Gift Ideas
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[BERINGTON, Simon, adapted by Jean-Baptiste DUPUY-DEMPORTES.]
Memoires de Gaudence de Luques, prisonnier de l’Inquisition...
Amsterdam and Leipzig, Arkstée & Merkus, 1754.
Second edition of this much expanded and altered translation of Berington’s celebrated utopian novel, Memoirs of Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca (1737). The Memoirs enjoyed immense popularity, undergoing at least twelve eighteenth-century editions in English and contemporary translations...
£650
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DIO CASSIUS.
Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...
Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.
First edition of Dio’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.
£2750
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HUGHES, John.
Poems on several Occasions. With some select Essays in Prose. In two Volumes …
London: Printed for J. Tonson and J. Watts. 1735.
First edition of the principal collection of the author’s works, published posthumously and edited, with a long biographical preface, by his brother-in-law, William Duncombe. John Hughes (1677–1720) was educated at a dissenting academy where Isaac Watts was his contemporary. From an early...
£850
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TACITUS, C. Cornelius; Justus LIPSIUS and Hugo GROTIUS (editors).
[Opera] C. Corn. Tacitus ex I. Lipsii editione...
Leiden, Elzevir, 1640.
First edition with Grotius’s notes, elegantly bound in early nineteenth-century English morocco. Elzevir had published an edition of Lipsius’s Tacitus in 1634; Dibdin notes ‘Of these elegant little editions [of 1634 and 1640], that of 1640 is preferred, on account of its having the notes...
£500
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MAGNON, Jean.
Les heures du Chrestien, divisées en trois journées; qui sont la journée de la penitence, la journée de la grace,...
Paris, se vendent chez l’autheur ... et chez Sebastien Martin, 1654.
First edition of this handsomely illustrated collection of prayers and devotions in verse and prose by the French playwright and poet Jean Magnon (1620–1662). The number of plates in individual copies varies, this copy containing at least two more than those described on OCLC.
£650
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WETZELL, Madame.
Les Matinées de la poupée, ou récréations d’une petite fille.
Paris, J. Langlumé, [1844?].
First and only edition, very rare, of a charming illustrated account of a girl’s doll. Brillantine, a doll, is given to Célénie for company while her elder sister Alméa is in Africa; the book recounts in detail their relationship over the course of a week, from Brillantine’s arrival with...
£450
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DREVES, [Johann Friedrich Peter,] and [Friedrich Gottlob] HAYNE [and Johann Stephan CAPIEUX (engraver)].
Choix...
Leipzig, Voss et compagnie, 1802.
First edition in French, the Plesch set, with 125 handsomely hand-coloured botanical plates, adapted from the German edition finished the previous year. Issued under the title Botanisches Bilderbuch für die Jugend und Freunde der Pflanzenkunde, the work had first appeared in twenty-eight...
£3500
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[COMMON PRAYER.]
The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...
London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794.
A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy.
£1850
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[UNGER, Salomo Gottlob.]
Geschichte des Oesterreich-Russischen und Türkischen Krieges, in den Jahren von 1787. bis 1792. Nebst...
Leipzig, Wilhelm Gottlob Sommer, 1792.
First and only edition, extremely rare, of this account of the Austro-Turkish War of 1788-1791, and of the concurrent Russo-Turkish war of 1787-92. It includes the full texts of the Treaty of Sistova of 4 August 1791 and of a separate convention attached to it, in both French and German. While...
£1250
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KOLLÁR, Jan.
Díla básnická … we dwau djljch [‘A Collection of Poems … in two parts’].
Buda, no publisher, but ‘with the types Gyuriána a Bagó’, 1845.
First collected edition of Jan Kollár’s works, inscribed to fellow poet and ‘brother Slav’ Ognjeslav Utješenowić-Ostrožinski, with an additional autograph sonnet written in his honour.
£1750
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PLINY the Younger.
Epistolarum libri X & panegyricus.
Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1640.
First Elzevir edition, handsomely bound for the Irish politician Thomas Wogan Browne.
£450
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[HALL STEVENSON, John.]
Makarony Fables …
London: ‘Printed for Circulation among private Subscribers only’, 1897.
Limited edition, numbered 172 of 300 copies, of this collection of satiric fables in verse by the poet and satirist John Hall-Stevenson (1718–1785), reprinted from the original edition of 1768. Hall-Stevenson’s reputation relies heavily on his friendship with Laurence Sterne, his contemporary...
£100
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[BOLINGBROKE, Henry St John, Viscount.]
Letters, on the Spirit of Patriotism: on the Idea of a Patriot King: and on the...
London: Printed for A. Millar … 1749.
First authorised edition, following a suppressed piracy by Pope. Written in 1738 for the Prince of Wales, the manuscript had been entrusted to Pope, who had it printed, to Bolingbroke’s fury: he bought up the entire edition and had it burnt in October 1744 (only two imperfect copies survive,...
£375
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BARETTI, Giuseppe.
An Introduction to the Italian Language. Containing Specimens of both Prose and Verse ... with a literal Translation...
London, Printed for A. Millar, in the Strand, 1755.
First edition. Giuseppe Baretti (1719–1789) offers a fine range of examples for learning Italian selected from twenty-seven authors, including Castiglione, Machiavelli, Galileo, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, Michelangelo, Petrarch, and Milton (one of his Italian sonnets, a choice perhaps prompted...
£650
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LIVY, Titus, and Thomas RUDDIMAN (editor).
Historiarum ab urbe condita libri qui supersunt, cum omnium epitomis,...
Kincaid, & J. Brown, 1751.
A very attractive set of the first Ruddiman edition. One of the last works prepared by Thomas Ruddiman (1674–1757), this ‘superb edition of Livy’ (ODNB) was highly praised for its accuracy and is a fine testament both to his classical scholarship and to his printing house. The son of a Banffshire...
£1200
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[COLTELLI, Michele.] [PROCOPE-COUTEAU.]
L’art de faire des garçons, ou nouveau tableau de l’amour conjugal. Par M***, docteur...
‘Londres’ [Paris?], 1779.
Uncommon later edition, probably printed in Paris but bound in Italy, of this popular guide to the production of boys, and to procreation and sex more broadly by the French-Italian writer, physician, and librarian Michel Coltelli (1684–1753, better known as Procope-Couteaux). Coltelli was the...
£265
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GROVES, John.
Greek and English dictionary, comprising all the words in the writings of the most popular Greek authors; in the...
London, for Cowie, Jolland & Co., 1838.
Seventh edition of Groves’s popular Greek–English dictionary, with charming doodles and cheeky notes by William Salked Brook of Woodbridge, Suffolk, dating from his time at Magdalen College School and then Oriel College Oxford (BA 1880). Brook appears to have inherited the volume from his father...
£150
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FLORUS.
Lucii Flori rerum ab urbe condita liber primus [– quartus].
[Venice, in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri, March 1521.]
Florus’s epitome of Roman history, extracted from the Aldine edition of March 1521 which comprised an epitome of Livy, Florus, and Niccolò Perotti’s translation of Polybius.
£750
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SMITH, Charlotte.
Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle …
London: Printed for T. Cadell, 1788.
First edition of Smith’s first original novel, preceded by two translations (albeit liberal ones, from French).
£1600
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[ANON.]
The Mystic Cottager of Chamouny: a Novel …
London: Printed for William Lane, at the Minerva Press … 1794.
First edition, very rare, presumably a first novel by a young authoress – the ‘Address to the public’ calls it ‘the genuine dictates of a moment of imagination … traced by the pen of juvenility …. for the sole endeavour of raising a trivial sum for the benefit of a distressed Orphan,...
£3750