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London : Library Association, (1983). First edition : limited to 1,000 numbered copies. The essential reference book for any collector of illustrated books on London – wise, witty, and massively detailed descriptions of over 230 books – and offering far more riches than the somewhat dry title might suggest.
Post 4to (27cm). (xxxiv),586pp. Plates. Original cloth; lower edge a touch dusty, but a very good copy in a lightly sunned but otherwise very good dust-jacket.

£100

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[London : Corporation of London, 1973]. First edition. A brief illustrated guide to the park and its history.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (24)pp. Line drawings and coloured map by Mary Warren. Coloured illustrations. Original stapled wrappers; very good.

£20

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London : for the Camden Society, 1844. First edition. A transcription of a valuable fourteenth-century manuscript French Chronicle of London, with an extensive introduction and explanatory notes. With a list of members of the Society, etc. Edited by George James Aungier, who was sentenced to transportation for life the following year for forging a cheque in the name of John Gough Nichols of the printing family – indeed the printers of the present work – Nichols testifying at the Old Bailey trial.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). [4],(xxiv),112,36pp. Original cloth, blocked in gilt and blind; minor wear at head, but a very good copy. Armorial bookplate of Travers Barton Wire (1835-1910).

£20

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London : John Murray (Publishers), (1982). First edition. From the grand to the curious, if not from the bizarre to the preposterous – some of the many architectural projects proposed – but rejected and never built – over a period of four hundred years. An extraordinary, richly illustrated and highly entertaining survey of London as it might have been. Signed on the title-page by the co-author, Ralph Hyde.
Post 4to (27cm). (224)pp. Illustrations throughout. Original boards; a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good barring a single tiny nick.

£25

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Edinburgh : The Geographical Institute, John Bartholomew & Son, 1956. Second edition. An attractive pocket atlas of London, with coloured sectional maps extending north to Highbury, eastwards to Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, south to the Oval, and westwards to Hammersmith, on a scale of something over three inches to the mile. Complete with historical notes, notes on place names, population, museums and galleries, theatres, cinemas, clubs, hotels, restaurants, sports grounds, etc, etc. Also with plans of several major buildings, general maps of the Greater London area, the major approach roads, underground railways, and an extensive street index, etc. First published in 1951.
Crown 8vo (19cm). xl,32,56pp. Thirty-two coloured map pages, six plans. Original stiff card pictorial wrappers; a few minor signs of age and use, faint crease to upper wrapper, but overall a very good copy.

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1892. Second edition : a revised and slightly expanded version of the original 1888 publication. Besant’s entertaining and richly illustrated account of life and society (principally in London) in 1837 – the year of the accession of Queen Victoria and in Besant’s view the year in which all that we think of as nineteenth-century really began.
Post 8vo (20cm). (xvi),244 + 32pp advertisements dated 1897. Numerous plates and illustrations. Original decorative cloth; a few small marks and spots; endpapers lightly cracked; a little shaken and slack, but a good and still bright copy. With the 1899 ownership inscription of C. K. Grenside – Charles Knowlys Grenside (1812-1902), a Wimbledon barrister.

£25

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London : The Builder, 1922. Third edition. A revised edition, here issued for the first time with key-plates, of Brewer’s delightful reconstructions of the streets and buildings of Elizabethan London: a panoramic view of London from the east; the Tower; Aldgate, Cheapside; Old St. Paul’s; Ludgate; Newgate; Ely Place; Old London Bridge; Westminster, etc. – first published as a collection the previous year, although the drawings originally appeared in “The Builder” in the 1880s and 1890s. With descriptive notes by Herbert Arthur Cox (1875-1956).
Foolscap folio (33cm). [ii],56,[ii]pp. Fourteen full-page plates (one folding), all with tissue key-plates. Original decorative cloth over bevelled boards; lightly worn and a little soiled; endpapers cracked; some tissue key-plates a little creased and frayed, but a serviceable copy of a fascinating production.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., [1941]. First edition. Heart-breaking personal essays on aspects of London “bombed, burned and battered”, illustrated with poignant and evocative photographs of the Blitz.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xviii),(302)pp. Eight plates. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; a few tiny patches of fading where the jacket is chipped; endpapers very lightly tanned; first few leaves very slightly creased, but otherwise a very good copy in the striking dust-jacket by the poster artist G. R. Morris – lightly tanned, a little worn, nicked and slightly chipped, with an unobtrusive tear to lower panel. Contemporary ownership inscription dated April 1941.

£50

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London : Michael Joseph, (1974). First edition. The first year of the war and London and Londoners are changed forever – The balloons go up, The children leave, The lights go out ... Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished photographs by the cameramen of the weekly magazine “Illustrated”.
Crown 4to (26cm). (128)pp. Illustrations throughout. Original boards; a few minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£15

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Godalming : H. Stedman, 1879. First edition. A thorough and well-illustrated history by the Victorian headmaster, with chapters on the founders; the early days; the masters; the schoolmasters; the poor brethren; the removal of the school to Godalming; the lighter hours; the governors; the new statutes, etc.
Crown 8vo (21cm). (xii),(240)pp. Wood-engraved frontispiece and ten plates. Steel-engraved portrait. Two double-page plans. Illustrations in text. Original pale blue armorial cloth gilt, ruled and blocked in black and gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch sunned; endpapers slightly trained at hinges; a few leaves roughly opened; a few minor marks and creases, but a good copy.

£40

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London : Edward Stanford, 1890. The third edition of this attractive guide – with material on the topography (with twenty guided routes) and neighbouring sites, the animals, reptiles, birds, moths and butterflies, trees, plants, mosses and fungi. Originally published in 1884.
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). xii,(138),[ii]pp. Illustrations by Heywood Sumner and others. Six coloured maps, some folding. Original cloth; covers a little tanned, marked and soiled; one map torn, without loss; endpapers a little strained and slightly cracked, but a good copy.

£25

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[Ilford] : Caunt Publishing, (1980). Second edition. An enlarged and augmented version of the original 1963 edition – illustrated sketches of incidents, characters, houses, etc., in Ilford history.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). 120pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Map. Original laminated boards; a touch sunned, but otherwise a very good copy.

£20

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1912. First edition. The earliest history of this celebrated and important London thoroughfare, covering the Strand itself, the side-streets, and the famous characters, with separate chapters on the Savoy, Somerset House, the Strand Churches, the Inns of Court and Chancery, the Great Houses, the Theatres, the Taverns and Coffee-Houses, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),(366),[vi]pp. Frontispiece and thirty-two plates (two folding). Original cloth; just a little sunned; just a touch shaken; some spotting, mainly of edges; slight damage to margin of one folding plate, but still a very good copy.

£15

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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

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[London] : At the Chiswick Press, for Constable & Co. and Houghton Mifflin, 1926. First edition : limited to 1,025 copies. The artist John Crowther was commissioned either side of 1880 by Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey to make water-colours of London buildings under threat from redevelopment – Beresford Chancellor describes a selection of sixty of them in a circular tour – Chelsea (where Crowther was living in 1881), Westminster, Whitehall, the Strand, the Borough, and home via Stockwell, Vauxhall and Battersea.
Crown 4to (27cm). (xiv),(132),[ii]pp. Sixty plates, many in colour. Original buckram, lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; lightly worn, a little bruised and slightly dulled; a few slight marks; front endpaper replaced; a few leaves roughly opened, but a reasonable copy of an attractive production.

