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.
-
DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.
£2500
-
DIOGENES LAERTIUS, [and Henri ESTIENNE (editor)].
Περι βίων, δογμάτων και αποφθεγμων...
[Geneva,] Henri Estienne, 1570.
First Estienne edition of The Lives of the Philosophers, a very important edition in the original Greek, ‘in which appear for the first time many passages discovered in manuscripts by Estienne’. ‘The volume also contains thirty-six pages of important textual annotations by Henri Estienne,...
£1400
-
DIONYSIUS [Periegetes].
Διονυσιου οικουμενης περιηγησις μετα των Ευσταθιου ‘υπομνηματων...
London, M. Clark for R. Littlebury, R. Scott, T. Sawbridge & G. Wells, 1688.
An attractive illustrated edition of Dionysius’s verse geography. Dionysius Periegetes, likely of Alexandria, is thought to have written his description of the world during the reign of Hadrian in the early second century. It was widely read both in the ancient world and subsequently, and is...
£500
-
[DOMINICAN NUNS.]
Regola e costituzioni delle suore di S. Domenico riviste e ristampate d’ordine del rmo p. vicario generale...
Rome, Bernardo Morini, 1853.
Very rare first edition thus of the regulations governing Dominican nuns, published by order of Alexandre Vincent Jandel (1810–1872), who served as Master of the Order of Preachers from 1850 until his death.
£250
-
DOMINICUS DE FLANDRIA.
Dominici de Flandria ordinis predicator[um] artium et theologie doctoris in divi Thome de Aq[ui]no co[m]mentaria...
Venice, Giorgio Arrivabene for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 25 January 1514.
Scarce early editions of two Aristotelian commentaries. The first, by the Dominican philosopher Dominic of Flanders (c. 1425–1479), analyses two works by Thomas Aquinas: his commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (on the nature of scientific axioms), and his De fallaciis...
£3000
-
[DOVES PRESS.]
Pervigilium Veneris.
Hammersmith, ‘printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press,’ 1910.
One of 150 copies on paper of the elusive Pervigilium Veneris, a celebration of the spring festival of Venus Genetrix, here in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe).
£950
-
DRYDEN, John.
Religio Laici or a Layman’s Faith. A Poem …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1683.
First edition, second issue (with a few minor corrections; Macdonald located only two copies of the first): ‘a defence of the Anglican position, which shows his singular power of arguing in verse’ (Leslie Stephen, DNB). The inspiration for the poem was the translation of Richard Simon’s Histoire...
£400
-
ECKARTSHAUSEN, Karl von.
Dieu est l’amour le plus pur, ma prière et ma contemplation. Par Eckartshausen. Paris, chez L.
Duprat-Duverger, rue des Grands-Augustins, no. 21, [1805-1813].
Scarce edition of a French translation of Gott ist die reinste Liebe by the German Catholic mystic Karl von Eckartshausen (1752–1803), this copy formerly in the possession of the long-term lover of Queen Victoria’s father.
£475
-
ECK, Johann.
Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum, & alios hostes Ecclesiae …
Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1572.
A rare pocket edition of Johann Eck’s handbook of anti-Lutheran material, with a section on the burning of heretics and the twelve articles of the Anabaptists of Münster, for use in the fight against Lutheranism.
£375
-
[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
-
[EMBROIDERED BINDING.]
Etrennes mignonnes, pour l’an de grace de Notre Seigneur M. DCC. LIII. …
Liège, Everard Kints, [1753].
A charming almanack for 1753 printed in Liège by Everard Kints – bookseller, printer, and wine merchant – here in a delightful embroidered binding with raised work in silver thread surrounding a skilfully executed floral arrangement.
£400
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
EUCLID.
Στοιχειων βιβλ. ιε εκ των θεωνος συνουσιων. Εις του αυτου του πρωτον,...
Basel, Johannes Herwagen, September 1533.
Editio princeps of Euclid, the ‘oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today’ (PMM), a work which ‘has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible’ (DSB).
£18000
-
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
-
EUSEBIUS CAESARIENSIS; RUFINUS AQUILEIENSIS, translator.
Historia ecclesiastica.
Rome, Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, 15 May 1476.
The Syston Park copy of the earliest history of the Christian Church, written in the early fourth century; this is probably the third edition. It was translated into Latin in the early fifth century by Rufinus of Aquileia, who extended the text down to the time of Theodosius at the end of the...
£4500
-
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
-
EYB, Albertus de.
Margarita poetica.
Paris, Ulrich Gering, 29 November 1478.
Very rare edition of a Renaissance manual on letter writing from the first Parisian press, a rubricated copy with early English provenance.
£15000
-
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