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Paris : Les Editions Isis, 1931. First edition : a presentation copy, warmly inscribed to Pierre Varenne (Pierre-Georges Battendier) (1893-1961), the novelist and lyricist, and signed by all three co-authors – Josephine Baker, the first black superstar and later Resistance heroine; the Czech director and screenwriter, Felix de la Cámara, and Baker’s Sicilian husband and manager, the self-styled Count Abatino – “the no-account count”. A story of selfless giving, involving a millionaire’s son and the maid’s daughter. Illustrated with stylish Jazz Age images by the Russian artist Georges de Pogedaieff (1897-1971).
Post 8vo (20cm). [viii],(176),[iv]pp. Six plates. Vignettes in text. Original pictorial wrappers; slightly chipped at foot; some mild wear; text just lightly tanned, but overall a very good and largely unopened copy of a scarce and fragile item.

£1,500

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London : for J. Allen, 1827. First edition : the second issue, with the date on the title-page altered from 1826 to 1827. A richly illustrated and wide-ranging history from the local artist, engraver and historian, who died of cholera at the age of thirty. Includes chapters on the rectory and its rectors; the church and its monuments; Lambeth Palace; the archbishops of Canterbury; the manors of Kennington, Vauxhall, and Stockwell; Waterloo; Brixton and Norwood, etc.
Medium 8vo (229 x 145mm). xii,458,[ii]pp. Thirty-eight plates, some coloured, many by Allen himself. Nine maps and plans, two folding, four coloured. Numerous wood engravings in text, two coloured. Pedigrees. Facsimiles, etc. Bound in a handsome nineteenth-century half black calf, banded and richly gilt; red label; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; just a hint of rubbing; some very minor internal browning and spotting, but a very good copy of a handsome work.

£250

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1903. First edition. Leonora in a difficult marriage to a Potteries earthenware manufacturer – “For its portrayal of the intricacies and incongruities of human nature this novel will be found interesting, the character studies being particularly well drawn ... a cleverness that carries conviction and insists on attention” (Birmingham Daily Post, 23rd October 1903).
Crown 8vo. [viii],362,[ii],4 + 32pp advertisements dated September 1903 (copies with catalogues dated May 1903 are recorded, but the book was not published until October and no priority can be inferred). Original purple cloth, ruled and blocked on upper cover in a floral art nouveau design in grey and pale blue; lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; lightly rubbed; a few faint marks and one slight bruise; a few spots to edges and prelims; inserted catalogue a little brittle and tanned (as always), but otherwise a very good and still bright copy of an uncommon book.

SOLD

London : John Murray, 1851. First edition. Autobiography sliding into fiction and beyond – “a literary curiosity which fascinates as much as it perplexes. An irregular medley of the common and eccentric – of life in its bye paths – of odd vicissitudes in city kens and country forges – of flash and philological scrapings – of balderdash, thimble-rig, slang and psalmody – yet withal most enjoyable – such is Lavengro” (Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, 8th February 1851). “In every respect a remarkable book. We find it difficult to convey to our readers a just notion of its varied attractions – its originality and power – its poetry, piety, philosophy and learning” (Morning Post, 24th February 1851). “There are passages in Lavengro which are unsurpassed in the prose literature of England” (Theodore Watts, in his introduction to the 1893 edition).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (190 x 117mm). xx,360; (xii),366; (xii),426pp. Portrait frontispiece – engraved by William Holl (1807-1871) from a portrait by Henry Wyndham Phillips (1820-1868). Bound, complete with half-titles, but without the inserted advertisements sometimes found, in an elegant later (early twentieth-century) half green morocco, banded and gilt, by William Root (1846-1924) & Son; top edges gilt; silk ribbons; cloth sides; marbled endleaves; a little sunned; some spotting of endleaves and binder’s blanks; a few very minor internal marks, but a very good set.

