Eighteenth Century

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 5
 

FIELDING, Henry. ~ The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, And his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. Written in Imitation of The Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote... The Third Edition, illustrated with Cuts. In two volumes...

London: for A. Millar,  1743.
First illustrated edition of Fileding's picaresque comedy, his first novel and (in part) a parody of Richardson's Pamela. It had been first printed by Millar the previous year. It might be considered an early example of the road-novel and presents many obvious subjects for illustration: inhabited as it is by a cast of loose women, scoundrels, rogues and fools.   view more...
£350.00
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 6
 

[RIDPATH, George.] ~ Parliamentary right maintain'd or the Hanover succession justify'd. Wherein The Hereditary Right to the Crown of England asserted &c. Is Consider'd, in III. Parts. The Ist Examins the Plea from Scripture. The II. That from the Laws & History of England, for Indefeasible Right, Nonresistance & Disposition of the Crown by Will. The III. Whether the Parliament, can repeal the Hanover Succession, as now Establish'd by the Treaty of Union. With Reflections on the Treasonable Schemes of the Party, as they occurr in their Book: & Particularly that of a new lurking pretender.

[London?],  1714.
First edition of this vigorous defence of the legality of the Hanover succession over the Stuarts and of parliamentary right by George Ridpath, whig polemicist, libellist and bigamist. Anonymously issued, it was written in exile in Scotland and Holland, its author having been convicted of libel: "the attorney-general said that he 'had for some years past outwent all his predecessors in scandal'" (DNB). It represents an attack on George Harbin's Hereditary right of the crown of England and reflects the popular sentiment that while George I was a German king who knew little of England and spoke little English, he was at least a Protestant and thus preferable to the hereditary catholic alternative, James Edward Stuart, the "new lurking pretender". In in letters to the English minister at the Hague Ridpath described the difficulties of distributing this work from his place in exile: "Copies were sent by various ships to different ports in England; but many were lost or thrown overboard by the captains, who dared not land them, or were returned because no one dared receive them" (DNB). This casts an interesting light on the assumption (expressed in the ESTC catalogue) that work was printed in London.   view more...
£300.00
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 7
ERSKINE, John.

ERSKINE, John. ~ An institute of the law of Scotland. In four books. In the order of Sir George Mackenzie's Institutions of the law... In two volumes...

Edinburgh: for John Bell,  1773.
First edition, very scarce, of one of the principal Scottish Enlightenment treatises on the law. John Erskine of Carnock, who has been called 'the lawyer of common sense' (DNB) wrote only two works but "both of these were of very great importance". The first, The principles of the law of Scotland (1754) was intended only as a manual for his students while the second, the Institute of the law of Scotland is a far more substantial volume, published from his manuscript after his death (1768). "The 'Institutes' are divided into four books. The first treats of law in general, of the courts of Scotland, and of the relations between husband and wife, parent and child, minors and their tutors and curators, and master and servant; the second treats chiefly of heritable rights; the third of contracts and successions; the fourth of actions and crimes." It was reprinted numerous times in the following centuries.    view more...
£975.00
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 10
 

(SCOTTISH ROYAL BOROUGHS.) ~ A Bill Proposed to be submitted to the consideration of Parliament [drop-head title], for Correcting the Abuses, and supplying the Defects, in the internal Government of the Royal Boroughs, and in the manner of accounting for the Property, Annual Revenues, and Expenditure of the same, in that Part of Great Britain called Scotland. Prepared by The Committee of Delegates,

[Edinburgh:  1787.]
Rare. The first item is known in two editions, both probably of the same year: ours and another entitled 'The Heads of a Bill...' The second item is a defensive memorandum also relating to the ancient constitutional liberties in the Scottish boroughs granted by charter and legitimised by immemorial custom. These antiquated liberties had been under continual scrutiny since the middle ages, but were more clearly threatened by the atmosphere of political reform of the 1780s.   view more...
£400.00
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 11
LEWIS, William.

LEWIS, William. ~ Expériences physiques et chymiques sur plusieurs matières relatives au Commerce & aux Arts: ouvrage traduit de l'Anglois de M. Lewis, de la Société Royale de Londres; Par M. De Puisieux...

Paris: chez Desaint,  1768-1769.
First continental edition of Lewis's Commercium philosophico-technicum (first published London 1763-6) a work of considerable value in the history of the industrial and applied arts. The author was a member of the Royal Society and a founder of the Society for the Improvement of Arts and Manufactures. Much of the first volume and part of the second is devoted to the extraction and working of gold and includes much detailed information on its smelting (with furnaces illustrated) and its application to the arts including the gilding of paper and bookbindings, together with a history of alchemy. In the later volumes he considers the manufacture of glass, the working and properties of platinum, and the use of colours in paints, dyes and inks.   view more...
£500.00
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 12
BERKELEY, George.

BERKELEY, George. ~ Recherches sur les vertus de l'eau de goudron, où l'on joint des Réfléctions Philosophiques sur diverses autres sujets... Avec deux Lettres de l'Auteur...

Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier,  1745.
FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH OF BERKELEY'S LAST WORK, Siris, a chain of philosophical reflections and enquiries concerning the virtues of tar-water (1744) and of his two letters on the subject to Thomas Prior. At the time of its publication, Siris was the most popular of the author's many works. Berkeley had observed the use of tar-water among the native Americans and came to regard it as a panacaea in medicine, setting up an apparatus for its manufacture. "He recommends it not only in fevers, diseases of the lungs, cancers, scrofula, throat diseases, apoplexies, chronic disorders of all kinds, but also as a general drink for infants. It strengthens their bodies and sharpens their intellects. It is good for cattle... It is good for all climates, land and sea, for rich and poor, high and low livers, and he had himself drunk a gallon of it in a few hours" (DNB).The Siris is, however, more than just a medical work and the consideration of tar-water led Berkeley into a lengthy chain of reflections on the principles of the universe and of divine providence.   view more...
£475.00
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 14
MILN, Robert.

MILN, Robert. ~ A course of physico-theological lectures upon the state of the world, from the Creation to the Deluge...

Carlisle: by J. Milliken and sold by R. Faulder in London,  1786.
First edition of an attempt to reconcile the geological evidence of Whitehurst, Deluc and others with scripture: published 8 years before the View of the Evidences of Christianity by William Paley, who appears among the subsribers here. Miln marshals numerous geological facts, together with local anecdotes and observations to argue for the entirely natural means chosen by the creator for the destruction of the antediluvian world and to explain fossil remains from an orthodox creationist perspective.The subscribers include not only Paley but also Joseph Priestley and William Cullen. The list is arranged alphabetically by town: Alnwick, Alston, Brampton, Cambridge, Carlisle, Cockermouth, Durham and so on, providing an interesting geographical cross-section of the potential readership. The pagination in ESTC gives an additional unnumbered leaf between p. xxiv and p.1 not present in our copy. This leaf bore half a page of additional subscribers and was in all likelihood never present in our copy.   view more...
£475.00
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 31
BERTHOLLET, Claude Louis.

BERTHOLLET, Claude Louis. ~ Elements of the art of dyeing... translated from the French by William Hamilton...

London: by Stephen Couchman, and sold by J. Johnson,  1791.
First edition in English, very scarce, of Berthollet's important scientific contribution to the burgeoning European textile industry. Having collaborated with Lavoisier on the latter's pioneering chemical nomenclature and presented some seventeen memoirs to the Academy, the author was already an influential chemist when appointed inspector of dye works and director of the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins in 1784. The Gobelins had their origins in the workshops of Flemish weavers brought to Paris by Henri IV in 1602 and were formally established by Colbert in 1667 as the "Royal Manufactury of Furnishings to the Crown". They became the pre-eminent centre for tapestry weaving in EuropeIn the Éléments de l'art de la teinture Berthollet "endeavored to place the ancient craft of dyeing on a scientific basis by a systematic discussion of its procedures, coupled with an attempt to find an adequate set of theoretical principles to explain the chemical actions involved. His explanation was that, depending on the variable physical conditions of temperature, quantity of solvent employed, and so forth, when a cloth was dyed the reciprocal affinities of the particles of the dye, the mordants, and the cloth itself were responsible for the kind and quality of dyeing. The colors produced were due to the oxidation of the mordant by the atmosphere" (DSB).The British edition appeared in the same year as the French, reflecting the market for such a treatise in a country where textile production was becoming one of the most important national industries. A second British edition appeared at Edinburgh the following year and several reprints appeared in the nineteenth century, presumably a measure of the popularity and utility of this scientific manual of dyeing in the British industrial revolution.   view more...
£1300.00
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 34
BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE, Jacques-Henri.

BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE, Jacques-Henri. ~ Chaumière Indienne...

Paris: P. Fr. Didot le jeune,  1791.
First edition, with the words "De l'imprimerie de Monsieur" preceding the imprint and with 130 pages. There are copies on papier velin (e.g. the British Library copy, which lacks a half-title) and paper with vertical chain-lines, as in ours. Several further edition, including piracies appeared in the same year, each with a different pagination. The true first edition is very scarce.Chaumière Indienne tells the story of a Englishman of the Royal Society seeking enlightenment through his travels to distant lands. "Born in Le Havre, [Bernardin de Saint-Pierre] took a delight even as a child in romantic day-dreaming, and after reading Robinson Crusoe set sail for Martinique at the age of 12." He later studied under the Jesuits, became a military engineer and something of nomad. "He became a geographer in Malta, a journalist in Holland, and engineer in Russia, in Warsaw and Vienna he lived by his wits; in Mauritius he appears to have lived as something of an opportunist. On his return to Paris he became a friend of J.-J. Rousseau, whose personality and philosophy were to have a profound influence on him" (New Oxford Companion to French Literature).   view more...
£300.00
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 36
COMBALUSIER, François de Paule.

COMBALUSIER, François de Paule. ~ Pneumato-Pathologia seu tractatus de flatulentis humani corporis affectibus...

Paris: Joannes de Bure,  1747.
First edition of this Parisian physician's first book, a treatise on the causes of flatulence. It was translated into French in an edition of 1754.   view more...
£275.00
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 38
 

SACHEVERELL, Henry. ~ A sermon preach'd before the honourable House of Commons, at St. Margaret's Westminster, on Friday, May 29. 1713.

London: for Henry Clements,  1713.
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 39
 

(SACHEVERELL, Henry.) [KING, William.] ~ A vindication of the Reverend Dr. Henry Sacheverell, from the false, scandalous, and malicious aspersions cast upon him in a late infamous pamphlet, entitled, The Modern Fanatick. Intended chiefly to expose the iniquity of the faction in general, without taking any considerable notice of their poor mad tool B-t in particular. In a dialogue beteen a Tory and a Wh-g.

London: for H. Clements,  [1711.]
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£70.00
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 42
SANTORINI, Giovanni Domenico, (edited by Michael GIRARDI).

SANTORINI, Giovanni Domenico, (edited by Michael GIRARDI).  ~ Anatomici summi septemdecim tabulae quae nunc primum edit atque explicat iisque alias addit de structura mammarum et de tunica testica vaginali....

Parma: ex Regia Typographia,  1775.
First edition of one of the finest anatomies of the eighteenth century. Santorini (1681-1737) "worked as both a practicing physician and teacher-anatomist in Venice and was known to be one of the most careful and fastidious anatomists of his period. This work, edited by Michael Girardi (1731-97) and issued . . . after Santorini's death, contains illustrations of many parts of the human body, including the organs of smell and hearing, the pharynx, breasts, heart, stomach, liver, intestines, pancreas, and bladder. Of the 21 plates in the book, 17 were by Santorini, and each plate is accompanied by a companion outline plate that is marked with reference letters. The book is one of the finest anatomies of the 18th century because of its excellent illustrations and comprehensive commentary" (Heirs of Hippocrates)."Santorini died before the completion of these anatomical plates which he intended to be his chef d'œuvre. This elegrantly printed volume is the only significant medical book printed by the celebrated Giambattista Bodoni for the Duke of Parma... All the twenty-one prints of the work are done in a light crayon effect which, however, does not impair the anatomic clarity of the prints, but even brings out well the differences in the tissues. Each plate is accompanied by an outline plate which is marked with reference letters. The seventeen plates by Santorini have a ruled margin at the top and on the side, like the Eustachian plates, but have no signatures of the artists. They were drawn by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, who made the coppers for Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata. A woman, Florentia Marcella, engraved Santorini's plates under Santorini's personal supervision. The work belongs to the best of its time., not only as regards the dissections and illustrations, but also as to the very elaborate commentary. The pictures deal with facial muscles, the base of the brain and other parts of the brain, the organs of smell and hearing, the pharynx, the breasts, the heart, the diaphragm with the beginning of the thoracic duct, the stomach, the liver, the intestines, the pancreas, the ileocaecal valve., the bladder, the muscles of the perineum, and the genitals. Covoli's pictures represent the breasts, the tunics of the testicle and a six months' foetus" (Choulant, pp. 263-64). Copies only rarely contain the portrait: it is lacking in the copies described in Norman, Heirs of Hippocrates and Choulant.   view more...
£1800.00
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 55
[CARACCIOLI, Louis Antoine de.]

[CARACCIOLI, Louis Antoine de.] ~ Le livre à la mode.

"Verte-Feuille, de l'imprimerie du Printemps au Perroquet," [Paris]:  'L'Année nouvelle,' [1759].
First edition of a famous bibliographical eccentricity, printed in green ink throughout. Caraccioli's text is ostensibly a polemic, suggesting that the tyranny of black ink should be swept away in favour of books printed in colours more suited to their subject. Addressing a youthful audience Caraccioli forsees a didactic funtion for such books, bringing a renewed pleasure to the task of learning, and he writes that Pascal, Descartes and Newton have had their day. While there is much semi-serious meditation on the nature of colour and its affect on the mind, one suspects a satirical intention, directed against the relentless quest for novelty in French literary society.The Preface announces a future publication in red ink, which duly appeared the following year. There are two issues of the Le livre à la mode, with slightly differing pagination and wording of the imprint. While our issue gives "printemps" the other gives "printems".   view more...
£475.00
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 63
CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, Miguel de.

CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, Miguel de. ~ The life and exploits of the ingenious gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated from the original Spanish... by Charles Jarvis, Esq; the whole carefully revised and corrected, with a new translation of the poetical parts by another hand. The second edition.

London: for J. and R. Tonson, S. Draper and R. Dodsley,  1749.
Jarvis's edition, which "is generally acknowledged as being close in spirit to the original" (Oxford DNB) was first published in 1742 and was frequently reprinted. It includes a reimpression of The life of Michael de Cervantes Saavedra. Written by Don Gregorio Mayáns & Siscár (1738) and A supplement to the translator's preface, more commonly known as A dissertation on the origin of books of chivalry, by William Warburton.   view more...
£850.00
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 102
SHERIDAN, Thomas.

SHERIDAN, Thomas. ~ A course of lectures in elocution.

London: W. Strahan for A. Millar, R. and J. Dodsley, T. Davies, C. Henderson, J. Wilkie, and E. Dilly,  1762.
First edition, Arnold Muirhead's copy. The lectures were delivered at Edinburgh "to large and respectable audiences" according to Boswell.   view more...
£350.00
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 666
[BUTEL-DUMONT, Georges-Marie, attributed to.]

[BUTEL-DUMONT, Georges-Marie, attributed to.] ~ Journées Mogoles, opuscule décent d'un docteur Chinois...

