Recent Acquisitions
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WYLD, James.
The islands of Japan by James Wyld, geographer to the Queen & H.R.H. the Prince Consort.
London, James Wyld, 1 January 1859.
Rare folding map of Japan by James Wyld the younger (1812–1887) published just a few years after the end of its long isolationist era, showing treaty ports opening soon following the signing of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States.
£1950
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HAYLEY, William, and William BLAKE (illustrator).
Ballads … founded on Anecdotes relating to Animals, with Prints...
Chichester, J. Seagrave, for London, Richard Phillips, 1805.
First edition of William Hayley’s sixteen Ballads illustrated by William Blake, with a fine provenance, plates I–III in the first state.
£3500
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HELMAN, Isidore-Stanislas-Henri.
Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales Chinoises, dédiés à Madame,...
Paris, chez l’auteur … et chez M. Ponce, [1788].
Two handsome engraved works by the French engraver and printseller Helman (1743–1806/9), here on uncut sheets, the first depicting scenes from Chinese history, the second episodes in the life of Confucius (Kong Fuzi).
£6000
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[PAPER TRADE.]
Arrest du conseil d’état du roi, portant modération et interprétation de plusieurs articles du tarif des...
[Besançon?, 1772?]
A seemingly unrecorded issue of this decree governing tariffs on paper and cardboard in Louis XV’s France, with no imprint but with the colophon ‘fait à Besançon le 18 avril 1772, signé, Lacoré’.
£175
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GIBELLI, Giacinto.
Due dissertazioni sopra li vantaggi, che si ottengono in medicina dall’uso del ferro per guarire molte infermità,...
Genoa, Paolo Scionico, 1767.
First and only edition, rare, of these treatises on the medicinal benefits of iron supplements, with accounts of their use by the author in curing over 450 patients of maladies ranging from anorexia to melancholy.
£600
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[WETENHALL, Edward.]
Enter into thy Closet: or, a Method and Order for Private Devotion … The fourth Edition.
London, John Martyn, 1672.
Rare fourth edition (first published in 1666) of this manual of private devotion by Edward Wettenhall (1636–1713), ‘a treatise endeavouring a plain discovery of the most spiritual and edifying course of reading, meditation, and prayer; and so, of self examination, humiliation, mortification,...
£375
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KEATE, George.
An Account of the Pelew Islands, situated in the western part of the Pacific Ocean: composed from the journals...
Dublin, Luke White, 1788.
First Dublin edition of this popular work, first published in London earlier the same year, by the virtuoso George Keate, member of the Royal Society and Society of Antiquities (1729−1797).
£650
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COSTER, François.
Piarum et Christ. institutionum libri tres, in usum sodalitatis B. Mariae Virginis primum conscripti, nunc...
Douai, Jean Bogard, 1582.
Very rare Douai edition of this devotional work by the Belgian Jesuit François Coster (1532–1619), first published at Cologne in 1578, illustrated with woodcuts of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of Sorrows.
£675
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PASCOLI, Alessandro.
Nuovo metodo per introdursi ad imitazion de’ geometri con ordine, chiarezza, e brevità nelle piu sottili...
Venice, Andrea Poletti, 1721.
Scarce second edition (first 1702) of this work of philosophy and medicine by the Perugian scholar Pascoli (1669–1757).
£450
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HOMER, and Alexander POPE (translator).
Homer’s Odyssey, translated by Alexander Pope, in two volumes.
London, John Bell, 1774.
First and only Bell edition of Pope’s Odyssey, extremely rare. Pope’s immensely popular version of the Odyssey, penned in collaboration with William Broome and Elijah Fenton, was first published by Bernard Lintot in 1726. The work brought Pope around £5600 in profits, and...
£450
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PARABOSCO, Girolamo.
Libro primo [- quarto] delle lettere amorose di M. Girolamo Parabosco. Con alcune altre di nuovo aggiunte.
Venice, Domenico Farri, 1581.
Uncommon collected edition of Girolamo Parabosco’s (1524–1557) immensely popular letters to anonymous lovers, literary contemporaries, and a courtesan, with several letters written from a female point of view, this copy formerly in the possession of Tycho Brahe’s nephew and with several manuscript...
£900
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GOSSELIN, Charles-Robert.
Plan d’éducation, en réponse aux académies de Marseille et de Châlons, dont l’une a proposé...
Amsterdam, 1785.
A most interesting sammelband of three rare French works on education from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
In the first work, Charles-Robert Gosselin (1740–1820) advocates a radical overhaul of the existing system of education in France through the destruction...£875
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DEVILLE, Albéric.
Voyage aux grottes d’Arcy, suivi de poésies fugitives et de pensées détachées. Par A. Deville, professeur...
Paris, Munier for Gérard, an XI (1802-3).
Scarce first edition, presented by the author, of this curious work comprising a description of the famous caves at Arcy-sur-Cure in France, alongside various poetical fancies, by the natural history professor and versifier Albéric Deville (1774–1832).
£250
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[SOCIETY OF JESUS.]
Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur. Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux.
Strasbourg, L.F. Le Roux, [1843].
First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843.
£375
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GABARO, Antonio.
Alla pregiatissima Signora Domenica Schiavon Menato nella fausta occasione del suo primo parto, in argomento...
Padua, ‘Nella Tipografia del Seminario’, 1820.
First and only edition, very rare, of a scathing and sexist condemnation of ‘inhuman’ women who do not breastfeed their own children, dedicated to Domenica Schiavon Menato, ‘an example to all women’, on the occasion of the birth of her first child.
£380
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BALLARIN, Vincenzo.
Dimostrazione sintetica della quadratura del circolo di Don Vincenzo Ballarin, piovano di S. Pietro della...
Venice, Fracasso, 1828.
First and only edition of this confident but mistaken attempt at squaring the circle – drawing a square with the same area as a given circle using a compass and straightedge – later proven to be impossible.
£900
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‘MAWE, Thomas’ [but John ABERCROMBIE].
Every Man his own Gardener. Being a new, and much more complete Gardener’s...
London: Printed for W. Griffith … 1767.
Second edition, published in the same year as the first, of an immensely popular work, which went through at least twenty-five editions. ‘Abercrombie was the son of a market gardener near Edinburgh who went on to be a gardener at Kew and Leicester House, as well as for a number of noblemen...
£225
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[SEX-WORK.]
Arrêtés des 3 et 4 Juin 1833, concernant les femmes et filles livrées à la prostitution publique.
Toulon, ‘de l’imprimerie d’Aug. Aurel’, 1833.
An apparently unrecorded set of decrees intended to regulate sex-work in the French port of Toulon on the Mediterranean coast, ‘for the maintenance of good morals and public health’.
£475
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[GOLD and SILVER.]
Bando generale per gli orefici, argentieri, ed altri che comprano, vendono, ed in qualsivoglia modo...
Rome, ‘nella stamperia della Rev. Camera Apostolica’, 1815.
Rare edict governing goldsmiths, silversmiths, and traders in gold and silver operating in Rome and the Papal States, issued by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca (1756–1844) in January 1815 as Camerlengo to Pope Pius VII.
£475
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ASTRUC, Jean.
Tractatus de motus fermentativi causa novam et mechanicam hypothesim conteniens, authore Joanne Astruc artium liberalium...
Montpellier, Honoratus Pech, 1702.
A dissertation on fermentation published by the physician Jean Astruc (1684–1766), aged eighteen; he later taught anatomy at Toulouse and the Collège Royal in Paris, and served as consultant to Louis XV and as chief physician of August II of Poland.
£500