FIRST EDITIONS AND FINE BINDINGS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : W. Collins Sons & Co., (1924). First edition. “Acclaimed, attacked, parodied, and read, to the most fabulous degree of best-sellerdom ... a romance suited to its decade – cynical, sophisticated, yet sentimental, highly coloured, and glittering ... the book certainly cast a spell in its day and influenced many young writers. The character of the heroine, Iris Storm, set a new fashion in fatal charmers; and Arlen’s pictures of London café society were as exact as glossy photographs” (ODNB). Filmed both in 1928 and in 1934 – as “A Woman of Affairs” (with Greta Garbo) and “Outcast Lady” (with Constance Bennett) respectively.
Crown 8vo (187 x 126mm). (viii),(330),[iv]pp. Bound in a striking late twentieth-century full green morocco, banded and gilt in an asymmetric art deco style [by Bayntun-Riviere]; all edges gilt; original cloth covers bound in at rear; a very good copy, clean and sound, in a most attractive commissioned binding.

£500

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London : Eveleigh Nash & Grayson, 1927. First edition of this collection of eleven translations of Balzac’s “most spell-binding” stories, including “At the Sign of the Cat and Racket”, “The Unknown Masterpiece”, “The Atheist’s Mass”, etc. Translated variously by Clara Bell, Ellen Marriage and John Gilmer, and edited and introduced by George Saintsbury (1845-1933).
Crown 8vo (191 x 124mm). (548)pp. Bound in an elegant later half green morocco, banded and gilt, for Asprey’s; all edges gilt; silk headbands; marbled endpapers; overall a very good copy.

£250

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London : Thomas Nelson & Sons, (1910). First edition. Buchan in South Africa with a Haggardesque tale of uprising, myth, fabulous necklace, etc.
Crown 8vo (180 x 116mm). vi,(376),viii pp. Frontispiece map. Bound in an attractive recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; a very good and clean copy. Attached to the verso of the front free endpaper is a contemporary prize label of the North Merchiston Continuation Classes – made out to James B. Campbell for general excellence. Blanchard A21.

£400

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

£250

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London : Cassell & Co., (1927). First edition. The fourth of the Father Brown volumes – ten short stories and pieces, including “The Song of the Flying Fish” and “The Red Moon of Meru”. Dedicated to Father John O’Connor of Bradford – reputed to be the original of “Father Brown” – and certainly the priest who guided Chesterton to catholicism.
Crown 8vo (188 x 119mm). [viii],(310),[ii]pp. Bound in an elegant recent half black morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; a few very faint spots, but a very good copy. Sullivan 71.

£250

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London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1940). First edition. A young and beautiful woman on trial for an apparently open-and-shut case of murder – Poirot sits in court. “All you need to know here is that Agatha has triumphantly done it again. The same infernal ingenuity, the same devilish double-crossing, the same old new twist, the same punch in the last pages. Be thankful she doesn’t take to murder in real earnest” (Daily Herald, 18th April 1940).
Crown 8vo (182 x 118mm). 252,[iv]pp. Bound in a smart recent half burgundy calf, banded and gilt; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in a pleasant binding.

£500

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1944. First edition. His uncommon first book – later published in the USA as “Obsequies at Oxford”. Gervase Fen making his first appearance in a witty and classical locked-room mystery with some theatrical types in wartime Oxford. “Whatever his true name is, he is most certainly a gentleman who knows Oxford backwards, forwards, and inside out. For his murders take place in the colleges, hotels and theatres of that city, and although these are in every case fictional, the calmer atmosphere of the Senior Common Room and the Porter’s Lodge is unmistakeably authentic” (The Sphere, 11th March 1944).
Crown 8vo (183 x 120mm). (160)pp. Plan. Bound, without half-title, in an elegant recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; wartime paper lightly tanned, but otherwise a very good copy in an attractive binding.

