ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Secker & Warburg, (1971). First edition. Signed by multiple award-winning John Banville on the title-page — loosely inserted is a 2008 ticket for “An Evening with John Banville”, the occasion on when the book was signed. Night Spawn, Night’s Pawn, Knight’s Pawn — his sometimes disavowed first novel, a fantasy political thriller of sorts set on a Greek island and then in Athens — “crotchety, posturing, absurdly pretentious”, in his own words, but for at least one online commentator, “I am left stunned. I think I have been bludgeoned by beauty”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (224)pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; just a hint of bruising, but a very good, clean and bright copy in the Mike Dempsey dust-jacket, equally very good.

£500

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London : Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830. First British edition. Alida de Barbérie is abducted by pirates – the brigantine “Water Witch” is pursued by Captain Ludlow. Set in and around the still half-Dutch New York of the early eighteenth century – the press was unanimous: “the mystery of the story, and the life and spirit of his characters, have, indeed, seldom been equalled, and is nowhere surpassed” (Morning Chronicle) – “Cooper, the American novelist, has no living superior” (The Scotsman). Precedes the American edition by two months, although a slightly earlier edition improbably published in Dresden is known in a handful of copies.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (188 x 114mm). viii,(322); [ii],316; [ii],308pp. Bound, without the advertisement leaves, in a smart contemporary half blue-green calf, banded and gilt; red labels; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; a few internal marks and spots, but still overall an excellent set. With the contemporary armorial bookplate in each volume of the colourful William Edward Powell (1788-1854), Member of Parliament and Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire, and the later bookplate of the well-known collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016) in the first volume.

£750

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

£400

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1857. First edition. A delightfully extra-illustrated and beautifully bound copy of this still controversial biography of Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) – “revolution as well as revelation” in Margaret Oliphant’s phrase. Unsold copies were withdrawn in the face of a storm of legal threat and hostility. Extra-illustrated by the insertion of forty additional plates, portraits and views, a number hand-coloured, as are the original frontispiece portrait and view of Haworth.
Two volumes. Post 8vo (202 x 123mm). viii,352; viii,(328)pp. Engraved frontispieces of Charlotte Brontë (the George Richmond portrait) and Haworth. Facsimile. Extra-illustrated with forty additional engravings, etc. Bound, complete with half-titles, in a handsome later (mid twentieth-century) half black crushed morocco, banded and gilt; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers, by George Bayntun of Bath; original cloth bound in a rear; a handful of minor marks and creases; slight nick to one inserted plate, but an excellent set. Housed in a matching slip-case.

£1,250

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London : for the Proprietors, by William Clarke; J. Murray; S. Bagster [and others], 1815-1818. First edition. A charming compilation, originally published in monthly parts, bringing images and descriptions of out of the way architecture and antiquities throughout England, Wales and Scotland. The images, many of them the earliest known of the various towns, buildings and architectural features, were supplied by an array of local and travelling artists, including principally John Hassell, George Arnald, Frederick Wilton Litchfield Stockdale, Luke Clennell and William Deeble – the plates engraved by Greig himself, some from his own designs, as well as Thomas Higham, Edward John Roberts, William Wallis, John Charles Varrall, Deeble himself and numerous others. Although generally ascribed to Greig’s former partner, the artist and engraver James Sargant Storer, Storer was by now working with his son on other projects – his name appears nowhere in the credits and the work would appear undoubtedly to be Greig’s, he himself engraving around one third of the plates. The engraved plates are supplemented by hundreds of anonymous but exquisitely worked head and tailpieces giving further detail.
Seven volumes. Foolscap 8vo (157 x 99mm). 336 engraved plates. Head and tailpieces. Bound in a stylish nineteenth-century half tan calf, banded and richly gilt; burgundy labels; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; some minor rubbing; a few faint signs of age and use; some browning and spotting, but a very pretty set. Ownership inscription of J. Atkins in each volume.

