SOMERSET MAUGHAM FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1898. First British edition. Maugham’s second book – Italy in the late fifteenth century – assassinations, conspiracies, and a gentleman swordsman becomes a saint. Loosely inserted is a signed, typed letter on Dorchester Hotel notepaper, dated 18th October 1951, from Maugham to a Mr. Sephton, “I don’t know what to suggest. I am afraid you won’t find France much better than England at the moment ... The English colony on the Riviera at the present time is very small and very poor ...”. Alexander Rhodes Sephton (1920-1973) was in turns civil servant, wartime commando, and teacher in Benghazi, Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(304),[viii]pp. Original holly-green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; slight wear to extremities; lightly bruised; label neatly removed from upper cover; a few slight marks; endpapers lightly tanned and a little cracked; a few spots; some intriguing pale pink stains to a couple of leaves, but overall a good copy of an early title. With the contemporary (1899) ownership inscription of Alexander F. M. Lockhart – Alexander Francis Maxwell Lockhart (1854-1902), merchant and advocate, at this time living near Malaga.

£200

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London : William Heinemann, 1919. First edition : with the integral advertisements announcing Heinemann’s new novels for 1919. Renegade stockbroker turned artist in London, Paris and Tahiti – Maugham’s celebrated Gauguinesque tale.
Post 8vo (20cm). [iv],(264),[iv]pp. Bound in a handsome later (second half of the twentieth century) Hatchard’s binding of half tan morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; olive labels; marbled endpapers; text somewhat tanned, as always, but otherwise a very good copy, attractively bound. With the striking bookplate of the late Jack Hodges (1924-2014), writer and book collector.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1926). First edition. Six short stories set in the Far East – “Before the Party”, “P. & O.”, “The Outstation”, “The Force of Circumstance”, “The Yellow Streak”, and “The Letter”, together with an introduction and a postscript. One of Maugham’s finest collections, notable in particular for “The Letter”, adapted for the stage by Maugham himself and the basis of the famous Academy Award winning William Wyler 1940 film, starring Bette Davis.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(312)pp. Original blue-green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt and black; just lightly rubbed; some spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy. With the attractive 1938 library bookplate of the surgeon John Herbert Bankes (1879-1950).

£75

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