Gift Ideas
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POWYS, John Cowper.
Autobiography.
London, John Lane, The Bodley Head, [1934].
First edition, signed on the half-title ‘John Cowper Powys, April 1935’. A very nice copy of a work not often found signed.
£250
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LEWIS, Wyndham, and Anne Gladys LEWIS.
Christmas card to the Bridsons.
[1950s].
‘To Joyce [née Thirlaway] + Geoffrey with Christmas love from Froanna + Wyndham …’
£50
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PRINCE, F[rank].
T[empleton]. Soldiers Bathing and other Poems.
London, The Fortune Press, [1954].
First edition, Prince’s second collection, inscribed ‘with good wishes from the author, F. T. Prince. 23 April, 1954.’
£200
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RACHEWILTZ, Boris de.
L’Elemento magico in Ezra Pound.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1965.
First edition, no. 182 of 1000 copies, an essay by Pound’s son-in-law published on the occasion of Pound’s eightieth birthday.
£150
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BURROUGHS, William.
The Naked Lunch.
Paris, Olympia Press, [1960].
First edition, second printing – the first had a decorative border on the title-page, was priced 1500 francs on the rear cover, and was issued with a dust-jacket (not the earliest copies). After the franc was devalued on 1 January 1960, copies were over-stamped with a new price; and shortly after there...
£200
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MITCHISON, Naomi; Wyndham LEWIS, illustrator.
Beyond this Limit …
[London,] Jonathan Cape, [1935].
First edition. This was Lewis’s only collaboration with Mitchison but she arranged for the publication of his Left Wings over Europe the following year, and they remained friends until his death. 32 designs by Lewis served as the inspiration for Mitchison’s narrative.
£75
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ANDREWS, Mark E.
The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...
Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.
A finely bound deluxe copy, one of twenty copies, of Mark Andrews’s lavishly illustrated catalogue tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period.
£675
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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, compiled by the Italian art historian Roberto Papini (1883–1957), director of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and later...
£300
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HOLLAR, Wenceslaus, attributed.
[Portraits of celebrated Courtezans.]
Nineteenth century?
A famous series of portraits depicting Restoration-era London courtesans, long attributed to Hollar, but that attribution rejected by Pennington and New Hollstein.
£1200
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ROTHERY, Charles William.
Notes on a yacht voyage to Hardanger Fjord, and the adjacent estuaries. By a yachting dabbler. With numerous...
London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman; Keswick, James Ivison, [1855].
First edition, second issue (with the mounted lithographs coloured) of this handsomely illustrated account of Rothery’s yachting cruise to the fjords of Norway, ‘charming and sublime scenery, which the sketches are intended, though slightly, to pourtray’ (Preface).
£250
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RUSKIN, John.
The stones of Venice … With illustration drawn by the author. Fourth edition.
Orpington, Kent, George Allen, 1886.
A deluxe copy, one of 220 copies, of the fourth expanded edition, printed on Van Gelder laid paper with the plates on India paper.
£375
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SOPHOCLES. POUND, Ezra, translator.
Women of Trachis. A Version by Ezra Pound.
London, Neville Spearman, [1956].
First edition, inscribed by the editor Denis Goacher ‘For Geoffrey [Bridson]: Nov. ’56 / This milestone / Just missed witnessing / The total collapse of / D. G.’ – Bridson had co-produced the play for BBC radio in April 1954.
£1000
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YRVEN, Marcelle.
La comédienne et le féminisme.
Paris, L. Pichon, 1914.
First edition of this feminist work on the necessity of a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre, by the celebrated actress Marcelle Yrven, presented to the editor-in-chief of Le Figaro’s literary supplement.
£250
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STEPHENSON BLAKE.
A Book of Types – SL1.
Sheffield & London, [1956].
Two beautiful type specimen books from the last typefoundry in England. A Book of Types (‘SL1’) is the first in a series of five type specimen lists issued by Stephenson Blake from 1956-1963. In this first issue, among some of the various original designs of the foundry, such as...
£85
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POPE, Alexander.
The Dunciad. With Notes variorum, and the Prologomena of Scriblerus. The second Edition, with some Additional Notes.
London: Printed for Lawton Gilliver … 1729.
‘Second’ octavo edition, revised. This is Griffith’s variant d, with an extra unpaginated leaf of terminal errata (printed on the same half-sheet as the cancel P3).
£450
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POPE, Alexander.
The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, with his last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, in four Volumes,...
London, ‘printed under the direction of J. Bell, British Library, Strand, bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ 1787...
A good set of Pope’s works, printed for inclusion in Bell’s The Poets of Great Britain. Initially imported from Edinburgh and issued with new titles, Bell’s Poets of Great Britain was intended to provide attractive and portable works of British poets ‘from Chaucer to Churchill’,...
£175
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NELSON, John.
An Extract of John Nelson’s Journal, being an Account of God’s Dealing with his Soul from his Youth to the forty-second...
Bristol, E. Farley & Co., 1767.
Rare first edition, printed in Bristol, of the autobiography of the preacher and pioneer of Methodism in Yorkshire John Nelson (1707–1774).
£600
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BISSON, Louis-Auguste.
‘Wildfire’.
Paris, c. 1844.
An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times.
£14500
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CASSANDRE, A.M.
Dubonnet.
Copenhagen, Axel Andreasen & Sønner, c., 1956.
A fine example of Cassandre’s now iconic publicity image for the wine-based aperitif Dubonnet, originally invented in 1846 in response to a government competition for delivering a palatable anti-malarial dose of quinine to French foreign legionaries serving in North Africa.
£750
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[DRYDEN, John.]
The Medall. A Satyre against Sedition. By the Authour of Absalom and Achitophel …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1682.
First edition, second issue, adding two Latin lines at the end. The subject of Dryden’s satire was the medal struck to celebrate Shaftesbury’s acquittal from charges of high treason. According to Spence, Charles II gave Dryden ‘the hint for writing his poem’, and rewarded him for it. In...
£750