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  1. DE BEAUVOIR, Simone.

    The Mandarins. A Novel …

    Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, [1956].

    First edition in English, signed by De Beauvoir on the limitation leaf, one of 500 unnumbered copies, of which only 275 were for sale.

    £750

  2. AIKEN, Conrad.

    Selected Poems.

    New York, Oxford University Press, 1964.

    Second printing (first 1961), inscribed: ‘For Geoffrey from Conrad and Savannah with a Hosanna 1968’. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken spent winters there later in his life. It was in Savannah in April 1968 that Bridson recorded the unbroadcast interviews which provide a valuable insight into...

    £150

  3. LOCKE, John. 

    [An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding].  Extrait d’un Livre Anglois qui n’est pas encore publié, intitulé...

    Amsterdam, Wolfgang, Waesbergi, Boom, & Van Someren, 1688. 

    A substantial and extremely influential extract, published two years before the appearance of the book, of Locke’s Essay concerning human understanding: a publication of major consequence in the history of philosophy.  This issue of the Bibliothèque universelle et historique also...

    £2850

  4. MARTINENQ, Jean Baptiste Thomas.

    Codex medicamentarius, seu pharmacopoea Parisiensis, ex mandato facultatis medicinae Parisiensis...

    Paris, apud Guillelmum Cavelier, 1748.

    Revised and enlarged edition (first 1638) of the Parisian pharmacopoeia, edited by the dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Paris, Jean Baptiste Thomas Martinenq (d. 1758), this copy greatly enhanced by extensive critical and analytical marginalia by an experienced near contemporary...

    £2500

  5. ANON.

    ‘Snap-shots taken on a tour in Algeria March 1900’. 

    Algeria, 1900.

    A charming album of snapshots recording the journey of a party of British men and women from Marseilles to Algiers in March 1900. Opening with images of the tourists aboard the S.S. Villa de Madrid crossing the Mediterranean, the album captures their visits to Tunis, Carthage, Hammam-Meskontine, Constantine,...

    £200

  6. ZOSIMUS. 

    Ιστοριας νεας βιβλοι ἑξ …  Historiae novae libri sex, notis illustrate. 

    Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1679. 

    First Oxford edition of this history of the Roman Empire from Augustus to the year 410, by the fifth-century Greek historian Zosimus.  The work is an important source particularly for the period 395-410 and its pagan author attributes Rome’s decline to its embrace of Christianity and rejection...

    £400

  7. [HALE, Matthew, Sir.] 

    An Essay touching the Gravitation, or non-Gravitation of fluid Bodies, and the Reasons thereof.  The second...

    London, Printed by W. Godbid, for William Shrowsbury … 1675. 

    Second edition, scarce, a reissue of the sheets of the first (1673), with a cancel title-page, and ‘Some occasional additions to the pamphlet called the essay’ (the second paginated sequence). 

    £1750

  8. [POPE, Walter.] 

    The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall: containing the history of his Life and Death.  Whereunto are annexed his last...

    London, Printed for Henry Brome … 1670. 

    First(?) edition of a partly fictitious and often satirical life of the highwayman Claude Duval, published shortly after his execution in 1670.  This is the more substantial of two opportunistic biographies, between them the main sources of information about him, though by no means entirely trustworthy. ...

    £750

  9. [MONROE, Marilyn.] 

    DIENES, André de.  Marilyn. 

    Cologne, Taschen, 2002. 

    First edition of this celebratory book on Marilyn Monroe, collecting photographs by her friend (and briefly lover) André de Dienes, who met Norma-Jean in 1945 and helped launch her career. 

    £200

  10. ŠTĚCH, Karel. 

    České budějovice v dřevorytech Karla Štěcha [České Budějovice in woodcuts by Karel Štěch]. 

    [Prague, Orbis], 1951. 

    First edition of this finely printed work on handmade paper, incorporating woodcut illustrations by renowned artist Karel Štěch and printed by Jihočeské tiskárny (South Bohemian Printers) in the city of České Budějovice.  The woodcuts depict the traditional industrial and pastoral themes...

    £550

  11. VILLA, Antonio, and Giovanni Battista VILLA. 

    Dispositio systematica conchyliarum terrestrium et fluviatilium quae adservantur...

    Milan, ex typis Borroni et Scotti, 1841. 

    First edition of this catalogue of molluscs and shellfish in the collection of Antonio and Giovanni Battista Villa. 

    £275

  12. DARRÉ, G.G.

    ‘Conferences diaconales données par Mr l’abbé Darré, Vicaire Général au GrandSéminaire d’Auch. Année...

    Auch, 1864.

    An attractively written manuscript of Abbé Darré’s practical manual for the use of young priests entering pastoral ministry, the text remaining unprinted, according to OCLC, until 1872.

    £200

  13. [MASS.]

    Cerimonie piu’ notabili della messa privata; Cavate dalle rubriche del Missale, ed altri autori da un Sacerdote D.C.D.M....

    Turin, Gianfranco Mairesse, 1739.

    An apparently unrecorded edition of this uncommon treatise on the celebration of the mass and its associated rituals.

    £300

  14. MALTHUS, Thomas Robert.

    An essay on the principle of population; or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness;...

    London, Johnson, 1803.

    Second edition, first published 1798. Called the ‘Great Quarto’, it is the first to bear Malthus’s name and is so revised by Malthus as to be ‘regarded by [him] as a substantially new work’ (ODNB). The first edition, published anonymously, is now a great rarity. This second was the result of...

    £4800

  15. BAKER, Valentine.

    Clouds in the East: travels and adventures on the Perso-Turkoman frontier …

    London, Chatto and Windus, 1876.

    First edition of Baker Pasha’s account of his journey to Central Asia.

    £550

  16. DI FIORE, Fedele.

    Il trionfo della verginità ossia breve elogio storico del Cristiano eroismo di Maria Regina Pedena vergine Modenese...

    Naples, dalla tipografia dei fratelli Paci, 1828.

    Very rare work prompted by the death of Maria Regina Pedena, a fourteen-year-old embroiderer who was found dead at her home in Modena in July 1827 with stab wounds to her throat and other wounds all over her body. A family friend, the thirty-five-year-old violin maker Eleutero Malagoli, was discovered...

    £300

  17. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Childermass … Section 1.

    London, Chatto & Windus, 1928.

    First edition, no. 74 of 225 copies of the special edition, signed by Lewis, additionally inscribed, in c. 1951, ‘To Geoffrey Bridson (through whom I am enabled to finish this book) – deepest thanks and friendliest greetings / Wyndham Lewis’.

    £2500

  18. WILLIAMS, William Carlos.

    Paterson [Books 1, 2, 3 & 4].

    Norfolk, New Classics, [1951]. [with:]

    First collected edition of Books One to Four and first edition of Book Five; inscribed on the front free endpaper of One to Four (in Williams’s distinctive scrawl, in two different pens after the first ran out of ink) ‘D.J. [i.e. G.] Bridson with my compliments / William...

    £1250

  19. [POUND.]

    FROBENIUS, Leo. Il Liuto di Gassire. Legenda Africana con una nota di Ezra Pound.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1961].

    First edition, translated into Italian from the German by Siegfried Walter di Rachewiltz, Pound’s grandson (b. 1947), and with a ten-page note by Pound. A presentation copy, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey Bridson with the compliments of Siegfried W. de Rachewiltz / Brunnenburg 30. 5. 61’.

    £100

  20. POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.

    Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].

    Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.

    £30