MITFORD, Algernon Bertram, translator.

英譯. 佐倉宗五郎之傳. The Ghost of Sakura. Translated into English … With...

Tokyo, Seishi-bunsha, 1892.

Extremely rare Tokyo-printed edition of this English rendition of the tale of Sakura Sōgorō, the legendary peasant-martyr of seventeenth-century Japan.

£450

MITFORD, Algernon Bertram, translator.

The Tale of forty seven Ronins …

Tokyo, Bible & Tract Repository [and (colophon:) Chōshichi Kurimoto], Meiji 25 [1892].

A seemingly unrecorded Tokyo edition of this famous tale of samurai vengeance, translated into English.

£850

‘WALINCOURT, Vicomte de’ [i.e. FONTAINE DE RESBECQ, Eugène de].

Voyage à Botany-Bay … suivi d’autres épisodes.

Limoges, Martial Ardant brothers [Louis and Eugène Ardant], [1865?].

First edition, very rare, of this light-hearted tale of a journey to Australia, in an attractive cartonnage binding.

£475

[VAN DER STRAET, Jan, after.]

[Imperatorum XII a Suetonio descriptorum effigies & resque gestae, iconibus fideliter expressae....

[Netherlands or Rome, early seventeenth century.]

A set of large-format equestrian portraits of the Twelve Caesars, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, with a rich array of scenes from their reigns both in the background and on their pedestals.

£1500

[SPADAZZI, Carlo, editor.]

Per le nozze Varano-Dolfin. Rime.

Venice, Stamperia Palese, 1807.

First and only edition of a collection of verses in celebration of an aristocratic Venetian wedding, a crisp copy bound in Herrnhuter paste paper.

£350

[SIGONIO, Carlo.] Marcus Tullius CICERO, attributed; [Claude MIGNAULT, editor].

M. Tullii Ciceronis consolatio....

Nunc primum repertus, et in lucem editus … Paris, Nicolas Chesneau, 1583.

Extremely rare early edition of Sigonio’s notorious Ciceronian forgery, first published in Venice earlier the same year and the centre of ‘one of the more notorious scholarly scandals of the early modern era’ (Baltussen), this copy from the libraries of two successive bishops of Séez.

£1500

[PROCESSIONAL.]

[Processionarium monasticum secundum consuetudinem ordinis S. Benedicti de observantia, auctum et accurate emendatum.]

[Coimbra, António de Mariz, 1571.]

An extremely rare Processional of Benedictine Use, printed in Coimbra in Portugal, bound in a fragment from a medieval Iberian manuscript breviary.

£1250

PLINY the Younger; Filippo BEROALDO, editor.

Epistolae Plinii ad Traianum cum panegyrico. Ex castigatione Philippi Beroaldi.

[(Colophon:) Bologna, Benedetto Faelli, 24 January 1502 (i.e. 1503; but really c. 1510–1515?)]

A pair of Bologna printings of short works by or attributed to Pliny the Younger, both edited by Filippo Beroaldo, the first an unrecorded variant with additional text, in a fine pastiche binding by Galiani of Bologna.

£3500

MILTON, John.

Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.

[Holborn,] W. Herbert Broome and James J. Guthrie at the Old Bourne Press, [1904].

First Old Bourne edition, numbered 42 of 200 copies and signed by James Guthrie, of Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.

£675

[LA REYNIE DE LA BRUYÈRE, Jean-Baptiste-Marie-Louis.]

The Livre rouge, or Red Book: being a List of secret Pensions, paid out...

Dublin, Patrick Byrne, 1790.

Rare Dublin edition of this English translation of the Livre rouge, a French Revolutionary indictment of the corruption of the Ancien régime, printed entirely in red by the radical printer–bookseller and United Irishman Patrick Byrne.

£450

KRUPKIN, Ilka.

Gudruna Trogstad, capitana.

Buenos Aires, Manuel Gleizer, 1930.

Scarce first edition, signed by the author, of a play following a female ship’s captain navigating the waters of a tropical storm, printed by an émigré publisher at the heart of the Buenos Aires literary scene.

£350

HORACE.

Opera, interpretatione et notis illustravit Ludovicus Despres … tomus primus (– secundus).

Venice, Typographia Balleoniana, 1797.

An uncut copy in a patterned paper binding of the respected critical edition of Horace by Louis Desprez (fl. 1675–1691).

£600

CASTIGLIONE, Baldassare.

Il libro del cortegiano … nuovamente stampato, & con somma diligentia revisto, con la sua tavola di...

Venice, Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1544.

Second Giolito edition of the classic Renaissance manual of courtly behaviour.

£800

AURELIUS VICTOR, Sextus.

Historiae romanae breviarium. A Jano & Saturno, Urbeque condita, usque ad Consulatum X Constantii Aug. &...

Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1579.

A pair of abbreviated histories based on the lost work of Sextus Aurelius Victor, from the distant origins of Rome up to the death of the Emperor Theodosius in 395 AD, illustrated with coins and portraits of the emperors, with early English provenance, later in the library of the Earls of Guilford.

£1450

[ARISTOTLE.]

‘P[hiloso]phia na[tur]alis seu Phisica; In duos Ar[istote]lis libros de generatione et corruptione; Commentarius...

[Douai, c. 1702].

An interesting hybrid volume, combining manuscript notes of lectures on Aristotle given at the Jesuit Collège d’Anchin in Douai, northern France, at the opening of the eighteenth century, with a printed list of the College’s students in 1702, interleaved with printed summaries of each book of the...

£1450

FORSTER, E. M.

Small archive of correspondence sent to Hazel Eardley-Wilmot and related papers.

Britain, 1943–1970.

An important collection of unpublished autograph letters and other documents sent by E. M. Forster over some thirty years to his friend, the writer, archaeologist, and schoolteacher Hazel Eardley-Wilmot.

£3000

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS; Marsilio FICINO, translator.

Liber de potestate et sapientia Dei …

[(Colophon:) Venice, Damianus de Mediolano, de Gorgonzola, 10 May 1493.]

An attractive Venetian edition of the first Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum (sometimes known as Pimander, from the name of just the first of fourteen chapters), the foundation of Hermetic Philosophy and a fundamental text of early alchemy.

£7500

PFEFFER DE WYDENBERG, Johannes.

[Directorium sacerdotale.]

[Basel, Johann Besicken, after 20 December 1482.]

First and only incunable edition, very rare, of a guide for priests written by the first theology professor at the University of Freiburg, provided with a helpful system for locating passages in the text.

£6500

[BOIS-SEIGNEUR-ISAAC.]

Histoire memorable et digne de foy, du sainct sang de miracle, advenue au Bois Seigneur Isaac diocese de...

Mons, Charles Michel, 1593.

First and only edition, very rare, of an account of a medieval miracle at the Augustinian abbey of Bois-Seigneur-Isaac, to the northeast of Mons in Belgium, published not long after the abbey had been all but destroyed during the French Wars of Religion.

£1250

BELLARMINO, Roberto.

Dichiarazione della dottrina cristiana ... Revista ed approvata. 

Brescia, Bendiscioli, 1815.

Very rare vernacular Brescia edition of Cardinal Bellarmino’s so-called ‘small catechism’ (Doctrina Christiana), composed in dialogue format for the education of children and ‘simple souls’, this copy an unusual example of a patterned paper used to cover a longstitch carta rustica...

£350