Gift Ideas
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JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianus; Cornelius NEPOS.
Trogi Pompei externae historiae in compendium ab Justino redactae. Externorum imperatorum...
Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani soceri’, January 1522.
First Aldine edition of Justinus’ abridgement of the lost Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, and of Nepos’ De viris illustribus, with a decorated initial to the opening of the text, likely executed in the early nineteenth century when the work was bound in Rome.
£1850
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FAULKNER, William.
A Fable.
[New York,] Random House, [1954].
Limited edition, no. 880 of 1000 copies signed by Faulkner. A late, overtly political novel set in the French trenches during the First World War, A Fable was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer and National Book Award. Faulkner thought it his greatest work.
£1500
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SHAKESPEARE, William; Richard Grant WHITE, editor.
The Works of William Shakespeare. The Plays edited from the Folio of...
Boston, Little Brown & Company, 1893.
An attractive Boston-printed edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, edited by the prominent American Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White (1922–1885).
£500
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[ALKEN, Henry.]
The Beauties & Defects in the Figure of the Horse, comparatively delineated in a series of Engravings.
Boston, Carter & Hendee, 1830.
First American edition, the second and scarcest overall. ‘The dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century’ (ODNB), Henry Thomas Alken (1785–1851) ‘showed an early liking for depicting animals, especially dogs and horses’, and ‘demonstrated his expertise in the book The...
£1600
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[CUMBERLAND, Richard.]
Arundel. By the author of the Observer.
London, Printed for C. Dilly … 1789.
First edition. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811) was the grandson of the great scholar Richard Bentley, and great-grandson of the Bishop of Peterborough; he had already made his name as a playwright in London, and was also the author of a periodical paper the Observer when he published this,...
£1500
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HORACE; James TATE, editor.
Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...
Cambridge, J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1832.
First edition of this attempt to arrange the books of Horace in chronological order by the classical scholar and master of Richmond School, James Tate (1771–1843), this copy presented by him to Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855), classicist, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Regius Professor of Greek,...
£150
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SCHILLER, Friedrich.
Wallenstein ein dramatisches Gedicht …
Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1800.
First edition of Schiller’s dramatic Wallenstein trilogy, tracing the rise and fall of the Bohemian general Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years’ War, from the von Carlowitz library and perhaps associated with the play’s French translator, Baroness Aloïse-Christine de Carlowitz....
£800
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[ALTAR CARDS.]
Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John.
‘A Paris, chez I. Baudemont’, second half of seventeenth century.
Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt cards for priests, bearing readings and prayers, and devotional images of Jesus and St John, comprising separately printed images, text and borders arranged together in collage fashion.
£2750
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GELLIUS, Aulus; [Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS, editor].
Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti hominis cura...
Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.
Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s celebrated 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 (Gronow,...
£450
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DENNYS, Nicholas Belfield, editor.
The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A complete guide to the open ports of those countries,...
Shortrede and Co., 1867.
First edition, complete with all twenty-nine maps and plans, of this remarkable guide to the open ports of China and Japan in the late 1860s, aimed at ‘travellers, merchants, and residents’, compiled by Nicholas Dennys (1839–1900), a noted scholar of Chinese folklore, with the sinologist...
£4750
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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 Cassius’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.
£2500
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[POEMS ON DRINKING.]
Raccolta di brindisi per tutte le occasioni; apostrofi al vino; inni in lode di Bacco, canzoni da tavola;...
Milan, Emilio Croci, 1875.
First edition of this compact font of inspiration for all partygoers, containing odes to Bacchus, endless praise of the merits of wine, drinking songs, and toasts for every occasion, including a party of printers.
£200
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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
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GISSING, George.
The Unclassed, A Novel … in three Volumes.
London, Chapman and Hall, 1884.
First edition of Gissing’s second novel – and Bernard Shaw’s favourite of his novels – in the single-volume remaindered issue in red cloth.
£950
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[SURTEES, Robert Smith,] and John LEECH (illustrator).
Handley Cross series.
London, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., 1899-1900.
Limited ‘Master of Foxhounds’ edition, finely printed at the Whitefriars Press. Having published the first editions of several of Surtees’s sporting novels, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. gathered and reprinted the six most successful as the ‘Handley Cross series’ as luxury sets. Publisher’s...
£1200
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KOH, John.
Dogs in Early Photography.
London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2024.
Throughout history, dogs have been a subject in art; dogs were featured in cave drawings, coins, funerary sculptures or medieval marginalia. Before smartphones allowed dog owners to capture and share every moment of their dogs’ lives, fine art documented this relationship and promoted the dog from...
£50
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[RENNEVILLE, Sophie de (?).]
Contes a Aglaé, ou la jeune moraliste.
Paris, Caillou, c.1820.
Very uncommon edition, possibly the first, of this collection of educational contes moraux, sometimes attributed to the prolific children’s author and journalist Sophie de Renneville (1772–1822).
£325
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YARRELL, William.
A History of British Fishes … illustrated by nearly 400 Woodcuts.
London, Samuel Bentley for John van Voorst, 1836.
First collected editions, with an autograph letter on the Hebridal smelt from the species’ discoverer. Published serially from 1835 to 1836, Yarrell’s History of British Fishes was reprinted within a year, and followed soon after by Thomas Bell’s British Reptiles in 1839 and...
£750
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HORACE.
Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera cum novo commentario ad modum Joannis Bond.
Paris, Didot, 1855.
The deluxe issue of Didot’s Horace, a fine early photographically-illustrated work, complete with all the photographic plates, headpieces and maps, and printed on fine paper.
£750
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EPICTETUS.
Το του Επικτητου εγχειριδιον. Ex editione Joannis Upton accurate expressum.
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
The first miniature Foulis edition of Epictetus in Greek, and the first Foulis Epictetus in Greek only. A 1765 reissue was, according to ESTC, reset.
£650