HIGHLIGHTS FROM ASH RARE BOOKS
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Jonathan Cape, (1980). First edition. Signed by Julian Barnes on the title-page. His first novel – a passage to adulthood and marriage in Betjeman’s Metroland, via a spell in Paris with the exciting Annick during les événements of 1968. Filmed in 1997 with Christian Bale and Emily Watson.
Post 8vo (21cm). 176pp. Original grey boards, blocked and lettered in silver; sliver of sunning at foot, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in an equally very good dust-jacket – a design by Craig Dodd – the jacket price-clipped by the publisher and with the revised price (£6.50) over-sticker.

£400

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1902. First edition. A young woman struggles for freedom and independence in the Potteries – “There is excellent material in every character, and the grip of circumstance is strong and capable. Indeed, the picture of ‘The Five Towns’ with the life of prosaic labour, into which the mystery of romance yet creeps, is not only admirable but beautiful” (Contemporary review in The Pilot).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],360 + 32pp advertisements dated March 1902. Original pictorial cloth, gilt and enamelled; top edge gilt; some minor rubbing and light wear; some spotting and browning, mainly to edges, endpapers and prelims, but still overall a very good copy of a difficult title. With the contemporary ownership inscription of H. B. Money-Coutts – Hugh Burdett Money-Coutts, Sixth Baron Latymer, J.P. (1876-1949), author and poet, who served at Gallipoli and in Egypt in the Great War.

£250

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1907. First edition. Signed by Arnold Bennett on the front free endpaper. A collection of thirteen bitter-sweet short stories of the Five Towns, all but one previously unpublished. Includes “Baby’s Bath”, “The Silent Brothers”, “Vera’s First Christmas Adventure”, “The Murder of the Mandarin”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [viii],302,[x]pp – the integral advertisements not noted by Emery. Original blue cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; mild wear at head; a little sunned; a few faint marks; a few spots to prelims, but a good copy of a difficult title.

£350

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1908. First edition. Bennett’s celebrated chronicle of the lives and times of two contrasting sisters. “There is nothing, therefore, surprising in the fact that, in the longest novel he has yet essayed, Mr. Arnold Bennett should have scored his most complete success. We are not sure, indeed, that publication ... does not give its author an entirely new place among contemporary novelists” (Daily Telegraph, 2nd December 1908).
Crown 8vo (182 x 114mm). viii,578pp. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco; a few minor marks and spots, but a very good copy of a notoriously difficult title.

£400

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Gotha : Justus Perthes, 1871. The seventh revision of this standard nineteenth-century wall-chart, originally published in 1863 and specifically designed for the British market to show “the lines of oceanic mail steam communication and overland routes, the international aerial and submarine telegraphs; and the principal tracks of sailing vessels; showing some continental surface characteristics, the oceanic currents and important deep-sea soundings”, etc. Twenty-five inset maps and plans add more detail of air currents, magnetic variation, projected canals, overland crossings, the principal ports, etc.
Tint lithograph on paper, with original hand colour on routes, borders, etc. Eight sheets, joining to give an overall size of 974 x 1554mm (approx. 38-1/4” x 61-1/4”). Mounted on linen, edged with pink ribbon and fitted with loops for hanging, and folding into its original card folder with printed label in both English and German; the folder worn and split in two; short split to linen backing at one point; some small marks, mainly to verso; some minor surface dustiness, but the chart still overall in very good condition.

£750

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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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New York : Ace Books, (1953). First edition. His first book and a landmark of twentieth-century counterculture, written under a pseudonym in the aftermath of shooting dead Joan Vollmar, the mother of his son, in a drunken party game in Mexico City – “I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death ... I have had no choice but to write my way out”. The original publication, published as an “Ace Double”, bound tête-bêche in “two books in one” format, with an abridged reprint of Maurice Helbrant’s 1941 “Narcotic Agent”.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). (150); (170)pp. Original pictorial wrappers – the Helbrant artwork (handcuffs applied to sorrowful woman in undress with drug paraphernalia on table) clearly attributed to Al Rossi, and the Junkie artwork (man restrains blonde attempting to reach syringe) probably by the same hand; orange edges; a touch of rubbing and mild creasing, the creasing a touch more marked to the Helbrant cover; tiny and unobtrusive split at head; three small ink digits to Helbrant preliminary leaf, but overall a very good, firm and clean copy. Maynard & Miles A1a.

