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

£1,500

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

£125

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

£500

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[Paris] : Publié sous les auspices de La Société Internationale des Intérêts Commerciaux, pour les Chemins de Fer de l’État, par Devambez, [1930]. First edition. The well-known French playwright and screenwriter with a witty response to Anita Loos (1889-1981) and her “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1925). From the library of Anita Loos, with her delightful portrait bookplate by Frank Walts (1877-1941), and two small “From the estate of Anita Loos” stamps. “Four letters twenty two post cards two night letters and one cable from his sweet, sweet Annabel Flowers to her darling, darling George Sabran”. Produced as English-language promotional and publicity material for both French State Railways and a range of French businesses, with overt plugs for perfumes, dresses, resorts, hairdressers, hats, jewels, cars, hotels, restaurants, shoes, etc., and even Kellner the body-builder of the Champs-Élysée. A leaflet list of “firms recommanded [sic]” is loosely inserted.
Crown 4to (24cm). [64]pp. Coloured illustrations throughout. Original wrappers; just lightly rubbed and slightly bruised; a touch shaken; a hint of tanning, but otherwise a very good copy in the silver dust-jacket, lettered and decorated in red and black – the jacket similarly lightly worn and slightly bruised, with a short tear at head, but in good condition for a fragile survival. Just three copies (Bibliothèque Nationale. Cambridge, and California) traced in major libraries.

£500

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London : R. & J. Dodsley, 1761. First edition. An encyclopaedic guide to London – the first to take in the whole of the Greater London area, with “numberless curiosities, not hitherto taken notice of by any other writers”. The entries, some running to multiple pages, are arranged alphabetically – from the Abbey Church of St. Peter’s Westminster, Abbots Langley, Abbs Court at Walton, and Abchurch Lane, to Young’s Almshouse, Young’s Court, Young’s Key, and Zoar Street. The text may well have been compiled by the publisher Robert Dodsley himself, having handed over the day-to-day running of the publishing business to his brother James in 1759. It includes unusual detail of the paintings and sculpture found in the many grand houses of the capital. The work is illustrated with seventy-six delightful plates, some bearing two images, almost all from original drawings commissioned from Samuel Wale (1721-1786), first Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, and “engraved by the best hands”. There are also two large folding maps and three plans – the maps offering a detailed plan of the built-up area of central London at six inches to the mile, and a very attractive hand-coloured depiction of “The Environs or Countries Twenty Miles Round London” by the well-known Thomas Kitchin (1719-1784). “The quality and number of the illustrations make this an unsurpassed guide to the appearance of mid-eighteenth century London” (Bernard Adams).
Six volumes. Post 8vo (200 x 120mm). [xii],344; [iv],352; [iv],328; [iv],(356); [iv],348; [iv],376pp. Engraved plates, maps and plans, some folding. Contemporary calf, now elegantly re-backed and re-labelled to style; some minor marks and light wear; some occasional internal spotting and offsetting; a few internal tears and small flaws, but a good set of a highly valuable contribution to London history.

£750

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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.

£2,000

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London : The Bodley Head, (1988). First British edition. Signed by Alan Furst on the title-page. The first in his extraordinary sequence of espionage novels, here opening in Bulgaria in 1934 and set over the following decade across Europe and beyond – “It is not the plots of his novels that set Furst above the competitors in his genre; it is a combination of the beautifully oblique writing and way in which he can produced a charged atmosphere with just a few sentences ... How I envy anybody who has not yet discovered his writing” (Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph). First published in Boston earlier in 1988.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],(438),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising; just a touch of tanning (as ever) to the text, but a very good copy in the Kurt Hoyt dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£200

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Oxford : Perpetua Press, (1993). First edition. Twenty-three poems by Robert Gittings, beautifully printed by Vivian Ridler at the Perpetua Press, each accompanied by a brass rubbing, from churches as far afield as Wensley in Yorkshire and Burghill in Herefordshire, by the poet’s daughter Clare Gittings – all finding their origins in a family tradition of Christmas cards. Foreword by Christopher Fry.
Demy 4to (283 x 203mm). [iv],(56),[iv]pp. Twenty-three full-page illustrations. Bound in a handsome 2009 designer binding By Chris Hicks – full blue morocco, with morocco hinges, silk headbands, etc., with gilt onlays and tooling on the front cover based on the Wensley angel; an excellent copy housed in its custom-made clamshell cloth box.

