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London : Library Association, (1983). First edition : limited to 1,000 numbered copies. The essential reference book for any collector of illustrated books on London – wise, witty, and massively detailed descriptions of over 230 books – and offering far more riches than the somewhat dry title might suggest.
Post 4to (27cm). (xxxiv),586pp. Plates. Original cloth; lower edge a touch dusty, but a very good copy in a lightly sunned but otherwise very good dust-jacket.

£100

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London : for the Camden Society, 1844. First edition. A transcription of a valuable fourteenth-century manuscript French Chronicle of London, with an extensive introduction and explanatory notes. With a list of members of the Society, etc. Edited by George James Aungier, who was sentenced to transportation for life the following year for forging a cheque in the name of John Gough Nichols of the printing family – indeed the printers of the present work – Nichols testifying at the Old Bailey trial.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). [4],(xxiv),112,36pp. Original cloth, blocked in gilt and blind; minor wear at head, but a very good copy. Armorial bookplate of Travers Barton Wire (1835-1910).

£20

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London : John Murray (Publishers), (1982). First edition. From the grand to the curious, if not from the bizarre to the preposterous – some of the many architectural projects proposed – but rejected and never built – over a period of four hundred years. An extraordinary, richly illustrated and highly entertaining survey of London as it might have been. Signed on the title-page by the co-author, Ralph Hyde.
Post 4to (27cm). (224)pp. Illustrations throughout. Original boards; a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good barring a single tiny nick.

£25

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London : B. T. Batsford, (1950). First edition. A delightful evocation of mid-twentieth-century London – eighty-four atmospheric photographs of the essential scenes, chosen from various sources, captioned and introduced by the publisher, Harry Batsford.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). [72pp]. Photographs throughout. Original cloth-backed boards, ruled and lettered in black; a few edge spots, but a very good copy in the handsome dust-jacket – a design by Brian Cook (Sir Brian Caldwell Cook Batsford) – the jacket with some minor wear and a handful of spots, but also very good.

£50

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

£125

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1863. First edition. Essays and sketches of Londoners “designed to exhibit faithful delineations of physiognomies characteristic of London people as they appear, not aiming at humorous exaggeration on the one hand or at ideal grace on the other. The faces and figures were drawn from life in every instance”. The Londoners of the law-courts, with judge, jury, attorneys, etc.; the Londoners of the railway excursion; the Londoners of the theatre; the Londoners of Covent Garden Market; the Londoners of a working-class court; and the Londoners of Belgravia. Most of the material originally appeared in the “Cornhill Magazine”, with the text of three of the six essays written by John Hollingshead (1827-1904).
Foolscap 4to (22cm). (144)pp. Thirty-three full-page illustrations and further vignettes in the text. Original blue pebbled pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; spine a little worn and slightly chipped; lacks front free endpaper; a few minor internal marks and spots, but a reasonable copy of an entertaining and unusual look at London life.

£100

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London : Mitchell Hughes & Clarke, 1926. First edition. History and anecdote relating to the area, nicely illustrated by the author, James Harvey Bloom – parson, antiquary, Shakespearian scholar, and father of the novelist, Ursula Bloom.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 48pp. Illustrations. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing; a few faint marks to the back cover, but a very good, clean and sound copy.

£30

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London : Mitchell Hughes & Clarke, 1926. First edition. History and anecdote relating to the area, nicely illustrated by the author, James Harvey Bloom – parson, antiquary, Shakespearian scholar, and father of the novelist, Ursula Bloom.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 60pp. Illustrations. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; endpapers lightly tanned; a few very minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy.

£20

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London : Macmillan & Co., [1941]. First edition. Heart-breaking personal essays on aspects of London “bombed, burned and battered”, illustrated with poignant and evocative photographs of the Blitz.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xviii),(302)pp. Eight plates. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; a few tiny patches of fading where the jacket is chipped; endpapers very lightly tanned; first few leaves very slightly creased, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket by the poster artist G. R. Morris – lightly tanned, a little worn, nicked and slightly chipped, with an unobtrusive tear to lower panel. Contemporary ownership inscription dated April 1941.

£50

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London : Michael Joseph, (1974). First edition. The first year of the war and London and Londoners are changed forever – The balloons go up, The children leave, The lights go out ... Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished photographs by the cameramen of the weekly magazine “Illustrated”.
Crown 4to (26cm). (128)pp. Illustrations throughout. Original boards; a few minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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Godalming : H. Stedman, 1879. First edition. A thorough and well-illustrated history by the Victorian headmaster, with chapters on the founders; the early days; the masters; the schoolmasters; the poor brethren; the removal of the school to Godalming; the lighter hours; the governors; the new statutes, etc.
Crown 8vo (21cm). (xii),(240)pp. Wood-engraved frontispiece and ten plates. Steel-engraved portrait. Two double-page plans. Illustrations in text. Original pale blue armorial cloth gilt, ruled and blocked in black and gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch sunned; endpapers slightly trained at hinges; a few leaves roughly opened; a few minor marks and creases, but a good copy.

£40

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London : Constable & Co., (1932). First edition. Burke in familiar territory in the dark lanes and byways of East End London – dismissing the stereotypes and pointing up the colour, the people, the river and the commerce – the book brought magnificently to life by the atmospheric lithographs of the bohemian Pearl Binder (1904-1990), later Lady Polly Elwyn-Jones – with sketches from her studio, studies of Aldgate, Wapping, Brick Lane, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (viii),(164),[iv]pp. Sixteen plates. Smaller illustrations in text. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; a few spots, mainly to edges; frontispiece just slightly chipped, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket – a pictorial monochrome design of the East End at night by Binder, lettered in bright pink – the jacket just a little worn and slightly frayed, with a short repaired tear, but a rare and welcome survival, featuring an illustration not included in the book. Contemporary (1934) ownership inscription of Kate M. Woodbridge.

£200

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London : Privately Printed for the Author, 1955. First edition. A presentation copy – tipped in is 2pp signed autograph letter from the author to Canon Addleshaw [George William Outram Addleshaw (1906-1982), later Dean of Chester], presenting the book, noting a couple of misprints and explaining that the frontispiece has been misbound. An attractively produced centenary history by a long-time resident of Tooting and a churchwarden at Holy Trinity.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],94,[ii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Two folding maps. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a few faint marks; endpapers a little tanned from the loose insertion of a related press-cutting, but otherwise very good.

£40

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[Ilford] : Caunt Publishing, (1980). Second edition. An enlarged and augmented version of the original 1963 edition – illustrated sketches of incidents, characters, houses, etc., in Ilford history.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). 120pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Map. Original laminated boards; a touch sunned, but otherwise a very good copy.

