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.
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POPE, [Alexander].
The sixth Epistle of the first Book of Horace imitated.
London, L. Gilliver, 1737.
First edition. Foxon P965; Rothschild 1638; Griffith 476.
£250
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PORTA, Giambattista della.
De humana physiognomonia … libri IIII; qui ab extimis, quae in hominum corporibus conspiciuntur signis,...
Hanau, Wilhelm Antonius for [Frankfurt,] Peter Fischer, 1593.
The second Latin edition and the first to be published in Germany of this richly illustrated work on physiognomy by the Italian polymath Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615), a beautiful copy in strictly contemporary German white calf.
£2500
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[PRAYER-BOOK.]
The new and complete Family Prayer-Book, or Church of England Man’s Divine Library: being an universal Illustration,...
London: Printed for Alex. Hogg … [1784-5.]
First edition thus, rare, published in 36 weekly parts, each originally accompanied with an illustration, and now correctly bound according to the complicated ‘Directions to the Binder’ at the end. Wright’s exhaustive compilation, with notes and commentary on each page, assembled calendars,...
£950
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[PRAYERBOOK.]
‘Gebetbuch’.
[Germany, early nineteenth century.]
An attractive early nineteenth-century Catholic prayerbook in German, containing prayers for both daily use and for use during Mass.
£185
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[PRAYERS.]
‘Orationes diversae pro temporum opportunitate dicendae’.
[Likely Lucca, late eighteenth century.]
A delightful manuscript prayerbook for use in communal worship, most likely for a rural community, with prayers for help in times of plagues and of animal diseases, prayers seeking protection from storms and alleviation of droughts, for times of earthquakes, for the sick, and against pagans. ...
£475
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[PRAYERS.]
Récueil de plusieurs prieres.
Vienna, ‘chez Georg Müllner libraire et relieur des livres’, [c. 1810].
Very rare and charming early nineteenth-century prayer book in an attractive binding by the Viennese ‘libraire et relieur’ Georg Müllner.
£450
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PRESENT FOR THE YOUNG (A).
London: Printed for The Religious Tract Society … and sold at their Depository … also by J. Nisbet...
[c. 1827]
First edition. A finely illustrated anthology of religious verse, contemplations, and prayers for children. Pieces include poems on the seasons and stories about a Welsh Shepherd, and ‘The Hill and the Valley’, all with heavily metaphorical content.
£175
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[PSALMS.]
Les Pseaumes de David, mis en Vers François, revus et approuvez par le Synode Walon des Provinces-Unies. Nouvelle Edition.
Amsterdam, ‘aux dépens de l’Eglise Françoise de Londres’, 1729’.
New edition of the metrical Psalms of the Pléiade poet Clément Marot and the theologian Théodore de Bèze, extensively revised, with a new version of 149 Psalms, printed for the use of Huguenot émigrés.
£950
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[PSALMS.]
The whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into English Meter by Tho. Strenhold, Jo. Hopkins, W. Whittingham, and others...
London, Printed by T. C[otes] for the Company of Stationers, 1637.
A very attractive pocket psalm-book with tunes, ruled in red throughout and in a handsome binding. Such diminutive psalm books began to appear at the end of the sixteenth-century, printed for the Company of Stationers, who had the monopoly. The printer here was Thomas Cotes, most famous as...
£2750
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[PSALMS.]
Psalterium Davidis carmine redditum per Eobanum Hessum. Annotationes Viti Theodori Noribergensis, quae vice commentarii...
Paris, [(colophon:) Guillaume Morel for] Jacques Dupuys ‘sub insigni Samaritanae’, [August] 1550.
Seemingly unrecorded issue of the Psalms of David in Latin as edited by the Lutheran theologian Eoban of Hesse (1488–1540) with commentary by Luther’s housemate, associate, and sometime secretary Veit Dietrich (1506–1549).
£1250
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[PSALMS.]
