Paris: Imprimerie de Ch. Lahure et Cie for Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1859.

First appearance in French of Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in Southern Africa (1857), describing his early years in the region and the first of his three great expeditions across the continent: ‘Livingstone’s services to African geography during thirty years are almost...

£250

London, n.p., 1722.

First edition of the by-laws of the London Assurance Corporation, which, along with The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, was constituted and granted sole rights, excepting private individuals, to the granting of assurance and bottomry by ‘The Bubble Act’ of 1720. The right to self-govern, reflected...

£1500

Paris, Charles-Pierre Berton, 1781.

First edition of this rare utopian voyage written by a woman for a readership of women.

£1500

This poster, along with two others designed by Louvat in 1944, was produced by the French Forces of the Interior (FFI), a name used by Charles de Gaulle for the French Resistance movement towards the end of the Second World War. In June 1944, the FFI was involved in the Allied invasion of Normandy and...

£75

Moscow, “Krasnaia Nov”, 1924.

Rare first edition of this assembly of three speeches by the Marxist philosopher, playwright, literary critic and the first Soviet people’s commissar for education. The first was given at Lenin’s funeral, the second speech is on Lenin and the youth, the last on Lenin and art. Unlike other Bolsheviks...

£200

London, printed for Thomas Astley, 1742

Sixth edition, first published in 1686, this issue was sometimes also published with a separate title page and imprint reading, ‘The money’d man’s pocket-book’, London, 1742’ immediately preceding the title-page of the second part. A series of tables calculating the amounts owed on leases based...

£125

Paris, Knapen & Fils, 1782.

First French edition of three travelogues owned by the renowned French geographer and author Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès (1767-1846), who is remembered today as much for his translations (he spoke nine languages) as for his original contributions to geography. Eyriès was an avid bibliophile; in 1795...

£600

Leipzig, Friedrich Gotthold Jacobäer, 1785.

First edition in German (first English 1782). Composed of seventy-two letters written during the course of a trip to India, dealing largely with the government and economies of the East Indies. In letter 25, (pp. 134-140), Mackintosh reports that at the Cape of Good Hope in April 1799, one Daniel Barwell...

£300

Naples: Orazio Salviani, 1573.

Third and best edition of the earliest detailed history of the Jesuit missions in the East, especially Japan. Included for the first time in this edition are five pages of Japanese characters in printed facsimile, ‘Specimen quoddam litterarum vocumque Japonicarum; desumptum e regis Bungi diplomate’...

£4500

Brescia, Bernardinus de Misintis, 30 May 1497.

First edition of Mantuanus’s work containing -on recto of m3- a lengthy reference to America, one of the very few 15th century instances: a ‘mention of discoveries of islands in the Atlantic, noting their size and the fact that they are inhabited. Because none of the ancient geographers knew...

£8000

Italy, c. 1760.

A thorough, methodical, and highly interesting manuscript treatise on the physical, political and religious geography of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, apparently unpublished, providing an important insight into the mid-eighteenth-century western European conception of the world. The latest event...

£2500

Baltimore, Samuel Sower, 1797.

First Baltimore (second American) edition, revised from Markham’s works for use in the United States. When first published in colonial-era Delaware, at Wilmington in 1764, the text was the first book on the selection, care, and racing of horse to be printed in America; this second edition is...

£1250

Chambersburg, Thomas J. Wright, [c. 1839].

Undated Chambersburg edition. Among the most popular farriery manuals in America, the Experienced Farrier remained in print almost a century after its first appearance, with this Chambersburg edition following those of Wilmington and Baltimore. Intended, like its predecessors, for the common...

£250

Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.

A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (1716-1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works he edited and expanded....

£850

Antwerp: Gioachimo Trognaesio, 1611.

First edition. A treatise on the conduct and service of cavalry by the lieutenant-general of the Spanish cavalry in the Low Countries at the Truce of 1609. Insisting that the cavalry should be considered independently of the other military branches, Melzo draws on his experiences in the Netherlands to...

£2150

Paris: Mathurin Henault, 1628.

First edition in French of Mendes Pinto’s celebrated travel account; rare. The original Portuguese edition was published in 1614, although the first draft of the book had been completed by 1569. The present ‘atmospheric and faithful French translation’ (Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe,...

£4750

London and Liverpool: George Philip & Son, 1891.

First English edition, standard issue. Hans Meyer (1858-1929), son of bookseller-turned-publisher Herrmann Julius Meyer and grandson of Joseph Meyer, the founder of the publishing house Bibliographisches Institut, built his reputation as one of the most famous explorers and mountaineers of his...

£5750

[Geneva], 1785.

First edition. McCulloch describes De la Banque D’Espagne as an “energetic remonstrance against the establishment of the bank in question, which had the consequences foretold by Mirabeau” (McCulloch, p. 188). The second work is a letter on the same subject often found bound up together.

£500

London: Spottiswoode and Shaw for Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848.

First edition. In December 1845 the Scottish explorer and surveyor Mitchell (1792-1855) set out on his fourth and last expedition which was in search of an overland route to Port Essington. ‘By June 1846 he had established a depot on the Maranoa and for nearly four months explored around the...

£700

London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2017.

One man’s fascinating record of four winters in the Antarctic during the 1920s, the period of transition from the isolation of the Heroic Age to the beginnings of radio communication with the world outside.

£50