ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
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London : Jarrold & Sons, 1902. First edition. An uncommon fantasy of identity switching from the irrepressible “R. Andom” – different identities assumed by means of a “magic green packet of transmigration tablets” – “The hero ... is projected into the twenty-first century through the agency of an explosive clock, and this is how he comes in contact with the Identity Exchange ... To those who like fun fast and furious, the story may be cordially commended” (The Scotsman, 10th November 1902). Later republished as “The Marvellous Adventures of Me”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 286,[vi],[16]pp. Numerous illustrations by Charles Harrison (1860-1943). Original pinkish-brown pictorial cloth, blocked and lettered in black and red; a few faint marks; some rusting to staples; just a touch shaken, but a good copy of an engaging fantasy.

£100

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1975. First edition. Signed by Alan Ayckbourn on the title-page. One of the great theatrical events of the twentieth century – six characters and three interwoven plays: Table Manners in the dining-room; Living Together in the living-room, and Round and Round the Garden – here with a fascinating preface by the author on the “crosswise” writing of the interlocked pieces. The first West End production (1974) starred Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon, Penelope Keith, Felicity Kendal, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 226,[ii]pp. Original bright blue boards, lettered in gilt; very slightly bruised at head and tail, but otherwise a very good, bright and clean copy in the pictorial David Brinson dust-jacket – just lightly tanned (as often), but also very good. With the pictorial bookplate of D. W. Budworth, annotated with the date of purchase at Edinburgh in the year of publication.

SOLD

London : Arthur L. Humphreys, 1903. Second Humphreys edition. A delightfully printed and bound edition of some of the finest essays in the language. Fifty-eight essays from “Of Truth” to “Of Vicissitude of Things” – “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man”.
Pott 4to (164 x 122mm). viii,(324)pp. Title-page in red and black. Bound (for Hatchard’s) in an elegant contemporary half crimson crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endleaves; a few minor signs of age and use, but a very good and handsome copy.

£125

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London : J. F. Bennet, 1907. Twenty-first edition. A popular and attractive map of the best-known stretch of Thames, produced by the City of London printer and stationer, John Frederick Bennet of Queen Street, manufacturer of “Wryte-eezy” stationery, which is advertised and illustrated among the numerous and entertaining advertisements. The map is accompanied by twenty pages of text, with notes on angling, boating, steam-launches, locks and tolls, with a distance-table, and an A-Z guide to the riverside towns and villages. First published in 1889.
Coloured lithograph on paper, folding into a pictorial cloth case. Printed surface 744 x 185mm (approx. 29-1/4” x 7-1/4”). A few faint marks; some very minor creasing; one tiny hole, but still an attractive example. No copy of this edition located in major libraries worldwide – and only a handful of copies of any of the earlier editions.

£100

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London : Methuen & Co., (1913). First edition. The further adventures of “The Card” – Edward Henry Machin stumbles into theatrical management in London and pursues Isabel Joy, the suffragette, to appear in his play. “There is no one in contemporary fiction so immense as Edward Henry Machin. He never wearies, because he always surprises and because Mr. Arnold Bennett never once errs in his presentation of him. ‘The Regent’ is as good, if not better, than ‘The Card’ and that is, indeed, saying a great deal” (The Globe, 12th September 1913).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(320)pp. Original cloth – the uncommon red variant – attractively blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; tiny mark to spine; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary pencilled ownership inscription of Emily and Henry Catchpole (a bookbinder) of Richmond Road, Dalston.

£125

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London : William Heinemann, 1900. First edition. Benson in the Balkans – a princess addicted to gambling, a rascally husband, a scheming prime-minister, and a son expelled from Eton – “We do not think Mr. Benson has written a more entertaining book” (Manchester Courier, 18th April 1900) – “He does it with marvellous cleverness and in fine literary style” (The Field, 21st April 1900).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],308 + 16pp advertisements. Original decorative sand cloth, blocked and lettered in black and red; a few faint marks; mild tanning of endpapers; just a touch shaken, but otherwise a very good and much better than average copy.

£100

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London : William Heinemann, 1903. First edition. “Thick yellow fog, and in consequence electric light to dress by and breakfast by, was the opening day of the year. Never, to anyone who looks at this fact in the right spirit, did a year dawn more characteristically ... We blindly groped on the threshold of the future”. A writer’s year, month by month, in part reflection, in part fiction. “There’s an unexpectedness about Mr. E. F. Benson which is not the least portion of his charm ... We have admired Mr. Benson often: we have never learned to know him so well or to appreciate his craftmanship so fully” (Manchester Courier, 14th April 1903).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(288) + [xxxii]pp. Original decorative sand cloth, blocked and lettered in black and red; some very minor wear; mild tanning of endpapers; a few leaves slightly creased, but otherwise a very good copy.

£100

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London : John Murray, (1952). First edition. Betjeman on Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Cheltenham, Leeds, London Railway Stations, the Isle of Man, Padstow, Sidmouth, Weymouth, the Isle of Wight, and many other places, as well as on the Architecture of Entertainment, Nonconformist Architecture, Victorian Architecture, churches, coast and country.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). (xii),244pp. Numerous illustrations, many by John Piper, including a folding panorama of Cheltenham. Original cream canvas, blocked and lettered in blue; top edge pink; a very good, clean and sound copy in the striking Piper dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

SOLD

London : John Murray, (1966). First edition : one of 100 special numbered copies on handmade paper, bound in white buckram, and signed by Betjeman. A collection of thirty-four new poems, with a verse preface, including “Cornish Cliffs”, “Monody on the Death of a Platonist Bank Clerk”, “The Cockney Amorist”, “Cricket Master”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). x,(82),[iv]pp. Original white buckram, lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; a very good copy in the original glassine dust-jacket – the fragile jacket with just a couple of chips.

£400

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London : Archibald Constable, 1906. A standard set of “what remains the most famous biography in any language, one of Western literature’s most germinal achievements: unprecedented in its time in its depth of research and its extensive use of private correspondence and recorded conversation” (Gordon Turnbull in ODNB). Boswell on Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), first published in 1791, and here edited by Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), retaining all the prefatory matter of the earliest editions.
Six volumes. Foolscap 8vo (170 x 104mm). Frontispieces. Bound in a most attractive near contemporary half polished calf, banded and prettily gilt, by John Ramage (1836-1911) & Co.; contrasting labels; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; very lightly rubbed, but a very good clean and sound set.

£500

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First edition : the first published state, with the regular cancel title-leaf dated 1914, advertisement leaves dated both Autumn and September 1913, and the preferred binding giving “Methven” in capitals at the foot. “Our summary can give no real conception of the greatness and the insight of this moving book; splendid in its style, masterly in the manner in which it paints for one the scent and savour and mystery of the sea; subtle and unerring in its grasp of the minds and motives of its creations ... It is strange that to a Polish exile and a seafaring man, to whom our language is a foreign tongue, it should be given to handle it with a touch so nearly approaching perfection” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 15th January 1914).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),406,[ii],8 + (32)pp. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing; edges and prelims somewhat spotted, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy.

SOLD

London : T. Fisher Unwin, (1923). First edition. “The rover Peyrol is a superb creation, the eternal ancient mariner yet native to his time and his soil ... Towards the end Lord Nelson himself steps upon the scene, and in three or four masterly pages we see the man as he was, the fragile body and restless mind nearing their supreme triumph and their doom ... the simplest of Mr. Conrad’s books; none the less, we rank it among the greatest” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6th December 1923).
Crown 8vo (21cm). (318),[ii]pp. Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; some faint wear; a little dulled; mild tanning of endpapers; a few leaves roughly opened, but otherwise a good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with some minor wear, with a few repaired nicks and some shallow chipping, but substantially complete and attractive still.

SOLD

London : Richard Bentley, 1835. First edition. The first full-scale biography of the “Man of Mercury” – Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751) – politician, exile, writer, historian, philosopher, libertine and wit – a figure, in the author’s phrase, too long “sedulously erased” from the history books. Included as appendices are Bolingbroke’s poems, the articles of impeachment, his will, etc.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo. xx,416; viii,472pp. Portrait frontispiece to each volume. Bound in a later (early twentieth century) half crimson calf, banded and gilt, by Bayntun; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; some minor wear and rubbing; spines a little dulled; some sunning to lower covers; preface and contents leaves to vol. i misbound in vol. ii; text a little marked and fingered in places; one leaf slightly damaged, without loss of text; but overall a good set. With the bookplate of William John Robertson in each volume.

