[TARONI, Giovanni Battista, pseud.] ‘Giovanna Statira BOTTINI’.

Cento nodi da sciogliersi proposti al genio de suoi...

Bologna, Gaspare de’ Franceschi, 1765.

Extremely rare edition of one hundred widely imitated riddles, published under the female anagrammatic pseudonym ‘Giovanna Statira Bottini’.

£450

VAN VEEN, Otto.

Amoris divini emblemata …

Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1660.

Second edition (first 1615) of sixty spiritual emblems personifying the Soul and Divine Love, a counterpart to van Veen’s 1608 emblem book on secular love, Amorum emblemata.

£950

VERRIEN, [Nicolas].

Recueil d’emblêmes, devises, medailles, et figures hieroglyphiques, au nombre de plus de douze cent, avec...

Paris, Claude Jombert [part II: Jean Jombert], 1724.

A rich collection of engraved emblems, monograms, and heraldic supporters, devised as a pattern book for the use of artists and craftsmen.

£750

ZAUNSLIFER, Petrus.

Tafereel van overdeftige Zinnebeelden, gemaelt naer de Deuchden, Ondeuchden, Gemoetsdriften der Menschen, Straffen...

Amsterdam, Gerard Onder de Linden, 1722.

First edition of this illustrated collection of religious emblems by the Dutch preacher Petrus Zaunslifer, adapting Cesare Ripa’s influential Iconologia.

£950

GAY, John.

Fables by John Gay, with a Life of the Author.

Vienna, Rudolph Sammer, 1799.

Uncommon Vienna-printed edition of this series of fables by John Gay (1685–1732), which humorously subverts expectations of power and authority through the juxtaposition of characters from beggars and kings to booksellers and elephants.

£375

[ALVISET, Jean Antoine.]

L’Ange gardien. Pour les devotes confreries des Saincts Anges Gardiens. Par un prestre de l’eglise...

Lyon, Jacques du Creux, 1647.

Very rare devotional manual for female and male members of the Confraternity of the Guardian Angels established in the church of St Peter in Besançon, in eastern France, in 1643, with a separately published and seemingly unrecorded appendix detailing its rules.

£350

BAUDELAIRE, Charles.

Oeuvres complètes … Les Fleurs du mal.

Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, [1917?].

An attractive early twentieth-century edition of Les Fleurs du mal, owned by the young Graham Pollard before going up to Oxford in 1921.

£250

CARACCIOLI, Louis-Antoine, Marquis.

The Travels of Reason in Europe. Translated from the French …

London, J. Johnson, and W. Charnley and Vesey and Whitfield, Newcastle, 1778.

First English edition, very rare, of this Sterneian philosophical voyage through Europe, first published at Paris in 1771 according to Quérard, though we cannot trace any copy before 1772.

£1200

[DARTON, William.]

Little Jack of all Trades, with suitable Representations. Part I [– Part II].

London, printed and sold by Darton and Harvey, 1809 [– printed for Darton, Harvey, and Darton, 1812].

Extremely rare early editions of this popular introduction to trades for children, likely written by the printer William Darton, with forty-six illustrations.

£750

EVELYN, John.

Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions.

London, John Martyn, 1679.

Third, enlarged edition of Evelyn’s Sylva, the foundational work of English forestry that remained the standard English treatise on the subject well into the nineteenth century.

£1500

GOETHE, [Johann Wolfgang von].

Goethe’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand. Eilfter [– Zwölfter] Band …

Stuttgart & Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1828.

First edition, first impression, of the first appearance of any part of Faust part two, published as the twelfth volume in Goethe’s Werke … Ausgabe letzter Hand, from the library of Ian Fleming.

£3500

[HÉRISSANT, Louis Théodore.]

Le fablier françois, ou élite des meilleures fables depuis La Fontaine.

Paris, Lottin le jeune, 1771.

First edition, rare, of what has a claim to be the first comprehensive collection of French fables from the period after La Fontaine, assembled by the diplomat, lawyer, and historian Louis-Théodore Hérissant (1743–1811).

£650

HERODIAN; [Angelo POLIZIANO, translator; Thomas SPARK, editor].

Ηρωδιανου ιστοριων βιβλια...

Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, for G. West and Anthony Peisley, 1704.

A finely bound copy of Herodian’s moralising history of Rome, from Marcus Aurelius to Gordian III.

£250

[PSALMS.] J. T. BARRETT, editor.

A Course of Psalms, adapted to the Services of the United Church of England and Ireland;...

London, J. Cochran, 1827.

Fifth edition of the Course of Psalms (1816), compiled by Jonathan Tyers Barrett (1784–1851) from the 1698 New Version of the Psalms, in a handsome contemporary binding of red morocco.

£175

VISHNU SHARMA, attributed, et al; Jean Antoine DUBOIS, translator.

Le Pantcha-tantra, ou les cinq ruses, fables du...

Paris, J.-S. Merlin, 1826.

First edition of this French translation of the Panchatantra, an ancient Indian collection of animal fables, of The Adventures of Guru Paramartha, a Tamil compilation of satirical stories, and of other oriental tales, by the French Catholic missionary Jean-Antoine Dubois, with remarkable...

£1850

[WILD & C^o.]

Large sample book of printed textiles.

[Turin, c. 1920?]

A large collection of samples of printed textiles, displaying a wide variety of techniques and applications.

£1250

BOUTMY, C.

‘Exercitium quotidianum dedicatum perillustri domino domino vice comiti de Haro et d’Enghien &c a C. Boutmy 1760’.

[Belgium, 1760.]

An attractively bound unpublished devotional manual composed by one C. Boutmy (unidentified) for his patron Henri vicomte de Haro et d’Enghien.

£450

[DOVES PRESS.] 

Pervigilium Veneris. 

Hammersmith, ‘printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press,’ 1910. 

One of 150 copies on paper of the elusive Pervigilium Veneris, a celebration of the spring festival of Venus Genetrix, here in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe). 

£950

GUSTÁ, Francisco.

Memorie della rivoluzione francese tanto politica che ecclesiastica e della gran parte, che vi hanno avuto...

Assisi, Ottavio Sgariglia, 1793.

Apparent first edition, very rare, of Gustá’s first and full articulation of his attack on the Jansenists as responsible for the horrors of the French Revolution.

£550

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