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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 : Jonathan Cape, (1971). We know from the opening section, “Imperialist Racist Fascist”, that champagne socialists might be in for a skewering. Amis in fine satiric form — the tale of Sir Roy Vandervane, eminent conductor with a taste for ever younger women, and his wife Kitty, with “all her command of oral italics, ditto inverted commas, black-letter and illuminated capitals”. Amis captures all the modish fashions of the day — attitudes, pronunciations and prejudices (including his own), as well as clothes, furnishings, music, etc., with merciless accuracy.
Crown 8vo (21cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge orange-pink; very good in the Bill Botten dust-jacket — price-clipped, just slightly sunned, but with only a hint of wear.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. Sixty-one playful clerihews from Auden, each illustrated with an entertaining caricature portrait from Filippo Sanjust (1925-1992) — “Mallarmé / Had too much to say / He could never quite / Leave the paper white”, etc.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [128]pp. Illustrated throughout. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; very faint tanning of endpapers; a few slight marks to verso of title-page, but a very good, very bright, and sound copy in the Sanjust dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped and very slightly bruised at tips, but also very good.

SOLD

London : André Deutsch, (1971). First British edition. “All you need to know about Hollywood, sex, drinking, adultery, desperation, marriage and money” — a novel from screenwriter, producer and director George Axelrod, living in London in 1971, and already famous for “The Seven Year Itch”, as well as his adaptations of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, “The Manchurian Candidate”, “The Secret Life of an American Wife”, etc. The tale of writing coach Harvey Bernstein, “failed poet, failed novelist, failed family man, failed drunk, failed suicide”, who divides fiction into those useful categories of “thin sensitive novels” and “thick insensitive novels”. A bawdy romp with one of his students, with a certain amount of guying of Philip Roth.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (176)pp. Original bright pink boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a handful of spots to top edge; very faint tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy in the Len Payne dust-jacket — the jacket very good indeed, clean and unworn. Loosely inserted is an interesting Deutsch survey slip, quizzing their readers on why they bought the book and their general preferences.

SOLD

New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, (1971). First edition. A collection of sixteen of the very best of Ballard’s early science fiction short stories, his own favourites, originally published in magazines between 1957 and 1966. Includes the title-story itself — a world where watches and clocks are banned; “Billenium” and “Build-Up” — worlds of over-population; the seminal “Terminal Beach”, etc. “No writer has ever written better in this genre; few have equaled these stories. This is a collection to savor and reread” (publisher’s blurb). There was no equivalent British edition.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [vi],310,[iv]pp. Original black boards, lettered in silver; just slightly bruised, with a hint of wear to tips; very faint spotting of top edge, but a very good copy in the Nicole de Jurenev dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped, a little sunned at spine, as usual, the rear panel slightly marked, but with only light wear and a single nick.

SOLD

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First edition. “This book is a warning about the coming domination of all western economies by the super-corporations — the Juggernauts of the new industrial order ... It argues that the size of the largest corporations has long since passed the point at which they can be managed effectively except at the expense of the consumer and the employee ... sterile conformism ... There is an urgent need to evolve a new public policy ... the alternative will be ... a new Dark Ages in the shadow of the giant corporations”. We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,(364)pp. Plates. Charts. Original brown boards, lettered in gilt; top edge pink; fore-edge a little spotted, but a good copy in the Behram Kapadia dust-jacket — the jacket a little worn, with a few nicks and repaired tears.

£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, (1971). First edition. Twenty-two poems and the poem sequence “Venusberg”, dedicated to Graham Greene — the poems mainly in remembrance of people — T. S. Eliot (who called Barker a genius — a view both shared and disputed by others), Herbert Read, Vernon Watkins, etc. — and specific places — Kew Gardens, Norfolk, Surrey, etc. Brought up in Battersea, Barker is variously remembered as the man who inspired Elizabeth Smart's “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept”, drinking chum of Dylan Thomas, collaborator in writing pornography with Anaïs Nin, and as the father of fifteen children by four different women born over a period of forty years.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 80pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket equally very good.

£25

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London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First British edition of this collection of short stories from the by now British-based American master of science fiction. Eight stories (one more than the American edition of the same title) — “creatures that look like men but aren't; rodent custodians of lone planets; tobacco mosaic totally out of control; a society in which cleanliness is a vice; beggars literally led by dogs; pomander-poaching on Mars; the coming of heterosexuality to Titan; a hippy space hijacker”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (186),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; slightly bruised at extremities, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket similarly faintly bruised, with a few slight marks on the rear panel, but unworn and also very good.

£40

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London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First British edition. The much-admired third instalment in Bova’s loosely connected “Watchmen” series — peace throughout the universe maintained by the Star Watch with the aid of the duelling machine, a virtual reality device for sublimating individual conflict — until someone tinkers with the mechanism. Originally published (with the shorter American spelling “dueling”) in New York in 1969.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(248),[ii]pp. Original blue cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few tiny pale spots to cloth; top edge a little spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the stylish (but unattributed) American-designed dust-jacket — the jacket just faintly sunned and with a couple of slight marks, but with only the lightest hint of use and wear and also very good.

£40

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Pinner : Private Libraries Association, 1971. First edition : limited to 1,500 copies. An evocative record of some of the antiquarian bookshops of London fifty years ago. An introductory reminiscence from Percy Muir on his fifty years in the trade (and the shops he had known) is followed by a brief history and a generous ration of photographs (interiors, exteriors, and portraits) for each of the following: James Bain, Andrew Block, Louis W. Bondy, Stanley Crowe, H. M. Fletcher, Harold Mortlake, Bertram Rota, Charles J. Sawyer, Stanley Smith, Suckling & Co., and Bernard Quaritch. A second series was added in 1977. The present copy is enlivened by some manuscript annotation in pen and pencil — a correction to the introductory text; “poor shop stock” of one of the inhabitants of Cecil Court; “Boorish, ungracious to the point of rudeness ... shop full of rubbish” of another; “v. poor shop stock” of a third.
Oblong royal 8vo (19 x 26cm). (96)pp. Illustrated throughout. Original grey cloth; red labels, ruled and lettered in gilt; cloth very lightly rubbed and slightly bruised, with a little flecking, but otherwise a very good copy. Stamp of the Sedbergh bookseller R. F. G. Hollett on front free endpaper, although whether Ronnie Hollett (1919-2011) was the author of the annotations, I do not care to speculate.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), (1971). First edition. An outstanding anthology of the fresh work of the period, with contributions from Dannie Abse, W. H. Auden, Patricia Beer, Tony Connor, Stanley Cook, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Douglas Dunn, James Fenton, John Fuller, Roy Fuller, Jean Overton Fuller, Thom Gunn, Ian Hamilton, Tony Harrison, Molly Holden, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Jennings, Philip Larkin, Michael Longley, George Macbeth, Norman MacCaig, George Mackay Brown, Derek Mahon, John Montague, Pete Morgan, Peter Porter, Stevie Smith, Anthony Thwaite, Charles Tomlinson, and around twenty others. With biographical notes on all the contributors.
Post 8vo (21cm). (112)pp. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good copy indeed — fresh, clean, bright and sound, in the Michael Brett dust-jacket — the jacket equally very good, bright and unfaded.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition. “Totally naked, for God’s sake? All this happened a long time ago” — “A novel which no other writer could have achieved; in an outrageous entertainment it dramatizes the fashionable themes of the anthropologists about the relationship between language and family structure ... a rich feast of word-and-thought play: Greek tragedy and vaudeville on a single stage”. Claude Lévi-Strauss hand-bagged.
Post 8vo (21cm). (220)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge lilac; a handful of edge-spots and some faint tanning to endpapers and outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy indeed — sharp, bright and sound — in the Michael Farrell dust-jacket — the jacket particularly fresh and unworn.

SOLD

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 : The Crime Club (William Collins, Sons & Co.), (1971). First edition. The last Miss Marple to be written (although the penultimate to be published). Miss Marple receives a letter and a request from a dead man — “With this first-rate story Dame Agatha triumphantly returns to the traditional detective novel” (Daily Mirror, 31st October 1971).
Post 8vo (21cm). 256pp. Original orange boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a hint of bruising; edges a little spotted and lightly and unevenly discoloured, but clean and sound within, and a good and bright copy in the original dust-jacket — a bold design in shocking pink and silver — a little rubbed and lightly worn at extremities, with a couple of tiny nicks, but complete and attractive still.

SOLD

London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First British and first hardback edition. A world in chaos — plague, strikes and riots — and a group of scientists at a top-secret facility in Cornwall try to develop a method of time travel to escape it all. First published as “Chronocules” the previous year in paperback form in the United States, where this exiled British writer was declared Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2007.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (206),[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a few faint marks, but overall still a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket — also very good.

£50

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London : Victor Gollancz, (1971). First edition. Her posthumously published final novel, found in manuscript across several exercise books after her death. An English country-house setting, around the turn of the last century, tyrannical step-mother, oppressed step-daughter, and all the vintage Compton-Burnett irony and dialogue, “more subtle and condensed than ever. Her final novel will be ranked among her finest”. With a foreword on the development of the book by Elizabeth Sprigge, and a critical epilogue by Charles Burkhart.
Post 8vo (21cm). (160)pp. Original holly boards, lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket with a couple of faint spots and some very minor creasing, but also very good and virtually unworn.

SOLD

London : Methuen & Co., (1971). First edition. The two comedians’ cloth-capped and scarved alter egos, Dud and Pete, on the burning issues of the day — sex, art, music, religion, superstition, the very worst things in the world, etc. — the text of a dozen of the incredibly popular, absurd, and surreal comic dialogues made famous on the television programme, “Not Only But Also”.
Narrow royal 8vo (26cm). (96)pp. Drawings by Bert Kitchen, Photographs by Lewis Morley. Original laminated pictorial boards; some light wear and bruising; a handful of interior spots, but a good copy of a vulnerable production. Ownership inscription, Powys-Smith.

