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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First edition. Signed and dated (1991) by Brian Aldiss on the title-page. The second Horatio Stubbs novel — the unforgettable Forgotten Army in India and Burma — a wildly funny but wholly serious attempt by Aldiss “to recreate it exactly as it was, whether heroic, bawdy or downright bloody unspeakable”. The book's publication in January 1971 led to a newspaper spat between the bookseller turned author and Mark Kahn, reviewer for the “Sunday Mirror” — “Chuck It, Mr Aldiss”, began the review — “I’m sorry that Mr Kahn (last Sunday) found my new novel ... tedious and nasty. War often is tedious and nasty”, came the lofty response, but it is noticeable that only one further Horatio Stubbs novel appeared, not the four that Aldiss originally intended.
Post 8vo (21cm). 272pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised; a few faint edge-spots; mild discolouration to pastedowns beneath the jacket flaps (evidently a manufacturing fault in the adhesive), but otherwise a very good copy in the Lou Klein dust-jacket — the jacket also very good, clean, whole and unfaded, with just some very minor edge-wear to the foot of the rear panel and some slight creasing to the foot of the front flap.

£75

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1934. First edition. The interwoven lives of two girlhood friends – Ann the great actress, Aurelia the homely and suffering.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(412)pp. Original yellow cloth, lettered and decorated on spine in red; a few tiny marks and faint creases, but a very good, bright and sharp copy in a price-clipped dust-jacket with a single short tear.

£25

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London : Faber & Faber, (1954). First edition : in the variant and almost certainly primary binding of orange-brown cloth, blocked and lettered in maroon. Absent-minded and dotty old autocrat, bright young godson, endless muddles, mismanagement of the village fête, charming young woman – “Everyone will agree they are in good company from beginning to end”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (214),[ii]pp. Original cloth; just a hint of sunning; light spotting to edges and endpapers; erasure mark from front free endpaper, but a very good and sound copy in the original yellow, blue, black, red and white dust-jacket – just lightly used and with slight fraying of inner flaps, but still very good.

£20

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1936). First edition. His uncommon first novel – gripping from the very first page (which concludes with a footnote invoking the Official Secrets Act). “A new writer of international spy stories has arrived ... The central character is Professor Henry Barstow, a highly strung savant ... Following a motoring accident, he takes on the identity of the colourful hero of the thriller he had previously picked up. Then, posing as his real self, he calmly accompanies the unscrupulous representative of a big armament firm to a Continental country, ostensibly with object of helping to acquire information about an atomic bomb ... an ingenious story, cleverly written, and cloaked with such verisimilitude that it does not appear to be far-fetched. More will be heard of Eric Ambler” (Mid Sussex Times, 17th November 1936).
Crown 8vo (182 x 115mm). 320pp. Bound in a smart recent half calf, lettered in gilt; raised bands; earlier cloth backstrip preserved at rear; slight tanning to the two outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy of a scarce book.

£850

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London : William Heinemann, (1933). First edition. International Aircraft and Airways Inc. collapses in 1987 after fifty years of oligarchy in guarding and upholding peace (by war and tyranny if necessary) – a “Pax Aeronautica” tale, providing an interesting contrast and a rather less optimistic vision than that of H. G. Wells’s “The Shape of Things to Come”, which was published in the same year. “Truthfully, I am not certain of Mr. Arlen’s conclusions. At any rate, he has given us a story the tremendous drive of which shatters all criticism, leaving only an excited admiration ... a splendid story splendidly told” (Richard King in “The Tatler”, 1st February 1933).
Crown 8vo (21cm). [4],xx,(380)pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a few very minor marks and spots; top edge a touch dusty, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with some mild edge-wear, but also very good.

£50

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The Kentish novelist and historian’s uncommon first novel. A story of young love, told “swiftly and significantly, and a too melodramatic finish to it is skilfully evaded ... there is an instinctive rightness in the management of this first novel that is very promising” (Liverpool Post, 2nd May 1931). A publisher’s presentation copy, with a Heinemann compliments slip loosely inserted.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],322pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; publisher’s device in blind on lower cover; mild bruise at head of spine, a handful of spots, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a design primarily in white, blue and red, with a colour-printed magnolia on the upper panel – the jacket very faintly rubbed and with a sprinkling of spots – but fresh and without a nick.

£50

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London : Faber & Faber, (2005). First edition : precedes the 2006 New York edition. “I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I traveled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain ...”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],304,[x]pp. Original black boards; very good indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£25

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New York : Henry Holt & Co., (2006). First American edition. Inscribed and signed by Paul Auster, “To Michelle, One for the book club, best Paul Auster x”. The accidental redemption of Nathan Glass, a long-lost nephew working in a bookstore, his colourful employer, a forgery, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [x],306,[ii],[2]pp. Original blue and cream boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the Sam Bassett dust-jacket, equally very good.

£50

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1987. First edition. A river appears in parched central Africa – “classic Ballard. Mesmerising. No one else writes with such haunting impact” (William Boyd).
Foolscap 4to (24cm). 254,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered on spine in gilt; near fine in the Paul Wright dust-jacket, also near fine.

£25

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London : Secker & Warburg, (1971). First edition. Signed by multiple award-winning John Banville on the title-page — loosely inserted is a 2008 ticket for “An Evening with John Banville”, the occasion on when the book was signed. Night Spawn, Night’s Pawn, Knight’s Pawn — his sometimes disavowed first novel, a fantasy political thriller of sorts set on a Greek island and then in Athens — “crotchety, posturing, absurdly pretentious”, in his own words, but for at least one online commentator, “I am left stunned. I think I have been bludgeoned by beauty”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (224)pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising, but a very good, clean and bright copy in the Mike Dempsey dust-jacket, equally very good.

£500

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London : Faber & Faber, (1998). First edition. Signed by Nicola Barker on the title-page. “Barker once again pushes back the boundaries of comedy, chronicling the dark inner lives of a cast of characters straight from the pages of a social services register” – set on the Isle of Sheppey and winner of the 2000 International Dublin Literary Award.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],290,[viii]pp. Original blue boards lettered in white; text faintly tanned as usual, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the Boyd & Evans dust-jacket, also very good indeed – bright, clean and unworn.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1980). First edition. Signed by Julian Barnes on the title-page. His first novel – a passage to adulthood and marriage in Betjeman’s Metroland, via a spell in Paris with the exciting Annick during les événements of 1968. Filmed in 1997 with Christian Bale and Emily Watson.
Post 8vo (21cm). 176pp. Original grey boards, blocked and lettered in silver; sliver of sunning at foot, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in an equally very good dust-jacket – a design by Craig Dodd – the jacket price-clipped by the publisher and with the revised price (£6.50) over-sticker.

£400

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1998). First edition. Signed by Julian Barnes on the title-page. His savage satire on England and the idea of England. Shortlisted for the Booker.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],266pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; very good in the Bill Gregory dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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London : Falcon Press, (1949). First British edition. The New Zealand born journalist with the tale of mad Sir Fulke Lord, who kills his wife and raises his daughter Georgina as a son. Still disguised as a boy, she escapes and joins Captain Cook’s final voyage of discovery to the South Seas. “A powerful blending of the romantic and the tragic, and a completely compelling narrative” (Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, 14th January 1950). Originally published in New York in 1948, but here with a fresh foreword on the author’s sources, dated London 1949.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (340)pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; slight spotting of edges; endpapers lightly tanned, with a few spots, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the stylish dust-jacket by John Erskine Yunge-Bateman (1897-1971) – the jacket just lightly worn and with some faint spotting, but also very good.

£40

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London : Constable & Co., (1941). First edition. Emmeline Pocock, daughter of the warden of All Saints, tries to see out the war in her sound-proof room – disturbances from the university town – tangled love drama, the eccentric provost, the sensational reports of Mr Jericho, the volcanic Lady Caroline Paltry, the melancholic Lord FitzCricket, poltergeists, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1902. First edition. An early Bindloss, an imperial romance set in West Africa – an area well-known to the author and the subject of his “In the Niger Country” (1898). An adventurer discovers a mahogany forest – desolate outposts, ju-ju, jungle-fever - somewhere perhaps between Conrad and Rider Haggard.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

£125

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London : Secker & Warburg, (1964). First edition. “Albert Jones made it from layabout to property racketeer in three months flat ... Against a backdrop of Manchester’s bright lights and slum streets – its tearaways and whores, students and sharp operators – this picaresque story offers unusual realism and rare entertainment”. An interesting and in some ways archetypal sixties novel – Bird’s first book, written as a young advertising executive, long before he became famous as the doyen of marketing men.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original violet boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good copy in the Robert Petty dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly used, but also very good.

