Recent Acquisitions

  1. PEETERS, Jacob.

    L’Atlas en abregé, ou nouvelle Description du monde, tirée du meilleurs auteurs de ce siècle …

    Antwerp, chez l’auteur, 1692.

    First edition of a charming atlas, the best-known production of Jacob Peeters (1637–1695), a Flemish engraver and publisher from an artistic family – his brothers Jan and Bonaventura were both artists. The map of the Americas shows California as an island; the allegorical engraved title features...

    £2500

  2. [NEW YORK.]

    Notarial instrument attesting to the residence of two French immigrants in New York.

    New York, 27 July 1797.

    An interesting document recording the immigration of two members of the French minor nobility into America during the French Revolution and Directory. The New York public notary Charles Bridgen here attests to the arrival of François Pierre Henri d’Héliand (b. 1768) and his wife Laurence Joséphine...

    £850

  3. SAINT AULAIRE, Achille.

    Voyage autour du monde par St. Aulaire.

    [Clichy, Maurice Loignon for] Paris, Arnauld de Vresse, [c. 1864].

    A hand-coloured copy of this scarce and charming juvenile guide to twenty-four countries across the globe. The plates are adapted from those first published in Paris by Aubert circa 1845 under the title Récréations instructives: voyage pittoresque à travers le monde (Gumuchian 5037).

    £1500

  4. SOWERBY, J[ohn] G[eorge], and Thomas CRANE, illustrators.  [Eliza KEARY.] 

    At Home. 

    London and Belfast, Marcus Ward & Co., [1881]. 

    Original maquette for this charming Victorian children’s book, illustrated by the stained-glass designer John George Sowerby and decorated by Thomas Crane, elder brother of the illustrator Walter Crane.  The verse, unacknowledged, is by Eliza Keary (1827–1918).  At Home and its sequels Abroad...

    £500

  5. [WINCHESTER COLLEGE.]

    Printed and manuscript election roll.

    [Winchester,] ‘1 November 1782’.

    A remarkable eighteenth-century part-printed election roll from Winchester College, with admissions, the names of scholars, prize-winners, and pupils elected to New College Oxford.

    £1250

  6. [WALL, Thomas].

    A Second Christian Warning-Piece; wherein is shewed the first and chief Cause of Englands present Misery … Humbly...

    London, 1681-2.

    First edition, very rare, of a vehement anti-Catholic tract published in the context of the Exclusion Crisis; bound with the principal astrological work of John Holwell (a slightly imperfect copy).

    £1750

  7. [CHURCH OF ENGLAND.] 

    The new weeks preparation for a worthy receiving of the Lord’s Supper, as recommended and appointed by...

    London, printed from the edition of the late Edwd. Wickstead, for T. Wilson and R. Spence, York, [c. 1780-1800?]. 

    An attractive copy of two later editions of these collections of prayers, hymns, meditations, and self-examinations, with a focus on Holy Communion. 

    £250

  8. CARD, Henry.

    Literary Recreations …

    London, Printed by W. Wilson … for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme … 1809.

    First edition of a scarce collection of miscellaneous essays on such topics as ‘the Condition and Character of Women in different Countries and Ages’ (pp. 51–118), the ‘Rapid Growth of Methodism’ (pp. 131–187), and ‘Bastards’ (pp. 199–227).

    £650

  9. BURCKHARDT, Johann Ludwig (John Lewis). 

    Travels in Arabia, comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the...

    London, Henry Colburn, 1829. 

    First edition, in one volume, recounting Johann Ludwig Burckhardt’s journey to Mecca on behalf of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa in 1814. 

    £3750

  10. [WILSON, James].

    Twenty-five Propositions, humbly presented and respectfully dedicated, and presented, to the Inhabitants of Saint...

    [Basseterre,] Printed at the Gazette Office, 1849.

    Very rare.  In his Propositions, Wilson bemoans ‘the lamentable aspect of this community, generally, in respect of morals and religion’, the populace divided into the ‘openly lawless and profane’ majority, the outwardly respectable (but with no thought to their everlasting fate),...

