home
catalogue index
rare books
manuscripts
autographs
works of art
contact

Fifteenth & Sixteenth Centuries

1. ARISTOTELES: (Argyropulos, John; Averroes; Bruni, Leonardo; Messana, Bartholomaeus de, tr. and comm.:) [Opera omnia]. Venice, Octavianus Scotus, 26 April 1496.

Super-chancery folio (31.5 x 21.8 cm.), fols. 106; 109 (sic; actually 108) [i]; , with the final blank; bound without fols. 107–266 in the first register (for explanation of this, see below). Waterstaining to last few leaves, some worming and staining at inner margin (blank), overall a good copy bound in early sixteenth-century blind-panelled and blind-stamped English calf, earlier manuscript stubs, spine sympathetically repaired, modern antique-style clasps. Some contemporary marginalia, particularly at the beginning of the ‘Ethics’. An apparent purchase-note in an early hand, noting that it was bought with two other books, by (from?) Thomas Wallys. Recto of first leaf with inscription (in later sixteenth-century hand?) of ‘Jacobus Daltonus’ (James Dalton), early inscription in Greek of Stephen Bale.

An excellent copy, in English ownership from the beginning of the sixteenth century, of the second part of a collected edition of Aristotle’s works, the volume contains John Argyropulos’s translation of the ‘Metaphysics’, with the commentary of Averroes, and Leonardo Bruni’s translations of the ‘Nicomachaean Ethics’, the ‘Politics’ and the ‘Oeconomica’, followed by Bartholomaeus de Messana’s translation of the ‘Physiognomia’. The early owner’s annotations include references to the important philosopher Duns Scotus (1265/75–1308), whose teachings were taught widely in European universities. A central section containing the logical works of Aristotle (fols. 107–266) has been left out; the same phenomenon is found in the British Library’s copy, and this is probably done deliberately, so that the book is almost entirely comprised of tracts important in metaphysics and moral philosophy.

Goff A 965 (Part II). BMC V 348 (IB.21110). BSB Ink 704. GKW 2340(2). Hain *2190. IGI 796. Poynter 14 no. 72.

£ 12,000

2. BEMBO, Pietro (Cardinal): Delle Prose . . . nella quale si ragiona della vulgar lingua. Venice, [C. da Trino], 1540.

Octavo, fols. 112. Second edition. Woodcut initials. Light age-yellowing, light smudges to first and last pages, a good fresh copy in green morocco, elaborately tooled on spine and sides, g.e., by Birdsall of Northamptonshire. A fine modern binding.

Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) Italian prelate and scholar and sometime secretary to Pope Leo X (1513–21). ‘Prosa delle Volgar Lingua’ (1525) is a codification of Italian orthography and grammar. The work argues for the literary use of Italian and specifically the Florentine/Tuscan tongue of Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio. In an age when Latin was the primary medium of literary expression, the advancement of refined Italian was still unusual and interesting and may well have helped it succeed as a standard written form. ‘Gli Asolani’, Bembo’s other principal work, became one of the most popular books of the Renaissance. He was also one of the earliest historiographers of the Venetian Republic (1529).

Adams B 572. Index Aureliensis *116.396. Not in BM/STC Italian. This edition not in Brunet or Graesse but see Brunet I 765 and Graesse I 533 for others.

£ 2,500

Medieval Incunable

3. BERNARDUS De Gordonio: Practica, seu Lilium medicinae. De ingeniis curandorum morborum. De regimine acutarum aegritudinum. De prognosticis. Venice, Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, for Benedictus Fontana, 16 January 1496/97.

Quarto (19.9 x 15.2 cm.), 258 of 276 leaves, lacks the first four fols. (index) and a1,8; c2,3,6,7; e1,8; m1,8; µ1,8; D1,8. The final blank (H8) is present. Woodcut initials. Some browning and staining, loss to extreme outer corner (blank) of first leaf, bound in nineteenth-century calf (rubbed, small superficial tears to spine), marbled endpapers. Plate of W. G. Lennox, pencil note at end that the copy was bought at Henry Sothern (i.e. Sotheran?), London 11/24 ’53, and at beginning that the copy was a gift, 1990. Some other bibliographical notes at end. Early readers’ marginalia in text.

Fourth edition of the principal work of Bernardus de Gordonio (d. c. 1320), professor of medicine at Montpellier, it was issued originally in 1305. A popular medical manual, which was translated into French, Spanish and German, it concerns epilepsy, scabies, trachoma, leprosy, and various contagious diseases. It gives the earliest description of seizures of petit mal, and of a modern truss, and has also been thought to contain the first reference to eye-glasses. Bernardus gives attention to the effects of the stars on health and states that a person can be cured of epilepsy if you put your lips to his ear and pronounce distinctly the names of the three kings who visited the baby Jesus, and their gifts. The author achieved wide fame, a fact seen in his appearance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This copy was annotated by contemporary or early readers.

Goff B 450. BMC V 349 (IA. 21109). GKW 4083. Hain *7799. Poynter 26 no. 129. Stillwell 312 (1480 edition).

£ 5,000

4. [BIBLE, German:] (Luther, Martin, trans.:) Biblia, das ist die Gantze Heilige Schrift Deutsch. Wittemberg, Johann Krafft 1591 [1590].

Folio (37.9 x 24.4 cm.), 2 vols., fols. [xx] 383 [i] (including final blank); 430. Titles in red and black. First volume has woodcut border to title-page and 150 further illustrations; woodcut border and 71 illustrations in second. Portrait of Augustus of Saxony on second leaf of first vol.; his privilege, dated June 1564, on verso. Woodcut picture of the Creation (verso of sixth leaf, vol. one) with initials HB (i.e. Hans Brosamer; see below), and date 1550. Light browning, some light worming (almost entirely marginal), good copies bound in contemporary blind-stamped pigskin, bevelled edges, blind-stamped portrait of Martin Luther at the centre of each cover, orange morocco gilt labels; vol. I with a few wormholes and a small patch of board exposed at bottom outer corner of upper cover; vol. II with repair to bottom outer corner of upper cover. All clasps except one (in vol. I) working. All edges red. Front pastedowns of both vols. with inscriptions and biblical mottoes in red and green of Basil Christopher Diechter von Briebre, dated 1630.

Fine copies of Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, which first appeared complete, in Wittemberg, in 1534. This edition carries a privilege dated 1564, suggesting it is a reprint of a publication from that time. The woodcuts appear to be those of Hans Brosamer (b. Fulda, c. 1506), one of several illustrators of Luther’s Bible, whose pictures, besides others, were used by Hans Lufft of Wittemberg, the reformer’s own chosen Bible printer. The bindings carry portrait stamps of Luther, and the copy belonged early on to a German nobleman. The printer, Johann Krafft was established in Wittemberg by 1550. By 1575 there were books issued from the press of his heirs but a few were still printed only with his name.

Excessively Rare. Not in Adams, D&M, or BL. This edition indeed apparently not in OCLC WorldCat. British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books. Bible, Part One (London, 1892) col. 195, gives the same pagination for a Krafft edition of 1584.

£ 6,000

5. BIBLE, Latin: Biblia [Nuremberg, Caspar Hochfeder, not after 1493].

Chancery folio (30.6 x 20.9 cm.), 401 unnumbered leaves (of 402, lacking final blank). First leaf with title only (‘Biblia’), on recto. 18-line illuminated first initial (fol. 2ra), decoration to borders of this leaf. Rubrication throughout. Worming towards beginning and end, mostly marginal, no loss of sense, some light stains to bottom margin, bookplate on title-page, in large part a well-preserved copy, generously-margined (text-block measures 232 x 245 mm.), bound in stout early vellum boards, sympathetically rebacked in vellum. Front pastedown and f.f.e. with plates of Freeman C.J. Roper, George Goold, John Windele (his plate also on title-page), and bibliographical notes (including two misattributions of printer, probably pre-BMC). Contemporary ex libris on verso of title-page and along top of first page of text, of the Charterhouse of Zeethe near Diest. Some annotations marking passages to be read.

A copy of an incunable edition of the Bible which was bought for use by a German monastery, rubricated and its first page of text decorated in an attractive manner, perhaps by the signed owners, the Carthusian monks of Zeethe. The edition includes with the text of the Gospels some printed marginalia, which makes cross-references to other biblical passages. In this particular copy, one also finds marginalia made in manuscript giving instructions on readings. These include (e.g. P7r, G7r) notes for what should be read out in the refectory (while the monks ate). Hochfeder, a printer largely of theological works, is recorded working at Nuremberg from 1491 to 1499, and subsequently at Metz and Cracow.

Goff B 595. BMC II 475 (IB. 8205). GKW 4272. Hain *3048. Not in D&M.

£ 8,000

Magnificently bound Estienne Bible

6. BIBLE, New Testament, Greek: Novum Iesu Christi D. N. Testamentum. Paris, Robert Estienne, 1550.

Folio (34.0 x 22.2 cm.), two parts in one vol., pp. [xxxii] 272; 202 [ii]. Third edition. Greek type by Claude Garamond in three sizes, printers device on titles and last leaf, Eusebian canons within woodcut frames decorated with columns, architectural ornaments and cherubs, woodcut initials and head pieces. Title-page backed, light browning to titles and gatherings a and b, a very good copy, wide-margined (5.3 cm. blank at bottom, 3.2 cm. at outer margin, 1.8 cm. at top), ruled in red, finely-bound in eighteenth-century red goatskin by Edwin Moor of Cambridge with concave gilt central lozenge of massed tools, spine in seven compartments, inner gilt dentelles, (hinges cracking, spine a little faded), marbled endpapers. A.e.g. With a slipcase. Plates and stamp of Llanover Library, on front pastedown only.

Well-preserved and splendidly-bound copy of the best edition of the Estienne Greek New Testament. A typographically important book, it is the first to show Garamond’s innovative and clear ‘Grec du roi’ Greek typeface, which was commissioned for Estienne, in all three sizes together. It is indeed also the first printing of what became the standard text of the New Testament in Greek. A critical apparatus is found down the inner margin of the text, showing collations and some important suggested changes which were printed with the Bible for the first time and subsequently accepted. These helped Estienne earn the title given to him by Bentley, the ‘Protestant Pope’.

Adams B 1661. D&M 4622. Schreiber 105. Renouard 76 no. 1.

£ 10,000

7. BORGOGNI, Gherardo: La Fonte del Diporto. Dialogo del Sig. Gherardo. Bergamo, Comin Ventura, 1598.

Quarto, fols. [iv] 62. FIRST EDITION. Printer’s device on title-page, woodcut initials, head and tailpieces. Light age-yellowing, otherwise a beautifully fresh copy in brown morocco gilt with green inlay by Loric, marbled endpapers, book plate of Baron de Landau, and another, unidentified.

The poet Gherardo Borgogni (1526–c. 1608), born in Monferrato, lived in Spain for a time before settling in Milan where he found patronage and friends, who included Torquato Tasso. The ‘Fonte del diporto’ is an important work since it provides valuable details concerning Borgogni’s contemporaries, notably the painter and draughtsman, Giovan Ambrogio Figino, the poets Giambattista Marino and Giuliano Goselini as well as the Accademia degli Inquieti of Milan, of which the poet was a member.

Rare, not in Adams or the British Library; Index Aureliensis (*122.415) records copies only in Berlin, Chicago, Milan, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Brunet (I 1116) indeed states: ‘Édition belle et rare. Quoique moins complète d’ailleurs que celle de 1602, elle renferme quelques morceaux qui n’ont pas été réimpr. dans cette dernière.’ Graesse I 497.

£ 5,000

9. CATANEO, Giovanni Battista: Tavole nuove a modo di almanaco, per trovare con il giuoco di tre dadi perpetuamente. Brescia, Tomaso Bozzola (colophon: Vincenzo di Sabbio for Bozzola) 1566.