SOLD

London : Victor Gollancz, 1971. First edition. The publisher’s file copy and so stamped on the front endpaper and the rear of the dust-jacket. Widowed and elderly Sybil Fairford lives on her Tuscan estate looking forward to the visit of a grand-daughter who never comes, but remains gracious to another visitor, an arrogant and pompous young hippie — the illegitimate child of her son’s wayward first wife. “Full of refreshing common sense ... this wise, unpretentious and enjoyable novel” (Wendy Monk in the Birmingham Daily Post, 19th June 1971). A Swedish writer once remarked of Lettice Cooper that “She is what we expect English people to be, but what they so seldom are”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (272)pp. Original tan boards, lettered in gilt; slightly bruised at foot, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean, and sound copy in the Michael Whittlesea dust-jacket — just faintly bruised and a touch sunned, with a few tiny marks, but also very good.

SOLD

Berkhamsted : Priapus Press, (1971). First edition : limited to 300 numbered copies. Inscribed, signed and dated (1971) by John Cotton. A single poem, with a cover design and a striking colour illustration by Rigby Graham. Loosely inserted is an additional hand-printed greetings card, also inscribed and signed by Cotton.
Post 8vo (21cm). [8]pp. Original orange stapled wrappers, with a Rigby Graham design in gold on the upper wrapper; very good.

SOLD

Kettering : Nina Steane, [1971]. First edition. “We are the child dervishes of the Chilterns, We Whirl, We roll in chalk, We strike sparks from flint ...” — a broadside poem dramatically illustrated by Harry Housman of Principal Edwards Magic Theatre. Number 14 in Nina Steane’s “All In” series of poetry posters.
Single sheet, printed in gold and black. 48 x 37cm. Minor wear, some creasing, and a couple of slight chips to edges, but a very good copy of a particularly fragile item. From the collection of the poet Martin Booth (1944-2004), with his book-label on verso. No copy located in any major library worldwide..

£50

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1971. First edition. “If you are planning to lounge on the beach and want your blood agreeably chilled, this is a real winner” (Jean Richardson in the Birmingham Daily Post, 24th July 1971). Five long stories from “the mistress of the macabre” — “No cosy tales for reading to a maiden aunt or an elderly cousin. Venice — Crete — Ireland — Jerusalem — East Anglia: the settings are as various as the plots”. The opening story, “Don't Look Now”, was memorably filmed two years later by Nicolas Roeg, with Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (286),[ii]pp. Original terracotta boards, lettered in gilt; slight bruise at foot; a few faint spots to edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the Flavia Tower dust-jacket — price-clipped and lightly edge-worn, but still bright, attractive and unfaded. Gift inscription dated September 1971.

SOLD

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First edition. The publisher’s file copy, stamped “Weidenfeld Library” on the front free endpaper. “Maureen Duffy may confuse but she never bores us ... This novel about the confusion and desperation of being young ... adds to Maureen Duffy’s reputation as an original and provocative writer” (Elizabeth Harvey in the Birmingham Daily Post, 1st May 1971). On holiday in Italy with wealthy parents, the precocious Kit sets out to destroy the burgeoning love affair between perfect mother and father’s new assistant with all the skill and concentration of a master spy.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(216),[ii]pp. Original red boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean, and sound copy in the Derrick Holmes dust-jacket — the jacket with the publishers’ shelf-label at foot and with two small chips to the foot of the flap-folds, but otherwise also very good.

SOLD

London : William Collins Sons & Co., (1971). First edition. An ironic counterpart to his brother’s “Spirit of Place” (1969) — a couple of preliminary pages (“This is a nice retsina”), and five inimitable Durrell stories — the birthday party in Corfu (with the ice-box); life in a London pet-shop; the night the mamba fell on the District Commissioner; the saga of the nose-bleed; and the ravishing Ursula in Bournemouth.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; very faint tanning of endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the Edward Mortelmans dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped and lightly bruised, with a tiny patch of discolouration to the rear panel, but with no noticeable wear.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition : one of 500 numbered copies (ex 600) produced for distribution in the United Kingdom. A sequence of poetic jottings, followed by twenty-one more formal poems, including “A Winter of Vampires”, “Pistol Weather”, “Revenants”, “Mistral”, etc.
Crown 4to (25cm). 48pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the original acetate dust-jacket and black cloth slip-case — the slip-case with a few tiny marks, but also very good.

£75

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London : MacGibbon & Kee, (1971). First British edition. His first book — “It is an astonishing, exasperating book; a beautiful, flowing, stormy prose poem. Tarantula is surrealism on speed, a phantasmagoric trip through America — seen by an impatient, restless, brilliant man stabbing at life with a lethal humour and a strange narrative power” (dust-jacket blurb by Michael Gray). Dylan was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(138)pp. Original lilac-grey boards, lettered in gilt; some small edge-spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the Michael Jarvis dust-jacket — the jacket with just a hint of bruising and a few faint spots to the edges of the inner flaps, but also very good.

£100

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First British edition. “Jammed into the hundred-acre plaza of the Gate of Heavenly Peace one August morning in 1966 were over a million young Chinese. Their bright crimson armbands proclaimed them the Red Guard. They were waiting to see their leader, Mao Tse-tung, ‘the red, red sun in our hearts’, waiting for the words that would send them streaming out over China in an outbreak of destruction and terror stimulated by idealism, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. A detailed and penetrating history from the multiple award-winning Anglo-American author and journalist, head of the Hong Kong Bureau of the Los Angeles Times in the years that mattered, as well as advisor to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xiv,478,[iv]pp. Original red boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; top edge pink; a touch bruised; some spotting of edges, but otherwise very good in the Keith Davis / Graham Berney dust-jacket — the jacket a touch dusty, lightly edge-worn, with a short tear to the upper panel, but complete and attractive still.

£40

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London : Trigram Press, (1971). First edition : the wrappers issue. Signed by Gavin Ewart on the title-page, with the date of January 1976 in another hand. A collection of thirty-nine poems — as Philip Larkin noted, “well-shaped pieces, freaked with pain and absurdity” — including “On the Death of an Unpleasant Executive”, “People Will Say We’re in Love”, “Soho and West, Saturday Morning”, “Intimations of Mortality on the Lower Richmond Road”, “The Only Emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream”, etc.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). (64)pp. Title-page and cover designs by Michael Foreman. Original flesh-coloured (the publisher’s description) wrappers, printed in brown and puce; a very good copy.

£25

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New York : New Directions, (1971). First trade edition : a few copies of an “unripe version” had been printed for friends of the author under a slightly different title the previous year. “Let my Japanese Pen tell its story / They say it is made of bamboo shoot and / does not scatter / drops of black blood ...” — a single long poem of linked verses, with strong echoes of Japanese poetry and Tibetan Buddhist texts. Illustrations by Ferlinghetti, poet, painter and publisher — and one of the most influential figures of his time.
Pott 4to (16cm). [92],[iv]pp. The text printed in facsimile manuscript on rectos only. Original wrappers in a black-and-white design by the poet; just a hint of age and use, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First edition. A posthumously published collection — eight short stories, all set during World War II, and mostly featuring Captain Crowe of the destroyer H.M.S. Apache — a Hornblower in modern dress — as he takes on the German navy in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, together with the novella, “If Hitler Had Invaded England” — “a little masterpiece” of what-might-have-been if Hitler had followed up on Dunkirk.
Post 8vo (21cm). (194),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; tiny sliver of sunning at tips; very faint spine crease; small mark to fore-edge, but a good copy in the Graham Humphreys dust-jacket — the jacket lightly tanned at spine, and with some light rubbing and wear to the extremities, but with a single short nick and also good.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), (1971). First edition. The publishing jackpot of 1971 — the fictional plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle — soon turned into the award-winning 1973 Fred Zinneman movie with Edward Fox, Terence Alexander, etc. “It was an overdraft, ex-reporter, Frederick Forsyth told me that made him sit down and write his first novel. It took him thirty-five days. Three publishers turned it down. A fourth shilly-shallied so much that Forsyth took it away and submitted it to a fifth, who said yes, yes, yes. The result: so far it has brought in rather more than £7,000 for each of those thirty-five days — around a quarter of a million pounds, of which Forsyth’s share is some £150,000. And all before a word has been published. ‘The Day of the Jackal’ (Hutchinson, £2) comes out tomorrow” (Mark Kahn in the Sunday Mirror, 6th June 1971). The article later admits that although written in thirty-five days, “the research and accumulation of material took years”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(358),[iv]pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising; faint tanning of endpapers; edges just a touch dusty, but a very good copy in the Tom Simmonds and Trevor Vertigan dust-jacket — the jacket with some very minor wear indeed to the extremities and a slight crease to the rear flap, but bright, unfaded and handsome still.

SOLD

London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First edition. Abduction and a famous Newmarket stables under threat — “Quite perfect little thriller about a rich loon who wants his amateur rider son to win the Derby. The doting parent will stop at nothing — not even at breaking the horses’ legs — to get his son the winning post. The narrative comes across in a nice horsey, heady style” (Belfast Telegraph, 18th June 1973).
Post 8vo (21cm). (216)pp. Endpaper maps. Original black boards, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; a few slight marks, but a very good copy in the Beverly le Barrow dust-jacket — price-clipped, lightly marked, and just slightly worn at extremities.

