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

London : Constable & Co., 1929. First edition in English : the London issue of the 1928 American sheets. Alain-Fournier’s 1913 masterpiece – also known in English as “The Lost Domain” or “The Lost Estate” – translated by Françoise Roussel Delisle (1886-1974) and with a lengthy introduction by Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), at whose instigation the translation was made. “The greatest novel of adolescence in European literature” (John Fowles). Memorably filmed in 1967 with Brigitte Fossey and Jean Blaise, and subsequently in 2006 with Clémence Poésy and Nicolas Duvauchelle.
Post 8vo (195 x 125mm). xxxii,306pp. Bound in an attractive recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth spine bound in at rear; a few faint spots, but otherwise a very good copy.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42370 – or simply click on the button

London : Chatto & Windus, 1929. First edition. His first novel – a searing indictment both of war and of public and private hypocrisy, the text peppered with asterisks in place of words and phrases that his publishers, to his annoyance and astonishment, considered “at present taboo in England”. There are also satirical tilts at the literary establishment, with recognisable caricatures of Eliot, Ford, Lawrence and Pound. Orwell regarded it as “much the best of the English war books”, Wells was “moved deeply”, and for Wyndham Lewis it was simply “magnificent”. “Sheer, stark truth. They did not always like truth in the old days; they do not always like it to-day. You may not like it yourself, but there it is” (Ralph Straus in The Bystander, 25th September 1929).
Demy 8vo (22cm). (xii),440pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge pink; faint fringe of light discolouration to foot of boards; mild tanning of endpapers; a few faint spots to outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket by Paul Nash (1889-1946) – the jacket with a few minor marks and creases, a couple of nicks and a short tear, but also very good. Small bookseller’s label of A. H. Spencer of Melbourne on front pastedown.

£500

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46361 – or simply click on the button

London : sold by J. Dodsley; J. Wilson & J. Fell; J. Almon and others, 1766. First edition : the first issue (without the later insertion of an epilogue, etc). The original appearance of the celebrated and immensely popular satirical verses of Christopher Anstey – “So much wit, so much humour, fun, and poetry, so much originality, never met together before” (Walpole). The old Etonian Anstey’s ridicule and parody of the freaks of fashion had the same kind of immediate success as his contemporary Laurence Sterne. He later moved to Bath, where he lived for the last thirty years of his life. The book was endlessly reprinted in smaller format editions, but never again in the spacious quarto of the first edition.
Post 4to (262 x 207mm). 104pp. Bound in a stylish recent quarter red morocco, ruled, lettered and decorated in gilt; cloth sides; first and last leaves lightly tanned; unobtrusive repaired two-inch split or tear to title-page; a little spotting and a few faint creases, but a very good and well-margined copy.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 17873 – or simply click on the button

London : by J. D. for Richard Chiswell, 1679. First edition. “Now among all the benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man’s life” (Francis Bacon) – an important collection of his various writings, letters, speeches, etc., grouped into several sections: political and moral discourses, with a good many aphorisms – “Discretion in speech is more than eloquence”; his scientific experiments, particularly relating to metals and minerals; his thoughts on medicine and theology; and the “Baconiana Bibliographica”, with thoughts on his own writings by himself and others. With an introduction by Thomas Tenison (1636-1715) – “Nature gives the world that Individual Species, but once in five hundred years”.
Crown 8vo (176 x 109mm). [2],272,[ii],104,[viii]pp – the introduction and contents leaves bound at the rear in this copy. With all fly-titles, imprimatur leaf, final blank, errata, etc. Engraved portrait frontispiece by Frederik Hendrik van Hove (1628?-1698). Contemporary calf, skilfully rebacked, preserving most of the original spine and label; sprinkled edges; lightly rubbed; endpapers rejointed; a few minor internal marks, chips and slight creases; tiny hole to one leaf; occasional light spotting and browning, but a sound and attractive copy of an important compilation. Bookplate of Dr and Mrs H. R. Knohl.

£750

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46216 – or simply click on the button

London : T. Nelson & Sons, 1861. First edition. A tale inspired by Paul Du Chaillu’s public lectures at the Royal Geographical Society and elsewhere early in 1861, and the publication of his “Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa” in April. Du Chaillu is believed to have been the first white man to encounter gorillas and was certainly the first to describe them in detail. By November, Ballantyne (also drawing on ideas from Darwin’s 1859 “On the Origin of Species”) had followed up “Coral Island” with another enormous success – witch-doctors, slave-traders, missionaries, wild animals, and the virtually unknown gorillas. “Few copies of the first edition appear to have survived, and to find one in the original cloth binding is a rare occurrence. This may well be a measure of the popularity of the tale, the book having been ‘read to death’ in the first few years of its existence to be finally consigned to the dustbin, dog-eared and tattered” (Eric Quayle, Ballantyne’s biographer and bibliographer).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],422pp. Frontispiece, extra pictorial title, and four (ex-five) tissue-guarded plates – lacking (without any indication of it having been removed – it may never have been bound in) the first plate, “King Jambai in Danger”; original pictorial cloth gilt (the purple variant); lightly rubbed and a little sunned; contents leaf creased; text and plates spotted and tanned in places, but a good, if incomplete, copy of a notorious rarity, usually priced in thousands. Neat contemporary inscription to John William Bagge Hearn, Dublin-born future barrister, from Thomas Harris Q.C., dated Xmas 1862.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 41569 – or simply click on the button

London : Eveleigh Nash & Grayson, 1927. First edition of this collection of eleven translations of Balzac’s “most spell-binding” stories, including “At the Sign of the Cat and Racket”, “The Unknown Masterpiece”, “The Atheist’s Mass”, etc. Translated variously by Clara Bell, Ellen Marriage and John Gilmer, and edited and introduced by George Saintsbury (1845-1933). “So great are these masterpieces of French fiction that the introduction ... is quite unnecessary. Balzac’s short stories are essentially original and powerful – and tragic. The volume opens with El Verdugo (The Executioner), one of the most powerful of his tales, but The Maranas is undoubtedly the greatest achievement in this excellent collection” (Dundee Courier, 3rd June 1927).
Crown 8vo (191 x 124mm). (548)pp. Bound in an elegant later half green morocco, banded and gilt, for Asprey’s; all edges gilt; silk headbands; marbled endpapers; overall a very good copy.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42568 – or simply click on the button

London : Jonathan Cape, (1940). First edition. An uncommon collection of fifteen short stories, including “The Bridge”, “A Scandalous Woman”, “Love is not Love”, etc. – “Grave, touching, low-toned, Mr. Bates’s stories are like the effect of a gleam of pale sunshine on a grey landscape – suddenly, in the most sordid and unexpected circumstances, beauty is there” (Daily News, 1st January 1941).
Post 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Original grey-green cloth, blocked and lettered in red; a touch tanned; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a typographic design in black, white and pink – lightly tanned, with some minor wear, a couple of short nicks, and a tiny chip, but still very good.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 40297 – or simply click on the button

London : Chapman & Hall, 1910. First edition. “We may at once proclaim that this is in his best vein of comedy-farce; that it begins quietly, to lull us into a false security ... until unawares we are taken with the spirit of a mirth that we could not control if we would. Lovely woman, of course, is the mainstay of the plot. A classic Helen was not more necessary to the tale of Troy than Helen Rathbone to this new story of the Five Towns” (The Globe, 23rd March 1910).
Crown 8vo (190 x 117mm). vi,316pp. Bound in a smart recent half navy morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth spine and upper cover preserved at rear; some spotting of prelims and edges; last leaf a little tanned, but still an attractive copy of an uncommon title.

SOLD

London : John Murray, (1937). First edition. An early collection of thirty-three poems – including “Slough”, “Exeter”, “Tea with the Poets”, “Croydon”, and “Tunbridge Wells” – “Produced in impeccable late Victorian style, this slim – nay, svelte – volume celebrates the joys and woes of Suburbia, High, Low, and Broad Balham is here, and Tooting” (Liverpool Daily Post, 18th December 1937).
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

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45435 – or simply click on the button

London : Secker & Warburg, (1964). First edition. “Albert Jones made it from layabout to property racketeer in three months flat ... Against a backdrop of Manchester’s bright lights and slum streets – its tearaways and whores, students and sharp operators – this picaresque story offers unusual realism and rare entertainment”. An interesting and in some ways the archetypal sixties novel – Bird’s first book, written as a young advertising executive, long before he became famous as the doyen of marketing men. “It derides those people who rush to film, document and analyse the ‘realism’ of the north, and all the modern realist writers whose experience is limited to their universities” (Daily Herald, 17th August 1964).
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original violet boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good copy in the Robert Petty dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly used, but also very good.

