Search results
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PEPE, Stefano.
[Half-title: ‘Il Cappuccino d’Este del Padre Pepe’] ‘Historia Della Vita, e della Morte, et Attioni...
[Italy, second half of the seventeenth century.]
A seemingly unpublished life of Alfonso III d’Este, Duke of Modena, who renounced his title to become a Capuchin friar.
£1250
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[ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]
Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.
First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.
£1500
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APULEIUS, Lucius.
L. Apuleii Metamorphoseos, sive lusus Asini libri XI. Floridoru[m] IIII. De deo Socratis I. De philosophia...
Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri’, May 1521.
First Aldine edition of the works of the second-century AD Numidian novelist Apuleius, with the editio princeps of Alcinous’s second-century handbook on Plato’s philosophy in the original Greek, from the library of the great French writer Victor Hugo.
£2000
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SCARRON, Paul.
Le Marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste. Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée a Paris.
[Leiden, Elzevier], 1656.
First Elzevier editions, very rare, of these two plays by Scarron, pirated after the text of the first editions printed in Paris. A finely bound volume with excellent Elzevierian provenance.
£800
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STANYHURST, William.
Veteris hominis per expensa quatuor novissima metamorphosis, et novi genesis.
Antwerp, Cornelius Woons, 1661.
First edition, rare, of this work on the Four Last Things by the Irish Jesuit William Stanyhurst (1601–1663), illustrated with five striking full-page emblematic engravings.
£875
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AESOP.
The Fables … With a Life of the Author: and embellished with one hundred & twelve Plates …
London, Printed for John Stockdale … 1793.
Second Stockdale edition, a paginary reprint of the first with the text reset using a short ‘s’ throughout; the translation was that of Samuel Croxall. Stockdale’s Aesop was notable for the extensive suite of illustrations, with plates by some thirty engravers including Stothard and Landseer,...
£6500
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RINUCCINI, Giovanni Battista.
Le capucin Escossois. Histoire merveilleuse, et tres veritable, arrivée de nostre-temps. Traduitte...
Paris, Jean Guignard, 1650.
First edition of François Barrault’s French translation of Rinuccini’s biography of the Scottish Catholic convert George Leslie (d. 1637?), a special issue decorated in gold and colour – another example bound and decorated thus, also without the index, is to be found in BM Lyon (with provenance...
£1250
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[VERACI, Gaetano.]
Nuova cicalata sopra la coda in forma di lettera responsiva alla Signora N.N.
[S.l., s.n,. c. 1770.]
Second edition, extremely rare and significantly expanded, of this highly suggestive, mock-academic panegyric on the ‘tail’.
£850
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JACQUEMOT, Jean.
Variorum poematium liber.
[Lyons,] Jean de Tournes, 1601.
Very rare first edition of this collection of neo-Latin Protestant biblical poetry by Jean Jacquemot (1543–1615), a notable Geneva preacher, poet, and translator, friend of Theodore Beza, here with the original French in civilité type.
£875
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SOWERBY, J[ohn] G[eorge], and Thomas CRANE, illustrators. [Eliza KEARY.]
At Home.
London and Belfast, Marcus Ward & Co., [1881].
Original maquette for this charming Victorian children’s book, illustrated by the stained-glass designer John George Sowerby and decorated by Thomas Crane, elder brother of the illustrator Walter Crane. The verse, unacknowledged, is by Eliza Keary (1827–1918). At Home and its sequels Abroad...
£500
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FENOUILLOT DE FALBAIRE, Charles-Georges.
Le fabricant de Londres, drame en cinq actes et en prose; représenté à la Comédie...
Paris, chez Delalain, 1771.
First edition of a London-set play by the French dramatist and contributor to the Encyclopédie, Fenouillot de Falbaire (1727–1800), illustrated with five fine plates after Gravelot.
£250
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MONTLOSIER, Francois-Dominique de Reynaud, comte de.
Le peuple Anglais bouffi d’orgueil, de bière et de thé, jugé...
Paris, chez Surosne, An IX (1803).
First edition, scarce on the market, of a virulent and amusing anti-English tirade by the French politician Montlosier (1755–1838), written on the eve of the Napoleonic Wars.
£375
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ELISABETH, Empress of Austria.
A collection of six manuscript scores from the library of Elisabeth (‘Sisi’), Empress...
1850–60s.
Elizabeth Amalie Eugenie of Bavaria (1837–1898), or ‘Sisi’, married Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria at the age of 16, on 24 April 1854. Her first child, a daughter, was born 11 months later but died as an infant (see below), and a male heir had to wait until the birth of Crown Prince Rudolf...
£3750
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COLERIDGE, Stephen.
A collection of inscribed and association copies.
[London, 1889–1930.]
A small archive of personal and association first editions inscribed by Stephen Coleridge (1854–1936), writer, barrister, anti-vivisectionist, and eccentric.
£650
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[MARRIAGE LOTTERY.]
The Sure Chance; or, a new Million Adventure. Wherein all are certain of getting Something. Invented...
London, J. Whitlock, 1694.
First edition, very rare, a satire on the lottery vogue of the mid-1690s: ‘the whole Town, nay, the whole Nation … is addicted to the pleasant and sometimes profitable Diversion of Publick Lotteries; we have seen Lotteries for old Plate, new Cabinets, China Dishes, and Womens Dresses …’.
£6250
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PLAUTUS.
M. Accius Plautus ex fide, atque auctoritate complurium librorum manuscriptorum opera Dionys. Lambini Monstroliensis...
Paris, Jean Le Blanc for Jean Macé, 1577 [– October 1576].
Reissue of the 1576 first edition of the plays of Plautus edited by the great French classical scholar Denis Lambin (1520–1572) and completed after his death by the Parisian professor of Greek, Jacques Hélie (d. 1590).
£650
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[MISSAL.]
Missal, in Latin, with readings for the first Sunday in Advent.
Southern Netherlands or northern France (Arras?), c. 1425.
A remnant of what must have been an exceptionally grand missal, with illumination of considerable finesse. We have been unable to trace any other leaves from the same manuscript.
£3250
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[HOMILIARY.]
Homiliary, in Latin, with parts of Augustine’s Sermones de Scripturis (Migne, Patrologia Latina 38,...
Germany, eleventh century.
The first leaf here contains parts of sermon 178 from Augustine’s Sermones de Scripturis. Chapter six of the sermon is based on Ecclesiasticus 31,8 and part of 31,10: ‘Blessed is the rich that is found without blemish, and hath not gone after gold’, and ‘Who might offend, and hath not...
£1750
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JOHN DE BURGH.
Pupilla oculi.
England, c. 1400.
John de Burgh’s Pupilla oculi was a handbook of canon law and pastoral theology for parish priests. It was mainly derived from the Oculus sacerdotis by William of Paull (or Pagula), written in 1320–28, and was probably composed c. 1380–85, when for part of that time John de Burgh...
£1750
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MASTER B.F.
Three very large historiated initials cut from a set of choirbooks.
Italy (Lodi), early sixteenth century.
Three extremely fine initials by the enigmatic artist known as Master B.F., one of the most inventive and accomplished illuminators of the Italian High Renaissance. They come almost certainly from a magnificent set of about twenty choirbooks belonging to the Olivetan monastery of Santi Angelo...
£150000