Recent Acquisitions
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[WETENHALL, Edward.]
Enter into thy Closet: or, a Method and Order for Private Devotion … The fourth Edition.
London, John Martyn, 1672.
Rare fourth edition (first published in 1666) of this manual of private devotion by Edward Wettenhall (1636–1713), ‘a treatise endeavouring a plain discovery of the most spiritual and edifying course of reading, meditation, and prayer; and so, of self examination, humiliation, mortification,...
£375
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KEATE, George.
An Account of the Pelew Islands, situated in the western part of the Pacific Ocean: composed from the journals...
Dublin, Luke White, 1788.
First Dublin edition of this popular work, first published in London earlier the same year, by the virtuoso George Keate, member of the Royal Society and Society of Antiquities (1729−1797).
£650
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COSTER, François.
Piarum et Christ. institutionum libri tres, in usum sodalitatis B. Mariae Virginis primum conscripti, nunc...
Douai, Jean Bogard, 1582.
Very rare Douai edition of this devotional work by the Belgian Jesuit François Coster (1532–1619), first published at Cologne in 1578, illustrated with woodcuts of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of Sorrows.
£675
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KITASATO SHIBASABURŌ, Baron.
Autograph letter signed to Bernhard Proskauer, enclosing a photograph of Robert Koch in Japanese...
Tokyo, 2 October 1908.
A charming letter from the Nobel Prize-winning Japanese physician and bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburō (1853–1931) to the German chemist and hygienist Bernhard Proskauer (1851–1915). From 1874 Proskauer worked at the Imperial Health Office in Berlin.
£1250
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PHILIP II, King of Spain.
Document signed ‘Yo el Rey’, nominating the viceroy of Peru, Don García Hurtado de Mendoza,...
San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 30 July 1588, and Lima, Peru, 2 and 4 December 1589.
An important document in which Philip II of Spain appoints the viceroy of Peru, Don García Hurtado de Mendoza, to the post of ‘Capitan general’. As recorded on the verso, the terms of the document were publicly proclaimed in Lima to the accompaniment of music and percussion instruments.
£3750
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[REGI, Domenico.]
Vita di Tommaso Moro Gran Cancelliere d’Inghilterra. Dedicato all’Eccellentissimo Signore D. Diego Matriaga...
Naples, [Michele Guarracino], 1755.
Seemingly unrecorded edition of this Italian biography of Thomas More by Domenico Regi (1608–1680), first published in Milan 1675.
£475
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VENERONI, Giovanni.
The Complete Italian Master; containing the best and easiest Rules for attaining that Language … Newly...
London, J. Nourse, 1763.
First edition thus, revising an earlier translation of Le maitre italien of 1711, which was not only ‘out of print’ but ‘in many respects inaccurate’ (Preface). The translator’s preface acknowledges the work of foreign editors since the second edition of 1729 and describes some...
£750
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[ZATTA, Antonio.]
Il filosofo del nord, ovvero Corso di morale filosofia.
‘Londra’ [i.e. Venice], [Zatta], 1788.
First edition under this title of this course of moral philosophy, broadly construed, in which the author attempts to invoke the authority of the ‘philosophers of the North’ (inter alia Hobbes, Bacon, Clark, and Addison on one side of the English Channel, Bayle, Pascal, La Mettrie, Grotius,...
£950
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PASCOLI, Alessandro.
Nuovo metodo per introdursi ad imitazion de’ geometri con ordine, chiarezza, e brevità nelle piu sottili...
Venice, Andrea Poletti, 1721.
Scarce second edition (first 1702) of this work of philosophy and medicine by the Perugian scholar Pascoli (1669–1757).
£450
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HOMER, and Alexander POPE (translator).
Homer’s Odyssey, translated by Alexander Pope, in two volumes.
London, John Bell, 1774.
First and only Bell edition of Pope’s Odyssey, extremely rare. Pope’s immensely popular version of the Odyssey, penned in collaboration with William Broome and Elijah Fenton, was first published by Bernard Lintot in 1726. The work brought Pope around £5600 in profits, and...