£400

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London : William Franks, 1806. A fine manuscript survey, bearing the name of William Franks Jr. (1780-1850) as vestry clerk, at a nominal scale on the first map leaf of two-and-a-half-inches (6.35cm) to twenty chains (402.34m) (ten inches to the mile, 1:6336). A sequence of maps depicting the boundaries between Clapham, Battersea, Lambeth, and Streatham, as they stood in the early nineteenth century. The route commences on the north side of Clapham Common, moving northwards along Wix’s Lane (with Mount Nod still standing); across Lavender Hill, then eastwards along meadows, water-courses and brick meads in the vicinity of modern Robertson Street; then southwards to the Lark Hall Tavern and across Larkhall Lane, down to the Clapham Road (A3); turning right along to the old Bedford Arms (now known as the Clapham North) and the Workhouse which stood on the site of Clapham North underground station; then southwards again down what are now Bedford Road and King’s Avenue; then westwards to join the eastern corner of Tooting Common, along what is now Emmanuel Road; northwards up what is now Cavendish Road; then westwards to cross Balham Hill and along a water-course in the vicinity of modern Malwood Road; up to Nightingale Lane; then around Clapham Common to the starting point at the foot of Wix’s Lane. The accompanying text gives precise directions; notes of boundary marks and posts; details of current and former owners; notes of inter-parish agreements, mainly on repairs and maintenance, but including historic boundary agreements and a new boundary agreement between Clapham and Lambeth settled at two joint meetings earlier in October. The survey evidently continued in use for a period of time and numerous pencilled notes have been added in later hands. Loosely inserted are a manuscript note relating to the perambulation of 1829; and an 1899 letter from the Board of Works for the Wandsworth District to Alexander Herbert Webber (1850-1927), solicitor and Clapham vestry clerk, concerning boundary changes, with the four relevant printed pages from the Board’s recommendations.
Post 4to (261 x 207mm). [ii],18 [but 24]pp + 8 blank leaves – comprising eleven pages of description and nine maps (one double-page). Contemporary marbled boards, now neatly rebacked in red morocco; black label; boards a little worn; a few minor marks, but still a very good example of a parish perambulation. A comparable survey for Lambeth parish dated 1808 survives in Lambeth Archives.

SOLD

London : T. Fisher Unwin, (1919). First British edition : includes corrections to the text not incorporated in the New York edition, which appeared a little earlier in 1919. “One of the finest of his novels, and Dona Rita perhaps the strongest and most perfect woman character he has yet conceived” (Aberdeen Press, 16th February 1920). “If I were to be asked in which of Mr Conrad’s writings his genius shows itself at its highest power, I should answer without hesitation, in this the latest of them” (Sidney Colvin, The Observer, 1919).
Post 8vo (193 x 121mm). x,336pp. Bound (for Sotheran) by Bayntun-Riviere in an elegant recent half-blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a couple of trifling marks, but a very good and clean copy in a handsome binding.

£250

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, (1923). First edition. “The rover Peyrol is a superb creation, the eternal ancient mariner yet native to his time and his soil ... Towards the end Lord Nelson himself steps upon the scene, and in three or four masterly pages we see the man as he was, the fragile body and restless mind nearing their supreme triumph and their doom ... the simplest of Mr. Conrad’s books; none the less, we rank it among the greatest” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6th December 1923).
Crown 8vo (189 x 121mm). (318),[ii]pp. Bound (for Sotheran) by Bayntun-Riviere in an elegant recent half-blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; some mild tanning to edges of final leaves, but otherwise a very good copy in a handsome binding.

£200

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1925. First edition. Four short stories previously unpublished in book form – “The Warrior’s Soul” – a moving tale of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, written during the Great War; “Prince Roman” – the Polish Patriot; “The Tale” – moral dilemmas at sea in the Great War, and “The Black Mate” – one of his earliest ventures into fiction. With a foreword by R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936). Published posthumously to the delight and acclaim of contemporary reviewers – “A substantial addition to Conrad’s best work” (The Scotsman); “one of the most remarkable books of short stories ever issued” (Daily Dispatch); “No unconsidered trifles ... They are of the stuff by which he will be judged” (Manchester Guardian).
Crown 8vo (189 x 120mm). (288)pp. Bound (for Sotheran) by Bayntun-Riviere in an elegant recent half-blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a few slight spots to prelims, but otherwise a very good copy in a handsome binding.

