{"title":"Chelsea Rare Book Fair 2026","description":"\u003cp\u003eFind us at Stand 20 at Chelsea Old Town Hall, Friday 30 October and Saturday 31 October.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp style=\"margin: 24px 0;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/firsts.artsvp.com\/a41cc1?link=sotherans\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" style=\"display: inline-block; padding: 14px 28px; border: 1px solid #fff; border-radius: 999px; background-color: #fff; color: #000; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.4; letter-spacing: 0.12em; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e Download complimentary ticket \u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"douglas-lord-alfred-lyrics-inscribed-by-the-poet","title":"DOUGLAS, Alfred, Lord. Lyrics.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e'Far Be It from Me to Run Down Oscar Wilde' - Inscribed by Bosie\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDOUGLAS, Alfred, \u003ci\u003eLord.\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Lyrics. \u003ci\u003eLondon:\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003eWestminster Press for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eRich and Cowan\u003c\/i\u003e. 1935.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher's blue cloth, upper board stamped in blind, spine lettered in gilt, in the very good, unclipped blue-green dust-jacket (7\/6 net), top-edge stained blue, the others untrimmed, partially unopened; pp. ii, 110, [2]; frontispiece portrait of 'Lord Alfred Douglas in his 24th year'; a few nicks to spine ends of jacket and to upper edges with corresponding sunning to cloth; slight offset to title; else a near-fine copy; front free endpaper inscribed 'Inscribed for G. Catalani by Alfred Douglas. April 1937' in green ink.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition thus of the collected lyric poetry of Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (1870–1945), a presentation copy 'inscribed for G. Catalani' in April 1937, containing the polemical 'Two Loves' used as evidence against Oscar Wilde in court and previously suppressed by the author.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of Douglas's homoerotic poetry was written between 1893 and 1896 and appeared in undergraduate literary journals such as \u003ci\u003eThe Spirit Lamp\u003c\/i\u003e, which he edited, and \u003ci\u003eThe Chameleon\u003c\/i\u003e, or in small-circulation magazines like \u003ci\u003eThe Artist\u003c\/i\u003e. Some of these poems appeared in a French edition of Douglas's verse in 1896, but most were not republished until the present \u003ci\u003eLyrics\u003c\/i\u003e of 1935, along with a companion volume of \u003ci\u003eSonnets\u003c\/i\u003e, which appeared in the same year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn contrast to the 'art-for-art's sake heresy […] promulgated by Oscar Wilde, who summed it up by saying that \"in all art style is of more importance than sincerity\", whereas I maintain that good poetry cannot be written without sincerity any more than it can be written without style […] Far be it for me to run down Oscar Wilde. I was the first to admire and pay homage to his genius and to put him in the very high place to which he belongs as a dramatist and a writer of prose […] Being essentially a great artist he lived to write one really great poem, \"The Ballad of Reading Gaol\" [\u003ci\u003ei.e. De Profundis\u003c\/i\u003e], which is an answer to and an implicit repudiation of his own heresy' (pp. 5–6). \u003cstrong\u003eThis collection features Douglas's 1892 'Two Loves' (pp. 56–58), featuring the line 'I am the love that dare not speak its name', weaponised against Wilde (along with his letters to Bosie) in his trials for 'gross indecency', as well as Douglas's own 'De Profundis', 'published in Poems (Mercure de France edition, 1896) and suppressed by [Douglas] in all subsequent collections' (p. 59).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2113572\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53478640583033,"sku":"2113572","price":500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2113572_e868a8fe-0dc5-41b7-9382-716cd5d03706.jpg?v=1787056701"},{"product_id":"pynchon-thomas-gravitys-rainbow","title":"PYNCHON, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePYNCHON, Thomas.\u003c\/strong\u003e Gravity's Rainbow. \u003ci\u003eNew York: The Viking Press\u003c\/i\u003e. 1973.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original orange cloth with embossed design to upper board; spine lettered in red; upper edge orange; pictorial dust jacket with a design by Marc Getter; pp. [viii], 3-760, [2]; a near-fine copy, lightly compressed to spine ends; in very good, clipped jacket, faded to spine (as is common), lightly rubbed and worn to extremities, particularly along the spine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, in a later state dust jacket – or possibly one intended for export – which has the ISBN 670-34832-5 to the lower panel, but lacking the '0273' code to the front flap which denotes the first issue.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePynchon's National Book Award-winning novel is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II. Widely considered to be his greatest work, it was selected by the jury for the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but was rejected by the Pulitzer Advisory Board due to its controversial content. The novel features a clandestine military organisation investigating the apparent correlation between the targeting of V-2 rockets and the erections of Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop, an American intelligence agent who was once the subject of experiments by a Nazi rocket scientist. It is not surprising that the novel was deemed a little \u003ci\u003eoutré\u003c\/i\u003e by the rather staid committee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2117539\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55711660409209,"sku":"2117539","price":750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2117539.jpg?v=1756273583"},{"product_id":"hartley-lp-night-fears","title":"HARTLEY, L. P. Night Fears.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHARTLEY, L. P.\u003c\/strong\u003e Night Fears. \u003ci\u003eLondon: G. P. Putnam's Sons.\u003c\/i\u003e 1924.