Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison or Sally Deegan

Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.

We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia.  Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.

 
  1. ACETI DE’ PORTI, Serafino. 

    Novo paradiso di delitie spirituali, nel quale si contiene la vita del salvator nostro Giesu Christo. ...

    Bologna, Giovanni Rossi, 1563. 

    Rare first edition of this devotional work by Serafino Aceti de’ Porti (1496–1540), a Canon Regular of the Lateran, encompassing episodes from the life of Christ, passages on love for God and on charity, prayers to the Virgin Mary, and spiritual advice by St Bridget. 

    £850

  2. AESOP, et al. [George STEWART, editor].

    Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et Luciani Samosatensis dialogi. Isocratis...

    Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart, 1723.

    First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish school textbook comprising selections in Greek and Latin from Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Dialogues, the orations of Isocrates, and the Tablet of Cebes.

    £375

  3. ALABASTER, William.

    Roxana tragaedia olim Cantabrigiae, acta in Col. Trin. Nunc primum in lucem edita.

    London, R. Badger for Andrew Crook, 1632.

    The pirated first edition (the first authorized text followed later in the same year) of a neo-Latin verse drama in the manner of Seneca, by one of the foremost Latinists of his day.

    £1500

  4. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).

    £3800

  5. ANGLÉS, José. 

    Flores theologicarum quaestionum, in quartum librum sententiarum.  Collecti, iterumq. selecti …  Pars prima...

    Rome, Giuseppe de Angelis, 1578. 

    Scarce second edition (first Cagliari, 1575–6) of an exhaustive compendium of theological questions compiled by the Spanish Franciscan Anglés (d. 1586), bishop of Bosa in Sardinia. 

    £750

  6. [ANTIPHONAL.]

    Very large historiated initial ‘H’, probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the Nativity...

    Italy (Siena), c. 1300.

    A very fine large initial painted in a style associated with the Master of the Gradual of Cortona, an artist named for a Franciscan gradual produced c. 1290 for the church of San Francesco in Cortona (now Vatican City, BAV, MS Ross. 612).

    £6750

  7. [ANTIPHONAL.]

    Antiphonal, with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.

    Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-fifteenth century.

    An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.

    £4250

  8. ANTIPHONAL,

    with neumes, containing antiphons, responses and versicles for Trinity Sunday, the Octave of Pentecost, Sundays after...

    Germany, 1st half of 12th century. 

    Two bifolia from a notably early antiphonal. 

    £5000

  9. ANTONIUS de Vercellis. 

    Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...

    Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93. 

    A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites. 

    £8500

  10. ANVILLE, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’.

    Considérations générales, sur l’étude et les connoissances que demande la composition...

    Paris, Galeries du Louvres, 1777

    Two first edition works in one volume by the great French geographer and royal cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville, consisting of d’Anville’s general guide to geography and his remarks on the construction of his famous maps of China.

    £500

  11. APPIAN of Alexandria.

    Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...

    Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.

    A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.

    £3000

  12. APULEIUS, Lucius. 

    L. Apuleii Metamorphoseos, sive lusus Asini libri XI.  Floridoru[m] IIII.  De deo Socratis I.  De philosophia...

    Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri’, May 1521. 

    First Aldine edition of the works of the second-century AD Numidian novelist Apuleius, with the editio princeps of Alcinous’s second-century handbook on Plato’s philosophy in the original Greek, from the library of the great French writer Victor Hugo. 

    £2000

  13. [AQUHORTIES.]

    Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …

    Edinburgh, Printed by J. Moir, Paterson’s Court, [1799?].

    Broadside rules for the newly established Aquhorties College, the only Roman Catholic college in Scotland, presumably designed to be posted up around the school.

    £850

  14. [ARCHCONFRATERNITY OF THE MOST HOLY CRUCIFIX.]

    Distinta descrizione della machina, luminari, ed ordinanza nella solenne processione...

    Rome, per il Casaletti, 1775.

    Rare record of a procession made by members of the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Crucifix from the church of San Marcello in Rome to Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in the jubilee year of 1775.

    £250

  15. ARISTOPHANES.

    The Frogs, a Comedy. Translated from the Greek of Aristophanes, by C[harles] Dunster, A.M …

    Oxford, J. and J. Fletcher; London, Rivington, Payne, Faulder, Cadell; Cambridge, Merrill, [1785].

    First edition in English, and the only separately published translation of The Frogs in the eighteenth century. ‘It is … somewhat surprising that in an age so studious of ancient literature as the present, and which so much abounds in translations of the Greek and Latin classics, we...

    £500

  16. ARISTOPHANES, and Henry Francis CARY, translator.

    The Birds … with Notes.

    London, Printed for Taylor and Hessey … 1824.

    First edition of the first metrical translation of Aristophanes’ The Birds into English by Henry Francis Cary (1722–1844) – perhaps best known for his blank verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

    £350

  17. ARISTOTLE.

    Αριστοτελους περι ποιητικης: Aristotelis de poetica liber ex versione Theodori Goulstoni. Lectionis...

    Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1780.

    Large-paper issue of the first Winstanley edition, handsomely bound. The first work published by the Oxford historian and classicist Thomas Winstanley (1749–1823), subsequently Camden Professor of History and Laudian Professor of Arabic, this edition of Aristotle’s De poetica was based...

    £675

  18. ARISTOTLE; Ermolao BARBARO, translator.

    De arte dicendi libri III.

    Paris, [Michel de] Vascosan, 1549.

    Rare first Vascosan edition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Latin, edited by the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro (1454–1493), in a binding with the arms of the Kingdom of Portugal.

    £650

  19. ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo. 

    Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga. 

    Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566. 

    First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini. 

    £1750

  20. AUGUSTINE, Pseudo-, et al. 

    Opusculum multarum bonaru[m] rerum refertum, ut sunt.  Diui Augustini meditationes, et eiusde[m]...

    Venice, Pietro Quarengi, 6 March 1512. 

    Uncommon edition of various devotional works, comprising: the pseudo-Augustinian Meditations, Soliloquies, and a treatise on the word of God; meditations on the human condition, and a letter on leading the perfect life, attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux; a short sermon assigned to Peter Damian; Anselm’s...

    £750