ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : T. Fisher Unwin, (1923). First edition. An attractive compilation of out of the way snippets of London history – central London taken street-by-street. Acres is best known for his history of the Bank of England, where he spent his working life.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (190),[ii]pp. Original cloth; lightly rubbed; endpapers tanned; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims; a good copy. A previous owner has attached a dozen or so contemporary press-cuttings with similar snippets of London history to the endleaves and prelims.

SOLD

New York : Ace Books, (1955). First edition. “He is far and away the best writer of the hard-boiled school” (Vincent Starrett). His last novel, completed by Robert Leslie Bellem. Published as an “Ace Double”, bound tête-bêche in “two books in one” format, with the first edition of “One Got Away” by paperback king Harry Whittington (1915-1989).
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 185 + 135pp. Original pictorial wrappers, the Shady Lady design attributed to Harry Barton, the other to Robert Emil Schulz; some rubbing, light wear and minor creasing; short split at head; text somewhat tanned; a good copy. Ownership stamps of W. A. Farek, Jr. on inside front covers.

£25

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London : Methuen & Co., (1925). First edition. Sir Nicholas Brannock found dead in Sloane Square – a case of poisoning – things look black for his nephew and dining companion Rollo. An elegant murder mystery, with an interesting use of an early radio broadcast to appeal for information. “First-rate detective yarn ... a web of baffling circumstances amid which the bewildered reader is held engrossed to the end” (Truth, 26th August 1925).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (256) + 8pp advertisements. Original green cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in black; a few slight marks; mild spotting to prelims and endpapers, but a good copy. Inked ownership name (Thomson) and some pencilled calculations to endpapers.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (1978). First edition. Eight stories, with striking illustrations by Jan Pienkowski. Includes “The Goodbye Song”, “The Queen of the Moon”, “Clean Sheets”, etc.
Royal 8vo (25cm). (128)pp. Illustrations throughout, some in colour. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising and fading; some occasional spotting, but otherwise a very good copy in the original Pienkowski dust-jacket – very good indeed save a few tiny spots on inner flaps.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1964). First edition. An Iraqi colonel has been murdered in Switzerland – and the woman in the bikini has disappeared. A reluctant and underestimated journalist finds his niche in the world of espionage.
Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],250,[iv]pp. Original blue boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright and clean copy in the Arthur Barbosa dust-jacket – the jacket a little rubbed, but otherwise very good.

SOLD

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1993). First edition. Autobiographical passages interspersed with some of the most interesting of his short stories.
Demy 8vo (23cm). x,(182)pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a few minimal signs of age and use, but a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : Arthur Barker, (1959). First edition. The fourth Guy Random novel – ranging from East Anglia to the Costa del Sol, via the gilded drawing-rooms of Belgravia and Soho’s Vulture Club.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (232)pp. Original jade boards, blocked and lettered across spine in pink; slight spotting of edges; faint tanning of endpapers, but a very good and bright copy in the original John Dugan dust-jacket – a pictorial design in orange, green, black and white – just faintly sunned and with just a hint of rubbing.

£20

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London : Arthur Barker, (1960). First edition. The fifth and last of the Guy Random novels – “a peer caught in a mouse-trap; three dozen mixed gadabouts stuffed into the boot-cupboard ... a striptease artiste roosting in the chandelier; and a weight-lifter entombed in the grand piano”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (232)pp. Original maroon boards, blocked and lettered across spine in yellow; a few faint spots, but a very good and sound copy in the original Sinc dust-jacket – a pictorial design in black, cerise, yellow and white – lightly rubbed and worn, and slightly dusty on lower panel.

£20

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Princeton : Princeton University Press, (1988). First edition. Plays, documentary filmscripts, cabaret and wireless scripts, etc., with full critical notes and apparatus. The first volume of the Complete Works, edited by Edward Mendelson. A presentation copy, with the editor’s compliments slip loosely inserted. From the collection of the late B. C. Bloomfield, who collaborated with Mendelson on the Auden bibliography.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [2],(xxxiv),680,[ii],[2]pp. Original burgundy cloth, blocked in black and ruled and lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket, also just a touch bruised.

£20

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London : for the Camden Society, 1844. First edition. A transcription of a valuable fourteenth-century manuscript French Chronicle of London, with an extensive introduction and explanatory notes. With a list of members of the Society, etc. Edited by George James Aungier, who was sentenced to transportation for life the following year for forging a cheque in the name of John Gough Nichols of the printing family – indeed the printers of the present work – Nichols testifying at the Old Bailey trial.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). [4],(xxiv),112,36pp. Original cloth, blocked in gilt and blind; minor wear at head, but a very good copy. Armorial bookplate of Travers Barton Wire (1835-1910).

£20

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London : Faber & Faber, (1998). First edition. Signed by Nicola Barker on the title-page. “Barker once again pushes back the boundaries of comedy, chronicling the dark inner lives of a cast of characters straight from the pages of a social services register” – set on the Isle of Sheppey and winner of the 2000 International Dublin Literary Award.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],290,[viii]pp. Original blue boards lettered in white; text faintly tanned as usual, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the Boyd & Evans dust-jacket, also very good indeed – bright, clean and unworn.

£25

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London : Michael Joseph, (1964). First edition. A collection of twelve short stories. Not published in the USA.
Post 8vo (21cm). 192pp. Original pale mauve-grey boards, blocked and lettered across spine in gilt; a very good copy in the Kenneth Farnhill dust-jacket, also very good barring a few faint marks and a couple of tiny nicks. Eads A99.

£15

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London : Michael Joseph, (1970). First edition. “On some occasions Pop was moved to go even further than mere champagne and concoct a cool but potent mixture of about equal parts of brandy and champagne, preferably pink, with a dash of angostura bitters and a slice of orange. This was the perfick stiffener to start the day on”. The fifth and last of the Larkin novels. Not published in the USA.
Post 8vo (21cm). (216)pp. Original light green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but very good copy in the Oliver Elmes dust-jacket, a little browned in places, but just lightly marked and faintly rubbed at extremities.

SOLD

London : Barrie & Rockliff, (1969). First edition. A handsomely illustrated and influential guide to collecting antique maps, with an index of mapmakers, a bibliography, etc.
Demy 4to (31cm). 160pp. Numerous plates and illustrations, some in colour. Original boards; very good in a lightly worn and price-clipped dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1920. First edition. The first full-length study of the Great Fire and the subsequent rebuilding.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],(xiv),(388),[iv]pp. Plates. Folding maps. Illustrations. Original cloth gilt; some minor wear; a touch sunned; endpapers strained at joints; a little shaken; some minor flaws and small signs of age and use, but a good and serviceable copy. Times Book Club label on rear endpaper.

SOLD

London : Constable & Co., (1941). First edition. The decidedly eccentric but musical Lord Berners with a tale of a “young composer who, under the auspices of a mysterious millionaire looks forward to a sumptuous production of his first symphony. Entangled with a heroine of enormous size, and assisted by a fashionable dressmaker who is also a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, the aspiring musician goes from one adventure to another”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],208pp. Frontispiece by Berners. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; top edge pink; slight spotting of edges, but a very good, sound and bright copy in the original white dust-jacket – a monochrome design repeating the frontispiece image – lightly rubbed, just a touch dusty and lightly soiled.

SOLD

London : Panther Books – Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), (1953). First edition : the wrappers issue. In a low dive on Venus, the very beautiful Miss Banner is looking for a spaceman to pilot an off-the-record spaceship to Beta Centaurus. Chandleresque sci-fi. Panther Book 57.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by George Ratcliffe; large (4cm) chip at foot; some creasing and wear; staples rusting; a reasonable copy. Just a single copy (Liverpool) located in the major UK libraries.

SOLD

London : Panther Books – Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), (1953). First edition : the wrappers issue. Security officer becomes suspicious of a physicist at the Spaceship Development Centre – “something had walked through walls all right – but certainly not a man”. Panther Book 40.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 143,[i]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Gordon C. Davies; short splits at head and tail; short tear to upper wrapper; some marking and creasing; staples rusting, but a reasonable copy. No copy located in any of the major UK libraries.

£10

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London : John Murray, (1974). First edition. Twenty-seven poems from the period 1967-1974, including “The Costa Blanca”, “A Wembley Lad”, “A Mind’s Journey to Diss”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 62,[ii]pp. Original yellow cloth, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; near fine in the original turquoise, white and black dust-jacket – price-clipped and with a faint suggestion of creasing at upper edge, but also very good indeed. Contemporary Christmas gift inscription from Jane and Robert to their father.

£20

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Brighton : Tony Appleton, 1972. A facsimile reprint (limited to 500 numbered copies) of this celebrated and influential Birrell & Garnett catalogue, first published in 1928 and at once recognised by Stanley Morison as the most significant attempt thus far at a descriptive list of the major original sources for the study of typography. With Pollard’s original introduction, chronological tables, etc.
Demy 4to (29cm). (xii),(108)pp. Facsimiles. Tables. Original cloth; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in a sunned, slightly nicked, chipped and price-clipped dust-jacket.

£15

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London : Walter Scott, 1899. First edition. The journalist, novelist and great populariser of socialism speaks out on the dark side of Victorian England – the children of the ghetto, past midnight on the Strand in the snow, chemical workers, life on the canals, in the police court, a workhouse school, and much else besides.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 240pp. Pictorial title. Original decorative cloth gilt; top edge gilt; slightly rubbed and a little dulled; mild tanning of endpapers; a touch shaken; a few minor marks and signs of use, but a good copy. Ownership stamps of Aaron Fletcher – probably Aaron James Fletcher (1868-1921) of Salford.

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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.

SOLD

Plymouth : Bowering Press, [ca.1950]. First edition. A handsome post-war specimen book from the Bowering Press. Includes specimen pages for book-work in Baskerville, Caslon Old Face, Fournier, Garamond, Gill Sans, Modern and Perpetua, with a selection of display faces in Albertus, Baskerville, Bulmer, Columna, and variations on Perpetua. Also with notes on other type faces and five pages of type borders and rules.
Post 4to (25cm). 107 leaves. Original pale green wrappers, lettered in blue; wrappers somewhat spotted, and a little nicked and creased; some spotting of edges, but a good and sound copy of an uncommon publication. Just two copies (Flinders and Washington University in St. Louis) located in major libraries worldwide. Contemporary ownership inscription – Smith, Seagulls, Smugglers Walk, Goring-by-Sea, in green ink on upper wrapper.

SOLD

London : George G. Harrap & Co., (1939). The second printing (November 1939) of the original publication issued earlier that month. “Planned with one purpose in mind – to provide the average family with sufficient amusement and entertainment for one hundred and one black-out nights” – “Problems and puzzles, games and competitions, humour, anecdotes and quotations” (Croydon Advertiser, 1st December 1939). Compiled pseudonymously by the screenwriter and film director Muriel Box, together with her husband Sydney, head of Gainsborough Pictures during the war years. Jointly they won the best original screenplay Oscar in 1946 for “The Seventh Veil”, the biggest British box-office success of its year and estimated to be the tenth most-viewed film ever made.
Post 8vo (21cm). 216pp. Amusing illustrations throughout by John Woods. Original blue boards, boldly lettered in yellow; lightly rubbed and a little worn at extremities; a few spots; endpapers a little tanned, but overall a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a striking Woods design in black and white – the jacket a little tanned, rubbed and worn, with a few nicks, chips and short tears, but substantially complete and a welcome survival.

SOLD

London : Sinclair-Stevenson, (1990). First edition. Hope Clearwater finds herself living on the edge of Africa – winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xiv),314,[viii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in a lighter blue; top edge just a touch dusty, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the original dust-jacket – equally very good indeed.

SOLD

London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (2012). First edition. Vienna in 1913, psychiatry, Freud, love affairs, London in 1914, war, espionage in Geneva, and the battlefields of France.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(354),[iv],[2]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a couple of corners just a touch bruised, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£15

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London : The Builder, 1922. Third edition. A revised edition, here issued for the first time with key-plates, of Brewer’s delightful reconstructions of the streets and buildings of Elizabethan London: a panoramic view of London from the east; the Tower; Aldgate, Cheapside; Old St. Paul’s; Ludgate; Newgate; Ely Place; Old London Bridge; Westminster, etc. – first published as a collection the previous year, although the drawings originally appeared in “The Builder” in the 1880s and 1890s. With descriptive notes by Herbert Arthur Cox (1875-1956).
Foolscap folio (33cm). [ii],56,[ii]pp. Fourteen full-page plates (one folding), all with tissue key-plates. Original decorative cloth over bevelled boards; lightly worn and a little soiled; endpapers cracked; some tissue key-plates a little creased and frayed, but a serviceable copy of a fascinating production.