£250

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London : A. C. Fifield, 1908. First edition. The first appearance of the book which made Davies’ name – a tramp by road and rail on both sides of the Atlantic in the late nineteenth century. A work of “primitive splendour and directness” (Osbert Sitwell). “Another effect of this book on me is to make me realize what a slave of convention I have been all my life. When I think of the way I worked tamely for my living during all those years when Mr. Davies, a free knight of the highway, lived like a pet bird on titbits, I feel that I have been duped out of my natural liberty” – from the preface by George Bernard Shaw.
Crown 8vo (184 x 113mm). [2],xiv,(296),[viii]pp. Bound in a handsome recent half red morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; trimmed a touch tight at head, but otherwise a very good copy in an attractive binding.

£400

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

£400

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London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1864. First edition. The antiquary and illustrator James Doyle (brother of Richard, uncle of Arthur Conan) compiles and illustrates a sumptuous chronicle of England from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the death of Richard III. Long celebrated as perhaps the finest example of Victorian colour-printing, with the glowing colours of Doyle’s illustrations engraved and printed by Edmund Evans (1826-1905) in eight to ten overlays on a hand-press – “as bright as if they had just been painted” (ODNB) – and, as Evans later recalled, “the most carefully executed book I have ever printed”.
Post 4to (262 x 200mm). [2],viii,462pp. Eighty-one coloured illustrations. Bound in an equally lavish contemporary full red sealskin, banded and richly gilt in compartments and on edges; panelled boards with trophy corners; all edges gilt and gauffered with fleurs-de-lys; marbled endpapers; some minor rubbing and faint wear; one leaf slightly marked; another torn and repaired (without loss), but a handsome copy of a handsome book. With a contemporary (October 1864) gift inscription from Albert Goodman to Mrs and Mrs Daintree – George Ekins Daintree (1828-1919), a farmer, and his wife Caroline Sarah Ruston (1829-1921), who were living at Pidley-cum-Fenton in Huntingdonshire at this time.

£500

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London : for Sherwood, Neely & Jones, 1821. First edition : the second issue, with the footnote on p.9. Pierce Egan’s roaring and runaway success – racy, slangy, and riotous adventures among the highest of high life and the lowest of low life in Regency London – “In his particular line, he was the greatest man in England” (John Camden Hotten). The sparkling text which took the country by storm as it appeared in instalments between August 1820 and July 1821 is gloriously accompanied by the superb aquatints of the brothers Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank, many depicting recognisable London scenes.
Demy 8vo (216 x 139mm). xvi,376pp. Frontispiece and thirty-five Cruikshank plates, all with original hand colour. Three folding leaves of music. Woodcut illustrations in text. Bound, without half-title and advertisements, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) full crimson morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; gilt turn-ins; marbled endpapers; a few minor marks and spots; two leaves neatly repaired, but a very good copy of Egan’s defining work.

£750

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1926). First British edition. “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world”. Old money, new money, the defining novel of the Jazz Age, originally published in New York the previous year.
Crown 8vo (186 x 123mm). [vi],218pp. Bound in an elegant recent full blue-black morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; a handful of minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, (1934). First edition. Greene’s first overtly political novel – “the injustice of man’s justice” – in some sense an inversion of the traditional detective story, as a communist London bus-driver awaits his hanging. “Mr Greene has a reputation for unconventional composition ... he has adopted methods more familiar in the cinema than in fiction. He uses close-ups and long shots and panoramas, and the action is seen through the camera-eye of each spectator in turn” (The Scotsman, 15th February 1934).
Crown 8vo (174 x 111mm). [viii],(276),[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half red morocco; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy.

£400

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London : William Heinemann, (1943). First edition. Greene’s powerful evocation of London in the blitz – a spy thriller full of guilt, menace and deceit. Informed by his work at the Ministry of Information – and turned into the 1944 Fritz Lang film noir, with Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds.
Crown 8vo (182 x 118mm). [vi],236,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half black morocco, banded and gilt; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good and attractive copy of a difficult wartime Greene.

