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Printed Books & Manuscripts
Welcome!
Welcome to Swann’s digital imprint—a new editorial experience of the traditional auction catalogue. Swann takes pride in our catalogues, but until now, technology had not caught up with the scholarship and care we give to every lot. We’re proud to share this new platform with you, which presents all the same lots as can be found elsewhere on our website, but in a reading-friendly format.
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Aesop (c. 620-564 bce) trans. john ogilby (1600-1676)
The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d in Verse: Adorn’d with Sculpture.
London: Printed by Thomas Roycroft for the Author, 1668.
Second edition (new title page, a re-issue of the 1665 edition sheets), [Together with] Aesopics, or a Second Collection of Fables, first edition; two large folio volumes, both illustrated throughout; first volume with portrait of Ogilby, frontispiece, engraved vignettes and initials, and eighty-one full-paged plates, all but two plates without text; Aesopics illustrated with sixty-eight full-paged plates in early issue before captions were added; both volumes bound in full leather, same height, but not uniform bindings, some tears, spotting to contents, 16 x 10 in. (2)
Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) engraved eighty-eight of the illustrations for these works, the others were executed by Dirck Stoop (c. 1610-1686) and Francis Barlow (c. 1626-1704).
Wing A-697 and A-698; ESTC R19147 & R8782.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Agricola, georg andreas (1672-1738)
Experimental Husbandman and Gardener: Containing a New Method of Improving Estates and Gardens.
London: Printed for W. Mears and F. Clay, 1726.
Quarto, expanded second edition, first published as A Philosophical Treatise of Husbandry and Gardening in 1721, a translation from the German, Neu-und nie erhorter doch in Natur un Vernufft Wohlgegrundeter, title page printed in red and black, illustrated with twenty-two engraved plates (of which thirteen are folding) showing extensive and detailed ways of grafting, propagating, transplanting, pruning, planting, and rooting trees, along with botanical anatomy, bound in modern half leather with marbled paper boards, ex libris T. Maynard, with his engraved armorial bookplate pasted on the verso of the title, 11 x 8 1/2 in.
ESTC T82177.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Agrippa, henricus cornelius (1486?-1535)
De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres.
[Cologne: ?Johannes Soter], 1533.
First edition, folio, a6, a-q6, r8, s-Z6, A-F6, G5 (lacking G6, final blank); woodcut portrait of the author in profile to title, woodcut text illustrations throughout, bound in full contemporary calf, gold-tooled spine, worn, some waterstaining, title fore-edge trimmed away with a loss of 7 mm of blank margin; front joint split, corners bumped, structurally intact, 11 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Adams A-386.
Estimate
$3,000 – $4,000
Antiphonal leaves, two examples.
Manuscript leaves on parchment containing musical bars and words from Gregorian chants, both framed; the first leaf with four-bar staves in red, main text in black ink with red capital strokes and chapter heads, large two-stave initial A formed from green stems with strings of pearls, and an added marginal miniature in pale red with blue, black, and gold ink highlights of a bearded man speaking to a child, the leaf 19 x 13 1/4 in. [and] the second leaf from a large lectionary song book, with four-line staves in red and a large initial E featuring a finely painted singer in profile, 21 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.; both purchased from Sam Fogg in the 1990s. (2)
Estimate
$250 – $350
Art Collection Catalogues, Four Examples.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Bacon, francis (1561-1626)
Operum Moralium et Civilium.
London: Typis Edward Griffin, apud Richard Whitaker, 1638.
First collected edition in Latin, folio, portrait frontispiece of Bacon bound opposite the first page of the History of Henry VII, ownership stamp of Catholic Father James Condamin to title page, who purchased it from Boussus (with their 1917 description clipped and pasted on ffep), with other notes; bound in contemporary parchment over boards, some light soiling and foxing, 11 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.
STC 1109; Gibson 196.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Bailey, william (active 1770)
One Hundred and Six Copper Plates of Mechanical Machines and Implements of Husbandry.
London: Printed for Benjamim [sic] White, 1782.
Large folio, volume two only, consisting of typographical title page, three preliminary leaves, and fifty-one full-paged plates with explanatory text, lacking the other volume; bound in contemporary half leather, marbled paper boards, 15 x 10 1/2 in.
ESTC T88289.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Bernardinus senensis [aka bernardino of siena] (1380-1444)
Sermones De Evangelio Aeterno.
[Basel: Johann Amerbach, not after 1489]. Editio princeps, folio, []8, [**]6, a-z8/6, aa-ee8/6, ff6, (signature ff with eight leaves, includes ff1-6 and a second identical copy of bifolium ff1/6), gg-ss8/6, lacking four text leaves: tt2-tt5 (text supplied in three leaves of neat contemporary or near-contemporary pen facsimile in the hand of the marginal annotator), vv-zz8/6, (a1 & zz8 blank & present); printed in gothic letter, double columns throughout, some areas of intense marginalia (slightly cropped in some margins); bound in 17th century Italian speckled sheepskin, gilt-tooled and labeled spine, some straight-through worm holes, contents fresh, 11 x 7 3/4 in.
Goff B349; H 2827; Pell 2079; Walsh 1170; Oates 2797; Bod-inc B-167; Sheppard 2430; Pr 7631; BMC III 752; BSB-Ink B-300; GW 3886; ISTC ib00349000.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Bernardus claravallensis (1090-1153) ed. theophilus brixianus
Opuscula.
Brescia: Angelus and Jacobus Britannicus, 18 March 1495.
Small octavo, with Brixianus’s Carmen de Vita S. Bernardi, A3-8, B10, a-z8, [turned r]8, [con]8, [orum]8, A-L8, (lacking thirty-six leaves: A1 & A2, M-O8, and P10), 312 of 348 leaves, bound in later half calf and paste-paper boards, worn, prefatory material printed in roman letter in single column, balance of the text in gothic letter, two columns, some damage to first few leaves, a few childish ink scribbles, 5 1/2 x 4 in.
Goff B364; CR 994; Veneziani (Brescia) 115; Pell 2156; Walsh 3415; Pr 6989; BMC VII 977; BSB-Ink B-314.050; GW 3907; ib003640000.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Beunat, joseph (circa 1813-1843)
Recueil des Dessins.
[Paris: Dubray, Imprimeur du Musée, circa 1816].
Folio, engraved throughout, with eighty-six pages with dozens of Empire and neo-classical design motifs for artists and designers, including many inspired by botanical elements; [bound with] three period ephemeral price lists of the manufacture of wares and decoration; bound in period half red morocco, gilt-tooled red leather label on front board, marbled paper-covered boards, 13 x 9 1/2 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Bible in finnish.
Biblia, se on Coco Pyhä Ramattu Suomexi.
Turusa : Präntätty cuningalliseld Kirjain Präntäjäldä Johan Winterildä, 1685, 1683.
Quarto, lacking all preliminary leaves before A1, including title, engraved title, etc.; also lacking six text leaves: I2, I3, 6M2, 6M3, Qq2 & Qq3; leaves Oo4 and Qq2 (NT) torn with loss; divisional title page to New Testament present; bound in contemporary leather over wooden boards, ruled in blind, large label on spine; lacking clasps nail-like catches present, later pastedowns, joints cracking, wear and abrasions to leather, structurally functional, both boards still attached; contents worn, some leaves coming loose, a few re-margined, still a substantial book 3 1/2 inches thick with some 1,400 pages, one leather strap present, 7 1/4 x 5 3/4 in.
This edition is based on the editio princeps of 1642, a Finnish translation from the original text by Aeschylus Petraeus, Martin Stodius, Gregory Matthaei, and Heinrich Hoffman. According to Darlow & Moule, this is the first appearance in print of the text as revised by Heinrich Florin, and edited by Johan Gezelius.
Darlow & Moule 3640.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Bible, hebrew and latin, trans. sebastian munster (1488-1552)
Mikdash Ha-Shem; Hebraica Biblia.
Basel: Michael Isingrinus & Henricus Petri, 1546.
First edition, two thick folio volumes, beautiful large display Hebrew wood type on title page and chapter pages, printed in two columns throughout, in Hebrew (vocalized) and Latin; lacking final ?blank in second volume; bound in full contemporary parchment over chamfered wooden boards, 13 1/4 x 8 1/2 in. (2)
Vinograd, Basel 74; Darlow & Moule 5090; Prijs 73.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Bible, illustrated.
Theatrum Biblicum. Hoc est Historiae Sacrae Veteris et Novi Testamenti Tabulis Aeneis Expressae.
[Holland]: Nicolaum Joannes Piscatorem [Visscher], 1650.
Five oblong folio volumes, engraved and illustrated throughout, containing separate title pages for the Historiae Sacrae, Acta Apostolorum, XII Fidei Apostolicae Symbola, and Visiones Apocalypticae Exhibitae, and approximately 460 full-paged engravings by and after Crispin, Haedeler, Petrus de Jode, Martin Heemskerck, Herman Muller, Joannes Breugel, Oort, and Collaert, and others almost all engraved by Visscher; a compendium of works, bound with dozens of period-era blank leaves interspersed in an indiscernible pattern; some plates mounted, some repaired, the majority in good shape; five volumes uniformly bound in period full parchment over boards, stained black, later endleaves, each 15 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. (5)
See Brunet V: 773 and Graesse VII: 110.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Bidloo, govert (1649-1713) and romeyn de hooghe (1645-1708)
Relation du Voyage de Sa Majesté Britannique en Hollande, et de la Reception qui luy a été.
The Hague: chez Arnout Leers, 1692.
Folio, [pi]2, *4, A-Z2, Aa-Dd2, illustrated with engraved title, portrait of William III, three full-page plates, and eleven folding engravings, clean, dark impressions of the plates; bound in contemporary speckled calf, rebacked, 14 1/2 x 9 3/4 in.
This lavishly illustrated Dutch production celebrates William III’s visit to The Hague in 1692, during the Nine Year’s War. It includes impressive images of the royal excess on display for the occasion, including a dramatic fireworks show.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Blondel, jacques-francois (1705-1774)
Cours d’Architecture, ou Traité de la Decoration, Distribution, & Construction des Bâtiments.
Paris: Chez Desaint, 1771-1777.
Nine volumes (six smaller octavo volumes and three larger octavo plate volumes), bound in very good uniform contemporary gold-tooled marbled reddish morocco, flat spines, decorated with ornate tooling, green lettering pieces, and round onlaid volume numbers, nicely preserved, plate volumes comprise six parts bound in three volumes, including a total of 377 full-page and folding engravings, a nice set, text volumes: 7 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.; plate volumes 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.
Berlin Kat. 2429; Fowler 51; Millard 29; RIBA I 296.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Bodoni press, two titles.
Including: Torquato Tasso’s (1544-1595) Aminta Favola Boschereccia, Parma: Impresso co’ Caratteri Bodoniani, 1789 [i.e. 1792], folio, engraved vignette portrait of Tasso on title, engraved vignette by Lucatelli, preface printed in an ornamental italic type, large copy with deckle edges, bound in half red morocco, housed in custom slipcase, 12 x 8 1/2 in. [and] Gilles Roussel’s Lymphae Circulatio, Parma: ex publico Typographeo, [1804], octavo, bound in full contemporary parchment, 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in. (2)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Boethius (c. 477-524 ce)
Textus Boetii. [De Consolatione Philosophiae].
[Lyons: Simon Vincent], 1524.
Octavo, A-K8, KK8, L-N8, O4; title page printed in red and black, within frame of typographical ornaments, with small woodcut emblem, illustrated with approximately twenty-five text woodcuts (many repeats); woodcut printer’s device on verso of last leaf, headlines cropped, bound in 19th century half leather and marbled paper-covered boards, 5 3/4 x 4 in.
This collection of texts for students includes works by Quintilian, Verulanus, Hubertus Montismoretanus, and a short illustrated treatise on astronomy.
Not in Adams.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Book of hours, use of utrecht, circa 1435-1445.
Manuscript on parchment, comprising 149 leaves, illuminated with five full-page miniatures and twenty-five large illuminated initials with extensive foliate ink tendrils extending into the margins; text in brown ink in a neat gothic liturgical hand, rubricated in red, captials and larger initials in red and blue; miniatures embellished with raised burnished gold, with full borders stretching across the open bifolia; subtle offsetting from a medieval pilgrim’s badge formerly tucked between folios 88 and 89; bound in 16th century tan calf over beveled wooden boards, neatly ruled in blind and tooled in gilt, with a large knotwork emblem on the front board, surrounded by compartments decorated with leaf, flower, acorn, and column tools; the verso similarly decorated with a large fleur-de-lis in the center panel, spine decorated in gilt, neatly rebacked, lacking clasps and catches.
Text in Dutch throughout, the Geert Groote (1340-1384) translation.
Illustrated with the following miniatures: 1) folio 15 verso, the Anunciation; 2) folio 62 verso, the Trinity Enthroned; 3) folio 85 verso the Crucifixion, with St. John comforting Mary; 4) folio 94 verso, the Last Judgement set in the Valley of Death; 5) folio 119 verso, the Funeral Mass; likely made for the woman depicted kneeling before the crucifixion on 85 verso, holding a scroll inscribed, “O bone ihesu misere”; purchased from Banner in 1947; Sam Fogg in 1996; 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 in.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
Boydell, james (ship’s-husband)
The Merchant-Freighter’s and Captains of Ships Assistant.
London: Printed for the Author and to be had at Lloyd’s; [and] the New York, the New England, the Jamaica, and the Pensylvania Coffee-Houses, 1764.
First edition, folio, signed by Boydell on page two, [A-C]2, D-Z2, Aa-Bb2, Cc1; title page and following leaf heavily chipped with marginal loss; title and leaf of introduction followed by a series of typographical tables designed for calculating the dimensions of packages, tables with hand-cut tabs along the fore-edges; bound in parchment over boards, rebacked, branded by the Mercantile Library Co. of Philadelphia on both boards with corresponding bookplate inside front board; signature of George Forten [sometimes Fortune], American Revolutionary War-era master of the ships Anne and Live Oak on first leaf of introduction, binding worn, many leaves badly chipped; 12 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Rare at auction, Worldcat lists twelve copies; ESTC T85777 listing seven copies in U.S. libraries.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Brant, sebastian (1458-1521)
Expositiones Omnium Titulorum Legalium.
Basel: Michael Furter, for Andreas Helmut, 1 October 1490; [bound with] II: Margarita Decretaliu[m], ed. Brant, [Basel: Nicolaus Kessler, 1496/1497], with Kessler’s woodcut device on final leaf; [and] III: Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum ad Venerabilem Virum, false imprint: Venice: Aldi Minutii, ie. [Nuremberg: F. Peypus, 1516], all three titles quarto, bound in mid-16th century alum-tawed blind-tooled calf over boards, rolled floral tool in outer panels and the seven virtues in inner panels, lacking leather ties, contents good, ex libris several mid-16th century owners, including Zacharias Hyso 1556, with inscriptions inside the front board; contents good, 8 x 6 in.
Although better known as the author of the satirical Ship of Fools, Brant made important contributions to civil and canon law. The first two works were published during his lifetime in the city that he called home.
I: Goff B1078; HC 3725; Pell 2815; Walsh 1242; Pr 7721; BMC III 781; BSB-Ink B-814; GW 5070; ISTC ib01078000; II: GW M20971; Van der Haegen I: 18,40; Goff M264; H 10756; Pellechet Ms 7649 (7554); CIBN M-133; Aquilon 459; IBE 3826; IGI VI 589A; IDL 3101; IBP 3602; Sajó-Soltész 2182; Collijn, Uppsala 1009; Voulliéme, Berlin 548.8; Borm 1779; Hubay, Augsburg 1364; Sheppard 2492; Proctor 7703; BMC III 774; BSB-Ink A-549; Kaufmann-Nabholz 570; ÖNB-Ink A-313; ISTC im00264000; III: Adams E-284.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Brathwait, richard (1588?-1673)
The English Gentleman.
London: Printed by John Haviland to be sold by Robert Bostock, 1630.
First edition, quarto, engraved pictorial title, double-paged explanatory “Draught of the Frontispiece,” present after typographical title, ¶2, ¶4, A-Mmm4, Nnn3, leaves Ss1 and Ss2 supplied from another (smaller and not washed) copy; text leaves washed and pressed, bound in full light brown morocco by Riviere with rounded boards, ornately tooled in gilt, aeg; some staining to contents, 7 x 5 in.
STC 3563; ESTC S104636.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Briseux, charles-etienne (c. 1680-1754)
L’Art de Bâtir des Maisons de Campagne.
Paris: J.B. Gibert, 1761.
Two large quarto volumes, engraved frontispiece in volume one and 260 full-paged and folding engravings throughout the two volumes, half-titles present in both, bound in uniform contemporary sponge-decorated calf, elaborately gilt-tooled and labeled spines, nicely preserved, ex libris Edmond L. Lincoln, with his book ticket inside the front boards, marbled endleaves,11 1/4 x 8 1/2 in. (2)
Fowler 68; Brunet I 1261; Graesse I 541.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Browne, sir thomas (1605-1682)
Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
London: Printed for Edward Dod to be sold by Andrew Crook, 1658.
Quarto, including Hydriotaphia and the Garden of Cyrus, each with an engraved plate (two plates) and separate title page, longitudinal title for second part present; bound in contemporary boards, rebacked, inner joint reinforced with cloth joint, contemporary ownership inscription of George Halley to title; 8 1/4 x 6 1/4 in.
Wing B-5162; ESTC R207236.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Bullart, isaac (1599-1672)
Academie des Sciences et des Arts, Contenant les Vies & les Eloges Historiques des Hommes Illustrés.
Amsterdam: Chez les heritiers de Daniel Elzevier [i.e. Brussels: Foppens], 1682.
Two folio volumes, half-titles present, titles printed in red and black with large engraved vignettes; lacking the final signature in the first volume: Ggg1-4, four leaves; illustrated throughout with more than 250 large text engraved portraits of illustrious men and women, including politicians, lawyers, clergymen, painters, poets, inventors, and others, including the following printers: Gutenberg, Plantin, Moretus, and Paulus Manutius, and the explorers Columbus, Vespucci, Cortes, and Drake; bound in full contemporary parchment over boards, spines tooled in black, with red labels, joints splitting, bindings somewhat discolored and bowed, 12 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. (2)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Bullart, isaac (1599-1672)
Academie des Sciences et des Arts, Contenant les Vies & les Eloges Historiques des Hommes Illustrés.
Paris: Chez Louis Bilaine, 1682.
Two folio volumes bound as one; half-titles present for both; title pages printed in red and black, each with engraved vignette; illustrated throughout with 279 portraits of important scientists, artists, thinkers, explorers, printers, and others of the period by a variety of artists; bound in contemporary full calf, quite worn, in need of rebacking, 13 x 8 in.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Caesar, gaius julius (100-44 bce)
Commentarii Tradotti di Latino in Volgar Lingua.
Venice: Rindoni & Pasini, 1531.
Octavo, [leaf]8, A-Z8, AA-GG8, HH2-7, (lacking text leaf HH1 and final ?blank HH8); title page printed within woodcut compartment, text in black and red, illustrated with six full-page woodcuts, woodcut vignettes in text, Italian translation by Agostino Ortica della Porta; two text leaves torn with loss, colophon leaf torn; some staining, later half leather, 5 3/4 x 4 in.
Estimate
$250 – $350
Capriolo, aliprando (active circa 1575-1599)
Ritratti di Cento Capitani Illustrati.
Rome: Gigliotti, 1596.
Quarto, first edition, first issue, engraved title, illustrated with ninety-seven (of 100) engraved text portraits, lacking three leaves; bound in contemporary parchment over boards, 8 1/4 x 5 3/4 in.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Cardano, girolamo (1501-1576)
De Rerum Varietate Libri XVII.
Basel: Henricus Petrus, 1557.
First octavo edition, two volumes, woodcut author’s portrait within a medallion on verso of title; illustrated with text woodcuts throughout, a few full-paged; with one folding typographical table at page 791/792; lacking a similar table at 769/770; bound in uniform contemporary German parchment over thin wooden boards, contemporary signature on the fist title and first leaf of second volume, contents good, 6 3/4 x 4 1/4 in. (2)
Cardano was the prototypical Renaissance polymath, with interests in palm-reading, biology, physics, demonology, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and gambling. This lifetime edition of his book on “a variety of things” was published in the same year as the first folio edition.
STC German page 182; Norman 402.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Cauvet, gilles-paul (1731-1788)
Recueil d’Ornemens à l’Usage des Jeunes Artistes.
Paris: Chez l’Auteur, 1777.
Oversized folio, entirely engraved: title, pictorial dedication, text of the dedication (with head-piece, text in fancy calligraphic italic), and sixty-one leaves of engraved plates, followed by the typographically printed privilege leaf; plate leaves sometimes with one large motif, sometimes several smaller images, consisting of a total of 110 separate images on the sixty-one leaves, plates printed in black, bistre, and sepia-colored inks and executed in a style that resembles the marks of a conte crayon; the last leaf large and folding; bound in full crushed red morocco by Chambolle-Duru, aeg, inner gilt dentelles, gilt and lettered spine, slightly rubbed, generally bright, 21 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.
Berlin Kat 483; Cohen de Ricci 208; Millard I 49.
Estimate
$2,500 – $3,500
Cleland, john (1709-1789)
Memoirs of a Coxcomb.
London: Printed for R. Griffiths, 1751.
First edition, 12mo, ex libris Cleland’s relation, Lieutenant William Cleland, with his engraved bookplate pasted on the ffep; bound in 19th century gilt calf by Riviere, front board detached, 5 3/4 x 3 1/4 in.
ESTC T57321.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Collins, j. (18th century)
A New Book of Shields Composed of a Variety of Ornaments & Trophies Calculated for the Use of Artificers in General.
London: Printed for Robert Sayer, Map & Printseller at No. 53 in Fleet Street, [no date, 1760s].
Quarto, entirely engraved, six leaves in total, consisting of the title and five engravings of ornamental shields, bound in contemporary limp paper wrappers, 9 x 7 1/4 in.
Rare, not in ESTC; no auction copies.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Cudworth, ralph (1617-1688)
The True Intellectual System of the Universe.
London: Printed for Richard Royston, Bookseller to His most sacred Majesty, [1678].
First edition, folio, engraved title, typographical title printed in red and black, bound in contemporary speckled boards with gilt roll-tooled compartments and corner pieces, rebacked and re-cornered, new pastedowns and endleaves; ex libris George Rose, with his engraved armorial bookplate pasted inside the front board; contents with some edge toning, one bifolium browned; last two leaves [(l)3 & (l)4] with "A Catalogue of Books" printed on one side only and pasted together back-to-back,12 1/4 x 7 3/4 in.
Cudworth was part of the movement of Cambridge Platonists, in the late 17th century. "The Platonists constructed a natural theology supporting the concept of free will, and opposing the materialism of Thomas Hobbes. To its members, there was no natural divide between philosophy and theology. Reason could, therefore, sort out rival theological and ethical claims without the violence that had troubled their generation.' (see Charles M. Richards on The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (ISSN 2161-0002))
Wing C-741; ESTC R27278.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Da vinci, leonardo; leon battista alberti, et alia.
Trattato della Pittura.
Naples: Ricciardo, 1733.
Folio, title page printed in red and black, large central engraved vignette above imprint, illustrated with text engravings throughout, with two full-paged portraits of da Vinci and Alberti, lacking the final two text leaves: H1 & H2; uncut, bound in limp paper covers, waterstaining with spotting, especially at the end, housed in a custom cloth box, 14 1/4 x 9 1/2 in.
Brunet V 1258; Graesse VI 327.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Dante alighieri (1265-1321)
La Commedia.
Venice: Bernardinus Benalius and Matteo Capcasa (di Codeca), 3 March 1491.
Folio, third fully illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy, 289 of 302 leaves (lacking thirteen leaves: eleven preliminaries [*1-10 and a1] and two text leaves [folios 98 & 103]); illustrated with three full-paged woodcuts (two blocks, one repeat), ninety-seven text woodcuts, woodcut initials; text in roman letter, woodcut printer’s device on verso of final leaf (Kristeller 187); some leaves waterstained, torn, with marginal repairs to first signature, some spotting to contents; bound in later half calf and marbled paper boards, edges gauffered and stained red, ex libris William Henry Dutton and Edmund McClure, with their bookplates inside the front board; signature of Angelo Bandini (1726-1800) on verso of last leaf; 11 3/4 x 8 in.
