ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
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UNITED KINGDOM

London : Fleetway House, [1926-1927]. First edition. No hyperbole here – vigorous prose and stunning pictures bringing inter-war London vividly back to life. Well over 100 informative essays on every conceivable aspect – from nightclubs to law-courts, and from bookshops to the underworld. Contributors include: E. Beresford Chancellor; G. K. Chesterton; W. H. Davies; Alan Ivimey; Walter Jerrold; E. V. Knox; Bohun Lynch; Arthur Machen; H. J. Massingham; H. V. Morton; J. B. Priestley; Dilys Powell; Edwin Pugh; Frank Rutter; Frank Swinnerton; H. M. Tomlinson; Katharine Tynan; Lady Kitty Vincent; Alec Waugh, etc.
Three volumes. Post 4to (29cm). [8],viii,384; [viii],385-768; [viii],769-1152pp. Tipped-in colour frontispieces. Over 1,200 photographs, many full-page, reproduced in photogravure. Folding map. Plans. Chronology, etc. Original decorative cloth gilt; very lightly rubbed; some spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good set.

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Leipzig : Karl Baedeker / London : T. Fisher Unwin / New York : Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1910. Seventh edition. Although the advertisements suggest that this copy was not issued until about 1924, the text is still that of the last edition to appear before the Great War and it remains an ever-useful and comprehensive guide to Edwardian Great Britain. Aside from copious general information – money, expenses, passports, railways, coaches, steamboats, hotels, sports and pastimes, history, the Welsh language, architecture and ancient monuments, etc. – there are seventy-eight detailed itineraries, taking the traveller from Dover to the Orkneys and to all points between.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). lxviii,624pp. Twenty-eight maps, sixty-five town-plans, etc., and a panorama of Snowdonia, many folding and in colour. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in blind; marbled edges; marker ribbon; gilt a touch dulled, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn, marked, slightly and lightly chipped, but an uncommon survival on a guidebook of this type.

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London : James Nisbet & Co., [1890]. First edition. Young Scotsman unwittingly enters a Babylonian London underworld, including the remarkable Tommy Splint – “Splint, ’cause w’en I was picked up, a small babby, at the work’us door, my left leg was broke, an’ they ’ad to put it up in splints; Tommy, ’cause they said I was like a he-cat; w’ich was a lie!”. The second novella in this Ballantyne double-bill relates the story of fun-loving, free-and-easy Jeff Benson on the south-east coast.
Crown 8vo (20cm). iv,260,32pp advertisements. Frontispiece and three plates. Original pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards; spine a touch rubbed; a hint of wear to extremities; some spotting to edges and prelims, but still a very good copy, fresh and bright.

£100

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London : Secker & Warburg, (1971). First edition. Signed by multiple award-winning John Banville on the title-page — loosely inserted is a 2008 ticket for “An Evening with John Banville”, the occasion on when the book was signed. Night Spawn, Night’s Pawn, Knight’s Pawn — his sometimes disavowed first novel, a fantasy political thriller of sorts set on a Greek island and then in Athens — “crotchety, posturing, absurdly pretentious”, in his own words, but for at least one online commentator, “I am left stunned. I think I have been bludgeoned by beauty”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (224)pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising, but a very good, clean and bright copy in the Mike Dempsey dust-jacket, equally very good.

£500

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London & New York : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1899. First edition : the American-printed sheets of the scarcer (and probably earlier) of the two London impressions, with the half-title and the plain title-page. Beerbohm with twenty essays on royalty, actors, the seaside in winter, sign-boards, music-halls, Covent Garden, and much else besides.
Foolscap 4to (18cm). [viii],(202),[ii]pp. Original green cloth, with white paper spine label, ruled and lettered in black; spine label slightly tanned; spine a little darkened; small and regular mark to upper cover; a few slight marks and spots, but still a very good copy. From the collection of the architectural historian, Professor Derek Linstrum (1925-2009), and with one of his distinctive Italian hand-made paper protective dust-jackets. Gallatin & Oliver 4a.

£100

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London : William Heinemann, 1913. First edition. Edwardian society dissected and made playful in an inspired sequence of Max caricatures – Asquith, Balfour, Sir Edward Carson, Caruso, Roger Fry, Lloyd George, George Grossmith, Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, George Moore, Auguste Rodin, Lord Rosebery, George Bernard Shaw, etc.
Crown 4to (24cm). (viii),[4],2,[ii]pp – forty-eight tipped in plates and two full-page illustrations. Original green pictorial cloth gilt in a Beerbohm design; just a hint of rubbing and a touch of bruising, but a very good copy. Small decorative bookplate of Richard Thompson.

£100

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London : John Miles, 1936. First edition. An extraordinary evocation of inter-war London – the buzzing street markets described and pictured with stunning photographs by László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), the Hungarian master. Petticoat Lane, Leather Lane, Farringdon Street, Strutton Ground, Brixton, North End Road, Choumert Road, Berwick Market, New Cut, Lewisham, Lavender Hill, Rye Lane, Battersea, Hammersmith, Shepherd’s Bush, Club Row, Hildreth Street, East Street, Portobello, Hoxton Street, Chiswick, Ridley Road, Kingston-on-Thames, Caledonian Market, Warwick Street and more, with additional chapters on junk merchants, silver kings, and antique dealers, and photographs too of Billingsgate and Covent Garden.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(202),[ii]pp. Sixty-four photogravure plates. Original cream canvas, lettered in red; a few slight marks; a touch bruised; a little shaken, but a good copy. Small bookseller’s label of T. W. Griggs & Co. of Durban at rear.

£125

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1908. First edition. Bennett’s celebrated chronicle of the lives and times of two contrasting sisters. “There is nothing, therefore, surprising in the fact that, in the longest novel he has yet essayed, Mr. Arnold Bennett should have scored his most complete success. We are not sure, indeed, that publication ... does not give its author an entirely new place among contemporary novelists” (Daily Telegraph, 2nd December 1908).
Crown 8vo (182 x 114mm). viii,578pp. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco; a few minor marks and spots, but a very good copy of a notoriously difficult title.

£400

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London : John Murray, (1937). First edition. An early collection of thirty-three poems – including “Slough”, “Exeter”, “Tea with the Poets”, “Croydon”, and “Tunbridge Wells”.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [xiv],(46),[iv]pp – including integral endpapers. Illustrations. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; all edges gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in the original McKnight Kauffer dust-jacket – a design in white, blue and black – the jacket lightly worn, slightly marked and a little tanned, with a revised price over-sticker on the front flap, and a single nick to the back panel, but complete and still very good.

£200

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London : John Murray, 1945. First edition. An early collection of twenty-four poems, including “Henley-on-Thames”, “Parliament Hill Fields”, “South London Sketch, 1944”, “May-Day Song for North Oxford”, “In a Bath Teashop”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). vi,54pp. Original red boards; paper title label ruled and lettered in black on upper cover; covers just faintly flecked, as usual; mild spotting of top edge, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket a touch darkened at the spine, a little spotted, and with a single tiny nick, but also very good.

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[Amsterdam : Apud Iohannem Blaeu, 1647]. A delightful antique map of Dorset, decorated with ships and shields, the imposing cartouche flanked by bales of wool and hemp. Originally produced by the Dutch master mapmaker Joan Willem Blaeu in 1645, and here with the Dutch language text on the verso of the 1647 edition. “The Blaeus produced the finest maps of the 17th century. The general quality of design, execution, paper and colouring were unsurpassed” (Radford).
Copper line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. Engraved surface 382 x 502mm (approx. 15” x 19-3/4”). Slight furl to the original vertical fold; a couple of tiny marks, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£500

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London : Basil Montagu Pickering, 1866. The first appearance of a highly important edition of Blake – “the poems of William Blake are here for the first time printed in their integrity”. Although a typographic edition of the Songs had appeared in 1839, and Gilchrist and Rossetti had included them in the 1863 biography, neither of those versions were in any sense faithful to Blake’s original text, with Rossetti in particular standing accused of efforts at “improvement”. The anonymous editor of this edition – Richard Herne Shepherd (1842-1895) – gives for the first time, in accessible form, the exact text of Blake’s idiosyncratic engraved publications of 1789 and 1794 (only twenty-two complete copies of each of which survive). The eleven additional poems, two never previously published, and including “Auguries of Innocence”, are printed from Blake’s original manuscripts.
Foolscap 8vo (165 x 103mm). xii,108pp. Decorative tailpieces. Bound, seemingly by the publisher, with the Pickering label, in an elegant contemporary full green straight-grain morocco, ruled and lettered in gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endleaves; just a slight hint of rubbing; a few faint marks; a couple of faint spots to endleaves, but a very good copy indeed.

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London : Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963. First British edition. Bradbury’s lyrical, mysterious, dark and fantastic coming of age novel as Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show comes to town – see Mephistophele, the Lava Drinker, the Demon Guillotine, the Dangling Man, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; very good indeed in the evocative Joe Mugnaini dust-jacket – also very good indeed, barring one tiny nick.

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London : G. & J. Cary, 1828. A charming pocket atlas, which first appeared in 1790, although the maps have here been wholly re-engraved and updated. Comprises general maps of England and Wales, North and South Wales, thirty-nine single-page maps of the English counties, and a large folding map of the turnpike roads of Yorkshire – all delicately hand-coloured – as well as lists of the borough and market towns, market days, distances from London, tables of over 140 primary routes, and a catalogue of Cary maps, atlases and globes. Sir George Fordham wrote of Cary as the prototype of the modern mapmaker, “the most prominent and successful exponent of his time”, the cartographer who “first combined care and beauty of design, with something really approximate to geographical accuracy”.
Crown 8vo (183 x 112mm). [vi],[16],[iv]pp. Engraved title and preliminary leaves. Forty-three engraved maps, one folding, with original hand colour. Bound in contemporary polished calf, now neatly rebacked to style, with raised bands, gilt rules, and a red label; new endleaves; a few very minor marks; small repair to the margin of the folding map, but a very good, fresh and clean example.

