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  1. DICKENS, Charles. 

    The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club … with forty-three illustrations, by R. Seymour and Phiz. 

    London, Chapman & Hall, 1837. 

    First edition, first issue.  The Pickwick Papers was serialised in twenty parts from April 1836, the novel reaching its conclusion in November 1837, when it was also released as a three-decker.  It was both Dickens’s most popular work and the launch of his relationship with Hablot K. Browne...

    £2000

  2. SBRUGLIO, Riccardo. 

    Richardi Sbrulii equitis Foroiuliani Cesareiq[ue] poete ad magnificu[m] atq[ue] illustrem Maximilianu[m]...

    [Colophon:] Augsburg, Hans von Erfurt, 1519.

    First, very rare, edition, of Sbruglio’s Latin poems addressed to Maximilianus Transylvanus, published in the year that Charles V became Holy Roman Emperor.  A native of Cividale in northern Italy, Sbruglio (c. 1480 – after 1525) studied and taught at Wittenberg (where the rector compared...

    £1800

  3. JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianius, and Lucius FLORUS. 

    [Epitome historiarum:] Justini historici clarissimi in Trogi Pompei historias...

    [Venice, Bartolomeo Zani, 3 February 1503]. 

    A thoroughly annotated copy of a greatly influential compendium of Trogus’s monumental forty-four-book Historia of the world from Babylon to the Augustan era. 

    £3800

  4. [SCHLOSSER, Johann Albert].  BODDAERT, Pieter.

    Epistola ad … Hier. Dav. Gaubium … De chaetodonte diacantho, descripto atque...

    Amsterdam, apud M. Magerum, 1772.

    First and only edition of Boddaert’s description of the Royal Angelfish found in the Schlosser natural history cabinet.  This is the first monograph on the Royal Angelfish (and its first illustration), a now common species of coral fish in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. 

    £500

  5. [BLASPHEMY.] 

    Handlu[n]g eynes Ersamen weysen Rats zu Nürmberg, von dem grossen laster der Gotsschwür und zutrinckens, verpotten. 

    [Altenburg, Gabriel Kantz,] 1526.

    First edition, very rare, of a short pamphlet against blasphemy and drunkenness printed at a small press in Germany at the beginning of the Reformation.

    £1500

  6. NICOLAUS of Damascus, and Niels KRAG (editor). 

    Ex Nicolai Damasceni universali historia seu de moribus gentium...

    [Geneva or Heidelberg,] Pierre de Saint-André, 1593. 

    First edition of Krag’s translation of Nicolaus of Damascus’s observations on the customs of the peoples of the ancient world.  The observations on forty ancient peoples (among them the Iberians, Celts, Phrygians, Assyrians, and Ethiopians) are extracted from the Universal History...

    £300

  7. JAYADEVA, and Friedrich MAJER (translator).

    Gita-Govinda, ein Indisches Singspiel ... aus der Ursprache ins Englische...

    Weimar, Landes-Industrie-Comptoir, 1802.

    First and only separate edition of this uncommon German translation of Gita Govinda, a ‘devoutly erotic poem of the twelfth-century Bengali poet Jayadeva’ (ODNB).

    £475

  8. [JACOBUS DE GRUYTRODE, (attr.)]. 

    Lavacrum conscientie [omnium sacerdotum]. 

    [Colophon:] Cologne, Heinrich Quentell, 1504.

    Rare edition of this popular late medieval treatise widely ascribed to the Carthusian monk Jacobus de Gruytrode (c. 1400–1475). 

    £750

  9. [TURKS.]

    Ein Gebet wider die vorstehende Noth und Gefahr der Christenheit, wegen deß Türcken. 

    [Wittenberg?], Im Jahr 1593. 

    A 1593 pamphlet containing a German prayer against the Turks.  Throughout the sixteenth century the Ottoman empire remained a powerful existential threat to western European Christendom.  Following a comparatively lengthy period of peace, renewed skirmishes and border conflicts resurfaced in...

    £875

  10. BARBARO, Francesco. 

    De re uxoria libri duo, ut venustate sermonis praeclari, ita & praeceptis optimis & exemplis uberrimis ex...

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1639. 

    An attractive later edition of this famous treatise on marriage by the eminent Venetian humanist and politician Francesco Barbaro (1390–1454). 

