Gift Ideas

  1. MOSZKOWSKI, Alexander [and H.J. STENNING (trans.).] 

    The Isles of Wisdom. 

    London, George Routledge & sons, 1924.

    First English edition of Alexander Moszkowski’s dystopian satire.  Moszkowski imagines a visit to a series of South-East Asian islands which each subscribe unreservedly to a philosophical school of thought.  These utopias are absurd: people’s notions of philosophical purity prevent them...

    £230

  2. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Roaring Queen. Edited and introduced by Walter Allen.

    London, Secker & Warburg, [1973].

    Limited edition, no XXVII of XXX copies not for sale, signed by Mrs Wyndham Lewis, Michael Ayrton & Walter Allen, with a signed etching by Michael Ayrton. A further 100 numbered copies were for general sale at £30 each.

    £500

  3. WATTS, Isaac. 

    Psalms of David imitated in the Language of the New Testament … 

    Birmingham, Printed & sold by Knott and Lloyd. 1806. 

    Unrecorded Birmingham editions of Watts’s Hymns (first 1707) and Psalms (first 1719), both many times reprinted, especially in America.  The portrait of Watts was printed especially for this edition and is dated 10 October 1806. 

    £300

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. [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

  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. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. CURTIUS Rufus, Quintus. 

    De rebus Alexandri Magni, cum commentario perpetuo & indice absolutissimo Samuelis Pitisci, quibus accedunt...

    Utrecht, Franciscus Halma, 1685. 

    First Halma edition of Curtius’s history of Alexander the Great, with a series of accomplished etched illustrations by Jan van den Aveelen. 

    £375

  20. HORACE; James TATE (editor). 

    Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...

    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