SOLD

London : Michael Joseph, (1974). First edition. The first year of the war and London and Londoners are changed forever – The balloons go up, The children leave, The lights go out ... Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished photographs by the cameramen of the weekly magazine “Illustrated”.
Crown 4to (26cm). (128)pp. Illustrations throughout. Original boards; a few minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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London : Sidgwick & Jackson, 1942. Second edition. A chronological arrangement of Brooke’s poetry – close on 100 poems. Originally published in 1932.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (x),(168)pp. Portrait frontispiece. Facsimile. Original blue cloth, lettered and with facsimile signature in black; light wear at foot; some marks and spotting, but a good copy in the dust-jacket, likewise a little marked and slightly worn at foot. Contemporary gift inscription on half-title. Keynes 18a.

£10

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London : Reaktion Books, (1997). First edition. A well-illustrated study (based on a Ph. D. thesis) of maps and geographical knowledge in the early modern world, with sections on the cartography of the early Portuguese discoveries, the geography of the Ottoman Empire, mapping the Moluccas, and the geography of Mercator and Ortelius.
Medium 8vo (25cm). 208pp. Illustrations, some coloured. Original boards; very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£10

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London : Hutchinson, (1990). First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated (1991) by Alan Brownjohn on the title-page. A collection of thirty-two poems, including “What Lovers Do in Novels”, “Film Noir”, “The Sunshine Coffee Lounge”, etc. “Some of the best British poems of the last thirty years” (Gavin Ewart).
Post 8vo (20cm). [viii],56pp. Original wrappers, printed in black, red and pale green, and lettered in white; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy.

£15

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London : Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), [1949]. First edition. Marguerite de Manell comes of age: she owns a great historic castle, but can’t afford to – she is living in a poky bed-sit and working as a shorthand typist.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [32]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design by “Brab” – Oliver Gilmore Brabbins (1912-1973); wrappers a little split; two repaired tears to rear wrapper, and one to upper wrapper; a reasonable copy of a fragile item. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£10

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1921]. First edition : in a variant binding of light blue cloth lettered in dark blue, with double rules at the head and tail of spine, and the JB monogram on the upper cover. Regarded by Buchan as his first serious piece of fiction – an episodic tale of the descent of kingliness through history – from Nordic prince to Abraham Lincoln.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,310,[ii]pp. Original cloth; spine very faintly marked and just a touch sunned; endpapers a little tanned; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good copy. Blanchard A51 – not noting this binding.

£20

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London : Panther Books – Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), (1952). First edition. “And Man’s very brain, his most powerful weapon, which had brought him from the mud to the stars, was the thing that drew the Destromech on!” Panther Book 29.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (128)pp. Original stapled pictorial wrappers in a design by Gordon C. Davies; somewhat rubbed and worn; a few creases; staples rusting; text a little tanned, but a reasonable copy of a fragile item. Aside from a microform in the Bodleian, no copy located in any major UK library.

SOLD

London : Panther Books, Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), (1953). First edition : the wrappers issue. “The story moves rapidly, out from the solar system to the far planets of Martell and Loris” – Captain Lance struggles alongside beautiful flame-haired Rusty Purcell for the mastery of the galaxy. Panther Book 69.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (158),[ii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by John Richards; a little rubbed and somewhat creased; upper wrapper slightly frayed; a reasonable copy. Just a single copy (Bodleian) located in the major UK libraries.

£10

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Newcastle upon Tyne : Morden Tower Book Room, [1965]. First separate edition. “As I sat at my counting frame to assess the people ...” – a ten-page poem relating to Bunting’s time in Tehran, originally published in an American magazine in 1951 and here making its first British appearance. With Bunting’s page of explanatory notes.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). [16]pp. Portrait. Original pictorial wrappers; wrappers just a touch rubbed and very lightly tanned, but otherwise very good.

£15

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New York : Simon & Schuster, (2001). First edition. Billy Bob Holland comes to Big Sky Country for some fishing and ends up helping out an old friend in trouble – deep trouble.
Medium 8vo (25cm). 334,[ii]pp. Original boards; an excellent copy in an equally unflawed dust-jacket.

£15

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London : Panther Books – Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), (1955). First edition. “Mankind overcomes his parasitical alien oppressors in this excellent and suspenseful sequel to ‘Twilight of Reason’” (Harbottle & Holland A43). Panther Book 192.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (141),[iii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a rocket design by John Richards; short split a foot; a little rubbed, creased and soiled; staples rusting; a reasonable copy. Just a single copy (Bodleian) located in the major UK libraries.

£10

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New York : Magazine Productions, (1952). First edition. “Six dames wanted Johnny – but five wanted him dead” – murder, mayhem, love and passion – “as believable as if it were happening today to the nice young boy next door – and just as shocking!” Rainbow No. 122.
Foolscap 4to (20cm). [iv],(130)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some wear and creasing; a couple of minuscule chips; a few slight marks, but a good copy of a difficult book. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£20

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London : Stanley Paul & Co., (1953). First edition. “Summer is i-comen in, and so is Reggie Wilmot, a stout lad with an eye like a frozen haddock and the makings of a high-class racketeer”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 224pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original Fouet dust-jacket – just a little sunned at spine, but fresh and unworn. Small bookseller’s label of Swan Libraries of Upminster.

SOLD

New York : Avon Publishing Co., (1948). First edition of this selection of fifteen stories, written between 1931 and 1940 and earlier collected in “Jackpot”. Includes “The Swell-Looking Girl”, “Saturday Afternoon”, etc. Avon 177.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). [ii],125,[i]pp. Original pictorial wrappers – an unsigned design by Ann Cantor; all edges red; a few very minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy.

£10

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London : John Green & Co., 1948. First edition. General historical matter on the county, followed by over 100 pages of a glossary of Hertfordshire dialect words.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 158,[ii]pp. Original cloth; very mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy in a lightly sunned and slightly chipped dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : Hamish Hamilton, (1959). First British edition. “A barrister has secretly adopted the child of a woman whom he himself had successfully prosecuted for murder. Of course, he gets murdered. The plot turns not only on who killed him, but on which of his children was the adopted one” (E. D. O’Brien, Illustrated London News, 3rd October 1959). With a concluding eleven pages of notes on the background and sources for London in 1865.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (236),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the striking Val Biro dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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London : C. Arthur Pearson, [ca.1950]. First edition. Nurse Gwyneth Ross longs for romance as she works in the Military Hospital at Kleinstadt in the British Zone of post-war occupied Germany. An early un-numbered title in Pearson’s once popular “Glamour Library”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 64pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some mild rubbing and slight wear; one nick and a few creases; short tear to one leaf, but overall a very good copy. Although the British Library has a set of the Glamour Library books, this title not individually traced in any major library worldwide.

£10

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London : Arthur Gray (Books), [1934]. First edition. “Who is she? Oh, come! You surely can’t tell me that you don’t know she’s the great Lulu Le Sainte?” – the lovely, famous and scandalous man-eater meets a confirmed woman-hater on a terrace in Monte Carlo. Inez Castello, author of half a dozen similar novels of the Bright-Young-Things period, was perhaps the London-born “actress” who took ship from Havana to New York under that name in 1920, but has otherwise eluded identification.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 256pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in black; cloth a little used and blotched; text a little marked and tanned, but a serviceable copy in the striking art-deco dust-jacket by H. W. Perl (1897-1952) – a little worn and slightly smudged, with repairs to folds – but complete and attractive still.

SOLD

London : George Routledge & Sons, [1889]. Titled “Don Quixote for Boys” on the cover – an attractively illustrated abridgement (albeit a lengthy one) by Meredith Jones of the much-admired eighteenth-century translation by Charles Jervas. First published in this form in 1875.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (378),[vi]pp. Six coloured plates. Original decorative cloth gilt over bevelled boards; a few very minor signs of age and use; slight area of discolouration to rear cover; some spotting of edges, but overall a very good and bright copy.

SOLD

London : Chapman & Hall, 1912. First edition. The earliest history of this celebrated and important London thoroughfare, covering the Strand itself, the side-streets, and the famous characters, with separate chapters on the Savoy, Somerset House, the Strand Churches, the Inns of Court and Chancery, the Great Houses, the Theatres, the Taverns and Coffee-Houses, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(366),[vi]pp. Frontispiece and thirty-two plates (two folding). Original cloth; just a little sunned; just a touch shaken; some spotting, mainly of edges; slight damage to margin of one folding plate, but still a very good copy.

£15

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London : for E. & C. Dilly; and J. Walter, 1775. First edition. A collection of various pieces from Hester Chapone – Richardson’s “little spitfire” – including her much-admired essays “On Affectation and Simplicity” and “On Conversation”, the novella “The Story of Fidelia”, and a selection of poems.
Foolscap 8vo (162 x 96mm). (xii),178pp. Bound, without half-title or final advertisement leaf, in a contemporary calf, now neatly rebacked, retaining the original title-label; endpapers replaced; a little browned and thumbed; two leaves a little soft at centre and slightly torn, one with a small hole and the loss of a few letters; names partially erased from title-page; a reasonable and modestly-priced copy.

£40

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London : Robert Hale, (1954). First paperback edition. Only the jewel-thief knows where the loot is – how to spring him from jail. First published in 1952.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a stylish design by “Brab” – Oliver Gilmore Brabbins (1912-1973); slight nick and flaw at foot; corner crease to lower wrapper, but overall a very good copy. No copy of this edition located in any major library.

£10

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London : Robert Hale, (1959). First paperback edition. We don’t know why the lovely Lucille wants so badly to learn to drive; why the blood-stains on the Cadillac are on the wrong side; or why the patrol officer was run over on a lonely beach road. Originally published the previous year under the “Raymond Marshall” pseudonym.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 190,[ii]pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a blonde and a candle by John Pollack (1918-1985); some very minor rubbing and wrinkling; tiny hole in lower wrapper, but overall a very good copy. No copy of this edition located in any major library.

£10

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London : Collins, 1944. First edition. “The women, of course, dress superbly, move like angels, are as beautiful as diamonds and, with one notable exception, behave abominably”. An early Cheyney “dark” novel of counter-espionage.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original sand cloth, lettered in green; a touch bruised; a few edge-spots, but a very good and sound copy in the original atmospheric pictorial dust-jacket – ruby-lipped brunette in green stares us down – lightly rubbed and just very slightly worn at head. Contemporary (1944) gift inscription.

£25

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London : Collins, 1948. First edition. One of Cheyney’s “Dark” series, with Everard Peter Quayle, “that poker-faced and most secretive of secret agents”, Vincente Callao, fashionable dance-band leader, the lovely Aurora Francis, and the enigmatic Antoinette Brown.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original sand cloth, lettered in green; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn, slightly creased, with a couple of nicks and a short tear.

£20

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London : Collins, 1949. First edition. Irish private enquiry agent, Terence O’Day – an afternoon at Plumpton Races – a tip about a horse, and another about a woman – the very beautiful and very dangerous Merys Vanner.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Original sand cloth, lettered in green; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good and sound copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – men appraise blonde at bar – the jacket just lightly worn, slightly nicked, and a little spotted on the verso.

SOLD

London : Todd Publishing Group, (1953). A hardback collection of a novella and three short stories, the latter having only previously appeared in paperback. Comprises the title story (Lemmy Caution); “Cocktail Party”; “The Arrest” (Alonzo McTavish), and “Cocktail for Cupid”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 158,[ii]pp. Original pale boards, lettered in brown; just a touch bruised; some mild tanning, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : Longmans, Green & Co., (1948). Second edition : revised and enlarged. Brief accounts and some splendid photographs and sketches of a cross-section of authors from Maurice Baring to Frances Brett Young. Includes John Buchan, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (146),[ii]pp. Portraits. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; very good in a lightly sunned, slightly spotted and price-clipped dust-jacket – a design in pale blue, maroon and white.

£10

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Oxford / New York : Oxford University Press, 1983. First edition. Extensive selections from Clare’s scattered autobiographical writings. Edited by Eric Robinson. Illustrated with wood engravings by John Lawrence.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xxii),(186)pp. Illustrations. Maps. Original boards; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in a just faintly rubbed dust-jacket.

£10

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London : Fortune Press, (1944). First edition. An early collection of forty poems, including “Enigma”, “Checkmate Every Move”, “Biological Experiment”, “No Discount for Cash”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (40)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered on spine in gilt; a few very minor marks, but a very good copy in the original dusky pink dust-jacket lettered in black – the jacket lightly sunned at spine and with a couple of faint marks. D’Arch Smith 120.

£10

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London & Beccles : William Clowes & Sons, (1954). First edition. A fine array of mid twentieth-century type specimens suitable for title-pages, etc., with examples from seventeen type families; modern faces; old style faces; small bolds; displays; scripts; titlings; initials; borders and rules; tables of point-widths, etc. With a good selection of Baskerville, Bell, Bembo, Bodoni, Garamond, Gill Sans, Goudy, Imprint, Perpetua, Plantin, etc., as well as lesser-known faces, numerous examples, etc.
Demy 4to (28cm). (xvi),246,[ii]pp. Some examples in colour. Original cloth-backed laminated boards; sprinkled edges; a few slight spots, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, (1964). First edition. A life of the celebrated eighteenth-century printer, William Strahan (1715-1785), compiled by the war-hero and publisher J. A. “Peter” Cochrane.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xiv),(226)pp. Portrait. Table. Facsimiles. Original boards; very good in a lightly used, rubbed and creased dust-jacket.

