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. ALAMANNI, Luigi.

    Opere toscane.

    [(Colophon:) Florence, [Bernardo Giunta], 9 July 1532.]

    First Florentine edition of this collection of vernacular verse, first published in Lyons in the same year, by the influential Florentine poet Alamanni, a friend of Machiavelli mentioned in the Art of War, our copy from the library of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey.

    £650

  2. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).

    £3800

  3. APPIAN of Alexandria.

    Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...

    Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.

    A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.

    £3000

  4. ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo. 

    Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga. 

    Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566. 

    First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini. 

    £1750

  5. BARTOLI, Adolfo.

    Scenari inediti della Commedia dell’arte. Contributo alla storia del teatro popolare italiano.

    Florence, Sansoni, 1880.

    Rare first edition, one of only 350 copies, of a foundational source for the study of Commedia dell’Arte. The exceptionally well-loved and widely-performed form of drama is the subject of the author’s pioneering study: he examines tropes, characters, plots, structures and lines of ‘scenarios’...

    £500

  6. BLANCHON, Jacques.

    Iacobi Blanchoni Ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum Beneventanum abbatem Selestensem defensionum liber.

    Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1550.

    First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly printed de Tournes edition.

    £950

  7. [CAESAR.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    Liber de militia C. Julii Caesaris, cum praefatione Joannis Thomae Freigii. 

    Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, 1584. 

    An attractively bound copy of Ramus’s uncommon treatise on Caesar’s military tactics, with unusual edge decoration.  The humanist Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) published widely on classical history and grammar while teaching at the Collège de France.  He was briefly forced from his post after converting...

    £450

  8. CAVALCANTI, Bartolomeo. 

    La retorica … divisa in sette libri, dove si contiene tutto quello, che appartiene all’arte Oratoria. In...

    Venice, Gabriel Giolitto, 1559. 

    Second edition, published in the same year as the first with a few amendments, of the earliest Italian and most innovative treatise on rhetoric.  The author ‘builds an original account of rhetoric by adding Ciceronian and Hermogenean material to an Aristotle base’ (Mack, p. 172). 

    £2250

  9. [CHAMPIER, Symphorien.]

    La vie & les gestes du preux chevalier Bayard. Contenant plusieurs victoires par luy faictes du Resgne...

    Lyons, Olivier Arnoullet, [(colophon:) 8 April 1558].

    A rare edition of Champier’s account of the preux chevalier Bayard’s life and achievements, from the renowned library of the duc de La Vallière.

    £9500

  10. DELL’UVA, Benedetto.

    Le vergini prudenti.

    Florence, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1582.

    First editions of three religious poems in ottava rima by the Capuan monk Benedetto dell’Uva, representative of Counter-Reformation poetry in southern Italy.

    £650

  11. GAGUIN, Robert.

    La mer des croniques et mirouer hystorial de France jadis compose en latin … et nouvellement traduict de latin...

    Paris, [Bernard Aubry for] Jacques Nyverd, to be sold by Galiot du Pré, [(colophon:) 23 August 1530].

    Very rare Paris vernacular edition (first 1518) of an illustrated history of the French monarchy, a seminal work of French historiography, devised as a scholarly account of France in the style of the classical historians.

    £8500

  12. IRENICUS, Franciscus.

    Germaniae exegeseos volumina duodecima a Francisco Irenico Ettelingiacensi exarata, eiusdem oratio protreptica,...

    [(Colophon:) Hagenau, Thomas Anshelm for Johann Koberger, August 1518.]

    First editions of a pair of sixteenth-century German antiquarian works in a contemporary binding by Konrad Kühneof Stuttgart from the library of the Elector of Bavaria.

    £3500

  13. LA VIGNE, André de.

    Le vergier dhonneur nouvellement imprime a paris. De lentreprinse et voyage de Naples. Auquel est comprins...

    [(Colophon:) Paris, Philippe le Noir], [1521–22].

    George Dunn’s copy of a rare early edition of the Vergier d’honneur, a reprint of the 1512 edition by Jean Petit and Jean Frellon.

    £9500

  14. [LA VIGNE, André de, and Octavien de SAINT-GELAIS.]

    Le vergier dhonneur nouvellement imprime a Paris. De lentreprise et...

    [Paris, Pierre le Dru and Jean Petit, 1503.]

    Extremely rare first edition of the Vergier d’Honneur, a celebration of the expedition of Charles VIII to Italy; a remarkable copy preceded by three leaves of illuminated manuscript containing unrecorded verse and a spectacular miniature of a knight on horseback.

    £120000

  15. LELAND, John.

    The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the Years 1535-1543. Edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith, with a Foreword by Thomas...

    London, Centaur Press Ltd, 1964.

    The authoritative edition of Leland’s Itinerary, a monument of English bibliography and antiquarian research. The Itinerary comprises the notes of the antiquary John Leland (c. 1503–1552) on his journeys through England and Wales during the dissolution of the monasteries. According...

    £50

  16. LUIGINI, Francesco.

    In librum Q. Horatii Flacci de arte poetica commentarius.

    Venice, [(colophon:) sons of] Aldus, 1554.

    First and only edition of Luigini’s commentary on Horace’s Art of Poetry, with a preface praising Paolo Manuzio.

    £850

  17. MIRANDULA (or MIRANDOLA), Ottaviano. 

    Illustrium poetarum flores. 

    Antwerp, Joannes Bellerus, 1563. 

    A remarkable copy, with numerous and eloquent contemporary annotations and additions in a French hand, of a scarce edition of an extremely popular collection of quotes and passages from classics of poetry, published by the renowned Flemish printer and composer Joannes Bellerus (Jean Bellère, 1526–1595). ...

    £1950

  18. MORI, Ascanio de’.

    Giuoco piacevole.

    Mantua, Giacomo Ruffinello, 1575.

    First edition of an uncommon Renaissance collection of tales in prose and verse, set in the Lombard city of Brescia during the Carnival of the ‘prosperous and peaceful’ year 1566, employing the narrative frame canonised by Boccaccio in the Decameron, though with pointedly opposed features.

    £950

  19. PATRIZI, Francesco.

    Egloga de Christi nativitate …

    [Padua, Printer of Lucianus (H 10276), c. 1482.]

    Extremely rare first edition of Patrizi’s pastoral poem on the birth of Christ, the first work of his to appear in print.

    £4500

  20. PETRONIUS.

    Satyricon, eiusdemque fragmenta, illustrata hac nova editione I. Bourdelotii notis criticis, et glossario petroniano...

    Leiden, Justus Livius, 1645.

    Third edition of the Satyricon as edited by the French scholar Jean Bourdelot (first published in 1618), accompanied by a glossary, an editorial preface and an extract of Justus Lipsius’ Epistolicis Quaestionibus (lib. III, epist. 2) with an appraisal of the literary value of the Satyricon.

    £950