£200

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London : John Pearson, 1873. First collected edition. Nineteen plays, including “The Gentle Craft” (i.e. “The Shoemakers’ Holiday”) – probably his most famous; “Satiro-Mastix”, his robust response to his friend Ben Jonson; “The Honest Whore”; the anti-papist “Whore of Babylon”; “Westward-Hoe” and “Northward-Hoe”; “The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt”, co-written with John Webster and originally known as “Lady Jane”; “The Roaring Girle. Or, Moll Cut-Purse”, co-written with Thomas Middleton; the mayoral pageants “London Triumphing” and “London’s Tempe”; “The Virgin Martyr”, co-written with Philip Massinger; “Match Mee In London”; “The Sun’s Darling”, co-written with John Ford; “The Witch of Edmonton”, etc. “Dekker’s writing does reveal a sustained compassion for society’s misfits and casualties ... incisive commentary on the social, political, and religious structure of London ... continuously productive under three monarchs ... survived poverty, plague, and prison” (John Twyning in ODNB). Carefully edited from surviving early editions, with extensive notes and a memoir by Richard Herne Shepherd (1842-1895).
Four volumes. Crown 8vo (178 x 110mm). xlviii,340; [iv],392; [iv],386; [iv],(452)pp. Bound in a later (twentieth-century) half green crushed morocco, banded and richly gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edges gilt; just a touch sunned; a handful of spots, but a very good set indeed in a most attractive binding. With the pictorial nautical bookplate of the collector George G. Stevenson.

£500

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1912]. First edition. “In Professor Challenger, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has created a figure as interesting as Sherlock Holmes, though of a quite different kind” (The Scotsman, 21st October 1912). A lost plateau discovered in South America inhabited by pterodactyls, iguanodons, a megalosaurus and much else besides. “The more we read the more spellbound we become. The book, it is safe to say, is the most remarkable published for many a month” (Liverpool Daily Post, 30th October 1912).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (320)pp. Frontispiece and seven plates – the frontispiece featuring a heavily disguised Conan Doyle himself, posing as Professor Challenger. Plans in text. Original blue pictorial cloth, blocked in white and gilt; small label removed from front cover; spine lightly creased; some mild bruising and a little rubbing and wear; endpapers slightly tanned; some spotting of edges; a few minor internal marks and small flaws; a couple of short tears; one plate slightly proud, but a good copy. Cancelled lending library label on rear pastedown.

SOLD

London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1913). First edition. “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gives further proof of his amazing versatility ... the author has got hold of a really good idea and has handled it with immense energy and ingenuity. The question of the possible end of the world is one that interests everybody” (Daily Citizen, 2nd September 1913).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(200)pp. Sixteen dramatic plates by Harry Rountree (1878-1950) – two featuring indomitable golfers – “Once fairly out on a round, it would take the crack of doom to stop a true golfer”, and “There were the golfers. Was it possible that they were going on with their game?” Original pictorial blue cloth; spine a little sunned; some minor rubbing and mild wear; label deftly removed from front free endpaper; some scattered browning and spotting, mainly of endpapers, prelims, and edges; a few faint marks, but a good copy.

£125

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London : Faber & Faber, (1958). First edition. The third volume in the Alexandria Quartet – David Mountolive, youthful passion, politics, diplomacy, and conspiracy. “Landscape, townscape and seascape are the never-forgotten milieu in which the diverse characters act out their destiny. Few novels are at once so dramatic and so instinct with poetry” (The Scotsman, 18th October 1958).
Post 8vo (22cm). 320pp. Original yellow cloth blocked in violet and gilt; edges spotted; mild spotting to front free endpaper, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a couple of minuscule nicks, but also very good.

£100

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London : George Routledge & Co., 1852. First edition. Promoted by the publishers as “the best book on this important country, written by a gentleman who has resided there many years”, and lauded by reviewers – “We can recommend the volume under notice as being one of the best and most instructive on the subject of Australia that has issued from the press. The concluding chapter is full of valuable and practical advice, and the success indeed of the work is best evinced by the fact of 20,000 copies having been already sold” (The Era, 15th August 1852).
Foolscap 8vo (167 x 100mm). [2],viii,216,[ii] + 16pp inserted advertisements. Folding map by John Richard Jobbins (1798-1866). Bound in a neat recent half roan, banded and ruled in gilt; tan label; marbled sides; text lightly tanned; a few minor marks, chips and creases; very faint fringe of mild discolouration to extreme outer edges of some leaves, but a good copy of a highly informative production.

