Search Results: Authors starting with V from Hordern House Rare Books

Amsterdam: T. van Hoorn, 1682. Repairs to tears in two plates, one with insubstantial loss at bottom corner; a few upper margins a little short but a good copy.. Small quarto, four parts in one volume (part 4 with separate pagination), engraved frontispiece by J. Luyken (dated 1683) and 16 plates; full vellum antique. Very rare, the first fully illustrated edition of this seventeenth-century imaginary voyage to western Australia, based on the story of the wreck of the VOC ship Vergulde Draeck in 1656. The plates are thus early - if imaginary - depictions of the Australian coast, and include two coastal scenes depicting the first meeting with the local population, the Australian court, and the fabulous fauna. The importance of the detailed and inventive illustrations has been overlooked: after the various editions of Pelsaert, this is the second major work to depict life and conditions on the Australian mainland, however fancifully. This work also has an important connection with Vlamingh's… Read More

London: George Woodfall, 1837. First and only edition. 8vo. pp. 11; sewn as issued in original titling wrappers. The Van Diemen's Land Company, established by Act of Parliament, and incorporated by Royal Charter, comprised a group of London businessmen who managed a large tract of land in north west Tasmania on a for-profit basis. The land, centred on Circular Head, formed the basis for a dairy herd, and the present report lists some of the changes of the previous year. It also provides a list of sales of livestock, a list of directors, and expresses their 'great satisfaction in being able to inform the Proprietors that Captain SirJohn Franklin, R.N., recently appointed Lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land, and who sailed for the Colony in September last, expressed himself favourably disposed towards the objects of the Company' (p. 10). .

Whitehall, London, 1823. Two pages, folio, manuscript in ink on a bifolium, the third page receipted to the Lord Chancellor by Treasury, the fourth page a docket title. Rare official document marking the appointment of the English lawyer John Lewes Pedder to the very consequential office of first Chief Justice of Van Diemen's Land, at the point when the judicial system of Tasmania became separated from that of New South Wales. Pedder, who arrived in Hobart in March 1824, would serve in the office for thirty years. He was also a Member of Tasmania's first Legislative Council, serving from 1825 until 1851, and a member of the Executive Council until 1836. "On 26 March 1824, after Pedder had arrived in Van Diemen's Land, Lieutenant-Governor Sorell issued a Proclamation declaring him duly appointed Chief Justice, and that on 10 May the Supreme Court would 'enter upon the Exercise of its Jurisdiction according to the full Powers granted by the Royal Charter'. The Charter of Justice was read out by the… Read More

Paris: Libraire Hachette & Cie., 1874. Two parts in one volume, two folding engraved maps; original yellow wrappers preserved in a neat French binding of half dark green morocco. Good account of Hawaiian royal affairs by a French consular official who arrived on the islands in 1855. The author stayed for 14 years and travelled widely during this time, often with King Kamehameha V, including the relief mission following the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 1868. The book was translated in 1981, and is now considered an excellent source for Hawaiian history of the period. .

London: The Argonaut Press, 1928. Very good copy, binding slightly soiled.. Quarto, colour title vignette, a few maps and illustrations; untrimmed and largely unopened, as issued in original vellum-backed blue cloth, gilt vignette on upper board, One of just 975 numbered copies: translated from the Italian of the original edition of 1510 by John Winter Jones for the Hakluyt Society in 1863 and here republished with a new and substantial essay on Varthema by Sir Richard Carnac Temple. .

Siena: Pazzini Carli, 1794. In fine original condition.. Eleven volumes, octavo, with 159 engraved plates; the text printed on pale blue tinted paper; an excellent set in contemporary quarter calf and glazed boards, spines gilt with crimson morocco labels. A most attractive late-18th-century edition of Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, in fine contemporary calf bindings. This edition includes 159 engraved plates, providing portraits for each of the artists included in Vasari's monumental work, along with three special folding plates to accompany the life of Michelangelo. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) remains the pre-eminent biographer of the Italian Renaissance. A talented artist and architect in his own right, Vasari enjoyed the patronage of the powerful Florentine Medici family. He turned his talents to recording the lives of great artists (including his contemporaries in Florence) and by so doing created a new genre. Vasari's biographies are both informative… Read More

Moulins: Imprimerie Bourbonnaise, 1898. Large octavo, frontispiece portrait, some light offsetting to title, original printed wrappers bound in; a very good copy in a lavish presentation binding of mauve calf with red morocco inlay, moiré silk endpapers, both boards with gilt figures, the front board with deeply embossed gilt coat of arms and gilt presentation note, spine with double crimson morocco labels. Beautifully bound presentation copy of this study of Vasco da Gama. Published in honour of the 400th anniversary of da Gama's first voyage, this work includes observations on two significant accounts of the voyage, the first by Camoens, the second that of a "matelot portugais". The work was prepared after a meeting of the so-called "Comité Vasco de Gama", whose members had met at l'Hotel de Ville du Moulins, and who were keen to promote better research and better understanding between France and Portugal. The work, commissioned by Henri Olivier, vice-president of the Vasco da Gama society, is… Read More

Amsterdam: Frans Buffa en Zonen, 1845. In fine condition.. Small folio, engraved title and 50 lithographed plates by P. Lauters, accompanying letterpress; a fine and complete copy in handsome contemporary green half morocco. An exquisitely-produced view book of the ports and peoples of the Dutch East Indies. Van de Velde's remarkably handsome book, produced at the famous lithographic workshop of Frans Buffa & Sons in Amsterdam, is a benchmark in the development of such works. The superb plates, with captions in Dutch and French, share much in common with other early mid-century works of voyages, especially those produced on the continent - one is reminded of the views associated with the near-contemporary account of the second Dumont d'Urville circumnavigation, by artists including Sainson, for example. They were lithographed by the master Paulus Lauters (1806-1876), who had earlier worked with Goubau in Brussels and been appointed to the Royal School for Engraving in that city in 1836. His earlier… Read More

1825. Lithograph on brown washed paper with white heightening, 290 x 370 mm., mounted. Carle Vernet (1758-1836) was trained by his father, Claude-Joseph. He won the Prix de Rome in 1782 and the Legion of Honor in 1808 with one of his battle scenes. Vernet was a horseman, riding until his death and often depicting animals in his paintings. This image shows the much prized Arabian stallion with a Middle Eastern city in the background. .

Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1858. Folio, single leaf, printed on blue paper; disbound. Petition highlighting the miseries and privations of the miners at the new township of Mount Ararat in Victoria, and asking that every miner be allowed to occupy and cultivate an acre of Crown Land. Ararat was first settled by Europeans in the 1840s after the surveyor Thomas Mitchell passed through the area in 1836. It was in 1857 that a group of Chinese miners en route to Central Victoria struck gold at the Canton Lead, making it the only city in Australia to be founded by the Chinese. This petition, then, dates from the very beginnings of the development of Ararat, and deals particularly with the poor diet of the miners ('the impossibility of obtaining a proper quantity of vegetable food'), but also highlights the relative poverty of the small society at Mount Ararat, where 'profits are too frequently the price of virtue.' .

Goverment Printer, 1862. Fine condition.. Foolscap folio, 7 pp., printed on blue paper; bound in modern half calf. The important Sixth Progress Report issued after the adverse findings of the Royal Commission enquiring into the disastrous Burke and Wills expedition. This separate printing of the report is identifiable by its colophon on page 7, and considerably predates the collective printing of the reports in 1863, where the colophon appears on page 8. Self-justification was, of course, the reason for this advance separate issue of the Sixth Report. .

Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1843. Some moderate foxing, binding a little rubbed and bumped.. Octavo, with four maps (two folding); contemporary green quarter roan. Scarce and important work on the Marquesas by Vincendon-Dumoulin, the eminent French scientist who travelled as hydrographer on Dumont d'Urville's second expedition to the Pacific and was responsible for much of the published narrative of the expedition following d'Urville's premature death. Vincendon-Dumoulin's book is usually cited as one of the chief sources for our history of the Marquesas in the post-discovery period, especially valuable since it is at least partly based on direct personal observation. Dumont d'Urville's secretary, César Desgraz, helped him with the compilation and is credited as co-author on the title-page. Additional information, including ethnological updates, is included in the sub-chapter titled 'Notice phrenologique et ethnologique sur les naturels de l'archipel Nouka-Hiva' by Pierre Marie Dumoutier, a… Read More

Naples: Stamperia Simoniana, 1758. Light browning of a few gatherings, some plates thumbed at margins but a handsome copy.. Folio, with engraved frontispiece and 25 plates, woodcut diagrams and vignettes throughout; contemporary vellum. Splendid edition of Vitruvius, published in large format with 25 detailed plates specially prepared for this edition. This is the best textual edition of Vitruvius, translated and edited by Berardo Galiani, the humanist scholar who reinterpreted the classical architectural canon for eighteenth-century sensibilities. A second edition of this version appeared later the same year in Siena. The Latin text has a facing Italian translation, with the Italian commentary printed below. Vitruvius is the only classical architectural treatise to have survived into the modern era. All printed editions derive from four manuscript copies of which just three are now extant (the manuscript held by the Abbey of Montecassino was destroyed during the Second World War). Some textual… Read More

The Hague: Abraham de Hondt, 1707. Some occasional light foxing but a very good and attractive set in solid Dutch vellum bindings of the period.. Two substantial volumes, folio, title-pages printed in black and red; contemporary Dutch hard vellum, central ornaments to sides and panelling in blind, unlettered spines with raised bands. The second edition, revised by the author, of his 'exhaustive commentary on Justinian's Digest, the principal work of the Dutch professor of law Johannes Voet (1647-1713). This influential work was first published 1698-1704 and translated into Italian, Dutch and English... "Voet ... differs from most of the other Dutch commentators on the Pandecta in his thorough an masterly exposition of the Roman-Dutch law as it obtained in his day. He was not satisfied with a mere academic treatise on the civil law, but he showed how that law should be applied to the affairs of everyday life, and how it was actually practiced in the courts of Holland and the adjoining provinces. Into… Read More

Stuttgart: E. Hochdanz, engraver, 1869. Coloured print, 260 x 190 mm. (sheet size), mounted. A vivid, if somewhat idealised, scene of a kangaroo hunt in a landscape reminiscent of the Alps. .

Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1839. Octavo, two hand-coloured lithographic plates, manuscript presentation inscription to "Lys" (for Cornelius?) van der Hoop in Salzburg; a fine copy in the original printed green glazed-paper boards. Rare: a superb copy in the original boards with a family manuscript presentation. This small work by the botanist Willem Hendrik de Vriese is a detailed survey of the truly enormous number of exotic plants being grown at the Villa Spaarnberg, the country estate of Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), a wealthy Dutch banker with a passionate interest in exotic botany: the range of his interests is summed up by the two plants depicted on the fine lithographic plates (a Lily from Japan and a "Theophrasta" from Hispaniola). Significantly, van der Hoop and his gardeners had been assiduous in their collection of Australian plants, assembling a remarkable group for such an early date, especially in a continental garden: by our count no fewer than 188 are listed, from grevilleas and… Read More