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London : MacGibbon & Kee, (1967). Originally published serially in Manchester in the early 1840s and here in a slightly shortened modern edition – one of the most important documents of nineteenth-century radicalism, covering the turbulent years either side of the Peterloo massacre, in the aftermath of which the highly articulate Bamford, both weaver and poet, was charged with treason and wrongly convicted of inciting a riot – “it is a voice that England cannot afford even now to shut its ears to”. With a preface by Tim Hilton.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 368pp. Original boards; top edge red; very good in a just lightly used and slightly creased dust-jacket.

£20

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London : for A. Bell; J. Pemberton, and J. Brown, 1715. First edition. Trials ancient and modern, including trials by ordeal, combat and attainder, as well as by the laws of church and state. A chronological selection, commencing with the trial by fire of Queen Emma before the Conquest, and continuing with similar highlights, some treated at very full length, including the trial of Cecely de Rygeway for the murder of her husband in 1347; the trial by combat of Henry Plantagenet (Henry IV) and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, in 1397; the trial of Richard, Earl of Cambridge, for treason against Henry V; the trials of Sir John Oldcastle both for heresy and for treason in 1413 and 1417 respectively; the trial of Anne Boleyn; the treason rial of Thomas Cromwell; the attainder of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and the treason trial of his son, the Earl of Surrey, in 1547; the trial of Alice Arden of Faversham in 1551; the treason trial of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton in 1554, and the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1586, as well as a number of less well known cases. A further selection was published the following year.
Crown 8vo (191 x 119mm). [x],452,[iv]pp. Bound in a later full polished panelled calf, banded and richly gilt; some light rubbing and wear; slight cracking at head; some very light worming to lower blank margins throughout; some very occasional mild internal spotting, but an elegant copy still. With the nineteenth-century bookplate of Baron Kinnaird of Inchture.

SOLD

New York : Century Co., 1915. First edition. A handsomely illustrated history of the French Revolution, in six parts, differing in tone from Belloc’s earlier and more formal history published in 1911. The present version was never published in the UK.
Demy 8vo (225 x 150mm). [vi],(302)pp. Colour frontispiece. Plates. Portraits. Bound in a handsome contemporary half red morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a few minor signs of age and use; occasional mild spotting and browning, but overall a very good copy. With the pictorial bookplate of the collector Roy McWilliams.

£125

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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 : Richard Bentley, 1835. First edition. The first full-scale biography of the “Man of Mercury” – Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751) – politician, exile, writer, historian, philosopher, libertine and wit – a figure, in the author’s phrase, too long “sedulously erased” from the history books. Included as appendices are Bolingbroke’s poems, the articles of impeachment, his will, etc.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo. xx,416; viii,472pp. Portrait frontispiece to each volume. Bound in a later (early twentieth century) half crimson calf, banded and gilt, by Bayntun; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; some minor wear and rubbing; spines a little dulled; some sunning to lower covers; preface and contents leaves to vol. i misbound in vol. ii; text a little marked and fingered in places; one leaf slightly damaged, without loss of text; but overall a good set. With the bookplate of William John Robertson in each volume.

£100

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London : Constable & Co., (1936). First British edition. One of the most admired, brilliant and beautifully written historical studies of the twentieth-century – Dangerfield locates the ominous conjunction of forces which overwhelmed the Liberal Party – the Lords, the Fenians, the radical workers, and the suffragettes.
Demy 8vo (222 x 135mm). (x),420pp. Bound in a handsome recent half burgundy morocco, banded and gilt; top edge red; a handful of spots to the first couple pf leaves, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy.

