Search results
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NEWTON, Isaac.
Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light. Also two treatises of...
London, for Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, printers to the Royal Society, 1704.
First edition of Newton’s Opticks, ‘which did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely, placed it on a scientific basis’, and ‘expounds Newton’s corpuscular or emission theory of light, and first contains his important optical discoveries in a collected...
£70000
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FABERT, Abraham.
Voyage du roy a Metz, l’occasion d’iceluy: ensemble les signes de resiouyssance faits par ses habitans pour...
[Metz, Fabert,] 1610.
A splendid hand-coloured and gilt copy of the first edition of this handsome festival book commemorating Henri IV’s entry into Metz in March 1603, published seven years after the event and in the same year that Henri was assassinated by François Ravaillac.
£60000
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GONZÁLES DE MENDOZA, Juan, and Robert PARKE, translator.
The Historie of the great and mightie Kingdome of China,...
London, Printed by J. Wolfe for Edward White, 1588 [or 1589].
First edition in English, rare, of the first significant European study of China, ‘one of the outstanding “best-sellers” of the sixteenth century’ (Boxer).
£50000
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SCHRÖDINGER, Erwin, et al.
A collection of offprints and papers from the library of Nándor Balázs.
1902–1961.
A remarkable collection of offprints and papers from the library of Hungarian-American physicist Nándor Balázs, laboratory assistant in the early 1950s to the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, comprising an exceptionally strong core of Schrödinger’s works – many of...
£50000
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HAKLUYT, Richard.
The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the most...
London, ‘George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, Deputies to Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie’, 1589.
First edition, a fine copy, with the world map, in a strictly contemporary London binding, of the first collection of English voyages.
£350000
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THOMSON, John.
Illustrations of China and its People. A Series of two Hundred Photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the...
London, Sampson Low &c, 1873–1874.
A good copy of this rare work (vol. I marked second edition, the rest first editions), showing superb images of Imperial China including rare portraits of high government officials as well as a large number of architectural and scenic views; this item ranks amongst the most spectacular photographically...
£35000
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[INDULGENCE.]
Letter of Indulgence (in Catalan), incipit ‘A Honor …’, granted by Cardinal Luis de Milá,...
[Lerida, Heinrich Botel, c. 1498.]
Extremely rare incunable indulgence in Catalan granted by Luis de Milá, Bishop of Lérida, in favour of the living (as opposed to the dead, see below) to gather funds for the repair of the old cathedral of Lérida, printed at Lérida, the second city of Catalonia, about one hundred miles...
£34000
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FOREST, BISSON FRERES, &c.
A collection of eight albumen prints (or salt and albumen collages) from mammoth-plate negatives...
France, 1864-5.
An exceptional series of oversize prints commissioned by the Compagnie de Chemins de Fer de l‘Ouest to commemorate the construction of a series of new bridges completed 1861–1864, including the metal bridge at Orival, later destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War, and the oblique stone bridge of...
£30000
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ALLIONI, Carlo.
Flora Pedemontana sive enumeratio methodica stirpium indigenarum Pedemontii [– Florae Pedemontanae icones accedit...
Turin, Giovanni Michele Briolo, 1785.
First edition of the earliest Italian regional flora by the ‘Linnaeus of Piedmont’, here in the extremely rare hand-coloured state and extensively annotated by Giovanni Battista Balbis, the author’s pupil and successor at the Botanical Garden of the University of Turin.
£30000
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ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.
Histoire de la mission des peres Capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...
Paris, François Huby, 1614.
Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy, of the first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed...
£30000
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QUR’AN.
Qur’an.
Persia (probably Shiraz), sixteenth century, c. AD 1600 and c. AD 1850.
A remarkable sixteenth-century Safavid Qur’an manuscript, carefully remargined during the Qajar period and extensively annotated by a scholar of that time.
£27500
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[JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]
The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge with all the Processe of the Cessions, Warrantes Supercedias &...
[Colophon: London, Richard Pynson], [1505–6?].
First edition(?), very rare, of the first printed guide for Justices of the Peace, issued with a short guide to land law.
£27500
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LACTANTIUS.
Opera.
[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...
£25000
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[LUYNES, Honoré Théodore Paul Joseph d’Albert, duc de.] VIGNES, Louis, photographer; Charles NEGRES, printer.
Voyage d’exploration à la mer Morte, à Petra et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain par M. Le Duc de Luynes,...
Printed 1874–76.
A fine set of the photogravures for which Nègre was justly celebrated, from the collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes. The titles and plate numbers are added in pencil, likely by the author or publisher (Arthus Bertrand, Paris, 1874-76). The albumen prints, from the original negatives...
£25000
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AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].
Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.
Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.
First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.
£22500
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[HAMILTON, Alexander, James MADISON, and John JAY].
The Federalist: A Collection of Essays written in Favor of the new Constitution,...
New York: Printed and sold by John and Andrew M’Lean … 1788.
First edition in book form of The Federalist Papers, the single most important work of American political philosophy, a normal paper copy, very rare in the original boards, uncut and largely unopened. Volume II is in a mixed state, with the error ‘Letter LXXX’ rather than ‘LXX’...
£220000
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JONSON, Benjamin.
The Workes …
London, Will Stansby, 1616.
An excellent set of the canonical Ben Jonson, the first collection of English plays in the proud format of a folio and the direct fore-runner of Shakespeare’s folios, here found with both the first (1616) and the corrected second editions (1640) of Volume I, and the first edition of Volume II[-III]...
£21000
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[GRADUAL.]
Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.
Italy (Umbria), end of thirteenth century.
A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi...
£20000
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SPILBERGEN, Joris van, and Jacob LE MAIRE.
Speculum orientalis occidentalisque Indiae navigationum; quarum una Georgii a...
Leiden, Nicolaes van Geelkercken, 1619.
First Latin edition of one of the classic Dutch illustrated voyages, identical in format and illustration to the same publisher’s Dutch-language edition of the same year.
£20000
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HAKLUYT, Richard.
The principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over-land,...
London, George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1598 [–1600].
Second edition, first issue of ‘Hakluyt’s monumental masterpiece, and the great prose epic of the Elizabethan period’ (Penrose), complete with the section on the conquest of Cadiz by Essex (vol. I, pp. 607-619) ordered suppressed by Elizabeth I in 1599 (in ESTC state 1a).
£20000