The commentary of Cristoforo Landino surrounds Dante’s original text, as revised by Pietro da Figino. This incunabula edition of the first illustrated Venetian version of the text contains a full cycle of images for the first time.
Goff D32; Bod-inc D-015; Sheppard 3982; Pr 4877; BMC V 373; GW 7969; ISTC id00032000.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Day, joseph (fl. circa 1795)
An Address to the Attorneys at Law and Solicitors Practising in Great Britain.
London; Printed for and Sold only by the Author, 1796.
First edition, octavo, rare, only one copy listed in ESTC worldwide (John Rylands Library, Manchester); [bound with] Charles Martyn’s Considerations on the Qualifications, Clerkships, Admissions, and Practice of Attorneys, London: for T. Whieldon, 1790, author’s presentation copy; some signatures of the first title browned and speckled, the two bound together in contemporary or near-contemporary half-leather and marbled paper boards, both boards detached; ex libris Simon le Blanc (likely the English jurist, c. 1748-1816), with engraved armorial bookplate inside front board; 8 1/4 x 5 in.
The first work, a rare self-published tract by Day, is concerned with his attempt to charter a professional society for lawyers called the London Law Club. “It appeared to me that the profession could by no other means attain the high degree of respectability, esteem, and confidence so extremely desired than by forming the institution under the immediate auspices of the heads of the law.” (pp. 33-34) See also Christopher W. Brooks, Lawyers, Litigation and English Society Since 1450, London; Hambledon Press, 1998, pp. 156-158.
I: ESTC T187775; II: ESTC N27317, also rare, ESTC lists two copies worldwide, both at Harvard.
Estimate
$300 – $400
De bie, cornelis (1627-1711)
Het Gulden Cabinet.
Antwerp: [J. van Montfort for] Jan Meyssens, 1661 [colophon: 1662].
First edition, quarto, with engraved title, added portrait of De Bie dated 1708 mounted and inserted, illustrated with ninety-seven full-page engravings of artists, and an engraving of a personification of the city of Rome repeated five times; bound in full contemporary Dutch parchment over boards, tooled in blind, neatly titled on spine; ex libris Frederik Verachter (1791-1870), archivist of the Antwerp city library, with pages of notes in his hand, signature to title, and inserted leaf with extra biographical information about one of the 280 artists of the Low Countries profiled and illustrated in this volume; contents good; ex libris Gustave Charles Antoine Marie Van Havre, with his armorial bookplate inside the front board, 9 x 7 1/4 in.
Funck 278.
Estimate
$400 – $600
De luzán, ignacio (1702-1754)
La Poetica, ó Reglas de la Poesia en General, y de sus Principales Especies.
Zaragoza: Francisco Revilla, 1737.
First edition, folio, title page printed within border of typographical ornaments, bound in full contemporary limp Spanish parchment, with alum-tawed loops and knots for closures, some browning, a bit dusty, 11 x 8 in.
Palau 155343.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Demosthenes (384-322 bce) ed. melanchthon & camerarius
Orationes Olynthiacae Tres.
[Basel: Thomas Platter, 1538].
Octavo, a-e8, final leaf blank & present, bound in half parchment and printed paper boards, 5 3/4 x 4 in.
Not in Adams.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Design book sammelband.
Anleitung nach Mustern, Fenster, Thueren und Thorwegen.
Augsburg: Johann Martin Will, et al., circa 1788.
Folio, a collection of several works, comprising 146 engraved ornamental design plates from the 18th century, seventy-five by Johann Martin Will (1727-1806), nineteen parts with four plates each (lacking one); together with sixteen plates after Lalonde, and other suites by Bonnet, Delafosse, Ranson, Petitot, and others, bound together in contemporary German half leather and speckled paper boards, 13 3/4 x 9 in.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Design book, a collection of engravings.
Folio, including the following titles: Premier -[Sixieme] Livre de Form Rocquaille et Cartel Inventez par Mondon le Fils et Gravé par A. Aveline, Paris: Mondon & Aveline, [1736], with a total of forty-two plates; de la Joue’s Livre [Premier-Troisieme] de Cartouches de Guerre, Paris: Huquier, [mid-18th c.], thirty-one plates; de la Joue’s Livre de Buffets, Paris: Huquier, [mid-18th c.], seven plates; Edme Bouchardon’s Premier [-Second] Livre de Vases, Paris: Huquier, [mid-18th c.], twenty-four plates; Differentes Pensées d’Ornements Arabesques à Divers Usages, Paris: Huquier, [mid-18th c.], in two parts, twenty plates; Boucher’s Receuil de Fontaines, Paris: Huquier, [mid-18th c.], seven plates; Gillot’s Livre d’Ornements de Trophés, Culs de Lampes, et Devises, Paris: Huquier et chez la Veuve de Chereau, 1732, twelve plates; an impressive assortment of 155 design engravings; bound in full contemporary parchment, sewing shaken but holding, untrimmed throughout, 14 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Design illustrations, france, 18th century.
A collection of approximately 106 engraved illustrations by Percenet, Beauvais, Avril, Houdan, and others, a large quarto format volume with smaller plates mounted on larger sheets, bound in later half sheepskin with marbled paper boards, 11 3/4 x 9 1/2 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Digby, everard (circa 1551-1605) trans. william percey (pseudonym?)
The Compleat Swimmer or the Art of Swimming.
London: Printed by J[ames] C[ottrel] for Henry Fletcher, 1658.
First and only edition, octavo, illustrated with engraved frontispiece; bound in full 19th century calf, rubbed and worn with one area of worming loss to covering material, front board; frontis cropped with loss along fore-edge, title cropped along top (top rule trimmed away), large closed tear to B1 tacked at blank margin, bottom corner of blank margin of B4 torn away without loss of text, a few other minor tears; contents clean; 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 in.
Wing P-1454; Ralph Thomas, Swimming, page 179; ESTC R20550; rare at auction with five results over 100 years: the same copy was sold twice in 2004 and 2017; the present copy was likely the one sold at Parke Bernet in December, 1952; the only other two auction results in the record date from 1916 and 1935; ESTC locates three U.K. and five U.S. copies.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Dousa, janus, the elder (1545-1604)
Nordovicis Centurionatus, Sive Plautinarum Explanationum Libri IV.
Leiden: ex officina Plantiniana apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1587.
First edition, 16mo, bound in contemporary Dutch parchment, laced case construction, with yapp edges and woven cotton or linen ties (likely replacements of original silk ties) with patches inside boards covering tie attachments, elegant oval tool stamped in blind on each board, corner and spine ornaments also tooled in blind; old ownership inscription scratched from title, near-contemporary notes of Michael Sumio on verso of title, and misquote of the ancient Roman poet Floridus [sometimes Florus] “Fuge [should be Sperne] mores transmarinos mille habent offucias”; some marginal notes and short ms. index on rear pastedown; some speckling to contents, generally good, 4 3/4 x 3 in.
For Dousa, the wide-ranging humanist polymath, Plautus was a favorite.
Adams D-868.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Du choul, guillaume (1496-1560)
Discorso della Religione Antica de Romani.
Lyon: Guillaume Rouille, 1569.
Quarto, [bound with] Discorso sopra la Castrametatione & Disciplina Militare, Lyon: Rouille, 1569, illustrated throughout with numismatic, mythological, and military woodcuts; bound in full parchment over boards, 9 x 6 1/4 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Dunton, john (1659-1733)
The Young-Students-Library, Containing Extracts and Abridgments of the Most Valuable Books.
London: Printed for John Dunton, 1692.
First edition, folio, with large frontispiece entitled, “An Emblem of ye Athenian Society,” by Frederick Hendrick van Hove, bound opposite the title; tear to gutter of title, some paper repairs to verso of frontis, bound in contemporary calf, rebacked and recornered, some toning to contents, new endleaves and pastedowns, 13 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.
Wing D-2635; ESTC R35551.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Dürer, albrecht (1471-1528)
Alberti Dureri Clarissimi Pictoris et Geometrae de Symmetria Partium in Rectis Formios Humanorum Corporum Libro.
Nuremberg: in aedibus viduae Hieronymus Andreae, 1532.
Small folio, A-E6, F4, G-N6, O3 (lacking final blank O4), with Dürer’s monogram on title, illustrated with woodcuts large and small throughout, including eighty-five full-length woodcuts showing carefully measured proportions for a variety of body types of men, women, and small children; title page dusty with paper repairs on verso, bound in modern half parchment over boards, some other paper repairs, some leaves coming loose from sewing structure; one set of proportions extensively annotated in a contemporary hand (slightly cropped), 10 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.
This edition of Dürer’s De Symmetria Partium is Joachim Camerarius’s Latin translation of the first two books of Vier Bucher von Menschlicher Proportion, first published in 1528.
Adams D-1044.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Ege, otto f. (1888-1951) compiler.
Original Leaves from Famous Bibles: Nine Centuries, 1121-1935 A.D.
Consisting of the following thirty-seven separate leaves: Armenian paper manuscript Bible circa 1121; Latin miniature Vulgate manuscript on parchment leaf circa 1240; large-format Italian Latin Bible manuscript parchment leaf circa 1280; large folio paper leaf from Adolph Rusch’s circa 1480 Strasbourg Bible; the first Latin Bible with catchwords, Paganinus de Paganinis’s Venice 1495 imprint; a leaf from the 1518 Aldine Greek Bible; octavo leaf from the 1519 Giunta Bible; Erasmus’s edition of the Latin New Testament printed by Thomas Volfius in Basel, 1522; Leiden Latin Bible printed by Myt, 1532; a suppressed Luther Bible, Leipzig: Worab, 1541; Stephanus Hebrew Bible leaf, 1544-1546; 1549 leaf from the English language Matthew Bible printed by John Day; folio-format leaf from the 1549 so-called Great Bible, printed by Whitchurche; Giustiniani’s Hebrew Latin Bible, 1551; Stephanus Greek New Testament, 1569; a leaf from the first Bible printed in Spanish, Basel: Guarinus, 1569; Plantin Hebrew Bible, Antwerp, 1584; Hutter’s typographically beautiful Hebrew Bible, Hamburg: Elianis per Saxonem, 1587; Geneva Breeches Bible, printed by Barker, 1592; Hamburg Polyglot, Junus, 1596; a leaf from the first Rheims-Douai Bible, 1609-1610; leaf from the King James Bible, Barker, 1611; the diminutive Pearl Bible, London, printed by Field, 1653; a leaf from a polyglot Gospel printed in Stockholm, by Wankif, 1671; a leaf from the Eliot Indian Bible, Cambridge: S. Green, 1685 (marginal yellow discoloration along fore-edge, tape); Oxford-printed leaf of the Baskett Bible, 1740; a leaf from Saur’s first Germantown Bible, 1743; a leaf of the 1763 edition of the same; the Baskerville Bible, 1763; 1782 leaf of Aitken’s Philadelphia Bible; 1791 leaf from Isaiah Thomas’s first quarto Bible; the 1808 Tomson’s Bible printed by Aitken in Philadelphia; 1899 leaf from Dodd & Mead’s polychrome Bible; a leaf from the Doves Bible, 1903-1905; a leaf from an Edinburgh miniature Bible, 1919; [and] a leaf from the Rogers Oxford Lectern Bible, 1935; all housed in publisher’s original folding box, each in a folding mat with explanatory card; sizes vary, the portfolio 19 x 13 1/2 in.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
England and wales, parliament, public general acts, 1650.
An Act to Prohibit all Commerce and Traffique between England & Scotland, and Enjoyning the Departure of Scots out of this Commonwealth.
London: Printed by Edward Husband & John Field, Printers to Parliament, 1650.
Folio, four leaves; this Act ordered on 2 August 1650; title with woodcut device and printed within a double-rule, disbound, title browned, edges heavily chipped, with losses to blank margins, 10 1/2 x 7 in.
This Act of the English Parliament was issued at the height of the Third English Civil War between Scottish Royalists and supporters of Charles II. Cromwell had just arrived in Edinburgh at the end of July in 1650 in support of the English Republic. On the third of September, the Scots were dealt a crushing blow by the New Model Army at the devastating Battle of Dunbar.
Estimate
$100 – $200
Erotica lot, four 18th century volumes.
Including: Histoire et Vie de L’Arretin, ou Entretiens de Magdelon & Julie, [No place: no printer], 1777, octavo, illustrated with double-paged engraving comprised of small thumbnails all depicting sexual behavior, bound in half leather with marbled paper boards; [together with] A New Description of Merryland, Bath: J. Leak & E. Curll, 1741, octavo, fifth edition, engraved frontispiece, half leather, front board detached, “Merryland” refers to the female body; Monumens du Culte Secret des Dames Romaines, Rome: [no printer], 1787, engraved and illustrated throughout, large octavo, binding decased; [and] Monumens de la Vie Privée des Douze Cesars, d’après une Suite de Pierres Gravées sous leur Règne, Caprées [i.e. Paris]: Chez Sabellus, 1780, large quarto, illustrated throughout; bound in half leather and marbled paper boards; sewing broken, binding decased, 10 x 7 3/4 in. (4)
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Eusebius pamphilus (260/265-339/340 ce)
Ecclesiasticae Historiae.
Paris: Robert Stephanus, 1544.
Editio princeps, thick folio, woodcut device to title, text in Greek, printed in Garamond’s newly designed typeface, last leaf (blank but for Estienne’s device) present in this copy, bound in 17th century calf boards, tooled in blind panels, neatly rebacked, ex libris Philip Lyttleton Gell, with bookplate, a complete and exceptionally fresh copy, including the blank leaf P5, 13 x 8 1/2 in.
This production of the Estienne press signals not only the first edition of Eusebius’s complete works, it is also the debut of the storied “grecs du roi” typeface, designed by Claude Garamond. The Royal Library at Fontainebleau contained a trove of unpublished Greek manuscripts at the time, and François I felt that they deserved a typeface worthy of their importance. Also for the first time, Estienne used a stunning new set of matching woodcut head-pieces and display initials.
Adams E-1093; Mortimer, French, 219; Schreiber 77; Renouard 59 11; Armstrong 52-54; Updike I 236-239; cf. A.F. Johnson’s Decorative Initial Letters, 112-113.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Fine binding, gruel & engelmann.
Thomas à Kempis L’Imitation de Jesus-Christ, Paris: Bellin-Leprieur et Morizot, illustrations by Plon Frères, [1852], small folio, lithographic plate printed in colors and gold advertising Gruel Engelmann binders bound between frontispiece and title, illustrated throughout with twelve engravings by Franz Keller, Xavier Steifensand, and Lucien Butavand; bound in full diced russia, tooled in blind, Renaissance-style with rolled tools in center compartments on each board, elegant decorative catches, clasps, and corner-pieces in silver (or silverplated), crimson watered silk endleaves, inner gilt dentelles, inner leather hinges, all edges stained red and gauffered in gilt with an all-over fleur-de-lys pattern, silk endbands in three colors, titled in gilt on spine, and signed “Gruel” in gilt at foot of spine; spine sunned and leather on outside of joints cracked, else very nicely preserved; ex libris Froissart, with bookplate, 6 1/2 x 10 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Fine bindings, two examples.
Thomas a Kempis’s De L’Imitation de Jesus-Christ, Paris: Desprez & Desessartz, 1719, large octavo, illustrated with five full-paged engravings, bound in full contemporary crushed brown morocco, boards tooled ornately in gilt along the edges, built up from smaller individual tools, spine tooled and lettered in gilt with the same floral and small decorative motifs, aeg, marbled endleaves, inner gilt dentelles, ex libris Ernest Schytte, with his 1898 bookplate designed by Pierre Ansart pasted inside the front board; very nicely preserved; [together with] Alessandro Mazzinelli’s Uffizio della Settimana Santa, Venice: Baglioni, 1753, octavo, illustrated with cuts; bound in full contemporary calf, ornately gilt-tooled over both boards and spine (some worming to top compartment), all edges gilt and gauffered, very decorative and nicely preserved. (2)
Estimate
$400 – $600
Fine bindings, two examples.
Including: Pliny the Elder’s Epistolae et Panegyricus, Editio nova, ed. Boxhorn, Leiden: Elzevir, 1653, 12mo, bound by Rivere in full tan leather, tooled in blind with an ornate central oval tool, ruled in blind compartments, gilt lettering piece on spine, 5 x 2 3/4 in. [together with] Gerard Vossius and others Dissertationes de Studiis Bene Instituendis, Utrecht: Ackersdyk et Gisb. Zylii, 1658, 12mo in a matching Riviere binding, same leather and tooling as the book described above, the two very nicely preserved, edges stained red, marbled endleaves, ex libris Froissart, with bookplates, 4 3/4 x 2 1/2 in. (2)
Estimate
$400 – $600
Fontaine, jacques valentin (fl. circa 1750)
Nouveau Livre d’Etudes et de Principes de Serrurreries.
Paris: Francois Chereau, circa 1750.
First edition, folio, engraved throughout, illustrated with twelve plates (including title), bold designs, very good impressions; bound in half leather, mottled paper boards, 13 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.
Guilmard 98.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Germain, pierre, le roman (1703-1783)
Elements d’Orfevrerie Divisés en Deux Parties de Cinquante Feuilles.
Paris: Se Vendent Chez l’Auteur, Place du Carousel à l’Orfevererie du Roy, 1748.
First edition, small folio, two parts in one volume, both signed on title pages by Germain; “avec privilege du Roy” also written in a contemporary hand below the imprint date in first part; both parts engraved throughout, illustrated with 100 full-page plates of various rococo wares for churches and wealthy patrons’ homes; some water staining to part two, bound in contemoporary half speckled sheepskin, marbled paper-covered boards, two labels on spine, 9 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Germain’s work was the largest model book for silver- and goldsmiths of its time. A valuable reference to subsequent craftspeople, it has been reprinted, including in Diderot’s Encyclopedie. Germain was a royal goldsmith, almost every design illustrated are his own, with the inclusion of several etchings of sketches by Jacques Roettiers (1707-1784). Roettiers was commissioned to create work for the Dauphin that was uncompleted at the time this book was published. For more, see Hélène Cavalié’s “Un manuel d’ornements et son influence : les Éléments d’orfèvrerie de Pierre Germain,” https://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/27751?lang=en.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Giardini, giovanni (1646-1722)
Promptuarium Artis Argentariae.
Rome: Faustus Amideus, 1750.
Folio, two parts in one volume, each with its own typographical title page (engraved vignettes), otherwise engraved, illustrated with 101 full-paged engravings, (irregularly numbered at the beginning, two plates numbered 94), without dedication and engraved title (no internal evidence of presence and/or removal of leaves); bound in contemporary sponge-decorated calf, gilt spine, rubbed and bumped, 15 3/4 x 10 1/4 in.
Berlin Kat 1142.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Giovio, paolo (1483-1552)
Vitae Illustrium Virorum. [and] Elogia Virorum Bellica Virtute Illustrium.
Basel: Heinrich Petrus & Petrus Perna, 1578, 1596.
Folio, four parts in one volume, woodcut title page borders, illustrated with many woodcut portraits throughout including those of Turkish leaders; title to second part of Elogia dated 1577; bound in full contemporary alum-tawed pigskin over wooden boards, brass catches and clasps still present, 13 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.
Adams G-667; G-645; G-648.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Grandjean de montigny, auguste-henri-victor (1776-1850)
Architecture Toscane.
Paris: de l’Imprimerie de P. Didot l’Ainé, 1815.
First edition, oversized folio, typographical title page for the collected eighteen parts (cahiers), each with an engraved sub-title, engraved throughout with 109 numbered full-paged illustrations, followed by forty-six leaves of typographically printed explanatory text, and two indices; bound in contemporary half red morocco, textured red paper boards, 16 3/4 x 11 in.
Graesse II 550.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Gutenberg bible facsimile leaves and publications, three titles
Including: Pages from the Gutenberg Bible of 42 Lines, with an introduction and notes by Otto W. Fuhrmann, New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1940; a prospectus for The Gutenberg Bible, a New Facsimile Edition, New Jersey: Pageant Books, 1960, with eight loose leaves reproducing highly decorated pages printed on one side, housed in publisher’s leatherette folder; [and] Henry Lewis Johnson’s Gutenberg and the Book of Books, New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1932, in publisher’s brown cloth and folding box. (3)
Estimate
$250 – $350
Hand-colored metalcut from french book of hours, and seven initials.
Parchment leaf with a full-page metalcut of the Virgin Mary with emblems of the immaculate conception: including rose bush, a mirror, tree of Jesse, fountain, and others, Mary in a white dress, with joined hands, and God above; hand-colored in blue, red, brown, and green, with gilt highlights, with prayers printed in gothic letter on the verso, gilt-illuminated marginal illustration, and small hand-written initials in colors with gilt highlights, 7 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.; [together with] seven illuminated initials trimmed from a manuscript, each approximately 2 1/2 x 3 in. (8)
Estimate
$400 – $600
Hauer, johann thomas (1748-1820)
Desseins a la Mode Neuve au Gout Antique pour les Architects.
Paris: J. Hauer, circa 1780.
Folio, a collection of plates on different subjects, including Cahier par les Maçons, seven plates; Cahier des Vases, twelve plates; Cahier des Fontaines, four plats; Cahiers de Epitaphes, three plates; Cahier des Sculpteurs et Tailleurs de Pierre, four plates; Cahier des Fourneaux, four plates; Cahier des Poitiers, four plates; Cahier des Armoires, three plates; Cahier Desseins des Trumeaux, two plates; Cahier des Horologes, three plates; Cahier des Menuisieurs, eight plates; Cahier des Trophees, one plate; Cahier des Silhouettes, sixteen plates (some printed in sepia ink), Frontispieces et Trophees, four plates; Diverses Menuiseries à l’Antique, four plates; and thirty-two additional Hauer plates, some printed in Augsburg, for a total of approximately 115 engraved plates, sizes and condition vary, housed in custom buckram case.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Hawkins, francis, trans. (1628-1681)
Youths Behaviour, or Decency in Conversation amongst Men, composed in French by Grave Persons, for the Use and Benefit of their Youth.
London: S. Griffin for William Lee, 1668.
Octavo, engraved portrait frontispiece of the translator at the age of ten, title printed within border of typographical ornaments; separate title page but continuous collation and pagination for the second part, New Additions unto Youths Behaviour, with engraved frontispiece of two women labeled “Vertue” and “Vice,” (lacking H8 final ?blank); bound in a 19th century prize binding from Mr. Oliphant’s School, awarded to Sophia Jane Drew in 1856; both boards detached, some toning and browning to contents, 5 3/4 x 3 1/2 in.
The second part of this courtesy book contains advice targeted to women, including an admonition of “that upstart impudence of naked Breasts,” a list of proverbs, and an alphabetical lexicon.
Wing Y-209A; ESTC R42970; rare at auction.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Holbein, hans (1497-1543)
Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones ad Vivum Expressae.
Lyons: apud Ioannem & Franciscum Frellonios, fratres, 1543.
Third edition, quarto, (lacking N4 final blank), title page with Frellon moth and crab woodcut printer’s device, illustrated throughout with ninety-four woodcuts by Holbein; bound in later limp parchment, housed in folding chemise, ex libris Philip Hofer, with his bookplate inside the front cover of the chemise, some spots, fingersoiling, one leaf repaired, 6 1/4 x 4 1/2 in.
Brunet III 252; Graesse III 317; not in Fairfax Murray; Mortimer: Harvard French 279 (Frellon’s Spanish edition of the same year); see also Philip Hofer’s “Holbein’s Old Testament Woodcuts,” in The New Colophon, vol. 1, part 2 (April 1948).
Estimate
$2,500 – $3,500
Holbein, hans (c. 1497-1543)
Bilder Des Todes. [The Dance of Death].
Leipzig: Insel, 1913.
Limited edition, copy number 495 of 800, illustrated throughout with forty woodcuts, with publisher’s title and limitation leaf, bound in printed decorative paper-covered boards, 7 x 5 1/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Hope, thomas (1769-1831)
Household Furniture and Interior Decoration.
London: T. Bensley for Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, 1807.