SOLD

London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1864. First edition. The antiquary and illustrator James Doyle (brother of Richard, uncle of Arthur Conan) compiles and illustrates a sumptuous chronicle of England from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the death of Richard III. Long celebrated as perhaps the finest example of Victorian colour-printing, with the glowing colours of Doyle’s illustrations engraved and printed by Edmund Evans (1826-1905) in eight to ten overlays on a hand-press – “as bright as if they had just been painted” (ODNB) – and, as Evans later recalled, “the most carefully executed book I have ever printed”.
Post 4to (262 x 200mm). [2],viii,462pp. Eighty-one coloured illustrations. Bound in an equally lavish contemporary full red sealskin, banded and richly gilt in compartments and on edges; panelled boards with trophy corners; all edges gilt and gauffered with fleurs-de-lys; marbled endpapers; some minor rubbing and faint wear; one leaf slightly marked; another torn and repaired (without loss), but a handsome copy of a handsome book. With a contemporary (October 1864) gift inscription from Albert Goodman to Mrs and Mrs Daintree – George Ekins Daintree (1828-1919), a farmer, and his wife Caroline Sarah Ruston (1829-1921), who were living at Pidley-cum-Fenton in Huntingdonshire at this time.

£500

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First British edition. “Jammed into the hundred-acre plaza of the Gate of Heavenly Peace one August morning in 1966 were over a million young Chinese. Their bright crimson armbands proclaimed them the Red Guard. They were waiting to see their leader, Mao Tse-tung, ‘the red, red sun in our hearts’, waiting for the words that would send them streaming out over China in an outbreak of destruction and terror stimulated by idealism, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. A detailed and penetrating history from the multiple award-winning Anglo-American author and journalist, head of the Hong Kong Bureau of the Los Angeles Times in the years that mattered, as well as advisor to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xiv,478,[iv]pp. Original red boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; top edge pink; a touch bruised; some spotting of edges, but otherwise very good in the Keith Davis / Graham Berney dust-jacket — the jacket a touch dusty, lightly edge-worn, with a short tear to the upper panel, but complete and attractive still.

£40

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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.

£125

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1902-1903. The magnificent “illustrated edition” of Green’s magisterial and hugely popular account, first published in 1874. Short only by Victorian standards, “It is a history, not of English Kings or English Conquests, but of the English People”. Green was among the first to switch attention from political and military to social and cultural history, although remaining well aware of that “recurring tendency to the formation of oppressive oligarchic structures from which, periodically, ordinary Englishmen had to liberate themselves” (Anthony Brundage in ODNB). The illustrated edition was prepared after his death by Green’s wife, Alice Stopford Green, and his former assistant, Kate Norgate – “It was a favourite wish of my husband’s to see English History interpreted and illustrated by pictures which should tell us how men and things appeared to lookers-on in their own day, and how contemporary observers aimed at representing them”.
Four volumes. Crown 4to (250 x 165mm). lvi,468; [6],lvi-lxxxiv,(469-932); [6],lxxxiii-(cxii),(933)-(1410); [6],(cxi)-(cxxxvi),(1411)-1906pp. Plates and maps (some folding, some coloured), portraits, tables, facsimiles, illustrations in text. Also bound in at the start is the shorter introductory matter to the earlier 1892 edition. Bound in a handsome contemporary half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; just lightly sunned; a few minor marks and spots; a couple of leaves lightly discoloured, but a very good set.

SOLD

London : for J. Dodsley, and T. Shrimpton, Bath, 1779. Second and best edition, corrected and enlarged to three volumes from the earlier two volumes published in 1769 and 1775. A fascinating compendium of Harington family papers, chiefly those of the mischievous Sir John Harington, translator of Ariosto, godson of Elizabeth I, alternately in and out of favour at both her court and that of James I & VI, but always at the centre of affairs – with his sometimes scurrilous accounts of the leading clergy; his report to Elizabeth on the Earl of Essex in Ireland; correspondence with Elizabeth, James, Prince Henry, Essex, Burleigh, Cecil, and others; conversations, letters and speeches by Elizabeth; his treatise on play; a letter to Isaac Newton on harmonic ratios from a later family member, with Newton’s detailed reply and a diagram; a letter from Prince Rupert at the time of the Civil War; earlier letters from John Cheke to King Edward, Somerset, Bishop Gardiner, Queen Mary, etc.; letters from Roger Ascham, and so much more. Edited by Henry Harington (1755-1791).
Three volumes. Post 12mo (164 x 96mm). [8],(xxii),[10],296; (xviii),326; [4],(vi),312pp. Miniature engraved portrait of Elizabeth I, said to be taken from a plate given by Elizabeth herself to Isabella Harington in 1554; two folding plates. Bound in elegant nineteenth-century half tan roan, ruled and tooled in gilt; green labels; marbled sides; some mild rubbing; tiny areas of surface abrasion and insect damage to two volumes; a few minor internal marks, spots and signs of use, but a good set. From the notable collection of Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016), with his bookplate.