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original green cloth, titled in gilt to upper board; gilt lettering to spine; pp. [viii], 220, [iv]; outer edges untrimmed; a very good example, sunned to edges and spine with light compression; endpapers browned and offset, with light spotting throughout, particularly prevalent on the prelims; authorial inscription 'To Oliver from Leslie with my love. June 1924' to front free endpaper (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of Hartley's first book, our copy inscribed by the author in the year of publication.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNight Fears\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of seventeen short stories on the theme of the supernatural, some of which were originally printed in periodicals such as \u003ci\u003eThe London Mercury\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Oxford Outlook\u003c\/i\u003e, the latter at which Hartley had been the editor. The title story follows a nightwatchman in his new role, and the characters he encounters as part of his rounds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps now best known for his 1953 novel \u003ci\u003eThe Go-Between\u003c\/i\u003e, Hartley's earliest influences came from writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, and although he wrote his first story at the tender age of 11, he struggled for much of his early life to realise his dream of becoming an author. It was not until 1924 that he met Constant Huntington of G. P. Putnam, who published this, his first volume, as well as his novella \u003ci\u003eSimonetta Perkins\u003c\/i\u003e in 1925. \u003ci\u003eNight Fears\u003c\/i\u003e was relatively unsuccessful, earning him no money. One reviewer wrote of his work that 'his examination of the disturbed mental states of his characters is top-notch, and his horror stories can seem to be so unique as to be unclassifiable. He was stylistically without a peer' (Nevins, p. 53).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2120232\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53508077388153,"sku":"2120232","price":2000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2120232_83d0b1f7-e79e-4feb-abe3-cef61561e028.jpg?v=1787056293"},{"product_id":"hd-the-hedgehog","title":"H.D. The Hedgehog.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eH.D.'S Only Work for Children\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eH.D.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Hedgehog. \u003ci\u003eLondon\u003c\/i\u003e: [\u003ci\u003eCurwen Press for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eThe Brendin Publishing Company\u003c\/i\u003e. 1936 [(Colophon:) 1925].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Original green printed boards, title to upper board within filleted border, in matching green dust-jacket; pp. [vi], 77, [3], woodcut headpieces and title vignettes by George Plank; some dampstaining to spine of boards (resulting in spotting to interior of jacket) and some darkening and spotting to spine and fore-edges of both jacket and boards; some spotting to top-edge of text block and to endpapers and first few ff., mild creasing to upper corner; otherwise internally very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, one of 300 copies, of American Imagist poet H.D.’s only book for children, published by the Curwen Press for the Brendin Publishing Company, founded by H.D.’s partner, the Modernist novelist Bryher.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe work was first conceived in 1924 as a pacifist treatise by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886–1961), one of the most prolific women poets of the Modernist era. Richard Aldington, to whom H.D. was married from 1913 to 1938 (although they had separated in the early 1920s) served in the First World War, when H.D. took over his role as assistant editor of the \u003ci\u003eEgoist\u003c\/i\u003e.  In 1916, she went onto publish her first poetry collection, \u003ci\u003eSea Garden\u003c\/i\u003e. Her brother was killed in action in 1918. In the same year, she began what would become a forty-year relationship with the iconic novelist Bryher (born Annie Winifred Ellerman, 1894–1983), who used her financial status to promote the careers of the likes of William Carlos Williams as well as Sylvia Beach's bookshop Shakespeare and Company.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the early 1930s, Bryher and novelist and filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson (then Bryher’s husband and co-founder, with Bryher and H.D., of the POOL Group) built Villa Kenwin in La Tour-de-Peliz, Switzerland, where H.D. wrote \u003ci\u003eThe Hedgehog\u003c\/i\u003e. During the Second World War, Bryher used the funds from her inheritance and the safe position of Villa Kenwin to provide crucial passage to the philosopher Walter Benjamin and more than one hundred Jewish refugees escaping the Nazi regime.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Hedgehog\u003c\/i\u003e details the story of Madge, a fatherless child living with her mother in Switzerland - protected from the reality of the Second World War as it draws near but not safe from the turbulence and volatility of growing up. From her anxieties surrounding the knowledge of mysterious \u003ci\u003eherissons\u003c\/i\u003e (hedgehogs), her woes soon expand into more adult concerns as she discovers what it means to exist on the precipice of the adult life. In her preface to the 1988 edition of \u003ci\u003eThe Hedgehog\u003c\/i\u003e, H.D.’s daughter, Perdita Macpherson Schaffner, recalls hearing about the book at the age of fourteen: H.D. ‘revealed - casually, over the teacups - that she had a manuscript, a story, well not exactly a story, too long, not exactly a novel, too short. A little book for children set in Switzerland, no not really for children, but about a child, about me, well sort of’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBoughn A17a.i.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121163\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54999494295929,"sku":"2121163","price":500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121163_e0fdac2f-903f-4166-8cd1-b11dc61bdb7b.jpg?v=1787055993"},{"product_id":"rolfe-frederick-william-baron-corvo-tarcissus-the-boy-martyr-of-rome-in-the-diocletian-persecution-ad-ccciii","title":"[ROLFE, Frederick William, Baron Corvo .] Tarcissus: The Boy Martyr of Rome in the Diocletian Persecution A.D. CCCIII.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[ROLFE, Frederick William, \u003ci\u003eBaron Corvo\u003ci\u003e.]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Tarcissus: The Boy Martyr of Rome in the Diocletian Persecution A.D. CCCIII. [\u003ci\u003en.p.: n.n.\u003c\/i\u003e 1970?]