BATTERSEA Book Fair List, 2018 .
STAND M09
Item 43
BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BQ, UK Tel.: +44 (0)1865 333555 Fax: +44 (0)1865 794143 Email: [email protected] Twitter: @blackwellrare blackwell.co.uk/rarebooks
BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
1. Abbott (Mary) [Original artwork:] Sketch Book. early 1940s, sketches in ink and pencil throughout, some use of colour, text of various types (mostly colouring suggestions, some appointments, and a passage of lyrical prose), pp. [190, approx.], 4to, black cloth, various paint spots, webbing showing at front hinge, rear hinge starting, loose gathering at rear, ownership inscription of ‘Mary Lee Abbott, 178 Spring Street’, sound £15,000 An important document, showing the early progress of one of the key figures of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism; various influences, from her immediate surroundings to the European avant-garde, are evident, as are the emergent characteristics of her own style - the energetic use of line, bold ideas about colour, the blending of abstract and figurative. Were the nature of the work not indicative of a stage of development, the presence of little recorded details such as an appointment with Vogue magazine would supply an approximate date - Abbott modelled for the magazine at the beginning of this decade.
2. Achebe (Chinua) Things Fall Apart. Heinemann, 1958, UNCORRECTED PROOF COPY FOR FIRST EDITION, a couple of handling marks and a few faint spots occasionally, a couple of passages marked lightly in pencil to the margin, pp. [viii], 185, crown 8vo, original tan wrappers printed to front and backstrip, the front with publication date and price written in blue ink, the stamp of ‘Juta & Co Ltd’ in Cape Town and ‘21 Apr 1958’ (date of sending?) stamped at foot, a few spots to edges, pencilled ownership inscription to half-title (flyleaf not called for), proof dustjacket chipped at head of backstrip panel with spotting to rear panel and rubbing to extremities, Juta & Co stamp at foot of front flap, good £3,500 An important work of post-colonial fiction, set in Nigeria at the end of the nineteenth-century - a scarce proof, the dustjacket of which does not carry the price but otherwise matches the design of the published version. A copy with African provenance, the publisher having offices in Cape Town.
3. Agee (James) A Death in the Family. Victor Gollancz, 1958, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. [viii], 339, crown 8vo, original maroon boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket with backstrip panel a shade darkened, wraparound band, very good £100 A review copy, with the publisher’s compliments slip loosely inserted.
4. Aldiss (Brian W.) An Age. Faber and Faber, 1967, FIRST EDITION, pp. 224, crown 8vo, original grey cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt with a few faint spots, dustjacket price- clipped, near fine £150 Signed by the author on the title-page, the signature dated to 1994.
5. [Alleyn (Edward)] The Statutes of Dulwich Colledge [sic]. [Dulwich: c. 1680], manuscript in ink on paper, red ruled margins, a few spots and stains, pp. 69, plus initial blank leaf, and 12 blank (save for red rules) leaves at end, folio, loose in the original limp vellum binding, title as above in MS on upper cover, a bit dust-soiled and a few other minor stains, good £3,000 This is a relatively early copy of ‘The Original Book of the Statutes and Ordinances of the College of God's Gift in Dulwich, Sept. 29, 1626, with an additional clause dated Nov. 20, 1626’ (Henslowe- Alleyn Digitisation Project, Muniments Series 3, Group 594). The College was originally ‘Alleyn's College of God's Gift at Dulwich’, but was known colloquially as Dulwich College more or less ab initio (but not correctly until 1808). The additional clause is dated only five days before Alleyn’s death. The dates of Edward Alleyn, (1566–1626), actor and theatre entrepreneur, are close to those of Shakespeare. Alleyn was two years younger, and survived the dramatist by a decade. ‘The impulse for this foundation had come from a variety of factors: Alleyn's childlessness; the current vogue for building such foundations, exemplified by such patrons as Thomas Sutton (who built Sutton's Hospital, that is, Charterhouse, in 1611); and the driving impulse to achieve fame and build a monumental legacy that seemed to be one of Alleyn's defining traits throughout his life. He had purchased the manor of Dulwich in 1605; the bargain was completed in late spring the next year and the entire estate passed into his hands in 1614. In May 1613 the physical construction of the college had begun (Alleyn having moved to Dulwich from his former house in Southwark) and
2 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
in September 1616 the college chapel was consecrated by George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury. Then, in 1618, Alleyn encountered opposition from Francis Bacon, then lord chancellor, who attempted to stay the patent for the institution because he opposed the transfer of personal fortunes to foundations ... But Alleyn was not one to be easily beaten down. After almost a year of politicking he managed to convince Bacon to change his mind, and on 13 September 1619 he read the deed of foundation and statutes in the college. Distinguished statesmen attended the event, including Francis Bacon, Inigo Jones (the king's surveyor), Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, Sir Thomas Grimes, John Finch (later lord keeper), and Sir John Bodley’ (ODNB).
Edward Gorey dustjacket 6. Amis (Kingsley) Lucky Jim. A Novel. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1954, FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, pp. 256, crown 8vo, original brick-red cloth, backstrip lettered in white, a touch of pushing at bottom corners, some very faint adhesive browning to endpapers, a small faint waterstain at foot of textblock, dustjacket by Edward Gorey with a little toning to backstrip and rear panel, the odd nick, very good £475 The American edition of Amis’s masterpiece is a more attractive proposition than its English antecedent, with early work by Edward Gorey - then on the staff at Doubleday - providing an illustration to the text.
7. Anderson (Poul) Three Hearts and Three Lions. New York: Doubleday, 1961, FIRST EDITION, a cluster of incredibly faint spots to prelims, pp. 191, 8vo, original red cloth with Edward Gorey lion stamped in gilt to upper board, backstrip lettered and decorated in gilt and black,minor rubbing along tail edge of cloth, faint endpaper browning, top edge red with the roughtrimmed fore-edge faintly spotted, Edward Gorey dustjacket a little nicked at head of backstrip panel, very good £300 A presentation copy: ‘Skål to John Baxter, Poul Anderson’ - the recipient a fellow Science Fiction author and bibliophile. Laid in is a typed letter to another author in the genre, the Dane Jannick Storm. Anderson’s letter, which opens with a stream of Danish, goes on to discuss the Danish translation of the present work, which Storm has related as being ‘faulty’ - a fact of ‘no surprise’ to the author, who continues with a discussion of the possible reasons for its deficiency and then a summary of the standard of translations that he has experienced (’The best [...] have been French. the worst have been German -- except for one very nice Swiss job’. An excellent double-association copy of one of the author’s key works, set partly in the Denmark of the author’s childhood - under the shadow of Nazism - before proceeding to a fantasy world informed by Medieval Romance and Norse Legend, amongst other influences.
8. Anon. The Frenzy of Fashion. Addressed to the Ladies. Printed for W. Goldsmith, 1777, woodcut tailpiece at end (see below), pp. 11, [1, blank], 4to, disbound, loose, good (ESTC T224090) £1,500 An impassioned tirade (in verse) against the laxity of modern morals, the folly and indeed the physical cruelties of the demands of fashion, harking back to a golden age. The woodcut at the end shows an oval with the monogram RC, possibly a clue to the authorship. Frenzy is a word that has lost its force, and is now applied approvingly to itself by the fashion industry. Rare: BL only in ESTC. ‘Tho’ brawny Fulvia strain her yielding waist, Taper’d by force, and tortured into taste Tho’ the squeez’d stomach to the bosom screw’d Swells into neck, and hungry yearns for food’
9. (Aristotle.) Michael of Ephesus Scholia, idest, brevis sed erudita atque utilis interpretatio in IIII. libros Aristotelis De Partibus Animalium. Dominico Monthesauro Veronensi interprete. Nunc primmùm in lucem edita. Basle: Peter Perna, 1559, FIRST EDITION, woodcut vignette to title-page, woodcut initials, Roman and italic letter, pp. 325, [15, including final blank], 8vo, contemporary limp vellum, title inked (twice) to spine, minor staining, tiny hole in spine, inscription to title-page of the convent of Santa Maria Inviolata, Riva del Garda, good (VD16 M 5134; USTC 604075; OCLC locates copies outside continental Europe at Oxford, Cambridge, British Library and Stanford) £2,500
3 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
First edition of a commentary by the important 12th-century Byzantine scholar Michael of Ephesus, on Aristotle's work 'On the parts of animals'. Michael was one of the principal Aristotelian scholars in a group organized in Constantinople by the Empress Anna Comnena. They represented an eastern Christian tradition of philosophical study that continued after the fall of Alexandria, its centre, to Arab conquerors in 642. Michael finished his commentaries in or after 1138. The present work was translated into Latin for by Domenico Montesauro, a physician of Verona. Michael's work is followed (201-325) by a version in Latin of book I of the original Aristotle, with facing commentary (presented here in italic), by the Padua philosophy professor Niccolo Leonico Tomeo (1456-1531). Tomeo's work had first been published in an edition of Venice, 1540, with a second edition of Paris, 1542. The printer reports (pp.4-5) that he was encouraged to add this part to his book by the great Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner (1516-1565).
10. Auden (W.H.) Look, Stranger! Poems. Faber and Faber, 1936, FIRST EDITION, pp. 69, 8vo, original grey cloth with backstrip panel and borders a little sunned, backstrip lettered in gilt, a few tiny spots to top edge, other edges roughtrimmed, sprinkling of tiny spots at head of rear endpapers,dustjacket discreetly price-clipped with some minor fraying, very good £95
11. [Austen (Jane)] Pride and Prejudice: a Novel in Two Volumes. Vol. I [-II]. Third Edition. Printed for T. Egerton, 1817, 2 vols., bound without half-titles or terminal blanks, some foxing, water-staining in the lower outer quarter of the seconf half of vol. ii, tiny hole in B8 in vol. i between lines 7 and 8 (no loss of text), pp.[ii], 289, [1]; [ii], 311, 12mo, contemporary half calf, flat spines gilt in compartments, neat repairs to joints, upper compartment of spine of vol. i renewed, new lettering pieces, early initials scrawled in a thin pen at head of title-pages, good (Gilson A5; Keynes 5) £5,000 The publishing history of this edition is not known. Jane Austen ‘was clearly not consulted (having sold the copyright) and no allusion to this edition has been traced in her surviving letters; it is not apparent whether A5 [i.e. this edition] was in fact issued before or after the author’s death [on July 18th, 1817]. Sales may not have been rapid; two copies have been seen in what appear to be later remainder cloth bindings’ (Gilson). ‘The chapters have been renumbered in this edition to suit the division into two volumes [as opposed to the three of the first two editions], and these new numbers have been reproduced in most later reprints’ (Keynes).
12. [Austen (Jane)] Sense and Sensibility: a Novel. In Three Volumes. The Second Edition. Vol. I [-III]. Printed for the Author, By C. Roworth, and Published by T. Egerton, 1813, 3 vols., bound without half-titles and terminal blanks, sporadic foxing (as usual), slight defect to inner margin of 1 leaf in vol. i, 4 leaves almost loose in vol. ii (never caught by the sewing), minor worming in the lower margin in vol. iii, pp. [ii], 306; [ii], 278; [ii], 294, 12mo, contemporary half calf, flat spines gilt in compartments, neat repairs to joints, new lettering pieces, engraved armorial bookplate inside front covers of vols. i and ii (Rumbold family), good (Gilson A2; Keynes 2) £8,000 Second edition of the author’s first book. The first edition, published in 1811, was sold out by July 1813. ‘The author introduced several alterations into the text of this edition, and one passage containing a reference to an improper subject was omitted’ (Keynes). ‘By a Lady’ on the title- page of the first edition is replaced by ‘By the author of Pride and Prejudice’, that novel having been published in January 1813.
13. [Barlow (William)] Magneticall Aduertisements: or divers pertinent obseruations, and approued experiments concerning the nature and properties of the Load-stone ... most needfull for practise, of trauelling, or framing of Instruments fit for Trauellers both by Sea and Land. Edward Griffin for Timothy Barlow, 1616, FIRST EDITION, printer's woodcut device on title (McKerrow 380), woodcut diagrams and illustrations in the text, 2 full- page, title soiled and with a very small hole and a small fragment missing from the top outer corner, pen trials and small ink stain, early repair in the margin of B3 and D2, occasional damp-staining and soiling, pp. [xvi], 86, [2, letter from William Gilbert to the author], [1, Errata], 4to, 19th-century calf, sides panelled in gilt, rebacked, extremities
4 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
rubbed, corners lightly scuffed, contemporary inscription with flourish on verso of title ‘Mr. Marshall his book’, initial P added before signature letter B (= Philip Bliss, 1787- 1857), blind stamp of the Royal Institution on the title, and their stamp in gilt on the upper cover (ESTC S104534; Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners 129; Wheeler Gift 89) £27,500 Rare, containing Barlow’s fundamental discovery, the directional properties of the compass-needle. In this book the English word magnetism (and also magneticall) is used for the first time (OED). The only other complete copy sold at auction since the Honeyman sale in 1978 was the Horblit-Streeter copy (sold Christie’s New York, 16 April 2007, $36,000 – “one diagram and some headlines cropped”). This is a large copy with no cropping. Barlow ‘designed navigating instruments, polar charts, and compasses. He explained the difference between iron and steel needles; improved the needle's shape; made an easily removable card so the needle could be easily remagnetized; gave instructions as to the best method of remagnetizing the needle by stroking it with the lodestone three or four times from the needle's center to the ends, using the north end of the lodestone for the needle's north end, and the south for the south. He also designed an azimuth compass for measuring the variations which happened to be an improvement on the instrument designed by Norman and Borough; it was a compass with sights and a verge ring marked in degrees, the first such compass, and was to be used by grateful seamen for over two hundred years’ (Gurney, Compass, a Story of Exploration and Innovation, New York (2004), p. 64). Before the text is an inserted leaf with a biographical notice of Barlow (?by Bliss), and the note ‘of Thorpe’ - i.e. bought from the bookseller Thomas Thorpe (1791-1851). The ‘P’B is followed by the numerals 44, probably indicating the year the book was acquired, and below to the left are the letters ‘Pa’, possibly being a price code.
14. (Beaton.) MY ROYAL PAST, by Baroness Von Bülop, née Princess Theodora Louise Alexina Ludmilla Sophie von Eckermann-Waldstein. As told to Cecil Beaton. B.T. Batsford, 1939, FIRST EDITION, colour frontispiece portrait of ‘the authoress in oils’, plates from photographs and line-drawings throughout, pp. xi, 146, 4to, original orange cloth, backstrip lettered in dark purple with a little fading at ends, top edge purple, a few faint spots to flyleaf, minor wear to one corner, dustjacket a little chipped and torn with some internal repair, good £400 Inscribed by Beaton on the flyleaf, with ‘Love to darling Winifred, Xmas 1939’ - the recipient being the author Clemence Dane (the nom de plume of Winifred Ashton). An uproarious spoof memoir, offering the recollections of a minor European royal ‘in the palmy pre-War days, which we shall never know again’. ‘Though perhaps never considered one of the great beauties of her time’ - the face of the disgraced noblewoman inserted into various portraits and group photographs throughout in fact belongs to Beaton’s friend, Chilean playboy Tony Gandarillas. Cameos from Francis Rose, Frederick Ashton, Michael Duff, and Lord Berners all add to the fun, with the text rich and ripe with absurdity from the Errata list (’For “Mademoiselle” read “meddlesome”’, etc.) on.
15. Beckett (Samuel, Translator) Anthology of Mexican Poetry. Compiled by Octavio Paz. Preface by C.M. Bowra. Thames and Hudson, [1959,] FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. 213, [1], crown 8vo, original brown cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt with publisher device in same to upper board, faintest of foxing to fore-edge, dustjacket with backstrip panel a shade darkened, very good (Federman and Fletcher 501.1) £175
Morris on Kelmscott 16. (Birmingham Guild of Handicraft.) THE QUEST, [Vol. 2], Number IV. Birmingham, November 1895, FIRST EDITION, C.M. Gere drawing of Kelmscott Manor engraved by William Hooper, further illustrations by the same as well as E.H. New, C.A. Levetus, E.G. Treglown, Sydney Meteyard, H.A. Payne, and M.J. Newill, along with initial letters throughout predominantly by Treglown and one by Payne, some offset browning and a small area of browning at head of gutter throughout, a few small spots at foot of title- page, pp. 47, [7, ads], 4to, original grey wrappers printed in green with some faint
5 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
browning, backstrip darkened, overhanging edges nicked and chipped, textblock edges untrimmed, good £300 An important issue of this attractively produced magazine, featuring Morris’s ‘Gossip About an Old House on the Upper Thames’, in which Morris describes in affectionate detail his dwelling and the activities there. Gere’s illustration originally featured in the Kelmscott edition of ‘News from Nowhere’, with the block, it is noted, ‘kindly lent by Mr Morris’. The magazine ran to a further two issues.
17. (Black Cygnet Press.) TOURNOUR (Sister Margaret) Bible Birds. Wood Engravings. Durham, 1996, ONE OF 100 COPIES, printed on Zerkall mouldmade paper, frontispiece, vignettes to title-page and colophon, and 18 full-page wood-engravings by Tournour printed on versos with corresponding quotation from Scripture to facing recto, pp. [49], royal 8vo, original quarter brown cloth with Cockerell marbled boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, top corners a trifle bumped, near fine (Halliwell 84) £150 Printed at the Tragara Press in Edinburgh, preceding the artist’s Bible Birds for the same Press and Bible Plants for Clarion Publishing.
With a TLs about ‘Th e Secret’ 18. Blish (James) A Clash of Cymbals. Faber and Faber, 1959, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. 197, crown 8vo, original red cloth, backstrip lettered in yellow, some faint foxing to edges and endpapers, Australian bookseller stamp at foot of flyleaf, TLs from the author tipped to front pastedown (see below), dustjacket price-clipped with the backstrip panel faintly sunned, very good £200 In the typed letter, the author explains to bibliophile and fellow science fiction author John Baxter that his wife Virginia Kidd collaborated with him on the book (’she wrote about a third of the novel in question’), and explains their writing process in detail - before reflecting obliquely on the fact that she had changed her policy regarding disclosure of this fact: ‘That’s the Secret, such as it is’ - signed, ‘Best wishes, Jim Blish’. Also the first hardback edition, having appeared as a paperback in the US under the title ‘The Triumph of Time’; the third instalment of the author’s ‘Cities in Flight’ series.
19. Bond (Nelson) The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950, FIRST EDITION, pp. 224, crown 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrip lettered in white, some minor grazing to cloth of lower board, bookplate of Raymond J. Browne to flyleaf, bookseller ticket to rear pastedown, dustjacket with backstrip panel a little browned and minor fraying around head, very good £125 Inscribed by the author on the title-page: ‘For John Baxter, with the best wishes of the author, Nelson Bond’, and additionally signed by the dedicatee (the author’s son) on the dedication page. A card with a festive design is laid in, bearing a note from the author to the same, inviting him to an open house on New Year’s Eve.
20. Boulle (Pierre) La Planète des singes. Roman Paris: René Juillard, 1963, FIRST EDITION, 46/50 DE LUXE COPIES, printed on Alfa paper, occasional light spotting, pp. 267, 8vo, original printed cream wrappers, a faint stain at very head of front with minor creasing to bottom corner of same, edges untrimmed and largely uncut with light foxing, publisher’s slip with copy number loosely inserted, original tissue jacket with a tear across head of rear panel and a touch of light fraying elsewhere, very good £2,000 With the author’s signature on a card, loosely inserted. The large paper edition of this major twentieth-century novel, the beginning of a continuing dynasty.
The Producibleness of Chymi cal Principles 21. [Boyle (Robert)] The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts and Paradoxes, Touching the Experiments Whereby the Vulgar Spagirists are Wont to Endeavour to Evince Their Salt, Sulphur and Mercury to be the True Principles of Things. To which in
6 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
this Edition are subjoyn’d divers Experiments and Notes about the Producibleness of Chymical Principles. Oxford: Printed by Henry Hall for Richard Davis and B. Took, 1680, Second edition of the Sceptical Chemist, first edition of Experiments and Notes, without the advertisement (as usual), some browning, confined to three gatherings in the first part, more general in the second, a few ink or rust spots, pp. [xx], 440, [xxviii], 268, 8vo, contemporary English calf, double gilt fillets on sides, gilt fleurons in the corners, surface of covers crackled, rebacked and recornered, old staple holes to upper board from a chained library, old ink notes to front flyleaf and name of author at top of title page written in an old hand, Sion College library stamp and release stamp (dated 1938) to title verso, good (Wing B4022; Fulton 34; Madan 3261and 3260; PMM 141 for the first edition; ESTC R16310) £12,000 ‘The importance of Boyle’s book must be sought in his combination of chemistry with physics. His corpuscular theory, and Newton’s modification of it, gradually led chemists towards an atomic view of matter ... Boyle distinguished between mixtures and compounds and tried to understand the latter in terms of the simpler chemical entities from which they could be constructed. His argument was designed to lead chemists away from the pure empiricism of his predecessors and to stress the theoretical, experimental and mechanistic elements of chemical science. The Sceptical Chymist is concerned with the relations between chemical substances rather than with transmuting one metal into another or the manufacture of drugs. In this sense the book must be considered as one of the most significant milestones on the way to the chemical revolution of Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century’ (PMM). In Experiments and Notes about the Producibleness of Chymicall Principles ‘Boyle undertook to show that many of the substances best qualified for the title elements could, in fact, be produced by transmutation from a variety of other elementary starting materials. And he considered this an important demonstration because: “If the bodies they call principles be produced de novo how will it be demonstrable, that nature was obliged to take those principles made ready to her hand, when she was to compound a mix’t body?’” (Kuhn p. 28). The first edition (London, 1661) of the Sceptical Chymist can now command a six-figure sum.
22. (Brancusi.) POUND (Ezra), Mina Loy, Iwan Goll, Jean Cocteau, Mary Butts et al. The Little Review. Quarterly Journal of Arts and Letters [VIII:1, Brancusi Issue.] New York, Autumn 1921, 24 plates showing photographs of Brancusi sculptures, a couple of minor outbreaks of faint spotting, pp. 112, 4to, original wrappers, minor creasing with some faint foxing and a small chip at head of backstrip, good (Gallup C627) £225 An important number of this major modernist magazine, beginning with Pound’s essay on Brancusi and illustrated with his sculpture throughout. It ends on a terse note: ‘Before we could revive from our trial for Joyce’s “Ulysses” it was announced for publication in book form. We limp from the field’.
23. Brant (Sebas tian) Stultifera Navis, Narragonice profectionis nu[m]q[uam] sat[is] laudata Nauis ... Atq[ue] iampridem per Jacobum Locher, cognomento Philomusum: Sueuu[m]: in latinu[m] traducta eloquiu[m]: Et per sebastianu[m] Brant: denuo seduloq[ue] reuisa: felici exorditur principio. [colophon:] Strasbourg: Johann (Reinhard) Grüninger, 1st June, 1497, with 116 woodcuts in the text, G1 with what appears to be a paperflaw, just affecting 1 letter on the recto and with minute loss to the woodcut on the verso, a few headline shaved, repair to lower outer corner of P1 (not affecting text), a tendency to browning, a few spots and stains, 112 leaves numbered 1-116, with errors, 4to (200 x 145 mm), early nineteenth-century dark green straight-grained morocco by Jno (i.e. John) Clarke (according to a neat inscription on the fly-leaf, probably the binder’s signature), quintuple gilt fillets on sides with an ornament of concentric circles at the corners, spine richly gilt in compartments, lettered in gilt direct in 2 compartments at the top, place of printing (‘Argêtina’, as per colophon) and date at the foot, gilt edges, neatly rebacked, armorial bookplate of E. Horrn Frost inside front cover, initials on the fly-leaf, and full signature ‘Elias Henry Frost’ at the foot of yiiiv dated from Charleston So[uth] Ca[rolina]
7 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
April 1852, good (ISTC ib01089000; Goff B1089; BMC I 112; PMM 37 for the first edition) £18,500 This ‘curious and amusing droll old book’ (as per an old bookseller’s description tipped onto the inside fron cover) first appeared in German in 1494, and in Latin, at Basle, 1 March 1497, of which this a reprint with different woodcuts. There was another Strasbourg reprint (Strasbourg being Brant’s native city) by Johann Schönsperger, 1 April 1497, which included the Basle colophon. Brant spared no-one in his satire, and the book immediately became immensely popular, in fact an unprecedented bestseller, with numerous authorised and unauthorised editions. ‘The Influence of “The Ship of Fools” was extensive and prolonged ... [It] was the first original work by a German which passed into world literature ... Brant’s book played an important part in European literature, and helped to blaze the trail that leads from medieval allegory to modern satire, drama and the novel of character’ (PMM).
24. Brooke (Jocelyn) A Mine of Serpents. The Bodley Head, 1949, FIRST EDITION, frontispiece with further plates before each of the book’s six sections, each with head and tail-piece also, pp. 252, crown 8vo original blue cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt and faded, top edge red, dustjacket with a few nicks, very good £225 Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf, to an eminent literary critic: ‘To Richard Ellmann, With admiration and all good wishes, from the author Jocelyn Brooke, 27 April 1960, Bishopsbourne’. The second in the author’s trilogy of ‘managed autobiography’, including reference to his time at Worcester College, Oxford.
25. Bruce (Robert) The VVay to True Peace and Rest Deliuered at Edinborough in xvi. Sermons: on the Lords Supper: Hezechiahs sicknesse: and other select Scriptures. Printed by R. Field for Thomas Man and Ionas Man 1617, woodcut printer’s device on title, outer leaves a bit soiled, damp-staining and a bit of browning, no endpapers, the front inner hinge strengthened with Japanese paper encrouching onto the printed matter very slightly, first few and last few leaves a bit frayed at at edges, pp. [xii], 367, small 4to, original limp vellum, rubbed and soiled, spine a little defective at head (ESTC S105939) £1,500 Consists of a Anglicizations of "Sermons upon the sacrament of the Lords Supper" and "Sermons preached in the Kirk of Edinburgh", published in Edinburgh in 1591. The 1591 edition is quite rare, and the present edition also pretty scarce, with 8 UK copies recorded in ESTC, 3 in the US. Bruce had a tempestuous career, constantly at loggerheads, with interludes of reconciliation, with his monarchs. The qualification on the title, ‘for the Present, Minister of the Word in Scotland’, is pregnant. Two of the sermons are of a directly political nature: ‘Intreating of the great delivery in 88 from the Spanish tyranny’, and ‘Preached at the publike Repentance of the Earle of Bothwell.’
26. Buchan (John) The Gap in the Curtain. Hodder and Stoughton, 1932, FIRST EDITION, p. 315, 4 [ads], crown 8vo, original green cloth with blind-stamped border to upper board and author’s initials in gilt to same, backstrip lettered in gilt, a trifle rubbed at head and with lean to spine, a few spots to edges, Blackwell sticker to front pastedown, good (Blanchard A94) £120 Signed by the author on the title-page.
27. Buckle (Richard) John Innocent at Oxford. A Fantasy. Illustrated by the Author. Chatto & Windus, 1939, FIRST EDITION, 7 full-page line drawings by the author, pp. vii, 150, foolscap 8vo, original quarter black cloth with marbled paper boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, top edge red, dustjacket designed by the author, price-clipped, very good £95 An amusing, satirical fantasy novel, set in Oxford University at the close of the twentieth century, from the well-known ballet critic, presumably incorporating impressions from the year he spent at Balliol.
28. Burns (Alan) Europe After the Rain. John Calder, 1965, FIRST EDITION, monochrome reproduction of eponymous Ernst painting double-spread to title-page, pp. 128, crown 8vo, original maroon boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, very faint shadow at head of
8 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
boards, dustjacket again with Ernst painting, minor soiling to this with the odd nick, very good £150 An ekphrastic piece of apocalyptic fiction, the author’s first novel - taking as its reference point the Max Ernst painting of the same name.
29. Burroughs (William) The Naked Lunch. John Calder in association with Olympia Press, 1964, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. [iv], 251, 8vo, original khaki boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, sprinkling of light spots to top edge and faint spot at head of flyleaf, dustjacket with a small spot of internal tape repair to upper joint-fold and at foot of front panel, very light sunning to backstrip panel, light creasing to extremities, very good £200 The striking dustjacket design, the eyes of its author glowing red, makes this a desirable edition of one of the most successful literary contributions of the Beat movement; the publisher’s estimation that it is ‘worthy to stand beside the work of Joyce, Kafka, Eliot and Beckett’ (dustjacket blub) is perhaps an overstatement.
30. Byron (Robert) The Road to Oxiana. Macmillan, 1937, FIRST EDITION, frontispiece and 15 further photographic plates, 4 full-page maps, very faint foxing to title-page and to one or two of the plates, pp. [ix], 341, [2, ads], crown 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt with very slight lean to spine, a few pinprick foxspots to endpapers, dustjacket with some tiny faint foxspots at foot of rear panel and one or two further faint marks, a tiny amount of deft restoration at corner-folds, very good £4,000 Scarce in the dustjacket. A ‘sacred text’ to Bruce Chatwin, a view which is echoed by many modern travellers.
31. (Cabbala. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni.) ARCANGELO DA BORGONUOVO Cabalistarum selectiora obscurioraque dogmata, a Ioanne Pico ex eorum commentationibus pridem excerpta, et ab Archangelo Burgonouensi minoritano, nunc primùm luculentissimis interpretationibus illustrata. ... Cum amplissimo indice rerum omnium insigniorum. Venice: Francesco de Franceschi, 1569, FIRST EDITION, woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut initials and head- and tailpieces, a bit of damp-staining and a few spots, tear at foot of Q7 repaired, entering text but without loss, ff. [xxviii], 219, [1, blank], small 8vo, contemporary limp vellum, traces of ties, another, short, work removed at end, lower cover repaired, early (and untidy) ownership inscription on title, title in ink on upper cover, that on the spine obscured (Adams P-1135; Bibliotheca Esoterica 3658; CNCE 2310) £6,000 First edition of this commentary on the cabbalistic theses of Pico della Mirandola. Arcangelo da Borgonuovo, a Franciscan, died at a ripe old age just before this book was published. He had spent most of his life defending Cabbalist doctrines, and Pico della Mirandola in particular. They shared the same Hebrew teacher in Flavio Mitridate. A very rare book: no copy in the USA in WorldCat.
