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  1. POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.

    Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].

    Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.

    £30

  2. MONTANUS, Arnoldus (attributed), John OGILBY (translator).

    Atlas Chinensis: being a second part of a relation of...

    London, Thomas Johnson for the author, 1671.

    First English edition, copiously and handsomely illustrated, recounting Balthasar Bort and Pieter van Hoorn’s embassies to China on behalf of the Dutch East India Company and containing a full general description of China ‘unsurpassed in detail, illustration, influence and popularity’ (Bibliotheca...

    £12000

  3. SCHÜBLER, Johann Jakob.

    Amor, vehementer quidem flagrans; artificiose tamen celatus, de Pantalonis custodiaque triumphans, intentato...

    Augsburg, Johann Michael Probst, [c. 1770?].

    Rare series of twelve engravings inspired by the Italian commedia dell’arte, one of the most beautiful books of the German Rococo, engraved by Johann Balthasar Probst after original illustrations by the architectural painter, sculptor, and mathematician Johann Jakob Schübler.

    £7500

  4. [USTONSON, Onesimus.]

    [SMITH, John?]. The True Art of Angling: being a clear and speedy Way of taking all Sorts of Fresh-water...

    London: Printed for Onesimus Ustonson … 1770.

    The last eighteenth-century edition of an angling classic first published in 1696 and much reprinted and updated by other authorities. Having ‘passed several editions’, the introduction claims, it has been revised to omit ‘superfluous’ oils and ointments, ‘carefully corrected’ throughout,...

    £750

  5. MARKHAM, Gervase.

    Cavalarice, or the English Horseman: Contayning all the Art of Horse-manship, asmuch as is necessary for any...

    London, Edward Allde for Edward White, [1616–] 1617.

    A beautiful copy of the second edition, ‘corrected and augmented’, of Markham’s Cavalarice, exceptionally well-preserved in a contemporary binding, from the library of the antiquary Sir John Marsham.

    £12000

  6. WALKER, George.

    Don Raphael, a Romance …

    London: Printed for G. Walker; and T. Hurst; by Exton ... 1803.

    First edition. ‘In order to satisfy the omnipresent needs of the Gothic industry, Walker apparently felt obliged to turn out a Gothic’s Gothic made up of fragments of Walpole, Beckford, Lewis, Radcliffe, and the cheap and tawdry Gothic chapbooks flooding the bookstalls. The dubious product...

    £3250

  7. WALKER, George.

    The three Spaniards, a Romance …

    London: Printed by Sampson Low; for G. Walker ...; and Hurst ... 1800.

    First edition, very rare; the very brief Preface sets the popular tone: ‘In compliance with the present taste in literary amusement, this work is presented to the Public.’

    £4000

  8. HAYWARD, Thomas.

    The British Muse, or, a Collection of Thoughts moral, natural, and sublime, of our English Poets: who flourished...

    London, Printed for F. Cogan … and J. Nourse … 1738.

    First edition of this interesting antiquarian miscellany of literary extracts. The subjects, arranged alphabetically, range from ‘Abbeys’ to ‘Youth’ via ‘Abstinence’, ‘Hypocrite’ ‘Mediocrity’ ‘Rebellion’ ‘Self-Murder’, and ‘Travel’. The authors quoted include Beaumont,...

    £575

  9. THOMAS, Dylan.

    Under Milk Wood. A Play for Voices …

    London, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1954.

    First edition, first impression. Bridson and Thomas had first met in 1933, but they did not get on; their tastes in poetry clashed and Thomas dumped a pot of tea over the eiderdown while staying with the Bridsons in Manchester. So Bridson passed the Welshman on to the radio producer Rowland Hughes, and...

    £1500

  10. [HOMILETIC.] 

    Meditations de la seconde annee. 

    [France, c. 1700.] 

    Apparently unpublished set of meditations for the Sundays in the liturgical year running from the seventh to the twenty-fourth week after Pentecost, shedding light on tools and practices in the homiletic art.  Themes range from reflections on the Eucharist, to considerations on mortality, on...

    £750

  11. POPE, Alexander.

    Windsor-Forest. To the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdown …

    London: Printed for Bernard Lintott … 1713.

    First edition of Pope’s second separately published poem, preceded by An Essay on Criticism in 1711. Written in the tradition that young poets begin with pastoral verse, Windsor-Forest, with its epigraph from Virgil’s Eclogues, was the poem that first won Swift’s regard and...

    £2750

  12. M’LEOD, John.

    Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Alceste, along the coast of Corea, to the Island of Lewchew; with an account of...

    London, John Murray, 1818.

    Second edition (first 1817), with five handsome aquatints, of this account of the voyage of the Alceste to China with Lord Amherst’s embassy, by the ship’s surgeon M’Leod.

    £275

  13. HAMILTON, William, of Monkland.

    Manuscript account book,

    1706–53.

    Manuscript account book with 41 entries recording payments to William (later Andrew) Hamilton of Monkland, Lanarkshire, by William Main of Meadowhead, of four pound Scots due annually for the ‘few duty’ (an annual land rent) on the farm of Meadowhead. The first entry is for £12 for the years 1704–6,...

    £5000

  14. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Lion and the Fox. The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare …

    London, Methuen & Co. Ltd., [1955.]

    Reprint of the second edition of Lewis’s ‘first political book’, a collection of essays engaging with Shakespeare and Machiavelli first published in 1927 and then reissued by Methuen in 1951; inscribed in a very shaky hand ‘To Geoffrey Bridson from Wyndham / Oct 1956’.

    £300

  15. THORNTON, Robert John, and Joseph DUFFOUR (translator).

    Preuves de l’efficacité de la vaccine, suivies d’une...

    Paris, Chomel, 1807.

    First French translation of Thornton’s Facts decisive in favour of the cow-pock, which first appeared in 1802 and swiftly ran through numerous editions. Thornton (1768–1837) attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of St Andrews, before lecturing on medical botany at Guy’s...

    £200

  16. MEITNER, Lise, and Otto R. FRISCH. 

    On the Products of the Fission of Uranium and Thorium under Neutron Bombardment. 

    Copenhagen, Ejnar Munksgaard, 1939. 

    First edition of this highly important paper, published in Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab.  Mathematisk-Fysiske Meddelelser, vol. 17, no. 5. 

    £850

  17. ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger

    Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...

    Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

    The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult. 

    £875

  18. RICHARDSON, James.

    Narrative of a mission to central Africa performed in the years 1850-51, under the orders and at the expense...

    London, Chapman and Hall, 1853.

    First edition recounting the English explorer, missionary and abolitionist James Richardson’s 1850-1851 expedition through central Africa, including the first known crossing of the Libyan Hammada al-Hamra, or ‘Red Plateau’.

    £300

  19. GOBAT, Samuel.

    Journal of a three years’ residence in Abyssinia, in furtherance of the objects of the Church Missionary Society...

    London, Hatchard & Son; and Seeley & Sons, 1834.

    First edition of a journal written by the Swiss Calvinist missionary and later Bishop of Jerusalem Samuel Gobat during his residence in Abyssinia between early 1830 and late 1832.

    £275

  20. GALTON, Francis.

    Narrative of an explorer in tropical South Africa being an account of a visit to Damaraland in 1851 … Also vacation...

    London, New York, and Melbourne, Ward, Locke and Co., 1889.

    Second revised edition, issued in ‘The Minerva Library of Famous Books’ series, recounting Francis Galton’s 1851 explorations in present-day South Africa and Namibia, together with an updated appendix on the history of Damaraland and the narrative of three ‘Vacation Tours’ to Spain, Palestine,...

    £100