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

London : Gerald G. Swan, (1947). First edition. “The winsome, but too aggressive blonde named Carrie really has nothing to do with the story. Not that Steve Brabazon had any objection to blondes qua blondes. But Carrie carried the principle too far”. Ames with a witty series of three interlinked stories, pre-dating his delightful Jane and Dagobert Brown murder mysteries.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (228)pp. Original blue cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a couple of tiny marks; slight tear to front free endpaper; the poor quality post-war paper slightly tanned, as ever, but a very good, sound and bright copy in the splendid dust-jacket – the jacket here in second state, with reduced price overlays on front flap and spine, but with just a single tiny hole and a touch of discolouration at head, a couple of minuscule nicks, and otherwise in very good, clean and fresh state.

£200

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London : Sands & Co., 1900. First edition. A rare, early, and entertaining murder mystery which opens with a young “unofficial investigator” in an office off Fenchurch Street. “One apparent murder, two advertisements in an agony column, two veiled ladies, a secret society, two or three villains, a highly suspicious private detective ... and another from Scotland Yard, more knave than fool, are the main ingredients” (Pall Mall Gazette, 19th April 1900). And to those we might add the anonymous letter, the overheard telephone call, the strange visitor, the cab-ride to an empty house beyond Ealing Common, and the corpse handcuffed to an insensate young man – “a maze of mysteries”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(240),[viii]pp. Original pictorial cloth, blocked in black, yellow and grey in an atmospheric design of a watcher by the window, the rooftops of London beyond; some light wear and a few marks; mild tanning of endpapers; a little shaken and slack; some minor marks and creases, but otherwise a good copy of a difficult title.

£200

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London : Albion Press, for James Cundee; and Vernor, Hood & Sharpe, 1810 [but 1809]. The last lifetime edition of Beckford’s sporting classic in a highly unusual binding : the first issue, with the author’s name incorrectly given as William, rather than Peter Beckford. The first thoroughgoing account of hare and fox-hunting, originally published anonymously in 1781, and here furnished with a fresh set of plates, engraved by John Scott (1774 -1827) from the paintings of James Barenger (1780-1831). It was said of Beckford that “Never had fox or hare the honour of being chased to death by so accomplished a hunter; never was a huntsman’s dinner graced by such urbanity and wit. He would bag a fox in Greek, find a hare in Latin, inspect his kennels in Italian, and direct the economy of his stables in exquisite French”. An early owner of the book has had it strikingly bound with the accusatory legend “Pirated edition by Cundee” lettered boldly on the centre of the spine – the owner, the reasons for regarding the book as a piracy, and for shaming it on the binding in this way, remain entirely unknown, although the book contains a dozen or so contemporary manuscript corrections (some partly shaved off in binding), including a note that two paragraphs have been omitted on p.241. For further detail and images, see the post A Bibliographical Binding, 26th May 2022, on the “Bookhunter on Safari” blog.
Demy 8vo (203 x 128mm). vi,314pp. Engraved frontispiece (after G. B. Cipriani), extra engraved title by Scott, folding plan, and seven (ex-eight) plates by Scott after Barenger – lacking the “Pointers” plate; the plates rebacked to reinstate the upper margins, which were presumably severed in some grievous mishap at the bindery; bound in a near contemporary crimson straight-grain morocco (a binder’s blank at the front is watermarked 1808), ruled and decorated in gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endleaves; silk ribbon; some minor rubbing and wear; some occasional spotting and browning; a few slight marks, but an attractive copy still, in an annotated binding quite unlike anything previously encountered.

£750

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London : William Heinemann, 1911. First edition : the variant binding in smooth brown cloth, the spine lettered in upper and lower case. Just 2,150 copies were issued in this form, the remainder being put in a more robust library binding. “A diaphanous novel possessed of a delayed explosive charge that detonates today with surprising power ... the finest, and darkest, kind of satire: as intoxicating as champagne, as addictive as morphine, and as lethal as prussic acid” (Robert McCrum) – “Mr Beerbohm in his way is perfect” (Virginia Woolf).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],350,[ii]pp. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt, and with the publisher’s device in blind on lower cover; a few faint marks and minor signs of age and use; mild tanning of endpapers, but overall a very good, sound, and rather better than usual copy. Book-label of a modern Connecticut collector.

£400

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London : for A. Bell; J. Pemberton, and J. Brown, 1715. First edition. Trials ancient and modern, including trials by ordeal, combat and attainder, as well as by the laws of church and state. A chronological selection, commencing with the trial by fire of Queen Emma before the Conquest, and continuing with similar highlights, some treated at very full length, including the trial of Cecely de Rygeway for the murder of her husband in 1347; the trial by combat of Henry Plantagenet (Henry IV) and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, in 1397; the trial of Richard, Earl of Cambridge, for treason against Henry V; the trials of Sir John Oldcastle both for heresy and for treason in 1413 and 1417 respectively; the trial of Anne Boleyn; the treason rial of Thomas Cromwell; the attainder of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and the treason trial of his son, the Earl of Surrey, in 1547; the trial of Alice Arden of Faversham in 1551; the treason trial of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton in 1554, and the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1586, as well as a number of less well known cases. A further selection was published the following year.
Crown 8vo (191 x 119mm). [x],452,[iv]pp. Bound in a later full polished panelled calf, banded and richly gilt; some light rubbing and wear; slight cracking at head; some very light worming to lower blank margins throughout; some very occasional mild internal spotting, but an elegant copy still. With the nineteenth-century bookplate of Baron Kinnaird of Inchture.

SOLD

London : Putnam & Co., (1942). First edition in English of “Vinter-Eventyr” – a collection of eleven short stories on themes suggested by occupied Denmark – themes of courage and resilience, pride and shame, freedom and death, etc. Includes “The Invincible Slave Owners”, “The Heroine”, “Sorrow-Acre”, etc. “All the greatest works of art are allegorical in the sense that they imply more than they state, and illuminate human nature everywhere” (L. P. Hartley reviewing the book in “The Sketch”, 21st April 1943).
Post 8vo (21cm). 290,[ii]pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; some faint spotting of edges, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the Robin Darwin dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, a touch darkened and slightly spotted, but with only very minor wear, a couple of nicks and single short tear, and also very good, particularly for a book produced under wartime conditions. Contemporary ownership inscription of Frances Christie.

£200

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1982). First edition. His third novel – “It is far too hot for sustained fighting ... we will all melt like ice-cream in the sun”. Evelyn Waugh meets John Buchan as eccentric settlers take up arms in the East African Campaign of the First World War.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [xii],370,[ii]pp. Map. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Paul Webb dust-jacket – also very good.

£100

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London : Grant Richards, 1923. First edition. “The Virginiola Fraud”, “The Missing Actress Sensation”, and seven further mysteries featuring the all-seeing blind detective of Richmond. “As fresh ... as when he first appeared ... Mr. Chesterton’s ‘Father Brown’ and the late Jaques Futrelle’s ‘Thinking Machine’ perhaps run him rather close for the deputyship of the lamented Sherlock. Max probably has it with the average reader ... well above the ordinary standard by which fiction detectives capture magazine readers” (Yorkshire Post, 26th September 1923).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (320)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in black; just a hint of rubbing and darkening, a couple of tiny marks, but a very good and sound copy.

£200

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London : Richards Press, (1940). First edition. “Mr. Bramah records the honey-tongued raconteur’s latest stories. They have all the inimitable qualities of the earlier collections ... the most delicate wit, and the shrewdest of observations on human life” (Daily News, 20th March 1940). “Needs no description ... as good as ever, and Mr. Bramah’s genius with the idiom has not failed” (Illustrated London News, 20th April 1940). The last of the five collections of Kai Lung stories published in Bramah’s lifetime – a series begun forty years earlier.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 320 + 16pp publisher’s catalogue. Original mustard cloth, lettered and decorated in black; endpapers slightly tanned, but a very good, bright and sound copy indeed in the dust-jacket by Harold Hookway Cowles (1896-1987) – the jacket also very good, with just minor wear at head, a couple of nicks and short tears to folds, with a suggestion of mild creasing and a few faint marks to the rear panel. Small label of Brewers Bookshop, Hong Kong, attached to rear pastedown.

