Recent Acquisitions
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CLÜVER, Philipp.
Introductio in universam geographiam tam veterem, quam novam …
Wolfenbüttel, Caspar Johann Bismarck for Conrad Buno, 1686.
The 1686 edition of perhaps the most important geographical textbook of the early modern period, an introduction to global geography by the German antiquarian and geographical pioneer Philipp Clüver, enlarged and supplemented by the German geographer Johann Buno.
£2500
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BENZI, Ugo; Giovanni Lodovico BERTALDI, commentator.
Regole della sanità et della natura de cibi … arricchita d’un trattato...
Turin, heirs of Giovanni Domenico Tarino, 1618.
Scarce first vernacular edition of the works of the medieval Sienese physician Ugo Benzi (c. 1360–1439); an extraordinary testament to their enduring popularity into the seventeenth century, expanded with commentary and a new appendix on the abuse of alcohol and tobacco by the Turinese doctor Giovanni...
£2500
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D’URFEY, Thomas.
Wit and Mirth: or Pills to purge Melancholy; being a Collection of the best merry Ballads and Songs, old and...
Pearson for J. Tonson, 1719 [– 1720].
The first complete edition, second issue of volumes I–V, and first issue of vol. VI, of the most famous songbook of its day, the first edition with titles altered to the familiar Wit and Mirth from Songs Compleat, 1719 (a change at the time of the publication in 1720 of volume VI,...
£2250
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
Doom of Youth …
London, Chatto & Windus, 1932.
First English edition, one of Lewis’s scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction). Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published...
£2000
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THICKNESSE, Philip.
A Year’s Journey through the Paix Bâs and Austrian Netherlands … Vol.
I [all published]. London: Printed in the Year 1784.
First edition, rare, and possibly suppressed, of a typically idiosyncratic account of a ‘quarrel-ridden tour’ of the Netherlands and Belgium by ‘the most irascible individual within the arena of late eighteenth-century print culture’ (ODNB), with a graphic depiction of the 1762...
£1850
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DANETT, Thomas.
A Continuation of the Historie of France, from the Death of Charles the Eight where Comines endeth, till the Death...
London, Printed by Thomas East for Thomas Charde, 1600.
First edition, an original history composed in sequel to Danett’s translation of The Historie of Philip de Commines (1596), covering the history of France from 1498 to 1559.
£1800
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OZEROV, Vladislav Aleksandrovich.
Sochineniia … Chast’ pervaia [–vtoraia] [Works … Part one [–two]].
St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1817 [-1816].
One of two rival collected editions published after Ozerov’s death in 1816, rare, including the first appearance of the author’s poetry and his last tragedy Poliksena.
£1800
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[WALL, Thomas].
A Second Christian Warning-Piece; wherein is shewed the first and chief Cause of Englands present Misery … Humbly...
London, 1681-2.
First edition, very rare, of a vehement anti-Catholic tract published in the context of the Exclusion Crisis; bound with the principal astrological work of John Holwell (a slightly imperfect copy).
£1750
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BOYLE, Robert.
Tractatus … Ubi 1. Mira aëris … rarefactio detecta. 2. Observata nova circa durationem virtutis elasticae...
London, Henry Herringman, 1671 [but printed abroad?].
I. Second edition, very scarce. The first edition, published the year before, is known in less than half a dozen copies. An English translation also appeared in 1671.
£1750
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[PARKER, Richard Green; Junkichi KATAYAMA 片山 淳吉, editor.]
物理階梯 [Butsuri kaitei; 'A Guide to Physics'].
Gifu Prefecture, Ministry of Education, Mizunoesaru/Jinshin [i.e. 1872].
First edition, very rare, of Japan’s first elementary science textbook, a major catalyst for the introduction of Western physics after the Meiji Restoration.
£1750
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TERTULLIAN.
Opera … per Beatum Rhenanum Seletstadiensem e tenebris eruta, atque a situ pro virili vindicata, adiectis singulorum...
Basel, [(colophon:) Hieronymus] Froben [and Nikolaus Episcopius], March 1539.
Third Froben edition of Tertullian’s extant writings, studiously edited and re-revised by Beatus Rhenanus, with extensive annotations showing considerable engagement with the text by early readers seeking to contextualise Tertullian.
£1750
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COMIDAS DE CARBOGNANO, Cosimo.
Primi principi della gramatica Turca ad uso dei missionari apostolici di Costantinopoli ...
Rome, stamperia della Sac. Congr. di Prop. Fide, 1794.
The first complete Ottoman Turkish grammar published in Italian, compiled by the Catholic Armenian dragoman Cosimo Comidas de Carbognano (translator to Count de Ludolf, minister of the Two Sicilies to the Ottoman Porte in the late eighteenth century) and published by the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda...
£1500
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[ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]
Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.
First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.
£1500
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GRUBBE, Margaret Julia Maria.
Archive of drawings, watercolours, and photographs.
England and Scotland, c. 1900 – 1960s.
A charming archive of the Suffolk artist Margaret Grubbe (1911–97), granddaughter of the painter John Seymour Lucas, comprising dozens of family photographs and over 150 of her drawings and watercolours, tracing her development as an artist from her childhood into middle age.
£1500
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TASSO, Torquato; Giovanni Francesco NEGRI, translator.
[Drop-head title:] Della tradottione della Gierusalemme liberata...
[Bologna, 1628.]
Rare first edition of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata to be translated into dialect, here in facing Bolognese and Italian translation, its printing suspended midway through the thirteenth canto, likely by Cardinal Bernardino Spada, a friend of the translator and the dedicatee of the work.
£1500
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[IMAGINARY VOYAGE.]
Admirable Travels of Messieurs Thomas Jenkins and David Lowellin through the unknown Tracts of Africa: with...
London, ‘for the Benefit of Robert Barker, an unfortunate blind man’, 1785.
Rare, a lively chapbook novella of adventures and tribulations in Africa, fusing elements of a Robinsonade with a brief utopia.
£1500
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‘SANIVAL, Marchesa di’, pseud. [i.e. SALVANI, Fausto].
La difesa delle donne o sia risposta apologetica al libro...
Siena, Luigi and Benedetto Bindi, 1786.
Very rare first edition, printed on blue paper, of this defence of women, written in response to an indecent satire entitled Lo scoglia dell’humanita, published under the Arcadian pseudonym Diunilgo Valdecio by Carlo Maria Chiaraviglio in 1774, which warned of the dangers to men posed by...
£1500
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[BECKFORD, William, and Samuel HENLEY, translator.]
An Arabian Tale, from an unpublished Manuscript. With Notes critical...
London, Printed for W. Clarke … 1809.
Scarce second edition – in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) – of Henley’s English translation of Beckford’s Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author’s wishes and predating publication...
£1500
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MARSILIUS of Inghen, GILES of Rome, and ALBERT of Saxony.
Marsilii de genera[tione et corruptione]. Commentaria fidelissimi...
[(Colophon:) Venice, [Boneto Locatello for] the heirs and partners of Ottaviano Scoto, 19 June 1520.]
A trio of late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle’s books on generation and corruption, composed at the University of Paris by Giles of Rome, Marsilius of Inghen, and Albert of Saxony, demonstrating the international nature of medieval scholarship.
£1500
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PLINY the Elder.
Historiae mundi libri XXXVII, cum castigationibus et adnotationibus doctiss. & variis praeterea lectionibus ex...
Frankfurt, Claude de Marne and heirs of Jean Aubry, 1608.
First Frankfurt edition of Pliny’s Natural History, here bound as an enormous single volume with strikingly decorated edges featuring acorns and scrolls.
£1400