£400

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London : A. C. Fifield, 1908. First edition. The first appearance of the book which made Davies’ name – a tramp by road and rail on both sides of the Atlantic in the late nineteenth century. A work of “primitive splendour and directness” (Osbert Sitwell). “Another effect of this book on me is to make me realize what a slave of convention I have been all my life. When I think of the way I worked tamely for my living during all those years when Mr. Davies, a free knight of the highway, lived like a pet bird on titbits, I feel that I have been duped out of my natural liberty” – from the preface by George Bernard Shaw.
Crown 8vo (184 x 113mm). [2],xiv,(296),[viii]pp. Bound in a handsome recent half red morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; trimmed a touch tight at head, but otherwise a very good copy in an attractive binding.

£400

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London : Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831. First edition. Disraeli’s intriguing early novel of high society – “all rings, ringlets, and a little rouge” – a wastrel redeemed by the love of a good woman, etc., but also the novel in which we first see the evolution of Disraeli’s politics and what was soon to become his particular brand of one-nation conservatism.
Three volumes. Medium 12mo (195 x 115mm). iv,300; [ii],(270),[ii]; [ii],(266)pp. Bound, without the half-titles to vols ii & iii and a final advertisement leaf, in an elegant, slightly later, half blue-black morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; some rubbing, slight scuffing and mild wear; a couple of short splits; internally some occasional faint marks and mild tanning, but overall a very good and handsome set. With the nautical bookplate of the collector and pharmacist Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016) in the first volume. Sadleir 738.

£750

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London : J. M. Dent & Sons, 1911. First edition : although 1,500 copies were printed, 200 were sent to New York to make up the American edition – and 890 were later pulped, leaving a maximum of 410 surviving copies. “A new stage of intimacy in the Anglo-Italian love affair and one of the happiest of travel books” – Cyril Connolly citing this among his 100 Key-Books of the Modern Movement.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,302pp. Title-page in olive and red. Frontispiece and twenty-three plates. Map of Sorrento and Capri. Original olive cloth, blocked and lettered on upper cover in dark green, and blocked and lettered across spine in gilt; top edge gilt; lightly rubbed and very slightly worn; a few slight marks; two very faint horizontal creases to spine, endpapers a little tanned; some occasional spotting; just a touch shaken, but overall a very good and still bright copy of a notoriously difficult title. Connolly 20. Woolf A13a.

£400

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London : for Sherwood, Neely & Jones, 1821. First edition : the second issue, with the footnote on p.9. Pierce Egan’s roaring and runaway success – racy, slangy, and riotous adventures among the highest of high life and the lowest of low life in Regency London – “In his particular line, he was the greatest man in England” (John Camden Hotten). The sparkling text which took the country by storm as it appeared in instalments between August 1820 and July 1821 is gloriously accompanied by the superb aquatints of the brothers Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank, many depicting recognisable London scenes.
Demy 8vo (216 x 139mm). xvi,376pp. Frontispiece and thirty-five Cruikshank plates, all with original hand colour. Three folding leaves of music. Woodcut illustrations in text. Bound, without half-title and advertisements, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) full crimson morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; gilt turn-ins; marbled endpapers; a few minor marks and spots; two leaves neatly repaired, but a very good copy of Egan’s defining work.

£750

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London : W. Faden, 1815. The “third edition” of this large and handsome map of the Greater London area – extending on a one-inch scale northwards to take in Tring and Hertford, east to Chelmsford and Basildon, south to Tonbridge, Dorking and Guildford, and west beyond Beaconsfield and Windsor. Faden was a maker of serious maps for serious purposes – “the turnpike roads are all laid down from an actual measurement with a perambulator” – and this map, originally published in 1788, was the best of its time. It was regularly updated – the present issue revised to include the new Regent’s Park and new Strand (Waterloo) Bridge – and remained in print until at least 1880.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. Engraved surface 1033 x 1254mm (approx. 40-5/8” x 49-1/4”). Dissected and mounted on linen, and folding to 261 x 160mm. Small holes to margins where the map has been tacked up for display; some very faint overall tanning, but a very good and clean copy in the remaining lower half of a contemporary sheepskin case. Howgego 188/07.

