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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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
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[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
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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
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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
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[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
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SOPHOCLES.
Tragoediae Sophoclis quotquot extant carmine Latino redditae Georgio Ratallero … interprete.
Antwerp, Jean Bellère, 1584.
An early seventeenth-century sammelband collecting contrasting classical texts: the tragedies of Sophocles, the civil war horrors of Lucan, and the sharp satires of Juvenal and Persius.
£950
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SOPHOCLES; Adrien TURNÈBE, editor.
Τραγωδιαι. Αιαξ μαστιγοφορος. Ηλεκτρα. Οιδιπους...
Paris, Adrien Turnèbe, 1553 [(colophon:) 24 December 1552].
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. Sophocles’ seven tragedies narrate the stories of the Greek heroes and heroines Ajax, Heracles and Deianeira, Oedipus and Jocasta, Philoctetes, Antigone,...
£1850
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[SPENCE, Joseph.] Nicholas TINDAL.
A Guide to classical Learning: or, Polymetis abridged … being a Work absolutely necessary,...
London, J. Dodsley, 1777.
Second illustrated edition (fourth overall) of Nicholas Tindal’s abridgement for schools of Polymetis (1747), a dialogue by the traveller, scholar, friend of Alexander Pope, and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford Joseph Spence (1699–1748), in which he explored the connections...
£250
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STANCOVICH, Pietro.
Dello anfiteatro di Pola, dei gradi marmorei del medesimo, nuovi scavi e scoperte, e di alcune epigrafi e figuline...
Venice, Giuseppe Picotti, 1822.
First edition, uncut in the original wrappers, of Pietro Stancovich’s description of the Roman amphitheatre in Pola (modern Pula) on the Istrian peninsula.
£275
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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
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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
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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
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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
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TACITUS, Publius Cornelius; N. S. SMITH, translator.
Dissertation on the Manners of the Germans, and the Life of Agricola … translated...
London, George and William Budd Whittaker, 1821.
First edition, a seemingly unrecorded issue of this bilingual edition of Tacitus’ Germania and Agricola, a subscription copy uncut in publisher’s boards.
£600
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[TACOLI, Carlotta Munarini, Marchioness.]
‘Memorie riguardanti la storia filosofica per istruzione elementare d’una...
Modena, 1805.
An unpublished manuscript introduction to ancient philosophy compiled by Marchioness Carlotta Munarini Tacoli for the education of her precocious eight-year-old-daughter, the future entomologist Adelaide Tacoli Bellincini Bagnesi (see below).
£1250
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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
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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
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TERENCE.
P. Terentii comoediae sex elegantissimae, cum Donati commentariis, ex optimorum praesertim veterum exemplariorum collatione...
Basel, the heirs of Nicolaus Brylinger, 1567.
A thoroughly annotated student edition of the plays of Terence, issued by the heirs of the Basel printer Nicolaus Brylinger (1515–1565), with introductory matter by Erasmus and commentary by Donatus and others.
£1750
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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
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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