First edition, oversized folio, half-title present, fifty-three leaves of explanatory text printed in letterpress followed by sixty full-paged engravings; bound in half leather and marbled paper boards, gilt tooled and lettered spine, 18 1/2 x 11 1/4 in.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Italian short tracts on current events, five examples.
Italy, 1672-1700.
Five separately bound large octavo pamphlets, including: Descrizzione del la Mossa dell’Esercito Ottomano, Florence & Bologna; Monti, 1672; Nova, e Distinta Relatione della Battaglia Seguita alli 29 e 30 di Agosto, 1689 in Sernia, Venice & Rome: Buagni, 1689; Vera, e Distinta Relatione della Gran Vittoria Ottenuta dalle Armi Imperiali, Venice & Rome: Buagni, 1689; Nuova, e Distinta Relatione della Presa della Famosa Fortezza di Assac Fatta dalli Moscoviti, Venice & Rome: Ercole, 1696; [and] Racconto Distinto dell’Udienza Solenne, Rome: Zenobi, 1700; all bindings modern half parchment and boards covered with sheets of antique printed Greek leaves, all approximately 8 1/2 x 6 in. (5)
Estimate
$400 – $600
Jombert, charles-antoine (1712-1784)
Repertoire des Artistes, ou Recueil de Compositions d’Architecture et d’Ornements Antiques et Modernes.
Paris, L’Auteur, 1765.
First edition, two folio volumes, illustrated with 491 engraved illustrations, some folding, some with multiple plates per page; bound in uniform later half parchment and marbled paper boards, the images in multiple parts, some with title pages; hundreds of rococo designs for architecture, doors, windows, hearths, trophies, and much more, plates with large margins throughout, almost all with deckle edges intact; 13 3/4 x 9 in. (2)
Estimate
$3,000 – $4,000
Josephus, flavius (37-c. 100)
The Famous and Memorable Works.
London: Printed by J.L for Anne Hood, 1655.
Folio, woodcut printer’s mark on title, a clean copy bound in contemporary speckled English calf, neatly rebacked, with original label, 13 1/4 x 18 1/2 in.
Rare, ESTC shows only the Yale copy in the U.S. ESTC R10907; Wing J-1076.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Kircher, athanasius (1602-1680)
Latium. Id est, Nova & Parallela Latii tum Veteris tum Novi Descriptio.
Amsterdam: Joannem Janssonium à Waesberge & Haeredes Elizei Weyerstraet, 1671.
First edition, added engraved title by Romeyn de Hooghe, portrait of dedicatee Pope Clement X, twenty-seven plates extraneous to collation: fifteen folding and twelve full-paged, in addition to numerous engraved text illustrations, bound in contemporary blind-tooled calf boards, rebacked, browning to text leaves, printed in Latin in two columns, new endleaves and pastedowns, 15 x 9 1/2 in.
Merrill 23 (with twenty-six engraved plates); Caillet 5777; Cicognara 3758; Olschki 17342.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Krauss, johann ulrich (1655-1719)
Historischer Bilder Bibel.
Augusburg: Krauss, 1705.
Folio, engraved throughout, first title mounted, five parts in one volume, each with engraved calligraphic title and pictorial title, with 135 numbered plates; [bound with] Heilige Augen und Gemuths-Lust, engraved titles to the two parts, engraved with 120 plates; [bound with] Biblisches Engel- u. Kunst-Werck, with engraved title and thirty plates; [and] Simonischer Lebens-Lauff, illustrated with twenty leaves of plates; all works bound together in full contemporary parchment over boards, 14 1/2 x 9 in.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Lajoue, jacques de (1687-1761) and others.
Sammelband of Engraved Design Books, Including: Livre de Cartouches de Guerre.
Paris: Huquier, [mid-18th century].
Folio, engraved throughout with seven plates, including title; [bound with] Livre Nouveau de Differents Trophées Inventez par A. Watteau, Paris: Huquier, [n.d.], twelve plates including title; [and] Second Livre de Cartouches Inventés par le Sr. de La Joue, Paris: Huquier, [n.d.], twelve plates including title; [and] twelve engraved plates by Le Pautre, and others of architectural interiors; Rudoph’s Livre des Tables Françoises Nouvellement Inventées, Augsburg: Merz, [n.d.], sixteen engravings; thirteen engravings of chimney breasts, some by Pineau; five engravings by Bonnard of grillwork in French churches; J.B. Toro’s Cartouches Nouvellem[en]t Inventez, [Paris]: Dubuisson, [n.d.], six plates, including title; Toro’s Dessein de Tombeaux Nouvellement Inventez, Paris: Gautrot, [n.d.], four plates, including title; Toro’s Desseins à Plusieurs Usages, six plate, including title; all bound in contemporary half parchment and paste-paper boards, 12 3/4 x 10 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Lalonde, richard de (fl. circa 1780)
Oeuvres Diverses de Lalonde Decorateur et Dessinateur.
Paris: Chereau, circa 1780.
Two oversized folio volumes, first collected edition, both volumes engraved throughout with title pages and 263 of 264 engravings, all gathered into sets of six Cahiers on different subjects, as issued, one set lacking one image; handsomely bound in full crushed red morocco, a bit dusty, but very nicely preserved, teg, 15 3/4 x 9 1/2 in. (2)
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Laws, t., carver (fl. circa 1772)
A New Book of Ornaments Design’d by T. Laws.
London: W. Darling, 1772.
Large oblong octavo, six engraved illustrations, including title, contemporary stab-sewing, with title as front limp cover, preserved in a custom phase box, title with marginal tears, toning, 12 x 6 1/2 in.
Rare, not in ESTC.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Le pautre, jean (1618-1682)
Oeuvres d’Architecture.
Paris: Jombert, 1751-1753.
Three folio volumes, first Jombert edition, added engraved titles in each, volume one illustrated with 248 full-paged plates and twenty-four folding (272 in total); volume two illustrated with 238 full-paged plates and twenty-six folding plates (264 in total); volume three illustrated with 207 full-paged and thirty-eight folding plates (245 in total), for a grand total of approximately 781 illustrations (this work appears with varying numbers of plates, this copy is likely lacking a few found in other copies); the set bound in uniform contemporary sponge-decorated French calf with elegantly gilt-decorated spines, nicely preserved, with endcaps almost indetectably repaired, 13 1/4 x 8 1/4 in. (3)
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Lewis, james (1750/1-1820)
Original Designs in Architecture.
London: Printed for the Author by Cooper & Graham, sold by Mssrs. Taylor & R. Faulder, 1797.
Oversized folio, two parts in one volume, each with its own title page (originally issued separately), illustrated with twenty-two full-paged plates in the first part and forty-one in the second part (final plate folding), bound in full contemporary tree calf, rebacked, gilt-tooled spine, 21 1/4 x 14 1/4 in.
ESTC N65198 & T139563; rare, ESTC shows part one held in five, part two in four U.S. libraries.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Limited edition facsimiles of early books.
Including: The Anatomical Excercises of Dr. William Harvey de Motu Cordis, 1628: de Circulatione Sanguinis, 1649; the First English Text of 1653, London: Nonesuch, [1928], copy no. 598 of 1450, bound in full niger goatskin, tooled and lettered in gilt, t.e.g.; Ovyde hys Booke of Methamorphose, trans. William Caxton, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, printed at the Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon & published by Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1924, copy no. 292 of 375 copies printed on Batchelor’s Kelmscott hand-made paper, bound in publisher’s quarter linen with blue paper boards, unopened; Boccaccio des Cas de Nobles Hommes et Femmes Malheureux, London; Chiswick Press, Charles Whittingham & Co., [1911], with folding color-printed frontispiece; [and] Schoenbaum’s William Shakespeare: a Documentary Life, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, in assoc. with the Scolar Press, 1975, copy no. 98 of 200 signed by the author. in publisher’s binding and slipcase, very good; a prospectus for a facsimile of the Council of Constance, and other ephemera.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Liturgies: latin rite, missale itineratium.
Vade Mecum. Missale Itinerarium seu Misse Peculiares Valde Devote.
Nuremberg: Wolfgang Huber, 1510.
Quarto, A-G8; lacking leaf with crucifixion woodcut: D3, (Adams collation says D6+1) in this copy leaf D3 replaced with a laid leaf with manuscript prayers whose watermark matches the paper used as endleaves, circa 1602; also lacking G8, the final leaf, with full-page woodcut; this copy bears no colophon in red on the verso of G7, differing from the copy described in Adams but identical to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München (the leaf undisturbed in both copies, no evidence of any alteration); small hand-colored woodcut of Christ’s head with crown of thorns below the text across the bottom of D7 recto (trimmed along bottom edge with slight loss), hand-colored woodcut initial on D4; text printed in red and black, title printed in red, in gothic text throughout in one and two columns; bound in circa 1603 alum-tawed leather over wooden boards, tooled in blind compartments, ex libris Fridericus Miltenberger of France, with his inscripitions on front board, inside front board, and on title page; ex libris the Benedictines of Lambach, Austria with their stamp on first and last leaves; binding and text wormed; catches and clasps present, 7 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.
Adams L-1167; Proctor 11077.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Loyola, saint ignatius of (1491-1556)
Essercitii Spirituali.
Rome: Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1625.
Octavo, text printed on one side of the page throughout, woodcut emblems, text in Italian, bound in marbled leather, spine tooled in gold with red label, 6 1/2 x 4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Machiavelli, niccolò (1469-1527)
I Discorsi, [bound with] Il Prencipe.
Palermo: Appresso gli Heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli [i.e. London: John Wolfe], 1584.
Octavo, same imprint and woodcut printer’s devices on both titles, both false imprints; text printed in Italian, in italic type throughout; contemporary or near-contemporary marginal notes in English in the first few leaves of the first work (slightly cropped); bound in 17th century full calf, worn, boards detached, trimmed a bit close, 6 x 4 in.
I: STC 17159; ESTC S106978; II: STC 17167; both titles rare at auction.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Manuscript leaves, hand-illuminated facsimiles.
Sergey Okoev’s Reproductions from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.
Two parchment leaves, one with a full-paged miniature depicting the exchange of New Year’s gifts, a great medieval banquet, from the January calendar page as it appears in the original manuscript, signed and dated by Okoev, painted in 2016; [and] a second leaf with text in two columns featuring three smaller two-line illuminated initials and an eleven-line miniature of the Fiery Furnace, with King Nebuchadnezzar, from Daniel 3, signed in 2007 by Okoev, each leaf approximately 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. (2)
Okoev has been a serious painter since 1977. Working for eight years, he created a complete facsimile of the Heures on parchment, painted with natural materials. He has exhibited his work worldwide.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Manuscript leaves, two early examples.
Including: single parchment leaf from a German Psalter, circa 1225, in brown ink, with red initials, with the beginning of Psalm 73, twenty-six lines, single column, 8 x 5 1/2 in. [together with] a single parchment leaf from a 15th century Book of Hours in Latin, small format, text in a gothic hand, with one- and two-line initials in red, blue and gold with tracery decoration, and line-fill in blue and gold at the end of each line, 5 3/4 x 4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Manuscript on paper.
The Retreat, a Sentimental Fragment Interspersed with Dialogues.
Britain, 1817.
Quarto format manuscript on laid paper with 1815 watermarks, title page very neatly done in a calligraghic hand incorporating several lettering styles, 328 numbered pages; each leaf lined, written in a neat italic hand brown ink, very faint inscription to title page that may be the author’s name, approximately twenty-four lines per page, in later half calf, marbled paper boards, some toning, offsetting to contents, some signatures sprung, 9 x 7 1/4 in.
The author, who only identifies himself with the initials N.P., has composed this work because, “a father’s best legacy to his children are lessons demonstrative of piety.” We may also infer that our writer had a connection to the sea as several of his dialogues are nautical in nature, and to that end he offers five pages in which he defines “Sea Terms,” after the last numbered page 328.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Manuscript on parchment, requiem mass.
Missae in Agenda Defunctorum Deservientes ex Missali Romano.
[Antwerp]: Père Gaspar de Haze, 1687.
Folio, eight parchment leaves, title in red, brown, and gold ink with fancy penwork dated Memento Mori image with skull, text in neat roman letters throughout, in double columns, including sections of music, multi-color head-piece, seven large initials on multi-colored illustrated fields, and two sections of text in gold ink on red fields, bound in full parchment over boards, 14 1/2 x 10 in.
See also the following regarding other manuscripts by the Franciscan Père De Have: Elly Cockx-Indestege’s Codicibus Impressisque, Leuven: Peeters, 2004, page 493; [and] Catalogue Méthodique de Livres, Delbecq, Gand: Vanderhaeghen-Hulin, 1840, item #733.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Mazarinade.
Lettre de Consolation Envoyée dans les Champs Elisées au Sultan Hibraim par le Sultan Mehemet son Fils, Empereur des Turcs.
[?Paris: no printer], 1649.
Quarto, A-B2, trans. by le Sieur Roverol, ex libris Harvard College Library with bookplate and stamps, released stamp initialed by William A. Jackson, full modern parchment over boards, 8 x 6 in.
he Ottoman Turkish Sultans mentioned in this work are Ibrahim (1615-1648), and his son Mehmed IV (1642-1693). Rare at auction.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Mercier, jean (circa 1510-1570)
Tabulae In Grammaticen Linguae Chaldaeae, quae & Syriaca dicitur. Multa interim de Rabbinico & Talmudico Stilo Traduntur.
Paris: Morelium, 1560.
Quarto, A-X4, bound in modern parchment over boards, 8 1/2 x 5 3/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Milton, john (1608-1674)
The Poetical Works.
London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1695.
Folio, engraved portrait frontispiece engraved by R. White bound opposite typographical title page, general title, separate title for Paradise Lost, illustrated with twelve full-paged engravings chiefly after Sir John Baptist Medina, by Michael Burghers or Peter Paul Bouche; the lines in Paradise Lost numbered; title pages of Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes dated 1695; without a list of subscribers after the general title; with the Table for Paradise Lost; bound in full contemporary English paneled and speckled calf, tooled in blind, rebacked, corners repaired, near contemporary ex libris of Sarah Bugg inside front board; along with that of Sam Bontham, 1726; later owned by forger Osborne Charles Vyse Aldis, with his signature on general title, with a nine-line note in his hand and initialed on page 343; 12 1/8 x 7 1/2 in.
Wing M-2163.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Montaigne, michel de (1533-1592) trans. john florio (1552-1625)
The Essayes or Morall, Politike, and Militarie Discourses.
London: Printed by Miles Flesher for Rich. Royston, 1632.
Third edition in English, folio, with added engraved title by Martin Droeshout, closed tears to “The Beholder of this Title,” and one text leaf, bound in full contemporary calf, rebacked, with new endleaves and pastedowns, 10 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.
“Florio’s Montaigne is in fact one of the masterpieces of English prose, with a stylistic range and felicity and passages of deep lingering music that make it comparable to Sir Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the works of Sir Thomas Browne.” (Quoted from New York Review Books blurb on Shakespeare’s Montaigne: the Florio translation, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, NYRB Classics, 2014)
STC 18043; ESTC S114977.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
More, thomas (1478-1535)
De Optimo Reip. Statu, deque Nova Insula Utopia, Libellus Vere Aureus.
Basel: Froben, 1518.
Third edition, the first printed by Froben, edited by Erasmus (d. 1536) a4, b1, b4, (lacking preliminary text leaves b2 & b3), c-s4, t-u6, x-z4, A-I4, K6; first appearance in print of More’s Epigrams; two titles printed within woodcut title page compartments, two colophons with large woodcut devices, lacking leaves with the woodcut of the eponymous island of the title and the Utopian alphabet (provided in good photocopy facsimile); resewn and rebacked, in parchment boards with yapp edges, contents generally good, some early marginalia and underlining, edges trimmed cropping some notes, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.
Adams M-1757; PMM 47 (1516 edition).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Mottley, john (1692-1750)
The History of the Life and Reign of the Empress Catharine.
London: Printed for William Meadows & M. Read, 1744.
First edition, two octavo volumes, frontispiece portrait of Catherine the Great bound opposite the first volume title, title pages printed in red and black, three other engraved plates (one folding), and one folding map; bound in uniform contemporary calf, rubbed, joints cracked, becoming detached, 8 x 4 3/4 in. (2)
ESTC T75735.
Estimate
$200 – $300
Musurus, marcus, ed. (c1470-1517)
Epistolae Diversorum Philosophorum, Oratorum, Rhetorum.
Venice: Aldus Manutius, Romanus, [not before 17 Apr. 1499].
Volume two only of two, quarto, printed in Greek characters throughout, lacking final blank, bound in 17th century calf, tooled in gilt on boards and spine, title in gilt lettering directly on spine, contents generally good, 8 x 6 in.
This second volume of letters contains works attributed to Basilius Magnus, Libanius, Chion, Aeschines, Isocrates, Phalaris, Pythagoras, Brutus, Apollonius Tyaneus, Julianus imperator, and Lex de Archiatris.
Goff E64; Klebs 379.1; Pell 4613; CIBN E-53; Polain(B) 1416; IGI 3707; Pr 5569; BMC V 560; BSB-Ink E-86; GW 9367; HC 6659*; Ahmanson-Murphy 30; ISTC ie00064000.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Narrative poetry, english.
The Muse in Good Humour: or, a Collection of the Best Poems, Comic Tales, Choice Fables, Enigmas, &c.
London: Printed for Mary Cooper, 1745.
12mo, two parts in one volume, engraved frontispiece to first part, illustrated with five engraved text vignettes; second title, The Muse in Good Humour: or, a Collection of Enigma’s, Serious and Comic. With a Compleat Key to the Whole. Part II. Vol. II, engraved title vignette on title, bound in contemporary calf, old rebacking, now failed, front board detached, contents generally good, portion of blank margin of second title torn away with loss of a small segment; 6 1/2 x 4 in.
These comic tales have an erotic slant to them. Some of the vignettes are signed in the plate by George Bickham Jr., the illustrator and caricaturist.
ESTC T41629 (slightly confused cataloging), rare in U.S. libraries, ESTC lists two copies: Newberry & Ohio State University.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Olaus, archbishop of uppsala, magnus (1490-1557)
A Compendious History of the Goths, Swedes, & Vandals, and other Northern Nations.
London: Printed by Streater, to be sold by Humphrey Mosely, et al., 1658.
First edition in English, small folio, variant with a comma after the word “Vandals,” on the title, title page printed in red and black, translated by John Streater; ex libris UCLA Library, with perforated stamp to title, sold as a duplicate with markings, rubber stamp to top edge, number stamped on dedication leaf and page 37, bound in full modern calf, period style, rubbed,10 1/2 x 6 3/4 in.
Wing M-257; ESTC R12262.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Olivier, j. (fl. circa 1770)
Fencing Familiarized: or a New Treatise on the Art of Sword Play. L’Art des Armes Simplifié.
London: Jean Bell & C. Etherington, York, 1771.
First edition, octavo, text in French and English, illustrated with folding engraved frontispiece, one full-paged plate, and seven folding engravings, text in French and English on facing pages; bound in later half morocco, rubbed, 8 1/4 x 5 in.
ESTC T135606.
Estimate
$600 – $900
Orbellis, nicolas de (1400-1475)
Sup[er] Sententias Co[m]pendium.
Paris: Regnault, 1520.
Thick octavo, title page printed in red and black featuring Regnault’s large woodcut device with elephant, text in gothic letter, printed in two columns throughout; bound in contemporary blind-tooled calf, very neatly rebacked, corners repaired, lacking original cloth ties, title in ink on top page edge, 6 1/4 x 4 in.
Adams O-250.
Orbellis was a Franciscan scholar and philosopher who taught at Angers. This work is focused on Duns Scotus’s commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Ornaments Displayed on a Full-Size for Working. Proper for all Carvers, Painters, &c: Containing a Variety of Accurate Examples of Foliage and Friezes.
London: Published by I. & J. Taylor, at the Architectoral Library, Holborn, [no date, circa 1770s].
Oblong folio, thirty plates printed in sepia, done in a mezzotint style that beautifully approximates the quality of the artist’s crayon; bound in later quarter leather and buckram boards, contents somewhat dusty, 18 1/2 x 11 in.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Ovid (43 bce-17/18 ce)
Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. Translated by the Most Eminent Hands.
London: Printed for Tonson, 1717.
Folio, regular paper issue, added engraved title bound as frontispiece, full-paged engraved portrait of dedicatee, the Princess of Wales by Vertue after Kneller; illustrated with fifteen full-paged engravings, one heading each book; bound in full contemporary tan English calf, sprinkled compartments with blind tooling, rebacked, later pastedowns and endleaves, 15 1/4 x 9 1/2 in.
ESTC T108889.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Papal decretals listing banned books, 1657-1727, four examples.
Large-format broadsides on laid paper, each with woodcut emblems, portraits of Peter and Paul, and Papal coat of arms, all printed in Rome: ex typographia Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae, 1657, 1659, 1664, & 1727; deep type impressions, very good examples with deckle edges, old folds, the smallest one (1664), 14 3/4 x 10 1/4 in., the other three 22 x 17 in.
Each Decretal lists books banned by the Catholic church. All are rare.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Peacham, henry (1576?-1643?)
The Compleat Gentleman. [and] The Gentlemans Exercise.
London: Printed [by John Legat] for Francis Constable, 1634.
Quarto, added engraved title (mounted) and typographical title, both works with woodcut text illustrations, bound in full parchment over beveled boards by Peacock & Mansfield, spine gilt tooled and lettered, all edges gilt and gauffered; ex libris Frederick Barne (1801-1886) with his bookplate inside front board and dated signature on title, 7 1/2 x 4 1/4 in.
STC 19504; ESTC S114316.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Pennant, thomas (1726-1798)
Arctic Zoology.
London: Printed by Henry Hughs, 1784-1785.
First edition, two quarto volumes, illustrated with engraved frontis to first volume, engraved vignette to both titles, twenty-two full-paged and one folding engraving, bound in uniform contemporary calf, second volume amateurisly repaired, front board re-attached, regular-paper copy, 9 x 7 in. (2)
ESTC T114528; T114529; Arctic Bibliography 13291; Lada-Mocarski 38; Sabin 59757; Wickersham 6822-23.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Percier, charles & pierre-françois-léonard fontaine.
Recueil des Decorations Interieures.
Paris: Chez les auteurs, Chez Ducamp, Joubert, Coeffier, 1801.
Oblong folio, engraved title, illustrated throughout with seventy-two engraved plates, half-title present; contemporary half red morocco and pink paste-paper boards, 16 1/2 x 11 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Pergolesi, michel angelo (1728-1815)
[Designs for Various Ornaments].
London: Published by the Author, 1777-1792.
Oversized folio sheets, comprising sixty-seven plates numbered one through sixty-six (two plates numbered 56); stab sewn in contemporary paper wrappers, numbered in a contemporary hand, in the original thirteen parts, with a notice from the publisher pasted on the wrapper of the twelfth part, generally very good with some marginal tears, chips, somewhat dusty, housed in custom folding box, 22 x 15 1/2 in.
Pergolesi’s rococo designs include ornately decorated vases, ceiling medallions, columns, wall motifs, fireplace surrounds, decorative urns, statuary, and more.
ESTC N480981, rare, two U.K. and Library of Congress copy only in U.S. libraries.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Persian and southeast asian manuscript leaves, four examples.
Including a square Persian work of calligraphy with panels separated by double-ruling in red, text in black ink within a blue frame of pieced paper, flecked in black and gold, paper frail, some slight losses, 8 x 8 in.; a mounted Persian calligraphy piece in black ink, with the letters framed in cloud-like bubbles, with a gilt field behind accented in blue, white, pink, and red roses, with fine stems in black, surrounded by a blue paper frame decorated with gold roses; a brightly painted miniature highlighted in gold depicting Parvati, the Hindu Mother Goddess, praying to Brahma; small panel with text in Sanskrit at the top, 10 x 7 1/2 in; [and] a small miniature featuring four Hindu gods and goddesses, including Vishnu, Hanuman, and two others, framed, 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 in. (4)
Estimate
$250 – $350
Philo of alexandria [aka] philo judaeus (c. 20 bce-c. 50 ce)
Opera Exegetica.
Cologne: Pierre de la Roviere, 1613.
