[SAINTE-HILAIRE, Émile Marco de.]

Réclamation addressée à S. Ece. Mgr. Delavau, préfet de police, par Modeste Agnès, patentée...

Paris, chez les marchands de nouveautés, 1821.

Rare first edition of this work on Parisian prostitution, attributed to the writer and journalist Émile Marco de Sainte-Hilaire (1796–1887). The Réclamation is presented as a letter from the prostitute Modeste Agnès to the newly-appointed Paris chief of police, Guy Delavau (1787–1874),...

£850

BACON, Francis. 

Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, operum moralium et civilium tomus … cura...

London, Edward Griffin [and John Haviland] for Richard Whitaker [and John Norton], 1638. 

First edition, first issue, a copy from the celebrated Albani library: tangible witness to the early and fecund reception of Bacon’s thought in the circles of Galilean science in Italy. 

£3500

[PONTIFICAL.]

Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. primum, nunc denuo Urbani Papae Octavi auctoritate recognitum.

Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1663.

An attractive Plantin-Moretus Pontifical, splendidly preserved in a richly baroque binding.

£4500

[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 The excessively rare ‘Pékin’ imprint was printed in very small numbers and swiftly withdrawn because of a statement on page 104...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

SCARPA, Antonio.

Index rerum Musei Anatomici Ticinensis accedit Antonii Scarpa in solemni Theatri Anatomici Ticinensis dedication....

Pavia, Bolzani, 1804.

Uncommon catalogue of the Anatomical Museum in Pavia, built as a complement to the anatomical theatre which was established by the anatomist Antonio Scarpa (1752-1832), who had been appointed professor of anatomy at the university in 1783 with the intention of transforming Pavia into one of the leading...

£350

[BEER.]

Jenaischer allgemeiner Bier-Comment nebst angehängtem Bier-Prozess.

‘Eschwig, Otter & Kunitz, 183*.’

An apparently unrecorded humorous handbook of drinking rules for students at the university of Jena, famous both as a centre of German idealism and Romanticism, and for its professors, who included Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, and Schlegel.

£375

[CHARITY.]

Costituzioni della Congregazione della Carità di Parma sotti gli auspizi di San Filippo Neri rinnovate nell’anno...

Parma, Stamperia Reale, [1778].

Uncommon set of constitutions for the Congregazione della Carità of Parma, printed after its refoundation in 1777. After a brief introduction, the constitutions set out the procedures for the election of the confreres and their reception, the times and order for meetings, discipline within the...

£300

LUCANGELI, Carlo.

Il colosseo di Roma della grandezza di palmi 2449 di circonferenza, ridotto alla circonferenza di palmi 40 49/60...

Rome, Luigi Perego Salvioni, [1813].

Rare account of the extraordinary scale model of the Colosseum, constructed over more than two decades decades by the architect and scenographer Carlo Lucangeli (1747-1812). Although cork models of ancient buildings had been popular for more than a century, this wooden model, depicting the Colosseum...

£450

DURINI, Angelo.

Versi latini dell’ eminentissimo Sig. Cardinale Angelo Durini sopra il Cocchio Volante del Sig. di Montgolfier...

[Milan, 1784.]

First edition, with a parallel Italian translation, of these Latin verses commemorating the first Montgolfier experiments with balloon flight by the Milanese diplomat and cardinal Angelo Maria Durini (1725–1796).

£1250

GAYOT DE PITAVAL (Conseil).

Question d’estat: fille reclamée par deux meres.

Paris, Nicolas le Gras, 1716.

First edition of this account by the famous advocate François Gayot de Pitaval (1673–1743) of a 1709 case, where a midwife had substituted a new-born girl who was then claimed both by the real mother and the woman to whom the baby had been given. Pitaval’s account details the principles by...

£350

ISOCRATES.

Orationes et epistolae gravitatis et suavitatis plenae de Greco in Latinum pridem conversae, nunc recognitae, per Hieronymu[m]...

Paris, Michel de Vascosan, 1553.

A handsome Latin edition of twenty-one works by the Athenian orator Isocrates whose work was highly influential on later education, oratory and writing. Isocrates (436–338 BC) studied under Socrates and the sophists, before establishing a famous school of rhetoric which attracted pupils from...

£750

ANDREWS, Mark E.

The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...

Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

A lavishly illustrated catalogue, tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period. Some 367 printed books, manuscripts, and maps are presented in chronological order, highlighting the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented...

£85

GALIER, W.H.

A visit to Blestland.

London, George Robertson & co., 1896.

First edition of this novel of utopian socialism which lambasts capitalism and religion. Blestland is a republican workers’ paradise located on a different planet which reveals how the divisions of earth can be abolished: by limiting ‘the enormous power for evil which capital can wield’....

£280

BRITISH MUSEUM.

List of Missing English Theological and Devotional Books.

[London, 1940s.]

Mimeographed typescript of books missing after the losses suffered by the British Museum Library during the Second World War. This is one of several lists of books destroyed, produced both as a record and as a tool for acquiring replacement copies – this copy appears to have been used for that...

£275

COMTE, Auguste, and Albert CROMPTON (editor).

Confessions and Testament of August Comte: and his correspondence with...

Liverpool, Young, 1910.

First edition in English of Comte’s Confessions, which first appeared with his ‘testament’ in French in 1884. These take the form of ‘Twelve Saint Clotildes’, a series of annual confessions which he recited to his muse’s grave. Clotilde de Vaux was a divorced woman whom Comte met...

£80

HUGHES, Ted.

T.S. Eliot: A Tribute by the Poet Laureate.

[London,] ‘Privately Printed by [the Salient Seedling for] Faber and Faber’, [August 1987].

A privately printed tribute to T.S. Eliot, limited to 250 copies signed by Ted Hughes. The text comprises an address given by Hughes on 26 September 1986, at the unveiling of Eliot’s blue plaque at Kensington Court Gardens.

£175

[MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]

Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...

Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.

Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...

£375

[SYPHILIS.]

Della tabe dorsale ovvero della cura della consunzione negli uomini e nelle donne con la spiegazione de’ sintomi,...

Venice, Graziosi, 1785.

First Italian translation, uncommon, of Tabes dorsalis: or, the cause of consumption in young men and women, by ‘a Physician of Bristol’.

£135

STACEY, George et al.

Daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits of Stacey and members of his family.

London, 1850s.

A handsome set of photographs of the English Quaker and abolitionist George Stacey (1787-1857), his second wife Mary née Barclay (1797-1876) and members of their extended family, taken by some of the finest portraitists in England at that time.

£7500

[FISCHER, Friedrich Christoph Jonathan, and Pierre-Gustave BRUNET (translator)].

Les nuits d’érpeuve des villageoises...

Paris, Jules Gay, 1861.

First edition in French, numbered 26 of 100 copies, of this obscure study, first published in 1780 as Über die Probenächte der teutschen Bauernmädchen (‘On the Rehearsal Nights of Teutonic Peasant Women’). Brunet’s ‘postface’ builds on the comparisons made in Fischer’s original...

£150