Gift Ideas
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BEISNER, Monika.
Dante Alighieri: La Commedia in 100 tavole.
Turin, Attini, 2021.
Limited edition, one of 500 numbered sets, of Monika Beisner’s one hundred illustrations of the Divine Comedy, each accompanying one canto, conveying with remarkable fidelity the vivacity of Dante’s verse.
£60
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[BASSI, Ugo.] PLANGENETO, Ugo (pseud.).
La lacrima di Monte Vesuvio volgarmente Lacryma Christi. Ditirambo.
Naples, Dallo stabiolimento del Guttemberg, 1841.
First and only edition, very rare, of one of the earliest works entirely devoted to Lacryma Christi, a red or white wine obtained from grapes growing on the fertile volcanic soil on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples.
£750
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[JUVENILE.]
[Library for Youth, or Book-Case of Knowledge, 10 vols.]
London: Printed for John Wallis … by T. Gillet or J. Cundee … 1800.
A fine complete set of Wallis’s ‘Library for Youth’ also known as the ‘Book-Case of Knowledge’, with all ten volumes in the first editions, dated 1800, and with two original designs (in reverse) for the frontispieces.
£4750
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[THE BOOK COLLECTOR.]
A special Number to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Bernard Quaritch Ltd.
The Book Collector, 1997.
A collection of essays together recounting the history of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, published by The Book Collector to commemorate the firm’s sesquicentenary in 1997.
£25
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MYERS, Robin, Michael HARRIS, and Giles MANDELBROTE (eds).
Lives in Book History: Changing Contours of Research over...
Leicester, Garendon Press, 2022.
‘This volume has grown out of one event in a long series of annual conferences on book-trade history – held to mark the fortieth conference in 2018. For this we had asked nine well-known book historians to give a retrospective review of their field, be it manuscripts, incunabula, book binding, and...
£35
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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
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QUARITCH, Bernard Alexander Christian, editor.
Contributions towards a Dictionary of English Book-Collectors as also of...
London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 1969.
A facsimile reprint of Quaritch’s series of profiles of bibliophiles, with brief lists of the treasures of their collections and notes on their dispersal at auction or in the trade, which remains a useful resource both for the history of book-collecting in Britain and for provenance research. Contributions...
£25
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SHAKESPEARE, William.
Shakespeare’s Sonnette übersetzt von Karl Lachmann.
Berlin, 1820. Gedruckt und verlegt bei G. Reimer.
First complete edition in German of Shakespeare’s sonnets, this copy retailed in contemporary Bath. The translation is by the philologist and teacher Karl Lachmann, who went on to translate Macbeth in 1829 and is now best known for his landmark edition of Lucretius (1850).
£950
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[COVENTRY, Francis].
La Vie et les aventures du petit Pompée. Histoire critique traduite de l’anglois par M. Toussaint …
A Londres [i.e. Paris?]. 1752.
First edition? in French of Coventry’s most famous work, The History of Pompey the Little, or, The Life and Adventures of a Lap-Dog (1751), a lively satire of fashionable London life, told through the eyes of a favoured pet.
£500
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DAMIANO, da Odemira.
Libro da imparare giocare a scachi, et de bellissimi partiti, revisti [et] recoretti, [et] con summa diligentia...
[Rome(?), after 1524.]
Extremely rare early edition of the first book to deal with the complete game and the first to give directions for playing without seeing the board.
£4750
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VANE, Charles William, Marquess of Londonderry.
A Steam Voyage to Constantinople, by the Rhine and the Danube, in 1840–41,...
London, Henry Colburn, 1842.
First edition, scarce on the market, of this ‘very interesting work’ (Blackmer) by Vane (1778–1854), the half-brother of Lord Castlereagh who served under Wellington in the Peninsular War and later as ambassador at the Congress of Vienna.
£1500
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DONNE, John.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...
London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.
Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.
£13500
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MAJER, Andrea.
Discorso sulla origine, progressi, e stato attuale della musica italiana …
Padua, ‘dalla Tipografia e Fonderia della Minerva’, 1821.
First edition of Majer’s treatise on music, ‘a conservative defence of tradition as part of a backlash against the popularity of Rossini’s reforms’ (Baragwanath, p. 29).
£185
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[KINGDOM OF THE TWO SICILIES.]
Ruoli de’ generali ed uffiziali attivi e sedentanei del reale esercito e dell’armata di mare...
Napoli, Reale Tipografia Militare, 1855.
Scarce 1855 edition of this roster of army and navy officers, doctors, chaplains, and administrators in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, issued during the reign of Ferdinand II and only a few years before the kingdom’s demise, handsomely bound with the royal arms on each board.
£400
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NELSON, John.
An Extract of John Nelson’s Journal, being an Account of God’s Dealing with his Soul from his Youth to the forty-second...
Bristol, E. Farley & Co., 1767.
Rare first edition, printed in Bristol, of the autobiography of the preacher and pioneer of Methodism in Yorkshire John Nelson (1707–1774).
£600
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Aristotle: From Antiquity to the Modern Era.
Preface by Martin J. Gross. Essays by Benjamin Morison and Barbara Scalvini.
Lewes, D. Giles Ltd for the Martin J. Gross Family Foundation, 2021.
Aristotle’s influence towers over western philosophy and science. His astonishing range and depth – philosophy and logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics – make him indisputably the most important intellectual figure in the western tradition before the modern age.
£30
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FORSYTH, William.
A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit-Trees, in which a new Method of Pruning and Training is fully...
London, Nichols & Son for T.N. Longman & O. Rees, T. Cadell junior & W. Davies, and J. Debrett, 1802.
First edition, with Forsyth’s promotion of his controversial remedy for injured trees. As superintendent of the royal gardens of St James’s and Kensington from 1784, Forsyth (1737–1804) developed a ‘plaister’ supposed to remedy diseased timber, an invention met with much enthusiasm by...
£275
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RAMSAY, Allan.
The Gentle Shepherd, a Scotch Pastoral … attempted in English by Margaret Turner.
London: Printed for the Author, by T. Bensley; and sold by G. Nicol … and by Mrs. Turner … 1790.
First edition of this parallel-text translation of Ramsay’s Scots verse drama, a subscriber’s copy from the library of Mary, Lady Vincent, née Chiswell, wife of Sir Francis Vincent (1747–1793), resident consul at Venice.
£600
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HALE, Matthew, Sir.
Contemplations moral and divine, in two Parts.
London, D. Brown, J. Walthoe, J. Sprint, M. Wotton, G. Conyers, and D. Midwinter, 1711.
An early eighteenth-century edition of Hale’s Contemplations in attractive contemporary English morocco. Though first and foremost a jurist, judge, and Commonwealth parliamentarian, Matthew Hale (1609–1676) wrote widely and extensively on other subjects: his Contemplations, first...
£450
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GASPAROLI, Carlo Maria.
Dialectica sive manuductio ad logicam dictata a R. P. Bar. De Somere. Scripta a me Car. Mar. Gasparoli....
Antwerp, 1753.
A handsome manuscript comprising a thorough course in logic and dialectic, executed by a student at the Jesuit college in Antwerp, and illustrated with an extraordinary decorative programme inspired by printed emblems.
£4750