32. Capote (Truman) Breakfast at Tiffany's. Hamish Hamilton, 1958, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. 159, crown 8vo, original red boards, backstrip lettered in silver with slight lean to spine, dustjacket price-clipped with a few nicks, very good £200
33. (Caradoc Press.) KALENDAR MDCCCCI. [1900,] SOLE EDITION, printed in red and black with wood-engraved initials and other decorations by H.G. and H.D. Webb, tissue guards, pp. [28], 64mo, original quarter vellum and blue board, device to upper board stamped in red with printed label to same, some very faint spotting and a faint offset of red ink clearly from the press device to lower board, untrimmed and largely unopened, bookplate to front pastedown, good (Ransom p. 225) £300 A charming little production, early in the life of the Press and with some pleasing amateurishness in the production - including a total of thirty days for the month of February (evidently the first issue, as copies have been seen with this corrected).
9 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
The Tove Jansson ‘Alice’ 34. Carroll (Lewis) Alice I Underlandet. I Översättning av Åke Runnquist , med Illustrationer av Tove Jansson. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers, 1966, FIRST JANSSON EDITION, illustrations throughout including 4 full-page and 11 with colour-printing, ownership inscription to half-title, pp. 112, 8vo, original brown cloth with Jansson medallion-design stamped in gilt to upper board, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket with Jansson design, a very short closed tear at foot of rear panel, a couple of tiny nicks, very mild toning to backstrip panel and borders, very good £950 A delightful edition and a lovely copy - Jansson’s illustrations are distinctive and appropriate.
The scarce deluxe issue 35. Carroll (Lewis) Alices Äventyr I Sagolandet och Bakom Spegeln. Översätt av Gösta Knutsson [Samtliga teckningar utförda av Robert Högfeldt.] Stockholm: Jan Förlag, 1945, FIRST HÖGFELDT EDITION, frontispiece and 9 further colour-printed plates with line drawings to the text, pp. 219, 8vo, original deluxe binding of half red morocco with marbled boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, some minor rubbing to extremities, dustjacket with some internal tape repair, very good £900
36. Carroll (Lewis) Snarkjakten. I Översättning av Lars Forssell och Åke Runnquist. Illustrerad av Tove Jansson. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers, 1959, FIRST SWEDISH EDITION, frontispiece and 8 full-page illustrations by Tove Jansson as well as numerous tail-piece decorations, pp. 52, crown 8vo, original wrappers with Jansson illustrations to both covers (that to front colour-printed), a hint of creasing to corners and the faintest of toning, near fine £850 A wonderful edition of Carroll’s poem, with Jansson’s illustrations - full of her characteristically sombre and quizzical expressions - capturing its mood perfectly. A sparkling copy, and scarce thus - the illustrations were used for an English language version by the Tate Gallery in 2012, but this is their original publication.
The Templar Holy Grail 37. Charteris (Leslie) Typescript of unpublished story ['The Saint's Second Front'] [circa 1941,] COMPLETE TYPESCRIPT with manuscript corrections, additions and deletions in pencil (sometimes red) by the author, some pages toned, one or two with faint spots and handling marks, pp. 237 [rectos only], 4to, loose sheets some with marginal creasing and the odd nick, in original envelope with pencilled note to author from typist to front and with ‘Pearl Harbor’ written in red ink to both envelope and label at head, splitting to envelope, in custom cloth and morocco slipcase and chemise, good £12,500 Charteris’s own copy of a story presumed lost, and a survival that apparently escaped even the author’s own subsequent recollection. There is no title to the typescript itself, but in correspondence Charteris refers to an unpublished novella called ‘The Saint’s Second Front’ that seems to relate to the present work - an alternative name that has become attached to it, ‘The Saint at Pearl Harbor’, refers to the subsequent attack from later in the same year that the story seems to predict. The prophetic nature of the narrative was one that Charteris revelled in from the point of view of his ability to predict events, and explains the titling of the envelope - it had become the most significant thing about a story which there was no longer any prospect of having published (Charteris reflected that ‘now [...] unlike other prophetic stories which I first brought out when they were prophetic, there would be no point in publishing it’). The plot concerns Templar’s aversion of a Japanese attack on the US, though directed at the coast of Southern California rather than Oahu. In the January 1965 issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine, Charteris remembered that the story had been rejected by ‘the national magazine I wrote it for [almost certainly Cosmopolitan] because “we do not think this is the time to publish anything which might aggravate the tensions with our Japanese friends”’. In the May 1957 issue of The Saint Detective Magazine, Charteris remarked that this was ’the only story I have written since becoming
10 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
a professional which never got published: nobody would touch it’ , and its bad start in life had since been thought to have rendered it lost to posterity, with the fact of its existence obscure - until, that is, the emergence of the present document, which displays Charteris at the height of his powers for both writing and prophecy.
38. (Chess.) The Book of the London International Chess Congress, 1899. Longmans, Green, 1900, FIRST EDITION, ONE OF 500 COPIES, various tables and diagrams, pp. lii, 232, royal 8vo, original brown buckram with publisher’s device stamped in gilt to upper board, backstrip lettered in gilt, t.e.g., others untrimmed and toned with a few spots, silk page-marker, endpapers foxed, very good £800 A scarce book, commemorating an unusually rich tournament - Emanuel Lasker won out, with a tie for second between Maróczy, Pillsbury, and Janowski.
Music and morals 39. Chiavelloni (Vincenzo) Discorsi della musica... Dedicati all’Emin. e Reveren. Sig. Card. Iacomo Rospigliosi Nipote della santita di nostro signore PP. Clemente Nono. Rome: Ignatio de Lazeri, 1668, FIRST (only) EDITION, with an engraved frontispiece signed by Carlo Cesio, title-page woodcut vignette, woodcut decorated initials, head and tailpieces, damp-staining in inner margins at beginning, occasional browning, faint spotting throughout, small stains through leaves Pp3 to Qq2 and small internal tear to fore-margin (Yy1), early annotations at upper margin and through first 4 lines of opening of Discorsi I (A1r), repairs to title-page, with the loss of a letter or two of the banner, probably masking the removal of a library stamp, a few leaves at the beginning reinforced at inner margin, pp. [xvi, including frontispiece, the last leaf blank], 556, [2], 4to, contemporary gilt- tooled vellum over pasteboards, arabesque roll-tooled border, triple fillet panel surrounded by floral and star tools with outstretched eagle tools at each corner and delicate scrollwork cornerpieces, central coat of arms of Bernardino Cardinal Rocci, spine with lateral double arabesque roll-tooled design, title lettered in ink over the gilt, rear inner hinge repaired, minor soiling/staining, inside front cover ex libris 'Bibliothecae Petri Buoninsegni, Senis 1814' and Landau 16654, (Gregory-Sonneck p. 58) £5,500 A significant association copy of this important work on morals and music, dedicated by Vincenzo Chiavelloni, canon of the Cathedral of Rieti and member of the famous Roman Accademia degli Sterili, where these Discorsi were delivered, to Bernardino Rocci (1627-1680), leader of the aforementioned Academy, who was named bishop on 22 April 1668 (and was later elevated to Cardinal in 1675). ‘[Chiavelloni’s] Discorsi della musica (Rome, 1668)... consist of 24 essays on the relationship of music to moral values and the development of virtue and as an aid to philosophy. The work relies entirely on ancient classical authors and is thus an example of the 17th-century Italian interest in the broad humanistic knowledge found in the works of philosophy, rhetoric and aesthetics of classical Greek and Latin sources. Of particular value to Baroque music aesthetics is the emphasis on music as a vehicle for representing and controlling the emotions of audiences, an aspect of ancient classical philosophy that was the basis for the Baroque theory of the Affects’ (Oxford Music Online). Quoted from his latest catalogue in the Monthly Review, Vol. 16, 1757, a Mr. Baretti describes the point of the Discorsi as ‘not so much the instruction of Italian musicians, as the reformation of their morals; and to say truth… their morals want as much correction as their music, which has, for these fifty years past, much degenerated from its antient solemnity. Chiavelloni, amongst other good things, tells these pretended Virtuosi to abstain from expressing effeminate passions, and singing obscene songs, to which they are in general too much addicted.’
40. (Churchill.) [drop he ad title:] CHURCHILL SAID ... 3 Scottish Nationalist leaflets quoting Churchill. Glasgow: c.1945- 1950, 8vo leaflets, printed on rectos only (not found in COPAC or WorldCat) £450 Both Woods and Cohen date these to the period of the First World War, but the war referred to in them (’make this both a war aim and a peace aim’) is the Second - Arthur Donaldson’s United Scotland Movement was not founded until 1950. Churchill was MP for Dundee from 1908 to
11 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
1922, and made a speech in the election campaign of 1911 (quoted here), in which he called for Scottish Home Rule. United Scotland Movement edition, only printing (?1950), Cohen A49.1. Woods A18/1. Scottish National Congress edition, only printing (?1945),Cohen A49.2 Woods A18/2. Scottish National Party edition, only printing (?1945), Cohen A49.3. Not in Woods
41. (Churchill.) FYFE (Sir David Maxwell, earl of Kilmuir) Party Political Broadcast ... 9.15 p.m. 20th September, 1951. 1951 typed document on Marston bond tub sized air-dried watermarked paper, pp. 8, 4to, with significant corrections and emendations in red biro by Sir Winston Churchill, held together with a rusting paper clip and a typed slip making the identification of Churchill’s notes (Plus VAT in the EU) £5,000 An intriguing and significant document in immediate post-war British politics: Churchill takes control. Kilmuir had a long and distinguished legal and political career, a noted servant of the Conservative Party, although a victim of the ‘night of the long knives.’ The acme of of his career was as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, and his subsequent crucial role in the drafting of the European Convention on Human Rights. ‘Having shadowed the Ministry of Labour during the years of opposition and made a study of industrial relations in other countries, Maxwell Fyfe was widely expected to receive this portfolio in a future Conservative government. An injudicious remark during a radio broadcast in September 1951, however, in which he appeared not to rule out the possibility of legislation caused uproar in the ranks of the unions and seems to have caused Churchill to change his plans. When, therefore, the party returned to office that October, he was made home secretary’ (ODNB). As party leader, Churchill would be concerned about the contents, and tenor, of a Party Political Broadcast one the eve of such a crucial election. Partly, therefore, his annotations are simply oratorical, removing flabbiness, intensifying. Industrial relations, and especially productivity, are a major theme of the speech, and Churchill is also keen to ensure that none of the remarks about the Trades Union are in any way ‘injudicious.’
42. Clemo (Jack) The Invading Gospel. Geoffrey Bles, 1958, FIRST EDITION, faint spotting to prelims recurrent at close of text, pp. 162, crown 8vo, original grey boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, a little spotting to edges and endpapers, dustjacket lightly frayed at head of backstrip panel and with some very light soiling, good £165 Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: ‘To Ernest, With appreciation of his interest in my earlier confessions of faith, and all good wishes, from Jack’. The recipient was the critic Ernest Martin.
43. Cocteau (Jean) ‘Nous croyons en l'Europe’. Sketches for the concept of a stamp. Paris: Sciaky, 1979, FIRST EDITION, 377/600 COPIES printed on Ingres paper, the text in black, grey, and blue, 13 full-page colour lithographs, the same designs reproduced as 99 postage stamps over two sheets with perforations and sticking instructions to gummed verso, these in a blue folder with EU emblem to front, a few faint spots to title and introduction leaves folio, original cloth portfolio with colour-printed Cocteau lithograph to front, a little faint spotting to borders of this, the sheets loose within pocket incorporating Cocteau design, very good £500 Previously unpublished drawings from 1961, expressing Cocteau’s conviction in the value of a unified Europe; the text consists of a title-leaf, the publisher’s introduction advocating the European Common Market, Madame Louise Weiss’s speech at the opening of the European Parliament, and a printed instruction to the verso of the stamps advising that they are not to be used for postage.
44. (Commonplace Book.) Manuscript notebook containing tales, fables, and a play, in English. [?Holland: c. 1810], Manuscript in ink on paper watermarked J. Kool & Comp (see below) in a single, neat, extraordinarily regular and legible sloping copper-plate hand, inner margins ruled in red, the play, and succeeding pieces, in double columns with a double red rule dividing them, one section with top outer corners sliced off, the paper in the latter part shorter at the outer margin, textblock nearly split at centre, pp. 90, [65], folio, contemporary, non-professional, half calf over canvas covered boards, some
12 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
abrasions, text block edged a bit forward, detached from headbands but by no means loose, good £2,750 Commonplace Book is perhaps not entirely apposite in describing this intriguing volume. Rather, it would seem to be an exercise book for a Dutch person perfecting their English (the English is pretty good, good Regency English, but it sometimes goes awry). The paper is Dutch, J. Kool & Comp being paper makers not far from Amsterdam, who flourished 1774-1836: the handwriting might be from any date within the period, but the mid-point seems about right. People and places are usually introduced just with an initial, but the people often have a ‘van’ or ‘van der’ before the initial, and the places have Burgomasters. All this suggests a Dutch provenance, and though literarily and calligraphically accomplished, the ‘primitive’ binding lends the volume a rather charming domesticity. Contents:- “Squire van Roderycke or a Double Murder Discovered by the Title of a Comedy.” Pages 1-27. “The Blue Horseman and his Family or a Process of Singular Connexion Resolve by the Final Discovery of a Capital Crime.” Pages 27-56. “The Coach Man James or a Remarkable Instance of Possible Innocence Notwithstanding an Accumulation of Apparent Charges.” Pages 56-72. “The Enigmatical Stranger or Remarkable Discovery of a Committed Murderer after a Lapse of Eleven Years.” Pages 73-90. “Fables.” Eight fables, with moral instructions; at least one, “The Dog and the Wolf,” is from Aesop. The others are: “The Cock and the Precious Stone”; “The Lion and the Rat”; “The Fox and the Wolf”; “The Dog, the Cock and the Fox”; “A Countryman and His Children”; “The Animals”; and “The Two Foxes.” Pages [91-97]. “Tales.” Eight instructive anecdotes and sketches: “The Released Galley Slave”; “Alphonsus, King of Naples and His Bufoon”; “Filial Love”; “The Innocent Treason”; “The Algerine Slave”; “The Discovery of the Island of Madeira”; “On Human Distresses”; and “Magnanimity and Gratitude.” Pages [97-109]. “The Mathematicians or the Eloped Lady.” A play in double columns. Pages [111-128]. “Peter, A German Tale.” From the French of Jean- Pierre Claris de Florian. In double columns with the French and English versions side-by-side. Pages [129-140]. Not the translations published by T. Becket, 1786 (ESTC N25864: 1 copy in the UK, Bristol; and 4 in Noth America). “Sophronimus, a Grecian Tale.” From the French of De Florian. In double columns with the French and English versions side-by-side. Pages [141-155]. A curious mixture then of the improving, and the Gothic.
45. Connolly (Cyril) & Jerome Zerbe. Les Pavillions. French Pavilions of the Eighteenth Century. Hamish Hamilton, 1962, FIRST EDITION, colour-printed frontispiece and monochrome illustration throughout, Errata slip tipped in at front, pp. [x], 209, 4to, original purple cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, top edge green, tape residue to flyleaf from note sometime fastened there (see below), dustjacket a little chipped at head of backstrip panel, very good £60 The note previously taped to the flyleaf, and now laid in there, is on headed paper from Lowndes Street, SW1, offering ‘Simone, A few hints for the Pavillion[sic] which I shall one day build for her, With love from Claud, Xmas 1962’ - this almost certainly being the British architect Claud Phillimore (4th Baron Phillimore), whose offices were at that address.
The last word on the subject 46. [Cordemoy (Géraud de)] Discours physique de la parole. Paris: Florentin Lambert, 1668, FIRST EDITION, woodcut device on title, a little browned, library accession No. stamped at head of title with a small resultant hole (not affecting text), pp. [xxx], 201, [1], 12mo, contemporary red morocco, French fillets borders on sides enclosing large French arms in gilt at the centre of both covers, in the corners a crowned initial H between leaf sprays with a fleur de lys tucked into the corner, gilt edges, rebacked in the late 18th century in green calf with the skin extending a short way round onto the covers (partly obscuring the inner corner decorations), spine gilt in compartments, the green faded, lacking lettering piece, corners slightly worn, stamp of the Ecole de Santé de Paris, with
13 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
the date 14 Frimaire An III (all this around the circumference) and a bust of Hippocrates at the centre, good £2,000 The rare first edition of this important work. ‘Geraud de Cordemoy (1626-1684) was one of the more important Cartesian philosophers during the decades immediately following the death of Descartes. While he is in some respects a very orthodox Cartesian, Cordemoy was the only Cartesian to embrace atomism, and one of the first to argue for occasionalism ... His two most important works are Le Discernement du corps et de l’âme (1666) and his Discours physique de la parole (1668) ... Though it is in the Discernement that we find the basics of Cordemoy's philosophy, it was his Discours physique de la parole which was most identified with him. (Unlike the Discernement, the Discours was [immediately] translated into English.) The Discours opens with the question of other minds: while I know that I am a thinking thing, how can I be certain that other humans are - might not they be mindless automata who only behave as if there were clever thoughts behind their behavior? Following Descartes, Cordemoy claims that it is other humans' use of language - both in its complexity and its creativity - which assures me that they have minds, in that such communication cannot be explained on mechanical principles alone. Cordemoy then concludes this discussion, saying: “Now that it is no longer possible for me to doubt that the bodies which resemble mine are united to souls, and since I am sure that there are other men than me, I think that I ought to look with care at what remains to be known about speech” ... As a testament to the significance of Cordemoy's study of language, one scholar has written that Cordemoy “picked up one of Descartes' arguments - based on the lack of true speech among animals - and developed it fully; so fully, in fact, that after Cordemoy the point was given very little attention, as if subsequent authors considered this the last word on the subject”’ (SEP).
‘For Walter de la Mare’ 47. Cornford (Frances) Different Days. [Hogarth Living Poets, No. 1] Hogarth Press, 1928, FIRST EDITION, pp. 48, crown 8vo, original blue boards with Vanessa Bell design to upper board, backstrip and borders a little darkened, textblock strained between flyleaf and half-title, publisher slip laid in, good (Woolmer 159; Anderson A5) £375 A presentation copy to a fellow poet, inscribed by the author to the verso of the flyleaf: ‘For Walter de la Mare from Frances Cornford, May 1928' (the month of publication). The publisher’s slip gives the date of publication and the price - completed in manuscript, the handwriting perhaps belongs to one of the Woolfs, but is too slight to confidently attribute.
48. Cornford (Frances) Spring Morning [Poems]. The Poetry Bookshop, 1915, FIRST EDITION, 7 small woodcuts by Gwen Raverat, a couple of faint spots at the foot of one page, pp. 24, crown 8vo, original green wrappers with Raverat illustration to front, the overhanging edges a little chipped, nicked and creased, with some gentle border-fading, in green cloth folder with ribbon ties, good (Anderson A3) £150 The first of the author’s works to be illustrated by her cousin, Gwen Raverat.
‘Slap the cat and count the spinach’ 49. [Coward (Noel)] Spangled Unicorn, an Anthology by Noel Coward. A Selection from the Works of Albrecht Drausler, Serge Lliavanov, Janet Urdler, Elihu Dunn, Ada Johnston, Jane Southerby Danks, Tao Lang Pee, E.A.I. Maunders, Crispin Pither and Juana Mandragágita (Translated by Lawton Drift). Hutchinson, [1932,] FIRST EDITION, portrait frontispiece of Coward and 10 other plates offering portraits of the ‘authors’, half-title and title-page printed in black and red, pp. 101, crown 8vo, original quarter fuchsia cloth with pink paper sides, backstrip lettered in grey, small bookseller ticket at foot of rear pastedown, dustjacket by G.E. Calthrop, a tiny nick at head of rear panel and very minor dustsoiling, custom cloth and morocco slipcase with chemise, near fine £500 Following on from his Sitwell parodies, as Hernia Whittlebot, and here casting his net more widely to offer an international selection of modernist spoofs, Coward once more displays his mastery of the parodic form - meticulous, arch, and very silly. A better copy would be the proverbial ‘spangled unicorn’, if such a proverb existed.
14 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
50. Craig[e] (John) Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica. John Darby for Timothy Child, 1699, FIRST EDITION, diagrams in the text, minor browning and some spotting towards the end, pp. viii, 9-36, 4to, modern half calf (ESTC R1725) £4,500 ‘Craig’s approach has long been the target of scorn, but I hope to convince the reader that in many respects he was three centuries ahead of his time, that his work was a remarkable early effort at the mathematical modelling of social processes, and that from one perspective it may legitimately be viewed as an anticipation of modern logistic regression’ (Stigler, p. 252). Many critical comments and interpretations indicate the difficulty of understanding [Craig’s] theory, which nevertheless inspired many of the great French probabilists in their works on a theory of testimony (Hald, p. 186). Pearson (p. 465) also praises Craig for his originality in devising a mathematical theory on this subject. Craig’s tract has been variously assessed over time. It has even been said that it is a parody of Newton (as the phrasing of the title might suggest). There was a second edition in 1755, and a translation into English by Richard Nash in 1991. The first edition is rare in commerce. There are only 3 auction records for it: one in a tract volume in the Macclesfield sale, the Kenney copy in 1968, and the Bute copy, also in a tract volume, in 1961. See Anders Hald, History of probability and statistics and their applications before 1750 (2003); Karl Pearson, The history of statistics in the 17th and 18th centuries, ed. by E. S. Pearson (1978); Stephen Stigler, ‘John Craig and the probability of history,’ pp. 252-273 in Statistics on the table (1999).
W.B. Dawkins’ copy 51. Darwin (Charles Robert) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. John Murray, 1860, with a folding diagram facing p. 117, occasional minor spotting, one or two pages with minor fraying, or minimal dust stain at fore-edge, pp. ix, [i], 502, 32 (ads dated January 1860), 8vo, original cloth (Freeman’s variant a), minor wear to extremities, but still a good copy, with the ownership inscription of W.B. Dawkins, Weston Zoyland Vicarage (see below), and tipped in between the title-page and the first page of Contents, an ?off-printed extract from John Fiske’s Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, with the drop-head title of ‘Darwinism Analyzed’, this foxed and sometime folded, as if sent in a letter (Freeman 376; for the first edition see Dibner 199; Garrison–Morton 220; Horblit 23b; Norman 593; PMM 344b, &c) £11,000 Second edition, second issue (’Fifth Thousand’ and 1860 on title-page: a very few copies are known with 1859).‘The most important book of science ever written. Indeed, given its importance to all of humanity and the rest of life, it it the most important book in any category. No work of science has ever been so fully vindicated by subsequent investigation, or has so profoundly altered humanity's view of itself and how the living world works. The theory of natural selection continues to gain relevance to the things that matter most to humanity - from our own origins and behaviour to every detail in the living environment on which our lives depend. Little wonder that the adjective “Darwinian”, sometimes lowercased to “Darwinian” as a tribute to its fixity, far outranks “Copernican,” “Newtonian,” and “Mendelian” in frrequency of usage’ (Foreword to the Cambridge Companion to the “Origin of Species”). This is a notable association copy, and the Fiske offprint or leaflet does not seem to be recorded. Both Dawkins and Fiske corresponded with Darwin, and both received presentation copies of the Descent of Man in 1871. William Boyd Dawkins (1837–1929) became professor of geology at Owen’s College, Manchester, in 1874. He had graduated with a first-class degree in natural sciences (1860) from Jesus College Oxford. His father, Richard, had moved to the Vicarage in Westonzoyland in 1853. Dawkins read this copy with close attention, with numerous marginal marks throughout. These marks single out topics of special interest to himself, such as the origin of domesticated animals, and geology: but many other passages are singled out, sometimes, it seems, simply for a particularly felicitous sentence. There are not many words to the annotations, but on p. 304 there are two corrections to the text. On line 15 to ‘eocene’ is added in the margin ‘Mei’. Six lines later the order of reptiles and birds is reversed. The Fiske leaflet gives an extract from his book Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874), though with a curious difference. The text sets out ‘eleven propositions, of which nine are demonstrated, the tenth is a corollary from its nine predecessors, and the eleventh a perfectly legitimate postulate ... in reply to the groundless assertion sometimes made, “that Darwinian theory rests upon purely
15 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
gratuitous assumptions”’. The curious difference is that, in the book version, instead of ‘gratuitous assumptions’ we have ‘thoughtless remarks — sometimes heard from theologians and penny-a- liners.’ It is perhaps an American printing, but no date, place or publisher is given.
52. Darwin (Charles Robert) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Third edition, with additions and corrections. (Seventh Thousand.) John Murray, 1861, with 1 folding diagram, the diagram frayed and soiled in the fore and lower margins, textblock a little strained between gatherings E & F, E a little proud at the top, pp. xix, 538, [2, ads], 8vo, uncut in the original cloth by Edmonds & Remants, with their ticket, sides blind stamped, spine gilt, front inner hinge a little strained, very good indeed (Freeman 381) £6,500 An exceptionally nice copy, the binding of unusual freshness, of the third edition (Freeman's variant b no priority) of "the most important biological book ever written" (Freeman), issued in April 1861, one of 2,000 copies printed. The text was extensively altered, and a table is given of differences from the second edition, a feature that occurs in each subsequent Murray edition. The third edition is also notable for the addition of the historical sketch in which Darwin acknowledges his predecessors in the general theory of evolution, which had already appeared in shorter form in the first German edition, as well as in the fourth American printing, both in 1860.
53. (Darwin.) JENYNS (Leonard) Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow. John Van Voorst, 1862, FIRST EDITION, with a mounted photograph portrait frontispiece, a couple of tiny spots on the photo and the backing paper a bit browned, the photo a bit faded, pp. ix, errata slip, 278, double-page table at p.100, 8vo, original dark green fine diaper cloth, edges rough trimmed, near fine (Freeman 830) £6,7 50 A very rare book in commerce. Freeman records two bindings: purple cloth, with inserted advertisements; and blue cloth, the latter probably a remainder binding. The cloth on this copy might at a stretch be called blueish-green, but not blue. ‘Henslow was Professor of Botany at Cambridge when Darwin was at Christ’s and they were personal friends - “the man who walked with Henslow”. Later, he looked after the Beagle material when it reached England, and [Darwin’s] Letters on Geology [Freeman 1] were addressed to him. Henslow himself had been invited to join the Beagle before Darwin was, as had Leonard Jenyns, the writer of this biography. There is only the one edition which must have remained in print for some time because the blue cloth case is much later than the original purple’ (Freeman). The volume includes Darwin's recollections on pp. 51-55; pp. 211-12 recount Henslow’s reaction to On the Origin of Species. The only copies in auction records are one in purple cloth, rebacked, which failed to sell in the Jeremy Norman sale at Sotheby’s in 1992 (the sale as a whole fared poorly: there was gloom in London that day). What is probably the same copy appeared at Sotheby’s earlier this year and fetched ££5,625 (Aggregate price).
54. Didion (Joan) The White Album. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979, FIRST EDITION, pp. 223, 8vo, original quarter navy blue cloth with red boards, backstrip lettered in white, a couple of small spots to top edge, dustjacket, near fine £200 Signed by the author on the title-page.
55. Dillard (R.H.W.) The Book of Changes. A Novel. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubelday, 1974, FIRST EDITION, pp. 239, crown 8vo, original black cloth, backstrip lettered in purple, light rubbing to extremities, edges roughtrimmed with faint spotting, Edward Gorey dustjacket with some light rubbing to extremities, very good £85 Inscribed on the flyleaf: ‘For Sara Paige Smith - of course, after life in Hillsville, the amazing events in this book of wonders will seem a bit flat and ordinary, but... maybe you’ll like it anyway - all very best, Richard Dillard, 9 September 1974’. The poet’s debut novel, an imaginative piece of detective fiction.
16 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
The flaps uncancelled 56. Donleavy (J.P.) The Ginger Man (Paris Edition). [The Traveller’s Companion Series.] Paris: The Olympia Press, 1958, SECOND EDITION, ONE OF 500 COPIES, title-page with typographic border printed in green, pp. 382, foolscap 8vo, original green boards, printed labels to upper board and backstrip, a few very faint spots to edges, first state dustjacket (see below), near fine (Kearney 172) £750 A revised edition, only slightly expurgated - and issued in response to the edition published in the UK by Spearman. Most copies of this edition were believed to have been destroyed by HM Customs, but in the early 1980s a number of copies emerged on the market (as Kearney remarks, ’an occurrence which gives one pause for reflection’) and the edition became less of a scarcity. However, as Kearney records, all of these copies had one common property - the flaps were cancels, carrying reviews of the novel and listing other books published by the Press and distributed by A. Zwemmer (as this one was intended to be). On this copy, the flaps are uncancelled - the first state, unseen by Kearney. They make the basis for the cancellation clear, and corroborate his reference to a description by Donleavy’s secretary - carrying a lengthy description of the beginnings of a litigation between Girodias and the London publisher, its abandonment in a state of ‘unmitigated fury’, the recognition that the Press’s reputation for obscenity (’a dark fame’) would forestall any possibility of their being treated fairly, and the temporary recourse to revenge by publishing rather than through the court. The legal wrangling between Donleavy and Girodias was ongoing, lasting for some 20 years, and the original litigative blurb - which insists on its foundation being in serving the ‘literary merit of the book’ (the aspect that Donleavy felt had been undone by its being included in Olympia’s series of ‘dirty’ books) - was abandoned on the basis that it might prejudice the case. Donleavy’s secretary considered that only ‘a handful of such copies’ (i.e., with the original flaps) were likely to exist.
57. Dos Passos (John) Nineteen Nineteen. Constable, [1932,] FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, a couple of faint spots to borders, pp. [viii], 462, crown 8vo, original dark orange cloth the lettering to upper board and backstrip in blind against a yellow ground, minimal fading to backstrip, top edge yellow, minor edge-foxing, dustjacket, the backstrip panel darkened and a little chipped at head with a white streak at foot, good £110 The dustjacket is uncommon.
58. (Doves Press.) COBDEN -SANDERSON (T.J.) London, a Paper Read at a Meeting of the Art Workers Guild, March 6 1891. 1906, [300 COPIES] on handmade paper, a note at the end printed in red, pp. 8, 8vo, original limp vellum, backstrip lettered in gilt, bookplate of Harvey E. Scudder, very good £225 Scudder, he of the bookplate, was a Californian printer in the mid-twentieth century.
