Search Results: Authors starting with S from Edmund Brumfitt Rare Books Ltd

4to, pp. [vii], [i] blank, 426; with eleven folding leaves of plates; text within double border, woodcut printer's device on title-page; aside from very occasional spotting, clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary carta rustica, upper half of spine loose and chipped, and some wear to other extremities; book-label of the Prussian/Norwegian collector Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Brose on front paste-down.
Rare expanded and updated edition of this collection of the rules governing the conduct, organisation, and military exercises of the Venetian army, first published in 1724, updated in 1735, and here with a supplement dated December 28, 1752, continuously paginated but with its own title-page. All editions are very scarce.
The author, Johann Mathias von der Schulenberg (1661-1747) was a German aristocrat who spent the end of his military career in the Venetian army, serving during the siege of Corfu in 1716 before retiring to Venice in 1718 to establish a significant art collection, correspond with… Read More

Two volumes bound in one, 12mo, pp. [ii], viii, 243, [1] blank; [ii], 298; engraved title-pages to each volume, and occasional engraved head- and tailpieces and initials; occasional spotting, but largely clean and fresh; in contemporary sheep-backed boards; spine ruled in gilt with gilt lettering-piece; some wear and marking to spine and boards, upper joint cracked at foot; nonetheless an attractive copy.
First edition in French of Susan Smythies' second novel, The History of Lucy Wellers, which had first appeared in English in 1754.
Notable as the first novel to state on the title-page that it was 'Written by a Lady', Lucy Wellers tells the story of a girl, born to unknown parents, and her virtuous resistance to the advances of an unsuitable man, with the reward of a happy marriage to a well-off landowner. The translation is the work of Adrien-Nicolas Piédefer, marquis de La Salle, and is one of two to have appeared in the same year, with the other, by Eidous, being published in Lyon under the title… Read More

8vo, pp. 116; woodcut vignette on title; some light staining to last couple of leaves, but otherwise clean; crudely bound in recent maroon wrappers.

Very uncommon first Venetian printing of a surprisingly uncommon book, first published in Modena the previous year. One of the last works of the philosopher, translator, and sometime tutor of Manzoni, Francesco Soave (1743-1806).

In Italian philosophical circles, Soave had made his name with his translations of Locke in the 1770s, and his empiricist instincts are very much present in his treatment of Kant's philosophy. The dedication, to Francesco Melzi d'Eril, sets out Soave's stall, calling Kant's philosophy one 'that tends to destroy all the ideas and the maxims that had been most firmly established, both in the practical and in the speculative sciences'. Soave, noting that Kant had been largely ignored in France and Italy until the publication of Villers' Philosophie de Kant ou Principes fondamentaux de la philosophie transcendale in 1801, relies… Read More

8vo, pp. xiv, 463, [1] errata; some browning and spotting throughout; in contemporary blue wrappers, stiffened with reused leaves from an index; printed paper label on spine, slightly chipped; some light wear but still an attractive copy.
First edition, uncommon, of this exhaustive dictionary of terms relating to agriculture, rural and domestic economy, medicine, botany, chemistry, hunting, and other land sciences.
Compiled by three contributors to Rozier's Nouveau Cours complet ou Dictionnaire universel d'Agriculture pratique, which had appeared the previous year, the Vocabulaire portatif offers a much more comprehensive overview of matters affecting rural life, in particular emphasising the ways in which scientific advances of the last couple of centuries could be applied to the practice of agriculture and animal husbandry, drawing on the work of Duhamel, Parmentier, Cadet-des-Vaux and others. However, these advances are of little use to the lay person who does not understand the terminology:… Read More

FIRST ITALIAN TRANSLATION.
8vo, pp. 118 (first leaf blank); some spotting and dustoiling in places throughout; in the original printed orange wrappers; somewhat worn, but still an attractive copy.
Uncommon Italian translation of Johann Georg's Sulzer's Versuch einiger Moralischen Betrachtungen über die Werke der Natur, which had first appeared in Berlin in 1745.
Seeking to draw lessons about moral philosophy from the physical sciences, Sulzer reflects on the scale of the universe, the ordering of natural phenomena, the ways in which apparent disorder can be explained, and various mysteries of nature, as well as the analogies that can be drawn between the nourishment of the body and that of the soul.
Sulzer (1720-1779) began his career as a mathematician, before becoming more interested both in the physical sciences and in philosophy. He is probably best known now for his works on aesthetics, notably his Allgemeine Therie der schönen Künste (1771-74). Although he had published works on subjects… Read More