£10

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Boston : Little, Brown & Co., (2001). First edition. Signed by Michael Connelly on the title-page. Harry Bosch is involved in a high-profile case – movie director and dead actress – meanwhile Terry McCaleb is handed a case which strangely and dangerously interconnects.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],418,[ii],[2],[ii]pp. Original boards; a couple of tiny marks, but an excellent copy in a fine dust-jacket.

SOLD

New York : Little, Brown & Co., (2005). First edition. Signed with a squiggle by Michael Connelly on the title-page. The eleventh Harry Bosch novel – Harry is back with the LAPD investigating cold cases, the 1988 murder of a sixteen-year-old girl is reopened with new evidence from DNA.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],(404),[iv],[2]pp. Original black boards; faint and tiny mark to fore-edge, but otherwise an excellent copy in a pristine dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : Orion Books, (2009). First edition : reported to precede the US edition by twelve days. Signed by Michael Connelly on the title-page. The shooting of a Chinese liquor store owner, triads, Hong Kong, and the kidnap of Harry Bosch’s daughter.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],(378)pp. Original black boards; a sparkling copy in a pristine dust-jacket.

£20

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London : André Deutsch, (1972). First edition. Signed by Kevin Crossley-Holland on front free endpaper. His first full-length collection – thirty-eight poems, including “Spring-Tide, Burnham-Overy-Staithe”, “Mirror Edged with Shells”, “A Lindisfarne Tombstone”, “Alderney: The Nunnery”, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 62,[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; very good in the blue, black and white Lloyd Martin dust-jacket – just a little tanned at edges.

£15

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London : A. & C. Black, (1938). First edition. Three sisters start a riding school – “the whole idea is pure nonsense” explodes Uncle Manfred – but they set out to prove him wrong. “Full of the right ‘jodhpur’ tone and suggests a really thorough knowledge of horseflesh” (Hull Daily Mail, 10th December 1938).
Foolscap 4to (23cm). viii,216pp. Illustrations and plates by Cecil Gwendolen Trew (1897-1958). Original pale grey cloth, lettered in blue; mild tanning of endpapers; just a hint of edge spotting, but a very good, crisp and sound copy in the original Trew dust-jacket – a pictorial design in red and black on grey – just slightly creased and with a single repaired tear on upper panel – but also very good and fresh.

£15

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London : Country Life, (1949). First edition. Peter and Tilly and funny business at the farm – adventures with bargemen, a strange lorry-driver, and a redhead who arrives in the oddest circumstances.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). (144)pp. Plates and illustrations by Geoffrey Whittam. Original grey cloth, lettered in green; top edge green; top edge slightly sunned, but very good indeed in the original Whittam dust-jacket – a pictorial design in green, black and white – just a little sunned, but fresh and unworn. With the bookplate of Douglas Charles Harrod.

SOLD

London : Macmillan, (1995). First edition. Her second novel – the disruptive beauty of a London temp disturbs the office calm.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],246,[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; a very good copy indeed in an equally good dust-jacket.

£15

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New York : Falcon Books, (1952). First edition. An unusual mystery from the larger-than-life Hoffman Price – Lydia collects stamps; Redheaded Velma collects things which don’t belong to her; Sweet Kay collects murder clues; Outdoor Girl Rita collects lies, and Private Eye John Carmody collects women (and bullets). Falcon No. 25.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],(7)-121,[i]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – redhead looking anything but cancelled; spine split and tape-repaired in places; a few nicks and small chips; text a little tanned and brittle, with some occasional nicks; a reasonable copy of an uncommon title. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1895. First edition. A collection of ten stories set in the “Golgotha” of the streets of late Victorian London – including “The Footfall”, a moral ghost story; “The Chilled Heart”; “The Third Man”; “The Madness of ’Liza”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). xii,(346),[ii]pp. Pictorial title-page. Original cloth gilt; a little rubbed and with some light sunning to boards; a few slight marks and creases, but a good copy of an unusual collection. Bleiler p.57.

SOLD

London : John Murray, 1904. First edition : the traditional first issue, with the plain top edge and lacking the closing bracket after “Ramal” on the title-page. The author’s second book and his first work of fiction – a supernatural tour and encounters with famous figures from the literary classics – Jane Eyre and Rochester, Wordsworth’s Lucy, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the Houyhnhnms, Poe’s Annabel Lee, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). x,202pp. Original decorative blue cloth, richly blocked in gilt on spine; just a hint of rubbing; a few faint spots, but a very good copy indeed. Bleiler p.59.

SOLD

London : Constable & Co., (1935). First edition. A handsome collection of De La Mare’s later poetry.
Crown 8vo (21cm). (xvi),(380)pp. Original pale grey-brown cloth, ruled and blocked in blind and gilt; edges a little spotted, but otherwise a very good, crisp, clean and sound copy.

£15

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London : T. V. Boardman & Co., (1949). First edition. A surprise legacy, with certain dangerous conditions attached – and the deceased had been poisoned.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a menacing design by Denis McLoughlin; slight chip at head; some wear; but a good and serviceable copy. Neat ownership inscription on upper wrapper. TVB Books 62.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson, (1994). First edition. Maurice Girodias and his authors – one of the most bizarre tales in all twentieth-century publishing – with much on Dominique Aury, Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, J. P. Donleavy, Lawrence Durrell, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kahane, Christopher Logue, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Alexander Trocchi, Miriam Worms, etc.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [xx],332pp. Plates. Original boards; very good in dust-jacket.

£15

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London : Gaywood Press, (1952). First edition. The third and last of the Space Express titles, one of which appeared under the “Franz Harkon” pseudonym. A journey to Nebulae Sixty-Six in search of Crystonium, led by the coldly beautiful Dr Mena Diamenter. “Abject rubbish” (Harbottle & Holland A92).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],(9)-100pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design by Leroi (Robert Osborne); some wear; short split at foot; staples rusting; text lightly tanned; a good copy. Just a single copy (Liverpool) located in the major UK libraries.

£25

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1933. First edition. General impressions of a tennis party, a country auction, the January sales, a hunt ball, and much more, with further entertaining and outlandish thoughts from the Provincial Lady on men, women and children in fiction, home life, everyday life, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],(x),(270),[ii]pp. Original green cloth, ruled in blind on upper cover, ruled and lettered in gilt across spine; spine a little sunned and slightly marked; slight spotting of edges and prelims; a good and sound copy.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1940. First edition. Provincial Lady – gas-masks, black-outs, identity-cards, war-work.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(312)pp. Illustrations by Illingworth. Original jade cloth, ruled in blind on upper cover, ruled and lettered in gilt across spine; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy. Bookplate.

£15

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London : Edwin Self & Co., [ca.1953]. First edition. “One of the most exciting and glamorous authors to depict life in modern Paris ... the fascinating world of beautiful artists’ models and dangerous demi-mondaines ... a new and glamorous world where excitement and passion rub shoulders with the treacherous apache and the shady boite de nuit”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a stylish but unsigned design, almost certainly by Leonard Potts (1902-1978); somewhat worn and creased; chip at head of upper wrapper; back wrapper a little marked; text tanned; staples rusted; a few spots, but a serviceable copy of a scarce title. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£25

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London : Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1936. A reprint of the original 1930 edition. An excellent guide to all aspects of the linocut – knife-work, gouge-work, materials and mediums, printing in black, printing in colour, design, pattern, etc., illustrated with some striking examples of contemporary work by Ward Hunt, Sydney Gausden, etc. In the Pitman’s Craft-for-All series.
Crown 8vo (20cm). xiv,114,(16)pp. Colour frontispiece. Numerous illustrations in black-and-white. Original cloth-backed boards; a few spots, but a very good copy in a lightly used and slightly nicked dust-jacket. Prize label of St. Aloysius Convent, Clarendon Square, with a 1936 inscription to A. Hull (for art).

SOLD

London : Chatto & Windus / Martin Secker & Warburg, (1945). First British and first trade edition. A day-by-day almanac of epigrams selected by Douglas from his own earlier works. The text varies considerably from that of the twenty-five copies privately printed at Lisbon in 1941. With decorations by Enid Marx.
Post 8vo (21cm). Original deep yellow cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge very lightly spotted, but a very good and bright copy in a just faintly tanned dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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London : T. V. Boardman & Co., (1948). First British edition. The McNeills bewildered by the cork, the wild duck theme, the bamboo pole, the medical tome and the copper knife. First published in the USA in 1943.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a design by Denis McLoughlin; an indifferent copy – rubbed, worn, creased, slightly split, a little soiled and with a scrawled price-sticker on upper wrapper. Just three copies of this edition (Bibliothèque Nationale, Bodleian and British Library) located in the major libraries worldwide. TVB Books 60.

SOLD

London : T. V. Boardman & Co., (1948). First edition. The BBC’s colourful Armchair Detective, variously actor, journalist, novelist, and script-writer, introduces a dozen favourite stories – by Nicholas Blake, Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts, Dudley himself, Anthony Gilbert, Gladys Mitchell, Ellery Queen, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (160)pp. Original pictorial wrappers – the artwork by Denis McLoughlin; a little worn, marked and lightly creased; one shallow chip; a few internal marks; last few leaves a little creased, but a serviceable copy. Just four copies (Bodleian, British Library, Harry Ransom and Brigham Young) located in major libraries worldwide. TVB Books 49.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1982). First edition. The central volume in the Avignon Quintet series, set mainly during the Second World War, and located in France, Egypt, Poland and Switzerland. Nominated for the Booker Prize.
Post 8vo (21cm). [xii],(394),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; a very good, clean and sound copy, in the original David Gentleman dust-jacket – the jacket with a few tiny spots and one slight nick, but also very good.

£25

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London : Judy Piatkus (Publishers), (1991). First edition. His first crime novel and the first appearance of Harry Devlin, the increasingly admired Liverpool solicitor and sleuth. His estranged wife found murdered, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],242pp. Original maroon boards, blocked and lettered in gilt on spine; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in the original Ken Leeder pictorial dust-jacket – also very good.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1959). First edition. An Eliot play first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1958, with Anna Massey, Alec McCowen, etc. – a man of distinction and respect is confronted by his past.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 108,[ii],[2]pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; slight spotting of top edge; endpapers lightly tanned, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, just faintly tanned and with a couple of tiny nicks and spots, but also very good. Contemporary (June 1959) gift inscription.

£25

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Buffalo : Privately Printed, 1981. First edition : limited to 500 copies. A splendidly idiosyncratic tabulation – with extensive quotation – of many hundreds of references in English and American fiction (from Smollett onwards) to what was plainly once the world’s most cherished institution – the British Museum and its Reading Room.
Medium 8vo (24cm). xiv,(194),[ii],[2]pp. Original cloth; just some spotting to top edge, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Macdonald & Co. (Publishers), (1952). First edition. An entertaining account of coming to London – and the perils and pitfalls of railway porters, private hotels, service flatlets, cab-drivers, digs, bed-sitting rooms, gas-rings, and all the hazards that may greet a young woman from the provinces (in this case Liverpool) – “Unless you intend coming in nothing but a fig leaf and a string of beads you will not expect your arrival in London to cause any sensation”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 54,[ii]pp. Title-page and illustrations by Ronald Searle. Original red boards, lettered in black; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy in the original Searle dust-jacket – a pictorial design of bed-sit, sausages and fire-hazard – just lightly used and with a few spots, but also very good.

£15

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London : T. V. Boardman & Co., (1948). First British edition. Murder in a San Francisco hotel – suspicion, scandal and another death. Emery was both soldier and lawyer as well as crime-writer. First published in the USA in 1947.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original wrappers; a hint of rubbing; spine a touch wrinkled, but a very good copy in the Denis McLoughlin dust-jacket – lightly rubbed and with just a touch of wear, but also very good. Ownership inscription on upper panel of jacket and first leaf of text. Just three copies of this edition (Bibliothèque Nationale, Bodleian and British Library) located in the major libraries worldwide. TVB Books 56.

SOLD

London : Chapman & Hall, 1920. First edition. A handsomely illustrated history of architecture and design, with sections on mouldings, architectural proportions, surface division, conventional ornament, design treatment, mythology and symbolism, ways and means, etc. In the Universal Art Series.
Demy 8vo (24cm). xx,376pp. Plates. Numerous illustrations. Original decorative cloth; top edge blue; some minor spotting, mainly of edges; endpapers lightly tanned, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – just lightly sunned, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Bear Hudson, 1945. First edition. Each time a certain point in the concert was reached, someone died. Red Benton and his whisky-loving accomplice Happy Harringay investigate. Bear Hudson No. 530.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 32pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a three colour design by H. W. Perl (1897-1952); some light wear and creasing; staples rusted; some internal creases and a few marks, but a good copy. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£20

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Sydney : Phantom Books – Original Novels Foundation, (1955). First Australian edition. Gil Denby hunts down an English Nazi collaborator in Teheran – the deadly Claire Fayne. First published in New York in 1950. No. 624 in the Australian Phantom series.
Foolscap 4to (19cm). [ii],5-130pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a copy of the Willard Downes design for the American edition; some minor rubbing and wear; small sticker removed from upper wrapper; a few slight creases, but a good copy. Just a single copy of this edition (National Library of Australia) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

Cleveland : Kaywin Publishers, (1952). First American edition. Phil Langley must marry – pursued by three beauties – blonde, redhead and brunette – makes a fatal choice. Originally published as “Spoilt Lives” by Swan in 1941, and as “Spoiled Lives” by Archer in the UK in 1950.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a self-explanatory design by Reginald Heade; slight chipping and splitting at head; text slightly tanned, with a few tiny creases, but overall a very good copy. No copy of this edition located in any major library worldwide.

