Search Results: Titles starting with E from Hordern House Rare Books

London: William H. Allen and Co, 1837. Octavo, with four folding maps; a fine copy in full navy gilt morocco. A fine copy of this engaging account of travels in the East Indies, especially Java and the Malay Peninsula. The voyage that Earl describes started from Western Australia, and his appendix includes "Observations on the Unexplored Parts of North and North-Western Australia". The most important section of the book is the long description of Singapore and discussion of its prospects. Earl adds a 14-page article at the end, "Observations on the Unexplored Parts of North and North-western Australia". Many years later he wrote the Handbook for Colonists in Tropical Australia (published Singapore 1862), a useful book in the settlement of the Northern Territory. . Provenance: Geoffrey Ingleton (renowned Sydney collector, d.1998; with bookplate).

Lyon: Anton Hars, 1616. Vellum aged, preliminaries rubbed and some creasing to the blank margins, overall good in original state.. Folio, engraved title; contemporary vellum. Old legal text concerning the Economy of the Law; bound in full vellum, title printed in red and black with ornate woodblock device. .

Greifswald: F.W. Kunicke, 1827. Folio, with engraved plate by G. Eduard Müller, some foxing; a good copy preserved in recent paper boards, blue morocco label to spine. A lovely copy of this rare work on the Minke Whale, here referred to by the now obsolete classification of Balaena rostrata Fabr. var. major. The beauty of this work is the elegant engraving by G. Eduard Müller in Berlin. One of the smaller Baleen Whales, so-called for the plates they use to "filter feed", the Minke was first described by Fabricius in 1780 (hence the classification by Rosenthal), but is better known from Lacépède's 1804 description in his Histoire naturelle des cétacés. As the letterpress explains, this work was prompted by the stranding of the whale on the coast of the Baltic island of Rügen, a chance which gave natural historians a rare opportunity to study the animal in detail. Rosenthal published this rare work as a festschrift for Dr Siegfried Joachim Meyer, the mayor of Greifswald. He also wrote a small… Read More

London: Company of Stationers, 1614. Title-page discoloured with some loss of the fore-edge, neatly laid down, preliminary leaves thumbed, frayed at corners and generally a bit damped, last few leaves of the second book chipped at corners with seventeenth century manuscript notations; overall good in worn contemporary limp vellum with faint manuscript lettering to spine.. Two works bound together, small octavo; title, 634, [88] pp.; 94 pp. (Duties of Constables); contemporary limp vellum with faint manuscript lettering to spine. A handsome compendium of two early legal manuals: these early seventeenth-century handbooks of common law were prepared for local magistrates, at the time known as Justices of the Peace. The Eirenarcha was written by English magistrate and luminary William Lambard (1536-1601); the work is remarkable for its clarity, easy style and use of pragmatic precedent. The author was a Justice of the Peace for Kent and used his considerable personal experience to produce a common law… Read More

Lisbon: na Typografia da Mesma Academia , 1848. Quarto, 11 pages, an unusually tall copy, uncut, on laid watermarked paper in plain wrappers. Scarce printing of a paper presented in Portuguese to the Lisbon Royal Academy of Science in 1843 on the life of Sir Joseph Banks. Manoel Maria José da Costa was an influential man of letters and scientist, for many years secretary of the Academy. Although not as well-known as Banks, his writings show a similar range and deal with a broad variety of scientific subjects, so we can infer that he felt an affinity with the subject of his presentation, the illustrious Banks. This rare pamphlet was apparently not known to the Banks scholar Harold B. Carter for his Sir Joseph Banks... A guide to biographical and bibliographical sources. .

Halle: Hemmerde and Schwetschke, 1788. Octavo, old stamp on title, minor paper flaw on one leaf; a very good copy in contemporary buff glazed boards, spine lettered in gilt at head. An attractive copy of this very scarce publication, not recorded by the Cook bibliographers Beddie or Holmes, and very important for the natural history of Australia and the southern hemisphere. Forster's manual on biological classification is based on the new species and genera seen by him and his son while naturalists on Cook's second voyage. Forster discusses the voyage in detail, and describes how parts of the work were composed during it. The text is intended to accommodate the significant expansion of the natural kingdom, and particularly the problems of description and classification arising from antipodean species. It presents a vivid picture of the collecting activities, methods, and constraints of the two naturalists. 'We have several useful post-voyage statements concerning the way in which Forster and his… Read More

