Continental

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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. SCHEFFER, Johannes Gerhard. 

    Constantini Opelii de fabrica triremium Meibomiana epistola perbrevis ad amicum. 

    ‘Eleuteropoli’ [Freistadt?], 1672. 

    First edition of this treatise on the ancient oar-driven warships known as triremes by the noted German philologist and archaeologist Johannes Scheffer (1621–1679), written as a critical response to the De fabrica triremium liber of Marcus Meibom, which had appeared in Amsterdam the previous...

    £875

  2. [SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]

    Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.

    Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.

    Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.

    £375

  3. SENECA, Lucius Annaeus.

    L. Annei Senecae opera, et ad dicendi facultatem, et ad bene vivendu[m] utilissima, per Des. Erasmum Roterod....

    Basel, ‘in officina Frobeniana’, 1529 [(colophon:) Basel, Johann Herwagen, March 1537].

    Second Erasmus edition of the moral essays and letters of Seneca, owned and annotated by Ludovicus Carinus (d. 1569), friend and later foe of Erasmus himself.

    £5000

  4. SENECA, Lucius Anneus. 

    Tragoediae pristinae integritati restitutae, per exactissimi judicii viros post Avantium & Philologum … 

    Paris, Badius Ascensius, 1514. 

    First edition edited by Erasmus and Badius Ascensius, a landmark in the history of Seneca’s textual tradition.  This key work, the product of a collaboration between two wholly committed humanists, cannot have been accomplished without some friction: Erasmus had allowed Badius to make use of...

    £1750

  5. SILIUS ITALICUS, C.; John CAREY, editor.

    Punicorum libri XVII, sedulâ recensione accurati [cover: Recensuit et...

    London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Co., T. Cadell,...

    First and only ‘Regent’s Classics’ edition of Silius Italicus’s epic poem on the Second Punic War, an attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards.

    £100

  6. SIMONETTA, Bonifacio.

    De Christiane Fidei et Romanorum Pontificum Persecutionibus.

    [(Colophon:) Basel, Nicolaus Kesler, 1509.]

    A beautiful copy of the second edition of Simonetta’s principal work, containing an early and intriguing reference to the New World, our copy from the library of Christian VI (1699–1746), King of Denmark and Norway, under whom the kingdom expanded its possessions in the Americas.

    £4500

  7. [SOCIETY OF JESUS.] 

    Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur.  Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux. 

    Strasbourg, L.F.  Le Roux, [1843]. 

    First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843. 

    £375

  8. SOPHOCLES; Adrien TURNÈBE, editor.

    Τραγωδιαι. Αιαξ μαστιγοφορος. Ηλεκτρα. Οιδιπους...

    Paris, Adrien Turnèbe, 1553 [(colophon:) 24 December 1552]. [issued with:] TRICLINIUS, Demetrius. Εις τα του σοφοκλεους...

    A wide-margined copy of Sophocles in Greek owned by the Vatican librarian and Greek scholar Leone Allacci, with his name on the title-page.

    £1850

  9. SPATARI, Pellegrino.

    Le orationi delle Messe di tutto l’anno, tradutte da Don Pellegrino Spathari canonico di Capodistria. Con...

    Pesaro, Bartolomeo Cesano, 1555.

    Rare first edition of this Italian translation of Latin prayers from the Missal by Spatari, a priest from Capodistria (modern-day Koper in Slovenia), dedicated to Vittoria Farnese, Duchess of Urbino (1519–1602).

    £650

  10. STANYHURST, William.

    Veteris hominis per expensa quatuor novissima metamorphosis, et novi genesis.

    Antwerp, Cornelius Woons, 1661.

    First edition, rare, of this work on death, the Last Judgement, Hell, and Heaven, by the Irish Jesuit William Stanyhurst (1601–1663), illustrated with five striking full-page emblematic engravings.

    £875

  11. STAPLETON, Thomas. 

    Promptuarium Catholicum ad instructionem concionatorum contra haereticos nostri temporis, super omnia evangelia...

    Antwerp, Pierre Beller, 1592. 

    Rare third edition, expanded, of Stapleton’s handbook or ‘storehouse’ of scriptural devotions for Sundays and feast days, first published in 1589.  An independent companion volume for the weekdays in Lent was first published in 1594. 

    £700

  12. STATIUS, P. Papinius; John CAREY, editor.

    Opera, sedula recensione accurata [cover: Recensuit et accuravit Joannes...

    London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. B. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Browne,...

    An attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards, of the ‘Regent’s Classics’ pocket edition of Statius.

    £120

  13. STATIUS, Publius Papinius.

    The Thebaid … translated into English Verse, with Notes and Observations and a Dissertation upon...

    Oxford, Printed at the Clarendon Press, 1767.

    First edition of ‘the most successful English rendering of Statius’ Thebaid’ (Sowerby), translated into heroic couplets by William Lillington Lewis. ‘Ably captur[ing] the sublimity, eeriness, and violence of the original’, it was to be his only work (ODNB). Samuel Johnson was...

    £750

  14. 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

  15. STOBAEUS, Johannes.

    Εκλογαι αποϕθεγματων και υποθηκων … Sententie ex thesauris Graecorum delectae …...

    Basel, Johann Oporinus for Christoph Froschauer, August 1549.

    Second, ‘in every respect preferable’ (Dibdin) edition of Gesner’s Stobaeus, acclaimed as ‘the first critical impression of the text of the Florilegium’ (ibid.), philologically and critically much superior to the first, published in 1543. Gesner’s parallel printing of the Greek...

    £1750

  16. STRABO.

    Strabonis geographicorum lib. XVII ... iam denuo a Conrado Heresbachio … ad fidem Graeci exemplaris, authorumque …...

    Basel, Johann Walder, 1539.

    Second edition of Strabo’s masterful Geographica in the Latin translation of the German Humanist and friend of Erasmus, Konrad Heresbach (1496–1576), here found with the first Latin translation of an epitome of Strabo’s work by the Basel professor of physic and logic, Hieronymus Gemusaeus...

    £2500

  17. STRAPAROLA, Giovanfrancesco.

    Le piacevoli notti di messer Giovanfrancesco Straparola da Caravaggio.

    Venice, Domenico Giglio, 1558.

    An early edition of both volumes of Straparola’s Facetious nights, first published in 1550–53.

    £2750

  18. STRYPE, John.

    The Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, Kt., first Instructer, afterwards Secretary of State, to King Edward VI.,...

    London, John Wyat, 1705.

    First edition of Strype’s biography of the courtier and classicist Sir John Cheke, inaugural Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge.

    £450

  19. SUCQUET, Antoine.

    Via vitae aeternae iconibus illustrata per Boetium a Bolswert.

    Antwerp, Martin Nutius, 1620.

    First edition, an attractive copy, of an emblem book which unites the spiritual meditations and practices of the Belgian Jesuit Antoine Sucquet with fine emblematic illustrations devised by the great baroque engraver Boetius à Bolswert (c. 1580–1633), called by Praz ‘the illustrator of the sentimental...

    £1500

  20. SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.

    Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...

    Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.

    Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...

    £1250