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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SOPHOCLES.
Σοφοκλεους τραγωδιαι επτα μετα σχολιων παλαιων και πανυ ωφελιμων....
[(Colophon:) Frankfurt am Main, Peter Braubach], 1544.
First of several Braubach editions of the seven extant Greek tragedies of Sophocles, this copy with annotations in two different hands, spanning two centuries. The text follows the first Giunta edition published at Florence in 1522 under the editorship of Antonio Francini, with the text of the...
£2000
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SOPHOCLES.
‘Αι του Σοφοκλεους τραγωδιαι ‘επτα. Sophoclis Tragoediae septem: nova versione donatae...
Eton, Joseph Pote; and sold by C. Bathurst et al, London, 1775.
An attractive Eton-printed edition of Thomas Johnson’s Sophocles. Johnson (d. 1746), was educated at Eton, gaining a scholarship to King’s Cambridge in 1683, and returning to the school as assistant master in 1705, the same year he published his editions of Sophocles’ Ajax and Electra...
£400
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[SOPHOCLES.]
Tragoediae superstites et deperditarum fragmenta ex recensione G. Dindorfii.
Oxford, University Press, 1832.
First Oxford edition of the Sophocles of the precocious Karl Wilhelm Dindorf (1802–1883), first published in Leipzig in 1825. This copy was a graduation present from Charles Old Goodford (1812–1884), assistant master (later Head Master and then provost) at Eton, to Arthur Hobhouse (1818–1904),...
£200
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STATIUS, P. Papinius; John CAREY, editor.
Opera, sedula recensione accurata [cover: Recensuit et accuravit Joannes...
London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. B. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Browne,...
An attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards, of the ‘Regent’s Classics’ pocket edition of Statius.
£120
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STATIUS, Publius Papinius.
The Thebaid … translated into English Verse, with Notes and Observations and a Dissertation upon...
Oxford, Printed at the Clarendon Press, 1767.
First edition of ‘the most successful English rendering of Statius’ Thebaid’ (Sowerby), translated into heroic couplets by William Lillington Lewis. ‘Ably captur[ing] the sublimity, eeriness, and violence of the original’, it was to be his only work (ODNB). Samuel Johnson was...
£750
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STOBAEUS, Johannes.
Εκλογαι αποϕθεγματων και υποθηκων … Sententie ex thesauris Graecorum delectae …...
Basel, Johann Oporinus for Christoph Froschauer, August 1549.
Second, ‘in every respect preferable’ (Dibdin) edition of Gesner’s Stobaeus, acclaimed as ‘the first critical impression of the text of the Florilegium’ (ibid.), philologically and critically much superior to the first, published in 1543. Gesner’s parallel printing of the Greek...
£1750
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SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...
Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.
Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...
£1250
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TACITUS.
C. Cornelius Tacitus, cum optimis exemplaribus collatus.
Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1678.
A remarkably fresh set of the third and final Elzevir edition of this format, reprinted from the edition of 1665.
£275
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TACITUS; J.N. LALLEMAND, editor.
Quae exstant opera.
Paris, J. Barbou for Desaint & Saillant, 1760.
A handsomely bound set, with striking gilt brocade endpapers preserving the name of the Augsburg manufacturer, elegantly ‘printed by Barbou and called by Harwood “one of the most beautiful and correct of all his classics.” The text is from Ernesti’s first edition, but it contains the readings...
£750
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TACITUS, Publius Cornelius.
The Works of Tacitus; volume I, containing the Annals, to which are prefixed political Discourses upon...
London, Thomas Woodward and John Peele, 1728[–1731].
First edition of this influential translation by the Scottish-born Thomas Gordon (d. 1750), dedicated to Robert Walpole and the Prince of Wales, each volume prefaced by a long political essay.
£1500
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TERENCE.
Les comedies … avec la traduction et les remarques de Madame Dacier ….
Rotterdam, Gaspar Fritsch, 1717.
A fine edition of Anne Dacier’s French Terence (first published 1688), the translation here revised by her, and the notes expanded, with delightful illustrations by Picart.
£850
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TERENCE Afer, Publius.
Comoediae sex, tum ex Donati commentariis … diligentius quam unquam antehac emendatae; Aelii Donati...
Paris, Robert Estienne, 1529.
First folio edition of Terence’s comedies by Robert Estienne. The printer had already produced a small, octavo edition of Terence’s works in 1526. Confident in its success, and through access to an excellent and ancient manuscript of the fourth-century commentary by Aelius Donatus, ‘in...
£1500
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TERENCE; Daniel HEINSIUS, editor.
Pub. Terentii comoediae sex, ex recensione Heinsiana.
Amsterdam, Henrik Wetstein, [c. 1700].
A small-format edition of Terence’s comedies, printed in Amsterdam but bound in Britain and owned by a Devonshire schoolboy.
£145
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TERENTIUS Afer, Publius.
Comoediae sex. Ex recensione Heinsiana, cum annotationibus Thomae Farnabii in quatuor priores et M.C.Is.F....
Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1658.
An intensely annotated copy of this rare pocket Jansson edition of Terence’s comedies. The edition itself was a successful production, uniting the text edited by Heinsius with the commentary of Thomas Farnaby to the first four comedies, and that of Méric Casaubon to the last two. Jansson had...
£2250
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THEOCRITUS, BION, MOSCHUS, SIMMIAS of Rhodes.
Θεοκριτου … Ειδυλλια και Επιγραμματα. Μοσχου...
[Heidelberg], Commelin, 1596.
First edition of the Greek Idylls published by Commelin, and first edition of Joseph Justus Scaliger’s commentary and notes, complemented with Isaac Casaubon’s notes, a form of which had first appeared in Geneva in 1569.
£550
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THEOCRITUS et al.
Theocriti aliorumque poetarum Idyllia. Eiusdem Epigrammata …
[Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1579. [bound with:] [PSALTER.] Psalmorum Davidis … [Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1575.
An outstanding volume uniting the Estienne Greek bucolic poets (Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus) and the Estienne Greek Psalms in an Henri Estienne presentation binding.
£9000
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TIBULLUS. James GRAINGER, translator.
A Poetical Translation of the Elegies of Tibullus; and of the Poems of Sulpicia.
With the original Text, and Notes critical and explanatory … London, A. Millar, 1759.
First edition of this translation, with notes, by James Grainger (1722–1766), an army surgeon who had, unusually, turned to the pen to supplement his income from medical work.
£300
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VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator.
Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...
Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565.
First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus.
£1250
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VALERIUS MAXIMUS.
Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].
First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.
£2750
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VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.
Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...
[(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]
Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...
£2750