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London : Chatto & Windus, 1975. First edition. Signed by Alan Ayckbourn on the title-page. One of the great theatrical events of the twentieth century – six characters and three interwoven plays: Table Manners in the dining-room; Living Together in the living-room, and Round and Round the Garden – here with a fascinating preface by the author on the “crosswise” writing of the interlocked pieces. The first West End production (1974) starred Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon, Penelope Keith, Felicity Kendal, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 226,[ii]pp. Original bright blue boards, lettered in gilt; very slightly bruised at head and tail, but otherwise a very good, bright and clean copy in the pictorial David Brinson dust-jacket – just lightly tanned (as often), but also very good. With the pictorial bookplate of D. W. Budworth, annotated with the date of purchase at Edinburgh in the year of publication.

£100

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London : John Murray, (1960). A handsomely bound reprint of the first collected edition of Betjeman, originally published in 1958. Also contains a number of poems not previously published in book form. Some 120 poems, including most of his most famous, compiled, edited and introduced by the Earl of Birkenhead.
Crown 8vo (184 x 105mm). (xxviii),(280)pp. Bound in a smart contemporary half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; just a touch sunned, but otherwise a very good copy.

£125

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1982). First edition. His third novel – “It is far too hot for sustained fighting ... we will all melt like ice-cream in the sun”. Evelyn Waugh meets John Buchan as eccentric settlers take up arms in the East African Campaign of the First World War.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [xii],370,[ii]pp. Map. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Paul Webb dust-jacket – also very good.

£100

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London : Methuen & Co., (1914). First edition : with the regular cancel title-leaf dated 1914, advertisement leaves dated both Autumn and September 1913, and the preferred binding giving “Methven” in capitals at the foot. Originally intended for publication in 1913, delays in binding meant that the novel did not appear until 15th January 1914, by which time demand was such that a second impression had already been printed and bound (Methuen advertisement in “Truth” 14th January 1914, p.49) – a fourth was needed by the end of the month. “Our summary can give no real conception of the greatness and the insight of this moving book; splendid in its style, masterly in the manner it which it paints for one the scent and savour and mystery of the sea; subtle and unerring in its grasp of the minds and motives of its creations ... It is strange that to a Polish exile and a seafaring man, to whom our language is a foreign tongue, it should be given to handle it with a touch so nearly approaching perfection” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 15th January 1914).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),406,[ii],8 + (32)pp. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing; edges and prelims somewhat spotted, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy.

£400

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, (1923). First edition. “The rover Peyrol is a superb creation, the eternal ancient mariner yet native to his time and his soil ... Towards the end Lord Nelson himself steps upon the scene, and in three or four masterly pages we see the man as he was, the fragile body and restless mind nearing their supreme triumph and their doom ... the simplest of Mr. Conrad’s books; none the less, we rank it among the greatest” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6th December 1923).
Crown 8vo (21cm). (318),[ii]pp. Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; some faint wear; a little dulled; mild tanning of endpapers; a few leaves roughly opened, but otherwise a good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with some minor wear, with a few repaired nicks and some shallow chipping, but substantially complete and attractive still.

£200

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London : Richard Bentley, 1840. First edition. The fourth of the Leatherstocking Tales (although the third in terms of chronology) – the Pathfinder (Hawkeye) escorts a young woman to the shores of Lake Ontario. “We are prepared to meet another escape through the woods, like that in ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ – another race over the waters, as in former sea romances – or another land siege, like the fearful leaguer of the blockhouse ... but in place of any one of these stirring passages, Mr. Cooper gives us all three. The interest of the story is unflaggingly maintained” (The Athenæum). “The most beautiful and natural, the simplest, the truest, and owing the least to mere art – of all Mr. Cooper’s novels” (The Atlas).
Three volumes. Royal 12mo (197 x 119mm). [iv],320,(v)-viii – the preface misbound at the rear; [ii],348; [ii],(340)pp. Bound, without final blanks, in a smart and unworn twentieth-century half dark green calf, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; occasional spotting and browning, a few slight creases, but overall a very good set. With the nautical bookplate of the distinguished collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016) in the first volume.