£40

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London : Barrie & Jenkins, (1971). First edition. “When Flashman was inveigled into a game of pontoon with Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck, he was making an unconscious choice about his own future — would it lie in the House of Commons or the West African slave trade? Was there, for that matter, very much difference?” — the third novel in the series.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (296)pp. Endpaper maps. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in silver; top edge darkened and spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the Arthur Barbosa dust-jacket — the jacket just a little tanned, mainly to flaps, but complete, virtually unworn, and also very good.

SOLD

London : Geographia, [1971]. Eleventh edition, revised and extended. Originally published in 1930, but here revised and extended in scope, reaching out to Rickmansworth and Egham to the west; Radlett and Potters Bar to the north; Rainham and Dartford to the east, and Epsom and Purley to the south. Contents include a double-page key map, 210 fully indexed sectional maps in colour on a generous scale of three inches to the mile; six coloured sectional maps of the City and West End at over six inches to the mile; coloured double-page maps of the postal districts and the major roads; a map of the underground railway; and four endpaper maps of the theatres, cinemas, clubs and museums.
Demy 8vo (209 x 129mm). 224,182pp. Bound in an elegant contemporary full green crushed morocco (for Hatchard’s); banded and gilt; ornamental centrepiece on upper board; all edges gilt; silk headbands; spine eveny tanned; minor wear to corners, but a very good copy in a handsome binding.

SOLD

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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London : William Collins Sons & Co., (1971). First edition. “One of the Western World’s great scientific achievements” (Stephen Jay Gould) — a truly ground-breaking study, redefining humankind itself, based on ten years of research and living with chimpanzees on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. “The chimpanzees are man’s nearest relatives. Their family life and social hierarchies, their loyalties and vendettas, their sexual behaviour, their treatment of children and the old, have a strange relevance to the human condition. The author does not draw morals, but the morals are there for all to see”. Goodall established for the first time that the chimpanzees were by no means vegetarian, as previously thought, and that they were also capable of making simple tools — leading to her mentor Louis Leakey’s famous remark: “Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). 256pp. Extraordinary photo plates, some in colour, by her then husband, Hugo van Lawick. Drawings by David Bygott. Endpaper diagrams. Original green boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; just a hint of sunning at tips, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped, but very good and without wear.

SOLD

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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London : Rapp & Whiting / André Deutsch, (1971). First edition : the hardback issue. Signed by Henry Graham on the title-page. A collection of twenty-nine poems from the Liverpool poet, including “Breakfast with Kafka”, “The Waltz of the Sea”, “Birds Make Ornithologists”, etc. “From his earliest output to the very end, his highly recognisable poetic voice had a distinctive style based on a dry, ironic wit” (from Brian Wake’s Guardian obituary, 20th March 2019).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (48)pp. Original blue-brown weave boards; very good in the original Kaye Bellman dust-jacket – a design in black, red and white – just faintly spotted on inner flaps, but also very good.

£25

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London : Methuen & Co., (1971). First edition : the wrappers issue. Probably his most successful play, first put on at the Criterion in July 1971, with Alan Bates playing the lead. It was directed by Harold Pinter, who later wrote: “I found its savage, lacerating wit hard to beat ... the play gives us a character who hurls himself towards destruction while living, in the fever of his intellectual hell, with a vitality and brilliance known to few of us. He courts death by remaining ruthlessly — even dementedly — alive. It’s a remarkable creation and Alan Bates as Butley gave the performance of a lifetime”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 80pp. Original photographic wrappers — Alan Bates and Richard O’Callaghan in the original production; lightly rubbed; a few faint edge-spots, but a good copy. Neat May 1972 ownership inscription. Loosely inserted is a 1972 Criterion Theatre programme for the original run, dating from after the point at which Richard Briers had taken over the lead from Bates.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1971). First edition. An illuminating segment of autobiography, taking Greene’s life past his first encounter with espionage and up to his first genuine success with the publication of “Stamboul Train” in 1932 — complete with the changes in the text made off the cuff from a telephone box to ward off a threatened libel action from J. B. Priestley. “I have tried, however unsuccessfully, to live again the follies and sentimentalities and exaggerations of the distant time, and to feel them, as I felt them then, without irony”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [2],(216),[vi]pp. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge grey; a very good bright clean and sound copy in the Michael Harvey dust-jacket — the jacket just a touch tanned and with some minuscule wear to the extremities, but also very good.

£50

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New York : McGraw Hill Book Co., (1971). First American edition. “Feminists have always seemed to me to be particularly repulsive ... until I met Germaine Greer, an Australian who lectures in English literature at Warwick University. Miss Greer is about to publish a book about women’s rights called The Female Eunuch ... which is likely to take the notion of freedom for women somewhere far beyond its present boundaries. You may judge how far when I tell you that she wanted to call it, The Clitoris Strikes Back” (Quentin Crewe in the Sunday Mirror, 27th September 1970). First published in London towards the end of 1970, but it was the American edition which really propelled the author to global fame.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (x),(350)pp. Original black and purple cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; top edge black; a few leaves just slightly bruised, but a very good, bright, clean, and sound copy in the S. Neil Fujita dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped, with just some mild edge-wear and a little creasing to the front flap, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. A collection of twenty-five poems — including the title-poem, as well as “The Colour Machine”, “Listening to Jefferson Airplane”, the LSD-inspired “At the Centre”, “Sunlight”, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (56)pp. Original lemon yellow cloth, lettered in gilt; a hint of spotting to top edge; small mark to fore-edge; very faint tanning of endpapers; faint creasing to front free endpaper, but otherwise a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket.

£25

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New York : Doubleday & Co., 1971. First edition. Signed by Arthur Hailey on a preliminary blank. The British-born writer with the best-selling novel of the year in the United States — “a barn-storming epic set in Detroit and describing the machinations, industrial and sociological, of the motor-car industry. ‘Hotel; Airport; and now Wheels’ runs the publisher’s blurb and one knows what to expect: executive skulduggery, sex, relentless competition, sex, power-jockeying, sex, the Mafia, sex” (Anthony Masters in the Birmingham Daily Post, 18th March 1972). Impeccably researched, as were all his novels, this one was turned into a television series in 1978, with Rock Hudson, Lee Remick, etc.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],374pp. Original stone cloth, blue label, ruled and lettered in silver; a very good copy in the Paul Bacon dust-jacket — the jacket with a little very light edge-wear but also very good. Loosely inserted is a First Edition Circle bookmark from a Chicago bookstore noting that the book was signed by the author especially for members of the Circle.

SOLD

London : André Deutsch, (1971). First British edition. “The idiosyncratic, irascible yet lovable bookseller, real or imagined, coping with a prosaic if not dull lot of buyers and non-buyers, has long been a cliché of a character. It is good, while the tribe is still in being, to have the roles reversed, and the part played by a customer” (contemporary review). Hanff’s epistolary love-affair with the Charing Cross Road bookshop of Marks & Co., improbably turned into a television play (1975) with Anne Jackson and Frank Finlay, a radio play, a stage play — winning an Actress of the Year for Rosemary Leach in 1982 — and the film in 1987, with Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],96pp. Original red boards, lettered in blue; a few edge spots; a touch of tanning to the endpapers; one leaf lightly creased (a production flaw), but a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket just faintly creased, lightly tanned on the flaps, but also very good and unworn. Attached to the rear flap of the jacket is a press-cutting of the unattributed review quoted above.

SOLD

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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London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First British edition. A baker’s dozen of commissioned and frequently challenging science fiction stories, all set in the year 2,000 but reflecting the preoccupations of 1970 — overpopulation, race relations, space exploration, starvation, and war. With contributions from Brian W. Aldiss (Orgy of the Living and the Dying); Bertram Chandler (Sea Change); Harrison himself (American Dead); Fritz Leiber (America the Beautiful); Naomi Mitchison (After the Accident); Chad Oliver (Far from this Earth); Mack Reynolds (Utopian); Thomas N. Scortia (Judas Fish); Robert Silverberg (Black is Beautiful), etc. With an introduction by Harrison, notes on the authors, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 288pp. Original orange-red boards, lettered in gilt; a few slight marks, spots, and some mild discolouration to edges and endpapers, but otherwise very good, bright and sound in the dust-jacket — the jacket lightly edge-worn and a touch dusty, but complete and still vibrant.

SOLD

[London] : National Book League & The Poetry Society, 1971. First edition : limited to 300 numbered copies, designed by Monica Schmoller and printed at the Westerham Press on handmade paper from Hodgkinson’s Wookey Hole Mill. An anthology of new poems on “committed” themes, specially commissioned from a well-chosen mix of established and younger poets, to celebrate and commemorate the 1971 Bedford Square Book Bang. Contributors include Dannie Abse, Patricia Beer, D. M. Black, Stewart Conn, D. J. Enright (Public Bar), Seamus Heaney (Servant Boy), Roger McGough, Adrian Mitchell, William Plomer (The Planes of Bedford Square), Vernon Scannell, Jon Silkin, Ted Walker, and half a dozen others. With an introduction by Clifford Simmons, biographical notes on the poets, etc.
Crown 4to (27cm). 43,[i]pp. Original orange-red wrappers, lettered in black; the wrappers, larger and thinner than the text leaves themselves, inevitably slightly creased and bruised, but otherwise a very good copy of a large and vulnerable item.

SOLD

London : Poetry Book Society, 1971. First edition. A collection of fresh work, edited by Terry Eagleton. Poems from John Barrell, Douglas Dunn (This Year and Next), John Fuller (Lecture Room: Ten a.m.), Michael Hamburger (2 – The Glade and Consumed), Seamus Heaney (2 – The Tollund Man and Maighdean Mara), Jon Silkin (2 – I Picked a Stone Up and In this Miserable Time), James Simmons (The Bridge-Players), and Ted Walker (2).
Demy 8vo (22cm). [16]pp. Original white wrappers, printed in black; a touch of rusting to staples, but otherwise very good.