£20

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London : B. T. Batsford, [1920]. First edition. “This very handsome quarto, which contains a wealth of information, very difficult to acquire, reproduces a series of illustrations even more difficult to get possession of. The subject is divided into eight sections, which include street topography, pleasure resorts, clubs, coffee houses and taverns ... great houses and public buildings, churches, and so on. Its pictures alone are a delight, not least the wonderful photographs of the interiors, and such buildings as remain” (The Graphic, 12th November 1921).
Crown 4to (26cm). (viii),(272),[ii]pp. Frontispiece and numerous plates, giving 191 images in total, many from contemporary sources. Original cloth gilt; just a hint of bruising; some mild spotting and browning of outer leaves, but a very good copy in the illustrated dust-jacket – just lightly rubbed and a little worn, but also very good.

£75

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London : B. T. Batsford, [1920]. First edition. “This very handsome quarto, which contains a wealth of information, very difficult to acquire, reproduces a series of illustrations even more difficult to get possession of. The subject is divided into eight sections, which include street topography, pleasure resorts, clubs, coffee houses and taverns ... great houses and public buildings, churches, and so on. Its pictures alone are a delight, not least the wonderful photographs of the interiors, and such buildings as remain” (The Graphic, 12th November 1921).
Crown 4to (26cm). (viii),(272),[ii]pp. Frontispiece and numerous plates, giving 191 images in total, many from contemporary sources. Original cloth gilt; lightly rubbed and just a touch bruised; a few slight spots, but still a very good copy.

£50

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[London] : At the Chiswick Press, for Constable & Co. and Houghton Mifflin, 1926. First edition : limited to 1,025 copies. The artist John Crowther was commissioned either side of 1880 by Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey to make water-colours of London buildings under threat from redevelopment – Beresford Chancellor describes a selection of sixty of them in a circular tour – Chelsea (where Crowther was living in 1881), Westminster, Whitehall, the Strand, the Borough, and home via Stockwell, Vauxhall and Battersea.
Crown 4to (27cm). (xiv),(132),[ii]pp. Sixty plates, many in colour. Original buckram, lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; lightly worn, a little bruised and slightly dulled; a few slight marks; front endpaper replaced; a few leaves roughly opened, but a reasonable copy of an attractive production.

£40

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London : by Mark Baskett ... and by the Assigns of Robert Baskett, 1766. A long and complex act expressing a determination to get a firm grip on the maintenance of the City, with provisions for proper record-keeping; the employment of non-freemen on necessary works; the publishing of contracts; the exclusion of common councilmen from contracting; the designation of streets to be paved; powers for regulating signage; a time-limit of one hour on wagons standing in the streets; barring barrows from foot pavements; the names of streets to be properly displayed, with (for the first time) “every house, shop, or warehouse ... to be marked or numbered”; rules on water-pipes and pavements; the watering of streets; footways to be cleaned daily; lamps and their placing and maintenance; much on the collection of and payment of rates; tolls and turnpikes, etc.
Foolscap folio (32cm). [ii],455-(504)pp. Black letter. Disbound. A few minor marks and faint creases, but in very good condition.

£50

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London : History & Social Actions Publications, (2008). First edition. An absorbing study of the rise and fall of the greatest of all the urban pleasure gardens – “it was popular; it was brilliantly organised; it was musical; it was entertaining; it had fireworks; it was a meeting place for lovers – it had it all”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 52pp. Maps. Illustrations. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; very good.

£20

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London : J. Duncombe, 1848 [but later]. A late nineteenth-century facsimile of the edition published by John Duncombe (1791-1853) in 1848, although the book itself, as “A Peep into the Holy Land, or, Sinks of London Laid Open”, had first appeared in the 1820s. A classic exposé of the dark side of life in the capital – “A True Picture of London Life, Cadging Made Easy, the He-She Man, Doings of the Modern Greeks, Snooking Kens Depicted, the Common Lodging-House Gallants, Lessons to Lovers of Dice, The Gaming Table”, etc. The fascinating “Flash Dictionary” runs to thirty-six pages at the end of the work, followed by a list of the sixty orders of “prime coves” – rum-bubbers, groaners, duffers, twirlers, gammoners, knackers, priggers, gaggers, dragsmen, bloods, and all the rest.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 131,[i]pp. Folding hand-coloured frontispiece and numerous black-and-white illustrations and decorations in the text by Cruikshank. Contemporary quarter roan, marbled sides – now neatly rebacked in morocco; top edge gilt; some very minor wear and a few slight marks, but overall a very good copy.

£200

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London : English Heritage, 1995. First edition. An evocative survey of architectural treasures across the Greater London area at risk from disuse and disrepair.
Crown 4to (25cm). 82,[ii]pp. Illustrations throughout. Original wrappers; very slightly bowed, but a very good copy. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£20

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London : Methuen & Co., (1914). First edition. A splendidly produced and illustrated survey of “the treasures of beauty and antiquity that still survive in the City of London ... these relics should be seen, sketched, and described before they disappear”. With chapters on the oldest remains, the pre-reformation churches, the Wren churches, the Charterhouse, St. John’s Clerkenwell and Austin Friars, the Inns of Court, City palaces and houses, the City Companies, the London signs, and the river.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xvi),312pp. Colour frontispiece, and over 100 crisp and clear illustrations (many full page) by the architect Edmund Livingstone Wratten (1877-1925). Original decorative cloth gilt; top edge gilt; some very minor rubbing; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a very good, bright and sound copy.

£100

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London : Richard Bentley & Son, 1877. First edition. A lively, anecdotal and detailed history of the Jacobite cause in London from 1714 on into the nineteenth century, but with emphasis on the activities surrounding the momentous events of 1715 and 1745. Compiled by the journalist and historian Dr. John Doran, editor of “Notes and Queries”.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (218 x 140mm). xii,(440); x,412pp. Bound in a handsome contemporary half burgundy roan, banded and richly gilt; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; lightly rubbed at extremities; a few minor marks, spots and small flaws, but still a very good set. With the 1899 armorial bookplate of the wealthy Arthur Gilstrap Soames J.P. (1854-1934), at one time High Sheriff of Lincolnshire, in each volume.

SOLD

London : for Sherwood, Neely & Jones, 1821. First edition : the second issue, with the footnote on p.9. Pierce Egan’s roaring and runaway success – racy, slangy, and riotous adventures among the highest of high life and the lowest of low life in Regency London – “In his particular line, he was the greatest man in England” (John Camden Hotten). The sparkling text which took the country by storm as it appeared in instalments between August 1820 and July 1821 is gloriously accompanied by the superb aquatints of the brothers Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank, many depicting recognisable London scenes.
Demy 8vo (216 x 139mm). xvi,376pp. Frontispiece and thirty-five Cruikshank plates, all with original hand colour. Three folding leaves of music. Woodcut illustrations in text. Bound, without half-title and advertisements, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) full crimson morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; gilt turn-ins; marbled endpapers; a few minor marks and spots; two leaves neatly repaired, but a very good copy of Egan’s defining work.

