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London : W. Collins Sons & Co., (1924). First edition. “Acclaimed, attacked, parodied, and read, to the most fabulous degree of best-sellerdom ... a romance suited to its decade – cynical, sophisticated, yet sentimental, highly coloured, and glittering ... the book certainly cast a spell in its day and influenced many young writers. The character of the heroine, Iris Storm, set a new fashion in fatal charmers; and Arlen’s pictures of London café society were as exact as glossy photographs” (ODNB). Filmed both in 1928 and in 1934 – as “A Woman of Affairs” (with Greta Garbo) and “Outcast Lady” (with Constance Bennett) respectively.
Crown 8vo (187 x 126mm). (viii),(330),[iv]pp. Bound in a striking late twentieth-century full green morocco, banded and gilt in an asymmetric art deco style [by Bayntun-Riviere]; all edges gilt; original cloth covers bound in at rear; a very good copy, clean and sound, in a most attractive commissioned binding.

£500

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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 : White Owl Press, 1932. First edition : one of 100 copies (of 130) numbered and signed by H. E. Bates. Two short stories, the first set in a London restaurant.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [vi],(52),[vi]pp. Striking art deco frontispiece. Original ochre bevelled buckram, lettered in gilt; top edge gilt; merest hint of tanning to endleaves; light offsetting of frontispiece to title-page, but a very good copy indeed – bright and sound.

£200

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London : Michael Joseph, (1970). First edition. “On some occasions Pop was moved to go even further than mere champagne and concoct a cool but potent mixture of about equal parts of brandy and champagne, preferably pink, with a dash of angostura bitters and a slice of orange. This was the perfick stiffener to start the day on”. The fifth and last of the Larkin novels. Not published in the USA.
Post 8vo (21cm). (216)pp. Original light green boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few faint signs of age and use, but very good copy in the Oliver Elmes dust-jacket, a little browned in places, but just lightly marked and faintly rubbed at extremities.

£25

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London : William Heinemann, 1911. First edition : the variant binding in smooth brown cloth, the spine lettered in upper and lower case. Just 2,150 copies were issued in this form, the remainder being put in a more robust library binding. “A diaphanous novel possessed of a delayed explosive charge that detonates today with surprising power ... the finest, and darkest, kind of satire: as intoxicating as champagne, as addictive as morphine, and as lethal as prussic acid” (Robert McCrum) – “Mr Beerbohm in his way is perfect” (Virginia Woolf).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],350,[ii]pp. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt, and with the publisher’s device in blind on lower cover; a few faint marks and minor signs of age and use; mild tanning of endpapers, but overall a very good, sound, and rather better than usual copy. Book-label of a modern Connecticut collector.

£250

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1902. First edition. A young woman struggles for freedom and independence in the Potteries – “There is excellent material in every character, and the grip of circumstance is strong and capable. Indeed, the picture of ‘The Five Towns’ with the life of prosaic labour, into which the mystery of romance yet creeps, is not only admirable but beautiful” (Contemporary review in The Pilot).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],360 + 32pp advertisements dated March 1902. Original pictorial cloth, gilt and enamelled; top edge gilt; some minor rubbing and light wear; some spotting and browning, mainly to edges, endpapers and prelims, but still overall a very good copy of a difficult title. With the contemporary ownership inscription of H. B. Money-Coutts – Hugh Burdett Money-Coutts, Sixth Baron Latymer, J.P. (1876-1949), author and poet, who served at Gallipoli and in Egypt in the Great War.

£350

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London : Methuen & Co., (1913). First edition. The further adventures of “The Card” – Edward Henry Machin stumbles into theatrical management in London and pursues Isabel Joy, the suffragette, to appear in his play. “There is no one in contemporary fiction so immense as Edward Henry Machin. He never wearies, because he always surprises and because Mr. Arnold Bennett never once errs in his presentation of him. ‘The Regent’ is as good, if not better, than ‘The Card’ and that is, indeed, saying a great deal” (The Globe, 12th September 1913).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (viii),(320)pp. Original cloth – the red variant – attractively blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch sunned; tiny mark to spine; endpapers lightly tanned; some spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary pencilled ownership inscription of Emily and Henry Catchpole (a bookbinder) of Richmond Road, Dalston.

