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AMBROSE of Milan, AUGUSTINE, and HIERONYMUS.
De virginitate opuscula Sanctorum doctorum, Ambrosii, Hieronymi et Augustini....
Rome, Paolo Manuzio, 1563.
Four first editions from Paolo Manuzio’s Roman press of Latin and Greek patristic texts on virginity, bound together at an early stage and annotated by Bernardino Pino, a cleric, courtier, dramatist, and humanist at the court of the Duke of Urbino.
£4000
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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
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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
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HOMER.
Ομηρου Ιλιας και Οδυσσεια μετα της εξηγησιος. Homeri Ilias et Ulyssea cum interpretatione...
Basel, Johann Herwagen, 1535.
First Herwagen edition of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, with the scholia of Didymus, edited, according to Dibdin, by the great German classicist Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574), with interesting near-contemporary annotations by a student of Greek, likely drawn from Thomas Grynaeus’s lectures in...
£6000
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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Collectanea adagiorum.
[(Colophon:) Strasbourg, Matthias Schürer, 1519.]
Intensely annotated copy of a lifetime edition of Erasmus’ repository of Greek and Latin proverbs. The first version of the Adagia, containing about eight hundred maxims, had been published in 1500. Erasmus continued to add to his thesaurus for over thirty years, the success of this...
£5850
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CURTIUS RUFUS, Quintus.
De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni regis Macedonum opus … Accesserunt enim antehac nunquam visa … Omnia...
Basel, Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, March 1545.
Handsome folio edition of Curtius Rufus’ history of Alexander the Great, edited by the German humanist Christoph Bruno (fl. 1541–1566), with extensive sixteenth-century marginal annotations.
£2000
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[POSTCARDS.] ‘PSH’.
Twenty-nine manuscript postcards.
London, 1912–c. 1920?.
A rare, personal, and comic snapshot into London life and English humour in the first quarter of the twentieth-century.
£375
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[CHOISY, François Timoléon, Abbé de.]
Journal ou suite de voyage de Siam. En forme des lettres familieres fait en M.DC.LXXXV...
C. Amsterdam, Pierre Mortier, 1687.
Amsterdam edition, issued the same year as the first Paris edition, recounting a voyage to Siam by the prolific French writer, former cross-dresser, and Jesuit priest, the Abbé de Choisy.
£300
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COCHRANE, John Dundas.
Narrative of a pedestrian journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, from the frontiers of China to the...
London, John Murray, 1824.
First edition of this account by the Scottish naval officer Cochrane (1793–1825). Having unsuccessfully offered his services for the exploration of the Niger, Cochrane ‘left England with the intention of making a tour of the world by way of Russia, Siberia, and North America. He travelled by Dieppe,...
£350
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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
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DU HALDE, Jean-Baptiste.
A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together with the Kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet,...
London, T. Gardner for Edward Cave, 1738 [– 1741].
The first complete English translation of Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique … de l’Empire de la Chine (1735), the ‘Bible of European sinophilia’ (Löwendahl). Based on the reports of major Jesuit missionaries, and shaped by the earlier Historia of Martini and Mémoires of Le...
£15000
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GOLOVNIN, Vasilii Mikhailovich.
Recollections of Japan, comprising a particular account of the religion, language, government,...
London, Henry Colburn, 1819.
First edition in English of Golovnin’s account of Japan and the Japanese, derived from his Russian original of 1816, with a preface on British relations with Japan and an appendix detailing Khvostov and Davydov’s fur-trading voyages to the northwest coast of America. Recollections followed Colburn’s...
£1000
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GROSIER, Jean-Baptiste and Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’ANVILLE.
Atlas général de la Chine; pour servir à la description générale...
Paris, Moutard, 1785.
A handsome atlas with a full set of 54 maps and plans of China by the celebrated French geographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville, the basis ‘for all maps of China, both in China and abroad, down to the early twentieth century’ (Wilkinson).
£4500
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DENNYS, Nicholas Belfield (editor).
The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A complete guide to the open ports of those countries,...
Shortrede and Co., 1867.
First edition, complete with all twenty-nine maps and plans, of this remarkable guide to the open ports of China and Japan in the late 1860s, aimed at ‘travellers, merchants, and residents’, compiled by Nicholas Dennys (1839–1900), a noted scholar of Chinese folklore, with the sinologist William...
£4750
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DENNYS, Nicholas Belfield.
The folk-lore of China, and its affinities with that of the Aryan and Semitic races …
London, Trübner and Co.; Hong Kong, “China Mail” Office, 1876.
First edition of a pioneering work on Chinese folklore by the British sinologist Nicholas Dennys (1839–1900), based on a series of articles he contributed to the China Review.
£550
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EARL, George Samuel Windsor.
The eastern seas, or voyages and adventures in the Indian archipelago, in 1832-33-34, comprising a...
London, Wm H. Allen and Co., 1837.
First edition. Earl (1813–1865) spent two years voyaging in the Indonesian archipelago before being given his own command of the small schooner Stamford on a trading voyage to Borneo. He was an intelligent observer, and his account contains much important information on Singapore, Java, Bangkok, and...
£650
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MENDES PINTO, Fernão.
The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, a Portugal: during his travels for the space of one...
London, Printed by J. Macock, for Henry Cripps, and Lodowick Lloyd … 1653.
First edition in English, translated by Henry Cogan, of a travel best-seller, first published posthumously in 1614; there were nineteen editions in six languages by the end of the century, ‘rivalling the popularity of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. It is, in fact, an exotic and imaginative...
£6500
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HALL, Basil.
Account of a voyage of discovery to the west coast of Corea, and the great Loo-Choo Island; with an appendix, containing...
London, John Murray, 1818.
First edition of this important work on Korea and the Ryukyu Islands by Basil Hall (1788-1844), narrating his 1816–17 voyage aboard the Lyra in the company of Murray Maxwell in the Alceste. The first chapter is devoted to the west coast of Korea – ‘until then unknown except by hearsay, and drawn...
£1250
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KRASHENINNIKOV, Stepan Petrovich; James GRIEVE, translator.
The history of Kamtschatka, and the Kurilski Islands, with the countries...
Gloucester, R. Raikes for T. Jefferys, 1764.
First edition of this English abridgement of Stepan Krasheninnikov’s account of the Kamchatka Peninsula and Kuril Islands, ‘the first scientific account of those regions’ (Hill), illustrated with two maps by Thomas Jefferys and five engraved plates.
£1850
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MARSDEN, William, translator.
Memoirs of a Malayan family, written by themselves, and translated from the original by W....
London, printed for the Oriental Translation Fund, sold by J. Murray and Parbury, Allen & Co., 1830.
First edition, Sir Thomas Phillipps’s copy, of Marsden’s translation of an account of the travels and trials of a Malayan family trading pepper in Java and Sumatra in the 1750s and 1760s, including their encounters with the Dutch and British East India Companies.
£1250