Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan
Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.
We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.
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ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.
Histoire de la mission des peres Capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...
Paris, François Huby, 1614.
Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy, of the first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed...
£30000
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ACETI DE’ PORTI, Serafino.
Novo paradiso di delitie spirituali, nel quale si contiene la vita del salvator nostro Giesu Christo. ...
Bologna, Giovanni Rossi, 1563.
Rare first edition of this devotional work by Serafino Aceti de’ Porti (1496–1540), a Canon Regular of the Lateran, encompassing episodes from the life of Christ, passages on love for God and on charity, prayers to the Virgin Mary, and spiritual advice by St Bridget.
£850
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AESOP, et al. [George STEWART, editor].
Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et Luciani Samosatensis dialogi. Isocratis...
Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart, 1723.
First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish school textbook comprising selections in Greek and Latin from Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Dialogues, the orations of Isocrates, and the Tablet of Cebes.
£375
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ALBERTI, Leon Battista.
El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...
Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.
First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).
£3800
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[ALMANACK.]
Calendarium Tyrnaviense ad annum Jesu Chris[ti] M. DCC. XXXI[.] …
[Tyrnau (Trnava), 1731.]
A remarkable almanack binding of part-printed, part-manuscript vellum, prepared for presentation at the Habsburg court in Vienna to the Genoese diplomat Clemente Doria.
£1850
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[ALMANACK.]
London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1820.
[London,] Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1820].
An extraordinary binding of silver filigree over blue silk on a miniature London Almanack for 1820.
£2750
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[ALMANACK.]
L’Esprit des chansonniers, extrain [sic?] des meilleurs poëtes.
Paris, Le Fuel, [1826?].
A very rare enamelled metal binding with an enchanting design of birds and squirrels, from the collection of the bookbinder, collector, and bibliographer Léon Gruel.
£2750
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[ALMANACK.]
Les etrennes a la rose, ou le rosier d’amour.
Paris, Janet, [1804?].
A charming literary almanack, or ‘rosebush of love’, collecting amatory poems using the motif of the rose, here bound in red silk strikingly embroidered in silver and dated with the French Revolutionary year ‘An XII’ (1804).
£2500
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[ALMANACK.]
Étrennes mignonnes, curieuses et utiles, pour l’année mil sept cent quatre-vingt-dix.
Paris, Guillot, 1790.
A French almanack for 1790 in a delightful sous mica binding with painted vignettes showing a courting couple one side and what appears to be a lovers’ tryst on the other, preserved in its original red morocco case.
£2750
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[ALTAR CARDS.]
Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John.
‘A Paris, chez I. Baudemont’, second half of seventeenth century.
Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt cards for priests, bearing readings and prayers, and devotional images of Jesus and St John, comprising separately printed images, text and borders arranged together in collage fashion.
£2750
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AMBROSE of Milan, AUGUSTINE, and HIERONYMUS.
De virginitate opuscula Sanctorum doctorum, Ambrosii, Hieronymi et Augustini....
Rome, Paolo Manuzio, 1562.
Four first editions from Paolo Manuzio’s Roman press of Latin and Greek patristic texts on virginity, bound together at an early stage and annotated by the sixteenth-century cleric, courtier, dramatist, and humanist Bernardino Pino at the court of the Duke of Urbino.
£4000
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ANACREON.
[Odaria.] Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...
Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.
Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G. C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions...
£650
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ANGLÉS, José.
Flores theologicarum quaestionum, in quartum librum sententiarum. Collecti, iterumq. selecti … Pars prima...
Rome, Giuseppe de Angelis, 1578.
Scarce second edition (first Cagliari, 1575–6) of an exhaustive compendium of theological questions compiled by the Spanish Franciscan Anglés (d. 1586), bishop of Bosa in Sardinia.
£750
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[ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]
Florilegium diversorum epigrammatum in septem libros, solerti nuper repurgatum cura M.D.XXI. Ανθολογια...
[(Colophon:) Venice, in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresano, January 1521.]
Second Aldine edition of the earliest known anthology in Greek.
£2000
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[ANTIPHONAL.]
Antiphonal, with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.
Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-fifteenth century.
An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.
£4250
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ANTIPHONAL,
with neumes, containing antiphons, responses and versicles for Trinity Sunday, the Octave of Pentecost, Sundays after...
Germany, 1st half of 12th century.
Two bifolia from a notably early antiphonal.
£5000
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[ANTIPHONAL.]
Very large historiated initial ‘H’ (probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the...
Italy (Siena), c. 1300.
A very fine large initial painted in a style associated with the Master of the Gradual of Cortona, an artist named for a Franciscan gradual produced c. 1290 for the church of San Francesco in Cortona (now Vatican City, BAV, MS Ross. 612).
£6750
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ANTONIUS de Vercellis.
Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...
Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93.
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.
£8500
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APPIAN of Alexandria.
Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...
Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.
A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.
£3000
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[AQUHORTIES.]
Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …
Edinburgh, Printed by J. Moir, Paterson’s Court, [1799?].
Broadside rules for the newly established Aquhorties College, the only Roman Catholic college in Scotland, presumably designed to be posted up around the school.
£850