ASH RARE BOOKS
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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.
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.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1936). First edition. His uncommon first novel – gripping from the very first page (which concludes with a footnote invoking the Official Secrets Act). “A new writer of international spy stories has arrived ... The central character is Professor Henry Barstow, a highly strung savant ... Following a motoring accident, he takes on the identity of the colourful hero of the thriller he had previously picked up. Then, posing as his real self, he calmly accompanies the unscrupulous representative of a big armament firm to a Continental country, ostensibly with object of helping to acquire information about an atomic bomb ... an ingenious story, cleverly written, and cloaked with such verisimilitude that it does not appear to be far-fetched. More will be heard of Eric Ambler” (Mid Sussex Times, 17th November 1936).
Crown 8vo (182 x 115mm). 320pp. Bound in a smart recent half calf, lettered in gilt; raised bands; earlier cloth backstrip preserved at rear; slight tanning to the two outer leaves, but otherwise a very good copy of a scarce book.

£550 (reduced from £850)

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London : Jarrold & Sons, 1902. First edition. An uncommon fantasy of identity switching from the irrepressible “R. Andom” – different identities assumed by means of a “magic green packet of transmigration tablets” – “The hero ... is projected into the twenty-first century through the agency of an explosive clock, and this is how he comes in contact with the Identity Exchange ... To those who like fun fast and furious, the story may be cordially commended” (The Scotsman, 10th November 1902). Later republished as “The Marvellous Adventures of Me”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 286,[vi],[16]pp. Numerous illustrations by Charles Harrison (1860-1943). Original pinkish-brown pictorial cloth, blocked and lettered in black and red; a few faint marks; some rusting to staples; just a touch shaken, but a good copy of an engaging fantasy.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1936. First edition. A murder mystery set in the Lake District – “ingenious detective story ... The narrator, Richard Carleton, succeeds to a Cumberland property by the death of his half brother and nephews. The house, or rather one room of it, is ransacked and the butler murdered on the night when he comes to take possession. A body is afterwards found on the moors ...” (Northern Whig, 30th March 1936).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (288),[ii]pp. Frontispiece map. Family tree. Original orange cloth lettered in black; a couple of trifling marks; some light edge-spotting, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the map-illustrated dust-jacket by Ralph Mott (1888-1959) – the second state jacket, price-clipped by the publisher and overprinted with a fresh price – the jacket with just minor wear and faint creasing, lightly fingered on rear panel, but also very good; a bright and cheerful copy.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : sold by J. Dodsley; J. Wilson & J. Fell; J. Almon and others, 1766. First edition : the first issue (without the later insertion of an epilogue, etc). The original appearance of the celebrated and immensely popular satirical verses of Christopher Anstey – “So much wit, so much humour, fun, and poetry, so much originality, never met together before” (Walpole). The old Etonian Anstey’s ridicule and parody of the freaks of fashion had the same kind of immediate success as his contemporary Laurence Sterne. He later moved to Bath, where he lived for the last thirty years of his life. The book was endlessly reprinted in smaller format editions, but never again in the spacious quarto of the first edition.
Post 4to (262 x 207mm). 104pp. Bound in a stylish recent quarter red morocco, ruled, lettered and decorated in gilt; cloth sides; first and last leaves lightly tanned; unobtrusive repaired two-inch split or tear to title-page; a little spotting and a few faint creases, but a very good and well-margined copy.

£170 (reduced from £250)

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Bristol : J. W. Arrowsmith, 1885. First edition : in the variant brown binding. A statue of Aphrodite brought to life by the application of an engagement ring and some make-up. “A remarkably clever and amusing story” (Western Daily Press, 30th June 1885). Twice filmed, with Maud Cressall playing the Venus in 1921 and Ava Gardner in 1948. Twice filmed, with Maud Cressall playing the Venus in 1921 and Ava Gardner in 1948.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). [iv],192pp. Original brown cloth, ruled and lettered on front cover in black, and on spine in gilt; chocolate endpapers; spine a shade darkened; two corners lightly bruised; endpapers cracking at hinges, but otherwise very good. Sadleir 53. Wolff 167a.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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New York : Henry Holt & Co., (2006). First American edition. Inscribed and signed by Paul Auster, “To Michelle, One for the book club, best Paul Auster x”. The accidental redemption of Nathan Glass, a long-lost nephew working in a bookstore, his colourful employer, a forgery, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [x],306,[ii],[2]pp. Original blue and cream boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the Sam Bassett dust-jacket, equally very good.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : by J. D. for Richard Chiswell, 1679. First edition. “Now among all the benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man’s life” (Francis Bacon) – an important collection of his various writings, letters, speeches, etc., grouped into several sections: political and moral discourses, with a good many aphorisms – “Discretion in speech is more than eloquence”; his scientific experiments, particularly relating to metals and minerals; his thoughts on medicine and theology; and the “Baconiana Bibliographica”, with thoughts on his own writings by himself and others. With an introduction by Thomas Tenison (1636-1715) – “Nature gives the world that Individual Species, but once in five hundred years”.
Crown 8vo (176 x 109mm). [2],272,[ii],104,[viii]pp – the introduction and contents leaves bound at the rear in this copy. With all fly-titles, imprimatur leaf, final blank, errata, etc. Engraved portrait frontispiece by Frederik Hendrik van Hove (1628?-1698). Contemporary calf, skilfully rebacked, preserving most of the original spine and label; sprinkled edges; lightly rubbed; endpapers rejointed; a few minor internal marks, chips and slight creases; tiny hole to one leaf; occasional light spotting and browning, but a sound and attractive copy of an important compilation. Bookplate of Dr and Mrs H. R. Knohl.

SOLD

London : James Nisbet & Co., 1880. First edition. Ballantyne’s fictionalised take on the Bligh Mutiny, Fletcher Christian, Pitcairn, and subsequent events.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(414),[ii],(16)pp. Frontispiece, extra pictorial title, and four plates. Original blue pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards; some minor rubbing and wear; endpapers slightly cracked; a little shaken; a few edge spots, but overall still a good copy. Gift inscription dated 1883 to William Lawrence from Howard Gilliat (1848-1906).

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Methuen & Co., 1896. First edition. Baring-Gould’s dark and controversial novel, set in and around the Devil’s Punch Bowl at Hindhead, was initially serialised in “The Graphic” between 6th July and 28th December 1895. The highly-rated Frank Dadd (1851-1929) was commissioned to provide an illustration for each of the twenty-six instalments, but when the book itself appeared in March 1896, only twelve of these were included. The present copy is offered with fourteen of Dadd’s original dramatic ink-and-wash drawings – five of those included in the book and nine which only ever appeared in “The Graphic” . Lauded by modern publishers as “a narrative that unfolds within the picturesque yet harsh landscape of rural England. The novel masterfully explores themes of social class, the intricacies of human relationships, and the resilience of the human spirit ... a candid commentary on societal norms and personal aspirations, illuminated through the lens of provincial life ... a timeless addition to the canon of English literature” . It ran through multiple editions, but was perhaps not to everyone’s taste: “A more hateful story than ‘The Broom Squire’ was never written” (The Sketch, Wednesday 1st April 1896).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(384) + 40pp inserted advertisements dated March 1896. Twelve plates by Dadd. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; some very minor wear; a few faint marks; a few edge spots, but a good copy. The original Dadd drawings are on boards, or mounted on boards, averaging approx. 15” x 12” (39 x 31cm), most with a paper guard bearing pencilled notes locating the illustration within the text. The blank margins of the boards show evidence of handling, masking and pinning in the course of being reproduced, but the images themselves are in very good order.

£750 (reduced from £1,250)

