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  1. [GOLD and SILVER.] 

    Bando generale per gli orefici, argentieri, ed altri che comprano, vendono, ed in qualsivoglia modo...

    Rome, ‘nella stamperia della Rev. Camera Apostolica’, 1815. 

    Rare edict governing goldsmiths, silversmiths, and traders in gold and silver operating in Rome and the Papal States, issued by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca (1756–1844) in January 1815 as Camerlengo to Pope Pius VII.

    £475

  2. [POETRY.] 

    ‘Trattato della [poesia Toscana]’. 

    [Asti?, 1780-1782.] 

    A manuscript treatise on the method of composing poetry in Italian, with numerous examples from renowned authors and eight apparently unpublished poems about horse-racing, with references to Arabian, Sardinian, English, and African horses, as well as to a firework display. 

    £750

  3. [MURAT, J.-B. de.] 

    La destinée d’une jolie femme, poème érotique, en six chants, par J.B… de M… 

    Paris, Langlois for Mongie, An XI (1803). 

    First and only edition, very scarce, of this humorous moralising tale of love and loss in verse, intended for a female readership and hidden under the ‘transparent veil’ of erotic poetry. 

    £650

  4. ‘MAWE, Thomas’ [but John ABERCROMBIE]. 

    Every Man his own Gardener.  Being a new, and much more complete Gardener’s...

    London: Printed for W. Griffith … 1767. 

    Second edition, published in the same year as the first, of an immensely popular work, which went through at least twenty-five editions.  ‘Abercrombie was the son of a market gardener near Edinburgh who went on to be a gardener at Kew and Leicester House, as well as for a number of noblemen...

    £225

  5. LIVINGSTONE, David. 

    Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; including a Sketch of sixteen Years’ Residence in the...

    London, John Murray, 1857. 

    First edition.  ‘Livingstone’s services to African geography during thirty years are almost unequalled; he covered about a third of the continent from the Cape to the Equator and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.  He made three great expeditions; in 1853-6 (described in this book),...

    £500

  6. BALLARIN, Vincenzo. 

    Dimostrazione sintetica della quadratura del circolo di Don Vincenzo Ballarin, piovano di S. Pietro della...

    Venice, Fracasso, 1828. 

    First and only edition of this confident but mistaken attempt at squaring the circle – drawing a square with the same area as a given circle using a compass and straightedge – later proven to be impossible. 

    £900

  7. [SOCIETY OF JESUS.] 

    Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur.  Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux. 

    Strasbourg, L.F.  Le Roux, [1843]. 

    First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843. 

    £375

  8. GABARO, Antonio. 

    Alla pregiatissima Signora Domenica Schiavon Menato nella fausta occasione del suo primo parto, in argomento...

    Padua, ‘Nella Tipografia del Seminario’, 1820. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of a scathing and sexist condemnation of ‘inhuman’ women who do not breastfeed their own children, dedicated to Domenica Schiavon Menato, ‘an example to all women’, on the occasion of the birth of her first child. 

    £380

  9. [HOSPICE SAINT-NICOLAS, METZ.]

    Deed granting land to the hospice.

    Metz, 5 May 1464.

    An attractive document recording the grant of agricultural land in 1464 to the Hospice of Saint-Nicolas, the oldest hospital in Metz, in northeast France, issued during the reign of Louis XI and in the final year of the papacy of Pius II.

    £450

  10. [TAXATION.]

    Le financier hermite.

    Paris, chez les marchands de nouveautés, 1789.

    Rare first edition of this anonymous work reviewing the existing system of taxation in France and making suggestions for its improvement, written on the eve of the French Revolution during the economic crisis that was one of its principal causes.

    £175

  11. ORIBASIUS. 

    Commentaria in Aphorismos Hippocratis … Ioannis Guinterij Andernaciis medici industria velut e profundissimis tenebris...

    Paris, Simon de Colines, 1533. 

    First edition of this commentary on Hippocrates, bound with a richly annotated copy of Galen’s works in the translation by Thomas Linacre. 

    £1750

  12. [BEWICK, Thomas?]

    Twenty-six rubbings from engraved woodblocks of the heads of Kings and Queens and England, apparently never published...

    [1790-1805?]

