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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SIMONETTA, Bonifacio.
De Christiane Fidei et Romanorum Pontificum Persecutionibus.
[(Colophon:) Basel, Nicolaus Kesler, 1509.]
A beautiful copy of the second edition of Simonetta’s principal work, containing an early and intriguing reference to the New World, our copy from the library of Christian VI (1699–1746), King of Denmark and Norway, under whom the kingdom expanded its possessions in the Americas.
£4500
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[SOCIETY OF JESUS.]
Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur. Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux.
Strasbourg, L.F. Le Roux, [1843].
First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843.
£375
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SOPHOCLES.
‘Αι του Σοφοκλεους τραγωδιαι ‘επτα. Sophoclis Tragoediae septem: nova versione donatae...
Eton, Joseph Pote; and sold by C. Bathurst et al, London, 1775.
An attractive Eton-printed edition of Thomas Johnson’s Sophocles. Johnson (d. 1746), was educated at Eton, gaining a scholarship to King’s Cambridge in 1683, and returning to the school as assistant master in 1705, the same year he published his editions of Sophocles’ Ajax and Electra...
£400
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[SOPHOCLES.]
Tragoediae superstites et deperditarum fragmenta ex recensione G. Dindorfii.
Oxford, University Press, 1832.
First Oxford edition of the Sophocles of the precocious Karl Wilhelm Dindorf (1802–1883), first published in Leipzig in 1825. This copy was a graduation present from Charles Old Goodford (1812–1884), assistant master (later Head Master and then provost) at Eton, to Arthur Hobhouse (1818–1904),...
£200
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SOPHOCLES.
Tragoediae Sophoclis quotquot extant carmine Latino redditae Georgio Ratallero … interprete.
Antwerp, Jean Bellère, 1584.
An early seventeenth-century sammelband collecting contrasting classical texts: the tragedies of Sophocles, the civil war horrors of Lucan, and the sharp satires of Juvenal and Persius.
£950
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SOPHOCLES; Adrien TURNÈBE, editor.
Τραγωδιαι. Αιαξ μαστιγοφορος. Ηλεκτρα. Οιδιπους...
Paris, Adrien Turnèbe, 1553 [(colophon:) 24 December 1552].
A wide-margined copy of Sophocles in Greek owned by the Vatican librarian and Greek scholar Leone Allacci, with his name on the title-page. Sophocles’ seven tragedies narrate the stories of the Greek heroes and heroines Ajax, Heracles and Deianeira, Oedipus and Jocasta, Philoctetes, Antigone,...
£1850
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SPATARI, Pellegrino.
Le orationi delle Messe di tutto l’anno, tradutte da Don Pellegrino Spathari canonico di Capodistria. Con...
Pesaro, Bartolomeo Cesano, 1555.
Rare first edition of this Italian translation of Latin prayers from the Missal by Spatari, a priest from Capodistria (modern-day Koper in Slovenia), dedicated to Vittoria Farnese, Duchess of Urbino (1519–1602).
£650
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[SPENCE, Joseph.] Nicholas TINDAL.
A Guide to classical Learning: or, Polymetis abridged … being a Work absolutely necessary,...
London, J. Dodsley, 1777.
Second illustrated edition (fourth overall) of Nicholas Tindal’s abridgement for schools of Polymetis (1747), a dialogue by the traveller, scholar, friend of Alexander Pope, and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford Joseph Spence (1699–1748), in which he explored the connections...
£250
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STANCOVICH, Pietro.
Dello anfiteatro di Pola, dei gradi marmorei del medesimo, nuovi scavi e scoperte, e di alcune epigrafi e figuline...
Venice, Giuseppe Picotti, 1822.
First edition, uncut in the original wrappers, of Pietro Stancovich’s description of the Roman amphitheatre in Pola (modern Pula) on the Istrian peninsula.
£275
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STAPLETON, Thomas.
Promptuarium Catholicum ad instructionem concionatorum contra haereticos nostri temporis, super omnia evangelia...
Antwerp, Pierre Beller, 1592.
Rare third edition, expanded, of Stapleton’s handbook or ‘storehouse’ of scriptural devotions for Sundays and feast days, first published in 1589. An independent companion volume for the weekdays in Lent was first published in 1594.
£700
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STATIUS, P. Papinius; John CAREY, editor.
Opera, sedula recensione accurata [cover: Recensuit et accuravit Joannes...
London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. B. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Browne,...
An attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards, of the ‘Regent’s Classics’ pocket edition of Statius.
£120
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STEPNIAK, Sergey.
דאָס אינטערערדישע רוסלאַנד … איבערזעצט פון א. פרומקין
[Dos...New York, Maks N. Maisel, 1921.
Scarce first American edition in Yiddish of Stepniak’s first and most influential book. Written in Italian during exile in Switzerland following his assassination of Nikolai Mezentsov, chief of Alexander II’s secret police, Underground Russia was published in 1882 and translated into...
£150
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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
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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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STRYPE, John.
The Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, Kt., first Instructer, afterwards Secretary of State, to King Edward VI.,...
London, John Wyat, 1705.
First edition of Strype’s biography of the courtier and classicist Sir John Cheke, inaugural Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge.
£450
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SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...
Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.
Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...
£1250
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SWIFT, Jonathan.
A Tale of a Tub … to which is added, an Account of a Battle between the antient and modern Books in St. James’s...
London, C. Bathurst, 1751.
A scarce later edition of Swift’s classic satires on corruption in religion and learning, as exemplified in the conduct of Peter (Roman Catholicism), Martin (Luther), and Jack (Calvin) in the Tale of the Tub, and the spirited fight over the highest peak of Parnassus in the Battel of...
£175
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SYKES, Arthur Ashley.
The Duty of Love to God, and to our Neighbours. A Sermon preach'd at the Assizes held at Chelmsford in...
London, J. Darby & T. Browne for Chelmsford, Samuel Lobb, 1728.
First and only edition of this sermon given by the latitudinarian and controversialist Arthur Ashley Sykes (c. 1684–1756).
£150
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TACITUS.
C. Cornelius Tacitus, cum optimis exemplaribus collatus.
Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1678.
A remarkably fresh set of the third and final Elzevir edition of this format, reprinted from the edition of 1665.
£275
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TACITUS, Publius Cornelius; N. S. SMITH, translator.
Dissertation on the Manners of the Germans, and the Life of Agricola … translated...
London, George and William Budd Whittaker, 1821.
First edition, a seemingly unrecorded issue of this bilingual edition of Tacitus’ Germania and Agricola, a subscription copy uncut in publisher’s boards.
£600