£100

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[Bath : J. H. Cotterell, ca.1850]. A handsome locally produced map, “sold by all booksellers in Bristol and Bath”, on a scale of just under a half-inch to the mile (1:77982), extending northwards to take in Rockhampton, Wotton-under-Edge and Tetbury, east to include Chippenham and Melksham, south to include Axbridge and Chilcompton, and westwards to the coast, with Newport and Chepstow beyond the Bristol Channel. An uncoloured key along the upper margin presupposes an intention to show the geology of the area, but the actual colouring on the map is of the conventional county pattern. Undated, but presumably post-dating the map of identical title produced by Cotterell’s father, Henry Fowler Cotterell (1791-1860), and prior to the lithographer Joseph Hollway or Holloway (1798?-1860) adopting the style “Holloway & Son” in the early 1850s.
Lithograph on paper, with original hand colour. Printed surface 393 x 511mm (approx. 15-1/2” x 20”). Dissected, mounted on linen, and folding into a cloth cover with a colour-printed paper label. Some minor marks, creasing and signs of age and use; a couple of small ink-splashes to lower margin, but overall in very good state. Just a single copy (Bodleian) located in major libraries.

£100

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London : J. Russell Smith, 1859. First edition. “Knightsbridge and Pimlico form the only suburbs west of the metropolis, whose history remains unwritten ... I trust the following pages will show that Knightsbridge is far from destitute of associations deserving to be recovered and saved from the ravages of time”. With material on the streets, buildings, eminent inhabitants, society and politics, etc., and separate chapters on Belgravia and the sub-district of St. Barnabas. The work was edited for publication by Charles Davis after the early death of his brother.
Crown 8vo (186 x 118mm). (xii),282pp. Eight lithographic plates in two colours. Wood-engravings in the text. The illustrations mainly engraved by Thomas Gilks (1815-1877) from sketches by an artist referred to only as “H.W”. Bound in a neat later half plum roan; green label; marbled endpapers; slightly rubbed at tips; a few internal creases, but a very good and serviceable copy. With the bookplate of book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

SOLD

London : Chatto & Windus, 1897. First edition. “The name of Dick Donovan is well-known. He has not a rival who can touch him in his own particular line, and these ‘Chronicles’ will probably take rank as the best Detective Stories ever written. But apart from their literary merit they deal with some very remarkable phases of crime, not the vulgar, sordid crime of the gutter and the slum, but crime considered as a fine art” (Edinburgh Evening News, 16th January 1897). Nine Michael Danevitch stories, including “The Mysterious Disappearance of a Million Roubles”, “A Modern Borgia”, “The Merchant of Riga”, etc., together with the novella, “The Clue of the Dead Hand”, featuring the Edinburgh detective Peter Brodie.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],[vi],304 + 8,32pp advertisements, the latter dated February 1897. Original blue cloth, elaborately blocked and lettered in silver; some light wear at extremities; endpapers a little cracked; slight tear to one advertisement leaf; a few spots, but a good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of Isabel Vernon.

£100

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. First edition. Beyond the early pamphlets and offprints, Douglas’s first book and his first venture into fiction. He later claimed that just eight copies were sold – a slight exaggeration, but close on 600 copies of the original 750 were still unsold in 1903 and almost certainly pulped. Contains fifteen short stories (including “Elfwater”, “Nocturne”, “The Devil’s Oak”, and “Belladonna”) as well as the fantasy femme fatale novella “Nerinda”, most of the former written in collaboration with his then wife, Elsa Fitzgibbon (1876-1916).
Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). (viii),(248)pp. Bound in a most attractive mid twentieth-century full red morocco, banded and gilt, by William Root & Son of London; top edge gilt; red silk marker; original pictorial cloth upper cover preserved at rear; a few very minor signs of age and use; a few faint spots, but overall a very good copy in a fine binding.

£400

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London : George Allen & Sons, 1908. First edition. A collection of twelve stories, including “The Kith of the Elf-Folk”, “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth”, “The Doom of La Traviata”, etc. Illustrated by the great Sidney Sime (1865-1941) and linked to Dunsany’s two earlier collections via the gods and goddesses of Pegãna, who appear in several of the stories.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). (xii),(244)pp. Ten black and white plates by Sime. Original decorative green cloth gilt; a touch sunned; some very faint rubbing and wear at tips; a few slight spots; small tape-marks on endpapers, but overall a very good and still bright copy.

£200

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London : Faber & Faber, (1958). First edition. The second volume in the Alexandria Quartet – “Balthazar’s merciless ‘Interlinear’ to the love-story of Justine”.
Post 8vo (22cm). 250,(iv)pp. Original blue cloth blocked in red and gilt; a touch dulled, with some mild wear; a handful of spots to edges and endpapers, but a good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a couple of tiny nicks and some slight marking to the lower panel.

SOLD

London : G. Routledge & Co., 1855. First edition. “A sensational tale of murder and betrayal” – her rare first novel, published in Routledge’s Railway Library format. “It is a new story, told in a new way, by a new author ... even those who scorn railway volumes, and indulge in pages where a stream of large type rolls grandly through ‘a meadow of margin’, will do well to ask for ‘My Brother’s Wife’. Very few will lay it down without finishing it ... a very interesting story very well told” (The Globe, 23rd August 1855). Bound together with another contemporary Routledge novel, “The Family Feud” 1855, by “Adam Hornbook” – i.e. Thomas Cooper (1805-1892) – “one of the most original writers of the day ... an excellent and powerful novel” (Atlas, 24th February 1855).
Two volumes, bound in one. Foolscap 8vo (160 x 97mm). iv,(396)pp (Hornbook); 304pp (Edwards). Bound in an attractive near contemporary half tan calf, banded and gilt; marbled sides and edges; marbled endpapers; a faint hint of rubbing, a handful of internal spots, but a very good copy. With the ownership inscription and book-label of John Norcliffe Preston (1827-1908) of the Third Light Dragoons (The King’s Own), who evidently had the books bound together for his home at Flasby Hall, near Skipton.

SOLD

[London : John Cooke], 1777. A neatly worked map of the whole of the built-up area of London in the eighteenth-century – on a scale of about 3-1/2 inches to the mile. The area shown extends from Hyde Park in the west to Mile End and Shadwell in the east, and from the borders of Islington down to Lambeth. Originally produced for John Cooke’s part-work publication Walter Harrison : “A New and Universal History, Description and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster” (London : 1775-1777).
Copper line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 265 x 490mm (approx. 10-1/2” x 19-1/4”). Trimmed tight to neatlines at head and sides; laid down on backing paper; some minor creasing and slight dustiness, but overall in good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Adams 57/039. Howgego 169.

£250

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London : Hutchinson, (1989). First edition. His second novel and the one which made his reputation – a slight, dark-haired girl with two heavy suitcases arrives in the small French town of Janvilliers in 1936 to become a waitress at a seedy hotel. “Like the great novels and stories of Flaubert and Maupassant ... quite out of the ordinary ... beautifully written and in the end extraordinarily moving” (Sunday Times).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original sepia boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge just a touch dusty, a hint of sunning, but a very good copy indeed in the pictorial dust-jacket – also very good.

£250

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London : Hutchinson, (1998). First edition. Signed by Sebastian Faulks on the title-page. “It would take a mile-long essay to do justice to the many virtues of Sebastian Faulks' wonderful new novel. This riveting account of a young Scotswoman’s odyssey through wartime London, and on into a perilous secret mission in Vichy France, deserves the highest praise ... Proustian cogitations, masterful narrative, and zestful pen portraits. A beautiful, near-masterpiece” (Independent on Sunday). Filmed with Cate Blanchett, etc., in 2001.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],393,[i]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the David Oliver dust-jacket – the jacket with just a hint of creasing at head, but also very good.

£100

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London : Duckworth, (1925). First edition. “No more hope, no more glory, not for the nation, not for the world I dare say, no more parades”. The second of the “Parade’s End” tetralogy – Christopher Tietjens, “the last Tory”, struggles with love and war. “Vivid and brilliant, and startlingly outspoken ... it is a superlatively fine thing ... in its own class it stands alone” (Ralph Straus in The Bystander, 14th October 1925).
Crown 8vo (19cm). (320)pp. Original green cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; a little rubbed and bruised, some spotting, labels neatly and inconspicuously removed from upper cover and rear endpaper, but a good and acceptable copy.

£100

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ca.1828. The original ink, pencil and sepia wash sketch used to produce the print of “Dover Castle, Kent”, engraved by Henry Adlard (1799-1893) and published by George Virtue in 1828. A boy with a telescope looks out to sea – the castle rising beyond. Captioned in pencil below image and with a further inscription naming Gastineau on verso.
Ink, pencil and sepia wash on paper. Image size 89 x 148mm (approx. 3-1/2” x 5-7/8”). Inlaid in stiffer paper guard. A few faint spots, but overall in very good order – and a scarce example of the preparatory sketch for a well-known and popular engraving, faithfully executed by Adlard in a near exact representation of the original sketch. With an example of the engraving.

