Recent Acquisitions
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[OPTICAL PRINT.]
‘No. 5. Morgan’s improved protean scenery: Mount Vesuvius, as represented at the Surrey Zoological Gardens...
London, Published by W. Morgan, [c. 1837].
A remarkable metamorphic or ‘protean’ print depicting a dormant Vesuvius by day but, when held up to the light, showing a dramatic eruption in the night sky.
£675
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BORSO D’ESTE, Duke of Modena, Duke of Ferrara.
Letter in his name in Italian, addressed to Feltrino Boiardo.
Modena, 3 July 1453.
A letter from early in Borso d’Este’s rule as first Duke of Modena. It is addressed to the condottiero Feltrino Boiardo, instructing him to raise taxes from the territories of Casalgrande, Dinazzano and Montebabbio for the support of a brigade of men-at-arms.
£750
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[DOVES PRESS.]
Pervigilium Veneris.
Hammersmith, ‘printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press,’ 1910.
One of 150 copies on paper of the elusive Pervigilium Veneris, in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe).
£950
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PLAUTUS.
M. Accius Plautus ex fide, atque auctoritate complurium librorum manuscriptorum opera Dionys. Lambini Monstroliensis...
Paris, Jean Le Blanc for Jean Macé, 1577 [– October 1576].
Reissue of the 1576 first edition of the plays of Plautus edited by the great French classical scholar Denis Lambin (1520–1572) and completed after his death by the Parisian professor of Greek, Jacques Hélie (d. 1590).
£650
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JACQUEMOT, Jean.
Variorum poematium liber.
[Lyons,] Jean de Tournes, 1601.
Very rare first edition of this collection of neo-Latin Protestant biblical poetry by Jean Jacquemot (1543–1615), a notable Geneva preacher, poet, and translator, friend of Theodore Beza, here with the original French in civilité type.
£875
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FENOUILLOT DE FALBAIRE, Charles-Georges.
Le fabricant de Londres, drame en cinq actes et en prose; représenté à la Comédie...
Paris, chez Delalain, 1771.
First edition of a London-set play by the French dramatist and contributor to the Encyclopédie, Fenouillot de Falbaire (1727–1800), illustrated with five fine plates after Gravelot.
£250
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[VERACI, Gaetano.]
Nuova cicalata sopra la coda in forma di lettera responsiva alla Signora N.N.
[S.l., s.n,. c. 1770.]
Second edition, extremely rare and significantly expanded, of this highly suggestive, mock-academic panegyric on the ‘tail’.
£850
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PEPE, Stefano.
[Half-title: ‘Il Cappuccino d’Este del Padre Pepe’] ‘Historia Della Vita, e della Morte, et Attioni...
[Italy, second half of the seventeenth century.]
A seemingly unpublished life of Alfonso III d’Este, Duke of Modena, who renounced his title to become a Capuchin friar.
£1250
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[ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]
Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.
First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.
£1500
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SCARRON, Paul.
Le Marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste. Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée a Paris.
[Leiden, Elzevier], 1656.
First Elzevier editions, very rare, of these two plays by Scarron, pirated after the text of the first editions printed in Paris. A finely bound volume with excellent Elzevierian provenance.
£800
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[ROUSSEAU, Pierre.]
Considérations sur le théatre de l’opéra. Novembre 1822.
[Paris,] de l’imprimerie de Rignoux, [1822].
Very rare proposal for a new opera house in Paris by the architect Pierre Rousseau (1751–1829), annotated by the author and accompanied by an autograph letter.
£475
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[MURAT, J.-B. de.]
La destinée d’une jolie femme, poème érotique, en six chants, par J.B… de M…
Paris, Langlois for Mongie, An XI (1803).
First and only edition, very scarce, of this humorous moralising tale of love and loss in verse, intended for a female readership and hidden under the ‘transparent veil’ of erotic poetry.
£650
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[MURDER.]
Arrest de la cour du Parlement, qui condamne Pierre Guyon, jardinier, à étre rompu vif ... dans la Place du Pilory...
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1778.
Very rare decree documenting the crimes and punishment of one Pierre Guyon, a murderous gardener from Poitiers; a case of green fingers turning blood-red.
£175
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[LE NOBLE, Pierre, and Eustache LE NOBLE (attributed).]
Les Amours d’Anne d’Austriche, Epouse de Louis 13. ...
‘A Cologne, Chez Pierre Marteau, 1696’ [France, early eighteenth century].
An early manuscript copy of a salacious – and treasonous – history arguing that Louis XIV was the illegitimate child of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Richelieu, bound with four engravings.
£850
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[BRISTOL.]
The Bristol Contest, being a Collection of all the Papers published by both Parties, on the Election, 1754.
Bristol, ‘sold by the Printing-Office … and by J. Palmer’, [1754].
Extremely rare first edition of this Bristol-printed political pamphlet, bound with the first edition of a French work on pyrotechnics used both for spectacle and for war.
£650
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ANGELI, Alessandro degli.
In astrologos coniectores libri quinque … Nunc primum prodit [sic] in lucem. Cum indicibus pernecessariis,...
Lyons, Horace Cardon, 1615.
First edition of this thorough attack on astrology by degli Angeli (1542–1620), head of the Jesuit college at Rome, this copy with a presentation inscription by the Lyons publisher and printer Horace Cardon (1566–1641).
£1600
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GELLIUS, Aulus.
Noctium Atticarum commentaria per Bonfinem Asculanum summa nuper diligentia et studio recognita.
Venice, Giovanni Tacuino, 1517.
Second edition of Gellius’s opus with the commentary of philologist Matteo Bonfini (1441–1517), annotated throughout by a contemporary reader whose corrections and comments include references to the lectures of Paolo Bombasi as cited by Erasmus in the 1508 edition of the Adagia.
£5500
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[WEDDING POETRY.]
Applausi alli felicissimi sponsali dell’illustrissimo Sig. Cavaliere Deifebo Perini Brancadori, con l’illustrissima...
Siena, Stamperia del Pubblico, 1699.
Seemingly unrecorded collection of sonnets written to mark the marriage of two Sienese nobles, Deifebo Perini Brancadori and Ottavia Orlandini. The fourteen sonnets, whose authorship remains unknown, take inspiration from the family name of the groom and aspects of the arms of both families, with...
£350
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CAPRA, Alessandro.
Geometria famigliare, et instruttione pratica d’Alessandro Capra architetto cremonese. Per gl’edificii nuovi,...
Cremona, Gio[vanni] Pietro Zanni, 1671.
An exceedingly rare extract from the first edition of the treatise of practical geometry by the architect and inventor Alessandro Capra (c. 1605–c. 1685), seemingly prepared and sold as a manual for surveyors and early estate agents.
£575
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AURIGNAC, Sara Thérèse d’.
Cahier de dessins.
[Villiers-en-Bière], c. 1896.
An album of fin-de-siècle sketches by fifteen-year-old Sara Thérèse d’Aurignac, comprising humorous vignettes, imaginative anthropomorphism, dancing devils, and scenes of leisure.
£875