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BUCHANAN, George. ~ Paraphrasis Psalmorum Davidis poetica multo quam antehac castigatior; auctore Georgio Buchanano, Scoto, po'tarum nostri saeculi facilè principe. Adnotata sunt argumenta, & carminum genera. Accesserunt duae eiusdem Buchanani tragoediae sacrae: Jephthes, & Baptistes sive Calumnia.

London: Richard Field,  1592.
A rare London pocket edition of Buchanan's Latin verse paraphrases of the Psalms: "The work which more than any other has secured to [Buchanan] his eminent place among modern Latin poets. Buchanan's translation of the Psalms may fairly be considered one of the representative books of the sixteenth century, expressing, as it does, in consummate form, the conjunction of piety and learning which was the ideal of the best type of humanist" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature).Buchanan, though a Scotsman, travelled widely on the continent. The two plays, Jephthe and Baptistes, which also appear in our edition were composed at Bordeaux during a spell of teaching at the newly founded Collège de Guyenne (where Montaigne was among Buchanan's pupils). The Paraphrasis was begun at Coimbra (Portugal) where Buchanan had been teaching at the time of the Inquisition. He had gone to teach there in 1547, only to find the university soon overrun with Jesuits who observed his every movement and confined him to a nearby monastery to reform his humanist tendency towards satire (and the eating of meat in Lent). The Paraphrasis was the product of his penance: an unmistakeable triumph of humanist piety and scholarship. The work was dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots (and the dedication is repeated in our Elizabethan edition) who appointed Buchanan tutor to her son, the future James VI. It was first printed by the Estiennes in 1566, but was also printed in England in 1580 and 1583.   view more...
£875.00
US$1308.82*




[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*






CICERO, Marcus Tullius. ~ [The complete works, in Latin].

Paris: Simon de Colines & Robert Estienne,  1543-1547.
An exceptionally rare complete set of the Colines-Estienne Cicero in a handsome uniform binding. Publication of the 10-volume series was begun by Simon de Colines in 1543 and completed by his stepson Robert Estienne in 1547. Some of the the individual volumes are very rare in themselves, some never having been seen by Renouard, the bibliographer of Simon de Colines.Cicero was the supreme orator of the Roman Empire and was pre-eminent among the classical authors valued by Renaissance humanists: "The ancient writer who earned their highest admiration was Cicero. Renaissance humanism was an age of Ciceronianism in which the study and imitation of Cicero was a widespread concern." (Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources). Such was the stature of Cicero that the word "humanism" was often interchangeable with "Ciceronianism." In the sixteenth-century Cicero represented several ideals: his language and composition were a model for any use of language, particularly Latin. His works were, for the humanists, the epitome of eloquence. As a philosopher, he combined both wisdom and eloquence, a combination which became the Renaissance ideal. He was also a man of the world, embodying the highest ideals of the renaissance philosopher or politician. Needless, to say his works were at the centre of the university curriculum in the sixteenth-century, and demand for complete and accurate editions of all his works was consistently strong. Few such editions can match the utility and functional beauty of the Paris Colines-Estienne editions.The individual volumes comprise the following:I. [Orations]. Orationum volumen primum [-tertium]. Paris: Simon de Colines, 18 November 1543-1544. Three vols, 1: ff. 424; 2: ff. 348 (misnumbered 356, due to faulty foliation, which skips from 208 to 217), [2] (last blank); 3: ff. 359 (misnumbered 357 due to faulty foliation: ff. 320 and 321 numbered 312 and 319 respectively), [1]. All three titles within Colines's "Figura architectonica" border. Text in italic; capital spaces with guide-letters. (See Renouard, Estienne, p. 70, note ad 14.). Appended to Part 2 are two Latin elegiac poems by H. Sussannaeus, addressed, respectively, "Ad Ioan. Gelinum Britonem Dioeceseos Briocensis" and "Ad Anianum Samesmynum Aurelium."II. [De Officiis & other philosophical works]. Officia diligenter restituta. Eiusdem De amicitia, & De senectute... Paradoxa, & Somnium Scipionis. Cum annotationibus Erasmi Roterodami, & Philippi Melanchthonis. Item, Annotation[ibus] Bartholomaei Latomi in Paradoxa. Paris: S. de Colines, 1543. ff. 174, [48] leaves. Title neatly backed, presumably at time of binding. With the comments of Erasmus and Melanchthon.III. [Philosopical works]. De Philosophia, prima pars [Philosophia volumen secundum]. Paris: Simon de Colines, May 1545-10 October 1545. Two vols, 1: ff 317, [3] (last two blank); 2: ff. 256. Colines's "Tempus IV" device on both titles. Texts in italic, capital spaces with guide-letters. Last leaf torn with loss of blank lower forecorner, neatly repaired by backing at time of binding. The full titles are (Vol. 1): De Philosophia, prima pars, id est, Academicarum quaestionum editionis primae liber secundus, editionis secundae, liber primus. De finibus bonorum & malorum libri V. Tusculanarum quaestionum libri V; (Vol. 2): Philosophia volumen secundum, id est, De natura deorum libri III. De divinatione libri II. De fato liber I. De legibus libri III. De universitate liber I. Qu. Ciceronis de petitione consulatus ad M. fratrem liber I.IV. [Letters to His Friends]. Epistolae familiares, diligentius quam quae hactenus exierunt, emendatae. (Edited by Claude Chaudière). Paris: Simon de Colines, 8 February 1545. Ff. 327, [8] (last blank). Colines's "Tempus IVb" device on title (being a variant of "Tempus IV", here signed with the cross of Lorraine). Text in italic, headings in roman, index in smaller roman; extensive use of Greek. A rare book of which we can locate only one other complete copy (Glasgow, an incomplete copy was described in Schreiber's Colines catalogue [no. 218], then believed to be unique). Renouard, whose note for this edition is particularly garbled and incomplete, states that this is the only Colines imprint to bear Henri [sic] Estienne's device. The text was overseen by Claude Chaudière, Regnault's son. In the preface Claude Chaudière emphasizes his position as Colines's grandson on his mother's side, and the care he has taken in establishing the text. After Colines's death, in 1546, Regnault and Claude were to take over his printing house. Ff. TT3-6, comprise Chaudière's Latin translations of Cicero's Greek citations: "Graecorum quae in his epistolis sparsim interferuntur, Latina interpretatio", and some passages concerning Cicero from Catullus, Quintilian, Silius Italicus, and Pliny the younger.V. [Rhetorical Works]. Rhetoricorum ad C. Herennium. lib. IIII. De inventione lib. II. Topica ad Trebatium lib. I. Oratoriae partitiones lib. I. Paris: Simon de Colines, 1545. Ff. 218, [6] (last two blank). Colines's "Tempus V" device on title (its first [and only?] use: reproduction in Renouard, p. 404). Text in italic; use of Greek.VI. [De Oratore]. De Oratore ad Quintum fratrem lib. III, etc. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1546. Ff. 281, [3]. Estienne device on title. VII. [Letters to Atticus & Brutus]. Epistolae ad Atticum [Epistolarum ad Brutum liber]. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1 April 1547. Two parts in one volume: ff. 336 and 142, [2] leaves (last blank). Estienne device on title.   view more...
£4400.00
US$6581.50*














