The Royal Charter of Confirmation Granted by King Charles II to the City of London by King Charles II - 1676: Published in London in 1676

Very good copy of the "second and very popular edition" of Presuhn's souvenir of excavations in Pompeii from 1874-1881In 10 sections with 80 chromolithographs by Victor Seeger and J.G. Bach after designs by Geremia Discanno and Miss Amy Butts.Pompeii, the latest excavations from 1874 to 1881 for lovers of art and antiquities. Along with murals from all four eras of interior design, the plates depict interior views, mythological wall paintings, floor mosaics, statues, plaster-casts of bodies, wall graffiti, plans of houses and the town. Text in German.Presuhn (1844-1881) was a German archeologist who lived and worked in Italy for almost decade from 1870 publishing books illustrating the latest murals, mosaics and discoveries made in the excavations in Pompeii. Discanno (1839-1907) was an Italian artist and painter who worked in Naples and Pompeii.Half brown leather binding with scuffed edges, spine with black and gold leather title labels, gilt title on green cloth covers, marbled endpapers. Slight… Read More

Extraordinary pocket edition of exotic travel illustrations for a Regency armchair traveller.Set of fine plates only from Sonzogno's attractive Italian editions of great travels books from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.Covering ethnography, costume, landscape, ceremonies, natural history and more from Africa, China, South America, Europe, Turkey, the Pacific, etc.With 175 copperplate engravings (15 b/w) by Cristoforo Dall'Acqua, Duche-de-Vancy, etc., most handcoloured by Lazaretti, after various artists.The plates from:John Mawe's Travels in the Interior of Brazil, 1812. Felix de Azara's Voyages dans l'Amerique Meridionale, 1809.Jean Francois Laperouse's Voyage, 1797.Samuel Holmes' Journal of a Voyage to China and Tartary, 1798. Joseph Billings and Martin Sauer's An Account of an Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia, 1799.Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior of Africa, 1799.Francois Le Vaillant's Second Voyage into the Interior of Africa, 1795.Guillaume-Antoine Olivier's Travels in the… Read More

A delightful Victorian botanical book by an aristocratic amateur artist living in IndiaTinted title page, 12 chromolithographic plates: preface printed in gold with botanical border, and 11 fine botanical plates each with text leaf printed in gold. Very fine botanical plates including group of flowers from Bombay, wild flowers from Mahableshwar, tulip tree, tuberose, Asian bleeding heart, jungle geranium, Bengal rose, crepe myrtle, tamarind, passionflower, lotus and the extinct Magnolia pterocarpa.Emily Eden (1797-1869) was an English aristocrat, writer, novelist and traveler who accompanied her brother George, Lord Auckland, to India from 1836 to 1842 when he was Governor-General. While Emily was sketching flowers, George launched the Afghan Campaign in 1839, "one of the worst disasters in British military history." Emily published books of travel writings Up the Country, 1866 and Letters from India, 1872, novels The Semi-Detached House 1859, and the Semi-Attached Couple 1860.She also privately… Read More

Volume 5 only of this 13-volume set of one of the finest German works on medical botany.Complete with 48 finely hand-coloured copperplate engravings of plants by the famous German botanical artist Friedrich Guimpel.Plants include peony, horseradish, figwort, meadow saffron, broadleaf plantain, annual mercury, sedge, fumitory, fumewort, celandine, buckthorn, vervain, dead-nettle, lichens, and more.Title page, preface, 96 pages of explanatory text, and 48 plates on watermarked laid paper mounted and folded against protective pages, with original blue wraps (dated 1816-1818) bound in at rear. Friedrich Gottlob Hayne (1763-1832) was a German botanist, taxonomist, pharmacist and professor. Beginning as a pharmacist in Berlin from 1778 to 1796, he worked as an assistant for the Royal Prussian Chemical Factory for several years before teaching pharmaceutical botany at the University of Berlin from 1811 until his death. Getreue Darstellung is his masterpiece, published over 30 years from 1805 to his death,… Read More

Set of 36 handcoloured lithographs after satirical illustrations by Jean-Gabriel Scheffer from What one says and what one thinks, Little Scenes of the World.An album of rare lithographs that depict comical scenes of daily life in Paris during the reign of King Charles X, in the Restoration era. Women in the voluminous puff-sleeved dresses and bonnets of the time, the men in elegant jackets and pants, lounging in restaurants, cafes, libraries, gardens and galleries.With title page and 36 hand-coloured plates lithographed and printed by Gihaut Frères in Paris (last six plates printed by Charles Tilt, London). These delightful satirical scenes mock the hypocrisies and annoyances of bourgeois society, in the same way as Thomas Rowlandson depicted the Miseries of Human Life in Regency England. The captions show what the characters say on the left, and what they really think on the right. Women flatter Plain Janes and ugly men, men flatter ugly women, a widow takes a new lover before her husband's… Read More

