Autographs, Documents & Manuscripts

[DAMASCUS – VENETIAN TAXES]. [Promissory note for Venetian customs taxes on goods from Damascus].
Venice, 22 Feb. / 5 March 1488. Italian notarial document on vellum (44.5 x 16 cm; text block ca. 27 x 14 cm). Written in two fine cursive hands. Full description

DAMIRI, Muhammad ibn Musa al-. Kitab Hayat al-Hayawan [= Book of the life of animals].
Meknes, Morocco, 1267 AH [= 1851 CE]. 4to (19 x 23 cm). Arabic manuscript on paper, brown maghribi script in two hands with important words and phrases in red and blue. With an illuminated head-piece at the start of the text in red, blue, green, and gold. Contemporary gold-tooled red leather with a fore-edge flap. 62 ll. Full description

[MANUSCRIPT]. [DEFOURNY, Pierre Josephus?]. Korte schets van het voor gevallene gedurende het bombardement van het citadel van Antwerpen.
Saint Omer, 24 April 1833. 4to (19.5 x 16.5 cm). Manuscript in Dutch, written in ink on laid paper with no watermark. 10 pp. Full description

DEJEAN, Jean-François-Aimé. Plan de la ville de l'Ecluse et de l'attaque de cette place par les Français.
[Netherlands, ca. 1800]. Manuscript fortification plan (54 x 49.5 cm) in ink on paper, with watercolour in green and red. With large panel at lower right with keys to important locations and the locations of the troops during the attack and title in large panel at the head. Scale ca. 1:9500. Signed "Vu Dejean". Full description

DICKEN, Charles Shortt and DICKEN FAMILY. [Album containing illustrations and photographs of Australia and India]. [Illustrated title-page:] Contributions thankfully received.
Australia [and England and India?], 1870s. Oblong album (ca. 23 x 30 cm). With 36 albumen prints, including 14 photographs of Australia. These include houses, churches, buildings in Springsure, Queensland around 1870, photos of Charles with his horse, a wonderful picture of an "Alligator killed in the Mackay River" and "bottle trees near Taroon", 5 photographs of India: Bengal Camp Delhi, multiple group photos in Darjeeling, a group photo in front of the government house in Calcutta, and the crew of the H.M.S. Narcissus, 17 photographs of Gibraltar, America, Switserland, art pieces and the Dicken family. Further with 24 watercolour paintings of flowers, landscapes and people, including two of the Taj Mahal, and 17 coloured pencil and ink drawings of people. The drawings and paintings are almost all signed S. P. D. or F. E. D., who were likely members of the Dicken family. Most photographs and art pieces are captioned in pencil or brown ink, several leaves are decorated with additional drawings or dried plants. Contemporary maroon cloth, embroidered with yellow flowers. Comes in a custom-made black-cloth clamshell box (internally covered in burgundy cloth), with a black morocco title-label on the spine, lettered in gold, and a folding liner of the same burgundy cloth. [50] ll. Full description

[MANUSCRIPT]. DODOENS (DODONAEUS), Rembert. [Declaration of financial and other documents received as incoming churchwarden of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Mechelen].
[Mechelen], 27 December 1558. Oblong 4to (19 x 21.5 cm). A document written in dark brown ink on paper, with the opening words filled in afterwards in light brown ink and the signature in light brown ink. [1] ll. Full description

DORN, Bernard. [21 autograph letters, signed, to Marie-Félicité Brosset].
Saint Petersburg, ca. 1840-1879.
With: (2) [Manuscript chronological numbered list of 34 publications by Dorn, 1843-1865].
[Saint Petersburg, ca. 1865].
8vo (letters, mostly 21 x 13.5 cm) and folio (list of publications). Letters in French with an occasional (Persian?) word in Arabic script, written in black ink on paper, some with the address on the outside and one with Dorn's (Persian?) red wax seal in Arabic script. 20 letters [4] pp. each (some including blanks); 1 letter [1, 1 blank] pp.; list of publications [4] pp. Full description

DRUMMOND, William. [Letter on the fighting between the Ottomans and Mamluks in Egypt].
Bucharest, 13 December 1803. 4to (23.5 x 18.5 cm). Autograph letter in English, signed, written in brown ink on laid paper. [2] pp. Full description

DUFFEYTE-DILHAN, Joseph. Les mémoires d'un ange, ou Les femmes vengées, roman historique, philosophique et moral, ... Tome I.er[-II.].
[Bordeaux], Edmond Ramadié, [1839-1840, with the authors 1843 printed dedication to the Dutch Queen Anna Pavlovna of Russia]. 2 volumes. 8vo. With 2 copies of the 4-page 1843 dedication to Queen Anna Pavlovna printed on heavy wove paper, signed by the author in brown ink on the first and last page and tipped onto the title-page in each volume. Contemporary finely diced (in horizontal lozenges) and gold-tooled red morocco for presentation to the Queen, (each board with a crown above flowers as centrepiece, and a decorative frame built up from separate tools; the spine with the title and volume number in the middle with decorations above and below), gold-tooled board edges, gilt edges.
With: (2) DUFFEYTE-DILHAN, Joseph. [Autograph, signed letter to Anna Pavlovna].
[Bordeaux?, 1843?]. 4to. Letter in ink on two sides of one leaf of a folded bifolium, signed by the author. “408” [= 406]; 419, [1 blank] pp. Full description

DUPERRÉ, Admiral Guy-Victor. [9 autograph letters, signed, mostly from the writer's time as Préfet maritime in Brest].
Brest, 22 February 1819 - 18 June 1829. Folio and 4to. Autograph letters in French, written in brown ink on single and double leaves of several laid and wove paper stocks.
With: (2) GHÉMAR, Louis-Joseph. Duperré [lithographic portrait].
Brussels, Charles Hen (printed by P. Degobert), dated 1842 by the artist. [4]; [1], [1 blank]; [3], [1 blank]; [1], [1 blank]; [1], [1 blank]; [1], [1 blank]; [1], [1 blank]; [2]; [2] pp. Full description