Books

An educational toy for children, designed as a cyclorama - a card theater featuring rotating images in the center. It represents dramatic scenes with heroic Muslims and was created during the German economic growth interest in North Africa, especially in Egypt. Accompanied by a rare original pamphlet addressing the connection between voice and visual effect.

[Protocol for the Reception of Heads of Foreign Mission at the Imperial Court]   8°, [4 pp.], original pink wrappers with lettering (wrappers with tiny folds, but overall in a good condition).   The manual in French language describes the diplomatic rules for foreign ambassadors, ministers, hereditary princes and officials at the Ottoman Imperial court.  

An exceedingly rare survivor - 1 of only 2 known examples - an official, authoritative account of the efforts of the crusading physician Henry Nicholls to combat the scourge of Yaws, a highly infectious disease that was then ravaging the working population of the Caribbean island of Dominica; here Nicholls details the disease’s origins, symptoms, pathology, diagnoses, and treatments, and…

  A small collection of rare ephemera gives an insight of a short- lived Don Cossacks Choir “Ataman General Kaledin”, founded in Munich under the influence of the Serge Jaroff’s Choir by a White Russian émigré Nicolas Nikolaïevitch von Leuchtenberg.

  A rare school book of geography, printed in Slovenian language, in a DP camp in Spittal, Austria, by the refugees from Slovenia two years after WWII. 

8°. 85 pp., [3], original printed wrappers (uncut example, small tears and folds in the corner, wrappers slightly dusty with minor tears in the spine).

Istanbul: A. H. Boyacıyan  - American Bible House 1880. 8°. XIX, 231 pp., [6 pp.], original blue cloth binding with debossed decoration and gilt lettering on the spine, old plate mounted on the inner side of the front cover, old list mounted on the rear free endpaper, old small annotations on the title page, otherwise in a good condition).

8°, [10 pp.] title page, colour plate and an introduction, 239 pp. with black and white illustrations, original illustrated wrappers (slightly age-toned and stained, small chips and folds in the corners and margins, old annotations in pencil on the first and last blank paper, wrappers slightly water-stained and tiny loss of paper on the spine, inside overall in a good,…

  [Hitler and the National Socialism]   The first separately printed biography of Adolf Hitler in Turkish language, with a critical analysis of the National socialism and a problem of anti-Semitism, published in the year, when Hitler was elected a chancellor. Signed by the author   8°, 147 pp., with interleaved sepia photographs, contemporary green cloth binding with gilt lettering…

  12°, [4 pp.] title and introduction, 338 pp., [2 pp.], contemporary black half goat with gold lines on the spine and a small round paper label on the side, black cloth boards, speckled edges (internally crisp and clean, endpapers slightly age-toned, spine slightly rubbed and with small cracks, endpapers with annotations in pencil, red and bron ink, cracks in…

  A detailed book on the early military history of the Arab World, centered on Mecca   8°, 254 pp., [2 pp.], 3 interleaved folding maps, original illustrated wrappers (wrappers with minor foxing and wear to the edges, one map split in the fold, but overall in a good condition).  

روبرتسون نام مورف مشهورك مولفاتندن يكى دنيانلر كشفنه داتر اولان تاريخى اولوب انجمن دانشك اعضاً خارجيه سنده و باب عالى ترجمه اوطه سى خلفاسنده عبدالغفار انيس بنده لرى انكليز لسانزه ترجمه اتمشدر Histoire de la découverte du nouveau monde p. Robertson traduite p. Enis Abdoulgaffar effendi membre de l’académie turqe en 1269 de l’Hegir – cet ouvrage est traduit de…

  A first issue of an exceedingly rare ephemeral Ottoman magazine, with possibly largest lithographed map of the world before the appearance of the late Ottoman chromolithographed atlases.   8°, 40 pp. with lithographed black and white plates, coloured folding lithographed map, 25 x 39 cm, original green wrappers with lettering on the inner sides (repaired tear in the folding…

  A rare complete set of three Communist newspapers, published in Paris in 1910 and 1911, by the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party in exile, includes articles by Lenin, who lived in there at the time.

[The Earthquake of Ljubljana and its Causes. A Lecture Held at the Conference of the Association for Natural Science for Styria in April 20th, 1895]   A rare speech on the Ljubljana earthquake of 1895, held in Graz by a geologist Rudolf Hoernes    8°. 61 pp., [2 pp.] blank, old blue wrappers (minor staining and foxing, wrappers with tiny…

  [Tarih-i İstikbâl. Mesaif-i Siyasiye / Reception History. Political Issues]   A charming late Ottoman binding made of Ebru – or Islamic marbled paper   8°. 208 pp., contemporary marbled paper boards with envelope flaps and brown calf spines (last 15 pages slightly age-toned and water stained, binding with minor wear, otherwise in a good condition).  