£400

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London : Faber & Faber, (1958). First edition. The second volume in the Alexandria Quartet – “Balthazar’s merciless ‘Interlinear’ to the love-story of Justine”.
Post 8vo (22cm). 250,(iv)pp. Original blue cloth blocked in red and gilt; a touch dulled, with some mild wear; a handful of spots to edges and endpapers, but a good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a couple of tiny nicks and some slight marking to the lower panel.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, 1960. First edition. The fourth and the final instalment of the Alexandria Quartet – Darley returns to an Alexandria at war. “As well as being a rounding-off and, in many ways, an explanation of the previous three books, ‘Clea’ is also a work on its own ... different, perhaps less subtle but, on the whole more moving” (The Sphere, 6th February 1960). One of the most memorable and extraordinary performances in twentieth-century fiction.
Demy 8vo (21cm). (288)pp. Original tangerine cloth, blocked in green and lettered in gilt; light spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket very lightly marked, with a handful of nicks and short repaired tears, but complete and attractive still.

£50

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London : Hutchinson, (1998). First edition. Signed by Sebastian Faulks on the title-page. “It would take a mile-long essay to do justice to the many virtues of Sebastian Faulks wonderful new novel. This riveting account of a young Scotswoman’s odyssey through wartime London, and on into a perilous secret mission in Vichy France, deserves the highest praise ... Proustian cogitations, masterful narrative, and zestful pen portraits. A beautiful, near-masterpiece” (Independent on Sunday). Filmed with Cate Blanchett, etc., in 2001.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],393,[i]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the David Oliver dust-jacket – the jacket with just a hint of creasing at head, but also very good.

£100

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London : Hutchinson, (2001). First edition. Signed by Sebastian Faulks on the title-page. The ending of the Eisenhower years, the Kennedy campaign, Washington 1959 – a novel to the jazz rhythms of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. “Both tense and affecting ... At the end one releases the breath one has unconsciously been holding ... a modern epic” (Anita Brookner).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],(342),[iv]pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising, but otherwise very good in the Robert Harding dust-jacket – the jacket with some minimal bruising, but also very good.

£40

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London : John Murray (Publishers), (2013). First edition. Signed by both editors, Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron. The posthumously published final instalment of Fermor’s famous journey on foot across Europe at the age of eighteen in the 1930s – “like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar”. The third leg – from the Iron Gates of Romania via Bucharest and Bulgaria to Salonika and Mount Athos. One of the twentieth-century classics – a “sublime masterpiece” (William Dalrymple).
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xxii),362pp. Portrait. Two maps. Original black boards, lettered in silver; an excellent copy in the Ed Kluz dust-jacket – the jacket also excellent.

£150

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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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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1929]. First edition of this thousand-page-plus omnibus collection of all bar three of the Thorndyke short stories which had appeared in the five collections published between 1909 and 1927. The stories are here grouped into six “inverted” and thirty-one “direct” examples, with an absorbing new preface by the author on the nature and methodology of the detective story. “Mr Freeman’s super-detective, Dr Thorndyke, needs no introduction ... each case has some new ingenuity to commend it” (The Scotsman, 14th October 1929).
Crown 8vo (182 x 116mm). viii,1080pp. Diagrams and a plan. Bound in a handsome later half crimson crushed morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; faint mark to back cover; some light spotting of edges; a few tiny internal marks; one leaf with a repaired tear, a handful of others lightly creased, but still a handsome copy.

£400

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London : Watts & Co., [1891]. First edition. An overtly polemical novel from the man credited as the first to use “humanist” in its modern sense – “Little more than a pamphlet; but a clever pamphlet, it must be confessed. Its purpose is to show the superiority of the Agnostic position over that of the Christian ... by imagining a Utopia, in New Guinea, inhabited by Agnostic colonists, who are as near moral perfection as it seems possible for mortal man to get. To them arrive three missionaries sent out to convert the Agnostics ... Two retire and the third is perverted by a charming female Agnostic” (Yorkshire Post, 29th July 1891).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 124,[iv] + [16]pp advertisements. Original blue cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt and blocked in blind; some minor wear at tips; a few slight marks, but a very good copy of a scarce book.

