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The Third and Best Utopia
MORE, Thomas, Sir.
De optimo reip. statu deque nova insula Utopia libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus … Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomae Mori, pleraque e Graecis versa. Epigrammata Des. Erasmi Roterodami.
Third edition of More’s Utopia, including his revisions and corrections and adding his and Erasmus’s Epigrammata for the first time; this is the culmination of the text as it evolved from More’s hand with the intercession of Erasmus. As the last edition in which More is likely to have been directly involved, it was used by the Yale editors as the basis for their modern critical edition.
A Chivalric Swansong
[MAILLES, Jacques de.]
La tresioyeuse plaisante & recreative hystoire composee par le loyal serviteur des faiz gestes triumphes et prouesses du bon chevalier sans paour et sans reprouche le gentil seigneur de Bayart …
First edition of Jacques de Mailles’ account of the Chevalier de Bayard, ‘le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche’, one of France’s most celebrated knights considered the epitome of chivalric virtues, written shortly after his death, with contemporary annotations in an English hand.
![[Summe le roy of des conincs summe.]](https://prd.assets.books.quaritch.com/images/GJ70_02.JPG)
Dutch Devotion: Morality for the Layman in the Vernacular
[LAURENTIUS, Frater; Jan van BREDERODE, translator.]
[Summe le roy of des conincs summe.]
Rare early edition in Dutch (first Delft 1478), preceding the first edition of the original French text, of what is perhaps the most significant treatise on Christian morality for the laity from the later thirteenth century. This edition was produced in the first printshop in Haarlem.
The First Delft Printshop: Reading Jerome in England
[JEROME, Saint.]
Obitus beati iheromini.
Rare incunable edition (first printed in Cologne, 1470), from the first printshop in Delft, of a devotional account of the life of St Jerome; a copy with early English provenance.
Presentation Copy to W. B. Tegetmeier
DARWIN, Charles.
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.
First edition, first issue, an important presentation copy to the naturalist and journalist William Bernhardt Tegetmeier, who provided Darwin with detailed information on poultry breeding and other subjects and who arranged for artists to produce some of the book’s illustrations.
Land Speculation, Coal, and Railroads in Pennsylvania;
Lynching and the Spectre of Civil War
[BARCLAY FAMILY.]
Album of letters, maps, accounts, and reports sent to Robert and later Charles Barclay (and some to the railway pioneer Joseph Pease), with copies of outgoing letters, largely relating to land in Bradford County, Pennsylvania; along with additional loose correspondence.
A large and coherent archive relating to a tract of 21,000 acres of coal-rich land in Pennsylvania, later known as Barclay Mountain, from its purchase in 1794 by the London brewer and merchant Robert Barclay (1751–1830) until its sale in 1853 by his son Charles Barclay (1780–1855). It takes in the discovery of coal in northern Pennsylvania and the sudden industrialisation and rapid settlement of the region.
![[Edited by Janus Lascaris.]](https://prd.assets.books.quaritch.com/images/GJ80_03.JPG)
Editio Princeps of 1500 Years of Greek Poetry
[ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]
[Edited by Janus Lascaris.]
Editio princeps, a beautiful printing in elegant epigraphic type, of the Planudean Anthology, a substantial collection of classical Greek verse which influenced artists, poets, and scholars. ‘The Greek Anthology is one of the great books of European literature, a garden containing the flowers and weeds of fifteen hundred years of Greek poetry, from the most humdrum doggerel to the purest poetry’ (Oxford Classical Dictionary).
Erwin Schrödinger and His Milieu
The Collection of Schrödinger’s Assistant
SCHRÖDINGER, Erwin, et al.
A collection of offprints and papers from the library of Nándor Balázs.
A remarkable collection of offprints and papers from the library of Hungarian-American physicist Nándor Balázs, laboratory assistant in the early 1950s to the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, comprising an exceptionally strong core of Schrödinger’s works – many of which stamped for presentation by the author or from his own library – as well as a notable complement of articles by the likes of Heisenberg, Dirac, Hilbert, Carathéodory, and Levi-Civita.
The First Archimedes
ARCHIMEDES, BOETHIUS, and CAMPANO da Novara; Luca GAURICO, editor.
Tetragonismus id est circuli quadratura per Campanum Archimedem Syracusanum atque Boetium mathematicae perspicacissimos adinventa.
The first appearance in print of any complete work by Archimedes, ‘generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians the world has ever known’ (PMM), including one of the earliest approximations of the value of π.
‘The Greatest of the Medieval Encyclopaedic Dictionaries’
BALBUS, Johannes.
Catholicon.
Third edition of the earliest printed lexicon, a monumental piece of printing from one of the earliest presses in Strasbourg, containing the thirteenth-century Latin dictionary and grammar of Johannes Balbus, the ‘greatest of the medieval encyclopaedic dictionaries’ (Chamberlin, p. 136).
The First Complete Plato
PLATO; Jean DE SERRES, translator and commentator; Henri ESTIENNE, editor.
