Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan
Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.
We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.
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[THOMAS À KEMPIS.]
Messer Giovanni Gerson. Utile & divota operetta della imitatione di Giesu Xpo …
Florence, Piero Pacini da Pescia, 16 April 1505.
Scarce edition of an anonymous Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi, with a striking woodcut of Christ to the title.
£4000
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[THOMAS À KEMPIS.]
Ioanni Gerson vulgare devota operetta della imitatione di Iesu Christo …
Florence, Antonio Miscomini, 22 July 1493.
Uncommon editions of two classic Latin devotional texts rendered into Italian.
£6500
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THOMAS AQUINAS; Antonius PIZAMANUS, editor.
Opuscula [with a life of St Thomas].
Venice, Hermannus Liechtenstein, 7 September 1490.
First collected edition of seventy-one shorter works by Thomas Aquinas.
£3750
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THOMAS CANTIPRATENSIS.
Bonum universale de proprietatibus apum.
[Cologne, Johann Koelhoff, the Elder, c. 1478–1480.]
Second edition of this manual of moral theology structured around the behaviour of bees, composed in the 1260s. It was a popular work, surviving in over a hundred manuscripts.
£6000
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TIBULLUS. James GRAINGER, translator.
A Poetical Translation of the Elegies of Tibullus; and of the Poems of Sulpicia.
With the original Text, and Notes critical and explanatory … London, A. Millar, 1759.
First edition of this translation, with notes, by James Grainger (1722–1766), an army surgeon who had, unusually, turned to the pen to supplement his income from medical work.
£300
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TOMPSON, John, editor.
English Miscellanies consisting of various Pieces of Divinity, Morals, Politicks, Philosophy and History;...
Gottingen by Abram. Vandenhoeck, Printer and Bookseller to the University 1746.
Second edition, revised, of John Tompson’s important English Miscellanies, expanded to almost twice the size of the first edition, including up-to-date content published since 1737.
£300
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TUCKER, Josiah.
Betydande frågor om handelen, wid tilfålle af de motsäjelser, som skedde emot den sista billen, om utlänningars...
[v. Oelreich], 1763.
First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...
£200
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TURNER, Sharon.
The sacred history of the world, as displayed in the creation and subsequent events to the deluge. Attempted to...
London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832 [– 1834; – 1837].
First edition, each volume with a presentation letter from the author (dated 1 March 1832, 12 December 1834, and 27 March 1837 respectively) to the classical scholar Thomas Gaisford.
£500
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TYRE, William, Archbishop of, and Giuseppe OROLOGGI (translator).
Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme,...
Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.
First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript detailing a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.
£2800
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URCEO, Antonio [or Codro].
Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur. Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat. Epistolae. ...
Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502.
First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts.
£3000
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VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator.
Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...
Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565.
First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus.
£1250
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VALERIUS MAXIMUS.
Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].
First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.
£2750
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VALLISNERI, Alberto Maria.
Lettioni venti sopra gli alti, et ineffabili misteri della Messa, in publico lette nella chiesa di...
Milan, Giovanni Battista da Ponte & fratelli, 1567.
Very rare first edition of a collection of twenty sermons on the Mass delivered by the Ferrarese Carmelite Vallisneri in the church of San Giovanni in Conca, Milan, dedicated to the city’s archbishop Cardinal Carlo Borromeo.
£500
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VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.
Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...
[(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]
Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...
£2750
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VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.
Quae supersunt ex historiae Romanae voluminibus duobus. Ex editione Petri Burmanni fideliter expressa.
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1752.
First and only Foulis Press edition, unusually found here in a contemporary Scandinavian binding, evidence of the high esteem in which these products of the Glasgow enlightenment were held across Europe.
£425
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VIGER, François.
De praecipuis graecae dictionis idiotismis … accessit praeterea huic editioni observationum non inutilium qualecunque...
London, G. Godbid for William Shrowsberey, 1678.
Second London edition of this treatise on Greek idiom by the French Jesuit François Viger (1590–1647).
£175
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[VIRGIL.] RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE).
...
Paris, André Wechel, 1564.
Second editions of Ramus’s extensive commentaries on Virgil’s two poems on country life, written in reaction to the dry doctrines of several French schools who based their teaching of nature on Aristotle’s Physics. Ramus wanted to keep in contact with the concrete realities of nature...
£950
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[WALLET.]
Wallet with manuscript and printed waste.
France, c. 1790.
An attractive late eighteenth-century wallet in the guise of a wallet-bound book, possibly re-using an earlier eighteenth-century binding, the interior compartments composed of manuscript and printed waste.
£950
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[WALLPAPER BINDING.]
‘Chassereau des Biens et Rentes deves a joseph Paul Roegier et marie margu te [sic] Bourdeau son espouse,...
Hainaut, 1750–1773.
A manuscript account book compiled by Joseph Paul Roegier and his son, recording receipts over a quarter-century, in an attractive and unusual binding reusing a large fragment of gilt leather wallpaper.
£3500
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WATTS, Isaac.
Psalms of David imitated in the Language of the New Testament …
Birmingham, Printed & sold by Knott and Lloyd. 1806.
Unrecorded Birmingham editions of Watts’s Hymns (first 1707) and Psalms (first 1719), both many times reprinted, especially in America. The portrait of Watts was printed especially for this edition and is dated 10 October 1806.
£300