£200

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London : Methuen & Co., 1898 [but 1897]. First edition. The second of the wonderful Wallypug books (for specially nice girls and boys only). The Wallypug travels to London from the land of Why for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Sights, scenes and also “his voyages on the underground in company with the Doctor-in-Law, Sergeant One-and-Nine, the Boy and the Fish, and of his remarkable adventures in general, and the book is as charmingly nonsensical and as full of irresponsible fun as its predecessor” (The Gentlewoman, 5th February 1898).
Post 8vo (21cm). (xvi),174,[ii] + 40pp advertisements dated November 1897. Illustrations, some full page, by Alan Wright (1864-1959). Original pictorial cloth, blocked in terracotta, olive and black, in a design by Wright; a touch sunned; just a hint of wear; rear endpaper slightly cracked; some spotting to endpapers and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy. Contemporary gift inscription dated May 1898.

£100

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London : for J. Murray / Edinburgh : for J. Sibbald, 1792. First Rowlandson edition. A very attractive edition of Fielding’s first full-length novel – and indeed one of the first genuine novels in English, originally piblished in 1742. The picaresque tale of the good-natured footman on the road home from London – Parson Adams, Lady Booby, Mrs Slipslop, etc. – here illustrated with eight delightful etchings by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), which are among Rowlandson’s earliest essays in book illustration.
Crown 8vo (190 x 118mm). xx,(332)pp. Bound in a neat nineteenth-century half calf, ruled in gilt, red label, marbled sides, sprinkled edges; some mild rubbing; some occasional internal light spotting and browning, but overall a very good copy. Pictorial bookplate of John Gough Noake of Attenoke (1879-1964).

£400

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London : Duckworth & Co., 1900. First edition : one of just 500 copies bound by the publishers for the British market, and here in the second issue pink rather cherry-red binding. A first mention of the Forsyte family (one chapter is headed “Salvation of a Forsyte”) in this famously uncommon early Galsworthy novel published under the “John Sinjohn” pseudonym. “Greta, the motherless girl, is altogether delightful. So is the hero, Alois Harz, the Bohemian painter; and so too is Christian, the other heroine, so to speak, whom he marries ... the characters are delightfully sketched, with a good deal of verisimilitude ... a decidedly readable story” (The Bookseller, 25th December 1900).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(258)pp. Original pink cloth, with white cloth lettering labels; a touch sunned; some very mild wear; faint traces on the front cover of a label or perhaps a protective jacket having been removed; a few slight marks; endpapers lightly tanned; occasional light spotting, but a good and sound copy. Pencilled gift inscription on front free endpaper.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1955). First edition. An accountant and his bride find themselves gambling in Monte Carlo – “Nor do I need to explain to you that this tale has not been written for the purposes of encouraging adultery, the use of pyjama tops, or registry office marriages. Nor is it meant to discourage gambling” (Graham Greene). “Mr. Greene carries it off gaily. He calls his tale an ‘entertainment’. So it is, and its background is brilliant” (Country Life, 17th February 1955). The basis of the 1956 film starring Glynis Johns and Rossano Brazzi, as well as the 1990 “Strike It Rich”, with Robert Lindsay and Molly Ringwald.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],140pp. Original blue cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; sliver of fading to head of spine; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good and sound copy in the Stevens dust-jacket – the jacket with a few faint marks on rear panel, a single short tear, some tiny chips at extremities, and one larger chip at foot, but bright and attractive still.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1969). First edition. “I met my Aunt Augusta for the first time in more than half a century at my mother’s funeral ...”. On Greene’s own admission, the only one of his books written “just for the fun of it” – memorably filmed in 1972 by George Cukor, with Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (320)pp. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; a couple of edge-spots, but a very good copy in the original pictorial Stephen Russ dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped but also very good.

£100

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Boston : Little, Brown & Co., 1916. Seemingly a special advance copy of the American edition, which was not formally published until the following year. A presentation copy to the woman who inspired it, inscribed “Your book, my darling, written for you with all the best of me & dated on my birthday (the reason of which was to love & serve you.)”, dated Easthampton, Long Island, 3rd July 1916, and signed by Cosmo Hamilton – the playwright and novelist of whom Dorothy Parker once wrote, “There can no longer be any doubt that it was from Cosmo Hamilton that the cosmic urge derived its name”. The recipient was Julia (Julie) Bolton, née Currey (1888-1952), whom he had married in 1915 after her divorce from the playwright Guy Bolton (1884-1979), friend and collaborator of P. G. Wodehouse. “Before everything else this is a Love Story, but is also a crushing indictment of the Divorce Laws of America and England ... emotion, anger, honest endeavour to play the game against overwhelming odds and the love of home and children” (UK publishers’ announcement, The Globe, 29th June 1916).
Crown 8vo (185 x 123mm). [iv],(126)pp. Bound in a smart contemporary half green crushed morocco by Putnam’s; top edge gilt; silk ribbon; a very good copy. With the recipient’s Julie Hamilton globe bookplate, designed by Ernest Clegg (1876-1954). No copy of this 1916 American printing located in any major library worldwide.