£250

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London : Gerald Duckworth & Co., (1997). First edition. The story of the sensational libel trial brought against the famous dancer Maud Allan (1873-1956) in 1918, a case which threatened to bring down the British establishment. “This is a story of judges and prejudice, of aesthetes and admirals, of MPs and dancing girls, of sex and conspiracy”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). vi,250pp. Plates. Portraits. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in a just lightly used dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Cassell & Co., (1943). Second impression of the original December 1943 publication – a pleasing presentation copy, inscribed “To Gwen with love from her ageing friend Collie / Christmas 1943” – this his future wife Gwendoline Frances Mary Mitchell (1898-1990), whom he was to marry a few months later. A wide-ranging wartime anthology of uplifting and inspiring quotations on the nature of England and the English, with familiar extracts from Blake, Brooke, Browning, Churchill, Kipling, Masefield, Milton, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth, but with a far greater number of lesser-known, more contemporary, and specially commissioned pieces from a variety of voices, including Knox himself and his flatmate, the refugee German actor Olaf Olsen (1919-2000) – “Of a truth, you are a strange, puzzling people. You laugh when you should cry. And when you should cry, you blow your noses very loudly and go for long walks”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 244pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in black; slightly bruised; a little marked; edges a touch dusty and slightly spotted, but a good copy in a good dust-jacket – the jacket lightly spotted and a little frayed at rear fold, but with only light wear and a couple of short tears.

£100

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ondon : Cassell & Co., (1943). Second impression of the original December 1943 publication – a pleasing presentation copy, inscribed to the historian Sir Arthur Bryant (1899-1985), “With best wishes and my thanks”, signed and dated Christmas 1943 by Collie Knox. Bryant was one of the numerous contributors to this wide-ranging wartime anthology of uplifting and inspiring quotations on the nature of England and the English, and has made a pencilled correction to his piece headed “Tradition is in Our Bones”. Elsewhere Bryant has placed pencil marks against other passages. There are familiar extracts from Blake, Brooke, Browning, Churchill, Kipling, Masefield, Milton, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth, but a far greater number of lesser-known, more contemporary, and specially commissioned pieces from a variety of voices, including Knox himself and his flatmate, the refugee German actor Olaf Olsen (1919-2000) – “Of a truth, you are a strange, puzzling people. You laugh when you should cry. And when you should cry, you blow your noses very loudly and go for long walks”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 244pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in black; a little sunned; slightly worn at tips; small spine crease; two corners bumped; a few marks; front endpaper cracked; a few internal creases, but a serviceable copy with a handsome provenance.

£50

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

£100

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London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (1988). First edition. Inscribed to Brian and Elspet [the actor Brian Rix and his wife Elspet Gray] and signed “John and Robert” by the authors – “Your support and love have been so invaluable”. The horrendously wounded hero of Mount Tumbledown and his father give a personal and controversial account, with the editorial assistance of Carol Price.
Royal 8vo (25cm). xii,196pp. Plates. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – lightly sunned, but also very good.

£25

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1902. An attractively bound reprint of the celebrated historian’s popular discussion of everyday ethical problems. It was in 1902 that Lecky became one of the first people to be granted the new Order of Merit. Originally published in 1899.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). xiv;(354)pp. Bound in an elaborate full green morocco, banded and extra gilt, by George Frederick Ayling (1862-1928) of Brighton and London; all edges gilt; a little rubbed and tanned, with a slight split at head, but still an attractive book.

