Recent Acquisitions
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AUDEN, Wystan Hugh.
Louis MacNeice, a memorial Address, delivered at All Souls, Langham Place on 17 October, 1963.
Privately printed for Faber & Faber, [1963].
First edition, one of 250 copies, of Auden’s memorial address for Louis MacNeice, with the printed order of service and newspaper cuttings of poems on MacNeice, including ‘The Cave of Making’ by Auden (The Listener, 1 October 1964).
£150
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NEPOS, Cornelius; Andreas SCHOTT, editor.
Opera quae quidem extant … Nunc denuo doctorum hominum accessionibus locupletata.
Frankfurt, Claude de Marne & the heirs of Johann Aubry, [1608–] 1609.
First edition thus, edited by Andreas Schott (1552–1629), with his extensive commentary alongside that of previous editors including Denys Lambin, from the library of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun.
£850
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[VACCINATION.]
Agli abitanti del dipartimento dell’Ombrone proclama del Comitato Centrale di Vaccina sedente in Siena. Abitanti...
Siena, Onorato Porri, 1808.
A seemingly unrecorded broadside promoting smallpox vaccination, issued in the short-lived Italian department of Ombrone under the First French Empire by the Central Vaccination Committee in Siena.
£650
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GIOIA [or GIOJA], Melchiorre.
Indole, estensione, vantaggi della statistica. Confutazione dell’ opuscolo che ha per titolo:...
Risposta alle obbiezioni fatte alle Tavole statistiche. Milan, Pirotta and Maspero, March 1809.
First and only edition of this rare work on the nature and necessity of statistics by Melchiorre Gioia, presented by the author to the former Minister for the Interior, Daniele Felici.
£1250
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[SASSOON, Siegfried.] SURTEES, [Robert Smith]; Lionel GOUGH, editor.
Hunting Scenes from Surtees.
London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953.
Sassoon’s proof copy of Hunting Scenes from Surtees, with pages left blank for the inclusion of his as-yet unwritten introduction.
£850
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BUXTON, Thomas Fowell.
An Inquiry, whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented, by our present System of Prison Discipline...
London, [J. M’Creery] for John & Arthur Arch, J. Butterworth & Son, and John Hatchard, 1818.
Third edition, published the same year as the first, of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton’s influential Inquiry into the British prison system.
£195
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PERSIUS; [Thomas BREWSTER, translator].
The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes;...
London, Printed for A. Millar, 1751.
Second edition, with the addition of Bayle’s life of Persius, with manuscript corrections.
£375
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[CAVALLERI, Paolo Agostino.]
Lettera dall’Adriatico del signor Antonio Bianchi sopra l’opera de’diritti dell’uomo del sig....
Rome, Giovanni Zempel, 1792 (colophon 1793).
First edition, uncommon, of this counter-revolutionary polemic written in response to Spedalieri’s I diritti dell’uomo of the previous year and attributed to the Barnabite Paolo Agostino Cavalleri (1742-1803). Spedalieri had attempted a Catholic response to the revolutionary ideas of the rights of...
£375
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[BERRY, Robert.]
Scots Law: manuscript lecture notes from the University of Glasgow.
Glasgow, 1877-8.
A very comprehensive and legible set of manuscript notes from the lectures on Scots law given at Glasgow in the Martinmas and Candlemas terms of the academic year 1877-8 by Robert Berry (1825–1903), Regius Professor of Law at the University from 1867 to 1887. The course of study was an intensive...
£400
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SHAKESPEARE, William, and Bolemir IZBORSKÝ, pseud. [i.e. Antonín MAREK], translator.
Omylowé dle Shakespeara...
Prague, Jozefa Fetterlowá, ‘in the Archbishop’s Printing House at the Seminary’, 1823.