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1940). First edition. An uncommon collection of fifteen short stories, including “The Bridge”, “A Scandalous Woman”, “Love is not Love”, etc. – “Grave, touching, low-toned, Mr. Bates’s stories are like the effect of a gleam of pale sunshine on a grey landscape – suddenly, in the most sordid and unexpected circumstances, beauty is there” (Daily News, 1st January 1941).
Post 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Original grey-green cloth, blocked and lettered in red; a touch tanned; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a typographic design in black, white and pink – lightly tanned, with some minor wear, a couple of short nicks, and a tiny chip, but still very good.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Vizetelly & Co., 1887. First Mermaid edition. The unexpurgated text of the ten major plays in Havelock Ellis's sought-after Mermaid Series of “The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists” – “The Maid's Tragedy”, “Philaster”, “The Wild-Goose Chase”, “Thierry and Theodoret”, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, “King and No King”, “Bonduca”, “The Spanish Curate”, “The Faithful Shepherdess” and “Valentinian”. Edited, with a long and perceptive introduction, notes, etc., by John St. Loe Strachey (1860-1927).
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (187 x 113mm). xl,(472); viii,(518) + 32pp advertisements dated September 1887. Portrait frontispieces. Bound in a most attractive recent half chestnut morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere of Bath; cloth sides; marbled endpapers; top edges gilt; a few leaves slightly spotted, but a very good set.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896. First edition : precedes the London edition by four days. Beerbohm’s first regularly published book – “Dandies and Dandies”, “The Pervasion of Rouge” and five further essays which immediately established his reputation – “These papers are really very brilliant, and almost every page would yield a quotation worth giving” (York Herald, 17th June 1896).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [viii],(166),[ii]pp. Original decorative cloth, enamelled and gilt in an art-nouveau design of butterflies, ribbons and mirrors by Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867-1944); top edge gilt; a little very minor rubbing; tiny bruise to one corner; some spotting, especially to endpapers, prelims and edges, but a very good, bright, and partly unopened copy of one of the most attractive productions of the 1890s.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, 1923. First trade edition. A sequence of fifty plates – Beerbohm at his finest and funniest – includes portrait caricatures of H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Aldous Huxley, Rudyard Kipling, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, Frederic Manning, E. V. Lucas, etc., with a particularly delightful rendering of a communist Sunday school.
Demy quarto (29cm). viii pp. Colour frontispiece and forty-nine plates, with captioned tissue guards. Original tan cloth, lettered in gilt and blocked in blind; some mild discolouration to cloth; some very minor spotting, but a very good copy in the substantial remains of the dust-jacket, with front rear and panels almost complete.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : William Heinemann, 1903. First edition. “Thick yellow fog, and in consequence electric light to dress by and breakfast by, was the opening day of the year. Never, to anyone who looks at this fact in the right spirit, did a year dawn more characteristically ... We blindly groped on the threshold of the future”. A writer’s year, month by month, in part reflection, in part fiction. “There’s an unexpectedness about Mr. E. F. Benson which is not the least portion of his charm ... We have admired Mr. Benson often: we have never learned to know him so well or to appreciate his craftmanship so fully” (Manchester Courier, 14th April 1903).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(288) + [xxxii]pp. Original decorative sand cloth, blocked and lettered in black and red; some very minor wear; mild tanning of endpapers; a few leaves slightly creased, but otherwise a very good copy.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Constable & Co., (1941). First edition. Emmeline Pocock, daughter of the warden of All Saints, tries to see out the war in her sound-proof room – disturbances from the university town (plainly Oxford) - tangled love drama, the eccentric provost, the sensational reports of Mr Jericho, the volcanic Lady Caroline Paltry, the melancholic Lord FitzCricket, poltergeists, etc. Lord Berners “whispers with delicate malice in his own enchanting pianissimo” (Times Literary Supplement).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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[London : for A. Churchill, J. Knapton & others, 1720]. A handsome antique map of Covent Garden – here bounded by Long Acre to the north, Drury Lane to the east, the Strand to the south and Bedfordbury to the west – with Bedford Street, King Street, Henrietta Street, Maiden Lane, Bow Street, Russell Street, etc., clearly marked. The map is decorated with a baroque title-piece and the names of nineteen smaller side-streets, alleys and new buildings are given in a numbered key. Originally produced by Richard Blome in the late seventeenth century, the map remained unpublished until the present updated version (with his name erased) appeared with the 1720 edition of John Stow’s “Survey of London”. The present example offers unusually clear evidence of the reworking of the plate prior to publication.
Copper line engraving on paper. Later hand colour. Engraved surface 308 x 181mm (approx. 12-1/8” x 7-1/8”). A heavily inked impression, displaying evidence of reworking and wear to the plate, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : James Hogg & Son, 1869. First edition. Inspiring and well-researched tales from the well-known social reformer on the titans of London commerce – Dick Whittington; Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange; Sir Edward Osborne and the Levant Company; Sir William Herrick, goldsmith and banker; Sir Thomas Smythe and the East India Company; Sir Henry Garway, Lord Mayor in 1639; Sir Dudley North, merchant, politician and economist; the bookseller Thomas Guy, founder of Guy’s Hospital; William Beckford and the Jamaica trade; Henry Thornton, banker and philanthropist; Nathan Meyer Rothschild; Samuel Gurney and the money market; and George Peabody and social housing.
Foolscap 8vo (168 x 112mm). (316)pp. Twenty-four illustrations, portraits, etc. Contemporary full green calf, banded and gilt; red label; marbled endpapers and matching edges; a little worn and dull; minor repair at head; a handful of faint spots to prelims, but a good and serviceable copy of a type of book no longer countenanced. Presentation inscription dated Rottingdean, Christmas 1873, to young Herbert Mercer as a “reward for diligence and attention during the term”.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, 1943 (i.e.1944). First edition. “The poet-artist-prophet is seen in relation to the industrial evils of his time” (The Sphere, 6th May 1944). The dazzling Jacob Bronowski shares his passion for the genius of William Blake, whose frontispiece to “Songs of Experience” was to become the final plate in the book version of Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man”.
Crown 8vo (189 x 121mm). [vi],(154)pp. Plates. Bound in a handsome, slightly later, full green crushed morocco (for Hatchard’s); banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; a few minor scuffs, but overall a very good and attractive copy. Pictorial bookplate of J. Hodges.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1912. First edition. A collection of ten short stories, including “The Company of the Marjolaine”, “The Lemnian”, “The Grove of Ashtaroth”, “The Kings of Orion”, etc., interspersed with accompanying poems – “Few writers have Mr. Buchan’s ability for expressing through the medium of the short story the dramatic, or poetic, significance of so wide a range of subjects ... the psychology of heredity, in Jacobite romance, in fishing, in mountaineering ... In ‘A Lucid Interval’ ... we are told how a deadly, mysterious Indian drug administered to the members of a Liberal Cabinet creates the greatest confusion ... The satire of this is delightful ... a welcome addition to the shelves of all who appreciate the literary side of fiction” (The Globe, 24th May 1912).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [2],xiv,324,(4) + 64pp inserted advertisements dated December 1911. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in silver; some very minor wear; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy. Contemporary (1912) gift inscription to Ethel A. Short from the Anglophile Gustave Monod M.D. (1878-1932), “a wise physician and a kind friend” to the many British visitors to the spa-town of Vichy, popular to the extent that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1931.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : Sydney J. Saunders & Co., [1889]. First edition. Charmingly illustrated poetic fancies for children, with “The Mermaid and the Zoophite”, “Swinging – Swinging – To, and Fro”, “The Fairies and the Bees” and “Said a Dewdrop to a Skylark”. Seemingly a variant issue, with the imprint of Sydney John Saunders (1837-1923), stationer and manufacturer of Christmas cards, etc. – the handful of other copies traced bearing the imprint of the similar Sockl & Nathan firm. Undated, but the book, beautifully printed in Leipzig, was noticed in the press in the latter part of 1889 – “full of such wonderfully nice pictures” (Newcastle Courant, 14th December) – and here has a Christmas 1889 gift inscription.
Oblong foolscap 4to (19 x 21cm). [24]pp. Illustrations throughout, mainly in sepia and grey, but with four pages in full colour, by Jessie Sophia Watkins (1850-1902). Original cloth-backed pictorial glazed boards; some wear and bruising to outer corners; boards lightly tanned; some mild internal browning and spotting, but a very good copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket, replicating the title-page design – the jacket worn, chipped, frayed, slightly torn, lightly spotted and a little defective on the blank lower panel, but a very early surviving example of a British pictorial jacket (not listed by Tanselle) and a remarkable survival on a children’s book. Contemporary gift inscription to Ethel Reich from her Auntie May, dated Christmas 1889. No copy of any issue traced in any major UK library.

SOLD

London : Hamish Hamilton, (1947). First British edition. The mystery of a man who comes back to London from the dead. “It looks impossible, insoluble; it turns out clear as day, a neat little crime, an excellently human motive. This is Carr at his best” (Illustrated London News, 23rd August 1947). Also published in New York the same year.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Original navy cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few slight marks; a few spots to top edge, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a dramatic design by Harold Hookway Cowles (1896-1987) – with a few tiny marks and scuffs, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Hurst & Blackett, 1863. First edition. Drawn from French sources and with emphasis in particular on the story of French influence and intervention in the American War of Independence. With a rich cast of characters including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Voltaire, Mirabeau, William Pitt, Tom Paine, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Walpole, Samuel Johnson, the Marquis de Lafayette, Madame du Barry, Richelieu, Rousseau, Captain Cook, Cagliostro, etc.
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (191 x 124mm). (xx),(346); xii,(376)pp. Bound in a smart, slightly later, half blue calf, banded and gilt, by Zaehnsdorf for the Chicago booksellers Alexander C. McLurg & Co.; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; slight wear at extremities; a few minor marks and small flaws, but overall a good and attractive set. Pictorial bookplate of Roy McWilliams in each volume.

£80 (reduced from £125)

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London : B. T. Batsford, [1920]. First edition. “This very handsome quarto, which contains a wealth of information, very difficult to acquire, reproduces a series of illustrations even more difficult to get possession of. The subject is divided into eight sections, which include street topography, pleasure resorts, clubs, coffee houses and taverns ... great houses and public buildings, churches, and so on. Its pictures alone are a delight, not least the wonderful photographs of the interiors, and such buildings as remain” (The Graphic, 12th November 1921).
Crown 4to (26cm). (viii),(272),[ii]pp. Frontispiece and numerous plates, giving 191 images in total, many from contemporary sources. Original cloth gilt; just a hint of bruising; some mild spotting and browning of outer leaves, but a very good copy in the illustrated dust-jacket – just lightly rubbed and a little worn, but also very good.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : for E. & C. Dilly; and J. Walter, 1775. First edition. A collection of various pieces from Hester Chapone – Richardson’s “little spitfire” – including her much-admired essays “On Affectation and Simplicity” and “On Conversation”, the novella “The Story of Fidelia”, and a selection of poems.
Foolscap 8vo (162 x 96mm). (xii),178pp. Bound, without half-title or final advertisement leaf, in a contemporary calf, now neatly rebacked, retaining the original title-label; endpapers replaced; a little browned and thumbed; two leaves a little soft at centre and slightly torn, one with a small hole and the loss of a few letters; names partially erased from title-page; a reasonable and modestly-priced copy.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1987). First edition. “In Alice Springs – a grid of scorching streets where men in long white socks were forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers – I met a Russian who was mapping the sacred sites of the Aboriginals”. His finest work – a novel of ideas – a “profound journey into the geography of the mind”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(294),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint edge spots, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1955). First edition. “A series of petty thefts brings Poirot to a students’ hostel where psychological, racial and sexual differences provide a rich field for Miss Christie’s conjuring tricks, Poirot is mellowed and delightful” (Yorkshire Post, 18th November 1955).
Crown 8vo (184 x 115mm). (192)pp. Bound in a smart recent half burgundy oasis, banded and gilt; original linson spine preserved at rear; a few slight spots, but a very good copy, attractively bound.

£150 (reduced from £250)

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London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1962). First edition. “Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window” – the last of her true country village mysteries. “The story is of an apparently unmotivated murder at a fête held in Miss Marples’s village, where a famous film star has recently bought the local mansion ... classic Christie sleight-of-hand technique” (Birmingham Daily Post, 4th December 1962).
Crown 8vo (185 x 118mm). (256)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half chestnut morocco, banded and gilt; some spotting of edges and prelims but otherwise a handsome copy.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : J. Duncombe, 1848 [but later]. A late nineteenth-century facsimile of the edition published by John Duncombe (1791-1853) in 1848, although the book itself, as “A Peep into the Holy Land, or, Sinks of London Laid Open”, had first appeared in the 1820s. A classic exposé of the dark side of life in the capital – “A True Picture of London Life, Cadging Made Easy, the He-She Man, Doings of the Modern Greeks, Snooking Kens Depicted, the Common Lodging-House Gallants, Lessons to Lovers of Dice, The Gaming Table”, etc. The fascinating “Flash Dictionary” runs to thirty-six pages at the end of the work, followed by a list of the sixty orders of “prime coves” – rum-bubbers, groaners, duffers, twirlers, gammoners, knackers, priggers, gaggers, dragsmen, bloods, and all the rest.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 131,[i]pp. Folding hand-coloured frontispiece and numerous black-and-white illustrations and decorations in the text by Cruikshank. Contemporary quarter roan, marbled sides – now neatly rebacked in morocco; top edge gilt; some very minor wear and a few slight marks, but overall a very good copy.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Duckworth & Co., 1910. First edition : a later issue, in the secondary binding, and with inserted advertisements datable from internal evidence to perhaps 1920. De La Mare’s neglected masterpiece – an enduring fantasy of the quest of the three royal monkeys. When asked about its possible influence on “Watership Down”, Richard Adams reportedly replied, “To try to copy ‘The Three Mulla-Mulgars’ would be like trying to copy ‘King Lear’”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),312 + 16pp advertisements. Coloured frontispiece and colour plate by John Robert (Jack) Monsell (1877-1952). Original olive pictorial cloth, blocked and lettered in black; a few minor signs of age and use; some minor spotting, mainly to edges and endpapers; one leaf a little frayed, but overall a very good, bright and sound copy in the matching dust-jacket – just slightly rubbed, but very good indeed.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1840-1841. First edition, in book form, bound from the original parts, of both “The Old Curiosity Shop” and “Barnaby Rudge” . The book was never reprinted in this form, and even unsold copies were cannibalised (within weeks of issue) to make separate books of the two titles we know today. “I am conscious that my pen winces a little even while I write these words. But it was done, and wisely done; and ‘Master Humphrey’s Clock’, as originally constructed, became one of the lost books of the earth, – which, we all know, are far more precious than any that can be read for love or money” (Charles Dickens, in 1848). A specimen wrapper from both the weekly and monthly issue of the parts is preserved at the rear of each volume.
Three volumes, bound in two. Royal 8vo (252 x 164mm). [2],iv,306; vi,306; vi,426pp. Frontispieces and illustrations by George Cattermole, Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”), etc. Bound in an elegant mid-Victorian half tan polished calf, banded and gilt; marbled sides and edges; very faintly rubbed; a few very minor signs of age and use; rear hinge of the thicker volume with neat internal reinforcement; a very good, crisp and handsome set.

