Search results

  1. TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

    Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington… London: Edward Moxon …1852.

    TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

    First edition. Wellington died at Walmer Castle on 14 September, and Tennyson’s ode was published on 18 November, the day of the funeral. One of his earliest Laureate poems, it was, of course, a patriotic piece, but also, as a Horatian ode in English, a notable technical achievement. Tennyson was to...

    £100

  2. MILL, James.

    Elements of political economy … Second edition, revised and corrected.

    London, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1824.

    Second edition of what Palgrave terms ‘Mill’s masterpiece’, extensively revised with alterations ‘too numerous to be specified’. This copy with a presentation inscription to Thomas Love Peacock signed ‘the author’.

    £1250

  3. [SHAKESPEARE]; ‘HAMILTON, N.E.S.A.’ [i.e. COLLIER, John Payne].

    An inquiry into the genuineness of the manuscript corrections...

    London, Richard Bentley, 1860.

    First edition, the result of research by the Keeper and Assistant Keeper of manuscripts at the British Library, Frederic Madden and Nicholas Hamilton.

    £75

  4. BRYDONE, P[atrick]. 

    A Tour through Sicily and Malta.  In a series of letters to William Beckford, Esq., of Somerly in Suffolk...

    London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1775. 

    Fourth edition of ‘one of the most successful works on Italian travel written in the eighteenth century and … the first important book on Sicily’ (Pine-Coffin). 

    £250

  5. LAWRENCE, James Henry. 

    A Picture of Verdun, or the English Detained in France … from the Portfolio of a Detenu. 

    London, T. Hookham junior & E.T. Hookham, 1810. 

    First edition of this remarkable account of life among the British prisoners in Napoleonic Verdun, following the mass arrest of English residents in and visitors to France. 

    £600

  6. LEGOUVÉ, Gabriel.

    Le mérite des femmes, poëme …

    Paris, chez Ant. Aug. Renouard, 1818.

    Scarce edition of this poem on womanly virtues by the poet, playwright, and member of the Académie française Gabriel Legouvé (1764–1812), published by Antoine-Augustin Renouard (1765–1853), the noted industrialist, political activist, publisher, bibliographer, and collector.

    £100

  7. LEGGE, James. 

    The Chinese Classics: with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes … In...

    Hong Kong, at the author’s; London, Trübner & Co., 1861 [– 1865]. 

    First editions of the first four volumes of Legge’s monumental Chinese Classics, with parallel Chinese and English texts, detailed introductions, notes, and indexes. 

    £3750

  8. [PHILOSOPHY.] 

    Philosophy course on logic. 

    [Brussels, early eighteenth century?] 

    An elegant manuscript philosophy course on logic.  Following a brief introduction (Prolegomenon in logicam, ff. [1]r-[2]r), the first part of the treatise is devoted to the cognitive faculty of the human mind (De facultate cognoscitiva mentis humanae, ff. [2]r-[53]r),...

    £375

  9. HARDY, Thomas.

    Selected Poems … with Portrait & title page design engraved on the wood by William Nicholson.

    London, [Ricciardi Press, Chiswick Press, for] The Medici Society, 1921.

    No. 332 of 1025 copies. Also found bound in full vellum.

    £150

  10. [ANON.]

    Quia Amore Langueo.

    [Colophon:] Chiswick, Caradoc Press, 1902.

    One of 250 copies on paper (there were also 20 on vellum), printed from a fifteenth-century manuscript at Lambeth Palace Library.

    £75

  11. STEVENSON, Robert Louis.

    Poems …

    London, [Florence Press for] Chatto & Windus, 1913.

    £100

  12. [ANON.] 

    Le moine galant, ou la vie de Don F… Bernardin, ecrite par lui-même. 

    [S.l., s.n.,] 1756. 

    Scarce first edition of this satirical ‘autobiography’ of a pleasure-driven law student turned monk, replete with amorous adventures. 

    £450

  13. [BRITISH LIBRARY.] 

    The Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue. 

    [London,] British Library, 1983. 

    First and only microfiche edition of ESTC, subsequently expanded into the English Short-Title Catalogue and made obsolete by digitisation. 

    £175

  14. [SMITH, John William.] 

    A Catalogue of the Books, Manuscripts and Prints, belonging to [John William Smith] … 

    London, Letts, Son & Co, [1870s-90s]. 

    A manuscript book catalogue employing a printed form.  John William Smith, of Clifton Terrace, Westbourne Terrace, and then Queens Gate, had a relatively predictable library of largely nineteenth-century material including history, classics, and literature (much Dickens and Tennyson), plus a smattering...

    £300

  15. [VALLI, Francesco di Andrea.] 

    Manuscript receipt book. 

    Villa di Vaglie, Cortona, 1735-1767. 

    An interesting manuscript receipt book recording the affairs and transactions of Francesco di Andrea Valli (or Vagli) and his sons Pietro and Egidio, landowners and farmers from Villa di Vaglie near Cortona, over the course of four decades. 

    £375

  16. YRVEN, Marcelle. 

    La comédienne et le féminisme. 

    Paris, L. Pichon, 1914. 

    First edition of this feminist work on the necessity of a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre, by the celebrated actress Marcelle Yrven, presented to the editor-in-chief of Le Figaro’s literary supplement. 

    £250

  17. BUONACCORSI, Biagio, and Niccolò VALORI. 

    Diario de’ successi piu importanti seguiti in Italia, & particolarmente in...

    Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568. 

    First edition of an insider account of Medici politics by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1472–1522), colleague and confidant of Machiavelli, bound with the first edition of Malespini’s history of Florence and owned by Claude-Enoch Virey, secretary to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. 

    £1000

  18. MOLAJONI, Bartolomeo. 

    Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto...

    Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811. 

    Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia. 

    £275

  19. CONTI, Natale. 

    Mythologiæ, sive explicationis fabularum, libri decem.  In quibus omnia propè naturalis & moralis philosophiæ...

    Frankfurt, the heirs of André Wechel, 1584. 

    The Mythologiae of Natale Conti (Natalis Comes), first published Venice 1567, was a standard reference work for classical mythology in the later Renaissance, treating the corpus as allegories that syncretized ancient philosophy and could thus be decoded by the initiated reader. 

    £950

  20. VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius. 

    Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi locis prope innumerabilibus emendati, ejusdem...

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565. 

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. 

    £1250