"Imprimée a Dély. Et se trouve à Paris, Chez J.P. Costard" [Paris],  1772.
First edition. Journées Mogoles mixes a whole series of orientalist themes with Turkish, Indian and Chinese elements. To all this is introduced, in the second part, a charming and desirable English lady, Milady Fanni with whom the hero falls in love. The introduction warns: "Jeune filles ce Livre n'est pas pour vous" and Gay describes the stories as "d'un merveilleux qui frise l'indécence".In the course of her wooing, Fanni introduces the hero to an imaginary personal library (part 2, pp. 57-61) allowing him a glimpse of her annotated catalogue, with her notes on Voltaire and Montesquieu and remarks on D'Alembert, Diderot, Racine, Corneille, Shakespeare, Rouseeau, Toussain and Marmontel.The authorship is uncertain, but the novel is usually attributed to Butel-Dumont, whose other works are on economic and political subjects. He was secretary to the French ambassador in Russia and a Royal Censor. The attractive woodcut vignettes are signed by Jean Beugnet.   view more...
£1000.00
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 123
 

[HARDY, Thomas.] ~ The patriot. Addressed to the people, on the present state of affairs in Britain and in France. With observations on Republican government, and discussions of the principles advanced in the writings of Thomas Paine.

Edinburgh: for J. Dickson and G. Nichol in London,  1793.
First edition of a rather reactionary consideration of Paine's republicanism which includes notice of the earlier critique by John Quincy Adams. A second edition appeared later in the same year. Hardy was a Scottish cleric, not to be confused with the radical Thomas Hardy, founder of the London Corresponding Society. Their positions cannot have been much farther apart.   view more...
£150.00
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 124
 

(SOCIETY OF THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE.)  ~ A letter to Mr. Hugh Bell, chairman of the Convention of Delegates.

[?Edinburgh,  ?1792.]
First edition of this pamphlet subscribed "a burgher of Edinburgh" charging the chairman of the Scottish Convention of Delegates with having allowed the electoral principles of the Society of Friends to become confused with the far more radical and un-parliamentary politics of Thomas Paine. Scarce.   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 127
[COYER, Gabriel François, Abbé.]

[COYER, Gabriel François, Abbé.] ~ Chinki, histoire cochinchinoise qui peut servir à d'autres pays.

"Londres,"  1768.
First edition, presumed first issue. Appearing in the same year as Voltaire's l'Homme aux 40 écus, Chinki was often attributed to Voltaire. Another issue of the same year contains a subtitle claiming the work as a sequel to Voltaire. The plight of the peasant Chinki at the hands of his Cochinchinese masters is a thinly veiled critique of the economic policies of the French state before Turgot. Several other issues appeared in the same year with the false London imprint: they were probably all printed inside France.   view more...
£400.00
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 130
(NEWTON). PEMBERTON, Henry.

(NEWTON). PEMBERTON, Henry. ~ Elémens de la philosophie newtonienne... traduit de l'Anglois [by Elias de Joncourt]..

Amsterdam and Leipzig: Arkstée & Merkus,  1755.
First edition in French of perhaps the mostly widely-read early work on Newton, the View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (first published in England in 1728). Pemberton's explanation of Newton's thought for a lay audience is valuable for having been written from the point of view of a friend and contains a good number of anecdotes. Pemberton had been as close to Newton as any other scientist and had superintended the editing of the definitive third edition of the Principia mathematica. The View was read in part to the dying Newton. It is often cited as evidence that Newton did not need to see an apple drop to formulate his theory of gravitation: Pemberton tells us simply that the idea came to him while sitting alone in a garden. Though the English edition was very popular and is not now especially rare, the continental translations are very scarce indeed. They are, however, important. Newton's acceptance in Europe was famously slow and it is through works such as Pemberton's that his thought became more widely understood. In addition to the French translation by de Joncourt there is an earlier Italian translation of 1733.   view more...
£875.00
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 134
MONTESQUIEU, Charles de Secondat, baron de.

MONTESQUIEU, Charles de Secondat, baron de. ~ Lettres persanes... nouvelle edition, augmentée de douze Lettres qui ne se trouvent point dans les précédentes; et suivie du Temple de Gnide.

"Londres" [but Paris],  1784.
A particularly nice copy of Montesquieu's satire on French (especially Parisian) society in which the king, the absolute monarchy, the Parliament, the Academy, the University, and the Catholic church are all very transparently ridiculed. Purporting to be the correspondence of Persian travellers in Europe, the work expressed opinions far more cutting than was traditionally possible, since the views expressed purport to be those of Mohammedans. It was first printed in 1721, and appears here in this false "Londres" imprint with Montesquieu's early short erotic novel, Temple de Gnide.   view more...
£385.00
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 136
(SCOTISM). ASCARGORTA, Juan de.

(SCOTISM). ASCARGORTA, Juan de. ~ Manual de confessores, ad mentem Scoti, por el R.P. Fr. Juan de Ascargorta, de el Orden de N.S.P.S. Francisco, lector jubilado, custodio, y examinador synodal. Van anadidas las direcciones, practicas para los nuevos confessores, y al fin las definiciones.

Seville: for Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros,  [1743].
A confessor's manual arranged according to the Scotist system favoured by the Franciscans: a system named after the thirteenth-century Oxford theologian John Duns Scotus. It was first printed in 1713.   view more...
£325.00
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 138
[BURNET, Sir Thomas.]

[BURNET, Sir Thomas.] ~ Le Chevalier de St. George, réhabilité dans sa qualité de Jacques III. par de nouvelles preuves. Avec la relation historique des suites de sa naissance, par Mr. Rousset, membre de l'Académie des Sciences de St. Petersbourg, &c.

"A Whitehall, de l'ancienne imprimerie du Cokpit", [?Amsterdam],  1745.
A very scarce French work with a false "Whitehall" imprint on the subject of James Stuart (variously the Old Pretender or Chevalier de St. George) recognised by the French and much of Catholic Europe as James III, rightful king of England and Scotland. This is in part a French translation of the Whig Thomas Burnet's incendiary pamphlet of 1713: Some new proofs by which it appears that the Pretender is truly James the Third which is here wrongly attributed (p.10) to the author's brother, Gilbert Burnet. A translation of that work into French first appeared in 1715 but a large part of our much enlarged 1745 edition is given over to a "Relation Historique" of the birth of James and of his claims to the British throne and is offered by the anonymous author as a work of particular contemporary interest. 1745 was the year of the failed "forty-five" rebellion of the Jacobites under James's son, Bonnie Prince Charlie. It is over double the length of the 1715 translation.   view more...
£650.00
US$972.27*
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 142
[BAKER, Thomas].

[BAKER, Thomas]. ~ Traité de l'incertitude des sciences. Traduit de l'anglois [translated by Nicolas Berger].

Paris: Pierre Miquelin and Jacques Piget,  1714.
First edition in French of Baker's Reflections upon Learning (1699), a work designed to display the inadequacies of human knowledge and reason and to emphasize the ultimate need for belief in revelation. It proved controversial (provoking an angry response from geologist and physician John Woodward) and was widely reprinted. Bacon and Descartes are closely considered.   view more...
£250.00
US$373.95*
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 143
M'QUHAE, William.

M'QUHAE, William. ~ The difficulties which attend the practice of religion, no just argument against it. A discourse from James, chapter I, verse 12.

Edinburgh: by Balfour and Smellie,  1775.
First and only edition of M'Quhae's only published work, a sermon preached in the presence of Charles, Lord Cathcart. M'Quhae, though unprolific in published work, had been a major influence on the young James Boswell, who had written his early "Journal of My Jaunt, Harvest 1762" for M'Quhae and John Johnston. The 21-year-old Boswell had met M'Quhae in 1761 and found in him a firm and sympathetic friend. "Only three years Boswell's senior, he had come into Lord Auchinleck's household as domestic tutor... By that time Boswell himself had passed beyond the need of a tutor's ministrations, and was able to associate with the new governor on purely social and friendly terms, M'Quhae's manliness pleased him greatly. At the University of Glasgow he had been a favourite pupil of Adam Smith; he was well educated, loved polite literature, and, though he had decided to be a clergyman in the country, was not without a relish for the scenes of active life" (Pottle, Boswell, Earlier Years, p. 75-6). The friendship did not however survive Boswell's European tours and M'Quhae lived a relatively quiet life as minister of St Quivox from 1764. He became, however, a respected member of the "New Licht" faction within the Church of Scotland, a movement which reflected the liberal attitudes of the Enlightenment against the conservative and Calvinsist "Old Licht faction". Burns humorously referred to him in "The Twa Herds" as "That curs'd rascal ca'd M'Quhae", and mentioned also "M'Quhae's pathetic manly sense."   view more...
£1500.00
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 144

"GINGLICUTT, John," pseud. ~ A brief account of Mr. John Ginglicutt's treatise concerning the altercation or scolding of the ancients. By the author.

London: for J. Roberts,  1731.
First edition of a nice little satire attributed variously to Swift or (more likely) John Arbuthnot. In the form of an advertisement for a forthcoming work (never issued) the Account described the author's heritage as son of a London purveyor of "fishes of a testacious kind, which exert their stimulating Quality on the Constitutions of such as eat them, and in the Discourse of such as vend them." The fish-wife's son then proceeds to sing the praises of the language of abuse as the true heir to the debating style of the ancients.   view more...
£275.00
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 146
STUART, Gilbert.

STUART, Gilbert. ~ An historical dissertation concerning the antiquity of the English constitution.

Edinburgh: printed for A. Kincaid & J. Bell; and for W. Sanby, J. Dodsley, E. Dilly, and T. Cadell, London,  1768.
First edition of this influential Scottish Enlightenment contribution to the debate over the origins of English liberty. "Published in 1768, the work summarizes the history of English liberty from the time of the first Britons to the Norman invasion. Implicit in this whiggish perspective was a challenge to David Hume, whose History of England had put a relativist historiographical agenda at the forefront of the debate on the nature of British liberty. In this ambitious attempt to synthesize the conjectural method of such writers as Kames and Adam Ferguson with the controversial approach of his relative Thomas Ruddiman, Stuart applied the legal scholarship of Montesquieu and John Dalrymple" (Zachs, Oxford DNB). The title-page bears a quote from Montesquieu on the origins of the British political system concluding "Ce beau systême a été trouvé dans le bois."   view more...
£850.00
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 147
ROBINSON, Nicholas.

ROBINSON, Nicholas. ~ A new theory of physick and diseases, founded on the principles of the Newtonian philosophy. By Nicholas Robinson, M.D...

London: for C. Rivington, J. Lacy and J. Clark,  1725.
First edition. Robinson was born in Wales but gained his MD at Reims in 1718. He was also a protegé of Richard Mead to whom the present work is dedicated. Much of the work is practical (it includes several medical recipes at the end) but the theory is based on the "Newtonian" premise: "Is not the mechanism of the body conducted by the same laws that support the motions of the greater orbs of the universe?"   view more...
£450.00
US$673.11*
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 148
HUME, David.

HUME, David. ~ The life of David Hume, Esq. Written by himself.

London: for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell,  1777.
First edition, first issue (with the reading "myself" on p. 29), Hume's final summation of his life and philosophy and the work he intended as his "funeral oration" (p. 35). Printed at the end is the Letter from Adam Smith to the publisher William Strahan on Hume's final days.   view more...
£950.00
US$1421.01*
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 149
 

WALLACE, Robert. ~ Various prospects of mankind, nature, and providence.

London: for A. Millar,  1761.
First edition of the work considered the origin of Malthus's population calculus as used in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Wallace had first introduced a geometrical account of population-growth in his Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind (1753). "In his Various Prospects of Mankind, [Wallace] had at first suggested community of goods as a solution of the social problem and then pointed out that the increase of population, which would result from communism, was a fatal flaw in his own solution" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature, sub. Malthus).   view more...
£600.00
US$897.48*
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 150
BUCHAN, David Stewart Erskine, Earl of,

BUCHAN, David Stewart Erskine, Earl of,  ~ Essays on the lives and writings of Fletcher of Saltoun and the poet Thomson: biographical, critical, and political. With some pieces of Thomson's never before published. By D.S. Earl of Buchan.

London : printed for J. Debrett,  1792.
First edition of these essays in which Buchan praised the ancient Scottish constitution and criticized the corruptions he detected in the present British constitution.   view more...
£150.00
US$224.37*
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 152
[DALRYMPLE, David, Sir.]

[DALRYMPLE, David, Sir.] ~ Proposals for carrying on a certain public work in the city of Edinburgh.

[Edinburgh,  1752.]
First edition of a humorous and scatological skit on Sir Gilbert Elliot, Lord Minto's Proposals for carrying on certain public works in the city of Edinburgh which had appeared in the same year: the pioneering work of Enlightenment urban improvement which persuaded the town council to begin its celebrated building projects. Dalrymple's rather ungenerous pamphlet is concerned principally with sewers and the public "necessary-house" and it has recently been argued that while satirical in tone it was actually meant seriously. Dalrymple demonstrated a longstanding and enlightened interest in public health and hygiene as part of the regeneration of human societies (Patrick Cadell sub. Dalrymple, Oxford DNB).   view more...
£550.00
US$822.69*
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 156
LETTSOM, John Coakley.

LETTSOM, John Coakley. ~ Histoire de l'origine de la médecine, par M. Coakley Lettsom... traduite de l'anglois par M. H***.

"Londres & se trouve à Paris, Rue des Cordiers, No. 4; et chez La Ve[uve] Hérissant; Théophile Barrois le jeune,"  1787.
First edition in French, bearing an obviously false "Londres" imprint, of History of the origin of medicine (London, 1778). Lettsom, the physician and Quaker philanthropist was a prolific author on medical subjects and his name is especially associated with the foundation of the Medical Society of London (as a Quaker, he was excluded from the Royal College of Physicians).   view more...
£225.00
US$336.55*
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 162
[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.]

[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] ~ L'orpheline angloise, ou histoire de Charlotte Summers, imitée de l'anglois de M. N**** par Mr. de la Place.

"Londres et se trouve à Paris" [probably printed in Paris]: chez Rollin fils,  1752.
A rare edition of the French translation of The history of Charlotte Summers; the first imitation of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) and translated by Fielding's own French translator. The work is occasionally, though not securely, attributed to Sarah Fielding. L'orpheline angloise had first appeared the previous year also with a (false) Londres imprint. ESTC lists a total of 5 copies only for the two editions and no UK copies of our 1752 edition.   view more...
£600.00
US$897.48*
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 163
HELIODORUS of Emesa.

HELIODORUS of Emesa.  ~ Amours de Theagénes et Chariclée. Histoire Ethiopique...

"Londres" [but Paris],  1743.
First edition of this anonymous translation of the third century Greek romance Aethiopica, a work highly prized in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe as perhaps the earliest prose adventure. It was admired and imitated by European authors such as Racine, Mme de Scudéry, Marin le Roy de Gomberville, Cervantes, and Aphra Behn and exercised a profound influence on the development of the European novel. This translation is sometimes ascribed to Louis-François de Fontenu.   view more...
£500.00
US$747.90*
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 167
 

(VESPUCCI). [CANOVAI, Stanilao.] ~ Lettera allo stampatore Sig. Pietro Allegrini a nome dell'autore dell'Elogio premiato d'Amerigo Vespucci.

[Florence,  1789.]
First edition of Canovai's first defence of his Elogio di Amerigo Vespucci (1788), the work which had stated that the fifteenth-century Italian navigator had reached America before Columbus and was the true discoverer of the continent that was to take his name. The Elogio was to provoke a storm of controversy between the Italians who believed that their countryman Vespucci was the first discoverer and those who regarded his accounts as spurious. Canovai's detailed and indignant defence is primarily levelled at the detractions of the Italian philologist Bechi. It was followed by another of the same year.   view more...
£260.00
US$388.91*
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 168
 

(VESPUCCI). [CANOVAI, Stanilao.] ~ Lettera II. allo stampatore Sig. Pietro Allegrini a nome dell'autore dell'Elogio premiato d'Amerigo Vespucci.

Cortona and Florence: Mulinelli and Pagni,  [1789].
First edition of Canovai's second defence of his Elogio di Amerigo Vespucci (1788), the work which had stated that the fifteenth-century Italian navigator had reached America before Columbus and was the true discoverer of the continent that was to take his name. The Elogio was to provoke a storm of controversy between the Italians who believed that their countryman Vespucci was the first discoverer and those who regarded his accounts as spurious. The "Lettera II" counters the criticisms of Bartolozzi and Tiraboschi and is no less splenetic than the first.   view more...
£260.00
US$388.91*
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 169
 

(VESPUCCI). [PELLI BENCIVENNI, Giuseppe.] ~ Difesa di Amerigo Vespucci.

