Foreign Literature

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This department specialises in rare and important works of French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish and South American literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Here you can find first editions and signed or presentation copies of authors as diverse as Akhmatova, Balzac, Borges, Camus, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Goldoni, Hugo, Kafka, Leopardi, Lorca, Manzoni, Pirandello, Pushkin, Schiller, Tolstoy, Zola, and many others. Among the important works which have passed through our hands are the original working manuscript of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, now in the Pushkin House in St Petersburg, the only known copy of the first edition of Brecht's first play, Baal (1920) with his working notes, and an extraordinary collection of Pushkin first editions.

 
  1. 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

  2. CARO, Annibale. 

    Rime del commendatore Annibal Caro.  Col privilegio di N.S. PP. Pio V. et dell’illustrissima signoria di...

    Venice, Aldus Manutius the Younger, 1569. 

    First edition of the poetry of Annibale Caro, offering a scathing yet humorous critique of his greatest poetic rival, Ludovico Castelvetro. 

    £650

  3. PASSI, Carlo.

    La selva di varia istoria … la quale avanti andava attorno stampata sotto nome finto di Annotationi dell’Infortunio,...

    Venice, Altobello Salicato, 1572.

    An unsophisticated copy of Passi and Ruscelli’s elaborations and explanations of Paolo Giovio’s history of his own time, bound in contemporary limp vellum reusing manuscript waste.

    £500

  4. PARADIN, Guillaume.

    Gulielmi Paradini Anchemani Epigrammata ...

    Lyons, Ant. Gryphius, 1581.

    First and only edition of this French historian’s poetry including verses about or addressed to Ronsard, Pontus de Tyard, Claude Rouillet, and the Lyons printers Sébastien and Antoine Gryphe, and Jean de Tournes.

    £950

  5. FAGNANI, Giovanni Marco. 

    De bello Arriano libri sex. 

    Milan, heirs of Pacifico da Ponte and Giovanni Battista Piccaglia, 1604. 

    First and only edition of the sole published work by the Italian nobleman Giovanni Marco Fagnani (1524–1609), an epic poem recounting Ambrose of Milan’s campaign against local Arians in late fourth-century Lombardy. 

    £900

  6. BRACCIOLINI, Francesco.

    Della croce racquistata, poema heroico libri XV.

    Paris, René Ruelle, 1605.

    First edition of Francesco Bracciolini’s epic poem modelled on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1591), narrating the recovery of the True Cross by the seventh-century Byzantine Emperor Heraclius from the Persian Emperor Khosrow II, and its return to Jerusalem in 629–630 AD. It is possible...

    £1500

  7. MARTIAL.

    Epigrammaton libri XIII. Ex fide vetustissimorum exemplarium, quanta fieri potuit cura vigilantiaque emendati.

    Paris, Jean Libert, 1612 [(colophon:) 1613].

    An uncommon small-format edition of Martial’s Epigrams, with early annotations marking passages used by the humanist poet Marot.

    £650

  8. TASSO, Torquato.

    Il rogo di Corinna, et la fenice ...

    Venice, Evangelista Deuch[ino], 1621. [with:] [—.] Il Rinaldo ... Di nuovo riveduto, & con diligenza corretto ... Venice, Evangelista Deuchino,...

    A strikingly bound copy of Deuchino’s editions of four pastoral plays and epic poems by Tasso.

    £750

  9. MATTHIEU, Pierre, et al.

    Tablettes ou quatrains de la vie et de la mort. Par Pierre Matthieu, conseiller du roy.

    Première [– troisième] partie … Rouen, Jacques Cailloué, 1628.

    Very rare pocket-sized Rouen edition of verses on life and death by the poet and royal historiographer Pierre Matthieu (1563–1621), here printed with further poems by Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Antoine Favre and others. All early editions are extremely rare, many known in a single copy.

    £3000

  10. AUBERY, Jean-Henri.

    D. Virgo Guarazonia. Scriptore reverendo patre, P. Ioanne Henrico Auberio Borbonio, religioso presbytero...

    Auch, Arnaud de Sainct Bonnet, 1650.

    A seemingly unrecorded (first?) edition of a remarkable neo-Latin poem on Our Lady of Garaison composed by the Jesuit priest Jean-Henri Aubery (1601–1652).

    £1250

  11. CORNEILLE, Pierre.

    Nicomède tragedie.

    Rouen, Laurens Maurry (and Paris, Guillaume de Luyne), 1653.

    Second edition (first 1651) of Corneille’s tragedy of sibling rivalry and the conflict of political and aristocratic ideals, set in Rome in the second century BC. It was written after Corneille moved to Paris in 1647 and was first staged at the height of the Fronde rebellion, after which he wrote nothing...

    £750

  12. SA‘DI, Abu ‘Abd Allah Musharrif al-Din (Adam OLEARIUS, translator). 

    Persianischer Rosenthal.  In welchen viel lustige...

    Schleswig, Johann Holwein for Johann Nauman in Hamburg, 1654. 

    Rare first illustrated edition, and the first edition translated by Olearius, of Sa‘di’s Gulistān or ‘Rose-garden’, with splendid engravings. 

    £6500

  13. SCARRON, Paul. 

    Le Marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste.  Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée a Paris. 

    [Leiden, Elzevier], 1656. 

    First Elzevier editions, very rare, of these two plays by Scarron, pirated after the text of the first editions printed in Paris.  A finely bound volume with excellent Elzevierian provenance. 

    £800

  14. [COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.]

    Les dames dans leur naturel, ou la galanterie sans façon. Sous le regne du Grand Alcandre.

    ‘A Cologne’ [but The Netherlands], ‘chez Pierre Marteau’, 1686.

    First edition, uncommon, of this tale of the debauchery of the ladies at Louis XIV’s court, purportedly ‘found in a cabinet, long after it had been written’ by the author.

    £685

  15. ARMINESI, Rocco degli.

    Attila flagelum Dei, tradotto dalla vera cronica per Rocco degli Arminesi padovano. Ove si narra come detto...

    Venice, Omobon Bettanino, [mid-eighteenth century].

    Very rare eighteenth-century edition of a popular and best-selling poem on Attila the Hun.

    £600

  16. [GUARINI, Giovanni Battista.]

    Il Pastor Fido.

    ‘In Parigi, appresso Tomaso Iolly, 1706’.

    Scarce Parisian edition of Guarini’s immensely popular ‘pastoral tragi-comedy’, charmingly illustrated by Antonio Luciani.

    £175

  17. CORNEILLE, Thomas.

    Il Pirro, tragedia … tradotta dal francese e recitata da’ signori cavalieri del Collegio Clementino nelle...

    Bologna, Longhi, [1700?].

    A very uncommon set of eight early translations by Thomas Corneille (1625–1709), the younger brother of Pierre, 'le Grand Corneille', published in the context of the Italian Accademie.

    £750

  18. RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus, pseud. [Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN]. 

    Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur /...

    ‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’ 

    First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.). 

    £675

  19. [PREDIERI, Luca Antonio, composer; Apostolo ZENO, librettist.]

    La tirannide vendicata, drama per musica, da rappresentarsi...

    Pesaro, Gavelli, 1726.

    First edition, very rare, of the libretto of an opera performed at Pesaro in 1726, bound in red damask most likely for presentation to the dedicatee, Teresa Borromeo Albani.

    £1250