Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison 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.

 
  1. WILSON, David (editor).

    A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, &c. in three Parts … 

    [Edinburgh:] Sold by the Editor at his House … and by J. Hamilton, Music Seller … [c.1800?].

    Second(?), expanded edition of this collection of (mostly) hymn tunes scored for treble, tenor, and bass. Though for most hymns the tunes only are printed, there are words for Cowper’s ‘Hark, my Soul!’ and one other, and at the end are the words and tunes for seven secular catches (in three...

    £500

  2. [WITTENBERG, University of]. 

    Tomus primus disputationum theologicarum, in academia Wittebergensi ab anno 1600 usq[ue] ad 1606...

    Wittenberg, Kaspar Heyden, 1625.

    A collection of twenty-eight disputations held at the University of Wittenberg by Lutheran theologians and their students between 1600 and 1611.  The disputations cover much ground, including the Eucharist, Church councils, canonical scripture, predestination, original sin, Christ’s ascension,...

    £950

  3. XENOPHON.

    De Cyri regis Persarum vita atque disciplina, libri VIII.

    Paris, Andreas Wechel, 1572.

    First edition of Joachim Camerarius’ Latin translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, a partly fictional work on the life and education of Cyrus the Great which served as a model for medieval and renaissance mirrors of princes, including Machiavelli’s Il Principe. A beautiful...

    £875

  4. 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

  5. ZOSIMUS. 

    Ιστοριας νεας βιβλοι ἑξ …  Historiae novae libri sex, notis illustrate. 

    Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1679. 

    First Oxford edition of this history of the Roman Empire from Augustus to the year 410, by the fifth-century Greek historian Zosimus.  The work is an important source particularly for the period 395-410 and its pagan author attributes Rome’s decline to its embrace of Christianity and rejection...

    £400