Recent Acquisitions
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ARNOLD, Edwin.
The Light of Asia or the great Renunciation … being the Life and teaching of Gautama, Prince of India and founder...
London: Trübner & Co … 1879.
First edition, a presentation copy, of one of the first successful attempts to popularize Buddhist thought in the West, freely adapted by Arnold from the Lalitavistara Sūtra.
£1200
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[ALMANACK.] ‘CHOTESCHAU, Christian Joachim von’ [pseud. Johann Franz NOWAK].
Neuer Titular-Calender zu ehren des...
Prague, Georg Labaun, [1713].
An annotated Bohemian almanack for the year 1713, with extensive manuscript notes by a local brewer.
£875
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BOEMUS, Johann, and ‘Lucio FAUNO’ [pseud. Giovanni TARCAGNOTA] (translator).
Gli costumi, le leggi, et...
Venice, Michele Tramezzino, 1542.
First edition in Italian of Johann Boemus’s influential ethnographic compendium, a sixteenth-century bestseller considered the first of its kind.
£475
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[RICHARD, Charles-Louis.]
Lettres d’un archevêque, à l’auteur de la brochure intitulée: Du droit du souverain sur les biens-fonds...
A Cologne, 1770.
First edition, uncommon, of this response to an anticlerical essay by the Chevalier de Cerfvol by the Dominican theologian and anti-philosophe Charles-Louis Richard (1711–1794). De Cherfvol had argued against the wealth of the clergy, and in particular of the religious orders, and proposed a means...
£200
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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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[PASCOLI, Livio.] ‘Vilio LOCASPI’.
Del modo di mantenere abolita la mendicità, discorso familiare.
Verona, Mainardi, 1817.
Only edition, very rare, of this proposal for the abolition of begging, and of poverty more broadly, by the poet and essayist Livio Pascoli.
£285
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MEGUSCHER, Francesco.
Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...
Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.
First edition of this comprehensive report on the best means to reverse the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy, in a way that could be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.
£950
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WITTKOWER, Jochanan.
Agudath Perachim. ‘Blüthenstrauß’. Anthologie deutscher und hebräischer Gedichte für Geist und Herz …
Altona, the Bonn Brothers for the author, 1880.
First and only edition of this anthology of moral poems and satirical and edifying epigrams translated from German into Hebrew, as well as transcriptions and translations of epitaphs from the Jewish community of Altona, now a district of Hamburg.
£350
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[GRIMOD DE LA REYNIÈRE, Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent.]
Manuel des amphitryons; contenant un traité de la dissection des viandes...
Paris, Capelle and Renand, 1808.
First edition of Grimod de la Reynière’s famed manual on the arts of the table and the entertainment of guests.
£1250
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[CORFU.]
Notificazione. Uffizio della segreteria del governo. Corfu, 7 Maggio 1816 …
Corfu, ‘en te typographia tes dioikeseos’, [1816].
A seemingly unrecorded bilingual broadside, in parallel Italian and Greek, reporting on cases of plague in the district of Leftimo on the island of Corfu, issued during the British protectorate in May 1816 and printed in the capital at the government press.
£375
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ENDERS, Elizabeth Crump.
Swinging Lanterns.
New York and London, D. Appleton and Co., 1923.
First edition of this celebrated Chinese travel memoir by Elizabeth Crump Enders, a vivid depiction of China in the 1920s formerly in the possession of Josephine del Drago, American heiress and Chinese art collector.
£100
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[DA PORTO, Luigi.]
‘Lettere di Alvigi da Porto vicentino al Savorgnano, al Ghilini, e ad altri intorno ai successi della Guerra...
[Milan, c. 1800].
A manuscript of an influential and then-unpublished historical work by the author of the original Romeo and Juliet, copied from a sixteenth-century codex at the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana.
£950
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[MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]
Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...
Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.
Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...
£375
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[LAFONT, Joseph de.]
Hypermnestre, tragedie, mise au theatre de l’Academie Royale de Musique de Lyon, pour la prémière fois...
Lyon, de l’imprimerie d’Aymé Delaroche ... aux dépens de l’Académie Royale de Musique, 1742.
Very scarce Lyon edition of the libretto for the tragedy Hypermnestre by the French playwright Joseph de Lafont (1686-1725). First performed in 1716, with music by Charles-Hubert Gervais, the play was initially criticised for its fifth act, but after rewriting by abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin enjoyed...
£175
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LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.
Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...
Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.
First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).
£375
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KOCH, Mansuetus.
Philosophia transnaturalis, sive metaphysica, centum assertionibus comprehensa, et publicae disputationi in celeberrimo...
Augsburg, Maria Magdalena Utzschneiderin, 1697.
Only edition (complete despite the pagination) of this dissertation defended at the Augustinian college in Rottenbuch, attempting to provide a survey of metaphysics in one hundred paragraphs. The work explains, among other matters, the scope and purpose of metaphysics, the basis of Aristotelian metaphysics,...
£225
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KOCH, Manfred (pr.), Primo SCHLECHTEN and Feliciano SCHARRER (resp.).
Philosophia rationalis sive logica centum assertionibus comprehensa...
Augsburg, Afra Sturmin, 1695.
A good copy of this rare dissertation from the Augustinian college at Rottenbuch in Bavaria, attempting to reduce logic (the science of reasoning) to one hundred numbered paragraphs. Describing the function and limits of logic, the authors, both Austin canons at Rottenbuch, explain the use of syllogisms,...
£275
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CHEVRET, Jean.
Épitre a l’humanité et a la patrie en particulier, sur le bon ordre & l’idée de la véritable liberté. Suivie...
[Paris?], au temple de la vérité, 1789.
A good copy of this rare essay on the workings of society and the conditions required for human flourishing, by the controversialist and librarian Jean Chevret (1747-1820). After a brief letter addressed to humanity in general and France (even, perhaps, Chevret’s own home town of Meulan) in particular,...
£275
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[CHARTONNET, Antoine-François.]
Considerations sur les devoirs des personnes qui sont engagées par leur état à servir les...
Paris, chez Edme Couterot, 1695.
Rare first edition of this religious manual of instruction aimed at those caring for the sick in hospitals, exhorting carers to look after the bodily and spiritual needs of their charges ‘with charity, gentleness, compassion, patience, diligence, zeal, respect and humility’.
£275
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CARAVADOSSI, Enrico.
La moderna filosofia convinta d’inganno nelle sue promesse di felicità libertà ed uguaglianza ragionamenti...
Turin, Giammichele Brioio, 1793.
First and seemingly only edition of this attack on the false promises of the philosophes, by the Torinese Dominican friar Enrico Caravadossi.
£395