Folio, fols. [iv] 42. Woodcut vignette to title-page with Gryphius-style device at centre, woodcut headpiece and small initials, each numbered leaf with tables on both sides. Some light soiling, corners of two leaves skilfully repaired (no loss of text), bound in early vellum boards.

Subjects of these calendar-tables include lunar cycles, religious festivals and day-lengths. A second edition is reported printed in Brescia, 1572.

Adams C 1017. Apparently omitted from Index Aureliensis. This author not in BMC/STC Italian. Riccardi I 511: ‘Raro’.

£ 5,000

10. CICERO, Marcus Tullius: Epistolarum Familiarum. Venice, Nicolas Jenson 1471.

Chancery quarto (27.2 x 19.0 cm.), 197 unnumbered leaves (of 204; lacking initial blank and fols. [198], [200–204]); fol. [10] bound at end. First page of text containing a large illuminated initial incorporating border decoration for the whole page, included in which is the patron’s armorial (or, an eagle sable, dimidiated, and a tree). This identifies the owner as a member of the Rovarella family of Ferrara (see ‘Hill’s Ordinary of Arms’, BL MS Add. 46817, fol. 124). Fourteen other beautifully illuminated initials; smaller initials in red or blue. First page slightly soiled, oil stain to outer margin towards end, affecting blank only except in penultimate and antepenultimate leaves, final leaf a bit ragged at outer edge (blank only), occasional light spotting, overall a good copy bound in modern eighteenth-century style red morocco gilt, earlier marbled endpapers, edges mottled red. Bookplates of Hopetoun and Herbert S. Squance. Occasional marginalia and interlinear additions.

First edition of Cicero’s letters by Nicolas Jenson, produced in his famously clear Roman type; this important printer was so celebrated that by 1475 he was made Count Palatine by Pope Sixtus IV. A copy with interesting illuminations, the decoration is in a Germanic, possibly a Lombard style, containing branch-work into which some animal heads are incorporated. This is very medieval in appearance, although we associate Jenson’s books with Renaissance humanism.

Goff C 508. BMC V 169 (2 copies, IB. 19623a., b., the first, illuminated, with second leaf made up from a copy of Jenson’s edition of 1475, the second, with no illuminations, wanting leaf 10). GKW 6806. Oates 1627. Hain 5168.

£ 7,000

Unknown Prognosticon

11. GAURICUS, Lucas, bishop of Civita, near Naples: Prognosticon, cuius initium erit vertente anno huma nati verbi M.D.LVI. Finis autem anno M.D.LXXXVII. (n.d. (1556?), n.pr.(Ferrara?)).

Small quarto, pp. [xx], signed A4B4C2. Title within woodcut architectural border, with putti and grotesques. Two horoscope diagrams in text. Light browning and spotting, waterstain to upper outer corner of last two leaves, pages strengthened at inner margins where evidence of some worming, bound in blue painted wrappers, bottom half of spine split along crease.

So far unrecorded ‘celebrity horoscopes’ by a famous Renaissance astrologer. Gauricus (1476–1558), who published horoscopes of Alciato and Luther, was a rival of Girolamo Cardano, a teacher of Scaliger, and astronomer to Paul IV. In this book he provides tables of March 1430 when the Ottoman Emperor attacked Byzantium, and of March 1556, with prognostications for the Emperor Charles V, his son Philip (later Philip II), Cosimo de’ Medici, Henri of France, the Venetian Senate, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Ercole II d’Este, Alfonso II d’Este, and bishop Aloiso d’Este of Ferrara, going as far as 1587. With the author’s interest here in the Este family, it is a possibility that the book was published in their lands, in and around Ferrara.

Possibly unique. This title not in Adams, Durling, BMC/STC Italian, Riccardi, Caillet or Houzeau & Lancaster. No copies in ICCU EDIT 16, OCLC WorldCat or RLG.

£ 8,000

12. GERSON, Jean: Tertia pars operum. [Strassburg, Johann (Reinhard) Grüninger?] 6 September 1488.

Chancery folio (29.8 x 20.2 cm.), 358 unnumbered leaves (aa–mm8,6nn8oo–rr8,6ss tt8 vv xx6 yy zz AA–ZZ ab–af8,6). The text finishes at the top of sig. af8v and most of this page is blank. This copy therefore differs from the British Library’s, which has an entirely blank af8 (see BMC). Title-page with full-size woodcut portrait on verso. Rubricated initials, neat contemporary marginalia. Light worming, bound in contemporary calf boards, tooled and paneled in blind, crudely repaired, new pastedowns and leather to clasps. Inscription of Augsburg episcopal library.

Third and last part of the omnia opera of Jean Gerson, in its second edition (first published in Cologne, 1483–1484). This copy appears to be a variant issue (see above). Besides sections on spirituality and practical theology there are Gerson’s own hymns, and studies of church singing, the Magnificat and the Song of Songs. Gerson (1363–1426), the leading theologian of his day, was Chancellor of Paris University, and at the Council of Constance (1395) helped defeat a papal schism and prosecuted Jan Huss.

Goff G 186 (Part III). BMC I 170 (Part III). Hain *7622. Polain (Belgium) 1590.

£ 3,000

15th century woodcut book

13. GUILLERMUS of Paris: Postilla super epistolas et evangelia de tempore et sanctis. Et pro defunctis. Basle, Nicolaus Kessler, 1 October 1492.

Super-chancery quarto (21.3 x 15.2 cm.), 162 unnumbered leaves (a–m8n6a–f8g h6), including two blanks, fols. [102] (n6) and [162] ((final) h6). Title-page with large woodcut of Crucifixion, 52 smaller woodcuts in text. Some light soiling and staining, a few wormholes to blank margins towards beginning, fols. [73] (k1) and [80] (k8) remargined in blank (the latter also with a small paper flaw, affecting two words on verso), fol. [76] (k4) with repair to blank outer margin, overall a good copy, rubricated throughout. Vellum bifolia of fifteenth-century breviary as endleaves. In a remboîtage of blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, large brass clasp, rebacked, cracks to spine, small tear to head. Contemporary ownership inscription on f.f.e.p. recto. A fine copy.

Illustrated guide to the excerpts from the Epistles and Evangelists read at church services throughout the year (the Lessons), the text was first issued in 1437. The importance of the book is shown in the fact that more than 100 incunable editions were produced (if a reasonable estimate of 400 copies per edition is accepted, this suggests over 40,000 copies in circulation!) The book’s naïve woodcuts, some of considerable charm, appeared in a Basle edition of 28 July 1491. The ‘British Museum Catalogue’, describing this earlier printing, suggests that the pictures were copied from earlier Lyons editions. Schreiber, writing about this present edition, suggests the influence of the Strassburg ‘Plenarium’ of 1482.

Goff G 682. BMC III 770. Schreiber 4147. Hain 8279. The Kraus copy, Catalogue 182, number 85.

£ 12,000

Henry VIII letter

15. [HENRY VIII King of England]: Copia originalis littere ad Leonem X de pace et federe per eum et Francorum regem. [Rome: Marcello Silber, after 12th August 1514].

Quarto, 4 unnumbered leaves including final blank. Green morocco gilt, inner dentelles.
Ex-libris R.B. A fine copy.

A letter from Henry VIII to Pope Leo X of Rome; it is a rare piece of printed diplomatic correspondence from the last decades of England as a Catholic monarchy. This type of Rome publication concerning the King of England would become unknown after the Reformation. The letter concerns the peace concluded 7 August 1514 between Henry VIII and Louis XII, which included a marriage between Mary Tudor sister of the King of England, and Louis XII. The negotiations followed the English invasion of France in 1513, during which the king had personally taken part in sieges against Therouanne and Tournai and at the battle of Guinegatte. One purpose to a French alliance, for Henry, was to counter his father-in-law, the king of Aragon, with whom there was political friction. The marriage took place on 9 October 1514, but peace with France ended in 1515 with the death of Louis XII and the accession of Francis I.

A very rare publication, particularly in the trade: this is the only copy recorded at auction since 1975. Institutional holdings of this book are few: we have located two copies on the continent (Bibliothèque Nationale and Venice Marciana) and two in Britain (both British Library). OCLC WorldCat notes three in the U.S. (Yale, Harvard and New York Public Library).

BM/STC French 233. Not in Adams. Tinto 181. Shaaber H156.

£ 18,000

16. HERODOTUS: Les neuf Livres des Histoires de Herodote Prince et Premier des Historiographes Grecz, initulez du nom des Muses . . . le tout traduit de Grec en Francais par Pierre Saliat. Paris, Estienne Groulleau, 1556.

Folio, fols. [8] 243, lacking first and last blank leaves. Woodcut device on title page, large woodcut historiated initials and headpieces. Title-page soiled, partially backed, repairs to margins, repair to blank margin of second leaf, light soiling to these two leaves, clean tear to top of S1 (no loss), occasional browning, otherwise a good and crisp copy, bound in a sympathetic modern calf binding, label red morocco gilt. Contemporary French ownership inscriptions to title-page, two further old inscriptions of William Steven and George Turner, manuscript addition to recto of third leaf.

FIRST COMPLETE EDITION IN FRENCH of all nine books of Herodotus’s ‘Histories’, a comprehensive early account of the war between the barbarians and Greeks which took place during a two hundred year period from King Gyges of Lydia to the conquest of Sestos by Athenians in 478. B.C. The first three books were published in 1552. Saliat (fl. 1537–1556) also translated works of Aristotle, Cicero, Erasmus, Philo the Jew, and Sallust. The present work includes a translation of an appendix by a fifteenth-century Byzantine scholar, George Gemistus Plethon, who has the distinction of having been an avowed pagan. New editions of Saliat’s Herodotus were issued in 1575 and 1580. The book was a source for Montaigne’s ‘Essaies’ (see Joseph de Zangroniz, ‘Montaigne, Amyot et Saliat’ (Paris 1906) 102–104).

Adams H 410. BMC/STC French 223.

£ 2,500

Rare 16th century German cook book

17. HÜBNER, Bartholomaeus: New speisebüchlein: Darinnen kurtzer Unterricht von Essen und Trincken. Auch von allerley Speisen und Getranck, so zur Menschlichen nahrung dienlich und bey den Teutschen Gebrauche sind sampt vielen guten Hausartzneyen. Erfurt, Johann Beck 1588.

16mo., 110 unnumbered leaves (A–N8O6). Title in red and black with woodcut vignette portrait of Hübner. Browning, bottom outer corner of first few leaves a bit ragged and thumbed at bottom outer corner, wormhole affecting one word on verso of title-page, and a word on recto and verso of A2 (still readable), going through interlinear blank of A3, paper repair to outer margin (blank) of A8, small further tear to title-page, leading off wormhole. Bound in nineteenth-century red blind-stamped calf, gilt, marbled endpapers. Early inscription on title-page of Leonardus Sigismundus ?Sternberg. Overall a good copy.

The author of this recipe book appears to have been a physician, fl. 1578–1593, who also published on medical practice. The present book is by far his rarest title, and we have only located two copies of this book, in this edition only (Library of Congress and University of Chicago). The bibliographer Georges Vicaire (see below) had a copy of a 1603 edition, not otherwise known.

Not in Adams or BMC/STC German. Not in Brunet. Not in Simon, ‘Bibliotheca gastronomica’ or ‘Bibliotheca bacchica’, not in Krivatsky. Vicaire ‘Bibliographie gastronomique’ 448 (1603 edition). See OCLC WorldCat and RLG for the copies referred to above. No further copies listed in VD16.

