Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison 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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[SOCIETY OF JESUS.]
Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur. Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux.
Strasbourg, L.F. Le Roux, [1843].
First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843.
£375
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SPATARI, Pellegrino.
Le orationi delle Messe di tutto l’anno, tradutte da Don Pellegrino Spathari canonico di Capodistria. ...
Pesaro, Bartolomeo Cesano, 1555.
Rare first edition of this Italian translation of Latin prayers from the Missal by Spatari, a priest from Capodistria (modern-day Koper in Slovenia), dedicated to Vittoria Farnese, Duchess of Urbino (1519–1602).
£650
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STAPLETON, Thomas.
Promptuarium Catholicum ad instructionem concionatorum contra haereticos nostri temporis, super omnia evangelia...
Antwerp, Pierre Beller, 1592.
Rare third edition, expanded, of Stapleton’s handbook or ‘storehouse’ of scriptural devotions for Sundays and feast days, first published in 1589. An independent companion volume for the weekdays in Lent was first published in 1594.
£700
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STEPNIAK, Sergey.
דאָס אינטערערדישע רוסלאַנד … איבערזעצט פון א. פרומקין
[Dos...New York, Maks N. Maisel, 1921.
Scarce first American edition in Yiddish of Stepniak’s first and most influential book. Written in Italian during exile in Switzerland following his assassination of Nikolai Mezentsov, chief of Alexander II’s secret police, Underground Russia was published in 1882 and translated into...
£150
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STEUART, Walter (of Pardovan?).
‘The ABC with the Shorter Catechisme appointed by the general Assembly to be a Directory for...
Edinburgh. Written by Walter Stewart. 1714[–15].
A very attractive calligraphic manuscript catechism, largely reproducing the very rare edition printed in Edinburgh in 1696 (NLS and Bodley only in ESTC). It was apparently produced in November–December 1714, and the imitation of both blackletter and roman type is consistently excellent throughout....
£2500
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STRYPE, John.
The Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, Kt., first Instructer, afterwards Secretary of State, to King Edward VI.,...
London, John Wyat, 1705.
First edition of Strype’s biography of the courtier and classicist Sir John Cheke, inaugural Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge.
£450
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SWIFT, Jonathan.
A Tale of a Tub … to which is added, an Account of a Battle between the antient and modern Books in St. James’s...
London, C. Bathurst, 1751.
A scarce later edition of Swift’s classic satires on corruption in religion and learning, as exemplified in the conduct of Peter (Roman Catholicism), Martin (Luther), and Jack (Calvin) in the Tale of the Tub, and the spirited fight over the highest peak of Parnassus in the Battel of...
£175
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SYKES, Arthur Ashley.
The Duty of Love to God, and to our Neighbours. A Sermon preach'd at the Assizes held at Chelmsford in...
London, J. Darby & T. Browne for Chelmsford, Samuel Lobb, 1728.
First and only edition of this sermon given by the latitudinarian and controversialist Arthur Ashley Sykes (c. 1684–1756).
£150
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TAULER, Johannes, attributed.
Exercitia D. Ioannis Thauleri piissima, super vita et passione salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi,...
Antwerp, Philippus Nutius, 1565.
Uncommon Antwerp edition of Laurentius Surius’s Latin translation of a devotional work on the life and passion of Christ attributed to the medieval German mystic Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), in an attractive contemporary binding and with interesting manuscript notes.
£1500
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TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND,
who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel,...
London, Printed for Thomas Simmons …, 1659.
First edition, rare, a list of Quaker victims of persecution in Ireland with details of their sufferings. The pamphlet was published and undersigned by a group of the victims including the country’s reputed first Quaker, William Edmondson, and Thomas Holme, who went on to publish A Brief...
£300
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[THOMAS À KEMPIS.]
Messer Giovanni Gerson. Utile & divota operetta della imitatione di Giesu Xpo …
Florence, Piero Pacini da Pescia, 16 April 1505.
Scarce edition of an anonymous Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi, with a striking woodcut of Christ to the title.
£4000
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TOMPSON, John, editor.
English Miscellanies consisting of various Pieces of Divinity, Morals, Politicks, Philosophy and History;...
Gottingen by Abram. Vandenhoeck, Printer and Bookseller to the University 1746.
Second edition, revised, of John Tompson’s important English Miscellanies, expanded to almost twice the size of the first edition, including up-to-date content published since 1737.
£300
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TRIMMER, Mrs.
[Sarah]. An Explanation of the Office for the public Baptism of Infants; and of the Order for the Confirmation of...
London: Printed for T. Longman, and G. G. J. and J. Robinson … and J. Johnson … 1791
First edition, dedicated with the Queen’s permission to the royal princess, Princess Mary. According to the Analytical Review there were two versions of his work with the same imprint, this one (not in ESTC), which sold for 1 s., and one with added catechistical questions for teachers (BL. Bodley,...
£650
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TUCKER, Josiah.
Betydande frågor om handelen, wid tilfålle af de motsäjelser, som skedde emot den sista billen, om utlänningars...
[v. Oelreich], 1763.
First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...
£200
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TURNER, Sharon.
The sacred history of the world, as displayed in the creation and subsequent events to the deluge. Attempted to...
London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832 [– 1834; – 1837].
First edition, each volume with a presentation letter from the author (dated 1 March 1832, 12 December 1834, and 27 March 1837 respectively) to the classical scholar Thomas Gaisford.
£500
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TYRE, William, Archbishop of, and Giuseppe OROLOGGI (translator).
Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme,...
Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.
First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript detailing a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.
£2800
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VALLISNERI, Alberto Maria.
Lettioni venti sopra gli alti, et ineffabili misteri della Messa, in publico lette nella chiesa di...
Milan, Giovanni Battista da Ponte & fratelli, 1567.
Very rare first edition of a collection of twenty sermons on the Mass delivered by the Ferrarese Carmelite Vallisneri in the church of San Giovanni in Conca, Milan, dedicated to the city’s archbishop Cardinal Carlo Borromeo.
£500
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WATTS, Isaac.
Psalms of David imitated in the Language of the New Testament …
Birmingham, Printed & sold by Knott and Lloyd. 1806.
Unrecorded Birmingham editions of Watts’s Hymns (first 1707) and Psalms (first 1719), both many times reprinted, especially in America. The portrait of Watts was printed especially for this edition and is dated 10 October 1806.
£300
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[WESLEY, John (editor).]
Excerpta ex Ovidio, Virgilio, Horatio, Juvenali, Persio, et Martiali: in usum juventutis Christianae....
Bristol, typis F. Farley, 1749.
First edition of one of the textbooks that Wesley compiled for the school that he founded at Kingswood, Bristol, in 1748. Finding contemporary textbooks inadequate, he published an astonishing number of works for his pupils – grammars, editions of classics, and other introductions to learning....
£1100
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[WETENHALL, Edward.]
Enter into thy Closet: or, a Method and Order for Private Devotion … The fourth Edition.
London, John Martyn, 1672.
Rare fourth edition (first published in 1666) of this manual of private devotion by Edward Wettenhall (1636–1713), ‘a treatise endeavouring a plain discovery of the most spiritual and edifying course of reading, meditation, and prayer; and so, of self examination, humiliation, mortification,...
£375