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Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1946. First edition. Essays on Asser, literacy in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, mediaeval education, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(168)pp. Two plates. Original cloth; a very good, bright and sound copy in a lightly worn, slightly nicked and partly tanned dust-jacket. With the ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield.

£15

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[London] : Fontana/Collins (1976). First paperback edition. A richly illustrated study of the Home Front 1939-1945, an extraordinary told via posters, advertisements, cartoons, film-stills, propaganda photographs, ephemera and much else. With a foreword by Vera Lynn.
Crown 4to (25cm). 256pp. Illustrations throughout. Original pictorial wrappers; some minor creasing, a few spots, but a good copy.

£15

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Bath : Postal Museum at Bath, 1984. First edition. An illustrated study of John Palmer (1742-1818) and the development of the first modern postal delivery service.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). 24pp. Portraits. Illustrations. Facsimiles. Original stapled wrappers; just slightly bruised, but a very good copy.

£15

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Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1961. First edition. Ten essays in honour of the great economic historian’s eightieth birthday – by Robert Ashton, Maurice Beresford, D. C. Coleman, Jack Fisher himself, Christopher Hill, Lawrence Stone, Joan Thirsk and others.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(236)pp. Portrait frontispiece. Original cloth; top edge lightly spotted; endpapers slightly tanned, but a very good copy in a lightly worn dust-jacket – slightly tanned and a touch dusty.

£20

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London : Library Association, (1982). First edition : limited to 1,000 copies, signed by the author. An exhaustive bibliography, with much interesting commentary.
Crown 4to (27cm). [2],xxxiv,474,[ii]pp. Illustrations. Facsimiles. Original cloth; a few faint marks and spots, but a very good copy in a lightly sunned and very slightly creased dust-jacket.

£25

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London : J. M. Dent & Sons, (1933). First edition. Written to mark the centenary of Britain’s decision to abolish slavery – a history and an examination of systems of slavery and semi-slavery post 1833, focussing on the aftermath of slavery and the continued existence of over five million slaves at the time of writing. With much on Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Dr. Lushington, Lord John Russell and William Wilberforce, and on slavery in South Africa, China, the Congo, the French Colonies, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Mauritius, the Portuguese Colonies, Sierra Leone and Zanzibar. A copy with an interesting provenance, presented by the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1956 to the late Barry Cambray Bloomfield (1931-2002) for his work in cataloguing the Society’s library.
Crown 8vo (19cm). xvi,(288)pp. Two portraits (Buxton and Wilberforce). Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge green; a little sunned; a few slight spots, but a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket a little tanned, a touch dusty, with a single small chip at head, but otherwise in good order.

£25

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London : Geoffrey Bles, (1935). First edition. “A chapter in Social History, a queer, poignant, naked-nerved chapter, which even at the present day contains lessons that have never been properly learnt”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(300)pp. Plates. Original blue cloth, blocked and lettered in red; a little dull; lettering faded; slight spotting of edges, but a good, sound and serviceable copy of a fascinating study.

£20

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

£250

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London : John Camden Hotten, [1870]. First edition. A dozen short plays in various styles – the operatic, the sensational, the bombastic, the farcical, the burlesque, the pathetic, the domestic, the maritime, the shoppy, the fantastic and juvenile, etc. – designed for under-rehearsed and jovial amateur players, complete with music, etc. The author was variously a captain in the Grenadier Guards, a Justice of the Peace, and subseqently High Sheriff of Norfolk.
Foolscap 4to (20cm). (2),(8),(3)-(194),38pp. Entertaining frontispiece and illustrations by William R. Snow. Original pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; just a touch bruised, a few slight spots, but a very good, bright and sound copy. Small bookseller’s label of J. MacGill of Belfast.

£50

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London : J. M. Dent & Sons, (1927). First Everyman edition. “Robert Owen, shop-boy and manufacturer, factory reformer and educationist, Socialist and Co-operative pioneer, Trade Union leader and secularist, founder of ideal communities and practical man of business, was something of a puzzle to his own generation, and is no less a puzzle to posterity” – the essential texts, edited and introduced by G. D. H. Cole, and here in the attractive pre-war Everyman format.
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). xx,298,[ii]pp. Original cloth; endpapers lightly tanned, but otherwise very good.

£20

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

£500

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London : Architectural Press, (1946). First edition. “Ewbank’d inside and Atco’d out, the English suburban residence and the garden which is an integral part of it stand trim and lovingly cared for in the mild sunshine ... ” – Richards’ faultless homage to and defence of suburbia, written while he was serving overseas. If not regarded as a minor classic, then it should be. Illustrated with memorable two-colour lithographs by John Piper.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 86pp. Eight plates. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch bruised; a few spots to edges and endleaves, but otherwise a very good copy in the original Piper dust-jacket – a pictorial design in pink, white, black and grey – lightly worn, slightly sunned, and a little spotted on rear panel and flaps, but complete and with just one short nick.

