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London : Chatto & Windus, 1933. First edition. “With ardent vehemence he makes war on war and all philistinism ... He stimulates, he provokes, he promotes argument ... and he can write (when he remembers not to fulminate) like an angel ... a love story of great tenderness and spiritual beauty ... a rich, full book, brimming with revolt against all forms of mean, material, cowardly living” (Country Life, 4th March 1933).
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],(496)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; just a touch rubbed; mild tanning of endpapers; faint crease to front endpaper; some edge-spotting, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket somewhat tanned and faded at spine (as ever), with some light wear and tear, and a couple of shallow chips, but complete and presentable still.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, (1954). First edition : in the variant and almost certainly primary binding of orange-brown cloth, blocked and lettered in maroon. Absent-minded and dotty old autocrat, bright young godson, endless muddles, mismanagement of the village fête, charming young woman – “Everyone will agree they are in good company from beginning to end”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (214),[ii]pp. Original cloth; just a hint of sunning; light spotting to edges and endpapers; erasure mark from front free endpaper, but a very good and sound copy in the original yellow, blue, black, red and white dust-jacket – just lightly used and with slight fraying of inner flaps, but still very good.

£25

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London : William Heinemann, 1920. First edition : the first issue, in black boards with white lettering. Loosely inserted is a single-page signed autograph letter from Arlen, on his Stanhope Place notepaper, charmingly postponing a luncheon engagement. A publisher’s presentation copy of his first book, blind-stamped as such on the title-page. “Who is Michael Arlen? In a little pocketable volume ... we have a highly amusing and in many respects a penetrating criticism of certain phases of life in London ... a delicious little essay ... I don’t know quite whether to believe in Michael – whether he is really an Armenian or a detached Englishman looking at London with the eyes of an artistic nomad. True, his outlook is un-English, but his familiarity with the poetic and artistic gods of our generation, and with some of our most recondite literary traditions, makes me suspicious” (London Chronicle, 15th January 1920).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). [xii],(178),[ii]pp. Illustrations by Michel Sevier (1886-1941). Original boards, decorated and lettered in white, and blocked in blind on rear cover; a touch of wear to extremities; front joint tender and slightly split; text just lightly tanned, but a good copy of a very fragile production. Later gift inscription dated 1931.

£200

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The Kentish novelist and historian’s uncommon first novel. A story of young love, told “swiftly and significantly, and a too melodramatic finish to it is skilfully evaded ... there is an instinctive rightness in the management of this first novel that is very promising” (Liverpool Post, 2nd May 1931). A publisher’s presentation copy, with a Heinemann compliments slip loosely inserted.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],322pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; publisher’s device in blind on lower cover; mild bruise at head of spine, a handful of spots, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a design primarily in white, blue and red, with a colour-printed magnolia on the upper panel – the jacket very faintly rubbed and with a sprinkling of spots – but fresh and without a nick.

£75

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London : Doubleday, 2008. First edition. “Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is a old friend – Jackson Brodie – himself on a journey that is about to be fatally interrupted”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). 348,[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; silk ribbon; just a hint of bruising, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket similarly with a hint of bruising and a half-price sticker on the front panel, but also very good.

£20

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London : Faber & Faber, (2005). First edition : precedes the 2006 New York edition. “I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I traveled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain ...”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [vi],304,[x]pp. Original black boards; very good indeed in the dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£25

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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 at which 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.

£400

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London : Secker & Warburg, (1989). First edition. Inscribed and signed on the title-page by John Banville. The confession of a cultured murderer – “A remarkable blend of thriller, farce and dramatic tragedy that stands out, quite clearly, as a work of genius” (publisher’s blurb) – “An astonishing, disturbing little novel that might have been coughed up from hell” (New York Times Book Review).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(220)pp, Original brown boards, lettered in gilt; text a little tanned, as usual, with a sprinkling of spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the Peter Dyer dust-jacket – also very good.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, (1998). First edition. Signed by Nicola Barker on the title-page. “Barker once again pushes back the boundaries of comedy, chronicling the dark inner lives of a cast of characters straight from the pages of a social services register” – set on the Isle of Sheppey and winner of the 2000 International Dublin Literary Award.
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],290,[viii]pp. Original blue boards lettered in white; text faintly tanned as usual, but otherwise a very good copy indeed in the Boyd & Evans dust-jacket, also very good indeed – bright, clean and unworn.

£40

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1980). First edition. Signed by Julian Barnes on the title-page. His first novel – a passage to adulthood and marriage in Betjeman’s Metroland, via a spell in Paris with the exciting Annick during les événements of 1968. Filmed in 1997 with Christian Bale and Emily Watson.
Post 8vo (21cm). 176pp. Original grey boards, blocked and lettered in silver; sliver of sunning at foot, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in an equally very good dust-jacket – a design by Craig Dodd – the jacket price-clipped by the publisher and with the revised price (£6.50) over-sticker.

£400

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1902. First edition. An early Bindloss, an imperial romance set in West Africa – an area well-known to the author and the subject of his “In the Niger Country” (1898). An adventurer discovers a mahogany forest – desolate outposts, ju-ju, jungle-fever - somewhere perhaps between Conrad and Rider Haggard.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

£125

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London : Putnam & Co., (1942). First edition in English of “Vinter-Eventyr” – a collection of eleven short stories on themes suggested by occupied Denmark – themes of courage and resilience, pride and shame, freedom and death, etc. Includes “The Invincible Slave Owners”, “The Heroine”, “Sorrow-Acre”, etc. “All the greatest works of art are allegorical in the sense that they imply more than they state, and illuminate human nature everywhere” (L. P. Hartley reviewing the book in “The Sketch”, 21st April 1943).
Post 8vo (21cm). 290,[ii]pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt; some faint spotting of edges, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the Robin Darwin dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, a touch darkened and slightly spotted, but with only very minor wear, a couple of nicks and single short tear, and also very good, particularly for a book produced under wartime conditions. Contemporary ownership inscription of Frances Christie.

£200

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London : Richards Press, (1940). First edition. “Mr. Bramah records the honey-tongued raconteur’s latest stories. They have all the inimitable qualities of the earlier collections ... the most delicate wit, and the shrewdest of observations on human life” (Daily News, 20th March 1940). “Needs no description ... as good as ever, and Mr. Bramah’s genius with the idiom has not failed” (Illustrated London News, 20th April 1940). The last of the five collections of Kai Lung stories published in Bramah’s lifetime – a series begun forty years earlier.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 320 + 16pp publisher’s catalogue. Original mustard cloth, lettered and decorated in black; endpapers slightly tanned, but a very good, bright and sound copy indeed in the dust-jacket by Harold Hookway Cowles (1896-1987) – the jacket also very good, with just minor wear at head, a couple of nicks and short tears to folds, with a suggestion of mild creasing and a few faint marks to the rear panel. Small label of Brewers Bookshop, Hong Kong, attached to rear pastedown.

