FABERT, Abraham.

Voyage du roy a Metz, l’occasion d’iceluy: ensemble les signes de resiouyssance faits par ses habitans pour...

[Metz, Fabert,] 1610.

A splendid hand-coloured and gilt copy of the first edition of this handsome festival book commemorating Henri IV’s entry into Metz in March 1603, published seven years after the event and in the same year that Henri was assassinated by François Ravaillac.

£60000

GONZÁLES DE MENDOZA, Juan, and Robert PARKE, translator. 

The Historie of the great and mightie Kingdome of China,...

London, Printed by J. Wolfe for Edward White, 1588 [or 1589]. 

First edition in English, rare, of the first significant European study of China, ‘one of the outstanding “best-sellers” of the sixteenth century’ (Boxer). 

£50000

[QUESNAY, François].

DU PONT DE NEMOURS, Pierre Samuel, editor. Physiocratie, ou constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus...

First edition of the ‘Bible’ of the Physiocrats and one of the most important and original works on political economy to be published before the Wealth of Nations. The excessively rare ‘Pékin’ imprint was printed in very small numbers and swiftly withdrawn because of a statement on page 104...

£37500

HAKLUYT, Richard.

The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the most...

Imprinted at London by George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, Deputies to Christopher Barker … 1589.

First edition, a fine copy, with the world map, in a strictly contemporary London binding, of the first collection of English voyages.

£350000

THOMSON, John.

Illustrations of China and its People. A Series of two Hundred Photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the...

London, Sampson Low &c, 1873–1874.

A good copy of this rare work (vol. I marked second edition, the rest first editions), showing superb images of Imperial China including rare portraits of high government officials as well as a large number of architectural and scenic views; this item ranks amongst the most spectacular photographically...

£35000

[INDULGENCE.] 

Letter of Indulgence (in Catalan), incipit ‘A Honor …’, granted by Cardinal Luis de Milá,...

[Lerida, Heinrich Botel, c. 1498.] 

Extremely rare incunable indulgence in Catalan granted by Luis de Milá, Bishop of Lérida, in favour of the living (as opposed to the dead, see below) to gather funds for the repair of the old cathedral of Lérida, printed at Lérida, the second city of Catalonia, about one hundred miles...

£34000

FOREST, BISSON FRERES, &c. 

A collection of eight albumen prints (or salt and albumen collages) from mammoth-plate negatives...

France, 1864-5.

An exceptional series of oversize prints commissioned by the Compagnie de Chemins de Fer de l‘Ouest to commemorate the construction of a series of new bridges completed 1861–1864, including the metal bridge at Orival, later destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War, and the oblique stone bridge of...

£30000

ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.

Histoire de la mission des peres Capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...

Paris, François Huby, 1614.

Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy, of the first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed...

£30000

ALLIONI, Carlo.

Flora Pedemontana sive enumeratio methodica stirpium indigenarum Pedemontii [– Florae Pedemontanae icones accedit...

Turin, Giovanni Michele Briolo, 1785.

First edition of the earliest Italian regional floras by the ‘Linnaeus of Piedmont’, here in the extremely rare hand-coloured state and extensively annotated by Giovanni Battista Balbis, the author’s pupil and successor at the Botanical Garden of the University of Turin.

£30000

[MONTESQUIEU, Charles Louis de Secondat].

De l’esprit des loix, ou du rapport que les loix doivent avoir avec la constitution...

Geneva, Barrillot [sic], [1748].

First edition, first issue. Montesquieu’s masterpiece of political theory, the principles of which formed the ideological basis of the French and American revolutions and were the cornerstone of the United States Constitution. Montesquieu argues that culture cannot be abstracted from the climate...

£25750

[ROZIER.] 

Le rozier historial de France contenant deux roziers.  Le p[re]mier rozier contient plusieurs belles rozes et boutons...

Paris, [Gilles Couteau for François Regnault,] 26 February 1522 [i.e. 1523]. 

First edition, the very handsome Fairfax-Murray copy, of the Rozier historial de France. 

£25000

LACTANTIUS.

Opera.

[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.

Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...

£25000

[LUYNES, Honoré Théodore Paul Joseph d’Albert, duc de.]  VIGNES, Louis, photographer; Charles NEGRES, printer. 

Voyage d’exploration à la mer Morte, à Petra et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain par M. Le Duc de Luynes,...

Printed 1874–76. 

A fine set of the photogravures for which Nègre was justly celebrated, from the collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes.  The titles and plate numbers are added in pencil, likely by the author or publisher (Arthus Bertrand, Paris, 1874-76).  The albumen prints, from the original negatives...

£25000

AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].  

Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.

Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.

First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.

£22500

[HAMILTON, Alexander, James MADISON, and John JAY].

The Federalist: A Collection of Essays written in Favor of the new Constitution,...

New York: Printed and sold by John and Andrew M’Lean … 1788.

First edition in book form of The Federalist Papers, the single most important work of American political philosophy, a normal paper copy, very rare in the original boards, uncut and largely unopened. Volume II is in a mixed state, with the error ‘Letter LXXX’ rather than ‘LXX’...

£220000

HAKLUYT, Richard.

The principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over-land,...

London, George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1598 [– 1600].

Second edition, first issue of ‘Hakluyt’s monumental masterpiece, and the great prose epic of the Elizabethan period’ (Penrose), complete with the section on the conquest of Cadiz by Essex (vol. I, pp. 607-619) ordered suppressed by Elizabeth I in 1599 (in ESTC state 1a).

£20000

[GRADUAL.]

Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.

Italy (Umbria), end of thirteenth century.

A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi...

£20000

ROUQUET, Jean-André. 

The present State of the Arts in England.  By M. Rouquet, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and...

London, for J. Nourse, 1755. 

First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, from the library of the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). 

£19500

[CANONS REGULAR OF THE LATERAN.]

Regula et constitutiones Canonicorum Regularium congregationis S. Salvatoris, Ordinis Sancti...

Rome, apud Paulum Bladum, 1592. 

The most complete edition, rare, of the Rule and Constitutions of the Order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine of the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour, printed on vellum, with two seemingly unrecorded cancels, from the library of a former Abbot General of the Order. 

£18500

MASTER B.F.

Three very large historiated initials cut from a set of choirbooks.

Italy (Lodi), early sixteenth century.

Three extremely fine initials by the enigmatic artist known as Master B.F., one of the most inventive and accomplished illuminators of the Italian High Renaissance. They come almost certainly from a magnificent set of about twenty choirbooks belonging to the Olivetan monastery of Santi Angelo...

£150000