The 52 California Book Fair
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The 52nd California book fair STAND 815 Item 127 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. 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 $3,900 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. 2. (Alembic Press.) RICHARDSON (Maureen) Plant Papers’ Paper Plants. Kennington, Oxford, Alembic Press, 1989, FIRST EDITION, 25/25 COPIES (from an edition of 145 copies) printed on a special making of Japanese handmade Kozo paper, 4 linocuts by John Gibbs printed in brown, 14 tipped-in samples of plant paper (enumerated below) made by Maureen Richardson, this special edition with five additional paper samples (one printed with a John Gibbs linocut), pp. [57], oblong 8vo, original tan wrappers of handmade plant paper (Yucca and Manila), stab-bound with red thread in the Japanese style, printed label to front, enclosed with further samples in a Japanese ‘shiho- chitsu’ clamshell box, fine $520 An exquisite treatise on modern paper-making in a traditional style, showcasing the work of Maureen Richardson at Plant Papers, where various plant-fibres are employed as an alternative to wood-pulp. Present here in sample form are Willow, Flax, Hemp, Bulrush, Giant Hogweed, Thistle, Maize, Rye, Buttercup, Dandelion, Onion, Scarlet Runner Bean, Marigold, and Poppy. [With:] (Alembic Press.) WORDE PAPERS 5: The first papermakers. Oxford, 1991, a small folded sheet of blue paper with a tipped-in sample of ‘wasp-paper’ - i.e., made from wood rasped and masticated via said animal and then built up ‘to make a delicate lightweight paper’. A charming piece of ephemera produced for the March 1991 luncheon of the Wynkyn de Worde Society. [And:] 3 further ephemeral keepsakes relating to the same occasion, by other presses (one the Hayloft Press, the others with ‘fep’ as the only clue) ‘CON MUCHAS NOTACIONES’ 3. (Americana.) VIRGIL Las Georgicas de Virgilio, principe de los poetas Latinos nueuamente traduzidas en nuestra lengua Castellana en verso suelto, iuntamente con la decima Egloga, con muchas notaciones que siruen en lugar de comento por Iuan de Guzman. Salamanca: Iuan Fernandez, 1586, FIRST EDITION OF THIS TRANSLATION, a couple of small holes in the title-page, and one in the succeeding leaf, repaired with the loss of a few letters, title a little short at fore-edge, contemporary ownership inscription on title, partly corroded, minor damp-staining, ff. [xxiv], 150, 12mo, recased in old vellum, spine consolidated $23,400 The first complete translation of the Georgics into Spanish. This in itself is a milestone, but the present petite volume packs an even bigger punch in the ‘notaciones’, whose importance as Americana it seems has only fairly recently been understood and appreciated. For in the notes, which occupy half the book, Guzman draws upon his (supposed) experiences in the New World. If he did not actually sojourn there, he does introduce ‘Americanismos’, e.g. ‘canoa... el barco de un palo’, which, he tells us, comes from Santo Domingo. He introduces other ‘vocables peregrinos’, such as ‘guayauas’, which taste like quince, and describes how these ‘vocables’ enrich the Spanish language (a language Guzman sees as becoming universal). See Carmela V. Mattza, Las Américas en las Geórgicas de Juan de Guzmán, Calíope, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2015), pp. 29-50; and Margherita Morreale, El nuevo mundo en las "notaciones" de Juan de Guzmán a su versión de las Geórgicas, Bulletin hispanique, 2002 104-2, pp. 577-626, listing all the ‘americanismos’ and topics bearing on the New World. Rarity: USTC records 11 copies, 6 of which are in BNE, and only 3 of which are extra-Iberian: BL, Houghton, Berkeley; WorldCat adds Yale. Not in RBH. 2 52 nd California Book Fair, Stand 815 4. Amis (Kingsley) One Fat Englishman. A Novel. Victor Gollancz, 1963, FIRST EDITION, pp. 192, crown 8vo, original red boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, top edge a trifle dusty, dustjacket, near fine $330 Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: ‘John Baxter, from another fat Englishman, Kingsley Amis’. The recipient, an author and bibliophile, recounts the circumstances of his Amis collection being signed in his entertaining memoir ‘A Pound of Paper’. 