Poetry
London: Henry G. Bohn, 1846.
'Amsterdam: Joannem Blaeu' [but probably Paris,] 1668.
Glogau: Joachim Funck, [?1609.]
Paisley: James Paton Ltd., 1928.
Paris: F. Buisson, Mongie l'a'né and Frère l'aïné at Rouen, "An IX" [1801.]
'Grenoble, & se vend a Paris': Charles de Sercy, 1664.
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...
Bratislava: Joh. Adam. Kästneri, 1680 [but probably 1683].
[Geneva:] apud Henricum Stephanum, & eius fratrem Robertum Stephanum, 1566.
London: by M.F. for John Marriot, 1633.
New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1856.
London: for John Nutt, 1702.
First edition of the Restoration dramatist's celebratory poem in rhymed heroic verse on the future of the Hanoverian succession, bound like many of his works in a presentation binding under the instruction of the author, or even (as has been suggested) by the author himself. This example is without the armorial centrepiece found on many of his bindings: Settle habitually presented copies of his works to potential noble patrons and added their arms. Settle was a very prolific playwright whose reputation has perhaps been unjustly coloured by the attacks of contemporaries such as Dryden, who wrote of Settle's work: "free from all meaning, whether good or bad, / And, in one word, heroically mad" (Absalom and Achitophel). Certainly his language is extravagant, even bombastic, but this reflects Settle's genius for spectacle. In 1680 he had been engaged by the Earl of Shaftesbury to create a pageant for one of his anti-Catholic Pope-burning events in the City of London, a spectacle which was said to have cost £1000 to produce. view more...
London: Richard Thrale, 1638.
A cento in Virgilian verse giving the principal Biblical events from the death of Abel to the ascension of Christ, mainly concerning the life of Christ and the prophecies of his Messiahship, the text extensively revised and enlarged from the author's Virgilius evangelisans, sive, Historia Domini & Salvatoris Nostri Jesu Christi (1633). Ross was born in Aberdeen but spent much of his later life in England, being vicar of Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight from 1634 to his death twenty years later. He was a voluminous and well-regarded writer, and is best known for his translation of the Koran (from the French), the first version in English.This is an interesting copy, its binding bearing Tudor rose devices on the covers, a relatively late example of what was in any case a rare emblem among bookbinding tools. Our copy is without the printed title, like the copy (Universty of Minnesota) reproduced for Early English Books Online. It retains a neat stub, suggesting deliberate cancellation rather than loss. The book is known for the variances in its makeup, notably in the final leaves. In our copy there are stubs of 2 cancelled leaves before the final leaf (a cancel) the text ending correctly p. 312 and the imprimatur of William Bray dated 1637. view more...
Venice: "al segno della speranza," 1550.
London: [Chiswick Press for] Ellis and White, 1881.
London: printed for R. Hunter, 1825.
London: printed for J. Tonson; and sold by W. Taylor at the Ship in Pater-noster Row, 1719.
London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1891.
![(EROTICA). [SEDAINE, Michel Jean and Pierre Lalmand]](/photos/875/medium/875.jpg "(EROTICA). [SEDAINE, Michel Jean and Pierre Lalmand]")
"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...
London: A[nne].M[axwell]. and R[obert].R[oberts]. for Dorman Newman, at the Kings Arms in the Poultrey, 1682.
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...
"Venise: chez Pantalon-Phébus" [Paris: Cazin], 1780.
Edinburgh: Apollo Press, by the Martins, 1782 [-1783].
London: [J. Hay & Co. Edinburgh] for Longman, Hurst [and others] and John Anderson in Edinburgh, 1811.
Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1576.
Scarce Lyon edition of Polydore Vergil's second and most famous book De inventoribus rerum ("History of Inventions") in French, with an interesting later Lyonnais provenance. In this ambitious work, Vergil addresses questions of origin, from the origin of the gods, man and languages to the origin of wine and liqueurs, marriage, magic, medicine, poetry, drama, geography and law. Drawing extensively on the Bible and original Greek and Latin texts, the title was one of the new encyclopaedias which attempted to disseminate the learning made available by the Renaisance humanists. The title was first published in Venice in 1499, with a revised and expanded edition appearing in 1521 (with the origins of the Christian Church); our edition was translated into French by Belleforest. An Italian by birth, Vergil spent much of his life in Britain, principally working as a Papal envoy under the direction of Adriano Castellesi da Corneto. Feted on his arrival as a cultured Italian, he enjoyed enduring royal favour of Henry VII and went on to write an important English history, the Anglica historia.The book contains the bookplate of Justin Godart, lawyer and Mayor of Lyon, who was a leading figure in the French Resistance (heading the Comité du Front National clandestin de libération de la France Zone Sud) during the Second World War. view more...