£40

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London : Corporation of London, 1951. First edition. A survey of the surviving City churches, with notes on bomb damage, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 32pp. Corrigenda slip. Folding plan. Illustrations. Endpaper illustrations of the spires. Original stapled wrappers; staples a little rusted; plan loose; a touch dusty, but a good copy.

£15

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London : History & Social Actions Publications, (2008). First edition. An absorbing study of the rise and fall of the greatest of all the urban pleasure gardens – “it was popular; it was brilliantly organised; it was musical; it was entertaining; it had fireworks; it was a meeting place for lovers – it had it all”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 52pp. Maps. Illustrations. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; very good.

£20

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Cambridge (MA) : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, (2015). First edition. A thoroughly engaging history of the London pea-souper, the London particular – in literature, in art and in reality – from the Dickensian gloom, through decades of attempted remedy and legislation, to the Clean Air acts of the mid twentieth century.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(392),[vi]pp. Numerous illustrations, some coloured. Original cloth-backed boards; very good in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£20

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London : Tinsley Brothers, 1876. First edition. A full-scale history of the famous old church, compiled by the then vicar from materials collected by the wine-merchant William Meade Williams (1799-1869), who was baptised at St. Helen’s in December 1799. Illustrated with wood-engraved plates, etc., mainly by Richard Knight – some from the drawings of Percy William Justyne.
Royal 8vo (27cm). (xiv),454,[ii]pp. Plates. Original decorative cloth gilt; a little sunned; a few minor marks, but a very good copy. With the contemporary book-label of a Mr. Rohde – presumably the civil servant John Rohde (1812-1899).

SOLD

London : for Sherwood, Gilbert, & Piper, 1835. First edition. Nineteenth-century Islington, Barnsbury, Battle Bridge, Canonbury, Finsbury Fields, Highbury, Highgate, etc., traversed in a series of five thorough and well-informed walks with the historian and unitarian minister, Thomas Kitson Cromwell. The walks are prefaced by a general history of the area and illustrated by charming engravings of the more important buildings.
Post 12mo (180 x 101mm). viii,412pp. Folding map. Twenty-four engraved plates, containing thirty-seven views, by father and son James (1771-1853) and Henry Sargant Storer (1797-1837). Bound in an attractive contemporary morocco-grained maroon calf, banded and gilt; green labels; marbled edges and endleaves; lightly tanned; faint rubbing; a few tiny scuffs; short tear and some creasing to map; some plates a little browned or with a light fringe of discolouration, but otherwise a very good copy. Contemporary armorial bookplate of J. H. Dixon – probably James Henry Dixon (1803-1876), lawyer and antiquary of Hornsey, whose library was dispersed by Sotheby’s in 1866. Also with the more recent bookplate of Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

£200

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London : English Heritage, 1995. First edition. An evocative survey of architectural treasures across the Greater London area at risk from disuse and disrepair.
Crown 4to (25cm). 82,[ii]pp. Illustrations throughout. Original wrappers; very slightly bowed, but a very good copy. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£20

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London : J. Russell Smith, 1859. First edition. “Knightsbridge and Pimlico form the only suburbs west of the metropolis, whose history remains unwritten ... I trust the following pages will show that Knightsbridge is far from destitute of associations deserving to be recovered and saved from the ravages of time”. With material on the streets, buildings, eminent inhabitants, society and politics, etc., and separate chapters on Belgravia and the sub-district of St. Barnabas. The work was edited for publication by Charles Davis after the early death of his brother.
Crown 8vo (186 x 118mm). (xii),282pp. Eight lithographic plates in two colours. Wood-engravings in the text. The illustrations mainly engraved by Thomas Gilks (1815-1877) from sketches by an artist referred to only as “H.W”. Bound in a neat later half plum roan; green label; marbled endpapers; slightly rubbed at tips; a few internal creases, but a very good and serviceable copy. With the bookplate of book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

£125

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London : Walthamstow Antiquarian Society, (1955). First edition. An interesting and detailed account of a rich variety of local publishing – with material on twenty-five different local productions from 1870 onwards.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],82pp. Plates. Illustrations. Folding chronological table. Original wrappers; slightly rubbed; a few faint spots; slight scuff to upper wrapper, but a good copy.

£15

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London : Charles Dickens, 1879. First edition : the hardback issue. The first appearance of this splendidly informal handbook produced by the younger Dickens, eldest son of the novelist. A mass of detailed and practical information – bus timetables, postal information, church services, newspaper offices, the names of professional envelope addressers (and prices), etc., alongside some lively and frequently offbeat asides on Victorian mores – “Opium Smoking Dens, – The best known is that of one Johnstone, who lives in a garret off Ratcliff-Highway ... a similar establishment of a slightly superior – or it might be more correct to say a shade less nauseating – class is that of Johnny Chang ...”. “Ladies Shopping without male escort, and requiring luncheon, can safely visit any of the great restaurants – care being always taken to avoid passing through a drinking bar”. With a fine array of contemporary advertisements.
Foolscap 8vo (17cm). 352pp. Maps. Original cloth; a touch dulled; some very minor wear; a few marks; endpapers a touch strained, but still a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription.

SOLD

London : Richard Bentley & Son, 1877. First edition. A lively, anecdotal and detailed history of the Jacobite cause in London from 1714 on into the nineteenth century, but with emphasis on the activities surrounding the momentous events of 1715 and 1745. Compiled by the journalist and historian Dr. John Doran, editor of “Notes and Queries”.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (218 x 140mm). xii,(440); x,412pp. Bound in a handsome contemporary half burgundy roan, banded and richly gilt; top edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; lightly rubbed at extremities; a few minor marks, spots and small flaws, but still a very good set. With the 1899 armorial bookplate of the wealthy Arthur Gilstrap Soames J.P. (1854-1934), at one time High Sheriff of Lincolnshire, in each volume.

SOLD

London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1963. First edition. Her first and most famous book – sixteen short stories and sketches of working-class life in Battersea and Clapham Junction “Out with the Girls”, “The Tallyman”, etc. Adapted for television by Ken Loach in 1965 and subsequently filmed with Suzy Kendall, Susan George, Dennis Waterman, etc.
Post 8vo (20cm). 110,[ii]pp. Illustrations by Susan Benson. Original blue-green boards, lettered down spine in gilt; very good in the original photographic Tina Tranter dust-jacket – very slightly worn and a touch soiled on lower panel.

£75

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

£750

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London : Macdonald & Co. (Publishers), (1952). First edition. An entertaining account of coming to London – and the perils and pitfalls of railway porters, private hotels, service flatlets, cab-drivers, digs, bed-sitting rooms, gas-rings, and all the hazards that may greet a young woman from the provinces (in this case Liverpool) – “Unless you intend coming in nothing but a fig leaf and a string of beads you will not expect your arrival in London to cause any sensation”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 54,[ii]pp. Title-page and illustrations by Ronald Searle. Original red boards, lettered in black; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy in the original Searle dust-jacket – a pictorial design of bed-sit, sausages and fire-hazard – just lightly used and with a few spots, but also very good.

£15

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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.

£150

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), (1966). First edition. "A treasure-house for the serendipitist ... the off-beat, the eccentric, even the bizarre" – Fletcher in words and pictures in Greenwich, Deptford, Rotherhithe, Wapping, the Bankside, Battersea Park, Chelsea, the pubs of Hammersmith, Kew, Richmond, etc.
Post 4to (28cm). (112)pp. Illustrations, many full page, by the author. Original boards; very good in the original Fletcher dust-jacket – a little worn, torn and repaired.

