Search results
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[MAISTRE, Xavier de.]
Voyage autour de ma chambre par M. le Chev. X*** *** O. A. S. D. S. M. S. [Officier au service de Sa Majesté...
Turin, 1794 [Lausanne, Isaac Hignou, 1795].
First edition, rare, of the celebrated fantasy novel Voyage around my Room, a parody of the grand travel narrative tradition, written by Xavier de Maistre (1763–1852), a Savoyard officer in the army of the Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia, during the forty-two days he spent in solitary confinement...
£2800
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MOSZKOWSKI, Alexander; [H.J. STENNING, translator].
The Isles of Wisdom.
London, George Routledge & Sons, 1924.
First English edition of Alexander Moszkowski’s dystopian satire, an imagined visit to a series of southeast Asian islands which each subscribe unreservedly to a different philosophical school of thought.
£250
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MATTHEW OF KRAKÓW; HEINRICH VON LANGENSTEIN.
Incipit dialogus rac[i]onis et co[n]scientie an expediat vel debeat quis raro vel...
[Cologne, Ulrich Zell, not after 1470].
Four works by two important fourteenth-century theologians, Matthew of Kraków (d. 1410) and Heinrich von Langenstein (d. 1397), the latter’s appearing here for the first time, issued by Cologne’s proto-printer Ulrich Zell.
£5500
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[DE LA GUTHÈRE.]
Du bon usage des eaux de Baignieres.
Agen, Antoine Bru … 1680.
Scarce second edition, revised, a guide to the waters at Bagnères-de-Bigorre in southwest France by a local physician, with a new dedication to the ten-year-old Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duc de Maine (1670–1736), son of Louis XIV and his mistress Madame de Montespan.
£600
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[FIRST AID – RAILWAYS.]
Ministère des chemins de fer, postes et télégraphes. Administration des chemins de fer de l’état. Manuel...
Ghent, F.& R. Buyck, 1912.
First separate edition, seemingly unrecorded, of this guide to first aid in a railway context, published by the state railway administration of Belgium.
£195
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[BYRON, George Gordon, Lord.]
Edward FINDEN, illustrator. [Landscape and Portrait Illustrations of Byron.]
[London, John Murray, 1833–4.]
Finden’s attractive engraved illustrations to the works of Byron, taken after drawings and paintings by Turner, Stanfield, Weston, and others, and his portraits of the Romantics after paintings in the Murrays’ collection, here with an autograph letter from the engraver to the Edinburgh publishers...
£850
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DONALDSON, Florence.
Lepcha Land or six Weeks in the Sikhim Himalayas ... With a Map showing Route, and 106 Illustrations. Photographs...
London, Sampson Low Marston & Company, 1900.
First edition of Florence Donaldson’s account of the Lepcha (or Rong) people of the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India, our copy from the library of the botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the first European permitted to trek through Sikkim.
£400
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KAVAN, Anna; Karl Theodor BLUTH.
The Horse’s Tale.
London, Gaberbocchus Press, [1949].
Uncommon first edition of this novel authored jointly by Kavan and her psychiatrist and friend Karl Theodor Bluth, written from the perspective of an ex-circus horse trying to find a place in postwar society and artistic circles, a criticism of prevailing trends in 1940s psychiatric treatment.
£850
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[1905 REVOLUTION.]
ЗРИТЕЛЬ [Zritel’; ‘The Observer’]. No. 24.
St Petersburg, “Sever”/A. M. Lesman, 24 December 1905.
Very rare penultimate number, confiscated by the authorities, of the very first of the satirical magazines to come out of the 1905 Revolution.
£750
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[CARTOUCHE.]
The Life and Actions of Lewis Dominique Cartouche: who was broke alive upon the Wheel at Paris, Nov. 28. 1721. N.S....
London, Printed for J. Roberts … 1722.
First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, of this life of the French highwayman Louis Dominique Bourguignon, alias ‘Cartouche’, broken on the wheel in 1721.
£1750
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GOUNOD, Charles François.
