Gift Ideas

  1. WILSON, David (editor).

    A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, &c. in three Parts … 

    [Edinburgh:] Sold by the Editor at his House … and by J. Hamilton, Music Seller … [c.1800?].

    Second(?), expanded edition of this collection of (mostly) hymn tunes scored for treble, tenor, and bass. Though for most hymns the tunes only are printed, there are words for Cowper’s ‘Hark, my Soul!’ and one other, and at the end are the words and tunes for seven secular catches (in three...

    £500

  2. MAJER, Andrea.

    Discorso sulla origine, progressi, e stato attuale della musica italiana …

    Padua, ‘dalla Tipografia e Fonderia della Minerva’, 1821.

    First edition of Majer’s treatise on Italian music, ‘a conservative defence of tradition as part of a backlash against the popularity of Rossini’s reforms’ (Baragwanath, p. 29).

    £450

  3. ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo. 

    Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga. 

    Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566. 

    First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini. 

    £1750

  4. SHEPHERD, Richard Herne.

    Forgotten Books worth remembering … No. I. Studies of Sensation and Event by Ebenezer Jones …

    London, Pickering & Co … 1878.

    An interesting collection of ‘rare tracts’, from the library of the Scottish lawyer and journalist John Skelton, who wrote for Blackwood’s under the pseudonym ‘Shirley’.

    £950

  5. [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

  6. FARINGTON, Susan Maria (illustrator). 

    The 104th Psalm.  Illustrated by Susan Maria Ffarington.  Worden. 

    London,  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, [c. 1867]. 

    The Faringtons or Ffaringtons were an ancient family of Worden Hall, Leyland, Lancashire, with a substantial family archive.  Susan Maria (1808–1894) edited The Farington Papers for the Chetham Society in 1856, and made other contributions to local history, but this unusual panorama seems to have...

    £650

  7. MAGNON, Jean. 

    Les heures du Chrestien, divisées en trois journées; qui sont la journée de la penitence, la journée de la...

    Paris, se vendent chez l’autheur … et chez Sebastien Martin, 1654. 

    First edition of this handsomely illustrated collection of prayers and devotions in verse and prose by the French playwright and poet Jean Magnon (1620–1662).  The number of plates in individual copies varies, this copy containing at least two more than those described on OCLC. 

    £650

  8. BUONACCORSI, Biagio, and Niccolò VALORI. 

    Diario de’ successi piu importanti seguiti in Italia, & particolarmente in...

    Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568. 

    First edition of an insider account of Medici politics by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1472–1522), colleague and confidant of Machiavelli, bound with the first edition of Malespini’s history of Florence and owned by Claude-Enoch Virey, secretary to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. 

    £1000

  9. ROBINSON, Alan James (artist), and Laurie BLOCK.

    An Odd Bestiary, or, a Compendium of instructive and entertaining Descriptions...

    [Easthampton (MA),] Cheloniidae Press, 1982.

    First edition, numbered 69 of 200 copies from a limited edition of 300 and signed by the artist.

    £500

  10. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Materials: Theatre of Machine Books, 1472–1800.

    Toronto, A.E Publications, 2023.

    One of twenty-five finely bound numbered deluxe copies, with four original leaves bound in, of this extraordinary survey of four centuries of machine books, tracing the evolution of printing techniques and draughtsmanship alongside the development of the machines themselves.

    £950

  11. DREYFUS, John. 

    Aspects of French Eighteenth Century Typography.  A study of type specimens in the Broxbourne Collection at Cambridge...

    Cambridge, The Roxburghe Club, 1982.

    A history of French type design in the eighteenth century based on the author’s detailed examinations of French type ornaments and typefounding methods. 

    £120

  12. MILBANK, Augustus Sussex.

    A Treatise upon the political & social Condition of Europe, from the Fall of the Roman Empire, down to...

    [Richmond, M. Bell for] London, Messrs Hatchard & Son, and Richmond, M. Bell, 1847.

    First and only edition of a rare Yorkshire-printed treatise of social history by an amateur historian and educational enthusiast, inscribed by the author to the Countess of Sandwich.

    £125

  13. [BROUN, Richard, Sir.] 

    Memorabilia curliana Mabenensia. 

    Dumfries, John Sinclair, 1830. 

    Uncommon first edition of this charming work on the sport of curling by the eccentric Scottish baronet Sir Richard Broun (1801–1858), with a focus on his native Lochmaben, being one of the earliest books on the sport. 

    £450

  14. KEATS, John.

    The Poems … arranged in chronological Order with a Preface by Sidney Colvin.

    London, The Florence Press for Chatto & Windus, 1915.

    No. 145 of 250 copies, in the deluxe vellum binding (for 45s); it could also be purchased in japon for a reduced price, and there was a trade edition on normal paper.

    £1200

  15. VALERIANI MOLINARI, Luigi.

    Discorsi concernenti la pubblica economia il gius pubblico e l’antico gius romano.

    Bologna, Masi, 1809.

    First edition of Valeriani’s (1758–1828) rare work of political economy presented as a science which stands as an organic complement to a nation’s set of legislation.

    £750

  16. [BRITISH LIBRARY.] 

    The Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue. 

    [London,] British Library, 1983. 

    First and only microfiche edition of ESTC, subsequently expanded into the English Short-Title Catalogue and made obsolete by digitisation. 

    £175

  17. STEVENSON, Robert Louis.

    Poems …

    London, [Florence Press for] Chatto & Windus, 1913.

    £100

  18. [ANON.]

    Quia Amore Langueo.

    [Colophon:] Chiswick, Caradoc Press, 1902.

    One of 250 copies on paper (there were also 20 on vellum), printed from a fifteenth-century manuscript at Lambeth Palace Library.

    £75

  19. DURRELL, Lawrence.

    Collected Poems.

    London, Faber and Faber, [1960].

    First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoff from Larry Durrell 1962 / “too much tape [?]” Eliot’.

    £400

  20. MYERS, Robin, Andrew BURNETT, and Renae SATTERLEY.

    ‘I do not eat the bread of idleness’: Dr Andrew Coltée Ducarel 1713–1785,...

    The Garendon Press, 2023.

    This volume brings together revised versions of four of Robin Myers’s papers on aspects of Ducarel’s life and work published between 1994 and 2002, and ‘The Life and Times of the Ducarel Brothers’, her recent introductory essay to Two Huguenot Brothers: Letters of Andrew and James Coltée...

    £45