Recent Acquisitions
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[WALLPAPER.]
A substantial album of printed wallpaper samples.
France, 1923–24.
A delightful sample album of French wallpapers printed by a variety of stencil, block and lithographic methods, on papers plain, coloured, textured, and silked.
£4750
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AIKEN, Conrad.
Thee.
New York, George Braziller, 1967.
First trade edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce [Bridson] / this little hymn of love / from Conrad / 1968’.
£250
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REXROTH, Kenneth.
An Autobiographical Novel …
Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
First edition, inscribed ‘In friendship / for Geoffrey Bridson / Kenneth Rexroth SF June 66’.
£300
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AUDEN, Wystan Hugh.
Louis MacNeice, a memorial Address, delivered at All Souls, Langham Place on 17 October, 1963.
Privately printed for Faber & Faber, [1963].
First edition, one of 250 copies.
£150
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GRAVES, Robert.
Collected Poems.
Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961.
First edition, inscribed ‘Yours ever, Robert Graves, 1962’.
£300
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AIKEN, Conrad.
Ushant, an Essay.
New York & Boston, Duell, Sloan and Pearce / Little, Brown and Company, [1952].
First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey [Bridson] from Conrad. Ex – Xmas 1956’. Ushant, Conrad’s ‘autobiographical narrative’, is often considered his most significant work in prose.
£300
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
America and Cosmic Man.
London and Brussels, Nicholas and Watson Ltd., [1948].
First edition, second state binding as always (the first, in green cloth, was rejected by Lewis as ‘hideous’ and was used on only 3 trial copies). In hand by 1943, not finished until 1946 and then rejected by American publishers until it finally found a British home in 1948, America and Cosmic Man...
£200
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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
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FLINDERS, Matthew.
Narrative of his Voyage in the Schooner Francis: 1798. Preceded and followed by Notes … by Geoffrey Rawson...
[London,] The Golden Cockerel Press, 1946.
No. 327 of 750 copies, of which the first 100 were specially bound in full green morocco.
£650
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HUGHES, Langston.
Shakespeare in Harlem.
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1942.
First edition of this wartime collection of poems, inscribed shortly after Hughes and Bridson met for the first time: ‘For Geoffrey Bridson, with the friendship, and regards of Langston Hughes. New York, January 28, 1944’.
£1000
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Vulgar Streak.
London, Robert Hale Ltd., 1941.
First edition, first impression, a scarce work because of wartime paper shortages and, possibly, the destruction of a portion of the first impression in the Blitz; certainly Robert Hale’s offices were bombed and the records destroyed, and the work was reprinted within a month.
£750
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[ANGLO-SOVIET DIPLOMACY.]
Papers regarding the Anglo-Soviet Negotiations 1939. Presented by the Secretary of State for Foreign...
London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1939.
A proof copy, complete with typed errata attached, of this collection of ninety-five papers relating to the negotiations between the Soviet and British governments between March and December 1939.
£750
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Revenge for Love.
London, Cassell & Co. Ltd., [1937].
First edition, very scarce in the dust-jacket, of ‘one of Lewis’s finest novels … a brilliant novel of character’ (Bridson, The Filibuster), set in pre-Civil War Spain and centred on an incident of Communist gun-running on the border. ‘Here for once, Communism is accepted as a...
£1250
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MITCHISON, Naomi; Wyndham LEWIS, illustrator.
Beyond this Limit …
[London,] Jonathan Cape, [1935].
First edition. This was Lewis’s only collaboration with Mitchison but she arranged for the publication of his Left Wings over Europe the following year, and they remained friends until his death. 32 designs by Lewis served as the inspiration for Mitchison’s narrative.
£75
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DON LEON,
a Poem by Lord Byron … forming Part of the private Journal of his Lordship, supposed have been entirely destroyed by...
London, The Fortune Press, [1934].
No. 3 of 1000 copies printed (many subsequently destroyed) of a famous Byron forgery. Don Leon, not by Byron, though written by someone familiar with his life and exploits, was an important early plea for the toleration of homosexuality.
£500
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ALDINGTON, Richard.
All Men are Enemies, a Romance.
London, Chatto & Windus, 1933.
First trade edition, inscribed ‘For D. G. Bridson from Richard Aldington / March. 1933’. Bridson’s review in The New English Weekly, 23 March 1933, was uncharacteristically without reservation in its enthusiasm: ‘one of the finest novels written lately … In actual reading [rather...
£200
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
Doom of Youth …
London, Chatto & Windus, 1932.
First English edition, one of Lewis’s scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction). Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published...
£2000
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KIRAM, Zeki Hasmet.
Vocabularium anatomiae latine-arabice. [Qāmūs al-ta¬šrīḥ Lātīnī-‘Arabī].
Berlin, Morgen- und Abendland-Verlag, 1923.
First edition of an uncommon glossary of anatomical terms in Latin with corresponding translation in Arabic, intended for Arabic-speaking medical students studying in European universities, by army officer turned Berlin publicist, arms dealer, and Muslim activist Zeki Kiram (1886–1946).
£375
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ENDERS, Elizabeth Crump.
Swinging Lanterns.
New York and London, D. Appleton and Co., 1923.
First edition of this celebrated Chinese travel memoir by Elizabeth Crump Enders, a vivid depiction of China in the 1920s formerly in the possession of Josephine del Drago, American heiress and Chinese art collector.
£100
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Caliph’s Design. Architects! Where is your Vortex?
London, The Egoist Ltd., 1919.
First edition, a pamphlet of art criticism, particularly an attack on ugly modern architecture; there is (rare) praise for Cézanne and Picasso. It was printed in an edition of 1000, of which 121 were distributed gratis and 84 eventually remaindered and returned to Lewis.
£400