59. Drummond (William) A Review of the Governments of Sparta and Athens. Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. and sold by G. Nicol, 1794, FIRST AND ONLY EDITION, a few spots here and there, pp. [viii], 282, [2, offset from title-page on verso of last leaf], 8vo, contemporary mottled calf, narrow double gilt fillets on sides with a tiny roll tooled rope within them, inner roll tooled floral border, spine gilt in compartments, black lettering piece, crack to upper joint but cords holding, minor wear to extremities, Lady Charlotte Murray’s copy with her oval printed book-label inside the front cover and the title-page inscribed ‘C.M. 1794, A Present from the Author’ (ESTC T117942) £900 An elegant copy of a scarce book. Sir William Drummond of Logiealmond (1770?–1828), classical scholar and diplomatist: ‘In the latter part of his career Drummond returned to his scholarly interests. He was an active member of the Dilettanti Society, which was by this time an important patron of classical archaeology. He had already published a Review of the Governments of Sparta and Athens in 1795 [sic], and the Satires of Persius, Translated in 1798, which had been well received ... It was Drummond's religious speculations, however, that caused a sensation. In 1805 he published his Academical Questions. He wrote to[the earl of] Aberdeen: I have attempted to veil its real meaning; but I am afraid that our bigots will take the alarm … I have avoided all remarks upon our peculiar religion. The constitution of the country has given us a creed … We must expect the
17 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
hoi polloi to be under the guidance of some superstition or another; and I do not think ours the most mischievous I know’ (ODNB). There are several candidates for Lady Charlotte Murray. Drummond himself had married a Murray. However this is likely to be Charlotte Murray, Duchess of Atholl, the 8th Baroness Strange (1731– 1805). In 1753 she married her first cousin, John Murray at Dunkeld, thus there was no change to her married name. Her first child was also Lady Charlotte Murray, the botanist. Neil Gow (a native of Dunkeld) composed a tune, Lady Charlotte Murray, dedicated to one or both of them.
Inscribed to the epigrapher, Walter de la Mare 60. Eddison (E.R., Translator) Egil's Saga. Done into English out of the Icelandic, with an Introduction, Notes and an Essay on Some Principles of Translation. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1930, FIRST EDDISON EDITION, 2 double-spread maps at rear, a few tiny spots to page-heads of opening leaves, pp. xxxiv, 346, [7, maps], 8vo, original red cloth with single fillet gilt border to upper board, backstrip lettered in gilt, a couple of tiny spots to edges, bookplate of Walter de la Mare to front pastedown with some very fine and faint spotting to the free endpapers, dustjacket with darkened backstrip panel, a couple of faint spots and small marks, very good £1,500 With a lengthy inscription by the author on the flyleaf to Walter de la Mare, whose bookplate is on the facing pastedown: ‘Dear Mr. de la Mare, I hope that you will honour me by accepting, as from one frequenter of desert islands to another, this book. I speak of my share in it: for the great Saga itself, whose portrait I have rashly tried to paint, & to frame, can only confer honour upon anybody connected with it, living or dead. So at least it seems to me, after five years’ living at close quarters with it. Yours very truly, E. R. Eddison'. The inscription refers obliquely to the quotation from de la Mare’s ‘Desert Islands’ that Eddison has used as the epigraph to the book - marking this as a very significant presentation (the other epigraph, from Sappho, eliminates the possibility of there being more than one such copy). Praised by Lewis and Tolkien for his own creative work (the latter referring to him as the ‘greatest and most convincing writer of invented worlds that I have read’), and exhibiting the same ‘Norse complex’ as a background to the fantasy world of his fiction - Eddison here undertakes, like Tolkien and earlier William Morris (a sure influence on both), a translation of the source material. An important and accomplished contribution to the field - and an excellent Fantasy association copy.
Inscribed by Eliot to Hope Mirrlees 61. (Eliot.) HARE (Cyril) With a Bare Bodkin. Faber and Faber, 1946, FIRST EDITION, pp. 183, crown 8vo, original pink cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt with slight lean to spine, a couple of small marks to same, endpapers faintly spotted with cracking to rear hinge, dustjacket, good £1,500 Inscribed on the flyleaf: ‘H.H.M. from T.S.E. (but why is the pin controller given such a grand old Spanish name? See Don Quixote)’. The inscription is from Eliot to his friend, the poet, novelist and translator Hope Mirrlees - the reference to the character of Mr Palafox in the novel. Eliot records the sending of the book in a letter to Mirrlees of Easter Monday that year - ‘I am sending you the latest Cyril Hare, which I think is good’; the gift relates not only to his directorial role at Faber, but also his enjoyment of crime fiction. It is possible, and certainly the case with other such examples from the Faber list, that Eliot was also the writer of the blurb - which emphasises primarily his publisher’s perception of the author’s work.
62. (England and Wales. Sovereign, Elizabeth I) A Declaration of the Causes moouing the Queene of England to giue aide to the Defence of the People afflicted and oppressed in the lowe Countries. Imprinted at London by Christopher Barker, [colophon:] 1585, woodcut device on title, and the word ‘A’ within a cartouche, full-page royal arms on verso, 2 woodcut initials, complete with the initial leaf, blank except for signature, washed, first leaf with residual soiling and with a patch 2/3 of the way down renewed, pp. [ii], 20, 5, [1], small 4to, burgundy crushed morocco by Riviere & Son, spine lettered vertically in gilt, gilt edges, joints skilfully repaired, bookplate of Robert Pirie (ESTC S100730) £2,500
18 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
The beginnings of, and justification for, the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). England sent a military expedition in 1585 to the Netherlands under the command of the Earl of Leicester in support of the resistance of the States General to Spanish Habsburg rule. A side effect of these initial hostilities was, following the seizure of English merchant ships in Spanish harbors, the English privy council immediately authorising a campaign against the Spanish fishing industry in Newfoundland and off the Grand Banks. The campaign was a huge success, and subsequently led to England's first sustained activity in the Americas. In this edition A3r line 11 of text ends "ha-"; B2r line 7 ends "compas-". Translations into Latin, Dutch, French and Italian, all printed by Barker, appeared at the same time.
63. Estienne (Henri) Francofordiense emporium, sive Francofordienses nundinae: quàm varia mercium genera in hoc emporio prostent, pagina septima indicabit. Geneva: Henri Estienne, 1574, FIRST EDITION, woodcut printer’s device on title, some slight browning first and last few leaves, a little damp-staining, tiny piece missing from top outer corner of first leaf, pp. [viii], 31, 120, small 8vo, modern limp vellum, in a cloth slipcase, BM duplicate with stamps to verso of title-page (showing through), sold in 1818, and to foot of last page, book label of H.P. Kraus (Adams S 1768; Renouard, Estienne 141, 2 (’assez rare’); Schreiber, The Estiennes 189; Simon, Bibl. Bacchica 235) £7 ,500 A famous little book. ‘The work consists of praise of the city [of Frankfurt] and its famous Fair, which offered to the civilized world such precious riches, of which books were only one category - in fact, though the volume is traditionally known as Estienne’s “Frankfurt Book Fair”, the Latin title more properly translates simply as the “Frankfurt Fair.” Estienne enumerates and describes the other kinds of merchandise offered for sale: horses, arms, wines, food, spices, clothing, earthenware, metalware, &c. After a section on books and literature, he ends with general praise of Germany, especially as the nation who gave the world the art of printing ... [This is] followed by a considerably longer section consisting of a quite curious collection of Latin poems and translations from the Greek; the majority of these pieces deal with the subject of drunkenness and are all from the pen of Estienne himself, except for ten epigrams from the Greek Anthology, also on drunkenness, translated by Joseph Scaliger’ (Schreiber).
64. Euler (Leonhard) Lettres a une Princesse d'Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique & de philosophie. Tome premier [-troisieme] St. Petersburg: l’Imprimerie de l'Academie Imperiale des Sciences, 1768-72, FURST EDITION, 3 vols., woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces, woodcut diagrams, 12 woodcut plates (11 folding), some leaves in vol. iii lightly browned, small hole in final leaf of volume 3 affecting one letter, a few fore-edges dust- stained or a tiny bit ragged, pp. XII, 314; [XVI, last leaf blank], 340; [XVI, last page being directions to the binder, in French, German, and Russian), 404, 8vo, uncut and unopened later (?pre-Revolutionary) Russian navy buckram, spines lettered in gilt, including initials P.L. (in Cyrillic) at foot, vestiges of the original wrappers at the ends of all vols., a little rubbed, very good, small, red, and rather indeterminate, stamp on the verso of the title- pages with the attributes of Athena ( Enestrom 343 344 & 417; see PMM 196) £9,500 A very fresh copy of this famous and important, ‘absorbing and popular’ (DSB) work. It would seem to have been rebound as an act of piety, still being unopened. These letters to the Princess of Anhalt-Dessau, to whom Euler had given physics lessons (while he was at the Académie royale de Berlin, but not published until after his return to St Petersburg) were enormously successful and 'profoundly influenced contemporary philosophy' (PMM 196, note). In the course of them, Euler attacks Leibniz’s monadology
65. Evans (I.O.) The World of To-Morrow. A Junior Book of Forecasts. Denis Archer, 1933, FIRST EDITION, 24 plates on ‘Diophane’ paper, a few of these a little browned to borders and off-setting, one with a short crack at inner margin, pp. 163, crown 8vo, original quarter yellow cloth with translucent ‘Rhodoid’ boards using the ‘“Neo-Nevett Tape-Slot” principle’, the boards with overlapping fore-edges (that to upper board a little chipped at head), some minor spotting to edges, very good £1,000 A work aimed at ‘Boys and Girls who would like to know the Future’ and covering a wide variety of subjects in relation to that pursuit - H.G. Wells is acknowledged as the primary influence, and the author had earlier produced the ‘Junior Outline of History’ in the same vein.
19 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
The book’s construction is celebrated on the rear cover, and succeeds in giving the book a futuristic look and feel - although the passage of time has revealed it to be a more fragile creature than its creators supposed. The present example has mostly escaped the ravages of time.
66. (Farleigh.) POOLE (Monica) The Wood Engravings of John Farleigh. With a Foreword by H.R.H. The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh KG, KT. Henley-on-Thames: Gresham Books, 1985 88/100 COPIES (from an edition of 110 copies) signed by the author, with a hand-printed proof from an original Farleigh engraved block within bound-in envelope following colophon page, illustrations throughout some in black and red, pp. [iv], 137, folio, original quarter brown leather with yellow cloth stamped in gilt to upper board, backstrip lettered in gilt, terracotta endpapers, brown cloth slipcase with printed paper label, fine £200
67. Fisher (Anne ) An accurate new Spelling Dictionary, and Expositor of the English Language. Containing a much larger collection of modern words than any book of the kind and price extant: and shewing how the same are to be written correctly, and pronounced properly; with the different meanings or significations of each word. To which is added an entire new dictionary of all the heathen gods and goddesses: and also of the most illustrious heroes treated of by Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and other ancient poets: with a summary account of their origin, descent, and exploits, and how represented by statuaries, painters, &c. To the whole is prefixed, a compendious, practical grammar of the English language. The Fourth Edition. Printed for the author, and sold by G. Robinson, in Paternoster-Row; E. Stevens, in Stationers’ Court; W. Nicoll, in St Paul’s Church-yard; and T. Slack, in Newcastle, 1782, main text in double columns, some browning and staining, bound rather tight but all legible, cut a bit close in places but no material loss, pp. [ii], x, ix-xx, [376], oblong 12mo, original reversed calf, edges, especially the top, worn, somewhat crudely rebacked in dark red leather, abrasion to lower cover, and some soiling (ESTC N504661) £2,000 ‘Fourth’ edition, but the third extant, no copy of the first being recorded. Not in Alston, and recorded in ESTC as ‘Private Collections’ only. The second edition is recorded at Cambridge only, and the third at the BL, and the Peabody Essex Museum, Phillips Library, Salem, Mass. ‘Anne Fisher compiled several schoolbooks; the earliest noted by Alston is the second edition of A New Grammar: being the Most Easy Guide to Speaking and Writing the English Language Properly and Correctly, which was printed and published in Newcastle in 1750 by Isaac Thompson, her future husband's employer. Her other works include The Pleasing Instructor, or, Entertaining Moralist … to which are Prefixed, New Thoughts on Education (1756); The New English Tutor, or, Modern Preceptor (1763?); A New English Exercise Book, calculated to Render the Construction of the English Tongue Easy and Familiar (1770); and An Accurate New Spelling Dictionary, and Expositor of the English Language (2nd edn, 1773). These popular books were frequently reprinted and pirated in the later years of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centuries. Anne Fisher was no mere compiler; she wrote as an experienced educator ... It is likely that she supported her husband [Thomas Slack] in his authorship, under the pseudonym S. Thomas, of several works of commercial instruction’ (Peter Isaac in ODNB).
The conversion of the New World 68. (Franciscans. Missions.) [WEERTS (Paul)] Abrege des Fruits acquis par l'Ordre des Frères Mineurs es quattres Parties de l'univers Nommement la Conversion du Nouveau Monde. Recueillies par un Pere Cordelier en Bruxelles. Brussels: Francois Vivien, 1652, FIRST EDITION, with engraved title-page and 4 full-page engravings in the text, the engravings trimmed close at the fore-margin, last leaf strengthened and with a small hole and some tears repaired, loss of a few letters, first 4 leaves with repairs to fore-margin, no loss of text, pp. [xvi, including title-page], 171 (p. 171 misnumbered 17), [1, Imprimatur], 12mo, contemporary vellum over boards, gilt ruled borders on sides with the the arms of
20 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
Fredericq de Marselaer (the Dedicatee) at the centre of both covers, slightly soiled, good (Sabin 74) £5,000 A very rare resumé of Franciscan missionary efforts in all parts of the known world, starting in Europe, going on the the Middle East, then to the East Indies, the Philippines, China and Japan, then, via Africa, to the New World - Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and Chile. WorldCat records only the NYPL copy in the US: not in COPAC. One of the engravings shows Franciscans and cherubim holding aloft two globes one with America shown and the other with Europe and Africa. Attributed to Paul Weerts by the Royal Library of Belgium online catalogue and by Servio Dirks in his Histoire littéraire et ibliographique des Freres Mineurs de l'observance de St-Francois en Belgique et dans le Pays-Bas, Antwerp, 1885. Most bibliographies give 171 pages, but some call for 5 pages more, blank, however, apparently. There are 2 copies in the Royal Library of Belgium, one of 171 pp., the other of 171, [5].
69. Freedman (Barnett) Real Farmhouse Cheese. [Milk Marketing Board,] [1949,] FIRST EDITION, with 8 lithographs by Barnett Freedman printed in black and green or yellow, pp. 16, folio, original sewn linen wrappers over card, with a design overall in grey, green and yellow by Barnett Freedman, incorporating the lettering and two further designs on the flaps, a trifle rubbed to extremities, near fine £800 A presentation copy, inscribed by the author/illustrator, ‘for Nan & Dave, with love from Barnett’. An uncommon book, all the more so inscribed. Commissioned in 1939 and written and illustrated by Barnett Freedman, it was finally published in 1949 by the Milk Marketing Board. It portrays cheese production from the cow to the dining table. Altogether delightful.
70. Garnett (David) Lady into Fox. Illustrated with Wood-Engravings by R.A. Garnett. Chatto & Windus, 1922, FIRST EDITION, frontispiece with tissue-guard, title-page vignette and 9 further illustrations with 1 full-page, spare label tipped in at rear, pp. [viii], 91, crown 8vo, original black and pink mottled cloth, backstrip with pink printed label, t.e.g., others roughtrimmed, bookplate to front pastedown and small pencil ownership inscription to flyleaf, dustjacket with darkened backstrip panel and an internally repaired scrape to front panel, a few nicks around head, very good £275 Signed by the author on the half-title, ‘by David Garnett’. The author’s first novel under his own name, following the pseudonymous ‘Dope Darling’. The illustrations are by Garnett’s wife Ray (née Marshall), whilst the book is dedicated to his lover Duncan Grant. Eliot praised the book, calling the author a ‘far more accomplished author’ than Aldous Huxley, with a ‘rare and exquisite sensibility’ - indeed, ‘there is no prose writer of the day who displays more pure technical skill in “writing”’; it is easy to see why Eliot admired the book, with its themes of metamorphosis and what he terms ‘the peculiar relations possible between man and beast’ close to those he was exploring in some of his own early work. The bookplate is that of Frederick John Hancock Lloyd, whilst the ownership inscription on the flyleaf is that of historian John Ehrman.
Early work by Antony Gormley 71. (Gormley.) Sieveking (Paul -René, edits) ORIGO 3. Cambridge: Cambridge Black Cross, n.d. [but circa 1970,] SOLE EDITION, illustrations (unsigned) by Antony Gormley, Marta Lombard, John Fullerton, Peter John Freeman, Paul-René Sieveking, pp. 24, tall 8vo, original stapled orange wrappers printed in claret with Gormley illustration to front, lightly handled with a few nicks and a little corner creasing, good (Miller & Price, ‘British Poetry Magazines’, 329) £1,850 Early work, perhaps the earliest published artistic work - preceding as it does his career in that field - of Antony Gormley, one of the most important artists of his generation. The illustrations here - the cover credited to him directly, and with the images on p.6, 8, and the vignette recurring on the title- page, constituting his other probable contributions - were produced whilst Gormley was a student in Archaeology, Anthropology & Art History at Trinity College, Cambridge. Following this degree he travelled to India, and on his return took up a place at St. Martin’s College; his own website puts the ‘year zero’ of his artistic career as 1981.
21 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
Though in an alternative medium to that in which he was to gain renown, there are early indicators of the sculptor's eye and elements that are characteristic of his subsequent work - fulfilling his stated aim to tackle the ‘fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relationship to nature and the cosmos’ (Artist’s website). His updating of classical examples and the interest in the anatomical characteristic of his mature work are both prefigured here in the cover design, where he offers a striking rendering of Leda and the Swan . Though it has a very modern, insouciant look in Gormley's version of this classical encounter, the combination of violent obscenity with apparent boredom is very much in the long tradition of the scene’s depiction. BL and Cambridge only on COPAC, no further copies in WorldCat.
‘A liar, a crétin, a stool pigeon...’ 72. (Greene.) Montas (Lucien), et al. GRAHAM GREENE. Démasqué. Finally Exposed [Republic of Haiti, Bulletin of the Department of Foreign Affairs.] Port-au-Prince, Haiti: (Printed at the Imprimerie Theodore for) The Department of Foreign Affairs, 1968, FIRST EDITION, photographic plates of Haitian landmarks including Government buildings, French and English text, pp. 97, 4to, original wrappers, minor rubbing and a little creasing at corners, title lettered in ink to backstrip (this now partially rubbed), blind- embossed ownership stamp of Sidney W. Mintz to flyleaf and cover, his inscription also to former, errat list laid in £300 An outstandingly virulent and sustained attack on the author, in response to his novel ‘The Comedians’ - set in contemporary Haiti and offering a scathing depiction of its President, ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier. Here Duvalier strikes back, via his Head of Cultural Affairs, Lucien Montas, alongside other governmental stooges, with a defamatory account of Greene’s life and work - calling him, amongst other things, ‘a perfect ignoramus... a spy... a drug addict... a torturer’. The latter insult was the epithet that, Greene reflected in ‘Ways of Escape’, surprised him the most - but may reflect a ‘tit for tat’ policy. Sidney W. Mintz was a US anthropologist who worked in this region, and around the Caribbean.
73. Gregory (David) Exercitatio geometrica de dimensione figurarum sive specimen methodi generalis dimetiendi quasuis figuras. Edinburgh: James Kniblo, Joshua van Solingen & John Colmar, 1684, FIRST EDITION, with a folding engraved plate, minor browning, title-page re-inforced at the innermargin and with a small repair there, D2 with a repair to a short tear in the inner margin, and D4 with another to the fore-margin, entering the text but without loss, brackets surrounding page numerals at head of page twice trimmed, perforated stamp on title of the Franklin Institute, and their stam on one page, pp. [iv], 50, [1, errata], 4to, modern calf backed boards, calf lettering piece on upper cover lettered in gilt (ESTC R27394) £7,500 A rare tract, which contains the first publication, albeit unauthorised, of Newton’s methods of infinite series. This prompted Newton to begin to write up his own work. ‘Most Tory Newtonians in early eighteenth century England were Scottish instead of English. The cause can be traced back to Scottish Episcopalians, in particular David Gregory and Archibald Pitcairne, who were among the most influential and charismatic Scottish Newtonians. Scottish Episcopalians embraced Newton's natural philosophy primarily as a justification to use reason to combat the religious enthusiasm of Scottish Presbyterians. Scottish Episcopalians were more tolerant of new ideas and fearful of the fanaticism, sectarianism, and anti-intellectualism exhibited by Presbyterians. As a whole, Tories/High Churchmen in England supported passive obedience, were less tolerant, and were wary of using reason in matters of faith. As a consequence, Scotland provided a much more fertile ground for Newtonianism than England. In 1691, the year after Presbyterianism was established as the official state religion in Scotland, Gregory resigned the mathematical chair at the University of Edinburgh and assumed the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy at Oxford. ... Primarily under the influence of Gregory and Pitcairne's Scottish disciples and colleagues at Oxford, Newtonian concepts were transmitted to High-Church Anglicans. A number of Tories embraced Newton's mathematical natural philosophy, not to combat Presbyterianism and not because they were unaware that such uses of reason could undermine traditional sources of religious authority such as Scripture, but because they were convinced it offered a more structured view of how the universe operated and provided a justification of an ordered society based on hierarchy, so important to High-Church Anglicans’ (J Friesen, Archibald
22 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
Pitcairne, David Gregory and the Scottish origins of English Tory Newtonianism, 1688-1715, Hist. Sci. 41 2(132) (2003), 163-191). ESTC records only 3 copies in America, Yale, Library Company, and LoC. This is one of only 4 books to bear this imprints, all 1684, (van Solingen and Colmar were Dutch imports), the others being Latin and English editions of Sibbald’s Scotia ilustrata, and a Gaelic edition of the Psalms.
Inscribed by Alec Guinness 74. (Guinness. ) LEHMANN (John, Editor) English Stories from 'New Writing'. John Lehmann, 1951, FIRST EDITION, pp. 351, crown 8vo, original red cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt against a black ground, a few faint spots to edges, dustjacket by Keith Vaughan a little darkened and chipped with some foxing to the flaps, very good £65 Inscribed by one of the contributors, Alec Guinness, with ‘Good wishes’ in 1978. Guinness joins Christopher Isherwood, George Orwell, V.S. Pritchett, Henry Green, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, Jocelyn Brooke, et al. in this anthology.
75. Gunter (Edmund) The Description and Use of the Sector, Crosse-staffe, & Other Instruments. VVith a Canon of Artificiall Sines and Tangents, to a Radius of 10000.0000. parts, and the vse thereof in Astronomie, Navigation, Dialling, and Fortification, &c. The second Edition much augmented Printed by William Iones, for Iames Bowler, 1636, with additional engraved title-page (which extends the title further), engraved frontispiece, diagram on printed title, 2 woodcut plates, and 2 printed slips, 1 folding, bound in, numerous diagrams and illustrations in the text, some full-page, others nearly so, slightly browned, a few patches of minor staining, one leaf with 2 small holes, 1 in the fore- margin, 1 with minor loss to text, [xii], 78, [2], 79-113, 116-163, [1]; 266; 56, 59-64, 67- 75, [1]; [114], 4to, contemporary calf, double blind fillets on sides, on the upper cover, at the outer upper corner there is a sequence of numbers from 1 to 10 blocked in blind, descending vertically, the sequence repeated half way through below (an unusual feature), repeated, one line only, on lower cover, rebacked, corners and edges repaired, fly-leaf at the end ruled in columns in red, small blue paper label inside front cover with a name scratched out, much later pencil annotations and workings in pencil in a few places (ESTC S103555; see Taylor p. 196) £8,000 A good, large, complete copy of the second and best edition of Gunter's collected writings (called The Works in the third edition of 1653), edited by Samuel Foster, with additions, including a chapter on the mathematics of fortification, not published before. The volume is in four separately numbered parts, comprising the Booke of the Sector, Booke of Crosse-stafte, Use of the Canon and Table, and the Canon Triangulorum, the last with a separate title page. Waters says the Booke of the Sector ‘must rank with Eden's translation of Cortes's Arte de Navegar and Wright's Certaine Errors as one of the three most important English books ever published for the improvement of navigation . . . [Gunter] opened up. . . an entirely new field, that of arithmetical navigation’ (Art of Navigation, p. 359). And further, ‘Gunter's exposition of finding a ship's position by calculation since it was eventually published to the world, must be classed as one of the most influential scientific works on navigation.’ ‘Easily the most substantial of Gunter's works was The Description and Use of the Sector, the Crosse-Staffe and other such Instruments (1623) which explained instruments which he had designed. Apart from the two mentioned in the title it also included an astronomical quadrant and a ‘cross-bow’—an alternative to the backstaff used by sailors for solar altitude measurements. Although this instrument did not become popular the others all did, in one form or another. The Gunter sector was a much more complex instrument than Thomas Hood's. It allowed calculations involving square and cubic proportions, and carried various trigonometrical scales. Moreover it had a scale for use with Mercator's new projection of the sphere, making this projection more manageable for navigators who were only partially mathematically literate. The sector was sold as a navigational instrument throughout the seventeenth century and survived in cases of drawing instruments for nearly three hundred years. The most striking feature of the cross-staff, distancing it from other forms of this instrument, was the inclusion of logarithmic scales. This was the first version of a logarithmic rule, and it was from Gunter's work that logarithmic slide rules were developed, instruments that remained in use until the late twentieth century’ (ODNB).
23 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
A scarce book anyway, it is often found incomplete (e.g. the Macclesfield copy). The matter is not helped by the fugitive nature of the inserts (sometimes called plates, but really inserts), and the fact that one of the plates is a volvelle, intended to be cut out. For some reason, the additional engraved title is sometimes missing. Several of the text illustrations extend well beyond the boundary of the text, and are therefore liable to cropping. In this copy only one if these is touched, and that barely.
76. (Guy’s Hospital) WALE (William) List of Books by Guy’s Men in the Wills Library, Guy’s Hospital. [London: n.p.], 1913, FIRST EDITION, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED with numerous portraits (mainly photogravure), other photographic images, cartoons, extracts from medical journals, &c, &c, and with the original colour printed frontispiece, pp. [ii], 69, [5, blank except for imprint on penultimate page], 4to, contemporary blue morocco by Sizar, gilt panelled sides, lettered in gilt on the upper cover and on the spine, original wrappers, the front one printed, bound in, top edges gilt, others uncut, bookplate of the compiler William Wale, and below this an oval engraving (c. 1800) of Britannia in her chariot £800 There were 50 large paper copies, 7 of which were extra-illustrated by or on behalf of William Wale - notes to this effect in the copies in the London Library and the RCSE. Whether this is one of the 7 (there is no note to this effect) or an extra-special copy is open to question. It may simply have been Wale’s own copy, but it has the feel of something which would have been presented to him upon his resignation, which occurred the year following publication. Wale had a brief but significant tenure as librarian at Guy’s, 1911-13, departing on very good terms.
77. Hamsun (Knut) Vagabonds. Translated from the Norwegian by Eugene Gay-Tifft. Cassell, 1931, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, a couple of spots at rear, pp. [iv], 549, 8vo, original black cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, some minor discolouration to bottom corner of upper board with all corners very gently knocked, top edge black, light spotting to other edges, dustjacket with backstrip panel a little sunned and some chipping, good £2,750 Inscribed by the author to the flyleaf: ‘Mr B.A. Abel, With thanks! Knut Hamsun, Norholm, 15 Mars 1931’. Abel was a Nottinghamshire solicitor - the reason for Hamsun’s gratitude is unknown, but his signature is uncommon.
78. (Hand and Flower Press.) SHA W-LAWRENCE (Betty, Illustrator) An Herbarium For The Fair. Being A Book Of Common Herbs With Etchings. Together With, Curious Notes On Their Histories And Uses For The Furtherance Of Loveliness And Love by Thomas Fassam. 1949, 7/250 COPIES signed by Thomas Fassam, title-page engraving by Alfred Richard Lane, 20 etchings by Shaw-Lawrence all of these signed by her in pencil, pp. 90, [1], 4to, original Sangorski & Sutclifffe binding of quarter brown morocco with plain grey sides, the backstrip lettered in gilt with five raised bands, top corners a little knocked with some very faint spotting to boards, very good £250
79. (Harsimus Press.) HENRY (Barbara) The Seaweed Journal. Jersey City, 2017, FIRST EDITION, 14/40 COPIES signed by the printer, largely printed in blue and black with occasional use of other colours, on Zerkall Book for the English text and Canal’s Linen Wrapper paper for the facsimile of the ‘extraterrestrial manuscript’, pp. [38], 4to, original pale turquoise linen, printed label inset to upper board, prospectus laid in, fine £600 Printing and book design of the highest order, with invention at its heart. The concept involves a found-text, ‘soaked in sea water’ and written in ‘a strange alphabet’ - the paper of its facsimile runkled to create this effect, and a new ‘asemic typeface’, ‘Kliluk’, designed by the printer (and made into type by Ed Rayher at Swamp Press) to replicate the alien script - and a dream in which its author and transporter explains its significance. Johannes Kepler’s ‘Somnium’ manuscript is an acknowledged part of the work’s fabric of influence.
80. (Harsimus Press.) HENRY (Barbara) Walt Whitman's Faces. A Typographic Reading. With an introductory essay by Karen Karbiener. Jersey City, 2012, 30/30 COPIES (from an edition of 80 copies) signed by Barbara Henry, these copies with additional two-colour prints of 4 lino-cut Whitman portraits signed by Henry, large frontispiece lino-cut
24 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
portrait of Whitman by Henry with further small portraits by the same to Contents Page and section-title, each printed in black against a yellow or red ground, printed in various colours and types with two photographic plates of street scenes both contemporary to Whitman and modern, pp. 17, [14, Whitman’s ‘Leaf of Faces’], royal 8vo, original variant quarter red morocco with grey boards, illustration printed in black to each board, backstrip with printed label, edges untrimmed, Prospectus and Press ephemera loosely inserted, new £500 A beautifully conceived and executed piece of Press-work, using Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaf of Faces’ as the focus for an experiment in type - a reading that is drawn along by the sophisticated semantic trick of co-opting typefaces to the human faces of the poem, but has as its basis the more substantial proposition that Whitman’s ‘early training as a compositor was a key influence on his development as a poet’ (Prospectus). In a unique quarter red binding - the rest of the special issue was done in green.