£20

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London : Love & Malcomson, [1924]. The forty-fourth edition of Fry’s perennially popular guide, published more or less annually from 1880, but here completely revised and updated, while retaining its defining feature – the splendid bird’s-eye views of the principal thoroughfares designed by Thomas Sulman (1832-1900) and George William Ruffle (1838-1901).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],182,[iv]pp. Folding map. Twenty double-page bird’s-eye views. Original green cloth; lightly sunned; endpapers lightly tanned; a few spots, but a very good copy.

£50

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London : Geographia, [1971]. Eleventh edition, revised and extended. Originally published in 1930, but here revised and extended in scope, reaching out to Rickmansworth and Egham to the west; Radlett and Potters Bar to the north; Rainham and Dartford to the east, and Epsom and Purley to the south. Contents include a double-page key map, 210 fully indexed sectional maps in colour on a generous scale of three inches to the mile; six coloured sectional maps of the City and West End at over six inches to the mile; coloured double-page maps of the postal districts and the major roads; a map of the underground railway; and four endpaper maps of the theatres, cinemas, clubs and museums.
Demy 8vo (209 x 129mm). 224,182pp. Bound in an elegant contemporary full green crushed morocco (for Hatchard’s); banded and gilt; ornamental centrepiece on upper board; all edges gilt; silk headbands; spine eveny tanned; minor wear to corners, but a very good copy in a handsome binding.

£125

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London : Phoenix House, (1962). First edition thus. A wholly revised edition of Godfrey’s classic “A History of Architecture in London” (1911), extending his original text on into the twentieth century and the geographical coverage out to a radius of forty miles from the capital. A richly illustrated history of English architecture as demonstrated in surviving London buildings – “no major building of architectural merit from Norman to our own time is overlooked”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xx),264pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original cloth gilt; a very good copy in a lightly worn dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Covenant Publishing, 1932. Third edition. A wide-ranging survey covering the religion, race, language and literature of pre-Christian Britain in London and further afield; circles, mounds and druids; open-air sanctuaries; holy hills; Arthurian traditions; the kinship of Trojans and Britons; Troy towns or mazes in London; druidic circle at Westminster; Merlin’s cave; Lludd Gate, and much else besides. With appendices by John Aneurin Grey Griffith. First published in 1914.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xii),212pp. Twenty plates, plans, diagrams, etc. Original olive cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in black; just a touch rubbed; a few minor marks; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting of text and edges, but otherwise a very good and sound copy.

£20

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London : Religious Tract Society, [1890]. First edition. An absorbing and well-illustrated behind-the-scenes look at the mechanics of Victorian London – with chapters on how London is fed; cleaned; lit; the police; the Thames police; Bart’s Hospital; the Post Office; the commissionaires; the Mint, and coming to London. Gordon was a London accountant as well as a prolific writer on a wide variety of topics. A volume in the “Leisure Hour Library” series.
Crown 8vo (186 x 118mm). 224pp. Illustrations, many full-page, and pictorial chapter headings. Bound in a neat later quarter calf; top edge gilt; some spotting, mainly of prelims and edges, but otherwise a very good copy.

SOLD

Dublin : for James M’Glashan, 1849. First edition. A concise and yet wide-ranging history of London – “A distinct view of the moral, municipal, medical, political, and religious state of the British metropolis; a particular account of all the establishments connected with literature and science; public schools and charitable institutions; trade and commerce; public companies, docks, markets, &c., public buildings, national establishments, and other important edifices; exhibition of works of art, and the places of public amusement – in fact everything there is to see, and how it is to be seen, are here fully explained”.
Foolscap 8vo (160 x 94mm). 324pp. Engraved frontispiece of St. Paul’s Cathedral by Thomas Edward Nicholson of Newcastle. Bound in an elegant contemporary half green calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; red label; marbled sides and endpapers; sprinkled edges; slightly sunned and very lightly rubbed; a few leaves slightly creased; light off-setting to title page; a few spots, but overall a very good copy of a useful compilation.

SOLD

London : W. S. Orr & Co., 1838. First edition. A compelling view of the “Modern Babylon” from the journalist James Grant – “Everything the Author has described, has either come under his own observation, or been verbally communicated to him by friends who were cognizant of the facts stated, and in whose veracity he could place the utmost reliance”. With chapters on begging imposters, debtors’ prisons, the lumber troop, parliament, penny theatres, workhouses, lunatic asylums, Bartholomew and Greenwich fairs, gaming houses and gamblers, the police, and other aspects of the underworld of the metropolis. Published in instalments at just the same time as “Oliver Twist” was being serialised, the work provides an interesting factual counterpart and companion to the Dickens novel, not least in that the young Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”) was responsible for the bulk of the illustrations.
Demy 8vo (217 x 132mm). viii,408pp. Frontispiece, extra vignette title, and twenty-two etched plates, mainly by “Phiz” (1815-1882), in his best Dickensian style. Bound in a smart nineteenth-century full tan polished calf, banded and gilt; marbled edges and endpapers; a few very minor signs of age and use; some occasional spotting and browning to plates, but a very good copy of a major precursor of Mayhew and the later nineteenth-century researchers.

£250

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1874. First edition : with the (later) advertisements dated November 1874. Thirty-seven illuminating essays and pieces on London life at the extremes from the campaigning journalist, James Greenwood – “The Lambeth Casual” – illustrated with evocative studies of London life by the gifted Alfred Concanen (1835-1886). Includes A Visit to Tiger Bay; An Evening at a Whitechapel Gaff; Sunday Evening with the Fancy; Amongst the Music-Hall Luminaries; At the Death-Bed of a London Dragon; At a Knocking Out (a savage attack on the ringing of auctions); Going Hopping in Kent; At a Gaol Delivery; At a Sugar Baking; At a Penny Wedding; A West-End Cholera Stronghold, and much more.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,364 + 40pp. Twelve lithotint plates by Concanen. Original pictorial cloth gilt by Leighton, Son & Hodge, with their ticket; minor wear at extremities; a little sunned; spine a little worn and faded; a little shaken; some minor spotting, mainly of edges, but very good copy of one of the best books of its kind. With the ownership blind-stamps of the York solicitor, John Atlay Shaftoe (1857-1938).

SOLD

London : for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, [1901]. The bulky 1901 issue of the official cab distance tables for the whole of the London area, cross referencing almost every conceivable location – Lord’s Cricket Ground to the Kennington Oval – 4 miles 934 yards; the “Angel” Islington to Putney Station, 7 miles, 592 yards, etc.
Royal 8vo (24cm). xxxvi pp, 400 ll tables. Original cloth gilt on card; sprinkled edges; slight snag to lower joint, cloth slightly bubbled, but otherwise a good copy.

£50

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London : Herbert Jenkins, 1918. First edition. Harben’s extraordinary dictionary of more than 6,000 street and place names in the City of London, their location, the forms and origins of the names, associations, early depictions on maps, etc. Still the essential work.
Royal 8vo (26cm). (xxviii),(642)pp. Six folding plans (one in two separate sheets), some in rear pocket. Original cloth; some minor rubbing; cloth a little stretched by the rear pocket; some spotting to edges, but still overall a very good copy.

