WEST INDIA DOCK COMPANY.

Three documents concerning the financing and early success of the new docks at the Isle of Dogs.

London, 1799–1810.

Three key documents concerning the financing and early success of the new docks at the Isle of Dogs, the first enclosed wet docks to be established on the Thames. Their construction was prompted by West India merchants and shipowners, outraged at the losses of sugar, rum, and other cargoes due to theft...

£1350

[CHAMPIER, Symphorien.]

La vie & les gestes du preux Chevalier Bayard. Contenant plusieurs victoires par luy faictes durant le...

[(Colophon:) Poitiers, Jacques Bouchet [and Enguilbert de Marnef], 28 March 1527.]

An otherwise unrecorded late sixteenth-century edition of Champier’s life of the Chevalier de Bayard, bound with the first edition of an account of Louis de la Trémoille, from the renowned library of Guyon de Sardière.

£8750

[BILLARDON DE SAUVIGNY, Edme-Louis.]

Voyage de Madame et de Madame Victoire.

Lunéville, Messuy, [1761].

Four rare works describing visits by the princesses Adélaïde and Victoire, daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska, to Lunéville and Nancy, in northeastern France, in 1761 and 1762, to see their grandfather Stanisław I Leszczyński, former King of Poland and then Duke of Lorraine.

£975

[THOM, Robert].

王嬌鸞百年長恨 Wang Keaou Lẅan pǐh nëen chang hǎn or the lasting Resentment of Miss Keaou Lwan Wang,...

Canton, Canton Press Office, 1839.

First and only edition, scarce, loosely translated from a Chinese novella which appears in the seventeenth-century story collection Jingu qiguan (‘Wonders old and new’). It contains a very early example of lithographic printing in China, in this case to reproduce a woodcut illustration.

£1750

[STANFORD, John Frederick].

John Bull and his wonderful Lamp. A new Reading of an old Tale. By Homunculus. With six Illustrations...

London, John Petherham, 1849.

First edition, a rare hand-coloured presentation copy, inscribed ‘with the author’s compliments – John Frederick Stanford’, this inscription allowing a new attribution for a work previously anonymous, or attributed to Thackeray.

£600

FENN, John, Sir.

Original Letters written during the Reigns of Henry VI. Edward IV. and Richard III. by various Persons...

London, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1787.

Second edition, published in the same year as the first, revised and corrected by George Steevens, of this selection from the ‘Paston Letters’, a notable source for the history of England during the Wars of the Roses which had been acquired by Fenn in 1774. Fenn published a second selection in 1789,...

£1200

[COSTUME.]

Dresses of different Nations or the Companion of History.

[N.p., 1810s?]

Very rare costume book, possibly a Scottish production, with double the number of plates of the only other known copy, commencing with a depiction of a ‘Scots Highlander’, and designed to educate children in the idiosyncrasies of national dress across the globe.

£1500

CHIANG Yee.

The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh.

[Edinburgh, Constable, for] London, Methuen, 1948.

First edition, signed, of this unusual Edinburgh travelogue by an exiled Chinese writer and artist, illustrated throughout by the author with sketches and paintings in his distinctive style.

£180

[CARLYLE.]

Illustrated memorial Volume of the Carlyle’s House purchase fund Committee with Catalogue of Carlyle’s Books Manuscripts...

London, The Carlyle’s House Memorial Trust, [1896].

First edition of an uncommon commemorative volume outlining the history of the purchase of Thomas Carlyle’s house at 24 (previously 5) Cheyne Row after a campaign led by George Lumsden, with an illustrated description of the house, a full catalogue of its contents, a Carlyle chronology, a list of...

£325

BARRIE, James Matthew.

A set of seven first editions, and one first published edition, in uniform bindings.

London, 1888–1896.

An attractive set of J. M. Barrie’s early novels up to 1896, predominantly Scottish in setting.

£650

LUNESCHLOS, Joannes de.

Thesaurus mathematum reseratus per algebram novam tam speciebus quam numeris declaratam et demonstratam....

Padua, Giulio Crivellari, 1646.

An uncommon mathematical text, written by a German scholar at the University of Padua; this copy arrived in England shortly after publication.

£8500

BOYLE, Robert.

A Disquisition about the final Causes of natural Things: wherein it is inquir’d, whether, and (if at all), with...

London, H. C. for John Taylor, 1688.

First edition, second issue, with Boyle’s name in full on the title-page. ‘Boyle is just revered as an enthusiastic early protagonist of the experimental method … [but] he recognized the limitations of experiment and wrote widely upon the philosophical implications of scientific investigation …...

£750

BOYLE, Robert.

Certain physiological Essays and other Tracts; written at distant Times, and on several Occasions. The second Edition....

London, Henry Herringman, 1669.

Second edition in English, enlarged. ‘The importance of the Essays [first 1661] lies in the fact that in a very real sense it was a “prologue” to the more widely known Sceptical Chymist since it continued the attack on the alchemists begun in New Experiments, and actually it...

£1500

MILLER, Henry.

Tropic of Cancer.

London, John Calder, 1963.

First UK editions of Miller’s autobiographical novels. Although first published in Paris in 1934, Tropic of Cancer’s republication by the Grove Press in 1961 led to numerous obscenity trials in US state courts, until the Supreme Court finally ruled it was not obscene in 1964.

£1500

LUCIAN of Samosata.

Opera, quae quidem extant, omnia, e Graeco sermone in Latinum, partim iam olim diversis authoribus, partim...

Lyons, Jean Frellon, 1549.

First Lyons edition of the works of Lucian of Samosata, the inventor of the comic dialogue, in a handsome contemporary Parisian binding for the French statesman and book collector Méry de Vic.

£3750

[KEIR, James.]

An Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Day, Esq.

London, printed for John Stockdale, 1791.

First edition of this biography of Thomas Day – notorious for his unsuccessful experiment in which he adopted two foundling girls, aged eleven and twelve, educating them in isolation in France according to Rousseau’s methods in the hopes of shaping the ideal wife and marrying the more successful...

£1500

[DISNEY, John.]

Memoirs of Thomas Brand-Hollis Esq. ...

London, T. Gillet, 1808.

First edition of a privately printed memoir of Thomas Brand of the Hyde, who assumed the name Brand-Hollis on inheriting the Dorset estates (and library and collection of sculpture) of his friend the ‘Republican’ Thomas Hollis, the Whig bibliophile. The author, John Disney, a close friend of Thomas...

£750

DIRAC, Paul Adrien Maurice.

Quantised Singularities in the electromagnetic Field. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London...

London, Harrison and Sons for the Royal Society, October 1931.

First edition of this remarkable paper by one of the twentieth century’s most important physicists. Famous for the Dirac equation and for predicting the existence of antimatter, Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger ‘for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic...

£800

BULLA, Paolo.

Notizie intorno all’osservatorio privato di Paolo Bulla.

Rome, Tipografia della R. Accademia dei Lincei, 1885.

First and only edition, very rare, of this description of Paolo Bulla’s private observatory, illustrated with five striking chromolithographic plates depicting astronomical events observed by Bulla in the sky above Rome, printed by the Accademia dei Lincei.

£1250

[WALSH, William].

Letters and Poems, amorous and gallant.

London, Jacob Tonson, 1692.

First edition of Walsh’s principal work – following the publication of his Dialogues concerning Women the year before – a collection of playful letters, elegant love lyrics, Virgilian pastorals, and witty epigrams.

£2500