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.
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ALAMANNI, Luigi.
Opere toscane.
[(Colophon:) Florence, [Bernardo Giunta], 9 July 1532.]
First Florentine edition of this collection of vernacular verse, first published in Lyons in the same year, by the influential Florentine poet Alamanni, a friend of Machiavelli mentioned in the Art of War, our copy from the library of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey.
£650
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ALBERTI, Leon Battista.
El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...
Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.
First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).
£3800
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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
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ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo.
Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga.
Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566.
First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini.
£1750
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BARTOLI, Adolfo.
Scenari inediti della Commedia dell’arte. Contributo alla storia del teatro popolare italiano.
Florence, Sansoni, 1880.
Rare first edition, one of only 350 copies, of a foundational source for the study of Commedia dell’Arte. The exceptionally well-loved and widely-performed form of drama is the subject of the author’s pioneering study: he examines tropes, characters, plots, structures and lines of ‘scenarios’...
£500
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BEROALDO, Filippo.
Opusculum eruditum quo continetur Declamatio philosophi medici & oratoris de excellentia disceptantium.
[(Colophon:) Paris], Denis Roce, [1 August 1501].
Second Paris editions (first 1500) of Beroaldo’s short texts on the power of persuasion and the ideal state; the first editions with illustrations, large and striking woodcuts of the Virgin Mary and Christ.
£3750
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BLANCHON, Jacques.
Iacobi Blanchoni Ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum Beneventanum abbatem Selestensem defensionum liber.
Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1550.
First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly printed de Tournes edition.
£950
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BUDÉ, Guillaume.
G. Budaei … Epistolarum latinarum lib. V. Annotationibusq[ue] adiectis in singulas fere epistolas. Graecarum...
[Paris,] Jodocus Badius, February 1531.
The first Badius combined edition of the Latin and Greek letters of the great French humanist Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), together with the commentary by his pupil Jacques Toussain, here with profuse annotations by a contemporary French student to almost every page.
£5500
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[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
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CAVALCANTI, Bartolomeo.
La retorica … divisa in sette libri, dove si contiene tutto quello, che appartiene all’arte Oratoria. In...
Venice, Gabriel Giolitto, 1559.
Second edition, published in the same year as the first with a few amendments, of the earliest Italian and most innovative treatise on rhetoric. The author ‘builds an original account of rhetoric by adding Ciceronian and Hermogenean material to an Aristotle base’ (Mack, p. 172).
£2250
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[CHAMPIER, Symphorien.]
La vie & les gestes du preux chevalier Bayard. Contenant plusieurs victoires par luy faictes du Resgne...
Lyons, Olivier Arnoullet, [(colophon:) 8 April 1558].
A rare edition of Champier’s account of the preux chevalier Bayard’s life and achievements, from the renowned library of the duc de La Vallière.
£9500
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CHAMPIER, [Symphorien].
Les gestes ensembles la vie du preulx chevalier Bayard [– Compendiosa illustrissimi Bayardi vita, una...
Lyons, Gilbert Devilliers, [(colophon:) 24 November 1525].
Rare first edition of this richly illustrated chivalric history of the Chevalier de Bayard, one of France’s most celebrated warriors, written in the year of his death.
£18000
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[CHAMPIER, Symphorien.]
La vie & les gestes du preux Chevalier Bayard. Contenant plusieurs victoires par luy faictes durant le...
[(Colophon:) Poitiers, Jacques Bouchet [and Enguilbert de Marnef], 28 March 1527.]
An otherwise unrecorded late sixteenth-century edition of Champier’s life of the Chevalier de Bayard, bound with the first edition of an account of Louis de la Trémoille, from the renowned library of Guyon de Sardière.
£8750
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CIGAULD, Vincent.
Allegationes Vincentii … iudicis ordinarii ville et comitatus Brivaten[sis] sup[er] bello ytalico per eum in...
(Colophon:) Paris, Jean Frellon, 23 December 1512.
Extremely rare first edition of this legal tract by Vincent Cigauld (fl. 1491–1523), a judge from Brioude, prompted by the War of the Holy League, in which the Papal States under Pope Julius II, alongside Venice, Spain, and later England, sought to thwart the ambitions of the French King Louis XII...
£2500
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DELL’UVA, Benedetto.
Le vergini prudenti.
Florence, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1582.
First editions of three religious poems in ottava rima by the Capuan monk Benedetto dell’Uva, representative of Counter-Reformation poetry in southern Italy.
£650
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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Desid. Erasmi Roterodami Colloquia nunc emendatiora.
Amsterdam, Jodocus Janssonius, 1644.
Later edition of Erasmus’ highly influential Latin dialogues, with a charming engraving of Hendrick de Keyser’s statue of him erected in Rotterdam in 1622.
£125
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FERNÁNDEZ, Jerónimo.
The Famous and delectable History of Don Bellianis of Greece, or, the Honour of Chivalry. Containing his...
London, Francis Kirkman, 1673, 1671, 1672.
First complete edition of Francis Kirkman’s version of the chivalric romance of Belianis of Greece, a continuation of Amadis de Gaul first published in Spanish in 1547.
£3750
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[FILLASTRE], Guillaume.
Le premier [– second] volume de la Thoison dor … Auquel soubs les vertus de magnanimite et iustice...
Paris, Jean Petit [for Poncet Le Preux], [(colophon:) Troyes, Nicolas Le Rouge, 21 April 1530].
Rare third edition (first, 1516) of the most successful contemporary treatise on the Order of the Golden Fleece, composed by a prominent member of the order for the son of its founder, Charles the Bold of Burgundy.
£9500
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GAGUIN, Robert.
La mer des croniques et mirouer hystorial de France jadis compose en latin … et nouvellement traduict de latin...
Paris, [Bernard Aubry for] Jacques Nyverd, to be sold by Galiot du Pré, [(colophon:) 23 August 1530].
Very rare Paris vernacular edition (first 1518) of an illustrated history of the French monarchy, a seminal work of French historiography, devised as a scholarly account of France in the style of the classical historians.
£8500
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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