[NUPTIALIA.]

Per le Faustissime Nozze del Nobile Signor Bartolomeo Grillenzoni di Carpi colla Nobile Signora Contessa Luigia Giacobazzi...

Guastalla, ‘Nella Regio-Ducale Stamperia di Salvatore Costa e Comp.’, 1791.

Seemingly unrecorded, provincially printed sonnets written to mark the marriage of Bartolomeo Grillenzoni and Luigia Gioacobazzi, dedicated to the father of the groom.

£250

[NUPTIALIA.]

Bartolomeo MOLAJONI.  Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il...

Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811. 

Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia. 

£275

[O’BRIEN.] NA GOPALEEN, Myles. [Pseud.] Brian O’Nolan.

The Hard Life … An Exegesis of Squalor.

London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1961.

First edition. A short comic novel described by O’Brien’s biographer Anthony Cronin as ‘a small masterpiece’, The Hard Life recounts the turn-of-the-century doings of a nameless narrator and the characters around him, with a remote, disdainful calmness and clarity. Set in the same turn-of-the-century...

£250

[O’BRIEN.] NA GOPALEEN, Myles. [Pseud.] Brian O’Nolan.

The Best of Myles.

New York: Walker & Company, 1968.

First US edition, preceded by the London, MacGibbon & Kee edition of the same year.

£150

[OCCUPIED FRANCE]

Finis les mauvais jours! Papa gagne de l’argent en Allemagne! [The bad days are over! Daddy is earning money...

[Paris], Office de Répartition de l´Affichage, 1943.

Rare, encouraging the voluntary relocation of French workers from impoverished and semi-starved France to Germany factories.

£300

[OPTICAL PRINT.] 

‘No. 5.  Morgan’s improved protean scenery: Mount Vesuvius, as represented at the Surrey Zoological Gardens...

London, Published by W. Morgan, [c. 1837]. 

A remarkable metamorphic or ‘protean’ print depicting a dormant Vesuvius by day but, when held up to the light, showing a dramatic eruption in the night sky. 

£675

[ORDE, John Powlett.]

A collection of 111 original compositions in Latin (and occasionally Greek) verse and prose.

Eton, 1818–1820.

A delightful insight into classical education at Eton, where until the mid-nineteenth century Greek and Latin were the only official classroom subjects, and Latin composition was considered a key accomplishment. Subjects covered here include ‘The Pigeon’ (5 May 1818), ‘Instruction’ (21...

£1750

[ORPHIC POEMS.]

Ορφεως αργοναυτικα υμνοι και περι λιθων. Orphei Argonautica hymni et de lapidibus...

Utrecht, Willem van de Water, 1689.

First Eschenbach edition, presenting the ‘Argonautica Orphica’, an anonymous fourth-century Greek epic probably based on the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, which had been rediscovered in the fifteenth century by Constantine Lascaris, alongside the Orphic Hymns and the Lithica,...

£325

[OSBORNE, Francis.]

Historical memoires on the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and King James.

London: Printed by T. Grismond, and are to be sold by T. Robinson … in Oxon. 1658.

First edition of Osborne’s history of the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI and I, two exemplary leaders of the Protestant English cause, with which Osborne was much taken in his works.

£475

OSTROGORSKII, Aleksandr Iakovlevich.

Zhivoe slovo. Kniga dlia izucheniia rodnogo iazyka [Living word. A book for learning our...

New York, Association Press, 1920.

Stereotype (first American?) edition. First published in 1907, Ostrogorsky’s (1868–1908) Zhivoe slovo was a runaway success in Russia, where it was widely regarded as the best reader of its type. Such high regard for the book presumably made it an obvious choice for it to be republished for...

£150

OVERBURY, Sir Thomas.

Sir Thomas Overbury His Wife. With Additions of new Characters, and many other Witty Conceits never before...

London, Printed by John Haviland, for A. Crooke … 1638.

Sixteenth edition of the most popular character book of the early seventeenth century.

£600

OVID.

P. Ovidii Nasonis operum …

Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1629.

First Elzevir edition, newly edited by Daniel Heinsius based on the Plantin edition of 1578.

£500

OVIDIUS Naso, Publius, and Pedro Sánchez de VIANA, translator and commentator. 

Las transformaciones. 

Valladolid, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, 1589.

First edition, a copy of notable provenance, of perhaps the most successful early Spanish translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by Pedro Sánchez de Viana (c. 1545–1619), a physician by training, published along with his substantial commentary. 

£6000