SOLD

London : Ivor Nicholson & Watson, [1932]. First edition. Essays by various well-chosen hands on forty Victorians – including Edmund Blunden on Matthew Arnold, Rebecca West on Charlotte Bronte, G. K. Chesterton on Charles Dickens, Neville Cardus on W. G. Grace, Laurence Housman on Florence Nightingale, Hugh Walpole on Anthony Trollope, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xx,556pp. Original orange cloth; just a touch sunned and faintly bruised; a few slight marks, but othrwise a very good copy. Ex-libris label inscribed J. Hornby and dated 1932.

£20

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London : for C. Davis and T. Green, 1729. First edition. “I have as little as possible interrupted the Thread of the Narration with idle and prolix Digressions or Reflections” – if only all historians were as disciplined as this London writing-master in his only book – an account of a popular uprising against an iniquitous tax on fruit – “All sorts were included, as well dry as green; as Mulberries, Grapes, Figgs, Apples, Pears and Plumbs; whereby the common sort of People were deprived of their usual Nourishment and Support, and reduced to the lowest Misery and Distress”. The uprising was led by the young Tommaso Aniello (1620-1647), known as Masaniello, whose short life and brief victory led to many depictions as a popular hero in art, theatre and opera, as well as discussion in the works of writers as diverse as John Locke and Tom Paine.
Crown 8vo (190 x 116mm). [2],xii,226,[ii]pp. Engraved portrait frontispiece. Bound, without initial blank, in a pleasant nineteenth-century half blue-black calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; marbled sides and endpapers; lightly rubbed; a few minor internal marks, some occasional mild spotting and browning, but a very good copy. Bookplate of Walter Flinn – presumably Walter Flinn (1856-1942) of Manchester, shipping merchant.

£250

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London : Gerald Duckworth & Co. / British Broadcasting Corporation, (1985). First edition. The rediscovered texts of George Orwell’s wartime radio broadcasts, transmitted weekly from December 1941 (Pearl Harbor) through to February 1943. Passages originally deleted by the wartime censor have been restored where legible. “The first large-scale unpublished work of Orwell’s to appear since his early death in 1950”. Edited, introduced and extensively annotated by the late W. J. (Bill) West (1942-1999), who discovered the lost original manuscripts.
Medium 8vo (25cm). 248pp. Maps. Original boards; price obliterated from front free endpaper, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly sunned but with negligible wear. Contemporary gift inscription.

£25

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London : Parker Gallery, 1911. First edition : a variant with the Parker Gallery label pasted over the original T. H. Parker imprint. A catalogue of the collection of 287 prints, with extensive descriptive and historical notes, an index of artists and engravers, a general index, etc. – the whole forming an illuminating history of the British navy. With an interesting introduction by the naval historian, Commander Charles Napier Robinson (1849-1936).
Foolscap 4to (22cm). xx,(340)pp. Frontispiece and eighteen plates. Original blue cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; just a touch rubbed; a few faint marks and some mild occasional spotting, but a bright and sound copy.

£40

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London : Evans Brothers, (1980). First edition. The extraordinary tale of the British volunteers and mercenaries who helped gain independence for the countries of South America – “the swashbuckling and fearless Lord Cochrane; William Brown, the amateur admiral; the embattled William Miller of Peru”, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (176)pp. Plates. Portraits. Maps. Original boards; very good in a price-clipped but very lightly used dust-jacket.

£20

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New York : Random House, (1971). First edition. A raging satire on Richard Nixon, still President in 1971, and the debasement of political language to the Orwellian formula — “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. Dwight Macdonald in the New York Times called it “far-fetched, unfair, tasteless, disturbing, logical, coarse and very funny ... in short, a masterpiece”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [xiv],200,[ii],[2],[vi]pp. Original quarter black cloth, blue boards, blocked and lettered in red, silver and gilt; top edge red; just a hint of bruising; a touch of adhesion damage to the front endpaper, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket — price-clipped, but very good, fresh, bright and unworn.