£500

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London : Tinsley Brothers, 1872. First edition. Hardy’s scarce second novel, published without an author’s name by Tinsley “in an edition presumably of 500 copies” in June 1872 (Purdy), having been rejected by Macmillan as “very slight and rather unexciting” the previous year. Tinsley recollected it as one of the “best press-noticed” books he ever published – e.g. “the artist is a true and original one ... every chapter, and almost every page sparkles with lively, natural dialogue ... so hard to write; so rare in fiction” (London Evening Standard, 2nd July 1872) – but it sold very poorly and many of the first edition sheets were subsequently remaindered in one volume form.
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [vi],(216); [vi],216pp. Bound, complete with half-titles, in a superior twentieth-century full crushed tan morocco, banded and richly gilt; inner gilt dentelles; top edges gilt; original green cloth covers preserved at the rear of each volume; some very minor wear and a touch of bruising; very faint scratching to rear board of vol. i; a couple of tiny chips and small flaws to text, but overall a very good and clean set in a handsome binding.

SOLD

London : Cecil Palmer, (1926). First edition. “Though so many writers have exhausted themselves on the subject they have not exhausted the subject itself, and Mr. Harper has a wonderful capacity for accumulating odd and out-of-the-way knowledge and of conveying it in a delightful, if sometimes inconsequential way ... a very entertaining book” (Western Mail, 10th February 1927). Includes chapters on London as a Birthplace; Battersea and Bolingbroke; Dr. Johnson’s London; Lord Beaconsfield’s London; Walter Besant’s London; Bankside; Fleet Street (The Street of Ink – and the Street of Venom); Berkeley Square, etc.
Demy 8vo (218 x 138mm). Plates. Portraits. Plan. Illustrations in the text by the author himself. Bound – for the London bookseller Charles James Sawyer (1876-1931) – in an elegant contemporary half tan crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; just a touch of rubbing; a few slight marks to rear board; a few edge-spots, but otherwise a very good copy.

£200

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London : William Collins Sons & Co., 1980. First British edition. Three celebrated novellas, two of which, “Revenge” and “Legends of the Fall”, subsequently became films starring Kevin Costner, Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, etc., but “the best is a beautifully rendered story called ‘The Man Who Gave Up His Name’. It’s an extraordinary piece of writing ... I think this novella can stand with the best examples the form has to offer – those by Conrad, Chekhov, Mann, James, Melville, Lawrence, Isak Dineson ...” (Raymond Carver, Chicago Tribune). First published in the USA in 1979.
Post 8vo (22cm). [iv],276pp. Original burgundy boards, lettered in gilt; a touch bruised; faint marking to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also just a touch bruised, very faintly sunned, and with a couple of very short and unobtrusive tears, but otherwise very good.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, (1936). First edition. A succinct, lucid, much-admired and highly influential account of the Great War by the renowned strategist and military historian – “Jealousies, trivialities, rivalries had their say and the bill was paid in lives. ‘Too often in this war’, Captain Liddell Hart has caustically put it, ‘did the leaders fight each other while the troops fought the foe’“ (Manchester Evening News, 6th August 1936) “The best short history of the Great War in any language” (The Listener).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xx),(9)-(260)pp. Four maps in text, three folding maps at rear. Original blue-grey cloth, lettered in red; some spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket in second state, with press-reviews on the front flap, but complete, just lightly tanned, and with minuscule wear. With the 1945 ownership inscription of Herbert James Daniel Collet (1919-1997) of Worthing.

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Salisbury : K. Clapperton, 1834. First edition : one of just twelve copies printed on large paper, the limitation statement given on the printer and publisher Kenneth Clapperton’s printed slip on the errata page. The antiquary Henry Hatcher of Endless Street, his name commemorated in the local Hatcher Society, was at various times both postmaster and schoolmaster at Salisbury, and the acknowledged nineteenth-century authority on its history. He here provides a measured account, commencing with material on Old Sarum and the “bardic circles” of Avebury and Stonehenge, with much on the mediaeval history and the cathedral, the later history, the local worthies, Wilton and Wilton House, local government, population statistics, etc.
Royal 8vo (240 x 170mm). [4],(iv),(170)pp. Vignette title. Bound in a handsome later (mid twentieth-century) half blue crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; slight tear to gutter of title-page; slight spotting to binder’s blanks, but overall a very good and clean copy.

