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.
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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
De Officiis … libri tres, ex editione Oliveti Parisiis vulgata.
London, T. Payne, 1791.
First Payne edition, edited by Henry Homer (1753–1791). A friend of the writer and schoolmaster Samuel Parr since his days at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Homer produced editions of Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Pliny the Younger, and others.
£450
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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
Marcus Tullius Ciceroes three Bookes of Duties to Marcus his Sonne, tourned out of Latine into English,...
[London, Richard Tottel,] 1583.
Sixth edition of Grimald’s Cicero, first published 1556. De Officiis was perhaps the most pervasive piece of classical writing in early modern Europe – the second or third book to be printed in Europe, standard reading in England from at least the sixteenth century, recommended in Eliot’s...
£3200
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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
Orationum pars I. Cum correctionibus P. Manutii, et annotationib[us] D. Lambini.
Venice, ‘ex bibliotheca Aldina’, 1570.
An unusual example of a white calf German binding on an Aldine Cicero, annotated in Greek and Latin.
£1850
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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
M. T. Ciceronis orationes Philippicae in M. Antonium.
Paris, Jean Loys, 1544.
Extremely rare edition of Cicero’s Philippics edited by the humanist Bartholomaeus Latomus and printed specifically for the Parisian university market, this copy with profuse marginal and interlinear annotations to the first, third, and fourth speeches taken down by a contemporary student...
£2250
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CLAUDIANUS, Claudius.
Claudii Claudiani Alexandrini, poetae illustriss. quotquot nostra hac tempestate extant opsucula, ad series...
Paris, Simon de Colines, 1530.
First Colines edition of the major works of Claudianus Claudius, known in the English-speaking world as Claudian, a Greek-speaking Latin poet best known for the unfinished epic De Raptu Proserpinae. It is printed in the same attractive italic type Colines used for his octavo editions of...
£850
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CLAUDIANUS, Claudius; Thaddaeus UGOLETUS, editor.
Opera.
Venice, Johannes Tacuinus, de Tridino, 6 June 1495.
A collection of late Roman poetry composed at the court of the Emperor Honorius, with notable provenance.
£3500
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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (Titus Flavius CLEMENS); Gentian HERVET, translator.
Omnia opera.
Paris, Sebastien Nivelle, 1572.
A thoroughly annotated copy of this early edition of the complete works of Clement of Alexandria, in the Latin translation of the theologian and humanist Gentian Hervet (or Hervetus, 1499–1584).
£4750
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[COMMON PRAYER.]
The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...
London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794.
A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy.
£1850
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[COMMON PRAYER.]
The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...
London & Glasgow, Collins’ Clear-Type Press, [c. 1910].
A George V Common Prayer and hymnal, uniformly bound and unusually housed in a ‘handbag’ slipcase for the convenience of the fashion-conscious churchgoer.
£275
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CONTI, Natale.
Mythologiae, sive explicationis fabularum, libri decem. In quibus omnia propè naturalis et moralis philosophiae...
Frankfurt, the heirs of André Wechel, 1584.
Scarce Frankfurt edition of the Mythologiae of Natale Conti (Natalis Comes), first published Venice 1567. It was a standard reference work for classical mythology in the later Renaissance, treating the corpus as allegories that syncretized ancient philosophy and could thus be decoded by the...
£950
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CORTÈS, Gioacchino.
Dissertazione anti-Bolgeniana sopra la carità difesa dal suo autore l’abate Gioacchino Cortes contro...
Rome, Salomoni, 1793.
First edition of this response to and attempted refutation of Bolgeni’s Della carità o amor di Dio by the Spanish Jesuit Joachim Cortès. Della carità was the best-known work of the Jesuit theologian and controversialist Gianvincenzo Bolgeni, in which he had argued, against...
£450
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COSTER, François.
Piarum et Christ. institutionum libri tres, in usum sodalitatis B. Mariae Virginis primum conscripti, nunc...
Douai, Jean Bogard, 1582.
Very rare Douai edition of this devotional work by the Belgian Jesuit François Coster (1532–1619), first published at Cologne in 1578, illustrated with woodcuts of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of Sorrows.
£675
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[CRIMEAN WAR.]
Les militaires chrétiens a la guerre d’orient. Récompenses annuelles.
Versailles, Beau jeune, [1856].
First and only edition, rare, of this unusual cartonnage giftbook history of the Crimean War.
£375
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CURTIUS RUFUS, Quintus.
De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni regis Macedonum opus … Accesserunt enim antehac nunquam visa … Omnia...
Basel, Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, March 1545.
Handsome folio edition of Curtius Rufus’ history of Alexander the Great, edited by the German humanist Christoph Bruno (fl. 1541–1566), with extensive sixteenth-century marginal annotations.
£2000
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CYPRIAN, Saint; Desiderius ERASMUS, editor.
Opera [– Alter tomus operum].
Lyons, Sébastien Gryphe, 1550.
A richly annotated copy of the works of the third-century martyr and bishop of Carthage, St Cyprian, with later Portuguese provenance.
£1800
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DARRÉ, G.G.
‘Conferences diaconales données par Mr l’abbé Darré, Vicaire Général au GrandSéminaire d’Auch. Année...
Auch, 1864.
An attractively written manuscript of Abbé Darré’s practical manual for the use of young priests entering pastoral ministry, the text remaining unprinted, according to OCLC, until 1872.
£200
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DE LUCA, Giovanni Battista.
Il Cardinale della S.R. Chiesa pratico di Gio. Battista de Luca nell’ozio Tusculano della Primavera...
Rome, nella stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, 1680.
Scarce first edition of this thorough work on the cardinalate by the Italian jurist and cardinal De Luca (1614–1683). De Luca studied and practiced law at Naples before moving to Rome in 1645, where he established his reputation as one of Italy’s pre-eminent jurists and worked closely with...
£300
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[DEVOTION.]
Meditation et preire du jeusne, seigneur ouvre me levres, & ma bouche announcer ta loüange. Ps. 51.v.17.
Se vend à Charenton, par Pierre Auvray, demeurant à Paris … [1670s?]
First edition, extremely rare, of a prayer in preparation for a fast, published for sale in Charenton, the first Protestant centre in the Paris region.
£850
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DIO CASSIUS.
Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...
Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.
First edition of Dio Cassius’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.
£2500
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DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.
£2500