Continental

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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. [EDWARD VII – COMMON PRAYER.]

    [Cover title: ‘Prayer Book of Edward VII’] The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration...

    [Norwood (MA), Plimpton Press for] New York, M. Walter Dunne, [1904].

    Authorised American edition of the Essex House Press Book of Common Prayer, published in celebration of the accession of Edward VII.

    £500

  2. EPICTETUS.

    Το του Επικτητου εγχειριδιον. Ex editione Joannis Upton accurate expressum.

    Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.

    The first miniature Foulis edition of Epictetus in Greek, and the first Foulis Epictetus in Greek only. A 1765 reissue was, according to ESTC, reset.

    £650

  3. ERASMUS, Desiderius.

    Collectanea adagiorum.

    [(Colophon:) Strasbourg, Matthias Schürer, 1519.]

    Intensely annotated copy of a lifetime edition of Erasmus’ repository of Greek and Latin proverbs. The first version of the Adagia, containing about eight hundred maxims, had been published in 1500. Erasmus continued to add to his thesaurus for over thirty years, the success of this...

    £5850

  4. ERASMUS, Desiderius. 

    Paraclesis, id est adhortio ad sanctissimum ac saluberrimum Cristianae philosophiae studium … 

    Basel, Johann Froben, February 1520. 

    Attractive contemporary Erasmus sammelband, superbly eloquent in its physical union of three treatises without which the humanist’s Praise of Folly would risk gross misinterpretation. 

    £5500

  5. ESTIENNE, Charles.

    De re vestiaria libellus, ex Bayfio excerptus: addita vulgaris linguae interpretatione, in adulesce[n]tuloru[m]...

    Paris, Robert Estienne, 1536.

    A wonderful sammelband of four children’s books compiled and published by the Estiennes, covering Roman dress and vases as well as plants and trees, bound with Antonio Telesio’s celebrated treatise on colours.

    £2250

  6. EUNAPIUS.

    Ευναπιου του Σαρδιανου βιοι φιλοσοφων και σοφιστων … De vitis philosophorum...

    ‘Cologne’ [but Geneva?], Samuel Crispin, 1616.

    Very uncommon edition of the twenty-four biographies of Eunapius of Sardis (b. 347?), valuable as a source for the neo-Platonic, and anti-Christian, philosophy of the fourth century; among his subjects were Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Epiphanius. The Latin translation is by Hadrianus Junius.

    £450

  7. EUSTRATIUS of Nicaea, et al.

    Ευστρατιου και αλλων τινων επισημων υπομνηματα εις...

    [(Colophon:) Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, July 1536.]

    Editio princeps of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Eustratius of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus, the Peripatetic philosopher Aspasius, and other anonymous scholiasts, published by the Aldine press, annotated by a contemporary scholar.

    £5500

  8. FAGNANI, Giovanni Marco. 

    De bello Arriano libri sex. 

    Milan, heirs of Pacifico da Ponte and Giovanni Battista Piccaglia, 1604. 

    First and only edition of the sole published work by the Italian nobleman Giovanni Marco Fagnani (1524–1609), an epic poem recounting Ambrose of Milan’s campaign against local Arians in late fourth-century Lombardy. 

    £900

  9. FARINGTON, Susan Maria (illustrator). 

    The 104th Psalm.  Illustrated by Susan Maria Ffarington.  Worden. 

    London,  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, [c. 1867]. 

    The Faringtons or Ffaringtons were an ancient family of Worden Hall, Leyland, Lancashire, with a substantial family archive.  Susan Maria (1808–1894) edited The Farington Papers for the Chetham Society in 1856, and made other contributions to local history, but this unusual panorama seems to have...

    £650

  10. FERRER, Ventura Pascual.

    Historia de los Dictadores de la republica Romana …

    Cartagena de Indias, Government Press for Gonzalez Pujòl, 1814.

    First edition, very rare, of this Colombia-printed history of the Roman dictators by the Cuban lawyer and writer Ferrer y Feruz (1772–1851), written in Colombia during the civil strife of early independence.

