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

Edinburgh : Privately Printed at the Tragara Press, (1974). First edition : limited to 115 numbered copies, all hand-printed. “Certain Landfalls”, “Postmark”, “Picture of Geishas”, and “A Patch of Dust” – here in an outstanding designer binding by multiple prize-winning bookbinder, Dominic Riley.
Royal 8vo (240 x 141mm). [ii],[10],[ii],[2]pp. Bound, retaining the original paper wrappers, in a 2003 Dominic Riley binding of red morocco, with stripes of tans, blacks and greys, with black lettering; charcoal top edge, with flicks of gilt; an excellent copy, complete with its decorated clamshell cloth box.

£2,000

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 19201 – or simply click on the button

New York : Macmillan Co., 1942. First edition. A tour-de-force from the English artist in exile – “There is a universality about the people of the earth that is healing, and it matters little whether one be talking with a tobacco farmer in North Carolina or a plowman in Devonshire. So, I knew, my sole chance of adjustment over here, in the country of my adoption, and my best cure for the incomparable fret of nostalgia as well as my only hope of becoming one with my new land, would be to wander among the workers on this earth and learn their habits and their lore”. Cotton-picking, water-mills, corn-shucking, hog-killing, sorghum-boiling, tobacco-harvesting, and much else of the American South, described and depicted in her searingly dramatic illustrations.
Demy 4to (272 x 203mm). (viii),(158),[ii]pp. Numerous wood-engraved illustrations (some full-page), headpieces, tailpieces, etc., by the author. Bound in an exquisite full tan morocco executed in 2001 by Rona Smith (1934-2004), winner of the Designer Bookbinders Finishing Award the following year – the binding with a recessed panel enclosing a silhouette onlay of a detail from the book; black lettering; sprinkled top edge; a fine copy, housed in its clamshell cloth box.

£2,000

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 14121 – or simply click on the button

London : Hollis & Carter, (1956). First edition. Professor Taylor demonstrating in this sweeping tour-de-force just why she became the first woman to hold an academic chair in geography – navigation by sun, sea, tide, current and stars – navigation without compass or chart – navigation with compass and chart – navigation with quadrant, octant and chronometer. Phoenicians and Greeks; Irish and Norsemen; the Mediterranean; the eastern and western oceans; the Portuguese; the English awakening; Edward Wright and the true chart; the longitude solved. “A perfect title for a book that is not only deeply learned, but proves the point that detachment from, and deep absorption in the subject is the ideal condition of writing. The whole mystery, and wonder, and achievement of man’s ventures through the oceans ... has in a sense been lifted into a level of poetry” (James Hanley in Truth, 11th January 1957).
Demy 8vo (209 x 132mm). xii,(296)pp. Plates. Maps. Diagrams. Illustrations. Bound in a striking 1996 designer binding by Margaret Willmer – black goatskin over sculptured boards, with tan goatskin medallions, and blue, red and tan onlays; suminagashi marbled endpapers; an excellent copy, housed in a custom-made ribbon-tied cloth case – the case a little sunned, but otherwise very good.

£750

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 46689 – or simply click on the button