Recent Acquisitions
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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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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and seventeenth-century Italian authors, published under a false Medina imprint, edited and with some poems previously unpublished by ‘Zanclevio Rizza’, now for the first time identified with Vincenzo Lazzari Guerra.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
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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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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