Featured
Newton on Colour
NEWTON, Isaac.
Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light. Also two treatises of the species and magnitude of curvilinear figures.
First edition of Newton’s Opticks, ‘which did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely, placed it on a scientific basis’, and ‘expounds Newton’s corpuscular or emission theory of light, and first contains his important optical discoveries in a collected form’ (Babson), also discussing rainbows and Newton’s Rings.
Birds, a Frog, and a Monkey with Pointed Red Shoes
LUDOLPH of Saxony.
Vita Christi.
Early incunable edition of Ludolph of Saxony’s popular and influential life of Christ, with lively south German illumination.
Contemporary Calf, with the World Map
HAKLUYT, Richard.
The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the most remote and farthest distant Quarters of the Earth at any Time within the Compasse of these 1500 Yeeres.
First edition, a fine copy, with the world map, in a strictly contemporary London binding, of the first collection of English voyages.
Editio Princeps
The Oldest Mathematical Textbook Still in Use
EUCLID.
Στοιχειων βιβλ. ιε εκ των θεωνος συνουσιων. Εις του αυτου του πρωτον, εξηγηματων Προκλου βιβλ. δ. Adiecta praefatiuncula in qua de disciplinis Mathematicis nonnihil.
Editio princeps of Euclid, the ‘oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today’ (PMM), a work which ‘has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible’ (DSB).
The Third and Best Utopia
MORE, Thomas, Sir.
De optimo reip. statu deque nova insula Utopia libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus … Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomae Mori, pleraque e Graecis versa. Epigrammata Des. Erasmi Roterodami.
Third edition of More’s Utopia, including his revisions and corrections and adding his and Erasmus’s Epigrammata for the first time; this is the culmination of the text as it evolved from More’s hand with the intercession of Erasmus. As the last edition in which More is likely to have been directly involved, it was used by the Yale editors as the basis for their modern critical edition.
A Chivalric Swansong
[MAILLES, Jacques de.]
La tresioyeuse plaisante & recreative hystoire composee par le loyal serviteur des faiz gestes triumphes et prouesses du bon chevalier sans paour et sans reprouche le gentil seigneur de Bayart …
First edition of Jacques de Mailles’ account of the Chevalier de Bayard, ‘le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche’, one of France’s most celebrated knights considered the epitome of chivalric virtues, written shortly after his death, with contemporary annotations in an English hand.
![[Summe le roy of des conincs summe.]](https://stg.assets.books.quaritch.com/images/GJ70_02.JPG)
Dutch Devotion: Morality for the Layman in the Vernacular
[LAURENTIUS, Frater; Jan van BREDERODE, translator.]
[Summe le roy of des conincs summe.]
Rare early edition in Dutch (first Delft 1478), preceding the first edition of the original French text, of what is perhaps the most significant treatise on Christian morality for the laity from the later thirteenth century. This edition was produced in the first printshop in Haarlem.
The First Delft Printshop: Reading Jerome in England
[JEROME, Saint.]
Obitus beati iheromini.
Rare incunable edition (first printed in Cologne, 1470), from the first printshop in Delft, of a devotional account of the life of St Jerome; a copy with early English provenance.
Presentation Copy to W. B. Tegetmeier
DARWIN, Charles.
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.
First edition, first issue, an important presentation copy to the naturalist and journalist William Bernhardt Tegetmeier, who provided Darwin with detailed information on poultry breeding and other subjects and who arranged for artists to produce some of the book’s illustrations.
Land Speculation, Coal, and Railroads in Pennsylvania;
Lynching and the Spectre of Civil War
[BARCLAY FAMILY.]
Album of letters, maps, accounts, and reports sent to Robert and later Charles Barclay (and some to the railway pioneer Joseph Pease), with copies of outgoing letters, largely relating to land in Bradford County, Pennsylvania; along with additional loose correspondence.
A large and coherent archive relating to a tract of 21,000 acres of coal-rich land in Pennsylvania, later known as Barclay Mountain, from its purchase in 1794 by the London brewer and merchant Robert Barclay (1751–1830) until its sale in 1853 by his son Charles Barclay (1780–1855). It takes in the discovery of coal in northern Pennsylvania and the sudden industrialisation and rapid settlement of the region.
![[Edited by Janus Lascaris.]](https://stg.assets.books.quaritch.com/images/GJ80_03.JPG)
Editio Princeps of 1500 Years of Greek Poetry
[ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]
[Edited by Janus Lascaris.]
Editio princeps, a beautiful printing in elegant epigraphic type, of the Planudean Anthology, a substantial collection of classical Greek verse which influenced artists, poets, and scholars. ‘The Greek Anthology is one of the great books of European literature, a garden containing the flowers and weeds of fifteen hundred years of Greek poetry, from the most humdrum doggerel to the purest poetry’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary).
