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A rare Tudor edition in English of this celebrated treatise on inventions and origins, which includes some of the earliest accounts in English of the invention of printing, theatre, mathematics, medicine, magic, religion, law, government (as well as wine, prostitution and warm baths). First published in Latin in 1499 (Venice) and augmented in 1521, De inventoribus rerum digested a huge mass of classical, biblical and contemporary learning and became a Renaissance bestseller. As many as 30 Latin editions alone appeared before the author’s death in 1555. The English translation, an abridgement by Thomas Langley, did not appear until 1546, by which time the Urbino-born Polydore had been resident in England for several decades. A diplomat, scholar, historian an humanist, Vergil counted Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, Cuthbert Tunstall, Thomas Linacre and Baldessare Castiglione among his acquaintances and correspondents.

Printed three times in 1546, the first English editions are remarkably rare. Though ours is dated 25 January 1546 and is listed first by STC, it was perhaps preceded by the edition dated 16 April 1546, given that a new year began on Lady Day (25 March) in old style dating. The work is divided into eight books, from which Langley makes succinct abridgements, of which a selection of chapter headings gives a flavour:

I. 9. ‘The begynnyng of Tragedies, Comedies, Satyres, and newe Comedies; 11. ‘Who founde Musyke’; 12. ‘Who found Musicall instruments’; 14. ‘Astrologie’; 15. ‘Who founde Geometrie, Artihmetike’; 16. ‘Physike’; 17. ‘The inventours of herbes medicinable’; 18. ‘The beginnyng of Magike’; 19. ‘Two kyndes of divination’. II. 1. ‘The originall of lawes’; 2. ‘Who ordeyned the first gouvernaunces’; 6. ‘Who set furth books fyrst, or made a library, Printyng, paper, parchement, arte of memory’ (which includes the observation: ’Truely the com[m]odite of liberaries is right profitable & necessary, but in co[m]parison of the crafte of printyng it is nothyng, both because one ma[n] may printe more in one day, then many men in many years could wryte: And also it preserveth both Greke & Latine auctours fro the dau[n]ger of corruption. It was found in Germany at Mogunce [Mainz] by one J. Guthenbergus a knight, he found moreover the Inke by his devise that printers used...)’

Among other entries we find treatments of: war, Olympiades, plays, metals, coins, painting, ‘wyne, oyle, honye, chese, and strange trees broughte into Italy’, labyrinths, theatres, prostitution and brothels, and Christian and Moslem origins and customs.

Provenance: Sotheby’s, June 14th, 1965, lot 231 (Traylen, £55); Blackwell, Centenary Catalogue, 1979, item 27, £450; private collection. STC 24654. STC lists two other printings of 1546: 24655 (also Grafton, dated 16 April) and 24656 (another issue of the same, portions reset, with both title and colophon dated 16 April). In an article of 1888, John Ferguson suggested that these 16 April editions/issues preceded the 25 January edition (though this was not adopted by the editors of STC); John Ferguson, ‘Bibliographical Notes on the English Translation of Polydore Vergil’s work, De Inventoribus Rerum’, 1888, pp. 17 et seq.

A nineteenth-century reimpression of one of the several celebrated collections of etched grotesques by baroque painter and engraver Stefano della Bella (1610-1664). Working variously in his native Florence, Rome and Paris he developed a daring and fanciful ornamental style, instrumental in the development of the French baroque style. His patrons included Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin and he had supplied the famous etched title-page for Galileo’s Dialogo of 1632. These are clearly much later impressions, printed on wove paper and in blue wrappers suggesting a date around or shortly after 1800. Each plate bears a small contemporary manuscript monogram across the plate border, presumably as a publisher’s guarantee of authenticity. OCLC: Getty, Harvard, Texas.

First edition. Anthony Pasquin was frequently at war with the critics, especially those of the Critical Review, but even they granted that in this staire, ‘he discovers, in the delineation of low characters, some kind of humour. His Margery Cockney and Phalim O’Shaughnessy are not unentertaining, though their jokes are not always very delicate, or very new.’ Jackson, p. 160.

