Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
6th April 2022
Printed in Meaux, east of Paris (and presumably in limited numbers), this is a copy of the first edition of a rare little book of epigrams by Ange-Denis Maquin (1756–1823), a professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres who subsequently fled across the Channel during the Terror. Settling at Hastings, ‘he began learning English and supported himself […]
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18th June 2021
This is a copy of the first edition in German of William Gilpin’s famous Essay on Prints, ‘published anonymously in 1768, which had influence on the Continent, [and] contained his earliest definition of the Picturesque’ (Grove Art). The translation is by Johann Jakob Volckmann (1732–1803). A former owner here has created an index of the […]
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26th November 2014
I had quite a bit of interest when I wrote about this book over on The New Antiquarian, so thought I’d share it here, too. I’ve written before about a fictitious Boston imprint. That book had no obvious connection with the United States, but this one does: it’s an early satire on emigration to America, from 1818. […]
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26th August 2014
Princess Caroline Matilda (1751–1775), the youngest sister of George III, was married off to her cousin, Christian VII of Denmark, when she was only 15. It was not a happy marriage. Christian was a mentally unstable philanderer who claimed it was ‘unfashionable to love one’s wife’, and Caroline eventually drifted into an affair with the […]
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13th February 2014
Sometimes, as a bookseller, you come across a book which makes you do a double take. Here’s one I discovered recently: Briefe über den Verlust der Regenten und Völker Europens an, und durch Frankreichs Republik (pp. [2], 66), with the imprint ‘London 1798. In allen Buchhandlungen Deutschlands in Englischer, Französicher und Deutscher Sprache zu haben.’ It’s […]
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22nd October 2012
This very rare book, a biting satire on Poland (its form of government, parliament, laws, military, society, women, dirtiness, duelling, etc.), is the first book to be published with a ‘California’ imprint, preceding the first book actually printed in California by over 50 years (Reglamento provicional, Monterey, 1834). It was in fact printed in Berlin. […]
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