£200

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London : Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1878. First edition. Entertaining and fact-filled walks around London in the company of the always engaging Augustus Hare: the Strand; the Inns of Court; Fleet Street; St. Paul’s; Smithfield, Clerkenwell, Canonbury; Cheapside; Aldersgate and Cripplegate; Bishopsgate; the City; the Tower; Thames Street; London Bridge and Southwark; Trafalgar Square; the West End; Regent Street; Regent’s Park; Oxford Street; Whitehall; Westminster Abbey; Westminster; Chelsea; Lambeth; Kensington, etc.
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (183 x 122mm). xxxvi,480; [vi],(512)pp. Numerous wood-engraved illustrations. Bound in an elegant near contemporary half green calf, banded and gilt; contrasting red and tan labels; top edges gilt; spines evenly tanned to a pleasant olive shade; some minor wear and rubbing; a few spots and faint marks, mainly to edges; a few leaves roughly opened, but overall a very good and partly unopened set.

SOLD

London : Cecil Palmer, (1924). First edition. Illustrated essays on various London topics – Doggett’s Coat and Badge; Door-Knockers; Statues; Keystones; Water-Gates; Ely Place and Hatton Garden; Belgravia; the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street; the City Liberties; the City Wards, etc. A sequel to the author’s “Queer Things about London. Strange Nooks and Corners” (1923).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xvi),256pp. Illustrations by the author. Original pictorial cloth; spine lightly sunned; a few faint marks and edge-spots; endpapers lightly tanned, but a good and sound copy.

£20

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London : William Collins, Sons & Co., 1976. First edition. An account of the Blitz and those who endured it – in London, Coventry, the southern ports and the northern towns – compiled from contemporary reports, diaries and the Mass-Observation archive.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [iv],372,[viiii]pp. Original boards; very mild spotting of top-edge, but a very good copy in a just lightly tanned dust-jacket. With the ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield.

£20

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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.

£200

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London : Portman Books, (1988). A facsimile reprint of the original 1947 edition. A masterly and fully illustrated review of the London shop signs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, compiled from Heal’s extraordinary collection of trade-cards and billheads (now in the British Museum).
Crown 4to (26cm). [x],220,[ii]pp. Illustrations throughout. Original boards; a very good copy in a just very lightly used dust-jacket.

£25

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London : by J. Streater, for Henry Twiford, George Sawbridge, Thomas Dring, and John Place, 1657. First edition. One of the earliest printed histories of London, second only to the early editions of Stow in terms of chronology. Compiled by the versatile and engaging Welsh author, royalist, politician and traveller, James Howell, after his release from a lengthy imprisonment at the time of the Interregnum. With accounts of St. Paul’s and the other ancient churches; the individual wards and precincts; the governance of the City; the walls, streets, gates and prisons; the Inns of Court; the twelve great livery companies; the company halls; the Tower, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and other prominent buildings; the Thames; London Bridge; the mayoralty; the city of Westminster and the Abbey; the Strand; Covent Garden; Lincoln’s Inn; Westminster Hall; Parliament, the Admiralty, etc.
Pott folio (270 x 166mm). [x],1-128,301-(408),[viii]pp – collates as institutional copies and complete despite the lacuna in pagination. Engraved portrait frontispiece and a very handsome double-page panoramic view of London from the south, frequently attributed to Wenceslas Hollar and depicting the city on the eve of the Civil War. Bound in a smart recent full calf; red label; repairs to margins of frontispiece and titlepage, not affecting image or text; minor repairs to dedication leaf, with partial loss of a few letters; panoramic view trimmed tight and just within left-hand neatline; text lightly and unevenly browned, with occasional spotting, but a good and servicable copy, attractively rebound. Ownership inscription (1760) of Isaac Hitchcock – possibly Isaac Hitchcock (1724?-1768) of Bildeston, Suffolk – with occasional annotation of similar date relating to the taking down of the old gates, etc.

£1,000

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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.

£125

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London : T. Egerton, 1801-1802. Second edition. A charming sequence of views of the Thames and its landmarks from its source to Tilbury, together with an entertaining and offbeat commentary in “plain and unadorned language”. First published in 1792, the delightful sepia aquatint views were etched by Cornelis Apostool from Ireland’s drawings – “at the time of their first publication the soft tones and translucent fluidity of the new medium must have made a welcome change from the formality of the line-engravings in which such subjects had hitherto been depicted” (Adams). For the present edition, some of the original aquatints have been replaced by fresh plates by Charles Rosenberg, and a view of the newly-built bridge at Staines is also included.
Medium 8vo (232 x 154mm). xvi,(210),[ii]; viii,258,[ii]pp. Engraved titles. Two maps. Fifty-two plates. Bound in an elegant later (Victorian) half green calf, banded and richly gilt; red labels; marbled sides; some minor rubbing; occasional spotting, but a very good set. With the armorial bookplate of Thomas Hayward Southby (1801-1889) of Carswell Manor at Buckland in each volume.

£500

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London : Printed for the author ... and published by J. H. Jackson, 1842. First edition. A handsomely illustrated local history, covering Islington, Holloway, Highbury, Barnsbury, Newington Green, Stroud Green, etc., taking in turn the early and manorial history, parish government, the St. Mary’s district and its later subdivisions – the St. John’s district, St. Paul’s district, Holy Trinity, the chapelries of St. Peter, St. James, All Saints and St. Stephen – the parts of Islington village in the parish of Clerkenwell, charities, biographical notes on local worthies, etc. Compiled by the younger Samuel Lewis, son of the publisher of topographical dictionaries.
Demy 4to (30cm). [xx],486pp. Extra engraved pictorial title. Maps of Islington and Finsbury, the former a folding plan by John Dower. Steel engraved views, mainly by Henry Griffiths after Edward Duncan (1803-1882). Woodcut views, facsimiles, portraits and coats of arms. Folding table. Original cloth, much restored and refurbished, with a plainly lettered new spine and fresh endpapers; a little bumped at head; very occasional spotting or browning, but a good, sound and serviceable copy.

£200

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London : Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, (1991). First edition. A fine and detailed study of poverty, community and society in the shadow of the gallows in eighteenth century London.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xxviii),484pp. Illustrations. Tables. Figures. Maps. Original boards; a very good copy in the dust-jacket.

£40

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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.

£150

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London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, [ca.1877]. Fourth thousand. A revised and corrected reprint of the original 1875 publication – Saturday afternoon excursions for the amateur antiquary – London churches and palaces – St. Olave Hart Street, Great St. Helen’s, the Savoy, Northumberland House, Holland House – and farther afield to Berkhamsted, Fulham, Ingatestone, Knole, St. Albans and the Surrey Hills. Prefaced by a general introduction, a chapter on the geography of London (a search for the seven streams), and chapters on London in the fifteenth and in the eighteenth centuries.
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). (252),[iv]pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original decorative cloth gilt; some minor wear to extremities; a few marks and spots; a touch shaken; but a good copy. With the contemporary armorial bookplate of S. Stubbs – the marine painter Samuel Stubbs (1841-1918) – with his initialled 1877 inscription to his wife, Jemima Tucker (1854-1894), and the contemporary bookseller’s label of William Gammell of Camden Town.

