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First edition of these edited extracts from the Florentine chronicler Villani, with lives of Boccaccio, Bardi, Giotto, Paulus Geometrus (the mathematician and tutor to Boccaccio) and Cavalcanti, among others. There are several accounts of Italian medical practitioners, including Taddeo, Torrigiano and Dino and Tommaso del Garbo. The Villani family were the leading contemporary chroniclers of fourteenth-century Florence and Filippo was responsible for extending the chronicles of his father and uncle, adding famous portraits of his contemporaries. Towards the end of his life he was appointed public reader of the Divine Comedy and he died in 1404. His chronicle remained in manuscript before being published by the Brescian historian Mazzuchelli in 1747 in this version which was several times reprinted.

James Speirs was a prolific evangelical speaker and publisher, whose printed output suggests he was an important figure in the Victorian Sunday School movement. Sown in the spring-time collects 12 addresses aimed at a juvenile audience by Speirs and others (R.L. Tafel, Alfred J. Johnson, Samuel Teed and Charles A. Faraday) several on a theme of natural metaphor: “About Hares and Tortoises”; “The Horse and its correspondence”, “The Serpent and its correspondence” and “Trees”. COPAC and Worldcat lists editions of 1876, 1877 and 1879. Worldcat lists 2 copies of this edition (Graduate Theological Union Library and Urbana College) but COPAC lists none in the UK

An apparently unrecorded issue of this anonymous anti-freemasonry sermon, probably a piracy of the incendiary pamphlet printed in the same year as Masonry the Way to Hell. 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.
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. Four other editions/issues dated 1768 under the slightly different titles with different paginations, but all four are recorded by ESTC in single copies only.
Not found in ESTC or Worldcat.

First edition, engraved throughout and printed for the author, an invaluable guide to the stratigraphy of Georgian society, which includes a section on the ‘Precedency of Women’. Joseph Edmondson was an artist of humble origins who had begun his career as a coach-painter, and became coach-painter to Queen Charlotte in 1763. ‘On 21 January 1764, thanks to the support of the new deputy earl marshal, Lord Suffolk, Edmondson was created Mowbray herald of arms extraordinary, although he continued his successful coach-painting business until his death.’ (Oxford DNB). Precedency gives tables of precedency of British men and women and provides a list of ‘collar days’ on which those entitled may wear their official “collars” indicating precedency. The book was reprinted in a second edition c. 1785.

First edition, rare. A French-language guide to the culture and rules of bull-fighting, published in the Basque city of San Sebastián (long before it was immortalised as the centre of bull fighting by Hemingway). The book is undated, but Worldcat lists other works printed by Aréas in the period 1885-1896. At least four editions followed, all undated.

First published in 1761 and also published in English in 1762. “Politique et social. Réflexions sur l’intolérance, qui est parfois nécessaire (mais dommages causés par l’émigration des protestants); les impôts, qui sont moins lourds que mal répartis; la néfaste célibat des prêtres; la nécessité des lois somptuaires, bien que ‘le luxe qui perd un petit état en enrichit un grand’; le duel, qui peut mener à la destruction de l’espèce humaine; l’exemption d’impôts des pères de famille qui favoriserait la population...” (INED).

First edition of this much-cited work on the history of hair-styling, grooming, beards and wigs. Cioranescu 45793; Colas 1449

A rare Revolutionary pamphlet, probably addressed to a Dutch audience, first published the year before, and in this second edition, provided with a new preface in light of the ‘happy events’ of the Revolution which ‘obligent le zèle et la bonne foi de l’auteur... de donner ici, comme dans un postscrit, ou supplément, les corrections et additions que la justice et le changement des circonstances rendent nécessaires’ (p. iii). The pagination in both editions, however, is identical.

The author analyses the effects of a revolution in France by looking at the changes it would make under three headings – ‘La Justice, l’utilité, la facilité’; gives a spirited criticism of the Ancien régime and joyously lauds the actions of his revolutionary comrades.