£400

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1912. First edition. Hutchinson, the first official amateur champion in 1886, covers all aspects of the game – with additional essays by Bernard Darwin, May Hezlet Ross and others.
Crown 8vo (21cm). (xii),(362)pp. Fifty-two photo plates – all the shots displayed by the leading players of the day. Original enamelled cloth in an attractive pictorial design; some mild rubbing and faint wear; a few slight marks and minor signs of age and use; endpapers tanned; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a very good copy. Ownership inscriptions of R. L. Aston and C. E. Evans.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1984). First British edition. Set mainly in the Prague Spring of 1968 – “A story of irreconcilable loves and infidelities – Milan Kundera addresses himself to the nature of twentieth-century ‘Being’... This masterly novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence”. Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim. Filmed in 1988, with Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],314pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a touch of dustiness to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the Russell Mills dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used and a touch sunned, but also very good.

£200

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1902. First edition. Despite the title, we have reached Kiev by Chapter Two, and the Baku oil wells by Chapter Three, with the bulk of the work concerning Persia, Baluchistan and Afghanistan – the artist and explorer describing not just every aspect of local life, but much interested too in the geopolitical uncertainties and tensions of these “coveted lands”. “By far his most serious and striking piece of work. It is unquestionably one of the most valuable and informative works on travel and exploration which have been published for many years” (The Sketch, 17th December 1902).
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (220 x 137mm). (viii),(462); viii,(460)pp, Numerous plates, offering some 175 illustrations. Maps (two folding). Plans. Diagrams. Bound in an elegant near contemporary half burgundy calf, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; silk ties; a little light wear and slight scuffing; some splash-marks to rear cover of vol. ii; edges lightly spotted, but otherwise a very good set. With the armorial bookplate of Sir Alexander Kay Muir (1868-1951) in each volume.

£250

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1929). First British edition. No longer just talking to the animals, but also to plants and insects, Dr Dolittle flies to the moon on the back of a giant moth – there to encounter all manner of surprises, not least the Vanity Lily, “a flower possessing the most advanced form of vegetable intellect”. “The Doctor’s lunar experiences – his problems of climate, dress, and diet, his researches into plant language, and his long-deferred meeting with the Moon man – are charmingly and logically conceived, and described with a quiet matter-of-factness that is very convincing. Mr. Lofting has, as usual, illustrated his text with many amusing and one or two really imaginative drawings” (Liverpool Daily Post, 3rd July 1929). First published in the United States the previous year.
Post 8vo (21cm). (320)pp. Coloured endpapers, two colour plates, title-page design and seventy full-page illustrations by the author. Original grey cloth, blocked and lettered in purple; top edge a touch dusty, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket, with a coloured pictorial onlay by Lofting – the jacket lightly worn and a little tanned, with a couple of spots, but also very good. Loosely inserted is a Jonathan Cape postcard, inviting readers to join their mailing list. Contemporary (1930) gift inscription on the verso of the front free endpaper.

£125

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London : Constable & Co., 1927. First edition. “A wonderfully poignant revealing of this most lovable writer” (Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 2nd August 1927). Mansfield destroyed all but a fragment of her “huge complaining diaries” prior to 1914, but the journal – here edited and introduced by John Middleton Murry – made up of notes for stories, diary entries, unposted letters, comments and confessions, preserves all that she wished to survive for the period 1914-1922.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xvi),(252)pp. Original grey cloth, ruled and lettered in blue; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy in the typographic dust-jacket – lightly tanned and just slightly worn – but also very good. Bookseller’s label of Edgar H. Wells & Co. of New York on rear pastedown.

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London : Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959. First edition : in the primary binding, lettered in silver. HMS Wager, one of Commodore Anson’s squadron, wrecked on the coast of Chile in 1741. “Drunkenness, mutiny and bloodshed” and the fictionalised tale of two young men – midshipman Jack Byron, secret poet (and real-life grandfather of Lord Byron) and his eccentric protégé Toby Barrow, surgeon’s mate – evidently precursors of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
Post 8vo (21cm). 256pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in silver; some spotting, mainly of prelims and edges; endpapers a touch tanned, but otherwise a very good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket lightly sunned, with some light rubbing and wear, but complete and attractive still.

