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.

    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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  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. 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

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. ARISTOTLE.

    De animo, libri III. Ioachimo Perionio interprete, per Nicolaum Grouchium correcti et emendati.

    Paris, Thomas Richard, 1561.

    Rare edition of Aristotle’s On the Soul in the Latin translation of Joachim Périon (d. 1559), edited by Nicolas de Grouchy (d. 1572), with scattered contemporary student annotations.

    £575

  12. 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

  13. AURELIUS VICTOR, Sextus.

    Historiae romanae breviarium. A Jano & Saturno, Urbeque condita, usque ad Consulatum X Constantii Aug. &...

    Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1579.

    A pair of abbreviated histories based on the lost work of Sextus Aurelius Victor, from the distant origins of Rome up to the death of the Emperor Theodosius in 395 AD, illustrated with coins and portraits of the emperors, with early English provenance, later in the library of the Earls of Guilford.

    £1450

  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. 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

  18. [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

  19. CARO Y CEJUDO, Gerónimo Martín.

    Refranes y modos de hablar, castellanos con latinos, que les corresponden, juntamente con la...

    Madrid, Julián Izquierdo, 1675.

    First edition, the Heber–Chorley–Stirling Maxwell–de Guinzbourg copy, of this extensive series of over 3500 Latin proverbs and idioms with their Spanish equivalents, taken from classical sources as well as Alciati, Augustine, Hadrianus Junius, and Thomas More.

    £1750

  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