Gift Ideas

  1. SHAKESPEARE, [William]. 

    The Works of Shakespeare, the text of the First Folio with Quarto variants and a selection of modern...

    [Cambridge, University Press for] The Nonesuch Press, and New York, Random House, 1929 [– 1933]. 

    First Nonesuch edition, number 220 of 1600 copies, not only handsomely printed and bound but also an important scholarly edition, collating the texts of the First Folio against variants in preceding quarto editions. 

    £1450

  2. FROST, Robert.

    A collection of five Christmas Poems 1953, 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1963, all in the issues printed for distribution...

    1953-1963, see below.

    One more Brevity. New York, Spiral Press, 1953. Pp [12]; illustrations by Philip Grushkin; small stain to one page, else very good, stapled in the original wrappers, booklabel of D. G. Bridson, inscribed ‘To Geoffrey Bridson from Robert Frost after the pleasantest sort of encounter Dec 13...

    £2000

  3. [JUVENILE.]

    [Library for Youth, or Book-Case of Knowledge, 10 vols.]

    London: Printed for John Wallis … by T. Gillet or J. Cundee … 1800.

    A fine complete set of Wallis’s ‘Library for Youth’ also known as the ‘Book-Case of Knowledge’, with all ten volumes in the first editions, dated 1800, and with two original designs (in reverse) for the frontispieces.

    £4750

  4. 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

  5. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Writer and the Absolute …

    London, Methuen & Co., Ltd., [1952].

    First edition, inscribed ‘To my dear friend Geoffrey Bridson / Wyndham Lewis / 25 June 1952’. The work was published the following day.

    £750

  6. HERODOTUS, and Isaac LITTLEBURY (translator). 

    The History of Herodotus: Translated from the Greek …  The Third...

    London, for D. Midwinter, A. Bettesworth & C. Hitch, J. & J. Pemberton, R. Ware, C. Rivington, J. Batley & J. Wood, F. Clay, A. Ward,...

    The ‘third’ (in fact fourth) and final edition of the first complete English translation of Herodotus’s History

    £450

  7. [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

  8. [SOUTH OF FRANCE.]

    ‘Routes de Privas à Nîmes 1892’.

    June-July 1892.

    A nice sketchbook, by an anonymous artist, recording a trip to the South of France in 1892, capturing the beauty of the landscape, as well as some of the historic monuments in the départements of Ardèche, Gard, and Vaucluse.

    £575

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. [COMMON PRAYER.] 

    The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

    London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794. 

    A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy. 

    £1850

  12. ZUKOFSKY, Louis.

    Some Time. Short Poems …

    Stuttgart, Jonathan Williams, 1956.

    First edition, one of 300 copies, inscribed ‘for D. G. Bridson, Sept. 21, 1957, Louis Zukofsky’.

    £500

  13. 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

  14. [PRAYERS.] 

    ‘Orationes diversae pro temporum opportunitate dicendae’. 

    [Likely Lucca, late eighteenth century.] 

    A delightful manuscript prayerbook for use in communal worship, most likely for a rural community, with prayers for help in times of plagues and of animal diseases, prayers seeking protection from storms and alleviation of droughts, for times of earthquakes, for the sick, and against pagans. ...

    £475

  15. [GELENIUS, Sigismund (editor).] 

    Notitia utraque, dignitatum, cum orientis, tum occidentis, ultra arcadii honoriique tempora,...

    Lyons, [Jacques du Creux for] Jean de Gabiano, 1608. 

    An expanded edition, illustrated on almost every leaf, of an anonymous fifth-century description of the Roman Empire. 

    £875

  16. DIO CASSIUS.

    Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...

    Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.

    First edition of Dio’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.

    £2750

  17. GELLIUS, Aulus [and Johann Friedrich GRONOVIUS (editor)].

    Noctes atticae: editio nova et prioribus omnibus docti...

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1651.

    Jansson’s piracy of Gronovius’s version, published the same year as the first edition. A commonplace book compiled by Aulus Gellius in the second century, the Attic Nights received several editions, of which the most highly regarded is that of Johann Friedrich Gronovius (1611–1671),...

    £450

  18. HORACE. 

    Opera omnia. 

    Paris, [Didot fils for] A. Mesnier, 1828. 

    A scarce miniature edition of Horace’s works, printed by Didot fils with type cut by Henri Didot. 

    £400

  19. TACITUS. 

    C. Cornelius Tacitus, cum optimis exemplaribus collatus. 

    Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1678. 

    A remarkably fresh set of the third and final Elzevir edition of this format, reprinted from the edition of 1665. 

    £275