Search results

  1. [HAMILTON, Joseph.]

    Some short and useful Reflections upon Duelling, which should be in the Hands of every Person who is liable...

    Dublin, for the Author, by C. Bentham, 1823.

    First edition, scarce, of this Dublin-printed assemblage of impassioned arguments and anecdotes against the ‘desolating vice’ of duelling.

    £600

  2. PLINY the Younger, Gaius SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, and Julius OBSEQUENS.

    C. Plinii Secundi Novocomensis Epistolarum...

    [(Colophon:) Venice, in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresano, June 1518.]

    The second Aldine edition of the letters of Pliny the Younger, with marks of early German ownership and annotations.

    £975

  3. 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

  4. RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator.

    Some British Ballads.

    London, Constable & Co. Ltd., [1919].

    First trade edition, illustrated by Rackham, of these ballads sourced largely from Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, our copy in a handsome Bayntun-Riviere binding.

    £500

  5. 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

  6. [THAMES ESTUARY.]

    Coloured chart of the Thames Estuary extending to Harwich and Ramsgate with map of the river from London to Gravesend.

    London, Edward Stanford, 16 May 1927.

    Attractive maps with plenty of accompanying information.

    £75

  7. SANSON, Nicolas.

    L’Asie en plusieurs cartes nouvelles, et exactes; et en divers traittés de geographie, et d’histoire. Là...

    Paris, for the author, 1658.

    Scarce second edition, featuring seventeen maps of Asia by the great French cartographer Nicolas Sanson, supplemented with his notes on Asiatic geography.

    £2750

  8. LAET, Joannes de, editor.

    De imperio Magni Mogolis sive India vera commentarius e variis auctoribus congestus …

    Leiden, ‘ex officina Elzeviriana’, 1631.

    Pocket-sized Elzevir edition (one of two issued in the same year) of this work on India and the Mughal Empire compiled by the Dutch geographer Joannes de Laet (1581–1649), this copy, exceptionally, in its original drab boards.

    £950

  9. [CHOISY, François Timoléon, Abbé de.]

    Journal ou suite de voyage de Siam. En forme des lettres familieres fait en M.DC.LXXXV...

    Amsterdam, Pierre Mortier, 1687.

    Amsterdam edition, issued the same year as the first Paris edition, recounting a voyage to Siam by the prolific French writer, former cross-dresser, and Jesuit priest, the Abbé de Choisy.

    £300

  10. 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

  11. [BELLIN, Jacques-Nicolas].

    Collection of maps from Prévost’s Histoire générale des voyages.

    Paris, Didot, 1746-1789.

    A collection of seventy-four maps taken from Antoine-François Prévost’s twenty-volume Histoire générale des voyages, the majority of them the work of the French cartographer, geographer and hydrographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin.

    £2500

  12. [CERCEAU, Abbé.]

    [Drop-head title:] La constitution vengée des inculpations des ennemis de la Révolution. Discours prononcé...

    [Paris,] Lenoir & Leboucher, [1790].

    One of two editions of this early Revolutionary pamphlet, very rare, defending the draft version of the Constitution of 1791 as consistent with Christianity.

    £185

  13. EYRE, Henry.

    A brief account of the Holt waters, containing one hundred and twelve eminent cures, perform’d by the use of the...

    London, printed for J. Roberts, 1731.

    First edition. The waters from Bath, Bristol and Holt, in Wiltshire, were the most popular English mineral waters of the eighteenth century, in no small part due to the activity of Henry Eyre, ‘Sworn Purveyor to Her Majesty [Queen Caroline, wife of George II] for all Mineral Waters’. Eyre ran a distribution...

    £450

  14. 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

  15. ATWOOD, Margaret.

    The Handmaid’s Tale.

    Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

    First American edition of Atwood’s award-winning theocratic dystopia, preceded only by the Canadian edition.

    £300

  16. [BARSANTI, Pier Vincenzo.]

    Della futura rinnovazione de’ cieli e della terra e de’ suoi abitatori libri tre.

    [Florence,] Stamperia Bonducciana, 1780.

    First edition of this polemical utopia by the Tuscan Dominican Pier Vincenzo Barsanti, which provoked the ire of Jansenists and led to accusations of Molinism and millenarism.

    £675

  17. [BOUCHET, Jean.]

    Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...

    Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.

    Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...

    £4500

  18. HAREL, Charles.

    Ménage sociétaire ou Moyen d’augmenter son bien-être en diminuant sa dépense, avec indication de quelques...

    Paris, Bureau de la Phalange, à la librairie Sociale, 1839.

    First edition of this work by the entrepreneur and inventor Charles Harel (1771–1852), a friend and disciple of Charles Fourier’s, describing Harel’s project for the founding of an utopian community of two hundred people housed in a single building, bound with eight other works in a sammelband...

    £975

  19. HESSE, Hermann.

    Siddhartha. Eine indische Dichtung.

    Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag, 1922.

    First edition of Hesse’s most celebrated work, the beautiful story of a young Brahmin’s search for the meaning of life on earth at the time of the Gautama Buddha.

    £1200

  20. PAPINI, Roberto.

    Le Arti d’Oggi: Architettura e Arti Decorative in Europa.

    Milan and Rome, Bestetti and Tumminelli, 1930.

    First edition of a thorough and extensively illustrated survey of architectural and artistic styles and artworks from across Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, preceded by the idea of a utopian town, ‘Universa’, where the futuristic ideal for a new society can be achieved and craftsmanship...

    £300