Florence: G. Allegrini,  1796.
First edition, rare. The Tuscan historian takes issue with the persistent claims that Amerigo Vespucci's claims to have discovered the American continent before Columbus were false. His particular stimulus was a work by Antonio Eximendo on Macchiavelli (Cesena, 1795) in which Vespucci had been once more dismissed as an impostor, despite Canovai's recent attempts to reclaim Vespucci as an Italian hero.   view more...
£400.00
US$598.32*
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 173
 

[SHERIDAN, Frances Chamberlaine.] ~ The dupe, a comedy. As it is now acting at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, by His Majesty's servants. By the author of the Discovery.

London: for A. Millar,   1764.
First edition of the second of Mrs Sheridan's comedies. Dublin born, Frances Sheridan became a much respected novelist (Miss Sidney Biddulph) and playwright, admired by Johnson, Boswell and Young. The Dupe was produced at Drury Lane by George Colman before being withdrawn after three nights, allegedly because 'of the theatrical cabals of a popular actress [Kitty Clive]' (ODNB).   view more...
£60.00
US$89.75*
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 175
 

(THEATRE). O'KEEFFE, John.  ~ The prisoner at large: a comedy. In two acts. As performed at the Theatre Royal in the Hay Market with universal applause.

Dublin: for Messrs. H. Chamberlain, D. Williams, H. Colles, L. White, P. Byrne and 8 others in Dublin,   [1789].
A farce, first printed in London 1788, with this probably a pirated edition.   view more...
£125.00
US$186.97*
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 179
 

(THEATRE). COLMAN, George, the Elder. ~ The man of business, a comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden.

London: for T. Becket,   1774.
First edition. Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Bulkley (although on account of its length many lines omitted from the theatre).   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 180
 

(THEATRE). [KELLY, Hugh.] ~ The school for wives. A comedy. As it is performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane.

London: for T. Becket,   1774.
First edition of a popular comedy which achieved five editions within two years, and had various stage revivals during the next forty years. Kelly was born in Killarney, the son of a Dublin tavern keeper. Becoming a lawyer in London to support a growing family he found considerable success in the theatre. "Kelly's third play, The School for Wives (1774), was the most successful drama in Drury Lane's 1773–4 season. Another comedy involving marriages and disguises, the play ran for twenty-four nights. It was printed in five editions and was seen in 1805 in Bath" (ODNB). He died in 1777 from complications arising from a failed operation at the New Street Bagnio to remove an abcess in his side.   view more...
£95.00
US$142.10*
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 181
 

(THEATRE). BROOKE, Henry. ~ Gustavus Vasa, the deliverer of his country. A tragedy. As it was to have been acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane.

London: for R. Dodsley,  1739.
First edition. Variant without the list of subscribers but with printed price (one shilling and six-pence). Epilogue by Mr Ogle.   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 182
 

(THEATRE). ARNE, Tho[mas] Aug[ustine]. ~ The guardian out-witted. A comic opera. At the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden. The musick composed by Tho. Aug. Arne, Doctor in music.

London: for J. and R. Tonson, and T. Lowndes,   1764.
One of two editions of 1764. This is the libretto of the opera and is ascribed to Arne (who also wrote the music) though he apparently denied the attribution (Nicoll).   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 183
 

(THEATRE). COLMAN, George, the Elder. ~ The English merchant, a comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane.

London: for T. Becket and P.A. De Hondt; and R. Baldwin,  1767.
First edition. Based on Le café ou l'ecossaise by Voltaire and with an epilogue written by David Garrick.   view more...
£80.00
US$119.66*
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 185
 

COWLEY, Mrs. [Hannah]. ~ Albina, Countess Raimond; a tragedy, as it is performed at the Theatre-Royal in the Hay-Market.

London: T. Spilsbury for J. Dodsley; R. Faulder; L. Davis; T. Becket [and 7 others in London],   1779.
First edition of Hannah Cowley's first tragedy. The play began a bitter controversy between Cowley and Hannah More, who produced a strikingly similar play, Percy, shortly afterwards. A charge of plagiarism was levelled at More but never proved. Their exchange appeared in the St James's Chronicle and was reprinted in the Gentleman's magazine.   view more...
£125.00
US$186.97*
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 186
 

COWLEY, Mrs. [Hannah]. ~ The belle's stratagem, a comedy, as acted at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden.

London: for T. Cadell,   1782.
First authorised edition of a play considered Cowley's masterpiece. It was dedicated to Queen Charlotte. Two pirated editions were published in Dublin in 1781.   view more...
£125.00
US$186.97*
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 187
 

(THEATRE). CAREY, George Saville.  ~ The dupes of fancy, or every man his hobby; a new farce: in two acts. As performed at the King's Theatre-Royal in the Hay-Market, with great applause.

London: for Alex. Hogg; and sold by T. Lewis and by all other booksellers and stationers in every city, borough, town, and village in Great Britain and Ireland,   1792.
First edition of one of the few plays by Carey to have actually been performed on the London stage.   view more...
£95.00
US$142.10*
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 189
 

(THEATRE). BIRCH, Samuel. ~ The adopted child, a musical drama, in two acts. As it is performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

London: for C. Dilly,   1795.
First edition. Birch was a man of many talents and occupations, like many of his theatrical contemporaries. He earned his living variously as a politician, playwright, and pastrycook.   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 191
 

(THEATRE). HOLCROFT, Thomas. ~ Duplicity: a comedy. As it is performed at the Theatre-Royal, in Covent-Garden.

London: for G. Robinson,   1781.
First edition. "Duplicity, whose plot resembles the story of Edward Moore's popular tragedy The Gamester, was staged at Covent Garden on 13 October 1781 and was performed six more times, but was postponed on several occasions because of a leading actor's illness" (ODNB).   view more...
£110.00
US$164.54*
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 203
 

(THEATRE). JACOB, Hildebrand.  ~ The fatal constancy. A tragedy. As it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane, by His Majesty's servants.

London: for J. Tonson,   1723.
First edition of a blank-verse tragedy acted six times at Drury Lane, twice by command of the princess of Wales.   view more...
£80.00
US$119.66*
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 207
 

(THEATRE). [JOHNSTONE, James.] ~ The disbanded officer; or, the Baroness of Bruchsal: a comedy. As performed at the Theatre Royal in the Hay-Market.

London: for T. Cadell,  1786.
First edition of the only play by Johnstone to be listed by Nicoll. It also appeared in a Dublin imprint later that year.   view more...
£150.00
US$224.37*
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 665
 

[SAURIN, Bernard Joseph.] ~ Mirza et Fatmé, conte indien traduit de l'Arabe.

"A la Haye" [Paris],  1754.
First edition. A rare novel for young readers, in the form of a fairy tale set in India, with a full complement of requisite genies and magical occurrences; a preface by the "translator" tells of the discovery in Delhi of an Arabic manuscript from the library of the Grand Mogul. Saurin (1706-1781) was a dramatist and poet with a particular interest in contemporary English writing; he published translations and imitations of Pope, Thomson, Lillo, etc. He was very friendly with Helvétius, who secured him a pension which enabled him to abandon law and dedicate himself to writing.   view more...
£350.00
US$523.53*
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 210
 

(THEATRE). BOADEN, James. ~ The Italian monk, a play, in three acts; and first performed the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 1797.

London: for G.G. and J. Robinson,  1797.
First edition. Adapted from Mrs Radcliffe.   view more...
£150.00
US$224.37*
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 211
 

(THEATRE). BOADEN, James. ~ Cambro-Britons, an historical play, in three acts. First performed at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, on Saturday, July 21, 1798. With a preface.

London: for G. G. and J. Robinson,   1798.
First edition. Nicoll's appended note states that this is "a very interesting specimen of early melodrama". "In Cambro-Britons (1798), set in the time of Llewelyn and Edward I, Boaden gothicizes Celtic myth, drawing partly on Gray's ode The Bard" (ODNB).   view more...
£150.00
US$224.37*
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 213
 

(THEATRE). MACKLIN, Charles. ~ The man of the world. A comedy. As performed at the Theatres-Royal, Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden.

London: John Bell,   1793.
First published Dublin 1785.   view more...
£60.00
US$89.75*
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 214
 

(THEATRE). DENIS, Charles. ~ The siege of Calais. A tragedy. From the French of Mr. de Belloy. With historical notes.

London: J. Lister, for J. Fletcher and Co., and T. Davies,   1765.
First edition, translated from the French of M. de Belloy [Pierre Laurent Buyrette].   view more...
£80.00
US$119.66*
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 216
 

(THEATRE). [YOUNG, Edward]. ~ The brothers. A tragedy. Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane.

London: for R. Dodsley,   1753.
First edition of a work which marked the end of Edward Young's theatrical ambitions. He withdrew the play from rehearsal at Drury Lane in 1724 while seeking a place in the Irish church and it was not to be performed or published for many years. It is based directly on Corneille's Persée et Démétrius.   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 217
 

(THEATRE). AYSCOUGH, George Edward. ~ Semiramis, a tragedy: as it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane.

London: for J. Dodsley,   1776.
First edition. Based on the play by Voltaire.   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 222
CREBILLON, Claude-Prosper-Jolyot de,

CREBILLON, Claude-Prosper-Jolyot de, "Crebillon fils". ~ Le Sopha, Conte Moral.

"A Gaznah, de l'imprimerie Très-Pieux, Très-Clément & Très-Auguste Sultan des Indes. L'an de l'Hegire MCXX. Avec privilege du Susdit."  [1742].
A celebrated novel of comic transformation, Le Sopha tells of an unfortunate young courtier, who for the sake of former sins is transformed into a piece of furniture, the sopha of the title. He is not to be reincarnated as a man until a man and a woman sincerely in love with each other had consummated their passion on him. It apparently secured Crebillon's temporary banishment from Paris (its characters were rather closely based on prominent society members) but became hugely popular and was translated into English by Eliza Haywood and William Hatchett. Dufrenoy saw it as a key work in the development of the oriental genre in the French novel, and certainly it spawned a host of imitations.While Tchemerzine and Cioranescu list a previous edition under the name Le Sopha couleur de rose, Tchemerzine states that he has never seen a copy. Copies of the first are indeed rare: Worldcat listing 5 copies. Our edition is the second.   view more...
£800.00
US$1196.64*
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 223
[DIGBY, Kenelm.] DIONIS, Charles.

[DIGBY, Kenelm.] DIONIS, Charles. ~ Dissertation sur le taenia, ou ver-plat, dans laquelle on prouve que ce ver n'est pas solitaire. Avec une lettre sur la poudre de sympathie, propre contre le rhumatisme simple ou gouteux.

Paris: P. G. Le Mercier,  1749.
First edition. While Dionis's consideration of the tape worm is fascinating enough (with its refutation of the theories of Nicolas Andry de Boisregard) the work is principally interesting for its larger part: Dionis's edition of Sir Kenelm Digby's account of the "Powder of Symapthy", an alchemical preparation purported to cure wounds at a distance. Made from dried green vitriol, this was a variant of the well-known Paracelsian 'weapon salve' which cured wounds by being applied, not to the patient, but to the offending weapon. It is a measure of the endurance of belief in this cure that Dionis entered into a contemporary dispute concerning its use and provides a recipe for it. Pp. 65-266 here are occupied by Dionis's introduction and by Digby's text, first published in 1658.   view more...
£400.00
US$598.32*
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 232
[COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.]

[COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.] ~ Les apparences trompeuses ou les amours du Duc de Nemours et de la marquise de Poyanne.

n.p. [?Rouen],  1715.
First edition of this rare clandestine novel which appeared with neither an author's name or place of publication. The work has an interesting place in the popular literature of the eighteenth-century. By telling an alternative story of the loves of the Duc de Nemours, Courtilz would have been well aware that it would be read with Madame de La Fayette's Princesse de Clèves (1678) in mind, since Nemours played the leading male part in that landmark novel. This may of course have been a straightforward ploy to pass off an inferior novel as something of a sequel, but recent critical studies have suggested a more interesting relationship. Assaf, for example, has read the novel as a palimpsest of the Princesse (that is, more than just a pastiche) or "un commentaire sur la dégradation de la magnificence et de la galanterie qui caractérisèrent la France au fort d'un règne, en plein désarroi au moment où s'écrit ce texte." Certainly, the death of Louis XIV in the year of publication and the accession of the 5-year-old Louis XV brought to an end a period of unparalleled magnificence at court, heralding a more troubled political and social scene in which the galanteries of aristocratic life would be viewed far more circumspectly by those outside.   view more...
£600.00
US$897.48*
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 234
ADDISON, Joseph.

ADDISON, Joseph. ~ The Free-Holder. Or Political Essays.

London: J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper,  1751.
A collected edition of numbers 1-55 of Addison's political journal, which was published twice weekly from December 1715 to June 1716. Macaulay later wrote: "Towards the close of the year 1715, while the rebellion was still raging in Scotland, Addison published the first number of a paper called 'The Freeholder'. Among his political works the Freeholder is entitled to the first place. Even in the Spectator there are few serious papers nobler than the character of his friend Lord Somers; and certainly no satirical papers superior to those in which the tory fox-hunter is introduced." (Modern British Essayists, T. Babington Macaulay).    view more...
£100.00
US$149.58*
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 247
WEBER, Friedrich August.

WEBER, Friedrich August. ~ Opuscula semiologica. I. De signis ex sputo.

Ulm: August Lebrecht Stettin,  1778.
First edition.   view more...
£375.00
US$560.92*
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 251
RETZ, Jean François Paul de Gondi de,

RETZ, Jean François Paul de Gondi de, ~ Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz. Containing, the particulars of his own life, with the most secret transactions of the French court and the civil wars. Translated from the French. In four volumes...

London: for T. Becket, T. Cadell, and T. Evans,  1774.
The Memoirs were first printed in English in 1723 and were immediately popular. Chesterfield recommended them wholeheartedly. "The best Memoirs that I know of, are those of Cardinal de Retz. --- I hardly know any Book so necessary for a young Man to read and remember; you will there find how great Business is really carried on, very differently from what People who have never been concerned in it imagine. In short you will, in every Page of that Book, see that strange inconsistent Creature, Man, just as he is" (reproduced on the title-page of our edition).   view more...
£425.00
US$635.71*
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 256
(HINDU GRAMMAR).

(HINDU GRAMMAR). ~ Grammatica indostana a mais vulgar que se practica no imperio do gram Mogol: offerecida aos muitos reverendos padres missionarios do ditto imperio

Rome: Estamperia da Sagrada Congregaçaõ de Propaganda Fide,  1788.
First edition, apparently reprinted at Lisbon in 1805.   view more...
£600.00
US$897.48*
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 259
PASSERI, Giovanni Battista.

PASSERI, Giovanni Battista. ~ Lucernae fictiles Musei Passerii.

Pesaro: [Niccolo] Gavelli,  1739 [-1743-1751.]
First edition of this celebrated illustrated account of Passeri's collection of oil-lamps. The collection was feted in its day as the best of its kind, but scholars have subsequently proved Passeri to have been the most gullible of collectors and that his collection consisted almost entirely of fakes. The work is thus a rather remakable testimony to the unfortunate fervour of an eighteenth-century collector. The frontispiece in volume 1 is a portrait of the Archbishop Friderico Lantio de Ruvere, engraved by Carlo Gregori after Giuseppe Menabuoni; emblematic title vignette by Giovanni Battista Passeri, engraved by Vincenzo Franceschini. The plates and head- and tail-pieces, are engraved after Giuseppe Menabuoni, mainly by Vincenzo Franceschini.   view more...
£1800.00
US$2692.43*
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 262
DUCLOS, Charles Pinot.