£250

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Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1912. First edition. A collection of ten short stories, including “The Company of the Marjolaine”, “The Lemnian”, “The Grove of Ashtaroth”, “The Kings of Orion”, etc., interspersed with accompanying poems – “Few writers have Mr. Buchan’s ability for expressing through the medium of the short story the dramatic, or poetic, significance of so wide a range of subjects ... the psychology of heredity, in Jacobite romance, in fishing, in mountaineering ... In ‘A Lucid Interval’ ... we are told how a deadly, mysterious Indian drug administered to the members of a Liberal Cabinet creates the greatest confusion ... The satire of this is delightful ... a welcome addition to the shelves of all who appreciate the literary side of fiction” (The Globe, 24th May 1912).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],xiv,324,(4) + 64pp inserted advertisements dated December 1911. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in silver; some very minor wear; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy. Contemporary (1912) gift inscription to Ethel A. Short from the Anglophile Gustave Monod M.D. (1878-1932), “a wise physician and a kind friend” to the many British visitors to the spa-town of Vichy, popular to the extent that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1931.

£250

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London : Raphael Tuck & Sons, [ca.1944]. First edition. “Irene Dallas shivered as she slipped into her black velvet gown ...” – Eleanor Burford (later Hibbert) wrote a number of romances under her own name, but is more familiar as Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, or Philippa Carr – her three best-known pseudonyms – and a runaway best-seller under each of them. The present title, from the outset of her career, appeared in the “Tuck’s Better Little Books” series, which “had its origin in the early days of the war, and was intended to provide a suitable diversion during air-raid alerts. Handy little books like these could be easily carried in the pocket, and handed on from one reader to another in the shelters. At the same time, by their small size, the books made the most of the very limited quantities of paper then available”. Survival rates of these ephemeral publications are poor – not a single copy of the present title has been located in major libraries worldwide, and nor does it appear in any online listing of the author’s works.
Pott 16mo (10cm). 32pp. Full-page illustrations. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a young woman bearing a marked resemblance to the author herself; wrappers lightly rubbed and a little creased; staples rusted, but a good copy of a scarce and fragile production.

£250

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London : Sydney J. Saunders & Co., [1889]. First edition. Charmingly illustrated poetic fancies for children, with “The Mermaid and the Zoophite”, “Swinging – Swinging – To, and Fro”, “The Fairies and the Bees” and “Said a Dewdrop to a Skylark”. Seemingly a variant issue, with the imprint of Sydney John Saunders (1837-1923), stationer and manufacturer of Christmas cards, etc. – the handful of other copies traced bearing the imprint of the similar Sockl & Nathan firm. Undated, but the book, beautifully printed in Leipzig, was noticed in the press in the latter part of 1889 – “full of such wonderfully nice pictures” (Newcastle Courant, 14th December) – and here has a Christmas 1889 gift inscription.
Oblong foolscap 4to (19 x 21cm). [24]pp. Illustrations throughout, mainly in sepia and grey, but with four pages in full colour, by Jessie Sophia Watkins (1850-1902). Original cloth-backed pictorial glazed boards; some wear and bruising to outer corners; boards lightly tanned; some mild internal browning and spotting, but a very good copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket, replicating the title-page design – the jacket worn, chipped, frayed, slightly torn, lightly spotted and a little defective on the blank lower panel, but a very early surviving example of a British pictorial jacket (not listed by Tanselle) and a remarkable survival on a children’s book. Contemporary gift inscription to Ethel Reich from her Auntie May, dated Christmas 1889. No copy traced in any major UK library.

£500

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London : John Murray / J. & H. L. Hunt / John Murray, 1823 / 1824 / 1821. Three Byron first editions bound together – “Werner” (the traditional first issue, without “The End” and the printer’s imprint on p.188, Byron’s gothic play set in a ruined castle on the Silesian frontier; the scarce “The Deformed Transformed” – a Faustian pact, and “Marino Faliero” (the traditional first issue, with the shorter speech on p.151) – an indecent libel on the Doge’s wife sets the action in train. The last also contains Byron’s long poem, “The Prophecy of Dante”. Three volumes, bound in one.
Demy 8vo (210 x 128mm). viii,188; 88; (xxii),(262)pp. Bound, without half-titles and advertisements, in contemporary half russia, now neatly rebacked in a stout and workmanlike morocco; marbled sides and edges; some minor external wear; a few leaves lightly bruised, but very good, clean and crisp texts of these three separately published Byron first editions. With the nineteenth-century armorial bookplate of Robert Hutton.

£250

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1947). First British edition. The mystery of a man who comes back to London from the dead. “It looks impossible, insoluble; it turns out clear as day, a neat little crime, an excellently human motive. This is Carr at his best” (Illustrated London News, 23rd August 1947). Also published in New York the same year.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Original navy cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few slight marks; a few spots to top edge, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a dramatic design by Harold Hookway Cowles (1896-1987) – with a few tiny marks and scuffs, but also very good.

£125

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London : Cassell & Co., (1935). First edition. The fifth and last of the Father Brown volumes – eight short stories, including “The Pursuit of Mr. Blue”, “The Crime of the Communist” and “The Insoluble Problem” – “The chief distinction between Mr. Chesterton’s Father Brown and all other detectives is that Father Brown sees and deals with sinners while other detectives commonly deal with criminals” (Daily News, 22nd April 1935).
Crown 8vo (181 x 114mm). [vi],248pp. Bound in a smart recent half black morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a few slight marks and small flaws, but overall a very good copy. Sullivan 96.

SOLD

London : Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830. First British edition. Alida de Barbérie is abducted by pirates – the brigantine “Water Witch” is pursued by Captain Ludlow. Set in and around the still half-Dutch New York of the early eighteenth century – the press was unanimous: “the mystery of the story, and the life and spirit of his characters, have, indeed, seldom been equalled, and is nowhere surpassed” (Morning Chronicle) – “Cooper, the American novelist, has no living superior” (The Scotsman). Precedes the American edition by two months, although a slightly earlier edition improbably published in Dresden is known in a handful of copies.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (188 x 114mm). viii,(322); [ii],316; [ii],308pp. Bound, without the advertisement leaves, in a smart contemporary half blue-green calf, banded and gilt; red labels; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; a few internal marks and spots, but still overall an excellent set. With the contemporary armorial bookplate in each volume of the colourful William Edward Powell (1788-1854), Member of Parliament and Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire, and the later bookplate of the well-known collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016) in the first volume.

£750

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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 : Bradbury & Evans, 1848. First edition, in book form, bound from the original monthly parts published between October 1846 and April 1848. Dickens’ telling tale of father and son, father and daughter – when the fifth instalment appeared, Thackeray – himself in the middle of serialising “Vanity Fair” – exclaimed “There’s no writing against such power as this – no one has a chance! Read that chapter describing young Paul’s death: it is unsurpassed – it is stupendous”. This copy exhibits the dropped “if” on p.426 – a point of no proven significance, any more than all the other errors and minor variations said to indicate a mythical “first issue” – in particular the depiction of Captain Cuttle’s hook on the wrong arm in the title-page vignette. There are no copies depicting it on the correct arm. See the Not Peevish post of 20th December 2013, on the “Bookhunter on Safari” blog.
Demy 8vo (210 x 131mm). xvi,624pp. Etched frontispiece, extra-title and thirty-eight plates by “Phiz” (H. K. Browne). Bound up, without errata leaf or half-title, in a contemporary olive half calf, marbled sides, now neatly rebacked, retaining the original red label; endpapers replaced; some minor scuffing and wear; some browning and spotting to plates, mainly to margins, but overall a good and sound copy.

£250

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London : Bodley Head, (1964). First British edition. His second novel – a dark masterpiece of love and imagination. Originally published in Boston the previous year – “Becomes by turns a love story, a melodrama, a soap opera, an unresolved detective story, a vaudeville routine, and a very fine light novel” (Renata Adler in The New Yorker, May 16th 1964).
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],340pp. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; mild tanning of fore-edge, but a very good copy in the intriguing Lehtola dust-jacket – also very good.

SOLD

London : Chatto & Windus, 1899. First edition. Sixteen short stories, including “The Spell of the Black Siren”, “A String of Famous Pearls”, “The League of Death”, “The Forged Cheque”, etc. “Mr. Dick Donovan is well known as a writer of clever detective stories. ‘The Records of Vincent Trill’ (Chatto) is as good as any that he has given us. Vincent Trill was no ordinary detective ... It is of course another matter whether it is desirable to encourage the public interest in the records of crime and criminals, but one can hardly blame Mr. Donovan for giving his readers what they want” (St. James’s Gazette, 17th May 1899).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],[vi],(286),[ii] + 32pp inserted advertisements dated September 1898. Original pictorial cloth; a little rubbed and slightly bruised; a few minor marks and spots, but a good copy.