Lyon: Melchior & Gaspard Trechsel, 1533.
First edition of two of the most influential and characteristic works by the renaissance physician and humanist, Symphorien Champier, colleague of Michael Servetus and François Rabelais at the Schools of Medicine at Lyons.In the Campus Elysius Galliae and Hortus Gallicus, Champier sought to reform the French pharmacopoeia and material medica, insisting that France had all the medical resources it needed in the form of herbs and medicinal plants without recourse to the exotic remedies espoused by the Arabic medical tradition. In doing this, Champier linked politics, culture, medicine and horticulture in praising the new cultural fertility of France (the Hortus Gallicus is dedicated to King Francis I). He cites various drugs known to be "pernicious and venomous" to Europeans, albeit perfectly suited to the inhabitants of other regions and other times (cf. Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: local knowledge and natural history in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 2007). Champier's thesis derives from his deep antipathy to the Arabic medical tradition: several of his many earlier works sought to purify Galenic and Hippocratic medicine of Arabic influence partly in the belief that by stripping away latter Arabic influence the physician was drawing closer to the pure Classical origins of western medicine. It also expresses his persistent critique of the occultist tradition, so deeply ingrained in medical theory and practice at the opening of the Renaissance.Champier's Renaissance attitudes to medicine may not have been original but they were certainly influential. Lyons was one of the most important centres of the Renaissance in France (witness his prominent contemporaries) and he was very prolific, writing or editing at least 45 individual books. Many of his works are hard to classify and their very diversity is typical of the spirit of the age. He has been criticised for attempting to uncover the truth by simply piling authority upon authority, drawing from history, poetry, philosophy, magic and medicine without distinction. This approach may be alien to the modern mind, but Champier wrote at the very beginning of the scientific Renaissance and his works are highly characteristic of the humanist cast of mind. "He shared with many humanists the capacity for oratorical exuberance. So that when Scaliger called him 'insolens, tumens, turgens,' perhaps this spirit should be interpreted as an indication that he was full of the 'spirit of the Renaissance,' that rare gas which the historical laboratory has never yet succeeded in holding in solution" (Thorndike). The three works here have separate titles but were almost certainly issued together. The Campus Elysius contains several additional tracts: De sanguinis missione; Epistola J. Champerii avunculo suo Symphoriano (dated 25 June 1532); Speculum medici Christiani (dedicated to Champier's son Antoine) and De Theriacâ gallicâ. The Periarcha is dedicated to Charles de l'Estang, protonotaire of Saint-Siége. Each work is notable for the careful typography characteristic of Champier's printed works: he worked closely with his printers (Dumaitre, Histoire de la medecine et du livre medical, p. 195).Symphorien Champier, was born into a bourgeois family at Saint-Symphorien-sur-Croise, near Lyon and studied at the University of Paris before 1495, when he matriculated at the medical school of Montpellier, which granted him his doctorate in 1504. He taught liberal arts in Grenoble and took a doctorate in theology in 1502. In 1509 he was appointed physician to Antoine Duke of Lorraine, who brought him to Nancy. Champier followed the duke several time to Italy, where he was involved in the battles of Agnadello (1509) and Marignano (1515). During his stays in Italy he won recognition as an academic teacher from the University of Pavia. In 1519 he became an alderman in Lyon, and for the last twenty years of his life he was at the center of the cultural Renaissance of that city, while simultaneously promoting the study of medicine by helping to found the College of the Holy Trinity and sponsoring translations of, and writing commentaries on, the works of Hippocrates and Galen. view more...
* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.503296 for the day 11 March 2010 but liable to fluctuate.
11 March 2010
![D[ONNE], J[ohn].](/photos/898/medium/898.jpg "D[ONNE], J[ohn].")
![[GRANT, Anne.]](/photos/9/medium/9.jpg "[GRANT, Anne.]")
