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First edition of the St Omer Pharmacopoeia, an exceptionally rare book. Printed from a manuscript (hence the ‘correcta’ of the title page) it consists of 686 remedies according to the materia medica and Galenic principles. It forms part of the distinct culture of city pharmacopoeias of the Southern Netherlands — Saint Omer being a part of the Burgundian, then Spanish Netherlands until the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678.

This copy is complete with the final leaf giving the names of seven doctors and six pharmacists at St Omer: ‘Nobilissimi aeqissimi domini, Vestri Humillimi & obesrvantissimi Clientes MEDICI & PHARMACOPOEI sub scripti...’ This leaf is not mentioned by Daems & Vendewiele and is lacking in the copy digitised by the library of St Omer. The printer was Louis Carlier, whose family printed a number of works (including a handful in English) alongside the more prolific English College Press. Despite this, no member of the Carlier family is mentioned in the Répertoire d’imprimeurs/libraires (Bibliothèque nationale, new edition, 2004).

Among the preparations are theriac and mythridatium, both considered universal antidotes (or heal-alls) based on ancient recipes. The Theriaca Andromachi Senioris contains viper flesh and opium, as well as over 50 other ingredients (including spices, autumn crocus and other flowers, gums and roots). Itsrecipe was based on ancient Egyptian and classical models and by the seventeenth century its preparation was a central function of European city pharmacists, often attended by considerable ceremony and civic pride. The book also includes a list of all medicines sold in Saint Omer: ‘Taxa seu pretium medicamentorum in hac pharmacopeia contentorum’ allowing a comparison of their prices and values in French currency. Daems & Vandewiele, Noord- en Zuidnederlandse stedlijke Pharmacopoeeë (1955), 177. No copy found in KVK or Worldcat. There are two copies in the public libraries of St Omer and probably two more in the library of the Société d’histoire de la pharmacie in Paris (though not found in their online catalogue). No copy appears in the online catalogues of the Bibliothèque nationale, the Wellcome library or the National Library of Medicine.

First edition, apparently transcribed from a genuine Middle English original. The title-page notes: ‘The Manuscript to be disposed of. – Apply to the Printer’. pp. 61-70 is an ‘Astronomical and Astrological Appendix’ from a work published in 1647. Caleb Stower (d. 1816) was an interesting and prolific printer with Unitarian connections.

The Supernatural Philosopher is a reissue of The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell (1720) with the addition of ‘Verses to Mr. Campbell. On the History of his Life and Adventures’ and ‘A remarkable passage of an apparition. 1665’.
The author evidently lodged for a while in the same London house as the Scots-born soothsayer Duncan Campbell (d. 1730), who was a well-known figure in the city. Deaf and mute, he was probably educated at Glasgow using the finger system devised by John Wallis in the seventeenth century. The History of the Life was persistently attributed until relatively recently to Defoe even though it was reissued here under Bond’s name.

First edition. Scottish antiquarian and Sharpe ‘lived in and for the past’ (Oxford DNB) and this early collection is steeped in Scottish occult lore and witchcraft (in which Sharpe was an acknowledged expert). Inspired by Scott, who became a lifetime friend and correspondent, the author spent a short spell at Oxford, but returned to Edinburgh in 1813, where he lived until his death in 1851. He left one of the most extensive collections of antiquities ever accumulated by a private individual in Scotland. Jackson, p. 310.

First edition. A rare novel by Bodier, known for his writings on spiritualist morals which he studied with Delanne, a notable French spiritist and physical researcher.

An apparently unrecorded issue of this anonymous anti-freemasonry sermon: also printed in the same year as Masonry the Way to Hell.

The sermon takes as its text Revelation XVII, 5 “And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the Earth” and gives a detailed consideration of the supposed ceremonies of the masons. Three other editions/issues dated 1768 are known, one with a Robinson and Roberts imprint paginating [iv], 39, [1] (NY Historical Society only) and a stated “Second edition” with the same imprint and pagination (BL and Clark Library, UCLA only), together with a Dublin reprint. All three are recorded by ESTC in single copies only. The Sermon provoked a response from John Thompson, freemason, entitled Remarks on a sermon lately published; entitled, Masonry the way to hell. Being a defence of that antient and honourable order, against the Jesuitical sophistry and false calumny of the author (1768, BL only). Not found in ESTC or Worldcat.

First edition. Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders found favour among readers with a taste for the poetry of Burns and Scot, as well as among Romantics who looked to the Scottish Highlands for evidence of a society uncorrupted by the vices of modern society. Anne Grant was born in Glasgow, but spent her childhood in America and is best known for her Memoirs of an American Lady (1808).