£400

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London : Rich & Cowan, (1937). First edition. Tipped in is a single-page typed letter from a New Jersey address, signed in full by Gogarty, with its original hand-addressed envelope – “My dear Dexter, You have done me a signal service and I am full of gratitude. Your Rules I have put into the mouth of one of my incredible characters ... when the book appears you shall have the first copy”. The letter is undated, but the envelope post-marked January 1941. The recipient was Edward Hopkins Dexter (1903-1983), a Fifth Avenue advertising man, then residing at 424 East 52nd Street, New York, and the book in question was presumably Gogarty’s “Mad Grandeur” published in the U.S.A. later in 1941. As to the present title – his best known – “The names in this book are real, the characters fictitious” – Gogarty, surgeon, poet, wit, raconteur, senator of the Free State, and the original of Joyce’s Buck Mulligan – with an extraordinary evocation of the Dublin of his times (“neither a novel, nor a set of memoirs ... in one continuum in which the past is as near as the present”) – discursive, reflective, anecdotal, with an enviable cast of “fictitious” characters, not least A.E. (George Russell), Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera, Lord Dunsany, Lady Gregory, Arthur Griffith, Tim Healy, Augustus John, Joyce himself, George Moore, W. B. Yeats, and many more.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [x],330pp. Original green cloth; some wear at both head and tail, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket by Leo Whelan (1892-1956) – the jacket likewise with some wear and chipping at extremities; some rubbing elsewhere and some faint tanning to spine, but a good and seldom seen survival.

SOLD

[London : ca.1820]. An extremely rare and very early example of a lithographic view, made by Lady Gordon, gifted amateur pupil of both Turner and Girtin. The ceremonial opening of Rennie’s bridge, with the Lord Mayor’s Barge, etc., took place on the second anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. The artist’s husband, Sir James Willoughby Gordon (1772-1851), was Quartermaster General at the time, and her daughter, Julia Emily Gordon (1810-1896) – also to become a fine artist – is said to have sat on Wellington’s knee on the eve of battle. Signed I. G. in the lower corner.
Lithograph on wove paper. Printed surface 142 x 263mm (approx. 5-1/2” x 10-1/4”). Tiny area of thinning at centre, a few specks to outer blank margins, but a very good example. No copy located in either the British Museum or the V. &. A.

£250

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London : Modern Fiction (London), [ca.1951]. First edition. Gangster client of ruthless defence attorney Stab Kelly is shot dead through his office window – two beautiful but wholly contrasting women are immediately involved. “Spike Gordon” was one of the new set of fictitious authors introduced by Edwin and Irene Turvey at the height of their success as Moderrn Fiction (London) – it is believed to mask the identity of John Russell Fearn.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 126,[ii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – elegant redhead looks concerned about the dead man; a little rubbed, nicked, creased and very slightly chipped; staples rusted; text a little brittle and tanned, with a few chips; one leaf torn and slightly defective, with the loss of a handful of letters, but overall a good copy of a rare title. No copy traced in any major library worldwide.

£100

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London : W. S. Orr & Co., 1838. First edition. A compelling view of the “Modern Babylon” from the journalist James Grant – “Everything the Author has described, has either come under his own observation, or been verbally communicated to him by friends who were cognizant of the facts stated, and in whose veracity he could place the utmost reliance”. With chapters on begging imposters, debtors’ prisons, the lumber troop, parliament, penny theatres, workhouses, lunatic asylums, Bartholomew and Greenwich fairs, gaming houses and gamblers, the police, and other aspects of the underworld of the metropolis. Published in instalments at just the same time as “Oliver Twist” was being serialised, the work provides an interesting factual counterpart and companion to the Dickens novel, not least in that the young Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”) was responsible for the bulk of the illustrations.
Demy 8vo (217 x 132mm). viii,408pp. Frontispiece, extra vignette title, and twenty-two etched plates, mainly by “Phiz” (1815-1882), in his best Dickensian style. Bound in a smart nineteenth-century full tan polished calf, banded and gilt; marbled edges and endpapers; a few very minor signs of age and use; some occasional spotting and browning to plates, but a very good copy of a major precursor of Mayhew and the later nineteenth-century researchers.

SOLD

London : Arthur Barker, 1934. First editions of the two separately published volumes of Graves’ “I Claudius” masterpiece. “I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the Idiot’, or ‘That Claudius’, or ‘Claudius the Stammerer’, or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius’ or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius’, am now about to write this strange history of my life ...”.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (213 x 132mm). 494; (576)pp. Folding genealogical tables. Bound in a handsome recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; the original cloth backstrips preserved at the rear of each volume; a few internal marks and spots, but overall a very good and sound set. Higginson A42a / A43a.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1943). First edition. Greene’s powerful evocation of London in the blitz – a spy thriller full of guilt, menace and deceit. Informed by his work at the Ministry of Information – and turned into the 1944 Fritz Lang film noir, with Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds.
Crown 8vo (182 x 118mm). [vi],236,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half black morocco, banded and gilt; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good and attractive copy of a difficult wartime Greene.

£400

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London : Ward, Lock, & Tyler, [1867 (but later)]. An undesignated late Victorian reprint of these powerful sketches of London life at the extremes from the campaigning journalist, James Greenwood – “The Lambeth Casual” – At the Hospital Gate; Newgate Market; A Dog Show; Concerning Muffins; The Bones of London; Christmas Eve in Brick Lane; The Leather Market; Watercresses; The Song-Bird Market; The Gleaners of the Thames Bank; The Halfpenny Barber, etc. First published in 1867. “Mr. Greenwood gives us some thirty of his clever sketches, made on the spot and from life, in the dark recesses of the metropolis ... One word as to the style of Mr. Greenwood’s narrative – it is excellent. Graphic and homely, it goes straight home” (The Globe, 14th December 1867).
Crown 8vo (19cm). viii,232,16pp. Twelve lively double-page plates depicting the various markets, etc. Original decorative red cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; a touch sunned; some very minor wear; endpapers a little tanned, and one slightly cracked; a little shaken and slack, but a serviceable copy of an extraordinary window into the life of the London poor.

SOLD

London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1888. First edition. An unusual Haggard, set in his native Norfolk, but one of his best: “A tale of mystery and complications and hidden treasure” (Daily Telegraph) – “combined with the regulation elements of the marriage which is a failure, a bigamy, and a dash of murder ... there is an ex-housemaid and present music-hall singer, suggestively nicknamed ‘The Tiger’, of a type much better left to the police reports” (Graphic); “reaching a far higher level than any of Mr. Haggard’s previous stories” (Liverpool Mercury); “one of the most powerful novels Mr. Haggard has written” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph); “shows that Mr. Rider Haggard has powers of which even he himself is perhaps scarcely conscious” (United Service Gazette).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(248); [viii],(264); [viii],(262),[ii]pp. Original red cloth, lettered in black; spines a little sunned and lightly worn; faint traces of small library labels removed from upper covers; some minor bruising and marking; small labels expertly removed from front endpapers, leaving only faint traces; endpapers very slightly cracked in vol. iii; a few minor internal marks and spots; a touch shaken, but a good set in the original cloth, showing very little evidence of library use. Neat blind stamp of Warren’s Library, Winchester, in each volume.

£400

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London : Cassell & Co., (1916). First edition. “One of the strangest of all the adventures which have befallen me in the course of a life that so far can scarcely be called tame or humdrum” – in the Allan Quatermain series, and “is especially welcome on that account. But more than this, it is the best and greatest of the series. It is never less than delightful, and for the greater part is profoundly thrilling” (Western Mail, 15th January 1916).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],344pp. Coloured frontispiece and three plates by A. C. Michael – Arthur Cadwgan Michael (1881-1965). Original brown cloth, ruled and lettered in blind on upper cover, lettered across spine in gilt; a touch of rubbing; mild spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good copy. Contemporary “Royal Naval War Libraries” stamp on front pastedown – although the book has evidently never seen library use.

£100

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London : Chapman & Hall, [1859]. A set of hand-coloured maps of the English counties, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight, with general maps of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The maps were originally published serially between January 1830 and July 1832 and are here reissued in lithographic form with the railways, etc., brought right up to date – showing, for example, the Lewes-Uckfield line opened in 1858. The original engraver, Sidney Hall, died in January 1831. A number of plates were already completed, but from September 1831 the remaining counties (from Rutland onwards) are signed not with his characteristic "Sidy. Hall", but with the plainer "S. Hall", the style adopted by his widow Selina, who was quietly and successfully to carry on the business in this quasi-anonymous way until her own death in 1853.
Demy 8vo (21cm). Forty-six folding maps, with four of the maps of larger size, all with original outline hand colour. Original black roan wallet style binding, with ribbon and flap, expertly restored and refurbished; one map loose; a few minor marks, but a very good copy indeed. Chubb DII – not noting this variant.

