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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MIRANDULA (or MIRANDOLA), Ottaviano.
Illustrium poetarum flores.
Antwerp, Joannes Bellerus, 1563.
A remarkable copy, with numerous and eloquent contemporary annotations and additions in a French hand, of a scarce edition of an extremely popular collection of quotes and passages from classics of poetry, published by the renowned Flemish printer and composer Joannes Bellerus (Jean Bellère,...
£1950
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MUSGRAVE, Samuel.
Two Dissertations. I. On the Graecian Mythology. II. An Examination of Sir Isaac Newton’s Objections to...
London, printed by J. Nichols, 1782.
First edition of this work by the classical scholar Samuel Musgrave (1732–1780), published posthumously for the benefit of the author’s widow, with a generous list of subscribers thanks to the efforts of the editor, Thomas Tyrwhitt.
£450
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NEPOS, Cornelius; Andreas SCHOTT, editor.
Opera quae quidem extant … Nunc denuo doctorum hominum accessionibus locupletata.
Frankfurt, Claude de Marne & the heirs of Johann Aubry, [1608–] 1609.
First edition thus, edited by Andreas Schott (1552–1629), with his extensive commentary alongside that of previous editors including Denys Lambin, from the library of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun.
£850
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NONIUS MARCELLUS.
De proprietate sermonum. Iam demum innumeris locis restitutus, multis locupletatus, ope vetustissimorum codicum,...
Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1565.
First critical edition of this grammar and dictionary of Latin from the later Roman Empire, a significant witness to earlier texts now lost, from the extensive library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle.
£450
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[ORDE, John Powlett.]
A collection of 111 original compositions in Latin (and occasionally Greek) verse and prose.
Eton, 1818–1820.
A delightful insight into classical education at Eton, where until the mid-nineteenth century Greek and Latin were the only official classroom subjects, and Latin composition was considered a key accomplishment.
£1750
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ORIBASIUS.
Commentaria in Aphorismos Hippocratis … Ioannis Guinterij Andernaciis medici industria velut e profundissimis tenebris...
Paris, Simon de Colines, 1533.
First edition of this commentary on Hippocrates, bound with a richly annotated copy of Galen’s works in the translation by Thomas Linacre.
£1750
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[ORPHIC POEMS.]
Ορφεως αργοναυτικα υμνοι και περι λιθων. Orphei Argonautica hymni et de lapidibus...
Utrecht, Willem van de Water, 1689.
First Eschenbach edition, presenting the ‘Argonautica Orphica’, an anonymous fourth-century Greek epic probably based on the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, which had been rediscovered in the fifteenth century by Constantine Lascaris, alongside the Orphic Hymns and the Lithica,...
£325
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PEACOCK, Thomas Love.
Rhododaphne: or the Thessalian Spell. A Poem.
London, T. Hookham, Jun., and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1818.
First edition of Peacock’s last and most ambitious poem, inspired by his enthusiasm for Greek poetry in the company of Shelley. A mythological narrative set in ancient Thessaly, Rhododaphne tells the story of the shepherd boy Anthemion, in love with the mortal girl Calliroë, and of the...
£750
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PEROTTO, Niccolò, and Benedetto BRUGNOLO, editor.
Cornucopi[a]e nuper emendatum a domino Benedicto Brugnolo: ac...
[Milan], Giovanni Giacomo and brothers da Legnano [for Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler, 28 October 1510 (colophon)].
Scarce Milanese edition of Perotto’s Cornucopiae, an encyclopaedic commentary to the first book of Martial’s epigrams, here with a curious combination of woodcut initials and capital spaces with guide letters.
£1750
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PERSIUS; [Thomas BREWSTER, translator].
The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes;...
London, Printed for A. Millar, 1751.
Second edition, with the addition of Bayle’s life of Persius, with manuscript corrections.
£375
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PERUCCI, Francesco.
Pompe funebri di tutte le nationi del mondo, raccolte dale storie sagre et profane.
Verona, Francesco Rossi, 1639.
First edition of Perucci’s account of the funeral practices of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, extensively illustrated with engravings copied in reverse from Porcacchi’s 1574 Funerali antichi di diversi popoli, et nationi, inscribed by a Scottish antiquary and documented book collector....
£975
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PETRONIUS.
Satyricon, eiusdemque fragmenta, illustrata hac nova editione I. Bourdelotii notis criticis, et glossario petroniano...
Leiden, Justus Livius, 1645.
Third edition of the Satyricon as edited by the French scholar Jean Bourdelot (first published in 1618), accompanied by a glossary, an editorial preface and an extract of Justus Lipsius’ Epistolicis Quaestionibus (lib. III, epist. 2) with an appraisal of the literary value of the Satyricon....
£950
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PIGHIUS, Stephanus Vinandus.
Themis dea, seu de lege divina … Mythologia … in quatuor anni partes, ab auctore recognita.
Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1568.
First edition of Pighius’s two treatises on Roman archaeology, one of the founding texts of scientific research into myths.
£450
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PINDAR.
Carmina, ex editione Chr. Gottl. Heyne.
Oxford, N. Bliss for M. Bliss and R. Bliss [– and London, for F. & C. Rivington, J. Payne & J. Mackinlay, W.H. Lunn, Longman, Hurst,...
An attractive Oxford-printed pocket edition of Pindar’s Odes, as edited by Christian Gottlob Heyne.
£175
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PLATO; [Marsilio FICINO].
Platonis opera.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Filippo Pinzi, 22 April 1517.]
Third edition of Marsilio Ficino’s important and influential Latin translations of and commentaries on Plato’s works, with numerous early annotations.
£5000
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PLINY the Elder.
Historia mundi, multo quam antehac unquam prodiit emaculatius [...] annotationibus eruditorum hominum...
Basel, Johann Froben, March 1525.
First Froben edition of Pliny’s encyclopaedia, with a prologue by Erasmus and Hermolaus Barbarus’s commentary, given to Erasmus’s correspondent Bartholomaeus Latomus by his student and future patron, Johann Ludwig von Hagen.
£4800
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PLINY the Elder; [Jean de LAET, editor].
Historiae naturalis libri XXXVII.
Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham I] Elzevir, 1635.
An attractive set of the first and only Elzevir edition of Pliny the Elder, ‘rightly considered one of their masterpieces’ (Willems, trans.).
£650
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PLINY the Elder.
Historiae mundi libri XXXVII, cum castigationibus et adnotationibus doctiss. & variis praeterea lectionibus ex...
Frankfurt, Claude de Marne and heirs of Jean Aubry, 1608.
First Frankfurt edition of Pliny’s Natural History, here bound as an enormous single volume with strikingly decorated edges featuring acorns and scrolls.
£1400
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PLINY the Younger.
Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt; omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa …
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
A handsome quarto Pliny from the Foulis press, published in the same year as the three-volume duodecimo.
£600
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PLINY the Younger.
Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt; omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa …
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
A handsome Foulis Press pocket Pliny. The first two volumes comprise the ten books of Pliny’s Epistulae (particularly important for their description of the eruption of Vesuvius), the third his Panegyric to Trajan: ‘clearly it was intended that sections Z to the end should comprise...
£850