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  1. LUCANGELI, Carlo.

    Il colosseo di Roma della grandezza di palmi 2449 di circonferenza, ridotto alla circonferenza di palmi 40 49/60...

    Rome, Luigi Perego Salvioni, [1813].

    Rare account of the extraordinary scale model of the Colosseum, constructed over more than two decades decades by the architect and scenographer Carlo Lucangeli (1747-1812). Although cork models of ancient buildings had been popular for more than a century, this wooden model, depicting the Colosseum...

    £450

  2. DURINI, Angelo.

    Versi latini dell’ eminentissimo Sig. Cardinale Angelo Durini sopra il Cocchio Volante del Sig. di Montgolfier...

    [Milan, 1784.]

    First edition, with a parallel Italian translation, of these Latin verses commemorating the first Montgolfier experiments with balloon flight by the Milanese diplomat and cardinal Angelo Maria Durini (1725–1796).

    £1250

  3. GAYOT DE PITAVAL (Conseil).

    Question d’estat: fille reclamée par deux meres.

    Paris, Nicolas le Gras, 1716.

    First edition of this account by the famous advocate François Gayot de Pitaval (1673–1743) of a 1709 case, where a midwife had substituted a new-born girl who was then claimed both by the real mother and the woman to whom the baby had been given. Pitaval’s account details the principles by...

    £350

  4. ISOCRATES.

    Orationes et epistolae gravitatis et suavitatis plenae de Greco in Latinum pridem conversae, nunc recognitae, per Hieronymu[m]...

    Paris, Michel de Vascosan, 1553.

    A handsome Latin edition of twenty-one works by the Athenian orator Isocrates whose work was highly influential on later education, oratory and writing. Isocrates (436–338 BC) studied under Socrates and the sophists, before establishing a famous school of rhetoric which attracted pupils from...

    £750

  5. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...

    Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

    A lavishly illustrated catalogue, tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period. Some 367 printed books, manuscripts, and maps are presented in chronological order, highlighting the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented...

    £85

  6. GALIER, W.H.

    A visit to Blestland.

    London, George Robertson & co., 1896.

    First edition of this novel of utopian socialism which lambasts capitalism and religion. Blestland is a republican workers’ paradise located on a different planet which reveals how the divisions of earth can be abolished: by limiting ‘the enormous power for evil which capital can wield’....

    £280

  7. BRITISH MUSEUM.

    List of Missing English Theological and Devotional Books.

    [London, 1940s.]

    Mimeographed typescript of books missing after the losses suffered by the British Museum Library during the Second World War. This is one of several lists of books destroyed, produced both as a record and as a tool for acquiring replacement copies – this copy appears to have been used for that...

    £275

  8. COMTE, Auguste, and Albert CROMPTON (editor).

    Confessions and Testament of August Comte: and his correspondence with...

    Liverpool, Young, 1910.

    First edition in English of Comte’s Confessions, which first appeared with his ‘testament’ in French in 1884. These take the form of ‘Twelve Saint Clotildes’, a series of annual confessions which he recited to his muse’s grave. Clotilde de Vaux was a divorced woman whom Comte met...

    £80

  9. HUGHES, Ted.

    T.S. Eliot: A Tribute by the Poet Laureate.

    [London,] ‘Privately Printed by [the Salient Seedling for] Faber and Faber’, [August 1987].

    A privately printed tribute to T.S. Eliot, limited to 250 copies signed by Ted Hughes. The text comprises an address given by Hughes on 26 September 1986, at the unveiling of Eliot’s blue plaque at Kensington Court Gardens.

    £175

  10. [MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]

    Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...

    Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.

    Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...

    £375

  11. [SYPHILIS.]

    Della tabe dorsale ovvero della cura della consunzione negli uomini e nelle donne con la spiegazione de’ sintomi,...

    Venice, Graziosi, 1785.

    First Italian translation, uncommon, of Tabes dorsalis: or, the cause of consumption in young men and women, by ‘a Physician of Bristol’.

    £135

  12. STACEY, George et al.

    Daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits of Stacey and members of his family.

    London, 1850s.

    A handsome set of photographs of the English Quaker and abolitionist George Stacey (1787-1857), his second wife Mary née Barclay (1797-1876) and members of their extended family, taken by some of the finest portraitists in England at that time.

    £7500

  13. [FISCHER, Friedrich Christoph Jonathan, and Pierre-Gustave BRUNET (translator)].

    Les nuits d’érpeuve des villageoises...

    Paris, Jules Gay, 1861.

    First edition in French, numbered 26 of 100 copies, of this obscure study, first published in 1780 as Über die Probenächte der teutschen Bauernmädchen (‘On the Rehearsal Nights of Teutonic Peasant Women’). Brunet’s ‘postface’ builds on the comparisons made in Fischer’s original...

    £150

  14. ELIOT, George.

    The Writings …

    Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1908.

    The Large-Paper edition of Eliot’s complete works, no. 184 of 750 sets.

    £2500

  15. MURRAY, Thomas Boyles.

    Pitcairn: the Island, the People, and the Pastor. To which is added a short notice of the original settlement...

    London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, [1860].

    Twelfth edition (first edition published in 1853). ‘Rev. Murray, who was the secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, here recounts the voyages of the Bounty, the mutiny, Captain Bligh’s voyage in an open boat, the voyage of the Pandora, and includes material on Peter Heywood,...

    £100

  16. MUSGRAVE, George C.

    To Kumassi with Scott. A Description of a Journey from Liverpool to Kumassi with the Ashanti Expedition, 1895-6 …

    London, Wightman & Co., 1896.

    First edition of the author’s account of the 1895-6 Ashanti Expedition including a description of the perilous 140-mile march through the jungle to Kumassi. ‘The 1895-6 Expedition to Ashanti took place at a time when the British Empire was in a ferment; wars and rumours of wars abounded on all sides....

    £100

  17. ALMEIDA, Theodoro de.

    Lisboa destruida poema, author o P. Theodoro de Almeida, da Congregaçaõ do Oratorio de Lisboa.

    Lisbon, Antonio Rodrigues Galhardo, 1803.

    First edition of this poem in six cantos, with extensive notes, on the disastrous 1755 Lisbon earthquake, by the Oratorian priest and philosopher Almeida (1722-1804). One of the deadliest in history, the earthquake almost totally destroyed the Portuguese capital and accentuated political tensions within...

    £175

  18. [RICHARDSON, Jonathan].

    The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors …. London: Printed by W....

    London: Printed by W. Nicol, late Bulmer & Co. … 1822

    First edition, very rare. The Address is a revised version of the valedictory lecture given on 31 December 1818 to mark the centenary of the death of William Penn. It gives an explanation of the origins of the Society and then is entirely directed to the career and particularly the principles of William...

    £1600

  19. [JUVENILE.] 

    Preliminary lessons on the history of England, originally compiled for private use, and now adapted to the junior...

    Taunton, J. Poole, 1821. 

    Later edition of this uncommon Taunton-printed sketch of English history for use in primary schools, which first appeared in 1809.  After brief notes on Julius Caesar, the Saxons, and notable pre-Conquest kings, the book offers a short overview of the character of each monarch (and monarch substitute)...

    £135

  20. [ANGLO-SOVIET DIPLOMACY.] 

    Papers regarding the Anglo-Soviet Negotiations 1939.  Presented by the Secretary of State for Foreign...

    London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1939. 

    A proof copy, complete with typed errata attached, of this collection of ninety-five papers relating to the negotiations between the Soviet and British governments between March and December 1939. 

    £750