DUCLOS, Charles Pinot. ~ Acajou et Zirphile, conte.

"A Minutie" [?Paris],  1776.
First published in 1744 Duclos' satrical fairy-tale provoked outrage and delight in different quarters. Its publication arose from a bet: the Comte de Tessin had commissioned a suite of engravings from Boucher for a fairy tale, but was unexpectedly recalled to Sweden. Boucher then took them to Mlle Quinault's salon where a contest was held to write a fairy tale around his bizarre scenes (including flying hands and genies in chamber pots). Apparently Voisenon, Caylus, and Duclos submitted entries but only Duclos's has survived. The first edition, like ours, was purported to be printed at 'Minutie' ('Trifles'). It's preface "to the public" is an agressive attack on the frivolities of literary Paris, the very readership at which the book was aimed. The tale itself is also a parody of the fashionable fairy-tale genre and involves two evil genies, a prince and princess (Acajou and Zirphile), and a good fairy. It inspired a response from Fréron and a comic-opera by Favart. The rare first edition of 1744 was printed in quarto with reproductions of Boucher's original illustrations. It was reprinted in duodecimo soon after and exists in several further eighteenth-century editions, including an English translation.   view more...
£300.00
US$448.74*
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 270
THOMSON, John.

THOMSON, John. ~ The universal calculator; or the merchant's, tradesman's, and family's assistant. Being an entire, new, and complete set of tables, adapted for dealers in every branch of trade, by wholesale or retail, and all families. Shewing, at one View, The Amount or Value of any Number or Quantity of Goods or Merchandise, from One to Ten Thousand, at all the various Prices, from One Farthing, in regular progression, to Thirty Shillings; in 280 different Tables. Also, At the foot of each Table is shown the Division of the Pound, Yard, &c. into the following Particulars, entirely new, and not to be found in any other Book, viz. For Dealers by Weight, such as Grocers, &c... For Dealers by Measure, such as Milliners, Haberdashers, &c... There are also added, Twenty-Seven Tables, Shewing the Exchange on Bills, Commission or Brokerage on Goods, &c. from 1/8 to 5 per Cent. and Tables, shewing the amount of any Salary, Income, Expence, &c. by the Day, Week, Month, or Year. By John Thomson, Accomptant in Edinburgh, Author of the Tables of Interest, and Tables for Calculating the Price of all kinds of Grain.

Edinburgh: [Murray & Cochran] for W. Creech and C. Elliot, Edinburgh; and C. Dilly, in the Poultry, London,  1784.
First edition of this very scarce set of Edinburgh merchant's tables. Thomson, styled "accomptant" in the title, also prepared various tables of interest and currency for tradesman. The book is dedicated "To the honourable the Master, Assistants, and other members of the Company of Mechants, of the City of Edinburgh". As was typical for similar works of essential reference printed across the border in England, the work bears Thomson's signature, guaranteeing them to be both correct and genuine.   view more...
£750.00
US$1121.85*
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 282
VERDY DU VERNOIS, Adrien-Marie-François de.

VERDY DU VERNOIS, Adrien-Marie-François de. ~ Hommage à la vertu guerrière, ou Éloges de quelques-uns des plus célèbres officiers français qui ont vécu et qui sont morts sous le règne de Louis XV.

Hombourg-ès-Monts: Henri Pierre Wolff,  1779.
First edition. A very scarce compilation of the lives of six prominent French military leaders of the eighteenth century. It includes a 35-page biography of Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, commander of the French forces in Canada. The other lives included are of Adrien-Maurice, Duc de Noailles; Jean-Baptiste-François, Marquis de Maillbois; François de Chevert; Louis Beau de Mascaron and le Chevalier Dorigny.   view more...
£275.00
US$411.34*
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 284
STRUTT, Joseph. Antoine Marie Henri BOULARD, translator.

STRUTT, Joseph. Antoine Marie Henri BOULARD, translator.  ~ Angleterre ancien, ou, Tableau des mœurs, usages, armes, habillemens, &c. des anciens habitans de l'Angleterre; c'est-à-dire, des anciens Bretons, des Anglo-Saxons, des Danois & des Normands. Ouvrage traduit de l'anglois de M. Joseph Strutt, par M. B***, & pouvant servir de suite aux Recueils de Montsaucon & de Caylus.

Paris: [widow Herissant for]: Maradin,  1789.
First editon in French of Strutt's antiquarian work, Horda Angel-cynnan: or, A compleat view of the manners, customs, arms, habits, &c. of the inhabitants of England (published in three volumes between 1774 and 1776). The illustrations in the French edition are re-engraved from those of the English edition which were mainly copied from a wide range of manuscript sources consulted by Strutt from the British Museum, Lambeth Palace Library, the Bodleian Library, and Oxford and Cambridge college libraries. The majority are from the Chronicle of Matthew Paris."Strutt may justifiably be regarded as the first serious historian of dress in England, and his pioneering works of scholarship were heavily drawn upon by nineteenth-century costume historians. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who doubted the reliability of artistic sources as historical evidence, he employed a comparative analysis of the manuscripts, showing that they were reliable indicators of changes not just in matters of dress but also of the 'manners and customs' of the time. He was one of the first to realize the potential value of visual material as a historical source rather than as simply serving an illustrative purpose. He showed an early appreciation of the intrinsic merit of medieval art and was unusual in producing near-facsimile engraved reproductions of the originals" (Harris in Oxford DNB).   view more...
£750.00
US$1121.85*
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 302
(TUSCANY). GALLUZZI, Riguccio.

(TUSCANY). GALLUZZI, Riguccio. ~ Istoria del Granducato do Toscana sotto il Governo della casa Medici... edizioni seconda.

Florence: Gaetano Cambiago,  1781.
Second edition, published in the same year as the first.   view more...
£350.00
US$523.53*
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 304
(DICTIONARY, German-English).

(DICTIONARY, German-English). ~ The new and complete dictionary of the German and English languages composed chiefly after the German dictionaries of Mr. Adelung and of Mr. Schwan. Every German Word being rendered into proper English and thoroughly enriched with phrases and terms of Arts and Sciences: A work, which will be useful and even indispensible, and therefore welcome to all such as have a mind to translate or read the works of either of the two languages, elaborated by John Ebers.

Leipzig: for Breitkopf and Haertel,  1796-1798.
First editions of a very extensive German-Dictionary with detailed definitions of a large range of technical, popular and slang words. Little is known of the career of Johann Ebers (1742-1818) save that he was a professor Professor at Halle.    view more...
£800.00
US$1196.64*
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 316
(CARADOC, of Llancafarn, Saint.)

(CARADOC, of Llancafarn, Saint.) ~ Die Historie van Walles, in sich haltend derer Printzen von Walles Leben und Thaten, von Cadwalader... biss auf Lhewelinum... Vormahls geschrieben in Brittischer Sprache von Caradoco Lhancarvanensi; nachmahls von D. Powel in Englisher publiciret, und von Mr. Wynne vermehret; ietzo aber aus dieser ins Teutsche gebracht.

Coburg: Paul Gunther Pforenhauer,   1725.
First edition in German of the Welsh medieval Chronicle of the Princes, commonly known as the Chronicle of Caradoc of Llancarfan. The German version is taken from the English translation by H. Lhoyd, edited by David Powel, first printed in 1584 and later augmented by William Wynne. The German translation is by Philipp Georg Huebner and is dedicated to Anton Ulrich, Duke of Saxony.Sabin notes of the first English edition that "a special interest in this work for the American collector consists in its relation of the most ancient 'Voyage and Discovery of the West Indies, performed by Madoc, the sonne of Owen Guined, prince of North Wales, anno 1170'" (Sabin 40914). This episode is found also in the German edition.   view more...
£800.00
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 887
 

[LOUIS, Antoine.] ~ [Thesis.] D.O.M. Positiones anatomicae et chirurgicae. Ex Anatomia.

[Paris: Delaguette,  1749.]
First and only edition. The name of Louis Antoine will always be associated with the invention of the guillotine as a 'humane' method of execution in Revolutionary France: indeed the apparatus was initially named the 'louison' or 'louisette' after Dr. Louis. While properly the invention of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the beheading device was championed by the then secretary of the Academy of Surgeons and the construction of the first prototypes was carried out under his supervision.It is perhaps appropriate that the present short thesis submitted for admission to l'École royale de chirurgie over 40 years previously should have been a consideration of trauma to the head: though referring to direct blows to the head rather than decapitation. The thesis occupies an important place in the history of the surgical profession in France, not so much for its content, but for the fact that Louis chose to submit it in Latin in place of the more usual verancular. In so doing Louis was honoured with the title "Ma'tre de chirurgie" in recognition of the fact that he, and future surgeons, were to recognised as liberally educated scholars rather than mere practitioners. This step was to place the surgeon on a par with the physician in French medical heirarchies.   view more...
£400.00
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 323
SAUNDERS, James.

SAUNDERS, James. ~ The Compleat Fisherman. Being a large and particular account, of all the several ways of fishing now practised in Europe; with abundance of curious secrets and niceties in the art of fishing, as well in the sea, as in lakes, meers, ponds, rivers or brooks; whether by darts, spears, harpoons, nets, hook and line, or any other way whatsover. More particularly calculated for the sport of angling. With directions for preparing the angle rods, lines, hooks, and baits, proper for every part of the sport respectively; and also for the angler's conduct in rightly applying them. Also, an account of all the principal rivers, lakes, &c. in England; and what kinds of fish are more especially found in them. Collected from the best authors, and from the long experience of James Saunders, Esq; of Newton-Awbery, upon the River Trent.

London: printed for W. Mears and S. Tooke,  1724.
First edition. The book gives details of various methods of catching different fish, and which rivers to find them in. It is the first angling book to mention silk-worm gut. According to ESTC, this present work was issued separately by five different printers in 1724. This issue is the only one included in Westwood & Satchell (Biblioteca Piscatoria, pp.189). The attractive engraved folding frontispiece shows different methods of fishing and four species of fish: brill, trout, carp and perch. ESTC lists three copies only: at Harvard, Princeton and Boston Public Library.   view more...
£850.00
US$1271.43*
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 329
WYCLIF [WYCLIFFE], John.

WYCLIF [WYCLIFFE], John.  ~ Dialogorum libri quatuor, quorum primus divinitatem et ideas tractat. Secundus universarum rerum creationem complectitur. Tertius de virtutibus vitiisque ipsis contrariis copiosissime loquitur. Quartus Romanae Ecclesiae sacramenta, eius pestiferam dotationem, antichristi regnum, fratrum fraudulentam originem atque forum hypocrysim, variaque nostro aevo scitu dignissima, graphice perstringit. Quae ut essent invenu facilia, singulorum librorum, tum caput, tum capitis summam indice praenotavimus. Auctus est denique liber, catalogo praecipuorum de Wiclefo nostro scriptorum, quem vita ex optimis fontibus, Germanico idiomate depicta, sequitur.

Frankfurt and Leipzig: Io. Gottl. Vierlingii,  1753.
A very uncommon printing of the four books of the Dialogus, Wycliffe's principal doctrinal work. It was first printed during the Reformation in 1525 and copies of this first edition are exceedingly rare following its suppression by the court of Rome. The work consists of four dialogues on church doctrine and attacks what Wycliffe saw as an imperialised papacy and also its supporters. Wycliffe (d. 1384) was responsible for the first complete translation of the Bible into English and as the founder of the Lollard movement, is considered a forefather of the Protestant Reformation. This copy includes a separately issued life of Wycliffe with a valuable bibliographical catalogue and fine engraved portrait.   view more...
£500.00
US$747.90*
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 330
DUSAULX, Jean.

DUSAULX, Jean. ~ De la Passion du Jeu, depuis les temps anciens jusqu'a nos jours.

Paris: De l'Imprimerie de Monsieur,   1779.
First edition of this scarce study on the sociology of gambling by French writer and ex-gambler Jean Dusaulx (1728-1799). Tormented throughout his life by a passion for games, Dusaulx wrote this work drawing from his own experiences and sorrows and produced a very personal and outspoken discourse on gambling by outlining the philosophical, political, historical and moral problems associated with gaming during the eighteenth century. All levels of French society were tempted by gambling during the Enlightenment: the royal courts held regular games; and hosts frequently acted as bankers for games to entertain their guests. Dusaulx criticised the government's political and financial interests for the spread of gambling and the decline of public morals and in this text advised banishing the pack of cards altogether. The second part comprises a discussion on the introduction of state lotteries, which Dusaulx argues implicitly sanctioned private gambling and that the governments which organise them, contribute to the moral degradation of their subjects. The study is mainly concerned with gambling in France though there are other interesting chapters involving stories of gambling in other countries, including a translation of the Emperor of China's edicts on gambling.   view more...
£950.00
US$1421.01*
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 331
 

[TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, Charles-François.] ~ L'Amour Dévoilé, ou le Système des Simpathistes, où l'on explique l'origine de l'Amour, des Inclinations, des Simpathies, des Aversions, des Antipathies, etc.

[n.p. ?Low Countries],  1749.
First editions. Tiphaigine de la Roche's L'Amour Dévoilé is a notable attempt to explain love and sexual attraction in mechanistic terms. The author considers the role of 'la matière Sympathique' which he believed to be a type of vapour exhaled by both animals and humans, and its action upon the senses of a member of the oppositie sex. This rational approach to the subject prefigures modern research into pheromones. Pernetti, author of the moral romance Histoire de Favoride was a canon of the cathedral at Lyon and a prominent antiquary of that city. He was also a freemason and wrote a short treatise on that subject   view more...
£495.00
US$740.42*
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 332
(OXFORD UNIVERSITY).

(OXFORD UNIVERSITY). ~ Parecbolæ sive excerpta e corpore statutorum universitatis Oxoniensis. Accedunt articuli religionis XXXIX in Ecclesia Anglicana recepti: nec non juramenta fidelitatis et suprematus. In Usum Juventutis Academicæ.

Oxford: Clarendon Press,   1794.
A very pretty eighteenth-century copy of the Oxford University statutes.   view more...
£150.00
US$224.37*
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 333
[L'ESTOILE, Pierre de].

[L'ESTOILE, Pierre de]. ~ Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France. Contenant ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable dans ce royaume depuis 1515. jusqu'en 1611. (Ed. Jean Godefroy).

Cologne [Brussels]: Heirs of Herman Demen,  1719.
A finely-illustrated history of France in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth century. The second part (1589-1611) is printed here for the first time; the first part originally having been published in 1621 as Journal des choses memorables advenues durant tout le regne de Henry III (Cioranesco 13602).The imprint is certainly false, and Brussels is the more likely origin, though the woodcut device on the first title is that of Antoine Vincent of Lyon. The frontispiece is notable and is a violent allegory of this turbulent century, the female personification of France is beset by a crowd of petitioners in the form of vagrants, a monk, nobles and merchants while in the background several brutal excutions are enacted, with the city of Paris and the towers of Notre Dame in the distance. It is the work of Richard van Orley (1663-1732), a Brussels painter and engraver, and engraved by François Harrewijn (1700-1764), also a Brussels engraver, pupil of Romeyn de Hooghe, known primarily for his portraits of historical figures. Harrewijn also supplied the excellent suite of 33 portraits of kings and queens (including Mary Stuart) and leading members of church and state.   view more...
£600.00
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 336
[BASTIDE, Jean François de.]

[BASTIDE, Jean François de.] ~ Les Têtes Folles.

"Londres" [ie. Paris?]: et se trouve à Paris, chez Tilliard,  1753.
First edition, probably printed in Paris. Written by French playwright, journalist and critic Bastide, this epistolary piece takes the form of a long and anguished love-letter, with the reader left waiting for the response of the young lady until the final tantalising pages. The finely-engraved (unsigned) frontispiece is a charming image of a lady in a garden before a bush laden with flower buds in the form of human faces.   view more...
£400.00
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 885
(HANDBILL).

