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  1. ZANCHI, Basilio.

    Dictionarium poeticum, et epitheta veterum poetarum … nunc secundo trans Alpes editum.

    Mons, Luca Rivius, 1612.

    Scarce Mons-printed edition of Zanchi’s onomasticon from A to Z, providing a comprehensive list of deities, notable figures, and heroes and heroines from classical myth and legend, drawn from the works of Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Propertius.

    £375

  2. VORAGINE, Jacobus de.

    Lombardica historia que a plerisque aurea legenda sanctorum appellatur.

    Strasbourg, [Georg Husner,] 1502.

    Jacobus de Voragine’s influential Legenda Aurea in a contemporary gilt-lettered binding with an incunable fragment used as the rear pastedown. This copy is also notable for its extensive sixteenth century manuscript additions relating to Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg and former ownership by...

    £8000

  3. APOLLODORUS; Benedetto EGIO, translator.

    Απολλοδωρου του Αθηναιου γραμματικου βιβλιοθηκης,...

    [Heidelberg,] ex officina Commeliniana, 1599.

    Second edition (first 1555) of this classic compendium of Greek myths and legends by Apollodorus, edited by Hieronymus Commelinus (1550–1597) and published posthumously by his heirs. The Greek text is accompanied by the Latin translation of Benedetto Egio, and is prefixed with Commelinus’...

    £875

  4. 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

  5. SCHNEPFF, Dietrich.

    Oratio de vita et morte illustrissimae principis ac dominae, D. Dorotheae Ursulae, illustrissimi principis...

    Tübingen, Alexander Hock, 1583.

    Scarce work issued following the death of Dorothea Ursula von Baden-Durlach (1559–1583), comprising a Latin funeral oration by the Tübingen professor Dietrich Schnepff (1525–1586) and verses in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew by several scholars.

    £550

  6. MILL, John Stuart; 中村 敬太郎 NAKAMURA Keitarō [i.e. 中村 正直 NAKAMURA Masanao], translator.

    On Liberty. 自由之理...

    Shizuoka, Ken’ichiro Kihira, Meiji Mizunoesaru/Jinshin [i.e. 1872].

    First edition, rare, of the first Japanese translation of Mill’s On Liberty, published twelve years after the English original, and very popular in Japan as a result of this translation by the philosopher and educator Masanao Nakamura (1832–1891).

    £2500

  7. EURIPIDES; SOPHOCLES; AESCHYLUS.

    Tragoediae selectae Aeschyli, Sophoclis, Euripidis. Cum duplici interpretatione Latina, una ad...

    [Geneva,] Henri Estienne, 1567.

    Handsome pocket-sized Estienne edition of eight plays by the three great fifth-century BC Greek tragedians, all based on figures and episodes from Greek myth, with interesting contemporary annotations to Euripides.

    £1850

  8. PLUTARCH; John Moyr SMITH, illustrator.

    An Argive Hero … with Illustrations designed after the Manner of early Greek Paintings.

    London, Arthur H. Moxon, 1877.

    Scarce first and only edition of John Moyr Smith’s illustrations of the life of Theseus, accompanying the text of Plutarch’s Life.

    £950

  9. ANNE, Queen.

    Warrant, signed, authorising John Grubham Howe as Paymaster General, to pay Major General James Mailand for the regiment...

    27 January 1708/9.

    An attractive document, bringing together the signatures of both Queen Anne and the future Prime Minister Robert Walpole.

    £1750

  10. BARCLAY, Arthur Kett.

    ‘Journal of a Tour through Cornwall and Wales 1826 by Arthur Kett Barclay’.

    18 July–13 October 1826.

    A most interesting diary recording a tour of England and Wales undertaken by the twenty-year-old Arthur Kett Barclay in 1826, especially valuable for its descriptions of English and Welsh mining in the late Industrial Revolution.

    £3500

  11. [BECKFORD, William, and Samuel HENLEY, translator.]

