Rare books from Bernard Quaritch Ltd

Second edition, scarcer than the first (also an Aldine, published in 1499), of the most beautiful illustrated book printed in Italy in the fifteenth century. Known for its fine woodcut illustrations, mysterious meanings, and the cryptic inclusion of Colonna's name, the Hypnerotomachia has been celebrated as the finest example of early Venetian printing.
'It is not easy to sum up in a few words the artistic and literary interest of the book. The woodcuts, one of which is signed "b" have been ascribed, as Pollard says, with no good reason to a dozen artists including Bellini. What is clear is that the artist who designed them was influenced by the work of Bellini, Carpaccio and perhaps Botticelli. They have a unique perfection and all that can be said with certainty is that the same hand may be traced in some other contemporary woodcuts. Why Aldus published this book is a mystery since he was mainly interested in producing editions of the Greek and Latin classics. In any case it was an expensive… Read More

25 separate parts for voices and instruments, large 4to (approximately 300 x 255 mm), [soprano:] ff. [9] (ff. [3] an insertion); [alto:] ff. [6]; [two tenor parts:] ff. [5] and [7]; [two bass parts:] ff. [4] and [8]; [three first violin parts:] ff. [8], [8] and [10]; [two second violin parts:] ff. [8] and [10]; [two viola parts:] ff. [6] and [9]; [two double bass parts:] ff. [10] and [11]; [first flute:] ff. [6]; [second flute:] ff. [5]; [first clarinet:] ff. [5]; [second clarinet:] ff. [5]; [bassoon:] ff. [6]; [serpent:] ff. [4]; [first horn:] ff. [6]; [second horn:] ff. [6]; [trombone:] ff. [4]; [organ:] ff. [12]; written in several scribal hands, many of the parts inscribed 'De Verheyen' in pencil in a contemporary or near- contemporary hand; some dust-soiling and browning, but generally in good condition, each part stitched and unbound.



A very grand unpublished Requiem mass by the Flemish composer and singer Pierre Emmanuel Verheyen (1750– 1819). Although not so indicated, this must be the… Read More

8 parts in one vol., 4to in 8s, pp. [16], 88; [4], 209, '230-231', 212-213, '234-264' [i.e. 244]; [4], 84; [4], 57, [1]; [4], 58; [4], 67, [1]; [4], 86; [4], 37, [1] (register continuous); title within an elaborate equestrian woodcut border to each part (the first as a general title, pts ii- iii dated 1616), woodcut initials, ornaments, and illustrations; bifolia I3.6 and I4.5 misbound, minimal paperflaws to C2 and 2A5 touching text but not affecting legibility; a beautiful copy, clean and crisp, in contemporary British calf, borders and spine roll-tooled in blind, board-edges roll-tooled in gilt, edges speckled red and with horizontal lines in ink to mark the 8 parts, a leaf of printer's waste (see below) at each end folded once to form 2 stubs (rubbed through by the sewing supports, otherwise well-preserved); a few light marks, small chip to first band, neat repair to headcap and subtle repair to corners; upper margin of title neatly inscribed 'John Marsham D.' in contemporary ink, large pencil… Read More

First edition, a copy of notable provenance, of perhaps the most successful early Spanish translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, by Pedro Sánchez de Viana (1545–1616), published along with his substantial commentary. In the age of Cervantes (another master of literary transformations), Ovid exerted wide and lasting influence on Spanish literature, uniquely able, among the Latin poets, to echo and clothe in myth and beauty the ambitions and anxieties of a generation of poets caught in a world of deep change. The re-elaboration of themes such as madness, desire, doubt, and self-knowledge in Cervantes and his contemporaries rely on Ovid's imagery and language, and de Viana's translation proved an important cultural transposition. Set out in hendecasyllables in alternate rhyme, the text itself is vivid and memorable. It is the commentary, however, which especially commands attention: sources for interpretation range from classical writers to Medieval scholastics, to more recent philologists including… Read More

4to maquette, comprising a printed general title-page and dedication (to the author's father and Jean-Henry Lévesque), and 7 autograph manuscript essays, written on loose sheets on rectos only in blue pen, and heavily corrected in pen and pencil throughout; each part preserved in a hand-decorated chemise; the whole group in a folding painted chemise with the general title-page, and in a black card box, decorated in scraffito on the front with an image of Brahma, and with a chess-board in perspective on the rear (edges worn), the interior faces with a black and white typographic design.
An extraordinary, unique production, with seven long, unpublished observational essays by Fricker on the post-war Parisian art world, including long discussions of the work of Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Blaise Cendrars; assembled in hand-decorated chemises and a folding box designed by his sister Jeanine Fricker, one of the leading lights of modern French… Read More