£100

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London : for Sherwood, Neely & Jones, 1821. First edition : the second issue, with the footnote on p.9. Pierce Egan’s roaring and runaway success – racy, slangy, and riotous adventures among the highest of high life and the lowest of low life in Regency London – “In his particular line, he was the greatest man in England” (John Camden Hotten). The sparkling text which took the country by storm as it appeared in instalments between August 1820 and July 1821 is gloriously accompanied by the superb aquatints of the brothers Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank, many depicting recognisable London scenes.
Demy 8vo (216 x 139mm). xvi,376pp. Frontispiece and thirty-five Cruikshank plates, all with original hand colour. Three folding leaves of music. Woodcut illustrations in text. Bound, without half-title and advertisements, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) full crimson morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; gilt turn-ins; marbled endpapers; a few minor marks and spots; two leaves neatly repaired, but a very good copy of Egan’s defining work.

£750

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1962-1965). A first edition set of all three novels in Longrigg’s succès de scandale, purportedly written by the fifteen-year-old Rosalind Erskine – Nabokov meets Angela Brazil as well brought up nymphets set up a near-bordello in the gym of their highly respectable boarding-school. Adapted into a musical by Wolf Mankowitz and John Barry, and later filmed in Germany with Natassja Kinski.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). (190),[ii]; (196); 190,[ii]pp. Original boards; top edges coloured; some light edge-spotting; slight sliver of fading to one volume, but a very good set in the original dust-jackets – the jackets lightly used, a little spotted in places, with a couple of short tears, but a nice set of these increasingly difficult titles.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson, (1993). First edition. Loosely inserted is Faulks’ printed compliments slip, inscribed and signed by Faulks to Peter Wilkinson, “for his edition of Birdsong”. His fourth and most famous novel, set before and during the Great War. Soon adapted for radio and the stage, with a television version in 2012, starring Eddie Redmayne and Clémence Poésy.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(408)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; faint number stamped on lower edge; mild adhesion marks to front free endpaper, where the compliments slip had been insecurely attached, but a very good copy in the Garner Russell dust-jacket – the jacket just a touch dusty, but also very good.

£400

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London : Orr & Co.; Simpkin Marshall & Co. & others, 1838. First edition. A discursive history of London, with some out of the way figures on historic prices, etc., the text acting as a vehicle to accompany the splendid steel-engraved plates, engraved by John Woods (fl.1835-1855) and others from the drawings of Thomas Hosmer Shepherd, Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”), Robert Garland, John Francis Salmon, Francis William Topham, Edward John Roberts, etc. Alongside views of the well-known buildings – Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, Mansion House, Somerset House, etc., there are some fine street scenes of Cheapside, Leadenhall Street, King William Street, etc., as well as views of the West India Dock, Billingsgate, etc. Originally published in monthly parts from June 1837, the text was continued after Fearnside’s early death by Thomas Harral (1773?-1853). “A most useful visual account of the London scene in the year of Queen Victoria’s accession ... the plates ... are of high quality” (Bernard Adams).
Medium 8vo (229 x 153mm). iv,(204)pp. Frontispiece, extra engraved vignette title (reading “Woods’s Views in London, Westminster, and their Vicinities”), and twenty-eight plates – the plates bound in cavalier disregard of the “Directions to the Binder”. Contemporary half roan, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a little rubbed and worn at extremities; plates a little browned and spotted; one text-leaf torn and repaired without loss, but a good copy of a handsome production.

£200

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1969). First edition. Victorian Lyme Regis and the enigmatic Sarah Woodruff – a book for which the note on the dust-jacket about the pagination being correct is perhaps a necessary prelude. Filmed by Karel Reisz in 1981 with a Harold Pinter screenplay, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (446),[ii]pp. Pictorial endpapers by Tom Adams. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; a very good, clean and sound copy in the Adrian Brewin dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly tanned, a touch sunned at spine, as usual, and with some very mild rubbing, but also very good.

£200

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London : Michael Joseph, (1965). First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated by Dick Francis in the year of publication. The first Sid Halley novel – steeple-chase jockey turned sleuth investigates the cunningly contrived decline of a race-course.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few tiny marks, but a very good copy in the Broom Lynne dust-jacket – bright, fresh and very good indeed, with only minuscule wear at foot and a couple of marks to inner flaps. A very attractive copy.

£250

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1929]. First edition of this thousand-page-plus omnibus collection of all bar three of the Thorndyke short stories which had appeared in the five collections published between 1909 and 1927. The stories are here grouped into six “inverted” and thirty-one “direct” examples, with an absorbing new preface by the author on the nature and methodology of the detective story. “Mr Freeman’s super-detective, Dr Thorndyke, needs no introduction ... each case has some new ingenuity to commend it” (The Scotsman, 14th October 1929).
Crown 8vo (182 x 116mm). viii,1080pp. Diagrams and a plan. Bound in a handsome later half crimson crushed morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; faint mark to back cover; some light spotting of edges; a few tiny internal marks; one leaf with a repaired tear, a handful of others lightly creased, but still a handsome copy.

£400

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1929]. First edition. The best-selling book of the early months of 1929 – a tragic tale of séances, spiritualism and messages from the other side, which opens with “goings-on” on the corner of Ezra Road and Electric Avenue in Brixton, where “young females a bit short in the frock, with young gents in evening clothes” have taken to turning up in smart cars late at night. Gibbs faultlessly captures the milieu of a certain time, a certain mood and a certain place. Filmed later in 1929 by Louis J. Gasnier – an early talking picture with Evelyn Brent, Neil Hamilton, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 286,[ii]pp. Original cloth grey cloth, ruled and lettered in black; a hint of wear; a few small splash-marks; some spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but a good copy in the original dust-jacket – a strikingly atmospheric design in black and white, with darkened room, crystal ball, etc., by Sydney Seymour-Lucas (1878-1954) – very slightly used, nicked and chipped, with a couple of marks, one tiny hole and a short repaired tear, but complete, and overall a well-preserved and very welcome survival. Bleiler p.81.

SOLD

Edinburgh : for Archibald Constable & Co., 1817. First edition. “Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain” – the originator of the psychological novel, “intimately skilled in the perversity of the human mind, and in all the blackest and most horrible passions of the human heart” (Quarterly Review, 1817), takes on the issues of the English Civil War. Published not long before his daughter Mary Shelley produced “Frankenstein” and much admired by Shelley himself, who immediately sent a copy to Byron, describing it as Godwin’s best.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (186 x 105mm). xii,306; [iv],316; [iv],(368)pp. Bound in a pleasant later (early twentieth-century) half tan polished calf, banded and gilt; olive labels; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; text a little browned and spotted in places; neatly repaired tears to a couple of leaves, but overall a very good set. With the nautical bookplate of the book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016). Wolff 2588 – but without the inserted advertisements.

£500

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London : James Bowden, 1899. First edition. An attractively illustrated and very full account of the career of the great man – to some extent ghost-written by Arthur Porritt (1872-1947) – from early recollections to decade-by-decade chapters on the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, with further individual chapters on early tours in Canada, the United States, and Australia, as well as thoughts on his contemporaries, hints to young cricketers, a statistical history of cricket, the laws of the game, etc. “With such a career behind him Dr. Grace’s pen could no more help pouring forth interesting matter than his bat at one time could help knocking up centuries ... constitutes in a way a history of modern cricket ... the stories are as innumerable as they are good” (Pall Mall Gazette).
Post 8vo (21cm). xx,524 + (32)pp inserted advertisements. Photogravure portrait frontispiece. Forty plates, portraits, etc., all but one printed on both sides and giving around 100 images in all. Original blue canvas, ruled and lettered in white, with a pictorial onlay; a little rubbed; endpapers slightly cracked; a little shaken; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges; some very occasional internal marks, but a good copy. With the booksellers’ stamp of Bailey & Woods of Cirencester and a presentation plate recording the gift of the book to Wellingborough Grammar School Library by C. A. Jones in the year of publication.

