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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. [ALTAR CARDS.]

    Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John.

    ‘A Paris, chez I. Baudemont’, second half of seventeenth century.

    Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt cards for priests, bearing readings and prayers, and devotional images of Jesus and St John, comprising separately printed images, text and borders arranged together in collage fashion.

    £2750

  3. FRONTINUS, Sextus Julius.

    Sexti Julii Frontini, viri consularis, quae extant. Robertus Keuchenius, S. F. notis et emendationibus...

    Amsterdam, Johann à Waesberge, 1661.

    The collected works of the first-century civil engineer and Roman general Frontinus, one-time governor of Roman Britain, edited and with extensive notes by the Dutch historian Robert Keuchen (1636–1673).

    £250

  4. GELLIUS, Aulus; [Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS, editor].

    Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti hominis cura...

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.

    Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s celebrated version, published the same year as the first edition. A commonplace book compiled by Aulus Gellius in the second century, the Attic Nights received several editions, of which the most highly regarded is that of Johann Friedrich Gronovius (Gronow,...

    £450

  5. GIBELLI, Giacinto. 

    Due dissertazioni sopra li vantaggi, che si ottengono in medicina dall’uso del ferro per guarire molte infermità,...

    Genoa, Paolo Scionico, 1767. 

    First and only edition, rare, of these treatises on the medicinal benefits of iron supplements, with accounts of their use by the author in curing over 450 patients of maladies ranging from anorexia to melancholy. 

    £600

  6. HYGINUS Gromaticus, attributed, and POLYBIUS.

    De Castris Romanis, quae extant. Cum notis & animadversionibus …

    Amsterdam, Jodocus Pluymer, 1660.

    First edition thus, with annotations by the politician Radboud Herman Scheele (1622–1662).

    £1000

  7. [JUVENILE.]

    [Library for Youth, or Book-Case of Knowledge, 10 vols.]

    London: Printed for John Wallis … by T. Gillet or J. Cundee … 1800.

    A fine complete set of Wallis’s ‘Library for Youth’ also known as the ‘Book-Case of Knowledge’, with all ten volumes in the first editions, dated 1800, and with two original designs (in reverse) for the frontispieces.

    £4750

  8. 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

  9. NIEUHOF, Jan, and Georg HORN (translator). 

    Legatio Batavica ad magnum Tartariae chamum Sungteium, modernum Sinae...

    Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1668. 

    First edition in Latin, beautifully illustrated, of Nieuhof’s account of his travels in China between 1655 and 1657, one of the most important early modern non-Jesuit studies. 

    £5000

  10. SCHEFFER, Johannes Gerhard. 

    Constantini Opelii de fabrica triremium Meibomiana epistola perbrevis ad amicum. 

    ‘Eleuteropoli’ [Freistadt?], 1672. 

    First edition of this treatise on the ancient oar-driven warships known as triremes by the noted German philologist and archaeologist Johannes Scheffer (1621–1679), written as a critical response to the De fabrica triremium liber of Marcus Meibom, which had appeared in Amsterdam the previous...

    £875

  11. SCHÜBLER, Johann Jacob, et al.

    Designs for furniture, funerary monuments, garden buildings.

    Augsburg, [c. 1710s–20s].

    An interesting sammelband containing over fifty handsome engraved plates with late Baroque designs for furniture, monuments, and summerhouses, published at Augsburg by Jeremias Wolff (1663–1724) and his heirs, and by Joseph Friedrich Leopold (1668–1727).

    £3750

  12. 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

  13. ERASMUS, Desiderius. 

    Paraclesis, id est adhortio ad sanctissimum ac saluberrimum Cristianae philosophiae studium … 

    Basel, Johann Froben, February 1520. 

    Attractive contemporary Erasmus sammelband, superbly eloquent in its physical union of three treatises without which the humanist’s Praise of Folly would risk gross misinterpretation. 

    £5500

  14. [GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.] ECKERMANN, Johann Peter; Dmitry Vasilievich AVERKIEV, translator.

    Разговоры Гете,...

    St Petersburg, A. S. Suvorin, 1891.

    First edition in Russian, very rare, of Eckermann’s famous Gespräche mit Goethe (1836-48). A professor of English and German at the University of Jena and later librarian at Weimar, Eckermann was Goethe’s companion and unpaid secretary from 1823 until Goethe’s death in 1832, and...

    £1500

  15. HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo von.

    Die Aegyptische Helena. Oper in zwei Aufzügen.

    [Leipzig, Mainzer Presse for Insel-Verlag, 1928.]

    First edition of Hofmannsthal’s text for Richard Strauss’s opera, one of 200 numbered copies – Hofmannsthal himself considered it to be his finest libretto.

    £750

  16. WEBER, Johann Adam.

    Discursus curiosi et fructuosi [ad praecipuas totius litteraturae humanae scientias illustrandas accommodate …].

    [Salzburg, Johann Baptist Mayr, 1690.]

    Third Salzburg edition of Weber’s wide-ranging discourses, in a handsome Bavarian binding for the Abbot of Ettal, Bernhard I Oberhauser, attributable to the monk Brother Gregor, a trained bookbinder from Hungary.

    £6000

  17. SCHILLER, Friedrich.

    Wallenstein ein dramatisches Gedicht …

    Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1800.

    First edition of Schiller’s dramatic Wallenstein trilogy, tracing the rise and fall of the Bohemian general Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years’ War, from the von Carlowitz library and perhaps associated with the play’s French translator, Baroness Aloïse-Christine de Carlowitz....

    £800

  18. 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

  19. MUSIL, Robert.

    Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer. Posse in drei Akten.

    Berlin, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1924.

    Rare first edition of Musil’s (1880–1942) early farce, featuring an abduction, extramarital affairs, and a staged murder.

    £500

  20. ANACREON.

    [Odaria.] Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...

    Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.

    Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G. C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions...

    £650