£500

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1928. First edition. Hardy’s final collection of poetry – 105 poems – the majority previously unpublished. Includes “The Lodging-House Fuchsias”, “To a Tree in London”, “Henley Regatta”, “That Kiss in the Dark”, and “We are Getting to the End”. Although prepared for the press before his death in January 1928, Hardy did not live to see its publication.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xii),202,[ii]pp. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; cloth a little bruised and slightly marked; some spotting of edges; endpapers faintly tanned, but a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a couple of faint scuffs, but fresh and virtually unworn. Decorative ex-libris label made out in the name of Phyllis Redfern Hardy, later Noble, (1904-2001).

SOLD

London : William Pickering, 1853. A handsomely produced edition of one of the earliest collected works of the Sweet Singer of the Temple, printed at the Chiswick Press and here in a highly attractive binding by Roger de Coverley & Sons. Originally published in 1835-1836 and including all the extant poems, letters, etc., then known, with lives of Herbert by Izaak Walton and Barnabas Oley, notes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, etc.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (217 x 139mm). xii,414; (xxviii),384pp. Engraved frontispieces. Title-pages in red and black. Bound in a stylish early twentieth-century full crushed chestnut morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; a few faint marks; endleaves tanned from turn-ins, but overall a very good set indeed.

£250

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London : Methuen & Co., (1904). First edition. Hichens’ celebrated international best-seller of love, faith and sand — a socialite seeks solace in the desert — “Unique in fiction — a soul’s tragedy with which no mortal love or strength can grapple … not merely a fine book, but a book which deserves to live” (London Evening Standard, 20th October 1904). There were two silent film versions even before the award-winning Technicolor version with Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer and Basil Rathbone, made by David O. Selznick in 1936.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),520 + 40pp advertisements dated September 1904. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine; some very minor wear and rubbing to cloth; a touch sunned; a few slight marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£200

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London : Methuen & Co., (1906). First edition. Hermione Lester marries a handsome man, ten years her junior. His grandmother was Sicilian and they venture to Sicily on their honeymoon. Things begin to unravel. “As a piece of constructive work ... Mr. Robert Hichens’ new novel, gives the impression of an almost too faultless perfection ... seldom, we should say, has there been a more perfectly harmonious development of plot and character” (Morning Post, 20th September 1906). “An exceptionally brilliant novel” (American Register, 22nd September 1906) – it was reprinted four times in its first week of publication. Filmed in 1921 with Ivor Novello, Phyllis Neilson-Terry and Desdemona Mazza, and again in 1948 with Kay Hammond, Lea Padovani, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],416 + 40pp publisher’s advertisements dated March 1906. Original decorative cloth gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch bruised; endpapers tanned and slightly cracked; some spotting, but a good and still attractive copy.

£125

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1988-1992). A complete first edition set of this magisterial biography of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) – the individual volumes sub-titled “The Search for Love : 1856-1898”, “The Pursuit of Power : 1898-1918”, “The Lure of Fantasy : 1918-1950” and “The Shaw Companion” – the last comprising “The Last Laugh : 1950-1992”, as well as the appendices, complete notes, a cumulative index, etc.
Five volumes, bound in four. Medium 8vo (25cm). viii,486,[ii]; (x),422; (x),544,[ii]; viii,490,[vi]pp. Plates. Portraits. Original boards; a very good set in the dust-jackets – the jackets just faintly creased in one or two places.

£100

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Bristol : J. W. Arrowsmith, [1898]. First edition : the first issue, with just the thirty-two earlier titles listed in the advertisements for Arrowsmith’s 3/6 series. A sequel to “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1894) — Ruritania three years on. “Holds the reader in breathless attention throughout, so spirited, vigorous, and well written is the narrative” (The Graphic, 30th July 1898). Illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) — he of the “Gibson Girl”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 385,[iii]pp. Eight plates. Original blue-green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine; just lightly rubbed and a touch bruised; endpapers a little tanned, but still overall a very good copy. Contemporary (April 1899) ownership inscription of Arthur Davies.

£125

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1869. First edition. An attractive and discursive social history, with much material on local writers and artists – Hampstead, Highgate and Islington – with good material also on Belsize, Canonbury, Frognal, Highbury, Hornsey, Kilburn Priory, Muswell Hill, Newington Green, Primrose Hill, the Wells and Spas, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xxvi,590,2 + 24pp inserted advertisements dated January 1868. Numerous woodcut illustrations in the text by Orlando Jewitt (1799-1869). Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt, and blocked in blind; cloth a little rubbed, worn and spotted; a touch shaken, but a good and serviceable copy. Bookplate of Harold Egan.

£100

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London : T. Egerton, 1801-1802. Second edition. A charming sequence of views of the Thames and its landmarks from its source to Tilbury, together with an entertaining and offbeat commentary in “plain and unadorned language”. First published in 1792, the delightful sepia aquatint views were etched by Cornelis Apostool from Ireland’s drawings – “at the time of their first publication the soft tones and translucent fluidity of the new medium must have made a welcome change from the formality of the line-engravings in which such subjects had hitherto been depicted” (Adams). For the present edition, some of the original aquatints have been replaced by fresh plates by Charles Rosenberg, and a view of the newly-built bridge at Staines is also included.
Medium 8vo (232 x 154mm). xvi,(210),[ii]; viii,258,[ii]pp. Engraved titles. Two maps. Fifty-two plates. Bound in an elegant later (Victorian) half green calf, banded and richly gilt; red labels; marbled sides; some minor rubbing; occasional spotting, but a very good set. With the armorial bookplate of Thomas Hayward Southby (1801-1889) of Carswell Manor at Buckland in each volume.

SOLD

London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882. First edition : in the variant green (a) binding – Miller & Matthews (B15) make a persuasive case for regarding these slightly taller copies in green as having appeared earlier than the regular copies in brown. Jefferies and his haunting evocation of a Wiltshire childhood – “where there was magic in everything, blades of grass and stars, the sun and the stones upon the ground”.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (180 x 119mm). viii,(288); iv,294,[ii]; iv,294,[ii]pp. Original decorative green cloth, blocked in black and gilt, and lettered in gilt; patterned endpapers; a few very minor signs of age and use; some occasional spotting to prelims and edges, but an excellent set. W. H. Smith blind-stamp to front free endpaper of the first volume.

SOLD

London : Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1903 [but 1902]. First edition. A laser-like ray for sky-writing in letters of flame doubles as a death-ray – a joint Russo-French coalition delivers an ultimatum to England. “It is all due to the machine, which is found to have the power to kill every living thing in the world” (London Evening Standard, 21st November 1902). “The death count of this Future [1909] War is unusually high” (Encyclopedia of Science Fiction).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 230,[ii]pp. Frontispiece and extra pictorial title. Original pictorial cloth; some minor rubbing; some mild spotting of edges, but still a very good copy. Sunday School prize label dated Xmas 1903 on front pastedown, made out to Harry Morehen (1895-1953), son of a Gloucester hairdresser, for regular attendance and good conduct – signed by local vicar Enoch Brooke Bradley (1854-1945).

SOLD

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1996). First edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. The second of the much-admired Frederick Troy series – Chief Inspector Troy is assigned to bodyguard and spy on Nikita Khrushchev on his visit to England – “A splash of Greene, a twist of Deighton, a small measure of history – Lawton has produced a thrilling cocktail” (The Times).
Royal 8vo (25cm). [x],416,[vi]pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; the merest hint of bruising, but a very good copy indeed – bright, clean and sound – in an equally very good dust-jacket.

£100

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1998). First edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. The scarce third novel in the much-admired Frederick Troy series – it is 1963 – a defection, a ministerial resignation, an overdose and a suicide – all echoes of very real events – an “unputdownable narrative of spying, sexual intrigue, political scandal and murder ... a haunting novel, transcending the bounds of genre fiction” (A. N. Wilson in the Daily Telegraph).
Royal 8vo (25cm). [viii],440pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; an excellent copy, bright, clean and sound, in an equally fine dust-jacket.

£100

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New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, (2017). First edition : precedes the 2018 London edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. The eighth of the Inspector Troy series – an encounter with Guy Burgess in Vienna in 1958 and the past begins to unravel into the present.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [viii],(342),[ii]pp. Original black and grey boards, lettered in metallic red; a very good copy indeed in the Carlos Beltran dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£100

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London : Geoffrey Bles, (1950). First edition. Illustrations and colour frontispiece by Pauline Baynes. The first and best-known of the Narnia chronicles. “It is a kind of modern fairy tale about four children evacuated to an old house in the country during the war. They discover that merely by stepping into a wardrobe they have access to a wonderland of strange creatures and stranger adventures ... his little book may well become a children’s classic” (a prophetic review in the Belfast News-Letter, 30th October 1950).
Post 8vo (198 x 130mm). (174)pp. Coloured frontispiece. Illustrations. Bound, without final blank, in an elegant recent full green morocco, banded and gilt; a few very minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£1,500

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London : Geoffrey Bles, (1953). First edition. Eustace and Jill in Narnia and the search for Prince Rilian. The fourth published but the sixth in chronological terms of the series.
Post 8vo (21cm). (218),[ii]pp. Endpaper map. Illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; just a touch sunned and faintly marked; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a good copy of the scarcest of the Narnia series.

