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London : Chatto & Windus, 1934. First edition. The interwoven lives of two girlhood friends – Ann the great actress, Aurelia the homely and suffering.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(412)pp. Original yellow cloth, lettered and decorated on spine in red; a few tiny marks and faint creases, but a very good, bright and sharp copy in a price-clipped dust-jacket with a single short tear.

£25

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London : Faber & Faber, (1954). First edition : in the variant and almost certainly primary binding of orange-brown cloth, blocked and lettered in maroon. Absent-minded and dotty old autocrat, bright young godson, endless muddles, mismanagement of the village fête, charming young woman – “Everyone will agree they are in good company from beginning to end”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (214),[ii]pp. Original cloth; just a hint of sunning; light spotting to edges and endpapers; erasure mark from front free endpaper, but a very good and sound copy in the original yellow, blue, black, red and white dust-jacket – just lightly used and with slight fraying of inner flaps, but still very good.

£20

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London : HarperCollins Publishers, (1993). First edition in English. Signed by Isabel Allende on the title-page. Five decades in the life-quest of Greg Reeves, son of a preacher who believes in the infinite plan of life – childhood amid the Los Angeles barrio gangs, the social and sexual revolution at Berkeley, Vietnam, lawyering in San Francisco, from hippy to yuppy, etc. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.
Royal 8vo (25cm). [vi],382,[xii]pp. Original violet boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; text just faintly tanned, as ever; a very good copy in the Sophie Williams dust-jacket – just a touch sunned, but also very good.

£100

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London : Grayson & Grayson, (1936). First edition. “Nor do the characters of Jove and Juno, Apollo and Daphne, Orpheus and Eurydice, thinly veil the identity of any living person ... if they misbehave themselves, that is their own fault”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 288pp. Original red cloth, lettered in black; very slightly sunned and darkened; very faint spine crease; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – worn, torn, chipped, darkened and repaired, with some loss (about 1cm – less than half an inch) at head of spine and across part of upper panel.

£40

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London : Sisley’s, [1907]. First edition. Aline Richardson “was just eighteen – and she wanted to forget it. She knew that girls have to get rid of brown legs at that age. In another year it would be in vain to fight against Fate disguised as the Proprieties, her hair would have to go right up and her skirts come right down!” Fate has much more in store for her than this as she joins the theatrical set in Edwardian London – an illuminating and rather shocking backstage novel on the bohemian London of the time from the successful actor-producer Arthur Applin – a world of “the glaring eyes of motors rushing to Savoy and Carlton with burdens of ennui and dyspepsia”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),304pp. Original pictorial enamelled cloth, lettered in red and with a delightful silhouette image of the chorus girl at her dressing table blocked on the upper cover; a few faint marks; some spotting to endpapers, edges and prelims, but a very good copy of a scarce and unjustly forgotten book.

SOLD

London : W. Collins Sons & Co., (1925). First edition. A prologue and twelve short stories in Arlen’s best vein – his last great success – London’s “charming people” and their “follies, misadventures, and galanteries”. Includes “The Ace of Cads”, “The Battle of Berkeley Square”, “The Ghoul of Golders Green”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(320),[vi],[2]pp. Original black cloth, ruled in gilt and blind and lettered in gilt; mild rubbing; some spotting, mainly of edges; a very good copy in the original Edmund Dulac dust-jacket – a striking butterfly design in black and gold – a little worn and slightly chipped at extremities, with a repaired diagonal tear and some creasing to upper panel, but complete and still attractive.

£50

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The Kentish novelist and historian’s uncommon first novel. A publisher’s presentation copy, with a Heinemann compliments slip loosely inserted.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],322pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; publisher’s device in blind on lower cover; mild bruise at head of spine, a handful of spots, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a design primarily in white, blue and red, with a colour-printed magnolia on the upper panel – the jacket very faintly rubbed and with a sprinkling of spots – but fresh and without a nick.

£50

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London : Constable & Co., (1939). First edition. “Old Miss Grierson had had her social flowering in the days when a man was a man and was properly rated as such by the ladies. In the year 1908, or thereabouts, one man, however weedy and inefficient, was considered the equal of at least three highly gifted and beautiful women ...”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(302)pp. Colour extra-title by Toby. Original light green cloth, ruled and lettered in blue; mild tanning of endpapers; some spotting of edges, but a very good and bright copy.

£20

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London : Faber & Faber, (2005). First edition : precedes the 2006 New York edition. “I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I traveled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain ...”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],304,[x]pp. Original black boards; very good indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£25

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New York : Henry Holt & Co., (2006). First American edition. Inscribed and signed by Paul Auster, “To Michelle, One for the book club, best Paul Auster x”. The accidental redemption of Nathan Glass, a long-lost nephew working in a bookstore, his colourful employer, a forgery, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [x],306,[ii],[2]pp. Original blue and cream boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the Sam Bassett dust-jacket, equally very good.

£50

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1984. First edition : in the earlier dust-jacket. The haunting novel based on his wartime experiences as a boy in Shanghai – filmed by Spielberg in 1987.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [viii],278,[ii]pp. Map. Original black boards; text a little tanned as always, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in an unflawed dust-jacket.

£100

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1987. First edition. A river appears in parched central Africa – “classic Ballard. Mesmerising. No one else writes with such haunting impact” (William Boyd).
Foolscap 4to (24cm). 254,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered on spine in gilt; near fine in the Paul Wright dust-jacket, also near fine.

£25

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London : Faber & Faber, (1998). First edition. Signed by Nicola Barker on the title-page. “Barker once again pushes back the boundaries of comedy, chronicling the dark inner lives of a cast of characters straight from the pages of a social services register” – set on the Isle of Sheppey and winner of the 2000 International Dublin Literary Award.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],290,[viii]pp. Original blue boards lettered in white; text faintly tanned as usual, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the Boyd & Evans dust-jacket, also very good indeed – bright, clean and unworn.

£25

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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 : Jonathan Cape, (1998). First edition. Signed by Julian Barnes on the title-page. His savage satire on England and the idea of England. Shortlisted for the Booker.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],266pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; very good in the Bill Gregory dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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London : Constable & Co., (1941). First edition. Emmeline Pocock, daughter of the warden of All Saints, tries to see out the war in her sound-proof room – disturbances from the university town – tangled love drama, the eccentric provost, the sensational reports of Mr Jericho, the volcanic Lady Caroline Paltry, the melancholic Lord FitzCricket, poltergeists, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

£100

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1902. First edition. An early Bindloss, an imperial romance set in West Africa – an area well-known to the author and the subject of his “In the Niger Country” (1898). An adventurer discovers a mahogany forest – desolate outposts, ju-ju, jungle-fever - somewhere perhaps between Conrad and Rider Haggard.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

£100

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London : Secker & Warburg, (1964). First edition. “Albert Jones made it from layabout to property racketeer in three months flat ... Against a backdrop of Manchester’s bright lights and slum streets – its tearaways and whores, students and sharp operators – this picaresque story offers unusual realism and rare entertainment”. An interesting and in some ways archetypal sixties novel – Bird’s first book, written as a young advertising executive, long before he became famous as the doyen of marketing men.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original violet boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good copy in the Robert Petty dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly used, but also very good.

£75

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London : Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963. First British edition. Bradbury’s lyrical, mysterious, dark and fantastic coming of age novel as Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show comes to town – See Mephistophele, the Lava Drinker, the Demon Guillotine, the Dangling Man, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World ...
Post 8vo (21cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; very good indeed in the evocative Joe Mugnaini dust-jacket – also very good indeed, barring one tiny nick.

£250

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London : Darton, Longman & Todd, (1960). First edition. An extensive anthology of seasonal verse and prose, with decorations by Barbara Jones and children of the Henry Fawcett School. The selection includes a Barbara Jones piece on “Traditional Joys”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (196)pp. Eight colour plates by the children. Numerous illustrations and decorations by Jones. Original imitation leather, blocked and gilt in an overall pictorial design by Barbara Jones, lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine in gilt; endpapers by Jones in orange and maroon; very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1986). First edition. “Blanche Vernon is one of those discreet, smart women one sees in restaurants alone ...”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; text faintly tanned, as usual, but otherwise very good indeed in the dust-jacket – just faintly creased, but also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1990). First edition. “They might have met far earlier, since Fay had had success as a singer, and Julia was at one time a famous diseuse, her glamour and repartee a legend. But when Julia sweeps in, wearing ravishing black silk, their celebrity is already past ...”. Love, friendship, dependence and disenchantment.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(218),[ii]pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good indeed in a just very lightly marked dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1955. First edition. A comedy of manners on the world of publishing, writing, literary prizes, etc. – set in New York, London and Paris.
Post 8vo (21cm). (280)pp. Original green boards, lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in the attractive Val Biro dust-jacket – a pictorial design in grey-green, pink and black – just very slightly nicked, but also very good.

