Gift Ideas

  1. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, Caius.

    [De XII Caesarum vitis. De Illustribus grammaticis. De Claris rhetoribus. Horatii vita. Plinii vita....

    Paris, Typographia Regia, 1644.

    An attractive, illustrated pocket Suetonius. Quoting the pioneering early eighteenth-century bookseller Guillaume de Bure, Cookman notes that this edition is ‘recherché a cause de la beauté de son impression’.

    £350

  2. [PSALMS.]

    Les Pseaumes de David, mis en rime Françoise, par Clement Marot, et Theodore de Beze.

    ‘Se vendent à Charenton, par Antoine Cellier, demeurent à Paris … à l’Imprimerie des Roziers’, 1667.

    Charenton-printed French Psalms in a remarkable shagreen binding with silver-filigree furniture, with English provenance since the eighteenth century.

    £2750

  3. MAGNON, Jean. 

    Les heures du Chrestien, divisées en trois journées; qui sont la journée de la penitence, la journée de la...

    Paris, se vendent chez l’autheur … et chez Sebastien Martin, 1654. 

    First edition of this handsomely illustrated collection of prayers and devotions in verse and prose by the French playwright and poet Jean Magnon (1620–1662).  The number of plates in individual copies varies, this copy containing at least two more than those described on OCLC. 

    £650

  4. RILKE, Rainer Maria. 

    Les Fenêtres.  Dix poèmes de Rainer Maria Rilke illustrés de dix eaux-fortes par Baladine. 

    Paris, Officina Sanctandreana, 1927. 

    First edition of a series of ten poems in French addressed by Rilke to his lover, the painter Baladine Klossowska, who herself provided the illustrations, numbered 146 of 500 copies on pur fil, of a total edition of 515. 

    £450

  5. MEREDITH, George.

    Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads.

    London, Chapman & Hall, 1862.

    First edition of a daring and innovative Victorian collection of poems adapting the sonnet sequence tradition (though in poems of sixteen lines) to the emotional realities of a failed contemporary marriage, tracing the course of estrangement as love gives way to discord, jealousy, unhappiness, and...

    £450

  6. [DICKSON, William, photographer.]

    Ambrotype of two young men holding hands.

    [Glasgow, 1860s.]

    A very attractive ambrotype double portrait showing two seated young men holding hands, with subtle hand-tinting to their faces and hands.

    £450

  7. BREREWOOD, Edward. 

    Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World … 

    London, Printed [by Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614. 

    First edition.  Brerewood, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, was a scholar in many fields who published nothing in his own lifetime (he died in 1613).  Enquiries, seen through the press by a nephew, explores the spread of ancient, eastern, and modern languages, discusses the...

    £3000

  8. [LABOURS OF THE MONTHS &c.] 

    Januarius.  Februarius.  Merz.  April … 

    Nuremberg, Joh. Andreae Endterische Handlung, [second half of eighteenth century]. 

    A scarce popular print depicting the labours of the months and signs of the zodiac, four continents, the four classical elements, and the four seasons. 

    £475

  9. VISSCHER, Nicolaes [I]. 

    Avium vivae et artificiosissimae delineationes. 

    Amsterdam, Nicolaus [I] Visscher, 1659. 

    First and only edition of this rare set of ornithological prints by the famed cartographer Nicolaes Visscher I. 

    £3750

  10. ASCHAM, Roger.

    A Report and Discourse … of the Affaires and State of Germany and the Emperour Charles his Court, during certaine...

    London, Printed by John Daye … [1570?].

    First edition. Ascham’s account of his time in Germany as secretary to Sir Richard Morison, ambassador to the court of Emperor Charles V, takes the form of a letter to the courtier John Astley.

    £2000

  11. BRIDGES, Robert.

    Eros and Psyche, a Poem in XII Measures … with Wood-cuts from Designs by Edward Burne-Jones.

    [Gregynog], The Gregynog Press, 1935.

    One of 300 copies, one of the most beautiful works from this press, with three-colour initials and a new typeface (used only in this volume) by Graily Hewitt.

    £1500

  12. KEATS, John.

    Endymion. A Poetic Romance … with Engravings by John Buckland-Wright.

    [London,] The Golden Cockerel Press, [1947].

    No. 200 of 500 copies of the Golden Cockerel Endymion (the first 100 specially bound in full vellum); also found in brown buckram rather than red as here.

    £1750

  13. HICKES, George, Runólfur JÓNSSON, and Edward BERNARD.

    Institutiones grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae et Moeso-Gothicae …...

    Oxford, ‘e theatro Sheldoniano … typis Junianis’, 1689 [– 1688].

    First edition of a foundational work in the modern study of ancient Germanic languages and in the field of comparative linguistics, comprising the first appearances of Hickes’s monumental grammar of Old English and Gothic and of Bernard’s etymological dictionary, accompanied by a survey of Old...

    £1200

  14. JUVENAL, Decimus Junius, and Aulus Persius FLACCUS.

    Satyrae.

    London, J. Brindley, 1744.

    First Brindley edition, edited by the Irish classical scholar Usher Gahagan (d. 1749). John Brindley began to publish his series of well-printed duodecimo classics in 1744, for which Gahagan edited eleven works before his arrest and conviction for high treason, having become embroiled with a...

    £650

  15. ANACREON.

    [Odaria.] Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...

    Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.

    Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G. C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions...

    £650

  16. CICERO, Marcus Tullius.

    De Officiis … libri tres, ex editione Oliveti Parisiis vulgata.

    London, T. Payne, 1791.

    First Payne edition, edited by Henry Homer (1753–1791). A friend of the writer and schoolmaster Samuel Parr since his days at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Homer produced editions of Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Pliny the Younger, and others.

    £450

  17. WEBER, Johann Adam.

    Discursus curiosi et fructuosi [ad praecipuas totius litteraturae humanae scientias illustrandas accommodate …].

    [Salzburg, Johann Baptist Mayr, 1690.]

    Third Salzburg edition of Weber’s wide-ranging discourses, in a handsome Bavarian binding for the Abbot of Ettal, Bernhard I Oberhauser, attributable to the monk Brother Gregor, a trained bookbinder from Hungary.

    £6000

  18. 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

  19. VARILLAS, [Antoine].

    La Pratique de l’education des princes, contenant l’histoire de Guillaume de Croy, surnommé Le Sage,...

    Amsterdam, H. Wetstein & H. Desbordes, 1686.

    A highly unusually decorated binding, likely an amateur imitation of then-fashionable tooling.

    £750

  20. STATIUS, P. Papinius; John CAREY, editor.

    Opera, sedula recensione accurata [cover: Recensuit et accuravit Joannes...

    London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. B. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Browne,...

    An attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards, of the ‘Regent’s Classics’ pocket edition of Statius.

    £120