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

[ENIGMAS.]

‘Recueils d’Enigmes’.

[France, mid-eighteenth century.]

Four manuscript volumes collecting over seven hundred enigmas and riddles from the Mercure de France, the most popular literary magazine of eighteenth-century Paris.

£750

PÉREZ DE HERRERA, Cristóbal.

Proverbios morales, y consejos christianos … Y enigmas philosoficas, naturales, y morales, con...

Adornadas con trece emblemas … Madrid, heirs of Francisco del Hierro, [1733].

Second edition, the Stirling Maxwell copy, of these 759 proverbs and 311 enigmas by Cristóbal Pérez de Herrera, social reformer, senior physician to Philip II of Spain, and ‘the prince of riddles’.

£1450

PIETRASANTA, Silvestro.

De symbolis heroicis libri IX …

Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1634.

First edition of this Jesuit collection of cryptic emblems covering the elements of natural and supernatural life, dedicated to Cardinal Pier Luigi Carafa and written by his confessor, the Roman Jesuit Silvestro Pietrasanta.

£850