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.
-
BÈZE, Théodore de.
Poemata varia: Sylvae, Elegiae, Epitaphia, Epigramm., Icones, Emblemata, Cato censorius, Abrahamus sacrificans,...
Geneva, Jacques Stoer, 1614.
One of the two ‘most complete’ (Gardy) editions of de Bèze’s verse, which includes the Icones and Emblemata, here bound with a copy of an anonymous defence of de Bèze’s poetry against his detractors; the Heber copy, in handsome gilt green morocco.
£1250
-
[BIBLE.]
Τα Βιβλια, τουτεστιν, η Θεια Γραφη της Παλαιας τε και Καινης Διαθηκης...
Moscow, the Holy Synod Press for the Russian Bible Society, 1821.
First edition printed in Russia of the Septuagint and Greek New Testament, published likely with political motives in the year of the Greek Revolution.
£1500
-
[BIBLE.]
Erläuterte Bibel mit Fragen, das ist, die ganze Heilige Schrift, Alten und Neuen Testaments, nach der teutschen Ubersetzung...
Altdorf, Joh. Adam Hessel for Ernst Friderich Zobel, 1751.
A German Bible with extensive apparatus, divided into five volumes and strikingly bound in a book-shaped pull-off case.
£2250
-
[BIBLE.]
The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments … diligently compared and revised …
Oxford, T. Wright and W. Gill, 1769.
First quarto edition of the Oxford ‘standard’ Bible, as revised by Benjamin Blayney of Hertford College, Oxford (1728–1801), later Regius Professor of Hebrew. The quarto and folio editions of 1769, of which this was the first to be finished, were printed from the same setting of type differently...
£5250
-
BIBLE, in Latin.
Genesis to Apocalypse, with the prologues attributed to St. Jerome and the Interpretation of Hebrew names.
France (Paris), mid-thirteenth century.
A handsome example of a thirteenth-century portable Bible manuscript, with an historiated initial marking the beginning of each book; from the libraries of Leander van Ess and Sir Thomas Phillipps.
£120000
-
[BIBLE – OLD TESTAMENT.]
Los cinco libros de la ley divina. De nuevo corregidos y bueltos à imprimir [– Aphtaroth de todo...
Amsterdam, ‘en casa, y a costa de Selomoh Proops’, ‘año 5478’ [i.e. 1717/1718].
An uncommon and handsomely produced Pentateuch with haftarot, printed for the use of the Spanish-speaking Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam, our copy in an attractive binding incorporating menorahs and with richly gauffered edges featuring birds and floral motifs.
£1850
-
[BIBLE – OLD TESTAMENT and APOCRYPHA, Greek; Johann LONITZER, editor.]
Της θειας γραφης παλαιας...
Strasbourg, Wolfgang Köpfel, 1526.
The first edition of the Old Testament in Greek to be printed in Germany, and the first aimed at a Protestant readership, with the Apocrypha separated along the lines of Luther’s German translation.
£8500
-
[BIGG-WITHER.]
The Holy Bible, containing the Old Testament and the New …
London, Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1628.
An attractive octavo Bible, with the apocrypha, genealogies (with a map), psalms, and Common Prayer – this was the family Bible of the Bigg (later Bigg-Wither) family, including Harris Bigg-Wither, who was famously, if briefly, engaged to Jane Austen in 1802.
£8750
-
BISSEL, Johannes.
Illustrium ab orbe condito ruinarum decades quatuor ... decadis primae pars prior almae congregationi academicae...
Würzburg, ‘typis viduae Walderi’, [1762].
Scarce later edition of the first part of a remarkable work by the Swabian Jesuit Johannes Bissel (1601–1682) on ‘ruinous’ events throughout human history, printed by ‘widow Walder’.
£450
-
BLANCHON, Jacques.
Iacobi Blanchoni Ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum Beneventanum abbatem Selestensem defensionum liber.
Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1550.
First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly printed de Tournes edition.
£950
-
BOCCHI, Achille.
Symbolicarum quaestionum, de universo genere, quas serio ludebat, libri quinque.
Bologna, Società Tipografica Bolognese, 1574.
Second edition (first 1555) of this notable and richly illustrated emblem book, from the library of the Sienese patrician and poet Bellisario Bulgarini.
£1950
-
BOETHIUS; Richard GRAHAM, Viscount Preston, translator.
Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books. Made English...
London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.
First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston (1648–1695).
£950
-
[BOIS, Paul.]
La vie des premieres religieuses Capucines du monastere de Marseille.
Marseille, de l’imprimerie de Dominique Sibié, 1754.
Scarce first edition of a compendium of the lives of thirteen Capuchin nuns associated with Marseille, attributed to Paul Bois (1685–1763), curate of nearby Noyers-sur-Jabron, with a woodcut frontispiece depicting a nun before an altar.
£375
-
[BOIS-SEIGNEUR-ISAAC.]
Histoire memorable et digne de foy, du sainct sang de miracle, advenue au Bois Seigneur Isaac diocese de...
Mons, Charles Michel, 1593.
First and only edition, very rare, of an account of a medieval miracle at the Augustinian abbey of Bois-Seigneur-Isaac, to the northeast of Mons in Belgium, published not long after the abbey had been all but destroyed during the French Wars of Religion.
£1250
-
[BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.]
La Liturgie. C’est a dire, le formulaire des Prieres publiques, de l’Administrations des Sacreman;...
A Londres, pour Jean Dunmore & Octavien Pulleyn le Jeune … 1667.
First edition of this translation, printed for the use of ‘toutes les Eglisses Paroissiales & dans les Chapelles de Isles de Jersey, Guernsey, & autres Isles adjacentes’, as well as for the French congregation at the Savoy in London.
£750
-
[BOUCHET, Jean.]
Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...
Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.
Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...
£4500
-
BOUTMY, C.
‘Exercitium quotidianum dedicatum perillustri domino domino vice comiti de Haro et d’Enghien &c a C. Boutmy 1760’.
[Belgium, 1760.]
An attractively bound unpublished devotional manual composed by one C. Boutmy (unidentified) for his patron Henri vicomte de Haro et d’Enghien.
£450
-
[BOUTREUX D’ESTIAU, Jacques de.]
De la puissance roialle sur la police de l’Eglise.
Paris, Pierre Durand, 1625.
A pair of uncommon works defending the French king’s authority over the Church, in a binding for Jacques-Auguste II de Thou and later in the renowned Caumartin library.
£950
-
[BREVIARY, Use of Passau.]
Breviarium s[ecundu]m chorum alme Ecclesie Pataviensis.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Petrus Liechtenstein for Vienna, Lukas and Leonhard Alantsee, 25 May 1515.]
A rare Passau breviary with numerous woodcut illustrations in a contemporary Austrian binding, printed in Venice for the Austrian market.
£4500
-
BUDÉ, Guillaume.
G. Budaei … Epistolarum latinarum lib. V. Annotationibusq[ue] adiectis in singulas fere epistolas. Graecarum...
[Paris,] Jodocus Badius, February 1531.
The first Badius combined edition of the Latin and Greek letters of the great French humanist Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), together with the commentary by his pupil Jacques Toussain, here with profuse annotations by a contemporary French student to almost every page.
£5500