£250

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London : Darton, Longman & Todd, (1960). First edition. An extensive anthology of seasonal verse and prose, with decorations by Barbara Jones and children of the Henry Fawcett School. The selection includes a Barbara Jones piece on “Traditional Joys”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (196)pp. Eight colour plates by the children. Numerous illustrations and decorations by Jones. Original imitation leather, blocked and gilt in an overall pictorial design by Barbara Jones, lettered in gilt on upper cover and spine in gilt; endpapers by Jones in orange and maroon; very good.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1986). First edition. “Blanche Vernon is one of those discreet, smart women one sees in restaurants alone ...” — “Miss Brookner writes exquisitely: her moulding of every sentence is a delight ... her impeccable evocations of mood — wet, lonely London summers are her forte — her small flares of wisdom and understanding, and her many moments of utter cleverness” (The Observer).
Post 8vo (21cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered on spine in gilt; text faintly tanned, as usual, but otherwise very good indeed in the dust-jacket – just faintly creased, but also very good.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1990). First edition. “They might have met far earlier, since Fay had had success as a singer, and Julia was at one time a famous diseuse, her glamour and repartee a legend. But when Julia sweeps in, wearing ravishing black silk, their celebrity is already past ...”. Love, friendship, dependence and disenchantment.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(218),[ii]pp. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good indeed in a just very lightly marked dust-jacket.

£25

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London : William Heinemann, (1931). First edition. The daughter of the precentor of St. David’s Cathedral in South Wales falls in with a young seaman, a deserter from a privateer, on the run from the Bow Street Runners – but not all is as it seems. Set in 1796 and researched in her usual meticulous way, the story also incorporates the French landing the following year – “arresting, provocative, and informing” (Dundee Courier, 4th March 1931).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],436,[ii]pp. Original olive cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few faint edge spots, but an excellent copy, bright, clean and sound, in the original red and white dust-jacket – the jacket with a few tiny nicks, a couple of very short and neatly repaired tears, and a sprinkling of spots, but itself very good indeed, clean and fresh.

£100

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London : William Heinemann, (1968). First edition. “Probably the finest ear of our times” (The Observer) – Burgess with the sequel to “Inside Mr Enderby”, published in 1963 under the pseudonym of “Joseph Kell”. “Technically, Mr. Burgess is perhaps the most accomplished novelist writing in English today” (The Tablet).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],(243),[ii],[3]pp. Original brown boards, lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the Bruce Macdonald dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used and slightly tanned, but also very good. Contemporary 1968 ownership inscription of the author and editor Justin Beecham Wintle, with an associated inscription on rear free endpaper.

£50

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London : Macmillan London, (1990). First edition. “Written in the rinsed-pebble prose of an outstanding man of letters” – the early reminiscences of the author of “Scenes from Provincial Life”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(170),[ii]pp. Original maroon boards, lettered on spine in gilt; very good in the Paul Collicut dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1960. First edition. Autobiography of the poet and (as Nicholas Blake) crime-writer. “‘You know perfectly well, Cecil, that no poet should ever write his autobiography’. That was W. H. Auden to Cecil Day Lewis just after the war. It is lucky for us Day Lewis disagreed, for The Buried Day impresses both by the beauty of its prose and by its unflinching honesty” (Daily News. 18th May 1960).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (244)pp. Plates. Portraits. Original tan buckram, blocked and lettered in black and gilt; a few minor signs of age and use, but overall a very good copy in the Reynolds Stone dust-jacket – just lightly tanned and slightly spotted, with a chip to rear panel. Contemporary (1961) ownership inscription of Mary Mitchell.

£25

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London : Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961. First edition. Durrell in Patagonia and elsewhere in Argentina. Penguins, elephant seals, guanocos, armadillos and agoutis, rheas, macaws and parrots, seriemas, and “ingenuity in dealing with such diverse mammals as a half-starved ocelot and a peccary with pneumonia, to say nothing of his crazy and unsuccessful attempt to catch a vampire bat with his own frozen toe as bait” – “Enjoy Mr. Durrell’s exquisite and gently humorous approach to the animal kingdom, as well as his appreciation of human beings and his faultless prose ... Do not on any account miss this book” (E. D. O’Brien in the Illustrated London News, 4th November 1961).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (236)pp. Over thirty charming illustrations by Ralph Thomas. Original tan boards, lettered in silver; a very good copy in the Ralph Thomas dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped and with some light repair and reinforcement at head and tail, but otherwise also very good.

£50

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London : William Collins Sons & Co., 1979. First edition. Six family-based stories – a ghastly picnic in Dorset, misadventure in Venice, sexual mayhem in Bournemouth, Margo and the Greek engineer, etc.
Post 8vo (22cm). (194),[ii]pp. Original holly boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the Val Biro dust-jacket – the jacket very faintly, amost imperceptibly, discoloured at foot of rear panel, but otherwise also very good.

£25

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London : HarperCollins Publishers, (1991). First edition. Eight stories – a return to Corfu, a picnic in the Perigord, an ageing belle in Memphis, a hangman in Paraguay, a gambling nun in Monte Carlo, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],(198)pp. ORiginal maroon boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the Arthur Robins dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£25

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., (1961). First edition. A review copy, with the publisher’s slip loosely inserted. The vagaries of the human heart and the four viewpoints of Penry Crendon (forgotten author and vagrant), his first wife Elizabeth (the devout Catholic), Mona his third (whose weaknesses are vulgarity and the bottle), and Blanche (the woman of sensibility engaged to his son). “She has helped explode the dying myth that the novel is becoming extinct” (John Betjeman).
Post 8vo (21cm). x,(212),[ii]pp. Original orange-red boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the original Barbara Jones dust-jacket – a design in yellow, orange, brown and black on white – just lightly nicked, with one unobtrusive short tear, and a little fingered on rear panel. Contemporary ownership inscription of Wendy Marlar.

