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.
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HOMER, and Alexander POPE (translator).
The Iliad of Homer. Translated from the Greek by Alexander Pope, Esq. Philadelphia,...
McCulloch, P. Stuart, 1795.
First American edition of Pope’s rendering of the Iliad. Pope began his reinterpretation of Homer’s epic poem when in his early twenties. Following several years of ‘great pain and apprehensions’, as Pope drafted his text on the backs of letters sent to him and his mother (now preserved...
£850
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[HOMILETIC.]
Meditations de la seconde annee.
[France, c. 1700.]
Apparently unpublished set of meditations for the Sundays in the liturgical year running from the seventh to the twenty-fourth week after Pentecost, shedding light on tools and practices in the homiletic art. Themes range from reflections on the Eucharist, to considerations on mortality, on...
£750
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HORACE.
Q. Horatius Flaccus ex recensione Dan. Heinsii.
Edinburgh, George Mosman, 1704.
A rare, modestly printed Scottish Horace, apparently the only printing in the British Isles of Heinsius’ edition, first published by Louis Elzevir in 1612.
£450
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HORACE.
Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera cum novo commentario ad modum Joannis Bond.
Paris, Didot, 1855.
The deluxe issue of Didot’s Horace, a fine early photographically-illustrated work, complete with all the photographic plates, headpieces and maps, and printed on fine paper.
£750
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HORACE; James TATE, editor.
Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...
Cambridge, J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1832.
First edition of this attempt to arrange the books of Horace in chronological order by the classical scholar and master of Richmond School, James Tate (1771–1843), this copy presented by him to Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855), classicist, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Regius Professor of Greek,...
£150
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[HOSPICE SAINT-NICOLAS, METZ.]
Deed granting land to the hospice.
Metz, 5 May 1464.
A significant document recording the grant of agricultural land in 1464 to the Hospice of Saint-Nicolas, the oldest hospital in Metz, in northeast France, issued during the reign of Louis XI and in the final year of the papacy of Pius II.
£450
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HOSPINIAN, Rudolf.
Historia Jesuitica. Hoc est, de origine, regulis, constitutionibus, privilegiis, incrementis, progressu...
Zurich, Johannes Rudolph Wolf, 1670.
Second edition of Hospinian’s vast and vitriolic attack on the Jesuits, first published in 1619 (also in Zurich by Wolf); both editions are scarce.
£800
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HOSSCHIUS, Sidronius.
Sidronii Hosschii e Societate Iesu elegiarum libri sex. Praemittuntur illustrissimorum virorum poemata in...
Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1656.
First collected edition of the neo-Latin verse of the Flemish Jesuit and poet Sidronius Hosschius (Sidron de Hossche, 1596–1653), edited after his death by his fellow poet Jacques van de Walle (1599–1690), and prefaced with poems on Hosschius’ death commissioned by the future Pope Alexander...
£600
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[HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.]
Royal order in French authorising payment to various officials engaged in raising a levy (‘aide’) at...
Paris, 30 March 1415.
A royal order to pay officials involved in raising a levy at Avranches, issued a few months before the battle of Agincourt.
£1750
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HURTADO, Eugenio, scribe.
[Missal for feast days.]
Madrid, 1827.
An extraordinary and enormous liturgical manuscript with painted and stencilled decorations, in a remarkable binding on wheels for ease of movement
£9500
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HYGINUS Gromaticus, attributed, and POLYBIUS.
De Castris Romanis, quae extant. Cum notis & animadversionibus …
Amsterdam, Jodocus Pluymer, 1660.
First edition thus, with annotations by the politician Radboud Herman Scheele (1622–1662).
£1000
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[HYMNAL.]
Neu-vermehrt- und vollständiges Gesang-Buch, worinnen sowohl die Psalmen Davids, nach D. Ambrosii Lobwassers, Uebersetzung...
[Likely Swabia, for] Philadelphia, Ernst Ludwig Baisch, 1774.
First and only edition thus of this German hymnal, issued in Philadelphia by Ernst Ludwig Baisch under his own imprint but printed in Germany, bound by an itinerant German Pennsylvanian binder with printed waste from Charles Cist’s Americanische Stadt und Land Calender for 1797, with inscriptions...
£3500
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IBN VERGA, Solomon; Georg GENTIUS, translator.
Historia Judaica res Judaeorum ab eversa aede Hierosolymitana, ad haec fere...
Amsterdam, Pieter Niellius, 1651.
First Latin edition of Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah, an important account of persecutions suffered by the Jews and a reflection upon the origins of antisemitism, from the library of the distinguished French savant and bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet with annotations in his hand.
£3750
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[INCUNABLE SAMMELBAND.]
Sammelband of ten works.
Rome, Stephan Plannck and Eucharius Silber, c. 1481–1491.
A sammelband of ten Roman incunables, nine of which printed by Stephan Plannck, covering subjects from astronomy to usury, holy water to marriage, and ending with St Antoninus’s manual for confessors, our copy with early annotations and partially preserving its original binding.
£25000
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[INDULGENCE.]
Letter of Indulgence (in Catalan), incipit ‘A Honor …’, granted by Cardinal Luis de Milá,...
[Lerida, Heinrich Botel, c. 1498.]
Extremely rare incunable indulgence in Catalan granted by Luis de Milá, Bishop of Lérida, in favour of the living (as opposed to the dead, see below) to gather funds for the repair of the old cathedral of Lérida, printed at Lérida, the second city of Catalonia, about one hundred miles...
£34000
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[INDULGENCES.]
Indulgencias concedidas a los congregantes de la inmaculada concepcion de Maria SS baxo el titulo de la corona...
[Barcelona, 1793.]
Very rare broadside detailing the indulgences granted to members, of both sexes, of the Congregation of the Immaculate Conception, established under the title of the Crown of the Seven Joys of the Virgin at the Franciscan convent in Barcelona. In 1792, Pope Pius VI had formerly linked the Congregation...
£175
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ISIDORUS A CRUCE.
Devoti admodum et consolatione pleni confessionales Psalmi septem in quibus peccator divinam pro criminibus...
Dillingen, Johann Caspar Bencard, 1675.
Rare illustrated edition of this work devoted to confession and seeking forgiveness for sins by Isidorus a Cruce (d. 1681), abbot of St Charles the Great in Prague.
£450
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ISOCRATES.
Orationes et epistolae gravitatis et suavitatis plenae de Greco in Latinum pridem conversae, nunc recognitae, per Hieronymu[m]...
Paris, Michel de Vascosan, 1553.
A handsome Latin edition of twenty-one works by the Athenian orator Isocrates whose work was highly influential on later education, oratory and writing. Isocrates (436–338 BC) studied under Socrates and the sophists, before establishing a famous school of rhetoric which attracted pupils from...
£750
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[JACOBUS DE GRUYTRODE, (attr.)].
Lavacrum conscientie [omnium sacerdotum].
[Colophon:] Cologne, Heinrich Quentell, 1504.
Rare edition of this popular late medieval treatise widely ascribed to the Carthusian monk Jacobus de Gruytrode (c. 1400–1475).
£750
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JACOBUS MEDIOLANENSIS.
Stimulus divini amoris Sancti Bonaventurae.
Venice, Stefano Nicolini da Sabbio, April 1535.
Rare edition of the Stimulus divini amoris, a popular medieval devotional treatise long attributed to St Bonaventure but in fact composed by the thirteenth-century Franciscan Giacomo da Milano.
£550