Search Results: Titles starting with D from Bernard Quaritch Ltd

Small 4to, pp. [12], 492, [20]; a beautiful, clean copy, bound in early seventeenth-century English calf, lacking ties, early nineteenth-century rebacking, spine in compartments decorated gilt, orange morocco lettering piece; lower joint split at foot; monogram of Ralph Freeman (two R's and an F so arranged that the spaces left by the R's form three lozenges two and one which make up the Freeman arms) stamped in blind to both covers; ownership inscription of Aubrey Freeman 'E libris Alberici Freeman Colle: Xti Cantabri: 1701' to title (see below); nineteenth-century bibliographical notes to front flyleaf.
First edition of Joachim Camerarius' Latin translation of Xenophon's Cyropaedia, a partly fictional work on the life and education of Cyrus the Great which served as a model for medieval and renaissance mirrors of princes, including Machiavelli's Il Principe. A beautiful copy, from the celebrated library of Ralph Freeman and then by descent to various other… 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).

4to, pp. viii, '160' [i.e. 260]; title copper-engraved with decorative border and large armorial cartouche, copper-engraved initial E (showing St Peter's Basilica), woodcut ornaments and initials; some spotting and browning in places, and minimal marginal worming to final few leaves (not affecting text); a very good, clean copy, uncut in contemporary carta rustica; binding somewhat browned and worn, and slightly loose.
First edition of this utopia by the Tuscan Dominican Pier Vincenzo Barsanti.
Barsanti (fl. before 1784), professor of theology at the episcopal seminary of Cortona and then prior of the convent of Santa Caterina in Livorno, bases his book on work he had presented previously to the Accademia Etrusca of Cortona, the vast scope of which made it ripe for expansion. Over the course of three books, he speculates about matters ranging from the fate of unbaptised infants to human reason, the tendency of philosophers and poets to plagiarise sacred texts, the art of navigation, and the… Read More

4to, pp. [52], 635, [1 (blank)]; title copper-engraved and 21 full-page copper-engravings printed in text (of which 8 duplicates); bound without bifolium a2.3 (dedication, see below); tear repaired to a4 (with no loss); a good copy very lightly washed, bound in early twentieth-century limp vellum, spine lettered in red and black ink.Second edition, expanded and extended, with a new series of striking venatic plates. The series of plates (attributable to Nicolas Perrey, who signs the title), showing composite scenes of hunters pursuing animals from birds and fish to lions and elephants, is wholly new, replacing the woodcut illustrations of the first edition of 1621. The engravings were reused in 1630, though the pruning and ploughing plate (p. 471) would be omitted from the later edition. In addition to the expansion of the first four books, the second edition is for the first time accompanied by a fifth book 'della villa', on the management of agricultural estates.
Copies seem to exist in three… Read More

First edition, inscribed 'To Geoffrey / my best copy / Wyndham'. Lewis breaks here with abstraction in the arts, naming Michael Ayrton, Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Ceri Richards and others as 'the finest group of painters and sculptors which England has ever known'. Ayrton collaborated on many illustrations and dust-jacket designs after Lewis lost his sight.Pound & Grover A39; Morrow & Lafourcade A39a.

Manuscript on paper ('Pro Patria' watermark), in Latin, 4to (204 x 158 mm), 3 parts in 1 vol, pp. i: [4 (title, blank)], 229, [1], 230-250, [3 (blank)]; ii: [6 (title, blanks)], 270-283, [35], [3 (blank)]; iii: [6 (title, blanks)], [85], [3 (blank)]; p. 170 misnumbered 180, pp. 171-186 misbound after p. 202; very neatly written in brown ink in a single hand; illustrated with 5 full-page logic diagrams, 13 full-page emblematic illustrations and 11 large vignettes in pen and wash; overall very good in contemporary calf, spine gilt in compartments with gilt red morocco lettering-piece, marbled endpapers; some loss at head- and tail-panels of spine, some wear to joints and extremities, light rubbing to boards, one old paper label to spine and two to upper board.
A handsome manuscript comprising a thorough course in logic and dialectic, executed by a student at the Jesuit college in Antwerp, and illustrated with an extraordinary decorative programme inspired by printed emblems.
Opening with an index… Read More

First edition of Dio's Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years. Born and raised at Nicaea in Bithynia, Dio (c. 164–235) served as a senator and consul in Rome, composing his famous Roman History in eighty books over the course of two decades, beginning with the landing of Aeneas in Italy and ending with his own retirement in 229. About a third of the work has come down to us intact, with books 36-54, covering the years 69-10 BC, surviving complete. This Italian rendering of books 37 to 58 was undertaken by the eminent Italian physician and humanist Niccolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), being completed by 1488 but remaining unpublished until this Zoppino edition. The text, encompassing the lives and deeds of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, is handsomely illustrated with oblong woodcuts at the… Read More

4to, pp. 31, [1] blank; with woodcut vignette on title, and woodcut head-piece and initial; with single engraved illustration on page 12; some spotting and foxing in places, but still crisp; in contemporary calf, covers with gilt borders, spine gilt; some light wear, but still an attractive copy, with the book-label of Giannalisa Feltrinelli on front paste-down.An attractive copy of this rare dissertation in which the author, a Minorite friar, attempts to demonstrate scientifically that the popular practice of ringing church bells during storms in the attempt to dissipate storm clouds and minimise the danger from lightning in fact had no effect. Ricci explains the nature of lightning, the thinking behind the practice, and, citing examples from both France and Italy, shows how church belltowers have fallen victim to lightning despite the best efforts of their bellringers. Citing the likes of Volta and Landriani, Ricci argues against moral and physical objections that the practice is more dangerous than… Read More

First English edition, one of Lewis's scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction). Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published in book form in New York. Of the 1518 copies printed only 411 had sold by the time Chatto and Windus faced two separate suits for libel, from Godfrey Winn and Alec Waugh (author of The Loom of Youth; his brother Evelyn, also satirised, took his charges on the chin). Lewis's publishers were already annoyed with him for his failure to provide them with the sequels to The Childermass, and avoided legal proceedings by withdrawing the book, returning 138 copies to Lewis and pulping 968. It was the last book he published with Chatto. 1932 was to prove an annus horribilis for Lewis, this the first of three books to be withdrawn from the market. See Bridson, The Filibuster, 'Thou Hast Robbed Me of My Youth', pp. 120–139.… Read More