Search Results: Authors starting with L from Musinsky Rare Books, Inc.

Milan: presso Agnello Nobile, 1803. 2 volumes in one, 12mo (157 x 97 mm).  xi, [1], 296; [4], 383, [1] pp.  Contemporary tree calf, smooth spine with red and dark green morocco lettering pieces, small gilt Montgolfier balloon tool at top and bottom, yellow red-sprinkled edges.  First complete edition of an epic poem on ballooning and the first balloon flights.  In elevated verse, the poem provides a history of aerostation and technical information on the construction of the first balloons. Not only a rare choice of topic for the genre, Lancetti's poem is also, with twenty cantos in ottava rima, several containing 130 to 160 stanzas, possibly the longest poem ever written on a means of transport.  Not surprisingly, the author admits to an obsession with hot air balloons in his youth. Having witnessed the first ascension in Italy, carried out by Paolo Andreani and the Gerli brothers in Milan on 25 February 1784, Lancetti decided, at the age of 17, to write a poem on… Read More

Augsburg: Johann Ulrich Krauss, 1700. Oblong 4to (240 x 282 mm). 18 plates: engraved title and 17 numbered etchings, engraved captions in German, by Melchior Küsel after Baur. Watermarks: 1) hunting horn, 45 x 32 mm., lettered below A I F; 2) serpent (95 x 37 mm.) coiled around an anchor(?) with leaf-shaped upper escutcheon lettered MD(?). Most in very good impressions. Some marginal soiling or foxing, a stain to title from erasure of shelfmark, crease marks to a few plates, plate 6 just shaved at foremargin. Modern morocco-backed boards (bowed). Provenance: Carl Gustav Schmidtsche Bibliothek, purple ink-stamp on title with ink shelfmark no. 494 (old attempts to erase the same number elsewhere on title-page causing small stain).*** Only separate edition of a suite of delightful landscape etchings after the miniature painter and engraver J. W. Baur (1607-1642), etched by Melchior Küsel (1626-1683), Augsburg engraver and goldsmith, and published by his son-in-law Johann Ulrich Krauss, the preeminent… Read More

Nancy: J. B. Hiacinthe Leclerc, 1769. 12mo (147 x 90 mm). 212, [3] pp. Woodcut thistle ornament on title, woodcut tailpieces. Half-title tearing slightly along gutter, old paper reinforcements to gutters of A8v and B1r, 2 or 3 short marginal tears, occasional light foxing. Contemporary red morocco, double gilt fillet border to sides, smooth spine gold-tooled, with green morocco gilt lettering-piece, gilt edges, marbled endpapers (extremities rubbed). Provenance: Stanislas de Guaita (1861-1897), poet and expert on the occult, bookplate; by succession to de Guaita's brother-in-law, Pierre de Lallemand de Mont, with his bookplate; Philippe Zoumeroff, sale, Paris, 16 May 2014, lot 27.*** First Edition of the first ordinances of Lorraine as part of France. Although the Duchies of Lorraine and Bar had been ceded to France by the Treaty of Vienna in 1738, for political reasons Louis XV postponed annexation, and named his father-in-law, Stanislas Leszczy ski, deposed King of Poland, as the last titular… Read More

[Geneva]: Jacob Stoer, 1591. 8vo (173 x 110 mm). [24], 761, [15] pp. Roman and italic types, shoulder notes, woodcut printer's device on title (Silvestre 1002), woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials. Contemporary blind roll-tooled alum-tawed skin, edges stained green (some minor rubbing). Provenance: Jesuits of Amberg (Bavaria), 18th-century inscription on title, later paper shelfmark label at foot of spine;  a few 18th-century marginal notes and occasional underlinings in red ink in the last treatise.   First Latin edition of four works of erudite spirituality by a personal friend of Calvin, an Augustinian monk from Anjou who abandoned the cowl to become a Huguenot, becoming the most prominent advocate of French Calvinism in the period preceding the Edict of Nantes. L'Espine's writings belong to a group of major literary sources for the modern understanding of the "interior life" of French Calvinists, supplanting the paucity of historical sources such as records of sermons or synodal and… Read More