Search results

  1. [THOMAS À KEMPIS.]

    Messer Giovanni Gerson. Utile & divota operetta della imitatione di Giesu Xpo …

    Florence, Piero Pacini da Pescia, 16 April 1505.

    Scarce edition of an anonymous Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi, with a striking woodcut of Christ to the title.

    £4000

  2. [VALLI, Francesco di Andrea.] 

    Manuscript receipt book. 

    Villa di Vaglie, Cortona, 1735-1767. 

    An interesting manuscript receipt book recording the affairs and transactions of Francesco di Andrea Valli (or Vagli) and his sons Pietro and Egidio, landowners and farmers from Villa di Vaglie near Cortona, over the course of four decades. 

    £375

  3. HEXHAM, Henry. 

    A Tongue-Combat, lately happening betweene two English Souldiers in the Tilt-boat of Gravesend, the one going...

    Printed at London [i.e. Holland].  1623. 

    First edition, written in reply to a rare pamphlet with a near-identical title by Richard Verstegan [or Rowlands], an intelligence agent in the Netherlands for the English Jesuits.  Verstegan’s original Toung-Combat comprised a dialogue between the pro-Catholic Red Scarf and the Protestant...

    £1650

  4. [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, a celebration of the spring festival of Venus Genetrix, here in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe). 

    £950

  5. BOLZANIO, Urbano or URBANUS BELLUNENSIS.

    Institutionum in linguam Graecam grammaticarum, libri duo …

    Basel, Johann Walder, September 1535.

    Basel edition of this popular grammar commissioned and first published by Aldus in 1497. Bolzanio’s full exploration of the Greek language was the first book in which the principles of Greek grammar were explained in Latin – after the publication of the all-Greek grammar of Constantinus Lascaris....

    £2000

  6. ASCHAM, Roger.

    A Report and Discourse … of the Affaires and State of Germany and the Emperour Charles his Court, during certaine...

    London, Printed by John Daye … [1570?].

    First edition. Ascham’s account of his time in Germany as secretary to Sir Richard Morison, ambassador to the court of Emperor Charles V, takes the form of a letter to the courtier John Astley.

    £2000

  7. ARISTAENETUS.

    Επιστολαι … Epistolae graecae. Cum Latina interpretatione & notis. Tertia editio emendatior & auctior.

    Paris, Marc Orry, 1610.

    A volume of fictional Greek amatory epistles, printed in parallel Greek and Latin, from the library of the Padua professor and printer Giovanni Antonio Volpi.

    £1250

  8. RANDOLPH, Thomas.

    The Poems … edited by G. Thorn-Drury …

    London, Frederick Etchells & Hugh Macdonald, 1929.

    No. 21 of 40 copies on all-rag laid paper, signed by Thorn-Drury, from a total edition of 400.

    £75

  9. MARKHAM, Gervase.

    Cavalarice, or the English Horseman: Contayning all the Art of Horse-manship, asmuch as is necessary for any...

    London, Edward Allde for Edward White, [1616 –] 1617. 

    A beautiful copy of the second edition, ‘corrected and augmented’, of Markham’s Cavalarice, exceptionally well-preserved in a contemporary binding, from the library of the antiquary Sir John Marsham.

    £9750

  10. DAMPIER, William, et al.

    A Collection of Voyages. In four volumes. Containing I. Captain William Dampier’s voyages round...

    London, for James and John Knapton, 1729.

    The first collected edition, ‘considered by many to be the best’ (Hill), illustrated with seventeen maps and forty-six plates.

    £9500

  11. 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

  12. THÜNEN, Johann Heinrich von.

    Der isolirte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und Nationalökonomie … [Part I and part II/1].

    Rostock, G.B. Leopold, 1842–50.

    Scarce second edition of the first part, revised and enlarged, being the repository of Thünen’s major theories, and the edition used by Roscher in his Geschichte der National-Oekonomik, here bound with the first edition of part II/1, the last to be published during the author’s lifetime; he died...

    £2500

  13. [SMITH, Adam.]

    ADLERSPARRE, Georg, et al., editors. Läsning i blandade ämnen. Första [– Femte och Sista] Årgången.

    Stockholm, Henrik A. Nordström, 1797–1801.

    First edition of all fifty parts of the Swedish literary periodical Läsning i blandade ämnen, containing over 200 pages of passages from various sections of the Wealth of Nations, making it the first opportunity for Swedish speakers to study Adam Smith. Georg Sartorius’s abridgement of the Wealth...

    £400

  14. VISSCHER, Nicolaes [I]. 

    Avium vivae et artificiosissimae delineationes. 

    Amsterdam, Nicolaus [I] Visscher, 1659. 

    First and only edition of this rare set of ornithological prints by the famed cartographer Nicolaes Visscher I. 

    £3750

  15. [COOKERY.]

    Twentieth Century Cook Book … published by the Ladies Mite Society, St. Pauls Church, Lincoln.

    Lincoln (NE), Franklin Press, 1902.

    First and only edition of a very scarce Nebraska recipe book, printed for the Ladies Mite Society in Lincoln, Nebraska, with additional recipes added in manuscript by a local resident. The broad range of recipes is gathered from many contributors who, other than Mrs J.E. Baum of Omaha and Mrs...

    £350

  16. [PLAYING CARDS.]

    Cartes Magiques Musicales. 1001 Danses pour Piano. / Magical Musical Cards or Thousand and one Dances for Piano.

    Paris, Bass, c. 1830.

    The complete Piquet deck of these rare and unusual musical playing cards including the English rules for the game, a delightful example of a nineteenth-century parlour game produced for the Anglo-French market.

    £3000

  17. [WALLOON CHURCH AMSTERDAM.] 

    Ordres et reglemens de la maison des orphelins, des vieillards, et des vielles femmes de l’eglise...

    Amsterdam, David Pierre Humbert, 1772.

    Very rare set of regulations governing the charitable house for orphans and the elderly founded by the Walloon Church in Amsterdam in 1631, with manuscript additions updating the lists of its male and female governors up to 1795.

    £1450

  18. [LABOURS OF THE MONTHS &c.] 

    Januarius.  Februarius.  Merz.  April … 

    Nuremberg, Joh. Andreae Endterische Handlung, [second half of eighteenth century]. 

    A scarce popular print depicting the labours of the months and signs of the zodiac, four continents, the four classical elements, and the four seasons. 

    £475

  19. CICERO, Marcus Tullius.

    Marcus Tullius Ciceroes three Bookes of Duties to Marcus his Sonne, tourned out of Latine into English,...

    [London, Richard Tottel,] 1583.

    Sixth edition of Grimald’s Cicero, first published 1556. De Officiis was perhaps the most pervasive piece of classical writing in early modern Europe – the second or third book to be printed in Europe, standard reading in England from at least the sixteenth century, recommended in Eliot’s...

    £3200

  20. BREREWOOD, Edward. 

    Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World … 

    London, Printed [by Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614. 

    First edition.  Brerewood, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, was a scholar in many fields who published nothing in his own lifetime (he died in 1613).  Enquiries, seen through the press by a nephew, explores the spread of ancient, eastern, and modern languages, discusses the...

    £3000