Gift Ideas
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[SAVOY-CARIGNAN, Maria Vittoria Francesca, Princess of.]
Recueil de prières et de pratiques très utils pour se conduire à Dieu...
[Paris, Imprimerie Royale], 1735.
First and only edition of this rare prayerbook, compiled by the notorious gambling house hostess and spy Maria Vittoria Francesca of Savoy-Carignan (1690–1766), elegantly printed in a very limited number at the royal press set up at the Louvre.
£2750
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MARLIANI, Bartolomeo.
Urbis Romae topographia.
Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544.
First illustrated edition (third overall), considerably expanded, providing a comprehensive visual record of ancient structures and sculptures in Rome as known in the sixteenth century.
£5500
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PYNCHON, Thomas.
Gravity’s Rainbow.
New York, The Viking Press, [1973].
First edition of Pynchon’s magnum opus, ‘literally indescribable, a tortured cadenza of lurid imaginings and total recall that goes on longer than you can quite believe’ (Michael Wood).
£900
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[GREVENSTUK Brothers.]
Hand-coloured parchment key labels, with the original engraved copper plate.
Amsterdam, [c. 1875–1900].
A rare and curious survival: some seventy key labels, printed on fine vellum and hand-coloured by royal calligraphers for a fin-de-siècle Dutch gentleman, splendidly preserved with the engraved copper plate from which they were printed.
£1200
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[BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph.]
L’Andrometrie, ou examen philosophique de l’homme. Par Monsieur l’Abbé de Villemaire.
Paris, chez Brunet, 1753.
First editions of two scarce works by the philosopher, moralist, and Parisian avocat Boudier de Villemert (1716–1801), best known as the author of L’Ami des Femmes, Le monde joué involving visits from extra-terrestrials both in ancient times and in the eighteenth century.
£2500
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FERDOWSĪ.
Shāhnāmah.
Tehran, Amir Kabir, AH 1350 [AD 1971].
A lavishly-produced edition of the Shāhnāmah (or Shahnameh), rare in the dustjacket, one of a thousand copies printed to mark the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire.
£4000
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GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.
Stella. Ein Schauspiel für Liebende in fünf Akten.
Berlin, August Mylius, 1776.
First edition, scarce, of Goethe’s early play about a man caught between his love for two women, which ends with reconciliation and a mariage à trois.
£1800
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MOSZKOWSKI, Alexander.
[H.J. STENNING, translator.] The Isles of Wisdom.
London, George Routledge & sons, 1924.
First English edition of Alexander Moszkowski’s dystopian satire, an imagined visit to a series of southeast Asian islands which each subscribe unreservedly to a different philosophical school of thought.
£230
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HAWTREY, George Procter.
Caramella. A Story of the Lotus Eaters up to date.
Bristol, J. W. Arrowsmith; London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., [1899].
First edition of this utopian novel exploring the bliss of Caramella, inspired by the land visited by Odysseus in book nine of the Odyssey, where the crew members he sent ashore consumed the lotus fruit and became addicted, forgetting all thoughts of return.
£250
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PAPINI, Roberto.
Le Arti d’Oggi: Architettura e Arti Decorative in Europa.
Milan and Rome, Bestetti and Tumminelli, 1930.
First edition of a thorough and extensively illustrated survey of architectural and artistic styles and artworks from across Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, preceded by the idea of a utopian town, ‘Universa’, where the futuristic ideal for a new society can be achieved and craftsmanship...
£300
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ATWOOD, Margaret.
The Handmaid’s Tale.
Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
First American edition of Atwood’s award-winning theocratic dystopia, preceded only by the Canadian edition.
£300
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RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator.
Some British Ballads.
London, Constable & Co. Ltd., [1919].
First trade edition, illustrated by Rackham, of these ballads sourced largely from Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, our copy in a handsome Bayntun-Riviere binding.
£500
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POMPONIO LETO, Giulio.
In omnia quae quidem extant, P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, Commentarii, varia multarum rerum cognitione referti,...
Basel, [Johann Oporinus, 1544].
Second edition of Leto’s influential commentary on all the works of Virgil, ‘the first to deal with all the works attributed to Virgil, and also the most extensive and complete, and therefore certainly the most important commentary written in the fifteenth century’ (Stok, p. 204).
£450
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[DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]
‘Atlas’.
Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].
An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.
£875
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SYMONS, Arthur, editor.
The Savoy.
London, Leonard Smithers, 1896.
First edition of this outstanding, though short-lived, avant-garde periodical, with contributions by Yeats (poems, and the three part essay on William Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy), Shaw, Conrad, Dowson, Havelock Ellis (on Nietzsche and Hardy), Lionel Johnson, Beerbohm,...
£3000
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[HAMILTON, Joseph.]
Some short and useful Reflections upon Duelling, which should be in the Hands of every Person who is liable...
Dublin, for the Author, by C. Bentham, 1823.
First edition, scarce, of this Dublin-printed assemblage of impassioned arguments and anecdotes against the ‘desolating vice’ of duelling.
£600
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MALORY, Thomas, Sir; Sir William Russell FLINT, illustrator.
Le Morte Darthur, the History of King Arthur and of his noble Knights...
[Edinburgh, R. & R. Clark for] London, Medici Society, [1935].
Scarce reprint of the Riccardi Press edition of 1911, edited by A.W. Pollard and first published by the Medici Society in 1920, here issued in a thin-paper one-volume edition, our copy in a handsome Bayntun-Riviere Kelliegram-style binding.
£2000
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FLEMING, Ian.
The Man with the golden Gun.
London, Jonathan Cape, 1965.
First edition, first impression, of the last Bond novel, published eight months after Fleming’s death, here with the binding in the second state, without the golden gun blocked to the upper cover (deemed too expensive after the first 900 copies).
£650
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FLEMING, Ian.
The Spy who loved me.
London, Jonathan Cape, 1962.
First edition, first impression, of the only Bond novel narrated in the first person by the twenty-three-year-old Canadian Vivienne Michel, a lover of Bond’s.
£1250
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FLEMING, Ian.
You only live twice.
London, Jonathan Cape, 1964.
First edition, first impression, first state of what is ‘perhaps the most bizarre and doom-fraught of all James Bond’s adventures’ (p. 1), set in Japan and inspired by Fleming’s visits to Japan for The Sunday Times, the title taken from a poem by Bashō: ‘You only live twice:...
£850