£20

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1937). First edition. “The only fictitious character in this book is a minor one” – the story of Elizabeth Patterson, “the beautiful girl from Baltimore who married Jerome Bonaparte, the youngest brother of Napoleon ... an epic of a clever, brilliant yet glittering cold woman ... Susan Ertz is penetrating in her characterisation and has a rare fund of narrative power. A book worth reading” (Leicester Chronicle, 23rd October 1937).
Post 8vo (21cm). 527,[i]pp. Original pale blue cloth, lettered in green and black; lightly rubbed; spine lightly sunned and with a few spots; mild spotting of edges and prelims, but a good and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket a little worn and chipped, but an uncommon survival.

£25

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London : Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), 1947. First edition. Newly found wealth, young love, deceiving men, arrest in Piccadilly Circus, and an act of questionable morality at the Chelsea Arts Ball. Firth in fine and rollicking form.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 194 (i.e.192)pp. Original blue boards, lettered in black; a touch sunned at tips, faint spine crease, but otherwise a very good copy in the charming dust-jacket by H. W. Perl (1897-1952) – rubbed, a little creased, price-clipped, chipped at head, tail and corners, with a larger (4 x 2.5cm) portion missing from rear panel and some nicks and short tears, but substantially complete and a rare and fragile survival.

£25

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

£25

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London : The Harvill Press, (1997). First British edition. Signed and dated (4th September 1997) by Richard Ford on the title-page. Three stories of men and women at the essential moments of truth – “One of the glories of modern American writing” (Jonathan Raban).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [x],(256),[vi]pp. Original black boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£40

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1940. First edition. “This pamphlet is propaganda. I believe that if the Nazis won they would destroy our civilisation ...”. In the Macmillan War Pamphlets series.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 32pp. Original orange stapled wrappers, printed in blue; staples very lightly rusted; lower wrapper very faintly creased, but otherwise a very good copy. Kirkpatrick A23.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1977). First edition. Partly autobiographical and described by Fowles himself as “an exploration of what it is to be English” – “It is probably the most stylish, well-written and genuinely distinguished novel of the year ... a rich, powerful, beautiful book that will greatly enhance Fowles’ reputation” (Michael Unger, Liverpool Daily Post, 8th October 1977). His “best book so far ... the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge and wisdom of a Tolstoy or James” (Saturday Review).
Post 8vo (21cm). 704pp. Original brown boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge blue; a very good copy indeed – bright, clean, and sound – in the Mon Mohan dust-jacket – the jacket also very good indeed.

£50

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

£400

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London : William Heinemann, (1917). First edition. “A great book ... It is indeed a red-letter day for the reviewer when such a book comes his way” (Pall Mall Gazette). Love, freedom, betrayal – a woman’s life through the Galsworthy mirror. “He strikes the note of impending doom all through; and the dedication of his story to Mr Thomas Hardy may be taken as a forewarning of a double dose of relentless destiny” (The Scotsman, 3rd September 1917).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],438,(4)pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt and blind, blocked on rear cover in blind; just a hint of rubbing and faint wear; outer leaves lightly tanned; a few edge spots, but overall a very good copy of an uncommon title.

£75

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Edinburgh : Canongate Books, (2008). First British edition. “An unforgettable novel about the distance a friendship must travel, and the depths it must plumb, when confronted by the threat of death. It is full of wisdom, dark laughter, and truth” – the multiple award-winning novel, first published in Australia earlier in 2008. “A book for grown-up people” (Hilary Mantel), “‘The Spare Room’ is a perfect novel” (Peter Carey).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(196),[vi]pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; green silk ribbon; a very good copy indeed in the pictorial dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£25

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1961). First edition. His first book – a novel set on the rarer fringes of London literary society. “A little bit of nonsense, young nonsense at that, but excellently contained ... a young man in love and in and out of money ... filled with wonderfully useful references to the preoccupations of the young. It is fun” (The Sphere, 3rd June 1961).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 288pp. Original orange-red boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few edge-spots, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the original dust-jacket – a pictorial design by Quentin Blake in purple, ochre and black on white – also very good indeed.

£25

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First edition. “Although Brian Glanville writes a weekly sports column for a Sunday newspaper, he has a sharp eye for the tactics of games that are not played on any pitch” (Nottingham Guardian, 4th October 1967) – “a pitiless eye for the frauds and tactics of the sex game” – the “artist type” revenges himself on intellectuals, stockbrokers and slick executives.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy in the stylish Bill Botten dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly rubbed and very slightly creased, but still very good.

£25

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1958. First edition. A lyrical and troubling coming of age in the green and gold of a French August. “Goes into the minds of children with the author’s usual tender-hefted vision” (The Sketch, 30 July 1958). Later made into the 1961 film with Kenneth More (his favourite film), Susannah York, Jane Asher, etc.
Post 8vo (197 x 127mm). [iv],(218),[ii]pp. Bound in a handsome recent half green morocco, banded and gilt; a fine, clean and bright copy.

£400

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London : Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), [1947]. First edition. American and Scotsman live in enmity on Italian island – Capri under another name. Mussolini, Fascism and Sedi, “who keeps a wineshop and is by way of being a witch” unite them – “the war and a British naval landing party give a climax and relish to the book” (The Sketch, 7th January 1948).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 208pp. Original red boards, lettered in black; faint spotting of top edge, but a very good, clean and sound copy of an uncommon title in the Paul Dessau dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used and slightly nicked, but also very good.

£40

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First British edition. Winner of the 1971 James Tait Black Memorial Prize — “her major work so far, a novel of great substance and power describing an African nation’s struggle to be born and the course of an epic love affair” — an Englishman confronts the inadequacy of his liberal ideas. “Gordimer writes of blacks and whites, but her steady, unblinking eye sees something grey there. You could call it human nature and you would be right. Her true subject is humankind, as it is for every great writer” (Daily Telegraph).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],504p. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the M. Mohan dust-jacket — a touch sunned, with some minor edge-wear, but also very good.

£40

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Leicester : Grange Fibre Co., 1962. First edition. Illustrated in colour throughout and with a stunning colour cover design by Rigby Graham.
Post 8vo (21cm). [32]pp. Original linson, printed in gold and colours, and lettered down the “linson vellum” spine in gilt; a touch darkened at tips and very slightly bruised, but still a very good, bright and sound copy.

£40

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London : Faber & Faber, (1971). First edition. Evidently a review copy, a printed Faber slip loosely inserted “With the author's compliments” and with a typed date of publication. Four mesmeric and haunting “fables” on the author’s native Guyana and its ethnic groups — Macusi, Arecuna, Wapisiana and Arawaks. With striking illustrations by Karen Usborne.
Post 8vo (21cm). 104pp. Original deep orange cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good, clean, bright and sound copy in the Karen Usborne dust-jacket — very good, clean and unworn.

