Recent Acquisitions
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SAVONAROLA, Girolamo.
Compendium totius philosophi[a]e tam naturalis q[uam] moralis … nunc primum in lucem editum [– Opus...
Venice, Aurelio Pinzi, January 1534.
First collected edition of three works by Savonarola (1452–1498), Dominican friar, popular preacher, social and spiritual reformer, and instigator of the famous ‘bonfires of vanities’.
£1250
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PERSIUS; [Thomas BREWSTER, translator].
The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes;...
London, Printed for A. Millar, 1751.
Second edition, with the addition of Bayle’s life of Persius, with manuscript corrections.
£375
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[CAVALLERI, Paolo Agostino.]
Lettera dall’Adriatico del signor Antonio Bianchi sopra l’opera de’diritti dell’uomo del sig....
Rome, Giovanni Zempel, 1792 (colophon 1793).
First edition, uncommon, of this counter-revolutionary polemic written in response to Spedalieri’s I diritti dell’uomo of the previous year and attributed to the Barnabite Paolo Agostino Cavalleri (1742-1803). Spedalieri had attempted a Catholic response to the revolutionary ideas of the rights of...
£375
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[BERRY, Robert.]
Scots Law: manuscript lecture notes from the University of Glasgow.
Glasgow, 1877-8.
A very comprehensive and legible set of manuscript notes from the lectures on Scots law given at Glasgow in the Martinmas and Candlemas terms of the academic year 1877-8 by Robert Berry (1825–1903), Regius Professor of Law at the University from 1867 to 1887. The course of study was an intensive...
£400
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SHAKESPEARE, William, and Bolemir IZBORSKÝ, pseud. [i.e. Antonín MAREK], translator.
Omylowé dle Shakespeara...
Prague, Jozefa Fetterlowá, ‘in the Archbishop’s Printing House at the Seminary’, 1823.
First edition in Czech, very rare, of A Comedy of Errors, freely translated by Antonín Marek (1785–1877), one of the earliest appearances of Shakespeare in the language, preceded only by a very rare translation of Macbeth by Karel Ignác Thám (Makbet, 1786), which was staged...
£1100
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REYES, Alfonso.
Corrected carbon typescript, signed, of an essay entitled ‘Chesterton y los titeres’ [Chesterton and the puppets].
[Buenos Aires?, c. 1952–3.]
Corrected carbon typescript of Alfonso Reyes’s essay entitled ‘Chesterton y los titeres’, concerning G.K. Chesterton’s play The Surprise, a religious allegory written in 1932 but first published posthumously in 1952.
£1000
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GOODMAN, Tobias, Rabbi.
אמונת ישראל [Emunat Yisrael]. The Faith of Israel, selected from the Writings of...
London, [John Wertheimer for] the author, 1834.
First and only edition in book form of an 1819 sermon given by Rabbi Tobias Goodman, thought to have been the first to have delivered a sermon in English in a British synagogue, our copy from the Rothschild Library at Exbury House, Hampshire.
£850
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TENNYSON, Alfred, and Eleanor FORTESCUE-BRICKDALE, illustrator.
The Idylls of the King … Illustrated in Colour...
London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1911].
Deluxe edition of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King illustrated by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872–1945), no. 124 of 250 copies signed by the artist.
£600
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ROSSI, Ottavio, and Bartolomeo FONTANA, compiler.
Lettere del Sig. Ottavio Rossi. Raccolte da Bartolomeo Fontana ...
Brescia, Bartolomeo Fontana, 1621.
First edition of over 150 letters by the poet and scholar Ottavio Rossi (1570–1630), printed in his native city of Brescia and including a letter to the painter Palma Giovane, our copy with a contemporary manuscript note on the artist’s final moments written mere days after his death.
£1250
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DE CASTRO, Alberto Osório.
Flores de Coral. Ultimos Poemas.
Dili, Ilha de Timor – Insulindia, Imprensa Nacional, 1908 [(colophon:) 31 December 1909; (wrapper:) 1910].
First edition of the first book printed on the island of Timor, no. 2 of 31 copies on a combination of song-kió-zu and tço-tzu paper from Guangzhou, a presentation copy, with a long dedicatory inscription in French from de Castro to the Romanian-French poet Anna, Comtesse Mathieu de...
£4750
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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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[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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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