Continental

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

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. AESOP, et al. [George STEWART, editor].

    Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et Luciani Samosatensis dialogi. Isocratis...

    Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart, 1723.

    First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish school textbook comprising selections in Greek and Latin from Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Dialogues, the orations of Isocrates, and the Tablet of Cebes.

    £375

  2. AMADUZZI, Giovanni Cristoforo.

    Epistola ad Johannem Baptistam Bodonium qua emendatur et suppletur commentarium de Anacreontis genere...

    [(Colophon:) Parma, Bodoni, 1791.]

    First edition of Amaduzzi’s philological and bibliographical commentary on Anacreon, addressed to Bodoni, ‘artis typographicae restitutor’ (p. 3).

    £275

  3. ANACREON.

    Ανακρεοντος τηιου μελη praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia...

    Parma, [Bodoni] ‘in aedibus Palatinis’, 1791.

    Thick paper copy, apparently one of 12 copies from an edition of 212. This attractive edition of Anacreon’s Odaria was edited by G.C. Amaduzzi and printed by Bodoni. ‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions cannot...

    £650

  4. [ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]

    Ανθολογια διαφορων επιγραμματων παλαιων, εις επτα βιβλια...

    [Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1566.

    First Estienne edition of the Planudean Anthology, a substantial collection of classical Greek poems and epigrams which proved a fertile source for scholars, poets, and artists, with extensive seventeenth-century annotations in Greek by an English scholar.

    £5000

  5. [ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]

    [Edited by Janus Lascaris.]

    [Florence, Lorenzo di Francesco de Alopa, 11 August 1494.]

    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...

    £16500

  6. APPIAN of Alexandria.

    Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...

    Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.

    A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.

    £3000

  7. ARCHIMEDES.

    Τα μεχρι νυν σωζομενα, απαντα … Opera, quae quidem extant, omnia, multis iam seculis desiderata...

    Basel, Johannes Herwagen, [(colophon): March] 1544.

    Editio princeps of the works of Archimedes, ‘the greatest mathematician and engineer of antiquity’ (PMM). Prior to this edition only a small tract in Latin translation, published in 1503, and a partial translation by Tartaglia, published in 1543, had appeared.

    £45000

  8. ARCHIMEDES, BOETHIUS, and CAMPANO da Novara; Luca GAURICO, editor.

    Tetragonismus id est circuli quadratura per Campanum...

    Venice, [Giacomo Penzio for] Giovanni Battista Sessa, 28 August 1503.

    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.

    £18000

  9. ARISTAENETUS.

    Επιστολαι … Epistolae graecae. Cum Latina interpretatione & notis. Tertia editio emendatior & auctior.

    Paris, Marc Orry, 1610.

    A volume of fictional Greek love stories, presented in the form of letters, printed in parallel Greek and Latin, from the library of the Padua professor and printer Giovanni Antonio Volpi.

    £1250

  10. ARISTIDES, Aelius.

    Orationum tomi tres, nunc primum latine versi a Gulielmo Cantero Ultraiectino. Huc accessit orationum tomus...

    Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566.

    First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino.

    £2750

  11. ARISTOPHANES.

    The Frogs, a Comedy. Translated from the Greek of Aristophanes, by C[harles] Dunster, A.M …

    Oxford, J. and J. Fletcher; London, Rivington, Payne, Faulder, Cadell; Cambridge, Merrill, [1785].

    First edition in English, and the only separately published translation of The Frogs in the eighteenth century. ‘It is … somewhat surprising that in an age so studious of ancient literature as the present, and which so much abounds in translations of the Greek and Latin classics, we have versions...

    £500

  12. ARISTOPHANES, and Henry Francis CARY, translator.

    The Birds … with Notes.

    London, Printed for Taylor and Hessey … 1824.

    First edition of the first metrical translation of Aristophanes’ The Birds into English by Henry Francis Cary (1722–1844) – perhaps best known for his blank verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

    £350

  13. ARISTOTLE; THEOPHRASTUS; Theodorus GAZA and Pietro ALCIONIO, translators.

    Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum...

    Lyons, [Nicolas Bacquenois for] Guillaume Gazeau, 1552.

    A union of Aristotle on animals and Theophrastus on plants, the fundamental texts from Ancient Greece on zoology and botany, in the translations of Gaza and Alcionio.

    £800

  14. BACON, Francis.

    Historia vitae et mortis.

    Amsterdam, Johannes van Ravesteyn, 1663.

    Pocket-sized Amsterdam editions of three works by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), uncut and unopened and bound, exceptionally, in the original drab boards.

    £975

  15. [BIBLE – OLD TESTAMENT and APOCRYPHA, Greek; Johann LONITZER, editor.]

    Της θειας γραφης παλαιας...

    Strasbourg, Wolfgang Köpfel, 1526.

    The first edition of the Old Testament in Greek to be printed in Germany, and the first aimed at a Protestant readership, with the Apocrypha separated along the lines of Luther’s German translation.

    £8500

  16. BOETHIUS; Richard GRAHAM, Viscount Preston, translator.

    Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books. Made English...

    London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.

    First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston (1648–1695).

    £950

  17. BOLZANIO, Urbano or URBANUS BELLUNENSIS.

    Institutionum in linguam Graecam grammaticarum, libri duo …

    Basel, Johann Walder, September 1535.

    Basel edition of this popular grammar commissioned and first published by Aldus in 1497. Bolzanio’s full exploration of the Greek language was the first book in which the principles of Greek grammar were explained in Latin – after the publication of the all-Greek grammar of Constantinus Lascaris....

    £2000

  18. CAESAR, Gaius Julius.

    C. Julii Caesaris quae extant. Accuratissime cum libris editis & MSS optimis collata, recognita & correcta....

    London, Jacob Tonson, 1712.

    First edition of the celebrated Tonson’s Caesar edited by Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), ‘the most sumptuous classical work which this country has produced’ (Dibdin).

    £9500

  19. [CAESAR.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    Liber de militia C. Julii Caesaris, cum praefatione Joannis Thomae Freigii. 

    Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, 1584. 

    An attractively bound copy of Ramus’s uncommon treatise on Caesar’s military tactics, with unusual edge decoration.  The humanist Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) published widely on classical history and grammar while teaching at the Collège de France.  He was briefly forced from his post after converting...

    £450

  20. CARTARI, Vincenzo.

    Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi ...

    Venice, Francesco Marcolini, 1556.

    First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients, the iconographic handbook of painters throughout Europe for the next 250 years.

    £800