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TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND,
who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel,...
London, Printed for Thomas Simmons …, 1659.
First edition, rare, a list of Quaker victims of persecution in Ireland with details of their sufferings. The pamphlet was published and undersigned by a group of the victims including the country’s reputed first Quaker, William Edmondson, and Thomas Holme, who went on to publish A Brief...
£300
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DUMAS, Alexandre, père.
Maître Adam le Calabrais.
Paris, Dumont, 1840.
Rare first authorised edition of an early comic novel by Dumas, written in 1839, before he achieved fame as a novelist. This edition was preceded by an unauthorised printing in Brussels the previous year.
£500
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GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich.
Kolchan. 4-ia kniga stikhov. Izdanie vtoroe [The Quiver. Fourth book of Poems. Second edition]....
[Second edition]. Petropolis, Berlin, 1923.
Second edition of the collection of poems with which Gumilev ‘reached the peak of his powers’ (Bristol, A History of Russian Poetry, p. 207).
£250
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RADIUS, J.
S. C. de. Characteristic Features of Russian and Slavic Poetry, with Specimens, translated by English Authors …
London, printed by Seyfang & Co. [for the author], 1854.
First and only edition. This little book contains what must be some of the earliest translations of Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Slovak, and Sorb verse into English. It certainly offers an early example of comparative Slavonic studies. Most of the specimens, however, are Russian, among...
£325
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[PUSHKIN, Alexander.]
LÉNSTRÖM, Carl Julius. Alexander Puschkin. Rysslands Byron. Ett Skaldeporträtt … första [-sednare]...
Uppsala, Leffler och Sebell; 1841.
First edition, very rare, of a study of Pushkin by the Swedish literary historian C. J. Lénström delivered at the Gustavian Auditorium on 8 December 1841.
£350
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EHRENBURG, Ilya Grigorievich.
Огонь [‘Ogon’; ‘Fire’].
[Gomel,] “Veka i Dni”, 1919.
First edition of this collection of poems, with a long signed presentation inscription in Russian on title-page to the actress Varvara Alekseeva-Meskhieva in pencil, covering the title-page: ‘To dear Varvara Vladimirovna Alekseeva-Meskhieva, from the heart, Ehrenburg. On the eve of departure...
£2000
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[HERZEN, Aleksandr Ivanovich]. ISKANDER (pseud.).
Prervannye razskazy… Izdanie vtoroe - ispravlennoe avtorom [Interrupted...
London, Trübner & Co., 1857.
Second, corrected edition of this collection of four short stories, which had initially been published in Russian periodicals, and were first collected and published as one volume in London in 1854.
£1250
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[BELYI, Andrei, pseud. [Boris Nikolaevich BUGAEV], et al.]
Kak my pishem [How we write].
Leningrad, Izdatel’stvo pisatelei, [1930].
First edition of these sketches on the art of writing, published as an aid to young writers, with contributions from Bely, Gorky, Zamyatin, Zoshchenko, Kaverin, Lavrenev, Libedinsky, Nikitin, Pilnyak, Slonimsky, Tikhonov, Aleksei Tolstoy, Tynyanov, Fedin, Olga Forsh, Chapygin, Shishkov, and Shklovsky.
£450
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DU BOSC, Jacques.
L’onneste femme, divisée en trois parties. Reveue, corrigée et augmentée en cette derniere edition …
Lyon, Antoine Cellier, 1661.
Very rare Lyon edition of Du Bosc’s famous ‘feminist’ work.
£450
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SHAKESPEARE, William, and Boris Leonidovich PASTERNAK, translator.
Otello, venetsianskii mavr. Perevod s angliiskogo...
Moscow, Ogiz, 1945.
First edition of Pasternak’s translation. ‘Pasternak was attached to Shakespeare for all his creative life. In his best early verse collection My Sister Life (pub. 1922), the poem “English Lessons” featured Desdemona and Ophelia “letting their passions slip from their shoulders...
£1000
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[ALMANACK.]
Al’manakh dlia vsekh. Kniga vtoraia [Almanack for all. Second book].
St Petersburg, “Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh”, 1911.
First edition, rare, the second of two annual literary almanacks with this title, with poems by Blok, Gorodetsky and Kuzmin, and short fiction by Chulkov, Gusev, Count Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Ivan Poroshin.
£200
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EHRENBURG, Il’ia Grigorievich.
Ogon’ [Fire].
[Gomel], “Veka i Dni”, 1919.
First edition. Although primarily known in the West as a prose writer and journalist (his novel Ottepel’ (The Thaw, 1954) coined the term for the era in the post-Stalin period), Ehrenburg (1891–1967) in fact wrote poetry all his life. The title for this collection, published...
£200
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STRABO.
Strabonis geographicorum lib. XVII ... iam denuo a Conrado Heresbachio … ad fidem Graeci exemplaris, authorumque …...
Basel, Johann Walder, 1539.
Second edition of Strabo’s masterful Geographica in the Latin translation of the German Humanist and friend of Erasmus, Konrad Heresbach (1496–1576), here found with the first Latin translation of an epitome of Strabo’s work by the Basel professor of physic and logic, Hieronymus Gemusaeus...
£2500
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LACTANTIUS.
Opera.
[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...
£25000
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VORAGINE, Jacobus de.
Lombardica historia que a plerisque aurea legenda sanctorum appellatur.
Strasbourg, [Georg Husner,] 1502.
Jacobus de Voragine’s influential Legenda Aurea in a contemporary gilt-lettered binding with an incunable fragment used as the rear pastedown. This copy is also notable for its extensive sixteenth century manuscript additions relating to Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg and former ownership...
£8000
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KANT, Immanuel.
Immanuelis Kantii opera ad philosophiam criticam. Volumen primum, cui inest Critica rationis purae Latine vertit...
Leipzig, for Engelhard Benjamin Schwickert, 1796.
First Latin translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, extensively annotated by a contemporary critical hand.
£2500
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SMITH, Albert.
A large archive of printed and manuscript material, including drafts of shows and lectures, including portions of...
[1820s to 1860s.]
Albert Richard Smith (1816–1860) trained as a surgeon but shortly afterwards turned to the world of letters, becoming a regular contributor to Bentley’s Miscellany and Punch; he adapted works by his friend Dickens for the theatre and edited The Man in the Moon (1847–9). ‘During...
£15000
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BARCLAY, Alexander.
Part-printed commission as Comptroller of Customs in Philadelphia.
5 August, 1749.
After a dissolute youth and a period in the army, Alexander Barclay (1711–1771) had been made Comptroller of Customs at Philadelphia in 1749, a position almost certainly engineered by his father David Barclay (1682–1769) – it required a significant sum (£500) advanced in security. David Barclay,...
£850
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AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].
Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.
Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.
First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.
£22500
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DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.
£2500