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  1. STOURM, Auguste-African, dit Eugène.

    Opinion sur la question des sucres.

    [Paris, Bourgogne & Martinet, n. d., but 1840.]

    First and only edition. ‘Le mauvais état de santé de M. Stourm ne lui permettant pas de monter à la tribune pour y développer une opinion longuement méditée sur la questions des sucres, il a pris le parti de faire imprimer ce qu’il ne pouvait pas dire’ (p. 2).

    £100

  2. SMITH, William.

    An authentic account of the life and memoirs of Mr. William Smith, an unfortunate convict, executed at Tyburn,...

    London, for J. Jefferies, 1750.

    The last account of William Smith, son of an Irish vicar, containing the story of how he came to be executed for forgery, in addition to odes written by Smith shortly before his execution.

    £40

  3. [COMPAGNIE DES INDES]

    [MORELLET.] [drop-head title:] Eclaircissemens, sur le Mémoire de M. l’Abbé Morelet [sic], concernant...

    [S.l., s.n., c.1769].

    First edition of an anonymous contemporary reply to Morellet’s Mémoire sur la situation actuelle de la Compagnie des Indes (1769), in which the Abbé had given a succinct history of the Compagnie and shown how its directors were benefitting to the detriment of the state.

    £150

  4. GIOJA, Melchiorre.

    Del merito e delle ricompense, trattato storico e filosofico ...

    Filadelfia, [n. p.], 1830 (vol. I); Lugano, Giuseppe Ruggia, 1830 (vol. II).

    Second edition (first published in 1818, a third followed in 1832) of this important work by the political theorist, economist, and champion of Italian unity, Gioja (1767–1829). ‘He contended in his best known work, Del merito e delle ricompense ..., which was inspired by Beccaria’s Dei delitti...

    £250

  5. [HARRINGTON, James.]

    The commonwealth of Oceana.

    London, printed for J. Streater, 1656.

    First edition, first issue. ‘Oceana presents Harrington’s vision of the ideal state: an aristocracy of limited, balanced powers. Harrington believed that democracy is most stable where a strong middle class exists and that revolution is a consequence of the separation of economic and political power....

    £3750

  6. PEARSON, Karl.

    King Robert the Bruce, 1274-1329, his Skull and Portraiture.

    [London:] printed by W. Lewis, at the University Press, Cambridge, ‘Offprinted from Biometrika, Vol. XVI, and issued to Subscribers only’,...

    First and only separate edition, ‘issued to Subscribers only’ (this copy unnumbered). The British biostatician and eugenicist Pearson (1857-1936) studied mathematics, physics, and Darwinism at the universities of Cambridge, Heidelberg, and Berlin, and (following a brief but abortive training in law)...

    £75

  7. PUBLICOLA.

    An answer to an audacious letter from John Angelo Belloni, dated Rome the 4th of May, 1732. N.S. Being an antidote to...

    London, [n. p.], 1732.

    An extremely rare pamphlet of economic and political interest, relating to fraudulent activity in the Charitable Corporation and to one of the chief culprit’s rumoured links to the Old Pretender.

    £450

  8. [SMITH, Adam.] [STEWART, Dugald.]

    Account of the life and writings of Adam Smith, LL.D. From the Transactions of the Royal Society...

    [Edinburgh? N.p. 1794?].

    First separate edition of the first ‘Life’ of Adam Smith, and one of only a handful of copies that were printed for limited private issue. A year later, it was incorporated into the Essays on Philosophical Subjects, and later in editions of the Wealth of Nations. Stewart (1753-1828) read the paper...

    £3750

  9. [TRADE AND EXCISE].

    An Additional Act for the better improvement and advancing the receipts of the Excise and New-Impost. At the...

    London, Henry Hills and Iohn Field, Printers to His Highness, 1657.

    First edition. The most substantial part of the Act, entitled ‘A Book of Values of Merchandize imported, according to which, excize is to be paid by the first buyer’, includes a 40-page alphabetical list of imported commodities, each recorded with the respective payable duty. A lively and detailed...

    £250

  10. MITTAG-LEFFLER, Gösta.

    Sur la représentation analytique d’une branche uniforme d’une fonction monogène.

    Stockholm, 1899-1909.