(HANDBILL). ~ A la Bonne Foy, Cour des Réligieux de l'Abbaye Saint Germain des Prés, la quatrieme Boutique

Paris: N. Fr. Valleyre jeune, c.  1773-83.
A lovely survival of a Parisian haberdasher's advertisement. From her shop oppositie the fan-makers in the courtyard of the Abbey of Saint Germain, Madame Roux (formerly Madame Varoquier) sold all manner of taffeta and laces, but seems to have been a specialist in ribbons. She advertises ribbons of numerous fabrics for collars, the hair, purse cords, and hats. This chance survival takes us to the colourful heart of the pre-Revolutionary Paris.   view more...
£300.00
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 338
(GEORGE II). COEUR, Jacob de.

(GEORGE II). COEUR, Jacob de.  ~ Odes a la gloire de sa Majeste Britannique George II. et a la louange de son altesse serenissime le Duc de Cumberland: envoyées pour etrennes au premier Janvier de l'an 1744. Vieux stile.

La Haye: J.A. Barreau,   1744.
An apparently unrecorded eighteenth-century pamphlet published in The Hague as a New Year's greeting to George II, issued following his victory against the French at The Battle of Dettingen in 1743, while preserving Flanders from the predations of the French. This was the last battle at which British forces were led into battle by a reigning monarch. Coming to the defence of Marie Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia against Louis XV's French armies, British troops fought as part of the "Pragmatic Army", which also comprised Austrian, Hessian, Hanoverian and Dutch troops. George II's favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland, is also lauded by the author in a separate tribute, having been honourably wounded in the same battle.   view more...
£250.00
US$373.95*
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 344
OVIDIUS NASO, Publius.

OVIDIUS NASO, Publius. ~ Ovid's Art of Love, in three books. Together with his amours, and remedy of love. Translated into English verse, by several eminent hands. To which are added, The Court of Love, a tale from Chaucer. And the History of Love. Adorn'd with cutts.

London: printed for J. Tonson; and sold by W. Taylor at the Ship in Pater-noster Row,  1719.
A scarce early edition. Three editions had previously been published, the first in 1709, and this popular title went on to be republished numerous times during the eighteenth century. The translators are identified in the text as John Dryden, Nahum Tate and William Congreve. 'The history of love' is by Charles Hopkins and 'The court of love' is a metrical paraphrase by Arthur Maynwaring.   view more...
£400.00
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 345
HALLER, [Albrecht.] M. le Baron de.

HALLER, [Albrecht.] M. le Baron de. ~ Usong, histoire oriental. Traduit de l'Allemand.

Paris & Lausanne: Valade and Fr. Grasset, & Compagnie,  1772.
First French edition. Baron Haller (1708-1777) was a famous Swiss botanist and poet; his many prestigious positions listed on the title page include "Président de la Société Royale de Gottingue, & de la Société Économique de Berne, and Associé de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris, &c, &c." Usong (1771) was one of three philosophical romances which he published between 1771 and 1774 in which he outlined his views on the relative merits of despotism, limited monarchy and aristocratic republican government. Usong is a staatsroman in which Haller demonstrates his profound admiration for Eastern political systems. Though set in a fictional Persia, the political arrangements of the ideal state are drawn from Chinese Confucian theory where government rests on the principle of accountability.Two further issues of this title also appeared in 1772: the first in Lausanne published by Grasset, and a second published in Paris and Frankfurt by Jean Georg Esslinger.   view more...
£350.00
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 370
SAINT-PIERRE, Bernardin de.

SAINT-PIERRE, Bernardin de. ~ Paul and Virginia. Translated from the French of Bernardin Saint-Pierre; by Helen Maria Williams, author of Letters on the French Revolution, Julia a novel, Poems, &c.

[N.p. but Paris: John Hurford Stone,]   1795.
First edition of this translation, a rare imprint from the English Press at Paris. The origin of this book has caused bibliographers some trouble - with its apparently English typography and use of catchwords, but rather outlandish overall appearance. It is described in some catalogues as being provincial English and it appears in the English Short Title Catalogue. Its true origin has been identified by John Bidwell of the Morgan Library, who writes in the online catalogue of that library "Given the French origins of the paper, type, plates and binding, and the quality of the typesetting, this edition was printed in Paris, almost certainly at the English Press of the expatriate radical John Hurford Stone, who was living with Helen Maria Williams at this time. Cf. Madeleine B. Stern, "The English Press in Paris and its successors," PBSA 74 (1980): 307-89."The type is indeed of ultimate English origin, being cast from Baskerville's punches by the Dépôt des caractères de Baskerville in Paris, established by Beaumarchais in 1791 and closed ca. 1795-1796. Beaumarchais (who considered Baskerville a genius) purchased the bulk of the Birmingham printer's punches from his widow after his death. Cf. John Dreyfus, "The Baskerville punches 1750-1950", The Library, 5th ser. 5 (1951): 26-48. (also cited by Bidwell).Helen Maria Williams was a central member of an important group of English radicals who had settled in Paris after the Revolution which included Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and Thomas Paine. She formed an association with the radical printer Stone, who divorced his wife in 1794 and was possibly secretly married to Williams that year. Paul and Virginia was translated at the height of the Terror, when Williams was imprisoned in the Couvent des Anglaises on account of the war between England and France. Stone's English Press remained active throughout these years in the Rue de Vaugirard, succesfully printing works by authors such as Paine and Joel Barlow.   view more...
£1800.00
US$2692.43*
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 395
[CERFVOL, De, pseudonym.]

[CERFVOL, De, pseudonym.] ~ Mémoire sur la population, dans lequel on indique le moyen de la rétablir, & de se procurer un corps militaire toujours subsistant & peuplant.

"Londres" [but Paris],  1768.
First edition of an influential pro-divorce polemic and a significant contribution to the eighteenth-century population debate. Divorce, as opposed to anullment in exceptional circumstances) remained unlawful in France until 1792."The demographic argument for divorce... was made early in the century by Montesquieu, who suggested in his Lettres persanes that the higher birthrate among non-Christian populations was a result of their permitting divorce, Being able to divorce, he suggested, men were more ready to marry and produce children. This argument was taken up and embellished throughout the eighteenth century, for despite the fact that France's population increased by a healthy 30% or more between 1700 and 1800, there was a persistent belief... that France was experiencing a demographic decline. The most imaginative scenario was produced by Cerfvol (a pseudonym), whose rate of divorce tract production rivaled John Milton's: Cerfvol published five works on divorce between 1768 and 1770. The most important of them was his Memoire sur la population (1768) in which he published detailed (though largely spurious) statistics to prove that celibacy was increasing in France at each generation, that generations were failing to reproduce themselves, and that the logical conclusion would be the utter depopulation of France.The principal way to arrest this galloping celibacy and the attendant decline of population, Cerfvol wrote, was to legalize divorce. He recognized other factors at work in population decline - among them incontinence, unequal and excessive taxation, the use of wet nurses, and women's wearing corsets - but, he wrote: "Let us seek the true cause of depopulation nowhere else than in the indissolubility of marriage"" (Phillips, Untying the Knot: a short history of divorce, 1991).The work was suppressed by the Paris Parlement on the 28 February, 1769.   view more...
£750.00
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 397
[OLIVIER, Abbé Jean.]

[OLIVIER, Abbé Jean.] ~ L'Infortuné Napolitain ou Les Aventures du Seigneur Rozelli, qui contiennent l'histoire de sa naissance de son esclavage, de son état monastique, de sa prison dans l'Inquisition, et ses différentes figures qu'il a faites, tant en Italie, qu'en France, & en Hollande. Nouvelle edition, revue, corrigée & augmentée d'un grand nombre de figures en taille-douce.

Amsterdam: Henri Desbordes,   1761.
A comic picaresque novel and an anti-Jesuit satire recounting the life and adventures of Rozelli in a series of fanciful catastrophes and disasters, in the course of which he becomes a Catholic clergyman and then converts to Judaism. The title was first published in 1708 and went on to be republished a number of times during the eighteenth century, with translations into English, German and Dutch. The illustrations appeared first in an edition of 1729.   view more...
£350.00
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 398
MARIN, [François Louis Claude.]

MARIN, [François Louis Claude.] ~ Histoire de Saladin, Sulthan d'Egypte et de Syrie, avec une introduction, une histoire abrégée de la Dynastie des Ayoubites fondée par Saladin, des notes critiques, historiques, géographiques, et quelques pièces justicatives.

Paris: Tilliard,  1758.
First edition of Marin's accomplished Middle Eastern history, a work which was widely-read and influential in the emerging orientalism in French culture. This was Marin's first truly succesful work and provided him with a literary reputation strong enough for him to be appointed Royal censor. The title was also published in the same year in the Hague by N. van Daalen. The maps depict Jerusalem, the crusader city of Acre (taken by Saladin in 1187) and the region of Acre.   view more...
£950.00
US$1421.01*
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 399
[LONGUE, Louis Pierre de.]

[LONGUE, Louis Pierre de.] ~ Les Princesses Malabares, ou le Celibat Philosophique. Ouvrages interessant & curieux, avec des notes historiques & critiques.

Andrinople [Paris]: Thomas Franco,   1734.
First edition.   view more...
£600.00
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 400
SWIFT, Jonathan.

SWIFT, Jonathan. ~ The history of the four last years of the Queen. Published from the last manuscript copy, corrected and enlarged by the author's own hand.

London: for A. Millar,  1758.
First edition, without the variant mis-prints. Written around 1713, Swift's defence of Queen Anne and her efforts to negotiate the peace treaty of Utrecht was finally published posthumously in 1758 amid extraordinary rumours that the published version was a forgery. Dr. Johnson said that "it seemed by no means to correspond with the notions I had formed of it from a conversation that I once heard between the Earl of Orrery and old Mr. Lewis" (Life of Swift, 1758) and Macaulay described it as "falsely attributed to Swift". In 1897 a letter to The London Times claimed that the lost manuscript had been found in Dublin, finally putting an end to the rumours. Swift's own attempts to publish the work earlier were apparently obstructed by the machinations of Viscount Bolingbroke, Earl of Oxford and others.   view more...
£300.00
US$448.74*
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 401
[CASTÉRA, Jean Henri.]

[CASTÉRA, Jean Henri.] ~ Vie de Catherine II, Imperatrice de Russie.

Paris: An V de la Republique,   1797.
A very scarce edition, at least two other editions of which were published in the same year by F. Buisson in Paris illustrated with six engraved portraits. This was the first biography in French of Catherine II, published the year after her death. Pandering to the anti-Russian sentiment then prevailing in France, Castéra sourced much of his material from the French ambassador to Russia, comte de Ségur.    view more...
£400.00
US$598.32*
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 403
(TREATIES).

(TREATIES). ~ [12 treaties between Britain and her allies following the French declaration of war in 1793] [comprising:] Convention between His Britannick Majesty and the Empress of Russia. Signed at London, the 25th of March, 1793. Published by authority.

London: Edward Johnston,   1793.
A collection of 12 scarce treaties between Britain and her allies following the French declaration of war in 1793 and one further treaty negotiated with Bavaria in 1800. The backbone of the British war policy, these 1793 agreements were designed to create an allied coalition against the French, of which the axis would be Britain and the German powers, with further support from subsidiary powers in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic. However, the speed and efficiency with which these agreements were signed belies the complex and conflicting aims of each nation and the subsequent rapid disintegration of the policy.Britain's initial admiration for the evolving Revolution in France quickly changed to alarm with the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, followed by the French declarations of war on Britain and the Dutch Republic on February 1 and Spain on March 7. French war-mongering had already led to the annexation of Savoy, Belgium and the Rhineland in 1792 and French ambitions were spelt out by Danton in the National Convention: "The frontiers of France have been mapped by nature, and we shall reach them at the four corners of the horizon, on the banks of the Rhine, by the side of the ocean and at the Alps. It is there that we shall reach the limits of our Republic."Notably, the first two agreements were conventions signed with Russia, one uniting the two countries as allies against the aggressions of France and securing Russia's cooperation in the naval war, the other being a trade agreement, which finally settled a longstanding commercial dispute between Britain and Russia. Signed on the same day in March 1793, a contemporary commentator wryly noted that it seemed the two powers were competing as to "who shall be most fond and shall kiss the first". However, despite the apparent goodwill on both sides, the conventions never led to full and binding treaties.Similarly, the terms of the convention signed with Prussia unravelled almost as soon as the ink was dry and within two months Frederick William II was demanding significant additional terms. Lord Grenville, Britain's Foreign Secretary, took a dim view of such demands and having first shored up his own position by negotiating a separate agreement with Austria, he initially refused to comply with Prussian requests. However, under pressure from Pitt and Dundas, Grenville was forced to negotiate further with the Prussians, with the result that the Austrians were in turn estranged.Like Russia, the Spanish had their own motives for joining the war and despite the successful signing of the convention of Aranjuez, which committed both parties to explore the prospects of an alliance, a further agreement was never reached. Alliances with Portugal, Sardinia and Sicily proved equally problematic in the following months.   view more...
£1200.00
US$1794.95*
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 884
[CAREW, Bampfylde-Moore.]

[CAREW, Bampfylde-Moore.] ~ The life and adventures of Bampfylde-Moore Carew, commonly called the King of the beggars. Being An impartial Account of his Life, from his leaving Tiverton School at the Age of Fifteen and entering into a Society of Gipsies; wherein the Motives of his Conduct are related and explained: The great Number of Characters and Shapes he has appeared in through Great Britain, Ireland, and several other Places of Europe: with his Travels twice through great Part of America: Giving a particular account of the origin, government, laws, and customs of the gipsies, with the Method of electing their King. And a dictionary of the cant language used by the mendicants.

London: for J. Buckland, C. Bathurst and T. Davies,  1793.
The celebrated life of a colourful swindler and impostor, first published in 1745 and reprinted numerous times. This is one of two editions printed for Buckland, Bathurst and Davies in 1793. The final 5 pages contain a notable cant dictionary.Carew fell in with a band of gypsies as a wayward young boy. "After a year and a half Carew returned home for a time, but soon after resumed a career of swindling and imposture, which saw him deceive people to whom he had previously been well known. Eventually he embarked for Newfoundland, but stayed only a short time. On his return to England he passed as the mate of a vessel, and eloped with the daughter of a respectable apothecary from Newcastle upon Tyne, whom he later married.Carew soon returned to the nomadic life, and when Clause Patch, a Gypsy king or chief, died Carew was elected his successor. He was convicted of being an idle vagrant, and sentenced to be transported to Maryland. On his arrival he attempted to escape, but was captured and made to wear a heavy iron collar; he escaped again, and encountered some Native Americans, who removed his shackles. On departure he travelled to Pennsylvania. He was then said to have swum the Delaware River, after which he adopted the guise of a Quaker, and made his way to Philadelphia, then to New York, and finally to Boston, where he embarked for England. He escaped impressment on board a man-of-war by pricking his hands and face, and rubbing in bay salt and gunpowder, so as to simulate smallpox" (John Ashton, rev. Heather Shore in Oxford DNB).This biography is variously attributed to Bampfylde Moore Carew himself, to Robert Goadby and to his wife Mrs. Goadby.    view more...
£200.00
US$299.16*
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 880
(EROTICA).

(EROTICA). ~ Théatre gaillard...

"Londres" [?Paris: Cazin],  1788.
The Théatre Gaillard was a notorious collection of erotic dramas of which earlier editions (the first was 1776) were the object of various confiscations by the authorities in France. This edition, ascribed to Cazin by Kearney, includes an entirely new suite of finely engraved erotic plates and is of exceptional rarity.The plays included are: Le Luxurieux by Legrand; le Tempérament by ?Grandval; Le Bordel, ou le J...-F... puni, by the comte de Caylus; l'Appareilleuse; la Comtesse d'Olonne by Bussy-Rabutin; Vasta, reine de Bordélie; la Nouvelle Messaline by Piron; Alphone l'impuissante; les Deux Biscuits; and les Plaisirs du Clo'tre.   view more...
£2400.00
US$3589.91*
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 882
[LA PORTE, Joseph de, editor.]

