FIRST EDITIONS AND MODERN GREATS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Chatto & Windus, 1929. First edition. His first novel – a searing indictment both of war and of public and private hypocrisy, the text peppered with asterisks in place of words and phrases that his publishers, to his annoyance and astonishment, considered “at present taboo in England”. There are also satirical tilts at the literary establishment, with recognisable caricatures of Eliot, Ford, Lawrence and Pound. Orwell regarded it as “much the best of the English war books”, Wells was “moved deeply”, and for Wyndham Lewis it was simply “magnificent”. “Sheer, stark truth. They did not always like truth in the old days; they do not always like it to-day. You may not like it yourself, but there it is” (Ralph Straus in The Bystander, 25th September 1929).
Demy 8vo (22cm). (xii),440pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge pink; faint fringe of light discolouration to foot of boards; mild tanning of endpapers; a few faint spots to outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket by Paul Nash (1889-1946) – the jacket with a few minor marks and creases, a couple of nicks and a short tear, but also very good. Small bookseller’s label of A. H. Spencer of Melbourne on front pastedown.

£500

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46361 – or simply click on the button

London : Constable & Co., 1929. First edition in English : the London issue of the 1928 American sheets. Alain-Fournier’s 1913 masterpiece – also known in English as “The Lost Domain” or “The Lost Estate” – translated by Françoise Roussel Delisle (1886-1974) and with a lengthy introduction by Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), at whose instigation the translation was made. “The greatest novel of adolescence in European literature” (John Fowles). Memorably filmed in 1967 with Brigitte Fossey and Jean Blaise, and subsequently in 2006 with Clémence Poésy and Nicolas Duvauchelle.
Post 8vo (195 x 125mm). xxxii,306pp. Bound in an attractive recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth spine bound in at rear; a few faint spots, but otherwise a very good copy.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42370 – or simply click on the button

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

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 39325 – or simply click on the button

London : J. M. Dent & Sons, 1911. First edition : although 1,500 copies were printed, 200 were sent to New York to make up the American edition – and 890 were later pulped, leaving a maximum of 410 surviving copies. “A new stage of intimacy in the Anglo-Italian love affair and one of the happiest of travel books” – Cyril Connolly citing this among his 100 Key-Books of the Modern Movement.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,302pp. Title-page in olive and red. Frontispiece and twenty-three plates. Map of Sorrento and Capri. Original olive cloth, blocked and lettered on upper cover in dark green, and blocked and lettered across spine in gilt; top edge gilt; lightly rubbed and very slightly worn; a few slight marks; two very faint horizontal creases to spine, endpapers a little tanned; some occasional spotting; just a touch shaken, but overall a very good and still bright copy of a notoriously difficult title. Connolly 20. Woolf A13a.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 34906 – or simply click on the button

London : Hutchinson, (1993). First edition. Loosely inserted is Faulks’ printed compliments slip, inscribed and signed by Faulks to Peter Wilkinson, “for his edition of Birdsong”. His fourth and most famous novel, set before and during the Great War. Soon adapted for radio and the stage, with a television version in 2012, starring Eddie Redmayne and Clémence Poésy.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(408)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; faint number stamped on lower edge; mild adhesion marks to front free endpaper, where the compliments slip had been insecurely attached, but a very good copy in the Garner Russell dust-jacket – the jacket just a touch dusty, but also very good.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44119 – or simply click on the button

London : Duckworth, (1925). First edition. “No more hope, no more glory, not for the nation, not for the world I dare say, no more parades”. The second of the “Parade’s End” tetralogy – Christopher Tietjens, “the last Tory”, struggles with love and war. “Vivid and brilliant, and startlingly outspoken ... it is a superlatively fine thing ... in its own class it stands alone” (Ralph Straus in The Bystander, 14th October 1925).
Crown 8vo (19cm). (320)pp. Original green cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; a little rubbed and bruised, some spotting, labels neatly and inconspicuously removed from upper cover and rear endpaper, but a good and acceptable copy. Harvey A59.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 18735 – or simply click on the button

New York : Lawrence E. Spivak, (1945). First edition. A collection of four stories previously unpublished in book form, edited and introduced by Ellery Queen. Bestseller Mystery B62.
Foolscap 4to (20cm). 126,[ii]pp. Original wrappers – a design by George Salter in blue, black and white; a little worn and creased; slight tear to title-page; text tanned, but a good copy of a fragile production. Stoddard 13.