SOLD

[London : for A. Churchill, J. Knapton & others, 1720]. A fine eighteenth-century map of the central London parish of St. Giles in the Fields, taking in Great Russell Street, Montague House (the site of the British Museum), Bloomsbury, Seven Dials, High Holborn, Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields. A keyed table identifies fifty-eight smaller alleys, yards, courts, inns, etc. Originally produced by Richard Blome in the late seventeenth century, the map remained unpublished until the present version (with his name erased) appeared with the 1720 edition of John Stow’s “Survey of London”.
Copper line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 297 x 364mm (approx. 11-3/4” x 14-3/8”). Original vertical fold; a few tiny marks and faint creases, but in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Adams 25/057.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at maps@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44473 – or simply click on the button

London : Frederick Warne & Co., 1886. First British edition. The runaway Harry Potter success of its day, condemning a generation of small boys to the purgatory of velvet cut-away jackets, knee-breeches and ruffles. Like Burnett herself, the illustrator Reginald Bathurst Birch (1856-1943), whose illustrations played so significant a part in the book’s success, was born in England before finding initial fame in the USA.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(270),[ii]pp. Illustrations by Birch, many full-page. Original pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards; some minor wear to extremities, but the binding expertly recased and strengthened; endpapers rejointed; some small and occasional internal marks, but a good copy. With the pictorial bookplate of Mary Anna Marten (1929-2010), archaeologist, trustee of the British Museum and heroine of the Crichel Down affair.

SOLD

London : Hurst & Blackett, 1863. First edition. Drawn from French sources and with emphasis in particular on the story of French influence and intervention in the American War of Independence. With a rich cast of characters including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Voltaire, Mirabeau, William Pitt, Tom Paine, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Walpole, Samuel Johnson, the Marquis de Lafayette, Madame du Barry, Richelieu, Rousseau, Captain Cook, Cagliostro, etc.
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (191 x 124mm). (xx),(346); xii,(376)pp. Bound in a smart, slightly later, half blue calf, banded and gilt, by Zaehnsdorf for the Chicago booksellers Alexander C. McLurg & Co.; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; slight wear at extremities; a few minor marks and small flaws, but overall a good and attractive set. Pictorial bookplate of Roy McWilliams in each volume.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42842 – or simply click on the button

London : for J. Warlters [sic], 1793. An attractive early collected edition of Hester Chapone – Richardson’s “little spitfire” – including all three works published in her lifetime: “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind” (1773); “Miscellanies in Prose and Verse” (1775) and “A Letter to a New-Married Lady” (1777). “Chapone’s name from the 1770s until the mid-nineteenth century was a byword for the female intellectual moralist” (ODNB).
Foolscap 8vo (159 x 90mm). [4],(viii),(182),[ii],116[but 118]pp. Bound in a neat recent quarter morocco; red label; some gatherings on the blue-tinted paper sometimes found in the publications of this period, but a very good, clean and crisp copy.

SOLD

London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1955). First edition. “A series of petty thefts brings Poirot to a students’ hostel where psychological, racial and sexual differences provide a rich field for Miss Christie’s conjuring tricks, Poirot is mellowed and delightful” (Yorkshire Post, 18th November 1955).
Crown 8vo (184 x 115mm). (192)pp. Bound in a smart recent half burgundy oasis, banded and gilt; original linson spine preserved at rear; a few slight spots, but a very good copy, attractively bound.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46225 – or simply click on the button

London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1962). First edition. “Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window” – the last of her true country village mysteries. “The story is of an apparently unmotivated murder at a fête held in Miss Marples’s village, where a famous film star has recently bought the local mansion ... classic Christie sleight-of-hand technique” (Birmingham Daily Post, 4th December 1962).
Crown 8vo (185 x 118mm). (256)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half chestnut morocco, banded and gilt; some spotting of edges and prelims but otherwise a handsome copy.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46081 – or simply click on the button

[London : ca.1855]. A commemorative cotton handkerchief printed on the spot for visitors to the Crystal Palace. The design is twofold (each could be had separately) – an outer frieze printed in red and ochre depicts a somewhat Eurocentric (although perhaps tongue in cheek) view of the advance of civilization – a Fijian cannibal before civilization, Britannia bringing blessings, the advances of hats, shoes, socks and parasols, and finally the “Glorious Result of Civilization” – the tipping of hats, the advantages of “Gentlemen’s Ready Made Clothes” (a discreet advertisement for Mr Moses, the founder of Moss Bros.), the ignoring of street urchins selling matches, the kissing of hands and the adoption of the latest fashions – all tartan for the ladies in the 1850s. In the centre of the handkerchief, a black-and-white image has been superimposed of the Crystal Palace in its new home in South London, with its terraces and fountains.
Printed surface 56 x 55cm (approx. 22” x 21-3/4”). Outer frieze a little faded; some faint spotting and creasing, but still an attractive example of an evocative and ephemeral souvenir of a particular time and place.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at prints@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42776 – or simply click on the button

London : Everett & Co., 1909. First edition. A German invasion by stealth from Captain Curties R.E. – “Vehicles rumbled by with loads of wounded. Before the headquarters of each of the Territorial Battalions, before each bank and each public building, outside Buckingham Palace, stood stolid German sentries. German officers filled the breakfast rooms of the hotels. The Monument was a German look-out post. The guttural tones of the Teuton answered ‘calls’ on the telephone, censored conversations, ‘cut off’ at a second’s notice. The railway stations and the police stations, the telegraph offices and the newspaper offices were in German hands ... London was under martial law, ‘held up’ by two hundred thousand Germans under arms. How had the enemy entered the city? That was the question. None had witnessed their coming. No transports had been sighted. No trains had been commandeered. There was no news of a landing. Curious – and startling! They had materialised, it seemed, out of thin air” (The Sketch, 13th April 1910).
Post 8vo (21cm). viii,312pp. Original red decorative cloth; a touch sunned; a few minor marks, spots and signs of age and use, but a very good copy of a scarce imaginary wars title.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1956). Seventh impression of the original 1943 publication. A sparkling anthology of over 700 passages of poetry and prose as De La Mare explores the differing themes of love – First Love, Grace and Beauty, Eros, The Fever and the Fret, Love Thwarted and Unrequited, Love Betrayed, Love Lamented, Constancy, Love in Grief, and much else besides. Spanning works from Homer to T. S. Eliot, and including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Marvell, Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Blake, Emily Brontë, Oscar Wilde and many more. “From its first page, then, to its last, this book has had for its compass merely my own personal, defective and deficient idea or conception of love. On that, apart from indolence and ignorance, the choice of its every poem, its every fallible statement has depended”.
Demy 8vo (214 x 129mm). cxliv,592pp. Coloured frontispiece, title vignette and black-and-white illustrations by Barnett Freedman (1901-1958). Bound by Zaehnsdorf in a contemporary full crushed russet morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; a few extremely faint marks, but a handsome copy. A few interesting pencilled notes by a previous owner.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46217 – or simply click on the button

London : Chapman & Hall, 1837. First edition, bound up from the original monthly parts. This copy includes the two original plates by Robert William Buss (1804-1875), disliked by Dickens and quickly replaced with fresh plates by “Phiz” — Hablot Knight Browne (1815-1882).
Demy 8vo. (218 x 134mm). (xvi),(610)pp. Etched frontispiece, etched additional title and forty-one etched plates by Robert Seymour, Buss, and “Phiz”. Bound, without half-title, in a contemporary half tan calf, now professionally rebacked and relabelled; marbled sides, endpapers and edges; some internal creases, chips, short tears and small flaws; foxing and browning to plates; one plate with a neatly repaired tear, another slightly frayed; occasional offsetting, but a serviceable copy, with the seldom seen Buss plates.

SOLD

[Amsterdam : François Halma, 1705]. A handsome prospect of London from the south – London bridge still with its houses, the new St. Paul’s prominent, and the Tower of London away to the right. Originally produced for the “Algemeene Weereld-Beschryving, nae de Rechte Verdeeling der Landschappen” by A. Phérotée de la Croix, published at Amsterdam in 1705.
Copper etching and line engraving on paper. Later hand colour. Engraved surface 200 x 269mm (approx. 7-7/8” x 10-5/8”). Trimmed a little tight; faint old vertical folds; a few very minor marks, but a good example of a scarce early view. A guaranteed genuine antique print.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at prints@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46231 – or simply click on the button

London : MacGibbon & Kee, (1971). First British edition. His first book — “It is an astonishing, exasperating book; a beautiful, flowing, stormy prose poem. Tarantula is surrealism on speed, a phantasmagoric trip through America — seen by an impatient, restless, brilliant man stabbing at life with a lethal humour and a strange narrative power” (dust-jacket blurb by Michael Gray). Dylan was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(138)pp. Original lilac-grey boards, lettered in gilt; some small edge-spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the Michael Jarvis dust-jacket — the jacket with just a hint of bruising and a few faint spots to the edges of the inner flaps, but also very good.

