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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DIONYSIUS of Halicarnassus.
Antiquitatum Rom. libri XI. Ab Aemylio Porto recens & post aliorum interpretationes Latine redditi.
Geneva, Jacob Stoer, 1614.
A rare pocket-sized edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the early history of Rome, in an armorial binding for Adrien Poërier.
£450
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VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator.
Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...
Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565.
First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus.
£1250
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GELLIUS, Aulus.
Auli Gellii luculentissimi scriptoris Noctes Atticae.
Lyon, Sebastian Gryphius, 1555.
Gryphius edition of Aulus Gellius’ famous Attic Nights, issued the year before Gryphius’ death.
£650
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DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.
£2500
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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
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ZAMPELIOS, Spiridion.
Βυζαντιναι Μελεται [Byzantine Studies]...
Athens, Christos Nikolaidos, 1857.
First edition. Spyros Zampelios was a champion of the continuity theory in the history of the Greek nation in the crucial decades of the mid nineteenth century, and the first Greek historian to adopt a tripartite examination of historical periods, divided into ancient, medieval and modern Hellenism....
£350
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PLINY the Younger.
Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt; omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa …
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
A handsome quarto Pliny from the Foulis press, published in the same year as the three-volume duodecimo.
£600
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PLINY the Younger.
Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt; omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa …
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
A handsome Foulis Press pocket Pliny. The first two volumes comprise the ten books of Pliny’s Epistulae (particularly important for their description of the eruption of Vesuvius), the third his Panegyric to Trajan: ‘clearly it was intended that sections Z to the end should comprise a third...
£850
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SALLUST.
Caii Sallustii Crispi quae extant.
London, James Tonson and John Watts, 1713.
First Maittaire edition. The French-born classical scholar Michel Maittaire (1668–1741) studied at Westminster, and then under Robert South at Christ Church, Oxford. He is best known for his Annales Typographici and the series of duodecimo classics that he published with Tonson and Watts from...
£300
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PINDAR.
Carmina, ex editione Chr. Gottl. Heyne.
Oxford, N. Bliss for M. Bliss and R. Bliss [– and London, for F. & C. Rivington, J. Payne & J. Mackinlay, W.H. Lunn, Longman, Hurst,...
An attractive Oxford-printed pocket edition of Pindar’s Odes, as edited by Christian Gottlob Heyne.
£175
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FREEMAN, Arthur.
Catullus Carmen 17.6 and Other Mysteries. A Study in Editorial Conflict, Eccentricity, Forgery, and Restitution....
London, The Author, 2020.
This partly historical, partly philological essay offers a general account of the early preservation, post-medieval recovery, and Renaissance evolution of the text of Catullus, with specific reference to one speculative reading in Carmen 17 (‘De Colonia’), and certain humanist twists and forgeries...
£15
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TACITUS.
C. Cornelius Tacitus, cum optimis exemplaribus collatus.
Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1678.
A remarkably fresh set of the third and final Elzevir edition of this format, reprinted from the edition of 1665.
£275
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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
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CAESAR, Gaius Julius.
C. Julii Caesaris quae extant. Accuratissime cum libris editis & MSS optimis collata, recognita & correcta....
London, Jacob Tonson, 1712.
First edition of the celebrated Tonson’s Caesar edited by Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), ‘the most sumptuous classical work which this country has produced’ (Dibdin).
£9500
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CLAUDIANUS, Claudius.
Claudii Claudiani Alexandrini, poetae illustriss. quotquot nostra hac tempestate extant opsucula, ad series...
Paris, Simon de Colines, 1530.
First Colines edition of the major works of Claudianus Claudius, known in the English-speaking world as Claudian, a Greek-speaking Latin poet best known for the unfinished epic De Raptu Proserpinae. It is printed in the same attractive italic type Colines used for his octavo editions of Horace,...
£850
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[‘ROBERTI, Antonius’, pseud.]; George PERKINS, editor.
Clavis Homerica, reserans significationes, etymologias,...
London, E. Griffin for Godfrey Emerson, 1638.
First London edition, ‘with the Catholic particulars omitted’ (Allison & Rogers I, p. 130) from the overtly Jesuit Douai edition in 1636, of Roberti’s explanation of Homeric vocabulary and terminology, prefaced by a Greek grammar.
£600
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TERENCE.
Comediae sex. A M. Anto. Mureto locis prope innumeris suo nitore restitutae …
Carmagnola, Marcantonio Bellone, 1590.
A rare provincial printing of a school edition the plays of Terence, printed in the small town of Carmagnola in Piedmont, which had become part of the Duchy of Savoy only two years earlier, after almost half a century under French domination. The text is taken from earlier printings of Marc Antoine Muret’s...
£375
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ORIBASIUS.
Commentaria in Aphorismos Hippocratis … Ioannis Guinterij Andernaciis medici industria velut e profundissimis tenebris...
Paris, Simon de Colines, 1533.
First edition of this commentary on Hippocrates, bound with a richly annotated copy of Galen’s works in the translation by Thomas Linacre.
£1750
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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 eminent...
£500
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TERENTIUS Afer, Publius.
Comoediae sex. Ex recensione Heinsiana, cum annotationibus Thomae Farnabii in quatuor priores et M.C.Is.F....
Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1658.
An intensely annotated copy of this rare pocket Jansson edition of Terence’s comedies. The edition itself was a successful production, uniting the text edited by Heinsius with the commentary of Thomas Farnaby to the first four comedies, and that of Méric Casaubon to the last two. Jansson had been...
£2250