Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan
Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.
We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.
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RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio.
Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...
Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562.
The third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the divisive questione d’amore hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature, our copy extensively annotated by a seventeenth-century collector of musical...
£2800
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ROMANA, Provost.
Nell’aprirsi della nuova chiesa dalla veneranda, antichissima Confraternita de’ Disciplinanti in Dogliani...
Mondovì, Pietro Francesco and Luiggi Rossi, [1756].
Unrecorded provincially printed broadside celebrating the opening of a new church of the Confraternity of the Disciplinants of Dogliani.
£275
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ROSSI, Ottavio, and Bartolomeo FONTANA, compiler.
Lettere del Sig. Ottavio Rossi. Raccolte da Bartolomeo Fontana ...
Brescia, Bartolomeo Fontana, 1621.
First edition of over 150 letters by the poet and scholar Ottavio Rossi (1570–1630), printed in his native city of Brescia and including a letter to the painter Palma Giovane, our copy with a contemporary manuscript note on the artist’s final moments written mere days after his death.
£1250
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ROTHSCHILD, Boaz Raphael.
[Sefer oniyah b’lev yam … Chelek rishon]. ספר אני בלב ים ... חלק ראשון
Fürth, Chaim ben Zvi Hirsch, 1766.
First part of the first and only edition of this work on the Thirteen Principles of Faith and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy by German rabbi Boaz Rothschild, our copy presented to the Rothschild family in England.
£450
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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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SABELLICO, Marco Antonio (or Marcantonio) Coccio; Petrus PONTANUS (or Du Pont, De Brugge).
Sanctissime elegie de...
Paris, Jean de Gourmont, [c. 1513].
One of only two recorded editions, both very rare, of this set of elegies addressed to the Virgin Mary, followed by verses ‘on St Peter’s sinking boat’, the former extensively annotated by a contemporary French student.
£1400
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SALLUST.
C. Sallustius Crispus cum veterum Historicorum fragmentis.
Leiden, ex officina Elzeviriana, 1634.
The first small format Elzevir printing of Sallust with a contemporary ink sketch of a Peeping Tom at the rear of the volume. The volume contains the two major works of Sallust, the Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline, along with the surviving fragments of his annalistic history of his...
£950
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SALLUST.
Caii Sallustii Crispi quae extant.
London, James Tonson and John Watts, 1713.
First Maittaire edition. The French-born classical scholar Michel Maittaire (1668–1741) studied at Westminster, and then under Robert South at Christ Church, Oxford. He is best known for his Annales Typographici and the series of duodecimo classics that he published with Tonson and Watts...
£300
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SALLUST.
C. Crispi Sallustii opera omnia quae exstant, ex recognitione Iani Gruteri. Accedunt castigg. annotat. notae, ac scholia...
Frankfurt, Zacharias Palthenius for Jonas Rosa, 1607.
The works of Sallust edited by the philologist and librarian Jan Gruter (1560–1627), with profuse annotations at the beginning attributed to the Dutch professor Willem Coetier (1647–1723) of Franeker.
£1500
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‘SANCTA CLARA, Abraham a’, i.e. Johann Ulrich MEGERLE.
Coraggio e viltà, l’uno nella virtù, l’altra nel vizio....
Trento, Giovanni Parone, 1717.
Scarce first and only Italian edition of Abraham a Sancta Clara’s emblematic moral treatise Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt, printed in Trento with one hundred striking – albeit somewhat provincial – woodcuts after the engravings in the first German edition of 1707.
£2250
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[SARPI, Paolo (pseud.).] ‘Pietro Soave POLANO’.
Historia del Concilio Tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano. Seconda...
Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1629.
Second edition, the first to omit the extraneous additions of the 1619 edition introduced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, of the influential and groundbreaking history of the Council of Trent by Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), described by Milton as ‘the great unmasker’.
£450
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[SAVONAROLA, Girolamo.] Ambrogio Caterino POLITI.
Discorso … contra la dottrina, et le profetie di Fra Girolamo Savonarola.
Venice, Giolito, 1548.
First edition of a condemnation of Savonarola’s theology, doctrine and prophecies by the former Savonarola acolyte Politi (1484–1553), ‘one of the most fiery Catholic polemicists of his times’ (Bongi, trans.), who four years earlier had published a confutation of Luther’s theology.
£1500
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[SAVOY-CARIGNAN, Maria Vittoria Francesca, Princess of.]
Recueil de prières et de pratiques très utils pour se conduire à Dieu...
[Paris, Imprimerie Royale], 1735.
First and only edition of this rare prayerbook, compiled by the notorious gambling house hostess and spy Maria Vittoria Francesca of Savoy-Carignan (1690–1766), elegantly printed in a very limited number at the royal press set up at the Louvre.
£2750
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SBRUGLIO, Riccardo.
Richardi Sbrulii equitis Foroiuliani Cesareiq[ue] poete ad magnificu[m] atq[ue] illustrem Maximilianu[m]...
[Colophon:] Augsburg, Hans von Erfurt, 1519.
First, very rare, edition, of Sbruglio’s Latin poems addressed to Maximilianus Transylvanus, published in the year that Charles V became Holy Roman Emperor. A native of Cividale in northern Italy, Sbruglio (c. 1480 – after 1525) studied and taught at Wittenberg (where the rector compared...
£1800
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SCHEFFER, Johannes Gerhard.
Constantini Opelii de fabrica triremium Meibomiana epistola perbrevis ad amicum.
‘Eleuteropoli’ [Freistadt?], 1672.
First edition of this treatise on the ancient oar-driven warships known as triremes by the noted German philologist and archaeologist Johannes Scheffer (1621–1679), written as a critical response to the De fabrica triremium liber of Marcus Meibom, which had appeared in Amsterdam the previous...
£875
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[SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]
Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.
Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.
Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.
£375
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SENECA the Younger, and SENECA the Rhetorician.
L. Annaei Senecae philosophi opera omnia; ex ult. I. Lipsii emendatio: et M. Annaei...
Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, [1639–]1640.
[With:]
GRONOVIUS, Joannes Fredericus. Ad L. & M. Annaeos Senecas notae....First Elzevir edition of the moral works and letters of the philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and the surviving Suasoriae and Controversiae of his father, known as Seneca the Rhetorician, along with the Amsterdam reprint of the extensive scholia of Johann Friedrich...
£500
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[SIBYLLINE ORACLES.]
Σιβυλλιακοι χρησμοι hoc est Sibyllina oracula ex vett. codd. aucta, renovate, et notis illustrate...
Paris, [Compagnie du grande navire,] 1607.
Second edition, handsomely printed in three sizes of the Grecs du roi, and illustrated with fine plates of the Sibyls by Mallery.
£1200
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SILIUS ITALICUS, C.; John CAREY, editor.
Punicorum libri XVII, sedulâ recensione accurati [cover: Recensuit et...
London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Co., T. Cadell,...
First and only ‘Regent’s Classics’ edition of Silius Italicus’s epic poem on the Second Punic War, an attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards.
£100
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SIMEONI, Gabriele.
Le III parti del campo de primi studii di Gabriel Symeoni Fiorentino.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Comin da Trino], 1546.
First edition of this early work by Simeoni, a wide-ranging compilation of juvenile poetry and prose dedicated to Cosimo de’ Medici, Duke of Florence.
£950