Sevin Seydi Rare Books was started in 1970, with two partners, Sevin Seydi and Maurice Whitby, and we have never had any wish to expand from this, or to become shopkeepers. Asked what is our specialisation, our best answer is ‘books no one else has’. Although sometimes fashionable expensive books come our way, our main interest is in searching out genuinely rare and interesting books from any period, in any language, on any subject.

Here is a baker’s dozen of books that have passed through our hands:-

• Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, Augsburg (Gunther Zainer) 1471: containing the first printed map of the world.
• Boccaccio, Giunta 1527, the genuine ‘ventisettana’ edition, the model for all others for 250 years: often confused with Consul Smith’s facsimile, 1727.
• Alberti, Los Diez Libros de Architectura, 1582, first edition in Spanish, unillustrated but this copy extra-illustrated with a complete suite of the woodcuts from the Italian edition, guaranteed as a contemporary compilation by the signature of the Spanish censor on the Italian title-page. Subsequent owners include one in Mexico.
• Discourse of Life and Death 1600, by Sir Philip Sidney’s friend Philippe de Mornay, translated by Mary Sidney, extra illustrated with manuscript poems and engravings (two by Crispin de Passe) all on the theme of the transience of life, the copy apparently from Petworth, and done for Mary Sidney in mourning for her brother.
• The Latin verses, 1632, of Alexander Gil, the man who (probably) taught Latin to John Milton.
• Lettre d’un habitant de Louisbourg 1745, the only contemporary printed account of the siege by an army from Massachusetts, which virtually ended French control of Canada: a clandestine printing with the false imprint ‘Quebec’ (where printing had not started). Only 2 copies in USA.
• A book from the library of Dr Johnson’s friend, Hester Piozzi, with her annotations on almost every page.
• First edition, in Ottoman Turkish, of the poems of Fitnat Hanim (died 1780), the most important woman poet of the Ottoman period.
• The second edition of the New Testament in Chinese, a fine copy in the original folder with bamboo clasps.
• A hitherto unrecorded printing of Jabberwocky done for a Cambridge class in Latin verse composition in 1872, with the printed Latin version by A.A.Vansittart
• The only extant copy, outside the Patent Office file copy in the BL, of a patent for a propeller taken out by Ludwig Wittgenstein while a graduate student in Manchester, 1911.
• Both volumes of verse in Russian published by Nabokov, Berlin 1922.
• Seamus Heaney, Eleven Poems, 1965, the true first edition, inscribed by Heaney.

Let us hope that the future yields books as interesting as these.