£750

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London : Macdonald & Co. (Publishers), (1952). First edition. An entertaining account of coming to London – and the perils and pitfalls of railway porters, private hotels, service flatlets, cab-drivers, digs, bed-sitting rooms, gas-rings, and all the hazards that may greet a young woman from the provinces (in this case Liverpool) – “Unless you intend coming in nothing but a fig leaf and a string of beads you will not expect your arrival in London to cause any sensation”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 54,[ii]pp. Title-page and illustrations by Ronald Searle. Original red boards, lettered in black; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy in the original Searle dust-jacket – a pictorial design of bed-sit, sausages and fire-hazard – just lightly used and with a few spots, but also very good.

£15

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London : for T. Egerton; T. Payne, Becket & Porter, etc. 1813. First edition. An elegant local history, covering in turn the origins, agriculture, botanic gardens, nurseries, manufactories, the canal, rectory, church and chapel, parish registers, benefactions, charity schools, the history, Fulham Palace, the bishops of London, ancient houses, Parsons Green, Walham Green, North End, Hammersmith, Pallenswick, Shepherds Bush, Brook Green, Brandenburgh House, Craven Cottage, etc.
Royal 8vo (252 x 158mm). (xiv),478 [i.e. 480]pp. Engraved frontispiece, dedication leaf and seven plates, mostly engraved by S. Watts after G. Lynn. Folding engraved map. Folding table. Woodcut vignettes by C. Nesbitt. Tailpieces. Bound in a neat recent quarter calf, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; a few faint scuffs; map trimmed at inner margin to aid folding, without loss of detail; some occasional informal internal strengthening with adhesive paper; a few slight flaws, odd patches of browning, a few spots, creases, marks and signs of use, but a good and robust copy.

£200

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London : Orr & Co.; Simpkin Marshall & Co. & others, 1838. First edition. A discursive history of London, with some out of the way figures on historic prices, etc., the text acting as a vehicle to accompany the splendid steel-engraved plates, engraved by John Woods (fl.1835-1855) and others from the drawings of Thomas Hosmer Shepherd, Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”), Robert Garland, John Francis Salmon, Francis William Topham, Edward John Roberts, etc. Alongside views of the well-known buildings – Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, Mansion House, Somerset House, etc., there are some fine street scenes of Cheapside, Leadenhall Street, King William Street, etc., as well as views of the West India Dock, Billingsgate, etc. Originally published in monthly parts from June 1837, the text was continued after Fearnside’s early death by Thomas Harral (1773?-1853). “A most useful visual account of the London scene in the year of Queen Victoria’s accession ... the plates ... are of high quality” (Bernard Adams).
Medium 8vo (229 x 153mm). iv,(204)pp. Frontispiece, extra engraved vignette title (reading “Woods’s Views in London, Westminster, and their Vicinities”), and twenty-eight plates – the plates bound in cavalier disregard of the “Directions to the Binder”. Contemporary half roan, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a little rubbed and worn at extremities; plates a little browned and spotted; one text-leaf torn and repaired without loss, but a good copy of a handsome production.

£200

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), (1966). First edition. "A treasure-house for the serendipitist ... the off-beat, the eccentric, even the bizarre" – Fletcher in words and pictures in Greenwich, Deptford, Rotherhithe, Wapping, the Bankside, Battersea Park, Chelsea, the pubs of Hammersmith, Kew, Richmond, etc.
Post 4to (28cm). (112)pp. Illustrations, many full page, by the author. Original boards; very good in the original Fletcher dust-jacket – a little worn, torn and repaired.

£20

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London : Phoenix House, (1962). First edition thus. A wholly revised edition of Godfrey’s classic “A History of Architecture in London” (1911), extending his original text on into the twentieth century and the geographical coverage out to a radius of forty miles from the capital. A richly illustrated history of English architecture as demonstrated in surviving London buildings – “no major building of architectural merit from Norman to our own time is overlooked”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xx),264pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original cloth gilt; a very good copy in a lightly worn dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Cassell & Co., 1888. First separate edition. Originally published in 1745 as part of “A Collection of Voyages and Travels”, this engaging account of early eighteenth-century London purports to have been written by a Portuguese traveller. In his introduction, Professor Henry Morley (1822-1894) dismisses that notion – “he writes of London altogether like one to the City born”. But Morley is equally persuaded that the account is not by Daniel Defoe, as has been plausibly claimed – “the clearness of detail upon London commerce, may strengthen the general impression that the description comes rather from a shrewd, clear-headed, and successful merchant than from a man of letters”. In Cassell’s “National Library” series.
Demy 16mo (15cm). 192pp. Original decorative cloth, lettered in gilt and black; spine sunned and slightly string-marked, but otherwise a good, clean and sound copy.

SOLD

London : Eyre & Spottiswoode, [1928]. First edition. “No part of London has more lanes and courts than Fleet-street, and you cannot make their acquaintance in better informed company than that of Mr Gore. Fleet-street, he reminds you, was the habitation of men 1,500 years before the first house rose in Piccadilly, when Charing was still a village of inns and stables; under Shoe-lane, the first known Roman cemetery was recently unearthed ... while, when we come to the eighteenth century, it would seem that the ghosts of the great men must jostle each other in the narrow courts of famous taverns” (Daily News, 26th April 1928). With delightful illustrations by Joseph Pike (1883-1956) – “It was my privilege to provide a commentary on Mr Joseph Pike’s charming drawings of old Fleet Street landmarks”.
Post 8vo (20cm). viii,114,[ii]pp. Sixteen gravure plates & twenty-three illustrations in the text, many full-page, by Pike. Original brown cloth, ruled and lettered in black and gilt; top edge gilt, other edges uncut; a hint of sunning to front board, a few minor marks and spots but overall still a very good copy.

£40

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Dublin : for James M’Glashan, 1849. First edition. A concise and yet wide-ranging history of London – “A distinct view of the moral, municipal, medical, political, and religious state of the British metropolis; a particular account of all the establishments connected with literature and science; public schools and charitable institutions; trade and commerce; public companies, docks, markets, &c., public buildings, national establishments, and other important edifices; exhibition of works of art, and the places of public amusement – in fact everything there is to see, and how it is to be seen, are here fully explained”.
Foolscap 8vo (160 x 94mm). 324pp. Engraved frontispiece of St. Paul’s Cathedral by Thomas Edward Nicholson of Newcastle. Bound in an elegant contemporary half green calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; red label; marbled sides and endpapers; sprinkled edges; slightly sunned and very lightly rubbed; a few leaves slightly creased; light off-setting to title page; a few spots, but overall a very good copy of a useful compilation.

