The following are just some of the highlights of Robert Lenkiewicz's astonishing collection of antiquarian books. The collection was dissipated after his death in 2002 in order to pay debts under the auspices of the executor to his Estate.

POSTERIOR ANALYTICA. Apollinaris of Cremona - 1430. Large folio manuscript on paper, in near contemporary vellum binding. There is a very attractive first leaf showing a miniature of Apollinaris at this desk writing this commentary on Aristotle's great work. The leaf is colourfully decorated with fifteenth century theological motifs.

There are some thirty or forty large folio translations and commentaries on the works of Aristotle (some incunables). There is also the extremely rare set (only fifty were ever printed) of eight folio volumes of Aristotle's works translated into English by Thomas Taylor. This set, handsomely bound, may have been his personal copy as they are signed by him.

OPERA/PLATA. Editio Princeps, in Greek.
1518. The Aldine two volume folio.

OPERA/PLATO. Translated by Marsilio Ficino.
1556. Basle. Henri Petri. Fine blind-stamped binding. There are at least ten variations in large folio of Ficino's translations of Plato in this collection as well as many of his own philosophical works.

OPERA/PLATO. Edited by Henry Estienne - 1578. Geneva. The first complete edition in Greek and Latin of Plato's works. These are bound in two very handsome large folio vellum bindings with the original Venetian ties in perfect order.

Amongst the many pre-1820 Platos in this collection attention should be drawn to Sydenham's Plato and Thomas Taylor's five-volumed English translation of Plato.

THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. Boetius - 1521. The first illustrated edition, fine red and black title page with famous woodcut of 'philosophy' in the form of a beautiful woman visiting the sleeping Boetius in his dreams.

COMPENDIUM THEOLOGICAE VERITATIS.Albertus Magnus - 1478. Ulm. Zainer. Fine incunable rubricated in red.

There are several other works by Albertus Magnus in the collection.

COMMENTARIES ON ARISTOTLE'S 'DE ANIMA'. Thomas Aquinas - 1496. Venice. Richly annotated throughout text. This copy has an exceptionally elegant title page and a lovely woodcut of Aquinas lecturing to his students in his library.

A COMMENTARY ON THE LETTERS OF ST PAUL. Thomas Aquinas - 1510. Venice. Handsome copy ruled in red, blind-stamped binding, folio. There is a very large collection on Thomas Aquinas in this library, many of them early folios.

THEOLOGICAL WORKS. Duns Scotus - 15th-18th centuries. 15 folios in contemporary vellum, fine collection.

CITY OF GOD/THE TRINITY. St. Augustine - 1489. Basle. Amerbach. Attractively rubricated throughout, this large folio contains a full-page woodcut of St Augustine in his study, with the City of God and a howling Satan nearby.

It should be pointed out that there is a large collection of great variety of the works of the Church Fathers from 15th-17th centuries. Many of these are rubricated, annotated and finely bound.

LEVIATHAN. Thomas Hobbes - 1651. The first and rarest of the three versions of the first edition. In a very fine contemporary Cottage binding.

Also the first Latin edition and many other examples of his work.

COLLECTED WORKS. John Locke - 1714. Three handsome folios, first edition and many other examples of Locke's works in French and English.

MALLEUS MALEFICARUM: Kramer and Sprenger - 1486, First Edition, Folio. This copy printed by Peter Drach is particularly striking for its heavy annotations throughout in a near contemporary hand, commencing with a poem to Satan and some descriptions of poisoning witches. It is conjectured that a more than enthusiastic judge used this copy. There are at least 9 or 10 other copies of the Malleus in this collection dating from 15th - 17th centuries.

FORMICARIUS: Johannes Nider - 1484. Second Edition. Folio. Striking contemporary binding; richly rubricated in red throughout the text. Unusually, this copy closes with a thirty-leaved manuscript in red ink on the rescuing of the soul from Satan and the techniques of exorcism with many references to the Church Fathers.

