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London : William Heinemann, 1920. First edition : the first issue, in black boards with white lettering. Loosely inserted is a single-page signed autograph letter from Arlen, on his Stanhope Place notepaper, charmingly postponing a luncheon engagement. A publisher’s presentation copy of his first book, blind-stamped as such on the title-page. “Who is Michael Arlen? In a little pocketable volume ... we have a highly amusing and in many respects a penetrating criticism of certain phases of life in London ... a delicious little essay ... I don’t know quite whether to believe in Michael – whether he is really an Armenian or a detached Englishman looking at London with the eyes of an artistic nomad. True, his outlook is un-English, but his familiarity with the poetic and artistic gods of our generation, and with some of our most recondite literary traditions, makes me suspicious” (London Chronicle, 15th January 1920).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). [xii],(178),[ii]pp. Illustrations by Michel Sevier (1886-1941). Original boards, decorated and lettered in white, and blocked in blind on rear cover; a touch of wear to extremities; front joint tender and slightly split; text just lightly tanned, but a good copy of a very fragile production. Later gift inscription dated 1931.

£200

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London : Duckworth & Co., 1900. First edition : of the 1,000 sets of sheets originally printed, only 500 were bound for the British market by the publishers, while some 250 were used for a colonial edition, and another 150 or so later destroyed unsold. The first mention of the Forsyte family (one chapter is headed “Salvation of a Forsyte”) in this famously uncommon early Galsworthy novel published under his “John Sinjohn” pseudonym. “Greta, the motherless girl, is altogether delightful. So is the hero, Alois Harz, the Bohemian painter; and so too is Christian, the other heroine, so to speak, whom he marries ... the characters are delightfully sketched, with a good deal of verisimilitude ... a decidedly readable story” (The Bookseller, 25th December 1900).
Crown 8vo (184 x 121mm). [vi],(258)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; some mild tanning to outer leaves, but otherwise a handsome copy of a book seldom encountered.

£400

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1958. First edition. A lyrical and troubling coming of age in the green and gold of a French August. “Goes into the minds of children with the author’s usual tender-hefted vision” (The Sketch, 30 July 1958). Later made into the 1961 film with Kenneth More (his favourite film), Susannah York, Jane Asher, etc.
Post 8vo (197 x 127mm). [iv],(218),[ii]pp. Bound in a handsome recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; a fine, clean and bright copy.

£400

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1914. First edition : one of just 2,000 copies printed of this highly influential collection of over 100 poems – “Maupassant-like vignettes passed through his great contemplative soul ... they strike a new note” (Cyril Connolly, citing this as one of the key books of the Modern Movement). “He places life upon the operating table, and, with an uncannily skilful knife, lays it bare” (The Globe, 26th November 1914).
Crown 8vo (194 x 124mm). [ii],(x),230,[ii]pp. Bound in a handsome recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth backstrip and front cover preserved at rear; a couple of faint spots, but overall a very good, bright and clean copy.

£400

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London : Faber & Faber, (1996). First edition. Heaney’s first post-Nobel collection of poems and 1996 Whitbread winner – some forty poems, including “The Rain Stick”, “Poet’s Chair”, “At the Wellhead”, etc. “Anyone who reads poetry has reason to rejoice at living in the age when Seamus Heaney is writing” (Richard Tillinghast in the New York Times Book Review).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],70pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket equally very good.

£100

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London : John Murray, (2016). First edition. The third in the Jackson Lamb Slow Horses series – Catherine Standish is inexplicably abducted from Aldersgate, River Cartwright is given an ultimatum, and then a body is dumped outside a fashionable restaurant where a well-known floppy-haired politician is lunching and eyeing up a red-haired waitress.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],361,[i]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the London skyline dust-jacket by Keenan – the jacket very slightly sunned, but also very good.

£150

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1983). First edition. “It was a Monday afternoon in November and already growing dark, not because of the lateness of the hour – it was barely three o’clock – but because of the fog, the thickest of London pea-soupers, which had hemmed us in on all sides since dawn – if indeed there had been a dawn” – Hill’s celebrated gothic horror, well-known in its adaptations for stage, screen and radio, and as a school set text for those not old enough to remember pea-soupers.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [x],160,[vi]pp. Illustrations by John Lawrence. Original olive boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch of sunning, but a very good, clean and bright copy in the Lawrence dust-jacket – the jacket also with a hint of sunning, but also very good.

£250

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Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, (1963). First edition. A boy discovers a Stone Age caveman living at the foot of a disused chalk-pit. King’s celebrated best-seller, here in the original Puffin edition, delightfully illustrated by Edward Ardizzone.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (158),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Original pictorial wrappers by Ardizzone; some light wear and creasing, but a good copy of a fragile publication.

£50

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1945-1960). A first edition set of Nancy Mitford’s abidingly popular and partly autobiographical tales of eccentricity and aristocracy – “The Pursuit of Love” (1945); “Love in a Cold Climate” (1949), and “Don’t Tell Alfred” (1960). “Wit, fantasy, humour, she has it all ... so far out of the ordinary that you may never hear the last of it” (Daniel George in the Daily Express, 21st July 1949).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 120mm). (196); 284; 248pp. Bound in an elegant recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; mild tanning (as ever) to the wartime paper of the first volume; a handful of edge spots to the second volume, but a very good set.

£1,500

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Boston : Atlantic Monthly Press, 1918. First edition. One of the classics of the field, a much-reprinted and thoroughly engaging account of Newton’s avid book-collecting career, his preference for inscribed copies, essays on some of his favourite authors – Charles Lamb; James Boswell; Hester Thrale (“it may at once be admitted that as a mother Mrs Thrale was not a conspicuous success”); William Godwin (A Ridiculous Philosopher); William Dodd, the Macaroni Parson; the then still unmentionable Oscar Wilde – Newton’s favourite booksellers and bookshops, his frequent visits to London, other collectors, etc.
Demy 8vo (211 x 140mm). (xxii),(356)pp. Colour frontispiece. Plates. Portraits. Facsimiles. Bound in a smart contemporary half russet morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; some minor rubbing and wear, with some skilful restoration to front joint, but still overall a very good copy. From the library of Sir Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), notable book-collector as well as novelist, with his distinctive Brackenburn book-label.

£200

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London : Tinsley Brothers, 1872. First edition : in the primary binding. “The wine here is altogether of the same vintage with which Mr. Trollope’s many readers have been familiar for some dozen years and more; the only novelty consists in the fashion of the cup ... It is thoroughly readable, very amusing, and shows all Mr. Trollope’s skilfulness of hand in manipulating nothings until they are made into some thing” (The Graphic, 29th June 1872).
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(354),[ii] + 16pp inserted advertisements dated May 1872. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled and decorated in black; just a hint of bruising and the mildest signs of age and use; outer leaves lightly tanned, but still an exceptionally good, bright and fresh copy. With the armorial bookplate of William F. Gumbleton.

£750

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1944). First edition. Have you met Clubfoot, Valentine Williams’ super spy? “No one can tell a crook story as he can ... what verve, what gusto, what conviction there is in Mr. Williams’ thrillers” wrote Dorothy L. Sayers at various times of the former war correspondent, veteran of real-life drama in every corner of Europe. “Clubfoot makes his appearance again, this time as the Führer’s personal emissary in North Africa and Italy, and later as the new Gestapo chief in Rome, trying to track down the secret dossier of the Führer himself that is in the hands of the Prussian generals who are plotting against him”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 256pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in white; some spotting to rear pastedown, but a very good copy in the stylish original dust-jacket – the jacket a little rubbed and worn, with some small nicks and tiny chips, but complete and attractive still.

£100

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