    An Arabian Tale, from an unpublished Manuscript. With Notes critical...

    London, Printed for W. Clarke … 1809.

    Scarce second edition – in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) – of Henley’s English translation of Beckford’s Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author’s wishes and predating publication...

    £1500

  12. [BYRON, George Gordon Noel, Lord.]

    AUCHER, Paschal. A Grammar Armenian and English ...

    Venice, at the Press of the Armenian Academy, 1819.

    First edition, scarce, of Byron’s Armenian Grammar, ‘the first English-language attempt to explain the structures of classical Armenian’, also containing ‘Byron’s only surviving verse translation of Armenian poetry’ (Rizzoli), but probably published without his knowledge.

    £3250

  13. CLARENDON, Edward Hyde, Earl of

    The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the Year 1641.  With...

    Oxford, Printed at the Theater, 1702[–4]. 

    First edition of Clarendon’s monumental History of the Civil War, with a presentation inscription by his son Henry Hyde, the second Earl (1638–1709). 

    £3250

  14. [COLVIL, Samuel.]

    ‘Mock Poem, or Whiggs Supplication Part ii’.

    1670s?

    A fine early manuscript of the second part of Colvil’s rollicking ‘Scottish Hudibras’, a satire on Scots Presbyterianism and sectarian wrangling between non-conformists in general. It circulated widely in manuscript before its first publication in 1681, when Colvil complained of ‘Transcribers,...

    £1250

  15. HARRIS, James.

    Three Treatises the first concerning Art the second concerning music painting and poetry the third concerning happiness...

    London, John Nourse and Paul Vaillant, 1765.

    Presentation copies, inscribed ‘From the Author’, of the revised second editions of these two works on art and language by the philosopher and latterly politician James Harris.

    £600

  16. HIPPOCRATES.

    The Eight Sections of Hippocrates Aphorismes review’d and rendred into English: according to the Translation of...

    London, W. G. for Rob. Crofts, 1665.

    First edition of this translation of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, a succinct summary of medical advice directed at the practitioner. The first English translation was published in 1610, and a second version, derived from it in 1655. Here the aphorisms are entirely re-arranged by topic...

    £850

  17. IRWIN, Eyles.

    The Triumph of Innocence; an Ode. Written on the Deliverance of Maria Theresa Charlotte, Princess Royal of France,...

    London, W. Bulmer for G. Nicol, 1796.

    First and only edition, very rare, of this anti-Jacobin poem celebrating the release of Marie Thérèse of France (1778–1851), eldest child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, from the Temple prison, where she had been held since 1792 as the rest of her family were gradually removed and executed.

    £800

  18. KOTZEBUE, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.

    The most remarkable Year in the Life of Augustus von Kotzebue; containing an Account...

    London, Richard Phillips, 1802.

    First edition in English of Kotzebue’s Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (1801), an account of his surprise arrest at the Russian border in 1800 on suspicions of being a Jacobin, and his transport to Tobolsk in Siberia. With some royal flattery, Kotzebue won his freedom back from...

    £500

  19. KOTZEBUE, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.

    The Constant Lover, or William and Jeanette: a Tale, from the German … To which is...

    London, John Bell, 1799.

    First edition in English, rare, of ‘Geprüfte Liebe’, a romance first published in Kotzebue’s Die jüngsten Kinder meiner Laune (1793–7), and then published separately in 1799, prefaced here by a summary translation of his literary autobiography.

    £1600

  20. KOTZEBUE, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.

    The Guardian Angel. From the German … A Story for Youth.

    London, J. Wright for Vernor and Hood, and J. Harris, 1802.

    First edition in English (and the first separate edition in any language?) of Kotzebue’s novella ‘Der Schutzgeist’, not his later play of that title, but a short story published in Gottlieb Wilhelm Becker’s Erholungen (Recreations) in 1797, where Kotzebue claimed it was a based...

    £650