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  1. H.M.S. COMUS and H.M.S. TOURMALINE. [HELBY, Harold Wildey Hasler.]   

    Log Book.  Hong Kong, Singapore, Palau, Yokohama,...

    Dec 1881–Feb 1884. 

    A characterful log book charting the voyage of Royal Navy steamer H.M.S. Comus, beginning with its berth in Hong Kong and following its course around the Pacific, before its passage home across the Atlantic. It records the technicalities of cruising by steam; the significant international...

    £3000

  2. MASTER B.F.

    Three very large historiated initials cut from a set of choirbooks.

    Italy (Lodi), early sixteenth century.

    Three extremely fine initials by the enigmatic artist known as Master B.F., one of the most inventive and accomplished illuminators of the Italian High Renaissance. They come almost certainly from a magnificent set of about twenty choirbooks belonging to the Olivetan monastery of Santi Angelo...

    £150000

  3. [ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]

    Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...

    Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.

    First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.

    £1500

  4. BEARDSLEY, Aubrey, art editor; Henry HARLAND, literary editor

    The Yellow Book.  An Illustrated Quarterly.  Volume...

    London [– & New York], Elkin Mathews & John Lane [– John Lane, The Bodley Head], and Boston, Copeland & Day, April 1894 [− April 1897]. 

    An excellent set of the first edition of The Yellow Book, the decade-defining illustrated quarterly that captured the spirit of decadence and aestheticism and gave its name to ‘the yellow nineties’. 

    £2000

  5. PEPE, Stefano. 

    [Half-title: ‘Il Cappuccino d’Este del Padre Pepe’] ‘Historia Della Vita, e della Morte, et Attioni...

    [Italy, second half of the seventeenth century.] 

    A seemingly unpublished life of Alfonso III d’Este, Duke of Modena, who renounced his title to become a Capuchin friar. 

    £1250

  6. [VERACI, Gaetano.] 

    Nuova cicalata sopra la coda in forma di lettera responsiva alla Signora N.N. 

    [S.l., s.n,. c. 1770.] 

    Second edition, extremely rare and significantly expanded, of this highly suggestive, mock-academic panegyric on the ‘tail’. 

    £850

  7. FENOUILLOT DE FALBAIRE, Charles-Georges. 

    Le fabricant de Londres, drame en cinq actes et en prose; représenté à la Comédie...

    Paris, chez Delalain, 1771. 

    First edition of a London-set play by the French dramatist and contributor to the Encyclopédie, Fenouillot de Falbaire (1727–1800), illustrated with five fine plates after Gravelot. 

    £250

  8. [MISSAL.]

    Missal, in Latin, with readings for the first Sunday in Advent.

    Southern Netherlands or northern France (Arras?), c. 1425.

    A remnant of what must have been an exceptionally grand missal, with illumination of considerable finesse. We have been unable to trace any other leaves from the same manuscript.

    £3250

  9. ST JOHN, Spenser Buckingham.

    Life in the Forests of the Far East.

    London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1862.

    First edition. A richly illustrated account of pioneering expeditions on the island of Borneo, by St John (1825-1910), who had been introduced to Sir James Brooke (the ‘White Raja’) in 1847, when Brooke was visiting England. St John ‘was quickly caught by Brooke’s charm and accompanied him as...

    £850

  10. MARVIN, Charles.

    The Russians at Merv and Herat and their power of invading India …

    London, W.H. Allen & Co., 1883.

    First edition of this work on the Russian threat to India by Charles Marvin (1854-1890), ‘the most widely read writer on Anglo-Russian matters of his day’ (Hopkirk).

    £875

  11. ANTIPHONAL,

    with neumes, containing antiphons, responses and versicles for Trinity Sunday, the Octave of Pentecost, Sundays after...

    Germany, 1st half of 12th century. 

    Two bifolia from a notably early antiphonal. 

    £5000

  12. SASSOON, Siegfried. 

    Nativity. 

    London, Faber & Gwyer, 1927. 

    First edition of this striking collaboration between Siegfried Sassoon and Paul Nash. 

    £175

  13. [CARDUCCI, Giosuè, Olindo GUERRINI, et al., editors.] 

    ...

    Bologna, 19 April [– 29 June] 1874. 

    Very rare complete run of this short-lived satirical magazine against the pro-government newspaper Il Monitore, produced by a group of young liberals from Bologna including the poets Giosuè Carducci and Olindo Guerrini. 

    £1000

  14. RISLEY, Herbert Hope, Sir et al.

    The gazetteer of Sikhim. With an introduction by H. H. Risley ... Edited in the Bengal Government...

    Calcutta, printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press, 1894.

    First edition of this comprehensive survey of Sikkim, in northeast India (bordering Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and West Bengal), which had become a princely state of British India in 1890. The chapters cover, inter alia, the region’s history, geography, laws, geology, agriculture, vegetation, butterflies,...

    £2500

  15. CALMET, Antoine Augustin.

    Commentaire litteral sur tous les livres de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament. Les deux livres d’Esdras,...

    Paris, Pierre Emery, 1712.

    First edition of the commentary on the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, and Esther by the French Benedictine Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757), from the library of the last male descendant of the distinguished Colbert family.

    £450

  16. MAGRE, Maurice.

    Les trois métiers de Jeannet. Les bons tours d’Yan.

    Paris, Hachette (Bibliothèque des écoles et des familles), [s.d. (but 1911?)].

    Two scarce children’s stories, published as part of Hachette’s ‘Bibliothèque des écoles et des familles’.

    £125

  17. RUSKIN, John.

    The stones of Venice … With illustration drawn by the author. Fourth edition.

    Orpington, Kent, George Allen, 1886.

    A deluxe copy, one of 220 copies, of the fourth expanded edition, printed on Van Gelder laid paper with the plates on India paper.

    £375

  18. SIMEONI, Gabriele.

    Comentarii di Gabriello Symeoni Fiorentino sopra alla tetrarchia di Vinegia, di Milano, di Mantova, et di Ferrara ...

    Venice, Comino da Trino di Monferrato, 1546.

    Scarce first edition of Gabriele Simeoni’s (1509–1575) political history of the most powerful city-states of sixteenth-century Italy – Venice, Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara – with full-page genealogical diagrams of the Visconti, Gonzaga, and d’Este families.

    £550

  19. TERENCE; Daniel HEINSIUS, editor.

    Pub. Terentii comoediae sex, ex recensione Heinsiana.

    Amsterdam, Henrik Wetstein, [c. 1700].

    A small-format edition of Terence’s comedies, printed in Amsterdam but bound in Britain and owned by a Devonshire schoolboy.

    £145

  20. BIANCONI, Giovanni Lodovico. 

    Descrizione dei circhi particolarmente di quello di Caracalla e dei giuochi in essi celebrati opera...

    Rome, nella stamperia Pagliarini, 1789. 

    First edition of this handsome work on the Circus of Maxentius, this copy formerly in the possession of the great French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879). 

    £1600