£20

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The daughter of the precentor of St. David’s Cathedral in South Wales falls in with a young seaman, a deserter from a privateer, on the run from the Bow Street Runners – but not all is as it seems. Set in 1796 and researched in her usual meticulous way, the story also incorporates the French landing the following year.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],436,[ii]pp. Original olive cloth, riled and lettered in gilt; a few faint edge spots, but an excellent copy, bright, clean and sound, in the original red and white dust-jacket – the jacket with a few tiny nicks, a couple of very short tears, and a sprinkling of spots, but itself very good indeed, clean and fresh.

£40

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London : Cornucopia Press, 1990. Second edition : limited to 300 numbered copies, signed both by J. L. Carr and by Ronald Blythe, who provides an introduction. Originally published in a small edition at Brighton in 1980, but here in a slightly revised text, finely designed and printed on mould-made paper at the September Press, and with a fresh preface by the author.
Crown 4to (27cm). (xvi),(106),[ii],[4]pp. Original green cloth, with pink labels ruled and lettered in black on upper cover and spine; top edge gilt; very good indeed in the original glassine dust-jacket.

£200

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London : World Film Publications, 1946. First edition. A “Book of the Film” adaptation by E. Fisher of an original story with dialogue by Joyce Cary, adapted via the Herbert Victor and Thorold Dickinson screenplay. Illustrated with stills and studio portraits (Phyllis Calvert, Eric Portman and some seldom seen black actors).
Crown 8vo (19cm). (78)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; a little rubbed and slight creased; text a little browned throughout, more heavily and unevenly on opening leaves, but a good copy of a fragile production.

£20

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London : Arthur Gray (Books), [1934]. First edition. “When I first saw the yacht she was lying at anchor in Rushcutter’s Bay, Sydney Harbour” – a sharebroker yearns to return to the South Seas. Shanghaied on the yacht of the beautiful Virginia Mortimer, he is offered a thousand pounds to pilot the yacht on a secret mission.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 254,[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in black; a few faint marks; edges and prelims a little spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking original dust-jacket – unsigned but by H. W. Perl (1897-1952) – a little rubbed, nicked and slightly soiled, but still very good. Just a single copy (British Library) located in the major UK libraries.

£75

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1987). First edition. “In Alice Springs – a grid of scorching streets where men in long white socks were forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers – I met a Russian who was mapping the sacred sites of the Aboriginals”. His finest work – a novel of ideas – a “profound journey into the geography of the mind”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(294),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint edge spots, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£100

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London : Cassell & Co., (1946). First edition. The great set-piece speeches of 1945 – the atomic bomb, the death of Roosevelt, the 1945 election, etc. The sixth volume of the war speeches, edited by Charles Eade.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(240)pp. Plates. Original blue cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims, but a very good copy in a lightly worn dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1989). First edition. His second novel – the winner of the 1989 Whitbread Fiction Prize. Lives intertwined across time – alchemy, occult, fate, passion and obsession.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 542,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; very faint spine crease; a few faint marks, but overall a very good copy in the dust-jacket – just lightly used.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1957. First edition. A father and three daughters – “A normal part of life may not be a thing to dispense with”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (208)pp. Original maroon boards, lettered on spine in gilt; a couple of spots, but a very good and bright copy in the original Gollancz yellow dust-jacket, printed in magenta and black – just lightly tanned, lightly marked and slightly worn at tips.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1963. First edition. “What harm is there in hearing a pin drop?” said Joanna.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 224pp. Original orange boards, lettered on spine in gilt; a handful of edge spots, but very good copy in the original Gollancz yellow dust-jacket, printed in magenta and black – just faintly marked and lightly chipped.

£20

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London : Methuen & Co., (1911). First edition. “The man who says he has no illusions has at least that one” – Conrad with his classic of terrorism, set variously in St. Petersburg and Geneva and published 5th October 1911. “Any hesitation seems to lie, not in over-estimating, but in doing justice to the rare truth and beauty of Mr. Conrad’s latest book. No Englishman could have written it” (The Sketch, 25th October 1911).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(378) + (32)pp advertisements dated September 1911. Original red cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt; just a touch sunned; a hint of bruising; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy. With the pictorial bookplate, designed by Oswald Tozeau, of Brand Whitlock (1869-1934), American author, journalist, lawyer and politician.

£400

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London : John Castle, 1924. First trade edition. Two of just three plays written by Joseph Conrad, adaptations respectively of his stories "Because of the Dollars" and "Tomorrow" - both concerned, as John Galsworthy points out in his introduction, with the theme of "the suffering of a woman capable of self-sacrifice". The introduction by Galsworthy, here appearing for the first time, makes extensive use of Conrad's letters on the plays.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(378) + (32)pp advertisements dated September 1911. Original red cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt; just a touch sunned; a hint of bruising; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy. With the pictorial bookplate, designed by Oswald Tozeau, of Brand Whitlock (1869-1934), American author, journalist, lawyer and politician.

£25

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1925. First edition. Four short stories previously unpublished in book form – “The Warrior’s Soul” – a moving tale of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, written during the Great War; “Prince Roman” – the Polish Patriot; “The Tale” – moral dilemmas at sea in the Great War, and “The Black Mate” – one of his earliest ventures into fiction. With a foreword by R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936). Published posthumously to the delight and acclaim of contemporary reviewers – “A substantial addition to Conrad’s best work” (The Scotsman); “one of the most remarkable books of short stories ever issued” (Daily Dispatch); “No unconsidered trifles ... They are of the stuff by which he will be judged” (Manchester Guardian).
Crown 8vo (21cm). (288)pp. Original holly cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges; one leaf with a slight production blemish; endpapers lightly tanned, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the original dust-jacket in a design by Edmondo Lucchesi (1871-1964) – the jacket just slightly creased, with a couple of tiny nicks, but also very good, clean and fresh.

£250

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London : Macmillan London, (1990). First edition. “Written in the rinsed-pebble prose of an outstanding man of letters” – the early reminiscences of the author of “Scenes from Provincial Life”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(170),[ii]pp. Original maroon boards, lettered on spine in gilt; very good in the Paul Collicut dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Everett & Co., 1909. First edition. A German invasion by stealth from Captain Curties R.E. – “Vehicles rumbled by with loads of wounded. Before the headquarters of each of the Territorial Battalions, before each bank and each public building, outside Buckingham Palace, stood stolid German sentries. German officers filled the breakfast rooms of the hotels. The Monument was a German look-out post. The guttural tones of the Teuton answered ‘calls’ on the telephone, censored conversations, ‘cut off’ at a second’s notice. The railway stations and the police stations, the telegraph offices and the newspaper offices were in German hands ... London was under martial law, ‘held up’ by two hundred thousand Germans under arms. How had the enemy entered the city? That was the question. None had witnessed their coming. No transports had been sighted. No trains had been commandeered. There was no news of a landing. Curious – and startling! They had materialised, it seemed, out of thin air” (The Sketch, 13th April 1910).
Post 8vo (21cm). viii,312pp. Original red decorative cloth; a touch sunned; a few minor marks, spots and signs of age and use, but a very good copy of a scarce imaginary wars title.

£200

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London : Michael Joseph, (1980). First edition. A TV-tie-in collection of nine short stories, some old, some new – with four appearing in book form for the first time. Includes “Georgy Porgy”, “The Umbrella Man”, “Mr Botibol”, “Vengeance is Mine Inc.”, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (128)pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; faint fringe of discolouration to endpapers, but otherwise very good in the dust-jacket – also very good save a few faint marks and some spotting to inner flaps.

