Search results
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[ALMANACK.]
Al’manakh dlia vsekh. Kniga vtoraia [Almanack for all. Second book].
St Petersburg, “Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh”, 1911.
First edition, rare, the second of two annual literary almanacks with this title, with poems by Blok, Gorodetsky and Kuzmin, and short fiction by Chulkov, Gusev, Count Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Ivan Poroshin.
£200
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EHRENBURG, Il’ia Grigorievich.
Ogon’ [Fire].
[Gomel], “Veka i Dni”, 1919.
First edition. Although primarily known in the West as a prose writer and journalist (his novel Ottepel’ (The Thaw, 1954) coined the term for the era in the post-Stalin period), Ehrenburg (1891–1967) in fact wrote poetry all his life. The title for this collection, published...
£200
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LACTANTIUS.
Opera.
[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...
£25000
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SMITH, Albert.
A large archive of printed and manuscript material, including drafts of shows and lectures, including portions of...
[1820s to 1860s.]
Albert Richard Smith (1816–1860) trained as a surgeon but shortly afterwards turned to the world of letters, becoming a regular contributor to Bentley’s Miscellany and Punch; he adapted works by his friend Dickens for the theatre and edited The Man in the Moon (1847–9). ‘During...
£15000
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BARCLAY, Alexander.
Part-printed commission as Comptroller of Customs in Philadelphia.
5 August, 1749.
After a dissolute youth and a period in the army, Alexander Barclay (1711–1771) had been made Comptroller of Customs at Philadelphia in 1749, a position almost certainly engineered by his father David Barclay (1682–1769) – it required a significant sum (£500) advanced in security. David Barclay,...
£850
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AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].
Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.
Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.
First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.
£22500
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DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.
£2500
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LANCINA, Juan Alfonso Rodríguez de.
Historia de las reboluciones del Senado de Messina, que ofrece al sacro, Catolico, real nombre...
Madrid, Por Julian de Paredes, impressor de libros, en la Plaçuela del Angel, 1692.
First and only edition of this rare account of the anti-Spanish revolt of Messina, in Sicily, which broke out in 1674 and lasted until 1678, by Juan Alfonso Rodríguez de Lancina (c. 1649–1703). Lancina, a judge of the Grand Court of the Vicaria, the highest criminal court of the Kingdom of...
£2500
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SOONE, William, and Pomponius MELA.
Gulielmi Sooni Vantesdeni Auditor, sive Pomponius Mela disputator, De situ orbis.
Cologne, Johann Birckman, 1572.
First edition of English jurist and cartographer William Soone’s notes on Pomponius Mela’s geography, presented in the form of an imaginary dialogue between the two authors.
£1750
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TYRE, William, Archbishop of, and Giuseppe OROLOGGI (translator).
Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme,...
Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.
First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript detailing a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.
£2800
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ZEVIANI, Giovanni Verardo.
Del flato a favore degl’ipocondriaci.
Verona, Antonio Andreoni, 1755.
Rare first edition of the first medical treatise on tympanites, a distention of the abdomen caused by the accumulation of gas in the gastro-intestinal tract, linking it with hypochondria and melancholy.
£650
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MARLOWE, Christopher, and Konstantin BAL’MONT, translator.
Tragicheskaia istoriia doktora Fausta [The Tragedy...
Moscow, K.F. Nekrasov, 1912.
First edition in book form, scarce, of Balmont’s translation of Marlowe’s Faustus, first published over two issues of the journal Zhizn in 1898.
£500
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ROMANOV, Panteleimon Sergeevich.
Rus’ [Russia] …
Moscow, M. & S. Sabashnikov, 1923–4.
First edition of the first two parts of an epic novel, which describes rural life in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Three more parts came out over the next 12 years; complete copies are very rare.
£1200
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ROMANOV, Panteleimon Sergeevich.
...
[Moscow,] “Molodaia gvardiia”, 1927.
First edition, containing three stories: that of the title, Chelovecheskaia dusha (‘Human soul’), and Zvezdy (‘Stars’).
£400
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[DAGUERRE.] MAYER & PIERSON [after Charles Richard MEADE.]
Carte-de-visite albumen print portrait of Louis Daguerre.
Paris, late 1860s.
In 1848 the pioneering American photographer Charles Richard Meade secured the commission for which he is now best known, a series of daguerrotypes of the medium’s founding father Louis Jaques Mandé Daguerre. The five images, known as the white-tie series to distinguish them from other portraits,...
£1200
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SSYL’NYM I ZAKLIUCHENNYM.
St. Petersburg, [Vol’naia Tipografiia for “Shipovnik”], 1907.
Rare first edition of this anthology of stories, novellas and poems by Russian authors; a publication intended to raise funds in support of the exiled and imprisoned (as the title translates), the victims of the Tsarist reaction after the 1905 revolution. Among the mainly socially oriented and neo-realistic...
£350
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COMIDAS DE CARBOGNANO, Cosimo.
Primi principi della gramatica Turca ad uso dei missionari apostolici di Costantinopoli ...
Rome, stamperia della Sac. Congr. di Prop. Fide, 1794.
The first complete Ottoman Turkish grammar published in Italian, compiled by the Catholic Armenian dragoman Cosimo Comidas de Carbognano (translator to Count de Ludolf, minister of the Two Sicilies to the Ottoman Porte in the late eighteenth century) and published by the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda...
£1500
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WALLIS, William.
The Western Gentleman’s Farrier, containing Remedies for the different Diseases to which Horses are incident...
Troy (OH), John T. Tullis, 1838.
Second edition of an American work on farriery, with diseases found only in the Western States including ‘big head’ and ‘nasal polypi’. First published in 1832 on the observation that ‘most of the present works on Farriery, or more especially those adapted to our western climate, are...
£250
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[SCHOLZE, Johann Sigismund.]
Sperontes singende Muse an der Pleisse in 2 mahl 50 Oden, der neuesten und besten musicalische Stücke...
Leipzig, auf kosten der lüstigen Gesellschaft [Breitkopf], 1741.
Second edition of the first part, first edition of the second part – a hugely influential collection of German songs that laid the groundwork for the Romantic Lied. ‘Its engraved titles, imprinted notes and numerous charming woodcut vignettes make this one of the age’s most delightful...
£4500
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BLAND-SUTTON, John, Sir.
Man and Beast in eastern Ethiopia. From Observations made in British East Africa, Uganda, and the Sudan...
London, Macmillan and Co., 1911.
First edition, a presentation copy from the author to the Welsh surgeon Sir John Milsom Rees (1866–1952). Bland-Sutton (1855–1936) served as President of both the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal College of Surgeons.
£400