£500

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London : Cassell & Co., (1926). First edition. The third of the Father Brown volumes – eight short stories, including “The Oracle of the Dog”, “The Miracle of Moon Crescent” and “The Doom of the Darnaways” – “That nice old cleric, strange compost of guile and guilessness, has already endeared himself to the public beyond the need of any new commendation. Here he is in excellent form, has never been in better; and one is delighted to observe that age cannot wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety. Not only can it not wither him, it cannot kill him; characteristically the book opens with the murder of Father Brown, followed by his instant resurrection” (The Sketch, 7th July 1926).
Crown 8vo (189 x 120mm). [viii],296pp. Bound in a smart recent half black morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; original cloth backstrip and upper cover preserved at rear; a few slight marks and spots, but overall a very good copy. Sullivan 63.

£250

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London : Methuen & Co., (1915). First British edition : includes an authorial note on the writing of the novel not present in the slightly earlier American edition. “There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds” – Conrad’s last masterpiece – “a matchless gift for embodying life as it is lived under extreme physical and psychological pressure”. With the cancel title-page (comma after Essex Street).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(416),[iv] + (32)pp inserted advertisements dated 8/5/15. Original decorative red cloth gilt; just a touch sunned; very faint mark to spine, but a very good, clean and sound copy.

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London : John Miller, 1825. First British edition. Cooper’s intriguing novel of a conflict of loyalties – Lionel Lincoln, Boston-born of an aristocratic English family, fights for the British in the American Revolutionary War. Praised in particular for the historical accuracy of his accounts of Lexington and Bunker Hill, Cooper’s wider theme of the fragilities of democracy has only been fully recognised in recent years.
Three volumes. Post 12mo (181 x 104mm). (320); [iv],300; [iv],275,[i]pp. Bound in a most attractive contemporary half polished tan calf, banded and gilt; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; some minor rubbing; a handful of wormholes; faint inked shelf-marks to spines; some occasional internal spotting and browning, but a very good and sound set. With the contemporary armorial bookplates of William Edward Powell (1788-1854) of Nanteos, Lord Lieutenant and M.P. for Cardiganshire, and the more recent bookplate of the collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

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London : Richard Bentley, 1833. First edition : precedes the American edition. Cooper explores society, politics, feudalism and democracy in this tale of a Swiss noblewoman and her love for the son of an executioner.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (188 x 112mm). (xvi),(322); [iv],(318); [iv],(332)pp. Bound in a stylish contemporary half polished lavender calf, banded and gilt; green labels; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; spines lightly tanned; just a hint of rubbing; faint shelf-marks on spines; some occasional internal spotting and browning, but a very good set. With the contemporary armorial bookplates of William Edward Powell (1788-1854) of Nanteos, Lord Lieutenant and M. P. for Cardiganshire, and the more recent bookplate of the collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

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London : William Heinemann, 1896. First British edition. His first book, “regarded as the first work of unalloyed naturalism in American fiction” (Milne Holton) and immediately inviting comparison in Europe with Hardy, Zola and Arthur Morrison’s “Tales of Mean Streets”. Originally published under a pseudonym at Crane’s own expense in 1893, but not issued under his own name until after the success of “The Red Badge of Courage” on both sides of the Atlantic. The British edition has a telling introduction by William Dean Howells (1837-1920) – “the girl herself, with her bewildered wish to be right and good, with her distorted perspective, her clinging and generous affections, her hopeless environments”.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). (viii),(148),4pp. Original decorative navy buckram gilt; top edge gilt; endpapers a little tanned; a touch shaken; a few minor marks and spots, but overall a very good copy. With the dated (October 1896) ownership inscription and armorial bookplate of Walter Wren (1833-1898), briefly a radical Member of Parliament and later a member of the first London County Council.

£125

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London : J. Duncombe, 1848 [but later]. A late nineteenth-century facsimile of the edition published by John Duncombe (1791-1853) in 1848, although the book itself, as “A Peep into the Holy Land, or, Sinks of London Laid Open”, had first appeared in the 1820s. A classic exposé of the dark side of life in the capital – “A True Picture of London Life, Cadging Made Easy, the He-She Man, Doings of the Modern Greeks, Snooking Kens Depicted, the Common Lodging-House Gallants, Lessons to Lovers of Dice, The Gaming Table”, etc. The fascinating “Flash Dictionary” runs to thirty-six pages at the end of the work, followed by a list of the sixty orders of “prime coves” – rum-bubbers, groaners, duffers, twirlers, gammoners, knackers, priggers, gaggers, dragsmen, bloods, and all the rest.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 131,[i]pp. Folding hand-coloured frontispiece and numerous black-and-white illustrations and decorations in the text by Cruikshank. Contemporary quarter roan, marbled sides – now neatly rebacked in morocco; top edge gilt; some very minor wear and a few slight marks, but overall a very good copy.

£200

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London : For the Proprietors by J. Smith, (1895). The seventeenth and penultimate appearance of this splendidly informal handbook produced by the younger Charles Dickens, eldest son of the novelist. Sixteen pages of maps are followed by a mass of detailed, practical and sometimes quirky information – a calendar of historical and forthcoming events from May 1895 to April 1896, advertising, amusements, analysts, ashes, athletics, auctions, banks, bargains, baths, beggars, bicycling, billiards, bill-posting, bohemia, boxing, bric-a-brac, cabs, charities, chops and steaks, churches, clubs, concerts, cooking schools, co-operative stores, cricket, dog stealers, dress, excursions, fish dinners, flats, fogs, football, gas, horses and carriages, hospitals, hotels, illuminations, jews, ladies shopping, libraries, lodgings, maps, markets, messengers, milk, museums, newspapers, nuisances, nurses, omnibus routes and colours, oysters, postal regulations, poultry and fancy fowls, private wires, racing, railways, restaurants, sea-water baths, servants, sharpers, shoeblacks, Sundays, suppers, theatres, tourist agencies, tramways, vegetarian restaurants, etc., with an appendix on the principal amusements, distance-tables, and some attractive contemporary advertisements.
Foolscap 4to (17cm). 262,[xxxii],[4]pp. Sixteen maps. Original decorative cloth; covers lightly worn and slightly marked; rear endpaper slightly cracked; a touch shaken, but still a good copy of a fragile and ephemeral publication.

£100

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London : Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831. First edition. Disraeli’s intriguing early novel of high society – “all rings, ringlets, and a little rouge” – a wastrel redeemed by the love of a good woman, etc., but also the novel in which we first see the evolution of Disraeli’s politics and what was soon to become his particular brand of one-nation conservatism.
Three volumes. Medium 12mo (195 x 115mm). iv,300; [ii],(270),[ii]; [ii],(266)pp. Bound, without the half-titles to vols ii & iii and a final advertisement leaf, in an elegant, slightly later, half blue-black morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; some rubbing, slight scuffing and mild wear; a couple of short splits; internally some occasional faint marks and mild tanning, but overall a very good and handsome set. With the nautical bookplate of the collector and pharmacist Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016) in the first volume. Sadleir 738.

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London : Methuen & Co., (1914). First edition. A splendidly produced and illustrated survey of “the treasures of beauty and antiquity that still survive in the City of London ... these relics should be seen, sketched, and described before they disappear”. With chapters on the oldest remains, the pre-reformation churches, the Wren churches, the Charterhouse, St. John’s Clerkenwell and Austin Friars, the Inns of Court, City palaces and houses, the City Companies, the London signs, and the river.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xvi),312pp. Colour frontispiece, and over 100 crisp and clear illustrations (many full page) by the architect Edmund Livingstone Wratten (1877-1925). Original decorative cloth gilt; top edge gilt; some very minor rubbing; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a very good, bright and sound copy.

£100

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[Edinburgh? : G. Hamilton & J. Balfour, and A. Kincaid?], 1751. A single-sheet reduction of Dorret’s 1750 wall-map of Scotland - “a greatly improved map ... the basis of practically every map of Scotland for the next forty years ... for the first time a really good outline becomes available” (Moir). Drawn and engraved by Dorret at a scale of ten miles to the inch (1:6336), with a separate inset of the Shetland Isles. No publication details are given, but the earlier wall-map was advertised in Scotland by the Edinburgh booksellers Hamilton, Balfour and Alexander Kincaid, and they may perhaps be responsible for this smaller version.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original outline hand colour. Engraved surface 790 x 620mm (approx. 31” x 24-1/2”). Dissected and mounted on linen; trimmed to neatlines, as usual; a few marks and some minor spotting; some wear and holing to the linen of the folds, but overall in good state for an early map of this type. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£500

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London : John Murray, (1917). First edition. Eight Sherlock Holmes stories, including “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge”, “The Adventure of the Red Circle”, “The Adventure of the Dying Detective”, “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”, and the title story itself, “His Last Bow” – Holmes brought out of retirement to serve his country in the Great War. “The great detective stands for so much more than himself. He is a type, a myth, a household word, in two continents” (Westminster Gazette, 3rd November 1917).
Crown 8vo (186 x 122mm). (viii),(306),[vi]pp. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco, lavishly gilt; marbled sides; a very good, clean and sound copy.