SOLD

London : for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, [1901]. The bulky 1901 issue of the official cab distance tables for the whole of the London area, cross referencing almost every conceivable location – Lord’s Cricket Ground to the Kennington Oval – 4 miles 934 yards; the “Angel” Islington to Putney Station, 7 miles, 592 yards, etc.
Royal 8vo (24cm). xxxvi pp, 400 ll tables. Original cloth gilt on card; sprinkled edges; slight snag to lower joint, cloth slightly bubbled, but otherwise a good copy.

£50

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

£200

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London : Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1878. First edition. Entertaining and fact-filled walks around London in the company of the always engaging Augustus Hare: the Strand; the Inns of Court; Fleet Street; St. Paul’s; Smithfield, Clerkenwell, Canonbury; Cheapside; Aldersgate and Cripplegate; Bishopsgate; the City; the Tower; Thames Street; London Bridge and Southwark; Trafalgar Square; the West End; Regent Street; Regent’s Park; Oxford Street; Whitehall; Westminster Abbey; Westminster; Chelsea; Lambeth; Kensington, etc.
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (183 x 122mm). xxxvi,480; [vi],(512)pp. Numerous wood-engraved illustrations. Bound in an elegant near contemporary half green calf, banded and gilt; contrasting red and tan labels; top edges gilt; spines evenly tanned to a pleasant olive shade; some minor wear and rubbing; a few spots and faint marks, mainly to edges; a few leaves roughly opened, but overall a very good and partly unopened set.

SOLD

London : John Harris, 1831. First edition. A charming illustrated pocket volume in the Harris “Little Library” series of familiar introductions to “various branches of useful knowledge”, intended, like most of the Harris output, for younger readers. Alongside the more familiar city landmarks – St. Paul’s, the Tower, the Royal Exchange, etc. – there is material on St. Paul’s School, Farringdon Market, Smithfield, the Docks, Wapping, the Thames Tunnel, etc.
Pott 4to (14cm). [viii],(260)pp. Twelve very polished engraved plates by Robert Sands (1782-1855), from the drawings of the well-known Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864). Original publisher’s roan-backed linen; very lightly rubbed; a few marks; some occasional spotting and browning, but a nice copy of a fragile production. Various gift inscriptions dated 1832, 1865 and 1952.

£100

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London : William Collins, Sons & Co., 1976. First edition. An account of the Blitz and those who endured it – in London, Coventry, the southern ports and the northern towns – compiled from contemporary reports, diaries and the Mass-Observation archive.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [iv],372,[viiii]pp. Original boards; very mild spotting of top-edge, but a very good copy in a just lightly tanned dust-jacket. With the ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield.

£20

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London : Cambridge University Press, 1935. First edition. Heal’s monumental study – with sections on goldsmiths, bankers and pawnbrokers; eminent London goldsmiths; Samuel Pepys and his goldsmiths; a list of known trade-cards; marks, shop-signs and emblems; and a directory of goldsmiths, jewellers, bankers and pawnbrokers.
Foolscap folio (34cm). (xii),(280)pp. Eighty plates. Original buckram gilt; top edge gilt; slight bruise to edge of upper cover, but a very good copy of a handsome production.

£200

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London : by J. Streater, for Henry Twiford, George Sawbridge, Thomas Dring, and John Place, 1657. First edition. One of the earliest printed histories of London, second only to the early editions of Stow in terms of chronology. Compiled by the versatile and engaging Welsh author, royalist, politician and traveller, James Howell, after his release from a lengthy imprisonment at the time of the Interregnum. With accounts of St. Paul’s and the other ancient churches; the individual wards and precincts; the governance of the City; the walls, streets, gates and prisons; the Inns of Court; the twelve great livery companies; the company halls; the Tower, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and other prominent buildings; the Thames; London Bridge; the mayoralty; the city of Westminster and the Abbey; the Strand; Covent Garden; Lincoln’s Inn; Westminster Hall; Parliament, the Admiralty, etc.
Pott folio (270 x 166mm). [x],1-128,301-(408),[viii]pp – collates as institutional copies and complete despite the lacuna in pagination. Engraved portrait frontispiece and a very handsome double-page panoramic view of London from the south, frequently attributed to Wenceslas Hollar and depicting the city on the eve of the Civil War. Bound in a smart recent full calf; red label; repairs to margins of frontispiece and titlepage, not affecting image or text; minor repairs to dedication leaf, with partial loss of a few letters; panoramic view trimmed tight and just within left-hand neatline; text lightly and unevenly browned, with occasional spotting, but a good and serviceable copy, attractively rebound. Ownership inscription (1760) of Isaac Hitchcock – possibly Isaac Hitchcock (1724?-1768) of Bildeston, Suffolk – with occasional annotation of similar date relating to the taking down of the old gates, etc.

£1,000

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1869. First edition. An attractive and discursive social history, with much material on local writers and artists – Hampstead, Highgate and Islington – with good material also on Belsize, Canonbury, Frognal, Highbury, Hornsey, Kilburn Priory, Muswell Hill, Newington Green, Primrose Hill, the Wells and Spas, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xxvi,590,2 + 24pp inserted advertisements dated January 1868. Numerous woodcut illustrations in the text by Orlando Jewitt (1799-1869). Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt, and blocked in blind; cloth a little rubbed, worn and spotted; a touch shaken, but a good and serviceable copy. Bookplate of Harold Egan.

£100

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London : Longmans, Green, & Co., 1898. First edition : in the secondary binding and with the inserted catalogue dated January 1903. A wide-ranging and attractively illustrated survey of the remarkably varied bird-life of the capital from the master naturalist, with much on individual birds, individual areas of London, adaptive behaviour, occasional visitors, the cat problem, rookeries, suggestions for introduction, a bibliography, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xvi,(340) + 40pp. Frontispiece and fifteen plates, colour-printed map, and fifteen further illustrations in the text – by Bryan Hook, A. D. McCormick and from photographs by R. B. Lodge. Original decorative cloth gilt; top edge gilt; minor rubbing at foot; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good, bright and attractive copy. Small bookseller’s label of Edward Baker of John Bright Street, Birmingham – “the most expert bookfinder extant”. Payne A16a.

£100

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London : Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, (1991). First edition. A fine and detailed study of poverty, community and society in the shadow of the gallows in eighteenth-century London.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xxviii),484pp. Illustrations. Tables. Figures. Maps. Original boards; a very good copy in the dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Printed by Subscription, 1888. First and sole edition : limited to an unspecified number of numbered copies. A handsome local history, compiled by a local wine-merchant of Green Bank, Merton Lane, who was also a long-serving secretary of the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution. Contains separate sections on the churches, the houses, gossip, customs, etc., as well as a survey of the “Highgate of Today”, notes on fossils found in the Archway cutting, etc. The “notes” on the surrounding areas are in fact extensive.
Crown 4to (249 x 177mm). (xvi),(520)pp. Portrait frontispiece (of Coleridge); double page maps; illustrations in text. Original pictorial cloth gilt, neatly rebacked in a stout morocco; top edge gilt; corners a little worn; front free endpaper replaced in a very good match of the original chocolate surface paper; rear endpaper neatly rejointed; a few small spots, marks and faint creases, but a very good, sound and serviceable copy. Ownership inscription of A. M. Henderson dated 1889 on half-title.