£25

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London : Ackermann, 1983. First edition. A richly illustrated and meticulously researched history of the celebrated art publishing and art dealing concern founded by Rudolph Ackermann (1764-1834). With much incidental material on Henry Alken, William Combe, John Buonarotti Papworth, Augustus Pugin, Thomas Rowlandson, George Stubbs, and other authors and artists; a checklist of the Ackermann books, games, and music; a bibliography, etc.
Demy 4to (31cm). 256pp. Illustrations throughout, many in colour. Original boards; top edge a touch dusty, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£25

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London : Michael Joseph, (1976). First edition. Art, racing, wine, women, and murder in Australia and New Zealand.
Post 8vo (21cm). (252),[iv]pp. Map. Original black boards, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; very mild dusting to edges, but otherwise a very good clean and sound copy in the original photographic Chris Yates dust-jacket, the principal lettering in white on black.

£15

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London : Michael Joseph, (1979). First edition. The second novel to feature Sid Halley, jockey turned private eye – the winner of two major crime-writing awards.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered across spine in silver; slight spine crease; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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Edinburgh : Canongate Books, (2008). First British edition. “An unforgettable novel about the distance a friendship must travel, and the depths it must plumb, when confronted by the threat of death. It is full of wisdom, dark laughter, and truth” – the multiple award-winning novel, first published in Australia earlier in 2008. “A book for grown-up people” (Hilary Mantel), “‘The Spare Room’ is a perfect novel” (Peter Carey).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(196),[vi]pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; green silk ribbon; a very good copy indeed in the pictorial dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£20

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London : Modern Publishing, [ca.1935]. [Second edition]. “Slight in structure, but so skilfully put together as to sustain a keen interest ... When the military adventurer returns to England his designs upon his friend’s widow are in a fair way of prospering, when the intuitions of another woman set to work ...” (The Scotsman, 3rd November 1890) – the posthumously published final novel of a once highly popular Victorian, originally published in 1890.
Crown 8vo (18cm). [iv],11-166pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers, in a romantic design by George Peace Micklewright (1893-1951); some very minor wear; staples rusting; text lightly tanned, but a very good copy of an uncommon survival. No copy of this edition located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1976). First edition. Tortured body found in a Sussex cornfield – the third in a year. Meanwhile a new master arrives at Trenchard House School.
Post 8vo (21cm). (224)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy indeed in the original Colin Andrews dust-jacket – a photographic design lettered in red, white and blue – also very good indeed.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (1967). First edition. “Brian Glanville has a pitiless eye for the frauds and tactics of the sex game” – the “artist type” revenges himself on intellectuals, stockbrokers and slick executives.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the stylish Bill Botten dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly rubbed and very slightly creased, but still very good.

£20

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London : Macmillan Children’s Books, (1981). First edition. A shy and lonely dragon finds his life rudely interrupted. Delightfully illustrated by Pauline Baynes (1922-2008).
Medium 8vo (24cm). 60,[ii],[2]pp. Illustrations, several full-page and in colour. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£10

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Oxford : Phaidon Press, (1978). First edition. An erudite study of the evolution of a British style, from the Elizabethans through Hollar and Hogarth to Hockney – work in engraving, mezzotint, aquatint, etching, etc., with much on Francesco Bartolozzi, Thomas Bewick, William Blake, etc.
Super royal 8vo (26cm). 244pp. Illustrations, some in colour. Original boards; a touch bruised; top edge a little spotted, but otherwise very good indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket slightly sunned at spine and lightly nicked.

SOLD

London : Robert Hale, (1951). First edition. Both a history and an evocation of the City in the aftermath of the war – Holborn and the Viaduct; The Fleet; the Temple; Smithfield and Bart’s; Newgate; Fleet Street; Ludgate; Cheapside; City Government; Plague and Money; Livery Companies; London Bridge and Tower Hill; Leadenhall Street and Aldgate; Rebuilding the City, etc. In the attractive “County Books” series.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,(302)pp. Plates. Photographs. Folding map. Original boards; just a hint of sunning at foot, but a very good sound and clean copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped and with a couple of tiny marks, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Gordon Martin Publishing Co., [1946]. First edition. Five stories, some evidently drawing on Gordon’s wartime experiences in Germany, his time at Yale, and in England as a Rhodes Scholar.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (126),[ii]pp. Original stapled card wrappers; staples rusted, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a striking design in red and black by Griff. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£15

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Leicester : Grange Fibre Co., (1955). First edition. A bound version of the entertaining “Bob the Binder” advertisements issued between 1952 and 1955 to encourage the use of “Linson”, “Fabroleen”, and other imitation fabrics made by Grange Fibre and marketed as “non-woven book cover material”.
Oblong crown 8vo (13cm). [124]pp. Illustrated throughout. Original linson vellum, gilt and enamelled; front cover very slightly spotted; slight nick to one leaf, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Scion, (1953). First edition. Regular space travel has begun (in 1987) – a Martian brain-surgeon operates on a human salesman, endowing him with dangerous powers of thought reading.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Ron Turner; chipped at head; some wear and creasing; tape repairs to spine and rear wrapper; staples rusted; erased stamp on title-page, but a reasonable copy with a fine provenance, carrying the typed ownership inscription of the SF historian and authority Philip Harbottle on the first leaf. Numbered A111 in the Harbottle & Holland bibliography. Just two copies (British Library and Liverpool) located in the major European libraries.

SOLD

London : Modern Fiction (London), [1953]. First edition. The terrible death of a beautiful woman – “gangsterdom and vice, against the pulsating background of New York’s seamier streets”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 126,[ii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – shootout over a telephonist; spine a little rubbed and slightly worn; upper wrapper a little creased and slightly scuffed; mild tanning to text, but otherwise a good and clean copy. Only the British Library copy located in all major libraries worldwide

SOLD

London : George Routledge & Sons, 1899. First British edition. “For those who like plenty of action, a jumping from sensation to sensation, in fact, a progress so exciting that the reader, gripped by the story, has no time to question its probabilities, this is just the book ... a smart detective ... a Wall Street firm believed to be fraudulent ... the detective personates a dead man ... burglars, fires, and dynamite ... certainly the best novel Mr. Gunter has given us for a long time past” (Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 24th September 1899). First published in New York earlier in 1899.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (290),[vi]pp. Original pictorial boards; a little worn and slightly scuffed; hinges a little tender; some spotting to endpapers; text a little tanned; a touch shaken, but a better than average copy of a fragile production.

£25

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London : Hurst & Blackett, [1924]. First edition. The playwright and novelist, of whom Dorothy Parker once wrote, “There can no longer be any doubt that it was from Cosmo Hamilton that the cosmic urge derived its name”, with a spicy tale of Tony and Teddy in love with the same woman – Tony successful, Teddy burning with jealousy, man overboard in the South Seas – “There is character in this story; genius in the writing, and artistic richness in the style and setting. A brilliant book ...” (Kensington Post, 5th December 1924). “And there is Lady George Cornish, who was once a barmaid and is still a good sort” (Ralph Straus in The Bystander, 4th March 1925).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 282,[ii] +16pp advertisements. Original blue cloth, lettered in black and ruled in black and blind; covers a touch sunned and lightly marked; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting, but a good copy. Small W. H. Smith (Newton Abbot) label on front pastedown.

£20

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London : Constable & Co., (1997). First edition. A life of William Frend de Morgan, his ceramic work at Chelsea, Merton Abbey and Sands End, the novels, friendship with William Morris and Burne-Jones, etc. The dust-jacket corrects the erroneous biographical dates of the title-page.
Medium 8vo (25cm). xiv,236,[vi]pp. Plates, some coloured. Portraits. Original boards; slightly bruised, a few faint marks, but very good in a similarly lightly bruised dust-jacket, with a short repaired tear.

£10

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New York : Dell Publishing Co., [1946]. Second edition. A collection of four stories, edited and introduced by Ellery Queen. Originally published by Lawrence E. Spivak the previous year – but here enlivened with some fine cover art by Gerald Gregg (1907-1985) in his distinctive airbrush style and the Dell “mapback” of the streets of downtown San Francisco. Dell Mapback 129.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 192pp. Original pictorial wrappers in a design by Gerald Gregg; some minor wear and slight creasing; tiny nick to upper wrapper and opening leaves; a good copy.

£10

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London : Cassell & Co., (1966). First British edition, originally published in America earlier the same year as “The Big Knockover”. Eight Continental Op short stories, the novelette “The Big Knockover”, and a chapter from the unfinished novel, “Tulip” – none of which had previously appeared in hardback form. Edited and introduced by Lillian Hellman. A review copy, with the publisher’s slips loosely inserted.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (xxii),356,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered across spine in silver; top edge a little spotted; a few slight marks, but a very good copy in the original red, white and black dust-jacket – lightly rubbed, a touch sunned, slightly nicked, and a little marked on lower panel.

£20

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London : Hutchinson, (2016). First edition. Signed by Robert Harris on the title-page. “Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [xii],(288),[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson, (2017). First edition. Signed by Robert Harris on the title-page. “September 1938. Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace. The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterwards be notorious for what takes place there. Munich”.
Medium 8vo (25cm) [x], 342pp. Double-page plan. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in black; pictorial endpapers; a very good copy in the Glenn O’Neill dust-jacket, also very good; signed by the author labels on upper panel of the jacket.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (1996). First edition. His much admired first novel – four ne’er-do-wells, the memorable Suzy the Black Widow, plastic guns, the IRA, the white Merc, and a bank heist.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(282)pp. Original red boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in black; mild tanning of edges, but a very good copy in the Tracey Winwood dust-jacket – also very good.

£10

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New York : Dell Publishing Co., [1949]. First paperback edition. Perky leather skullcap, an odd gymnasium, monkey money, a wedding that makes no sense, amazing dancers, dried grasses and dead birds – a stylish thriller set in Paris from the art critic John Canaday under his Matthew Head pseudonym. Originally published in 1947. Dell 346 – in mapback format.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 240pp. Original pictorial wrappers; all edges green; some light wear and creasing; vertical crease to lower wrapper; text lightly tanned, but a good copy. Just two copies of this edition (Stanford and Monash) located in major libraries worldwide.

£10

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Newcastle : Centre for the Literary Arts, (2009). First edition. A single sheet folding, to form four leaves, with Heaney’s poem on the recto, and with a photograph and a note by Sean O’Brien on the poem and on Heaney’s family connections with Blyth on the verso.
Long demy 8vo (15cm). In very good and clean state. No copy located in any major UK library.

SOLD

London : Oxford University Press, 1968. First edition. A pioneering study of the pre-history, rise and influence of the literary agent in England and America – with much on Arnold Bennett, Walter Besant, Curtis Brown, William Heinemann, J. B. Pinker, A. P. Watt, etc., and an extensive bibliography of material relating to the conditions of authorship.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(136)pp. Original boards; very faint spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise very good in a rubbed dust-jacket.