First complete collected edition in Greek with Latin translation, folio, title printed within elaborate woodcut compartment, Latin translation by Sigismund Gelenius, with notes by Adrien Turnebe and David Hoeschel, text printed in dual columns in Greek and Latin throughout; bound in half leather with marbled paper boards, somewhat worn and loose, some browning to text leaves, waterstains, title page torn and mounted, mold damage to paper with marginal losses in the index, 12 3/4 x 8 in.
Hoffmann II 67.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Pineau, nicolas (1684-1754)
Nouveaux Desseins de Pieds de Tables et de Vases et Consoles de Sculpture en Bois Inventés.
Paris: Chez Mariette, [n.d. 18th century].
Oblong folio, twenty-four full-paged engravings in four suites of six images depicting elaborately carved table bases, cartouches, wall brackets, cabinets, and wall decoration, all in the rococo style; the leaves untrimmed, bound in contemporary blue paper-covered boards (worn), leaves untrimmed, contents generally fresh, 16 x 13 3/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Plumier, charles (1646-1704)
L’Art de Tourner.
Paris: Claude Jombert, 1701.
Folio, cancel slip with updated imprint on title, covering over the Lyons: Jean Certe, 1701 imprint; title page printed in red and black, engraved title vignette by Le Clerc, vignettes at head of dedication and first leaf of text with cherubs in the turning workshop, containing an additional seventy (of seventy-one) full-paged plates (one folding), numbered irregularly, lacking plate sixty-six; text in parallel columns in French and Latin throughout; bound in full contemporary calf with gilt-tooled spine, worn, but structurally sound, ex libris French owner circa 1730 with inscription to ffep, 14 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.
Plumier’s is the first work dedicated exclusively to lathe work. In it he describes how to build the lathe itself, and how to use it to fashion wares in ivory, various metals, and wood.
Honeyman sale 6-2504.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Polignac, melchior de (1661-1742)
Etat et Description des Statues tant Colossales.
Paris: J.B. Coignard, 1742.<QL
First edition, octavo, A-B8, C4, half calf, marbled paper boards, 7 1/4 x 4 1/2 in.
This catalogue advertises Cardinal Polignac’s (1661-1742) great collection of ancient marble art, which included colossal, life-size, and half life-size statuary, busts, bas-reliefs, urns, columns, carved inscriptions, and other Greek and Roman antiquities. Polignac acquired these objects as he dabbled in archeology in Rome in the 1730s. The auctioneer, Coignard, states that the collection may either be sold in parts as a whole. From what this cataloguer could gather, Frederick the Great (1712-1786) purchased the collection outright.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Qu’ran, manuscript, 19th century.
Octavo format manuscript on wove paper, text in black ink, richly decorated and gilt double-page opening, interlinear, border, headings, and dividing sections in gilt throughout, added decoration in red and blue; approximately ten lines per page, nearly 300 pages; bound in full red morocco, tooled in gilt on both boards, binding decased, sewing perished, some leaves loose, 7 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Quintilianus, marcus fabius (c. 35-100 ce)
Oratoriarum Libri XII.
Basel: Bebelius, 1529.
Folio, woodcut printer’s mark to title and verso of final leaf, text in single column, roman letter throughout, bound in full contemporary alum-tawed pigskin over wooden boards, with large medallion tooled in black in center panel, dated 1571, with the initials I.D.L.; contents generally good, (text leaf 163 with triangular tear with loss to words in about twelve lines); 12 x 8 in.
Adams Q-29.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Ravenscroft, edward (1654?-1707)
The Canterbury Guests; or, a Bargain Broken.
London: for Daniel Brown & John Walthoe, 1695.
First and only edition, quarto, title page toned and stained, with a few breaks, reinforced on verso with heavy paper along gutter, following leaf with some tears and breaks, ex libris E.M. Cudahy of Loyola University with stamp on page 33 and verso of title, where it has been inked out; stamp of R & L Wilbur of the Gramercy book shop on ffep; later cloth, some water stains, last few leaves browned, a good candidate for restoration, 8 1/2 x 6 1/4 in.
Ranvescroft is remembered in the study of Shakespeare for sniffing out Titus Andronicus as likely not being from the hand of the Bard. His speculation, known as the Ravenscroft tradition, is as follows, “‘it the most incorrect and indigested piece in all his works, it seems rather a heap of rubbish then a structure.” See Ravenscroft’s introduction to the first quarto of Titus Andronics, 1600.
Rare at auction; Wing R-327; ESTC R13534.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Riemer, jacob (1676-1762)
Beschryving van ‘sGraven-Hage.
Delft & The Hague: Reiner Boitet, & John de Dros, 1730-1739.
Three folio volumes, with engraved title in first volume, engraved vignettes on each of the three titles, each printed in red and black, illustrated with twelve full-page engravings, forty-seven large folding engravings, and some text illustrations, a large copy with broad margins, bound in full uniform parchment over boards, tooled in blind, spines neatly lettered in ink, boards bowed, 15 3/4 x 9 3/4 in. (3)
Estimate
$2,000 – $2,500
Ripa, cesare (c. 1560-1622)
Della Novissima Iconologia.
Padua: Tozzi, 1625.
Thick quarto, three parts in one volume, each with separate title page; general half-title present, engraved vignette to all titles, author portrait engraving on [a]4 verso, two internal blanks between parts present; illustrated with numerous woodcut text emblems throughout, mainly personifications of qualities, states, and traits, like abundance, diligence, knowledge of the human condition, artifice, discretion, and so on, arranged alphabetically, bound in later parchment over boards, some water staining to contents, 8 3/4 x 6 in.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Romagnesi, louis alexandre (1776-1852)
Recueil de Dessins.
[Paris: Romagnesi, circa1826.]
Folio, illustrated with lithographic illustrations throughout, beginning with the title, consisting of seventy-nine full-paged plates depicting hundreds of design motifs; bound in half leather, 13 3/4 x 10 1/4 in. [with] Romagnesi’s Tarif des Objets de Sculpture en Carton-Pierre, a trade catalogue from 1826.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Rubens, peter paul (1577-1640) & plantin moretus museum
Titels en Portretten Gesneden naar P.P. Rubens voor de Plantijnsche Drukkererij.
Antwerp: Plantin, 1877.
Oversized folio, title page printed in red and black, with half-title (half-title damaged and torn, dents to title); text in Dutch and French throughout, edited with descriptions of the plates by Max Rooses, illustrated with thirty-five engravings, (twenty-nine title pages, five portraits, and one ecclesiastical armorial plate with two cherubs), new impressions from the original 17th century copper plates, all after Rubens; bound in publisher’s boards, worn, in need of repair, 17 3/4 x 13 3/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Saly, jacques françois (1717-1776)
Vasa a se Inventa atque Studii Causa Delin. et Incisa.
[No place: no printer,] 1746.
Folio, engraved throughout with illustrated title and thirty full-paged etchings of imaginative vases, bound in full contemporary parchment over boards, 14 1/2 x 10 in., [together with] thirty drawings, each of the thirty engravings in the book skillfully rendered, viz., twenty-four pencil sketches, two in charcoal or conte crayon, and four watercolors with pencil sketching and ink accents, all unsigned on single sheets of quarto-format laid paper; [and] two loose engravings of urns from another publication of about the same period; drawings and book housed in custom case, the drawings 10 x 7 3/4 in.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Sammelband of english ballad operas, and other works, 1720s.
Octavo volume containing the following titles: John Gay’s, (1685-1732) The Beggar’s Opera, London: Printed for John Watts, 1728, with engraved music; Gay’s Polly: an Opera, London: Printed for T. Thomson, 1729; Charles Johnson’s The Village Opera, London: Printed for J. Watts, 1729; William Rufus Chetwood’s The Lovers Opera, London: sold by A. Dodd, 1729; Charles Coffey’s The Beggar’s Wedding, London: Printed for James & John Knapton, 1729; Gabriel John’s Flagellum: or a Dry Answer to Dr. Hancock’s Wonderfully Comical Liquid Book, London: Thomas Warner, 1723; [and] William Tunstall’s Ballads and Some Other Occasional Poems, London: by E. Berington, 1716; the seven titles bound in contemporary English paneled and speckled calf, boards detached, 7 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.
Estimate
$1,200 – $1,500
Sammelband of five works, 1599-1606.
Including: Aubert Le Mire’s (1573-1640) Origines Coenobiorum Benedictinorum in Belgio, Antwerp: H. Verdussen, 1606; Le Mire’s Elenchus Historicorum Belgii, nondum Typis Editorum, Antwerp: H. Verdussen, 1606; Erycius Puteanus’s (1574-1646) De Erycio Nomine Syntagma. Item Iuli Paridis de Nominibus Epitome, Hanau: C. de Marne & Heirs of J. Aubry at the Wechel Press, 1606; Jean Cousin’s De Prosperitate et exitio Salominis, Douai: J. Bogard, 1599; [and] Didier Herauld’s (1575-1649) Adversariorum Libri Duo, Paris: J. Perier, 1599; five octavo titles bound in one volume, in contemporary speckled sheepskin with gilt spine and label, ex libris Nord Kirchern Library with bookplate pasted inside front board, binding slightly rubbed, generally very good, 6 1/2 x 4 in.
This interesting sammelband contains five rare works, all first editions, on philological and theological subjects by living Flemish and French scholars. Le Mire writes on the origin and history of the Benedictine order, attacking the Reformation. His second title is a catalogue of unpublished manuscripts held by ecclesiastical institutions, written with an aim to have said manuscripts published. Puteanus, a pupil of Lipsius, does a deep dive into the etymology of his own first name, Eric, and includes some personal autobiographical details. Belgian historian and canon of the Tournai cathedral, Cognatus [aka Jean Cousin] writes a dissertation on King Solomon. Finally, professor of law and Greek Herauld goes with the classics, commenting on Diogenes Laertius, Herodotus, Pindar, Plautus, Aristotle, Cicero and Juvenal. He then shares his extensive critique of the recently published [Heidelberg, 1598] editio princeps of Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras.
I) Matagne, Répertoire des Ouvrages du XVIIe siècle</i>, L-141; not in Simoni; II) & II) not in Simoni; III. Bibliotheca Belgica IV, p. 762; not in Paisey; IV) Cioranescu 22407; Répertoire Bibliographique II (Douia) p. 350, no. 291; V) Adams H-291.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Sandys, george (1578-1644)
A Relation of a Journey begun An Dom. 1610.
London: Printed by [Tomas Cotes] for Ro. Allot, 1627.
Third edition, small folio, illustrated with engraved title, double-page engraved map, one small folding plate, and forty-seven text engravings, bound in contemporary speckled calf boards blind tooled with the initials “RF” on both boards, signed on title and ffep by Roger Feildyng, later armorial bookplate inside front board with motto “Virtus Mille Scuta,” rebacked, 10 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.
STC 21728; ESTC S114571.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Shakespeare, william (1564-1616)
Three Odd Volumes of Works.
London: Printed for J. Tonson and the Rest of the Proprietors, 1734-1735.
12mo, first volume without general title, including the following plays: The Tempest; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, with frontispiece; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Measure for Measure, with frontispiece, incomplete, lacking two leaves: A4 (page 7/8) and A9 (17/18); The Comedy of Errors, with frontispiece; Much Ado about Nothing, lacking last leaf, pages 71/72; bound in quarter leather, marbled paper boards, trimmed very close with loss of text in some margins, 5 3/4 x 3 1/2 in.;
[Together with] Volume the Third, containing: Twelfth-Night, with frontispiece; The Winter’s Tale, with frontispiece; The Life and Death of King John, with frontispiece; The Life and Death of Richard the Second, with frontispiece; The First Part of Henry IV, with frontispiece; bound in full contemporary mottled calf, with spine label, 6 1/4 x 3 3/4 in.;
[And] Volume the Eighth, including: Pericles, Prince of Tyre, The London Prodigal, with frontispiece; The Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, with two frontispieces; The History of Sir John Oldcastle, the Good Lord Cobham, with frontispiece; The Puritan or the Widow of Watling-Street; A Yorkshire Tragedy, with frontispiece; The Comedy of Errors, lacking the first twelve leaves, including title and frontispiece, everything before page 25; The Tragedy of Locrine, with frontispiece; bound in later half leather and marbled paper boards, trimmed very closely, cropping head, foot, and fore-edge text in places, some worming, 5 3/4 x 3 1/2 in. (3)
Estimate
$600 – $800
Smith, adam (1723-1790)
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell jun. and W. Davies (successors to Mr. Cadell) in the Strand, 1796.
Three octavo volumes, eighth edition, bound in contemporary uniform half leather with marbled paper boards, 8 1/4 x 5 in. (3)
Estimate
$500 – $700
Smith, george (1713-1776)
A Collection of Fifty-three Prints, Consisting of Etchings and Engravings.
London: Boydell, 1770.
First edition, large folio, typographical title page followed by fifty-two plates, six full-paged, the other forty-six two to a page, with an additional nineteen plates by Smith trimmed and mounted on sheets bound after; publisher’s half green morocco, 16 3/4 x 10 1/2 in.
ESTC N52608, showing seven U.S. copies.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Sousa, luis de (1555?-1632)
Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Views of Church of Batalha […] in Portugal.
London: Printed for I. & .J Taylor, 1795.
Oversized folio, engraved title, five illustrations in the first part, and twenty plates in the second; bound in half leather with marbled paper boards, binding in need of repair, leather cracking at joints, 21 1/2 x 14 in.
ESTC T147700.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Southerne, thomas (1660-1746)
Oroonoko: a Tragedy.
London: for H. Playford, B. Tooke, and A. Bettesworth, 1699.
Quarto, A-L4, ex libris E.M. Cudahy of Loyola University with stamp on page 33 messily inked out, ink stamp on verso of title, final leaf abraded with some surface loss, later boards, title dusty with rust hole, some internal spotting, toning; 8 1/4 x 6 1/2 in.
Southerne’s play is based on Aphra Behn’s novel of the same name. In it, the African Prince of the title is kidnapped and sold into slavery to a Cornish man who takes him to Surinam, where he is ultimately reunited with his betrothed from Africa, Imoinda.
Wing S-4764; ESTC R216959.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Specimens of Woodcuts and Engravings.
New York: Foliophiles, 1926.
Limited edition portfolio number 97 of 120, containing fifteen original leaves with woodcuts and engravings, housed in publisher’s portfolio, including single leaves with illustrations from the following works: 1) Sebastian Brant’s Navis Stultifera, 1506; 2) Hortus Sanitatis, 1517; 3) Livy’s Quatorze Decadas, 1520; 4) Biblia Picturis Illustrata, 1540; 5) Belon’s De Aquatilibus, 1553; 6) Munster’s Cosmographia Universalis, 1559; 7) Bocchi’s Symbolicarum Quaetionum, 1574; 8) Missale Romanum, 1576; 9) Livy in German, 1596; 10) History of the Dacian Wars, 1616; 11) Mexia’s Nuova Seconda Selva, 1616; 12) English Bible, 1639; 13) Briefve Histoire de L’Institution, 1680; 14) True Effigies of the Most Eminent Painters, 1694; 15) La Sicilia di Filippo Paruta, 1697; sizes of leaves vary, some folded; faults to portfolio box, 12 3/4 x 10 in.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Stafford, sir thomas (fl. circa 1633)
Pacata Hibernia.
London: Printed by A[ugustine] M[athewes], and part of the impression made over, to be vented for the benefit of the Children of John Mynshew, deceased, 1633.
Folio, illustrated with fourteen original maps, three maps are later copies, Kinsale map missing, and the two portraits are later reproductions, bound in contemporary paneled sheep, with an older rebacking, 12 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.
STC 23132a; ESTC S117457.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Sterne, laurence (1713-1768)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
I-II: [York]: [Printed by Ann Ward], 1760. III & IV: London: for R. & J. Dodsley, 1761. V-VI: London: T. Becket & P.A. Dehondt, 1762. VII-VIII: London: T. Becket & P.A. Dehondt, 1765. London: T. Becket & P.A. Dehondt, 1767.
First edition, nine small octavo volumes; volumes V, VII, and IX signed by the author, “L. Sterne,” at the head of the opening chapter; first volume with black page; volume III with engraved frontispiece; marbled leaf present in volume IV; half-titles present in volumes IV, V, VI, and IX; volumes, I, II, III, VII, and IX expertly rebacked; volumes V and VIII with front board detached; ex libris Arthur M. Brown; Edward P. Borden; and Winston H. Hagen, with the gilt-tooled morocco book label of each inside the front boards of each volume; the set bound in uniform contemporary speckled calf, each spine with two labels; each volume housed in a separate chemise in a nine-chambered custom box, 6 1/4 x 3 1/2 in. (9)
A fine set of one of the greatest comic novels in the English language, Sterne’s irreverence and humor fly in the of modern assumptions about the dry pedantry of 18th century writers and thinkers. Standing on the shoulders of Rabelais and Cervantes, the story is lively, self-aware, and especially enjoyably read in the first edition.
Ashley V page 204; Cross II page 268; Rothschild 1970; Tinker 1973.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
The Printed Page, England.
A Collection of Manuscript and Printed Leaves, 15th-19th Century.
Twenty-three leaves removed from printed books including a 15th century English manuscript; the collected works of Thoms Becon, 1560; a printed 1555 Breviary; Timme’s Catholike and Ecclesiasticall Exposition, 1575; Calvin’s Sermons, 1583; Chaucer’s Works, 1598; quarto King James Bible, 1612; Minsheu’s A Guide to Tongues, 1617; and others; housed in a portfolio box, each leaf in a folder that identifies the contents; sizes of leaves vary, portfolio measures 13 x 10 in.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Theti, carlo (1529-1589)
Discorsi delle Fortificationi, Espugnationi, & Difese delle Citta, & d’altri Luoghi.
Venice: Giacomo de Franceschi, 1617.
Folio, title page with large woodcut vignette, illustrated with text diagrams and large woodcuts throughout, several spanning an opening, bound in contemporary limp parchment, 14 1/4 x 10 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Trials, divorce, adultery, great britain.
Trials for Adultery: or the History of Divorces, Being Select Trials at Doctors Commons for Adultery, Fornication, Cruelty, Impotence, &c.
London: Printed for S. Bladon, 1779-1780.
[Together with]: The Trial of Isaac Prescott, Esq. A Captain in the Royal Navy, for Wanton, Tyrannical, Unprovoked, and Savage Cruelty towards Jane Prescott, his Wife, London: G. Lister, 1785, first edition, illustrated with engraved frontispiece; [bound with] Adultery. The Very Interesting and Remarkable Trial of Mrs. Elizabeth Hankey, London: Printed for the Proprietor, 1783; The Trial of the Rev. Mr. James Altham, London: G. Lister, 1785, volume two; The Second Part of the Trial of the Hon. Mrs. Catherine Newton, London: for the Proprietors, 1782, with engraved frontispiece, second edition; The Trial of Mrs. Elizabeth Williams, London: for the Editors, Cornwell, & Lister, [n.d. 1782?]; The Trial of the Rev. Mr. James Altham, London: G. Lister, 1785, volume one, with frontispiece; The Life and Amours of the Lady Ann F-L-Y, London: for G. Lister, [n.d. 1782?]; [and] The Trial of the Hon. Mrs. Catherine Newton, London: Etherington & Lister, 1782, second edition; eight octavo volumes, bound in uniform contemporary half calf as a set, 8 x 5 in.
These volumes consist of racy content for the period, with much eyewitness testimony regarding who was in whose bedchamber, and the incriminating disarray of wigs, breeches, bedclothes, and petticoats.
Trials for Adultery: ESTC T106050; Isaac Prescott ESTC T53435, rare, listing two U.S. copies at Cornell and Berkeley Law; Mrs. Elizabeth Hankey, ESTC T95756, rare, listing one U.S. copy at California State Library, Sutro Library; James Altham ESTC T95761, no American copies; Catherine Newton, second part, ESTC N36528, no American copies; Elizabeth Williams ESTC T53434, two U.S. copies at Huntington and Providence College; Lady Ann F-L-Y ESTC T106501 rare, one copy in ESTC at BL, no American copies; Catherine Newton</i>, first part, ESTC N63339, one copy in ESTC at Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, no U.S. copies.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Valla, laurentius [lorenzo] (c. 1407-1457)
De Lingua Latina.
Paris: [Johannis Barbier edibus], 1510.
Folio, (dedicatory epistle mistakenly bound at the end); title page printed in red and black, title with large emblematic woodcut device; text in roman letter in two columns throughout, with many criblé woodcut initials, some fairly heavy water staining to contents; later ownership inscription to title, contemporary marginalia; ex libris Bibliotheque F. Renard, with bookplate inside front board, bound in full modern calf, antique style, rubbed, 10 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Adams V-163.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Varia: four early continental books, 1553-1798.
Including: Bartolomeo Peregrino’s (d. 1591) Opus Divinum de Sacra, ac Fertili, Brescia: Ludovicum Britannicum, 1553, quarto, woodcut to title, lacking text leaf B3, bound in half leather with speckled paper boards, 8 1/4 x 6 in.; [together with] René Descartes’s Les Principes de la Philosophie, Paris: Chez Nicolas le Gras, 1681, fourth edition, quarto, added engraved title, illustrated with twenty folding engraved plates after the text, one folding woodcut, and text illustrations, bound in full contemporary parchment tooled in blind, 9 x 6 3/4 in.; William Emerson’s The Principles of Mechanics, London: Printed for G.G. & J. Robinson, 1794, fourth edition, quarto, forty-three folding engraved plates, modern half leather with marbled paper boards, 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.; [and] Barthez’s Nouvelle Méchanique des Mouvements de l’Homme et des Animaux, Carcassonne: Pierre Polere, 1798, quarto, bound in full contemporary marbled sheepskin, smooth spine tooled in gilt with red gilt lettering piece, corners worn, 10 1/8 x 8 in. (4)
Estimate
$600 – $800
Vauts, moses à (no known dates, possible pseudonym)
The Husband’s Authority Unvail’d; Wherein It is Moderately Discussed whether it be Fit or Lawfull for a Good Man to Beat his Bad Wife.
London: Printed by T.N. for Robert Bostock, 1650.
First and only edition, quarto, (lacking O4, final blank); bound in later half leather, boards detached, some scattered spotting, waterstaining, stains to title, ex libris John Delaware Lewis, with his gilt-tooled morocco book ticket past inside front board; some headlines cropped, 7 x 5 1/4 in.
Wing V-163; ESTC R205920; ESTC locates seven U.S. library copies.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Vega, garcilaso de la (1539-1616)
The Royal Commentaries of Peru.
London: Printed by Miles Flesher for Jacob Tonson, 1688.
Folio, one of four variants printed by Flesher for different booksellers, engraved frontispiece portrait of translator Paul Rycaut bound opposite title, title printed in red and black; illustrated with eight (of ten) full-paged engravings; bound in later marbled sheepskin, old rebacking, now failed, front board detached, some discoloration to contents, a few frayed edges and closed tears, 12 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.
Wing G-217; ESTC R11046; European Americana 688/105; Palau 354799; Sabin 98760.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Vegetius renatus, publius flavius (late 4th century)
De Re Militari Libri Quatuor.
Paris: Christian Wechel, 1534.
Folio, printer’s device on title, large woodcut on verso of title, illustrated with numerous full-paged woodcuts, ruled in red throughout; bound in an ornate faux renaissance binding by Théodore [aka Louis] Hagué (1822-1891), with multi-color onlaid leather, intricate interweaving plant forms, flowers, stylized dolphins, and raised gesso fleur-de-lys, among other motifs, with cast corner-pieces, bosses, catches and clasps, edges gilt, painted, and gauffered, front board detached, leather somewhat dry and flaking in places, one clasp extension cracked, all pieces present; very good impressions of the woodcuts, 12 1/4 x 8 in.
“Théodore Hagué (1822-1891), also known as Louis, is perhaps the most notorious forger of fine early modern bindings. He worked for a time at the London bookbinding firm of Zaehnsdorf’s, as well as privately for the Duke d’Aumale, restoring his library. By the early 1860s, then living in Brussels, it apparently occurred to him to try his skills against the ultimate test: attempt to pass his bindings off as authentic.” (For more, cf. Elizabeth DeBold’s article in The Collation, “Under Cover: Forged Bindings on Display at the Folger,” July 19, 2018; https://collation.folger.edu/2018/07/forged-bindings/)
Estimate
$3,000 – $4,000
Victorius, petrus [piero vettori] (1499-1585)
Explicationes Svarvm in Catonem, Varronem, Columellam Castigationum.