£ 15,000

18. HUTTEN, Ulrich von: Nemo. Augsburg, in officina Millerana, after 24 August [1518].

Small quarto, 12 unnumbered leaves (A–C4). FIRST EDITION. Woodcut pictorial frontispiece by Hans Weiditz, the ‘Petrarch Master’. Light age-yellowing, light thumbing and spotting, a well-preserved and generously-margined copy bound in modern chocolate calf, red morocco label. Early marginalia and underlining in two hands, one contemporary or early and in Latin and German, the other later and in Latin. This second annotator adds a bibliographical note on the blank verso of the final leaf. A fine copy.

The first printing of Hutten’s ‘second’ Nemo, which substantially augments his first edition (Erfurt, 1516). The main body of the work, which consists of verses containing puns and proverbs on domestic matters, is here enlarged by thirty distichs. Added also for the first time are a long preface to the humanist Croteus Rubeanus, attacking lawyers and theologians, and a letter to Julius Pflug, with references to Erasmus and Melanchthon, and allusions to the Reuchlin controversy (Hutten had been allied with Johannes Reuchlin in defence of Hebrew books). The woodcut frontispiece depicts a bearded man in armour, with Polyphemus to the left, and Ulysses’s ship behind. On each side of the man are objects including a jug, a ladle, spectacles, a book, backgammon board, counters, cards, lute, an axe. The image was used again in an edition of c. 1519–20.

BM/STC German 427. Not in Adams. Fairfax-Murray 211. Benzing ‘Hutten’ 62. VD 16 lists only four further copies.

£ 5,000

19. HYGINUS, C. Julius: Fabularum Liber, ad omnium poetarum lectionem mire necessarie . . . eiusdem Poeticon Astonomicon, libri quattuor. Basle, apud Hervagium, 1535.

Folio, fols. XV, pp. 8–248, text woodcuts of the constellations personified, woodcut initials. Last two leaves have Greek and Latin texts on facing pages. Bound in nineteenth-century cat’s-paw boards with pink spine (worn).

FIRST EDITION OF ALL THE WORKS, and including Palaephatus’ ‘De Fabulosis Narrationibus’, Fulgentius’ ‘Mythologicarum & Locum Antiquarum Interpretatio’, Aratus’ ‘Phainomenon Fragementus’ & ‘Phaenomena’, and Proculus’ ‘De Sphaera’.

Hyginus, Latin author, a native of Spain (or Alexandria), was a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor and a freedman of Augustus, by whom he was made superintendent of the Palatine library (Suetonius, ‘De Gramminaticis’, 20). He is said to have fallen into great poverty in his old age, and to have been supported by the historian Clodius Licinus. He was a voluminous author, and his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee keeping. Sadly, all these are lost. The ‘Poeticon Astronomicon’ was one of the primary ancient literary sources on the constellations.

BM/STC German 427. Not in Adams.

£ 3,000

20. MARCHESINUS, Johannes (O.F.M., fifteenth century): Mammotrectus super Bibliam. Venice: Franciscus Renner de Heilbronn and Nicolaus de Frankfordia, 1476.

Chancery quarto (21.3 x 15.7cm.), 223 fols. of 228, lacking first and final blanks and last 3 leaves of text. Double column. 39 lines and headline. Seven-line initial ‘I’ to Prologue inserted in purple, green and blue on gold with extending floral decoration along upper and inner margin, eight-line initial ‘F’ to St. Jerome’s epistle in purple, green and dark blue on gold ground historiated in central margin, the foot of the leaf with blue roundel with the sacred initials within green laurel wreath with purple floral decorations, other initials in blue and red. Front pastedown from an early fifteenth-century scholastic manuscript. Small tear at bottom of first leaf, no text loss. Damp-staining on top right corners of first few leaves, some marginal worming on last 7 leaves with no text loss. Overall a good clean copy, bound in contemporary blind-stamped Venetian goatskin (rolls and small tools used), vellum manuscript front pastedown, and stub at end, fittingly re-backed (perhaps in the eighteenth century), the odd wormhole to binding and some worming to final pastedown. Bookplate of John Sparrow.

One of three 1476 editions of this guide to preaching and reading the bible; a copy in a beautiful contemporary binding. This work, first printed (twice) in 1470, and again (once) in 1472 but reportedly written in 1466, explains the grammatical constructs and etymology of difficult words in the Scriptures, and includes liturgical explanations of the festivals of the Church year, and the legends of the saints. Priests could refer to the ‘Mammotrectus’ to help their overall comprehension of the main scriptural themes and improve their comprehension of the Bible for their sermons. The title of the book is translatable as ‘Nursling’. Marchesinus was a Franciscan friar from Reggio Emilia, near Modena, Italy. John Sparrow, owner of the copy, was sometime Warden of All Soul’s and an important bibliophile.

Goff M 236. BMC V 194 (IA. 19855). Hain 10556. Oates 1664.

£ 5,000

21. MARLIANI, Giovanni Bartolommeo: Urbis Romae Topographia. Rome, Valerio and Luigi Dorico, September 1544.

Folio, pp. 68 (a6A–B4C–L6). Woodcut initials, 23 woodcut illustrations, of which five are full-page and one is double-page with a further folding section. Final leaf recto has below the register, a large woodcut printer’s device depicting the legend of Pegasus and the Fountain of Hippocrene. Waterstaining to bottom margin throughout, tear along creases to further folding section of double-page illustration, slight spotting to title-page, stab-hole to top margin (blank) of first three leaves, otherwise a good copy bound in early vellum with yapp edges, spine made from a different piece of vellum (binding slightly soiled and rumpled, early repair, ties removed). Front cover with early ink monogram. A good copy.

FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION of this popular guide to Rome’s ruins, first published in Rome, 1534, the text was considerably revised for this printing, and a new dedication to Francis I of France was written. Illustrations include a double-page map of Rome by Giovanni Battista Palatino, a half-page depiction of Romulus, Remus and the Wolf, a full-page illustration of the Laocoon, and pictures of the Circus Maximus, the Pyramid, Trajan’s Column, and the Obelisk.

BM/STC Italian 418. Adams M 610. Fowler 189. Mortimer, sixteenth-century Harvard Italian, 284.

£ 5,000

22. [OVIDIUS NASO, Publius]: Metamorphoses, argumentis brevioribus ex luctatio grammatico collectis expositae: una cum vivis singularum transformationum iconibus in aes incisis. Antwerp, ex officina Plantiniana, apud viduam, & Ioannem Moretum (dedication dated January 1591).

Oblong 16mo., pp. 361 [xxii]. 178 full-page engraved illustrations from the text, plus full-page engraved medallion portrait of the author, full-page engraved Plantin device (‘Labore et Constantia’), engraved border to title-page. Interleaved. Light browning, title-page slightly dusty, clean tear to Q3 (pp. 245–246). Bound in quarter-calf and marbled boards, clasp intact, rubbed, some repair to top joint and at tail of spine, bottom joint cracked but sound, English inscriptions (eighteenth or nineteenth century) to interleavings towards beginning.

BMC/STC Dutch 164. Adams O 504.

£ 6,000

Magnificent illuminated Pliny

23. PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Gaius [Pliny the Elder:] (Beroaldo, Filippo, ed.:) Historia Naturalis. [Colophon: Parma, Andreas Portilia, 8 July 1481.]

Super-royal folio (40.2 x 28.1 cm.), 266 leaves of 268 (a2–8b6c–e8f6g–h8i–l6m– y8z6&4A–F8G6aa–dd8ee5), lacking integral blanks at beginning and end. Roman letter. First page of text (sig. a2r) with large contemporary illuminated initial and illuminated heraldic shield, unidentified (or, a lion sable, with plant in chief) in bottom margin. Sig. c1r also carries an illuminated initial from the same time. Some light foxing, spotting and staining, particularly to margins, light scattering of wormholes towards beginning, mended snag to bottom margin (blank) of last leaf of text, owner’s inscription almost completely removed from sig. a4r and very faded old stamp on recto of final blank endleaf, a very good, wide-margined copy, many pages of remarkable freshness, in early vellum (soiled, ties removed, top joint mended). Early shelfmark in ink on verso of initial blank. Contemporary or early marginalia in two hands, including several paragraphs at the first page of the text (see below).

A superb copy of the third Parma edition of Pliny’s ‘Natural History’, which was the main medieval source for ancient science. The book is illuminated for a contemporary Italian owner, and carries two sets of contemporary or early annotations. The first of these, sometimes trimmed, is a scientific gloss, while the second comprises notes of a philological or historical nature and includes sporadic suggestions for better readings of the text. Amongst these variants is one (at sig. bb8r) which is said to be different to something propounded by Lorenzo Valla (1405–1457). The copy is in the edition of Filippo Beroaldo the younger, a humanities teacher at the University of Bologna and editor of printed books, who normally produced work for the Bolognese publisher Ugo Ruggeri.

Goff P 793. BMC VII 937. Hain 13094*. Oates 2573.

£ 24,000

25. SANCTO GEORGIO, Johannes Antonius de, bishop of Alessandria: Oratio funebris . . . in exequiis Reverendissimi D. Cardinalis Tornacensis. [Rome, Stephan Plannck, on or after 16 October 1483.]

Chancery quarto (20.4 x 14.2 cm.), 6 unnumbered leaves including final blank, clearly integral because it shows on recto an offsetting from the previous page. A good copy in black, white and beige floral paper on boards.

One of two different editions from the same year, of a funeral oration for Ferricus de Cluniaco (Ferri de Clugny), cardinal and bishop of Tournai, who died in Rome on 7 October 1483. Made bishop in 1473 and cardinal in 1480, he was a counsellor or emissary for Philip the Good and Charles the Bold of Burgundy, the Emperor Maximilian and Louis XI of France. His funeral was held on 16 October 1483. Plannck, the printer, specialised in publishing orations given in Rome, in this quarto pamphlet form. The speech-giver, Gianantonio de San Giorgio (1439–1509), was bishop of a suffragan diocese of Milan, and was also a successful canonist and law teacher. He was promoted to cardinal in 1493.

Goff S 134. Not in BMC (the BL nevertheless has a copy, IA.18342). Hain 7597*. Mead ‘Huntington’ 2023.

£ 3,500

First edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle

26. SCHEDEL, Hartmann: Liber chronicarum. Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 12th July 1493.

Imperial folio (45.5 x 30.9 cm.), fols [20], CCLXVI, [5], CCLXVII–CCXCIX, [2]: 323 leaves (of 328), lacking fols. CCLIX–CCLXI (blank save for headline). and two of a possible three blanks at end, 64 lines and headline, table and parts of the text in double columns, gothic letter, several initials at the beginning coloured in red and blue, 1,089 woodcuts (some repeated) from 645 blocks by Michael Wolgemut, William Pleydenwurff and their workshop, most likely including their young apprentice Albrecht Dürer. Many of the illustrations are double-page. Original title-page cut down and mounted, worming in the text at the beginning and end, slight worming in margins throughout occasionally affecting a few illustrations, some light spotting and browning, overall a crisp, generously-margined copy bound in contemporary German blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards, remains of clasps (worn, worming to covers). Early ownership inscription on initial blank dated 1493. Nuremberg. Ex librises on title-page from the 1570s and 1637; ownership note of Anselm Casmir Guckert, prebendary of Speyer Cathedral, dated 1747, saying that the book was given to him by Clara, daughter of Henry Schaeffer. Note dated 1757, of the Jesuit College of Speyer, that the book came to them in a legacy . A very tall copy.