SOLD

London : James Reynolds, 1851. One of the well-known series of educational diagrams on card published by James Reynolds of the Strand – in this case drawn and engraved by John Emslie. The diagram illustrates the earth in its relative position to the sun on the first day of each month, with the equinoxial and solstitial lines and notes of the signs of the zodiac. Smaller inset diagrams demonstrate the causation of night, day, twilight and dawn, while explanatory text offers instruction on the sidereal day, the solar year, etc.
Steel line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. 230 x 287mm (approx. 9” x 11-1/4”). Small and light stain to upper corner; slight darkening of outer edges; a few minor marks, spots and signs of use, but overall in very good state.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at maps@ashrare.com quoting stock number 43930 – or simply click on the button

London : for T. Egerton; T. Payne, Becket & Porter, etc. 1813. First edition. An elegant local history, covering in turn the origins, agriculture, botanic gardens, nurseries, manufactories, the canal, rectory, church and chapel, parish registers, benefactions, charity schools, the history, Fulham Palace, the bishops of London, ancient houses, Parsons Green, Walham Green, North End, Hammersmith, Pallenswick, Shepherds Bush, Brook Green, Brandenburgh House, Craven Cottage, etc.
Royal 8vo (252 x 158mm). (xiv),478 [i.e. 480]pp. Engraved frontispiece, dedication leaf and seven plates, mostly engraved by S. Watts after G. Lynn. Folding engraved map. Folding table. Woodcut vignettes by C. Nesbitt. Tailpieces. Bound in a neat recent quarter calf, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; a few faint scuffs; map trimmed at inner margin to aid folding, without loss of detail; some occasional informal internal strengthening with adhesive paper; a few slight flaws, odd patches of browning, a few spots, creases, marks and signs of use, but a good and robust copy.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 38420 – or simply click on the button

London : Bear, Hudson, [1946]. First edition. “High in the Transylvanian Alps, close by a small village called Safnia, stands the mighty grey-walled castle of the Grafshens ...” – the ever-versatile Firth in something of a cult classic presents Jerry Liddon, “English, bronzed, clear-eyed and fair-haired” and his new half-Romanian bride, “tip-tilted nose and dark, glossy hair”, married in Bucharest and Safnia-bound. What could possibly go wrong? This archetypal Bear, Hudson publication also includes Frank Griffin’s “All Set for Murder”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 80pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – an evocative design by H. W. Perl – Hyman Woolf Perlzweig (1897-1952); a little rubbed; rear wrapper lightly marked and creased; staples rusting; text lightly tanned, with the first leaf slightly spotted, but a good copy of a well-known rarity. Just two copies (British Library and National Library of Wales) located in major UK libraries.

SOLD

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

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45546 – or simply click on the button

Edinburgh : Adam & Charles Black, 1887. First edition. A ground-breaking treatise, laying the foundations for Frazer’s later work, not least “The Golden Bough” – “I had to do the work of collection and classification for myself, with very little help from my predecessors”. Totem defined, clan totems, religious totems, sex totems, individual totems, phratic and subphratic totems, subtotems, etc. “The value of his work lies in the skill with which it condenses and makes available a vast amount of information, the result, plainly, of wide and careful study” (The Scotsman, 14th November 1887).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,96pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a little worn at tips; lightly sunned and a little marked; small hole in lower cover and rear hinge; a touch shaken; a few pencil marks; minor faults notwithstanding, a good and presentable copy of a scarce and fragile item.

SOLD

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

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45611 – or simply click on the button

London : John Murray, 1825. First edition. A first-hand account of Byron’s ill-fated venture into the Greek War of Independence – compiled from diaries written at the time by Byron’s chief assistant (and the brother of his mistress Teresa Guiccioli) – “one of the most amiable, brave, and excellent young men he had ever encountered”. Regarded as giving the most reliable account of Byron’s last days, Gamba offers no apologies “for being too minute in any details connected with the name of Byron and the cause of Greece”.
Demy 8vo (210 x 130mm). xii,(308)pp. Two folding facsimile letters. Bound, without half-title, in a near contemporary full purple calf, banded and gilt; tan label; marbled edges and endleaves; silk ribbon; some minor wear and slight scuffing; colour rather unsuccessfully touched up in places; occasional internal spotting, but still a handsome copy.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44481 – or simply click on the button

London : Cassell & Co., (1932). First edition. Satan narrates the epic of mankind – his versions of the biblical stories, the days when he possessed Tiberius, Nero, the Caliph, Cromwell and Napoleon, his final possession, last days in a Bayswater boarding-house, and cremation at Golders Green. Gerhardi, or Gerhardie to use the spelling he later adopted, and something of a lost masterpiece – Evelyn Waugh once remarked to him, “I have talent, but you have genius”. He was also the principal model for the central character (Logan Mountstuart) in William Boyd’s “Any Human Heart”. His collaborator, Brian Holdsworth Lunn (1893-1956), of the Lunn travel-agency family, historian and schoolmaster, is chiefly remembered for his “Switchback” autobiography, with its portrayal of wartime mental breakdown.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 382,[ii]pp. Original black cloth, lettered in red; a few spots to covers and edges; small patch of fading at foot, where the dust-jacket is chipped; endpapers lightly tanned, but overall a very good copy in the striking pictorial dust-jacket – sunned at spine, tiny chips at head, a slightly larger one at foot; some nicks and short tears, with some local discolouration from tape-repairs, but still good and not unattractive.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 40682 – or simply click on the button

London : Robin Hood Press, 1952. Third edition. The first of the Darcy Glinto series – “Clare Holding went to a night club, but she didn’t go back home. Her parents had a card from her to say she was on holiday” – Kelly’s archetypal White Slave kidnap novel – withdrawn from sale by the publishers on first publication in 1940 after a prosecution for alleged obscenity and hefty fines for both publishers and author. “If this is too Tough for you to read, then – Lady – Don’t Turn Over”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; front wrapper lightly creased; a hint of tanning to the foot of the text, but otherwise a very good copy. Just a single copy of this edition (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46364 – or simply click on the button

London : Robin Hood Press, 1950. First edition. “To the mortuary janitor it was just one more nice white body. To Tim Bray it was the body of the girl he had loved”. Bray investigates Dr Gruner and his rather special maternity clinic – “an old racket, but a new angle”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; slight wear at foot; a few minor creases; text lightly tanned, but overall still a very good copy. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46357 – or simply click on the button

London : Faber & Faber, 1980-1989. First editions. The complete “To the Ends of the Earth” trilogy, the three novels published successively in 1980, 1987 and 1989, the first winning the Booker Prize. “The work of a master at the full stretch of his age and wisdom ... Golding is quite simply the best living writer of the short novel in the English language” (Andrew Sinclair, The Times). The basis of the 2005 BBC TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch, etc.
Three volumes. Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],278,[iv]pp; [iv],(282),[ii]pp; [iv],(314),[ii]pp. Original boards; very mild tanning of endpapers to first volume; text of third volume a little tanned, as always, but otherwise a very good set in the dust-jackets by Cathie Felstead and Paul Hogarth. Neat dated ownership inscription of Timothy Langdale in the first volume.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1951). First edition. Adultery and broken hearts in Clapham – the basis of both the 1955 film with Deborah Kerr and Van Johnson, and the 1999 film with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes. “For me one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody’s language” (William Faulkner, in a letter to his UK publisher).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [vi],(238)pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt; some tanning of outer leaves; a few edge spots; slight flaw to final leaf, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket lightly tanned, but with just minimal wear and a couple of slight nicks, and also very good.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45734 – or simply click on the button

London : Longmans, Green, & Co., 1900. First edition. The title story, set in the period of King Cetywayo, and two other longish tales, “Elissa” (also known as “The Doom of Zimbabwe”) and “The Wizard”. “Black Heart and White Heart ... is the best story that Mr. H. Rider Haggard has ever written; better, indeed, than anything we had hitherto thought him capable of writing” (The Graphic, 30th June 1900).
Crown 8vo (19cm). xii,[2],414pp. Frontispiece and thirty-three full-page illustrations (the latter not included in pagination) by Charles Kerr (1858-1907) and Frederick Henry Townsend (1868-1920). Original dark blue cloth over bevelled boards, lettered in gilt; some minor wear to extremities, a few faint marks, some spotting to text and plates, but a very good and still bright copy.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 38520 – or simply click on the button

