Search Results: Authors starting with A from Bernard Quaritch Ltd

8vo, ff. [viii], 395, [17], with engraved title and 7 engraved illustrations; woodcut initials; slight worming from quire Nn onwards (touching some letters and illustrations), some light damp staining and toning, small tear to f. 290; overall very good in contemporary vellum, paper label with title to spine (slightly chipped); slightly marked and cockled; armorial bookplate to front pastedown.
Second edition, enlarged and revised (the first edition published earlier in 1614), a handsome copy. 'Un ouvrage aussi important que rare' (Leclerc). The first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhao, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed of the French Capuchins, Yves d'Evreux, Arsène de Paris, Ambroise d'Amiens, and Claude d'Abbeville, accompanied Daniel de la Rivardière's expedition to settle Maranhao. Relations between the French and the local Tupi indians were good and the… Read More

First edition of this poem in six cantos, with extensive notes, on the disastrous 1755 Lisbon earthquake, by the Oratorian priest and philosopher Almeida (1722-1804). One of the deadliest in history, the earthquake almost totally destroyed the Portuguese capital and accentuated political tensions within the kingdom. It was widely discussed by European Enlightenment philosophers, including Voltaire and Rousseau, and led to important debates around theodicy and philosophical optimism.Almeida was one of the most important figures of the iluminismo in Portugal and spent time in exile in France following the persecution of his congregation by the Marquis of Pombal. He wrote Lisboa destruida soon after the earthquake but it remained in manuscript until 1803, its publication perhaps motivated by the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, which threatened to bring fresh disaster to his country. In his prologue, Almeida refers to Voltaire's Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne as 'obra dictada, naõ pelas Musas… Read More

ANDREWS, Mark E. The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics, 1500-1800.
Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

Folio (304 x 224 mm), pp. ix, [1], 419, [3]; with nearly 100 illustrations and 2 illustrated fold-out pages; printed boards, with dust-jacket.
A lavishly illustrated catalogue, tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period. Some 367 printed books, manuscripts, and maps are presented in chronological order, highlighting the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented those ideas. Drawing from Mark Andrews's larger collection of civil engineering, here we see the books, illustrations, and diagrams that formed the daily working tools of Italian scientists, engineers, and builders – from civil engineering's first printed works in the early sixteenth century to the publication of Venturi's landmark text on fundamental hydraulic principles in 1797.
Technical… Read More

A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis's sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli's last rites. More than one hand is at work in annotating this copy, and the early ownership history reveals a strict Franciscan connection: at first owned by Niccolò Bonaccorsi of Lucca, the book was then gifted to Andrea Alamanni, and eventually loaned to Francesco de Emperio. The annotations are detailed and wide-ranging in subject: citations from the Church Fathers are interestingly complemented by quotations from Classical authors; a close analysis of the sermons is carried out with references to Duns Scotus; and an examination of what constitutes certainty references Aristotle's logic, as well as Pythagoras. Considerable attention is devoted to form and to standards of rhetoric. Manicules and underlinings occur on every page, evidencing a thorough reading, and the last blank is taken… Read More

8vo, pp. [5], [3 (blank)]; a pristine copy sewn in the original black- and brown-printed wrappers; preliminary editorial note inscribed by Julian Arnold to A. Gay Beaman with the quote '"The sweet, soft woman, and the friendly men" (see verse 4)'; autograph note tipped in, by Julian Arnold, dated 9 March 1936, brown ink, 14 lines, well preserved.
First edition, one of only fifty copies hand-printed by T. Perry Sticker, presentation copy from the editor (the author's son) and accompanied by his autograph note regarding the printing and planned circulation of the poem.
Edwin Arnold (1832–1904) was an English poet and journalist. His lifelong endeavour as a poet consisted in the transposition into English verse of the culture and spirituality of the Orient, culminating in the publication of the long narrative poem The Light of Asia, or The Great Renunciation, which was among the first works to popularize the life and philosophy of Buddha in the West. A similarly epic treatment of Hinduism was… Read More

First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy. The author's principal work, completed in 1326, it runs to nearly half a million words and went through four further editions before 1501; it was repeatedly printed throughout the following century, with the last edition appearing in 1582. It was also the last (and most substantial) book printed by Schüssler, the Augsburg printer so admired by William Morris for his presswork, who later in 1473 sold his five presses to the Monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra, also at Augsburg. Augustinus had taught philosophy and theology at Paris (lecturing on Peter Lombard's Sentences) and Padua, before serving as chaplain to Charles, son of Robert, King of Naples. He engaged with the most crucial philosophical issues of his age, writing extensively on logic (including a commentary on Aristotle's Prior analytics), psychology, and metaphysics, as well as composing several theological treatises and… Read More

First edition of this rare translation of the pseudo-Augustinian Meditationum Liber, an eleventh-century devotional text very popular in the Middle Ages.The translator, John Martin, was an Augustinian friar who became a fervent activist within the Society of United Irishmen. His political conversion (and this book) coincided with the outbreak of the rebellion of 1798, in which he took a number of increasingly dangerous commissions from the Dublin United Irish Committee, but he has been largely neglected in the historiography of the rebellion; his stance suited neither loyalists nor rebel apologists, and he remains an enigmatic figure.Daire Keogh, '"The most dangerous villain in society"; Fr. John Martin's Mission to the United Irishmen of Wicklow in 1798', Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 7, (1992), pp. 115-135.ESTC records copies at the British Library, National Library of Ireland, and Illinois only.