£40

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1951. First edition. “Now that the great days of England are perhaps over – it is extraordinary to think that we have lived through the very greatest of them in our lifetime – it is somehow consoling to pursue and evoke the past, recent as well as remote”. Twelve essays – on All Souls; on Hillesden and Oliver Cromwell; on Milton; on Jonathan Swift; an afternoon at Haworth Parsonage; on Thomas Hardy and Max Gate; on John Buchan; on Nottingham – “what an astonishing town it is”; on D. H. Lawrence, and on Alun Lewis, etc.
Demy 8vo (214 x 131mm). (x),(246)pp. Bound in a handsome contemporary full Turkish blue morocco, banded and gilt; silk headbands; all edges gilt; Cockerell endpapers; a little sunned, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1962. First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed to fellow historian Arthur Bryant and his wife – “For Arthur and Anne – admiration – affection – encouragement from A.L.” Rowse’s ground-breaking interpretation of Sir Walter Raleigh or Ralegh – “the most brilliant, various and glittering of all Elizabethans”, relying on the recently discovered Throckmorton diaries.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(348)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original cloth gilt; a touch dulled and slightly marked; some internal marks; four leaves loose at rear; a well-read copy in a worn, creased and slightly marked dust-jacket. With numerous pencilled annotations and underlinings by Arthur Bryant.

SOLD

London : Macmillan London, (1971). First edition. An appealing presentation copy, inscribed “For Arthur with constant / devotion and comradeship / in the art / of history and letters / from A. L.” – the recipient being fellow historian Sir Arthur Bryant (1899-1985). A pioneering study of the social life of Elizabethan England, from court to countryside, with chapters on class, food and sanitation, sex, parish and sport, custom, witchcraft and astrology, etc. The early part of the book in particular has been much marked and underlined by Bryant, with occasional disagreement and some minor annotation.
Demy 8vo (23cm). x,(294)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original blue cloth gilt; top edge blue; a little marked and bruised; internally a considerable amount of staining, mainly to page-edges – Sir Arthur was evidently a messy reader; a well-thumbed copy in a battered and worn dust-jacket – but unique and important in tying together two of the most distinguished English historians of the twentieth century.

£100

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Boston : Hardy, Pratt & Co., 1902. The elegant “Tour de France” edition, limited to 1,250 sets – this set unnumbered. A celebrated eye-witness account of the French court from 1691 to 1723 – Versailles, Louis XIV, the Duc d’Orléans, Ninon de l’Enclos, Louis de France, Madame de Maintenon, and all the rest. The twenty volumes of the original French edition, edited by Pierre Adolph Chéruel (1809-1891), have here been translated and abridged to four volumes by Katharine Prescott Wormeley (1830-1908).
Four volumes. Post 8vo (205 x 140mm). x,(346); x,330; x,(346); xiv,396pp. Forty-two photogravure portraits, some hand-coloured. Genealogical table. Bound in an elegant contemporary half blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; a little worn and sunned; some spotting of edges; lower boards and endleaves slightly affected by damp, with some softening and marking, but a good, serviceable and not unattractive set. Pictorial bookplates and ownership inscriptions of Roy McWilliams in each volume.

£200

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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.

£100

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London : John Murray, (1966). First edition. “This is the history of the long frontier of the Euphrates through eight centuries of Roman warfare”. A panoramic survey of the power-sapping travails of Rome on the eastern outskirts of empire – the Seleucid kings, the Parthians, the Armenian wars, etc. – and a message of “the uselessness of war across a frontier whose trade was able to benefit both sides”.
Medium 8vo (23cm). (xii),(460)pp. Plates. Double-page map. Folding map at rear. Bibliography, etc. Original canvas, lettered in gilt; just a touch sunned; a few ninor marks and spots, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped by the publisher with a revised price over-sticker, and with some very minor marking and wear, but also very good.