SOLD

London : Geoffrey Bles, (1954). First edition. The fifth instalment of “The Chronicles of Narnia” – an “ancient story, which takes us right back to the reign of High King Peter, tells how the Boy and the Horse together escaped from the cruel country of Calormen, through the city of Tashbaan, across the desert, into Archenland, over the mountains, and so at last (with the help of Aslan) to Narnia itself”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (200)pp. Endpaper map. Frontispiece and illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Original grey boards, lettered in silver; spine a little darkened; a few faint marks; endpapers and outer leaves a little tanned; mild spotting to edges and prelims, but a good and sound copy. Small bookseller’s label of Grindley’s of Leigh-on-Sea on rear pastedown.

SOLD

London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1955. First edition. The sixth instalment of “The Chronicles of Narnia”, taking us back to “the dawn of Narnian time and the day when the Beasts first talked, which was also the first day when people from our world first went to Narnia. It all happened because Diggory’s wicked uncle, who was a magician, sent him to the Wood Between the Worlds”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (184)pp. Illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Original green boards, lettered in silver; covers a little marked and slightly sunned; top edge a little spotted; a few very minor internal marks and spots, but a good and sound copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of Margaret and Mary Gunyon.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (2019). First edition. Signed by Patrick McGuinness on the title-page. His second novel – a young woman murdered, a retired school-teacher monstered by the media, a former pupil investigates – “both very funny and – at the same time – shatteringly sad” – “Literary fiction as it should be: in stylish, surprising, lyrical sentences we are forced to confront the hidden power structures, public and private, that control our everyday lives” (The Times).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(330)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; about fine in the dust-jacket – also fine.

£100

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London : Allan Wingate, (1945). First edition. “That the book has not been printed until now is partly due to the manuscript’s habit of absenting itself from my possession for long intervals ... all the characters, including the narrator, are entirely imaginary”. Raffish life on the Riviera before the war – a mountain retreat from the heat with Spider – “They say he poisoned his wife ... He takes drugs and has a daughter aged ten”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],108,[ii]pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; a handful of faint spots to edges and endpapers, but a very good copy in the John Banting dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, with a couple of repaired small chips and a repaired short tear; the back panel slightly marked, but a fragile survival and attractive still.

SOLD

London : Alan Ross, 1965. First edition. Recollections of “Fitzrovian Nights” – and of Francis Bacon, Cyril Connolly, Graham Greene, Nina Hamnett, John Minton, Elizabeth Smart, Stevie Smith, Tambimuttu, Dylan Thomas, Woodrow Wyatt, and many more – together with six of the best of the Maclaren-Ross short stories of the period, including “I Had to Go Sick” and “A Bit of a Smash in Madras”. “With its glimpses of Connolly in his Bloomsbury office and Graham Greene at home in Clapham Common, [it] is one of the great literary source-books of the age” (D. J. Taylor in The Guardian, 7th December 2012).
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],344,[ii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Facsimiles. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; edges spotted; a few spots to endpapers, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – just very slightly rubbed and with hint of tanning, but also very good.

£100

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London : Constable & Co., (1924). First edition. A collection of twenty-five stories written between 1908 and 1920, including the semi-autobiographical “An Indiscreet Journey”, etc. “At its highest, Katherine Mansfield’s art was like pure singing ... Once you can hear Katherine Mansfield’s music, you never tire of it. Its perfection never becomes monotonous ... In a sense all her stories are about the same problem – how difficult intimacy is, and how unutterably lovely, and how of all wickednesses the worst is committed by those who spoil intimacy, or betray it, or use it for other ends” (Daily News, 21st August 1924).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],(x),(260)pp. Original grey cloth, ruled and lettered in blue; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the typographic dust-jacket – lightly tanned and with minor wear and a few short nicks, but also very good. Pictorial bookplate of Marjorie Dickson and small bookseller’s label of the Bucks County Book Shop of Amersham on front endpaper.

SOLD

London : Saunders & Otley, 1836. First edition. Marryat’s amiable and abidingly popular tale of the making of a seaman – although as one modern critic has it, “there’s something here to offend almost everyone”. Contemporary critics found it “a work of great power and surpassing beauty, sufficient of itself to have established his reputation as a man of genius” (London Courier, 19th December 1836).
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (186 x 112mm). (viii),(292); (viii),306; viii,314pp. Bound, without half-titles and advertisement leaves, in a neat contemporary half tan calf, banded and gilt; red labels; marbled sides, edges and endleaves; just a touch sunned; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good and sound set. With the contemporary armorial bookplates of John Wingfield (1769-1862) of Onslow, Sheriff of Shropshire and Mayor of Shrewsbury, in each volume – and the more recent nautical bookplate of the notable collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

£500

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London : J. Reynolds, 1851. An attractive and clearly worked map of mid nineteenth-century London, extending from Primrose Hill down to the Oval, and from the Serpentine across to Blackwall Reach, on a scale of four inches (approx. 10cm) to the mile. Drawn and engraved by Henry Martin, originally published in 1847 – and here updated to include the Hungerford Suspension Bridge and the site of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, with the cover title modified to read “The Exhibition Map of London: and Visitors Guide”. Also included in the case are a 36pp guide, with advice to strangers; notes on the principal buildings; the scientific institutions, museums and exhibitions; the principal theatres, churches, docks and bridges; sights and amusements; cab and railway fares; an index to the 1,000 leading thoroughfares, and notes on the Great Exhibition itself, as well as a separate small map “Showing the Situation of the Chief Objects of Interest in London”, drawn and engraved by John Emslie (1813-1875).
Steel line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 405 x 760mm (approx. 16” x 29-7/8”), folding into a pocket-sized cloth case (16cm), with a paper label and an image of the Great Exhibition. The case slightly scuffed; some wear and slight holing at the folds of the main map, with a number of tape and paper repairs, especially to the south-western corner, with some attendant discolouration; the smaller map very slightly frayed at edges, not affecting the image, but overall a good and serviceable copy of an attractive and interesting production. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Howgego 406/003.

£200

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London : A. & C. Black, 1919. First edition. Morgan’s extraordinary and “deadly true” first novel, written while a prisoner-of-war and rewritten after his manuscript was lost at sea. His searing account of the systematic and sadistic bullying of tyro midshipmen in the Royal Navy of the time led to the book’s strange disappearance from the bookshops – never officially suppressed but, as Morgan later recalled, “the ordinary means of distribution ceased to be available to it. How this was brought about I do not know, but as the Navy has a Secret Service, I draw my own conclusions”.
Post 8vo (21cm). viii,348pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in blind; a touch rubbed; spine a little sunned (as often); some spotting of edges and endpapers, but a good and sound copy of a difficult title. Related press-cuttings loosely inserted.

SOLD

London : W. Morgan, 1838. An excellent example of the Victorian protean print or metamorphic scene – a print so designed as to change in appearance when held up before a strong light. As the text explains: “This print at first represents the venerable building early in the morning, on the 10th day of January; and, upon holding it before the light, you will observe the awful conflagration, as it appeared on the night of the same day, which totally destroyed the Exchange”.
Lithograph on paper, with tissue underlay, laid on to the original grey backing sheet with a lithographic descriptive label. Original hand colour. Image area 158 x 226mm (approx. 6-1/4” x 8-7/8”). A few slight spots; tissue underlay slightly damaged at outer edges (not affecting the quality of the transformation); but a very good copy of a scarce and fragile item. A guaranteed genuine antique print.

