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1. [ELLIS, Philip]. The first Sermon preach’d before Their Majesties in English at Windsor, on the first Sunday of October 1685. London: Henry Hills, 1686, pp. [4], 31, [1]. Upper forecorner of title neatly cut away (just touching one letter). Wing E595.

2. -- -- Second Sermon preach’d before the King and Queen, and Queen Dowager, in Their Majesties Chappel at St. James’s, upon All-Saints Day, November 1. 1685. London: Henry Hills, 1686, pp. [2], 32, [2] (advert). Wing E597.

3. -- -- The third Sermon preach’d before the King and Queen, in Their Majesties chappel at St. James’s, on the third Sunday in Advent, Decemb. 13. 1685. London: Henry Hills, 1686, pp. [2], 29, [1]. Small hole affecting a few words on recto and verso of final leaf. Wing E603.

4. CARTWRIGHT, Thomas. A Sermon preached upon the anniversary Solemnity of the happy Inauguration of our dread Soveraign Lord King James II. In the Collegiate Church of Ripon, February the 6th. 1685/6. The Second Edition. London: printed by J. Leake, and are to be sold by Walter Davis, 1686, pp. [6], 38. Title page and final leaf slightly inky with various pen tests, blots and stains. Wing C707.

5. ELLIS, Phillip. Sixth Sermon preach’d before the King and Queen, in Their Majesties chappel at St. James’s, upon the first Wednesday in Lent, Febr. 24. 1685. London: Henry Hills, 1686, pp. [2], 31, [3] (adverts). Wing E602.

6. BETHAM, John. A Sermon preach’d before the King and Queen, in Their Majesties Chappel at St. James’s, upon the Annunciation of our Blessed Lady, March 25. 1686. London: Henry Hills... sold by Matthew Turner, 1686, pp. [2], 32, [2] (advert). Wing B2060.

7. J. G., D.D. A Sermon of the Passion of our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ. Preached on Good-Friday. In his Excellencies the Spanish Ambassador’s Chappel. London: for Matthew Turner, 1686, pp. [4] (including initial blank), 34, [2]. Wing G40.

8. [DORMER, John]. A Sermon preach’d before Their Majesties in their Chappel at St. James’s the 25th. Sunday after Pentecost, November 17th. 1686. London: by Nat. Thompson, 1687, pp. [2], 30. Wing D1928.

9. ELLIS, Philip. A Sermon preach’d before the King and Queen, upon the second Sunday in Advent, being the fifth of December, 1686. London: Henry Hills, 1686, pp. [2], 33, [1]. Wing E599.

10. [DORMER, John]. A Sermon of judgement, preached before the Queen Dowager, in Her Majesties Chappel at Somerset-House; on the first Sunday in Advent. Being the 27th. of Novemb. 1686. London: Nat. Thompson, 1687, pp. [2], 32. Wing D1927.

First editions (save for 4. Cartrwright) of ten sermons delivered to the Royal Family at the Catholic Court of James II. Five are by James’s favorite, Philip Ellis, whose reputation as an orator began while still at Westminster School, where he was reputed to speak ‘ex cathedra like an angel’ and where he was referred to as ‘Jolly Phil’. He had converted to Catholicism while still at school and trod the path to Douai, entering the Benedictine priory of St Gregory. ‘After being ordained priest Ellis was appointed preacher-general in 1685 and sent to work in England. His abilities recommended him to the notice of James II, who appointed him one of his chaplains-in-ordinary and preachers. He was attached to the chapels royal at Whitehall, St James's, Somerset House, and Windsor, where he became known as 'the great pulpit man' of the Catholics, and a number of his sermons delivered between 1685 and 1687 were published...’ (Geoffrey Scott in Oxford DNB).

Also included is the powerful sermon on repentance preached to Charles II’s widow, Catherine of Braganza (’Queen Dowager’) by John Dormer, another Royal favorite.

Two rare and decorative Spanish ABCs for use in the schoolroom, each with decorative woodcut squares for the letters of the alphabet. The dated example (1868) depicts men and women in a range of roles and occupations (a bagpiper, children, drummer, florist, calendar seller, etc) within attractive roundels with palms,the captions of each are divided into syllables. This sheet is numbered ‘13, pliego 2’, indicating it was probably part of a series of educational plates (unidentified). The undated example is not numbered and has a different sequence of decorative squares illustrating a range of contemporary occupations: including a shoemaker, carpenter, dentist, barber, grape seller, doctor, organist and acrobat. In each case the letter of the alphabet is given with a corresponding number.