£75

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London : Putnam & Co., (1942). First edition in English of “Vinter-Eventyr” – a collection of eleven short stories on themes suggested by occupied Denmark – themes of courage and resilience, pride and shame, freedom and death, etc. Includes “The Invincible Slave Owners”, “The Heroine”, “Sorrow-Acre”, etc. “All the greatest works of art are allegorical in the sense that they imply more than they state, and illuminate human nature everywhere” (L. P. Hartley reviewing the book in “The Sketch”, 21st April 1943).
Post 8vo (21cm). 290,[ii]pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; some faint spotting of edges, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the Robin Darwin dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, a touch darkened and slightly spotted, but with only very minor wear, a couple of nicks and single short tear, and also very good, particularly for a book produced under wartime conditions. Contemporary ownership inscription of Frances Christie.

£200

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London : Richards Press, (1940). First edition. “Mr. Bramah records the honey-tongued raconteur’s latest stories. They have all the inimitable qualities of the earlier collections ... the most delicate wit, and the shrewdest of observations on human life” (Daily News, 20th March 1940). “Needs no description ... as good as ever, and Mr. Bramah’s genius with the idiom has not failed” (Illustrated London News, 20th April 1940). The last of the five collections of Kai Lung stories published in Bramah’s lifetime – a series begun forty years earlier.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 320 + 16pp publisher’s catalogue. Original mustard cloth, lettered and decorated in black; endpapers slightly tanned, but a very good, bright and sound copy indeed in the dust-jacket by Harold Hookway Cowles (1896-1987) – the jacket also very good, with just minor wear at head, a couple of nicks and short tears to folds, with a suggestion of mild creasing and a few faint marks to the rear panel. Small label of Brewers Bookshop, Hong Kong, attached to rear pastedown.

£250

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London : Darton, Longman & Todd, (1960). First edition. An extensive anthology of seasonal verse and prose, with decorations by Barbara Jones and children of the Henry Fawcett School. The selection includes a Barbara Jones piece on “Traditional Joys”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (196)pp. Eight colour plates by the children. Numerous illustrations and decorations by Jones. Original imitation leather, blocked and gilt in an overall pictorial design by Barbara Jones, lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine in gilt; endpapers by Jones in orange and maroon; very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1986). First edition. “Blanche Vernon is one of those discreet, smart women one sees in restaurants alone ...” — “Miss Brookner writes exquisitely: her moulding of every sentence is a delight ... her impeccable evocations of mood — wet, lonely London summers are her forte — her small flares of wisdom and understanding, and her many moments of utter cleverness” (The Observer).
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; text faintly tanned, as usual, but otherwise very good indeed in the dust-jacket – just faintly creased, but also very good.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1990). First edition. “They might have met far earlier, since Fay had had success as a singer, and Julia was at one time a famous diseuse, her glamour and repartee a legend. But when Julia sweeps in, wearing ravishing black silk, their celebrity is already past ...”. Love, friendship, dependence and disenchantment.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(218),[ii]pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good indeed in a just very lightly marked dust-jacket.

£25

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The daughter of the precentor of St. David’s Cathedral in South Wales falls in with a young seaman, a deserter from a privateer, on the run from the Bow Street Runners – but not all is as it seems. Set in 1796 and researched in her usual meticulous way, the story also incorporates the French landing the following year.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],436,[ii]pp. Original olive cloth, riled and lettered in gilt; a few faint edge spots, but an excellent copy, bright, clean and sound, in the original red and white dust-jacket – the jacket with a few tiny nicks, a couple of very short tears, and a sprinkling of spots, but itself very good indeed, clean and fresh.

£40

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1946). First edition in English of the banned “Die Blendung” (1935), his first and only novel, translated from the German (under Canetti’s personal supervision) by Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgwood (1910-1997). A Head without a World, Headless World and The World in the Head.
Post 8vo (198 x 133mm). 464pp. Bound in a smart recent half black morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; a few slight marks and faint creases, but a very good copy.

£250

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London : Cornucopia Press, 1990. Second edition : limited to 300 numbered copies, signed both by J. L. Carr and by Ronald Blythe, who provides an introduction. Originally published in a small edition at Brighton in 1980, but here in a slightly revised text, finely designed and printed on mould-made paper at the September Press, and with a fresh preface by the author.
Crown 4to (27cm). (xvi),(106),[ii],[4]pp. Original green cloth, with pink labels ruled and lettered in black on upper cover and spine; top edge gilt; very good indeed in the original glassine dust-jacket.

£200

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London : World Film Publications, 1946. First edition. A “Book of the Film” adaptation by E. Fisher of an original story with dialogue by Joyce Cary, adapted via the Herbert Victor and Thorold Dickinson screenplay. Illustrated with stills and studio portraits (Phyllis Calvert, Eric Portman and some seldom seen black actors).
Crown 8vo (19cm). (78)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; a little rubbed and slight creased; text a little browned throughout, more heavily and unevenly on opening leaves, but a good copy of a fragile production.

£20

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London : Eyre & Spottiswoode, (1971). First edition. The recipient of the first ever Whitbread Novel of the Year award, her earlier novel “A Slanting Light” having taken the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1963. A novel framed around the making of a documentary on a forgotten Jewish poet (said to be based on Isaac Rosenberg). “We see not only human nature, often treacherous and fallible in action, but a panoramic view of English and Jewish life on many levels of society over the last fifty years”. The present copy is inscribed by the author on the title-page, “To Martyn with warmest good wishes and thanks for everything, Gerda” — the recipient being bookseller Martyn Goff (1923-2015), architect of the Bedford Square Book Bang held that summer, and soon to become the driving force behind the Booker Prize.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (430),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; slight bruise at foot; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the purple dust-jacket — the jacket lightly sunned, with a hint of tanning, some mild edge-wear and a couple of slight scuffs, but still complete, bright and also very good.

£400

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1987). First edition. “In Alice Springs – a grid of scorching streets where men in long white socks were forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers – I met a Russian who was mapping the sacred sites of the Aboriginals”. His finest work – a novel of ideas – a “profound journey into the geography of the mind”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(294),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint edge spots, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£100

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London : Cassell & Co., (1946). First edition. The great set-piece speeches of 1945 – the atomic bomb, the death of Roosevelt, the 1945 election, etc. The sixth volume of the war speeches, edited by Charles Eade.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(240)pp. Plates. Original blue cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims, but a very good copy in a lightly worn dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1989). First edition. His second novel – the winner of the 1989 Whitbread Fiction Prize. Lives intertwined across time – alchemy, occult, fate, passion and obsession.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 542,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; very faint spine crease; a few faint marks, but overall a very good copy in the dust-jacket – just lightly used.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1957. First edition. A father and three daughters – “A normal part of life may not be a thing to dispense with”. “This great author has made blood-relationship and its attendant psychological maladies her subject. Grim would be the result were it not for Miss Compton-Burnett’s exquisite humour, and the breath-taking twists and turns of each household drama” (The Tatler, 28th August 1957).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (208)pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; a couple of spots, but a very good and bright copy in the original Gollancz yellow dust-jacket, printed in magenta and black – just lightly tanned, lightly marked and slightly worn at tips.

£20

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1963. First edition. “What harm is there in hearing a pin drop?” said Joanna. “To read her stylized, spare and formal novels is to hear the rattle of elegant skeletons, to sit inside the cage while charming and well-bred panthers pick the dinner-bones clean ... a riotously funny, infinitely black comedy about an appalling father” (The Tatler, 4th December 1963).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 224pp. Original orange boards, lettered in gilt; a handful of edge spots, but very good copy in the original Gollancz yellow dust-jacket, printed in magenta and black – just faintly marked and lightly chipped.

£20

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London : Macmillan London, (1990). First edition. “Written in the rinsed-pebble prose of an outstanding man of letters” – the early reminiscences of the author of “Scenes from Provincial Life”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(170),[ii]pp. Original maroon boards, lettered on spine in gilt; very good in the Paul Collicut dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Everett & Co., 1909. First edition. A German invasion by stealth from Captain Curties R.E. – “Vehicles rumbled by with loads of wounded. Before the headquarters of each of the Territorial Battalions, before each bank and each public building, outside Buckingham Palace, stood stolid German sentries. German officers filled the breakfast rooms of the hotels. The Monument was a German look-out post. The guttural tones of the Teuton answered ‘calls’ on the telephone, censored conversations, ‘cut off’ at a second’s notice. The railway stations and the police stations, the telegraph offices and the newspaper offices were in German hands ... London was under martial law, ‘held up’ by two hundred thousand Germans under arms. How had the enemy entered the city? That was the question. None had witnessed their coming. No transports had been sighted. No trains had been commandeered. There was no news of a landing. Curious – and startling! They had materialised, it seemed, out of thin air” (The Sketch, 13th April 1910).
Post 8vo (21cm). viii,312pp. Original red decorative cloth; a touch sunned; a few minor marks, spots and signs of age and use, but a very good copy of a scarce imaginary wars title.