£500 (reduced from £750)

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1913). First edition. “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gives further proof of his amazing versatility ... the author has got hold of a really good idea and has handled it with immense energy and ingenuity. The question of the possible end of the world is one that interests everybody” (Daily Citizen, 2nd September 1913).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(200)pp. Sixteen dramatic plates by Harry Rountree (1878-1950) – two featuring indomitable golfers – “Once fairly out on a round, it would take the crack of doom to stop a true golfer”, and “There were the golfers. Was it possible that they were going on with their game?” Original pictorial blue cloth; spine a little sunned; some minor rubbing and mild wear; label deftly removed from front free endpaper; some scattered browning and spotting, mainly of endpapers, prelims, and edges; a few faint marks, but a good copy.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

London : George Allen & Sons, 1908. First edition. A collection of twelve stories, including “The Kith of the Elf-Folk”, “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth”, “The Doom of La Traviata”, etc. Illustrated by the great Sidney Sime (1865-1941) and linked to Dunsany’s two earlier collections via the gods and goddesses of Pegãna, who appear in several of the stories.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). (xii),(244)pp. Ten black and white plates by Sime. Original decorative green cloth gilt; a touch sunned; some very faint rubbing and wear at tips; a few slight spots; small tape-marks on endpapers, but overall a very good and still bright copy.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, (1958). First edition. The third volume in the Alexandria Quartet – David Mountolive, youthful passion, politics, diplomacy, and conspiracy. “Landscape, townscape and seascape are the never-forgotten milieu in which the diverse characters act out their destiny. Few novels are at once so dramatic and so instinct with poetry” (The Scotsman, 18th October 1958).
Post 8vo (22cm). 320pp. Original yellow cloth blocked in violet and gilt; edges spotted; mild spotting to front free endpaper, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a couple of minuscule nicks, but also very good.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, 1960. First edition. The fourth and the final instalment of the Alexandria Quartet – Darley returns to an Alexandria at war. “The series ... can now be seen as a whole. And it can be seen to be an outstanding work of contemporary English fiction” (Nottingham Guardian, 11th February 1960).
Post 8vo (21cm). (288)pp. Original tangerine cloth, blocked in green and lettered in gilt; edges spotted; mild spotting to front free endpaper, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just a touch sunned, and with a couple of minuscule nicks, but also very good.

SOLD, BUT PLEASE ASK ABOUT AN ALTERNATIVE COPY

[London : for W. Innys & J. Richardson, J. & P. Knapton & others], 1755. A most attractive eighteenth-century map of Stepney parish and the East End hamlets of Bethnal Green, Bow, Bromley, Limehouse, Mile End, Poplar, Ratcliffe, Spitalfields, Wapping and the Isle of Dogs. A keyed table gives the names of over 100 streets, courts, walks and alleys. Although seemingly rather earlier, both in style and content, the map was first published with the part-work edition of John Stow’s “A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster” (London : 1754-1757).
Copper line engraving on paper. Later hand colour. Engraved surface 354 x 284mm (approx. 14” x 11-1/4”). Faint old folds, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Adams 37/080.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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[London : John Cooke], 1777. A neatly worked map of the whole of the built-up area of London in the eighteenth-century – on a scale of about 3-1/2 inches to the mile. The area shown extends from Hyde Park in the west to Mile End and Shadwell in the east, and from the borders of Islington down to Lambeth. Originally produced for John Cooke’s part-work publication Walter Harrison : “A New and Universal History, Description and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster” (London : 1775-1777).
Copper line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 265 x 490mm (approx. 10-1/2” x 19-1/4”). Trimmed tight to neatlines at head and sides; laid down on backing paper; some minor creasing and slight dustiness, but overall in good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Adams 57/039. Howgego 169.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : Collins for The Crime Club, (1946). First edition. “Looking back on it all, I cannot believe that it happened, though I have tangible proof that it did. It seems now like a long drawn-out dream; or, more accurately, a nightmare ...” – the lives of fellow-travellers on the same coach become entangled.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 192pp. Original orange cloth, lettered in black; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good sound and bright copy in the colourful dust-jacket (a design by. S. J.) – the jacket price-clipped, just lightly rubbed at extremities and a little spotted on the lower panel and flaps. Contemporary (February 1947) ownership inscription of J. P. Farnley neatly pasted over, with a related manuscript date on rear endpaper.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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London : Methuen & Co., 1898 [but 1897]. First edition. The second of the wonderful Wallypug books (for specially nice girls and boys only). The Wallypug travels to London from the land of Why for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Sights, scenes and also “his voyages on the underground in company with the Doctor-in-Law, Sergeant One-and-Nine, the Boy and the Fish, and of his remarkable adventures in general, and the book is as charmingly nonsensical and as full of irresponsible fun as its predecessor” (The Gentlewoman, 5th February 1898).
Post 8vo (21cm). (xvi),174,[ii] + 40pp advertisements dated November 1897. Illustrations, some full page, by Alan Wright (1864-1959). Original pictorial cloth, blocked in terracotta, olive and black, in a design by Wright; a touch sunned; just a hint of wear; rear endpaper slightly cracked; some spotting to endpapers and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy. Contemporary gift inscription dated May 1898.

SOLD

London : for T. Egerton; T. Payne, Becket & Porter, etc. 1813. First edition. An elegant local history, covering in turn the origins, agriculture, botanic gardens, nurseries, manufactories, the canal, rectory, church and chapel, parish registers, benefactions, charity schools, the history, Fulham Palace, the bishops of London, ancient houses, Parsons Green, Walham Green, North End, Hammersmith, Pallenswick, Shepherds Bush, Brook Green, Brandenburgh House, Craven Cottage, etc.
Royal 8vo (252 x 158mm). (xiv),478 [i.e. 480]pp. Engraved frontispiece, dedication leaf and seven plates, mostly engraved by S. Watts after G. Lynn. Folding engraved map. Folding table. Woodcut vignettes by C. Nesbitt. Tailpieces. Bound in a neat recent quarter calf, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; a few faint scuffs; map trimmed at inner margin to aid folding, without loss of detail; some occasional informal internal strengthening with adhesive paper; a few slight flaws, odd patches of browning, a few spots, creases, marks and signs of use, but a good and robust copy.

£135 (reduced from £200)

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London : Hutchinson, (1989). First edition. His second novel and the one which made his reputation – a slight, dark-haired girl with two heavy suitcases arrives in the small French town of Janvilliers in 1936 to become a waitress at a seedy hotel. “Like the great novels and stories of Flaubert and Maupassant ... quite out of the ordinary ... beautifully written and in the end extraordinarily moving” (Sunday Times).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original sepia boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge just a touch dusty, a hint of sunning, but a very good copy indeed in the pictorial dust-jacket – also very good.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Orr & Co.; Simpkin Marshall & Co. & others, 1838. First edition. A discursive history of London, with some out of the way figures on historic prices, etc., the text acting as a vehicle to accompany the splendid steel-engraved plates, engraved by John Woods (fl.1835-1855) and others from the drawings of Thomas Hosmer Shepherd, Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”), Robert Garland, John Francis Salmon, Francis William Topham, Edward John Roberts, etc. Alongside views of the well-known buildings – Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, Mansion House, Somerset House, etc., there are some fine street scenes of Cheapside, Leadenhall Street, King William Street, etc., as well as views of the West India Dock, Billingsgate, etc. Originally published in monthly parts from June 1837, the text was continued after Fearnside’s early death by Thomas Harral (1773?-1853). “A most useful visual account of the London scene in the year of Queen Victoria’s accession ... the plates ... are of high quality” (Bernard Adams).
Medium 8vo (229 x 153mm). iv,(204)pp. Frontispiece, extra engraved vignette title (reading “Woods’s Views in London, Westminster, and their Vicinities”), and twenty-eight plates – the plates bound in cavalier disregard of the “Directions to the Binder”. Contemporary half roan, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a little rubbed and worn at extremities; plates a little browned and spotted; one text-leaf torn and repaired without loss, but a good copy of a handsome production.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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London : for J. Murray / Edinburgh : for J. Sibbald, 1792. First Rowlandson edition. A very attractive edition of Fielding’s first full-length novel – and indeed one of the first genuine novels in English, originally published in 1742. The picaresque tale of the good-natured footman on the road home from London – Parson Adams, Lady Booby, Mrs Slipslop, etc. – here illustrated with eight delightful etchings by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), which are among Rowlandson’s earliest essays in book illustration.
Crown 8vo (190 x 118mm). xx,(332)pp. Bound in a neat nineteenth-century half calf, ruled in gilt, red label, marbled sides, sprinkled edges; some mild rubbing; some occasional internal light spotting and browning, but overall a very good copy. Pictorial bookplate of John Gough Noake of Attenoke (1879-1964).

£250 (reduced from £400)

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London : Cassell & Co., (1960). First edition : the uncommon first issue, with the references to the Don Juan Club on pages 3-4 intact. Copies of the book were rapidly recalled and a replacement leaf inserted to remove these references at the insistence of the intelligence services: the Don Juan was the name of a genuine spooks’ hang-out. “Could a situation arise in this country in which an extremist Left Wing Government would be in a position to undo all that has been achieved to safeguard the British way of life?” (George Fraser in the Aberdeen Evening Express, 11th May 1960). Set in the near future of a London beset with anti-nuclear protests, police brutality and racial tensions, Fitzgibbon’s prescient novel was turned into an outstanding television series with Denholm Elliott, Barbara Murray, etc., in 1962.
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(248)pp. Origin red boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the striking wrap-around dust-jacket – the jacket just slightly scuffed in a couple of places, but also very good.

SOLD, BUT PLEASE ASK ABOUT AN ALTERNATIVE COPY

London : Michael Joseph, (1965). First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated by Dick Francis in the year of publication. The first Sid Halley novel – steeple-chase jockey turned sleuth investigates the cunningly contrived decline of a race-course.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few tiny marks, but a very good copy in the Broom Lynne dust-jacket – bright, fresh and very good indeed, with only minuscule wear at foot and a couple of marks to inner flaps. A very attractive copy.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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

£260 (reduced from £400)

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London : The Bodley Head, (1988). First British edition. Signed by Alan Furst on the title-page. The first in his extraordinary sequence of espionage novels, here opening in Bulgaria in 1934 and set over the following decade across Europe and beyond – “It is not the plots of his novels that set Furst above the competitors in his genre; it is a combination of the beautifully oblique writing and way in which he can produced a charged atmosphere with just a few sentences ... How I envy anybody who has not yet discovered his writing” (Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph). First published in Boston earlier in 1988.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],(438),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising; just a touch of tanning (as ever) to the text, but a very good copy in the Kurt Hoyt dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£150 (reduced from £200)

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London : Victor Gollancz, (2000). First edition : precedes the Random House New York edition. Signed and inscribed with “best wishes” by Alan Furst on the title-page. “In my estimation Kingdom of Shadows is a masterpiece. Furst is here writing at the height of his powers, confident of his style, tone and content. And his evocation of that dark time of the soul, before and during the Second World War, reverberates in the mind just as that famous Beethoven symphony call-sign echoed in the airwaves over Europe all those years ago” (Vincent Banville, Irish Times).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],274,[vi]pp. Double-page map. Original black boards, lettered in silver; a very good copy in the James Walker dust-jacket – also very good.

£85 (reduced from £125)

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London : Bodley Head, (1969). First edition. “I met my Aunt Augusta for the first time in more than half a century at my mother’s funeral ...”. On Greene’s own admission, the only one of his books written “just for the fun of it” – memorably filmed in 1972 by George Cukor, with Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (320)pp. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; a couple of edge-spots, but a very good copy in the original pictorial Stephen Russ dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped but also very good.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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Preston (HRT) : Cupid Press, 1950. First edition : limited to 660 numbered copies on mould-made paper. A fine and unusual 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.

