ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
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UNITED KINGDOM

London : Chatto & Windus, 1933. First edition. “With ardent vehemence he makes war on war and all philistinism ... He stimulates, he provokes, he promotes argument ... and he can write (when he remembers not to fulminate) like an angel ... a love story of great tenderness and spiritual beauty ... a rich, full book, brimming with revolt against all forms of mean, material, cowardly living” (Country Life, 4th March 1933).
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],(496)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; just a touch rubbed; mild tanning of endpapers; faint crease to front endpaper; some edge-spotting, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket somewhat tanned and faded at spine (as ever), with some light wear and tear, and a couple of shallow chips, but complete and presentable still.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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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.

£150 (reduced from £250)

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1956). First edition. Dagobert and Jane in the Austrian Tyrol – the seventh in this fine series of wickedly witty murder mysteries. “Above all, it has Jane: not only the most engaging wife-of-sleuth, but the gayest and perhaps funniest narrator in detective fiction” (Illustrated London News, 18th August 1956).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 190,[ii]pp. Original maroon boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in black; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good and sound copy in the Jarvis dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, with some minor wear at head and some faint spots, but otherwise also very good. Small bookseller’s label of Boans Book Salon of Perth on front pastedown.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : William Heinemann, 1920. First edition : the first issue, in black boards with white lettering. Loosely inserted is a single-page signed autograph letter from Arlen, on his Stanhope Place notepaper, charmingly postponing a luncheon engagement. A publisher’s presentation copy of his first book, blind-stamped as such on the title-page. “Who is Michael Arlen? In a little pocketable volume ... we have a highly amusing and in many respects a penetrating criticism of certain phases of life in London ... a delicious little essay ... I don’t know quite whether to believe in Michael – whether he is really an Armenian or a detached Englishman looking at London with the eyes of an artistic nomad. True, his outlook is un-English, but his familiarity with the poetic and artistic gods of our generation, and with some of our most recondite literary traditions, makes me suspicious” (London Chronicle, 15th January 1920).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). [xii],(178),[ii]pp. Illustrations by Michel Sevier (1886-1941). Original boards, decorated and lettered in white, and blocked in blind on rear cover; a touch of wear to extremities; front joint tender and slightly split; text just lightly tanned, but a good copy of a very fragile production. Later gift inscription dated 1931.

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The Kentish novelist and historian’s uncommon first novel. A story of young love, told “swiftly and significantly, and a too melodramatic finish to it is skilfully evaded ... there is an instinctive rightness in the management of this first novel that is very promising” (Liverpool Post, 2nd May 1931). A publisher’s presentation copy, with a Heinemann compliments slip loosely inserted.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],322pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; publisher’s device in blind on lower cover; mild bruise at head of spine, a handful of spots, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a design primarily in white, blue and red, with a colour-printed magnolia on the upper panel – the jacket very faintly rubbed and with a sprinkling of spots – but fresh and without a nick.

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London : T. Nelson & Sons, 1859. First edition : the first issue, with the map printed in purple. A charming little tourist guide to the Irish Lakes, illustrated with the distinctive and recently introduced two-colour lithographs made popular by the Nelson firm.
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). (112) + 16pp inserted advertisements dated May 1858. Frontispiece, folding map and eleven plates. Original decorative cloth gilt; spine just a touch darkened; some very minor wear at tips; a few faint marks; some spotting to prelims and adverts, but overall a very good copy. Gift inscription dated Christmas Day 1859 from Mrs Hunter to Miss Read on front free endpaper.

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Chester & Bangor : T. Catherall, [ca.1855]. First edition. Cover title “Views in the North Wales District : Second Series”. A set of highly attractive engravings of North Wales engraved by William Banks & Son of Edinburgh for the local publisher Thomas Catherall (1809-1889) – vignette views of Bangor, Penrhyn, Beaumaris, Carnarvon, Snowdon, Llanberis, Beddgelert, Bettws-y-Coed, Conway, Llandudno, Rhyl, Llangollen, Ruthin, etc. – one of which is dated 1855.
Long demy 8vo (15 x 23cm). Engraved pictorial title and twenty-nine plates. Original decorative cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; slight wear to head of spine; a touch shaken and slack, but the plates clean, crisp and in very good order.

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1980). First edition. Signed by Julian Barnes on the title-page. His first novel – a passage to adulthood and marriage in Betjeman’s Metroland, via a spell in Paris with the exciting Annick during les événements of 1968. Filmed in 1997 with Christian Bale and Emily Watson.
Post 8vo (21cm). 176pp. Original grey boards, blocked and lettered in silver; sliver of sunning at foot, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in an equally very good dust-jacket – a design by Craig Dodd – the jacket price-clipped by the publisher and with the revised price (£6.50) over-sticker.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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

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

£85 (reduced from £125)

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London : Michael Joseph, (1950). First edition. “Mr Bentley begins his second thriller on the River, under the shadow of Big Ben, and takes us on to one of the less reputable night clubs to meet Victor Skinner, hero of the last war turned proprietor; ‘Snow’ White, his sinister young assistant; and lovely Rose, a hostess with a conscience ... What a difference the mere choice of words can make – here is blood-and-thunder refined by wit and elegance of phrase” (Liverpool Evening Post, 29th November 1950). Filmed in by Vernon Sewell in 1953 with Dermot Walsh, Sydney Tafler and Mary Germaine, with scenes set in a Charing Cross Road bookshop.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 254,[ii]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in silver; endpapers lightly tanned, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the Patrick Gierth dust-jacket, and the rare promotional “The new Nicholas Bentley thriller for Christmas” wraparound band – both also very good.

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1902. First edition. An early Bindloss, an imperial romance set in West Africa – an area well-known to the author and the subject of his “In the Niger Country” (1898). An adventurer discovers a mahogany forest – desolate outposts, ju-ju, jungle-fever - somewhere perhaps between Conrad and Rider Haggard.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

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

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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.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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[London : for Carington Bowles, ca.1765]. A large and handsome eighteenth-century map of the county on a scale of three-eighths of an inch to the mile (1:168960). Compiled by Emanuel Bowen, Geographer to George II, and originally produced in 1751 for a series of maps separately sold from 1749 on and eventually published as “The Large English Atlas” (London 1760 and later editions). The present example dates from the 1760s – after the date at which Carington Bowles took over the shop at St. Paul’s from his uncle, Thomas Bowles. The particular charm of this series of maps resides in the numerous historical and geographical notes that fill up blank spaces and corners – with notes in this case on cloth manufacture at Cranbrook, the waters at Tunbridge Wells, Romney Marsh, Hythe, Appledore, Hawkhurst, Deal Castle, Dover Harbour, the enlargement of the harbour at Ramsgate, Reculver Market, Rochester, Maidstone, Canterbury, Faversham, Gravesend, Woolwich, Greenwich, Deptford and much else. With a finely engraved dedication panel (to Lionel Sackville, Duke of Dorset) and a thematic cartouche of hops, fish, lobsters, baskets, fruit, anchors, cannon, swords, etc., in the rococo style of the period. A separate inset gives a chart of the Downs, Goodwin Sands, etc.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original outline hand-colour. Engraved surface 522 x 704mm (approx. 20-1/2” x 27-3/4”). Dissected, mounted on linen and folding into the original marbled slip-case, with the engraved label of Carington Bowles of St. Paul’s Churchyard. Case lightly rubbed; map trimmed close to neatlines, but overall in very good and clean state. With the attractive contemporary rococo armorial (three bucks trippant) bookplate of John Rogers attached to the case – John Rogers (1743-1821) of Yarlington in Somerset, High Sheriff for Somerset in 1804.

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London : Carington Bowles, 1791. An attractive late eighteenth-century map of central London, engraved on a generous scale of four inches to the mile (1:15840), extending out to Islington in the north, Stepney in the east, Newington Butts in the south and Hyde Park Corner to the west. Originally engraved by Joseph Ellis (1734?-1793) and published in 1773, the map was regularly revised through to the end of the century. Below the map is an extensive ‘Table of References to the Churches and Principal Buildings, Shewing their Situation in the above Plan’, together with a ‘Geometrical Explanation’ of how to read from grid squares.
Copper engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Printed surface 388 x 552mm (approx. 15-1/4” x 21-3/4”). Dissected and mounted on linen. Some wear and splitting to folds, with some folds neatly strengthened and repaired on verso with archival tape; a good and serviceable copy of a fragile and ephemeral item. Howgego 158A/008.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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Ludlow : by H. Procter, 1806. First Ludlow edition. Originally published at Worcester in an undated mid-eighteenth-century edition under the name of Bowlker’s father, Richard, this became one of the most popular angling guides ever produced, appearing in various revisions and fresh editions at least as late as 1854. Charles Bowlker was considered the most accomplished fly-fisher of his day – “never regard what bunglers and slovens tell you”. This edition was the first to be published in his home town of Ludlow.
Demy 12mo (185 x 111mm). x,98pp. Engraved frontispiece by J. Ross, depicting six flies, a trout, and a vignette fishing scene. Bound in neat modern drab boards, paper label, in period style; some minor interior discolouration and browning; some nicks, creases and small flaws, but overall an attractive and uncut copy of an attractive book.

£100 (reduced from £200)

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London : Bowring Petroleum Co., [ca.1917]. An attractive pocket atlas of the Thames, comprising a double-page general map and twenty-eight sectional maps covering the Thames from Westminster Bridge to Cricklade, with a further sectional map showing the Thames and Severn Canal as far as Trewsbury House near Kemble. Four pages of text add material on the 1914 Bye-Laws affecting motor launches and a brief history of Mex Motor Spirit – helping the allies to victory in “the present great War”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 36pp. Thirty-one coloured maps by George Philip & Son. Original tan cloth wrappers, lettered and decorated in black and yellow; some minor external wear, but a very good copy. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

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

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The daughter of the precentor of St. David’s Cathedral in South Wales falls in with a young seaman, a deserter from a privateer, on the run from the Bow Street Runners – but not all is as it seems. Set in 1796 and researched in her usual meticulous way, the story also incorporates the French landing the following year – “arresting, provocative, and informing” (Dundee Courier, 4th March 1931).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],436,[ii]pp. Original olive cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few faint edge spots, but an excellent copy, bright, clean and sound, in the original red and white dust-jacket – the jacket with a few tiny nicks, a couple of very short and neatly repaired tears, and a sprinkling of spots, but itself very good indeed, clean and fresh.