£40

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London : Religious Tract Society, 1890. First edition. An interesting and heavily illustrated portrait of late Victorian London – chapters on civic and commercial London; the Tower of London; ecclesiastical London; the imperial government and the royal palaces, and legal and literary London.
Imperial 8vo (29cm). (224),8pp. One hundred and thirty illustrations – many full page – by William Logsdail (1859-1944) and others. Original pictorial cloth gilt; all edges gilt; some wear at extremities and slight snag at head; a few slight marks and spots, but a reasonable copy of an attractive production.

SOLD

London : Priory Press, 1910. First edition. Beginning as a spirited defence of the much derided Cockney dialect (in fact the first standard and the first written English), MacBride goes on to explore its origins and then the importance of dialects in general, with much on the dialects of other parts of the country.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 62,[iv]pp. Original wrappers; wrappers lightly tanned, slightly marked and a little creased; a handful of internal spots, but a good copy of a fragile item.

£15

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London : Martin Secker, (1924). First edition : one of 200 numbered copies on large paper, signed by Arthur Machen. Machen at large in London’s unknown corners and amid the mystery of common things – “a volume that should be on every good bookman’s shelf of essays ... no writer on London has communicated more perfectly the unapprehended mystery of the Mother City in its unfamiliar aspects. The author is alive to the ‘awful unexpectedness’ with which his adventure abounds, and, chief charm of the work, he gives you the right sense of an eternal quest” (J. D. Symon in the Illustrated London News, 13th September 1924).
Demy 8vo (215 x 138mm). (142),[ii]pp. Bound in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) half red morocco, banded and ruled in gilt; a few very minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Parochial Church Council of St. George & St. Ethelbert, 1987. First edition. An illustrated jubilee history.
Demy 8vo (21cm). (160)pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Facsimiles. Original stapled wrappers, very good. With the ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield.

£20

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Chichester : Phillimore & Co., (1989). First edition. A short history of the fish-market, illustrated from old maps and engravings, accompanied by a fine sequence of explanatory photographs taken in the final two years before the market moved out of the City in 1982.
Crown 4to (26cm). [128]pp. Illustrations throughout. Original boards; very good indeed in a price-clipped dust-jacket.

£20

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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.
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.

£200

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London : Phoenix House, (1950). First edition. A quite splendid anthology of nearly 700 extracts, mainly from memoirs and private letters, offering thoughts on every aspect of London life – from accidents, actors and air-raids to traffic and the weather. Extensively illustrated from contemporary sources.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xiv,514pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original cloth; a very good copy in a lightly repaired and reinforced, price-clipped, dust-jacket.

£25

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London : Grant Richards, 1903. First edition. Both a history of the theatre and some lively reminiscence of Victorian plays and players. Chapter XVI, a highly entertaining attack on George Bernard Shaw and his “utter want of practical knowledge of the stage”, is said (very plausibly) to have been written by Shaw himself. Edited by Ralph Maude.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (viii),(240)pp. Colour frontispiece. Plates (including portraits of both Maude and his wife, the actress Winifred Emery). Original cloth gilt; top edge gilt; some very faint rubbing; a few faint marks, but a very good copy.

£25

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London : B. T. Batsford, (1983). First edition. A masterly and fully illustrated study of the history and remains of Roman London from “the father of London’s modern archaeology”. Chapters on London before the Roman Conquest; the Claudian Invasion; the first Londinium; its transformation; its heyday; the hinterland; Londinium in the Antonine and Severan Periods; Londinium in the Third Century; the Fourth; from Londinium to London, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xii),288pp. Sixty photographs. Forty maps, plans and diagrams. Original boards; just a hint of tanning, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just slightly sunned, but also very good.

£25

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London : E. Marlborough & Co., 1862. First edition. An unusual London history, concentrating on those parts of it famous in the history of liberty, and written at a time when it was still possible and still true to speak of the “one sentiment in the breasts of all true-born English men and women – invincible attachment to the liberties their fathers won”. With chapters on the City; Smithfield; the Tower; the Fleet Prison; the Temple and Lincoln’s Inn; Whitehall; the liberty of the press; Bunhill Fields, etc.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). xii,(292)pp. Wood-engraved illustrations by Charles William Sheeres (1819?-1899). Original green cloth gilt over bevelled boards in an elaborate design by Hanbury & Co., with their ticket; all edges gilt; small mark on upper cover; mild spotting and just a hint of cracking to endpapers, but a very good, still bright and attractive copy of a handsome book.

SOLD

London : Office of the National Illustrated Library, [1852]. First edition. An attractively illustrated series of “poetic prose” sketches, many of which had originally appeared in the “Illustrated London News”, but are here revised and expanded. Sections on Ancient London; St. Paul’s; Cheapside; London Bridge Wharf; the Tower; London Docks; Whitechapel; Guildhall; Christ’s Hospital; Smithfield Market; Newgate; Fleet Street; St. Clement Dane; Westminster Abbey; St. Giles and the Rookery; London Fog; Southwark; Street Amusements; Spring-Time; Cemeteries; Greenwich Park, and Holidays of the London Poor.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 306,[ii]pp. Frontispiece and extra engraved pictorial title. Wood-engraved illustrations, a number full-page. Original red cloth, elaborately decorated in gilt and blind; all edges gilt; some light wear to tips; a touch bruised; a few leaves very slightly discoloured at corners, but overall still a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Virago, (1980). First edition. “A fuelless, meatless and sugarless world”- a thoroughly-researched study of “the deprivations and dramas of the women’s war”, commencing with a woman’s chronology of the war and extremely well illustrated from contemporary sources – photographs, advertisements, recipes, posters, etc.
Crown 4to (25cm). [x],206pp. Illustrations throughout. Original pictorial wrappers; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : The London Society, (1929). Second edition. A revised version of the original 1923 publication – Dr Norman’s historical notes on all the City churches, with a tabular list describing present uses, etc., suggestions for extended use, a bibliography, etc.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (60)pp. Addendum slip. Folding map. Original cloth; a few slight marks and spots, but overall a very good copy.

£20

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Cambridge : By the author, (1979). First edition. A guided tour with twenty-eight stopping places from Crystal Palace Station to Rockhills – the great urban park fully explored.
Pott 4to (21cm). (24)pp. Plates. Double-page plan. Original stapled wrappers; wrappers slightly marked and faded; mild browning to opening leaves, but otherwise very good.

£20

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New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1971). First edition. Inscribed, signed and dated by the author – “For Marie, with much love from Mollie 1972”. The author wrote a regular “Letter from London” column for the “New Yorker” throughout the war years, while “all that is best in the good life of civilized effort appears to be slowly and painfully keeling over”. Her editor, William Shawn, has here assembled the letters to provide a consecutive eye-witness chronicle. Precedes the London edition, which did not appear until the following year.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],378pp. Frontispiece by David Low. Original orange cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; top edge orange; a hint of sunning; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just slightly used, but also very good.

£125

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London : Penguin Books, (1951). First edition : the wrappers issue. Pevsner incisive on the merits and demerits of the built heritage of the much abused county. In the celebrated “Buildings of England” series.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 204,[iv]pp. Plates. Map. Original wrappers; a little rubbed and sunned; one of the blank pages supplied for making notes has been so used; a good copy.

£20

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London : Cassell & Co., (1976). First edition. A study of Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864) and his family – and their contribution to the recording of the London landscape of the nineteenth century.
Demy 4to (29cm). 116pp. Numerous illustrations, some in colour. Original boards; slight spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good copy in a sunned and price-clipped dust-jacket.

