Search Results: Authors starting with P from Bernard Quaritch Ltd

12mo (136 x 72 mm), pp. [ii], 138, [4, blank]; faint dampstain in foot of last few leaves, upper margins occasionally trimmed a little close, a few light stains, but a good, crisp copy in eighteenth-century Italian mottled sheep, spine gilt; slightly rubbed, joints cracked but holding, some minor restoration. Extremely rare first edition, fourth variant (variant 'V'), of a classic of seventeenth-century erotic literature, the masterpiece of the celebrated satirist Ferrante Pallavicino (1615–1644). Published anonymously in Venice with a fictitious Cambrai imprint, The rhetoric of whores is a ferocious anti-Jesuit work in which the 15 lessons of the standard Jesuit rhetoric textbook, Cipriano Suarez's De arte rhetorica, are turned into lessons given by an experienced old prostitute to her young disciple.
'More than any of his other books, The rhetoric of whores demonstrates why Pallavicino was the only Italian author of his epoch capable of a coherent vision that integrated satire, scepticism, and… Read More

8vo, pp. 33, [3]; a very good copy, uncut, in contemporary plain wrappers.
Only edition, very rare, of this essay on the relief of begging, and of poverty more broadly, by the poet and essayist Livio Pascoli.
Working from the basis that every person has a right to live, and that this right extends both to the poor and to the right to shelter and sustenance, Pascoli examines the ways in which the European countries that have tended not to embrace charitable foundations and the principles of universal help have tended to be those with the highest rates of poverty. Drawing on examples from Britain, Switzerland, and elsewhere, Pascoli explores the ways in which Italy might look abroad for ideas on minimising poverty, and advocates for assistance for the poor, exploring the effectiveness of various remedies.
Not in Goldsmiths' or Kress. OCLC finds a single copy worldwide (Bocconi, Milan).

8vo, pp. 224, [1], with parallel English and French title-pages; frontispiece engraving of Mother Goose telling stories to three children, and eight engraved plates; 'The Discreet Princess; or the Adventures of Finetta. A Novel' has separate title-pages in English and French, dated 1764; text in English and French on facing pages throughout; a few leaves slightly dusty, but a fine copy, uncut,
in contemporary (Italian?) boards, spine ruled in blind, covers somewhat stained, joints and edges worn.
First parallel-text edition of Perrault's famous fairy tales, in English and French, with fine illustrations after Hendrik Immink. Perrault has long been eclipsed in fame by that of his stories – 'Little Red Riding-Hood', 'Blue Beard', 'Sleeping Beauty', 'Puss in Boots', 'Cinderilla', 'Tom Thumb' – which have become archetypes of the fairy tale. They first appeared in French in 1697 and then in a translation of 1729 by Robert Samber, Histories, or Tales of… Read More

An attractive volume containing sixteen engravings by Giovanni Petrini of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, including renderings of famous paintings by the likes of Correggio, Poussin, Titian, Raphael, and Rubens.
The volume opens with an image of the Virgin and Child after Luca Giordano's Madonna of the Rosary, set within an architectural frame bearing fifteen medallion scenes from the lives of Mary and Jesus. The plates that follow, each with Biblical quotations from the Vulgate below, illustrate: the Annunciation (after Federico Barocci), the Visitation (after Domenichino), the Nativity (after Correggio), the Presentation in the Temple (after Carlo Maratti), Christ among the doctors (after Nicolas Poussin), the Agony in the Garden (after Giovanni Lanfranco), the Flagellation (after Marco Benefial), the Crowning with Thorns (after Titian), Christ falling on the way to Calvary (after Raphael), the Crucifixion (after Annibale Carracci), the Resurrection (after Ciro Ferri), the… Read More

An attractive illustrated edition of twenty-seven of Plutarch's lives, extensively annotated by a Papal tax-collector, in a striking contemporary binding.
The contemporary binding, titled in gilt on the upper board and decorated both in blind and gilt, employs a striking central tool of a vase of flames. Hobson identifies this emblem in renaissance tooling as a symbol of love, whether carnal or spiritual, or of devotion to a patron. Though a frequently used motif, we have not been able to locate any other use of the same tool, other instances showing small handles on the 'hips' of the vase rather than the more elaborate handles found here. The floral roll and the unusual repeated strapwork tool used for the borders are likewise unidentified. For two uses of the same (or very similar) fleur-de-lys and ray, however, see De Marinis 470 and 1207 ter.
Zoppino's Seconda et ultima parte completes for the first time Giorgio Rusconi's Prima parte of 1518; copies are also sometimes found with the later… Read More

4to., pp. [4], 163, [1, blank]; a very good copy in nineteenth-century half calf with marbled boards, spine gilt, rubbed; joints cracked; cords sound, some insect damage to rear cover; bookplate sometime removed from front pastedown; ownership inscription of Robert Southey to title page dated 'Keswick 1820', and 11-line note in his hand to front flyleaf; sold at the sale of his library, Sotheby's 18th May 1844, lot 2340, £1 11s; with a note by the purchaser; contemporary ownership inscription of John Mason to final blank page.
First edition, from the library of Robert Southey, with an ownership inscription an eleven-line note in his distinctive diminutive hand.
Pocklington's high church, altar-wise polemic, a rebuff of his former patron, the troublesome bishop John Williams, served him well in the short term: 'It is significant that [in June 1637] he was sworn… Read More