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London : Thomas Nelson & Sons, (1910). First edition. Buchan in South Africa with a Haggardesque tale of uprising, myth, fabulous necklace, etc. “A very perfect gift for a youth of spirit – brimful of excitement and wonders, and with a hero who does everything that doth become a man!” (The Globe, 21st September 1910).
Crown 8vo (180 x 116mm). vi,(376),viii pp. Frontispiece map. Bound in an attractive recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; a very good and clean copy. Attached to the verso of the front free endpaper is a contemporary prize label of the North Merchiston Continuation Classes – made out to James B. Campbell for general excellence. Blanchard A21.

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London : Henry Colburn, 1837. First British and first illustrated edition. The Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, author of “The Pleasures of Hope”, with a wide-ranging account of his travels to Algiers, Bona, Oran, etc., in 1834. With material on Christian slaves, camels, the cactus, Moorish women, vapour-baths, coffee-houses, and much else besides. With an appendix giving statistical details, prospects for trade, etc. Originally serialised in the “New Monthly Magazine” from 1835 and brought out in an unillustrated version in the United States in 1836. “Beautifully written letters ... We welcome him again and again, and wish him long in the field. The genius of Campbell is ‘a charter and freehold of rejoicing’“ (Morning Post, 20th January 1836).
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (24cm). xx,354; (xii),358,[2]pp. Ten aquatint plates (three folding), four engraved by William Read. Folding plan of Algiers, also by Read. Printed music. Original cloth; vol.i neatly repaired and refurbished, with the endpapers replaced; vol.ii a little worn at head and tail, and lacking front free endpaper; plates a little spotted and tanned; a few slight marks and small flaws, but a good and serviceable set in the original cloth.

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London : Collins, 1945. First edition. Lemmy Caution is now attached to U. S. Army Intelligence in Paris – “We watch him track an enemy agent, first across Paris, then through the glades of Surrey. The scene is rich with dames, james, babies, mommas and frails; and this guy or bozo Confucius does not fail to inspire” (Elizabeth Bowen in The Tatler, 12th December 1945).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 192pp. Original sand cloth, lettered in green; just a hint of bruising, but a very good and sound copy in the pictorial dust-jacket – the jacket with a few faint marks, but only minimal wear, and also very good.

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London : C. Chapple for the author, 1810. First edition. The former mistress of Frederick Duke of York, with a scurrilous exposé which led to trials for libel, pamphlets, caricatures and an outbreak of counter accusations and denials – the Duke was eventually cleared of charges of corruption, although there seems no doubt that Mrs Clarke had been paid for affording the Duke’s patronage to those seeking preferment. Her life was the basis of the novel “Mary Anne” (1954) by her descendant Daphne du Maurier.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (222 x 127mm). (xii),216; [iv],(308)pp. Engraved portrait frontispiece by Freeman after Adam Buck, with facsimile signature. An uncut copy bound in modern boards; paper labels; covers a little marked and soiled; a few minor internal marks, spots and creases but a good and serviceable set. Occasional pencil markings of a previous owner.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : for the Author, 1812. First edition. The poems of the extravagant and colourful younger Colman – still “very humorous and some of them extravagantly indecent” (Joseph Knight in old DNB). Responding to criticism, Colman published “Vagaries Vindicated”, which “The Champion” (25th July 1813) “found to resemble nothing so much as a dirty cloth used to clean a filthy picture”.
Post 4to (268 x 209mm). [ii],144pp. Bound (without half-title), in a contemporary full calf, now rebacked, refurbished and restored in a stout and functional morocco; some rubbing; some spots, slight marginal discolouration to rear, but a very good and well-margined copy.

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New York : G. W. & C. B. Colton, [1866]. An attractive map of the Greater London area from the well-known New York publishing house. Set in an elaborate decorative border and presented on a scale of five-eighths of an inch to the mile, the coverage extends from Ealing in the west, northwards to Southgate, east to Abbey Wood, and south to Mitcham and Kingston. First registered in 1855, the present revised and updated version was prepared for the 1866 edition of “Colton’s General Atlas”.
Lithograph on paper, with later hand colour. Printed surface 330 x 395mm (approx. 12-2/4” x 15-3/4”). Text on verso. A few short nicks to outer blank margins, not affecting image, but otherwise in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Hyde 42/05.

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London : Herbert Jenkins, [1944]. First edition. The suicide of gambling man Colonel Trevor brings Inspector Jimmy Brigg to a suburban greyhound track – and then just as an outsider wins, a man falls dead. A nicely observed murder mystery from the veteran crime-writer.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 188pp. Original orange cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in black; a number of edge spots, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the striking dust-jacket – the jacket with just very minor wear and a little spotting on verso, but also very good.

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

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[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.

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London : William Simpson Ford, [1851]. Handsome and scarce, a stylised and simplified plan of Central London, from Hyde Park across to the City of London, with sixty or so of the principal buildings shown pictorially in roundels and vignettes. The plan is framed within a foliate pictorial border – the Great Exhibition at the top, the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and the Mansion House at the foot, portraits of Victoria and Albert, and images of the national costumes of the countries of the world. Issued as a souvenir of the Great Exhibition, the plan was designed by the artist William Alfred Delamotte, then acting as librarian at St. Bartholmew’s Hospital (which is pictured), also responsible for making sketches of medical conditions for the hospital museum. Lithographed in black on a sepia ground by the otherwise unrecorded J. Meyer, evidently from some of the spellings not a native English speaker.
Lithograph in two colours on paper. Printed surface 553 x 370mm (approx. 21-3/4” x 14-1/2”). Horizontal fold; a touch dusty; couple of marks; very slight fraying to one margin; a few short marginal tears extending just within the printed area; mild creasing at foot, but overall in very good condition for a scarce and ephemeral item. Just a single copy (British Library) traced in major libraries worldwide.

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1908. First edition. Twenty-three essays and poems on bookish themes – Some Books and their Associations; The Passionate Printer; The Happy Printer; Two Modern Illustrators (Kate Greenaway and Hugh Thomson); Samuel Rogers; Samuel Pepys; Thackeray’s Esmond; Milton; Fresh Facts about Fielding, etc. “To appreciate the book, for itself, lock, stock and barrel – or, rather, binding, matter, and print – it is good to feed a little on the literary food of Austin Dobson ... It is a pleasure reflected and enjoyed. Mr Dobson’s affection for books is breathed from this volume” (Woolwich Gazette, 13th November 1908).
Post 8vo (204 x 132mm). xii,232pp. Frontispiece and twelve plates – five by Kate Greenaway, the remainder by Hugh Thomson; bound in a near contemporary handsome half blue crushed morocco, banded and gilt; by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; silk headbands; top edge gilt; some mild rubbing and fading; endpapers lightly tanned at edges, but otherwise a very good copy of an attractive production. Small book-seller’s label of W. & G. Foyle on rear paste-down.

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London : Faber & Faber, (1958). First edition. “As for sport (said Antrobus), the very word makes me uneasy. I’ve never believed in its healing power. Once I was forced to referee a match between H.M.S. Threadbare and the French Fleet which resulted in my nearly being dismembered”. Ten Antrobus tales of diplomatic life, each neatly captured in a full-page Nicolas Bentley illustration.
Post 8vo (21cm). 94,[ii]pp. Illustrations and decorative chapter headings by Bentley. Original turquoise cloth, lettered in yellow; a single tiny edge-spot, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the Bentley dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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Edinburgh : Privately Printed at the Tragara Press, (1974). First edition : limited to 115 numbered copies, all hand-printed. “Certain Landfalls”, “Postmark”, “Picture of Geishas”, and “A Patch of Dust” – here in an outstanding designer binding by multiple prize-winning bookbinder, Dominic Riley.
Royal 8vo (240 x 141mm). [ii],[10],[ii],[2]pp. Bound, retaining the original paper wrappers, in a 2003 Dominic Riley binding of red morocco, with stripes of tans, blacks and greys, with black lettering; charcoal top edge, with flicks of gilt; an excellent copy, complete with its decorated clamshell cloth box.

SOLD

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.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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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.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Williams & Norgate, 1927. First edition. “To obey God’s orders as delivered by conscience – that is duty; to obey man’s orders as issued by rightful authority – that is discipline. The foundation of both alike is denial of self for a higher good” . Inspirational examples of both addressed to “the youth of England” from the lesser-known annals of army history – St. Lucia 1778; Robert Rollo Gillespie; Sir Harry Burrard and Sir John Moore; Sir Harry Smith; the Burmese Expedition 1824-1826; Lord Raglan, and several more.
Crown 8vo (177 x 115mm). (xviii),284pp. Four portrait plates. Folding map. Bound for the Terra Nova School of Birkdale in a fine contemporary full tree calf prize binding, banded and richly gilt; red label; marbled endpapers and edges; a few trifling signs of age, but a very good copy. Presentation label dated July 1928 on front pastedown made out to J. V. Hansford – John Vernon Hansford (1915-1999).

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Michael Joseph, (1969). First edition. “Yesterday I lost my licence ...” – jockey Kelly Hughes “sets out to find out who framed him. But the nearer he gets to the truth, the more violent is the retaliation” (Liverpool Echo, 6th November 1969).
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered across spine in gilt; very faint spine crease, but a very good copy in the original Carl Bernard dust-jacket – a photographic design lettered in white and red – just lightly worn and slightly nicked. With the December 1969 ownership inscription of Suzanne Eastmease and the label of the Sandon Saddlery Company of Buntingford.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1901. The Silver Library edition of Froude’s celebrated lectures on Hawkins, Drake and the Armada, originally published in 1895 – and here presented in a handsome prize binding. “Let us be thankful that the Reformation period has been once more illuminated by a man who to original research and immense labour, which are none too common, added a brilliance of style and vividness of narration – a combination which is most rare” (Westminster Gazette, 22nd April 1895).
Crown 8vo (183 x 121mm). [vi],(310)pp. Bound in a contemporary peacock-blue half calf, banded and gilt, by Andrews of Durham, with the crest of the Durham Training College for School Masters on the upper cover; red label; all edges red; marbled endpapers; a few very faint signs of age, but an excellent copy. An inscription notes the book’s award as a prize to J. R. Moses, second in the college list in 1902 – this John Robert Moses (1880-1917), the son of a local miner and who later became a schoolmaster in Sunderland. For a full account, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post for 4th September 2014.