£30

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London : Royal Thames Yacht Club, (1978). First edition. A handsomely illustrated history of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, first instituted when the Duke of Cumberland presented a cup in 1775. With much passing reference to the America’s Cup, the Channel Match, the New York Yacht Club, the Royal Yacht Squadron, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (192)pp. Colour plates. Numerous illustrations. Original boards; very good in a lightly used dust-jacket.

£25

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New York : Oxford University Press 1982. First American edition. A most attractive study – a richly illustrated survey of London as seen by the great artists down the ages.
Crown 4to (27cm). 160pp. Illustrations throughout, many in colour. Original boards; very good in a just faintly sunned dust-jacket.

£25

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London : printed by George E. Eyre & William Spottiswoode, 1857. [Second edition]. London was first divided into postal districts in 1857-1858, to a plan devised by Sir Rowland Hill in 1856 – a circle of roughly twelve miles radius from the General Post Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand being split into ten districts, “each to be treated, in many respects, as a separate town”. The present alphabetical index and guide first appeared in 1856, but for this edition was furnished with maps of the districts, converting it into one of the very earliest London street atlases. A folding index map covers the whole area, followed by individual maps of the whole of the Eastern Central (EC) and Western Central (WC) districts, and further maps of the innermost portions of the Northern, North Eastern, Eastern, South Eastern, Southern, South Western, Western, and North Western districts – these corresponding approximately to the modern head districts – N1, E1, SE1, SW1, W1 and NW1. The North Eastern and Southern districts were abolished in the 1860s following a report by Anthony Trollope – hence no modern S or NE London postcodes.
Royal 8vo (25cm). 78,[ii]pp. One folding and ten single-page maps, the rectos only included in pagination. The index with alphabetical thumb-guides. Original drab printed boards, neatly rebacked in a match of the original sheep; some occasional mild spotting, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of W. M. King – “Northern District of Scotland”.

£400

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London : Privately Published, 1876. First edition. An attractively produced history of the company from its sixteenth-century origins and its incorporation in the seventeenth century, together with names and addresses of the livery in 1876.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). 112pp. Original decorative cloth gilt; all edges gilt; a hint of rubbing and slightly shaken, but a very good, clean and bright copy.

£50

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London : Blackie & Son, 1911. First edition. A delightful book about London for children – not just Oranges and Lemons and other nursery rhymes, but the origins of the city, the Romans, Boadicea, Saxon London, the Danes, Westminster Abbey, the Thames, London Bridge, the Tower, the Great Fire, St. Paul’s, London children, St. James’s Park, the Crystal Palace, the Zoo, Covent Garden, the docks, and London servants. With colour plates by Wilfrid Ball, W. L. Wyllie, Frank Brangwyn, Samuel Scott, Stanhope Forbes, Vicat Cole, and others, as well as numerous illustrations, some full-page, in the text.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). 128pp. Twelve coloured plates. Numerous illustrations. Maps. Music. Original pictorial cloth; a touch dulled, faintly marked and slightly bruised; endpapers and outer leaves a little tanned, but otherwise internally a very good, clean and sound copy.

£40

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London : Tinsley Brothers, 1880. First edition. Powerful campaigning journalism from Ritchie, updating and expanding on his much earlier “The Night Side of London” (1857). With chapters on popular amusements; music-halls; Sundays with the people; the low lodging-house; in an opium den; excursionists; river steamers; street salesmen; city nuisances; out of gaol; in a gipsy camp; the street boys of London, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(296)pp. Original brown cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt and black; some light wear; library-label removed from upper cover; hinges a little tender; a few minor marks and spots, but a good copy of a scarce book. Very occasional pencil annotation.

£100

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London : Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1937. First Edition. An illustrated, discursive and entertaining journey down the Thames from Lechlade to the sea, by the popular novelist and critic, with atmospheric photographs by her husband H. E. (Sir Henry) Turner.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xii),(174)pp. Fifty one photos. Original pink canvas, ruled and lettered in black; a few tiny marks, some spotting, mainly to prelims and edges, but a very good and sound copy in the textured dust-jacket, sunned and a little rubbed, but complete and attractive still.

£30

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London : Rock & Co., [ca.1850]. A bound sequence of fifteen handsome vignette plates of London scenes, somewhat larger than the usual Rock & Co. views and including some new additions to London’s built environment erected in the 1840s. Views include the new Royal Exchange, the Post Office (the view incorporating a man holding up a placard for "Rock’s Conversation Cards"), St. Paul’s, the British Museum, Exeter Hall, the Horse Guards, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, the Houses of Parliament, Lambeth Palace, the Hungerford Suspension Bridge, the Port of London, the Thames Tunnel, etc.
Small landscape folio (22cm). Fifteen steel-engraved vignette plates, without text or title-page. Original decorative blind-stamped cloth; marbled edges; some very minor wear; endpapers replaced at some point; the plates somewhat spotted in places, but otherwise a very good copy. Photographic bookplate of The Steel Collection on front pastedown.

£200

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London : Oxford University Press, 1956. First edition. A highly-regarded survey of nineteenth-century theatre and drama – in fact covering the period 1792-1914 – with much incidental reference to Harley Granville Barker, Dionysius Lardner Boucicault, Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, Sir John Hare, Sir Henry Irving, Charles Kean, William Charles Macready, Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, James Robinson Planché, Thomas William Robertson, etc. – and much also on the London theatres themselves.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xiv),(204),[ii]pp. Plates. Original cloth; a very good, clean and sound copy in a lightly used dust-jacket.

£20

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London : His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1925. First edition. A general historical introduction followed by an illustrated borough-by-borough inventory of all the known survivals dating from pre-1714. Covers rather more of London than the title might imply – Battersea, Chelsea, Finsbury, Fulham, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Holborn, Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Paddington, St. Marylebone, St. Pancras, Stoke Newington, Wandsworth and Westminster. With supplementary material on the early heraldry, a glossary, index, etc.
Demy 4to (28cm). xxiv,194pp. 235 plates. Folding coloured map in pocket. Original decorative cloth; a very good copy.

£75

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London : Nathaniel Cooke, 1853. First edition in English of this amiable and much-quoted primary source on Victorian London. An acute overseas visitor shines a light on London street life, the London squares, life on the Thames, the London police, Newgate, the Post Office, the London of fogs and gaslight, the City, the Bank of England, Hyde Park, the haunts of fashion, the newspapers and periodicals, the theatres, and much else. Originally published as "Wanderungen durch London" (1852-1853) and here in a translation by Otto von Wenckstern (1819-1869), translator of Goethe, writer on slavery, the Schleswig-Holstein question, etc.
Crown 8vo (21cm). xii,290pp. Frontispiece, extra pictorial title and six lively plates of street scenes by William McConnell (1832?-1867). Original decorative cloth, elaborately blocked in gilt and blind; a little worn at head; a touch sunned; some rubbing; front free endpaper neatly excised; a few slight marks and spots, but still overall a good copy. With the contemporary armorial bookplate of the book-collector John Rowden Freme (1821-1872) of Wepre Hall in Flintshire, and the later pencilled ownership inscriptions of A. Fraser.