SOLD

London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition : the hardback issue. A presentation copy, inscribed by the author to his publisher, the late Tom Maschler (1933-2020) — “for Tom, new poems for my new publisher — with love thanks”, signed in full, and dated January 1972. Autobiographical poem sequences from the most senior of the “Mersey Sound” poets — pre-war Liverpool, wartime in Rhyl, student days in Paris, a holiday in Norway, dialectics in Hampstead, Aldermaston marches, schoolteacher in the provinces, return to Liverpool and growing fame as performer, poet and painter.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 46,[ii]pp. Original lavender-grey boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, clean, and sound copy in the M. Mohan dust-jacket — the jacket with some faint suggestion of wear to the extremities, but also very good.

£200

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London : Bantam Press, (2016). First edition : the hardback issue. Music journalist, presenter and historian David Hepworth — “1971 saw the release of more monumental albums than any year before or since and the establishment of a pantheon of stars who would dominate the next forty years ... January that year fired the gun on an unrepeatable surge of creativity, technological innovation, blissful ignorance, naked ambition and outrageous good fortune. By December rock had exploded into the mainstream. How did it happen? This book tells you. It’s the story of 1971, rock’s golden year”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],375,[i]pp. Plates, portraits, some coloured. Original pictorial boards; tiny bruise to one corner, but a very good copy in the curious original (and intensely irritating) three-quarter-length dust-jacket, designed to expose the upper portion of the boards.

£25

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London : André Deutsch, (1971). First edition : the rare hardback issue. The winner of the inaugural Whitbread Award for Poetry. A collection of thirty “prose-hymns”, all previously unpublished, with notes on King Offa, etc., and an introduction by C. H. Sisson. “These brilliantly exact verbal organizations are typical of the book: the activities of Mercia — coining, hammering, carving — are, first of all, the qualities of Mr Hill’s own poetic technique, so that style matches theme in a striking congruency” (TLS review).
Foolscap 4to (21cm). [48]pp. Original stone boards, lettered in brown; some spotting and browning of edges, endpapers and the inner flaps of the John Andrew dust-jacket, but otherwise a very good copy of a poorly produced book — the jacket complete and unworn. Loosely inserted are two contemporary press reviews.

£200

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1971). First edition. The title story, together with four further stories — “The Elephant Man”, “Friends of Miss Reece”, “Cockles and Mussels”, and “Somerville”. Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for 1972. “Susan Hill has never written anything as deeply moving”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],186pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a few faint spots to top edge, but a very good copy in the Beverly le Barrow dust-jacket — the jacket, barring some light spotting to verso and a hint of tanning to rear panel, also very good.

£50

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1971). First edition. “The most interesting, original and encouraging novel from a young novelist for a long time ... her most ambitious novel to date, a delicate, oblique story, set mainly on the Western Front in the First World War, about a close relationship between two young infantry officers ... beautifully written, moving, lyrical, tense with the sights, smells and din of the Western Front” (Keith Brace, in the Birmingham Daily Post, 23rd October 1971).
Post 8vo (21cm). (224)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; top edge pink; a little bruised at extremities; a few faint marks, but a good copy in the silver George Mayhew dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped by the publisher, with a revised price (£4.95 as opposed to the original £1.75) over-sticker, similarly bruised, rubbed in places, and a little marked and creased, but in reasonable state for an ill-thought-out production, not designed to last or to be handled.

£25

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London : Macmillan London, (1971). First edition. A pictorial chronicle of the often needlessly abandoned and destroyed buildings of London over the previous century — mansions, churches, quartiers, public buildings, commerce, hotels and restaurants, transport, and buildings under threat. A powerful plea for common sense in these matters from the architectural historian, Secretary of the Victorian Society, and general editor of the Survey of London.
Demy 4to (29cm). [vi],250pp. Illustrations throughout. Original maroon cloth, lettered in red and gold; some spotting, mainly of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the pictorial dust-jacket — the jacket worn and a little chipped, with several repaired tears.

SOLD

New York : Pirate Editions, (1971). First edition : the regular paperback issue. Counter-culture reaches its peak with a book rejected by thirty publishers, never popular with the owners of bookshops for obvious reasons, and now uncommon — “A handbook of survival and warfare for the citizens of Woodstock Nation”, with sections on free food; free clothing and furniture; free transportation; free land; free housing, etc., as well as the underground press; guerrilla broadcasting; demonstrations; street fighting; stink bombs, smoke bombs and pipe bombs; hip-pocket law; shoplifting, other books worth stealing, etc. Pleasing to see cricket playing its part — “At both Van Cortland Park in the Bronx and Walker Park on Staten Island every Sunday afternoon there are free cricket matches ... free tea and crumpets are served during intermission. I say!” p.242.
Crown 8vo (18cm). xii,308pp. Original pictorial wrappers; covers lightly rubbed and a little marked; spine a little creased; faint spotting of edges and outer leaves; a good copy of a fragile and difficult title.

£200

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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 : Secker & Warburg, (1971). First British edition. “It is London, tomorrow. The government has announced that Cessation is only a few weeks off; in the meantime, most people are planning their own particular ends, and those with the most status and privilege are preparing to go City — that is, to embark for the fabulous End City on the south-west coast” — the young Starvies are passive, the Failergoners weak-willed and indecisive, and the Lifers fight back. “Ostensibly this book is a skilful and successful piece of science fiction, but it is more than that. It is a devastatingly uncomfortable view of the way we live now” (Victoria Brittain in the Illustrated London News, 1st October 1971, on this British author first published in the United States).
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(228)pp. Original jade boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the Philip Mann dust-jacket — the jacket with some light edge-wear, but also very good.

£25

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New York : Harper & Row, (1971). First American edition : contains seven more poems than the British edition, which had appeared five months earlier, taking the total number of poems to well over sixty. The jacket quotes extensively from the British reviews — “English poetry has found a new hero” (Peter Porter); “Hughes now joins the select band of survivor-poets whose work is adequate to the destructive reality we inhabit. I think he is the only British poet to have done so” (A. Alvarez); “An amazingly sustained, unified performance” (Alan Brownjohn); “A most extraordinary work of genius” (C. B. Cox).
Foolscap 4to (23cm). (x),84,[ii]pp. Original quarter black cloth, cream boards, lettered in red and with a black Leonard Baskin crow on the upper board; edges a little spotted, but otherwise a very good and crisp copy in the Baskin dust-jacket — the jacket with a few faint spots, but very good and unworn.

SOLD

Woodford Green : Poet and Printer, (1971). First edition : limited to 200 copies, with an additional “no more than thirty” copies for academic or review purposes. In theory, half of the 200 copies were to be distributed by the publisher and half given to Hughes, but there was evidently a certain amount of muddle. The present example is from Hughes’ own personal stock and numbered 71/88 below his signature on the front free endpaper. A collection of twelve poems, including the title-poem, as well as “Bones”, “Amulet”, “Snow Song”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (28),[iv]pp. Original cream paper-backed red and black patterned boards, lettered on spine and upper cover in black; a very good copy indeed.

SOLD

London : William Collins Sons & Co., 1971. First edition. Signed by the author on the title-page. “I have been researching ‘Levkas Man’ for the last ten years ... and it means more to me than any other book I have written” — a complex tale, inspired by Louis Leakey’s discoveries in the Olduvai Gorge, of a rogue anthropologist in search of humankind’s arrival in Europe. The typical Innes action moves from Amsterdam to Malta and on to the Greek islands, but “Collins have had complaints about the erudite-looking dust-cover ... ‘We didn’t want to give the wrong impression by having a cloak-and-dagger sort of cover’, said Innes. ‘The book is about a love-hate relationship between a young man and the anthropologist who had adopted him’” (Newcastle Journal, 20th February 1971). “People say people can’t write stories any more. Tell that to Hammond Innes” (Sunday Times).
Post 8vo (21cm). 320pp. Endpaper maps. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; small (2cm) stain on top edge, slightly extending on to fore-edge, but otherwise a very good, bright, and sound copy in the Richard Dalkins dust-jacket — the jacket with a couple of faint marks, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Cassell & Co., (1971). First edition. “London exists because of London Bridge” — a richly illustrated history of the bridge in its various incarnations — the early wooden bridges, the nineteen-arched stone bridge — “a wonder of the medieval world”, Rennie’s elegant nineteenth-century design, and its just-built replacement. “Let the whole Earth now all Her wonders count, This Bridge of Wonders is the Paramount” (James Howell, 1657).
Crown 4to (24cm). [x],134pp. Illustrated throughout, many of the images from the author’s own superb collection. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean, and sound copy in the Mike Barfield dust-jacket — the jacket good — price-clipped, a touch sunned, lightly worn and with a couple of nicks at head.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated (26th May 1980) by the author — “For Ruth and Al With every good wish” — the recipients being Ruth and Al Windfeldt of Scene of the Crime Fine Books in Sherman Oaks. Killer at large in a training-school for nurses, Adam Dalgliesh is called in — the fourth Dalgliesh novel and the one which cemented her reputation, winner of the CWA Silver Dagger and runner-up in the Mystery Writers of America Best Novel Award.
Post 8vo (21cm). 296pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; a little bumped at head and tail, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket similarly bruised at tips, but with only minimal wear elsewhere and also very good.