£150 (reduced from £250)

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London : Spencer Blackett, 1889. First edition. The title story and three further Quatermain tales, “Hunter Quatermain’s Story”, “A Tale of Three Lions” and “Long Odds”. “The most notable conception in Mr. Rider Haggard’s new volume of stories ... is surely the baboon-woman, Hendrika” (St. James’s Gazette, 18th December 1889).
Crown 8vo (184 x 128mm). 334,[iv] + (32)pp inserted advertisements dated September 1889. Frontispiece and seven full-page illustrations by Maurice Greiffenhagen (1862-1931) and Charles Kerr (1858-1907), with numerous further text illustrations, decorative devices and initials. Bound in a stylish later (mid twentieth-century) full tan calf, banded and richly gilt, contrasting red and blue labels, inner gilt dentelles, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, by Bayntun; some mild rubbing to head and joints; a few faint marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : Edward Arnold, 1897. First edition. The barrister and artist Sir Francis Newbolt, brother of the poet, with tales of fishing – in Scotland, on the Thames, and especially in the salmon rivers of Norway – with a concluding piece on “The Angler’s Library”. “There is a freshness and a certain refined choice of language in these three-and-twenty chats on angling topics which raise them above the usual level of fishermen’s stories” (St. James’s Gazette, 26th April 1897). “Some capital reading of an unhackneyed kind” (Morning Post, 13th April 1897).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Frontispiece – a signed original etching by the author – and twelve atmospheric plates by Thomas Hope McLachlan (1845-1897). Original blue cloth, ruled and blocked in blind and silver; just a hint of rubbing; a few edge spots; mild tanning of endpapers; one leaf slightly creased, but a very good copy of a most attractive production.

£85 (reduced from £125)

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Boston : Little, Brown & Co., 1916. Seemingly a special advance copy of the American edition, which was not formally published until the following year. A presentation copy to the woman who inspired it, inscribed “Your book, my darling, written for you with all the best of me & dated on my birthday (the reason of which was to love & serve you.)”, dated Easthampton, Long Island, 3rd July 1916, and signed by Cosmo Hamilton – the playwright and novelist of whom Dorothy Parker once wrote, “There can no longer be any doubt that it was from Cosmo Hamilton that the cosmic urge derived its name”. The recipient was Julia (Julie) Bolton, née Currey (1888-1952), whom he had married in 1915 after her divorce from the playwright Guy Bolton (1884-1979), friend and collaborator of P. G. Wodehouse. “Before everything else this is a Love Story, but is also a crushing indictment of the Divorce Laws of America and England ... emotion, anger, honest endeavour to play the game against overwhelming odds and the love of home and children” (UK publishers’ announcement, The Globe, 29th June 1916).
Crown 8vo (185 x 123mm). [iv],(126)pp. Bound in a smart contemporary half green crushed morocco by Putnam’s; top edge gilt; silk ribbon; a very good copy. With the recipient’s Julie Hamilton globe bookplate, designed by Ernest Clegg (1876-1954). No copy of this 1916 American printing located in any major library worldwide.

£360 (reduced from £500)

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London : for J. Dodsley, and T. Shrimpton, Bath, 1779. Second and best edition, corrected and enlarged to three volumes from the earlier two volumes published in 1769 and 1775. A fascinating compendium of Harington family papers, chiefly those of the mischievous Sir John Harington, translator of Ariosto, godson of Elizabeth I, alternately in and out of favour at both her court and that of James I & VI, but always at the centre of affairs – with his sometimes scurrilous accounts of the leading clergy; his report to Elizabeth on the Earl of Essex in Ireland; correspondence with Elizabeth, James, Prince Henry, Essex, Burleigh, Cecil, and others; conversations, letters and speeches by Elizabeth; his treatise on play; a letter to Isaac Newton on harmonic ratios from a later family member, with Newton’s detailed reply and a diagram; a letter from Prince Rupert at the time of the Civil War; earlier letters from John Cheke to King Edward, Somerset, Bishop Gardiner, Queen Mary, etc.; letters from Roger Ascham, and so much more. Edited by Henry Harington (1755-1791).
Three volumes. Post 12mo (164 x 96mm). [8],(xxii),[10],296; (xviii),326; [4],(vi),312pp. Miniature engraved portrait of Elizabeth I, said to be taken from a plate given by Elizabeth herself to Isabella Harington in 1554; two folding plates. Bound in elegant nineteenth-century half tan roan, ruled and tooled in gilt; green labels; marbled sides; some mild rubbing; tiny areas of surface abrasion and insect damage to two volumes; a few minor internal marks, spots and signs of use, but a good set. From the notable collection of Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016), with his bookplate.

£170 (reduced from £250)

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London : Cecil Palmer, (1926). First edition. “Though so many writers have exhausted themselves on the subject they have not exhausted the subject itself, and Mr. Harper has a wonderful capacity for accumulating odd and out-of-the-way knowledge and of conveying it in a delightful, if sometimes inconsequential way ... a very entertaining book” (Western Mail, 10th February 1927). Includes chapters on London as a Birthplace; Battersea and Bolingbroke; Dr. Johnson’s London; Lord Beaconsfield’s London; Walter Besant’s London; Bankside; Fleet Street (The Street of Ink – and the Street of Venom); Berkeley Square, etc.
Demy 8vo (218 x 138mm). Plates. Portraits. Plan. Illustrations in the text by the author himself. Bound – for the London bookseller Charles James Sawyer (1876-1931) – in an elegant contemporary half tan crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; just a touch of rubbing; a few slight marks to rear board; a few edge-spots, but otherwise a very good copy.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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London : John Harris, 1831. First edition. A charming illustrated pocket volume in the Harris “Little Library” series of familiar introductions to “various branches of useful knowledge”, intended, like most of the Harris output, for younger readers. Alongside the more familiar city landmarks – St. Paul’s, the Tower, the Royal Exchange, etc. – there is material on St. Paul’s School, Farringdon Market, Smithfield, the Docks, Wapping, the Thames Tunnel, etc.
Pott 4to (14cm). [viii],(260)pp. Twelve very polished engraved plates by Robert Sands (1782-1855), from the drawings of the well-known Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864). Original publisher’s roan-backed linen; very lightly rubbed; a few marks; some occasional spotting and browning, but a nice copy of a fragile production. Various gift inscriptions dated 1832, 1865 and 1952.

SOLD

London : William Collins Sons & Co., 1980. First British edition. Three celebrated novellas, two of which, “Revenge” and “Legends of the Fall”, subsequently became films starring Kevin Costner, Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, etc., but “the best is a beautifully rendered story called ‘The Man Who Gave Up His Name’. It’s an extraordinary piece of writing ... I think this novella can stand with the best examples the form has to offer – those by Conrad, Chekhov, Mann, James, Melville, Lawrence, Isak Dineson ...” (Raymond Carver, Chicago Tribune). First published in the USA in 1979.
Post 8vo (22cm). [iv],276pp. Original burgundy boards, lettered in gilt; a touch bruised; faint marking to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also just a touch bruised, very faintly sunned, and with a couple of very short and unobtrusive tears, but otherwise very good.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Cambridge University Press, 1935. First edition. Heal’s monumental study – with sections on goldsmiths, bankers and pawnbrokers; eminent London goldsmiths; Samuel Pepys and his goldsmiths; a list of known trade-cards; marks, shop-signs and emblems; and a directory of goldsmiths, jewellers, bankers and pawnbrokers.
Foolscap folio (34cm). (xii),(280)pp. Eighty plates. Original buckram gilt; top edge gilt; slight bruise to edge of upper cover, but a very good copy of a handsome production.

£100 (reduced from £200)

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London : Methuen & Co., (1906). First edition. Hermione Lester marries a handsome man, ten years her junior. His grandmother was Sicilian and they venture to Sicily on their honeymoon. Things begin to unravel. “As a piece of constructive work ... Mr. Robert Hichens’ new novel, gives the impression of an almost too faultless perfection ... seldom, we should say, has there been a more perfectly harmonious development of plot and character” (Morning Post, 20th September 1906). “An exceptionally brilliant novel” (American Register, 22nd September 1906) – it was reprinted four times in its first week of publication. Filmed in 1921 with Ivor Novello, Phyllis Neilson-Terry and Desdemona Mazza, and again in 1948 with Kay Hammond, Lea Padovani, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],416 + 40pp publisher’s advertisements dated March 1906. Original decorative cloth gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch bruised; endpapers tanned and slightly cracked; some spotting, but a good and still attractive copy.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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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.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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Bristol : J. W. Arrowsmith, [1898]. First edition : the first issue, with just the thirty-two earlier titles listed in the advertisements for Arrowsmith’s 3/6 series. A sequel to “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1894) — Ruritania three years on. “Holds the reader in breathless attention throughout, so spirited, vigorous, and well written is the narrative” (The Graphic, 30th July 1898). Illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) — he of the “Gibson Girl”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 385,[iii]pp. Eight plates. Original blue-green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine; just lightly rubbed and a touch bruised; endpapers a little tanned, but still overall a very good copy. Contemporary (April 1899) ownership inscription of Arthur Davies.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1869. First edition. An attractive and discursive social history, with much material on local writers and artists – Hampstead, Highgate and Islington – with good material also on Belsize, Canonbury, Frognal, Highbury, Hornsey, Kilburn Priory, Muswell Hill, Newington Green, Primrose Hill, the Wells and Spas, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xxvi,590,2 + 24pp inserted advertisements dated January 1868. Numerous woodcut illustrations in the text by Orlando Jewitt (1799-1869). Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt, and blocked in blind; cloth a little rubbed, worn and spotted; a touch shaken, but a good and serviceable copy. Bookplate of Harold Egan.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Longmans, Green, & Co., 1898. First edition : in the secondary binding and with the inserted catalogue dated January 1903. A wide-ranging and attractively illustrated survey of the remarkably varied bird-life of the capital from the master naturalist, with much on individual birds, individual areas of London, adaptive behaviour, occasional visitors, the cat problem, rookeries, suggestions for introduction, a bibliography, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xvi,(340) + 40pp. Frontispiece and fifteen plates, colour-printed map, and fifteen further illustrations in the text – by Bryan Hook, A. D. McCormick and from photographs by R. B. Lodge. Original decorative cloth gilt; top edge gilt; minor rubbing at foot; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good, bright and attractive copy. Small bookseller’s label of Edward Baker of John Bright Street, Birmingham – “the most expert bookfinder extant”. Payne A16a.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1944. First edition. “What fun it is! A don at a provincial university has been crushed by a meteorite, evidently hurled down on him of malice aforethought; and our old friend Appleby investigates in the richest atmosphere of dons and dukes. The talk is enchanting. In fact, the whole thing is enchanting” (Illustrated London News, 13th May 1944).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (168)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch of sunning to spine, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket of a fragile wartime production – the jacket lightly fingered and slightly sunned, but with only a hint of wear and also very good.

SOLD

London : Methuen & Co., (1938). First edition. An extensive and handsomely illustrated dictionary of silhouette artists, prefaced by introductory chapters on the origins and history; china, glass, jewellery and boxes; albums and scrap-books; the silhouette in America; the shadow theatre; fakes and forgeries, etc.
Demy 4to (280 x 210mm). (xxx),154,(ii)pp. Over 100 plates, 10 in colour. Bound in a striking late twentieth-century designer binding – full black morocco, boldly lettered in recessed red onlay on the front cover and in raised letters in blind on the rear cover; a handsome copy.