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e16mo (119 x 90 mm). Original grey card wrappers printed in black, title on front wrapper within double ruled border; pp. [2], 5-9, [1]; a couple of light creases to wrappers, otherwise fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFacsimile edition of the first edition, first printing of Rolfe’s first published book.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrederick William Rolfe (1860-1913), styled Baron Corvo, was an English writer, painter and photographer whose turbulent life was marked by failed religious aspirations, financial instability, and heterodox behaviour. His most famous work, \u003ci\u003eHadrian the Seventh\u003c\/i\u003e (1904), earned him the posthumous praise of D.H. Lawrence, W.H. Auden, and Graham Greene.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst published in 1880, the poem recounts the story of the “dear brave boy” Tarcissus who was martyred in the third century, beaten to death by a crowd whilst carrying the Blessed Sacraments. “The fact that [boy martyrs] was a favourite [subject] of poetic pederasts in Rolfe’s time invites speculation, especially in view of the fact that the subject matter of Rolfe’s fiction was usually coloured by homosexuality” (Benkovitz, p. 11).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis facsimile, printed in a time or revived interest in Rolfe’s oeuvre, is not to be confused with the foolscap quarto facsimile edition described by Woolf (A1b).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Benkovitz,\u003c\/i\u003e Frederick Rolfe: Baron Corvo\u003ci\u003e, 1977.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121497\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55047237468537,"sku":"2121497","price":100.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121497.jpg?v=1742376962"},{"product_id":"lessing-doris-the-golden-notebook-2","title":"LESSING, Doris The Golden Notebook.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLESSING, Doris\u003c\/strong\u003e The Golden Notebook. \u003ci\u003eSimon and Schuster,\u003c\/i\u003e 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Yellow cloth boards; black lettering to spine; white dust jacket retaining price designed by Janet Halverson; red endpapers; pp. 567, (2); slight bumping to top and bottom of hinges; dust jacket slightly soiled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst American Edition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArguably Doris Lessing’s magnum opus, \u003ci\u003eThe Golden Notebook\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of Anna, a woman reconciling with aspects of her identity that she has kept in four colour coded notebooks. The story explores love, politics, and modernity. A wonderful portrait of the complexity of human existence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eThe Golden Notebook\u003c\/i\u003e is the kind of novel every publisher waits for impatiently – a major work by a major talent. It is surely one of the most important English novels of our time.’ – front dust jacket.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122880\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55666280137081,"sku":"2122880","price":400.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122880.jpg?v=1787055538"},{"product_id":"coleridge-samuel-taylor-remorse-a-tragedy-in-five-acts","title":"COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Remorse: A Tragedy, in Five Acts.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCOLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor.\u003c\/strong\u003e Remorse: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. \u003ci\u003eLondon: W. Pople\u003c\/i\u003e. 1813.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Early 20th-century green Morocco by \u003cstrong\u003eSangorski \u0026amp; Sutcliffe, London\u003c\/strong\u003e, gilt triple fillet border to covers with floral cornerpieces, spine gilt-ruled in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, turn-ins roll-tooled in gilt, top edge gilt, other edges uncut; pp. [xii], 72; colour a little faded to spine and edges, hinges cracked but holding firm, minor rubbing to corners; occasional light spotting, otherwise a very good, clean copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, with page 3 misnumbered as “6”, of Coleridge’s second play.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSet in sixteenth-century Granada at the height of the persecution against the Moriscos, \u003ci\u003eRemorse\u003c\/i\u003e, a blank verse tragedy, is an account of the gradual moral corruption of the Spanish nobleman Ordonio and his part in the murder of his own brother.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eColeridge wrote the play in 1797 at the suggestion of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), originally titling it \u003ci\u003eOsorio\u003c\/i\u003e after its protagonist (later renamed Ordonio). Rejected by Drury Lane Theatre, a manuscript copy remained in Sheridan’s possession and, in Coleridge’s words, “wandered about the town from his house”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first thirty lines of Act V, Scene I appeared separately as the poem “The Dungeon” in \u003ci\u003eLyrical Ballads\u003c\/i\u003e (1798) and in 1802, part of a song from Act III was published without acknowledgement of Coleridge’s authorship (see Preface).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe revised version of the play, re-titled \u003ci\u003eRemorse\u003c\/i\u003e, premiered at Drury Lane on 23 January 1813, enjoying commercial success with a run of twenty nights. This 1813 first edition was followed in the same year by two further editions, with much of the original preface omitted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWise 29\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123102\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55853469073785,"sku":"2123102","price":450.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123102.jpg?v=1755770358"},{"product_id":"cleveland-john-attributed-author-monumentum-regale-or-a-tombe-erected-for-that-incomparable-and-glorious-monarch","title":"[CLEVELAND, John ( attributed author ).] Monumentum Regale or a tombe, erected for that incomparable and glorious monarch, Charles the First, King of Great Britane, France and Ireland, \u0026c. In select elegies, epitaphs, and poems.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[CLEVELAND, John (\u003ci\u003eattributed author\u003ci\u003e).]