£125

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London : William Heinemann, (1951). First edition. Adultery and broken hearts in Clapham – the basis of both the 1955 film with Deborah Kerr and Van Johnson, and the 1999 film with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [vi],(238)pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt; some tanning of outer leaves; a few edge spots; slight flaw to final leaf, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket lightly tanned, but with just minimal wear and a couple of slight nicks, and also very good.

£200

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1887. First edition. An anonymously published landmark in dystopian fiction, with the narrator recovering from unconsciousness into a future William Morris arts-and-crafts ecological world without cities, money or politics – pre-dating Morris’s own “News from Nowhere” by several years, and Wells’s “A Modern Utopia” by even more. Inserted, in its original envelope, is a remarkable single-page signed autograph letter on his North Parade, Penzance, notepaper, dated 31st December 1920, from W. H. Hudson, replying to an enquiry about the scarcity of the book – “I am pleased to learn the first edition is scarce as I would be glad to have it out of existence. The book is a poor thing but in the later editions one or two of the most glaring absurdities are eliminated. The first edition had an ugly black and red cover. I have succeeded in recovering a few copies for the pleasure of destroying them”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(288)pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt on spine, and ruled, blocked and lettered in red; a little rubbed and worn, with the colour of the cloth touched up in one or two places and some evidence of repair to the lower joint; faint creasing to the cloth of the upper cover; slight cracking to the patterned green endpapers; pencilled notes erased from half-title; a few minor internal marks, but a good copy of a scarce book – with a most extraordinary authorial letter. From the well-known library of the recipient of the letter, the distinguished American collector Paul Lemperly (1858-1939), with his decorative bookplate. Lemperly’s “Among My Books” was published in a limited edition in 1929, containing extensive quotation from Hudson’s letter as well as making it clear that at that point, nine years on, he was still trying to hunt down a copy of the book.

£2,000

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London : William Heinemann, 1899. First edition : [one of 2,000 copies]. Eighteen-year-old Nanda enters the decadent fin-de-siècle marriage market – “We begin by being afraid that we shall not understand enough, we end by fearing that we may understand too much ... It is a strong book, but there is one thing greater than its strength, and that is its audacity” (Morning Post, 29th June 1899). A copy from the library of Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995). Spender’s “The Destructive Element” (1935) remains one of the most interesting and influential studies of James and his contemporaries.
Crown 8vo (20cm). vi,414,[ii] + [32]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind with an art-nouveau iris design; some very mild rubbing; a few internal marks and spots; a handful of leaves roughly opened, but otherwise a very good copy with an interesting provenance. With the earlier ownership inscription of Mary Lillias Johnston, the small bookseller’s label of R. J. Porteus & Co. of Newcastle, and a facsimile of the Stephen & Natasha Spender bookplate designed by John Craxton neatly inserted.

£125

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London : Richard Bentley & Son, 1884. First edition : just 625 sets were printed, of which only 425 were initially sent for binding. “Meadow and brook, wheat-fields and hills – a simple landscape, yet such as is not to be surpassed by any on earth. A common landscape – there are hundreds such in England – yet beyond compare. There are none like it elsewhere in the wide world” – Jefferies in his element in his native Wiltshire, with a novel characterised as “a sad little episode of cottage life, very tragic in its termination” (Reading Mercury, 20th September 1884). “Human nature, especially rustic human nature, has seldom if ever had a closer student or a more picturesque exponent” (The Graphic, 20th September 1884).
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],296; [ii],(328)pp. Decorative initials, head and tailpieces. Original green pebble-grain cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing and bruising; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims, but a very good, bright and sound set.

£500

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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 : 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 : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1996). First edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. The second of the much-admired Frederick Troy series – Chief Inspector Troy is assigned to bodyguard and spy on Nikita Khrushchev on his visit to England – “A splash of Greene, a twist of Deighton, a small measure of history – Lawton has produced a thrilling cocktail” (The Times).
Royal 8vo (25cm). [x],416,[vi]pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; the merest hint of bruising, but a very good copy indeed – bright, clean and sound – in an equally very good dust-jacket.

£100

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1998). First edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. The scarce third novel in the much-admired Frederick Troy series – it is 1963 – a defection, a ministerial resignation, an overdose and a suicide – all echoes of very real events – an “unputdownable narrative of spying, sexual intrigue, political scandal and murder ... a haunting novel, transcending the bounds of genre fiction” (A. N. Wilson in the Daily Telegraph).
Royal 8vo (25cm). [viii],440pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; an excellent copy, bright, clean and sound, in an equally fine dust-jacket.

