GALUPPI, Baldassare.

Daniel in lacu leonum modi sacri recinendi a piis virginibus choristis de Nosocomio Incurabilium appellato....

Venice, s.n., 1773.

First edition, very rare, of the libretto for this oratorio written by the celebrated composer Baldassare Galuppi for the renowned women’s choir of the Ospedale degli Incurabili in Venice.

£650

FOURCROY DE GUILLERVILLE, Jean-Louis de.

Les Enfans élevés dans l’ordre de la nature, ou abrégé de l’histoire naturelle...

Paris, brothers Estienne, and Lausanne, François Grasset & Comp., 1775.

Second edition of Fourcroy de Guillerville’s parental advice-book, first published the previous year, with instructions for the care of infants directed particularly at mothers.

£250

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

[EDUCATION.]

‘École communale de garçons de Ste Florence (Vendée) dirigée par M. Esgonière.’

Sainte-Florence, 1876–1877.

A very interesting and extremely detailed record of lessons given by Charles Esgonière at the boys’ school in the town of Sainte-Florence, in the Loire, during the academic year 1876–77, providing a valuable insight into provincial schooling in France in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

£650

COLIN, Hyacinthe.

Vie de la venerable servante de dieu Marie Lumague veuve de M. Pollalion, gentil-homme ordinaire du roy, institutrice...

Paris, Claude-Jean-Baptiste Hérissant, 1744.

Uncommon first edition of this biography of the educational philanthropist Marie de Lumague (1599–1657) by the cleric and orator Hyacinthe Colin (d. 1754).

£500

CLAUDIANUS, Claudius; Tommaso MEDINA, translator.

Il ratto di Proserpina di Claudio Claudiano tradotto in versi sciolti...

Brescia, Bettoni, 1804.

Very rare first edition of a translation of Claudian’s The Rape of Proserpine by the debauched friend of Casanova, Count Tommaso Medina (or Medín, 1725–1788), with facing Latin and Italian text, bound in vermiculated paper.

£650

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

BREVIARY,

in Latin, from the Sanctorale, with text for the feasts of Saint Mark and Saints Philip and James.

Northern Italy, late 15th century.

A well-preserved leaf from an attractive Italian breviary with several readings for the feast of St Mark (25 April) followed by hymns, prayers, and readings for the feast of St Philip and St James (3 May).

£350

BATTEN, Henry, and Henry VINER, composers and arrangers.

Responses, Suffrages, Tersanctus, and Chants, as used in...

Penzance, Viner’s Musical Repository, 1844.

Exceedingly rare first and only edition of these Penzance-printed Tractarian hymns and chants composed by the local minister and his organist.

£300

XENOPHON; [Philipp MELANCHTHON, editor].

Ξενοφωντος απαντα. Xenophontis opera omnia, in tres partes distincta,...

Schwäbisch Hall, [Peter Braubach], 1540.

The first complete edition of Xenophon’s works in Greek, the earlier of two issues (see below), richly annotated in Greek, Latin, and German, from the library of Nicolas-Antoine Labbey de Billy.

£4000

THEODORET.

Διαλογοι τρεις κατα τινων αιρεσεων … Lib. 3. contra haereses …

Leipzig, [(colophon:) Ernst Vögelin], 1568.

First edition of Strigel’s Latin translation of Theodoret’s dialogues against heresies, bound with the accompanying second edition of the original Greek (first Rome 1547), in a contemporary binding with signed panels by Jörg Bernutz of Wittenberg.

£1350

STEPHANUS of Byzantium; HANNO; Abraham Van BERKEL, editor and translator.

Genuina Stephani Byzantini de urbibus et populis...

Leiden, Daniel van Gaasbeeck, 1674.

First edition thus, a volume of short and fragmentary geographical works from Greece, Africa, and Egypt, spanning a thousand years of antiquity.

£450

[‘ROBERTI, Antonius’, pseud.]; George PERKINS, editor.

Clavis Homerica, reserans significationes, etymologias,...

London, E. Griffin for Godfrey Emerson, 1638.

First London edition, ‘with the Catholic particulars omitted’ (Allison & Rogers I, p. 130) from the overtly Jesuit Douai edition in 1636, of Roberti’s explanation of Homeric vocabulary and terminology, prefaced by a Greek grammar.

£600

LONGINUS, [Pseudo-]; Jonathan TOUP and David RUHNKEN, editors.

Quae supersunt Graece et Latine.

Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1778.

The first Toup edition of Longinus’ On the Sublime, finely printed and handsomely bound as a leaving present given by the Eton master Charles Yonge.

£375

HOMER; Hubert VAN GIFFEN, editor.

Οδυσσεια … Odyssea … Batrachomyomachia, Hymni, aliaque … opuscula, seu catalecta....

Cum praefatione, scholiis, & indice … Strasbourg, Theodosius Rihel, [1572].

First Rihel edition of the Odyssey, with the Batrachomyomachia and Homeric Hymns, edited by the humanist Hubert van Giffen with a parallel Latin translation, ‘the first full modern commentary on the Homeric poems to reach print’ (Demetriou, p. 496).

£850

DIOGENES LAERTIUS; Henri ESTIENNE, editor.

Περι βιων, δογματων και αποφθεγματων εν φιλοσοφια...

[Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1570.

First Estienne edition of The Lives of the Philosophers, the main surviving source of information on many Greek philosophers and their writings, including quotations from works now lost.

£850

CHEKE, John, Sir, and Stephen [GARDINER], Bishop of Winchester.

De pronuntiatione graecae potissimum linguae...

Basel, Nikolaus Episcopius the younger, 1555.

First edition of this collection of letters between John Cheke and Stephen Gardiner debating the correct pronunciation of classical Greek, printed in Basel, where Cheke was in exile during the reign of Queen Mary.

£950

[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

[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

BEAUMONT, Joseph.

Psyche: or Loves Mysterie in XX. Canto’s: displaying the Intercourse betwixt Christ and the Soule …

London, Printed by John Dawson for George Boddington, 1648.

First edition of this lengthy religious epic representing the journey of the personified Soul from England to the Holy Land and back, written by Beaumont, one of the Royalist fellows ejected from Cambridge in 1644.

£1250