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.

 
  1. TRIMMER, [Sarah], Mrs.

    An Explanation of the Office for the public Baptism of Infants; and of the Order for the Confirmation of...

    Robinson … and J. Johnson, 1791.

    First edition, dedicated with the Queen’s permission to the royal princess, Princess Mary.

    £650

  2. TUCKER, Josiah.

    Betydande frågor om handelen, wid tilfålle af de motsäjelser, som skedde emot den sista billen, om utlänningars...

    [v. Oelreich], 1763.

    First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...

    £200

  3. TYRE, William, Archbishop of, and Giuseppe OROLOGGI (translator).

    Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme,...

    Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.

    First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript detailing a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.

    £2800

  4. URCEO, Antonio [or Codro]. 

    Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur.  Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat.  Epistolae. ...

    Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502. 

    First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts. 

    £3000

  5. VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator

    Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565. 

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. 

    £1250

  6. VALERIUS MAXIMUS, Gaius.

    Valerii Maximi dictorum, & factorum memorabilium libri novem.

    [(Colophon:) Sélestat, Lazarus Schürer, December 1520.]

    Very rare edition of Valerius Maximus printed at Sélestat in eastern France, profusely annotated in a sixteenth-century German hand.

    £2250

  7. VALLISNERI, Alberto Maria. 

    Lettioni venti sopra gli alti, et ineffabili misteri della Messa, in publico lette nella chiesa di...

    Milan, Giovanni Battista da Ponte & fratelli, 1567.

    Very rare first edition of a collection of twenty sermons on the Mass delivered by the Ferrarese Carmelite Vallisneri in the church of San Giovanni in Conca, Milan, dedicated to the city’s archbishop Cardinal Carlo Borromeo. 

    £500

  8. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.

    Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...

    [(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]

    Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...

    £2750

  9. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.

    Quae supersunt ex historiae Romanae voluminibus duobus. Ex editione Petri Burmanni fideliter expressa.

    Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1752.

    First and only Foulis Press edition, unusually found here in a contemporary Scandinavian binding, evidence of the high esteem in which these products of the Glasgow enlightenment were held across Europe.

    £425

  10. VIGER, François.

    De praecipuis graecae dictionis idiotismis … accessit praeterea huic editioni observationum non inutilium qualecunque...

    London, G. Godbid for William Shrowsberey, 1678.

    Second London edition of this treatise on Greek idiom by the French Jesuit François Viger (1590–1647).

    £175

  11. VINCENT OF LÉRINS.

    The Waie home to Christ and Truth leadinge from Antichrist and Errour, made and set furth in the Latine Tongue...

    [London, Robert Caly, 22 October 1554].

    First edition in English, very rare, of St Vincent’s Commonitorium pro catholicae fidei antiquitate, translated and with a long Prologue by John Proctor (1521–1558), and a dedication to Queen Mary, ‘a lady of heavenly simplicitie’ whom Proctor later praises as the restorer of the...

    £9500

  12. [VIRGIL.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    ...

    Paris, André Wechel, 1564. 

    Second editions of Ramus’s extensive commentaries on Virgil’s two poems on country life, written in reaction to the dry doctrines of several French schools who based their teaching of nature on Aristotle’s Physics.  Ramus wanted to keep in contact with the concrete realities of nature...

    £950

  13. VORAGINE, Jacobus de.

    Sermones quadragesimales [– de tempore & de sanctis per totum annum] …

    [(Colophons:) Venice, Simon de Luere for Lazarus de Suardis, 12 September 1497; – 31 August 1497.]

    An annotated copy of Jacobus de Voragine’s sermons, one of the most popular medieval sermon collections, composed in the late thirteenth century. Jacobus de Voragine (Jacopo da Varazze) was a Dominican preacher from Genoa who produced several model books of sermons, providing variations to be...

    £3250

  14. 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 by...

    £8000

  15. [WALLET.]

    Wallet with manuscript and printed waste.

    France, c. 1790.

    An attractive late eighteenth-century wallet in the guise of a wallet-bound book, possibly re-using an earlier eighteenth-century binding, the interior compartments composed of manuscript and printed waste.

    £950

  16. [WALLPAPER BINDING.]

    ‘Chassereau des Biens et Rentes deves a joseph Paul Roegier et marie margu te [sic] Bourdeau son espouse,...

    Hainaut, 1750–1773.

    A manuscript account book compiled by Joseph Paul Roegier and his son, recording receipts over a quarter-century, in an attractive and unusual binding reusing a large fragment of gilt leather wallpaper.

    £3500

  17. WEBER, Johann Adam.

    Discursus curiosi et fructuosi [ad praecipuas totius litteraturae humanae scientias illustrandas accommodate …].

    [Salzburg, Johann Baptist Mayr, 1690.]

    Third Salzburg edition of Weber’s wide-ranging discourses, in a handsome Bavarian binding for the Abbot of Ettal, Bernhard I Oberhauser, attributable to the monk Brother Gregor, a trained bookbinder from Hungary.

    £6000

  18. WILSON, David (editor).

    A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, &c. in three Parts … 

    [Edinburgh:] Sold by the Editor at his House … and by J. Hamilton, Music Seller … [c.1800?].

    Second(?), expanded edition of this collection of (mostly) hymn tunes scored for treble, tenor, and bass. Though for most hymns the tunes only are printed, there are words for Cowper’s ‘Hark, my Soul!’ and one other, and at the end are the words and tunes for seven secular catches (in three...

    £500

  19. [WILSON,] Thomas, Bishop of Sodor and Man.

    A short and plain Instruction for the better Understanding of the Lord’s Supper,...

    London, B. Dod, T. Longman & C. Hitch, J. Hodges, and J. & J. Rivington, 1755.

    Scarce first posthumous edition of this liturgical manual by Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, with two early female owners.

    £250

  20. WITTKOWER, Jochanan.

    Agudath Perachim. ‘Blüthenstrauß’. Anthologie deutscher und hebräischer Gedichte für Geist und Herz …

    Altona, the Bonn Brothers for the author, 1880.

    First and only edition of this anthology of moral poems and satirical and edifying epigrams translated from German into Hebrew, as well as transcriptions and translations of epitaphs from the Jewish community of Altona, now a district of Hamburg.

    £350