Search Results: Authors starting with R from Bruce Marshall Rare Books

Augsburg: [J. Sittich], January 1514. Quarto (210 x 155mm). Title within four-part woodcut border, 87 woodcuts, 10 of these large including 1 full page lunar figure, numerous initials, all in bright contemporary hand-colour, with working volvelles. Contemporary quarter pigskin over wooden boards.
A rare, richly illustrated calendar from the Augsburg Renaissance.
Printed calendars and almanacs became extremely popular in the fifteenth century and provided ordinary people with the basic knowledge required to plan their daily routines. The market for calendars was first tapped by Gutenburg, who published a calendar which calculated the times of new and full moons and planetary positions, with readings every two to three days. All earlier calendars, however, were superseded by those of Regiomontanus (1436-1476) whose calculations were far more accurate; he recorded several eclipses of the moon and his interest led him to make the important observation that longitude at sea could be determined by… Read More

Lyon, Horace Cardon, 1616, Translated into French by D. F. de Riquebourg-Trigault.Thick 8vo,(170 x 110mm). Engraved title, frontispiece portrait, folding woodcut and engraved plate of letterpress. Contemporary limp vellum, title inscribed in manuscript on spine.
First French edition of one of the most important works on China.
First published in Augsburg by Christopher Mangius (1615), 'this chronicle about the Western mission in China from 1583-1611… provided a systematic portrait of contemporary Chinese society as perceived by Ricci, who was fluent in Chinese and exhibited both a sympathetic interest in Chinese culture and an erudite perspective on the Jesuits' accomplishments.
Matteo Ricci, Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters.
Ricci arrived at the Portuguese settlement of Macau in 1582 where he began his missionary work in China. He became the first European… Read More

London: John Murray, Richard Bentley and Josiah Fisher, 1829- 1837, 4 vols, 4to, (275 x 200mm), Contemporary red half morocco gilt, with 110 engraved plates of which 72 are hand-coloured, a very nice large uncut copy.
Scarce Complete Copy of the First Edition of this Rare Work on the Natural History of the Arctic.
Sir John Richardson (1787–1865), surgeon, naturalist and Arctic explorer, went on Sir John Franklin's first two Arctic expeditions as ship's doctor and naturalist, and made observations and collected a large number of plant and animal specimens from the Canadian Arctic.
On his return to England after the second expedition he began to write this four-volume work of natural history, first published between 1829 and 1837. A volume is dedicated to each of the classes of mammal, bird, fish and insect, which are found in the Canadian Arctic. This work is an interesting example of pre-Darwinian natural history, full of detailed descriptions of the appearance, anatomy and behaviour of the… Read More