Les Pseaumes de David, mis en rime Françoise, par Clement Marot, et Theodore de Beze.
‘Se vendent à Charenton, par Antoine Cellier, demeurent à Paris … à l’Imprimerie des Roziers’, 1667.
Charenton-printed French Psalms in a remarkable shagreen binding with silver-filigree furniture, with English provenance since the eighteenth century.
£2750
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[PSALMS; Basil WOODD, editor.]
The Psalms of David, and other Portions of the Sacred Scriptures, selected from various Authors,...
London, Watts & Bridgewaters, Rivingtons, and Matthews, 1800.
A pocket-sized Psalm- and prayerbook with a hidden heraldic fore-edge painting for Horatio Walpole, later first Earl of Orford.
£2000
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PURSEY, Thomas.
The last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.
[Edinburgh, T. Pursey, 1900.]
A photographic tour-de-force, assembling many hundreds of individual photographic portraits neatly incorporated into a painted scenario, and then reproduced as a photogravure, depicting all the attendees of the last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held in May 1900. Evidently a...
£2000
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[QUARITCH.]
Guillaume Postel (1510–1581).
Quaritch, 2006.
A catalogue of a collection of the works of the Renaissance scholar and Arabist, Guillaume Postel. ‘Not only does it include editions of quite exceptional rarity, to be found in few libraries on either side of the Atlantic, but it illustrates every moment of Postel’s extraordinary career and...
£60
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QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius, and Pierre GALLAND (ed.).
M. Fabii Quintiliani … de oratoria institutione livre XII....
Paris, Thomas Richard, 1554 [– 1550-1561].
A mixed edition of Pierre Galland’s Quintilian, a hugely successful project from its first appearance in 1538. This copy joins the Institutio oratoria with the (now believed to be spurious, if contemporary) Declamationes, and conforms with the copy held at the Arsenal.
£700
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QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius, and Jacques-Louis d’ESTREBAY (editor).
Compendium libri secundi, tertii, et quinti institutionum...
Paris, Thomas Richard, 1558.
Very rare third edition of this compendium of Quintilian’s oratory by Jacques-Louis d’Estrebay (or Estrebee, 1481–1550?), humanist, translator, professor of Rhetoric at Rheims and subsequently at the College of Sante-Barbe in Paris, and a proof-reader for the Estiennes. The title-page indicates...
£350
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QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius.
Institutiones oratoriae, ac Declamationes, cuiuscuius sint, summa accuratione nuper recognitae, cum...
[Paris,] Badius Ascensius for Ascensius and Roigny, August [– September] 1533.
Rare reprint of Badius’s successful 1528 Quintilian, with the commentary of Peter Schade, German humanist author of an important work on rhetoric.
£1250
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[RAMEAUX, François-Alexis.]
Edictum pro regis Hou-kuanensis adversus Europaeum Mou (idest adversus RR.DD. Rameaux).
[China], [1840–1] 道光卄年.
A letter sent by the Department of Justice to the Hubei provincial government to request an arrest warrant for the French missionary François-Alexis Rameaux (1802–1845). This is most likely a copy, being written on decorated paper as used in private exchanges, especially between lower and higher...
£3500
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[RAMEAUX, François-Alexis.]
Notice of the death of Rameaux issued by Bernard-Vincent Laribe.
[China, 1845.]
A circular notifying the Christian community of the death of François-Alexis Rameaux (1802–1845), Vicar Apostolic of Zhejiang and Jiangxi from 1838, issued by his friend and successor Bernard-Vincent Laribe (1802–1850), asking that prayers for his soul be practiced nightly for six months....
£2000
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RENAN, Ernest (1823-1892), French philologist and philosopher.
A collection of 26 autograph letters and notes signed, with one...
Paris and Sèvres, 1853-1889 (and undated).
A fine collection of letters from Renan, providing an insight into the breadth of his academic pursuits, his publications, his contacts in France and abroad, and his personality.
£500