Search results

  1. [AGRICULTURE.]

    Photographs from the countryside around Beijing.

    [Early twentieth century.]

    Details of agricultural work and life, depicting the growing, transporting and selling of agricultural produce. Men carry loads on their backs, presumably to market or a storehouse; a camel caravan arrives in Beijing; other views show oxen ploughing, ponies carrying heavy loads, market stalls and a remarkable...

    £3000

  2. DIONYSIUS [Periegetes].

    Διονυσιου οικουμενης περιηγησις μετα των Ευσταθιου ‘υπομνηματων...

    London, M. Clark for R. Littlebury, R. Scott, T. Sawbridge & G. Wells, 1688.

    An attractive illustrated edition of Dionysius’s verse geography. Dionysius Periegetes, likely of Alexandria, is thought to have written his description of the world during the reign of Hadrian in the early second century. It was widely read both in the ancient world and subsequently, and is...

    £500

  3. PLUTARCH.

    ...

    Venice, Nicolao di Aristotile detto Zoppino, March 1525.

    An attractive illustrated edition of twenty-seven of Plutarch’s lives, extensively annotated by a Papal tax-collector, in a striking contemporary binding.

    £2750

  4. SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.

    Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...

    Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.

    Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...

    £1250

  5. SPATARI, Pellegrino.

    Le orationi delle Messe di tutto l’anno, tradutte da Don Pellegrino Spathari canonico di Capodistria. Con...

    Pesaro, Bartolomeo Cesano, 1555.

    Rare first edition of this Italian translation of Latin prayers from the Missal by Spatari, a priest from Capodistria (modern-day Koper in Slovenia), dedicated to Vittoria Farnese, Duchess of Urbino (1519–1602).

    £650

  6. [SATIRE.]

    ‘A Letter to Julian’.

    [Circa October, 1685.]

    An attractive scribal copy of a ‘shotgun libel’ in verse, drawing attention to the scandals of the season at Tunbridge Wells and in London society. Captain Robert Julian had been imprisoned for a libel against Charles II in 1684-5; a number of verse satires of the time were addressed to him,...

    £350

  7. CÉSPEDES Y MENESES, Gonzalo de.

    Varia fortuna del soldado Pindaro.

    Lisbon, Geraldo de la Viña, ‘626’ [i.e 1626].

    Rare first edition of this semi-autobiographical picaresque novel, printed while the author was in exile in Lisbon following the publication of his politically controversial Historia apologética en los sucesos del reyno de Aragon (1622).

    £6750

  8. FINÉ, Oronce. 

    Opere di Orontio Fineo … divise in cinque parti, arimetica, geometria, cosmografia, e orivoli, tradotte da...

    Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587. 

    First Italian edition of the works of Finé.  Among the most influential scientific scholars of the sixteenth century, over three decades at the Collège Royale Oronce Finé (1494–1555) made considerable contributions to various branches of mathematics, from geometry and arithmetic to astronomy...

    £2750

  9. [ALMANACK.]

    Calendarium Tyrnaviense ad annum Jesu Chris[ti] M. DCC. XXXI[.] …

    [Tyrnau (Trnava), 1731.]

    A remarkable almanack binding of part-printed, part-manuscript vellum, prepared for presentation at the Habsburg court in Vienna to the Genoese diplomat Clemente Doria.

    £1850

  10. FENNING, Daniel.

    The Ready Reckoner; or Trader’s most useful Assistant, in buying and selling all sorts of Commodities either...

    London, printed for S. Crowder … and B.C. Collins … in Salisbury, 1785.

    First edition thus, edited by the mathematician and almanack-maker Joseph Moon of Salisbury.

    £250

  11. [ALMANACK.]

    L’Esprit des chansonniers, extrain [sic?] des meilleurs poëtes.

    Paris, Le Fuel, [1826?].

    A very rare enamelled metal binding with an enchanting design of birds and squirrels, from the collection of the bookbinder, collector, and bibliographer Léon Gruel.

    £2750

  12. [KAFKA, Franz, Max BROD, et al.]

    Das bunte Buch.

    Leipzig, Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1914.

    First edition of this literary almanack, containing Kafka’s short story Zum Nachdenken für Herrenreiter. The story had been published as part of Kafka’s first collection, Betrachtung, earlier in the year.

    £250

  13. [POETS’ GUILD.]

    Tsekh Poetov I [–III].

    Berlin, S. Efron, 1922[–3].

    First edition of this literary almanack from the newly re-established Poets’ Guild, first formed in 1911 and with members including Gumilev, Gorodetsky, and Mandelstam, the core of whom became known as the Acmeists.

    £1250

  14. FLEMING, Alexander, Sir.

    On the antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with special Reference to their Use in...

    [London, H.K. Lewis & Co., 1944.]

    Second edition of Fleming’s study announcing the discovery of penicillin, one of 250 copies which Fleming commissioned to be printed in 1944. The original offprint, issued in 1929 in 150 copies and liberally distributed by Fleming to the scientific community at large for the prompt furthering...

    £4000

  15. [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

  16. [TREATIES.]

    Volume of tracts on European treaties of peace and alliance.

    Vienna and Amsterdam, 1725-1731.

    A collection of scarce texts relating to the Peace of Vienna (1725) and subsequent treaties of Hanover (1725), Paris (1727), Seville (1729), and Vienna (1731), with contemporary manuscript additions in Italian and French clearly composed by someone in diplomatic service. The collection eloquently...

    £1750

  17. MELCHIOR, Christian. 

    ‘Synechia sive summa lectionum Plutarchicarum a domino conrectore huius scholae Salderianae praelectarum. ...

    [Brandenburg an der Havel, 1620.] 

    An unpublished early seventeenth-century manuscript recording lectures on Plutarch’s pedagogical work On the Education of Children, bound with a scarce printed edition of the same text, and a rare edition of the poems of Theognis and other Greek lyric poets, each with numerous marginal and...

    £6500

  18. STOBAEUS, Johannes.

    Εκλογαι αποϕθεγματων και υποθηκων … Sententie ex thesauris Graecorum delectae …...

    Basel, Johann Oporinus for Christoph Froschauer, August 1549.

    Second, ‘in every respect preferable’ (Dibdin) edition of Gesner’s Stobaeus, acclaimed as ‘the first critical impression of the text of the Florilegium’ (ibid.), philologically and critically much superior to the first, published in 1543. Gesner’s parallel printing of the Greek...

    £1750

  19. 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

  20. FARIS, Ahmad.

    Abdaʻ ma-kan fi suwar Salitan Al ʻUthman … Album des souverains Ottomans édité par Selim Faris Effendy directeur...

    Leipzig, Carl Garte, [c. 1885].

    A handsome set of portraits of thirty-four Ottoman Sultans from Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, to Abdul Hamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909, this copy annotated with notes in Arabic.

    £3500