£100

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London : John Murray, (1952). First edition. Betjeman on Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Cheltenham, Leeds, London Railway Stations, the Isle of Man, Padstow, Sidmouth, Weymouth, the Isle of Wight, and many other places, as well as on Nonconformist Architecture, Victorian Architecture. Numerous illustrations – many by John Piper.
Foolscap 4to (23cm). (xii),244pp. Numerous illustrations, including a folding panorama of Cheltenham by Piper. Original cream canvas, blocked and lettered in blue; top edge pink; a very good, clean and sound copy in the striking Piper dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£125

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London : “The Field”, 1877. First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed, signed and dated (30th June 1877) by the author to Samuel Hoare (1841-1915), later Sir Samuel Hoare M.P., Harrow and Trinity (Cambridge), banker, parliamentarian and keen amateur cricketer with the Quidnuncs. One of the monuments of cricket literature – a highly influential account which in attempting to define, perhaps for the first time, the quintessential Englishness of cricket, contrived to make it not just a game, but a lasting repository of high-minded Victorian ideals and the ultimate sporting extension of a deeply-imbued sense of national identity. Box takes in turn the origins of ball-games; the Dark and Middle Ages; progress and development; rising popularity; the moral, social and physical attributes; chapters on each of the major counties; the public schools; the eastern counties; intercolonial matches (in North America and Australia); school and village cricket; curiosities; the grounds; the laws; the poems, songs and ballads; a glossary, and a postscript on Shakespeare and cricket.
Crown 4to (26cm). x,496pp. Plates, text illustrations, diagrams. Original decorative cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; some mainly minor wear to extremities; a few slight marks, but overall a much better than average copy of a difficult title. With the significant pictorial bookplate of A. E. Winder – Anthony Edward (Tony) Winder (1944-1991), legendary cricket collector, who acquired (inter alia) John Arlott’s library in 1979 and is himself the subject of a book by David Rayvern Allen, published in 2008.

£500

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London : Ralph Stokes for the Gaywood Press, [ca.1952]. First edition. “I was a construction gang foreman, not a private eye or a cop. I’ll admit that my one taste of hoodlums some weeks ago had whetted my appetite for the detecting racket ...” – Ace Capelli was a house name used variously by Geoffrey Pardoe, Stephen Frances (Hank Janson) and Norman Lazenby. Although over thirty Capelli titles are known, only fourteen or so are represented in major collections.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],9-132pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a sprightly design by Leonard Potts; a little chipped at foot; some mild creasing; staples rusted; text lightly tanned, but still overall a very good copy of a scarce and fragile item. No copy located in any major library worldwide. `

£85

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London : for the Author, by Bradbury & Evans, 1846. First edition. With Dickens to Italy via Lyons and Avignon – Genoa, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Rome via Pisa and Siena, Naples, Pompeii, and Florence. With charming illustrations by Samuel Palmer (1805-1881).
Foolscap 8vo (174 x 110mm). [viii],(270),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Bound, complete with half-title and advertisement leaves, in a very pleasant later (early twentieth-century) full tan polished calf by Morrell; banded and gilt; contrasting red and black labels; top edge gilt; inner gilt dentelles; a little spotting of prelims and edges, but otherwise a very good copy indeed. Modern bookplate of David M. Kirkby, the Chester bookbinder.

£500

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London : Hamish Hamilton, (1959). First British edition. “A barrister has secretly adopted the child of a woman whom he himself had successfully prosecuted for murder. Of course, he gets murdered. The plot turns not only on who killed him, but on which of his children was the adopted one” (E. D. O’Brien, Illustrated London News, 3rd October 1959). With a concluding eleven pages of notes on the background and sources for London in 1865.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (236),[iv]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in silver; a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the striking Val Biro dust-jacket – also very good.

£50

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London : for the Author, by Bradbury & Evans, 1846. First edition. With Dickens to Italy via Lyons and Avignon – Genoa, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Rome via Pisa and Siena, Naples, Pompeii, and Florence. With charming illustrations by Samuel Palmer (1805-1881).
Foolscap 8vo (174 x 110mm). [viii],(270),[ii]pp. Illustrations. Bound, complete with half-title and advertisement leaves, in a very pleasant later (early twentieth-century) full tan polished calf by Morrell; banded and gilt; contrasting red and black labels; top edge gilt; inner gilt dentelles; a little spotting of prelims and edges, but otherwise a very good copy indeed.

