[AQUHORTIES College.]

Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …

[At foot:] 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

LAVAGNA, Giovanni.

‘Ad explicandum phisicam eclect[i]cam R.P. Joannis Lavagna S.J. tabulae decem et octo.’

Venice, 1789.

A splendid manuscript devoted to physics, comprising 190 beautifully executed diagrams covering matter and motion, gravity, light, sound, hydrostatics, and magnetism, compiled by the Venetian Jesuit Giovanni Lavagna.

£2500

SOPHOCLES. 

Aiax flagellifer.  Callimachi Cyrenaei Hymni in Iovem & Apollinem.  Ioanne Lonicero interprete.  Genetliacon divo...

Basel, [Johann] Herwagen, August 1533. 

First separate edition of Sophocles’s Ajax, with a facing Latin version by humanist philologist and theologian Johann Lonitzer (c. 1499–1569), printed with his translation of Callimachus’s hymns to Apollo and Zeus and his ode celebrating the birth of the future Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel...

£2750

[KAFKA, Franz.]

Almanach des Schocken Verlags auf das Jahr 5695.

Berlin, Schocken Verlag, 1934/35.

Pp. 96-103 contain Kafka’s Aufzeichnungen über eine jüdische Wandertruppe, the description of his meeting with a troupe of Yiddish actors in the Café Savoy in Prague in 1911. This encounter was to have a profound effect on his writing. The passage was later published in an extended version in the...

£180

POCKLINGTON, John.

Altare Christianum: or, the dead Vicar’s Plea. Wherein the Vicar of Gr. being dead, yet speaketh, and pleadeth...

London, Printed by Richard Badger. 1637.

First edition, from the library of Robert Southey, with an ownership inscription an eleven-line note in his distinctive diminutive hand.

£3750

DASSIER, Jean and Jacques-Antoine.

‘An Explanation of Dassier’s Medals being a Representation of a Series of Events...

London, c. 1795-1800.

An exceptionally fine illustrated manuscript, with drawings after the series of sixty medals of Roman history from Romulus to the Age of Augustus produced by Jean Dassier and his son in 1740-1743. The drawings are executed with considerable finesse, adding detailed elements not clearly visible...

£7500

FRANZ, Wolfgang.

Animalium historia sacra, in qua plerorumque animalium praecipuae proprietates in gratiam studiosorum theologiae...

Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1643.

First Jansson edition (fifth overall). First published in Wittenberg in 1612, the Animalium historia sacra is the most successful work of the Lutheran theologian Wolfgang Franz (1564 – 1628), providing a careful study of the creatures appearing in the Bible, both real and mythical.

£75

DU ROSIER, Simon.

Antithesis Christi et Antichristi, videlicet Papae.

[Geneva], Eustace Vignon, 1578.

Rare edition of this satirical attack on the Catholic Church and the Pope by the Protestant minister Simon Du Rosier (or Rosarius), first published in Wittemberg in 1521. An excellent example of the ‘antithesis genre’, of which Luther’s Passional Christi und Antichristi is the most famous expression,...

£2500

RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio. 

Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...

Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562. 

Annotated copy, once owned by a music book collector, of the third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the very divisive ‘questione d’amore’ hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature. 

£2800

AUSONIUS, Decimus Magnus.

Ausonii Burdigalensis, viri consularis, omnia, quae adhuc in veteribus bibliothecis inveniri potuerunt,...

Bordeaux, Simon Millanges, 1580.

First Vinet edition of the works of the fourth-century poet Ausonius, with interesting annotations by two early readers. Ausonius taught rhetoric in his native Bordeaux for thirty years before serving as tutor and then consul to the emperor Gratian. He was a prolific poet, employing a variety...

£1950

SCHOENAU, Johann Heinrich von. 

Betrachtungen uber die geheimbe Fürbilder, der Sechs Tage der Welt-Erschaffung, und des siebenden...

Zürich, Johann Wilhelm Simler, 1688. 

Scarce first edition of this interesting work on the seven days of Creation, linked to the life of Christ and to the history of the Church, in an attractive eighteenth-century devotional binding. 

£850

TUCKER, Josiah.

Betydande frågor om handelen, wid tilfålle af de motsäjelser, som skedde emot den sista billen, om utlänningars...

Stockholm, Jon. G. Langes [colophon: N. v. Oelreich], 1763.

First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...

£250

DIODORUS Siculus. 

Bibliothecae historicae libri XV.  Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum...

Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559. 

Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.  Although Diodorus’s text, published in Greek for the first time by Estienne in the same year, offers a history of the world from its inception until Caesar, it came down...

£2500

FREEMAN, Arthur.

Bibliotheca Fictiva [supplements].

London, 2015-2021.

Three supplements to Arthur Freeman's Bibliotheca Fictiva, an inventory of books and manuscripts relating to literary forgery. Spanning some twenty-four centuries, the book seeks also to define and describe the controversial genre it represents. Individual entries offer specific commentary...

£45

[BASKERVILLE PRESS.]

The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

Third and final edition of Baskerville’s octavo prayer book. The prayers for the Royal Family on cancels B8, C6, and D3 include the name of Queen Charlotte, whom George III married in 1761. This copy also includes the ‘occasional prayers’ which were only printed for part of the edition and are...

£1200

[COMMON PRAYER.] 

The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794. 

A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy. 

£1850

STEPNIAK, Sergey. 

דאָס אינטערערדישע רוסלאַנד … איבערזעצט פון א. פרומקין
[Dos...

New York, Maks N. Maisel, 1921. 

Scarce first American edition in Yiddish of Stepniak’s first and most influential book.  Written in Italian during exile in Switzerland following his assassination of Nikolai Mezentsov, chief of Alexander II’s secret police, Underground Russia was published in 1882 and translated into...

£150

[KRIŠTOLOVEC, Ivan.]

Breve notitia della traslatione del corpo di S. Paolo Primo Eremita

Rome, Giorgio Placho, 1702.

First and only edition, very rare, of this account of the translation of the remains of St Paul of Thebes, known as Paul, the First Hermit or Paul the Anchorite (third/fourth century), the first Christian hermit. It was compiled by the theologian who would become Prior of one of the most important...

£350

ZAMPELIOS, Spiridion.

Βυζαντιναι Μελεται [Byzantine Studies]...

Athens, Christos Nikolaidos, 1857.

First edition. Spyros Zampelios was a champion of the continuity theory in the history of the Greek nation in the crucial decades of the mid nineteenth century, and the first Greek historian to adopt a tripartite examination of historical periods, divided into ancient, medieval and modern Hellenism....

£350

PINDAR. 

Carmina, ex editione Chr. Gottl. Heyne. 

Oxford, N. Bliss for M. Bliss and R. Bliss [– and London, for F. & C. Rivington, J. Payne & J. Mackinlay, W.H. Lunn, Longman, Hurst,...

An attractive Oxford-printed pocket edition of Pindar’s Odes, as edited by Christian Gottlob Heyne. 

£175