Απαντα τα σωζομενα … Opera quae extant omnia …
A magnificent large-paper copy of the first complete edition of Plato’s corpus, edited by Henri Estienne and accompanied by a new parallel translation by Jean de Serres.
Editio Princeps
It’s All Greek to Me
GAZA, Theodorus.
Grammatica introductiva; De mensibus; Apollonius Dyscolus: De constructione; Herodianus: De numeris.
A beautiful example of early Greek printing, containing the editio princeps of the grammar of Theodorus Gaza, and one of the first texts to be printed entirely in Greek.
Marriage, the Moon, a Manual for Confessors, and More
[INCUNABLE SAMMELBAND.]
Sammelband of ten works.
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; with annotations showing the early ownership of a scholar/practitioner of canon law or a confessor, and partially preserving its original binding.
The Syston Park Copy
HERP, Hendrik.
Speculum aureum decem praeceptorum Dei.
First edition of this collection of sermons based on the Ten Commandments, devised for both confessors and preachers, printed by Peter Schoeffer, Gutenberg’s assistant and, after Gutenberg himself, ‘the most influential individual in the early history of the printed word’ (White, p. xi).
Local Government, Murder, and Football
[JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]
The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge with all the Processe of the Cessions, Warrantes Supercedias & all that longeth to ony Justyce to make Endytementes of haute Treason petyt Treason Felonyes Appeles Trespas upon Statutes, Trespas contra Regis Pacem Nocumentis with dyvers Thynges more as it appereth in the Kalender of the same Boke.
First edition(?), very rare, of the first printed guide for Justices of the Peace, issued with a short guide to land law.
An Excellent Copy in Contemporary Dutch Vellum
[MONTESQUIEU, Charles Louis de Secondat.]
De l’esprit des loix, ou du rapport que les loix doivent avoir avec la constitution de chaque gouvernement, les moeurs, le climat, la religion, le commerce, &c. à quoi l’auteur a ajouté des recherches nouvelles sur les loix romaines touchant les successions, sur les loix françoises, & sur les loix féodales.
First edition, first issue of Montesquieu’s masterpiece of political theory asserting the principle of the separation of a government’s powers as a means to prevent tyranny: a principle which formed the ideological basis of the French and American revolutions and became the cornerstone of the United States Constitution.
The ‘Bible’ of the Physiocrats
[QUESNAY, François.] DU PONT DE NEMOURS, Pierre Samuel, editor.
Physiocratie, ou constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain …
First edition of the ‘Bible’ of the Physiocrats and one of the most important and original works on political economy to be published before the Wealth of Nations.
Missionary Martyrs in Japan
SICARDO, José.
Christiandad del Japon, y dilatada persecucion que padecio. Memorias sacras, de los martyres de las ilustres religiones de Santo Domingo, San Francisco, Compañia de Jesus, y crecido numero de seglares, y con especialidad, de los religiosos del orden de N.P.S. Augustin …
Rare first edition of this important and comprehensive account of Christian missions to Japan by the Spanish Augustinian José Sicardo (1643–1715).
'The Bible of European Sinophilia'
DU HALDE, Jean-Baptiste.
A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together with the Kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet, containing the Geography and History (natural as well as civil) of those Countries, enrich’d with general and particular Maps, and adorned with a great number of Cuts, from the French of P. J. B. Du Halde, Jesuit: with Notes geographical, historical, and critical; and other Improvements, particularly in the Maps, by the Translator …
The first complete English translation of Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique … de l’Empire de la Chine (1735), the ‘Bible of European sinophilia’ (Löwendahl). Based on the reports of major Jesuit missionaries, and shaped by the earlier Historia of Martini and Mémoires of Le Comte, Du Halde’s Description ‘was more elaborate and authentic than any other account of the empire that had appeared previously … it was an encyclopaedia of information, a rich quarry for writers who happened to be interested in Chinese affairs in the mid-18th century’ (Löwendahl); or, in the words of Hill, the ‘first definitive European work on the Chinese Empire’.
A Playwright’s Jonson
JONSON, Benjamin.
The Workes …
An excellent set of the canonical Ben Jonson, the first collection of English plays in the proud format of a folio and the direct fore-runner of Shakespeare’s folios, here found with both the first (1616) and the corrected second editions (1640) of Volume I, and the first edition of Volume II[-III] (1631–40).
‘African American’ Songbooks
‘CHAFF, Gumbo’ [pseud. Elias HOWE].
The Ethiopian Glee Book; a Collection of popular Negro Melodies, arranged for Quartett Clubs. [– No. 2; – No. 3].
First editions of all three parts – a very early collection of blackface minstrel tunes, with songs in two to four parts set to words in supposed African American dialect. The pseudonym of the publisher-compiler, ‘Gumbo Chaff’, is taken from the eponymous song of the 1830s (printed on p. 4 here), and was one of the first blackface stock characters.
Abolition for Children
[HEDGE, Mary Anne.]
Samboe; or, the African Boy …
First edition of an abolitionist novella for children dedicated to William Wilberforce. Hedge, of Colchester, was the author of a number of improving works for youth, of which this is probably the best known.