Search results
-
PONTOPPIDAN, Erich.
The Natural History of Norway containing a particular and accurate Account of the Temperature of the Air, the...
London, for A. Linde, 1755.
First English edition, a nice copy likely bound by the publisher Andreas Linde, of this remarkable account of Norway’s natural history by the Danish theologian and antiquary Pontoppidan (1698–1764), whose accounts of sea monsters influenced both Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Jules Verne’s...
£1250
-
RANK, Otto.
Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden. Versuch einer psychologischen Mythendeutung.
Leipzig and Vienna, Franz Deuticke, 1909.
First edition of this psychoanalytical investigation of mythological heroism and the role of birth legends in the stories of heroes, by the German psychoanalyst Otto Rank (1884–1939), published as part of the series Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde under the editorship of Freud....
£100
-
SHEPHERD, Richard Herne.
No. I. Studies of Sensation and Event by Ebenezer Jones …
London, Pickering & Co … 1878.
An interesting collection of rare tracts, from the library of the Scottish lawyer and journalist John Skelton (1831–1897), who wrote for Blackwood’s under the pseudonym ‘Shirley’.
£950
-
SOPHOCLES; Adrien TURNÈBE, editor.
Τραγωδιαι. Αιαξ μαστιγοφορος. Ηλεκτρα. Οιδιπους...
Paris, Adrien Turnèbe, 1553 [(colophon:) 24 December 1552].
A wide-margined copy of Sophocles in Greek owned by the Vatican librarian and Greek scholar Leone Allacci, with his name on the title-page. Sophocles’ seven tragedies narrate the stories of the Greek heroes and heroines Ajax, Heracles and Deianeira, Oedipus and Jocasta, Philoctetes, Antigone,...
£1850
-
SOPHOCLES; Ezra POUND, translator.
Women of Trachis. A Version by Ezra Pound.
London, Neville Spearman, [1956].
First edition of Pound’s version of Sophocles’ Trachiniae, inscribed by the editor Denis Goacher to Geoffrey Bridson (1910–1980), who had co-produced the play for BBC radio in April 1954.
£1000
-
[VOGEL, Johann Christoph.]
Démophon.
[France (probably Paris), c. 1787.]
A contemporary scribal manuscript of Johann Christoph Vogel’s opera Démophon, from the library of Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on the story of the legendary king Demophon of Thrace recounted in the De astronomia of Hyginus.
£5250
-
ZANCHI, Basilio.
Dictionarium poeticum, et epitheta veterum poetarum … nunc secundo trans Alpes editum.
Mons, Luca Rivius, 1612.
Scarce Mons-printed edition of Zanchi’s onomasticon from A to Z, providing a comprehensive list of deities, notable figures, and heroes and heroines from classical myth and legend, drawn from the works of Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Propertius.
£375
-
VORAGINE, Jacobus de.
Lombardica historia que a plerisque aurea legenda sanctorum appellatur.
Strasbourg, [Georg Husner,] 1502.
Jacobus de Voragine’s influential Legenda Aurea in a contemporary gilt-lettered binding with an incunable fragment used as the rear pastedown. This copy is also notable for its extensive sixteenth century manuscript additions relating to Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg and former ownership by...
£8000
-
APOLLODORUS; Benedetto EGIO, translator.
Απολλοδωρου του Αθηναιου γραμματικου βιβλιοθηκης,...
[Heidelberg,] ex officina Commeliniana, 1599.
Second edition (first 1555) of this classic compendium of Greek myths and legends by Apollodorus, edited by Hieronymus Commelinus (1550–1597) and published posthumously by his heirs. The Greek text is accompanied by the Latin translation of Benedetto Egio, and is prefixed with Commelinus’...
£875
-
SCHNEPFF, Dietrich.
Oratio de vita et morte illustrissimae principis ac dominae, D. Dorotheae Ursulae, illustrissimi principis...
Tübingen, Alexander Hock, 1583.
