Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller 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. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. FRONTINUS, Sextus Julius.

    Sexti Julii Frontini, viri consularis, quae extant. Robertus Keuchenius, S. F. notis et emendationibus...

    Amsterdam, Johann à Waesberge, 1661.

    The collected works of the first-century civil engineer and Roman general Frontinus, one-time governor of Roman Britain, edited and with extensive notes by the Dutch historian Robert Keuchen (1636–1673).

    £250

  5. FRY, Theodore.

    A brief Memoir of Francis Fry, F.S.A. of Bristol. By his Son … Not published.

    [London, Printed by Barclay and Fry,] 1887.

    First edition. Francis Fry (1803–1886) of Bristol, the preeminent student and collector of English Bibles in his time, was also an active partner in the Quaker family firm of chocolate and porcelain manufacturers and type founders. Among his publications were a facsimile of the first complete...

    £850

  6. 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

  7. GAMON, Christophe de.

    La semaine, ou création du monde du sieur Christofle de Gamon, contre celle du Sieur du Bartas.

    [Geneva,] Gédéon Petit, 1609.

    Unauthorised second edition, scarcer than the first, of this poem on the creation of the world by Christophe de Gamon, this copy containing an early example of the use of the formula ‘collated and perfect’ by the librarian to the eighth Earl of Kinnoull.

    £950

  8. GAZA, Theodorus.

    Grammatica introductiva; De mensibus; Apollonius Dyscolus: De constructione; Herodianus: De numeris.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, 25 December 1495.]

    A beautiful example of early Greek printing, containing the editio princeps of the grammar of Theodorus Gaza, and one of the first texts to be printed entirely in Greek.

    £45000

  9. GELLIUS, Aulus.

    Auli Gellii luculentissimi scriptoris Noctes Atticae.

    Lyon, Sebastian Gryphius, 1555.

    Gryphius edition of Aulus Gellius’ famous Attic Nights, issued the year before Gryphius’ death.

    £650

  10. GELLIUS, Aulus; [Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS, editor].

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

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.

    Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s celebrated 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 (Gronow,...

    £450

  11. [GEORGE V.]

    The Form and Order of the Service that is to be performed and of the Ceremonies that are to be observed in the Coronation...

    London, Novello & Company, 1911.

    A handsome copy of the Coronation service, with choral settings of the music sung, including (among others) Parry’s ‘I was glad’, Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’, and ‘God save the King!’, arranged by Sir Frederick Bridge (1844–1924), organist at Westminster Abbey.

    £450

  12. GIBBON, Edward.

    The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

    London, 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. The first edition of volume I (1000 copies, published...

    £14000

  13. GIOVANNI GUALBERTO, Saint.

    Sanctus Ioannes Gualbertus Florentinus institutor ordinis Vallisumbrosae.

    [S.l., s.n.,] 1774.

    A wonderful engraving, extremely rare, depicting scenes from the life of Saint Giovanni Gualberto (c. 985–1073, anglicised as John Gualbert), founder of the Vallombrosan Order.

    £1250

  14. 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

  15. GOBINET, Charles. 

    Instruction sur la vérité du Saint Sacrement, contenant en abregé les principaux motifs de la créance Catholique...

    Paris, François le Cointe, 1677. 

    Scarce first edition thus, containing an explanation of the Eucharist and a defence of transubstantiation by the French writer and teacher Charles Gobinet (1613–1690), a lovely copy bearing a stamp found on bindings executed for Louis de France, the Grand Dauphin (1661–1711), eldest son of Louis...

    £650

  16. GOODWIN, Thomas.

    Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities wherein many Roman and English...

    London, R.W. for Peter Parker, 1661.

    A wholly unsophisticated Restoration sammelband of three popular seventeenth-century schoolbooks.

    £850

  17. GOODWIN, Thomas.

    Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities, wherein many Roman & English...

    Oxford, Leonard Lichfield for Henry Cripps, 1638.

    Early editions of these two popular schoolbooks on antiquities, often found bound together – a compendium of Roman antiquities and a study of the customs and religious rites of the ancient Jews, originally published in 1614 and 1625 respectively – by the headmaster and scholar Thomas Goodwin (1587–1642)....

    £1600

  18. [GOSPELS.] Charles HURÉ, translator.

    Le nouveau testament de notre-seigneur Jesus-Christ, nouvellement traduit en françois...

    Paris, L. Roulland, 1712.

    An attractive early Jansenist binding, with a sober shagreen exterior concealing gilt decoration within, on a copy of the Gospels extracted from Charles Huré’s French New Testament.

    £950

  19. [GRADUAL.]

    Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.

    Italy (Umbria), end of thirteenth century.

    A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi...

    £20000

  20. GRAILE, John.

    Three Sermons preached at the Cathedral in Norwich. And a fourth at a parochial Church in Norfolk. Humbly recommending,...

    London, Printed for W. Kettilby … 1685.

    First and only edition, rare. The third of these four sermons was delivered on the anniversary of Charles I’s execution, 30 January 1684, drawing on the Proverb: ‘For the transgression of a land, many are the princes there’, in which the plurality of leaders is shown to be the ‘constant...

    £850