£100

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An untitled scrapbook made up at an undetermined date from a variety of sources spread over a wide chronological period. The material contained in the album comprises over seventy small early nineteenth-century engraved London scenes, some with hand colour; over 120 further small early nineteenth-century topographical engravings of scenes in England and Wales, some with hand-colour; three later engraved vignettes of Malvern; a number of miscellaneous pieces, including two pencil sketches; three Louis Wain caricatures of cats; and two rather fine woodcut illustrations by Tirzah Garwood from an unidentified publication, dating perhaps from the 1920s.
Royal 4to (32cm). Thirty leaves. Rebound in a somewhat amateur modern quarter morocco; morocco lifting; some marking to covers; hinges internally reinforced; a few slight nicks, but otherwise in very good state.

£100

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London : J. P. Segg & Co., 1888. Seventeenth year of publication. An opulent guidebook to Victorian London, printed in purple and gold throughout, and concentrating on the world of privilege – editorial write-ups on the “leading houses” – Piesse & Lubin of New Bond Street for perfumes; Barkentin & Krall of Regent Street for jewellery; advertisements for silks and champagnes; for luxury travel by train or steamship; the best hotels; write-ups for the best resorts and hotels outside London – Brighton, Bournemouth, Eastbourne, etc. There is also an illustrated “Album of Operatic, Dramatic, and Musical Celebrities” – portraits of Ellen Terry, Lily Langtry, and the rest. The guide had been published since 1872, initially by Henry Herbert, but ownership had now passed to a slightly mysterious Greek dentist-cum-advertising-contractor (and later cinema owner) named George Eustace Skliros – for both of whom see my “Victorian Opulence” post of 18th October 2018 on the “Bookhunter on Safari” blog.
Elephant 8vo (28cm). xii,240pp. Polychromatic title-page. Decorative gold and purple borders throughout. Numerous illustrations, many full-page. Original decorative cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; just a hint of wear and bruising; spine a touch sunned; some spotting to outer leaves, but a very good copy of a very scarce and handsome production.

SOLD

Paris : Chez Buisson, 1788. First edition. A charming eighteenth-century illustrated French guide to London from the 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.

£400

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, (1927). First edition. Studies of childhood in London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, by the 'rebel woman' – Evelyn Sharp, suffragette, feminist, radical journalist and off-beat writer for children. The nursery school, playing in the street, park and playground, going to the pictures, the panto, the school play, the Christmas party, the swimming-baths, the children’s library, the children’s court, the certified school, the clinic, the hospital, etc. With drawings and illustrations by Eve Garnett (1900-1991).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(256),[iv]pp. Frontispiece. Colour plates. Numerous illustrations. Original orange cloth; just a little sunned; very slightly rubbed; a few faint marks, but an attractive copy of a very attractive book.

£40

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London : Robert Hale, (1950). First edition. A stylish exploration of the history of the “blind and wayward growth” of the parts of London east of Aldgate. In the Hale County Books series.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 416pp. Plates. Map. Original cloth gilt; a few faint marks and spots, but a very good copy in a lightly worn, slightly torn, repaired and price-clipped dust-jacket.

£15

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1909. First edition. A substantial history of St. Paul’s from the earliest times, with additional material on the organists, the library, Paul’s Cross, the memorials, etc., and extensive quotation from the diary of Robert Green, Dean’s Verger from 1852 to 1900, on life in the nineteenth century cathedral. With illustrations by Louis Weirter.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xxxii),512pp. Plates. Illustrations. Original pictorial cloth gilt; top edge gilt; just a little bruised at corners; some mild tanning of endpapers and mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy.

£40

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London : John Smith, 1833. First edition. An account of that part of London forming the original parish, from Abbey Road and St. John’s Wood in the north to Oxford Street in the south, bounded to the west by the Edgware Road, and to the east by Primrose Hill, London Zoo, Regent’s Park, and Cleveland Street. Includes material on Roman roads, Tyburn, the Portland family, the local churches, chapels, schools and hospitals, Oxford Street, Cavendish Square, Portman Square, Portland Place, Lord’s Cricket Ground, conduits and waterworks, Marylebone High Street, the Gardens, local worthies and eccentrics, the Cato Street conspiracy, etc., etc.
Post 8vo (194 x 114mm). [x],(320)pp. Folding lithographed map by Jeremie Graf and James Lewis Soret. Six lithographed views (five by Edward Hassell), again printed by Graf and Soret. Bound in a stout later half black pigskin; cloth sides; sprinkled edges; just slightly rubbed; short repaired tear to map; a few slight marks; some spotting to plates, but a good and sound copy. An interesting later letter presenting the book to a Mrs Welbury, laid in at the front, reads in part, “I am glad to say I have at last picked up a copy of Smith’s Marylebone. For books out of print one must bide one’s time ...”.

£125

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London : Borough of Walthamstow, 1936. First edition. An illustrated account of the founding bequest of pictures from Frank Brangwyn to the Water House (now the William Morris Gallery) in Walthamstow. With an account of the house by George E. Roebuck, accounts of Brangwyn and Arthur H. Mackmurdo by Spradbery, a list of the 148 pictures, etc. Printed at the Curwen Press.
Demy 8vo (22cm). (32)pp. Seven Plates. Original wrappers; a touch dusty, but a very good copy. With a related memo and a colour post-card loosely inserted.

£20

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London : Turnstile Press, (1951). First and sole edition. A whimsical London guide – a mixture of essays, visits, prose poems and "cockney idylls" – delightfully illustrated by Lynton Lamb.
Post 8vo (22cm). [viii],142,[ii]pp. Original black cloth, lettered on spine in gilt; some spotting of endpapers, etc., but a nice copy in the price-clipped Lynton Lamb dust-jacket – a design in orange, black, yellow and white.

£20

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London : Methuen & Co., (1932). First edition. The author of “Mrs Miniver” with ten poems, including “The Muffin Man”, relating to a quiet and small London square, followed by ten on the London telephone districts, Avenue, Frobisher, Gulliver, Mayfair, Victoria, etc., and a further eight whimsical pieces on contemporary topics. Illustrated throughout with great charm by Ernest H. Shepard.
Demy 8vo (22cm). viii,(64)pp. Illustrations. Original pictorial cloth gilt; lightly rubbed and a touch dulled; endpapers a little tanned; a few spots and minor signs of use, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription of G. G. D. Stevenson dated Christmas 1932.

£15

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London : J. Johnston, 1820. “Third edition” – i.e. a fresh impression of the original 1820 publication. The naive and pedantic “Doctor Syntax, learned sage, The pride and glory of the age” – with a series of comical adventures and mainly misadventures in London – an anonymous revival of this fictional character first invented by William Combe, but here set against some highly recognisable London scenes. The tale commences with Syntax and his wife Dolly poring over a map of London at the tea-table; arrival at the White Horse in Fetter Lane; robbed in St. Giles; behind the scenes at the opera; at a masquerade; rehearsing his play; in Hyde Park; at the Royal Academy; to Richmond by river; at Vauxhall Gardens; overboard at London Bridge; at the House of Commons; in a gambling den; at St. Paul’s; at the Bank of England; presented at Court to the Prince Regent; and the fate of the play, etc.
Royal 8vo (257 x 160mm). iv,[2],(320)pp. Hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece, pictorial title and eighteen delightful hand-coloured plates, sometimes attributed to Thomas Rowlandson or Robert Cruikshank, although the first is signed by Charles Williams (fl.1797-1830). This copy misbound and lacking the “Doctor Syntax at the Exhibition” plate, but with the “Doctor Syntax at Vauxhall Gardens” plate in duplicate in its stead. Bound in an elegant recent quarter chestnut morocco; a tall copy, the text leaves untrimmed; some internal marks; some occasional browning and spotting, but an attractive example of a highly entertaining production.