 

DONNE, John. ~ Biathanatos. A declaration of that paradoxe or thesis, that self-homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise. Wherein the nature, and the extent of all those lawes, which seeme to be violated by the act, are diligently surveyed.

London: for Humphrey Moseley,  1648.
First edition, second issue, giving the date '1648'. Keynes suggests that the work was first published in 1647, since although it is undated, it first appears in the Stationers' Register in the autumn of 1646. The second issue uses the unsold sheets of that first issue with a cancel title.Donne frankly admits his fascination for the act of suicide in his Preface "...whensoever any affliction assailes me, mee thinks I have the keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presentes it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword." He chose not to publish his meditations on the subject and only circulated the Biathanatos among friends in manuscript. He sent a copy to Sir Edward Herbert, and, in 1619, another to Sir Robert Karre, writing: "It was written by me many years since; and because it is upon a misinterpretable subject, I have always gone so near suppressing it, nor many eyes to read it: onely to some particular friends in both Universities, then when I writ it, I did communicate it: And I remember, I had this answer, That certainly, there was a false thread in it, but not easily found: Keep it, I pray, with the same jealousie; let any that your discretion admits to the sight of it, know the date of it; and that it is a Book written by Jack Donne, and not by D. Donne: Reserve it for me, if I live, and if I die, I only forbid it the Presse, and the Fire: publish it not, but burn it not; and between those, do what you will with it'"(cited by Keynes). It was published posthumously by John Donne the younger, and dedicated by Lord Herbert's sone Phillip.   view more...
£3000.00
US$4487.39*










(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*











 

GOWER, John. ~ De Confessione Amantis.