£500

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London : Milestone Publications, (1953). First edition. The headlines ran “Nude Dame Snatched from Bath”, “Socialite Disappears”, “Dresses at Point of a Gun”, “Bandit Hands her Scanties”, “It was Awful says Maid”.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers – green-eyed blonde under threat; some minor wear and light creasing; staples rusted; a few slight marks, but a very good copy of a scarce title. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£100

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

£400

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London : Faber & Faber, (1982). First edition. The central volume in the Avignon Quintet series, set mainly during the Second World War, and located in France, Egypt, Poland and Switzerland. Nominated for the Booker Prize.
Post 8vo (21cm). [xii],(394),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; a very good, clean and sound copy, in the original David Gentleman dust-jacket – the jacket with a few tiny spots and one slight nick, but also very good.

£40

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

£25

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London : Hutchinson, (1993). First edition. Loosely inserted is Faulks’ printed compliments slip, inscribed and signed by Faulks to Peter Wilkinson, “for his edition of Birdsong”. His fourth and most famous novel, set before and during the Great War. Soon adapted for radio and the stage, with a television version in 2012, starring Eddie Redmayne and Clémence Poésy.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],(408)pp. Original green boards, blocked and lettered in silver; faint number stamped on lower edge; mild adhesion marks to front free endpaper, where the compliments slip had been insecurely attached, but a very good copy in the Garner Russell dust-jacket – the jacket just a touch dusty, but also very good.

£400

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London : Hutchinson, (1989). First edition. His second novel and the one which made his reputation – a slight, dark-haired girl with two heavy suitcases arrives in the small French town of Janvilliers in 1936 to become a waitress at a seedy hotel. “Like the great novels and stories of Flaubert and Maupassant ... quite out of the ordinary ... beautifully written and in the end extraordinarily moving” (Sunday Times).
Demy 8vo (23cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original sepia boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge just a touch dusty, a hint of sunning, but a very good copy indeed in the pictorial dust-jacket – also very good.

£250

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

£50

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London : Macmillan Children’s Books, (1981). First edition. A shy and lonely dragon finds his life rudely interrupted. Delightfully illustrated by Pauline Baynes (1922-2008).
Medium 8vo (24cm). 60,[ii],[2]pp. Illustrations, several full-page and in colour. Original green boards, lettered in gilt; very good in the Rumer Godden dust-jacket – also very good.

£25

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

£250

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London : Jeremiah How, 1842-1844. A first edition set of both series of this elaborate and much-lauded production. A copiously illustrated collection of fifty-two of the finest English ballads, each with an introduction – including “Chevy Chase”, “Fair Rosamond”, “Genevieve”, “King Arthur’s Death”, “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne”, “Sir Lancelot du Lake”, “The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green”, “The Demon Lover”, “The Nut-Brown Mayd”, etc. – illustrated with wood-engravings by the foremost artists and engravers of the period, including, among the artists, Edward Corbould, “Alfred Crowquill”, Richard Dadd, John Franklin, William Powell Frith, Sir John Gilbert, Kenny Meadows, Sir Joseph Noel Paton and Sir John Tenniel, and among the engravers – Frederick Branston, George Dalziel, Edmund Evans, William Folkard, Mason Jackson, Ebenezer Landells, William James Linton, Orrin Smith, Henry Vizetelly and John Walmsley. “The most ambitious English book with wood engravings during the period under survey” (Gordon Ray, “The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914”).
Two volumes (257 x 179mm). vi,234; viii,235-(442)pp. Illustrations and decorations throughout. Bound in a handsome nineteenth-century full burgundy sealskin, banded and richly gilt, for Hatchard’s; all edges gilt; blue ribbons; some mild scuffing and minor rubbing and wear; some very occasional internal spotting, but a very good set of one of the landmarks of Victorian illustration.

£400

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London & New York : Harper & Brothers, (1902). First edition : [one of 500 copies]. A collection of ninety-nine poems – his most extensive collection up to that time – many of them war poems, dating from the time of the Boer War, but others from other places and other times. Includes “The Souls of the Slain”, “The Mother Mourns”, “By the Earth’s Corpse”, “Between Us Now”, “The Darkling Thrush”, “I Have Lived with Shades”, and others.
Post 8vo (21cm). (xii),260,[ii],[2]pp. Original decorative cloth gilt; top edge gilt; just a touch rubbed; endpapers a little spotted, but a very good and bright copy. Pictorial “Faskally” bookplate of Peter and Margery Morris.