An attractive Plantin-Moretus Pontifical, splendidly preserved in a richly baroque binding.
We would suggest that the striking binding was likely executed in northern Germany in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. This would be supported by an early Duisburg provenance – 'Bibliothecae Duysburgensis' may be Duisburg University, founded in 1655 and disbanded in 1818, although this volume has not been identified in the printed catalogue of the University of 1685 nor in the manuscript catalogues of 1717 or 1795-99.
The work is accompanied by printed music and by an unusually varied series of woodcut initials, illustrating (inter alia) David at prayer, the Annunciation, the Magi following the star and the Adoration, St Christopher carrying the Christchild, the Baptism of Christ, the Supper at Emmaus, the Crucifixion and several Stations of the Cross, the Turin Shroud, the Resurrected Christ and Christ in Majesty, Christ greeting Mary Magdalen, the Assumption, St John the Evangelist, St… Read More

First English edition, a nice copy, albeit without two of the original plates to the first part, of this remarkable account of Norway's natural history by the Danish theologian and antiquary Pontoppidan (1698-1764), whose accounts of sea monsters influenced both Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Jules Verne's Twenty thousand leagues under the seas.First published as Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie at Copenhagen in 1752-53, the work is divided into two parts. The first covers Norway's 'air' (i.e. climate), 'soils and mountains', 'waters', 'vegetables', 'sea-vegetables', 'gems and curious stones', and 'metals and minerals', while the second describes its quadrupeds, serpents, insects, birds, fish, and sea monsters, ending with an 'account of the Norwegian nation'.Pontoppidan argues for the existence of sea serpents ('the great sea-snakes I once held only for chimera, but am now fully convinced that they are found in the North sea, as sure as any other fish' (II p. 38)), of mermen and… Read More

A fine set of the bibliographically complicated small octavo Works, including the scarce supplementary Vol II. Part II. These sets were by no means cheap reprints of the folio and octavo formats, as Pope actually preferred the 'neat little octavos', for both aesthetic and financial reasons, and they went through four to six editions each. 'Pope used successive editions to make significant revisions in the accidentals as well as the substantives of his text; and we know that he read proof for the volumes published for Lintot as well as those of his own printer and publishers' (Foxon, Pope and the Early Eighteenth Century Book Trade). 'The publishers appear to have planned at first to make this small octavo edition of Pope's Works a four volume set. Gilliver set the form by printing his small octavo Works, II, and the Dunciad as two "pocket volumes." Then Lintot came into the undertaking, and re-printed what he had the copyright in – the Works [I] of 1717 – and some additional poems, as two more… Read More

Folio, pp. [2], 18; slight spotting but a very good copy, disbound.
First edition of Pope's second separately published poem, preceded by An Essay on Criticism in 1711. Written in the tradition that young poets begin with pastoral verse, Windsor-Forest, with its epigraph from Virgil's Eclogues, was the poem that first won Swift's regard and laid foundations for the 'most celebrated literary friendship of the earlier eighteenth century' (Oxford DNB).
The poem takes its title from the royal forest which surrounded the farming village of Binfield in Berkshire, where Pope lived from the age of eleven – anti-Catholic legislation had forced his family to leave London in 1692. 'Granted the idealization of the English countryside … the scenery it describes corresponds with remarkable accuracy to features actually present in the landscape' (Maynard Mack). Pope rescued the earlier, descriptive, section of the poem from his own juvenilia. The conclusion, with its vision… Read More

First edition, a fine association copy. Agnes Bedford (1892-1969) was a lifelong friend of Pound (they first met in 1919 and corresponded until 1963 when he unexpectedly severed contact) and through him of Wyndham Lewis, with whom she had an affair in the 1920s. A vocal coach and accompanist, she provided the music for Pound's Five Troubadour Songs (1920). After he left for Paris in January 1920, Bedford sublet his flat; she then visited him in Paris the following year, where she was the principal amanuensis for his opera based on Villon's Le Testament. She was later the rehearsal coach for its first performance in 1931 and her contacts were vital to the casting of singers (Bridson was later involved in the first broadcast of the opera in 1962, for which Bedford was frequently consulted). Laid in here is a copy of a letter of 4 May 1969 from Bedford to Bridson on his retirement – 'I have been so happy to read all the appreciative things about you on all sides' – recalling 'happy times at Studio A'… Read More

A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy.
The London bookbinder John Lovejoy (fl. c. 1781–1812) is known by his distinctive Masonic bindings, employing an array of Masonic tools often arranged in striking compositions. He was himself a Mason, from around 1791 until 1812. His practices as an employer, however, earned him a certain notoriety among binders and the nickname 'the Tyrant': as a journeyman in 1781 he advocated a reduction in the working day (from fourteen to thirteen hours) but, when a master binder, he bitterly opposed such a change and was among the employers who prosecuted the leaders of the 1786 strike. Although it is accepted that Lovejoy was not, as previously thought, the only binder using Masonic motifs, close comparison of the tools with other examples of his work suggests this binding to be his.
Good and Harding's 1794 Common Prayer appeared in two settings, one octavo and the other a splendid large quarto,… Read More