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.

 
  1. [PSALMS; Basil WOODD, editor.]

    The Psalms of David, and other Portions of the Sacred Scriptures, selected from various Authors,...

    London, Watts & Bridgewaters, Rivingtons, and Matthews, 1800.

    A pocket-sized Psalm- and prayerbook with a hidden heraldic fore-edge painting for Horatio Walpole, later first Earl of Orford.

    £2000

  2. [PSALTER. BRUNO, Archbishop of Würzburg, editor.]

    Psalterium.

    [Würzburg, Georg Reyser, c. 1488–1489.]

    First edition of the Psalter with the commentary ascribed to the eleventh-century Bishop of Würzburg, printed at Würzburg by Georg Reyser and in a contemporary Würzburg monastic binding.

    £24000

  3. [PSALTER.] Justinus DECADYUS, editor.

    Ψαλτηριον.

    Venice, Aldus Manutius, [not after 1 October 1498].

    The elegant first Aldine printing of the Greek Psalter, following two earlier and plainer editions of 1481 and 1486, which had employed much simpler Greek typefaces with fewer ligatures and contractions.

    £45000

  4. PURSEY, Thomas.

    The last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

    [Edinburgh, T. Pursey, 1900.]

    A photographic tour-de-force, assembling many hundreds of individual photographic portraits neatly incorporated into a painted scenario, and then reproduced as a photogravure, depicting all the attendees of the last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held in May 1900. Evidently a...

    £2000

  5. RABANUS MAURUS et al.

    Rabanus de sacramento Eucharistiae. Opus nunc primum recens editum, ex bibliotheca Cuthberti Tunstalli...

    Cologne, Johann Quentel, 1551.

    First edition of a work on the sacrament of the Eucharist by Rabanus Maurus, thoroughly annotated by a contemporary reader, followed by other works on the same subject and on the Trinity.

    £950

  6. [RAMEAUX, François-Alexis.]

    Edictum pro regis Hou-kuanensis adversus Europaeum Mou (idest adversus RR.DD. Rameaux).

    [China], [1840–1] 道光卄年.

    A letter sent by the Department of Justice to the Hubei provincial government to request an arrest warrant for the French missionary François-Alexis Rameaux (1802–1845). This is most likely a copy, being written on decorated paper as used in private exchanges, especially between lower and higher...

    £3500

  7. [RAMEAUX, François-Alexis.]

    Notice of the death of Rameaux issued by Bernard-Vincent Laribe.

    [China, 1845.]

    A circular notifying the Christian community of the death of François-Alexis Rameaux (1802–1845), Vicar Apostolic of Zhejiang and Jiangxi from 1838, issued by his friend and successor Bernard-Vincent Laribe (1802–1850), asking that prayers for his soul be practiced nightly for six months.

    £2000

  8. RHOADS, James Evans.

    Autograph letter signed (‘James E. Rhoads’) to Henry Horniman.

    Philadelphia, 22 July 1869.

    A letter from the first president of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. Rhoads (1828–1895) helped establish the college as a nondenominational, internationally respected school, and the first higher education institution to offer graduate degrees to women.

    £100

  9. RICCI, Giovanni and PORTA, Ercolano.

    Storia della missione francescana e del Vicariato Apostolico del Hunan meridionale dalle sue...

    Bologna, Stabilimenti tipografici riuniti, 1925.

    First and only edition of this history of the Franciscan Mission in South Hunan from its establishment to 1924, with particular attention to the persecution of the Christians during the Boxer Rebellion and the following years of restoration and progress of the mission. The appendix comprises letters,...

    £450

  10. [RICHARDSON, Jonathan.]

    The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors…

    London, Printed by W. Nicol, late Bulmer & Co., 1822.

    Rare first edition of a revised version of the valedictory lecture given by the Outinian Society on 31 December 1818 to mark the centenary of the death of William Penn (1644–1717), founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, drawing on information supplied by the Society’s founder, Penn’s grandson.

