Extremely rare first edition of this highly original and insufficiently known work on mechanics, which recent scholarship by Camerota and Hellbing has shown to be the most important such work in the generation between Guidobaldo and Galileo. Highlights include the revolutionary view that the true science of motion is the..... More

First edition of the most detailed eighteenth-century biography of Galileo, “particularly important and authoritative because Nelli had discovered Galileo’s papers and had at his disposal an impressive collection of sources” (The Cambridge Companion to Galileo). Nelli’s 18th century biography stands as a comprehensive feat which would not be equaled in..... More

First edition of this important polemic: Campanella’s contribution to the defence of Galileo, written in 1616 during the latter’s first brush with the authorities but only published in 1622. The work is a spirited plea for freedom of thought (libertas philosophandi) as well as a concerted defence of the mobility..... More

Very rare second edition (first, 1568) of this early attack on the Jesuits, written as part of a wider tug-of-war between the Protestants and the Catholics over the right to the teachings of St. Augustine. It provides an early Protestant reaction to the Jesuits’ use of print in polemical disputes..... More

Lively popular scene illustrating a fishmonger at her stand in the Halles, the famous food market in the center of Paris, here displaying her fish for sale. The large characters of the title let us believe that the print might have been conceived for promotional use. The artist, Camille Bourget..... More

Very rare first edition of Argenti’s detailed eyewitness account of the religious turmoil resulting in the destruction in 1603 of the Jesuit College in Claudiopolis, Transylvania (modern-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania) by hostile Protestant forces. A manuscript of this letter is housed at the Biblioteca Vacelliana in Rome. In the present letter..... More

First edition of the first printed work devoted to the Cathedral of St. Stephen, the most historically important medieval building in Vienna. St. Stephen’s Cathedral had its origins as a Roman basilica (dedicated in 1147). Repeatedly burnt and rebuilt, it was enlarged in the 14th century by Duke Rudolf IV..... More

A fine and very genuine copy of the rare first edition of Pablo José de Arriaga’s meticulous account of the Indians of Peru at the turn of the 17th century. Intended as a manual to help clerics identify and eradicate native “superstitions”, the work is filled with minute details describing..... More

First edition of this Italian ethnographic work on the Indigenous peoples of North America. The first section focuses on the funerary rites and ceremonial dances of the Choctaw, Otoe, Oconee, Esselen, and Yoki tribes. Of special interest is Grossi's meticulous account of a three-day funeral for a Yoki chief, which..... More

First Italian edition in book form of Benjamin Franklin’s pamphlet describing the invention of his new stove, originally published by Franklin in 1744 as An Account of the new-invented Philadelphia Fireplaces. The work includes a foldout engraving copied after the engraving of Franklin’s first edition, illustrating airflow through the flue..... More

[BOUND WITH:] CATTIER, Isaac. Response a Monsieur Papin Docteur en Medecine, touchant la Poudre de Sympathie. Paris, Edme Martin, 1651. 8vo, 87 pp., [1] f., including woodcut colophon on title and final pages, concluded with a page of errata. Contemporary manuscript annotations under epigram and in the margins of a dozen pages..... More

First edition of this illustrated description of the remarkable cabinet of curiosities collected by the Danish polymath, Ole Worm (1588-1654), a physician, linguist, naturalist, and a professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen. Worm amassed an expansive collection, housed in his “Museum Wormianum”, consisting of an assortment of bizarre..... More

Chromolithographed broadside (165 x 68.5 cm). Printed on three attached sheets, untitled, number “151” at bottom, with cipher of printer “CBN. W” (i.e., C. Burckardt Nachfolger, Wissembourg) at bottom right corner. Light toning, some horizontal folds, otherwise very good. Large, life-size chromolithographed broadside depicting a young man, in typical Spanish..... More