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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 : Methuen & Co., (1955). First edition. Professor Ashton, great authority on the industrial revolution, on the people, agriculture and products, internal trade and transport, manufactures, overseas trade and shipping, money, banking, foreign exchange, labour, etc. With statistical tables, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (viii),(258),[ii]pp. Original cloth; very good in a slightly nicked dust-jacket. Ownership inscription of C. J. A. Robertson.

£15

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London : Oxford University Press, 1959. First edition. A study of the golden age of fox-hunting and coaching, with chapters on both Charles James Apperley and Robert Smith Surtees, eleven chapters on "The Chase" and seven on "The Road", a bibliography, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],(xii),188,[ii]pp. Colour frontispiece. Plates. Map. Original cloth; slight production flaw to last leaf of text, otherwise a very good, sound and bright copy in a lightly rubbed and slightly creased dust-jacket.

£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 : Thames Methuen, (1987). First edition. The splendour, squalor and all the minutiae of the young Englishman abroad in the eighteenth-century – Hibbert in fine form with a richly illustrated account.
Crown 4to (26cm). 256pp. Numerous illustrations, many in colour. Original boards; a very good copy in a slightly sunned dust-jacket. From the library of the distinguished artist and architectural historian, Geoffrey Scowcroft Fletcher (1923-2004), with his 1990 ownership inscription, recording the book as a gift from his wife and his dog.

£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 : Chatto & Windus, 1940. First edition. The countrywide part-time observers and full-time researchers of the legendary and hugely influential Mass-Observation report on “the anthropology of ourselves” in the first four months of war – the impact of the blackout; gas-masks; air raid neurosis; blimp reassurance; the collapse of the football pools; the drought of news; the A.R.P. wardens; class conflict and evacuation; the red poster fiasco; the Ministry of Information; the rise of jazz; saving versus spending; public versus private opinion; civilian morale; leaders and led. Edited and arranged by Tom Harrisson (1911-1976) and Charles Madge (1912-1996) – “This book is possible because we live in a democracy”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],(x),(426),[ii]pp. Original yellow cloth, blocked and lettered in red; top edge pink; a few tiny marks; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket – a little nicked and chipped, with short tears and tape-repairs, but still substanially complete and attractive.

£125

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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 : 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 : Robert Maxwell, (1968). Originally published in 1815 as “Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain”, the French-born American Simond gives a fascinating and complete portrait of the British social life of the period. Based in London but travelling all across England and as far afield as the Welsh hills and the Scottish Highlands, talking to anyone and everyone – in country-houses and gardens, at trials and prize-fights, in ironworks and coalmines, in asylums, prisons and hospitals. Edited and introduced by Christopher Hibbert.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 176pp. Plates. Original boards; very good in the dust-jacket – the dust-jacket a little creased on lower panel, but otherwise also very good.

£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.

£75

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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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