London: Thomas Berthelet,  1532.
Second edition of Gower's great Middle English poem, completed about 1390 and dedicated to Richard II. Gower is chiefly remembered as a friend of Geoffrey Chaucer and his Confessio Amantis is frequently cited as the origin of William Shakespeare's play Pericles (who's story is taken from book 8 of the Confessio) but he should be accepted in his own right as one of the great pioneers of English literature.The plan of the Confessio was doubtless borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, and consists of a dialogue first between the poet, in the character of a lover, and Venus, and afterwards between the poet, in the character of a penitent, and Genius, whom Venus assigns to him as a confessor. In the conversation between the penitent and the confessor the seven deadly sins are discussed and illustrated from Gower's encyclopaedic knowledge of Ovid, Josephus, Vincent de Beauvais, Statius, the Gesta Romanorum, the Bible, and other sources. In the eighth book, having described the duty of a king and prayed for England, the poet bids farewell to earthly love. The work is a profound meditation on human love and morality and in Gower's own words in the Prologue it was "a boke for Englondes sake".The work survives in numerous early manuscripts (attesting to its immediate popularity) and was first printed by Caxton in 1474. Thomas Berthelet's edition of 1532 is considered textually superior to Caxton. Pforzheimer notes that the "edition was printed from a manuscript, resembling MS. Bodley 294, but inferior in correctness, collated with Caxton's edition from which several passages lacking in the manuscript were supplied. In the prefatory note 'To the reader' Berthelet included the alternative form of the introductory lines Prologue 24-92, also from Caxton's edition, so that on the whole this edition is textually an improvement over the earlier one. It is also a good example of workmanlike printing much above the average English work of the period" (Pforzheimer). The third edition of 1554 is merely a paginary reprint of the present.The early ownership inscription of William Sotheby is dated 1532. This copy is handsomely bound in the style of Mackinley for the Earl of Stafford, among the richest men in England at the opening of the nineteenth-century. The Earl was himself a latter-day member of the Gower family (he claimed descent in the male line from Sir Alan Gower of Stittenham, supposedly sheriff of York at the time of the conquest). Several antiquaries had previously suggested that the poet's origins lay in the same place, so this would have been a fitting acquisition for the Earl.   view more...
£15000.00
US$22436.93*





HALIFAX, [George SAVILE, Marquis of]. ~ Conseils d'un homme de qualite a sa fille.

London: Matthew Gillyflower,  1697.
A very rare French edition (albeit with "Londres" imprint) of Halifax's Advice to Betty, a counsel for young ladies of high birth on how to behave and manage themselves despite the prevailing inequalities of the sexes. Halifax wrote the book for his young daughter and it was only intended to be privately circulated; however, a pirated edition appeared in 1688 as The Ladies New-Year's Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter and by 1765 it had reached its fifteenth numbered edition, with translations also appearing in French and Italian. An edition with the imprint "chez Jaques Partridge à Charing-Cross, & Matieu Gilliflower dans Westminster-Hall", had appeared in 1692, and ESTC does not list this 1697 edition. Bound with the probable first edition of La Chalotais' revolutionary programme for an enlightened public system of education. The Essai was praised by Voltaire and was widely reprinted in its first year. Several issues are dated 1763, and ours is usually (though not bibliographically certainly) considered the first. La Chalotais was instrumental in dismantling the apparatus of Jesuit education in France, and his programme is his proposal for its replacement. Based on the acquisition of reason before the considerations of religion, the system divides education into primary (up to 10 years) and secondary phases and he here considers the relative merits of letters, history, geography, natural history, mathematics, physics (including astronomy and mechanics), literature, logic and metaphysics. Any study of religion is confined to a tertiary phase.   view more...
£950.00
US$1421.01*



 

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*


 

[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*












LOVEDAY, R[obert].  ~ Loveday's Letters Domestick and Forrein. To several persons, occasionally distributed in subjects philosophicall, historicall, & morall. By R. Loveday Gent. the late translator of the three first parts of Cleopatra.

London: J.G. for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Corn-hill,  1659.
£850.00
US$1271.43*


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
US$2243.69*


(MANUSCRIPT NOVEL). ~ [A fictional narrative of the adventures of Valsain and Aspaisie and their friends Qisnhy and Carithe in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Northern Europe and America.]

