The Fourth Folio in Black Morocco

SHAKESPEARE, William.

Mr. William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true Original Copies. Unto which is added, seven Playes, never before Printed in Folio … The fourth Edition …

An exceptional copy of Shakespeare’s Fourth Folio. Despite the statement ‘never before Printed in Folio’, the seven new plays (of which Pericles is the only one still commonly attributed to Shakespeare) had earlier appeared in the second issue of the Third Folio in 1664, but this edition, the last in so grand a format and the last in Shakespeare’s own century, was the principal textual basis of eighteenth-century recensions from Rowe, Theobald and Pope to Hanmer and Johnson.

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Neapolitan Sermons in a Florentine Binding

URSINIS, Bartholomaeus de.

[Quadragesimale quod dicitur Gratia Dei.]

First and only edition, a handsome, wide-margined copy of Bartholomaeus de Ursinis’s sermons, printed and illuminated in Naples, in a contemporary Florentine binding.

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Franciscans in Munich Studying Hebrew Scripture

PAULUS DE SANCTA MARIA.

Scrutinium scripturarum.

Third edition of this treatise of Christian Hebraism by a converso bishop, from the library of the Franciscans of Munich, with their distinctive brand to the top edge of the volume. The text had originally been printed by Mentelin in c. 1470, then by Ulrich Han in Rome.

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BIBLE, in Latin.

Genesis to Apocalypse, with the prologues attributed to St. Jerome and the Interpretation of Hebrew names.

A handsome example of a thirteenth-century portable Bible manuscript, with an historiated initial marking the beginning of each book; from the libraries of Leander van Ess and Sir Thomas Phillipps.

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Homiletic Work
Annotated by Machiavelli’s Last Confessor

ANTONIUS de Vercellis.

Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus Brognolo].

A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites.

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A Presentation Copy to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Unrecorded Works, and a Proof Poem

[DOBELL, Sydney Thompson.]

England’s Day. A War-Saga.

Presentation copy of Dobell’s scarce poem England’s Day, inscribed on the wrapper ‘Dante Rossetti Esq. With hearty regard’, and noted by William Michael Rossetti on the verso as ‘from Gabriel’s books 1882’.

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From the First Venetian Press

LACTANTIUS.

Opera.

Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African early Christian writer.

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The Last Judgement

[GRADUAL.]

Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.

A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi animam meam’ (‘Unto thee I lift up my soul’) for the first Sunday in Advent (and thus the very first text of the liturgical year). As for the corresponding text for that day in the Antiphonal (‘Aspiciens a longe …’, ‘Seeing from afar, behold the power of God coming …’) the initial ‘A’ was often given lavish treatment by the illuminators of Italian choirbooks, and in both cases the iconography sometimes combined Christ in glory after the Ascension with the Last Judgment, as here. While the dead rising from their graves are sometimes depicted, our initial is unusual for its inclusion of tormented souls in Hell. The style may be compared to the oeuvres of the First Master of the Gubbio Choir Books and the Master of the Deruta-Salerno Missals. The decorated initials on the verso are characteristic of Umbrian illumination in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.

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Safavid Qur’an
Heavily Annotated by a Qajar Scholar

QUR’AN.

Safavid Qur’an.

A remarkable sixteenth-century Safavid Qur’an manuscript, carefully remargined during the Qajar period and extensively annotated by a scholar of that time.

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The Aldine Greek Psalter

[PSALTER.] Justinus DECADYUS, editor.

Ψαλτηριον.

The elegant first Aldine printing of the Greek Psalter, following two earlier and plainer editions of 1481 and 1486, which had employed much simpler Greek typefaces with fewer ligatures and contractions. 

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Chivalry Illuminated: a Royal Commission?

[LA VIGNE, André de, and Octavien de SAINT-GELAIS.]

Le vergier dhonneur nouvellement imprime a Paris. De lentreprise et voyage de Napples. Auquel est compris commant le roy Charles huitiesme de ce nom a banyere desployee passa et rapassa de iournee en iournee depuis Lyon iusques a napples et de napples iusques a Lyon. E[n]semble plusieurs aultres choses faictes et composees par reverend pere en dieu monsigneur octovie[n] de sainct Gelais evesque da[n]golesme et par Maistre Andry de la vigne secretaire de monsieur le duc de Savoye avec aultres.