£1,000

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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.

£250

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

£500

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London : Strahan & Co., 1872. 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 anonymous author of this fascinating novel was himself to become a radical M.P. in 1874. 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).
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.

£200

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London : Duckworth & Co., 1913. First edition : Roberts’ variant (1), with the cancel title dated 1913. “Review copies have been noted both with the bound-in title without date and with the tipped-in title with date ... as Duckworth’s records were destroyed during the war, a final solution to these bibliographical problems may be impossible” (Roberts). “No other English novelist of our time has so great a power to translate passion into words, but that is neither the beginning nor end of his art” (London Evening Standard, 30th May 1913).
Crown 8vo (186 x 119mm). (viii),(424) + (20)pp advertisements. Bound in a smart recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; a few slight marks and spots; one leaf chipped, with the loss of four letters, but a good copy, attractively bound. Roberts A4.

£500

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (2001). First edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. London in the Spring of 1941 – German spy, American captain, Cockney policeman, his precocious daughter – and Sergeant Troy of the Yard. “Wonderfully captures the atmosphere of wartime London ... original and entertaining” (Robert Harris). “One of the most entertaining thrillers I have read in years” (Sunday Telegraph).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],322,[iv]pp. Original brown boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just a touch sunned, but otherwise also very good.

£100

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1936. First edition. “The essence of her story lies in the reaction of two respectable but unhappy married couples to the intoxicating stimulus of care-free and self-possessed youth, personified by a brother and sister, Hugh and Clare, who descend upon a dreary industrial town in the North, and sow unrest in their train” (Yorkshire Post, 27th August 1930). “I think Rosamond Lehmann is the best of the younger generation of English novelists ... at the head of the world of fiction that derives on the female side from Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield and on the male side from Joyce and Lawrence” (Hugh Walpole).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],318,[ii]pp. Original mustard cloth, lettered and decorated in blue; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the jaunty dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn at head and a little dulled at spine, but still very good. With the striking ex-libris label of Michael Howson on the front free endpaper.

£200

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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.

£2,000

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London : for Charles Marsh, 1738. First edition. One of three editions published that year, but with the additional poems not included in the other editions. The poems include three Odes for the Grand Khaibar, replete with references to freemasonry, a poem to Alexander Pope and a poem on the death of Queen Caroline. In other phases of his career the bookseller Marsh also produced versions of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and A Winter’s Tale – improved by himself – as well as the poem, “The Library : An Epistle from a Bookseller, to a Gentleman, his Customer, Desiring him to Discharge his Bill”, of which a contemporary noted that he “did no great matter in his business, being of a very unhappy temper, and withall very proud and insolent, with a very plentiful share of conceit, as appears from this extraordinary piece”.
Foolscap 4to (213 x 136mm). 104pp. Engraved frontispiece by Giles King. Bound in a stylish later (mid twentieth-century) full tree calf, the boards decorated with a Greek key border and masonic symbols; a touch sunned; internally a few leaves roughly opened, but a very good and uncut copy. From the collection of Albert Edward Collins Nice (1898-1969), with his pencilled notes on the previously unrecorded masonic references.

£500

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London : Golden Cockerel Press, 1947. First edition : limited to 550 numbered copies, of which this is one of 430 on Fabriano's Italian mould-made paper, bound in quarter blue buckram. A presentation copy, inscribed, signed and dated Christmas 1947 to Margery [Green] - "So here it is at last & many thanks". Woman in detail – the feet and legs; the torso; the hands; the neck, face and head, and the hair – illustrated with elegant drawings by Mark Severin (1907-1987). “Patrick Miller may skate on thin ice, but he performs most gracefully. An architect by profession, a globe-trotter by way of relaxation, he has acquired the habit of surveying scientifically every wonder of the world that is set before him. How, then could he hold back when confronted by Woman?” (the publisher, Christopher Sandford).
Royal 8vo (25cm). (64)pp. Five full-page illustrations by Severin. Original quarter blue buckram; paper boards; top edge gilt; a touch sunned; some minor wear to corners; a few marks to boards; final leaf a little tanned, but a good copy. With the decorative bookplate of the recipient, Margery Green.