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Monumentum Regale or a tombe, erected for that incomparable and glorious monarch, Charles the First, King of Great Britane, France and Ireland, \u0026amp;c. In select elegies, epitaphs, and poems. [\u003ci\u003eLondon: William Bentley\u003c\/i\u003e.] 1649.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e[bound with:]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eB[IRKENHEAD], J[ohn].\u003c\/strong\u003e Loyalties tears flowing after the bloud of the royall sufferer Charles I. \u0026amp;c. Englands glory and shame. [\u003ci\u003eLondon?: n.p.\u003c\/i\u003e]. “1649”. [\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003c\/i\u003e 1650].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo works in one vol. 8vo. Contemporary calf, rebacked, blind double rule border to boards, spine blind-ruled in compartments, lettered directly in gilt to one, edges sprinkled red, endpapers renewed; Monumentum: pp. [2], 46, title and pp. 2 and 3 printed in black and red, woodcut skull and crown to title, typographic headpieces; Loyalties: [2 (blank)], [2], 11, [1 (blank)], bound without 8-page advertisement; boards and extremities a little worn; light, uniform toning throughout, occasional very light dampstaining to lower margin, trimmed close at head and foot in places, occasionally touching page numbering and shaving last line of p. 41 of 1st work; ink scribbling to final blank verso of 2nd work; bookplate of the Fox Pointe Collection to front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of Cleveland’s collection of royalist verse and second edition of Birkenhead’s poem: two rare clandestine publications commemorating Charles I, composed in the immediate aftermath of his execution.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished anonymously, \u003ci\u003eMonumentum Regale\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of eight poetical works of varying length traditionally attributed to the poet and satirist John Cleveland (c. 1613-1658). Modern scholarship, however, has reassigned all but one of the texts – the sixth elegy – to other authors, including Josh Ashburnham, Payne Fisher, Thomas Pierce, and Henry King. A fervent royalist, Cleveland accompanied Charles during the Civil War until the king’s surrender to the Scots at Newark, and wrote one of the most biting caricatures of Oliver Cromwell (\u003ci\u003eThe Character of a London-Diurnall\u003c\/i\u003e, 1645). Little is known of his life after the war, though “there has been a reasonable assumption that, in Berdan’s words, ‘[l]ike the great majority of the unfortunate cavaliers, he wandered about in complete dependence upon his more fortunate friends’” (\u003ci\u003eODNB\u003c\/i\u003e). The collection comprises: 1. “Epitaph” beginning “Behold the Mirror”, 2. “Chronostichon decollationis Caroli Regis”, 3. “An Elegie on the Meekest of Men, the most glorious of Princes, the most Constant of Martyrs, Charles the I”, 4. “Caroli Τοῦ Μακαρίτου Παλιγγενεσία”, 5. “A Deep Groan, fetch’d at the Funerall of that incomparable and Glorious Monarch, Charles the First”, 6. “An Elegie” beginning “Were not my Faith”, 7. “An Elegie” beginning “Does not the Sun”, 8. “An Epitaph” beginning “Whitin the Sacred Vault”. The \u003ci\u003eMonumentum\u003c\/i\u003e, sometimes found bound in copies of the \u003ci\u003eEikon Basilike\u003c\/i\u003e, was issued twice in 1649; this is the version with “yeare” in the imprint and without the ninth poem “Upon the Death of King Charles”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second work, \u003ci\u003eLoyalties Tears Flowing\u003c\/i\u003e, is a 240-line monody – an extended poem of grieving – on Charles’s execution by the poet, journalist and satirist Sir John Birkenhead (\u003ci\u003ec.\u003c\/i\u003e 1617-1679). Best remembered for his newsbooks, including \u003ci\u003eMercurius Britannicus\u003c\/i\u003e, Birkenhead’s poetic talent “has perhaps been unfairly minimised” (\u003ci\u003eODNB\u003c\/i\u003e). Author of the longest known commendatory poem in existence (240 lines dedicated to William Cartwright), several of his lyrics were set to music by Henry Lawes (1596-1662). First published in 1649, \u003ci\u003eLoyalties Tears Flowing\u003c\/i\u003e “exhibits less of the satirical stridency that characterises much of Birkenhead’s writing and more a sense of controlled indignation and genuine sorrow” (ibid.). At the Restoration, his loyalty was rewarded: he regained his Oxford fellowship, received a doctorate of civil law at the king’s recommendation, and from 1660 to 1663 held the office of Licenser of the Press.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMonumentum: ESTC R208852 (version with “yeare” imprint); Madan 107. Loyalties: ESTC R209196 (only six locations recorded).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122558\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56082767085945,"sku":"2122558","price":2000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122558.jpg?v=1774275610"},{"product_id":"colette-ie-sidonie-gabrielle-colette-lentrave","title":"'COLETTE', pseud. [ i.e. Sidonie-Gabrielle COLETTE]. L’Entrave.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eInscribed to one of Colette's Wedding Witnesses\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e'COLETTE', \u003ci\u003epseud.\u003ci\u003e [\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003ci\u003e Sidonie-Gabrielle COLETTE].\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e L’Entrave. \u003ci\u003eParis: Librairie des Lettres\u003c\/i\u003e. 1913.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original cream wrappers printed in grey and red, uncut, preserved in a modern cloth slipcase; pp. [iv], 307, [1 (blank)]; book and inkwell device to upper wrapper and title; a few light stains to upper wrapper, short tear to head of upper joint neatly repaired, hinges reinforced; uniform light toning, light marginal dampstaining, mostly at the beginning, small hole (repaired) and traces of adhesive to inner margin of front free endpaper and half-title; overall a remarkably good copy; presentation inscription to half-title in ink: '\u003cstrong\u003eA Georges Abric en témoignage d’une grande sympathie, Colette de Jouvenel\u003c\/strong\u003e' (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition in book form, particularly rare in the original wrappers, inscribed by Colette to one of the witnesses at her second wedding.