Recent Acquisitions
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LEVI-STRAUSS, Claude.
Le Père Noël supplicié.
[Paris, Chantenay, 1952.]
Rare first separate appearance, a presentation copy, of Lèvi-Strauss’s article ‘Father Christmas tortured’, an ethnological analysis of French ecclesiastical authorities’ disapproval of the ‘paganisation’ of Father Christmas, describing the hanging and burning of an effigy at Dijon just...
£250
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LAING, John.
An account of a voyage to Spitzbergen; containing a full description of that country, of the zoology of the north,...
[Balfour for], London, J. Mawman and David Brown, Edinburgh, 1815.
First edition of Laing’s account of his voyage as a ship’s surgeon on a whaling vessel under Captain Scoresby to the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, in 1806 and 1807.
£850
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[JUVENILE.]
The Weasel Family.
London, Edinburgh, and New York, T. Nelson and Sons, [1860s?]
First edition, rare, of a rather charming Victorian picture-book, from ‘The Funny Animal Series’, later collected in Comical Creatures: a Picture Book for the Nursery (1867).
£375
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JENKINS, Edward.
The Devil’s Chain … Twentieth Thousand. With twelve Illustrations by Barnard and Thomson.
[Southwark, M’Corquodale and Co. for] London and Belfast, William Mullan & Son, 1877.
A reissue of the illustrated edition, from a different publishing house, of this lively narrative tracing the ‘universally ruinous effect of drink on all classes of the English population’ (Sutherland) by Member of Parliament, anti-slavery campaigner, and ardent imperialist Edward Jenkins.
£100
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HARDY, Campbell.
Sporting Adventures in the New World; or, Days and Nights of Moose-Hunting in the Pine Forests of Acadia …
London, Hurst and Blackett, 1855.
First edition of this most interesting account of Nova Scotia, Canada, by the Royal Artillery officer Campbell Hardy (1831–1919).
£575
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BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett.
Poems before Congress …
London, [Bradbury and Evans for] Chapman and Hall, 1860.
First edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s slender collection of seven poems on the cause of Italian independence, and one attacking slavery in the United States (‘A Curse for a Nation’), published a year before her death.
£200
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BLANFORD, William Thomas.
Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia, made during the Progress of the British Expedition...
London, Macmillan and Co., 1870.
First edition of the geologist and naturalist William Thomas Blanford’s study of Abyssinian flora and fauna, undertaken during Britain’s military expedition through the country in 1868 and supplemented by hand-coloured lithographic plates, including those of bird species newly discovered by the...
£300
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ARENA, Antoine.
Antonius de Arena Provençalis de bragardissima villa de Soleriis ad suos compagnones, qui sunt de persona friantes,...
London [i.e. Paris, Joseph-Gérard Barbou], 1758.
A fine copy of the 1758 edition of this popular macaronic poem by the Provençal poet Arena (c. 1508–63), first published in 1528, an early example of the genre and an important primary source for the basse-dance, a court dance performed in France and England between 1450 and 1550.
£1100
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[PARKER, Richard Green; Junkichi KATAYAMA 片山 淳吉, editor.]
物理階梯 [Butsuri kaitei; 'A Guide to Physics'].
Gifu Prefecture, Ministry of Education, Mizunoesaru/Jinshin [i.e. 1872].
First edition, very rare, of Japan’s first elementary science textbook, a major catalyst for the introduction of Western physics after the Meiji Restoration.
£1750
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[BENDISCIOLI, Faustino.]
Quadro ossia saggio epilogato del Sistema di liberta’ proclamato dai Francesi.
Milan, Stamperia [dei Patrioti d’Italia] di Strada Nuova, [1799].
An impassioned tract attacking the claims of a new life of liberty promoted in Europe after the French Revolution, very rarely to be found in any of the three editions published in the same year.
£200
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[BANK OF SCOTLAND.]
Act of Parliament for erecting a Bank in Scotland. Edinburgh, July 17 1695.
Edinburgh, printed by the heirs and successors of Andrew Anderson, 1695.
Very rare edition of the Act of Parliament establishing Scotland’s first and oldest bank, founded just one year after the Bank of England.
£650
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ADDAMS, Jane.
Twenty Years at Hull House with autobiographical Notes.
New York, Macmillan, 1910.
First edition, second printing (issued in the same month and year as the first) of Jane Addams’s bestselling autobiography and account of Hull House, Chicago’s first settlement house for immigrants and the poor (the second in the United States), our copy with two autograph letters from...
£650
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[MARIA THERESA.]
Sammelband of twenty-three works, including two broadsides, published on the death of Maria Theresa of Austria.
[Naples, 1781.]
An extraordinary sammelband gathering eulogies and epigraphs to Maria Theresa of Austria, including several ephemeral pieces and broadsides and displaying the breadth of southern Italian typography in the late eighteenth century.
£1950
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ARMINESI, Rocco degli.
Attila flagelum Dei, tradotto dalla vera cronica per Rocco degli Arminesi padovano. Ove si narra come detto...
Venice, Omobon Bettanino, [mid-eighteenth century].
Very rare eighteenth-century edition of a popular and best-selling poem on Attila the Hun.
£600
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BROWNE, Thomas.
Religio Medici, Urn Burial, Christian Morals, and other Essays.
[Printed by the Ballantyne Press, and sold by Hacon and Ricketts, The Vale Press, London, and John Lane, New York, 1902].
First edition thus, limited to 310 unnumbered copies plus 10 on vellum (the limitation not here stated).
£2000
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DIONYSIUS of Halicarnassus.
Antiquitatum Rom. libri XI. Ab Aemylio Porto recens & post aliorum interpretationes Latine redditi.
Geneva, Jacob Stoer, 1614.
A rare pocket-sized edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the early history of Rome, in an armorial binding for Adrien Poërier.
£450
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[BIBLE.]
Biblia sacra vulgatae editionis Sixti Quinti Pont. Max. iussu recognita atque edita.
Antwerp, Jan Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1599.
Plantin edition of the Clementine Vulgate, bound in four volumes and interleaved for scholarly annotations.
£1250
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LEE, Laurie.
Cider with Rosie … with drawings by John Ward.
London, Hogarth Press, 1959.
First edition, second impression, the author’s copy with his pencil marks for public readings and loosely inserted correspondence including praise from Leonard Woolf.
£1000
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[DODSLEY, Robert, et al.]
The Oeconomy of Human Life, in two parts, translated from an Indian manuscript, written by a Chinese...
Newport, J. Mallett, 1783.
Rare printing, undertaken in Newport on the Isle of Wight by James Mallett. Only nine publications are listed in ESTC as Mallett, Newport: mostly occasional endeavours, undertaken in 1767, 1770, 1782, 1783 (two publications, including ours), 1784, and 1789 (three publications), and almost all...
£450
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[WISHART, George.]
I. G. de rebus auspiciis serenssimi, & potentissimi Caroli Dei gratia Magnae Brittanniae, Franciae & Hiberniae...
[Amsterdam or The Hague,] 1647.
First edition, rare, a fine-paper copy in a handsome binding, of an account of the campaign of James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, against the Covenanters in 1644−46, a copy of which was strung around Montrose’s neck when he was hanged.
£1750