Antique illustrated books and works illustrated with woodcuts, etchings, engravings, drawings from 16th to 18th centuries

irst edition of the French translation, and the first appearance of the work in French, of Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola’s major history of the conquest of the Moluccas, first published in Spanish at Madrid in 1609. The illustration comprises three repeated frontispieces, one portrait, six maps and twenty-six folding plates, making thirty-six illustrations in all; the present copy is complete with all plates, including the map of Ceylon, often lacking.

Contemporary full mottled brown calf. Spines with raised bands, decorated with central floral lozenges and gilt rolls...

Paris, Gueffier, 1769-1770. Four octavo volumes.

First edition of this major eighteenth-century classic of scientific recreations, illustrated with 72 folding plates, 68 of them finely coloured by hand at the time of publication, together with a folding table. Four further plates listing the prices of recreational apparatus sold by Guyot accompany the first three volumes. The first two volumes appeared in 1769 and the remaining two in 1770.

Contemporary full polished tan calf, smooth spines elegantly decorated with gilt floral tools and fillets, red morocco lettering-pieces...

First edition of the French translation. First published in English in 1712 under the title A cruising voyage round the world. Illustrated with 2 engraved titles, 14 engraved plates and 7 maps including 2 large format (Paraguay and Chile - mainland Peru and Brazil and the Land of the Amazons) and a world map.
Bound in full brown sprinkled calf, spine elaborately gilt, gilt roulettes on the edges, all red speckled edges. Expertly restored (corners, upper and lower part of joints). Two small restored tears on the world map, not affecting the image.
Ex-libris in ink "Sr Remy" to the upper left margin of the title-page.
A tear to the world map, not affecting the...

Chez Théodore Le Gras, à Paris 1728, 12° (9,5x17cm), (2 p.) xvij (7 p.) 346 pp.; (2 p.) ij 376 pp.; (2 p.) ij 387 pp.; (6 p.) 392 pp.; (6 p.) 404 pp., 5 volumes bound.
First edition of this famous description of West Africa.
78 full-page engraved plates:
- volume 1: 5 maps, 2 plates and 1 folding plan
- volume 2: 6 maps, 17 plates and 4 folding plans
- volume 3: 2 maps and 13 plates
- volume 4: 5 maps, 8 plates and 3 folding plans
- volume 5: 3 maps and 9 plates
First edition of this famous description of West Africa. Illustrated with 78 full-page engraved plates.
Contemporary beige calf, spine elaborately gilt, 19th century red leather...

First edition, with 18 engraved maps et 5 folding engraved plates.
Contemporary tan calf, skillfully restored tear to the first folding map, some marginal restorations to the map “Troisième division - Archipel des navigateurs”. Falkland Islands map expertly rebacked on the outer margin as well as the Magellan Strait map. Map of the Buton Strait with a small marginal tear and a second restored with a strip of paper.
Bougainville undertook the first official French circumnavigation and scientific expedition. Starting from Nantes in November 1766, he sailed to the Falklands, made a stopover in Buenos Aires and then crossed the Magellan Strait and the...

Second collective first edition, with continuous pagination, containing for the first time Phèdre, the Discours prononcé à l'Académie françoise à la réception de Messieurs de Corneille et de Bergeret and the Idylle sur la paix.(Brunet, IV, 1077). Work illustrated with 12 figures including 2 frontispieces, most signed by François Chauveau; the frontispiece of the first volume engraved by Le Brun. 
Edition shared between Barbin, Denys Thierry and Pierre Trabouillet.
Full midnight blue morocco binding from the late 19th century signed at the foot of the pastedown Thibaron-Joly (Former worker of Trautz, Thibaron partnered with the gilder Joly in 1874). Spine with raised bands decorated...

Rare first edition of one of the most remarkable Dutch emblem books of the seventeenth century, illustrated with an engraved title bearing the device "SPE ET METU" and fifty-one emblems designed by Adriaen van de Venne and engraved by the artist himself together with Willem van de Passe, Johannes Gelle, Christoffel Le Blon the Elder, Albert Poel and Jan Gerritsz Swelinck.