£40

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 30444 – or simply click on the button

London : Jonathan Cape, (1941). First British edition. Inspired by Hemingway’s own experience as a war correspondent in Spain and already a best-seller in the United States, incidentally making a rediscovered John Donne briefly an American best-seller too. The film rights were sold for a record sum – and the resulting 1943 technicolour movie with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman was nominated for nine Academy Awards. “There are some unforgettable scenes ... the description by the woman Pilar of the massacre of the mayor, priest and local Fascisti ... the shooting of the civil guard ... For sheer descriptive power ... the blowing up of the bridge would be difficult to equal in fiction. In other words, best-seller or not, this is a magnificent novel” (The Sphere, 15th March 1941).
Post 8vo (198 x 129mm). 462,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half navy morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a few faint marks but a very good, clean and sound copy in an attractive binding.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46224 – or simply click on the button

New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951. First edition. His first and most famous novel, based on his own army experiences in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, which he witnessed. An immediate success, winner of the National Book Award, always included in lists of the major novels of the twentieth century, and the basis of the memorable and multiple Oscar-winning 1953 film, with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, etc.
Demy 8vo (207 x 136mm). [xii],(862)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half black morocco, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endleaves; very faint crease to the final leaves, but otherwise an excellent copy, clean and sound.

£400

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44486 – or simply click on the button

London : Chatto & Windus, 1968. First edition. His first novel, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize – set in London and the South of France – “cold indifference ... tugs at them like a dirty wind”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; very good in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£25

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 41320 – or simply click on the button

London : Faber & Faber, (1984). First British edition. Set mainly in the Prague Spring of 1968 – “A story of irreconcilable loves and infidelities – Milan Kundera addresses himself to the nature of twentieth-century ‘Being’... This masterly novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence”. Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim. Filmed in 1988, with Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],314pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a touch of dustiness to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the Russell Mills dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used and a touch sunned, but also very good.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46392 – or simply click on the button

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

£500

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45690 – or simply click on the button

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

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46259 – or simply click on the button

London : André Deutsch, (1971). First edition. Winner of the 1971 Booker Prize, described by the judges as “a work of great distinction, beautifully written, deeply felt, addressing itself with an often disturbing irony to the problems of uprooting and dislocation in the post-colonial world”. Less a novel than a novella introduced by two short stories — an Indian servant in Washington, D.C., two brothers from the West Indies in London, two English diplomats in East Africa — all within a framing narrative. “Its revolutionary nature still remains untarnished; indeed, the experimental side seems magnified at a time when mainstream deployment of the terms avant-garde and experimental, even form, seems to have fallen into misuse” (Neel Mukherjee in the Paris Review, 20th February 2018).
Demy 8vo (22cm). 256pp. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; faint spine crease and just a hint of tanning to the front endpaper, but otherwise a very good copy in the silver Sam Houston dust-jacket — the silver with some very faint and inevitable signs of handling, but also very good.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44955 – or simply click on the button

London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) / Jonathan Cape, (1960-1964). A first edition set of her scandalous trilogy – the separately published “The Country Girls” (1960) – Irish girls in black underwear, banned in Ireland, publicly burnt by her parish priest in Tuamgraney – “By turns beautiful and bawdy, funny and haunting ... often referred to as the quintessential tale of Irish girlhood, it is not the novel that broke the mould: it is the one that made it” (Eimear McBride); “The Lonely Girl” (1962) – filmed in 1964 as “The Girl With Green Eyes”, with Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave, Peter Finch, etc. – and the darker concluding volume set in London, “Girls in Their Married Bliss” (1964).
Three volumes. Post & crown 8vo (21 & 20cm). (224); (254),[ii]; 190,[ii]pp. Original boards (black, mauve, blue); a few faint marks; some mild spotting to the endpapers of the first volume and edges of the second, but very good copies in the original pictorial dust-jackets by Jillian Willett, Hofbauer and David Fawcett respectively – the jackets with some minor rubbing and a couple of nicks, the back panel of the second a little splashed, but complete and overall also very good. Ownership stamp of the Raffin Stud, Castletown, County Meath, in the second volume.

