Gift Ideas
-
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
-
[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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
GIGLI, Mariano.
Esperimento del nobile giovinetto Francesco Piazzi d’anni dieci non compiuti sulle sette lingue italiana, francese,...
Milan, Società tipografica de’ classici italiani, 1818.
First and only edition, rare, of a series of 450 translation exercises in French, Spanish, English, German, Latin, Greek, and Italian, posed to the ten-year-old linguistic prodigy Francesco Piazzi by his tutor as the culmination of his highly experimental method of linguistic instruction.
£1250
-
HEBER, Reginald, and Nicolas BARKER (editor).
A Letter from India.
The Roxburghe Club, 2020.
'I do not expect that with fair prospects of eminence at home, you should go to the Ganges for a mitre,’ wrote Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs, in 1819 to Reginald Heber at Hodnet in Shropshire, but in vain. Despite a growing reputation...
£100
-
[JUVENILE.]
A Token of Remembrance from a Mother to her absent Children, comprising simple Tales, Dialogues, and easy Poetry, adapted...
London, William Darton, 58, Holborn Hill, 1822.
First edition of this collection of moral tales and poetry for children, compiled by a mother for her young daughter, from the lending library of the newly established Coast Guard.
£350
-
[CALLIGRAPHIC SCORES.]
Two anonymous manuscript scores.
London, 1820s.
Two charming productions, sent as anonymous gifts, presumably to the wife or daughter(s) of Col. Thomas Nuttall (or Nuthall) (d. 1829) of the Madras Cavalry.
£850
-
[PSALMS.]
Les Pseaumes de David, mis en rime Françoise, par Clement Marot, et Theodore de Beze.
‘Se vendent à Charenton, par Antoine Cellier, demeurent à Paris … à l’Imprimerie des Roziers’, 1667.
Charenton-printed French Psalms in a remarkable shagreen binding with silver-filigree furniture, with English provenance since the eighteenth century.
£2750
-
[LITURGY.] Girolamo GIOVANNINI, editor.
Officium hebdomadae sanctae, juxta formam missalis & breviarii romani, sub Urbano...
Venice, ‘ex typographia Balleoniana’, 1742.
Very rare small-format edition of the Offices for Holy Week, with a woodcut Man of Sorrows.
£275
-
SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, Caius.
[De XII Caesarum vitis. De Illustribus grammaticis. De Claris rhetoribus. Horatii vita. Plinii vita....
Paris, Typographia Regia, 1644.
An attractive, illustrated pocket Suetonius. Quoting the pioneering early eighteenth-century bookseller Guillaume de Bure, Cookman notes that this edition is ‘recherché a cause de la beauté de son impression’.
£350
-
MAGNON, Jean.
Les heures du Chrestien, divisées en trois journées; qui sont la journée de la penitence, la journée de la...
Paris, se vendent chez l’autheur … et chez Sebastien Martin, 1654.
First edition of this handsomely illustrated collection of prayers and devotions in verse and prose by the French playwright and poet Jean Magnon (1620–1662). The number of plates in individual copies varies, this copy containing at least two more than those described on OCLC.
£650
-
MEREDITH, George.
Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads.
London, Chapman & Hall, 1862.
First edition of a daring and innovative Victorian collection of poems adapting the sonnet sequence tradition (though in poems of sixteen lines) to the emotional realities of a failed contemporary marriage, tracing the course of estrangement as love gives way to discord, jealousy, unhappiness, and...
£450
-
[DICKSON, William, photographer.]
Ambrotype of two young men holding hands.
[Glasgow, 1860s.]
A very attractive ambrotype double portrait showing two seated young men holding hands, with subtle hand-tinting to their faces and hands.
£450
-
BREREWOOD, Edward.
Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World …
London, Printed [by Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614.
First edition. Brerewood, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, was a scholar in many fields who published nothing in his own lifetime (he died in 1613). Enquiries, seen through the press by a nephew, explores the spread of ancient, eastern, and modern languages, discusses the...
£3000
-
[LABOURS OF THE MONTHS &c.]
Januarius. Februarius. Merz. April …
Nuremberg, Joh. Andreae Endterische Handlung, [second half of eighteenth century].
A scarce popular print depicting the labours of the months and signs of the zodiac, four continents, the four classical elements, and the four seasons.
£475
-
VISSCHER, Nicolaes [I].
Avium vivae et artificiosissimae delineationes.
Amsterdam, Nicolaus [I] Visscher, 1659.
First and only edition of this rare set of ornithological prints by the famed cartographer Nicolaes Visscher I.
£3750
-
ASCHAM, Roger.
A Report and Discourse … of the Affaires and State of Germany and the Emperour Charles his Court, during certaine...
London, Printed by John Daye … [1570?].
First edition. Ascham’s account of his time in Germany as secretary to Sir Richard Morison, ambassador to the court of Emperor Charles V, takes the form of a letter to the courtier John Astley.
£2000
-
JUVENAL, Decimus Junius, and Aulus Persius FLACCUS.
Satyrae.
London, J. Brindley, 1744.
First Brindley edition, edited by the Irish classical scholar Usher Gahagan (d. 1749). John Brindley began to publish his series of well-printed duodecimo classics in 1744, for which Gahagan edited eleven works before his arrest and conviction for high treason, having become embroiled with a...
£650