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. PLUTARCH.

    The Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that grave learned Philosopher and Historiographer,...

    Imprinted at London by Richard Field for Bonham Norton, 1595.

    Second edition of North’s celebrated translation of Plutarch, first published in 1579, which has long been recognized as a major source for Shakespeare, providing not only the historical framework for Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus,...

    £4500

  2. PLUTARCH [and Jodocus BADIUS Ascensius (editor)].

    Vitae … novissime … longe diligentius repositae, majoreque...

    Venice, Melchiorre Sessa [the elder] & Pietro Ravani, 26 November 1516.

    First substantially illustrated edition of Plutarch’s Lives, with signs of early reading. First published in this popular translation in Paris in 1514 by French scholar-printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius (1462–1535) in collaboration with Jean Petit, the text is here accompanied by seventy-eight...

    £4250

  3. POCKLINGTON, John.

    Altare Christianum: or, the dead Vicar’s Plea. Wherein the Vicar of Gr. being dead, yet speaketh, and pleadeth...

    London, Printed by Richard Badger. 1637.

    First edition, from the library of Robert Southey, with an ownership inscription an eleven-line note in his distinctive diminutive hand.

    £3750

  4. POCOCKE, Richard.

    A Description of the East, and some other Countries.

    London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and P. Knapton, W. Innys, W. Meadows, G. Hawkins, S. Birt, T. Longman, C. Hitch, R. Dodsley,...

    First edition, demy folio issue. The traveller and cleric Pococke (1704-1765), was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and graduated BA in 1725, BCL in 1731, and DCL in 1733. His family’s ecclesiastical connexions and his facility at navigating the complexities of clerical patronage enabled...

    £8000

  5. [PONTIFICAL.]

    Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. Primum, nunc denuo Urbani Papae Octavi auctoritate recognitum.

    Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1663.

    An attractive Plantin-Moretus Pontifical, splendidly preserved in a richly baroque binding.

    £4500

  6. POPE, [Alexander].

    The second Epistle of the second Book of Horace, imitated by Mr. Pope.

    London, R. Dodsley, 1737.

    First edition, the issue (presumably early) with the footnote on p. 12 misnumbered ‘16’ for 15.

    £275

  7. POPE, [Alexander].

    The sixth Epistle of the first Book of Horace imitated.

    London, L. Gilliver, 1737.

    First edition. Foxon P965; Rothschild 1638; Griffith 476.

    £250

  8. [PRAYER-BOOK.]

    The new and complete Family Prayer-Book, or Church of England Man’s Divine Library: being an universal Illustration,...

    London: Printed for Alex. Hogg … [1784-5.]

    First edition thus, rare, published in 36 weekly parts, each originally accompanied with an illustration, and now correctly bound according to the complicated ‘Directions to the Binder’ at the end. Wright’s exhaustive compilation, with notes and commentary on each page, assembled calendars,...

    £950

  9. [PRAYERS.] 

    ‘Orationes diversae pro temporum opportunitate dicendae’. 

    [Likely Lucca, late eighteenth century.] 

    A delightful manuscript prayerbook for use in communal worship, most likely for a rural community, with prayers for help in times of plagues and of animal diseases, prayers seeking protection from storms and alleviation of droughts, for times of earthquakes, for the sick, and against pagans. ...

    £475

  10. [PRAYERS.] 

    Récueil de plusieurs prieres.   

    Vienna, ‘chez Georg Müllner libraire et relieur des livres’, [c. 1810].

    Very rare and charming early nineteenth-century prayer book in an attractive binding by the Viennese ‘libraire et relieur’ Georg Müllner. 

    £450

  11. PRESENT FOR THE YOUNG (A).

    London: Printed for The Religious Tract Society … and sold at their Depository … also by J. Nisbet...

    [c. 1827]

    First edition. A finely illustrated anthology of religious verse, contemplations, and prayers for children. Pieces include poems on the seasons and stories about a Welsh Shepherd, and ‘The Hill and the Valley’, all with heavily metaphorical content.