£200

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1960. First edition. Autobiography of the poet and (as Nicholas Blake) crime-writer.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (244)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original tan buckram, blocked and lettered in black and gilt; a few minor signs of age and use, but overall a very good copy in the Reynolds Stone dust-jacket – just lightly tanned and slightly spotted, with a chip to rear panel. Contemporary (1961) ownership inscription of Mary Mitchell.

£20

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. First edition. Beyond the early pamphlets and offprints, Douglas’s first book and his first venture into fiction. He later claimed that just eight copies were sold – a slight exaggeration, but close on 600 copies of the original 750 were still unsold in 1903 and almost certainly pulped. Contains fifteen short stories (including “Elfwater”, “Nocturne”, “The Devil’s Oak”, and “Belladonna”) as well as the fantasy femme fatale novella “Nerinda”, most of the former written in collaboration with his then wife, Elsa Fitzgibbon (1876-1916).
Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). (viii),(248)pp. Bound in a most attractive mid twentieth-century full red morocco, banded and gilt, by William Root & Son of London; top edge gilt; red silk marker; original pictorial cloth upper cover preserved at rear; a few very minor signs of age and use; a few faint spots, but overall a very good copy in a fine binding.

£400

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London : Fortune Press, [1940]. First edition. A review copy, and so stamped on front free endpaper. Three verse plays: “The Unburied Dead”, dedicated to Gandhi; “Ora Pro Nobis”, dedicated to Richard March; and “Pimp, Skunk and Profiteer”, dedicated to Ezra Pound.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (136)pp. Original green buckram, lettered in gilt; cloth a little dulled and faded; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy in the original beige dust-jacket, printed in black, with a striking design on the upper panel – very slightly tanned and with just a hint of wear. Neat contemporary (1941) inscription on front free endpaper. D’Arch Smith 169.

£25

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London : Dennis Dobson, (1961). First edition. Very much a London novel – starting in Stockwell and recounting the satirical tale of a spiv who suddenly finds himself possessed of the power of healing.
Post 8vo (21cm). 192pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; endpapers very slightly tanned, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a stylish pictorial design in red, green and black on white – just a touch dusty, but otherwise very good indeed.

£20

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London : George Allen & Sons, 1908. First edition. A collection of twelve stories, including “The Kith of the Elf-Folk”, “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth”, “The Doom of La Traviata”, etc. Illustrated by the great Sidney Sime (1865-1941) and linked to Dunsany’s two earlier collections via the gods and goddesses of Pegãna, who appear in several of the stories.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). (xii),(244)pp. Ten black and white plates by Sime. Original decorative green cloth gilt; a touch sunned; some very faint rubbing and wear at tips; a few slight spots; small tape-marks on endpapers, but overall a very good and still bright copy.

£250

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Longmans, Green & Co., (1961). First edition. The vagaries of the human heart and the four viewpoints of Penry Crendon (forgotten author and vagrant), his first wife Elizabeth (the devout Catholic), Mona his third (whose weaknesses are vulgarity and the bottle), and Blanche (the woman of sensibility engaged to his son). “She has helped explode the dying myth that the novel is becoming extinct” (John Betjeman).
Post 8vo (21cm). x,(212),[ii]pp. Original orange-red boards, lettered on spine in gilt; just slightly bruised; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original Barbara Jones dust-jacket – a design in yellow, orange, brown and black on white – the jacket lightly spotted on rear panel and verso.

£20

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., (1961). First edition. A review copy, with the publisher’s slip loosely inserted. The vagaries of the human heart and the four viewpoints of Penry Crendon (forgotten author and vagrant), his first wife Elizabeth (the devout Catholic), Mona his third (whose weaknesses are vulgarity and the bottle), and Blanche (the woman of sensibility engaged to his son). “She has helped explode the dying myth that the novel is becoming extinct” (John Betjeman).
Post 8vo (21cm). x,(212),[ii]pp. Original orange-red boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the original Barbara Jones dust-jacket – a design in yellow, orange, brown and black on white – just lightly nicked and a little fingered on lower panel. Contemporary ownership inscription of Wendy Marlar. Bloomfield D27.

£20

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London : Constable & Co., 1911. First edition. “A really clever and amusing piece of work, and its attractions are as many as its charming title suggests” (Pall Mall Gazette, 12th August 1911). A modern publisher transported back to the Middle Ages by virtue of railway accident near Salisbury – Ford’s popular fantasy, dedicated to Violet Hunt – “I have worked at it harder, I think, than at any story I ever wrote, because it was to please you”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(364),[xii]pp. Original brown cloth, pictorially blocked in blind on upper cover; a touch bruised; endpapers a little spotted, with a sprinkling of spots elsewhere, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of G. M. Bradley.

£100

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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. “There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them” (W. H. Auden).
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.

£50

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London : The Harvill Press, (1997). First British edition. Signed and dated (4th September 1997) by Richard Ford on the title-page. Three stories of men and women at the essential moments of truth – “One of the glories of modern American writing” (Jonathan Raban).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],(256),[vi]pp. Original black boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£40

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London : Michael Joseph, (1940). First edition. Don Narciso Rich, a liberal lawyer no longer young and almost portly, volunteers to accompany Columbus on his third voyage to the Americas – “Here is history, not in terms of banner and caravel, but in living terms of greed, ambition, thirst, jealousy”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (320)pp. Endpaper map. Original red cloth, blocked and lettered in silver; mild darkening at head; a couple of marks; slight tanning to half-title, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the Philip Gough dust-jacket – the jacket a little creased, but with only minimal wear and also very good. Book Society bookplate (a design by Rex Whistler) with “September 1940” in manuscript inserted to verso of front free endpaper.

£125

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1940. First edition. “This pamphlet is propaganda. I believe that if the Nazis won they would destroy our civilisation ...”. In the Macmillan War Pamphlets series.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 32pp. Original orange stapled wrappers, printed in blue; staples very lightly rusted; lower wrapper very faintly creased, but otherwise a very good copy. Kirkpatrick A23.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1969). First edition. Victorian Lyme Regis and the enigmatic Sarah Woodruff – a book for which the note on the dust-jacket about the pagination being correct is perhaps a necessary prelude. Filmed by Karel Reisz in 1981 with a Harold Pinter screenplay, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (446),[ii]pp. Pictorial endpapers by Tom Adams. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; a very good, clean and sound copy in the Adrian Brewin dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly tanned, a touch sunned at spine, as usual, and with some very mild rubbing, but also very good.

£200

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Edinburgh : Canongate Books, (2008). First British edition. “An unforgettable novel about the distance a friendship must travel, and the depths it must plumb, when confronted by the threat of death. It is full of wisdom, dark laughter, and truth” – the multiple award-winning novel, first published in Australia earlier in 2008. “A book for grown-up people” (Hilary Mantel), “‘The Spare Room’ is a perfect novel” (Peter Carey).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(196),[vi]pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; green silk ribbon; a very good copy indeed in the pictorial dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1967). First edition. “Brian Glanville has a pitiless eye for the frauds and tactics of the sex game” – the “artist type” revenges himself on intellectuals, stockbrokers and slick executives.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the stylish Bill Botten dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly rubbed and very slightly creased, but still very good.

£20

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1961). First edition. His first book – a novel set on the rarer fringes of London literary society. “A little bit of nonsense, young nonsense at that, but excellently contained ... a young man in love and in and out of money ... filled with wonderfully useful references to the preoccupations of the young. It is fun” (The Sphere, 3rd June 1961).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 288pp. Original orange-red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few edge-spots, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a pictorial design by Quentin Blake in purple, ochre and black on white – also very good indeed.

£25

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London : Cassell & Co., (1932). First edition. Satan narrates the epic of mankind – his versions of the biblical stories, the days when he possessed Tiberius, Nero, the Caliph, Cromwell and Napoleon, his final possession, last days in a Bayswater boarding-house, and cremation at Golders Green. Gerhardi, or Gerhardie to use the spelling he later adopted, and something of a lost masterpiece – Evelyn Waugh once remarked to him, “I have talent, but you have genius”. He was also the principal model for the central character (Logan Mountstuart) in William Boyd’s “Any Human Heart”. His collaborator, Brian Holdsworth Lunn (1893-1956), of the Lunn travel-agency family, historian and schoolmaster, is chiefly remembered for his “Switchback” autobiography, with its portrayal of wartime mental breakdown.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 382,[ii]pp. Original black cloth, lettered in red; a few spots to covers and edges; small patch of fading at foot, where the dust-jacket is chipped; endpapers lightly tanned, but overall a very good copy in the striking pictorial dust-jacket – sunned at spine, tiny chips at head, a slightly larger one at foot; some nicks and short tears, with some local discolouration from tape-repairs, but still good and not unattractive.