The ‘Londres’ imprint is probably false, even though the book may well have been sold by Richardson. The typography suggest and origin in the Netherlands (the recent origin of this copy). Both editions are rare. ESTC locates 4 copies of the first (Christ Church Oxford, John Rylands, Huntington, Colorado), but only one of the second (British Library). The CCFr lists a single copy of the first edition only (Bn) and none of the second.

A collection of 12 scarce treaties between Britain and her allies following the French declaration of war in 1793 and one further treaty negotiated with Bavaria in 1800. The backbone of the British war policy, these 1793 agreements were designed to create an allied coalition against the French, of which the axis would be Britain and the German powers, with further support from subsidiary powers in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic. However, the speed and efficiency with which these agreements were signed belies the complex and conflicting aims of each nation and the subsequent rapid disintegration of the policy.

Britain's initial admiration for the evolving Revolution in France quickly changed to alarm with the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, followed by the French declarations of war on Britain and the Dutch Republic on February 1 and Spain on March 7. French war-mongering had already led to the annexation of Savoy, Belgium and the Rhineland in 1792 and French ambitions were spelt out by Danton in the National Convention: "The frontiers of France have been mapped by nature, and we shall reach them at the four corners of the horizon, on the banks of the Rhine, by the side of the ocean and at the Alps. It is there that we shall reach the limits of our Republic."

Notably, the first two agreements were conventions signed with Russia, one uniting the two countries as allies against the aggressions of France and securing Russia's cooperation in the naval war, the other being a trade agreement, which finally settled a longstanding commercial dispute between Britain and Russia. Signed on the same day in March 1793, a contemporary commentator wryly noted that it seemed the two powers were competing as to "who shall be most fond and shall kiss the first". However, despite the apparent goodwill on both sides, the conventions never led to full and binding treaties.

Similarly, the terms of the convention signed with Prussia unravelled almost as soon as the ink was dry and within two months Frederick William II was demanding significant additional terms. Lord Grenville, Britain's Foreign Secretary, took a dim view of such demands and having first shored up his own position by negotiating a separate agreement with Austria, he initially refused to comply with Prussian requests. However, under pressure from Pitt and Dundas, Grenville was forced to negotiate further with the Prussians, with the result that the Austrians were in turn estranged.

Like Russia, the Spanish had their own motives for joining the war and despite the successful signing of the convention of Aranjuez, which committed both parties to explore the prospects of an alliance, a further agreement was never reached. Alliances with Portugal, Sardinia and Sicily proved equally problematic in the following months. The four earliest agreements were also published as a collection in London by J. Debrett in 1793. The identical title pages of the first two Russian treaties make it impossible to identify which edition is held at each of the 5 libraries listed on ESTC. The final treaty, published by A. Strahan, is particularly scarce, with only one copy recorded on ESTC (Cambridge).

First editions. Tiphaigne de la Roche’s L’Amour Dévoilé is a notable attempt to explain love and sexual attraction in mechanistic terms. The author considers the role of ‘la matière Sympathique’, which he believed to be a type of vapour exhaled by both animals and humans, and its action upon the senses of a member of the opposite sex. This rational approach to the subject makes overt reference to Leeuwenhoek who had explained the action of skin pores and appears to prefigure modern research into pheromones.

The author studied medicine at the University of Caen and practised as a physician. L’Amour Dévoilé is his first published work preceding several speculative and utopian novels, notably Giphantie (1760, the title an anagram of his name) in which he anticipated several modern developments including photography and synthetic food.

Pernetti, author of the moral romance Histoire de Favoride was a canon of the cathedral at Lyon and a prominent antiquary of that city. He was also a freemason and wrote a short treatise on that subject. Gay I, 115 (L’Amour Dévoilé).

First edition of this comprehensive study of the sociology of gambling by French writer and self-confessed ex-gambler Jean Dusaulx (1728-1799). Gambling was deeply-rooted in French society, especially in Paris, where all classes (including the court) were obsessed with card games and lotteries. Dusaulx sought to analyse this craze and to point out the moral depravity which it both reflected and encouraged. He includes numerous anecdotes to illustrate the irrationality of the gambler, making De la Passion du Jeu an important account of this aspect of the social history of pre-Revolutionary France.

