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[London] : Cambridge University Press for the National Book League, 1947. First edition : one of the copies issued in cloth, with the plates not included in the wrappers issue. A major exhibition catalogue, with a foreword by Sadleir and an introduction by Carter.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (xiv),(50)pp. Sixteen plates. Original cloth; a hint of rubbing; endpapers slightly spotted, with a short repaired tear to rear free endpaper; but a very good and bright copy in the original dust-jacket – lightly worn and slightly tanned.

£20

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Aldershot : Ashgate, (1998). First edition. An illustrated decade-by-decade survey, with biographical notes and checklists of over 200 authors from the English-speaking world. A review copy, with the manuscript review notes of the late B. C. Bloomfield loosely inserted.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xii),228pp. Numerous illustrations. Original boards; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket.

£25

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London & New York : Mansell Publishing, (1988). First edition. An extensive finding-list of over 5,500 booksellers’ catalogues of musical material, with subject and locational indices. With an introductory essay on the “Music Antiquarian” by Albi Rosenthal.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xxiv),372pp. Original cloth; very good indeed.

£25

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1908. First edition. Twenty-three essays and poems on bookish themes – Some Books and their Associations; The Passionate Printer; The Happy Printer; Two Modern Illustrators (Kate Greenaway and Hugh Thomson); Samuel Rogers; Samuel Pepys; Thackeray’s Esmond; Milton; Fresh Facts about Fielding, etc. “To appreciate the book, for itself, lock, stock and barrel – or, rather, binding, matter, and print – it is good to feed a little on the literary food of Austin Dobson ... It is a pleasure reflected and enjoyed. Mr Dobson’s affection for books is breathed from this volume” (Woolwich Gazette, 13th November 1908).
Post 8vo (204 x 132mm). xii,232pp. Frontispiece and twelve plates – five by Kate Greenaway, the remainder by Hugh Thomson; bound in a near contemporary handsome half blue crushed morocco, banded and gilt; by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; silk headbands; top edge gilt; some mild rubbing and fading; endpapers lightly tanned at edges, but otherwise a very good copy of an attractive production. Small book-seller’s label of W. & G. Foyle on rear paste-down.

£125

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Aldershot : Wildwood House, (1989). First paperback edition. A well-illustrated survey, with much on Aubrey Beardsley, Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac, Jessie M. King, Phil May, William Morris, Arthur Rackham, Heath Robinson, etc., with a checklist of all the major illustrators and their work. First published in 1988.
Post 4to (27cm). x,(186),[iv]pp. Numerous illustrations. Seven colour plates. Original pictorial wrappers; very good.

£20

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London : for the Bibliographical Society, 1949. A reprint of the original 1945 edition. A collection of essays, including F. S. Ferguson, on English Books before 1640; F. C. Francis, The Bibliographical Society; a Sketch of the First Fifty Years; E. P. Goldschmidt, The Study of Early Bookbinding; W. W. Greg, Bibliography – A Retrospect; W. A. Jackson, America; Michael Sadleir, The Development During the Last Fifty Years of Bibliographical Study of Books of the Nineteenth Century; Victor Scholderer, Early Printed Books; Harold Williams, The Eighteenth Century; F. P. Wilson: Shakespeare and the ‘New Bibliography’, etc. With a list of the Society's publications, 1892-1942.
Demy 4to (29cm). (viii),(216)pp. Original holland-backed boards; top edge gilt; a few faint marks; slight rubbing to corners, but a very good copy. From the collection of the late B. C. Bloomfield, former President of the Bibliographical Society.

£30

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New York : Pierpont Morgan Library / Toronto : Oxford University Press, (1975). First edition. A lavishly produced exploration of 225 treasures from the Pierpont Morgan Library, with bibliographical notes and short discussions of each. With a preface by Charles Ryskamp and an interesting essay by the historian by J. H. Plumb on “The First Flourishing of Children’s Books”.
Royal 4to (31cm). [2],(xxx),(266),[ii]pp. Colour plates. Over 300 monochrome illustrations. Original cloth; very good in a just lightly rubbed dust-jacket.

