Here are some highlights of our Winter 2013 catalogue:
BARTHOLOMAEUS ANGLICUS
De proprietatibus rerum
Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 1492.
Folio.
Second Koberger edition. A fine and and rare incunable edition of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's great medieval encyclopaedia. The work is the most extensive compilation of all scientific knowledge available in the 13th century, and was avidly read by fifteenth-century scholars, and
Bartholomaeus, a Franciscan born around the turn of the 13th century, is believed to have studied at Oxford. De proprietatibus rerum was written ca 1245 at the school of Magdeburg in Saxonia and intended for the use of students and the general public. The work is organized in 19 books, whose subjects, in order, are God, angels and demons, the human mind or soul, physiology, of ages (family and domestic life), medicine, the universe and celestial bodies, time, form and matter (elements), air and its forms, water and its forms, earth and its forms including geography, gems, minerals and metals, animals, and color, odor, taste and liquids.
HESYCHIUS
Dictionarium (grece)
Florence, 1520.
Folio. Text in Greek.
With splendid woodcut head-pieces and initials printed in red.
Beautifully printed Second Edition of the most extensive dictionary of classical Greek extant, prepared by the Greek scholar Antonio Francini.
Compiled in the fifth or sixth century AD, Hesychius's dictionary was first printed by Aldus in 1514.
[Missale Ambrosianum] Missale s[e]c[undum] more[m] s. Ambrosii
Milan, G. A. Scinzenzeler for G. G. da Legnano, 20. Sept. 1522.
Folio. A complete exemplar of this exceedingly rare post-incunable Milanese Missal for the use of the Ambrosian rite. Printed in red and black throughout; beautifully iluustrated with a fine title-woodcut, two full-page and numerous smaller woodcuts in the text; most pages with charming historiated woodcut head-pieces in top margin; extensive printed musical notations in text.
CHRISTOPHER ST. GERMAN
[A dialogue between a doctor of divinity and a student of English law] The fyrste dyalogue in Englysshe, wyth newe addycyons.
[London,] Robert Wyer, [1531].
Small octavo. Very rare second edition in English of Dialogus de fundamentis legum Anglie et de conscientia (first printed in 1528 in Latin). This important legal work, considered to be the first study of the role of conscience within English common law, was used as a student primer until Blackstone published his Commentaries in 1765-9. Its enduring popularity into the 19th century was a result of its clear introduction to common law concepts.
PETER MARTYR
De orbe novo.
Paris: Guillelmum Avvray, 1587.
Octavo. Edited by Richard Hakluyt and dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh.
Peter Martyr's chronicle of the Spanish conquest of the Americas was first published in 1530 and part had appeared in English translation in 1555. This rare edition of Peter Martyr's 'decades' in Latin is the complete version, edited and annotated by Hakluyt as part of an apparent ongoing endevour to encourage England's ambitions toward further exapnding her nascent explorations into the Americas and to compete with the Spanish and French in the division of the New World.
SAMUEL PURCHAS
Purchas, his Pilgrimage.
London: William Stansby for Henry Fetherstone, 1626.
Folio. Illustrated with a superb double-page map of China, 23 engraved maps in the text, and one further engraved illustration in text.
The fourth edition, and the only illustrated edition of this important work, termed "the best edition" by Church and Sabin. It was published at the suggestion of King James I and the request of King Charles I to accompany the first edition of the author's four-volume Pilgrimes published in 1625. Most of the maps are from Hondius, while the double-page map of China was probably engraved by Elstracke. Books 8 and 9 (pp. 791-967) relate to America.