WILLIAM BOYD FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

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

£100

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1984). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. Henderson Dores – shy, English, self-conscious and nearly forty – stands worrying in the middle of Park Avenue, New York City. Filmed in 1988 with Daniel Day-Lewis.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (256)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; some mild tanning and spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the Lyn Duncombe dust-jacket – the jacket showing some very mild signs of age and use, but also very good.

£75

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1984). First edition. Henderson Dores – shy, English, self-conscious and nearly forty – stands worrying in the middle of Park Avenue, New York City.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (256)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; text a touch tanned as usual, but a very good copy in the Lyn Duncombe dust-jacket – price-clipped but also very good.

£40

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44053 – or simply click on the button

London : Sinclair-Stevenson, (1993). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. “His name is Salvador Carriscant and thus begins Kay Fischer’s journey into the past of this beguiling and seductive older man who claims to be her father” – “Achingly memorable” (The Times).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(324),[iv]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising; text lightly tanned, but overall a very good copy in the Robin Rout dust-jacket – also very good.

£50

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London : Sinclair-Stevenson, (1993). First edition. “His name is Salvador Carriscant and thus begins Kay Fischer’s journey into the past of this beguiling and seductive older man who claims to be her father ...”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(324),[iv]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising, but overall a very good copy in the Robin Rout dust-jacket – also very good.

£40

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 41477 – or simply click on the button

London : Sinclair-Stevenson, (1993). First edition. “His name is Salvador Carriscant and thus begins Kay Fischer’s journey into the past of this beguiling and seductive older man who claims to be her father ...”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(324),[iv]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; the merest hint of bruising, but overall a very good copy indeed in the Robin Rout dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£40

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42756 – or simply click on the button

Cambridge : 21 Publishing, (1998). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. A biography of the New Jersey artist Nat Tate, who contrived to destroy almost his entire output of Abstract Expressionism before killing himself in 1960. Except that the entire story is a fiction, as the name (think National Gallery, Tate) might suggest. A celebrated hoax, decked out with blurbs from David Bowie and Gore Vidal, both of whom were in on the prank, which managed to fool and embarrass a surprising number of “experts” unwilling to admit they had never heard of Tate.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). (70),[ii]pp. Numerous illustrations, some full-page, some coloured. Original green cloth, lettered in blue; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

SOLD

London : Hamish Hamilton, (2004). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. A collection of sixteen short stories of love and fascination, some in experimental form, and ranging widely in time and place. “His best writing, observing tiny moments of love, lust and epiphany with extraordinary sensitivity” (The Spectator).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(210),[iv]pp. Original orange boards, lettered in silver; just the merest hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket likewise with a hint of bruising, but also very good.

£75

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (2005). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. An extensive collection of Boyd’s non-fiction – eleven more-or-less autobiographical pieces, followed by forty essays on writers – Boyd on Auden, Ballard, Dickens, Fowles, Golding, Spark, Vonnegut, Waugh, etc.; twenty-one pieces on artists – Braque, Bonnard, Grosz, Hopper, Picasso, etc; eleven pieces on Africa; twelve on film; twelve on television; and twenty-four on an eclectic selection of people and places. “In all its richness, diversity and idiosyncrasy – a beguiling intellectual autobiography of one of our most important novelists”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xviii),650,[iv]pp. Original green cloth, lettered in silver; just a few minimal signs of age and use, but a very good copy in a just faintly bruised dust-jacket.

£100

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London : Bloomsbury, (2006). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. “In 1939 Eva is a beautiful 28-year-old living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service ... she learns to become the perfect spy”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(326),[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in metallic red; marker ribbon; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket equally very good. With the contemporary “signed first edition” wrap-around band of the booksellers Topping & Co.

£50

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London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (2012). First edition. Vienna in 1913, psychiatry, Freud, love affairs, London in 1914, war, espionage in Geneva, and the battlefields of France.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(354),[iv],[2]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a couple of corners just a touch bruised, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£20

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London : Viking, (2018). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. “Moving from Edinburgh in 1894 to the far-flung Andaman Islands in 1906, and smoothly landing in various European cities in between, Boyd’s affecting novel follows a young Scotsman’s ardent pursuit of a woman and its treacherous consequences”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(372),[ii],[2]pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; a touch of bruising, but a very good copy in a similarly very good if infuriating dust-jacket, the design incorporating completely fake wear and tear, as well as photographic foxing.

£50

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