SOLD

London : Martin Secker, [1921]. First edition : [one of just 500 copies printed]. Graves’ scarce second collection of poems for Secker. Twenty-five poems, including “The Finding of Love”, “The Kiss”, “The Coronation Murder”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (54),[ii],[8]pp. Portrait frontispiece by Ben Nicholson. Original decorative boards in a cobbled design; paper title-label; some minor wear and slight splitting to spine; title-page lightly tanned from tissue guard, but otherwise a good, clean, copy of a fragile production.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1948). First edition. “If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?” – the moral crisis of Henry Scobie in Sierra Leone – and the heart of Greene.
Crown 8vo (180 x 119mm). [vi],(298)pp. Bound in a smart recent half red morocco, lettered in gilt; a few edge-spots, but otherwise a very good and attractive copy.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1955). First edition. “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused”. Western involvement in Indo-China – twice filmed, with Audie Murphy and Michael Redgrave in 1958, and with Brendan Fraser and Michael Caine in 2002 – the book which made Greene a CIA suspect for the remainder of his life.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(248)pp. Original blue-grey cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge blue; some spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, a touch sunned at spine (as often), and with some very minor wear, but also very good.

SOLD

Preston (HRT) : Cupid Press, 1950. First edition : limited to 660 numbered copies on mould-made paper. A fine and unnusual selection of 114 seventeenth-century lyrics – Aphra Behn; William Congreve; Sir William Davenant; John Dryden; Thomas D’Urfey; Sir George Etherege; George Farquhar; John Oldmixon; Thomas Otway; Sir Charles Sedley; John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester – but most impressive for some remarkably fine and little-known poems from lesser and even anonymous poets. With an absorbing introduction and extensive notes by Hadfield. Beautifully produced and with illustrations by Rex Whistler.
Medium 8vo (232 x 139mm). xx,(154),[ii]pp. Folding coloured collotype frontispiece and monochrome collotype illustrations by Whistler; bound in a stylish recent half burgundy morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides; partially erased stamp to verso of title-page; faint crease to frontispiece, but a very good and most attractive copy.

£250

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London : Spencer Blackett, 1889. First edition. The title story and three further Quatermain tales, “Hunter Quatermain’s Story”, “A Tale of Three Lions” and “Long Odds”. “The most notable conception in Mr. Rider Haggard’s new volume of stories ... is surely the baboon-woman, Hendrika” (St. James’s Gazette, 18th December 1889).
Crown 8vo (184 x 128mm). 334,[iv] + (32)pp inserted advertisements dated September 1889. Frontispiece and seven full-page illustrations by Maurice Greiffenhagen (1862-1931) and Charles Kerr (1858-1907), with numerous further text illustrations, decorative devices and initials. Bound in a stylish later (mid twentieth-century) full tan calf, banded and richly gilt, contrasting red and blue labels, inner gilt dentelles, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, by Bayntun; some mild rubbing to head and joints; a few faint marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£250

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London : Edward Arnold, 1897. First edition. The barrister and artist Sir Francis Newbolt, brother of the poet, with tales of fishing – in Scotland, on the Thames, and especially in the salmon rivers of Norway – with a concluding piece on “The Angler’s Library”. “There is a freshness and a certain refined choice of language in these three-and-twenty chats on angling topics which raise them above the usual level of fishermen’s stories” (St. James’s Gazette, 26th April 1897). “Some capital reading of an unhackneyed kind” (Morning Post, 13th April 1897).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Frontispiece – a signed original etching by the author – and twelve atmospheric plates by Thomas Hope McLachlan (1845-1897). Original blue cloth, ruled and blocked in blind and silver; just a hint of rubbing; a few edge spots; mild tanning of endpapers; one leaf slightly creased, but a very good copy of a most attractive production.

£125

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London : Boriswood, 1933. First trade edition. The self-taught former ship’s stoker with a powerful novel of a captain obsessed with his only passenger, the wife of a diplomat. A mysterious stoker named Mulcare joins the crew at the last minute. “You are not reading about a ship, you live on it ... I am happy that Mr. Hanley has achieved this first-rate novel. For me he is now easily first among living writers of sea stories” (Richard Aldington).
Demy 8vo (22cm). (424),[viii]pp. Original black cloth, ruled and lettered in red and silver; top edge red; endpapers lightly tanned; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy indeed, bright and sound, in the delightful art-deco dust-jacket by James Boswell (1906-1971), also very good indeed, bar a single small mark on the lower panel. Loosely inserted are the original publisher’s flyer and a press-cutting of the Richard Aldington review quoted above.

£125

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London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882. First edition : one of 1,000 copies of the first issue text, before the corrections made for the virtually identical second impression. One of Hardy’s most original, interesting and controversial novels – a Wessex tale of star-crossed lovers in which he aimed “to make science, not the mere padding of a romance, but the actual vehicle of romance” – “We have known military novels, sporting and dramatic novels, law and police novels, but an astronomical novel never ... The author, in fact, has imagined and described a woman with whom few of his male readers will not fall in love” (contemporary review in The Athenaeum).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [iv],246,[ii]; [iv],240; [iv],(224)pp. Bound, complete with half-titles, in a very attractive later (early twentieth-century) full tan morocco, banded and extra gilt, by Birdsall; original cloth preserved at rear; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; a couple of faint scuffs; a few internal faint creases and small flaws; endpapers lightly tanned, but a very handsome set.

£1,500

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London : Spencer Blackett, 1890. First edition. Three novellas making their first appearance in book form – the first from John Campbell, Marquis of Lorne, later Duke of Argyll (1845-1914); the second from Annie Hector Alexander (1825-1902), and the third – “The Melancholy Hussar” – from Thomas Hardy. The Hardy story originally appeared in “The Bristol Times and Mirror” earlier in 1890.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(212),[iv]pp. Original pale blue cloth, ruled and lettered across upper cover and spine in black; covers lightly rubbed and very slightly marked; mild bubbling of cloth on upper cover; endpapers a little cracked; a little shaken and slack, but overall still a very good copy of an uncommon Hardy item. Contemporary (1896) ownership inscription of F. W. Wilkinson, and small late twentieth-century bookseller’s label of the Hardy specialist, H. V. Day of Dorchester.

£100

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1925. First edition. The last collection published in Hardy’s lifetime – 152 poems, most previously unpublished and mainly recently composed, although with a handful from earlier in his career.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],x,(280),(4)pp. Original green cloth gilt; some spotting of endpapers, but a very good, bright and largely unopened copy in the dust-jacket – just slightly tanned and with a small mark on upper panel, but also very good. Purdy pp.234-248.

£200

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London : John Harris, 1831. First edition. A charming illustrated pocket volume in the Harris “Little Library” series of familiar introductions to “various branches of useful knowledge”, intended, like most of the Harris output, for younger readers. Alongside the more familiar city landmarks – St. Paul’s, the Tower, the Royal Exchange, etc. – there is material on St. Paul’s School, Farringdon Market, Smithfield, the Docks, Wapping, the Thames Tunnel, etc.
Pott 4to (14cm). [viii],(260)pp. Twelve very polished engraved plates by Robert Sands (1782-1855), from the drawings of the well-known Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864). Original publisher’s roan-backed linen; very lightly rubbed; a few marks; some occasional spotting and browning, but a nice copy of a fragile production. Various gift inscriptions dated 1832, 1865 and 1952.

£100

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1887. First edition. An anonymously published landmark in dystopian fiction, with the narrator recovering from unconsciousness into a future William Morris arts-and-crafts ecological world without cities, money or politics – pre-dating Morris’s own “News from Nowhere” by several years, and Wells’s “A Modern Utopia” by even more. Inserted, in its original envelope, is a remarkable single-page signed autograph letter on his North Parade, Penzance, notepaper, dated 31st December 1920, from W. H. Hudson, replying to an enquiry about the scarcity of the book – “I am pleased to learn the first edition is scarce as I would be glad to have it out of existence. The book is a poor thing but in the later editions one or two of the most glaring absurdities are eliminated. The first edition had an ugly black and red cover. I have succeeded in recovering a few copies for the pleasure of destroying them”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(288)pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt on spine, and ruled, blocked and lettered in red; a little rubbed and worn, with the colour of the cloth touched up in one or two places and some evidence of repair to the lower joint; faint creasing to the cloth of the upper cover; slight cracking to the patterned green endpapers; pencilled notes erased from half-title; a few minor internal marks, but a good copy of a scarce book – with a most extraordinary authorial letter. From the well-known library of the recipient of the letter, the distinguished American collector Paul Lemperly (1858-1939), with his decorative bookplate. Lemperly’s “Among My Books” was published in a limited edition in 1929, containing extensive quotation from Hudson’s letter as well as making it clear that at that point, nine years on, he was still trying to hunt down a copy of the book. For further detail and images, see the post An Ugly Red and Black Cover, 16th June 2022, on the “Bookhunter on Safari” blog.