£50

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1957). First edition. A fragile widow, an ex-army chauffeur, love, obsession, and repudiation. “On his day there is no more subtle novelist writing than L. P. Hartley, and few as satisfying. In The Hireling he is very much on his day ... a triumph of the novelist’s art” (Daily News, 10th July 1957). Memorably filmed in 1973, with Robert Shaw, Sarah Miles, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(248),[iv]pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; just a hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the Patricia Davey dust-jacket – just faintly tanned, with a couple of slight marks, but also very good.

£50

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London : Bodley Head, (1966). First edition. Regency novel set in Bath – Stacy Calverleigh has gambled away his fortune and requires an heiress. Young orphan Fanny Wendover fits the bill, but her Aunt Abigail has other ideas – enter Uncle Miles – the Black Sheep.
Post 8vo (21cm). (256)pp. Original maroon boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; small mark on top edge, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the original Arthur Barbosa dust-jacket – also very good.

£40

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First British edition. “A cross between Hans Christian Andersen and Franz Kafka” – twenty of the famous New York underground performer’s miniature stories and fables, including “The Zebra Storyteller”, “The Santa Claus Murderer”, “Bullfinch and Goblin”, “The Hidden Ballroom at Versailles”, etc. “My own preference is the pseudo-didactic piece ‘On Hope’ with its crazy but irreproachable logic” (Derek Stanford in The Scotsman, 6th November 1971).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(88),[ii]pp. Original quarter tan cloth, marbled boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch bumped at foot; mild spotting of edges; very faint crease to opening leaves, but a good copy in the splendid Bill Botten dust-jacket — the jacket likewise a little bumped, with a few small indentations and a crease to the front flap, but complete and with only very minor wear.

£40

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Stroud : New Departures, 1984. Second edition : adds three poems, fifteen photographs and the Jane Percival portrait to the original publication issued earlier in 1984. A memorial selection of Frances Horovitz poems, with poems in her honour by Kathleen Raine, Jeff Nuttall, Michael Horovitz, etc. Edited by Michael Horovitz.
Demy 8vo (21cm). 56pp. Photo illustrations. Original photographic stapled wrappers; lightly used and slightly rubbed, but a good copy.

£20

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London : William Heinemann, (1971). First British edition. Signed by the author on the half-title. Her third novel — the removal of their hedge as a fire-precaution leaves Bingo and Barney Edwards of Bel Air defenceless and exposed to the farcical madness of contemporary Los Angeles — hippies, junkies, the alternative psychiatrist-cum-guru next door, his patients, brushes with firemen, welfare services, the police, ice-plants, and the realities of the fire when it comes. “A brilliant comic novel ... full of extraordinary characters and events” (Alison Lurie).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(244),[ii],[2]pp. Original orange-red boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a very good, clean, fresh and bright copy in the Camm Ashbrooke dust-jacket — barring one minuscule nick, also fresh, bright, clean and unworn.

£50

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Macmillan & Co., 1959. First edition. Her high comedy of a deluded and utterly unspeakable author at large in Bruges. “An unqualified success in its essence of the totally unexpected. Its parade of preposterous, yet not unconvincing, characters must surely be unique for one novel” (Newmarket Journal, 5th February 1959).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(246),[ii]pp. Original turquoise cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in a lightly used dust-jacket – a little spotted on reverse. Bookplate of David Graham.

£40

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London : Folio Society, 1998. First Folio Society edition. A handsome production, with a preface by Stephen James Joyce, an introduction by Jacques Aubert, and some striking illustrations by Mimmo Paladino.
Royal 8vo (25cm). (xx),[2],(736),[ii]pp. Eighteen plates in black and gold by Paladino. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and blocked with a Paladino illustration; a fine copy, housed in its original card slip-case.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1968. First edition. His first novel, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize – set in London and the South of France – “cold indifference ... tugs at them like a dirty wind”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; very good in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£25

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London : Victor Gollancz, 1987. First edition. His first novel – young Englishman trapped in Tokyo, an enforced marriage, and a collision with the world of Japanese organised crime. Winner of Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask awards. “This is a fine book, its comedy nicely underplayed, making the world seem big and frightening after reading it, and the business of crossing frontiers only for the brave” (Sunday Telegraph, 22nd February 1987).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],(156)pp. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; slight production flaw to pp.143-48, but otherwise a very good, crisp and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly sunned to spine, but also very good.

£50

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ondon : Cassell & Co., (1943). Second impression of the original December 1943 publication – a pleasing presentation copy, inscribed to the historian Sir Arthur Bryant (1899-1985), “With best wishes and my thanks”, signed and dated Christmas 1943 by Collie Knox. Bryant was one of the numerous contributors to this wide-ranging wartime anthology of uplifting and inspiring quotations on the nature of England and the English, and has made a pencilled correction to his piece headed “Tradition is in Our Bones”. Elsewhere Bryant has placed pencil marks against other passages. There are familiar extracts from Blake, Brooke, Browning, Churchill, Kipling, Masefield, Milton, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth, but a far greater number of lesser-known, more contemporary, and specially commissioned pieces from a variety of voices, including Knox himself and his flatmate, the refugee German actor Olaf Olsen (1919-2000) – “Of a truth, you are a strange, puzzling people. You laugh when you should cry. And when you should cry, you blow your noses very loudly and go for long walks”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 244pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in black; a little sunned; slightly worn at tips; small spine crease; two corners bumped; a few marks; front endpaper cracked; a few internal creases, but a serviceable copy with a handsome provenance.

£50

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1955). First edition : the trade issue. Lawrence of Arabia on his time spent pseudonymously in the R.A.F. – “I wrote it tightly, because our clothes are so tight, and our lives so tight in the service. There is no freedom of conduct at all ... I wanted to bring out the apartness of us”.
Crown 4to (26cm). [ii],206pp. Original blue buckram, blocked in gilt and blind, and lettered in gilt; top edge blue; some spotting of endpapers, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a few faint marks, but also very good.

£100

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London : Michael Joseph, (1989). First (British) edition in English of “L’Altrui Mestiere” (1985). Forty-four essays on everything from astronomy to linguistics and zoology, with autobiographical pieces and on the nature of writing. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],(x),(210),[ii]pp. Original maroon boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good copy in a likewise very good dust-jacket – an infuriating design by Cathy Morley which simulates non-existent tears and repairs.

