The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.. London: Strahan and Cadell, 1776-1788

First editions of all six volumes of the most celebrated historical work in English literature. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall covers the thirteen centuries from the age of Trajan to the fall of Constantinople with unmatched erudition, clarity, and organization. “Gibbon brought a width of vision and a critical mastery of the available sources which have not been equaled to this day; and the result was clothed in an inimitable prose” (PMM).

$28,000

La Historia di Italia. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1561

FIRST EDITION. A “masterpiece of scientific history,” Guicciardini’s History of Italy was “undoubtedly the greatest historical work that had appeared since the beginning of the modern era. It remains the most solid monument of Italian reason in the 16th century, the final triumph of that Florentine school of philosophical historians which included Machiavelli …” (Britannica, 11th ed.).

$28,000

“Poetry of Flowers” autograph manuscript watercolor album. No place, ca. 1820s

This splendid album of botanical watercolors and the “poetry of flowers,” the product of years of reading, writing, and painting, was created by Lady Laetitia Emerson Tennent. She collected several hundred poems and lines of verse concerning flowers and the language of flowers written by poets from Shakespeare and Spenser to Wordsworth and other Romantics, the famous and the obscure.

$27,000

De Bello Gottorum. Rome: Johann Besicken for Jacobo Mazzocchi, 20 June 1506

First edition of Procopius’s Gothic Wars. This work is our principal source for Roman history of the 6th century and the rule of Justinian I.

$22,000

Catalogue of the celebrated collection of works of art and vertu known as “The Vienna Museum,” the property of Messrs. Lowenstein Brothers, of Frankfort-on-the-Main. London: Christie, Manson & Woods, 1860

This important volume is “the earliest photographically illustrated auction catalogue” (Gernsheim, Incunabula, 122). It contains 36 photographs on salted paper by Hermann Emden of Frankfurt.

$12,000

Teletype covering the Normandy landings on D-Day. Associated Press, 5 and 6 June 1944

First announcement of the D-Day landings, perhaps the most important event of the 20th century.

$9,500

The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. With the precedent Passages, and Actions, that contributed thereunto, and the happy End, and Conclusion thereof by the King’s blessed Restoration. Oxford: Printed at the Theater, 1702-1704

FIRST EDITION. A magnificent set of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, “the most valuable of all the contemporary accounts of the Civil Wars. … His characters are not simply bundles of characteristics, but consistent and full of life, sketched sometimes with affection, sometimes with light humor” (DNB).

$7,800

The Historie of Twelve Caesars … newly translated into English, by Philemon Holland. London: Matthew Lowne, 1606

First edition in English of Suetonius’ dramatic biographies of the first “Twelve Caesars,” translated by Philemon Holland. This entertaining work is a principal source for one of the most eventful and scandalous periods in ancient history. Suetonius is the first biographer in Latin whose works have come down to us.

$7,500

[Poster.] Nuzhno usilit’ i ukrepit’ internatsional’nye proletarskie sviazi rabochego klassa SSSR a rabochim klassom burzhuaznykh stran [“We Must Reinforce and Consolidate the International Proletarian Links of the Working Class of the USSR with the Working Class of the Bourgeois Countries” – Stalin]. Moscow, Izostat, 20 October 1940

This dramatic poster, similar in style to the Socialist Realist graphics found in USSR In Construction, exhorts the people to support MOPL, the International Organization of Helpers of Fighters for the Revolution. The figures represent international workers united with the Soviets in the heroic struggle for the Revolution. The poster was printed during the last year of Lissitzky’s life while he worked for the Soviet state with the sure knowledge that his friends and colleagues were the victims of Stalin’s purges.

$6,800

View of Rome from the Tiber River with Castel Sant’Angelo and Saint Peter’s Basilica. Rome, ca. 1870

$4,500