5. Anacreon [Greek Title:] TEIOU MELE. Parma: In Aedibus Palatinis [typis Bodonianis] 1791, printed on heavy paper with cross watermark with initials "FP", with engraved portrait of Anacreon on title, and of José Nicolás de Azara (the Dedicatee) on the Dedication, printed in capitals throughout, minor spotting, mainly around the edges, pp. [iv], cvviii, 111, small 8vo in 4s, contemporary red morocco, single gilt fillet on sides, gilt ruled compartments on spine, lettered in gilt direct, inner dentelles gilt with a distinctive small roll tool (alternating squares and lozenges with a blind saltire in the middle, separated by a dot), board edges gilt with a roll tool of small dots, gilt edges, light Prussian blue paste-downs and end-leaves, spine very slightly darkened, armorial bookplate of the Marsh family of Gaynes Park, Essex, very good $1,300 A most elegant edition, uniformly praised by bibliographers: a ‘bijou typographique’ (Renouard); ‘très jolie édition’ (Brunet); of this, and the 1785 4to edition, ‘more elegant and exquisitely finished productions cannot be conceived’ (Dibdin); &c. 6. (Anthology. North-Shields.) A SELECT COLLECTION OF POEMS, from admired Authors, and scarce Miscellanies. With many Pieces never before Published. North-Shields: Printed by W. Kelley, Bookseller; sold by J. Bew, Paternoster Row, London, 1790, FIRST (ONLY) EDITION, pp. vii, 240, 12mo, contemporary calf, spine gilt with a flower in each compartment, red lettering piece, a little abraded, good $650 A pleasant copy of a scarce (not in Johnson) and interesting selection. Some have known authors (Percy, Burns, Mrs. Thrale, Crabbe, &c) but most are anonymous, and some not exactly from ‘Miscellanies’: e.g. Verses left in a Chop House, Verses Copied from the Window of an obscure Lodging-House in London. At the end are a number of poems by J. Bedingfeld, originally of Oxborogh, later of Lincoln’s Inn. Many of the poems are amourous, e.g. A Gentleman to a Surgeon letting his Mistress (i.e. phlebotomising her). ESTC records 3 copies in the UK, 8 in North America. 7. [Aubrey [or Hobry] (Mary)] A French Midwife who murdered her Husband, in Long Acre. Anno 1687-8. Published by J. Cauldfield, Jan. 1, 1798, single sheet engraving, 218 x 185 mm to image edge, legend and to lower edge 24 mm, narrow margins, coloured by a contemporary hand, laid down on card $1,170 The sensationalised central image is of Mary wielding a meat cleaver, her husband already decapitated, his head - dripping blood - held by the hair by the son, the lower part of the right leg beneath the table, blood dripping from the severed limb. Mary is about to make another cut, aiming to sever the upper part of the right leg (by the crotch). She is egged on by a devil and a hag; vignette at the top left of the burning at the stake. This case caused quite a stir at the time, given the feverish politics. ‘That three illustrations of Mary Hobry's crime and punishment are included in a deck of playing cards about the Revolution suggests the significance of the crime as a portent of the social and political disorder which could flourish under a Catholic king’ (ODNB). It also raised the question, in the most dramatic way, of the powerlessness of the wife of an abusive husband. All accounts of the murder suggest that the marriage had been contentious and violent. The couple fought about Denis's extravagance, especially his seizure and waste of what Mary Hobry earned through her “industrious Care” as a midwife, his drunkenness and dissolute life, which Mary claimed had infected her with a sexually transmitted disease, and his insistence that she “submit to a compliance with him in Villanies contrary to Nature” (L'Estrange, quoted in ODNB). Her crime was ‘petty treason and murder.’ Though there were several publications at the time about the case, interest in it seems to have faded, and we find no reference to until the present publication, over a century later. Perhaps it came in response to another febrile political climate, or perhaps in the wake of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. See Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550 - 1700, pp. 34-35; and Randall Martin, Women, Murder, and Equity in Early Modern England, p. 68 ff. The Royal Collections Trust catalogue describes this as a copy of an older print. 3 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS 8. Azevedo Tojal (Pedro de) Carlos reduzido, Inglaterra illustrada.