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. [RAMEAUX, François-Alexis.]

    Notice of the death of Rameaux issued by Bernard-Vincent Laribe.

    [China, 1845.]

    A circular notifying the Christian community of the death of François-Alexis Rameaux (1802–1845), Vicar Apostolic of Zhejiang and Jiangxi from 1838, issued by his friend and successor Bernard-Vincent Laribe (1802–1850), asking that prayers for his soul be practiced nightly for six months....

    £2000

  2. RHOADS, James Evans.

    Autograph letter signed (‘James E. Rhoads’) to Henry Horniman.

    Philadelphia, 22 July 1869.

    A letter from the first president of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. Rhoads (1828–1895) helped establish the college as a nondenominational, internationally respected school, and the first higher education institution to offer graduate degrees to women.

    £100

  3. RICCI, Giovanni and PORTA, Ercolano.

    Storia della missione francescana e del Vicariato Apostolico del Hunan meridionale dalle sue...

    Bologna, Stabilimenti tipografici riuniti, 1925.

    First and only edition of this history of the Franciscan Mission in South Hunan from its establishment to 1924, with particular attention to the persecution of the Christians during the Boxer Rebellion and the following years of restoration and progress of the mission. The appendix comprises letters,...

    £450

  4. [RICHARDSON, Jonathan.]

    The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors…

    London, Printed by W. Nicol, late Bulmer & Co., 1822.

    Rare first edition of a revised version of the valedictory lecture given by the Outinian Society on 31 December 1818 to mark the centenary of the death of William Penn (1644–1717), founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, drawing on information supplied by the Society’s founder, Penn’s grandson.

    £1600

  5. RICH, Jeremiah.

    The Whole Book of Psalms in Meter. According to the Art of Short-Writing …

    London, ‘Printed and are sold by Samuel Botley Teacher of the said Art … and nowhere els.’, [1660?].

    First edition, the issue with Samuel Botley in the imprint – an extremely attractive miniature Psalter in shorthand by a ‘skilled and celebrated’ practitioner whose work was known to Pepys (though Pepys himself employed a rival system).

    £4250

  6. ROMANA, Provost.

    Nell’aprirsi della nuova chiesa dalla veneranda, antichissima Confraternita de’ Disciplinanti in Dogliani...

    Mondovì, Pietro Francesco and Luiggi Rossi, [1756].

    Unrecorded provincially printed broadside celebrating the opening of a new church of the Confraternity of the Disciplinants of Dogliani.

    £275

  7. ROTHSCHILD, Boaz Raphael.

    [Sefer oniyah b’lev yam … Chelek rishon]. ספר אני בלב ים ... חלק ראשון

    Fürth, Chaim ben Zvi Hirsch, 1766.

    First part of the first and only edition of this work on the Thirteen Principles of Faith and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy by German rabbi Boaz Rothschild, our copy presented to the Rothschild family in England.

    £450

  8. [ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]

    Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...

    Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.

    First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.

    £1500

  9. [SARPI, Paolo (pseud.).] ‘Pietro Soave POLANO’. 

    Historia del Concilio Tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano.  Seconda...

    Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1629. 

    Second edition, the first to omit the extraneous additions of the 1619 edition introduced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, of the influential and groundbreaking history of the Council of Trent by Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), described by Milton as ‘the great unmasker’. 

    £450

  10. [SAVONAROLA, Girolamo.] Ambrogio Caterino POLITI.

    Discorso … contra la dottrina, et le profetie di Fra Girolamo Savonarola.

    Venice, Giolito, 1548.

    First edition of a condemnation of Savonarola’s theology, doctrine and prophecies by the former Savonarola acolyte Politi (1484–1553), ‘one of the most fiery Catholic polemicists of his times’ (Bongi, trans.), who four years earlier had published a confutation of Luther’s theology.

    £1500

  11. [SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]

    Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.

    Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.

    Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.

    £375

  12. [SOCIETY OF JESUS.] 

    Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur.  Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux. 

    Strasbourg, L.F.  Le Roux, [1843]. 

    First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843. 

    £375

  13. SPATARI, Pellegrino.

    Le orationi delle Messe di tutto l’anno, tradutte da Don Pellegrino Spathari canonico di Capodistria. Con...

    Pesaro, Bartolomeo Cesano, 1555.

    Rare first edition of this Italian translation of Latin prayers from the Missal by Spatari, a priest from Capodistria (modern-day Koper in Slovenia), dedicated to Vittoria Farnese, Duchess of Urbino (1519–1602).

    £650

  14. STANYHURST, William.

    Veteris hominis per expensa quatuor novissima metamorphosis, et novi genesis.

    Antwerp, Cornelius Woons, 1661.

    First edition, rare, of this work on death, the Last Judgement, Hell, and Heaven, by the Irish Jesuit William Stanyhurst (1601–1663), illustrated with five striking full-page emblematic engravings.

    £875

  15. STAPLETON, Thomas. 

    Promptuarium Catholicum ad instructionem concionatorum contra haereticos nostri temporis, super omnia evangelia...

    Antwerp, Pierre Beller, 1592. 

    Rare third edition, expanded, of Stapleton’s handbook or ‘storehouse’ of scriptural devotions for Sundays and feast days, first published in 1589.  An independent companion volume for the weekdays in Lent was first published in 1594. 

    £700

  16. STEPNIAK, Sergey. 

    דאָס אינטערערדישע רוסלאַנד … איבערזעצט פון א. פרומקין
    [Dos...

    New York, Maks N. Maisel, 1921. 

    Scarce first American edition in Yiddish of Stepniak’s first and most influential book.  Written in Italian during exile in Switzerland following his assassination of Nikolai Mezentsov, chief of Alexander II’s secret police, Underground Russia was published in 1882 and translated into...

    £150

  17. STRYPE, John.

    The Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, Kt., first Instructer, afterwards Secretary of State, to King Edward VI.,...

    London, John Wyat, 1705.

    First edition of Strype’s biography of the courtier and classicist Sir John Cheke, inaugural Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge.

    £450

  18. SWIFT, Jonathan. 

    A Tale of a Tub … to which is added, an Account of a Battle between the antient and modern Books in St. James’s...

    London, C. Bathurst, 1751. 

    A scarce later edition of Swift’s classic satires on corruption in religion and learning, as exemplified in the conduct of Peter (Roman Catholicism), Martin (Luther), and Jack (Calvin) in the Tale of the Tub, and the spirited fight over the highest peak of Parnassus in the Battel of...

    £175

  19. SYKES, Arthur Ashley. 

    The Duty of Love to God, and to our Neighbours.  A Sermon preach'd at the Assizes held at Chelmsford in...

    London, J. Darby & T. Browne for Chelmsford, Samuel Lobb, 1728. 

    First and only edition of this sermon given by the latitudinarian and controversialist Arthur Ashley Sykes (c. 1684–1756). 

    £150

  20. TAULER, Johannes, attributed

    Exercitia D. Ioannis Thauleri piissima, super vita et passione salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi,...

    Antwerp, Philippus Nutius, 1565. 

    Uncommon Antwerp edition of Laurentius Surius’s Latin translation of a devotional work on the life and passion of Christ attributed to the medieval German mystic Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), in an attractive contemporary binding and with interesting manuscript notes. 

    £1500