FIRST EDITION and of one of the greatest one of the best-known fifteenth-century German woodcut books. A chronological narrative of historical events, including portents and demons, there are a number of unusual passages such as an account of the invention of printing at Mainz, the proto-Reformation movements of Wycliff and Huss, and the African voyage of Cam and Behaim. which has been erroneously interpreted as their discovery of the New World. The astonishing array of woodcuts are identified in the colophon itself as the work of Michel Wolgemut and his stepson William Pleydenwurff and this is one of the very few incunables illustrated by known named artists; ‘Whereas most illustrated books of the time used woodcuts as supplements to the text, the Nuremberg Chronicle, was planned from the first to be a marriage of words and pictures’ [Making the Book, Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collection]. Recent scholarship has attributed a number of the cuts to Albrecht Dürer and they do indeed bear a remarkably strong resemblance to the latter’s illustrations of the Apocalypse. Apart from the great Biblical cuts there are 116 named views of places, of which less than a quarter make any attempt at topographical accuracy, hence such examples as ‘Angelie Province’ stated to be London or Dover is more plausibly a view of Nuremberg or Salzburg. Nevertheless, there are many illustrations of topographical interest and the book includes the first modern map of central Europe, as well as a map of the world.

It is not known who conceived the idea for the book, but the first contracts for it were drawn up in 1487 between the Nuremberg businessmen who financed the project, Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermaister, and the publisher Anton Koberger. It is most likely that Wolgemut and Pleydenwuff were commissioned early in the project. Schedel (1440–1514), a noted Nuremburg scholar, was probably recruited to write the text at a later date, and most of it is drawn from earlier chronicles, particularly Jacopo da Bergamo’s ‘Supplementum Chronicarum’ and the ‘Speculum Historiale’ of Vincentius of Beauvais. The book was first issued in Latin, and then in a German translation in December 1493. Koberger printed approximately 2500 copies between the two editions, an extraordinary number at a time when most print runs were in the range of 200 to 500 copies.

Due to the book’s size and weight, copies in contemporary bindings are of the utmost rarity.

Goff S 307. BMC II 437 (IC. 7451). HC 14508*. Oates 1026. JCB ‘European Americana’ 493/21. Sabin 77523. Fairfax Murray 394. Hodgkin ‘Rariora’ II 195–201.

£ 40,000

27. SIRENIUS, Julius Carrarius [Magius, Hieronymus]: De Fato, libri novem. In eosdem libros Periochae, cum rerum, & verborum insignium indice locupletissimo. Venice, ex Officina Iordani Ziletti 1563.

Folio, fols. [xx] 168 [xii]. Light age-yellowing, some foxing, light worming to inner margin, touching some letters, a good copy bound in seventeenth-century brown morocco gilt, cardinal’s armorial at centre of covers, corners repaired, new spine. Early inscriptions and stamps to front free endpaper recto and title-page. Edges gauffered and gilt.

FIRST EDITION. Subjects of Sirenius’s philosophical and theological treatise on fate include prophesy, divinations, dreams, and astrological predictions. Sirenius, a native of Brescia, also wrote guides dedicated to metaphysics and predestination.

BMC/STC Italian 630. Adams S 1218.

£ 2,500

28. STELLA CLERICORUM cuilibet derico summe necessaria, [Leipzig, Conrad Kachelofen] 1494.

Quarto (19.3 x 14.2 cm.),14 fols. (A8B6), Gothic letter, 32–33 lines per page. B3 mislettered A3 and bound after the true A3, B4 misbound between A5/6. Occasional light spotting, some repair to blank edges, bound in modern half vellum boards, title on spine.

Popular devotional work for the use of clerics. The text appears to use the works of SS. Bernard of Clairvaux and Augustine substantially. This is possibly a variant issue as comparison by an earlier cataloguer has found differences between ours and the Cambridge copy (listed in Oates below), which has 30–30ll., showing variations on sigs. B2 and B3. Kachelofen (d. 1528/9) was quite likely the second printer of Leipzig, and appears to be the first major publisher to set up in the city. His output was eclectic.

Goff S 779. Not in BMC. Marston p .72. Voullième (B) 1323. Oates 1278.

£ 6,500

First Vitruvius printed in Germany

29. VITRUVIUS, Marcus Pollio: De architectura libri decem [Frontinus, Sextus Julius: De aquaeductibus urbis Romanae] [Cusanus, Nicolas: De staticis experimentis]. Strassburg, ex officina Knoblochiana, per Georgium Machaeropioeum 1543 (colophon: mense Augusto).

Small quarto, pp. [lii] 262 [lii]. 82 pages with woodcut illustrations, small to full-page, woodcut initials. Bound in contemporary limp vellum, yapp edges, torn with loss at head of spine, tear at outer edge of lower cover, contemporary and early notes on initial and final blanks, and occasionally in margins of text. A note on the verso of the initial blank, in an early hand, indicates that the book was owned by ‘C. Warde, equis’ (i.e. Sir C. Warde).

The first edition of Vitruvius to be printed in Germany. Its plates are substantially based on those of the famous and important edition of Como, 1521.

Adams V 906. Not in BM/STC German. Fowler 401. See also Fowler 395.

£ 6,500

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Greatest fencing book of the 18th century

30. ANGELO, Domenico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo (1716–1802): L’Ecole des Armes [L’Ecole des Armes avec l’explication générale des principales attitudes et positions concernant L’Escrime, Dediée à Leurs Altesses Royales Les Princes Guillaume-Henry et Henry Frédéric]. London, R. & J. Dodsley, Pall Mall, 1763.

Oblong folio, 5 preliminary leaves (title, dedication, preface, list of subscribers; these leaves individually lettered a–e) followed by 47 black and white engraved plates, mixed in with unnumbered but individually lettered leaves of instructions (the first lettered f (in the sequence of prelims.); thereafter A–Fff, i.e., without the j’s, u’s and w’s as per standard printing style, in total 1 plus 52 leaves), followed by 2 leaves (table and errata). Title-page slightly dusty with a small flaw in a blank portion, occasional further light spotting, two mends, one to a tear in a blank portion, the other replacing an outer corner (blank), an excellent copy, bound in modern gilt-ruled full red morocco, title in gilt on upper cover, spine gilt.

FIRST EDITION of a comprehensive manual on the art of fencing, dedicated to the princes William Henry and Henry Frederick. Fencing was an indispensable part of a gentleman’s education, which Englishmen seem usually to have learned abroad until 1755, when Angelo came to London in the company of the celebrated beauty Peg Woffington. Early in his time in the country, Angelo scored impressive victories in public matches against English and Irish social fencers. His ensuing fame gained him key clients at court and in the royal family (amongst the first were the Duke of Devonshire and the Prince of Wales). Angelo and his descendants went on to train generations of wealthy English youth in fencing and horsemanship.

The ‘Ecole des Armes’, which was often reprinted, presents the classical foil fencing of the French school. The 47 illustrations, each of which is a chef-d’oeuvre, were drawn from life by John Gwynn, a founding member of the Royal Academy, with Angelo posing as the main figure. Angelo’s work was selected as the chapter on ‘Escrime’ in the ‘Encyclopédie’ of Diderot and d’Alembert.

Thimm 9.

£ 12,000

31. AUGUSTINUS, Aurelius [St. Augustine] (Vives, J. L.; Healey, John:) The Citie of God. [London], printed by George Eld, 1610.

Folio in 6’s, pp. [xvi] 921 [ix], lacking initial and final blanks. Woodcut headpieces and initials, title-page with woodcut printer’s vignette. Light browning and waterstaining, the odd small spot, flaw to the fourth leaf with no loss of text, a good copy bound in contemporary gilt-ruled calf with gilt lozenge at centre of covers, slightly rubbed, ties removed, fittingly rebacked, all edges gilt. Armorial plates of Waldegrave Pelham Gray and Rev. Henry Kenneth Warrand, neat, almost indecipherable signature (Gray’s?) to front free endpaper recto.

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION of Augustine’s ‘City of God’, translating a popular Latin edition with learned notes by Joannes Ludovicus Vives which, coincidentally, was originally dedicated to Henry VIII (Vives’s dedicatory letter to the king, dated 1522, and Henry’s reply, from Greenwich, 24 January 1523, are included in English, here). Vives, a humanist and churchman, was tutor to Henry’s daughter Mary until the Reformation. The English version is by John Healey (c. 1585–c. 1616), of St. John’s College, Cambridge, a recusant who was interrogated after the Gunpowder Plot.

‘Running to more than half a million words, it is one of the largest early modern English translations. Healey’s rendering of the Latin is loose but competent, and his rhyming verse translations of the Latin poetry quoted in text and commentary are quite attractive. He worked from at least two editions of the Latin, one of which printed Vives’s commentary complete, while the other expurgated passages objectionable to post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism, and he noted which passages these were in a series of marginal comments. He undertook the project at the instigation of William Crashaw. Healey’s translation was commercially successful enough to go into a second edition in 1620, and a modernised version was reprinted several times in the popular Everyman series in the twentieth century’ (John Considine, ‘Healey, John’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols., Oxford, 2004, XXVI, 137).

The dedication, by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe to the Earl of Pembroke, is of some American interest as it informs that Healey had recently gone to Virginia (vide Considine ut supra).

STC 916.

£ 3,500

Christopher Rawlinson's copy

32. BIBLE, New Testament, Gospels, Gothic and Anglo-Saxon: Quatuor Jesu Christi Evangeliorum versiones perantiquae duae Gothica et Anglo-Saxonica . . . Accessit & Glossarium Gothicum. (ed. by Franciscus Junius and Thomas Marshall). Dordrecht, ‘Typis & sumptibus Junianis, Excudebant Henricus and Joannes Essaei’, 1665.

Quarto, two parts in one, pp. (16), 565 (3), (24), 432. Engraved title-page, woodcut initials. Fine polished full calf, compartmentalised spine skilfully repaired, gilt title. Four pages of notes tipped in at beginning plus another manuscript note in same hand between pp. 162–63, occasional further annotations. Provenance, on top of title page is the printed name of ‘Christopher Rawlinson’ (see below). From Lord Polwarth’s library. A good, clean copy.

‘Editio princeps’ of the Gospels in Gothic, edited from the famous Codex Argenteus by Franciscus Junius (1589–1677) and printed parallel with the Anglo-Saxon Gospels. Both are in type-faces designed by the editor. The Gothic text was subsequently used for an edition of Stockholm, 1671, 1670, and the present edition was reissued whole in Amsterdam in 1684. The Gospels were translated into Gothic by Ulphilas (311–381 A.D.), ‘Ambassador for the Goths . . . His translation of the Bible into the barbarous Gothic in an age when Greek and Latin alone were considered fit media for the transmission of divine truth, marks Ulphilas as a man of prophetic vision in uplift of his people’ (notes at beginning of copy). They are followed by the ‘Observationes de versione Gothica’, which is edited by Dr Thomas Marshall, (1621–1685), teutonic scholar, former pupil of Junius and one time Dean of Gloucester. The Anglo-Saxon text is based on the edition published by John Day in 1571 and corrected against three manuscripts in English libraries. Following Marshall’s contribution is Junius’ ‘Gothicum Glossarium, quo pleraque Argentei
Codicis Vocabula explicuntur, atque linguis cognatis illustrantur’ (the cognate languages were Danish, Dutch, English, French, German and that of the Runic inscriptions).

An important provenance. Christopher Rawlinson (1677–1733) was to use the types that Junius designed and also Junius’s own notes to produce his own edition of King Alfred’s translation of Boethius (1698).

Darlow and Moule 1604, 4557.

£ 4,500

Author's presentation copy

33. BOSWELL, James (1740–1795): An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to that Island, and memoirs of Pascal Paoli . . . Illustrated with a new and accurate Map. London, Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, 1769.