£40

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1893. First edition. An interesting and erudite discourse from the British parliamentarian and scholar on the variety of ways of knowing and understanding the great figures of the past – via history, biography, autobiography, diaries, memoirs, letters, table-talk, characterisation, monumental inscriptions, portraiture and, not least, imaginative literature. With passing reference to Aristotle, Boswell, Julius Caesar, Lord Chesterfield, Goethe, Dr Johnson, La Bruyère, Rousseau, Shakespeare, Theophrastus, Voltaire, etc., etc. The present extra-illustrated copy has been enlivened by the insertion of thirty-seven engraved portraits, culled from various sources, of a number of the figures mentioned (although the hand-coloured plate inserted as a frontispiece would appear to be a portrait of Robert Stevenson, the engineer, rather than of the author).
Crown 8vo (191 x 125mm). (viii),140pp. Thirty-seven engraved or lithographed portraits inserted. Bound in a handsome near contemporary half blue crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Blackwell – I think Henry Blackwell (1851-1928) of New York, rather than the Oxford booksellers; top edge gilt; marbled sides and matching endpapers; a hint of rubbing and a few very minor signs of age; a sprinkling of internal spots, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : John Murray, 1917. First edition. An engaging and well-researched life of one Lord Mayor of London – the turbulent and magnificent John Wilkes (1725-1797) – by one of his successors in that office. Duels, the “North Briton”, general warrants, habeas corpus, expulsions from the Commons, the Middlesex elections, the mayoralty and all the rest.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xxxvi,(300)pp. Sixteen plates. Original armorial cloth gilt; some minor wear; a touch dulled; some internal browning and spotting, but a good and sound copy. A 1918 gift inscription is signed by the author’s wife.

£25

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., (1944). First British edition. “The history of a people with the politics left out” – Trevelyan’s magisterial survey of English life over six centuries – “a series of successive scenes ... for in Chaucer’s time the English people first appear as a racial and cultural unit ... ... unless we become a totalitarian state and forget all our Englishry, there will always be something mediaeval in our ways of thinking, especially in our idea that people and corporations have rights and liberties which the State ought in some measure to respect, in spite of the legal omnicompetence of Parliament”.
Demy 8vo (214 x 134mm). xii,628pp. Maps, some double-page, two coloured; diagram. Bound in an elegant, slightly later, half navy crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; a very good copy. Small Times Book Club stamp in two places.

£125

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London : Oxford University Press, 1933. First edition. A distinguished, literate and well-illustrated survey of all aspects of eighteenth-century life, with authoritative essays by G. M. Trevelyan, Dorothy George, G. D. H. Cole, R. W. Chapman and others – the period; the church; the navy; army; exploration and discovery; travel and communications; London; town-life in the provinces; industry and trade; agriculture and rural life; poverty, crime and philanthropy; manners, meals and domestic pastimes; sports and games; costume; taste; painting and engraving; sculpture; architecture and the garden; interiors; drama and theatre; music; education; science; medicine; the law and lawyers; authors and booksellers; newspapers, etc.
Two volumes. Medium 8vo (24cm). (xxiv),(406),[ii]; (x),404pp. Numerous plates. Original cloth gilt; a very good and bright set in the dust-jackets – price-clipped but with only minimal wear.

£100

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

£400

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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.

£50

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London : Oxford University Press, 1934. First edition. A magisterial and richly illustrated study of the background to mid nineteenth-century England, with chapters on Work and Wages (J. H. Clapham), Homes and Habits, Town Life and London (R. H. Mottram), Life in the New Towns, Country Life and Sport (Bernard Darwin), The Navy, The Army, The Mercantile Marine (Basil Lubbock), The Press, Art, Architecture (A. E. Richardson), Music, Drama (Allardyce Nicoll), Holidays and Travel, Charity, Expansion and Emigration, and the Portrait of an Age.
Two volumes. Medium 8vo (24cm). [ii],(xxvi),414,[ii]; viii,558,[ii]pp. Errata slip. Numerous plates drawn from contemporary sources. Facsimiles. Original cloth gilt; some spotting of edges, one endpaper lightly tanned, but a very good set in the original dust-jackets – lightly tanned, slightly worn and a little chipped.

£100

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