Recent Acquisitions
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[DRESS – SUMPTUARY LAW.]
Ordonnance du Roy pour le reglement & reformation de la dissolution & superfluité qui est és habillemens,...
Paris, Federic Morel, 1583.
A rare example of one of the early attempts by the French authorities at sumptuary law relating to clothing, prohibiting the wearing of certain types of adornment and dress by the vast majority of the population. Similar prohibitions had been made by Henri III’s predecessors, and one of his...
£350
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CHEVRET, Jean.
Épitre a l’humanité et a la patrie en particulier, sur le bon ordre & l’idée de la véritable liberté. Suivie...
[Paris?], au temple de la vérité, 1789.
A good copy of this rare essay on the workings of society and the conditions required for human flourishing, by the controversialist and librarian Jean Chevret (1747-1820). After a brief letter addressed to humanity in general and France (even, perhaps, Chevret’s own home town of Meulan) in particular,...
£275
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[CHARTONNET, Antoine-François.]
Considerations sur les devoirs des personnes qui sont engagées par leur état à servir les...
Paris, chez Edme Couterot, 1695.
Rare first edition of this religious manual of instruction aimed at those caring for the sick in hospitals, exhorting carers to look after the bodily and spiritual needs of their charges ‘with charity, gentleness, compassion, patience, diligence, zeal, respect and humility’.
£275
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CARON, Jean-Charles-Félix.
Compendium institutionum philosophiae, in quo de rhetorica et philosophia, tractatur. Ad usum candidatorum...
Paris, N. M. Tilliard, 1770.
Very uncommon guide, by the Parisian surgeon Jean-Charles-Félix Caron, to the philosophy student in the University of Paris needs to know in order to graduate first as bachelor and then as master of arts in the university. The work is essentially a kind of bluffer’s guide: “there are people who,...
£750
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CARAVADOSSI, Enrico.
La moderna filosofia convinta d’inganno nelle sue promesse di felicità libertà ed uguaglianza ragionamenti...
Turin, Giammichele Brioio, 1793.
First and seemingly only edition of this attack on the false promises of the philosophes, by the Torinese Dominican friar Enrico Caravadossi.
£395
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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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[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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CONTI, Natale.
Mythologiæ, sive explicationis fabularum, libri decem. In quibus omnia propè naturalis & moralis philosophiæ...
Frankfurt, the heirs of André Wechel, 1584.
The Mythologiae of Natale Conti (Natalis Comes), first published Venice 1567, was a standard reference work for classical mythology in the later Renaissance, treating the corpus as allegories that syncretized ancient philosophy and could thus be decoded by the initiated reader.
£950
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[VALLI, Francesco di Andrea.]
Manuscript receipt book.
Villa di Vaglie, Cortona, 1735-1767.
An interesting manuscript receipt book recording the affairs and transactions of Francesco di Andrea Valli (or Vagli) and his sons Pietro and Egidio, landowners and farmers from Villa di Vaglie near Cortona, over the course of four decades.
£375
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MOLAJONI, Bartolomeo.
Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto...
Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811.
Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia.
£275
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[SMITH, John William.]
A Catalogue of the Books, Manuscripts and Prints, belonging to [John William Smith] …
London, Letts, Son & Co, [1870s-90s].
A manuscript book catalogue employing a printed form. John William Smith, of Clifton Terrace, Westbourne Terrace, and then Queens Gate, had a relatively predictable library of largely nineteenth-century material including history, classics, and literature (much Dickens and Tennyson), plus a smattering...
£300
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[ANON.]
Le moine galant, ou la vie de Don F… Bernardin, ecrite par lui-même.
[S.l., s.n.,] 1756.
Scarce first edition of this satirical ‘autobiography’ of a pleasure-driven law student turned monk, replete with amorous adventures.
£450
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[SARPI, Paolo (pseud.).] ‘Pietro Soave POLANO’.
Historia del Concilio Tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano. Seconda...
Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1629.
Second edition, the first to omit the extraneous additions of the 1619 edition introduced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, of the influential and groundbreaking history of the Council of Trent by Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), described by Milton as ‘the great unmasker’.
£450
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[OFFICE OF THE DEAD.]
Uffizio de’ morti, ad uso delle confraternite e congregazioni.
Turin, Bernardino Barberis, 1805.
An apparently unrecorded Turin-printed Office of the Dead, with striking woodcut memento mori ornaments, printed for the use of religious congregations and confraternities. The Uffizio de’ morti, outlining the liturgy used in commemoration of the dead, is accompanied by a notice...
£225
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WYLD, James.
The islands of Japan by James Wyld, geographer to the Queen & H.R.H. the Prince Consort.
London, James Wyld, 1 January 1859.
Rare folding map of Japan by James Wyld the younger (1812–1887) published just a few years after the end of its long isolationist era, showing treaty ports opening soon following the signing of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States.
£1950
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HELMAN, Isidore-Stanislas-Henri.
Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales Chinoises, dédiés à Madame,...
Paris, chez l’auteur … et chez M. Ponce, [1788].
Two handsome engraved works by the French engraver and printseller Helman (1743–1806/9), here on uncut sheets, the first depicting scenes from Chinese history, the second episodes in the life of Confucius (Kong Fuzi).
£6000
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[PAPER TRADE.]
Arrest du conseil d’état du roi, portant modération et interprétation de plusieurs articles du tarif des...
[Besançon?, 1772?]
A seemingly unrecorded issue of this decree governing tariffs on paper and cardboard in Louis XV’s France, with no imprint but with the colophon ‘fait à Besançon le 18 avril 1772, signé, Lacoré’.
£175
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GIBELLI, Giacinto.
Due dissertazioni sopra li vantaggi, che si ottengono in medicina dall’uso del ferro per guarire molte infermità,...
Genoa, Paolo Scionico, 1767.
First and only edition, rare, of these treatises on the medicinal benefits of iron supplements, with accounts of their use by the author in curing over 450 patients of maladies ranging from anorexia to melancholy.
£600
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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