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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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HERODOTUS.
Historiae Libri IX: et de vita Homeri libellus. Illi, ex interpretatione Laurentio Vallae adscripta; hic ex interpretatione...
Frankfurt, Heirs of Andreas Wechel (Claude de Marne and Johann Aubry), 1594.
Freidrich Sylberg’s edition of Herodotus in the Latin translation by Lorenzo Valla, based on the text published by Estienne in 1566, along with extracts from the Greek physician Ctesias’s Persika, a history of Persia, and Indika, the first book to be devoted entirely to India, Estienne’s...
£1500
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HIEROCLES of Alexandria.
Ύπομνηνα εις τα των Πυθαγορειων επη τα χρυσα … commentarius in...
London, J. R. [John Redmayne] for J. Williams, and Henry Dickinson, Cambridge, 1673.
London edition of the only complete work of Hierocles, his commentaries on the Golden Verses, a valuable epitome of Pythagorean ethical teachings, printed here in the original and in a Latin translation. According to tradition they were put into their present form by Lysis, one of the most...
£500
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HIPPOCRATES.
The Eight Sections of Hippocrates Aphorismes review’d and rendred into English: according to the Translation of...
London, W. G. for Rob. Crofts, 1665.
First edition of this translation of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, a succinct summary of medical advice directed at the practitioner. The first English translation was published in 1610, and a second version, derived from it in 1655. Here the aphorisms are entirely re-arranged by topic...
£850
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HOMER.
Ομηρου Ιλιας και Οδυσσεια μετα της εξηγησιος. Homeri Ilias et Ulyssea cum interpretatione...
Basel, Johann Herwagen, 1535.
First Herwagen edition of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, with the scholia of Didymus, edited, according to Dibdin, by the great German classicist Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574), with interesting near-contemporary annotations by a student of Greek, likely drawn from Thomas Grynaeus’s...
£6000
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HOMER, and Alexander POPE (translator).
The Iliad of Homer. Translated from the Greek by Alexander Pope, Esq. Philadelphia,...
McCulloch, P. Stuart, 1795.
First American edition of Pope’s rendering of the Iliad. Pope began his reinterpretation of Homer’s epic poem when in his early twenties. Following several years of ‘great pain and apprehensions’, as Pope drafted his text on the backs of letters sent to him and his mother (now preserved...
£850
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HORACE.
Q. Horatius Flaccus ex recensione Dan. Heinsii.
Edinburgh, George Mosman, 1704.
A rare, modestly printed Scottish Horace, apparently the only printing in the British Isles of Heinsius’ edition, first published by Louis Elzevir in 1612.
£450
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HORACE.
Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera cum novo commentario ad modum Joannis Bond.
Paris, Didot, 1855.
The deluxe issue of Didot’s Horace, a fine early photographically-illustrated work, complete with all the photographic plates, headpieces and maps, and printed on fine paper.
£750
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HORACE; James TATE, editor.
Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...
Cambridge, J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1832.
First edition of this attempt to arrange the books of Horace in chronological order by the classical scholar and master of Richmond School, James Tate (1771–1843), this copy presented by him to Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855), classicist, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Regius Professor of Greek,...
£150
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HYGINUS Gromaticus, attributed, and POLYBIUS.
De Castris Romanis, quae extant. Cum notis & animadversionibus …
Amsterdam, Jodocus Pluymer, 1660.
First edition thus, with annotations by the politician Radboud Herman Scheele (1622–1662).
£1000
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ISOCRATES.
Orationes et epistolae gravitatis et suavitatis plenae de Greco in Latinum pridem conversae, nunc recognitae, per Hieronymu[m]...
Paris, Michel de Vascosan, 1553.
A handsome Latin edition of twenty-one works by the Athenian orator Isocrates whose work was highly influential on later education, oratory and writing. Isocrates (436–338 BC) studied under Socrates and the sophists, before establishing a famous school of rhetoric which attracted pupils from...
£750
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JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianius, and Lucius FLORUS.
[Epitome historiarum:] Justini historici clarissimi in Trogi Pompei historias...
[Venice, Bartolomeo Zani, 3 February 1503].
A thoroughly annotated copy of a greatly influential compendium of Trogus’s monumental forty-four-book Historia of the world from Babylon to the Augustan era.
£3800
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JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianus; Cornelius NEPOS.
Trogi Pompei externae historiae in compendium ab Justino redactae. Externorum imperatorum...
Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani soceri’, January 1522.
First Aldine edition of Justinus’ abridgement of the lost Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, and of Nepos’ De viris illustribus, with a decorated initial to the opening of the text, likely executed in the early nineteenth century when the work was bound in Rome.
£1850