Paris: Robert Stephanus, 1543.
Octavo, a-i8, text printed in italic type, ruled in red throughout, bound in modern full leather, blind-tooled, period style, 6 1/2 x 4 in.
This work is the fourth part of the Scriptores Rei Rusticae, with Victorius’s commentary on Cato, Varro, and Columella.
Reounard 55, #2; Adams V-676; Schreiber 70d.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Letters Concerning the English Nation.
London: Printed [by William Bowyer] for C. Davis & A. Lyon, 1733.
First edition, octavo, translated by John Lockman, A-S8, printed on heavy paper, a clean copy bound in modern half leather, 7 3/4 x 4 3/4 in.
In this far-reaching series of essays, Voltaire recounts the famous anecdote of Sir Isaac Newton’s moment of inspiration. “[A]s he was walking one day in his garden, he saw some fruits fall from a tree, [and] fell into a profound meditation on that gravity. […] Why may not this power which causes heavy bodies to descend, […] why may not this power extend as high as the moon?”
Sabin 100751; Maslen & Lancaster, Bowyer Ledgers, 1958; ESTC T137614; Babson 242; Walls 424.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Vredeman de vries, hans (1527-c. 1607)
Perspective 5e Partie.
The Hague: Marolois, 1615.
Oblong folio, forty-nine numbered illustrations on forty-eight plates; in parts, [bound with] Perspective Pars Altera, Leiden: Hondius, [1605], illustrated with twenty-five plates; [bound with] Architectura Praeclara & Eximia Scientia Complectens, Leiden: Hondius, [n.d.], illustrated with thirty plates each of the parts with a separate engraved title page, leaves of text, some with engraved text portraits on typographically printed leaves; bound in contemporary full parchment, lacking ties, tooled and ruled in blind, 14 x 11 in.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Watson, thomas (c. 1620-1686)
The Christian’s Charter; [bound with] Autarkeia, or the Art of Divine Contentment.
London: Printed for Ralph Smith [and Arthur Bettesworth], 1657; London: Printed by E.M. for Ralph Smith, 1658.
Two octavo titles bound as one volume; first title lacking two leaves: A1 & A2 (title and first leaf of dedication), engraved portrait frontispiece by Frederick Hendrick van den Hove and half-title present (half-title is leaf a4, printed in large type in landscape format; portrait stained and mounted); bound in contemporary calf, worn, front board detached, some signatures sprung, staining, fly speck, dog-eared pages, other signs of use, 5 1/4 x 3 1/2 in.
Christian’s Charter: Wing W-1115, ESTC R38512 listing four copies in U.S. libraries, no mention of portrait; Autarkeia: Wing W-1103, ESTC R38511, no U.S. copies, one U.K. copy (Cambridge, Keynes Collection); anything by Watson is rare at auction.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Weyerman, jacob campo (1677-1747)
De Levens-Beschryvingen der Nederlandsche Konst-Schilders.
The Hague: Widow of E. Boucquet, Scheurleer, Boucquet, & Jongh, 1729-1769.
First edition, four quarto volumes illustrated with added engraved title in volume one, text vignettes, some large, one folding plate, and forty-two full-paged engravings incorporating portraits in vignettes; the set bound in full uniform contemporary blind-tooled Dutch parchment over boards, ex libris Count Anatoly Demidov, with his stamp on ffeps, 8 x 6 in. (4)
Thieme-Becker vol. xxxv, page 480.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Willoughby, edwin eliott (1899-1959)
The Making of the King James Bible. A Monograph with […] an Original Leaf from the Great ‘She’ Bible of 1611.
Los Angeles: Printed for Dawson’s Book Shop at the Plantin Press, 1956.
Folio, the original leaf containing Luke XXI: 13 through XXII: 39, covering his account of the Last Supper, text in two columns, with one woodcut initial, the monograph in publisher’s cloth spine with paper boards reproducing Garden of Eden woodcut, one of 290 copies, 15 1/2 x 10 1/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Witzel, georg (1501-1573)
Postill. Epitome Homiliarum Dominicalium.
Mainz: Franciscus Behem, 1543.
Quarto, title page printed within architectural woodcut compartment, with two cherubs at the base, text printed in red and black; lacking three leaves: 465, 466, & 467, final leaf with woodcut printer’s device and colophon on verso present, illustrated with sixty full-paged woodcuts (including repeats) depicting the life of Christ, including many Gospel and Passion woodcuts by Monogrammist IS & shovel; bound in full contemporary blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, rebacked, with one original clasp, the other and the catches replaced, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.
This extensive volume of sermons by the prolific Witzel springs from the New Testament. The author had a complicated relationship with his religious beliefs, and vacillated between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism during his career. This edition rarely appears at auction.
Not in Adams.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Xavier, jerome (1549-1617) and lodewijk de dieu (1590-1642)
Dastan-i Masih [Persian] Historia Christi Persice.
Leiden: Ex Officina Elseviriana, 1639.
First edition, first western book printed in Persian, quarto, title page printed in red and black, text throughout in Persian and Latin on opposite pages, some spotting, contemporary parchment over boards, laced case construction, 7 3/4 x 6 in.
Jerome Xavier was a Jesuit priest whose calling brought him overseas beginning in the late 16th century. He served as missionary to the Mughal Court of Akbar (1542-1605).
Willems 490.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Zamagna, bernardo (1735-1820)
Navis Aeria et Elegiarum Monobiblos.
Rome: Paullus Giunchius, 1768.
[bound with] Zamagna’s Selecta Patrum Societatis Jesu Carmina, Genoa: Joannes Baptista Lertius, 1647; [and] Echo Libri Duo, Rome: ex typographia Francisci Bizzarrini Komarek, 1764; all octavo, each title with engraved emblem on title, first title with full-paged engraving of the airship, “Navis Aeria”; the second title illustrated with a few small round woodcut emblems in the text, last leaf blank but for colophon with large woodcut printer’s device; the three bound together in contemporary parchment over boards, 7 x 4 1/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Medicine
Aëtius of amida (fl. mid-6th century)
Contractae ex Veteribus Medicinae Tetrabiblos.
Basel: Froben, 1542.
Second complete Latin edition, folio, woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut initials attributed to Holbein; translated by Janus Cornarius (1500-1558), bound in full contemporary full alum-tawed pigskin over wooden boards, decorated with blind tooling, brass catches and clasps intact; contemporary armorial crest with initials M.A.L. on front board, several contemporary manuscript ownership inscriptions of doctors to title; large tear with loss to blank margin at foot of title, somewhat ham-handedly replaced, small oval patch below title, scattered marginal notes, some light waterstaining to top edge of first signature, text generally fresh, large margins, 12 1/4 x 8 in.
Durling 46; Heirs of Hippocrates 49; Garrison-Morton-Norman 33 (1534 edition); Waller 238; Wellcome I, 50.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Albertus magnus (c. 1200-1280) & bartholomaeus metlinger.
Der Weyber Natürliche Heymlichaiten.
Augsburg: Henrich Steiner, 1531.
Quarto, A-G4 (final leaf G4 blank & present) title with woodcut depicting the childbirth room, with the mother in bed in the background, and a man serving her; a female helper near the foot of the bed, holding an earthenware pot; and the midwife in the foreground washing the new baby in a tub; a large woodcut depicting two doctors on A2; bound in modern half parchment brown paper-covered boards, 7 1/2 x 5 3/4 in.
This rare work on child care and pediatrics was first published under Metlinger’s name in 1473. Instructions for midwives attributed to Albertus Magnus are also included, along with a short treatise attributed to Isocrates.
Waller 314; not in Garrison-Morton or Wellcome.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Albinus, [weiss] bernhard siegfried (1697-1770)
Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum Corporis Humani.
Leiden: Apud Joannem & Hermannum Verbeek, 1747.
First edition, oversized folio, engraved vignette to title, full-paged engraved dedication leaf; four leaf author’s preface; illustrated with forty full-paged anatomical engravings by Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759), with typographical leaves of explanatory text accompanying each plate (or pair of plates) the first twenty-four images in pairs, in which the same subject is presented in two forms: as an outline with numbered parts; and fully shaded with backgrounds; bound in modern half leather and marbled paper boards, 27 1/2 x 19 1/4 in.
Albinus and Wandelaar worked jointly on this work, which was largely funded by Albinus himself. For accuracy, the collaborators used grid scaling to produce precise images. Clara, an 18th century rhinoceros who was touring Europe in 1741, makes two appearances in the creative backgrounds employed by Wandelaar.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Beverwijck, johan van (1594-1647)
Schat Wercken der Gesontheyt.
Amsterdam: Schipper, 1660.
Quarto, illustrated throughout with text engravings, (some full-paged), text in Dutch throughout, multiple sections with divisional title pages, bound in half parchment with marbled paper boards, 10 1/4 x 8 in.
This Dutch Treasury of Health, from an early proponent of William Harvey, (regarding the circulation of the blood), contains many folk remedies, accounts of disease, herbal, and surgical practices. One also finds images showing experiments proving Harvey’s theories. The camera obscura is also illustrated, along with ethnographic plates, and more.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Boyle, robert (1627-1691)
Medicinal Experiments or a Collection of Choice and Safe Remedies, for the Most Part Simple and Easily Prepared.
London: Printed for Sam. Smith and Jo. Taylor, 1703.
Fourth edition, 12mo, engraved portrait frontispiece, six leaves of bookseller’s ads after the text, text contains dozens of remedies for everything from madness, gout, asthma, baldness, and gonorrhea, to small pox, dysentery, vertigo, and sore throat; bound in later full calf, slightly rubbed, 6 x 3 1/2 in.
ESTC N10762; Fulton 183 (suspecting authenticity of part three “earmarks of a forgery”).
Estimate
$300 – $400
Browne, john (1642-1700)
Myographia Nova: or a Graphical Description of all the Muscles in Humane Body.
London: Printed by Tho. Milbourn, for the Author, 1697.
Folio, engraved frontispiece portrait of Browne bound opposite the title, with forty full-paged anatomical plates, bound in full contemporary speckled English calf, tooled in blind, rebacked, contents good, 12 1/4 x 7 3/4 in.
First edition of a substantially revised version of Browne’s 1681 Compleat Treatise of the Muscles, which had plagiarized the text of William Mollins’s Muskotomia, and the illustrations to Giulio Casserio’s 1632 Tabulae Anatomicae. The work also contains the first edition of Richard Lower’s An Appendix of the Heart and its Use.
Krivatsy 1822; Russell 103; Fulton, Lower 50; Wing B-5128.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Castelli, bartholomeo (16th century)
Lexicon Medicum Graeco-Latinum. Ex Hippocrate et Galeno Desumptum.
Venice: Nicolaum Polum & Franciscum Bolzettam, 1607.
Octavo, some worming to text, bound in full limp parchment, worn, loss to corners, 5 3/4 x 4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
De graaf, regnier (1641-1673)
Opera Omnia.
Lyon: Hugetan & Soc., 1678.
Second edition, octavo, engraved portrait and engraved title, text illustrated with forty-one engraved plates, many folding; bound in full contemporary sprinkled sheepskin, gold-tooled spine, nicely preserved, some minor worming, mainly confined to boards and first and last few leaves, some spotting to contents, 7 1/4 x 4 1/2 in.
Waller 3675; Wellcome III page 142.
Estimate
$300 – $400
Descartes, rené (1596-1650)
L’Homme et la Formation du Foetus.
Paris: Theodore Girard, 1677.
Second edition, large quarto, printer’s woodcut vignette to title, illustrated with anatomical text woodcuts and other diagrams, bound in full contemporary French speckled sheepskin, gilt-tooled spine, worn, but structurally sound, contents with some spotting, 9 1/2 x 7 in.
Descartes’s L’Homme is “the first attempt to cover the whole field of animal physiology,” according to Garrison-Morton. The distinctive illustrations sprang from the mind and pen of the author himself. Especially notable are those illustrating the human brain as it connects with the eyes, and the position of the pineal gland, Descartes’ seat of the soul, buried deep in the human machine.
Garrison & Morton 574; Wellcome II 452.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Digby, kenelm (1603-1665)
Choice and Experimented Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery, as also Cordial and Distilled Waters and Spirits, Perfumes and other Curiosities.
London: Printed by Andrew Clark for Henry Brome, 1675.
[bound with] The Closet […] Opened: whereby is Discovered Several Ways for Making Metheglin, Syder, Cherry-Wine, &c. Together with Excellent Directions for Cookery, London: by H[enry] C[ruttenden] for H. Brome, 1677; two octavo volumes bound as one, first title with engraved portrait frontispiece of the author, lacking final leaf K8 with longitudinal title; both works with index present, bound in contemporary sheep-covered boards, old rebacking, front joint starting, some minor bio-predation to back flyleaves and top edge, 5 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.
The first title contains dozens of medical preparations and health remedies to treat fevers, coughs, deafness, dizziness, gonorrhea, looseness, leprosy, in addition to general curative waters, balms, and ointments for women’s ailments, wounds, stomach complaints, headache, worms, and so on. Digby’s Closet is focused on food and drink, with recipes for making ale, broths, jellies, cider, meat pies, upwards of forty different formulas for mead and metheglin (spiced and flavored mead), how to stew oysters, bake pigeons, make puff paste, syllabub, horseradish, and more.
I: Wing D-1425, ESTC R10653; II: Wing D-1429, ESTC R10652.
Estimate
$2,500 – $3,500
Dissertations, medical, seventeen examples.
Leipzig: mid- to late-18th century.
Including works by University of Leipzig physicians and scientists: Augustin Friedrich Walther (1688-1746); Ernestus Gottlob Bose; Johann Ernst Hebenstreit (1703-1757); Christianus Ferdinandus Widemann; Christian Gottlieb Ludwig (1709-1773); Christophorus Albertus Klimmius; Christian-Fridericus Kadelbach; Joannes Christophorus Pohlius; Anton Wilhelm Plaz (1708-1784); Carolus Fredericus Agner; and others; all printed in Leipzig; many ex officina Langenhemia, all quarto and stab sewn with applied paper covering the stitches, in good condition, each approximately 8 x 7 in. (17)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Dissertations, medical, sixteen examples.
Leipzig: mid- to late-18th century.
Including works by University of Leipzig physicians and scientists: Johann August Istrich; Joannes Fridericus Knicker; Christianus Gotthelf Fridericus Webel; Joannes Gottlieb Plecker; Petrus Paulus Haering; Fridericus Lebegott Pitschel; Benjamin Ferdinandus Quaas; Joannes Benjamin Boehmer; Immanuel Gottlob Gerdessen; and others; all printed in Leipzig; many ex officina Langenhemia, all quarto and stab sewn with applied paper covering the stitches, in good condition, each approximately 8 x 7 in. (20)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Dissertations, medical, twenty examples.
Leipzig: late-18th century.
Including works by University of Leipzig physicians and scientists: Anton Wilhelm Plaz (1708-1784); Joannes Carolus Gehler; Carl Christian Krause; Martinus Gottlob Halpitius; Joannes Guilelmus Wildenhayn; Christianus Gotthelf Fridericus Webel; Joannes Christianus Hoffmann; Georg Wilhelm Liebe; Ernestus Siegfried Adolphus; and others; all printed in Leipzig; many ex officina Langenhemia, all quarto and stab sewn with applied paper covering the stitches, in good condition, each approximately 8 x 7 in. (20)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Dissertations, twelve illustrated examples, 1830s-1850s.
Including: Küttlinger’s Ueber eine Cystenförmige Entartung des Hodens, Würzburg: Tein, 1841; Prinz’s Ueber de Bruch am unteren Ende des Radius, Erlangen: Barfus’schen, 1842; Schlinck’s Dissertatio Inauguralis Medico-Cirurgica de Tornaculis, Vienna: Ueberrenter, 1844, two copies; Herzog’s Ueber die Hypertrophieen der Äussern Weiblichen Genitalien, Erlangen: Barfus’schen, 1842; Massmann’s Descriptio Osteologica Cranii Myrmecophagae Tetradactylae, Berlin: Starck, 1823; Tuch’s Descriptio Osteologica Capitis Myrmecophagae Jubatae, Berlin: Trowitzsch & son, 1821; Ritterich’s Ad Orationem Sollemnem qua Professoris Opthalmiatriae Extraordinarii, Leipzig: Staritz, 1830; Gueterbock’s De Pure et Granulatione, Berlin: Plahniana, 1837; Eylandt’s Observationes Microscopicae de Musculis Organicis in Hominis Cute Obviis, Leipzig: Reyherus, 1850; Middeldorpf’s Disquisitio de Glandulis Brunnianis, Vratislava: Jos. Max, [no date]; [and] Moquin-Tandon’s Essai sur les Déboulemens ou Multiplications d’Organes dans les Végétaux, Montpellier: Martel le Jeune, 1826; condition and sizes vary. (12)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Duverney, guichard joseph (1648-1730)
A Treatise of the Organ of Hearing: Containing the Structure, the Uses, and the Diseases of all the Parts of the Ear.
London: for Samuel Baker, 1737.
First edition, 12mo, translated by John Marshall, illustrated with sixteen folding engraved illustrations related to the anatomy of the ear; bound in full parchment over boards, rebacked (sewing broken along the spine, some signatures and leaves becoming detached, in need of resewing), 6 1/4 x 3 3/4 in.
ESTC T61558.
Estimate
$200 – $300
Eustachius, bartolomeo (circa 1510-1574)
Tabulae Anatomicae.
Rome: Sumptibus Laurentii & Thomae Pagliarini, ex typographia Rochi Bernabo, 1728.
Over-sized folio, title page printed in red and black, engraved portrait of dedicatee, engraved vignette of the dissecting room on title, (final blank may not be integral); illustrated with forty-seven full-page engravings of human anatomical dissection, bound in contemporary sponge-decorated sheep, gilt-tooled spine (front joint cracked, board edges worn, contents good), ex libris contemporary French physician, with ownership on title dated 1765, notes in the same hand in French pasted on slips mounted beneath each image throughout, 14 3/4 x 10 in.
Wellcome II, p. 536; Chouland-Frank, Anatomical Illustration, p. 202; Garrison & Morton 391; Blake, 139; Norman, 740.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Fabricius, hieronymus (1533-1619)
Tractatus Anatomicus Triplex.
[Oppenheim or Frankfurt]: Johann Theodorum de Bry, 1614.
Small folio, ¶4, A-X4, Y3, illustrated with engraved title, eleven full-paged engravings and nine folding engravings from Giovanni Georgi’s Opera Chirurgica added at the end; bound in later half leather and paper-covered boards, rebacked and recornered,12 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.
In this work, surgeon Fabricius, an anatomy professor at Padua and student of Fallopius, shares detailed anatomical images and descriptions of the eye and the larynx. The actual position of the lens is illustrated for the first time on page sixty-four, and the monograph on the larynx is the first of its kind.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Fludd, robert (1574-1637)
Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica. [bound with] Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae.
Oppenheim: Hieronymus Gallerus for Johann Theodorus de Bry, 1617; [and] Frankfurt: Guilhelm Fitzer, 1633.
First editions of both works, two folio volumes bound as one, Utriusque with engraved allegorical title, illustrated with large folding plate: Integrae Naturae, one full-paged engraving and sixty-one text engravings; bound in full contemporary tanned sheep, with sponge-applied diamond pattern and gilt spine, very neatly and sympathetically rebacked; ex libris Denis Duveen, with his bookplate inside front board cancelled with handwritten note, “Disposed of 1946,” and illegible initials, some tears to contents, some neatly mended, leaf B1 in first work misbound at the end of the signature; 12 1/2 x 8 in.
In the second work, Fludd argues with Gassendi regarding the circulation of the blood. Fludd refutes with Harvey’s evidence.
I: Wellcome I, 2324; Duveen 222; II: Ferguson I, 283; Duveen 223.
Estimate
$6,000 – $8,000
Freud, sigmund (1856-1939)
Die Traumdeutung.
Leipzig & Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1900 [ie. 1899].
First edition of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, octavo, original pale blue publisher’s front cover present, rebound in modern half brown cloth and paste paper boards, without back cover, housed in custom box, 8 1/2 x 5 3/4 in.
“Unquestionably Freud’s greatest single work.” (PMM) Here, Freud introduces the idea of the unconscious, and leaves an indelible mark on culture, advancing the idea that dreams have symbolic meaning to the dreamer beyond their literal content.
Garrison-Morton 4980; PMM 389; Grolier Medicine 87.
Estimate
$6,000 – $8,000
Freud, sigmund (1856-1939)
Zur Auffassung der Aphasien. Eine Kritische Studie.
Leipzig & Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1891.
First edition of Freud’s first work, one of approximately 850 copies printed, of which only 257 were sold, the rest were destroyed; with ten text illustrations, bound in original publisher’s paper wrappers, somewhat chipped, front cover detached spine fragmentary, housed in custom folding box, book ticket of H.F. Norman pasted inside front cover, 9 1/4 x 6 in.
Norman F15.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Fries, lorenz (circa 1485-1532)
Der Spiegel der Artzney. [bound with] Gart der Gesuntheit; zu Latin Ortus Sanitatis.
Strasbourg: Balthassar Beck, 1529.
Two folio volumes bound as one; without final blanks, first title printed within elaborate allegorical woodcut compartment incorporating portraits of Galen and Asclepius flanking, and images of medical practitioners preparing and purchasing medicines and herbs, illustrated with Johannes Wechtlin’s (active circa 1502-1526) full-page woodcut, “Viscera and Bloodletting Man,” an anatomical image displaying a semi-dissected male figure drawn post-mortem from observations of a dissection performed in Strasbourg on the body of a hanged criminal, (a few minor short closed tears to text leaves, some larger tears neatly repaired, contents otherwise very good); second title illustrated with 426 lively woodcuts, four of which adorn the title; bound in full contemporary or near-contemporary alum-tawed German pigskin over wooden boards, rolled tool decoration with central portrait panels, top clasp signed with initials,1589 clerical ownership inscription to first title; one catch lacking the cross-bar; bottom section of front joint cracked, top section neatly repaired; surface rubbing, generally very good, housed in modern buckram case, 11 1/8 x 7 3/4 in.
The numerous fascinating woodcuts in this German abridgement of the Hortus Sanitatis depict many birds, animals of the land and sea, insects, amphibians, and reptiles, with text describing the dangers and virtues of their nature and conduct, an exceptional copy.
I: VD 16, F 2873; Benzing, Fries 30; Durling 1664; II: VD 16, H5125; Durling 2467.
Estimate
$15,000 – $20,000
Geminus, thomas (d. 1562)
Compendiosa Totius Anatomie Delineatio.
London: In officina Ioanni Herfordie, 1545.
First edition, folio, lacking five leaves: including the title page; dedication leaf [fleuron1]; first leaf of text [A1]; text leaves G4 & G5 (supplied in facsimile); and two plates (also supplied in photocopy facsimile): the folding engraving of Adam & Eve; and the plate showing female organs; thirty-eight (of forty) engraved plates are present in this copy, viz., three skeletal; sixteen muscular; five vascular; four neurological; five depicting organs; four of the brain; and one final plate which illustrates the anatomy of the eye, surgical tools, and a pig dissected; enhanced with the addition of three original pen-and-ink drawings on laid paper, drawn larger than the engravings, replicating plates 1, 2, and 9 portraying the muscular system, the first two folding, the last trimmed at calf level with loss of the drawing below; bound in modern half limp parchment with paper covers, sympathetically made, generally crisp with large margins, some underlining in text, one longer marginal note on a vascular plate; some spotting, closed tears, 14 1/4 x 10 1/2 in.
Geminus was inspired by Vesalius’s landmark anatomical illustrations, and although he gives prominent credit, his renditions were published without authorization. Nonetheless, the absolute mastery of his work, its stature as the first English medical book with a suite of full-paged engravings, and only the second book printed in England to contain engravings of any kind, set it apart on several levels. One may surmise that the missing plates seemed too explicit for some set of tastes between 1545 and 2021. As a summary of Vesalius, an abridged version with full illustrations, it brought valuable and practical information to British physicians and surgeons without the heft.
Choulant-Frank pp. 192-194; Cushing VI C-2; Garrison-Morton 376 1; NLM/Durling 2039; Norman 886; STC 11714; Stillwell Science 645; Wellcome 2731.
