Search results
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PALAFOX Y MENDOZA, Juan de.
The History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars. Together with an Account of several remarkable...
London, W. Godbid for M. Pitt, 1671.
First edition in English of Palafox's Historia de la conquista de la China (1670), an account of the Manchu conquest of Ming China based on reports sent to him from Macao and the Philippines.
£1750
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PLAYFAIR, George Macdonald Home.
The cities and towns of China. A geographical dictionary …
Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., 1879.
First edition of a dictionary of Chinese towns and cities by G.M.H. Playfair (1850–1917), based upon the French Sinologist Édouard Biot’s earlier Dictionnaire of 1842.
£600
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MÜNSTER, Sebastian.
[Melechet ha-Dikduk] מלאכת הדיקדוק Institutiones grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam FR Sebastiani...
[Basel,] Johann Froben, 1524.
First edition of Sebastian Münster’s (1488–1552) important Hebrew grammar for students, bound with the first Latin edition of his translation of Elia Levita’s Composita verborum, both critical to the Christian scholarly reception of Hebrew grammatical works and here enhanced by extensive...
£7000
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JEROME, Saint.
Epistolae Sancti Hieronymi.
Venice, Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis, 7 January and 12 July 1496.
Venetian incunable edition of Jerome’s epistles, one of the most famous collections of letters in Latin literature, alongside those of Cicero, Seneca and Pliny, this copy with interesting marginal annotations.
£3500
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JUVENAL, Decimus Junius.
Argumenta Satyrarum Iuvenalis per Antonimu [sic] Mancinellum. Cu[m] quattuor co[m]me[n]tariis … Sebastianus...
[(Colophon:) Milan, Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler for Giovanni da Legnano, 17 August 1501.]
Rare edition of Juvenal’s Satires with commentary by the Italian humanists Antonio Mancinelli, Domizio Calderini, Giorgio Merula, and Giorgio Valla, edited by the Greek scholar Sebastianus Ducius, with extensive early annotations and corrections to both the text and commentary.
£5000
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ST JOHN, Spenser Buckingham.
Life in the forests of the far east … With numerous illustrations …
London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1862.
First edition, a nice copy in the publisher’s binding and with their advertisements, of this richly illustrated account of pioneering expeditions on the island of Borneo by St John (1825-1910), who had been introduced to Sir James Brooke (the ‘White Raja’) in 1847, when Brooke was visiting England.
£1600
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WINES, Enoch Cobb.
A peep at China, in Mr. Dunn’s Chinese collection; with miscellaneous notices relating to the institutions...
Philadelphia, for Nathan Dunn, 1839.
Scarce first edition of a guide to the remarkable collection of Chinese artefacts accumulated by the American businessman Nathan Dunn (1782–1844).
£1250
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WYLD, James.
The islands of Japan by James Wyld, geographer to the Queen & H.R.H. the Prince Consort.
London, James Wyld, 1 January 1859.
Rare folding map of Japan by James Wyld the younger (1812–1887) published just a few years after the end of its long isolationist era, showing treaty ports opening soon following the signing of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States.
£1500
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TIMKOVSKII, Egor Fedorovich.
Travels of the Russian mission through Mongolia to China, and residence in Peking, in the years 1820-1821...
London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1827.
First edition in English (first Russian 1824) of this important description of Mongolia and China by the Russian traveller and diplomat Egor Timkovskii (1790–1875), translated by Hannibal Evans Lloyd (1771–1847).
£1100
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OVIDIUS Naso, Publius.
Amatoria. Quorum indicem sequens continet pagella.
Lyons, Sebastian Gryphius, 1554.
Attractive annotated copy of a successful edition of the collection of Ovid’s poems on love, comprising Heroidum epistolae, Auli Sabini…epistolae III, Elegiarum libri III, de Remedio amoris libri III, ad Liviam de morte Drusi, de Nuce, de Medicamine faciei, Fragmenta, Carmen ad Pisonem,...
£1850
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VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.
Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...
[(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]
Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...
£2750
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TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.
Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546.]
First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations.
£6750
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SOPHOCLES.
Σοφοκλεους τραγωδιαι επτα μετα σχολιων παλαιων και πανυ ωφελιμων....
[(Colophon:) Frankfurt am Main, Peter Braubach], 1544.
First of several Braubach editions of the seven extant Greek tragedies of Sophocles, this copy with annotations in two different hands, spanning two centuries. The text follows the first Giunta edition published at Florence in 1522 under the editorship of Antonio Francini, with the text of the...
£2000
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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
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TERENTIUS Afer, Publius.
Comoediae sex. Ex recensione Heinsiana, cum annotationibus Thomae Farnabii in quatuor priores et M.C.Is.F....
Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1658.
An intensely annotated copy of this rare pocket Jansson edition of Terence’s comedies. The edition itself was a successful production, uniting the text edited by Heinsius with the commentary of Thomas Farnaby to the first four comedies, and that of Méric Casaubon to the last two. Jansson had...
£2250
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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
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[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
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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
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YARRELL, William.
A History of British Fishes … illustrated by nearly 400 Woodcuts.
London, Samuel Bentley for John van Voorst, 1836.
First collected editions, with an autograph letter on the Hebridal smelt from the species’ discoverer. Published serially from 1835 to 1836, Yarrell’s History of British Fishes was reprinted within a year, and followed soon after by Thomas Bell’s British Reptiles in 1839 and...
£750
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MORI, Ascanio de’.
Giuoco piacevole.
Mantua, Giacomo Ruffinello, 1575.
First edition of an uncommon Renaissance collection of tales in prose and verse, set in the Lombard city of Brescia during the Carnival of the ‘prosperous and peaceful’ year 1566, employing the narrative frame canonised by Boccaccio in the Decameron, though with pointedly opposed features.
£950