Gift Ideas
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ROUQUET, Jean-André.
The present State of the Arts in England. By M. Rouquet, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and...
London, for J. Nourse, 1755.
First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, from the library of the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790).
£19500
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BISSON, Louis-Auguste.
‘Wildfire’.
Paris, c. 1844.
An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times.
£14500
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KAEMPFER, Engelbert, and John Gaspar SCHEUCHZER (translator).
The History of Japan, giving an Account of the ancient and...
London, for the translator, 1727.
First edition, first issue, of the German naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer’s monumental History of Japan, translated by the Swiss naturalist Johann Caspar Scheuchzer and illustrated with splendid plates.
£7500
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HUGO, Victor.
Notre-Dame de Paris. Par Victor Hugo. Troisième edition … Tome premier [– deuxième].
Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1831.
First edition, third issue, of Victor Hugo’s great historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of 275 copies printed.
£7500
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[ANTIPHONAL.]
Very large historiated initial ‘H’, probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the Nativity...
Italy (Siena), c. 1300.
A very fine large initial painted in a style associated with the Master of the Gradual of Cortona, an artist named for a Franciscan gradual produced c. 1290 for the church of San Francesco in Cortona (now Vatican City, BAV, MS Ross. 612).
£6750
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DENNYS, Nicholas Belfield (editor).
The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A complete guide to the open ports of those countries,...
Shortrede and Co., 1867.
First edition, complete with all twenty-nine maps and plans, of this remarkable guide to the open ports of China and Japan in the late 1860s, aimed at ‘travellers, merchants, and residents’, compiled by Nicholas Dennys (1839–1900), a noted scholar of Chinese folklore, with the sinologist...
£5750
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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
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[JUVENILE.]
[Library for Youth, or Book-Case of Knowledge, 10 vols.]
London: Printed for John Wallis … by T. Gillet or J. Cundee … 1800.
A fine complete set of Wallis’s ‘Library for Youth’ also known as the ‘Book-Case of Knowledge’, with all ten volumes in the first editions, dated 1800, and with two original designs (in reverse) for the frontispieces.
£4750
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NIEUHOF, Jan; Athanasius KIRCHER; and John OGILBY, translator.
An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United...
London, John Macock for the author, 1669.
First English edition, beautifully illustrated, recounting the Dutch traveller Jan Nieuhof’s journey as part of Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keizer’s embassy to Peking between 1655 and 1657. Having previously been employed by the Dutch West India Company in Brazil, Nieuhof joined the Dutch...
£4000
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COLONNA, Fabio.
Φυτοβασανος, sive Plantarum aliquot historia …
Naples, Orazio Salviani, 1592.
First edition, a landmark in botanical illustration, ‘the first strictly botanical book with intaglio prints’ (Blunt).
£4000
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VISSCHER, Nicolaes [I].
Avium vivae et artificiosissimae delineationes.
Amsterdam, Nicolaus [I] Visscher, 1659.
First and only edition of this rare set of ornithological prints by the famed cartographer Nicolaes Visscher I.
£3750
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BRUNFELS, Otto.
Precationes Biblicae sanctoru[m] patrum, illustrium viroru[m] et mulierum utriusq[ue] Testamenti.
Strasbourg, Johannes Schott, 1528.
First edition, rare. The earliest Protestant prayer-books, of which this is perhaps the most notable example, often comprised prayers taken directly from (or adapted from) the Bible. Brunfels’s Precationes Biblicae appeared in the same year in German translation (Biblisch Bettbüchlein...
£3500
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NIEUHOF, Jean, and Jean LE CARPENTIER (translator).
L’ambassade de la compagnie orientale des provinces unies...
Leiden, Jacob de Meurs, 1665.
Lavishly illustrated first French edition of Nieuhof’s travels through China from 1655 to 1657.
£3500
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LOCKE, John.
[An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding]. Extrait d’un Livre Anglois qui n’est pas encore publié, intitulé...
Amsterdam, Wolfgang, Waesbergi, Boom, & Van Someren, 1688.
A substantial and extremely influential extract, published two years before the appearance of the book, of Locke’s Essay concerning human understanding: a publication of major consequence in the history of philosophy. This issue of the Bibliothèque universelle et historique also...
£2850
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[GRICK, Friedrich.]
Fortalitium scientiae, das ist: die unfehlbare, volkommeliche, unerschätzliche Kunst aller Künsten und...
[Nuremberg,] 1617.
First edition of this provocative tract on Rosicrucianism and alchemy presenting arguments both for and against the Order, purportedly written by the 562-year-old fictitious Rosicrucian, Hugo de Alverda.
£2850
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[GREENE, Asa.]
The perils of Pearl Street, including a taste of the dangers of Wall Street, by a late merchant.
New York, Betts & Anstice and Peter Hill, 1834.
First edition of a very early Wall Street novella, the fictional tale of Billy Hazard, an innocent carpenter’s son from rural New York state determined to make it as a merchant in the city. Billy’s attempts to establish himself in the mercantile trade in New York City are ultimately unsuccessful...
£2750
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[SOUTH AMERICA.]
Album of sketches made in Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.
1840s?
An attractive album of sketches by an anonymous Francophone artist made during a trip to South America.
£2750
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[PSALMS.]
The whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into English Meter by Tho. Strenhold, Jo. Hopkins, W. Whittingham, and others...
London, Printed by T. C[otes] for the Company of Stationers, 1637.
A very attractive pocket psalm-book with tunes, ruled in red throughout and in a handsome binding. Such diminutive psalm books began to appear at the end of the sixteenth-century, printed for the Company of Stationers, who had the monopoly. The printer here was Thomas Cotes, most famous as...
£2750
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ELIOT, George.
The Writings …
Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1908.
The Large-Paper edition of Eliot’s complete works, no. 184 of 750 sets.
£2500
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[SACROBOSCO, Johannes de.]
CLAVIUS, Christophorus. In sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco commentarius, nunc iterum ab ipso Auctore...
Rome, Francesco Zanetti for Domenico Basa, 1581.
Third edition, the first to contain Clavius’s condemnation of Copernicus, with ten highly detailed woodcut diagrams of solar and lunar eclipses not included in the first edition.
£2500