J. M. Marés was a prolific publisher of juvenile literature and chapbooks in Madrid. Worldcat lists a number of large-format woodcut sheets, but neither of these titles, nor any other ABCs.

First edition, the Duchesse de Berry’s copy, mounted on green silk, with her arms and the bookplate of the Bibliothèque de Rosny.

Picquet dedicated the map to Louis XVIII. The scale is approximately 1:17,200 (4000 m = 233 mm), the relief is shown by hachures, and this example is hand coloured in outline. The Journal général de la littérature de France, ou Répertoire méthodique (1816) noted: ‘L’exécution de ce nouveau plan est très soigné: il y a régne autant de netteté que d’exactitude. D’un moindre format que les plans ordinaires, il réunit dans un petit cadre tout ce qui distingue d’autres plans qui le précendent, et M. Picquet, déja avanteugeusement connu par plusieurs travauz géographiques, s’est acquis par là de nouveaux droits à la reconnaissance des amateurs et des voyageurs’.

Marie-Caroline, Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870) married Louis XVIII’s nephew, Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry in April 1816, twenty years her senior. Together they were among the pre-eminent collectors of their generation, amassing a fabulous library at the Chateau de Rosny (Normandy), before he was murdered on the steps of the Paris opera by a Bonapartist fanatic in 1820. The duchesse remained a principal patron of the arts, and a leader of taste, fashion and entertainment in Paris until the revolution of 1830. This Plan de Paris was lot 1871 in the de Rosny sale of 1837. Vallée, Catalogue des plans de Paris, 2371 (1816).

First edition. Reports from Tonkin, Cochinchina (parts of modern Vietnam) and China by missionaries of the the Séminaire des Missions étrangères de Paris, whose directors were then in exile in London. These letters (all dated) are first hand accounts by the bishops and other missionaries in the Far Eastern provinces and include numerous descriptions of local religion and custom, as a well as (sometimes violent) measure taken by Westerners against them. Printer James Coghlan (?1731-1800), originally a book binder, became the pre-eminent Catholic printer, publisher and bookseller in London in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, having taken over the stock of Thomas Meighan in 1774. ESTC: Cornell only in North America. CCFr: Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris only.

Second edition (first 1608, also Saint Omer). A martyrology by the Jesuit priest John Wilson (c. 1575-1645), master of the College Press at St Omer. ‘During the first half of the 17th century the English College Press at St. Omer, France, under the direction of John Wilson, SJ, was the most important source of the proscribed Catholic literature that nourished the piety and loyalty of English recusants’ (Catholic Encyclopedia). Wilson’s origins were in Staffordshire. He evidently converted as a young man and entered the English college at Rome in 1603, being ordained in 1605. He took over the St Omer press in 1608.

‘Although described in the title as an 'English Martyrologie', the calendar’s subjects are drawn from all parts of Britain and Ireland. Saints commemorated in the month of January, for example, include: ‘S. Meliorus Martyr’ of Cornwall, ‘S. Croniacke Confessor’ of Scotland, ‘S. Beno Priest and Confessor of North Wales’ and S. Eoglodius Monke and Confessor’ of Ireland. Organized by chronology rather than geography and mingling saints of different regions on the same page, Wilson’s text offers a vision of encompassing Catholicism that integrates multiple kingdoms, nations and peoples of the Atlantic archipelago’ (Highley, ‘’The Lost British Lamb’: English Catholic Exiles and the Problem of Britain’, in Baker and Maley, eds., British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, 2002). STC 25772; Allison & Rogers, Catholic Books, 890. ESTC: UK: Downside Abbey, National Library of Ireland; US: Brown, Folger, Huntington and Texas. CCFr: Louvain and Poitiers only.

First edition in English of the Jesuit Crasset’s Histoire de l’Église du Japon (1689).