£100

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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 : 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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London : Alan Ross, 1965. First edition. Recollections of “Fitzrovian Nights” – and of Francis Bacon, Cyril Connolly, Graham Greene, Nina Hamnett, Alun Lewis, John Minton, Elizabeth Smart, Stevie Smith, Tambimuttu, Dylan Thomas, Ruthven Todd, Woodrow Wyatt, and many more – together with six of the best of the Maclaren-Ross short stories of the period, including “I Had to Go Sick” and “A Bit of a Smash in Madras”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],344,[ii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Facsimiles. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; edges spotted; a few spots to endpapers, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – just very slightly rubbed and with hint of tanning, but also very good.

£75

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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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New York : George H. Doran Co., (1925). First edition. Published a month earlier than the London edition and retaining a textual integrity which the British publication did not – two separate libel actions having necessitated changes in the names of characters in the latter, as well as the substitution of the fictional place-names of Tching-Yen, Pleasant Vale, and The Mount, for the real places of Hong Kong, Happy Valley, and The Peak. “Like many other of Mr. Maugham’s stories, the scene of his latest – and best – book is laid ‘East of Suez’. The theme, a loveless marriage and its disastrous aftermath, though old as the hills, is invested with modernity and freshness by means of a photographic realism” (Nottingham Journal, 21st May 1925). Filmed in 1934 (Greta Garbo), and in 2006 (Naomi Watts).
Crown 8vo (192 x 127mm). (290)pp. Bound in an attractive recent half red morocco, banded and gilt; a handful of minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£400

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London : William Heinemann, (1944). First British edition. An American airman traumatised by the Great War searches for meaning in life in Chicago, Paris and India. “Mr Somerset Maugham’s new novel ... is in some ways the most important he has written ... Do not think from all this that the novel is preachy-preachy, because it is not: it is as full of Maugham sparkle and wit, naughtiness, sex and satire as anyone could wish. My own view is that this is the best non-war novel we have had since 1939. I read it several times with deep appreciation and delight” (Aberdeen Evening Express, 20th July 1944). Filmed in 1946 with Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney and Anne Baxter (who won an Oscar), and again in 1984 with Bill Murray, Theresa Russell, Catherine Hicks, Denholm Elliott, etc. Originally published a few months earlier in the USA.
Crown 8vo (182 x 120mm). [iv],284pp. Bound in a handsome recent full blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a couple of tiny marks; a few internal marks and spots, but otherwise a very good copy.

£250

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1861. First edition : one of the 2,000 copies of the first impression, with the roman rather than gothic half-title, just four notes on p.323, etc. The original appearance of a perennial favourite – close on 300 of the finest poems in the language from seventy-five or so poets – from Sir Thomas Wyatt, Marlowe and Shakespeare, to Shelley and Keats. With a preface and some extensive notes by Palgrave.
Foolscap 8vo. [4],[viii],332pp. Engraved vignette by Charles Henry Jeens (1827-1879) after Thomas Woolner (1825-1892). Bound in a smart recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original cloth gilt (the priced, earliest variant) at rear; a handful of spots, a small flaw to the final leaf, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription on title-page and some neat pencil markings to margins in places.

£400

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1941]. First edition. “A real little master-work, full of delightful ideas and witty drawings. The main idea is what we would or should do if the war was over” (Hampstead News, 25th December 1941). The authors offer their thoughts on town planning, dress reform, transport, sport, education, art, etc. – they later claimed their work as the inspiration behind the Beveridge Report, although the section on “surrealism in the home” at least would appear to have passed Beveridge by.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,136pp. Pictorial endpapers. Illustrations throughout. Original blue pictorial cloth, blocked and lettered in black; a few edge spots, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the Heath Robinson dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped; chipped at head and tail, with the loss of a few letters, with some further light wear and shallow chipping, but a scarce and fragile wartime survival.