81. Hay (David Ramsay) The Laws of Harmonious Colouring, adapted to interior decorations, manufactures, and other useful purposes. Third edition. Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers; and Orr & Smith, London, 1836, with 5 plates formed of pasted- on coloured paper triangles, and 5 diagrams within the text, 4 of which are hand- coloured, pp. vii, [1], 72, 8vo, original green cloth, printed paper label on upper cover, slight damp marks to edges of boards, the upper cover a trifle faded, ink stamp inside front cover of the Ben Damph Forest library, family seat of the Earls of Lovelace, good £800 ‘On seeking Scott's advice regarding his early wish to become an artist, [Hay] was taken into the author's study where they conversed at length. Scott recommended that unless he felt such a ‘glow of ambition that [he] would rather run a hundred chances of obscurity and penury than miss one of being a Wilkie … he should resolutely set himself to introducing something of a more elegant style of house-painting’ (Lockhart, 7.201–2). Hay was ‘modest and wise enough to accept the advice with thankfulness, and to act upon it. After a few years he had qualified himself to take charge of all this delicate limning and blazoning at Abbotsford’ (ibid.) ... From the outset, Hay took an interest in the theoretical side of his work and in 1828 published a slim volume, the Laws of Harmonious Colouring. The work ran to six editions in nineteen years, each edition increasing in scope, and was essentially rewritten after the fourth edition. In a notice of 1843 in the Edinburgh Review, the eminent scientist David Brewster acclaimed Hay's work for bringing ‘scientific truth’ to the otherwise murky speculations abounding on the fine arts ... Most of Hay's works were illustrated from his own designs. Although most of his ideas are completely discredited today and dismissed as pseudo-science, Hay's influence in his own time was extensive’ (ODNB). The labels states that copies were available plain and coloured.
82. (Heaney.) KOCHANOWSKI (Jan) Laments. Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Seamus Heaney. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1995, FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, parallel Polish and English text, pp. xx, 59, crown 8vo, original tan boards, backstrip lettered in black with vignette to upper board in same, dustjacket, fine (Brandes & Durkan A63c) £750 Inscribed by Heaney on the flyleaf to the poet Thomas Kinsella: ‘Tom Kinsella, All good wishes, Seamus Heaney, September 1999’.
83. Heaney (Seamus) Selected Poems, 1966-1987. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1990, FIRST EDITION, pp. [x], 273, 8vo, original black cloth with upper board lettered in blind, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket, near fine (Brandes & Durkan A46d) £450 Inscribed by the author on the half-title: ‘For Patrick Daly, Blessings on the work, Seamus Heaney, April 1991’. The recipient was a US State Department protocol officer who arranged the visits, and gifts, of foreign dignitaries - a role which had, a few years earlier, brought him into contact with Heaney and his wife.
84. Herodotus Herodotou Logoi ennea hoiper epikalountai Mousai [in Greek]. Basle: Johann Herwagen, [1541], woodcut printer’s device on verso of final leaf (otherwise
25 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
blank), numerous woodcut initials, text in Greek, section at the lower outer corner of title-page neatly excised and renewed, title slightly soiled, pp. [xx], 310, [2], folio, [bound with:] Thoukydide meta scholio palaio kai panu ophelimo [in Greek] ... Accessit praeterea diligentia Ioachimi Camerarij, in castigando tum textu, tum commentarijs unà cum annotationibus eius. Basle: Johann Herwagen, 1540, text in Greek, numerous woodcut initials, title-page with same excision and renewal as Herodotus, lacking the final leaf (as sometimes) blank except for printer’s device, pp. [xxiv], 225, [3], 177 [i.e. 127], folio. 2 vols bound in 1, contemporary elaborately blind-stamped pigskin, original twirled brass clasps, later ink lettering on spine, small ink stamp on verso of first title of the Donaueschingen library, a choice copy (Adams H395 and T664) £5,000 These two editions, published a year apart, are often found together, probably as intended. The last leaf is sometimes missing from the Thucydides (e.g. 2 of the 3 copies in Adams, the copy in Harvard). That the two title-pages have the same excision and repair (not at all recent) it is probably no coincidence, but the significance is not apparent. These are the first Herwagen editions of these historians, the Herodotus being the second Greek edition, and the Thucydides the third.
85. [Holbach ( Paul Henri Thiry, baron d’)] Théologie portative ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion Chretienne. Par M. L’Abbé Bernier, Licencié en Théologie. ‘Londres’ [i.e. Amsterdam?], 1768, FIRST EDITION, a trifle browned in places, a few minor stains, pp. [iv], 200, 12mo, 19th-century calf by Riviere, double gilt fillets on sides, spine gilt in compartments, black lettering pieces, rubbed and a little worn, repairs to ends of spine, splits in joints, inner hinges reinforced with cloth, good (ESTC T112022; Bengesco 2403) £2,500 A magnificantly sardonic Dictionary (sometimes attributed to Voltaire), equal to or surpassing Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, though narrower in scope and less discursive. There seem to be two issues, or variants: one, as ours, of 200 pp. (corresponding to the ESTC no. above), another, in 8vo, of 229 pp (= ESTC T174493). Bengesco lists a 243 pp. 8vo. The book is rare in any state. A pencil note in side the front cover states ‘Huxley copy’. If true, this would likey be Thomas Henry Huxley, ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, who coined the term ‘agnostic’ to expess his own philosophical outlook, and it would have been grist to his mill. If Huxley’s books were sold after his death in 1895, this would be compatible with a purchase note on the fly-leaf ‘J.C. ?Uinland, July 9th, 1898’.
86. Holdstock (Robert) Earthwind. Faber and Faber, 1977, FIRST EDITION, pp. [vi], 245, crown 8vo, original green boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket with small nick at foot of backstrip panel, very good £70 Inscribed by the author on the title-page for author and bibliophile John Baxter: ‘With all best wishes, Robert Holdstock’. The author’s second novel.
87. Holdstock (Robe rt) Mythago Wood. Victor Gollancz, 1984, FIRST EDITION, pp. 252, crown 8vo, original black boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket, near fine £200 Signed by the author to the title-page. An intergenerational narrative that escapes from the aftermath of the Second World War via immersion in a primeval forest populated by mythagos - manifestations of a collective unconscious with varying properties. The influences of Jung and Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’ are added to those of fantasy authors, to create a book that established Holdstock as a major author in the genre.
88. Hooke (Robert) Lectiones Cutlerianae, or, A Collection of Lectures: Physical, Mechanical, Geographical, & Astronomical. Made before the Royal Society on several Occasions at Gresham Colledge. To which are added divers Miscellaneous Discourses Printed for John Martyn, [1674-78], 1679, FIRST EDITION, 6 parts in 1 vol., with the general title but without ‘The Titles of the several Tracts’ (1 leaf) as often, with 19 plates on 17 sheets, mostly folding, one, De Potentia, supplied from another copy, 2 trimmed just
26 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
within plate-mark at fore-edge, small burn or rust hole in C1 of the second part, cut a little close in a few places but without material loss, a few stains and occasional mild browning and spotting, pp. [viii], 28; [viii], 78; 32; [viii], 112; [ii, of iv, without the initial blank], 4to, 18th-century speckled calf, skilfully rebacked and the spine richly gilt, original speckled edges, from the Selbourne Library with discrete stamp to verso of title and on one other page, some contemporary marginalia. (Keynes 23 (collectively), (16 and 18-22 severally, not in that order); Dibner Heralds of Science 147; ESTC R4280) £35,000 First edition of the rarest and, with Micrographia, the most important of Hooke’s works, with all the plates (plate IV from Lampas often missing). According to Keynes and others (e.g. Norman), the leaves bearing the general title and the index are a bifolium, p1-2, but this is to be doubted. First because the second leaf is frequently wanting, e.g. in one of the three copies in the BL, and in the Harvard copy. Moreover in only one of the BL copies does the index leaf follow the general title Hooke's six Cutlerian lectures originally appeared separately between 1674 and 1678, and were first collected here under a general title. The lectures were named in honour of Sir James Cutler, who founded a lectureship in mechanics for Hooke in 1664. The first lecture contains Hooke's reformulation of the approach to orbital dynamics. He recognized here for the first time that orbital motion did not depend on centrifugal force, but rather on the principle of rectilinear inertia. This discovery set Newton on the correct path to understanding orbital dynamics. The second Cutlerian lecture, Animadversions on the first part of the machina coelestis, contains the first descriptions of Hooke's clock-driven telescope and the first form of a universal joint. The Lectures de potentia restitutiva, the fifth published Cutlerian lecture, contains Hooke's law of elasticity, that stress is proportional to strain. The sixth and final published lecture, Lectures and collections, includes an account of the comet witnessed in April 1677. It also prints two letters from Leeuwenhoek concerning his miscroscopical examinations, and gives Hooke's own account of his improved microscopical methods. The contemporary marginalia are not all that extensive, but they do occur throughout, indicating a close reading by an informed reader. Some of it is in the form of NBs or simply dots marking special passages, but there are also a few corrections to the text - not the errata, which are not corrected. One one page (25 in Cometa) we have ‘as Cassini’, and ‘as Kepler hath’.
89. Hooke (Robert, editor) Philosophical Collections, containing An Account of the Physical, Anatomical, Chymical, Mechanical, Astronomical, Optical, or other Mathematical and Philosophical Experiments and Observations as have lately come to the Publisher hands ... [Imprint from colophon of no.1; from no. 2-7, imprints from title page] [John Martyn], Moses Pitt, and Richard Chiswell, 1679-82, FIRST EDITION, 6 plates (one with loss to image, another laid down), 2 folding, 1 an engraving in the text in 4,1 leaf with tear repaired without loss, a blank corner replaced (loss of catchword), first plate with 2 lacunae at the lower edge, repaired with the missing parts of the illustration in MS facsimile, tear in E2 entering from margin but avoiding the text, repaired, lower outer corner of F2 renewed (loss of catchword), second plate laid down, tear from lower margin repaired, entering the engraved surface with trivial loss, G1 in No. 2 with a tear and minor loss to upper margin (no loss of text), No. 2 without blanks (but there may not have been any: see Keynes), no conjugate blanks to plates in 3 and 6 (as per Keynes’s copy), the latter with a small repair to the inner margin, occasional fairly minor staining, pp. 44, [ii], 210, 4to, modern speckled calf, old sprinkled edges, good (Keynes 24, ‘very uncommon’; ESTC P177) £5,000 First edition, complete in seven parts. The death of the Royal Society's secretary, Henry Oldenburg, in 1677 interrupted the publication of the Philosophical transactions. These scientific papers, edited by Hooke, were issued to fill the void in the Royal Society publication from the last number of the Philosophical transactions in 1679 until it resumed again in 1682/3. Only two of the papers bear Hooke’s name, but he probably contributed at least one of the book reviews. The book is of course something of a miscellany. Some notable items are:- The first English version of Tasman’s own journal of his voyage to Australia, based on the 1674 Rembrantsz abridgement(no. 6, paper 3) The first part of William Briggs' Theory of Vision (No. 6, p. 167); the second part was published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1683.
27 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
No. 5, papers 2-6 reprint's Pell's Idea of Mathematics. This first appeared in 1638 (a broadside, the only surviving copy of which is at BL), and then in 1650 as part of John Dury’s The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (also a very rare book, Oxford and BL only on COPAC). His arguments are clearly very close to those of Bacon, Comenius, and their followers but also have a large personal element. The tract stressed the importance of mathematics and proposed ‘the writing of a Consilarius Mathematicus, the establishment of a public library of all mathematical books, and the publication of three new treatises.’ ESTC list just 6 copies in the US, there being notable absences.
The Natural History of Religion 90. Hume (David) Four Dissertations. I. The natural history of religion. II. Of the passions. III. Of tragedy. IV. Of the standard of taste. Printed [by William Bowyer] for A. Miller, 1757, FIRST EDITION, the inking a little uneven in the early pages, minor browning, thumbing, a few spots, with the half-title and the Dedication, the usual cancels (C12, D1, K5-8 - stubs showing), typographical eror on p. 9, but that on p. 131 corrected, pp. [iv], vii, [3], 240, 12mo, contemporary calf, lacking lettering piece, slightly rubbed and worn, spine a little defective at either end, cracking to lower joint (but sound), contemporary signature of James MacIvor on fly-leaf (a further inscription sliced off the head) and half-title, later pencil marking in the margins (Jessop, pages 33-35; Chuo I, 45; Rothschild 1176; Todd, p. 200) £2,200 The publication of this volume is a tangled tale. ‘Hume first suggested the volume to Andrew Millar in 1755, proposing essays on the natural history of religion, the passions, tragedy, and geometry and natural philosophy. The second of these derived from book 2 of the Treatise, and completed its abridgement; the fourth may have been a reworking of book 1, part 2. But it was dropped on the advice of Lord Stanhope, a mathematician; and Hume had proposed to replace it with two essays on suicide and on the immortality of the soul. Though ‘Five dissertations’ were printed in proof, Warburton's interference and Hume's “abundant prudence” led to their withdrawal, and Hume substituted another, on the standard of taste, to make up the final four dissertations. The most substantial of these was the “Natural history of religion”. When it was first drafted is uncertain; it may have been contemporary with the still-unpublished Dialogues. It offered an experimental history of religious belief and practice, with a comparative analysis of the respective characteristics of polytheism and monotheism. Hume found that polytheism had not only preceded monotheism, but was much less dangerous, being less liable to join a philosophical enthusiasm to a religious superstition. This error he attributed specifically to the Stoics; but all theists were implicated. The only remedy, he concluded, was to set one species of superstition against another, “while we ourselves … happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy”’ (ODNB). This is not all. ‘After publication Hume withdrew the dedication to John Home ... but cancelled the withdrawal four days later: in the interval 800 copies were sold without it’ (Jessop)
91. (Incline Press.) (RAVILIOUS.) Powers (Alan), Barry Kitts and Ronald Maddox. In Place of Toothpaste. Three Essays Celebrating the Watercolour Painting of Eric Ravilious. Oldham, 2004, FIRST EDITION, 74/250 COPIES printed on Zerkall mouldmade paper, 6 tipped-in colourplate reproductions, one a facsimile of a letter from Edward Bawden, some previously unpublished, wood-engraved title-page decoration, designed by Ravilious, printed in blue, pp. viii, 34, royal 8vo, original quarter mid blue cloth, backstrip gilt lettered, blue and white Ravilious-patterned boards, printed front cover label, untrimmed, fine £150
92. Ishiguro (Kazuo) A Pale View of Hills. Faber and Faber, 1982, FIRST EDITION, pp. 183, crown 8vo, original blue-grey boards, backstrip gilt lettered, dustjacket with backstrip panel a trifle faded, near fine £1,200 A superb and, to all appearances, unread copy of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s debut novel.
93. Jackson (Shirley) Life Among the Savages. Michael Joseph, 1954, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. 196, crown 8vo, original black boards, backstrip lettered in gilt with slight
28 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
lean to spine, contemporary ownership inscription, dustjacket with shallow chip to one corner, very good £125 A domestic comedy from the author of ‘The Lottery’ and ‘The Haunting of Hill House’.
Arms of James VIII and III 94. (James Francis Edward [James Francis Edward Stuart; styled James VIII and III; known as Chevalier de St George, Pretender, Old Pretender]) Mercure galant dédié à Monseigneur le Dauphin. May 1708. Paris: Michel Brunet, May, 1708, woodcut arms of the Dauphin on the title-page, 2 folding engraved plates of music, pp. 413, [7], 12mo, contemporary French red morocco, French fillets on sides, gilt with a fleur-de-lys in each corner and a large plaque at the centre of both covers of the arms of James Francis Edward Stuart as James III of Great Britain and Ireland, spine gilt in compartments with a fleur-de-lys in each of those not lettered, gilt edges, headcap sometime pulled back with resultant 5mm split at head of joints, minor discolouration towards foot of covers, a couple of longitudinal cracks in the surface of the upper cover, faded Jesuit stamp on title, half of a small label at top outer corner of inside front cover (presumably of the same institution), modern bookplate of Jacques Laget, very good £4,000 A rare provenance. The Coat of Arms on this binding, is one of two styles used by James Francis Edward Stuart, one as Prince of Wales, the other as king: see the University of Toronto, British Armorial Bindings (Online) for examples of both stamps. There is an example of the present stamp in the Blairs College Library in the University of Aberdeen (formerly on loan to the NLS). The BL has only an example of the Prince of Wales stamp. James VIII and III was recognised by Louis XIV upon the death of the former’s father in 1701. Early 1708 saw the first attempt at a French-backed Jacobite rising, which fell short even of a landing, so by May 1708 James was recuperating in France, on the eve of his military career in the service of Louis. Two curious features of this French binding are that in the motto surrounding the arms are the mis- spelling of ‘pense’ (here ‘pence’) and the introduction of an extra syllable after ‘soit’. Thus here it reads ‘Hony soit il qui mal y pence’.
95. Jameson (Storm) Farewell to Youth. William Heinemann, 1928, FIRST EDITION, a couple of very faint spots to prelims, recurrent at rear, pp. [viii], 312, crown 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt with a nick at head, tiny star stamped in gilt to upper board with publisher’s device blind-stamped to lower, faintly sunned through the jacket, some minor edge-spotting, bookplate of Storn Jameson to front pastedown, dustjacket with head of browned backstrip panel a little chipped, very good £250 The author’s own copy, with her attractive bookplate.
96. Joachim, Abbot of Fiore Interpretatio preclara ... in Hieremiam prophetam ad haec usq[ue] tempora minime prospecta (nunc vero eius iam coepta impletione: intellectumq[ue] dante vexatione) in dies magis perspicua fiet. [colophon:] Venice: Bernardinus Benalius, 1525, with woodcut border on title, repeated with variations at beginning of text, two woodcuts and several woodcut diagrammatic illustrations, woodcut initials of various sorts including 2 historiated, ff. [xx], 62, 4to, [bound with:] Liber co[n]cordie novi ac veteris Testamenti: nunc primo impressus et in lucem editus ... [colophon:] Venice: Simon de Luere, 13 April 1519, woodcut initials, 3 diagramatic illustrations in text, 1 full-page, ff. [iv], 135, lacking the terminal blank, contemporary Venetian calf, blind roll tooled borders on sides, with a central lozenge design, edges tooled in blind (gauffered without the gilt), titled in ink on foredge (’Joachim in Hieremiam’), traces of 4 ties, skilfully rebacked, repairs to corners, &c, very good (Adams 211 and 209) £10,000 First edition of both works, and a rather lovely volume. ‘Dante voiced the general opinion of his age in declaring Joachim one "endowed with prophetic spirit." But he himself always disclaimed the title of prophet. The interpretation of Scriptural prophecy, with reference to the history and the future of the Church, is the main theme of his three chief works: "Liber Concordiae Novi ac Veteris
29 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
Testamenti," "Expositio in Apocalipsim," and "Psalterium Decem Cordarum." The mystical basis of his teaching is the doctrine of the "Eternal Gospel," founded on a strained interpretation of the text in the Apocalypse (14:6). There are three states of the world, corresponding to the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. In the first age the Father ruled, representing power and inspiring fear, to which the Old Testament dispensation corresponds; then the wisdom hidden through the ages was revealed in the Son, and we have the Catholic Church of the New Testament; a third period will come, the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, a new dispensation of universal love, which will proceed from the Gospel of Christ, but transcend the letter of it, and in which there will be no need for disciplinary institutions’ (Catholic Encyclopaedia). The commentary on Jeremiah (which features the woodcut of the seven-headed dragon) is wrongly attributed to Joachim.
97. Johnston (Arthu r, editor) Delitiæ poetarum Scotorum hujus ævi illustrium: [Pars I - altera]. Amsterdam: Joan Blaeu, 1637, FIRST EDITION, 2 parts in 1 vol., woodcut printer’s device on the title-pages to both parts, pp. 699; 578, [2], 12mo, original vellum, the spine re-lettered (with bad Latinity) the original lettering having faded, overlapping fore-edges, slightly soiled, headbands present but separated fron textblock, armorial Abercairny bookplate inside front cover, that of Robert J. Hayhurst opposite, good (Bibliographia Aberdonensis I, p. 280; see McOmish and Reid, eds: Neo-Latin and Literary Culture in Early Modern Scotland, Brill, 2016) £1,100 ‘Seven tenths of this remarkable national anthology consists of selections from the works of men of the N.E. of Scotland ... The collection is generally estimable and drew high praise from Dr. Samuel Johnson [it ‘would have done honour to any nation’, he said] and other competent critics’ (Bib. Aberdonensis). ‘The change [in Sir John Scot of Scotstarvit’s political career] no doubt partly reflected Scot's increasing absorption in the advancement of two major schemes of patriotic publication. The Amsterdam publisher Blaeu was producing a series of volumes devoted to the modern Latin verse of particular countries, and Scot recruited the Aberdeen poet Arthur Johnston to edit a Scottish contribution. Work began in the 1620s, and culminated in the two-volume Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637), which included some of Scot's own verse. Scot's commitment to the work was demonstrated by the fact that he visited Amsterdam to help see the work through the press, as well as paying the entire cost of printing ... [Scot’s] main claim to fame, however, is the literary and scholarly publications which he sponsored, outstanding given the general poverty of such patronage in Scotland in the period. The statement that learned men “came to him from all quarters; so that his house [Scotstarvit Tower] was a kind of college” (Nisbet, vol. 2, appx, 282) is exaggerated, but Scot, with his contacts with a range of Dutch and other continental scholars and his close relationship with his brother-in-law and other Scottish poets, formed a sorely needed focus for cultural activity in the country’ (ODNB). Abercairny, near Crieff in Perthisre, is not so very far from Scotstarvit.
98. Jones (Barbara) Follies & Grottoes. Constable, 1953, FIRST EDITION, colour-printed title-page and illustrations by the author throughout with 17 photographic illustrations in a section of plates, pp. xii, 264, 8vo, original purple cloth, backstrip lettered in silver, top edge pink, contemporary and later ownership inscriptions to flyleaf, dustjacket to a design by the author, a little nicked at head of backstrip panel, very good £150 An absorbing, entertaining, and informative guide.
99. Jones (LeRoi [Amiri Baraka]) ‘Dutchman’ & ‘The Slave’. Two Plays. Faber and Faber, 1965, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. [vi], 88, crown 8vo, original red cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket with minor rubbing at extremities, very good £65 With a leaflet and poster relating to the film version of ‘Dutchman’ laid in.
Interesting provenance 100. Joyce (James) Collected Poems. New York: Black Sun Press, 1936, FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, 735/750 COPIES (from an edition of 800 copies) printed in blue, brown tinted frontispiece portrait of the author by Augustus John, tissue-guard present, pp. lxvi, foolscap 8vo, original white boards, the upper board with an overall floral pattern within a decorative border printed in blue, backstrip lettered in blue, small dark spot to upper
30 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
joint, untrimmed, page-marker, bookplate of Paul Jordan Smith, tissue jacket chipped with some loss and a couple of small spots of tape repair, very good (Slocum & Cahoon 44; Minkoff 45) £550 The copy of Paul Jordan Smith, author of an early book on Joyce’s work, ‘A Key to the Ulysses of James Joyce’, a Universalist minister and scholar of Robert Burton who founded the hoax art movement of Disumbrationism. His bookplate features a pipe, and the small black spot to the upper joint, which carries through to the gutter of the front endpapers, has every appearanceof having been caused by fugitive ash. This volume includes the first publication of 'Ecce Puer' and the first American appearance of 'Pomes Penyeach' .
101. Joyce (James) Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber, 1939, FIRST EDITION, initial blank and final text-page browned as usual, pp. [viii], 628, 8vo, original brick-red cloth, backstrip lettered and with rules in gilt, a couple of minor marks, top edge yellow, others untrimmed, Blackwell’s sticker at foot of front pastedown, very good £950 The copy of Lord Berners with his pencil ownership inscription to the front pastedown writ large - on the facing flyleaf a couple of page numbers are noted, p. 572 for its synopsis with an illegible note to p. 212. Berners has been identified as an influence on certain passages in Joyce’s work - and he was a follower of the latter’s work as this, and further works in his collection attest.
102. (Joyce.) JOLAS (Maria, Editor) A James Joyce Yearbook. Paris: Transition Press, 1949, FIRST EDITION, 281/950 COPIES (from an edition of 1,000 copies) frontispiece by Andre Masson, various plates (photographic, facsimile, etc.), ‘Omission’ slip tipped in at rear, pp. 195, small 4to, original wrappers with Masson design printed in green, tissue wrapper, fine (Slocum & Cahoon B30) £100 Contributions from Stuart Gilbert, Philippe Soupault, Hermann Broch, et al.; includes the first publication of ‘Ad-Writer’, a letter to Constant Huntington regarding his translation of Italo Svevo’s ‘Senilita’.
103. Juan y Santacilla (Jorge), and Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre Giral. Observaciones astronomicas, y phisicas hechas de orden de S. Mag. en los reynos del Peru ... de las quales se deduce la figura, y magnitud de la tierra, y se aplica a la navegacion Madrid: Juan de Zuñiga, 1748, FIRST EDITION, title printed in red and black, elaborate allegorical vignette on title incorporating the Spanish royal arms, engraved allegorical frontispiece, 8 folding engraved plates, plus an unnumbered engraving of the moon, engraved vignette at head of text picturing the expedition at work, worming mainly in the upper margin up to gathering L, but at its worst B-H entering the text with the loss of a few letters, damp- staining to the upper margins at the beginning and again in the lower outer corner towards the end, pp. [xvi], xxviii, 396, [14], 4to, contemporary calf, spine richly gilt, citron lettering piece, a bit scuffed, still good (Alden/Landis 748/105; Palau 125472; Sabin 36808) £1,250 This scarce volume was published in the same year as, although separately from, the four volume narrative account of the expedition entitled Relacion historica del viage a la America Meridional. It deals exclusively with the measurements (and the instruments to obtain them) made to establish the arc of meridian. ‘After Cassini’s measurements ... seemed to show that the earth was a spheroid elongated at the poles, in clear opposition to Newton’s theory, the French Academy of Sciences proposed that two series of measurements on one degree of an arc of the meridian should be made, one near the North Pole, the other near the equator. Louis XV designated a Hispano-French for the measurement at the equator, in which, by appointment of Philp V, Juan and Ulloa would particiapte on behalf of Spain’ (DSB). The very accurate results supported Newton’s theory. See Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World. By Larrie D. Ferreiro, 2011. The endpapers are not characteristically Spanish, so the binding may be French.
31 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
Pastry puff 104. Kidder (Edward) E. Kidder’s Receipts of Pastry and Cookery, for the Use of His Scholars. Who Teaches at His School in Queen Street near St. Thomas Apostles ... Ladies May Be Taught at Their Own Houses. [c. 1725], engraved throughout, title-page a cancel, printed on one side only, tiny amount of worming in the gutter of first few leaves, some leaves a bit browned, portrait frontispiece, title, 42 leaves, 8 plates, 3 folding (see below), 8vo, original panelled sheep to an unsusually elaborate design, cracks in joints, corners a little worn (Cagle 793 (calling this the first edition); see Bitting p. 259, and ESTC T92423) £2,750 A scarce and early collection, unusually, for the genre, engraved throughout. Its make-up, and dating are still a puzzle to bibliographers. Kidder ‘taught cookery in London between about 1720 and 1734, but little else about his life is known. The evidence for his activities is confined mostly to his one published work, the Receipts of Pastry and Cookery. In publication by 1720, this exists in six different versions; they give different addresses for his cooking schools and carry his portrait, but the date of the first edition is unknown. About 1720 Kidder taught at three London cookery schools, in St Martin's-le-Grand, Norris Street, and Little Lincoln's Inn Fields. After abandoning the two latter in 1721 he divided his time between two schools, teaching three afternoons a week at St Martin's-le-Grand and three afternoons at a school next to Furnival's Inn in Holborn, until in 1722 or 1723 he moved to Queen Street, near St Thomas Apostles [as here]. Some of his pupils wrote his recipes in blank books with a printed title page, one of which, inscribed by the owner, shows that Kidder was still teaching in Queen Street in 1734. Having risen socially, he donned a gentlemanly wig for his portrait [as here] ... Although Kidder ran a pastry school, his recipes covered the whole range of soups, salads, meat, fish, poultry, sauces, and jellies, as well as pies and tarts. His recipes were repeatedly plagiarized throughout the eighteenth century, yet Kidder seems not to have plagiarized recipes himself. He probably taught his students to make established favourites, so even if his Receipts may not be especially inventive, it is a valuable record of 170 standard English dishes of the day, accompanied by attractive designs for pie shapes and decorations. The first recipe for puff pastry (identical to the standard commercial product of today) to appear in print is Kidder's’ (ODNB). The pages are disjunct leaves, have irregular signatures and pagination. The variability of the paper suggests that copies may have been made up on a more or less ad hoc basis. The single leaf plates at the end are perhaps double-page spreads. ESTC gives the date for both of its editions conjecturally as 1740, but earlier seems more probable. Bitting calls for an advertisement at the end: not present here, or in the copy described by Cagle. Given that the title-page is a cancel, suggests that the book was simply re-issued with a new title each time the author changed address.
105. Knight (Ellis Cornelia) Marcus Flaminius; or, a view of the military, political, and social life of the Romans: in a series of letters from a patrician to his friend; in the Year DCC.LXII from the Foundation of Rome, to the Year DCC.LXIX. In two volumes. Vol. I [-II]. Printed for C. Dilly, 1792, FIRST EDITION, complete with half-titles, pp. xii, 402; [iv], 341, 8vo, contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, twin black lettering pieces, yellow edges, minor wear, good, engraved armorial bookplate in both vols. of Charlotte Mary Peters, and her signature at the head of the titles £1,500 The second work of Cornelia Knight, ‘Nelson's poet laureate’, following her Dinarbas, a continuation of Johnson’s Rasselas. Scarce. The paper has a variable tendency to blue-ness, where most blue, it is a little mottled. Charlotte Mary Peters is possibly the future wife of Henry Holland, the architect, though she was only 4 years old in 1792.
106. Kristeva (Julia) Colette. Translated by Jane Marie Todd [European Perspectives series.] New York: Columbia University Press, [2004,] FIRST EDITION, pp. [xiv], 521, [3, publisher’s list], 8vo, original purple boards, backstrip lettered in silver, trivial knock to top corner of upper board, dustjacket with some very minor creasing at extremities, near fine £95 Signed by the author on the title-page, the final volume in her trilogy on ‘Female Genius’.