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginally serialised in \u003ci\u003eLa Vie Parisienne\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eL’Entrave\u003c\/i\u003e (The Shackle) is the sequel to \u003ci\u003eLa Vagabonde\u003c\/i\u003e (1910). Reflecting Colette’s own life, however, the tone of the two novels differs markedly: if \u003ci\u003eLa Vagabonde\u003c\/i\u003e celebrates independence and self-discovery, \u003ci\u003eL’Entrave\u003c\/i\u003e turns inward, exploring the ambivalence and quiet disillusion that come with love’s constraints.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the intervening years, Colette (at the time of publication married to Henri Gauthier-Villars, better known by his pen name, Willy) had married the journalist and diplomat Henry de Jouvenel (1876–1935) and given birth to their daughter, Colette de Jouvenel (1913–1981). \u003cstrong\u003eShe recalled with characteristic humour, in \u003ci\u003eL’Étoile Vesper\u003c\/i\u003e, the double strain of childbearing and serial publication\u003c\/strong\u003e: 'The child and the novel were racing me, and \u003ci\u003eLa Vie Parisienne\u003c\/i\u003e, which was publishing my unfinished novel in instalments, was gaining ground. The child announced that it would arrive first, and I screwed the cap back onto my pen'. Colette and de Jouvenel divorced in 1924 after she became romantically involved with his son, their affair inspiring her the characters of Phil and Mme Dalleray in \u003ci\u003eLe Blé en herbe\u003c\/i\u003e (1923).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn later years, Colette was unsparing in her assessment of \u003ci\u003eL’Entrave\u003c\/i\u003e, criticising its 'narrow ending', 'diminished heroes', and 'blessing tone'.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance:\u003c\/i\u003e From the library of Georges Abric, editor-in-chief of \u003ci\u003eLe Matin\u003c\/i\u003e and a close friend of Henry de Jouvenel. Together with Léon Hamel and Jean Sapéne, Abric was one of the witnesses (\u003ci\u003etémoins\u003c\/i\u003e) at the wedding of Colette and Jouvenal on 19 December 1912.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee La Société des amis de Colette, online.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123539\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56010402759033,"sku":"2123539","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123539.jpg?v=1760713267"},{"product_id":"jarman-derek-modern-nature","title":"JARMAN, Derek. Modern Nature.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJARMAN, Derek.\u003c\/strong\u003e Modern Nature. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Century\u003c\/i\u003e. 1991.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original dark blue cloth lettered in white to the spine, in the dust-jacket designed by the Senate, priced £16.99 to the front flap; pp. [6], 314; a few very light spots to text block, spine tips a touch softened, a touch of rubbing to jacket extremities; a near fine copy in like jacket; inscribed by Derek Jarman in black ink to the front free endpaper; eleven press cuttings relating to Jarman and the book loosely laid in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA fine, inscribed first impression of Derek Jarman’s remarkable late journals.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1987, shortly after discovering he was HIV-positive, Jarman bought a cottage on the Dungeness coast, in the shadow of a nuclear power station. He named it Prospect Cottage. Moving between Kent and London, where he owned a small studio flat on Charing Cross Road, the journal, beginning in January 1989 and ending in September 1990, records life at the cottage, not least the creation of a remarkable garden in the surrounding shingle. ‘Describing the garden to Maggi Hambling at a gallery opening’, he writes, ‘I said I intended to write a book about it. She said: “Oh, you’ve finally discovered nature, Derek.” “I don’t think it’s really quite like that,” I said, thinking of Constable and Samuel Palmer’s Kent. “Ah, I understand completely. You’ve discovered modern nature.”’ The diary covers the making of the 1990 film The Garden, the early stages of his adaptation of Marlowe’s Edward II, as well as his stay at St Mary’s, Paddington, after contracting tuberculosis. An heir to a great tradition of English diaries and nature writing (Dorothy Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gilbert White, Denton Welch), Modern Nature offers a moving, beautifully written insight into the life of a gay, HIV-positive man and artist in England during the late, dark years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123108\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56129732215161,"sku":"2123108","price":600.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123108.jpg?v=1793274221"},{"product_id":"anon-hotel-nettuno-pisa","title":"ANON. Hotel Nettuno, Pisa.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eANON.\u003c\/strong\u003e Hotel Nettuno, Pisa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginal hotel luggage label, c.1930. 155 x 100 mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hotel opened in 1831 with 110 rooms. A brochure published at the end of the nineteenth Century said \"no hotel in Pisa surpassed the Nettuno for elegance and good taste.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNotable guests have included Virginia Wolf and King George V. The hotel remained in business until the second half of the twentieth Century and is now home to the student house known as Residenzia Nettuno.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrinters: Richter \u0026amp; C. Napoli.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSlight wear to top margin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123815\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56194392064377,"sku":"2123815","price":170.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123815.jpg?v=1763046819"},{"product_id":"gulik-robert-van-author-and-illustrator-the-chinese-maze-murders-a-chinese-detective-story-suggested-by-three-original-ancient-chinese-plots","title":"GULIK, Robert van ( author and illustrator ). The Chinese Maze Murders: A Chinese Detective Story Suggested by Three Original Ancient Chinese Plots.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Whole Thing has a Great Charm and Freshness\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGULIK, Robert van (\u003ci\u003eauthor and illustrator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e The Chinese Maze Murders: A Chinese Detective Story Suggested by Three Original Ancient Chinese Plots. \u003ci\u003eThe Hague and Bandung: W. Van Hoeve\u003c\/i\u003e. 1956.