Erwin Schrödinger and His Milieu
The Collection of Schrödinger’s Assistant
SCHRÖDINGER, Erwin, et al.
A collection of offprints and papers from the library of Nándor Balázs.
A remarkable collection of offprints and papers from the library of Hungarian-American physicist Nándor Balázs, laboratory assistant in the early 1950s to the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, comprising an exceptionally strong core of Schrödinger’s works – many of which stamped for presentation by the author or from his own library – as well as a notable complement of articles by the likes of Heisenberg, Dirac, Hilbert, Carathéodory, and Levi-Civita.
The First Archimedes
ARCHIMEDES, BOETHIUS, and CAMPANO da Novara; Luca GAURICO, editor.
Tetragonismus id est circuli quadratura per Campanum Archimedem Syracusanum atque Boetium mathematicae perspicacissimos adinventa.
The first appearance in print of any complete work by Archimedes, ‘generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians the world has ever known’ (PMM), including one of the earliest approximations of the value of π.
‘The Greatest of the Medieval Encyclopaedic Dictionaries’
BALBUS, Johannes.
Catholicon.
Third edition of the earliest printed lexicon, a monumental piece of printing from one of the earliest presses in Strasbourg, containing the thirteenth-century Latin dictionary and grammar of Johannes Balbus, the ‘greatest of the medieval encyclopaedic dictionaries’ (Chamberlin, p. 136).
The First Complete Plato
PLATO; Jean DE SERRES, translator and commentator; Henri ESTIENNE, editor.
Απαντα τα σωζομενα … Opera quae extant omnia …
A magnificent large-paper copy of the first complete edition of Plato’s corpus, edited by Henri Estienne and accompanied by a new parallel translation by Jean de Serres.
Editio Princeps
It’s All Greek to Me
GAZA, Theodorus.
Grammatica introductiva; De mensibus; Apollonius Dyscolus: De constructione; Herodianus: De numeris.
A beautiful example of early Greek printing, containing the editio princeps of the grammar of Theodorus Gaza, and one of the first texts to be printed entirely in Greek.
Marriage, the Moon, a Manual for Confessors, and More
[INCUNABLE SAMMELBAND.]
Sammelband of ten works.
A sammelband of ten Roman incunables, nine of which printed by Stephan Plannck, covering subjects from astronomy to usury, holy water to marriage, and ending with St Antoninus’s manual for confessors; with annotations showing the early ownership of a scholar/practitioner of canon law or a confessor, and partially preserving its original binding.
The Syston Park Copy
HERP, Hendrik.
Speculum aureum decem praeceptorum Dei.
First edition of this collection of sermons based on the Ten Commandments, devised for both confessors and preachers, printed by Peter Schoeffer, Gutenberg’s assistant and, after Gutenberg himself, ‘the most influential individual in the early history of the printed word’ (White, p. xi).
Local Government, Murder, and Football
[JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]
The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge with all the Processe of the Cessions, Warrantes Supercedias & all that longeth to ony Justyce to make Endytementes of haute Treason petyt Treason Felonyes Appeles Trespas upon Statutes, Trespas contra Regis Pacem Nocumentis with dyvers Thynges more as it appereth in the Kalender of the same Boke.
First edition(?), very rare, of the first printed guide for Justices of the Peace, issued with a short guide to land law.
‘African American’ Songbooks
‘CHAFF, Gumbo’ [pseud. Elias HOWE].
The Ethiopian Glee Book; a Collection of popular Negro Melodies, arranged for Quartett Clubs. [– No. 2; – No. 3].
First editions of all three parts – a very early collection of blackface minstrel tunes, with songs in two to four parts set to words in supposed African American dialect. The pseudonym of the publisher-compiler, ‘Gumbo Chaff’, is taken from the eponymous song of the 1830s (printed on p. 4 here), and was one of the first blackface stock characters.
From the Library of Robert Riddell of Glenriddell
FENN, John, Sir.
Original Letters written during the Reigns of Henry VI. Edward IV. and Richard III. by various Persons of Rank or Consequence; containing many curious Anecdotes, relative to that turbulent and bloody, but hitherto dark, Period of our History … Authenticated by Engravings of Autographs, Fac Similes, Paper-Marks, and Seals … The second Edition, with Additions and Corrections …
Second edition, published in the same year as the first, revised and corrected by George Steevens, of this selection from the ‘Paston Letters’, a notable source for the history of England during the Wars of the Roses which had been acquired by Fenn in 1774. Fenn published a second selection in 1789, and a fifth volume appeared posthumously in 1823.