1 Eleazar Albin | A Natural History of Birds, 1738-40, 3 volumes

2 Aristotle | Politiques, 1598, tree calf

3 Roger Ascham | The Schoolemaster, 1589, nineteenth-century armorial morocco, the Berland copy

4 Juliana Berners | The Gentlemans Academie, 1595, early modern female authorship

5 Bible, Latin | A bifolium from the Gutenberg Bible

6 Biblia Latina | 2 fragments from the Fust and Schöffer 48-line Bible [Mainz: Johann Fust & Peter Schöffer , 14 August 1462]

7 Blaeu | Novus atlas sinensis, Amsterdam, 1655

8 Boccaccio | The tragedies, [ca. 1554- 1555], nineteenth-century armorial red morocco gilt for John W. de Kay

9 William Bonde | The Pilgrimage of Perfection, 1526, the summa of late medieval teachings on the religious life

10 Book of Common Prayer | The Forme and maner of makyng, and consecratyng Bishoppes, Priestes, and Deacons. London: Richard Grafton, August 1552

11 Sebastian Brant [Alexander Barclay, translator] | Stultifera navis, 1570, early modern female book ownership

12 Antonio da Brescia | Savonarola, and other works, 1485-1503, later half calf

13 Gaius Julius Caesar | The eyght books… conteyning his martiall exploytes… translated… by Arthur Goldinge]. (London: William Seres, [1565]), the rare first complete edition in English

14 Girolamo Cardano [Thomas Bedingfield, translator] | Cardanus comforte, 1576, rare second edition of the book held by Hamlet during his famous soliloquy

15 Chaucer | The Woorkes, 1561, the edition likely used as Shakespeare's source text for Troilus and Cressida

16 Chaucer | The Workes, 1598, first Speght edition

17 Chronicles of England | [Here begynneth a shorte and a breue table on these cronycles], [ca. 1510], containing perhaps the first printed view of London

18 [Chronicles of England], Wynken de Worde, 1497

19 John Dee | Document signed (“Joannes Dee Gardianus”) as Warden of Christ's College, Manchester, 1597

20 Doppelmayr | Novus atlas coelestis, Nuremberg, 1742

21 Thomas Elyot | The castell of helth corrected and in some places augmented, [?1550]

22 Erasmus | Apophthegmes, 1542, first edition in English

Property of a Gentleman

23 [Bible in English] | The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the newe testamente, 1548

Property of a Gentleman

24 Abraham Flemming | A Panoplie of Epistles, 1576

25 Jean Froissart | Cronycles, 1542 and ca 1535

26 John Gower | De Confessione Amantis, 1532, the Berland copy

27 John Gower | De Confessione Amantis, 1554, the Berland copy

28 John Heywood | The Spider and the Flie, 1556, the Berland copy, in an attractive nineteenth-century morocco gilt binding

29 Ranulph Higden | Polycronicon, 1495, second edition of the first book in England to contain printed music

30 Plants and gardening—Hill | The Profitable Arte of Gardening, 1574, third edition [with:] Dodoens, A New Herball, 1595, 2 volumes in all

31 Hans Holbein the Younger | The Images of the Old Testament, Lyons, 1549, first edition in English

32 Holinshed | The Chronicles, 1586-7, 3 volumes bound in 2, plus further volume of eighteenth-century reprints of cancelled leaves, a quintessential piece of Elizabethan secular scholarship

33 Thomas Elyot and others | Instructional texts for princes and aristocrats, 4 volumes in all

34 Jacobsz | Pascaarte van alle de Zee-custen van Europa, Amsterdam, 1655

35 William Langham | The Garden of Health, 1579 [i.e. 1597], first edition of an early guide to herbal remedies

36 William Langland | The Vision of Pierce Plowman, London, 1561

37 Law and Legal History

38 Legal history | A group of printed English Statutes, 22 works in 21 volumes

39 Sir Thomas Littleton | Lyttilton Tenures truely translated into Englyshe, 1538, the first textbook on English property law

40 Nicolaus de Lyra | Praeceptorium, Cologne, 1496, contemporary stamped calf, Hildesheim copy

41 Machiavelli | The Florentine Historie, 1595, first edition in English

42 Molière | Œuvres de J.-B. P. Molière, tome premier, Paris, 1664, contemporary calf gilt

43 Thomas More | The Confutacyon of Tyndales answere, both parts, 1532

44 Thomas More | The Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance, 1533, the Foyle copy

45 Thomas More | Workes, 1557, eighteenth-century sprinkled calf gilt, the Chatsworth copy

46 Abraham Munting | Naauwkeurige Beschryving der Aardgewassen, 1696, fine botanical engravings

47 John Palsgrave | L'Esclaircissement de la Langue Francoyse, 1530, the first French grammar and the first French-English dictionary

48 Petrarch [Thomas Twyne, translator] | Phisicke against fortune, 1579, first English translation