# Is "Ethica (first printed in B.d.S. Opera Posthuma)" by Baruch Spinoza a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Ethica (first printed in B.d.S. Opera Posthuma) by Baruch Spinoza ([Jan Rieuwertsz], Amsterdam, 1677) is identified by: The title page is the point: it reads only "B.D.S. Amsterdam 1677 Latin is the true first, but it does not stand alone: the Dutch De Nagelate Schriften van B.d.S.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The title page is the point: it reads only "B.D.S. Opera Posthuma, quorum series post praefationem exhibetur", with a woodcut device and no place of publication and no publisher named — the imprint was deliberately suppressed, and the author is identified by initials alone
- Amsterdam and Jan Rieuwertsz are a bibliographic reconstruction, which is why every responsible catalogue record brackets them: "[Amsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz], 1677"
- A title page that prints Amsterdam or Rieuwertsz openly is not this book
- Collation [40], 614, [32]; [2], 112, [8] pp., set in roman, italic and Hebrew type, with woodcut text illustrations and contents plus errata leaves at the end; the Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae has its own signatures and pagination
- This volume carries the first printing of the Ethica along with the Tractatus Politicus, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, Epistolae and the Hebrew grammar
- Contemporary stiff vellum with a manuscript spine title is the usual contemporary binding
- Publisher imprint reads [Jan Rieuwertsz], Amsterdam

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Baruch Spinoza |
| Publisher | [Jan Rieuwertsz], Amsterdam |
| Year | 1677 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The title page is the point: it reads only "B.D.S. Opera Posthuma, quorum series post praefationem exhibetur", with a woodcut device and no… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Quarto. The title page is the point: it reads only "B.D.S. Opera Posthuma, quorum series post praefationem exhibetur", with a woodcut device and no place of publication and no publisher named — the imprint was deliberately suppressed, and the author is identified by initials alone. Amsterdam and Jan Rieuwertsz are a bibliographic reconstruction, which is why every responsible catalogue record brackets them: "[Amsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz], 1677". A title page that prints Amsterdam or Rieuwertsz openly is not this book. Collation [40], 614, [32]; [2], 112, [8] pp., set in roman, italic and Hebrew type, with woodcut text illustrations and contents plus errata leaves at the end; the Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae has its own signatures and pagination. This volume carries the first printing of the Ethica along with the Tractatus Politicus, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, Epistolae and the Hebrew grammar. Contemporary stiff vellum with a manuscript spine title is the usual contemporary binding. Copies are frequently found without an engraved portrait; dealers describe portrait-less copies as normal, so absence is not evidence of a later printing. Reference: Kingma & Offenberg 24; Van der Linde 22.

## Is this the true first?
Amsterdam 1677 Latin is the true first, but it does not stand alone: the Dutch De Nagelate Schriften van B.d.S. (Glazemaker's translation, Kingma & Offenberg 25) was published simultaneously in 1677, not afterward — the editorial team delivered both copy-texts to the printer together, and scholars decline to award precedence to either. Both are collected as first editions of their respective languages; the Dutch volume omits the Hebrew grammar and is therefore not a complete counterpart. There is no contemporary English edition to compete: the Ethics did not reach print in English until 1883, when W. Hale White (Trübner, London) and R.H.M. Elwes (George Bell, Bohn's Philosophical Library) both appeared — precedence between those two within 1883 is not established by the sources consulted. George Eliot's 1854-56 English translation went unpublished in her lifetime.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition exists for a 1677 quarto. The reprint tells that matter: the work was banned in Holland in 1678 and placed on the Index in 1679, so later 17th- and 18th-century appearances are separate editions, not printings. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarly editions (Paulus; Van Vloten & Land; Gebhardt) and modern anastatic/photographic facsimiles of the 1677 sheets circulate and are what donors realistically hold — a facsimile reproduces the imprint-less title page faithfully, so judge on paper, type impression and binding rather than on the title page alone.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Ethica (first printed in B.d.S. Opera Posthuma)* by Baruch Spinoza a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/ethica-first-printed-in-bds-opera-posthuma
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.