[LA PORTE, Joseph de, editor.] ~ Bibliothèque des génies et des fées...

Paris: Duchesne,  1765-[1764].
First edition of this extensive eighteenth-century fairy-tale collection. The Jesuit compiler Joseph de la Porte drew the tales from a variety of earlier sources (collections by Madame Louise Lévesque and Moncrif and versions by Mdame Fagnan and Henri Pajon printed in Le Mercure). The collection contanins: Merveilleux et Charmante; Le Prince des aigues marines; Le Prince invisible; Grisdelin et Charmante; Les Voyageuses; Le Prince Ananas & la Princesse Moustelle; Eritzine & Parelin; Minet-bleu & Louvette; Alidor & Thersandre; Caressant et Blanchette; Cornichon et Toupette; Néangir et ses freres Argentine & ses soeurs; La Princesse Minon-Minette et le Prince Souci and Aphranor et Bellanire. It was reprinted (in part) as a volume of the Cabinet des Fées in 1785, with the editor's name given.This copy has a distinguished provenance: bearing the arms of Anne-Léon II de Montmorency and hi wife, who were prominent in pre-Revolutionary French society before emigrating to Munster during the Revolution. The later bookplates are of La Rochefoucauld duc de Bisaccia: French ambassador in London and a supporter of the failed restoration of the French monarchy in the 1870s.   view more...
£2000.00
US$2991.59*
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 883
[BONNEMAIN, Antoine-Jean-Thomas.]

[BONNEMAIN, Antoine-Jean-Thomas.] ~ Les chemises rouges, ou mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du règne des anarchistes.

Paris: Deroy & Maret, "An VII" [  1799.]
First edition of this account of two of the most brutal episodes of the Terror - the execution of 9 members of the town council of Orleans implicated in a supposed murder attempt on Léonard Bourdon, member of the National Convention, and the summary execution of 54 men and women accused of having been part of a royalist plot against Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois and other members of the revolutionary government. The latter were hastily dressed in sack-cloth (the "chemises rouges") an attire reserved for murderers. They included the 19-year old Cécile-Aimée Renault, who was adopted as a martyr of the anti-revoultionary movement.The work provides detailed transcripts from the trials and biographical details of the accused. The engraved frontispiece to the first volume is a melodramatic rendering of the condemnation of the "Orleans 9" in the tribunal.   view more...
£650.00
US$972.27*
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 434
NECKER, M. [Jacques].

NECKER, M. [Jacques]. ~ Du pouvoir exécutif dans les grands états.

[n.p., Paris?:],  1792.
First edition. An important political treatise on the relation between the executive power and the legislature by Necker, French statesman and finance minister of Louis XVI. His analysis and comparison of the systems of France, the United States, England and other European powers argued that separation of executive and legislative powers would lead to an imbalance of power, with the legislature enjoying unlimited and unchecked authority.   view more...
£800.00
US$1196.64*
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 437
[CHOUDARD]-DESFORGES, [Pierre Jean Baptiste].

[CHOUDARD]-DESFORGES, [Pierre Jean Baptiste]. ~ Tom Jones a Londres, comédie en cinq actes, en vers, tirée du roman de Fielding, répresentée, pour la première fois, par les comédiens Italiens ordinaires du Roi, le Mardi 22 Octobre 1782.

Paris: F. J. Baudouin,  1782.
First editions. A dramatic adaptation of Fielding's Tom Jones for the French stage by Choudard-Desforges, with its sequel. The plays were written for performance by the Comédie-Italienne, of which the playwright Desforges had been a member.   view more...
£500.00
US$747.90*
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 878
(EROTICA). [

(EROTICA). ["V.T.H.S.", pseud.] ~ La Rhétorique des putains, ou la fameuse maquerelle. Ouvrage imité d l'Italien, orné de joiles figures en taille-douce.

"Rome" [? France]: "aux dépens du Saint Pere,"  1794.
An especially rare pornographic dialogue, purporting to be a didactic conversation between an older and a younger prostitute (Marthe and Angélique) presented in a series of "lessons". This edition is important for its inclusion of a series of bizarre plates originally intended for another work, "L'Arétin de la Révolution", of which only a single copy is known (according to Dutel). These rather crudely printed plates are humorous caricatures depicting a series of couples in Revolutionary dress and must be among the most extraordinary reflections of the Revolutionary period in the graphic arts.The French text was first printed in 1771, bearing only a slight resemblance to the stated Italian source (Rettorica delle Putane by Ferrante Pallavicino), and including 3 small plates. It was reprinted without plates in 1790 and then in 1794 (ours) with the introduction of the plates discussed. All editions are of exceptional rarity.   view more...
£2000.00
US$2991.59*
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 879
(EROTICA).

(EROTICA). ~ Julie philosophe ou le bon patriote. Histoire à peu près véritable, d'une Citoyenne active qui a été tour-à-tour agent & victime dans les dernieres révolutions de la Hollande, du Brabant & de la France.

[n.p. ?Paris],  1791.
First edition. A pornographic French Revolutionary novel of the greatest rarity, replete with allusions to some of the most important figures in contemporary society, including Mirabeau, Calonne, la comtesse de la Mothe and the arch-swindler Theveneau de Morande. Gay remarked on its unexpected perspective on the Revolution: "Aussi ce livre appartient-il à l'histoire, et sera t'il toujours lu et recherché lorsque beaucoup d'autres productions érotiques et frivoles auront disparu de la circulation et seront oubliées."The work was attributed to Andrea de Nerciat by Apollinaire in the introduction to his 1910 edition, but this attribution is not generally accepted.   view more...
£3000.00
US$4487.39*
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 877
(EROTICA).

(EROTICA). ~ La cauchoise, ou, Mémoires d'une courtisanne célèbre. Roman pour servir de suite à tous les bons ouvrages de la philosophie de la nature.

"A Libidinibus" [i.e. France?]: "Chez Sensualité, à la Délicatesse, rue du Tempérament, 10308070" [i.e. c.  1783.]
First edition. A famous pornographic novel - a first-person narrative of a young woman who becomes a prostitute - of which only two other copies are now traceable (Harvard and private collection). La Cauchoise is best known for its inclusion of a fictitious library catalogue of 49 pornographic works, some real, some invented, which has continuously intrigued bibliographers and publishers. The catalogue was dropped in all subsequent editions.The work was frequently reprinted in the nineteenth century, under this title and a variant, usually with a variation of our false imprint. The first edition is of exceptional rarity. There is no copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale or British Library, and Worldcat lists only the Harvard copy.   view more...
£2500.00
US$3739.49*
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 445
[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.

[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.  ~ L'Orpheline angloise, ou histoire de Charlotte Summers, imitee de l'anglois de M. N****.

London [Liège?]: "et se trouve à Francfort, en foire, chez J. F. Bassompierre, libraire de Liége",   1756.
Third edition in French. This popular work is considered the first imitation of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) and it is most likely this connection that led to speculation that Sarah Fielding, his novelist sister, was the anonymous author. The title was first published as The history of Charlotte Summers, the fortunate parish girl twice in 1750, before being translated into French for publication in 1751, with a second edition in French in 1752.    view more...
£300.00
US$448.74*
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 446
[FOUQUET, Charles Louis Auguste de,] Duc de Belle-Isle [and Louis-Georges-Erasme CONTADES, marquis de].

[FOUQUET, Charles Louis Auguste de,] Duc de Belle-Isle [and Louis-Georges-Erasme CONTADES, marquis de].  ~ Lettres du Marechal Duc de Belleisle au Marachel de Contades; avec des extraits de quelques-unes de celles de ce dernier; trouvées parmi les papiers, aprés la Bataille de Minden. Suivant la copie de Londres, imprimée sur les originaux, par autorité du gouvernement de la Grande Bretagne.

The Hague: Pierre de Hondt,   1759.
One of several editions of 1759, professedly "suivant la copie de Londres" issued in both English and French; other editions rapidly appeared in Amsterdam, Paris, and The Hague.The Battle of Minden was an important victory for British, Hanoverian, Hessian and Prussian troops against the French and Saxons during the Seven Years War. The title appears to have been first published by order of the British government, who presumably seized upon the letters, which number French casualties and deaths at 11,000, as an important propaganda tool.   view more...
£150.00
US$224.37*
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 452
(FRENCH REVOLUTION.)

(FRENCH REVOLUTION.) ~ Discours, addressé [sic] à un certain peuple sur sa situation présente …

"a Londres: se vend chez W. Richardson" [but probably continental],  1789.
Second edition, a rare Revolutionary pamphlet, first published the year before, and amended here in light of the 'happy events' of the Revolution which 'obligent le zèle et la bonne foi de l'auteur … de donner ici, comme dans un postscrit, ou supplément, les corrections et additions que la justice et le changement des circonstances rendent nécessaires' (p. iii). The pagination in both versions, however, is identical.The author analyses the effects of a revolution in France by looking at the changes it would make under three headings – 'La Justice, l'utilité, la facilité'; gives a spirited criticism of what is now known as the anciene régime; and joyously lauds the actions of his revolutionary comrades.   view more...
£850.00
US$1271.43*
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 454
 

(CALONNE, Charles Alexandre de). ~ Grande révolution arrivée à Londre [sic] et emprisonnement du sieur de Calonne pour l'avoir excité.

[Paris:] J. Calais , n.d. [c.   1791.]
First and only edition of this violent polemic against the disgraced minister Calonne, who had been blamed for the collapse of French finances on the eve of the Revolution. He fled to London and was at once denounced as a traitor. This rare pamphlet imagines his fate at the hands of a revolutionary mob in London.   view more...
£90.00
US$134.62*
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 456
ARIOSTO, Lodovico.

ARIOSTO, Lodovico. ~ Dei suppositi commedia del divino Ludovico Ariosto nuova edizione dedicata all'illustrissima Signora Caterina Edwin.

London: Tommaso Edlin,  1737.
An attractive early eighteenth-century London imprint of Ariosto's I Suppositi ('The Pretenders'), a comic play based on Terence's The Eunuch and Plautus's The Captives, which first appeared in prose 1509, with the lyrical version, found here, completed between 1529 and 1532. This edition was published in London by Thomas Edlin, who produced a series of classic and fashionable Italian works by writers including Ariosto, Boccaccio and Ongaro, of which a number were dedicated to English ladies of society. In this case, the dedicatee, is one Catherine Edwin, whose arms appear here as an attractive and unusual frontispiece.   view more...
£250.00
US$373.95*
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 458
 

LINGUET, [Simon Nicolas Henri]. ~ Mémoires sur La Bastille, et sur la détention de M. Linguet, écrits par lui-même.

London [i.e. Berne: Weller]: T. Spilsbury,  1783.
An early edition of Linguet's memoir of his incarceration in the infamous Bastille prison from 1780-82. This issue is an imitation of the original edition in volume 10 of Annales politiques, civiles et litteraires du dix-huitieme siecle, which was published in 1783 also with the T. Spilsbury imprint. Numerous other editions with the false Spilsbury imprint of were also published in the same year on the Continent, most of which are presumed to have been printed in Brussels or Hamburg, with at least one further Berne imprint.   view more...
£150.00
US$224.37*
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 472
[BERKELEY, George, editor]; Richard STEELE [preface]; F. M. JANIÇON, translator.

[BERKELEY, George, editor]; Richard STEELE [preface]; F. M. JANIÇON, translator. ~ Bibliotheque des Dames, contenant des regles génerales pour leur conduite, dans toutes les circonstances de la vie. Ecrite par une dame, & publiée par Mr. le Chev. R[ichard]. Steele, traduite de l'Anglois par Mr. Janiçon. Seconde edition.

Amsterdam: Du Villard et Changuion,   1719-24.
First complete edition in French, in 3 volumes, the earlier edition (1716) comprising volume 1 only. The work was originally published in English as "The ladies library. Written by a lady. Published by Mr. Steele." in 3 volumes in 1714; it was formerly attributed to Lady Mary Wray, but is now known accepted as having been compiled "from the several writings of our greatest divines" (preface) by George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne and philosopher, whose contract for it with Jacob Tonson is extant in the Osborn Collection at Yale. Steele's part in the publication was merely "to write a preface & to subscribe his name" (contract). Berkeley and Steele, fellow Irish compatriots in London, became close friends early in Berkeley's career and it was Steele's introduction to his own publisher Tonson which led to the publication of this work. "Berkeley undertook compilation of the three-volume Ladies Library (purporting to be 'by a Lady') for Tonson, for which Steele wrote a preface. This quite heavily edited set of readings on social convention, the family, and religion was intended to better women's education and social standing, and went through six editions in Berkeley's lifetime." (Stewart in Oxford DNB).   view more...
£550.00
US$822.69*
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 659
 

[SALLE, Antoine de la, attributed to.] ~ Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles. Suivent les cent nouvelles contenant les cent histoires nouveaux qui sont moult plaisans à raconter en toutes bonnes compagnies ; par manière de joyeuseté.

"A La Haye" [but probably France], chez P. Gosse and J. Neaulme,  1733.
A nice edition of this famous collection of bawdy stories told at the court of Louis XI in the fifteenth century. Some 14 or 15 of the 100 stories are taken from Giovanni Boccaccio, and as many more from Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini or other Italian writers, or French fabliaux, but about 70 are probably original.   view more...
£100.00
US$149.58*
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 875
(EROTICA). [SEDAINE, Michel Jean and Pierre Lalmand]

(EROTICA). [SEDAINE, Michel Jean and Pierre Lalmand] ~ La tentation de S. Antoine, ornée de figures et de musique. [Le Pot-Pourri de Loth, orné de figures et de musique.]

"Londres" [Paris: Cazin],   1781.
First edition, de luxe issue on large paper of this pairing of libretti by Sedaine, complete with the 5 erotic plates absent in some copies, on account of their subject-matter.This is a bibliographically complex work. Dutel, in his recent bibliography describes and illustrates an edition of 1781 which has the same plates and pagination (though 1 leaf bearing the word "fin" is bound at the end of the second part in ours, where in his it is bound at the end of the first). However, he cites just "un feuillet de musique gravée" inserted, where ours has a full 20 pages between the 2 parts. Our copy is also clearly different from the point of view of size and paper. His copy measures just 18.8 × 12.4 mm and is apparently on ordinary paper, where ours is notably larger and is luxuriously printed on blue paper and papier vergé. Furthermore, in comparing the 2 title-pages with those he illustrates, while being identical in letterpress details, the typographical ornaments are completely different, though positioned similarly.Dutel also lists a second edition of (Londres, 1782) in even smaller format (18mo) but on blue and thick paper, with an additional part and plate. There were several later editions.Gay cites both 1781 and 1782 editions but it is impossible to tell whether his 1781 edition conforms to ours or Dutel's example, since he gives no pagination or exact size. Of the work he writes: "Ce volume, dont les exemplaires sont très rares, se paierent fort cher aujourd'hui, car lese gravures... sont fort bien exécutées... Tous les curieux de galanteries connaisent ces deux ouvrages, au moins de réputation." he notes the authorship of Sedaine in the first case and suggests Pierre Lalmand as the author of the second. He also admits that their literary quality is "fort mince" being "du pur libertinage" and of a sacrilegious quality.   view more...
£2000.00
US$2991.59*
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 474
[MOLÉ, Guillaume François Roger.]

[MOLÉ, Guillaume François Roger.] ~ Histoire des modes Françaises, ou révolutions du costumes en France, depuis l'établissement de la monarchie jusqu'à nos jours. Contenant tout ce qui concerne le tête des Français, avec des recherches sur l'usage des chevelures artificielles chez les anciens.

"A Amsterdam, et se trouve a Paris": Costard,  1773.
First edition of this much-cited work on the history of hair-styling and grooming, beards and wigs.   view more...
£260.00
US$388.91*
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 844
 

(GAMBLING). COLLIER, Jeremy. ~ An essay upon gaming, in a dialogue between Callimachus and Dolomedes.