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1960. First edition. Autobiography of the poet and (as Nicholas Blake) crime-writer.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (244)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original tan buckram, blocked and lettered in black and gilt; a few minor signs of age and use, but overall a very good copy in the Reynolds Stone dust-jacket – just lightly tanned and slightly spotted, with a chip to rear panel. Contemporary (1961) ownership inscription of Mary Mitchell.

£20

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1940. First edition. Provincial Lady – gas-masks, black-outs, identity-cards, war-work.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(312)pp. Illustrations by Illingworth. Original jade cloth, ruled in blind on upper cover, ruled and lettered in gilt across spine; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy. Bookplate.

£15

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London : Bodley Head, (1964). First British edition. His second novel – a dark masterpiece of love and imagination. Originally published in Boston the previous year.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],340pp. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; mild tanning of fore-edge, but a very good copy in the intriguing Lehtola dust-jacket – also very good.

£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 : Chatto & Windus / Martin Secker & Warburg, (1945). First British and first trade edition. A day-by-day almanac of epigrams selected by Douglas from his own earlier works. The text varies considerably from that of the twenty-five copies privately printed at Lisbon in 1941. With decorations by Enid Marx.
Post 8vo (21cm). Original deep yellow cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge very lightly spotted, but a very good and bright copy in a just faintly tanned dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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London : Fortune Press, [1940]. First edition. A review copy, and so stamped on front free endpaper. Three verse plays: “The Unburied Dead”, dedicated to Gandhi; “Ora Pro Nobis”, dedicated to Richard March; and “Pimp, Skunk and Profiteer”, dedicated to Ezra Pound.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (136)pp. Original green buckram, lettered in gilt; cloth a little dulled and faded; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy in the original beige dust-jacket, printed in black, with a striking design on the upper panel – very slightly tanned and with just a hint of wear. Neat contemporary (1941) inscription on front free endpaper. D’Arch Smith 169.

£25

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London : Dennis Dobson, (1961). First edition. Very much a London novel – starting in Stockwell and recounting the satirical tale of a spiv who suddenly finds himself possessed of the power of healing.
Post 8vo (21cm). 192pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; endpapers very slightly tanned, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a stylish pictorial design in red, green and black on white – just a touch dusty, but otherwise very good indeed.

£20

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London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1963. First edition. Her first and most famous book – sixteen short stories and sketches of working-class life in Battersea and Clapham Junction “Out with the Girls”, “The Tallyman”, etc. Adapted for television by Ken Loach in 1965 and subsequently filmed with Suzy Kendall, Susan George, Dennis Waterman, etc.
Post 8vo (20cm). 110,[ii]pp. Illustrations by Susan Benson. Original blue-green boards, lettered down spine in gilt; very good in the original photographic Tina Tranter dust-jacket – very slightly worn and a touch soiled on lower panel.

£75

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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.

£250

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., (1961). First edition. A review copy, with the publisher’s slip loosely inserted. The vagaries of the human heart and the four viewpoints of Penry Crendon (forgotten author and vagrant), his first wife Elizabeth (the devout Catholic), Mona his third (whose weaknesses are vulgarity and the bottle), and Blanche (the woman of sensibility engaged to his son). “She has helped explode the dying myth that the novel is becoming extinct” (John Betjeman).
Post 8vo (21cm). x,(212),[ii]pp. Original orange-red boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the original Barbara Jones dust-jacket – a design in yellow, orange, brown and black on white – just lightly nicked and a little fingered on lower panel. Contemporary ownership inscription of Wendy Marlar. Bloomfield D27.

£20

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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, (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 : Constable & Co., 1911. First edition. A modern man adrift in the Middle Ages – Ford’s popular fantasy, dedicated to Violet Hunt – “I have worked at it harder, I think, than at any story I ever wrote, because it was to please you”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(364),[xii]pp. Original brown cloth, pictorially blocked in blind on upper cover; a touch bruised; endpapers a little spotted, with a sprinkling of spots elsewhere, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of G. M. Bradley. Harvey A33a.

£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. “There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them” (W. H. Auden).
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. Harvey A59.

£50

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New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, (1990). First edition. Signed by Richard Ford on the title-page. His highly acclaimed fourth novel – on the edge of the Great Plains and “coming out into the world as it is and not as we had hoped, but as it resolutely is”.
Crown 4to (24cm). [x],(178),[ii],[2]pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in metallic pink; top edge very slightly spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the Marc Cohen dust-jacket – fresh, bright and unflawed.

£40

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London : The Harvill Press, (1997). First British edition. Signed and dated (4th September 1997) by Richard Ford on the title-page. “One of the glories of modern American writing” (Jonathan Raban).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],(256),[vi]pp. Original black boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£50

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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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Edinburgh : Canongate Books, (2008). First British edition. “An unforgettable novel about the distance a friendship must travel, and the depths it must plumb, when confronted by the threat of death. It is full of wisdom, dark laughter, and truth” – the multiple award-winning novel, first published in Australia earlier in 2008. “A book for grown-up people” (Hilary Mantel), “‘The Spare Room’ is a perfect novel” (Peter Carey).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(196),[vi]pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; green silk ribbon; a very good copy indeed in the pictorial dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1967). First edition. “Brian Glanville has a pitiless eye for the frauds and tactics of the sex game” – the “artist type” revenges himself on intellectuals, stockbrokers and slick executives.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the stylish Bill Botten dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly rubbed and very slightly creased, but still very good.

£20

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1961). First edition. His first book – a novel set on the rarer fringes of London literary society.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 288pp. Original orange-red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few edge-spots, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a pictorial design by Quentin Blake in purple, ochre and black on white – also very good indeed.

£20

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London : Cassell & Co., (1932). First edition. Satan narrates the epic of mankind – his versions of the biblical stories, the days when he possessed Tiberius, Nero, the Caliph, Cromwell and Napoleon, his final possession, last days in a Bayswater boarding-house, and cremation at Golders Green. Gerhardi, or Gerhardie to use the spelling he later adopted, and something of a lost masterpiece – Evelyn Waugh once remarked to him, “I have talent, but you have genius”. He was also the principal model for the central character (Logan Mountstuart) in William Boyd’s “Any Human Heart”. His collaborator, Brian Holdsworth Lunn (1893-1956), of the Lunn travel-agency family, historian and schoolmaster, is chiefly remembered for his “Switchback” autobiography, with its portrayal of wartime mental breakdown.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 382,[ii]pp. Original black cloth, lettered in red; a few spots to covers and edges; small patch of fading at foot, where the dust-jacket is chipped; endpapers lightly tanned, but overall a very good copy in the striking pictorial dust-jacket – sunned at spine, tiny chips at head, a slightly larger one at foot; some nicks and short tears, with some local discolouration from tape-repairs, but still good and not unattractive.

£100

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1929]. First edition. The best-selling book of the early months of 1929 – a tragic tale of séances, spiritualism and messages from the other side, which opens with “goings-on” on the corner of Ezra Road and Electric Avenue in Brixton, where “young females a bit short in the frock, with young gents in evening clothes” have taken to turning up in smart cars late at night. Gibbs faultlessly captures the milieu of a certain time, a certain mood and a certain place. Filmed later in 1929 by Louis J. Gasnier – an early talking picture with Evelyn Brent, Neil Hamilton, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 286,[ii]pp. Original cloth grey cloth, ruled and lettered in black; a hint of wear; a few small splash-marks; some spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but a good copy in the original dust-jacket – a strikingly atmospheric design in black and white, with darkened room, crystal ball, etc., by Sydney Seymour-Lucas (1878-1954) – very slightly used, nicked and chipped, with a couple of marks, one tiny hole and a short repaired tear, but complete, and overall a well-preserved and very welcome survival. Bleiler p.81.

£200

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London : Viking, (1996). First British edition. A strange predictive tale of the beautiful, mysterious and entirely virtual media star – from the man who coined the term cyberspace.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],292,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the Gary Marsh dust-jacket – similarly with a hint of bruising, but also very good.

£20

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1947]. First edition. American and Scotsman live in enmity on Italian island – Mussolini and Fascism unite them. An uncommon novel from the author of “Magnolia Street”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 208pp. Original red boards, lettered in black; faint spotting of top edge, but a very good, clean and sound copy in the Paul Dessau dust-jacket – just lightly used and slightly nicked.

