[MACARTNEY EMBASSY.]

Archive of letters and documents from the Macartney Embassy to China.

Britain and China, 1792–1833.

A remarkable and largely unpublished archive from Lord Macartney’s embassy to China of 1792–4 – a pivotal moment in relations between China and the West – including a diplomatic autograph letter signed by Macartney, autograph correspondence between him and other leading figures of the mission,...

£75000

NEWTON, Isaac.

Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light. Also two treatises of...

London, for Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, printers to the Royal Society, 1704.

First edition of Newton’s Opticks, ‘which did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely, placed it on a scientific basis’, and ‘expounds Newton’s corpuscular or emission theory of light, and first contains his important optical discoveries in a collected...

£70000

QUR’AN,

signed Ghaybi bin ‘Umar, Edirne.

Ottoman Turkey, dated the end of Muharram AH 822 (February AD 1419).

An important early Ottoman Qur’an manuscript, copied in the period (from 1363 to 1453) when the capital of the Ottoman Empire was based at Edirne (Adrianople) in Eastern Thrace. Very few Qur’ans are attributed to this centre but the quality of this manuscript, still evident despite some damage...

£65000

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

SCHRÖDINGER, Erwin, et al.

A collection of offprints and papers from the library of Nándor Balázs.

1902–1961.

A remarkable collection of offprints and papers from the library of Hungarian-American physicist Nándor Balázs, laboratory assistant in the early 1950s to the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, comprising an exceptionally strong core of Schrödinger’s works – many of...

£50000

ARCHIMEDES.

Τα μεχρι νυν σωζομενα, απαντα … Opera, quae quidem extant, omnia, multis iam seculis desiderata...

Basel, Johannes Herwagen, [(colophon): March] 1544.

Editio princeps of the works of Archimedes, ‘the greatest mathematician and engineer of antiquity’ (PMM). Prior to this edition only a small tract in Latin translation, published in 1503, and a partial translation by Tartaglia, published in 1543, had appeared.

£45000

GAZA, Theodorus.

Grammatica introductiva; De mensibus; Apollonius Dyscolus: De constructione; Herodianus: De numeris.

[(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, 25 December 1495.]

A beautiful example of early Greek printing, containing the editio princeps of the grammar of Theodorus Gaza, and one of the first texts to be printed entirely in Greek.

£45000

[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

MARX, Karl.

Capital. A critical analysis of capitalist production … translated from the third edition by Samuel Moore and Edward...

London, Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1887.

A remarkably well-preserved copy of the first edition, first issue, one of only five hundred copies (Sraffa), of the English translation of Marx’s Das Kapital, published in London four years after Marx’s death under the editorship of Engels.

£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

[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

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