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London : John Murray, (1986). First edition. Inscribed (to Lucy) and signed by Patrick Leigh Fermor on the front free endpaper. On foot across Europe at the age of eighteen in the 1930s – “like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar” – the second instalment (from the borders of Hungary to Transylvania) of a famous journey, reconstructed from maps, memories, and a diary – fascinating on every page. One of the twentieth-century classics – a “sublime masterpiece” (William Dalrymple).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],248,[ii]pp. Double-page map. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the John Craxton dust-jacket – the jacket a little sunned (as usual), but also very good.

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London : John Murray (Publishers), (2013). First edition. Signed by both editors, Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron. The posthumously published final instalment of Fermor’s famous journey on foot across Europe at the age of eighteen in the 1930s – “like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar”. The third leg – from the Iron Gates of Romania via Bucharest and Bulgaria to Salonika and Mount Athos. One of the twentieth-century classics – a “sublime masterpiece” (William Dalrymple).
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xxii),362pp. Portrait. Two maps. Original black boards, lettered in silver; an excellent copy in the Ed Kluz dust-jacket – the jacket also excellent.

£150

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London : George G. Harrap & Co., (1934). First jigsaw edition. An elegant Fletcher country-house mystery – the Ellingshurst diamonds go missing, a housemaid is murdered, and the mysterious tenant of the Dower House disappears. Originally published the previous year, but here reissued in the “Harrap Jig-Saw Mystery” series, with a pink tissue insert at p.236 demanding that the reader “Stop!”, followed by instructions to assemble the jigsaw puzzle contained in a compartment at the rear to reveal the culprit, and then to open up the pink-sealed final pages for the full denouement.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (3)-(252),[ii]pp. With all bar one of the 150 jigsaw puzzle pieces (lacking just one corner piece) and both halves of the pink tissue seal. Original orange cloth, blocked and lettered in black; faint strip of sunning at head; some spotting, mainly of edges and endpapers; some internal marks, but a good and still bright copy in the green and yellow dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn and creased, with a few marks, spots and short nicks, but a complete and uncommon survival.

£200

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London : Michael Joseph, (1940). First edition. Don Narciso Rich, a liberal lawyer no longer young and almost portly, volunteers to accompany Columbus on his third voyage to the Americas – “Here is history, not in terms of banner and caravel, but in living terms of greed, ambition, thirst, jealousy”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (320)pp. Endpaper map. Original red cloth, blocked and lettered in silver; mild darkening at head; a couple of marks; slight tanning to half-title, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the Philip Gough dust-jacket – the jacket a little creased, but with only minimal wear and also very good. Book Society bookplate (a design by Rex Whistler) with “September 1940” in manuscript inserted to verso of front free endpaper.

£125

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1936). First edition : the first issue, with the top edge stained blue. Wealthy collector of antiquities disappears after a hit-and-run – Thorndyke investigates.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 317,[iii]pp. Original pale blue cloth, lettered in black; just a hint of rubbing and sunning, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a typographic design in green and cerise on white – also just faintly rubbed and very lightly sunned, but an excellent copy – the highly fugitive colours of the jacket surviving remarkably well.

£500

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London, Edinburgh & Glasgow : A. Fullarton & Co., 1843. First edition. An extensive and comprehensive gazetteer of England and Wales, arranged alphabetically county-by-county, town-by-town, and village-by-village, from Abberley in Worcestershire to Zennor in Cornwall, paying special attention to the newly-laid railways and the recent parliamentary and poor-law reforms. Also with an analysis of the 1841 census returns. Fullarton’s father, Archibald Fullarton (1781-1836), had earlier published James Bell’s “A New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales” (1833-1834), but a copyright dispute with Samuel Lewis (1782-1865) necessitated a wholesale revision of the original text and a change of title, although the attractive maps of the earlier work, with appropriate updating, are for the most part retained.
Four volumes. Royal 8vo (249 x 160mm). (lxii),[2],648; [ii],616; [ii],656; [ii],640,[iv],80pp. Forty-seven steel engraved maps (a folding general map, with original outline hand colour, by Robert Scott (1771-1841) of Edinburgh; four folding maps of areas of Wales, two by John & Charles Walker of London – the North-Eastern section in duplicate in error; and forty-two county maps, many with pictorial vignettes, by Scott, Robert Gray & Son of Glasgow, and James Neele of London – Yorkshire given in three separate maps of the Ridings). Three engraved views (London, Liverpool, and Windsor) by William Bell Scott (1811-1890) and others. Bound in a striking contemporary half blue-black polished calf, banded and richly gilt; contrasting red labels; marbled sides, edges and endpapers; some mild rubbing and slight shelf-wear; some occasional light browning and spotting; a couple of short tears to folding maps, but a handsome set of an impressive production. Armorial bookplate of John Hales in each volume.

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London : Collier & Co., 1908. First British edition. It begins at a masked ball – a young woman in a Western outfit and a man dressed as a burglar. Love story, crime story, mystery novel. “A puzzle both subtle and intricate ... three distinct sets of intelligence, of different qualities, are set to work to unriddle the mystery” (The Scotsman, 18th May 1908) – police, journalist, and the extraordinary Professor Van Dusen – the “Thinking Machine”. Futrelle’s first “Thinking Machine” novel, originally published in New York in 1906.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (224)pp. Coloured frontispiece by Reginald Pannett. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt and blocked in blind, with two pictorial onlays by Pannett; just a hint of bruising; endpapers lightly tanned; a few edge spots, but a very good, bright and attractive copy.

£250

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1857. First edition. A delightfully extra-illustrated and beautifully bound copy of this still controversial biography of Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) – “revolution as well as revelation” in Margaret Oliphant’s phrase. Unsold copies were withdrawn in the face of a storm of legal threat and hostility. Extra-illustrated by the insertion of forty additional plates, portraits and views, a number hand-coloured, as are the original frontispiece portrait and view of Haworth.
Two volumes. Post 8vo (202 x 123mm). viii,352; viii,(328)pp. Engraved frontispieces of Charlotte Brontë (the George Richmond portrait) and Haworth. Facsimile. Extra-illustrated with forty additional engravings, etc. Bound, complete with half-titles, in a handsome later (mid twentieth-century) half black crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers, by George Bayntun of Bath; original cloth bound in a rear; a handful of minor marks and creases; some very mild occasional foxing to the additional plates, with a handful more seriously tanned; slight nick to one inserted plate, but an excellent set. Housed in a matching slip-case.

SOLD

London : Ward, Lock, & Tyler, 1872. Second edition. Powerful sketches of London life at the extremes from the campaigning journalist, James Greenwood – “The Lambeth Casual” – At the Hospital Gate; Newgate Market; A Dog Show; Concerning Muffins; The Bones of London; Christmas Eve in Brick Lane; The Leather Market; Watercresses; The Song-Bird Market; The Gleaners of the Thames Bank; The Halfpenny Barber, etc. First published in 1867. “Mr. Greenwood gives us some thirty of his clever sketches, made on the spot and from life, in the dark recesses of the metropolis ... One word as to the style of Mr. Greenwood’s narrative – it is excellent. Graphic and homely, it goes straight home” (The Globe, 14th December 1867).
Crown 8vo (19cm). viii,232pp. Twelve lively double-page plates depicting the various markets, etc. Original red cloth gilt over bevelled boards, the cloth decorated in blue, silver and black; all edges gilt; a touch sunned; some mild rubbing and light wear; the cloth with a few patches of discolouration; endpapers slightly cracked; the text clean, if a little shaken and slack; a good copy of an important contribution to Victorian thought on the amelioration of conditions for the London poor.

SOLD

London : Greening & Co., 1906. First edition. A winged Immortal from the planet Muran visits Earth “for the purposes of research – historical and otherwise”. Not much radium and not much romance, as the reviewer for the “Illustrated London News” (5th May 1906) pointed out – but in visiting the House of Commons, being demonstrated at the Royal Society, attending an “at home”, and interviewing prominent people, there is plenty of scope for some delicate satire on Edwardian Society. Written in his retirement by the Cornish journalist J. Henry Harris.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(236)pp + 52pp inserted publisher’s advertisements dated 1905-1906, printed in red and black. Original pictorial cloth, gilt and enamelled; a few minor marks; endpapers lightly tanned, but a very good, bright and sound copy.

£100

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1939. First edition. Household, “a discriminating hedonist, well versed in the pleasures of the table and the bed” as Michael Barber in ODNB has it, with his most famous and enduring novel – a laconic English sportsman sets out to bag “the biggest game on earth” – a Hitleresque dictator bent on the perversion of civilisation. Nominated at least once as “the best manhunt book in history”. Filmed as “Man Hunt” by Fritz Lang in 1941, with Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, etc., and again by Clive Donner in 1976, with Peter O’Toole, John Standing, Alastair Sim, Harold Pinter, etc.
Crown 8vo (177 x 113mm). [vi],(272)pp. Bound in a stylish recent full black morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a few small internal marks and spots, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1963). First edition. An early collection of twenty-three poems, including “Moon-Tulips”, “Moon-Freaks” and “The Dracula Vine”. Not published in the USA.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). 46,[ii]pp. Striking full-page illustrations by Rolf Brandt (1906-1986). Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge a little spotted, but a very good and bright copy in the Brandt dust-jacket – the jacket lightly sunned at spine (as usual), but complete, unworn and very good indeed.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1963). First edition. His first prose work – eleven Kiplingesque stories on the real manner of the evolution of the owl, whale, fox, polar bear, hyena, tortoise, bee, cat, donkey, hare and elephant. Illustrations by George Adamson (1913-2005).
Foolscap 4to (22cm). 72pp. Six full-page illustrations. Original blue canvas, lettered in gilt; a very good clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a pictorial Adamson design in blue, pink and black – just very lightly worn, and a little sunned at spine – but also very good. Ownership inscription of Anne C. Cassells.