2 parts in one vol., folio, pp. I: [4], 247, [1 (blank)], [19], [1 (blank)], II: [2], 300, [17], [1 (blank)]; 64 full-page woodcut illustrations, woodcut device to titles and woodcut initials throughout; light marginal dust-staining to early leaves; a very good copy in later seventeenth-century Italian speckled sheep, spine gilt in compartments with gilt red morocco lettering-piece in one, edges speckled green and red, marbled pastedowns; a little rubbed, corners bumped with superficial loss to one, head-cap and -band lost; front flyleaf stamped 'Libreria Angelo Dela, Brescia', bookseller's ticket to upper pastedown and slip of C.E. Rappaport, Rome.
Fourth edition of the first detailed study in veterinary anatomy and an extremely important work in the history of anatomy as a discipline. Influenced by Andreas Vesalius's De fabrica corporis humani (Basel, 1543), the Anatomia del cavallo is copiously illustrated with large woodcuts, attributed variously (and with little evidence) to Caracci, Titian, and… Read More

8vo (255 x 158mm), 23 volumes and etched steel plate in box; uncut, volumes and box bound in original coloured full buckram by the Leighton-Straker Bookbinding Co., Ltd., gilt morocco lettering-pieces on spines, top edges gilt; a little light wear and occasional soiling, spines of a few volumes lightly sunned; a very good set.
Limited edition of 877, of which 66 sets were destroyed when a bomb hit the bindery in September 1940, so at most 811 complete sets survive (Dreyfus, Nonesuch Press, 108). The steel plate included with this set is number 605, "Solemn reference is made to Mr. Bunsby" from Dombey and Son
(Chapter 23, facing p.458), engraved by H. K. Browne ('Phiz'), with the typed letter of authenticity on Chapman & Hall headed paper, signed by Arthur Waugh.
Intended as a definitive edition of Dickens' works the Nonesuch Press edition was printed using the original steel… Read More

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

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

Folio, ff. 216; printed in bâtarde type in two columns, title in red and black with a large woodcut in four compartments, the scrolls printed in red, signed with the Lorraine cross, in all 293 text woodcuts from 92 blocks, some larger cuts with woodcut borders on one side, medallion heads of kings and popes, half-length figures, woodcut capitals of varying design, white on black; outer and lower margin of c1 cut shorter, two closed tears in the upper margin of the same leaf, some scattered pinholes, one small wormtrack in the text developing horizontally to a maximum of 20 mm length and 2 mm width then receding, over four quires, occasional very light staining; slight soiling on margins of title, but a very appealing copy in clear dark impression; mid nineteenth-century red morocco, three fleurs-de-lys stamped in gilt on covers, fleur-de-lys stamped in three compartments of spine, the fourth and uppermost lettered in gilt; minor wear, two corners slightly bumped.… 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

Second edition of Gellius's opus with the commentary of philologist Matteo Bonfini (1441–1517), annotated throughout by a contemporary reader whose corrections and comments include references to the lectures of Paolo Bombasi as cited by Erasmus in the 1508 edition of the Adagia. Erasmus singled out Bombasi as 'the best of friends'. Bombasi (also Paulus Bombasius, or Paolo Bombace, 1476–1527) was born in Bologna of a noble family. He distinguished himself as a rhetor, philologist, and poet, and became prefect of the Vatican Library, holding regular correspondence with Erasmus. He was one of the victims of the violence which occurred in the 1527 sack of Rome. Our annotator is likely to have been part of the Bologna circle of humanists who gathered for readings of Aulus Gellius, occasionally including Erasmus who lived for some months in Bombasi's house in Bologna. The most explicit note occurs on f. 13v ('Paulus Bombasius Bononiensis hunc versiculum sic emendat … hoc modo: "saepe etiam fuit… Read More

First edition in English, rare, of the first significant European study of China, 'one of the outstanding "best-sellers" of the sixteenth century' (Boxer). A publication of enormous influence on Elizabethan conceptions of China, it also contained much information on the Spanish Americas. The translation, by Robert Parke, was undertaken at the request and encouragement of Richard Hakluyt, appearing before the latter's Principal Navigations and was dedicated to the explorer Thomas Cavendish. The publisher John Wolfe had issued an edition in Italian under a false 'Venice' imprint in 1587, but this was the first time the work was accessible to a wider English audience. Mendoza had departed on a mission to China in 1580, but because of political instability in the Philippines he made it no further then Mexico, returning to Spain and then Rome in 1583, where he was commissioned to write this history, drawing upon information provided by missionaries in Mexico. La Historia de las Cosas más Notables,… 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

A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784). Born at Haarlem in the Netherlands, Loo spent most of his life in his native city where he was registered with the Painters Guild as a 'painter of flowers'. He is perhaps best known for his watercolours of hyacinths, a collection of which – entitled 'Choix de Jacintes' and comprising thirteen images by Loo and Cornelis van Noorde painted between 1765 and 1769 – is preserved at the Oak Spring Garden Library in Virginia. The vibrantly coloured and beautifully executed images here run in more or less alphabetical order from 'l'Asther à fleur blanche' to 'la Gimauve' in volume 1, and from 'Hépatique' to 'Verveine' in volume 2, each set neatly within a ruled frame, through which they occasionally burst – as in the case of 'Chelidoine de l'Amerique' for example – with considerable exuberance. Of particular note in the first volume… Read More