£250

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Newcastle : Centre for the Literary Arts, (2009). First edition. A single sheet folding, to form four leaves, with Heaney’s poem on the recto, and with a photograph and a note by Sean O’Brien on the poem and on Heaney’s family connections with Blyth on the verso.
Long demy 8vo (15cm). In very good and clean state. No copy located in any major UK library.

£40

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London : Faber & Faber, (1984). First edition. One of the most celebrated collections of poems of modern times – over forty poems from Heaney at the height of his powers. “Many of these poems have a tough rind as though the author knew for his purposes deferred comprehension was better than instant. Obliquity suits him. Heaney’s talent, a prodigious one, is exfoliating and augmenting here” (Richard Ellman).
Post 8vo (21cm). (124),[iv] – including integral endpapers. Original black boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few tiny spots to top edge, but otherwise a very good copy indeed – bright, clean and sound, in an equally unflawed dust-jacket.

£200

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London : William Pickering, 1853. A handsomely produced edition of one of the earliest collected works of the Sweet Singer of the Temple, printed at the Chiswick Press and here in a highly attractive binding by Roger de Coverley & Sons. Originally published in 1835-1836 and including all the extant poems, letters, etc., then known, with lives of Herbert by Izaak Walton and Barnabas Oley, notes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, etc.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (217 x 139mm). xii,414; (xxviii),384pp. Engraved frontispieces. Title-pages in red and black. Bound in a stylish early twentieth-century full crushed chestnut morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; a few faint marks; endleaves tanned from turn-ins, but overall a very good set indeed.

£250

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Winchester : St. Paul’s Bibliographies, in association with the Victoria & Albert Museum, (1986). First edition. An alphabetical listing of more than 4,000 country houses, with full listings of the literature relating to them culled from books and magazines. With illustrations and a bibliography.
Demy 4to (29cm). viii,328pp. Twenty-nine illustrations. Original boards; a very good copy in the pictorial dust-jacket, also very good.

£40

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

£1,000

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

£1,000

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

£100

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London : Oxford University Press, 1975. First edition of this authoritative Oxford Standard Authors text, edited and introduced by Professor Ian Donaldson. Includes the Epigrams, The Forest, The Underwood, Ungathered Verse, Songs and Poems from the Plays and Masques, Leges Convivales, Dubia, etc.
Post 8vo (198 x 129mm). xxii,410pp. Facsimiles. Bound in an elegant contemporary quarter brown morocco, banded and gilt; marbled sides; very good.

£100

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1845. First edition : in the more elaborate and earliest binding. Clearly modelled on Dickens’ treatment of social issues in his Christmas books, Lever tackles the Irish issue of absentee landlords – “a very pretty little volume ... dedicated to his children with a desire to inculcate this truth, ‘that prosperity has as many duties as adversity has sorrows’ ... painted with his customary force of genius and his usual glowing and effective colouring” (Liverpool Mail, 29th March 1845).
Pott 4to (18cm). [iv],(204)pp. Four etched plates, pictorial title, and wood-engraved illustrations by “Phiz” – Hablot Knight Browne (1815-1882). Original decorative green cloth, blocked in gilt and blind in a design of harps, shamrocks, etc.; all edges gilt; a touch sunned; a few slight marks; some spotting and browning, mainly to plates, but a very good, bright and sound copy.

£50

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London : William Heinemann, (1927). First edition. Kay Harker seeks the stolen fortune of his sea-faring great-grandfather – a celebrated fantasy novel for children.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (328)pp. Original blue cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; small mark to top edge; a few faint spots, but overall a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – a striking pictorial design in green, grey and blue – the jacket just a little edge-worn, and with some spotting to rear panel and flaps, but also very good.

£150

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London : William Heinemann, (1926). First edition. Six short stories set in the Far East – “Before the Party”, “P. & O.”, “The Outstation”, “The Force of Circumstance”, “The Yellow Streak”, and “The Letter”, together with an introduction and a postscript. One of Maugham’s finest collections, notable in particular for “The Letter”, adapted for the stage by Maugham himself and the basis of the famous Academy Award winning William Wyler 1940 film, starring Bette Davis.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(312)pp. Original blue-green cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt and black; just lightly rubbed; some spotting, mainly to edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy. With the attractive 1938 library bookplate of the surgeon John Herbert Bankes (1879-1950).