    First edition of this important series of papers by Mittag-Leffler, offprints from Acta Mathematica, the international mathematical journal established by him in 1882.

    £750

  11. PICK, G. Vesian.

    Digest of political economy: the principles of John Stuart Mill.

    London, Swan Sonnerschein & Co., 1893.

    Second edition (first 1892) of Pick’s epitome of J.S. Mill’s Principles of political economy. Stating his aim as to ‘present a bird’s-eye view of Political Economy’, with a secondary intent of being used by students as a companion volume to the treatise itself, Pick aims to bring a new simplicity...

    £100

  12. REID, Thomas.

    The Works of Thomas Reid … with an Account of his Life and Writings, by Dugalds Stewart … with Notes, by the...

    Charlestown (MA), Samuel Etheridge junior, 1813.

    First American edition of the foundation of the Scottish Common Sense School, with a life of Reid by his disciple Dugald Stewart. The set includes his early treatises and analytics, his enquiry into the human mind and the senses, memory, intellectual and active powers, actions, and morals.

    £120

  13. SCHREBER, Daniel Gottfried.

    Delineatio historiae scientiarum oeconomicarum quatenus ut academicae considerandae sunt qua sub auspiciis...

    Leipzig, ex officina Iacobaeeria, [1764].

    First edition of this interesting outline of the history of economic science by the jurist and philosopher Schreber (1708-1777), presented as his inaugural lecture as professor of economics, politics and philosophy at the University of Leipzig.

    £75

  14. SPURR, George Graham.

    The Land of Gold. A Tale of ’49. Illustrative of early pioneer life in California, and founded upon fact....

    Boston, A. Williams & Company, 1881.

    First edition. ‘This narrative ... is contributed to the file of literature for the purpose of keeping green the memory of the achievements of the early pioneers in California, and to show future generations what it cost to add what was once a wild unbroken solitude to civilisation and fame’...

    £100

  15. MENDELSSOHN, Moses. 

    Philosophische Schriften. 

    Troppau, Joseph Georg Traßler, 1784. 

    Later edition, in an attractive contemporary binding, of the works of the German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786). First published in 1761 and here reprinted in the Silesian city of Troppau (now Opawa, Czechia), the collection includes Über die Empfindungen, Philosophische...

    £250

  16. RILKE, Rainer Maria. 

    Les Fenêtres.  Dix poèmes de Rainer Maria Rilke illustrés de dix eaux-fortes par Baladine. 

    Paris, Officina Sanctandreana, 1927.

    First edition, numbered 146 of 500 copies on pur fil, of a total edition of 515.  A series of ten poems in French addressed by Rilke to his lover ‘Mouky’ or ‘Baladine’ Klossowska, who herself provided the illustrations.  Elisabeth Dorothea Klossowska née Spiro (1886–1969)...

    £1200

  17. [ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques.] 

    Le Devin du village, intermede, représenté devant Sa Majesté a Fontainebleau, le Mecredi 14 Novembre...

    [Paris,] Pierre-Robert-Christophe Ballard, 1770. 

    Rare edition of a later lifetime performance of Rousseau’s influential opera, The Village Soothsayer, in an attractively unsophisticated sammelband of court operas. 

    £375

  18. RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus, pseud. [Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN]. 

    Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur /...

    ‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’ 

    First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.). 

    £675

  19. [SACROBOSCO, Johannes de.] 

    CLAVIUS, Christophorus.  In sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco commentarius, nunc iterum ab ipso Auctore...

    Rome, Francesco Zanetti for Domenico Basa, 1581. 

    Third edition, the first to contain Clavius’s condemnation of Copernicus, with ten highly detailed woodcut diagrams of solar and lunar eclipses not included in the first edition. 

    £2500

  20. ‘G.’ [i.e. Terence Ian Fytton ARMSTRONG].

    Annotations on Some Minor Writings of “T.E. Lawrence” by G.

    London: W. Graves for Eric Partridge, Ltd. at the Scholartis Press, 1935.

    First edition, no. 484 of 500 copies. Annotations was the second bibliographical work on Lawrence to be published, and was written by the poet, author, bibliographer, and bookseller T.I.F. Armstrong (AKA ‘John Gawsworth’), who possessed ‘a bibliographic talent that led Lawrence Durrell to write...

    £75