£400

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Preston (HRT) : Cupid Press, 1950. First edition : limited to 660 numbered copies on mould-made paper. A fine and unnusual selection of 114 seventeenth-century lyrics – Aphra Behn; William Congreve; Sir William Davenant; John Dryden; Thomas D’Urfey; Sir George Etherege; George Farquhar; John Oldmixon; Thomas Otway; Sir Charles Sedley; John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester – but most impressive for some remarkably fine and little-known poems from lesser and even anonymous poets. With an absorbing introduction and extensive notes by Hadfield. Beautifully produced and with illustrations by Rex Whistler.
Medium 8vo (232 x 139mm). xx,(154),[ii]pp. Folding coloured collotype frontispiece and monochrome collotype illustrations by Whistler; bound in a stylish recent half burgundy morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides; partially erased stamp to verso of title-page; faint crease to frontispiece, but a very good and most attractive copy.

£250

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1857. First edition. “As on the one hand it should ever be remembered that we are boys, and boys at school, so on the other hand we must bear in mind that we form a complete social body ... a society, in which, by the nature of the case, we must not only learn, but act and live; and act and live not only as boys, but as boys who will be men” (Rugby School Magazine). First published in April 1857 and reprinted four times before the year was out – surely the most famous, inspiring, and influential of all school stories, and the most celebrated encapsulation of the British public school ethos. Bound in is a two-page signed autograph letter from Hughes on House of Commons Library notepaper, dated 30th May 1866 (Hughes became Liberal M.P. for Lambeth in 1865), to an un-named recipient, making apologies over a social engagement, “but if there be no opposition on the part of our whips to my absence I will try to come to you”.
Crown 8vo (176 x 117mm). viii,420pp. Bound in a handsome later (late twentieth-century) full blue morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; marbled endleaves; a handful of slight spots, but a very good copy indeed – attractively bound and now housed in custom-made slip-case.

SOLD

London : for C. Dilly, 1798. First edition. “No, Sir; we had talk enough, but no conversation ...” – the essential Johnson distilled (with Boswell’s entire approbation). Johnson on conversation, wine, marriage, children, education, conduct, manners, London, trade, travelling, life, death, religion, politics, and much else.
Demy 8vo (213 x 130mm). [iv],446,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart modern sprinkled calf, richly gilt in period style; marbled endpapers; some spotting, mainly to outer leaves; a few minor marks, but a very good copy.

£400

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New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951. First edition. His first and most famous novel, based on his own army experiences in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, which he witnessed. An immediate success, winner of the National Book Award, always included in lists of the major novels of the twentieth century, and the basis of the memorable and multiple Oscar-winning 1953 film, with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, etc.
Demy 8vo (207 x 136mm). [xii],(862)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half black morocco, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endleaves; very faint crease to the final leaves, but otherwise an excellent copy, clean and sound.

£400

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London : Geoffrey Bles, (1950). First edition. Illustrations and colour frontispiece by Pauline Baynes. The first and best-known of the Narnia chronicles. “It is a kind of modern fairy tale about four children evacuated to an old house in the country during the war. They discover that merely by stepping into a wardrobe they have access to a wonderland of strange creatures and stranger adventures ... his little book may well become a children’s classic” (a prophetic review in the Belfast News-Letter, 30th October 1950).
Post 8vo (198 x 130mm). (174)pp. Coloured frontispiece. Illustrations. Bound, without final blank, in an elegant recent full green morocco, banded and gilt; a few very minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£1,500

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Oxford : At the Clarendon Press, 1908. An early reprint of the original 1907 edition. Over 300 French poems, from Froissart and his contemporaries through to Verlaine, chosen, introduced, and furnished with notes by Lucas. “This new anthology of French poetry is, in its way, a perfect gem, reflecting the highest credit ... It is, without doubt, the most complete representation of poetry that has been placed before the English public” (Daily Telegraph) – “an ideal Christmas gift” (Manchester Courier).
Foolscap 8vo (163 x 100mm). (xxxvi),(492)pp. Bound in an elegant contemporary full calf prize binding for Merchant Taylors’ School; banded and gilt; school arms and the James Graves English Literature Prize legend on upper cover; marbled edges and matching endpapers; just a hint of rubbing; a handful of leaves at rear slightly creased (a production flaw), but otherwise a very good copy. Printed school presentation label made out in manuscript to J. D. Cowley laid in to front endpaper – this John Duncan Cowley (1897-1944), librarian, bibliographer, and squadron-leader killed by enemy action.