£125

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Bath : Old School Press, 2001. First edition : one of twenty copies (of 230) reserved in sheets for binders and signed by both Andrew Motion and the illustrator, Simon Brett. Four extended poems from the then Poet Laureate, delicately hand-printed on Magnani paper, illustrated with evocative and atmospheric wood-engravings by Simon Brett.
Post 4to (271 x 190mm). [48]pp. Four wood-engraved illustrations. Bound in black morocco, with delicately shaded pale morocco onlays, in an exquisite designer binding by Kate Holland, winner of the 2006 Mansfield Medal and First Prize for Best Book in the annual Designer Binders’ competition – the present binding dating from the same period; delicately marbled edges and endpapers; the binding housed in its original velvet-lined black cloth box, decorated with a crescent moon. A fine copy of a beautiful book.

£2,000

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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.

£200

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1932). First edition. “The thriller of the week – and probably the season – is Liam O’Flaherty’s The Puritan ... in which a man kills a woman in the cause of virtue ... A common plot? Yes, but you’ve never come across anything like Mr. O’Flaherty’s variation, outside the pages of Dostoievsky. It floods along to its terrible end like a dark swirl of water, and you race with it, helpless as a straw” (Daily Herald, 4th February 1932).
Post 8vo (21cm). 326,[ii],[2]pp. Original orange-red cloth, blocked and lettered in green; blocked in blind on rear cover; some faint spots, mainly to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket by Theyre Lee-Elliott (1903-1988) – the jacket faintly tanned at spine, with a couple of faint marks and some mild wear at tips, but also very good.

£200

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London : Blond & Briggs / Anthony Blond / Muller, Blond & White / Frederick Muller / Hutchinson, (1984-1992). A complete first edition set of all seven volumes – Morning Star (1984); The Face of the Waters (1985); Before the Cock Crow (1986); New Seed for Old (1988); Blood of My Bone (1989); In the Image of God (1990); and The Troubadour (1992). “Perhaps it’s time that Raven’s books got a Government health warning” (Daily Mail).
Seven volumes. Demy 8vo (23cm). Original boards; text slightly tanned, as usual, in the first and two final volumes, but otherwise a very good set in the original dust-jackets – the first three by Lawrence Toynbee (1922-2002) – the jackets a little sunned at spine, but unclipped and otherwise also very good. Neat ownership inscription of Martin Cohen in each volume.

£250

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First edition in English of “Un Peu de Soleil dans l’Eau Froide”. Troubled Parisian journalist at the point of despair escapes to the country, where he meets a new and extremely respectable married woman. “A sad love story set in Paris and Limoges, told with brevity, compassion and elegance. Sagan misses nothing” (Daily Mirror, 4th November 1971). “It is when love becomes immoderate that tragedy enters”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],184,[ii]pp. Original dark green boards, lettered in gilt; just slightly bruised; a few edge spots, but a very good copy in the Bruce Pinkard dust-jacket — the jacket good with some minor edge-wear, and three short repaired tears and minor creasing on rear panel. A decent copy of a scarce book.

£100

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London : Editions Poetry London, (1945). First edition. “I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my anticipation to face the moment I most desire”. Smart’s celebrated fictional account of her love affair with the poet George Barker (1913-1991) – “a visceral journey into the human heart, written in a language so urgent, raw and lyrical that each sentence is a bruise or a kiss” (Raffaella Barker).
Demy 8vo (211 x 130mm). 54,[ii]pp. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco, lettered down spine in gilt; top edge gilt; a most attractive copy of the first edition of this scarce modern classic.

