Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan

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. TERENCE; Daniel HEINSIUS, editor.

    Pub. Terentii comoediae sex, ex recensione Heinsiana.

    Amsterdam, Henrik Wetstein, [c. 1700].

    A small-format edition of Terence’s comedies, printed in Amsterdam but bound in Britain and owned by a Devonshire schoolboy.

    £145

  2. TERENTIUS Afer, Publius.

    Comoediae sex. Ex recensione Heinsiana, cum annotationibus Thomae Farnabii in quatuor priores et M.C.Is.F....

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1658.

    An intensely annotated copy of this rare pocket Jansson edition of Terence’s comedies. The edition itself was a successful production, uniting the text edited by Heinsius with the commentary of Thomas Farnaby to the first four comedies, and that of Méric Casaubon to the last two. Jansson had...

    £2250

  3. THEOCRITUS, BION, MOSCHUS, SIMMIAS of Rhodes.

    Θεοκριτου … Ειδυλλια και Επιγραμματα. Μοσχου...

    [Heidelberg], Commelin, 1596.

    First edition of the Greek Idylls published by Commelin, and first edition of Joseph Justus Scaliger’s commentary and notes, complemented with Isaac Casaubon’s notes, a form of which had first appeared in Geneva in 1569.

    £550

  4. THEOCRITUS et al.

    Theocriti aliorumque poetarum Idyllia. Eiusdem Epigrammata …

    [Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1579.

    An outstanding volume uniting the Estienne Greek bucolic poets (Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus) and the Estienne Greek Psalms in an Henri Estienne presentation binding.

    £9000

  5. TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND,

    who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel,...

    London, Printed for Thomas Simmons …, 1659.

    First edition, rare, a list of Quaker victims of persecution in Ireland with details of their sufferings. The pamphlet was published and undersigned by a group of the victims including the country’s reputed first Quaker, William Edmondson, and Thomas Holme, who went on to publish A Brief...

    £300

  6. [THOMAS À KEMPIS.]

    Messer Giovanni Gerson. Utile & divota operetta della imitatione di Giesu Xpo …

    Florence, Piero Pacini da Pescia, 16 April 1505.

    Scarce edition of an anonymous Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi, with a striking woodcut of Christ to the title.

    £4000

  7. [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.

    £6500

  8. THOMAS À KEMPIS.

    De imitatione Christi libri quatuor.

    ‘Leiden’ [Amsterdam], Elzevir, 1658.

    Second Elzevir edition of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi, with a new engraved title and a false imprint, handsomely bound in French red morocco with citron doublures.

    £675

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. THOMAS CANTIPRATENSIS.

    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, composed in the 1260s. It was a popular work, surviving in over a hundred manuscripts.

    £6000

  12. 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

  13. 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

  14. TURNER, Sharon.

    The sacred history of the world, as displayed in the creation and subsequent events to the deluge. Attempted to...

    London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832 [– 1834; – 1837].

    First edition, each volume with a presentation letter from the author (dated 1 March 1832, 12 December 1834, and 27 March 1837 respectively) to the classical scholar Thomas Gaisford.

    £500

  15. 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

  16. URCEO, Antonio [or Codro]. 

    Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur.  Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat.  Epistolae. ...

    Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502. 

    First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts. 

    £3000

  17. VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator

    Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565. 

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. 

    £1250

  18. VALERIUS MAXIMUS.

    Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].

    First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.

    £2750

  19. 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

  20. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.

    Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...

    [(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]

    Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...

    £2750