£2,000

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Crediton : Richard Gilbertson, [1967]. First edition : limited to 100 copies – this copy unsigned, unsewn, untrimmed, and out of series, but presumably belonging to the final sequence of sixty-four copies, without the manuscript additions. Fourteen poems, including “An Otter”, “The Jaguar”, “Wodwo”, “Hawk Roosting”, etc.
Post 4to (27)cm. [iv],18,[ii]pp. Unsewn sheets in salmon-coloured fur-grained wrappers, lettered in black; a couple of tiny marks, but a very good copy.

£100

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London : Rainbow Press, (1976). First edition : one of just twenty-six lettered copies (of 226) printed for the author’s personal use and signed by Ted Hughes. A collection of thirty-one poems, designed and printed on hand-made paper by Sebastian Carter at the Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge. The ten illustrations, printed in blue, are by Ted Hughes himself.
Pott 4to (14cm). [iv],(66),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Original slate-blue Japanese paper boards, lettered in silver, with a cork roundel onlay; faint and tiny spot to rear endpaper, but a very good copy indeed in the original matching slip-case. Sagar A48 – noting that the compilers had not seen any of the twenty-six lettered copies.

SOLD

London : Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1937. First edition : one of just 2,040 copies printed. “One expects a good deal of this subtle, lively, attractive author, whose Muse frequents rather shady company but without losing her grace and poise ... a story of Berlin before the Nazi regime had clipped the wings of its gaiety” (The Sketch, 10th November 1937). The basis, of course, of the musical “Cabaret”, filmed with Liza Minelli, but also of the earlier play and film “I Am a Camera” – irreverently reviewed by Walter Kerr, “Me No Leica”.
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). 150,[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in black; just a touch rubbed; a few faint marks; final blank a little tanned, but otherwise a very good and clean copy.

SOLD

London : Charles Knight & Co., 1839. First edition. A monumental and attractive treatise on the whole history and practice of wood-engraving, with much on the antiquity of the process, the age of Durer, the revival under Thomas Bewick, the precise techniques and tools employed, etc. Jackson had served part of his apprenticeship under Bewick himself and was one of the finest practitioners of his time. His collaborator, William Andrew Chatto (father of the publisher), also wrote on the history of playing-cards, etc.
Elephant 8vo (161 x 174mm). xvi,(750),[ii]pp. Seven plates, some coloured, including a Baxter print of Ovingham and a double-page “patent illuminated map” of Jerusalem by William Hughes. Numerous wood engravings in text, some coloured. Bound in a smart later (late twentieth-century) half-calf; marbled sides and endpapers; text a little shaken, but firm in binding; a few slight marks, but overall a very good copy. Occasional interesting pencilled annotation from a widely-read and knowledgeable former owner, sadly unidentifiable.

£250

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London : William Heinemann, 1899. First edition : [one of 2,000 copies]. Eighteen-year-old Nanda enters the decadent fin-de-siècle marriage market – “We begin by being afraid that we shall not understand enough, we end by fearing that we may understand too much ... It is a strong book, but there is one thing greater than its strength, and that is its audacity” (Morning Post, 29th June 1899). A copy from the library of Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995). Spender’s “The Destructive Element” (1935) remains one of the most interesting and influential studies of James and his contemporaries.
Crown 8vo (20cm). vi,414,[ii] + [32]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind with an art-nouveau iris design; some very mild rubbing; a few internal marks and spots; a handful of leaves roughly opened, but otherwise a very good copy with an interesting provenance. With the earlier ownership inscription of Mary Lillias Johnston, the small bookseller’s label of R. J. Porteus & Co. of Newcastle, and a facsimile of the Stephen & Natasha Spender bookplate designed by John Craxton neatly inserted.

£125

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London : Methuen & Co., 1903. First edition : in the variant and possibly secondary blue binding. Eleven short stories – “Mr. James’s best sort ... nearly every story contains an idea of real power and interest” (Westminster Gazette, 21st March 1903). A copy from the library of Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995), with his occasional pencil markings. Spender’s “The Destructive Element” (1935) remains one of the most interesting and influential studies of James and his contemporaries.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],312pp. Original blue cloth, ruled in gilt and blind, and lettered in gilt; a little rubbed and slightly marked, but a good copy with an interesting provenance. With the earlier ownership inscription of G. Hastings, and with a facsimile of the Stephen & Natasha Spender bookplate designed by John Craxton neatly inserted.

£100

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London : Top Fiction, [1953]. First edition : the variant with the advertisements for the sheet-music of the Anne Shelton recording (Summer 1953) of the “Hank Janson Blues” on the inner wrappers. The first novel of the never-completed final “Continental” series – a change of scene brings Janson to Amsterdam and an entanglement both with the lovely Helga and a gang of Iron Curtain smugglers. The lower wrapper reproduces the cover of the planned but never published “Perfumed Nemesis”. Later republished under the Alexander Moring imprint as “Silken Snare” in 1959.
Foolscap 8vo (19cm). 143,[i]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a Reginald Heade design of rapturous blonde in clinging blue; some minor wear; a few faint marks; staples a little rusted; lower wrapper lightly spotted; a little bruised, but a very good and bright copy. No copy located in any major library worldwide. Williams & Holland 49.

£100

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London : Richard Bentley & Son, 1884. First edition : just 625 sets were printed, of which only 425 were initially sent for binding. “Meadow and brook, wheat-fields and hills – a simple landscape, yet such as is not to be surpassed by any on earth. A common landscape – there are hundreds such in England – yet beyond compare. There are none like it elsewhere in the wide world” – Jefferies in his element in his native Wiltshire, with a novel characterised as “a sad little episode of cottage life, very tragic in its termination” (Reading Mercury, 20th September 1884). “Human nature, especially rustic human nature, has seldom if ever had a closer student or a more picturesque exponent” (The Graphic, 20th September 1884).
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],296; [ii],(328)pp. Decorative initials, head and tailpieces. Original green pebble-grain cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing and bruising; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims, but a very good, bright and sound set.

£500

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London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1887. First edition. His late novel, to some extent autobiographical and based on his own family and their small Wiltshire farm. “He has certainly made himself master of a peculiarly graceful and often fascinating style of fiction” (The Graphic, 28th May 1887).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],260pp – the variant without final blanks or advertisements. Original decorative cloth in a daffodil design; very faint crease to spine; some very minor rubbing; endpapers slightly cracked; some spotting, a little soiling to a few early leaves; still overall a very good and bright copy. With the 1904 ownership inscription of Ethel Mary Mountfort (1883-1966) of Cambridge.

£100

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London : John Murray, 1845. First Owen Jones edition. One of the highlights of early Victorian book production and early colour printing – the text with decorative borders and initials throughout, many in colour, interspersed with divisional titles chromolithographed in gold and glowing colours, and illustrations drawn from the great masters.
Royal 8vo (239 x 153mm). xl,484pp. Eight illuminated titles by Jones, with four less elaborate by Henry Warren and John C. Horsley; vignettes, initials, borders and ornaments by Jones; illustrations by George Scharf after Raphael, etc.; original publisher’s roan over bevelled boards, richly gilt; expertly rebacked and refurbished, retaining the original spine; all edges gilt; some light rubbing, sunning and wear; inner hinges reinforced; some occasional spotting, but still an attractive copy of a handsome book. Small ownership stamp of the old Williams’s Library of Cheltenham.

£250

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1855. First edition. Kingsley’s ever-popular saga of the days of Drake, the Armada, etc. – “the most perfect romance that we have yet had from Mr. Kingsley’s pen ... he is in love with the manliness, hardihood, and imagination of our forefathers” (Daily News, 4th April 1855). The first novel ever published by Macmillan and probably unique in Victorian fiction in having a holiday resort named after it (much to Kingsley’s annoyance).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 120mm). [2],viii,(304); vi,356; vi,(374)pp. Bound, with half-titles and preliminary advertisement, but without the inserted catalogue sometimes found, in a near contemporary quarter roan, ruled and lettered in gilt; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; some light wear; faint cracking to vol. iii; internally, some soiling, marking and fraying – especially to vol. i; one leaf with a more extensive repaired tear; occasional pencil marks; a reasonable and modestly priced set of a difficult Victorian classic. Small library stamps of Newtyle Public Library on p.41 of each volume – a Scottish provenance reinforced by some resonant pencil annotation to p.217 in vol iii – the passage relating to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots – “A confounded tissue of lies. Whether true or not – uncharitable”.

£250

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1899. First edition. "In summer all right-minded boys built huts in the furze-hill behind the college – little lairs whittled out of the heart of the prickly bushes, full of stumps, odd root-ends, and spikes, but, since they were strictly forbidden, palaces of delight".
Post 8vo (195 x 122mm). (xii),272,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half red morocco; top edge gilt; original cloth gilt sides retained; a very attractive copy. Stewart 195.