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[London : Admiralty, 1858]. A handsome and rare Admiralty chart from Powell’s “Harbours of Refuge” series, lithographed by Thomas Malby (1808-1877) & Sons. Shows the new breakwater, and a number of projected redoubts and batteries, with the Fort de Roule under construction, and fine detail of the area. Powell was later to become Chief Draughtsman to the Hydrographic Office at the Admiralty.
Lithograph on paper, with full original hand colour. Printed surface 51.8 x 67.8cm (approx. 20¼” x 26¾”). Some minor wear to outer edges; a few repaired marginal tears, two just touching the printed surface, but otherwise in very good state for a scarce and fragile survival. Only the British Library copy located in major libraries worldwide.

£250

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London : Richard Phillips, 1804. A fine antique print of St. Paul’s and the Thames. Engraved by James Newton (1748-1807?) from an original study by Edward Pugh, and originally produced for Phillips’ “Modern London : Being the History and Present State of the British Metropolis” (1804).
Copper line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 145 x 186mm (approx. 5-3/4” x 7-3/8”). A few tiny specks, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique print. Adams 89/016.

£100

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

£100

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London : for Abel Roper, 1723. First edition in English. “So long as Rome maintain’d its liberties, the Roman ladies were distinguish’d for their beauty, their wit, their vertue, or their courage ... But no sooner had the emperors subjected Rome, and render’d themselves absolute masters of the republick, than their consorts became sharers with them in their grandeur, their glory and their authority”. A lively and then novel take on Roman history – the women put in the forefront of the action – Calpurnia; Livia Drusilla; Julia; Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina, and Cæsonia – consorts to Caligula; Valeria Messalina; Agrippina; Octavia; Sabina Poppæa; Statilia Messalina – Nero’s last consort; Lepida; Galeria Fundana; Domitilla; Marcia Furnilla, and Domitia Longina, consort to Domitian. Originally published in Paris as “Les Femmes des Douze Césars” in 1718, and already in its fourth French edition by the time this translation appeared in London. Translated by George James.
Post 8vo (194 x 114mm). [vi],352,[32]pp. Title-page in red and black. Bound in a contemporary sprinkled calf, banded and ruled in gilt; pink edges; some light rubbing and wear; small shelf-mark to spine; tiny split to front joint; text a little tanned in places, but an attractive copy still. Book-label of St. Andrew Ward (1745-1822) of Hooton Pagnell.

£250

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London : Henry Colburn, 1826. First edition. “The best of all the novels of Horace Smith” (The Atlas). A much-lauded historical novel from Horace Smith, friend, benefactor and adviser on money matters to both Shelley and Leigh Hunt, and friend and host in later life to Dickens, Thackeray, Harrison Ainsworth and other notables. “The characters (like Sir Walter Scott’s) from the highest to the lowest, have individuality. Their qualities, manners, and forms, are distinctive and real. Constantia Beverning may be placed in competition with the Rebecca of ‘Ivanhoe’“ (The Scotsman).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 115mm). [ii],378; [ii],(400); [ii],414pp. No half-titles called for. Bound, without the advertisement leaf, in a Victorian half blue-black calf, ruled and lettered in gilt, by Edmund Worrall (1823-1894) of Birmingham, with his label in each volume; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; a touch sunned; lightly rubbed and slightly worn, with a few tiny scuffs; a few minor internal marks and spots, but otherwise a very good set. With the ownership inscription “Lawford, Downhills” written over a blind-stamp in each volume – presumably the solicitor John Lawford (1790-1863) of the Georgian Downhills Park in Tottenham.

£250

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London : Henry Colburn, 1826. First edition. A fine historical novel – inheritance, treachery and deceit – opening in Calais in the days of Henry VIII. “Sir Walter Scott must learn to bear a rival near the throne. His contemporaries are already beginning to pay a divided allegiance. They think, and apparently with justice, Horace Smith is second, and only second, to the once sole monarch” (Monthly Magazine).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (187 x 115mm). [ii],310; [ii],350; [ii],326pp. No half-titles called for. Bound, without the errata slip and advertisements sometimes found, in a smart contemporary polished half blue-black calf, ruled and gilt, with ownership initials “N. R.” at foot; red labels; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; just a hint of rubbing, and light wear to corners; light spotting to endpapers and outer leaves; a few very minor internal marks and spots, but a very good set.