    £650

  11. FIAMMA, Gabriele. 

    Prediche del reverendo don Gabriel Fiamma, canonico regolare lateranense; fatte in vari tempi, in vari luoghi,...

    Venice, Francesco Senese, 1570.

    Scarce third edition of this collection of twelve sermons by the Augustinian canon and bishop of Chioggia, Gabriele Fiamma (1533–1585). 

    £400

  12. [FITZ-PATRICK, Robertus, translator, probably pseud.]

    The sacred History of the Holy Sheet. Collected from grave Authors, and translated...

    London: Printed for M. Cooper … 1745

    First edition of what appears to be the first book in English devoted to a description of the Turin Shroud and its history, curiously combining a sympathetic text with a heavily ironic, anti-Catholic preface, particularly anti-European Catholics. Can the preface have been influenced by the events of...

    £750

  13. FLORUS, Lucius. 

    Lucii Flori rerum ab urbe condita liber primus [– quartus]. 

    [Venice, in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri, March 1521.] 

    Florus’s epitome of Roman history, extracted from the Aldine edition of March 1521 which comprised an epitome of Livy, Florus, and Niccolò Perotti’s translation of Polybius. 

    £750

  14. FORD, Simon.

    The Restoring of fallen Brethren: containing the Substance of two Sermons … preached on the Performance of public...

    London, Printed for Henry Mortlock … 1697.

    First edition, the last published work of the clergyman and poet Simon Ford (1618/9-1699), being two sermons preached on the occasion of the performance of penance ‘for the late Fornications, and filthy Uncleannesses. that have been committed in this Neighbourhood’.

    £275

  15. FREEMAN, Arthur.

    Catullus Carmen 17.6 and Other Mysteries. A Study in Editorial Conflict, Eccentricity, Forgery, and Restitution....

    London, The Author, 2020.

    This partly historical, partly philological essay offers a general account of the early preservation, post-medieval recovery, and Renaissance evolution of the text of Catullus, with specific reference to one speculative reading in Carmen 17 (‘De Colonia’), and certain humanist twists and forgeries...

    £15

  16. FREEMAN, Arthur.

    Bibliotheca Fictiva [supplements].

    London, 2015-2021.

    Three supplements to Arthur Freeman's Bibliotheca Fictiva, an inventory of books and manuscripts relating to literary forgery. Spanning some twenty-four centuries, the book seeks also to define and describe the controversial genre it represents. Individual entries offer specific commentary...

    £45

  17. FREUD, Sigmund.

    Die Zukunft einer Illusion.

    Leipzig/Vienna/Zürich, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927.

    First edition, in the first issue of 5000 copies, of Freud’s work on the origins and future development of religion (the ‘illusion’ of the title), centred on the notion of religion as, in one form or another, wish-fulfilment and the longing for a paternal figure as a response to a realisation...

    £85

  18. FREUD, Sigmund.

    Moses and monotheism [translated from the German by Katherine Jones].

    New York, Alfred A, Knopf, 1939.

    First American edition of the last lifetime publication of Freud, a study of the origins of monotheism in Judaism and Christiantity, where Freud took as his point of departure the theory that Moses was not an Israelite but an Egyptian, who imported the seeds of Judaism into Israel from Egypt. The book...

    £80

  19. FRONTINUS, Sextus Julius.

    Sexti Julii Frontini, viri consularis, quae extant. Robertus Keuchenius, S. F. notis et emendationibus...

    Amsterdam, Johann à Waesberge, 1661.

    The collected works of the first-century civil engineer and Roman general Frontinus, one-time governor of Roman Britain, edited and with extensive notes by the Dutch historian Robert Keuchen (1636–1673).

    £250

  20. FRY, Theodore.

    A brief Memoir of Francis Fry, F.S.A. of Bristol. By his Son … Not published.

    [London, Printed by Barclay and Fry,] 1887.

    First edition. Francis Fry (1803–1886) of Bristol, the preeminent student and collector of English Bibles in his time, was also an active partner in the Quaker family firm of chocolate and porcelain manufacturers and type founders. Among his publications were a facsimile of the first complete...

    £850