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. GELLIUS, Aulus; [Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS, editor].

    Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti hominis cura...

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.

    Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s celebrated version, published the same year as the first edition. A commonplace book compiled by Aulus Gellius in the second century, the Attic Nights received several editions, of which the most highly regarded is that of Johann Friedrich Gronovius (Gronow,...

    £450

  2. [GEORGE V.]

    The Form and Order of the Service that is to be performed and of the Ceremonies that are to be observed in the Coronation...

    London, Novello & Company, 1911.

    A handsome copy of the Coronation service, with choral settings of the music sung, including (among others) Parry’s ‘I was glad’, Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’, and ‘God save the King!’, arranged by Sir Frederick Bridge (1844–1924), organist at Westminster Abbey.

    £450

  3. GIBBON, Edward.

    The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

    London, W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1776–88.

    First editions of all six volumes of Gibbon’s ‘masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style’ (PMM). The first volume here is of the second variant (of two), with the errata corrected as far as p. 183 and X4 and a4 so signed. The first edition of volume I (1000 copies, published...

    £14000

  4. GIOVANNI GUALBERTO, Saint.

    Sanctus Ioannes Gualbertus Florentinus institutor ordinis Vallisumbrosae.

    [S.l., s.n.,] 1774.

    A wonderful engraving, extremely rare, depicting scenes from the life of Saint Giovanni Gualberto (c. 985–1073, anglicised as John Gualbert), founder of the Vallombrosan Order.

    £1250

  5. GIRALDI, Lilio Gregorio. 

    De Deis gentium varia et multiplex historia, in qua simul de eorum imaginibus et cognominibus agitur,...

    Basel, Oporinus, 1548. 

    First edition of the most important mythography to be published after Boccaccio’s Genealogiae deorum gentilium and before Conti’s Mythologiae, with extensive marginalia in the first part. 

    £2500

  6. GOBINET, Charles. 

    Instruction sur la vérité du Saint Sacrement, contenant en abregé les principaux motifs de la créance Catholique...

    Paris, François le Cointe, 1677. 

    Scarce first edition thus, containing an explanation of the Eucharist and a defence of transubstantiation by the French writer and teacher Charles Gobinet (1613–1690), a lovely copy bearing a stamp found on bindings executed for Louis de France, the Grand Dauphin (1661–1711), eldest son of Louis...

    £650

  7. GOODWIN, Thomas.

    Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities wherein many Roman and English...

    London, R.W. for Peter Parker, 1661.

    A wholly unsophisticated Restoration sammelband of three popular seventeenth-century schoolbooks.

    £850

  8. GOODWIN, Thomas.

    Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities, wherein many Roman & English...

    Oxford, Leonard Lichfield for Henry Cripps, 1638.

    Early editions of these two popular schoolbooks on antiquities, often found bound together – a compendium of Roman antiquities and a study of the customs and religious rites of the ancient Jews, originally published in 1614 and 1625 respectively – by the headmaster and scholar Thomas Goodwin (1587–1642)....

    £1600

  9. [GOSPELS.] Charles HURÉ, translator.

    Le nouveau testament de notre-seigneur Jesus-Christ, nouvellement traduit en françois...

    Paris, L. Roulland, 1712.

    An attractive early Jansenist binding, with a sober shagreen exterior concealing gilt decoration within, on a copy of the Gospels extracted from Charles Huré’s French New Testament.

    £950

  10. [GRADUAL.]

    Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.

    Italy (Umbria), end of thirteenth century.

    A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi...

    £20000

  11. GRAILE, John.

    Three Sermons preached at the Cathedral in Norwich. And a fourth at a parochial Church in Norfolk. Humbly recommending,...

    London, Printed for W. Kettilby … 1685.

    First and only edition, rare. The third of these four sermons was delivered on the anniversary of Charles I’s execution, 30 January 1684, drawing on the Proverb: ‘For the transgression of a land, many are the princes there’, in which the plurality of leaders is shown to be the ‘constant...