SOLD

London : Gold & Warburton, (1971). First edition. “What a cracker! She had the face, figure and personality to make men breathe more heavily and have carnal thoughts ... Kay may have been a cracker, but she was not all she was cracked up to be” — “Hank Janson” was originally a pseudonym adopted by Stephen Daniel Frances (1917-1989) in 1948, but had long since become a house-name used by a variety of other and increasingly desperate authors. The present title was among the last handful of Jansons — no more were to appear after 1971 until the recent reprints of some of the early titles.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 189,[iii]pp. Original pictorial wrappers; some minor rubbing; faint creasing to one corner, but otherwise a very good copy. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : William Collins Sons & Co., (1971). First edition. Johnson in a nursing home for the old people’s Social Evening — the events experienced in different ways by nine different protagonists. Researched largely by talking to old people in the pubs of Islington. “His originality, inventiveness and technical skills have never been deployed with finer artistry or to greater effect, nor have they ever been used on a theme which he has treated with greater feeling and integrity”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 204,[iv]pp. Original sage-green boards, lettered in gilt; just lightly bruised; top edge a touch dusty; spotting to fore-edge, but a good copy in the Eugene Ankenny dust-jacket — the jacket slightly sunned, somewhat worn, and a little creased and chipped.

SOLD

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 : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First edition. “For most people the machines remain mysterious, clattering away to themselves behind the glass walls of air-conditioned temples, attended by a highly paid few”. A well-written demystification and a remarkably prescient analysis of the extent to which computers were already making an impact on everyday lives, with references to online networks, databanks, etc. “By 1980, with millions of terminals online ... there will already be a substantial class of people ... able to work largely at home with the aid of a terminal and perhaps a picturephone”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (176)pp. Original grey boards, lettered in gilt; a touch bruised and a few faint edge-spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the Dorothy Judd dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped, lightly used, but also very good barring a single short one-inch tear to the back panel.

SOLD

London : Oxford University Press, (1971). First edition. A fine study of the urban poor, backed up with a mountain of documentary and statistical evidence, of that crucial late Victorian period when the emphasis shifted from charitable endeavour for the poor destined always to be with us, to a belief that poverty could (and should) be eradicated by genuine structural change. A fascinating counterpoint to Dickens, Gissing, Mayhew and Booth. “One of the most stimulating and in the best sense provocative studies of Victorian London which have yet appeared” (Asa Briggs).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xvi),424pp. Plates. Tables. Maps. Figures. Original red cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket a little sunned and with mild edge-wear, but also very good. Some pencil annotation and underlining. Ownership inscription somewhat heavily crossed through. Loosely inserted are press-cuttings of a number of contemporary and laudatory reviews.

SOLD

London : William Collins Sons & Co. (The Crime Club), (1971). First edition. The diffident detective travels across India by rail — the routine chore is not all it seems. “The Bombay CID inspector so amiably created by Mr. Keating figures this time in a battle of wits, staged entirely in an express carriage” (Belfast Telegraph, 10th January 1972).
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very slightly bruised; slight spotting of edges; but a very good copy in the original Kenneth Farnhill dust-jacket — a design in black, red and green on white — slightly nicked, but also very good.

£25

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London : Collins, (1971). First edition. “Suppose your country began to change. Suppose that without noticing it, it became dangerous for some people to live in any longer ... That is what happened to Anna in Germany in 1933 ... Perhaps not quite a novel. Most of it is true”. The first instalment of her “Out of the Hitler Time” trilogy.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (192)pp. Illustrations by the author. Original pink boards, lettered in silver; one tiny scuff; endpapers faintly tanned; some light discolouration to edges; a good, sound and internally clean copy in the author-designed jacket (the earlier variant with the “Charley” advertisement on the back panel) — the jacket price-clipped, with a very shallow fringe of discolouration to the bottom edge (more noticeable on verso); some light chipping, wear, tiny nicks, one short tear to upper edge, and a few faint marks, but a very acceptable copy of a very difficult title.

SOLD

New York : Grossman Publishers, 1971. First edition. A delightful sequence of sixty-six photographs of books and people reading from the Hungarian master photographer, the son of a Budapest bookseller — photographs from throughout his career — Hungary in 1915; Paris in the 1920s, 1930s, and again in the 1960s; New York from the 1930s to 1970; Connecticut in the 1950s; Buenos Aires in 1962; New Orleans in 1966; Japan in 1968, etc.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [64]pp. Illustrations throughout. Original white boards, ruled and lettered in black; tiny sliver of tanning to foot, but a very good copy indeed in the Jacqueline Schuman designed jacket — price-clipped and just faintly tanned at spine — but without the yellowing usually encountered, and also very good. Gift inscription on half-title from Jan to her Mom — “you taught me much more than any book could ever say”.

£75

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition. A man with no memory found wandering on the Embankment — a descent into madness and alternative worlds — short-listed for the Booker Prize and “her most astounding imaginative achievement — a rare work which explores new areas of thought”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (252)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge pink; a few tiny marks; slight flaw to rear pastedown, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the Alan Tunbridge dust-jacket — the jacket with some very mild edge-wear and a couple of spots to the flaps, but also very good.

SOLD

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 : Victor Gollancz, 1971. First edition. “There’s a corpse in the copse ...” — a seedy literary hanger-on found dead on his way to see his editor in Kent — American private eye Jim Piron, some ripely eccentric characters, the author’s sardonic humour, and a fine English country-house murder. “McGirr at his splendidly ingenious and exhilarating best”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 160pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the Gollancz yellow dust-jacket, printed in magenta and black — just faintly bruised and with some mild creasing, but also very good.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition : the scarce hardback issue. At that time probably better-known for his membership of “The Scaffold”, and in particular “Lily the Pink”, but here with his third solo collection of poems and already en route to becoming President of the Poetry Society. Forty-seven poems in three sequences — “There is the off-beat sense of humour and the compulsive juggling with sounds and appearances of words. But behind the smile is a very serious man with a highly individualistic perception, savagely satirical, and surprisingly lyrical” (Belfast Telegraph, 3rd December 1971).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (72)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; tiny bruise to one corner; a few faint spots to front endpaper, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in M. Mohan dust-jacket — the jacket, barring a handful of spots to front flap and the merest suggestion of rubbing to head, in excellent state.

£125

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London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First British edition. Signed by McKuen on the half-title. A collection of over forty love poems and lyrics from the Californian singer-songwriter — “The Art of Catching Trains”, followed by poems for San Francisco, Paris, Venice, London, Cheyenne, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Gstaad, and two further sequences. Reportedly the best-selling poet in history at that point, with his own television show on the BBC in 1971 — “The masses ate him up with a spoon, while highbrow literary critics roasted him on a spit” (Julia Keller). Interesting now to contrast his reputation with that of his friend and frequent collaborator, Jacques Brel.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],(112),[vi]pp. Original fawn cloth, lettered in silver; just a little bruised; top edge spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the David Nutter dust-jacket — the jacket a little rubbed and worn, but complete and without tears. Contemporary ownership inscription of Yvette Smith of the Wirral.

£25

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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 : 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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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 : Michael Joseph, (1971). First edition. “A man called Chamberlain who did Prime Minister impressions spoke on the wireless; he said, ‘As from eleven o’clock we are at war with Germany’. (I loved the WE) ...”. Autobiography, truth, and humour from Milligan, who performed (rather than read) parts of the book at the Bedford Square Book Bang to tumultuous applause that summer.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],146,[ii]pp. Illustrations. Photographs. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a few faint edge-spots, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket a little sunned, worn and slightly chipped, with a relatively unobtrusive repaired tear and split to the rear panel extending to its full height. Contemporary May 1971 gift inscription, with twelve signatories, on front paste-down.

£25

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London : New English Library, (1971). First edition. “For ten thousand years did the Bright Empire of Melniboné rule the world by virtue of her Sorcerer Kings, her Dragon Hordes and her golden battle barges ...” — the action taking place between the earlier short stories of “The Singing Citadel” and “The Stealer of Souls” — and Moorcock already hailed in the publisher’s blurb as “the greatest living writer of heroic fantasy”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 140,[iv]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; text lightly tanned, as usual; a handful of pale spots to edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good, bright, and sound copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket sunned at the spine (although remaining entirely legible), with some slight wear and a single very short tear to the rear panel.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition. “To be intimate means to be close, and I must make it clear at the outset that I am treating this literally” — the zoologist examines the whole range of human intimacy from social to sexual, and the overwhelming and increasingly forgotten importance to the human animal of touching and physical contact — from eye contact, a handshake, or a pat on the back, to the hug, the caress, and the kiss and beyond. “The female navel, at any rate, will never be the same again” wrote Mordecai Richler in the New York Times, 5th March 1972.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original fawn cloth; brown label; ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge pink; a few edge-spots, but a very good copy in the M. Mohan dust-jacket — the jacket just a touch sunned, with some very minor edge-wear, but also very good.

£25

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), (1971). First edition. Eleanor Strathearn leaves a bleak flat and a dead marriage to create a new home for herself and her five more or less grown-up children. “Eleanor is one of Penelope Mortimer’s smartingly vulnerable and ultimately devastated heroines ... her best and strongest book by far — brilliantly particularised and achingly alive” (Kirkus Review, 1st March 1972). “She writes with a frankness and conviction that give one the uneasy and yet thrilling feeling of eavesdropping on real life” (Jean Richardson in the Birmingham Daily Post, 18th September 1971).
Post 8vo (21cm). (232)pp. Original black boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; slightly bruised; some spotting of edges; very mild tanning of endpapers, but a good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket with just a little edge-wear and a slight crease to the front flap, but also good. Ownership inscription of Nancy Kraatz — loosely inserted is a January 1972 letter from her giving the book to a friend — “I enjoyed it very much and think you will ... of course they will film the book”, etc.

