Recent Acquisitions
-
STRICKLAND, Hugh Edwin, and A.
G. MELVILLE. The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire...
London: Reeve, Benham, and Reeve … 1848.
A fine family copy of the first scientific monograph on the dodo, and a related flightless bird, the Rodrigues solitaire.
£7500
-
SOLVYNS, François Baltazard.
The Costume of Hindostan, elucidated by sixty coloured engravings; with descriptions in English and...
London, W. Bulmer and Co. for Edward Orme, 1804 [–1805].
First edition in book form (originally issued in parts) of this superb record of the people of Bengal by the Flemish painter and ethnographer Solvyns (1760–1824), issued by the engraver and publisher Edward Orme (1775–1848).
£4500
-
SICARDO, José.
Christiandad del Japon, y dilatada persecucion que padecio. Memorias sacras, de los martyres de las ilustres religiones...
Madrid, Francisco Sanz, 1698.
Rare first edition of this important and comprehensive account of Christian missions to Japan by the Spanish Augustinian José Sicardo (1643–1715).
£15000
-
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
-
PEETERS, Jacob.
L’Atlas en abregé, ou nouvelle Description du monde, tirée du meilleurs auteurs de ce siècle …
Antwerp, chez l’auteur, 1692.
First edition of a charming atlas, the best-known production of Jacob Peeters (1637–1695), a Flemish engraver and publisher from an artistic family – his brothers Jan and Bonaventura were both artists. The map of the Americas shows California as an island; the allegorical engraved title features...
£2500
-
MÜLLER, Gerhard Friedrich.
Voyages from Asia to America, for completing the discoveries of the north west coast of America. To...
London, T. Jefferys, 1764.
Second edition (first 1761) of this key work devoted to discoveries in northeastern Asia and northwestern America, including the Bering Strait, published by Thomas Jefferys, geographer to George III, ‘remembered in particular for some of the most important eighteenth-century maps of the Americas’...
£6500
-
[MONTANUS, Arnoldus.]
Ambassades mémorables de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales des Provinces Unies, vers les empereurs du Japon....
Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1680.
First edition in French of an important and influential study of Japan by the Dutch theologian and historian Arnoldus Montanus, based on eyewitness accounts from two Dutch East India Company (VOC) missions to Japan in 1649 and 1661.
£4500
-
[CANONS REGULAR OF THE LATERAN.]
Regula et constitutiones Canonicorum Regularium congregationis S. Salvatoris, Ordinis Sancti...
Rome, apud Paulum Bladum, 1592.
The most complete edition, rare, of the Rule and Constitutions of the Order of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine of the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour, printed on vellum, with two seemingly unrecorded cancels, from the library of a former Abbot General of the Order.
£25000
-
[WALLPAPER.]
A substantial album of printed wallpaper samples.
France, 1923–24.
A delightful sample album of French wallpapers printed by a variety of stencil, block and lithographic methods, on papers plain, coloured, textured, and silked.
£4750
-
[MAGDALEN CHAPEL.]
The Hymns Anthems and Tunes with the Ode used at the Magdalen Chapel set for the Organ Harpsichord, Voice German-Flute...
London, Printed for Longman and Broderip … [1780?].
Two rare later editions of the Magdalen Chapel hymnbook.
£2000
-
[LA ROCHE, Sophie von.]
Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim. Von einer Freundin derselben aus Original-Papieren und andern...
Leipzig, bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1771.
First edition of Sophie von La Roche’s first novel, a best seller which brought her fame and recognition throughout Germany, and was translated into French, English, Russian and Dutch. It became a pattern for the genre of the epistolary novel in Germany, and has even been cited as a forerunner...
£950
-
[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
-
[ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques.]
Le Devin du village, intermede, représenté devant Sa Majesté a Fontainebleau, le Mecredi 14 Novembre...
[Paris,] Pierre-Robert-Christophe Ballard, 1770.
Rare edition of a later lifetime performance of Rousseau’s influential opera, The Village Soothsayer, in an attractively unsophisticated sammelband of court operas.
£375
-
TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.
Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.
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
-
CORBOULD, Henry (illustrator).
[Cover title:] Illustrations to Theodric, by Thomas Campbell, from designs by Henry...
London, Edward Lacey, 1829.
Unrecorded, a suite of five engravings for Thomas Campbell’s Theodric (1824), though seemingly not intended for inclusion in any particular edition.
£650
-
CARO, Annibale.
Rime del commendatore Annibal Caro. Col privilegio di N.S. PP. Pio V. et dell’illustrissima signoria di...
Venice, Aldus Manutius the Younger, 1569.
First edition of the poetry of Annibale Caro, offering a scathing yet humorous critique of his greatest poetic rival, Ludovico Castelvetro.
£650
-
PIGHIUS, Stephanus Vinandus.
Themis dea, seu de lege divina … Mythologia … in quatuor anni partes, ab auctore recognita.
Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1568.
First and only edition, scarce, of Pighius’s two treatises on Roman archaeology, one of the founding texts of scientific research into myths.
£450
-
KOTZEBUE, Otto von.
A voyage of discovery into the South Sea and Beering’s Straits, for the purpose of exploring a north-east...
London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821.
First edition in English, translated from the German edition of the same year, of Kotzebue’s classic voyage; ‘a prized edition’ (Hill).
£3000
-
GUIGNES, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de.
Voyages à Peking, Manille et l’Île de France, faits dans l’intervalle des années 1784...
Paris, l’Imprimerie Impériale, 1808.
First edition, the complete four-volume set, containing a survey of Chinese history and customs, a narrative of the author’s journey to Beijing as part of the Dutch East India embassy in 1794–5, and a magnificent folio atlas featuring 97 beautiful illustrations and intricate maps.
£6500
-
FLINDERS, Matthew.
Narrative of his Voyage in the Schooner Francis: 1798. Preceded and followed by Notes … by Geoffrey Rawson...
[London,] The Golden Cockerel Press, 1946.
No. 327 of 750 copies, of which the first 100 were specially bound in full green morocco.
£650