SOLD

London : Duckworth & Co., 1900. First edition : of the 1,000 sets of sheets originally printed, only 500 were bound for the British market by the publishers, while some 250 were used for a colonial edition, and another 150 or so later destroyed unsold. The first mention of the Forsyte family (one chapter is headed “Salvation of a Forsyte”) in this famously uncommon early Galsworthy novel published under his “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 (184 x 121mm). [vi],(258)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; some mild tanning to outer leaves, but otherwise a handsome copy of a book seldom encountered.

SOLD

London : William Collins Sons & Co. (Crime Club), (1978). First edition. Lovejoy is broke, but has the clues to an amazing find. His means of financing the treasure hunt are idiosyncratic. The second Lovejoy novel. “Crime in the world of antiques. Zany, informative and altogether captivating. Impossible to imagine anybody not enjoying it” (Derby Daily Telegraph, 14th December 1978).
Post 8vo (21cm). 192,[iv]pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the Colin Thomas dust-jacket – the jacket just very faintly rubbed, but also very good.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1963) [but 1962]. First edition. “Few authors of the ’60s were so quintessentially of their time ... among the canniest and laugh-out-loud funniest portraits of Swinging London” (Rob Latham). “In a tall house at the wrong end of the King’s Road, Chelsea, four girls rent an attic room and spend the first months of their grown up life. Unity is sixteen, but she has persuaded her parents that she must have Freedom, so she spends her days working in a supermarket, and her evenings being Free”. A lost world and a lost language of Adam Faith haircuts, mods, rockers, teds, beatniks, coffee-bars, and juvenile delinquency. “There is nothing flash-in-the-pan about the literary power of Jane Gaskell. Genius is a word one may use too soon” (Elizabeth Bowen).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a sliver of fading at tips; some faint edge-spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the Susan Einzig dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly sunned, but also very good. Pictorial bookplate of Fiona Williams on front pastedown.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1958. First edition. A lyrical and troubling coming of age in the green and gold of a French August. “Goes into the minds of children with the author’s usual tender-hefted vision” (The Sketch, 30 July 1958). Later made into the 1961 film with Kenneth More (his favourite film), Susannah York, Jane Asher, etc.
Post 8vo (197 x 127mm). [iv],(218),[ii]pp. Bound in a handsome recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; a fine, clean and bright copy.

£300 (reduced from £400)

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London : Macdonald & Co. (Publishers), (1952). First edition. A handsome presentation copy, inscribed “most gratefully” and signed by the author (under his real name) to John Foster White (1921-1997), the editor of the book. The printed acknowledgements expand further – “I must express my gratitude to Mr. John Foster White for the unflagging interest he has taken ... the helpful suggestions he has made and the tireless energy he has shown in collecting the photographs” . Our attribution of authorship to Goldring has been disputed, but White was in no doubt and nor is the catalogue of the Goldring archive at the University of Victoria. “A well-written non-technical survey by one who loves buildings and can express delight in them. It is illustrated with well chosen photographs of such places as Brighton, Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham, Newcastle, Blandford, Farnham, Ramsgate, and many towns with unsuspected Georgian beauty” (John Betjeman).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (244)pp. Over 100 photographs. Original cloth; a very good copy in the original Roy Sanford dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn, a touch dulled and a little marked, but overall also very good.

£100 (reduced from £200)

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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.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Cassell & Co., (1916). First edition. “One of the strangest of all the adventures which have befallen me in the course of a life that so far can scarcely be called tame or humdrum” – in the Allan Quatermain series, and “is especially welcome on that account. But more than this, it is the best and greatest of the series. It is never less than delightful, and for the greater part is profoundly thrilling” (Western Mail, 15th January 1916).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],344pp. Coloured frontispiece and three plates by A. C. Michael – Arthur Cadwgan Michael (1881-1965). Original brown cloth, ruled and lettered in blind on upper cover, lettered across spine in gilt; a touch of rubbing; mild spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good copy. Contemporary “Royal Naval War Libraries” stamp on front pastedown – although the book has evidently never seen library use.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : A. & C. Black, 1895. First complete edition : originally published in three separate instalments 1894-1895. A weighty survey, with a lengthy introduction covering collecting, preservation, German book-plates, French book-plates, English book-plates and their ten basic styles, American book-plates, early references, eighteenth-century engravers and styles, nineteenth-century design, etc., followed by detailed chronological tables of known examples from 1516 to 1895.
Post 4to (28cm). [viii],124,(226),[xx]pp. Numerous plates and illustrations. Original cloth gilt; lightly sunned; a few minor marks; a touch shaken, but a very good copy of a handsome production.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : Herbert Jenkins, 1918. First edition. Harben’s extraordinary dictionary of more than 6,000 street and place names in the City of London, their location, the forms and origins of the names, associations, early depictions on maps, etc. Still the essential work.
Royal 8vo (26cm). (xxviii),(642)pp. Six folding plans (one in two separate sheets), some in rear pocket. Original cloth; some minor rubbing; cloth a little stretched by the rear pocket; some spotting to edges, but still overall a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1914. First edition : one of just 2,000 copies printed of this highly influential collection of over 100 poems – “Maupassant-like vignettes passed through his great contemplative soul ... they strike a new note” (Cyril Connolly, citing this as one of the key books of the Modern Movement). “He places life upon the operating table, and, with an uncannily skilful knife, lays it bare” (The Globe, 26th November 1914).
Crown 8vo (194 x 124mm). [ii],(x),230,[ii]pp. Bound in a handsome recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth backstrip and front cover preserved at rear; a couple of faint spots, but overall a very good, bright and clean copy.

SOLD

London : Hamish Hamilton, (1957). First edition. A fragile widow, an ex-army chauffeur, love, obsession, and repudiation. “On his day there is no more subtle novelist writing than L. P. Hartley, and few as satisfying. In The Hireling he is very much on his day ... a triumph of the novelist’s art” (Daily News, 10th July 1957). Memorably filmed in 1973, with Robert Shaw, Sarah Miles, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(248),[iv]pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the Patricia Davey dust-jacket – just faintly tanned, with a couple of slight marks, but also very good.

SOLD

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.

£300 (reduced from £400)

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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.

£95 (reduced from £150)

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London : Faber & Faber, (1984). First edition : the first issue, with the integral endpapers. One of the most celebrated collections of poems of modern times – over forty poems from Heaney at the height of his powers. “Many of these poems have a tough rind as though the author knew for his purposes deferred comprehension was better than instant. Obliquity suits him. Heaney’s talent, a prodigious one, is exfoliating and augmenting here” (Richard Ellman).
Post 8vo (21cm). (124),[iv] – including integral endpapers. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good copy indeed – bright, clean and sound, in an equally unflawed dust-jacket.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Faber & Faber, (1996). First edition. Heaney’s first post-Nobel collection of poems and 1996 Whitbread winner – some forty poems, including “The Rain Stick”, “Poet’s Chair”, “At the Wellhead”, etc. “Anyone who reads poetry has reason to rejoice at living in the age when Seamus Heaney is writing” (Richard Tillinghast in the New York Times Book Review).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],70pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket equally very good.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : John Murray, (2016). First edition. The third in the Jackson Lamb Slow Horses series – Catherine Standish is inexplicably abducted from Aldersgate, River Cartwright is given an ultimatum, and then a body is dumped outside a fashionable restaurant where a well-known floppy-haired politician is lunching and eyeing up a red-haired waitress.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],361,[i]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the London skyline dust-jacket by Keenan – the jacket very slightly sunned, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Hamish Hamilton, (1983). First edition. “It was a Monday afternoon in November and already growing dark, not because of the lateness of the hour – it was barely three o’clock – but because of the fog, the thickest of London pea-soupers, which had hemmed us in on all sides since dawn – if indeed there had been a dawn” – Hill’s celebrated gothic horror, well-known in its adaptations for stage, screen and radio, and as a school set text for those not old enough to remember pea-soupers.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [x],160,[vi]pp. Illustrations by John Lawrence. Original olive boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch of sunning, but a very good, clean and bright copy in the Lawrence dust-jacket – the jacket also with a hint of sunning, but also very good.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1988-1992). A complete first edition set of this magisterial biography of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) – the individual volumes sub-titled “The Search for Love : 1856-1898”, “The Pursuit of Power : 1898-1918”, “The Lure of Fantasy : 1918-1950” and “The Shaw Companion” – the last comprising “The Last Laugh : 1950-1992”, as well as the appendices, complete notes, a cumulative index, etc.
Five volumes, bound in four. Medium 8vo (25cm). viii,486,[ii]; (x),422; (x),544,[ii]; viii,490,[vi]pp. Plates. Portraits. Original boards; a very good set in the dust-jackets – the jackets just faintly creased in one or two places.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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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.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Hodder & Stoughton (A John Curtis Book), (1994), First edition. A well-illustrated and definitive life of Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1956), born to poverty in a log-cabin in Wisconsin, founder of the pharmaceutical combine, introducer of medicine in tablet form from his factory in Wandsworth, researcher, explorer, collector of books and artefacts, founder of the Wellcome Trust, the Wellcome Library, the Wellcome Collection, philanthropist, archaeologist, and much else.
Medium 8vo (237 x 152mm). (xx),422pp. Plates (some coloured). Portraits. Illustrations. Bound in a stylish contemporary full green morocco, lettered in gilt, and housed in a matching morocco slip-case. A fine copy.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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

SOLD

London : Strahan & Co., 1872. First edition : the second issue. A striking binding design, clearly stamped “second edition” diagonally across the spines, although the contents are equally clearly the first edition sheets – even the errata leaf is unchanged. The only alteration would appear to be that the final contents page in the first volume is now numbered “iii” (wrongly). Presumably the binding was doctored by the publishers to boost flagging sales after some fairly strenuous advance publicity, although I am unable to recall ever having seen a comparable example of this kind of reissue, with a fresh and false edition statement on the binding. Having been trailed in the press since October, the book was published 13th December 1871 (although dated for the following year). This “second edition” was announced as early as 16th January 1872 – just a day after the British Museum received its copyright copy in the unaltered binding. The tale of a radicalised heir to an earldom, as well as London squares, Scottish moors, and Midland mines – “A very clever, and occasionally rather malicious, satire on the politics and the politicians of our time. Yet in the main the author’s arrows are launched fairly and hit the right mark” – Prigs and Whigs, Fogies and Tories, outspoken young women, the Radish Club, a “rank communist”, religion and radicalism – “many happy passages ... many brilliant epigrams ... It would not be difficult to find the originals of most of the characters in this tale” (Sun & Central Press, 27th December 1871). The anonymous author of this fascinating novel was himself to become a radical M.P. in 1874.
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). iii [but viii],[2],(204); vi,230pp. Original pebble-grain tan cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled diagonally in black; some very minor wear; a few slight spots; just a touch shaken, but otherwise a very good set. Loosely inserted are some interesting biographical notes on the author, etc.