SOLD

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 : B. T. Batsford, (1971). First edition. A well illustrated and wide-ranging survey, by one of the best of antiquarian booksellers, of (mainly British) illustrated books of the nineteenth century — with chapters on chapbooks; Thomas Bewick and George Cruikshank; line engraving; the periodicals; the Dalziels; the advent of colour; fin-de-siècle; foreign influence; America, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xvi),(288)pp. Four colour plates. Numerous monochrome illustrations. Original orange cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge black; a few slight marks and minor signs of age and use, but a good and bright copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket just slightly used.

SOLD

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 : National Book League, 1971. First edition. A prospectus for Martyn Goff’s spectacular demonstration of the continuing relevance of the book, to be held in Bedford Square — “books — like discs, like TV, like cassettes — are fun”. Gives advance details of some of the planned activities: themed stalls; a science fiction evening with James Blish and John Brunner; crime with Julian Symons; an occult evening; B. S. Johnson on the new novel; poet’s corner; performances for children; and of course a bookshop. A further section outlines the projected finances, guarantees, sponsorship, income, admission charges — the whole event to cost something under £40,000, most of which would be recouped. Printed by the Shenval Press.
Crown 4to (21cm). [12]pp. Original orange and white stapled wrappers featuring a plan of the event; lightly marked and a little creased, but a good copy of an uncommon survival. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition : the hardback issue. A play written for television — a rich and powerful industrialist starts to pull apart his crumbling private life. The play was eventually turned into a film for television in 1980, with Alan Bates and Gemma Jones — “Osborne has this time tackled a subject worthy of his talents” (Liverpool Echo, 13th February 1980).
Post 8vo (21cm). 54,[ii]pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt; an indifferent copy — the spine a little mottled with some very faint spotting of edges, but sound and in the dust-jacket — the jacket rubbed, a little soiled, slightly worn in places, and with a couple of short tears.

£20

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London : Robert Hale, (1971). First edition. An intriguing examination from this prolific American author of the whole field of ghosts, hauntings, apparitions, manifestations, poltergeists, spirit voices, etc., with chapters on individual cases — “Borley Rectory”, “The Dark Lady of Bognor Regis”, “The Affair at Tedworth”, etc. With a bibliography, index, etc. There would appear to be no equivalent American edition.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (192)pp. Original violet boards, lettered in silver; top edge purple; very slightly bruised at foot, but otherwise a very good copy in the stylish C. R. Evans dust-jacket — price-clipped and just a touch sunned, but with only a hint of wear and also very good.

£50

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[London] : Blond & Briggs, (1971). First edition. “It is this case, and cases such as these, which stand at the cross-roads of our liberty ... Members of the Jury, this is a case about dissent ... we are all of us, totally entitled to disagree with their views; but this is a case about whether or not they are also entitled to disagree with us” (John Mortimer Q.C. in his opening address). Richard Neville, Felix Dennis and Jim Anderson on trial over the notorious “Schoolkids” issue of the magazine “Oz” — an account rushed out by film director Tony Palmer in August 1971 in the wake of the longest obscenity trial in British history, which had taken place over six weeks in June and July. Among the defence witnesses were George Melly, Caroline Coon, Edward de Bono, Hans Eysenck, John Peel, Marty Feldman, Ronald Dworkin, and Feliks Topolski, who provided the illustrations.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (276)pp. Illustrations by Topolski. Original pictorial wrappers; spine faded, slightly spotted, and a little rubbed and creased; mild spotting of edges and outer leaves; a good copy of a fragile production.

£40

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London : George Allen & Unwin, (1971). First edition : the hardback issue. His third collection of poetry — over forty poems, including “At Four O’Clock in the Morning”, “Through All Your Abstract Reasoning”, “Heroine Bitches”, “Interruption at the Opera House”, etc. “A sensibility profoundly aware of the ever-present possibility of the magical and the miraculous, as well as of the granite-hard realities. These are undiluted poems, beautifully calculated, informed — even in their darkest moments — with courage and hope” (Charles Causley).
Demy 8vo (23cm). 64pp. Original black cloth, lettered in silver; top edge black; an excellent copy, bright, clean, and sound, in the Meg Rutherford dust-jacket — the jacket equally good, fresh, and unworn.

£75

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition in English. The first major collection of poetry by the Mexican Nobel Prize winner to be published in the British Isles — Paz at that time lecturing at Cambridge. Poems from his collections “Salamandra” (1958-1961) and “Ladera Este” (1962-1968), together with the stand-alone poems “Sun Stone” (1957) and “Blanco” (1966) — all given in parallel Spanish and English text versions — the translations by Paul Blackburn, Denise Levertov, Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Tomlinson and others, as well as Paz himself.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],198pp. Original aubergine boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; slightly bruised at head; top edge a little spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the Leigh Taylor dust-jacket — the jacket just a touch sunned, but with only the faintest signs of use and also very good.

£50

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London : ICA, [1971]. First edition. An attractively produced catalogue, designed by Edward Wright and printed at the Shenval Press, of the 1971 London exhibition — although limited to forty-five loans from collectors living in London, an impressive array. With an introduction by Sir Roland Penrose (1900-1984).
Single sheet, folding to form five leaves (eight if fully folded). 26 x 26cm. Illustrations. Very good.

£25

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London : Methuen & Co., (1971). First edition. A married couple of twenty years await a visit from the wife’s old flatmate — troubling and conflicting memories surface. “The most technically daring play that Harold Pinter has written. Mr Pinter proceeds from complexity to complexity, but it is dangerous to suppose that the ambiguity of a new Pinter play is merely a development of the ambiguity of the one that preceded it ... one of the finest plays, one of the most mind-startling, one of the most immaculately written, of its generation. But it is not as simple as Beatrix Potter” (Harold Hobson in a contemporary review).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (76),[iv]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket — Colin Blakeley, Dorothy Tutin and Vivien Merchant in the original Peter Hall production at the Royal Shakespeare — the jacket with just a little wear at head and two corners, but also very good. Loosely inserted are two contemporary press-cuttings — the Harold Hobson review quoted above, with the concluding part of the quotation energetically crossed out by a former owner, and a splendid Pinter spoof by Alan Brien.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. “I believe one should be able to control and manipulate experiences”. A collection of thirty-four poems, mainly from the years 1960-1961, and including “Parliament Hill Fields”, “Stillborn”, “Heavy Women”, “Love Letter”, “Small Hours”, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 64pp. Original blue cloth, lettered down spine in gilt; just a hint of rubbing; very mild tanning of endpapers; a few edge spots, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just a little tanned, with a couple of spots on lower panel, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. “My poems do not turn out to be about Hiroshima, but about a child forming itself finger by finger in the dark”. Eighteen poems from the final months of Plath’s life, including “Gigolo”, “Childless Woman” and “Purdah”, together with the slightly earlier “Three Women”. With a short introductory note by Ted Hughes.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (56)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in silver; top edge a little spotted, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket with a couple of tiny marks on rear panel, but also very good.

£100

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1

London : William Heinemann, (1971). First edition. The tenth volume in the series, as the “Dance to the Music of Time” enters its final movement. Austerity in post-war literary London, the eccentric and egotistical X. Trapnel, the rascally Widmerpool, now an M.P., and Pamela Flitton — “probably the vilest, rudest, most odious woman in fiction ... sulky, ill-bred, beautiful”, as Elizabeth Harvey put it in a contemporary review.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(242),[ii]pp. Original red cloth, blocked in black and lettered in gilt; a touch bruised, with some flecking, mainly to the edges of the cloth; top edge spotted, but a good copy in the Broom Lynne dust-jacket — a design in red, orange, black and white — just a touch darkened at the spine, with some minimal wear and a few spots, but just a single short nick and itself very good.

£50

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Gerrards Cross : Colin Smythe, 1971. First edition. “There is magic in every carpet. Cities and villages exist right under your feet ...” — his first book. “A reviewer who stumbles upon a book of what he considers to be quite extraordinary quality also finds himself in some difficulty. The language of praise has become so debased — notably by book reviewers — that it’s not easy either to sound convincing or to do justice ... Am I too enthusiastic? Well, it’s that I feel it’s a new dimension in imagination and the prose is beautiful” (Rosemarie Doyle in The Irish Times). Loosely inserted is a manuscript note from the publisher, Colin Smythe, on his business notepaper — “Sorry, I forgot this in my letter: the enclosed may amuse you, also by T. P.”, attached to which are press-cuttings of the review quoted above and ten entertaining 1973 Pratchett cartoons depicting goings-on at the government’s fictional “Warlock Hall” paranormal research establishment, as published in Smythe’s publication, the “Psychic Researcher”, as well as an example of Smythe’s personal ex-libris label.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). (196)pp. Illustrations by the author. Original olive boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Pratchett dust-jacket — also very good and protected by an acetate sleeve. Small blurred library stamp on verso of title.

SOLD

London : Studio Vista, (1971). First edition. “The first general work to be published which considers the entire history of English literature from the viewpoint of the book-collector ... The major auction houses regularly present book sales, and prices have risen dramatically; yet it is still possible for the poorest amateur to build a satisfying library at a modest cost” — with chapters on points and pitfalls; the earliest printed books; novels and romances; poetry; drama; science and medicine; travel and topography; natural history; early children’s books; detective fiction; bindings and binding styles, etc., with a glossary, a list of abbreviations, a concise bibliography, etc.
Medium 4to (31cm). 144pp. Colour plates. Monochrome illustrations throughout — all of books in Quayle’s own impressive collection. Original navy cloth, lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges and outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket with only very minor edge-wear and also very good.

