Recent Acquisitions
-
ADORNO, Theodor W., Else FRENKEL-BRUNSWIK, Daniel J. LEVINSON, and R. Nevitt SANFORD
The Authoritarian Personality.
New York, Harper Brothers, 1950.
First edition of this groundbreaking work of social psychology on the development of prejudice by Theodor Adorno and the psychologists Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, written in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
£225
-
[SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley.]
The School for Scandal. A Comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre, Smoke-Alley, Dublin.
[Dublin], Printed for the Booksellers, 1793.
First separate illustrated edition of Sheridan’s highly popular The School for Scandal, which has ‘amused audiences from [its] early, immensely successful performances up to the present day, for Sheridan is one of the great comic writers in English’ (ODNB).
£750
-
PACE, Giulio.
Artis Lullianae emendatae libri IV. Quibus docetur methodus, per quam magna terminorum generalium, attributorum,...
Naples, Secondino Roncagliolo, 1631.
Rare third edition (first 1618) of this concise summary of Ramon Lull’s (c. 1232–1316) highly influential Ars Magna by the famous Protestant Italian Aristotelian scholar and jurist Giulio Pace (1550–1635), whose edition of the Organon was for a long time the standard edition of Aristotle’s...
£750
-
BENZI, Ugo; Giovanni Lodovico BERTALDI, commentator.
Regole della sanità et della natura de cibi … arricchita d’un trattato...
Turin, heirs of Giovanni Domenico Tarino, 1618.
Scarce first vernacular edition of the works of the medieval Sienese physician Ugo Benzi (c. 1360–1439); an extraordinary testament to their enduring popularity into the seventeenth century, expanded with commentary and a new appendix on the abuse of alcohol and tobacco by the Turinese doctor Giovanni...
£2500
-
BALZAC, Jean-Louis Guez de.
Aristippus, or, Monsr. de Balsac’s Masterpiece, being a Discourse concerning the Court … Englished...
London, Tho. Newcomb for Nat. Eakins and Tho. Johnson,1659.
First edition in English of Balzac’s Aristippe (first published posthumously in 1658), a treatise on wisdom in political administration and on the nature of life at court, dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden, who was an admirer.
£750
-
RICHARDUS ANGLICUS.
Correctorium alchymiae ... Das is reformierte Alchimy, oder Alchimeibesserung, und Straffung der Alchimistischen...
Strasbourg, Bernard Jobin, 1581.
First edition of ‘a very rare collection’ (Duveen) of five alchemical treatises, comprising Richardus Anglicus’ Correctorium and Reformierte Alchimei, Lull’s Apertorium et accuratio vegetabilium and Vom philosophischen Stein, and Geber’s Secretum.
£4500
-
[WASHINGTON, George.] PAINE, Thomas.
An Eulogy on the Life of General George Washington, who died at Mount Vernon, December 14th,...
Newburyport, Edmund M. Blunt, 1800.
First edition of this eulogy on Washington, ‘the saviour of your country’ and ‘father of his people’. This is the issue with urn woodcut on the final verso. Thomas Paine (1773–1811, not to be confused with the author of Common Sense) later changed his name to that of his father,...
£250
-
BEAUMONT, Joseph.
Psyche: or Loves Mysterie in XX. Canto’s: displaying the Intercourse betwixt Christ and the Soule …
London, Printed by John Dawson for George Boddington, 1648.
First edition of this lengthy religious epic representing the journey of the personified Soul from England to the Holy Land and back, written by Beaumont, one of the Royalist fellows ejected from Cambridge in 1644.
£1250
-
[IMAGINARY VOYAGE.]
Admirable Travels of Messieurs Thomas Jenkins and David Lowellin through the unknown Tracts of Africa: with...
London, ‘for the Benefit of Robert Barker, an unfortunate blind man’, 1785.
Rare, a lively chapbook novella of adventures and tribulations in Africa, fusing elements of a Robinsonade with a brief utopia.
£1500
-
TASSO, Torquato; Giovanni Francesco NEGRI, translator.
[Drop-head title:] Della tradottione della Gierusalemme liberata...
[Bologna, 1628.]
Rare first edition of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata to be translated into dialect, here in facing Bolognese and Italian translation, its printing suspended midway through the thirteenth canto, likely by Cardinal Bernardino Spada, a friend of the translator and the dedicatee of the work.
£1500
-
POMPONIO LETO, Giulio.
In omnia quae quidem extant, P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, Commentarii, varia multarum rerum cognitione referti,...
Basel, [Johann Oporinus, 1544].
Second edition of Leto’s influential commentary on all the works of Virgil, ‘the first to deal with all the works attributed to Virgil, and also the most extensive and complete, and therefore certainly the most important commentary written in the fifteenth century’ (Stok, p. 204).
£450
-
CLÜVER, Philipp.
Introductio in universam geographiam tam veterem, quam novam …
Wolfenbüttel, Caspar Johann Bismarck for Conrad Buno, 1686.
The 1686 edition of perhaps the most important geographical textbook of the early modern period, an introduction to global geography by the German antiquarian and geographical pioneer Philipp Clüver, enlarged and supplemented by the German geographer Johann Buno.
£2500
-
GUILLIM, John.
A Display of Heraldrie: manifesting a more easie Accesse to the Knowledge thereof than hath beene hitherto published...
London, Thomas Cotes for Jacob Blome, 1638.
Third edition, corrected and enlarged, of this cornerstone of English heraldry; this copy annotated throughout in two hands, each showing close engagement with the blazon expounded by the text.
£950
-
ARISTOTLE; THEOPHRASTUS; Theodorus GAZA and Pietro ALCIONIO, translators.
Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum...
Lyons, [Nicolas Bacquenois for] Guillaume Gazeau, 1552.
A union of Aristotle on animals and Theophrastus on plants, the fundamental texts from Ancient Greece on zoology and botany, in the translations of Gaza and Alcionio.
£800
-
[LILY, William.]
A short introduction of grammar generally to be used; compiled and set forth for the bringing up of all those...
Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1709.
Later editions (likely issued together) of two Latin grammars ascribed to the great grammarian and schoolmaster William Lily (1468?–1522/1523).
£350
-
GOELICKE, Andreas Ottomar.
Disputatio physica experimentalis exhibens aliquot naturae phaenomena, quae per attractionem vulgo fieri...
Halle, Johann Montag, [1704].
Scarce academic disputation on experimental physics led by the German physician and professor Andreas Ottomar Goelicke (1671–1744).
£275
-
[BREWER, George.]
The Siamese Tales, being a Collection of Stories told to the Son of the Mandarin Sam-Sib, for the Purpose of...
London, Vernor & Hood and Champante & Whitrow, 1796.
First edition of an anonymously published collection of ‘Siamese tales’, written as fables to increase their appeal to children.
£950
-
BOUTMY, C.
‘Exercitium quotidianum dedicatum perillustri domino domino vice comiti de Haro et d’Enghien &c a C. Boutmy 1760’.
[Belgium, 1760.]
An attractively bound unpublished devotional manual composed by one C. Boutmy (unidentified) for his patron Henri vicomte de Haro et d’Enghien.
£450
-
DANETT, Thomas.
A Continuation of the Historie of France, from the Death of Charles the Eight where Comines endeth, till the Death...
London, Printed by Thomas East for Thomas Charde, 1600.
First edition, an original history composed in sequel to Danett’s translation of The Historie of Philip de Commines (1596), covering the history of France from 1498 to 1559.
£1800
-
[ABC.]
Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...
C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].
A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.
£3750