£40

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New York : Grolier Club, 1984. First edition : limited to 1,000 copies. Eleven papers by Robert Giroux (The Future of the Book), Frank Stella (An Artist’s View of Prints), G. Thomas Tanselle (The Evolving Role of Bibliography, 1884-1984), and others.
Royal 8vo (27cm). (xii),146pp. Original yellow cloth, lettered in black; a touch bowed, but otherwise very good.

£20

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London : Oxford University Press, 1967. First edition in English. A handsome and wide-ranging survey, with individual chapters on nursery rhymes, fairy stories, Hans Christian Andersen, Heinrich Hoffman, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, fantasy, the Little Prince, dreams and educational methods, Red Indians, education through pictures, photography, colour prints, comic strips, politics, Jean de Brunhoff, twentieth-century picture books, etc., with extensive bibliographies. Originally published in Zurich in 1959. Edited and translated from the extended second edition of 1963 by Brian Alderson.
Medium 8vo (25cm). xviii,(298),[iv]pp. Plates, some coloured. Illustrations. Original boards; very good in a price-clipped but otherwise very good dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1881. First edition. Lang opens with an “Apology for the Book-Hunter” – with remarks on biblography, taste, bookstalls, catalogues, auctions, etc. – before moving on to libraries great and small, and the books of the collector – the care of books, the enemies of books, the book-ghoul, the iniquities of bookbinders, manuscripts, early printed books, first editions, fashions in book-collecting, etc. The final chapter (contributed by Austin Dobson) deals with English illustrated books of the previous hundred years.
Crown 8vo (179 x 113mm). (xvi),184pp. Frontispiece by Walter Crane. Three coloured plates. Wood-engravings in text. Bound in an attractive later (mid twentieth-century) half olive morocco, banded and gilt, by George Bayntun of Bath; all edges gilt; marbled endleaves; a few tiny marks and spots, but overall a very good copy. Dated 1958 ownership inscription of David Fyfe Anderson (1904-1988), the Scottish obstetrician.

SOLD

London : Privately Printed, 1946. First edition : limited to 500 copies. A bibliographical monograph on the concept of rarity in collecting, combined with a case-study on the complex publishing history of George Bernard Shaw’s “An Unsocial Socialist” (1887). With a short, even curt, introductory note by Shaw on Loewenstein’s “abominable drudgery” in the field of Shaw biography and bibliography (Loewenstein was founder of the Shaw Society).
Demy 8vo (22cm). (20)pp. Original wrappers; wrappers slightly dusty and nicked, but a good copy of a fragile production.

£20

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London : British Printing Machinery Association, 1980. First edition. The catalogue of the related 1980 exhibitions held at the National Exhibition Centre and elsewhere – describing 188 items in Birmingham, ninety-five in Aberystwyth, forty-nine in Cambridge, 100 in Manchester, etc. With an introductory essay by Ruari McLean.
Royal 8vo (26cm). (140),[iv]pp. Colour plates. Original pictorial wrappers; edges just lightly spotted, but otherwise very good in the dust-jacket – the jacket itself a little spotted.

£20

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Ann Arbor : Arbor Libri Press, 1995. First edition. Recollections and reminiscences of the American book and map dealer F. J. Manasek (of G. B. Manasek of Vermont) – with chapters on what things are worth; dealers; the London bookshops; auctions; fairs, etc.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [ii],146,[iv]pp. Original cloth; a very good copy indeed, in an equally very good dust-jacket.

£15

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London : B. T. Batsford, (1979). A reprint of the original 1954 edition, with a fresh preface updating the list of recommended reading, etc. An illustrated history and collectors’ guide to English children’s books, with checklists of the most important authors, the publishing history of the major works, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (256)pp. Colour plates. 107 illustrations. Original boards; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in a just slightly dusty and price-clipped dust-jacket.

£25

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New York : Praeger Publishers, (1971). First edition : the American issue. A well illustrated and wide-ranging survey, by one of the best of antiquarian booksellers, of (mainly British) illustrated books of the nineteenth century – with chapters on chapbooks; Thomas Bewick and George Cruikshank; line engraving; the periodicals; the Dalziels; the advent of colour; fin-de-siècle; foreign influence; America, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xvi),(288)pp. Five colour plates. Numerous monochrome illustrations. Original orange cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge black; a very good and bright copy in the dust-jacket.

