Recent Acquisitions
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RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus, pseud. [Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN].
Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur /...
‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’
First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.).
£675
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[WALKER, Patrick.]
Some remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at Glenluce...
Glasgow: J. and M. Robertson, 1794.
Very rare chapbook life of the Covenanter Alexander Peden (1626–1686), first published 1724 and much reprinted; the ‘second part’ first appeared in an edition of 1778.
£225
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MARTIN, Theodore, Sir.
Horace and his Friends. Two Lectures delivered at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution …
Printed for private Circulation. 1881.
First editions of two privately-printed pamphlets by the poet, translator and biographer Theodore Martin (1816–1909) – presentation copies, to the Scottish journalist John Skelton, a frequent contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine (as was Martin).
£400
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RINUCCINI, Ottavio.
La Dafne, nuovamente stampata in occasione delle felicissime nozze del signor marchese Pier Francesco Rinuccini,...
Florence, Borgognissanti, 1810.
Scarce edition of Rinuccini’s Dafne, the first printed opera libretto; a rare survival preserved unbound in folded sheets.
£650
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MOZART, et al.
A volume of twelve piano duets adapted from overtures by Mozart, Rossini, and others by J. F. Burrowes, J. Mazzinghi,...
London, mostly Birchall & Co., 1810s–1820s.
A good collection of late Georgian piano duets, including adaptations from The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, La Clemenza di Tito, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia, along with a few original compostions by Dussek, Mazzinghi, etc. A full list is available...
£350
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LOCATELLI, Lodovico.
Theatro d’Arcani … nel quale si tratta dell’arte chimica, et suoi arcani, con gli afforismi d’Ippocrate...
Milan, Gio. Pietro Ramellati, 1644.
First edition of Locatelli’s alchemical tract, which includes the first Italian translation of Paracelsus.
£2500
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FLINDERS, Matthew.
Narrative of his Voyage in the Schooner Francis: 1798. Preceded and followed by Notes … by Geoffrey Rawson...
[London,] The Golden Cockerel Press, 1946.
No. 327 of 750 copies, of which the first 100 were specially bound in full green morocco.
£650
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BOEMUS, Johann, and ‘Lucio FAUNO’ [pseud. Giovanni TARCAGNOTA] (translator).
Gli costumi, le leggi, et...
Venice, Michele Tramezzino, 1542.
First edition in Italian of Johann Boemus’s influential ethnographic compendium, a sixteenth-century bestseller considered the first of its kind.
£475
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[RICHARD, Charles-Louis.]
Lettres d’un archevêque, à l’auteur de la brochure intitulée: Du droit du souverain sur les biens-fonds...
A Cologne, 1770.
First edition, uncommon, of this response to an anticlerical essay by the Chevalier de Cerfvol by the Dominican theologian and anti-philosophe Charles-Louis Richard (1711–1794). De Cherfvol had argued against the wealth of the clergy, and in particular of the religious orders, and proposed a means...
£200
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[PASCOLI, Livio.] ‘Vilio LOCASPI’.
Del modo di mantenere abolita la mendicità, discorso familiare.
Verona, Mainardi, 1817.
Only edition, very rare, of this proposal for the abolition of begging, and of poverty more broadly, by the poet and essayist Livio Pascoli.
£285
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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
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[GRIMOD DE LA REYNIÈRE, Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent.]
Manuel des amphitryons; contenant un traité de la dissection des viandes...
Paris, Capelle and Renand, 1808.
First edition of Grimod de la Reynière’s famed manual on the arts of the table and the entertainment of guests.
£1250
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[CORFU.]
Notificazione. Uffizio della segreteria del governo. Corfu, 7 Maggio 1816 …
Corfu, ‘en te typographia tes dioikeseos’, [1816].
A seemingly unrecorded bilingual broadside, in parallel Italian and Greek, reporting on cases of plague in the district of Leftimo on the island of Corfu, issued during the British protectorate in May 1816 and printed in the capital at the government press.
£375
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ENDERS, Elizabeth Crump.
Swinging Lanterns.
New York and London, D. Appleton and Co., 1923.
First edition of this celebrated Chinese travel memoir by Elizabeth Crump Enders, a vivid depiction of China in the 1920s formerly in the possession of Josephine del Drago, American heiress and Chinese art collector.
£100
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[DA PORTO, Luigi.]
‘Lettere di Alvigi da Porto vicentino al Savorgnano, al Ghilini, e ad altri intorno ai successi della Guerra...
[Milan, c. 1800].
A manuscript of an influential and then-unpublished historical work by the author of the original Romeo and Juliet, copied from a sixteenth-century codex at the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana.
£950
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[MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]
Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...
Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.
Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...
£375
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LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.
Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...
Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.
First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).
£375
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KOCH, Mansuetus.
Philosophia transnaturalis, sive metaphysica, centum assertionibus comprehensa, et publicae disputationi in celeberrimo...
Augsburg, Maria Magdalena Utzschneiderin, 1697.
Only edition (complete despite the pagination) of this dissertation defended at the Augustinian college in Rottenbuch, attempting to provide a survey of metaphysics in one hundred paragraphs. The work explains, among other matters, the scope and purpose of metaphysics, the basis of Aristotelian metaphysics,...
£225
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KOCH, Manfred (pr.), Primo SCHLECHTEN and Feliciano SCHARRER (resp.).
Philosophia rationalis sive logica centum assertionibus comprehensa...
Augsburg, Afra Sturmin, 1695.
A good copy of this rare dissertation from the Augustinian college at Rottenbuch in Bavaria, attempting to reduce logic (the science of reasoning) to one hundred numbered paragraphs. Describing the function and limits of logic, the authors, both Austin canons at Rottenbuch, explain the use of syllogisms,...
£275
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CHEVRET, Jean.
Épitre a l’humanité et a la patrie en particulier, sur le bon ordre & l’idée de la véritable liberté. Suivie...
[Paris?], au temple de la vérité, 1789.
A good copy of this rare essay on the workings of society and the conditions required for human flourishing, by the controversialist and librarian Jean Chevret (1747-1820). After a brief letter addressed to humanity in general and France (even, perhaps, Chevret’s own home town of Meulan) in particular,...
£275