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Leeds : Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 1994. First edition. The early book trade in York, with extensive analysis of an unusually detailed stock inventory.
Crown 4to (25cm). (viii),108pp. Illustrations. Map. Tables. Original pictorial wrappers; a little bruised, but otherwise a very good copy.

£15

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Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, (1970). First edition. The third and final volume of Bennett’s masterly analysis of supply and demand in the early English book trade, continuing the story from the death of Elizabeth I to the outbreak of the Civil War. An account of the total output of the press, irrespective of quality – “the nature of the subject matter and the demand it set out to meet”. With chapters on inception; patronage; regulation; piracy; translation; literacy; variety (religion, law, education, medicine, information, arithmetic and science, geography and travel, history, news, literature); printers, booksellers and readers.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],xiv,(54),[ii]pp. Original boards; a few edge-spots, but a very good copy in a price-clipped and just slightly nicked dust-jacket – also very good. Occasional pencil marks and notes (in my hand). Bookseller’s label of Henry Sotheran Ltd. on front paste-down.

£25

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Oxford : Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1981. First edition. An indexed checklist of 429 items relating to the book-trade outside London, primarily listed by county. Oxford Bibliographical Society Occasional Publication No.16.
Post 4to (26cm). vi,(38)pp. Original wrappers; just a touch bruised, but a very good copy.

£15

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Faversham : Faversham Society, 1996. First edition. Biographical notes on over 100 individuals in some way connected with the book trade through Faversham’s history – booksellers, stationers, printers, etc. Faversham Papers No. 51.
Pott folio (30cm). (xx),(54)pp. Plates. Original stapled sheets; lower cover a little creased and spotted, otherwise very good.

£20

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Leiden & Boston : Brill, (2018). First edition. The first attempt fully to analyse the books and other printed materials entered for publication in the Stationers’ Register to 1640, but which no longer survive. The author’s estimate of the sheer extent of loss – perhaps 20,000 pieces of printing in all – books, ballads, news-books, broadsides, religious tracts, almanacs, plays, verse, music, etc., are dealt with in turn – perhaps skews our entire understanding of the period. With an extensive and useful bibliography. In the “Library of the Written Word” series.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [xii],224,[viii]pp. Figures and graphs, some coloured. Original yellow cloth, lettered in blue; a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket equally very good.

£40

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Signal Mountain : Summertown Texts, 1998. First edition. A classified and detailed listing of 1,478 dissertations, theses, honours papers, final year projects and other technically unpublished writings relating to the British book trade – with sections on bibliographers and editors, bibliography by period, by region, book production and distribution, libraries, bookselling, paper, watermarks, printing, illustration, presses, publishing, typography, forms, genres, subjects, newspapers, periodicals, authors and much else.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (xx),314,[ii]pp. Original cloth; very good.

£40

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Newcastle upon Tyne : Thorne’s Students Bookshops for the History of the Book Trade in the North, 1975. First edition. A thoroughly researched biographical dictionary of the book trade in the North East, offered together with the extensive 1981 supplement prepared by P. J. Wallis.
Two volumes. Medium 8vo (24cm). xviii,116,[ii]; [4],viii,60,[iv]pp. Illustrations. Facsimiles. Original cloth (the supplement in wrappers); mild spotting of edges, but otherwise very good – the first volume in a very good dust-jacket.

£40

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London : Werner Shaw, in collaboration with Elkin Mathews, 1986. First edition. Both a personal memoir of the years 1938-1945 and the story of the Elkin Mathews business at that time. With much on her husband, the bookseller Percy Muir (the book forming a sequel to his own “Minding My Own Business”), but with sidelights on an eccentric cast of characters including the actress Phyllis Calvert, Rupert Cross, Ian Fleming, Peter Murray Hill, the translator Koteliansky, E. H. W. Meyerstein, A. J. A. Symons, Hugh Walpole, Greville Worthington, etc.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (x),224,[vi]pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Original brown boards, lettered in gilt; slight bruise to fore-edge, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a photographic design in sepia monochrome, lettered in orange and white – just faintly sunned and lightly marked, but also very good.

£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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Winchester : St. Paul’s Bibliographies / New Castle : Oak Knoll Press, (1995). First edition. The fifteenth collection of conference papers in the “Publishing Pathways” series. Includes essays by Luigi Balsamo (on Italian bookselling in the eighteenth century); Bill Bell (on Smith & Elder); Christopher Edwards (on antiquarian bookselling in Britain in 1725); Simon Eliot (on circulating libraries, book-clubs, etc); Germaine Greer (on Sam Briscoe); Anthony Hobson (on booksellers & bookbinders); Giles Mandelbrote (booksellers and bookshops in late 17th-century London); James Tierney (on advertisements and Robert Dodsley), and William Zachs (on John Murray).
Foolscap 4to (22cm). (xiv),188,[vi]pp. Original pictorial laminated boards; just a hint of bruising, but overall a very good copy.

£25

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Oxford : Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1986. First edition. A study of a dozen Durham bookbinders and booksellers, including John Aisley, Abraham Ashworth, James Dansken, Catherine Waghorn, John Waghorn, William Werdon, and the Durham Insect-Roll Binder. With the separately printed errata slip, explaining the transposition of certain of the plates. Oxford Bibliographical Society Occasional Publication No.19.
Cropwn 4to (26cm). (xii),(62),[ii]pp. Numerous illustrations of bindings, tools, etc. Original wrappers; a few minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy.

£15

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New York : [Phoenix Bookshop], 1978. First edition : limited to 250 copies, hors commerce, printed as a Christmas greeting from Bob Wilson of the Phoenix Bookshop. An account of the correspondence and his eventual visit to Alice B. Toklas in Paris.
Crown 8vo. [iv],(10),[ii]pp. Photo portrait. Facsimile. Original pale cream stapled wrappers, lettered in black; a hint of rusting to staples, otherwise very good indeed in the original mailing envelope.

£20

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New York : [Phoenix Bookshop], 1979. First edition : limited to 250 copies. Privately published as a Christmas Greeting – and inscribed and signed by Wilson. An account of his discovery of the original typescript of Faulkner’s first novel, together with the manuscripts of unpublished poems and stories.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],(8)pp. Facsimile. Original stapled wrappers; staples just a touch rusted, but a very good copy in the original Phoenix Book Shop envelope.

£15

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