£100

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London : Herbert Jenkins, 1925. First edition. An engaging anthology of prose and verse relating to gardens and gardening, culled from wide-ranging and often little-known sources from the reign of Charlemagne to the end of the eighteenth century. With separate sections, inter alia, on castle gardens; the joys of gardening; the gardener; women gardeners; lovesome flowers; sundial mottoes; the orchard; bee lore; astrological lore; gardening calendars, etc. With a bibliography of sources. Compiled by the distinguished gardener and garden designer Sophie Rohde of Reigate. “Will interest the gardener and historian alike, and even the general reader cannot fail to find much that will please him in these enchanting pages” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 4th February 1926).
Foolscap 8vo (169 x 105mm). (332)pp. Bound, for Hatchard’s, in an elegant near contemporary half crimson morocco; top edge gilt; a couple of tiny marks; slight tanning of the outer edges of the endleaves, but still a very good copy.

£125

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London : Constable & Co., 1925. First edition. Isabelle de Charrière (1740-1805), known as Zélide, “lived in her father’s moated castle in Holland, like a fairytale princess in a tower. She was the clever, sexy, mercurial young Dutch blue-stocking with whom Boswell fell disastrously in love in 1764 ... this tender, funny, faintly salacious portrait of a ‘belle-esprit’ is one of the most exquisite biographical miniatures ever written (Richard Holmes)” – a best-seller in its day and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize – “Its success proves that sheer literary quality will make a book go” (James Milne, in the Graphic, 14th November 1925).
Demy 8vo (220 x 144mm). (viii),(216),[iv]pp. Two portrait plates and two silhouettes. Bound in an elegant later red calf, banded and gilt; blue labels; marbled sides and endpapers; top edge gilt; silk ribbon; just a touch dulled; some minute wear to a corner; a handful of spots, but a very good copy. With the small silver book-label of A. Constable Maxwell of the Chateau de Vallamand in Switzerland on the front endpaper.

£125

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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 : for Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1807. First edition. An extensive collection of quotations from Sidney, given under a multitude of headings – Man, Birth, Education and Study, Reason and Wisdom, Virtue, Glory, and over fifty more, including Courtesy, Friendship, Curiosity, Custom, Justice, Woman, Love, Faith, etc. – interspersed with occasionally lengthy notes, remarks, and interpretation by Jane Porter (La Penserosa) (1776-1850), the well-respected pioneering historical novelist. Edited, introduced, and dedicated to Gustavus IV of Sweden, by Porter.
Two volumes. Crown 12mo (165 x 97mm). Engraved frontispieces. vi,(xvi),222,[ii]; [vi],225,[i]pp. Bound, without half-titles, in a most attractive nineteenth-century full polished mottled calf, banded and gilt; boards ruled and framed in gilt and blind; sprinkled edges; marbled endpapers; faint cracking to joints, but still entirely firm; a few very minor internal marks and spots, but otherwise a very good set.

£250

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London : John Murray, (1950-1961). A complete first edition set of the four volumes of Stark’s autobiography – the first volume signed by the author on the half-title. From her picaresque childhood, through her life and travels in the Arab and Persian world, to World War II – “It is difficult to know which to admire more, her vivid description of her experiences or the realism of the lessons which she draws from them ... Our future is uncontrollable if we are unable to read our past” (Sir Charles Petrie in The Illustrated London News, 28th October 1961).
Four volumes. Demy 8vo (23cm). (xiv),346; (xvi),(342),[ii]; (xvi),(288); xii,(298),[ii]pp. Numerous plates – many from the author’s own photographs; portraits; maps, some double-page, etc. Wood-engraved decorations by Reynolds Stone. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt, with facsimiles of the author’s signature on upper covers; the first volume a little faded; some edge-spotting, chiefly to the final volume, but otherwise a very good set in the Frank Quilter dust-jackets – the first price-clipped, a little worn, nicked and chipped, with repairs at head; the second price-clipped, a little chipped, with repaired tears to foot at folds; the third with slight chipping at head and some repaired nicks; the fourth very good, with only a hint of wear. The first volume with the decorative bookplate of Jean A. Callander of Westwood, Falkirk, the third and fourth with unrelated inscriptions.