32 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
107. [La Calprenède (Gaultier de Coste, seigneur de)] Hymen’s Præludia: or Love’s Master- Piece. Being that So-much-Admired Romance, intituled, Cleopatra. In Twelve Parts. Written originally in the French, and now rendred into English, by Robert Loveday [and John Coles, James Webb and John Davies]. Printed for Ralph Smith, 1698, title within double rules, occasional paper-flaws, rust or other small holes with the loss of the odd letter, minor ink, wax or other stains, a few leaves foxed, slightly browned in places, final advertisement leaf discarded, pp. [viii], 958, folio in 4s, near contemporary mottled calf, rebacked, corners worn, inscription on flyleaf recording the purchase of it on 3 Oct. 1699 for 18/6, a few emendations to the text in the same early hand, nineteenth-century book- plate of the Marquess of Headfort, good (Wing, 2nd ed., L124a; ESTC R221100, giving the date as 1652 in error) £1,500 The text has a convoluted publishing history. ‘Having become proficient in French and Italian under the instruction of another member of the Clinton household, Loveday translated into English the first three parts of La Calprenède’s Cléopâtre under the title Hymen’s Præludia, or, Love’s Master-Piece; these appeared respectively in 1652, 1654, and 1655, and were reprinted many times. Despite the erroneous attribution of other parts of the romance to Loveday’s hand in some later editions, it was only with the collaboration of John Coles that part 4 was completed and published in 1656. Loveday [who died in 1656] was an agreeable writer, and his translation is accurate and idiomatic’ (ODNB). Coles was responsible for parts 5-7, James Webb for part 8, and John Davies for parts 9-12. Individual parts, and incomplete collections were published until the first collected edition appeared in 1668, and there were several editions until the mid-eighteenth century. The daughter of Anthony and Cleopatra, the Cleopatra of the title (also known as Cleopatra Selene) was the consort of Juba II, King of Mauretania. The present edition is a rare one, with just BL, London Library, Bodley, Newberry and Barr Smith Library recorded in ESTC.
With illustrations by Picasso and Cocteau 108. Laporte (Geneviève) Les Cavaliers d'Ombre / Sous Le Manteau de feu. Illustrations de Pablo Picasso. Préface de Jacques Audiberti / Illustrations de Jean Cocteau. Préface de Armand Lanoux. Paris: Joseph Foret, 1956, FIRST EDITION THUS, ONE OF 300 NUMBERED COPIES, this copy out of series and marked ‘EXEMPLAIRE D’ARTISTE’, frontispiece and one further full-page drawing by Picasso to first title, with frontispiece and full-page drawing by Cocteau to the second, one or two faint foxspots and very light handling marks, pp. [28]; [30], 8vo, original wrappers with Cocteau lithographs to both covers printed in black, red and green, dos à dos binding, loose-bound as issued, a little browning at backstrip ends, light foxing to textblock edges and endpapers of first title, very good £1,500 Inscribed by the author to the title-page of ‘Les Cavaliers d’Ombre’: ‘A Norbert toujours fidèle à lui- même, Geneviève, le 5.3.58’ - above the inscription Laporte has written three lines of [unpublished?] verse. Laporte is best known for her association with Cocteau and Picasso, who illustrate her work here - particularly the latter, for whom she was mistress and model during the 1950s
Malcolm Bradbury’s copy, with a note from Larkin 109. Larkin (Philip) The Less Deceived. Poems. Hessle: The Marvell Press, 1955 [but 1956,] FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION, pp. 43, crown 8vo, original wrappers, dustjacket with the backstrip panel a little faded and the odd nick or crease to extremities, very good (Bloomfield A6a, second impression) £750 The novelist and academic Malcolm Bradbury’s copy, with his ownership inscription at the head of the half-title. Laid in is a typed note to Bradbury from ‘The Librarian’ at the University of Hull, signed with the initials ‘P.A.L’ (i.e., Philip Arthur Larkin) and dated January 1961 - Bradbury had taken up his first academic post there in 1959. The note suggests that Bradbury might keep some of the 23rd of that month free in order to meet with an emissary from the TLS. On the verso of the note are some pencil notes by Bradbury, under the heading ‘The Mugwumps of the Labour Party’, and likely in reference to the G.T. Garratt book of that title.
33 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
This printing corrects the misprint (’floor’ for ‘sea’ on p. 38) and includes extracts from early reviews of the book on its rear flap. As a further thread to the association, Bradbury had been taught as a schoolboy by the book’s dedicatee, Monica Jones.
110. Laski (Harold J.) An archive of manuscript material. - ‘The Foundations of Sovereignty’, 1920, pp. 24 - ‘The Russian Enigma’, n.d., pp. 7 - [The Introduction to:] ‘The Defence of Liberty against Tyrants. A Translation of the ‘Vindiciae contra tyrannos’ by Junius Brutus. With an historical introduction’, [1923], pp. 70 - ‘America: 1947’, [1947], pp. 17 - ‘The British Labour Party after Fifty Years’, [1950], pp. 13 1920- 1950, the manuscript material all ink on paper and signed at foot, a few with marks from rusted paperclips to outer sheets, the last with a few words circled in pencil, 4to, the 1923 translation in custom blue morocco and cloth dropdown box lettered in gilt, the others loose sheets stored in plastic wallets, good condition £5,000 A group of published and unpublished material from one of the twentieth-century’s leading political theorists of the left, offering a small but representative cross-section of his thought and activity over a thirty year period. Born into a Jewish family in Manchester, Laski’s energetic intellect took him to New College, Oxford, and then Harvard where his burgeoning reputation was founded on his espousal of the doctrine of pluralism; returning to England in 1920, he became a leading figure in the Labour Party and the Fabian Society - taking up a lectureship at the London School of Economics, a post that he retained for the last thirty years of his life. Laski was ‘the best-known socialist intellectual of his era’ (ODNB) and, though a shift towards Marxism during the 1930s attracted controversy, his importance and reputation were well established, and his work has proved enduring. Of the material here, the article on ‘The Russian Enigma’, and the late essay on ‘The British Labour Party after Fifty Years’, would appear to be unpublished. [With:] A collection of pamphlets and offprints by the same, some inscribed, comprising:- - ‘A Note on Sovereignty and Federalism’, offprint from The Canadian Law Times, Vol. 35. 1915 - ‘The Sovereignty of the State’, offprint from The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. XIII, No. 4, February 1916, ms. correction to text in author’s hand - ‘The Political Theory of the Disruption’, offprint from The American Political Science Review’, Vol. X, No. 3, 1916, inscribed ‘With love from Harold’ to front - ‘The Basis of Vicarious Liability’, offprint from the Yale Law Journal, December 1916, inscribed ‘With love from Harold’ to front - ‘The Early History of the Corporation in England’, offprint from the Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXX, No. 6, 1917, inscribed ‘With love from Harold’ to front - Problem of Administrative Areas. Smith College Studies in History, Vol. IV, No. 1, October 1918, inscribed ‘With love from Harold’ to front - ‘Recent Contributions to Political Science’, offprint from Ecomonica, Issued Terminally by the London School of Economics and Political Science. January 1921. T. Fisher Unwin, 1921 - The Position of Parties and the Right of Dissolution. Fabian Tract No. 210. The Fabian Society, 1924, inscribed ‘With love & good wishes, H.J.L.’ to front - The Problem of a Second Chamber. Fabian Tract No. 213. The Fabian Society, 1925, inscribed ‘With love from Harold’ to front - Socialism and Freedom. Fabian Tract No. 216. The Fabian Society, 1925, inscribed ‘With my love, H.J.L.’ to front - Karl Marx. An Essay [reprint]. The Fabian Society and Geo. Allen & Unwin, 1925, ownership inscription of J.G. Elkington to title-page and some annotation to the text in the same hand - On the Study of Politics. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 22 October 1926. Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1926 [2 copies] - The Recovery of Citizenship. Self and Society Booklets, No. 4. Ernest Benn, 1928 - The Socialist Tradition in the French Revolution. The Fabian Society and Geo. Allen & Unwin, 1930 - The Limitations of the Expert. Fabian Tract No. 235. The Fabian Society, 1931 - The Labour Party, The War and The Future. The Labour Party, 1939, inscribed ‘With my love, H’ to front
34 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
- Is This an Imperialist War? Labour Party, 1940, inscribed ‘With love from Harold’ to front - Will Planning Restrict Freedom? The Planning Bogies series. The Architectural Press, [1944], inscribed ‘With love from Harold’ at head of text - Democracy at the Cross-Roads, NCLC Publishing, n.d. - What is Democracy [with Lord Lindsay, S. de Madariaga, Bertrand Russell, and D.W. Brogan]. Peace Aims Pamphlet 38. National Peace Council, [1946] - The Secret Battalion. An Examination of the Communist Attitude to the Labour Party. The Labour Party, [1946] - ‘What Socialism Means to Me’, offprint from Labour Forum, 1 [1948]
111. Le Guin (Ursula) The Farthest Shore. Victor Gollancz, 1973, PROOF COPY FOR FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, full-page map, a few spots at head of half-title, pp. 206, crown 8vo, original buff proof wrappers printed to front and backstrip, minor handling marks, endpaper maps, good £200 The third volume of the 'Earthsea' trilogy, inscribed by the author on the title-page for author and bibliophile John Baxter.
‘from Alix to James’ 112. Lear (Edward) Teapots and Quails and other New Nonsenses. Edited and Introduced by Angus Davidson and Philip Hofer. John Murray, 1953, FIRST EDITION, numerous drawings reproducing work by Lear, pp. 64, royal 8vo, original illustrated boards, illustrated endpapers, bookplate of Richard Strachey to verso of flyleaf, dustjacket repeating board design with a few nicks and a chip at head of backstrip panel, very good £90 Inscribed on the verso of the flyleaf: ‘With love from Alix to James, Xmas ‘53’ - i.e., Bloomsbury stalwarts the Stracheys, best-known as translators of Freud. Subsequently ownership passed to Dick Strachey, the son of James’s elder brother Ralph and the author of the Little Reuben series.
Charles Graves’ review copy 113. Leavis (F.R.) New Bearings in English Poetry. A Study of The Contemporary Situation. Chatto & Windus, 1932, FIRST EDITION, occasional marginal marking in pencil (see below), pp. [viii], 214, crown 8vo, original blue-green cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, top edge blue, dustjacket with some minor chipping and a couple of closed tears, pencil notes of Charles Graves to rear endpapers and dustjacket flap, very good £250 An interesting copy of an important book - the author’s first major statement of his desire to reorient the study of poetry. This copy bears the notes of Leavis’s contemporary, journalist Charles Graves (brother of Robert) - though we have been unable to trace his review.
114. Lewis (C.S.) Reflections on the Psalms. Geoffrey Bles, 1958, FIRST EDITION, pp. [viii], 151, crown 8vo, original maroon boards, backstrip lettered in yellow, faintly sunned through the jacket, top corners gently pushed, top edge blue with a couple of faint spots to fore-edge, contemporary ownership inscription to flyleaf, dustjacket with a couple of short closed tears at head and a nick to rear panel, erased pencil notes to rear flap, very good (Como 32) £2,000 Inscribed by the author on the title-page: ‘To Graham, from C.S. Lewis’.
In the scarce dustjacket 115. Lewis (Wyndham) The Hitler Cult. Dent, 1939, FIRST EDITION, a few spots to prelims, pp. x, 270, crown 8vo, original black cloth, backstrip with lettering blocked in sliver and blind, some very faint discolouration to cloth, top edge red with edges lightly spotted, light foxing to endpapers, dustjacket with some light soiling and a sprinkling of tiny spots, the front and backstrip panel toned with extremities chipped, good (Morrow & Lafourcade A30; Pound & Grover A30a) £800
35 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
The dustjacket is uncommon and clearly apes the yellow and text-heavy designs of Gollancz jackets from this period; part of a series on ‘Hitlerism’, other instalments of which are enumerated on the rear flap, Dent may simply have been trying to appeal to an area of the market that Gollancz had successfully cornered at that time.
116. (Limericks.) [later MS title on fly -leaf:] THE BOOK OF LIMERICKS. (1-230) circa 1928, a feint ruled album with 230 typed limericks on slips of paper pasted onto the pages, juxtaposed above with cut out steel-engraved illustrations, pp. 230, the last leaf with a needle (sharp, and a little rusted) pinned to it, 4to, contemporary/original red linen backed marbled boards, spine weakening (largely due to the increase of bulk, thanks to the additions) £1,500 The limericks here collected are of the type that Don Marquis identifies as LIMERICKS. The chief glory of this collection, beyond the lubricity of the lyrics themselves, is their extremely clever juxtaposition with melodramatic illustrations from Penny Dreadfuls: they may be said to lift the lid on Victorian prudery and hypocrisy. We have not identified any particular publications, but some examples are signed by such artists as Crowquill, Nicholson, and John Swain. The collection is datable to about 1928. A few appear in Norman Douglas’s anthology, and others in Gershorn Legman’s anthology of 1953, where commensurate dates are assigned. Contemporary references to Freud, Stopes, and a Seven Horse Austin, reinforce this dating. The one concerning Freud was composed by Philip Hestletine, and was published in The Weekend Book in 1927: here, the last word is ‘phalluses’ rather than the coy ‘fallacies’ in Legman. About a quarter of the limericks here are anthologised by Legman, but many are not, so there are probably some original.
117. Lommius (Jodocus: Josse van Lom) Medicinalium observationum libri tres. Quibus notæ morborum omnium, et quæ de his possint praesagia, iudiciaque, proponuntur. Antwerp: [Christpher Plantin for] Willem Silvius, 1560, FIRST EDITION, title within woodcut border, interleaved and annotated in the eighteenth-century (see below), title trimmed at foot with slight loss to border, side note on f. 90v trimmed, one or two annotations slightly trimmed, worming in the gutter, just affecting text on 2 leaves (the worming only affecting the printed text, not the interleaves), rust hole in f. 42 with the loss of a couple of letters, ff. [viii], 129, [3], 8vo, eighteenth-century unlettered calf, slightly rubbed, some surface abrasion to spine and lower cover, good (Adams L1431; Ruelens & De Backer p. 23) £2,000 The scarce first edition of a book which held sway for two and a half centuries, a copy that was rebound, interleaved and annotated in the mid-eighteenth century, probably in England. ‘Originating as an accessible manual of diagnosis for municipal authorities, it emphasized the observable aspects of illness and downplayed the role of humors and hidden causes. As a result, it both heralded and served the trend to symptom-based nosology. Eventually, as disease concepts shifted from symptoms to organs, Lommius was eclipsed by the next epistemic fashion: positivistic organicism. The multiple editions of this work invite us to reconsider the sustained influence of ancient writers, including Celsus, in medical pedagogy and semeiology, as well as the timing and location of the development of nosological concepts of disease’ (Jacalyn Duffin, Jodocus Lommius’s Little Golden Book in Jnl. of the History of Med. and Allied Sciences, Vol. 61, pp. 249-287, 2006). The book bears witness to a close study, the entire text studded with asterisks in the margins. There are long notes, in Latin in a neat hand, on 33 pages of the interleaves, a few of them extending over several pages. Most of the notes are references to writers subsequent to Lommius, some English, Willis, Floyer and Bayne, the last seemingly David Kinneir, who published A New Essay on the Nerves in 1738 under that pseudonym. Continental writers referred to are Hoffmann and Boerhaave. The annotator seems to have been particularly interested in asthma. Given that the book was so often reprinted, it is interesting that the eighteenth-century owner chose a copy of the first edition for study.
118. Lope de Vega y Carpio (Félix) Arcadia, Prosas, y Versos. Con na Exposicion delos no[m]bres Historicos, y Poeticos a Don Pedro Tellez Giron ... Madrid: [colophon: Pedro de Madrigal], 1603, title within woodcut architectural border, woodcut portrait of Lope on [...]7v, woodcut arms of Tellez Giron on f. 312v, cut a little close with some headlines just touched, water-staining in the first half and more particularly the first quarter (but not a disaster), a few fragments of blank corners torn away, and small hole in the first leaf
36 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
of the Exposicion touching a couple of letters, ff. [8], 312 (various errors in signatures and pagination), [30], small 8vo, early 19th-century half English calf, rubbed, upper joint and top of spine repaired, early English provenance (see below), inscription of Aurelio M. Espinos (also see below) and his book label on front free endpaper, sound (Profeti, Bibliografia di Lope de Vega: opere non drammatiche pp. 36-37; Palau 356295; Morby p. 141) £5,000 Early (third or fourth) edition of Lope de Vega’s extraordinarily successful pastoral novel (partly in verse), first published in 1598 and going through more than 40 editions within a century. All the early editions are rare: WorldCat records only the BL copy of this, though Profeti adds a few more, Arsenal, Wolfenbüttel, Hispanic Society, and Florence: not in the BNSpain. Verso of the title inscribed: ‘John Winstanley liber [...] / ex dono Margaret ?Sotherno / 1641’, John Winstanley’s signature (the ascenders just cropped) on the page opposite. The inscription of A.M. Espinosa is dated 1908, noting it as a gift from T.S. Bell, which means this is Espinosa Senior, father of the noted folklorist Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa.
‘for Kate from Caroline’ 119. Lorac (E.C.R.) Still Waters. Crime Club by Collins, 1949, FIRST EDITION, a few faint spots to half-title and a little foxing towards close, pp. 192, crown 8vo, original red cloth, backstrip lettered in black and a touch faded at tips, snagging to cloth at head of upper board (production fault), foxing to edges and endpapers, dustjacket a little chipped and nicked with a couple of short closed tears, the backstrip panel gently faded, good £2,500 A presentation copy and in a complex sense a dedication copy of sorts, inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: ‘For Kate, from Caroline. May ‘48-’49.’ There follows a quotation from the text which describes - in the words of Inspector Macdonald - the character Kate Hoggett; clearly based on this real-life namesake to whom - along with her husband Giles - the author’s Foreword conveys an acknowledgement and gratitude, whilst referring to her use of real places and names within her fiction. A scarce book, with a very desirable - and appropriately intriguing - presentation; inscribed copies of the author’s books are very uncommon.
120. (Louis XIV.) SAMMELBAND of 8 works relating to Louis XIV and French politics and diplomacy. Various places, 1670-95, 8 works in 1 vol., 12mo, contemporary vellum over boards, brown lettering piece ‘La France demasquée &c’, string marks to upper board, engraved armorial bookplate of the 6th duke of Portland inside front cover £2,000 A fascinating collection of tracts, some of notable rarity, dealing with French expansionism. Hans Willem [William] Bentinck, first earl of Portland (1649–1709), grappled with this very problem, especially as it interplayed with Anglo-Dutch affairs, throughout his long diplomatic and political career and its seems likely that he assembled the volume, and contributed the underlinings and two brief annotations in the first work. Comprising, in the order in which they are bound:- 1. [Lisola (François-Paul de)] La France demasquée, ou ses irrégularitez dans sa conduite et maximes. The Hague: Jean Laurent, 1670, pp. 91. 2. Le pot aux roses des françois découvert par un amateur de la vérité. Cologne: Pierre Petit, [c. 1670], pp. 42. Yale only in the US in WorldCat. 3. Memoire du Roy Tres-chrestien a l'abbé de Gravel ... avec la lettre d'un conseiller d'Estat d'un Prince d'Empire, escrite à ce sujet au Deputé de son Maistre à Diete de Ratisbonne: traduite de la langue Allemande. Cologne: Everard Wurts, 1673, pp. 88. 4. Suitte des pieces touchant les differens qui sont entre sa Majesté Tres-Chrestienne et son Altesse Electorale Palatine. Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1680, pp. 20. Not found in WorldCat or KVK. 5. Savile (Henry) Copie du Memoire Presenté au Roy Tres-Chrestien ... le 27 Juin 1680: Avec les remarques Sur la Réponse que le Roy Tres Chrestien a fait de bouche, &c. Avec la suite du Journal du Voyage du Roy. Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1680, pp. 41 (sectional title-page to 2nd part dated 1 day after that to the first). Biblioteca Nacional de España only in WorldCat. 6. Journal du voyage du roy en Flandre: avec une relation de ce qui s'est passé sur le vaisseau l'Entreprenant et aux combats des deux frégates à la rade de Dunkerque. Paris: Bureau d'Adresses, 1680, pp. 41. 3 copies only in WorldCat, all on the Continent. 7. Lettre escrite au Roy par les Archevêques, Evêques, et autres Ecclésiastiques deputez du Clergé de France ... sur le dernier Bref du Pape, au sujet de la Regale. Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1680, pp. 20. 2
37 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
copies only in WorldCat, both on the Continent, besides a ?Paris edition and an English translation in the BL. 8. Reponce a une deduction presenté par Mr. de Bonrepos a la cour de Danemark par laquelle il prétend prouver que sur les conditions offertes par la France, le repos peut être rétably dans la Chrêtienté, sur un pied juste raisonnable, & de durée. Cologne: Guillaume Frappefort, ‘à l'Enseigne de la bonne Paix’, 1695, pp. [iv], 198, title-page browned and flecked. The text is subscribed T.D.P. and the title informs us that the text is by the author of Le Salut del’Europe, but the author remains unknown. Bonrepos = J.A. de Mesmes comte d'Avaux. WorldCat records only Yale and UCLA in the US, and Oxford in the UK: the BL has the second edition of the same year.
Wadham provenance 121. Lucretius Carus (Titus) T. Lucretius Carus The Epicurean Philosopher, his Six Books De Natura Rerum done into into English Verse, with Notes [by Thomas Creech]. The Second Edition, Corrected and Enlarged Oxford: L. Lichfield ... for Anthony Stephens, 1683, with an engraved frontispiece by M. Burgher, under instructions from Creech, a little worming in the lower margins towards the end, not affecting text, pp. [xliv], 223, 59, 8vo, contemporary calf, double blind fillets on sides with corner ornaments, old (possibly contemporary) paper label attached to spine, lettered in ink, lacking the L, a little rubbed, especially the spine, stain to lower cover, still a good copy,ownership inscription on fly- leaf ‘Ex Libris Gulielmi Dod, e Coll. Wadham, Oxon’, and his ownership inscription (English) dated 1684 on the title-page (ESTC R23065; Gordon 331A; Grolier "Wither to Prior" 237) £950 Second Creech edition. Creech's "incomparable translation" (Thomas Hearne) was highly praised by Dryden, and vied in popularity with Dryden's "Virgil" and Pope's "Homer." It was an immediate success: a second edition had to be printed within a few months. Added to this edition are the frontispiece, extra notes, and a dazzling array of commendatory verses, by Dryden (not signed, but identified in a contemporary hand: MacDonald 231 - not in fact by Dryden, but by Tonson), Tate, Otway, Aphra Behn (the longest, at 7 pages), Waller, and others. Most of these celebrate Creech’s connection with Wadham: William Dod might well have known him.
122. Lull (Ramón) Libelli aliquot Chemici: nunc primum, excepto Vade mecum, in lucem opera doctoris Toxitæ editi. Basle: Peter Perna, 1572, FIRST EDITION OF THIS COLLECTION, full-page woodcut ‘arbor operationis’ on p. 192, and small woodcut on p. 224, paper page tabs marking the divisions of the volume (the last, right at the foot of the page pulled a little, with a resultant short tear, the length of the tab, no more), a little bit of browning, mainly confined to the terminal gatherings, poor impression of the running title on p. 375, pp. [xvi], 480, [31], 8vo, 18th-century vellum, tan wash label on spine bounded by double gilt fillets, lettered in gilt in Italian, very good (Rogent and Durán 116; VD 16 R150; Duveen p. 370 (no copy in the Young collection); Neville Historical Chemical Library Vol.2 , pp.100-101) £4,500 An important and rare edition of the pseudo-Lullian alchemical corpus, containing eight treatises, most published for the first time. There was another edition in 1600. The label on the spine reads ‘DIZIO/FISIC/TO I’ indicating a one-time Italian provenance and that this was once part of a set considered to be definitive, but the volume is of course complete in itself.
123. McInerney (Jay) Bright Lights, Big City. Jonathan Cape, 1985, FIRST HARDBACK EDITION, pp. [x], 182, crown 8vo, original grey boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, a few faint spots to top edge, dustjacket, near fine £200 Preceded by the US paperback edition.
124. MacKenzie (Henry) The Man of Feeling. A New Edition. Hambourg [Hamburg]: printed for Hoffmann, 1785, with an engraved frontispiece by C.C. Glasbach after Daniel Chodowiecki, a few spots, some quite dark (like rust marks) and obscuring a few letters, pp. 192 (including frontispiece), 8vo, contemporary calf, spine ruled in gilt, red lettering piece, very good (ESTC T131914, 5 in the UK and 1 in Szczecin Public Library) £850
38 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
The first Continental printing in English of The Man of Feeling (first edition, 1771): Hoffmann produced another edition in 1794. The name of Hoffman survives to this day in the firm of Hoffmann und Campe Verlag. The only contender for an earlier Continental printing, in translation, is that probably printed in Paris in 1775 (ESTC T120532). ESTC records just 11 books published by Hoffman, the present book being the first, and the second edition of it among the tally. 8 were in English, 3 in French; 1 in the latter category published in conjunction with Joseph Johnson.
With a note from Hugh Casson 125. Mackley (George) Wood Engraver. [Edited by Lewis H. Green. Foreword by Sir Hugh Casson. Introduction by Monica Poole. A Biography by Elizabeth Romyn.] Gresham Books, 1981, FIRST EDITION, numerous reproductions of Mackley’s wood-engravings, pp. 136, 4to, original variant binding of quarter sheep and marbled boards, blind- stamped border to sheep at intersection, backstrip lettered in gilt, a touch of rubbing at corners, very good £200 The copy of Editor Lewis H. Green, with a plastic wallet containing various press clippings laid in, along with an ALs from Hugh Casson (who provides the Foreword) - professing himself ‘absolutely delighted with the book’, praising its quality, and considering that ‘G.M. must be very pleased indeed’. An excellent association copy. The book is normally found bound in blue cloth - here the binding matches the limited edition of the artist’s ‘Confessions of a Woodpecker’.
126. MacNeice (Louis, Translator) The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. Faber and Faber, 1936, FIRST EDITION, pp. 71, 8vo, original purple cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, bookplate of J. Timothy Kenrick to front pastedown, dustjacket a little tatty with some tape repair at head of rear panel, good £600 Signed by MacNeice at the foot of his Preface.
Geoffrey Grigson’s copy 127. Madge (Charles) The Disappearing Castle. Faber and Faber, 1937, FIRST EDITION, pp. 70, 8vo, original red cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket with minor fraying around head, very good £75 An excellent association copy of Madge’s debut verse-collection, bearing the signature of his contemporary Geoffrey Grigson in pencil to the flyleaf - some of the poems here had been published by Grigson as editor of ‘New Verse’. Below Grigson’s is the later signature of another author, playwright and novelist Julian Mitchell.
128. Magens (Nicolas) The Universal Merchant: Containing the Rationale of Commerce, in Theory and Practice; an Enquiry into the Nature and Genius of Banks, their Power, Use, Influence, and Efficacy; the Establishment and operative Transactions of the Banks of London and Amsterdam, their Capacity and Credit calculated and compared; an Account of the Banks of Hamburgh, Nuremberg, Venice, and Genoa, their Credit and Course of Business; the Doctrine of Bullion and Coins amply discussed; and therefrom the Course and Par of Exchange regularly deduced ... Adapted equally to the Use and Information of Gentlemen who propose to make a Figure in Public Affairs, as to the Merchant, Factor, Broker, and Remitter. [Translated by William Horsley]. Printed by C. Say, for W. Owen, 1753, foxed in places, leaves at either end stained from turn-ins, pp. [vi], xxii, 131, [4], 4to, contemporary calf, double gilt fillets on sides, spine gilt, red lettering piece, rebacked preserving most of the original spine, corners worn but consolidated, good (ESTC T92967; Wallis (Newton) 350.3) £3,000 First edition in English of a remarkable and scarce book on trade and banking and an important source for Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, particular in regard to exchange mechanisms and coin systems. Nicolaus Magens or Magen, called by Adam Smith Meggens, by Steuart, Megens, and in the Dictionnaire de l’économie politique, Magends, was a German merchant who lived for many years in England and gained a great reputation in commercial matters. In the Universal Merchant,
39 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
to which he added a postscript in 1756, he showed a deep insight into trade mechanisms, as highly appreciated by Smith: ‘The author, after a general treatise on trade and on wealth, by which is meant not merely gold and silver, the common medium of trade, but a pre-eminence of industry, manufactures, and commerce, enters into an enquiry concerning bullion, after which he considers the nature, operation, and effects of banks in general and in particular. The treatise concludes with a further illustration of the business of exchange from the tables of Sir Isaac Newton, with remarks and additions’ (Palgrave). The Wealth of Nations contains six substantial direct and indirect references to the Universal Merchant. A further interesting reference is to be found in Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence.
129. Mailer (Norman) Barbary Shore. Jonathan Cape, 1952, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. 286, crown 8vo, original blue boards, lettered in silver to upper board and backstrip, a couple of faint spots to endpapers, bookseller ticket at foot of flyleaf, dustjacket with some minor rubbing and shllow chipping to extremities, very good £200 Signed by the author on the title-page; his second novel.
130. Malthus (Thomas Robert) Definitions in Political Economy, Preceded by An Inquiry into the Rules Which Ought to Guide Political Economists in the Definition and Use of their Terms, With Remarks on the Deviation from these Rules in their Writings. John Murray, 1827, FIRST EDITION, bound without the half-title, pp. [iii-] viii, 261, 8vo, contemporary calf by J. Jones, triple gilt fillets on sides, black lettering piece on spine, spine rubbed and a little defective at head, slight wear to extremities, bookplate of Charles and Grace Booth (Goldsmiths' 25180; Kress C.1924; Mattioli 2205; Sraffa 3697) £2,750 ‘Definitions in Political Economy (1827) was a valiant attempt to resolve differences of opinion in political economy by codifying its terminology and establishing rules for the definition of terms. It could be regarded as one of the earliest works on the methodology of economics’ (ODNB). Various binders by the name of J. Jones are recorded by Ramsden, either in Wales or Liverpool. Given Booth family connections with Liverpool, it seems likely that our Jones was a Liverpudlian.
131. Manguel (Alberto) & Gianni Guadalup i. The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. New York: Macmillan, 1980, FIRST EDITION, drawings and maps throughout, pp. [x], 438, 4to, original quarter dark green cloth with mid green boards, backstrip lettered in gilt with bump at foot of upper joint, a few faint spots to top edge, bookplate of John Baxter to front pastedown, dustjacket price-clipped, very good £75 Inscribed on the title-page by Alberto Manguel, to author and bibliophile John Baxter and his wife: ‘To John and Marie-Dominique, Over wine, film and literary gossip, Paris, 14 May 1996. Alberto’. With a postcard from Manguel to the same laid in, thanking him for his book on Woody Allen and hoping for a a meeting. A marvellous compendium, covering Oz, Middle-earth, Erewhon, et al.
132. Mann (Thomas) Der Tod in Venedig. Novelle. Berlin: S. Fischer, 1913, FIRST TRADE EDITION, pp. 145, [2, ads], foolscap 8vo, original grey wrappers printed in black, a small amount chipping and creasing to edges, textblock edges untrimmed and partly unopened, bookplate of Lucie Ceconi to flyleaf, very good £2,500 A very well-preserved copy of the first trade edition, this formerly belonging to Lucie Ceconi (née Oberwarth) - the first wife of German art dealer Paul Cassirer, who played an important role in bringing to a wider audience the work of the Berlin Secession, and then the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, particularly in his promotion of the work of Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh. There was a deluxe, signed issue of 60 copies, as well as an issue in cloth - but it is much less common to find the wrappered issue in such a state as this.
