DESENFANS, Noel Joseph.

Les deux Hermites, dédié a mylord Lyttelton …

A Londres; chez R. Davis … J Ridley … W Owen … 1773.

First and only edition, uncommon, of an epistolary novel by the future art dealer Noel Joseph Desenfans. The scene is Paris in the 1680s, the theme is Enlightenment, and the author’s aim was to inspire ‘l’horreur de l’oppression, sentiment nécessaire à l’harmonie de la Société, & vertu...

£650

[SHIPLEY, William].

Comparative Observations on two of the Poems which were honoured with Prizes in a late Certamen at Ch. Ch....

York: Printed in theYear 1767

First edition of an undergraduate prank in which the future Dean of St. Asaph ridicules the awarding of prizes by the Dean of Christ Church and his fellow judges to two Latin poems written in honour of a visit by the Prince of Brunswick. An ironic dedication to the Dean is followed by the text of the...

£350

[SMOLLETT, Tobias George.]

Autograph letter, signed, from one Charles Young to an unnamed recipient offering for sale the original...

London, undated, c.1850

Although he had already embarked on his career as a novelist ‘Smollett continued to practise medicine and write on medical matters. In June 1750, with supportive references from other practitioners and having paid the fee of £28 Scots, he was awarded the degree of MD by Marischal College’ (Oxford...

£225

ALEXANDER, Jonathan, and Francis WORMALD, eds..

An Early Breton Gospel Book. A Ninth-Century Manuscript from the Collection of...

The Roxburghe Club, 1977.

This ninth-century manuscript was the oldest and most important in the collection formed by Harry Bradfer-Lawrence. The book was begun by Professor Francis Wormald. He discusses the manuscript’s antecedents, both Carolingian and Merovingian, and the marked influence of Tours that points to a Breton...

£180

PATCH, Blanche.

Thirty Years with G. B. S.

London, Victor Gollancz, 1951.

First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed on the half-title ‘To Gladys & Hesketh Pearson with best wishes for 1951. From Blanche Patch. 10th January, 1951’. An American edition appeared the same year.

£250

ALBERT, Sidney P.

‘Shaw’s Advice to the Players of Major Barbara’, Reprinted from Theatre Survey, X, 1 (1969); and ‘Reflections...

Reprinted from Modern Drama, XIV, 2 (1791).

£20

FLEMING, Peter.

Brazilian Adventure.

London: Queen Anne Press, 2010.

First edition thus, no. 120 of 150 copies. 'In April 1932 Fleming answered an advertisement in the agony column of The Times, which led him to take part in a crack-brained and amateurish expedition to the hinterland of Brazil, ostensibly to look for Colonel P.H. Fawcett, a missing explorer....

£125

FLEMING, Peter.

News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir.

London: Queen Anne Press, 2010.

First edition thus, no. 120 of 150 copies. Fleming had first travelled to China in 1931 and returned in 1933 as the Special Correspondent of The Times, to cover the war between the nationalists and the communists; 'After reaching Mukden (Shenyang) in Manchuria and taking part in a sortie...

£125

BONVALOT, Gabriel.

Du Caucase aux Indes à travers le Pamir.

Paris: Librairie Plon, 1889.

First edition. The French orientalist and explorer Bonvalot (1853-1933) made his first expedition into Central Asia in 1880, and undertook a second journey into the area with the artist Pépin and the physician and scientist Guillaume Capus in 1886-1887. In the course of a remarkable expedition, the...

£200

‘HURLBUT’ [i.e. HURLBERT], William Henry.

Pictures of Cuba.

London: M’Corquodale and Co. for Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1855.

First British edition, revised and retitled, issued in the ‘Traveller’s Library’ series. Pictures of Cuba was first published under the title Gan-Eden: or, Pictures of Cuba (Boston: 1854), and Hurlbert (1827-1895) states in his preface that, ‘In the short time that has elapsed...

£150

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

BURY, Stephen.

Artists’ books: the book as a work of art, 1963-2000.

London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2015.

The history of artists’ involvement with the book format between 1963 and 2000 includes a fascinating range of artists and movements from Mallarmé to the Piece of Paper Press via Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Fluxus and conceptual art. This second edition includes updated text with new bibliographic descriptions...

£60

[LAW, John.]

Abbildung des auf der Strasse Quincampoix in Paris entstandenen so berühmten Actien-Handel. Excudit C. Weigel nach...

[1720.]

This engraving is a German version of ‘Rue Quinquempoix en l'Année 1720’(BM Catalogue 1655). It gives a view, in angular perspective, of the Rue Quinquempoix, Paris, with crowds of persons assembled there during the share mania of the Mississippi, South Sea, and other schemes which bubbled in the...

£1250

[CLOTHING].

[Essay on clothing styles].

[England, c. 1850].

A charming, early-Victorian, illustrated essay on the clothing styles of Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and ‘Asiatics’, ending with a short section in which the captions are written in Italian (in the same hand), and the illustrations of styles (2 extant portraying a Cardinal and a Venetian townswoman,...

£400

BELLONI, Girolami, Marchese.

Del Commercio dissertazione.

Rome, Niccolo and Marco Pagliarini, 1757.

Second edition to be authorized by Belloni, (first, 1750) – the first edition to include the author’s considerations on ‘imaginary money’ (pp. 135-154) – of a work notable for its argument in favour of restrictions on the export of money by the Vatican banker Girolamo Belloni (1688–1760)....

£300

CHOYSELAT, Prudent le.

Discours oeconomique, non moins utile que récréatif, monstrant comme de cinq cens livres pour une foys...

Rouen, Martin le Menestrier 1612 [but ca. 1745].

Early edition of an interesting ‘way to wealth’, in fact a guide to the management of poultry, first published 1569. An English translation was published in 1580 under the title A Discourse of housebandrie, described by Mary Aslin (Rothansted) as ‘the first book on poultry’. Brunet, Quérard...

£550

BEVERIDGE, William Henry.

Full employment in a free society: a report ...

London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, [1944].

First edition of the second report by the social reformer and economist W. H. Beveridge (1879-1963), a sequel to the epoch-making Beveridge report on Social Insurance and Allied Services made to the Government in December 1942. Beveridge had earlier published Unemployment: a Problem of Industry (1909),...

£50

NORMAN, George Warde.

Papers on various subjects.

[London] Printed for private circulation by T. & W. Boone, 1869.

A nice association copy of this collection of fifty-two essays, letters and petitions by the financial writer and merchant banker George Warde Norman (1793-1882), from the library of Edward Strutt, first Baron Belper (1801-1880). The pieces collected here, many of which originally appeared in The Spectator,...

£175

BARANTE, Amable-Guillaume-Prosper Brugière, baron de (1782-1866), French statesman and historian.

Two autograph letters signed...

Paris, 14 January [no year] and [n.p.] 4 May 1861.

Two autograph letters from the French peer and historian Barante. The first, addressed to Monsieur Bajot, editor of the Annales Maritimes, asks him to send numbers he is missing for this year. The second, written to an unidentified ‘monsieur et honoré confrère’ on the encouragement of Monsieur...

£50

BENTHAM, William, barrister and numismatist.

Autograph letter to the bookseller Lackington.

Upper Gower Street [London], 25 August 1819.

Writing in the third person, Bentham requests that he be sent the ‘Supplemt of Mr Ruding’s Coins intended for the purchasers of the quarto edn’. Rogers Ruding (1751-1820) published his Annals of the Coinage, a chronological account of English coinage, in four quarto volumes in 1817. It sold out...

£100