£750

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44681 – or simply click on the button

London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1964. First edition of the last novel published in his lifetime – “the best comic fantasy since ‘Tristram Shandy’” – mad scientist plots the end of the world, time travel used to age whiskey, both James Joyce and St. Augustine with speaking parts, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in a just lightly used and slightly creased dust-jacket.

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42284 – or simply click on the button

London : Secker & Warburg, 1949. First edition. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”. The most compelling and chilling novel of the twentieth century – not least in that it now appears to have been widely adopted as an instruction manual. “Every statue and street and building has been re-named, every date has been altered ... History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”.
Crown 8vo (184 x 122mm). 312pp. Bound in a smart recent full dark green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy, handsomely bound.

£1,000

Currently on display at Bryars & Bryars in central London, please enquire about availability – books@ashrare.com

London : Constable & Co., (1948). First British edition. A selection of over seventy of the best of the short stories and articles arranged under various headings. Includes “Tripping over Trivia”, “Horse Sense”, “Larcenous Ladies”, “A Dog’s Best Friend”, “Smoking Ladies”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 278,[ii]pp. Frontispiece. Original dark green cloth, lettered in silver; a very good and bright copy in the original pale blue dust-jacket, printed in red and darker blue – slightly sunned and a just a little marked.

£25

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 43496 – or simply click on the button

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

£250

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 26007 – or simply click on the button

London : William Heinemann, (1949). First British edition. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board” – the travails of Cassandra Mortmain. Her first novel – an eccentric classic brought to an even wider audience by the 2003 film with Bill Nighy, Romola Garai, Rose Byrne, etc.
Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [iv],338pp. Illustrations by Ruth Steed (from sketches by the author). Bound in a smart recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; red label; marbled sides; top edge red; some spotting to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in an elegant binding.

£500

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 27004 – or simply click on the button

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated (May 1971) by the author on the front free endpaper. Runaway best-seller success for this first novel from the Hollywood film star — a psychological horror-upon-horror story set in 1930s Connecticut, itself instantly turned into a film.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [vi],280,[ii]pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge charcoal; a couple of faint marks, but a very good copy in the Paul Bacon dust-jacket — the jacket with some minor wear, slight creasing, and one very short tear at the head of the flap, but also very good.

£125

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45045 – or simply click on the button

London : William Heinemann, (1962). First edition. The first novel in the “Spiral Ascent” trilogy – failed poets and communism in the 1930s – “I believe that it may well be the first part of one of the greatest and most original novels of our time” (Christopher Isherwood).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],282pp. Original green boards, lettered in white; a very good copy in the Brian Russell dust-jacket – a stylish architectural design in mauve and tan – also very good.

£50

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 40699 – or simply click on the button

London : Jonathan Cape, (1966). First British edition. Wolfe’s first collection – twenty-two essays and half a dozen caricatures. An entirely new voice in journalism skyrockets metaphors, neologisms, hip-talk and learned reference into the pursuit of the form and style of the new. Includes “The Fifth Beatle”, “The First Tycoon of Teen”, “The Last American Hero”, “The Girl of the Year”, “The Nanny Mafia”, “A Sunday Kind of Love”, “The Woman Who Has Everything”, “Why Doormen Hate Volkswagens”, etc. First published in New York the previous year, but here in the period-defining dust-jacket by Jonathan Miller.
Post 8vo (21cm). (xviii),(340),[iv]pp. Original pink boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; mild tanning of edges, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a touch sunned, with some very minor edge-wear and a single short tear, but also very good.

£100

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42570 – or simply click on the button