FIRST EDITIONS OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : C. Arthur Pearson, 1920. First edition. “Christopher Beck has brought the pirate story abreast of the times, for it is an air pirate and his ultimate defeat by two plucky young British airmen, that this story is concerned. Airships, seaplanes and motors send the narrative hurtling along at a breathless pace” (The Scotsman, 9th December 1920).
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Eight dramatic plates by (Joseph) Watson Charlton (1876-1948). Original pictorial cloth; spine lightly worn and a little sunned; outer leaves a little tanned; a few internal marks and spots, but a good copy. Contemporary (March 1921) school prize label for Blealow Parochial School – the prize going to Alice Webster, for Progress.

£25

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London : Country Life, (1933). First edition. A charming guide to all the business of children and ponies – “how they may be happily and economically combined” – buying a pony, saddlery and dress, learning to ride, hunting, showing, hacking, jumping and gymkhanas, expenses, etc., delightfully illustrated with the author’s sketches. With a preface by Sir Alfred James Munnings (1878-1959).
Foolscap 4to (22cm). (xvi),(134),[ii]pp. Numerous illustrations, some full page. Original red cloth, lettered in green; top edge green; just a touch of fading; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy in the original grey, red and black dust-jacket – lightly worn, a little tanned and with a small chip missing from lower panel.

£25

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Leeds & Glasgow : E. J. Arnold & Son, [1912]. First edition. A charming guide, with illustrated instructions for tacking stitch, long and short stich, double-row, borders, oversewing stitch, jewelled work, etc.
Crown 4to (25cm). 26,[ii]pp. Original cloth on card covers; illustrations throughout, some in two colours; very slightly rubbed and lightly marked, but a serviceable copy of a scarce work.

£20

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London : George Routledge & Sons, 1867 [i.e.1866]. First edition. One of a number of tales of derring-do written by the bookseller Anne Bowman of Richmond (Yorkshire) either side of 1860 – “A new work, from the pen of Miss Anne Bowman, full of adventurous excitement and hair-breadth escapes from all kinds of peril. A family are shipped from London to a West India island, where they pass through a never-ending series of vicissitudes enough to daunt the energies of the strongest amongst the members of it. No one can complain of monotony who peruses these spirit-stirring pages” (Bell’s Life in London, 24th November 1866).
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). [ii],446pp. Frontispiece and seven suitably dramatic plates by the Dalziel Brothers. Inset slip advertising the Broadway Magazine. Original pictorial cloth gilt; just faintly rubbed; spine just a touch sunned; one or two slight marks, but a very good example of the genre. Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£200

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

£250

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

£500

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Aldershot : Ashgate, (1998). First edition. An illustrated decade-by-decade survey, with biographical notes and checklists of over 200 authors from the English-speaking world. A review copy, with the manuscript review notes of the late B. C. Bloomfield loosely inserted.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xii),228pp. Numerous illustrations. Original boards; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket.

£25

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London : George Newnes, (1924). First edition. Fourteen William stories, including “William and Photography”, “William and the Black Cat”, “William the Showman”, “William Enters Politics”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],250,[ii]pp – including integral front endpapers. Illustrations, some full-page, by Thomas Henry. Original red cloth, lettered in black; faint crease to lower cover; a few edge-spots, but overall a very good, fresh and sound copy. Neat gift inscription dated May 1924.

£75

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London : A. & C. Black, (1938). First edition. Three sisters start a riding school – “the whole idea is pure nonsense” explodes Uncle Manfred – but they set out to prove him wrong. “Full of the right ‘jodhpur’ tone and suggests a really thorough knowledge of horseflesh” (Hull Daily Mail, 10th December 1938).
Foolscap 4to (23cm). viii,216pp. Illustrations and plates by Cecil Gwendolen Trew (1897-1958). Original pale grey cloth, lettered in blue; mild tanning of endpapers; just a hint of edge spotting, but a very good, crisp and sound copy in the original Trew dust-jacket – a pictorial design in red and black on grey – just slightly creased and with a single repaired tear on upper panel – but also very good and fresh.

£25

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London : Country Life, (1939). First edition : in the secondary binding of pale brown cloth over thin and flexible boards, lettered in black – the publisher’s imprint reading Junior Country Life Library on four lines. A story for older children set on Romney Marsh – and “without the inevitable ponies and dogs filling the chief roles”.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). viii,180pp. Illustrations by Nina Scott Langley. Just a touch bruised; a few slight edge spots, but a very good and bright copy in the secondary dust-jacket – a Scott James pictorial design in black and orange on white – priced 4s/6d – and listing forty-seven titles in the Junior Country Life Library – the jacket a little worn, tanned and repaired, and somewhat chipped at tips, but without loss of lettering.

