Gift Ideas

  1. [GREATTI, Giuseppe.] 

    L’Educazione. Poemetto in ottava rima. 

    Padua, 1796. 

    Only edition of this poem on the theme of education, dedicated to the Paduan noblewoman Arpalice Savorgnan di Brazzà, well-known in the city for her embrace of radicals and revolutionaries, which led her salon to be known as ‘l’unione dei giacobini’ (see di Brazzà, p. 714). 

    £350

  2. HERODOTUS, and Isaac LITTLEBURY (translator). 

    The History of Herodotus: Translated from the Greek …  The Third...

    London, for D. Midwinter, A. Bettesworth & C. Hitch, J. & J. Pemberton, R. Ware, C. Rivington, J. Batley & J. Wood, F. Clay, A. Ward,...

    The ‘third’ (in fact fourth) and final edition of the first complete English translation of Herodotus’s History

    £450

  3. [MONROE, Marilyn.] 

    DIENES, André de.  Marilyn. 

    Cologne, Taschen, 2002. 

    First edition of this celebratory book on Marilyn Monroe, collecting photographs by her friend (and briefly lover) André de Dienes, who met Norma-Jean in 1945 and helped launch her career. 

    £200

  4. [SOUTH OF FRANCE.]

    ‘Routes de Privas à Nîmes 1892’.

    June-July 1892.

    A nice sketchbook, by an anonymous artist, recording a trip to the South of France in 1892, capturing the beauty of the landscape, as well as some of the historic monuments in the départements of Ardèche, Gard, and Vaucluse.

    £575

  5. MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

    Urbis Romae topographia. 

    Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

    First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

    £5500

  6. MAGNON, Jean. 

    Les heures du Chrestien, divisées en trois journées; qui sont la journée de la penitence, la journée de la...

    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

  7. [LOTTERY SATIRE.] 

    A Scheme for a New Lottery: or, a Husband and Coach and Six for forty Shillings.  Being very advantageous...

    London: Printed for T. Dormer … 1732. 

    First edition of this facetious proposal to match, for the fee of forty shillings each, 50,000 ‘maids and widows’ with a similar number of ‘gentlemen and tradesmen’, by lottery.  The ‘gentlemen and tradesmen’ include ‘500 Lawyers, 200 Petty-foggers … 2 Scotchmen, both Pedlars,...

    £2000

  8. LOCKE, John. 

    [An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding].  Extrait d’un Livre Anglois qui n’est pas encore publié, intitulé...

    Amsterdam, Wolfgang, Waesbergi, Boom, & Van Someren, 1688. 

    A substantial and extremely influential extract, published two years before the appearance of the book, of Locke’s Essay concerning human understanding: a publication of major consequence in the history of philosophy.  This issue of the Bibliothèque universelle et historique also...

    £2850

  9. [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

  10. DURRELL, Lawrence.

    Collected Poems.

    London, Faber and Faber, [1960].

    First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoff from Larry Durrell 1962 / “too much tape [?]” Eliot’. Eliot had been the editor at Faber when Durrell submitted The Black Book in 1937, but had only recommended publication with cuts that Durrell was unwilling to make. Eliot did however publish...

    £400

  11. ZUKOFSKY, Louis.

    Some Time. Short Poems …

    Stuttgart, Jonathan Williams, 1956.

    First edition, one of 300 copies, inscribed ‘for D. G. Bridson, Sept. 21, 1957, Louis Zukofsky’.

    £500

  12. REXROTH, Kenneth.

    An Autobiographical Novel …

    Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.

    First edition, inscribed ‘In friendship / for Geoffrey Bridson / Kenneth Rexroth SF June 66’.

    £300

  13. ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo. 

    Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga. 

    Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566. 

    First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini. 

    £1750

  14. [PRAYERS.] 

    ‘Orationes diversae pro temporum opportunitate dicendae’. 

    [Likely Lucca, late eighteenth century.] 

    A delightful manuscript prayerbook for use in communal worship, most likely for a rural community, with prayers for help in times of plagues and of animal diseases, prayers seeking protection from storms and alleviation of droughts, for times of earthquakes, for the sick, and against pagans. ...

    £475

  15. [SACROBOSCO, Johannes de.] 

    CLAVIUS, Christophorus.  In sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco commentarius, nunc iterum ab ipso Auctore...

    Rome, Francesco Zanetti for Domenico Basa, 1581. 

    Third edition, the first to contain Clavius’s condemnation of Copernicus, with ten highly detailed woodcut diagrams of solar and lunar eclipses not included in the first edition. 

    £2500

  16. [GELENIUS, Sigismund (editor).] 

    Notitia utraque, dignitatum, cum orientis, tum occidentis, ultra arcadii honoriique tempora,...

    Lyons, [Jacques du Creux for] Jean de Gabiano, 1608. 

    An expanded edition, illustrated on almost every leaf, of an anonymous fifth-century description of the Roman Empire. 

    £875

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. GELLIUS, Aulus [and Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS (editor)].

    Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti...

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.

    Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s version, published the same year as the first edition. A commonplace book compiled by Aulus Gellius in the second century, the Attic Nights received several editions, of which the most highly regarded is that of Johann Friedrich Gronovius (1611–1671),...

    £450