Search results

  1. [ABC.]

    Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...

    C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].

    A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.

    £3750

  2. WYCHERLEY, William.

    The Posthumous Works … in Prose and Verse. Faithfully publish’d from his original Manuscripts, by Mr. Theobald....

    London: Printed for A. Bettesworth, J. Osborn, W. Mears, W. and J. Innys, J. Peele, T. Woodward; and F. Clay. 1728.

    First edition of an important collection, comprising 308 maxims, one short essay and a large number of previously unpublished poems (the third paginated sequence), based on manuscripts acquired from Captain Thomas Shrimpton, Wycherley’s sole executor.

    £850

  3. [BREWER, George.]

    The Siamese Tales, being a Collection of Stories told to the Son of the Mandarin Sam-Sib, for the Purpose of...

    London, Vernor & Hood and Champante & Whitrow, 1796.

    First edition of an anonymously published collection of ‘Siamese tales’, written as fables to increase their appeal to children.

    £950

  4. 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    An attractively bound unpublished devotional manual composed by one C. Boutmy (unidentified) for his patron Henri vicomte de Haro et d’Enghien.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

  5. GOELICKE, Andreas Ottomar.

    Disputatio physica experimentalis exhibens aliquot naturae phaenomena, quae per attractionem vulgo fieri...

    Halle, Johann Montag, [1704].

    Scarce academic disputation on experimental physics led by the German physician and professor Andreas Ottomar Goelicke (1671–1744).

    £275

  6. [RICHARDSON, Jonathan.]

    The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors…

    London, Printed by W. Nicol, late Bulmer & Co., 1822.

    Rare first edition of a revised version of the valedictory lecture given by the Outinian Society on 31 December 1818 to mark the centenary of the death of William Penn (1644–1717), founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, drawing on information supplied by the Society’s founder, Penn’s grandson.

    £1600

  7. [CURLL, Edmund, editor.]

    Impartial Memorials of the Life and Writings of Thomas Hearne, M.A. by several Hands.

    London, Printed in the Year 1736.

    First separate edition, amusing but in no way ‘impartial’, of this biography of the age’s leading antiquary, Thomas Hearne (1678–1735).

    £450

  8. [LILY, William.]

    A short introduction of grammar generally to be used; compiled and set forth for the bringing up of all those...

    Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1709.

    Later editions (likely issued together) of two Latin grammars ascribed to the great grammarian and schoolmaster William Lily (1468?–1522/1523).

    £350

  9. FLEMING, Ian.

    You only live twice.

    London, Jonathan Cape, 1964.

    First edition, first impression, first state of what is ‘perhaps the most bizarre and doom-fraught of all James Bond’s adventures’ (p. 1), set in Japan and inspired by Fleming’s visits to Japan for The Sunday Times, the title taken from a poem by Bashō: ‘You only live twice:...

    £850

  10. FLEMING, Ian.

    The Spy who loved me.

    London, Jonathan Cape, 1962.

    First edition, first impression, of the only Bond novel narrated in the first person by the twenty-three-year-old Canadian Vivienne Michel, a lover of Bond’s.

    £1250

  11. OHNET, Georges; Lady GODOLPHIN OSBORNE, translator.

    The Battles of Life. The Ironmaster. From the French of Georges...

    Authorized Translation … London, Wyman & Sons … 1884.

    First edition in English of this bestselling novel intended for a female readership, translated from the French by Lady William Godolphin Osborne, printed amidst the translator’s contentious copyright lawsuit against the publisher Henry Vizetelly, who had issued a rival translation in the same year.

    £450

  12. FLEMING, Ian.

    The Man with the golden Gun.

    London, Jonathan Cape, 1965.

    First edition, first impression, of the last Bond novel, published eight months after Fleming’s death, here with the binding in the second state, without the golden gun blocked to the upper cover (deemed too expensive after the first 900 copies).

    £650

  13. ARISTOTLE; THEOPHRASTUS; Theodorus GAZA and Pietro ALCIONIO, translators.

    Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum...

    Lyons, [Nicolas Bacquenois for] Guillaume Gazeau, 1552.

    A union of Aristotle on animals and Theophrastus on plants, the fundamental texts from Ancient Greece on zoology and botany, in the translations of Gaza and Alcionio.

    £800

  14. GUILLIM, John.

    A Display of Heraldrie: manifesting a more easie Accesse to the Knowledge thereof than hath beene hitherto published...

    London, Thomas Cotes for Jacob Blome, 1638.

    Third edition, corrected and enlarged, of this cornerstone of English heraldry; this copy annotated throughout in two hands, each showing close engagement with the blazon expounded by the text.

    £950

  15. [HAMILTON, Joseph.]

    Some short and useful Reflections upon Duelling, which should be in the Hands of every Person who is liable...

    Dublin, for the Author, by C. Bentham, 1823.

    First edition, scarce, of this Dublin-printed assemblage of impassioned arguments and anecdotes against the ‘desolating vice’ of duelling.

    £600

  16. PLINY the Younger, Gaius SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, and Julius OBSEQUENS.

    C. Plinii Secundi Novocomensis Epistolarum...

    [(Colophon:) Venice, in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresano, June 1518.]

    The second Aldine edition of the letters of Pliny the Younger, with marks of early German ownership and annotations.

    £975

  17. POMPONIO LETO, Giulio.

    In omnia quae quidem extant, P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, Commentarii, varia multarum rerum cognitione referti,...

    Basel, [Johann Oporinus, 1544].

    Second edition of Leto’s influential commentary on all the works of Virgil, ‘the first to deal with all the works attributed to Virgil, and also the most extensive and complete, and therefore certainly the most important commentary written in the fifteenth century’ (Stok, p. 204).

    £450

  18. RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator.

    Some British Ballads.

    London, Constable & Co. Ltd., [1919].

    First trade edition, illustrated by Rackham, of these ballads sourced largely from Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, our copy in a handsome Bayntun-Riviere binding.

    £500

  19. SPILBERGEN, Joris van, and Jacob LE MAIRE.

    Speculum orientalis occidentalisque Indiae navigationum; quarum una Georgii a...

    Leiden, Nicolaes van Geelkercken, 1619.

    First Latin edition of one of the classic Dutch illustrated voyages, identical in format and illustration to the same publisher’s Dutch-language edition of the same year.

    £20000

  20. SYMONS, Arthur, editor.

    The Savoy.

    London, Leonard Smithers, 1896.

    First edition of this outstanding, though short-lived, avant-garde periodical, with contributions by Yeats (poems, and the three part essay on William Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy), Shaw, Conrad, Dowson, Havelock Ellis (on Nietzsche and Hardy), Lionel Johnson, Beerbohm,...

    £3000