Estimate
$7,000 – $9,000
Gilbert, william (1544-1603)
Tractatus, sive Physiologia Nova de Magnete.
Stettin: Georg Götzke, 1633.
Third edition, quarto, [lacking signature A: four leaves of prefatory material], edited by Wolfgang Lochmans (1594-1643); illustrated with thirteen engraved illustrations on small slips extraneous to collation and text woodcuts and diagrams; bound in contemporary limp parchment; ex libris Ralph Herman Major (1884-1970); some browning to contents, 9 1/4 x 7 in.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Gray’s anatomy illustrations, archive, 1950s.
A large group of approximately fifty camera-ready illustrations, some original drawings, others printed with hand-retouching, some overlaid with transparencies bearing hand-drawing in red, including some signed by Don Alvarado, including three original drawings signed by medical illustrator Robert Wabnitz (1925-2008), who drew all tissue drawings for the 1954 edition of Gray’s Anatomy; a group of sixteen hand-drawn initials created for sections in the book depicting anatomical subjects and small portraits of medical pioneers, and a variety of depictions of the brain, vascular system and others, most from the twenty-seventh 100th Anniversary edition from 1959; sizes and condition vary.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Harvey, william (1578-1657)
Anatomical Exercitations, Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures.
London: Printed by James Young for Octavian Pulleyn, 1653.
First edition in English, octavo, lacking portrait frontispiece and first and last blanks, bound in period sheepskin boards, rebacked, spine lighter, title dusty, last few leaves with a gutter stain and adhering to back board, new endleaves and pastedowns, 6 3/4 x 4 1/4 in.
In his bibliography of Harvey’s works Keynes notes that “many of the copies of the book lack the engraving, and may have never contained it.”
Wing H-1085; Keynes 43; Thomason E.1435 (1); ESTC R13027; Krivatsy 5351; Norman 1012; Wellcome III page 220.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Harvey, william (1578-1657)
Exercitationes Anatomicae de Motu Cordis & Sanguinis Circulatione.
Rotterdam: Arnold Leers, 1654.
First collected edition of the two texts, 12mo, four leaves from the index misbound with second signature of preliminary leaves (likely printed on the same sheet and not collated correctly by the binder) in the first work; illustrated with added engraved title and two full-paged engravings; bound in contemporary full English calf with gilt rulings; some marginal worming to inner gutter leaves; sewing structure perished, some signatures and leaves working loose, a good candidate for resewing and proper restoration, contemporary ownership inscription of Thomas Greenwood on ffep, 5 x 3 in.
“De Circulatione Sanguinis was first published with De Motu Cordis in 1654 and as the two works have usually been printed together since that date, their bibliographical history largely overlaps. […] The argument [in De Circulatione] is not as tightly worked out as in De Motu Cordis but weaves around the theme of the movement of the blood in the arteries and veins and its immediate cause and manner. The points discussed are chosen to answer specific criticisms or to refute alternative notions.” (Keynes, pages 73-74)
Keynes 8; Krivatsy 15333.; Russell 357.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,000
Laënnec, rené théophile hyacinthe (1781-1826)
Traité de L’Auscultation Médiate et des Maladies des Poumons et du Coeur.
Paris: J.-S. Chaudé, 1826.
Second edition, two thick octavo volumes bound in original publisher’s paper wrappers covered in glassine (torn rather badly on the first volume), first volume broken into three pieces along spine; both volumes untrimmed, illustrated with four folding plates, 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in. (2)
The second edition of Laënnec’s groundbreaking work on his invention of the stethoscope contains pathological anatomy of the chest not included in the first edition.
Garrison-Morton 2673; Osler 1319; Waler 5493.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Le dran, henri-françois (1685-1770)
Observations in Surgery.
London: Printed for J. Hodges at the Looking-Glass on London-Bridge, 1739.
First edition in English, translated by John Sparrow, octavo, illustrated with two folding engravings, bound in contemporary speckled English calf, ruled in gilt with original label, a little worn, generally good, 8 x 4 3/4 in.; [together with] Prestwich’s Dissertation on Mineral, Animal, & Vegetable Poisons, London: for F. Newberry, 1775, by John Prestwich (1745-1796), first edition, octavo, engraved title, illustrated with eleven full-paged plates (ten of plants, the eleventh depicting two scorpions, poisonous toad, beetle, centipede, and snake), with lively accounts of poisoning and cures; bound in contemporary paneled calf, original red label, both joints cracked, front board just hanging on, 8 1/4 x 5 in.
Le Dran: ESTC T176869; Prestwich: ESTC T149634; Roscoe A425.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Lizars, john (1792-1860)
A System of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body.
Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars, Daniel Lizars, S. Highley, & W. Curry, [n.d. circa 1835].
Elephant folio, atlas volume only, later edition, illustrated with 101 plates, almost all hand-tinted or hand-colored; bound in full green textured morocco (rubbed, joints starting), 17 x 10 1/2 in.
Wellcome III page 531 (describing the first edition).
Estimate
$500 – $750
Manuscript on paper, british medical.
Two quarto format manuscripts on laid paper, possibly Scottish, dated 1774, one recounting case histories of patients, with diagnoses and treatments in detail, stab sewn consisting of approximately forty pages, physician’s notes, fragmentary, in several hands; [together with] another stab sewn collection of notes on laid paper recording basic medical information, defintions of diseases, sicknesses, and syndromes, consisting of approximately twenty pages, fragmentary, each measuring approximately, 6 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.
“As I was deliberating the opthalmia, it seemed to go away & another disease that occupied our attention supervened; the form of it was somewhat singular and it sometimes puzzled me how to judge of it. I thought it was probably owing to cold, for the symptoms were such as commonly proceed from cold. He complained of soreness all over his body with cough and difficultly breathing.”
Estimate
$600 – $800
Manuscript on paper, france, 18th century.
Extrait des Leçons de Monsieur Serrein Docteur Regent de la Faculté de Paris […] sur la Matière Medicale.
Quarto format manuscript in French on laid paper, 672 number pages, italic hand in brown ink throughout, taken during medical classes at the Academie des Sciences in Paris, with added index at the beginning, and a few score leaves at the end, both in different hands, near contemporary ownership inscriptions of other medical students on preliminaries; bound in later half sheep, speckled paper boards, 8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Medical college of copenhagen.
Prodromus Praevertens Acta Medica Havniensia.
Copenhagen: [Typis Haeredum Berlingianorum excudebat Ludolph. Henr. Lillie], 1753.
Quarto, engraved vignette to title, two folding, and two full page engravings by Odvardt Helmoldt von Lode (1726-1757), a Danish artist and engraver of Estonian origin, plates depicting a set of conjoined twins; their hearts; a woman with a teratoma (a tumor containing hair and teeth); and what may be lice; bound in contemporary thin wooden boards, leather spine, boards covered in marbled paper, 7 1/2 x 6 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Medical manuscript in german.
Specielle Pathologie und Therapie.
Jena, 1831-1832.
Quarto, 293 numbered pages in brown ink on laid paper, thirty-two lines per page, handwritten medical lecture notes in German on pathology and therapeutics, signed on title by Georg Rauschenberg, perhaps notes on the lectures of Dr. G.D. Kiefer; bound in contemporary black paste-paper, 10 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Medical student’s photo album, 1905.
Oblong folio-format photo album, 1905; twenty-five black pages with photographs affixed, depicting mostly family fun and outdoor activities; including five “playful” medical school images of male students posing with human cadaver subjects: one with five students holding a skeleton; two nearly identical photos depicting eighteen young men standing behind a cadaver lying in the prone position, one with all men hatless, in the second, about ten are wearing hats; in the final image of this nature, perhaps the most disturbing, six students in aprons hold semi-dissected remains upright, while two others pose in the background in open upright coffins; contemporary album in suede fringed cover, 11 x 7 3/4 in.
Estimate
$500 – $750
Medico, giuseppe del (fl. circa 1811)
Anatomia per Uso dei Pittori e Scultori.
Rome: Vincenzo Poggioli, 1811.
First edition, folio, eighty-four numbered pages with typographical printing followed by thirty-eight full-page engravings printed in black ink only, of which twenty-three have hand-coloring, mostly with the muscles and brain images done in a red wash, the last plate, showing intestines, employs pale red and pale blue; bound in later half cloth with patterned paper boards, some marginal notes and pencil sketches on some plates, spotting to title, a few plates browned, 16 x 10 1/2 in.
Choulant-Frank p. 331; Duval & Cuyer, Histoire de l’Anatomie Plastique, pages 358-63; Garrison-Morton 406; Heirs of Hippocrates 1166; Norman 1484.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Mosher, dr. harris peyton (1867-1954)
Photographs Demonstrating Cranial Dissection Techniques.
Including twenty albumen photographs of decapitated heads in various stages of dissection, the images varying in size and mounted on uniform period mats, approximately fourteen with contemporary explantory ink captions, some with Mosher’s name as well, 14 x 11 in.
Dr. Mosher made important contributions to the field of otolaryngology. He was graduated from Harvard Medical School, and later taught at the school’s Department of Anatomy. There he pioneered and designed a dynamic program of dissection of the head and sinus anatomy. “Mosher’s Course” was part of the curriculum for thirty-five years.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Pancoast, joseph (1805-1882)
A Treatise on Operative Surgery.
Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1844.
First edition, large quarto, illustrated with eighty full-paged lithographs of surgical procedures, with publisher’s catalogs bound at beginning and end, in modern half leather with cloth-covered boards, 12 1/4 x 9 3/4 in.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Raynalde, thomas (1540-1551)
The Byrth of Mankinde, otherwise named The Woman’s Book.
London: [Thomas Dawson] for Thomas Adams, 1613.
Quarto, A4, B-O8; title page printed within publisher’s woodcut compartment, illustrated with nine full pages of woodcuts, woodcut initials, text in roman and black letter; bound in contemporary limp parchment, 7 1/4 x 5 3/4 in.
STC 21162; ESTC S123264; four copies in U.S. libraries.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Rivière, lazare (1589-1655)
Observationes Medicae & Curationes Insignes.
London: Miles Flesher, 1646.
Octavo, first London edition, printed in the same year as the first Paris; bound in contemporary parchment, dusty, parchment covering loosening, 7 x 4 1/2 in.
Wing R-1557; ESTC R2306.
Estimate
$200 – $300
Rohault, jacques (1618-1672)
Traité de Physique.
Paris: Veuve de Charles Savreux, 1671.
First edition, quarto in two parts, privilege signed on verso of last leaf, one folding engraving, and one full-paged plate extraneous to collation, text illustrations throughout, bound in full contemporary speckled French calf, spine tooled in gilt (endcaps chipped, structurally sound), staining to last few leaves, 9 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Rudio, eustachius (1551-1611)
Ars Medica, Libri Quatuor.
Venice: Jo. Antonium & Jacobum de Franciscis, 1608.
Folio, title page printed in red and black, three parts in one volume, large woodcut printer’s device on title, separate divisional title pages for the other sections; ex libris University of Aberdeen, with deaccession stamp on bookplate and small stamp to first preliminary leaf, although four parts are called for on the title, the small number of libraries that hold this edition sometimes contain three, as found here, bound in full contemporary limp parchment, decased, title and top edge dusty, a substantial volume, 12 1/4 x 8 1/2 in.
Rudios taught at Padua, this volume was published during his lifetime and includes his treatise on the heart, among dozens of other works.
Rare at auction; fewer than ten copies in Worldcat.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Rueff, jacob (1500-1558)
De Conceptu et Generatione Hominis: De Matrice et Eius Partibus.
Frankfurt: Sigismund Feyerabend, 1580.
Quarto, first edition with illustrations by Jost Amman, including a detailed birthing scene on the title, woodcut arms of the dedicatee, and seventy-three text woodcuts, several full-paged; bound in contemporary limp parchment (later pastedown and ffep to front), title toned, marginal corner tear with slight loss on folio 47, owner’s signature to title, and a few other manuscript notes, 8 x 6 1/4 in.
According to Garrison and Morton, the 1580 edition of Rueff’s practical obstetrical work, “contains the first true anatomical pictures in an obstetrics book.” Rueff, as Zurich’s official doctor, ordered that his book be given to all local practitioners attending women in labor, and asked that appropriate sections be read aloud in the birthing room as the delivery progressed. The manual was also geared to pregnant women themselves, a trend in pregnancy and childbirth literature that has served women for many centuries and is still in popular use today.
Durling 3981; VD16 R3582.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Scultetus, johannes (1595-1645)
L’Arcenal de Chirurgie.
Lyon: A. Cellier, 1672.
First edition in French, quarto, illustrated with added engraved title, large arms of dedicatee, and forty-nine plates (plate count is not accurate: plate forty-two is repeated; two unnumbered full-paged plates of a child with birth deformities); bound in contemporary speckled sheep, blind tooled in gilt, neatly rebacked, 8 3/4 x 6 1/4 in.
Illustrations in this work begin with surgical tools and devices, progressing to instructive images to aid doctors when setting broken limbs, performing trepanation, and surgical solutions to a variety of ailments, with explanatory text. The frontispiece depicts the surgeon at work, the patient held by ropes in his pain.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Sigismund-scholtz, adam (fl. circa 1670)
Cerebrum Orcae Vulgari Supposititiâ Sermpatis Ceti Larvâ Develatum.
Leipzig: apud Nicolaum Scipionem, 1678.
Quarto, second edition, disbound; [together with] seven other medical pamphlet dissertations 1650s-1690s, including Tobias Heinsius’s De Ascite Dissertatio, Basel: Decker, 1656; Hieronymus Bauhin’s De Tertiana Intermittente Exquisita, Basel: Decker, 1666; Martin Bogdan’s De Recidiva Morborum, Basel: Decker, 1659; Christian Samuel Ziegra’s De Parelio, Wittenberg: Henckelius, 1680; Sturm’s De Plantarum Animaliumque Generatione, Aldorff: Schonnerstaedtianis, 1687; Nicolaus du Mont’s Calculo Renum et Vesicae, Basel: Bertschius, 1690; Schenck’s De Melancholiae, Jena: Krebs, 1662; [and] author’s presentation’s copy of Hippolyte Bilon’s Dissertation sur la Douleur, Paris: Imprimerie de Feugueray, 1803; sizes vary. (9)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Spratt, george (1784-1840)
Obstetric Tables comprising Coloured Delineations on a Peculiar Plan [together with] Supplement to Obstetric Tables.
London: Published for the author for John Churchill, 1833 & 1835.
First edition, two large quarto volumes, the first illustrated with twelve plates (most printed in color and constructed with many hand-cut flaps pasted in place); the Supplement with seven similar illustrations, each bound in publisher’s green moiré-patterned cloth, some foxing and discoloration to contents, 10 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (2)
Waller 9134.
Estimate
$300 – $500
T. k. (doctor in physick)
The Kitchin-Physician: or, a Guide for Good-Housewives in Maintaining their Families in Health.
London: Printed for Samuel Lee, 1680.
12mo, without the frontispiece; bound in original sheepskin, worn, pages dogeared and very worn, several with tears, sometimes across the middle of the page, without much loss, title page amateurishly reinforced on verso with lined paper; a well-loved book in worn but unsophisticated condition, 5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in.
Wing K-20; R18406; rare, ESTC lists two U.S. copies: Huntington & U.S. National Library of Medicine; rare at auction.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Vesalius, andreas (1514-1564)
Anatomische Erklaerung der Original-Figuere.
Ingoldstadt: Anton Attenzhouer, 1783.
Folio, second edition of Henrich Palmaz Leveling’s (1742-1798) translation, iconic full-paged woodcut compartment illustrating the crowded dissecting room; engraved vignette to typographical title with portrait of Leveling with the caduceus and skeleton; illustrated with more than 200 text woodcuts printed from the original Vesalian blocks, which were destroyed during the second World War when Munich was bombed; including two double-paged woodcuts and two folding; bound in later half leather and marbled paper boards, spine tooled in gilt, 16 1/4 x 10 1/2 in.
Leveling relied upon the input of Danish-born French anatomist Jakob Winslow (1669-1760) while crafting his pared-down explanations of Vesalius’s images.
Cushing VI A-15; Heirs of Hippocrates 1042; Osler 573; Choulant-Frank 185; Waller 5752.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Wirsung, christof (1500 or 1505-1571)
Praxis Medicinae Universalis.
London: Edmund Bollifant, 1598.
First edition in English, folio; printer’s woodcut device to title (title fragmentary along edges, chipped with loss to blank margins, mounted), first twenty pages with older glassine paper repairs along fore-edges; strong waterstaining to first fifty pages, other scattered tears, repairs, and stains; bound in full later leather scratched and rubbed, 11 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.
Wirsung’s compendium of thousands of health remedies also includes instructions for the preservation of fruits, roots, flowers, and other foods.
STC 25862; ESTC S105368, showing six copies in U.S. libraries.
Estimate
$2,000 – $2,500
Science
Accademia del cimento, florence, italy.
Essayes of Natural Experiments Made in the Academie del Cimento.
London: printed by Benjamin Alsop, 1684.
First edition, quarto, (Z4 final blank present), translated by Richard Waller, illustrated with added engraved title, first leaf with order to print present, bound in full contemporary speckled English calf, early engraved armorial bookplate inside the front board, ex libris Gordon Castle and Kenney Collection, with book labels inside front board; front board detached, 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.
Wing A-161; ESTC R6541; Bolton I 259; Duveen page 636.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Apianus, petrus (1495-1552)
Cosmographia.
Giles Coppenius for Arnold Berckmann, 1540.
Quarto, A-O4, P, two parts in one volume, edited by Regnier Gemma Frisius (1508-1555), illustrated with fifty-one woodcut illustrations and diagrams, with four of five fully constructed and intact volvelles, (one without moving parts); woodcut printer’s device on verso of last leaf; bound in contemporary or near-contemporary parchment over boards, lettering on spine; spine covering fragmentary at sewing supports; final dozen pages with a small portion of upper outside blank margin nibbled away with slight loss, 8 1/2 x 6 in.
Fairfax Murray German 40; Sabin 1745; Alden 540/2.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Aratus of solis (circa 315-240 bce)
Syntagma Arateorum: Opus Poetica et Astronomia.
Leiden: Christopher Raphelengius for Plantin, 1600.
First edition, edited by the young Hugo Grotius (1583-1645); illustrated with forty-three full-paged engravings and one folding engraving of constellations by Jacob de Gheyn; bound in full antique red morocco, with gilt decoration on boards and lettering on spine, aeg, marbled endleaves (corners bumped with some damage, headcap chipped); the Hoe copy, with his gilt-tooled morocco book label pasted inside the front board, 9 x 6 in.
Adams A-1519; Lalande page 135.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Bélidor, bernard forest de (1698-1761)
Architecture Hydraulique, ou l’Art de Conduire, d’Elever, et de Menager les Eaux.
Paris: Charles Jombert, 1737-1753.
First edition, four large quarto volumes, illustrated with engraved titles to first and fourth volumes, bespoke hydraulics-themed head- and tail-pieces, and 219 folding engraved illustrations bound throughout the set (plates 10-19 in the fourth volume misbound after plate 34); uniformly bound in full contemporary sponge-decorated French calfskin with gilt-tooled spines and lettering pieces, generally good, some minor damage to heads and tails, a substantial set occupying nine inches of shelf space, 11 x 8 in. (4)
A fine set of Bélidor’s substantial contribution to hydraulic engineering, and his greatest work, in Architecture Hydraulique, he uses integral calculus to solve the technical challenges of his designs.
Brunet I 740; Graesse I 324.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Biancani, giuseppe (1566-1624)
Sphaera seu Cosmographia Demonstrativa, ac Facili Methodo Tradita.
Modena: Ex Typographia Andreae & Hieronymi Cassiani, 1653.
Folio, illustrated with numerous text illustrations, one large folding plate and a woodcut printed on a small sheet of paper extraneous to collation; [bound with] Biancani’s Constructio Instrumenti ad Horologia Solaria, Modena: Cassiani, 1654, illustrated with three sheets of engravings: one with five, one with four, and one with three, all printed on both sides; with a large folding typographical table, bound in contemporary paper boards with parchment spine, 11 1/2 x 8 in.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Bois-reymond, emil du (1818-1896)
Untersuchungen uber Therische Elektrictat.
Berlin: Verlag von G. Reimer, 1848-1884.
Two octavo volumes uniformly bound in half leather with alligator-patterned paper, parchment corners, illustrated, 9 x 5 1/2 in. (2)
Estimate
$600 – $800
Boyle, robert (1627-1691)
Experimenta & Observationes Physicae: Wherein are Briefly Treated of Several Subjects Relating to Natural Philosophy in an Experimental Way.
London: Printed for John Taylor and John Wyat, 1691.
First edition, octavo, bound in contemporary speckled sheepskin, rebacked, corners bumped and damaged, contents with some toning and speckling, 6 1/2 x 4 in.
Wing B-3959; Fulton 193; rare at auction, last copy offered in 1984.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Boyle, robert (1627-1691)
The Philosophical Works.
London: Printed for W. Innys and R. Manby, 1738.
Three large quarto volumes, second edition, engraved portrait frontispiece of the author opposite title of the first volume, illustrated with fifteen plates over the set (single leaf plates in first and third volume, thirteen folding plates in volume two); lacking signature Hhhh in second volume (four text leaves not removed, most likely omitted in the process of gathering or binding and never included in this copy); bound in uniform contemporary English calf, spines with labels and volume numbers, 9 1/4 x 7 in. (3)
ESTC N19966.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Boyle, robert (1627-1691)
The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes.
Oxford: Printed by Henry Hall for Ric. Davis & B. Tooke, 1680.
[and]: Experiments and Notes about the Producibleness of Chymicall Principles, Being Parts of an Appendix design’d to be added to the Sceptical Chymist, second edition, octavo, without the inserted publisher’s advertisement to the reader; the two parts bound in contemporary boards, rebacked, corners repaired, toning, tears, some paper defects and repairs to text leaves, 6 3/4 x 4 in.
Wing B-4022; Madan III 3260-3261; Fulton Boyle 34.
Estimate
$6,000 – $8,000
Brahe, tycho (1546-1601)
Opera Omnia, sive Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata.
Frankfurt: Ioannis Godofredi Schönvvetteri, 1648.
Second edition, quarto, two parts in one volume, (Ooo4 & ee2 blank & present), divisional title page to second part, large printer’s device on both title pages and another astronomically-themed device on last leaf, illustrated with numerous text woodcuts, some full-page, tables and diagrams; expertly resewn, in old parchment boards, (possibly recased, but very neatly so), later label on spine, some page browning, generally good, likely washed, but not excessively pressed, 9 1/8 x 7 1/4 in.
Graesse I, 518; Poggendorff I, 273; Gingerich, no. 24 (earlier edition); Houzeau & Lancaster 2704.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Cleomedes (fl. circa 400 ce); ed. robert balfour (c. 1553-1621)
Cleomedis Meteora Graece et Latine.
Bordeaux: Simon Milangium, 1605.
First edition, quarto, title page printed in red and black with a block of type ornaments above the imprint, illustrated with text diagrams throughout, text in first section printed in Greek and Latin in parallel columns, divisional title page for Balfour’s commentary, pagination and collation continuous, bound in parchment over boards, boards bowed, contents toned, some minor worming, 8 1/2 x 6 in.
Balfour was the principal of Guienne College in Bordeaux. He consulted a manuscript of Cleomedes’ work from the Cardinal François de Joyeuse’s (1562-1615) library. Cleomedes was an ancient Greek astronomer and author of On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies, a blend of philosophy and science from a Stoic perspective. Through his extensive verbatim references to Posidonius of Rhodes (135-51 BCE), he has effectively preserved the work, which has not come down to us through any extant manuscripts. Cleomedes’ work is valuable for its accurate obersvations on lunar eclipses, and the earliest clear explantion of the Sun and Moon Illusion, i.e., why the rising and setting bodies look larger at the horizon than they do when fully risen, even though their sizes do not change. Even this he attributes to Posidonius.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Copernicus, nicolaus (1473-1543)
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium.
Basel: Henrich Petrus, 1566.
