THÜNEN, Johann Heinrich von.

Der isolirte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und Nationalökonomie … [Part I and part II/1].

Rostock, G.B. Leopold, 1842–50.

Scarce second edition of the first part, revised and enlarged, being the repository of Thünen’s major theories, and the edition used by Roscher in his Geschichte der National-Oekonomik, here bound with the first edition of part II/1, the last to be published during the author’s lifetime;...

£1750

[SPINELLI.]

Illuminated arms of the Spinelli family of Florence.

Italy (Florence), c. 1460s.

Florentine border decoration of very high quality from what must have been a luxurious manuscript produced for a member of the wealthy Spinelli family. Sadly there is no indication of the contents of the parent manuscript, nor have we been able to identify a likely candidate, but ruling just visible...

£2750

RICH, Jeremiah.

The Whole Book of Psalms in Meter. According to the Art of Short-Writing …

London, ‘Printed and are sold by Samuel Botley Teacher of the said Art … and nowhere els’, [1660?].

First edition, the issue with Samuel Botley in the imprint, of an extremely attractive miniature Psalter in shorthand by a ‘skilled and celebrated’ practitioner whose work was known to Pepys (though Pepys himself employed a rival system).

£3500

RENOWNED HISTORY (The)

of Primrose Prettyface, who by her Sweetness of Temper, & Love of Learning, was raised from being the Daughter...

London, Printed & sold by J. Marshall & Co. … (Price 6d in Gilt Paper – 9d bound in Red.) [1788?].

One of three undated editions, probably the last (adding Marshall’s Cheapside premises at 17 Queen Street to the imprint), but the only one with an engraved title-page and frontispiece.

£950

PYNCHON, Thomas.

Gravity’s Rainbow.

New York, The Viking Press, [1973].

First edition of Pynchon’s magnum opus, ‘literally indescribable, a tortured cadenza of lurid imaginings and total recall that goes on longer than you can quite believe’ (Michael Wood).

£900

[HERVEY, Elizabeth.]

The Mourtray Family. A Novel …

London: Printed by Millar Ritchie … for R. Faulder … 1800.

First edition of the penultimate novel by Elizabeth Hervey (c. 1748–1820), elder half-sister of the writer William Beckford – her father, Francis Marsh, had died and her mother Maria (née Hamilton) remarried another Jamaica plantation owner, William Beckford senior, who also died in 1770....

£2500

MÜLLER, Gerhard Friedrich.

Voyages from Asia to America, for completing the Discoveries of the North West Coast of America. To...

London, T. Jefferys, 1764.

Second edition (first 1761) of this key work devoted to discoveries in northeastern Asia and northwestern America, including the Bering Strait, published by Thomas Jefferys, geographer to George III, ‘remembered in particular for some of the most important eighteenth-century maps of the Americas’...

£4500

[MONROE, Marilyn.] DIENES, André de.

Marilyn.

Cologne, Taschen, 2002.

First edition of this celebratory book on Marilyn Monroe, collecting photographs by her friend (and briefly lover) André de Dienes, who met Norma-Jean in 1945 and helped launch her career.

£200

MITCHEL, William.

A tract volume of fifteen works, including five very rare broadsides.

Edinburgh and Glasgow 1711–1720.

A fabulous tract volume of works by the ‘odd half-crazy varlet of a tinsmith’ and pamphleteer William Mitchel (1670–1740?), author of some fifty ‘books’ sold from his shop in Edinburgh (and briefly, in 1719, Glasgow). Of the fifteen works here, ten are known in three copies or fewer in ESTC....

£7500

MILHAUD, Darius.

Le boeuf sur le toit, ou The nothing doing bar. Farce imaginée et réglée par Jean Cocteau – costumes de G. P. Fauconnet...

Paris, Editions de la Sirène, 1920.

First edition of Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58 (The ox on the roof, or The nothing-doing bar), a surrealist ballet-farce which became extremely popular in 1920s Paris.

£750