SOLD

[Bideford] : Sunstone Press, (1987). First edition : one of 250 numbered copies (of 2,000) signed by both Ted Hughes and the illustrator, Reginald James Lloyd. Twenty-eight animal poems, richly illustrated with full page colour images.
Pott 8vo (16cm). [vi],[58]pp (numbered 1-(29) on rectos only). Very good indeed in the dust-jacket and the original slip-case (the case very lightly marked).

SOLD

London : W. Collins Sons & Co., (1917). First edition : one of just 2,000 copies. James mauling the plutocrats and laissez-faire capitalism – a novel unfinished at the time of his death, but here concluded with his extensive working notes, as well a perceptive preface by Percy Lubbock. “Nearer than anything else we possess to a living image of the creative process itself” (Manchester Guardian).
Post 8vo (21cm). (viii),(348)pp. Photogravure portrait frontispiece by Emil Otto Hoppé (1878-1972). Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; spine a touch darkened; minor wear at tips; a few slight marks; mild tanning of endpapers; some spotting, mainly of edges, but still a good copy.

£100

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London : for C. Dilly, 1798. First edition. “No, Sir; we had talk enough, but no conversation ...” – the essential Johnson distilled (with Boswell’s entire approbation). Johnson on conversation, wine, marriage, children, education, conduct, manners, London, trade, travelling, life, death, religion, politics, and much else.
Demy 8vo (213 x 130mm). [iv],446,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart modern sprinkled calf, richly gilt in period style; marbled endpapers; some spotting, mainly to outer leaves; a few minor marks, but a very good copy.

£400

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London : for H. Baldwin; J. Johnson; G. G. & J. Robinson [and numerous others], 1800-1801. New edition, corrected. An attractive early edition of Johnson’s “Lives”, which had first appeared some twenty years earlier. The lives of over fifty poets, some rather more eminent than others, ranging from brief notices to major critical essays on Milton, Dryden, Pope, Addison, Thomas Otway, Richard Savage, Edward Young, etc.
Four volumes. Post 12mo (180 x 103mm). (viii),298; (vi),(288); [iv],284; [iv],322,[ii]pp. Twenty-eight portraits, engraved by John Hall, James Caldwall, Joseph Collyer, Francesco Bartolozzi, and others. Bound in a restrained and elegant contemporary full polished tan calf gilt, by Thomas Barratt (1769-1833) of Oxford, with his label; green labels; numerals in roundels; sprinkled edges; marbled endleaves; some minor rubbing and wear; text lightly browned; a few tiny old wormholes, but a good and pleasant set. With the armorial bookplate of Sir Simon Haughton Sherard (1811-1882) in two volumes, and the earlier ownership inscription of Thomas Tudball (1784-1864) of Balliol College in another.

SOLD

New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951. First edition. His first and most famous novel, based on his own army experiences in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, which he witnessed. An immediate success, winner of the National Book Award, always included in lists of the major novels of the twentieth century, and the basis of the memorable and multiple Oscar-winning 1953 film, with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, etc.
Demy 8vo (207 x 136mm). [xii],(862)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half black morocco, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endleaves; very faint crease to the final leaves, but otherwise an excellent copy, clean and sound.

£400

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London : Cassell & Co., (1943). Second impression of the original December 1943 publication – a pleasing presentation copy, inscribed “To Gwen with love from her ageing friend Collie / Christmas 1943” – this his future wife Gwendoline Frances Mary Mitchell (1898-1990), whom he was to marry a few months later. A wide-ranging wartime anthology of uplifting and inspiring quotations on the nature of England and the English, with familiar extracts from Blake, Brooke, Browning, Churchill, Kipling, Masefield, Milton, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth, but with a far greater number of lesser-known, more contemporary, and specially commissioned pieces from a variety of voices, including Knox himself and his flatmate, the refugee German actor Olaf Olsen (1919-2000) – “Of a truth, you are a strange, puzzling people. You laugh when you should cry. And when you should cry, you blow your noses very loudly and go for long walks”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 244pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in black; slightly bruised; a little marked; edges a touch dusty and slightly spotted, but a good copy in a good dust-jacket – the jacket lightly spotted and a little frayed at rear fold, but with only light wear and a couple of short tears.

£100

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London : Henry Colburn, 1841. First edition. Lauder’s second collection of carefully preserved highland legends – a world of warlocks, water-kelpies, dominies and fighting men, with the Legend of the Clan-Allen Stewarts, etc.
Three volumes. Post 8vo (195 x 118mm). xxiv,292; [vi],294; [vi],(324)pp. Six etched plates by “Phiz” (Hablot Knight Browne). Bound in an attractive contemporary half red calf, with green labels, banded and gilt; marbled edges and endpapers; some mild rubbing and some occasional internal marking and spotting; plates spotted, but overall still a very good set.

SOLD

London : Laurie & Whittle, 1804. An elegant map of early nineteenth-century London on a scale of 3-3/4 inches to the mile (1:1690) - the coverage extending from Pentonville down to Walworth, and from Bayswater across to Stepney. Below the map is an extensive table of public offices and buildings. Engraved by Stephen William Cooke (1768-1854) and first published in 1801.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. Engraved surface 406 x 626mm (approx. 16” x 24-5/8”). Dissected, mounted on linen, and folding into the original card slip-case, with an engraved label titled “Laurie & Whittle’s New and Elegant Plan of London. 1805”; the slip-case lightly rubbed and slightly marked; the map with a couple of faint marks, but overall in very good state indeed.

SOLD

London : Robert John Bush, 1872. First edition. “There was an old person of Ealing, Who was wholly devoid of good feeling” – a very extensive collection of 100 Lear limericks, together with much of his nonsensical botany, and further nonsense rhymes – all with his own idiosyncratic illustrations.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). viii,[286]pp. Illustrated throughout. Original cloth-backed pictorial boards; lightly worn; lower board unevenly tanned and spotted, but an attractive copy, tightened and refurbished; endpapers rejointed; mild spotting of edges; a few outer edges a little marked, but overall a very good copy of a difficult title. With the armorial bookplate and “Crescent” motto of Thomas William Tatton of Wythenshawe (1816-1885), High Sheriff of Cheshire.

SOLD

London : Ward, Lock & Bowden, 1896. First edition in this form. His first novel having been banned in Russia, Le Queux dedicated his second to the Tzar – the sensational but highly sympathetic memoirs of a Jewish Russian nihilist activist. “That I have been compelled to bestow fictitious names upon the actors in these dramas, add and suppress certain incidents, and change the scene in more than one instance, is obvious; nevertheless, I anticipate that many will recognise in Anton Prèhznev’s stories solutions of more than one sensational mystery that has startled Europe”. Twelve of the fifteen extraordinary individual tales, many set in London, had earlier appeared in “Strange Tales of a Nihilist” (1892), but all have here been revised and to some extent re-written; two now appear under different titles, and three have been added, including “The Velvet Paw” – on a foggy December evening in London, Prèhznev is followed on to the underground at Temple tube station by a tall auburn-haired young woman, dressed all in black.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 320pp. Original green decorative pictorial cloth, lettered in gilt on spine, and blocked and lettered in red and black; lightly rubbed; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy of an uncommon title – most of the institutional copies being of the “colonial edition” in a plain binding. W. H. Smith & Son blind-stamp and contemporary (London 1896) ownership inscription of Stewart Foulis.

£200

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London : Geoffrey Bles, (1954). First edition. The fifth instalment of “The Chronicles of Narnia” – an “ancient story, which takes us right back to the reign of High King Peter, tells how the Boy and the Horse together escaped from the cruel country of Calormen, through the city of Tashbaan, across the desert, into Archenland, over the mountains, and so at last (with the help of Aslan) to Narnia itself”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (200)pp. Endpaper map. Frontispiece and illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Original grey boards, lettered in silver; spine lightly and unevenly sunned; a few faint spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the original pictorial Pauline Baynes dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn, slightly chipped at head, lightly marked, a little sunned and tanned, with a short tear and a couple of nicks, but complete and better than it often is. Dated contemporary (1954) gift inscription to Carol on verso of front free endpaper.

SOLD

London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1955. First edition. The sixth instalment of “The Chronicles of Narnia”, taking us back to “the dawn of Narnian time and the day when the Beasts first talked, which was also the first day when people from our world first went to Narnia. It all happened because Diggory’s wicked uncle, who was a magician, sent him to the Wood Between the Worlds”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (184)pp. Illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Original green boards, lettered in silver; some spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the original pictorial Pauline Baynes dust-jacket – lightly rubbed, a touch sunned, and a little spotted on inner flaps and lower panel, but also very good. Neat contemporary ownership inscription on front free endpaper.