£750

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London : Hutchinson, (1993). First edition. Loosely inserted is Faulks’ printed compliments slip, inscribed and signed by Faulks to Peter Wilkinson, “for his edition of Birdsong”. His fourth and most famous novel, set before and during the Great War. Soon adapted for radio and the stage, with a television version in 2012, starring Eddie Redmayne and Clémence Poésy.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(408)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; faint number stamped on lower edge; mild adhesion marks to front free endpaper, where the compliments slip had been insecurely attached, but a very good copy in the Garner Russell dust-jacket – the jacket just a touch dusty, but also very good.

£400

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London : Barrie & Jenkins (1975). First edition. What caused the Indian Mutiny? It began with Lord Palmerston commissioning Flashman at Balmoral – the Siege of Cawnpore, Lucknow, etc., with notable appearances from Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Lord Cardigan, Florence Nightingale, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 336pp. Endpaper maps. Original red boards, lettered in silver; a few faint marks; a few edge-spots, but a very good copy in the Arthur Barbosa dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly sunned, but also very good.

£250

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1936). First edition : the first issue, with the top edge stained blue. Wealthy collector of antiquities disappears after a hit-and-run – Thorndyke investigates.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 317,[iii]pp. Original pale blue cloth, lettered in black; just a hint of rubbing and sunning, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a typographic design in green and cerise on white – also just faintly rubbed and very lightly sunned, but an excellent copy – the highly fugitive colours of the jacket surviving remarkably well.

£500

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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.

£750

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London : Jeremiah How, 1842-1844. A first edition set of both series of this elaborate and much-lauded production. A copiously illustrated collection of fifty-two of the finest English ballads, each with an introduction – including “Chevy Chase”, “Fair Rosamond”, “Genevieve”, “King Arthur’s Death”, “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne”, “Sir Lancelot du Lake”, “The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green”, “The Demon Lover”, “The Nut-Brown Mayd”, etc. – illustrated with wood-engravings by the foremost artists and engravers of the period, including, among the artists, Edward Corbould, “Alfred Crowquill”, Richard Dadd, John Franklin, William Powell Frith, Sir John Gilbert, Kenny Meadows, Sir Joseph Noel Paton and Sir John Tenniel, and among the engravers – Frederick Branston, George Dalziel, Edmund Evans, William Folkard, Mason Jackson, Ebenezer Landells, William James Linton, Orrin Smith, Henry Vizetelly and John Walmsley. “The most ambitious English book with wood engravings during the period under survey” (Gordon Ray, “The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914”).
Two volumes (257 x 179mm). vi,234; viii,235-(442)pp. Illustrations and decorations throughout. Bound in a handsome nineteenth-century full burgundy sealskin, banded and richly gilt, for Hatchard’s; all edges gilt; blue ribbons; some mild scuffing and minor rubbing and wear; some very occasional internal spotting, but a very good set of one of the landmarks of Victorian illustration.

£400

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1887. First edition : one of just 860 copies in the primary binding. The story of Grace Melbury, the faithful Giles Winterborne, and the faithless Edred Fitzpiers. Controversial for its time, but “his loveliest if not his finest book” (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) and “the most beautiful and most noble of Hardy’s novels” (William Lyon Phelps) – and indeed Hardy’s own favourite – “On taking up ‘The Woodlanders’ and reading it after many years, I like it as a story best of all”.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],302,[ii]; [iv],328; [iv],316pp. Original holly-green cloth, ruled in black and lettered in gilt; a touch dulled; lightly worn at extremities; endpapers strained at hinges (two with neat repair); vol. i. recased and tightened; vols ii and iii a little shaken and slack; a handful of minor flaws, but a good set. Purdy pp.54-57.