£25

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Leicester : Grange Fibre Co., 1962. First edition. Illustrated in colour throughout and with a stunning colour cover design by Rigby Graham.
Post 8vo (21cm). [32]pp. Original linson, printed in gold and colours, and lettered down the “linson vellum” spine in gilt; a touch darkened at tips and very slightly bruised, but still a very good, bright and sound copy.

£25

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London : Hogarth Press, 1952. First edition. A middle-aged London couple have evenings apart – alright until a younger woman appears.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(252)pp. Original turquoise cloth, lettered in gilt; small spot on lower edge, but a very good copy in the Lynton Lamb dust-jacket – a little worn and just slightly chipped at extremities.

£40

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London : Hurst & Blackett, [1924]. First edition. The playwright and novelist, of whom Dorothy Parker once wrote, “There can no longer be any doubt that it was from Cosmo Hamilton that the cosmic urge derived its name”, with a spicy tale of Tony and Teddy in love with the same woman – Tony successful, Teddy burning with jealousy, man overboard in the South Seas – “There is character in this story; genius in the writing, and artistic richness in the style and setting. A brilliant book ...” (Kensington Post, 5th December 1924). “And there is Lady George Cornish, who was once a barmaid and is still a good sort” (Ralph Straus in The Bystander, 4th March 1925).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 282,[ii] +16pp advertisements. Original blue cloth, lettered in black and ruled in black and blind; covers a touch sunned and lightly marked; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting, but a good copy. Small W. H. Smith (Newton Abbot) label on front pastedown.

£20

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London : Boriswood, 1933. First trade edition. The self-taught former ship’s stoker with a powerful novel of a captain obsessed with his only passenger, the wife of a diplomat. A mysterious stoker named Mulcare joins the crew at the last minute. “You are not reading about a ship, you live on it ... I am happy that Mr. Hanley has achieved this first-rate novel. For me he is now easily first among living writers of sea stories” (Richard Aldington).
Demy 8vo (22cm). (424),[viii]pp. Original black cloth, ruled and lettered in red and silver; top edge red; endpapers lightly tanned; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy indeed, bright and sound, in the delightful art-deco dust-jacket by James Boswell (1906-1971), also very good indeed, bar a single small mark on the lower panel. Loosely inserted are the original publisher’s flyer and a press-cutting of the Richard Aldington review quoted above.

£125

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London : Hutchinson, (1995). First edition. His second novel – Bletchley Park, the Ultra Secret, etc. – filmed with Saffron Burrows, Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, etc., with a Tom Stoppard screenplay, in 2001.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],390,[ii]pp. Endpaper plans. Original black boards, lettered in silver; a few faint signs of use, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – equally with just minimal signs of use.

£25

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London : Hutchinson, (2016). First edition. Signed by Robert Harris on the title-page. “Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [xii],(288),[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Hutchinson, (2017). First edition. Signed by Robert Harris on the title-page. “September 1938. Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace. The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterwards be notorious for what takes place there. Munich”.
Medium 8vo (25cm) [x], 342pp. Double-page plan. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in black; pictorial endpapers; a very good copy in the Glenn O’Neill dust-jacket, also very good; signed by the author labels on upper panel of the jacket.

£20

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Harmondsworth : Viking, (1985). First edition. “An outrageously funny dinner party, a separation, a shooting weekend, a brutal moment glimpsed through a window, a brawl in a London flat, a manic photographic session, a crazed drive through southern France ... comic and passionate, menacing and desolate” – a novel from the poet also known under other names as the crime writers Jack Curtis and David Lawrence.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(182),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1991). First edition. Signed by Josephine Hart on the title-page. Her first novel, dedicated to her husband, Maurice Saatchi, and the basis of the 1992 Louis Malle film, with Jeremy Irons, Miranda Richardson and Juliette Binoche.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],216,[ii]pp. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; text a touch tanned, a few tiny spots, but a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1953). First edition. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. When I came upon the diary it was lying at the bottom of a rather battered red cardboard collar-box ...” – Hartley’s haunting evocation of a boy out of his depth in the golden summer of 1900 – the basis for the 1971 Joseph Losey film with Julie Christie, Alan Bates, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 296pp. Original red cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge red; a couple of minor marks, but a very good, clean and sound copy in the Val Biro dust-jacket – the jacket lightly rubbed, with a few unobtrusive nicks and tiny tears, but also very good. Contemporary Rex Whistler designed Book Society bookplate with the name Bennell.

£250

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1957). First edition. A fragile widow, an ex-army chauffeur, love, obsession, and repudiation. Memorably filmed in 1973, with Robert Shaw, Sarah Miles, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(248),[iv]pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the Patricia Davey dust-jacket – just faintly tanned, with a couple of slight marks, but also very good.

£50

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London : Fact, (1938). First edition. Hemingway with eye-witness reportage of the Spanish Civil War – the saving of Madrid; the Aragon Front; Teruel; Franco advancing; final despatches. Published as No. 16 in the “Fact Monograph a Month” series. There would appear to be no equivalent American edition.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (3)-97,[i]pp. Maps. Original wrappers – a design in orange, black and white; a few very minor signs of age and use, but a very good, sound and clean copy.

£50

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London : Bodley Head, (1966). First edition. Regency novel set in Bath – Stacy Calverleigh has gambled away his fortune and requires an heiress. Young orphan Fanny Wendover fits the bill, but her Aunt Abigail has other ideas – enter Uncle Miles – the Black Sheep.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original maroon boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; small mark on top edge, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original Arthur Barbosa dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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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 with a Trappist monk. There were two silent film versions even before the award-winning Technicolor version with Charles Boyer and Basil Rathbone made by David O. Selznick in 1936. Marlene Dietrich played Domini – “This script – you know it is twash”.
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.

£50

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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. 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 of the sort of novel they simply don’t write any more.

£40

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London : J. M. Dent & Sons, 1922. First edition. The great naturalist’s final thoughts – on deer, on ears, the wind, ways back to nature, smell, noses, sense of direction, migration, sound, music, art and the unanswered questions.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (xvi),(336)pp. Original green cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in black and gilt; spine lettering a touch dull; slight spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a good and sound copy. Payne A43a.

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1929. First British edition. Hughes’ highly regarded novel of childhood innocence and piracy on the high seas. “I was some fifty years older when I read the book again: a different person reading a different novel, sinister, darker, more poignant and more complex. A High Wind in Jamaica is one of those rare novels that works on more than one level and can appeal to all ages. It changes as we change, and its theme is change herself” (Michael Holroyd). Filmed in 1965 with Anthony Quinn, James Coburn, Dennis Price, Viviane Ventura, etc. Originally published in New York earlier the same year as “The Innocent Voyage”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(284)pp. Original green cloth; top edge green; a few minor signs of age and use, but a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped and a little worn and tanned, with a handful of tiny chips and short tears, but not unattractive.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1952. First edition. Mass hysteria and possession in seventeenth-century France – with power, corruption and political expediency. The basis of the 1971 Ken Russell film, with Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],376pp. Original orange cloth, blocked and lettered in black and gilt; a little dulled; faint spine crease, but otherwise very good in the Val Biro dust-jacket – a pictorial design in orange, yellow and black – lightly worn and slightly spotted, with some light repair and reinforcement.

£25

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London : Edward Arnold & Co., 1919. First edition. His third collection of atmospheric tales – five stories, including “The Diary of Mr. Poynter”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],152pp. Original grey-black cloth, lettered and decorated in a cobweb design in pale blue; some mild rubbing; a touch of bruising; a few minor marks, but a very good copy. With the pencilled ownership inscription at front and inked note at end of Sir Percy Loraine (1880-1961), British High Commissioner to Egypt, Ambassador to Turkey, Ambassador to Italy, and racehorse owner.

£200

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1959. First edition. Her high comedy of a deluded and utterly unspeakable author at large in Bruges.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(246),[ii]pp. Original turquoise cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in a lightly used dust-jacket – a little spotted on reverse. Bookplate of David Graham.

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1968. First edition. His first novel, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize – set in London and the South of France – “cold indifference ... tugs at them like a dirty wind”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; very good in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£25

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London : Faber & Faber, (1987). First edition. An extensive selection from across the full range of Kipling’s work, edited and selected by Craig Raine.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],448,[vi]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; text lightly tanned; one leaf damaged (without loss of text); otherwise very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£10

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1987. First edition. His uncommon first book – young Englishman trapped in Tokyo, an enforced marriage, and a collision with the world of Japanese organised crime. Winner of Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask awards.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(156)pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; slight production flaw to pp.143-48, but otherwise a very good, crisp and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly sunned to spine, but also very good.