SOLD

London : Richard Bentley, 1843 [but 1842]. First edition. “It gives us the home, private and personal memoirs of royalty from William III and his Queen Mary to George II; and lets us into the stories of their courtly circles, and their recreations when released from the miseries of ceremony and etiquette ... having once begun with them, it will be found a difficult matter to lay them down until the word finis stares the untired reader in the face ... altogether one of the most entertaining works with which our lighter literature has ever been adorned” (The Globe, 7th January 1843). With individual chapters on the monarchs, consorts, mistresses, children, and other notables, including the Dukes of Marlborough and Buckingham, Viscount Bolingbroke, Francis Atterbury, Abigail Masham, Robert Harley, Beau Fielding, the Earl of Chesterfield, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Mary Bellenden, Sir Robert Walpole, George Bubb Doddington, etc.
Three volumes. Demy 8vo (217 x 131mm). xx,496; xx,(442); (xviii),460pp. Engraved portrait frontispieces. Bound, without the half-title to vol.iii, in a handsome later half red calf, banded and gilt; black title-labels; marbled boards, endpapers and edges; some minor rubbing and slight scuffing, but a very good, clean and sound set. With the armorial bookplate in each volume of Laurence Currie (1867-1934), banker, director of railway and insurance companies, member of the Council of India and of the Royal Commission on University Education in London, and author of a book on Napoleon and his marshals.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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

£300 (reduced from £500)

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London : Oxford University Press, 1975. First edition of this authoritative Oxford Standard Authors text, edited and introduced by Professor Ian Donaldson. Includes the Epigrams, The Forest, The Underwood, Ungathered Verse, Songs and Poems from the Plays and Masques, Leges Convivales, Dubia, etc.
Post 8vo (198 x 129mm). xxii,410pp. Facsimiles. Bound in an elegant contemporary quarter brown morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; very good.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Folio Society, 1998. First Folio Society edition. A handsome production, with a preface by Stephen James Joyce, an introduction by Jacques Aubert, and some striking illustrations by Mimmo Paladino.
Royal 8vo (25cm). (xx),[2],(736),[ii]pp. Eighteen plates in black and gold by Paladino. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and blocked with a Paladino illustration; a fine copy, housed in its original card slip-case.

SOLD

Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, (1963). First edition. A boy discovers a Stone Age caveman living at the foot of a disused chalk-pit. King’s celebrated best-seller, here in the original Puffin edition, delightfully illustrated by Edward Ardizzone.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (158),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Original pictorial wrappers by Ardizzone; some light wear and creasing, but a good copy of a fragile publication.

£35 (reduced from £50)

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London : Quercus, (2008). First British edition. “Put aside all thoughts of political correctness and meet Jason Harrow”. Sustained by his new-found religion, Harrow has become a pillar of family life, principle and patriotism. The telephone rings and his former life is on the end of the line. To avert a terrorist attack, he must risk his decency, his sanity, and his life. “Klavan is the most original American crime novelist” (Stephen King).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(384),[ii],[4]pp. Original navy boards, lettered in silver; a few very faint signs of age and use; a couple of faint edge-spots, but still overall a very good copy in an equally very good dust-jacket.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : James B. Knapp, [ca.1895]. First edition. A pictorial guide – Kent heavily represented, with short chapters on Folkestone, Dover, Deal, Rochester, Chislehurst, Knole, Eltham Palace, Hayes and Keston Common, Downe, Cobham Hall, Hever Castle and Penshurst – with further similar chapters on Twickenham, Kingston-on-Thames, Hampton Court, Ilford, Epping Forest, Alexandra Palace, High Barnet, Lakeland, Huntingdonshire, Tewkesbury Abbey, Ross, Belvoir Castle, Sedgemoor, Dorchester, etc. One of a series produced by the Methodist preacher during his period of stewardship 1890-1895.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). 144p. Numerous wood-engraved illustrations. Original pictorial cloth, blocked in silver, gilt and black; a touch rubbed and just slightly darkened; endpapers a little tanned; some slight spotting of edges, but overall a very good copy. Just a single copy (Oxford Brookes) located in major libraries worldwide.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1955). First edition : the trade issue. Lawrence of Arabia on his time spent pseudonymously in the R.A.F. – “I wrote it tightly, because our clothes are so tight, and our lives so tight in the service. There is no freedom of conduct at all ... I wanted to bring out the apartness of us”.
Crown 4to (26cm). [ii],206pp. Original blue buckram, blocked in gilt and blind, and lettered in gilt; top edge blue; some spotting of endpapers, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a few faint marks, but also very good.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (2002). First edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. A stand-alone novel set in the American summer of 1969 – the USA about to land a man on the moon, the Vietnam War ripping families apart, Norman Mailer running for Mayor of New York – failed civil rights worker, failed lawyer, and failed journalist Turner Raines tracks down a runaway. “I entreat you, dear reader, to search out John Lawton and cherish him to your bosom, for he is truly an original” (Michael Painter, Irish Times).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(328)pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; just a hint of tanning to text, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the Peter Wallis dust-jacket – the jacket with a touch of sunning, but otherwise unworn and unflawed.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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

SOLD

New York : Macmillan Co., 1942. First edition. A tour-de-force from the English artist in exile – “There is a universality about the people of the earth that is healing, and it matters little whether one be talking with a tobacco farmer in North Carolina or a plowman in Devonshire. So, I knew, my sole chance of adjustment over here, in the country of my adoption, and my best cure for the incomparable fret of nostalgia as well as my only hope of becoming one with my new land, would be to wander among the workers on this earth and learn their habits and their lore”. Cotton-picking, water-mills, corn-shucking, hog-killing, sorghum-boiling, tobacco-harvesting, and much else of the American South, described and depicted in her searingly dramatic illustrations.
Demy 4to (272 x 203mm). (viii),(158),[ii]pp. Numerous wood-engraved illustrations (some full-page), headpieces, tailpieces, etc., by the author. Bound in an exquisite full tan morocco executed in 2001 by Rona Smith (1934-2004), winner of the Designer Bookbinders Finishing Award the following year – the binding with a recessed panel enclosing a silhouette onlay of a detail from the book; black lettering; sprinkled top edge; a fine copy, housed in its clamshell cloth box.

£1,400 (reduced from £2,000)

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London : Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1843. First edition : the second issue, with the variant title. “A vigorous, dashing sketch of the prairies of California, the wildernesses of the Rocky Mountains, and the swamps of Texas” (Court Journal). Originally issued a little earlier as “Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora and Western Texas”, Sadleir suggests that the book was relaunched with a more exciting title specifically for the gift-books for boys market. Scarce in either incarnation, Marryat’s novel, full of factual information drawn from (unacknowledged) contemporary sources and his own visit to the Americas, is perhaps the earliest children’s book with an American Wild West setting. It is certainly the first work of fiction to contain Mormon characters and remains an important source of information on the pre Gold Rush California of the 1830s.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (195 x 115mm). viii,312; [ii],318; [ii],(300)pp. Folding lithographic map by William Lake of the Pacific coast and territories of the Shoshones, Umbiquas, Cayuses, Nez Perces, Flatheads, etc. Bound, without half-titles (if actually called for in this issue) and final imprint leaf in vol.ii, in a smart later (early twentieth-century) half tan calf, by Henry Young & Sons of Liverpool, banded and richly gilt; contrasting maroon and tan labels; marbled sides and endpapers; top edges gilt; a few minor marks, spots and small flaws, but a very good set. Sadleir 1586b. Wolff 4525a.

SOLD

London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1941). First British edition. Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn, Detective-Inspector Fox and the Lampreys. First published in the USA as “Death of a Peer”. “Her writing is as good as any to be found in crime fiction” (H. R. F. Keating, nominating the book as among the hundred best in all crime and mystery fiction).
Crown 8vo (179 x 117mm). 316,[iv]pp. Bound in an elegant recent full burgundy morocco; black labels; marbled endpapers; sprinkled edges; a few slight spots, but a very good copy.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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London : William Heinemann, (1924). First edition. “A singularly interesting and well-written novel of breathless adventure ... the book is so well written, its adventures so abundant, that I would wish to end with unqualified praise and say that this should be, and will be, one of the books that all must read” (The Sphere, 8th November 1924).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],332pp. Original blue cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; top edge blue; very lightly rubbed; endpapers a little tanned; edges and prelims somewhat spotted, but still a pleasant copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – the jacket a little sunned, lightly worn, with some very shallow chipping, a couple of short repaired tears and a few tiny nicks, but still an uncommon and attractive survival.

