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  1. FORBES, James David.

    Travels through the Alps … New edition revised and annotated by W.A.B. Coolidge … With portrait, new...

    London, Adam and Charles Black, 1900.

    A handsome edition of four of Forbes’s chief writings relating to his Alpine travels, from the library of Guido Rey (1861–1935), the distinguished Italian Alpinist, writer and photographer.

    £450

  2. GAZA, Theodorus.

    Grammatica introductiva; De mensibus; Apollonius Dyscolus: De constructione; Herodianus: De numeris.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, 25 December 1495.]

    A beautiful example of early Greek printing, containing the editio princeps of the grammar of Theodorus Gaza, and one of the first texts to be printed entirely in Greek.

    £45000

  3. HANWAY, Jonas.

    An historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, with a journal of travels from London through Russia...

    London, Dodsley, Nourse, Millar, Vaillant, & Patterson, Waugh, and Willock, 1753.

    First edition of Hanway’s narrative of his trade mission to Russia, Persia, and the Caspian Sea, with a contemporary bookplate bearing the names of the prominent Devon merchant and ship-owner Arthur Holdsworth and his wife.

    £1400

  4. [HERALDRY.]

    Manuscripts relating to Low Countries nobility.

    [Low Countries, mid-seventeenth century?]

    A fine set of manuscripts relating to Low Countries heraldry and history compiled by a learned local antiquary.

    £1750

  5. 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

  6. [JESUITS.]

    The Travels of several learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus, into divers Parts of the Archipelago, India, China,...

    London, for R. Gosling, 1714.

    First English translation of twenty-two letters by major French Jesuit missionaries in Asia and the Americas, taken from Charles Le Gobien’s Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (1711–13). The Jesuits largely dominated seventeenth and early eighteenth-century missionary activity in the...

    £1250

  7. [LOO, Pieter van, attributed.]

    156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits.

    [Holland, c. 1760–80].

    A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784).

    £100000

  8. 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

  9. MERULA, Giorgio.

    Enarrationes Satyrarum Juvenalis.

    Treviso, Bartholomaeus Confalonerius, [not before May] 1478.

    The first book printed by Bartolomeo Confalonieri da Salò in Treviso, Michael Wodhull’s copy, bound and ruled for him by the London binder Maria Wier.

    £6500

  10. MILL, John Stuart; Jan VÁŇA, translator.

    O Individualitě. Z anglického jazyka přeložil J. Váňa …

    Váňa … Prague, Militký and Novák, 1880.

    First edition in Czech, very rare, of Mill’s ‘On Individuality’, being chapter three of On Liberty (1859) – the first portion of that text to appear in Czech, and perhaps the earliest appearance of anything by Mill in that language. The translator was Jan Váňa (1847–1915),...

    £350

  11. MILL, John Stuart; Hugo KOSTERKA and Václav PETRŽELKA, translators.

    O Svobodě. Přeložili H. Kosterka a V. Petrželka...

    Prague, Czech student magazine press, 1891.

    First edition in Czech of On Liberty (1859), very rare, translated by the prominent translator and publisher Hugo Kosterka (1867–1956), editor and co-founder of the Moderní revue, and Václav Petrželka (1869–1927).

    £650

  12. PAULUS DE CASTRO.

    Super primo, secundo et tertio libro Codicis.

    Venice, [Andreas Torresanus, de Asula], 30 June 1487.

    Rare second edition of Paulus de Castro’s commentary on the first three books of the Codex of Justinian, from the library of Dürer’s closest friend Willibald Pirckheimer.

    £12500

  13. PETTY, William, Sir.

    Another Essay in Political Arithmetick, concerning the growth of the City of London: with the measures,...

    London, printed by H.H. for Mark Pardoe, 1683.

    First edition, scarce – seemingly unique in its uncut and unbound state – of Petty’s first work of political arithmetic, a landmark work of statistics, demography, and economics.

    £12000

  14. QUR’AN,

    signed Ghaybi bin ‘Umar, Edirne.

    Ottoman Turkey, dated the end of Muharram AH 822 (February AD 1419).

    An important early Ottoman Qur’an manuscript, copied in the period (from 1363 to 1453) when the capital of the Ottoman Empire was based at Edirne (Adrianople) in Eastern Thrace. Very few Qur’ans are attributed to this centre but the quality of this manuscript, still evident despite some damage...

    £65000

  15. RAIMONDI, Eugenio.

    Delle caccie … libri Quattro, aggiuntovi’n questa nuova ’mpressione il quinto libro della villa.

    [Naples, Lazzaro Scoriggio, 1626.]

    Second edition, expanded and extended, with a new series of striking hunting plates. The series of plates (attributable to Nicolas Perrey, who signs the title), showing composite scenes of hunters pursuing animals from birds and fish to lions and elephants, is wholly new, replacing the woodcut...

    £2500

  16. ‘WOODLAND SKETCHES.

    With poetical Selections …

    Frome. 1836’.

    A delightful illustrated manuscript commonplace of uncommonly coherent design, assembling relevant quotations from Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Cowper, Spenser, Coleridge, and others, alongside illustrations of ten British trees – Beech, Willow, White Poplar, Cedar, Elm, Pine, Oak, Birch, Yew,...

    £1250

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. AUGUSTINUS, Aurelius.

    De civitate Dei.

    Venice, Nicolaus Jenson, 2 October 1475.

    A tall copy with some deckle edges of the only Jenson edition of the City of God, Augustine’s influential treatise written in the wake of the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. Augustine sought to justify why a Christian state, with the support of God, could be defeated in this way;...

    £24000

  20. [BRITISH MOSSES.]

    Two volumes of window-mounted moss samples, with manuscript captions.

    [England, 1860s.]

    A charming nineteenth-century herbarium comprising 560 moss specimens.

    £850