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in red to upper board and spine, with small red vignette to upper board; bright orange illustrated  jacket designed by the author, with the rare wrap-around promotional band featuring Agatha Christie’s endorsement; pp. xiii, [1 (blank)], 322, with 19 illustrated plates by the author; jacket with light wear to the hinges of the flaps, some toning to spine and white rear panel, and slight spotting to the reverse; promotional band with a few closed tears (c. 2 cm to front) and light toning and spotting to white areas; small bookseller’s label to pastedown; slight offsetting to endpapers; overall a remarkably clean and bright copy; near fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst English edition of the second Judge Dee novel, with the rare promotional wrap-around band bearing Agatha Christie’s endorsement, in which she writes that she “enjoyed the book immensely. The whole thing has a great charm and freshness and I hope it will have a great success”.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough the publisher’s blurb notes that “nowadays readers of detective stories often voice the complaint that it becomes increasingly difficult to find a crime novel that brings something entirely new”, Van Gulik innovates by deliberately returning to the past: his detective, Judge Dee, is based on the seventh-century Tang dynasty magistrate Di Renjie, while the narrative follows ancient plots, structured around the solution of three interlinked cases.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Chinese Maze Murders\u003c\/i\u003e was first published in Japanese in 1950; this 1956 edition is the first appearance of the novel in English.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eEvers, p. 51.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124218\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56511041569145,"sku":"2124218","price":1400.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124218.jpg?v=1768587390"},{"product_id":"gulik-robert-van-author-and-illustrator-the-haunted-monastery","title":"GULIK, Robert van ( author and illustrator ). The Haunted Monastery.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGULIK, Robert van (\u003ci\u003eauthor and illustrator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e The Haunted Monastery. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Heinemann\u003c\/i\u003e. 1963.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s soft green card covers lettered to front cover and spine, endpapers reproducing map of the monastery by the author; pp. [ii], vii, [1 blank], 159, [3], with 9 illustrations by the author; creasing to front cover and spine, head of spine chipped, light toning, slight spotting to the lower corners of the first few leaves and to the edges of the text block, otherwise internally clean; very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUncorrected proof copy of the seventh novel in the Judge Dee series.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eForced to seek shelter from a violent storm, Judge Dee takes refuge in the Monastery of the Morning Clouds, a place already burdened by a sinister reputation. Three women had been murdered there the previous year, and the monastery remains a forbidding and oppressive setting. In keeping with the conventions of traditional Chinese crime fiction, Judge Dee must unravel three interlinked cases.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJudge Dee is a fictionalised version of the Tang-dynasty magistrate Di Renjie (seventh century). Van Gulik first encountered the character while translating the eighteenth-century Chinese detective novel \u003ci\u003eDee Goong An\u003c\/i\u003e (1949), an experience which inspired him to create his own Judge Dee stories. The series was published between 1949 and 1967. A Dutch diplomat and accomplished sinologist, Van Gulik consistently incorporated his scholarly research into his fiction and illustrated his novels himself, adopting a distinctive woodblock-inspired style.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eEvers, p. 55.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122639\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56511043469689,"sku":"2122639","price":650.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122639.jpg?v=1768587487"},{"product_id":"romoli-f-1901-1969-grand-hotel-savoy-cortina-dampezzo-dolomiti","title":"ROMOLI, Filipo (1901-1969). Grand Hotel Savoy, Cortina D'Ampezzo Dolomiti.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eROMOLI, Filipo (1901-1969).\u003c\/strong\u003e Grand Hotel Savoy, Cortina D'Ampezzo Dolomiti.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginal hotel luggage label, c.1925. 85 x 115 mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hotel was constructed in 1912 in the Art Nouveau style. Its opening coincided with Cortina D'Ampezzo's growing popularity as a destination for Winter sports.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy the 1950's, Cortina and the hotel experienced a boom, becoming a favoured destination for stars like Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, and Brigitte Bardot. The town hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSigned by the artist F. Romoli.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrinters: Barabino \u0026amp; Graeve - Genova.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRare.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124203\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56559356510585,"sku":"2124203","price":240.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124203.jpg?v=1769433545"},{"product_id":"fowles-john-the-french-lieutenant-s-woman","title":"FOWLES, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFOWLES, John.\u003c\/strong\u003e The French Lieutenant’s Woman. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Jonathan Cape\u003c\/i\u003e. 1969.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original brown cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper with typography by Adrian Brewin and endpapers with a drawing by Tom Adams; pp. 445, [3]; light toning to page block, tiny nick to lower edge of one page, dustwrapper rubbed to upper spine tip and corners and lightly toned to spine; a near fine copy in a very good wrapper; inscribed by the author in black ink to the half title.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn inscribed first edition, first printing of a Victorian novel that could only have been written in the 1960s.