£150

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London : Priory Press, 1910. First edition. Beginning as a spirited defence of the much derided Cockney dialect (in fact the first standard and the first written English), MacBride goes on to explore its origins and then the importance of dialects in general, with much on the dialects of other parts of the country.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 62,[iv]pp. Original wrappers; wrappers lightly tanned, slightly marked and a little creased; a handful of internal spots, but a good copy of a fragile item.

£15

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London : MacGibbon & Kee, (1969). First collected edition of the celebrated London trilogy – the powerful MacInnes novels originally published separately between 1957 and 1960, and treating in full-on fashion the social phenomena of the era – the first wave of black immigration, the emergence of the teenager as an economic entity, and the eternal trinity of prostitutes, ponces and policemen – “themes of which no other contemporary novelist has yet shown himself properly aware ... No responsible novelist before Mr MacInnes had taken the trouble to find out” (from the introduction by Francis Wyndham).
Medium 8vo (24cm). [2],x,626,[ii]pp. Original grey canvas; red title-panel, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; a few faint marks and minor signs of age of use, but a good and sound copy in the Horace Ové dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn, with a few short tears, a light patch of mild discolouration at head, and slight spotting to the flaps, but complete and striking still.

£50

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London : Parochial Church Council of St. George & St. Ethelbert, 1987. First edition. An illustrated jubilee history.
Demy 8vo (21cm). (160)pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Facsimiles. Original stapled wrappers, very good. With the ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield.

£20

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Paris : E. Plon, Nourrit & Cie., [1894]. First edition. The lighter side of London life and fashion as seen by the popular and irrepressible Belgian caricaturist – Charing Cross Station, lunch-hour on the Strand, Royal Ascot, Hyde Park and Rotten Row, Kensington, Piccadilly Circus, the Lowther Arcade, Piccadilly and Park Lane, Henley, the Music-Hall, Christmas parties, Kensington Gardens, Maidenhead, and so much more – sketches, studies and wry observation.
Landscape foolscap folio. (26cm). 32 leaves. Illustrated throughout, frequently in colour, with full-page plates and medleys of smaller studies. Original pictorial cloth; lightly rubbed and slightly worn; front endpaper cracked and torn; some minor internal marks and short tears, but overall still a good copy of a delightful compilation.

£200

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London : B. T. Batsford, (1983). First edition. A masterly and fully illustrated study of the history and remains of Roman London from “the father of London’s modern archaeology”. Chapters on London before the Roman Conquest; the Claudian Invasion; the first Londinium; its transformation; its heyday; the hinterland; Londinium in the Antonine and Severan Periods; Londinium in the Third Century; the Fourth; from Londinium to London, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xii),288pp. Sixty photographs. Forty maps, plans and diagrams. Original boards; just a hint of tanning, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just slightly sunned, but also very good.

£25

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London : by Charles Eyre and William Strahan, 1777. “Whereas the hamlet ... is very populous, and increasing in buildings and inhabitants, and by reason of its contiguity to the metropolis, the roads and ways within the same are much frequented and used in the night-time by travellers, as well as by persons residing in them, who ... are exposed to robberies, burglaries, and other offences, which are frequently committed there”. Covers the appointment of trustees and officers, the engaging of watchmen and constables, their duties, the financing of the proposals through rates, etc.
Foolscap folio. [ii],1407-1426pp. Disbound and now protected by later wrappers; wrappers split; a few minor marks and creases, but otherwise very good.

£30

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Cambridge : By the author, (1979). First edition. A guided tour with twenty-eight stopping places from Crystal Palace Station to Rockhills – the great urban park fully explored.
Pott 4to (21cm). (24)pp. Plates. Double-page plan. Original stapled wrappers; wrappers slightly marked and faded; mild browning to opening leaves, but otherwise very good.

£20

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London : Cecil Palmer, (1927). First edition. An anatomist brings thirty years’ experience of physical anthropology to a study of the mental and physical characteristics of early Londoners and their descendants, with perhaps even the evolution of a new head form. With chapters on the Palæolithic and Neolithic; the Beaker Folk; the Coming of the Celt; Caesar and London; London under the Roman; Picts, Scots and Saxons; Saxon London; London and the Danes, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 240pp. Original cloth; some very minor rubbing and a couple of marks, but a very good copy – clean and sound.

£25

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London : privately printed by A. V. Huckle & Son, The Ramsden Press, (1929). First edition. A well-illustrated and very attractively produced tour of Clapham and its older houses, former residents, etc., with appendices including material on the Windmill Inn, sports and pastimes – cricket, golf, etc., the ponds, the flora and fauna, the geology, fossils, the wells, etc. Neatly inserted is a single page typed letter on headed notepaper, signed by the editor J. H. Michael Burgess, thanking the recipient for ordering a copy of the book, etc.
Demy 4to (270 x 191mm). xx,(122),[ii]pp. Plates. Illustrations. Three maps, one folding. Printed in red and black throughout. Bound in a stylish contemporary half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; just a touch sunned; some spotting to the earlier leaves, but still a very good copy. With the dated (1930) ownership of E. Baldwin, the recipient of the letter.

£125

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London : for J. Coxhead, 1813. A slightly revised and fully illustrated version of Pennant’s “Some Account of London”, originally published in 1790 – a popular London history compiled by the Welsh naturalist and traveller – “much more palatable than the usual antiquarian stodge” (Adams). Pennant’s discursive approach, “composed from the observations of perhaps half my life”, takes in a variety of topics, including antiquities, archery, bagnios, breweries, burials, coffins, duels, fires, wines and much else.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (216 x 129mm). vi,(384); [ii],325,[iii]pp. Two maps and thirty-nine further engraved plates by Vincent Woodthorpe, Thomas Prattent, William Poole, and others. Bound in a handsome contemporary full sprinkled calf, stylishly worked in gilt and blind; sprinkled edges; some minor rubbing and wear; mild cracking; some slight internal spotting and browning; some offsetting to plates, but still overall a very good set. With the armorial bookplate of James Hansard (1781-1849) of the printing family in each volume. Adams 111.

SOLD

London : Penguin Books, (1951). First edition : the wrappers issue. Pevsner incisive on the merits and demerits of the built heritage of the much abused county. In the celebrated “Buildings of England” series.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 204,[iv]pp. Plates. Map. Original wrappers; a little rubbed and sunned; one of the blank pages supplied for making notes has been so used; a good copy.