£20

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Newcastle upon Tyne : Frank Graham, (1971). First edition : limited to 450 copies. An attractive facsimile of eighteen of the illustrated halfpenny chapbooks produced for children by William Davison of Alnwick in the early nineteenth century. With an introduction by Peter Isaac (1921-2002).
Foolscap 8vo (15cm). 14,[152]pp. Illustrations (some by Thomas Bewick). Facsimiles. Original cloth gilt; very good in the dust-jacket – just slightly nicked and slightly dusty on lower panel.

£20

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London : Duckworth & Co., 1910. First edition : a later issue, in the secondary binding, and with inserted advertisements datable from internal evidence to perhaps 1920. De La Mare’s neglected masterpiece – an enduring fantasy of the quest of the three royal monkeys. When asked about its possible influence on “Watership Down”, Richard Adams reportedly replied, “To try to copy ‘The Three Mulla-Mulgars’ would be like trying to copy ‘King Lear’”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),312 + 16pp advertisements. Coloured frontispiece and colour plate by John Robert (Jack) Monsell (1877-1952). Original olive pictorial cloth, blocked and lettered in black; a few minor signs of age and use; some minor spotting, mainly to edges and endpapers; one leaf a little frayed, but overall a very good, bright and sound copy in the matching dust-jacket – just slightly rubbed, but very good indeed.

£125

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New Haven : Yale University Press, (1988). First edition. A full-scale history of periodical publishing for children in England, drawing on her doctoral thesis, with special emphasis on readership and perception.
Medium 8vo (24cm). x,272,[vi]pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; very good in a just faintly rubbed dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Hutchinson & Co., [1895]. First edition. The first of the wonderful Wallypug books (for specially nice girls and boys only) – a talking doll takes Girlie to the land Why, “where all the questions and answers come from ... but, before we start, you must promise me that you will be very kind to the Wallypug, for he is a kind of relation of mine”. The fish with a cold, breakfast for tea, the socialist cockatoo, the invisible joke, the ride with the alphabet, and other superb fantasies.
Crown 4to (21cm). (xvi),(202),[vi]pp. Full-page illustrations by the well-known Harry Furniss (1854-1925), illustrator of Lewis Carroll, Dickens and Thackeray, later a pioneer of the animated film cartoon – with vignettes by his fifteen-year-old daughter Dorothy Furniss (1879-1944). Original pictorial cloth gilt in a Furniss design; all edges gilt; just a touch bruised; a little shaken and slack; some light internal spotting, but otherwise a very good and bright copy. Pencilled ownership inscription of Henry F. Baker.

£100

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London : Blackie & Son, (1989). First edition. A collection of over 100 poems, some previously unpublished, with illustrations by Nick Duffy.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). 144pp. Illustrations. Original grey boards, lettered in gilt; very good indeed in the original dust-jacket – a pictorial Duffy design, lettered in pink and blue – also very good indeed.

£20

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New York : Pierpont Morgan Library / Toronto : Oxford University Press, (1975). First edition. A lavishly produced exploration of 225 treasures from the Pierpont Morgan Library, with bibliographical notes and short discussions of each. With a preface by Charles Ryskamp and an interesting essay by the historian by J. H. Plumb on “The First Flourishing of Children’s Books”.
Royal 4to (31cm). [2],(xxx),(266),[ii]pp. Colour plates. Over 300 monochrome illustrations. Original cloth; very good in a just lightly rubbed dust-jacket.

£40

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London : W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1831. First edition. An extended catechism, with a supplementary table of biblical texts pointing out various duties, sins to be avoided, threatenings to the wicked, blessings to the righteous, etc., compiled for the use of the Harewood Sunday School in Yorkshire, and prepared for publication by the local vicar, Richard Hale (1773-1854), evidently in memory of the compiler, his late wife, Mary Ann Hale, née Loft, and their short marriage of just five years.
Post 12mo (18cm). (96)pp. Original sheep-backed boards; a little rubbed and worn; some staining to boards; stitching slack and a few leaves loose; a serviceable copy of a very uncommon book. Contemporary (1833) pencilled ownership inscription of a member of the Pulford family. Only a single copy (Roderic Bowen Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

£50

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London : Oxford University Press, 1967. First edition in English. A handsome and wide-ranging survey, with individual chapters on nursery rhymes, fairy stories, Hans Christian Andersen, Heinrich Hoffman, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, fantasy, the Little Prince, dreams and educational methods, Red Indians, education through pictures, photography, colour prints, comic strips, politics, Jean de Brunhoff, twentieth-century picture books, etc., with extensive bibliographies. Originally published in Zurich in 1959. Edited and translated from the extended second edition of 1963 by Brian Alderson.
Medium 8vo (25cm). xviii,(298),[iv]pp. Plates, some coloured. Illustrations. Original boards; very good in a price-clipped but otherwise very good dust-jacket.