£75

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London : Arthur Barker, (1952). First edition. An innocent born in the year of the Amorous Dragon – abroad in ancient China.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 192pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge crimson; a very good copy in the original dust-jacket, printed in red, black and gold – just a little sunned and with a few short nicks repaired on verso.

£20

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London : William Heinemann, (1960). First British edition. The celebrated Pulitzer Prize winner, voted “best novel of the century” in a 1999 poll.
Post 8vo (21cm). 296pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in silver; a few faint marks and minimal signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the original Fratini dust-jacket, just faintly spotted on lower panel with a couple of tiny nicks, but also very good.

£750

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London : Hogarth Press, 1959. First edition : the first issue, with the potentially libellous passage, “There was a fire at the piano-works almost every year, it seemed to be a way of balancing the books”, still present on p.272.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(282),[ii]pp. Full-page illustrations by John Ward. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a couple of faint and tiny marks to edges, but a very good copy in the original John Ward dust-jacket – a pictorial design in sepia, ochre, green, black and white – with a couple of spots to flaps but otherwise bright and unworn.

£200

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London : Michael Joseph, (1989). First (British) edition in English of “L’Altrui Mestiere” (1985). Forty-four essays on everything from astronomy to linguistics and zoology, with autobiographical pieces and on the nature of writing. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],(x),(210),[ii]pp. Original maroon boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in a likewise very good dust-jacket.

£15

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1969). First British edition. An “essential companion” to “Under the Volcano” – Lowry’s return to the scene. Edited by Lowry’s widow, Margerie Bonner, and his first biographer, Douglas Day, from 700 pages of Lowry’s notes and drafts.
Post 8vo (21cm). xviii,[2],(256)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge lilac; an unusually good copy, the book very good indeed, the jacket fresh, white, unworn and the lettering unfaded.

£100

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1936. First edition. A satirical novel, set in South Kensington, in which “men arrange the affairs of the world, while women stand back and admire”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],356,[iv]pp. Original red cloth, ruled in blind on upper cover; ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; covers and endpapers lightly marked; slightly bruised; a few edge spots; a good copy in the original Eric Fraser dust-jacket – a pictorial design in red, black and white – price-clipped, lightly tanned, lightly rubbed, very slightly chipped and with a few short tears.

£25

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London : Jarrolds, (1937). First edition. Reflections and studies on the character and genius of Scotland from the author of “England, Their England”. In the My Country series.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (280),[iv]pp. Portrait frontispiece. Plates. Original jade cloth, lettered across spine in white; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a monochrome photographic design, lettered in green and black – lightly worn.

£20

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1939. First edition : in a dust-jacket over-printed with Macmillan’s Overseas Library information and restrictions on lower flap. An epistolary novel in which the hero flies round the world to escape the “cold blue eyes” of the lady.
Crown 8vo. viii,(308),[ii],[2]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in gilt and blind; a few slight marks; endpapers and edges a little tanned; a very good copy in the original Bip Pares dust-jacket – cream, lettered in red and decorated in sky-blue – price-clipped, lightly worn, very slightly chipped and a little tanned. Small bookseller’s label of Angus & Robertson of Sydney on front paste-down.

£15

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London : Jonathan Cape, (2001). First edition. “McEwan’s finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class ...” – filmed in 2007 with Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, etc.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (372),[iv]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; a very good, bright and clean copy in the Chris Frazer Smith photographic dust-jacket – also very good barring a corner crease to the inner flap.

£50

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London : Bantam Press, (2000). First edition. Fresh from the battle of Waterloo, Matthew Hervey departs on a secret mission to India.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xiv),320,[ii]pp. A very good copy in the Chris Collingwood dust-jacket – also very good. Contemporary ownership inscription of R. K. Gilkes (April, 2000).

£20

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London : Bantam Press, (2008). First edition. Brigadier Mallinson with a further instalment of the much-lauded adventures of Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons- South Africa in 1828, Hervey escorts an embassy to Shaka, King of the Zulus.
Medium 8vo (25cm). x,(338),[ii],[2]pp. Endpaper maps. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good in the pictorial Robert Papp dust-jacket – just faintly creased.

£20

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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.
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.

£150

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London : Constable & Co., 1927. First edition. Mansfield destroyed all but a fragment of her “huge complaining diaries” prior to 1914, but the journal – here edited and introduced by John Middleton Murry – made up of notes for stories, diary entries, unposted letters, comments and confessions, preserves all that she wished to survive for the period 1914-1922.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xvi),(252)pp. Original grey cloth, ruled and lettered in blue; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy in the typographic dust-jacket – lightly tanned and just slightly worn – but also very good. Bookseller’s label of Edgar H. Wells & Co. of New York on rear pastedown.

£50

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1936. First edition. An Elizabethan tale of the days leading up to the Armada – filmed in 1937 with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (their first pairing), as well as Flora Robson, Tamara Desni, James Mason, etc.
Crown 8vo (21cm). 316pp. Original pale blue cloth, lettered in gilt and black; a few slight marks to cloth; top edge lightly spotted, but a very good copy in the handsome Bip Pares dust-jacket – lightly worn and creased at extremities, with a couple of nicks, but also very good. Contemporary ownership inscription of Kathleen F. Martin. For more on Bip Pares, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 17th September 2013.

£125

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London : Hodder and Stoughton, (1942). First edition. “A powerful, fascinating novel of the Eighteenth Century in England and Italy; the drama of a primitive crime in a polished setting and the slow working of a strange revenge”. A wartime novel by the popular author of “The Four Feathers”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 318,[ii]pp. Original light blue cloth, lettered in black; slightly sunned; some minor wear; a few slight marks, flecks and spots, but internally a very good, clean and sound copy in a dust-jacket designed by Pip Pares (1904-1977) – a little chipped and worn with a few nicks, but substantially complete and not unattractive. For more on Bip Pares, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 17th September 2013.

£25

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London : Michael Joseph, (1957). First edition. One of the most powerful of Masters’ Indian tales, commencing in 1902 and charting the career of Peter Savage, administrator, mountaineer, soldier and a man of “ruthless will and stupendous ambition”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],(416)pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; slight bruise to lower edge of upper board; slight production flaw affecting the tops of some leaves; endpapers a little tanned, but a good copy in the Donald Green dust-jacket – lightly worn and a touch tanned. Tiny inscription on front free endpaper.

£20

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London : Cassell & Co., (1929). First edition in English of “Climats” (1928) – a story of love and jealousy, a man and two women – “the familiar triangle in an unfamiliar construction” (The Graphic, 19th October 1929) – from a French author immensely popular in the English-speaking world in the interwar years. Translated by Dr Joseph Collins (1866-1950).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(314),[ii]pp. Original black cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; just slightly bruised; edges spotted, but a very good copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – lightly sunned and with a little light wear, but also very good.

£40

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London : John Miles, (1935). First edition in English of the Grand Prix winning “Les Célebataires” (1934), here in a translation by Thomas McGreevy. A powerful novel of minor aristocracy failing to come to terms with the modern world.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(268)pp. In the secondary binding of blue cloth, lettered in darker blue; very good in the secondary Frederick Muller dust-jacket – a little rubbed and slightly sprinkled and tanned.

£20

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London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (1990). First edition. Hostages, terrorists, car-bomb and the Troubles.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],194,[ii],[4]pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge just a touch dusty; a few very faint marks, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£20

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1932. First edition. Morgan draws on his Great War experiences in the Netherlands – a great success in its day and winner of the Hawthornden Prize.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xii),434,[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; tiny split at foot of front endpaper, some spotting of edges, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the attractive original dust-jacket – a pictorial design signed VMM – a little tanned and slightly nicked, but also very good.

£40

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London : André Deutsch, (1969). First edition. The Port of Spain and the twinned stories of the dispossessed conquistador and the later Venezuelan revolution.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [2],334pp. Frontispiece plan. Endpaper maps. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge orange; very good in the original Keith Rawling dust-jacket – a design in brown, gold and orange – a little sunned and just slightly nicked.

