Gift Ideas

  1. 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

  2. SILIUS ITALICUS, C.; John CAREY, editor.

    Punicorum libri XVII, sedulâ recensione accurati [cover: Recensuit et...

    London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Co., T. Cadell,...

    First and only ‘Regent’s Classics’ edition of Silius Italicus’s epic poem on the Second Punic War, an attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards.

    £100

  3. MILNE, A. A.; E. H. SHEPARD, illustrator.

    The House at Pooh Corner.

    London, Methuen & Co., 1928.

    First edition, first impression, of A. A. Milne’s classic final collection of tales about Winnie the Pooh and friends, and the first introduction of Tigger.

    £650

  4. [SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]

    Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.

    Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.

    Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.

    £375

  5. BLANCHON, Jacques.

    Iacobi Blanchoni Ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum Beneventanum abbatem Selestensem defensionum liber.

    Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1550.

    First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly printed de Tournes edition.

    £950

  6. JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianus; Cornelius NEPOS.

    Trogi Pompei externae historiae in compendium ab Justino redactae. Externorum imperatorum...

    Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani soceri’, January 1522.

    First Aldine edition of Justinus’ abridgement of the lost Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, and of Nepos’ De viris illustribus, with a decorated initial to the opening of the text, likely executed in the early nineteenth century when the work was bound in Rome.

    £1850

  7. MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

    Urbis Romae topographia. 

    Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

    First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

    £5500

  8. [BIBLE.]

    Erläuterte Bibel mit Fragen, das ist, die ganze Heilige Schrift, Alten und Neuen Testaments, nach der teutschen Ubersetzung...

    Altdorf, Joh. Adam Hessel for Ernst Friderich Zobel, 1751.

    A German Bible with extensive apparatus, divided into five volumes and strikingly bound in a book-shaped pull-off case.

    £2750

  9. FAULKNER, William.

    A Fable.

    [New York,] Random House, [1954].

    Limited edition, no. 880 of 1000 copies signed by Faulkner. A late, overtly political novel set in the French trenches during the First World War, A Fable was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer and National Book Award. Faulkner thought it his greatest work. 

    £1500

  10. FAULKNER, William.

    Absalom, Absalom!

    New York, Random House, 1936.

    First edition, the special limited issue, no. 159 of 300 copies signed by Faulkner.

    £4500

  11. SHAKESPEARE, William; Richard Grant WHITE, editor.

    The Works of William Shakespeare. The Plays edited from the Folio of...

    Boston, Little Brown & Company, 1893.

    An attractive Boston-printed edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, edited by the prominent American Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White (1922–1885).

    £500

  12. [BIBLE.]

    The Holy Bible, containing the Old Testament and the New, newly translated out of the originall Tongues and with the former...

    [Cambridge,] Printed by Roger Daniel, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge, 1648.

    A seemingly unrecorded Cambridge-printed Bible with metrical Psalms in an elaborate English binding of gilt green vellum with morocco onlays and highly unusual gilt and gauffered edges painted with flowers, birds, and animals.

    £3750

  13. [GOSPELS.] Charles HURÉ, translator.

    Le nouveau testament de notre-seigneur Jesus-Christ, nouvellement traduit en françois...

    Paris, L. Roulland, 1712.

    An attractive early Jansenist binding, with a sober shagreen exterior concealing gilt decoration within, on a copy of the Gospels extracted from Charles Huré’s French New Testament.

    £950

  14. [PSALMS.]

    Les Pseaumes de David, mis en rime Françoise, par Clement Marot, et Theodore de Beze.

    ‘Se vendent à Charenton, par Antoine Cellier, demeurent à Paris … à l’Imprimerie des Roziers’, 1667.

    Charenton-printed French Psalms in a remarkable shagreen binding with silver-filigree furniture, with English provenance since the eighteenth century.

    £2750

  15. [COMMON PRAYER.]

    The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

    London & Glasgow, Collins’ Clear-Type Press, [c. 1910].

    A George V Common Prayer and hymnal, uniformly bound and unusually housed in a ‘handbag’ slipcase for the convenience of the fashion-conscious churchgoer.

    £275

  16. [COMMON PRAYER.] 

    The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

    London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794. 

    A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy. 

    £1850

  17. [ALKEN, Henry.]

    The Beauties & Defects in the Figure of the Horse, comparatively delineated in a series of Engravings.

    Boston, Carter & Hendee, 1830.

    First American edition, the second and scarcest overall. ‘The dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century’ (ODNB), Henry Thomas Alken (1785–1851) ‘showed an early liking for depicting animals, especially dogs and horses’, and ‘demonstrated his expertise in the book The...

    £1600

  18. [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

  19. GALIER, W.H.

    A visit to Blestland.

    London, George Robertson & Co., 1896.

    First edition of this novel of utopian socialism which lambasts capitalism and religion. Blestland is a republican workers’ paradise located on a different planet which reveals how the divisions of earth can be abolished: by limiting ‘the enormous power for evil which capital can wield’....

    £280

  20. HORACE; James TATE, editor

    Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...

    Cambridge, J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1832. 

    First edition of this attempt to arrange the books of Horace in chronological order by the classical scholar and master of Richmond School, James Tate (1771–1843), this copy presented by him to Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855), classicist, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Regius Professor of Greek,...

    £150