Second edition, small folio, [¶]6, a-z6, A-Z6, Aa-Ff4, Gg6, final leaf blank but for printer’s device and present in this copy; woodcut printer’s device to title, illustrated with woodcut text diagrams; early ownership inscriptions removed from title at foot with some loss to blank area under the imprint (repaired on verso), title with marginal paper repairs to verso; 1cm trimmed at bottom of blank margin r3 & r4 (repaired with laid paper); short closed tear to bottom blank margin z1 (2 cm); browning and toning throughout, period marginalia amateurishly and incompletely washed away in several places, with staining, one longer note still legible; bound in modern limp parchment, period style, 11 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Provenance: Sold by English physicist and poet Edward Neville da Costa Andrade (1887-1971) at Sotheby’s 1 August 1939, lot 692; purchased by Rosenbach; sold to William Marshall Bullitt (1873-1957) of Louisville Kentucky on 26 August 1939 (Bullitt collection pencil manuscript annotation mentioning the date and Rosenbach on ffep, confirmed by Rosenbach records).
This second edition of Copernicus’s revolutionary work also contains Georg Joachim Rheticus’s (1514-1574) Narratio Prima. In it, Rheticus, Copernicus’s only pupil, introduces the concepts of his mentor’s heliocentric model. It was published separately in 1540, and did not accompany the first edition of De Revolutionibus.
Adams C-2603; Cinti 48; Gingerich, An annotated Census of Copernicus’ ‘De Revolutionibus,’; Houzeau & Lancaster 2503.
Estimate
$60,000 – $80,000
Descartes, rené (1596-1650)
Geometria.
Amsterdam: Ludovicum & Danielem Elzevirios, 1659.
[together with] Descartes’s Principia Matheseos Universalis, Amsterdam: Ludovicum & Danielem Elzevirios, 1661; two separate quarto volumes; first title with engraved frontispiece portrait, title printed in red and black, both volumes signed by a Utrecht mathematician Jacob Lutfrett [?] and dated 1700, with marginal mathematical formulas in the same hand, especially dense in the Geometria volume; bound in uniform contemporary Dutch parchment over boards, ex libris Edward Neville da Costa Andrade (1887-1971), with his bookplate in both volumes, 7 3/4 x 5 3/4 in. (2)
This second edition of the Geometria was edited by Frans van Schooten (c. 1615-1660) and served to popularize Descartes works, published here with other supporting works contributed by Johann Hudde, Van Heuraet, Erasmus Bertholin, De Beaune, and Jan de Witt.
Willems 1244.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Digges, leonard (c. 1515-1559) and thomas digges (1546-1595)
A Geometrical Practical Treatize named Pantometria.
London: Abell Jeffes, 1591.
Second edition, folio, lacking initial blank and final section (pages 174-195) 173 pages only of 195; woodcut vignette on title, large armorial woodcut on verso of title, illustrated throughout with text illustrations and diagrams, contemporary stab-sewn construction in limp parchment, although this copy is lacking the last section, the appearance of the binding and sewing indicate it was either originally bound or issued separately, and not removed at a later date; later wove endleaves and pastedowns, 10 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.
In this work, the father-son Digges team tackle the practical aspects of geometry as applied to measuring distances, plotting trajectories on land and sea, and aiming weaponry with precision.
Tomash & Williams D54; ESTC S107357; The Geometry of War 45; STC 6859.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Euclid (fl. circa 300 bce)
The Elements of Geometrie.
London: John Daye, 1570.
First complete edition in English, translation by Sir Henry Billingsley (d. 1606) from the Greek, preface by John Dee (1527-1608); folio, large allegorical woodcut compartment featuring personifications of scientists, gods, and muses (McKerrow & Ferguson 99); with Wharton’s engraved portrait of Euclid from the 1661 London edition added; full-page woodcut portrait of the printer on verso of last leaf (McKerrow 145); groundplat lacking (provided in good photocopy facsimile on appropriate paper); title page mounted, preliminary signatures misbound: a4, d4, b4, c4; no overslips present in Book XI; lacking EEE4 (final ?blank); contents generally good, edges gilt and gauffered, rebound sympathetically in full calf, period style, 11 1/2 x 8 in.
STC 10560; ESTC S106699; Luborsky & Ingram, English Illustrated Books 1536-1603, 10560.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Euclid (mid-4th century bce)
Elements of Geometry Book I.
New York: Random House, 1944.
Limited edition, octavo, one of 500 copies printed for Random House at the Press of A. Colish, New York; introduction by Paul Valéry, woodcut on title after Gordon Craig printed in blue and silver, illustrations printed in colored ink throughout, bound in publisher’s full cloth, blocked in silver, housed in slightly tattered original slipcase, 9 x 5 1/4 in.
Estimate
$200 – $300
Faraday, michael (1791-1867)
Manipulations Chimiques.
Paris: A. Sautelet et Cie., 1827.
First edition in French, published the same year as the first London, two octavo volumes, half-titles present in both, the two bound in uniform contemporary half dark brown calf, gilt-tooled and lettered spines, marbled paper boards, ffep cut out of first volume, book ticket of Rotterdam bookseller inside front board of first volume, 7 3/4 x 4 3/4 in. (2)
Estimate
$200 – $300
Franklin, benjamin (1706-1790)
Experiences et Observations sur l’Électricité Faites à Philadelphie en Amérique.
Paris: Chez Durand [Veuve Delatour], 1756.
Second edition, two octavo volumes; one engraved illustration in the second volume, bound in uniform later half green sheepskin, mottled paper boards, 6 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (2)
Estimate
$400 – $600
Galilei, galileo (1564-1642)
Systema Cosmicum.
Lyon: Joannes Antonius Huguetan, 1641.
Second edition in Latin of Galileo’s landmark Dialogus de Systemate Mundi, in quarto, *4-**4, A-Ddd4; illustrated with engraved title depicting an imagined dialogue between Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Copernicus; large engraved vignette on typographical title page; full-page engraved portrait of Galileo by Claude Audran; and text illustrations; ex libris French geophysicist, astronomer, and chronobiologist Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan (1678-1771), with his signature on both title pages; bound in contemporary limp parchment, some signatures browned, some spotting to contents; small name blind-embossed on engraved title (20th century); bookplate of Otto Orren Fisher inside front board, 9 x 6 1/2 in.
It was the publication of the present work that landed Galileo in hot water with the Holy See and into permanent house arrest until his death in 1642. The astronomer explores the relative merits of the heliocentric model in the form of a dialogue, as indicated by the title. Three characters present different viewpoints. Salviati is a heliocentric Copernican, Sagredo is neutral, and Simplicio is an adherent of the Aristotelian/Ptolemaeic system that places the earth at the center of the universe. The arguments are mathematical, complicated, and at times speculative. Galileo sketches out his important theory of inertial frame of reference, a concept that has held up over the centuries, and much of the work is prescient and accurate. As an early work, it also contains unresolved loose ends, keeping subsequent scientists and observers on the job.
Carli-Favaro 38, 180; Cinti 215, 109; Riccardi I 513.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Gardiner, william (d. 1752)
Tables of Logarithms for All Numbers from 1 to 102100, and for the Sines and Tangents to Every Ten Seconds of Each Degree in the Quadrant.
London: Printed for the Author and by G. Smith, 1742.
First edition, large quarto; a beautifully printed book on heavy paper; errata slip bound between a2 & a3, contents well-preserved in contemporary speckled boards (worn, bumped, corners damaged), boards still attached, marbled endleaves, 11 1/2 x 9 in.
Gardiner meticulously calculated, corrected, and compiled these thousands of logarithms in response to the scarcity of Adrian Vlacq’s Tabulae Sinuum. He also includes a table of “Logistical logarithms” because of their “ready and frequent use in Astronomical calculations.” In his preface, he notes that he has “strictly examin’d every sheet after it was printed off, and in each copy have carefully rectified all the faults I discover’d.” Hans Sloane, John Ferguson, Henry Flitcroft, and Edmund Halley are listed as subscribers.
ESTC T102269.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Gassendi, pierre (1592-1655)
Institutio Astronomica iuxta Hypothese tam veterum quam Copernici and Tychonis.
The Hague: Adrian Vlacq, 1656.
Quarto, engraved author portrait bound opposite the first leaf of text, title printed in red and black, illustrated with numerous woodcut text diagrams, several taking up a full page, with several internal title pages marking different sections, contemporary manuscript inscription to title and final leaf; an exceptional uncut copy in contemporary paper boards, 8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.
Houzeau & Lancaster 9222.
Estimate
$2,000 – $4,000
Goad, john (1616-1689)
Astro-Meteorologica, or Aphorisms and Discourses of the Bodies Coelestial.
London: Printed by J. Rawlins, for Obadiah Blagrave, 1686.
First edition, folio, bound in full modern calf paneled in blind compartments, sprinkled, in period style, with red lettering piece on spine, some spotting to contents, several 19th century ownership stamps of Thomas Kane, 10 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.
Wing G-897; ESTC R30414.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Gregory, david (1659-1708)
Astronomiae Physicae & Geometricae Elementa.
Oxford: E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1702.
First edition, folio, large engraved vignette to title, illustrated with text diagrams throughout, bound in contemporary half parchment and corners; uncut throughout, waterstain to foot of title and follwing twenty pages, else fresh, 14 3/4 x 9 1/2 in.
Gregory’s work is notable for including the first appearance in print of Newton’s lunar theory. The Astronomiae is also considered the first instructional work of astronomy predicated on the existence of gravity.
ESTC T18607; Babson 71; Sotheran I 1652; Wallis 87.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Grollier de servière, gaspard (1676-1745)
Recueil d’Ouvrages Curieux de Mathematique et de Mecanique.
Lyon: David Forey, 1719.
First edition, quarto, title page printed in red and black, engraved head-piece, and eighty-five full-paged engravings by Étienne-Joseph Daudet (numbering irregular, plates numbered 1-88, but plates 39, 48, and 76 seem not to have been printed, and are not called for in the instructions to the binder); ex libris John, Earl of Bute, with his engraved armorial bookplate on verso of title, and engraved Luton Library bookplate inside front board; bound in contemporary speckled calf boards, gilt-tooled spine, rebacked, 10 1/4 x 7 3/4 in.
This beautifully illustrated catalogue of inventions and instruments is based on the collection of Nicolas Grollier de Servière (1676-1745), our author’s grandfather. Folding ladders, a wheelchair, many mills, the book wheel for omnivorous readers, pontoon boats, clocks run by marble raceways, inventive wells, and more are all meticulously engraved and described in detail.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Herschel, sir john frederick william (1792-1871)
Results of Astronomical Observations made during 1834-1838 at the Cape of Good Hope.
London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1847.
First edition, large quarto, presentation copy, with engraved leaf presenting this copy from Algernon, Duke of Northumberland, to Edward Everett with the best respects of the author, illustrated with lithographic frontispiece and seventeen folding engraved or lithographic plates; bound in publisher’s full blind-stamped cloth, with gilt-lettered spine, neatly rebacked, Everett’s bookplate inside front board, 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 in.
First edition of Herschel’s exhaustive survey of the night sky of the southern hemisphere.
DSB VI, 326. BEA, pages 493-94; Norman 1056.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Hooke, robert (1635-1703)
Micrographia Restaurata.
London: Printed and Sold by John Bowles, R. Dodsley, and John Cuff, Optician, in Fleetstreet, 1745.
Folio, illustrated with thirty-three large engravings (thirty full-paged and three folding), with many contemporary marginal drawings and notes throughout by an English scientist whose initials may be C.M. (on leaf C, our annotator has added an M to the C), including corrections to some of Dr. Baker’s conclusions, and sketches of his own microscopic observations, bound in contemporary boards, worn and repaired, 14 x 9 in.
It should come as no surprise that the louse, flea, and house fly occupy the large and detailed folding plates in this groundbreaking work. The additional information added by our contemporary and as yet unidentified scientist contextualize the work in a unique way.
ESTC T73384.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Kant, immanuel (1724-1804)
Two Titles.
Including: Critik der Reinen Vernunft, Riga: Hartknoch,1794, octavo, fourth edition, 884 pages, printed in gothic letter throughout, bound in contemporary speckled paper over boards, rubbed, 7 3/4 x 4 1/2 in. [and] Kant’s Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht Abgefasst, Konigsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius, 1798, first edition, octavo, modern half leather and speckled paper boards, first and last few leaves with spotting, foxing, 7 3/4 x 4 1/2 in. (2)
Estimate
$200 – $300
Kircher, athanasius (1602-1680)
Magnes sive de Arte Magneticum Opus Tripartitum.
Cologne: Jodocus Kalcoven, 1643.
Second edition, quarto, additional engraved title, illustrated with twenty-nine plates (including the folding plate), bound in full parchment (covering material split at front joint), some browning to pages, as is often the case, 7 3/4 x 5 3/4 in.
Merrill 5.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Le vengeur d’orsan, a. (fl. circa 1860)
Our Satellite. A Selenography According to the Present State of Science.
London: A. W. Bennett, August 1862.
First edition, first number (all published), folio, illustrated with nine albumen photographs and two lithographs: viz., six small photos mounted on text pages, and three larger photos mounted on full sheets, one full-paged lithograph, and one small inset text litho; bound in pictorial publisher’s boards, with two small printer’s slips tipped in, ex libris British Astronomical Association Library, with stamps to title, front cover, and elsewhere, sewing perished, spine covering lacking, edges of some leaves chipped and dusty, 17 x 13 in.
Part two was never published after Bennett found out that D’Orsan stole his images from De La Rue, and prominently added his own name to the plate.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Ledermüller, martin frobenius (1719-1769)
Amusement Microscopique tant pour l’Esprit, que pour les Yeux.
Nuremberg: Adam Wolfgang Winterschmidt, 1764, 1766. 1768.
First edition in French, thick quarto, three parts and supplement in one volume; illustrated with hand-colored frontispiece 150 hand-colored plates (a few printed in color), and two hand-colored folding plates; bound in full contemporary German marbled calf, with gilt tooling and lettering to the spine and blind rolled tooling to the boards, decorative paste decoration to page edges, contents very good; 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.
Ledermüller’s beautifully hand-colored and fascinatingly arranged compositions, engraved after his own drawings, were inspired by the collection of natural history specimens in Bayreuth belonging to the Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Perusing the book, one recalls the childhood excitement of viewing samples under magnification for the first time. From butterfly wings, crystals, minute seashells, microscopic waterborne life forms, fabric, and botanical samples, to the human fingerprint, fleas, houseflies, and lice, all can be found in this volume, in vivid hand-color. Our guide to this miniature world also provides practical advice for building microscopes, and different ways of viewing slides and projecting images from the microscope for others to view.
Wellcome III 472.
Estimate
$6,000 – $8,000
Leopold, duke of austria (13th century)
Compilatio Leupoldi Ducatus Austrie Filii de Astrorum Scientia Decem Continentis Tractatus.
Venice: [Jacobus Pentius for] Melchior Sessa and Petrus de Ravanis, 1520.
Second edition, quarto, lacking text leaf C1; large woodcut on title, with smaller Sessa device depicting a cat with a rat in its mouth, illustrated with many woodcuts in text, bound in later blind-tooled dark morocco, Renaissance revival, joints rubbed, structurally sound, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.
Little is known about the medieval astronomer/astrologer who has left us this work. It is mainly concerned with the zodiac, astrological predictions, the weather, and ancient gods, and was influential and admired by early astronomers.
Adams L-516; Sander 3948; Essling 2081; Houzeau and Lancaster 4783.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Lubieniecki, stanislaw (1623-1675)
Theatrum Cometicum, Duabus Partibus Constans.
Amsterdam: Typis Daniel Baccamude apud Franciscum Cuperum,1668 [1666].
First edition, three parts bound in two small folio volumes, illustrated with three engraved title pages, fine engraved portrait of the author by Visscher, another of Johann Ernst Rautenstein (1623-1666) by Sommeren; and seventy-eight engraved plates (plates 19/20 and 56/57 each contain two images per plate, numbered separately), most folding, others full-page; bound in uniform quarter mottled sheep with sponge-decorated paper boards, gilt spines with decoration and labels, some slight toning and scattered minor worming, very good, lacking one leaf presumed blank [second volume (A)1], one signature with added unnumbered and unsigned singlet (first volume signature Vvvvv has five leaves),11 1/2 x 7 1/2 in. (2)
Lubieniecki was a Polish astronomer and historian with a special interest in comets and an influential group of colleagues and correspondents. In the present wor, he shares his history of comets, beginning with those mentioned in the Bible, and including detailed accounts of the more recent comet that he personally observed in 1664 and 1665. Letters concerning those sightings are also published here, including his correspondence with Hevelius, Guerike, Gaspar Schott, and dozens of others.
Brunet III, 1194; Graesse IV, 270; Honeyman 2052; Knijff & Jan Visser, Bibliographia Sociana 2067; Poggendorff I, 1508; Thorndike VIII 336.
Estimate
$8,000 – $10,000
Manuscript, student’s notebook, france.
Traité de Physique.
Circa 1709-1754.
Octavo format manuscript on laid paper, text in French, comprising more than 300 pages, beginning with physics, which may be based on a course in physiology and pathology taught by François Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix (1706-1767); containing notes on hydraulics, algebra, quadrupeds, birds, insects, fish, plants, and mineralogy, and illustrated with four hand-drawn folding illustrations of diagrams and experiments; followed by many more pages, including commonplace observations on similar topics dated 1709, many pages of preparation recipes for medications and curative waters, and other material, bound in full contemporary mottled sheepskin, worn, 5 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Moxon, joseph (1627-1691)
Mathematicks Made Easie: or, a Mathematical Dictionary.
London: Printed for J. Moxon, at the Sign of Atlas, in Warwick Lane, 1692.
Octavo, engraved frontispiece portrait opposite title, illustrated with four engraved plates bound after text and a few woodcut text illustrations, bound in full contemporary speckled English sheep, somewhat bumped and worn, unsophisticated, 6 3/4 x 4 1/4 in. [together with] John Ward’s (active 1698-1709) The Young Mathematician’s Guide, London: Printed by Tho. Horne, J. Woodward, and A. Bettesworth, 1713, octavo, portrait frontispiece of author opposite title, text diagrams, bound in contemporary calf, rebacked, joints splitting, 7 3/4 x 4 1/2 in.; [and] Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi’s (1804-1851) Fundamenta Nova Theoriae Functionum Ellipticarum, Regiomonti: Borntraeger, 1829, large quarto, folding chart, bound in contemporary half cloth, foxing and water stains to title, 10 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. (3)
Moxon: Wing M-3007; ESTC R10338. Ward: ESTC T132407.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Munster, sebastian (1488-1552)
Rudimenta Mathematica.
Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1551.
First edition, small folio, lacking X6, final leaf with printer’s device, and folding diagram; a large woodcut on title page with a large tower and six figures engaged in measuring various objects with different scientific instruments, illustrated with numerous text woodcuts and diagrams; bound in later limp parchment; dampstaining throughout, with some damage to leaves; bottom corner of many leaves reinforced, weakened by the water damage, 12 x 8 in.
Adams M-1939; Burmeister 54; Zinner 2022; Houzeau-Lancaster 11364.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Musschenbroek, pieter van (1692-1761)
Physicae Experimentales et Geometricae de Magnete, Tuborum Capillarium Vitreorumque.
Leiden: Samuel Luchtmans, 1729.
First edition, quarto, title page printed in red and black; ex libris Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) with his signature on title; illustrated with thirty-two folding engravings (two numbered plates, twenty-eight numbered plates, and two unnumbered plates), including a large folding Ephemerides Meteorolgicae Ultrajectinae for 1728; a handsome copy in a worn contemporary binding, aeg, full French calf, rubbed, front joint cracked, some light damage to endcaps, endbands intact, 9 1/2 x 7 in.
Musschenbroek’s early textbook of experimental physics contains sections on magnetism, capillary action, the size of the earth, the relative strengths of building materials, and meteorological observations, all illustrated. Other than the signature on the title, no further notes of Buffon occur in the text.
DSB IX, 597; Wheeler Gift 268; Wolf II, 517-19; Graesse IV 637.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Musschenbroek, pieter van (1692-1761)
Tentamina Experimentorum Naturalium.
Leiden: J. & H. Verbeek, 1731.
First edition, quarto, illustrated with thirty-three folding engravings (plate 29 repeated), and folding typographical table, some plates misbound; bound in full contemporary Dutch blindstamped parchment over boards, neat ink label on spine, front joint cracked, 10 x 7 1/2 in.
Wheeler Gift 276.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Newton, sir isaac (1642-1727)
Opuscula Mathematica, Philosophica et Philologica.
Lausanne & Geneva: Marc-Michel Bousquet, 1744.
First collected edition, three quarto volumes, title pages printed in red and black with engraved portrait vignette of Newton, illustrated with sixty-four engraved plates and two folding typographical tables extraneous to collation, directions to the binder present; bound in uniform contemporary half sheep with speckled paper boards, marbled pastedowns, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in. [together with] Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Geneva: Barrillot & Filii, 1742, volume three only, bound in full contemporary calf, front board attached, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in. (4)
Babson 9; Wallis 2.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Nollet, jean antoine (1700-1770)
Recherches sur les Causes Particulières des Phénoménes Électriques.
Paris: Freres Guerin, 1749.
First edition, 12mo, half-title present, illustrated with seven folding engravings of electrical experiments, bound in full contemporary French mottled calf with gilt-tooled spine, nicely preserved, ex libris Joseph Henry Chave, with his bookplate inside the front board, 6 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.
“The author lays down a theory, according to which the cause of electrical phenomena is the ‘effluence and affluence’ of a subtile fluid which is everywhere present. Some interesting experiments are described with vacuum tubes also on the influence of electric charges on the growth of plants.”–Wheeler Gift 355.
Estimate
$200 – $300
Ozanam, jacques (1640-1718)
Dictionnaire Mathématique ou Idée Générale des Mathématiques.
Amsterdam: Huguetan, 1691.
Large quarto, engraved allegorical title facing typographical title page (printed in red and black), illustrated with text diagrams and twenty-four engravings extraneous to collation, musical notation in text; bound in handsome full German calf parchment, tooled in blind, 9 1/4 x 7 in.
This valuable French dictionary of mathematical and scientific terms was published in both Paris and Amsterdam in 1691. It covers astronomy, navigation, optics, painting, music, and many other topics, with alphabetical subject index at the end.
Houzeau & Lancaster 9334.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Pagnini, giovanni (fl. circa 1750)
Costruzione ed Uso del Compasso di Proporzione.
Naples: Ignazio Russo, 1753.
First and only edition, quarto, woodcut emblem to title, illustrated with fifteen folding engravings illustrating the use of the proportional compass, and related tables; bound in contemporary parchment over stiff boards, title tooled in gilt directly on spine, very old ms. library shelf locations, 9 x 6 1/2 in.
The proportional or reduction compass is a device that facilitates the reduction, enlargement, or division of distances based on a set ratio. It has two legs, like a normal compass, but the pivot point can be adjusted by moving it along a channel cut in each leg. Once set, the change in size of a set figure can be made by consulting the needle points on the other end of the compass. A practical instrument for sculptors, craftsmen, and astronomers alike, its invention has been credited to Galileo, Hulsius, Jost Bürgi, and Fabrizio Mordente, although it was certainly used in antiquity, as one has been discovered in the charred remains of Pompeii.
Sotheran 12897; Honeyman Collection 2392.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Pappus of alexandria (circa 290-350 ce)
Mathematicae Collectiones.
Venice: Franciscum de Franciscis Senensem, apud Hieronymum Concordiam, 1589.
Folio, second edition, lacking initial blank, translated from Greek by Federico Commandino (1506-1575), title page with woodcut printer’s device, many diagrams throughout the text, extensive marginalia surrounding the text of the first theorem in Book V, written in a neat italic hand, in Latin and Greek, black ink; bound in limp parchment, aeg, signature on title excised, repaired with matching paper, contents crisp, 12 x 8 1/2 in.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Piccolomini, alessandro (1508-1578)
La Sfera del Mondo.[bound with] Dele Stelle Fisse.
Venice: Giovanni Varisco e Compagni, 1573 [and] 1570.
Tenth edition, quarto, illustrated with text woodcuts and forty-eight full-paged woodcut star maps, bound in contemporary limp parchment, lacking ties, top outer corner of title torn away with loss of the top of the letter “O” in Mondo, repaired, several early ownership inscriptions to title, 8 x 6 in.
