Search Results: Titles starting with S from Bernard Quaritch Ltd

8vo., pp. 62, with engraved frontispiece, folding gameboard, full-page woodcut at end, upper margins trimmed close affecting 'A' in title and many headlines; modern quarter morocco.
First edition of this facetious proposal to match, for the fee of forty shillings each, 50,000 'maids and widows' with a similar number of 'gentlemen and tradesmen', by lottery. The 'gentlemen and tradesmen' include '500 Lawyers, 200 Petty-foggers ... 2 Scotchmen, both Pedlars, 500 Broken Booksellers' and an astonishing '21,000 Publishers'. Many of these professions appear on an inserted folding game sheet on which ladies may try their luck in advance (blindfolded, with a pin). The text includes a ludicrous multiplicity of technical conditions pertaining to the scheme, some of which involve allusions to such contemporary figures as Colley Cibber, Alexander Pope, and the eccentric 'Orator' Henley.
As well as being genuinely comic and generally satirical, A Scheme for a New Lottery has a specific target in the… Read More

ANDREWS, Mark E. The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics, 1500-1800.
Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

Folio (304 x 224 mm), pp. ix, [1], 419, [3]; with nearly 100 illustrations and 2 illustrated fold-out pages; printed boards, with dust-jacket.
A lavishly illustrated catalogue, tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period. Some 367 printed books, manuscripts, and maps are presented in chronological order, highlighting the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented those ideas. Drawing from Mark Andrews's larger collection of civil engineering, here we see the books, illustrations, and diagrams that formed the daily working tools of Italian scientists, engineers, and builders – from civil engineering's first printed works in the early sixteenth century to the publication of Venturi's landmark text on fundamental hydraulic principles in 1797.
Technical… 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

8vo, pp. [14], 124, [2], with scratchboard illustrations by E. McKnight Kauffer; a very goodcopy in the publisher's black cloth, orange spine (sunned), wanting the dust-jacket;bookplate of D. G. Bridson, and with dots under the letters d g b on the colophon leaf.First edition of this wartime collection of poems, inscribed shortly after Hughes and Bridsonmet for the first time: 'For Geoffrey Bridson, with the friendship, and regards of LangstonHughes. New York, January 28, 1944'.

Small 8vo, pp. 123, [1], [8, advertisements]; slightly browned, advertisements loose; very good in later snakeskin binding, gilt-lettered spine label, with original green printed wrappers bound in.
A handsome copy of the 'fifth thousand' of this very successful handbook for prospective emigrants to Australia, published only six weeks after the first issue. The handbook was the work of the brothers John (b. 1821) and Samuel Sidney (1813-1883), the former having settled in New South Wales around 1838. 'It was an immediate popular success, seven 1000-copy editions being sold in five months. Of particular interest ... is the anti-Wakefieldian espousal of the general values of squatters, who were called "the heart's blood of Australia"' (ADB).
The first part ('How to emigrate') includes chapters on the necessity for emigration, a description of Australia and the Bush, on wives and children, on the choice of colonies, on cattle, horses and sheep, on Bush roads, and on necessary provisions. Part II… Read More

An attractive volume containing sixteen engravings by Giovanni Petrini of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, including renderings of famous paintings by the likes of Correggio, Poussin, Titian, Raphael, and Rubens.
The volume opens with an image of the Virgin and Child after Luca Giordano's Madonna of the Rosary, set within an architectural frame bearing fifteen medallion scenes from the lives of Mary and Jesus. The plates that follow, each with Biblical quotations from the Vulgate below, illustrate: the Annunciation (after Federico Barocci), the Visitation (after Domenichino), the Nativity (after Correggio), the Presentation in the Temple (after Carlo Maratti), Christ among the doctors (after Nicolas Poussin), the Agony in the Garden (after Giovanni Lanfranco), the Flagellation (after Marco Benefial), the Crowning with Thorns (after Titian), Christ falling on the way to Calvary (after Raphael), the Crucifixion (after Annibale Carracci), the Resurrection (after Ciro Ferri), the… Read More

First and only edition of Morris's, Bax's, and Dave's account of the Commune of Paris of 1871, presented as 'the starting point of the irresistible Unity of Socialism in Europe and America'. An irregular complement to the Socialist League's journal The Commonweal (under Morris's editorship from its establishment in 1885 until his ousting in 1889), The Socialist Platform was 'intended in great measure to be a Commentary on the Manifesto of the League', which had itself been published with notes by Morris and Bax. The Platform, with its distinctive woodcut headpiece by Walter Crane (bearing the motto 'agitate, educate, organize'), ran to seven issues, of which four were authored by Morris. Among these, the Short Account appears to be by far the rarest; his other contributions are Useful Work v. Useless Toil (no. 2), True and False Society (no. 6), and Monopoly: Or, How Labour is Robbed (no. 7). Scott, p. 24.8vo, pp. [2], [59]-79, [1 (advertisement for the League's publications]; woodcut device of the… 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

First edition of this account of trips to Norway, the Outer Hebrides, Skye, and Sweden undertaken by the Countess of Norbury (1876-1966), handsomely illustrated with photographic plates as well as colour reproductions from the author's original sketches.8vo, pp. 160, text in black and red; with frontispiece and 9 plates; some discolouring to half-title, occasional light foxing; overall very good in original light blue cloth, spine and upper cover lettered in darker blue, original pictorial dust jacket (a little dusty, with a few short tears at head repaired to verso).

Large 4to, pp. [2], 16, with 4 engraved plates (2 folding); a little creasing at corners, some loss at fore-edge of first plate affecting engraved text; a very good copy stab-stitched in contemporary marbled paper wrappers; 'From the author' at head of title.First edition, presentation copy, with attractive engravings showing a 'Plan of the new town of Thurso', an 'Improved elevation and plans of Janet Street in the new town of Thurso', a 'Plan of certain farms on the river Thurso ... intended partly to be let in small lots on improving leases to new settlers', and 'Sketch of the fishing village of Brodiestown intended to be created at Sarilet'.Agricultural improver, politician, and president of the Board of Agriculture, Sinclair (1754-1835) was educated at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Oxford, inheriting his father's Caithness estates in Scotland. A sketch details Sinclair's various schemes for improvement, including sheep farming at Langwell, the adoption of a 'fen system of husbandry', the creation of… Read More