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn his essay “Notes on an Unfinished Novel” (\u003ci\u003eHarper’s Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, July 1968) written, as the title suggests, while writing this novel (it was at the time only provisionally entitled \u003ci\u003eThe French Lieutenant's Woman\u003c\/i\u003e), Fowles notes that he “do[esn’t] think of it as a historical novel, a genre in which I have very little interest.” The very first paragraph, however, locates the action “at Lyme Regis […] one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867”, exactly 100 years before Fowles was writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe epigraph for the first chapter is taken from Hardy’s poem “The Riddle”, and the capsule summary printed on the cover of the current paperback edition of the book reads as if it were describing a Hardy novel: “Charles Smithson, a respectable engaged man, meets Sarah Woodruff as she stands on the Cobb at Lyme Regis, staring out to sea. Charles falls in love, but Sarah is a disgraced woman, and their romance will defy all the stifling conventions of the Victorian age.” But that is where the resemblance ends; \u003ci\u003eThe French Lieutenant's Woman\u003c\/i\u003e is very much a novel of 1967, where its narrator is undisguisedly located, sometimes subtly, sometimes more explicitly. In Chapter 13, we are informed that:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. If I have pretended until now to know my characters’ minds and innermost thoughts, it is because I am writing in (just as I have assumed some of the vocabulary and ‘voice’ of) a convention universally accepted at the time of my story: that the novelist stands next to God. He may not know all, yet he tries to pretend that he does.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuch conceits might become tiresome, but here they seem natural, the narrative unfolding with the assurance and inevitability of a nineteenth-century novel. In the \u003ci\u003eHarper's\u003c\/i\u003e essay, Fowles cites Thackeray, noting his deft use of voice, “characteristic teasing of the reader, [and] compensatory self-mocking” as precedents for his own methods (it may be the only example of Thackeray and Alain Robbe-Grillet being discussed in relation to one another).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis copy is warmly inscribed and dated by Fowles to one Pearl Goldwater, “whom the author will remember meeting”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123957\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56585557803385,"sku":"2123957","price":750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123957.jpg?v=1769851626"},{"product_id":"le-carre-john-the-karla-trilogy-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-the-honourable-schoolboy-and-smileys-people","title":"LE CARRÉ, John. The Karla Trilogy: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLE CARRÉ, John.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Karla Trilogy: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Hodder and Stoughton\u003c\/i\u003e. 1974, 1977, 1979.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Three volumes. \u003ci\u003eTinker Tailor Soldier Spy\u003c\/i\u003e: original black cloth lettered in gilt to spine with Smiley monogram in gilt to upper board, top edge of text block purple (fresh and unfaded); \u003ci\u003eThe Honourable Schoolboy\u003c\/i\u003e: original blue cloth lettered in gilt to spine, this copy the variant with illustrated map endpapers; \u003ci\u003eSmiley’s People\u003c\/i\u003e: original blue cloth lettered in gilt to spine; all in the original illustrated dust-jackets; pp. 349, [1]; pp. 532; pp. 327, [1]; wrappers with occasional rubs and nicks to edges and extremities, \u003ci\u003eTinker Tailor\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e Smiley\u003c\/i\u003e a touch faded to the spine, discreetly reapaired closed tear (c. 3cm) to upper front edge of \u003ci\u003eSmiley\u003c\/i\u003e wrapper; overall, a crisp, sharp near fine set. \u003ci\u003eTinker Tailor Soldier Spy\u003c\/i\u003e inscribed in black ink, \"John Le Carré \/ a.k.a David Cornwell \/ 19th November 2019 \/ Cornwall\".\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA bright sharp set of first editions and printings of the author's great trilogy, the first volume signed and dated by the author as both David Cornwell and John Le Carré.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLe Carré’s magnum opus, the trilogy constitutes one of the most significant achievements of postwar British fiction. Through George Smiley’s extended struggles with his Soviet counterpart and nemesis, Karla, the sequence as a whole recasts the spy novel as a study of institutional failure, moral compromise, and the long erosion of Cold War certainties.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124281\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56703922307449,"sku":"2124281","price":4500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124281.jpg?v=1771590716"},{"product_id":"pynchon-thomas-v","title":"PYNCHON, Thomas. V.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePYNCHON, Thomas.\u003c\/strong\u003e V. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Jonathan Cape.\u003c\/i\u003e 1963.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original black cloth lettered in silver to the spine, in the neatly price-clipped dustwrapper designed by Leigh Hunt; pp. 492, [2]; pink top-stain faded, light bump to lower outer corner of rear panel, wrapper with a little wear to extremities and very light tidemark to lower edge; a sharp near fine copy in like wrapper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn attractive first UK edition, first printing of Pynchon's richly inventive debut novel.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePynchon’s first novel follows Benny Profane, a discharged U.S. Navy sailor, as he drifts among the bohemian artists of the “Whole Sick Crew” in postwar New York. Meanwhile, Herbert Stencil pursues the elusive woman known only as “V.” her existence reconstructed from fragments in his father’s journals. Spanning six decades, multiple continents, combining comedy, sadness and much else, the novel’s extraordinary energy and invention announced Pynchon as a fresh voice and major force in postwar American fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123726\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56703932924281,"sku":"2123726","price":400.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123726.jpg?v=1771590906"},{"product_id":"anon-hotel-du-pavillon-paris","title":"ANON. Hotel du Pavillon, Paris.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eANON.