Recent Acquisitions
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MAXIMUS the Confessor; Jean PICOT, translator.
Sanctissimi patris magistrique, Maximi, confessoris atque martyris, varia...
[(Colophon:) Paris,] Guillaume Morel, [1560].
First edition of Jean Picot’s Latin translation of this Byzantine compilation of extracts from the writings of Maximus the Confessor and others, our copy owned by a sixteenth-century monk at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
£850
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[LOUIS XVI.]
Le vertueux Louis XVI; précis de ses douleurs, suivi de détails peu connus sur son illustre famille.
Lille, L. Lefort, [1817].
An seemingly unrecorded royalist panegyric-cum-almanack, provincially printed at Lille in the wake of the Bourbon Restoration.
£475
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GILES of Rome; [Bernardo GRANELLI and GILES of Viterbo, editors].
Comentaria in viii. libros physicorum Aristotelis.
[(Colophon:) Padua, Hieronymus de Durantibus, 15 October 1493.]
An uncommon Paduan imprint containing the first edition of Giles of Rome’s commentary on the physics of Aristotle.
£5000
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GERHARD, Johann.
Meditationes sacrae. Editio postrema, prioribus emendatior.
Oxford, John Lichfield for Henry Curteyne, 1633.
First English-printed Latin edition of Gerhard’s ‘devotional masterpiece’ (ODCC), Oxford-printed and in a contemporary Oxford binding with binder’s waste from an early edition of Melanchthon’s textbook on rhetoric.
£950
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‘DORNIS, Jean’ [pseud. Élena BEER].
La voie douloureuse.
[Évreux, Charles Hérissey for] Paris, Calmann Levy, 1894.
First edition of Jean Dornis’ first novel, presented by the author to her brother-in-law, Edmond Raphael Beer, one of twenty-four copies on papier de Hollande.
£275
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BURNET, Gilbert.
A Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland. In four Conferences....
Glasgow, Robert Sanders, 1673.
One of three editions, all of the same year, of a ‘decidedly aggressive’ (Stewart, p. 40) tract in dialogue on the powers of the state in church affairs and on the subject’s right to resist.
£500
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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
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[LE MARCHE.]
Deed relating to the sale of property in Beltrovato (a district of Morrovalle in the Province of Macerata in the Marche...
[Rome, 1616.]
A curiously bound public instrument notarised by the Apostolic Camera in Rome detailing the sale of property belonging to two brothers from the influential de’ Mozzi family of Macerata.
£850
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ADRICHEM, Christian van; Francesco BALDELLI, translator.
Gerusalemme e suoi dintorni ai tempi di Gesù Cristo. Mappa e...
Genoa, Tipografia arcivescovile, 1882.
Scarce first edition thus of Baldelli’s sixteenth-century translation of this guide to Jerusalem for pilgrims by the Dutch cartographer Christian van Adrichem, instrumental in popularising the Stations of the Cross and the basis for maps of the Holy Land well into the eighteenth century.
£200
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[TAYLOR, John.]
The Column called the Monument, described, erected to perpetuate the dreadful Fire of London in the Year 1666;...
Bryan … for Samuel Arnott, Keeper of the Monument. [1805?]
Third edition (first 1787) of this guidebook to London’s Monument, with an account of the Great Fire of 1666 which it commemorates, authored by the Monument’s first keeper.
£350
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KAVAN, Anna; Karl Theodor BLUTH.
The Horse’s Tale.
London, Gaberbocchus Press, [1949].
Uncommon first edition of this novel authored jointly by Kavan and her psychiatrist and friend Karl Theodor Bluth, written from the perspective of an ex-circus horse trying to find a place in postwar society and artistic circles, a criticism of prevailing trends in 1940s psychiatric treatment.
£850
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DONALDSON, Florence.
Lepcha Land or six Weeks in the Sikhim Himalayas ... With a Map showing Route, and 106 Illustrations. Photographs...
London, Sampson Low Marston & Company, 1900.
First edition of Florence Donaldson’s account of the Lepcha (or Rong) people of the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India, our copy from the library of the botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the first European permitted to trek through Sikkim.
£400
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HERODIAN.
His History of twenty Roman Caesars and Emperors (of his Time) … interpreted out of the Greeke Original.
London, Hugh Perry, 1629.
First edition of this translation, attributed to James Maxwell, from the Greek edition printed by Estienne in 1581.
£600
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CORNEILLE, Thomas.
Il Pirro, tragedia … tradotta dal francese e recitata da’ signori cavalieri del Collegio Clementino nelle...
Bologna, Longhi, [1700?].
A very uncommon set of eight early translations by Thomas Corneille (1625–1709), the younger brother of Pierre, 'le Grand Corneille', published in the context of the Italian Accademie.
£750
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ROCCA, Bernardino.
De’ discorsi di guerra … libri Quattro, dove s’insegna a’ capitani, et soldati il modo di condurre esserciti,...
Venice, Damiano Zenaro, 1582.
First edition of Rocca’s military treatise, from the library of the world’s oldest defence and security think tank.
£450
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‘RIZZA, Zanclevio’, pseud. [i.e. Vincenzo LAZZARI GUERRA], editor and contributor.
Piccola raccolta di...
‘Medina’ [i.e. Mori], ‘Frangipane Mozza-Sai’ [i.e. Michelini e Tetoldini], 1788.
A very rare collection of satirical verses by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian authors, published under a false Medina imprint, edited and with some poems previously unpublished by ‘Zanclevio Rizza’, now for the first time identified with Vincenzo Lazzari Guerra.
£500
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PASSI, Carlo.
La selva di varia istoria … la quale avanti andava attorno stampata sotto nome finto di Annotationi dell’Infortunio,...
Venice, Altobello Salicato, 1572.
An unsophisticated copy of Passi and Ruscelli’s elaborations and explanations of Paolo Giovio’s history of his own time, bound in contemporary limp vellum reusing manuscript waste.
£500
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MEFFRET, Johann.
Sermones Meffreth alias Ortulus regine de tempore. Pars hyemalis.
[Basel, Nicolaus Kesler, not after 1485.]
A volume of sermons with early English annotations, in a binding featuring tools attributed to an early Cambridge workshop known as the Unicorn Binder.
£6500
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[GAMES AND RECREATION.]
Trattato de’ giochi e de’ divertimenti permessi, o proibiti ai Cristiani.
Rome, Michel'Angelo Barbiellini, 1768.
First edition of a treatise on games and recreation compiled in Rome by the publisher Barbiellini, with the purpose of providing a comprehensive ethical evaluation of all manner of diversions.
£650
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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