Gift Ideas

  1. [ENGELBRECHT, Martin.]

    [Vier Jahreszeiten. Serie 89.]

    [Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht, c. 1750.]

    An attractive hand-coloured engraved peepshow showing the four seasons, with summer in the foreground retreating into winter behind, lined with printed waste from an illustrated Dutch religious broadside.

    £1750

  2. [DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]

    ‘Atlas’.

    Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].

    An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.

    £875

  3. COLONNA, Fabio.

    Φυτοβασανος, sive Plantarum aliquot historia …

    Naples, Orazio Salviani, 1592.

    First edition, a landmark in botanical illustration, ‘the first strictly botanical book with intaglio prints’ (Blunt).

    £4000

  4. VARILLAS, [Antoine].

    La Pratique de l’education des princes, contenant l’histoire de Guillaume de Croy, surnommé Le Sage,...

    Amsterdam, H. Wetstein & H. Desbordes, 1686.

    A highly unusually decorated binding, likely an amateur imitation of then-fashionable tooling.

    £750

  5. OATES, Russel [or Russell].

    ‘Specimens of Writing by Russel Oates, at Mr Richd Kemplay’s Academy, St John’s Place,...

    Leeds, 1825.

    A pair of calligraphic dictation books from a pupil at Richard Kemplay’s Academy for Young Gentleman in Leeds, with printed class lists ranking pupils by their errors.

    £850

  6. ANDREWS, Mark.

    The Science and Engineering of Water. An illustrated Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts on Hydraulics north of the...

    Toronto, AE Publications, 2024.

    An extensively illustrated catalogue of books, maps, and drawings on the science and engineering of water from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth, utilised by practitioners in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, the New World, and East Asia.

    £85

  7. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...

    Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

    A lavishly illustrated catalogue, tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period. Some 367 printed books, manuscripts, and maps are presented in chronological order, highlighting the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented...

    £85

  8. [PLAYING CARDS.]

    Complete Deck of 52 Playing Cards.

    London, Bancks Brothers, successors to Hunt & Sons, c. 1849.

    An extremely well-preserved complete deck of playing cards by Bancks Brothers.

    £200

  9. [SOPHOCLES.]

    Tragoediae superstites et deperditarum fragmenta ex recensione G. Dindorfii.

    Oxford, University Press, 1832.

    First Oxford edition of the Sophocles of the precocious Karl Wilhelm Dindorf (1802–1883), first published in Leipzig in 1825. This copy was a graduation present from Charles Old Goodford (1812–1884), assistant master (later Head Master and then provost) at Eton, to Arthur Hobhouse (1818–1904),...

    £200

  10. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.

    Quae supersunt ex historiae Romanae voluminibus duobus. Ex editione Petri Burmanni fideliter expressa.

    Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1752.

    First and only Foulis Press edition, unusually found here in a contemporary Scandinavian binding, evidence of the high esteem in which these products of the Glasgow enlightenment were held across Europe.

    £425

  11. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Materials: A Theatre of Machine Books, 1472–1800.

    Toronto, AE Publications, 2023.

    An extraordinary survey of four centuries of machine books, tracing the evolution of printing techniques and draughtsmanship alongside the development of the machines themselves. In this catalogue of eighty-six works from his collection of books on civil engineering, Mark Andrews situates a series...

    £85

  12. PLINY the Younger. 

    Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt; omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa …

    Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.

    A handsome Foulis Press pocket Pliny. The first two volumes comprise the ten books of Pliny’s Epistulae (particularly important for their description of the eruption of Vesuvius), the third his Panegyric to Trajan: ‘clearly it was intended that sections Z to the end should comprise...

    £850

  13. TIBULLUS.

    Albius Tibullus, eques Romanus; et in eum Jo. Antonii Vulpii philologi ac rhetoris in gymnasio Patavino novus commentarius...

    Padua, Giuseppe Comino, 1749.

    An important edition of Tibullus’ love poems, with the commentary of Giovanni Antonio Volpi, who had founded the Libreria Cominiana along with his brother and the engraver Giuseppe Comino in 1717. Volpi had published a well-received edition of the standard tripos of Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius...

    £250

  14. TERENCE.

    Les comedies … avec la traduction et les remarques de Madame Dacier ….

    Rotterdam, Gaspar Fritsch, 1717.

    A fine edition of Anne Dacier’s French Terence (first published 1688), the translation here revised by her, and the notes expanded, with delightful illustrations by Picart.

    £850

  15. TIBULLUS. James GRAINGER, translator.

    A Poetical Translation of the Elegies of Tibullus; and of the Poems of Sulpicia.

    With the original Text, and Notes critical and explanatory … London, A. Millar, 1759.

    First edition of this translation, with notes, by James Grainger (1722–1766), an army surgeon who had, unusually, turned to the pen to supplement his income from medical work.

    £300

  16. OVID.

    P. Ovidii Nasonis operum …

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1629.

    First Elzevir edition, newly edited by Daniel Heinsius based on the Plantin edition of 1578.

    £500

  17. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, Caius.

    [De XII Caesarum vitis. De Illustribus grammaticis. De Claris rhetoribus. Horatii vita. Plinii vita....

    Paris, Typographia Regia, 1644.

    An attractive, illustrated pocket Suetonius. Quoting the pioneering early eighteenth-century bookseller Guillaume de Bure, Cookman notes that this edition is ‘recherché a cause de la beauté de son impression’.

    £350

  18. [PINNOCK, William].

    A catechism of the history of France, containing a clear outline of all the important changes which that country...

    London, Printed by Bensley and Sons for Pinnock and Maunder, [c. 1819].

    Second edition of this much-reprinted guide to French history for British youth from the Roman conquest of Gaul to the fall of Napoleon, one of Pinnock’s many catechisms on historical and scientific subjects.

    £125

  19. BURNE-JONES, Edward.

    The Little Holland House Album … with an Introduction & Notes by John Christian.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2024

    The Little Holland House Album was compiled by Edward Burne-Jones in about 1858-9 for Sophia, Mrs Dalrymple, the youngest of the seven celebrated Pattle sisters who played such an important role in mid-Victorian cultural life. Their centre was Little Holland House in Kensington where another of the...

    £75

  20. [BURY, Charlotte, Lady.]

    The Exclusives. In three Volumes ...

    London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley ... 1830.

    First edition of this celebrated society novel written after the enormous success of Marianne Spencer Stanhope’s Almack’s (1826), a roman à clef centred on the fashionable assembly rooms in St James’s.

    £950