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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1982). First edition. His third novel – “It is far too hot for sustained fighting ... we will all melt like ice-cream in the sun”. Evelyn Waugh meets John Buchan as eccentric settlers take up arms in the East African Campaign of the First World War.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [xii],370,[ii]pp. Map. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the Paul Webb dust-jacket – also very good.

£100

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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 : Robert Hale, (1962). First edition. “Sitting, facing me in the clients’ chair was a lovely-looking Chinese girl, her hands folded rather primly in her lap ... she looked peaceful and not even surprised. From the small bloodstain over her left breast, I guessed she had been shot quickly and expertly ... she had been dead for some hours”. Cracking Hadley Chase novel, filmed in German in 1964 by Manfred R. Köhler as “Ein Sarg aus Hongkong”, with Heinz Drache, Elga Andersen, Greta Chi, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). 186,[vi]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in red and silver; faint residue marks to boards; a few faint spots to front free endpaper, but a very good copy in the Val Biro dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn and a little sunned, with a couple of nicks, a short tear, and a crease to the front flap, but complete and attractive still.

£50

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London : John Murray (Publishers), (2013). First edition. Signed by both editors, Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron. The posthumously published final instalment of Fermor’s famous journey on foot across Europe at the age of eighteen in the 1930s – “like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar”. The third leg – from the Iron Gates of Romania via Bucharest and Bulgaria to Salonika and Mount Athos. One of the twentieth-century classics – a “sublime masterpiece” (William Dalrymple).
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xxii),362pp. Portrait. Two maps. Original black boards, lettered in silver; an excellent copy in the Ed Kluz dust-jacket – the jacket also excellent.

£150

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1969). First edition. Victorian Lyme Regis and the enigmatic Sarah Woodruff – a book for which the note on the dust-jacket about the pagination being correct is perhaps a necessary prelude. Filmed by Karel Reisz in 1981 with a Harold Pinter screenplay, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (446),[ii]pp. Pictorial endpapers by Tom Adams. Original brown boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; a very good, clean and sound copy in the Adrian Brewin dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly tanned, a touch sunned at spine, as usual, and with some very mild rubbing, but also very good.

£200

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1929]. First edition of this thousand-page-plus omnibus collection of all bar three of the Thorndyke short stories which had appeared in the five collections published between 1909 and 1927. The stories are here grouped into six “inverted” and thirty-one “direct” examples, with an absorbing new preface by the author on the nature and methodology of the detective story. “Mr Freeman’s super-detective, Dr Thorndyke, needs no introduction ... each case has some new ingenuity to commend it” (The Scotsman, 14th October 1929).
Crown 8vo (182 x 116mm). viii,1080pp. Diagrams and a plan. Bound in a handsome later half crimson crushed morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; faint mark to back cover; some light spotting of edges; a few tiny internal marks; one leaf with a repaired tear, a handful of others lightly creased, but still a handsome copy.

£400

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

£1,250

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London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1887. First edition. An anonymously published landmark in dystopian fiction, with the narrator recovering from unconsciousness into a future William Morris arts-and-crafts ecological world without cities, money or politics – pre-dating Morris’s own “News from Nowhere” by several years, and Wells’s “A Modern Utopia” by even more. Inserted, in its original envelope, is a remarkable single-page signed autograph letter on his North Parade, Penzance, notepaper, dated 31st December 1920, from W. H. Hudson, replying to an enquiry about the scarcity of the book – “I am pleased to learn the first edition is scarce as I would be glad to have it out of existence. The book is a poor thing but in the later editions one or two of the most glaring absurdities are eliminated. The first edition had an ugly black and red cover. I have succeeded in recovering a few copies for the pleasure of destroying them”.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(288)pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt on spine, and ruled, blocked and lettered in red; a little rubbed and worn, with the colour of the cloth touched up in one or two places and some evidence of repair to the lower joint; faint creasing to the cloth of the upper cover; slight cracking to the patterned green endpapers; pencilled notes erased from half-title; a few minor internal marks, but a good copy of a scarce book – with a most extraordinary authorial letter. From the well-known library of the recipient of the letter, the distinguished American collector Paul Lemperly (1858-1939), with his decorative bookplate. Lemperly’s “Among My Books” was published in a limited edition in 1929, containing extensive quotation from Hudson’s letter as well as making it clear that at that point, nine years on, he was still trying to hunt down a copy of the book.

£2,000

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London : Faber & Faber, (1963). First edition. His first prose work – eleven Kiplingesque stories on the real manner of the evolution of the owl, whale, fox, polar bear, hyena, tortoise, bee, cat, donkey, hare and elephant. Illustrations by George Adamson (1913-2005).
Foolscap 4to (22cm). 72pp. Six full-page illustrations. Original blue canvas, lettered in gilt; a very good clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a pictorial Adamson design in blue, pink and black – just very lightly worn, and a little sunned at spine – but also very good. Ownership inscription of Anne C. Cassells.

£200

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

£125

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London : Richard Bentley & Son, 1884. First edition : just 625 sets were printed, of which only 425 were initially sent for binding. “Meadow and brook, wheat-fields and hills – a simple landscape, yet such as is not to be surpassed by any on earth. A common landscape – there are hundreds such in England – yet beyond compare. There are none like it elsewhere in the wide world” – Jefferies in his element in his native Wiltshire, with a novel characterised as “a sad little episode of cottage life, very tragic in its termination” (Reading Mercury, 20th September 1884). “Human nature, especially rustic human nature, has seldom if ever had a closer student or a more picturesque exponent” (The Graphic, 20th September 1884).
Two volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],296; [ii],(328)pp. Decorative initials, head and tailpieces. Original green pebble-grain cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing and bruising; some spotting, mainly of edges and prelims, but a very good, bright and sound set.