PRECEPTORIUM:Johannes Nider - 1507. The binding is decorated with panel features originally cut in the mid-fifteenth century.

DE LAMIIS: Ulrich Molitor - 1489. This is the most important and only illustrated incunable book on witchcraft, characterised by unusual woodcuts. Interestingly this nineteenth century binding features the same panel decoration as the previous book.

Fine examples of witchcraft tracts and commentaries are represented by Bodin, Weyer, Del Rio, Bovet, Piperno, Le Loyer, Anania, Godelman, and De Lancre. Two very fine copies (first and second editions) of Guazzo's COMPENDIUM MALEFICARUM. These books contain the most famous of all woodcut series concerning the folklore of witchcraft.

English witchcraft is also very well represented both by manuscript and printed material (manuscript witchcraft is extremely rare).

The first, second and third editions of Reginald Scot's DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT; King James I's DEMONOLOGIA, in a separate edition as well as his collected works. Other important English witchcraft items are by Webster, Potts, Glanville, Cotta, Boulton, Beaumont, Defoe, Casaubon. The most striking item in this part of the collection is a manuscript, possibly in the hand of Sir Edward Fairfax, 1623, claiming the daemoniacal possession of his two daughters. This is a disturbing example of folklore paranoia at its worst. This exceedingly rare work was followed in the early nineteenth century by the work of a scholar called Ebenezer Sibley. He included 92 watercolours of the visions of the two young girls. This manuscript is also in the collection and is autographed.

POLYGRAPHIA. Trithemius Von Spanheim - 1517. Original contemporary blind-stamped binding with gold decoration. Of particular interest are the hand coloured full-page plates showing Trithemius presenting this rare book (padlocked) to the Emperor of Saxony.

STEGANOGRAPHIA. Trithemius Von Spanheim - Several copies of this notorious work, viewed as the origin of the more complex secrecies of the Western magical tradition. A unique set of 17th/18th century manuscripts in four volumes of this work from a rare Masonic library. Two of Trithemius' most famous pupils, Paracelsus and Agrippa Von Nettersheim are generously represented in this collection. There is a particularly fine copy of Agrippa's OCCULTA PHILOSOPHIA (1533.Cologne) with blind stamped vellum binding and clasps. This book of which there are many versions including manuscripts in this collection is seen as the basis for Occult belief systems right up to the nineteenth century. There are also the first editions of his works from Italy, Germany, France and England. Agrippa's popularity was so great that a spurious Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy was published in Jacobean England. There are two copies in this collection. There are also nine volumes of annotated manuscripts from the 17th/18th century relating to Agrippa's ideas.

OPERA. Pico Della Mirandola - 1517.Paris. Fine bindings. Two copies.

DE VERBO MERIFICO. Johannes Reuchlin - 1490's. Very rare.

DE ARTE CABBALISTICA. Johannes Reuchlin - 1517. These two books would be considered very significant editions to any library specialising in Neo-Platonism and Jewish mysticism.

There is a large collection of Books of Secrets; an unusual and eccentric body of literature popular in the 16th/17th centuries combining medical, alchemical and mystical ideas.

There are also fine examples of the works of Giambatista Della Porta from many different countries. Perhaps the rarest of these is the German edition, 1680, of the NATURAL MAGIC with a large number of dramatic plates in two volumes.

There is a large collection of works by John Dee, the famous Elizabethan mathematician and scientist/mystic, who formulated one of the first great libraries in Europe. Two significant examples are the TRUE AND FAITHFUL RELATIONS/DEE'S ACTS WITH SPIRITS transcribed by Meric Casaubon, 1659, and EUCLID'S GEOMETRY with Dee's famous Mathematical Preface that was to so influence contemporary thinking and navigational theory.

There are many works by Jacob Boehme, the German "shoe maker/mystic". Most remarkable of these is a four-volume folio set of Boehme's works translated by William Law in the eighteenth century. It is very unusual for this work to survive intact as the many fine etchings are characterised by an unusual 'flap and fold' system of great ingenuity.

