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  1. VALERIUS MAXIMUS.

    Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].

    First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.

    £2750

  2. PEROTTO, Niccolò, and Benedetto BRUGNOLO, editor.

    Cornucopi[a]e nuper emendatum a domino Benedicto Brugnolo: ac...

    [Milan], Giovanni Giacomo and brothers da Legnano [for Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler, 28 October 1510 (colophon)].

    Scarce Milanese edition of Perotto’s Cornucopiae, an encyclopaedic commentary to the first book of Martial’s epigrams, here with a curious combination of woodcut initials and capital spaces with guide letters.

    £1750

  3. SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de.

    Cours de linguistique générale.

    Lausanne & Paris, Payot, 1916.

    First edition of this seminal textbook on linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, fundamental to the development of structuralism and semiotics, introducing distinctions between signified and signifier as well as language systems and speech.

    £575

  4. [LOO, Pieter van, (attributed).] 

    156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits. 

    [Holland, c. 1760–80]. 

    A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784). 

    £110000

  5. GROUCHY, Nicolas de. 

    Praeceptiones dialecticae, Nicolao Gruchio Rotomagensi authore.  Disputatio eiusdem, quid de nomine dialectices...

    Paris, Gabriel Buon, 1563. 

    An apparently unrecorded edition of Grouchy’s abstract of his lectures on logic and Aristotelian dialectic.  The philologist Nicolas de Grouchy (1510–1572) spent twelve years in Bordeaux (1535-47) as professor of rhetoric at the Collège de Guyenne (the top class was called ‘Classe de Rhétorique’),...

    £750

  6. RUSH, John; Jacob F. SHEEK, editor.

    The Hand-Book to veterinary Homoeopathy, or the homoeopathic Treatment of the Horse,...

    New York & San Francisco, Boericke & Tafel, 1876.

    Later American edition of a rare hand-book to veterinary homoeopathy. The text, first published in 1853, offers homoeopathic remedies for a variety of ailments, prefaced by a defence of the principles of the practice.

    £275

  7. 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...

    £2250

  8. POPE, Alexander.

    The Temple of Fame: a Vision … London: Printed for Bernard Lintot … 1715.

    London: Printed for Bernard Lintot … 1715.

    First edition. A modernized version of Chaucer’s Hous of Fame, for which Lintot paid Pope £32 5s. Perhaps Lintot was hoping to arouse interest in the rather expensive new edition of Chaucer which is advertised here at 30 s. in sheets. Queen Anne’s licence to Urry is dated 20 July 1714, and the Proposals...

    £350

  9. [HOARE, Prince.]

    Songs, Duets, and Chorus, in the Prize; or, 2, 5, 3, 8. A Farce, in two Acts. The Music composed by Mr. Storace.

    [London,] 1793.

    First edition, scarce, of the libretto to The Prize by Prince Hoare, scored by Stephen Storace.

    £350

  10. ALFIERI, Vittorio, and Charles LLOYD, translator.

    The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri; translated from the Italian...

    London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1815.

    First edition of this translation of Alfieri’s (1749–1803) tragedies into English, undertaken by the poet Charles Lloyd ‘on the suggestion of a friend whose judgement I highly respect’, likely Robert Southey, whom he addresses as his ‘sponsor’ in the ‘Dedicatory Sonnet’.

    £450

  11. BEBEL, August, and Daniel DE LEON, translator.

    Woman under socialism. Translated from the original German of the...

    New York, Labor News Press, 1904.

    First edition in English, first printing, of Bebel’s Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1884), the initial cause of a bitter rift between its translator, Daniel de Leon, and James Connolly of the Socialist Labor Party, who thought it would scare off female recruits.

    £125

  12. BRULL, Mariano, and Mathilde POMÈS, translator.

    Solo de Rosa. Poemas.

    Con dos rosas de Mariano y Portocarrero. [Havana,] ‘La Veronica’, 1941.

    First edition, no. 186 of 300 copies, printed in Cuba and inscribed by the author to his French translator, Mathilde Pomès, with Pomès’s manuscript translation of one of Brull’s poems from Solo de Rosa loosely inserted.

    £650

  13. [HEMSTERHUIS, François.] 

    Alexis ou de l’age d’or. 

    Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1787. 

    First edition of Hemsterhuis’s philosophical dialogue on a ‘golden age’, an influential work of pre-Romantic aesthetics. 

    £375

  14. 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

  15. STETSON, Charlotte Perkins [later GILMAN].

    Women and Economics: A Study of the economic Relation between Men and Women as...

    London and Boston, G. P. Putnam’s Sons and Small, Maynard & Company, 1900.

    Third edition, first published in 1898, of the best-known and most influential work of the prominent American feminist, sociologist, and novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

    £95

  16. WHITE, James.

    A Compendium of the veterinary Art, containing an accurate Description of all the Diseases to which the Horse is...

    Canterbury, W. Bristow for J. Badcock, London, 1802.

    First edition of one of the first works on ‘the veterinary art’. With the formalisation of the increasingly academic subject of equine medicine and the foundation of the Royal Veterinary College in the late eighteenth century, the term ‘veterinary’ soon supplanted ‘farriery’, first...

    £275

  17. MARKHAM, ‘J.’ [Gervase], G. JEFFERIES, ‘and Experienced INDIANS’, [and C.D. LESHER (editor)].

    The Citizen...

    Chambersburg, Thomas J. Wright, [c. 1839].

    Undated Chambersburg edition. Among the most popular farriery manuals in America, the Experienced Farrier remained in print almost a century after its first appearance, with this Chambersburg edition following those of Wilmington and Baltimore. Intended, like its predecessors, for the common...

    £250

  18. [GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich, Osip MANDELSTAM, et al, translators.]

    Поэты французского Возрождения...

    Leningrad, Goslitizdat, 1938.

    First edition of a rare anthology of Russian translations of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century poems by Villon, Marot, Ronsard, Du Bellay, and others. Two of the Villon translations are attributed in the index to Mandelstam, but are in fact by Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (1886–1921), husband of Anna...

    £1750

  19. HUME, David, [and Octavie BELOT, translator].

    Histoire de la maison de Tudor sur le trône d’Angleterre … traduit...

    Amsterdam [i.e. Paris], 1763.

    A very fine set of the first French edition of Hume’s history of Tudor England, translated by the Parisian widow Octavie Belot (1719–1805, née Guichard), who supported herself with income from her translations, and through her work developed a friendship with Hume.

    £600

  20. 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