133. (Maritime. East India Company.) [HARDY (Charles, editor)] A Register of Ships, employed in the service of the Hon. the United East India Company From the union of the two companies, in 1707, to the year 1760; specifying the number of voyages, tonnage, commanders, and stations. To which is added, from the latter period to the present time, the managing owners, principal officers, surgeons, and pursers; with the dates of their
40 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
sailing and arrival: also, an appendix, containing many particulars, interesting to those concerned in the East India commerce. Printed for Charles Hardy, Jerusalem Coffeehouse, 1800, with a folding table and 1 folding leaf, pp. 233/34 cropped at foot with the loss perhaps of a line, occasional foxing, [x], 216, [10], 217-224, [3], 226-238, 265-268, 243-248, 255 (folding, verso [1]), 253-254, 249-252, 261-264, 257-260, 265- 271, [24], 16, folding table, verso blank, [13], 12mo, contemporary diced Russia, neatly rebacked and gilt with a ship in each compartment, gilt edges, armorial bookplate of Edwin J. Poyser, good (ESTC T231501) £2,000 One of the earliest editions of Charles Hardy’s Register of Ships, an extraordinarily rich resource, and of the utmost rarity. There is a copy dated 1798 in Goldsmiths’, and one dated 1799 in the India Office (neither of these in ESTC). There were several editions, continued by Hardy’s son Horatio, until the mid-1830s. On the evidence of this copy, some of these new ‘editions’ were cobbled together. Here, the title-page is straight afterwards followed by a sectional title, A List of Commanders ... dated 1805, and the nightmarish collation is evidence of further interpolations, covering the years between 1800 and 1805. ESTC records 2 copies of this title of this year, 1 of 180 pages (single copy, at Trinity College, Hartford CT) and the present (Cambridge only, with a complicated collation, not however identical, or even, it has to be said, similar). There is also a copy in the BL, with a collation similar to the Cambridge copy. The bookplate is late-19th-century, allowing for the identification of Edwin Josiah Poyser, the businessman who was the leading shareholder in the buy-out of Madame Tussaud’s in 1889.
Betjeman’s ‘wild and mad and ridiculous poet’ 134. Marzials (Theo.) The Gallery of Pigeons, and Other Poems. Henry S. King, 1873, FIRST EDITION, some light staining to pp. 66-7, no half-title as issued, pp. viii, 198, 28 [List, dated January 1873], foolscap 8vo, original dark green cloth, lettered in gilt to upper board and backstrip, a little rubbing along joints and at backstrip ends with a touch of wear, likewise at corners which are gently knocked, a few gentle grazes to upper board, the top edge a little dusty, good £700 An alluringly unusual man, whose charms reached Ford Madox Hueffer, Edmund Gosse, Max Beerbohm, et al., Marzials was an aesthete of a particularly eccentric sensibility. We should not be surprised, therefore, to find this, his sole volume of verse, in the collection of Lord Berners at Faringdon House (whence this copy came). Its route to that destination is a matter of perhaps more intrigue - on the basis of a few distinctive attributes, we can surmise that this is the very copy that John Betjeman found in a second-hand bookshop in Highgate Hill, a chance encounter that formed the basis of that author's attempt to recover Marzials' celebrity in a radio talk of 1950. It has the pencilled marginalia that Betjeman describes, which a note to the verso of the flyleaf signed by Frank Marzials, the author's brother, records as having been 'copied from Theo's own copy', and the very price that Betjeman mentions having paid (1s. 6d.) at the foot of the same. One can hardly think that two such copies exist, and Betjeman was a regular guest at Faringdon; he may have felt that Berners would recognise a kindred spirit in Marzials, a singer and songwriter as well as a poet (indeed, his fame largely resting on the middle of those three), and he probably had a hunch that he would appreciate the poet’s savage self-admonishments delivered in the margins here, which offer their own, very rich entertainment: ‘puerile drivel’, ‘how perfectly stupid’, ‘naughty, but not bad’, ‘vulgar’, ‘my dear deformed child’ (this at the head of ‘Tragedy’), ‘I can’t be bothered with it’, ‘Oh, how dull’, ‘ineffably silly, ghastly expenditure of sweet words and soft images & pictures’, ‘rubbish cut down from decasyllabic’, etc.; with occasional approbation - ‘it has an horizon and that’s something’, ‘mad but rather nice’, ‘I rather like it’, ‘jolly & fresh & pointless & young & silly’, ‘I really like it because its young & original & very me’ - and a handful of comments too abstruse to pass as opinion (‘antediluvian no doubt’, ‘invertebrate’).
Signed by Agnes Miller Parker 135. (Miller Parker.) BATES (H.E.) Down the River. With 83 Engravings on Wood by Agnes Miller Parker. Gollancz, 1937, FIRST EDITION, 83 wood-engravings by Agnes Miller- Parker, a number full-page, pp. 150, 4to, original mid blue cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, bookplates to front pastedown, bump to top corner of lower board, second issue
41 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
dustjacket (carrying quote by Eric Gill), backstrip panel gently sunned and the rear panel faintly foxed, very good (Eads A29a) £250 Signed by the illustrator on the flyleaf, and dated to the year of publication.
136. Mitchison (Naomi) Memoirs of a Spacewoman. Victor Gollancz, 1962, FIRST EDITION, partial browning to half-title, pp. 176, foolscap 8vo, original red boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket price-clipped and a little darkened to backstrip panel and borders with a few minor nicks and chips, later signed photo of author laid in, very good £95 The author’s debut in this genre.
137. Mollwo (Adrienne) A Fair Suffragette. Henry J. Drane, n.d. [1909,] FIRST EDITION, foxing to prelims receding into text and recurrent at rear, 8vo, original red cloth, lettered in gilt to upper board and backstrip, a couple of tiny spots of wear to upper joint, light foxing to edges, patch of bleed from cloth colour to leading edge of front endpapers, endpapers foxed, good £650 A scarce book whose main merit - but it is a significant one - is in its historical moment. BL, Bodleian, CUL, and NLS only on COPAC, none on WorldCat.
funniest ... bleakest 138. Montesquieu (Charles -Louis de Secondat, Baron de) Persian Letters. Translated by [John] Ozell. Volume the first [-second]. Printed for J. Tonson: and sold by Thomas Combes and James Lacy, 1722, occasional browning or foxing, fairly pronounced at the beginning of vol. ii, pp. [vi], [3-] 721 (recte 271, B8 a cancel), 15 (Contents and translator’s Postscript); 309, [12], 12mo, contemporary sprinkled calf, double gilt fillet borders on sides, spine gilt in compartments, numbered direct, lacking lettering pieces, a bit rubbed, short cracks at end of joints, the Macclefield copy with bookplates and blindstamps, good (McBurney 136; ESTC T90449) £3,500 First edition in English (the French original having appeared the year before, printed in Holland) and rather uncommon. ‘The Persian Letters is both one of the funniest books written by a major philosopher, and one of the bleakest. It presents both virtue and self-knowledge as almost unattainable. Almost all the Europeans in the Persian Letters are ridiculous; most of those who are not appear only to serve as a mouthpiece for Montesquieu's own views. Rica is amiable and good- natured, but this is largely due to the fact that, since he has no responsibilities, his virtue has never been seriously tested. For all Usbek's apparent enlightenment and humanity, he turns out to be a monster whose cruelty does not bring him happiness, as he himself recognizes even as he decides to inflict it. His eunuchs, unable to hope for either freedom or happiness, learn to enjoy tormenting their charges, and his wives, for the most part, profess love while plotting intrigues. The only admirable character in the novel is Roxana, but the social institutions of Persia make her life intolerable: she is separated from the man she loves and forced to live in slavery. Her suicide is presented as a noble act, but also as an indictment of the despotic institutions that make it necessary’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
139. Moorcock (Michael) The Chinese Agent. Hutchinson, 1970, FIRST EDITION, pp. 184, crown 8vo, original red boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket price-clipped by publisher with minor toning and a short closed tear at head of front panel, very good £100 Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: ‘To John Baxter’, with a bibliographic note explaining that a version of the story had been published as ‘Somewhere in the Night’ for Compact Books, concluding happily that in the present version ‘it became one of my best-sellers! All best, Mike, 5th Sept ‘05, Paris’. Above the inscription is the stamp of Moorcock’s agent Janet Freer. The author has also signed the book’s title-page. A witty send-up of the spy fiction genre.
42 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
ungratefully inscribed 140. Moore (Marianne) Festschrift for Marianne Moore’s Seventy Seventh Birthday, by various hands. Edited by Tambimuttu. New York: Tambimuttu and Mass, 1964, FIRST EDITION, 4 plates of monochrome photographs, 15 illustrations by Peggy Bacon, Laurence Scott, and Helene Fesenmaier, pp. 137, crown 8vo, original quarter black cloth with patterned paper sides, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket by Leonard Baskin, small chip at head of backstrip panel, very good £150 With a marvellously ungrateful inscription on the flyleaf by the subject of this tribute, referring to the price sticker on the front flap: ‘$4.95! $2.00 is more like it, with 200 corrections. Marianne Moore (1964 to be exact)’, and then, more obscurely at the foot, ‘? inadvertent question mark’. Never has this cataloguer’s pricing pencil been wielded more unsurely. Literary contributions come from the Editor, Richard Eberhart, Allen Ginsberg, Conrad Aiken, Kathleen Raine, Malcolm Cowley, et al.
141. [Morelly (Etienne -Gabriel)] Code de Nature, ou le véritable esprit de ses loix, de tout tems négligé ou méconnu. Par-Tout [i.e. Netherlands]: chez le vrai Sage, 1755, FIRST EDITION, title printed in red and black and with an engraved vignette, pp. 236, [4], 8vo, entirely uncut in contemporary pink sheep backed marbled boards, the spine rubbed, torn at foot where possibly a small paper label has been removed, there being such a label at the top of the spine, near contemporary armorial bookplate of Robert Rutherfor inside front cover, likewise miniature pencil ownership inscription of Roger Senhouse date [19]43, good (Goldsmiths’ 9074; Hartig ‘Essai de Bibliographie’ in Hartig & Soboul, Pour une histoire de l’utopie en France, au XVIIIe siècle, p. 55; Higgs 1107; Kress 5457) £1,650 Proto communism, ‘oeuvre maîtresse de la pensée utopique du XVIII siècle’ (Hartig): a work drawn on by many later writers, including Marx. The basic tenet is the abolition of private property, except that which is necessary for daily living. Morelly is a somewhat obscure figure, but he produced a fairly substantial oeuvre, the present work being a development of his Basiliade, 1753. Code de Nature was included in the unauthorised edition of Diderot’s works published in Amsterdam in 1773, which led to work being attributed to him. This has led to more than a little confusion.
Presentation copy for Georges Davy 142. Mo rgan (Charles) The Burning Glass. A Play. With a Preface on Power over Nature. Macmillan, 1953, FIRST EDITION, pp. xxviii, [1], 156, 8vo, original green cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, gentle wear to corners and backstrip ends, dustjacket flaps laid in at rear, good £120 With a lengthy inscription from the author on the flyleaf to a major French sociologist, referring to their acquaintance through the Institut de France: ‘A Monsieur Georges Davy, Doyen de la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Paris, avec les hommages de l’auteur, qui a l’honneur d’être son confrère à l’Institut et de porter, comme lui, une arme sculptée par des amis communs, Charles Morgan, Londres, 16 Campden Hill Square, le 17 juin 1954’. Morgan’s final play.
143. Morris (Jan) The Spectacle of Empire. Style, Effect and the Pax Britannica. Faber and Faber, 1982, FIRST EDITION, photographic and other illustration throughout, some colour-printed, pp. 255, 4to, original red boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket, near fine £95 Inscribed on the half-title: ‘For John Baxter, With best wishes, Jan Morris’ - the recipient an author and bibliophile.
144. Murakami (Haruki) Kafka on the Shore. Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. Harvill, 2005, 93/100 COPIES signed and stamped by the author on a tipped in bookplate, pp. 505, 8vo, original white leather with inlaid black cat to front, backstrip
43 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
lettered in black, tiny speck to lower board, black page-marker, wave-patterned endpapers, slipcase, near fine £950
In the dustjacket 145. Musil (Robert) Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften [The Man Without Qualities.] Roman [Dritter Band.] Lausanne: Imprimerie Centrale, 1943, FIRST EDITION, frontispiece photograph of author, with further plates showing facsmile page and Musil’s death-mask, some foxing at head of prelims and to pages either side of plates, pp. 462, crown 8vo, original grey cloth blocked in black to upper board and backstrip, top corners a little knocked, some foxing heaviest at borders, stamp of Australian bookseller at foot of flyleaf, dustjacket toned with a small amount of chipping, good £2,000 One of 1,000 copies, the third volume of Musil’s sprawling meisterwerk - published by his widow Martha following his death, and assembled from his working material. Scarce, particularly so in the dustjacket.
146. Nagy ([S.], Illustrator) The World Conference in Caricature. At the World Economic Conference, London, 1933. Described by William Foss and A.B. Austin. Soncino Press, [1933,] FIRST EDITION, line drawing to each recto, pp. xii, 215, 4to, original blue buckram, lettered in gilt to upper board and backstrip, some faint spotting around head, all edges blue with some foxing to these and endpapers, dustjacket a little darkened, dustsoiled and lightly foxed, internal tape repair at foot of backstrip panel, good £325 Inscribed on the title-page by the illustrator, ‘To Mrs Maria Korda, With all my respect. London 21, May, 34. S. Nagy’. The recipient was an actress and the wife of director Alexander Korda - a further inscription on the verso of the same re-presents the book to their son Peter in 1945. A note to the latter inscription, the recipient a journalist, mentions that ‘Every journalist says that I am a first class cartoonist. Every cartoonist swears that I am the best journalist in the world’.
Inscribed by the artist to John Betjeman 147. (Nash.) (Betjeman.) BERTRAM (Anthony, introduction) PAUL NASH. [British Artists of To-Day, Number V.] [Printed at the Curwen Press for] The Fleuron, 1927, FIRST EDITION, 17 monochrome plates reproducing the artist’s work, pp. [5] + plates, 12mo, original Curwen patterned paper boards (though Enid Marx rather than Nash), label to upper board printed in red, slight sunning to backstrip, very good £1,000 An excellent association copy of this early work on Nash, inscribed by the artist to the flyleaf: ‘John Betjeman from Paul Nash [minor deletion] (bought)’ - the inscription apparently recording the nature of the gift. Nash was among those whom Betjeman drew into the group for the celebrated Shell Guides, with Nash contributing that for Dorset in 1935.
148. (New England.) MITCHEL, or Mitchil (Jonathan) A Discourse of the Glory to which God hath called Believers by Jesus Christ. Delivered in some sermons out of the I Pet. 5 chap. 10 ver. Together with an annexed letter. Both, by that eminent and worthy minister of the Gospel, Mr. Jonathan Mitchil, late pastor to the church at Cambridge in New- England. Printed for Nathaniel Ponder, 1677, FIRST EDITION, each part with a caption title, pp. [xiv], 263, 21, small 8vo, contemporary speckled calf, double blind fillets on sides, spine richly gilt in compartments, red lettering piece, gilt edges, short crack at foot of upper joint, very good (Sabin 49655; ESTC R36603) £2, 500 Mitchel was born in Halifax, W. Yorks, but moved, aged 11, with his parents to New England to escape religious persecution. In his adult life, after graduating from Harvard, he contributed much to the life of Massachusetts, both lay and religious. ‘The main source for Mitchel's life is Cotton Mather's 'Ecclesiastes, or, The life of Mr. Jonathan Mitchel', printed in Magnalia Christi Americana. Mather based his account in part on the Latin diary, Vitae hypomnemata, that Mitchel kept for most of his adult life but that has not survived. Mather vividly describes Mitchel preaching from the pulpit: 'He would speak with such a Transcendent Majesty and Liveliness, that the People … would often Shake under his Dispensations, as if they had Heard the Sound of the Trumpets from the Burning Mountain' (Mather, Magnalia Christi, 4.174)’ (ODNB).
44 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
The collation is as per ESTC (and Harvard in particular), which notes that the title-page is A2; Sabin calls for 16 preliminary pages. ‘Mitchil’ is how the author’s name appears on the title. Rare.
149. Nietzsche (Friedrich) Also Sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen. Leipzig: Insel, 1908, 446/430 COPIES (from an edition of 530 copies), decorations printed in claret red and gold, including an extravagant ornamental double title-page, title-page and section titles, with head and tail-pieces and other typographic flourishes, all by Henry van de Velde, the typeface designed by Georges Lemmen and cut with the assistance of Harry Kessler, occasional faint spots, the red off-setting slightly, pp. [vi], 161, [2], folio, original vellum with overlapping fore-edges, van de Velde design stamped in gilt to upper board, backstrip lettered in gilt within decorative border of same, the gilt in all cases showing very gentle rubbing, minor knock at head of backstrip, t.e.g., others untrimmed, endpapers with typographic gold border and some spotting, dropdown box of morocco and cloth, very good £5,000 A sumptuous piece of book design, perhaps the finest in the Art Nouveau style - produced under the direction of Count Kessler, with a new typeface by Georges Lemmen and lavish decorations by Henry van de Velde that operate in a very unified way with the text.
150. Nin (Anaïs) D.H. Lawrence. An unprofessional Study. Paris: Edward W. Titus at the Sign of the Black Manikin, 1932, FIRST EDITION, 119/500 COPIES (from an edition of 550 copies), title-page printed in red and black, pp. [x], 146, crown 8vo, original black buckram, lettered in gilt to upper board and backstrip, spine slightly cocked, edges untrimmed and partly uncut, very good £650 The author’s first book, this copy inscribed by her on the flyleaf: ‘To Comtesse Jean de Vogüé, who understands the “tortured” Lawrence’. Hélène de Vogüé married into one of the most influential Catholic families in France and used the wealth that this conferred to pursue her intellectual interests, mixing with the leading artists and writers of the period - including Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, with whom she conducted a long affair. She features recurrently in Nin’s diaries of this time, where she is referred to by her nickname ‘Nellie’.
151. North (William) The City of the Jugglers; or, Free-Trade in Souls. A Romance of the “Golden” Age. With four highly finished etchings, by F.H.T. Bellew. H.J. Gibbs, 1850, FIRST EDITION, plates as per title-page, uniformly slightly browned, plates offset, frontispiece slightly foxed, bound without the advertisements, inscription at top of title- page cropped, pp. xii, 250, 8vo, contemporary half black calf, worn at extremities, spine chipped, lacking label, small hole in upper board at fore-edge penetrating into the first 20 pages (no more than a nick by the time it reaches the paper), sound £3,000 Rare. ‘In his own time, William North (1825?-1854) was widely published (he wrote at least eleven books) and well-known, first in London and Paris, and in the early eighteen-fifties in New York, yet there is no modern biography, and there is no entry for him in such standard works as the Oxford Companion to English Literature, the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, or the Dictionary of National Biography. ‘North’s The City of the Jugglers or, Free Trade in Souls, a satire and fantasia on the stockmarket frenzies of Britain in the late 1840s with a side-trip to the 1848 Revolution in Hungary, is one of the most original novels of the mid-Victorian period, but it is also the most elusive book by one of the nineteenth-century’s most elusive authors. Frederick Bellew’s frontispiece engraving is apparently the only known portrait of the book’s author’ (from the University of South Carolina’s website: the University has made the text available both as an e-book and POD). It is possible to believe that the cropped inscription are the vestiges of ‘With the author’s compliments.’
152. O'Brien (Flann) The Poor Mouth (An Béal Bocht). A bad story about the hard life. Edited by Myles na Gopaleen. Translated by Patrick C. Power and Illustrated by Ralph Steadman. Bernard Jacobson, in association with Hart-Davis, Macgibbon, 1973, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, 130/130 COPIES signed and numbered by the illustrator, title-page design and numerous monochrome illustrations by Steadman with a few further decorations by the
45 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
same, pp. 128, royal 8vo, original hessian cloth with lettering by Ralph Steadman to upper board, a little browned around the backstrip, edges roughtrimmed, endpaper maps by Steadman, bookplate to verso of flyleaf, very good £1,500 Originally published in Irish in 1941, this is a gloriously amusing response to the country staple of misery-laden Gaeltacht memoirs. [With:] A signed, numbered (as the book) print of one of the illustrations, framed and glazed with a hint of sunning to margins.
153. O’Brien (Flann) The Third Policeman. MacGibbon & Kee, 1967, FIRST EDITION, pp. 200, 8vo., original dark brown boards, backstrip gilt lettered, partial browning to fore- edge of textblock, dustjacket with faint marginal toning, very good £300
154. Oe (Kenzaburo) Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids. Translated and Introduced by Paul St Mackintosh and Maki Sugiyama. London and New York: Marion Boyars, 1995, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. 189, crown 8vo, original red boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, newspaper clipping laid in, dustjacket, near fine £100 Signed by the author to the title-page. The first novel (published in his native Japan in 1958) by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.
By Christina Jeffery (née Rufford)? 155. O’Farrell (Burke) Cold Comfort. A Novel. In three volumes. Vol. I [-III]. T. Cautley Newby, 1871, FIRST EDITION, 3 vols. bound in 2, bound without the advertisements, occasional foxing, pp. [vi], 318, 166; [ii, tile-page to vol. ii, verso blank], 167-332, [ii, title-page vol. iii], 359, 8vo in 12s, contemporary half calf, red lettering pieces on spine, numbered in gilt direct minor wear and rubbing, with significant manuscript additions (see below) (Wolff 5202; not in Sadleir) £3,000 An intriguing copy of a rare three-decker, whose authorship should perhaps be re-ascribed. Three three-deckers are attributed to ”Burke O’Farrell”. Even Betting, 1869, the present title - both these published by the notorious publisher of the first Brontë novels, Thomas Cautley Newby - and Proud Lucifer, Chapman and Hall, 1877. The author and the three titles are given by Allibone, as in Wolff. Apart from this, facts about the supposed Hibernian author are not forthcoming. The evidence of this copy, ascribing it with all credibility to Christina Jeffery (née Rufford), implies that all three are pseudonymous works, probably hers. Both of the (bound) volumes have the ownership inscription inside the front cover of John Rouse Bloxam, (1807–1891), antiquary, curate to J. H. Newman at Littlemore, where ‘he had the opportunity to promote the cause closest to his heart, the revival of ceremonial in the Church of England’ (ODNB), and sometime bursar, vice-president, and librarian (1851–62) of Magdalen College. On the title-page of vol. i he has crossed out “Burke O’Farrell” and substituted “Christina (Rufford) Jefferies [sic]”. At the top of the page he identifies Cold Comfort as a farm in Warwickshire. The printed Dedication is to John Edward Bevor Jeffery, Magistrate of Arrariah, Bengal, with affectionate regards of the Author. Bloxam has suffixed ‘ess’ to the last word, followed by a note to the effect that Christina was the wife of the Dedicatee, and that ‘she was brought up by an aunt belonging to the Church of Rome and so became a Romanist’ (perhaps this has some bearing on the Irishness of the book). At various places throughout the novel Bloxam identifies characters with members of the Ruffold and Purton families, plus one or two others. Chief among the identifications is the authoress with the heroine, Desirée, making the novel autobiographical. Another of the characters so identified - ‘an old irascible Indian judge’ - is the Rev. Henry Bloxam Purton (Rev. John Purchas in the text): this gives the family connection, presumably, but the Bloxams, of Rugby fame, were Warwickshire people anyway, and so perhaps in the know. An 8vo bifolium of blue writing paper, bearing a tabulated version of the identifications (not in Bloxam’s hand, but annotated by him) is pasted in opposite the title-page to vol. i. Inside the front cover of the first vol., and on the end-paper opposite, are a pair of carte-de-visite photographs (by Elliott & Fry) of ‘the authoress’ (so identified by Bloxam), one full-face, the other in profile. Opposite the Dedication is another, this time of the authouess and a gentleman, presumably her husband. These are relatively youthful portraits.
46 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
Hunting, and the appreciation of horses, play a not inconsiderable part in the matter, and the narratives has, at times, a certain rollicking style. The novel was perhaps padded out to 3 vols: 2 is more sensible.
156. Oughtred (William) [Sammelband of three works, two in Latin and one in English] Oxford: 1652-77, 3 works in 1 vol. (see below), 8vo, contemporary ?Continental limp vellum, overlapping fore-edges, upper yap edge mostly gnawed away with similar damage but only slight loss to the lower edges, a tract appears to have been removed from the front (1. ESTC R29067; Macclesfield 218; Madan 2203. 2. ESTC R203065; Macclesfield 2289; Madan 3147. 3. ESTC R203065; Madan 2513; Taylor 259) £5,000 A remarkable sammelband containing the bulk of Oughtred’s published works, with the exception of his Mathematical recreations and Trigonometry. Oughtred (1574-1660) was one of the most important and influential mathematicians of the first half of the seventeenth century and was much admired by Newton, who described him as “a man whose judgment (if any man’s) may be safely relied upon” (Correspondence III, 364). Oughtred “exercised a formative influence on a host of young men with a mathematical bent, alike at the university level and at the instrument maker’s bench” (Taylor, Practitioners, p. 192), notably including Christopher Wren, John Wallis, Seth Ward, Jonas Moore and Charles Scarborough. One of Oughtred’s pupils, William Forster, visited him at his rectory at Albury, Surrey in 1630, and persuaded him to let him translate and publish his Latin treatises. 1. Clavis mathematicae denuo limata… Editio tertia auctior & emendatior. [Bound as issued with:] Elementi decimi Euclidis declaratio: de solidis regularibus tractatus. [And with:] Theorematum in libris Archimedis de sphaera & cylindro declaratio. [And with:] Horologiorum sciotericorum in plano: geometricè solùm, Sine calculo trigonometrico delineandorum, modus facillimus. Oxford: L. Lichfield, sold by T. Robinson, 1652, 4 parts each with separate title, pp. [xvi (first leaf blank)], 151; [2], 46; [4], 10; [2], 41 [recte 45], [3, first two blank, third with diagram to be cut out and pasted on p. 40], woodcut diagrams in text. Third and best edition of Oughtred’s most important work, the first to be edited by John Wallis, and with three further treatises published here for the first time (or the first time in Latin for the last). 2. Opuscula mathematica hactenus inedita. Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1677. pp. [viii (first leaf blank)], 212 [i.e. 228], [1, errata], with double-page folding table at p. 60 and three folding engraved plates. FIRST EDITION. 3. The circles of proportion and the horizontal instrument &c….; translated into English and set forth for the publique benefit by W[illiam] F[orster]; and now by the authors consent, revised … by A[rthur] H[aughton]. Oxford: W. Hall for R. Davis, 1660, 2 parts in one vol., pp. [iv], 254, with eight folding engraved plates (numbered I-V and three unnumbered). Oxford: W. Hall for R. Davis, 1660. ESTC calls for an additional final leaf with vertical half-title; this may represent a variant issue (it is present in only two of the four copies in Cambridge University Library, and it is not present in the digitized copies in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the ETH, Zürich). Second edition of the first manual for the slide-rule – the every-day pocket calculating device of scientists and engineers for the next three centuries – invented by Oughtred about 1621. Circles of proportion was first published in 1632-33 and describes the principles of logarithmic scales and the use of the slide-rule in a wide range of applications including astronomical and navigational.
157. Paolozzi (Eduardo) Metafisikal Translations. Kelpra Studio, [1962,] FIRST EDITION, screenprinted illustration combined with text throughout, pp. [45], imperial 8vo, original white wrappers printed in red to front, a little light creasing and a few faint spots, a strip of faint browning at head of rear and a few faint pressure marks, faint spotting to inside covers even more faintly offset, very good £1,350 Inscribed by the artist to the flyleaf: ‘For Elizabeth Claridge, Eduardo Paolozzi, January 1965’. The recipient was the wife of art dealer Mark Glazebrook.
158. Patmore (Derek) I Decorate My Home. Putnam, 1936, FIRST EDITION, frontispiece photograph of author, 16 further photographic plates all with captioned tissue-guards printed in red and a further 4 plates from drawings, some very faint foxing to prelims, pp. xiv, 213, 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt and slightly sunned through the jacket, faint foxing to edges, dustjacket, very good £175
47 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
Formulated as a handbook for the appreciation of ‘the ordinary person of good taste but moderate means’, Patmore is a skilful and engaging guide - and the book is appealingly pitched. He had earlier published works on colour-choice and furnishing, as well as - in a more literary vein - a memoir of his family (including his mother, the novelist Brigit Patmore, and his great-grandfather Coventry Patmore), and a play with his mother’s sometime partner Richard Aldington. As a record of the author’s own taste, and more generally of fashions in interior design in the period, it is an absorbing account.
Ed. opt. 159. Pausanias. Taes Ellados Periaegaesis (Greek), hoc est Graeciae descriptio accurata, qua Lector ceu manu per eam regionem circumductior: cum Latina Romuli Amasaei interpretatione. Accesserunt Gul. Xylandri & Frid. Sylbergii annotationes, ac Novae Notae Ioachimi Kuhnii. Leipzig: Thomas Fritsch, 1696, title in red and black with engraved printer's device (Pegasus), double column text in Greek and Latin, a tendency to browning, not consistent and never severe, a lttle more pronounced towards the end, a few scattered spots, pp. [26], 898, 899-943 numbered as columns, [76], folio contemporary ivory vellum, overlapping fore-edges, lettered in ink on the spine, lettering a bit faded, vellum a little soiled, very good (Schweiger I, 224: Dibdin II, 272 "emphatically and justly called the 'ed. opt. of Pausanias'") £1,250 Monumental edition of this celebrated work, edited by Joachim Kühn, and supplemented with the Latin translation by the humanist Romolo Quirino Amaseo, which first appeared in Rome in 1547. The editio princeps had been published in 1516 by Aldus's heirs. "Since its rediscovery in the Renaissance Pausanias' work has been recognised as a valuable source for ancient Greece, a mine of antiquarian, historical and topographical information on various purposes ... From the seventeenth century onward visitors to Greece found Pausanias' work an excellent resource for the reconstruction of the country's ancient topography. Its usefulness for this purpose was easy to recognise, and by the early nineteenth century ... Pausanias' Periegesis not only served as a travel guide but it was also used systematically to discover and identify ancient remains" (M. Pretzler, Pausanias. Travel Writing in Ancient Greece, London 2007, pp. 11-12).