£10

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London : Lloyd Cole, [ca. 1943]. First edition. Mysterious goings-on on Cauldron Snout – the mysterious remains of Celtic monuments, rocking stones, Druid circles, Bronze Age villages, and Roman camps are joined by a more modern and invisible mystery.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). (32)pp on pink paper. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a grim design by H. W. Perl; a little rubbed and slightly soiled; staples rusting, but a good copy of a scarce and ephemeral item. Just a single copy (University of California, Riverside) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

New Castle : Oak Knoll Press / London : John Murray, 1999. Second edition. An updating and revision of the classic 1972 publication – the essential sourcebook for the history of collecting and connoisseurship, both public and private, in England from the seventeenth century. With a lengthy new introduction for this edition.
Super Royal 8vo (27cm). xlviii,(462),[ii]pp. Numerous illustrations. Original cloth; very good in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1966). First edition. Regency novel set in Bath – Stacy Calverleigh has gambled away his fortune and requires an heiress. Young orphan Fanny Wendover fits the bill, but her Aunt Abigail has other ideas – enter Uncle Miles – the Black Sheep.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original maroon boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; small mark on top edge, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original Arthur Barbosa dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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Barnsley : Sad Traffic / Seaview Publications, 1969-[1971]. A complete set of all five issues of this Yorkshire alternative magazine – with poems and contributions from George Barker (1), Donald Davie (2), Roy Fisher (5), Roy Fuller (1), Frances Horovitz (1), Michael Horovitz (2), Ted Hughes (1), Spike Milligan (4), William Oxley (2), Brian Patten (4), David Tipton (3), etc.
Five issues. Crown 4to (25cm). 20; 32; 40; 44; 48pp. Illustrations. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some very minor marking, slight soiling and surface creasing, but overall in very good state. Just a single complete set (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

London : Robert Edmund Taylor & Son, 1896. First edition. The first of two attractive little pocket guides by the evidently pseudonymous ’Alf ’Holliday – “the pun is not agreeable” (The Queen, 5th September 1896). Seven half-holiday rambles across North London – Hornsey to East Finchley; East Finchley to Hendon; Hendon to Harrow; Cricklewood to Edgware; Finchley to Pinner; Willesden Green to Barnet; and a lengthy Hampstead Heath to Enfield. “One hails with delight the prospect of escaping from hot, dusty London, and of enjoying the manifold benefits of fresh air and scenery in the easily accessible neighbourhood recommended to our notice” (Hampstead and Highgate Express, 4th July 1896).
Pott 4to (14cm). 64pp. Printed in red and black throughout. Wood-engraved illustrations. Original decorative wrappers; wrappers slightly nicked and chipped; first few leaves slightly nicked; some mild creasing and occasional spotting, but a good copy of a scarce and fragile production. Just two copies (British Library and Manchester) located in major UK libraries.

SOLD

London : Methuen & Co., 1900. First edition. A powerful political novel – Alexander Quisanté – an outsider, but the coming man in London political circles. “He is vulgar, he is something of a charlatan, but he has a streak of genius and that mysterious quality – force” (Pall Mall Gazette, 10th October 1900). Lady May Gaston has breeding, humour and courage – “Lady May sneers and mistrusts and dislikes, but she is carried away”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],376 + (48)pp advertisements dated August 1900. Original blue-green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine; very lightly rubbed; slight spotting of edges and endpapers; but a very good copy. Faint bookseller’s blind-stamp of W. H. Smith & Son, London, on front free endpaper.

£15

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London : Methuen & Co., (1907). First edition. “Common opinion said that Lord Lynborough ought never to have had a peerage and forty thousand a year; he ought to have had a pound a week and a back bedroom in Bloomsbury. Then he would have become an eminent man ...”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],332 + 40pp advertisements dated September 1907. Frontispiece by Arthur Herbert Buckland. Original blue-green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; the faintest hint of rubbing; very slight worming to hinge of lower endpaper and the extreme gutter of advertisements and final text leaves, but otherwise a very good and still bright copy. Pencilled initials S. A. H. on front endpaper.

£15

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London : Hutchinson & Co., 1908. First edition : the earlier variant in larger format and in the slightly more elaborate binding, with double rules at head and tail of spine. Hudson in St. Ives, Zennor, Land’s End, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). viii,(324),[iv]pp. Eight plates & forty-one illustrations by A. L. Collins. Original decorative cloth gilt; top edge gilt; some spotting throughout, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of Alfred Trapnell, a Bristol smelter and refiner, dated 1908. Small Foyles label on rear pastedown. Payne A26a).

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1999). First trade edition. Twenty-eight poems on the creatures of the sea – “Starfish”, “Whelk”, “Whale”, “Lobster”, etc., with illustrations throughout by Flora McDonnell. First published in a very limited edition by Hughes’ own Sunstone Press in 1993, but here in a revised text and with wholly new illustrations.
Foolscap 4to (18cm). [64]pp. Original navy-blue cloth, lettered in gilt; very good indeed in the Flora McDonnell dust-jacket, also very good indeed.

£25

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London : Amalgamated Press, [1953]. First edition. Respectable Charles Stranway takes his wife to France in pursuit of a fortune – murder south of Arles. Sexton Blake Library, Third Series, No. 294, issued in August 1953.
Foolscap 4to (18cm). 64pp. Original stapled pictorial wrappers – a design by Eric Parker; spine lightly rubbed and a little tanned; staple a little rusted, but a good copy. Ownership initials J. F. on verso of front wrapper.

£5

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London : Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1900 [i.e. 1899]. First edition. A dying request, a kiss and its consequences, haunted houses, ghosts, secret panels, snowstorms, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 232pp. Frontispiece and pictorial title vignette by William Henry Charles Groome (1854-1913). Original pictorial cloth; very slightly rubbed; a touch bruised; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good and bright copy. Contemporary (Christmas 1901) school prize inscription to Lilian Gundry for composition and exercises – this presumably Lilian Kate Gundry (1889-1973) of Portsmouth, herself to become a school-teacher.

£15

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London : Chiswick Press, 1891. Second edition. First published in 1887, but “much useful matter has [now] been added, and an attempt has been made to classify it”. Jacobi was manager of the Chiswick Press and provides much useful advice. With chapters on the Composing Room; Machine and Press Work; Inks, Varnishes, etc.; Warehouse Work and Stationery; Mucilages; Stereotyping and Electrotyping; Lithography; Engraving and Process Work; Bookbinding, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (xiv),360,[viii]pp. Original cloth; expertly rebacked, repaired and refurbished, retaining the original cloth spine; some wear; pervasive mild stain to upper corners, almost throughout; a few leaves slightly chipped, but a good, working copy.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1981. First British edition. “A brilliant scheme to obtain four million dollars by a highly original form of extortion” from a luxury hotel-cum-apartment block. By the author of “The Cincinnati Kid”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 256pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; top edge lightly spotted, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in an equally very good dust-jacket.

£10

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London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1968). First edition. Ghote comes to a cold and drizzling London for an international conference, but becomes involved in investigating the disappearance of a radiant niece.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; faintest hint of spotting to top edge, but very good indeed in the original colour-printed Brian Roll dust-jacket – lettered in black and bright blue.

£15

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London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1969). First edition. The Inspector is ordered to prevent a murder – the murder of a flamingo in Bombay Zoo.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; slight spotting of top edge, but a very good, sound and unworn copy in a just lightly sunned and very lightly used dust-jacket – a colour-printed design by Brian Roll, lettered in red and black. Hubin p.226.

£15

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London : Curtis Warren, [1952]. First edition. Writer and anthropologist moves to a remote cottage on Dartmoor – strange girl without memories found on the moor is frightened of the blue lichen. “This story marked the start of Hughes’s transformation from ‘straight-SF’ hackery to intriguing science-fantasy” (Harbottle & Holland A261).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 112pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design attributed to Ray Theobald; small chip at foot of spine extending to lower wrapper; some creasing to lower wrapper; staples a little rusted, but overall a very good copy. Just four copies located in major libraries worldwide – none in the UK.

SOLD

London : C. Arthur Pearson, [1935]. First edition. “At last one of the employment agencies had sent her to Rudolph Meyer, who was in need of a secretary. Rudolph Meyer was something of a mystery. He had made his first appearance in London society two years before, and was supposed to have lived mainly in the East ...”. Published in 1935 in Pearson’s “Big Threepennies” series.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 128pp. Original pictorial wrappers – blonde looks apprehensive; some minor rubbing and wear; text lightly tanned, but a very good copy of a scarce and fragile production. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1987). First edition. An extensive selection from across the full range of Kipling’s work, edited and selected by Craig Raine.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],448,[vi]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; text lightly tanned; one leaf damaged (without loss of text); otherwise very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£10

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London : Charles Knight & Co., 1845. First edition of Knight’s “Capital and Labour” – based in part on his earlier “Results of Machinery” (1831), but much amplified and with the statistics updated. Charles Knight, author, pioneer of popular and populist publishing, and social reformer, on the mutual dependence of capital and labour, the introduction of mass-production, etc. – his little books and pamphlets were said (by Thomas Spring-Rice, Melbourne’s Chancellor of the Exchequer) to have “effected more good for the suppression of outrage than a regiment of horse”.
Foolscap 12mo (146 x 89mm). [2],vii-viii,(9)-250pp (complete). Contemporary half roan, banded and richly gilt; contrasting labels; marbled edges; some very minor wear; endpapers a little tanned at corners; a few slight marks, but a very good copy.

SOLD

New York : Dell Publishing Co., [1950]. First Dell edition. The famous bad women of history sit down to discuss love and life – Eve, Salome, Helen of Troy, Delilah, Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia, Anne Boleyn, the Queen of Sheba and others set the record straight. Originally published in 1928 as “Ladies in Hades : A Story of Hell’s Smart Set”. Dell Mapback 415.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 158,[ii]pp. Six full-page illustrations. Original pictorial wrappers; all edges blue; just very faintly rubbed, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1987). First edition. A centenary history of this distinguished publishing house, with much incidental material on Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, Jonathan Cape, John Davidson, George Egerton, Kenneth Grahame, Graham Greene, Allen Lane, John Lane, Richard le Gallienne, Elkin Mathews, Max Reinhardt, William Watson, Oscar Wilde, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (viii),(366),[ii]pp. Plates. Facsimiles. Original boards; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

SOLD

London : Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications, (1980). First edition. A handsome listing of over 5,600 works by some 1,600 artists – with biographical notes (many of the minor artists being documented for the first time) and at least one example of each artist’s work illustrated.
Demy 4to (29cm). (xxiv),456pp. Colour plates. Numerous illustrations. Original cloth; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£25

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London : T. V. Boardman & Co., (1948). First British edition. Old Elijah Mellor makes the contents of his will known before he dies – four murders ensue. The unconventional detective Tod Frick investigates. Set in San Francisco and surrounds. First published in Philadelphia in 1946.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial wrappers – an unsigned design by Denis McLoughlin; some light rubbing and wear; short split at foot; a few slight marks, but overall still a very good copy. Just two copies (Bodleian and British Library) located in the major libraries worldwide. TVB Books 54.

£10

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London : Herbert Jenkins, (1929). First edition. The last of the thoughts of Gladys Alicia May – on New Year resolutions, tea leaves, choosing a woman, going to the dogs, Hackney Downs, and much more besides.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 254,[ii]pp. Illustrations by A. Jones. Original orange cloth, ruled and lettered on upper cover; ruled, blocked and lettered across spine; blocked and lettered on lower cover – all in black; tiny nick at head; a few slight marks; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good and bright copy of an uncommon book. With a dated (1929) contemporary inscription from L.E.H. to Mrs H. B. Vinten.

£20

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London : Selwyn & Blount (1928), [ca.1930]. An attractive paperback edition in Selwyn & Blount’s Super Sixpenny series. Classic whodunit – wealthy Londoner murdered – Was it the young wife? Her beautiful sister? One of the servants? Secrets in every corner of the house. First published in 1903.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; lightly chipped at tips; wrappers slightly worn and creased, but a good copy. No copy of this edition located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Private Libraries Association & the Bookplate Society, 1976. First edition. An impressive catalogue of the known labels, with an historical introduction, appendices of early American labels, printers’ gifts, book stamps, etc.
Royal 8vo (26cm). xxii,(186)pp. Facsimiles. Original cloth; very good indeed.

£10

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New York : Delacorte Press, (1990). First edition. Chili Palmer discovers that there’s not a world of difference between loan-sharking in Miami and movie-making in Hollywood. Filmed in 1995, with John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, James Gandolfini, etc., and more recently in a rather different television version with Chris O’Dowd, etc.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],292,[ii]pp. Original white and black cloth-backed boards, lettered in green; one tiny mark, but a very good copy in the Andrew Newman dust-jacket – also very good. Ex-libris label of H. Wilkins.

SOLD

London : Viking, (2004). First British edition. April in Detroit – eighty-four-year-old rich and retired lawyer Anthony Paradiso likes the company of young women – vultures circle and people end up dead.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(292),[iv]pp. Original yellow boards, lettered in metallic blue; just slightly bruised, but a very good copy in the Donald Milne dust-jacket, also slightly bruised.

£10

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Stone : Curzon Publishing Co., [ca.1947]. First edition. Danny King can’t see the man he has come to meet in the crowded West End cafe. In the Curzon Crime & Passion series, distributed by Murray & Nichols.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 32pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; spine rolled; staples rusted; lower wrapper lightly creased, but a very good copy of a scarce and ephemeral item. No copy traced in any major library worldwide

£20

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Leicester : Waddling Duck Press, 1983. First edition : limited to fifty copies, set and hand-printed by Toni Savage and his family. Three poems from the well-known blues musician.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [12]pp. Four illustrations printed in blue. Original gray-brown wrappers; minor spotting and browning to spine area of wrappers, but otherwise a very good copy of a scarce publication.

£10

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Paris : Collection Merlin, 1953. First edition : one of 300 ordinary copies (of 600). His first book, a collection of twenty-five poems, etc., published under the Merlin imprint of the Olympia Press.
Royal 8vo (25cm). (64)pp. Original plain white wrappers; a very good copy in the original pale grey pebbled dust-jacket, printed in black – just a touch dusty, but otherwise also very good.