£450 (reduced from £750)

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London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1887. First edition. His late novel, to some extent autobiographical and based on his own family and their small Wiltshire farm. “He has certainly made himself master of a peculiarly graceful and often fascinating style of fiction” (The Graphic, 28th May 1887).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],260pp – the variant without final blanks or advertisements. Original decorative cloth in a daffodil design; very faint crease to spine; some very minor rubbing; endpapers slightly cracked; some spotting, a little soiling to a few early leaves; still overall a very good and bright copy. With the 1904 ownership inscription of Ethel Mary Mountfort (1883-1966) of Cambridge.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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Amsterdam : chez D. de la Feuille, [1706]. A most attractive antique map of the world in hemispheres. Originally produced for the “Oorlogs Tabletten ...” published by Daniel de la Feuille at Amsterdam in 1706.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. Engraved surface 153 x 215mm (approx. 6” x 8-1/2”). Very minor repair to foot of fold, some slight browning and faint marking, one small hole, single vertical crease, but a very good and crisp impression, with warm and rich original colour. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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London : E. Lacey, [ca.1837]. A rare and charming small map of the London area, extending out to Enfield in the north, the Barking Levels to the east, Croydon in the south, and Greenford to the west. Despite the small scale of some five-and-a-half miles to the inch (1:349572), distinctions are clearly made between mail-coach roads and bye-roads, between rivers and canals, and there are even tiny figures indicating distances from the centre of town. Originally produced by the London bookseller Edward Lacey and utilised in an undated late-1830s edition of his “Youth’s New Picture of London”.
Line engraving on paper. Engraved surface 116 x 100mm (approx. 4-5/8” x 4”. A few tiny specks, but overall in very good and clean state. Adams 180/028. Not recorded by Howgego.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1902. First edition. Despite the title, we have reached Kiev by Chapter Two, and the Baku oil wells by Chapter Three, with the bulk of the work concerning Persia, Baluchistan and Afghanistan – the artist and explorer describing not just every aspect of local life, but much interested too in the geopolitical uncertainties and tensions of these “coveted lands”. “By far his most serious and striking piece of work. It is unquestionably one of the most valuable and informative works on travel and exploration which have been published for many years” (The Sketch, 17th December 1902).
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (220 x 137mm). (viii),(462); viii,(460)pp, Numerous plates, offering some 175 illustrations. Maps (two folding). Plans. Diagrams. Bound in an elegant near contemporary half burgundy calf, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; silk ties; a little light wear and slight scuffing; some splash-marks to rear cover of vol. ii; edges lightly spotted, but otherwise a very good set. With the armorial bookplate of Sir Alexander Kay Muir (1868-1951) in each volume.

£170 (reduced from £250)

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London : Bickers & Son, [1918]. First edition : the London issue of the American sheets. Thirty-six tales of inspiring bravery, ancient and modern, grouped under the headings of “Facing Death to Avoid It”, “The Treasure-Seekers”, “Soldiers Who Knew No Fear”, “Some Exploits of the Sea”, and “Famous Deeds of Discipline”, with individual chapter titles such as, “How an Artist Outwitted a Pope”, “A Great Novelist among the Corsairs”, etc.
Post 8vo (197 x 129mm). xii,420pp. Sixteen plates. Bound in a handsome full prize tree calf, by Bickers & Son, banded and gilt, with the arms of Guy Henry Fisher-Rowe (1877-1946) of St. David’s School, Reigate, on the upper cover; top edge gilt; marbled endpapers; just a hint of rubbing, but a very good copy indeed. School prize-label dated 1930, signed by Fisher-Rowe, and made out to W. G. Peck of the Lower Third.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1995). First edition. “Wonderfully captures the atmosphere of wartime London ... an original and entertaining detective story” (Robert Harris). The first of the Frederick Troy novels – “A severed human arm leads to an unholy web of spying, murder, and betrayal in war-torn London ... Newcomer Lawton has an urban documentarist’s eye and ear for his jangled world ... and a nasty sense of how little slips can indeed sink ships” (Kirkus Reviews, 1st April 1995).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi], 342,[iv]pp. Original red boards, lettered in silver; a couple of faint and tiny spots, but a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket of an elusive modern rarity.

£150 (reduced from £250)

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

SOLD

New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, (2017). First edition : precedes the 2018 London edition. Signed by John Lawton on the title-page. The eighth of the Inspector Troy series – an encounter with Guy Burgess in Vienna in 1958 and the past begins to unravel into the present.
Medium 8vo (24cm). [viii],(342),[ii]pp. Original black and grey boards, lettered in metallic red; a very good copy indeed in the Carlos Beltran dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

SOLD

London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1980). First edition. The last duel with Karla.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (328)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a photographic design by Stephen Cornwell – the jacket just a touch sunned, lightly rubbed, and with a short tear to the upper panel.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : George Gregory & Co., [1894]. First edition. Spoof biblical account of the 1894 Stock Exchange battle with the “outside brokers” which led to the Exchange Telegraph Company being compelled to withdraw their price tape facilities from eighty-seven of these non-members. The Stock Exchange Committee awakes from its slumbers to find it is no longer the reign of Queen Anne. “Then said Softly unto himself, Surely, my brethren, the Brokers and Jobbers are mugs of the first water”. Interesting in being issued by George Gregory of Tokenhouse Buildings, Lothbury, known as the king of the outside brokers and notorious for his prolific advertising – a practice not permitted to actual members of the Exchange.
Long crown 4to (192 x 251mm). (22)pp. Illustrations throughout. Original pictorial ribbon-tied wrappers; a little fingered, slightly split, mildly worn and lightly frayed, but a reasonable copy of a scarce and ephemeral survival. Just a single copy (British Library) located in the world’s major libraries.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Robert John Bush, 1877. First edition. More inspired nonsense from Edward Lear – with the present volume containing the first appearance of “The Dong with the Luminous Nose”, “The Pobble Who Has No Toes”, “The Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò”, “The Akond of Swat”, etc.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). [128],4pp. Numerous illustrations by the author. Original pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards, in a Lear design, by W. Bone & Son; expertly resewn and refurbished; endpapers replaced; a few small marks to covers; light spotting to prelims, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary armorial bookplate of the Tatton family – presumably at this date that of Thomas Egerton Tatton (1846-1924).

£360 (reduced from £500)

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London : Grant Richards, 1898. First edition. Laurence Gray, young man of humble background from Blackburn made good, is wrongfully arrested for murder on the day of his engagement to the beautiful Geraldine Lucas. On the one hand a powerful indictment of the penal system, on the other “a chaotic conglomeration of sensational incidents, flung together in an inartistic fashion” (Dundee Advertiser, 12 May 1898).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),316,[iv]pp. Frontispiece and seven dramatic plates by the always entertaining Stanley Llewellyn Wood (1866-1928). Original pictorial mustard cloth, reproducing one of the Wood plates; spine a touch darkened; endpapers slightly cracking; a few minor marks and spots, but still an attractive copy.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Printed by Subscription, 1888. First and sole edition : limited to an unspecified number of numbered copies. A handsome local history, compiled by a local wine-merchant of Green Bank, Merton Lane, who was also a long-serving secretary of the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution. Contains separate sections on the churches, the houses, gossip, customs, etc., as well as a survey of the “Highgate of Today”, notes on fossils found in the Archway cutting, etc. The “notes” on the surrounding areas are in fact extensive.
Crown 4to (249 x 177mm). (xvi),(520)pp. Portrait frontispiece (of Coleridge); double page maps; illustrations in text. Original pictorial cloth gilt, neatly rebacked in a stout morocco; top edge gilt; corners a little worn; front free endpaper replaced in a very good match of the original chocolate surface paper; rear endpaper neatly rejointed; a few small spots, marks and faint creases, but a very good, sound and serviceable copy. Ownership inscription of A. M. Henderson dated 1889 on half-title.

£80 (reduced from £150)

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London : Stanley Paul, [1947]. First edition. Three young men, beautiful young woman found bound and gagged, missing jewel, crazy crooks, maharajah, opera-loving policeman, etc. His first novel – “Leaves Three Men in a Boat tied up at the jetty” (Evening Chronicle review).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 224pp. Original stone cloth, lettered in red; a touch of sunning at foot; a few faint edge spots, but a very good copy in the original pictorial Thompson dust-jacket – a little worn and slightly chipped at extremities.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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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.

£85 (reduced from £125)

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London : Jonathan Cape, (2019). First edition. Signed by Patrick McGuinness on the title-page. His second novel – a young woman murdered, a retired school-teacher monstered by the media, a former pupil investigates – “both very funny and – at the same time – shatteringly sad” – “Literary fiction as it should be: in stylish, surprising, lyrical sentences we are forced to confront the hidden power structures, public and private, that control our everyday lives” (The Times).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(330)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; about fine in the dust-jacket – also fine.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Alan Ross, 1965. First edition. Recollections of “Fitzrovian Nights” – and of Francis Bacon, Cyril Connolly, Graham Greene, Nina Hamnett, John Minton, Elizabeth Smart, Stevie Smith, Tambimuttu, Dylan Thomas, Woodrow Wyatt, and many more – together with six of the best of the Maclaren-Ross short stories of the period, including “I Had to Go Sick” and “A Bit of a Smash in Madras”. “With its glimpses of Connolly in his Bloomsbury office and Graham Greene at home in Clapham Common, [it] is one of the great literary source-books of the age” (D. J. Taylor in The Guardian, 7th December 2012).
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],344,[ii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Facsimiles. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; edges spotted; a few spots to endpapers, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – just very slightly rubbed and with hint of tanning, but also very good.

£70 (reduced from £100)

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Paris : E. Plon, Nourrit & Cie., [1894]. First edition. The lighter side of London life and fashion as seen by the popular and irrepressible Belgian caricaturist – Charing Cross Station, lunch-hour on the Strand, Royal Ascot, Hyde Park and Rotten Row, Kensington, Piccadilly Circus, the Lowther Arcade, Piccadilly and Park Lane, Henley, the Music-Hall, Christmas parties, Kensington Gardens, Maidenhead, and so much more – sketches, studies and wry observation. “Just the most charming Christmas book imaginable, full of amusing and smart pictures, plain and coloured, and as bright as they make them” (Lady's Pictorial, 15th December 1894).
Landscape foolscap folio. (26cm). 32 leaves. Illustrated throughout, frequently in colour, with full-page plates and medleys of smaller studies. Original pictorial cloth; lightly rubbed and slightly worn; front endpaper cracked and torn; some minor internal marks and short tears, but overall still a good copy of a delightful compilation.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Methuen & Co., 1902. First edition. The long-missing heir to the Twickenham fortune (or his double) is bizarrely discovered as the “marvellous sleeping man” – a glass-case exhibit in a sideshow at the Royal Aquarium. Relatives have cogent reasons for not wishing him to wake up – but he does. “The surprising and sensational events that result in consequence keep the reader breathless ... a masterpiece of sensational plot” (Northern Whig, 26th August 1901).
Post 8vo (21cm). viii,(310),[ii] + 40pp advertisements dated August 1902. Original decorative red cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; slight bruising; a touch rubbed; a few slight spots, mainly to edges and endpapers, but still a very good and bright copy of an uncommon and intriguing title.

£100 (reduced from £200)

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Boston : Little, Brown & Co., 1866. Limited to 100 numbered copies. The first nineteenth-century and only the third collected edition of Marvell, improving on the error-strewn editions of 1726 and 1776. Poems (some in Latin, one in Greek), satires, songs, etc. The introductory life of the poet (“the best in print”) is taken from an 1844 article in the “Edinburgh Review” attributed to Henry Rogers (1806-1877). First published in this form in Boston in 1857 and not published in London until 1870.
Post 8vo (194 x 122mm). (liv),(336)pp. Title-page in red and black. Engraved portrait frontispiece. Bound, without half-title, in a stylish contemporary half purple-black roan, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; some light rubbing and minor wear; outer leaves lightly tanned; very faint spotting to fore-edge, but overall a very good copy. With the armorial bookplate of the American architect and designer Edward Francis Searles (1841-1920).

£180 (reduced from £250)

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London : William Heinemann, 1903. First edition : the second issue, with a cancel-title dated 1903. “Worth a thousand of the average books published nowadays” (Westminster Gazette, 19th November 1902). “Mr W. S. Maugham has given us his strongest book. In fact, the novel is in many ways one of the strongest of the year ... In this case he deals with the problem of marriage, and gives all his strength to the delineation of the husband and the wife” (The Sketch, 26th November 1902).
Crown 8vo (184 x 120mm). vi,(374)pp. Bound in an attractive recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; slight nicks to a handful of early leaves; some spotting, mainly of prelims and edges, but otherwise a good copy, handsomely bound. Neat library stamp of the Harman Church Bungalow Library of Fairlight on final leaf.

