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. [ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA PLANUDEA.]

    [Edited by Janus Lascaris.]

    [Florence, Lorenzo di Francesco de Alopa, 11 August 1494.]

    Editio princeps, a beautiful printing in elegant epigraphic type, of the Planudean Anthology, a substantial collection of classical Greek verse which influenced artists, poets, and scholars. ‘The Greek Anthology is one of the great books of European literature, a garden containing the flowers...

    £16500

  2. APPIAN of Alexandria.

    Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...

    Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.

    A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.

    £3000

  3. [AQUHORTIES.]

    Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …

    Edinburgh, Printed by J. Moir, Paterson’s Court, [1799?].

    Broadside rules for the newly established Aquhorties College, the only Roman Catholic college in Scotland, presumably designed to be posted up around the school.

    £850

  4. [ARCHCONFRATERNITY OF THE MOST HOLY CRUCIFIX.]

    Distinta descrizione della machina, luminari, ed ordinanza nella solenne processione...

    Rome, per il Casaletti, 1775.

    Rare record of a procession made by members of the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Crucifix from the church of San Marcello in Rome to Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in the jubilee year of 1775.

    £250

  5. [ARCHCONFRATERNITY OF SAN GIOVANNI DECOLLATO.]

    ‘Arciconfraternitas Sancti Ioannis decollati’.

    Rome, second half of eighteenth century.

    An unusual woodcut – likely intended for use as a badge – bearing the insignia of the Arciconfraternita di San Giovanni decollato, a Roman archconfraternity which provided comfort and company to those condemned to death, most notably Giordano Bruno in 1600.

    £500

  6. ARIAS, Francisco.

    Paleys der deughden begrypende de naervolghinghe der alder-heylichste ende weerdichste Maghet Maria. Eerst gemaeckt...

    Antwerp, Gheleyn Janssens, 1609.

    First Dutch edition of this work of Marian devotion by the Spanish Jesuit and ascetical writer Francisco Arias (1533–1605), first published in Spanish as De la imitacion de Nuestra Señora in 1588.

    £375

  7. ARISTAENETUS.

    Επιστολαι … Epistolae graecae. Cum Latina interpretatione & notis. Tertia editio emendatior & auctior.

    Paris, Marc Orry, 1610.

    A volume of fictional Greek love stories, presented in the form of letters, printed in parallel Greek and Latin, from the library of the Padua professor and printer Giovanni Antonio Volpi.

    £1250

  8. ARISTIDES, Aelius.

    Orationum tomi tres, nunc primum latine versi a Gulielmo Cantero Ultraiectino. Huc accessit orationum tomus...

    Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566.

    First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino.

    £2750

  9. ARISTOPHANES.

    The Frogs, a Comedy. Translated from the Greek of Aristophanes, by C[harles] Dunster, A.M …

    Oxford, J. and J. Fletcher; London, Rivington, Payne, Faulder, Cadell; Cambridge, Merrill, [1785].

    First edition in English, and the only separately published translation of The Frogs in the eighteenth century. ‘It is … somewhat surprising that in an age so studious of ancient literature as the present, and which so much abounds in translations of the Greek and Latin classics, we have versions...

    £500

  10. ARISTOPHANES, and Henry Francis CARY, translator.

    The Birds … with Notes.

    London, Printed for Taylor and Hessey … 1824.

    First edition of the first metrical translation of Aristophanes’ The Birds into English by Henry Francis Cary (1722–1844) – perhaps best known for his blank verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

    £350

  11. [ARISTOTLE.]

    ‘P[hiloso]phia na[tur]alis seu Phisica; In duos Ar[istote]lis libros de generatione et corruptione; Commentarius...

    [Douai, c. 1702].

    An interesting hybrid volume, combining manuscript notes of lectures on Aristotle given at the Jesuit Collège d’Anchin in Douai, northern France, at the opening of the eighteenth century, with a printed list of the College’s students in 1702, interleaved with printed summaries of each book of the...

    £1450

  12. ARISTOTLE; THEOPHRASTUS; Theodorus GAZA and Pietro ALCIONIO, translators.

    Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum...

    Lyons, [Nicolas Bacquenois for] Guillaume Gazeau, 1552.

    A union of Aristotle on animals and Theophrastus on plants, the fundamental texts from Ancient Greece on zoology and botany, in the translations of Gaza and Alcionio.

    £800

  13. ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo.

    Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga.

    Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566.

    First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini.

    £1750

  14. [ATHANASIUS, Pseudo-.]

    Գիրք պատասխանական Ս[ր]բ[ո]յն Աթանասի. Հարցմանց Ս[ր]բ[ո]յն...

    Constantinople, Chnchin Hovhannes, [1749].

    Rare theological and moral treatise in Armenian, framed as a dialogue between St Cyril of Jerusalem and St Athanasius of Alexandria, printed and almost certainly bound in Constantinople, and illustrated with three woodcuts. 

    £2000

  15. AUGUSTINE, Pseudo-, et al. 

    Opusculum multarum bonaru[m] rerum refertum, ut sunt.  Diui Augustini meditationes, et eiusde[m]...

    Venice, Pietro Quarengi, 6 March 1512. 

    Uncommon edition of various devotional works, comprising: the pseudo-Augustinian Meditations, Soliloquies, and a treatise on the word of God; meditations on the human condition, and a letter on leading the perfect life, attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux; a short sermon assigned to Peter Damian; Anselm’s...

    £750

  16. AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].  

    Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.

    Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.

    First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.

    £22500

  17. AURELIUS VICTOR, Sextus.

    Historiae romanae breviarium. A Jano & Saturno, Urbeque condita, usque ad Consulatum X Constantii Aug. &...

    Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1579.

    A pair of abbreviated histories based on the lost work of Sextus Aurelius Victor, from the distant origins of Rome up to the death of the Emperor Theodosius in 395 AD, illustrated with coins and portraits of the emperors, with early English provenance, later in the library of the Earls of Guilford.

    £1450

  18. BACON, Francis.

    Historia vitae et mortis.

    Amsterdam, Johannes van Ravesteyn, 1663.

    Pocket-sized Amsterdam editions of three works by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), uncut and unopened and bound, exceptionally, in the original drab boards.

    £975

  19. BACON, Francis.

    Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica, civilia, et theologica, nunc primum edita. Cura & fide Guilielmi Rawley...

    London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani Pulleyn, 1658.

    First edition, second issue of this collection of the philosophical, political, and theological writings of Bacon, including numerous essays previously unpublished, and the first appearance in Latin of a biographical sketch of the philosopher by William Rawley (c. 1588–1667), Bacon’s literary...

    £1250

  20. BALBUS, Johannes.

    Catholicon.

    [Strasbourg, The R-Printer (Adolf Rusch), not after 1475.]

    Third edition of the earliest printed lexicon, a monumental piece of printing from one of the earliest presses in Strasbourg, containing the thirteenth-century Latin dictionary and grammar of Johannes Balbus, the ‘greatest of the medieval encyclopaedic dictionaries’ (Chamberlin, p. 136).

    £65000