London : Macmillan & Co., 1928. First edition. Hardy’s final collection of poetry – 105 poems – the majority previously unpublished. Includes “The Lodging-House Fuchsias”, “To a Tree in London”, “Henley Regatta”, “That Kiss in the Dark”, and “We are Getting to the End”. Although prepared for the press before his death in January 1928, Hardy did not live to see its publication.
Crown 8vo (21cm). (xii),202,[ii]pp. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few edge-spots, endpapers lightly tanned, but a very good, clean, sound and largely unopened copy in a dust-jacket with just a couple of slight marks, but also very good indeed.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44476 – or simply click on the button

London : Addey & Co., 1853. First British edition. A book heralded as the first genuine children’s novel set in California – and a cracking tale of the California Gold Rush as young Sam Gilman accompanies his father to San Francisco, where they arrive by sea on the Fourth of July. First published in New York earlier that year with the additional sub-title, “The Young Californian”.
Foolscap 8vo (166 x 100mm). [ii],(9)-214pp – pagination irregular, but collates as the British Library copy. Engraved frontispiece by Dalziel and title-page on plate paper. Bound in a stylish, perhaps French, half polished tan calf, delicately gilt on spine; marbled sides; red edges; just a touch rubbed; hairline split at head of upper joint, but solid and sound; a few minor marks and spots, but a very good and attractive copy. Blank ex-libris label covering an earlier ownership inscription.

£150

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 39010 – or simply click on the button

London : Jonathan Cape, (1941). First British edition. Inspired by Hemingway’s own experience as a war correspondent in Spain and already a best-seller in the United States, incidentally making a rediscovered John Donne briefly an American best-seller too. The film rights were sold for a record sum – and the resulting 1943 technicolour movie with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman was nominated for nine Academy Awards. “There are some unforgettable scenes ... the description by the woman Pilar of the massacre of the mayor, priest and local Fascisti ... the shooting of the civil guard ... For sheer descriptive power ... the blowing up of the bridge would be difficult to equal in fiction. In other words, best-seller or not, this is a magnificent novel” (The Sphere, 15th March 1941).
Post 8vo (198 x 129mm). 462,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half navy morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a few faint marks but a very good, clean and sound copy in an attractive binding.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46224 – or simply click on the button

London : John Macrone, 1837. First edition. A searching analysis, backed up with statistics and tables, with chapters and sections on the moral and physical health of Londoners of all ages and classes; life expectancy; infectious diseases; the prevalence of epidemics; causes of illness; the geology; the sewers; the London climate; the use of coal; population growth; streets, buildings and the failures of town planning; proposed improvements; slaughterhouses; the effect of gas works and other factories; number of burials; deficiencies in water supply; adulteration of food and impurity of water; abuse of alcohol; the demoralising influence of pawn shops; manners and customs; gluttony and “the pernicious effects of suppers”; keeping late hours; urban improvement; government apathy; factory smoke; life insurance; Mr Babbage’s calculations etc. “The great metropolis supplies a tolerably abundant store of materials ... so ample, indeed, that an author must bring a corresponding share of courage to the task of comprising and condensing its topics ... The first chapters of the work contain much valuable statistical information, and those which follow present a very amusing and instructive selection of varieties peculiar to ‘London as it is’“ (Morning Post, 4th October 1837).
Post 12mo (175 x 105mm). xii,(390)pp. Tables. Bound in an attractive later full marbled calf, banded and gilt; marbled edges; slightly rubbed; slight splits at foot; a few very minor marks but otherwise a very good copy of an extraordinary production.

SOLD

[Bideford] : Sunstone Press, (1993). First edition : published in a limited edition of 100 copies by Hughes’ own Sunstone Press, but this copy, without the limitation statement, evidently bound up from a small over-run of sheets remaining at the printers. Twenty-eight poems on the creatures of the sea – “Starfish”, “Whelk”, “Whale”, “Lobster”, etc. – each stunningly illustrated with a full-page colour illustration by Hughes’ Sunstone partner, the artist Reginald James Lloyd (1926-2020), who has signed and dated this copy, 17th August 2007. A disagreement with his regular publishers, Faber & Faber, over this “naughty adventure” in self-publishing meant that when the Faber edition eventually appeared, after Hughes’ death and six years later, the illustrations were by a different artist (Flora McDonnell) and, attractive as they are, they are simply not the original illustrations of this full collaboration between artist and poet – the work of each inspired by the other.
Demy 8vo (210 x 146mm). [iv],28 leaves. Frontispiece and twenty-eight full-page coloured illustrations by Lloyd; bound in a smart recent half red morocco, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt, with Lloyd’s original “kelp” endpapers; a very good copy indeed of one of the scarcest of Hughes’ printed books. Just a single copy (Cambridge) of this edition located in major UK libraries. Loosely inserted are two invitations to exhibitions of Lloyd’s work at Winchcombe and Bideford, dated 2006 and 2007 respectively.

£500

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46215 – or simply click on the button

London : Victor Gollancz, 1944. First edition. “What fun it is! A don at a provincial university has been crushed by a meteorite, evidently hurled down on him of malice aforethought; and our old friend Appleby investigates in the richest atmosphere of dons and dukes. The talk is enchanting. In fact, the whole thing is enchanting” (Illustrated London News, 13th May 1944).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (168)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch of sunning to spine, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket of a fragile wartime production – the jacket lightly fingered and slightly sunned, but with only a hint of wear and also very good.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46150 – or simply click on the button

London : Victor Gollancz, 1945. First edition. Detective-Inspector Appleby meets his future wife Judith Raven. “Dead men ‘set’ like turnips, domestic animals turn to stone, the tales of a forgotten novelist coming true – a whole brood of Ravens in the Manor, and at its gates a tribe of rustics earthier than Cold Comfort Farm – it is all quite crazy, lavishly ingenious and extremely good fun” (Illustrated London News, 30th March 1946).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 152pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising but a very good and clean copy in the original yellow dust-jacket – the jacket with just a touch of tanning and a couple of tiny nicks but also very good.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46151 – or simply click on the button

London : Victor Gollancz, 1982. First edition. A presentation copy to the author’s son, inscribed “Angus, with love from the author” (Angus John Mackintosh Stewart, 1936-1998), and dated Fawler (the family home) 1982. A retired Appleby at a fancy dress fête, featuring an unusual number of sheiks, where the entertainment gets rather out of hand.
Post 8vo (21cm). (158)pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; just the faintest signs of use but a very good copy in the eye-catching yellow dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46185 – or simply click on the button

London : Victor Gollancz, 1983. First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed and initialled by the author to his son “A. J. M. S.” (Angus John Mackintosh Stewart, 1936-1998), and dated Fawler (the family home) 1983. The two detectives join forces to solve “an intriguing reversal of the classic locked-room mystery” – not how the murderer got in, but how the dead man got out.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(156)pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised, but a very good copy in the distinctive yellow dust-jacket – also very good.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46186 – or simply click on the button

London : S. D. Frances, [1949]. First edition. The tenth book in the series. “I was staying at John Parker’s place in Hollywood and it was a nice set-up. It was especially a nice set-up on account of Beryl ... Me and Beryl were rubbing along nicely together, just like a coupla dry sticks that keep on wanting to burst into flame on account of they’re getting so hot”.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 124,[iv]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – blonde, gun, heels and stockings – a design by “Ferrari” (Philip Montague Mendoza); some very minor wear and a touch of fraying; tiny nick to rear wrapper; a few slight creases; faint tanning to text, but otherwise a very good copy of an uncommon title. Just two copies (British Library and Trinity College, Dublin) located in major libraries worldwide.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46193 – or simply click on the button

London : S. D. Frances, [1950]. First edition. Hank is taken off a big story to fly to St. Louis – there is a reason. The scarce second book of the second series. The book attracted forty-nine destruction orders (Holland. p.322). Later republished under the Roberts & Vinter imprint as “Play It Quiet” in 1962.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (3)-128,[ii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a Heade blonde in bonds, heels and little else; some very minor wear to tips and edges; a touch of rusting to staples; a few trifling marks, but a very good copy of a scarce and fragile publication. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46195 – or simply click on the button

London : S. D. Frances, [1951]. First edition. The first book in the third series of Jansons – and the recipient of seventy-six local authority destruction orders by 1953 (Holland p.323) – a record even for Janson. A job interview in the opening pages which brings in discussion of Descartes, Plato, Nietzsche, Hume, Schopenhauer, and the Behaviourists was perhaps not the reason. Later republished under the Roberts & Vinter imprint as “Cool Sugar” in 1960.
Foolscap 8vo (19cm). 125,[iii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – a design by Reginald Heade – one of his very best, with redhead in abandon and a filmy green negligee; price adjusted by silvering over the front wrapper; some very minor wear and mild creasing; a few faint marks, but a very good copy. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46197 – or simply click on the button

London : Tinsley Brothers, 1877. First edition : in the primary binding. “The leading idea in the tale is this: at Birmingham there is an immense property without an owner, and two years ago over 100 claimants from America and other countries held a family council there ... Something similar (under different names of localities etc.) forms the nucleus of my novel which shows how this vast property influences the lives of many people” (Jefferies in a letter of July 1876). His rare third novel, intended to appeal to lovers of the sensational in the style of Wilkie Collins — “He certainly succeeds in seizing on his reader’s attention from the first start, and his story, with all its faults, is never for a moment dull or trivial” (The Graphic, 25th August 1877).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(250),[ii]; [iv],278; [iv],(290)pp. Original dove-grey cloth, lettered in gilt, and ruled and blocked in black and gilt; spines a little darkened; a little rubbed; some slight splash-marks and faint spots; two endpapers a little cracked; a little shaken in places; a few minor internal marks and small flaws, but overall a good set of a notable rarity — ranked by Sadleir as the scarcest of all Jefferies’ novels.