£75

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London : Gannet Press, [1953]. First edition. Magoth escapes from the Penal Asteroid of Halma – he has discovered a way to speed up evolution and intends to seize control of the Four Planets. “While biographical information is sparse, one fact remains extremely plain: Ward must rate as the all-time worst-ever SF author! ... He displays a stunning lack of astronomical knowledge that makes the book compulsive reading – in the hope that it can’t get any worse! But it does ... Possibly the worst SF novel ever published” (Harbottle & Holland A306).
Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Ray Theobald; an indifferent copy – worn and creased; acid-free tape repairs and strengthening to spine and wrappers; lower wrapper discoloured and missing one corner; text tanned; some insect holing to lower blank margins through second half of book, but a serviceable copy of a scarce and fragile item. Just six copies located in major libraries worldwide – none in the UK.

£30

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London : Michael Joseph, (1961). First edition. A review copy, with the publisher’s slip loosely inserted – and from the library of the crime writer, reviewer and broadcaster “Anthony Lejeune” (1928-2018). Dame Beatrice is called on by a school-mistress friend to extricate her from the possibility of an attempted murder charge – and then there’s a corpse – “a combination of murder, archaeology and games mistresses” (Illustrated London News, 2nd September 1961).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (240)pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a few edge spots; endpapers slightly tanned, but a very good copy in the Kenneth Farnhill dust-jacket – the jacket just lightly used and a little tanned on rear panel, but also very good.

£100

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1970). First edition. Exploring the international underground with one of its prime movers and makers – psychedelic shrines in Katmandu; New York yippies posting marijuana cigarettes to strangers; Living Theatre wrecking marriages as conscientious social sabotage; international situationists adding LSD to the Paris événements; Mick Jagger in a party frock freeing butterflies before half a million; freaks throwing money at stockbrokers – ah, the sixties – if you can remember them, you weren’t really there.
Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],(362)pp. Frontispiece. Complete with the folding underground almanac poster-game “Headopoly” in pocket at rear. Original yellow boards, blocked and lettered in black; top edge black; some light marking and very mild discolouration to lower edge; front endpaper lightly tanned, but overall a very good copy in the iconic Martin Sharp dust-jacket – just a little sunned, but also very good.

£250

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London : Chapman & Hall, 1834. First edition. “A bottle of Reading sauce, a box of ‘peptic pills’, and a portable frying-pan ought to form part of every angler’s travelling equipage”. Fly-fishing in Coquetdale, Glendale and the Northern Hills, together with an appendix – “a well-written review of the older angling literature” (Westwood & Satchell), as well as a list of trout streams all across the north of England and the Borders. Father of the publisher, Chatto was also the editor of “The New Sporting Magazine” – “must have a place in every library” (Blackwood’s Magazine).
Foolscap 8vo (166 x 100mm). [iv],212pp. Wood-engraved head and tailpieces, mostly by Ebenezer Landells (1808-1860). Contemporary half green sheep, banded and gilt; marbled sides and edges; some minor rubbing and wear; some internal marks, chips and small flaws, but a good copy of an attractive book. With the later armorial bookplate of Mackenzie of Gairloch – probably Sir Kenneth John Mackenzie (1861-1929).

£125

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London : Secker & Warburg, 1949. First edition. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen ...”. The most compelling and chilling novel of the twentieth century – not least in that it can no longer be wholly regarded as fiction.
Crown 8vo (183 x 121mm). 312pp. Bound in a smart recent dark green full morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; a couple of minor internal marks, but overall a very good, clean and sound copy, handsomely bound.

£1,000

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London : B. T. Batsford, 1954. First edition. A charming exploration of eighty Surrey gardens – the wild-life, the writers, and the gardens themselves.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,(260)pp. Illustrations by William McLaren. Original cloth; a very good copy in the McLaren dust-jacket – lightly worn, but also very good. Small contemporary ownership inscription.

