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.
-
TERENCE Afer, Publius.
Comoediae sex, tum ex Donati commentariis … diligentius quam unquam antehac emendatae; Aelii Donati...
Paris, Robert Estienne, 1529.
First folio edition of Terence’s comedies by Robert Estienne. The printer had already produced a small, octavo edition of Terence’s works in 1526. Confident in its success, and through access to an excellent and ancient manuscript of the fourth-century commentary by Aelius Donatus, ‘in 1529...
£1500
-
QUINTILIAN, Marcus Fabius, and Jacques-Louis d’ESTREBAY (editor).
Compendium libri secundi, tertii, et quinti institutionum...
Paris, Thomas Richard, 1558.
Very rare third edition of this compendium of Quintilian’s oratory by Jacques-Louis d’Estrebay (or Estrebee, 1481–1550?), humanist, translator, professor of Rhetoric at Rheims and subsequently at the College of Sante-Barbe in Paris, and a proof-reader for the Estiennes. The title-page indicates...
£350
-
SCHEFFER, Johannes Gerhard.
Constantini Opelii de fabrica triremium Meibomiana epistola perbrevis ad amicum.
‘Eleuteropoli’ [Freistadt?], 1672.
First edition of this treatise on the ancient oar-driven warships known as triremes by the noted German philologist and archaeologist Johannes Scheffer (1621–1679), written as a critical response to the De fabrica triremium liber of Marcus Meibom, which had appeared in Amsterdam the previous year.
£875
-
SALLUST.
C. Sallustius Crispus cum veterum Historicorum fragmentis.
Leiden, ex officina Elzeviriana, 1634.
The first small format Elzevir printing of Sallust with a contemporary ink sketch of a Peeping Tom at the rear of the volume. The volume contains the two major works of Sallust, the Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline, along with the surviving fragments of his annalistic history of his own...
£950
-
MERCURIALE, Girolamo.
De arte gymnastica libri sex, in quibus exercitationum omnium vetustarum genera, loca, modi, facultates,...
Venice, [Lucantonio II] Giunta, 1587.
Third edition of ‘the first illustrated book on gymnastics’ (Morton). A physician occupying senior posts in the medical faculties of Padua, Bologna, Rome, and Pisa, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) draws heavily on accounts of ancient exercise to argue for its medical benefits, being the first...
£2750
-
THUCYDIDES; Lorenzo VALLA, translator; Henri ESTIENNE, editor.
Περι του Πελοποννησιακου πολεμου...
[Geneva, Henri II Estienne for] Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, Claude Marne, and Jean Aubry, 1594.
A richly annotated and extra-illustrated copy of Thucydides, edited and printed by perhaps the greatest Greek scholar of the sixteenth century; a bilingual edition with multilingual annotations, providing evidence of the keen interest in Thucydides demonstrated by German Protestant humanist scholars.
£2250
-
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
-
STANCOVICH, Pietro.
Dello anfiteatro di Pola, dei gradi marmorei del medesimo, nuovi scavi e scoperte, e di alcune epigrafi e figuline...
Venice, Giuseppe Picotti, 1822.
First edition, uncut in the original wrappers, of Pietro Stancovich’s description of the Roman amphitheatre in Pola (modern Pula) on the Istrian peninsula.
£275
-
CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
De philosophia tomus primus.
Lyon, Sébastien Gryphe, 1546.
A small format Lyon edition of Cicero, in a contemporary calf gilt binding made in Lyon (or Paris), with later Bohemian ownership. This is one of numerous editions of classical texts printed by the prolific Sébastien Gryphe of Lyon, which were to be found in libraries across Europe, including some of...
£300
-
VIGER, François.
De praecipuis graecae dictionis idiotismis … accessit praeterea huic editioni observationum non inutilium qualecunque...
London, G. Godbid for William Shrowsberey, 1678.
Second London edition of this treatise on Greek idiom by the French Jesuit François Viger (1590–1647).
£175
-
CHEKE, John, Sir, and Stephen [GARDINER], Bishop of Winchester.
