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. STOBAEUS, Johannes.

    Εκλογαι αποϕθεγματων και υποθηκων … Sententie ex thesauris Graecorum delectae …...

    Basel, Johann Oporinus for Christoph Froschauer, August 1549.

    Second, ‘in every respect preferable’ (Dibdin) edition of Gesner’s Stobaeus, acclaimed as ‘the first critical impression of the text of the Florilegium’ (ibid.), philologically and critically much superior to the first, published in 1543. Gesner’s parallel printing of the Greek...

    £1750

  2. SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.

    Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...

    Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.

    Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...

    £1250

  3. TACITUS. 

    C. Cornelius Tacitus, cum optimis exemplaribus collatus. 

    Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1678. 

    A remarkably fresh set of the third and final Elzevir edition of this format, reprinted from the edition of 1665. 

    £275

  4. TERENCE.

    Les comedies … avec la traduction et les remarques de Madame Dacier ….

    Rotterdam, Gaspar Fritsch, 1717.

    A fine edition of Anne Dacier’s French Terence (first published 1688), the translation here revised by her, and the notes expanded, with delightful illustrations by Picart.

    £850

  5. TERENCE.

    Comediae sex. A M. Anto. Mureto locis prope innumeris suo nitore restitutae …

    Carmagnola, Marcantonio Bellone, 1590.

    A rare provincial printing of a school edition the plays of Terence, printed in the small town of Carmagnola in Piedmont, which had become part of the Duchy of Savoy only two years earlier, after almost half a century under French domination. The text is taken from earlier printings of Marc Antoine...

    £375

  6. TERENCE Afer, Publius. 

    Comoediae sex, tum ex Donati commentariis … diligentius quam unquam antehac emendatae; Aelii Donati...

    Paris, Robert Estienne, 1529. 

    First folio edition of Terence’s comedies by Robert Estienne.  The printer had already produced a small, octavo edition of Terence’s works in 1526.  Confident in its success, and through access to an excellent and ancient manuscript of the fourth-century commentary by Aelius Donatus, ‘in...

    £1500

  7. TERENCE; Daniel HEINSIUS, editor.

    Pub. Terentii comoediae sex, ex recensione Heinsiana.

    Amsterdam, Henrik Wetstein, [c. 1700].

    A small-format edition of Terence’s comedies, printed in Amsterdam but bound in Britain and owned by a Devonshire schoolboy.

    £145

  8. TERENTIUS Afer, Publius.

    Comoediae sex. Ex recensione Heinsiana, cum annotationibus Thomae Farnabii in quatuor priores et M.C.Is.F....

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1658.

    An intensely annotated copy of this rare pocket Jansson edition of Terence’s comedies. The edition itself was a successful production, uniting the text edited by Heinsius with the commentary of Thomas Farnaby to the first four comedies, and that of Méric Casaubon to the last two. Jansson had...

    £2250

  9. THEOCRITUS, BION, MOSCHUS, SIMMIAS of Rhodes.

    Θεοκριτου … Ειδυλλια και Επιγραμματα. Μοσχου...

    [Heidelberg], Commelin, 1596.

    First edition of the Greek Idylls published by Commelin, and first edition of Joseph Justus Scaliger’s commentary and notes, complemented with Isaac Casaubon’s notes, a form of which had first appeared in Geneva in 1569.

    £550

  10. THEOCRITUS et al.

    Theocriti aliorumque poetarum Idyllia. Eiusdem Epigrammata …

    [Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1579.

    An outstanding volume uniting the Estienne Greek bucolic poets (Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus) and the Estienne Greek Psalms in an Henri Estienne presentation binding.

    £9000

  11. TIBULLUS. James GRAINGER, translator.

    A Poetical Translation of the Elegies of Tibullus; and of the Poems of Sulpicia.

    With the original Text, and Notes critical and explanatory … London, A. Millar, 1759.

    First edition of this translation, with notes, by James Grainger (1722–1766), an army surgeon who had, unusually, turned to the pen to supplement his income from medical work.

    £300

  12. VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator

    Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565. 

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. 

    £1250

  13. VALERIUS MAXIMUS.

    Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].

    First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.

    £2750

  14. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.

    Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...

    [(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]

    Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...

    £2750

  15. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.

    Quae supersunt ex historiae Romanae voluminibus duobus. Ex editione Petri Burmanni fideliter expressa.

    Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1752.

    First and only Foulis Press edition, unusually found here in a contemporary Scandinavian binding, evidence of the high esteem in which these products of the Glasgow enlightenment were held across Europe.

    £425

  16. VIGER, François.

    De praecipuis graecae dictionis idiotismis … accessit praeterea huic editioni observationum non inutilium qualecunque...

    London, G. Godbid for William Shrowsberey, 1678.

    Second London edition of this treatise on Greek idiom by the French Jesuit François Viger (1590–1647).

    £175

  17. [VIRGIL.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    ...

    Paris, André Wechel, 1564. 

    Second editions of Ramus’s extensive commentaries on Virgil’s two poems on country life, written in reaction to the dry doctrines of several French schools who based their teaching of nature on Aristotle’s Physics.  Ramus wanted to keep in contact with the concrete realities of nature...

    £950

  18. XENOPHON.

    De Cyri regis Persarum vita atque disciplina, libri VIII.

    Paris, Andreas Wechel, 1572.

    First edition of Joachim Camerarius’ Latin translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, a partly fictional work on the life and education of Cyrus the Great which served as a model for medieval and renaissance mirrors of princes, including Machiavelli’s Il Principe. A beautiful...

    £875

  19. ZAMPELIOS, Spiridion.

    Βυζαντιναι Μελεται [Byzantine Studies]...

    Athens, Christos Nikolaidos, 1857.

    First edition. Spyros Zampelios was a champion of the continuity theory in the history of the Greek nation in the crucial decades of the mid nineteenth century, and the first Greek historian to adopt a tripartite examination of historical periods, divided into ancient, medieval and modern Hellenism....

    £350

  20. ZANCHI, Basilio.

    Dictionarium poeticum, et epitheta veterum poetarum … nunc secondo trans Alpes editum.

    Mons, Luca Rivius, 1612.

    Scarce Mons-printed edition of Zanchi’s classical onomasticon from A to Z, providing a comprehensive list of deities, notable figures, and locations from the works of Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Propertius.

    £375