    £850

  12. GUILLON, Pierre.

    Danti voci suae vocem virtutis. Quaestio theologica … Has theses … ac praeside, S.M.N.D.D. Ludovico Bellayer,...

    Poitiers, Jean-Felix Faulcon, [1770].

    An apparently unrecorded broadside giving the text of theological theses defended by Pierre Guillon of Poitiers for entry into minor orders. A bachelor of theology from the city’s university, Guillon’s gruelling five-hour examination took place on 22 November 1770 between one and six o’clock,...

    £275

  13. HAEFTEN, Benedictus van.

    Regia via crucis.

    Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti, 1635.

    First edition of an important counter-reformation devotional emblem book, with a title-page designed by Peter Paul Rubens. Haeften (1588-1648) was provost of the Benedictine abbey of Affligem, Belgium, and played an important role in the reform of the Benedictine order. The Regia via crucis was his most...

    £1100

  14. HAMILTON, ‘Eliza’ [Elizabeth].

    Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah; written previous to, and during the Period of...

    London, J. Crowder for G. & J. Robinson, 1801.

    Second edition of Hamilton’s first separately published work, a pseudo-Oriental satire on British society, in a very well-preserved gilt paper binding imitating calf.

    £575

  15. HEBER, Reginald, and Nicolas BARKER (editor).

    A Letter from India.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2020.

    'I do not expect that with fair prospects of eminence at home, you should go to the Ganges for a mitre,’ wrote Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs, in 1819 to Reginald Heber at Hodnet in Shropshire, but in vain. Despite a growing reputation...

    £100

  16. HENRICUS DE HERP.

    Speculum aureum decem praeceptorum Dei.

    [(Colophon:) Mainz, Peter Schoeffer, 10 September 1474.]

    First edition of this collection of sermons based on the Ten Commandments, devised for both confessors and preachers, printed by Peter Schoeffer, Gutenberg’s assistant and, after Gutenberg himself, ‘the most influential individual in the early history of the printed word’ (White, p. xi).

    £24000

  17. HERMOGENES.

    Τεχνη ρητορικη τελειοτατη. Hermogenis ars oratoria absolutissima, et libri omnes. Cum nova versione...

    Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1614.

    A parallel text edition of Hermogenes in a simple but fine contemporary binding.

    £750

  18. HERODOTUS.

    Historiae Libri IX: et de vita Homeri libellus. Illi, ex interpretatione Laurentio Vallae adscripta; hic ex interpretatione...

    Frankfurt, Heirs of Andreas Wechel (Claude de Marne and Johann Aubry), 1594.

    Freidrich Sylberg’s edition of Herodotus in the Latin translation by Lorenzo Valla, based on the text published by Estienne in 1566, along with extracts from the Greek physician Ctesias’s Persika, a history of Persia, and Indika, the first book to be devoted entirely to India, Estienne’s...

    £1500

  19. HIEROCLES of Alexandria.

    Ύπομνηνα εις τα των Πυθαγορειων επη τα χρυσα … commentarius in...

    London, J. R. [John Redmayne] for J. Williams, and Henry Dickinson, Cambridge, 1673.

    London edition of the only complete work of Hierocles, his commentaries on the Golden Verses, a valuable epitome of Pythagorean ethical teachings, printed here in the original and in a Latin translation. According to tradition they were put into their present form by Lysis, one of the most...

    £500

  20. HOMER.

    Ομηρου Ιλιας και Οδυσσεια μετα της εξηγησιος. Homeri Ilias et Ulyssea cum interpretatione...

    Basel, Johann Herwagen, 1535.

    First Herwagen edition of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, with the scholia of Didymus, edited, according to Dibdin, by the great German classicist Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574), with interesting near-contemporary annotations by a student of Greek, likely drawn from Thomas Grynaeus’s...

    £6000