    £1600

  11. RICH, Jeremiah.

    The Whole Book of Psalms in Meter. According to the Art of Short-Writing …

    London, ‘Printed and are sold by Samuel Botley Teacher of the said Art … and nowhere els.’, [1660?].

    First edition, the issue with Samuel Botley in the imprint – an extremely attractive miniature Psalter in shorthand by a ‘skilled and celebrated’ practitioner whose work was known to Pepys (though Pepys himself employed a rival system).

    £4250

  12. ROMANA, Provost.

    Nell’aprirsi della nuova chiesa dalla veneranda, antichissima Confraternita de’ Disciplinanti in Dogliani...

    Mondovì, Pietro Francesco and Luiggi Rossi, [1756].

    Unrecorded provincially printed broadside celebrating the opening of a new church of the Confraternity of the Disciplinants of Dogliani.

    £275

  13. ROTH, Henry.

    Call it Sleep.

    London, Michael Joseph, 1963.

    First UK edition of Roth’s precocious masterpiece, generally regarded as the finest novel of Jewish immigration to America before and after the turn of the century.

    £250

  14. ROTHSCHILD, Boaz Raphael.

    [Sefer oniyah b’lev yam … Chelek rishon]. ספר אני בלב ים ... חלק ראשון

    Fürth, Chaim ben Zvi Hirsch, 1766.

    First part of the first and only edition of this work on the Thirteen Principles of Faith and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy by German rabbi Boaz Rothschild, our copy presented to the Rothschild family in England.

    £450

  15. ROUGEMONT, François de; [Sebastião de MAGALHÃES, translator].

    Relacam do estado politico e espiritual do imperio da China, pellos...

    Lisbon, Joao da Costa, 1672.

    Portuguese translation, the first appearance of the text, of the Dutch Jesuit François de Rougemont’s history of mid seventeenth-century China, published a year before the Latin original. Inspired to join the Chinese missions after meeting the famed Jesuit sinologist Martino Martini in Louvain,...

    £2500

  16. [ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]

    Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...

    Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.

    First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.

    £1500

  17. SABELLICO, Marco Antonio (or Marcantonio) Coccio; Petrus PONTANUS (or Du Pont, De Brugge).

    Sanctissime elegie de...

    Paris, Jean de Gourmont, [c. 1513].

    One of only two recorded editions, both very rare, of this set of elegies addressed to the Virgin Mary, followed by verses ‘on St Peter’s sinking boat’, the former extensively annotated by a contemporary French student.

    £1400

  18. [SARPI, Paolo (pseud.).] ‘Pietro Soave POLANO’. 

    Historia del Concilio Tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano.  Seconda...

    Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1629. 

    Second edition, the first to omit the extraneous additions of the 1619 edition introduced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, of the influential and groundbreaking history of the Council of Trent by Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), described by Milton as ‘the great unmasker’. 

    £450

  19. [SAVONAROLA, Girolamo.] Ambrogio Caterino POLITI.

    Discorso … contra la dottrina, et le profetie di Fra Girolamo Savonarola.

    Venice, Giolito, 1548.

    First edition of a condemnation of Savonarola’s theology, doctrine and prophecies by the former Savonarola acolyte Politi (1484–1553), ‘one of the most fiery Catholic polemicists of his times’ (Bongi, trans.), who four years earlier had published a confutation of Luther’s theology.

    £1500

  20. [SAVOY-CARIGNAN, Maria Vittoria Francesca, Princess of.]

    Recueil de prières et de pratiques très utils pour se conduire à Dieu...

    [Paris, Imprimerie Royale], 1735.

    First and only edition of this rare prayerbook, compiled by the notorious gambling house hostess and spy Maria Vittoria Francesca of Savoy-Carignan (1690–1766), elegantly printed in a very limited number at the royal press set up at the Louvre.

    £2750