£750

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44710 – or simply click on the button

[London : R. & J. Dodsley, 1764]. A charming antique map – decorated with a stylish rococo cartouche, a compass rose, etc. Compiled and engraved by Thomas Kitchin, one of the best known of English mapmakers of the period and later to become Hydrographer to the King. Originally produced for “England Illustrated, or, a Compendium of the Natural History, Geography, Topography, and Antiquities Ecclesiastical and Civil, of England and Wales” (London : 1764).
Copper line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 252 x 194mm (approx. 9-7/8” x 7-5/8”). Just a hint of browning, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at maps@ashrare.com quoting stock number 34164 – or simply click on the button

London : Bickers & Son, [1918]. First edition : the London issue of the American sheets. Thirty-six tales of inspiring bravery, ancient and modern, grouped under the headings of “Facing Death to Avoid It”, “The Treasure-Seekers”, “Soldiers Who Knew No Fear”, “Some Exploits of the Sea”, and “Famous Deeds of Discipline”, with individual chapter titles such as, “How an Artist Outwitted a Pope”, “A Great Novelist among the Corsairs”, etc.
Post 8vo (197 x 129mm). xii,420pp. Sixteen plates. Bound in a handsome full prize tree calf, by Bickers & Son, banded and gilt, with the arms of Guy Henry Fisher-Rowe (1877-1946) of St. David’s School, Reigate, on the upper cover; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; just a hint of rubbing, but a very good copy indeed. School prize-label dated 1930, signed by Fisher-Rowe, and made out to W. G. Peck of the Lower Third.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44460 – or simply click on the button

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1995). First edition. “Wonderfully captures the atmosphere of wartime London ... an original and entertaining detective story” (Robert Harris). The first of the Frederick Troy novels – “A severed human arm leads to an unholy web of spying, murder, and betrayal in war-torn London ... Newcomer Lawton has an urban documentarist’s eye and ear for his jangled world ... and a nasty sense of how little slips can indeed sink ships” (Kirkus Reviews, 1st April 1995).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi], 342,[iv]pp. Original red boards, lettered in silver; a couple of faint and tiny spots, but a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket of an elusive modern rarity.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46189 – or simply click on the button

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1996). First edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. The second of the much-admired Frederick Troy series – Chief Inspector Troy is assigned to bodyguard and spy on Nikita Khrushchev on his visit to England – “A splash of Greene, a twist of Deighton, a small measure of history – Lawton has produced a thrilling cocktail” (The Times).
Royal 8vo (25cm). [x],416,[vi]pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; the merest hint of bruising, but a very good copy indeed – bright, clean and sound – in an equally very good dust-jacket.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45871 – or simply click on the button

London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1959. First edition. His astonishing novel of London youth and changing mores – “Though the language is jazz and the mood very hip, this is the truest, shrewdest and kindest eye that has yet looked over the new world made by the ‘kids’ themselves”. Filmed in 1986 with Eddie O’Connell, Patsy Kensit, David Bowie, James Fox, Ray Davies, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (224)pp. Original red-pink boards, lettered in gilt; a touch dulled; some tanning of endpapers; a few tiny spots, but a good copy in the original Roger Mayne dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn and somewhat creased, but complete and intact.

SOLD

London : Methuen & Co., 1902. First edition. The long-missing heir to the Twickenham fortune (or his double) is bizarrely discovered as the “marvellous sleeping man” – a glass-case exhibit in a sideshow at the Royal Aquarium. Relatives have cogent reasons for not wishing him to wake up – but he does. “The surprising and sensational events that result in consequence keep the reader breathless ... a masterpiece of sensational plot” (Northern Whig, 26th August 1901).
Post 8vo (21cm). viii,(310),[ii] + 40pp advertisements dated August 1902. Original decorative red cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; slight bruising; a touch rubbed; a few slight spots, mainly to edges and endpapers, but still a very good and bright copy of an uncommon and intriguing title.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46221 – or simply click on the button

London : Longmans, Green & Co., (1958). First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed to Trevor – the actor Trevor Howard (1913-1988) – signed with forename, and dated 28th March 1959 by the author. Spy with a split personality caused by a wartime injury in North Africa. As a final note makes clear, the novel was to a considerable extent autobiographical. “A spy with a second self which takes over at the most unexpected moments. One result is that there are times when he cannot be sure which side he is on ... Given the Maugham magic no reader could ask for more” (Belfast Telegraph, 23rd May 1975).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(166),[iv]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; one rear corner a little bumped; endpapers lightly tanned; a handful of spots but otherwise a very good copy in the Bruce Petty dust-jacket – the jacket just a little worn and slightly marked. Loosely inserted is a 1961 stamped, postmarked, typed, addressed envelope to Mrs Trevor Howard – the actress Helen Cherry (1915-2001).

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46136 – or simply click on the button

London : William Heinemann, 1903. First edition : the second issue, with a cancel-title dated 1903. “Worth a thousand of the average books published nowadays” (Westminster Gazette, 19th November 1902). “Mr W. S. Maugham has given us his strongest book. In fact, the novel is in many ways one of the strongest of the year ... In this case he deals with the problem of marriage, and gives all his strength to the delineation of the husband and the wife” (The Sketch, 26th November 1902).
Crown 8vo (184 x 120mm). vi,(374)pp. Bound in an attractive recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; slight nicks to a handful of early leaves; some spotting, mainly of prelims and edges, but otherwise a good copy, handsomely bound. Neat library stamp of the Harman Church Bungalow Library of Fairlight on final leaf.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46211 – or simply click on the button

London : Routledge, Warne & Routledge, 1864 [but 1863]. First edition. Something of a tour-de-force in Pre-Raphaelite illustration, with Millais in “a labour of love” taking six years to complete twenty drawings for the Dalziel Brothers, who executed the wood-engravings, a number of proofs of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1862-1863, while others became Millais oils and watercolours. “Mr. Millais has given all the force of thought to it for which his works are remarkable ... the design and execution are full of suggestive force and meaning” (Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 12th December 1863).
Post 4to (254 x 195mm). 4,48,1 leaves, printed in red and black. Twenty plates, ruled and lettered in red. Head and tailpieces. Contemporary full black sealskin, banded and extra gilt; all edges gilt; some minor rubbing and wear; endpapers replaced; some foxing in various degree throughout, but still a handsome copy. With the 1948 ownership inscription of the artist Geoffrey Scowcroft Fletcher (1923-2004). Loosely inserted is Fletcher’s signed single-page autograph note on Daily Telegraph notepaper, dated May 1983, recounting the story of the book and Millais’s admiration of the skill of the Dalziels, but “the book, however, had only a limited sale”.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1877. A standard edition of the poetry, printed on india paper and published in Macmillan’s “Globe Edition” series. Bound in 1883 in a very handsome binding, with fore-edge painting, for the Cambridge scholar-bookseller Robert Bowes (1835-1919) as a gift for his wife Fanny Bowes (1831-1903) on her birthday in June of that year. Inscribed and initialled by Bowes with his wife’s name and the date — with a further later inscription in a different hand commemorating her death in 1903. With Bowes’ personal “Quod Vis Potes” bookplate bound in. Bowes was a nephew of the publisher Alexander Macmillan (1818-1896) and his partner in the Cambridge bookshop of “Macmillan & Bowes”, while his wife Fanny Bowes was Macmillan’s sister-in-law. Sold together with the companion edition of “Poetical Works of Walter Scott” (1878), bound to match and evidently part of the original gift.
Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (174 x 115mm). (xii),(626); (xliv),(560)pp. Bound in handsome full citron morocco, banded and extra gilt; all edges gilt; hand-painted endleaves in a design of tulips for Milton and thistles for Scott, the designs repeated in concealment beneath the gilt of the fore-edges and only revealed when the pages are fanned open; spines a little darkened and with some minor rubbing, but otherwise in very good order and an extremely rare example of a personalised binding of this type.