SOLD

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

SOLD

London : Hamish Hamilton, (1945-1960). A first edition set of Nancy Mitford’s abidingly popular and partly autobiographical tales of eccentricity and aristocracy – “The Pursuit of Love” (1945); “Love in a Cold Climate” (1949), and “Don’t Tell Alfred” (1960). “Wit, fantasy, humour, she has it all ... so far out of the ordinary that you may never hear the last of it” (Daniel George in the Daily Express, 21st July 1949).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 120mm). (196); 284; 248pp. Bound in an elegant recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; mild tanning (as ever) to the wartime paper of the first volume; a handful of edge spots to the second volume, but a very good set.

SOLD

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.

£50 (reduced from £100)

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1936. First edition : the limited issue of 210 signed copies, bound in full morocco. “The pilgrimage of a poet through the world, finely conceived and admirably written” (Time & Tide, 11th April 1936). “A new novel by Charles Morgan has become one of the major events in the immense world of fiction, and a heartening event it is, for, unlike so many novelists, he has always something to say that matters ... the carefully constructed theme must be carefully and slowly read, for every sentence means something, and the understanding reader finds as much joy in reading it, as Mr. Morgan has found in writing it ... as the ‘heroine’ said to Sparkenbroke: ‘It is you, telling it, I remember, not what you told’” (Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 6th April 1936).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],(x),(554)pp. Original full russet morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; a few very faint marks and indications of age and use; some spotting to free endpapers, but a very good copy.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition. “To be intimate means to be close, and I must make it clear at the outset that I am treating this literally” — in a ground-breaking study the late zoologist examines the whole range of human intimacy from social to sexual, and the overwhelming and increasingly forgotten importance to the human animal of touching and physical contact — from eye contact, a handshake, or a pat on the back, to the hug, the caress, and the kiss and beyond. “The female navel, at any rate, will never be the same again” wrote Mordecai Richler in the New York Times, 5th March 1972.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original fawn cloth; brown label; ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge pink; a few edge-spots, but a very good copy in the M. Mohan dust-jacket — the jacket just a touch sunned, with some very minor edge-wear, but also very good.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : W. G. Moss; and sold by Simpkin and Marshall; and West, Hastings, 1824. First edition : the variant in royal 8vo format (it was also issued in a larger and smaller forms). The standard history, although fewer than 150 copies were subscribed for. The text is generally thought to have been written around Moss’s attractive illustrations by William Herbert (1772-1851), the antiquary and librarian. Moss himself, here described as “Draughtsman to His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge”, was a London painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy until 1827, but thereafter seems to have found employment as a clerk at the General Post Office. He died at Kennington in 1854. The present copy has interesting additional matter bound in – an additional illustration (see below), a four-page prospectus for the never-published “The History and Antiquities of the Rape of Hastings”, again to be by (or illustrated by) Moss, bearing the plaintive pencilled note “NB Save this leaf this work will not be finished”. This is followed by twenty-two leaves, fourteen of which are blank, the remainder carrying 17pp of manuscript transcription of a document of 1541 relating to Hastings, signed at the end Mr. Chas. Gay 1827.
Royal 8vo (241 x 153mm). [2],xiv,206,[ii]p. Folding town plan of Hastings. Etched facsimile of a page from Domesday in two colours. Eighteen engraved plates, many in proof state, engraved by a clutch of distinguished engravers from Moss’s designs. And the additional illustration – a small stipple-engraved portrait of Sir Cloudesley Shovell by Penny mounted out to fit the page area and inserted facing p.150. Contemporary half calf, banded and gilt; marbled sides, edges and endpapers; the binding neatly restored and refurbished; some wear and rubbing to edges; occasional slight spotting and minor creasing, but overall a very good copy. Later inscriptions to preliminary and final blanks.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co., [ca.1891]. An undated reissue of the British edition, originally published by Ward, Lock & Co. in 1887, but here with the addition of James Bowden to the title-page imprint (the upper wrapper retaining the original imprint). The shadowy nineteenth-century American woman crime-writer was most often published under her “Lawrence Lynch” pseudonym, but here appears under her genuine maiden name with a tale of the theft of a trove of diamonds. First published in Chicago in 1884 as by Lawrence L. Lynch.
Post 8vo (21cm). 160pp. Original pictorial wrappers – now with an additional plain outer wrapper; a little worn and slightly chipped and frayed; text a little tanned and brittle; a few nicks and chips, but a reasonable copy of a fragile and ephemeral production. An ex-library copy, with the occasional stamps of Paddington Public Library.

£30 (reduced from £50)

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Boston : Atlantic Monthly Press, 1918. First edition. One of the classics of the field, a much-reprinted and thoroughly engaging account of Newton’s avid book-collecting career, his preference for inscribed copies, essays on some of his favourite authors – Charles Lamb; James Boswell; Hester Thrale (“it may at once be admitted that as a mother Mrs Thrale was not a conspicuous success”); William Godwin (A Ridiculous Philosopher); William Dodd, the Macaroni Parson; the then still unmentionable Oscar Wilde – Newton’s favourite booksellers and bookshops, his frequent visits to London, other collectors, etc.
Demy 8vo (211 x 140mm). (xxii),(356)pp. Colour frontispiece. Plates. Portraits. Facsimiles. Bound in a smart contemporary half russet morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; some minor rubbing and wear, with some skilful restoration to front joint, but still overall a very good copy. From the library of Sir Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), notable book-collector as well as novelist, with his distinctive Brackenburn book-label.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Hutchinson & Co., 1908. First edition. The third of the Scarlet Pimpernel series – “Paris this September, 1793! – or shall we call it Vendémiaire, Year 1 of the Republic?” – “Like its scarlet predecessor, [it] is so beautifully unlike life that we have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Sir Peter Blakeney, of the drawl and the inane smile, and the still inaner rhyme, is once more with us, dawdling into Revolutionary France, and doing the most heroic things under the nose of a Government that would give millions to see him dead” (Daily News, 23rd October 1908).
Crown 8vo (189 x 122mm). 352 + (32)pp advertisements dated Autumn 1908 – the adverts curiously referring to the present work as “The Illusive Pimpernel”, which raises some interesting questions. Bound in a smart later quarter chestnut morocco, banded and ruled in gilt; marbled sides – by James Ashton of London, with his stamp; outer leaves lightly tanned; some occasional scattered foxing, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of H. T. Page on half-title. With the distinctive books-cat-and-skull, “Life Beyond Life”, bookplate of the late Paul Minet (1937-2012), bookseller and journalist.

SOLD

Southampton : Ordnance Survey Office, 1886. Sheet 306 of the one-inch nineteenth-century Ordnance survey, with parts of adjacent sheets, assembled together to give complete coverage of eastern Kent – the coastline round from Faversham, via Whitstable, Herne Bay, Margate, Ramsgate, Deal, Dover, Folkestone, Sandgate, Hythe and Dymchurch to New Romney – with Ashford, Canterbury and Sandwich inland.
Line engraving on paper, with delicate original hand colour. Engraved surface 900 x 837mm (approx. 35-1/2” x 33"). Dissected, mounted on linen and folding into the original Edward Stanford cloth case, with paper label; case a little worn, a couple of tiny marks, but the map in very good and clean state.

£95 (reduced from £150)

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Southampton : Ordnance Survey Office 1878-1889. A composite map of the southern and western environs of London made up of various ordnance survey one-inch sheets. Centred more or less on Weybridge and extending north to Slough and Ealing, east to Greenwich and Oxted, southwards to include Godalming and west to take in Farnham, Sandhurst and Waltham St. Lawrence, and including Windsor, Richmond, Chiswick, Putney, Fulham, Clapham, Camberwell, Croydon, Caterham, Redhill, Reigate, Dorking, Guildford, Aldershot, etc.
Electrotype on paper. Full original hand colour. Printed surface 680 x 1000mm (approx. 26-3/4” x 39”). Dissected, mounted on linen and folding into red shagreen guards, ruled and lettered in gilt. Guards very slightly rubbed, just a hint of tanning to some folds, but overall in very good and clean state. With the contemporary ownership inscription of Arthur Edgell Eastwood (1860-1949), solicitor and J.P.

£120 (reduced from £200)

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

£250 (reduced from £400)

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London : W. H. Allen & Co., 1887. First edition. An interesting study and possible solution to 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood', supplied by the prolific writer on astronomy, mathematics, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). viii,166,[ii] + (48)pp advertisements dated December 1887. Extra engraved title-page. Original decorative cloth gilt; spine slightly tanned; slight wear to tips; endpapers cracking; a little shaken and slack, but a clean and serviceable copy. With the ex-libris label of the well known doctor-cum-actor, Eric John Llewellyn Jones-Evans (1898-1989), and the earlier dated February 1888 ownership inscription of A. M. Heathcote of Winchester – Arthur Malcolm Heathcote (1847-1934), publisher, author of verse plays for children, reciter, entertainer, etc. Loosely inserted is a stamped and receipted 1935 invoice from the booksellers H. M. Gilbert & Son of Southampton to Dr. Jones-Evans.

