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  1. TENNYSON, Arthur, Lord.

    Enoch Arden, etc.

    London: Edward Moxon & Co. … 1864.

    First edition, the issue with the earliest (August) state of Moxon’s inserted eight-page catalogue.

    £175

  2. ‘SANCTA CLARA, Abraham a’, i.e. Johann Ulrich MEGERLE.

    Coraggio e viltà, l’uno nella virtù, l’altra nel vizio....

    Trento, Giovanni Parone, 1717.

    Scarce first and only Italian edition of Abraham a Sancta Clara’s emblematic moral treatise Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt, printed in Trento with one hundred striking – albeit somewhat provincial – woodcuts after the engravings in the first German edition of 1707.

    £2250

  3. VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator

    Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565. 

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. 

    £1250

  4. STAVORINUS, Johan Splinter, and Samuel Hull WILCOCKE, translator.

    Voyages to the East-Indies … Translated from...

    London, for G.G. and J. Robinson, 1798.

    First edition in English of a first-hand account of two VOC voyages by Stavorinus (1739–1788): the first, 1768–71, to Batavia, Bantam and Bengal; the second, 1774–78, to Samarang, Macassar, Amboyna, Surat, and the Malabar Coast, corrected thanks to the translator’s connection to the author’s...

    £850

  5. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Bolemir IZBORSKÝ, pseud. [i.e. Antonín MAREK], translator.

    Omylowé dle Shakespeara...

    Prague, Jozefa Fetterlowá, ‘in the Archbishop’s Printing House at the Seminary’, 1823.

    First edition in Czech, very rare, of A Comedy of Errors, freely translated by Antonín Marek (1785–1877), one of the earliest appearances of Shakespeare in the language, preceded only by a very rare translation of Macbeth by Karel Ignác Thám (Makbet, 1786), which was staged...

    £1100

  6. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Mihály VÖRÖSMARTY, translator

    Lear Király … 

    Pest, Landerer & Heckenastn, 1856. 

    First edition of the first translation of King Lear into Hungarian by Mihály Vörösmarty, commissioned by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and carried out as part of a joint effort between three of Hungary’s most renowned poets. 

    £950

  7. UGARTE, Manuel, and Georges FOUCART, translator.

    ‘Contes de la Pampa’: a manuscript translation of Ugarte’s...

    Paris, [c. 1923–5].

    A fine, largely unpublished manuscript, with translations of all fourteen stories from Miguel Ugarte’s Cuentos de la Pampa (1903, here translated from the 1920 edition).

    £1750

  8. ROSCOMMON, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of.

    An Essay on Translated Verse …

    London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1684.

    First edition of Roscommon’s influential Essay, in heroic couplets, which owes much to Boileau and to the author’s own education in France after the attainder of his kinsman the Earl of Strafford, with an introductory poem by Dryden.

    £450

  9. HALLAM, Arthur Henry. 

    Remains, in Verse and Prose … 

    [London,] Printed by W. Nicol, 1834.

    First edition, a presentation copy from the editor, the historian Henry Hallam, to his late son’s friend and fellow Cambridge ‘Apostle’ James Spedding.  The prefatory memoir by Hallam senior includes a long letter from Spedding (‘one of his most valued friends’) (pp. xx-xxvi),  here...

    £5000

  10. FERRARI, Giovanni Francesco. 

    Le rime burlesche, sopra varii, et piacevoli soggetti; indrizzate à diversi nobili signori. 

    Venice, heirs of Melchior Sessa, 1570.

    First edition of the only work published by Giovanni Francesco Ferrari (d. 1588?), a Renaissance court poet of whom little is known, including poems in macaronic Spanish, several Italian dialects, and in lingua zerga, or furbesco, derived from the jargon of criminals.

    £1250

  11. SICARDO, José.

    Christiandad del Japon, y dilatada persecucion que padecio. Memorias sacras, de los martyres de las ilustres religiones...

    Madrid, Francisco Sanz, 1698.

    Rare first edition of this important and comprehensive account of Christian missions to Japan by the Spanish Augustinian José Sicardo (1643–1715).