Although the title page bears the imprint of the Amsterdam bookseller Jan Evertsz Cloppenburgh, the volume was printed in Middelburg by Hans van der Hellen, in Johan de Brune's native city. The first edition is thought to have comprised...

Paris, Émery, Saugrain and Pierre Martin, 1730. Four large folio volumes.

Second, revised, corrected and enlarged edition of Dom Augustin Calmet's Dictionnaire historique, critique, chronologique, géographique et littéral de la Bible, and the first to incorporate into a single alphabetical sequence both the text of the 1722 edition and the two supplementary volumes published in 1728. It thus gave this vast exegetical undertaking its definitive form, in four volumes covering A-D, E-M, N-T and V-Z.

The Paris edition of this complete recasting, in...

A uniformly bound contemporary set of the Abbé Bertholon’s three major treatises on electricity, in five octavo volumes.

De l’électricité du corps humain dans l’état de santé et de maladie, Paris, Croulbois, and Lyon, Bernuset, 1786, 2 volumes: second edition, considerably enlarged, the first edition of 1780 having appeared in a single volume; 6 folding plates at the end of volume II.

De l’électricité des végétaux, Paris, P. F. Didot jeune, 1783: first edition, illustrated with 3 folding plates and a folding table of plant diseases.

De l’électricité des météores, Lyon, Bernuset, 1787, 2 volumes: first edition, Lyon...

New edition, the first and only one in quarto, of this extensive historical and geographical description of Switzerland, which originated in Abraham Ruchat's Délices and was progressively recast over more than sixty years. Published in Neuchâtel by Samuel Fauche in 1778, it comprises two volumes substantially enlarged from the earlier editions, combining Ruchat's text with that of Abraham Stanyan and contributions by several other authors. A binder's instruction leaf at the end of each volume specifies the arrangement of the extensive series of illustrations.

The 1757 edition, the finest early edition of Mes Rêveries, the only substantial work left by Maurice, Comte de Saxe. The first edition, published at The Hague the previous year by Zacharie de Pazzi de Bonneville from a defective copy of the manuscript, contained only 40 plates. Prepared by the Abbé Gabriel-Louis Pérau, the present edition includes 84 plates, 61 of them folding, drawn by Pierre Patte from the Marshal’s designs and sketches and engraved by Moitte, Tardieu, and Patte. They depict military dress and equipment, troop dispositions, and plans and profiles of fortifications. Pérau also added a 134-page abridged life of the Marshal together with...

New illustrated edition with 232 figures, principally by Borel. Volume XIV contains an additional suite by Moreau, a suite by Marillier and another anonymous suite. Copy on vellum paper, the figures on heavy vellum. At the end of the publisher's notice, a leaf with the price of works: the 20 volumes in-18, fine paper, in wrappers with 18 engravings...30Fr. The same with 212 engravings, in wrappers...60Fr. The same, 17 volumes, deluxe vellum paper, figures from first proofs...120Fr. The volumes may be purchased separately by works. While at Princeton University and the Royal Library of Denmark one finds only the edition in 20 volumes with 18 engravings, this copy proves more desirable in...

First edition of one of the most beautiful books of the 18^th century, of which the text and the music are entirely engraved. It is illustrated with an engraved title, 3 frontispieces by Le Bouteux and Le Barbier, a dedication page with the Dauphine arms, and 100 figures by Moreau le Jeune, Le Barbier, Le Bouteux and Saint-Quentin, finely engraved in copperplate by Masquelier and Née. The portrait of Laborde, which can be found on some copies, is not part of this edition and was printed in 1774, separately.

Magnificent copy bound in 4 volumes, very rare condition. There are usually only copies with 2 volumes for understandable cost issues. It is...

Paris, Jean-Thomas Hérissant, 1759. Three octavo volumes.