£20

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London : Milestone, (1953). First edition. “The missing negatives were important right enough – a photographic record of the archives the Crime Commission had prepared for their next strike at the underworld ... Perrelli at the peak of his ability to chill and to thrill”. Although the “Nick Perrelli” name was used by various authors, American copyright records note this title as the work of George H. Dawson.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (128)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some minor wear and creasing; a few spots, but a very good copy of a scarce title. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

£125

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London : Architectural Press, (1946). First edition. “Ewbank’d inside and Atco’d out, the English suburban residence and the garden which is an integral part of it stand trim and lovingly cared for in the mild sunshine ... ” – Richards’ faultless homage to and defence of suburbia, written while he was serving overseas. If not regarded as a minor classic, then it should be. Illustrated with memorable two-colour lithographs by John Piper.
Demy 8vo (22cm). 86pp. Eight plates. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt; a touch bruised; a few spots to edges and endleaves, but otherwise a very good copy in the original Piper dust-jacket – a pictorial design in pink, white, black and grey – lightly worn, slightly sunned, and a little spotted on rear panel and flaps, but complete and with just one short nick.

£100

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London : Lindsay Drummond, [1944]. First edition. A collection of twenty-one wartime short stories – from Mulk Raj Anand (Lottery), John Heath-Stubbs (That on Parched Mountains), J. F. Hendry (The Catacomb of Love), Rayner Heppenstall (The Bird has Flown), Inez Holden (To-day at the Bureaucracy), Gwyn Jones (Take us the Little Foxes), Mary Lavin (The Statue in the Grounds), John Pudney (The City of Copious Libations), Alan Ross (Pain), William Sansom (From the Water Junction) and others, including the two editors themselves. With biographical notes on the contributors.
First edition. Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],(186)pp. Original mustard cloth, ruled, blocked and lettered in cerise; very lightly rubbed and just lightly bruised; some spotting, mainly to edges; a couple of tiny creases, but still overall a very good copy in the striking Henry Moore dust-jacket – the jacket a little rubbed and slightly darkened, but with just minor wear and also very good.

£50

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London : Bradbury & Evans, 1855. First edition. Set in the decades following on from “Vanity Fair” (and reintroducing some of the characters in peripheral roles), Thackeray gives his most complete exploration of character, wealth, marriage and religion. “One of the few immortal novels ... As a novel of English upper and middle class life, it remains without a rival” (Helen Rex Keller).
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (216 x 134mm). viii,380; viii,(376)pp. Frontispieces, extra pictorial titles, forty-four plates and numerous wood-engravings in the text by the celebrated Richard Doyle (1824-1883). Bound (without half-titles) in a handsome near contemporary half crimson roan, banded and gilt, by James Maclehose (1811-1885) of Glasgow; marbled sides, edges and endleaves; a hint of rubbing and bruising; a few tiny scuffs; a handful of spots, but overall a very good, clean, bright and sound set. With the attractive gold-printed pictorial bookplate of A. P. Urquhart in each volume, and the small book label of the distinguished Newcastle bookseller Robert D. Steedman in the first.

£400

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London : Herbert Jenkins, (1958). First edition. Uncle Fred knocks Sir Raymond Bastable’s hat off with a brazil nut fired by catapult from the Drones Club. The third Uncle Fred novel – meddling, blackmail, scandal, and a pseudonymous and much-disowned novel called “Cocktail Time” – with Pongo Twistleton, Beefy Bastable, publishers, agents, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original red boards, blocked and lettered in black; a few slight marks; a hint of bruising; W. H. Smith Library label partially removed from front pastedown, but otherwise a very good and sound copy in the Hall dust-jacket – just lightly used, but also very good.

£100

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London : Herbert Jenkins, [1947]. First British edition. The sixth Blandings Castle novel, with Lord Emsworth, the Empress of Blandings, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, and Veronica Wedge – “the dumbest beauty listed in the pages of Debrett”. First published in New York a few months earlier.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 252pp. Original orange cloth, blocked and lettered in black; a touch of sunning, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket – a Frank Ford design of bare-shouldered beauty simpering at bespectacled gent – the dust-jacket lightly used, with a few tiny nicks, and neatly price-clipped, but otherwise also very good.

£125

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London : Herbert Jenkins, 1923. First edition : the second issue, listing eleven titles on the verso of the half-title. The second “Jeeves” title – “Jeeves Exerts the Old Cerebellum”, “Aunt Agatha Speaks Her Mind”, “The Great Sermon Handicap”, and fifteen further Jeeves and Wooster short stories (introducing Bingo Little for the first time).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (256)pp. Original pictorial green cloth, blocked and lettered in black; a hint of wear to head; a touch of bruising; spine faintly marked and slightly darkened; mild tanning of endpapers; a few slight spots, but a good copy of the book which firmly established Jeeves and Wooster in the national consciousness.

£200

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44161 – or simply click on the button