£1,500

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London : by J. Streater, for Henry Twiford, George Sawbridge, Thomas Dring, and John Place, 1657. First edition. One of the earliest printed histories of London, second only to the early editions of Stow in terms of chronology. Compiled by the versatile and engaging Welsh author, royalist, politician and traveller, James Howell, after his release from a lengthy imprisonment at the time of the Interregnum. With accounts of St. Paul’s and the other ancient churches; the individual wards and precincts; the governance of the City; the walls, streets, gates and prisons; the Inns of Court; the twelve great livery companies; the company halls; the Tower, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and other prominent buildings; the Thames; London Bridge; the mayoralty; the city of Westminster and the Abbey; the Strand; Covent Garden; Lincoln’s Inn; Westminster Hall; Parliament, the Admiralty, etc.
Pott folio (270 x 166mm). [x],1-128,301-(408),[viii]pp – collates as institutional copies and complete despite the lacuna in pagination. Engraved portrait frontispiece and a very handsome double-page panoramic view of London from the south, frequently attributed to Wenceslas Hollar and depicting the city on the eve of the Civil War. Bound in a smart recent full calf; red label; repairs to margins of frontispiece and titlepage, not affecting image or text; minor repairs to dedication leaf, with partial loss of a few letters; panoramic view trimmed tight and just within left-hand neatline; text lightly and unevenly browned, with occasional spotting, but a good and servicable copy, attractively rebound. Ownership inscription (1760) of Isaac Hitchcock – possibly Isaac Hitchcock (1724?-1768) of Bildeston, Suffolk – with occasional annotation of similar date relating to the taking down of the old gates, etc.

£1,000

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[Bideford] : Sunstone Press, (1993). First edition : published in a limited edition of 100 copies by Hughes’ own Sunstone Press, but this copy, without the limitation statement, evidently bound up from a small over-run of sheets remaining at the printers. Twenty-eight poems on the creatures of the sea – “Starfish”, “Whelk”, “Whale”, “Lobster”, etc. – each stunningly illustrated with a full-page colour illustration by Hughes’s Sunstone partner, the artist Reginald James Lloyd (b.1926). A disagreement with his regular publishers, Faber & Faber, over this “naughty adventure” in self-publishing meant that when the Faber edition eventually appeared, after Hughes’ death and six years later, the illustrations were by a different artist (Flora McDonnell) and, attractive as they are, they are simply not the original illustrations of this full collaboration between artist and poet – the work of each inspired by the other.
Demy 8vo (210 x 148mm). [iv],28 leaves. Frontispiece and twenty-eight full-page coloured illustrations by Lloyd; bound in an elegant full pale blue straight-grain morocco, with Lloyd’s original “kelp” endpapers; a very good copy indeed of one of the scarcest of Hughes’ printed books. Just a single copy (Cambridge) of this edition located in major libraries worldwide.

£400

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London : S. D. Frances, [1949]. First edition. The sixth book of the first series – Janson in Des Moines, Iowa – “She was a dead dame. But that took an awful lot of believing because folk just don’t die that way ... So that started everything, including a lotta misery for June and a live guy winding up in a coffin that was due for cremation”.
Foolscap 8vo (19cm). (3)-(126),[iv]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a striking design by Reginald Heade – green-eyed redhead with jade ear-rings shrieks; lightly rubbed and very slightly worn; staples rusted, but otherwise a very good, bright and clean copy. Bookseller’s stamp of James Preston of Blackburn on rear wrapper. Only the British Library copy recorded in major libraries worldwide. Williams & Holland 6.

£125

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London : John Murray, (1977). First edition. On foot across Europe at the age of eighteen in the 1930s – “like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar” through Holland, Germany, Vienna, Prague, and on into Hungary – the first instalment of a famous journey reconstructed from maps, memories, and a diary – fascinating on every page. One of the twentieth-century classics – a “sublime masterpiece” (William Dalrymple).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(292),[iv]pp. Portrait frontispiece. Double-page map. With the elusive errata slip – “for ‘water-hog’ read ‘water-hag’”, etc. – in duplicate. Original boards; a few very faint spots, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket by John Craxton (1922-2009) – just faintly sunned (as usual) and lightly spotted on flaps and rear panel, but still very good.

