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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[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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[DOVES PRESS.]
Pervigilium Veneris.
Hammersmith, ‘printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press,’ 1910.
One of 150 copies on paper of the elusive Pervigilium Veneris, in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe).
£950
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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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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, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
The first miniature Foulis edition of Epictetus in Greek, and the first Foulis Epictetus in Greek only. A 1765 reissue was, according to ESTC, reset.
£650
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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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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Collectanea adagiorum.
[(Colophon:) Strasbourg, Matthias Schürer, 1519.]
Intensely annotated copy of a lifetime edition of Erasmus’ repository of Greek and Latin proverbs. The first version of the Adagia, containing about eight hundred maxims, had been published in 1500. Erasmus continued to add to his thesaurus for over thirty years, the success of this...
£5850
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EUSTRATIUS of Nicaea, et al.
Ευστρατιου και αλλων τινων επισημων υπομνηματα εις...
[(Colophon:) Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, July 1536.]
Editio princeps of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Eustratius of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus, the Peripatetic philosopher Aspasius, and other anonymous scholiasts, published by the Aldine press, annotated by a contemporary scholar.
£5500
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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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FERRER, Ventura Pascual.
Historia de los Dictadores de la republica Romana …
Cartagena de Indias, Government Press for Gonzalez Pujòl, 1814.
First edition, very rare, of this Colombia-printed history of the Roman dictators by the Cuban lawyer and writer Ferrer y Feruz (1772–1851), written in Colombia during the civil strife of early independence.
£650
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FIAMMA, Gabriele.
Prediche del reverendo don Gabriel Fiamma, canonico regolare lateranense; fatte in vari tempi, in vari luoghi,...
Venice, Francesco Senese, 1570.
Scarce third edition of this collection of twelve sermons by the Augustinian canon and bishop of Chioggia, Gabriele Fiamma (1533–1585).
£400
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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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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
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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
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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
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FREUD, Sigmund.
Moses and monotheism [translated from the German by Katherine Jones].
New York, Alfred A, Knopf, 1939.
First American edition of the last lifetime publication of Freud, a study of the origins of monotheism in Judaism and Christiantity, where Freud took as his point of departure the theory that Moses was not an Israelite but an Egyptian, who imported the seeds of Judaism into Israel from Egypt. The book...
£80