[MURDER.]

Arrest de la cour du Parlement, qui condamne Pierre Guyon, jardinier, à étre rompu vif ... dans la Place du Pilory...

Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1778.

Very rare decree documenting the crimes and punishment of one Pierre Guyon, a murderous gardener from Poitiers; a case of green fingers turning blood-red.

£175

NIEUHOF, Jean, and Jean LE CARPENTIER (translator). 

L’ambassade de la compagnie orientale des provinces unies...

Leiden, Jacob de Meurs, 1665. 

Lavishly illustrated first French edition of Nieuhof’s travels through China from 1655 to 1657. 

£3500

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 The excessively rare ‘Pékin’ imprint was printed in very small numbers and swiftly withdrawn because of a statement on page 104...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

ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. 

Du contract social; ou Principes du droit politique ... 

Milan, François Pogliani, 1796. 

Rare first edition printed in Italy of Rousseau’s Contrat social. 

£1750

[ROUSSEAU, Pierre.] 

Considérations sur le théatre de l’opéra.  Novembre 1822. 

[Paris,] de l’imprimerie de Rignoux, [1822].

Very rare proposal for a new opera house in Paris by the architect Pierre Rousseau (1751–1829), annotated by the author and accompanied by an autograph letter. 

£475

SCARRON, Paul. 

Le Marquis ridicule, ou la comtesse faite à la haste.  Comedie … Suivant la copie imprimée a Paris. 

[Leiden, Elzevier], 1656. 

First Elzevier editions, very rare, of these two plays by Scarron, pirated after the text of the first editions printed in Paris.  A finely bound volume with excellent Elzevierian provenance. 

£800

VERLAINE, Paul, and Léon LEBÈGUE (illustrator).

Fêtes gallantes.

Paris, F. Ferroud for the Librairie des Amateurs, 30 July 1913.

Limited edition on vélin teinté d’Arches, numbered 430 of 500 copies, with etchings by Lebègue. First published in 1869, Verlaine’s Fêtes gallantes are here exquisitely printed and illustrated by Léon Lebègue (1863 – 1944) and finely bound by Flammarion.

£750

[GALEN.] STEPHANUS.   

Stephani Atheniensis philosophi explanationes in Galeni priorem librum therapeuticum ad Glauconem, Augustino...

Venice, Giunta, November 1554. 

First edition of Agostino Gadaldini’s Latin translation of Galen’s medical treatise Ad Glauconem and of Stephanus’ commentary upon it, enhanced with his own scholia.

£950

H.M.S. COMUS and H.M.S. TOURMALINE. [HELBY, Harold Wildey Hasler.]   

Log Book.  Hong Kong, Singapore, Palau, Yokohama,...

Dec 1881–Feb 1884. 

A characterful log book charting the voyage of Royal Navy steamer H.M.S. Comus, beginning with its berth in Hong Kong and following its course around the Pacific, before its passage home across the Atlantic. It records the technicalities of cruising by steam; the significant international...

£3000

MASTER B.F.

Three very large historiated initials cut from a set of choirbooks.

Italy (Lodi), early sixteenth century.

Three extremely fine initials by the enigmatic artist known as Master B.F., one of the most inventive and accomplished illuminators of the Italian High Renaissance. They come almost certainly from a magnificent set of about twenty choirbooks belonging to the Olivetan monastery of Santi Angelo...

£150000

[ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]

Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...

Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.

First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.

£1500

APULEIUS, Lucius. 

L. Apuleii Metamorphoseos, sive lusus Asini libri XI.  Floridoru[m] IIII.  De deo Socratis I.  De philosophia...

Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri’, May 1521. 

First Aldine edition of the works of the second-century AD Numidian novelist Apuleius, with the editio princeps of Alcinous’s second-century handbook on Plato’s philosophy in the original Greek, from the library of the great French writer Victor Hugo. 

£2000

BEARDSLEY, Aubrey, art editor; Henry HARLAND, literary editor. 

The Yellow Book.  An Illustrated Quarterly.  Volume...

London [– & New York], Elkin Mathews & John Lane [– John Lane, The Bodley Head], and Boston, Copeland & Day, April 1894 [− April 1897]. 

An excellent set of the first edition of The Yellow Book, the decade-defining illustrated quarterly that captured the spirit of decadence and aestheticism and gave its name to ‘the yellow nineties’. 

£2000

JACQUEMOT, Jean. 

Variorum poematium liber. 

[Lyons,] Jean de Tournes, 1601. 

Very rare first edition of this collection of neo-Latin Protestant biblical poetry by Jean Jacquemot (1543–1615), a notable Geneva preacher, poet, and translator, friend of Theodore Beza, here with the original French in civilité type. 

£875

PEPE, Stefano. 

[Half-title: ‘Il Cappuccino d’Este del Padre Pepe’] ‘Historia Della Vita, e della Morte, et Attioni...

[Italy, second half of the seventeenth century.] 

A seemingly unpublished life of Alfonso III d’Este, Duke of Modena, who renounced his title to become a Capuchin friar. 

£1250

[VERACI, Gaetano.] 

Nuova cicalata sopra la coda in forma di lettera responsiva alla Signora N.N. 

[S.l., s.n,. c. 1770.] 

Second edition, extremely rare and significantly expanded, of this highly suggestive, mock-academic panegyric on the ‘tail’. 

£850

FENOUILLOT DE FALBAIRE, Charles-Georges. 

Le fabricant de Londres, drame en cinq actes et en prose; représenté à la Comédie...

Paris, chez Delalain, 1771. 

First edition of a London-set play by the French dramatist and contributor to the Encyclopédie, Fenouillot de Falbaire (1727–1800), illustrated with five fine plates after Gravelot. 

£250

[MISSAL.]

Missal, in Latin, with readings for the first Sunday in Advent.

Southern Netherlands or northern France (Arras?), c. 1425.

A remnant of what must have been an exceptionally grand missal, with illumination of considerable finesse. We have been unable to trace any other leaves from the same manuscript.

£3250

ST JOHN, Spenser Buckingham.

Life in the Forests of the Far East.

London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1862.

First edition. A richly illustrated account of pioneering expeditions on the island of Borneo, by St John (1825-1910), who had been introduced to Sir James Brooke (the ‘White Raja’) in 1847, when Brooke was visiting England. St John ‘was quickly caught by Brooke’s charm and accompanied him as...

£850

MARVIN, Charles.

The Russians at Merv and Herat and their power of invading India …

London, W.H. Allen & Co., 1883.

First edition of this work on the Russian threat to India by Charles Marvin (1854-1890), ‘the most widely read writer on Anglo-Russian matters of his day’ (Hopkirk).

£875