  An exceedingly rare mimeographed illustrated book on the economy in agriculture, made for an Ottoman school with a stunning multicolour title page showcasing a well-managed farm   8°: 422 pp., [2 pp.] index, mimeographed text with illustrations, charts and vignettes, illustrated title page, old corrections and annotations in pencil and blue ink, original blue cloth with debossed ornaments (minor…

  Extremely rare – 1 of only 3 known examples – an ‘Edital’ (Notice) broadside issued by the exiled Portuguese royal court in Brazil that encourages the cultivation of plants that have pharmacological and industrial uses, part of Brazil’s revolutionary economic liberalization programme overseen by the ‘Real Junta do Commercio’, published in Rio de Janeiro by the Impressão Regia, Brazil’s…

  An indispensable and highly sophisticated primary account tracking the interconnected geopolitical and cultural ties of the Nile Valley, written during the complex dual governance of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium.  

  8°, 184 pp. with black and white illustrations, original illustrated wrappers, later spine (small tears in margins, small patches with loss of text due to glue on three pages replaced with manuscript in pencil, otherwise in a good condition).  

  A very rare and important Arabic language school atlas of Egypt, commissioned by the country’s Education Ministry and Ministry of Finance, emblematic of the country’s emerging national awakening whereby Egyptians gradually regained control over their country’s economy and institutions from the British quasi-colonial regime; in this vein, such cartographic works in the Arabic language, made for the use of…

  [The Pocket Island and Other Stories]   Signed by the author   8°, 194 pp., [2 pp.], original illustrated wrappers (wrappers with a tiny chip and repairs on the spine, inside a good, uncut examples, author’s dedication and signature on the title page).  

A rare and important work on Demotic script, the ‘keystone’ that linked ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics to the medieval world, which permitted the legendary philologist Jean-François Champollion to decipher the Rosetta Stone; the present study written by his brother, the archaeologist Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac, is largely based upon the late Jean-François’s work, and critically emphasized the alphabetical nature of the script and…

This is the extremely rare first edition of the Italian Navy’s sea chart of stretch of the Somali coast around El Ataleh, some ways up from Mogadishu.          Zincograph (Good, but with noticeable wear along old folds with some toning in upper area), 63 x 59 cm (25 x 23 inches).  

An exceedingly rare, nearly complete set of 184 issues (of 186) of one of the pioneering Colombian magazines, promoting contemporary literature, extra illustrated with four lithographs by Manuel Doroteo Carvajal Marulanda.

A unique private photo album representing the collection of works by Austrian-Hungarian artist Elisabeth Neumayer-Somossy, whose creations transitioned from applied arts to highly valued artworks.

MÜHENDIS MEKTEBI İKTISAD CEMIYETI [Ottoman Society of Engineering and Economy]. Hasan RASIM - Hüseyin HILMI - Osman NURI (ed.). VARIOUS AUTHORS. [Genç mühendis / Young Engineer] Istanbul: [Various Publishers] 1324-1330 [1909-1914] 26 issues (of 62) in one volume, 4°: Nos. 1-26, each with 8 pp., nos. 25 and 26 with 16 pp. each, contemporary faux alligator skin card binding (no.…

  The two books published by the Ottoman Navy Press present the latest tactics, techniques and constructions on the field of naval warfare and defense.   2 volumes bound-in-one, Small 4°, [8 pp.], 163 pp.,13 illustrations of naval battles on thick paper, separated with blank papers. [8 pp.], 142 pp., [2 pp.], 6 folding plates. Contemporary black cloth boards with…

Isidoro OLVERA Crespo (1815 - 1859). Mexico City: Imprenta de J.M. Lara, 1851.    8° (21.5 x 13.5 cm): [4], 119, [3] pp., plus, errata leaf, bound in modern quarter calf over cloth with gilt title to spine (Very Good, overall clean and crisp, just some areas of very light toning) (#70664).   Very Rare – a fascinating and unusual treatise…

میرزا علی آشتیانی Mirza Ali Mostoufi bin Yusof Ashtiani, also known as Meykadeh میکده, (1253-1322 Author; Mohammad-Mahdi al-Golpayegani; Mostafa, Illustrator. [Chahâr fasl-e Meykade / The Four Seasons of Mikdeh also meaning The Four Seasons of a Tavern] Tehran: 1307 [1889]. Large 8°, 223 pp. [1 pp.] imprint, lithographed text with 31 illustrations, later brown cloth binding (minor age-toning and staining,…

  A first and only translation of Les fleurs du mal to Esperanto was published in La Laguna on Tenerife Island in 1957. 

