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  1. TAYLOR, Alfred Swaine.

    On the Processes for detecting Blood in medico-legal Cases.

    [London, Guy’s Hospital Reports, 1870.]

    Taylor’s own offprint of this interesting article on detecting blood ‘for the purposes of pathology and legal medicine’, in which he publishes, for the first time, a description of the spectroscopic process developed by the eminent microscopist and geologist Henry Clifton Sorby (1826–1908),...

    £350

  2. NAVARRETE, Domingo Fernández.

    Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China. Descripcion breve...

    Madrid, Juan Garcia Infançon for Florian Anisson, 1676.

    Scarce first edition, one of the most important early studies of Chinese history, religion, philosophy, and culture, by the Spanish Dominican Domingo Navarrete (d. 1689).

    £4750

  3. FORTUNE, Robert.

    A residence among the Chinese: inland, on the coast, and at sea. Being a narrative of scenes and adventures during...

    London, John Murray, 1857.

    First edition recounting the three years spent in China between 1853 and 1856 by the Scottish traveller Robert Fortune (1812-1880), a botanist, horticulturalist, and former agent of the Tea Commission, along with his recommendations for British policy in light of the outbreak of the Second Opium War....

    £400

  4. ORLEANS, Pierre Joseph d’ and Francis EGERTON, 1st Earl of ELLESMERE (editor and translator).

    History of the two Tartar conquerors...

    London, The Hakluyt Society, 1854.

    First edition thus, a Hakluyt society translation of Pierre Joseph d’Orleans’ history of the Manchu conquest and the reign of the Kangxi emperor, appended with reports by the seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary travellers Ferdinand Verbiest and Tomás Pereira.

    £175

  5. PEISSEL, Michel.

    Tibetan pilgrimage. Architecture of the sacred land. Text and watercolors by Michel Peissel.

    New York, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2005.

    ‘Tibetan Pilgrimage … is the result of forty-five years of study by author and illustrator Michel Peissel … With nearly a hundred exceptional watercolour illustrations, this book reveals the elegance, variety, and originality of Tibetan architecture in all its splendor’ (dust jacket).

    £75

  6. SALE, Richard.

    Mapping the Himalayas. Michael Ward and the Pundit legacy.

    Ross-on-Wye, Carreg Limited, 2009.

    Limited edition, no. 13 of 50 copies, signed by Richard Sale. ‘Who is there whose heart has not been thrilled when they first heard the stories of the Pundits, that remarkable group of men who, from the 1860s through to the 1890s, were sent to map clandestinely the remote areas north of British India...

    £125

  7. ALEXANDER, William.

    The costume of China, illustrated in forty-eight coloured engravings …

    London, William Miller, 1805.

    An incomplete first edition of William Alexander’s important and widely popular illustrated work on China, containing 44 of the original 48 aquatint plates. A one-time student of William Pars and later Julius Caesar Ibbetson, Alexander travelled to China as artist-in-residence for the diplomatic trade...

    £750

  8. STAPLETON, Thomas. 

    Promptuarium Catholicum ad instructionem concionatorum contra haereticos nostri temporis, super omnia evangelia...

    Antwerp, Pierre Beller, 1592. 

    Rare third edition, expanded, of Stapleton’s handbook or ‘storehouse’ of scriptural devotions for Sundays and feast days, first published in 1589.  An independent companion volume for the weekdays in Lent was first published in 1594. 

    £700

  9. MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa. 

    Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...

    Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846. 

    Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento. 

    £175

  10. [MILAN, province of.]

    Ordo admittendi virgines ad monasterii ingressum habitumque regularem suscipiendi ritus item servandus...

    Milan, Tamburini and Valdoni, 1843.

    Scarce edition of this set of rites for the admission of women to convents in the province of Milan, covering their investiture, tonsure, and vows, with instructions printed in red, texts to be spoken and sung in black, and with printed music for hymns and blessings. The first edition appears...

    £200

  11. BEAUVILLIERS, Marie de.

    Conférences spirituelles d’une supérieure à ses religieuses ... d’après un manuscrit revu et mis...

