Recent Acquisitions
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FLORIAN, Jean-Pierre Claris de.
‘Stella a pastoral Romance … Translated from the French’.
[?England, early nineteenth century.]
An apparently unpublished manuscript translation of Florian’s popular romance Estelle (1788), a pastoral set in the Cévennes in the fifteenth century; it is in prose but regularly interspersed with poetry. There were two published English translations: Stella, a pastoral Romance...
£950
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[CHARITY.]
Reglement du 11 Juin 1752, concernant la nourriture et le travail des pauvres de l’Hôpital de N. D. de la Charité,...
Dijon, Antoine Defay, [1752].
Very rare work detailing the regulations governing the 450-or-so poor residents of the Hôpital de Notre Dame de la Charité in Dijon, eastern France, in the mid-eighteenth century.
£850
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CHALMERS, David.
Histoire abbregee de tous les roys de France, Angleterre et Escosse, mise en ordre par forme d’Harmonie: contenant...
Paris, Jean Fevrier, 1579.
First edition of Chalmer’s historical work focusing on Scotland’s relations with France and England, written at a time of marriage negotiations between England and France, seeking to dispel the idea that England had any overlordship over Scotland.
£950
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[ALMANACK.] WING, John.
Ολυμπια δωματα or an Almanack for the Year of our Lord God 1689 …
Cambridge, John Hayes, ‘1689’ [1688].
An interesting Cambridge-printed almanack, owned and annotated in West Yorkshire by one John Brooke, who records, in various places, ‘Subsidy money for Dalton, Kirkheaton, Huddersfield, and Lepton’, debts owing for geese, ‘Men imployed at Bowling green’ (18 February to 26 April, 8 pages),...
£950
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‘SANIVAL, Marchesa di’, pseud. [i.e. SALVANI, Fausto].
La difesa delle donne o sia risposta apologetica al libro...
Siena, Luigi and Benedetto Bindi, 1786.
Very rare first edition, printed on blue paper, of this defence of women, written in response to an indecent satire entitled Lo scoglia dell’humanita, published under the Arcadian pseudonym Diunilgo Valdecio by Carlo Maria Chiaraviglio in 1774, which warned of the dangers to men posed by...
£1500
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[PSALMS.]
Psalmi Davidis regis et vatis inclyti, a M. Antonio Flaminio & P. Francisco Spinula pietis elegantissimis, Latinis...
Antwerp, [(colophon:) Jan Verwithagen for Joannes Steelsius], 1559.
A collection of verse paraphrases of the Psalms, by the poets and humanist scholars Marcantonio Flaminio (1498–1550) and Publio Francesco Spinola (c. 1520–1567), bound for Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553–1617).
£975
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‘PIETRO da VICOVARO’, i.e. Giuseppe CORTESE.
Apparecchio per accompagnare Maria Santissima nella sua gloriosa assunzione...
Rome, Komarek, 1735.
Very rare devotional work dedicated to the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, a novena written by Pietro da Vicovaro.
£550
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[MILITARIA.]
Instruction provisoire arrêtée par le roi, concernant l’exercice et les manoeuvres de l’infanterie du 20 Mai 1788.
Montauban, Vincent Teulières, 1788.
A seemingly unrecorded edition of these pre-French Revolution instructions on infantry manoeuvres, printed at Montauban in the south of France, with several passages updated in manuscript by a practising soldier.
£750
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KRYLOV, [Ivan Andreevich]; William Ralston SHEDDEN-RALSTON, translator.
Krilof and his Fables …
London, Strahan and Co., 1869.
First edition in English in book form of any of Krylov’s Fables, a presentation copy ‘To Sir John Shaw Lefevre H.C.B. from the Translator’.
£850
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BLANCHET, Joseph.
L’art, ou les principes philosophiques du chant … IIe edition, corrigée et augmentée …
Paris, Augustin-Martin Lottin, Michel Lambert, and Nicolas-Bonaventure Duchesne, 1756.
