THE LIBRARY OF THE LATE HUGH SELBOURNE, M.D., PART ONE Wednesday 25 March 2015 Knightsbridge, London THE LIBRARY OF THE LIBRARY T HE L A T E H UGH SE L BOURNE, M.D., PAR T O NE | Knightsbridge, London | Wednesday 25 March 2015 25 March | Knightsbridge, London Wednesday 22731 THE LIBRARY OF THE LATE HUGH SELBOURNE, M.D., PART ONE Wednesday 25 March 2015 at 11.00 and 14.00 Knightsbridge, London BONHAMS ENQUIRIES Please see page 2 for bidder Montpelier Street Matthew Haley information including after-sale Knightsbridge Simon Roberts collection and shipment. London SW7 1HH Luke Batterham www.bonhams.com Sarah Lindberg Please see back of catalogue +44 (0) 20 7393 3828 for important notice to bidders VIEWING +44 (0) 20 7393 3831 Sunday 22 March ILLUSTRATIONS 11.00 – 15.00 Consultant Front cover: Lot 325 Monday 23 March John Collins Back cover: Lot 48 09.00 – 16.30 +44 (0) 20 7393 3841 Inside front cover: Lot 266 Tuesday 24 March Inside back cover: Lots 145 & 205 09.00 – 16.30 Shipping and Collections Leor Cohen BIDS +44 (0) 20 7393 3841 +44 (0) 20 7447 7448 +44 (0) 20 7447 7401 fax [email protected] To bid via the internet please visit www.bonhams.com CUSTOMER SERVICES Monday to Friday 08.30 – 18.00 New bidders must also provide +44 (0) 20 7447 7447 proof of identity when submitting bids. Failure to do this may result in your bids not being processed. Please note that bids should be submitted no later than 4pm on LIVE ONLINE BIDDING IS the day prior to the auction. AVAILABLE FOR THIS SALE Please email [email protected] Bidding by telephone will only with “Live bidding” in the subject be accepted on a lot with a line up to 48 hours before the lower estimate of or in excess auction to register for this service. of £500. SALE NUMBER: 22731 CATALOGUE: £18 Bonhams 1793 Limited Bonhams 1793 Ltd Directors Bonhams UK Ltd Directors Registered No. 4326560 Robert Brooks Co-Chairman, Colin Sheaf Chairman, Jonathan Baddeley, Andrew McKenzie, Simon Mitchell, Jeff Muse, Registered Office: Montpelier Galleries Malcolm Barber Co-Chairman, Antony Bennett, Matthew Bradbury, Mike Neill, Charlie O’Brien, Giles Peppiatt, Montpelier Street, London SW7 1HH Colin Sheaf Deputy Chairman, Lucinda Bredin, Harvey Cammell, Simon Cottle, Peter Rees, Iain Rushbrook, John Sandon, Matthew Girling Global CEO, Andrew Currie, Paul Davidson, Jean Ghika, Tim Schofield, Veronique Scorer, +44 (0) 20 7393 3900 Patrick Meade Global CEO, Charles Graham-Campbell, Miranda Grant, James Stratton, Roger Tappin, Ralph Taylor, +44 (0) 20 7393 3905 fax Geoffrey Davies, Jonathan Horwich, Richard Harvey, Robin Hereford, Asaph Hyman, Shahin Virani, David Williams, James Knight, Caroline Oliphant, Charles Lanning, Sophie Law, Fergus Lyons, Michael Wynell-Mayow, Suzannah Yip. Hugh Watchorn. Gordon McFarlan, SALE INFORMATION IMPORTANT NOTICES Illustrations in the catalogue are for the purpose of identification only. Bidders should be wary of using illustrations as indicators of tone or For explanation of any asterisked symbols that may appear in catalogues, contrast. In some cases (for example mounted and framed items) please see the notice entitled ‘VAT’ at the end of the catalogue. catalogue illustrations may not include full margins. Please note that lots comprising printed books, unframed maps and Items indicated in the catalogue as ‘framed and glazed’ have not been bound manuscripts are not liable to VAT on the Buyer’s Premium. examined out-of-frame, unless specifically stated. The measurements given for framed items are those of the image-to-view, although the Lots are sold with all faults, imperfections and errors of description, but actual image may be larger. if on collation any described printed book in this catalogue is found to lack text or illustrations, the same may be returned to Bonhams within 20 days of the sale; the unstated defect to be detailed in writing. COLLECTION AND STORAGE This shall not apply in the case of un-named items, blanks, half-titles or Buyers’ accounts are due for settlement at the end of each sale and it advertisements, nor to damage to bindings, stains, tears or other defects is our hope that clients will collect at the same time or certainly within unless these result in loss to text or illustration. Atlases, maps and prints 48 hours of the sale finishing. are sold not subject to return, as are periodicals and items sold as collections, association and extra-illustrated copies, or as bindings. All sold lots will remain in Bonhams Knightsbridge Book Department for a period of 21 days. Any items not collected by then may be removed to our warehouse at Park Royal where storage charges will PHOTOGRAPHS AND PRINTS apply at the rate of £2 per day per lot, attracting