£500

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London : Edward Stanford, 1884. Second and best edition – a considerably revised and enlarged version of this wonderfully illustrated major history, first published the previous year. The additions and revisions were such that a separately published thirty-page “Supplement”, with four extra maps, was produced for those who had bought the original edition. Probably the most comprehensive history of London since Stow, the first volume containing a general history, the second a detailed account of each parish in the suburbs. “Mr. W. J. Loftie’s ‘History of London’ will take rank as a classic. No one who is competent to judge will lay down the book without a feeling of admiration” (contemporary review in The World).
Two volumes. Post 8vo (202 x 136mm). xxii,(448); (viii),(450)pp. Twenty-six maps and plans, including facsimiles of maps by Ryther, Hollar, Seale and Rocque, maps of London at different periods, and maps of the Grosvenor, Marylebone and Portman estates, mostly folding, and many in colour. Sixteen further illustrations, views, panoramas, etc. Bound in a smart recent half burgundy morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; a few minor internal marks and creases; occasional slight tears to the folds, but a very good set. Old ownership inscriptions of D. Janson and Thomas J. Hobson.

SOLD

London : Arthur Gray (Books), [1934]. First edition. “At the end of an evening spent in the West End of London this man found his mind a complete blank as to the events of an hour of it, and he discovered in his possession, inexplicably, a parcel of diamonds that represented a fortune. How, where, and with whom, had he spent the mystery hour?” – Philip Granger is soon mixed up with Doc Summers, bland and ambassadorial king of crime (drawn from the life), but the beautiful Olive is intent on saving him.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original orange cloth, lettered in black; small and faint band of discolouration at foot of spine; a few edge-spots; text lightly tanned; a couple of nicks and small flaws, but a good copy of an uncommon title – in the striking original dust-jacket by H. W. Perl (1897-1952) – the jacket a little worn, and lightly creased and sunned, with a few repaired splits and a tear, but complete and attractive still.

Currently on display at Bryars & Bryars in central London, please enquire about availability – books@ashrare.com

London : Henry Colburn, 1839. First edition. Marryat’s celebrated tale of the Flying Dutchman, ghost ships, holy relics, Arabian magic, demon pilots, and the Inquisition, which also manages to incorporate the story of the White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains, often separately anthologised and credited as “the first significant werewolf tale in English, and still one of the best” (Bleiler).
Three volumes. Post 8vo. [iv],300; [ii],(290); [ii],266pp. Bound, with the half-title in vol.i, but without the advertisements in vol.iii, in a handsome, later (early twentieth-century) half red crushed morocco, banded and prettily gilt by Riviere & Son; top edges gilt; marbled endleaves; spines a touch dulled; some light rubbing and wear to joints and tips; internally a few minor marks, spots and creases, but otherwise a very attractive set.

SOLD

London : Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1846. First edition : the secondary issue, with the eight dramatic engraved plates by James Stephenson (1808-1886) which were not included in the first issue. Familiar Marryat terrain with rip-roaring adventures and derring-do – off Hispaniola, Port Royal, Liverpool, Senegal, sharks, tigers, spies, London, the Tower, Jacobites, Bordeaux, Brazil, diamond mines, etc.
Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (161 x 98mm). [iv],(380); [iv],(362),[ii]pp. Eight engraved plates. Bound, complete with half-titles and final imprint leaf, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) full turquoise morocco, banded and richly gilt, by Riviere & Son; inner gilt dentelles; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; original pictorial cloth gilt covers preserved at the rear of each volume; spines inevitably a little tanned; short scratch to an upper board; internally a few very minor marks and creases; plates slightly shaved in binding, but a very good copy. No copy of this illustrated issue located in any major UK library.

£250

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London : William Heinemann, (1935). First edition. “‘Christmas ought to be brought up to date’, Maria said; ‘it ought to have gangsters and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols’”. Kay Harker and the battle for the magical box which annihilates space and time — “The children will like it. And grown-ups will probably revel in it” (The Scotsman, 5th September 1935); “One of the most delicious children’s stories I have ever read” (Western Mail, 2nd January 1936). More of a loose companion piece than strictly speaking a sequel to Masefield’s “The Midnight Folk” (1927).
Crown 8vo (190 x 120mm). [viii],(418)pp. Pictorial head and tailpieces. Bound in a handsome recent full blue morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; minor marks to half-title, but otherwise a most attractive copy. Dated (1949) gift inscription to half-title.

SOLD

London : C. Arthur Pearson, 1899. First edition. The tongue-in-cheek thesis is that nothing about the home could not be better managed by men, from purchasing household requisites to the rearing of children. The second half of the book is made up of a selection of letters – from earnest agreement to howls of outrage – received by the author after parts of the book had appeared in magazines. The author was the truculent Irish journalist, playwright, bohemian, and man-about-town, Augustus Moore, brother of the novelist George Moore.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(290),[ii]pp. Illustrations by Yorick. Original pictorial cloth; some minor rubbing and wear; endpapers a little spotted; edges lightly tanned; a touch shaken, but a good copy.

£100

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[London : George Virtue, 1832]. One of the most attractive and popular of all antique maps of the county, decorated with a “gothick” architectural border, coats of arms, and vignette views of Holkham and Norwich. Originally engraved by William Schmollinger (1811?-1869) for Moule’s partwork series “The English Counties Delineated” (London : 1830-1837) – and here in early state before the addition of railways, etc.
Steel line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 202 x 268mm (approx. 8” x 10-5/8”). Trimmed a little tight (as usual); a few faint spots and specks, but overall in very good and clean state. Rare in this early state and with original colour. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£100

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[London : George Virtue, 1831]. A most attractive “gothick” map of the county, bordered with vine-leaves, coats of arms, and inset views of Great Malvern, Worcester, and Croom or Croome Court. Originally engraved by James Bingley (1796-1869) in 1831 for Moule’s part-work series “The English Counties Delineated” (1830-1837) – and here in very early state, before the later additions.
Steel line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 261 x 202mm (approx. 10-1/4” x 8”). Lightly cropped at head (as usual); a few tiny specks, but overall in very good and clean state. Rare in this early state and with original colour. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£100

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London : John Long, (1906). First edition. A scarce Edwardian murder mystery from the war correspondent turned novelist. An old man well-known in London and sinfully rich disappears off the face of the earth. A drunken journalist identifies the body seven years later and decides to investigate – then changes his mind. Belle Molloy, whose Irish lilt tends to lapse into broader brogue, and her beautiful young friend Miss Lilian Lee also feature.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 318,[ii] + (32)pp inserted advertisements dated June 1906. Original pictorial cloth, lettered in gilt on spine and enamelled in red, white and black on upper cover; just lightly rubbed and a touch bruised; mild tanning of endpapers; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of Arthur Garratt.

£125

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London : Arthur Gray (Books), [1934]. First edition. “Someone once said that the parties in Hollywood sounded like school treats compared to those given by Maisie Bellamy” – film critic Peter Day knows everyone in the Elstree set – young Lucinda Carey does not. Conflicts between love and career, “the glamour of the film world; written with first-hand knowledge”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (250),[ii]pp. Original jade cloth, lettered in black; a few minor marks, but a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket by H. W. Perl (1897-1952) – a little sunned, label neatly removed, but very lightly used and bright and attractive. Just two copies (British Library and New York) located in the world’s major libraries.

£125

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New York : Gemor Press, (1945). First edition. “The unveiling of women is a delicate matter. It will not happen overnight. We are all afraid of what we shall find”. One of 1,000 copies of the regular edition, illustrated with five woodcuts by “Ian Hugo” – Nin’s husband Hugh Parker Guiler (1898-1985). This copy signed by Nin and amicably inscribed to Raymond Daum – “Hoping we may collaborate!” – Raymond Witham Daum (1923-2003), cameraman and archivist, perhaps best-known for his “Walking with Garbo” (1991). His archive documenting his friendships with Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo and other well-known figures is now housed at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [iv],(184),[iv],[4]pp – including integral endleaves. Five woodblock illustrations by Ian Hugo. Original decorative boards in a Hugo design in maroon and cream; some very minor wear and a few slight marks; tiny sticker mark on rear board; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy.

£500

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London : Secker & Warburg, 1949. First edition. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”. The most compelling and chilling novel of the twentieth century – not least in that it now appears to have been widely adopted as an instruction manual. “Every statue and street and building has been re-named, every date has been altered ... History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”.
Crown 8vo (184 x 122mm). 312pp. Bound in a smart recent full dark green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy, handsomely bound.

£1,000

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1885. First edition. The great stylist’s philosophical novel of ancient Rome – the young Marius, secretary to the stoic Marcus Aurelius, pursues integrity and the aesthetic life. One of the most remarkable novels of the period, stretching the boundaries of fiction, and exploring questions of morality, religion, philosophy and gender. A key text of the modern movement, influencing authors as diverse as Hardy, Joyce, Wilde and Woolf. “We consciously looked to Pater for our philosophy” (W. B. Yeats).
Two volumes. Post 8vo (202 x 132mm). [viii],260; [viii],246,[ii]pp. Bound in an elegant later (early twentieth-century) half blue morocco; marbled sides and endpapers; top edges gilt; a few very faint signs of age and use, but a very good set of an uncommon book. With the pictorial book-room bookplate of Allan D. Macdonald and the later (1950) ownership inscription of David Fyfe Anderson (1904-1988), the Scottish obstetrician, in each volume.

£400

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London : George Philip & Son, [1913]. First edition. An attractive and inventive map of London, the map divided up into sixteen double-sided individual cards, which could be carried individually in the pocket according to the area required. The coverage, at a scale of two inches to the mile, extends northwards to Cricklewood, Kilburn, Hampstead, Holloway, Highbury, Clapton, Leyton and Stratford; to the east Canning Town, Woolwich, and Eltham; to the south Beckenham, Sydenham, Norwood, Streatham and Wimbledon; and westwards to Hammersmith and Barnes. Additional cards include a key map, a tube and road map of the central area, and bird’s-eye views of theatreland and the City.
Sixteen colour-printed cards, each 157 x 90mm (approx. 6-1/8” x 3-1/2”), contained in a decorative card slip-case; case a little marked and slightly creased; the outer cards slightly fingered, but a very good and uncommon survival.