£100

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London : Viking, (1996). First British edition. A strange predictive tale of the beautiful, mysterious and entirely virtual media star – from the man who coined the term cyberspace. “The founding father of cyberpunk returns to the techno-decadent 21st century mapped out in his other major works ... Gibson exhibits his greatest strength: intense speculation, expressed in dramatic form, about the near-term evolution of and merging of cultural, social and technological trends, and how they affect character” (Publishers’ Weekly).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],292,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the Gary Marsh dust-jacket – similarly with a hint of bruising, but also very good.

£20

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1947]. First edition. American and Scotsman live in enmity on Italian island – Mussolini and Fascism unite them. An uncommon novel from the author of “Magnolia Street”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 208pp. Original red boards, lettered in black; faint spotting of top edge, but a very good, clean and sound copy in the Paul Dessau dust-jacket – just lightly used and slightly nicked.

£25

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London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. “Golding at his playful, ironic and mysterious best” The title story set in ancient Egypt, together with “Clonk Clonk” from a primitive matriarchal society, and “Envoy Extraordinary” from Imperial Rome.
Post 8vo (21cm). 178,[ii]pp. Original pale green boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket with just a hint of rubbing to tips and with a couple of tiny marks and a nick to the rear panel, but also very good.

£50

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First British edition. Winner of the 1971 James Tait Black Memorial Prize — “her major work so far, a novel of great substance and power describing an African nation’s struggle to be born and the course of an epic love affair” — an Englishman confronts the inadequacy of his liberal ideas. “Gordimer writes of blacks and whites, but her steady, unblinking eye sees something grey there. You could call it human nature and you would be right. Her true subject is humankind, as it is for every great writer” (Daily Telegraph).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],504p. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the M. Mohan dust-jacket — a touch sunned, with some minor edge-wear, but also very good.

£40

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Leicester : Grange Fibre Co., 1962. First edition. Illustrated in colour throughout and with a stunning colour cover design by Rigby Graham.
Post 8vo (21cm). [32]pp. Original linson, printed in gold and colours, and lettered down the “linson vellum” spine in gilt; a touch darkened at tips and very slightly bruised, but still a very good, bright and sound copy.

£25

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London : Boriswood, 1933. First trade edition. The self-taught former ship’s stoker with a powerful novel of a captain obsessed with his only passenger, the wife of a diplomat. A mysterious stoker named Mulcare joins the crew at the last minute. “You are not reading about a ship, you live on it ... I am happy that Mr. Hanley has achieved this first-rate novel. For me he is now easily first among living writers of sea stories” (Richard Aldington).
Demy 8vo (22cm). (424),[viii]pp. Original black cloth, ruled and lettered in red and silver; top edge red; endpapers lightly tanned; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy indeed, bright and sound, in the delightful art-deco dust-jacket by James Boswell (1906-1971), also very good indeed, bar a single small mark on the lower panel. Loosely inserted are the original publisher’s flyer and a press-cutting of the Richard Aldington review quoted above.

£125

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London : Greening & Co., 1906. First edition. A winged Immortal from the planet Muran visits Earth “for the purposes of research – historical and otherwise”. Not much radium and not much romance, as the reviewer for the “Illustrated London News” (5th May 1906) pointed out – but in visiting the House of Commons, being demonstrated at the Royal Society, attending an “at home”, and interviewing prominent people, there is plenty of scope for some delicate satire on Edwardian Society. Written in his retirement by the Cornish journalist J. Henry Harris.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(236)pp + 52pp inserted publisher’s advertisements dated 1905-1906, printed in red and black. Original pictorial cloth, gilt and enamelled; a few minor marks; endpapers lightly tanned, but a very good, bright and sound copy.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. Evidently a review copy, a printed Faber slip loosely inserted “With the author's compliments” and with a typed date of publication. Four mesmeric and haunting “fables” on the author’s native Guyana and its ethnic groups — Macusi, Arecuna, Wapisiana and Arawaks. With striking illustrations by Karen Usborne.
Post 8vo (21cm). 104pp. Original deep orange cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good, clean, bright and sound copy in the Karen Usborne dust-jacket — very good, clean and unworn.

£100

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Harmondsworth : Viking, (1985). First edition. “An outrageously funny dinner party, a separation, a shooting weekend, a brutal moment glimpsed through a window, a brawl in a London flat, a manic photographic session, a crazed drive through southern France ... comic and passionate, menacing and desolate” – a novel from the poet also known under other names as the crime writers Jack Curtis and David Lawrence.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(182),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1957). First edition. A fragile widow, an ex-army chauffeur, love, obsession, and repudiation. “On his day there is no more subtle novelist writing than L. P. Hartley, and few as satisfying. In The Hireling he is very much on his day ... a triumph of the novelist’s art” (Daily News, 10th July 1957). Memorably filmed in 1973, with Robert Shaw, Sarah Miles, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(248),[iv]pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the Patricia Davey dust-jacket – just faintly tanned, with a couple of slight marks, but also very good.

£50

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London : Bodley Head, (1966). First edition. Regency novel set in Bath – Stacy Calverleigh has gambled away his fortune and requires an heiress. Young orphan Fanny Wendover fits the bill, but her Aunt Abigail has other ideas – enter Uncle Miles – the Black Sheep.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original maroon boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; small mark on top edge, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original Arthur Barbosa dust-jacket – also very good.

£40

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London : Methuen & Co., (1904). First edition. Hichens’ celebrated international best-seller of love, faith and sand – a socialite seeks solace in the desert with a Trappist monk. There were two silent film versions even before the award-winning Technicolor version with Charles Boyer and Basil Rathbone made by David O. Selznick in 1936. Marlene Dietrich played Domini – “This script – you know it is twash”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),520 + 40pp advertisements dated September 1904. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine; some very minor wear and rubbing to cloth; a touch sunned; a few slight marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£125

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London : Methuen & Co., (1906). First edition. Hermione Lester marries a handsome man, ten years her junior. His grandmother was Sicilian and they venture to Sicily on their honeymoon. Things begin to unravel. Filmed in 1921 with Ivor Novello, Phyllis Neilson-Terry and Desdemona Mazza, and again in 1948 with Kay Hammond, Lea Padovani, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],416 + 40pp publisher’s advertisements dated March 1906. Original decorative cloth gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch bruised; endpapers tanned and slightly cracked; some spotting, but a good and still attractive copy of the sort of novel they simply don’t write any more.

£100

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First British edition. “A cross between Hans Christian Andersen and Franz Kafka” — twenty of the famous New York underground performer’s miniature stories and fables, including “The Zebra Storyteller”, “The Santa Claus Murderer”, “Bullfinch and Goblin”, “The Hidden Ballroom at Versailles”, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(88),[ii]pp. Original quarter tan cloth, marbled boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch bumped at foot; mild spotting of edges; very faint crease to opening leaves, but a good copy in the splendid Bill Botten dust-jacket — the jacket likewise a little bumped, with a few small indentations and a crease to the front flap, but complete and with only very minor wear.

£40

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London : William Heinemann, (1971). First British edition. Signed by the author on the half-title. Her third novel — the removal of their hedge as a fire-precaution leaves Bingo and Barney Edwards of Bel Air defenceless and exposed to the farcical madness of contemporary Los Angeles — hippies, junkies, the alternative psychiatrist-cum-guru next door, his patients, brushes with firemen, welfare services, the police, ice-plants, and the realities of the fire when it comes. “A brilliant comic novel ... full of extraordinary characters and events” (Alison Lurie).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(244),[ii],[2]pp. Original orange-red boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good, clean, fresh and bright copy in the Camm Ashbrooke dust-jacket — barring one minuscule nick, also fresh, bright, clean and unworn.

£75

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1959. First edition. Her high comedy of a deluded and utterly unspeakable author at large in Bruges.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(246),[ii]pp. Original turquoise cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in a lightly used dust-jacket – a little spotted on reverse. Bookplate of David Graham.

£25

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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

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London : Faber & Faber, (1987). First edition. An extensive selection from across the full range of Kipling’s work, edited and selected by Craig Raine.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],448,[vi]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; text lightly tanned; one leaf damaged (without loss of text); otherwise very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£10

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1987. First edition. His first novel – young Englishman trapped in Tokyo, an enforced marriage, and a collision with the world of Japanese organised crime. Winner of Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask awards. “This is a fine book, its comedy nicely underplayed, making the world seem big and frightening after reading it, and the business of crossing frontiers only for the brave” (Sunday Telegraph, 22nd February 1987).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(156)pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; slight production flaw to pp.143-48, but otherwise a very good, crisp and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly sunned to spine, but also very good.