£250

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

£1,000

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Basle [i.e. London : by W. Bowyer], 1734. First edition. Although an English translation had been published in London as “Letters Concerning the English Nation” in 1733, this is the first appearance of the original French text of the book now generally known as the “Lettres Philosophiques” and as “the first bomb thrown at the Ancien Régime”. It has been said of Voltaire that “he came to England a poet and left it a philosopher”: however that may be, this book resulting from his stay in 1726-1728 is “one of the greatest and most influential works of the eighteenth century and beyond ... the book that taught the whole of Europe how to think” (Voltaire Foundation). The letters, contrasting English and French thinking, deal variously with religion in England – Quakers, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Socinians; politics, parliament and Magna Carta; trade, commerce and the businessman who “contributes to the felicity of the world”; English empiricism and Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton; and literature – Shakespeare above all, Wycherley, Congreve, Swift and Pope, etc. The London publishers’ preface is interesting on the author’s extreme reluctance to sanction a French-language edition – they had suppressed this edition for an entire year, but others were now preparing illicit editions and they now had to displease the author to please the public. The furore which greeted the French editions when they appeared in France probably justified Voltaire’s reluctance and the use here of a fake Basle imprint.
Foolscap 8vo (171 x 103mm). [viii],228,[xx]pp. Bound in a creditable modern rendition of early eighteenth-century full panelled calf; sprinkled edges; a few slight marks; Voltaire’s name added to the title-page in manuscript; faint fringe of very pale discolouration to fore-edge throughout text, barely visible in most places; a few minor internal marks and tiny flaws, but a good copy of one of the key books of the Enlightenment. Eighteenth-century (1768) ownership inscription now obscured.

£1,250

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Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1841. First British edition. A celebrated novel from the Welsh barrister and M.P. – shop assistant inherits a fortune and must navigate the ways of the wealthy, devious lawyers, social climbers, and miscellaneous opportunists. The legal battles have led to it being described as “the most famous novel about the law” (Robert Lee Wolff).
Three volumes. Post 8vo (192 x 116mm). viii,(404); [iv],(392); [ii],(430)pp. Bound, without two half-titles and an advertisement leaf, in a pleasant contemporary half red calf, banded and gilt; marbled sides and edges; some minor rubbing, mild scuffing and light wear; some spotting to binder’s blanks; a few faint signs of age and use, but otherwise a very good set. With the ownership inscriptions of R. D. Nicholls – possibly Robert Devereux Nicholls (1811-1848) – and the later bookplate of the well-known collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016) in the first volume.

£250

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London : for Edward Harding; Scott; Highley / Cambridge : Deighton, 1803. First edition. An attractive compilation, based mainly on primary sources and offering “a more complete and entertaining guide to the members and visitants of the university, than any which has yet appeared”.
Royal 12mo (196 x 114mm). (xviii),341,[i]pp. Seventeen plates dated 1801-1802 (one less than the full complement, but copies with lower tallies are frequent), mostly displaying a combined view of a college and a portrait – the last engraved by Andrew Birrell from a drawing by Gardiner. Bound (without half-title) in an elegant near contemporary half calf, ruled and blocked in gilt; black label; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; very slightly rubbed; a handful of leaves lightly frayed, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy.

£125

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London : Adam & Charles Black, 1910. First edition : the second issue, the title-page dated 1910, but bearing the “First published September 1909” statement on the verso (which the first issue did not). Later republished as two separate novels – “Mike at Wrykyn” and “Enter Psmith” (or “Mike and Psmith”). Cricket and public school – and apparently thought of by Wodehouse as his best work – “You won’t mind my calling you Comrade, will you. I’ve just become a socialist. It’s a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it” (p.181).
Post 8vo (21cm). (xii),(340) + 8pp advertisements. Twelve cheery plates by Thomas Montague Radcliff Whitwell (1868-1928). Original pictorial cloth in an olive, red and white design by Whitwell; some light rubbing; slight cracking of endpapers; a touch shaken; some intermittent internal browning and tanning, but otherwise a very good and still bright copy. With the small ownership stamp of John J. Looijestijn and the very Wodehousian bookplate of the American collector James Herbert Heineman (1917-1994).

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