JOHN BUCHAN FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

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

£400

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Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1912. First edition. A collection of ten short stories, including “The Company of the Marjolaine”, “The Lemnian”, “The Grove of Ashtaroth”, “The Kings of Orion”, etc., interspersed with accompanying poems – “Few writers have Mr. Buchan’s ability for expressing through the medium of the short story the dramatic, or poetic, significance of so wide a range of subjects ... the psychology of heredity, in Jacobite romance, in fishing, in mountaineering ... In ‘A Lucid Interval’ ... we are told how a deadly, mysterious Indian drug administered to the members of a Liberal Cabinet creates the greatest confusion ... The satire of this is delightful ... a welcome addition to the shelves of all who appreciate the literary side of fiction” (The Globe, 24th May 1912).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],xiv,324,(4) + 64pp inserted advertisements dated December 1911. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in silver; some very minor wear; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy. Contemporary (1912) gift inscription to Ethel A. Short from the Anglophile Gustave Monod M.D. (1878-1932), “a wise physician and a kind friend” to the many British visitors to the spa-town of Vichy, popular to the extent that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1931.

£250

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Edinburgh : William Blackwood & Sons, 1916. First edition. Edward Leithen comes up against an anarchist plot to destroy western civilisation – set in London before the Great War. One of Buchan’s defining novels, with the quintessential line “You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). x,238pp. Original red cloth, lettered in black; lightly sunned; some light marking to lower cover; text a little tanned as always; endleaves also tanned with a slight crack to lower hinge, but overall a nice copy of a fragile wartime production. Blanchard A35.

SOLD

London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1921]. First edition : in a variant binding of light blue cloth lettered in dark blue, with double rules at the head and tail of spine, and the JB monogram on the upper cover. Regarded by Buchan as his first serious piece of fiction – an episodic tale of the descent of kingliness through history – from Nordic prince to Abraham Lincoln.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,310,[ii]pp. Original cloth; spine very faintly marked and just a touch sunned; endpapers a little tanned; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good copy. Blanchard A51 – not noting this binding.

£20

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1933. First edition. Adam Melfort takes the blame for his wife’s attempt at forgery, but on his release from jail is recruited to work behind enemy lines in Belgium during the Great War.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (384)pp. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; a couple of tiny nicks at foot, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly marked and faintly rubbed, with a tiny chip and a very short tear to rear panel. Heraldic silver label of the Musson Book Company of Toronto to spine of jacket and the ownership stamp of A. E. H. Whitehouse of Oxbow. Small booksellers’ label of Hazen Twiss of Saskatoon at rear. Blanchard A99.

SOLD

London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1936). First British edition. The fifth and last of the Richard Hannay novels (although he does make a brief appearance in one later book). “Three men stood on a hill in an African kraal, and swore life-long loyalty to a fourth man and his descendants ... in two well-directed leaps we are in the thick of a kidnapping plot as menacing and as credible as any of the author’s best inventions ... from the first chapter one realises that men who feel as they do about duck-shooting and the English spring can never be allowed to lose whatever game they are playing” (The Sphere, 1st August 1936).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 318,[ii]pp. Endpaper map. Original green cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; a few faint marks; some light spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good copy in the map-illustrated dust-jacket by Chesterman – the jacket with some light discolouration at head, a short repaired tear on back panel, a couple of marks and slight nicks, but complete, bright and otherwise very good. Blanchard A115.

SOLD