For more on these bindings, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 5th June 2020.

£1,000

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44687 – or simply click on the button

London : for T. Cadel [sic], 1793. Fifth edition. Hannah More – “the strong and generous bias in favour of universal toleration, noble as the principle itself is, has engendered a dangerous notion that all error is innocent”. First published in 1791.
Foolscap 8vo (154 x 94mm). [viii],(262),[ii]pp. Bound in a neat later (twentieth-century) quarter calf; marbled sides; slight browning to edges of first and last leaves, but an attractive copy, complete with half-title and final advertisement leaf. Contemporary (1796) ownership inscription of Olivia Sayle (1771-1834). Born in remote Wentbridge, Yorkshire, Sayle was the daughter of a sheep farmer, well known for his improvements in breeding. In 1801, close to thirty years old, she married Henry Jackson, a surgeon. Their grandson, also Henry Jackson (1839-1921), was an eminent classicist, vice-master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, Fellow of the British Academy, and the recipient of the Order of Merit in 1908.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46351 – or simply click on the button

London : Methuen & Co., 1902. First edition. A pub in Wapping, scuttling, smuggling, receiving, murder and more – “Cap’en Nat is among the most unforgettable characters in fiction ... Mr. Morrison’s masterpiece so far, or, rather, an absolute masterpiece which any novelist might be proud to claim” (The Graphic, 4th October 1902). “Total genius. A depth of characterisation and atmosphere worthy of Dickens ... While it is a mystery story, following loosely in the genre of Morrison’s earlier Martin Hewitt detective stories, its power lies in its exquisitely restrained writing. Why is Morrison not taught at universities, alongside Conrad?” (John Yeoman).
Crown 8vo (193 x 125mm). viii,348 + 40pp advertisements dated August 1902. Bound in a smart recent quarter green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth front cover and spine preserved at rear; a little light spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46009 – or simply click on the button

London : G. Virtue, 1833. One of the most attractive of all maps of the island, decorated with an extravagant “gothick” architectural border, coats of arms and a vignette panorama of Mona presiding over stormy seas. Engraved in 1833 by James Bingley (1796-1869) for Moule’s part-work series “The English Counties Delineated” (1830-1837) – and here in earliest state, dated 1833 in the plate and before later revision.
Steel line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 192 x 266mm (approx. 7-5/8” x 10-1/2”). A few tiny specks and spots, but overall in very good and clean state. Rare in this early state and with original colour. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at maps@ashrare.com quoting stock number 43949 – or simply click on the button

[London : George Virtue, 1832]. One of the most attractive and popular of all antique maps of the county, decorated with a “gothick” architectural border, six coats of arms and vignette views of Euston Hall and Heveningham Hall. Originally engraved by William Schmollinger (1811?-1869) for Moule’s part-work 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 194 x 272mm (approx. 7-5/8” 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

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at maps@ashrare.com quoting stock number 43913 – or simply click on the button

London : Jonathan Cape, (1933). First edition. Restoring a country cottage – “Mr. Nichols rambles about among the old beams and the pots and pans in his own discursive, witty, charming way. He had a housekeeper called Mrs. Wrench. He had a neighbour who was a Professor. He found a hollow wall behind which was a perfect Sheraton alcove and a lovely Staffordshire figure of a lady in it. He enlisted the services of a water-diviner. He bought a hive and started bee-keeping ... I enjoyed A Thatched Roof very much indeed, as everyone must” (A. G. Macdonell in The Bystander, 13th December 1933).
Post 8vo (21cm). (286),[ii]pp. Endpapers, frontispiece, pictorial title, and illustrations – some full-page – by Rex Whistler; original pink pictorial canvas, blocked in black and lettered in silver; small mark to half-title; a handful of spots to endpapers and edges; a touch shaken, but otherwise still a very good copy in the charming Rex Whistler dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn, frayed, and slightly tanned, with a few nicks and a couple of shallow chips, but neatly reinforced and repaired, substantially complete and attractive still.

SOLD

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

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42159 – or simply click on the button

London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1964. First edition of the last novel published in his lifetime – “the best comic fantasy since ‘Tristram Shandy’” – mad scientist plots the end of the world, time travel used to age whiskey, both James Joyce and St. Augustine with speaking parts, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in a just lightly used and slightly creased dust-jacket.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42284 – or simply click on the button

[London : Henry Overton, ca.1740]. A scarce and attractive antique print – Hanover Square from the south – the heights and hills of north London away to the north. Originally published as part of Overton’s undated series of "Prospects of the most remarkable places in and about the Citty of London".
Copper line engraving on paper. Later hand colour. Engraved surface 162 x 241mm (approx. 6-3/8” x 9-1/2”). Trimmed a little tight at sides; very faint vertical fold; a few very minor marks, but overall in very good state. A guaranteed genuine antique print. Adams 26/033.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at prints@ashrare.com quoting stock number 37517 – or simply click on the button

London : Duckworth, 1936. First edition. “Ablaze with sports-cars and cocktails and bailiffs and film-directors and innuendoes, and even poor old Freud is hoisted out of his dismal coffin of the early nineteen-twenties and put through his creaking paces. It is all very amusingly done, and the glitter is maintained with a vast deal of switching on and off of artificial lights” – A. G. Macdonell’s review in “The Bystander”, 29th January 1936.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 272,[iv]pp. Original magenta cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; a few faint marks; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a good copy of a difficult early title.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44049 – or simply click on the button

London : Hamish Hamilton, (1946). First edition. The cadet and the stolen postal order – the pursuit of justice for the unimportant – based on a true story and one of the defining plays of the mid-twentieth century, frequently revived, with numerous film, television and radio adaptations. Here inscribed by Rattigan to his secretary Mary, signed with forename (Terry) and dated October 1946. Mary Herring began working for Rattigan shortly before the play opened at the Lyric in May 1946 and was to become his confidante, companion, guardian of his reputation, controller of his finances, and keeper of his secrets for the next seventeen years.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (110),[ii]pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in red; original production flaw to two leaves leaving them proud, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the fragile and brittle post-war jacket a little tanned, with some minor chipping and slight repairs at head and tail.

SOLD

London : Elkin Mathews, 1896 [i.e. 1895]. First edition. The short-lived Ruding’s scarce and only novel – he died at the age of twenty-five less than a month after it was published. Very consciously a new kind of fiction – startling, impressionistic, psychological, experimental and fin-de-siècle – and marked out as so by a dramatic cobwebby cover and a fine frontispiece by Aubrey Beardsley. “The story is indeed a powerful one; a tale of wrong and suffering told in a vivid and thrilling language. It is in very truth the tragedy of a brain – its revolt, its suffering, its final passionate cries against the cruel wrong” (Sunday Times).
Post 8vo (21cm). [2],x,(100),20pp. Frontispiece – the regular “Portrait” variant, rather than the “Black Coffee” design found in a handful of pre-publication copies – by Aubrey Beardsley. Original blue cloth, blocked in lighter blue and lettered in bronze; lightly rubbed; spine dulled (as always); endpapers lightly tanned; a few minor spots and creases, but a good copy of a difficult title.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

London : John Murray, 1845. First edition. A key novel in the whole Tractarian, Young England, Oxford Movement controversies of the times – a lament for the loss of Anglican faith, hostility to the industrial world, profound opposition to Rome and the Jesuits – and yet also a lurid and sensational novel, widely read and hugely popular, especially in the United States. “Hawkstone has the rare merit of being written throughout with more or less of intellectual power. It does not contain a single page in which the evidence of mind is not apparent” (John Bull, 29th March 1845).
Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (159 x 99cm). viii,396; [ii],422pp. Bound, without half-titles, in a neat contemporary half tan calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; black labels; marbled sides, edges, and endleaves; some very minor wear; a handful of internal spots, but a very good set. Contemporary ownership inscriptions of Mary Hobson, and later owner’s 1909 name.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44482 – or simply click on the button

London : John Murray, (1950-1961). A complete first edition set of the four volumes of Stark’s autobiography – the first volume signed by the author on the half-title. From her picaresque childhood, through her life and travels in the Arab and Persian world, to World War II – “It is difficult to know which to admire more, her vivid description of her experiences or the realism of the lessons which she draws from them ... Our future is uncontrollable if we are unable to read our past” (Sir Charles Petrie in The Illustrated London News, 28th October 1961).
Four volumes. Demy 8vo (23cm). (xiv),346; (xvi),(342),[ii]; (xvi),(288); xii,(298),[ii]pp. Numerous plates – many from the author’s own photographs; portraits; maps, some double-page, etc. Wood-engraved decorations by Reynolds Stone. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt, with facsimiles of the author’s signature on upper covers; the first volume a little faded; some edge-spotting, chiefly to the final volume, but otherwise a very good set in the Frank Quilter dust-jackets – the first price-clipped, a little worn, nicked and chipped, with repairs at head; the second price-clipped, a little chipped, with repaired tears to foot at folds; the third with slight chipping at head and some repaired nicks; the fourth very good, with only a hint of wear. The first volume with the decorative bookplate of Jean A. Callander of Westwood, Falkirk, the third and fourth with unrelated inscriptions.