£50

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

£100

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

£50

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1902. First edition. “Wild, roaring fun” (Daily News, 20th November 1902). Two well-connected but impoverished young men recruit a team of likewise young, charming and penniless men and women, available for hire to disrupt and disentangle unfortunate or unsuitable romantic attachments before too much harm can be done either to the lovers or, more particularly, their families – “Adventure of the Exemplary Earl”, “Adventure of the Lady Novelist and the Vaccinationist”, “Adventure of the Fair American”, and other tales. “In ‘The Disentanglers’ we have the apotheosis of the detective-story, with, as Mr. Lang’s Canadian millionaire would say, ‘every modern improvement’, divorced, too, from ‘all that cheap revolver business’, to quote the hero and Disentangler-in-Chief ... Apart from the excellent construction and swing of the stories, there is endless fun in the sly digs at literature, modern and ancient – at the penny novelette, the British Museum girl, and the Celtic minor poet” (The Sketch, 3rd December 1902).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],418,[ii]pp. Frontispiece and six perfectly judged plates by Henry Justice Ford (1860-1941). Original decorative cloth – “a bold black and red design on its light coloured cloth cleverly indicative of the contents” (The Gentlewoman, 13th December 1902) – the cloth slightly darkened; a handful of marks and spots; light spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy.

£200

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London : Arthur Barker, (1952). First edition. An innocent born in the year of the Amorous Dragon – abroad in ancient China.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 192pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge crimson; a very good copy in the original dust-jacket, printed in red, black and gold – just a little sunned and with a few short nicks repaired on verso.

£20

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

£500

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1980). First edition. The last duel with Karla.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (328)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a photographic design by Stephen Cornwell – the jacket just a touch sunned, lightly rubbed, and with a short tear to the upper panel.

£50

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London : Viking, (2017). First edition : the “exclusive signed edition”, signed by John le Carré on an additional preliminary leaf dated September 2017. Both a prequel and a sequel to “The Spy who Came in from the Cold” – a swansong for George Smiley, Peter Guillam, Bill Haydon, Jim Prideaux and other memorable spies of fiction. “Poignant and brilliant” (Robert McCrum in The Guardian).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [2],[vi],264,[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a fine copy in the dust-jacket.

£125

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London : Michael Joseph, (1989). First (British) edition in English of “L’Altrui Mestiere” (1985). Forty-four essays on everything from astronomy to linguistics and zoology, with autobiographical pieces and on the nature of writing. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],(x),(210),[ii]pp. Original maroon boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in a likewise very good dust-jacket – an infuriating design by Cathy Morley which simulates non-existent tears and repairs.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1969). First British edition. An “essential companion” to “Under the Volcano” – Lowry’s return to the scene. Edited by Lowry’s widow, Margerie Bonner, and his first biographer, Douglas Day, from 700 pages of Lowry’s notes and drafts. “I welcome the chance to read these pages, which come from the draft-plan of another masterpiece” (Dominic Le Foe in The Illustrated London News, 12th July 1969).
Post 8vo (21cm). xviii,[2],(256)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge lilac; an unusually good copy, the book very good indeed, the jacket fresh, white, unworn and the lettering unfaded.

£50

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First British edition. Lowry’s final novel, completed in draft form before his death and edited from his marginal notes and instructions by his widow, Margerie Bonner. A journey “on which hangs the meaning of his being” to the island off Vancouver. “Had he lived and worked it into the dense rich complexity of Under the Volcano it would have been another such masterpiece ... the familiar Lowry hallmarks of occultism, subtlety with words, vivid recurring images, the theme of lost homes and an endless journey ... Lowry’s search for humanity’s lost equilibrium” (Victoria Brittain in the Illustrated London News, 1st November 1971). “A species of ecstatic prose that has all but gone out of existence” (Matthew Corrigan in the New York Times, 25th October 1970).
Post 8vo (21cm). [4],[viii],336pp. Original maroon boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge grey; tiny bruise at foot; some almost imperceptible tanning of endpapers; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the Bill Botten dust-jacket — the jacket lightly bruised, with a hint of spotting here and there, but unworn and also very good.

£40

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New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (1971). First edition. Signed by Mary McCarthy on the title-page. “An absorbing novel about a young man’s voyage into adulthood, enlivened by Mary McCarthy’s needling wit ... an authentic and thoughtful slice of cultural history” (Hilary Mantel). Dodging the draft in 1960s Paris — “Fiercely intelligent, insatiably combative, McCarthy’s novels invite controversy” (Penelope Lively). “Miss McCarthy provides some exquisitely funny scenes, but as usual in her writing the pain is left visible not so much as an inch under the surface” (Victoria Brittain, in the Illustrated London News, 1st November 1971).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],344pp. Original yellow cloth, lettered in blue and brown; top edge brown; cloth lightly bruised and slightly spotted, with some very faint discolouration at head; a handful of edge-spots, but internally a very good, clean, and sound copy in the Peter Vos / Paul Bacon dust-jacket — the jacket similarly bruised and faintly discoloured at head, with some light edge-wear, a couple of nicks, and a couple of repaired tears on the back panel, but complete and serviceable still.

£50

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London : Jarrolds, (1937). First edition. Reflections and studies on the character and genius of Scotland from the author of “England, Their England”. In the My Country series.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (280),[iv]pp. Portrait frontispiece. Plates. Original jade cloth, lettered across spine in white; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a monochrome photographic design, lettered in green and black – lightly worn.

£20

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1939. First edition : in a dust-jacket over-printed with Macmillan’s Overseas Library information and restrictions on lower flap. An epistolary novel in which the hero flies round the world to escape the “cold blue eyes” of the lady.
Crown 8vo. viii,(308),[ii],[2]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in gilt and blind; a few slight marks; endpapers and edges a little tanned; a very good copy in the original Bip Pares dust-jacket – cream, lettered in red and decorated in sky-blue – price-clipped, lightly worn, very slightly chipped and a little tanned. Small bookseller’s label of Angus & Robertson of Sydney on front paste-down.

£15

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1990). First edition. Signed by Ian McEwan on the title-page. “It is 1955 and post-war Berlin is crawling with subterfuge” – a young British technician involved in electronic surveillance encounters a beautiful young German called Maria.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(232)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good copy in the Robin Cracknell dust-jacket – the jacket with a faint impression of the author’s signature on the lower panel, but also very good.

£50

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New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1971). First edition. A Jewish writer with writer’s block and a black writer, “between soul and revolution”, in a New York tenement — co-tenants of a landlord keen to evict. “Malamud in his novels and stories discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of New York. He was a myth-maker, a fabulist, a writer of exquisite parables ... He is a rich original of the first rank” (Saul Bellow).
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],230,[ii]pp. Original orange cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge charcoal; a few slight marks, but still a very good, clean, and sound copy in the Muriel Nasser dust-jacket — the jacket also very good.

£40

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London : Bantam Press, (2000). First edition. Fresh from the battle of Waterloo, Matthew Hervey departs on a secret mission to India.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xiv),320,[ii]pp. A very good copy in the Chris Collingwood dust-jacket – also very good. Contemporary ownership inscription of R. K. Gilkes (April, 2000).

£20

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London : Bantam Press, (2008). First edition. Brigadier Mallinson with a further instalment of the much-lauded adventures of Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons- South Africa in 1828, Hervey escorts an embassy to Shaka, King of the Zulus.
Medium 8vo (25cm). x,(338),[ii],[2]pp. Endpaper maps. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good in the pictorial Robert Papp dust-jacket – just faintly creased.

£20

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London : Constable & Co., (1924). First edition. A collection of twenty-five stories written between 1908 and 1920, including the semi-autobiographical “An Indiscreet Journey”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],(x),(260)pp. Original grey cloth, ruled and lettered in blue; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the typographic dust-jacket – lightly tanned and with minor wear and a few short nicks, but also very good. Pictorial bookplate of Marjorie Dickson and small bookseller’s label of the Bucks County Book Shop of Amersham on front endpaper.

£150

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London : Constable & Co., 1927. First edition. Mansfield destroyed all but a fragment of her “huge complaining diaries” prior to 1914, but the journal – here edited and introduced by John Middleton Murry – made up of notes for stories, diary entries, unposted letters, comments and confessions, preserves all that she wished to survive for the period 1914-1922.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xvi),(252)pp. Original grey cloth, ruled and lettered in blue; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy in the typographic dust-jacket – lightly tanned and just slightly worn – but also very good. Bookseller’s label of Edgar H. Wells & Co. of New York on rear pastedown.