SOLD

London : Colllins, 1964. First edition. The culmination of Phillips’ extraordinary thirty-year trawl through the parish rate books, the land register, the crown lease book, the licensing records, the insurance documents and the early poll books – building up to more or less a house-by-house reconstruction of large parts of the eighteenth century West End – Berkeley Square, Cavendish Square, Charing Cross, Covent Garden, Hanover Square, Holborn, Leicester Square, Red Lion Square, St. James, St. Martin’s Lane, Soho Square, the Strand, etc.
Royal 4to (32cm). (322)[ii]pp. Plates (seventeen in colour). Profuse illustrations. Original red buckram, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£200

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Gerrards Cross : Colin Smythe, 1971. First edition. “There is magic in every carpet. Cities and villages exist right under your feet ...” — his first book. “A reviewer who stumbles upon a book of what he considers to be quite extraordinary quality also finds himself in some difficulty. The language of praise has become so debased — notably by book reviewers — that it’s not easy either to sound convincing or to do justice ... Am I too enthusiastic? Well, it’s that I feel it’s a new dimension in imagination and the prose is beautiful” (Rosemarie Doyle in The Irish Times). Loosely inserted is a manuscript note from the publisher, Colin Smythe, on his business notepaper — “Sorry, I forgot this in my letter: the enclosed may amuse you, also by T. P.”, attached to which are press-cuttings of the review quoted above and ten entertaining 1973 Pratchett cartoons depicting goings-on at the government’s fictional “Warlock Hall” paranormal research establishment, as published in Smythe’s publication, the “Psychic Researcher”, as well as an example of Smythe’s personal ex-libris label.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). (196)pp. Illustrations by the author. Original olive boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Pratchett dust-jacket — also very good and protected by an acetate sleeve. Small blurred library stamp on verso of title.

SOLD

London : Architectural Press, (1946). First edition. “Ewbank’d inside and Atco’d out, the English suburban residence and the garden which is an integral part of it stand trim and lovingly cared for in the mild sunshine” – Richards’ faultless homage to suburbia, written while he was serving overseas. If not regarded as a minor classic, then it should be. Illustrated with memorable two-colour lithographs by John Piper (1903-1992).
Demy 8vo (22cm). 86pp. Eight plates. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt; some mild spotting to edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good, bright, and sound copy in the Piper dust-jacket – the jacket a touch sunned, with some minor wear, a couple of tiny nicks and chips, a few spots and some mild discolouration to the back panel – but a complete and welcome survival.

£100

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London : Virtue, Spalding & Co., 1875. First edition. A charmingly illustrated study and guide to the town-crosses, market-crosses, Eleanor crosses, roadside crosses, etc., scattered all across England. This copy has been extra illustrated by the insertion of additional matter, including seven early photographs of crosses, etc., at Launceston and Lostwithiel, press cuttings, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,(160)pp. Seventy-two wood-engraved illustrations. Original pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards; just a hint of wear and bruising; small mark to back cover; slightly shaken, but a very good and bright copy. With the armorial bookplate of Lieutenant-Colonel the Rev Christopher T. Perowne (1904-1973), the “Chindit Bishop”, and occasional neat pencilled notes. Small bookseller’s ticket of James Gemmell of Edinburgh at rear.

SOLD

London : Macmillan London, (1971). First edition. An appealing presentation copy, inscribed “For Arthur with constant / devotion and comradeship / in the art / of history and letters / from A. L.” – the recipient being fellow historian Sir Arthur Bryant (1899-1985). A pioneering study of the social life of Elizabethan England, from court to countryside, with chapters on class, food and sanitation, sex, parish and sport, custom, witchcraft and astrology, etc. The early part of the book in particular has been much marked and underlined by Bryant, with occasional disagreement and some minor annotation.
Demy 8vo (23cm). x,(294)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original blue cloth gilt; top edge blue; a little marked and bruised; internally a considerable amount of staining, mainly to page-edges – Sir Arthur was evidently a messy reader; a well-thumbed copy in a battered and worn dust-jacket – but unique and important in tying together two of the most distinguished English historians of the twentieth century.

£100

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London : J. Robins, 1818. An attractive antique map – London and its environs two hundred years ago. At a scale of half an inch to the mile, the map extends northwards to include Welwyn, east to Basildon and Rochester, south beyond Reigate and Guildford, and west to Beaconsfield. Drawn and engraved by John Russell and originally produced in 1808 for the part-work by “Dr David Hughson” (David Pugh) known as “London; Being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis” (London : 1805-1809) – but here in an updated and corrected later impression.
Copper line engraving on paper. Full original hand colour. Engraved surface 356 x 400mm (approx. 14” x 15-3/4”). Cropped tight to right-hand margin, with a short nick just touching the map; old folds; a couple of faint and tiny marks, but overall in very good state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Howgego 246 – not listing this later variant.

£200

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Boston : Hardy, Pratt & Co., 1902. The elegant “Tour de France” edition, limited to 1,250 sets – this set unnumbered. A celebrated eye-witness account of the French court from 1691 to 1723 – Versailles, Louis XIV, the Duc d’Orléans, Ninon de l’Enclos, Louis de France, Madame de Maintenon, and all the rest. The twenty volumes of the original French edition, edited by Pierre Adolph Chéruel (1809-1891), have here been translated and abridged to four volumes by Katharine Prescott Wormeley (1830-1908).
Four volumes. Post 8vo (205 x 140mm). x,(346); x,330; x,(346); xiv,396pp. Forty-two photogravure portraits, some hand-coloured. Genealogical table. Bound in an elegant contemporary half blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; a little worn and sunned; some spotting of edges; lower boards and endleaves slightly affected by damp, with some softening and marking, but a good, serviceable and not unattractive set. Pictorial bookplates and ownership inscriptions of Roy McWilliams in each volume.

£200

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London : Houlston & Wright, [1859]. First edition. Vivid sketches of London life, hour by hour – Billingsgate Market at 4 a.m., printing The Times at 5, Covent Garden Market at 6, and so on through the day – commuters, in court, a fashionable marriage, the London Docks, auctions, clubs, a theatrical green room, etc., until a late debate in the House of Commons, a Bal Masque, and Bow Street police station in the early hours of the morning round off the day. “London scenes of every kind, and London people of every grade, he knows thoroughly; indeed, more remarkable even than the microscopic accuracy of his descriptions is the universality of the knowledge which enables him to describe ... he has thoroughly dissected London life, and taken up and laid bare the minutest artery” (Illustrated Times, 29th October 1859).
Demy 8vo (22cm). xii,(5)-392pp. Portrait frontispiece and forty-seven wood-engravings of London scenes crowded with life by William McConnell (1833-1867). Original orange-brown cloth, elaborately patterned, by Leighton, Son & Hodge, with their ticket; some very minor rubbing and wear; internally a handful of spots, but a very good copy of a sparkling contribution to the literature of London. Ownership inscription of Jack Simmons; occasional pencil annotation.

£250

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New York : Simon & Schuster, (1928). First edition in English. Translated from the original German by the extraordinary American Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961), renegade Soviet spy, and with an introduction by John Galsworthy (1867-1933) – “A delicious book. Delicious not only for children but for those who are no longer so fortunate ... a little masterpiece ... I particularly recommend it to sportsmen”.
Post 8vo (198 x 127mm). 293,[i]pp. Frontispiece and illustrations by Kurt Wiese (1887-1974). Bound in a smart recent half green morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original pictorial front endpapers; half-title washed; a couple of very minor internal flaws, but a very good copy indeed.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1939). First British edition. Six sequences of Saroyan short stories – “Mr. Saroyan is so diverse, so expressive, that he is never a bore and always amusing ... Seldom cynical, occasionally angry, he is always seeing, watching, understanding, and transposing, into his highly artificial prose that achieves the ultra-natural, the ways, foibles, desires and idiocies of mankind ... he has a spate of words at need and sometimes lets them tumble over one another, but always as trained acrobats, never with casual effect or effort” (Birmingham Daily Post, 21st March 1939).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 316,[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in yellow; a few faint spots to endpapers, but an exceptionally good copy of a book where the yellow blocking has usually suffered – in the striking original dust-jacket – the jacket with minimal wear and a sprinkle of spots, but also exceptionally good.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, (1947). First edition. Almost 300 Sassoon poems, drawn from his eight earlier published collections, and including the previously unpublished “Microcosmos”.
Post 8vo (22cm). xvi,(270),[ii]pp. Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good copy, bright, clean and sound, in the dust-jacket – the fragile jacket just faintly creased also very good. Ownership inscription of Rosamond Cave.