£150 (reduced from £200)

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London : for C. Davis and T. Green, 1729. First edition. “I have as little as possible interrupted the Thread of the Narration with idle and prolix Digressions or Reflections” – if only all historians were as disciplined as this London writing-master in his only book – an account of a popular uprising against an iniquitous tax on fruit – “All sorts were included, as well dry as green; as Mulberries, Grapes, Figgs, Apples, Pears and Plumbs; whereby the common sort of People were deprived of their usual Nourishment and Support, and reduced to the lowest Misery and Distress”. The uprising was led by the young Tommaso Aniello (1620-1647), known as Masaniello, whose short life and brief victory led to many depictions as a popular hero in art, theatre and opera, as well as discussion in the works of writers as diverse as John Locke and Tom Paine.
Crown 8vo (190 x 116mm). [2],xii,226,[ii]pp. Engraved portrait frontispiece. Bound, without initial blank, in a pleasant nineteenth-century half blue-black calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; red labels; marbled sides and endpapers; lightly rubbed; a few minor internal marks, some occasional mild spotting and browning, but a very good copy. Bookplate of Walter Flinn – presumably Walter Flinn (1856-1942) of Manchester, shipping merchant.

£170 (reduced from £250)

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London : W. Morgan, 1838. An excellent example of the Victorian protean print or metamorphic scene – a print so designed as to change in appearance when held up before a strong light. As the text explains: “This print at first represents the venerable building early in the morning, on the 10th day of January; and, upon holding it before the light, you will observe the awful conflagration, as it appeared on the night of the same day, which totally destroyed the Exchange”.
Lithograph on paper, with tissue underlay, laid on to the original grey backing sheet with a lithographic descriptive label. Original hand colour. Image area 158 x 226mm (approx. 6-1/4” x 8-7/8”). A few slight spots; tissue underlay slightly damaged at outer edges (not affecting the quality of the transformation); but a very good copy of a scarce and fragile item. A guaranteed genuine antique print.

£220 (reduced from £400)

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London : George Virtue, 1831]. One of the prettiest and most popular of all antique maps of the county, decorated with inset views of Dover, Greenwich and Rochester, coats of arms, and an architectural border festooned with hops. Originally engraved in 1831 by William Schmollinger (1811?-1869) for the part-work series “The English Counties Delineated” (London : 1830-1837) – and here in early state before the addition of railways, etc.
Steel line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 202 x 258mm (approx. 8” x 10-1/8”). Trimmed a little tight (as usual); a hint of tanning to margins; faint corner crease; a few faint spots and specks, but overall in very good and clean state. Rare in this early state and with original colour. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

SOLD

[London : George Virtue, 1834]. An attractive town-plan decorated with the coats of arms of the city and the colleges, and a vignette view of Trinity. Originally engraved by John Crane Dower (1791?-1847) in 1834 for Moule’s “English Counties Delineated” series (London : 1830-1837).
Steel line engraving on paper. Original hand colour. Engraved surface 205 x 253mm (approx. 8” x 10”). Trimmed a little tight at foot; a few faint marks and spots, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map.

SOLD

Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1882. First edition. Oliphant in top form with a dozen essays, sketches and stories of a gently satirical turn – “A Turkish Effendi on Christendom and Islam”, “Moral Reflections by a Japanese Traveller”, “The Autobiography of a Joint-Stock Company”, “The Newest American Railroad”, “A New Method of Social Evolution”, “Knight-Errantry in the Nineteenth Century”, etc. “A more thoroughly enjoyable book has not appeared in many a long day” (Morning Post, 19th August 1882).
Post 8vo (194 x 123mm). (x),(430)pp. One illustration. Bound in an elegant later half burgundy morocco, by Bickers & Son; top edge gilt; marbled endleaves; just a touch sunned; some spotting, especially of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy. Armorial bookplate of R. D. Jackson.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1834. First edition. “A bottle of Reading sauce, a box of ‘peptic pills’, and a portable frying-pan ought to form part of every angler’s travelling equipage”. Fly-fishing in Coquetdale, Glendale and the Northern Hills, together with an appendix – “a well-written review of the older angling literature” (Westwood & Satchell), as well as a list of trout streams all across the north of England and the Borders. Father of the publisher, Chatto was also the editor of “The New Sporting Magazine” – “must have a place in every library” (Blackwood’s Magazine).
Foolscap 8vo (166 x 100mm). [iv],212pp. Wood-engraved head and tailpieces, mostly by Ebenezer Landells (1808-1860). Contemporary half green sheep, banded and gilt; marbled sides and edges; some minor rubbing and wear; some internal marks, chips and small flaws, but a good copy of an attractive book. With the later armorial bookplate of Mackenzie of Gairloch – probably Sir Kenneth John Mackenzie (1861-1929).

£80 (reduced from £125)

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1861. First edition : mixed issue – with the four (rather than six) notes on p.323, obviously indicating the earlier printing, but with the gothic (rather than plain) half-title. The original appearance of a perennial favourite – close on 300 of the finest poems in the language from seventy-five or so poets – from Sir Thomas Wyatt, Marlowe and Shakespeare, to Shelley and Keats. With a preface and some extensive notes by Palgrave.
Foolscap 8vo (162 x 103mm). [4],[viii],332pp. Engraved vignette by Charles Henry Jeens (1827-1879) after Thomas Woolner (1825-1892). Bound in an elegant recent half green morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original cloth spine and upper panel (by Burn) at rear (the Carter “C” unpriced variant, although Carter makes a case of probability not certainty for the ordering of the variants); contrasting label (erroneously lettered “The Golden Treasures”); marbled sides; some occasional light spotting, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary (1862) pencilled ownership inscription of Marion Campbell of Edinburgh. The tickets of both Burn and the Edinburgh bookseller William Pattison Kennedy (1804?-1877) neatly reinserted.

£240 (reduced from £400)

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London : Parker, Son & Bourn, 1861. First edition : in Carter’s primary binding of green pebble-grain cloth. Peacock’s final novel – a country house, eccentric guests – and full to the last of his “inveterate prejudices and pugnacious hostility to every modern innovation” (Garnett).
Post 8vo (20cm). viii,316,(4)pp. Original cloth; some minor wear; endpapers cracking; text somewhat shaken and a little slack; some mild discolouration to first few leaves; occasional marking and spotting; but a good and presentable copy in cloth. With the neat ownership inscriptions of members of the Vachell and Wilson families. Wolff 5479. Carter (BV) pp.146-147 & (MBV) p.32.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Duckworth, 1936. First edition. “Ablaze with sports-cars and cocktails and bailiffs and film-directors and innuendoes, and even poor old Freud is hoisted out of his dismal coffin of the early nineteen-twenties and put through his creaking paces. It is all very amusingly done, and the glitter is maintained with a vast deal of switching on and off of artificial lights” – A. G. Macdonell’s review in “The Bystander”, 29th January 1936.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 272,[iv]pp. Original magenta cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; a few faint marks; some spotting of edges and prelims, but a good copy of a difficult early title.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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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.

£70 (reduced from £100)

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London : James Reynolds, [ca.1850]. One of the well-known series of educational diagrams on card published by James Reynolds of the Strand. The diagram displays the earth’s annual rotation round the sun, with markers of the seasons, solstices and equinoxes, set within an oval framework of the signs of the zodiac. Corner notes add information on the size, speed and rotation of the earth, as well as on the zodiac. Six lines of longer text below the image offer a clearly written explanation of the phenomena of the seasons.
Steel line engraving on card, with original hand colour. 228 x 287mm (approx. 9” x 11-1/4”). Faint darkening to outer edges; a few very minor spots and specks, but overall in very good state.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : Methuen & Co., (1918). First edition. Rohmer escapes from the Doctor Fu Manchu genre with a restrained but serious excursion into the occult and philosophical novel — a genius solves the secret of all wisdom, but withholds it from a world too young and raw to appreciate it. “A love story, with a decidedly attractive heroine, runs through the novel, and it shows us something of the Bohemian side of artistic London” (Westminster Gazette, 9th November 1918).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],250pp + (32)pp. Original tan cloth, lettered in black; very slightly rubbed; a touch bruised; very mild spotting of edges; a few small marks and spots; advertisement leaves a little tanned and brittle, with a short tear to final leaf, but overall a very good copy of a difficult title. Bleiler p.170.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : J. Robins, 1818. An attractive antique map – London and its environs two hundred years ago. At a scale of half an inch to the mile, the map extends northwards to include Welwyn, east to Basildon and Rochester, south beyond Reigate and Guildford, and west to Beaconsfield. Drawn and engraved by John Russell and originally produced in 1808 for the part-work by “Dr David Hughson” (David Pugh) known as “London; Being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis” (London : 1805-1809) – but here in an updated and corrected later impression.
Copper line engraving on paper. Full original hand colour. Engraved surface 356 x 400mm (approx. 14” x 15-3/4”). Cropped tight to right-hand margin, with a short nick just touching the map; old folds; a couple of faint and tiny marks, but overall in very good state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Howgego 246 – not listing this later variant.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Christopher Sandford at the Golden Cockerel Press, 1946. First edition : one of 750 numbered copies. A rousing anthology of verse and prose – from Shakespeare to Churchill, from the well-known to the obscure – extolling the spirit of Britain at war, Britain at sea, and Britain in the air. Over sixty pieces, including both Wellington and Thackeray on Waterloo, Instructions to Captain Cook, Nelson’s Prayer before Trafalgar, etc. Illustrated with wood-engravings (made on active service) by John O’Connor (1913-2004), and with an introduction by Dorothy Rutter (1892-1961).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],150,[vi]pp. Eleven wood-engravings. Original buckram-backed decorative boards; top edge gilt; a very good copy.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : Faber & Faber, (1939). First British edition. Six sequences of Saroyan short stories – “Mr. Saroyan is so diverse, so expressive, that he is never a bore and always amusing ... Seldom cynical, occasionally angry, he is always seeing, watching, understanding, and transposing, into his highly artificial prose that achieves the ultra-natural, the ways, foibles, desires and idiocies of mankind ... he has a spate of words at need and sometimes lets them tumble over one another, but always as trained acrobats, never with casual effect or effort” (Birmingham Daily Post, 21st March 1939).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 316,[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in yellow; a few faint spots to endpapers, but an exceptionally good copy of a book where the yellow blocking has usually suffered – in the striking original dust-jacket – the jacket with minimal wear and a sprinkling of spots, but also exceptionally good.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : George Routledge & Sons, 1895. First British edition. “A remarkably pretty woman had just whirled past in a sleigh ... ‘How in the world did she turn up in New York in January! Too much rapid transit in this world!’ ... This year of ninety reminds me that my life has been deficient in sleigh-rides”. The colourful and adventurous soldier-turned-popular-author here going completely over the top in Victorian yellow-back format. Originally published in Chicago in 1894. “Colonel Richard Henry Savage wields a pen of power” (Saturday Review, 5th November 1892).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [vi],304,4,[iv]pp – advertisements dated 1894. Original pictorial boards; a little rubbed and worn; a little shaken; text a little brittle and tanned, with occasional slight chipping; one leaf more heavily chipped, without affecting the text, but a good copy of a scarce and fragile production. Small bookseller’s label of Neal’s Library of Paris on front paste-down.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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[London : George Newnes, 1946]. An attractive pictorial map, with historical notes and vignettes, of the centre of York. On the verso of the map are further notes and views, with a larger view of Walmgate Bar in the nineteenth century. Originally produced for the “Strand Magazine” – Jack Sayer produced a number of similar maps used as railway posters in the interwar years.
Coloured lithograph on paper. Printed surface 257 x 185mm (approx. 10-1/8” x 7-1/4”. Original horizontal fold; slight nick and a couple of tiny repaired staple holes to fold, but otherwise in very good and clean state.