First edition. Edward Jacob, antiquary and naturalist was born at Canterbury and was four times mayor of Faversham. He lived in a fine house in Preston Street and later at Nutts Farm, Leysdown, on the Isle of Sheppey. He had published his History of Faversham in 1774. Plantae Favershamienses was the fruit of many years botanizing and is an alphabetical catalogue of locally-occurring plants, with occasional notes on habitat (‘in the Brent marshes’, ‘about the Abbey pond’, ‘by the Road Sides near Sittingbourn’ etc) and with cross-references to the national floras of John Ray (1724) and William Hudson (1762). Jacob includes several notable Kentish plants outside the immediate vicinity of Faversham from information supplied by friends. The plate illustrates the Green Winged Orchid, then common in meadows around Faversham.

First edition of this translation of La Vida de Santa Teresa de Jesus by English Catholic convert, courtier and exile, Tobie Matthew. It is dedicated to the Queen of England, Henrietta Maria, who in 1642 was in the Hague attempting to raise money against the royal jewels for Charles’s cause in the recently erupted Civil War. A previous translation by Michael Walpole (1570-1625) appeared as The lyf of the mother Teresa of Iesus. (Antwerp, 1611). Wing T753; Clancy, English Catholic Books 1641-1700, 941.

Norbert Wiener's copy of the first English edition of Pierre de Latil's acclaimed introduction to cybernetics, sent to Wiener by the publishers as a review copy. Wiener was the immensely influential pioneering founder of the field of cybernetics and his review of the work headlines the text on the back of the dust-jacket: ‘I definitely think that it is one of the really good popularizations of cybernetics.’ The title was first published in 1953 in Paris as La Pensée Artificielle.

First edition (presumed first issue, being bound concertina style). A very rare and influential kimono design book by the Rinpa master, Kamisake Sekka. Koromogae (literally ‘change of clothes’) consists of 100 striking modernist fabric designs for kimonos, on double leaves. Sekka was an influential advocate for the wearing and design of the kimono among early twentieth-century Japanese women, encouraging the modernisation of its decoration and a closer liaison between producer and consumer.

Sekka is important for having fused traditional Japanese design with European modernism, the latter experience first hand in his visit to the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901. At the age of 36, Sekka travelled to Europe on behalf of the Kyoto local government to attend the Glasgow Exhibition. He stayed in Europe about six months researching European craft and design before returning to Kyoto where he served as an instructor at the School of Art and Design. ‘Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942) was one of Japan’s leading artists, designers and art instructors. His bold, visually dynamic designs and innovative approach to production made him one of the great visionaries of modern Japanese art and design’ (Kamisaka Sekka: Dawn of modern Japanese Design, 2012). Libraryhub (formerly COPAC) lists the BL copy only (and a copy of vol. 1 only at Manchester). Worldcat adds National Diet Libryyr (Tokyo) and University of Cincinnati only.

A rare caricature of domestic strife, Calcutta-printed by Scottish printmaker James Moffat (1775-1815), better known for his Indian topographical views popular among British colonial residents in India. A woman, dressed in a short shift, angrily pulls a bottle from the hand of a drunken man, who sits with his right fist raised and a cigar hanging from his mouth as smoke billows around his head. He holds onto a bottle with his left hand, a glass and pile of cigars at his elbow. The woman points with her left hand to a clock on the wall which shows the time as five past five. In the background on the left, a dark-faced, cloaked figure stands before the curtained doorway on the left.

‘Moffat was a Scotsman who arrived in India aged only 14, living in Calcutta from 1789 to 1815. He appears to have learnt his profession of drawing and engraving in India. According to Wynyard Wilkinson (‘The Makers of Indian Colonial Silver’, London, 1987, p. 137) he was apprenticed as an engraver to the silversmith John Ludvig Jacobi in 1789, and then worked from 1794-1804 for another silversmith John Mair and his successor firms, while engraving and publishing his own views. An advertisement in the ‘Calcutta Gazette’ in 1797 offering to produce ‘Picturesque copper-plate engravings’ led to a series of views of Calcutta and its environs.’ ?

Comprising excerpts (’secrets’) on the art of etching and engraving from Abraham Bosse’s Traité des manieres de graver en taille douce (first published in 1645), several other technical instructions, two medical recipes and a short account book of its owner, who evidently practised as an engraver, for the year 1693.

