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  1. GELLIUS, Aulus [and Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS (editor)].

    Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti...

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.

    Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s version, published the same year as the first edition. A commonplace book compiled by Aulus Gellius in the second century, the Attic Nights received several editions, of which the most highly regarded is that of Johann Friedrich Gronovius (1611–1671),...

    £450

  2. [VIRGIL.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    ...

    Paris, André Wechel, 1564. 

    Second editions of Ramus’s extensive commentaries on Virgil’s two poems on country life, written in reaction to the dry doctrines of several French schools who based their teaching of nature on Aristotle’s Physics.  Ramus wanted to keep in contact with the concrete realities of nature...

    £950

  3. [CAESAR.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    Liber de militia C. Julii Caesaris, cum praefatione Joannis Thomae Freigii. 

    Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, 1584. 

    An attractively bound copy of Ramus’s uncommon treatise on Caesar’s military tactics, with unusual edge decoration.  The humanist Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) published widely on classical history and grammar while teaching at the Collège de France.  He was briefly forced from his post after...

    £450

  4. COLLIE, John Norman.

    Climbing on the Himalaya and other Mountain Ranges.

    Edinburgh, T. and A. Constable for David Douglas, 1902.

    First edition, published in the year that Collie (1859-1942) became professor of organic chemistry at University College London. ‘Besides his eminence as a scientist, [Collie] acquired great fame as a climber and explorer of mountains. Beginning with the Cuillin peaks in Skye, where he discovered many...

    £750

  5. MILLER, Henry.

    Tropic of Cancer.

    London, John Calder, 1963.

    First UK editions of both books. Laid in loose is a rare piece of ephemera, comprising articles written by Miller for the LA Times (‘Why I wrote “Tropic of Cancer”’) and by John Ciardi for the Saturday Review in 1963, ‘Reprinted by the Henry Miller Literary Society, Minneapolis’....

    £1500

  6. [CICERO, Marcus Tullius.] 

    Tully’s three Books of Offices, in English.  With Notes explaining the Method and Meaning of the...

    London, [W. Onley] for Sam. Buckley, 1699. 

    First edition of this translation by Thomas Cockman, who had prepared an edition of the original text in 1695, here provides copious footnotes and an index.  There were at least eleven further editions by the end of the eighteenth century. 

    £300

  7. [COMMON PRAYER.] 

    The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

    London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794. 

    A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy. 

    £1850

  8. FINÉ, Oronce. 

    Opere di Orontio Fineo … divise in cinque parti, arimetica, geometria, cosmografia, e orivoli, tradotte da...

    Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587. 

    First Italian edition of the works of Finé.  Among the most influential scientific scholars of the sixteenth century, over three decades at the Collège Royale Oronce Finé (1494–1555) made considerable contributions to various branches of mathematics, from geometry and arithmetic to astronomy...

    £2750

  9. CHRYSOSTOM, John. 

    [Opera: Homeliae.]  Que in secundo Ioannis Chrisostomi volumine continentur: Super Mattheum homelie 89 …...

    Venice, Stagnino & de Gregoriis, 1503. 

    First edition of Chrysostom’s Opera omnia, the second volume (of two), annotated throughout by two critical readers. 

    £2800

  10. [GELENIUS, Sigismund (editor).] 

    Notitia utraque, dignitatum, cum orientis, tum occidentis, ultra arcadii honoriique tempora,...

    Lyons, [Jacques du Creux for] Jean de Gabiano, 1608. 

    An expanded edition, illustrated on almost every leaf, of an anonymous fifth-century description of the Roman Empire. 

    £875

  11. CAVALCANTI, Bartolomeo. 

    La retorica … divisa in sette libri, dove si contiene tutto quello, che appartiene all’arte Oratoria. In...

    Venice, Gabriel Giolitto, 1559. 

    Second edition, published in the same year as the first with a few amendments, of the earliest Italian and most innovative treatise on rhetoric.  The author ‘builds an original account of rhetoric by adding Ciceronian and Hermogenean material to an Aristotle base’ (Mack, p. 172). 

    £2250

  12. LINNAEUS, Carl (or von LINNÉ), and James JENKINSON (translator). 

    A generic and specific Description of...

    Ashburner, and Lancaster, A. Ashburner, 1775. 

    First edition of this provincially printed partial translation of Linnaeus’s Genera plantarumIt precedes both William Withering’s The Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables naturally growing in Great Britain (1776), the first such work to be based on Linnaean taxonomy,...

    £225

  13. NADAL, [Augustin,] Abbé

    Herode: Tragedie nouvelle. 

    Paris, Pierre Ribou, 1709. 

    First edition of Nadal’s tragedy on King Herod, the second in the series of Biblical plays over which he quarrelled with Voltaire. 

    £275

  14. [PRAYERS.] 

    ‘Orationes diversae pro temporum opportunitate dicendae’. 

    [Likely Lucca, late eighteenth century.] 

    A delightful manuscript prayerbook for use in communal worship, most likely for a rural community, with prayers for help in times of plagues and of animal diseases, prayers seeking protection from storms and alleviation of droughts, for times of earthquakes, for the sick, and against pagans. ...

    £475

  15. MANTELL, A. M. (attr.).

    Views in North Wales.

    Circa 1880.

    A magnificent album of large-format views of North Wales and Chester, likely produced in celebration of the new harbour and hotel at Holyhead, which was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales in June 1880 – a group portrait of the event is depicted here.

    £6500

  16. AIKEN, Conrad.

    Thee.

    New York, George Braziller, 1967.

    First trade edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce [Bridson] / this little hymn of love / from Conrad / 1968’.

    £250

  17. AIKEN, Conrad.

    Ushant, an Essay.

    New York & Boston, Duell, Sloan and Pearce / Little, Brown and Company, [1952].

    First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey [Bridson] from Conrad. Ex – Xmas 1956’. Ushant, Conrad’s ‘autobiographical narrative’, is often considered his most significant work in prose.

    £300

  18. REXROTH, Kenneth.

    An Autobiographical Novel …

    Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.

    First edition, inscribed ‘In friendship / for Geoffrey Bridson / Kenneth Rexroth SF June 66’.

    £300

  19. ZUKOFSKY, Louis.

    Some Time. Short Poems …

    Stuttgart, Jonathan Williams, 1956.

    First edition, one of 300 copies, inscribed ‘for D. G. Bridson, Sept. 21, 1957, Louis Zukofsky’.

    £500

  20. DURRELL, Lawrence.

    Collected Poems.

    London, Faber and Faber, [1960].

    First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoff from Larry Durrell 1962 / “too much tape [?]” Eliot’.

    £400