£20

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London : André Deutsch, (1972). First edition. A collection of essays and articles – Naipaul on being an Indian West Indian, on London, on cricket, on India, on John Steinbeck and Monterey, on Norman Mailer and New York, on Jacques Soustelle, on St. Kitts, on Anguilla, on Mauritius, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 286,[ii]pp. Original navy boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch of sunning to spine, but a very good copy in the original Peter Freeman dust-jacket – a design in blue, yellow, cerise and white – just slightly creased on an inner flap, but otherwise very good.

£20

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London : Arthur Gray (Books), [1934]. First edition. “Someone once said that the parties in Hollywood sounded like school treats compared to those given by Maisie Bellamy” – film critic Peter Day knows everyone in the Elstree set – young Lucinda Carey does not. Conflicts between love and career, “the glamour of the film world; written with first-hand knowledge”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (250),[ii]pp. Original jade cloth, lettered in black; a few minor marks, but a very good copy in the striking art-deco dust-jacket by H. W. Perl (1897-1952) – a little sunned, label neatly removed, but very lightly used and bright and attractive. Just two copies (British Library and New York) located in the world’s major libraries.

£125

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New York : Gemor Press, (1945). First edition. “The unveiling of women is a delicate matter. It will not happen overnight. We are all afraid of what we shall find”. One of 1,000 copies of the regular edition, illustrated with five woodcuts by “Ian Hugo” – Nin’s husband Hugh Parker Guiler (1898-1985). This copy signed by Nin and amicably inscribed to Raymond Daum – “Hoping we may colloborate!” – Raymond Witham Daum (1923-2003), cameraman and archivist, perhaps best-known for his “Walking with Garbo” (1991). His archive documenting his friendships with Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo and other well-known figures is now housed at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [iv],(184),[iv],[4]pp – including integral endleaves. Five woodblock illustrations by Ian Hugo. Original decorative boards in a Hugo design in maroon and cream; some very minor wear and a few slight marks; tiny sticker mark on rear board; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy.

£500

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London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1964. First edition of the last novel published in his lifetime – “the best comic fantasy since ‘Tristram Shandy’” – mad scientist plots the end of the world, time travel used to age whiskey, both James Joyce and St. Augustine with speaking parts, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in a just lightly used and slightly creased dust-jacket.

£250

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1933). First edition. The daughter of a county family marries the son of one of the tenants and is rejected by her kith and kin – a fine and unsentimental novel of Irish life. “From this straightforward account of the lives of a few Irish families we get an almost complete conception of the problem of Ireland” (Aberdeen Press, 12th October 1933).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (414),[ii]pp. Original olive cloth, blocked and lettered in yellow; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the stylish dust-jacket – slightly darkened at foot of spine and with just a touch of edge-wear, but also very good.

£125

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, (1997). A definitive edition of Orwell’s second novel, originally published in 1935, restoring for the first time a number of previously censored readings, and indicating other passages known to have been “toned down”. Edited, and with a lengthy textual note by Peter Davison. First published in this form in 1986.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(308),[iv]pp. Original blue cloth, blocked and lettered in silver; very good in the original dust-jacket – a design in blue, orange, red and white – just very faintly sunned.

£40

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London : Gerald Duckworth & Co. / British Broadcasting Corporation, (1985). First edition. The rediscovered texts of George Orwell’s wartime radio broadcasts, transmitted weekly from December 1941 (Pearl Harbor) through to February 1943. Passages originally deleted by the wartime censor have been restored where legible. “The first large-scale unpublished work of Orwell’s to appear since his early death in 1950”. Edited, introduced and extensively annotated by the late W. J. (Bill) West (1942-1999), who discovered the lost original manuscripts.
Medium 8vo (25cm). 248pp. Maps. Original boards; price obliterated from front free endpaper, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly sunned but with negligible wear. Contemporary gift inscription.

£25

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London : Brentano, (1929). First British edition. An intriguing and sensational first novel, first published anonymously in New York earlier the same year, and soon turned into a film as “The Divorcee” (1930), for which Norma Shearer won an Academy Award for best actress. “As a young woman’s comment on marriage, divorce and sex equality, seen in a city like New York, it is a profoundly moving revelation” (Daily Mirror). Towle herself, who usually wrote under the name Ursula Parrott, had been divorced in 1928 – and was again in 1932, 1938 and 1944. Nine of her other novels and short stories were also made into films, including “Strangers May Kiss”, “Next Time We Love” and “There’s Always Tomorrow”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (288)pp. Original indigo cloth, lettered in gilt; some sunning and uneven fading to covers; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting of edges, but a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket (probably in second state, with press reviews) – a stunning art deco design by Alan Rogers – the jacket just slightly darkened, but still very good.

£200

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London : Jonathan Cape, (2009). First edition. Signed and dated (2009) by Iain Pears on the title-page. Love story, murder mystery, espionage and the enigma of John Stone, arms manufacturer and manipulator of markets before the Great War – set in Venice, Paris and London.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(598),[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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London : William Heinemann, (1933). First edition. Priestley on crusade, exploring the fractured society of the 1930s – the metropolitan world of the press, night-clubs, fashionable hostesses, bankers and incipient fascism, satirised and contrasted with the stark reality of northern industrial decay. A novel much admired by Ramsay MacDonald.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],(322),[iv]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the striking art deco jacket – a design by Olive – also very good, just lightly worn with a few nicks and small chips, and one slightly larger but not obtrusive chip to the spine, not affecting image or lettering. Contemporary 1933 ownership inscription of the writer [George] Wyndham Haslett (1902-1970), author of “Corunna Road”, “House of Illusion”, etc.

£100

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1974. First edition. Nine short stories – antique dealers and their fantasies; the lady from Guatemala; Molly – “as noisy as a blowlamp, but pretty”; an innocent abroad; an ambitious film-producer, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (204),[iv]pp. Original light green-grey boards, lettered in gilt; very minor adhesion damage to endpapers, but a very good copy in the John Sutcliffe dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Macmillan, (1978). First edition. Humphrey Boyce and his nephew rescue the exquisite Leonora from a book auction and the book-dealers “hunched over the table in their shabby clothes” – “The sale room is no place for a woman”, declares Humphrey, in a memorable opening line.
Post 8vo (21cm). 208pp. Original turquoise boards, lettered in silver; very slightly bruised, but a very good copy in the original blue, turquoise and white dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped and just lightly rubbed, but also very good.

£30

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1997). First British edition. Pynchon’s Grand Tour of the Enlightenment’s dark hemisphere.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(774),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good in the Raquel Jaramillo dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (2009). First British edition. “It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A. ... a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists”. Filmed in 2014 with Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, etc.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(370),[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£50

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London : Grant Richards, 1912. First edition. A most attractive presentation copy, inscribed, signed and dated (January 1912) by Grant Richards to his eldest son, Gerard Franklin Grant Richards (1901-1916). His first novel and our first introduction to his character, the elegantly raffish ‘Amiable Charles’, here heading south to winter in Monte Carlo and beyond.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (378),[ii]pp. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt; lightly sunned; some slight wear to extremities; corners faintly bruised; a few splash marks; a little shaken and slack; mild spotting and tanning to endpapers, but a reasonable copy with a fine provenance. Later ownership initials of G.G.S. and stamp of the Waterperry Horticultural School.

£75

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London : Cassell & Co., (1935). First edition. An attractive presentation copy, inscribed and signed to ‘Hélène from her father, the author Grant Richards’ – Hélène Charlotte de Berquely Richards (b.1908) became Richards’ step-daughter on his marriage to her widowed mother, Maria Magdalena Ágnes Csanády de Berquely, in 1915. The last of the raffish continental adventures of the very amiable Charles Caerleon, who had first appeared in ‘Caviare’, published by Richards himself in 1912 – ‘Young wives are the sunderers of friendship’.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(312)pp. Original jade cloth, lettered in red; the spine sunned to an amiable shade of tan; a hint of shelfwear; some occasional spotting, but a good and sound copy with a very pleasing provenance.

