PITTORIO, Lodovico.

Delle homelie di M. Lodovico Pittorio da Ferrara. Parte prima [– seconda]. Nella quale si espongono tutti...

Turin, Francesco Lorenzini, 1581 (colophon: 1582).

Very rare edition of a popular and much reprinted collection of sermons for Lent, feast days, and Sundays by the Ferrarese humanist Luigi Bigi, known as Pittorio (1454–1525), illustrated with over a hundred small woodcuts depicting the Evangelists and scenes from the life of Christ.

£800

[OUR LADY OF LORETO.]

Abregé de l’histoire de Notre Dame de Lorette à l’usage de la nation Française. Deiparae domus in...

Loreto, Federico Sartori, 1787.

Rare edition of this guidebook for French visitors to the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, this copy extra-illustrated with handsome plates depicting three sides of the Santa Casa, with explanatory text in French and Latin, produced by the French engraver Hubert Vincent, one dated to 1686.

£1350

[NOVARA.]

Editti per le sagre ordinationi, con altre cose appartenenti alla disciplina del clero della città, e diocesi di Novara....

Novara, Francesco Liborio Cavallo, [1704].

Very rare set of edicts governing ordination and clerical discipline in the city and diocese of Novara, issued by Giovanni Battista Visconti Aicardi, Bishop of Novara from 1688 until his death in 1713.

£400

MONIGLIA, Tommaso Vicenzo.

Osservazioni critico-filosofiche contro i materialisti, divise in due trattati …

Lucca, Vincenzo Giuntini, 1760. 

Uncommon anti-materialist work by the Tuscan philosopher Tommaso Moniglia (1686–1767).

£250

GASPARI, Giovanni Battista.

Sanctorum Ticinensis ecclesiae episcoporum vitae breviarium, nec non SS. Guniforti, Boetii martii,...

Pavia, Giovanni Andrea Magri, [1651].

First and only edition, rare, of this history of the first Bishops and saints of Pavia.

£850

[FRANCIS OF PAOLA, Saint.]

I tredici venerdì del glorioso S. Francesco di Paola di nuovo riordinati, e in miglior’ forma...

Fano, Andrea Donati, 1756.

A seemingly unrecorded edition of prayers, meditations, and hymns for the thirteen Fridays in honour of St Francis of Paola, founder of the Order of Minims, printed in the Italian city of Fano on the Adriatic coast.

£450

[ANON.]

L’Isola de’ solitari o sia il felice a suo dispetto operetta alle donne di spirito italiane.

Pisa, Ranieri Prosperi, 1791.

First and only edition of a very rare, late eighteenth-century social satire, taking a swipe at intellectual academies and society’s ingratitude towards good actions.

£350

ABBIATE FORIERI, Matteo.

La Colonna di chiesa santa. Panegirico detto nella solennizata festa di S. Agostino nella Chiesa de...

Milan, Lodovico Monza, 1660.

Very rare panegyric given at the Church of San Marco in Milan to mark the feast day of St Augustine in 1660, by the Milanese lawyer Matteo Abbiate Forieri, an annual event on behalf of the lawyers of the city’s Scuole Palatine.

£175

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

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

[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