Recent Acquisitions
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[BEER.]
Jenaischer allgemeiner Bier-Comment nebst angehängtem Bier-Prozess.
‘Eschwig, Otter & Kunitz, 183*.’
An apparently unrecorded humorous handbook of drinking rules for students at the university of Jena, famous both as a centre of German idealism and Romanticism, and for its professors, who included Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, and Schlegel.
£375
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[BECKFORD, William, and Samuel HENLEY, translator.]
An Arabian Tale, from an unpublished Manuscript. With Notes critical...
London, Printed for W. Clarke … 1809.
Scarce second edition – in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) – of Henley’s English translation of Beckford’s Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author’s wishes and predating publication...
£1500
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SHIPLEY, Hannah.
Manuscript on trade, commerce, and accounting.
[England, c. 1800.]
An attractive manuscript, written by one Hannah Shipley, discussing trade and commerce with practical examples of commercial accounting.
£500
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[HEMSTERHUIS, François.]
Alexis ou de l’age d’or.
Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1787.
First edition of Hemsterhuis’s philosophical dialogue on a ‘golden age’, an influential work of pre-Romantic aesthetics.
£375
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BEBEL, August, and Daniel DE LEON, translator.
Woman under socialism. Translated from the original German of the...
New York, Labor News Press, 1904.
First edition in English, first printing, of Bebel’s Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1884), the initial cause of a bitter rift between its translator, Daniel de Leon, and James Connolly of the Socialist Labor Party, who thought it would scare off female recruits.
£125
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ALFIERI, Vittorio, and Charles LLOYD, translator.
The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri; translated from the Italian...
London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1815.
First edition of this translation of Alfieri’s (1749–1803) tragedies into English, undertaken by the poet Charles Lloyd ‘on the suggestion of a friend whose judgement I highly respect’, likely Robert Southey, whom he addresses as his ‘sponsor’ in the ‘Dedicatory Sonnet’.
£450
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[LADY JANE GREY.]
‘The last days of Lady Jane Grey’.
[c. 1870s?].
Manuscript, unfinished or incomplete. The title-page promises ‘The Trial, the Prison and the Execution’ but sadly only one page of manuscript is present, adjoined to the title-page, which describes Jane Grey’s trial: ‘Lady Jane appeared before her judges in all her wonted loveliness: her...
£175
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MOORE, Thomas.
Lalla Rookh, an Oriental Romance … eleventh Edition.
London, [A. & R. Spottiswoode for] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1822.
An early edition of Thomas Moore’s popular orientalist poem Lalla Rookh, owned by a young Siegfried Sassoon.
£450
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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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DICKENS, Charles; Hablot Knight BROWNE and George CATTERMOLE, illustrators.
Master Humphrey’s Clock.
London, Chapman and Hall, 1840–41.
First edition in book form, of Charles Dickens’ weekly periodical, featuring a collection of short stories and his two novels The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge.
£175
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BUTLER, Samuel.
Hudibras, in three Parts, written in the Time of the Late Wars … with Annotations and an Index.
London, Thomas Maiden for Vernor & Hood [and others], 1802.
An illustrated pocket edition of Butler’s Hudibras, the most celebrated satire and one of the most influential poems of the seventeenth century, owned by a young Siegfried Sassoon.
£450
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SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...
Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.
Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...
£1250
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BEERBOHM, Max.
Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford Love Story.
London, William Heinemann, 1911.
First edition of Beerbohm’s only novel, an Oxford Eights Week satire in which the effect of one woman’s beauty on the entire undergraduate population proves comically fatal, in the scarcer variant binding of decorated cloth.
£195
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[PSALMS.]
Psalterium Davidis carmine redditum per Eobanum Hessum. Annotationes Viti Theodori Noribergensis, quae vice commentarii...
Paris, [(colophon:) Guillaume Morel for] Jacques Dupuys ‘sub insigni Samaritanae’, [August] 1550.
Seemingly unrecorded issue of the Psalms of David in Latin as edited by the Lutheran theologian Eoban of Hesse (1488–1540) with commentary by Luther’s housemate, associate, and sometime secretary Veit Dietrich (1506–1549).
£1250
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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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SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de.
Cours de linguistique générale.
Lausanne & Paris, Payot, 1916.
First edition of this seminal textbook on linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, fundamental to the development of structuralism and semiotics, introducing distinctions between signified and signifier as well as language systems and speech.
£575
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VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.
Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...
[(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]
Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...
£2750
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VALERIUS MAXIMUS.
Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].
First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.
£2750
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TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.
Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546.]
First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations.
£6750
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OVIDIUS Naso, Publius.
Amatoria. Quorum indicem sequens continet pagella.
Lyons, Sebastian Gryphius, 1554.
Attractive annotated copy of a successful edition of the collection of Ovid’s poems on love, comprising Heroidum epistolae, Auli Sabini…epistolae III, Elegiarum libri III, de Remedio amoris libri III, ad Liviam de morte Drusi, de Nuce, de Medicamine faciei, Fragmenta, Carmen ad Pisonem,...
£1850