First edition in Czech, very rare, of A Comedy of Errors, freely translated by Antonín Marek (1785–1877), one of the earliest appearances of Shakespeare in the language, preceded only by a very rare translation of Macbeth by Karel Ignác Thám (Makbet, 1786), which was staged...
£1100
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REYES, Alfonso.
Corrected carbon typescript, signed, of an essay entitled ‘Chesterton y los titeres’ [Chesterton and the puppets].
[Buenos Aires?, c. 1952–3.]
Corrected carbon typescript of Alfonso Reyes’s essay entitled ‘Chesterton y los titeres’, concerning G.K. Chesterton’s play The Surprise, a religious allegory written in 1932 but first published posthumously in 1952.
£1000
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GOODMAN, Tobias, Rabbi.
אמונת ישראל [Emunat Yisrael]. The Faith of Israel, selected from the Writings of...
London, [John Wertheimer for] the author, 1834.
First and only edition in book form of an 1819 sermon given by Rabbi Tobias Goodman, thought to have been the first to have delivered a sermon in English in a British synagogue, our copy from the Rothschild Library at Exbury House, Hampshire.
£850
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TENNYSON, Alfred, and Eleanor FORTESCUE-BRICKDALE, illustrator.
The Idylls of the King … Illustrated in Colour...
London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1911].
Deluxe edition of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King illustrated by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872–1945), no. 124 of 250 copies signed by the artist.
£600
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ROSSI, Ottavio, and Bartolomeo FONTANA, compiler.
Lettere del Sig. Ottavio Rossi. Raccolte da Bartolomeo Fontana ...
Brescia, Bartolomeo Fontana, 1621.
First edition of over 150 letters by the poet and scholar Ottavio Rossi (1570–1630), printed in his native city of Brescia and including a letter to the painter Palma Giovane, our copy with a contemporary manuscript note on the artist’s final moments written mere days after his death.
£1250
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DE CASTRO, Alberto Osório.
Flores de Coral. Ultimos Poemas.
Dili, Ilha de Timor – Insulindia, Imprensa Nacional, 1908 [(colophon:) 31 December 1909; (wrapper:) 1910].
First edition of the first book printed on the island of Timor, no. 2 of 31 copies on a combination of song-kió-zu and tço-tzu paper from Guangzhou, a presentation copy, with a long dedicatory inscription in French from de Castro to the Romanian-French poet Anna, Comtesse Mathieu de...
£4750
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[BECKFORD, William, and Samuel HENLEY, translator.]
An Arabian Tale, from an unpublished Manuscript. With Notes critical...
London, Printed for W. Clarke … 1809.
Scarce second edition – in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) – of Henley’s English translation of Beckford’s Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author’s wishes and predating publication...
£1500
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[HEMSTERHUIS, François.]
Alexis ou de l’age d’or.
Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1787.
First edition of Hemsterhuis’s philosophical dialogue on a ‘golden age’, an influential work of pre-Romantic aesthetics.
£375
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BEBEL, August, and Daniel DE LEON, translator.
Woman under socialism. Translated from the original German of the...
New York, Labor News Press, 1904.
First edition in English, first printing, of Bebel’s Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1884), the initial cause of a bitter rift between its translator, Daniel de Leon, and James Connolly of the Socialist Labor Party, who thought it would scare off female recruits.
£125
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ALFIERI, Vittorio, and Charles LLOYD, translator.
The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri; translated from the Italian...
London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1815.
First edition of this translation of Alfieri’s (1749–1803) tragedies into English, undertaken by the poet Charles Lloyd ‘on the suggestion of a friend whose judgement I highly respect’, likely Robert Southey, whom he addresses as his ‘sponsor’ in the ‘Dedicatory Sonnet’.
£450
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MOORE, Thomas.
Lalla Rookh, an Oriental Romance … eleventh Edition.
London, [A. & R. Spottiswoode for] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1822.
An early edition of Thomas Moore’s popular orientalist poem Lalla Rookh, owned by a young Siegfried Sassoon.
£450