£45 (reduced from £75)

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London : Tinsley Brothers, 1874. First edition. Genial rambles and excursions in various parts of the British Isles – with chapters on London after Dark, the Alexandra Palace, The Last Man in London, the Royal Academy, Connemara, Co. Clare, Blarney, Killarney, Scarborough, the Isle of Thanet, Hayling Island, Weston-super-Mare, Goodwood, the Isle of Wight, Sark, etc. Scott was the best-known theatre critic of the period. The startling frontispiece of a flying bat-like journalist is by his brother-in-law, George du Maurier (1834-1896).
Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,(356) + [iv]pp advertisements. Frontispiece and extra pictorial title by Du Maurier. Original decorative cloth over bevelled boards; some very slight wear, a few spots, a little shaken, but a very good copy of a scarce book.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : William Heinemann, (1975). First edition. The final volume of Scott’s “Jewel in the Crown” quartet – the British Raj moves inexorably towards its end, the horrors of partition, etc. “Is there nothing more gullible in the whole animal world than a human being? One has this hysterical belief in the non-recurrence of the abysmal, I suppose. One always imagines one has reached the nadir and that the only possible next move is up and out”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(600)pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very faint spine crease; light spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original Bill Richmond dust-jacket – just faintly sunned at spine, but also very good.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : John Murray, 1857. First edition. More or less a manifesto from the great architect of St. Pancras, the Albert Memorial, the Foreign Office, etc. – modifying the gothic vision by incorporating plate glass and cast iron as he urges a national style. “The product of a warm heart, a religious mind, and a fertile but not undisciplined imagination. It is pervaded by a single-minded and sincere spirit; and the entire absence of pretension” (The Press, 19th December 1857).
Demy 8vo (24cm). xii,(286),[ii]pp. Vignette title. Original blind-stamped cloth by Edmonds & Remnants, with their ticket; some wear at head; small label removed from spine, leaving a slight trace; a few slight spots and light creases, but otherwise a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription and armorial bookplate of William Lipscomb – probably the Wakefield magistrate of that name.

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London : William Pickering, 1847. First Pickering edition. “The not distinguishing where things should be distinguished, and the not confounding, where things should be confounded, is the cause of all the mistakes in the world” and other majestic thinking from the “glory of the English nation”, the jurist and scholar John Selden. Collections of Selden’s table-talk had appeared since the seventeenth century, but are here introduced by a long “biographical preface” from Samuel Weller Singer (1783-1858) – “There are few volumes of its size so pregnant with sense, combined with the most profound learning; it is impossible to open it without finding some important fact ... something practically useful and applicable to the business of life”. Printed by Charles Whittingham at Chiswick.
Foolscap 8vo (164 x 100mm). cxxxiv,[2],(258)pp. Portrait frontispiece. Bound in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) half tan crushed morocco; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; just a hint of sunning, a few faint spots to binder’s blanks, but overall a very good, sound and clean copy. Dated 1957 ownership inscription of David Fyfe Anderson (1904-1988), the Scottish obstetrician.

£85 (reduced from £125)

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Paris : Chez Buisson, 1788. First edition. A charming eighteenth-century illustrated French guide to London from a journalist and refugee who had absconded to London with the aristocratic wife of his employer. Serres de la Tour includes chapters on the character of the people, the London way of life, the antiquity, the extent, the principal buildings in turn, the Thames, the hospitals, societies, institutions, markets, spectacles and amusements, the post, the taverns and cafes, etc. In an unusual feature at this date, the second volume comprises an alphabetical dictionary of the smaller towns and villages of the London area (from Abbots Langley to Windsor), with descriptions of each, this followed by notes on the principal English towns elsewhere, from Bath to York. As Adams points out, the folding plates are “larger and more handsome than those usually found in a duodecimo volume. They ... seem not to be associated with any British prints of the period. Most view the buildings at an unusually oblique angle and include ... much architectural detail”.
Two volumes. Crown 12mo (163 x 95mm). 4,372; [ii],(324),[iv]pp. Folding map and nine folding plates. Contemporary mottled calf, the spines prettily ruled and decorated in gilt in a floral design; marbled edges and endpapers; some minor rubbing and wear; lacks one title-label and one numeral label; some repairs and strengthening to folds of plates; two leaves torn without loss; a few minor marks and small flaws, but overall still a very good set in a pleasant contemporary binding. Adams 65.

£250 (reduced from £400)

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London : for Abel Roper, 1723. First edition in English. “So long as Rome maintain’d its liberties, the Roman ladies were distinguish’d for their beauty, their wit, their vertue, or their courage ... But no sooner had the emperors subjected Rome, and render’d themselves absolute masters of the republick, than their consorts became sharers with them in their grandeur, their glory and their authority”. A lively and then novel take on Roman history – the women put in the forefront of the action – Calpurnia; Livia Drusilla; Julia; Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina, and Cæsonia – consorts to Caligula; Valeria Messalina; Agrippina; Octavia; Sabina Poppæa; Statilia Messalina – Nero’s last consort; Lepida; Galeria Fundana; Domitilla; Marcia Furnilla, and Domitia Longina, consort to Domitian. Originally published in Paris as “Les Femmes des Douze Césars” in 1718, and already in its fourth French edition by the time this translation appeared in London. Translated by George James.
Post 8vo (194 x 114mm). [vi],352,[32]pp. Title-page in red and black. Bound in a contemporary sprinkled calf, banded and ruled in gilt; pink edges; some light rubbing and wear; small shelf-mark to spine; tiny split to front joint; text a little tanned in places, but an attractive copy still. Book-label of St. Andrew Ward (1745-1822) of Hooton Pagnell.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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Augsburg : Tob. Conrad Lotter, [ca.1760]. A fine and scarce antique map of the British Isles, with an elegant military lion and unicorn cartouche. In another corner an angel with a trumpet bears aloft the arms of the four nations, and there are sailing ships off the coast. Originally engraved by Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-1777) for Seutter’s "Atlas Minor" in the 1740s and here in a slightly later state with Lotter’s own imprint.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. Engraved surface 201 x 256mm (approx. 8” x 10-1/8”). Faint tanning to outer margins, but otherwise in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique map. Shirley : Seutter 3 (Figure 82).

£150 (reduced from £250)

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London : John Murray, 1845. First edition. A key novel in the whole Tractarian, Young England, Oxford Movement controversies of the times – a lament for the loss of Anglican faith, hostility to the industrial world, profound opposition to Rome and the Jesuits – and yet also a lurid and sensational novel, widely read and hugely popular, especially in the United States. “Hawkstone has the rare merit of being written throughout with more or less of intellectual power. It does not contain a single page in which the evidence of mind is not apparent” (John Bull, 29th March 1845).
Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (159 x 99cm). viii,396; [ii],422pp. Bound, without half-titles, in a neat contemporary half tan calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; black labels; marbled sides, edges, and endleaves; some very minor wear; a handful of internal spots, but a very good set. Contemporary ownership inscriptions of Mary Hobson, and later owner’s 1909 name.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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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.

£75 (reduced from £100)

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London : John Murray, 1887. First edition. Samuel “Self-Help” Smiles with “many fresh instances of what can be accomplished by honest force of will and steady accomplishment” from right across the range of human endeavour. Treated thematically, there are inspiring chapters on Man and Gentleman; Great Men – Great Workers; Great Young Men; Great Old Men; Lineage of Talent and Genius; The Literary Ailment (Over Brain-Work); Health and Hobbies; Town and Country Life; Single and Married, and the Evening of Life.
Crown 8vo (180 x 117mm). xii,474pp. Bound in an elegant contemporary full plum prize calf, banded and gilt, with the arms of the Crypt School in Gloucester on the upper cover, by George Davies & Son of Gloucester; marbled edges and endpapers; some minor rubbing and a few tiny scuffs, but a very good and sound copy. Midsummer 1888 Mark Prize school label of the Crypt School made out to G. W. Crump – George Wallace Crump (1874-1915), the son of a local iron railing manufacturer.

£70 (reduced from £100)

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London : Henry Colburn, 1826. First edition. “The best of all the novels of Horace Smith” (The Atlas). A much-lauded historical novel from Horace Smith, friend, benefactor and adviser on money matters to both Shelley and Leigh Hunt, and friend and host in later life to Dickens, Thackeray, Harrison Ainsworth and other notables. “The characters (like Sir Walter Scott’s) from the highest to the lowest, have individuality. Their qualities, manners, and forms, are distinctive and real. Constantia Beverning may be placed in competition with the Rebecca of ‘Ivanhoe’“ (The Scotsman).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 115mm). [ii],378; [ii],(400); [ii],414pp. No half-titles called for. Bound, without the advertisement leaf, in a Victorian half blue-black calf, ruled and lettered in gilt, by Edmund Worrall (1823-1894) of Birmingham, with his label in each volume; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; a touch sunned; lightly rubbed and slightly worn, with a few tiny scuffs; a few minor internal marks and spots, but otherwise a very good set. With the ownership inscription “Lawford, Downhills” written over a blind-stamp in each volume – presumably the solicitor John Lawford (1790-1863) of the Georgian Downhills Park in Tottenham.

£150 (reduced from £250)

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Edinburgh & London : William Blackwood & Sons, 1895. First edition. “Amateur-gipsy tours ... iron endurance, the temper of Mark Tapley, and the will to survive of Robinson Crusoe” (Somerville). “A sense of humour is one of the essentials for any tour, as necessary as a knapsack, or a map, and as both writers possess a keen perception of the ludicrous, their account of their jouneyings on ponyback through the northern parts of the Principality is most amusing and entertaining” (The Gentlewoman, 17th August 1895).
Crown 8vo (193 x 124mm). vi,186 + 32pp advertisements dated June 1895 – the month of publication. Illustrations by Somerville. Bound in an elegant recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth upper cover and spine preserved at rear (the primary binding, with the publishers’ name given in full at foot of spine); a few minor marks and spots, but a very good copy of an uncommon title. Neat ownership inscription.

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1903. First edition. Eleven short stories, with illustrations by Somerville. “Once more the authors write of what they have seen and heard, with a direct simplicity which is akin to genius … Such work should live forever” (Leeds Mercury, 25th May 1903).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],274,2pp + [4]pp inserted advertisements. Ten full-page illustrations. Original grey cloth, lettered in black and gilt, with a striking pictorial design by Somerville; very lightly bruised at head, some spotting of edges and text, but otherwise a very good copy.

£70 (reduced from £100)

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1908. First edition : in the primary binding, the white cloth band extending across both front and back covers. The second volume of Major Yeates stories — eleven tales, illustrated by Somerville. “The present volume quite bears out the brilliant reputation … won by the original R. M. stories. It could not possibly be superior, and we are loth to admit that it is any way inferior … Miss Somerville and ‘Martin Ross’ deserve the unqualified gratitude of the reading public” (Irish Times, 2nd October 1908).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(316),(4)pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original pale green cloth, with onlaid white band, lettered in gilt and black; a touch sunned; a few specks; endpapers a little tanned; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good and still bright copy.