    £175

  12. [PROCESSIONAL, Dominican use.]

    Processionarium ordinis fratrum praedicatorum.

    Seville, Meinardus Ungut and Stanislaus Polonus, 3 April, 1494.

    First edition of the first Spanish book to make extensive use of typeset music printing, one of the finest products of early Spanish typography.

    £35000

  13. [PSALMS.]

    The whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into English Meter by Tho. Strenhold, Jo. Hopkins, W. Whittingham, and others …...

    London, Printed by T. C[otes] for the Company of Stationers, 1637.

    A very attractive pocket psalm-book with tunes, ruled in red throughout and in a handsome binding. Such diminutive psalm books began to appear at the end of the sixteenth-century, printed for the Company of Stationers, who had the monopoly. The printer here was Thomas Cotes, most famous as printer...

    £2750

  14. [PSALMS.]

    Les Pseaumes de David, mis en Vers François, revus et approuvez par le Synode Walon des Provinces-Unies. Nouvelle Edition.

    Amsterdam, ‘aux dépens de l’Eglise Françoise de Londres’, 1729’.

    New edition of the metrical Psalms of the Pléiade poet Clément Marot and the theologian Théodore de Bèze, extensively revised, with a new version of 149 Psalms, printed for the use of Huguenot émigrés.

    £950

  15. PURSEY, Thomas.

    The last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

    [Edinburgh, T. Pursey, 1900.]

    A photographic tour-de-force, assembling many hundreds of individual photographic portraits neatly incorporated into a painted scenario, and then reproduced as a photogravure, depicting all the attendees of the last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held in May 1900. Evidently a...

    £2000

  16. [QUARITCH.]

    Guillaume Postel (1510–1581).

    Quaritch, 2006.

    A catalogue of a collection of the works of the Renaissance scholar and Arabist, Guillaume Postel. ‘Not only does it include editions of quite exceptional rarity, to be found in few libraries on either side of the Atlantic, but it illustrates every moment of Postel’s extraordinary career and...

    £60

  17. QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius, and Pierre GALLAND (ed.).

    M. Fabii Quintiliani … de oratoria institutione livre XII....

    Paris, Thomas Richard, 1554 [– 1550-1561].

    A mixed edition of Pierre Galland’s Quintilian, a hugely successful project from its first appearance in 1538. This copy joins the Institutio oratoria with the (now believed to be spurious, if contemporary) Declamationes, and conforms with the copy held at the Arsenal.

    £700

  18. QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius, and Jacques-Louis d’ESTREBAY (editor).

    Compendium libri secundi, tertii, et quinti institutionum...

    Paris, Thomas Richard, 1558.

    Very rare third edition of this compendium of Quintilian’s oratory by Jacques-Louis d’Estrebay (or Estrebee, 1481–1550?), humanist, translator, professor of Rhetoric at Rheims and subsequently at the College of Sante-Barbe in Paris, and a proof-reader for the Estiennes. The title-page indicates...

    £350

  19. QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius.

    Institutiones oratoriae, ac Declamationes, cuiuscuius sint, summa accuratione nuper recognitae, cum...

    [Paris,] Badius Ascensius for Ascensius and Roigny, August [– September] 1533. 

    Rare reprint of Badius’s successful 1528 Quintilian, with the commentary of Peter Schade, German humanist author of an important work on rhetoric. 

    £1250

  20. [REGI, Domenico.] 

    Vita di Tommaso Moro Gran Cancelliere d’Inghilterra.  Dedicato all’Eccellentissimo Signore D. Diego Matriaga...

    Naples, [Michele Guarracino], 1755. 

    Seemingly unrecorded edition of this Italian biography of Thomas More by Domenico Regi (1608–1680), first published in Milan 1675. 

    £475