Continental

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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.

    Τα εθικα. Moralia, id est opera, exceptis vitis, reliqua [edited by Daniel Wyttenbach].

    Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1795–1800; 1810; 1830.

    Gaisford’s own copy of the Oxford Plutarch containing letters between him and the editor, Daniel Wyttenbach. Dr Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855) was appointed Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford in 1812, and later became Dean of Christ Church in 1831. He had an active role at the University Press,...

    £2500

  2. POCOCKE, Richard. 

    A Description of the East, and some other Countries.  London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and...

    [Nourse, and J. Rivington’ (I)], 1743–1745. 

    First edition, demy folio issue. A successful churchman Pococke (1704-1765) is now best remembered as a traveller and mountaineer. His earliest journeys were undertaken between 1733 and 1736 through continental Europe. His ‘next and most ambitious journey, from 1737 to 1740, was to the Near...

    £8000

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. PROPERTIUS; Oliffe Legh RICHMOND, editor.

    Sexti Properti quae supersunt opera, edidit novoque adparatu critico instruxit...

    Cambridge, University Press, 1928.

    First edition of Richmond’s controversial Propertius, A. F. Scholfield’s copy, with three letters from the editor.

    £400

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. SALLUST.

    C. Sallustius Crispus cum veterum Historicorum fragmentis.

    Leiden, ex officina Elzeviriana, 1634.

    The first small format Elzevir printing of Sallust with a contemporary ink sketch of a Peeping Tom at the rear of the volume. The volume contains the two major works of Sallust, the Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline, along with the surviving fragments of his annalistic history of his...

    £950

  10. SALLUST.

    Caii Sallustii Crispi quae extant.

    London, James Tonson and John Watts, 1713.

    First Maittaire edition. The French-born classical scholar Michel Maittaire (1668–1741) studied at Westminster, and then under Robert South at Christ Church, Oxford. He is best known for his Annales Typographici and the series of duodecimo classics that he published with Tonson and Watts...

    £300

  11. SCHEFFER, Johannes Gerhard. 

    Constantini Opelii de fabrica triremium Meibomiana epistola perbrevis ad amicum. 

    ‘Eleuteropoli’ [Freistadt?], 1672. 

    First edition of this treatise on the ancient oar-driven warships known as triremes by the noted German philologist and archaeologist Johannes Scheffer (1621–1679), written as a critical response to the De fabrica triremium liber of Marcus Meibom, which had appeared in Amsterdam the previous...

    £875

  12. SENECA the Younger, and SENECA the Rhetorician.

    L. Annaei Senecae philosophi opera omnia; ex ult. I. Lipsii emendatio: et M. Annaei...

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, [1639–]1640.
    [With:] 
    GRONOVIUS, Joannes Fredericus. Ad L. & M. Annaeos Senecas notae....

    First Elzevir edition of the moral works and letters of the philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and the surviving Suasoriae and Controversiae of his father, known as Seneca the Rhetorician, along with the Amsterdam reprint of the extensive scholia of Johann Friedrich...

    £500

  13. [SIBYLLINE ORACLES.]

    Σιβυλλιακοι χρησμοι hoc est Sibyllina oracula ex vett. codd. aucta, renovate, et notis illustrate...

    Paris, [Compagnie du grande navire,] 1607.

    Second edition, handsomely printed in three sizes of the Grecs du roi, and illustrated with fine plates of the Sibyls by Mallery.

    £1200

  14. SILIUS ITALICUS, C.; John CAREY, editor.

    Punicorum libri XVII, sedulâ recensione accurati [cover: Recensuit et...

    London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Co., T. Cadell,...

    First and only ‘Regent’s Classics’ edition of Silius Italicus’s epic poem on the Second Punic War, an attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards.

    £100

  15. SOPHOCLES.

    Σοφοκλεους τραγωδιαι επτα μετα σχολιων παλαιων και πανυ ωφελιμων....

    [(Colophon:) Frankfurt am Main, Peter Braubach], 1544.

    First of several Braubach editions of the seven extant Greek tragedies of Sophocles, this copy with annotations in two different hands, spanning two centuries. The text follows the first Giunta edition published at Florence in 1522 under the editorship of Antonio Francini, with the text of the...

    £2000

  16. SOPHOCLES.

    ‘Αι του Σοφοκλεους τραγωδιαι ‘επτα. Sophoclis Tragoediae septem: nova versione donatae...

    Eton, Joseph Pote; and sold by C. Bathurst et al, London, 1775.

    An attractive Eton-printed edition of Thomas Johnson’s Sophocles. Johnson (d. 1746), was educated at Eton, gaining a scholarship to King’s Cambridge in 1683, and returning to the school as assistant master in 1705, the same year he published his editions of Sophocles’ Ajax and Electra...

    £400

  17. [SOPHOCLES.]

    Tragoediae superstites et deperditarum fragmenta ex recensione G. Dindorfii.

    Oxford, University Press, 1832.

    First Oxford edition of the Sophocles of the precocious Karl Wilhelm Dindorf (1802–1883), first published in Leipzig in 1825. This copy was a graduation present from Charles Old Goodford (1812–1884), assistant master (later Head Master and then provost) at Eton, to Arthur Hobhouse (1818–1904),...

    £200

  18. SOPHOCLES; Adrien TURNÈBE, editor.

    Τραγωδιαι. Αιαξ μαστιγοφορος. Ηλεκτρα. Οιδιπους...

    Paris, Adrien Turnèbe, 1553 [(colophon:) 24 December 1552]. [issued with:] TRICLINIUS, Demetrius. Εις τα του σοφοκλεους...

    A wide-margined copy of Sophocles in Greek owned by the Vatican librarian and Greek scholar Leone Allacci, with his name on the title-page.

    £1850

  19. STATIUS, P. Papinius; John CAREY, editor.

    Opera, sedula recensione accurata [cover: Recensuit et accuravit Joannes...

    London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. B. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Browne,...

    An attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards, of the ‘Regent’s Classics’ pocket edition of Statius.

    £120

  20. STATIUS, Publius Papinius.

    The Thebaid … translated into English Verse, with Notes and Observations and a Dissertation upon...

    Oxford, Printed at the Clarendon Press, 1767.

    First edition of ‘the most successful English rendering of Statius’ Thebaid’ (Sowerby), translated into heroic couplets by William Lillington Lewis. ‘Ably captur[ing] the sublimity, eeriness, and violence of the original’, it was to be his only work (ODNB). Samuel Johnson was...

    £750