The Geography of Ptolemy Elucidated
Preferring to share the fruits of his studies directly with the very many learned societies to which he belonged, Rylands rarely opted to have these findings published more widely. The major exception to this rule was his 1893 work The Geography of Ptolemy Elucidated.
Rylands claims to have first encountered Ptolemy's (approx. 100-170 AD) geographical work a full 45 years earlier, but it was an 1872 Quaritch book sale of “about a dozens editions” of Ptolemy's Cosmographia, which proved the true catalyst for 20 years of careful study. Rylands purchased two editions of the Cosmographia from the sale, and was alarmed to discover how egregiously they differed.
Unable to rest without pursuing this troubling “difficulty” further, as Rylands wrote in the introduction to The Geography of Ptolemy:
A long and careful bibliographical study was undertaken, during which very nearly every printed edition, and not a few of the manuscripts, in the libraries at home and abroad, including the Vatican, were examined, and a score or two of critical points selected, which, with ordinary care, determined the heredity of a copy. (v)
Some of the notes Rylands made during these studies can be viewed at the University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. In these tracings, diagrams, calculations and commentaries we can see examples of further ways in which Rylands used books as tools (click on the images below for further examples):