Octavo, pp. xx, [3] 34–400, nineteenth-century three-quarter red morocco, worn, spine in six compartments, gilt panels, two containing gilt title, marbled boards, worn. Portrait frontispiece by Pascal Paoli of the Corsicans, folding engraved map (from the same plate as in the first edition, but with a scale of miles added. Inscription by Boswell himself on blank preceding the portrait frontispiece: ‘To Andrew Lumisden Esq. as a mark of sincere regard from the Author’. Book label of Joseph Y. Jeanes, Philadelphia.

Third edition. The preface to this edition also includes for the first time a eulogistic letter from George Lyttelton to Boswell in praise of Paoli. Boswell, a Scottish lawyer, is mainly remembered as the biographer of Samuel Johnson. He was invited to visit Corsica by Paoli in August 1764 whilst he was travelling in Italy. Boswell was determined to get to Corsica and stated that had he not received a formal invitation, he should still go, and probably be hanged as a spy. ‘He crossed from Leghorn to Corsica; saw the great Paoli; talked politics to him . . . He also took the liberty of asking Paoli “a thousand questions with regard to the most minute and private circumstances of his life” ’ (DNB). He apparently played Scottish airs to the Corsican peasantry. He returned to London with his head full of Corsica, and against Johnson’s advice, resolved to write an account of his experiences. This is a refreshing contemporary observation of eighteenth-century Corsica and covers a number of aspects; the first chapter consists of a geographical analysis of the Island followed by a historical and political overview. The book concludes with Boswell’s journal of his tour of the Island and the memoirs of Pascal Paoli. However, the book did not receive general approval. Walpole laughed at it and Gray described the journal as a ‘dialogue between a green goose and a hero’. Boswell never ceased to champion the Corsican cause and published a volume of ‘Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans’ in the spring of 1769.

Andrew Lumisden (1720–1801), an ‘active and accurate antiquary’, was a Scottish Jacobite with whom Boswell became acquainted in Rome in 1765. They became good friends and Lumisden later assisted Boswell when he was writing the Life of Dr Johnson, by deciphering place names in the diarists’ journal of a French tour in late 1775.

Rothschild 446, 447.s

£ 6,500

The Stinking Burns

34. BURNS, Robert: Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect. William Creech, Edinburgh, 1787.

Octavo, pp. xlviii, 368. Second edition, FIRST EDINBURGH EDITION, with the misprint ‘Boxburgh’ in the list of subscribers and ‘stinking’ on p. 263. Portrait, half-title, some light soiling. Contemporary calf: worn, spine in compartments with contemporary red morocco label. Fine brown quarter morocco slipcase. Despite some soiling a fine complete copy.

The initial ‘Kilmarnock Edition’ published by John Wilson of Kilmarnock on 31st July 1786, c. 600 copies at 3 shillings were sold out in just over a month of publication. Due to demand, William Creech, an eminent Scottish bookseller, published the First Edinburgh edition on 21st April 1787. Three thousand copies in all were republished. However, after the first batch had been printed, the type had to be reset due to the fact that an error had crept into the line ‘Address to a Haggis’ whereby ‘Auld Scotland wants nae skinking wave’ became ‘Auld Scotland wants nae stinking wave’ (p. 263). The first Edinburgh edition has thus become known as the ‘Stinking Burns’.

On 23rd April 1787, Burns disposed of the property of his poems to Creech. In the event, Burns did not actually get paid till 30th May 1788, a matter that kept him hanging around Edinburgh many months longer than he had anticipated. Nevertheless, he received a rapturous welcome in the city and a number of fine reviews of the work. ‘Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect’ are the production of a man in a low station in life which he composed ‘to amuse himself with the little creation of his own fancy, amid the toil and fatigues of labour; to transcribe the various feelings, the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears in his own breast . . . and many of them are elegant and pleasing . . . Such as are of the descriptive kind contain faithful and pleasing delineations of the simplicity and manners, and engaging scenes to be found in country life . . . Upon the whole, we think that our rural bard is justly entitled to the patronage and encouragement which have been liberally extended towards him’ [Rev. John Logan (1748–1788) The English Review — Unsigned note, May 1782].

Rothschild 556.

£ 4,000

One of the rarest of the American Floras

35. [BYAM, Lydia]: A Collection of Exotics, from the Island of Antigua. London, 1797.

Folio, 5 leaves comprising title and dedication, 12 hand-coloured unsigned aquatint plates, title slightly soiled. Modem half-calf and contemporary marbled boards. The Robert de Belder copy (Sotheby’s, London, 1987).

FIRST EDITION of a very rare botanical book from the library of Robert de Belder, creator of one of the greatest collections of botanical books in the world and founder of the Arboretum Kalmthout in Belgium. Lydia Byam was the elder sister of the Governor of Antigua, William Gunthorpe. This work was printed again in 1798 and 1799.

The scarcity especially of complete copies in this good condition, is seen in the fact that of the two in the Natural History Museum, one lacks 7 of the 12 plates, while the other has its margins trimmed away and a broken binding (our copy is well-margined). Besides the Natural History Museum, there are no other known institutional holdings in Britain, and we know of only one copy of the second edition (at the Wellcome Institute). OCLC WorldCat lists three locations only of the present printing in the US (National Tropical Botanical Garden, Hamilton College Library, New York Public Library). No further copies on RLG.

Hunt 749: ‘One of the rarest of American floras; not listed by Pritzel, Jackson, Dunthorne, Nissen or Great Flower Books . . . The charming delicately engraved plates are an example of good representations of American flora which in some instances antedate the earliest colour plates of these subjects listed by Pritzel and Stapf’.

£ 20,000

36. CAESAR, Gaius Julius: [Hirtius, A.:] (Coustellier, A.U., ed.) Opera omnia. Paris, Joseph Barbou 1755.

12mo., 2 vols., pp. [iv] xxvii [i] 360; [iv] 455 [v], with final blank at end, plus engraved
frontispiece and 2 fold-out maps in first vol., 2 fold-out maps in second. Fine, crisp copies bound in burgundy morocco, elaborate foliated designs stamped in gilt on spines and covers, gilt dentelles, labels in green morocco (slight loss to head of spine in vol. 2, light stain towards tail, blue silk endpapers, a.e.g. Stamps of Silke Montague, small burgundy ownership medallions of James Hartmann.

Barbou’s elegant edition of Caesar’s commentaries, with supplements by his general Aulus Hirtius. This was part of a library of the classics prepared for this publisher by A. U. Coustellier; the catalogue as of 1755 is found at the end of the second volume here. For the aid of the book-collector, a list of editions of Caesar, from the first, Rome, 1469 (now Goff C 16) onwards, is added to the works.

Brunet I 1457. Graesse II 8.

£ 3,000

37. COMMELIN, Caspar: Horti Medici Amstelaedamis Plantae, Rariores et Exoticae. Ad vivum aeri incisae. Lugduni Batavorum [Leiden], apud Fridericum Haringh 1706.

Quarto, pp. [viiii] 488, plus 48 plates engraved by Pieter Sluyter. Plates 23 and 24 bound in wrong order. Ragged at edges, with some soiling and darkening, tear to plate 35, repaired from the verso, bound, with initial and final blanks, contemporary marbled wrappers in large part preserved, encased in modern half calf and marbled boards, red morocco gilt label. Armorial plate on verso of wrapper of John Hope M.D., purchase-note (his?), Leiden, October 13 1718. One early ink shelfmark on verso of wrapper, crossed through, another on title-page.

FIRST EDITION of these illustrations and descriptions of plants in the Hortus Medicus of Amsterdam. This was the author’s longest illustrated plant-study. He had published a work in Leiden, 1703, called the ‘Praeludia Botanica’ containing an appendix with illustrations of only 33 plants; the present work and the other were both published again in 1715. Commelin (1667–1731) was the nephew of Jan Commelin, a spice merchant instrumental to the growth of the Amsterdam botanical garden, which began as a physic garden. A genus of flower, the commelina, is named after them.

Hunt 399, 405 (other editions); Nissen, BB, 387; Pritzel 1837.

£ 2,500

Assisted by Hooke and Tompion

38. DERHAM, William (1657–1735): The Artificial Clockmaker . . . A Treatise of Watch, and Clock-work: Wherein the Art of Calculating Numbers for most sorts of Movements is explained to the capacity of the Unlearned. Also the History of Clock-work, both Ancient and Modern. With other Useful Matters never before Published. London, James Knapton, 1696.

Quarto, pp. vi 11, 132. FIRST EDITION. Very light browning, small tear in bottom margin of L 4 and R 4, neither affecting text. Single blind-stamped border with decorative motifs on corners, compartmentalised spine, gilt title on red leather in one, a clean and firm copy, bound in contemporary mottled calf well preserved. Ex-libris E.M. Bartlett. The Kenney copy.

William Derham, vicar of Upminster, Essex, is mainly known to horologists for this little treatise on clocks and watches. From the Restoration onwards, horology became a subject of scientific discussion and investigation. It was largely the innovations of Robert Hooke and his contemporary, Thomas Tompion, which enabled the field to move beyond imitation by blacksmiths. Derham’s work is a summation of horological discoveries to date and reflects the newly found serious nature of this field of study. In the preface of ‘The Artificial Clock-Maker’ he acknowledged the help he had received from Hooke and Tompion. ‘In the History of the Modern Inventions, I have had (among some others), the assistance chiefly of the ingenious Dr H . . . and Dr T . . .: The former being the Author of some, and well acquainted with others, of the Mechanical Inventions of that fertile Reign of King Charles II and the latter actually concerned in all, or most of the late inventions in Clock-work, by means of his famed skill in that, and other Mechanick operations’.

Derham was also a naturalist, scientist, and theologian. He contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Society and was elected fellow in 1702. On the accession of George I, Derham became chaplain to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II, and was installed canon of Windsor in September 1716. (See also R. W. Symonds, (incidentally the grandfather of Thomas.J. Symonds), Thomas Tompion, (London 1951)).

Wing D 1099 (7 locations in UK; Clark Library, Boston Public Library, Library Company of Philadelphia and Yale only in US).

£ 6,000

39. [HOOKE, Robert, editor]: Philosophical Collections. London, Printed for John Martyn, [Moses Pitt, Richard Chiswel] Printers for the Royal Society, 1679 [–82].

COMPLETE SET, seven numbers in one volume, 210 pp., six folding plates, one full-page engraving (no. 5, p. 161), one half-page engraving (no. 4, p. 92), half calf , modern boards. A good clean copy.

Robert Hooke was authorised by the Council of the Royal Society to publish the Philosophical Collections after the official Transactions ceased publication on Henry Oldenburg’s death in 1677. Ordinary publication of the Transactions was resumed in January 1682/3. The purpose of the journal was to provide an up-to-date account of any physical, chemical, astronomical or philosophical observations and to advertise the publication of any books of this kind. Complete sets of these seven numbers are very uncommon.

The Royal Society, founded in 1660, is the oldest scientific society in Great Britain and one of the oldest in Europe. Founders and early members included the scientist Bishop John Wilkins, the philosopher Joseph Glanvill, the mathematician John Wallis and the architect Christopher Wren, who wrote the preamble to its charter.

Keynes, Hooke 24. Norman 1100 (listing 3 folding plates). See PMM 148 for the ‘Philosophical Transactions’.

£ 20,000

40. JOSEPHUS: (D’Andilly, A., tr.:) Histoire des Juifs. Troisième edition. Paris, chez Pierre le Petit 1670.

Folio, two vols., pp. [xvi] ‘572’ [=772] [liv]; [xvi] xxxvi 520 [xlvi] (including final blank at end of vol. I), plus 1 full-page engraved plate in first vol., 3 double-page maps in second vol., 6 engraved illustrations in text. Engraved headpieces, tailpieces and initials. Titles in red and black with engraved vignettes, half-title in first vol. Light staining in vol. I, some loss to extreme bottom outer corner (blank) in vol. II, otherwise good copies, wide-margined, ruled in red, in seventeenth-century red morocco gilt ducal bindings, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, light spotting and staining, joints repaired. A.e.g. Pen inscriptions and shelfmarks of George Bridges, later shelfmarks in pencil, the one in the first vol. dated 1849.