£100

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London : Macmillan & Co., (1969). First edition. With much passing reference to Charles Baudelaire, Roger de Beauvoir, Jules Claretie, Theophile Gautier, Arsene Houssaye, Charles Monselet, Henry Murger, Gerard de Nerval, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (202),[ii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Original boards; a few slight marks; a few leaves slightly creased, but otherwise a very good copy in a lightly marked dust-jacket.

£15

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1941. First edition. Wartime speech on the nature of Englishness – “mongrels who are proud to be mongrels and, partly because of the fact, are not a ‘volk’ but a nation”. Macmillan War Pamphlets No. 10.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (32)pp. Original stapled wrappers, a design in orange and blue; a few slight marks; some spotting; staples atouch rusted, but a good copy.

£15

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Kingham : Village Press, 1925. First edition. The earliest history of the W.I. – “the most important body formed during the century”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (xvi),(290),[xvi]pp. Plates. Portraits. Original cloth; a few faint signs of age and use; a few spots, but a very good copy.

£20

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London : Oxford University Press, 1933. First edition. A distinguished, literate and well-illustrated survey of all aspects of eighteenth-century life, with authoritative essays by G. M. Trevelyan, Dorothy George, G. D. H. Cole, R. W. Chapman and others – the period; the church; the navy; army; exploration and discovery; travel and communications; London; town-life in the provinces; industry and trade; agriculture and rural life; poverty, crime and philanthropy; manners, meals and domestic pastimes; sports and games; costume; taste; painting and engraving; sculpture; architecture and the garden; interiors; drama and theatre; music; education; science; medicine; the law and lawyers; authors and booksellers; newspapers, etc.
Two volumes. Medium 8vo (24cm). (xxiv),(406),[ii]; (x),404pp. Numerous plates. Original cloth gilt; a very good and bright set in the dust-jackets – price-clipped but with only minimal wear.

£100

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1899. First edition. A powerful account of Emile Zola’s exile in England in the wake of the celebrated “J’Accuse ...” letter and headline concerning the Dreyfus furore. Compiled by Ernest Vizetelly, son of the English publisher who went to prison for publishing Zola, and himself the translator of many of Zola’s novels.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],(xviii),218,[ii] + 32pp advertisements dated March 1899. Four portraits. Original decorative cloth, blocked in red and black; endpapers a little tanned; occasional mild browning and spotting, but a very good copy. Ownership inscription (1954) of Kenneth Wilkinson.

£50

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London : George Allen & Unwin, (1955). First edition. A classic and ground-breaking study – with much on Henry Brougham, William Cobbett, Charles Knight, Harriet Martineau, Francis Place, Hugh Seymour Tremenheere, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 192pp. Original boards; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy in a just lightly tanned and faintly spotted dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Contact Publications, (1948). First edition. A fascinating set of essays in the absorbing “Contact” series, in this instance grouped around the theme of “Class” in the immediate post-war world. Topics include changing class barriers, the English upper class, the middle class, the backstreets, the City of London, nationalisation, clothes and class, Philip Toynbee on the burden of one’s background, the social frontiers of psychiatry, Tyrone Guthrie, Geoffrey Grigson and Lady Violet Bonham-Carter for and against the public funding of the arts, Harold Macmillan on the place of government in a free society, etc. With illustrations from Pearl Falconer and others.
Demy 4to (30cm). xx,96,xxi-xxviii pp. Photographs and illustrations throughout, some coloured. Advertisements. Original boards; a touch bruised and slightly shaken, but overall a very good copy in the striking Lynton Lamb dust-jacket – the jacket with very minor signs of age and use, but also very good.

£25

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London : Oxford University Press, 1934. First edition. A magisterial and richly illustrated study of the background to mid nineteenth-century England, with chapters on Work and Wages (J. H. Clapham), Homes and Habits, Town Life and London (R. H. Mottram), Life in the New Towns, Country Life and Sport (Bernard Darwin), The Navy, The Army, The Mercantile Marine (Basil Lubbock), The Press, Art, Architecture (A. E. Richardson), Music, Drama (Allardyce Nicoll), Holidays and Travel, Charity, Expansion and Emigration, and the Portrait of an Age.
Two volumes. Medium 8vo (24cm). [ii],(xxvi),414,[ii]; viii,558,[ii]pp. Errata slip. Numerous plates drawn from contemporary sources. Facsimiles. Original cloth gilt; some spotting of edges, one endpaper lightly tanned, but a very good set in the original dust-jackets – lightly tanned, slightly worn and a little chipped.

£100

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