£250

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London : Frederick Pickton, 1858. First edition. A thorough account of the parish, with individual chapters offering a general survey; the history of the manors of Lambeth, Kennington, Vauxhall, Stockwell and Levehurst; Lambeth Palace; the archbishops; the churches; the rectors; the monuments and epitaphs; the older and more important buildings, and remarkable events, with appendices on the subisdy rolls, the charities, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xvi,(248),[iv]pp. Title-page in red and black. Fourteen engraved plates (two on steel). Wood-engraved illustrations in text. Facsimiles. Tables. List of subscribers. Original cloth, lettered in gilt and decorated in blind, by Bone & Son, with their ticket; some very minor wear; spine a little sunned; a handful of spots, but overall a very good and largely unopened copy. With the bookplate of the book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

£100

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London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1827. First edition : a large-paper copy, with the finely engraved illustrations proofed on india-paper. A diligent and monumental study of the history of the world-famed bridge, making use of generally unavailable sources, translations of ancient documents, etc.
Demy 8vo (223 x 134mm). (xvi),(688),[ii]. Fifty-six wood-engraved illustrations. Bound in a handsome later (early twentieth-century) half chestnut morocco by Zaehnsdorf; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; original paper title-label bound in; just a hint of rubbing; some internal spotting, but a very good copy of an extraordinary piece of research. With the nautical bookplate of the distinguished twentieth-century book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

SOLD

London : David Bogue, 1855. First edition. The final realisation of an idea first hatched in 1828 – an encyclopaedic dictionary of London – from the Adelphi to the Zoological Gardens – mixing the “entertaining and anecdotic” with “social statistics and other Great Facts”. Compiled by John Timbs F.S.A., author, journalist and antiquary. As “agreeable a book as you could wish to meet with. There is so much out-of-the-way reading in it – such apt introduction of personal experience” (The Examiner, 5th May 1855).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). viii,800 + 32pp advertisements dated July 1857. Portrait frontispiece. Original publisher’s cloth by Leighton, Son & Hodge, with their ticket; lightly sunned; slight spine crease; front free endpaper neatly excised, but overall a very good copy. Small contemporary booksellers’ label of Mann Nephews of Cornhill.

£125

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London : John Murray, 1917. First edition. An engaging and well-researched life of one Lord Mayor of London – the turbulent and magnificent John Wilkes (1725-1797) – by one of his successors in that office. Duels, the “North Briton”, general warrants, habeas corpus, expulsions from the Commons, the Middlesex elections, the mayoralty and all the rest.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xxxvi,(300)pp. Sixteen plates. Original armorial cloth gilt; some minor wear; a touch dulled; some internal browning and spotting, but a good and sound copy. A 1918 gift inscription is signed by the author’s wife.

£25

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[Wanstead] : for the Author, (1962). First edition : limited to 1,000 copies. An attractive chronological survey, with illustrations from old prints and the author’s own drawings.
Crown 4to (25cm). 152pp. Colour frontispiece. Illustrations. Maps. Original wrappers; sunned at spine, but otherwise a very good copy.

£25

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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.

£200

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Newton Abbot : David & Charles, (1979). First edition. A fine and detailed study of the extraordinary events – faction, feud and controversy – surrounding the building of the first Westminster Bridge in the mid eighteenth century. With much on Antonio Canaletto, Sir Henry Fielding, Richard Graham, Nicholas Hawksmoor, Andrews Jelfe, Charles Labelye, Batty Langley, Thomas Lediard, etc.
Royal 8vo (25cm). (320)pp. Plates. Maps. Original cloth; a very good copy in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Official Publications Bureau, 1923. First edition. An extensively illustrated guide to every aspect of West Ham – at that time reckoned the country’s seventh largest town.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],(284)pp – including integral endpapers. Illustrations. Portraits. Maps. Advertisements. Original boards, neatly rebacked and rehinged in cloth; covers and some leaves a little marked and soiled; occasional manuscript correction and annotation; a good and serviceable copy.

£40

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1892. First edition. Montagu Williams Q.C., variously schoolmaster, soldier, actor, dramatist, journalist, leading barrister and police magistrate known in the East End as “the poor man’s magistrate”, with a fine series of lively essays (all based on true stories) portraying life across Victorian London – down east with East End Shows, Match Girls, Sclater Street Birds, Griddlers or Street Singers, the London Hospital, Clerkenwell Green, Ratcliff Highway, Sunday at the East End (including cricket in Bethnal Green), Burglarious Bill, From the East End to Ramsgate, etc. – and up west with Climbing the Ladder (enter plutocracy), Descending the Ladder, Modern Stockbrokers, Huckstering Hymen (the marriage market), the Company Promoter, Things Theatrical, Covent Garden, Floss and Floss (lawyers), the Road to Ruin, Moneylenders, Talent in Tatters, and the London Season. With a preface by Charles Dickens Jr.
Crown 8vo (20cm). xii,244pp. Original cloth gilt; one corner slightly bumped, a few minor marks and faint signs of age and use, but a very good and bright copy.

£100

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London : Phoenix House, (1960). First edition. Reminiscence of ordinary Londoners before the Great War from the broadcaster and journalist – “a reconstruction, based on my experience, of the life lived by the Little Man who crowded the streets, the trains, the buses, and trams; who applauded Irving and Ellen Terry, Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd ... He was as obscure as the other side of the moon, and the only time he got his name in the papers was in the casualty list of the first world war ...”. With an introduction by Herbert Morrison.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],314pp. Eighty illustrations. Original purple cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright and sound copy in the original Freda Nichols dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn and used.

£20

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Newton Abbot : David & Charles, (1967). First edition : the Readers’ Union issue, with its stickers on dust-jacket and title-page. An extraordinary pictorial record – with stunning photographs by Joseph McKeown (1925-2007) – of a lost landscape: a sewer gas lamp off the Strand; a pottery kiln in Kensington; a candle factory in Battersea; food-drying kilns in Lambeth; a margarine factory in Southall; a sealing-wax factory in Bermondsey; snuff mills at Morden; the Camden Town catacombs, and dozens of other relics of a once great hub of manufacturing.
Demy 4to (29cm). 160pp. Colour frontispiece. Full page photographs throughout. Original boards; mild tanning of outer edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket a little tape-stained in places, but otherwise also very good. Ownership stamp of Ian S. Pettman.

£25

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London : Hogarth Press, (1982). First British edition. Essays on the London Docks, Oxford Street, Great Men’s Houses, London’s Abbeys and Cathedrals, and the House of Commons. Originally written for “Good Housekeeping” in 1931-1932 and previously only published in book form in an American limited edition.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 44,[iv]pp. Original purple-grey boards, lettered in gilt; very good indeed in the original pictorial Angelica Garnett dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£40

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London : Hogarth Press, (1982). First British edition. Essays on the London Docks, Oxford Street, Great Men’s Houses, London’s Abbeys and Cathedrals, and the House of Commons. Originally written for “Good Housekeeping” in 1931-1932 and previously only published in book form in an American limited edition.
Demy 8vo (23cm). 44,[iv]pp. Original purple-grey boards, lettered in gilt; very good in the original pictorial Angelica Garnett dust-jacket – the front panel somewhat sunned and slightly discoloured, but complete and otherwise unworn.

£15

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