£125

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London : Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1846. First edition : the secondary issue, with the eight dramatic engraved plates by James Stephenson (1808-1886) which were not included in the first issue. Familiar Marryat terrain with rip-roaring adventures and derring-do – off Hispaniola, Port Royal, Liverpool, Senegal, sharks, tigers, spies, London, the Tower, Jacobites, Bordeaux, Brazil, diamond mines, etc.
Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (161 x 98mm). [iv],(380); [iv],(362),[ii]pp. Eight engraved plates. Bound, complete with half-titles and final imprint leaf, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) full turquoise morocco, banded and richly gilt, by Riviere & Son; inner gilt dentelles; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; original pictorial cloth gilt covers preserved at the rear of each volume; spines inevitably a little tanned; short scratch to an upper board; internally a few very minor marks and creases; plates slightly shaved in binding, but a very good copy. No copy of this illustrated issue located in any major UK library.

£250

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1902. First edition. Mason’s enduring tale of courage, cowardice and redemption – made into popular films on at least seven occasions from 1915 onwards, of which perhaps the most memorable is that directed by Zoltan Korda and starring Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith, and June Duprez.
Crown 8vo (181 x 117mm). viii,338,[vi]pp. Bound in a handsome recent full walnut crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; very occasional mild spotting, but overall a very good copy indeed, most attractively bound.

£1,000

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1877. A standard edition of the poetry, printed on india paper and published in Macmillan’s “Globe Edition” series. Bound in 1883 in a very handsome binding, with fore-edge painting, for the Cambridge scholar-bookseller Robert Bowes (1835-1919) as a gift for his wife Fanny Bowes (1831-1903) on her birthday in June of that year. Inscribed and initialled by Bowes with his wife’s name and the date — with a further later inscription in a different hand commemorating her death in 1903. With Bowes’ personal “Quod Vis Potes” bookplate bound in. Bowes was a nephew of the publisher Alexander Macmillan (1818-1896) and his partner in the Cambridge bookshop of “Macmillan & Bowes”, while his wife Fanny Bowes was Macmillan’s sister-in-law. Sold together with the companion edition of “Poetical Works of Walter Scott” (1878), bound to match and evidently part of the original gift.
Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (174 x 115mm). (xii),(626); (xliv),(560)pp. Bound in handsome full citron morocco, banded and extra gilt; all edges gilt; hand-painted endleaves in a design of tulips for Milton and thistles for Scott, the designs repeated in concealment beneath the gilt of the fore-edges and only revealed when the pages are fanned open; spines a little darkened and with some minor rubbing, but otherwise in very good order and an extremely rare example of a personalised binding of this type.

For more on these bindings, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 5th June 2020.

£1,000

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Bath : Old School Press, 2001. First edition : one of twenty copies (of 230) reserved in sheets for binders and signed by both Andrew Motion and the illustrator, Simon Brett. Four extended poems from the then Poet Laureate, delicately hand-printed on Magnani paper, illustrated with evocative and atmospheric wood-engravings by Simon Brett.
Post 4to (271 x 190mm). [48]pp. Four wood-engraved illustrations. Bound in black morocco, with delicately shaded pale morocco onlays, in an exquisite designer binding by Kate Holland, winner of the 2006 Mansfield Medal and First Prize for Best Book in the annual Designer Binders’ competition – the present binding dating from the same period; delicately marbled edges and endpapers; the binding housed in its original velvet-lined black cloth box, decorated with a crescent moon. A fine copy of a beautiful book.