£500

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45856 – or simply click on the button

London : Secker & Warburg, (1963). First edition. Story at the height of his success – published in hardback in January, a Penguin paperback was rushed out in February to coincide with the general release of the film of the same name, starring Ian Hendry, John Gregson, June Ritchie, Liz Fraser, etc. Albert the tallyman in the world of never-never. “If a total lack of heroes and heroines be the hallmark of modern writing then Mr. Story is very modern indeed” (Wolverhampton Express, 5th January 1963).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (160)pp. Original lilac boards, lettered in silver; a very good copy in the striking Anne Hickmott dust-jacket – the jacket with a few very faint marks, but also very good.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46360 – or simply click on the button

London : Faber & Faber, (1947). Second impression of the original 1946 edition, but here furnished with a delightful and artistic hand-made additional dust-jacket. Phoebe Carpenter takes over the farm while her husband is away at war and transforms it from pasture to ploughland, buying the latest machinery, and becoming the most successful farmer in the area before facing her final hurdle – the return of her husband to a farm no longer recognisable as his own. “Here set forth in great good humour and, if one may say it for want of a better word, tenderness. This is a book to read and re-read at leisure” (Exeter & Plymouth Gazette, 3rd January 1947).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 272pp. Original blue cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a touch of fading and a few spots but a very good copy in the striking original Berthold Wolpe dust-jacket, the whole protected in the hand-drawn jacket depicting the village square, with some characters from the novel. An unjustly neglected novel here paid a handsome tribute by an early reader with a carefully crafted addition to the book. A charming and unique period piece.

SOLD

London : Frank Palmer, (1913). First edition in English of “I Hafsbandet” (1890). Strindberg’s novel of isolation and resistance – a clever outsider arrives at a remote village in the archipelago as the Superintendent of Fisheries. Translated by Ellie Schleussner. “This is a book of strange power, and it gives rise to strange thoughts, imaginings, and feelings. The usually placid reader will feel distinctly uncomfortable before he reaches the end, and the end may perhaps shock him. It reads like a frontal attack on woman and Christianity” (Pall Mall Gazette, 30th July 1913).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 324pp. Original pictorial cloth, gilt and enamelled; just a touch sunned; some spotting to endpapers and prelims, but a very good copy. Contemporary gift inscription dated Christmas 1913.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42560 – or simply click on the button

London : Frederick Pickton, 1858. First edition. A thorough account of the parish, with individual chapters offering a general survey; the history of the manors of Lambeth, Kennington, Vauxhall, Stockwell and Levehurst; Lambeth Palace; the archbishops; the churches; the rectors; the monuments and epitaphs; the older and more important buildings, and remarkable events, with appendices on the subsidy rolls, the charities, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xvi,(248),[iv]pp. Title-page in red and black. Fourteen engraved plates (two on steel). Wood-engraved illustrations in text. Facsimiles. Tables. List of subscribers. Original cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind, by Bone & Son, with their ticket; some very minor wear; spine a little sunned; a handful of spots, but overall a very good and largely unopened copy. With the bookplate of the book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 43307 – or simply click on the button

London : J. D. Potter, [ca.1905]. A striking and unusual map displaying (in two portions) the stretch of the tidal Thames from Charing Cross to Gravesend – the upper portion going downstream to Barking Reach, the larger lower portion from Halfway Reach on to Gravesend. At a scale of four inches to one sea mile, the principal feature is the identification in red of over 180 steamship wharves, with notes on vessel lengths, average spring and neap depths, etc. Compiled by the steamship owners and brokers Temple, Thomson & Clark, from their address at 38 Leadenhall Street – premises they appear to have occupied for a short while either side of 1905 – and published by the nautical equipment firm established by John Dennett Potter of the Minories.
Colour printed lithograph on paper. Printed surface 665 x 995mm (approx. 26-1/4” x 39-1/4”). Dissected, mounted on linen, and folding into marbled guards; a little worn with some surface creasing; some damage to right hand margin, not affecting image; some holes, short splits and repaired tears to folds, but in reasonable condition for a scarce and heavily used working map of this type. Just two copies (Bodleian and British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at maps@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42891 – or simply click on the button

London : Robert Holden & Co., (1915 [but 1926]). [Second edition]. The first and most famous of the Doctor Syn novels – the piratical vicar of Dymchurch – rum-running, night-riding and coffins. Thorndike starred in his own touring production of a stage version in the 1920s, produced by his sister – Dame Sybil Thorndike (1882-1976) – who contributes a foreword to the present edition. It was filmed in 1937 with George Arliss, Margaret Lockwood, etc.
Crown 8vo (181 x 117mm). 256pp. Bound, without preliminary blanks, in a fine recent half blue morocco, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endleaves; a sprinkling of edge-spots, but a very good copy.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44484 – or simply click on the button

London : Bodley Head, (1966). First edition. “Delightfully witty ... The love department is the marital troubles office in a women’s magazine, presided over by the bountiful Lady Dolores. She enlists the help of a holy innocent, Edward, in her battle against a sinister passion-peddler and marriage wrecker in the Wimbledon district” (Illustrated London News, 24th September 1966).
Post 8vo (21cm). (296)pp. Original turquoise boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; faint spotting to fore-edge, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a stylish design by Stephen Russ – the jacket just faintly tanned, with a few spots, but also very good. Small bookseller’s label of John Sandoe of Chelsea on front pastedown.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46358 – or simply click on the button

London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1867. First edition. Grace Crawley, Mrs Proudie, Septimus Harding, etc. – “Mr. Trollope has seldom been in greater force” (Illustrated London News, 9th March 1867). “Taking it as a whole, I regard this as the best novel I have written” (Trollope in 1883). With lively wood-engraved plates and illustrations after George Housman Thomas (1824-1868), mainly engraved by his brother, William Luson Thomas (1830-1900).
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (209 x 129mm). [iv],384; [iv],384pp. Thirty-two full-page plates and thirty-two vignettes. Bound in a stylish recent full burgundy crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; mild browning and spotting to outer leaves; a few faint marks; one plate trimmed tight, but overall a very good and handsome set, housed in a custom-made cloth case.

£500

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46205 – or simply click on the button

London : Chapman & Hall, 1873. First British edition. One of Trollope’s best and most enjoyable – and “one of the most entertaining, worthless, attractive women in the history of the novel: the totally amoral Lizzie Eustace” (P. D. James). “The novel is rare in fine state, for it had great library popularity ... few copies in good original condition have survived the zeal of contemporary readers” (Sadleir, writing in 1928).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (183 x 123mm). viii,354; viii,(364); viii,(354)pp. Bound (for Hatchard’s of Piccadilly), complete with half-titles, in a smart later (early twentieth-century) half red morocco; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; silk ribbons; a few very minor internal marks, spots and small flaws, but overall a very good set in a handsome binding. Monogram bookplates – possibly of George Capel Cure (1853-1943) of Blake Hall, Ongar – engraved by Allan Wyon (1843-1907), together with the more recent bookplate of the notable modern collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

£1,250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46208 – or simply click on the button

London : Chapman & Hall, 1877. First edition. “Once again we have the author at his best, we feel quite disposed to agree with the distinguished critic who declared not long ago that he held that Mr. Trollope’s novels must be counted among the few real pleasures of life. As a specimen of realistic literary art, it would not be easy to find anything more perfect than these three volumes ... there is hardly a figure in the story which has not the sharpness of outline and fidelity of a fine photograph” (The Graphic, 16th June 1877). The figures of course include Arabella Trefoil, “a masterly study of a girl without a heart” (Michael Sadleir), but also “the finest, most fearless and the most tragic of all his doomed and desperate anti-heroines” (James Pope-Hennessy).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (184 x 122mm). viii,(294); viii,(294); viii,284pp. Bound, complete with half-titles, in an elegant later (early twentieth-century) full chestnut straight-grained calf, banded & gilt, by Zaehnsdorf; inner gilt turn-ins; marbled endpapers; just a hint of wear; a few slight marks, nicks and faint creases, but still a very good set.