£20

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London : William Heinemann, (1984). First edition. A sparkling collection of eight stories, five previously unpublished. Includes “A Martian Comes to Stay”, “The Dragon Tunnel”, “Princess by Mistake” and “A Flock of Gryphons”, etc. “As witty, ingenious, and delightful to read as any of the books that have made her such a popular writer”.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (120)pp. Charming illustrations by John Lawrence (1933- ). Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint marks, but otherwise a very good copy in the Lawrence dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used, but also very good.

£40

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1969). First British edition. An “essential companion” to “Under the Volcano” – Lowry’s return to the scene. Edited by Lowry’s widow, Margerie Bonner, and his first biographer, Douglas Day, from 700 pages of Lowry’s notes and drafts. “I welcome the chance to read these pages, which come from the draft-plan of another masterpiece” (Dominic Le Foe in The Illustrated London News, 12th July 1969).
Post 8vo (21cm). xviii,[2],(256)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge lilac; an unusually good copy, the book very good indeed, the jacket fresh, white, unworn and the lettering unfaded.

£50

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First British edition. Lowry’s final novel, completed in draft form before his death and edited from his marginal notes and instructions by his widow, Margerie Bonner. A journey “on which hangs the meaning of his being” to the island off Vancouver. “Had he lived and worked it into the dense rich complexity of Under the Volcano it would have been another such masterpiece ... the familiar Lowry hallmarks of occultism, subtlety with words, vivid recurring images, the theme of lost homes and an endless journey ... Lowry’s search for humanity’s lost equilibrium” (Victoria Brittain in the Illustrated London News, 1st November 1971). “A species of ecstatic prose that has all but gone out of existence” (Matthew Corrigan in the New York Times, 25th October 1970).
Post 8vo (21cm). [4],[viii],336pp. Original maroon boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge grey; tiny bruise at foot; some almost imperceptible tanning of endpapers; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the Bill Botten dust-jacket — the jacket lightly bruised, with a hint of spotting here and there, but unworn and also very good.

£40

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New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (1971). First edition. Signed by Mary McCarthy on the title-page. “An absorbing novel about a young man’s voyage into adulthood, enlivened by Mary McCarthy’s needling wit ... an authentic and thoughtful slice of cultural history” (Hilary Mantel). Dodging the draft in 1960s Paris — “Fiercely intelligent, insatiably combative, McCarthy’s novels invite controversy” (Penelope Lively). “Miss McCarthy provides some exquisitely funny scenes, but as usual in her writing the pain is left visible not so much as an inch under the surface” (Victoria Brittain, in the Illustrated London News, 1st November 1971).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],344pp. Original yellow cloth, lettered in blue and brown; top edge brown; cloth lightly bruised and slightly spotted, with some very faint discolouration at head; a handful of edge-spots, but internally a very good, clean, and sound copy in the Peter Vos / Paul Bacon dust-jacket — the jacket similarly bruised and faintly discoloured at head, with some light edge-wear, a couple of nicks, and a couple of repaired tears on the back panel, but complete and serviceable still.

£50

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1939. First edition : in a dust-jacket over-printed with Macmillan’s Overseas Library information and restrictions on lower flap. An epistolary novel in which the hero flies round the world to escape the “cold blue eyes” of the lady. “A sheer joy ... as he passes over famous places he writes to her wittily and whimsically on all sorts of subjects ... from Mussolini to the Elgin Marbles ... all very light, very clever and illuminating” (Aberdeen Evening Press, 2nd December 1939). “Dazzling descriptions, fierce resentments, gaiety, irresponsibility and a wit from which the venom is never quite absent” (Western Daily Press, 16th November 1939).
Crown 8vo. viii,(308),[ii],[2]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in gilt and blind; a few slight marks; endpapers and edges a little tanned; a very good copy in the original Bip Pares dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, lightly worn, very slightly chipped, neatly repaired at head and tail, and a little marked and tanned. Small bookseller’s label of Angus & Robertson of Sydney on front paste-down.

£25

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London : MacGibbon & Kee, (1969). First collected edition of the celebrated London trilogy – the powerful MacInnes novels originally published separately between 1957 and 1960, and treating in full-on fashion the social phenomena of the era – the first wave of black immigration, the emergence of the teenager as an economic entity, and the eternal trinity of prostitutes, ponces and policemen – “themes of which no other contemporary novelist has yet shown himself properly aware ... No responsible novelist before Mr MacInnes had taken the trouble to find out” (from the introduction by Francis Wyndham).
Medium 8vo (24cm). [2],x,626,[ii]pp. Original grey canvas; red title-panel, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; a few faint marks and minor signs of age of use, but a good and sound copy in the Horace Ové dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn, with a few short tears, a light patch of mild discolouration at head, and slight spotting to the flaps, but complete and striking still.

£50

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New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1971). First edition. A Jewish writer with writer’s block and a black writer, “between soul and revolution”, in a New York tenement — co-tenants of a landlord keen to evict. “Malamud in his novels and stories discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of New York. He was a myth-maker, a fabulist, a writer of exquisite parables ... He is a rich original of the first rank” (Saul Bellow).
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],230,[ii]pp. Original orange cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge charcoal; a few slight marks, but still a very good, clean, and sound copy in the Muriel Nasser dust-jacket — the jacket also very good.

£40

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London : Bantam Press, (2000). First edition. The second in the Much-acclaimed Matthew Hervey series – fresh from the battle of Waterloo, Hervey departs on a secret mission to India.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xiv),320,[ii]pp. A very good copy in the Chris Collingwood dust-jacket – also very good. Contemporary ownership inscription of R. K. Gilkes (April, 2000).

£25

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London : Bantam Press, (2008). First edition. Brigadier Mallinson with a further instalment of the much-lauded adventures of Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons- South Africa in 1828, Hervey escorts an embassy to Shaka, King of the Zulus.
Medium 8vo (25cm). x,(338),[ii],[2]pp. Endpaper maps. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good in the pictorial Robert Papp dust-jacket – just faintly creased.

£20

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicholson, (1977). First edition. The opening volume of the Levant Trilogy. Guy and Harriet reach Egypt. “Manning etches in the landscape and the intricate machinery of war – which devours so much that is exuberant and tender – with lyrical exactitude. And she has a fine ear attuned to the inventive and desperate converse of people flung together and ringed by fire” (Kirkus Reviews, 1 September 1977).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],196,[iv]pp. Original bright blue boards, lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised; some spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy in the David Hockney dust-jacket – the jacket also with a hint of bruising, but otherwise very good and in first state, with comments from Frederic Raphael, Walter Allen, etc., on the rear panel.