£250

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1855 [but 1854]. First edition. The last of Thackeray’s Christmas stories, a satirical fairy tale, wonderfully illustrated with Thackeray’s own numerous sketches. “But in the meanwhile, and for a brief holyday, let us laugh and be as pleasant as we can. And you elder folks – a little joking and dancing and fooling will do even you no harm. The author wishes you a merry Christmas, and welcomes you to the Fire-side Pantomime”.
Crown 8vo (177 x 129mm). iv,128pp. Eight plates. Numerous illustrations in text. Bound in a handsome early twentieth-century full tan calf, banded in gilt, by Riviere; red labels; all edges gilt; inner gilt dentelles; marbled endleaves; slight scratch to rear board; some internal marks and spots; one leaf with a short repaired tear, but still an attractive copy in a fine binding.

£250

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London : Richard Bentley, 1865. First edition. “From the building of the first bridge at London to the startling incident of a few days since” – the history of London in highly entertaining story and anecdote, with sections of Historic Sketches; Remarkable Duels; Notorious Highwaymen; Rogueries, Crimes and Punishments; Love and Marriage; Supernatural Stories; Sights and Shows, and Public Amusements; Strange Adventures and Catastrophes; Remarkable Persons; and Miscellaneous. “The indefatigable prince of compilers has once more plied his industrious scissors to good purpose” (Illustrated London News, 24th June 1865).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (190 x 118mm). viii,324; viii,320; viii,(332)pp. Bound, without half-titles, in an attractive contemporary half tan calf, banded and gilt; contrasting red and green labels; marbled sides, edges and endpapers; lightly rubbed; a few very minor marks, small flaws and slight creases; slight spotting of prelims; text very slightly tanned, but still a nice set. Gift inscriptions dated 1886 in each volume and the more recent book-labels of Oliver Ray.

£250

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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.

£750

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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.

£850

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

£750

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

£1,250

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Strawberry Hill : by Thomas Kirgate, 1765-1771. Second edition. The complete four volume set, together with the supplementary volume, “A Catalogue of Engravers, who have been Born or Resided in England” (1765). Still a key early source, covering not just painters, but architects, sculptors, etc. Already richly illustrated with over 100 portraits, etc., by Alexander Bannerman, Thomas Chambars, Anthony Walker, etc., the number here has been more than doubled by the insertion of 130 additional plates – mainly portraits, but also including contemporary engravings of Strawberry Hill, etc., and in the supplementary volume a rich array of examples of work by the some of our earliest engravers, including plates engraved by Thomas Cecill, John Droeshout, Renold Elstrack, William Faithorne, Richard Gaywood, George Glover, Remy Hogenberg, David Loggan, Pierre Lombart, George Vertue himself, several by Robert White, and numerous others.
Five volumes. Crown 4to (225 x 172mm). (xiv),182,[xx]; [ii],182,[lviii]; [ii],167,[xi]; (xii),(152),[viii]; [iv],140,14,20,[viii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Bound (probably about 1830) in elaborate late eighteenth-century style – full red straight-grain morocco, lavishly gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; some light wear; joints reinforced in one or two places; a few slight marks and small flaws; some of the additional plates cropped, folded, or re-margined to size, but a very good, fascinating and valuable example of a grangerised (extra-illustrated) copy. With the armorial bookplate of Cyril Flower, Lord Battersea (1843-1907), Victorian aesthete and parliamentarian, in each volume.

£4,000

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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.

£500

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

£750

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1952-1961. A first edition set of the separately published “Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955) and “Unconditional Surrender” (1961). “One doesn’t read Evelyn Waugh for military history. But ... a brilliant reconstruction ... the characters and episodes sketched with the sure dexterity of a model by Barbara Hepworth, the lightness of wit sustained marvellously, the judgments suitably heavy” (Birmingham Daily Post, 5th December 1961). “Waugh’s most profound and substantial work” (Anthony Gardner).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (186 x 121mm). (vi),314; [x],(336); [viii],(312)pp. Bound in an elegant recent quarter blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edges blue; some spotting of edges and mild tanning to outer leaves in the final volume, but otherwise a very good set.

£750

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