£500

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London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882. First edition : one of 1,000 copies of the first issue text, before the corrections made for the virtually identical second impression. One of Hardy’s most original, interesting and controversial novels – a Wessex tale of star-crossed lovers in which he aimed “to make science, not the mere padding of a romance, but the actual vehicle of romance” – “We have known military novels, sporting and dramatic novels, law and police novels, but an astronomical novel never ... The author, in fact, has imagined and described a woman with whom few of his male readers will not fall in love” (contemporary review in The Athenaeum).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [iv],246,[ii]; [iv],240; [iv],(224)pp. Bound, complete with half-titles, in a very attractive later (early twentieth-century) full tan morocco, banded and extra gilt, by Birdsall; original cloth preserved at rear; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; a couple of faint scuffs; a few internal faint creases and small flaws; endpapers lightly tanned, but a very handsome set.

£1,500

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London : William Heinemann, 1899. First edition : [one of 2,000 copies]. Eighteen-year-old Nanda enters the decadent fin-de-siècle marriage market – “We begin by being afraid that we shall not understand enough, we end by fearing that we may understand too much ... It is a strong book, but there is one thing greater than its strength, and that is its audacity” (Morning Post, 29th June 1899). A copy from the library of Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995). Spender’s “The Destructive Element” (1935) remains one of the most interesting and influential studies of James and his contemporaries.
Crown 8vo (20cm). vi,414,[ii] + [32]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind with an art-nouveau iris design; some very mild rubbing; a few internal marks and spots; a handful of leaves roughly opened, but otherwise a very good copy with an interesting provenance. With the earlier ownership inscription of Mary Lillias Johnston, the small bookseller’s label of R. J. Porteus & Co. of Newcastle, and a facsimile of the Stephen & Natasha Spender bookplate designed by John Craxton neatly inserted.

£125

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London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882. First edition : in the variant green (a) binding – Miller & Matthews (B15) make a persuasive case for regarding these slightly taller copies in green as having appeared earlier than the regular copies in brown. Jefferies and his haunting evocation of a Wiltshire childhood – “where there was magic in everything, blades of grass and stars, the sun and the stones upon the ground”.
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (180 x 119mm). viii,(288); iv,294,[ii]; iv,294,[ii]pp. Original decorative green cloth, blocked in black and gilt, and lettered in gilt; patterned endpapers; a few very minor signs of age and use; some occasional spotting to prelims and edges, but an excellent set. W. H. Smith blind-stamp to front free endpaper of the first volume.

£1,000

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London : André Deutsch, (1967). First edition. An extraordinary study – part grim, part comic – of the “beautiful, vulgar, frightening and propitiatory things that people make when confronted by that shocking and unwelcome reminder, the death of another”. With chapters on the corpse; the shroud; the coffin; the hearse; the floral tributes; printing and the word; the procession; the cemetery and the crematorium; the tomb; relics and mementoes, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). 304pp. Illustrations throughout, including photographs and many Jones drawings. Original purple boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; two corners a little bumped, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking Barbara Jones dust-jacket – the jacket also very good. Bloomfield A7.

£125

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London : for Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1808. First edition. Lamb’s hugely influential rediscovery of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans, many of the specimens of their work culled from “plays which are to be found only in the British Museum and in some scarce private libraries” – Francis Beaumont, George Chapman, Thomas Decker, John Fletcher, John Ford, Fulke Greville, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, John Marston, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton, George Peele, Cyril Tourneur, John Webster, and many more – “the most striking anthology perhaps ever made from English literature” (Edmund Blunden).
Crown 8vo (185 x 113mm). xii,484pp. Bound, without half-title, in a very handsome later (early twentieth century) full blue crushed morocco, banded and richly gilt, by Robert Riviere & Son; all edges gilt; inner gilt dentelles; marbled endleaves; some very minor rubbing and a hint of bruising, but a very good copy.

£500

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1955. First edition. The sixth instalment of “The Chronicles of Narnia”, taking us back to “the dawn of Narnian time and the day when the Beasts first talked, which was also the first day when people from our world first went to Narnia. It all happened because Diggory’s wicked uncle, who was a magician, sent him to the Wood Between the Worlds”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (184)pp. Illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Original green boards, lettered in silver; some spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the original pictorial Pauline Baynes dust-jacket – lightly rubbed, a touch sunned, and a little spotted on inner flaps and lower panel, but also very good. Neat contemporary ownership inscription on front free endpaper.