£25

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London : National Council of Evangelical Free Churches, 1907. First edition. Twenty-nine improving talks for the young, with metaphors from sports and hobbies – cricket, golf, cycling, photography, and much else – “We are the batsmen, and we have to keep our wicket up”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(140)pp. Original pictorial cloth, gilt and enamelled; spine a touch dulled, but overall a very good copy.

£40

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

£200

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London : Geoffrey Bles, (1950). First edition. Illustrations and colour frontispiece by Pauline Baynes. The first and best-known of the Narnia chronicles.
Post 8vo (198 x 130mm). (174)pp. Coloured frontispiece. Illustrations. Bound, without final blank, in an elegant recent full green morocco, banded and gilt; a few very minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£1,250

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London : J. & E. Bumpus, 1932. First edition : limited to 400 numbered copies. “Including a catalogue of the exhibition, with notes; an essay on Dodgson’s illustrators by Harold Hartley; and additional literary pieces (chiefly unpublished). With six illustrations”. A charming catalogue of the centenary exhibition, describing over six-hundred Carroll related items and rarities, together with the Hartley essay, and also including a number of previously unpublished (or unpublished in book form) short pieces by Carroll – juvenilia, articles, acrostics, extracts from letters, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xx),(140)pp. Frontispiece and five plates. Original cloth; cloth a little bubbled; edges slightly spotted, but a very good, bright and clean copy, in a just slightly nicked and dulled dust-jacket.

£40

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Boston : Horn Book, (1970). A reprint of the original 1947 edition. An extensive overview of the subject, with chapters on the period before 1800; nineteenth-century England; early American illustration; Howard Pyle; foreign picture books; graphic processes; illustrators of children’s classics; animated drawing; twentieth-century developments, etc., supplemented with biographies of living illustrators worldwide, bibliographies, etc.
Demy 4to (28cm) . xvi,(528)pp. Numerous illustrations. Original cloth; a few faint spots to top edge, but a very good and bright copy.

£40

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London : Stanley Paul & Co., 1908. First edition. “True stories of real peril told by men and boys from personal experience, including original stories by G. Manville Fenn, Clive R. Fenn, H. J. A. Hervey, and others”. Thirty-three stories, including Manville Fenn’s “The Black Spot”, as well as “With Panthers in a Cotton Field”, “Fighting Loons”, “With a Tiger in Manchuria”, “Treed by Wolves on the Koyukuk”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 376pp. Plates and illustrations in text. Original pictorial cloth over bevelled boards, gilt and enamelled; all edges gilt; lightly bruised; some rubbing and wear; covers slightly discoloured in places; a few internal marks and creases, but a good copy. Gift inscription dated 1919, from Gordon to Rhoda.

£25

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London : Methuen & Co., (1928). First edition. “One day when Pooh Bear had nothing else to do, he thought he would do something, so he went round to Piglet’s house to see what Piglet was doing”. Illustrations, endpapers, and cover-design by the inimitable Ernest H. Shepard.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xii),(180)pp. Original pink cloth, ruled, blocked, and lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; just a touch dulled; some very mild rubbing and wear to extremities; faint tanning of endpapers; slight spotting of edges; a few minor internal marks and tiny flaws, but overall still a very good copy.

£400

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London : B. T. Batsford, (1979). A reprint of the original 1954 edition, with a fresh preface updating the list of recommended reading, etc. An illustrated history and collectors’ guide to English children’s books, with checklists of the most important authors, the publishing history of the major works, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (256)pp. Colour plates. 107 illustrations. Original boards; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in a just slightly dusty and price-clipped dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, (1985). First edition. Professor Musgrave with a history of the boys’ school story – from its origins, through the great Victorians and on to 1930.
Demy 8vo (23cm). viii,(276),[iv]pp. Illustrations. Original boards; faint mark to top edge, otherwise very good in dust-jacket.

