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. TERENCE Afer, Publius. 

    Comoediae sex, tum ex Donati commentariis … diligentius quam unquam antehac emendatae; Aelii Donati...

    Paris, Robert Estienne, 1529. 

    First folio edition of Terence’s comedies by Robert Estienne.  The printer had already produced a small, octavo edition of Terence’s works in 1526.  Confident in its success, and through access to an excellent and ancient manuscript of the fourth-century commentary by Aelius Donatus, ‘in...

    £1500

  2. TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND,

    who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel,...

    London, Printed for Thomas Simmons …, 1659.

    First edition, rare, a list of Quaker victims of persecution in Ireland with details of their sufferings. The pamphlet was published and undersigned by a group of the victims including the country’s reputed first Quaker, William Edmondson, and Thomas Holme, who went on to publish A Brief...

    £300

  3. [THOMAS À KEMPIS.]

    Messer Giovanni Gerson. Utile & divota operetta della imitatione di Giesu Xpo …

    Florence, Piero Pacini da Pescia, 16 April 1505.

    Scarce edition of an anonymous Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi, with a striking woodcut of Christ to the title.

    £4000

  4. TOMPSON, John, editor.

    English Miscellanies consisting of various Pieces of Divinity, Morals, Politicks, Philosophy and History;...

    Gottingen by Abram. Vandenhoeck, Printer and Bookseller to the University 1746.

    Second edition, revised, of John Tompson’s important English Miscellanies, expanded to almost twice the size of the first edition, including up-to-date content published since 1737.

    £300

  5. TRIMMER, Mrs.

    [Sarah]. An Explanation of the Office for the public Baptism of Infants; and of the Order for the Confirmation of...

    London: Printed for T. Longman, and G. G. J. and J. Robinson … and J. Johnson … 1791

    First edition, dedicated with the Queen’s permission to the royal princess, Princess Mary. According to the Analytical Review there were two versions of his work with the same imprint, this one (not in ESTC), which sold for 1 s., and one with added catechistical questions for teachers (BL. Bodley,...

    £650

  6. TUCKER, Josiah.

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

    [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...

    £200

  7. TURNER, Sharon.

    The sacred history of the world, as displayed in the creation and subsequent events to the deluge. Attempted to...

    London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832 [– 1834; – 1837].

    First edition, each volume with a presentation letter from the author (dated 1 March 1832, 12 December 1834, and 27 March 1837 respectively) to the classical scholar Thomas Gaisford.

    £500

  8. TYRE, William, Archbishop of, and Giuseppe OROLOGGI (translator).

    Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme,...

    Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.

    First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript detailing a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.

    £2800

  9. URCEO, Antonio [or Codro]. 

    Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur.  Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat.  Epistolae. ...

    Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502. 

    First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts. 

    £3000

  10. VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius. 

    Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi locis prope innumerabilibus emendati, ejusdem...

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565. 

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. 

    £1250

  11. VALERIUS MAXIMUS, Gaius.

    Factorum dictorumque memorabilium libri novem. Praeterea Caii Titii Probi, in decimum lib. huius operis,...

    Mainz, Ivo Schoeffer, 1544.

    An attractive copy, with an interesting provenance, of a scarce Mainz edition of Valerius Maximus accompanied by Probus’ Epitome.

    £1500

  12. VALLISNERI, Alberto Maria. 

    Lettioni venti sopra gli alti, et ineffabili misteri della Messa, in publico lette nella chiesa di...

    Milan, Giovanni Battista da Ponte & fratelli, 1567.

    Very rare first edition of a collection of twenty sermons on the Mass delivered by the Ferrarese Carmelite Vallisneri in the church of San Giovanni in Conca, Milan, dedicated to the city’s archbishop Cardinal Carlo Borromeo. 

    £500

  13. VIRGIL Maro, Publius, and Giovanni Andrea dell’ANGUILLARA (trans.). 

    Il primo libro della Eneida di Vergilio,...

    Padua, Gratioso Perchacino, 1564. 

    First edition of the first book of Anguillara’s verse translation of the Aeneid, a copy printed on strong paper and inscribed by the author.  The humanist, poet, and successful translator of Ovid Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara (1517–1572) undertook to translate into Italian ottava...

    £2500

  14. [VIRGIL.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    ...

    Paris, André Wechel, 1564. 

    Second editions of Ramus’s extensive commentaries on Virgil’s two poems on country life, written in reaction to the dry doctrines of several French schools who based their teaching of nature on Aristotle’s Physics.  Ramus wanted to keep in contact with the concrete realities of nature...

    £950

  15. WATTS, Isaac. 

    Psalms of David imitated in the Language of the New Testament … 

    Birmingham, Printed & sold by Knott and Lloyd. 1806. 

    Unrecorded Birmingham editions of Watts’s Hymns (first 1707) and Psalms (first 1719), both many times reprinted, especially in America.  The portrait of Watts was printed especially for this edition and is dated 10 October 1806. 

    £300

  16. [WESLEY, John (editor).]

    Excerpta ex Ovidio, Virgilio, Horatio, Juvenali, Persio, et Martiali: in usum juventutis Christianae....

    Bristol, typis F. Farley, 1749.

    First edition of one of the textbooks that Wesley compiled for the school that he founded at Kingswood, Bristol, in 1748. Finding contemporary textbooks inadequate, he published an astonishing number of works for his pupils – grammars, editions of classics, and other introductions to learning....

    £1100

  17. [WETENHALL, Edward.] 

    Enter into thy Closet: or, a Method and Order for Private Devotion … The fourth Edition. 

    London, John Martyn, 1672. 

    Rare fourth edition (first published in 1666) of this manual of private devotion by Edward Wettenhall (1636–1713), ‘a treatise endeavouring a plain discovery of the most spiritual and edifying course of reading, meditation, and prayer; and so, of self examination, humiliation, mortification,...

    £375

  18. 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

  19. [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

  20. WITTKOWER, Jochanan.

    Agudath Perachim. ‘Blüthenstrauß’. Anthologie deutscher und hebräischer Gedichte für Geist und Herz …

    Altona, the Bonn Brothers for the author, 1880.

    First and only edition of this anthology of moral poems and satirical and edifying epigrams translated from German into Hebrew, as well as transcriptions and translations of epitaphs from the Jewish community of Altona, now a district of Hamburg.

    £350