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  1. [SATIRE.]

    ‘A Letter to Julian’.

    [Circa October, 1685.]

    An attractive scribal copy of a ‘shotgun libel’ in verse, drawing attention to the scandals of the season at Tunbridge Wells and in London society. Captain Robert Julian had been imprisoned for a libel against Charles II in 1684-5; a number of verse satires of the time were addressed to him,...

    £350

  2. CÉSPEDES Y MENESES, Gonzalo de.

    Varia fortuna del soldado Pindaro.

    Lisbon, Geraldo de la Viña, ‘626’ [i.e 1626].

    Rare first edition of this semi-autobiographical picaresque novel, printed while the author was in exile in Lisbon following the publication of his politically controversial Historia apologética en los sucesos del reyno de Aragon (1622).

    £6750

  3. AMBROSE of Milan, AUGUSTINE, and HIERONYMUS.

    De virginitate opuscula Sanctorum doctorum, Ambrosii, Hieronymi et Augustini....

    Rome, Paolo Manuzio, 1562.

    Four first editions from Paolo Manuzio’s Roman press of Latin and Greek patristic texts on virginity, bound together at an early stage and annotated by the sixteenth-century cleric, courtier, dramatist, and humanist Bernardino Pino at the court of the Duke of Urbino.

    £4000

  4. FINÉ, Oronce. 

    Opere di Orontio Fineo … divise in cinque parti, arimetica, geometria, cosmografia, e orivoli, tradotte da...

    Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587. 

    First Italian edition of the works of Finé.  Among the most influential scientific scholars of the sixteenth century, over three decades at the Collège Royale Oronce Finé (1494–1555) made considerable contributions to various branches of mathematics, from geometry and arithmetic to astronomy...

    £2750

  5. JUVENAL, Decimus Junius.

    Argumenta Satyrarum Iuvenalis per Antonimu [sic] Mancinellum. Cu[m] quattuor co[m]me[n]tariis … Sebastianus...

    [(Colophon:) Milan, Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler for Giovanni da Legnano, 17 August 1501.]

    Rare edition of Juvenal’s Satires with commentary by the Italian humanists Antonio Mancinelli, Domizio Calderini, Giorgio Merula, and Giorgio Valla, edited by the Greek scholar Sebastianus Ducius, with extensive early annotations and corrections to both the text and commentary.

    £5000

  6. [ALMANACK.]

    Calendarium Tyrnaviense ad annum Jesu Chris[ti] M. DCC. XXXI[.] …

    [Tyrnau (Trnava), 1731.]

    A remarkable almanack binding of part-printed, part-manuscript vellum, prepared for presentation at the Habsburg court in Vienna to the Genoese diplomat Clemente Doria.

    £1850

  7. FENNING, Daniel.

    The Ready Reckoner; or Trader’s most useful Assistant, in buying and selling all sorts of Commodities either...

    London, printed for S. Crowder … and B.C. Collins … in Salisbury, 1785.

    First edition thus, edited by the mathematician and almanack-maker Joseph Moon of Salisbury.

    £250

  8. [MINIATURE BOOKS.]

    ‘Hebdomadaire, ou bibliotheque secrete’.

    France, c. 1800.

    A charming miniature diary in seven volumes, hidden within a compartment of a book-form box.

    £2750

  9. [ALMANACK.]

    London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1820.

    [London,] Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1820].

    An extraordinary binding of silver filigree over blue silk on a miniature London Almanack for 1820.

    £2750

  10. [ALMANACK.]

    L’Esprit des chansonniers, extrain [sic?] des meilleurs poëtes.

    Paris, Le Fuel, [1826?].

    A very rare enamelled metal binding with an enchanting design of birds and squirrels, from the collection of the bookbinder, collector, and bibliographer Léon Gruel.

    £2750

  11. [TOWNLEY, William Dalison.]

    Punch’s Pocket-Book for 1877, containing a Calendar, Cash Account, Diary and Memoranda for every...