An unusual illustrated work on botany was originally written in Esperanto by a Danish agronomist and Esperantist Paul de Neergaard.

  An uncommon collection of Esperanto literature and poetry by Chinese authors, was published in Beijing in 1989.

  An uncommon translation to Esperanto of the Japanese short story Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa from 1927 was published in Tokyo in 1954. 

A very rare book of Lithuanian folk songs, translated to Esperanto, was published in Kaunas on the eve of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, and in the last year of the Lithuanian Esperanto Association before WWII.

  This classics of the Esperanto Anthology was published in 1958 by the Esperanto publishing house Stafeto, in La Laguna, Tenerife. 

  An uncommon translation of De lycksaliges ö by August Strindberg in Esperanto was published in Leipzig in 1926. 

  A rare book with art deco cover by an Austrian author Erich Kilian in Esperanto, was published in Cologne a year before the Nazis forbade publications in Esperanto. 

  A first edition of an Esperanto translation of a report on concentration camps in Poland by a Polish autor Zofia Nałkowska.

  An uncommon work by a Danish scientist in Esperanto with scientific explanations on the development racial distinctions, was published on the eve of WWII and was opposing racism. 

  An uncommon translation of a short story from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes was translated to Esperanto and published by a private press in 1955 in Spain. 

  A collection of early Esperanto translations of poetry from the Antiquity to modern times was made by a Hungarian Esperantist Kálmán Kalocsay.

  A signed copy of an uncommon poetry book was written and published in Esperanto by a British author Marjorie Boulton. 

  A rare book of poems by a Brazilian Esperantist Geraldo Mattos was published at the 100th anniversary of birth of Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof.

  An uncommon first edition of poems, originally written in Esperanto by a Hungarian author Káláman Kalocsay (1891-1976) was published in Budapest in 1931 and is considered one of the finest collections of original Esperanto poetry.

  An uncommon illustrated scientific book,  written in Esperanto, includes numerous original articles on biology, chemistry, geology, linguistics and other topics. 

  A rare theatre play by Jakob David Applebaum was originally published in Esperanto by Stafato publishing house in La Laguna, Tenerife. 

  A very rare copy of selected poems by an Estonian author Marie Under in Esperanto, bound in a decorative art-deco wrappers, was published in Tallinn in 1929.  

An Esperanto translation of a Dutch novel 1872 Akbar. Oosterse roman in a stunning art deco binding, was translated by Julia Isbrücker and J. R. G. Isbrücker in Cseh method in 1936.  

  This is a first edition of a famous Esperanto book by Lajos Tárkony on contemporary Esperanto authors, published in Budapest in 1932.

  A rare first edition of an Esperanto book of short stories by a Swiss Esperantist Reto Rossetti, published in Stafeto Esperanto publishing house in La Laguna on Tenerife Island in 1955.

  An Esperanto translation of a Wilhelm Hauff's novel Die Sängerin was published in Berlin by Friedrich Ellersiek shortly after WWI, in 1921. 

  A fascinating and important intelligence telegram, sent from the Royal Yugoslavian Embassy in Bern, Switzerland to the Yugoslavian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade, correctly predicting that Germany planned to attack England in September 1940.

Copper engraving and etching, 39 x 26 cm (15.3 x 10.2 inches) (minor foxing, but overall in a good condition).

  A beautifully designed book with expressionistic design of text and drawings in a mint condition was designed by a Slovenian academic artist France Kralj in 1921, who was at the time an active member of contemporary art and political movements.

  8°: 156 pp. with black and white images, dark green illustrated wrappers (good overall, small tears, small folds and chips to corners, wrappers slightly stained and water-stained, tiny tears and loss of paper to spine, corner of front cover repaired).  

  A beautifully designed large book on the growth of the Fascist industry was published at the 10th anniversary of the rule of the National Fascist Party in Italy.  

  A scarce catalogue listing works of 12 Yugoslav female artists, held in Ljubljana in late 1939 in the Jakopič Pavilion.