Norman 1696 (1559 edition); BEA, page 904-05; Riccardi II, 270 (this edition); Warner, page 200.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Ramelli, agostino (circa 1531-1608)
Le Diverse et Artificiose Machine.
Paris: In Casa del’Autore, 1588.
First edition, folio, lacking text leaf Y1 (folio 295), and final two leaves: Kk1 & Kk2 (folios 337 & 338), engraved title page with architectural border, portrait of Ramelli within a similar style border on verso of title, illustrated throughout with 193 of 195 full and double-paged engravings of machines (plates are numbered i through cxcv, although cxlviii and cxlix are combined in one plate); text in French and Italian, each page printed within border of typographical ornaments; this copy purchased from John Howell in San Francisco, with typed description; bound in period parchment over boards, with parchment covering slit open to accommodate raised spines and covered with strips of alum-tawed leather secured under the parchment, hole in front board, boards warped, front joint cracked at head, 13 1/2 x 9 in.
Ramelli planned this lavish self-published work with an eye to discouraging unauthorized pirated editions. Long regarded as a high spot of book design, the impressive machines of industry, war, and amusement still entrance the reader.
Mortimer, Harvard French 452; Cockle 788; Spaulding & Karpinski 43; Dibner 173; Norman 1777; Wellcome 5323 Brunet IV 1095.
Estimate
$6,000 – $8,000
Reynolds, james (1817-1876)
Astronomical and Geographical Diagrams.
London: Reynolds, 1850s.
Small folio-format publisher’s cloth folder containing the following loose sheets: one leaf of explanatory text, and twelve full-paged engraved diagrams of astronomical phenomena, six hand-colored: the Sun and Solar Phenomena; the Theory of the Seasons; the Earth and its Atmosphere; Diagram of Meteorology; Comets & Aerolites; and Eclipses, six perforated with transparent tissue: Transparent Chart of the Heavens; the Central Sun; Telescopic Appearance of the Moon; Transparent Solar System; Phases of the Moon; and Comparative Magnitudes of the Planets; green striped and textured publisher’s cloth stamped in blind, lettered in gilt, 11 1/4 x 9 in.
Estimate
$250 – $350
Russell, william howard (1820-1907)
The Atlantic Cable.
London: Day & Son Ltd., [circa 1866].
First edition, folio, illustrated with twenty-six chromolithographs (including the title and chart), each mounted as issued, ruled and titled in gold ink; bound in original publisher’s embossed cloth covers, worn, lacking spine, sewing perished, pages detached, corners bumped, marginal damage to pages,16 1/2 x 11 1/4 in.
Hook and Norman 189; Sabin 74396; Sterling and Shiers 6-197; Wheeler Gift 1622.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Sacrobosco, johannes de (c. 1195-1256)
Sphera Volgare Novamente Tradotta.
Venice: Bartolomeo Zanetti for Juan Ortega de Carrión, 1537.
First Italian edition, quarto, A-O4, lacking final two leaves, often lacking: consisting of the errata and a volvelle woodcut; translation by Marco Mauro illustrated with cosmographically-themed woodcut title page border, large full-paged woodcut on verso of title showing the translator at work, his desk a globe, with another globe on a stand in the background, a ship at sea in the window, sun and moon in the sky, with tools of astronomy and navigation in the surrounding border; full-paged woodcut arms of Charles V on the second leaf, numerous text illustrations, full-paged arms of dedicatee, Juan Ortega de Carrión, on verso of last leaf; bound in 18th century brocade paper-covered boards, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.
Harvard/Mortimer Italian 452; Sander 4441.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Sacrobosco, johannes de (circa 1195-1256)
Sphaera Mundi.
Venice: [Bonetus Locatellus], for Octavianus Scotus, 4 October 1490.
Quarto, a-f8, illustrated with numerous text woodcuts throughout, some printed in yellow, red, and black; full-page woodcut portraying Urania, Ptolemy, and Astronomia on a throne, woodcut printer’s device printed in red on colophon leaf; old marginalia on title and in text washed almost completely away, margins trimmed a bit close, bound in full modern calf, spine tooled in gilt, housed in custom cloth-covered clamshell box, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.
Goff J409; HC 14113*; Klebs 874.14; Bod-inc J-184; Sheppard 4183; Pr 5023; BMC V 438; BSB-Ink I-507; GW M14646; ISTC ij00409000.
Estimate
$6,000 – $8,000
Schott, gaspar (1608-1666)
Organum Mathematicum Libris IX Explicatum.
Wurzburg: J.A. Endter, 1668.
First edition, thick quarto, added engraved title with portrait, typographical table printed in red and black, full-paged portrait of dedicatee, with a total of sixty-three plates (about a third folding), and twenty-eight folding typographical tables; bound in full contemporary parchment over boards with yapp edges, tooled with the arms of Maximilian Pagl (1668-1725) as Abbot of Lambach Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Austria; spine material torn away with loss to about half, else structurally sound, 8 x 6 1/2 in.
Graesse VI, 314; Brunet V, 219.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Schott, gaspar (1608-1666)
Physica Curiosa [and] Technica Curiosa.
Wurzburg: Sumptibus Endter & Wolffgang Jr. Haeredum, Excudebat Hertz, 1662.
Three thick quarto volumes, the two parts of Physica Curiosa illustrated with engraved title in the first volume and fifty-eight engraved plates (some folding) throughout the set, bound in uniform rough parchment (or alum-tawed skin) over wooden boards, ruled in blind, 8 x 6 1/4 in.; Technica Curiosa with half-title and engraved title, engraved full-paged arms and an additional sixty plates, lacking typographical title page and author portrait; bound in full contemporary parchment, some spotting, 8 1/2 x 6 in. (3)
Estimate
$2,000 – $2,500
Sepp, jan christiaan (1739-1811)
Beschouwing der Wonderen Gods in de Minstgeachtte Schepzelen of Nederlandsche Insecten.
Amsterdam: Gedrukt voor den Auteur, 1762.
Six quarto parts, illustrated with 50 hand-colored engravings (including general engraved title), the sheets folded but never trimmed, sewn, or bound, in pristine state, 7 3/4 x 10 in.
This exceptional example of 18th century book production looks as fresh as one might have found it in a book store in 1762.
Horn & Schenkling, p. 1115; Nissen, ZBI 3808; Landwehr,182.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Sturm, johann christophorus (1635-1703)
Mathesis Enucleata: or the Elements of the Mathematicks.
London: Printed for Robert Knaplock, Dan. Midwinter, and Tho. Leigh, 1700.
First edition, octavo, illustrated with twenty-nine plates (some folding), and one folding typographical table, some browning to text, first and last few leaves chipped, bound in modern full leather, antique style, rubbed, spine quite dry, 8 x 5 in.
Wing S-6094; ESTC R27150.
Estimate
$200 – $300
Sultzer, charles (1770-1854)
Dissertation sur un Ver Intestinal Nouvellement Découvert et Décrit sous le Nom Bicorne Rude.
Strasbourg & Paris: J.A. Fischer chez Amand Koenig, 1801.
First edition, hand-colored engraved title and two full-paged hand-colored engravings bound after the text, [4]-52 pages; bound in contemporary half red morocco, decorative paper boards, spine tooled and lettered in gilt, nicely colored, contents fresh, some deckle edges, 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.
Young Sultzer saw a twenty-six year-old female patient with gastric complaints. “Le bicorne rude avait été évacué en grande abondance par une jeune fille […] à la suite d’un purgatif.” (Bottentuit) Under the microscope, the doctor observed these strange horned structures, the “bicorne rude” of the title, and concluded that he had discovered a new species of parasitic intestinal worm. Although Sultzer’s work was accepted by some contemporary colleagues, subsequent research revealed the mysterious horned parasite to be nothing more than seed of the black mulberry (Morus nigra), presumably eaten (in abundance) by his patient. German-Austrian hygienist and parasitologist Johann Gottfried Bremser (1767-1827) reviewed Sulter’s work and suggested that these worms looked very much like seeds, although he wasn’t sure of the variety. And thus the bicorne rude passed from parasite to pseudo-parasite.
Cahiers de Formation Parasitologie, 1995, 5-6; Quérard IX, 292; Buchnummer des Verkäufers 65046; see also Bottentuit’s Trente-Sixième Aneé la France Médicale, page 1310, “Pseudo-parasites.”
Estimate
$400 – $600
Swartz, olof (1760-1818)
Dispositio Systematica Muscorum Frondosorum Sueciae.
Erlangen: Joannem Jacobum Palm, 1799.
Octavo, illustrated with nine hand-colored full-page engravings of botanical plant parts, in blue paper wrappers, 6 x 3 3/4 in.
Swartz was Swedish botanist and taxonomist who studied under Linnaeus. In this work, written while he served as a professor at the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, Swartz catalogs and illustrates Swedish mosses.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Thomas, corbinianus (1694-1767)
Mercurii Philosophici Firmamentum Firmianum Descriptionem et Usum Globi Artificialis Coelestis.
Frankfurt & Leipzig: [no printer], 1730.
First edition, oblong octavo, lacking typographical title page, illustrated with hand-colored frontispiece and eighty-four hand-colored plates of constellations, heavenly bodies, tools, charts, celestial maps, and armillary spheres, many folding; some browning to text, bound in half alum-tawed leather and paper boards, 7 3/4 x 6 1/4 in.
Thomas was a Benedictine monk from Salzburg, who contributed some novel representations of the constellations in this work, described by the Linda Hall Library as, “one of the unsung treasures of celestial cartography.” The catalogers praise his rendering of Andromeda, and note the separate plate dedicated to Camelopardalis (a constellation of a camel). Indus and Pavo, seen in the southern sky, rarely achieved separate depiction. Thomas even invented the constellation Corona Firmiana to honor his patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg.
Honeyman sale VI 2975; Linda Hall, Out of This World, 24; https://stars.lindahall.org/tho.htm
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Turner, richard (1723-1791)
A View of the Heavens, Being a Short but Comprehensive System of Modern Astronomy.
London: Printed for S. Crowder, 1783.
Small folio, illustrated with engraved frontispiece bound opposite the title, text engravings, one full-paged engraving, and one fully constructed volvelle of the astronomical clock; bound in later cloth, 12 1/4 x 7 3/4 in.
ESTC N64731 listing one U.K. and two U.S. copies only.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Valentiner, carl wilhelm (1845-1931)
Atlas des Sonnensystems, 25 Abbildungen in Lichtdruck.
Lahr: Moritz Schauenberg, 1884.
First edition, folio, illustrated with a moon map; collotype illustrations based on the lunar photographs of Julius Grimm (1842-1906); a lemon lit from one side to show no moon, two half moons, and the full moon; sun spots; solar flares; and some artistic renderings of astronomical phenomena and planets in our solar system; twenty-five plates; bound in publisher’s blue cloth spine and printed boards, 17 1/4 x 13 1/8 in.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Zahn, johann (1641-1707)
Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus sive Telescopium.
Wurzburg: Quirinus Heyl, 1685-1686.
First edition, folio, three parts in one volume, each title page printed in red and black, illustrated with added engraved general title, five folding engravings, twenty-six full-paged engravings, forty-one text engravings (many full-paged), and eight folding typographical tables; bound in full contemporary parchment over boards, contents generally good, 12 x 8 in.
Zahn’s important work on the telescope treats the subject of optics in detail at the moment of its great flourishing. Grinding lenses with precision and compounding their power brought everything from distant galaxies to microscopic lifeforms into focus. Imagine the excitement of discovery in this period. Even as modern people, we marvel at the world we see at the other end of the lens. Zahn also describes the camera obscura, lantern slides, and projection. With the right arrangement of lenses and mirrors, he showed how to project the image seen through a telescope or microscope onto a wall, along with other inventions, including a plan for a portable camera 150 years before a practical model was built.
Garrison-Morton 263; Krivatsy 13208; Waller 11455; Norman 2278; the first edition is rare at auction.
Estimate
$8,000 – $10,000
Zonca, vittorio (1568-1602)
Novo Teatro di Machine et Edificii.
Padua: Pietro Bertelli, 1607.
First edition, small folio, engraved title with elaborate architectural border, illustrated with forty-two full-paged engraved plates of ingenious machines, including a depiction of letterpress printing, and an engraving press; bound in modern gilt-decorated parchment over stiff boards, contents good, 10 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.
Dibner 173 (note); Riccardi II, 668-669.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Travel
Alexander, william (1767-1816)
The Costume of the Russian Empire.
London: Printed by W. Miller for S. Gosnell, 1803.
First edition, folio, illustrated with seventy-three hand-colored stipple engravings, text in English and French, ex libris Joseph Marryat and Roger Budin, with their bookplates pasted inside the front board, beautifully bound in full contemporary straight-grained morocco, tooled in blind and gilt, aeg, spine slightly sunned, structurally sound without repairs, marbled endleaves, very good, 14 x 10 1/4 in.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Barrow, john (fl. circa 1765)
A Collection of Authentic, Useful, and Entertaining Voyages and Discoveries.
London: Printed for J. Knox, 1765.
First edition, three 12mo volumes, illustrated with four full-paged engravings, one folding, and three folding maps, bound in uniform 19th century half navy blue calf with marbled paper boards by Manderson of Brighton, 6 3/4 x 4 in. (3)
Sabin 3655; ESTC T90429.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Barrow, sir john, 1st baronet (1764-1848)
Travels in China.
London: Printed by A. Strahan, for T. Cadell, and W. Davies, 1804.
First edition, large quarto, illustrated with hand-colored stipple engraved portrait frontispiece and four hand-colored aquatint plates in the text (five in total), three black-and-white engravings (two double-paged, one single paged), bound in full contemporary red morocco with gilt-ruled boards, rebacked, some spotting to contents,
Graesse I 299; Cox I 346; Abbey Travel 531; Lust 365.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Bossoli, carlo (1815-1884)
The Beautiful Scenery and Chief Places of Interest throughout the Crimea.
London: Day & Son, Lithographers to the Queen, 1856.
First edition, elephant folio, illustrated with lithographic title, and fifty-one chromolithographic plates, (forty-four appear as two smaller images on the same sheet; the other seven are full-paged), bound in contemporary half morocco with large gilt-lettered label to front board, front board detached, contemporary London book ticket inside front board of S & T Gilbert Booksellers, bound by Wright, some foxing, 21 3/4 x 14 1/2 in.
Estimate
$2,000 – $2,500
Bulkeley, john & john cummins
A Voyage to the South-Seas in the Years 1740-1. Containing a Faithful Narrative of the Loss of the Ship the Wager.
London: Printed for Jacob Robinson, 1743.
First edition, octavo, some spotting to contents, bound in contemporary full calf, rebacked, first few signatures detached from textblock, 7 3/4 x 4 3/4 in.
Sabin 9108; ESTC T142350.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Coxe, william (1747-1828)
Les Nouvelles Découvertes des Russes entre l’Asie et l’Amérique.
Paris: Hôtel de Thou, 1781.
Folio, first edition in French, (published after the first English edition of 1780), half-title present, illustrated with four folding maps of the region and a view of the town of Kyakhta in the Republic of Buryatia, Russia, located on the Kyakhta River near the Mongolia–Russia border; bound in contemporary sponge-decorated calf, spine tooled in gilt, contents generally good, a former contemporary owner has written his name on dozens of pages throughout, usually at chapter heads, binding corners bumped, some general wear structurally intact, 9 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Cranz, david (1723-1777)
The History of Greenland: Containing a Description of The Country, and Its Inhabitants.
London: Printer for the Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel among the Heathen: and sold by J. Dodsley, et alia, 1767.
First edition in English, two octavo volumes, illustrated with nine plates, including six folding (of which two are maps); bound in contemporary uniform tree calf, with gilt-tooled spines, rebacked, original spines replaced, 8 1/4 x 5 in.
The English translation was done by Bishop John Gambold (1711-1771), of the Moravian Church. The work focuses on the church’s missionary work on the island, but also summarizes Greenland’s early history, settlement, and natural history.
ESTC T144569; Sabin 17417.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Ellis, aller gustin (1868-1953)
Archive of Photographs, Journals & Ephemera, Thailand, 1923-1938.
Including a photo album, journal, and large scrapbook from his time as a pathologist, doctor, and professor. The photo album containing approximately eighty photographs of the sights in Thailand (some commercially produced), and approximately ninety photo postcards from Thailand, Japan, and the Phillippines; the journal containing fifty-six typed pages describing Ellis’s journey from Seattle to Bangkok between August and October 1923, illustrated with approximately twenty-five photographs, including some of the Great Wall of China and Peking, and nineteen typed pages initialed by Dr. Ellis, describing a twelve-day trip to the old Khmer city of Angkor in Cambodia taken in April, 1924 by Ellis and friends, illustrated with eleven photographs; the scrapbook, printed and bound by the Daily Mail Press in Bangkok, contains approximately 400 pages almost all filled with a variety of material, including newspaper clippings related to the Thai Royal Family and medicine in Thailand, columns from Thai newspapers, with some personal notes, photographs, letters and cards signed by some of his notable associates overseas, and ephemera, including all of Dr. Ellis’s “To Your Good Health” columns from 1929-30, and later material related to Ellis’s time in retirement in the U.S.
Dr. Ellis traveled to Thailand under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1919 through 1921, and again between 1923 and 1928. He was the first American pathologist to work extensively in the country, was Dean of the Siriraj Medical School, and founder of the Ellis Pathological Museum. Dr. Ellis also had a connection with Prince Mahidol Adulyadej (1892-1929), who earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1928. Ellis also and wrote an essay about the Prince’s life after his untimely passing.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Ellis, sir henry (1788-1855)
Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China.
London: Printed for John Murray, 1817.
First edition, portrait frontispiece of William Pitt Amherst, 1st Early Amherst (1773-1857), ambassador extraordinary to the court of China’s Quing dynasty; illustrated with large folding engraved map, two full-paged maps, and seven hand-colored aquatint plates, some spotting; bound in original calf boards, quite scratched, old rebacking, front board detached, 10 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.
Abbey Travel 536; Hill 542; Löwendahl 791; Lust 509 Cordier BS 2393.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Kircher, athanasius (1602-1680)
Toonneel van China.
Amsterdam: Johannes Janssonius van Waesberge, en de Wede. Wijlen Elizeus Weyerstraet, 1668.
First Dutch edition, illustrated with added engraved title, three folding maps, twenty-two plates (of which two are folding), and sixty text engravings, folding plates and maps laid down, some with stains, losses, and tears; leaves a bit frail, occasionally reinforced; bound in later half green morocco, front board and preliminaries detached; a good candidate for restoration, 13 3/4 x 9 in.
Cordier Sinica 26; De Backer & Sommervogel IV, 1064; Lust 39; Morrison II, 380.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
M’leod, john, ship’s surgeon
Narrative of a Voyage in His Majesty’s Late Ship Alceste to the Yellow Sea, along the Coast of Corea.
London: John Murray, 1817.
First edition, octavo, portrait frontispiece, lacking half-title, illustrated with four hand-colored plates, contemporary half leather, rebacked, some waterstaining to head of portrait leaf, slight spotting to title, 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.
Abbey Travel 559.
Estimate
$250 – $350
Peary, robert e. (1856-1920)
The North Pole.
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910.
Signed limited first edition, copy number four of 500 with limitation page signed by Peary and Robert Bartlett (1875-1946); illustrated with four photogravures and 112 mounted photographic reproductions, and folding map; frontispiece and title toned from the acidic tissue guard; bound in publisher’s full parchment over boards, tooled and lettered in gilt, lacking cloth ties, some damage to rear fly-leaf, some breakage of endpaper along inner spine, 11 1/2 x 8 3/4 in.
Arctic Bibliography 13230.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Perry, matthew calbraith (1794-1858) ed. francis l. hawks (1798-1866)
Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas & Japan.
Washington D.C.: Beverley Tucker, Senate Printer, 1856.
Special presentation copy with secretarial note signed by Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) as first edition, President, sending this specially bound copy to Sir Edward Thornton (1817-1906), “As a slight evidence of his kindness in undertaking the laborious task of arbitrating the questions between the United States and Brazil in the case of the ship ‘Canada.’” Signed January 14, 1871; bound in full contemporary pebbled navy morocco over beveled boards, gilt extra; with Grant’s note tipped between endleaves in volume one; illustrated with all plates as called for, the set consisting of four large quarto volumes in uniform deluxe bindings, aeg, 11 x 8 1/2 in. (4)
Hill 1332; Sabin 30968.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Roberts, david (1796-1864)
The Holy Land.
London: Day & Son, 1855.
First edition, six small folio volumes, illustrated with 250 full-paged lithographic plates (including portrait frontispiece and illustrated titles); bound in contemporary half morocco, aeg, some spotting to contents, 11 1/8 x 8 in. (6)
Abbey Travel 385, 272; Bobins I 160; Tooley (1954) 401, 402.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Schouten, wouter (1638-1704)
Reys-Togten naar en door Oost-Indien.
Amsterdam: by Gerrit Tielenburg en Jan ‘Tlam, 1740.
Large quarto, third edition, title page printed in black and red, added engraved title, engraved author portrait, illustrated throughout with fine etchings by Kip and Decker, including four custom vignettes, twenty-four full-paged illustrations, and nineteen large folding plates, bound in later half leather, marbled paper boards, 9 x 7 in.
Schouten traveled as a surgeon to the Dutch East Indies in the 1650s and ’60s. The plates in this lively narrative portray shipwrecks, interactions with indigenous peoples, battles, and traditional cultural events as witnessed by the Dutch traders.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Smith, john (1580-1631)
De Gedenkwaardige Reizen vanden Beroemden.
Leiden: Pieter vander Aa, 1707.
Octavo, engraved vignette to title, illustrated with five of seven double-paged engraved illustrations of North American Native Indians; [bound with] Willem Keeling’s Derde Reys, gedaan voor de Engelsche Maatschappy na Oost-Indian, met drie Scheepen, de Draak, Hector en Consent, van Anno 1607 tot 1610, Leiden: Pieter Vander Aa, 1706; title vignette, illustrated with three double-paged engravings; [bound with] Robert Coverte’s Gedenkwaardige Reys, Leiden: Pieter Vander Aa, 1706, title vignette, illustrated with two double-page plates; [bound with] William Finch’s Voyagie van Capiteyn William Hawkins, door Oost-Indien, Leiden: Vander Aa, 1706, title vignette, illustrated with folding engraved map and nine additional double-paged plates; bound in old half calf, marbled paper boards, worn, some leaves sprung, a good candidate for restoration with very good plates; 6 3/4 x 4 in.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Speke, john hanning (1827-1864)
Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile.
London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1863.
First edition, octavo, illustrated with engraved portrait frontispiece, numerous woodcut text engravings, large folding map housed in custom pocket inside the front board, full-paged map, and twenty-five full-paged plates, bound in contemporary half calf with marbled paper boards, 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Stevenson, robert louis (1850-1894)
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.
London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879.
First edition, octavo, illustrated with wood-engraved frontispiece, bound in publisher’s green cloth, blocked in gilt, brown endleaves, a bit rubbed along joints and endcaps, generally good, with bookbinder’s ticket, Burn & Co., pasted inside back board, 7 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Wu, l.t., editor-in-chief
China as She Is: a Comprehensive Album.
Shanghai: the Liang You Printing & Publishing Co., 1934.
Folio, the second impression, illustrated with twenty colored plates at the beginning, twenty-three divisional leaves illustrated with a color plate mounted on decorative paper spotted in gold; text photogravure illustrations in black and white throughou; text in Chinese and English, with sections on twenty-three regions including Hunan, Szechuan, Yunnan, Manchuria, Tibet, Mongolia, and others; bound in publisher’s fancy textured cloth spine and boards, with folding maps with demographic charts on thin paper after the text; presented by Gene Kong Tang of General Electric to Judge Milton J. Helmick as a holiday present with flyleaf inscription, 12 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.
Judge Helmick (1885-1943) was appointed to a ten-year term at the U.S. Court for China in Shanghai in 1934. When the Japanese occupied the Shanghai Consulate in December of 1941, Helmick was taken prisoner and held for about six months before being returned to the States. After the U.S. relinquished its rights to territories in China, his position was effectively eliminated, but he returned to China in 1944 to familiarize himself with China’s new legal system. He remained there, working for Standard Vacuum Oil in Shanghai until 1951. In the mid-1950s, he served as a Judge in North Africa, and ultimately retired to San Francisco.