Very rare first edition of one of the earliest “auto-bibliographies” by a Jesuit, the highly learned controversialist Jakob Gretser, one of the most prolific of Jesuit authors. Gretser explains in the preface that he compiled this bibliography of his own works following requests for such a catalogue from people in..... More

The second augmented edition of Galileo’s classic on hydrostatics, published the same year within months of the first edition, represents his first published work in physics (Drake, p. 179). The Discorso is hailed by historians of science as having united for the first time two previously separate disciplines: statics and..... More

Scarce, French-language edition of Du Laurens'works, with a set of 26 anatomical engravings derived from Vesalius and others. "This is the second edition of the French translation of Du Laurens' collected works... which preceeded the publication of the Latin text. In addition to the author's textbook of anatomy and his..... More

First edition of the most influential seventeenth-century edition of Archimedes’ complete works. The work contains the Greek text with a Latin “trot” running alongside and has extensive exegetical notes. It was still regarded as the best edition in 1670 when Sturm made his German translation. “The success of the humanist..... More

Very rare manuscript user’s manual for the famous terrestrial and celestial globes by the van Langren cartographic dynasty, notable as the first to employ the highly accurate star observations of the “tresfameux” Tycho Brahe – whose contribution is duly acknowledged (fol. 9v). Well into the age of print, these manuals..... More

Scarce edition of three alchemical texts—comprising the first illustrated appearance of the ‘Twelve Keys’ of Basil Valentine, and the first printed editions of Thomas Norton’ The Ordinall of Alchemy, and John Cremer’s ‘Testament’—collected by the pre-eminent Rosicrucian apologist Maier. The first work shows the intimate dependency of 17th-century alchemy and..... More

Scarce first edition and an attractive copy, bound in what must be a presentation binding with the image of Saint Benedict stamped on the front cover and the arms of the author stamped on the back cover. The work is one of the more fanciful illustrated chronicles devoted to the..... More

Rare contemporary Portuguese account of the Dutch conquest in May 1624 of the principal Brazilian city, Salvador da Bahia, a brief victory that was reversed less than a year later by the largest armada ever sent to the Americas. This Dutch attempt to establish a colony in Brazil was the..... More

Rare first and only edition, first issue, of the Vicenza architect Ottavio Revesi Bruti’s (c. 1585-1648) richly illustrated folio describing his new instrument for accurately constructing scale drawings of the architectural orders without reliance on laborious calculations, a boon both for practical architects eager to avoid difficult mathematics on the..... More

Rare first French edition of the earliest written eyewitness account of Japan, by the adventurer, pirate, missionary and mercenary who was among the first Europeans to visit that country. In 1537 Mendes Pinto (1509?-1583) began a 21-year odyssey to the East. Although his reliability has been questioned almost since the..... More

The title in Asher’s English translation is: Considerations and reasons of the noble Directors of the Chartered West-India Company, delivered in the assembly of their High Might. the States General of these Free United Netherlands, on the present deliberations on a Truce with the King of Spain. With Conscientious Reflections..... More

Rare first edition of this Mannerist suite of designs for triumphal arches and entrances, by a Florentine who had been invited to the French court by Marie de Medici, became royal engineer to Louis XIII, and built grottos and fountains on the grounds of St. Germain-en-Laye and Fontainebleau. He was..... More

Very attractive copy of the rare first edition of the first work on logarithms printed in Italy, the first published work of a great mathematician of whom Galileo wrote, “few, if any, since Archimedes, have delved as far and as deep into the science of geometry.” Cavalieri introduced and popularized..... More