£50

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First British edition. The title-story and the eight short stories of the “Big Mama’s Funeral” sequence, first published in Colombia and Mexico in 1961-1962. “One of the richest pieces of writing this exceptional author has produced” (Victoria Brittain in the Illustrated London News, 1st October 1971). The second of his books (and the first of his short stories) to appear in a British edition, the translations those of J. S. Bernstein first published in the United States. Márquez was awarded the Nobel in 1982 “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],170pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge red; a few tiny marks, but a very good copy indeed in the Toni Evora dust-jacket – also very good. Neat ownership inscription of Kiernan Ryan.

£200

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London : William Heinemann, (1924). First edition. “A singularly interesting and well-written novel of breathless adventure ... the book is so well written, its adventures so abundant, that I would wish to end with unqualified praise and say that this should be, and will be, one of the books that all must read” (The Sphere, 8th November 1924).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],332pp. Original blue cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; top edge blue; very lightly rubbed; endpapers a little tanned; edges and prelims somewhat spotted, but still a pleasant copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – the jacket a little sunned, lightly worn, with some very shallow chipping, a couple of short repaired tears and a few tiny nicks, but still an uncommon and attractive survival.

£125

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London : Hodder and Stoughton, (1942). First edition. “A powerful, fascinating novel of the Eighteenth Century in England and Italy; the drama of a primitive crime in a polished setting and the slow working of a strange revenge”. A wartime novel by the popular author of “The Four Feathers”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 318,[ii]pp. Original light blue cloth, lettered in black; slightly sunned; some minor wear; a few slight marks, flecks and spots, but internally a very good, clean and sound copy in a dust-jacket designed by Pip Pares (1904-1977) – a little chipped and worn with a few nicks, but substantially complete and not unattractive. For more on Bip Pares, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 17th September 2013.

£25

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London : Michael Joseph, (1957). First edition. One of the most powerful of Masters’ Indian tales, commencing in 1902 and charting the career of Peter Savage, administrator, mountaineer, soldier and a man of “ruthless will and stupendous ambition”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],(416)pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; slight bruise to lower edge of upper board; slight production flaw affecting the tops of some leaves; endpapers a little tanned, but a good copy in the Donald Green dust-jacket – lightly worn and a touch tanned. Tiny inscription on front free endpaper.

£20

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London : Cassell & Co., (1929). First edition in English of “Climats” (1928) – a story of love and jealousy, a man and two women – “the familiar triangle in an unfamiliar construction” (The Graphic, 19th October 1929) – from a French author immensely popular in the English-speaking world in the interwar years. Translated by Dr Joseph Collins (1866-1950).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(314),[ii]pp. Original black cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; just slightly bruised; edges spotted, but a very good copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – lightly sunned and with a little light wear, but also very good.

£40

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Hanley : R. & L. Locker, (1947). Second edition. Gaynor Frost is in love with brilliant young surgeon, Shane Lodester, but her adopted sister Marcia dazzles him into an engagement. A rival for Marcia’s hand kills himself and Gaynor is compelled to take the blame. First published by Mills & Boon in 1940.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 158,[ii]pp. Original beige boards, lettered in black; edges a little spotted, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a little chip, some creases, unobtrusive tears, and some light discolouration to rear panel, but complete and attractive still.

£20

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New York : Gemini Smith / Playboy Press, (1971). First edition. The richly illustrated life and times of a much-banned author — writing, painting, California, Paris, childhood — “Today’s naked generation has learned nearly everything from him — everything, that is to say, except his bookishness, his capacity for recapturing innocence, his sense of wonder, his sense of words ... Miller talking his life instead of writing it (he has written it already) ... Durrell thinks that Miller’s lifework is the best confessional writing since Rousseau. He is probably right” (Anthony Burgess in the New York Times, 2nd January 1972).
Foolscap folio (32cm). (208)pp. Photographs, portraits and illustrations throughout, some in colour. Original navy cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright and clean copy in the Bradley Smith / Nicole de Jurenev dust-jacket — the jacket also very good, with just very minor edge-wear.

£100

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London : John Miles, (1935). First edition in English of the Grand Prix winning “Les Célebataires” (1934), here in a translation by Thomas McGreevy. A powerful novel of minor aristocracy failing to come to terms with the modern world.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(268)pp. In the secondary binding of blue cloth, lettered in darker blue; very good in the secondary Frederick Muller dust-jacket – a little rubbed and slightly sprinkled and tanned.

£20

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1932. First edition. A great success in its day and winner of the Hawthornden Prize. Morgan draws on his Great War experiences for a subtle and ethereal love story – a British officer interned in a castle, a Dutch aristocrat, and his English step-daughter married to a German officer. “The Fountain is written as beautifully as it is possible for a book to be” (John Bayley, in The London Review of Books, 7th February 1985).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xii),434,[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; tiny split at foot of front endpaper, some spotting of edges, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the attractive original dust-jacket – a pictorial design signed VMM – a little tanned and slightly nicked, but also very good.

£100

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1971). First edition. “I was a politician and I was getting out of politics because I was ashamed ... I went to that part of the country I was supposed to represent — represent as a hole might represent a bucket”. Stream of consciousness and a mind in torment from Anthony Greville, M.P. — politics, adultery — “I sometimes called Natalia Natalie instead of Natalia, when she was the ravenous rather than the angelic angel” — and excursions into the interplay of power and politics. “An outstanding novel. It throws into the melting-pot the whole problem of the predicament of living and it needs to be read more than once” (Elizabeth Harvey for the Birmingham Daily Post, 26th June 1971). “One of the most interesting and gifted English novelists writing today” (Vernon Scannell).
Demy 8vo (23cm). 316,[iv]pp. Original navy boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge orange; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the Peter Cope dust-jacket — the jacket with some very minor edge-wear and a hint of tanning to the inner flaps, but also very good.

£25

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London : André Deutsch, (1969). First edition. The Port of Spain and the twinned stories of the dispossessed conquistador and the later Venezuelan revolution.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [2],334pp. Frontispiece plan. Endpaper maps. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge orange; very good in the original Keith Rawling dust-jacket – a design in brown, gold and orange – a little sunned and just slightly nicked.

£20

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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

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London : André Deutsch, (1972). First edition. A collection of essays and articles – Naipaul on being an Indian West Indian, on London, on cricket, on India, on John Steinbeck and Monterey, on Norman Mailer and New York, on Jacques Soustelle, on St. Kitts, on Anguilla, on Mauritius, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 286,[ii]pp. Original navy boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch of sunning to spine, but a very good copy in the original Peter Freeman dust-jacket – a design in blue, yellow, cerise and white – just slightly creased on an inner flap, but otherwise very good.

£20

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London : Arthur Gray (Books), [1934]. First edition. “Someone once said that the parties in Hollywood sounded like school treats compared to those given by Maisie Bellamy” – film critic Peter Day knows everyone in the Elstree set – young Lucinda Carey does not. Conflicts between love and career, “the glamour of the film world; written with first-hand knowledge”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (250),[ii]pp. Original jade cloth, lettered in black; a few minor marks, but a very good copy in the striking art-deco dust-jacket by H. W. Perl (1897-1952) – a little sunned, label neatly removed, but very lightly used and bright and attractive. Just two copies (British Library and New York) located in the world’s major libraries.

£125

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New York : Gemor Press, (1945). First edition. “The unveiling of women is a delicate matter. It will not happen overnight. We are all afraid of what we shall find”. One of 1,000 copies of the regular edition, illustrated with five woodcuts by “Ian Hugo” – Nin’s husband Hugh Parker Guiler (1898-1985). This copy signed by Nin and amicably inscribed to Raymond Daum – “Hoping we may collaborate!” – Raymond Witham Daum (1923-2003), cameraman and archivist, perhaps best-known for his “Walking with Garbo” (1991). His archive documenting his friendships with Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo and other well-known figures is now housed at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [iv],(184),[iv],[4]pp – including integral endleaves. Five woodblock illustrations by Ian Hugo. Original decorative boards in a Hugo design in maroon and cream; some very minor wear and a few slight marks; tiny sticker mark on rear board; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy.

£500

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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

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1933). First edition. The daughter of a county family marries the son of one of the tenants and is rejected by her kith and kin – a fine and unsentimental novel of Irish life. “From this straightforward account of the lives of a few Irish families we get an almost complete conception of the problem of Ireland” (Aberdeen Press, 12th October 1933).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (414),[ii]pp. Original olive cloth, blocked and lettered in yellow; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the stylish dust-jacket – slightly darkened at foot of spine and with just a touch of edge-wear, but also very good.