    £275

  11. ISIDORUS A CRUCE. 

    Devoti admodum et consolatione pleni confessionales Psalmi septem in quibus peccator divinam pro criminibus...

    Dillingen, Johann Caspar Bencard, 1675. 

    Rare illustrated edition of this work devoted to confession and seeking forgiveness for sins by Isidorus a Cruce (d. 1681), abbot of St Charles the Great in Prague. 

    £450

  12. BRUNFELS, Otto. 

    Precationes Biblicae sanctoru[m] patrum, illustrium viroru[m] et mulierum utriusq[ue] Testamenti. 

    Strasbourg, Johannes Schott, 1528.

    First edition, rare.  The earliest Protestant prayer-books, of which this is perhaps the most notable example, often comprised prayers taken directly from (or adapted from) the Bible.  Brunfels’s Precationes Biblicae appeared in the same year in German translation (Biblisch Bettbüchlein...

    £3500

  13. [PRAYERS.] 

    Récueil de plusieurs prieres.   

    Vienna, ‘chez Georg Müllner libraire et relieur des livres’, [c. 1810].

    Very rare and charming early nineteenth-century prayer book in an attractive binding by the Viennese ‘libraire et relieur’ Georg Müllner. 

    £450

  14. BAIKIE, William Balfour.

    Narrative of an exploring voyage up the rivers Kwóra and Bínue (commonly known as the Niger and Tsádda)...

    London, John Murray, 1856.

    First edition recounting an expedition along previously uncharted waters of the Niger under the captaincy of the maritime naturalist and surgeon William Balfour Baikie. ‘The influence of Sir Roderick Murchison procured [Baikie] the post of surgeon and naturalist to the Niger expedition of 1854, and...

    £175

  15. BAKER, Samuel White.

    The Albert N’yanza, great basin of the Nile, and explorations of the Nile sources.

    Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott and London, Macmillan & Co, 1868.

    Third edition, recounting Samuel White Baker’s discovery of Lake Albert - ‘the great reservoir of the equatorial waters, the ALBERT N’YANZA, from which the river issues as the entire White Nile’ – in 1864. ‘After a year spent on the Sudan-Abyssinian border, during which time he learnt Arabic,...

    £125

  16. MELLAND, Frank Hulme, and Edward H.

    Cholmeley. Through the heart of Africa: being an account of a journey on bicycles and on foot...

    London, Constable & Company Ltd., 1912.

    First edition recounting the 1910 journey of two colonial administrators from northern Rhodesia through German East Africa, across Lake Victoria, and along the Nile River into South Sudan, a journey totalling more than 2,500 miles.

    £100

  17. WILSON, Charles Thomas and Robert William FELKIN.

    Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan ...

    London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882.

    First edition of this account of Sudan and Uganda by the medical missionary and explorer (and magician) Dr Robert Felkin (1853-1926) and the Rev. Charles Wilson. Wilson’s narrative includes chapters on Zanzibar, ‘life in Uganda’, ‘government and language of the Waganda’, and ‘voyage to Kagei...

    £250

  18. WILLOUGHBY, John Christopher.

    East Africa and its big game. The narrative of a sporting trip from Zanzibar to the borders of the...

    London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1889.

    First edition, signed by the author. ‘Willoughby and Sir Robert Harvey trekked into the virtually unknown region of the Tana River, the Taveta Forest and the area near Mount Kilimanjaro’ (Czech).

    £200

  19. THOMSON, Joseph.

    To the central African lakes and back: the narrative of the Royal Geographical Society’s East Central African...

    Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1881.

    Second edition, published in the same year as the first. ‘In 1878 Thomson was appointed geologist and naturalist to an expedition under Alexander Keith Johnston, which was sent out by the Royal Geographical Society for the exploration of East Central Africa ... By the death of Keith Johnston on 28...

    £850

  20. GRAY, William.

    Travels in Western Africa, in the years 1818, 19, 20, and 21, from the River Gambia, through Woolli, Bondoo, Galam,...

    London, John Murray, 1825.

    First edition, with fine aquatint plates. The Colonial Office’s Niger expedition, commanded by Major John Peddie, reached the River Senegal in November 1815; Peddie immediately fell victim to fever, leaving Staff Surgeon Dochard and Captain Gray to take over the mission. They set out with 100 men and...

    £350