TENNYSON, Alfred, and Eleanor FORTESCUE-BRICKDALE, illustrator.

The Idylls of the King … Illustrated in Colour...

London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1911].

Deluxe edition of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King illustrated by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872–1945), no. 124 of 250 copies signed by the artist.

£600

ROSSI, Ottavio, and Bartolomeo FONTANA, compiler.

Lettere del Sig. Ottavio Rossi. Raccolte da Bartolomeo Fontana ...

Brescia, Bartolomeo Fontana, 1621.

First edition of over 150 letters by the poet and scholar Ottavio Rossi (1570–1630), printed in his native city of Brescia and including a letter to the painter Palma Giovane, our copy with a contemporary manuscript note on the artist’s final moments written mere days after his death.

£1250

[BECKFORD, William, and Samuel HENLEY, translator.]

An Arabian Tale, from an unpublished Manuscript. With Notes critical...

London, Printed for W. Clarke … 1809.

Scarce second edition – in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) – of Henley’s English translation of Beckford’s Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author’s wishes and predating publication...

£1500

[HEMSTERHUIS, François.] 

Alexis ou de l’age d’or. 

Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1787. 

First edition of Hemsterhuis’s philosophical dialogue on a ‘golden age’, an influential work of pre-Romantic aesthetics. 

£375

BEBEL, August, and Daniel DE LEON, translator.

Woman under socialism. Translated from the original German of the...

New York, Labor News Press, 1904.

First edition in English, first printing, of Bebel’s Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1884), the initial cause of a bitter rift between its translator, Daniel de Leon, and James Connolly of the Socialist Labor Party, who thought it would scare off female recruits.

£125

ALFIERI, Vittorio, and Charles LLOYD, translator.

The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri; translated from the Italian...

London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1815.

First edition of this translation of Alfieri’s (1749–1803) tragedies into English, undertaken by the poet Charles Lloyd ‘on the suggestion of a friend whose judgement I highly respect’, likely Robert Southey, whom he addresses as his ‘sponsor’ in the ‘Dedicatory Sonnet’.

£450

MOORE, Thomas.

Lalla Rookh, an Oriental Romance … eleventh Edition.

London, [A. & R. Spottiswoode for] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1822.

An early edition of Thomas Moore’s popular orientalist poem Lalla Rookh, owned by a young Siegfried Sassoon.

£450

DICKENS, Charles; Hablot Knight BROWNE and George CATTERMOLE, illustrators.

Master Humphrey’s Clock.

London, Chapman and Hall, 1840–41.

First edition in book form, of Charles Dickens’ weekly periodical, featuring a collection of short stories and his two novels The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge.

£175

BUTLER, Samuel.

Hudibras, in three Parts, written in the Time of the Late Wars … with Annotations and an Index.

London, Thomas Maiden for Vernor & Hood [and others], 1802.

An illustrated pocket edition of Butler’s Hudibras, the most celebrated satire and one of the most influential poems of the seventeenth century, owned by a young Siegfried Sassoon.

£450

SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de.

Cours de linguistique générale.

Lausanne & Paris, Payot, 1916.

First edition of this seminal textbook on linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, fundamental to the development of structuralism and semiotics, introducing distinctions between signified and signifier as well as language systems and speech.

£575

VALERIUS MAXIMUS.

Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.

[(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].

First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.

£2750

TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.

Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.

[(Colophon:) Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546.]

First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations.

£6750

WYLD, James.

The islands of Japan by James Wyld, geographer to the Queen & H.R.H. the Prince Consort.

London, James Wyld, 1 January 1859.

Rare folding map of Japan by James Wyld the younger (1812–1887) published just a few years after the end of its long isolationist era, showing treaty ports opening soon following the signing of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States.

£1500

[MONTANUS, Arnoldus.]

Ambassades mémorables de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales des Provinces Unies, vers les empereurs du Japon....

Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1680.

First edition in French of an important and influential study of Japan by the Dutch theologian and historian Arnoldus Montanus, based on eyewitness accounts from two Dutch East India Company (VOC) missions to Japan in 1649 and 1661.

£3500

GUIGNES, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de.

Voyages à Peking, Manille et l’Île de France, faits dans l’intervalle des années 1784...

Paris, l’Imprimerie Impériale, 1808.

First edition, the complete four-volume set, containing a survey of Chinese history and customs, a narrative of the author’s journey to Beijing as part of the Dutch East India embassy in 1794–5, and a magnificent folio atlas featuring 97 beautiful illustrations and intricate maps.

£6500

EUSTRATIUS of Nicaea, et al.

Ευστρατιου και αλλων τινων επισημων υπομνηματα εις...

[(Colophon:) Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, July 1536.]

Editio princeps of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Eustratius of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus, the Peripatetic philosopher Aspasius, and other anonymous scholiasts, published by the Aldine press, annotated by a contemporary scholar.

£5500

APPIAN of Alexandria.

Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...

Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.

A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.

£3000

BYRON, [George Gordon Noel], Lord, and Thomas MOORE, biographer.

The Works of Lord Byron, with his Letters...

London, [A. & R. Spottiswoode for] John Murray, 1832 [– 1833; – 1837].

A handsome set, attractively bound in Art Deco green morocco, of the collected works of Lord Byron, accompanied by Moore’s life of the poet.

£850

POUND, Ezra.

Cantos 110–116 …

printed & published by the Fuck You / press at a secret location in the lower east side, New York City, USA, 1967.

Unauthorised edition (unsurprisingly), no. 261 of 300 copies. The contents are extracts and include a number of apparently unidentified lines; this piracy forced the publication of Drafts and Fragment of Cantos CX–CXVII (1969).

£150

WATSON, Sheila.

‘The Great War, Wyndham Lewis and the Underground Press’, a special issue of artscanada, November 1967, issue...

The recordings included are three sections from One-Way Song, made at Harvard in 1940 alongside his lecture, and ‘Marshall McLuhan recalls Lewis’.

£50