SOLD

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 : Anthony Blond, (1971). First edition. The elusive seventh novel in the “Alms for Oblivion” sequence. It is 1945 and “there is a feeling of Domesday over every white man in India ... Simon Raven goes back in time to the hectic death throes of the Indian Empire, when Tradition and Honour were giving way to Riot, Nationalism and Hatred”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 224pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; slightly bruised at foot; a couple of spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the Oliver Elmes dust-jacket — the spine sunned, creased, and worn at tips, with a three-inch (8cm) repaired tear to fold of upper flap and one much shorter repair at foot. Foyle’s label on front pastedown. Contemporary ownership inscription of William Diver.

SOLD

London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), (1971). First edition. Crossword addict Stanley Manning has his eyes on his wife’s inheritance from his hated mother-in-law — “a man dominated by greed, who discovers, as his nerve goes, that a harmless hobby may become an over-ruling obsession”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; mild tanning to endpapers, but a very good copy in the Colin Andrews dust-jacket — the jacket with just a touch of edge-wear and some slight creasing to inner flaps, but also very good. Contemporary gift inscription to front free endpaper.

£125

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New York : William Morrow & Co., 1971. First edition. “When I read The Dice Man fifteen years ago, I wanted to know who had written it, and why. It read more like an act of survival than a novel, but whether it was the author’s survival or mine, I wasn’t sure. I had stopped drinking alcohol and I was looking, simply, for another drug. The book made me high; it offered multiple universes, all of them safer than vodka” (Tanya Gold in The Guardian, 4th March 2017). The fictional autobiography of a bored New York psychiatrist who persuades himself and his patients to surrender their will to the random roll of the dice — the dicelife. His first book and not an immediate success, as evidenced by the remainder mark on the bottom edge of this copy, but gradually to become the ultimate cult novel of its time.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (xiv),(306)pp. Original black and white cloth-backed boards; just a suggestion of bruising; a few faint marks; traces of label removal on front free endpaper, but otherwise a very good copy in the Lawrence Ratzkin dust-jacket — a little sunned, very slightly worn at head, a touch bruised, with one small mark and one short nick, but complete and elegant still.

SOLD

[London] : Arts Council, 1971. First edition. A richly illustrated catalogue of the memorable 1971 retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery — an exhibition which also toured Europe. Notes of the 227 exhibits by the artist from West Norwood, with an introduction and a biographical note by Bryan Robertson, notes of previous exhibitions, a bibliography, etc.
Post 4to (24cm). 80pp. Numerous full-page illustrations, some in colour. Original monochrome card wrappers; wrappers lightly rubbed, and a little spotted and tanned, but a good copy. Occasional annotation, mainly in pencil, by a previous owner — seeming to relate to the framing of various items.

SOLD

London : Chatto & Windus, 1971. First edition. Twenty-three poets aged under thirty-five — a fine anthology with biographical notes and some captivating period portrait photographs. Contributors include Stewart Conn (5 poems), Kevin Crossley-Holland (3), Peter Dale (4), Douglas Dunn (5), John Fuller (4), Ian Hamilton (4), Tony Harrison (4), a Beatle-cropped Seamus Heaney (5), Brian Jones (4), Angela Langfield (3), Michael Longley (4), Derek Mahon (5), Dom Moraes (5), Brian Patten (3), Jeremy Robson himself (4), Jon Stallworthy (5), Hugo Williams (4), and half a dozen others.
Post 8vo (22cm). 156pp. Plates. Portraits. Original violet boards, lettered in gilt; a couple of slight marks, but a very good copy in the pictorial dust-jacket — the jacket with a couple of short repaired tears at head, and another on the inside flap, but clean and complete and with only very minor further wear.

£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 : 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 : William Heinemann, (1971). First edition. “Gathered at Pankot are the wives, daughters, mothers and widows of officers, a microcosm of English society — rigid with a sense of duty and brittle with the awareness of class”. The elusive third novel in Scott’s “Raj Quartet” — the war draws to its final stages — “It can no longer be denied that Japanese soldiers with guns and paper umbrellas may appear on the golf course at Pankot”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],392pp. Original navy boards, lettered in gilt; a little bruised; edges somewhat spotted, but a still bright and sound copy in the Roloff Beny dust-jacket, also lightly bruised, but still very good, with just a faint hint of wear.

SOLD

London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First edition. The pioneering journalist with the first of her much-admired books on gardening — “not so much a textbook as a treasury of ideas. Ideas on designing and planting, ideas for the winter garden and the wild garden, ideas for planting the odd corner or filling the August gap, ideas for hedges and climbing plants, paths and windbreaks, ideas on books to read and gardens to visit”. Loosely inserted is a single-page typed letter on her headed notepaper, signed with forename and with manuscript addition and corrections, from the author to her friend Candida [Lycett Green], referring to both Osbert Lancaster (the author’s husband) and John Betjeman, the first volume of whose letters, edited by Lycett Green (his daughter), had just appeared. “I liked Vol. I. So much, especially your linking pieces” appears as a manuscript postscript to the letter.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 176pp. Photo plates. Drawings by Osbert Lancaster. Original sage boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; slightly bruised; small paper flaw and small inked erasure to front free endpaper, but otherwise a very good, clean, and sound copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped, slightly bruised, with the spine a little darkened and faintly splashed in places, but otherwise very good and unworn.

SOLD

London : Dennis Dobson, (1971). First edition. A delightful little squib — “Dr Searle, face to face as always with the sicknesses of twentieth-century society, has now confronted the terrible problem of addiction. In this book he concisely and graphically crystallizes the horror and degradation of those who are slaves to narcotics ... Take a trip with Searle. NB The Addict’s moment of truth has been tactfully concealed from casual gaze by sealing the last two pages”.
Pott 4to (15cm). [40]pp. Coloured illustrations throughout. Original pictorial boards; rear board faintly discoloured; a few spots, but a good copy of a small and ephemeral production — the seal still present.

£20

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London : Bodley Head, (1971). First British edition. “I’m not the milk, and the milk’s not me! I’m Mickey!” — “I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me. God bless milk and God bless me!” — Sendak’s tour-de-force for toddlers, banned in some parts of the world for “gratuitous nudity”.
Demy 4to (29cm). [40]pp. Coloured illustrations throughout. Original pictorial boards; a little rubbed and slightly worn; a few slight marks; a good copy in the matching dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped, rubbed and edge-worn, with a few marks and repaired tears. A serviceable copy.

SOLD

London : Martin Secker & Warburg, (1971). First edition. His first novel and an extraordinary debut — in a sleepy South African town a wealthy spinster of impeccably imperial British family informs the chief of police that she has shot her Zulu cook — not a problem, until it emerges that this was a crime of illicit and distinctly unusual passion. “Readers of this wholly original first novel may find it hard to decide whether they are faint with laughter or staggering from shock”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(250)pp. Original navy boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; slightly marked and lightly bruised; a few small internal marks, but a good copy in the John Newberry / Philip Mann dust-jacket — the jacket sunned at spine (as usual), with some minor wear and a short tear at the foot of the front flap.

SOLD

London : Victor Gollancz, 1971. First British and first hardback edition. Inscribed and signed by Belfast-born Bob Shaw on the title-page. “A tale of intrigue and double dealings ... a new drug that produces immortality. There is already a drug, but it has the side effect that it makes men impotent: the new one does not ... when it is offered to the manufacturer’s cost accountant for trial, someone starts trying to kill him. This fast, hard-hitting story is the best so far from this author” (James Clayton in the Birmingham Daily Post, 12th June 1971). First published in paperback in New York the previous year.
Post 8vo (21cm). (160)pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; small mark on lower edge, but otherwise a very good copy indeed — clean, bright and sound in the dust-jacket — the jacket with two faint and tiny creases, and with a very small mark on the rear flap, but also very good, fresh, bright and unworn.

£125

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1971). First edition in English of “L’Ours en Peluche” (1960). “Professor Chabot is haunted by the idea of suicide and speculates on how the news will affect his wife, children, and mistress ... But it is not suicide which will end the story of Professor Chabot”. Translated from the French by John Clay.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],156pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a faint hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the Beverly le Barrow dust-jacket — the jacket price-clipped by the publisher, with a revised price over-sticker, but very good, fresh and unworn.

SOLD

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 : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First British edition. “‘That ain’t no ordinary loco-weed’, said C.K. — that there is red-dirt marijuana, that’s what that is’. A black farm-hand, a twelve-year-old white boy and a cow stumble on their own ‘pot’ plant in a patch of dwarf cactus — to the benefit of all three”. Twenty-three stories and other pieces from the Texan screenwriter, known for his work on “Dr. Strangelove”, “The Loved One”, “The Collector”, “The Cincinnati Kid”, “Casino Royale”, “Barbarella”, “Easy Rider”, etc. — and something of a cult figure in the Swinging London of the late 1960s, hanging out with all the beautiful people. “The most profoundly witty writer of our generation” (Gore Vidal). First published in the United States in 1967.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],246,[ii]pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge black; slightly bruised; tiny mark to fore-edge, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the Bill Botten dust-jacket — the jacket similarly bruised, with some very light edge-wear and two short nicks at the head of the front panel, but complete and attractive still.

