Seville, 25 July 1576.

A commercial document from the heyday of Seville’s trade with the Indies. Drawn up for Sebastián de Baeza, a resident of the barrio of San Bartolomé in Seville, the document recapitulates a previous agreement of 25 June 1576 between, on the one hand, Hernán López de Segovia and, on...

£1200

Leiden, Nicolaes van Geelkercken, 1619.

First Latin edition of one of the classic Dutch illustrated voyages, identical in format and illustration to the same publisher’s Dutch-language edition of the same year.

£20000

London: Printed by T. Grismond, and are to be sold by T. Robinson … in Oxon. 1658.

First edition of Osborne’s history of the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI and I, two exemplary leaders of the Protestant English cause, with which Osborne was much taken in his works.

£475

Leiden, Jacob de Meurs, 1665. 

Lavishly illustrated first French edition of Nieuhof’s travels through China from 1655 to 1657. 

£3500

Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1668. 

First edition in Latin, beautifully illustrated, of Nieuhof’s account of his travels in China between 1655 and 1657, one of the most important early modern non-Jesuit studies. 

£5000

Cremona, Gio[vanni] Pietro Zanni, 1671.

An exceedingly rare extract from the first edition of the treatise of practical geometry by the architect and inventor Alessandro Capra (c. 1605–c. 1685), seemingly prepared and sold as a manual for surveyors and early estate agents.

£575

London, printed for H.M. and sold by J. Whitlock, 1695.

First edition. The Royal Fishery Company, incorporated in 1662, had great trouble finding subscribers. Initially, Charles II offered £9000 as an incentive to investors but on these only raising £3680 he withdrew his undertaking, instead allowing a lottery to aid the Company’s fortunes. After attempts...

£200

London, E. Whitlock, 1698.

First edition; a French version appeared the same year. Since its foundation in 1688, the Royal Lustring Company (importers of ‘lustrings’ or ‘alamodes’ – a fine, light, glossy, black silk) had enjoyed special monopolistic privileges which it had exploited to the full. However, by the end...

£275

London, printed by E. P. for R. Wilkin … 1704.

First edition of this important but little-studied work on free trade for the public good by the physician and political writer Peter Paxton.

£900

[London, n.p., 1711].

First extended account of Clifford’s long-running legal battle with the Dutch West India Company in Surinam over Corcabo, his sugar plantation. The earlier publications had been just four pages long; this work furnishes us with plantation account details and testimonies, chronologically arranged with...

£650

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...

£550

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

[Bordeaux, c. 1787.]

A very rare advertisement card of a provincial bookseller from Bordeaux, a scarce piece of trade ephemera.

£75

5 August, 1749.

After a dissolute youth and a period in the army, Alexander Barclay (1711–1771) had been made Comptroller of Customs at Philadelphia in 1749, a position almost certainly engineered by his father David Barclay (1682–1769) – it required a significant sum (£500) advanced in security. David Barclay,...

£850

London, R. Baldwin, 1761.

An interesting and extremely rare account book for 1761 used by a series of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century carpenters, joiners, and a tallow chandler in Denbighshire, North Wales to record appointments, time spent on ongoing projects, and accounts.

£850

[v. Oelreich], 1763.

First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...

£200

London, printed and sold by T. Harrison … and by J. Robson … 1765.

First edition, an unjustly neglected study of the politics and economics of international trade, inspired in part by comparison with France, where Mildmay spent five years in the 1750s.

£350

Lisbon and Lucca, (vols. 3–4: ‘e si vende da Giuseppe Bouchard librajo francese in Firenze’), 1765–66.

First edition, scarce on the market, of a highly important work in the history of economics and world trade. Pagnini (1714–89) worked in the financial department of the Tuscan government and published translations of several of Locke’s works. The Della decima is his most important work,...

£5500

[Besançon?, 1772?] 

A seemingly unrecorded issue of this decree governing tariffs on paper and cardboard in Louis XV’s France, with no imprint but with the colophon ‘fait à Besançon le 18 avril 1772, signé, Lacoré’. 

£175

Paris, chez Valade; Brussels, chez Emmanuel Flon, 1774.

£100