Extremely rare first edition of the Vergier d’Honneur, a celebration of the expedition of Charles VIII to Italy; a remarkable copy preceded by three leaves of illuminated manuscript containing unrecorded verse and a spectacular miniature of a knight on horseback.

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Editio Princeps of 1500 Years of Greek Poetry

[ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]

[Edited by Janus Lascaris.]

Editio princeps, a beautiful printing in elegant epigraphic type, of the Planudean Anthology, a substantial collection of classical Greek verse which influenced artists, poets, and scholars. ‘The Greek Anthology is one of the great books of European literature, a garden containing the flowers and weeds of fifteen hundred years of Greek poetry, from the most humdrum doggerel to the purest poetry’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary).

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Mercantile Arithmetic and Mathematical Games

BAKER, Humfrey.

The Well Sprynge of Sciences which teacheth the perfect Worke and Practise of Arithmeticke bothe in whole Numbers and Fractions, with such easye and compendious Instruction into the sayde Arte, as hathe not heretofore been by any set out nor laboured. Beawtified with most necessarye Rules and Questions, not onely profitable for Marchaunts, but also for all Artificers, as in the Table doth partlye appeare …

The extremely rare first edition (one of two copies in ESTC) of a very popular guide to arithmetic by the London schoolteacher and almanack-maker Humfrey Baker (fl. 1557–87).

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Newton on Colour

NEWTON, Isaac.

Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light. Also two treatises of the species and magnitude of curvilinear figures.

First edition of Newton’s Opticks, ‘which did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely, placed it on a scientific basis’, and ‘expounds Newton’s corpuscular or emission theory of light, and first contains his important optical discoveries in a collected form’ (Babson), also discussing rainbows and Newton’s Rings.

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Contemporary Calf, with the World Map

HAKLUYT, Richard.

The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the most remote and farthest distant Quarters of the Earth at any Time within the Compasse of these 1500 Yeeres.

First edition, a fine copy, with the world map, in a strictly contemporary London binding, of the first collection of English voyages.

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Editio Princeps
The Oldest Mathematical Textbook Still in Use

EUCLID.

Στοιχειων βιβλ. ιε εκ των θεωνος συνουσιων. Εις του αυτου του πρωτον, εξηγηματων Προκλου βιβλ. δ. Adiecta praefatiuncula in qua de disciplinis Mathematicis nonnihil.

Editio princeps of Euclid, the ‘oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today’ (PMM), a work which ‘has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible’ (DSB).

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The Third and Best Utopia

MORE, Thomas, Sir.

De optimo reip. statu deque nova insula Utopia libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus … Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomae Mori, pleraque e Graecis versa. Epigrammata Des. Erasmi Roterodami.

Third edition of More’s Utopia, including his revisions and corrections and adding his and Erasmus’s Epigrammata for the first time; this is the culmination of the text as it evolved from More’s hand with the intercession of Erasmus. As the last edition in which More is likely to have been directly involved, it was used by the Yale editors as the basis for their modern critical edition.

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Dutch Devotion: Morality for the Layman in the Vernacular

[LAURENTIUS, Frater; Jan van BREDERODE, translator.]

[Summe le roy of des conincs summe.]

Rare early edition in Dutch (first Delft 1478), preceding the first edition of the original French text, of what is perhaps the most significant treatise on Christian morality for the laity from the later thirteenth century. This edition was produced in the first printshop in Haarlem.

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The First Delft Printshop: Reading Jerome in England

[JEROME, Saint.]

Obitus beati iheromini.

Rare incunable edition (first printed in Cologne, 1470), from the first printshop in Delft, of a devotional account of the life of St Jerome; a copy with early English provenance.

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Presentation Copy to W. B. Tegetmeier

DARWIN, Charles.

The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.

First edition, first issue, an important presentation copy to the naturalist and journalist William Bernhardt Tegetmeier, who provided Darwin with detailed information on poultry breeding and other subjects and who arranged for artists to produce some of the book’s illustrations.

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