£40

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicholson, (1977). First edition. The opening volume of the Levant Trilogy. Guy and Harriet reach Egypt. “Manning etches in the landscape and the intricate machinery of war – which devours so much that is exuberant and tender – with lyrical exactitude. And she has a fine ear attuned to the inventive and desperate converse of people flung together and ringed by fire” (Kirkus Reviews, 1 September 1977).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],196,[iv]pp. Original bright blue boards, lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised; a handful of faint spots, but otherwise a very good copy in the David Hockney dustjacket – the jacket price-clipped and in second state, with press reviews of the novel on the rear panel, but just lightly used and very good.

£40

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London : William Heinemann, (1924). First edition. “A singularly interesting and well-written novel of breathless adventure ... the book is so well written, its adventures so abundant, that I would wish to end with unqualified praise and say that this should be, and will be, one of the books that all must read” (The Sphere, 8th November 1924).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],332pp. Original blue cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; top edge blue; very lightly rubbed; endpapers a little tanned; edges and prelims somewhat spotted, but still a pleasant copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – the jacket a little sunned, lightly worn, with some very shallow chipping, a couple of short repaired tears and a few tiny nicks, but still an uncommon and attractive survival.

£125

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London : Hodder and Stoughton, (1942). First edition. “Mr. Mason’s new novel is neatly fashioned and competently told ... Its theme is revenge, the revenge competently and remorselessly planned, inflexibly pursued by a young Englishman, to whom an unforgivable wrong had been done and who, under a new identity, had become a great Italian singer. The essence of the 18th century – beastliness under brocade – is vividly distilled” (Western Mail, 12th May 1942)
Crown 8vo (19cm). 318,[ii]pp. Original light blue cloth, lettered in black; slightly sunned; some minor wear; a few slight marks, flecks and spots, but internally a very good, clean and sound copy in a dust-jacket designed by Pip Pares (1904-1977) – a little chipped and worn with a few nicks, but substantially complete and not unattractive. For more on Bip Pares, see my Bookhunter on Safari blog-post of 17th September 2013.

£20

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London : Michael Joseph, (1957). First edition. “A story, closely stitched and richly coloured, of contending wills and mountaineering (the two dovetail symbolically) in Wales, Switzerland and India, and of Anglo-Indian life in the first decades of the century” (Birmingham Daily Post, 21st May 1957). One of the most powerful of Masters’ tales, commencing in 1902 and charting the career of Peter Savage, administrator, mountaineer, soldier and a man of “ruthless will and stupendous ambition”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],(416)pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; slight bruise to lower edge of upper board; slight production flaw affecting the tops of some leaves; endpapers a little tanned, but a good copy in the Donald Green dust-jacket – lightly worn and a touch tanned. Tiny inscription on front free endpaper.

£25

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New York : Gemini Smith / Playboy Press, (1971). First edition. The richly illustrated life and times of a much-banned author — writing, painting, California, Paris, childhood — “Today’s naked generation has learned nearly everything from him — everything, that is to say, except his bookishness, his capacity for recapturing innocence, his sense of wonder, his sense of words ... Miller talking his life instead of writing it (he has written it already) ... Durrell thinks that Miller’s lifework is the best confessional writing since Rousseau. He is probably right” (Anthony Burgess in the New York Times, 2nd January 1972).
Foolscap folio (32cm). (208)pp. Photographs, portraits and illustrations throughout, some in colour. Original navy cloth, lettered in gilt; a very good, bright and clean copy in the Bradley Smith / Nicole de Jurenev dust-jacket — the jacket also very good, with just very minor edge-wear.

£100

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

£1,500

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1936. First edition : the limited issue of 210 signed copies, bound in full morocco. “The pilgrimage of a poet through the world, finely conceived and admirably written” (Time & Tide, 11th April 1936). “A new novel by Charles Morgan has become one of the major events in the immense world of fiction, and a heartening event it is, for, unlike so many novelists, he has always something to say that matters ... the carefully constructed theme must be carefully and slowly read, for every sentence means something, and the understanding reader finds as much joy in reading it, as Mr. Morgan has found in writing it ... as the ‘heroine’ said to Sparkenbroke: ‘It is you, telling it, I remember, not what you told’” (Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 6th April 1936).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [2],(x),(554)pp. Original full russet morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; a few very faint marks and indications of age and use; some spotting to free endpapers, but a very good copy.

£200

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1971). First edition. “I was a politician and I was getting out of politics because I was ashamed ... I went to that part of the country I was supposed to represent — represent as a hole might represent a bucket”. Stream of consciousness and a mind in torment from Anthony Greville, M.P. — politics, adultery — “I sometimes called Natalia Natalie instead of Natalia, when she was the ravenous rather than the angelic angel” — and excursions into the interplay of power and politics. “An outstanding novel. It throws into the melting-pot the whole problem of the predicament of living and it needs to be read more than once” (Elizabeth Harvey for the Birmingham Daily Post, 26th June 1971). “One of the most interesting and gifted English novelists writing today” (Vernon Scannell).
Demy 8vo (23cm). 316,[iv]pp. Original navy boards, ruled, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge orange; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the Peter Cope dust-jacket — the jacket with some very minor edge-wear and a hint of tanning to the inner flaps, but also very good.

£25

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, (1997). A definitive edition of Orwell’s second novel, originally published in 1935, restoring for the first time a number of previously censored readings, and indicating other passages known to have been “toned down”. Edited, and with a lengthy textual note by Peter Davison. First published in this form in 1986.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(308),[iv]pp. Original blue cloth, blocked and lettered in silver; very good in the original dust-jacket – a design in blue, orange, red and white – just very faintly sunned.

£40

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London : Gerald Duckworth & Co. / British Broadcasting Corporation, (1985). First edition. The rediscovered texts of George Orwell’s wartime radio broadcasts, transmitted weekly from December 1941 (Pearl Harbor) through to February 1943. Passages originally deleted by the wartime censor have been restored where legible. “The first large-scale unpublished work of Orwell’s to appear since his early death in 1950”. Edited, introduced and extensively annotated by the late W. J. (Bill) West (1942-1999), who discovered the lost original manuscripts.
Medium 8vo (25cm). 248pp. Maps. Original boards; price obliterated from front free endpaper, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly sunned but with negligible wear. Contemporary gift inscription.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1971). First edition. “When a woman tells you her past, you can be sure she intends you to be her future, you can quote me there” — the interior monologue of a very ordinary man with a mind to murder his wife. “Its theme is the habitual duplicity of civilized life. Conspiracy, says Frederic Raphael, is the inevitable partner of permanence; we share our beds with strangers”.
Post 8vo (21cm). (184)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge red; slight tanning to endpapers and a couple of spots, but a very good copy in the Colin Andrews dust-jacket — the jacket sunned at spine (as usual) and price-clipped by the publisher, with a revised price over-sticker, but with only a very faint suggestion of wear and also very good.

