Gift Ideas

  1. ELIOT, George.

    The Writings …

    Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1908.

    The Large-Paper edition of Eliot’s complete works, no. 184 of 750 sets.

    £2500

  2. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Writer and the Absolute …

    London, Methuen & Co., Ltd., [1952].

    First edition, inscribed ‘To my dear friend Geoffrey Bridson / Wyndham Lewis / 25 June 1952’. The work was published the following day.

    £750

  3. SHAKESPEARE, [William]. 

    The Works of Shakespeare, the text of the First Folio with Quarto variants and a selection of modern...

    [Cambridge, University Press for] The Nonesuch Press, and New York, Random House, 1929 [– 1933]. 

    First Nonesuch edition, number 220 of 1600 copies, not only handsomely printed and bound but also an important scholarly edition, collating the texts of the First Folio against variants in preceding quarto editions. 

    £1450

  4. SPENSER, Edmund. 

    The Works of Edmund Spenser. 

    Oxford, The Shakespeare Head Press, 1930 [– 1932]. 

    Limited edition, numbered 123 of 375 copies, of the handsome Shakespeare Head Spenser, one of the most significant works of the press. 

    £1250

  5. SOPHOCLES. POUND, Ezra, translator.

    Women of Trachis. A Version by Ezra Pound.

    London, Neville Spearman, [1956].

    First edition, inscribed by the editor Denis Goacher ‘For Geoffrey [Bridson]: Nov. ’56 / This milestone / Just missed witnessing / The total collapse of / D. G.’ – Bridson had co-produced the play for BBC radio in April 1954.

    £1000

  6. BISSON, Louis-Auguste. 

    ‘Wildfire’. 

    Paris, c. 1844. 

    An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times. 

    £14500

  7. [PSALMS.] 

    The whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into English Meter by Tho. Strenhold, Jo. Hopkins, W. Whittingham, and others...

    London, Printed by T. C[otes] for the Company of Stationers, 1637. 

    A very attractive pocket psalm-book with tunes, ruled in red throughout and in a handsome binding.  Such diminutive psalm books began to appear at the end of the sixteenth-century, printed for the Company of Stationers, who had the monopoly.  The printer here was Thomas Cotes, most famous as...

    £2750

  8. WHITMAN, Walt, and Antonio FRASCONI (illustrator).

    A Whitman Portrait.

    [New York, Spiral Press, 1960.]

    First edition, comprising extracts from Leaves of Grass, facsimile letters and a selection of woodcut ‘portraits’ by Frasconi. Numbered 149 of 525 copies signed by Frasconi, printed on Japanese Goyu paper.

    £250

  9. PARLIAMENTARY RECRUITING COMMITTEE.

    Which? Have you a reason or only an excuse for not enlisting Now!

    London, The Abbey Press, 1915.

    A forthright call to the men of London, encouraging them to enlist for military service during World War One.

    £250

  10. WALLIS, William.

    The Western Gentleman’s Farrier, containing Remedies for the different Diseases to which Horses are incident...

    Troy (OH), John T. Tullis, 1838.

    Second edition of an American work on farriery, with diseases found only in the Western States including ‘big head’ and ‘nasal polypi’. First published in 1832 on the observation that ‘most of the present works on Farriery, or more especially those adapted to our western climate, are...

    £250

  11. [PARIS UPRISING.]

    Votez toujours. Je ferai le reste [Always vote. I’ll do the rest].

    Paris, Comite d'initiative pour un movement revolutionnaire, Imprimerie Robert et Cie, 1968.

    First edition. A striking image of General De Gaulle patting France on the head for obediently voting, a baton cunningly concealed behind him. 1968 was a year when passions were flying high in France. The communist and socialist parties had formed an alliance in February with a view to replacing...

    £550

  12. [KAFKA, Franz, et al.]

    Vom jüngsten Tag. Ein Almanach neuer Dichtung.

    Leipzig, [W. Drugulin for] Kurt Wolff, 1916.

    First edition of the first collective publication of the younger generation of German writers Wolff had assembled under the rubric of Der jüngste Tag.

    £250

  13. GALIER, W.H.

    A visit to Blestland.

    London, George Robertson & co., 1896.

    First edition of this novel of utopian socialism which lambasts capitalism and religion. Blestland is a republican workers’ paradise located on a different planet which reveals how the divisions of earth can be abolished: by limiting ‘the enormous power for evil which capital can wield’....

    £280

  14. THACKERAY, William Makepeace. 

    The Virginians, a tale of the last century. 

    London, Bradbury & Evans, November 1857 [– October 1859].

    First edition in the original monthly parts of Thackeray’s American sequel to Henry Esmond

    £600

  15. [ENGELBRECHT, Martin.]

    [Vier Jahreszeiten. Serie 89.]

    [Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht, c. 1750.]

    An attractive hand-coloured engraved peepshow showing the four seasons, with summer in the foreground retreating into winter behind, lined with printed waste from an illustrated Dutch religious broadside.

    £1750

  16. [ANTIPHONAL.]

    Very large historiated initial ‘H’, probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the Nativity...

    Italy (Siena), c. 1300.

    A very fine large initial painted in a style associated with the Master of the Gradual of Cortona, an artist named for a Franciscan gradual produced c. 1290 for the church of San Francesco in Cortona (now Vatican City, BAV, MS Ross. 612).

    £6750

  17. MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

    Urbis Romae topographia. 

    Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

    First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

    £5500

  18. THOMAS, Dylan, and Sir Peter Blake, illustrator.

    Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices.

    London: Apple Litho (Bristol) Ltd. for Enitharmon Editions and Queen Anne Press, 2013.

    De Luxe edition, number 61 of 100 copies with a signed print by Blake. This finely-produced edition was published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth and celebrates the culmination of over twenty-five years of work by Peter Blake, one of the founding fathers of British Pop Art. The...

    £975

  19. [CALLIGRAPHIC SCORES.]

    Two anonymous manuscript scores.

    London, 1820s.

    Two charming productions, sent as anonymous gifts, presumably to the wife or daughter(s) of Col. Thomas Nuttall (or Nuthall) (d. 1829) of the Madras Cavalry.

    £850

  20. [BEWICK, Thomas?]

    Twenty-six rubbings from engraved woodblocks of the heads of Kings and Queens and England, apparently never published...

    [1790-1805?]

    Twenty-six apparently unrecorded wood-engravings – heads of the monarchs of England from William the Conqueror to George III – these images taken by rubbing from the blocks rather than printing. The engravings bear strong similarity to the 26 which appear in An Abridgement of the History...

    £750