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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[ALVISET, Jean Antoine.]
L’Ange gardien. Pour les devotes confreries des Saincts Anges Gardiens. Par un prestre de l’eglise...
Lyon, Jacques du Creux, 1647.
Very rare devotional manual for female and male members of the Confraternity of the Guardian Angels established in the church of St Peter in Besançon, in eastern France, in 1643, with a separately published and seemingly unrecorded appendix detailing its rules.
£350
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AMADUZZI, Giovanni Cristoforo.
Epistola ad Johannem Baptistam Bodonium qua emendatur et suppletur commentarium de Anacreontis genere...
[(Colophon:) Parma, Bodoni, 1791.]
First edition of Amaduzzi’s philological and bibliographical commentary on Anacreon, addressed to Bodoni, ‘artis typographicae restitutor’ (p. 3).
£275
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ANACREON.
Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...
Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.
Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G.C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions cannot...
£650
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ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger.
Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...
Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528.
The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult.
£875
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[ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]
[Edited by Janus Lascaris.]
[Florence, Lorenzo di Francesco de Alopa, 11 August 1494.]
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...
£16500
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ANTONIUS de Vercellis.
Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...
Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93.
A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites.
£8500
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APPIAN of Alexandria.
Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...
Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.
A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.
£3000
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[AQUHORTIES.]
Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …
Edinburgh, Printed by J. Moir, Paterson’s Court, [1799?].
Broadside rules for the newly established Aquhorties College, the only Roman Catholic college in Scotland, presumably designed to be posted up around the school.
£850
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[ARCHCONFRATERNITY OF THE MOST HOLY CRUCIFIX.]
Distinta descrizione della machina, luminari, ed ordinanza nella solenne processione...
Rome, per il Casaletti, 1775.
Rare record of a procession made by members of the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Crucifix from the church of San Marcello in Rome to Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in the jubilee year of 1775.
£250
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[ARCHCONFRATERNITY OF SAN GIOVANNI DECOLLATO.]
‘Arciconfraternitas Sancti Ioannis decollati’.
Rome, second half of eighteenth century.
An unusual woodcut – likely intended for use as a badge – bearing the insignia of the Arciconfraternita di San Giovanni decollato, a Roman archconfraternity which provided comfort and company to those condemned to death, most notably Giordano Bruno in 1600.
£500
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ARIAS, Francisco.
Paleys der deughden begrypende de naervolghinghe der alder-heylichste ende weerdichste Maghet Maria. Eerst gemaeckt...
Antwerp, Gheleyn Janssens, 1609.
First Dutch edition of this work of Marian devotion by the Spanish Jesuit and ascetical writer Francisco Arias (1533–1605), first published in Spanish as De la imitacion de Nuestra Señora in 1588.
£375
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ARISTAENETUS.
Επιστολαι … Epistolae graecae. Cum Latina interpretatione & notis. Tertia editio emendatior & auctior.
Paris, Marc Orry, 1610.
A volume of fictional Greek love stories, presented in the form of letters, printed in parallel Greek and Latin, from the library of the Padua professor and printer Giovanni Antonio Volpi.
£1250
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ARISTIDES, Aelius.
Orationum tomi tres, nunc primum latine versi a Gulielmo Cantero Ultraiectino. Huc accessit orationum tomus...
Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566.
First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino.
£2750
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ARISTOPHANES.
The Frogs, a Comedy. Translated from the Greek of Aristophanes, by C[harles] Dunster, A.M …
Oxford, J. and J. Fletcher; London, Rivington, Payne, Faulder, Cadell; Cambridge, Merrill, [1785].
First edition in English, and the only separately published translation of The Frogs in the eighteenth century. ‘It is … somewhat surprising that in an age so studious of ancient literature as the present, and which so much abounds in translations of the Greek and Latin classics, we have versions...
£500
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ARISTOPHANES, and Henry Francis CARY, translator.
The Birds … with Notes.
London, Printed for Taylor and Hessey … 1824.
First edition of the first metrical translation of Aristophanes’ The Birds into English by Henry Francis Cary (1722–1844) – perhaps best known for his blank verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
£350
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ARISTOTLE.
De animo, libri III. Ioachimo Perionio interprete, per Nicolaum Grouchium correcti et emendati.
Paris, Thomas Richard, 1561.
Rare edition of Aristotle’s On the Soul in the Latin translation of Joachim Périon (d. 1559), edited by Nicolas de Grouchy (d. 1572), with scattered contemporary student annotations.
£575
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ARISTOTLE; THEOPHRASTUS; Theodorus GAZA and Pietro ALCIONIO, translators.
Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum...
Lyons, [Nicolas Bacquenois for] Guillaume Gazeau, 1552.
A union of Aristotle on animals and Theophrastus on plants, the fundamental texts from Ancient Greece on zoology and botany, in the translations of Gaza and Alcionio.
£800
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ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo.
Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga.
Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566.
First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini.
£1750
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AUGUSTINE, Pseudo-, et al.
Opusculum multarum bonaru[m] rerum refertum, ut sunt. Diui Augustini meditationes, et eiusde[m]...
Venice, Pietro Quarengi, 6 March 1512.
Uncommon edition of various devotional works, comprising: the pseudo-Augustinian Meditations, Soliloquies, and a treatise on the word of God; meditations on the human condition, and a letter on leading the perfect life, attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux; a short sermon assigned to Peter Damian; Anselm’s...
£750
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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