£15

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New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, (1991). First edition. An absorbing study of models of masculinity in (mainly Victorian) books for boys – “asexuality and virility as social ideals”.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [xiv],(216),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; very good in dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Hutchinson & Co., 1907. First edition. Judge Parry and an extraordinary Scottish fantasy tale for children, in which a Swiss Seal umpiring a cricket match seems relatively normal. Illustrated by Harry Furniss (1854-1925).
Foolscap 4to (21cm). viii,248pp. Illustrations. Original red cloth, pictorially blocked and lettered in gilt and black on upper cover and spine; all edges gilt; a little bruised; covers with some patches of fading and discolouration to edges; endpapers tanned; some internal marks and creases; but a good and still bright copy. Ownership inscription.

£25

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London : Frederick Warne & Co., 1910. First edition. “Once upon a time there was a wood-mouse, and her name was Mrs. Tittlemouse. She lived in a bank under a hedge”. Cover design, endpapers and colour illustrations by the author.
Pott 4to (15cm). (86)pp. Original variant blue boards, with pictorial onlay; a little rubbed and slightly marked; internally a few small marks and slight flaws, but overall a very good copy of a fragile production. Ownership blind-stamp featuring the letter “V” on front free endpaper.

SOLD

London : Blackie & Son, 1911. First edition. A delightful book about London for children – not just Oranges and Lemons and other nursery rhymes, but the origins of the city, the Romans, Boadicea, Saxon London, the Danes, Westminster Abbey, the Thames, London Bridge, the Tower, the Great Fire, St. Paul’s, London children, St. James’s Park, the Crystal Palace, the Zoo, Covent Garden, the docks, and London servants. With colour plates by Wilfrid Ball, W. L. Wyllie, Frank Brangwyn, Samuel Scott, Stanhope Forbes, Vicat Cole, and others, as well as numerous illustrations, some full-page, in the text.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). 128pp. Twelve coloured plates. Numerous illustrations. Maps. Music. Original pictorial cloth; a touch dulled, faintly marked and slightly bruised; endpapers and outer leaves a little tanned, but otherwise internally a very good, clean and sound copy.

£40

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London : David Bogue, 1856 [i.e.1855]. First edition. “There is no living writer in our language who is at all to be compared with Captain Mayne Reid for the power with which he unites fact and marvel” (Morning Advertiser, 7th January 1856) – “As a writer of books for boys, commend us above all men living to Captain Mayne Reid! Wherever his new book goes this new year there will be abundant delight for hours of reading, and plenty to talk about by the evening fire. Toils and adventures, dangers, darings, and sufferings ...” (The Nonconformist, February 1856).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). viii,(472) + [xvi],32pp illustrated advertisements dated 1856 and February 1856 respectively. Twelve lively plates by Gustave Janet (1829-1898) and others. Original pictorial cloth gilt; a touch rubbed; slight fading and splashing to boards, but still a very good copy. Contemporary (1861) gift inscription to John Edward Oldfield from his Aunt Emma.

£250

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London : George Routledge & Sons, 1866. First edition. "There once was a king did a very sad thing ..." and other nonsense rhymes from the fertile and inventive Charles Ross, each with one of his own extraordinary illustrations, engraved and printed in colours by Edmund Evans. Ross was the inventor of the first comic cartoon character, the immortal Ally Sloper F.O.M. (Friend of Man), who made his debut in Ross’s magazine "Judy" in August 1867 before taking on a life of his own in annuals and the weekly Ally Sloper comics. The characteristic style and tenor are already in place in these early images and rhymes.
Foolscap 4to (19cm). 62,[ii]pp, interleaved with guards. Colour illustrations throughout. Original red-brown cloth, lettered in gilt up spine; pictorially blocked and lettered in gilt, and ruled and decorated in blind, on upper cover; ruled and decorated in blind on lower cover; lightly rubbed and faintly sunned; mild lifting of cloth; endpapers slightly cracked; a little shaken; a few slight marks and spots, but still a very good copy of an interesting and unusual production. With the contemporary blind stamp of the bookseller Alfred Palmer of Bromsgrove.

£200

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London : Country Life, (1932). First edition. The adventures of three London children while their mother is away. “A story for Medium-sized People in eight incidents”. Illustrated by James H. Dowd (1884-1956).
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [x],(172),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Original yellow cloth, blocked and lettered in blue and black; top edge a touch dusty; very mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good, bright, sound and unworn copy in the original black and sand dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly worn.