Paris: Panckoucke, Agasse, 1825. A good set overall; some bindings a little worn, a couple of spines and joints shaken.. Nine quarto volumes, comprising seven text volumes and two volumes containing 397 engraved illustrations; in contemporary quarter roan with red labels. The first major comparative study to illustrate Australian insects. Published over a span of almost two decades, this is an important work of entomology. A product of the high enlightenment, the Insectes was originally included within the famous Encyclopédie méthodique and the breadth of the manifest learning is phenomenal, a testament to the spirit of the enlightenment. Although the entomological works of John Lewin and Edward Donovan (both published 1805) have rightly been accorded iconic status in Australian natural history, this work by Olivier has not been given much attention despite the fact that the first four volumes date from the last decade of the eighteenth century. Scores of Australian insects are illustrated here… Read More

Paris: Didot Fréres, 1836. Engraving, 135 x 220 mm.; very good condition. Charming engraved plate depicting an Australian indigenous tomb, complete with carved trees and unusually formed earthen walls. Although the image is somewhat incongruous as a depiction of an Australian Aboriginal tomb, it does include dendroglyphs on two of the trees pictured. The plate is taken directly from Domeny de Rienzi's Océanie ou Cinquième partie du monde, revue géographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronésie, de la Polynésie et de Mélanésie (Paris 1836). This book condensed and clarified information and images from the great French voyages of the first decades of the nineteenth-century including Freycinet, Duperrey and Dumont d'Urville. .

Paris: Didot Fréres, 1836. In good condition.. Engraving, 135 x 220 mm. Charming engraved plate depicting the memorial to La Pérouse erected by the Dumont d'Urville expedition to Vanikoro. The plate was published in Domeny de Rienzi's Océanie ou Cinquième partie du monde, revue géographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronésie, de la Polynésie et de Mélanésie (Paris 1836). This book condensed and clarified information and images from the great French voyages of the first decades of the nineteenth-century including Freycinet, Duperrey and Dumont d'Urville. .

Paris: Didot Fréres, 1836. Engraving, 135 x 220 mm.; very good condition. Charming engraved plate depicting sailors filling casks at New Ireland, Papua, from Domeny de Rienzi's Océanie ou Cinquième partie du monde, revue géographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronésie, de la Polynésie et de Mélanésie (Paris 1836). This book condensed and clarified information and images from the great French voyages of the first decades of the nineteenth-century including Freycinet, Duperrey and Dumont d'Urville. .

London: Printed for John Bill, 1614. A few stains and slight scorch-mark to the spine, loose at front hinge as illustrated, but in excellent original condition.. Small quarto, bound with another work in contemporary limp vellum; boxed. First edition: Brerewood, professor of astronomy and scholar in many fields, discusses the tongues in which the liturgy is celebrated, and identifies the parts of the world where Christians live, and the other parts where 'idolaters' flourish. There are digressions on the height of mountains, the depth of the sea, and the dimensions of whales and elephants. As well as speculations on the size of the "Great Southern Continent..." there are numerous references to America, including reports on the religious practices encountered by Spanish and Portuguese explorers, a report of converts "above the Bay of California, of whom as yet, histories make so little report, that of their number I can make no estimate", and an attempt to prove that the indigenous Americans were… Read More

Stuttgart and Tübingen: sumtibus J.G. Cottae, 1833-, 1850. Six volumes, octavo, each volume with both series title and individual title bound in, supplement volume with 40 plates, some toning and spotting; an excellent set in contemporary tan quarter calf, gilt. A magisterial six-volume work, heavily indebted to Robert Brown, and bringing plant catalogues into the modern scientific era. Hundreds of Australian plants are included, the vast majority now with carefully argued notes and great lists of references. Carl Sigismund Kunth (1788-1850) was a German botanist who worked closely with Alexander von Humboldt on plants from North and South America; this work is in fact dedicated to Humboldt. Kunth worked with both Humboldt and Bonpland in Paris from 1813-1819, before returning to become Professor of Botany at Berlin University in 1820, where he also became attached to the Botanical Garden. His collection became part of the Royal Herbarium in Berlin after his death. Where copies are seen at all, it… Read More

London: J. Wright, 1734. Folio; a large copy, disbound; quarter morocco box. First edition, and a fine copy of one of Pope's most celebrated invectives, addressed to his physician and life-long friend, Arbuthnot. It famously contains Pope's savaging of Queen Caroline's confidant and society gossip Lord Hervey, who is named "Paris" here but "Sporus" in subsequent editions: "Let Paris tremble" - "What? that Thing of silk, Paris, that mere white Curd of Ass's milk? Satire or Shame alas! Can Paris feel? Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?" .

London: R. Ware, 1754. Rebacked retaining original boards; title page a little browned, yet a very good copy overall.. Octavo; original boards. Eleventh edition. Copy of David Dundas with bookplate. Historiographer royal to Charles II, and author of many historical works, it is nonetheless this work upon which his 'enduring title to literary fame rests' (CHEL). Written during his imprisonment in the 'Fleet' in the 1640s, it is an engaging, subtle and largely fictitious account of the political and social conditions of the day. .