£250

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London : Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1843. First edition : the second issue, with the variant title. “A vigorous, dashing sketch of the prairies of California, the wildernesses of the Rocky Mountains, and the swamps of Texas” (Court Journal). Originally issued a little earlier as “Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora and Western Texas”, Sadleir suggests that the book was relaunched with a more exciting title specifically for the gift-books for boys market. Scarce in either incarnation, Marryat’s novel, full of factual information drawn from (unacknowledged) contemporary sources and his own visit to the Americas, is perhaps the earliest children’s book with an American Wild West setting. It is certainly the first work of fiction to contain Mormon characters and remains an important source of information on the pre Gold Rush California of the 1830s.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (195 x 115mm). viii,312; [ii],318; [ii],(300)pp. Folding lithographic map by William Lake of the Pacific coast and territories of the Shoshones, Umbiquas, Cayuses, Nez Perces, Flatheads, etc. Bound, without half-titles (if actually called for in this issue) and final imprint leaf in vol.ii, in a smart later (early twentieth-century) half tan calf, by Henry Young & Sons of Liverpool, banded and richly gilt; contrasting maroon and tan labels; marbled sides and endpapers; top edges gilt; a few minor marks, spots and small flaws, but a very good set. Sadleir 1586b. Wolff 4525a.

£500

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1902. First edition. Mason’s enduring tale of courage, cowardice and redemption – made into popular films on at least seven occasions from 1915 onwards, of which perhaps the most memorable is that directed by Zoltan Korda and starring Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith, and June Duprez.
Crown 8vo (181 x 117mm). viii,338,[vi]pp. Bound in a handsome recent full walnut crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; very occasional mild spotting, but overall a very good copy indeed, most attractively bound.

£1,000

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[London : for Thomas Bowles and John Bowles], 1727 [but ca.1732]. A handsome map of the world in hemispheres – the extremes of the earth as yet unknown in Europe – California shown as an island, the coastlines of “New Zeeland”, “New Holland” and “Japon” hazy and incomplete. Inset between the spandrels are a map of the North Pole, notes on the prevailing trade-winds and the northern and southern signs of the zodiac, while along the lower border is a frieze depicting the people and riches of the earth. Originally produced in 1727 for Moll’s “Atlas Minor”, but here in a slightly later but still early impression.
Copper line engraving on paper. Original outline hand colour. Engraved surface 198 x 262 (approx. 7-3/4” x 10-1/4”). Some very minor dustiness in a few small places, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£500

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London : for Richard Phillips, 1803. First collected edition of the convention-defying Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – with an extensive selection of her letters from Constantinople, Venice and other foreign parts, a selection of poems, some of the essays, her translation of Epictetus, etc. Anonymously edited, with a memoir, by James Dallaway (1763-1834), from materials supplied by her son-in-law, Lord Bute – apparently in exchange for the suppression of other manuscripts held by Richard Phillips, the publisher.
Five volumes. Crown 8vo (187 x 108mm). Two engraved portraits. Nine facsimiles, some folding, one on two plates. Bound in an attractive (probably Scottish) contemporary mottled calf, prettily gilt with guilloche bands, small tools, etc.; red morocco labels; lemon edges; marbled endpapers; ribbon markers; the upper cover of one volume slightly pitted; a few slight nicks, chips, creases and faint discolourations; one leaf slightly damaged at gutter, but overall a very good and highly attractive set. With the contemporary ownership inscriptions of F. Forbes.

£500

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London : Methuen & Co., 1894. First edition. Morrison’s extraordinary vision of the late Victorian mean streets of the East End of London – “Unquestionably an achievement of art ... something more than remarkable. The tune is new in the sense in which the new woman, and the new drama, and the new hedonism, and the other clamant bores of the period are not new ... It is akin to a shock, to a sudden gust of east wind. But to those who care for all humanity ... it should be something like a godsend” (Pall Mall Gazette, 19th November 1894).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (302),[ii] + 32pp advertisements dated October 1894. Original dark green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few trifling signs of age and use; mild tanning of endpapers; a few slight spots, but a very good copy. Wolff 4949.