SOLD

London : for T. Cooper, 1742. First edition. An impressive and spirited riposte to the recently published memoirs of Sarah Churchill, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744), throwing much light on the history of the court from the revolution to 1710. Ralph, of whom his erstwhile friend Benjamin Franklin wrote “I think I never knew a prettier talker”, arrived in England with Franklin in 1724. As a journalist and historian he soon became enmeshed in English literary and political circles and their long-running feuds. He was a friend at various times of both Fielding and Hogarth and it was Charles James Fox who said of him, “I am every day more and more surprised that Ralph should have had so much less reputation as an historian than he seems to deserve”.
Post 8vo (194 x 121mm). [iv],(468)pp. Bound in a neat recent half calf, banded and tooled in blind; title-page a touch dusty and slightly chipped; some occasional spotting; a few minor marks and small flaws; very faint discolouration of the upper margin of some leaves, but still a very good copy.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : James Reynolds, [ca.1850]. One of the well-known series of educational diagrams on card published by James Reynolds of the Strand. In the present example, the upper diagram demonstrates both solar and lunar eclipses, while the lower one illustrates the causation of spring and neap tides, with an additional four lines of clearly written explanatory text.
Steel line engraving on card, with original hand colour. 229 x 284mm (approx. 9” x 11-1/4”. A few minor marks and specks to outer margins, but overall in very good and clean state.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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[London] : Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House), (2017). First edition. Signed by Matthew Richardson on the title-page. “I know a secret. A secret that changes everything”. A sparkling debut from Richardson – “a bang-up-to-date thriller told with old-school panache” (Mick Herron); “I dare you to find a first novel as self-assured, impeccably researched and beautifully rendered ... a portrait of espionage that calls to mind early Le Carré” (Gregg Hurwitz).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],(326),[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a fine copy in the Silas Manhood dust-jacket.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : J. Britton, 1826. A fine antique print – a general view of the city from the open fields to the west – a rainbow counterpoints the cathedral. Engraved by Thomas Jeavons (1794-1867) from an original study by George Fennell Robson and originally produced for John Britton’s “Picturesque Views of the English Cities” (London : 1826-1828). The edition was strictly limited to 1,000 impressions and the original plates were destroyed in January 1829 after that number had been printed.
Line engraving on paper. Later hand colour. Engraved surface 164 x 234mm (approx. 6-1/2” x 9-1/4”). Small spot at foot of lower margin, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique print.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1849. First edition. The Lamps of Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience – the first of Ruskin’s works to bear his name and one of the nineteenth century’s greatest and most influential texts, illustrated with his own stone-etched plates. Although the Gothic Revival was already well underway, it was Ruskin who gave it its moral credo and turned it into a national movement – a book which Marcel Proust claimed to know by heart.
Crown 4to (251 x 169mm). (xii),(206)pp. Fourteen lithographed plates. Errata slip. Bound, without half-title and advertisement leaves, in a lavish near contemporary full vellum, red bands and black labels, heavily worked in gilt, by Henry Stamper (1802-1887) of Soho; panelled boards; decorated edges and turn-ins; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; the binding expertly and almost invisibly repaired at the head and tail of front joint; some minor wear and light bruising; a few slight marks, but a very good copy in a handsome binding by one of the leading London binders of the period.

SOLD

London : The Studio, 1910. First edition. A handsomely bound and richly illustrated monograph, with an admirably researched history of the genre. “The beautifully expressive art of mezzotint was early adopted as their own by the engravers of England, so that it became known abroad as ‘la manière Anglaise’ … this medium of the copper-plate produced masterpieces which are among the glories of British art” (Morning Post, 19th December 1910).
Demy 4to (287 x 199mm). xii,(44)pp. 128 plates. Contemporary half red morocco, banded and gilt, for Sotheran, by Alfred & Frank Denny of the Strand; top edge gilt; some minor wear; some occasional spotting, but a very good copy.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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Edinburgh : Archibald Constable & Co., 1826. First edition. Scott in the thick of the Civil War – Cromwell, Charles II, etc. Written rapidly to earn his way out of financial difficulties, the reviewers found the novel flawed and occasionally wayward in its history, but it became a huge commercial success and remains one of his most popular titles.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (190 x 121mm). xvi,(316); [ii],332; [ii],370pp. With the two cancel-leaves reported by Worthington in all copies examined – the title-page to vol.i and leaf L4 in vol.iii (the latter in second state). Bound (without half-titles) in a neat near contemporary silk-cloth, leather labels; a little sunned, some minor wear, occasional slight spotting, but otherwise a very good set. With the armorial “Fide et Constantia” bookplate of William John Lee in each volume.

SOLD

London : John Seller, [1694?]. A charming and rare small map of Dorsetshire by John Seller, here in its earlier state before the addition of the two captions explaining the numerals (which give miles west and south from London). This set of maps first appeared under the title “Anglia Contracta”, dated to between 1689 and 1694 by Skelton, and generally ascribed to somewhere near the latter date. The presence here of Seller’s address at the Royal Exchange, premises he is not known to have occupied later than 1686, suggests that the maps may actually have been engraved a little earlier.
Copper line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 118 x 152mm (approx. 4-5/8” x 6”). Just a touch dusty, but still in very good state. Of extreme rarity with original colour. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Hodson 122.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : William Heinemann, (1949). First British edition. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board” – the travails of Cassandra Mortmain. Her first novel – an eccentric classic brought to an even wider audience by the 2003 film with Bill Nighy, Romola Garai, Rose Byrne, etc.
Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [iv],338pp. Illustrations by Ruth Steed (from sketches by the author). Bound in a smart recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; red label; marbled sides; top edge red; some spotting to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in an elegant binding.

£350 (reduced from £500)

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London : for Robert Pawlet, 1678. First edition. The transcript of the trial for high treason of the goldsmith and banker William Staley – the first victim of the fevered Popish Plot trials. A conversation in French overheard in a public house led to the charge that Staley did “falsly, wickedly, and traiterously compass, imagine, devise and invent the killing the King”. He was reported as saying, inter alia, “the King of England is the greatest heretick and the greatest rogue in the world, there’s the heart... and here’s the hand that would kill him”. In the atmosphere of the time, he was summarily found guilty and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered.
Pott folio (31cm). 12pp. Disbound. Slightly soiled and lightly frayed; a few minor nicks and creases, but a good and serviceable copy.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Macmillan London, (1976). First British edition. The extraordinary life of Canadian millionaire, fighter pilot and spymaster Sir William Stephenson (1897-1989), head of British Security Co-ordination for the Western Allies during World War Two. Written with Stephenson’s co-operation, the book’s coverage of quasi-legal covert activity angered certain elements with the British government and the British edition is scarce. It has frequently been attacked and belittled – Hugh Trevor-Roper (before his fall from grace) called it “utterly worthless” – but beyond some misleading material about his date of birth and parentage, nothing in the account of the wartime activities at least has credibly been disproved, and it is a matter of record that Stephenson was knighted in 1945 and became the first non-American to receive the Medal for Merit (the highest United States civilian award) in 1946. We also have it from Ian Fleming that while James Bond was fiction, Stephenson was the real thing.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [xxvi],(486)pp. Folding map. Photo plates. Portraits. Original blue canvas, ruled and lettered in silver; just a touch rubbed; a some very faint edge-spots, but a very good copy in the Ken Carroll dust-jacket – the jacket very lightly used and also very good.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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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.

SOLD

London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1903. A handsome and lavishly produced edition of Surtees’ classic of sporting humour, produced for the Trübner Sporting Library series. John Jorrocks originally surfaced in the “New Sporting Magazine” in 1831, and first appeared in book form in 1838, but here appears with the original illustrations from all the various early editions – by Henry Alken, “Phiz” and William Heath – including an Alken illustration previously unpublished. With an interesting introduction on the history of the book and its illustrations by Joseph Grego (1843-1908), noted authority on illustration and its techniques.
Super royal 8vo (258 x 172mm). xxii,(356)pp. Frontispiece, extra pictorial title, twenty-nine tissue-guarded plates – twenty-two with original hand colour – and nine illustrations in text. Bound in an elegant contemporary half red crushed morocco for Hatchard’s; banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endleaves; a few very minor signs of age and use; some spotting to text, but otherwise a very good copy indeed. Dated 1906 gift inscription from Alwyn(e) Ainsworth Crossley (1881-1933) to S. M. Crossley – presumably his widowed mother, Sarah Maude Crossley (1847-1938).

£125 (reduced from £200)

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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).

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : Seeley, Service & Co., 1929. First edition. An excellent guide to all aspects of the subject, from its literature, to tackle, casting, entomology, trout-flies, fly-dressing, etc., with additional chapters on trout scales by G. Herbert Nall, and on the legal aspect of fishing by Alban Bacon, etc. In the much-admired “Lonsdale Library” series.
Demy 8vo (179 x 132mm). 448pp. Numerous plates and illustrations. Bound in an attractive later half morocco; a few minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, (1955). First edition. A charming little monograph by the art historian Basil Taylor, the man who brought British painting back into favour and inspired Paul Mellon’s collecting – with an introductory essay, numerous plates (some in colour) – all with notes, biographical notes on the artists, etc.
Crown 8vo (178 x 108mm). (72)pp. Seventy plates (six in colour). Bound in an elegant contemporary half red crushed morocco, attractively gilt; peacock device on upper cover; green label; marbled endpapers; a very good copy.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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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.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1866. An early collected edition of Thackeray’s gentle and engaging social satires, delightfully illustrated with his own drawings, which were originally published as Christmas books between 1846 and 1848. “Eschewing what has become a species of conventional Christmas mannerism – depending for interest and genial tone of colouring neither upon yule logs, nor plum puddings, nor branches of mistletoe, nor smoking boar’s heads garnished with bay sprigs and rosemary – Mr. Thackeray’s Christmas offering has all the peculiar and original characteristics of the individual mind of its producer ... the very incarnation of riot-running fancy” (Morning Chronicle, 29th December 1846).
Crown 8vo (183 x 133mm). viii,(52); 56; (52)pp. Folding frontispiece, engraved title and fifty engraved and lithographed plates from Thackeray’s own designs. Bound, without half-title, in an elegant contemporary half chestnut roan, banded and gilt; black label; marbled edges, by Andrew Grieve of Edinburgh (1812-1880), with his blind-stamp; some very minor rubbing and wear; a few spots to the endpapers, but a very good copy in a most attractive binding. With the bookplate of the Reverend John Mitchell Harvey (1835-1876).

SOLD

London : Hamish Hamilton, (1984). First edition. Signed by Paul Theroux on the title-page. Young American woman at large in London, underpaid for her academic work at the Hemisphere Institute of International Studies, enters the worlds both of the escort agency and international terrorism. The basis of the 1986 film “Half Moon Street”, with Sigourney Weaver, Michael Caine, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(138)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good copy in the black and silver Don Macpherson dust-jacket – also very good.

