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  1. FERRI, Giovanni.

    Discours sur les principes de l’education lycéenne, prononcé à l’inauguration du Lycée d’Angers, par...

    Angers, Frères Mame, 1806.

    Only edition, rare, of this speech by the Italian writer and educationalist Giovanni Ferri de St. Constant (1755-1830), on the inauguration of the Lycée at Angers. Ferri, who had worked in France before the radicalisation of the Revolution had led to his exile in England, had returned to France with...

    £225

  2. [SIDNEY, John and Samuel.]

    Sidney’s Australian hand-book. How to settle and succeed in Australia: comprising every information...

    London, Pelham Richardson, 1848.

    A handsome copy of the ‘fifth thousand’ of this very successful handbook for prospective emigrants to Australia, published only six weeks after the first issue. The handbook was the work of the brothers John (b. 1821) and Samuel Sidney (1813-1883), the former having settled in New South Wales around...

    £650

  3. SHAW, Thomas.

    Travels, or observations relating to several parts of Barbary and the Levant, illustrated with cuts, the second edition,...

    London, A. Millar and W. Sandby, 1757.

    ‘Second and most valued edition’ (ODNB) of Shaw’s observations of North Africa and the Near East. Serving as Chaplain to the English factory at Algiers from 1720 to 1733, Thomas Shaw (1694–1751) travelled extensively in Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus, and North Africa, gathering extensive observations...

    £1200

  4. HANWAY, Jonas.

    An historical account of the British trade over the Caspian Sea, with a journal of travels from London through Russia...

    London, Dodsley, Nourse, Millar, Vaillant, & Patterson, Waugh, and Willock, 1753.

    First edition of Hanway’s narrative of his trade mission to Russia, Persia, and the Caspian Sea. Having joined the Russia Company in 1743, Jonas Hanway (1712–1786) sailed for Riga in April that year, before travelling on to St Petersburg, Moscow, and Astrakhan in an attempt to re-establish...

    £1400

  5. MAJOR, Richard Henry.

    The life of Prince Henry of Portugal, surnamed the navigator; and its results: comprising the discovery,...

    London, A. Asher & Co., 1868.

    First edition (published in 70 large paper copies), presented by the author to the Scottish explorer James Augustus Grant, who accompanied John Hanning Speke on his famous Nile expedition of 1860-63.

    £875

  6. MCCULLOCH, John Ramsay.

    Principes d’économie politique suivis de quelques recherches relatives à leur application et d’un...

    Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1851.

    First and only complete French translation, an association copy signed by the translator for the historian and member of the Académie française Pierre-François Tissot, and afterwards in the library of the economist and statist Michel Chevalier, who like Tissot held a chair at the Collège de France.

    £300

  7. PAGNINI, Giovanni Francesco; Francesco BALDUCCI PEGOLOTTI; Giovanni da UZZANO.

    Della decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal...

    Lisbona e Lucca, (vols. 3-4: e si vende da Giuseppe Bouchard librajo francese in Firenze), 1765-66.

    First edition, scarce on the market, of a highly important work in the history of economics and world trade. Pagnini (1714-89) worked in the financial department of the Tuscan government and published translations of several of Locke’s works. The Della decima is his most important work, giving ‘a...

    £5500

  8. [COURTESAN].

    Les confessions d’une courtisane devenue philosophe.

    Londres et Bruxelles, Le Francq, 1784.

    First edition (another appeared in the same year with a “Londres et se trouve à Paris” imprint) of this anonymous novel describing the ascent (or perhaps descent) of a courtesan into the world of the philosophe; naturally, she is of good family but is driven to be a courtesan by love,...

    £850

  9. GARINEAU, Sylvain-Jean.

    Rhum du Marin. S. Garineau, Bordeaux. En vente à La Brède chez Madame Vve Magna. Prix: 3 Francs le litre.

    [Bordeaux,] Moffre & Renouil, [c. 1890].

    An extremely rare broadside advertisement for rum, splendidly printed in the fin de siècle style, with vibrant colours, depicting anthropomorphic acrobatic animals.

    £300

  10. [GUARINI, Giambattista Lascaris].

    Ragionamenti filosofici.

    Rome, Gioacchino Puccinelli, 1785[-6].

    Only edition, very uncommon, of this collection of 33 essays on scientific and philosophical subjects, published with the aspiration to provide a complete course of physics and philosophy. The work is divided into four parts. The first deals with materialism and idealism, the physical attributes of bodies,...

    £875

  11. [ARNAULD, Antoine, and Pierre NICOLE.]

    La logique ou l’art de penser, contenant, outre les regles communes, plusieurs observations...

    Paris, Jean Guignart, Charles Savreaux, and Jean de Launay, 1662.

    Scarce first edition of the work known as the Port Royal Logic. The authors were leaders of the Port Royal movement, and the book displays the distinctive tone of earnest piety for which the movement became famous. La Logique was the most famous logic text of the seventeenth century and set the form...

    £1750

  12. [AYALA Y AGUILAR, José de.]

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

    Barcelona, 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, Bentham. The tract moves to a wider juridical consideration of the relationship between individuals and...

    £250

  13. AUDEN, W.H. Collected poems.

    Edited by Edward Mendelson.

    London, Faber and Faber, 1976.

    First edition. Denis Healey’s copy, with his signature dated 1976 to front free endpaper, his occasional marginal pencil marks, and a few notes to rear pastedown. Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey (1917-2015) served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970, Chancellor of the Exchequer from...

    £75

  14. [BAILEY, Samuel]

    The Rationale of Political Representation. By the author of essays on the formation of opinions, &c., &c.

    London: R. Hunter. 1835.

    First edition. The Rationale… examines many aspects of political representation, from chapters on the ‘Grounds of Preference for a Representative Government’ to a ‘Discussion of Changes in Political Institutions’. Alongside this extended treatise there are two further supplementary essays:...

    £250

  15. LEIGHTON, J. Harold.

    Collection of exhibition prints,

    1920s–1940s.

    An impressive international exhibition portfolio - by renowned Pictorialist and an expert in this process.

    £7500

  16. BALLOU, Adin.

    Practical Christian socialism: a conversational exposition of the true system of human society; in three parts, viz:...

    Hopedale and New York, by the author and Fowlers and Wells, 1854.

    First edition. Adin Ballou (1803-90), Universalist clergyman and leading American Christian social reformer, founded the utopian Hopedale Community in 1841, during the heyday of such communal experiments. He surrendered his presidency of Hopedale in 1852 in order to devote himself to expanding his movement...

    £450

  17. [PROSTITUTION.] CAR, officier de santé.

    Le veritable journal des femmes du Palais, ou suite du tableau de l’état phisique et...

    [Paris, 1790?].

    The second of three numbers of this very rare journal, compiled by ‘Car, officier de santé’, describing fifteen Palais-Royal prostitutes in considerable detail.

    £1250

  18. [RICCI, Pellegrino].

    Dissertazione sul costume di suonar le campane in occasione di temporali …

    Faenza, Lodovico Genestri, 1787.

    An attractive copy of this rare dissertation in which the author, a Minorite friar, attempts to demonstrate scientifically that the popular practice of ringing church bells during storms in the attempt to dissipate storm clouds and minimise the danger from lightning in fact had no effect. Ricci explains...

    £475

  19. 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

  20. [UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.]

    Subscription list for repairs to the College Chapel.

    [Oxford, c. 1860].

    A printed appeal from University College, signed by the Master Frederick Charles Plumptre (1796–1870), for funds to improve the interior of the Chapel, with an admission that ‘the College has no funds whatever to devote to such a purpose’. The list of subscribers contains some ninety names.

    £50