£50

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London : Duckworth & Co., (1919). First edition. Christmas in 1896 and Miriam arrives in Putney to stay with the Broom sisters. It was in the previous year that the phrase “stream of consciousness” was first used in a literary context, specifically to describe the style of Richardson’s “Pilgrimage” sequence of novels, of which this is the fifth and probably the most experimental – “Never, perhaps, has the familiar definition of a realistic novel as a ‘transcript from life’ been capable of a more exact application than in the case of the series of books in which Miss Dorothy Richardson is recording the experiences of her heroine ... brimful of the most brilliantly vivid impressions ... a curious reminder that life is a flashing succession of photographic impressions” (The Scotsman, 22nd December 1919).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(294),[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, ruled, blocked, and lettered in black; mild tanning of outer blank leaves, but a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket (the front flap of which advertises Virginia Woolf’s earliest novels) lightly tanned, with a few slight nicks and tiny chips, with just one slightly more substantial chip to the upper corner of the rear panel, but also very good.

£200

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London : Duckworth & Co., (1931). First edition. The tenth volume in the “Pilgrimage” sequence – Miriam once more in London – trying to reject the influence of Hypo G. Wilson (so clearly based on Richardson’s former lover, H. G. Wells). With an afterword by John Cowper Powys – “It is hard to think of any woman in fiction more living, more real ... Certainly she is one of the master realists of our tongue. Like all great writers, she really and truly creates a completely new world ...”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original purple-blue cloth, lettered in gilt; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – lightly worn and slightly spotted, with a faint crease to rear panel, but also very good.

£100

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London : Methuen & Co., (1918). First edition. Rohmer tries to escape from the Doctor Fu Manchu genre with a restrained but serious excursion into the occult and philiosophical novel.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],250pp + (32)pp. Original tan cloth, lettered in black; very slightly rubbed; a touch bruised; very mild spotting of edges; a few small marks and spots; advertisement leaves a little tanned and brittle, with a short tear to final leaf, but overall a very good copy of a difficult title. Bleiler p.170.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1963. First published edition : the trade issue. Rolfe’s long-lost early novel, set in Rome in the early sixteenth century, first printed and prepared for publication in 1908-1909 but never issued. Edited and introduced by Cecil Woolf.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(344)pp. Original boards – Rolfe’s striking original design in violet and white, lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, clean, bright and sound copy in the original matching dust-jacket – Rolfe’s own design, printed in scarlet and purple on white – just slightly tanned, but also very good. Woolf A8c.

£25

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London : Constable & Co., (1948). First British edition. A selection of over seventy of the best of the short stories and articles arranged under various headings. Includes “Tripping over Trivia”, “Horse Sense”, “Larcenous Ladies”, “A Dog’s Best Friend”, “Smoking Ladies”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 278,[ii]pp. Frontispiece. Original dark green cloth, lettered in silver; a very good and bright copy in the original pale blue dust-jacket, printed in red and darker blue – slightly sunned and a just a little marked.

£25

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London : Constable & Co., (1937). First edition. Young love in France – “a book which begins and ends with their farewell, under the cliff-like side of a Cunarder on the docks of Cherbourg in the rain”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],344pp. Original purple cloth, blocked in gilt and lettered in green across spine; top edge pink; a touch sunned; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a design in purple-red, white and black (with words from the song) – just lightly used, a touch sunned and very lightly tanned – but in very good order.

£50

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London : Mantle, (2012). First edition. “1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk ... dark authoritarian rule; press, radio and television are controlled .. there are terrible rumours too about what is happening in the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(594),[iv]pp. Endpaper maps. Original boards; a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Hogarth Press, 1956. First edition. “One moment the window was empty, a dark square – and the next this strange new woman was standing against the sill ...” – the rich and private jungle within the brick façades of Kensington. A fine novel from this quirky and neglected master of London lives.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (240)pp. Original bright blue boards, lettered in gilt; top edge pink; slight sliver of fading at foot; mild tanning of endpapers; a few slight edge spots, but overall a very good copy in the stylish Charles Mozley dust-jacket – price-clipped, lightly tanned and with a few short nicks, but still attractive. Small bookseller’s label of George’s of Bristol on front pastedown.

£20

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London : Hogarth Press, 1958. First edition. A part-time jazz pianist in a small London club falls for an unusual young woman – “This one face contains his future. Why?” – an elegant novel from “one of the modern masters of English prose” (Anthony Burgess) – “His observation, wit and use of words are fresh, exciting and beautiful” (John Betjeman).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (222),[ii]pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint spots, but a very good copy in the stylish Charles Mozley dust-jacket – the jacket a touch sunned and just lightly worn at extremities.

£25

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London : Lindsay Drummond, [1944]. First edition. A collection of twenty-one wartime short stories – from Mulk Raj Anand (Lottery), John Heath-Stubbs (That on Parched Mountains), J. F. Hendry (The Catacomb of Love), Rayner Heppenstall (The Bird has Flown), Inez Holden (To-day at the Bureaucracy), Gwyn Jones (Take us the Little Foxes), Mary Lavin (The Statue in the Grounds), John Pudney (The City of Copious Libations), Alan Ross (Pain), William Sansom (From the Water Junction) and others, including the two editors themselves. With biographical notes on the contributors.
First edition. Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],(186)pp. Original mustard cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in cerise; very lightly rubbed and just lightly bruised; some spotting, mainly to edges; a couple of tiny creases, but still overall a very good copy in the striking Henry Moore dust-jacket – the jacket a little rubbed and slightly darkened, but with just minor wear and also very good.

£50

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London : Ernest Benn, (1929). First British edition : in a secondary but nonetheless striking dust-jacket – an art deco design by “Barbara” in Benn’s 3/6 Library format. Her first novel, previously unpublished but pre-dating “The Story of an African Farm” (1883) and taking up the same themes of childhood and adolescence in nineteenth-century South Africa. With an explanatory introduction by her husband, Samuel Cron Cronwright-Schreiner.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 254,[ii]pp. Portrait. Plate. Original brown cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; a few marks and spots, mild tanning to plates, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a little worn, nicked and slightly chipped, the spine lightly tanned and a little spotted.

£25

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London : William Heinemann, (1975). First edition. The final volume of Scott’s “Jewel in the Crown” quartet – the British Raj moves inexorably towards its end.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(600)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very faint spine crease; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original Bill Richmond dust-jacket – just faintly sunned at spine.

£50

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London : W. H. Allen, 1959. First edition. His second book, winner of the Hawthornden prize, the title novella memorably filmed by Tony Richardson, with Tom Courtenay and Michael Redgrave, in 1962. With eight further short stories, including “On Saturday Afternoon”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 176pp. Original grey cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch of fading; endpapers very lightly tanned, but a very good copy in the original Mona Moore dust-jacket – just lightly used.

£200

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Glasgow : William MacLellan, (1946). First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated (1981) by John Singer. Thirty-one new short stories – by Mulk Raj Anand, Anna Kavan, Hugo Manning, Hugh MacDiarmid, Henry Miller (Murder in the Suburbs), Elizabeth Taylor (Husbands and Wives), Fred Urquhart, John Waller, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (232)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered on spine in gilt; edges lightly spotted; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in the original blue and white dust-jacket – lightly nicked and chipped.

£20

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London : Editions Poetry London, (1945). First edition. “I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my anticipation to face the moment I most desire”. Smart’s celebrated fictional account of her love affair with the poet George Barker (1913-1991) – “a visceral journey into the human heart, written in a language so urgent, raw and lyrical that each sentence is a bruise or a kiss” (Raffaella Barker).
Demy 8vo (211 x 130mm). 54,[ii]pp. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco, lettered down spine in gilt; top edge gilt; a most attractive copy of the first edition of this scarce modern classic.

£250

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1961. First edition. Miss Brodie in her prime in pre-war Edinburgh – the basis of the 1969 film with Maggie Smith, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(172)pp. Original deep turquoise cloth, lettered in gilt; a little dulled; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in the stylish original pictorial jacket by Victor Reinganum (1907-1995) – the jacket lightly marked and a little worn, with minor reinforcement, and with a darker, thumb-nail sized mark on front panel.

£75

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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”.
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.

£75

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London : Collins, 1953. First edition. A London bank-clerk pursues a strange inheritance in remote Cornwall.
Post 8vo (21cm). 256pp. Original green cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; very good in the pictorial Harry Toothill dust-jacket – a little creased, with a few short repaired tears and a chip on lower panel.