£125

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, (1997). A definitive edition of Orwell’s second novel, originally published in 1935, restoring for the first time a number of previously censored readings, and indicating other passages known to have been “toned down”. Edited, and with a lengthy textual note by Peter Davison. First published in this form in 1986.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(308),[iv]pp. Original blue cloth, blocked and lettered in silver; very good in the original dust-jacket – a design in blue, orange, red and white – just very faintly sunned.

£40

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

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1974. First edition. Nine short stories – antique dealers and their fantasies; the lady from Guatemala; Molly – “as noisy as a blowlamp, but pretty”; an innocent abroad; an ambitious film-producer, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (204),[iv]pp. Original light green-grey boards, lettered in gilt; very minor adhesion damage to endpapers, but a very good copy in the John Sutcliffe dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1997). First British edition. Pynchon’s Grand Tour of the Enlightenment’s dark hemisphere.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(774),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good in the Raquel Jaramillo dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (2009). First British edition. “It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A. ... a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists”. Filmed in 2014 with Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, etc.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(370),[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£50

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition. “When a woman tells you her past, you can be sure she intends you to be her future, you can quote me there” — the interior monologue of a very ordinary man with a mind to murder his wife. “Its theme is the habitual duplicity of civilized life. Conspiracy, says Frederic Raphael, is the inevitable partner of permanence; we share our beds with strangers”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (184)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge red; slight tanning to endpapers and a couple of spots, but a very good copy in the Colin Andrews dust-jacket — the jacket sunned at spine (as usual) and price-clipped by the publisher, with a revised price over-sticker, but with only a very faint suggestion of wear and also very good.

£25

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London : Methuen & Co., (1918). First edition. Rohmer tries to escape from the Doctor Fu Manchu genre with a restrained but serious excursion into the occult and philiosophical novel.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],250pp + (32)pp. Original tan cloth, lettered in black; very slightly rubbed; a touch bruised; very mild spotting of edges; a few small marks and spots; advertisement leaves a little tanned and brittle, with a short tear to final leaf, but overall a very good copy of a difficult title. Bleiler p.170.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1963. First published edition : the trade issue. Rolfe’s long-lost early novel, set in Rome in the early sixteenth century, first printed and prepared for publication in 1908-1909 but never issued. Edited and introduced by Cecil Woolf.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(344)pp. Original boards – Rolfe’s striking original design in violet and white, lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, clean, bright and sound copy in the original matching dust-jacket – Rolfe’s own design, printed in scarlet and purple on white – just slightly tanned, but also very good. Woolf A8c.

£25

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

£40

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London : 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

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London : Frank Cass & Co., (1970). A facsimile reprint of the complete run of all ten issues of the influential quarterly originally published between 1917 and 1920. With contributions from Richard Aldington, T. S. Eliot, Ronald Firbank, Stephen Hudson, Ford Madox Hueffer, Aldous Huxley, Wyndham Lewis, Katherine Mansfield, Wilfred Owen, Ezra Pound, Herbert Read, Dorothy M. Richardson, Isaac Rosenberg, Frank Rutter, Siegfried Sassoon, Walter Sickert, Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell, etc. – as well as illustrations by H. Gaudier-Brzeska, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, Nina Hamnett, E. McKnight Kauffer, Wyndham Lewis, John Nash, Paul Nash, C. R. W. Nevinson, Lucien Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Edward Wadsworth, and others. Frank Cass Library of English Little Magazines No. 16, edited by B. C. Bloomfield.
Two volumes. Crown 4to (26cm). Irregular pagination. Illustrations, many full-page. Original cloth; slight marking to foot of boards and light fading to fore-edges, but otherwise very good.

£50

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London : Constable & Co., (1937). First edition. Young love in France – “a book which begins and ends with their farewell, under the cliff-like side of a Cunarder on the docks of Cherbourg in the rain”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],344pp. Original purple cloth, blocked in gilt and lettered in green across spine; top edge pink; a touch sunned; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a design in purple-red, white and black (with words from the song) – just lightly used, a touch sunned and very lightly tanned – but in very good order.

£50

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

£40

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London : Mantle, (2012). First edition. “1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk ... dark authoritarian rule; press, radio and television are controlled .. there are terrible rumours too about what is happening in the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(594),[iv]pp. Endpaper maps. Original boards; a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Faber & Faber, (1939). First British edition. Six sequences of Saroyan short stories – “Mr. Saroyan is so diverse, so expressive, that he is never a bore and always amusing ... Seldom cynical, occasionally angry, he is always seeing, watching, understanding, and transposing, into his highly artificial prose that achieves the ultra-natural, the ways, foibles, desires and idiocies of mankind ... he has a spate of words at need and sometimes lets them tumble over one another, but always as trained acrobats, never with casual effect or effort” (Birmingham Daily Post, 21st March 1939).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 316,[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in yellow; a few faint spots to endpapers, but an exceptionally good copy of a book where the yellow blocking has usually suffered – in the striking original dust-jacket – the jacket with minimal wear and a sprinkle of spots, but also exceptionally good.

£100

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London : Lindsay Drummond, [1944]. First edition. A collection of twenty-one wartime short stories – from Mulk Raj Anand (Lottery), John Heath-Stubbs (That on Parched Mountains), J. F. Hendry (The Catacomb of Love), Rayner Heppenstall (The Bird has Flown), Inez Holden (To-day at the Bureaucracy), Gwyn Jones (Take us the Little Foxes), Mary Lavin (The Statue in the Grounds), John Pudney (The City of Copious Libations), Alan Ross (Pain), William Sansom (From the Water Junction) and others, including the two editors themselves. With biographical notes on the contributors.
First edition. Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],(186)pp. Original mustard cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in cerise; very lightly rubbed and just lightly bruised; some spotting, mainly to edges; a couple of tiny creases, but still overall a very good copy in the striking Henry Moore dust-jacket – the jacket a little rubbed and slightly darkened, but with just minor wear and also very good.

£50

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London : William Heinemann, (1975). First edition. The final volume of Scott’s “Jewel in the Crown” quartet – the British Raj moves inexorably towards its end, the horrors of partition, etc. “Is there nothing more gullible in the whole animal world than a human being? One has this hysterical belief in the non-recurrence of the abysmal, I suppose. One always imagines one has reached the nadir and that the only possible next move is up and out”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(600)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very faint spine crease; light spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original Bill Richmond dust-jacket – just faintly sunned at spine, but also very good.

£100

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London : Constable & Co., 1928. First edition. “You can introduce almost any measure of Socialism or Communism into England provided you call it by some other name. Propose Socialistic confiscation of the incomes of the rich, and the whole country will rise to repel such Russian wickedness. Call it income-tax, supertax, and estate duties, and you can lift enough hundreds of millions from the pockets of our propertied class to turn the Soviet of Federated Russian Republics green with envy”. Begun as a letter to his sister-in-law, Shaw’s mansplaining apologia for socialism eventually ran to eighty-four chapters. He later claimed that although he had taken “the utmost pains to make it intelligible, clear, lucid, unambiguous, simple, and unmistakeable ... only one man in the civilized world has understood it; and that man is Albert Einstein”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). xxxvi,(496)pp. Original decorative green cloth gilt; top edge gilt; mild discolouration of endpapers; edges a little spotted, but otherwise a very good, bright, sound and unworn copy in the striking dust-jacket – an uncredited design by Eric Kennington (1888-1960) – the jacket a touch spotted, and little worn and torn, with some minor repair, but virtually complete and attractive still.

£200

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London : W. H. Allen, 1959. First edition. His second book, winner of the Hawthornden prize, the title novella memorably filmed by Tony Richardson, with Tom Courtenay and Michael Redgrave, in 1962. With eight further short stories, including “On Saturday Afternoon”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 176pp. Original grey cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch of fading; endpapers very lightly tanned, but a very good copy in the original Mona Moore dust-jacket – just lightly used.

£200

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

£250

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London : 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

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London : Bodley Head, (1971). First edition in English. Six novellas and short stories, together with sixteen poems from the winner of 1970 Nobel Prize, “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”. Translated by Michael Glenny. “His new collection, with its stoical, plain, inward beauty, movingly reminds us that Solzhenitsyn seems never to have written a line that was not somehow tinged with hope” (Kirkus Review).
Post 8vo (21cm). (242),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy, fresh, clean and sound in the Michael Harvey dust-jacket — the jacket lightly sunned, with a hint of tanning and three short nicks, but complete and clean.