West Brookfield: O.S. Cooke & Co., 1849. A wonderful copy.. Octavo, in original printed wrappers. Rare first edition of a radical American utopian tract. Greene (1818-1878) was a prominent American theorist and Unitarian minister, who published prolifically on the question of government and banking, as well as producing more esoteric works on the kabbala, transcendentalism and suffrage. His long-held beliefs regarding the importance of the individual and ownership of labour, led to his postulation of the urgent necessity for a community of equals providing non-competitive support for each other. This reinstatement of private property is an explicit rejection of Socialism, which he labels in this work 'the only political system which presents no good points.' Instead, he calls for a profoundly American apotheosis of the republican ideal: 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: this is the mystical triangle which ought to be inscribed on the colors of every republic.' Only the presence of all three of these… Read More

Avignon and Paris: Froulle, 1779. Spine label chipped but in fine condition otherwise.. Octavo, with an engraved frontispiece view of Tahiti; a fine copy in contemporary speckled half calf. First edition: the very scarce and earliest separate serious work on Tahiti (predated only by the Omai-based fictions and the poetical satires on Joseph Banks); it is based for its facts on the reports of Wallis, Bougainville and Cook, and for its philosophy on Montesquieu and Rousseau. 'Taitbout's pamphlet is of interest, not for the originality of its ideas, but because it reveals how notions of geographical control deriving from Montesquieu and applied by the Forsters to the islanders of the Pacific, could provide a rational explanation for the soft primitivism with which Bougainville, Hawkesworth, Banks, Diderot, and others, had endowed the peoples of the Society Islands, and add point and fire to a revolutionary pamphlet...' (Bernard Smith, European vision and the South Pacific, 1985, p. 87). Tahiti was much… Read More

La Haye and Paris: Pierre Aillaud, 1786. Fine condition.. Octavo, [ii], 236 pp., uncut copy in original buntpapier wrappers. Curious and eclectic collection of essays on geography, astronomy, and recent voyage discoveries. The geographical sections are informed by the discoveries of Cook, La Pérouse and other explorers of the Pacific, and include the author's thoughts on the role of the South Seas and New Holland in a new understanding of the earth. Belair blends astronomy, discoveries and other scientific observations with excerpts from Voltaire and other poets. In the preface he discusses the implications of recent voyages to the Pacific Ocean, and in discussing the extent of the world's known and unknown oceans, Belair speculates on the vast undersea mountain chains that connect the continents and polar regions with New Holland. Pierre-Alexandre Julienne de Belair, was born in Paris in 1747 and rose to become a general during the defence of Paris against the Prussians in 1792. A gifted and… Read More

Paris & Bordeaux: Publications de la Société des Bibliophiles de Guyenne, 1873. First two leaves of the second volume a bit foxed but otherwise in very good condition, an attractive set.. Two volumes, octavo, handsome contemporary (? original) binding of quarter brown morocco and marbled boards, spine gilt between raised bands. The first critical edition of the Essais, published by the long-lasting Bordeaux-based learned society, the Bibliophiles de Guyenne (Guyenne is an archaic name for Aquitaine). The society remains active today. In 1980 Raymond Darricau wrote a study of this publication, "À l'origine des études montaignistes: la première édition critique des Essais (1580) publiée en 1870-1873 par la Société des Bibliophiles de Guyenne", which appears in Revue française d'histoire du livre (1980, pp. 421-457), as the society's Bulletin was renamed in the early 1970s. .

York: G. Peacock, 1793. Some light scattered foxing.. Quarto, with three folding plates, early marbled boards, calf spine renewed. A singular work written and published at the cusp of the fashion for the cultivation of imported exotics, which provides a most interesting overview of the state of play in England in the early 1790s. It concludes with a two-page notice on the "Directions for the Preservation of Seeds, &c." on long voyages. Richard Steele, a Yorkshire gardener who lived and worked around Thirsk, wrote this as "an attempt to aid in the management of that most elegantly-refined and fascinating department of the Garden, where the prodigious variety of rare plants that have been introduced into this kingdom, from the hot regions of the terraqueous globe, are deposited...". What is immediately noticeable is that while there are established collections from the East and West Indies, and while British gardens were beginning to have really substantial collections of Cape plants, there is still… Read More

London: Cresset Press, 1928. Large quarto; vellum, uncut and limited to 250 copies. Number 7 of an edition of 250: with the bookplate of Vyvyan Edwards. A beautiful copy of Bacon's Essayes, printed on Batchelor's Kelmscott hand-made paper, with titles and initials designed by Joscelyne Gaskin. .