£40

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1896 [i.e 1895]. The first illustrated edition of a perennial favourite – the collection of sixty or more children’s poems by Stevenson first published ten years earlier – “The Land of Counterpane”, “The Land of Nod”, “My Bed is a Boat”, “The Land of Story-Books”, etc. Illustrated throughout by Charles Robinson (1870-1937) – “Just as ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ is the best of its kind – you are certain it will live as long ... as the presence of little ones brightens the earth – so Charles Robinson’s illustrations are the best of their kind ... John Lane’s exquisite volume is a treasure” (contemporary review in Black & White).
Post 8vo (21cm). xiv,(140),[iv],16pp – the advertisements dated 1895. Cover design and illustrations throughout by Robinson. Original pictorial cloth gilt; top edge gilt; a few slight marks; a couple of faint splashes to upper cover; a few spots, chiefly to the endpapers, but a very good, bright and sound copy. Dated (1900) gift inscription to Mary Robinson from her brother Cecil on front free endpaper.

£200

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London : Bodley Head, 1960. First Leonard Rosoman illustrated edition. A perennial favourite since its first publication in 1895, but here given a complete makeover by the original publishers with over 100 fresh drawings for this edition by Leonard Rosoman.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 142,[ii]pp. Numerous illustrations. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original Rosoman dust-jacket – a design in green, grey and black – just slightly nicked.

£15

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London : Frederick Warne, (1986). First edition. A richly illustrated biography of Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), with much new material, including previously unpublished photographs and illustrations.
Crown 4to (26cm). 224pp. Illustrations throughout. Colour plates. Original boards; a very good copy in a price-clipped and just faintly rubbed dust-jacket. Pictorial bookplate of A.W. & P. M. Best.

£20

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Edinburgh : Andersons, [ca.1925]. A reprint of this attractive and popular compilation, re-issued in various formats from about 1905 onwards – the words and music of forty favourite children’s songs – “Girls and Boys Come out to Play”, “I Love Little Pussy”, “Sing a Song of Sixpence”, and others which might not pass muster in this day and age – with three-colour plates by Lawson Wood, Charles Crombie, Harry Rountree, etc.
Crown 4to (25cm). 62 [i.e. 60]pp. Eight colour plates. Original pictorial satin cotton, with rabbits, chicks, etc.; slight wear at tips; a touch sunned, but still a very good copy.

£25

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London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1870. Forty-fourth edition. A quite extraordinary compilation for the nineteenth-century child, condensing into under 500 pages an encyclopaedic amount of information on all manner of topics. Conceived in the form of Socratic question-and-answer dialogue, we learn of everything from acorns to zinc – from just one opening at random, “What is goulard?”, “What is benzoin?”, “What is storax”, “What is gum-guaiacum”, “What forms the famous diamond cement?” – all confidently and succinctly answered. Originally published as “262 Questions and Answers” in 1825, the book rapidly became a standard text, much expanded through multiple editions until at least a sixty-third edition in 1913, the text initially augmented after the author’s death by her nephew Robert Arthur Ward (1826-1898).
Foolscap 12mo (139 x 88mm). (vi),474pp. Bound in a smart recent full tan calf, banded and tooled in blind; red label; marbled endpapers; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy. Very occasional annotation and a number of pencil marks.

£100

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Edinburgh : Oliver & Boyd / London : Simpkin & Marshall, 1832. First edition. Selected Latin passages, moving on from simple constructions (nominative and verb, adjective and substantive, etc.), to longer and increasingly more complex anecdotes, maxims, and fables, etc., followed by an extensive vocabulary. Generally attributed to the schoolmaster Richard Valpy, said to have been “a mighty flogger”, whose large and impressive library was dispersed at auction in 1832.
Post 12mo (171 x 102mm). [iv],(224)pp. Contemporary full sheep; sprinkled edges; some minor rubbing and slight wear to corners; a few slight marks, but internally clean and sound, and barring the presence of a number of pencil marks, looking virtually unused. A very good copy of a standard text which remained in print throughout the century.

£75

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London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co.; Hamilton, Adams & Co., [etc]., 1850. Eighth edition. "Designed to inspire young persons with a taste for that useful branch of education" – Little Lucy Harcourt is brought up to the mark in grammar – "though she sometimes betrayed a little impatience, ill-humour, and carelessness, yet if we look over these little faults, she was tolerably good". Intended for use both at home and in schools, but although the work evidently enjoyed a considerable nineteenth-century vogue, being first published in about 1827 (the date of the preface) and reaching a tenth edition in 1865, we are unable to trace any edition earlier than the 1841 (sixth) in the British Library – and no copy of the present edition in any of the major UK libraries.
Post 12mo (19cm). 204pp. Original blind-stamped cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; small and faint band of uneven colour across spine, but a very good copy. Impenetrable contemporary ownership inscription.

£50

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