£500

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London : Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1843. First edition : the second issue, with the variant title. “A vigorous, dashing sketch of the prairies of California, the wildernesses of the Rocky Mountains, and the swamps of Texas” (Court Journal). Originally issued a little earlier as “Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora and Western Texas”, Sadleir suggests that the book was relaunched with a more exciting title specifically for the gift-books for boys market. Scarce in either incarnation, Marryat’s novel, full of factual information drawn from (unacknowledged) contemporary sources and his own visit to the Americas, is perhaps the earliest children’s book with an American Wild West setting. It is certainly the first work of fiction to contain Mormon characters and remains an important source of information on the pre Gold Rush California of the 1830s.
Three volumes. Demy 12mo (195 x 115mm). viii,312; [ii],318; [ii],(300)pp. Folding lithographic map by William Lake of the Pacific coast and territories of the Shoshones, Umbiquas, Cayuses, Nez Perces, Flatheads, etc. Bound, without half-titles (if actually called for in this issue) and final imprint leaf in vol.ii, in a smart later (early twentieth-century) half tan calf, by Henry Young & Sons of Liverpool, banded and richly gilt; contrasting maroon and tan labels; marbled sides and endpapers; top edges gilt; a few minor marks, spots and small flaws, but a very good set. Sadleir 1586b. Wolff 4525a.

£500

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New York : George H. Doran Co., (1925). First edition. Published a month earlier than the London edition and retaining a textual integrity which the British publication did not – two separate libel actions having necessitated changes in the names of characters in the latter, as well as the substitution of the fictional place-names of Tching-Yen, Pleasant Vale, and The Mount, for the real places of Hong Kong, Happy Valley, and The Peak. “Like many other of Mr. Maugham’s stories, the scene of his latest – and best – book is laid ‘East of Suez’. The theme, a loveless marriage and its disastrous aftermath, though old as the hills, is invested with modernity and freshness by means of a photographic realism” (Nottingham Journal, 21st May 1925). Filmed in 1934 (Greta Garbo), and in 2006 (Naomi Watts).
Crown 8vo (192 x 127mm). (290)pp. Bound in an attractive recent half red morocco, banded and gilt; a handful of minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

£400

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New York : Gemor Press, (1945). First edition. “The unveiling of women is a delicate matter. It will not happen overnight. We are all afraid of what we shall find”. One of 1,000 copies of the regular edition, illustrated with five woodcuts by “Ian Hugo” – Nin’s husband Hugh Parker Guiler (1898-1985). This copy signed by Nin and amicably inscribed to Raymond Daum – “Hoping we may collaborate!” – Raymond Witham Daum (1923-2003), cameraman and archivist, perhaps best-known for his “Walking with Garbo” (1991). His archive documenting his friendships with Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo and other well-known figures is now housed at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [iv],(184),[iv],[4]pp – including integral endleaves. Five woodblock illustrations by Ian Hugo. Original decorative boards in a Hugo design in maroon and cream; some very minor wear and a few slight marks; tiny sticker mark on rear board; endpapers a little tanned, but a very good copy.

£500

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1861. First edition : one of the 2,000 copies of the first impression, with the roman rather than gothic half-title, just four notes on p.323, etc. 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. [4],[viii],332pp. Engraved vignette by Charles Henry Jeens (1827-1879) after Thomas Woolner (1825-1892). Bound in a smart recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original cloth gilt (the priced, earliest variant) at rear; a handful of spots, a small flaw to the final leaf, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription on title-page and some neat pencil markings to margins in places.

£400

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1885. First edition. The great stylist’s philosophical novel of ancient Rome – the young Marius, secretary to the stoic Marcus Aurelius, pursues integrity and the aesthetic life. One of the most remarkable novels of the period, stretching the boundaries of fiction, and exploring questions of morality, religion, philosophy and gender. A key text of the modern movement, influencing authors as diverse as Hardy, Joyce, Wilde and Woolf. “We consciously looked to Pater for our philosophy” (W. B. Yeats).
Two volumes. Post 8vo (202 x 132mm). [viii],260; [viii],246,[ii]pp. Bound in an elegant later (early twentieth-century) half blue morocco; marbled sides and endpapers; top edges gilt; a few very faint signs of age and use, but a very good set of an uncommon book. With the pictorial book-room bookplate of Allan D. Macdonald and the later (1950) ownership inscription of David Fyfe Anderson (1904-1988), the Scottish obstetrician, in each volume.

