Recent Acquisitions
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[IMAGINARY VOYAGE.]
Admirable Travels of Messieurs Thomas Jenkins and David Lowellin through the unknown Tracts of Africa: with...
London, ‘for the Benefit of Robert Barker, an unfortunate blind man’, 1785.
Rare, a lively chapbook novella of adventures and tribulations in Africa, fusing elements of a Robinsonade with a brief utopia.
£1500
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TASSO, Torquato; Giovanni Francesco NEGRI, translator.
[Drop-head title:] Della tradottione della Gierusalemme liberata...
[Bologna, 1628.]
Rare first edition of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata to be translated into dialect, here in facing Bolognese and Italian translation, its printing suspended midway through the thirteenth canto, likely by Cardinal Bernardino Spada, a friend of the translator and the dedicatee of the work.
£1500
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POMPONIO LETO, Giulio.
In omnia quae quidem extant, P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, Commentarii, varia multarum rerum cognitione referti,...
Basel, [Johann Oporinus, 1544].
Second edition of Leto’s influential commentary on all the works of Virgil, ‘the first to deal with all the works attributed to Virgil, and also the most extensive and complete, and therefore certainly the most important commentary written in the fifteenth century’ (Stok, p. 204).
£450
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POPE, William.
Manuscript arithmetic schoolbook.
[Tiverton?] ‘Sunday Octr 24.th 1804’.
A manuscript arithmetic schoolbook belonging to one William Pope, very well preserved in its original stationery binding and wrapper, with provincially printed arithmetic tables as endpapers.
£850
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LUCIAN of Samosata; Étienne MOQUOT, editor.
Luciani Samosatensis dialogi selecti. Cum nova versione et notis. Ab uno e...
Lyons, Claude Obert, 1636.
Parallel Greek and Latin edition of selected dialogues by the second-century satirist Lucian, edited by the French Jesuit Étienne Moquot (1570–1625?) for use in Jesuit schools (first 1621).
£375
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REFUGE, Eustace de; Girolamo CANINI, translator.
Trattato della corte del Signor Refuge. Tradotto di Francese in questo...
Venice, Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1621.
Rare first edition in Italian of this treatise on courtly behaviour attributed to the French statesman Eustache de Refuge (1564–1617), a seventeenth-century bestseller combining Machiavelli with Castiglione, with folding letterpress flowcharts by the translator, Giuseppe Canini, who had also produced...
£1850
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CLÜVER, Philipp.
Introductio in universam geographiam tam veterem, quam novam …
Wolfenbüttel, Caspar Johann Bismarck for Conrad Buno, 1686.
The 1686 edition of perhaps the most important geographical textbook of the early modern period, an introduction to global geography by the German antiquarian and geographical pioneer Philipp Clüver, enlarged and supplemented by the German geographer Johann Buno.
£2500
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GUILLIM, John.
A Display of Heraldrie: manifesting a more easie Accesse to the Knowledge thereof than hath beene hitherto published...
London, Thomas Cotes for Jacob Blome, 1638.
Third edition, corrected and enlarged, of this cornerstone of English heraldry; this copy annotated throughout in two hands, each showing close engagement with the blazon expounded by the text.
£950
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ARISTOTLE; THEOPHRASTUS; Theodorus GAZA and Pietro ALCIONIO, translators.
Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum...
Lyons, [Nicolas Bacquenois for] Guillaume Gazeau, 1552.
A union of Aristotle on animals and Theophrastus on plants, the fundamental texts from Ancient Greece on zoology and botany, in the translations of Gaza and Alcionio.
£800
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[LILY, William.]
A short introduction of grammar generally to be used; compiled and set forth for the bringing up of all those...
Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1709.
Later editions (likely issued together) of two Latin grammars ascribed to the great grammarian and schoolmaster William Lily (1468?–1522/1523).
£350
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GIGLI, Mariano.
Esperimento del nobile giovinetto Francesco Piazzi d’anni dieci non compiuti sulle sette lingue italiana, francese,...
Milan, Società tipografica de’ classici italiani, 1818.
First and only edition, rare, of a series of 450 translation exercises in French, Spanish, English, German, Latin, Greek, and Italian, posed to the ten-year-old linguistic prodigy Francesco Piazzi by his tutor as the culmination of his highly experimental method of linguistic instruction.
£1250
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GOELICKE, Andreas Ottomar.
Disputatio physica experimentalis exhibens aliquot naturae phaenomena, quae per attractionem vulgo fieri...
Halle, Johann Montag, [1704].
Scarce academic disputation on experimental physics led by the German physician and professor Andreas Ottomar Goelicke (1671–1744).
£275
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[BREWER, George.]
The Siamese Tales, being a Collection of Stories told to the Son of the Mandarin Sam-Sib, for the Purpose of...
London, Vernor & Hood and Champante & Whitrow, 1796.
First edition of an anonymously published collection of ‘Siamese tales’, written as fables to increase their appeal to children.
£950
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BOUTMY, C.
‘Exercitium quotidianum dedicatum perillustri domino domino vice comiti de Haro et d’Enghien &c a C. Boutmy 1760’.
[Belgium, 1760.]
An attractively bound unpublished devotional manual composed by one C. Boutmy (unidentified) for his patron Henri vicomte de Haro et d’Enghien.
£450
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DANETT, Thomas.
A Continuation of the Historie of France, from the Death of Charles the Eight where Comines endeth, till the Death...
London, Printed by Thomas East for Thomas Charde, 1600.
First edition, an original history composed in sequel to Danett’s translation of The Historie of Philip de Commines (1596), covering the history of France from 1498 to 1559.
£1800
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[ABC.]
Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...
C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].
A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.
£3750
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MACDONALD, Alexander.
‘Instructions and regulations for the formations and movements of horse artillery by Captain A: Macdonald...
[England, 1827.]
Scarce manuscript of an unpublished work on the formations and movements of horse artillery by the distinguished soldier and Waterloo veteran Major-General Alexander Macdonald CB (1776–1840), illustrated with twenty-five coloured diagrams.
£1500
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LEE, Edwin.
The Principal Baths of Germany [– The Baths of Nassau Baden and the adjacent Districts; – The Baths of central...
London, Whittaker & Cp., Paris, Galignani & Cp., and Frankfurt & Wiesbaden, Charles Jugel 1840 [– 1841].
First edition, scarce, of Edwin Lee’s two-volume survey of palliative bathing spots in Germany, including an appendix on the ‘Cold Water Cure’, a combination of induced sweating and cold-water therapy ‘of late very much in vogue’ (appendix).
£350
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CAMPBELL, Thomas.
Gertrude of Wyoming; a Pennsylvanian Tale. And other Poems.
London, T. Bensley, for the Author ... 1809.
First edition of Campbell’s most re-printed poem, based on a massacre of American patriots by British forces and their Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) allies in 1778. Its portrayal of ‘pastoral innocence evoked only to be destroyed by the savagery of war (embodied in this case by Mohawk allies of...
£650
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OZEROV, Vladislav Aleksandrovich.
Sochineniia … Chast’ pervaia [–vtoraia] [Works … Part one [–two]].
St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1817 [-1816].
One of two rival collected editions published after Ozerov’s death in 1816, rare, including the first appearance of the author’s poetry and his last tragedy Poliksena.
£1800