London: printed for J. Morphew,  1713.
First edition. Also later issued as part of Collier's "Essays upon several moral subjects. Part III.", third edition, 1720.   view more...
£600.00
US$897.48*
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 482
MARTINELLI, Vincenzio.

MARTINELLI, Vincenzio. ~ Istoria del governo d'Inghilterra e delle sue colonie in India, e nell' America Settentrionale, scritta da Vincenzio Martinelli a sua eccellenza il Sig. principe D. Lorenzo Corsini.

Florence: Gaetano Cambiagi,  1776.
First edition of this Italian account of the constitution of England, of which the largest part is devoted to a description of the British colonies in the East Indies and in America. The chapters on the East Indies include several reflections on the tea and coffee trade, and the introduction of coffee to London in 1652. Published in the year of the American Revolution it includes descriptions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, Georgia, Florida, New England, New York, New Jersey, Nova Scotia, Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland, and Canada.   view more...
£900.00
US$1346.22*
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 483
MENA, Antonio Manuel de.

MENA, Antonio Manuel de. ~ Estado general del Imperio Rusiano ò Moscovita, desde su origen hasta la toma de Azoff en la presente guerra. Tomo I... [Tomo II].

Madrid: Lorenzo Francisco Mojados,  1736-38.
First edition of this very scarce Spanish history of the Russian empire.The subtitle to volume one reads "Que contiene una introduccion à la historia de los czares, en que se trata del imperio Rusiano en general: descripcion geographica, hermosura, bondad, abundancia, comercio, y riqueza de aquella monarquia: de los diferentes pueblos, que habitan baxo de sus dominios, Lapones, Samoides, Ostiakos, Tartaros, etc. sus modales, habito, edificios, forma de vivir, armas, govierno, y religion; con todo lo demás perteneciente á una noticia general de la Moscovia. Y las vidas de todos los monarcas, que han sido dueños de Rusia, hasta la muerte del czar Juan Basilio el Cruel, que fuè año de 1584. Sur autor don Manuel Antonio de Mena."Volume two is subtitled: En que continuando la historia de sus czares, se contienen las vidas de Theodoro Basiliovitz, Boris Gudenou, Demetrio, Zuski, Ladislao, Miguèl Romanoff, y Alexo Michaelovitz, padre del esclarecido heroè Pedro el Grande, una relacion de las cerèmonias antiguamente observadas en las coronaciones de los czares, y una noticia del origen, fuerzas y progressos de los Cosacos.    view more...
£1250.00
US$1869.74*
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 487
[PAGANUCCI, Jean.]

[PAGANUCCI, Jean.] ~ Manuel historique, géographique et politique des négocians, ou, Encyclopédie portative de la théorie et de la pratique du commerce

Lyon: Jean-Marie Bruyset,  1762.
First edition of this scarce and very extensive commercial encyclopaedia. Among its numerous subjects are trade laws, tarrifs and treaties, weights and measures, currencies, trade goods (including silk, wool and cotton), agricultural products (including wine), spices and medicines. The scope is global with interesting entries for American and Eastern colonies.   view more...
£1250.00
US$1869.74*
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 488
MARESCALCHI, Ferdinando, Conte.

MARESCALCHI, Ferdinando, Conte. ~ Antonio e Cleopatra; tragedia.

Bassano:  1788.
First edition of this play. Marescalchi was born in Bologna, then in the Papal States, on 26 February 1754, into a noble family, he became a hereditary member of the Senate of that town. He later supported Napoleon in Italy and prospered under his patronage.   view more...
£300.00
US$448.74*
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 489
(FAUST, Johann). CAYET, Pierre-Victor Palma

(FAUST, Johann). CAYET, Pierre-Victor Palma ~ Histoire prodigieuse et lamentable de Jean Fauste, grand magicien avec son testament et sa vie epouventable.

"Cologne, chez les Héritiers de Pierre Marteau" [i.e. Bruxelles G. de Backer],   1712
A very scarce edition. The translation, first published in 1598, is the oldest French translation of the 1587 Spies edito princeps of Historia von Doctor Johann Fausten.   view more...
£650.00
US$972.27*
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 491
KNOTT, Johann Nepomuk.

KNOTT, Johann Nepomuk. ~ Praktische Grundsätze des Acker, - Wiesen-, Futterkräuter- und Gartenbaues, der Viehzucht und aller übrigen Zweige der Landwirthschaft...

Munich: Johann Baptist Strobel,  1792.
First edition of this agricultural handbook. It contains an interesting bibliographical table listing no less than 75 printed agricultural works in German.   view more...
£200.00
US$299.16*
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 494
MILTON, John.

MILTON, John. ~ Paradise Lost. A Poem in twelve books... the Ninth edition...

London: for Jacob Tonson,  1711.
   view more...
£600.00
US$897.48*
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 499
BURDON, William, Captain.

BURDON, William, Captain. ~ Le marechal de poche d'un cavalier, qui enseigne, comment se servir de son cheval en voyage et les remedes qui conviennent dans les maladies et accedents en route... traduit de l'Anglois par M. S. M. Officier Suisse.

La Haye: C. de Rogissart & Soeurs,  1737.
First edition in French, rare, of one the the most popular eighteenth century works of equestrian medicine: The Gentleman's pocket-farrrier. First printed in 1730, it was reprinted numerous times in the eighteenth century in England and translated for use on the continent. There were several French editions but the first is rare.   view more...
£925.00
US$1383.61*
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 860
TEXIER, [Alex Adrien de].

TEXIER, [Alex Adrien de]. ~ Les colons de toutes couleurs. Histoire d'un établissement nouveau a la côte de Guinée.

Berlin: George Decker,   1798.
First edition. A remarkable but little-known utopian novel set in Africa, exploring the theme of inter-racial marriage and relations between the inhabitants of "toutes couleurs". The work is revolutionary in every sense, applying the principles of 1789 to a newly-founded fictional colony, founded in Africa by refugees from the insurrection of Saint Domingue (later Haiti). Central to the novel is the marriage of Adrien and Zara, as an emblem of racial harmony. The fine plates depict mixed tableaux, notably the scene of a white woman suckling a black child, which graphically demolish the racial taboos of the previous era. Although several earlier novels had considered sexual relations between black and white, they almost always mirrored earlier stereotypes, with black protagonists in subordinate roles or as exotic interlopers: none provided a serious consideration of the possibility of complete integration of the type Texier describes.The work is dedicated to the Queen of Prussia (Princess Elizabeth Christine of Brunswick) and the first plate depicts the presentation of a portrait medallion to her husband, Frederick the Great. The fine plates were engraved by D. Berger, C. H. Grünler after J. D. Schubert and W. Chodowiecki.   view more...
£3250.00
US$4861.33*
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 639
 

(THEATRE). HOLCROFT, Thomas. ~ The choleric fathers. A comic opera. Performed at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden.

London: for G.G.J. and J. Robinson,   1785.
First edition of this very popular comic opera which brought Holcroft £140 over the course of seven performances.   view more...
£60.00
US$89.75*
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 916
BIENVILLE, D. T. de.

BIENVILLE, D. T. de.  ~ La nymphomanie, ou, Traité de la fureur utérine, dans lequel on explique avec autant de clarté que de méthode, les commencemens & les progrès de cette cruelle maladie, dont on développe les différentes causes; ensuite on propose lesmoyens de conduite dans les diverses périodes, & les spécifiques les plus éprouvés pour la curation.

Londres [Paris?],  1789.
The first full-length study of excessive female sexual desire, then considered both a medical and moral complaint. Nymphomanie was first published in 1771 and became something of a best-seller, running to several editions before the century's end. It was translated and printed in England in 1775. The "Londres" imprint of our French edition is certainly false. Among the causes of nymphomania, Bienville identifies eating rich food, consuming too much chocolate, dwelling on impure thoughts, reading novels, or performing "secret pollutions".   view more...
£250.00
US$373.95*
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 662
[CHEVRIER, François Antoine.]

[CHEVRIER, François Antoine.]  ~ Testament politique du maréchal duc de Belle-Isle.

"Paris: aux dépens des Libraires associés" [?Amsterdam],  1762.
First published in 1761 and also published in English in 1762. "Politique et social. Réflexions sur l'intolérance, qui est parfois nécessaire (mais dommages causés par l'émigration des protestants); les impôts, qui sont moins lourds que mal répartis; la néfaste célibat des prêtres; la nécessité des lois somptuaires, bien que 'le luxe qui perd un petit état en enrichit un grand'; le duel, qui peut mener à la destruction de l'espèce humaine; l'exemption d'impôts des pères de famille qui favoriserait la population..." (INED).   view more...
£75.00
US$112.18*
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 863
 

HOFFMANN, Friedrich. ~ Vollständige Anweisung zu einer sichern, vernünftigen und in Erfahrung stehenden medicinischen Praxi Medica, auss Hrn. D. Friederich Hoffmanns... Scriptis und Manuscriptis mit großem Fleiß verfertigt, zu Berförderung des gemeinen bestens heraus gezogen und in Ordnung gebracht.

Ulm: Daniel B. Sohn,  1736.
Second edition (first 1724) of Hoffmann's "Complete Instruction for a safe, sensible and medically respected practice of medicine": a very extensive baroque medical compendium.Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), a German physician, practiced and taught medicine, chemistry and physics in Halle from 1693. He studied and wrote on such varied topics as paediatrics, mineral waters and meteorology and introduced many new drugs into medical practice (such as a compound spirit of ether branded "Anodyne" and "Hoffmanns-Tropfen" still today known as a household remedy). Hoffmann was among the first to describe several diseases, including appendicitis and German measles, and to recognize the regulatory role of the nervous system.The work contains examinations of common ailments such as fever, infections, haemorrhageing, cramps, spasms and convulsions, consideration of the cerebral and nervous system, lymph and glands, female complaints and childhood illnesses. It also includes numerous medicinal recipes and cures.   view more...
£900.00
US$1346.22*
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 660
 

(LAW. Manuscript). GIGON DU BESSIX. ~ Dissertation sure les partages et les appanages de la maison de France.

[France],  1751.
An extensive manuscript treatise on the French system of apanages, probably unpublished. By the custom of apanage the younger sons of French kings were granted portions of the royal fiefs, which would revert to the crown on the extinction of the male line of each son. The system was deeply rooted in the politcal and legal structures of France and contributed greatly to the country's regional character.Gigon du Bessix, who had served as an avocat in the royal courts under Louis XV and his regents, cites several earlier (printed) works on the subject but seeks to present a comprehensive legal history of the subject. We have found no printed version of Gigon's text in any of the usual bibliographical sources.   view more...
£1600.00
US$2393.27*
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 575
LAFAYETTE, Marie-Madeleine de,

LAFAYETTE, Marie-Madeleine de, ~ La Princesse de Clèves.

"Amsterdam et se trouve a Paris" [probably Paris],   1786.
A nice copy of this famous novel, issued as volumes 4 & 5 of a set of the works of Madame de Lafayette, but bound separately here without the half-titles from the set and the spines numbered "I" and "II".The library of Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex was sold at auction in 1844-45.   view more...
£200.00
US$299.16*
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 872
[BIDPAI.] SCHULTENS, Henrik Albert, translator.

[BIDPAI.] SCHULTENS, Henrik Albert, translator. ~ [Fables, in Arabic.] Pars versionis Arabicae libri Colailah wa Dimnah, sive Fabularum Bidpai philosophi Indi / in usum auditorum edita ab Henrico Alberto Schultens.

Leyden: Henri Mostert,  1786.
The first printing of any part of the Arabic text of the Hindu Indian Fables of Bidpai (also known as the tales of Kalilah and Dimnah): the portion here published being the chapter of the lion and the ox. These animal fables originated in India but passed into Persia before 570 AD where they were translated first into Pahlavi and then into Arabic. The Indian original, together with the Pahlavi translation were then lost, leaving the Arabic version the only one available to later scholars and translators and the means by which the fables entered western literature. It was translated into many European language and exerted a defining influence on fabulists such as LaFontaine. The full text was not printed until 1816 in the edition of Silvestre de Sacy.   view more...
£1500.00
US$2243.69*
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 712
 

(GAMBLING). MOORE, Mr [Edward]. ~ The Gamester. A tragedy. As written by Mr. Moore, distinguishing also the variations of the theatre, as performed at the Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane. Regulated from the prompt-book. By permission of the managers. By Mr. Hopkins, prompter.

London: printed for John Bell,  1777.
Bell's Edition. The play was first published in 1753 and went on to a number of further editions. This edition was also issued as part of Bell's British Theatre, vol. 12.   view more...
£40.00
US$59.83*
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 661
 

(VIRGINITY. Manuscript.) ~ Traité de la Ste. Virginité; [Instruction sur la Vie Religieuse.]

n.p. [France],  1775.
An anonymous and probably unpublished treatise on female virginity, in French, and clearly intended as a practical manual for the instruction of novice nuns. The larger part is an extensive treatment of the religious purpose of the celibate life with examples from scripture and the church fathers and advice and instruction on the conduct that life. It provides lengthy discourses on the mental and physical temptations to be conquered: with chapters on the demeanour of the chaste and the avoidance of sinful thought and action. There are especially interesting passages on the face and the expressions of the devout, advising the avoidance of particular forms of gaze which might encourage temptation.The language is contemporary and vernacular, again suggesting practice rather than theory, and it might almost be described as conversational with a distinct first person authorial voice. The gender of the author is not immediately apparent, but it would be an interesting exercise to speculate upon the question through close analysis of the text.We have been unable to identify any contemporary printed text with this title suggesting that the work was either unpublished or circulated only in manuscript.   view more...
£1800.00
US$2692.43*
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 626
(DEVOTION. MANUSCRIPT PRAYER BOOK.)

(DEVOTION. MANUSCRIPT PRAYER BOOK.) ~ Catholischer Seelen Wecker worinnen Morgen- Abends- Mess Beicht und Com[m]union Gebetter wie auch Kräftige Lytaneyen Zum Trost und heyl der seelen Begriffen seynd.

[Germany], c.  1791.
A very decorative personal prayer book containing morning and evening prayer and private prayers to be said as an accompaniment to the mass. All are in German, including versions of the Agnus Dei and Pater Noster and there are long litanies of saints.The series of baroque illustrations is especially striking, with the eleven images including several emblems. 1. Christ recumbent on cross and shroud in a flower garden; 2. an angel leading the Christ child; 3. the Trinity (Christ seated beside the Father with the Dove of the Holy Spirit above); 4. The Virgin enthroned; 5. The Lamb of God (depicted above souls in Hell); 6. Mary Magadalen in her grotto, holding a skull; 7. the Holy Sacrament (the host with chalice); 8. The Sacred Heart; 9. King David with a harp; 10. Joseph with the Christ child; 11. Saint Anne teaching the Virgin to read.    view more...
£1200.00
US$1794.95*
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 603
(MEDICAL MANUSCRIPT.) (BARTHEZ, Joseph Paul).

(MEDICAL MANUSCRIPT.) (BARTHEZ, Joseph Paul). ~ Extraits du cours des vertus des Plantes, Par Mr. Barthez chancelier de l'université de medecine de l'année 1774.