A handsome example of an early lithographed edition of a divan, written by an Ottoman female author Leyla Hanım   8°, 110 pp. lithographed text, [2 pp.] blan, two title pages with coloured and additionally illustrated headers, gilt lines to opposite pages, contemporary embossed black boards, later spine (title page with a title in Latin alphabet in ballpoint pen and…

  A manuscript travelogue of Europe with stunning illustrations, made by a female author   Oblong 8°. [5 pp.] blank, [16 pp.] manuscript in black ink with illustrations in gouache, pencil and pencil, accompanied with yellow highlights and toning, illustrated titles and initials, yellow endpapers, [15 pp.] blank, dark green washed silk binding with gold tooling and lettering, gilt edges…

An unusual early feminist anti-Hitler publication from 1934 was written by a famous Slovenian / Yugoslavian female writer, who later became a partisan fighter, prisoner of the  Ravensbrück concentration camp and after the war a victim of the new Yugoslav regime.   8°. 96 pp. with black and white title page, original illustrated wrappers (light foxing, mostly to the wrappers…

  A collection of 6 Ottoman books on modern Turkish women is bound in original silk bindings with vivid 1920s patterns, which emphasize the presence of a woman as a central motif.    

  [Redd-i Renan. İslâmiyet ve Fünûn /  Answer to Renan. Islam and Arts]   12°, 76 pp., [2 pp] blank, later marbled paper wrappers with mounted original cover (one page with a sentence underlined in red ink, front cover with minor foxing, otherwise in a good condition).  

A rare miniature Ottoman calendar for women was published in 1916 during World War I by the first Ottoman Muslim feminist press, which also printed a newspaper under the same name, Kadınlar Dünyası (Women’s World). 7 x 5,5 cm (2.8 x 2.2 inches), [64 pp.], calendar with blank pages verso, portraits of contemporary leaders and dignitaries, original illustrated covers mounted…

An unusual work in German language by a retired professor of zoology Alexander von Brandt, searching for the explanation for the female liberation, especially sexual liberation, and feminism through the history, evolution, botanical and zoological examples.   8°. VII, 202 pp. with black and white images, [2pp.], 4 black and white plates, original orange wrappers with lettering (sporadic pages cut…

  First Ottoman book on feminism   12°, 85 pp., [3 pp.], contemporary pink wrappers (very good, wrappers with minor scratches and tiny tears).

  A complete set of rare Slovenian magazine on social issues, published between 1918 and 1919, was edited by a women's rights activist, educator and politician Alojzija Štebi.

  A superb example, handsomely bound in a fine three quarter blue morocco, probably from the library of Napoleon II.

The Pedagogy of Families, or Education and Teaching Made Accessible to all Fathers of Families   Book on pedagogy for fathers with a stunning binding, from a library of the Belgian king Leopold II.   Small 8°, [4 pp.], VIII, 268 pp., contemporary red hard-grained morocco with gilt and blind tooling and lettering, gilt floral turn-ins, gilt edges, white moiré…

  [A Tribute to His Royal Highness the Duke of Braband, Crown Prince of the Belgians, at the Occasion of his Eighteenth Birthday. Apr 9, 1853]   An ode in honour of the Duke of Brabant, the future Leopold II of Belgium, written for his 18th birthday. An example with a stunning watered-silk binding from the king’s personal library.  …

A religious work in a fine binding from the Fürstenberg library at the Castle Donaueschingen.   Small 8°, [2 pp.] blank, XXIV, 246 pp., [4 pp.], blank, full green calf with blind and gold tooling, spine with raised bands and gold lettering and tooling, original dark red endpapers, gilt edges  (old tiny sporadic annotations in text and drawings (map and…

A beautifully executed manuscript diploma for Duke of Brabant, the future Belgian king Leopold II, the honorary president of the Philharmonic Society of Wavre, Belgium.   Small Folio (35,7 x 22,6 cm), [8 pp.] blank, 2 pages with manuscript recto, blank, contemporary red hard-grained morocco with gold and blind tooling and lettering, gilt floral turn-ins, gilt edges, white moiré paper…

  A thesis on the first autopsy ever conducted in the Ottoman Empire, performed by Karl Ambros Bernard in 1841, at the Austrian Hospital in Istanbul, written by Hayrullah Efendi, a future Ottoman diplomat and prolific author   8°: [4 pp., index], 149 pp., 6 folding charts, contemporary marbled boards, restored calf spine, old paste down tile to cover bearing…

Very rare and historically significant – “the first Brazilian pharmacological handbook”, published in Rio de Janeiro, and authored by José Maria Bomtempo, the chief physician to the Portuguese-Brazilian royal court and an internationally-renowned authority on tropical medicine; the fascinating and surprisingly readable work was intended to educate military doctors working in the field in Brazil on how to identify flora,…

    [Nukhbat al-talim. Tabur talimi also Nuhbetü't-talim. Tabur Talimi / The Elite Education. Education for Battalions]   8°, [1] title page, 13 pp., 79 numbered lithographed plates contemporary binding with marbled boards, calf spine with gilt decoration, lettering and ornaments from original wrappers mounted on boards (binding with rubbed spots, spine with small cracks and chips, ca 10 tiny…

  Folio, 42 chromolithographed double-paged maps, original chromolithographed illustrated boards, recent black cloth spine, original green endpapers (boards with minor wear, light staining, light water-staining in the lower white margin of the rear cover, tiny chips to the margins of the front cover,  spine replaced, crack in the joints repaired, a tiny tear in the Great Britain map).  