First edition, though designated as the ‘second’, of this philosophical and anatomical singing manual authored by a priest, with an engraved illustration of the lungs.
£750
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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 Addams...
£650
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D’URFEY, Thomas.
Wit and Mirth: or Pills to purge Melancholy; being a Collection of the best merry Ballads and Songs, old and...
Pearson for J. Tonson, 1719 [– 1720].
The first complete edition, second issue of volumes I–V, and first issue of vol. VI, of the most famous songbook of its day, the first edition with titles altered to the familiar Wit and Mirth from Songs Compleat, 1719 (a change at the time of the publication in 1720 of volume VI,...
£2250
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ADORNO, Theodor W., Else FRENKEL-BRUNSWIK, Daniel J. LEVINSON, and R. Nevitt SANFORD
The Authoritarian Personality.
New York, Harper Brothers, 1950.
First edition of this groundbreaking work of social psychology on the development of prejudice by Theodor Adorno and the psychologists Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, written in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
£225
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[SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley.]
The School for Scandal. A Comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre, Smoke-Alley, Dublin.
[Dublin], Printed for the Booksellers, 1793.
First separate illustrated edition of Sheridan’s highly popular The School for Scandal, which has ‘amused audiences from [its] early, immensely successful performances up to the present day, for Sheridan is one of the great comic writers in English’ (ODNB).
£750
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PACE, Giulio.
Artis Lullianae emendatae libri IV. Quibus docetur methodus, per quam magna terminorum generalium, attributorum,...
Naples, Secondino Roncagliolo, 1631.
Rare third edition (first 1618) of this concise summary of Ramon Lull’s (c. 1232–1316) highly influential Ars Magna by the famous Protestant Italian Aristotelian scholar and jurist Giulio Pace (1550–1635), whose edition of the Organon was for a long time the standard edition of Aristotle’s...
£750
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[LE GUERCHOIS, Madeleine d’Aguesseau, Madame.]
Avis d’une mere a son fils.
Paris, Desaint & Saillant, 1743.
A popular work of maternal advice, in a simple vellum binding richly decorated by the master calligrapher Francois Nicolas Bédigis (1738–1814).
£2750
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BENZI, Ugo; Giovanni Lodovico BERTALDI, commentator.
Regole della sanità et della natura de cibi … arricchita d’un trattato...
Turin, heirs of Giovanni Domenico Tarino, 1618.
Scarce first vernacular edition of the works of the medieval Sienese physician Ugo Benzi (c. 1360–1439); an extraordinary testament to their enduring popularity into the seventeenth century, expanded with commentary and a new appendix on the abuse of alcohol and tobacco by the Turinese doctor Giovanni...
£2500
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BALZAC, Jean-Louis Guez de.
Aristippus, or, Monsr. de Balsac’s Masterpiece, being a Discourse concerning the Court … Englished...
London, Tho. Newcomb for Nat. Eakins and Tho. Johnson,1659.
First edition in English of Balzac’s Aristippe (first published posthumously in 1658), a treatise on wisdom in political administration and on the nature of life at court, dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden, who was an admirer.
£750
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RICHARDUS ANGLICUS.
Correctorium alchymiae ... Das is reformierte Alchimy, oder Alchimeibesserung, und Straffung der Alchimistischen...
Strasbourg, Bernard Jobin, 1581.
First edition of ‘a very rare collection’ (Duveen) of five alchemical treatises, comprising Richardus Anglicus’ Correctorium and Reformierte Alchimei, Lull’s Apertorium et accuratio vegetabilium and Vom philosophischen Stein, and Geber’s Secretum.
£4500
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[WASHINGTON, George.] PAINE, Thomas.
An Eulogy on the Life of General George Washington, who died at Mount Vernon, December 14th,...
Newburyport, Edmund M. Blunt, 1800.
First edition of this eulogy on Washington, ‘the saviour of your country’ and ‘father of his people’. This is the issue with urn woodcut on the final verso. Thomas Paine (1773–1811, not to be confused with the author of Common Sense) later changed his name to that of his father,...
£250