A volume of ten songs bound together, all signed and inscribed by Gounod to Arthur Cecil Blunt.
London, 1870–3.
Ten of Gounod’s London-published songs, specially bound for presentation, all signed and inscribed in pencil on the upper wrapper to the English actor Arthur Cecil: ‘To my friend Arthur C. Blunt. Ch, Gounod’.
£2000
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MOORE, George.
Manuscript commonplace book of poems, songs, prayers, and letters.
1805–1855.
An appealing commonplace book of verses and songs, with occasional prayers and letters, mostly written by George Moore (1794–1854), a London soda water manufacturer and amateur poet who was murdered by the notorious French revolutionary Emmanuel Barthélemy (1823–1855).
£550
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MUSIL, Robert.
Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer. Posse in drei Akten.
Berlin, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1924.
Rare first edition of Musil’s early farce, featuring an abduction, extramarital affairs, and a staged murder, an important precursor to his most famous work, the unfinished modernist novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities).
£500
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OSTROVSKY, Aleksandr Nikolaevich.
Бѣдная Невѣста. Бѣдная невѣста, комедія въ пяти дѣйствіяхъ....
Moscow, Stepanov, 1852.
First separate edition, rare, of the second play by one of the leading Russian playwrights of the nineteenth century, drawing attention to the plight of young women who forced to marry for money rather than love, thought by Turgenev to be one of Ostrovsky’s finest works.
£4000
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[SHEPHEARD, James.]
The Dying Speech of James Shepheard: who suffer’d Death at Tyburn, March the 17th, 1717/18. Deliver’d by...
[London, s.n., 1718.]
One of at least five printings of this ‘speech’ – allegedly written by the young Jacobite James Shepheard, hanged at Tyburn for planning the assassination of George I – some adding a hymn. Its inflammatory content makes it very unlikely that it was in fact delivered.
£750
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ANDERSEN, Hans Christian; Mary HOWITT, translator.
The Improvisatore: or, Life in Italy. From the Danish … Translated by Mary...
London: Richard Bentley … 1845
First edition in English of Andersen’s autobiographical novel reflecting his travels in Italy. The poet and novelist Caroline Norton (1808-1877) obviously valued it highly, and there are pencilled marginal scorings and underlings throughout. She was a granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and...
£550
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[TAYLOR, John.]
The Column called the Monument, described, erected to perpetuate the dreadful Fire of London in the Year 1666;...
Bryan … for Samuel Arnott, Keeper of the Monument. [1805?]
Third edition (first 1787) of this guidebook to London’s Monument, with an account of the Great Fire of 1666 which it commemorates, authored by the Monument’s first keeper.
£350
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GARRIDO, Joam Antonio.
Taboada curiosa, novamente reformada, e augmentada, em que se trata de todas as regras geraes, e especies...
Lisbon, Ignacio Nogueira Xisto, 1759.
Sixth edition of a rare Portuguese merchant’s guide. ‘This all-purpose handbook includes rates of exchange for European currencies, rules for basic math, instructions on bookkeeping for companies, rules of spelling and pronunciation, and a number of odd lists: e.g. notable items for the numbers...
£250
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AELIANUS, Claudius, Conrad GESSNER (translator), and Pierre GILLES (editor).
Περι ζωων ιδιοτητος...
Cologny, Philippe Albert, 1616.
Uncommon Geneva edition of Aelianus’s De animalium natura, the Greek printed in parallel with Gessner’s Latin translation. A third-century work on natural history, Aelianus’s text offers accounts and anecdotes of animals, ‘an appealing collection of facts and fables about the animal...
£300
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ADRICHEM, Christian van; Francesco BALDELLI, translator.
Gerusalemme e suoi dintorni ai tempi di Gesù Cristo. Mappa e...
Genoa, Tipografia arcivescovile, 1882.
Scarce first edition thus of Baldelli’s sixteenth-century translation of this guide to Jerusalem for pilgrims by the Dutch cartographer Christian van Adrichem, instrumental in popularising the Stations of the Cross and the basis for maps of the Holy Land well into the eighteenth century.
£200