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

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

FLORUS.

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

[FRANCE and ITALY.]

A collection of manuscript and printed material pertaining to French territorial ambitions in Italy.

[1537 – c. 1630].

A collection of memoranda concerning French ambitions in the Italian peninsula during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

£750

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

FREEMAN, Arthur.

Catullus Carmen 17.6 and Other Mysteries. A Study in Editorial Conflict, Eccentricity, Forgery, and Restitution....

London, The Author, 2020.

This partly historical, partly philological essay offers a general account of the early preservation, post-medieval recovery, and Renaissance evolution of the text of Catullus, with specific reference to one speculative reading in Carmen 17 (‘De Colonia’), and certain humanist twists and forgeries...

£15

FREEMAN, Arthur.

Bibliotheca Fictiva [supplements].

London, 2015-2021.

Three supplements to Arthur Freeman's Bibliotheca Fictiva, an inventory of books and manuscripts relating to literary forgery. Spanning some twenty-four centuries, the book seeks also to define and describe the controversial genre it represents. Individual entries offer specific commentary...

£45

FREUD, Sigmund.

Die Zukunft einer Illusion.

Leipzig/Vienna/Zürich, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927.

First edition, in the first issue of 5000 copies, of Freud’s work on the origins and future development of religion (the ‘illusion’ of the title), centred on the notion of religion as, in one form or another, wish-fulfilment and the longing for a paternal figure as a response to a realisation...

£85

[FROBEN, Johannes].

Portrait, after Holbein the Younger, showing the scholar-printer half-length, to right, black fur-lined dress,...

The original of this celebrated portrait is lost, and it only survives in copies. There is one at Hampton Court, for example. See the account in Oliver Miller, Tudor, Stuart and early Georgian Paintings in the Royal Collection, 1963. There are two copies in the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung at Basel (357, 1910).

£12000

FULBECKE, William.

An Historicall Collection of the continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians during...

London, Printed for William Ponsonby. 1601.

First edition. Fulbecke’s Historicall Collection ‘was a narrative history of the last years of the Roman republic and it is significant as one of the very few attempts by a Renaissance Englishman to write such a work … An interesting attempt to weave together such often-contradictory...

£5250

GASPAROLI, Carlo Maria.

Dialectica sive manuductio ad logicam dictata a R. P. Bar. De Somere. Scripta a me Car. Mar. Gasparoli....

Antwerp, 1753.

A handsome manuscript comprising a thorough course in logic and dialectic, executed by a student at the Jesuit college in Antwerp, and illustrated with an extraordinary decorative programme inspired by printed emblems.

£4750

GAY, John.

Achilles. An Opera. As it is perform’d at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden ... with the Musick prefix’d to each Song.

London: Printed for J. Watts ... 1733.

First edition of Gay’s last ballad opera; he was arranging for its production at the time of his death. The work is a farcical burlesque of classical myth, in which Achilles, dressed as a woman, is admitted to the court of Lycomedes, who falls in love with him while he in turn is trying to woo...

£400

GAZZOLI, Giacomo Maria.

Il Luminario de’ Ciechi. Operetta diretta all’universale del Giudaismo da Giacomo M.a Gazzoli già...

Parma, [Giambattista Bodoni] ‘Dalla Reale Tipografia’, 1797.

A rare typographic marvel featuring three distinct Hebrew typefaces by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813), in which Rabbi-turned-Catholic-zealot Giacomo Gazzoli exhorts the Jews of Italy to ‘emerge from a state of blindness into the light of Christianity’.

£850

[GELENIUS, Sigismund (editor).] 

Notitia utraque, dignitatum, cum orientis, tum occidentis, ultra arcadii honoriique tempora,...

Lyons, [Jacques du Creux for] Jean de Gabiano, 1608. 

An expanded edition, illustrated on almost every leaf, of an anonymous fifth-century description of the Roman Empire. 

£875

GELLIUS, Aulus [and Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS (editor)].

Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti...

Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.

Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s version, published the same year as the first edition. A commonplace book compiled by Aulus Gellius in the second century, the Attic Nights received several editions, of which the most highly regarded is that of Johann Friedrich Gronovius (1611–1671),...

£450

GIBBON, Edward.

The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire.

London, printed for W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1776–88.

First editions of all six volumes of Gibbon’s ‘masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style’ (PMM). The first volume here is of the second variant (of two), with the errata corrected as far as p. 183 and X4 and a4 so signed.

£14000

GIRALDI, Lilio Gregorio. 

De Deis gentium varia et multiplex historia, in qua simul de eorum imaginibus et cognominibus agitur,...

Basel, Oporinus, 1548. 

First edition of the most important mythography to be published after Boccaccio’s Genealogiae deorum gentilium and before Conti’s Mythologiae, with extensive marginalia in the first part. 

£2500

GROVES, John.

Greek and English dictionary, comprising all the words in the writings of the most popular Greek authors; in the...

London, for Cowie, Jolland & Co., 1838.

Seventh edition of Groves’s popular Greek–English dictionary, with charming doodles and cheeky notes by William Salked Brook of Woodbridge, Suffolk, dating from his time at Magdalen College School and then Oriel College Oxford (BA 1880). Brook appears to have inherited the volume from his father...

£150

GUALDI, Cesare [i.e. Gregorio LETI]. 

Vita di Donna Olimpia Maldachini [sic] che governò la Chiesa, durante il...

‘Ragusa’ [i.e. Geneva], Giulio Giuli, 1676. 

Scarce expanded edition of Gregorio Leti’s salacious life of Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilij, the infamous sister-in-law of Innocent X dubbed ‘Pope Olimpia I’ for her extraordinary influence on the Papacy. 

£750

HAEFTEN, Benedictus van.

Regia via crucis.

Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti, 1635.

First edition of an important counter-reformation devotional emblem book, with a title-page designed by Peter Paul Rubens. Haeften (1588-1648) was provost of the Benedictine abbey of Affligem, Belgium, and played an important role in the reform of the Benedictine order. The Regia via crucis was his most...

£1100