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. PAULUS DE CASTRO.

    Super primo, secundo et tertio libro Codicis.

    Venice, [Andreas Torresanus, de Asula], 30 June 1487.

    Rare second edition of Paulus de Castro’s commentary on the first three books of the Codex of Justinian, from the library of Dürer’s closest friend Willibald Pirckheimer.

    £12500

  2. PEACOCK, Thomas Love.

    Rhododaphne: or the Thessalian Spell. A Poem.

    London, T. Hookham, Jun., and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1818.

    First edition of Peacock’s last and most ambitious poem, inspired by his enthusiasm for Greek poetry in the company of Shelley. A mythological narrative set in ancient Thessaly, Rhododaphne tells the story of the shepherd boy Anthemion, in love with the mortal girl Calliroë, and of the...

    £750

  3. PEPE, Stefano. 

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

    [Italy, second half of the seventeenth century.] 

    A seemingly unpublished life of Alfonso III d’Este, Duke of Modena, who renounced his title to become a Capuchin friar. 

    £1250

  4. PEROTTO, Niccolò, and Benedetto BRUGNOLO, editor.

    Cornucopi[a]e nuper emendatum a domino Benedicto Brugnolo: ac...

    [Milan], Giovanni Giacomo and brothers da Legnano [for Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler, 28 October 1510 (colophon)].

    Scarce Milanese edition of Perotto’s Cornucopiae, an encyclopaedic commentary to the first book of Martial’s epigrams, here with a curious combination of woodcut initials and capital spaces with guide letters.

    £1750

  5. PERSIUS; [Thomas BREWSTER, translator].

    The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes;...

    London, Printed for A. Millar, 1751.

    Second edition, with the addition of Bayle’s life of Persius, with manuscript corrections.

    £375

  6. PERUCCI, Francesco.

    Pompe funebri di tutte le nationi del mondo, raccolte dale storie sagre et profane.

    Verona, Francesco Rossi, 1639.

    First edition of Perucci’s account of the funeral practices of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, extensively illustrated with engravings copied in reverse from Porcacchi’s 1574 Funerali antichi di diversi popoli, et nationi, inscribed by a Scottish antiquary and documented book collector....

    £975

  7. PETRINI, Giovanni.

    Sixteen copper engravings depicting scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

    [Rome, late eighteenth century.]

    An attractive volume containing sixteen engravings by Giovanni Petrini of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, including renderings of famous paintings by the likes of Correggio, Poussin, Titian, Raphael, and Rubens.

    £1750

  8. PETRONIUS.

    Satyricon, eiusdemque fragmenta, illustrata hac nova editione I. Bourdelotii notis criticis, et glossario petroniano...

    Leiden, Justus Livius, 1645.

    Third edition of the Satyricon as edited by the French scholar Jean Bourdelot (first published in 1618), accompanied by a glossary, an editorial preface and an extract of Justus Lipsius’ Epistolicis Quaestionibus (lib. III, epist. 2) with an appraisal of the literary value of the Satyricon....

    £950

  9. PIERTZ, Leonhard, Praesidens; Johann Ernst SCHLERETH, Respondens.

    De sacramentis in specie, Eucharistia et Poenitentia...

    Würzburg, Johann Michael Kleyer, 1703.

    A good copy of this rare Würzburg dissertation on the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance, under the Jesuit professor Leonhard Piertz (1662–1741). The dissertation discusses when the Eucharist was instituted, what verbal formulae are necessary for consecration, whether the Eucharistic sacrifice...

    £175

  10. ‘PIETRO da VICOVARO’, i.e. Giuseppe CORTESE.

    Apparecchio per accompagnare Maria Santissima nella sua gloriosa assunzione...

    Rome, Komarek, 1735.

    Very rare devotional work dedicated to the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, a novena written by Pietro da Vicovaro.

    £550

  11. PIGHIUS, Stephanus Vinandus.

    Themis dea, seu de lege divina … Mythologia … in quatuor anni partes, ab auctore recognita.

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1568.

    First edition of Pighius’s two treatises on Roman archaeology, one of the founding texts of scientific research into myths.

    £450

  12. PINDAR. 

    Carmina, ex editione Chr. Gottl. Heyne. 

    Oxford, N. Bliss for M. Bliss and R. Bliss [– and London, for F. & C. Rivington, J. Payne & J. Mackinlay, W.H. Lunn, Longman, Hurst,...

    An attractive Oxford-printed pocket edition of Pindar’s Odes, as edited by Christian Gottlob Heyne. 

    £175

  13. PLATO; [Marsilio FICINO].

    Platonis opera.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Filippo Pinzi, 22 April 1517.]

    Third edition of Marsilio Ficino’s important and influential Latin translations of and commentaries on Plato’s works, with numerous early annotations.

    £5000

  14. PLINY the Elder

    Historia mundi, multo quam antehac unquam prodiit emaculatius [...] annotationibus eruditorum hominum...

    Basel, Johann Froben, March 1525. 

    First Froben edition of Pliny’s encyclopaedia, with a prologue by Erasmus and Hermolaus Barbarus’s commentary, given to Erasmus’s correspondent Bartholomaeus Latomus by his student and future patron, Johann Ludwig von Hagen. 

    £4800

  15. PLINY the Elder; [Jean de LAET, editor].

    Historiae naturalis libri XXXVII.

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham I] Elzevir, 1635.

    An attractive set of the first and only Elzevir edition of Pliny the Elder, ‘rightly considered one of their masterpieces’ (Willems, trans.).

    £650

  16. PLINY the Elder.

    Historiae mundi libri XXXVII, cum castigationibus et adnotationibus doctiss. & variis praeterea lectionibus ex...

    Frankfurt, Claude de Marne and heirs of Jean Aubry, 1608.

    First Frankfurt edition of Pliny’s Natural History, here bound as an enormous single volume with strikingly decorated edges featuring acorns and scrolls.

    £1400

  17. PLINY the Younger.

    Epistolarum libri X & panegyricus.

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1640.

    First Elzevir edition, handsomely bound for the Irish politician Thomas Wogan Browne.

    £450

  18. PLINY the Younger. 

    Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt; omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa …

    Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.

    A handsome quarto Pliny from the Foulis press, published in the same year as the three-volume duodecimo.

    £600

  19. PLINY the Younger. 

    Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt; omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa …

    Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.

    A handsome Foulis Press pocket Pliny. The first two volumes comprise the ten books of Pliny’s Epistulae (particularly important for their description of the eruption of Vesuvius), the third his Panegyric to Trajan: ‘clearly it was intended that sections Z to the end should comprise...

    £850

  20. PLUTARCH.

    ...

    Venice, Nicolao di Aristotile detto Zoppino, March 1525.

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

    £2750