£400

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London : George Virtue, 1831]. One of the prettiest and most popular of all antique maps of the county, decorated with inset views of Dover, Greenwich and Rochester, coats of arms, and an architectural border festooned with hops. Originally engraved in 1831 by William Schmollinger (1811?-1869) for the part-work series “The English Counties Delineated” (London : 1830-1837) – and here in early state before the addition of railways, etc.
Steel line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 202 x 258mm (approx. 8” x 10-1/8”). Trimmed a little tight (as usual); a hint of tanning to margins; faint corner crease; a few faint spots and specks, but overall in very good and clean state. Rare in this early state and with original colour. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£125

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) / Jonathan Cape, (1960-1964). A first edition set of her scandalous trilogy – the separately published “The Country Girls” (1960) – Irish girls in black underwear, banned in Ireland, publicly burnt by her parish priest in Tuamgraney – “By turns beautiful and bawdy, funny and haunting ... often referred to as the quintessential tale of Irish girlhood, it is not the novel that broke the mould: it is the one that made it” (Eimear McBride); “The Lonely Girl” (1962) – filmed in 1964 as “The Girl With Green Eyes”, with Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave, Peter Finch, etc. – and the darker concluding volume set in London, “Girls in Their Married Bliss” (1964).
Three volumes. Post & crown 8vo (21 & 20cm). (224); (254),[ii]; 190,[ii]pp. Original boards (black, mauve, blue); a few faint marks; some mild spotting to the endpapers of the first volume and edges of the second, but very good copies in the original pictorial dust-jackets by Jillian Willett, Hofbauer and David Fawcett respectively – the jackets with some minor rubbing and a couple of nicks, the back panel of the second a little splashed, but complete and overall also very good. Ownership stamp of the Raffin Stud, Castletown, County Meath, in the second volume.

£750

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1940. First edition. The artist Bip Pares married for a second time in 1938 and she and her husband, Robert Christopher Bradby (1905-1982), honeymooned by travelling to Bhutan, Sikkim, and the borders of Tibet, falling in along the way with the British Everest Expedition under Bill Tilman – “Everything is blue, the sky is blue, the hills are blue, the distance, the reflections in the river, and the noonday shadows on the snows and the blue has a great depth almost as if, when you reach out your hand you could touch it, like the bloom on a grape”.
Medium 8vo (23cm). (302),[ii]pp. Sixteen colour monochrome plates; sixteen portrait plates, including images of members of the expedition, of the honeymooners, and of a young Sherpa Tenzing, and sixty illustrations in the text, all by the author; two maps. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in silver; pictorial endpapers by the author; tiny rim of fading at tips; a few faint marks; endpapers lightly tanned, but a sound and bright copy in the rare original dust-jacket – a design in blue and cream by the author – the jacket price-clipped, a little worn and creased, with a couple of chips, some short repaired tears, and some light spotting, but substantially complete and a welcome survival. This copy has been signed by Charles Warren (1906-1999), mountaineer and doctor to the expedition, whose portrait appears in the book, and (on an inserted slip) by Peter Lloyd (1907-2003), engineer and mountaineer, another senior member of the expedition, later to become president of the Alpine Club.

SOLD

London : Anthony Blond, (1959). First edition. His second novel — a resignation from the army, a mysterious and murky organisation steps in. Murder required. “A thriller written in a sort of lurid phosphorescence” (Siriol Hugh-Jones in The Tatler, 4th November 1959).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(248),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch dulled; mild tanning and spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the Oliver Carson dust-jacket – just lightly used.

SOLD

London : Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1844. First edition : a later binding up of the first edition sheets, with inserted advertisements dated 1850. An absorbing full-length account of the Monmouth Rebellion, drawing on previously unknown sources and records. The author was a schoolmaster at Lyme Regis (and also at one time the mayor) and is particularly strong on local records and traditions.
Two volumes. Post 8vo (21cm). xvi,338,[ii] + 32pp advertisements dated June 1850; viii,346,[ii]pp. Portrait frontispiece, view of Lyme Regis, and two folding maps; wood engravings in text. Original terracotta cloth, blocked and decorated in gilt and blind, by Westleys & Co., with their ticket; a touch sunned; a few faint marks; rear endpaper to first volume slightly cracked; a few spots, mainly to edges; slight offsetting from plates; advertisement leaves partially unopened; related press-cutting laid in; overall a very good set.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1941]. First edition. “A real little master-work, full of delightful ideas and witty drawings. The main idea is what we would or should do if the war was over” (Hampstead News, 25th December 1941). The authors offer their thoughts on town planning, dress reform, transport, sport, education, art, etc. – they later claimed their work as the inspiration behind the Beveridge Report, although the section on “surrealism in the home” at least would appear to have passed Beveridge by.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,136pp. Pictorial endpapers. Illustrations throughout. Original blue pictorial cloth, blocked and lettered in black; a few edge spots, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the Heath Robinson dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped; chipped at head and tail, with the loss of a few letters, with some further light wear and shallow chipping, but a scarce and fragile wartime survival. Small gift inscription on front free endpaper.

SOLD

London : George Allen & Unwin, (1946). First British edition. A fluent, witty, elegant, and sweeping survey of the philosophic tradition, treated as much as social and cultural history as in terms of pure philosophy – the Pre-Socratics; Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; the Cynics, Sceptics, Stoics, and Epicureans; Jewish, Mohammedan, and Catholic scholars; and the modern tradition – Machiavelli, Erasmus and More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Byron, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Bergson, William James, Dewey, etc. “I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But, to my mind, a man without bias cannot write interesting history – if, indeed, such a man exists” (Bertrand Russell).
Demy 8vo (23cm). 916pp. Original canvas, blocked in brown and lettered in yellow; a very good copy in the A. E. Barlow dust-jacket (printed on the verso of a war-surplus map of the English East Coast) – the jacket lightly repaired and slightly chipped at head and tail, with a further shallow chip at the top of the front panel, but otherwise very good.

SOLD

London : Faber & Gwyer / Faber & Faber, (1928-1936). A first edition set of the three separately published volumes – “This is fiction, but with a difference – for the author, who wishes at present to remain anonymous, has himself lived the life of a hero” – the first two volumes were published anonymously, the first in an edition of just 1,500 copies. “The most satisfying piece of autobiography to be published in our time. All the equipment of a novelist is Sassoon’s. But what novel could equal in fascination this true story? The three books give him a place unique in English letters” (Howard Spring in the Evening Standard, 3rd September 1936).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (183 x 113mm). (396),[iv]; 334,[ii]; 280pp. Bound, without one initial blank leaf, in a handsome recent full navy crushed morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; a couple of tiny marks; mild tanning of outer leaves in one volume, but a very good set.

£1,500

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London : Nathaniel Cooke, 1853. First edition in English of this amiable and much-quoted primary source on Victorian London. An acute overseas visitor shines a light on London street life, the London squares, life on the Thames, the London police, Newgate, the Post Office, the London of fogs and gaslight, the City, the Bank of England, Hyde Park, the haunts of fashion, the newspapers and periodicals, the theatres, and much else. Originally published as “Wanderungen durch London” (1852-1853) and here in a translation by Otto von Wenckstern (1819-1869), translator of Goethe, writer on slavery, the Schleswig-Holstein question, etc.
Crown 8vo (187 x 116mm). xii,290pp. Frontispiece, extra pictorial title and six lively plates of street scenes by William McConnell (1832?-1867). Bound, without half-title, in neat contemporary half roan, ruled, lettered and blocked in gilt; marbled sides; lightly rubbed and worn at extremities; short split to upper joint; a few minor internal marks and slight creases, but a good and serviceable copy of an important contribution to the history of the London streets.

£100

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London : Constable & Co., 1925. First edition. Isabelle de Charrière (1740-1805), known as Zélide, “lived in her father’s moated castle in Holland, like a fairytale princess in a tower. She was the clever, sexy, mercurial young Dutch blue-stocking with whom Boswell fell disastrously in love in 1764 ... this tender, funny, faintly salacious portrait of a ‘belle-esprit’ is one of the most exquisite biographical miniatures ever written (Richard Holmes)” – a best-seller in its day and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize – “Its success proves that sheer literary quality will make a book go” (James Milne, in the Graphic, 14th November 1925).
Demy 8vo (220 x 144mm). (viii),(216),[iv]pp. Two portrait plates and two silhouettes. Bound in an elegant later red calf, banded and gilt; blue labels; marbled sides and endpapers; top edge gilt; silk ribbon; just a touch dulled; some minute wear to a corner; a handful of spots, but a very good copy. With the small silver book-label of A. Constable Maxwell of the Chateau de Vallamand in Switzerland on the front endpaper.

£125

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London : William Pickering, 1847. First Pickering edition. “The not distinguishing where things should be distinguished, and the not confounding, where things should be confounded, is the cause of all the mistakes in the world” and other majestic thinking from the “glory of the English nation”, the jurist and scholar John Selden. Collections of Selden’s table-talk had appeared since the seventeenth century, but are here introduced by a long “biographical preface” from Samuel Weller Singer (1783-1858) – “There are few volumes of its size so pregnant with sense, combined with the most profound learning; it is impossible to open it without finding some important fact ... something practically useful and applicable to the business of life”. Printed by Charles Whittingham at Chiswick.
Foolscap 8vo (164 x 100mm). cxxxiv,[2],(258)pp. Portrait frontispiece. Bound in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) half tan crushed morocco; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; just a hint of sunning, a few faint spots to binder’s blanks, but overall a very good, sound and clean copy. Dated 1957 ownership inscription of David Fyfe Anderson (1904-1988), the Scottish obstetrician.