£20

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London : Colllins, 1964. First edition. The culmination of Phillips’ extraordinary thirty-year trawl through the parish rate books, the land register, the crown lease book, the licensing records, the insurance documents and the early poll books – building up to more or less a house-by-house reconstruction of large parts of the eighteenth century West End – Berkeley Square, Cavendish Square, Charing Cross, Covent Garden, Hanover Square, Holborn, Leicester Square, Red Lion Square, St. James, St. Martin’s Lane, Soho Square, the Strand, etc.
Royal 4to (32cm). (322)[ii]pp. Plates (seventeen in colour). Profuse illustrations. Original red buckram, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£200

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London : Collins, 1951. First edition. A magisterial and copiously illustrated survey of the topographical and social history of the London river-front in the mid-eighteenth century. The area covered runs from Woolwich round to Hampton Court via the City and Westminster.
Royal 4to (32cm). [ii],(228),[ii]pp. Over 250 illustrations, mainly from contemporary sources. Original red buckram, lettered in gilt; top edge red; a little sunned and unevenly faded, but a good, clean and sound copy in worn, chipped, marked and tanned dust-jacket.

£50

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London : Cassell & Co., (1976). First edition. A study of Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864) and his family – and their contribution to the recording of the London landscape of the nineteenth century.
Demy 4to (29cm). 116pp. Numerous illustrations, some in colour. Original boards; slight spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good copy in a sunned and price-clipped dust-jacket.

£30

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London : Royal Thames Yacht Club, (1978). First edition. A handsomely illustrated history of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, first instituted when the Duke of Cumberland presented a cup in 1775. With much passing reference to the America’s Cup, the Channel Match, the New York Yacht Club, the Royal Yacht Squadron, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (192)pp. Colour plates. Numerous illustrations. Original boards; very good in a lightly sunned dust-jacket.

£25

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New York : Oxford University Press 1982. First American edition. A most attractive study – a richly illustrated survey of London as seen by the great artists down the ages.
Crown 4to (27cm). 160pp. Illustrations throughout, many in colour. Original boards; very good in a just faintly sunned dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Privately Published, 1876. First edition. An attractively produced history of the company from its sixteenth-century origins and its incorporation in the seventeenth century, together with names and addresses of the livery in 1876.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). 112pp. Original decorative cloth gilt; all edges gilt; a hint of rubbing and slightly shaken, but a very good, clean and bright copy.

£50

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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 : by Charles Eyre and William Strahan, 1772. An act relating to some parcels of land in Wimbledon and West Shene, as well as enabling the closing off of a footpath leading to the Thames from “the house now in the occupation of Lewis Shepheard wine-merchant, near Richmond Green”, for which in return the King would pay to have Palace Lane “to be well and sufficiently amended and made commodious” and to add a towpath from there to “two ferries belonging to his Majesty, one called Railhead Ferry, and the other Isleworth Church Ferry”.
Foolscap folio. [ii],783-787pp. Disbound. Lightly marked and a little creased, but otherwise in good order.

£25

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London : T. Werner Laurie, [1907]. First edition. A charming pocket companion – author and reader in search of out-of-the-way fragments of antiquity across London – the things we generally miss – “Some of them will be known to you, others will not be familiar, because, being trifling, they are often overlooked”. Delightfully illustrated with the author’s own photographs.
Crown 16mo (13cm). 14,(ccxx)pp. Thirty-three photographs. Publisher’s decorative full roan, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good and bright copy. Contemporary (March 1908) gift inscription to Elizabeth Barbara Allix (1871-1945) from her sister.

£50

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London : Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1937. First Edition. An illustrated, discursive and entertaining journey down the Thames from Lechlade to the sea, by the popular novelist and critic, with atmospheric photographs by her husband H. E. (Sir Henry) Turner.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xii),(174)pp. Fifty one photos. Original pink canvas, ruled and lettered in black; a few tiny marks, some spotting, mainly to prelims and edges, but a very good and sound copy in the textured dust-jacket, sunned and a little rubbed, but complete and attractive still.

£30

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London : Oxford University Press, 1956. First edition. A highly-regarded survey of nineteenth-century theatre and drama – in fact covering the period 1792-1914 – with much incidental reference to Harley Granville Barker, Dionysius Lardner Boucicault, Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, Sir John Hare, Sir Henry Irving, Charles Kean, William Charles Macready, Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, James Robinson Planché, Thomas William Robertson, etc. – and much also on the London theatres themselves.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xiv),(204),[ii]pp. Plates. Original cloth; a very good, clean and sound copy in a lightly used dust-jacket.

£20

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London : His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1925. First edition. A general historical introduction followed by an illustrated borough-by-borough inventory of all the known survivals dating from pre-1714. Covers rather more of London than the title might imply – Battersea, Chelsea, Finsbury, Fulham, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Holborn, Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Paddington, St. Marylebone, St. Pancras, Stoke Newington, Wandsworth and Westminster. With supplementary material on the early heraldry, a glossary, index, etc.
Demy 4to (28cm). xxiv,194pp. 235 plates. Folding coloured map in pocket. Original decorative cloth; a very good copy.

£50

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London : Nathaniel Cooke, 1853. First edition in English of this amiable and much-quoted primary source on Victorian London. An acute overseas visitor shines a light on London street life, the London squares, life on the Thames, the London police, Newgate, the Post Office, the London of fogs and gaslight, the City, the Bank of England, Hyde Park, the haunts of fashion, the newspapers and periodicals, the theatres, and much else. Originally published as “Wanderungen durch London” (1852-1853) and here in a translation by Otto von Wenckstern (1819-1869), translator of Goethe, writer on slavery, the Schleswig-Holstein question, etc.
Crown 8vo (187 x 116mm). xii,290pp. Frontispiece, extra pictorial title and six lively plates of street scenes by William McConnell (1832?-1867). Bound, without half-title, in neat contemporary half roan, ruled, lettered and blocked in gilt; marbled sides; lightly rubbed and worn at extremities; short split to upper joint; a few minor internal marks and slight creases, but a good and serviceable copy of an important contribution to the history of the London streets.