£450
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PARABOSCO, Girolamo.
Libro primo [- quarto] delle lettere amorose di M. Girolamo Parabosco. Con alcune altre di nuovo aggiunte.
Venice, Domenico Farri, 1581.
Uncommon collected edition of Girolamo Parabosco’s (1524–1557) immensely popular letters to anonymous lovers, literary contemporaries, and a courtesan, with several letters written from a female point of view, this copy formerly in the possession of Tycho Brahe’s nephew and with several manuscript...
£900
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LA SALLE, Jean-Baptiste, Saint.
Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne, divisées en deux parties.
Rheims, Le Batard [– Barbier], 1808.
Rare edition of La Salle’s pedagogical work, printed in civilité type and bound in printed and manuscript waste. The Règles of St Jean-Baptiste La Salle (1651–1719) first appeared in 1702 and, an immediate success, were reprinted innumerable times until well into the nineteenth...
£750
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GOSSELIN, Charles-Robert.
Plan d’éducation, en réponse aux académies de Marseille et de Châlons, dont l’une a proposé...
Amsterdam, 1785.
A most interesting sammelband of three rare French works on education from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
In the first work, Charles-Robert Gosselin (1740–1820) advocates a radical overhaul of the existing system of education in France through the destruction...£875
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GOBINET, Charles.
Instruction sur la vérité du Saint Sacrement, contenant en abregé les principaux motifs de la créance Catholique...
Paris, François le Cointe, 1677.
Scarce first edition thus, containing an explanation of the Eucharist and a defence of transubstantiation by the French writer and teacher Charles Gobinet (1613–1690), a lovely copy bearing a stamp found on bindings executed for Louis de France, the Grand Dauphin (1661–1711), eldest son of Louis...
£650
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DEVILLE, Albéric.
Voyage aux grottes d’Arcy, suivi de poésies fugitives et de pensées détachées. Par A. Deville, professeur...
Paris, Munier for Gérard, an XI (1802-3).
Scarce first edition, presented by the author, of this curious work comprising a description of the famous caves at Arcy-sur-Cure in France, alongside various poetical fancies, by the natural history professor and versifier Albéric Deville (1774–1832).
£250
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SAINT AULAIRE, Achille.
Voyage autour du monde par St. Aulaire.
[Clichy, Maurice Loignon for] Paris, Arnauld de Vresse, [c. 1864].
A hand-coloured copy of this scarce and charming juvenile guide to twenty-four countries across the globe. The plates are adapted from those first published in Paris by Aubert circa 1845 under the title Récréations instructives: voyage pittoresque à travers le monde (Gumuchian 5037).
£2000
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[MIRACLE CURE.]
Poudre suédoise.
Paris, [s.p., c.1760].
Seemingly unrecorded pamphlet extolling the virtues of ‘Swedish Powder’, sold at the Hôtel du Grand-Cerf on the rue Saint-Denis for the treatment and prevention of several ailments, but especially for the ‘most unfortunate symptoms of venereal disease’.
£600
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SENECA, Lucius Annaeus.
L. Annei Senecae opera, et ad dicendi facultatem, et ad bene vivendu[m] utilissima, per Des. Erasmum...
Basel, ‘in officina Frobeniana’, 1529 [(colophon:) Basel, Johann Herwagen, March 1537].
Second Erasmus edition of the moral essays and letters of Seneca, owned and annotated by Ludovicus Carinus (d. 1569), friend and later foe of Erasmus himself.
£6000
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[SOCIETY OF JESUS.]
Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur. Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux.
Strasbourg, L.F. Le Roux, [1843].
First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843.
£375
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GABARO, Antonio.
Alla pregiatissima Signora Domenica Schiavon Menato nella fausta occasione del suo primo parto, in argomento...
Padua, ‘Nella Tipografia del Seminario’, 1820.
First and only edition, very rare, of a scathing and sexist condemnation of ‘inhuman’ women who do not breastfeed their own children, dedicated to Domenica Schiavon Menato, ‘an example to all women’, on the occasion of the birth of her first child.
£380