A complete manuscript course of stenography, or shorthand ― the art of writing ‘aussi vite que la parole’, finely written with numerous thumbnail drawings. Divided into four parts (introduction, pronunciation, punctuation and an atlas) with an errata, a table of contents and two sheets of stenographic examples or exercises.
The ‘Atlas’ supplies description of the stenographic signs in 13 charts, with 51 finely drawn vignettes giving the figurative equivalent of the stenographic signs and their pronunciation. Among them we find the links of a chain for representing an open ‘a’ (as in anneaux), a radiating halo for an ‘o’ (as in oréole), a drunkard for the ‘i’ (ivrogne), a gallows for the ‘p’ (potence), a cat for the ‘ch’ (chat), and so on, including a funnel, lyre, clock, umbrella, falls, arrow and gondola, the morphology of the signs given an ideogrammatic cue as a mnemonic. The whole represents a complete teaching system aimed at the aspiring stenographer.

First edition of this defence of Wilde by his loyal friend, composer and pianist, Dalhousie Young. ‘Published after Oscar Wilde's trial, during which Wilde's works were used as evidence of his ‘immorality'’ Apologia pro Oscar Wilde sets out to defend Wilde and his writing. Dalhousie Young argues that a work of fiction is not automatically a work of autobiography; fiction does reveal an author's inner secrets or true character. Powerfully, Young furthermore publicly questions whether it is right that sexual acts between two consenting adults of the same sex should be outlawed (see p. 38), or looked upon as a ‘sin’’ (British Library).

This is the second of two issues of the first edition, distinguished by its darker wrapper. Millard, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, p. 574, no. 679.

Sole edition: tales and snippets based on the argot, gossip and jokes of the Porcherons quartier of Paris, at the foot of the slope to Montmartre. It includes the woeful tale of a young clerk and a prostitute as well as a Catéchisme poissard. It purports to be the work of a washerwoman, ‘Mame Fanchon’. The term ‘Poissarde’ (literally, a fishwife) refers, in general, to coarse and vulgar language and is frequently to be found in chapbooks of the period. Worlcat: Flanders Heritage Library (Antwerp) only.

First edition in French of the Italianate gothic novel Angelo Guicciardini, or, The Bandit of the Alps: a Romance (London, Colburn 1809). Rare. Sophia Francis’ other novels include: Constance de Lindensdorf, Vivonia and The Nun of Misericordia. They were all popular circulating and subscription library titles. No British copies in Jisc/Library Hub (formerly COPAC), Worldcat: University of Virginia only in US. cf. The Novel in English: a bibliographical Addition to Andrew Block’s The English Novel, 263, a.

A Napeoleonic-era manuscript course in classical and modern French history made for a woman or girl, Caroline Hémart. Probably prepared by a tutor, the texts are enthusiastically neo-classical in tone: the opening ‘Élements de chronologie’ serve as a grounding in ancient history (with definitions of terms such as ‘Olympiade’) of Europe and the near East, based on the text of Napoleonic scholar, Luc de Lancival. The manuscript concludes with 27 stanzas of a heroic poem, ‘Ode à Clio’ by M. Le Comte François de Neufchateau (published c. 1807), which is, again, a glorious version of history seen through still-rosy Napoleonic lenses.

First edition in French of The Castilian, an historical novel in English (Colburn, 1829), by a notable Spanish historical novelist, very much in the vein of Scott. Though most of his novels were in Spanish, Trueba y Cosío had been educated partly in England, and this attempt in English attracted favourable reviews. The translation is by Defauconpret, best known for his translations of Scott. Rare: Worldcat lists the Bn copy only.

