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.
-
ABBIATE FORIERI, Matteo.
La Colonna di chiesa santa. Panegirico detto nella solennizata festa di S. Agostino nella Chiesa de...
Milan, Lodovico Monza, 1660.
Very rare panegyric given at the Church of San Marco in Milan to mark the feast day of St Augustine in 1660, by the Milanese lawyer Matteo Abbiate Forieri, an annual event on behalf of the lawyers of the city’s Scuole Palatine.
£175
-
‘ABRAHAM a Sancta Clara’ [pseud. Johann Ulrich MEGERLE].
Coraggio e viltà, l’uno nella virtù, l’altra nel vizio....
Trento, Giovanni Parone, 1717.
Scarce first and only Italian edition of Abraham a Sancta Clara’s emblematic moral treatise Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt, printed in Trento with one hundred striking – albeit somewhat provincial – woodcuts based on the engravings in the first German edition (1707).
£1850
-
ACQUAVIVA, Claudio.
Meditationes in Psalmum XLIV, & CXVIII.
Rome, Bartolomeo Zanetti, 1616.
First edition of these Jesuit meditations on two of the Psalms, a copy bound in the Soresini workshop for Cardinal Scipione Borghese.
£1550
-
ADRICHEM, Christian van; Francesco BALDELLI, translator.
Gerusalemme e suoi dintorni ai tempi di Gesù Cristo. Mappa e descrizione...
Genoa, Tipografia arcivescovile, 1882.
Scarce first edition thus of Baldelli’s sixteenth-century translation of this guide to Jerusalem for pilgrims by the Dutch cartographer Christian van Adrichem, instrumental in popularising the Stations of the Cross, and the basis for maps of the Holy Land well into the eighteenth century. The caption...
£200
-
[ADVENT.]
Praeparatio ad nativitatem Domini Nostri Jesu Christi ad excitandos animi affectus ex missali Romano, et breviario collecta...
Turin, Ignazio Soffietti, [c. 1790].
An extremely rare short liturgical text to be used in the festive season from 16 to 24 December, complete with music, with a hand-coloured title-page and in decorative wrappers.
£475
-
AESOP.
Les fables d’Ésope, mises en françois, avec le sens moral en quatre vers, et des figures à chaque fable. Nouvelle edition,...
Lyon, Amable Leroy, 1809.
An illustrated Lyon schoolboy edition of Aesop’s Fables, uncut in its original wrappers with the ticket of a French bookseller in Rome.
£250
-
AESOP.
Les fables et la vie d’Ésope, composée par Planudes le Grand, traduites du Grec en Français, selon la version Grecque,...
Caen, Pierre-Théodore Chalopin, [between 1822 and 1832].
An uncommon provincial edition of Aesop’s Fables, illustrated by Pierre-François Godard, stab-stitched in its original Bibliothèque-bleue wrappers.
£250
-
AESOP; Augustin LEGRAND, illustrator.
Ésope en bel humeur, ou fables d’Ésope, en vaudeville, avec gravures … et calendrier...
Paris, Batilliot frères, [c. 1795–1800].
A French verse Aesop to be sung to popular tunes, with fine plates by Legrand printed in bright orange.
£950
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
[ALBUM.]
The Conversational Album. For recreative Instruction and Amusement. London, Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.,
[and booksellers in Birmingham, Brighton, Boston, Liverpool, and Manchester], [c. 1873].
An amusing late-Victorian book of printed conversation starters for both ladies and gentlemen, completed in manuscript by members of the Backhouse, Mounsey, Richardson, and Barclay families of Darlington and Sunderland. Darlington had a particularly high Quaker population, especially active in banking...
£1500
-
ALCIATI, Andrea.
Les emblemes … mis en rime francoyse & puis nagueres reimprime avec curieuse correction.
Paris, Chrestien Wechel, 1539.
Third edition of Jean Lefevre’s French verse translation of Alciati’s Emblematum liber, bound with the second edition of Giovio’s Dialogo dell’imprese, the first to include Girolamo Ruscelli’s supplementary and substantial Discorso on emblems and mottos.
£1750
-
ALCIATI, Andrea; Claude MIGNAULT, editor; Fédéric MOREL.
Omnia … emblemata, cum commentariis, quibus emblematum detecta...
Paris, Jean Richer for François Gueffier, 1618.
The final Paris printing of Mignault’s extensive and influential commentary of Alciati’s Emblems, yet the first edition to contain Fédéric Morel’s ‘Corollaria et monita’.
£850
-
[ALEXANDER VII, Pope.]
Vero e pieno ragguaglio delle ceremonie fatte per l’incoronazione di N. Sig. Alessandro papa...
Rome and Florence, nella stamperia di S. A. S. alla Condotta, 1655.
Very rare first(?) edition of this detailed and entertaining account of the coronation of Pope Alexander VII in April 1655, capturing the splendour, colour, and emotion of the occasion.
£450
-
[ALMANACK.]
Les étrennes à la rose, ou le rosier d’amour.
Paris, Janet, [1804?].
A charming literary almanack, or ‘rosebush of love’, collecting amatory poems using the motif of the rose, here bound in red silk strikingly embroidered in silver and dated with the French Revolutionary year ‘An XII’ (1804).
£2500
-
[ALMANACK.]
Étrennes mignones [sic], curieuses et utiles, avec plusieurs augmentations & corrections, pour l’année mil sept...
Paris, Claude-Jacques-Charles [Durand] and Pierre-François Durand, 1775.
A very rare Parisian almanack for 1775, our copy in a handsome binding embroidered in gold and silver threads and with emblematic mottoes and charming illustrations depicting putti fanning smoke from a burning candle and holding a flaming heart.
£1500
-
[ALMANACK.]
London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1785.
[London,] Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1785].
A very attractive miniature London Almanack in its elaborate original binding of gilt white calf and matching étui, with an engraving of the soon-to-be-finished Somerset House.
£950
-
[ALMANACK.]
Le triomphe de la vertu. Sujets tirés de la Sainte Bible.
Paris, Janet, [1814].
A very rare biblical almanack for 1814 by Janet, attractively illustrated with engraved plates depicting episodes from the Old Testament.
£300
-
[ALMANACK.]
Les perfidies supposées ou les médisances pardonables. Almanach orné des jolies gravures.
Paris, Janet, ‘Successeur du Sr Jubert’, 1800.
A seemingly unrecorded almanack for 1800, issued by the prolific publisher of almanacks Pierre-Étienne Janet (1746–1830), with suggestive engravings accompanied by explanatory poems, songs, and music, our copy in a handsome binding of contemporary painted white sheep with designs of hearts, garlands,...
£1450