£40

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London : Athlone Press, 1962. First edition. A study of the growth of collecting autograph letters between the early eighteenth century and about 1914. With chapters on the Early Collectors; William Upcott; Dawson Turner; Other Nineteenth Century Collections, etc.
Demy 8vo. viii,(118),[ii]pp. Plates. Original cloth; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in a lightly sunned dust-jacket. With the pencilled ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield, former Director of Collection Development at the British Library.

£25

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1920. First British edition : a British issue of the American sheets, first published in 1918. One of the classics of the field, a much-reprinted and thoroughly engaging account of Newton’s avid book-collecting career, his preference for inscribed copies, essays on some of his favourite authors – Charles Lamb; James Boswell; Hester Thrale (“it may at once be admitted that as a mother Mrs Thrale was not a conspicuous success”); William Godwin (“A Ridculous Philosopher”); William Dodd, the Macaroni Parson; the then still unmentionable Oscar Wilde – Newton’s favourite booksellers and bookshops, his frequent visits to London, other collectors, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (xxi),(374),[ii]pp. Colour frontispiece. Plates. Portraits, Facsimiles. Original linen-backed boards; lightly tanned and slightly marked on lower board; endpapers a little tanned, but still overall a very good copy.

SOLD

New York : Pierpont Morgan Library / London : Oxford University Press, (1976). First edition : the hardback issue. A superbly produced and illustrated survey – with sections on all the major artists and illustrative processes, a checklist of 100 outstanding illustrated books of the period, a bibliography, indices of artists, authors, titles, etc., with formal bibliographical descriptions by Thomas V. Lange. Preface by Charles Ryskamp.
Royal 4to (31cm). (xxiv),(340)pp. Illustrations throughout, two in colour – and including a fine sequence of full-page images. Original blue cloth gilt; a few edge-spots, but a very good and bright copy in the original acetate dust-jacket.

£50

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London : Charles J. Sawyer, 1927. First edition : limited to 2,000 copies. “There comes a time in the evolution of every sport, pastime or hobby, when it degenerates or improves (according to the point of view) into a scientific pursuit requiring accurate knowledge as well as affectionate appreciation ... Book-collecting has reached this stage”. The distilled fruits of forty years’ experience in the book-trade presented in a sprightly survey of books, book-collecting and prices from Caxton to Kipling.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (227 x 142mm). xvi,(368); viii,(424)pp. Plates, facsimiles, illustrations. Bound in a handsome contemporary half blue morocco, banded & gilt, by Bayntun of Bath for C. J. Sawyer; top edges gilt; some minimal wear, a few spots, but a very good set, handsomely bound.

SOLD

Cleveland & New York : World Publishing Co., (1957). First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed, signed and dated (1957) by Bill Targ. Essays by Richard Altick, Jacob Blanck, Marchette Chute, F. J. Harvey Darton, August Derleth, Iona and Peter Opie, Ellery Queen, Vincent Starrett, and other cognoscenti on various aspects of children’s books and their collecting – “with emphasis on the great rarities, classics, and highspots”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (508),[iv]pp. Plates. Facsimiles. Original cloth; very good in a sunned and lightly tanned, but otherwise good dust-jacket.

£40

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London : Library Association, (1975). A reprint (with minor corrections) of the 1971 third edition. A fine history of the production, distribution and accessibility of scientific literature – with chapters on scientific incunabula, scientific books before 1600, the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the rise of scientific societies, scientific periodicals, scientific bibliographies and bibliographers, private libraries, science publishing, etc. With an extensive bibliography.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (x),508,[ii]pp. Plates. Original cloth; a few very minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy.

£20

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New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. First edition. Inscribed (to the bibliographer Barry Bloomfield) and signed by the author, the New York bookseller, Robert A. Wilson. A clearly laid-out guide for the novice first edition collector – with chapters on what, how, who, dealers, auctions, condition, identification, bibliographies, housing, fakes, investment, disposing, definitions, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). xiv,(272)pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; very good in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£20

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