£200

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1902. First edition. “Wild, roaring fun” (Daily News, 20th November 1902). Two well-connected but impoverished young men recruit a team of likewise young, charming and penniless men and women, available for hire to disrupt and disentangle unfortunate or unsuitable romantic attachments before too much harm can be done either to the lovers or, more particularly, their families – “Adventure of the Exemplary Earl”, “Adventure of the Lady Novelist and the Vaccinationist”, “Adventure of the Fair American”, and other tales. “In ‘The Disentanglers’ we have the apotheosis of the detective-story, with, as Mr. Lang’s Canadian millionaire would say, ‘every modern improvement’, divorced, too, from ‘all that cheap revolver business’, to quote the hero and Disentangler-in-Chief ... Apart from the excellent construction and swing of the stories, there is endless fun in the sly digs at literature, modern and ancient – at the penny novelette, the British Museum girl, and the Celtic minor poet” (The Sketch, 3rd December 1902).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],418,[ii]pp. Frontispiece and six perfectly judged plates by Henry Justice Ford (1860-1941). Original decorative cloth – “a bold black and red design on its light coloured cloth cleverly indicative of the contents” (The Gentlewoman, 13th December 1902) – the cloth slightly darkened; a handful of marks and spots; light spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy.

£200

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London : Geoffrey Bles, (1951). First edition. The second to be published (but fourth in chronological order) of the Chronicles of Narnia – the four Pevensie children return to Narnia.
Post 8vo (21cm). (196)pp. Endpaper map. Illustrations and colour frontispiece by Pauline Baynes. Original dark blue boards, lettered in silver; slightly cocked; a touch bruised, with a tiny sliver of fading to head; a few minor marks and spots, but a good and sound copy in the Pauline Baynes dust-jacket – the jacket lightly tanned, somewhat worn and chipped, with some short nicks, tears and a few small holes, but substantially complete. Neat contemporary ownership inscription on front free endpaper.

SOLD

London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1956. First edition. The seventh and final novel in the Chronicles of Narnia – Shift the ape, Puzzle the donkey – Jill and Eustace come to the aid of King Tirian. Winner of the Carnegie Medal, with Lewis writing to his illustrator Pauline Baynes, “Is it not rather ‘our’ medal? I’m sure the illustrations were taken into account”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 184pp. Illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; some spotting of edges, endpapers and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy in the original pictorial Pauline Baynes dust-jacket – price-clipped, lightly worn at head, faintly sunned, and with some spotting. Dated contemporary (1956) gift inscription to front endpaper.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First British edition. The title-story and the eight short stories of the “Big Mama’s Funeral” sequence, first published in Colombia and Mexico in 1961-1962. “One of the richest pieces of writing this exceptional author has produced” (Victoria Brittain in the Illustrated London News, 1st October 1971). The second of his books (and the first of his short stories) to appear in a British edition, the translations those of J. S. Bernstein first published in the United States. Márquez was awarded the Nobel in 1982 “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],170pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge red; a few tiny marks, but a very good copy indeed in the Toni Evora dust-jacket – also very good. Neat ownership inscription of Kiernan Ryan.

£200

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1936. First edition. “Everything in this book is tense, electric. On every page there is a touch of magic; a flight of visual imagination ... atmosphere conveyed so that it becomes almost palpable. Mr. Mason has written no better book than this” (Douglas West). An Elizabethan tale of espionage and revenge in the days leading up to the Armada – filmed in 1937 with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (their first pairing), as well as Flora Robson, Tamara Desni, James Mason, etc.
Crown 8vo (21cm). 316pp. Original pale blue cloth, lettered in gilt and black; a few slight marks to cloth; top edge lightly spotted, but a very good copy in the handsome Bip Pares dust-jacket – lightly worn and creased at extremities, with a couple of nicks, but also very good. Contemporary ownership inscription of Kathleen F. Martin. For more on Bip Pares, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 17th September 2013.

SOLD

New York : George H. Doran Co., (1925). First edition. Published a month earlier than the London edition and retaining a textual integrity which the British publication did not – two separate libel actions having necessitated changes in the names of characters in the latter, as well as the substitution of the fictional place-names of Tching-Yen, Pleasant Vale, and The Mount, for the real places of Hong Kong, Happy Valley, and The Peak. “Like many other of Mr. Maugham’s stories, the scene of his latest – and best – book is laid ‘East of Suez’. The theme, a loveless marriage and its disastrous aftermath, though old as the hills, is invested with modernity and freshness by means of a photographic realism” (Nottingham Journal, 21st May 1925). Filmed in 1934 (Greta Garbo), and in 2006 (Naomi Watts).
Crown 8vo (192 x 127mm). (290)pp. Bound in an attractive recent half red morocco, banded and gilt; a handful of minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£400

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London : William Heinemann, 1928. First edition. Clearly based on Maugham’s own experiences working for British Intelligence during World War I and very much the prototype of the modern espionage novel. It is alleged that Churchill himself urged Maugham to burn a number of further stories originally intended for the book. Turned into a TV series in 1991, with Alex Jennings, Joss Ackland, Ian Bannen, Jason Isaacs, etc.
Crown 8vo (185 x 120mm). [viii],304pp. Bound in a smart recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth spine and upper cover preserved at rear; a few internal marks, tiny nicks and small flaws, but a good copy in an elegant binding.

SOLD

London : for C. Davis and T. Green, 1729. First edition. “I have as little as possible interrupted the Thread of the Narration with idle and prolix Digressions or Reflections” – if only all historians were as disciplined as this London writing-master in his only book – an account of a popular uprising against an iniquitous tax on fruit – “All sorts were included, as well dry as green; as Mulberries, Grapes, Figgs, Apples, Pears and Plumbs; whereby the common sort of People were deprived of their usual Nourishment and Support, and reduced to the lowest Misery and Distress”. The uprising was led by the young Tommaso Aniello (1620-1647), known as Masaniello, whose short life and brief victory led to many depictions as a popular hero in art, theatre and opera, as well as discussion in the works of writers as diverse as John Locke and Tom Paine.
Crown 8vo (190 x 116mm). [2],xii,226,[ii]pp. Engraved portrait frontispiece. Bound, without initial blank, in a pleasant nineteenth-century half blue-black calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; marbled sides and endpapers; lightly rubbed; a few minor internal marks, some occasional mild spotting and browning, but a very good copy. Bookplate of Walter Flinn – presumably Walter Flinn (1856-1942) of Manchester, shipping merchant.

£250

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New York : Random House, [1974]. First American edition. Signed by Michael Moorcock on the title-page. A disturbing fantasy – this edition with the deliberately false announcement of Moorcock’s death by way of introduction – the action commencing on the roof garden of Derry & Toms, but ranging through time from 1871 to 1990, through place from Havana to Shanghai, through multiple incarnations of the principal character, and through multiple “What would you do?” moral dilemmas. “A fearful, compelling book – told with a calm voice through clenched teeth”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 174,[ii],[4]pp. Original blue and lilac cloth-backed boards, lettered in metallic turquoise; faint fringe of fading to extremities; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good and sound copy in an equally very good dust-jacket, unworn and unfaded.

SOLD

Stoke-on-Trent : Archer Press, (1950). First edition. “Sam Case was brought up in a swamp cabin in Georgia. He was a rough kid who was used to finding things out for himself. This is the story of how he found out plenty”. Typical post-war pulp fare from the Archer Press stable, with William Newton under one of his various pseudonyms, and a delicious Reginald Heade cover.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; American price stamp to top corner; pasted in copyright notice on verso of half-title; very faint crease to rear wrapper; text slightly tanned, but an exceptionally unworn and fresh copy. This 1950 edition not found in any major library worldwide.

£100

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1932. First edition. A great success in its day and winner of the Hawthornden Prize. Morgan draws on his Great War experiences for a subtle and ethereal love story – a British officer interned in a castle, a Dutch aristocrat, and his English step-daughter married to a German officer. “The Fountain is written as beautifully as it is possible for a book to be” (John Bayley, in The London Review of Books, 7th February 1985).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xii),434,[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; tiny split at foot of front endpaper, some spotting of edges, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the attractive original dust-jacket – a pictorial design signed VMM – a little tanned and slightly nicked, but also very good.

