Gift Ideas
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ANACREON.
[Odaria.] Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...
Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.
Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G. C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions...
£650
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WEBER, Johann Adam.
Discursus curiosi et fructuosi [ad praecipuas totius litteraturae humanae scientias illustrandas accommodate …].
[Salzburg, Johann Baptist Mayr, 1690.]
Third Salzburg edition of Weber’s wide-ranging discourses, in a handsome Bavarian binding for the Abbot of Ettal, Bernhard I Oberhauser, attributable to the monk Brother Gregor, a trained bookbinder from Hungary.
£6000
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SCHILLER, Friedrich.
Wallenstein ein dramatisches Gedicht …
Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1800.
First edition of Schiller’s dramatic Wallenstein trilogy, tracing the rise and fall of the Bohemian general Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years’ War, from the von Carlowitz library and perhaps associated with the play’s French translator, Baroness Aloïse-Christine de Carlowitz....
£800
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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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[ALTAR CARDS.]
Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John.
‘A Paris, chez I. Baudemont’, second half of seventeenth century.
Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt cards for priests, bearing readings and prayers, and devotional images of Jesus and St John, comprising separately printed images, text and borders arranged together in collage fashion.
£2750
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GELLIUS, Aulus; [Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS, editor].
Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti hominis cura...
Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.
Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s celebrated version, published the same year as the first edition. A commonplace book compiled by Aulus Gellius in the second century, the Attic Nights received several editions, of which the most highly regarded is that of Johann Friedrich Gronovius (Gronow,...
£450
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[ENGELBRECHT, Martin.]
[Vier Jahreszeiten. Serie 89.]
[Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht, c. 1750.]
An attractive hand-coloured engraved peepshow showing the four seasons, with summer in the foreground retreating into winter behind, lined with printed waste from an illustrated Dutch religious broadside.
£1750
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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...
£4750
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DIO CASSIUS.
Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...
Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.
First edition of Dio Cassius’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.
£2500
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[POEMS ON DRINKING.]
Raccolta di brindisi per tutte le occasioni; apostrofi al vino; inni in lode di Bacco, canzoni da tavola;...
Milan, Emilio Croci, 1875.
First edition of this compact font of inspiration for all partygoers, containing odes to Bacchus, endless praise of the merits of wine, drinking songs, and toasts for every occasion, including a party of printers.
£200
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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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GISSING, George.
The Unclassed, A Novel … in three Volumes.
London, Chapman and Hall, 1884.
First edition of Gissing’s second novel – and Bernard Shaw’s favourite of his novels – in the single-volume remaindered issue in red cloth.
£950
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[SURTEES, Robert Smith,] and John LEECH (illustrator).
Handley Cross series.
London, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., 1899-1900.
Limited ‘Master of Foxhounds’ edition, finely printed at the Whitefriars Press. Having published the first editions of several of Surtees’s sporting novels, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. gathered and reprinted the six most successful as the ‘Handley Cross series’ as luxury sets. Publisher’s...
£1200
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KOH, John.
Dogs in Early Photography.
London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2024.
Throughout history, dogs have been a subject in art; dogs were featured in cave drawings, coins, funerary sculptures or medieval marginalia. Before smartphones allowed dog owners to capture and share every moment of their dogs’ lives, fine art documented this relationship and promoted the dog from...
£50
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JUVENAL, Decimus Junius, and Aulus Persius FLACCUS.
Satyrae.
London, J. Brindley, 1744.
First Brindley edition, edited by the Irish classical scholar Usher Gahagan (d. 1749). John Brindley began to publish his series of well-printed duodecimo classics in 1744, for which Gahagan edited eleven works before his arrest and conviction for high treason, having become embroiled with a...
£650
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[RENNEVILLE, Sophie de (?).]
Contes a Aglaé, ou la jeune moraliste.
Paris, Caillou, c.1820.
Very uncommon edition, possibly the first, of this collection of educational contes moraux, sometimes attributed to the prolific children’s author and journalist Sophie de Renneville (1772–1822).
£325
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YARRELL, William.
A History of British Fishes … illustrated by nearly 400 Woodcuts.
London, Samuel Bentley for John van Voorst, 1836.
First collected editions, with an autograph letter on the Hebridal smelt from the species’ discoverer. Published serially from 1835 to 1836, Yarrell’s History of British Fishes was reprinted within a year, and followed soon after by Thomas Bell’s British Reptiles in 1839 and...
£750
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HORACE.
Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera cum novo commentario ad modum Joannis Bond.
Paris, Didot, 1855.
The deluxe issue of Didot’s Horace, a fine early photographically-illustrated work, complete with all the photographic plates, headpieces and maps, and printed on fine paper.
£750
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EPICTETUS.
Το του Επικτητου εγχειριδιον. Ex editione Joannis Upton accurate expressum.
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
The first miniature Foulis edition of Epictetus in Greek, and the first Foulis Epictetus in Greek only. A 1765 reissue was, according to ESTC, reset.
£650
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COBDEN-SANDERSON, Annie; Marianne TIDCOMBE, editor.
The Prison Diary of Annie Cobden-Sanderson, with a Facsimile of the Original.
[Marlborough,] Libanus Press, 2017.
The imprisonment of Annie Cobden-Sanderson, daughter of the famous Victorian statesman Richard Cobden, prompted a wave of letters of protest to the newspapers, giving the women’s suffrage campaign the major boost she had hoped for. The ten women with whom Cobden-Sanderson was arrested (and of whom...
£25