First edition in French of Johann Gottlob Lehmann's Traités de physique, d'histoire naturelle, de minéralogie et de métallurgie, translated and annotated by Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach. All three volumes bear this collective half-title and bring together in French for the first time several of the German scientist's principal works on mining, mineralogy, metallurgy and geology.

New edition revised by the author, illustrated with 4 copper-engraved plates by Morel after drawings by Chaudet (Cohen, col. 927). A sumptuous publication from the press of Pierre Didot l'aîné, the foremost printer of his day. This edition is distinguished from all previous ones by its entirely renewed illustration in a neoclassical spirit, in keeping with the aesthetic of the Directoire period. It is the first to have been revised by the author himself.
Contemporary binding in full red morocco, spine with five raised bands richly decorated with gilt dentelles, fillets and fleurons, boards framed with a double gilt dentelle, gilt roll on the turn-ins and headbands...

First edition of this revised and illustrated version of François de Ligny’s Histoire de la vie de Jésus-Christ, published in Paris in 1804 under the supervision of the Abbé de Sambucy. The work is illustrated with 75 plates - 40 in volume I, including the frontispiece, and 35 in volume II, likewise including the frontispiece - engraved under the direction of L. Petit after paintings from the Italian, French and Flemish schools, together with a folding map of Palestine. Entirely printed on laid paper watermarked “Vie de J.C.”

First edition. A title-frontispiece featuring the personification of justice. Specific title page and pagination for Receptarum juris utriusque regularum partitiones by Cousinio.

Contemporary full vellum binding with overlapping flaps. Smooth spine with title-label lacking. Vellum soiled overall. Good copy.

These Elements of Civil Law are the work of Professor of Law at Amsterdam Joannes Arnold Corvinus, Protestant minister and jurist. Before becoming a lawyer he was a Calvinist preacher. Close to Grotius, he was part of a group of legal writers sympathetic to Protestants who commented on reason of State.


 

Third and definitive version published during Raynal's lifetime of the Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, issued in Geneva by Jean-Léonard Pellet. The text appeared in 1780 simultaneously in four quarto volumes and ten octavo volumes; the present copy belongs to the octavo issue reissued with cancel titles dated 1781. Substantially enlarged from the versions of 1770 and 1774, this is the fullest form of the text published during Raynal's lifetime.

10 volumes, octavo. The first volume opens with a portrait of Raynal designed by...

First edition, superbly illustrated with 50 engraved and hand-coloured plates, all numbered and signed by William Ellis. Bilingual text, first in English, followed by the French translation on facing pages. Printed on deluxe wove paper.
English binding. Spine entirely rebacked in chocolate shagreen, decorated with five blind-stamped romantic floral tools. Brown calf boards adorned with a large central lozenge composed of leafy friezes. Blind-stamped border frieze with corner tools, and a second leafy border. Upper board split along the joint and nearly detached, lower joint open at the foot over 5 cm, with a continuing crack of 10 cm though the leather remains closed. Corners heavily...

First edition, printed by the Imprimerie Royale in Paris in 1753, illustrated with an engraved title vignette, six folding maps and two further folding plates devoted to astronomical observations (positions of the sun and moon, together with explanatory diagrams). The maps depict the coasts of Acadia and Île Royale, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the harbour of Canso, the south-eastern coast of Île Royale, the harbour of Chibouctou (Halifax), and the south-eastern extremity of Acadia.

Fine...

Rare French first edition in the translation by Esprit Pézenas, illustrated with 2 title vignettes and 78 folding plates representing instruments used for physics demonstrations.

Armorial copy with unidentified coat of arms.
Contemporary full porphyry sheep binding. Decorated spine with raised bands. Beige calf title label, brown sheep volume label. One lack to foot of volume I. Light lack to head compartment of volume II and to foot compartment. Split to upper joints at foot of both volumes, 1cm. Corners with leather losses, as well as to edges. The use of acid to achieve the porphyry marbling has caused certain alterations to the leather, notably...