  [Primary Atlas of the World. For use in Egyptian Schools. First Edition]   First Egyptian modern school atlas of the world, published in the year of the country’s independence, in 1922.   Square 4°. Title page, 35 pp. with full page colour lithographed maps, bound in original blue card covers with title printed on front cover (title page little…

  Very rare and historically significant - a gorgeous unsophisticated example of the first Nama (Khoekhoe) language primer and one of the earliest language primers published in Sub-Saharan Africa, the subtitle of which translates as ‘Shouting Together and Reading Book’; Nama, a non-Bantu language with its signature ‘click consonants’ is spoken by the Nama, Damara and Haiǁom peoples who are…

A rare first Ottoman Book on Darwinism, printed in Bitola.   8°. 200 pp. with three interleaved images, [4 pp.], contemporary brown embossed covers, red label with gilt lettering in Ottoman on the spine, endpapers with art nouveau pattern (little age-toned and stained, binding slightly rubbed on corners, but otherwise in a good conditon).

The first printed translation of the Bible into Ottoman language and the basics for all the later Turkish translations of the text. Printed in Paris with 17th century Arabic types, previously used in Napoleon’s Cairo press and one of the most elegant types made in the West.   Two volumes in one. 4°. [4 pp.], 7 pp., 984 pp. [2…

8°. [8] pp. index, [3 pp.] introduction, 454 pp. letterpress, 24 lithographed folding plated with 337 images, contemporary dark brown morocco with gold tooling and title on the spine, contemporary marbled endpapers, marbled edges (binding slightly scuffed and rubbed with small loss of material on the spine, cracks along the hinges, small scribbles to the rear of the front loose…

A milestone of children’s education in the Ottoman Empire – the first printed Ottoman primer and the first primer with modern educational methods for teachers.   Large 8°, 68 pp. lithographed text with blank page after the front wrapper probably counting as p. 1, original illustrated pink wrappers, yellow sheet with printed instructions and black cut outs bound after the…

  First Soviet historical atlas, made by one of the leading historians Konstantin Kurjashov and accompanied with an introduction by a pioneering historian of the Russian revolutionary movement Mikhail Pokrovsy, glorifying Russian economy of the past and presenting the newly founded Soviet Union as a historical self sufficient formation.   Oblong folio, 12 pp. XVIII with 58 numbered maps, printed…

Two ephemeral advertisements for the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an early African-American a cappella group that introduced spiritual music originating from enslaved people to audiences worldwide.

  A rare Polish edition of Animal Farm was printed in London for the Polish market, where the work was banned   8°, 94 pp., [2 pp.], original illustrated wrappers (Very Good, minor damages in the margins of the wrappers).  

  A handsome, early 19th century illustrated manuscript pamphlet in French language explaining various methods of fortunetelling.   Small 8°, [96 pp.] manuscript in French with illustrations and charts in black ink, contemporary wall-paper stenciled wrappers with manuscript label in black ink pasted on the front cover, originally bound with a linen string (minor, sporadic staining to the corners of…

  Large 8°, 48 pp., [8 pp.], printed in black grey and red on thick paper, with mounted portrait of Franz Kafka under grey flap and 4 original linocuts in grey and black, original printed wrappers over blank paper boards, 215 numbered example of 296 (unbound as originally published, minor foxing, binding little rubbed with light staining and age-toning).  

  A first Ottoman translation of the Freud’s groundbreaking work on psychoanalysis, sexual origins of neurosis and the Oedipus complex, written by the pioneer of the modern Ottoman psychology   Small 4°: 57 pp., original tan wrappers with lettering (wrappers with light staining, later spine  

8°, 16 pp. with black and white illustrations, original illustrated wrappers, stapled (tiny tears in margins of wrappers, otherwise in a good condition) (#70348).

[Çanakkale Boğazı ve civarı / Dardanelles Strait and its Vicinity]   12°.  166 pp., [2 pp.] blank, original wrappers with tile on the cover and decoration on the back cover, recent black cloth binding with gilt lettering on the cover and spine and debossed decoration (slightly age-toned and stained, small cracks in the inner side of the original cover, otherwise…