£950

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45847 – or simply click on the button

Stoke-on-Trent : Archer Press, (1950). First edition. “After what you have done to me ... kill me!” is the teaser tag on the cover – a torrid tale of girlish indiscretion, marital disillusion, passion and deceit. “The wages of sin are sometimes even worse than death” sententiously adds the back cover. Somewhat incongruously set in a respectable London suburb – Wimbledon, I think, from memory (McKeag was living in Clapham at the time) – but this versatile author in top form, abetted by a sensational cover-design by Reginald Heade (1901-1957), finest of all the pulp-artists – and one of his very best.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; American price over-printed on upper wrapper; “Printed in England” stamp on title and copyright sticker on verso; a few faint signs of age; text a touch tanned, but a very good copy of a scarce and fragile item. Just two copies (British Library and Trinity College, Dublin) located in major libraries worldwide.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 43896 – or simply click on the button

London : Effingham Wilson, 1831. First edition under this title of “The Reformers’ Bible”, Wade’s “accessible critique of elite parasitism” (ODNB). A publisher’s presentation copy, inscribed on the title-page, “To the Editor of the Weekly Dispatch. With the Publisher’s Compliments”. Based on Wade’s earlier “The Black Book; or, Corruption Unmasked” (1820), but here “composed entirely afresh, newly arranged ... in all respects a new book”, and published by Effingham Wilson (1785-1868), radical bookseller of the Royal Exchange. The editor of the Weekly Dispatch, presumably Robert Bell, recipient of this copy, was quick to review it: “a complete view of the expenditure, patronage, influence, and abuses of the government, in church, state, law and representation”, warning the sinecurists, “who have too long been permitted to fatten in luxurious and useless idleness on the industry of this tax-eaten nation, this is a most dangerous publication. In the present age, we hold it to be an incontrovertible maxim, that a perfect knowledge on the part of the people of the existing abuses in Church and State, is all that is required for their abolition” (Weekly Dispatch, 6th February 1831). The passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832 was not coincidental.
Demy 8vo (213 x 132mm). xx,576pp. Caricature frontispiece. Bound in contemporary half tan calf, banded and gilt; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; spine expertly repaired at head and joints; light offsetting and spotting to opening leaves, but otherwise a very good copy. With the contemporary small bookseller’s label of Richard James Kennett (1802-1885) of Great Queen Street on front pastedown.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46213 – or simply click on the button

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

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45428 – or simply click on the button

London : Chapman & Hall, 1945. First edition. “Chapter One : I meet Sebastian Flyte – and Anthony Blanche – I visit Brideshead for the first time” – “Each of his novels has hit its intended mark. He has not, up to now, aspired to write a great book. This time he has; and he has done so” (Elizabeth Bowen in The Tatler, 13th June 1945).
Crown 8vo (187 x 122mm). 304pp. Bound in an elegant recent crimson quarter morocco, banded and gilt; a few faint edge-spots; a couple of minor internal marks, but otherwise very good copy, handsomely bound.

£750

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45549 – or simply click on the button

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). “One doesn’t read Evelyn Waugh for military history. But ... a brilliant reconstruction ... the characters and episodes sketched with the sure dexterity of a model by Barbara Hepworth, the lightness of wit sustained marvellously, the judgments suitably heavy” (Birmingham Daily Post, 5th December 1961). “Waugh’s most profound and substantial work” (Anthony Gardner).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (186 x 121mm). (vi),314; [x],(336); [viii],(312)pp. Bound in an elegant recent quarter blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edges blue; some spotting of edges and mild tanning to outer leaves in the final volume, but otherwise a very good set.

£750

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46203 – or simply click on the button

London : Macmillan & Co., 1904. First edition. A publisher’s presentation copy, with a presentation stamp on the title-page, and a review slip loosely inserted. Wells in full satirical mode as research chemists in Kent create a substance causing colossal growth – of chickens, plants, wasps, rats – and humans. “The Food of the Gods is, though it is hardly necessary to say so, a strange book. There is more in it than in half-a-dozen ordinary novels put together” (King and His Navy & Army Magazine, 15th October 1904).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),318,[ii] + 16pp advertisements dated July 1904. Original sage-green cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind on front cover; top edge gilt; some very minor rubbing and bruising; some spotting, mainly of edges and endpapers; just a touch shaken, but still overall a very good copy.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46219 – or simply click on the button

London : Sherwood, Jones, & Co., 1823. First edition. “Laughter, says a merry wag of our times ... is, next to breathing, the most important business of the lungs”. The colourful Westmacott, “journalist and blackmailer”, as the ODNB has it, with a highly entertaining exploration of the miseries of authorcraft, of the mind, of travelling by coach, of the miseries of London, walking in London, London lodging houses, of love and matrimony, of borrowing, and of living too fast. Bound in are a specimen front and rear wrapper from the original partwork publication, one with the pasted-over bookseller’s label of Jennett of Belfast.
Royal 8vo (249 x 155mm). (viii),(98)pp – a handful of copies (e.g. Cambridge University Library) are recorded with an additional leaf, but this would appear to be atypical. Ten lively plates, some with tissue guards, and ten illustrations by the gifted Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856). Bound in are two smaller format publishers’ catalogues of eight and sixteen pages respectively, the latter dated August 1823. Bound in a contemporary half calf, with later red label, now neatly restored at extremities; top edge gilt; marbled sides; some light rubbing and wear; some occasional marks, spots and small areas of discolouration, but a good copy of an entertaining read.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46359 – or simply click on the button

London : Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown; and J. Mawe, 1820. First edition. A concise and well-organised study by the London music-master, neatly classifying the multivalves, bivalves and univalves, giving instruction on cleaning and preservation, etc. Illustrated with some exquisite hand-coloured plates, depicting sixty-three species.
Post 8vo (196 x 115mm). xxiv,(120),[iv],[2]pp. Four etched plates, all with delicate original hand colour. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco, ruled, tooled and lettered in gilt; very mild offsetting from plates; small mark to first plate, but otherwise a very good copy. Ownership inscription of George Wood, dated 1890.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 37998 – or simply click on the button

London : Barrie & Jenkins, (1973). First edition. Ivor Llewellyn is fresh out of his sixth marriage when his lawyer recommends Bachelors Anonymous, a support group for bachelors to help each other prevent impulsive marriage proposals. “There is the much-married executive, Ivor Llewellyn … who tended to propose to women over the coffee because he couldn’t think of anything else to say to them. There is the English Joe Pickering, who has one of the sunniest smiles in SW7; and there is Ephraim Trout, the lawyer, who was so thin and meagre that a course of diet bread might well have rendered him invisible” (Birmingham Daily Post, 25th May 1974).
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket – the jacket slightly darkened at the edges of the laminate (as usual), but also very good.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46122 – or simply click on the button

London : James Wyld, 1891. An attractive circular map of the environs of London on a scale of half an inch to a mile, extending north beyond Hertford and Ware, east to Tilbury, south to Dorking and Edenbridge, and westwards to Windsor and Eton. Coloured circles indicate places respectively within four miles and twelve miles of Charing Cross. Originally published in 1832 and revised and updated by Wyld’s son and grandson until the present version, which is the last known.
Lithograph on paper with delicate original hand colour. Printed surface 620 x 610mm (approx. 24-3/8” x 24”). Dissected, mounted on linen, and folding into a Wyld cloth case, with paper labels (cover title “Wyld’s New Map of Country Round London”); case a little worn and spine label chipped; pinholes to upper margin of map; a few slight creases, but the map overall in very good state. Ownership stamp of James Scott in two places, with some pencilled addition to the map beyond the south-west corner. Hyde D&H 344 – not listing this edition.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at maps@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42888 – or simply click on the button

London : Macmillan & Co., 1880. First edition. “There is always a pleasurable feeling of expectation in opening a new novel by Miss Yonge and that lady’s many admirers need not be told that there is a certainty of more or less satisfaction from anything she writes” (Morning Post, 14th September 1880). A lost inheritance, a secret love – Major Delavie and his three daughters encounter the wonderfully villainous Lady Belamour.
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],288; [viii],304pp. Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt, and blocked in black; a little rubbed and worn; endpapers cracking; a little slack; a few internal marks, nicks and spots, but a good and serviceable cloth set.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42769 – or simply click on the button