£25

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1963. First published edition : the trade issue. Rolfe’s long-lost early novel, set in Rome in the early sixteenth century, first printed and prepared for publication in 1908-1909 but never formally issued. Edited and introduced by Cecil Woolf. “Chiefly the journal of Dom Gheraldo ... a physician, a gossip, a magician, and a mentor ... he is wise; he is, as all the great diarists have been in real life, human ... This is a very fine book. In its scope Don Renato makes the rest of this week’s batch, or most batches for that matter, look rather puny” (Wendy Monk in the Birmingham Daily Post, 10th December 1963).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(344)pp. Original boards – Rolfe’s striking original design in violet and white, lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, clean, bright and sound copy in the original matching dust-jacket – Rolfe’s own design, printed in scarlet and purple on white – just slightly tanned, but also very good. Woolf A8c.

£40

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New York : Random House, (1971). First edition. A raging satire on Richard Nixon, still President in 1971, and the debasement of political language to the Orwellian formula — “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. Dwight Macdonald in the New York Times called it “far-fetched, unfair, tasteless, disturbing, logical, coarse and very funny ... in short, a masterpiece”.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [xiv],200,[ii],[2],[vi]pp. Original quarter black cloth, blue boards, blocked and lettered in red, silver and gilt; top edge red; just a hint of bruising; a touch of adhesion damage to the front endpaper, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket — price-clipped, but very good, fresh, bright and unworn.

£40

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London : Constable & Co., (1948). First British edition. A selection of over seventy of the best of the short stories and articles arranged under various headings. Includes “Tripping over Trivia”, “Horse Sense”, “Larcenous Ladies”, “A Dog’s Best Friend”, “Smoking Ladies”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 278,[ii]pp. Frontispiece. Original dark green cloth, lettered in silver; a very good and bright copy in the original pale blue dust-jacket, printed in red and darker blue – slightly sunned and a just a little marked.

£25

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London : Frank Cass & Co., (1970). A facsimile reprint of the complete run of all ten issues of the influential quarterly originally published between 1917 and 1920. With contributions from Richard Aldington, T. S. Eliot, Ronald Firbank, Stephen Hudson, Ford Madox Hueffer, Aldous Huxley, Wyndham Lewis, Katherine Mansfield, Wilfred Owen, Ezra Pound, Herbert Read, Dorothy M. Richardson, Isaac Rosenberg, Frank Rutter, Siegfried Sassoon, Walter Sickert, Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell, etc. – as well as illustrations by H. Gaudier-Brzeska, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, Nina Hamnett, E. McKnight Kauffer, Wyndham Lewis, John Nash, Paul Nash, C. R. W. Nevinson, Lucien Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Edward Wadsworth, and others. Frank Cass Library of English Little Magazines No. 16, edited by B. C. Bloomfield.
Two volumes. Crown 4to (26cm). Irregular pagination. Illustrations, many full-page. Original cloth; slight marking to foot of boards and light fading to fore-edges, but otherwise very good.

£50

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London : Constable & Co., (1937). First edition. Young love in France – “a book which begins and ends with their farewell, under the cliff-like side of a Cunarder on the docks of Cherbourg in the rain”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],344pp. Original purple cloth, blocked in gilt and lettered in green across spine; top edge pink; a touch sunned; mild spotting of edges, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket – a design in purple-red, white and black (with words from the song) – just lightly worn, with a few short tears, a touch sunned and very lightly tanned – but complete and attractive still.

£40

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London : Mantle, (2012). First edition. “1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk ... dark authoritarian rule; press, radio and television are controlled .. there are terrible rumours too about what is happening in the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House”.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(594),[iv]pp. Endpaper maps. Original boards; a very good copy in a very good dust-jacket.

£20

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London : William Heinemann, (1949). First British edition. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board” – the travails of Cassandra Mortmain. Her first novel – an eccentric classic brought to an even wider audience by the 2003 film with Bill Nighy, Romola Garai, Rose Byrne, etc.
Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [iv],338pp. Illustrations by Ruth Steed (from sketches by the author). Bound in a smart recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; red label; marbled sides; top edge red; some spotting to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in an elegant binding.

£500

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London : Bodley Head, (1971). First edition in English. Six novellas and short stories, together with sixteen poems from the winner of 1970 Nobel Prize, “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”. Translated by Michael Glenny. “His new collection, with its stoical, plain, inward beauty, movingly reminds us that Solzhenitsyn seems never to have written a line that was not somehow tinged with hope” (Kirkus Review).
Post 8vo (21cm). (242),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt; a very good copy, fresh, clean and sound in the Michael Harvey dust-jacket — the jacket lightly sunned, with a hint of tanning and three short nicks, but complete and clean.

£25

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New York : Liveright, (1971). First edition. “The three writings issued in this volume — two for the first time and the longer Q.E.D. in a corrected edition — represent the first steps of Gertrude Stein’s literary progress”. “Fernhurst”, begun in 1904, is a fictional account of a scandalous love triangle; the slightly earlier “Q.E.D.” is a suppressed autobiographical novel concerning another love triangle, while the family saga of “The Making of Americans” appears in the form of an unpublished early draft. With a note on the texts by Donald Gallup and a lengthy introduction by Leon Katz.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [8],xxxiv,214pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt and blind; a few specks on top edge, but otherwise a very good, bright, clean, and sound copy in the dust-jacket — the jacket with some mild rubbing, a couple of small scratches, and some very minor wear, but also very good.

£40

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973. First edition. Jack Flowers, Singapore fixer and pimp, in a spot of trouble with the locals – memorably filmed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1979, with Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],(248)pp. Original stone cloth, blocked and lettered in blue and red; top edge pink; some spotting of cloth and edges, but a good and sound copy in the Paul Bacon dust-jacket – price-clipped, but very good, fresh and clean.

£40

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1984). First edition. Signed by Paul Theroux on the title-page. Young American woman at large in London, underpaid for her academic work at the Hemisphere Institute of International Studies, enters the worlds both of the escort agency and international terrorism. The basis of the 1986 film “Half Moon Street”, with Sigourney Weaver, Michael Caine, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(138)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good copy in the black and silver Don Macpherson dust-jacket – also very good.

£50

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. First edition. Hong Kong on the eve of the hand-over to China – Bunt Mullard struggles to adapt and a young woman disappears from his factory.
Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],(244),[iv]pp. Original quarter red cloth; red boards; lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Michaela Sullivan dust-jacket – equally very good.