SOLD

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 : William Collins Sons & Co., 1971. First edition. The third of the author’s lightly fictionalised autobiographies — covering her career as a writer, her wartime WVS work in Deptford, etc. “She writes as poignantly of a garden or a dog, the illness of a close friend, the virtues and shortcomings of her family, old age and death as she does of war”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],214,[ii]pp. Original green cloth, enamelled in red and lettered in gilt; a few slight marks, but still a good copy in the dust-jacket - a pictorial design by Charles Mozley in khaki, green, black and red — the jacket just lightly sunned and a little discoloured on the rear panel, with some slight wear and a few short and unobtrusive nicks and tears.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. A review copy, with the publisher’s slip loosely inserted — from the library of fellow playwright John Osborne, with the Hurst Arvon Centre label on the half-title. A surreal farce — “the dialogue operates like a railway junction with a madman switching over the points” (Irving Wardle in The Times). First performed at the Ambiance Lunch-Hour Theatre Club, “with outstanding success”, the previous year, with Prunella Scales and Stephen Moore in the leading parts.
Post 8vo (21cm). (48)pp. Original yellow and white wrappers; some minor bruising and faint creasing; a few slight marks, but a very good copy of a fragile production.

SOLD

London : Chatto & Windus, 1971. First edition. Widowed and elderly Laura Palfrey takes a taxi through the rain to join the other residents at the Claremont Hotel on the Cromwell Road — but she later tells a lie. Both her funniest and her saddest book, reviewed by Kingsley Amis as a “continuously fascinating novel, always pushing the reader one way and another”. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a television adaptation in 1973 won Celia Johnson a BAFTA Best Actress, and Joan Plowright took on the title role for the 2005 film.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(206),[ii]pp. Original lavender boards, blocked in black and ruled and lettered in gilt; a tiny sliver of sunning to head and one faint mark, but a very good, clean and sound copy indeed of an unaccountably scarce book, in the original Adrian Daintrey dust-jacket — just faintly tanned at spine, but otherwise very good, fresh and quite unworn.

SOLD

Bailrigg, Lancaster : Continuum, [1971]. First edition. An anthology which commences pugnaciously with a quotation from Ho Chi Minh — “the poet also should know how to lead an attack”. The opening editorial continues on the theme of dark mills, cramped houses, capitalist exploitation, dark and satanic schools, and even universities — “slave markets for the technocrats” — and “places where humanity is denied, where the potential for love, creativity and joy is suppressed for the sake of profit”. Northern chippiness aside, a very good anthology, with poems from Anne Cluysenaar, Tony Connor, Henry Graham (2), Adrian Henri (2), David Jaffin (2), George Macbeth, Hugh MacDiarmid, Barry MacSweeney, Wes Magee (3), Adrian Mitchell, Pete Morgan (2), Jeff Nuttall, Brian Patten (3), John Pudney (3), Graham Taylor himself (4), and around twenty others.
Crown 4to (25cm). 32pp. Original stapled wrappers — an atmospheric photograph by Bernard Jeffries — a little rubbed, bruised and creased; slight rusting to staples, but a serviceable copy of an uncommon booklet, with just five copies located worldwide in institutional collections, just two in the UK — Liverpool and UCL.

£25

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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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London : J. M. Dent & Sons, (1971). First separate edition. Lyrical recollections of a childhood excursion by charabanc to Porthcawl with his aunt and her husband, “steaming hunk of an uncle, his braces straining like hawsers, crammed behind the counter of the tiny shop at the front of the house, and breathing like a brass band”.
Long pott 4to (13cm). [32]pp. Vignette illustrations almost throughout by Meg Stevens (1931-2012). Original stapled pictorial card wrappers; very good indeed.

SOLD

New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, (1971). First edition : the American issue of the British sheets. A feast of sumptuous scholarship on the beliefs in religion, magic, astrology, witchcraft, divination, prophecy, ghosts and fairies, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — “It would be tempting to explain this long survival of magical practices by pointing out that they helped to provide many wizards with a respectable livelihood. The example of the legal profession is a reminder that it is always possible for a substantial social group to support itself by proffering solutions to problems which they themselves have helped to manufacture”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). xviii,[2],716pp. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge orange; a very good copy indeed in the Diane Large dust-jacket — also very good.

SOLD

London : Bodley Head, (1971). First edition. “A novel about obsession, about a pervading fear of reality, and the fantasies that are invited in their place” (publisher’s blurb) — “William Trevor’s best book yet. Poor Miss Gomez stepped from her Jamaican orphanage to serve behind the counter in Bourne & Hollingsworth, then to the top floor of a Soho brothel” (Victoria Brittain in the Illustrated London News, 1st December 1971).
Post 8vo (21cm). (292)pp. Original lavender boards, lettered in gilt; just lightly bruised; some spotting of top edge, but a very good and sound copy in the Michael Harvey dust-jacket — the jacket very good, clean and unworn.

£100

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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 : 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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Oxford : Carcanet Press, (1971). First edition : one of forty special numbered and dated copies (of 600), signed by the late Val Warner. Her first collection — thirty poems, including “In Woolworth’s”, “Balham, Christmas”, etc. “Her poems are densely populated with contemporary London figures and features. They are often abrupt, sardonic, allusive and disabused” (Patricia Craig obituary, The Guardian, 2nd November 2020).
Pott 4to (19cm). [ii],34pp. Original stapled wrappers — a design in black on sand by Priscilla Eckhard; wrappers just a touch dusty; tiny mark; outer leaves and edges a little spotted, but otherwise a very good copy.

£40

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London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed with a friendly greeting and signed with forename by the author in July 1971 — the recipient being Edgar S. Brown of Allentown (PA), whom the author singles out for thanks in his foreword, “for his prevailing urgent and American voice across the Atlantic”. Loosely inserted is the address portion of the packaging used to convey the book from London to Pennsylvania. A full-scale biography of “the myopic, paranoiac near genius” Frederick William Rolfe, “Baron Corvo” (1860-1913) — a biography inspired by, but wholly supplanting, A. J. A. Symons’ “The Quest for Corvo” (1934).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xl),(450)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a couple of light marks, but a very good copy in the John Riley dust-jacket — the jacket with some very minor wear at head and corners, but also very good. Ownership inscription and mark in the text against his name by Edgar S. Brown.

£50

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Oxford : Carcanet Press, (1971). First edition : one of forty special numbered and dated copies (of 600) signed by Daniel Weissbort. A collection of twenty-seven poems. “It’s hard to imagine how anything could be more natural, relaxed and true to the writer’s self, true to his secret, personal life than Daniel Weissbort’s poems” (Ted Hughes, with whom Weissbort founded “Modern Poetry in Translation”).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [ii],30pp. Original red stapled wrappers, printed in black and with a design by Priscilla Eckhard on the upper wrapper; very minor signs of age and use; slight spotting of endpapers, but a very good copy.

£40

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1971. First edition. An extraordinary assemblage of over 150 photographs of Victorian and Edwardian London — domestic life, rural survivals, Londoners at work and play, shops and markets, transport, public services, and much else besides — “Here are the pieman, the chairmender, the flower-girl, the society hostess; all the throng of the rich and poor going about the serious business of their daily lives”.
Crown 4to (26cm). 128pp. Illustrations throughout. Original orange boards, lettered in gilt; lightly bruised, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket a little worn and nicked, with a couple of short tears, and lightly discoloured at edges where the laminate expires, but complete and serviceable still.

SOLD

London : Barrie & Jenkins, (1971). First edition. Jeeves, Wooster, Aunt Dahlia, Roderick Spode — and Madeline Bassett once more — the penultimate Jeeves and Wooster novel, published to coincide with the author’s ninetieth birthday — “as fresh and amusing as the best of a series that continues to give pleasure to millions” (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 11th November 1971).
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original navy boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised; some very mild tanning of endpapers; some spotting to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket — the jacket, as so often, with a faint darkening of the edges where the laminate expires, but otherwise very good and unworn. Bookplate of Elaine Sturgess on front free endpaper.

SOLD

London : Michael Joseph, (1971). First British edition. Wolfe coined the term “radical chic” in an essay for “New York” magazine in June 1970. It had already struck a chord before the essay (in augmented form) appeared in book form on either side of the Atlantic — “Political extremism is all the rage in these days of radical chic — just as it was when the bored children of the middle class, reacting against their background, helped the radical leftists Mussolini and Hitler into dictatorial power”, noted the Illustrated London News on 31st October 1970. Wolfe’s second essay illuminates in similar vein the San Francisco poverty programmes — “the smell of singed snobbery, roasted radicals and charred chic ascends with blissful delight” (Alexander Walker in the Birmingham Daily Post, 23rd October 1971).
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(154)pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; a couple of spots, but a very good copy in the Graham Rogers dust-jacket, also very good.

£75

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London : William Collins Sons & Co., (1971). First British edition. Wouk’s monumental novel of World War II and its impact on three families, one American, one Jewish, and one English — in the estimation of many, the “great” American World War II novel, comparable to “Gone with the Wind” or “All Quiet on the Western Front”. His hero, the stoical Commander Victor “Pug” Henry, initially a naval attaché in Berlin, finds himself in a position to meet not only Hitler, but Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. Himself a navy war veteran, Wouk later wrote that in his novel, “I did my best to shake up the familiar elements in the kaleidoscope of art, to give them an organizing vision and a shape, so that he who runs might read and picture what happened in this worst world catastrophe — the worst, that is, so far”. First published in Boston earlier that year.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],806pp. Original grey boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; some spotting of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket just a touch sunned at spine, but with minimal wear and also very good.

SOLD

New York : Doubleday & Co., 1971. First edition : limited to 250 numbered copies, signed by Yevtushenko. An extensive collection, with authorial introductions and over fifty poems from five collections in both English and Russian texts — the English adaptations by James Dickey, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anthony Kahn, Stanley Kunitz, John Updike, Richard Wilbur, and others.
Demy 8vo (22cm). Decorations by Raymond Davidson. [2],xxii,[2],328pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt; just a touch dulled, but a very good, clean, and sound copy in the original slip-case — the case just lightly tanned in places, but also very good.

SOLD