£400

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London : Colllins, 1964. First edition. The culmination of Phillips’ extraordinary thirty-year trawl through the parish rate books, the land register, the crown lease book, the licensing records, the insurance documents and the early poll books – building up to more or less a house-by-house reconstruction of large parts of the eighteenth century West End – Berkeley Square, Cavendish Square, Charing Cross, Covent Garden, Hanover Square, Holborn, Leicester Square, Red Lion Square, St. James, St. Martin’s Lane, Soho Square, the Strand, etc.
Royal 4to (32cm). (322)[ii]pp. Plates (seventeen in colour). Profuse illustrations. Original red buckram, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£200

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London : Federation Press, [1924]. First edition : with a copyright date of 1924 and issued from the publishers’ pre-1925 Fetter Lane address. “A story of love that came too late to a woman of sin” – a tale also commencing with two contrasting impoverished writers on Fleet Street. With a 3pp authorial preface quoting from Omar Khayyam omitted in later editions.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 152,[viii]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some very minor wear; lower wrapper a little dusty; text a little tanned; a touch of rust to staples, but overall a very good copy of a scarce and fragile production. No copy of this edition and only a single copy (British Library) of any later edition located in major libraries worldwide.

£100

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[Leicester] : Hermitage Publications, [1948]. First edition. Susie escapes from the white slave traffic of Soho, but Detective Officer Maurice, Special Branch, tracks her down via an aunt in Edgbaston to an estate agent’ s office in Birmingham. It is a question of murder. “Ben Sarto” was the regular pseudonym of Frank Dubrez Fawcett (1891-1968), but it is not at all clear whether the four extremely rare Sarto titles published by Hermitage in 1947-1948 and distributed by Thorpe & Porter were actually by him.
Crown 8vo (18cm). 114 (i.e.112)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some minor rubbing, slight creasing and light wear; staples a touch rusted; press creases to a couple of leaves, but a very good, clean and sound copy of a scarce and fragile production. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£100

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London : Charles Knight & Co., [1838-1843]. The first Charles Knight edition. Comprises two volumes each of the comedies, histories and tragedies, as well as the poems, a volume of seventeen doubtful plays sometimes ascribed to Shakespeare (or Shakspere, as Knight insists on having it), together with commendatory verses, a history of critical opinion, material on Shakespeare in Germany, indexes, and a final volume of Knight’s full-length biography. All furnished with introductory notices, notes, variant readings, a glossary, music to the songs, etc. – and profusely illustrated throughout by the leading wood-engravers of the day from the designs of William Harvey (1796-1866) and others. Using the latest technology, Charles Knight (1791-1873) was in the vanguard of bringing the price of books within everyday reach and bringing education and edification in their train with the use of copious illustration – here insisting on illustrations of “the realities upon which the imagination of the poet must have rested ... the localities ... the portraits of the real personages ... accurate costume in all its rich variety”.
Eight volumes. Royal 8vo (240 x 159mm). Pictorial title-pages, profuse vignettes and decorations throughout. Bound in a handsome contemporary full polished plum calf, banded and gilt; silk ribbons; some minor rubbing; a few scratches; a few front endpapers slightly split, but still firm; a handful of minor marks, but a very good, overall very clean and sound set of a tour-de-force of early Victorian publishing. Contemporary bookplates of William Payne to each volume – possibly the nineteenth-century actor William Payne (1804-1878), who carried Edmund Kean from the stage when he fell terminally ill in his last ever performance (Othello at Covent Garden in 1833).

£1,000

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London : Hurst & Blackett, 1865. First edition. “This book deals not so much with the London of the ghost-stories ... as with the London consecrated by manifold traditions – a city every street and alley of which teems with interesting associations, every paving-stone of which marks, as it were, the abiding-place of some ancient legend or biographical story; in short this London of the present haunted by the memories of the past”. With separate chapters on Charing Cross, Drury Lane, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Long Acre, St. Giles, St. Martin’s Lane, the Savoy, Somerset House, the Strand, Temple Bar, etc., and a fund of out-of-the-way anecdote of Londoners past.
Demy 8vo (212 x 134mm). (xvi),(518),[ii]pp. Wood-engraved illustrations by Frederick William Fairholt, F.S.A. (1814-1866). Bound, without half-title, in smart recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; marbled sides; some marking to title-page; a few spots and slight creases, but handsome copy.