£100

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[Augsburg : Mattheus Seutter, 1740]. A boldly engraved full-size antique map of the whole of Scandinavia, with a striking allegorical cartouche. Produced at Augsburg for his “Atlas Novus” by Matthaeus Seutter, Geographer to the Emperor Charles VI.
Copper line engraving on paper, with full original hand colour. Engraved surface 488 x 565mm (approx. 19-1/8” x 22-1/4”). Slight browning to central vertical fold; a few marks to blank margins; small repair at foot, but otherwise in very good state. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£500

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1895. First edition. “Morality is mainly a question of circumstance, and largely dependent on the chances of detection”. Her first novel – the beautiful, witty, wise, cynical and deeply unconventional Lady Joan Relton. Although published in the “Keynotes” series, with the usual Aubrey Beardsley title-page, Sharp’s attitude towards her fin-de-siècle contemporaries was at best ambivalent: “I am tired of being a Bohemian; every little pigmy who writes ballads and lets his hair grow and doesn’t wash is a Bohemian”, says one of the characters. Sharp, herself deeply unconventional, later found fame and notoriety as one of the most powerful and eloquent voices in the suffragette movement.
Crown 8vo (180 x 112mm). [iv],182pp. Bound, without advertisements, in a smart near contemporary (early twentieth century) half brown polished calf, banded and gilt in a floral pattern; marbled sides, endpapers and edges; just a touch of rubbing; mild tanning of binder’s blanks, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1950). First edition. “A novel from one of the best of living story-tellers ... He writes of England, a little, of Malaya during the war and after it, and of the Australian outback most of all ... To be able to produce, and with every page to sustain that extraordinary tension, is this writer’s individual gift ... it has given us some mesmerically readable novels, of which A Town like Alice ... is the best so far” (The Sphere, 17th June 1950).
Crown 8vo (183 x 119mm). [vi].332,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt; top edge red; some tanning to the two outer leaves; a few leaves a little marked; a handful of spots, but a handsome copy of a twentieth-century classic.

SOLD

London : Cassell & Co., 1902-1903. First edition : bound from the original monthly parts. “Everything is entirely original – articles, illustrations, and treatment” (Pall Mall Gazette). Over 170 separate essays, all heavily illustrated, on every conceivable aspect of life in Edwardian London – from smart shopping in Whiteley’s to hardship shopping in the farthing shop in the East End, multiple wedding services in Walworth, ghettos of Russian and Italian immigrants, from sweatshops to polo playing at Ranelagh. Contributors include St. John Adcock, R. Austin Freeman, Arthur Griffiths, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Arthur Morrison, Edwin Pugh, W. Pett Ridge, Sims himself, and a raft of others with particular expertise on various topics. Many of the illustrations are from specially taken photographs, but others are from many of the leading illustrators of the day – H. M. Brock, Gordon Browne, Lucien Davies, Hal Hurst, H. M. Paget, Fred Pegram, F. H. Townsend, etc. “A brilliant literary and pictorial panorama of this wonderful metropolis of ours” (The Globe, 25th March 1903). T
Three volumes. Demy 4to (30cm). viii,384; viii,384; viii,(384)pp. Around 1400 illustrations, some full page. Bound in the publisher’s de luxe half crimson leather, banded and gilt; sprinkled edges; some very minor rubbing and slight fading; a few tiny marks, but a very good set of a remarkable publication.

SOLD

London : Editions Poetry London, (1945). First edition. “I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my anticipation to face the moment I most desire”. Smart’s celebrated fictional account of her love affair with the poet George Barker (1913-1991) – “a visceral journey into the human heart, written in a language so urgent, raw and lyrical that each sentence is a bruise or a kiss” (Raffaella Barker).
Demy 8vo (211 x 130mm). 54,[ii]pp. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco, lettered down spine in gilt; top edge gilt; a most attractive copy of the first edition of this scarce modern classic.

£250

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1903. First edition. Eleven short stories, with illustrations by Somerville. “Once more the authors write of what they have seen and heard, with a direct simplicity which is akin to genius … Such work should live forever” (Leeds Mercury, 25th May 1903).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],274,2pp + [4]pp inserted advertisements. Ten full-page illustrations. Original grey cloth, lettered in black and gilt, with a striking pictorial design by Somerville; very lightly bruised at head, some spotting of edges and text, but otherwise a very good copy.

£100

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1908. First edition : in the primary binding, the white cloth band extending across both front and back covers. The second volume of Major Yeates stories — eleven tales, illustrated by Somerville. “The present volume quite bears out the brilliant reputation … won by the original R. M. stories. It could not possibly be superior, and we are loth to admit that it is any way inferior … Miss Somerville and ‘Martin Ross’ deserve the unqualified gratitude of the reading public” (Irish Times, 2nd October 1908).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(316),(4)pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original pale green cloth, with onlaid white band, lettered in gilt and black; a touch sunned; a few specks; endpapers a little tanned; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good and still bright copy.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, [ca.1998]. A twenty-fourth printing of the 1968 second edition. Inscribed, “To Ira Nadel” and signed by Tom Stoppard on the front free endpaper. The introductory cast-list of the 1967 National Theatre production is further signed by John Stride (1936-2018) and Edward Petherbridge (b.1936), who played the title roles. Loosely inserted is a National Theatre postcard of Stride and Petherbridge in that original production. Nadel was the author of “Double Act : A Life of Tom Stoppard” in 2002.
Post 8vo (20cm). (94),[ii]pp. Original wrappers; a couple of minor scuffs, but a very good copy. From the collection of Professor Ira Nadel (1943-2021), Stoppard’s biographer.

£250

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New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1968. First American edition. Signed by Tom Stoppard on the front free endpaper. Stoppard’s anarchic novel of modern London – the penniless dandy Lord Malquist, his fanatical Boswellian biographer (Moon), a lion banned from the Ritz, an Irish Saviour on a donkey, three irresistible women, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],180,[ii],[2]pp. Original cloth-backed boards; slight production flaw to two leaves, but otherwise a very good, sound, and clean copy in the Emil Antonucci dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped and a little sunned, as usual, but otherwise also very good. From the collection of Professor Ira Nadel (1943-2021), Stoppard’s biographer.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1973). First edition : the wrappers issue. Signed by Tom Stoppard on the title-page. “Stoppard uses radio as a carver uses wood: we are given a near flawless miniature by a craftsman utterly at home with his tools” (Jeremy Rundall in the Sunday Times).
Post 8vo (20cm). (80)pp. Original wrappers; a couple of faint and tiny marks; just the merest hint of bruising, but a very good copy. From the collection of Professor Ira Nadel (1943-2021), Stoppard’s biographer.

SOLD

New York : Grove Press, [1974]. First American edition. Signed by Stoppard on the front free endpaper. A review copy, with the publisher’s slip loosely inserted – the slip revealing that the actual publication date was 1974, to coincide with the first American production of the play in that year, and not the 1972 of the copyright date, which has confused countless cataloguers. “Simply dazzling. It takes your breath away with its sheer exuberance of literacy, its cascade of words and conspicuous display of intellect. It is also extraordinarily funny” (Clive Barnes in the New York Times, 20th February 1974).
Post 8vo (22cm). (92),[iv]pp. Music. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, sound and clean copy in the photographic dust-jacket (Michael Hordern and Diana Rigg in the original London production) – the jacket also very good. From the collection of Professor Ira Nadel (1943-2021), Stoppard’s biographer.

SOLD

London : Poetry, 1939. The first issue of this legendary magazine, originally called simply “Poetry”, the first series of which ran until 1951. This copy signed next to their contributions by nine of the original contributors – Audrey Beecham, Dorian Cooke, Walter de la Mare, Lawrence Durrell (twice), Clifford Dyment, Philip O’Connor, Herbert Read, Edwin Smith and Stephen Spender (twice). Other contributors to a highly impressive first issue include George Barker, Gavin Ewart, John Gawsworth, J. F. Hendry, Rayner Heppenstall, Louis Macneice, Nicholas Moore, Keidrych Rhys, Tambimuttu himself, Dylan Thomas and Laurence Whistler.
Crown 4to (25cm). [32]pp. Photograph by Edwin Smith. Three wood engravings by Diana Gardner. Original stapled wrappers, with a design in red and black by Hector Whistler; some mild spotting, mainly to wrappers; just a hint of wear and a touch of rusting to staples, but overall a very good copy of a highly evocative survival.

£250

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1971. First edition. Widowed and elderly Laura Palfrey takes a taxi through the rain to join the other residents at the Claremont Hotel on the Cromwell Road — but she later tells a lie. Both her funniest and her saddest book, reviewed by Kingsley Amis as a “continuously fascinating novel, always pushing the reader one way and another”. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a television adaptation in 1973 won Celia Johnson a BAFTA Best Actress, and Joan Plowright took on the title role for the 2005 film.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(206),[ii]pp. Original lavender boards, blocked in black and ruled and lettered in gilt; a tiny sliver of sunning to head and one faint mark, but a very good, clean and sound copy indeed of an unaccountably scarce book, in the original Adrian Daintrey dust-jacket — just faintly tanned at spine, but otherwise very good, fresh and quite unworn.

SOLD

London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1852-1853. First edition : a mixed set, with the second and third volumes marked “second edition” (i.e. the second printings of the first edition). Opening in 1691 in the days of William of Orange and Queen Mary, ending under Queen Anne in 1718, and generally considered the best historical novel of its time. Interesting in bringing in Addison, Steele and Swift as characters, Trollope thought it Thackeray’s masterpiece, although George Eliot found it “the most uncomfortable book you can imagine”.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (183 x 121mm). 344; vi,(320); vi,324pp. Bound in a slightly later Victorian half cherry polished calf, banded and gilt; green labels; marbled sides and endpapers; sprinkled edges; just a hint of rubbing; a few minor internal marks and spots, but a very good set. With the decorative Carr Manor, Meanwood, bookplate of the distinguished physician Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt (1836-1925) of Leeds, inventor of the clinical thermometer, in each volume.

