27 September 2016
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Library List No. 8: 27 September 2016 A selection of 19 items 1. ADLEY, Charles Coles. The Story of the Telegraph in India. London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1866 Octavo. Original maroon sand-grained cloth, title gilt to spine and to the upper board, triple fillet panel in blind to the boards, brown surface-paper endpapers. Folding map. Spine a little sunned, overall slightly rubbed, ?inscription clipped from the head of the title page, first gathering a little sprung, light toning, occasional foxing, a very good copy. First edition. Uncommon, just four locations on Copac - BL, Oxford, Cambridge, and NLS - OCLC adds MIT only. Adley dedicates the book to Robert Wygram Crawford, chairman of the Commons committee on East India Telegraphic and Postal communications, and also of The East India Railway Company, as another who has “ceaselessly advocated … measures indispensable to remedy the unhappily benighted condition of Telegraphic science and accommodation in India” (Preface). Adley had spent several years in the employ of the EIRC, as an Peter Harrington, 100 Fulham Road, London, UK SW3 6HS · Tel +44 20 7591 0220 · [email protected] assistant engineer on the Burdwan division in West Bengal, and for a year as resident engineer on the construction of the Raniganj division; he was later appointed Superintendent of the Telegraph Department of the line. In 1858 he had founded the Engineers’ Journal and Railway and Public Works Chronicle of India and the Colonies, published in Calcutta, which he also edited. After a brief retirement in England, he returned to India in 1868 joining the Public Works Department of the Government of India. His first duty was the design of the Small Arms Factory at Dum-Dum, Bengal, for which he was highly commended by the Government. He was subsequently engaged in designing drainage and irrigation systems for the improvement of the famine and fever-stricken districts near the Hooghly. In 1873 he finally retired to England, his health undermined by years working in the marshes of Bengal. He died in 1896, aged 68. £1,250 [99968] 2. BRUCE, Charles Edward. Waziristan, 1936–1937. The Problems of the North-West Frontiers of India and their Solutions. Aldershot: Gale & Polden, Ltd., 1938 Octavo. Original sand textured card wraps, lettered in brown on the front wrap. Map to the text. A little rubbed on the wraps, a scatter of foxing, but overall very good indeed. First published in 1938, this is a pre-publication issue, designated “Private and Confidential” on the title page. The text is heavily annotated throughout on available blank spaces, and on extra leaves paper-clipped, or loosely inserted in place. These notes takes the form of a dialogue, with the comments of Sir John Coleridge, initialled at the end (his opinion was evidently sought by Bruce), and Bruce’s red-inked responses. Between them they constitute a full and highly-informed= private debate between two serving officers with considerable experience of contemporary British frontier policy in the region in question. Bruce was educated at Wellington and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He joined the 20th Lancashire Fusiliers in 1896, transferring to the 24th Baluchistan Regiment in 1897. He saw service in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, and in 1901 joined the Indian Political Department, seeing action on the North West Frontier in operations against the Darwesh Khel Wazirs in 1902. He was mentioned in dispatches twice during WWI and awarded the OBE for his war services. He served in Afghanistan in 1919, MiD and awarded the CIE - Companion of the Indian Empire - going on to Waziristan, MID twice, and later awarded CBE and CSI - Commander of the Star of India. He was subsequently Chief Commissioner of Baluchistan through the 1920s, and retired in 1931. He wrote Waziristan 1936–1937 and others on various tribes along the N.W. Frontier of India. Coleridge was a classmate of Bruce’s at Wellington and Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Indian Staff Corps in 1898, transferring to the 8th Gurkhas in 1900, and accompanied the Younghusband Mission to Tibet in 1903. Coleridge served on the Abor expedition on the north-east frontier of India in 1911-12, MID. He served in World War I, joining the General Staff of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in 1916. He commanded the 189th Brigade from October 1917 and the 188th Brigade from December 1917, and was awarded the DSO and bar, and CMG. Following the War he returned to India as a General Staff Officer, carrying out a review of internal security measures and of the new Indian Defence Force. He served as Assistant Commandant at the Quetta Staff College, 1923–5, Military Secretary Army Headquarters, India, 1926-30, and became commander of the Kohat District in 1930. During the North West Frontier operations of 1930-1 he commanded, as a Major-General, the