£125

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[London : 1694?]. A charming and rare small antique map of Shropshire by John Seller. Originally produced for a set of maps which appeared under the title “Anglia Contracta”, dated to between 1689 and 1694 by Skelton and generally ascribed to somewhere near the latter date. The maps in their original form were subsequently reissued a number of times between 1696 and 1711, with the present example dating from no later than 1697. Of extreme rarity with original colour.
Copper line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 122 x 146mm (approx. 4-3/4” x 5-3/4”). A few faint marks and some mild tanning, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£125

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London : Charles Knight & Co., [1838-1843]. The first Charles Knight edition. Comprises two volumes each of the comedies, histories and tragedies, as well as the poems, a volume of seventeen doubtful plays sometimes ascribed to Shakespeare (or Shakspere, as Knight insists on having it), together with commendatory verses, a history of critical opinion, material on Shakespeare in Germany, indexes, and a final volume of Knight’s full-length biography. All furnished with introductory notices, notes, variant readings, a glossary, music to the songs, etc. – and profusely illustrated throughout by the leading wood-engravers of the day from the designs of William Harvey (1796-1866) and others. Using the latest technology, Charles Knight (1791-1873) was in the vanguard of bringing the price of books within everyday reach and bringing education and edification in their train with the use of copious illustration – here insisting on illustrations of “the realities upon which the imagination of the poet must have rested ... the localities ... the portraits of the real personages ... accurate costume in all its rich variety”.
Eight volumes. Royal 8vo (240 x 159mm). Pictorial title-pages, profuse vignettes and decorations throughout. Bound in a handsome contemporary full polished plum calf, banded and gilt; silk ribbons; some minor rubbing; a few scratches; a few front endpapers slightly split, but still firm; a handful of minor marks, but a very good, overall very clean and sound set of a tour-de-force of early Victorian publishing. Contemporary bookplates of William Payne to each volume – possibly the nineteenth-century actor William Payne (1804-1878), who carried Edmund Kean from the stage when he fell terminally ill in his last ever performance (Othello at Covent Garden in 1833).

£1,000

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London : John Murray, 1887. First edition. Samuel “Self-Help” Smiles with “many fresh instances of what can be accomplished by honest force of will and steady accomplishment” from right across the range of human endeavour. Treated thematically, there are inspiring chapters on Man and Gentleman; Great Men – Great Workers; Great Young Men; Great Old Men; Lineage of Talent and Genius; The Literary Ailment (Over Brain-Work); Health and Hobbies; Town and Country Life; Single and Married, and the Evening of Life.
Crown 8vo (180 x 117mm). xii,474pp. Bound in an elegant contemporary full plum prize calf, banded and gilt, with the arms of the Crypt School in Gloucester on the upper cover, by George Davies & Son of Gloucester; marbled edges and endpapers; some minor rubbing and a few tiny scuffs, but a very good and sound copy. Midsummer 1888 Mark Prize school label of the Crypt School made out to G. W. Crump – George Wallace Crump (1874-1915), the son of a local iron railing manufacturer.

£100

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1963. First edition. “Few people alive at the time were more delightful, more ingenious, more movingly lovely, and, as it might happen, more savage, than the girls of slender means” – “A comedy of manners and characters that at the same time resounds with profound and unsettling intimations. All Miss Spark’s powers are at full strength” (Birmingham Daily Post, 24th September 1963).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(184),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, sound and clean copy in the evocative autumnal dust-jacket by Harry Cowdell (1912-1987) – just lightly sunned and slightly rubbed at extremities.

£100

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London : John Murray, (1950-1961). A complete first edition set of the four volumes of Stark’s autobiography – the first volume signed by the author on the half-title. From her picaresque childhood, through her life and travels in the Arab and Persian world, to World War II – “It is difficult to know which to admire more, her vivid description of her experiences or the realism of the lessons which she draws from them ... Our future is uncontrollable if we are unable to read our past” (Sir Charles Petrie in The Illustrated London News, 28th October 1961).
Four volumes. Demy 8vo (23cm). (xiv),346; (xvi),(342),[ii]; (xvi),(288); xii,(298),[ii]pp. Numerous plates – many from the author’s own photographs; portraits; maps, some double-page, etc. Wood-engraved decorations by Reynolds Stone. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt, with facsimiles of the author’s signature on upper covers; the first volume a little faded; some edge-spotting, chiefly to the final volume, but otherwise a very good set in the Frank Quilter dust-jackets – the first price-clipped, a little worn, nicked and chipped, with repairs at head; the second price-clipped, a little chipped, with repaired tears to foot at folds; the third with slight chipping at head and some repaired nicks; the fourth very good, with only a hint of wear. The first volume with the decorative bookplate of Jean A. Callander of Westwood, Falkirk, the third and fourth with unrelated inscriptions.

£500

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New York : Grove Press, [1974]. First American edition. Signed by Tom Stoppard on the front free endpaper. A review copy, with the publisher’s slip loosely inserted – the slip revealing that the actual publication date was 1974, to coincide with the first American production of the play in that year, and not the 1972 of the copyright date, which has confused countless cataloguers. “Simply dazzling. It takes your breath away with its sheer exuberance of literacy, its cascade of words and conspicuous display of intellect. It is also extraordinarily funny” (Clive Barnes in the New York Times, 20th February 1974).
Post 8vo (22cm). (92),[iv]pp. Music. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, sound and clean copy in the photographic dust-jacket (Michael Hordern and Diana Rigg in the original London production) – the jacket also very good. From the collection of Professor Ira Nadel (1943-2021), Stoppard’s biographer.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1971). First British edition. Signed by Paul Theroux on the title-page. An early novel from Theroux, set in Malawi, where he had worked for the Peace Corps in 1963-1965, before being thrown out of both the Peace Corps and Malawi for assisting a political opponent of Hastings Banda to escape the country. The novel, published at just about the time Theroux and his family settled in England, was banned in Malawi for many years. “Linguistic exuberance, imaginative daring, a splendid ear for the rhythms of speech, a keen eye for human oddity” (The Scotsman).
Post 8vo (21cm). (318),[ii]pp. Original terracotta boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising and a single edge-spot, but a very good copy in the Derrick Greaves dust-jacket — the jacket also very good, with just the merest suggestion of tanning.

£150

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London : Putnam, (1955). First British and first separate edition : a pencilled note states this to be the first issue, without the copyright notice on the verso of the title-page – a point not mentioned by Rolph. The unfinished and partly autobiographical novel, originally published with other material a few months earlier in the USA. With a foreword by Vernon Watkins.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (116)pp. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; endpapers faintly tanned, but a very good copy in the original Gross-André dust-jacket – a design in purple, pink, black and white – a little sunned and tanned as usual, but also very good.

£125

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., (1944). First British edition. “The history of a people with the politics left out” – Trevelyan’s magisterial survey of English life over six centuries – “a series of successive scenes ... for in Chaucer’s time the English people first appear as a racial and cultural unit ... ... unless we become a totalitarian state and forget all our Englishry, there will always be something mediaeval in our ways of thinking, especially in our idea that people and corporations have rights and liberties which the State ought in some measure to respect, in spite of the legal omnicompetence of Parliament”.
Demy 8vo (214 x 134mm). xii,628pp. Maps, some double-page, two coloured; diagram. Bound in an elegant, slightly later, half navy crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; a very good copy. Small Times Book Club stamp in two places.

£125

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London : Bodley Head, (1975). First edition. “Good short stories are hard to come by, but when William Trevor produces a new collection one can be sure that they are more than merely good ... the twelve stories ... are as various and surprising as ever, but never for a moment do they stray from the world we know, or the world that we know exists”. Includes the title story, as well as “Afternoon Dancing”, “Mrs Silly”, “Office Romances”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; faint spine crease; a few faint spots, but overall a very good copy in the original John Walsh dust-jacket – also very good, fresh and unworn.

£100

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1880. First edition. A fine and unduly neglected late novel, the last of the Palliser sequence and Trollope at his most moving and humane. “We come across many old friends of bygone days – the Duke of Omnium, Mr. and Mrs. Finn and many, many others ... we roam around Barsetshire ... The book is written in Mr. Trollope’s happiest style, and is one which, when once taken up, it will be found impossible to put down” (The Graphic, 29th May 1880).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,320pp; viii;(328); viii,312 + 24pp publishers’ catalogue. Original blue-green cloth, blocked in black and lettered in gilt; expertly recased and refurbished; endpapers rejointed; edges cleaned; some minor residual signs of age and wear; a few minor marks, but otherwise a very good and attractive set. With the bookplate of Leslie Benson in each volume and the earlier ownership inscription ‘Bradwell’ to each title-page.