SOLD

New York : Popular Library, [1948]. A fresh edition of the 1925 classic, here enlivened with a famous cover by Earle Kulp Bergey (1901-1952).
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). (126),[ii]pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a blonde much leered at; all edges green; some very minor wear; faint creasing; small ink-mark on upper wrapper; slight nick to lower wrapper; small inked price and reference number on preliminary leaf; some light pencilled scribble to outer leaves, but a nice, bright copy still.

£10

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London : Hammond, Hammond & Co., 1946. First British edition of the enduringly funny 1945 American best-seller. Chicken-farming for amateurs. With the Val Biro designed bookplate of the novelist, Paul Tabori (1908-1974).
Demy 8vo (23cm). 236pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in silver on spine, and blocked in metallic red on upper cover and spine; very good in the original Stein dust-jacket – a design in green, red, black and white – price-clipped, a little rubbed and slightly worn.

SOLD

New York : Flying Eagle Publications, 1954. An action-packed issue of the American monthly, featuring “Find a Victim”, a complete Lew Archer novella by John Ross Macdonald; James T. Farrell’s novelette, “I Want a French Girl”; Evan Hunter’s Matt Cordell short story, “Return”, and further contributions from Richard Marsten, Charles Beckman, Muriel Burns, etc.
Foolscap 4to (20cm). 144pp. Illustrations in two colours. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some mild rubbing and wear; a few spots to rear wrapper; text a touch tanned, but overall still a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1936. First edition. A satirical novel, set in South Kensington, in which “men arrange the affairs of the world, while women stand back and admire”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],356,[iv]pp. Original red cloth, ruled in blind on upper cover; ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; covers and endpapers lightly marked; slightly bruised; a few edge spots; a good copy in the original Eric Fraser dust-jacket – a pictorial design in red, black and white – price-clipped, lightly tanned, lightly rubbed, very slightly chipped and with a few short tears.

£25

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1939. First edition : in a dust-jacket over-printed with Macmillan’s Overseas Library information and restrictions on lower flap. An epistolary novel in which the hero flies round the world to escape the “cold blue eyes” of the lady.
Crown 8vo. viii,(308),[ii],[2]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in gilt and blind; a few slight marks; endpapers and edges a little tanned; a very good copy in the original Bip Pares dust-jacket – cream, lettered in red and decorated in sky-blue – price-clipped, lightly worn, very slightly chipped and a little tanned. Small bookseller’s label of Angus & Robertson of Sydney on front paste-down.

£15

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New York : Dell Publishing Co., [1950]. First paperback edition. LA at the turn of the century – “Celeste’s mother, born and reared in London’s slums and a former lusty Barbary Coast queen, now operates a fashionable restaurant in Los Angeles which is a cover for less reputable activities. Honest in her own way, Dolly adores her daughter and tries to shield her from all sin, the world’s and her own”. Originally published simply as “Celeste” the previous year. Dell 382 – in the mapback format.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 236,[iv]pp. Original pictorial wrappers – Celeste prepares herself; all edges blue/green; just a hint of rubbing; very faint corner crease; first few leaves a little creased, with a couple of short tears, but in all other respects a very good copy.

£10

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New York : Magazine Productions, (1951). First edition. To Jessie Evans “men were like a doctor’s prescription: To be taken twice daily; as needed. But when she met a rough, earthy guy named Mike, who wanted her – but who refused to be slave to her beauty – Jessie learned to love like a woman – not a tyrant queen of hearts!” No 108 in the Rainbow Romance series.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(130)pp. Eight full-page photographic illustrations. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a stylish design generally attributed to George Gross (1909-2003); wrappers a little worn and creased; split to spine; a few spots; text a little tanned, but otherwise a very good copy of an uncommon title. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£25

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London : Jarrolds Publishers London, [1944]. A paperback edition of this spy novel from a real spy – the Belgian Marthe Cnockaert, first awarded the Iron Cross and then later sentenced to death by the Germans. Her autobiography, “I was a Spy!” (1932) had a preface by Churchill and was filmed in 1933, with Madeleine Carroll, Herbert Marshall and Conrad Veidt. She and her husband, Jock McKenna, then went on to write a succession of popular spy novels – in the present example, first published in 1937, the brilliant and steely Colonel John Templeman needs to disappear for a few hours.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (128)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by J. Abbey – Joseph van Abbé; some minor wear; one short tear; upper staple rusted, but otherwise a very good copy. Just a single copy of this edition (Bodleian) located in major libraries worldwide.

£10

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Bridgend : Seren Books, (1990). First edition. A collection of thirty-nine poems, including “On Hay Bridge”, “Monsters”, “Margam Park”, etc. “He writes with freedom and perhaps unfashionable eloquence” (Michael Hofman).
Post 8vo (20cm). 80pp. Original pictorial wrappers; very good indeed.

£10

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London : Oxford University Press, 1935. First edition. A fine and comprehensive anthology of the Romantic Movement – beginning, wittily enough, with William Combe in search of the picturesque, and ending with the young Tennyson and Browning.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,888pp. Original decorative cloth gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in a just lightly bruised dust-jacket.

£20

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London : L. Miller & Son, [ca.1950]. First edition. Set in New York in wartime: vital blueprints go missing – Daisy Hamilton blames herself for being careless with the keys.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 48pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; lightly rubbed and a little creased; staple rusting; leaves in latter part damaged and frayed at foot, without affecting text; an indifferent copy of an apparently unrecorded title – no copy located in any major library worldwide.

£20

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Redhill : Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., (1947). First paperback edition. Never married Bay Stratton has a slightly mysterious role at the embassy in Paris – Miss Sims the mannequin tells him that “An ordinary, modern girl, who knew how to take care of herself, would make you nervous”. She’s right. Originally published by Collins in 1935.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 190,[ii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design by Reginald Mills; some very minor chipping, creasing and marking, but a very good copy. Just a single copy (British Library) of this edition located in major libraries worldwide.

£10

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London : Gannet Press, [1953]. First edition. Magoth escapes from the Penal Asteroid of Halma – he has discovered a way to speed up evolution and intends to seize control of the Four Planets. “While biographical information is sparse, one fact remains extremely plain: Ward must rate as the all-time worst-ever SF author! ... He displays a stunning lack of astronomical knowledge that makes the book compulsive reading – in the hope that it can’t get any worse! But it does ... Possibly the worst SF novel ever published” (Harbottle & Holland A306).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Ray Theobald; an indifferent copy – worn and creased; acid-free tape repairs and strengthening to spine and wrappers; lower wrapper discoloured and missing one corner; text tanned; some insect holing to lower blank margins through second half of book, but a serviceable copy of a scarce and fragile item. Just six copies located in major libraries worldwide – none in the UK.

SOLD

London : Michael Joseph, (1972). First edition. Strange goings-on in an English country village – folklore unhallowed by custom elsewhere – “a cosy read only to those of sound mind sitting by a good fire and a well-lighted room and, preferably, not alone or late at night”. Dame Beatrice solves the case.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; very mild spotting of top edge, but a very good copy in the monochrome David Pether dust-jacket – just lightly tanned at outer margins, but also very good.

£20

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London : Michael Joseph, (1973). First edition. A respectable don and his family visit the remote island of Great Skua, a haunt of suspected gun-runners. Murder, witches, ornithologists, and Dame Beatrice is supposedly writing her memoirs.
Post 8vo (21cm). (214)pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; very mild bruise at foot of spine, but a very good copy indeed in the Richard Murby dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£25

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Manchester : T. A. & E. Pemberton, [1949]. First edition. “Old man Rutledge, as Tony Lantz called him, had been a whiz of a detective in his day, and had built himself a regular medieval castle up here in the Catskills when he went into retirement” ... the floodlights are still on come the morning. One of three murder mysteries written by the Memphis writer under this pseudonym – none apparently published in the United States.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 160pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; a few tiny chips; some mild creasing; lower wrapper faintly discoloured; staples rusting; text a little tanned, but a good and serviceable copy of an uncommon book. Just two copies (British Library and Trinity College, Dublin) located in major libraries worldwide.

£15

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London : Martin & Reid, [ca.1946]. First edition. Morland using his experiences as a journalist in the Far East with a mystery set in the weeks before Pearl Harbour.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 16pp. Original decorative stapled wrappers; wrappers a little worn, creased and slightly chipped; text a little tanned and creased, but a reasonable copy of a scarce and fragile item. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), [1949]. First edition. Ann gives the gondolier a charming smile, pats her auburn hair, and almost falls out of the gondola.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [32]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design by “Brab” – Oliver Gilmore Brabbins (1912-1973); wrappers lightly rubbed and slightly creased; staples rusted, but otherwise a very good copy. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£15

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Oxford : Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1984. First edition. An annotated finding list of 220 typefounders’ and fifty-four printers’ specimens, with appendices of related material. Oxford Bibliographical Society Occasional Publication No.14.
Crown 4to (25cm). 70,[ii]pp. Erratum slip loosely inserted. Original wrappers; very good.

£10

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London : Methuen & Co., (1933). First edition. “I promised ... to try to write for your especial delectation a yarn about London – one of those knuckle-duster and thick-ear yarns that you like so much, with a West End hotel of sybaritic splendour, a sinister little riverside tavern run by an unpleasant yellow-faced man with narrow eyes and a benign suavity of manner, and a heroine of Madonna-like beauty, and, of course, missing documents of vital importance. Here you are then ...” – the strangely neglected Muir – somewhere between John Buchan and Peter Cheyney on the spectrum – delivers all this and more in a first-rate thriller.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,248 + 8pp advertisements. Original black cloth, ruled and lettered in yellow; just a touch of rubbing; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting, mainly of edges, but otherwise a very good and bright copy. Ownership inscription of Donald H. Watkin.

SOLD

Oxford : Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1975. First edition. An impressive collection of essays on various aspects of the history of the book trade – by Giles Barber, Nicolas Barker, Terry Belanger, Harry Carter, John Carter (on Pollard himself), John Dreyfus and Peter Isaac, J. D. Fleeman, Michael Harris, Anthony Hobson, Richard Hunt, Paul Morgan, A. N. L. Munby, Howard Nixon, David Rogers, Michael Turner, and David Vaisey.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (viii),(404)pp. Portrait and fifteen plates. Facsimiles. Original quarter linen; just a touch bruised; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy.

SOLD

New York : Pocket Books, (1943). First paperback edition. “Rare Books and Raw Murder Mix”. Originally published in 1938 – and made into a film starring Melvyn Douglas the same year, a sequence of events that led to the former reporter Harry Kurnitz becoming a witty and stylish Hollywood screenwriter (Hatari, Pretty Baby, Shadow of the Thin Man and many more).
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). [iv],204pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a design by Leo Manso (1914-1993); all edges red; spine a little worn and lightly sunned; a reasonable copy.

£15

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New York : Pocket Books, (1949). First paperback edition. Dave Calder hired to solve the disappearance of a heavily insured violin. Owner then murdered – list of suspects reads like a telephone directory. First published in 1946.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). [viii],214,[ii]pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a stylish design by Harvey Whitney Kidder (1918-2001); all edges red; a touch of light wear; text slightly tanned, but otherwise a very good copy.

£10

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London : B. T. Batsford, 1954. First edition. A charming exploration of eighty Surrey gardens – the wild-life, the writers, and the gardens themselves.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,(260)pp. Illustrations by William McLaren. Original cloth; a very good copy in the McLaren dust-jacket – lightly worn, but also very good. Small contemporary ownership inscription.

£15

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Dublin : Pillar Publishing Co., [1946]. First edition. Gillian Dale – rich, beautiful and “the loneliest creature in creation” – takes advantage of her mother’s absence to catch a train to London and take a job as a shop assistant.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 80pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; diagonal crease to upper wrapper; a few minor marks; staples rusting, but a good copy. Just two copies (Bodleian and British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1969). First edition. “She had an open sports car, an Aston Martin, a white one. They always do, don’t they ...”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original apple green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very minor bruise, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the Peter Cope dust-jacket, lettered in red and green, just very slightly rubbed and very lightly creased, but still very good.

£15

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1982). First edition. Mark Savage, film star turned private investigator, with a pretty vet in darkest Dyfed.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (256)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good and clean copy in the Melvyn Gill jacket, lettered in blue and white, somewhat sunned at spine, but with just minimal wear. Small neat stamp of the H. M. Yacht Britannia Library on front free endpaper.

£10

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1983). First edition. Mark Savage, film-star turned private eye, returns to Elstree – someone is out to sabotage a movie.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (256)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a little sunned at spine, price-clipped, but with only the slightest hint of wear.

£10

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London : HarperCollins (Collins Crime), (1995). First edition. Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt, and a Russian Grand Duke in Cairo in 1908.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(186),[ii]pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges, but otherwise very good in the original pictorial Richard Duckett dust-jacket – the jacket just with a hint of sunning, but also very good.