£100

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London : Methuen & Co., 1894. First edition. Morrison’s extraordinary vision of the late Victorian mean streets of the East End of London – “Unquestionably an achievement of art ... something more than remarkable. The tune is new in the sense in which the new woman, and the new drama, and the new hedonism, and the other clamant bores of the period are not new ... It is akin to a shock, to a sudden gust of east wind. But to those who care for all humanity ... it should be something like a godsend” (Pall Mall Gazette, 19th November 1894).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (302),[ii] + 32pp advertisements dated October 1894. Original dark green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few trifling signs of age and use; mild tanning of endpapers; a few slight spots, but a very good copy.

£250

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Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1882. First edition. Oliphant in top form with a dozen essays, sketches and stories of a gently satirical turn – “A Turkish Effendi on Christendom and Islam”, “Moral Reflections by a Japanese Traveller”, “The Autobiography of a Joint-Stock Company”, “The Newest American Railroad”, “A New Method of Social Evolution”, “Knight-Errantry in the Nineteenth Century”, etc. “A more thoroughly enjoyable book has not appeared in many a long day” (Morning Post, 19th August 1882).
Post 8vo (194 x 123mm). (x),(430)pp. One illustration. Bound in an elegant later half burgundy morocco, by Bickers & Son; top edge gilt; marbled endleaves; just a touch sunned; some spotting, especially of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy. Armorial bookplate of R. D. Jackson.

£200

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1861. First edition : one of the 2,000 copies of the first impression, with the roman rather than gothic half-title, just four notes on p.323, etc. The original appearance of a perennial favourite – close on 300 of the finest poems in the language from seventy-five or so poets – from Sir Thomas Wyatt, Marlowe and Shakespeare, to Shelley and Keats. With a preface and some extensive notes by Palgrave.
Foolscap 8vo. [4],[viii],332pp. Engraved vignette by Charles Henry Jeens (1827-1879) after Thomas Woolner (1825-1892). Bound in a smart recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original cloth gilt (the priced, earliest variant) at rear; a handful of spots, a small flaw to the final leaf, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription on title-page and some neat pencil markings to margins in places.

£400

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London : Brentano, (1929). First British edition. A sensational and scandalous first novel, first published anonymously in New York earlier the same year, and soon turned into a film as “The Divorcee” (1930), for which Norma Shearer won an Academy Award for best actress. A candid, outspoken, and partly autobiographical look at the illusive freedom of young women in the aftermath of the Great War and the giddiness of the roaring ‘twenties. Set in a New York world of night-clubs and speakeasies, with illuminating references to the authors of the day – Galsworthy, Wells and Michael Arlen (the author had spent some time in London). “Women used to have status, a relative security. Now they have the status of any prostitute, success while their looks hold out. If the next generation of women have any sense, they’ll dynamite the statue of Mrs. Pankhurst, and start a crusade for the return of chivalry”. Ursula Parrott herself had been divorced in 1928 – and was again in 1932, 1938 and 1944. Nine of her other novels and short stories were also made into films, including “Strangers May Kiss”, “Next Time We Love” and “There’s Always Tomorrow”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (288)pp. Original indigo cloth, lettered in gilt; some sunning and uneven fading to covers; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting of edges, but a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket (probably in second state, with UK press reviews) – a stunning art deco design by Alan Rogers – the jacket just slightly darkened, but still very good.

SOLD

London : privately printed by A. V. Huckle & Son, The Ramsden Press, (1929). First edition. A well-illustrated and very attractively produced tour of Clapham and its older houses, former residents, etc., with appendices including material on the Windmill Inn, sports and pastimes – cricket, golf, etc., the ponds, the flora and fauna, the geology, fossils, the wells, etc. Neatly inserted is a single page typed letter on headed notepaper, signed by the editor J. H. Michael Burgess, thanking the recipient for ordering a copy of the book, etc.
Demy 4to (270 x 191mm). xx,(122),[ii]pp. Plates. Illustrations. Three maps, one folding. Printed in red and black throughout. Bound in a stylish contemporary half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; just a touch sunned; some spotting to the earlier leaves, but still a very good copy. With the dated (1930) ownership of E. Baldwin, the recipient of the letter.

£125

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London : for J. Coxhead, 1813. A slightly revised and fully illustrated version of Pennant’s “Some Account of London”, originally published in 1790 – a popular London history compiled by the Welsh naturalist and traveller – “much more palatable than the usual antiquarian stodge” (Adams). Pennant’s discursive approach, “composed from the observations of perhaps half my life”, takes in a variety of topics, including antiquities, archery, bagnios, breweries, burials, coffins, duels, fires, wines and much else.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (216 x 129mm). vi,(384); [ii],325,[iii]pp. Two maps and thirty-nine further engraved plates by Vincent Woodthorpe, Thomas Prattent, William Poole, and others. Bound in a handsome contemporary full sprinkled calf, stylishly worked in gilt and blind; sprinkled edges; some minor rubbing and wear; mild cracking; some slight internal spotting and browning; some offsetting to plates, but still overall a very good set. With the armorial bookplate of James Hansard (1781-1849) of the printing family in each volume. Adams 111.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), (1971). First edition. Crossword addict Stanley Manning has his eyes on his wife’s inheritance from his hated mother-in-law — “a man dominated by greed, who discovers, as his nerve goes, that a harmless hobby may become an over-ruling obsession”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; mild tanning to endpapers, but a very good copy in the Colin Andrews dust-jacket — the jacket with just a touch of edge-wear and some slight creasing to inner flaps, but also very good. Contemporary gift inscription to front free endpaper.

£125

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[Leicester] : Hermitage Publications, [1948]. First edition. Susie escapes from the white slave traffic of Soho, but Detective Officer Maurice, Special Branch, tracks her down via an aunt in Edgbaston to an estate agent’ s office in Birmingham. It is a question of murder. “Ben Sarto” was the regular pseudonym of Frank Dubrez Fawcett (1891-1968), but it is not at all clear whether the four extremely rare Sarto titles published by Hermitage in 1947-1948 and distributed by Thorpe & Porter were actually by him.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 114 (i.e.112)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some minor rubbing, slight creasing and light wear; staples a touch rusted; press creases to a couple of leaves, but a very good, clean and sound copy of a scarce and fragile production. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Nathaniel Cooke, 1853. First edition in English of this amiable and much-quoted primary source on Victorian London. An acute overseas visitor shines a light on London street life, the London squares, life on the Thames, the London police, Newgate, the Post Office, the London of fogs and gaslight, the City, the Bank of England, Hyde Park, the haunts of fashion, the newspapers and periodicals, the theatres, and much else. Originally published as "Wanderungen durch London" (1852-1853) and here in a translation by Otto von Wenckstern (1819-1869), translator of Goethe, writer on slavery, the Schleswig-Holstein question, etc.
Crown 8vo (21cm). xii,290pp. Frontispiece, extra pictorial title and six lively plates of street scenes by William McConnell (1832?-1867). Original decorative cloth, elaborately blocked in gilt and blind; a little worn at head; a touch sunned; some rubbing; front free endpaper neatly excised; a few slight marks and spots, but still overall a good copy. With the contemporary armorial bookplate of the book-collector John Rowden Freme (1821-1872) of Wepre Hall in Flintshire, and the later pencilled ownership inscriptions of A. Fraser.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1975). First edition. The final volume of Scott’s “Jewel in the Crown” quartet – the British Raj moves inexorably towards its end, the horrors of partition, etc. “Is there nothing more gullible in the whole animal world than a human being? One has this hysterical belief in the non-recurrence of the abysmal, I suppose. One always imagines one has reached the nadir and that the only possible next move is up and out”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(600)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very faint spine crease; light spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original Bill Richmond dust-jacket – just faintly sunned at spine, but also very good.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, (1947). First edition. The scarce second novel in the “Strangers and Brothers” series – aristocracy and academe 1935-1943 – a gifted young scholar who has everything except happiness.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 392pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; spine titling a touch dulled; very slightly bruised; some spotting of edges, but a good copy in the dust-jacket – the rare jacket, which is price-clipped, a little worn, and slightly chipped, has been repaired and strengthened by the application of some lamination, which although effective, has added some wrinkling and creasing of its own. Not an ideal copy, but priced accordingly and not unattractive.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1949). First edition. The elusive third novel in the “Strangers and Brothers” series, although the first in terms of chronology – the early life of Lewis Eliot, from an impoverished upbringing in a provincial town to youthful success and failure 1914-1933. “A brilliant, penetrating and absorbing novel, far out of the common run” (Illustrated London News, 15th October 1949).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 416pp. Original orange cloth, lettered in gilt; a few slight marks to covers and a sliver of fading at foot; two tiny holes to back cover; some light spotting of edges; internally clean and sound; a good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped and very lightly tanned, with a few slight marks and small unobtrusive chips, but still good and complete with a promotional Book Society wraparound band. A few small pencilled notes to rear endpaper.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1951. First edition. Set in Cambridge in 1937 as the college prepares to elect a new master. Politics and intrigue at High Table. The seminal fourth book in the “Strangers and Brothers” sequence. “First and foremost, quite unreasonably gripping ... the most dramatic of the writer’s novels, and I think the best as a whole” (Illustrated London News, 25th August 1951).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xii),(388)pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing; top edge a little spotted, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn at head, slightly marked and lightly tanned (more so at spine), with some internal taped reinforcement and repair, but complete and presentable still, with a contemporary Macmillan bookmark, mentioning the present novel, loosely inserted. Ex-libris label of Nigel C. Anderson, dated 1980, affixed to front pastedown.

