CRAWFORD, F. Marion.

Saracinesca ... in three Volumes ...

William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1887.

First edition. The prolific American novelist F. Marion Crawford, born in Italy and for most of his life resident in Rome, enjoyed a phenomenal success both in England and America. Saracinesca is the first novel of his Roman tetralogy (with Sant’ Ilario, Don Orsino, and Corleone: a Sicilian Story),...

£280

CROMARTY, George Mackenzie, Earl of.

An historical Account of the Conspiracies by the Earls of Gowry, and Robert Logan of Restalrig,...

First edition, dedicated to Queen Anne, ‘and to all the Princes who share in her royal blood’. The Vindication of Robert III was first published in 1695.

£150

[CUMBERLAND, Richard.]

Arundel. By the author of the Observer.

London, Printed for C. Dilly … 1789.

First edition. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811) was the grandson of the great scholar Richard Bentley, and great-grandson of the Bishop of Peterborough; he had already made his name as a playwright in London, and was also the author of a periodical paper the Observer when he published this,...

£1500

[CURLL, Edmund, editor.]

Impartial Memorials of the Life and Writings of Thomas Hearne, M.A. by several Hands.

London: Printed in the Year 1736.

First separate edition (based on John Bilstone’s hostile preface to Hearne’s Vindication of those who take the Oath of Allegiance, 1731, and first printed in this form as part of volume III of Curll’s edition of Mr. Pope’s Literary Correspondence, 1735).

£450

[CURLL, Edmund, et al.]

An impartial History of the Life, Character, Amours, Travels, and Transactions of Mr. John Barber,...

London, Printed for E. Curll …, 1741.

First edition of this obituary pamphlet on the printer John Barber (c. 1675–1741), a friend and correspondent of Swift for many years, and a friend of Pope (there are bequests to both in his will).

£650

CURTIUS Rufus, Quintus. 

De rebus Alexandri Magni, cum commentario perpetuo & indice absolutissimo Samuelis Pitisci, quibus accedunt...

Utrecht, Franciscus Halma, 1685. 

First Halma edition of Curtius’s history of Alexander the Great, with a series of accomplished etched illustrations by Jan van den Aveelen. 

£375

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

[DA PORTO, Luigi.]

‘Lettere di Alvigi da Porto vicentino al Savorgnano, al Ghilini, e ad altri intorno ai successi della Guerra...

[Milan, c. 1800].

A manuscript of an influential and then-unpublished historical work by the author of the original Romeo and Juliet, copied from a sixteenth-century codex at the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana.

£950

DAVENANT, William, Sir.

Two excellent Plays: the Wits, a Comedie: the Platonick Lovers, a Tragi-Comedie. Both presented...

London, Printed for G. Bedel, and T. Collins … 1665

First collected edition of two plays first published in 1636, probably published to fill the revenue gap after the temporary closure of the theatres in 1665 because of the Plague.

£950

DAVID, [Pierre Drapeyron de].

A History of the Campaigns of General Pichegru, containing the Operations of the Armies of the North,...

London, for G.G.J. & J. Robinson, 1796.

First edition in English, printed in the same year as the French original, of this account of General Pichegru’s campaigns during the early French Revolutionary Wars.

£185

DAVIDSON, John.

Smith: a Tragedy.

Glasgow, Frederick W. Wilson and Brother, 1888.

First edition of a rare foray into drama by a Scottish poet who influenced T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. John Davidson (1857-1909) was highly regarded during his lifetime by writers like W.B. Yeats, and later by Eliot, Stevens, and Aldous Huxley. Along with Yeats, Ernest Dowson, and others,...

£300

DAY, Thomas.

The History of Sandford and Merton; a Work intended for the Use of Children …

London: Printed for B. Crosby … Darton and Harvey … and T. Ostell … 1803.

First edition thus of Thomas Day’s wildly popular story for children, here in ‘a more reduced form’ as ‘the price of the original work may be incommodious to … young readers’. This was was not the same text as the ‘Abridged’ version first published by Wallis and Newbery (and by Darton...

£150

DE BEAUVOIR, Simone.

The Mandarins. A Novel …

Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, [1956].

First edition in English, signed by De Beauvoir on the limitation leaf, one of 500 unnumbered copies, of which only 275 were for sale.

£750

[DEFOE, Daniel.] 

[Incipit:] Ye True-born Englishmen proceed … 

[London, 1701.] 

One of a number of editions (at least seven) in 1701, priority not established, of this popular poem attacking Parliament for its failure to support the Dutch against the aggressions of Louis XIV of France.  The texts ‘vary considerably’ (Moore) across the printings, which all appeared without...

£1000

[DE LA COSTE.]

Voyage philosophique d’Angleterre fait en 1783 et 1784.

A Londres. Et se trouve à Paris, chez Poinçoit … 1787.

First edition, second issue, with cancel title-pages redated 1787 (first 1786) – an interesting and detailed sociological discussion of England and in the English on the eve of the French Revolution, in the form of discursive letters. The author deals with London’s institutions and buildings, taverns...

£250

[DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]

‘Atlas’.

Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].

An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.

£875

DENNIS, John.

The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, contain’d in some new Discoveries never made before, requisite for the Writing...

London, Printed for Geo. Strahan … and Bernard Lintott … 1704.

First edition. Published as a ‘preliminary’ to a proposed, but never completed, masterwork, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry comprises a Preface, Proposal and ‘Specimen’, the latter being an essay substantially on Milton, ‘one of the greatest and most daring Genius’s that has appear’d...

£1250

[DENNIS, John, and George DUCKETT?]

Pope Alexander’s Supremacy and Infallibility examin’d, and the Errors of Scriblerus...

London, J. Roberts, 1729.

First edition, very scarce in commerce, of an exhilaratingly spiteful attack on Pope in the wake of the publication of the Dunciad variorum, comprising seven different satirical texts, three in verse, issued in quarto to match ‘the least pompous Edition of the Dunciad’.

£3250

DESENFANS, Noel Joseph.

Les deux Hermites, dédié a mylord Lyttelton …

A Londres; chez R. Davis … J Ridley … W Owen … 1773.

First and only edition, uncommon, of an epistolary novel by the future art dealer Noel Joseph Desenfans. The scene is Paris in the 1680s, the theme is Enlightenment, and the author’s aim was to inspire ‘l’horreur de l’oppression, sentiment nécessaire à l’harmonie de la Société, & vertu...

£650

DESFORGES, Pierre Choudard.

Tom Jones a Londres, Comédie en cinq actes et en vers, tirée du roman de Fielding … Réprésentée,...

Paris, Chez Prault, Imprimeur du Roi … 1789.

Later edition, first published 1782. Desforges’s dramatic adaptation of Fielding’s novel was followed in 1788 by an apparently inferior sequel, Tom Jones et Fellamar.

£95