£250

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1970). First edition. Exploring the international underground with one of its prime movers and makers – psychedelic shrines in Katmandu; New York yippies posting marijuana cigarettes to strangers; Living Theatre wrecking marriages as conscientious social sabotage; international situationists adding LSD to the Paris événements; Mick Jagger in a party frock freeing butterflies before half a million; freaks throwing money at stockbrokers – ah, the sixties – if you can remember them, you weren’t really there.
Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],(362)pp. Frontispiece. Complete with the folding underground almanac poster-game “Headopoly” in pocket at rear. Original yellow boards, blocked and lettered in black; top edge black; some light marking and very mild discolouration to lower edge; front endpaper lightly tanned, but overall a very good copy in the iconic Martin Sharp dust-jacket – just a little sunned, but also very good.

£250

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London : Chatto & Windus / Exeter : James G. Commin, 1904. A “new and complete” library edition : limited to 600 numbered sets. “The most curious papers of the sort I ever saw” – the extraordinary treasure trove of the letters and papers of several generations of the Paston family of Norfolk and London, chronicling their lives, tribulations, successes and failures, as they rose from humble beginnings to high society – “They are the richest source there is for every aspect of the lives of gentlemen and gentlewomen of the English middle ages ... The history of the family in the fifteenth century is theirs alone” (ODNB). Although collections of the letters had appeared from 1787 onwards, this edition, with nearly 1,100 letters and papers, edited by James Gairdner (1828-1912) of the Public Record Office, was much the most comprehensive to appear until modern times.
Six volumes. Demy 8vo (218 x 157mm). Bound in a smart mid-twentieth-century half blue crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; spines just a touch darkened, but a very good set – clean and sound. With the nautical bookplate of the notable collector George G. Stevenson in each volume.

£500

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London : printed by George E. Eyre & William Spottiswoode, 1857. [Second edition]. London was first divided into postal districts in 1857-1858, to a plan devised by Sir Rowland Hill in 1856 – a circle of roughly twelve miles radius from the General Post Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand being split into ten districts, “each to be treated, in many respects, as a separate town”. The present alphabetical index and guide first appeared in 1856, but for this edition was furnished with maps of the districts, converting it into one of the very earliest London street atlases. A folding index map covers the whole area, followed by individual maps of the whole of the Eastern Central (EC) and Western Central (WC) districts, and further maps of the innermost portions of the Northern, North Eastern, Eastern, South Eastern, Southern, South Western, Western, and North Western districts – these corresponding approximately to the modern head districts – N1, E1, SE1, SW1, W1 and NW1. The North Eastern and Southern districts were abolished in the 1860s following a report by Anthony Trollope – hence no modern S or NE London postcodes.
Royal 8vo (25cm). 78,[ii]pp. One folding and ten single-page maps, the rectos only included in pagination. The index with alphabetical thumb-guides. Original drab printed boards, neatly rebacked in a match of the original sheep; some occasional mild spotting, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of W. M. King – “Northern District of Scotland”.

£400

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London : Edward Stanford, 1866. Third edition. A magnificent and vibrantly-coloured wall-map compiled by Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay, at this time Local Director and later to become Director-General of H. M. Geological Survey. England and Wales on a scale of twelve miles to the inch, hand-coloured in a multiplicity of carefully variegated colours to show the different strata. One of the most handsome British geological productions of the nineteenth century. Originally published in 1859 and carefully giving a list of authorities consulted.
Lithograph on paper, with full original hand colour. Printed surface approx. 921 x 811mm (36-1/4” x 31-7/8”). Dissected, mounted on linen with brass eyelets for hanging, and folding into the original cloth slip-case, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind; case with some light wear; a few minor marks and small flaws, but overall a very good copy. No copies of this 1866 edition located in any of the major UK libraries.