A superb art nouveau decorated poetry manuscript, copied and illuminated throughout by a M. Jullien with geometric designs inspired by Renaissance and Islamic tiles, in keeping with the Orientalist symbolism of the 56 poems by Henri de Régnier (1864-1936), a disciple of Mallarmé and one of the most significant French Symbolist poets. The binding is skilfully decorated by Jullien in pyrography. Although we are aware of other decorated manuscripts in his hand, almost nothing more is known of him.�

A rare satirical elegy and epitaph for the celebrated electrical eel, who could no longer rise to the occasion. A reissue of the sheets of the first edition of 1777 with a cancel title, of this elaborate addition to the corpus of salacious 1770s pamphlets devoted to the subject of the electrical eel, a topic of serious scientific enquiry and popular merriment. This one continues the phallic joke and manages to draw in the hapless Chevalier D’Eon (whose sex was then popularly debated) alongside the lecherous Earl of Harrington.

‘If the Gymnotus Electricus, lately exhibited to the Public, be really dead, it is to be hoped that we shall have no more of these witty indecencies’ (Monthly Review, Nov. 1777). ESTC: Harvard and Princeton only worldwide of this issue. ESTC gives the pagination [4], 29, [1], but both the 2 copies reported have only pp [2] before title, as here, though it is perhaps likely the work was issued with a half-title or initial blank not present in surviving copies.

An unusual New Years’ gift from an unnamed compiler ‘for my dearly beloved Isabella Sophia Ochando de la Vanda. January one, 1830’; a manuscript compilation of patriotic verse and pious texts by hymnodist Edmeston, Shepherd, Southey (’The Victory’), Millman, Bowring, Burden, Emmerson, and Carlyle’s ‘Hymn before public worship translated from the Arabic’. Most of the texts are in English but a couple, by the Mechitarian cleric Nerses Clajense, are in Spanish and French respectively.

The two fine watercolours show HMS Victory in battle and a fallen arab horseman.

A lively collection of biographies of the unpopular Fermiers généraux – men responsible for collecting indirect taxation in ancien régime France. The Mémoirs pour servir l’histoire du Publicanisme moderne was never published in print but circulated widely in manuscript — its tone is familiar, ironic and sometimes scurrilous in its treatment of the careers of these powerful and wealthy men.

There are more than 100 entries including those for important cultural figures, Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière (one of the prime-movers in the great Lafontaine edition of 1762 called the ‘Fermiers généraux’ edition), Charles Le Normant de Tournehem (guardian of Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, future marquise de Pompadour) and the collector Pierre Grimod du Fort. Each entry provides a brief account of the sources of their wealth, of their families and progeny, and of their administrative capabilities (or otherwise). Morality is neverfar from the surface, and there are frequent grumblings of sexual infidelities. The biography for Le Riche de La Poupelinière (the longest in the collection) includes the anecdote of his being surprised in bed with an actress from the Opera, mistress of the Prince de Carignan and of the secret passageway from a neighbouring house through the firelplace, through which his lovers came and went.

The text mostly in a single hand of 1750. Each entry includes spaces left for the arms of the subjected, never completed). A second hand, perhaps not much later, adds notes, some additional biographies and tables. The book apparently existed for some time stitched in the simple wrapper of its first and last leaves before being bound, probably a little later in the century. French libraries contain several manuscript examples of this popular text.

A delightful example of Japanese art of flower arrangement, ikebana, in the form of 24 ‘Rikka Zu’ (flower arrangements), with an important provenance. The arrangements combine boughs of trees or bamboo. with flowers including chrysanthemums, lotus, lilies, irises, and cherry blossom. The style is deliberately and strikingly asymmetrical, with stems tightly bundled at the foot in keeping with prevailing decorative aesthetics.