160. (Peake.) CARROLL (Lewis) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass. With Illustrations by Mervyn Peake [Zephyr Books Vol.67.] Stockholm: Continental Book Company, 1946, FIRST PEAKE EDITION, numerous line-drawings, many of them full-page, by Mervyn Peake, pp. 352, foolscap 8vo, original pale grey wrappers printed in blue and red, further line-drawing by Peake on front cover, tiny chip at head of backstrip, dustjacket a little chipped at backstrip panel ends with lettering to the same faded, tiny spot to margin of front, very good £400 Issued eight years before the English edition of Peake’s illustrations - a very nice copy.
161. (Pip er.) WEST (Anthony) John Piper. Secker & Warburg, 1979, FIRST EDITION, 14/100 COPIES (from an edition of 126 copies) with a tipped-in original lithograph signed and numbered by John Piper, numerous monochrome reproductions of Piper’s work throughout and including 33 designs in colour on 16 plates, pp. 224, 4to, original deluxe binding of full red morocco, backstrip lettered in gilt and gently faded with a touch of rubbing at head, slipcase, very good £800
162. [Pol idori (John William)] The Vampyre; a Tale. Printed [by Gillet] for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819, FIRST EDITION, fourth issue, complete with half-title and both Extracts, a little very light spotting, pp. xxv, [i], [27-] 84, 8vo, contemporary half calf, terracotta lettering piece (later, but blending in perfectly), slightly worn at extremities, and repair to head of spine, good £3,000 Fourth issue: without Byron’s name on the title-page, gathering 'A' reset to 23 lines to account for the removal of a slur on Mary Godwin and Claire Clairmont, and ‘almost’ corrected on p. 36. An agreeable copy in a contemporary binding. Pasted inside the front cover is an old bookseller’s description, not identifying the issue, but asserting ‘it is difficult to know who wrote this work’ (though Polidori’s name is given within square brackets).
48 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
163. [Polidori (John William)] Vampyren af Lord Byron. Öfversättning. Jemte en Översaättning fran Ryskan. Af C[arl] S[amuel] F[orssan]. Helsingfors [Helsinki]: J. Simelius, 1824, some foxing, pp. [i], 52, [2, blank], small 8vo, stitched, blue wrappers, good £1,200 An exceedingly rare translation of The Vampyre, with only the National Library of Sweden copy recorded by WorldCat. It was known by 1824 that Byron was not the author, but a publisher in a far flung part of Europe was probably not going to be too scrupulous about this. A French translation appeared in 1820, German in 1822, Spanish (Paris published) in 1829; making this one of the earliest translations. The appended translation is an allegory (Lifvets gåta) by Feodor Glinka. The pagination of our copy accords with that in NL Sweden, although the last 3 leaves are in fact 3 of gathering No. 4 (which one would expect to be 4 leaves at least). The wrappers could be original, but have a slightly later feel: however, the title-page is slightly offset onto the inside of the front wrapper, suggesting a certain antiquity. Pencil inscription at the head of the title-page: Sourander, 13.11.[19]33.
164. Portis (Charles) True Grit. A Novel. New York: Simon and Schuster, [1968,] FIRST EDITION, pp. 215, crown 8vo, original grey cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt and red with decorations in latter, top edge ochre with fore-edge roughtrimmed, dustjacket price- clipped with minimal rubbing to extremities, very good £285 One of the most important novels in the Western genre, and notable as the basis for two major film adapations.
Inscr ibed to a contributor 165. Potter (Stephen) One-Upmanship. Being Some Account of the Activities and Teaching of the Lifemanship Correspondence College of One-Upness and Gameslifemastery. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952, FIRST EDITION, illustrations by Lt.-Col. F. Wilson, pp. 160, crown 8vo, original blue boards, backstrip lettered in silver with slight lean to spine and a touch of fading at head, small area of faint waterstaining at foot of upper board, gentle dustsoiling to top edge, dustjacket with a short closed tear at head of front panel, a little rubbing and chipping, very good £250 Inscribed on the flyleaf: ‘To S. Arnold Forster, With sincerest thanks for page 79, from S. Potter, September 1952’. The recipient was Diana (known as Sam) Arnold Forster, the second wife of the artist Michael Rothenstein. The textual reference is to a footnote, where a reference is made to her ‘means of suggesting to borrowers of books that their reading is superficial and that they are imperceptive of the finer nuances’ - this achieved through marginalia, an example of which is provided with a facsimile of her manuscript to illustrate her three main techniques: the ‘Surely’ ploy, Question-mark ploy, and Exclamation-mark ploy.
166. Pound (E zra) Selected Poems. Edited with an Introduction by T.S. Eliot. Faber and Gwyer, 1928, FIRST EDITION, pp. xxxii, 184, crown 8vo, original green cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, half-inch section of fading corresponding to dustjacket at head of backstrip, very minor bump to top corners, top edge green, others roughtrimmed, small bookseller sticker (one B.H. Blackwell) to front pastedown, dustjacket with section of loss at head of backstrip panel and internal tape repair to joint-folds (one having separated entirely, the other most of the way down), good (Gallup A30a; Gallup B10a) £150 The presence of the dustjacket is uncommon.
167. Pullman (Philip) His Dark Materials. Northern Lights; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass [3 Vols.] Scholastic, 1995- 2000, FIRST EDITIONS, pp. [viii], 408; [viii], 344; [viii], 552, 8vo, original boards, backstrips lettered in gilt, second and third volumes stamped in gilt to upper board, the second volume with a couple of miniscule spots to top edge, dustjackets with that to Northern Lights the first issue, the latter with Carnegie Gold Medal to front, near fine condition overall £2,500 All volumes signed by the author to the title-page .
49 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
168. Quintilian Declamationes CXXXVI. [Ed. Thaddeus Ugoletus]. Parma: Angelus Ugoletus, 3 Jul 1494, EDITIO PRINCEPS of the 136 (really 137) Declamationes, woodcut printer’s device at end, first 2 leaves a little browned and frayed at lower margin where sometime damp-stained, this stain diminishing for about a quarter of the volume before ceasing, damp-stain in top outer corner throughout, a single worm hole in the first 10 leaves with minimal loss, 2 small holes on n6 with the loss of a couple of letters and others touched, ff. [vi], LXXXVI, folio, 303 x 205 mm, old green reversed calf, preserving the original sewing and cords, first leaf and fly-leaf separated from textblock but attached to the front cover, a little scuffed and the spine slightly faded, contemporary paper label on upper cover with MS title (ISTC iq00022000) £7,000 On the authorship see C. Ritter, Die Quintilianischen Declamationen (Freiburg and Tübingen, 1881), 3-7; M. Winterbottom, The Minor Declamations ascribed to Quintilian (Berlin, 1984), pp. xii–xv; on the edition's place in the textual tradition see M. Winterbottom, in Texts and Transmission, 337. Dibdin (Bib. Spenceriana) describes this as ‘of some importance to the collector of early classics’, referring us to Affo’s ‘valuable notice of this edition’ in his Tipografia Parmense.
169. Quintilian Epitome F. Quintiliani nuper summo & ingenio & dilige[n]tia collecta, qua possit studiosa iuve[n]tus, quicquid est Rhetoricæ institutionis apud ipsum authorem, breviore compendio & multo facilius adse qui. Authore Iona Philologo [i.e. Johannes Giunterius] ... Paris: Simon de Colines, 1534, title within fine woodcut border by Geoffrey Troy, ‘au soleil’, 5- and 9-line criblé initials, first leaf a trifle smaller than the others, lacking final blank ff. [viii], 67, small 8vo, late 19th-century half calf for Sir Edward William Watkin (bookplate), gilt on spine mostly rubbed off but Sir William’s crest still discernable in top compartment, red lettering piece, yellow edges, contemporary annotations in English and Latin (mostly a little cropped) (Renouard pp. 234-35) £3,500 The second Colines edition of this Epitome (first, 1531), and a very rare book: Renouard located only 1 copy (Besançon), and WorldCat records only 1 - John Rylands; SUDOC adds Lille, but doesn’t give Besançon. Colines re-issued the text in, 1536, 1539 and 1542. Copies of the 1531 and 1536 editions in the Schreiber collection. The Mancunian Sir William Watkin, 1st Baronet (1819–1901), railway entrepreneur, and MP, received a knighthood for his service in the British cause in Canada in 1868.
170. Quintilian Institutionum oratoriarum libri XI ... Declamationum liber. Omnia multò, quàm anteà castigatius. Lyons: Sebastian Gryphius, 1536, woodcut printer’s device on title and title to second part, woodcut initials, minimal browning at either end, pp. 607, [24, last 3 pages blank], 247, 8vo, contemporary calf, elaborately tooled in blind, upper panel on upper cover lettered ADOLPH / US GLAU / BUR - CGh, traces of gilt in the letters and surrounding fleurons, remains of green silk ties, worn at extremities, headcap defective, late 16th or early 17th century ownership inscription at foot of title of Joannes Rodolphus ab Erlach, with the Latin family motto below, label inside the front cover of Bibliotheque de Spietz (Baudrier VIII p. 96; this edition not in Adams) £5,000 A splendid copy. The von Erlachs, a prominent family of politicians, administrators and military commanders of Bern in Switzerland, acquired the castle and lands of Spietz in 1516, holding the lands till the French Revolution, and the castle till 1875.
171. Quintilian Institutionum oratoriarum libri XII. Singulari cum studio, tum iudicio doctissimorum virorum, ad fidem uetustissimorum codicum recogniti ac restituti. Paris: Ambroise Girault, [colophopn adds:] excudebat Io. Lodoicus Tiletanus, 1541, very fine woodcut printer’s device on title, criblé initials, last leaf lad down and defective at foot, without loss of text however, slightly browned in places, early ownership inscriptions on title, a few minor stains, ff. [xviii], 155 (i.e. 184), folio, late 18th- or early 19th-century calf, delicate roll tooled border on sides, sometime rebacked, corners worn, some rubbing and scuffing (Adams 61) £2,500 A very handsome edition. An inscription inside the front cover reads: ‘B[ough]t at Lord Glenlee’s Sale Jany. 20 1853. 12/-’ (Lot 1016), the buyer being one John Marshall Jr. who has written his name
50 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
with the same date opposite on the fly-leaf. Below this is the signature of T.W. Williams, dated Flax Bourton 1893 - his bookplate inside the front cover. Acquired by Austin from Blackwell’s in 1949. Sir William Miller, second baronet, Lord Glenlee (1755–1846). ‘Glenlee was considered a very able man, with a profound knowledge of mathematics, his favourite subject. He also took pleasure in classical learning, and was acquainted with the language and literature of France, Spain, and Italy, to which, in extreme old age, he added that of Germany. He was notable for his striking appearance: Henry Cockburn wrote of him: “the figure was slender, the countenance pale, but with a full dark eye; the features regular, unless, when disturbed, as his whole frame often was, by little jerks and gesticulations, as if he was under frequent galvanism; his air and manner polite”, but also that “he never used an English word when a Scots one could be got”’ (ODNB). The sale of his library lasted 12 days.
172. Quintilian Oratoriarum institutionum. Una cum annotationibus Raphaelis Regii in deprauationes eiusdem. Et tabula per alphabetum nouiter addita. [colophon:] Venice: Bernardino Viani, July, 1522, title within bold woodcut border, commentary surrounding text, title-page and first few leaves with a heavy stain in the lower part, this diminishing to slight and variable throughout, outer corners repaired, some worming at the beginning with slight loss to the woodcut border, and touching letters in the first few leaves of text, 77. [iv], CLXXIII, folio, contemporary Venetian calf, wide blind roll tooled borders on sides, two central panels on the upper cover, the superior one bearing vestiges of an inscription, the lower cover with one inner panel with further roll tooled borders and a central saltire, cloth ties, rebacked somewhat crudely, preserving however the original spine, head of spine defective, early inscription at foot of title-page recording ownership in Urbino, later indistinct stamp on title (CNCE 38523) £3,000 A nice Venetian binding, with ties, but somewhat crudely treated when rebacked. The inscription on the upper cover was perhaps not made directly onto the leather, since a lightness of tone of same suggests that there may have been a paper label on top, through which the inscription seeped - borne out by the fact that some letters are beyond the boundary of the panel, but within the lighter area. We can make out Quintilianii as the headline, but the rest is not clear: it was however formal and fairly grand. Bought from Heck, Vienna, in 1958 for 380 Austrian Shillings.
173. Quintilian Oratoriarum institutionum Libri XII. opera ac studio Ioachimi Camerarii, Ioannis Sichardi, aliorumque doctissimorum ... Virorum: partim ex meliorum codicum collatione restituti sibi, partim Annotationibus ... illustrati. Quibus sparsim adiecimus Guihelmi Philandri Castilionei Castigationes: Praeterea quoque Declamationum Librum postremae huic aeditioni cum scholiis et argumentis addidimus, ut uno libro omnia Fabii opera essent comprehensa. Ad haec Indicem rerum & verborum memorabilium locupletissimum. Basle: [colophon:] Robert Winter, 1543, woodcut printer’s device on verso of last leaf (otherwise blank), minor worming lasting the first half of the volume, touching letters and the loss of a few, damp-staing in the lower margin and lower part of the fore-margin, pp. [xxiv], 714 (i.e. 754, includes a blank leaf between the 2 parts), [4], 4to, contemporary pigskin over wooden boards, panelled in blind, the date 1549 incorporated on the upper cover, 1 of 2 clasps, a bit soiled, the spine darkened, probably having been covered in paper at some time, various pen trials (not in Adams) £2,000 A nice Basle 4to.
174. Richardson (Dorothy M.) Honeycomb. Duckworth, 1917, FIRST EDITION, the poor quality wartime paper browned as usual, pp. [iv], 260, 16 [ads], crown 8vo, original blue cloth, lettered in black to backstrip and upper board with blind-stamped rules carrying around same, publisher device blind-stamped to lower board, very good £300 Signed by the author on the half-title, the third novel in the author’s ‘Pilgrimage’ series.
51 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
A composer’s copy 175. Rimsky -Korsakow (Nicolas [Nicolai Rimsky -Korsak ov]) Principes d'Orchestration, avec exemples notés, tirés de ses propres œuvres. Rédaction de Maximilian Steinberg. Traduite du russe par M.-D. Calvocoressi. [Part] I [Texte]. Berlin, Paris: Édition russe de musique, Max Eschig, 1914, FIRST FRENCH EDITION, tables, snatches of musical notation, title-page and final page a little dusty, some minor handling marks as well as the odd faint spot to borders, occasional notes by Lord Berners (see below), pp. xiii, 168, royal 8vo, slightly later brown morocco binding by Douglas Cockerell (blind-stamped ‘D.C. & Son, 1927’ on lower turn-in), gilt stave design to both boards with characteristic Cockerell decorations in blind and gilt around backstrip and in compartments, five raised bands and lettered direct in gilt (’Rimsky-Korsakow, The Band’), a little rubbing to corners and a couple of marks, a.e.g, Cockerell marbled endpapers, good £300 The copy of composer Lord Berners, and with his annotation - largely consisting of marking passages for attention (one at the end of Chapter IV with a question-mark), but with occasional comment (his own calculation of orchestra numbers in the margin of the table at opening of text, and on p. 26 ‘horns & trumpets’). A small insight into the process and influences of the man considered by another Russian, Igor Stravinsky, to be the leading composer of his generation.
Sir Robert Mond’s copies 176. Rivers (W.H.R.) The History of Melanesian Society. In Two Volumes [Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to Melanesia]. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1914, FIRST EDITIONS, first volume has 8 diagrams to text with 25 photographic plates and 5 full-page maps, fold-out map printed in black and blue tipped in at rear, second volume adds a single full- page map, some browning and foxing to first volume and a few pages with waterstaining at head, second volume with just occasional light foxing to borders, pp. xii, 400; [vi], 610, 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrips lettered in gilt, blind-stamped border to both boards, cloth of second volume bubbling in a couple of places and with a small waterstain at foot of lower board, endpapers browned with a few spots and the armorial bookplate of Robert Ludwig Mond to front pastedowns, good £300 An important work, the product of the author’s visit to the region in 1907-8 - a thorough ethnographic survey that presents a ‘diffusionist thesis for the development of culture in the south- west Pacific’ (ODNB). Rivers’ pioneering study had a significant cultural impact - T.S. Eliot drew analogies from it, in fearing that ‘when applied science has done everything possible with the materials on this earth to make life as interesting as possible, it will not be surprising if the population of the entire civilized world rapidly follows the fate of the Melanesians’, which was they were ‘dying from pure boredom’. Sir Robert Ludwig Mond was a chemist and archaeologist who is notable in this context for having funded the fieldwork of Rivers’ follower Bronislaw Malinowski.
Ruthven Todd’s copy (briefly) 177. Roberts (Michael) Poems. Jonathan Cape, 1936, FIRST EDITION, faint spot to prelims and final text-page, pp. 64, crown 8vo, original cream cloth patterned with green, red and brown, the backstrip lettered in dark green and darkened, cloth a little darkened around head, quote from Dante in pencil to flyleaf and two ownership inscriptions (see below), clippings of a few Roberts poems laid in, dustjacket a little darkened to backstrip panel and borders with a small mark at foot of front panel and a short closed tear at head of upper joint-fold, very good £50 The author’s second collection of verse, and the copy of Scottish poet Ruthven Todd - though given that a second ownership inscription is dated to the year following publication, not one that he held on to for very long.
52 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
Signed by the author and Duncan Grant 178. Roche (Paul) Enigma Variations And. Gloucester: The Thornhill Press, 1974, FIRST EDITION, pp. [vi], 42, crown 8vo, original wrappers with design by Duncan Grant to front, a little creasing and spotting to borders, good £120 Signed on the title-page by both Roche and Duncan Grant, who provides the cover design. Roche and Grant met in 1946 and lived together in the final years of the latter’s life.
179. (Saki.) MUNRO (H.H.) When William Came. John Lane The Bodley Head, 1914 [but 1913,] FIRST EDITION, very light foxing to first handful of leaves, pp. 322, [6, ads], 24 [Publisher list], crown 8vo, original red cloth, lettered in gilt to upper board and backstrip, the latter with some mottled fading, top edge red, the others roughtrimmed with a few spots, enlarged corner to rear free endpaper turned down (minor production fault), good £8,000 Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: ‘To Lady Rosalind Northcote, With the author’s good wishes, H.H. Munro, Nov. 19th ‘13’ - the date in advance of the stated publication, the recipient a fellow author (of books on Devon and herbs respectively). Saki grew up in Devon, and the friendship encapsulated by this gift may have originated there - given the scarcity of inscriptions by the author, we can infer that it must have been close, although the inference made by Munro’s sister in her biography, that Munro and Northcote were romantically involved, must be wide of the mark. This, the second of the author’s two novels, ‘a portrait of England shamefully giving way to a German invasion’ (ODNB), predicts the conflict in which the author would himself die - compelled to enlist despite his age (with the subtext of the book being an advocacy of compulsory military service). No other inscribed copies are known.
180. Salinger (J.D.) The Catcher in the Rye. Hamish Hamilton, 1951 FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, pp. 253, crown 8vo, original pale blue boards, backstrip lettered in silver, some very faint spotting to cloth, edges and endpapers a little spotted, the front pastedown with Paris bookseller ticket at foot, dustjacket cby Fritz Wegner with some minor rubbing to extremities and a couple of nicks, faint foxing to flaps and light dustsoiling to rear panel, protective slipcase, very good £600
181. (Shakespeare He ad Press.) (Ballad.) THE NUTBROWN MAID. Oxford: [Printed at the Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon, for] Basil Blackwell, 1925, 7/55 COPIES printed on Batchelor’s hand-made paper in black and brown, pp. [xvi], 22, small 4to, original special binding of full vellum lettered in gilt to front and backstrip, the original nut-brown silk ties present and in good state, a couple of minor spots to vellum, edges untrimmed, bookplate of Evan Morgan to front pastedown, very good £450 The copy of Welsh poet Evan Morgan, Viscount Tredegar.
182. Sharp (Evelyn) At the Relton Arms. John Lane The Bodley Head, 1895, FIRST EDITION, title-page design by Aubrey Beardsley, the odd faint handling mark, pp. [iv], 182, 10, 16, ads, crown 8vo, original dark green cloth, the upper board with lettering and border design (repeating Beardsley’s title-page design) in pale green, series device in same to backstrip and lower board, with lettering to former in gilt, rubbed to extremities with a small circular mark at head of upper board (sticker removal?), a couple of other very faint marks, edges untrimmed, ads uncut, good £185 The author’s first novel, Vol. XIII in the publisher’s Keynotes series, and preceded only by a pamphlet in defence of Fairy Tales - a contemporary review considered it ‘neither hysterical nor unduly spiced’. Dating from the years of her association with the Yellow Book, it precedes her later involvement with the Suffrage movement as a result of which she was twice imprisoned.
183. Sharp (Samuel) A Treatise on the Operations of Surgery, with a Description and Representation of the Instruments used in performing them: to which is prefix’d an Introduction on the Nature and Treatment of Wounds, Abscesses and Ulcers. Printed by
53 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
J. Watts: and sold by J. Roberts, and J. Brotherton, 1739, FIRST EDITION, with 14 engraved plates, occasional minor soiling or staining (including apparently a mark left by a blood-stained finger, in the chapter on castration), pp. [xvi], liii, 224, 8vo, original calf, double gilt fillets on sides, rebacked (and recased) preserving original spine, one lacuna filled in, new lettering pieces, corners repaired, and the gilt rules on the spine redone, 2 faded inscriptions on title-page, the first owner’s apparently, John Row, engulfed by the slightly later one of Dav. Calderwood, recording his purchase of the book in London in December 1757, price 3/- (ESTC T101089) £5,500 The very rare first edition of Sharp’s important treatise (the present cataloguer was looking for a copy for over 25 years): the second edition of the same year, and later editions, are relatively common. This was ‘the first monograph in English on the subject and achieved eleven editions, and translations into French, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian ... Sharp proved an innovative surgical actitioner and communicator as the many editions of his books in seven European languages indicate. Nineteenth-century surgeons admired his forthrightness and skills. Louis Bégin, a French practitioner, assessed Sharp in 1825 as one of those surgeons whose works show in the highest degree the impress of an observing mind, hostile to all authority and routine. There are few diseases on which he did not put forward new ideas, few operations whose instruments or procedures he did not improve. His writings contain many things in few pages, and we find in them both an originality and an independence of thought which charm the reader and always secure his attention’ (ODNB). Sharp resigned his appointment at Guy's Hospital on 23 September 1757, on the grounds of ill- health: by coincidence perhaps, just weeks before the date of the second inscription.
184. Shelley (Mary) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Thomas Hodgson, [1856], pp. xii, 202, small 8vo, contemporary half calf, a little worn, headcap defective, good (Sadleir 3755a) £1,200 Complete with the half-title (though without the advertisements) giving the Parlour Library No. - CXLIV. The Parlour Library was the first successful series of fiction reprints in paper boards, founded in 1847 by the Belfast firm of Simms and McIntyre, and continued by Thomas Hodgson and a succession of London publishers into the 1860s. Advertised as books 'for all', these shilling volumes, stimulated an unprecedented demand for cheap, attractively packaged new and popular novels. Of the 3 copies listed in COPAC 1, at Exeter, has the date stated as 1846 - which would antedate the foundation of the Library. Another copy has ?1846, while the third, Cambridge, has ?1850. We are inclined to agree with Sadleir’s date of 1856. WorldCat adds 3 more copies, Lilly, Pforzheimer, and Yale, 2 of them at least lacking the half-title.
185. Sieveking (Lance) A Tomb with a View. Faber and Faber, 1950, FIRST EDITION, original orange cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt with a hint of fading at ends, top edge a trifle dusty, dustjacket with a couple of spots of internal tape repair, a little chipping to corners and at head of toned backstrip panel, with the original Evening Standard ‘Thriller of the Year’ band, good £100 A thriller contrived, in the author’s idiosyncratic style, to withhold the event - and the word ‘murder’ - until the very last. This a presentation copy, inscribed by the author shortly after publication ‘With cordial greetings, To Sylva Norman’ - the recipient an authority on the Shelleys and previously the wife of Edmund Blunden, with whom she collaborated. It is not unlikely, and this is certainly the case with other contemporary titles in this genre from the Faber list, that the blurb is by T.S. Eliot.
186. Sigal (Clancy) Going Away. A Report, A Memoir. Boston and Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin and The Riverside Press, 1962, FIRST EDITION, pp. [x], 513, 8vo, original orange cloth, backstrip lettered in silver, top edge black, fore-edge roughtrimmed, dustjacket price-clipped with chip at head of upper joint-fold and some minor rubbing, very good £200 With a lengthy inscription by the author to the flyleaf: ‘Dear John - Tom Haydn says this novel “made a man” of him. Do I have to take responsibility for this?’ before speculating that it ‘wd make a great movie - directed by, um, Frankenheimer? w/ a cost of thousands. Be well, Clancy’. The recipient was John Baxter, noted bibliophile and - like Sigal - a cineaste.
54 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
An autobiographical bildungsroman, describing the author’s road trip from the west to the east coast of a homeland that has begin to alienate.
187. (Sitwell.) WHITTLEBOT (Hernia [vere, Noel Coward]) Chelsea Buns. Edited by Noel Coward. With an Introduction by Gaspard Pustontin. Hutchinson, [1925,] FIRST EDITION, frontispiece 'portrait' by G.E. Calthrop, occasional faint foxing, pp. 45, crown 8vo, original binding of patterned paper boards, printed label to upper board, light rubbing and a touch of wear to extremities, dustjacket £200 Noel Coward having fun with, or rather at, Edith Sitwell: ‘Round - oblong - like jam -/ Terse as virulent hermaphrodites’, and more in that vein. The scarce dustjacket, which provides a large photographic portrait of the ‘editor’, gives away the somewhat thin game.
188. Southern (Terry) Flash and Filigree. Andre Deutsch, 1958, FIRST EDITION, pp. 204, crown 8vo, original black boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, faint partial browning to endpapers, very light spotting to top edge, dustjacket by Stephen Russ with some very faint spots to pale areas and the backstrip panel very gently sunned, very good £95 The author’s first book, with the UK edition preceding its US counterpart.
189. Sperling (Johannes) Anthropologia physica. Wittenberg: Johannes Berger, 1647, FIRST EDITION, uniformly very slightly browned, pp. [xxxii], 780, [34], Index plus 2 blank leaves, small 8vo, contemporary vellum over wooden boards, later ink lettering to spine, 19th-century allegorical Swedish bookplate, very good £850 The very scarce first edition of this teaching manual, in question and answer form. The work is in two books: the first, and longer, one is on the soul, the second on the body. The human counterpart to Sperling’s better-known Zoologia physica. Sperling was a student of Sennert’s.
The protagonist’s wife 190. Stoppard (Tom) Travesties. Faber and Faber, 1975, FIRST EDITION, pressure mark from paperclips sometime fastened to leading edge of opening leaves, a few tiny spots to prefatory note, pp. 99, crown 8vo, original dark green cloth, abckstrip lettered in gilt, minor scrape to front, dustjacket, very good £1,500 A most important presentation copy of one of the playwright’s major works - inscribed by the author on the flyleaf to the widow of Henry Wilfred Carr, the lead character in a scenario that explores the coincidence of Lenin, James Joyce, and Tristan Tzara all being present in wartime Zürich. The author’s inscription reads: ‘For Noël Carr, with fondest regards, from Tom Stoppard, April ‘75’. In his introduction, Stoppard professes himself ‘indebted to Mrs. Noël Carr’ - not only for supplying biographical details, but ’for her benevolence towards me and towards what must seem to her a peculiarly well-named play’ (p. 13). Henry Carr was a British consular official, upon whom minor fame had already been conferred by his association with James Joyce, whom he had known whilst posted in Zürich - a petty dispute over money owed from a theatrical production in which Carr had acted (Joyce found himself in the role of business manager) led to Joyce portraying Carr in the ‘Circe’ episode of his ‘Ulysses’, in the form of a drunken, foul-mouthed soldier who assaults Stephen Dedalus. Most of Stoppard’s research for the work came from written sources, primarily Richard Ellmann’s biography of Joyce - and from direct discussion with Ellmann himself. It was only, Stoppard reports, following the play’s opening that he found himself the recipient of a letter that began: ‘I was totally fascinated by the reviews of your play - the chief reason being that Henry Carr was my husband...’
191. [Studholme (John)] An Essay on Human Nature. Carlisle: Printed by J. Harrison, for the Author, 1777, FIRST (ONLY) EDITION, 4 lines supplied in MS at end of the Explanation (see below), some mild damp-stainin in the upper 1/3 of the volume, pp. xii, [13-] 184, 12mo, contemporary ?sheep, spine gilt, a little rubbed, slightly warped, good, inscription in Greek at the head of the title of a Reid, inscription on fly-leaf of Deborah Reid of Green Hill (ESTC T65199) £2,000
55 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
A Lockean treatise: there are few references to other authors, but one, to Locke, adjudges him ‘one of the greatest Men’. The attribution of authorship in ESTC is derived from an inscription in a copy belonging to Arnold Muirhead, into whose collection this volume would have dovetailed neatly. The attribution is here in MS on the title-page, in a particularly neat hand ‘By John Studholme, Thorsby’. ESTC has Thursby, which is the usual spelling of the village 6 miles south of Carlisle. There are also a couple of corrections to the text, again very neat, suggesting authorial participation. The continuation of the text in MS on p. v is identical to that in the copy digitized in ECCO, which strongly suggests that in fact all copies were in the gift of the author (though why then his name not printed on the title-page remains obscure). There are 5 books printed by Harrison recorded in ESTC between 1776 and 1780, 2 Bibles, a BCP, a short-lived Carlisle magazine, and the present work. 7 copies are recorded in ESTC (BL, C, NLS O, Private Collection: Rutgers, Yale), with WorldCat adding the Newberry, and COPAC Manchester. ?Sheep. We query sheep, because although it has the grain of sheep, it is an unusually tough variety of the skin, perhaps some the product of some particularly hardy Cumberland breed: at any rate, a local artefact.
192. Suetonius Tranquillus (Gaius) Commentationes conditae a Philippo Beroaldo in Suetonium Tranquillum Additisque plurimis annotamentis: quae ut facilius cognoscantur. Asterico. Notauimus. Eiusdem Philippi Beroaldi vita per Bartholomaeum Blanchinum composita ... Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris [de Phaellis], 1506, woodcut printer’s device on title, some water-staining towards the upper inner margin at either end, apparently repeatedly, and severe enough for the loss or disintigration of patches of the margin, without loss however, the bulk of the book in good order though with a mild damp-stain in the upper inner margin, A7 short tear to upper conrer without loss of text, ff. [8], 326, [12, Table of Words, this usually found at the front of the volume, this section here with a vellum backstrip], folio, 18th-century Italian vellum, a little soiled, early inscription on title ‘Cosimo Medici Speziale di Masso’, modern owner’s stamp in red at foot (CNCE 36040) £1,500 The first edition of Suetonius with the commentary of Philippo Beroaldus the Elder was published by Benedictus in 1493. In this edition, there is an admonition on the title-page, warning against ‘malevolent printers’ pirating it.
