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. [THOMAS à Kempis.]

    Ioanni Gerson vulgare devota operetta della imitatione di Iesu Christo …

    Florence, Antonio Miscomini, 22 July 1493.

    Uncommon editions of two classic Latin devotional texts rendered into Italian.

    £5750

  2. THOMAS À KEMPIS; Johann Michael SAILER, translator.

    Das Buch von der Nachfolgung Christi … Zweyte Ausgabe.

    Munich, Ignaz Joseph Lentner, and Leipzig, Hartmann, 1820.

    Uncommon ‘second edition’ of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi as translated by Johann Michael Sailer, Bishop of Regensburg.

    £250

  3. THOMAS AQUINAS; Antonius PIZAMANUS, editor.

    Opuscula [with a life of St Thomas].

    Venice, Hermannus Liechtenstein, 7 September 1490.

    First collected edition of seventy-one shorter works by Thomas Aquinas.

    £3750

  4. THOMAS of Cantimpré.

    Bonum universale de proprietatibus apum.

    [Cologne, Johann Koelhoff, the Elder, c. 1478–1480.]

    Second edition of this manual of moral theology structured around the behaviour of bees.

    £6000

  5. TOMPSON, John, editor.

    English Miscellanies consisting of various Pieces of Divinity, Morals, Politicks, Philosophy and History;...

    Gottingen by Abram. Vandenhoeck, Printer and Bookseller to the University 1746.

    Second edition, revised, of John Tompson’s important English Miscellanies, expanded to almost twice the size of the first edition, including up-to-date content published since 1737.

    £300

  6. TUCKER, Josiah.

    Betydande frågor om handelen, wid tilfålle af de motsäjelser, som skedde emot den sista billen, om utlänningars...

    [v. Oelreich], 1763.

    First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...

    £200

  7. TYRE, William, Archbishop of, and Giuseppe OROLOGGI (translator).

    Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme,...

    Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.

    First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript detailing a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.

    £2800

  8. VALLISNERI, Alberto Maria. 

    Lettioni venti sopra gli alti, et ineffabili misteri della Messa, in publico lette nella chiesa di...

    Milan, Giovanni Battista da Ponte & fratelli, 1567.

    Very rare first edition of a collection of twenty sermons on the Mass delivered by the Ferrarese Carmelite Vallisneri in the church of San Giovanni in Conca, Milan, dedicated to the city’s archbishop Cardinal Carlo Borromeo. 

    £500

  9. VORAGINE, Jacobus de.

    Sermones quadragesimales [– de tempore & de sanctis per totum annum] …

    [(Colophons:) Venice, Simon de Luere for Lazarus de Suardis, 12 September 1497; – 31 August 1497.]

    An annotated copy of Jacobus de Voragine’s sermons, one of the most popular medieval sermon collections, composed in the late thirteenth century. Jacobus de Voragine (Jacopo da Varazze) was a Dominican preacher from Genoa who produced several model books of sermons, providing variations to be used...

    £3250

  10. WEBER, Johann Adam.

    Discursus curiosi et fructuosi [ad praecipuas totius litteraturae humanae scientias illustrandas accommodate …].

    [Salzburg, Johann Baptist Mayr, 1690.]

    Third Salzburg edition of Weber’s wide-ranging discourses, in a handsome Bavarian binding for the Abbot of Ettal, Bernhard I Oberhauser, attributable to the monk Brother Gregor, a trained bookbinder from Hungary.

    £6000

  11. WILSON, David (editor).

    A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, &c. in three Parts … 

    [Edinburgh:] Sold by the Editor at his House … and by J. Hamilton, Music Seller … [c.1800?].

    Second(?), expanded edition of this collection of (mostly) hymn tunes scored for treble, tenor, and bass. Though for most hymns the tunes only are printed, there are words for Cowper’s ‘Hark, my Soul!’ and one other, and at the end are the words and tunes for seven secular catches (in three parts),...

    £500

  12. [WILSON,] Thomas, Bishop of Sodor and Man.

    A short and plain Instruction for the better Understanding of the Lord’s Supper,...

    London, B. Dod, T. Longman & C. Hitch, J. Hodges, and J. & J. Rivington, 1755.

    Scarce first posthumous edition of this liturgical manual by Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, with two early female owners.

    £250

  13. WITTKOWER, Jochanan.

    Agudath Perachim. ‘Blüthenstrauß’. Anthologie deutscher und hebräischer Gedichte für Geist und Herz …

    Altona, the Bonn Brothers for the author, 1880.

    First and only edition of this anthology of moral poems and satirical and edifying epigrams translated from German into Hebrew, as well as transcriptions and translations of epitaphs from the Jewish community of Altona, now a district of Hamburg.

    £350

  14. WORMALD, Francis; Jonathan ALEXANDER, editor.

    An Early Breton Gospel Book: A ninth-century Manuscript from the Collection of H.L....

    Cambridge, ‘Printed [at the University Press] for presentation to the Members of the Roxburghe Club’, 1977.

    First edition, dedicated and presented to the Roxburghe Club by Philip Bradfer-Lawrence, a member’s copy presented to Adrian McLaughlin.

    £175

  15. ZAND, Nathalie.

    [Drop-head title:] Les olives inférieures centres de la station verticale … Travail du Laboratoire d’Anatomie...

    [Paris, 31 December 1927.]

    Scarce offprint of a work on the inferior olivary nucleus by the Polish–Jewish neurologist Nathalie Zylberlast-Zand (1883–1942) – later executed during the Second World War – our copy presented to Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington, whose work is cited at length in...

    £550

  16. ZENO of Verona, Saint

    In presenti opusculo infrascripta continentur.  Sermones luculentissimi …  Omelie & admonitiones...

    Venice, Giacomo Penzio for Benedetto Fontana, 24 January 1508. 

    Rare first edition of the sermons of Zeno of Verona, edited by Guarino and published here along with the sermons of Caesarius of Arles and Origen, and other homiletic material, especially Marian. 

    £1500