    £1850

  11. MÜLLER, Gerhard Friedrich.

    Voyages from Asia to America, for completing the discoveries of the north west coast of America. To...

    London, T. Jefferys, 1764.

    Second edition (first 1761) of this key work devoted to discoveries in northeastern Asia and northwestern America, including the Bering Strait, published by Thomas Jefferys, geographer to George III, ‘remembered in particular for some of the most important eighteenth-century maps of the Americas’...

    £6500

  12. HEXHAM, Henry. 

    A Tongue-Combat, lately happening betweene two English Souldiers in the Tilt-boat of Gravesend, the one going...

    Printed at London [i.e. Holland].  1623. 

    First edition, written in reply to a rare pamphlet with a near-identical title by Richard Verstegan [or Rowlands], an intelligence agent in the Netherlands for the English Jesuits.  Verstegan’s original Toung-Combat comprised a dialogue between the pro-Catholic Red Scarf and the Protestant...

    £1650

  13. MEURSIUS, Johannes. 

    Ioannis Meursi Regnum Atticum, sive de regibus Atheniensium, eorumque rebus gestis, libri III. 

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1633. 

    First edition, a study of ancient Attic mythology and history by the Dutch classicist Meursius (Jan van Meurs, 1579–1639). 

    £300

  14. [MONTEMAYOR, Jorge de, and Gaspar GIL POLO.]

    The Troublesome and Hard Adventures in Love. Lively setting forth, the Feavers, the...

    London, Printed by B. Alsop ... 1652 [but 1651].

    The rare second edition of a text of 1594 known in a single imperfect copy (STC 153.3).

    £7500

  15. [JACOB, Martha.] 

    Commonplace book. 

    [St Albans, late eighteenth − early nineteenth century.] 

    A rich devotional commonplace book compiled by Martha Jacob (1775–1817), comprising an extraordinary visionary dream encounter alongside original verse, acrostics, and hymns. 

    £1650

  16. [CONFRATERNITY OF THE SACRED HEART.] 

    Devotion au Sacré Coeur de Jesus, pour les confrères de l’un et de l’autre sexe, reçus...

    Toulouse, Jean-Henri Guillemette, 1757. 

    Very rare pocket-sized devotional manual for both male and female members of the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus established at the fourteenth-century Convent of Saint-Pantaléon of the Canonesses Regular of Saint Augustine in Toulouse. 

    £950

  17. [ALMANACK.] 

    ...

    Liège and Paris, Stahl, [1841]. 

    Rare issue of the long-running and highly entertaining Almanach de Liège, illustrated with numerous crudely printed woodcuts. 

    £225

  18. [SHIDYĀQ, Ahmad Fāris, attributed author.]

    Kitāb al-muhāwarah al-unsīyah fī al-lughatayn al-Inklīzīyah wa-al-ʿArabīyah...

    [Malta, 1840].

    First edition, an English grammar and vocabulary designed for Arabic students, attributed to the Lebanese-born Shidyāq, who lived between Cairo and Malta in the 1820s–40s, and is best known for his well-regarded Arabic translation of the Bible (1857), and for his less well-regarded opinion...

    £950

  19. SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de.

    Cours de linguistique générale.

    Lausanne & Paris, Payot, 1916.

    First edition of this seminal textbook on linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, fundamental to the development of structuralism and semiotics, introducing distinctions between signified and signifier as well as language systems and speech.

    £575

  20. [OXFORD.] 

    Carmina quadragesimalia ab Aedis Christi Oxon. alumnis composita et ab ejusdem Aedis baccalaureis determinantibus...

    Oxford, ‘E Theatro Sheldoniano,’ 1723 [– 1748]. 

    First edition of these humorous verses in Latin, composed by bachelors at Christ Church Oxford as part of scholastic Lenten disputations on natural philosophy. 

    £500