Scarce work issued following the death of Dorothea Ursula von Baden-Durlach (1559–1583), comprising a Latin funeral oration by the Tübingen professor Dietrich Schnepff (1525–1586) and verses in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew by several scholars.
£550
-
MILL, John Stuart; 中村 敬太郎 NAKAMURA Keitarō [i.e. 中村 正直 NAKAMURA Masanao], translator.
On Liberty. 自由之理...
Shizuoka, Ken’ichiro Kihira, Meiji Mizunoesaru/Jinshin [i.e. 1872].
First edition, rare, of the first Japanese translation of Mill’s On Liberty, published twelve years after the English original, and very popular in Japan as a result of this translation by the philosopher and educator Masanao Nakamura (1832–1891).
£2500
-
EURIPIDES; SOPHOCLES; AESCHYLUS.
Tragoediae selectae Aeschyli, Sophoclis, Euripidis. Cum duplici interpretatione Latina, una ad...
[Geneva,] Henri Estienne, 1567.
Handsome pocket-sized Estienne edition of eight plays by the three great fifth-century BC Greek tragedians, all based on figures and episodes from Greek myth, with interesting contemporary annotations to Euripides.
£1850
-
PLUTARCH; John Moyr SMITH, illustrator.
An Argive Hero … with Illustrations designed after the Manner of early Greek Paintings.
London, Arthur H. Moxon, 1877.
Scarce first and only edition of John Moyr Smith’s illustrations of the life of Theseus, accompanying the text of Plutarch’s Life.
£950
-
ANNE, Queen.
Warrant, signed, authorising John Grubham Howe as Paymaster General, to pay Major General James Mailand for the regiment...
27 January 1708/9.
An attractive document, bringing together the signatures of both Queen Anne and the future Prime Minister Robert Walpole.
£1750
-
BARCLAY, Arthur Kett.
‘Journal of a Tour through Cornwall and Wales 1826 by Arthur Kett Barclay’.
18 July–13 October 1826.
A most interesting diary recording a tour of England and Wales undertaken by the twenty-year-old Arthur Kett Barclay in 1826, especially valuable for its descriptions of English and Welsh mining in the late Industrial Revolution.
£3500
-
[BECKFORD, William, and Samuel HENLEY, translator.]
An Arabian Tale, from an unpublished Manuscript. With Notes critical...
London, Printed for W. Clarke … 1809.
Scarce second edition – in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) – of Henley’s English translation of Beckford’s Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author’s wishes and predating publication...
£1500
-
[BYRON, George Gordon Noel, Lord.]
AUCHER, Paschal. A Grammar Armenian and English ...
Venice, at the Press of the Armenian Academy, 1819.
First edition, scarce, of Byron’s Armenian Grammar, ‘the first English-language attempt to explain the structures of classical Armenian’, also containing ‘Byron’s only surviving verse translation of Armenian poetry’ (Rizzoli), but probably published without his knowledge.
£3250
-
CLARENDON, Edward Hyde, Earl of.
The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the Year 1641. With...
Oxford, Printed at the Theater, 1702[–4].
First edition of Clarendon’s monumental History of the Civil War, with a presentation inscription by his son Henry Hyde, the second Earl (1638–1709).
£3250
-
[COLVIL, Samuel.]
‘Mock Poem, or Whiggs Supplication Part ii’.
1670s?
A fine early manuscript of the second part of Colvil’s rollicking ‘Scottish Hudibras’, a satire on Scots Presbyterianism and sectarian wrangling between non-conformists in general. It circulated widely in manuscript before its first publication in 1681, when Colvil complained of ‘Transcribers,...
£1250
-
HARRIS, James.
Three Treatises the first concerning Art the second concerning music painting and poetry the third concerning happiness...
London, John Nourse and Paul Vaillant, 1765.
Presentation copies, inscribed ‘From the Author’, of the revised second editions of these two works on art and language by the philosopher and latterly politician James Harris.
£600