£2,000

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London : Hutchinson & Co., 1908. First edition. The third of the Scarlet Pimpernel series – “Paris this September, 1793! – or shall we call it Vendémiaire, Year 1 of the Republic?” – “Like its scarlet predecessor, [it] is so beautifully unlike life that we have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Sir Peter Blakeney, of the drawl and the inane smile, and the still inaner rhyme, is once more with us, dawdling into Revolutionary France, and doing the most heroic things under the nose of a Government that would give millions to see him dead” (Daily News, 23rd October 1908).
Crown 8vo (189 x 122mm). 352 + (32)pp advertisements dated Autumn 1908 – the adverts curiously referring to the present work as “The Illusive Pimpernel”, which raises some interesting questions. Bound in a smart later quarter chestnut morocco, banded and ruled in gilt; marbled sides – by James Ashton of London, with his stamp; outer leaves lightly tanned; some occasional scattered foxing, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of H. T. Page on half-title. With the distinctive books-cat-and-skull, “Life Beyond Life”, bookplate of the late Paul Minet (1937-2012), bookseller and journalist.

£250

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London : Secker & Warburg, 1949. First edition. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”. The most compelling and chilling novel of the twentieth century – not least in that it now appears to have been widely adopted as an instruction manual. “Every statue and street and building has been re-named, every date has been altered ... History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”.
Crown 8vo (184 x 122mm). 312pp. Bound in a smart recent full dark green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy, handsomely bound.

£1,000

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London : Oxford University Press, 1927. A handsomely bound edition of the comprehensive Shelley edited and introduced by Thomas Hutchinson (1856-1938) and first published by the OUP in 1904. Includes the prefaces by Mary Shelley written for the 1824 and 1839 editions of his poems.
Crown 8vo (189 x 122mm). xxiv,912pp. Portrait frontispiece. Bound for Harrow School in a pleasant contemporary half diced calf, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; some mild rubbing and wear, a couple of slight marks, but a very good copy. Laid in to the front endpaper is the printed armorial Harrow prize label from the tenure of Sir Cyril Norwood as headmaster, 1926-1934, made out in manuscript to G. D. Petherick in 1932 – George David Petherick (1917-1986), soldier and barrister.

£100

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1887. First edition. A celebrated collection of fifty-four poems, thirty-eight in English and the remainder in Scots – the latter including the first appearance in book form of both “A Lowden Sabbath Morn” and “The Scotsman’s Return from Abroad”.
Foolscap 8vo (175 x 118mm). [ii],(xvi),[2],(138),[ii]pp. Bound, with the initial blank but without the inserted advertisements, in a delightful contemporary half tan morocco, banded and gilt in a floral design; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a hint of rubbing; mild spotting of binder’s blanks and edges, but a very good copy indeed. With the pictorial 1895 bookplate of Albert Harrison.

£200

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London : for W. Simpkin & R. Marshall and / Louth : J. & J. Jackson, 1827. First edition. Tennyson’s uncommon first book – an anonymous collaboration (although the 102 poems were individually written) with his elder brother Charles, who later adopted the surname Turner – locally printed at Louth before the brothers went up to Cambridge. A former owner has neatly and carefully ascribed the poems to A.T. or C.T. in pencil, correctly noting that some are of uncertain authorship and that a few are in fact by a third brother, Frederick Tennyson.
Crown 8vo (this copy well-margined at 181 x 109mm). xii,228pp. Bound in a handsome later (mid twentieth-century) full red calf by Bayntun of Bath, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; inner gilt dentelles; marbled endpapers; a handful of faint spots, but a very good and most attractive copy.

SOLD

London : Chapman & Hall, 1952-1961. First edition set of the separately published "Men at Arms" (1952), "Officers and Gentlemen" (1955) and "Unconditional Surrender" (1961).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (180 x 113mm). A fine set bound in an elegant recent full red morocco, banded and ruled in gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; an excellent set, clean and fresh.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1935). First edition. The perilous journey home through Devon rivers of a twenty-pound salmon – “a rare and beautiful book that should take its place as a classic among the few that are written at once with a poet’s insight and a naturalist’s knowledge” (New York Times).
Crown 8vo (184 x 119mm). (320)pp. Title-page and colophon decorations by C. F. Tunnicliffe. Bound in an attractive later half russet morocco, banded and gilt with salmon, by Bayntun; top edge gilt; a few slight spots; very mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy.

£250

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