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  1. 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

  2. SHAKESPEARE, [William]. 

    The Works of Shakespeare, the text of the First Folio with Quarto variants and a selection of modern...

    [Cambridge, University Press for] The Nonesuch Press, and New York, Random House, 1929 [– 1933]. 

    First Nonesuch edition, number 220 of 1600 copies, not only handsomely printed and bound but also an important scholarly edition, collating the texts of the First Folio against variants in preceding quarto editions. 

    £1450

  3. DE LUCA, Giovanni Battista. 

    Il Cardinale della S.R. Chiesa pratico di Gio. Battista de Luca nell’ozio Tusculano della Primavera...

    Rome, nella stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, 1680. 

    Scarce first edition of this thorough work on the cardinalate by the Italian jurist and cardinal De Luca (1614–1683).  De Luca studied and practiced law at Naples before moving to Rome in 1645, where he established his reputation as one of Italy’s pre-eminent jurists and worked closely with...

    £300

  4. KELLER, Martialis.

    Neueröffnete Himmels-Schule, in welcher aus zwölf, als so vielen Theilen vorgesetzten Lehrpunkten verschiedene...

    Augsburg, Matthäus Riegers, 1793.

    Rare later edition of this educational and devotional work by the Bavarian Benedictine Martialis Keller, containing prayers, exercises, and points of doctrine, and illustrated with attractive engravings, this copy in a contemporary local binding.

    £500

  5. [DEFOE, Daniel.] 

    [Incipit:] Ye True-born Englishmen proceed … 

    [London, 1701.] 

    One of a number of editions (at least seven) in 1701, priority not established, of this popular poem attacking Parliament for its failure to support the Dutch against the aggressions of Louis XIV of France.  The texts ‘vary considerably’ (Moore) across the printings, which all appeared without...

    £1000

  6. QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius, and Pierre GALLAND (ed.).

    M. Fabii Quintiliani … de oratoria institutione livre XII....

    Paris, Thomas Richard, 1554 [– 1550-1561].

    A mixed edition of Pierre Galland’s Quintilian, a hugely successful project from its first appearance in 1538. This copy joins the Institutio oratoria with the (now believed to be spurious, if contemporary) Declamationes, and conforms with the copy held at the Arsenal.

    £700

  7. COCCHI, Antonio.

    ‘Consulto medico sopra il contagio della tabe polmonare’.

    ‘Florence, 1753’.

    An attractively written manuscript copy of this important medical report on pulmonary tuberculosis composed for the health authorities in the city of Florence by the eminent physician Antonio Cocchi (1695–1758) on behalf of the city’s medical college.

    £450

  8. [INTERSEX.]

    Three pamphlets.

    Paris, 1892–1920.

    A collection of rare French pamphlets on the subject of differences in sex development from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two of the three pamphlets are doctoral theses, covering the social impact of differences in sex development, and persistent müllerian duct syndrome (‘tubular...

    £450

  9. SIMON, John, Sir.

    A volume of autograph letters received by Sir John Simon from medical friends and acquaintances.

    Circa 1848-1887.

    An interesting collection of letters to Sir John Simon and Lady Simon, from many of the leading physicians and surgeons of the Victorian era. Sir John Simon (1816–1904) was a renowned surgeon, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and an efficient and dynamic reformer of public health...

    £1250

  10. GALLICO, Paul.

    An archive of thirty-four scrapbooks compiled by Gallico.

    1928–1972.

    A lovingly and meticulously compiled archive of the writing career of the novelist Paul Gallico. The scrapbooks are arranged chronologically and by book/film with letters, telegrams, publicity materials, photographs and ephemera neatly intermingled with copies of reviews and reactions from local,...

    £5500

  11. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Vulgar Streak.

    London, Robert Hale Ltd., 1941.

    First edition, first impression, a scarce work because of wartime paper shortages and, possibly, the destruction of a portion of the first impression in the Blitz; certainly Robert Hale’s offices were bombed and the records destroyed, and the work was reprinted within a month.

    £750

  12. SOLDANI, Jacopo. 

    Lezione di Jacopo Soldani sopra il Brindisi recitata da lui nell’Accademia Fiorentina il dì 20 di gennaio...

    Florence, Tipografia della pia casa di Patronato, 1886. 

    First and only edition of satirist Jacopo Soldani’s 1597 debut address to the Accademia Fiorentina on the art of making a toast. 

    £75

  13. HUGHES, Langston. 

    Shakespeare in Harlem. 

    New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1942.

    First edition of this wartime collection of poems, inscribed shortly after Hughes and Bridson met for the first time: ‘For Geoffrey Bridson, with the friendship, and regards of Langston Hughes. New York, January 28, 1944’.

    £1000

  14. ARISTIDES, Aelius. 

    Orationum tomi tres, nunc primum latine versi a Gulielmo Cantero Ultraiectino.  Huc accessit orationum tomus...

    Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566. 

    First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino.  The translation was prepared from the Greek by the German scholar Wilhelm Canter (1542–1575), author of an acclaimed Syntagma, a systematic...

    £2750

  15. SENECA, Lucius Anneus. 

    Tragoediae pristinae integritati restitutae, per exactissimi judicii viros post Avantium & Philologum … 

    Paris, Badius Ascensius, 1514. 

    First edition edited by Erasmus and Badius Ascensius, a landmark in the history of Seneca’s textual tradition.  This key work, the product of a collaboration between two wholly committed humanists, cannot have been accomplished without some friction: Erasmus had allowed Badius to make use of...

    £1750

  16. PLINY the Younger.

    Epistolarum libri X & panegyricus.

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1640.

    First Elzevir edition, handsomely bound for the Irish politician Thomas Wogan Browne.

    £450

  17. NEPOS, Cornelius. 

    De vita excellentium imperatorum.  Interpretatione et notis illustravit Nicolaus Courtin … in usum serenissimi...

    Paris, Frères Barbou, 1726. 

    An attractive later Delphin edition (first 1675) of Cornelius Nepos’s LivesThe only surviving work by the first-century BC biographer Cornelius Nepos, the Vitae excellentium imperatorum once formed part of a broader De viris illustribus.  The Lives include Themistocles,...

    £275

  18. CURTIUS Rufus, Quintus. 

    De rebus Alexandri Magni, cum commentario perpetuo & indice absolutissimo Samuelis Pitisci, quibus accedunt...

    Utrecht, Franciscus Halma, 1685. 

    First Halma edition of Curtius’s history of Alexander the Great, with a series of accomplished etched illustrations by Jan van den Aveelen. 

    £375

  19. LIVY, Titus. 

    T. Livii Patauini […] ex XIIII Decadibus Historiae Romanae ab Urbe condita, Decades, prima, tertia, quarta,...

    Paris, [Michel Vascosan for] Oudin Petit, 1543 [– Michel Vascosan for himself and Oudin Petit, 1542]. 

    A much-praised edition of Livy’s History, reprinting Vascosan’s 1535 edition and including the philological corpus on Livy by the most established humanists of the time: Rhenanus, Gelenius, Grynaeus, Glareanus, Badius Ascensius, Valla, and Sabellico. 

    £3800

  20. TACITUS. 

    C. Cornelius Tacitus, cum optimis exemplaribus collatus. 

    Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1678. 

    A remarkably fresh set of the third and final Elzevir edition of this format, reprinted from the edition of 1665. 

    £275