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London : for J. Dodsley, J. Johnson, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, T. Cadell, J. Murray [and others], 1793. A handsome early collected edition of Sterne, comprising “Tristram Shandy”, “A Sentimental Journey”, three volumes of sermons and two of letters, as well as “A Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais” and “The History of a Watch-Coat”, together with his own memoir of his life and family.
Ten volumes. Crown 8vo (175 x 112mm). Engraved portraits of both Sterne and his daughter Lydia, his daughter shown sitting beside the Nollekens bust of her father, engraved by James Caldwall from a painting by Benjamin West. Plates. Marbled leaf. Bound in a most attractive contemporary tree calf, prettily gilt and with contrasting red and green labels; lemon edges; some minor rubbing, a few slight marks and minor signs of age and use, but overall a very good and clean set with an attractive provenance. From the library of Fasque Castle, with the Fasque bookplates and ownership inscriptions, dated Liverpool 1798, of (Sir) John Gladstone (1764-1851). Gladstone was the father of William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) and this set would have formed part of the household furniture among which the four-times prime minister grew up.

£500 (reduced from £750)

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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.

£125 (reduced from £250)

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London : Secker & Warburg, (1963). First edition. Story at the height of his success – published in hardback in January, a Penguin paperback was rushed out in February to coincide with the general release of the film of the same name, starring Ian Hendry, John Gregson, June Ritchie, Liz Fraser, etc. Albert the tallyman in the world of never-never. “If a total lack of heroes and heroines be the hallmark of modern writing then Mr. Story is very modern indeed” (Wolverhampton Express, 5th January 1963).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (160)pp. Original lilac boards, lettered in silver; a very good copy in the striking Anne Hickmott dust-jacket – the jacket with a few very faint marks, but also very good.

£65 (reduced from £100)

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London : Edward Moxon, 1855. First edition. With the ownership signature of Tennyson’s sister Matilda Tennyson (1816-1915), and further inscribed “Leonora M. Pinwill [Leonora Marian Pinwill (1842-1910)] from Matilda Tennyson July. 28th 1856”. Matilda, perhaps the favourite sister, was known to the family primarily as Tilly – but also as “The Empress Maud”. Her nickname is bestowed on this major collection of eight poems (Tennyson’s own favourite to the end of his days) which added not only “Come into the garden, Maud”, but also “Half a league onward”, “Theirs not to reason why” and “Cannon to the right of them” to the universal canon of most quoted lines. “It is no small thing in these days of lying, humbug, and flunkey worship, to come at last upon a real, true thing, and that a genuine poem, full of those vivid yet subtle pictures of internal life and external nature which Tennyson knows so well how to draw” (The Atlas, 4th August 1855).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). [viii],154,[ii]pp + 8pp advertisements dated October 1855 inserted at front (advertisements dated July and August are also known). Original green cloth, decorated in blind; lightly sunned and a little worn; rear cover a little marked and ink-splashed; endpapers cracking; a little shaken; a few minor internal spots, but a good copy with a splendid association. With occasional pencil marks alongside the text.

£500 (reduced from £750)

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London : Bradbury & Evans, 1856. First British edition. Two stories, with Thackeray satirical on social climbing, and teasing on a young and possibly mismatched couple.
Crown 8vo (183 x 120mm). 82 + [6]pp advertisements dated July 1856. Bound in a late nineteenth-century full red-brown crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Peter Alexander Riarch (1836-1888?), a gifted pupil of the great Francis Bedford, last heard of in Cincinnati in 1888; inner gilt dentelles; top edge gilt; marbled endleaves; original yellow pictorial wrappers and advertisements preserved at rear; just a hint of rubbing; some occasional internal spots; a few miniscule repairs, but a very good copy of a Thackeray scarcity.

£140 (reduced from £200)

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London : Putnam, (1955). First British and first separate edition : a pencilled note states this to be the first issue, without the copyright notice on the verso of the title-page – a point not mentioned by Rolph. The unfinished and partly autobiographical novel, originally published with other material a few months earlier in the USA. With a foreword by Vernon Watkins.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (116)pp. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; endpapers faintly tanned, but a very good copy in the original Gross-André dust-jacket – a design in purple, pink, black and white – a little sunned and tanned as usual, but also very good.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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

£160 (reduced from £250)

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London : Bodley Head, (1966). First edition. “Delightfully witty ... The love department is the marital troubles office in a women’s magazine, presided over by the bountiful Lady Dolores. She enlists the help of a holy innocent, Edward, in her battle against a sinister passion-peddler and marriage wrecker in the Wimbledon district” (Illustrated London News, 24th September 1966).
Post 8vo (21cm). (296)pp. Original turquoise boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; faint spotting to fore-edge, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a stylish design by Stephen Russ – the jacket just faintly tanned, with a few spots, but also very good. Small bookseller’s label of John Sandoe of Chelsea on front pastedown.

£75 (reduced from £125)

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1882. First edition. An uncommon late Trollope title – love, marriage, politics and class divisions. Lady Frances Trafford falls for a post-office clerk, her brother, Lord Hampstead, pays court to Marion Fay, a humble Quaker. “A course (two courses indeed) of true love that does not run quite smooth, a strong contrast of polite and by no means polite society, a Government office and its humours, some hunting scenes, an anonymous letter, the vain endeavours of crabbed age to control generous youth – these are the ingredients of ‘Marion Fay’, and it must be confessed that most of them have met before inside covers bearing Mr. Trollope’s respected name. But what of that?” (Pall Mall Gazette, 22nd June 1882).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (182 x 115mm). viii,(304); viii,282; viii,(272)pp. Bound, with half-titles but without the final blank in vol.ii, in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) half red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; top edges gilt; internally some occasional light thumbing and spotting, but a very good set. Bookseller’s label of Henry Sotheran Ltd. in vol.i. Sadleir 64.

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Edinburgh : Oliver & Boyd / London : Simpkin & Marshall, 1832. First edition. Selected Latin passages, moving on from simple constructions (nominative and verb, adjective and substantive, etc.), to longer and increasingly more complex anecdotes, maxims, and fables, etc., followed by an extensive vocabulary. Generally attributed to the schoolmaster Richard Valpy, said to have been “a mighty flogger”, whose large and impressive library was dispersed at auction in 1832.
Post 12mo (171 x 102mm). [iv],(224)pp. Contemporary full sheep; sprinkled edges; some minor rubbing and slight wear to corners; a few slight marks, but internally clean and sound, and barring the presence of a number of pencil marks, looking virtually unused. A very good copy of a standard text which remained in print throughout the century.

£50 (reduced from £75)

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London : Cassell & Co., [1884]. First edition in book form. A sequel to the highly popular “Old and New London”, compiled jointly by Walford and C. W. Thornbury. A circular tour round Chiswick, Ealing, Twickenham, Shepperton, Staines, Hillingdon, Uxbridge, Ruislip, Harrow, Barnet, Chigwell, Ilford, Dagenham, Woolwich, Sidcup, Bromley, Beckenham, Croydon, Epsom, Kingston, Richmond, Wimbledon and all the towns and villages between. Heavily illustrated with some 400 wood-engravings, including many images of buildings and villages never previously depicted. First published serially between 1882 and 1884.
Two volumes. Crown 4to (27cm). xvi,576; (xvi),560pp – two preliminary leaves in vol.ii inexplicably straying into the index. Numerous illustrations. Maps. Original decorative cloth gilt; all edges gilt; a touch bruised; slight scratch to one lower cover; a few slight spots, but overall a very good, bright and fresh set.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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Strawberry Hill : by Thomas Kirgate, 1765-1771. Second edition. The complete four volume set, together with the supplementary volume, “A Catalogue of Engravers, who have been Born or Resided in England” (1765). Still a key early source, covering not just painters, but architects, sculptors, etc. Already richly illustrated with over 100 portraits, etc., by Alexander Bannerman, Thomas Chambars, Anthony Walker, etc., the number here has been more than doubled by the insertion of 130 additional plates – mainly portraits, but also including contemporary engravings of Strawberry Hill, etc., and in the supplementary volume a rich array of examples of work by the some of our earliest engravers, including plates engraved by Thomas Cecill, John Droeshout, Renold Elstrack, William Faithorne, Richard Gaywood, George Glover, Remy Hogenberg, David Loggan, Pierre Lombart, George Vertue himself, several by Robert White, and numerous others.
Five volumes. Crown 4to (225 x 172mm). (xiv),182,[xx]; [ii],182,[lviii]; [ii],167,[xi]; (xii),(152),[viii]; [iv],140,14,20,[viii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Bound (probably about 1830) in elaborate late eighteenth-century style – full red straight-grain morocco, lavishly gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; some light wear; joints reinforced in one or two places; a few slight marks and small flaws; some of the additional plates cropped, folded, or re-margined to size, but a very good, fascinating and valuable example of a grangerised (extra-illustrated) copy. With the armorial bookplate of Cyril Flower, Lord Battersea (1843-1907), Victorian aesthete and parliamentarian, in each volume.

£3,000 (reduced from £4,000)

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1909. First edition. A young woman rejects suburban conventions for science, socialism, suffragettes and living in sin – and Wells fictionalises his relationship with his mistress Amber Reeves (1887-1981), who gave birth to his daughter later in 1909. Macmillan flatly declined to publish the book and Canon Lambert railed “I would just as soon send a daughter of mine to a house infected with diphtheria or typhoid fever as put that book into her hands”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 352pp. Original brown cloth, ruled in blind and blocked and lettered in gilt on upper cover, lettered across spine in gilt; very minor wear at head and tail; mild tanning of endpapers; a few slight marks, but a very good copy. With the contemporary bookplate of the mathematician Philip Worsley Wood (1880-1959), designed by P. Boddy and dated 1909.

£60 (reduced from £100)

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London : Virtue & Co., [1881]. A very handsome prospect of Southwark and London Bridge as they stood in the mid sixteenth century. Below the image is a keyed reference to twenty of the principal buildings and features – Baynard Castle, the Steelyard, St. Thomas’s Hospital, etc. Drawn and etched by Nathaniel Whittock from a contemporary drawing by the peripatetic Flemish artist Anton van den Wyngaerde. Originally produced for the part-work “History of Surrey” (London : 1840-1848) – and here in the later reissue published 1878 and 1881.
Etching and engraving on paper. Engraved surface 194 x 331mm (approx. 7-5/8” x 13”). Original vertical fold, a few tiny marks and specks, but overall in very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique print.

£125 (reduced from £200)

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London : Barrie & Jenkins, (1973). First edition. Ivor Llewellyn is fresh out of his sixth marriage when his lawyer recommends Bachelors Anonymous, a support group for bachelors to help each other prevent impulsive marriage proposals. “There is the much-married executive, Ivor Llewellyn … who tended to propose to women over the coffee because he couldn’t think of anything else to say to them. There is the English Joe Pickering, who has one of the sunniest smiles in SW7; and there is Ephraim Trout, the lawyer, who was so thin and meagre that a course of diet bread might well have rendered him invisible” (Birmingham Daily Post, 25th May 1974).
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Osbert Lancaster dust-jacket – the jacket slightly darkened at the edges of the laminate (as usual), but also very good.

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London : Oxford University Press, 1934. First edition. A magisterial and richly illustrated study of the background to mid nineteenth-century England, with chapters on Work and Wages (J. H. Clapham), Homes and Habits, Town Life and London (R. H. Mottram), Life in the New Towns, Country Life and Sport (Bernard Darwin), The Navy, The Army, The Mercantile Marine (Basil Lubbock), The Press, Art, Architecture (A. E. Richardson), Music, Drama (Allardyce Nicoll), Holidays and Travel, Charity, Expansion and Emigration, and the Portrait of an Age.
Two volumes. Medium 8vo (24cm). [ii],(xxvi),414,[ii]; viii,558,[ii]pp. Errata slip. Numerous plates drawn from contemporary sources. Facsimiles. Original cloth gilt; some spotting of edges, one endpaper lightly tanned, but a very good set in the original dust-jackets – lightly tanned, slightly worn and a little chipped.

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