Foreign Literature
Contact Donovan Rees
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.
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BIZZARRI, Pietro.
Petri Bizzari varia opuscula, quorum indicem sequens pagina demonstrabit.
Venice, [Paolo Manuzio], 1565.
...
£2500
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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
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GONZAGA, Curzio.
Il Fido amante, poema eroico.
Mantua, [(colophon:) Giacomo Ruffinello, 1582].
First edition of an Italian Renaissance heroic poem in thirty-six cantos, much appreciated by Tasso and published the year after the first authorized edition of the Gerusalemme liberata.
£600
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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
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PETIOT, Étienne.
Panegyricus Ludovico XIII. vindici rebellionis, domitori Elementorum, æterno triumphatori: Pro fracta Britannia,...
Ferrara, Giuseppe Gironi, 1639.
An extremely rare Ferrarese edition of the hugely popular panegyric to Louis XIII by the Jesuit Étienne Petiot (1602–1675), professor of rhetoric, encomiastic writer, and theologian from Limoges, written on the occasion of the defeat of the Huguenots at the end of the siege of La Rochelle and...
£975
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[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
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[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
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[POETRY.]
‘Trattato della [poesia Toscana]’.
[Asti?, 1780-1782.]
A manuscript treatise on the method of composing poetry in Italian, with numerous examples from renowned authors and eight apparently unpublished poems about horse-racing, with references to Arabian, Sardinian, English, and African horses, as well as to a firework display.
£750
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[TRENTO, Giulio].
Gli spiriti. Paragoni poetici. Dialogo d’un giovine, ed un cinico dell’andare alla Guerra. Diario mensuale...
Treviso, G. Trento, [1788].
Only edition, mentioned only in one or two pieces of local antiquarian history but not recorded in any of the usual library catalogues. An ephemeral publication containing a short story, a literary divertissement linking passages from Parini’s Mattino with an unidentified poem on gambling and an ode...
£300
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[NAPOLEONIC ITALY.]
Alla società delle gentilissime signore di Moncalieri dilettanti del giuoco del tavolazzo. Sonetto bernesco-morale...
Turin, Giacomo Fea, 1799.
An unrecorded sonnet addressed to the to the female players of tavolazzo – a Piedmontese sport along the lines of target shooting – at the Society of the Gentlewomen of Moncalieri; the rules of the sport would be formally laid out in 1780.
£375
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[MALTA.]
Eruditissima istoria dell’assedio fatto dalli Turchi all città di Malta.
Naples, [c. 1800?].
Scarce poem on the 1565 Great Siege of Malta, when around 2400 Knights Hospitallers and Maltese inhabitants repelled an Ottoman invasion lead by Dragut and Mustafa Pasha. Library catalogues credit the work to Innico Grivaccio.
£650
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PAZZI, Antonio de, and Torquato TASSO.
Stanze inedite di Antonio de Pazzi e di Torquato Tasso in biasimo ed in lode delle...
Venice, Picotti, 1810.
Scarce first edition of verses ‘in blame and in praise of women’ by Antonio de Pazzi and Torquato Tasso, edited by the eminent antiquary and librarian Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819) from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, and dedicated to Baron Antonio Mulazzani...
£200
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GOLDONI, Carlo.
Scelta di alcune commedie. Per uso de’ dilettanti della lingua italiana. Prima edizione italiana.
Livorno, Assunto Barbani, 1816.
First edition printed in Italy of a collection of ten comedies by Goldoni, selected for their lack of complicated syntax and lack of Venetian dialect and idioms, published in Livorno for the benefit of the English community.
£175
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PIEROTTI, A.
Il cervello e la difesa delle donne sestine giocose ... precedute da indirizzo, e dedica in vario metro.
Florence, N. Fabbrini, 1842.
First and only edition, very rare, of this misogynistic poem by the Florentine poet Pierotti, in which he pretends to explore the female brain with reference to Galen, accusing women of, for example, greed, theft, cunning, vanity, and irascibility. The second part is a somewhat patronising defense...
£375
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MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa.
Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...
Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846.
Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento.
£175
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ROSINI, Giovanni.
Alla memoria di Maria Antinori vedova del Marchese Consalvi di Macerata morta improvvisamente la sera del XIV...
Pisa, Niccolò Capurro, 1852.
Scarce first and only edition of this poem in memory of Maria Antinori, widow of the Marchese Consalvi, on her death at the age of thirty-five, penned by the poet, playwright, historical novelist, art historian, and art collector Giovanni Rosini (1776–1855), this copy presented by the author to...
£275
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[JUVENILIA.]
Racconti per gli adolescenti. Con tavole miniate.
Trieste, ‘Sezione Letterario-Artistica del Lloyd Austriaco’, 1857.
First and only edition, extremely rare, of these cautionary tales for adolescents, featuring inter alia debates among children on the ethics of taxidermy, a brawl in Latin lessons, arrests for embezzlement, and the unjust incarceration of a schoolboy.
£350
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[CARDUCCI, Giosuè, Olindo GUERRINI, et al., editors.]
...
Bologna, 19 April [– 29 June] 1874.
Very rare complete run of this short-lived satirical magazine against the pro-government newspaper Il Monitore, produced by a group of young liberals from Bologna including the poets Giosuè Carducci and Olindo Guerrini.
£1000
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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
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[PIRANDELLO, Luigi.]
LO VECCHIO MUSTI, Manlio. Bibliografia di Pirandello.
Verona, Mondadori, 1937.
First edition of this authoritative bibliography of Pirandello, published just a year after his death. It includes a long introductory essay by Massimo Bontempelli.
£100