We are excited to be heading north again today and tomorrow for the 2026 Edinburgh Book Fair, in its second year at the Intercontinental George Hotel in the New Town. Come see us at stand 14 and browse our selection of books, manuscripts, ephemera and more!
We are so proud to have been featured by Fill Refill for this World Book Day. Check our their interview with Eulalie here: www.fillrefill.co/books-rule-o...
We are excited to return to San Francisco for the 57th edition of the California International Antiquarian Book Fair, taking place at Pier 27, The Embarcadero from February 27 to March 1 2026. Come by and see us at booth 218! For a preview of our booth, explore our fair list here: buff.ly/VpJW4gn
The photographs take centre stage, showing not only an impressive array of canals, water supply systems, harbours, lighthouses, railway bridges, and tunnels, but also fascinating portraits of builders and engineers at work. For more info, visit our website here: buff.ly/vjv7fwP
The book opens with portraits of the civil engineer Robert Stephenson, showcases landmark constructions such as the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge and Montreal’s Victoria Bridge, and includes photographic collections of major engineering projects, such as the Paris metro, and the Panama Canal. 🧵2/3
We are thrilled to introduce Mark Andrew’s newest publication: The Photographer at Work: Documenting Civil Engineering 1853 to 1913. This beautifully designed book highlights the convergence of civil engineering and photography from 1853 to 1915, featuring over 400 photographic illustrations. 🧵1/3
Happy World Whale Day! This pamphlet is an account of the white beluga whale by Henry Lee of the Royal Aquarium in Brighton, the first beluga successfully transported to England.
Zand continued to practise as a physician in the Warsaw Ghetto; during the liquidation of the ghetto, she and the Jewish gynaecologist Zofia Garlicka, were caught by the Gestapo and taken to Pawiak prison, where Zand was executed the following day, aged fifty-nine.
In 1937 she was the sole Polish delegate to the Fourth International Conference of the
International Association of Women Physicians in Edinburgh. She vocally opposed eugenics, offered parenting advice to working-class families, and volunteered at the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw.
Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science! This work on the inferior olivary nucleus, a structure in the medulla, is the work of Polish-Jewish neurologist and advocate for women's rights Nathalie Zylberlast-Zand (1883–1942), founding member of the Association of Polish Female Physicians.
⚓🐬 Legendary Venetian printer Aldus Manutius died #onthisday in 1515. Pictured here is the iconic Aldine dolphin -and anchor-printer's device, associated with the adage 'festina lente' (make haste slowly).
A woodcut depicting Pope Gregory the ninth with the Papal tiara giving his decretals to a group of men.
How many tiaras? Three! It must be... POPE GREGORY IX and his decretals (Printed in Lyon, by Fradin in 1515) (new acquisition here at Spencer / @kulibraries.bsky.social from @quaritch1847.bsky.social) 📜 #bookhistory #booksky #libsky #rarebooks :
A hand-coloured woodcut of Salomon & Marcolf, from the popular Latin jest book recording their dialogues. Printed at Leipzig after 1488 & bought from @quaritch1847.bsky.social by @theulspeccoll.bsky.social in 1891. Now Inc.5.A.27.2[1067].
Beautiful!
Happy birthday to Virginia Woolf, born #onthisday in 1882!
📚 WOOLF, Virginia. Reviewing … with a Note by Leonard Woolf. London, Hogarth Press, 1939.
Happy birthday to chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur, born #onthisday in 1822! This is his visiting card from 45 rue d’Ulm, the address of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where Pasteur began his education and where he was later appointed director of scientific studies.
3. An autograph manuscript notebook of Christmas carols, compiled over twenty-five years from the British Museum, early printed books, and contemporary books and periodicals.
4. A fragment of twenty-one leaves from a fifteenth-century portable Sarum Breviary, with prayers for Christmas Eve.
Pictured here:
1. Christmas card from the poets Hugh MacDiarmid (i.e. Christopher Grieve) & Valda Trevlyn Grieve to Geoffrey and Joyce Bridson.
2. Aubrey Beardsley's 'Large Christmas Card', tipped into a complete run of the avant-garde periodical The Savoy (1896).
Happy Christmas!
🎁 And that's a wrap! For the 24th & final day of our Advent Calendar of early European books, we have this magnificently illustrated (and very rare) incunable, printed in Delft in 1486, a collection of the liturgical Epistles and Gospels translated into Dutch. Happy holidays from all of us at Q! 🎄
‘Given the title “le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche,” Bayard was seen as embodying the best of the traditional chivalric virtues of the gentle knight' (Kalas (1994), p. 1014). The author was married to Bayard's cousin & attended the French army during the Italian Wars as a physician.
He had fought in the Italian Wars of Charles VIII, Louis XII, and François I, starting with the Battle of Fornovo in 1495, Agnadello in 1509, and the sieges of Padua and Brescia, Ravenna, and Marignano in 1515; in 1524 he was shot and killed in Piedmont as the French army retreated over the Alps.
This richly illustrated chivalry book, for the penultimate day (!) of our Advent Calendar of early European books, is an account of the life and deeds of the Chevalier de Bayard (1473–1524), one of France's most celebrated warriors, written in the year of his death.
He also discusses the ideas of friendship and responsibility with regard to doctor/patient relationships. Our copy has been heavily annotated by an early reader, largely on the rhetorical structure of Erasmus's arguments.
Is marriage better than celibacy? Erasmus's controversial work in praise of marriage, for Day 22 of our Advent Calendar of early European books, argues that marriage is primarily an expression of intimate friendship & a path to spiritual growth, sparking arguments with other scholars & clerics.
Scipione amassed a fortune from his privileged position, as well as perhaps the best art collection of the time, much of which survives today at the Villa Borghese in Rome. Several books in the family library were bound, as here, by the workshop of Baldassarre Soresini, known as the Borghese Master.
This beautiful Roman binding, for day 21 of our Advent Calendar, was made for OG nepo baby Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577–1633), the papal nephew appointed cardinal as soon as his uncle was elected Pope Paul V in 1605 (the Italian 'nipote', or nephew, being the source of 'nepotism'!).
👑 Boccaccio, with Dante and Petrarch, is considered one of the 'tre corone' ('three crowns') of Italian literature. He died 650 years ago #onthisday, in 1375. This is a rare 1520 edition of Filocolo, his earliest prose narrative (his most famous, of course, being the Decameron).
Melanchthon’s commentary, framing the Aeneid as a guide to the rewards of virtue & the condemnation of vice, proved the most popular of the 16thc. Copies with the same commentaries were often censored in Catholic territories, whereas these Zurich editions could freely proclaim their sources.
This beautifully illustrated 1573 edition of Virgil's works, for Day 20 of our Advent Calendar of early European books, was printed in Switzerland and was edited by Philipp Melanchthon and other Protestant scholars.