Search results
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[BOUCHET, Jean.]
Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...
Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.
Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...
£4500
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HAREL, Charles.
Ménage sociétaire ou Moyen d’augmenter son bien-être en diminuant sa dépense, avec indication de quelques...
Paris, Bureau de la Phalange, à la librairie Sociale, 1839.
First edition of this work by the entrepreneur and inventor Charles Harel (1771–1852), a friend and disciple of Charles Fourier’s, describing Harel’s project for the founding of an utopian community of two hundred people housed in a single building, bound with eight other works in a sammelband...
£975
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HESSE, Hermann.
Siddhartha. Eine indische Dichtung.
Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag, 1922.
First edition of Hesse’s most celebrated work, the beautiful story of a young Brahmin’s search for the meaning of life on earth at the time of the Gautama Buddha.
£1200
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PAPINI, Roberto.
Le Arti d’Oggi: Architettura e Arti Decorative in Europa.
Milan and Rome, Bestetti and Tumminelli, 1930.
First edition of a thorough and extensively illustrated survey of architectural and artistic styles and artworks from across Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, preceded by the idea of a utopian town, ‘Universa’, where the futuristic ideal for a new society can be achieved and craftsmanship...
£300
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[DANIEL, Yuli Markovich,]
pseud. ‘Nikolai ARZHAK’. Говорит Москва. Повесть [Govorit Moskva. Povest’....
Munich, I. Baschkirzew for Washington, D.C., B[oris] Filippoff, 1962.
First edition, smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published pseudonymously, of this dystopian work in which the government ‘declares a “Day of Public Murders” and permits random murder’ (Terras), one of the books which led directly to Daniel’s arrest and show trial in 1966 for ‘anti-Soviet...
£150
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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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JOHNSON, Samuel.
Mr. Johnson’s Preface to his Edition of Shakespear’s Plays.
London, Printed for J. and R. Tonson [and eleven others] … 1765.
First separate edition. ‘The separate Preface seems to be scarce. It is possible that the publishers were reluctant to let people read Johnson’s preface without paying for his edition … and while unable in decency to resist the public demand – or the author’s request – protected...
£1500
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[ISELIN, Isaak].
Träume eines Menschenfreundes. Erster Theil.
Basel, Johannes Schweighauser, 1776.
Uncommon first edition, part one only (very rarely to be found complete with both parts), of the most mature expression of Iselin’s anti-Rousseau republicanism, a social ‘dream’ of great articulation and – arguably – applicability, residing confidently on the borderline between utopia and...
£150
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PIRANI, Giovanni.
Le donne belle del secolo XVIII. Inferme nello spedale della voluttà visitate dalla ragione. Opera filosofico-critico-morale...
Rimini, Paolo Albertini, 1791.
Scarce first edition of this ‘libro bizarro’ printed in Rimini, in which the personification of Reason takes the narrator on an imaginary journey to a ‘hospital’ in order to heal young women corrupted by the decadence of the eighteenth century.
£950
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HAWTREY, George Procter.
Caramella. A Story of the Lotus Eaters up to date.
Bristol, J. W. Arrowsmith; London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., [1899].
First edition of this utopian novel exploring the bliss of Caramella, inspired by the land visited by Odysseus in book nine of the Odyssey, where the crew members he sent ashore consumed the lotus fruit and became addicted, forgetting all thoughts of return.
£250
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BALLOU, Adin.
Practical Christian Socialism: a conversational Exposition of the true System of human Society; in three Parts, viz:...
Hopedale and New York, by the author and Fowlers and Wells, 1854.
First exposition of Ballou’s most important work, an explication of the principles behind his utopian Hopedale Community, established in Milford, Massachusetts in 1841.
£450
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[ISELIN, Isaak; Peder Topp WANDALL, translator].
Philosophiske og Patriotiske Drømme af en Menneskeven. Oversatte af Peder Topp...
Frid. Stein, 1774.
Very rare first Danish edition of Iselin’s earliest work, the very successful Filosofische und patriotische Träume, translated by the librarian, writer, and dramatist Peder Topp Wandall (1737–1794).
£250
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JACOMB, Charles Ernest.
And a New Earth. A Romance.
London, George Routledge & Sons, 1926.
First edition of this post-apocalyptic fantasy novel relating the history of a utopian island that survived a ‘second flood’ in 1958, which destroyed the world’s civilization and reduced the human population to just ten thousand.
£75
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GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.
Stella. Ein Schauspiel für Liebende in fünf Akten.
Berlin, August Mylius, 1776.
First edition, scarce, of Goethe’s early play about a man caught between his love for two women, which ends with reconciliation and a mariage à trois.
£1800
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GIORDANO, Vito.
Il giudice di se stesso.
Naples, Gaetano Tardano, 1793.
Second edition of the first work (first 1792) and first edition of the second, both very rare, containing philosophical, theological, and legal meditations by the Neapolitan lawyer and judge Vito Giordano, featuring abstract, dreamlike ‘flights of fancy’ set both on earth and in heaven.
£450
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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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BARTHOLOMEW OF PISA.
Sermo[n]es lucidissimi et insignes dubiorum et casuum, co[n]scientialium co[n]te[m]ptivi et elucidativi sup[er]...
Lyon, Romain Morin, 3 February 1519.
Rare edition of forty-five sermons for Lent and Easter by the Franciscan friar Bartholomew of Pisa (d. c. 1401), printed in Lyon by Romain Morin.
£2250
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‘CODACCI, Scarpafico’, pseud. [i.e. Gaetano VERACI.]
Cicalata sopra la coda in forma di lettera indirizzata alla Signora N.N....
[Florence,] ‘nel Campo Cauditano’, 1765.
First edition of this highly suggestive, mock-academic ode to the ‘tail’, dedicated to an anonymous lady on the birth of a son.
£550
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[DUQUESNE, Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard.]
Vie de la vénérable mère Catherine de Bar, dite en religion Mecthilde du S. Sacrement,...
Nancy, Claude-Sigisbert Lamort; Paris, Le Berton and Herissant, 1775.
Uncommon biography of the French nun Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament (née Catherine de Bar, 1614-1698), founder of the order of Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, by the French theologian Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard Duquesne (1732-1791). Most copies lack the frontispiece...
£650
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GIOVIO, Paolo.
Historiarum sui temporis. Tomus primus … ex Italico Latinus factus …
Lyon, heirs of Sébastien Gryphe, 1561.
The first Lyon pocket edition of Giovio’s history of his own time, in a charming gilt limp vellum binding.
£350