Recent Acquisitions
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DU BOS, Jean-Baptiste, Abbé.
Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture. … Quatriéme [sic] édition revûë,...
Paris, Pierre-Jean Mariette, 1740.
Fourth edition, expanded and corrected, of this key work in aesthetic and sentimental theory, with Coleridge family provenance.
£250
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DIONYSIUS of Halicarnassus.
Antiquitatum Rom. libri XI. Ab Aemylio Porto recens & post aliorum interpretationes Latine redditi.
Geneva, Jacob Stoer, 1614.
A rare pocket-sized edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the early history of Rome, in an armorial binding for Adrien Poërier.
£450
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[CRIMEAN WAR.]
Les militaires chrétiens a la guerre d’orient. Récompenses annuelles.
Versailles, Beau jeune, [1856].
First and only edition, rare, of this unusual cartonnage giftbook history of the Crimean War.
£375
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[WILSON,] Thomas, Bishop of Sodor and Man.
A short and plain Instruction for the better Understanding of the Lord’s Supper,...
London, B. Dod, T. Longman & C. Hitch, J. Hodges, and J. & J. Rivington, 1755.
Scarce first posthumous edition of this liturgical manual by Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, with two early female owners.
£250
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TAYLOR, Alfred Swaine.
Notes for lectures on heat.
[London,] c. 1844.
An extensive set of lecture notes, with numerous corrections and additions, on the subject of heat, by the eminent medical jurist and toxicologist Alfred Swaine Taylor (1806–1880).
£3750
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PONSONBY, Emily, Lady.
De Greville’s en de Lorimers. Twee Familie-Tafereelen, naar het Engelsch ...
Amsterdam, P. N. Van Kampen, 1851.
First edition in Dutch of ‘Susan Grenville; or Irresolution’ from Pride and Irresolution (1850), translated by J. Oudijk van Putten; ‘Walter Lorimer’ is a much shorter sketch at the end of vol. II.
£250
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PLINY the Elder; [Jean de LAET, editor].
Historiae naturalis libri XXXVII.
Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham I] Elzevir, 1635.
An attractive set of the first and only Elzevir edition of Pliny the Elder, ‘rightly considered one of their masterpieces’ (Willems, trans.).
£650
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MAXIMUS the Confessor; Jean PICOT, translator.
Sanctissimi patris magistrique, Maximi, confessoris atque martyris, varia...
[(Colophon:) Paris,] Guillaume Morel, [1560].
First edition of Jean Picot’s Latin translation of this Byzantine compilation of extracts from the writings of Maximus the Confessor and others, our copy owned by a sixteenth-century monk at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
£850
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[LOUIS XVI.]
Le vertueux Louis XVI; précis de ses douleurs, suivi de détails peu connus sur son illustre famille.
Lille, L. Lefort, [1817].
An seemingly unrecorded royalist panegyric-cum-almanack, provincially printed at Lille in the wake of the Bourbon Restoration.
£475
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GILES of Rome; [Bernardo GRANELLI and GILES of Viterbo, editors].
Comentaria in viii. libros physicorum Aristotelis.
[(Colophon:) Padua, Hieronymus de Durantibus, 15 October 1493.]
An uncommon Paduan imprint containing the first edition of Giles of Rome’s commentary on the physics of Aristotle.
£5000
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GERHARD, Johann.
Meditationes sacrae. Editio postrema, prioribus emendatior.
Oxford, John Lichfield for Henry Curteyne, 1633.
First English-printed Latin edition of Gerhard’s ‘devotional masterpiece’ (ODCC), Oxford-printed and in a contemporary Oxford binding with binder’s waste from an early edition of Melanchthon’s textbook on rhetoric.
£950
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‘DORNIS, Jean’ [pseud. Élena BEER].
La voie douloureuse.
[Évreux, Charles Hérissey for] Paris, Calmann Levy, 1894.
First edition of Jean Dornis’ first novel, presented by the author to her brother-in-law, Edmond Raphael Beer, one of twenty-four copies on papier de Hollande.
£275
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BURNET, Gilbert.
A Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland. In four Conferences....
Glasgow, Robert Sanders, 1673.
One of three editions, all of the same year, of a ‘decidedly aggressive’ (Stewart, p. 40) tract in dialogue on the powers of the state in church affairs and on the subject’s right to resist.
£500
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PROPERTIUS; Oliffe Legh RICHMOND, editor.
Sexti Properti quae supersunt opera, edidit novoque adparatu critico instruxit...
Cambridge, University Press, 1928.
First edition of Richmond’s controversial Propertius, A. F. Scholfield’s copy, with three letters from the editor.
£400
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[LE MARCHE.]
Deed relating to the sale of property in Beltrovato (a district of Morrovalle in the Province of Macerata in the Marche...
[Rome, 1616.]
A curiously bound public instrument notarised by the Apostolic Camera in Rome detailing the sale of property belonging to two brothers from the influential de’ Mozzi family of Macerata.
£850
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ADRICHEM, Christian van; Francesco BALDELLI, translator.
Gerusalemme e suoi dintorni ai tempi di Gesù Cristo. Mappa e...
Genoa, Tipografia arcivescovile, 1882.
Scarce first edition thus of Baldelli’s sixteenth-century translation of this guide to Jerusalem for pilgrims by the Dutch cartographer Christian van Adrichem, instrumental in popularising the Stations of the Cross and the basis for maps of the Holy Land well into the eighteenth century.
£200
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[TAYLOR, John.]
The Column called the Monument, described, erected to perpetuate the dreadful Fire of London in the Year 1666;...
Bryan … for Samuel Arnott, Keeper of the Monument. [1805?]
Third edition (first 1787) of this guidebook to London’s Monument, with an account of the Great Fire of 1666 which it commemorates, authored by the Monument’s first keeper.
£350
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[SHEPHEARD, James.]
The Dying Speech of James Shepheard: who suffer’d Death at Tyburn, March the 17th, 1717/18. Deliver’d by...
[London, s.n., 1718.]
One of at least five printings of this ‘speech’ – allegedly written by the young Jacobite James Shepheard, hanged at Tyburn for planning the assassination of George I – some adding a hymn. Its inflammatory content makes it very unlikely that it was in fact delivered.
£750
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MOORE, George.
Manuscript commonplace book of poems, songs, prayers, and letters.
1805–1855.
An appealing commonplace book of verses and songs, with occasional prayers and letters, mostly written by George Moore (1794–1854), a London soda water manufacturer and amateur poet who was murdered by the notorious French revolutionary Emmanuel Barthélemy (1823–1855).
£550
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KAVAN, Anna; Karl Theodor BLUTH.
The Horse’s Tale.
London, Gaberbocchus Press, [1949].
Uncommon first edition of this novel authored jointly by Kavan and her psychiatrist and friend Karl Theodor Bluth, written from the perspective of an ex-circus horse trying to find a place in postwar society and artistic circles, a criticism of prevailing trends in 1940s psychiatric treatment.
£850