    London, [Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. for] Punch Office, 1877.

    A Punch almanack for 1877 with nearly sixty manuscript diary entries by the seventeen-year-old William Dalison Townley of Fulbourn, near Cambridge, written during the period of illness immediately preceding his untimely death.

    £450

  12. [KAFKA, Franz, Max BROD, et al.]

    Das bunte Buch.

    Leipzig, Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1914.

    First edition of this literary almanack, containing Kafka’s short story Zum Nachdenken für Herrenreiter. The story had been published as part of Kafka’s first collection, Betrachtung, earlier in the year.

    £250

  13. [POETS’ GUILD.]

    Tsekh Poetov I [–III].

    Berlin, S. Efron, 1922[–3].

    First edition of this literary almanack from the newly re-established Poets’ Guild, first formed in 1911 and with members including Gumilev, Gorodetsky, and Mandelstam, the core of whom became known as the Acmeists.

    £1250

  14. [LOUIS XIV.]

    L’oraison funebre de tres-haute, tres-excellente et tres-puissante princesse monarchie universelle. Prononcée le...

    ‘Cologne’, s.n., ‘1705’ [1704].

    Sole edition, very rare and virtually unstudied, of ‘one of the most curious and violent pamphlets published against Louis XIV’ (Pelissier, trans.).

    £1250

  15. FLEMING, Alexander, Sir.

    On the antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with special Reference to their Use in...

    [London, H.K. Lewis & Co., 1944.]

    Second edition of Fleming’s study announcing the discovery of penicillin, one of 250 copies which Fleming commissioned to be printed in 1944. The original offprint, issued in 1929 in 150 copies and liberally distributed by Fleming to the scientific community at large for the prompt furthering...

    £4000

  16. [BEER.]

    Jenaischer allgemeiner Bier-Comment nebst angehängtem Bier-Prozess.

    ‘Eschwig, Otter & Kunitz, 183*.’

    An apparently unrecorded humorous handbook of drinking rules for students at the university of Jena, famous both as a centre of German idealism and Romanticism, and for its professors, who included Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, and Schlegel.

    £375

  17. [TREATIES.]

    Volume of tracts on European treaties of peace and alliance.

    Vienna and Amsterdam, 1725-1731.

    A collection of scarce texts relating to the Peace of Vienna (1725) and subsequent treaties of Hanover (1725), Paris (1727), Seville (1729), and Vienna (1731), with contemporary manuscript additions in Italian and French clearly composed by someone in diplomatic service. The collection eloquently...

    £1750

  18. MELCHIOR, Christian. 

    ‘Synechia sive summa lectionum Plutarchicarum a domino conrectore huius scholae Salderianae praelectarum. ...

    [Brandenburg an der Havel, 1620.] 

    An unpublished early seventeenth-century manuscript recording lectures on Plutarch’s pedagogical work On the Education of Children, bound with a scarce printed edition of the same text, and a rare edition of the poems of Theognis and other Greek lyric poets, each with numerous marginal and...

    £6500

  19. STOBAEUS, Johannes.

    Εκλογαι αποϕθεγματων και υποθηκων … Sententie ex thesauris Graecorum delectae …...

    Basel, Johann Oporinus for Christoph Froschauer, August 1549.

    Second, ‘in every respect preferable’ (Dibdin) edition of Gesner’s Stobaeus, acclaimed as ‘the first critical impression of the text of the Florilegium’ (ibid.), philologically and critically much superior to the first, published in 1543. Gesner’s parallel printing of the Greek...

    £1750

  20. LATHAM, Simon.

    Latham’s Falconry: or, the Faulcons Lure, and Cure: in two Books. The first, concerning the ordering and training...

    London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for John Harison, 1633.

    First collected edition (third edition of volume I, originally published in 1614 and reissued in 1615, second edition of volume II, originally published in 1618).

    £8500