    Paris, Moquet et Cie for Toulouse, 1838.

    Scarce second edition (first 1837, also rare) of this spiritual guide by Marie de Beauvilliers (1574–1667), edited from a manuscript by the historian l'abbé Louis Gaudreau (1798–1872) and including a short biography of the author.

    £400

  12. [DOMINICAN NUNS.]

    Regola e costituzioni delle suore di S. Domenico riviste e ristampate d’ordine del rmo p. vicario generale...

    Rome, Bernardo Morini, 1853.

    Very rare first edition thus of the regulations governing Dominican nuns, published by order of Alexandre Vincent Jandel (1810–1872), who served as Master of the Order of Preachers from 1850 until his death.

    £250

  13. MAURIZI, Maria Luisa.

    Morali e divote riflessioni a tutti utilissime e specialmente alle persone claustrali scritte dalla serva...

    Rome, Tipografia della Pia Unione alle Terme, 1833.

    Uncommon first edition of this collection of meditations on the religious life, by the Roman nun Maria Luisa Maurizi (born Giacinta Gertrude Maurizi, 1770–1831), and published posthumously at the behest of her spiritual director, Agostino Romagnoli.

    £150

  14. GUILLON, Pierre.

    Danti voci suae vocem virtutis. Quaestio theologica … Has theses … ac praeside, S.M.N.D.D. Ludovico Bellayer,...

    Poitiers, Jean-Felix Faulcon, [1770].

    An apparently unrecorded broadside giving the text of theological theses defended by Pierre Guillon of Poitiers for entry into minor orders. A bachelor of theology from the city’s university, Guillon’s gruelling five-hour examination took place on 22 November 1770 between one and six o’clock,...

    £275

  15. ROMANA, Provost.

    Nell’aprirsi della nuova chiesa dalla veneranda, antichissima Confraternita de’ Disciplinanti in Dogliani...

    Mondovì, Pietro Francesco and Luiggi Rossi, [1756].

    Unrecorded provincially printed broadside celebrating the opening of a new church of the Confraternity of the Disciplinants of Dogliani.

    £275

  16. [BIBLE.]

    The Holy Bible. The Old Testament (& New Testament), embellished with Engravings, from Pictures and Designs by the Most...

    London: Printed for Thomas Macklin, by Thomas Bensley, 1800.

    A wonderful set, in an extremely attractive contemporary binding, of this monumental feat of British printing, the grandest and most ambitious of all English Bibles. Printed on a new, thick wove Whatman paper in a specially designed large type, and illustrated with seventy full-page engravings...

    £10000

  17. BYRON, George Gordon Noël, Lord Byron

    Manfred, a dramatic poem. 

    London, John Murray, 1817. 

    A contemporary sammelband of three works by Byron, two of them in first edition. 

    £950

  18. THACKERAY, William Makepeace. 

    The Virginians, a tale of the last century. 

    London, Bradbury & Evans, November 1857 [– October 1859].

    First edition in the original monthly parts of Thackeray’s American sequel to Henry Esmond

    £600

  19. [JUVENILIA.] 

    Racconti per gli adolescenti.  Con tavole miniate. 

    Trieste, ‘Sezione Letterario-Artistica del Lloyd Austriaco’, 1857. 

    First and only edition, extremely rare, of these cautionary tales for adolescents, featuring inter alia debates among children on the ethics of taxidermy, a brawl in Latin lessons, arrests for embezzlement, and the unjust incarceration of a schoolboy. 

    £350

  20. PIEROTTI, A. 

    Il cervello e la difesa delle donne sestine giocose ... precedute da indirizzo, e dedica in vario metro. 

    Florence, N. Fabbrini, 1842. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of this misogynistic poem by the Florentine poet Pierotti, in which he pretends to explore the female brain with reference to Galen, accusing women of, for example, greed, theft, cunning, vanity, and irascibility.  The second part is a somewhat patronising defense...

    £375