[Montepelier:   1774 or slightly later.]
An extensive notebook on the medicinal virtues of plants, compiled by Joseph Marie Joachim Vigarous de Montagut from lectures given by the great physician Joseph Paul Barthez at the medical school at Montpelier. The lectures evidently comprised a very complete survey of the field and were arranged according to the Linnaean classification of plant taxonomy rather than a medical classification. Each plant is defined using Linnaean names and there follows a brief decription of its uses according a wide variety of previous writers. These include Cullen, Van Helmont, Boerhaave, Jussieu, Fernel, Gesner, Pringle, Fuller, Willis, Sydenham, Linnaeus and Floyer and Barthez's own opinion is then frequently recorded.Viagrous de Montagut evidently attended the Montpelier medical school from an early age. If he made his notes in or soon after they were delivered in 1774, then he must have been just 15 (having been born in 1759). 1774 was the year in which Barthez had been elevated to position of Chancellor at Montpelier. He had been born and educated at Montpelier, taking his doctor's degree in 1753, and then acting as a military physician before becoming joint editor of the Journal des savants and the Encyclopédie méthodique and later returning to Montpelier in 1759. He later became both physician to Louis XVI and an adviser to Napoloeon. He published several influential medical treatises and is remembered as a primary exponent of the theories of vitalism in explaining the nature of biological life.Barthez's autograph letter tipped in to this manuscript is of interest. Probably addressed to Vigarous himself, Barthez recalls having travelled with Vigarous' father as part of the "juri médical" and having recognised the many injustices he had suffered (quite probably in the aftermath of the Revolution). The letter seems to have been sent with a copy of one of Barthez's books. Vigarous published several works himself, including Cours élémentaire de maladies de femmes (1801).   view more...
£1500.00
US$2243.69*
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 908
(ALMANACH).

(ALMANACH). ~ Le Jockei, ou le confident de mes plaisirs. Almanach chantant. Pour la présente année.

Paris: Langlois, [An VII,  1798-99.]
An attractive almanach with the text of numerous songs. Le Jockei appears unrecorded in any of the usual bibliographical resources (CCFr, KVK, Worldcat etc). No copy listed in the Bn online catalogue.   view more...
£250.00
US$373.95*
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 856
 

(BREWING). [TOURNAI ORDONNANCES]. ~ Ordonnances de messieurs du magistrat de la ville & cité de Tournay des 26. 8bre & 15. novembre 1718, portant reglement pour les brasseurs & brasseuses, cabaretiers, cabaretires & débiteurs de bierres; comme aussi pour les commis & employez à la conservation des droits & impôts de cette ville, de même que pour les brouteurs, &c.

Tournai: Anselme du Puicht,  1718; 1721.
An appealing copy in fine original state, of the civic ordinances of the city of Tournai concerning all aspects of the beer trade: a trade which was then, as now, a central part of Flemish economy and culture. The civic ordinances, as in most Western European towns, were ultimately derived from medieval customary law. They are highly detailed and include regulations concerning brewing, distribution, wholesaling and retailing, prevention of adulteration, restriction on imports, the keeping of taverns, and taxation. Some of the ordinances are technical matters concerned with the brewing process, restriction of prices and record-keeping (brewers were required to record customers). Tournai was a French city until the end of the sixteenth century. In 1718 it would have been part of the Austrian Netherlands. Today it is in Belgium.   view more...
£1750.00
US$2617.64*
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 855
 

[HOLBERG, Ludvig, Baron].  ~ Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum novam telluris theoriam…

Copenhagen and Leipzig: Jacob Preuss,  1741.
First edition. The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift's Gulliver's Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to be set in the earth's interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth's crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth's cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems.Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages.   view more...
£2250.00
US$3365.54*
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 854
ROBINS, Benjamin.

ROBINS, Benjamin. ~ New principles of gunnery: containing, the determination of the force of gun-powder, and an investigation of the difference in the resisting power of the air to swift and slow motions. By Benjamin Robins, F. R. S.

London: for J. Nourse,   1742.
First edition."New Principles of Gunnery transformed ballistics into a Newtonian science. Galileo's vacuum theory was the only practical theory before 1742, but only for low-velocity mortars as demonstrated in Bélidor's Le bombardier français (1731). Robins made it applicable for gunpowder weaponry in general. His key contribution was the invention and utilization of the ballistic pendulum. With Huygens's law of pendulum motion and Newton's law of linear momentum, he deduced the bullet's impact velocity from the subsequent swing angle. Robins then used the ballistic pendulum to verify his interior-ballistics theory, relying on Boyle's law, the thirty-ninth proposition from book one of the Principia, and the pneumatic chemistry techniques of Francis Hauksbee the elder and Stephen Hales. By applying Newton's second law of motion to velocity measurements at varying ranges, Robins also obtained the air-resistance force acting on musket balls. This revealed the significant limitations of Galileo's vacuum ballistics theory and of Newton's air-resistance function when approaching the speed of sound" (Steele in Oxford DNB).Robins was born of Quaker stock in Bath. He was initially self-educated but was later taught by the Newtonian editor Henry Pemberton and became a significant exponent of Newton's physics. He had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1727. His New principles of gunnery was widely-read and was translated into German by Euler and also into French.   view more...
£950.00
US$1421.01*
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 671
[NERCIAT, André-Robert Andréa de.]

[NERCIAT, André-Robert Andréa de.] ~ Felicia, ou Mes fredaines....

"Amsterdam" [?Paris], n.d. [  1775.]
Probable first edition (according to Dutel's bibliography). Nerciat's novel, with its numerous examples of the heroine's unbridled lust, was described by Gay as "l'une des plus charmantes productions du siècle dernier". The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French describes it as "... a lively first-person narrative whose cheerful eroticism contrasts with the darker works of Laclos and Sade." It is one of the archetypal works of pre-Revolutionary erotica and was reprinted numerous times.The number of editions has bewildered bibliographers. Gay chose to place the illustrated Cazin editions first in the sequence (and does not list our edition). More recently, Dutel has suggested the more likely primacy of this undated, unillustrated "Amsterdam" imprint. Darnton lists the work among his 720 'forbidden books' (though he cites the Cazin edition) and notes 25 copies confiscated from Manoury at Caen.   view more...
£800.00
US$1196.64*
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 672
[DESBIEFS, Louis.]

[DESBIEFS, Louis.] ~ Sophie. Par M. D. B.

"A La Haye, et se trouve à Paris, chez Hochereau, l'a'né" [Paris],  1756.
First and only edition of a very scarce galante novel. According to Cioranescu, Desbiefs published all his known works (Passe-temps des mousquetaires ou le temps perdu; l'Heureuse victime; Nine and Sophie) between 1755 and 1756. The first of these consisted of 58 licentious stories and was reprinted by Gay in 1866. Sophie appears never to have been reprinted.The "La Haye" imprint is certainly false, and 'permission tacite' was granted at Paris on 18 novembre 1756 (CCFr catalogue).   view more...
£850.00
US$1271.43*
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 675
[GRAILLARD DE GRAVILLE, Barthelemy Claude].

[GRAILLARD DE GRAVILLE, Barthelemy Claude]. ~ Le Mage de Chica.

"Amsterdam, et se trouve a Paris" [probably Paris]: Cuissart  1759.
First edition, rare: a pre-revolutionary attack on feudalism and the French aristocracy through the thoughts of a wise man from a sacred caste of magi in an imaginary land. Graillard de Graville (1727-1764) was a Parisian journalist and writer. Worried by the effects of feudalism, the work solicits rebels to overthrow the anachronistic social structure of 1750s France. There is an extended explanation of why it has been necessary to create a fictional character, in which Graville spells out the faults of all of the existing Continents. Thus, he rejects America on the grounds that the Spanish have reduced all of the natives to ashes; Asia because they are too effeminate; Africa because 'mes Concitoyens ne pourroient souffrir qu'un Nègre eût les vertus d'un Européen'; and Europe because 'ce sont presque tous animaux de differentes especes, quoiqu'avec le même masque'. Having satisfied himself that no known land can furnish the perfect blend of the philosopher and the prodigy, he reluctantly reverts to the depiction of an entirely imaginary land of wise men.   view more...
£975.00
US$1458.40*
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 676
[CHOUDARD-DESFORGES, Pierre Jean Baptiste.]

[CHOUDARD-DESFORGES, Pierre Jean Baptiste.] ~ Mille et un souvenirs, ou les veillées conjugales, recueil d'Anecdotes véritables, galantes, sérieuses, bouffonnes, comiques, tragiques, nationales, étrangères, merveilleuses, mystérieuses, etc. Manuscrit trouvé dans les papiers d'une succession...

"Hambourg: chez les principaux libraires",  1799.
One of two editions of 1799, the first year of publication. A series of erotic anecdotes: "Ouvrage érotique, fort immoral, mis à l'index, par mesure de police, en 1825" (Gay).Towards the end of a successful and mainly respectable literary and theatrical career, Choudard-Desforges published (anonymously) 2 erotic memoirs, Le Poète (1798) and the present Mille et un souvenirs. Both were far from respectable and the latter was banned, though reprinted at least twice in the nineteenth century. A very rare book, there are 2 issues dated 1799. Both give Hambourg but one has the imprint "chez les marchands de nouveautés" (noted by both Gay and Cioranescu as the only issue of that year) and has 5 volumes and the other (ours), a different setting in a more "modern" typeface with the complete text in 4 volumes.   view more...
£400.00
US$598.32*
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 679

 ~ L'aventurier Chinois.

"A Pekin et se trouve a Paris chez Merigot le Jeune..." [?Paris],  1773.
First edition, rare, of an interesting philosophical novel which has been interpreted as a response to Voltaire's critique of optimisim in Candide. Reflecting the literary vogue for chinoiserie, the tale is set in China and the East Indies. It begins with an elaborate variation of the "lost manuscript" trope as an explanation of the origin of the text. The preface recounts how a Chinese philosopher loses a manuscript to a European merchant who makes a translation of it; while travelling onwards to Alexandria he purchases an Egyptian mummy and wraps it in the pages of his manuscript. Sending both mummy and manuscript to Paris, he finds them confiscated and is himself arrested on arrival. He is released and the mummy restored, while the manuscript somehow finds itself back in circulation aboard a ship of the Compagnie de Indes, travelling the world, where they were used to wrap some "petites miniatures assez indécents". The merchant miraculously comes upon them on a future trip to China, rescuing them and bringing them to publication (the latter playfully explaining the false Peking imprint). This preface is both an amusing variation on the trope and a wry comment on the politics of trade and confiscation of texts in pre-Revolutionary France.The tale itself has been extensively discussed as a repsonse to Voltaire, particularly in relation to the theme of women in an interesting article by A. Owen Aldridge, 'The Vindication of Philosophical Optimism in a pseudo-confucian imitation of Voltaire's Candide', Asian and African Studies 6, 1997, 2, p. 117-125.   view more...
£500.00
US$747.90*
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 681
 

GUYS, Jean-Baptiste. ~ La baguette mystérieuse ou Abizai.

La Haye, et se trouve à Paris, chez Duchesne,  1755.
First edition of a very scarce amorous novel in the oriental mode. A follower of Crébillon fils, Guys is described by Dufrenoy, in no uncertain terms, as one of the "Crébillonnistes décadents" who developed the more undesirable elements of the orientalist genre.   view more...
£400.00
US$598.32*
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 684
[MAYEUR DE SAINT-PAUL, François.]

[MAYEUR DE SAINT-PAUL, François.] ~ Le vol plus haut, ou l'espion des principaux théatres de la capitale; contenant une histoire abrégée des acteurs & actrices de ces mêmes theâtres, enrichie d'observations philosophiques & d'anecdotes récréatives. Dedié aux amateurs.

"Memphis: chez Sincere, Libraire réfugié au Puits de la Verité" [?Paris,]  1784.
First edition of a notorious libelle, directed against the Parisian theatrical world and some of its luminaries, usually attributed to the wayward actor Mayeur de Saint-Paul and occasionally to one or more associates: the arch-libellist Charles Thévereau de Morande, François Poultier and the actor Dumont. It includes a particularly grimy attack on the morality of the dancer François Nivelon (author of the English best-seller, Rudiments of Genteel Behavior) and a series of well-known actresses are accused of prostitution.This scurrilous exposé of several leading figures was not universally appreciated and the work was quickly banned. Robert Dawson found 43 copies listed in the registers of books held at the Bastille after having been confiscated at customs or elsewhere (Dawson, Confiscations at customs: banned books and the French booktrade, 2006, p. 258.)The work is here bound with an issue of Mayeur de Saint-Paul's earlier (and equally notorious) theatrical libelle: Le désœuvré. This issue has the title-page of the first edition (giving "Londres, 1781") but is without the preliminaries usually found with that edition. It is probable that these were never present in this copy and indeed it seems that there were several early issues with variant titles and pagination not fully ennumerated in the bibliographical catalogues.Both works are rare, having been subject to suppression over a long period of time.   view more...
£850.00
US$1271.43*
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 692
(MOLIERE.) ARTAUD, [Jean-Baptiste.]

(MOLIERE.) ARTAUD, [Jean-Baptiste.] ~ La Centenaire de Molière, comédie en un acte, en vers et en prose; Suivie d'un Divertissement relatif à l'Apothéose de Molière par M. Artaud; Représentée pour la première fois par les Comédiens françois ordinaires du Roi, à Paris, le jeudi 18 février 1773. Et à Versailles, Devant Sá Majesté, le mardi 3 mars 1773.

Paris: [C. Simon for] la Veuve Duchesne,  1773.
First edition. This celebratory comedy in honour of the centenary of Molière combined a cast of over 20 characters from his most famous plays. It was popular enough to have spawned a number of printed editions, with or without music, all roughly contemporary. Ours, with 70 pages and music is the most elaborate, with its ornaments by Beugnet. It is the only edition noted by Cioranescu.   view more...
£300.00
US$448.74*
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 695
[VADÉ, Jean Joseph.]

[VADÉ, Jean Joseph.] ~ Desserts de petits soupers agréables dérobés au chevalier du pélican, auteur du Déjeuné de la Rapée. Po'me Gaillardi-poissardi-marins-ironi-comique.

"De l'imprimerie de la joye" [?Paris],  1755.
First edition. A collection of popular and bawdy songs in the "poissarde" vein by the acknowleged master of this semi-ethnographic style, in which popular Parisian speech from the streets was transcribed in quasi-phonetic style. The publisher's catalogue lists a good number of other examples of publications in this style.This copy bears the inscription of Jules Bobin a close friend of J-K Huysmans and a colleague at the ministère de l'Intérieur. Bobin was a voracious bibliophile, specialising in the curious and occult.   view more...
£750.00
US$1121.85*
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 850
 

HOLBERG, Ludvig, Baron. ~ Voyage de Nicolas Klimius dans le monde souterrain, contenant une nouvelle téorie de la terre, et l'histoire d'une cinquiême monarchie inconnue jusqu'à present. Ouvrage tiré de la bibliothéque Mr. B. Abelin; et traduit du latin par Mr. de Mauvillon.

"Copenhague" [but Dresden]: Jaques Preuss,  1741.
First edition in French, published very shortly after the first Latin edition. The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift's Gulliver's Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to be set in the earth's interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth's crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth's cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems.Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages.   view more...
£1150.00
US$1720.16*
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 848
 

CHAUCER, Geoffrey. ~ The poetical works... in fourteen volumes. The miscellaneous pieces from Urry's edition 1721, the Canterbury Tales from Tyrwhitt's edition of 1775.

Edinburgh: Apollo Press, by the Martins,  1782 [-1783].
An excellent set of the works of Chaucer printed by the Apollo Press for the Bell's Poets series (which ran to 109 volumes). The Chaucer set was issued last in the series and is often to be found separately bound as an entity in its own right. It includes introductory materials from Tyrwhitt's edition, including the Life of Chaucer, textual notes and an excellent glossary. The distinctive engraved title pages represent one of the few 18th-century sequences produced prior to the Romantics and presents a refreshingly "ungothic" view.   view more...
£600.00
US$897.48*
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 709
 

(STERNE). GORGY, [Jean-Claude.] ~ Nouveau voyage sentimental. Par M. de Gorjy, (sous le nom d'Yorik). Nouvelle édition, beaucoup augmentée.

"Londres" [but probably Reims], Cazin,  1785.
A false London imprint of this imitation of Sterne by Gorgy. First published in 1784.   view more...
£125.00
US$186.97*
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* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.495795 for the day 10 March 2010 but liable to fluctuate.

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10 March 2010