Search results
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[COURTESAN.]
Les confessions d’une courtisane devenue philosophe.
‘London’ and Brussels, Le Francq, 1784.
First edition (another appeared in the same year with a 'Londres et se trouve à Paris' imprint) of this anonymous novel describing the ascent (or perhaps descent) of a courtesan into the world of the philosophe.
£850
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[DICKSON, William, photographer.]
Ambrotype of two young men holding hands.
[Glasgow, 1860s.]
A very attractive ambrotype double portrait showing two seated young men holding hands, with subtle hand-tinting to their faces and hands.
£450
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[KRÜDENER, Barbara Juliane de Vietinghoff, Freifrau von.]
Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G… Tome premier...
Paris, Henrichs, 1804.
Rare first edition of Valérie, the famous semi-autobiographical Romantic novel by the Riga-born mystic and novelist Madame de Krüdener (1766–1824), whose influence as Tsar Alexander I’s spiritual adviser contributed directly to the formation of the Holy Alliance of 1815.
£400
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[LA ROCHE, Sophie von.]
Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim. Von einer Freundin derselben aus Original-Papieren und andern...
Leipzig, bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1771.
First edition of Sophie von La Roche’s (1730–1807) bestselling epistolary novel, a bestseller featuring kidnapping, travels from Germany to Scotland, and a false wedding ceremony, a direct forerunner to Goethe’s Werther.
£750
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[LE NOBLE, Pierre, and Eustache LE NOBLE (attributed).]
Les Amours d’Anne d’Austriche, Epouse de Louis 13. Avec le Cardinal...
‘A Cologne, Chez Pierre Marteau, 1696’ [France, early eighteenth century].
An early manuscript copy of a salacious – and treasonous – history arguing that Louis XIV was the illegitimate child of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Richelieu, bound with four engravings.
£850
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MANLEY, Delarivier.
The Power of Love: in seven Novels viz. I. The fair Hypocrite. II. The Physician’s Stratagem. III. The...
London, Printed for John Barber … and John Morphew … 1720.
First edition, apparently a presentation copy, of Delarivier Manley’s last work of prose, a collection of seven amorous novellas partly derived from William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566), ‘adding divers new Incidents’, and supplemented by several original compositions.
£2500
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MEREDITH, George.
Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads.
London, Chapman & Hall, 1862.
First edition of a daring and innovative Victorian collection of poems adapting the sonnet sequence tradition (though in poems of sixteen lines) to the emotional realities of a failed contemporary marriage, tracing the course of estrangement as love gives way to discord, jealousy, unhappiness, and...
£450
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[MONTEMAYOR, Jorge de, and Gaspar GIL POLO.]
The Troublesome and Hard Adventures in Love. Lively setting forth, the Feavers, the...
Alsop ... 1652 [but 1651].
The rare second edition of a text of 1594 known in a single imperfect copy (STC 153.3).
£7500
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MOREL DE RUBEMPRÉ, Joseph.
Les secrets de la génération ou l’art de procréer à volonté des filles ou des garçons, de faire...
chez tous les libraires, [c. 1870].
Joseph Morel de Rubempré’s (1812–86) popular guide to the secrets of sex, (billed as the thirtieth edition of vol. I and the twelfth of vol. II).
£150
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[NUPTIALIA.]
Bartolomeo MOLAJONI. Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il...
Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811.
Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia.
£275
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[BREVIARY.]
Sarum Breviary, in Latin.
England, first quarter of fifteenth century.
A fragment of twenty-one leaves from a portable Sarum Breviary, with nineteenth-century Staffordshire provenance.
£4250
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[POSTCARDS.]
‘PSH’. Twenty-nine manuscript postcards.
London, 1912–c. 1920?.
Hand-drawn postcards providing a rare, personal, and comic snapshot into English humour and the lives of London lovers in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
£375
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RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio.
Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...
Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562.
The third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the divisive questione d’amore hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature, our copy extensively annotated by a seventeenth-century collector of musical...
£2800
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[LOVE TOKEN.]
Portrait of a woman wearing photographic jewellery.
[1850s].
An ambrotype portrait of a young woman with a photographic brooch at her neck depicting a man, presumably her betrothed or spouse.
£375
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JOHN OF FREIBURG.
Summa confessorum [and] Tractatus de instructione confessorum, in Latin
France, mid-fourteenth century.
From a large and well-decorated manuscript containing the Dominican theologian John of Freiburg’s massive Summa confessorum (written in 1297–8) and his smaller Tractatus de instructione confessorum (also known as the Confessionale and written shortly after the Summa)....
£1500
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BOOK OF HOURS,
in Latin, from the Hours of the Virgin and including the beginning of Psalm 97.
Flanders or northern France, early 14th century.
An exquisite leaf from an exceptionally early Book of Hours. The defective parent manuscript, which also contained a Vie de sainte Marguerite in French rhyming verse, was lot 76 in Sotheby’s sale ‘Western Manuscripts and Miniatures’ of 17 December 1991, subsequent to which the leaves...
£1800
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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
Epistolarum ad Atticum, libri XVI. Eiusdem epistolarum ad Q Fratrem, libri III. Incerti auctoris epistola...
Paris, Jean Bienné, 1573.
A finely bound copy of Cicero’s letters to Atticus and his brother Quintus, the sixth of a nine-volume set of Cicero’s works printed by Jean Bienné in 1572–1573, edited by the great French classical scholar Denis Lambin.
£975
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CORNEILLE, Pierre.
Nicomède tragedie.
Rouen, Laurens Maurry (and Paris, Guillaume de Luyne), 1653.
Second edition (first 1651) of Corneille’s tragedy of sibling rivalry and the conflict of political and aristocratic ideals, set in Rome in the second century BC. It was written after Corneille moved to Paris in 1647 and was first staged at the height of the Fronde rebellion, after which he wrote nothing...
£750
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GARNIER, Robert.
Les tragedies de Robert Garnier conseiller du roy, lieutenant general criminel au siege presidial et seneschaussee...
Rouen, Jean Crevel, 1611.
Very uncommon Rouen printed edition of the tragedies of the great French Renaissance playwright Robert Garnier (1545–1590).
£550
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GOBINET, Charles.
Instruction sur la vérité du Saint Sacrement, contenant en abregé les principaux motifs de la créance Catholique...
Paris, François le Cointe, 1677.
Scarce first edition thus, containing an explanation of the Eucharist and a defence of transubstantiation by the French writer and teacher Charles Gobinet (1613–1690), a lovely copy bearing a stamp found on bindings executed for Louis de France, the Grand Dauphin (1661–1711), eldest son of Louis...
£650