First edition of this Jesuit missionary Hindustani-Portuguese grammar, the former language rendered in arabic characters.

First edition of one of Carus’s pioneering works in the emerging science of psychology. The author’s major contribution was in exploring the psychology of the unconscious and he is considered the precursor of Jung (who acknowleged his debt to Carus) in this field. The author was a prolific figure who wrote on many aspects of psychology, medicine and philosophy. He was an accomplished landscape artist in the Romantic tradition and had studied under Caspar David Friedrich. He was also a friend of Nietzsche, Humboldt and Goethe.

The Vorlesungen über Psychologie is especially notable for its wide frame of reference outside the discipline of medicine. Many of Carus’s examples are drawn from literature, with a special emphasis on the works of Shakespeare: in the course of his argument he refers variously to Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet and Othello. OCLC lists the National Library of Medicine copy only outside Europe.

An expanded version of Maddison’s Englands looking in and out (1640). Maddison, a forward looking and enterprising landlord was a vocal advocate for the regulation of the money markets, arguing that foreign exchangers and unscrupulous merchants had devalued the currency for personal gain. He developed his ideas in the work above mentioned to include the demand that an accurate account be kept and made available of the balance of trade. “In 1655 he published an updated version of his 1640 tract entitled Great Britain's remembrancer, looking in and out; tending to the increase of the monies of the Commonwealth. Presented to his highness the lord protector and to the high court of parliament now assembled (1655). His recent experience of office can account for new calls for a bank, a council for the mint, and free ports, but his general economic views remained unchanged” (ODNB). Wing M245.

The eighteenth annual report of the Liverpool Catholic Blind Asylum for children (for the year 1862). Includes also the rules and regulations for the government of the Asylum, founded in 1841 by the very reverend Dr Thomas Youens. Evidently scarce with Worldcat and COPAC listing no copies of this or of reports for other years.

A very rare set of Friendly Society regulations, with additonal evidence of their operation in the form of slips and notes of payment to a member. Though the history of this form of co-operative insurance goes back to early times it is considered to have formally begun in England with the Acts encouraging their formation of the late eighteenth-century. Thousands of such societies sprang up at the opening of the nineteenth century. Though initially encouraged, they were also viewed with suspicion in some quarters as hot-beds of political sedition. The Macclesfield rules are notable in this respect, being insistent on the exclusion of all topics of political or religious dispute in meetings, anyone contravening was to be either fined or expelled. Not in COPAC or the BL catalogue.

First edition of this pamphlet subscribed ‘a burgher of Edinburgh’ charging the chairman of the Scottish Convention of Delegates with having allowed the electoral principles of the Society of Friends to become confused with the far more radical and un-parliamentary politics of Thomas Paine. Scarce.

First edition of a rather reactionary consideration of Paine’s republicanism which includes notice of the earlier critique by John Quincy Adams. A second edition appeared later in the same year. Hardy was a Scottish cleric, not to be confused with the radical Thomas Hardy, founder of the London Corresponding Society. Their positions cannot have been much farther apart. Sabin 59081.

First edition, containing historical, topographical and contemporary accounts of the city’s religious, civic, educational and cultural buildings and institutions in the early nineteenth century and before.

‘Mackenzie was a strong radical, a secretary of the Northern Political Union, and the leading founder of the Newcastle Mechanics' Institute in 1824. His publications (all from Newcastle) contain much statistical information aimed at providing grounds for local self-improvement. They include An Historical and Descriptive View of the County of Northumberland (2 vols., 1811, revised as ‘historical, topographical and descriptive’ to 2 vols. quarto, 1825); A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (2 vols., 1827); and An Historical, Topographical and Descriptive View of the County Palatine of Durham (1834), which had been completed after Mackenzie's death by Metcalf Ross’ (Oxford DNB).