Copy in a fine French ducal binding of this popular translation of Josephus, published previously in 1667 and 1668. It continued to be printed through the first half of the eighteenth century. The engraved vignettes and illustrations are by François Chauveau (1613–76), who was, from, 1662, Louis XIV’s own engraver, and, from 1663, counselor at the French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.

This edition not in Brunet but see vol. III, 572, for other editions.

£ 3,000

One of the masterpieces of French Eighteenth century book illustration

41. LA FONTAINE, Jean de (1621–1695): Contes et nouvelles en vers Amsterdam (= Paris), (Duchesne), 1762.

Octavo, two vols., pp. XIV, 268 (2), 16; VIII, 306 (8 plus 2 blanks). Contemporary red morocco, spine with gilt flower and title label, covers with triple-gilt fillet border and a gilt flower in every corner, inside covers gilt. Two volumes in modern slipcase. First volume contains one engraved portrait of La Fontaine, plus 39 engraved plates illustrating the fables, second volume contains an engraved portrait of Charles Eisen and 41 engraved plates, designed by him. In total four vignettes and 53 beautifully engraved head and tailpieces within the two volumes. A fine copy.

Based on Boccaccio, La Fontaine’s fables consist of a number of allegorical stories and popular tales of a moralistic nature. This edition is known as the ‘Fermiers-Generaux’, as the author was commissioned by the farmers-general, or tax-farmers, a large body of men who collected the indirect taxes levied by the French crown. No expense was spared to produce a copy commensurate with the wealth and position of this group. The last five stories are not actually the work of La Fontaine: ‘La Couturière’, ‘Le Gascon’ and ‘La Cruche’ are by Auterau; ‘Promettre est un et tenir est un autre’ by Vergier and ‘Le Rossignol’ is attributed to Lamblin or to De Trousset de Valincourt. The ‘Dissertation sur la Joconde’ at the end of the first volume is by Boileau. The engraved portraits of La Fontaine and Charles Eisen (1720–1778) in the first volume are by the French artist, Hyacinthe Rigaud.

Charles Eisen was one of the acknowledged masters of French book illustration during the rococo period. ‘The robustness and voluptuous sensuality of his plates capture the flavour of the original Boccaccio from whom La Fontaine took these tales, yet the precision and delicacy of their execution saves them from vulgarity.’ (Leslie A. Morris in ‘Vision of a collector’.)

‘Les estampes dessinées par M Eissen expriment sans obscénité les instants les plus piquants des contes: on reconnoit dans plusieurs la touché de Rubens, dans d’autres celie de Teniere . . . dans la plupart celles des Graces’ (Cohen-De Ricci). Most of the illustrations were engraved by a certain M. Ficquet ‘homme unique de ce genre’. (Cohen-De Ricci.)

Cohen-De Ricci. pp. 558–68. Leslie A. Morris in ‘Visions of a collector’ (1991), pp. 277–9. Lewine, pp. 278–80.

£ 12,000

42. LA GUERINIERE, frère Robichon de: Ecole de Cavalerie, contenant la Connoissance, l’Instruction, et la Conservation du Cheval. Avec Figures en Taille-Douce. A Paris, chez Huart et Moreau, Desaint et Saillant, Durand, Delormel, Pissot 1751.

Folio, pp. [viii] 318 [x] plus frontispiece and 24 plates at end, the last three of which are fold-out. Third edition. Light age-yellowing, neat repair to blank bottom margin of last leaf before plates, bound in contemporary half-calf and yellow speckled paper boards, slightly rubbed.

Third edition of this work, the second in the original format. It was first printed, in folio, in 1733, and an octavo edition followed in 1736.

Brunet III 769. Graesse IV 79.

£ 4,000

One of only two copies on Vellum

43. [MERARD DE SAINT-JUST, Anne-Jeanne-Félicité D’Ormoy, Madame]: La Corbeille de Fleurs. Paris: F.A. Didot l’ainé [1796].

16mo., pp. iv, 250, iii, printed on vellum, bound in contemporary dark red straight-grained red morocco, covers with single gilt rule border, gilt central panel with inverted corners, smooth spine in six compartments, gilt lettered in one, a repeated pattern of circlets and stars in the others, board edges and turn-ins gilt, light blue watered silk linings, silk doublures with gilt vine border and roundel cornerpiece. g.e., joints cracked and slight rubbing.

Probably one of two copies on vellum, extra to the 25 copies on papier velin which comprise the whole edition. The work contains imaginary epistolary exchanges with a marquise, Victorine d’Ortinmar, the story of Girouette I, called the dupe, sovereign of a large kingdom on the moon, and a pastoral story called Rosine and Colette. There are two poems at the end. Excessively rare.

Brunet III 1643; Van Praet Velins bibl. pub I. II 537 (recording two copies on vellum, one owned by the bookseller M Chardon). Very rare in institutions: this title apparently not in OCLC WorldCat, the Bibliothèque Nationale catalogue, or COPAC.

£ 5,000

44. MORE, Henry: An Antidote against Atheism, or, an Appeal to the Naturall Faculties of the Minde of Man, whether there be not a God. The second Edition corrected and enlarged: with an Appendix thereunto annexed. London: J. Flesher; William Mordern, Cambridge, 1655.

Octavo, pp. [xxxii] 278 [xiv] 398 [iv]. Title in red and blank. With a blank leaf followed by a leaf carrying a section title on recto, before second register. Light age-yellowing, a good copy bound in contemporary blind-ruled sheep, lettering stamped (recently?) in gilt on spine, joints cracked but cords sound, piece of leather replaced at head. Plate of Zion Research Library, label of William George’s Sons, Bristol. Inscription, (?) Drayard House, Wilts.

Second edition of these arguments for the existence of God, book three refutes atheists’ general disbelief in the supernatural and discusses phenomena including the raising of winds with spells, people who have had foreign bodies put into them through bewitchment, the Pied Piper, the sealing of covenants with the devil, witches, fairy circles, and werewolves. Henry More (1614–1687), Cambridge Platonist, was also a correspondent of Descartes.

Wing M 2640.

£ 2,500

First Edition Shakespeare, Duke of Roxburgh copy

46. SHAKESPEARE, William and FLETCHER, John: The Two Noble Kinsmen. London, Thomas Cotes, for John Waterson, 1634.

Quarto, (175 x 128mm.), pp. [ii] 88 [ii]. FIRST EDITION. Roman type with italic, typographical headpiece, printer’s woodcut device (MacKerrow 238) on title, woodcut initial; leaf B2 shaved at the tail-edge costing most of the signature but preserving the catchwords, B3 skilfully repaired in the lower margins partly obscuring the catchword. Full red morocco gilt, turn-ins gilt, marbled endpapers, double flyleaves, all edges gilt, by F. Bedford. Ex libris Duke of Roxburghe, with his memorial stamp on title, and Richard Manney’s bookplate.

The only play by Shakespeare not to have been printed in the folio editions. Although not included in the traditional canon of Shakespeare’s plays (probably because it did not appear in the Folios), ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ is accepted as written partly by Shakespeare in about 1613. The play is closely based on Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale’. The main addition to the plot is the Jailer’s daughter who falls in love with the protagonist, Palamon, and runs mad. She is subsequently cured by a lower-class admirer posing as Palamon. The overall tone is lighter than the Chaucerian prototype as the play is diversified with song and lyrical passages. The play has rarely been performed in modern times. The printing of ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ is unusual as it includes some of the stage prompts. For this reason it had been believed that the prompt book itself served as the exemplar from which the present first edition was set. Subsequent research has shown that the text was set from annotated foul papers, including some annotations from the prompter such as specifications of off-stage noises and music. The printed text almost certainly dates from when the play was revived between 1625–6 when Curtis Grenville and Thomas Tuckfield were acting for the company and they are mentioned in the text. The copy supplied to the publisher for printing was probably the one used by Edward Knight the bookkeeper of the King’s Men. (Printer’s copy for Two Noble Kinsmen, Studies in Bibliography, 1958, 61–84.)

This is the only separate edition printed in the seventeenth century. In 1679 the play was included in the folio edition of ‘Fifty Comedies and Tragedies’, by Beaumont and Fletcher. ‘The Rivals’ by William Davenant is a variation of ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’.

Greg 492. STC 11075. Pforzheimer 899.

£ 35,000

47. SPINOZA, Baruch: Opera posthuma. [Amsterdam, Jan Rieuwertsz], 1677.

Quarto, pp. [xx] 614 [xxxiv] 112 [viii]. FIRST EDITION. Small woodcut diagrams. Light age-yellowing, light soiling to final two leaves, bound in early gilt-ruled spotted calf, sympathetically rebacked. Bookplate neatly removed. Signature of Lord Aberdour and ink shelfmark, probably his. Early marginalia.

The second work published by Spinoza (1632–77) following the ‘Tractatus
theologico-politicus’ (Amsterdam 1670), it contains the first printing of his important treatise, the ‘Ethices’, in which he set out most fully his highly important theories of natural theology. The Opera Postuma, edited by Spinoza’s friend Jarig Jelles was printed after Spinoza’s death without place and publishers’s name for fear of prosecution. Soon after publication, the book was suppressed by order of the States General as ‘prophaen, atheistisch ende blasphement’. The work may originally have been written for a philosophical club based outside Amsterdam, which was set up to study Cartesian philosophy. Also here are a ‘Tractatus politicus’, a ‘Tractatus de intellectus emendatione’, an epistolary collection and a Hebrew grammar. Correspondents, whose letters to and from Spinoza are here preserved, include Henry Oldenburg, first secretary of the Royal Society, and Gottfried Liebnitz.

Van der Linde 22. See PMM 153 infr.

£ 9,000

48. STANLEY, Thomas: The History of Philosophy: containing the Lives, Opinions, Actions and Discourses of the Philosophers of every Sect. Illustrated with the Effigies of divers of Them. The Second Edition. London, printed for Thomas Bassett 1687.

Folio, pp. [xxviii] 1091 [i] including engraved portrait frontispiece. T3 (pp. 141/2) bound before T2 (pp. 139/40). Title in red and black. 26 engraved portraits of philosophers, a small engraving of a coin, an engraving of the orbits of the sun and planets around the earth, and a small woodcut musical illustration, all in text. Light age-browning, tears to X1 and 2C2, with no loss, bound in contemporary boards, rubbed, recently but sympathetically rebacked, red morocco gilt label. Inscriptions of Thomas Pindar, the first (on recto of front free endpaper) dated Kempley Court, June 30th 1690. Name-label bookplate on pastedown of Dr Gustavus Hinrichs.

‘In its account of “Those on whom the Attribute of Wise was conferred” in antiquity, with particular attention to Thales, Solon, and Socrates, the first volume established the pattern of “Lives and Opinions” followed in the later volumes. Volume 2 . . . included detailed accounts of the philosophical doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism . . . and volume 3 . . . encompasses Pythagoras and the pre-Socratics, Scepticism, and a particularly detailed and sympathetic account of Epicureanism . . . In these three volumes Stanley sought to give a comprehensive account of the various schools of Greek philosophy, in as impartial a way as possible: “there is due to every one the Commendation of their own Deserts”, he writes in the dedication to volume 1. A fourth folio volume, The History of the Chaldaick Philosophy . . . is briefer and more tentative in treating the occult learning of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia: “there is not any thing more difficult to be retrieved out of the Ruins of Antiquity than the learning of the Eastern Nations” . . . Stanley’s History of Philosophy was accepted as a standard authority for many years’ (Warren Chernaik, ‘Stanley, Thomas’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols., 2004, LII, 240–243. see 242).