There are 9 selections from the opening of Bosse’s treatise, all concerning the preparation of the varnishes, acids and their application to the plate, plus the preparation of tools and points for etching, including an échoppe (or etching-needle) and techniques for controlling them on the plate:

La manière de faire le vernis dur pour graver a leau forte sur le Cuivre;... de faire la mistion du suif et huille pour couvrir les planches...;... pour faire la ditte eau forte;... dapliquer le vernis sur la planche;... de faire saicher le vernis sur la planche avec le feu;... de faire les pointe[s] et les eschopes pour graver au verny mol et deur;... de gouverner les pointes sur la planche; de faire le verny mol ensemble le moyen de sen servir et autre particularitez;... dapliquer le verny sur la planche;... de faire le vernix dur & mol seront blanc...

Added to this are recipes for two further varnishes, preparations of gold, silver and bronze (’larain albon’) and a method for transferring prints to glass. The medical recipes are for urine retention and inflamed eyes (’mal des hieux’).

The book has been used, briefly, as an account book, with c. 3 pages of interesting entries for 1693, noting several agreements made for engraving or other aritistic work, apparently in the vicinity of Marseilles. The writer paid 2 livres 2 sous to a Mademoiselle de Sieubert for four pictures (including one of children at play and a Saint Jerome); several figures are noted for plates either made or bought. In another entry over 200 livres are paid for a picture of Christ in the Garden by Bedeau (probably Pierre Bedeau, peintre ordinaire du roi, who died at Marseille in 1707).

The owner/maker’s name has been rubbed away from the cover, though the arms on the lower cover may be helpful in indentifying him. A note to the front pastedown, probably in a different hand gives the name of a Monsieur de Magny, rue de la Bucherie, Paris.

First edition of a spectacular panorama made from drawings by a British serviceman on the long sea voyage home to England. It depicts members of the Bengal Native Infantry on the march with horses, camels and elephants and includes a Hindu priest, native officers, water-carriers, laundry-men, sepoys, a coffee party, a ‘cart in which Native Females ride and ‘Fakeers denouncing their flying Friends’. The Bengal Native Infantry, comprising mainly indigenous troops, originated with the East India Company's Bengal Army and was central to British power in India; it was only disbanded after the Indian Mutiny (1857). William Ludlow was one of their British officers, apparently with numerous postings over a relatively long period, notably in the suppression of ‘Thuggee’ violence against British interests in Bengal.

This is also a very early British example of ‘zincography’, perhaps one of the earliest substantial projects in this media. In 1834, the Frenchman Breugnot obtained a 15 year patent for a new lithographic process in which zinc plates replace the more traditional lithographic stones. The Literary Gazette of 1834 contains a brief notice of specimen by Day and Haghe of this new process, the publishers of Ludlow’s remarkable large scale prints the following year. Abbey, Life 530. Copies are also known as folding plates in a cloth binding, or as loose plates sometimes mounted in albums, the rolled version, especially with the original box, appear very rare. Of all versions Worldcat lists copies at Brown, University of Minnesota, Zurich, National Library of Australia. The BL and the Lewis Walpole Library have a copies, in 6 original plates (each with 3 scenes, the Walpole copy uncoloured).

First edition. ‘... born at Calais, author of lively, licentious novels, widely read about 1800 (the favourite reading of Miss Crawley in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair)... During a riotous, dissipated youth this author returned to Calais on one occasion to find that his disgusted father had published notice of his death’ (Oxford Companion to French Literature).

Monsieur Botte was reprinted several times and seems to have found favour in 1803 adapted for the stage as M. Botte; ou, Le négociant anglais comédie en trois actes et en prose, imitée du roman de Pigault-Lebrun by Servières and Sutton de Clonard. The Critical Review describes an English edition of 1804 published by William Lane (of the Minerva Press), but if it was indeed published by Lane, we can find no trace of it in the usual catalogues.

First edition in French of The Banished Man (1794). Smith’s republican sympathies are well-known, but this novel marked a shift in her enthusiasm for the Revolution — it opens in 1792 with the impact of the Revolutionary wars and covers the execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793 as well as the radical period of the Terror. The introduction to Marquand’s translation serves as a retrospective review of Smith’s remarkable popularity in France. Worldcat lists the copy at Illinois as the only copy outside continental Europe. The UK’s Libraryhub (formerly COPAC) adds a copy at Birmingham.

