Recent Acquisitions
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[ALMANACK.]
Les etrennes a la rose, ou le rosier d’amour.
Paris, Janet, [1804?].
A charming literary almanack, or ‘rosebush of love’, collecting amatory poems using the motif of the rose, here bound in red silk strikingly embroidered in silver and dated with the French Revolutionary year ‘An XII’ (1804).
£2500
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CLÜVER, Philipp.
Introductio in universam geographiam tam veterem, quam novam …
Wolfenbüttel, Caspar Johann Bismarck for Conrad Buno, 1686.
The 1686 edition of perhaps the most important geographical textbook of the early modern period, an introduction to global geography by the German antiquarian and geographical pioneer Philipp Clüver, enlarged and supplemented by the German geographer Johann Buno.
£2500
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
Doom of Youth …
London, Chatto & Windus, 1932.
First English edition, one of Lewis’s scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction). Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published...
£2000
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THICKNESSE, Philip.
A Year’s Journey through the Paix Bâs and Austrian Netherlands … Vol.
I [all published]. London: Printed in the Year 1784.
First edition, rare, and possibly suppressed, of a typically idiosyncratic account of a ‘quarrel-ridden tour’ of the Netherlands and Belgium by ‘the most irascible individual within the arena of late eighteenth-century print culture’ (ODNB), with a graphic depiction of the 1762...
£1850
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REFUGE, Eustace de; Girolamo CANINI, translator.
Trattato della corte del Signor Refuge. Tradotto di Francese in questo...
Venice, Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1621.
Rare first edition in Italian of this treatise on courtly behaviour attributed to the French statesman Eustache de Refuge (1564–1617), a seventeenth-century bestseller combining Machiavelli with Castiglione, with folding letterpress flowcharts by the translator, Giuseppe Canini, who had also produced...
£1850
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[MARY I.] VISDOMINI, Francesco.
Oratione funebre fatta in Napoli nell’hon. essequie della serenissima regina d’Ingliterra...
[Naples, Raimondo Amato, 1559.]
First edition, extremely rare, of this Italian sermon on the death of Mary I of England. Our copy appears to be an unrecorded issue, omitting from the title-page the imprint recorded by EDIT16 (‘se vendeno ala porta piccola de s. Laurentio appresso à Raymondo Amato’).
£1800
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DANETT, Thomas.
A Continuation of the Historie of France, from the Death of Charles the Eight where Comines endeth, till the Death...
London, Printed by Thomas East for Thomas Charde, 1600.
First edition, an original history composed in sequel to Danett’s translation of The Historie of Philip de Commines (1596), covering the history of France from 1498 to 1559.
£1800
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OZEROV, Vladislav Aleksandrovich.
Sochineniia … Chast’ pervaia [–vtoraia] [Works … Part one [–two]].
St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1817 [-1816].
One of two rival collected editions published after Ozerov’s death in 1816, rare, including the first appearance of the author’s poetry and his last tragedy Poliksena.
£1800
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[WALL, Thomas].
A Second Christian Warning-Piece; wherein is shewed the first and chief Cause of Englands present Misery … Humbly...
London, 1681-2.
First edition, very rare, of a vehement anti-Catholic tract published in the context of the Exclusion Crisis; bound with the principal astrological work of John Holwell (a slightly imperfect copy).
£1750
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BOYLE, Robert.
Tractatus … Ubi 1. Mira aëris … rarefactio detecta. 2. Observata nova circa durationem virtutis elasticae...
London, Henry Herringman, 1671 [but printed abroad?].
I. Second edition, very scarce. The first edition, published the year before, is known in less than half a dozen copies. An English translation also appeared in 1671.
£1750
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[WISHART, George.]
I. G. de rebus auspiciis serenssimi, & potentissimi Caroli Dei gratia Magnae Brittanniae, Franciae & Hiberniae...
[Amsterdam or The Hague,] 1647.
First edition, rare, a fine paper copy in a handsome binding, of an account of the campaign of James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, against the Covenanters in 1644−46.
£1750
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[ORDE, John Powlett.]
A collection of 111 original compositions in Latin (and occasionally Greek) verse and prose.
Eton, 1818–1820.
A delightful insight into classical education at Eton, where until the mid-nineteenth century Greek and Latin were the only official classroom subjects, and Latin composition was considered a key accomplishment. Subjects covered here include ‘The Pigeon’ (5 May 1818), ‘Instruction’ (21...
£1750
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COMIDAS DE CARBOGNANO, Cosimo.
Primi principi della gramatica Turca ad uso dei missionari apostolici di Costantinopoli ...
Rome, stamperia della Sac. Congr. di Prop. Fide, 1794.
The first complete Ottoman Turkish grammar published in Italian, compiled by the Catholic Armenian dragoman Cosimo Comidas de Carbognano (translator to Count de Ludolf, minister of the Two Sicilies to the Ottoman Porte in the late eighteenth century) and published by the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda...
£1500
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[ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]
Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.
First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.
£1500
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SAINT AULAIRE, Achille.
Voyage autour du monde par St. Aulaire.
[Clichy, Maurice Loignon for] Paris, Arnauld de Vresse, [c. 1864].
A hand-coloured copy of this scarce and charming juvenile guide to twenty-four countries across the globe. The plates are adapted from those first published in Paris by Aubert circa 1845 under the title Récréations instructives: voyage pittoresque à travers le monde (Gumuchian 5037).
£1500
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GRUBBE, Margaret Julia Maria.
Archive of drawings, watercolours, and photographs.
England and Scotland, c. 1900 – 1960s.
A charming archive of the Suffolk artist Margaret Grubbe (1911–97), granddaughter of the painter John Seymour Lucas, comprising dozens of family photographs and over 150 of her drawings and watercolours, tracing her development as an artist from her childhood into middle age.
£1500
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HEMINGWAY, Ernest.
A Farewell to Arms.
New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929.
First edition, first printing, without the disclaimer on p. [x] and with the Scribner’s seal on the copyright page.
£1500
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MACDONALD, Alexander.
‘Instructions and regulations for the formations and movements of horse artillery by Captain A: Macdonald...
[England, 1827.]
Scarce manuscript of an unpublished work on the formations and movements of horse artillery by the distinguished soldier and Waterloo veteran Major-General Alexander Macdonald CB (1776–1840), illustrated with twenty-five coloured diagrams.
£1500
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TASSO, Torquato; Giovanni Francesco NEGRI, translator.
[Drop-head title:] Della tradottione della Gierusalemme liberata...
[Bologna, 1628.]
Rare first edition of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata to be translated into dialect, here in facing Bolognese and Italian translation, its printing suspended midway through the thirteenth canto, likely by Cardinal Bernardino Spada, a friend of the translator and the dedicatee of the work.
£1500
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[IMAGINARY VOYAGE.]
Admirable Travels of Messieurs Thomas Jenkins and David Lowellin through the unknown Tracts of Africa: with...
London, ‘for the Benefit of Robert Barker, an unfortunate blind man’, 1785.
Rare, a lively chapbook novella of adventures and tribulations in Africa, fusing elements of a Robinsonade with a brief utopia.
£1500