Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller 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. LIVY, Titus. 

    T. Livii Patauini […] ex XIIII Decadibus Historiae Romanae ab Urbe condita, Decades, prima, tertia, quarta,...

    Paris, [Michel Vascosan for] Oudin Petit, 1543 [– Michel Vascosan for himself and Oudin Petit, 1542]. 

    A much-praised edition of Livy’s History, reprinting Vascosan’s 1535 edition and including the philological corpus on Livy by the most established humanists of the time: Rhenanus, Gelenius, Grynaeus, Glareanus, Badius Ascensius, Valla, and Sabellico. 

    £3800

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. LUDOPHUS of Saxony. 

    In Psal. David, diligentiss. Simul, & doctissima Enarratio ....Ad cuius ornamentum & collocupletatione[m]...

    [Lyons,] A. Vincent, [1542]. 

    Uncommon and significant edition of one of the most important fourteenth-century commentaries on the Psalms, hailed as excellent for its method and clarity and first put through the press in 1491. 

    £2000

  5. MABLY, Gabriel Bonnot, Abbé de.

    Observations on the Romans. Written originally in French …

    London: Printed for R. Griffiths … 1751.

    First English edition of this Roman history (first published in the same year in Geneva as Observations sur les Romains). Mably studies episodes from the pre-imperial era (the seven kings, Gracchi and Punic wars), before skimming the vast majority of imperial dynastic rule to finish with a chapter...

    £875

  6. MACROBIUS, Ambrosius Theodosius.

    Somnium Scipionis ex Ciceronis libro De republica excerptum; Macrobii … primi diei Saturnaliorum...

    Venice, Filippo Pinzi, 29 October 1500.

    Sixth and last incunable edition of Macrobius, illustrated with a world map, with extensive early annotations.

    £9500

  7. MAGGI, Lorenzo. 

    I sacri hinni, che si leggono in tutto l’anno nella santa chiesa Catholica, tradotti, et commentati in lingua...

    Venice, Francesco Rampazetto, 1567.

    Very rare first edition of this collection of hymns by the Milanese archpriest of Riva San Vitale, Lorenzo Maggi, dedicated to Pope Pius V and intended for members of the clergy with limited Latin. 

    £500

  8. MAGNON, Jean. 

    Les heures du Chrestien, divisées en trois journées; qui sont la journée de la penitence, la journée de la...

    Paris, se vendent chez l’autheur … et chez Sebastien Martin, 1654. 

    First edition of this handsomely illustrated collection of prayers and devotions in verse and prose by the French playwright and poet Jean Magnon (1620–1662).  The number of plates in individual copies varies, this copy containing at least two more than those described on OCLC. 

    £650

  9. MANCINI, Celso. 

    Il padrino Christiano … per formare i cavallieri di Christo nel duello della morte.  Diviso in tre parti … 

    Ferrara, Vittorio Baldini, 1592. 

    Rare first edition of a meditational work on this world and the next by Celso Mancini (1542–1612), canon regular of the Lateran, philosopher, and bishop of Alessano. 

    £950

  10. MÄNDL, Kaspar.

    Christliche Sitten-Lehr und heylsame Anmuthungen gezogen auß Betrachtung deß bitteren Leyden und Sterbens unsers...

    Augsburg, Matthias Wolff, 1737.

    A superb example of Rococo decorative binding, exploiting all available materials – silks, metals, beads, papers, gilding, and leather – to extraordinary (if perhaps excessive) effect.

    £6750

  11. [MAPS.]

    ‘Carte du Vicariat Apost. de Péking & Tche-ly Nord’.

    [China], 1896.

    Two handsome maps providing a snapshot of the region around modern Beijing and the Bohai Sea encompassed within the Vicariate Apostolic of Northern Chi-Li and the Vicariate Apostolic of Southwestern Chi-Li in 1896, showing towns, missionary residences, roads, railways, rivers and lakes, and part...

    £1800

  12. [MARABOTTA, Cattaneo.] 

    Vita della serafica S. Caterina da Genova. 

    Genoa, Tipografia Frugoni, 1832. 

    Rare first edition thus, an attractive nineteenth-century reprint of Marabotta’s biography of Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), first published in 1737, the date of her canonisation.  Catherine was known for her writings on mysticism and for her work with the poor and sick, notably during...

    £185

  13. MARKISH, Peretz Davidovich.

    Rubezh. Izbrannye stikhi [Threshold. Selected poems]. Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1933.

    [Selected poems]. Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1933.

    First edition in Russian of the first book by the Soviet Yiddish poet and novelist Peretz Markish (1895-1952), a collection of poems, Shveln (Threshold, Kiev, 1919) which established his reputation as one of the most important Yiddish poets of his time.

    £1800

  14. MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

    Urbis Romae topographia. 

    Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

    First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

    £5500

  15. MARTIAL.

    Epigrammaton libri XIII. Ex fide vetustissimorum exemplarium, quanta fieri potuit cura vigilantiaque emendati.

    Paris, Jean Libert, 1612 [(colophon:) 1613].

    An uncommon small-format edition of Martial’s Epigrams, with early annotations marking passages used by the humanist poet Marot.

    £650

  16. [MARY I.] VISDOMINI, Francesco.

    Oratione funebre fatta in Napoli nell’hon. essequie della serenissima regina d’Ingliterra...

    [Naples, Raimondo Amato, 1559.]

    First edition, extremely rare, of this Italian sermon on the death of Mary I of England. Our copy appears to be an unrecorded issue, omitting from the title-page the imprint recorded by EDIT16 (‘se vendeno ala porta piccola de s. Laurentio appresso à Raymondo Amato’).

    £1800

  17. [MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]

    Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...

    Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.

    Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...

    £375

  18. [MASS.]

    Cerimonie piu’ notabili della messa privata; Cavate dalle rubriche del Missale, ed altri autori da un Sacerdote D.C.D.M....

    Turin, Gianfranco Mairesse, 1739.

    An apparently unrecorded edition of this uncommon treatise on the celebration of the mass and its associated rituals.

    £300

  19. MAURIZI, Maria Luisa.

    Morali e divote riflessioni a tutti utilissime e specialmente alle persone claustrali scritte dalla serva...

    Rome, Tipografia della Pia Unione alle Terme, 1833.

    Uncommon first edition of this collection of meditations on the religious life, by the Roman nun Maria Luisa Maurizi (born Giacinta Gertrude Maurizi, 1770–1831), and published posthumously at the behest of her spiritual director, Agostino Romagnoli.

    £150

  20. MELCHIOR, Christian. 

    ‘Synechia sive summa lectionum Plutarchicarum a domino conrectore huius scholae Salderianae praelectarum. ...

    [Brandenburg an der Havel, 1620.] 

    An unpublished early seventeenth-century manuscript recording lectures on Plutarch’s pedagogical work On the Education of Children, bound with a scarce printed edition of the same text, and a rare edition of the poems of Theognis and other Greek lyric poets, each with numerous marginal and...

    £6500