Gift Ideas
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BURNE-JONES, Edward.
The Little Holland House Album … with an Introduction & Notes by John Christian.
The Roxburghe Club, 2024
The Little Holland House Album was compiled by Edward Burne-Jones in about 1858-9 for Sophia, Mrs Dalrymple, the youngest of the seven celebrated Pattle sisters who played such an important role in mid-Victorian cultural life. Their centre was Little Holland House in Kensington where another of the...
£75
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[BURY, Charlotte, Lady.]
The Exclusives. In three Volumes ...
London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley ... 1830.
First edition of this celebrated society novel written after the enormous success of Marianne Spencer Stanhope’s Almack’s (1826), a roman à clef centred on the fashionable assembly rooms in St James’s.
£950
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PEACOCK, Thomas Love.
Rhododaphne: or the Thessalian Spell. A Poem.
London, T. Hookham, Jun., and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1818.
First edition of Peacock’s last and most ambitious poem, inspired by his enthusiasm for Greek poetry in the company of Shelley. A mythological narrative set in ancient Thessaly, Rhododaphne tells the story of the shepherd boy Anthemion, in love with the mortal girl Calliroë, and of the...
£750
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[LINCOLN, Abraham, and Stephen DOUGLAS.]
Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in...
Columbus, Follet, Foster, and Company, 1860.
First edition, later issue, with a rule above the printer’s names on the copyright page and advertisements stating fifteen thousand copies sold, of the Lincoln–Douglas Senate campaign debates of 1858, ‘historically the most important series of American political debates’ (Howes), our...
£950
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STRICKLAND, Hugh Edwin, and A.
G. MELVILLE. The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities and Osteology of the Dodo,...
London, Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, 1848.
An extra-illustrated family copy of the first scientific monograph on the dodo, and a related flightless bird, the Rodrigues solitaire, with the bookplates of the author and his father and a frontispiece by the author’s wife.
£7500
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[ANTIPHONAL.]
Very large historiated initial ‘H’ (probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the...
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
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CHALKHILL, John.
Thealma and Clearchus. A pastoral History in smooth and easie Verse. Written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq;...
London, Printed for Benj. Tooke … 1683.
First edition of Chalkhill’s unfinished pastoral poem, with the corrected state of the title, designating the author as ‘an acquaintant and friend of Edmund [originally ‘Edward’] Spencer’.
£1850
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SILIUS ITALICUS, C.; John CAREY, editor.
Punicorum libri XVII, sedulâ recensione accurati [cover: Recensuit et...
London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Co., T. Cadell,...
First and only ‘Regent’s Classics’ edition of Silius Italicus’s epic poem on the Second Punic War, an attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards.
£100
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MILNE, A. A.; E. H. SHEPARD, illustrator.
The House at Pooh Corner.
London, Methuen & Co., 1928.
First edition, first impression, of A. A. Milne’s classic final collection of tales about Winnie the Pooh and friends, and the first introduction of Tigger.
£650
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[SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]
Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.
Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.
Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.
£375
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BLANCHON, Jacques.
Iacobi Blanchoni Ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum Beneventanum abbatem Selestensem defensionum liber.
Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1550.
First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly printed de Tournes edition.
£950
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JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianus; Cornelius NEPOS.
Trogi Pompei externae historiae in compendium ab Justino redactae. Externorum imperatorum...
Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani soceri’, January 1522.
First Aldine edition of Justinus’ abridgement of the lost Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, and of Nepos’ De viris illustribus, with a decorated initial to the opening of the text, likely executed in the early nineteenth century when the work was bound in Rome.
£1850
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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
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FAULKNER, William.
A Fable.
[New York,] Random House, [1954].
Limited edition, no. 880 of 1000 copies signed by Faulkner. A late, overtly political novel set in the French trenches during the First World War, A Fable was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer and National Book Award. Faulkner thought it his greatest work.
£1500
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FAULKNER, William.
Absalom, Absalom!
New York, Random House, 1936.
First edition, the special limited issue, no. 159 of 300 copies signed by Faulkner.
£4500
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SHAKESPEARE, William; Richard Grant WHITE, editor.
The Works of William Shakespeare. The Plays edited from the Folio of...
Boston, Little Brown & Company, 1893.
An attractive Boston-printed edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, edited by the prominent American Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White (1922–1885).
£500
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[ALKEN, Henry.]
The Beauties & Defects in the Figure of the Horse, comparatively delineated in a series of Engravings.
Boston, Carter & Hendee, 1830.
First American edition, the second and scarcest overall. ‘The dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century’ (ODNB), Henry Thomas Alken (1785–1851) ‘showed an early liking for depicting animals, especially dogs and horses’, and ‘demonstrated his expertise in the book The...
£1600
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[CUMBERLAND, Richard.]
Arundel. By the author of the Observer.
London, Printed for C. Dilly … 1789.
First edition. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811) was the grandson of the great scholar Richard Bentley, and great-grandson of the Bishop of Peterborough; he had already made his name as a playwright in London, and was also the author of a periodical paper the Observer when he published this,...
£1500
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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
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HORACE; James TATE, editor.
Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...
Cambridge, J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1832.
First edition of this attempt to arrange the books of Horace in chronological order by the classical scholar and master of Richmond School, James Tate (1771–1843), this copy presented by him to Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855), classicist, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Regius Professor of Greek,...
£150