    £12000

  12. [BECCARIA, Cesare.]

    Dei Delitti e delle pene. Edizione sesta di nuovo corretta ed accresciuta.

    Harlem, et se vend a Paris, chez Molini, 1766.

    Sixth edition, expanded to forty-seven paragraphs, of Beccaria’s principal work, one of the founding texts of penology and an important statement of criminal law reform, here with the additions of the ‘Giudizio di celebre professore sopra il livro dei delitti e delle pene’ and ‘Risposta...

    £750

  13. FERDOWSĪ.

    Shāhnāmah.

    Tehran, Amir Kabir, AH 1350 [AD 1971].

    A lavishly-produced edition of the Shāhnāmah (or Shahnameh), rare in the dustjacket, one of a thousand copies printed to mark the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire.

    £4750

  14. BENTHAM, Jeremy.

    The elements of the art of packing, as applied to special juries, particularly in cases of libel law …

    London, Effingham Wilson, 1821.

    First published edition (first printed 1810), of Bentham’s criticism of English libel law, which he had always detested, and which more than once stood in the way of the free publication of his opinions. When the work was written, the law’s injustice had recently been made obvious in a series of...

    £250

  15. [AYALA Y AGUILAR, José de.]

    Examen del derecho de vida y muerte, egercido por los gobiernos. Escrito por un Cubano.

    Barcelona, Ignacio Estivill, 1838.

    First edition of a Cuban treatise of criminal law, a forceful impugnation of capital punishment which invokes arguments and schemes from, among others, Filangieri, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Rousseau, and Bentham.

    £250

  16. [JULY REVOLUTION.]

    Habitans de Paris, les députés de la France, en ce moment réunis à Paris, m’ont exprimé le desir que...

    [Paris], imprimerie de A. Guyot, [31 July 1830].

    A seemingly unrecorded copy of Louis Philippe’s famous proclamation of 31 July 1830 accepting the position of Lieutenant-Général du Royaume in the wake of the July Revolution. Just days later Charles X would abdicate, and Louis Philippe would be proclaimed King of the French. Less than eighteen years...

    £100

  17. [CUSTOMARY LAW.]

    Rechten, ende costumen van Antwerpen [and] Ordonnantie ende verhael vanden stijl ende maniere van procederen voor...

    Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1582.

    First edition of this compendium of customary law for the city of Antwerp, printed by Christophe Plantin, with extensive marginal annotations by two early readers. Compiled by the advocates Carel Gabri and Philips van Mallery, the work was printed in only a few hundred copies destined for the city’s...

    £1250

  18. GIZZI [or GITTIO], Andrea Giuseppe.

    Lo scettro del despota, overo del titolo, e dignità dispotale, discorso istorico,...

    Naples, G. Raillard, 1697.

    Only edition of this extraordinary and rare study of legal, ceremonial, and political roles of the despot, or despotes, a class of prince akin to a king and beneath an emperor in the power structures of both the Byzantine world and Renaissance Italy, and thus a title used both in Venice and...

    £2500

  19. [HUNTING].

    Anno Regni Georgii III. Regis Magnae Britannie, Franciae & Hiberniae, Decimo Tertio. At the Parliament begun and holden...

    Edinburgh, printed by Alexander Kincaid, His Majesty’s Printer, 1773.

    Unrecorded edition of an act ‘for the more effectual preservation of the Game in that Part of Great Britain called Scotland’, which brought Scottish game law in line with English. The act sets out the strict hunting seasons for each type of game (muir fowl or tarmargen are banned between 10 December...

    £150

  20. [CAVALLERI, Paolo Agostino.]

    Lettera dall’Adriatico del signor Antonio Bianchi sopra l’opera de’diritti dell’uomo del sig....

    Rome, Giovanni Zempel, 1792 (colophon 1793).

    First edition, uncommon, of this counter-revolutionary polemic written in response to Spedalieri’s I diritti dell’uomo of the previous year and attributed to the Barnabite Paolo Agostino Cavalleri (1742-1803). Spedalieri had attempted a Catholic response to the revolutionary ideas of the rights of...

    £375