Wing S 5239.

£ 1,500

49. WEBSTER John: The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors . . . But that there is a corporeal league made betwixt the Devil and the Witch . . . London, Jonas More, 1677.

Quarto, pp. (16) 346 (4). FIRST EDITION. Roman letter with italic. Slight tear to corner of Bb1 with no text loss, hole Cc4 with minor text loss, still a good clean copy, bound in brown calf, red gilt title piece, slightly worn. Ex libris Spottiswoode, 1900.

Dedicating the work to neighbours in Yorkshire as a placatory text to halt spurious rumours and misunderstanding concerning devilish matters, Webster provides an overview of censure concerning the treatment of apparitions and witchcraft and describes witches and their deeds. He adopts a rational approach and insists that all evidence in support of sorcery should be subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as employed by the likes of Newton and Locke. After all, what need was there to suspect the handiwork of the devil in any miracle, when ‘Mr Boyle’ . . . was able . . . ‘to manifest the great and wonderful virtues that God had endowed stones, minerals, plants and roots withal’.

Wing W 1230.

£ 2,000

50. ZOHAR hadash . . . de-Hamisha Humshe Torah, de-Hamesh megilot, ve-Tikunim ve-likute ha-Zohar . . . me-sefer ha-Zohar yashan ve-hadash ve-tikunim ve-Midrash ne’ elam (by Isaac ben Abraham Neustadt). Amsterdam, Moses ben Abraham Mendes Countinho 1701.

Quarto, 89 leaves (sigs. 1–442, 451), misnumbered. Hebrew letter. Some browning, bound in contemporary blind-ruled, blind-stamped calf, with fleurs-de-lis designs, and central oval medallions on covers. Brass clasps, in working order. Rubbed, cracking to top joint. Owner’s inscription in Hebrew on title-page.

A very rare printing of Zohar hadash, a commentary on the book of Ruth, with material of importance in cabalistic studies. Isaac ben Abraham Neustadt was a rabbi of Amsterdam. His son, Löw, provided a table at the end.

Not in Steinschneider, ‘Bibliotheca Bodleiana’. OCLC WorldCat locates one copy only, at Brown University. J. C. Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea (4 vols., Hamburg and Leipzig, 1718–33), III, 1148; IV, 1001.

£ 4,000

Nineteenth & Twentieth centuries

51. ACKERMAN, R.: A Picturesque Tour of the English Lakes, containing a Description of the most romantic scenery of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, with Accounts of Antient and modern manners and customs, and elucidations of The History and Antiquities of that part of the country, &c. &c. Illustrated with forty-eight coloured views, drawn by Messrs. T. H. Fielding, and J. Walton, during a two years residence among the Lakes. London, printed for R. Ackermann 1821.

Quarto, pp. vi [ii] 288 plus 48 coloured plates of landscapes. LARGE PAPER COPY. Title-page with coloured landscape vignette. Contemporary manuscript map of lakes loosely inserted in book. Light browning, front free endpaper becoming detached, bound in red half-morocco gilt and cloth boards, marbled pastedowns and endpapers, rubbed, original red morocco gilt spine relaid.

Brunet II 1248 (stating the edition carries no date). Graesse II 577 (dating it to 1822).

£ 4,500

Aleister Crowley

56. [CROWLEY, Aleister, ed.:] The Equinox. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., March 1909–March 1914 [Vol. 1, No. 1–Vol. 1,
No. 10].

Octavo. Ten vols. Original cloth-backed printed boards. Covers worn with chipping and some soiling, heavy tape repair to backstrip of 2 vols., spines loose and split at joints to a few others, many vols. sprung but generally clean and unspotted internally. Ex libris Dr J. Thomas Head.

Crowley’s bi-annual journal of the occult, of which he wrote around three quarters. Present here is the complete early run, and overall nearly the whole series. One further part was published in 1919, with the number ‘vol. III, Part I’ (nothing of vol. II was produced). Three separate books were labelled as belonging to the series but were not periodicals. Uncommon.

See the bibliography by Gerald Yorke in John Symonds, ‘the Great Beast: the Life of Aleister Crowley’ (London 1952) 306–307 (no. 63).

£ 2,500

Crowley presentation copy

57. CROWLEY, Aleister: Moonchild. A Prologue. London 1929 The Mandrake Press.

Octavo, pp. vii 335. FIRST EDITION. Original green cloth. This is CROWLEY'S OWN COPY and PRESENTED AND SIGNED BY HIM on the front free endpaper: ‘To Clements Hassell with sincere admiration of a fine artist and appreciation of an excellent friend from Aleister Crowley oct[ober] 8,[19]'32. EV.’ (EV here stands for Era Vulgare which is Latin for, in the common era which Crowley, having been anti-Christian from childhood, uses instead of A.D. On the back free endpaper Crowley has made autograph notes in a diary fashion of his meetings, drawing the sign of Mercury and Mars, five lines of times including Foyle's and lunch at Grosvenor House.

*A rare dust jacket designed by Beresford Egan is not present in our copy.

£ 5,000

Remarkable Presentation-Association copy

62. GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832): Umrisse zu Goethe’s Faust Stuttgart u. Tübingen, 1. Cotta, 1820.

26 etchings (first plate detached) by Moritz REITZSCH and 12 pages of separately-gathered text consisting of a preface and a plate list quoting the corresponding passages from Faust. Yellow paper wrapper (fragile). PRESENTATION INSCRIPTION IN THE HAND OF J. W. VON GOETHE AND ALSO SIGNED BY HIM, ‘Den theuren Gatten Bracebridge zu geneigten Andenken, Weimar d. 1 Marz 1826/Goethe’ (A gift to the dear Bracebridge couple in fond memory, Weimar, 1 March 1826/Goethe).

Charles-Holte Bracebridge (1799–1872), of Warwickshire, and his wife Selina, were a wealthy literary couple who spent a deal of their married life travelling Europe. In the course of their visit to Germany, Selina befriended Goethe’s daughter-in-law, Ottilie von Goethe (1795–1872). Some forty letters from Selina to Ottilie survive in the Goethe Archive, Weimar. Mrs Bracebridge also features in Ottilie’s diary. The Bracebridges were a very well connected couple, both Florence Nightingale and George Eliot were associates.

Reitzsch’s illustrations of Faust are perhaps the most influential depiction of this drama, and his sharp outline drawings had a long lasting impact on future stage productions of the work. The fact that Goethe chose this particular edition as a gift to the Bracebridges confirms the extent to which he approved of Reitzsch’s vision of the play.

£ 30,000

63. [GREECE, Parthenon, etc., Corfu and SPAIN: photographs of Greece, Corfu and Spain. Various photographers, late 1860s–1890s. Albumen prints of various dimensions laid on original card and containing 94 photographs, of which 73 are of Athens and Greece (37 full-page, 29 half-page, 2 quarto and 5 smaller) and 21 of Spain (13 full-page, 4 half-page, and 4 quarto-size). The photographers are D. Constantin, [1860s–1870s]; J. Laurent, Madrid [1870s–1880s]; B. Borri & Figlio, Corfu; Attractively rebound in modern red half-morocco and marbled boards.

£ 2,500

Presentation copy

66. HITLER, Adolf (1899–1945): Mein Kampf (‘My Struggle’). Munich, Franz Ther Nachfolger, 1926, 1927.

Octavo, two vols., (respectively second and first editions), pp. XVI 391 plus [xxxii] pages of Nazi advertisements; XI 354 plus [ii] pages of advertisements for the first volume of ‘Mein Kampf’. Bound in red cloth. HANDWRITTEN DEDICATION SIGNED ‘in memory of our shared imprisonment (dated Munich, 20 December 1935) to Emil Danneberg, Adolf Hitler’.

Hitler composed ‘Mein Kampf’ at Landsberg jail, where he resided following his failed Munich beer hall putsch. Danneberg is not a recognised co-conspirator. Perhaps he was his prison guard?

Included with a copy of Mein Kampf vol. I, second edition (1926), with vellum covers, and photograph with auto pen autograph (number 245 of 500).

£ 22,000

68. MOLEVILLE, Bertrand de (Dallas, R. C., tr.): The Costume of the Hereditary States of the House of Austria. London: Printed for William Miller by William Bulmer, 1804.

Folio, pp. [vi] xxviii plus 50 colour plates with facing explanations. French and English language. First plate bound as a frontispiece in this copy. Light age-yellowing, bound in contemporary blue morocco, neoclassical tooling to spine and covers in gilt and blind (gilt only on spine), slightly rubbed and bumped.

One of a series of costume books published by Miller (the other titles comprised costumes of Russia, for which see here below, China and the Ottoman Empire), included in this volume are clothes from Tirol, Hungary, Bohemia, Transylvania, the Dalmatian coast, Moravia, and those of Jews from Poland. The pictures are copied by the engravers William Ellis and William Poole, from a collection which had been recently published in Vienna, called ‘Costumes des Etats de l’Empereur’. Bertrand de Moleville, author of the text, was sometime a minister for Louis XVI.

£ 2,000

70. PALMER, Samuel: The Eclogues of Virgil. An English Version. With Illustrations by the Author. London, published by Seeley & Company, 54 Fleet Street, 1883.

Folio, pp. xiv [ii] 102 plus 14 full-page illustrations (etchings and facsimiles of drawings), each with a facing leaf with the verse it illustrates, not included in the pagination. Title and half-title in red and black. A good copy bound in green cloth publisher’s boards, title and author stamped in gilt on front cover and spine, rustic pitchfork vignette stamped in centre of front cover, uncut.

£ 1,200

71. PENNINGTON, John H: Aerostation, or steam aerial navigation. Baltimore, Entered according to Act of Congress . . . in the Clerks Office of the District Court of Maryland. 1838.

Octavo, eight pages plus a lithographic plate, rather frayed and worn at fore-edges, library and ink accession numbers. Early paper wrappers, torn and frayed, modern morocco bound encasement. Stamps of Franklin Institute Library, Pennsylvania.

FIRST EDITION — of extreme rarity. Pennington a Baltimore inventor, proposed and patented an immense disc 375 feet in length, powered by paddle-wheels.

Kress C4699 (photocopy only). Photocopy only in BL. OCLC WorldCat gives 5 copies only in US (Smithsonian, University of Chicago, Boston Athenaeum, Buffalo and Erie Community Public Library, Western Reserve Historial Society Library).

£ 10,000

72. PYNE, W. H.: The History of the Royal Residences of Windsor Castle, St. James’s Palace, Carlton House, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court, Buckingham House, and Frogmore. London, A. Dry, 1819.

Quarto, three vols., pp. 585. Illustrated with 100 highly finished and hand-coloured engravings, and Facsimiles of original drawings. Bound in half red morocco, with gilt lettering and decorative detail.

All aspects of the Royal residences are described in this work, from the kitchen and general running of the household to individual items of furniture. The work culminates with an alphabetical list of portraits in the Royal Collections described in the book and a list of plates. Pyne provided the text and the drawings were supplied by eminent artists such as Nash, Pugin, MacKenzie amongst others. Though the work had some success, it involved Pyne in serious financial difficulties, and he was on more than one occasion confined for debt in the King’s Bench prison. [DNB] [Abbey 396]

£ 7,500

73. RUGE, Gerde: Michail Gorbatsjov. Frankfurt, Fischer Verlag for Tirion, Netherlands 1990.

Octavo, pp. 318 plus 8 pp. photographs. Paperback. Signed by Gorbachev on half-title.

£ 500

74. [RUSSIA:] The Costume of the Russian Empire, Illustrated by a Series of Seventy-Three Engravings. With Descriptions in English and French. London: Printed for W. Miller, Old Bond Street, by S. Gosnell, Little Queen Street, Holborn. 1803.

