Gift Ideas
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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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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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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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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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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
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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
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[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
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[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
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[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
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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
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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
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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
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[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