£15

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London : F. M. Mowl, [ca.1934]. Second edition. “A powerfully written story” (Hampshire Telegraph, 21st June 1929) – a well-bred, mysterious, young widow living in a Derbyshire village, the vicissitudes of her daughter’s life, etc. – “One of the finest novels published recently” (Hull Daily Mail, 11th June 1929). Originally published in hardback in 1929 and here in undated ninepenny paperback form from Frederick Matthew Mowl’s 1932-1936 Duke Street address.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – an early design by H. W. Perl (1897-1952); wrappers worn and a little chipped, with some nicks and short tears; staples rusted; text lightly tanned, but a reasonable copy of an uncommon title. No copy of this edition located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : George Philip & Son, [1950]. An attractive post-war edition of this London guide which first appeared in 1937. Includes suggested itineraries; a double-page map of the exit roads in two colours; four similar sectional maps of the approaches by road; a double-page map of the environs; a coloured indexed map of the theatres, etc.; three coloured double-page maps of central London at a scale of four inches to the mile; a coloured map of the inner London railways, etc.; a gazetteer; notes on places of interest, and an index to the street plans, with notes on places of worship and the underground railways on lower wrapper.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (40)pp. Original decorative stapled wrappers; wrappers lightly tanned, with one tiny chip and a very short tear; staples a little rusted, but otherwise an attractive copy of an ephemeral production.

SOLD

London : T. Werner Laurie, [1906]. First edition. Their first collaboration – “That monster, London, was just lying down to rest. The clocks of the Strand churches and the Strand hotels, keeping nocturnal vigil, showed a quarter to one under the February moon ...” – later published in the USA as “Doubloons”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,344pp. Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; lightly worn and bruised; tiny nick at foot; a little shaken and slack; front free endpaper torn and slightly defective; rear endpaper a little cracked; some spotting, mainly of prelims and edges; a few internal chips and small flaws, but a reasonable copy of a difficult title.

£25

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[London] : John Player & Sons, 1938. A complete set of the fifty coloured cigarette cards in the original printed album – thirty-four English and sixteen Australian cricketers, including some of the most famous names in the history of the game: Les Ames, Denis Compton, Bill Edrich, Tom Goddard, Alf Gover, Wally Hammond, Len Hutton, Eddie Paynter, Hedley Verity, Cyril Washbrook, Don Bradman, Jack Fingleton, Lindsay Hassett, Stan McCabe, Bill O’Reilly, etc.
Long crown 8vo (13 x 19cm). (20)pp – covers included in pagination. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; staples rusted; a few faint marks, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Collins, 1948. First edition. Powell’s popular radio private eye, the Irishman Philip Odell, makes his first appearance in book form – a thriller set in the American Zone of post-war Germany – the hunt for the six scientists who know the secret of Hitler’s bacteria gas.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 192pp. Original burgundy cloth, lettered in silver; cloth a little marked and splashed; edges slightly spotted; slight nick to one leaf, but a good copy of a difficult title.

£10

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London : William Heinemann, (1988). First edition. A full-length study of the life and works of E. M. Delafield (1890-1943) – “a novelist of a distinctive and remarkable talent” as well as the author of the abidingly entertaining “Diary of a Provincial Lady”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). xiv,190,[iv]pp. Plates. Portraits. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; just a touch bruised, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – just lightly used and a touch sunned, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Oxford University Press, 1959. First edition. Signed by John Press on the title-page. Loosely inserted is a 1985 2pp autograph letter from Press, signed with forename, concerning a reading by women poets, etc. A collection of fifty-five poems, including “Kipling in Excelsis”, “The Backs in February”, “Salthouse, Norfolk”, “Advice to Sadists”, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),68pp. Original orange cloth, lettered in silver; a few faint spots to top edge; endpapers lightly tanned, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a design in yellow, black and red – just lightly used and sunned, but otherwise still very good.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1979. First edition. Typist and army widow shows an unexpected aptitude for espionage – plus David Audley, Jack Butler, et al. “One of the very finest, and most subtle ... of this remarkable writer” (Patrick Cosgrave).
Post 8vo (21cm). 256pp. Original dark brown boards, lettered in gilt; one tiny mark on lower edge, otherwise very good indeed in the Oliver Hatch dust-jacket, just very faintly sunned at spine.

£25

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1985. First edition. An American former army major is pushed off a cliff in France the day after the D-Day anniversary ceremonies – prompting a crisis within British Intelligence. Even Audley comes under suspicion. “Diabolically ingenious” (Christopher Pym).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (256)pp. Original tan boards, lettered in gilt; a sprinkling of faint edge-spots, but a very good and bright copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with just a hint of mild creasing, but also very good.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1986. First edition. Two KGB rivals confront each other – but on Exmoor. Polish dissidents involved and David Audley has been playing politics. “Can only add to his reputation” (Financial Times).
Medium 8vo (24cm). 256pp. Original grey boards, lettered in gilt; just a touch rubbed, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket very faintly creased and with a hint of tanning to head of inner flaps, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Victor Gollancz, 1987. First edition. David Audley’s early years in espionage – Greece and Germany in 1945 and the mysterious unit known as TRR-2.
Medium 8vo (24cm). 254,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just very lightly used and with a tiny mark on rear panel, but also very good.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1988. First edition. A sailing accident on the South Coast, a Yorkshire gun battle, two deaths and a mystery. Audley involved and the hunters become the hunted. “Superior stuff, as always” (The Times).
Medium 8vo (24cm). [ii],(252),[ii]pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1997). First British edition. Pynchon’s Grand Tour of the Enlightenment’s dark hemisphere.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(774),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good in the Raquel Jaramillo dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1954. First British edition. “A first-rate story of New England mayhem, in which those familiar characters, Queen père et fils, are temporarily discarded and the near-lynching and sleuthing are done by the locals. Original, violent and ingenious” (The Sphere, 11th September 1954).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 222pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised, edges a little spotted and tanned, but a good copy in the Gollancz yellow dust-jacket, lettered in magenta and black – the jacket just lightly used, slightly marked and a little dulled, but complete and attractive still.

£15

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London : John Westhouse, 1945. First Brandt edition. Seventeenth-century translations of Rabelais by Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611-1660) and Peter Anthony Motteux (1660-1718), here combined with the extraordinary illustrations of Rolf A. Brandt (1906-1986). Introduction by Denis Saurat.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [xvi],(270),[ii]pp. Fourteen plates by Brandt. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch rubbed and slightly rolled; a few minor marks and spots, but a good copy in the Brandt dust-jacket – lightly tanned, slightly worn, nicked and split, with some neat taped repairs, but substantially complete and not unattractive.

£15

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New York : Falcon Books, (1953). First edition. “The attractive redhead walked into an elevator and said ‘Twenty-two, please’. Nick Brett followed close on her heels and said ‘Forty’. But before he reached the fortieth floor of the Hotel Lorenz, New York’s palatial home-away-from-home, Nick found himself knee-deep in shocking violence and sordid love ...”.
Foolscap 4to (20cm). [iv],7-(130)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design attributed to Howell Dodd (1910-2005); some minor wear and mild creasing; staples rusting; lower wrapper nicked, creased and lightly discoloured; text a little tanned, but a good copy. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£20

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London : Curtis Warren, (1952). First edition : the wrappers issue. “When creation which is contrary to all the accepted laws of Nature springs directly from Genius in the grip of Evil the results may well take a form so terrible as to be beyond human understanding ...”. Mad scientist, laboratory horror, allegorical fantasy – “charmingly bizarre” (Harbottle & Holland A268).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a perplexed design attributed to Gordon C. Davies; chipped at head (2cm), with minor chip at foot; some rubbing and light creasing; staples badly rusted; a serviceable copy. No copy located in any major UK library.

£20

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London : Federation Press, (1927). First edition. A great white yacht beneath a tropical moon – young Madeline is shocked by her beast of her husband, Lord Farlingham.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 158,[ii]pp. Original pictorial wrappers in a design by George Peace Micklewright (1893-1951); a wreck of a copy – upper wrapper damaged and detached; spine crudely repaired with brown paper; lower wrapper chipped and dampstained; text tanned and brittle, with tears to several preliminary leaves; edges spotted. A copy without merit save that of being unrecorded – an edition unknown to Holland & Williams in their 1990 Rénin checklist and untraced in any major library worldwide.

£25

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Hanley : R. & L. Locker, (1946). First edition. “The cave man secured his woman by knocking her down with a club and carting her off to his subterranean lair. David Thurston knocked her down in Fleet Street with an eight-cylinder sports car, and got her that way. Which amounted to much the same thing – except that comedy ended there, and drama began”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 96pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – blonde in pyjamas, man more formally dressed – a design by Philip Simmonds; some wear to spine; minor creasing; a touch dusty, but overall a very good copy. Only a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

[Leicester] : Beacon Publishing Co., [ca.1948]. First edition. Renin with “the most modern of seductive vampires, who brings mingled glamour, tawdry splendour, and shameful disillusion wherever she goes”.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 112pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; wrappers creased, with some splits and short tears; staples rusted, but a reasonable copy of a scarce title. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£25

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London : Gramol Publications, (1930). First edition. A story which opens on a simmering Shaftesbury Avenue just before theatre time – “There were, too, the usual men of a type germane to the district after dark, aimless, like grim shadows; there were, too, the usual women of a type with aims that lead to nowhere, slowly moving shadows across the screen of night”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 126,[ii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; wrappers a little worn, nicked, and creased; inked price on upper wrapper; text a little tanned, with a corner chip not affecting text; staples rusting, but a good and serviceable copy of an uncommon title. No copy of this original edition located in any major library worldwide – and only two copies (Bodleian and British Library) of the later 1946 edition.

SOLD

Leicester : Leicester University Press / New York : St. Martin’s Press, 1982. First edition. Essays by Terry Belanger, John Valdimir Price, Isabel Rivers, etc., on various aspects of writing, publishing and reading in the eighteenth century.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (xii),(268)pp. Original boards; a little bumped at head; mild spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in a lightly sunned and creased dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1951). Second edition : an expanded version of the most influential anthology of the period. Originally published in 1936, it “formed the taste of a generation”. The present edition incorporates a supplement of more recent work, chosen and introduced by Anne Ridler, principally of the poets who emerged during the Second World War.
Crown 8vo (20cm). xx,432pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge red; a few marks, spots and slight scuffs, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a typographic design in black on pale blue – a little worn, somewhat chipped, nicked and slightly tanned.

SOLD

London : F. C. Avis, (1972). First edition. An absorbing and compelling dictionary of symbols, from the letter A to the meteorological symbol for zodiacal light, via Lithuanian accents and logotype – accents, alphabets, book reference marks, borders, commercial signs, conventional symbols, initial letters, mathematical characters, ornaments, printing peculiars, representative foreign alphabets, scientific marks, type founts, zodiacal signs, etc.
Narrow royal 8vo (26cm). 360pp. Original cloth; top edge a touch dusty, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used and slightly creased.

£20

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London : Hammond, Hammond & Co., (1954). First British edition. An interesting guide to literary craftsmanship from the well-known literary agent – with chapters on clues, suspense, taboos, plotting, etc. With an introduction by Maurice Richardson. “One of the most entertaining textbooks ever written” (Vincent Starrett).
Crown 8vo (20cm). xviii,(172),[ii]pp. Original boards; very good in a very lightly used and just slightly nicked dust-jacket.

£10

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1963. First published edition : the trade issue. Rolfe’s long-lost early novel, set in Rome in the early sixteenth century, first printed and prepared for publication in 1908-1909 but never issued. Edited and introduced by Cecil Woolf.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(344)pp. Original boards – Rolfe’s striking original design in violet and white, lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, clean, bright and sound copy in the original matching dust-jacket – Rolfe’s own design, printed in scarlet and purple on white – just slightly tanned, but also very good. Woolf A8c.

£25

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Hanley : Harborough Publishing Co., (1950). First edition in English. Originally published in Paris in 1942.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Illustrations. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – naked blonde in fur stole from David Wright; some minor wear and creasing; a few internal spots, but overall a very good copy. Partial book-exchange stamp at foot of upper wrapper. Just two copies of this edition (Bodleian and British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

London : Harborough Publishing Co., (1952). First edition in English of “Les Ensorcelées” (originally published in 1944 as “Vaudou : Roman de Moeurs Martiniquaises”). Royer was the author of “L’Amour chez les Soviets” (1932) and other similar works.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (160)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design by David Wright; lightly worn, with a few minor creases and small flaws; text a little tanned, but a very good copy. Just three copies of this edition (Bodleian, British Library and Trinity College, Dublin) located in major libraries worldwide.

£25

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1930]. First edition. “Tiny Carteret stretched out a hand like a leg of mutton and picked up the marmalade. On the sideboard what remained of the kidneys and bacon still sizzled cheerfully on the hot plate; by his side a cup of dimensions suitable for a baby’s bath gave forth the fragrant smell of coffee. In short, Tiny Carteret, half-way through his breakfast ...”. Rugby-playing hero ventures forth – sinister organisation based in Switzerland, compromising photographic negative, the honour of a Balkan queen, the happiness of an English duke’s daughter, the security of the state, London night-clubs, Parisian hotels, murder and mayhem – “a story of thrilling adventure and ingenuity the like of which has seldom been written” (Western Mail, 14th August 1930).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 320pp. Original blue cloth, ruled in black and blind, and lettered in black; a few edge spots, but a very good sharp and sound copy. Contemporary (December 1930) ownership inscription of Barbara Dunn.