£35 (reduced from £50)

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London : Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961. First edition. “The tone, the subject, the attitude are unmistakeable ... they cannot be mistaken for the voice of any other poet – a rare quality at any period – is not the least of the reasons why Mr. Thomas is widely considered one of the finest poets writing in English at the moment ... its 36 granite-hard poems, their images shining like Penrhyn slate after rain, confirm Mr. Thomas as a minor poet of classic status” (Birmingham Daily Post, 19th September 1961).
Post 8vo (22cm). 48pp. Original boards; a very good copy in the matching dust-jacket – the jacket also very good, with the Poetry Book Society Choice wrap-around band.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : Hurst & Blackett, 1865. First edition. “This book deals not so much with the London of the ghost-stories ... as with the London consecrated by manifold traditions – a city every street and alley of which teems with interesting associations, every paving-stone of which marks, as it were, the abiding-place of some ancient legend or biographical story; in short this London of the present haunted by the memories of the past”. With separate chapters on Charing Cross, Drury Lane, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Long Acre, St. Giles, St. Martin’s Lane, the Savoy, Somerset House, the Strand, Temple Bar, etc., and a fund of out-of-the-way anecdote of Londoners past.
Demy 8vo (212 x 134mm). (xvi),(518),[ii]pp. Wood-engraved illustrations by Frederick William Fairholt, F.S.A. (1814-1866). Bound, without half-title, in smart recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides; some marking to title-page; a few spots and slight creases, but a handsome copy.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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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.

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London : Virtue & Co., [1876]. New edition, corrected and enlarged. An invaluable encyclopaedic dictionary of London – from the Adelphi to the Zoological Gardens, with articles on topics (alchemists, aldermen, almshouses, amusements, artesian wells, etc.) as well as places – mixing the “entertaining and anecdotic” with “social statistics and other Great Facts”. Originally published in small octavo in 1855, but here updated (to 1867), enlarged and expanded, “improved, it is hoped, in the value of its contents, as well as increased in bulk”. Compiled by John Timbs F.S.A., author, journalist and antiquary.
One volume, bound in two. Royal 8vo (250 x 166mm). (viii),434; 435-(872)pp. Frontispiece, extra engraved title, and five engraved plates. Bound in contemporary half black leather, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; a little rubbed and slightly worn; a touch shaken; very occasional internal spotting, chiefly to prelims, but a good and serviceable set.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1971). First edition. “A novel about obsession, about a pervading fear of reality, and the fantasies that are invited in their place” (publisher’s blurb) — “William Trevor’s best book yet. Poor Miss Gomez stepped from her Jamaican orphanage to serve behind the counter in Bourne & Hollingsworth, then to the top floor of a Soho brothel” (Victoria Brittain in the Illustrated London News, 1st December 1971).
Post 8vo (21cm). (292)pp. Original lavender boards, lettered in gilt; just lightly bruised; some spotting of top edge, but a very good and sound copy in the Michael Harvey dust-jacket — the jacket very good, clean and unworn.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Bodley Head, (1981). First edition. A collection of a dozen short stories, including “Downstairs at Fitzgerald’s”, “Sunday Drinks”, “The Paradise Lounge”, etc. “Good short stories are hard to come by, but when William Trevor produces a new collection one can be sure that they are more than merely good”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original orange boards, lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but overall a very good copy in the Michael Harvey and Les Wies dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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London : Bodley Head, (1990). First edition. A collection of a dozen short stories, including “In Love with Ariadne”, “Honeymoon in Tramore”, “Coffee with Oliver”, etc – “the bewildering complexities of the human condition ... devastating insight, elegiac compassion and densely textured economy”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (252),[iv]pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; tiny mark on p.122, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a design featuring a landscape by Paul Camille Guigou – very slightly marked at fore-edges but otherwise very good indeed.

£35 (reduced from £50)

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London : Colophon Press, 1997. First edition : one of 200 copies (ex 232) finely printed on mould-made paper, and numbered and signed by William Trevor. “The roomful of important men expectantly await the one whom another has already dubbed the party’s ghost ...” – a Trevor short story.
Royal 8vo (26cm). [ii],26,[ii],[2]pp. Original blue stiff wrappers; paper label; a fine copy.

£35 (reduced from £50)

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London : Tinsley Brothers, 1872. First edition : in the primary binding. “The wine here is altogether of the same vintage with which Mr. Trollope’s many readers have been familiar for some dozen years and more; the only novelty consists in the fashion of the cup ... It is thoroughly readable, very amusing, and shows all Mr. Trollope’s skilfulness of hand in manipulating nothings until they are made into some thing” (The Graphic, 29th June 1872).
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(354),[ii] + 16pp inserted advertisements dated May 1872. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled and decorated in black; just a hint of bruising and the mildest signs of age and use; outer leaves lightly tanned, but still an exceptionally good, bright and fresh copy. With the armorial bookplate of William F. Gumbleton.

SOLD

London : Ward, Lock & Bowden, [ca.1895]. An undesignated reprint of the 1883 third edition. The original 1874 edition is of course of legendary rarity – as Sadleir noted in 1928, “No price records exist. Should a good copy come up for sale it will fetch as much as the most frenzied Trollopian present can afford to pay”. “We settle down, in companionship with Mr. Anthony Trollope, at the Gangoil Farm, on the other side of the Equator, just as easily and comfortably as we did at Orley Farm itself. There are not a few persons to whom the bare idea of colonial existence is intolerable; yet here it is made even charming” (London Evening Standard, 9th November 1874).
Foolscap 8vo (172 x 109mm). [vi],(314)pp. Bound in a smart recent half maroon calf, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; a few minor marks and small flaws, but a very good copy.

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1881. First edition. Lucy and Ayala Dormer left destitute by the death of their gifted but improvident artist father. “Possibly the most unjustly neglected of all Trollope’s novels ... and yet it is one of the most charming ... the lightest and airiest of them all, it has a gaiety and happiness and playfulness that Trollope ... never exceeded ... what vigour of scene and creation, what vitality of action and dialogue it contains” (Hugh Walpole). “The author has not written a better or pleasanter novel for a good many years” (Pall Mall Gazette, 28th May 1881).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (189 x 121mm). iv,280; iv,272; iv,(278)pp. Bound (without final blank, no half-titles or advertisements called for) in an elegant later (mid-twentieth-century) half red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; top edges gilt; one or two tiny marks and edge-spots, but a very good, clean and fresh set of an uncommon late title.

SOLD

London : Chatto & Windus, (1980). First British edition. “You would say he was a man who had gone to pieces, or maybe he’d always been in pieces: maybe he’d arrived unassembled ...”. A fine early Anne Tyler. Originally published in New York earlier the same year.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(312)pp. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, fresh, sound and bright copy in the pictorial Oliver Elmes dust-jacket – price-clipped by the publisher and with a revised price over-sticker – also very good indeed.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. First edition. The sequel to “Rabbit, Run” (1960), set against the background of the Summer of Love — “Ten years have passed; the athletic escapist has become a paunchy conservative, and Eisenhower’s becalmed America has become 1969’s lurid confusion of technology, fantasy, and emergency. Rabbit is abandoned and mocked, his home is invaded, the world of his childhood decays into a mere sublunar void; still he clings to semblances of patriotism and paternity”. Acclaimed on first publication — “A rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece” (Time Magazine), “Without doubt, the finest novel John Updike has written” (Julian Symons in the Sunday Times), and acclaimed now, “One of the most gifted American realists ... John Updike’s surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country” (Joyce Carol Oates in 2015).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(407),[i]pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in silver and gilt; top edge blue; an excellent copy, bright, clean, and sound in an unflawed dust-jacket.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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London : William Heinemann, (1962). First edition. The first novel in the “Spiral Ascent” trilogy – failed poets and communism in the 1930s – “I believe that it may well be the first part of one of the greatest and most original novels of our time” (Christopher Isherwood).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],282pp. Original green boards, lettered in white; a very good copy in the Brian Russell dust-jacket – a stylish architectural design in mauve and tan – also very good.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : for J. Dodsley, 1782. First trade edition. A pioneering and still valuable study, giving in chronological order details of some 160 early English engravers, often with incisive comment on their merits, and preserving material which would not otherwise survive. Originally printed and published as a supplementary volume to Walpole’s “Anecdotes of Painting in England” at Walpole’s private press at Strawberry Hill some twenty years earlier.
Crown 8vo (189 x 119mm). [ii],304,[vi]pp. Bound in a smart recent quarter calf; marbled sides and endpapers; some occasional internal spotting and browning; a few slight marks, but otherwise a very good copy.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1892. First edition. An early novel of faith and doubt from the sterling Mrs Humphry Ward, Tasmanian-born grand-daughter of Dr. Arnold of Rugby. “Though the book is by no means sensational, its violent death-rate is very high. We hear of at least three deaths by accident, and two by suicide, while the mortality is heightened by two cases of cancer, one of consumption, and one of diphtheria. The boy and girl pass through a very rough childhood” (Pall Mall Gazette, 22nd January 1892) – for all that, the novel proved popular with the public, reaching a tenth edition by July 1894.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],388; [viii],388; [viii],396pp. Original cloth, lettered and blocked in gilt and blind; very short split to lower joint of vol.i; a little sunned; the patterned endpapers a little tanned; preliminary blank neatly removed from vol.i; but still a clean and pleasant-looking set. Pencilled ownership inscriptions of Cyril D. Fitzroy, dated Oxford 1905 – this Cyril Duncombe Fitzroy (1861-1939), an Inspector of Schools for Art Instruction. Sadleir 3288. Wolff 7017.

£70 (reduced from £100)

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London : for J. Clark & R. Hett; E. Matthews, and R. Ford, 1726. First edition. A popular and much reprinted text, with very clear expositions and worked examples of the problems and principles, intended to lead on “to the higher speculations of the great Sir Isaac Newton and his followers”. Dedicated to John Eames (1686-1744), recently elected to the Royal Society on Newton’s recommendation and himself a serious scholar of physics. “The same perspicuity of thought and ease of expression which distinguish his other works running through the whole of this, I don’t question but the world will meet with equal pleasure and satisfaction in the perusal” (from Eames’ preface). Watts was perhaps better known as a hymn-writer, but was also the author of such works as “Logic, or The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth” (1724), which became the standard text on logic at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale.
Post 8vo (196mm x 16mm), [2](xiv),(220)[xii]pp. Title-page in red and black, six folding plates. Contemporary full calf, silk headbands; rebacked, labelled, banded and gilt to style; sprinkled edges; some light wear; neat repair to title-page, not affecting lettering; some occasional internal marking and spotting; small ink stain to fore-edge but a good, sound and attractive copy of an important and accomplished work, particularly good on the use of maps and globes.