£100

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London : J. P. Segg & Co., 1888. Seventeenth year of publication. An opulent guidebook to Victorian London, printed in purple and gold throughout, and concentrating on the world of privilege – editorial write-ups on the “leading houses” – Piesse & Lubin of New Bond Street for perfumes; Barkentin & Krall of Regent Street for jewellery; advertisements for silks and champagnes; for luxury travel by train or steamship; the best hotels; write-ups for the best resorts and hotels outside London – Brighton, Bournemouth, Eastbourne, etc. There is also an illustrated “Album of Operatic, Dramatic, and Musical Celebrities” – portraits of Ellen Terry, Lily Langtry, and the rest. The guide had been published since 1872, initially by Henry Herbert, but ownership had now passed to a slightly mysterious Greek dentist-cum-advertising-contractor (and later cinema owner) named George Eustace Skliros – for both of whom see my “Victorian Opulence” post of 18th October 2018 on the “Bookhunter on Safari” blog.
Elephant 8vo (28cm). xii,240pp. Polychromatic title-page. Decorative gold and purple borders throughout. Numerous illustrations, many full-page. Original decorative cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; just a hint of wear and bruising; spine a touch sunned; some spotting to outer leaves, but a very good copy of a very scarce and handsome production.

SOLD

Paris : Chez Buisson, 1788. First edition. A charming eighteenth-century illustrated French guide to London from a journalist and refugee who had absconded to London with the aristocratic wife of his employer. Serres de la Tour includes chapters on the character of the people, the London way of life, the antiquity, the extent, the principal buildings in turn, the Thames, the hospitals, societies, institutions, markets, spectacles and amusements, the post, the taverns and cafes, etc. In an unusual feature at this date, the second volume comprises an alphabetical dictionary of the smaller towns and villages of the London area (from Abbots Langley to Windsor), with descriptions of each, this followed by notes on the principal English towns elsewhere, from Bath to York. As Adams points out, the folding plates are “larger and more handsome than those usually found in a duodecimo volume. They ... seem not to be associated with any British prints of the period. Most view the buildings at an unusually oblique angle and include ... much architectural detail”.
Two volumes. Crown 12mo (163 x 95mm). 4,372; [ii],(324),[iv]pp. Folding map and nine folding plates. Contemporary mottled calf, the spines prettily ruled and decorated in gilt in a floral design; marbled edges and endpapers; some minor rubbing and wear; lacks one title-label and one numeral label; some repairs and strengthening to folds of plates; two leaves torn without loss; a few minor marks and small flaws, but overall still a very good set in a pleasant contemporary binding. Adams 65.

£400

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1909. First edition. A substantial history of St. Paul’s from the earliest times, with additional material on the organists, the library, Paul’s Cross, the memorials, etc., and extensive quotation from the diary of Robert Green, Dean’s Verger from 1852 to 1900, on life in the nineteenth century cathedral. With illustrations by Louis Weirter.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xxxii),512pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original pictorial cloth gilt; top edge gilt; just a little bruised at corners; some mild tanning of endpapers and mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy.

£40

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London : by Charles Eyre and William Strahan, 1781. An act modifying and regulating the special arrangements for the collection and enforcement of claims for small debts which obtained in Stepney and Hackney, which were made more complicated by virtue of the fact that the inhabitants were “very numerous, and very many of them indigent sailors and seafaring men, who for the most part of their lives were at sea, and in the King’s service on the high sea, and also were many times employed in the mercantile affairs of the King’s subjects in parts beyond the seas”. Details arrangements and duties stewards, the appearance of defendants, the mode of trial, collection, payment by instalments, appeals, juries, witnesses, final verdicts, fees payable, perjury, etc.
Foolscap folio (30cm). [ii],1803-1816pp. Black letter. Disbound and housed in later wrappers; wrappers worn and split; text a little tanned in places, with a tiny nick to fore-edge, but otherwise sound and serviceable.

£25

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London : for the Author, by Wilson & Whitworth, (1920). First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed and signed by the author. An extensive and unusually detailed history, particularly strong on the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century corporate history. Stokes, originally a house-builder and estate agent, was chairman of the public health committee in 1918 and to become mayor of East Ham in 1921.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (258),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Maps. Original cloth gilt; sprinkled edges; a little worn and faded; a touch rolled; endpapers slightly tanned, but a good and serviceable copy of a valuable account. Loosely inserted is a postcard of old East Ham Church, dated 1904 in manuscript. and addressed to Mrs (Emily) Noble of Barking.

£40

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London : Turnstile Press, (1951). First and sole edition. A whimsical London guide – a mixture of essays, visits, prose poems and "cockney idylls" – delightfully illustrated by Lynton Lamb.
Post 8vo (22cm). [viii],142,[ii]pp. Original black cloth, lettered on spine in gilt; some spotting of endpapers, etc., but a nice copy in the price-clipped Lynton Lamb dust-jacket – a design in orange, black, yellow and white.

£20

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London : Methuen & Co., (1932). First edition. The author of “Mrs Miniver” with ten poems, including “The Muffin Man”, relating to a quiet and small London square, followed by ten on the London telephone districts, Avenue, Frobisher, Gulliver, Mayfair, Victoria, etc., and a further eight whimsical pieces on contemporary topics. Illustrated throughout with great charm by Ernest H. Shepard.
Demy 8vo (22cm). viii,(64)pp. Illustrations. Original pictorial cloth gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch dulled; endpapers a little tanned; a few spots and minor signs of use, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of G. G. D. Stevenson dated Christmas 1932.

£15

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London : J. Johnston, 1820. “Third edition” – i.e. a fresh impression of the original 1820 publication. The naive and pedantic “Doctor Syntax, learned sage, The pride and glory of the age” – with a series of comical adventures and mainly misadventures in London – an anonymous revival of this fictional character first invented by William Combe, but here set against some highly recognisable London scenes. The tale commences with Syntax and his wife Dolly poring over a map of London at the tea-table; arrival at the White Horse in Fetter Lane; robbed in St. Giles; behind the scenes at the opera; at a masquerade; rehearsing his play; in Hyde Park; at the Royal Academy; to Richmond by river; at Vauxhall Gardens; overboard at London Bridge; at the House of Commons; in a gambling den; at St. Paul’s; at the Bank of England; presented at Court to the Prince Regent; and the fate of the play, etc.
Royal 8vo (257 x 160mm). iv,[2],(320)pp. Hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece, pictorial title and eighteen delightful hand-coloured plates, sometimes attributed to Thomas Rowlandson or Robert Cruikshank, although the first is signed by Charles Williams (fl.1797-1830). This copy misbound and lacking the “Doctor Syntax at the Exhibition” plate, but with the “Doctor Syntax at Vauxhall Gardens” plate in duplicate in its stead. Bound in an elegant recent quarter chestnut morocco; a tall copy, the text leaves untrimmed; some internal marks; some occasional browning and spotting, but an attractive example of a highly entertaining production.