SOLD

London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, (1938). First British edition. The second of the author’s murder mysteries – set in New York. “Three murders at the rate of half a crown apiece is good value for money, and those who demand tales of sudden death for their entertainment will welcome ‘The Embarrassed Murderer’ ... if only for the authoress’s prodigality ... [but] Miss Stockwell’s ‘thriller’ has more to recommend it than generosity in the matter of corpses, however, for it is one of the best pieces of detective fiction I have read recently ... each of [the murders] is closely related to the elusive ‘perfect crime’ ... For crime fiction this gets top marks” (Western Morning News, 9th November 1938).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],282pp. Original green cloth, lettered in brown; a few faint marks; edges a little spotted, but a very good copy in the James Arnold dust-jacket – the jacket just a touch dulled at spine and with a handful of spots, but also very good.

£100

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New York : Grove Press, (1976). First American edition. Signed by Tom Stoppard on the front free endpaper. Interlinked plays always performed together – sexual indiscretion in parliamentary places – “Tom Stoppard again unrolls a dazzling carpet of words to provide us with a joyous evening. They are the happiest 85 minutes available in the West End just now. Inspired fantasy, blissful entertainment!” – Felix Barker on the London production, with Luan Peters, Edward de Souza, Peter Bowles, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (76),[iv]pp. Original black cloth, lettered in silver; tiny rim of sunning at foot of spine, but otherwise a sparkling copy in the Kenneth R. Deardoff dust-jacket – a design in lilac and black – the lilac inevitably a little sunned at spine, but the jacket otherwise very good and without wear. From the collection of Professor Ira Nadel (1943-2021), Stoppard’s biographer.

SOLD

London : Hurst & Blackett, 1865. First edition. “This book 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.
Demy 8vo (212 x 134mm). (xvi),(518),[ii]pp. Wood-engraved illustrations by Frederick William Fairholt, F.S.A. (1814-1866). Bound, without half-title, in smart recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides; some marking to title-page; a few spots and slight creases, but handsome copy.

£200

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London : Richard Bentley, 1858 [but 1857]. First edition. “The best of the new novels. The author has left Barchester Cloisters and now finds his way into the civil service, upon which he has ideas as strong as those he has expressed about ecclesiastical endowments ... unusually good, and the character-painting ... excellent” (The Examiner, 19th December 1857). Trollope regarded it as “certainly the best novel I had as yet written” – notable also for what he regarded as his first successful love scene and the first appearance of Chaffanbrass.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (181 x 111mm). iv,340; iv,322; iv,334pp. Bound in a neat, early twentieth-century, half blue calf, banded and gilt; marbled endpapers; sprinkled edges; some very minor rubbing and bruising; internally a little thumbed, with small marks, some creases, and very occasional annotation and underlining, but a good set of a scarce early title, most of the original 1,000 copies being intended for library lending. Sadleir 6.

£750

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1882. First edition. An uncommon late Trollope title – love, marriage, politics and class divisions. Lady Frances Trafford falls for a post-office clerk, her brother, Lord Hampstead, pays court to Marion Fay, a humble Quaker. “A course (two courses indeed) of true love that does not run quite smooth, a strong contrast of polite and by no means polite society, a Government office and its humours, some hunting scenes, an anonymous letter, the vain endeavours of crabbed age to control generous youth – these are the ingredients of ‘Marion Fay’, and it must be confessed that most of them have met before inside covers bearing Mr. Trollope’s respected name. But what of that?” (Pall Mall Gazette, 22nd June 1882).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (182 x 115mm). viii,(304); viii,282; viii,(272)pp. Bound, with half-titles but without the final blank in vol.ii, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) half red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; top edges gilt; internally some occasional light thumbing and spotting, but a very good set. Bookseller’s label of Henry Sotheran Ltd. in vol.i. Sadleir 64.

£750

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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 (185 x 115mm). 432pp. Bound in a smart recent half burgundy morocco, banded and gilt; internally some mild tanning to outer edges of the cheap wartime paper, with intermittent spotting and foxing, but a reasonable copy, attractively bound.

SOLD

London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1909. First edition. A young woman rejects suburban conventions for science, socialism, suffragettes and living in sin – and Wells fictionalises his relationship with his mistress Amber Reeves (1887-1981), who gave birth to his daughter later in 1909. Macmillan flatly declined to publish the book and Canon Lambert railed “I would just as soon send a daughter of mine to a house infected with diphtheria or typhoid fever as put that book into her hands”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 352pp. Original brown cloth, ruled in blind and blocked and lettered in gilt on upper cover, lettered across spine in gilt; very minor wear at head and tail; mild tanning of endpapers; a few slight marks, but a very good copy. With the contemporary bookplate of the mathematician Philip Worsley Wood (1880-1959), designed by P. Boddy and dated 1909.

£100

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London : Cassell & Co., (1923). First edition. Journalist from Sydenham and other earthlings find themselves in Utopia, an evolved civilisation in a world without government or religion, “as clean as starlight and as sweet as cold water on a dusty day” – “Let it be said at once, in this book Mr. Wells is at his best. Indeed, if one had to name the novel that represents his many-sided genius most completely, one could hardly fail to name ‘Men Like Gods’“ (Sylvia Lynd in the Daily News, 8th March 1923).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,304pp. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt and blind (Currey’s ‘B’ variant); a sliver of fading at head and tail; some tanning of endpapers; a few edge spots, but a very good and sound copy in the grey dust-jacket, lettered in purple – the jacket just slightly darkened and faded at spine, but fresh and unworn.

£250

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1892. First edition. Montagu Williams Q.C., leading barrister, known in the East End as “the poor man’s magistrate”, and variously schoolmaster, soldier, actor, dramatist and journalist, with a fine series of lively essays (all based on true stories) portraying life across Victorian London – down east with East End Shows, Match Girls, Sclater Street Birds, Griddlers or Street Singers, the London Hospital, Clerkenwell Green, Ratcliff Highway, Sunday at the East End (including cricket in Bethnal Green), Burglarious Bill, From the East End to Ramsgate, etc. – and up west with Climbing the Ladder (enter plutocracy), Descending the Ladder, Modern Stockbrokers, Huckstering Hymen (the marriage market), the Company Promoter, Things Theatrical, Covent Garden, Floss & Floss (lawyers), the Road to Ruin, Moneylenders, Talent in Tatters, and the London Season. With a preface by Charles Dickens Jr.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (xvi),(388)pp. Original blue cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; lightly rubbed; upper cover a little marked, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Herbert Jenkins, (1931). First British edition. Anthony, Fifth Earl of Droitwich, is poised to marry Violet Waddington, the soup heiress – but then his old nurse turns up to expose the skeleton in the family cupboard. Butlers, aunts, barbers and socialists. First published three weeks earlier in New York.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 280,[viii]pp. Original orange cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in black; the slightest suggestion of rubbing; some mild spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good, bright and sound copy.

SOLD

London : Barrie & Jenkins, (1973). First edition. The sequel to “Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin”. Ivor Llewellyn, much married and currently divorced head of a Hollywood film studio, returns to London.
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising; a few faint edge-marks, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket – price-clipped but also very good.

SOLD

New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, (1981). First edition. Wolfe on modern architecture – smart, well-researched, and devastating – “Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement parts wholesale distribution warehouse ... Every new $900,000 summer house ... has so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial plate glass, banks of tungsten-halogen lamps, and white cylindrical shapes, it looks like an insecticide refinery”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). [x],(144),[vi]pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; a very good copy indeed in the Kiyoshi Kanai dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£100

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