    Twenty-six apparently unrecorded wood-engravings – heads of the monarchs of England from William the Conqueror to George III – these images taken by rubbing from the blocks rather than printing. The engravings bear strong similarity to the 26 which appear in An Abridgement of the History...

    £750

  13. [ANON.]

    The Pocket Farrier: A Treatise on the veterinary Art, containing the Materia Medica and Pharmacopoeia, by a practical Farrier.

    London, Richardson & Son, and Dublin and Derby, [1844].

    Very scarce manual on farriery. ‘This anonymous work consists of a digest of other authors and quotes liberally – with acknowledgements – from Clater, Richard Lawrence, White, Gibson, Feron, Blaine, Moorcroft, Wilkinson, Coleman, Goodwin, Clark, and The Veterinary College. The section Veterinary...

    £225

  14. [YOUATT, William, and Isambard Kingdom BRUNEL.]

    The Horse, with a Treatise on Draught and a copious Index.

    London, W. Clowes for Baldwin and Cradock ‘under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge’, 1831.

    First edition of the first of Youatt’s animal treatises. Established in practice with Delabere Blaine, William Youatt (1776-1847) was on similarly poor terms with the Veterinary College, leaving his mature studies there without a certificate. A leading reformer among veterinary surgeons of the 1820s,...

    £350

  15. LAWSON, A.

    The modern Farrier, or the Art of Preserving the Health and Curing the Diseases of Horses, Dogs, Oxen, Cows, Sheep,...

    Newcastle upon Tyne, Mackenzie & Dent, 1822.

    Early issue of an uncommon farriery manual, printed at Newcastle. First appearing in the early 1820s, this popular text was frequently reprinted throughout the decade, with a twenty-fifth edition recorded in 1842. All editions are now scarce, with only one copy dated 1822 recorded on Copac (at the Wellcome...

    £120

  16. [JEREMY, Henry.]

    The Laws relating to Horses, considered as the Subject of Property, Sale, Hire, Wager, Distress, Heriot, or of...

    London, Luke Hansard & Sons for J. & W.T. Clarke, 1825.

    First edition of a manual on laws relating to horse ownership, transaction, and use, with details of the incidents by which case-law was established.

    £450

  17. LAWRENCE, Richard.

    An Inquiry into the Structure & animal Oeconomy of the Horse, comprehending the Diseases to which his Limbs...

    Birmingham, executors of T.A. Pearson for the author, and sold by Knott & Lloyd, and in London, G. & W. Nicol and L.B. Seeley, [1803].

    Second edition of the treatise on farriery and equine anatomy by Lawrence, one of the first students of the Veterinary College. A resident pupil from January 1793 and employed as a surgical assistant to the College’s infirmary the following year, Lawrence complains of the still very much amateur nature...

    £650

  18. NETTEN, Cornelis Anthonie Geisweit van der.

    Handboek der Paardenkennis, ten dienste van [– voor] den Burger- en Krijgsstand [–...

    Amsterdam and the Hague, [P.E. Briët for –] the brothers van Cleef, 1811 [– 1817].

    First edition of the first part, second of the second, of a scarce Dutch treatise on horsemanship and farriery. Captured by the Prussians in the late 1780s, Cornelis Anthonie Geisweit van der Netten (1772-1847) served in the Austrian army against the Turks and in Belgium before returning to his native...

    £750

  19. [MIRACLE CURE.] 

    Poudre suédoise. 

    Paris, [s.p., c.1760]. 

    Seemingly unrecorded pamphlet extolling the virtues of ‘Swedish Powder’, sold at the Hôtel du Grand-Cerf on the rue Saint-Denis for the treatment and prevention of several ailments, but especially for the ‘most unfortunate symptoms of venereal disease’. 

    £600

  20. MYERS, Robin, Andrew BURNETT, and Renae SATTERLEY.

    ‘I do not eat the bread of idleness’: Dr Andrew Coltée Ducarel 1713–1785,...

    The Garendon Press, 2023.

    This volume brings together revised versions of four of Robin Myers’s papers on aspects of Ducarel’s life and work published between 1994 and 2002, and ‘The Life and Times of the Ducarel Brothers’, her recent introductory essay to Two Huguenot Brothers: Letters of Andrew and James Coltée...

    £45