Recent Acquisitions
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REXROTH, Kenneth.
An Autobiographical Novel …
Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
First edition, inscribed ‘In friendship / for Geoffrey Bridson / Kenneth Rexroth SF June 66’.
£300
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LANCELLA, Marco.
Espositione dell’hinno che la S.R.C. canta per commune suffragio de’ fedeli defonti Dies irae, Dies illa,...
Vico Equense, Giovanni Giacomo Carlino and Antonio Pace, 1598.
First edition, very rare, of an early meditation and full commentary on the text of the ancient sequence Dies Irae, provincially printed at Vico Equense, near Naples.
£900
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AUBREY, John.
Miscellanies, upon the following Subjects. I. Day-Fatality. II. Local-Fatality. III. Ostenta. IV. Omens....
London: Printed for A. Bettewsorth, and J. Battley … J. Pemberton … and E. Curll … 1721.
Second edition, enlarged, of Aubrey’s entertaining collection of folk history, superstitions, and gossip, the only book he completed, first published in 1696. The topics he tackles in this work of ‘hermetick philosophy’ include ‘omens and prophecies, dreams and apparitions, day fatality...
£750
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AIKEN, Conrad.
Ushant, an Essay.
New York & Boston, Duell, Sloan and Pearce / Little, Brown and Company, [1952].
First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey [Bridson] from Conrad. Ex – Xmas 1956’. Ushant, Conrad’s ‘autobiographical narrative’, is often considered his most significant work in prose.
£300
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AIKEN, Conrad.
Thee.
New York, George Braziller, 1967.
First trade edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce [Bridson] / this little hymn of love / from Conrad / 1968’.
£250
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NADAL, [Augustin,] Abbé.
Herode: Tragedie nouvelle.
Paris, Pierre Ribou, 1709.
First edition of Nadal’s tragedy on King Herod, the second in the series of Biblical plays over which he quarrelled with Voltaire.
£275
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LINNAEUS, Carl (or von LINNÉ), and James JENKINSON (translator).
A generic and specific Description of...
Ashburner, and Lancaster, A. Ashburner, 1775.
First edition of this provincially printed partial translation of Linnaeus’s Genera plantarum. It precedes both William Withering’s The Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables naturally growing in Great Britain (1776), the first such work to be based on Linnaean taxonomy,...
£225
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Vulgar Streak.
London, Robert Hale Ltd., 1941.
First edition, first impression, a scarce work because of wartime paper shortages and, possibly, the destruction of a portion of the first impression in the Blitz; certainly Robert Hale’s offices were bombed and the records destroyed, and the work was reprinted within a month.
£750
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VALERIUS Maximus; Stephanus PIGHIUS and Justus LIPSIUS (editors).
Dictorum factorumque memorabilium libri IX, infinitis...
Leiden, Franciscus Raphelengius ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1594.
Fourth Plantin edition of Valerius Maximus’s compendium of anecdotes, one of the most popular Classical texts and an insightful source on Roman life. Compiled in the early first century, the nine books of Facta et dicta memorabilia (‘Memorable deeds and sayings’) comprise anecdotes...
£350
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PLINY the Elder.
Historia mundi, multo quam antehac unquam prodiit emaculatius [...] annotationibus eruditorum hominum...
Basel, Johann Froben, March 1525.
First Froben edition of Pliny’s encyclopaedia, with a prologue by Erasmus and Hermolaus Barbarus’s commentary, given to Erasmus’s correspondent Bartholomaeus Latomus by his student and future patron, Johann Ludwig von Hagen.
£4800
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DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’. Although Diodorus’s text, published in Greek for the first time by Estienne in the same year, offers a history of the world from its inception until Caesar, it came down...
£2500
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GELLIUS, Aulus.
Noctium Atticarum commentaria per Bonfinem Asculanum summa nuper diligentia et studio recognita.
Venice, Giovanni Tacuino, 1517.
Second edition of Gellius’s opus with the commentary of philologist Matteo Bonfini (1441–1517), annotated throughout by a contemporary reader whose corrections and comments include references to the lectures of Paolo Bombasi as cited by Erasmus in the 1508 edition of the Adagia.
£5500
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ARISTIDES, Aelius.
Orationum tomi tres, nunc primum latine versi a Gulielmo Cantero Ultraiectino. Huc accessit orationum tomus...
Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566.
First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino. The translation was prepared from the Greek by the German scholar Wilhelm Canter (1542–1575), author of an acclaimed Syntagma, a systematic...
£2750
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HUGHES, Langston.
Shakespeare in Harlem.
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1942.
First edition of this wartime collection of poems, inscribed shortly after Hughes and Bridson met for the first time: ‘For Geoffrey Bridson, with the friendship, and regards of Langston Hughes. New York, January 28, 1944’.
£1000
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GUALDI, Cesare [i.e. Gregorio LETI].
Vita di Donna Olimpia Maldachini [sic] che governò la Chiesa, durante il...
‘Ragusa’ [i.e. Geneva], Giulio Giuli, 1676.
Scarce expanded edition of Gregorio Leti’s salacious life of Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilij, the infamous sister-in-law of Innocent X dubbed ‘Pope Olimpia I’ for her extraordinary influence on the Papacy.
£750
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Revenge for Love.
London, Cassell & Co. Ltd., [1937].
First edition, very scarce in the dust-jacket, of ‘one of Lewis’s finest novels … a brilliant novel of character’ (Bridson, The Filibuster), set in pre-Civil War Spain and centred on an incident of Communist gun-running on the border. ‘Here for once, Communism is accepted as a...
£1250
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CELLINI, Benvenuto.
Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino da lui medesimo scritta, nella quale molte curiose...
‘Cologne’ [i.e. Florence], ‘Pietro Martello’ [i.e. Bartolini], [1792].
The counterfeit edition of Benvenuto Cellini’s seminal autobiography, extra-illustrated with two large engravings illustrating his ‘Perseus and Medusa’ and the ‘Hercules and Cacus’ of his rival sculptor Bandinelli.
£850
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[INTERSEX.]
Three pamphlets.
Paris, 1892–1920.
A collection of rare French pamphlets on the subject of differences in sex development from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two of the three pamphlets are doctoral theses, covering the social impact of differences in sex development, and persistent müllerian duct syndrome (‘tubular...
£450
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[CHURCH OF ENGLAND.]
The new weeks preparation for a worthy receiving of the Lord’s Supper, as recommended and appointed by...
London, printed from the edition of the late Edwd. Wickstead, for T. Wilson and R. Spence, York, [c. 1780-1800?].
An attractive copy of two later editions of these collections of prayers, hymns, meditations, and self-examinations, with a focus on Holy Communion.
£250