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...

£975

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

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

London, New York, & Bombay, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1897.

First edition of Madden’s reimagination of Elizabethan sport, derived from passages from Shakespeare. Though a legal writer and prominent jurist, being appointed attorney-general of Ireland in 1889, the best known publication of Dodgson Hamilton Madden (1840–1928) remains the Diary of Master...

£120

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

Mantua, heirs of Alberto Pazzoni, 1761. 

Very rare work detailing tariffs and taxes relating to the city and province of Mantua in Lombardy, issued during the period of Austrian rule, providing a fascinating snapshot of mid-eighteenth-century economics and trade in the region. 

£500

London: Printed for T. Lownds ... 1749. 

First edition of this translation, very rare, of a work first printed in French in Paris in 1700 (see below) and, in a different translation, in English in 1704 as An agreeable Criticism of the City of Paris. 

£1250

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

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

London: C. Adlard for John Churchill, 1843.

First edition. A classic treatise on the Niger region and the yellow fever written by the Scottish doctor James Ormiston McWilliam, the hero of a government expedition exploring the region and its commercial opportunities, and explicitly aimed at suppressing the slave trade. When the yellow fever...

£600

Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.

First edition of this comprehensive report on the best means to reverse the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy, in a way that could be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.

£950

[Venice, printer of Pomponius Mela, 1477].

Second edition, very rare. This is the variant issue without date or place of printing, and is one of only five books known to have produced by the anonymous printer who has been named after the present edition. Mela’s description of the world, also known under the title Chorographia,...

£25000

London, Printed by J. Macock, for Henry Cripps, and Lodowick Lloyd … 1653. 

First edition in English, translated by Henry Cogan, of a travel best-seller, first published posthumously in 1614; there were nineteen editions in six languages by the end of the century, ‘rivalling the popularity of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.  It is, in fact, an exotic and imaginative...

£7500

Venice, [Lucantonio II] Giunta, 1587. 

Third edition of ‘the first illustrated book on gymnastics’ (Morton).  A physician occupying senior posts in the medical faculties of Padua, Bologna, Rome, and Pisa, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) draws heavily on accounts of ancient exercise to argue for its medical benefits, being the...

£2750

Paris, J. Andriveau-Goujon, 1850. 

A lovely hand-coloured folding map of the Middle East and part of Asia, comprising Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and the western borders of China and modern-day India, from the celebrated Parisian map-selling company of Andriveau-Goujon. 

£350

Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Milan, Paris, 1855-1875.

A remarkable sammelband of scarce works on military medicine in French, Italian, Dutch and German, including an item on Florence Nightingale and treatises on gunshot wounds, the Red Cross, field hospitals, battlefield first aid, and ambulances. Several items bear inscriptions by Félix Hippolyte...

£2250

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

Paris, François Rousselet, 1610. 

Scarce second edition of this influential work on military logistics, with copper-engraved illustrations of cannons, grenades, and various military formations. 

£650