Search results

  1. [BRITISH MOSSES.]

    Two volumes of window-mounted moss samples, with manuscript captions.

    [England, 1860s.]

    A charming nineteenth-century herbarium comprising 560 moss specimens.

    £850

  2. PITTER, Přemysl.

    Domovu i exilu [Home and Exile].

    London, Čechoslovák-FCI, [1956].

    First editions, association copies, of a series of radio transcripts by the humanitarian Protestant lay preacher and educator Přemysl Pitter (1895–1976), often described as the ‘forgotten Czech Schindler’, owned by the Czech-Jewish poet, novelist, and Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.

    £850

  3. CICERO, Marcus Tullius.

    De Officiis … libri tres, ex editione Oliveti Parisiis vulgata.

    London, T. Payne, 1791.

    First Payne edition, edited by Henry Homer (1753–1791). A friend of the writer and schoolmaster Samuel Parr since his days at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Homer produced editions of Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Pliny the Younger, and others.

    £450

  4. LEVEY, Michael.

    The later Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen … second edition.

    Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

    Revised second edition of Levey’s catalogue of the later Italian paintings in the Royal Collection, from Carracci to Zuccarelli and including the largest group of Canalettos in the world, a specially bound duplicate of Elizabeth II’s presentation copy.

    £475

  5. OVID; [Philipp GUNDEL, editor].

    Fastorum libri sex diligentissime recogniti. Addito calendario Romano venerandae vetustatis,...

    [(Colophon:) Vienna, Hieronymus Vietor and Johann Singriener for Leonhard Alantsee, 3 October 1513.]

    First and only editions, very rare, of two post-incunable Ovid recensions by Philipp Gundel, curiously bound in a strikingly archaic likely eighteenth-century binding.

    £3500

  6. NEVILL, Ralph; Geoffrey HOLME, editor.

    Old English Sporting Prints and their History.

    London, Herbert Reiach for the Studio Ltd, 1923.

    Limited edition, numbered 576 of 1500 copies. A fine collection of prints by the great sporting artists of England, from Henry Alken and Thomas Rowlandson to Francesco Bartolozzi, accompanied by an essay by Ralph Nevill (1865 – 1930).

    £165

  7. LANDI, Bassiano.

    De origine et causa pestis Patauinae, anni MDLV ...

    Venice, apud Balthassarem Constantinum (colophon: ‘Ioan. Gryphius excudebat’), 1555.

    First edition of this important work investigating the causes of the plague which struck Padua in 1555, by the eminent, and controversial, professor of medicine Bassiano Landi (d. 1562). In his De origine Landi argues against the then popular belief that the plague had been caused by putrid...

    £1250

  8. ROTHSCHILD, Boaz Raphael.

    [Sefer oniyah b’lev yam … Chelek rishon]. ספר אני בלב ים ... חלק ראשון

    Fürth, Chaim ben Zvi Hirsch, 1766.

    First part of the first and only edition of this work on the Thirteen Principles of Faith and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy by German rabbi Boaz Rothschild, our copy presented to the Rothschild family in England.

    £450

  9. HIEROCLES of Alexandria.

    Ύπομνηνα εις τα των Πυθαγορειων επη τα χρυσα … commentarius in...

    London, J. R. [John Redmayne] for J. Williams, and Henry Dickinson, Cambridge, 1673.

    London edition of the only complete work of Hierocles, his commentaries on the Golden Verses, a valuable epitome of Pythagorean ethical teachings, printed here in the original and in a Latin translation. According to tradition they were put into their present form by Lysis, one of the most...

    £500

  10. LUCIAN of Samosata.

    Opera graece et latine ad editionem Tiberii Hemsterhusii et Ioannis Frederici Reitzii accurate expressa cum...

    Zweibrücken, Typographia Societatis, 1789–1793.

    Renouard’s copy of the Bipontine Lucian, the finest instantiation of the Hemsterhuys-Reitz edition, ‘the most accurate and complete edition of Lucian that has ever been published’ (Dibdin), made more accurate and extensive through reference to Parisian manuscripts which had never been published...

    £8000

  11. LUCRETIUS. 

    Titi Lucretii Cari de rerum natura libri VI.  Ad optimorum exemplarium veritatem exacti.  Quae praeterea in hac...

    Padua, Giuseppe Comino [for Volpi], 2 January 1721. 

    First Volpi–Comino edition of Lucretius’s famous materialist and Epicurean poem, the most notable Italian edition of the eighteenth century.  The present work is the product of the long-running and fruitful collaboration between the printer Giuseppe Comino and the scholars Giovanni Antonio...

    £450

  12. 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

  13. SALLUST.

    Caii Sallustii Crispi quae extant.

    London, James Tonson and John Watts, 1713.

    First Maittaire edition. The French-born classical scholar Michel Maittaire (1668–1741) studied at Westminster, and then under Robert South at Christ Church, Oxford. He is best known for his Annales Typographici and the series of duodecimo classics that he published with Tonson and Watts...

    £300

  14. TAULER, Johannes, attributed

    Exercitia D. Ioannis Thauleri piissima, super vita et passione salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi,...

    Antwerp, Philippus Nutius, 1565. 

    Uncommon Antwerp edition of Laurentius Surius’s Latin translation of a devotional work on the life and passion of Christ attributed to the medieval German mystic Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), in an attractive contemporary binding and with interesting manuscript notes. 

    £1500

  15. [THOMAS À KEMPIS.]

    Messer Giovanni Gerson. Utile & divota operetta della imitatione di Giesu Xpo …

    Florence, Piero Pacini da Pescia, 16 April 1505.

    Scarce edition of an anonymous Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi, with a striking woodcut of Christ to the title.

    £4000

  16. [VALLI, Francesco di Andrea.] 

    Manuscript receipt book. 

    Villa di Vaglie, Cortona, 1735-1767. 

    An interesting manuscript receipt book recording the affairs and transactions of Francesco di Andrea Valli (or Vagli) and his sons Pietro and Egidio, landowners and farmers from Villa di Vaglie near Cortona, over the course of four decades. 

    £375

  17. HEXHAM, Henry. 

    A Tongue-Combat, lately happening betweene two English Souldiers in the Tilt-boat of Gravesend, the one going...

    Printed at London [i.e. Holland].  1623. 

    First edition, written in reply to a rare pamphlet with a near-identical title by Richard Verstegan [or Rowlands], an intelligence agent in the Netherlands for the English Jesuits.  Verstegan’s original Toung-Combat comprised a dialogue between the pro-Catholic Red Scarf and the Protestant...

    £1650

  18. [DOVES PRESS.] 

    Pervigilium Veneris. 

    Hammersmith, ‘printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press,’ 1910. 

    One of 150 copies on paper of the elusive Pervigilium Veneris, a celebration of the spring festival of Venus Genetrix, here in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe). 

    £950

  19. BOLZANIO, Urbano or URBANUS BELLUNENSIS.

    Institutionum in linguam Graecam grammaticarum, libri duo …

    Basel, Johann Walder, September 1535.

    Basel edition of this popular grammar commissioned and first published by Aldus in 1497. Bolzanio’s full exploration of the Greek language was the first book in which the principles of Greek grammar were explained in Latin – after the publication of the all-Greek grammar of Constantinus Lascaris....

    £2000

  20. ASCHAM, Roger.

    A Report and Discourse … of the Affaires and State of Germany and the Emperour Charles his Court, during certaine...

    London, Printed by John Daye … [1570?].

    First edition. Ascham’s account of his time in Germany as secretary to Sir Richard Morison, ambassador to the court of Emperor Charles V, takes the form of a letter to the courtier John Astley.

    £2000