The manuscript is dated, on the first extant image, Kansei 4 (1792) July 7th and there is a further inscription to the verso of one fold, now partly obscured by a paper strip (an old reinforcement) but still legible. It reads: ‘The lord Todo Izumino-kami, when his ambassador’s mission at Kyoto had a celebration in Ryokan’ and ‘Ikeno bo’. Ikenobo was the oldest and most important school of ikebana in Japan, founded at Kyoto in the fifteenth century, while the Todo clan were an ancient Samurai family with origins in the sixteenth century. The manuscript may be considerably older than the inscription of 1792. Its style is closely comparable with a manuscript now at Cambridge, Ikenobō rikka no zu (CUL FJ.978.12) dated to the ‘seventeenth or eighteenth century’ (2223 in Hayashi and Kornicki, Early Japanese books in Cambridge University Library).

A striking and beautiful single sheet of brokatpapier, with devotional images printed in gilt in a style usually associated with Augsburg. This uncut sheet may have been destined for endpapers, each image neatly fitting an octavo-sized book.

Gay describes this Le Passe partout as a “recueil de pièces satiriques, dirigées pour la plupart contre la clergé”, with the Jesuites du College de Louis le Grand and Louis XIV's great general, the Maréchal de Villars singled out for special attention. The anonymous author satirically describes himself as “Chevalier de l’Ordre de l’Industrie & de la Gibeciere” (‘chevalier d'industrie’ means swindler in French and ‘gibecièr’ is a gamebag or satchel), but his real identity remains a mystery. This is the second edition. A more common issue with the imprint 'la présente année' is considered variously to have been printed from 1700 to 1708. The BL catalogue suggests Holland as the place of publication for our edition. No source hazards a guess at the author.

First published in 1674, this edition of Traité de la jalousie contains a fine and detailed allegorical frontispiece juxtaposing a family with an image of adultery and an emblem of heart in a vice or press. De Courtin’s work purports to be an early self-help manual which offers practical advice on dealing with jealousy in marriage, which, as the advertisement proclaims: ‘De toutes les maladies de l’esprit, La Jalousie est assurément la plus dangereuse, & la plus difficile à guerir’. It is, in effect, a profoundly misogynistic work insisting on the subordiation of the woman, just as certain members of society must necessarily be subject to the state. Despite being described by Gay as an ‘ouvrage ennuyeux et mal ecrit’, the frequency with which the title was reprinted after its first publication in 1674 is testament to its contemporary popularity. It appeared in English as A Treatise of Jealousie, or, a Means to preserve Peace in Marriage in 1684�

The final work Octavie ou l'Epouse fidelle was first published in 1683; this imprint is not dated, but other undated copies are suggested to have been published c.1700. Passe Partout: Gay, III, 659; Courton: Gay, III, 236; Chavigny: not found in Gay.

First edition, all published. Delandine’s short-lived and scarce literary magazine includes numerous translated excerpts from British authors and other articles of British interest, notably Chesterfield (his portraits of Marlborough and Bolingbroke), Thomas Parnell (’Health, an Eclogue’), a letter from actor James Quin, Thomas Hunter’s Observations on Tacitus, Thomas Chatterton, Johnson (two excerpts from The Rambler, plus a note on his Dictionary), Dick Whittington and his cat, an article on the origin of British newspapers, and Butler’s ‘A Huffing Courtier’.

First edition, falsely dated 1914 to evade the censorship of the occupying forces and actually issued in 1918. A beautiful woodcut illustrated study of the iconography of the ancient Flemish versions of the game of lotto, including the symbolism of the playing cards.

An interesting selection of watercolours, drawings and lithographs by a Victorian woman. Some are typical, if very accomplished, holiday or genre scenes, but there is an interesting scattering of domestic scenes: a women sewing, another at a substantial treadle sewing machine, making mincemeat, crocheting, picking peas, and drawing in an album. Of special interest are 5 original and probably unique lithographs, evidently the work of the same artist, nicely demonstrating the contemporary enthusiasm for amateur lithography among women. Some are trials for letterheads, giving the address: ‘The Rookery, George Lane, Parish of Woodford’ [Essex]. Among the travel watercolours are some really lovely seaside scenes and a finely observed interior of a railway sleeping compartment on the Geneva-Paris line.