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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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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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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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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[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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[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
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BALLARIN, Vincenzo.
Dimostrazione sintetica della quadratura del circolo di Don Vincenzo Ballarin, piovano di S. Pietro della...
Venice, Fracasso, 1828.
First and only edition of this confident but mistaken attempt at squaring the circle – drawing a square with the same area as a given circle using a compass and straightedge – later proven to be impossible.
£900
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‘MAWE, Thomas’ [but John ABERCROMBIE].
Every Man his own Gardener. Being a new, and much more complete Gardener’s...
London: Printed for W. Griffith … 1767.
Second edition, published in the same year as the first, of an immensely popular work, which went through at least twenty-five editions. ‘Abercrombie was the son of a market gardener near Edinburgh who went on to be a gardener at Kew and Leicester House, as well as for a number of noblemen...
£225
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[MURAT, J.-B. de.]
La destinée d’une jolie femme, poème érotique, en six chants, par J.B… de M…
Paris, Langlois for Mongie, An XI (1803).
First and only edition, very scarce, of this humorous moralising tale of love and loss in verse, intended for a female readership and hidden under the ‘transparent veil’ of erotic poetry.
£650
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[SEX-WORK.]
Arrêtés des 3 et 4 Juin 1833, concernant les femmes et filles livrées à la prostitution publique.
Toulon, ‘de l’imprimerie d’Aug. Aurel’, 1833.
An apparently unrecorded set of decrees intended to regulate sex-work in the French port of Toulon on the Mediterranean coast, ‘for the maintenance of good morals and public health’.
£475
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[GOLD and SILVER.]
Bando generale per gli orefici, argentieri, ed altri che comprano, vendono, ed in qualsivoglia modo...
Rome, ‘nella stamperia della Rev. Camera Apostolica’, 1815.
Rare edict governing goldsmiths, silversmiths, and traders in gold and silver operating in Rome and the Papal States, issued by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca (1756–1844) in January 1815 as Camerlengo to Pope Pius VII.
£475
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ASTRUC, Jean.
Tractatus de motus fermentativi causa novam et mechanicam hypothesim conteniens, authore Joanne Astruc artium liberalium...
Montpellier, Honoratus Pech, 1702.
A dissertation on fermentation published by the physician Jean Astruc (1684–1766), aged eighteen; he later taught anatomy at Toulouse and the Collège Royal in Paris, and served as consultant to Louis XV and as chief physician of August II of Poland.
£500
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ROSSINI, Giovanni.
Alla memoria di Maria Antinori vedova del Marchese Consalvi di Macerata morta improvvisamente la sera del...
Pisa, Niccolo Capurro, 1852.
Scarce first and only edition of this poem in memory of Maria Antinori, widow of the Marchese Consalvi, on her death at the age of thirty-five, penned by the poet, playwright, historical novelist, and art historian Giovanni Rossini (1776–1855).
£275
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PAZZI, Antonio de, and Torquato TASSO.
Stanze inedite di Antonio de Pazzi e di Torquato Tasso in biasimo ed in lode delle...
Venice, Picotti, 1810.
Scarce first edition of verses ‘in blame and in praise of women’ by Antonio de Pazzi and Torquato Tasso, edited by the eminent antiquary and librarian Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819) from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, and dedicated to Baron Antonio Mulazzani...
£200