£500

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London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1902. First edition. “Wild, roaring fun” (Daily News, 20th November 1902). Two well-connected but impoverished young men recruit a team of likewise young, charming and penniless men and women, available for hire to disrupt and disentangle unfortunate or unsuitable romantic attachments before too much harm can be done either to the lovers or, more particularly, their families – “Adventure of the Exemplary Earl”, “Adventure of the Lady Novelist and the Vaccinationist”, “Adventure of the Fair American”, and other tales. “In ‘The Disentanglers’ we have the apotheosis of the detective-story, with, as Mr. Lang’s Canadian millionaire would say, ‘every modern improvement’, divorced, too, from ‘all that cheap revolver business’, to quote the hero and Disentangler-in-Chief ... Apart from the excellent construction and swing of the stories, there is endless fun in the sly digs at literature, modern and ancient – at the penny novelette, the British Museum girl, and the Celtic minor poet” (The Sketch, 3rd December 1902).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],418,[ii]pp. Frontispiece and six perfectly judged plates by Henry Justice Ford (1860-1941). Original decorative cloth – “a bold black and red design on its light coloured cloth cleverly indicative of the contents” (The Gentlewoman, 13th December 1902) – the cloth slightly darkened; a handful of marks and spots; light spotting of edges, but otherwise a very good copy.

£200

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

£400

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1861. First edition : one of the 2,000 copies of the first impression, with the roman rather than gothic half-title, just four notes on p.323, etc. The original appearance of a perennial favourite – close on 300 of the finest poems in the language from seventy-five or so poets – from Sir Thomas Wyatt, Marlowe and Shakespeare, to Shelley and Keats. With a preface and some extensive notes by Palgrave.
Foolscap 8vo. [4],[viii],332pp. Engraved vignette by Charles Henry Jeens (1827-1879) after Thomas Woolner (1825-1892). Bound in a smart recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original cloth gilt (the priced, earliest variant) at rear; a handful of spots, a small flaw to the final leaf, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription on title-page and some neat pencil markings to margins in places.

£400

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London : privately printed by A. V. Huckle & Son, The Ramsden Press, (1929). First edition. A well-illustrated and very attractively produced tour of Clapham and its older houses, former residents, etc., with appendices including material on the Windmill Inn, sports and pastimes – cricket, golf, etc., the ponds, the flora and fauna, the geology, fossils, the wells, etc. Neatly inserted is a single page typed letter on headed notepaper, signed by the editor J. H. Michael Burgess, thanking the recipient for ordering a copy of the book, etc.
Demy 4to (270 x 191mm). xx,(122),[ii]pp. Plates. Illustrations. Three maps, one folding. Printed in red and black throughout. Bound in a stylish contemporary half green morocco, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; just a touch sunned; some spotting to the earlier leaves, but still a very good copy. With the dated (1930) ownership of E. Baldwin, the recipient of the letter.

£125

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London : Faber & Faber, (1939). First British edition. Six sequences of Saroyan short stories – “Mr. Saroyan is so diverse, so expressive, that he is never a bore and always amusing ... Seldom cynical, occasionally angry, he is always seeing, watching, understanding, and transposing, into his highly artificial prose that achieves the ultra-natural, the ways, foibles, desires and idiocies of mankind ... he has a spate of words at need and sometimes lets them tumble over one another, but always as trained acrobats, never with casual effect or effort” (Birmingham Daily Post, 21st March 1939).
Crown 8vo (20cm). 316,[iv]pp. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in yellow; a few faint spots to endpapers, but an exceptionally good copy of a book where the yellow blocking has usually suffered – in the striking original dust-jacket – the jacket with minimal wear and a sprinkle of spots, but also exceptionally good.

£100

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London : Faber & Faber, [ca.1998]. A twenty-fourth printing of the 1968 second edition. Inscribed, “To Ira Nadel” and signed by Tom Stoppard on the front free endpaper. The introductory cast-list of the 1967 National Theatre production is further signed by John Stride (1936-2018) and Edward Petherbridge (b.1936), who played the title roles. Loosely inserted is a National Theatre postcard of Stride and Petherbridge in that original production. Nadel was the author of “Double Act : A Life of Tom Stoppard” in 2002.
Post 8vo (20cm). (94),[ii]pp. Original wrappers; a couple of minor scuffs, but a very good copy. From the collection of Professor Ira Nadel (1943-2021), Stoppard’s biographer.

£250

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

£200

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

£1,000

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

£400

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London : Cassell & Co., (1923). First edition. Journalist from Sydenham and other earthlings find themselves in Utopia, an evolved civilisation in a world without government or religion, “as clean as starlight and as sweet as cold water on a dusty day” – “Let it be said at once, in this book Mr. Wells is at his best. Indeed, if one had to name the novel that represents his many-sided genius most completely, one could hardly fail to name ‘Men Like Gods’“ (Sylvia Lynd in the Daily News, 8th March 1923).
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,304pp. Original green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt and blind (Currey’s ‘B’ variant); a sliver of fading at head and tail; some tanning of endpapers; a few edge spots, but a very good and sound copy in the grey dust-jacket, lettered in purple – the jacket just slightly darkened and faded at spine, but fresh and unworn.

£250

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New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, (1981). First edition. Wolfe on modern architecture – smart, well-researched, and devastating – “Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement parts wholesale distribution warehouse ... Every new $900,000 summer house ... has so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial plate glass, banks of tungsten-halogen lamps, and white cylindrical shapes, it looks like an insecticide refinery”, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). [x],(144),[vi]pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; a very good copy indeed in the Kiyoshi Kanai dust-jacket – also very good indeed.

£100

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