Search results
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BISSON, Louis-Auguste.
‘Wildfire’.
Paris, c. 1844.
An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times.
£14500
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GIBBON, Edward.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
London, W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1776–88.
First editions of all six volumes of Gibbon’s ‘masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style’ (PMM). The first volume here is of the second variant (of two), with the errata corrected as far as p. 183 and X4 and a4 so signed. The first edition of volume I (1000 copies, published...
£14000
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DE MOIVRE, Abraham.
The Doctrine of Chances: or, a Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play.
London, W. Pearson for the author, 1718.
First edition, a very good copy with likely Virginian provenance, of this classic on the theory of probability and game theory, inscribed in multiple hands aboard the sixty-gun warship HMS Dunkirk, a human moment of indulgence stolen between the drudgery and danger of life aboard a Royal Naval ship.
£14000
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DONNE, John.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...
London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.
Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.
£13500
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FENTON, Roger.
Lichfield Cathedral, south transept portal and steps.
1858.
A fine print of one of Fenton's most striking architectural photographs, the details of the stonework given human scale, and a touch of mystery, with the figure posed half-in and half-out of the doorway. It was one of a number of images of Lichfield which 'from a restricted distance, move around the...
£12500
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PAULUS DE CASTRO.
Super primo, secundo et tertio libro Codicis.
Venice, [Andreas Torresanus, de Asula], 30 June 1487.
Rare second edition of Paulus de Castro’s commentary on the first three books of the Codex of Justinian, from the library of Dürer’s closest friend Willibald Pirckheimer.
£12500
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[MASTER OF THE GENEVA BOCCACCIO.]
St Bartholomew in India, miniature cut from a copy of Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale.
[France (Loire Valley, Nantes or Angers), fifteenth century (c. 1460s).]
An iconographically intriguing miniature by one of the greatest painters in the circle of Jean Fouquet, from a deluxe copy of Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale almost certainly commissioned by King René of Anjou.
£12500
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SICARDO, José.
Christiandad del Japon, y dilatada persecucion que padecio. Memorias sacras, de los martyres de las ilustres religiones...
Madrid, Francisco Sanz, 1698.
Rare first edition of this important and comprehensive account of Christian missions to Japan by the Spanish Augustinian José Sicardo (1643–1715).
£12000
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PETTY, William, Sir.
Another Essay in Political Arithmetick, concerning the growth of the City of London: with the measures,...
London, printed by H.H. for Mark Pardoe, 1683.
First edition, scarce – seemingly unique in its uncut and unbound state – of Petty’s first work of political arithmetic, a landmark work of statistics, demography, and economics.
£12000
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PONTANO, Giovanni.
De rebus coelestibus.
Naples, ‘ex officina Sigismundi Mayr Germani : summo ingenio artificis Ioannetto Salodio : Antonio Vuerengrundt : Evangelista Papiensi :...
First editions of three works on cosmology, ethics, and astrology by the Neapolitan humanist, poet, and polymath Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), an important sammelband from the celebrated library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), professor of natural philosophy and natural history at the University...
£11000
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[LOO, Pieter van, attributed.]
156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits.
[Holland, c. 1760–80].
A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784).
£100000
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MARKHAM, Gervase.
Cavalarice, or the English Horseman: Contayning all the Art of Horse-manship, asmuch as is necessary for any...
London, Edward Allde for Edward White, [1616 –] 1617.
A beautiful copy of the second edition, ‘corrected and augmented’, of Markham’s Cavalarice, exceptionally well-preserved in a contemporary binding, from the library of the antiquary Sir John Marsham.
£9750
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[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 by Staggemeier and Welcher, of this monumental feat of British printing, the grandest and most ambitious of all English Bibles.
£9500
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CAESAR, Gaius Julius.
C. Julii Caesaris quae extant. Accuratissime cum libris editis & MSS optimis collata, recognita & correcta....
London, Jacob Tonson, 1712.
First edition of the celebrated Tonson’s Caesar edited by Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), ‘the most sumptuous classical work which this country has produced’ (Dibdin).
£9500
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HURTADO, Eugenio, scribe.
[Missal for feast days.]
Madrid, 1827.
An extraordinary and enormous liturgical manuscript with painted and stencilled decorations, in a remarkable binding on wheels for ease of movement
£9500
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DAMPIER, William, et al.
A Collection of Voyages. In four volumes. Containing I. Captain William Dampier’s voyages round...
London, for James and John Knapton, 1729.
The first collected edition, ‘considered by many to be the best’ (Hill), illustrated with seventeen maps and forty-six plates.
£9500
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THEOCRITUS et al.
Theocriti aliorumque poetarum Idyllia. Eiusdem Epigrammata …
[Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1579.
An outstanding volume uniting the Estienne Greek bucolic poets (Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus) and the Estienne Greek Psalms in an Henri Estienne presentation binding.
£9000
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ANTONIUS de Vercellis.
Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...
Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93.
A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites.
£8500
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LATHAM, Simon.
Latham’s Falconry: or, the Faulcons Lure, and Cure: in two Books. The first, concerning the ordering and training...
London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for John Harison, 1633.
First collected edition (third edition of volume I, originally published in 1614 and reissued in 1615, second edition of volume II, originally published in 1618).
£8500
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BRANDT, Bill.
Stonehenge: after Thomas Hardy,
c. 1946.
In Bill Brandt Behind the Camera, Mark Haworth-Booth writes on Brandt’s landscape photographs from the five-year period between 1945 and 1950:
£8500