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First edition. Nicolas Upton’s De Studio militari was first written in 1447 and circulated in manuscript. ‘It is a treatise, in four parts, on heraldry and the arts of war, drawing heavily on a tradition of heraldic and legal writing, but also reflecting contemporary concerns. The first book elaborates a view of nobility and knighthood that recognizes the importance of virtue, but which also attaches importance (as Bartolo da Sassoferrato had done) to princely authority in the granting of arms. Upton voices the topos of the decline of chivalry, as well as contemporary aristocratic concern that too many low-born men were acquiring arms in wartime. The second book discusses various types and laws of war (using Giovanni da Legnano's Tractatus de bello), a theme carried over into the fourth book with treatment of Henry V's campaign statutes. For the third book, on the colours of heraldry, Upton relies, though not slavishly, on the treatise of Johannes de Bado Aureo (possibly Bishop John Trevor of St Asaph's). The fourth draws also on French treatises and especially on encyclopaedias (such as Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum) for the meaning of heraldic signs (animals, birds, fish, flowers, and ordinaries); but the extended list, in 195 sections, also reflects a growing demand for (and disputes over) coats of arms’ (Oxford DNB).

It is followed in this first printed edition by jurist Henry Spelman’s Aspilogia, a Latin treatise on coats of armour, which, although probably written before 1595 had not previously appeared in print. It opens with a fine portrait of Spelman by Faithorne.

Magistri Johannis de Bado Aureo Tractatus de armis (Wing J744) and Henrici Spelmanni equitis Auati aspilogia (Wing S4919) each have separate dated title page, with imprint ‘typis R. Norton’, pagination and register.
In Nicholaum Uptonum Notæ (caption title) has separate pagination but the register is continuous from Auati aspilogia. The illustrations are signed by W. Hollar and Ro. Vaughan. The two double page engraved plates by Lombart are on paper with clear and visible foolscap watermarks. Wing (CD-Rom, 1996), U124
Wing (CD-Rom, 1996), J744
Wing (CD-Rom, 1996), S4919

KingVictorian Decorated Trade Bindings 36 ( variant of this binding by Robert Dudley).

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 735 (Albert Warren, King’s example in blue).

Not in King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings.

Not in King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings.

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 361 (Red, John Leighton).

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 361 (John Leighton).

Not in King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings

A comprehensive descriptive catalogue of the published works of Mariette Lydis 1922-1940, including several unique items. With an introductory essay and bibliography.

First edition. A preface explains the etymology of the novel’s subtitle: Cigisbéisme [’cicisbeism’] — the custom, probably of Italian origin, of a married woman keeping an additional male companion, either Platonic or otherwise. Its author, Durdent, produced several other novels and a translation of Edgeworth’s Fanny. Despite its promising subject matter, Clémentina appears to have gone almost entirely unnoticed by contemporary reviewers.

This copy is complete with spine labels (two for each volume) printed on the verso of the title-page of the second volume. Thankfully, they have not been used in binding here (which has black labels lettered in gilt supplied by the binder) since their use would entail sacrificing the title page. It seems an odd place to print them, and where such printed title-pages have been encountered elsewhere they have been printed on a blank. Worldcat: Cambridge (England) and Toronto only.

First edition. A novel illustrating the contemporary vogue for fiction based on the records of the French law courts. A contemporary reviewer in the Revue encyclopèdique savaged the novel itself but evidently found the 38-page introduction interesting - being a commentary on the merits of the relatively recent development of trial by jury in France. The book found several other reviews in the same year and evidently divided opinion. The Revue bibliographique du Royaume des Pays-bas simply noted ‘Cet ouvrage a été saisi par la police’.

Dubergier, who did not put his name on the title, was prolific both as a translator from English and as a novelist in his own right — usually favouring popular literature of the Walter Scott variety, sometime with Scottish or Irish settings. Querard, 11, p. 115. Worldcat lists the Bn and Princeton copies only.

First edition. This important anti-slavery act, now approaching its bicentenary, was a direct result of the formation of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823, and renewed political agitation by key abolitionist figures such as Wilberforce and Clarkson. The society was founded on 31 January 1823, when a group well known for their opposition to the slave trade met at the King’s Head tavern in the City of London. ‘Its purpose was to rouse public opinion to bring as much pressure as possible on parliament, and the new generation realized that for this they still needed Clarkson... He rode some 10,000 miles and achieved his masterpiece: by the summer of 1824, 777 petitions had been sent to parliament demanding gradual emancipation’. Also in this year, Wilberforce published his Appeal to the Religion, Justice and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire in behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies, in which he ‘dwelt on the moral and spiritual degradation of the slaves and presented their emancipation as a matter of national duty to God. It proved to be a powerful inspiration for the anti-slavery agitation in the country’ (Oxford DNB).

‘The Consolidated Slave Act repealed previous legislation on slavery and brought together all slave laws into one act. The act was designed to eliminate the more vicious provisions of the West Indian slave codes while simultaneously setting out new guidelines for the better treatment of slaves and free people of color. As recommended by the commission, the act included clauses that facilitated manumission’. Newton, ‘The King v. Robert James, a Slave, for Rape: Inequality, Gender, and British Slave Amelioration, 1823-1834’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 47, no. 3, 2005, pp. 592-3. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3879392. Accessed 12 Mar. 2024.