£500

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London : Richard Bentley, 1837. First edition. A novel with the reputation of being her best – a stinging satire on evangelicalism, with an unscrupulous vicar who manipulates the more susceptible women of the parish – “We do not know that we have ever read a work of fiction, similar in general character, superior to ‘The Vicar of Wrexhill’. Never, certainly, have we met with a more able, a more ingeniously conducted exposure of canting hypocrisy” (The Scotsman).
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (195 x 114mm). [iv],324; [iv],328; [iv],(344)pp. Frontispieces and six striking further plates drawn and etched by Auguste Hervieu (1795-1880). Bound, with both half-titles called for, in a nineteenth-century half roan with marbled sides and the binder’s labels of Fr. Ljunggrens of Goteborg – now fully rebacked in a recent chestnut morocco, banded and gilt, with black labels; some occasional spotting and browning; a few minor marks, nicks, creases and small flaws, but overall a very good set of an uncommon book.

£500

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1892. First edition. An early novel of faith and doubt from the sterling Mrs Humphry Ward, Tasmanian-born grand-daughter of Dr. Arnold of Rugby. “Though the book is by no means sensational, its violent death-rate is very high. We hear of at least three deaths by accident, and two by suicide, while the mortality is heightened by two cases of cancer, one of consumption, and one of diphtheria. The boy and girl pass through a very rough childhood” (Pall Mall Gazette, 22nd January 1892) – for all that, the novel proved popular with the public, reaching a tenth edition by July 1894.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],388; [viii],388; [viii],396pp. Original cloth, lettered and blocked in gilt and blind; very short split to lower joint of vol.i; a little sunned; the patterned endpapers a little tanned; preliminary blank neatly removed from vol.i; but still a clean and pleasant-looking set. Pencilled ownership inscriptions of Cyril D. Fitzroy, dated Oxford 1905 – this Cyril Duncombe Fitzroy (1861-1939), an Inspector of Schools for Art Instruction. Sadleir 3288. Wolff 7017.

£100

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London : A. A. Quin (Publishers), [1953?]. First edition. The tale of wide boy Curly Travers and the pouty and enigmatic Sonia, the torch-singer – “Her mouth had a sulky twist to it and she painted her lips deep and heavy ... on the way up she’d changed her name to Sonia. Then she’d changed herself to match”. A well put together story with an authentic London setting and equally authentic London dialogue from the short-lived Quin publishing firm, apparently active as publishers only in 1952-1954.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some light wear at tips; a few slight creases, but otherwise a very good copy of a scarce and ephemeral item. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Duckworth, 1930. First edition. Waugh on his travels – Monte Carlo, Naples, Messina, Haifa, Port Said, Cairo, Malta, Crete, Constantinople, Athens, Corfu, Venice, Ragusa, Barcelona, Algiers, Malaga, Gibraltar, Seville and Lisbon – “piquant and entertaining, and, of course, pleasantly outspoken ... a jolly book, then, in which Mr. Waugh manages to advertise quite a number of picturesque objects, including himself. I enjoyed every word of his book, and have no hesitation in recommending it” (Ralph Straus in The Bystander, 1st October 1930).
Demy 8vo (23cm). 206,[ii]pp. Frontispiece by the author; double-page map; sketch map and three photo plates of Barcelona. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; a little sunned and faded; endpapers tanned; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims; a good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket expertly repaired and restored in places.

£500

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London : Chapman & Hall, (1936). First edition. A collection of eleven short stories, including “Period Piece”, “Excursion in Reality”, “Love in the Slump”, “Bella Fleace Gave a Party”, etc. “One of the few living authors who is incapable of being a bore. One of the few whose books are worth buying and keeping ... Mr. Waugh is the much-imitated author of our time. Yet we all know that he is inimitable” (Daily Mirror, 30th June 1936).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],(238),[ii]pp. Frontispiece in two colours by Thomas Derrick (1885-1954) – a design also used on the elusive dust-jacket. Original lizard pattern red and black cloth, lettered in gilt; faint mark to top edge; some mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy, still bright and unworn.

£400

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1957. First edition. Waugh starts hearing voices. “The devastating and racking funniness ... comes from Mr. Waugh’s genius for sheathing terror in mirth ... we are given pure entertainment, the better for getting the reader under the skin” (Elizabeth Bowen in The Tatler, 31st July 1957).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),184pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge blue; a very good, clean and sound copy in the Val Biro dust-jacket – a pictorial design in yellow, tan, black and white – the jacket with the merest hint of sunning and wear and also very good.

£100

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1932]. First edition : in the primary binding in black cloth, with the pictorial endpapers. “I am a liar in a world of lies” – a much under-rated late Wells novel – a Jungian exploration of the psychological impact of the Great War, the principal character based at least in part on Ford Madox Ford. Dedicated to Wells’ current mistress, Odette Keun.
Post 8vo (21cm). 408 + 40pp advertisements dated January 1933. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean, and sound copy in the original Youngman Carter dust-jacket, lightly sunned at spine but with just minor wear, a few slight nicks and creases, and a couple of short repaired tears at foot.

£100

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London : Macmillan London, (1983). First edition. Signed by the author (as Mary Wesley) on the title-page. Her scarce and startling first novel for an adult audience – “Leaving her cottage in immaculate order (so that others would not be troubled) Matilda Poliport sets off for the seaside. She is armed with a bottle of Beaujolais and a gourmet’s picnic for a meticulously planned suicide” (Liverpool Echo, 28th May 1983).
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(218),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; text a little tanned as always, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – incorporating an L. S. Lowry picture – fresh, clean and unworn.

£250

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London : Herbert Jenkins, 1930. First British edition : with the witty preface not included in the American edition which appeared two weeks earlier. “Jeeves and the Impending Doom”, “Jeeves and the Song of Songs” and nine further famous tales – the third Jeeves & Wooster short story collection. “Mr. P. G. Wodehouse is again up to his quite inimitable best. As amusing a book as you will find” (The Tatler, 20th August 1930).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 312,[viii]pp. Original orange cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in black; just a hint of rubbing; endpapers a little tanned; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a very good, bright and sound copy.

£400

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London : Herbert Jenkins, (1965). First British edition. The calm and serenity of Blandings Castle disturbed – “A pretty girl in distress, the mending of sundered hearts, the introduction of imposters into his brother’s demesne, all come alike to Gally. Admittedly one or two of his schemes go awry en route”. The ninth Blandings Castle book, first published in the USA as “The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; a few slight marks and spots to edges; mild tanning to endpapers and outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket by Payne – the jacket price-clipped, a touch sunned, with some faint tanning to flaps, and a few spots to rear panel, but also very good.

£100

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London : Rare Book Society, 2011. First edition. An illustrated dictionary of well over 1,500 members of the map-trade in the British Isles from the beginnings until the mid nineteenth century, including all the known engravers and lithographers, all the known globemakers and retailers, the principal mapsellers and publishers, the key cartographers, the makers of map-based games and puzzles, and others. Each entry includes a list of published work, the known biographical facts (in most cases based on fresh and original research), addresses and dates, details of apprentices, etc. Twenty-five years in the making, the book contains previously unpublished material on almost every page.
Royal 8vo (25cm). xxxii,744pp. Over 600 illustrations; apprentice charts, etc. Original buckram; very good in the dust-jacket. Please note an additional UK 10 for postage overseas.

£125

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London : A. H. Bullen / Dublin : Maunsel & Co., 1906. First edition. “I walked among the seven woods of Coole ...” – fifteen poems (some previously published in a limited edition), including “In the Seven Woods”, “Never Give all the Heart”, “The Withering of the Boughs” and “Under the Moon”, together with much revised versions of three verse plays (“The Shadowy Waters”, “On Baile’s Strand” and “The King’s Threshold”). Yeats’ preface provides a highly interesting commentary on his work at this period. “We have gradually come to think of Mr. Yeats as the greatest of the younger poets who use the English tongue” (Daily News).
Crown 8vo (20cm). xvi,(280)pp. Original decorative blue cloth gilt in a design by Althea Gyles (1867-1949); just very faintly rubbed and bruised; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good and bright copy. Neat contemporary gift inscription dated Xmas 1906 and later decorative bookplate of Ronald and Jay Hamilton.

£400

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Dublin : Cuala Press, 1932. First edition : limited to 450 copies printed and published by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats at the Cuala Press. A collection of forty-six poems, including some of Yeats’ finest work – “Byzantium”, “Coole Park 1929”, “The Nineteenth Century and After”, “The Crazed Moon”, “Quarrel in Old Age”, “I Am of Ireland”, the “Crazy Jane” sequence, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [xvi],(42),[ii],[4]pp. Original linen-backed boards; a hint of browning to tips; a few tiny marks and faint spots, but overall a very good and unopened copy. Small bookseller’s label of Greene & Co. of Dublin on front pastedown.

£500

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