£20

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London : William Heinemann, (1954). First British edition. “One night Mack lay back on his bed in the Palace Flophouse and he said, ‘I ain’t never been satisfied with that book Cannery Row. I would have went about it different’” – the sequel.
Post 8vo (21cm). viii,264pp. Original dark green cloth, ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; very faint cup-mark on lower cover, but otherwise a very good, sound and bright copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket by PG – very lightly worn, with just a few tiny chips and a few short tears.

£25

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973. First edition. Jack Flowers, Singapore fixer and pimp, in a spot of trouble with the locals – memorably filmed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1979, with Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(248)pp. Original stone cloth, blocked and lettered in blue and red; top edge pink; some spotting of cloth and edges, but a good and sound copy in the Paul Bacon dust-jacket – price-clipped, but very good, fresh and clean.

£25

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. First edition. Hong Kong on the eve of the hand-over to China – Bunt Mullard struggles to adapt and a young woman disappears from his factory.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],(244),[iv]pp. Original quarter red cloth; red boards; lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Michaela Sullivan dust-jacket – equally very good.

£20

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1947). First edition. Barsetshire in its first post-war summer – evacuees departed and a very charming young widow arrives to turn a few heads.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (382),[ii]pp. Map endpapers. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a map design by M. Weightman – price-clipped and over-printed with a fresh price by the publisher – also very good.

£25

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London : Bloomsbury, (1995). First edition. Inscribed and signed by Joanna Trollope on the title-page. Two intelligent, ordinary, recognisable families intertwined in friendship in a country town – intimacy, betrayal and loyalty.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],(262),[ii],[2]pp. Original navy boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge a little spotted; faint press-crease to title-page, but otherwise a very good copy in the Jenny Wheatley dust-jacket – just faintly rubbed, but also very good.

£20

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London : Bloomsbury, (2000). First edition. Signed by Joanna Trollope on the title-page. Judge abandons his wife of forty years for a barrister half his age, but neither woman behaves quite as expected. “Just as one has forgotten the intense pleasure of reading Trollope, along comes another flawless novel” (Library Journal).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [iv],(312),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; purple ribbon; very faint tanning of edges, but a very good copy in the Jenny Wheatley dust-jacket – also very good.

SOLD

New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990. First edition. Signed by the author on the title-page. The “Presumed Innocent” attorney finds his wife has killed herself.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(518)pp. Original half cloth; a very good copy in the Neil Stuart dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1980). First British edition. “You would say he was a man who had gone to pieces, or maybe he’d always been in pieces: maybe he’d arrived unassembled ...”. A fine early Anne Tyler. Originally published in New York earlier the same year.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(312)pp. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, fresh, sound and bright copy in the pictorial Oliver Elmes dust-jacket – price-clipped by the publisher and with a revised price over-sticker – also very good indeed.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, (2009). First British edition. A pedant adrift in his own life.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (278),[ii],[4]pp. Original grey boards, lettered in gilt; just the faintest signs of use, but very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Penguin Books, (1988). A reprint, in the Penguin Modern Classics series, of this collection originally published by Heinemann in 1969. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page.
Post 8vo (20cm). (234),[vi]pp. Original colour-printed Paul Leith wrappers; text edges very mildly tanned; a few very small spots on title-page, but otherwise in very good state. Walker A3c.

£15

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London : Enitharmon Press, 1994. First edition : [one of 1,000 copies in wrappers]. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page. Six short stories, including “A Ship in the Sky”, with an introduction by Frank Kermode.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 102,[ii]pp. Original pale blue-grey wrappers, with a Glenn Sujo design, printed in blue and black; very good. Walker A7a.

£15

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1968). First edition. Satirical and still fresh fable of town-planning in Sussex.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges, but a very good and bright copy in the Verney dust-jacket, just a little worn and faintly dulled.

£10

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1962. First edition. An absorbing novel which takes us from 1942 to the birth of rock and roll – with the revolving viewpoints of a Professor of Classics, his runaway teenage son subsisting on the fringes of legality in wartime London and becoming a jazz pianist, and Eleanor – sister to the first and aunt to the second.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(330)pp. Original red cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt; a few slight marks, but a very good copy in the Victor Reinganum dust-jacket – very lightly worn and just slightly soiled, but also very good. Contemporary dated ownership inscription of Mary Campbell.

£20

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London : Stanley Paul & Co., (1924). First edition. One of the author’s “smartly witty novels, self-consciously progressive especially about sex, published between 1908 and 1929” (Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction). “A frank and convention-defying story” (Aberdeen Press, 1st January 1925). The rather supercilious Lily Kesterton lives in the worst part of Kensington with her rather dull husband, but longs for high society and the smart set of bright young things exemplified by her friend Mrs Flare – a character who could slip effortlessly and without alteration into the pages of any of Evelyn Waugh’s early novels. “An entertaining and brightly written story. All the characters are well drawn” (Times Literary Supplement). For more on Gertie Wentworth-James, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 4th May 2017.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 256 + (40)pp advertisements. Original grey cloth, ruled and lettered in black; cloth lightly rubbed and a little marked; a handful of edge spots, but a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a lively design of redhead dancing with a devil on a string – a little worn, torn, chipped, marked and repaired, but substantially complete and attractive still. Ownership inscription dated August 1926 blocked out.

£50

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1962). First edition. Square-bashing with the RAF – and the undermining of a rebel.
Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],74,[iv]pp. Original holly green boards, blocked and lettered up spine in silver; top edge red; a very good copy in a lightly worn and slightly creased dust-jacket featuring a scene from the original Royal Court Theatre production. Contemporary (1963) ownership inscription of P. M. Turner on front free endpaper.

£25

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London : Neville Spearman, (1954). First British edition. The dismantling of the American dream – a sharp satire originally published in New York in 1934.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (140)pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in white; very good in the original dust-jacket, printed in yellow, red and grey – a little sunned at spine, lightly nicked and slightly holed and creased on lower panel.

£20

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London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (2001). First edition. A sixteen-year sojourn in Paris, wandering “through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians ... an exhilarating adventure with a most seductive companion”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [x],(212),[ii]pp. Endpaper maps. Original pictorial boards; a few faint marks, but still very good in the matching dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1973). First edition. White’s novel of a matriarch and her impact – drawing on his own relationship with his mother. Published in the year White won the Nobel Prize.
Post 8vo (21cm). 608pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in the original Desmond Digby dust-jacket – price-clipped and just lightly used.

£25

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, 1950. First edition. The author’s second book – a collection of eleven stories, including “Sister Superior”, “Heart of Elm”, “What do Hippo’s Eat”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 212pp. Original dark red cloth, lettered in gilt; slight tanning of endpapers; mark on fore-edge, but otherwise a very good, bright and unworn copy in the original grey dust-jacket, printed in red and black – alao very good, with just a few faint signs of age and use.

£25

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, 1957. First edition. Eight stories in which various characters seek, cheerfully or desperately, to get their bearings on the new map of post-war English society.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(194)pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a few faint spots, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – also very good, with just a couple of little nicks to lower panel.

£20

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, (1980). First edition. A novel of the varying and complex moods of post-war England 1948-1969 – and the very different attitudes and careers of two brothers.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],296pp. Original turquoise boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; very good in a very good dust-jacket, just lightly sunned.

£15

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New York : Doubleday & Co., 1946. First edition. Wilson’s celebrated collection of short stories of the “lost generation” – “the adventures of an egoist among the bedeviled”. Banned on first publication.
Post 8vo (21cm). [xii],338,[ii]pp. Frontispiece. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the original grey, green and white dust-jacket – lightly tanned and slightly chipped.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1966). First British edition. Wolfe’s first collection – twenty-two essays and half a dozen caricatures. An entirely new voice in journalism skyrockets metaphors, neologisms, hip-talk and learned reference into the pursuit of the form and style of the new. Includes “The Fifth Beatle”, “The First Tycoon of Teen”, “The Last American Hero”, “The Girl of the Year”, “The Nanny Mafia”, “A Sunday Kind of Love”, “The Woman Who Has Everything”, “Why Doormen Hate Volkswagens”, etc. First published in New York the previous year, but here in the period-defining dust-jacket by Jonathan Miller.
Post 8vo (21cm). (xviii),(340),[iv]pp. Original pink boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; mild tanning of edges, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a touch sunned, with some very minor edge-wear and a single short tear, but also very good.

£100

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