UTRIESQUE COSMI...Robert Fludd - 1619. This and all other examples of his work are well represented in handsome folios published by the German Rosicurucian company Johannes De Bry in the seventeenth century. Fludd's scientific and mystical system, beautiful and eccentric as it is, is heightened by the remarkable full-page etchings of his cosmological ideas.

ARS MAGNA...Athanasius Kircher - This and all other examples of his seventeenth century publications are well represented. Kircher was perhaps the last great Renaissance polymath and his books are extraordinary for their encyclopaedic range and dramatic illustrations.

DE SUBTILITATE...Girolamo Cardano - c. 1550. This is a particularly fine copy of this philosopher's work amongst several others in the collection.

CABALA RESPONSIVA. Manuscript - c.1750. A most unusual folio manuscript containing hundreds of diagrams and texts on numerical and mystical ideas, bound in vellum.

There are a large number of GRIMOIRES in manuscript, which purports to contain the techniques for raising spirits to help the practising magician. The most unusual of these, CLAVICULAE DE SOLOMONIS (Key of Solomon), is one of the earliest examples in the country of this type of manuscript.

PRETIOSA MARGARITA. Lacinius - 1546. Aldine Press. An early and rare item with famous woodcut plates.

QUINTA ESSENTIA. Thurneisser - 1574. This item contains remarkable full-page woodcuts.

ARCANA CHYMICA. Libavius - Four handsome versions of this folio work.

ATALANTA FUGIENS. Michael Maier - This sixteenth century work contains some of the most famous mystical diagrams in the history of alchemy.

ROSARIUM PHILOSOPHORUM/DE ALCHYMIA - 1550. Frankfurt. Unusual illustrations with the title page hand-coloured in a contemporary hand.

ROSARIUM PHILOSOPHORUM - 1612. Manuscript version in black vellum, blind-stamped, containing diagrams and watercolours.

There are a large number of other alchemical manuscripts from the late sixteenth century onwards. There are also fifteen manuscripts in the hand of the last two practising alchemists in England, as well as some extremely scarce manuscripts from alchemists working for the Nazi regime.

AMPHITHEATRUM SAPIENTIAE ETERNAE. Heinrich Khunrath - 1608. The very rare Magdeburg edition, which is justly referred to as one of the seminal alchemical works. The plates with which it is illustrated are remarkable both for their subject matter and for their execution. This is a superb copy in contemporary vellum.

BIBLIOTECHA MEDICA. Jean Jacques Manget - 1703. Two volumes. Red morocco Chancery folios. These huge books are especially significant as they are Manget's Dedication copy to Frederick the King of Prussia. The bindings are gold-stamped with the king's royal insignia.

BIBLIOTECHA MEDICA CURIOSA. Jean Jacques Manget - 1702. Two volumes, folio, contemporary calf, gilt spine. This is the first edition of the most complete collection of alchemical texts ever published, containing over 140 treatises. For the historian of chemistry this is a most important and indispensable work.

WORKS OF MOSES CORDEVERO. Joseph Gikatilla - This is a fifteenth century manuscript, attractively bound in red morocco, written on wax paper.

CLAVIS. Guilliame Postel - 1643. Fine nineteenth century green morocco binding. Very rare.

SEPHER RAZIEL - 1701. Amsterdam. One of the rarest of all cabbalistic works.

CABBALISTIC TEXTS. Johannes Pistorius - 1587. Basle. The very scarce large folio of all the major renaissance texts linking Jewish mysticism and Christianity. Contemporary vellum binding.

ZOHAR. A complete system of cabbalistic theology - 1558. Large folio.

KABBALA DENUDATA. Knorr Von Rosenroth - 1677. Frankfurt.

Reproduced with the kind permission of Fisher Mackenzie © Fisher Mackenzie, 2004.