£25

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1963. First edition. “Few people alive at the time were more delightful, more ingenious, more movingly lovely, and, as it might happen, more savage, than the girls of slender means”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(184),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, sound and clean copy in the evocative autumnal dust-jacket by Harry Cowdell (1912-1987) – just lightly sunned and slightly rubbed at extremities.

£75

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London : Collins, 1953. First edition. A London bank-clerk pursues a strange inheritance in remote Cornwall.
Post 8vo (21cm). 256pp. Original green cloth, lettered across spine in gilt; very good in the pictorial Harry Toothill dust-jacket – a little creased, with a few short repaired tears and a chip on lower panel.

£20

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New York : Liveright, (1971). First edition. “The three writings issued in this volume — two for the first time and the longer Q.E.D. in a corrected edition — represent the first steps of Gertrude Stein’s literary progress”. “Fernhurst”, begun in 1904, is a fictional account of a scandalous love triangle; the slightly earlier “Q.E.D.” is a suppressed autobiographical novel concerning another love triangle, while the family saga of “The Making of Americans” appears in the form of an unpublished early draft. With a note on the texts by Donald Gallup and a lengthy introduction by Leon Katz.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [8],xxxiv,214pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt and blind; a few specks on top edge, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean, and sound copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket with some mild rubbing, a couple of small scratches, and some very minor wear, but also very good.

£40

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London : Bodley Head, (1971). First British edition. Signed by Paul Theroux on the title-page. An early novel from Theroux, set in Malawi, where he had worked for the Peace Corps in 1963-1965, before being thrown out of both the Peace Corps and Malawi for assisting a political opponent of Hastings Banda to escape the country. The novel, published at just about the time Theroux and his family settled in England, was banned in Malawi for many years. “Linguistic exuberance, imaginative daring, a splendid ear for the rhythms of speech, a keen eye for human oddity” (The Scotsman).
Post 8vo (21cm). (318),[ii]pp. Original terracotta boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising and a single edge-spot, but a very good copy in the Derrick Greaves dust-jacket — the jacket also very good, with just the merest suggestion of tanning.

£200

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973. First edition. Jack Flowers, Singapore fixer and pimp, in a spot of trouble with the locals – memorably filmed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1979, with Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(248)pp. Original stone cloth, blocked and lettered in blue and red; top edge pink; some spotting of cloth and edges, but a good and sound copy in the Paul Bacon dust-jacket – price-clipped, but very good, fresh and clean.

£25

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. First edition. Hong Kong on the eve of the hand-over to China – Bunt Mullard struggles to adapt and a young woman disappears from his factory.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],(244),[iv]pp. Original quarter red cloth; red boards; lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Michaela Sullivan dust-jacket – equally very good.

£20

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London : Bloomsbury, (2000). First edition. Signed by Joanna Trollope on the title-page. Judge abandons his wife of forty years for a barrister half his age, but neither woman behaves quite as expected. “Just as one has forgotten the intense pleasure of reading Trollope, along comes another flawless novel” (Library Journal).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [iv],(312),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; purple ribbon; very faint tanning of edges, but a very good copy in the Jenny Wheatley dust-jacket – also very good.

SOLD

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

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New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990. First edition. Signed by the author on the title-page. The “Presumed Innocent” attorney finds his wife has killed herself.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(518)pp. Original half cloth; a very good copy in the Neil Stuart dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1980). First British edition. “You would say he was a man who had gone to pieces, or maybe he’d always been in pieces: maybe he’d arrived unassembled ...”. A fine early Anne Tyler. Originally published in New York earlier the same year.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(312)pp. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, fresh, sound and bright copy in the pictorial Oliver Elmes dust-jacket – price-clipped by the publisher and with a revised price over-sticker – also very good indeed.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, (2009). First British edition. A pedant adrift in his own life.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (278),[ii],[4]pp. Original grey boards, lettered in gilt; just the faintest signs of use, but very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. First edition. The sequel to “Rabbit, Run” (1960), set against the background of the Summer of Love — “Ten years have passed; the athletic escapist has become a paunchy conservative, and Eisenhower’s becalmed America has become 1969’s lurid confusion of technology, fantasy, and emergency. Rabbit is abandoned and mocked, his home is invaded, the world of his childhood decays into a mere sublunar void; still he clings to semblances of patriotism and paternity”. Acclaimed on first publication — “A rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece” (Time Magazine), “Without doubt, the finest novel John Updike has written” (Julian Symons in the Sunday Times), and acclaimed now, “One of the most gifted American realists ... John Updike’s surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country” (Joyce Carol Oates in 2015).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(407),[i]pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in silver and gilt; top edge blue; an excellent copy, bright, clean, and sound in an unflawed dust-jacket.

£50

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London : Penguin Books, (1988). A reprint, in the Penguin Modern Classics series, of this collection originally published by Heinemann in 1969. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page.
Post 8vo (20cm). (234),[vi]pp. Original colour-printed Paul Leith wrappers; text edges very mildly tanned; a few very small spots on title-page, but otherwise in very good state. Walker A3c.

£15

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London : Enitharmon Press, 1994. First edition : [one of 1,000 copies in wrappers]. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page. Six short stories, including “A Ship in the Sky”, with an introduction by Frank Kermode.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 102,[ii]pp. Original pale blue-grey wrappers, with a Glenn Sujo design, printed in blue and black; very good. Walker A7a.

£15

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1968). First edition. Satirical and still fresh fable of town-planning in Sussex.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges, but a very good and bright copy in the Verney dust-jacket, just a little worn and faintly dulled.

£10

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1962. First edition. An absorbing novel which takes us from 1942 to the birth of rock and roll – with the revolving viewpoints of a Professor of Classics, his runaway teenage son subsisting on the fringes of legality in wartime London and becoming a jazz pianist, and Eleanor – sister to the first and aunt to the second.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(330)pp. Original red cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt; a few slight marks, but a very good copy in the Victor Reinganum dust-jacket – very lightly worn and just slightly soiled, but also very good. Contemporary dated ownership inscription of Mary Campbell.

£20

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London : Allan Wingate, (1949). First trade edition. The charting of a late nineteenth-century American childhood – beautiful mother, feckless father, extremes of fortune – from the redoubtable Mrs Hawkes, trained zoologist, traveller and writer. A “book of uncommonly invigorating charm”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original red cloth, ruled blocked and lettered in gilt; very mild spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – price-clipped and with a small mark on lower panel, but also very good.

£25

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London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (2001). First edition. A sixteen-year sojourn in Paris, wandering “through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians ... an exhilarating adventure with a most seductive companion”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [x],(212),[ii]pp. Endpaper maps. Original pictorial boards; a few faint marks, but still very good in the matching dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1973). First edition. White’s novel of a matriarch and her impact – drawing on his own relationship with his mother. Published in the year White won the Nobel Prize.
Post 8vo (21cm). 608pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in the original Desmond Digby dust-jacket – price-clipped and just lightly used.

£25

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1958). First edition. Wildeblood is best-known for his “Against the Law” (1955) – an account of his imprisonment for homosexuality which led more or less directly to the Wolfenden Report and decriminalisation – but he appears here in much lighter vein with an amusing novel of Soho life – gang warfare interferes with one of the area’s staple industries and Cora and the working girls are obliged to found the National Youth Movement for the Prevention of Hooliganism in Soho (NYMPHS for short).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 192pp. Original turquoise boards, lettered in silver; lightly marked; edges and prelims somewhat spotted; “Supplied for the Public Service” crown stamp on lower edge, but a good copy in the Charles King dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn, slightly nicked, and a little marked and spotted – but complete and striking still.

£40

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, 1950. First edition. The author’s second book – a collection of eleven stories, including “Sister Superior”, “Heart of Elm”, “What do Hippo’s Eat”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 212pp. Original dark red cloth, lettered in gilt; slight tanning of endpapers; mark on fore-edge, but otherwise a very good, bright and unworn copy in the original grey dust-jacket, printed in red and black – alao very good, with just a few faint signs of age and use.

£25

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, 1957. First edition. Eight stories in which various characters seek, cheerfully or desperately, to get their bearings on the new map of post-war English society.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],(194)pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a few faint spots, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – also very good, with just a couple of little nicks to lower panel.

£20

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, (1980). First edition. A novel of the varying and complex moods of post-war England 1948-1969 – and the very different attitudes and careers of two brothers.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],296pp. Original turquoise boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; very good in a very good dust-jacket, just lightly sunned.

£15

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New York : Doubleday & Co., 1946. First edition. Wilson’s celebrated collection of short stories of the “lost generation” – “the adventures of an egoist among the bedeviled”. Banned on first publication.
Post 8vo (21cm). [xii],338,[ii]pp. Frontispiece. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the original grey, green and white dust-jacket – lightly tanned and slightly chipped.

£25

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