Large quarto, 16 pp. prelims. (in English and French) plus 73 coloured illustrations with tissue-guards and facing descriptions on separate leaves, in English (recto) and French (verso), bound in turn of the nineteenth century diced Russia gilt, title lettered in gilt on spine, top joint cracked, cords holding, new endpapers. Armorial plates of Sir William Jenningham, Bart., and Charles Tennant.

One of a series of costume books published by Miller, another (for a copy of which, see above) covered the Austrian Empire, a third the Ottomans, and a fourth China. The work copies a series of plates made between 1776 and 1779 in St. Petersburg by C. W. Müller and dedicated to Catherine the Great. Depicted here are, amongst others, traditional Finns, Laplanders, Estonians, Samoyeds, Mongols, Kirghis and Tartars.

Hiler 767. Colas 702 (p. 242).

£ 1,500

75. SCHWERDT, C. F .G. R.: Hunting, Hawking, Shooting. Privately printed for the author by Waterlow and Sons Limited, London 1928–1937.

Large 4to., 4 vols., pp. xxiv 324; xvi 359 [i]; [x] 256; xiii 260. 265 plates in first three vols., 116 plates in fourth, plus frontispieces, and plates at end depicting Schwerdt’s bookplate.

Only 300 copies of this important bibliography were printed. The first three volumes, all published at the same time, are copy number 126 and the fourth, which was issued nine years later, is copy number 111.

£ 4,500

76. [SOUTHCOTT, Joanna (1750–1814):] A volume of pamphlets by or about the prophetess Joanna Southcott.

‘Although Southcott did not start publishing her writings until 1801, when she was fifty-one, most of her texts are enlivened by fascinating fragments of village lore and autobiographical detail from her early life in Devon . . . Southcott’s millenarian visions first began in 1792 when she was forty-one years old. Day and night, she was spoken to by a ‘voice’ predicting what would happen on earth, from the coming war in France to food shortages in the west country . . . To prove the authenticity of her mission, Southcott developed the bold strategy of sealing her prophecies and sending them to clergymen and other dignitaries, so that her predictions could be tested against future events’ (see Sylvia Bowerbank, ‘Southcott, Joanna’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds. H. C. G. Matthew, Brian Harrison (60 vols., Oxford 2004), LI, 683–691).

Contents comprise: [I] Hymns, or Spiritual Songs, composed from the Prophetic Writings of Joanna Southcott. Fourth Edition. London, Marchant and Galabin [etc.] 1814 (12mo., pp. x, 4, 223); [II] The Strange Effects of Faith. Third Part. Fourth Edition. London, Marchan 1814 (octavo, pp. 97–240); [III] A Caution and Instruction to the Sealed, that they may know for what they are sealed. Fourth Edition. London, Marchant and Galabin, March 1814 (octavo, pp. 24); [IV] Copies, and Parts of Copies, of Letters and Communications [. . .] Transmitted by Miss Townley to Mr. W. Sharp [. . .] [London], S. Rousseau [1804] (octavo, pp. 92); [V] Prophecies announcing the Birth of the Prince of Peace. London, W. Marchant [?1814] (octavo, pp. 440); [VI] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the First. London, S. Rousseau 1804 (octavo, pp. 96); [VII] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Second. [London], S. Rousseau [n.d.](octavo, pp. 97–192); [VIII] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Third. London, S. Rousseau [n.d.](octavo, pp. 193–288); [IX] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Fourth. London, S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 289–384); [X] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Fifth. [London], S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 385–480); [XI] From this Publication the Readers may discern what is hastening upon the Land, as they are daily provoking the Lord to Anger, by false Doctrine, as well as the crying Sins of the Nation. [London], W. Marchant [1808] (octavo, pp. 48); [XII] A True Picture of the World, and a Looking-Glass for all Men. London, Galabin and Marchant [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 48); [XIII] A Communication sent in a Letter to the Reverend Mr. P. in 1797, with an Explanation thereon now given. London, W. Marchant, 1814 (octavo, pp. 24); [XIV] Sound an Alarm in my Holy Mountain. Ninth Edition. London, Galabin and Marchant 1816 (octavo, pp. 72); [XV] The Continuation of the Prophecies of Joanna Southcott. London, E. Spragg [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 56).

Medium browning, contents soiled in places, some underlining and marginalia, bound
together in modern quarter-calf and marbled boards, red morocco label.

£ 850

77. [SOUTHCOTT, Joanna:] A second volume of Southcottian pamphlets.

[I] A Word to the Wise, or a Call to the Nation. London, Marchant and Galabin 1813 (octavo, pp. 55 [i]); [II] Letters and Communications. Lately Written to Jane Townley. Stourbridge, J. Heming 1804. (octavo, pp. 128 [vi], including three blank leaves at end); [III] Sound an Alarm in my Holy Mountain. Ninth Edition. London, Marchant and Galabin, May 1816 (octavo, pp. 72); [IV] On the Prayers for the Fast Day, May, 1804. London, S. Rousseau [1804?] (octavo, pp. 48); [V] Copies and Parts of Copies of Letters and Communications. The Parable of the Little Flock of Sheep. London, S. Rousseau 1804 (octavo, pp. 92); [VI] Mr. Joseph Southcott, the Brother of Joanna Southcott, will now Com Forward as Dinah’s Brethren did, that they shall not Deal with his Sister, as they would with a Harlot. London, S. Rousseau 1804 (octavo, pp. 110 (incomplete at end); [VII] A Warning to the World. Joanna Southcott’s Prophecies. London, S. Rousseau, April 25 1804 (octavo, pp. 100); [VIII] Joanna Southcott’s Answer to Five Charges in the Leeds Mercury. London, E. J. Field [1805] (octavo, pp. 24); [IX] Prophesies announcing the Birth of the Prince of Peace. London, W. Marchant, September 7 1814 (octavo, pp. 40); [X] An Answer to the World. London, S. Rousseau, 1806 (octavo, pp. 96); [XI] A True Picture of the World, and a Looking-Glass for All Men. London, Galabin and Marchant [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 48); [XII] An Answer to a Sermon published and preached by Mr. Smith, on Tuesday Evening, March 15, 1808, at Beersheba-Chapel. London, W. Marchant 1808 (octavo, pp. 83 [I]); [XIII] [Another copy, different issue].

Overall medium browning, some contents spotted, soiled, ragged at margins, some underlining and marginalia. Bound together in contemporary half-calf and marbled boards, red morocco label.

£ 850

78. [SOUTHCOTT, Joanna:] A third volume.

[I] Songs of Faith, Hope and Joy founded on the Prophecies, given from 1792. Brighton, Phillips and Co. [1835] (octavo, pp. 32); [II] [Another copy]; [III] Divine and Spiritual Communications. The Second Edition. London, W. Marchant, 1823 (octavo, pp. 44); [IV] Scriptures which shew for what Christ died. London, Marchant and Galabin, June 21 1812 (octavo, pp. 64); [V] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the First. London, S. Rousseau 1804 (octavo, pp. 96); [VI] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the Second. London, S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 97–192); [VII] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the Third. [London], S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 193–288); [VIII] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the Fourth. [London], S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 289–384); [IX] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the Fifth. [London], S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 385–480); [X] The Controversy between Joanna Southcott and Elias Carpenter. Part I. [London] S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 48); [XI] Truth defended: or Christ’s glorious and peaceable reign is at hand. London, A. Hancock, 1840 (octavo, pp. 16); [XII] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the first. London, Elisabeth Fairlight Vaughan 1849 (8vo., pp. 100); [XIII] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the third. [London], S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 193–288); [XIV] Commentary upon the Prayers and Ordinances of the English Protestant Church. Arranged by Lavinia E. C. Jones. Bradford-on-Avon, Daniel Jones [1863] (octavo, pp. 84 [iv] (including 3 pp. ‘Catalogue of Southcott’s works entered at Stationer’s Hall’)); [XV] Scriptural evidences on the day of Judgment, and the Ten Lost Kingdoms preceding the Millenium. By Daniel Jones. London/Bradford, G. Berger, J. Rawling, 1843 (octavo, pp. [iv] 90 [ii] including final blank); [XVI] A Word to the Wise. Or a Call to the Nation. The Third Edition. London, Marchant and Galabin 1813 (octavo, pp. 55 [i]).

Some pamphlets spotted and soiling, others quite fresh, bound together in modern half-calf and marbled boards, red morocco label. With some original printed wrappers bound in.

£ 850

79. [SOUTHCOTT, Joanna:] A fourth volume.

[I] Prophecies announcing the Birth of the Prince of Peace. London, W. Marchant [1814] (octavo, pp. 40); [II] From this Publication the Readers may discern what is hastening upon the Land. [London], W. Marchant [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 43); [III] A Warning to the World. Joanna Southcott’s Prophecies. London, Rousseau, April 25 1804 (octavo, pp. 100); [IV] On the Prayers for the Fast Day, May, 1804. London, Marchant and Galabin [1804] (octavo, pp. 48); [V] Copies and Parts of Copies of Letters and Communications. [London], S. Rousseau, 1804 (octavo, pp. 92); [VI] The True Explanation of the Bible. Part the First. London, S. Rousseau, 1804 (octavo, pp. 96) [VII] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Second. London, S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 97–192); [VIII] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Third. [London] S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 193–288); [IX] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Fourth. [London] S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 289–384); [X] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Fifth. London, S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 385–480); [XI] True Explanations of the Bible. Part the Sixth. [London], S. Rousseau [n.d.] (octavo, pp. 481–576); [XII] The Strange Effects of Faith; with Remarkable Prophecies, made in 1792, &c. Of Things which are to come. Sixth part. Fourth Edition. London, W. Marchant, 1814 (octavo, pp. 241–288); [XIII] The Fourth Book of Wonders, being the Answer of the Lord to the Hebrews. London, W. Marchant, 1814 (octavo, pp. 80); [XIV] London, November 7th, 1808. From this Publication the Readers may discern what is hastening upon the Land. London, W. Marchant [1808] (octavo, pp. 48); [XV] The Continuation of the Prophecies of Joanna Southcott. A Word in Season to a Stinking Kingdom. London, Marchant and Galabin, 1810 (octavo, pp. 56).

Light browning, spotting and soiling in some places, bound in modern half-calf and marbled boards, red morocco label.

£ 850

Author's Original Revisions

83. SYMONDS, John: copy with author’s revisions of ‘The King of the Shadow Realm’ (London, Duckworth, 1989), to be retitled ‘The Beast 666’ (1996).

8vo., pp. x [ii] 558. Paperback, worn. Author’s pen revisions and typed paste-ins found extensively throughout.

Symonds’s own corrected copy for the fourth edition of his biography of Aleister Crowley, to be entitled ‘The Beast 666’. The first and second editions (1951 and 1971) had been called ‘The Great Beast’, while the third (1989) was titled ‘The King of the Shadow Realm’. The work was described by Colin Wilson as ‘a kind of appalling classic’, as it illustrated Crowley’s absolute depravity.

£ 12,500

Original Drawing

85. WARHOL, Andy. The philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again). London, Cassell, 1975.

Octavo, pp. 241. FIRST EDITION Presentation copy Provenance; signed by author ‘To Ian [Reddington, “Tricky Dicky” in Eastenders]. Dog . . . Andy Warhol, London 1975’ With an original drawing of dog's head on the half-title, publisher's cloth, dust-jacket, with an unusual inscription in that Warhol has drawn a dog’s head, and not the familiar soup. A very fine copy.

Warhol on love, beauty, work, art and success, with piercing glimpses of the contemporary world and his own role in it, written with honesty and a lot of humour.

£ 3000