First edition. Boydell’s tables allowed dealers in beer, wine and spirits to accurately assess the true contents of part-used casks through measurement of ullage (the empty portion of any barrel) — an essential calculation in tax and excise assessments. Several new editions were advertised in the nineteenth-century but all editions are rare.
The author was probably the same Boydell who described himself as ‘ships-husband’ on the title of his The Merchant Freighter’s and Captains of Ships Assistant - Being Tables Calculated with the Greatest Accuracy (‘London: printed for the author... and to be had at Lloyd's, the New York, the New England, the Jamaica, and the Pensylvania coffee-houses; and of any bookseller in Great Britain, 1764). ESTC: Leeds, NLS, Glasgow, St Andrews, U Kentucky, UVA, Saint Olaf (MN) and State Library of Tasmania.

First edition with the Lydis illustrations, of Colette’s coming-of-age novel (first published in 1900-3 with debatable contribution from her then-husband, Willy). This is copy number 88 of 100 on pur fil Lafuma with plates in 2 states, after copies on Japon and Hollande, of a total edition of 1585 copies on different papers. There was mutual admiration (and perhaps more) between Colette and Lydis, the former having written an admiring note on the artist for the programme of the 1934 Bal des petits lits blancs, which Lydis had illustrated.

A rare physionotrace portrait of Henry Walter Livingston (June 12, 1768 – December 22, 1810) a United States Representative from the state of New York. He graduated from Yale College in 1786 where he studied law and was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in New York City. He was private secretary to Gouverneur Morris, American Minister Plenipotentiary to Paris, France, 1792-1794; judge of the court of common pleas of Columbia County, N.Y.; member of the State assembly in 1802 and again in 1810; elected as a Federalist to the Eighth and Ninth Congresses (March 4, 1803-March 3, 1807). He died at his home in Livingston, New York on December 22, 1810 and is interred with his wife in a vault there.

Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes). The process was introduced to America by Charles Saint-Mémin.

The miniaturist Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.

A rare physionotrace portrait of David Watson (1773–1830) was a lawyer, educated at William & Mary College (1796-1797) and (with Jefferson) a member of the first Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia in 1817. He and known to have been a confidant of Thomas Jefferson and other notable figures of the period. He was elected six times to the General Assembly and represented Louisa County at the 1829 Constitutional Convention.

Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes). The process was introduced to America by Charles Saint-Mémin.

The miniaturist Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.

First edition of this Covenanter propaganda pamphlet of the era of the Bishops’ Wars, purporting to offer intelligence as to the parlous and divisive state of the English nation, particularly the English forces, who the author ‘L.D.’ claims to have infiltrated. It is full of fascinating gossip and opinion, albeit mainly fictional, sometimes in verse form.

‘What will you fight for a Booke of Common Prayer?
What will you fight for a Court of High Commission?.... [English]
Wee fight to have our true Religion stand:
Wee fight to keepe our Lawes unvilified...’ [Scots].

The spy-narrator recounts various sorties into England. At Canterbury he visits Becket’s tomb and scrawls on the cathedral wall, hears a sermon at Lambeth, visits Guy Fawkes’s house and reports a dissolute Whitehall, with the King having fled. Wing L10 (another edition of 22 pages is L11); Thomason E.153[22].

A superb ‘game of goose’ on the theme of the peoples of the known world, with fine engraved corner vignettes representing Africa, America, Europe and Asia and 63 vignettes representing different peoples. They include native Americans (of California, Mexico, the Amazon, Iroquois, Brazil, Chile, Tierra del Fuego, Paraguay and Nootka Island), inhabitants of Java, Sumatra, China, Japan, Tahiti, Australia (Nouvelle Hollande) and New Zealand, as well as Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In common with other games of this type, the cultural attitudes represented by the symbolism and mode of play is worthy of decoding. With dice and counters, the players are to navigate (culturally, not geographically) from China (evidently still at the furthest reaches of the European geographical imagination) to France, via the 63 numbered squares, with their various characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Mexico (square 6) is shown as a bridge and players landing there jump straight to square 12 (the Amazon); at 19 (Tahiti) the islanders’ hospitality detains players for two turns; at 31 (Siberia) the players waits in exile until another player reaches the same square and rescues them, at square 42, traditionally the ‘puzzle’ square (Japan) the player is refused landing and goes back to 30 (Abyssinia) and just before the end, square 58 (New Zealand) the player encounters the reputed anthrophages (man-eaters) and returns to the start. Ciompi/Seville Collection 32; Adrian Seville, ‘The geographical Jeux de l'Oie of Europe. Les Jeux de l’Oie géographiques de l’Europe’, Belgeo, 3-4, 2008, 427-444 (56).

First edition of this British political satire, co-opting Aesop’s animals of in a series of witty verses, capitalising on the popularity of the Aesop in English via the editions of Ogilby and L’Estrange. ‘In 1698 a whole series of fables began to appear anonymously which set Aesop on a journey through England and the rest of Europe. He comments through his animal characters about the Jacobite threat, William’s government of England, and Louis XIV’s ambitions on the continent. As one writer put it, “It is now the Mode, it seems, for Brutes to turn Politicians,” and Aesop was chosen as their main expositor. Aesop at Tunbridge (1698) was a structured attack on William and on Whig principles in general. In the same year Aesop at Bath criticized the Jacobites; Aesop Return d from Tunbridge committed the hapless supporter of the Jacobites to Bedlam; Old Aesop at Whitehall defended the government; and Aesop at Amsterdam objected to the very monarchical forms of government supported in one way or another by Whig, Tory, and Jacobite factions’ (Daniel, ‘Political and Philosophical Uses of Fables in eighteenth-century England’, The Eighteenth Century, 23, 2, 1982, p. 153).
Wing O196. ESTC lists US copies at Clark (UCLA), Folger, Harvard, Cincinnati and Texas.