£500

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1946). First edition. The pursuit of justice for the unimportant – one of the defining plays of the mid twentieth century, frequently revived and here inscribed by Rattigan to his secretary Mary, signed with forename (Terry) and dated October 1946. Mary Herring began working for Rattigan shortly before the play opened at the Lyric and was to become his confidante, companion, guardian of his reputation, controller of his finances, and keeper of his secrets for the next seventeen years.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (110),[ii]pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in red; original production flaw to two leaves leaving them proud, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a little tanned at spine and slightly worn and chipped at tips.

£400

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London : Macdonald & Co. (Publishers), (1951). First edition. An outstanding presentation copy, inscribed “For John with best wishes and never failing regard from St. Trinians and Ronald Searle”, the message and signature incorporated in a placard being held aloft by a St. Trinian’s girl in a delightful original pen, ink and wash sketch by Searle on the front free endpaper.
Post 8vo (21cm). 96pp. Illustrations throughout. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in black; a very good copy in the original Searle dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used and slightly darkened.

£400

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London : Edward Moxon, 1855. First edition. A major collection of Tennyson’s poetry (and his own favourite to the end of his days), which added not only “Come into the garden, Maud”, but also “Half a league onward”, “Theirs not to reason why” and “Cannon to the right of them” to the universal canon of most quoted lines.
Foolscap 8vo (165 x 99mm). [viii],154pp. Bound, with the half-title, but without the separately printed advertisement leaves, in an elegant near contemporary full tan calf, banded and richly gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endleaves; some very minor rubbing and faint wear, but a very good copy. Armorial bookplate of A. T. Higginson – seemingly Alexander Tweed Higginson (1842-1912) of Montreal.

£250

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Exeter : Printed (and sold) by R. Trewman, 1777. First edition. An attractive provincial masonic miscellany, compiled, printed and published by the Exeter bookseller Robert Trewman. Comprises various charges and addresses – on masonry, initiation, charity, masters of lodges, etc., with prayers, laws for lodges, ceremonies of consecration, installation and laying foundations, funerals, etc., a rebuttal of objections to freemasonry, material on Freemasons’ Hall, the antient masons, the York masons, together with anthems, odes, an extensive selection of songs, a list of English lodges, etc., and a list of some 260 mainly local subscribers.
Crown 8vo (182 x 108mm). (xxiv),266,[ii]pp. Engraved frontispiece by John Kirk of London after Brother John Chubb of Bridgewater. Bound in a later (early twentieth-century) half sprinkled calf; green label; marbled sides; lightly rubbed; title-page a little dusty; some light internal marks, creases, and faint marginal discolouration in places, but a good copy. Eight names of members of the Wilson family inscribed on verso of frontispiece, apparently all in the same hand. From the collection of Albert Edward Collins Nice (1898-1969). ESTC T105458 – noting just four copies.

£250

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London : Secker & Warburg, 1940. First edition. An uncommon late Wells – as a World War develops he advances a grim choice between revolution and destruction – “I mean exactly what I say, the disastrous extinction of mankind”. He proposes a “way to a world realisation of collective unity”, via scientifically planned and directed socialism, the rule of law, and total freedom of speech. “The book is full of things that bite and sting ... He is at any rate thoroughly alive. And towards the end he rejoices ... ‘The world has never been so awake’”(Aberdeen Press, 1st January 1940).
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original grey cloth, ruled and lettered in red; top edge red; some marks and spots of discolouration to cloth; mild tanning of endpapers, but a good copy in the seldom seen original dust-jacket by William Kermode (1895-1957) – the jacket with some light repair and restoration to edges. Contemporary (January 1940) ownership inscription of A. L. Weyers.

£250

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London : Faber & Faber, (1935). First edition. The perilous journey home through Devon rivers of a twenty-pound salmon – “a rare and beautiful book that should take its place as a classic among the few that are written at once with a poet’s insight and a naturalist’s knowledge” (New York Times).
Crown 8vo (184 x 119mm). (320)pp. Title-page and colophon decorations by C. F. Tunnicliffe. Bound in an attractive later half russet morocco, banded and gilt with salmon, by Bayntun; top edge gilt; a few slight spots; very mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy.

£250

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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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