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London : Eveleigh Nash & Grayson, 1927. First edition of this collection of eleven translations of Balzac’s “most spell-binding” stories, including “At the Sign of the Cat and Racket”, “The Unknown Masterpiece”, “The Atheist’s Mass”, etc. Translated variously by Clara Bell, Ellen Marriage and John Gilmer, and edited and introduced by George Saintsbury (1845-1933). “So great are these masterpieces of French fiction that the introduction ... is quite unnecessary. Balzac’s short stories are essentially original and powerful – and tragic. The volume opens with El Verdugo (The Executioner), one of the most powerful of his tales, but The Maranas is undoubtedly the greatest achievement in this excellent collection” (Dundee Courier, 3rd June 1927).
Crown 8vo (191 x 124mm). (548)pp. Bound in an elegant later half green morocco, banded and gilt, for Asprey’s; all edges gilt; silk headbands; marbled endpapers; overall a very good copy.

£250

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London : Thomas Nelson & Sons, (1910). First edition. Buchan in South Africa with a Haggardesque tale of uprising, myth, fabulous necklace, etc. “A very perfect gift for a youth of spirit – brimful of excitement and wonders, and with a hero who does everything that doth become a man!” (The Globe, 21st September 1910).
Crown 8vo (180 x 116mm). vi,(376),viii pp. Frontispiece map. Bound in an attractive recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; a very good and clean copy. Attached to the verso of the front free endpaper is a contemporary prize label of the North Merchiston Continuation Classes – made out to James B. Campbell for general excellence. Blanchard A21.

£400

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

SOLD

London : Duckworth & Co., 1900. First edition : of the 1,000 sets of sheets originally printed, only 500 were bound for the British market by the publishers, while some 250 were used for a colonial edition, and another 150 or so later destroyed unsold. The first mention of the Forsyte family (one chapter is headed “Salvation of a Forsyte”) in this famously uncommon early Galsworthy novel published under his “John Sinjohn” pseudonym. “Greta, the motherless girl, is altogether delightful. So is the hero, Alois Harz, the Bohemian painter; and so too is Christian, the other heroine, so to speak, whom he marries ... the characters are delightfully sketched, with a good deal of verisimilitude ... a decidedly readable story” (The Bookseller, 25th December 1900).
Crown 8vo (184 x 121mm). [vi],(258)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; some mild tanning to outer leaves, but otherwise a handsome copy of a book seldom encountered.

£400

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

SOLD

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

£500

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1945-1960). A first edition set of Nancy Mitford’s abidingly popular and partly autobiographical tales of eccentricity and aristocracy – “The Pursuit of Love” (1945); “Love in a Cold Climate” (1949), and “Don’t Tell Alfred” (1960). “Wit, fantasy, humour, she has it all ... so far out of the ordinary that you may never hear the last of it” (Daniel George in the Daily Express, 21st July 1949).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 120mm). (196); 284; 248pp. Bound in an elegant recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; mild tanning (as ever) to the wartime paper of the first volume; a handful of edge spots to the second volume, but a very good set.

£1,500

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

£250

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

SOLD

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

SOLD

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

£250

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