De pronuntiatione graecae potissimum linguae...
Basel, Nikolaus Episcopius the younger, 1555.
First edition of this collection of letters between John Cheke and Stephen Gardiner debating the correct pronunciation of classical Greek, printed in Basel, where Cheke was in exile during the reign of Queen Mary.
£950
-
NONIUS MARCELLUS.
De proprietate sermonum. Iam demum innumeris locis restitutus, multis locupletatus, ope vetustissimorum codicum,...
Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1565.
First critical edition of this grammar and dictionary of Latin from the later Roman Empire, a significant witness to earlier texts now lost, from the extensive library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle.
£450
-
CURTIUS RUFUS, Quintus.
De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni regis Macedonum opus … Accesserunt enim antehac nunquam visa … Omnia...
Basel, Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, March 1545.
Handsome folio edition of Curtius Rufus’ history of Alexander the Great, edited by the German humanist Christoph Bruno (fl. 1541–1566), with extensive sixteenth-century marginal annotations.
£2000
-
RANK, Otto.
Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden. Versuch einer psychologischen Mythendeutung.
Leipzig and Vienna, Franz Deuticke, 1909.
First edition of this psychoanalytical investigation of mythological heroism and the role of birth legends in the stories of heroes, by the German psychoanalyst Otto Rank (1884–1939), published as part of the series Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde under the editorship of Freud. Rank discusses,...
£100
-
POCOCKE, Richard.
A Description of the East, and some other Countries. London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and...
[Nourse, and J. Rivington’ (I)], 1743–1745.
First edition, demy folio issue. A successful churchman Pococke (1704-1765) is now best remembered as a traveller and mountaineer. His earliest journeys were undertaken between 1733 and 1736 through continental Europe. His ‘next and most ambitious journey, from 1737 to 1740, was to the Near East,...
£8000
-
DIOGENES LAERTIUS; Henri ESTIENNE, editor.
Περι βιων, δογματων και αποφθεγματων εν φιλοσοφια...
[Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1570.
First Estienne edition of The Lives of the Philosophers, the main surviving source of information on many Greek philosophers and their writings, including quotations from works now lost.
£850
-
EUNAPIUS; Hadrianus JUNIUS, translator; Hieronymus COMMELIN, editor.
Βιοι φιλοσοφων και σοφιστων...
‘Cologny’ [Geneva], Samuel Crespin, 1616.
An uncommon edition of the twenty-four biographies of Eunapius of Sardis (c. 345–415), valuable as a source for the neo-Platonic, and anti-Christian, philosophy of the fourth century; like the Emperor Julian, whom he admired, he wrote to oppose Christianity and defend his own beliefs. His subjects...
£450
-
ZANCHI, Basilio.
Dictionarium poeticum, et epitheta veterum poetarum … nunc secundo trans Alpes editum.
Mons, Luca Rivius, 1612.
Scarce Mons-printed edition of Zanchi’s onomasticon from A to Z, providing a comprehensive list of deities, notable figures, and heroes and heroines from classical myth and legend, drawn from the works of Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Propertius.
£375
-
XENOPHON; Antonmaria SALVINI, translator.
Di Senofonte Efesio degli amori di Abrocome e d’Anzia libri cinque ... Edizione...
London (i.e. Florence?), ‘presso gli Eredi Pickard’, 1757.
Second edition of this erotic work on the splendour of the male member, cleverly disguised as a treatise on an ancient bronze statue and bound after Salvini’s Italian translation of Xenophon’s Ephesian Tale, adding for the first time a second mock-academic treatise on teenaged girls.
£650
-
[BIBLE – OLD TESTAMENT and APOCRYPHA, Greek; Johann LONITZER, editor.]
Της θειας γραφης παλαιας...
Strasbourg, Wolfgang Köpfel, 1526.
The first edition of the Old Testament in Greek to be printed in Germany, and the first aimed at a Protestant readership, with the Apocrypha separated along the lines of Luther’s German translation.
£8500