Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan

Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.

We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia.  Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.

 
  1. HORACE.

    Q. Horatius Flaccus ex recensione Dan. Heinsii.

    Edinburgh, George Mosman, 1704.

    A rare, modestly printed Scottish Horace, apparently the only printing in the British Isles of Heinsius’ edition, first published by Louis Elzevir in 1612.

    £450

  2. HORACE.

    Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera cum novo commentario ad modum Joannis Bond.

    Paris, Didot, 1855.

    The deluxe issue of Didot’s Horace, a fine early photographically-illustrated work, complete with all the photographic plates, headpieces and maps, and printed on fine paper.

    £750

  3. HORACE.

    Quinti Horatii Flacci poemata, novis scholiis et argumentis ab Henrico Stephano illustrata. Eiusdem Henr. Stephani diatribae...

    [Geneva, Henri Estienne, 1574.]

    First Henri Estienne edition of the works of Horace, with his marginal scholia and appendices, this copy with annotations by a late sixteenth-century student providing a running commentary on the Odes and Epodes.

    £2500

  4. HORACE; James TATE, editor

    Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...

    Cambridge, J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1832. 

    First edition of this attempt to arrange the books of Horace in chronological order by the classical scholar and master of Richmond School, James Tate (1771–1843), this copy presented by him to Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855), classicist, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Regius Professor of Greek,...

    £150

  5. [HOSPICE SAINT-NICOLAS, METZ.]

    Deed granting land to the hospice.

    Metz, 5 May 1464.

    A significant document recording the grant of agricultural land in 1464 to the Hospice of Saint-Nicolas, the oldest hospital in Metz, in northeast France, issued during the reign of Louis XI and in the final year of the papacy of Pius II.

    £450

  6. HOSPINIAN, Rudolf. 

    Historia Jesuitica.  Hoc est, de origine, regulis, constitutionibus, privilegiis, incrementis, progressu...

    Zurich, Johannes Rudolph Wolf, 1670. 

    Second edition of Hospinian’s vast and vitriolic attack on the Jesuits, first published in 1619 (also in Zurich by Wolf); both editions are scarce. 

    £800

  7. HOSSCHIUS, Sidronius.

    Sidronii Hosschii e Societate Iesu elegiarum libri sex. Praemittuntur illustrissimorum virorum poemata in...

    Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1656.

    First collected edition of the neo-Latin verse of the Flemish Jesuit and poet Sidronius Hosschius (Sidron de Hossche, 1596–1653), edited after his death by his fellow poet Jacques van de Walle (1599–1690), and prefaced with poems on Hosschius’ death commissioned by the future Pope Alexander...

    £600

  8. [HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.]

    Royal order in French authorising payment to various officials engaged in raising a levy (‘aide’) at...

    Paris, 30 March 1415.

    A royal order to pay officials involved in raising a levy at Avranches, issued a few months before the battle of Agincourt.

    £1750

  9. HURTADO, Eugenio, scribe.

    [Missal for feast days.]

    Madrid, 1827.

    An extraordinary and enormous liturgical manuscript with painted and stencilled decorations, in a remarkable binding on wheels for ease of movement

    £9500

  10. HYGINUS Gromaticus, attributed, and POLYBIUS.

    De Castris Romanis, quae extant. Cum notis & animadversionibus …

    Amsterdam, Jodocus Pluymer, 1660.

    First edition thus, with annotations by the politician Radboud Herman Scheele (1622–1662).

    £1000

  11. IBN VERGA, Solomon; Georg GENTIUS, translator.

    Historia Judaica res Judaeorum ab eversa aede Hierosolymitana, ad haec fere...

    Amsterdam, Pieter Niellius, 1651.

    First Latin edition of Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah, an important account of persecutions suffered by the Jews and a reflection upon the origins of antisemitism, from the library of the distinguished French savant and bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet with annotations in his hand.

    £3750

  12. [INCUNABLE SAMMELBAND.]

    Sammelband of ten works.

    Rome, Stephan Plannck and Eucharius Silber, c. 1481–1491.

    A sammelband of ten Roman incunables, nine of which printed by Stephan Plannck, covering subjects from astronomy to usury, holy water to marriage, and ending with St Antoninus’s manual for confessors, our copy with early annotations and partially preserving its original binding.

    £25000

  13. [INDULGENCE.] 

    Letter of Indulgence (in Catalan), incipit ‘A Honor …’, granted by Cardinal Luis de Milá,...

    [Lerida, Heinrich Botel, c. 1498.] 

    Extremely rare incunable indulgence in Catalan granted by Luis de Milá, Bishop of Lérida, in favour of the living (as opposed to the dead, see below) to gather funds for the repair of the old cathedral of Lérida, printed at Lérida, the second city of Catalonia, about one hundred miles...

    £34000

  14. [INDULGENCES.] 

    Indulgencias concedidas a los congregantes de la inmaculada concepcion de Maria SS baxo el titulo de la corona...

    [Barcelona, 1793.] 

    Very rare broadside detailing the indulgences granted to members, of both sexes, of the Congregation of the Immaculate Conception, established under the title of the Crown of the Seven Joys of the Virgin at the Franciscan convent in Barcelona.  In 1792, Pope Pius VI had formerly linked the Congregation...

    £175

  15. IRENICUS, Franciscus.

    Germaniae exegeseos volumina duodecima a Francisco Irenico Ettelingiacensi exarata, eiusdem oratio protreptica,...

    [(Colophon:) Hagenau, Thomas Anshelm for Johann Koberger, August 1518.]

    First editions of a pair of sixteenth-century German antiquarian works in a contemporary binding by Konrad Kühneof Stuttgart from the library of the Elector of Bavaria.

    £3500

  16. ISOCRATES.

    Orationes et epistolae gravitatis et suavitatis plenae de Greco in Latinum pridem conversae, nunc recognitae, per Hieronymu[m]...

    Paris, Michel de Vascosan, 1553.

    A handsome Latin edition of twenty-one works by the Athenian orator Isocrates whose work was highly influential on later education, oratory and writing. Isocrates (436–338 BC) studied under Socrates and the sophists, before establishing a famous school of rhetoric which attracted pupils from...

    £750

  17. IVANOV, Vyacheslav Ivanovich.

    Prometei tragediia [Prometheus a tragedy].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1919.

    First edition of Ivanov’s dramatic poem Prometheus, which follows the form of Greek tragedy.

    £250

  18. [JACOBUS DE GRUYTRODE, (attr.)]. 

    Lavacrum conscientie [omnium sacerdotum]. 

    [Colophon:] Cologne, Heinrich Quentell, 1504.

    Rare edition of this popular late medieval treatise widely ascribed to the Carthusian monk Jacobus de Gruytrode (c. 1400–1475). 

    £750

  19. JACOBUS MEDIOLANENSIS. 

    Stimulus divini amoris Sancti Bonaventurae. 

    Venice, Stefano Nicolini da Sabbio, April 1535. 

    Rare edition of the Stimulus divini amoris, a popular medieval devotional treatise long attributed to St Bonaventure but in fact composed by the thirteenth-century Franciscan Giacomo da Milano. 

    £550

  20. [JESUITS.]

    The Travels of several learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus, into divers Parts of the Archipelago, India, China,...

    London, for R. Gosling, 1714.

    First English translation of twenty-two letters by major French Jesuit missionaries in Asia and the Americas, taken from Charles Le Gobien’s Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (1711–13). The Jesuits largely dominated seventeenth and early eighteenth-century missionary activity in the...

    £1250