Brighton [1859]. (oblong 4to stiff paper covers) [1], 34pp. Very good. 35 stiff sheets stapled together and bound with a plain paper wrapper. The first sheet is the key to Moon's German Alphabet. The following 34 pages is the story of the birth of Christ taken from Luke, Chapter 1 in the Moon Alphabet, entitled "Geburt Christi". Moon invented his system of embossed reading in 1845. It was considered by many to be easier to learn than the Braille system. This is an early example of Moon's type. Book about. Text in German Language & Moon alphabet. (Reference, Bible in Moon Alphabet, Braille, Luke--New Testament Book).

Complete set with 144 fine bird plates drawn, engraved and hand-coloured mostly by George Graves, (A few plates after Samuel Howitt and Sydenham Edwards, and engraved by Weddell and Warner.)A nice set of this study of British birds, with many songbirds, game birds, owls and hawks, divers, waders, and sea birds.Second edition of first two volumes (originally published in parts from 1811 and 1821), but first edition of the complete set (the third volume first appearing in 1821).With the title typo: British Ornithology, Being the History, with a Coloured Representation, of Every Kown [sic] Species of British Birds.George Graves (1784-1839), FLS, was an English publisher, artist, engraver and colourist who worked on botanical and ornithological works. Apart from British Birds (1811-1821), he also wrote and illustrated Ovarium Britannicum (1816), The Naturalist's Pocket Book (1817), and A Monograph on British Grasses (1822). From 1817, he oversaw the hand-colouring and publishing with William Jackson… Read More

Very good + copy of the second edition (first with hand-coloured lithographic plates) of Strutt's monumental work on the costume of England, first published with 143 copperplate engravings in 1796.The classic study of English costume illustrated with numerous examples from illuminated manuscripts held in the British Library, the Bodleian, and Harleian collections. Complete with 153 hand-colored plates, 10 more than the first edition, of people, costumes, armour, seals, and everyday objects from the time of the Saxons to the end of the 17th century. With 2 hand-coloured frontispieces, 8 hand-coloured plates of Egyptian, Greek and Roman costumes in the introduction, and 143 hand-coloured lithographic plates of English costume.New improved edition with critical and explanatory notes by James Robinson Planche, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Joseph Strutt (1749-1802) was an English engraver, artist, antiquary and writer famous for his work on the history of English costume and sports. Starting with… Read More

Very good complete copy of Stephenson and Churchill's medical botany.With 187 fine hand-coloured botanical illustrations drawn and engraved by William Clark (Vol. I), others drawn by G. Reid and Charles Morgan Curtis and engraved by [Edward Smith] Weddell and W.M. Maddocks.Includes the endangered plant roughbark lignum-vitae, Guaiacum officinale, Pl. 90.John Stephenson (1790-1864) was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Linnean Society. He also wrote Medical Zoology and Mineralogy (1838). James Morss Churchill (1796-1863) was a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and Fellow of the Medico-Botanical Society of London. He also wrote the first article on acupuncture in the UK in 1821.New edition (after the first in four volumes in 1831) edited by Gilbert T. Burnett, Professor of Botany at King's College, London. William Clark (fl. 1820-1840) was botanical artist and engraver to the Horticultural Society of London, providing illustrations for the Pomological Magazine and the… Read More

London: Heinemann, 1966. First editions, first printings all. Fine/Near Fine. This is a complete set of the 8-volume official biography of Winston Churchill, together with the complete 13 companion volumes of Churchill's papers up to 1939 (Four additional volumes of his wartime papers were published later) All 21 volumes are the British first (i.e. "true first") editions, first printing All are in near fine to fine condition, and all include dust jackets There are some minor tears on several dust jackets, apparently from shelf wear, but the books themselves appear unread The companion volumes are all essentially pristine There is really nothing else in print to rival the scale and comprehensiveness of this set, which documents the life of one of the 20th century most important leaders (The last three companion volumes total nearly 5,000 pages by themselves!) In 1966, Winston Churchill's son Randolph began writing a was intended to be a definitive, comprehensive biography of his father However, he… Read More