Gift Ideas

  1. CASAUBON, Meric.

    A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, as it is an effect of nature but is mistaken by many for either divine inspiration,...

    London, R.D. for Thomas Johnson, 1655 [i.e. 1654].

    First edition of the first separate treatise on ‘enthusiasm’, a pioneering work of psychiatry avant la lettre and one of the most ground-breaking publications in a very public controversy. Of all Casaubon’s books, this has been shown as the most directly linked to the publication...

    £1750

  2. VIRGIL Maro, Publius, and Giovanni Andrea dell’ANGUILLARA (trans.). 

    Il primo libro della Eneida di Vergilio,...

    Padua, Gratioso Perchacino, 1564. 

    First edition of the first book of Anguillara’s verse translation of the Aeneid, a copy printed on strong paper and inscribed by the author.  The humanist, poet, and successful translator of Ovid Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara (1517–1572) undertook to translate into Italian ottava...

    £2500

  3. 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

  4. NIXON, Howard M. 

    Broxbourne Library: Styles and Designs of Bookbindings from the twelfth to the twentieth Century … with an...

    London, Maggs Brothers for the Broxbourne Library, 1956. 

    First edition, one of three hundred copies, of Howard Nixon’s richly illustrated catalogue of the bindings in the library of Albert Ehrman.

    £875

  5. [HERVEY, Elizabeth.] 

    The Mourtray Family.  A Novel … 

    London: Printed by Millar Ritchie … for R. Faulder … 1800. 

    First edition of the penultimate novel by Elizabeth Hervey (c. 1748–1820), elder half-sister of the writer William Beckford – her father, Francis Marsh, had died and her mother Maria (née Hamilton) remarried another Jamaica plantation owner, William Beckford senior, who also died...

    £2500

  6. BARKER, Nicolas.

    At First, All Went Well… & Other Brief Lives.

    London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2019.

    This book brings together eighty obituaries written by Nicolas Barker. The first were published in 1966 and the last in 2018. Print links them all: they were printers, publishers, librarians, booksellers or book collectors, their lives joined by a common dedication to the printed word and all that goes...

    £40

  7. FREEMAN, Arthur.

    Catullus Carmen 17.6 and Other Mysteries. A Study in Editorial Conflict, Eccentricity, Forgery, and Restitution....

    London, The Author, 2020.

    This partly historical, partly philological essay offers a general account of the early preservation, post-medieval recovery, and Renaissance evolution of the text of Catullus, with specific reference to one speculative reading in Carmen 17 (‘De Colonia’), and certain humanist twists and forgeries...

    £15

  8. FREEMAN, Arthur.

    Bibliotheca Fictiva: A Collection of Books & Manuscripts Relating to Literary Forgery 400 BC – AD 2000.

    London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2024.

    This fully revised and enlarged edition of Bibliotheca Fictiva – the descriptive inventory of a collection of books and manuscripts relating to literary forgery in the Western world over the last twenty-four centuries, now housed in the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University – adds more than...

    £80

  9. WORCESTER, Edward Somerset, Marquess of.

    A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions, as at present I can call...

    Reprinted, and sold by T. Payne … 1746.

    Second edition of a charming catalogue of inventions claimed to have been ‘tried and perfected’ by the royalist second Marquess of Worcester (1601–1667), first published in 1663. 

    £750

  10. WALLIS, William.

    The Western Gentleman’s Farrier, containing Remedies for the different Diseases to which Horses are incident...

    Troy (OH), John T. Tullis, 1838.

    Second edition of an American work on farriery, with diseases found only in the Western States including ‘big head’ and ‘nasal polypi’. First published in 1832 on the observation that ‘most of the present works on Farriery, or more especially those adapted to our western climate, are...

    £250

  11. [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

  12. 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

  13. [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

  14. SMITH, Albert Richard.

    The Story of Mont Blanc …

    London, David Bogue, 1853.

    First edition of Smith’s famous book on Mont Blanc, a lovely copy formerly in the possession of his sister, Laura Eady.

    £1275

  15. VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius. 

    Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi locis prope innumerabilibus emendati, ejusdem...

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565. 

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. 

    £1250

  16. CARDONNEL, Adam de.

    Picturesque Antiquities of Scotland [I–II] …

    London: Printed for the Author, and sold by Edwards … also by Edwards’s, in Halifax. 1788.

    First edition, the very rare issue with the plates in sepia, printed directly onto thick wove paper.

    £975

  17. AKHMATOVA, Anna Andreevna, translator.

    Golosa poetov. Stikhi zarubezhnykh poetov v perevode Anny Akhmatovoi [Poets’...

    Moscow, “Progress”, 1965.

    First edition: translations by Akhmatova of a selection of pieces by Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Yugoslavian, Norwegian, and Indian poets.

    £450

  18. ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger

    Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...

    Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

    The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult. 

    £875

  19. KOLLÁR, Jan. 

    Díla básnická … we dwau djljch [‘A Collection of Poems … in two parts’]. 

    Buda, no publisher, but ‘with the types Gyuriána a Bagó’, 1845. 

    First collected edition of Jan Kollár’s works, inscribed to fellow poet and ‘brother Slav’ Ognjeslav Utješenowić-Ostrožinski, with an additional autograph sonnet written in his honour. 

    £1750

  20. HEMINGWAY, Ernest, and Evgenia KALASHNIKOVA (translator).

    Imet’ i ne imet’ [To have and have not].

    Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1938.

    First edition in Russian of To have and have not (1937), with an introduction by the Soviet critic Ivan Anisimov. Hemingway’s first appearance in Russian was Death in the Afternoon in 1934, when he was praised in the Soviet Union as an active anti-Fascist, and he soon became a...

    £1250