Recent Acquisitions
-
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
-
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
-
[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
-
[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
-
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
-
DU HALDE, Jean-Baptiste.
A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together with the Kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet,...
London, T. Gardner for Edward Cave, 1738 [– 1741].
The first complete English translation of Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique … de l’Empire de la Chine (1735), the ‘Bible of European sinophilia’ (Löwenstein).
£15000
-
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
-
[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
-
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
-
ACTON, William.
Prostitution, considered in its moral, social, & sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities. With proposals...
London, [Savill and Edwards for] John Churchill, 1857.
First edition of this medico-social analysis of sex work and sexually transmitted infections in London, in which physician William Acton argues for increased governmental intervention, influential in shaping the later Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869.
£1250
-
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
-
[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
-
[RICCI, Pellegrino].
Dissertazione sul costume di suonar le campane in occasione di temporali …
Faenza, Lodovico Genestri, 1787.
An attractive copy of this rare dissertation in which the author, a Minorite friar, attempts to demonstrate scientifically that the popular practice of ringing church bells during storms in the attempt to dissipate storm clouds and minimise the danger from lightning in fact had no effect. Ricci explains...
£475