£250

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London : Hurst & Blackett, 1865. First edition. A delightfully extra-illustrated copy, augmented and expanded to two volumes by the insertion of some sixty additional engravings, portraits and views. “Deals not so much with the London of the ghost-stories ... as with the London consecrated by manifold traditions – a city every street and alley of which teems with interesting associations, every paving-stone of which marks, as it were, the abiding-place of some ancient legend or biographical story; in short this London of the present haunted by the memories of the past”. With separate chapters on Charing Cross, Drury Lane, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Long Acre, St. Giles, St. Martin’s Lane, the Savoy, Somerset House, the Strand, Temple Bar, etc., and a fund of out-of-the-way anecdote of Londoners past.
One volume, bound in two. Demy 8vo (216 x 139mm). (iii)-(xvi),256; [ii],257-518,[ii]pp (the half-title used as a title to the second volume). Numerous wood engraved illustrations by Frederick William Fairholt F.S.A. (1814-1866), augmented with some sixty inserted engravings, two double-page, one hand-coloured. Bound in a near contemporary handsome full crimson russia, banded and gilt, by Zaehnsdorf; top edges gilt; inner gilt dentelles; floral-patterned silk endpapers; lightly worn and rubbed, but a most attractive compilation.

SOLD

London : John Murray, 1876. First edition. A very useful dictionary, based on personal visits, of what are now the London suburbs – from Abbey Wood to Yiewsley, with short histories, notes on the principal buildings, population figures, etc. “Until now ... there has been nothing approaching Mr. Thorne’s work in fulness of detail or convenience of arrangement. If Londoners remain any longer ignorant of the many attractive spots that are still to be found just beyond their own doors, it will not be for want of pleasant and trustworthy guidance” (Pall Mall Gazette, 16th February 1877).
Two volumes. Post 8vo (21cm). vi,410 + 20pp advertisements dated October 1876; [ii],411-794,[ii] + 32pp adverts dated January 1876. Original cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt, and blocked in blind; some light wear to extremities; a few faint marks; endpapers sightly cracked; a touch shaken, but a good and serviceable set.

£100

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London : Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1855 [but 1854]. First edition. Trollope’s fourth book and the first of the Barchester novels. Only 1,000 copies were printed, of which Sadleir believed perhaps as many as 400 were later pulped. “Now, of course, ‘The Warden’ is rare. The demand for Trollope first editions far exceeds even the total limits of the original printing number. In consequence the price has risen rapidly” (Sadleir – writing in 1928).
Crown 8vo (194 x 122mm). iv,336 + 24pp inserted advertisements, dated September 1854. Bound in an elegant later half chestnut morocco, banded and gilt, by Robert Riviere & Son; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; a small area of slight fading to the top of the front board, but otherwise a very good copy indeed – clean, sound and beautifully bound. From the celebrated collection of the antiquary Harry Lawrence Bradfer-Lawrence (1887-1965), with his armorial bookplate.

SOLD

London : Chapman & Hall, 1879. First edition. A scarce late Trollope, featuring on Sadleir’s “A”-list of rarities (XIX Century Fiction, 1951). Disinherited son makes good in the goldfields of Australia, returning home a wealthy man to marry Hester Bolton, but the delightfully wicked Euphemia Smith turns up to claim a prior marriage. Trollope makes interesting use of his Post Office experience to hinge the story on a forged postmark. “Mr Trollope has perhaps never hit upon a story that more strongly arouses the reader’s attention and sympathy, and never told one with more mastery of the whole situation, in small things no less than in great” (The Graphic, 26th July 1879).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (181 x 120mm). vi,290; vi,296; vi,302,[ii]pp. Bound, complete with half-titles and final blank, in a most handsome later half morocco, gilt on wide bands and decorated with small onlay flowers, by Zaehnsdorf; all edges gilt; marbled sides and matching endpapers; just a hint of rubbing; a few minor internal marks, but overall clean and sound, and a very good set indeed. With the attractive bookplates of both Ernest George Mocatta (1849-1927), stockbroker and book-collector, and Harold Charles (Harley) Drayton (1901-1966), the renowned financier whose library was dispersed at Sotheby’s in 1968. Sadleir 55 – “very scarce in fine condition”.

£1,000

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Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1872-1873. First editions of two companion volumes in Blackwood’s “Ancient Classics for English Readers” – the historian Edward Walford with a complete introduction to Juvenal, with a biography, chapters on satires and satirists, morals at Rome, women at Rome, town-life at Rome, Juvenal’s modern imitators, etc., while the clergyman and classicist W. Lucas Collins provides a similar service for Plautus and Terence, with chapters on ancient comic drama, Menander, and full analysis of the comedies.
Two volumes, bound in one, with both general and individual title-pages. Foolscap 8vo (171 x 108mm). [2],[iv],(170); [vi],(156)pp. Bound in a very attractive near contemporary half vellum, by Henry Bickers & Son of Leicester Square; prettily gilt; marbled sides, with matching edges and endpapers; a few faint marks and very minor signs of age and use; some spotting to binder’s blanks and outer leaves, but a very good copy.

£100

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London : Edward Wallis, [ca.1820]. An extremely uncommon jigsaw map of the world, produced for educational purposes – the world in hemispheres, with six ancillary maps showing circles, zones, parallels, meridians, definitions, etc. First produced by Wallis’s father, John Wallis (1745?-1818) in 1800, but here with some revision – Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) now shown as a separate island, additional island groups in the Pacific, etc.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. 257 x 445mm (approx. 10-1/8” x 17-1/2”). Dissected into about fifty pieces and mounted on wood; a few minor marks and specks, but complete and overall in very good condition. Just one copy (an incomplete example in the Library of Congress) of the 1800 edition located in major libraries worldwide, and none at all of this revised version.

£1,000

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1968). First British edition. “Watson, 40, is American. He was a gangling, crew-cut, Anglophile student of twenty-two when he went to Cambridge and met Dr. Francis Crick. Two years later they had solved the problem of DNA ... But the discovery was not made by supermen. In London yesterday Watson, whose book reveals the failings, foibles and petty jealousies of many scientists still well known in Britain, spoke of the bumbling way in which the discovery was made” (Daily Mirror, 16th May 1968).
Demy 8vo (23cm). xvi,(236),[iv]pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Diagrams. Facsimiles. Original purple boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge lilac; a very good, clean and sound copy in the Dorothy Judd dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, and with some minor wear to extremities, but also very good.

£125

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1952-1961. A first edition set of the separately published “Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955) and “Unconditional Surrender” (1961). “Waugh's most profound and substantial work” (Anthony Gardner).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 120mm). (vi),314; [x],(336); [viii],(312)pp. Bound in an elegant recent blue-black quarter morocco, banded and gilt; top edges blue; some mild tanning of a few outer leaves; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good set.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (1944). The first edition of this enduringly popular anthology – the best of English poetry – all of which, it is said, Wavell knew by heart. Includes around 180 poems drawn from all periods and arranged thematically – “Music, Mystery and Magic”; “Good Fighting”; “Love and All That”; “The Call of the Wild”; “Conversation Pieces”; “The Lighter Side”; “Hymns of Hate”; “Ragbag”, and “Last Post”, each with an introduction by Wavell.
Crown 8vo (188 x 120mm). 432pp. Bound in a smart recent half sprinkled calf, banded and gilt; marbled sides; top edge red; edges a little spotted, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

London : John Murray, 1891. First edition. A monumental dictionary of London from the well-known Abbey Road, and Abbey Street, Bermondsey, to the Yorkshire Stingo and the Zoo. “There is scarcely an unregarded, shabby-genteel street in Bloomsbury, or Chelsea, or Clerkenwell which has not its shred of history or literature connected with it” (London Evening Standard, 5th February 1891). Ostensibly based on Peter Cunningham’s “Handbook of London” (1849), but so far extended and updated as to be essentially a new work.
Three volumes. Medium 8vo (230 x 144mm). xxxii,(546); [iv],622; [iv],(608)pp. Bound in a handsome near contemporary half aubergine crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Bickers & Son of Leicester Square; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a few slight marks; some shelf-wear to lower edges; some foxing and spotting, mainly to endpapers, edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good set in a most elegant binding. Contemporary ownership inscriptions.

£300

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London : Herbert Jenkins, [1946]. First British edition. A tangled country house tale of missing diamonds, the forgetful but profound Viscount Uffingham disguised as his own butler, the formidable game-huntress Clarissa Cork, con-man Soapy Molloy and his sharp-talking wife, beautiful niece, rugby-playing hero, etc. Written by Wodehouse whilst in internment camp and first published in the USA in 1942.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original orange cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in black; just a touch bruised; faint marking to lower cover; a few edge-spots; endpapers just faintly tanned, but still a very good, bright, and sound copy in the dust-jacket by Frank Ford (1907-1970) – the first of Ford's jackets for Wodehouse – an aghast Dolly Molloy discovers broad-beamed viscount-cum-butler exploring her bedroom – the jacket also very good – just slightly sunned, but with only minor rubbing, mild wear, and a couple of tiny nicks. Contemporary ownership stamp of B. A. Abel – the Nottingham solicitor Bertram Albert Abel (1889-1965).

SOLD

Dublin : Cuala Press, 1932. First edition : limited to 450 copies printed and published by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats at the Cuala Press. A collection of forty-six poems, including some of Yeats’ finest work – “Byzantium”, “Coole Park 1929”, “The Nineteenth Century and After”, “The Crazed Moon”, “Quarrel in Old Age”, “I Am of Ireland”, the “Crazy Jane” sequence, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [xvi],(42),[ii],[4]pp. Original linen-backed boards; a hint of browning to tips; a few tiny marks and faint spots, but overall a very good and unopened copy. Small bookseller’s label of Greene & Co. of Dublin on front pastedown.

£500

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