Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Pettit

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. ABBIATE FORIERI, Matteo.

    La Colonna di chiesa santa. Panegirico detto nella solennizata festa di S. Agostino nella Chiesa de...

    Milan, Lodovico Monza, 1660.

    Very rare panegyric given at the Church of San Marco in Milan to mark the feast day of St Augustine in 1660, by the Milanese lawyer Matteo Abbiate Forieri, an annual event on behalf of the lawyers of the city’s Scuole Palatine.

    £175

  2. ‘ABRAHAM a Sancta Clara’ [pseud. Johann Ulrich MEGERLE].

    Coraggio e viltà, l’uno nella virtù, l’altra nel vizio....

    Trento, Giovanni Parone, 1717.

    Scarce first and only Italian edition of Abraham a Sancta Clara’s emblematic moral treatise Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt, printed in Trento with one hundred striking – albeit somewhat provincial – woodcuts based on the engravings in the first German edition (1707).

    £1850

  3. ACQUAVIVA, Claudio.

    Meditationes in Psalmum XLIV, & CXVIII.

    Rome, Bartolomeo Zanetti, 1616.

    First edition of these Jesuit meditations on two of the Psalms, a copy bound in the Soresini workshop for Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

    £1550

  4. [ADVENT.]

    Praeparatio ad nativitatem Domini Nostri Jesu Christi ad excitandos animi affectus ex missali Romano, et breviario collecta...

    Turin, Ignazio Soffietti, [c. 1790].

    An extremely rare short liturgical text to be used in the festive season from 16 to 24 December, complete with music, with a hand-coloured title-page and in decorative wrappers.

    £475

  5. AESOP, et al.; [George STEWART, editor].

    Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et Luciani Samosatensis dialogi. Isocratis...

    Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart, 1723.

    First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish school textbook comprising selections in Greek and Latin from Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Dialogues, the orations of Isocrates, and the Tablet of Cebes.

    £375

  6. ALAMANNI, Luigi.

    Opere toscane.

    [(Colophon:) Florence, [Bernardo Giunta], 9 July 1532.]

    First Florentine edition of this collection of vernacular verse, first published in Lyons in the same year, by the influential Florentine poet Alamanni, a friend of Machiavelli mentioned in the Art of War, our copy from the library of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey.

    £650

  7. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).

    £3800

  8. ALCIATI, Andrea.

    Les emblemes … mis en rime francoyse & puis nagueres reimprime avec curieuse correction.

    Paris, Chrestien Wechel, 1539.

    Third edition of Jean Lefevre’s French verse translation of Alciati’s Emblematum liber, bound with the second edition of Giovio’s Dialogo dell’imprese, the first to include Girolamo Ruscelli’s supplementary and substantial Discorso on emblems and mottos.

    £1750

  9. ALCIATI, Andrea; Claude MIGNAULT, editor; Fédéric MOREL.

    Omnia … emblemata, cum commentariis, quibus emblematum detecta...

    Paris, Jean Richer for François Gueffier, 1618.

    The final Paris printing of Mignault’s extensive and influential commentary of Alciati’s Emblems, yet the first edition to contain Fédéric Morel’s ‘Corollaria et monita’.

    £850

  10. [ALEXANDER VII, Pope.]

    Vero e pieno ragguaglio delle ceremonie fatte per l’incoronazione di N. Sig. Alessandro papa...

    Rome and Florence, nella stamperia di S. A. S. alla Condotta, 1655.

    Very rare first(?) edition of this detailed and entertaining account of the coronation of Pope Alexander VII in April 1655, capturing the splendour, colour, and emotion of the occasion.

    £450

  11. [ALMANACK.]

    Les étrennes à la rose, ou le rosier d’amour.

    Paris, Janet, [1804?].

    A charming literary almanack, or ‘rosebush of love’, collecting amatory poems using the motif of the rose, here bound in red silk strikingly embroidered in silver and dated with the French Revolutionary year ‘An XII’ (1804).

    £2500

  12. [ALMANACK.]

    Étrennes mignones [sic], curieuses et utiles, avec plusieurs augmentations & corrections, pour l’année mil sept...

    Paris, Claude-Jacques-Charles [Durand] and Pierre-François Durand, 1775.

    A very rare Parisian almanack for 1775, our copy in a handsome binding embroidered in gold and silver threads and with emblematic mottoes and charming illustrations depicting putti fanning smoke from a burning candle and holding a flaming heart.

    £1500

  13. [ALMANACK.]

    London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1785.

    [London,] Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1785].

    A very attractive miniature London Almanack in its elaborate original binding of gilt white calf and matching étui, with an engraving of the soon-to-be-finished Somerset House.

    £950

  14. [ALMANACK.]

    Le triomphe de la vertu. Sujets tirés de la Sainte Bible.

    Paris, Janet, [1814].

    A very rare biblical almanack for 1814 by Janet, attractively illustrated with engraved plates depicting episodes from the Old Testament.

    £300

  15. [ALMANACK.]

    Les perfidies supposées ou les médisances pardonables. Almanach orné des jolies gravures.

    Paris, Janet, ‘Successeur du Sr Jubert’, 1800.

    A seemingly unrecorded almanack for 1800, issued by the prolific publisher of almanacks Pierre-Étienne Janet (1746–1830), with suggestive engravings accompanied by explanatory poems, songs, and music, our copy in a handsome binding of contemporary painted white sheep with designs of hearts, garlands,...

    £1450

  16. [ALTAR CARDS.]

    Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John.

    Paris, Vanheck, [early eighteenth century].

    Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt-cards for priests with prayers for the celebration of Mass, with woodcut illustrations and lively wheat-and-vine borders.

    £1750

  17. [ALVISET, Jean Antoine.]

    L’Ange gardien. Pour les devotes confreries des Saincts Anges Gardiens. Par un prestre de l’eglise...

    Lyon, Jacques du Creux, 1647.

    Very rare devotional manual for female and male members of the Confraternity of the Guardian Angels established in the church of St Peter in Besançon, in eastern France, in 1643, with a separately published and seemingly unrecorded appendix detailing its rules.

    £350

  18. AMADUZZI, Giovanni Cristoforo.

    Epistola ad Johannem Baptistam Bodonium qua emendatur et suppletur commentarium de Anacreontis genere...

    [(Colophon:) Parma, Bodoni, 1791.]

    First edition of Amaduzzi’s philological and bibliographical commentary on Anacreon, addressed to Bodoni, ‘artis typographicae restitutor’ (p. 3).

    £275

  19. ANACREON.

    Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...

    Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.

    Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G.C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions cannot...

    £650

  20. [ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]

    Ανθολογια διαφορων επιγραμματων παλαιων, εις επτα βιβλια...

    [Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1566.

    First Estienne edition of the Planudean Anthology, a substantial collection of classical Greek poems and epigrams which proved a fertile source for scholars, poets, and artists, with extensive seventeenth-century annotations in Greek by an English scholar.

    £5000