[ARABIAN NIGHTS.]

Arabian Tales; or, a Continuation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. Consisting of Stories related by the...

London, Faulder, and Hookham and Carpenter, Egerton, Walker [and five others], 1794.

First edition of this translation of the Continuation des mille et une nuits (1788–9) by Denis Chavis and Jacques Cazotte; despite the very close similarity to the title of the translation by Robert Heron published in Edinburgh in 1792, the text here is different.

£1000

[BIBLE – OLD TESTAMENT and APOCRYPHA, Greek; Johann LONITZER, editor.]

Της θειας γραφης παλαιας...

Strasbourg, Wolfgang Köpfel, 1526.

The first edition of the Old Testament in Greek to be printed in Germany, and the first aimed at a Protestant readership, with the Apocrypha separated along the lines of Luther’s German translation.

£8500

BOYLE, Robert.

A Disquisition about the final Causes of natural Things: wherein it is inquir’d, whether, and (if at all), with...

London, H. C. for John Taylor, 1688.

First edition, second issue, with Boyle’s name in full on the title-page. ‘Boyle is just revered as an enthusiastic early protagonist of the experimental method … [but] he recognized the limitations of experiment and wrote widely upon the philosophical implications of scientific investigation …...

£750

WOODCROFT, Bennet, editor; [J. G. GREENWOOD, translator].

The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria. From the original Greek.

London, Charles Whittingham, 1851.

First edition of this English translation of the Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria, this copy signed by the editor, the engineer, inventor, and pioneering patent administrator Bennet Woodcroft.

£300

WILLAN, Leonard.

The exact Politician, or, compleat Statesman: briefly and methodically resolved into such Principles, whereby...

London, Dorman Newman, 1670.

First edition, second issue, employing the sheets of the first edition (The perfect States-man, 1668, printed for the author) with a new cancel title-page, containing one of the earliest assertions that private interests serve the public good.

£850

TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord.

The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate.

London, Macmillan & Co., 1894.

An exceptionally attractive turn-of-the-century binding, with floral and foliate tooling in gilt and blind, later in the library of Alan Titchmarsh.

£675

[STATIONS OF THE CROSS.]

Exercice du Via Crucis, avec les pratiques de cette dévotion.

Caen, Nicolas-Gilles Dedouit, [c. 1825].

Very rare manual for devotees of the Stations of the Cross, printed at Caen in Normandy, illustrated with woodcuts in naive style for each of the Stations.

£350

MICHAELIS, Johann David.

Grammatica syriaca.

[(Colophon:) Göttingen, Friedrich Andreas Rosenbusch for] Halle, the Orphanage, 1784.

First edition of a notable Syriac grammar by one of the most learned oriental scholars of the German Enlightenment, Johann David Michaelis.

£350

LAWRENCE, D[avid] H[erbert].

Pansies.

London, P. R. Stephensen, 1929.

No. 91 of 500 signed copies of this privately printed edition, issued as a protest against the censorship of the first edition published by Secker.

£600

JUSTEL, Christofle.

Codex canonum ecclesiae Africanae. Christophorus Iustellus ex MSS codicibus edidit, Graecam versionem adiunxit,...

Paris, Abraham Pacard, 1615.

Second edition (first 1614) of this dual language collection of canons of the early African Church edited by the ecclesiastical historian Christofle Justel (1580–1649), this copy presented by him to the legal scholar Laurent Bouchel (1559–1629).

£950

[JOUY, Étienne de; Pierre-François GODARD.]

[Jeux de cartes instructives. Histoire d’Angleterre.]

N.p., n.d. [France, c. 1800–1815].

A rare early nineteenth-century French set of ‘instructive playing cards’ for teaching children about the kings and queens of England.

£475

[HYMNAL.]

Den Swenska Psalm-Boken. Af Konungen gillad och stadfästad år 1819. Med utsatta Melodier.

Stockholm, Ludwig Öberg, 1830.

A seemingly unrecorded Swedish hymnbook, in a delightful gilt and painted panel-stamped betrothal binding and with a long chain of female provenance in central Sweden.

£1750

HEYLYN, Peter.

Cosmographie in four Books: containing the Chorographie and Historie of the whole World, and all the principal Kingdoms,...

London, Philip Chetwind, 1666 [i.e. 1667].

Third edition of Peter Heylyn’s Cosmographie, one of the most ambitious English geographical surveys of the seventeenth century.  The final appendix discusses ‘Terra Australia Incognita, or the Southern Continent’ and various voyages across Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands,...

£2000

GRIFFONI, Angelo.

Per le nozze faustissime dei nobili signori conte Vincenzo Marazzi e Contessa Vittoria Serbelloni sonetto.

Crema, Antonio Ronna, 1815.

A large provincially printed broadside on silk, seemingly unrecorded, celebrating the marriage of Vittoria Serbelloni to Vincenzo Marazzi.

£500

[FIVE SENSES.]

No. 80. De almagtige opperheer schonk aan zyn beeld vyf zinnen, gelukkig die hier niets dan in Gods vrees beginnen.

Amsterdam, heirs of the widow of Jacobus van Egmont, [c. 1800].

Very rare popular print depicting the five senses, issued by the heirs of the Amsterdam printer Marretje Valintgoet.

£550

CURTIUS RUFUS, Quintus.

De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni. Editio prioribus correctior.

Toulouse, Pierre Robert, [1714–1760].

A rare Toulouse printing of a rhetorical and moralising history of Alexander the Great.

£275

[BOUREAU-DESLANDES, André-François.]

Pigmalion, ou la statue animée.

‘A Londres, chez Samuel Harding’, 1741.

A very interesting sammelband of scarce works encompassing materialism clothed as myth, astronomy, and Parisian polite society.

£1250

ARISTOTLE.

De animo, libri III. Ioachimo Perionio interprete, per Nicolaum Grouchium correcti et emendati.

Paris, Thomas Richard, 1561.

Rare edition of Aristotle’s On the Soul in the Latin translation of Joachim Périon (d. 1559), edited by Nicolas de Grouchy (d. 1572), with scattered contemporary student annotations.

£575

ALFONSO, Vincenzo.

Prima centuria dele lettre [sic] …

Naples, Giovanni Domenico Montanaro, 1634.

Dedication copy of an extremely rare Neapolitan printing in a fine vellum gilt binding made for the dedicatee, Cardinal Francesco Boncompagni.

£2750

FAERNO, Gabriele.

Fabulae centum ex antiquis auctoribus delectae, carminibus explicatae …

Padua, Giuseppe Comino, [(colophon:) 27 October] 1730.

A collection of popular verse fables by the sixteenth-century scholar Gabriele Faerno of Cremona (c. 1510–1561), in an eighteenth-century patterned paper binding.

£300