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.
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DE LUCA, Giovanni Battista.
Il Cardinale della S.R. Chiesa pratico di Gio. Battista de Luca nell’ozio Tusculano della Primavera...
Rome, nella stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, 1680.
Scarce first edition of this thorough work on the cardinalate by the Italian jurist and cardinal De Luca (1614–1683). De Luca studied and practiced law at Naples before moving to Rome in 1645, where he established his reputation as one of Italy’s pre-eminent jurists and worked closely with...
£300
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DEZA, Diego de.
In defensio[n]es Sancti Thomae ab impugnationibus magistri Nicholai Magistrique Mathie.
Seville, Meinardus Ungut and Stanislaus Polonus, 4 February 1491.
First edition, institutionally rare and the only copy to have appeared at auction for at least the last half century, of the influential main work of theologian Diego de Deza y Tavera (1444–1523), a towering figure in the Spanish Renaissance.
£50000
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DIO CASSIUS.
Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...
Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.
First edition of Dio’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.
£2750
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DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.
£2500
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DIOGENES LAERTIUS, [and Henri ESTIENNE (editor)].
Περι βίων, δογμάτων και αποφθεγμων...
[Geneva,] Henri Estienne, 1570.
First Estienne edition of The Lives of the Philosophers, a very important edition in the original Greek, ‘in which appear for the first time many passages discovered in manuscripts by Estienne’. ‘The volume also contains thirty-six pages of important textual annotations by Henri Estienne,...
£1400
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[DOMINICAN NUNS.]
Regola e costituzioni delle suore di S. Domenico riviste e ristampate d’ordine del rmo p. vicario generale...
Rome, Bernardo Morini, 1853.
Very rare first edition thus of the regulations governing Dominican nuns, published by order of Alexandre Vincent Jandel (1810–1872), who served as Master of the Order of Preachers from 1850 until his death.
£250
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DRYDEN, John.
Religio Laici or a Layman’s Faith. A Poem …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1683.
First edition, second issue (with a few minor corrections; Macdonald located only two copies of the first): ‘a defence of the Anglican position, which shows his singular power of arguing in verse’ (Leslie Stephen, DNB). The inspiration for the poem was the translation of Richard Simon’s Histoire...
£400
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DUNS SCOTUS, John.
Questiones quodlibetales ex quattuor Sententiarum voluminibus … nunc prime revise … a … Antonio de Fantis.
Pavia, Giacomo Pocatela, 1517.
Uncommon Pavia-printed edition of Duns Scotus’s Quaestiones on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, edited by the Padua-based theologian Antonio de Fantis and first published two years earlier.
£2500
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DU RONDEL, Jacques.
La vie d’Épicure.
Paris, Antoine Cellier, 1679.
First edition of Du Rondel’s Life of Epicurus, a seminal work in the study of eighteenth-century Epicureanism; an important copy, from the distinguished library of Pierre-Daniel Huet.
£1750
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ECKARTSHAUSEN, Karl von.
Dieu est l’amour le plus pur, ma prière et ma contemplation. Par Eckartshausen. Paris, chez L.
Duprat-Duverger, rue des Grands-Augustins, no. 21, [1805-1813].
Scarce edition of a French translation of Gott ist die reinste Liebe by the German Catholic mystic Karl von Eckartshausen (1752–1803), this copy formerly in the possession of the long-term lover of Queen Victoria’s father.
£475
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[EDWARD VII – COMMON PRAYER.]
[Cover title: ‘Prayer Book of Edward VII’] The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration...
[Norwood (MA), Plimpton Press for] New York, M. Walter Dunne, [1904].
Authorised American edition of the Essex House Press Book of Common Prayer, published in celebration of the accession of Edward VII.
£500
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EPICTETUS.
To tou Epiktetou encheiridion. Ex editione Joannis Upton accurate expressum.
Glasgow, Foulis, 1751.
The first miniature Foulis edition of Epictetus in Greek, and the first Foulis Epictetus in Greek only; it had been preceded by a larger format, duodecimo (1748) edition in Greek and Latin. A 1765 reissue was, according to ESTC, reset.
£900
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EPIPHANIUS.
Κατα αιρεσεων ογδοηκοτα το επικληθεν Παναριον … Contra octoginta haereses...
Basel, [Johann Herwagen, 1544].
Editio princeps of the Greek text of Epiphanius’s great compendium of heresies, in a particularly attractive and well-preserved contemporary pigskin binding.
£5000
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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Paraclesis, id est adhortio ad sanctissimum ac saluberrimum Cristianae philosophiae studium …
Basel, Johann Froben, February 1520.
Attractive contemporary Erasmus sammelband, superbly eloquent in its physical union of three treatises without which the humanist’s Praise of Folly would risk gross misinterpretation.
£5500
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EUCHERIUS, Johannes (pseud.).
Gratiarum actio. Wirtembergensibus et Tubingensibus verbi ministris; qui censuris Patriarche Constantinopolitani...
Christopoli [i.e. Poznań, J. Wolrab], 1585.
Very rare early imprint from Poznań, one of the oldest and most important cities in Poland, a Catholic stronghold. There Johann Wolrab, Nikolaus’ eldest son, founded the second city printing press in 1579. Gratiarum actio had first appeared in 1584 in two productions printed in Krakow and Poznań,...
£800
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FAGNANI, Giovanni Marco.
De bello Arriano libri sex.
Milan, heirs of Pacifico da Ponte and Giovanni Battista Piccaglia, 1604.
First and only edition of the sole published work by the Italian nobleman Giovanni Marco Fagnani (1524–1609), an epic poem recounting Ambrose of Milan’s campaign against local Arians in late fourth-century Lombardy.
£900
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FARINGTON, Susan Maria (illustrator).
The 104th Psalm. Illustrated by Susan Maria Ffarington. Worden.
London, Vincent Brooks Day & Son, [c. 1867].
The Faringtons or Ffaringtons were an ancient family of Worden Hall, Leyland, Lancashire, with a substantial family archive. Susan Maria (1808–1894) edited The Farington Papers for the Chetham Society in 1856, and made other contributions to local history, but this unusual panorama seems to have...
£650
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FLORUS, Lucius.
Lucii Flori rerum ab urbe condita liber primus [– quartus].
[Venice, in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri, March 1521.]
Florus’s epitome of Roman history, extracted from the Aldine edition of March 1521 which comprised an epitome of Livy, Florus, and Niccolò Perotti’s translation of Polybius.
£750
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FORD, Simon.
The Restoring of fallen Brethren: containing the Substance of two Sermons … preached on the Performance of public...
London, Printed for Henry Mortlock … 1697.
First edition, the last published work of the clergyman and poet Simon Ford (1618/9-1699), being two sermons preached on the occasion of the performance of penance ‘for the late Fornications, and filthy Uncleannesses. that have been committed in this Neighbourhood’.
£275
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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