£200

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1879. First edition. A scarce late Trollope, featuring on Sadleir’s “A”-list of rarities (XIX Century Fiction, 1951). Disinherited son makes good in the goldfields of Australia, returning home a wealthy man to marry Hester Bolton, but the delightfully wicked Euphemia Smith turns up to claim a prior marriage. Trollope makes interesting use of his Post Office experience to hinge the story on a forged postmark. “Mr Trollope has perhaps never hit upon a story that more strongly arouses the reader’s attention and sympathy, and never told one with more mastery of the whole situation, in small things no less than in great” (The Graphic, 26th July 1879).
Three volumes. Crown 8vo (181 x 120mm). vi,290; vi,296; vi,302,[ii]pp. Bound, complete with half-titles and final blank, in a most handsome later half morocco, gilt on wide bands and decorated with small onlay flowers, by Zaehnsdorf; all edges gilt; marbled sides and matching endpapers; just a hint of rubbing; a few minor internal marks, but overall clean and sound, and a very good set indeed. With the attractive bookplates of both Ernest George Mocatta (1849-1927), stockbroker and book-collector, and Harold Charles (Harley) Drayton (1901-1966), the renowned financier whose library was dispersed at Sotheby’s in 1968. Sadleir 55 – “very scarce in fine condition”.

£1,000

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London : Phoenix Press, [ca.1946]. First edition. As they arrive in Paris, Madge Bradley rather regrets having become travelling companion to the fat, ugly, flashily-dressed, and intolerably rich widow, Mrs Brent. Published by Phoenix from their mid-1940s Deacon Street address.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [96]pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – redhead, pink heels, wine and cigarettes – a typical design by H. W. Perl – Hyman Woolf Perlzweig (1897-1952); minor wear; some creasing; staples a touch rusted; text lightly tanned, but a very good copy of a very uncommon title. No copy of any edition located in major libraries worldwide.

£75

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London : Edward Wallis, [ca.1820]. An extremely uncommon jigsaw map of the world, produced for educational purposes – the world in hemispheres, with six ancillary maps showing circles, zones, parallels, meridians, definitions, etc. First produced by Wallis’s father, John Wallis (1745?-1818) in 1800, but here with some revision – Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) now shown as a separate island, additional island groups in the Pacific, etc.
Copper line engraving on paper, with original hand colour. 257 x 445mm (approx. 10-1/8” x 17-1/2”). Dissected into about fifty pieces and mounted on wood; a few minor marks and specks, but complete and overall in very good condition. Just one copy (an incomplete example in the Library of Congress) of the 1800 edition located in major libraries worldwide, and none at all of this revised version.

£1,000

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1944). The first edition of this enduringly popular anthology – the best of English poetry – all of which, it is said, Wavell knew by heart. Includes around 180 poems drawn from all periods and arranged thematically – “Music, Mystery and Magic”; “Good Fighting”; “Love and All That”; “The Call of the Wild”; “Conversation Pieces”; “The Lighter Side”; “Hymns of Hate”; “Ragbag”, and “Last Post”, each with an introduction by Wavell.
Crown 8vo (185 x 115mm). 432pp. Bound in a smart recent half burgundy morocco, banded and gilt; internally some mild tanning to outer edges of the cheap wartime paper, with intermittent spotting and foxing, but a reasonable copy, attractively bound.

£400

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London : John Murray, 1891. First edition. A monumental dictionary of London from the well-known Abbey Road, and Abbey Street, Bermondsey, to the Yorkshire Stingo and the Zoo. “There is scarcely an unregarded, shabby-genteel street in Bloomsbury, or Chelsea, or Clerkenwell which has not its shred of history or literature connected with it” (London Evening Standard, 5th February 1891). Ostensibly based on Peter Cunningham’s “Handbook of London” (1849), but so far extended and updated as to be essentially a new work.
Three volumes. Medium 8vo (230 x 144mm). xxxii,(546); [iv],622; [iv],(608)pp. Bound in a handsome near contemporary half aubergine crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Bickers & Son of Leicester Square; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; a few slight marks; some shelf-wear to lower edges; some foxing and spotting, mainly to endpapers, edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good set in a most elegant binding. Contemporary ownership inscriptions.

£300

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