[?France c.  1800-1801.]
A manuscript novel, almost certainly authorial and unpublished. It is in part a series of imaginary voyages, with a strongly utopian flavour, but fused with various other literary tropes, notably a captivity narrative and strong elements of the eighteenth-century French romans philosophiques and romans du sérail. It also contains long passages of social and political commentary upon the major European powers. This is a remarkable and wide-ranging text, clearly written over a considerable period of time, with several changes of style and with substantial additions and revisions: all in a single hand. The hero, Valsain (a French-born Knight of Malta) is a model of the universal man: widely travelled and educated in the languages and customs of many countries.In the first draft of the manuscript, the action begins almost immediately with the arrival of the Napoleonic fleet off Malta en route for their famous Nile expedition, which Valsain promptly joins. However, a lengthy addition occupying the final 11 pages, tells the story of his life before this and his adventures in North America where he lived for several years after the Wars of Independence, taking his chances as a soldier (a naval engagement between American and British ships is described) and his engagement to an American girl. The engagement was broken only by his need to return to France on a lengthy and much-delayed passage of eighteenth months, finding on his arrival a series of long-out-of-date letters from her family asking for news and finally giving up hope of seeing him again. He also made several expeditions to the Greek Islands, Constantinople, Smyrna and Alexandria. Valsain's adventures with Napoleon are short-lived, since he is captured on his return from Egypt and imprisoned in a cave, from where is rescued by a couple of young women. One of them, Aspasie, a native of the Greek island of Naxos, becomes his lover. In the manner of the conte orientale, she tells him her tale: an education with a French tutor on Naxos, her kidnapping and imprisonment in the harem at Alexandria and her escape from Osman Bey's household when in Egypt. Aspasie is cast as a perfect counterpart for Valsain: noble, European-educated (a perfect fusion of French and Greek culture) but with an uncommon knowledge of the languages and ways of the East. The couple settle on an island in the River Nile, the very model of the utopian household, soon finding another counterpart to their own lives in their friends Qisnhy and his wife Carithe, natives of Abyssinia who came to Egypt with a trading caravan. Conversations between the friends allow the author to engage in a series of allegories: with Qisnhy recounting a series of semi-magical journeys to unknown countries (glossed in the margin in the author's hand: Russia, Poland, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey etc). The descriptions of Britain and France occupy several pages and are clearly comments on the contemporary situation. Britain is characterised as rich, busy and commercially successful but damned by a corrupt political and legal system based on antiquity: two emblematical scenes are recounted: a typical British boxing prize-fight and the sale of a wife. France, by contrast, is depicted as economically troubled by former political strife but blessed with a powerful, visionary and energetic leader, clearly Napoleon himself.The final part of the narrative recounts the return of Valsain and Aspasie to their spiritual and cultural home in Napoleonic France: where Aspasie refinds her French tutor and Valsain finds himself in the service of the Emperor.This text is a significant discovery: and can be read as a richly-layered reflection of cultural attitudes in France at the height of Napoleonic enthusiasm. It contains important cross-cultural reflections on the characteristics of the inhabitants of the world, and the relative importance of innate "natural" traits, language, culture, religion, politics and education. The story is audacious in scope: linking the culture of the Orient with that of Europe and America in the adventures of a single hero, provoking a chain of questions on the European encounter with the rest of the world at this crucial moment of French expansionism and youthful American independence. As a source-text for understanding the nature and extent of Orientalism in France, the story of Valsaim and Aspasie is surely unique.The authorship of the manuscript is, at this stage, unknown. It is interesting to consider the gender the anonymous author. A notable feature of the text is a consistent interest in gender relations and especially in the position of women in society. Those societies (particularly British) which underestimate the potential of women are censured and Aspasie herself is seemingly offered as a model of female culture and education and a perfect equal to her mate, Valsain. One of the many long asides has Aspasie describing the origins and childhood of tutor, Amelie and the sources of her own model education.   view more...
£8000.00
US$11966.36*



[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.
£850.00
US$1271.43*


MILTON, John. ~ Como, Dramma con Maschere … rappresentato a Ludlow Castle, nel 1634, in presenza di Giovanni Egerton … Traduzione sostenuta ad litteram // Comus, Masque … représenté au Chateau de Ludlow, en 1634, devant John Egerton … Traduction littérale …

Paris, De l'Imprimerie de Charles Crapelet  1806.
£800.00
US$1196.64*















PASSE PARTOUT (Le) galant par Monsieur **** Chevalier de l'Ordre de l'Industrie & de la Gibeciere.  ~ 

'A Constantinople [i.e. Holland?], A l'Imprimerie de Sa Hautesse',   1710.
£400.00
US$598.32*




ROSS, Alexander. ~ Virgilii evangelisantis Christiados libri XIII. In quibus omnia quæ de Domino nostro Iesu Christo in utroque Testamento, vel dicta vel prædicta sunt, altisona divina Maronis tuba suavissime decantantur…

London: Richard Thrale,   1638.
£825.00
US$1234.03*



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*













(STUART, Charles, Baron Stuart de Rothesay). ~ [5 fine blue morocco bindings by Simier from the Rothesay collection.]

  1640-1650.
£3400.00
US$5085.70*





















































 ~ 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*


[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.
£550.00
US$822.69*


BUCHANAN, George. ~ Psalmorum Dauidis paraphrasis poetica, nu[n]c primùm edita, authore Georgio Buchanano... Eiusdem Buchanani tragoedia quæ inscribitur Iephthes...

[Geneva:] apud Henricum Stephanum, & eius fratrem Robertum Stephanum,  1566.
£700.00
US$1047.06*


















£650.00
US$972.27*


£525.00
US$785.29*



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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