193. (Suffrage.) HANCOCK (Miss K.I.) An archive of manuscript and printed material relating to the Suffrage Movement. - 7 printed items issued by the National Women’s Social & Political Union, 1911-13, including 5 broadsides (2 of which printed in green and purple and promoting ‘The Suffragette’ weekly paper), 2 accounts by Mary Richardson of her force-feeding in HM Prison Holloway in 1913 - 27 pieces of correspondence, from Ray Strachey, Elizabeth Macadam, Eva Marian Hubback, Eleanor Rathbone, et al. - 6 pieces of printed material issued by the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, 1927-29, including a pamphlet by Millicent Fawcett, a Manifesto issued ‘To the Women Voters of Great Britain’ in advance of the General Election of 1929, and a few relating to the resignation of members in 1927 - 7 issues of ‘The Woman’s Leader, and The Common Cause’ newspaper, 1927-28, very well kept, that from September 14th with an account of the Summer School at St. Hilda’s, for which Hancock served as a director and gave a lecture on parliamentary procedure. - 5 pieces of miscellaneous printed ephemera, including a leaflet ‘In Memoriam’ of Emily Wilding Davison (1913), a campaign flyer for Ray Strachey in 1922, the order for a ‘Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication’ at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church for the granting of Equal Franchise in July 1928, and the ‘Memorandum on the Position of Women in the Civil Service’ (London & National Society for Women’s Service, 1929) - 8 pieces of printed, and 1 piece of manuscript material relating to the death of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, comprising: press cuttings of tributes from The Guardian and
56 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
the obituary from The Nation and Athenaeum, the draft of an autograph letter (by Irene Hancock?) to Lady Cynthia Colville, informing her of the date of the memorial service at Westminster Abbey and asking her to relate this information to the Queen, 10pp. typescript listing organisations and people expected to be represented, the ‘Order of Service’ for the same, and the ‘Curwen Edition’ of Ward Howe’s ‘Battle Hymn’ (sung at the service, with the omitted verses crossed through), Miss Hancock’s invitation (her name at head) to the Unveiling of the Memorial to Fawcett in Westminster Abbey in March 1932, the order of service for and description of the same 1913- 1932, some printing in green- purple, and red, occasional minor foxing but generally in very good state, various sizes and formats, good condition overall £10,000 An excellent archive, largely relating to the second wave of the Suffrage movement, and formed by Miss Irene Hancock - an active member and participant of the movement. It includes printed ephemera, much of it scarce and especially so in this sort of condition, relating to key figures and moments in the progression towards ‘Equal Franchise’ - culminating in the order for a ‘Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication’ upon this being granted in July 1928 (the service concluding with Ethel Smyth’s ‘Suffrage March’). The earliest material represents the most urgent phase of the movement, its anti-authoritarian, outlaw status represented in the memorial leaflet for Emily Wilding Davison and Mary Richardson’s accounts of force-feeding - the two of them responsible for perhaps the most notorious acts associated with the cause. The message and presentation of the material here is markedly different, more impassioned, than the later material, which has a more official look. By the time of the memorials to Millicent Fawcett, we witness the general acceptance of their work, and its importance, by the establishment. This archive offers an excellent record of this monumental change achieved within a single generation. The manuscript material adds a personal aspect, showing Miss Hancock’s entry into the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC) - formerly the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies - and her interaction there with various leading figures of the Suffrage movement. The archive includes thirteen pieces of correspondence from Ray Strachey, whom she had first known through work for Strachey’s parliamentary campaign in Chiswick in 1923, and letters from Elizabeth Macadam (2), Eva Marian Hubback (2), Eleanor Rathbone, et al.; first taking the role of General Secretary, carrying recommendations from Ray Strachey as well as testimonials from her time at Headington School, Oxford (where she was Head Girl) and secretarial college, then running the organisation’s summer school (at St Hilda’s College, Oxford), before progressing to a career at the Bar. Prior to embarking on the latter, in the winter of 1928-29, Hancock toured Europe in charge of Barbara Strachey, then only 16 - her mother in frequent correspondence, making arrangements, enquiring after her daughter’s health (a cause for concern), and discussing matters regarding their work, with occasional mention (mostly in a financial regard) of her own mother Mary Berenson (née Pearsall Smith). Strachey’s letters are full of interesting details: she mentions that her book ‘The Cause’ has provoked the threat of legal action from Sylvia Pankhurst, ‘for saying they didn’t publish full accounts in the WSPU!’; and, in a P.S. to a troubled letter about Barbara, relates that ‘the N.U. council was too awful for words. Everything rang hollow & was muddled & mishandled as well. It’s a doomed show in my opinion. But they all seemed thoroughly pleased with it’.
194. (Surréalisme .) HUGNET (Georges, Introduction) Petite anthologie poétique du surréalisme. Paris: Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1934, FIRST EDITION, photomontage of contributors by Man Ray and further monochrome plates by Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, Victor Brauner, Hans Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, et al., literary contributions by André Breton, René Char, René Crevel, Paul Eluard, Benjamin Péret, Tristan Tzara, et al. pp. 166, [4], crown 8vo, original wrappers, a little sunned to borders with reading creases to spine, a little nicked and creased at extremities, good £275 The copy of Lord Berners with his ownership inscription to the front cover.
195. (Surréalisme.) BRETON (André) Second Manifeste du Surréalisme. Paris: Éditions Kra, 1930, FIRST EDITION, title-page printed in blue, pages a little toned throughout, pp. [iv], 104, 4to, original grey wrappers printed in black and blue, light overall dustsoiling and
57 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
faint spotting, with a few nicks and short split at head of upper joint, top edge a little dusty, pages uncut, very good £350 A well-preserved copy of this important text, from the collection of Lord Berners at Faringdon House, but without mark of ownership.
196. Thomas (Edward) Oxford. Painted by John Fulleylove. Described by Edward Thomas. A. & C. Black, 1903, FIRST EDITION, 60 colour plates, tissue-guards with printed captions, light spotting to prelims and a few faint spots throughout, verso of plate facing p. 53 with a little paper transfer from text lifting a few letters, pp. xii, 264, [2], royal 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrip and front board blocked in gilt and black, t.e.g. with a little foxing to fore-edge, trivial rubbing to extremities, grey dustjacket repeating cover design in blue, the backstrip panel a shade darkened with a little chipping at folds, very good (Eckert p. 190) £750 The dustjacket is most uncommon, and has kept this copy in superb condition.
Garnett to Garnett 197. Thomas (Edward) Poems. With a portrait from a photograph by Duncan Williams. Selwyn & Blount, 1917, FIRST EDITION, [ONE OF 525 COPIES], pp. 63, crown 8vo, original grey boards, backstrip with printed label, slight lean to spine, minor handling marks, corner gently knocked, good (Eckert p. 242) £1,200 A significant association copy, inscribed on the half-title in the month of publication by the author’s close friend and literary advisor Edward Garnett, to his son: ‘David Garnett! from EG, Oct. 1917’.
The Tove Jansson Hobbit 198. Tolkien (J.R.R.) Bilbo. En Hobbits Äventyr [The Hobbit.] I Översättning av Britt G. Hallqvist och med Illustrationer av Tove Jansson. Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1962, FIRST JANSSON EDITION, 10 full-page drawings with numerous smaller drawings throughout text, pp. 308, 8vo, original quarter green cloth with colour-printed Jansson illustration to upper board, a touch of fading almost exclusively to lower board and none affecting Jansson image, backstrip lettered in gilt and a touch faded with gentle rubbing at ends, very good (Hammond & Anderson Swedish C4) £2,000 An attractive edition - this is an excellent copy of a book whose scarcity can be attributed to both author and illustrator being immensely collectable separately. Given the importance of the Nordic influence on Tolkien’s work, there is something reciprocal about the foremost illustrator of the region turning her hand to one of his most enduring works - and the results are delightful.
Inscribed to a Leonard Cohen connection 199. Trocchi (Alexander) Cain's Book. John Calder, 1963, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, a few printing smudges to the title-page, pp. 252, crown 8vo, original red boards, backstrip lettered in silver, crease to knocked top corner of upper board, dustjacket a little nicked and chipped and darkened slightly in a couple of places, very good £2,500 With a lengthy inscription by the author to the flyleaf: ‘For Nancy Bacal – Can I ask you to be careful not to treat this book as “literature”? Whatever else it is, it’s not that. Of course, there is a good deal of “fiction” in it, but… For example, my publisher’s first question when he had read it: “It’s great! But are you working on another novel now?” It was as though he hadn’t read it at all. Alex. London, March 1963’. The recipient was a Canadian who had come to London to study classical theatre at RADA, where she became involved in various counter-cultural activities - including founding the Black Power movement in London alongside her then partner Michael de Freitas (Michael X/Michael Abdul Malik). She had been introduced to Trocchi by Leonard Cohen - a mutual friend that she had known since childhood, and whose song ‘Seems So Long Ago, Nancy’ was written for her; at the
58 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
time of her introduction to Trocchi she was working as an interviewer for CBC (in which capacity she also interviewed the first incarnation of Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones) and making a film about drug use. ‘Cain’s Book’ was first published in New York in 1960, and received positive notices but no widespread attention; upon its UK publication, however, it caused a scandal and was prosecuted for obscenity having been seized in Sheffield as a threat to the morals of the young. Trocchi, well- versed in Situationist practice having been integrally involved with the nascent movement whilst in Paris, saw the furore as an opportunity to promote the book and at the Edinburgh Festival 1964 staged a public burning (with added explosives) that was part protest against and part endorsement of the judgement of the book as incendiary material. Cohen’s role in the story goes beyond the merely incidental: between the US and the UK publications of the work, Trocchi had been charged with the capital offence of supplying drugs to a minor in New York - it was Cohen who assisted him in crossing into Canada, from where he made his way back to London, receiving for his trouble an inadvertent overdose from his charge’s largesse.
Inscribed to ‘Mr LSD’ 200. Trocchi (Alexander) Young Adam. Heinemann, 1961, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, crown 8vo, original brown boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, mild traces of damp to baords, very minor knock to bottom corner of upper board, tiny waterstain to leading edge of rear free endpaper, dustjacket a little frayed with some light soiling to rear panel, good £2,500 Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: ‘For Desmond O’Brien - a small & overdue token of my esteem - Alex. London, 1.1.65! (Tempus fuxit [sic])’. An excellent presentation copy, inscribed to a man Trocchi called a ‘fellow traveller’: O’Brien was an Old Etonian and Lloyd’s underwriter who had founded the World Psychedelic Centre with Michael Hollingshead in the year of this inscription - his reputation as a psychedelic impresario already conferring upon him the title of ‘Mr LSD’ (enshrined by a sensationalist exposé in ‘London Life’ magazine)
201. [Turnbull (William Barclay David Donald)] Notes, Chiefly Correctory, on Dr Dibdin's Tour Through Scotland. [Edinburgh:] 1838, FIRST EDITION, outer pages a little dust- soiled and foxed, pp. 16, tall 8vo, slightly later Bannantyne Club style burgundy roan backed cloth covered boards, a bit faded, spine rubbed £1,750 David Murray’s copy, with his bookplate, signature on title-page, notes also (identifying the author), as well as on fly-leaf. Turnbull himself appears in the text, as noted by Murray. A zesty (and immediate) exposé of inaccuracies in Dibdin’s Bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour in the northern counties of England and in Scotland. Most of the inaccuracies stem from lack of local knowledge (and might have been more kindly dealt with), but there are glorious howlers too. Dibdin’s self-regard is not unnoticed either. Rare: according to John Windle and Karma Pippin, "Thomas Frognall Dibdin, 1776-1847, A Bibliography", only 10 copies were printed.
202. Tynan (Katharine) The Years of the Shadow. Constable, 1919, FIRST EDITION, single spot at foot of prelims, blind-stamp ‘Presentation Copy’ to corner of title-page, single spot towards foot of prelims, pp. viii, 343, 8vo, original dark green cloth, backstrip and upper board lettered and decorated in blind, the latter within a blind-stamped border, corners and backstrip ends a little pushed, a few small spots to edges, good £400 A presentation copy, with the poem ‘Brothers’ (from the previous year’s ‘Herb o’Grace’) in the author’s holograph to the flyleaf, and signed by the author with a note below: ‘Written for dear Billy Gibbon, November 1921’. The recipient was the poet William Monk Gibbon, a friend and correspondent of the author - then at the beginning of his literary career. Gibbon studied at St. Columba's College, Dublin and Keble College, Oxford: he left the latter after a term in order to volunteer for the Army in 1915, and whilst on leave in Ireland was involved in the Easter Rising of 1916 - both of which conflicts are central events in Tynan’s memoir. The experience of the Rising was the foundation of his ardent pacifism thereafter. In 1963 he edited ‘The Poems of Katharine Tynan’.
59 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
The dedication copy 203. Underwood (Michael) Death by Misadventure. Hammond, Hammond, 1960, FIRST EDITION, light foxing to borders of prelims recurrent at rear, pp. 221, [3, ads], crown 8vo, original maroon boards, backstrip lettered in yellow, a little corner-bumping, light foxing to edges, dustjacket a little rubbed and nicked, very good £200 Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: ‘To Patience, with all the gratitude and affection which cannot appear in a simple dedication - from Michael, Publication Day, Nov. 1960.’ The title-page verso bears the printed dedication ‘To Patience Ross’. The recipient was a literary agent with A.M. Heath. The author was an Oxford law graduate and a prolific crime writer - this is the eighth of his books to feature Inspector Simon Manton. The year before this novel he had been elected a member of the Detection Club.
204. (Underwood.) SAX (Artist) [Original artwork for:] ‘Death by Misadventure’ by Michael Underwood. circa 1960, gouache on card with some pencil sketching visible, pp. [1], crown 8vo, laid down on black art paper £200 The book published by Hammond in 1960, the finished dustjacket showing some differences to this design - most pronouncedly in the colouring.
205. Vechten (Carl Van) The Blind Bow-Boy. With a decoration by Robert E. Locher. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923, FIRST EDITION, colour-printed frontispiece by Locher with tissue-guard, title-page printed in black and green, pp. [viii], 261, crown 8vo, original quarter beige linen with patterned paper sides, backstrip with printed label, top edge green, others roughtrimmed, contemporary gift inscription to flyleaf, dustjacket repeating frontispiece design with some minor nicks and chipping, short closed tear to upper joint- fold, very good £100
Inscribed to Ralph Kirkpatrick 206. Vieillard (Roger, Illustrator) Hommage à Rimbaud. Burins de R. Vieillard. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1945, FIRST EDITION, 46/150 COPIES (from an edition of 186 copies) signed by the author and printed on Vélin d’Arches paper, title-page and half-title printed in black and terracotta, 17 copper-engraved illustrations by Vieillard including title-page vignette, 4 tail-pieces and 12 full-page, all tissue-guarded, a few with heightening in white, 4to, the sheets loose as issued in original wrappers, tissue wrapper, cloth and board chemise faintly spotted with the backstrip lettered in gilt, cloth and board slipcase with some light wear, very good £650 A selection of 12 poems by Arthur Rimbaud, exquisitely illustrated by Roger Vieillard - an artist associated with Atelier 17, and one of the finest working in his medium. This copy is inscribed by the artist in pencil on the initial blank leaf: ‘à Ralph Kirkpatrick, pour les possibilités harmoniques, Roger Vieillard, amicalement’ - a few characteristic decorations adorn the inscription, and continue onto the half-title where they fill the page, with an additional inscription (’pour Ralph Kirkpatrick’) at the foot. The recipient was an American musician and musicologist, and many of Vieillard’s decorations are suggestive of musical notation. Kirkpatrick’s bookplate, designed by Vieillard, is on the inside of the chemise.
207. Waller (Edmund) Poems, &c. Written upon several occasions, and to several persons ... The fourth Edition, with several Additions, Never before Printed. Printed for Henry Herringman, 1682, with 2 engraved portraits (here bound facing each other, before the title-page), title printed in red and black, a trifle browned, a bit of spotting to portraits, pp. [xii], 289, 8vo, contemporary black morocco, double gilt fillets on sides, attractive corner pieces built up from small tools, spine gilt in compartments, initials E P in gilt in the second compartment, gilt edges, upper joint slightly rubbed, very good, early signature on title of Eliza Hughes, another inscription of the front free end-paper of Elizabeth [Hughes,
60 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
partially erased] dated 1703, bookplate of Robert S. Pirie (Wither to Prior 929; ESTC R30183) £1,200 This edition, besides the added poems, and ‘A Speech at a Conference of both Houses’, contains the first engraved portraits of the poet, one at the age of 23, the other at the age of 76 (i.e. in the year that this edition was published). Wither to Prior calls for the portrait of the younger man to face the title-page, and the other to precede the poems: bound as they are here allows an easy comparison of the two effigies. The initials on the spine perhaps represent the maiden name of Eliza Hughes. A very nice copy, just how you want your 17th-century poetry.
208. Wallis (John) A Defence of the Royal Society, and the Philosophical Transactions, Particularly those of July, 1670. In Answer to the Cavils of Dr. William Holder. In a Letter to the Right Honourable William Lord Viscount Brouncker. Printed by T[homas] S[nowden] for Thomas Moore, 1678, FIRST EDITION, browning and foxing, small marginal repairs to most leaves, a few tiny marginal wormholes, none of which affecting printed area, pp. [ii], 33, [1], small 4to,, quarter-calf and marbled boards (ESTC R705) £3,000 ‘A Defence of the Royal Society’ is not really a guide to the contents of this pamphlet, which is in fact a foundation work on teaching the deaf to speak, wrapped up in a notorious priority dispute. In 1659, when Alexander Popham was 10 years old, his parents entrusted him to the care of William Holder (1616-98), who undertook to teach him to speak. Popham stayed with Holder for a year, at which time he was able to pronounce words “plainly and distinctly, and with a good and graceful tone,” as Holder wrote in a 1678 pamphlet (see below). Holder claimed that his extraordinary achievement attracted many visitors to his house near Oxford, including men like Ward, Wilkins, and Bathurst, who (just like Holder and Wallis) were to become founders or fellows of the Royal Society, but also, or so Holder claimed, John Wallis (1616-1703) – a claim that was categorically denied by Wallis. Wallis, according to his own account, had never met young Popham before he took him on as a pupil. Furthermore, when Popham entered his tuition, he was unable to utter a single word. This, Holder explained was because Popham had forgotten Holder’s teaching in the two years since Holder had left. In 1669, Holder published his ‘Elements of Speech’, which contained a sophisticated analysis of speech sounds according to articulatory principles. It also contained ‘an appendix concerning persons deaf and dumb’, in which Holder explained how a deaf person could be instructed to produce speech sounds. Probably in reaction to this work, Wallis pointed publicly to his own achievements both in articulatory phonetics and in teaching language to deaf persons. In 1670, he published, in the Philosophical Transactions (Vol. 5, pp. 1087-97), a letter he had written in 1662 in which he explained to Robert Boyle the progress he had made, and added a short but unsigned postscript, mentioning that ‘Dr. Wallis’ had later also successfully taught ‘a young Gentleman of a very good family’, who was born deaf, clearly intending Popham (p. 1098). This infuriated Holder, but he remained silent until 1678, when he decided to expose Wallis’s devious ways in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Supplement to the Philosophical Transactions of July, 1670, with some reflexions on Dr. John Wallis, his Letter there inserted’, in which he explained what ‘subtle contrivances’ Wallis had used to reap the fruit of another person’s labour, driven by an excessive greed of fame. Wallis was quick to respond. In the same year, 1678, he published the present work, in which Holder’s accusations were answered in great detail. The thrust of the argument was that Wallis had never witnessed any results obtained by Holder in teaching Popham and that, when Wallis first met him, he could not utter or understand a single word of English. Rather than being disingenuous, Wallis had acted out of politeness in passing over it. In sum, Holder had tried in vain what Wallis accomplished afterwards, and was now complaining that he was deprived of the credit for something he never achieved. Rare in commerce, and not so common in ESTC: of the 13 copies recorded in the UK, 7 are in Oxford libraries (none in Cambridge); and just a dozen overseas.
209. Wallis (John) A Treatise of Algebra, both Historical and Practical Shewing, the original, progress, and advancement thereof, from time to time; and by what steps it hath attained to the heighth at which now it is. With some additional treatises, I. Of the cono-cuneus; being a body representing in part a conus, in part a cuneus. II. Of angular sections; and other things relating there-unto, and to trigonometry. III. Of the angle of contact; with other things appertaining to the composition of magnitudes, the inceptives of magnitudes, and the composition of motions, with the results thereof. IV. Of combinations, alternations, and aliquot parts. Printed by John Playford, for Richard
61 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
Davis, Bookseller, in the University of Oxford, 1685, FIRST EDITION, with engraved portrait frontispiece by Loggan, and with 10 folding engraved plates, diagrams in the text, short portion of the top edge of 1 plate protruding slightly, a few scattered spots and minor browning, pp. [xvi], 374, [iv], 17, [i], 76 [i.e.176], [i], 17, folio, sumptuously bound in contemporary red morocco, gilt panelled sides, spine richly gilt, gilt edges, later pastedowns, minor shefl-wear, very good (ESTC R12258) £17,500 A choice copy of Wallis’s famous mathematical work on algebra, his only book to be published in English, and the first recorded effort to give a graphical interpretation of the complex roots of a real quadratic equation. Some of his greatest work are contained here, ‘including an exposition of infinite series and the first printed account ... of Newton’s pioneering results. Wallis had long been afraid that foreigners might claim the glory of Newton’s achievements as their own before Newton had done so ... In addition the book contains a full exposition of Algebra with its history in a hundred chapters, a feat never previously attempted by any author’ (DSB). Wallis also devoted the final 28 chapters to a discussion of the methods of exhaustion and of indivisibles with reference to the Arithmetica infinitorum. A number of shorter treatises on analytic three dimensional geometry and sundry other topics of great significance are included, as well as various supplementary treatises concluding with Caswell’s A Brief (but Full) Account of the Doctrine of Trigonometry. A pencil note on a fly-leaf identifies this as the Christie-Miller, Britwell, copy. The note is in the hand of Charles Traylen, who bought this copy at a Britwell sale at Sotheby’s in 1971. There is something peculiarly satisfying about important English books of the Scientific Revolution in contemporary red morocco.
The dedication copy 210. White (Antonia) Frost in May. Desmond Harmsworth, 1933, FIRST EDITION, pp. 368, crown 8vo, original white cloth, backstrip lettered in red and darkened, a couple of minor marks, dustjacket price-clipped, chipped with some loss at head of rear panel, good £2,000 The dedication copy of the author’s first novel, based on her time at Catholic boarding school, inscribed by the author on the flyleaf to her husband (the third incumbent): ‘To Tom, The first copy, from Toni, June 25, 1933’. The recipient was Tom Hopkinson, to whom the book bears a printed dedication using his initials ‘H.T. Hopkinson’.
211. Whiting (Thomas) Mathematical, Geometrical, and Philosophical Delights: containing Essays, Problems, Solutions, Theorems, &c. selected from an extensive correspondence. Printed for Messrs. Whiting, Davis, Gale, Leybourn, and Kemmish; And sold by T.N. Longman, 1798, with 13 engraved plates, one catchword trimmed, minor browning and staining, pp. iv, [5-] 228, bound with other items (see below), 4to, modern brown morocco backed marbled boards, ownership inscription on preserved fly-leaf of Geo. Sherwin of Dale Abbey dated 1800 £1,200 This volume is a bit of a puzzle. ESTC T110407 records Mathematical, Geometrical, and Philosophical Delights, puiblished in 11 parts 1792-98, with 13 plates preceded by a separate title- page dated 1797. Bound with the volume as described above (sans 1797 title-page) we have the parts issue, each numbered and consisting of 4 pp. - except part 11, where we have the title-page only, and a page of advertisement referring to No. 16 of the Scientific Receptacle (a stable-mate). These parts, a little soiled, and cut close, are evidently disbound from a calf-bound volume, and are in fact almost detached (as a body) from the main text block. Thus we seem to have an unrecorded collected edition. However the 225 pages contain much more than the ‘Delights’’, with correspondence, and Essays. Thomas Whiting had a boarding school in Lambeth from about 1785 to 1795, thereafter a larger establishment, referred to on the title-page here as Keppel-House Seminary.
212. Wodehouse (P.G.) The Adventures of Sally. Herbert Jenkins, 1923, FIRST EDITION, first issue, pp. 312, [8, ads], crown 8vo, original orange cloth with illustration stamped in brown to upper board and publisher’s device in same to lower, backstrip lettered in brown and very gently faded with a touch of rubbing at tips, very good (McIlvaine A29a) £500
62 BATTERSEA BOOK FAIR: STAND M09
The first issue identified by the listing of 9 books on the verso of the half-title.
213. Wolfe (Tom) The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965, FIRST EDITION, pp. xvii, 339, 8vo, original white cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt with decorations in yellow, decorations in yellow and gilt to upper board, some staining to cloth, top edge yellow and a couple of small ink-spots to fore-edge, bookplate of John Baxter to front pastedown, dustjacket, good £300 Inscribed by the author on the half-title, ‘To John Baxter, Tom Wolfe’ - the recipient an author and bibliophile.
214. Wollstonecraft (Mary) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Printed for J. Johnson. 1792, FIRST EDITION, a little foxing, mainly at the beginning, elsewhere a few larger scattered spots (?wax), pp. xix, [i](blank), 452, 8vo, contemporary half calf, flat spine gilt, black lettering piece, stamp of the Signet Library in gilt on both covers, joints neatly repaired (Masterpieces of Women’s Literature pp.528-30: PMM 242: Tinker 2314: Todd 9: Windle A5a) £12,500 Wollstonecraft’s most famous work ‘aims, like her first book, to make women think, but it goes far beyond it in passionate argument for women’s rights and for the opportunity to prove themselves intellectually equal to men. “It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore them their lost dignity.”’ (Todd quoting ‘A Vindication’) She was the first to codify women’s rights, to identify the cause as ‘justice for one half of the human race’. This rallying cry was perceived as being too revolutionary for its day, but in reality it was not especially shocking. She did not attack the institution of marriage, nor the practice of religion. Wollstonecraft sought ‘to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness.’ Her object was to show that women should not be an unregarded adjunct of men, but ought to be their equal partners, and that this end could only be achieved through equal opportunity in education.
215. Wyndham (John) The Day of the Triffids. New York: Doubleday, 1951, FIRST EDITION, pp. 222, 8vo, original blue-grey cloth, backstrip lettered in green, some very minor corner bumping, a few spots to edges and faint partial browning to free endpapers, dustjacket designed by Whitney Bender with a little rubbing to extremities, very good £800 A nice copy of the true first edition of this landmark Science Fiction work, with differences to the design and to the text of the British edition from the same year - this the copy of Science Fiction author and bibliophile John Baxter, though without mark of ownership.
216. Wyndham (John) The Midwich Cuckoos. Michael Joseph, 1957, FIRST EDITION, pp. 240, crown 8vo, original black boards, backstrip gilt lettered, small patch of abrasion at bottom corner of upper board, the edges toned witha couple of small spots, a few spots to endpapers with strip of browning to free endpapers, dustjacket with some very light dustsoiling, very good £250
217. Wyrley (William) The True Vse of Armorie, Shewed by Historie, and plainly proued by example: the necessitie therof also discouered: with the maner of differings in ancient time, the lawfulnes of honorable funerals and moniments: with other matters of Antiquitie, incident to the aduauncin of Banners, Ensignes, and marks of noblenesse and cheualrie. Imprinted at London by I. Iackson, for Gabriell Cawood, 1592, FIRST EDITION, title within border of printers ornaments, 1 large woodcut initial, 15 woodcut coats of arms within text, all but 1 of them with old hand-colouring, without the initial leaf (blank except for signature mark), first 5 leaves a trifle short at top, some headlines trimmed, small burn hole in L4 touching a couple of letters on the verso, a bit of soiling and some damp-stains, verso of last leaf dust soiled, pp. [ii], 159, small 4to, 18th-century mottled calf, gilt roll tooled border on sides, spine gilt in compartments, twin lettering pieces, rebacked preserving spine, inner hinges strengthened with cloth, corners worn,
63 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS
some contemporary annotations, mostly just repeating in the marginwords in the text, verso of last leaf with an early (if not contemporary) proverb in Italian, and the signature of Peter Wentworth, paper lozenge with ‘The Bassett Armes / 1594’ printed in red (ESTC S120446) £3,500 Rare. ‘In 1592 Wyrley published The True Use of Armorie. Sir William Dugdale, who reprinted the main text in his The Antient Usage in Bearing of … Arms in 1682, quoted William Burton as saying that his friend Erdeswick had told him that he himself was the real author of the book, “though he gave leave to Mr Wyrley (who had been bred up under him) to publish it in his own name” . Anthony Wood, however, considered the claim one more sign that Erdeswick's mind was unbalanced. Wyrley's research had its special dangers, especially in view of his connection with Erdeswick, a known recusant. In 1592 the Warwickshire recusancy commissioners reported that ‘one Woorley, sometime servant to one Sampson Erswicke … was suspected to be a lewd and a seditious papist’, resorting often ‘as a wandering man, under the colour of tricking out of arms in churches’ to the houses of ‘gentlemen known to be ill-affected in religion’ in Warwickshire and neighbouring counties. He was also suspected of secretly carrying letters between papists ’ (ODNB). The text is followed by 2 poems, The Glorious Life and Honorable Death of Sir Iohn Chandos, and The Honorable Life and Languishing Death of Sir Iohn de Gralhy Capitall de Buz. These occupy pp. 29 to the end, by far the bulk of the book. They are in the style of the Mirour for Magistrates.
218. Yeats (W.B.) Autobiographies: Reveries over Childhood and Youth and The Trembling of the Veil. Macmillan, 1926, FIRST EDITION, portrait frontispiece and 4 other plates (one colourprinted), tissue-guards present, preliminaries and final few leaves very lightly foxed, pp. viii, 480, crown 8vo, original apple-green cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt, backstrip and the front cover blind-stamped to a design by Charles Ricketts, edges untrimmed with a few faint spots, dustjacket repeating Ricketts design with a faint mark to front panel and the backstrip panel a little sunned, very good (Wade 151) £350
64