Peshawar District. He was Military Secretary to the India Office,1933-6, and General Officer Commanding Northern Command, India, 1936-40 for which he was MID twice, retiring shortly afterwards. A remarkable document, offering a unique, detailed and frank critique of British policy on the North West Frontier in the early part of the twentieth century. £1,500 [91487] A musical manuscript presented to his wife 3. [BURGESS, Anthony.] WILSON, John Burgess. Sonatina in G Major. For Anne Field. No place, Christmas, 1952 Folio, pp 6. White wove paper lined in six double staves, with plain front wrapper titled in ink by Burgess. Wire stitched. Housed in a blue cloth ribbon tied chemise by the Chelsea Bindery, with titles to front gilt. Worn at fold with old repair newly conserved. Some signs of damp in a small area slightly affecting three of four notes. Some further edge wear. Holograph music manuscript comprising the complete Sonatina written by Burgess as a Christmas gift to his first wife. Titled and annotated by him and signed at the end with the rare complete form of his signature John Burgess Wilson. Burgess famously wanted more than anything to be considered a composer and the present score comes some 6 years before his first published work of fiction. He wrote two books on music including his “Musical Autobiography”, This Man And Music, in which he boasts of his greatest work the “unplayable” Guitar concerto. Manuscript versions of his compositions are very scarce indeed - only one has appeared at auction in the past 35 years. We cannot imagine a more personally motivated example as this. £2,750 [25605] 4. (CHINDITS.) Collection of material relating to Wingate’s Chindits and their campaigns in Burma. [Various places and dates, 1940s-1980s] Superb collection of material concerning the Chindits, includes Wingate’s Report on the Operations of 77th Brigade; the original MS of the Hedley’s book Jungle Fighter; a number of SEAC Chindit publications; a small trove of pieces from the collection of a serving Chindit officer, including intelligence reports, some excellent press photographs, and a remarkable original “panic flag” - the escape map, neckerchief, signal flag carried by the Chindits; the privately produced Chindits Old Comrade’s Association appreciation of Wingate; together with a group of Chindit memoirs. These last are not the best copies in all cases, but most of the major books are there including Fergusson’s The Wild Green Earth signed, Anthony Brett-James’s copy with his pithy notes, and one of Patrick Boyle’s MS note-books used in the composition of Jungle, Jungle Little Chindit. More detailed listing follows below. Overall very good. Named after the temple-guard leogryphs of Burma, the Chindits were a special forces group formed by the enigmatic and charismatic Orde Wingate, one of the greatest early exponents of unconventional warfare. In two campaigns - Operation Longcloth an exploratory expedition into Japanese-held territory by a force of just 3,000 beginning in February 1943, and Operation Thursday of March 1944, which was the second largest airborne operation of the Second World War - this mixed force of British, Burma Rifles, Hong Kong Volunteers, Gurkhas and West African troops were instrumental in eroding the Japanese grip on Burma. This collection contains some extremely uncommon contemporary material; personal effects of a serving officer; together with a significant group of the memoirs written by participants: a) WINGATE, O.C., Brigadier. Report on Operations of 77th Indian Infantry Brigade in Burma, February to June 1943. New Delhi: Printed by the Manager Government of India Press, 1943. Octavo. Original green cloth backed printed boards. Large folding coloured map in end-pocket, diagrams and tables to the text. Boards slightly browned, else a very good copy. Wingate’s report on Operation “Longcloth”, the founding operation of the “Chindits”. Setting out with three objectives; to cut the railway line between Mandalya and Myitkyina; to harrass the enemy in the Shwebo district; and if possible to cross the Irrawaddy and cut the railway between Mandalay and Lashio. They were successful in the first objective and Japanese reaction to their presence indicates a degree of success in the second. However, at the railway line two columns were ambushed and incurred heavy casualties, Wingate ordered a general dispersal and retreat back to India. They had spent twelve weeks in the jungle and marched almost a thousand miles, their losses were 833 out of 3,000 men. Wingate saw the operation as a dismal failure, but whilst it lacked material results “Longcloth” recast future strategic thinking. It had been shown that the British could attack in the jungle, an alien environment for them, and take the war to the Japanese. Wingate accompanied Churchill to Quebec in August ‘43 for the “Quadrant” conference with the intention of persuading the Allied chiefs of the soundness of the long range penetration concept.