a removal charge estimated at £5 + VAT. Unlike Books, Manuscripts and Maps, but following the general convention, descriptions of photographs, related albums and prints do Buyers are encouraged to make contact with the Book Department’s not contain any particular indicators of condition or faults. A subjective Stock Manager, Leor Cohen to discuss any collection, storage or opinion on such matters can be sought from the Book Department. shipping concerns. The names of photographers given at the head of lots represent our opinion at the time of going to press. These may, or may not, be Leor Cohen supported by factual information elsewhere in the description. For Tel: +44 (0) 20 7393 3841 further important notices relating to lots offered in this sale see notices [email protected] at the end of this catalogue. CONTENTS LOTS First Session, commencing at 11am Continental Printed Books and Illuminated Manuscripts 1 – 39 English Literature and History 40 – 89 Romantic and Victorian Literature 90 – 116 Private Press and Modern Literature 117 – 141 Second Session, commencing at 2pm British Topography, Art, and Illustrated Books 142 – 161 Travel 162 – 208 Natural History 209 – 227 Science and Medicine 228 – 329 HUGH SELBOURNE (1906-1973) “I set out from the start to broaden my outlook and to learn as much as I could about the beautiful world we live in, and the way in which people have expressed themselves, not only scientifically, but spiritually, through literature and the fine arts.” My father Hugh Selbourne was a Manchester physician of French birth. He came of poor parents – his father was an unskilled tailor and his mother a seamstress – who had left Odessa and thereafter Constantinople at the end of the nineteenth century, and who lived in Montmartre. The family left France for their final move to England in 1914, shortly after the beginning of the war, when he was eight and had already begun his education in a Montmartre elementary school. The family’s straitened circumstances in the East End of London did not impede his intellectual progress, despite the fact that he and his elder brother – who also became a doctor – had at one point to divide a single medical textbook between them, by separating it physically into two parts and swapping the parts between them. Nor could he afford a stethoscope in his early student days; his first stethoscope was given to him by a professor of medicine who noticed his embarrassment at being without one (an instrument which he kept for the rest of his life). Such matters as this, and the fact that he was to become a fine diarist and master of English prose – A Doctor’s Life: The Diaries of Hugh Selbourne M.D was published by Jonathan Cape in 1989 to critical acclaim including from Hilary Mantel in the Guardian – made him a ‘medical man’ of a most distinctive kind. That he was also able to amass a personal library of such quality and range – buying the first books in it while still a student and continuing to build it for more than forty years – makes his collection a singular testimony to his overcoming of early hardship as an immigrant to Britain and to his erudition. Moreover, his Library sheds light on a life which will in the future become increasingly known when other volumes of his diaries, compared by reviewers with those of Parson Kilvert and containing a vivid portrait of the ills, events and foibles of his times, are published. My father began his medical studies at the age of seventeen and qualified at St. Bart’s before his twenty-second birthday, becoming an MD and Member of the Royal College of Physicians in the same year – a rare feat – when still only twenty-five. For a while he was house physician to Lord Horder, the King’s doctor, who had a high regard for his skills and knowledge of humankind. He worked in London hospitals and hospitals in the south-east of England, before moving to Manchester in 1938, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was first a general practitioner and then a consultant physician, with a large practice and a reputation as an outstanding diagnostician, wit and bibliophile. While my sisters and I are sad to see our father’s books go, we are reassured by the hope that they will once again be in the hands of appreciative collectors and new institutional homes across the world. David Selbourne, February 2015 THE LIBRARY OF THE LATE HUGH SELBOURNE, M.D., PART ONE | 3 23 4 | BONHAMS 1 THE LIBRARY OF THE LATE HUGH SELBOURNE, M.D., PART ONE First Session Wednesday 25 March 2015 at 11.00 Please note that this sale is subject to the Conditions of Sale and other Notices at the beginning and end of this catalogue, and any saleroom notices that may be posted.