£380 (reduced from £500)

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London : Chapman & Hall, (1932). First edition. His third novel – the modernisation of the Azanian empire. “In his new novel. Mr. Evelyn Waugh shows himself again as the true Puck of the novel-writing world. It is scarcely five years since his first novel was published; but already he has a host of imitators and many of them clever … his novels have the effect of making real life seem almost sane and pleasant by contrast. In short, he is a benefactor of mankind” (Sylvia Lynd in the Daily News, 12th October 1932).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (304)pp. Frontispiece map. Original lizard pattern red and black cloth, lettered in gilt; just lightly rubbed; some spotting, mainly to prelims and edges; a few faint marks, but a very good copy. Faint ownership inscription of M. A. Watson.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Chapman & Hall, (1936). First edition. A collection of eleven short stories, including “Excursion in Reality”, “Love in the Slump”, and “Bella Fleace Gave a Party”. “One of the few living authors who is incapable of being a bore. One of the few whose books are worth buying and keeping ... ‘Excursion in Reality’ is a brilliant study of the unreality of cinema production ... Mr Waugh is the much-imitated author of our time. Yet we all know that he is inimitable” (Daily Mirror, 30th June 1936).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],(238)pp. Frontispiece in two colours by Thomas Derrick (1885-1954). Original lizard pattern red and black cloth, lettered in gilt; spine just a touch sunned; a scattering of edge spots, but a very good copy, bright, sound and unworn.

SOLD

London : Chapman & Hall, 1955. First edition. The second volume in Waugh’s “Sword of Honour” trilogy – “‘Men at Arms’ ended with the death of Apthorpe. ‘Officers and Gentlemen’ begins with the placation of his spirit, a ritual preparation for the descent into the nether world of Crete”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],(336),[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge blue; a few slight marks; a few edge-spots, but a very good copy in the original Val Biro dust-jacket – a design in blue, yellow, white and black – lightly marked, with a few nicks and a very short tear, the lower panel spotted, but complete and attractive still.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1957. First edition. Waugh starts hearing voices. “The devastating and racking funniness ... comes from Mr. Waugh’s genius for sheathing terror in mirth ... we are given pure entertainment, the better for getting the reader under the skin” (Elizabeth Bowen in The Tatler, 31st July 1957).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),184pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge blue; a very good, clean and sound copy in the Val Biro dust-jacket – a pictorial design in yellow, tan, black and white – the jacket with the merest hint of sunning and wear and also very good.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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

£175 (reduced from £250)

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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.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1944). First edition. Have you met Clubfoot, Valentine Williams’ super spy? “No one can tell a crook story as he can ... what verve, what gusto, what conviction there is in Mr. Williams’ thrillers” wrote Dorothy L. Sayers at various times of the former war correspondent, veteran of real-life drama in every corner of Europe. “Clubfoot makes his appearance again, this time as the Führer’s personal emissary in North Africa and Italy, and later as the new Gestapo chief in Rome, trying to track down the secret dossier of the Führer himself that is in the hands of the Prussian generals who are plotting against him”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 256pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in white; some spotting to rear pastedown, but a very good copy in the stylish original dust-jacket – the jacket a little rubbed and worn, with some small nicks and tiny chips, but complete and attractive still.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, 1950. First edition. The author’s second book – “eleven more short stories about dreadful people ... Mr. Wilson has charity as well as a fine perceptive nose for evil; he knows many conditions of men and has yet to be tempted into the trade of manufacturing jolly commonplaces” (Frederick Laws in the Daily News, 24th July 1950). Includes “Sister Superior”, “Heart of Elm”, “What do Hippo’s Eat”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 212pp. Original dark red cloth, lettered in gilt; slight tanning of endpapers; mark on fore-edge, but otherwise a very good, bright and unworn copy in the original grey dust-jacket, printed in red and black – also very good, with just a few faint signs of age and use.

£35 (reduced from £50)

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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.

£85 (reduced from £125)

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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.

£175 (reduced from £250)

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London : Herbert Jenkins, (1937). First edition : in the primary binding of scarlet cloth. A splendid collection of nine short stories, with Lord Emsworth, Blandings Castle, Mr Mulliner, the Oldest Member, the Drones Club, Ukridge, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 312,[viii]pp. Original cloth, blocked and lettered in black; a few faint marks and a couple of hairline splits to cloth; mild tanning of endpapers; some spotting of edges and closing advertisement leaves, but a good and still attractive copy.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : Herbert Jenkins, (1965). First British edition. The calm and serenity of Blandings Castle disturbed – “A pretty girl in distress, the mending of sundered hearts, the introduction of imposters into his brother’s demesne, all come alike to Gally. Admittedly one or two of his schemes go awry en route”. The ninth Blandings Castle book, first published in the USA as “The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; a few slight marks and spots to edges; mild tanning to endpapers and outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket by Payne – the jacket price-clipped, a touch sunned, with some faint tanning to flaps, and a few spots to rear panel, but also very good.

SOLD

Barrie & Jenkins, (1972). First edition. A sequel to “The Luck of the Bodkins” – Monty Bodkin; Gertrude Butterwick, his hockey-playing fiancée from West Dulwich; Sandy Miller, his vivacious secretary; Chimp Twist, Soapy Molloy and other favourites; the Drones Club and the Happy Prawn night-club. Later published in the USA as “The Plot That Thickened”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a little bruised at foot; a few faint spots, but a good copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket – the jacket also slightly bruised, with a small chip at foot.

£40 (reduced from £50)

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London : Barrie & Jenkins, (1973). First edition. The sequel to “Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin”. Ivor Llewellyn, much married and currently divorced head of a Hollywood film studio, returns to London.
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a couple of edge spots, but a very good copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket – the jacket slightly darkened at edges of the laminate (as usual), with a slight crease to the back panel, but also very good.

SOLD

Mansfield (CT) : Maurizio Martino, [1993]. A convenient facsimile reprint in two smaller format volumes of the original five volume set published between 1981 and 1986 : limited to 325 copies. The full catalogue of one of the great collections of Victorian fiction, neatly complementing Sadleir, and similarly a standard and indispensable work.
Two volumes (24cm). Medium 8vo. xxxvi,(332), viii,(326),[ii]; viii,(300), viii,298, viii,(230)pp. Plates. Portrait. Facsimiles. Apology slip relating to a slight error in the lettering on the binding. Original cloth; a very good set.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Rare Book Society, 2011. First edition. An illustrated dictionary of well over 1,500 members of the map-trade in the British Isles from the beginnings until the mid nineteenth century, including all the known engravers and lithographers, all the known globemakers and retailers, the principal mapsellers and publishers, the key cartographers, the makers of map-based games and puzzles, and others. Each entry includes a list of published work, the known biographical facts (in most cases based on fresh and original research), addresses and dates, details of apprentices, etc. Twenty-five years in the making, the book contains previously unpublished material on almost every page.
Royal 8vo (25cm). xxxii,744pp. Over 600 illustrations; apprentice charts, etc. Original buckram; very good in the dust-jacket. Please note an additional UK 10 for postage overseas.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : James Wyld, 1830. A late, seemingly unrecorded, and much revised edition of the map first published by John Ainslie (1745-1828) in 1783. A crystal-clear road map of Scotland on a scale of around fourteen miles to the inch, with mileages shown along each road, a triangular distance table for the major towns, and a table of spot-heights for the hills, etc. Wyld has added numerous new roads, especially in the Highlands, considerably extended the table of heights, and added a table of comparable English figures.
Copper line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 603 x 557mm (approx. 23-3/4” x 22-7/8”). Dissected, mounted on edge-bound linen, and folding into the original embossed cloth slip-case, with Wyld’s printed label, titled “Roads of Scotland”; case a little worn; some very mild tanning and pale offsetting to the map, but overall in very good order. With the contemporary ownership inscriptions of Lady Hardy on both slip-case and verso of the map, the latter dated 1836 - this presumably Louisa Emily Anne Hardy, née Berkeley (1788-1877), cousin and intimate correspondent of Lord Byron, now married to Nelson’s flag-captain (he of “Kiss me, Hardy”) - Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy (1769-1839). No copy of this Wyld edition located in any major library worldwide.

£175 (reduced from £250)

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1900. First edition. “I walked among the seven woods of Coole ... The sleep that is in the pools Among great trees, and in the wings of owls, And under lovers’ eyelids ... The harp-strings have begun to cry out to the eagles” . Yeats at his lyrical best in this “beautiful phantasmagoria” (Pall Mall Gazette, 8th December 1900). “Mr. Yeats in these later days has strange views as to the scope and mission of poetry. It is as guarded and peculiar and personal to himself as with other men are their last wills and testaments” (Morning Leader, 22nd January 1901).
Crown 4to (25cm). (58),[ii]pp. Original dark blue decorative cloth gilt over bevelled boards; top edge gilt; some mild wear to tips; endpapers lightly spotted; a few faint marks, but otherwise a very good copy of a handsome production. Neat “Aunt Nina” inscription to half-title.

SOLD

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.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1908. A collection of fifty historical tales of heroism and self-denial intended as “a treasury for young people”, or “a mother’s storehouse for reading aloud to her boys” – Alcestis and Antigone, The Pass of Thermopylae, The Shepherd Girl of Nanterre, The Keys of Calais, Sir Thomas More’s Daughter, The Children in the Wood of the Far South, etc. Originally published in 1864.
Foolscap 8vo (154 x 98mm). (xii),454pp. Engraved pictorial title-page. Bound in a very pretty contemporary half navy calf, banded and gilt; red label; top edge gilt; a few trifling signs of age, but a very good, clean and partially unopened copy. With the attractive 1914 bookplate of Maude Hawke (1888-1976), etched by her Tyneside neighbour, Sir Henry John Fanshawe Badeley (1874-1951), and the later 1950 ownership inscription of David Fyfe Anderson.

£40 (reduced from £50)

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