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. 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

  2. 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

  3. ZANCHI, Basilio.

    Dictionarium poeticum, et epitheta veterum poetarum … nunc secondo trans Alpes editum.

    Mons, Luca Rivius, 1612.

    Scarce Mons-printed edition of Zanchi’s classical onomasticon from A to Z, providing a comprehensive list of deities, notable figures, and locations from the works of Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Propertius.

    £375

  4. ZENO of Verona, Saint

    In presenti opusculo infrascripta continentur.  Sermones luculentissimi …  Omelie & admonitiones...

    Venice, Giacomo Penzio for Benedetto Fontana, 24 January 1508. 

    Rare first edition of the sermons of Zeno of Verona, edited by Guarino and published here along with the sermons of Caesarius of Arles and Origen, and other homiletic material, especially Marian. 

    £1500

  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