£40

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Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1988. First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated (1988) by Peter Scupham on the half-title. A collection of fifty-seven poems, including “Blackpool, by Night”, “Bigness on the Side of Good”, “V. E. Day”, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (xii),(68),(ii)pp. Original wrappers – a design in black, white and turquoise, with a colour illustration by Paul Nash on upper wrapper; very good.

SOLD

London : André Deutsch, (1974). First edition. Philosopher and pacifist is pushed to the very limits of his ideals by a ferocious and turbulent former pupil. Originally produced unsuccessfully as “The Battle of Shrivings” in 1970, the present heavily revised version was published in hope that “the play itself now give me at last some kind of peace”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (106),[ii]pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a hint of tanning to front endpaper, but a very good copy indeed in the original monochrome photographic dust-jacket, the principal lettering in red and white – also very good indeed, bar a few faint marks to the rear panel.

SOLD

London : Alexander Moring, [ca.1956]. [Second edition]. Red Miller, reformed con-man turned private eye, witnesses an old pal fall to his death in a police siege. In a secret pocket inside the dead man’s shirt is a book – “I had more than a vague idea that the book was old, very old – and maybe valuable”. Bookseller gets murdered. Some other “guys claimed to be antiquarian booksellers, but didn’t know Aristotle from a hole in the ground”. Originally published in 1953 under Reg Carter’s earlier Comyns imprint, but here under the Moring imprint he acquired on his release from prison in 1955.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 143,[i]pp. Original pictorial wrappers; some minor wear; upper wrapper with some creasing and a repaired 4cm tear, but otherwise a very good and clean copy. No copy of this Moring edition located in any major library worldwide.

£25

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, (1984). First edition : in the primary dust-jacket (designed by Red Ranch). Wilt resurfaces teaching at the Fenland Tech – complications ensue, with drug-dealing, Inspector Flint, accusations of voyeurism, and the local US airbase.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(236)pp. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; very good in the original dust-jacket – the principal design in red, black and green on white – just a touch sunned and slightly bruised.

£15

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London : Eveleigh Nash, (1920). First edition. A collection of twenty posthumously published sketches and slight pieces from the Irish poet, Dora Sigerson Shorter. With an introduction from Thomas Hardy, whose poem “How She Went to Ireland” commemorates her funeral in Dublin.
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). (126),[ii]pp. Original green cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; lightly rubbed; spine titling dulled; endpapers a little tanned, but a good, sound and serviceable copy.

SOLD

Oxford : Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1963-1972. A complete set of all six issues of the journal, covering the publication years 1962-1967.
Six issues, bound together in a single volume, retaining the original wrappers. Medium 8vo (235 x 150mm). Contemporary buckram, lettered in gilt; very good.

£25

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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.

SOLD

London : Robert Hale, (1950). First edition. A stylish exploration of the history of the “blind and wayward growth” of the parts of London east of Aldgate. In the Hale County Books series.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 416pp. Plates. Map. Original cloth gilt; a few faint marks and spots, but a very good copy in a lightly worn, slightly torn, repaired and price-clipped dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : George Routledge & Sons, 1879. An undesignated reprint of the original 1878 edition. A biography of the wealthy lace-merchant George Moore (1806-1876) – a perfect Smiles subject, an entirely self-made man, a fortune made through application and perseverance, and benevolence on a large and wide-ranging scale, much of his charitable work carried out in secret.
Crown 8vo (186 x 120mm). xvi,460pp. Portrait. Bound in a handsome contemporary full tan calf, banded and gilt, by John Bird Hawes (1820-1885) of Cambridge, with his stamp; marbled endpapers and matching edges; some very minor rubbing; a few faint marks, some spotting of prelims, but a very good copy. Contemporary (1882) inscription to Desmond Beale-Browne (1870-1953), the book given as a prize for drawing to the future Brigadier-General.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., (1964). First edition. The ninth – and probably the best known – of Snow’s “Strangers and Brothers” sequence.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(408)pp. Original red boards, lettered on spine in gilt; the faintest of spotting to top edge and front free endpaper, but otherwise very good, bright and sound in the original colour-printed Sidney Nolan dust-jacket – just very faintly rubbed.

SOLD

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1986. First edition. A life of Alexander Stuart Strahan (1833-1918), with interesting material on George Macdonald, Alfred Tennyson, Anthony Trollope and other Strahan authors, as well as the other publishers of the day.
Crown 4to (24cm). (x),(270),[ii}pp. Portraits, etc. Original cloth; a very good copy in a spotted dust-jacket.

SOLD

London : Scion, (1951). First edition. Venus and its mighty scientific civilisation are dying, plans are made to take the air and the water from a neighbouring planet populated by strange creatures who “walk upright on two legs and possess round-shaped bodies crowned with queer furry mats.”
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Ron Turner; a little worn; somewhat creased and bruised; marks, chips and short tears to lower wrapper; text a little browned and soiled; a reasonable copy. Three copies (Bodleian, Liverpool and National Library of Scotland) located in the major UK libraries.

£20

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London : Scion, (1952). First edition. Meteorites with rivets light up a Sussex night, a curious stranger rescues sparky young journalist Glenda Carlyle from unwanted attentions in an alley off Fleet Street.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 112pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Ron Turner; spine a little tanned, worn and slightly torn; some rubbing and scuffing; lower wrapper a little discoloured; staples rusted; a poor copy. Aside from the Liverpool copy and a microform at the Bodleian, no copies located in any major UK library.

£20

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London : Scion, (1952). First edition. The elders of Mars covet the planet Earth. They have failed twice (1914-1918 and 1939-1946) to persuade humanity to destroy itself – time to unleash the Gravity Bomb.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 112pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a Ron Turner design; somewhat rubbed, worn, creased and slightly split; chipped at head; inked figures to upper wrapper; one leaf chipped, but a reasonable copy. Aside from the Liverpool copy and a microform at the Bodleian, no copies located in any major UK library.

£20

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London : Methuen & Co., (1932). First edition. The author of “Mrs Miniver” with ten poems, including “The Muffin Man”, relating to a quiet and small London square, followed by ten on the London telephone districts, Avenue, Frobisher, Gulliver, Mayfair, Victoria, etc., and a further eight whimsical pieces on contemporary topics. Illustrated throughout with great charm by Ernest H. Shepard.
Demy 8vo (22cm). viii,(64)pp. Illustrations. Original pictorial cloth gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch dulled; endpapers a little tanned; a few spots and minor signs of use, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of G. G. D. Stevenson dated Christmas 1932.

£15

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London : Picador, (1992). First edition. “These are, I should warn you, the words of a dead man ...”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(262),[ii]pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; a very good copy indeed in the Tom Stimpson dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£20

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London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1967). First edition. “So well plotted and so wickedly funny that it easily stands as a leading contender for honours as the best mystery novel of this year and a few other years as well” (Stanley Ellin).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (224)pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few spots to edges and endleaves, but a very good copy in the George Coral dust-jacket – just a little used, with a short tear and a few nicks.

SOLD

Boston Spa & London : British Library, 2002. First edition. Essays by various hands on aspects of the international press in London: German printing and bookselling in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; chapters on printing in Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Polish, Hungarian and the Scandinavian languages, etc.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (viii),(274),[vi]pp. Facsimiles. Original boards; just slightly bruised, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket, likewise just lightly bruised.

£20

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973. First edition. Jack Flowers, Singapore fixer and pimp, in a spot of trouble with the locals – memorably filmed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1979, with Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(248)pp. Original stone cloth, blocked and lettered in blue and red; top edge pink; some spotting of cloth and edges, but a good and sound copy in the Paul Bacon dust-jacket – price-clipped, but very good, fresh and clean.

£25

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. First edition. Hong Kong on the eve of the hand-over to China – Bunt Mullard struggles to adapt and a young woman disappears from his factory.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],(244),[iv]pp. Original quarter red cloth; red boards; lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Michaela Sullivan dust-jacket – equally very good.

£20

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London : J. M. Dent & Sons, (1985). First edition. The voluminous correspondence of the poet, with much passing reference to W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Richard Hughes, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Glyn Jones, Louis MacNeice, Edith Sitwell, Henry Treece, Vernon Watkins, etc. Edited by Paul Ferris.
Foolscap 4to (25cm). (xxiv),982,[ii]pp. Original blue boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good copy in a lightly used, faintly sunned and slightly creased dust-jacket.

£20

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, (1933). First edition. “The name of Ben Travers is, in itself, sufficient to conjure up visions of the most excruciatingly funny happenings. ‘Hyde Side Up’ is welcome, not only because it is indeed a very funny novel, but it is now over seven years since the reading public had an offering from the author of ‘A Cuckoo in the Nest’, ‘Rookery Nook’, etc.” (Exeter & Plymouth Gazette, 30th June 1933). Based on Travers’ own popular talking picture, “Plunder”. “Without doubt the funniest novel of the year”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (vi),342,[iv]pp. Original blue cloth, blocked and lettered in red; lower cover a little marked; some spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but a good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, a little tanned, lightly marked, and with a couple of nicks, but also good. Contemporary (June 1934) ownership inscription of the New Zealander Owen Raskin (1911-1997).

SOLD

London : T. V. Boardman & Co., (1947). First British edition. Crime and comedy as a honeymoon is interrupted by murder – Julius Gilbert (fat, complacent, student of Spinoza) investigates. Originally published in New York in 1945.
Crown 8vo (18cm). (160)pp. Original pictorial wrappers – a design by Denis McLoughlin; some rubbing and wear; text lightly tanned, but a good copy still. Just two copies of this edition (Bodleian and British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

SOLD

London : Enitharmon Press, 1994. First edition : [one of 1,000 copies in wrappers]. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page. Six short stories, including “A Ship in the Sky”, with an introduction by Frank Kermode.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 102,[ii]pp. Original pale blue-grey wrappers, with a Glenn Sujo design, printed in blue and black; very good. Walker A7a.

£15

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London : Edwin Self & Co., [ca.1952]. First edition. “A fascinating story of the modern Paris underworld with all the romantic and glamorous aspect of life with artist’s models and midinettes”. One of the earliest “Valois” titles and frankly hilarious in its Franglais – “The température inside the room seemed to leap hundreds of degrees! The air was électrique, so that even Danielle Javenne could feel it in the garde-robe ...”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; a little worn, creased and slightly chipped; text lightly tanned; staples slightly rusted, but a good copy. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£25

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1968). First edition. Satirical and still fresh fable of town-planning in Sussex.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges, but a very good and bright copy in the Verney dust-jacket, just a little worn and faintly dulled.

£10

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New York : Falcon Books, (1952). First edition. “I pointed to the drink in her glass. ‘What is it?’ ‘An aphrodisiac’, she said blandly. ‘Why do you need that stuff?’ – ‘I’m going to take you home with me’, she told me”. Classic noir, with a Black Dahlia type serial killer on the loose. No. 35 in the Falcon series.
Foolscap 4to (19cm). [iv],129,[i]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; upper wrapper chipped; lower wrapper slightly discoloured; staples rusting; text brittle and tanned, with some chipping; a reasonable copy of an uncommon title. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£20

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London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (2001). First edition. A sixteen-year sojourn in Paris, wandering “through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians ... an exhilarating adventure with a most seductive companion”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [x],(212),[ii]pp. Endpaper maps. Original pictorial boards; a few faint marks, but still very good in the matching dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co., [ca.1924]. A reprint of an early Willis title, first published in 1913, but here issued from Anglo-Eastern’s 1919-1931 address in Waterloo Road, with advertisements for other titles issued in the early 1920s. Classic account, both lurid and journalistic, of young women being lured into prostitution in London’s West End. With a preface by William Sinclair, Archdeacon of London and Canon of St. Paul’s.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 190,[ii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some creasing and light wear, but a good copy of a scarce title. No copy of this edition located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Herbert Jenkins, (1962). First British edition : in the primary binding, lettered in gilt. “The morning sun shone down on Blandings Castle, and the various inmates of the ancestral home of Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, their breakfasts digested, were occupying themselves in their various ways ...”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 192pp. Original red boards, stamped in blind and lettered in gilt; a touch bruised; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket lightly used, with a couple of tiny nicks, and some slight discolouration to lower panel, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Barrie & Jenkins, (1970). First edition. A Gainsborough miniature goes missing – hanging in the balance are the future of Mellingham Hall; the peace of mind of Homer Pyle, who suspects his sister, Bernadette (Barney) Clayborne, of kleptomania; the happiness of a young heir and both his fiancées; the prospects of a gold-digging actress; the employment of a fake butler, and much else besides.
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, just a touch tanned, and with a tiny nick at head of front panel, but also very good. Contemporary (1971) gift inscription on front free endpaper.

SOLD