Leighton Library, Dunblane

Scotland's oldest purpose-built independent library founded in 1687

Leighton Library has 1620 first edition of "De sensu rerum et magia" by Tommaso Campanella

Added at 07:16 on 05 September 2025

The Leighton Library has a 1620 first edition of "De sensu rerum et magia" by Italian poet, philosopher, astrologer and theologian Tommaso Campanella who was born #OnThisDay 5 September 1568.

Campanella’s central claim in this book is that everything in nature has “sense” or awareness - from stones to stars. This metaphysical stance laid the groundwork for imagining objects as narrators or agents, a concept that would later partly inspire the first fully-fledged "it-narrative" in English (a genre of novel which follows the fortunes of an object that is passed around between different owners). Campanella didn’t write fiction, but his idea that objects possess consciousness and participate in cosmic sympathy philosophically legitimised the notion that objects could “speak” or “remember.”

Tommaso Campanella was accused of conspiring against the Spanish rulers of Calabria in 1599. He was tortured and sent to prison, where he spent 27 years, and during which time he wrote his most significant works

< Leighton Library has 1663 first edition of "Hierozoicon sive bipertitum opus De animalibus sacrae scripturae" by Samuel Bochart