Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison 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. ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.

    Histoire de la mission des peres capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...

    Paris, François Huby, 1614.

    Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy. The first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed of...

    £30000

  2. [ALTAR CARDS.]

    Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John.

    ‘A Paris, chez I. Baudemont’, second half of seventeenth century.

    Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt cards for priests, bearing readings and prayers, and devotional images of Jesus and St John, comprising separately printed images, text and borders arranged together in collage fashion.

    £2750

  3. ANTIPHONAL,

    with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.

    Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-15th century.

    An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.

    £4250

  4. ANTONIUS de Vercellis. 

    Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...

    Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93. 

    A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites. 

    £8500

  5. ANVILLE, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’.

    Considérations générales, sur l’étude et les connoissances que demande la composition...

    Paris, Galeries du Louvres, 1777

    Two first edition works in one volume by the great French geographer and royal cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville, consisting of d’Anville’s general guide to geography and his remarks on the construction of his famous maps of China.

    £500

  6. [AQUHORTIES College.]

    Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …

    [At foot:] Edinburgh: Printed by J. Moir, Paterson’s Court. [1799?].

    Broadside rules for the newly established Aquhorties College, the only Roman Catholic college in Scotland, presumably designed to be posted up around the school.

    £850

  7. BACON, Francis.

    Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica, civilia, et theologica, nunc primum edita. Cura & fide Guilielmi Rawley…...

    London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani Pulleyn, 1658.

    First edition, second issue (with the imprint R. Daniel, rather than R. Danielis) of this collection of the philosophical, political, and theological writings of Bacon, including numerous essays previously unpublished, and the first appearance of William Rawley’s biographical sketch of the philosopher....

    £1250

  8. [BASKERVILLE PRESS.]

    The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

    Third and final edition of Baskerville’s octavo prayer book. The prayers for the Royal Family on cancels B8, C6, and D3 include the name of Queen Charlotte, whom George III married in 1761. This copy also includes the ‘occasional prayers’ which were only printed for part of the edition and are...

    £1200

  9. BAUMGARTNER, Reinhard.

    Conclusiones ex universa theologia morali in catholico lyceo Societatis Jesu ad S. Salvatorem Augustae publicae...

    [Augsburg], Joseph Antonius Labhart, [1754].

    Only edition of this attractively printed summary of moral theology, presented as a disputation in the Jesuit college in Augsburg under the supervision of the professor of the subject, Reinhard Baumgartner (1699-1764). Over fifty paragraphs, the reader is offered a concise guide to the operation of conscience,...

    £175

  10. BEAUMONT, Joseph.

    Psyche: or Loves Mysterie in XX. Canto’s: displaying the Intercourse between Christ and the Soule …

    London, Printed by John Dawson for George Boddington … 1648.

    First edition. Beaumont was one of the royalist fellows ejected from Cambridge in 1644, and he devoted his enforced retirement to the composition of this poem, a ‘religious epic’ representing ‘a Soule led by divine Grace, and her Guardian Angel ... through the difficult Temptations and Assaults...

    £1250

  11. BEAUVILLIERS, Marie de.

    Conférences spirituelles d’une supérieure à ses religieuses ... d’après un manuscrit revu et mis...

    Paris, Moquet et Cie for Toulouse, 1838.

    Scarce second edition (first 1837, also rare) of this spiritual guide by Marie de Beauvilliers (1574–1667), edited from a manuscript by the historian l'abbé Louis Gaudreau (1798–1872) and including a short biography of the author.

    £400

  12. [BIANCHI, Isidoro.]

    Compendio della vita e miracoli della B. Elisabetta Picenardi del Terz’Ordine de’ Servi di M.V. E del culto...

    Cremona, per il Feraboli, 1805.

    Second edition (first Rome 1804) of this account of the life and miracles of Elisabetta Picenardi (1428–1468) of the Servite Order, who was beatified in November 1804 after Pope Pius VII issued confirmation of her local cultus. The work is attributed to the Camaldolese monk Isidoro Bianchi (1731–1808)....

    £350

  13. BIANCHINI, Giuseppe. 

    Enarratio pseudo-Athanasiana in symbolum ante hac inedita, et Vigilii Tapsitani de Trinitate ad Theophilum...

    Verona, Pierantonio Berno, 1732. 

    First edition, presented by the author, of this scarce work on the Apostles’ Creed by the Veronese Oratorian, Biblical and liturgical scholar, and librarian Giuseppe Bianchini (1704–1764), with a delightful frontispiece depicting the city of Verona. 

    £675

  14. [BIBLE.]

    The Holy Bible. The Old Testament (& New Testament), embellished with Engravings, from Pictures and Designs by the Most...

    London: Printed for Thomas Macklin, by Thomas Bensley, 1800.

    A wonderful set, in an extremely attractive contemporary binding, of this monumental feat of British printing, the grandest and most ambitious of all English Bibles. Printed on a new, thick wove Whatman paper in a specially designed large type, and illustrated with seventy full-page engravings...

    £10000

  15. [BIBLE.]

    FORTESCU, Alexander, editor. The Holy Family Bible, containing the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and...

    Winchester: Printed for the Proprietor by John Wilkes, and sold by him, and William Harris … London. 1774.

    First edition, very rare, of a provincially-printed Bible, with original notes and additional matter by Alexander Fortescu, Rector of Stretton. Fortescu took as his source text the Cambridge folio Bible printed by Field in 1659, adding a short summary text at the head of each book, and explanatory...

    £1500

  16. BIBLE,

    in Latin, Jeremiah 30, 6–32,19 and 44,21–48,24

    Germany or perhaps Switzerland, mid-12th century.

    From a folio German romanesque Bible.

    £3750

  17. BLANCHON, Jacques.

    Iacobi Blanchoni ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum beneventanum abbatem selestensem defensionum liber.

    Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1550.

    First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly-printed de Tournes edition. Ostensibly a simple series of remarks against the theses of the (presumably sternly Scholastic) abbot of Selestan, this is a tract of Renaissance moral philosophy. The theme of...

    £950

  18. [BLASPHEMY.] 

    Handlu[n]g eynes Ersamen weysen Rats zu Nürmberg, von dem grossen laster der Gotsschwür und zutrinckens, verpotten. 

    [Altenburg, Gabriel Kantz,] 1526.

    First edition, very rare, of a short pamphlet against blasphemy and drunkenness printed at a small press in Germany at the beginning of the Reformation.

    £1500

  19. [BOOK OF COMMON ORDER.] 

    [The CL Psalms of David in Metre, with the Prose.  For the Use of Kirk of Scotland …] 

    [Middelburgh, Richard Schilders, 1602.] 

    A substantial fragment, the main text largely complete, of an attractive Dutch printing of the Scottish Book of Common Order.  Originally drawn up by John Knox in Geneva for the use of the English-speaking congregations there, the liturgy known as the Book of Common Order quickly made its way...

    £2250