A group reliures japonisantes on a series of Edinburgh-printed ‘Author’s Edition’ copies of these two American authors. This style of binding, with characteristic embossed gilt paper covers in Japanese style became a bibliophilic vogue in the 1880s, reflecting the tremendous enthusiasm for all things Japanese in contemporary Paris. It is most unusual to find them in this context, on a group of popular American titles:

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 1883. pp. xlviii, 212; 256, (without half-titles) [and] HOWELLS, William D. Their Wedding Journey and A Chance Acquaintance. 1882, pp. 320; 303, [1]; The Undiscovered Country, 1882, pp. 250; 4 pages of ads, 269, [1]; The Lady of Aroostook. 1882, pp. 204 191, [1]; The Rise of Silas Lapham. 1885, pp. 330; 320, [2]; A Forgone Conclusion. A Counterfeit Presentment and The Parlour Car. 1882, pp. 316; 228.

First edition of this very scarce collection of French caricatures of English ‘types’, men and women, including: an Oxford student, an auctioneer, a bus driver, a barmaid, a dressmaker, a chamber maid, a beggar and an invalid. Libraryrhub lists Bodley as the only UK location.

Three superb preliminary drawings for lithograph caricatures on the Civil War: Saturn is pleased to see it is not just he who devours his own children, as the figure of America in feathered head-dress gobbles up one of her people; American game animals congratulate themselves on the chaos of the war, which leaves them safe and sound; while the figure of Europe falls asleep watching the spectacle of war, which has been going on the same for two years.

1. Le vieux Saturne voyant avec plaisir qu’il n’ya pas que lui qui dévore ses enfants (168 × 212 mm).
2. Le Gibier américaine se felicitant de la Guerre civile qui lui laisse la paix et la tranquilité (170 × 212 mm).
3. Finissant par s’endormir à force de leur voir faire toujours la même chose depuis deux ans (182 × 230 mm).

These three images, by the pre-eminent French caricaturist of the day, were published as lithographs in the Paris journal, Charivari. Cham (1818-79), worked very much in the spirit of Daumier and contributed to the the Charivari for some thirty years; he had also created first French comic book (‘bande dessinée’), Histoire de Mr. Lajaunisse in 1839.

First edition in French and slightly revised edition of the author’s 1922 classic, Cocktails. How to Mix Them, which was the first book to print the recipe for the Sidecar. Vermeire, one of the most influential cocktail personalities of the past century, was a Belgian bartender who plied his trade in London during the European Golden Age before opening ‘Roberts’ in his home town of Knokke, Belgium. The volume includes recipes for Slings, Fizzes, Cobblers as well as recipes for medicinal drinks, such as the usual hot toddy for a cold, but also absinthe for a headache and champagne for seasickness. A very pleasing copy of this classic cocktail book.

A unique artist’s book. A powerful fusion of the Dance of Death with the creatures of a Medieval bestiary in De Bournazel’s extraordinary style. Tumbling figures, furtive forest creatures, and a grinning death’s head, combine in this meditation on human mortality, made as a visual diary of the artist’s own personal bereavement. Adieu Vat (an archaic French term of farewell) expresses the sense of incomprehension (a lone figure holds a placard reading ‘NON’, the only word in an otherwise wordless book), of anger, despair, ultimate acceptance and, occasionally humour and consolation. Made in 2016 the book has been retained by the artist until now.

Diane de Bournazel (b. 1956) creates books as ‘poems without words’ in her unique pen, ink and gouache style, filling each page with mazes of vegetation, mysterious borders, structures and figures, opening windows within pages allowing us to see behind and beyond them, suggesting a series of alternative worlds and narratives. Drawing on the universals of the cosmos, the natural world, of childhood and human relationships each of her books invite careful ‘reading’ and multiple interpretations. Collectors have found the books to speak for themselves, and the artist writes of her work simply as:

‘Poésie sans paroles.
Il s’agit bien de ça.
Mettre en images le monde et l’arrière monde,
Comme un poète mais sans mot dire’.

Her work is represented in private and public collections in France (including the Bibliothèque nationale), the United Kingdom and in the United States (Boston Athenaeum, San Francisco Center for the Book etc).