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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CONTI, Natale.
Mythologiae, sive explicationis fabularum, libri decem. In quibus omnia propè naturalis et moralis philosophiae...
Frankfurt, the heirs of André Wechel, 1584.
Scarce Frankfurt edition of the Mythologiae of Natale Conti (Natalis Comes), first published Venice 1567. It was a standard reference work for classical mythology in the later Renaissance, treating the corpus as allegories that syncretized ancient philosophy and could thus be decoded by the...
£950
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CORTÈS, Gioacchino.
Dissertazione anti-Bolgeniana sopra la carità difesa dal suo autore l’abate Gioacchino Cortes contro...
Rome, Salomoni, 1793.
First edition of this response to and attempted refutation of Bolgeni’s Della carità o amor di Dio by the Spanish Jesuit Joachim Cortès. Della carità was the best-known work of the Jesuit theologian and controversialist Gianvincenzo Bolgeni, in which he had argued, against...
£450
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COSTER, François.
Piarum et Christ. institutionum libri tres, in usum sodalitatis B. Mariae Virginis primum conscripti, nunc...
Douai, Jean Bogard, 1582.
Very rare Douai edition of this devotional work by the Belgian Jesuit François Coster (1532–1619), first published at Cologne in 1578, illustrated with woodcuts of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of Sorrows.
£675
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[CRIMEAN WAR.]
Les militaires chrétiens a la guerre d’orient. Récompenses annuelles.
Versailles, Beau jeune, [1856].
First and only edition, rare, of this unusual cartonnage giftbook history of the Crimean War.
£375
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CURTIUS RUFUS, Quintus.
De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni regis Macedonum opus … Accesserunt enim antehac nunquam visa … Omnia...
Basel, Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, March 1545.
Handsome folio edition of Curtius Rufus’ history of Alexander the Great, edited by the German humanist Christoph Bruno (fl. 1541–1566), with extensive sixteenth-century marginal annotations.
£2000
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CYPRIAN, Saint; Desiderius ERASMUS, editor.
Opera [– Alter tomus operum].
Lyons, Sébastien Gryphe, 1550.
A richly annotated copy of the works of the third-century martyr and bishop of Carthage, St Cyprian, with later Portuguese provenance.
£1800
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DARRÉ, G.G.
‘Conferences diaconales données par Mr l’abbé Darré, Vicaire Général au GrandSéminaire d’Auch. Année...
Auch, 1864.
An attractively written manuscript of Abbé Darré’s practical manual for the use of young priests entering pastoral ministry, the text remaining unprinted, according to OCLC, until 1872.
£200
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DELL’UVA, Benedetto.
Le vergini prudenti.
Florence, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1582.
First editions of three religious poems in ottava rima by the Capuan monk Benedetto dell’Uva, representative of Counter-Reformation poetry in southern Italy.
£650
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DE LUCA, Giovanni Battista.
Il Cardinale della S.R. Chiesa pratico di Gio. Battista de Luca nell’ozio Tusculano della Primavera...
Rome, nella stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, 1680.
Scarce first edition of this thorough work on the cardinalate by the Italian jurist and cardinal De Luca (1614–1683). De Luca studied and practiced law at Naples before moving to Rome in 1645, where he established his reputation as one of Italy’s pre-eminent jurists and worked closely with...
£300
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[DEVOTION.]
Meditation et preire du jeusne, seigneur ouvre me levres, & ma bouche announcer ta loüange. Ps. 51.v.17.
Se vend à Charenton, par Pierre Auvray, demeurant à Paris … [1670s?]
First edition, extremely rare, of a prayer in preparation for a fast, published for sale in Charenton, the first Protestant centre in the Paris region.
£850
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DIO CASSIUS.
Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...
Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.
First edition of Dio Cassius’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.
£2500
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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
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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
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DIONYSIUS of Halicarnassus.
Antiquitatum Rom. libri XI. Ab Aemylio Porto recens & post aliorum interpretationes Latine redditi.
Geneva, Jacob Stoer, 1614.
A rare pocket-sized edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the early history of Rome, in an armorial binding for Adrien Poërier.
£450
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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
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[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
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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
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[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
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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
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[DUQUESNE, Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard.]
Vie de la vénérable mère Catherine de Bar, dite en religion Mecthilde du S. Sacrement,...
Nancy, Claude-Sigisbert Lamort; Paris, Le Berton and Herissant, 1775.
Uncommon biography of the French nun Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament (née Catherine de Bar, 1614-1698), founder of the order of Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, by the French theologian Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard Duquesne (1732-1791). Most copies lack the frontispiece...
£650