£20

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London : Bloomsbury, (2000). First edition. Signed by Joanna Trollope on the title-page. Judge abandons his wife of forty years for a barrister half his age, but neither woman behaves quite as expected. “Just as one has forgotten the intense pleasure of reading Trollope, along comes another flawless novel” (Library Journal).
Medium 8vo (25cm). [iv],(312),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; purple ribbon; very faint tanning of edges, but a very good copy in the Jenny Wheatley dust-jacket – also very good.

SOLD

New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990. First edition. Signed by the author on the title-page. The “Presumed Innocent” attorney finds his wife has killed herself.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(518)pp. Original half cloth; a very good copy in the Neil Stuart dust-jacket – also very good.

£40

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1980). First British edition. “You would say he was a man who had gone to pieces, or maybe he’d always been in pieces: maybe he’d arrived unassembled ...”. A fine early Anne Tyler. Originally published in New York earlier the same year.
Post 8vo (21cm). [iv],(312)pp. Original brown boards, ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; a very good, fresh, sound and bright copy in the pictorial Oliver Elmes dust-jacket – price-clipped by the publisher and with a revised price over-sticker – also very good indeed.

£50

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London : Chatto & Windus, (2009). First British edition. A pedant adrift in his own life.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (278),[ii],[4]pp. Original grey boards, lettered in gilt; just the faintest signs of use, but very good in the dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. First edition. The sequel to “Rabbit, Run” (1960), set against the background of the Summer of Love — “Ten years have passed; the athletic escapist has become a paunchy conservative, and Eisenhower’s becalmed America has become 1969’s lurid confusion of technology, fantasy, and emergency. Rabbit is abandoned and mocked, his home is invaded, the world of his childhood decays into a mere sublunar void; still he clings to semblances of patriotism and paternity”. Acclaimed on first publication — “A rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece” (Time Magazine), “Without doubt, the finest novel John Updike has written” (Julian Symons in the Sunday Times), and acclaimed now, “One of the most gifted American realists ... John Updike’s surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country” (Joyce Carol Oates in 2015).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(407),[i]pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in silver and gilt; top edge blue; an excellent copy, bright, clean, and sound in an unflawed dust-jacket.

£50

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London : William Heinemann, (1962). First edition. The first novel in the “Spiral Ascent” trilogy – failed poets and communism in the 1930s – “I believe that it may well be the first part of one of the greatest and most original novels of our time” (Christopher Isherwood).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],282pp. Original green boards, lettered in white; a very good copy in the Brian Russell dust-jacket – a stylish architectural design in mauve and tan – also very good.

£50

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London : Penguin Books, (1988). A reprint, in the Penguin Modern Classics series, of this collection originally published by Heinemann in 1969. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page.
Post 8vo (20cm). (234),[vi]pp. Original colour-printed Paul Leith wrappers; text edges very mildly tanned; a few very small spots on title-page, but otherwise in very good state. Walker A3c.

£25

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London : Enitharmon Press, 1994. First edition : [one of 1,000 copies in wrappers]. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page. Six short stories, including “A Ship in the Sky”, with an introduction by Frank Kermode.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 102,[ii]pp. Original pale blue-grey wrappers, with a Glenn Sujo design, printed in blue and black; very good. Walker A7a.

£25

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London : Macmillan & Co., 1962. First edition. An absorbing novel which takes us from 1942 to the birth of rock and roll – with the revolving viewpoints of a Professor of Classics, his runaway teenage son becoming a jazz pianist, and Eleanor – sister to the first and aunt to the second. “Brilliant glimpses of London’s war-time criminal fringe, and the world of jazz music” (London Evening News, 28th March 1962).
Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],(330)pp. Original red cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt; a few slight marks, but a very good copy in the Victor Reinganum dust-jacket – very lightly worn and just slightly soiled, but also very good. Contemporary dated ownership inscription of Mary Campbell.

£25

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London : Allan Wingate, (1949). First trade edition. The charting of a late nineteenth-century American childhood – beautiful mother, feckless father, extremes of fortune – from the redoubtable Mrs Hawkes, trained zoologist, traveller and writer. “Unusual both in the vivid lightness of its style and in its entire approach to childhood” (The Queen, 31st August 1949).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (192)pp. Original red cloth, ruled blocked and lettered in gilt; very mild spotting of edges and endpapers, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – price-clipped and with a small mark on lower panel, but also very good.

£25

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London : Bloomsbury Publishing, (2001). First edition. A sixteen-year sojourn in Paris, wandering “through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians ... an exhilarating adventure with a most seductive companion”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [x],(212),[ii]pp. Endpaper maps. Original pictorial boards; a few faint marks, but still very good in the matching dust-jacket – also very good.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1973). First edition. White’s novel of a matriarch and her impact – drawing on his own relationship with his mother. “As clever, imaginative, and true a novel as any you are likely to encounter this year, or even next” (William Trevor review in The Guardian). Published in the year White won the Nobel Prize.
Post 8vo (21cm). 608pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few slight spots, but a very good copy in the original Desmond Digby dust-jacket – price-clipped and just lightly used, but also very good.

£40

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London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1958). First edition. Wildeblood is best-known for his “Against the Law” (1955) – an account of his imprisonment for homosexuality which led more or less directly to the Wolfenden Report and decriminalisation – but he appears here in much lighter vein with an amusing novel of Soho life – gang warfare interferes with one of the area’s staple industries and Cora and the working girls are obliged to found the National Youth Movement for the Prevention of Hooliganism in Soho (NYMPHS for short).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 192pp. Original turquoise boards, lettered in silver; lightly marked; edges and prelims somewhat spotted; “Supplied for the Public Service” crown stamp on lower edge, but a good copy in the Charles King dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn, slightly nicked, and a little marked and spotted – but complete and striking still.

£40

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London : Martin Secker & Warburg, 1950. First edition. The author’s second book – “eleven more short stories about dreadful people ... Mr. Wilson has charity as well as a fine perceptive nose for evil; he knows many conditions of men and has yet to be tempted into the trade of manufacturing jolly commonplaces” (Frederick Laws in the Daily News, 24th July 1950). Includes “Sister Superior”, “Heart of Elm”, “What do Hippo’s Eat”, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 212pp. Original dark red cloth, lettered in gilt; slight tanning of endpapers; mark on fore-edge, but otherwise a very good, bright and unworn copy in the original grey dust-jacket, printed in red and black – also very good, with just a few faint signs of age and use.

£50

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