£250

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London : Frederick Pickton, 1858. First edition. A thorough account of the parish, with individual chapters offering a general survey; the history of the manors of Lambeth, Kennington, Vauxhall, Stockwell and Levehurst; Lambeth Palace; the archbishops; the churches; the rectors; the monuments and epitaphs; the older and more important buildings, and remarkable events, with appendices on the subsidy rolls, the charities, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xvi,(248),[iv]pp. Title-page in red and black. Fourteen engraved plates (two on steel). Wood-engraved illustrations in text. Facsimiles. Tables. List of subscribers. Original cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind, by Bone & Son, with their ticket; some very minor wear; spine a little sunned; a handful of spots, but overall a very good and largely unopened copy. With the bookplate of the book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

£100

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

£200

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London : John Murray, 1876. First edition. A very useful dictionary, based on personal visits, of what are now the London suburbs – from Abbey Wood to Yiewsley, with short histories, notes on the principal buildings, population figures, etc. “Until now ... there has been nothing approaching Mr. Thorne’s work in fulness of detail or convenience of arrangement. If Londoners remain any longer ignorant of the many attractive spots that are still to be found just beyond their own doors, it will not be for want of pleasant and trustworthy guidance” (Pall Mall Gazette, 16th February 1877).
Two volumes. Post 8vo (21cm). vi,410 + 20pp advertisements dated October 1876; [ii],411-794,[ii] + 32pp adverts dated January 1876. Original cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt, and blocked in blind; some light wear to extremities; a few faint marks; endpapers sightly cracked; a touch shaken, but a good and serviceable set.

£100

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London : David Bogue, 1855. First edition. The final realisation of an idea first hatched in 1828 – an encyclopaedic dictionary of London – from the Adelphi to the Zoological Gardens – mixing the “entertaining and anecdotic” with “social statistics and other Great Facts”. Compiled by John Timbs F.S.A., author, journalist and antiquary. As “agreeable a book as you could wish to meet with. There is so much out-of-the-way reading in it – such apt introduction of personal experience” (The Examiner, 5th May 1855).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). viii,800 + 32pp advertisements dated July 1857. Portrait frontispiece. Original publisher’s cloth by Leighton, Son & Hodge, with their ticket; lightly sunned; slight spine crease; front free endpaper neatly excised, but overall a very good copy. Small contemporary booksellers’ label of Mann Nephews of Cornhill.

£125

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

£200

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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 Miscellanous. “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 : 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 : Cassell & Co., [1884]. First edition in book form. A sequel to the highly popular “Old and New London”, compiled jointly by Walford and C. W. Thornbury. A circular tour round Chiswick, Ealing, Twickenham, Shepperton, Staines, Hillingdon, Uxbridge, Ruislip, Harrow, Barnet, Chigwell, Ilford, Dagenham, Woolwich, Sidcup, Bromley, Beckenham, Croydon, Epsom, Kingston, Richmond, Wimbledon and all the towns and villages between. Heavily illustrated with some 400 wood-engravings, including many images of buildings and villages never previously depicted. First published serially between 1882 and 1884.
Two volumes. Crown 4to (27cm). xvi,576; (xvi),560pp – two preliminary leaves in vol.ii inexplicably straying into the index. Numerous illustrations. Maps. Original decorative cloth gilt; all edges gilt; a touch bruised; slight scratch to one lower cover; a few slight spots, but overall a very good, bright and fresh set.

£200

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Newton Abbot : David & Charles, (1979). First edition. A fine and detailed study of the extraordinary events – faction, feud and controversy – surrounding the building of the first Westminster Bridge in the mid eighteenth century. With much on Antonio Canaletto, Sir Henry Fielding, Richard Graham, Nicholas Hawksmoor, Andrews Jelfe, Charles Labelye, Batty Langley, Thomas Lediard, etc.
Royal 8vo (25cm). (320)pp. Plates. Maps. Original cloth; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : John Murray, 1891. First edition. A monumental dictionary of London from the well-known Abbey Road, and Abbey Street, Bermondsey, to the Yorkshire Stingo and the Zoo. “There is scarcely an unregarded, shabby-genteel street in Bloomsbury, or Chelsea, or Clerkenwell which has not its shred of history or literature connected with it” (London Evening Standard, 5th February 1891). Ostensibly based on Peter Cunningham’s “Handbook of London” (1849), but so far extended and updated as to be essentially a new work.
Three volumes. Medium 8vo (230 x 144mm). xxxii,(546); [iv],622; [iv],(608)pp. Bound in a handsome near contemporary half aubergine crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Bickers & Son of Leicester Square; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a few slight marks; some shelf-wear to lower edges; some foxing and spotting, mainly to endpapers, edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good set in a most elegant binding. Contemporary ownership inscriptions.

£300

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1892. [Second edition]. Montagu Williams Q.C., leading barrister, known in the East End as “the poor man’s magistrate”, and variously schoolmaster, soldier, actor, dramatist and journalist, with a fine series of lively essays (all based on true stories) portraying life across Victorian London – down east with East End Shows, Match Girls, Sclater Street Birds, Griddlers or Street Singers, the London Hospital, Clerkenwell Green, Ratcliff Highway, Sunday at the East End (including cricket in Bethnal Green), Burglarious Bill, From the East End to Ramsgate, etc. – and up west with Climbing the Ladder (enter plutocracy), Descending the Ladder, Modern Stockbrokers, Huckstering Hymen (the marriage market), the Company Promoter, Things Theatrical, Covent Garden, Floss & Floss (lawyers), the Road to Ruin, Moneylenders, Talent in Tatters, and the London Season. With a preface by Charles Dickens Jr.
Crown 8vo (20cm). xii,244pp. Original cloth gilt; one corner slightly bumped, a few minor marks and faint signs of age and use, but a very good and bright copy.

£40

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London : Phoenix House, (1960). First edition. Reminiscence of ordinary Londoners before the Great War from the broadcaster and journalist – “a reconstruction, based on my experience, of the life lived by the Little Man who crowded the streets, the trains, the buses, and trams; who applauded Irving and Ellen Terry, Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd ... He was as obscure as the other side of the moon, and the only time he got his name in the papers was in the casualty list of the first world war ...”. With an introduction by Herbert Morrison.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],314pp. Eighty illustrations. Original purple cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright and sound copy in the original Freda Nichols dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn and used.

£20

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Newton Abbot : David & Charles, (1967). First edition : the Readers’ Union issue, with its stickers on dust-jacket and title-page. An extraordinary pictorial record – with stunning photographs by Joseph McKeown (1925-2007) – of a lost landscape: a sewer gas lamp off the Strand; a pottery kiln in Kensington; a candle factory in Battersea; food-drying kilns in Lambeth; a margarine factory in Southall; a sealing-wax factory in Bermondsey; snuff mills at Morden; the Camden Town catacombs, and dozens of other relics of a once great hub of manufacturing.
Demy 4to (29cm). 160pp. Colour frontispiece. Full page photographs throughout. Original boards; mild tanning of outer edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket a little tape-stained in places, but otherwise also very good. Ownership stamp of Ian S. Pettman.

£25

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