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  1. 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

  2. D’URFEY, Thomas.

    Wit and Mirth: or Pills to purge Melancholy; being a Collection of the best merry Ballads and Songs, old and...

    Pearson for J. Tonson, 1719 [– 1720].

    The first complete edition, second issue of volumes I–V, and first issue of vol. VI, of the most famous songbook of its day, the first edition with titles altered to the familiar Wit and Mirth from Songs Compleat, 1719 (a change at the time of the publication in 1720 of volume VI,...

    £2250

  3. HIRSCH, William.

    Genius and Degeneration. A Psychological Study.

    New York, Appleton, 1896.

    First edition in English, translated from the second edition of the German original, Genie und Entartung (1895).

    £150

  4. 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

  5. ALCIONIO, Pietro.

    Petri Alcyonii Medices legatus de exsilio.

    [Venice, in the house of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, November 1522.]

    First edition of Alcionio’s dialogue on exile, an intensely annotated copy from a family of French humanists and Reformers. Pietro Alcionio (or Petrus Alcyonius, fl. 1487–1527) was a Venetian humanist, scholar and Aristotelian translator who began his career as a proofreader for Aldus Manutius....

    £5750

  6. KRYLOV, [Ivan Andreevich]; William Ralston SHEDDEN-RALSTON, translator.

    Krilof and his Fables …

    London, Strahan and Co., 1869.

    First edition in English in book form of any of Krylov’s Fables, a presentation copy ‘To Sir John Shaw Lefevre H.C.B. from the Translator’.

    £850

  7. HERODIAN.

    His History of twenty Roman Caesars and Emperors (of his Time) … interpreted out of the Greeke Original.

    London, Hugh Perry, 1629.

    First edition of this translation, attributed to James Maxwell, from the Greek edition printed by Estienne in 1581.

    £600

  8. [MILITARIA.]

    Instruction provisoire arrêtée par le roi, concernant l’exercice et les manoeuvres de l’infanterie du 20 Mai 1788.

    Montauban, Vincent Teulières, 1788.

    A seemingly unrecorded edition of these pre-French Revolution instructions on infantry manoeuvres, printed at Montauban in the south of France, with several passages updated in manuscript by a practising soldier.

    £750

  9. MONTE DI PIETÀ DI MILANO.

    Piano, e regole per il buon governo della congregazione de’ creditori della Regia Ducal Camera di...

    Milan, Giuseppe Richino Malatesta, [1753].

    An uncommon description of the workings of an eighteenth-century Italian charitable organisation, bound in a contemporary paste paper wrapper.

    £400

  10. ‘PIETRO da VICOVARO’, i.e. Giuseppe CORTESE.

    Apparecchio per accompagnare Maria Santissima nella sua gloriosa assunzione...

    Rome, Komarek, 1735.

    Very rare devotional work dedicated to the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, a novena written by Pietro da Vicovaro.

    £550

  11. [PSALMS.]

    Psalmi Davidis regis et vatis inclyti, a M. Antonio Flaminio & P. Francisco Spinula pietis elegantissimis, Latinis...

    Antwerp, [(colophon:) Jan Verwithagen for Joannes Steelsius], 1559.

    A collection of verse paraphrases of the Psalms, by the poets and humanist scholars Marcantonio Flaminio (1498–1550) and Publio Francesco Spinola (c. 1520–1567), bound for Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553–1617).

    £975

  12. ‘SANIVAL, Marchesa di’, pseud. [i.e. SALVANI, Fausto].

    La difesa delle donne o sia risposta apologetica al libro...

    Siena, Luigi and Benedetto Bindi, 1786.

    Very rare first edition, printed on blue paper, of this defence of women, written in response to an indecent satire entitled Lo scoglia dell’humanita, published under the Arcadian pseudonym Diunilgo Valdecio by Carlo Maria Chiaraviglio in 1774, which warned of the dangers to men posed by...

    £1500

  13. [ALMANACK.] WING, John.

    Ολυμπια δωματα or an Almanack for the Year of our Lord God 1689 …

    Cambridge, John Hayes, ‘1689’ [1688].

    An interesting Cambridge-printed almanack, owned and annotated in West Yorkshire by one John Brooke, who records, in various places, ‘Subsidy money for Dalton, Kirkheaton, Huddersfield, and Lepton’, debts owing for geese, ‘Men imployed at Bowling green’ (18 February to 26 April, 8 pages),...

    £950

  14. CHALMERS, David.

    Histoire abbregee de tous les roys de France, Angleterre et Escosse, mise en ordre par forme d’Harmonie: contenant...

    Paris, Jean Fevrier, 1579.

    First edition of Chalmer’s historical work focusing on Scotland’s relations with France and England, written at a time of marriage negotiations between England and France, seeking to dispel the idea that England had any overlordship over Scotland.

    £950

  15. [CHARITY.]

    Reglement du 11 Juin 1752, concernant la nourriture et le travail des pauvres de l’Hôpital de N. D. de la Charité,...

    Dijon, Antoine Defay, [1752].

    Very rare work detailing the regulations governing the 450-or-so poor residents of the Hôpital de Notre Dame de la Charité in Dijon, eastern France, in the mid-eighteenth century.

    £850

  16. FLORIAN, Jean-Pierre Claris de.

    ‘Stella a pastoral Romance … Translated from the French’.

    [?England, early nineteenth century.]

    An apparently unpublished manuscript translation of Florian’s popular romance Estelle (1788), a pastoral set in the Cévennes in the fifteenth century; it is in prose but regularly interspersed with poetry. There were two published English translations: Stella, a pastoral Romance...

    £950

  17. [GAMES AND RECREATION.]

    Trattato de’ giochi e de’ divertimenti permessi, o proibiti ai Cristiani.

    Rome, Michel'Angelo Barbiellini, 1768.

    First edition of a treatise on games and recreation compiled in Rome by the publisher Barbiellini, with the purpose of providing a comprehensive ethical evaluation of all manner of diversions.

    £650

  18. MEFFRET, Johann.

    Sermones Meffreth alias Ortulus regine de tempore. Pars hyemalis.

    [Basel, Nicolaus Kesler, not after 1485.]

    A volume of sermons with early English annotations, in a binding featuring tools attributed to an early Cambridge workshop known as the Unicorn Binder.

    £6500

  19. PASSI, Carlo.

    La selva di varia istoria … la quale avanti andava attorno stampata sotto nome finto di Annotationi dell’Infortunio,...

    Venice, Altobello Salicato, 1572.

    An unsophisticated copy of Passi and Ruscelli’s elaborations and explanations of Paolo Giovio’s history of his own time, bound in contemporary limp vellum reusing manuscript waste.

    £500

  20. ‘RIZZA, Zanclevio’, pseud. [i.e. Vincenzo LAZZARI GUERRA], editor and contributor.

    Piccola raccolta di...

    ‘Medina’ [i.e. Mori], ‘Frangipane Mozza-Sai’ [i.e. Michelini e Tetoldini], 1788.

    A very rare collection of satirical verses by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian authors, published under a false Medina imprint, edited and with some poems previously unpublished by ‘Zanclevio Rizza’, now for the first time identified with Vincenzo Lazzari Guerra.

    £500