Recent Acquisitions
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LUCAS, John.
'Select and Original Pieces written at Mr Sigston’s Academy.' Queen Square, Leeds.
Leeds, 1816 [–1817].
A handsomely illustrated manuscript on a variety of themes, produced as weekly exercises in penmanship by a pupil at Sigston’s Methodist boarding school in Leeds.
£1375
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SURTEES, Robert Smith.
The Horseman’s Manual, being a Treatise on Soundness, the Law of Warranty, and generally on the Laws relating...
London, M.A. Pittman for Alfred Miller, 1831.
First edition of Surtees’s first work, the only publication to bear his name, from the family of the dedicatee. Though best known for his sporting articles and novels, Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) was, alongside his landed interests, a respected jurist in County Durham, serving as justice...
£1250
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Revenge for Love.
London, Cassell & Co. Ltd., [1937].
First edition, very scarce in the dust-jacket, of ‘one of Lewis’s finest novels … a brilliant novel of character’ (Bridson, The Filibuster), set in pre-Civil War Spain and centred on an incident of Communist gun-running on the border. ‘Here for once, Communism is accepted as a...
£1250
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WILLIAMS, William Carlos.
Paterson [Books 1, 2, 3 & 4].
Norfolk, New Classics, [1951]. [with:]
First collected edition of Books One to Four and first edition of Book Five; inscribed on the front free endpaper of One to Four (in Williams’s distinctive scrawl, in two different pens after the first ran out of ink) ‘D.J. [i.e. G.] Bridson with my compliments / William...
£1250
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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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[WINCHESTER COLLEGE.]
Printed and manuscript election roll.
[Winchester,] ‘1 November 1782’.
A remarkable eighteenth-century part-printed election roll from Winchester College, with admissions, the names of scholars, prize-winners, and pupils elected to New College Oxford.
£1250
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BACON, Francis.
Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica, civilia, et theologica, nunc primum edita. Cura & fide Guilielmi Rawley...
London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani Pulleyn, 1658.
First edition, second issue of this collection of the philosophical, political, and theological writings of Bacon, including numerous essays previously unpublished, and the first appearance in Latin of a biographical sketch of the philosopher by William Rawley (c. 1588–1667), Bacon’s literary...
£1250
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ROSSI, Ottavio, and Bartolomeo FONTANA, compiler.
Lettere del Sig. Ottavio Rossi. Raccolte da Bartolomeo Fontana ...
Brescia, Bartolomeo Fontana, 1621.
First edition of over 150 letters by the poet and scholar Ottavio Rossi (1570–1630), printed in his native city of Brescia and including a letter to the painter Palma Giovane, our copy with a contemporary manuscript note on the artist’s final moments written mere days after his death.
£1250
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GIOIA [or GIOJA], Melchiorre.
Indole, estensione, vantaggi della statistica. Confutazione dell’ opuscolo che ha per titolo:...
Risposta alle obbiezioni fatte alle Tavole statistiche. Milan, Pirotta and Maspero, March 1809.
First and only edition of this rare work on the nature and necessity of statistics by Melchiorre Gioia, presented by the author to the former Minister for the Interior, Daniele Felici.
£1250
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SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...
Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.
Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...
£1250
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[PREDIERI, Luca Antonio, composer; Apostolo ZENO, librettist.]
La tirannide vendicata, drama per musica, da rappresentarsi...
Pesaro, Gavelli, 1726.
First edition, very rare, of the libretto of an opera performed at Pesaro in 1726, bound in red damask most likely for presentation to the dedicatee, Teresa Borromeo Albani.
£1250
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[PSALMS.]
Psalterium Davidis carmine redditum per Eobanum Hessum. Annotationes Viti Theodori Noribergensis, quae vice commentarii...
Paris, [(colophon:) Guillaume Morel for] Jacques Dupuys ‘sub insigni Samaritanae’, [August] 1550.
Seemingly unrecorded issue of the Psalms of David in Latin as edited by the Lutheran theologian Eoban of Hesse (1488–1540) with commentary by Luther’s housemate, associate, and sometime secretary Veit Dietrich (1506–1549).
£1250
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BEAUMONT, Joseph.
Psyche: or Loves Mysterie in XX. Canto’s: displaying the Intercourse betwixt Christ and the Soule …
London, Printed by John Dawson for George Boddington, 1648.
First edition of this lengthy religious epic representing the journey of the personified Soul from England to the Holy Land and back, written by Beaumont, one of the Royalist fellows ejected from Cambridge in 1644.
£1250
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[TACOLI, Carlotta Munarini, Marchioness.]
‘Memorie riguardanti la storia filosofica per istruzione elementare d’una...
Modena, 1805.
An unpublished manuscript introduction to ancient philosophy compiled by Marchioness Carlotta Munarini Tacoli for the education of her precocious eight-year-old-daughter, the future entomologist Adelaide Tacoli Bellincini Bagnesi (see below).
£1250
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ALTING, Jacob; Heinrich Jakob van BASHUYSEN, editor.
Compendium fundamentorum punctationis linguae sanctae. Sive grammaticae...
Hanau, Johann Georg Winsheimer ‘in Typographia Orientali’ for Johann Fernau, 1712
First and only edition, seemingly the only surviving copy, of this Hanau-printed abridgement of Alting’s Hebrew grammar (first published in 1654) by the German Hebraist Heinrich van Bashuysen, printed at Bashuysen’s own press for the use of his pupils at the local gymnasium.
£1250
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DIOMEDES; Aelius DONATUS; Johann CAESARIUS, editor.
Grammatici opus, ab Iohanne Caesario, ita emendatum, Scholiisque illustratum,...
Hagenau, Johann Setzer, 1526.
A sammelband of four early sixteenth-century Latin grammars, from the Macclesfield Library at Shirburn Castle. The first work comprises two fourth-century Latin grammars, of which one is a rare complete survival from antiquity; this is bound with three early sixteenth-century schoolbooks on grammar...
£1250
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[SEVILLE.]
Mercantile contract between Sebastián de Baeza of Seville and Hernán López de Segovia, almost certainly relating...
Seville, 25 July 1576.
A commercial document from the heyday of Seville’s trade with the Indies. Drawn up for Sebastián de Baeza, a resident of the barrio of San Bartolomé in Seville, the document recapitulates a previous agreement of 25 June 1576 between, on the one hand, Hernán López de Segovia and, on...
£1200
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[DAGUERRE.] MAYER & PIERSON [after Charles Richard MEADE.]
Carte-de-visite albumen print portrait of Louis Daguerre.
Paris, late 1860s.
In 1848 the pioneering American photographer Charles Richard Meade secured the commission for which he is now best known, a series of daguerrotypes of the medium’s founding father Louis Jaques Mandé Daguerre. The five images, known as the white-tie series to distinguish them from other portraits,...
£1200
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SHAKESPEARE, William, and Bolemir IZBORSKÝ, pseud. [i.e. Antonín MAREK], translator.
Omylowé dle Shakespeara...
Prague, Jozefa Fetterlowá, ‘in the Archbishop’s Printing House at the Seminary’, 1823.
First edition in Czech, very rare, of A Comedy of Errors, freely translated by Antonín Marek (1785–1877), one of the earliest appearances of Shakespeare in the language, preceded only by a very rare translation of Macbeth by Karel Ignác Thám (Makbet, 1786), which was staged...
£1100
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HUGHES, Langston.
Shakespeare in Harlem.
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1942.
First edition of this wartime collection of poems, inscribed shortly after Hughes and Bridson met for the first time: ‘For Geoffrey Bridson, with the friendship, and regards of Langston Hughes. New York, January 28, 1944’.
£1000