£500

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London : Bradbury & Evans, 1848. First edition, bound from the original monthly parts published between January 1847 and July 1848. The parts in first state, with the “rustic” heading to the first chapter, the inadvertent “Mr. Pitt” rather than “Sir Pitt” on p.453, and the notorious “Marquis of Steyne” wood-engraving (p.336) – an illustration said to have been suppressed, under threat of court action, for its allegedly libellous resemblance to the Third Marquis of Hertford. This has been disputed, but the portrait certainly only appears in the earliest copies of the book – and disappeared very early in the book’s life cycle.
Demy 8vo (214 x 131mm). xvi,624pp. Etched plates and highly entertaining text illustrations by Thackeray himself. Bound, without half-title, in a recent half green calf, banded and richly gilt, with burgundy label, in a pleasing imitation of contemporary style; marbled sides; plates spotted in varying degrees, but the text clean; a very good copy in an attractive binding.

£850

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1866. An early collected edition of Thackeray’s gentle and engaging social satires, delightfully illustrated with his own drawings, which were originally published as Christmas books between 1846 and 1848. “Eschewing what has become a species of conventional Christmas mannerism – depending for interest and genial tone of colouring neither upon yule logs, nor plum puddings, nor branches of mistletoe, nor smoking boar’s heads garnished with bay sprigs and rosemary – Mr. Thackeray’s Christmas offering has all the peculiar and original characteristics of the individual mind of its producer ... the very incarnation of riot-running fancy” (Morning Chronicle, 29th December 1846).
Crown 8vo (183 x 133mm). viii,(52); 56; (52)pp. Folding frontispiece, engraved title and fifty engraved and lithographed plates from Thackeray’s own designs. Bound, without half-title, in an elegant contemporary half chestnut roan, banded and gilt; black label; marbled edges, by Andrew Grieve of Edinburgh (1812-1880), with his blind-stamp; some very minor rubbing and wear; a few spots to the endpapers, but a very good copy in a most attractive binding. With the bookplate of the Reverend John Mitchell Harvey (1835-1876).

£125

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

£200

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London : Richard Bentley, 1865. First edition. “From the building of the first bridge at London to the startling incident of a few days since” – the history of London in highly entertaining story and anecdote, with sections of Historic Sketches; Remarkable Duels; Notorious Highwaymen; Rogueries, Crimes and Punishments; Love and Marriage; Supernatural Stories; Sights and Shows, and Public Amusements; Strange Adventures and Catastrophes; Remarkable Persons; and Miscellanous. “The indefatigable prince of compilers has once more plied his industrious scissors to good purpose” (Illustrated London News, 24th June 1865).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (190 x 118mm). viii,324; viii,320; viii,(332)pp. Bound, without half-titles, in an attractive contemporary half tan calf, banded and gilt; contrasting red and green labels; marbled sides, edges and endpapers; lightly rubbed; a few very minor marks, small flaws and slight creases; slight spotting of prelims; text very slightly tanned, but still a nice set. Gift inscriptions dated 1886 in each volume and the more recent book-labels of Oliver Ray.

£250

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1879. First edition. A scarce late Trollope, featuring on Sadleir’s “A”-list of rarities (XIX Century Fiction, 1951). Disinherited son makes good in the goldfields of Australia, returning home a wealthy man to marry Hester Bolton, but the delightfully wicked Euphemia Smith turns up to claim a prior marriage. Trollope makes interesting use of his Post Office experience to hinge the story on a forged postmark. “Mr Trollope has perhaps never hit upon a story that more strongly arouses the reader’s attention and sympathy, and never told one with more mastery of the whole situation, in small things no less than in great” (The Graphic, 26th July 1879).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (181 x 120mm). vi,290; vi,296; vi,302,[ii]pp. Bound, complete with half-titles and final blank, in a most handsome later half morocco, gilt on wide bands and decorated with small onlay flowers, by Zaehnsdorf; all edges gilt; marbled sides and matching endpapers; just a hint of rubbing; a few minor internal marks, but overall clean and sound, and a very good set indeed. With the attractive bookplates of both Ernest George Mocatta (1849-1927), stockbroker and book-collector, and Harold Charles (Harley) Drayton (1901-1966), the renowned financier whose library was dispersed at Sotheby’s in 1968. Sadleir 55 – “very scarce in fine condition”.

