[ALMANACK.]

Étrennes mignonnes, curieuses et utiles, pour l’année mil sept cent quatre-vingt-dix.

Paris, Guillot, 1790.

A French almanack for 1790 in a delightful sous mica binding with painted vignettes showing a courting couple one side and what appears to be a lovers’ tryst on the other, preserved in its original red morocco case.

£2750

[ALMANACK.]

Les etrennes a la rose, ou le rosier d’amour.

Paris, Janet, [1804?].

A charming literary almanack, or ‘rosebush of love’, collecting amatory poems using the motif of the rose, here bound in red silk strikingly embroidered in silver and dated with the French Revolutionary year ‘An XII’ (1804).

£2500

THOMAS CANTIPRATENSIS.

Bonum universale de proprietatibus apum.

[Cologne, Johann Koelhoff, the Elder, c. 1478–1480.]

Second edition of this manual of moral theology structured around the behaviour of bees, composed in the 1260s. It was a popular work, surviving in over a hundred manuscripts.

£6000

MACDONALD, Alexander.

‘Instructions and regulations for the formations and movements of horse artillery by Captain A: Macdonald...

[England, 1827.]

Scarce manuscript of an unpublished work on the formations and movements of horse artillery by the distinguished soldier and Waterloo veteran Major-General Alexander Macdonald CB (1776–1840), illustrated with twenty-five coloured diagrams.

£1500

BURCKHARDT, Johann Ludwig (John Lewis).

Travels in Arabia, comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans...

London, Henry Colburn, 1829.

First edition, in one volume, recounting Johann Ludwig Burckhardt’s journey to Mecca on behalf of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa in 1814.

£3750

BACON, Francis. 

Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, operum moralium et civilium tomus … cura...

London, Edward Griffin [and John Haviland] for Richard Whitaker [and John Norton], 1638. 

First edition, first issue, a copy from the celebrated Albani library: tangible witness to the early and fecund reception of Bacon’s thought in the circles of Galilean science in Italy. 

£3500

PROPERTIUS; Oliffe Legh RICHMOND, editor.

Sexti Properti quae supersunt opera, edidit novoque adparatu critico instruxit...

Cambridge, University Press, 1928.

First edition of Richmond’s controversial Propertius, A. F. Scholfield’s copy, with three letters from the editor.

£400

[NEW YORK.]

Notarial instrument attesting to the residence of two French immigrants in New York.

New York, 27 July 1797.

An interesting notarial document recording the immigration of two members of the French minor nobility to America during the French Revolution and Directory.

£850

[STEREOGRAPH.]

‘Going Out’ [and] ‘Coming In’.

London, Gebhardt, Rottmann & Co., [late 1850s or 1860s].

An amusing pair of stereos depicting the ‘before’ and ‘after’ a gentleman’s night out.

£70

[STEREOGRAPH.]

James ELLIOTT, photographer.

‘The first Love Letter’ [and] ‘Difference of Opinion’. London, 1860s.

Three hand-tinted albumen prints in stereo format featuring elaborate historical costumes, depicting the early stages of courtship and a lovers’ tiff.

£175

[MONS.]

...

Mons, J. B. Varret, 1748.

First and only edition, very rare, of this history of the Sunday school in Mons, established for the Christian education of the boys and girls of the city and supported by the Canonesses of St Waltrude among other benefactors.

£975

BLANCHET, Joseph.

L’art, ou les principes philosophiques du chant … II^e edition, corrigée et augmentée …

Paris, Augustin-Martin Lottin, Michel Lambert, and Nicolas-Bonaventure Duchesne, 1756.

First edition of this philosophical and anatomical singing manual, with an engraved illustration of the lungs.

£750

‘SANTO DOMINGO’.

Tablettes Parisiennes, par M. Santo-Domingo. Deuxième edition.

Brussels, Aug. Wahlen for H. Tarlier, 1826.

Second edition, scarcer than the first edition of the previous year, of these risqué recollections of Parisian life, this copy printed on yellow paper, including a ‘Linnaean’ classification of Parisian women.

£475

[HAMBURG.] 

A sammelband of material relating to the Great Fire of Hamburg. 

[Germany, 1842.] 

A fine and unusual volume of materials relating to the Great Fire of Hamburg of May 1842, comprising a long article by Joseph Mendelssohn published over five issues of Der Komet, special issues of several periodicals devoted to the disaster, a rare poem by Margarethe Hedwig Hülle, and...

£850

GOLDONI, Carlo.

Scelta di alcune commedie. Per uso de’ dilettanti della lingua italiana. Prima edizione italiana.

Livorno, Assunto Barbani, 1816.

First edition printed in Italy of a collection of ten comedies by Goldoni, selected for their lack of complicated syntax and lack of Venetian dialect and idioms, published in Livorno for the benefit of the English community.

£175