[ABC.]

Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...

C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].

A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.

£3750

[ACCADEMIA DELL’ARCADIA.]

Favola di due gatti e della scimia coll’ appello de’ medesimi gatti all’ orso, divisa in due...

Florence, Bernardo Paperini, 1730.

First complete edition. A rare fable in parallel Latin and Italian verse by members of the Accademia dell’Arcadia, comprising Due gatti ed una scimia (first published in 1728) and the first appearance of the second part, Appello de’ due gatti all’ orso. Both are published only pseudonymously under...

£550

‘A.C.’ and ‘A.L.C.’

Dialogue entre un médecin et un homme du monde …

Paris, chez les marchands de nouveautés, 1824.

Rare first edition of this entertaining satirical dialogue between ‘M. de B.’ and ‘le docteur X’, taking a swipe at contemporary medicine and the medical profession.

£375

ADDISON, Joseph, [and Giulio RUCELLAI, translator].

Il Tamburo parafrasi in versi sciolti della commedia tradotta...

Florence, Andrea Bonducci, 1750.

First edition in Italian of Joseph Addison’s 1715 The Drummer; or, the Haunted House, translated from Destouches’s French prose translation of 1737 into Italian hendecasyllabic blank verse.

£450

AESOP. 

The Fables …  With a Life of the Author: and embellished with one hundred & twelve Plates … 

London, Printed for John Stockdale … 1793. 

Second Stockdale edition, a paginary reprint of the first with the text reset using a short ‘s’ throughout; the translation was that of Samuel Croxall.  Stockdale’s Aesop was notable for the extensive suite of illustrations, with plates by some thirty engravers including Stothard and Landseer,...

£6500

AESOP, et al. [George STEWART, editor].

Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et Luciani Samosatensis dialogi. Isocratis...

Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart, 1723.

First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish school textbook comprising selections in Greek and Latin from Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Dialogues, the orations of Isocrates, and the Tablet of Cebes.

£375

AIKEN, Conrad.

Thee.

New York, George Braziller, 1967.

First trade edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce [Bridson] / this little hymn of love / from Conrad / 1968’.

£250

AIKEN, Conrad.

Selected Poems.

New York, Oxford University Press, 1964.

Second printing (first 1961), inscribed: ‘For Geoffrey from Conrad and Savannah with a Hosanna 1968’. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken spent winters there later in his life. It was in Savannah in April 1968 that Bridson recorded the unbroadcast interviews which provide a valuable insight into...

£150

AIKEN, Conrad.

The Collected Novels … Introduction by R.P. Blackmur.

New York, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, [1964].

First edition, inscribed: ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce [Bridson] con amore but o at what a distance from Conrad 1964’.

£150

AINSWORTH, William Harrison.

The Combat of the Thirty. From a Breton Lay of the fourteenth Century. With an Introduction, comprising...

London: Chapman and Hall … 1859

First edition of the first English translations of these two texts, inscribed to ‘James Crossley from his old friend William Harrison Ainsworth’. The two men had been friends since 1817 when Crossley, a solicitor, was articled to Ainsworth’s father and later became a partner in the firm. He was...

£550

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

ALBERT, Sidney P.

‘Shaw’s Advice to the Players of Major Barbara’, Reprinted from Theatre Survey, X, 1 (1969); and ‘Reflections...

Reprinted from Modern Drama, XIV, 2 (1791).

£20

[ALDERLEY EDGE.]

Alderley Edge and its Neighbourhood.

Macclesfield, J. Swinnerton, [1843].

First edition of this locally printed collection of legends, people, and sites of interest around Alderley Edge, Cheshire, with an inscription to the library of the (later Royal) Archaeological Institute from the Institute’s principal founder Albert Way.

£175

ALEKSANDROVA, Zinaida and Dmitry GORLOV.

Мишкины соседи [Little Bear’s neighbours].

Moscow, VLKSM Izdatelstvo Detskoi Literaturi, 1936.

First edition. A very nice copy of this collection of verses for young children, composed by one of the most prolific Soviet children’s poets, and illustrated by one of the most prolific of Soviet children’s artists. The tales tell of the lives of a selection of farm and wild animals, including...

£350

ALFIERI, Vittorio, and Charles LLOYD, translator.

The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri; translated from the Italian...

London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1815.

First edition of this translation of Alfieri’s (1749–1803) tragedies into English, undertaken by the poet Charles Lloyd ‘on the suggestion of a friend whose judgement I highly respect’, likely Robert Southey, whom he addresses as his ‘sponsor’ in the ‘Dedicatory Sonnet’.

£450

ANACREON.

[Odaria.] Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...

Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.

Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G. C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions...

£650

[ANON.]

Quia Amore Langueo.

[Colophon:] Chiswick, Caradoc Press, 1902.

One of 250 copies on paper (there were also 20 on vellum), printed from a fifteenth-century manuscript at Lambeth Palace Library.

£75

[ANON].

Elogio del corno. Dell‘ autore della felice produzione italiana intitolata Della Necessità ed Utilità dei Debiti.

Venice, Stamperia Graziosi, 1796.

Only edition, as far as we can tell unrecorded, of this anonymously published poem in praise of the horn. Although ostensibly a chaste work extolling the virtues of the instrument, there is enough to suggest that the poet may have been thinking along less musical lines; the horn, we are repeatedly told,...

£275

ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger. 

Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...

Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult. 

£875

ARIOSTO, Ludovico.

Delle Satire e rime … libri due.

London, John Pickard, 1716.

First edition with the annotations of Paolo Antonio Rolli (1687–1765), the celebrated émigré Italian poet who moved to London in 1716, became a private tutor, wrote libretti for Handel and others, and translated Paradise Lost into Italian. He also edited Italian classics that...

£500