£1,000

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1881. First edition. Lucy and Ayala Dormer left destitute by the death of their gifted but improvident artist father. “Possibly the most unjustly neglected of all Trollope’s novels ... and yet it is one of the most charming ... the lightest and airiest of them all, it has a gaiety and happiness and playfulness that Trollope ... never exceeded ... what vigour of scene and creation, what vitality of action and dialogue it contains” (Hugh Walpole). “The author has not written a better or pleasanter novel for a good many years” (Pall Mall Gazette, 28th May 1881).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (189 x 121mm). iv,280; iv,272; iv,(278)pp. Bound (without final blank, no half-titles or advertisements called for) in an elegant later (mid-twentieth-century) half red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; top edges gilt; one or two tiny marks and edge-spots, but a very good, clean and fresh set of an uncommon late title.

£850

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London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1870. Forty-fourth edition. A quite extraordinary compilation for the nineteenth-century child, condensing into under 500 pages an encyclopaedic amount of information on all manner of topics. Conceived in the form of Socratic question-and-answer dialogue, we learn of everything from acorns to zinc – from just one opening at random, “What is goulard?”, “What is benzoin?”, “What is storax”, “What is gum-guaiacum”, “What forms the famous diamond cement?” – all confidently and succinctly answered. Originally published as “262 Questions and Answers” in 1825, the book rapidly became a standard text, much expanded through multiple editions until at least a sixty-third edition in 1913, the text initially augmented after the author’s death by her nephew Robert Arthur Ward (1826-1898).
Foolscap 12mo (139 x 88mm). (vi),474pp. Bound in a smart recent full tan calf, banded and tooled in blind; red label; marbled endpapers; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy. Very occasional annotation and a number of pencil marks.

£100

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London : Chapman & Hall, (1936). First edition. A collection of eleven short stories, including “Period Piece”, “Excursion in Reality”, “Love in the Slump”, “Bella Fleace Gave a Party”, etc. “One of the few living authors who is incapable of being a bore. One of the few whose books are worth buying and keeping ... Mr. Waugh is the much-imitated author of our time. Yet we all know that he is inimitable” (Daily Mirror, 30th June 1936).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],(238),[ii]pp. Frontispiece in two colours by Thomas Derrick (1885-1954) – a design also used on the elusive dust-jacket. Original lizard pattern red and black cloth, lettered in gilt; faint mark to top edge; some mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy, still bright and unworn.

£400

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London : Chapman & Hall, (1938). First edition. “Up to a point, Lord Copper” – the wrong Boot is sent to Ishmaelia. “Mr. Evelyn Waugh has let himself go with a whoop on the trail of sensational journalism ... easily the funniest book of the season” (Illustrated London News, 25th June 1938). The present copy has the front panel of the original dust-jacket laid in to the front free endpaper – the rare and quickly suppressed earlier version of the jacket, with the “Daily Beast” masthead clearly mimicking that of Beaverbrook’s “Daily Express”, and making the butt of Waugh’s satire all too plain. This was rapidly replaced by a plainer jacket with the masthead removed.
Original lizard pattern red and black cloth, lettered in gilt; just a touch rubbed and faintly sunned; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very copy. Contemporary ownership inscription – Vinicombe, dated July 1938.

£500

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London : Cassell & Co., (1923). First edition. Journalist from Sydenham and other earthlings find themselves in Utopia, an evolved civilisation in a world without government or religion, “as clean as starlight and as sweet as cold water on a dusty day” – “Let it be said at once, in this book Mr. Wells is at his best. Indeed, if one had to name the novel that represents his many-sided genius most completely, one could hardly fail to name ‘Men Like Gods’“ (Sylvia Lynd in the Daily News, 8th March 1923).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,304pp. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt and blind (Currey’s ‘B’ variant); a sliver of fading at head and tail; some tanning of endpapers; a few edge spots, but a very good and sound copy in the grey dust-jacket, lettered in purple – the jacket just slightly darkened and faded at spine, but fresh and unworn.

£250

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New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, (1981). First edition. Wolfe on modern architecture – smart, well-researched, and devastating – “Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement parts wholesale distribution warehouse ... Every new $900,000 summer house ... has so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial plate glass, banks of tungsten-halogen lamps, and white cylindrical shapes, it looks like an insecticide refinery”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). [x],(144),[vi]pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; a very good copy indeed in the Kiyoshi Kanai dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£100

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