\u003c\/strong\u003e Hotel du Pavillon, Paris.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginal hotel luggage label, c.1919. 125 x 160 mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hotel Pavillon de La Reine is named after Anne of Austria, Queen of France, who lived in the wing that separated the residence from the present day Place de Vosges in the Marais district of Paris in the 17th Century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was built between 1605 and 1608 and has had several notable owners throughout its history. Guests have included James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. The building was listed as a historic monument in 1984.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrinters: Pap. Imp. Des Hotels. J. Devouge_Paris.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a very rare label in fine condition.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123811\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56745984950649,"sku":"2123811","price":300.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123811.jpg?v=1772181058"},{"product_id":"beckett-samuel-author-and-translator-waiting-for-godot-a-tragicomedy-in-two-acts-1","title":"BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot, a tragicomedy in two acts.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eGodot\u003c\/i\u003e Arrives in America\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBECKETT, Samuel.\u003c\/strong\u003e Waiting for Godot, a tragicomedy in two acts. \u003ci\u003eNew York: Grove Press.\u003c\/i\u003e 1954.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt and silver and in blind across boards and spine, red endpapers, in the dust-jacket priced $4.75 to upper edge of front flap; pp. [7], ff. 7–60, pp. [5]; 2 ff. photographic plates after p. iv; extremities of dust-jacket lightly rubbed, spine a little toned, small pink stain to lower edge of rear flap; a near-fine copy in a very good jacket.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA crisp, bright copy of the first printing in English of Beckett’s most famous work, preceding the expurgated UK issue by two years.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eEn attendant Godot\u003c\/i\u003e was first published by Les Éditions de Minuit in 1952 and premiered on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris. Beckett’s English translation, completed later the same year, was first staged on 3 August 1955 at London’s Arts Theatre, directed by Peter Hall, the American premiere, directed by Alan Schneider, taking place on 3 January 1956 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. The US edition of the translation, issued by Grove Press in September 1954, predates the UK edition, which was published by Faber and Faber in February 1956. The Faber edition included cuts to the text required by the Lord Chamberlain (the play described by censor C. W. Heriot as an ‘ugly little jet of marsh-gas’ and ‘two hours of angry boredom’); the cuts would remain unrestored in UK editions until 1965.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFederman \u0026amp; Fletcher 373.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124869\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56923590623609,"sku":"2124869","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124869.jpg?v=1774976807"},{"product_id":"bell-clive-bell-clive-since-cezanne","title":"BELL, Clive. Since Cézanne.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBELL, Clive.\u003c\/strong\u003e Since Cézanne. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Chatto and Windus\u003c\/i\u003e. 1922.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s blue cloth with white title-label to spine lettered in black, fore and bottom edge untrimmed; pp. [8], 229, [3], with eight black and white illustrated plates depicting artworks including a frontispiece; lacking the dust-jacket, toning and rubbing to title label, a little pushing to crown and base of spine; toning to edges of textblock, toning to endpapers, small ‘p’ to final blank; near fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first impression of Clive Bell’s treatise on the Post-Impressionists.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClive Bell was central to the artistic movement of the Bloomsbury Group. He met Leonard Woolf and others during his first term at Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1899. His love and interest in art grew during his years as a student, and he won the Earl of Derby scholarship which allowed him to travel to Paris in 1904. Although his scholarship of art grew, so did his love of cafés and the company of artists.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1914, he published \u003ci\u003eArt\u003c\/i\u003e for which he is best remembered. In this work he puts forward his theory of ‘Significant Form’, that the quality common to all works ‘that provoke our aesthetic emotions’ are the ‘relations and combinations of lines and colours’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee, BELL, Art (1914).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125003\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57122259370361,"sku":"2125003","price":200.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125003.jpg?v=1776858394"},{"product_id":"farina-richard-been-down-so-long-it-looks-like-up-to-me","title":"FARIÑA, Richard. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFARIÑA, Richard.\u003c\/strong\u003e Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. \u003ci\u003eNew York: Random House\u003c\/i\u003e. 1966.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s quarter binding with green cloth to spine and blue card over boards, lettered and illustrated with white, black and yellow, top-edge blue and fore-edges untrimmed, illustrated dust-jacket designed by Eric Von Schmidt with printed price of $5.95 to front flap; spine a little sunned and whites of jacket a little rubbed, minor shelfwear; ex-libris label front pastedown partially removed; very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first impression of Fariña's first and only novel.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart campus novel, part travelogue, Richard Fariña's novel explores the complexities of early adulthood through its protagonist, Gnossos Pappadopoulis. He wrote the novel while still a student at Cornell University, where he shared a room with Thomas Pynchon, who described this book as coming ‘on like the hallelujah chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch’. (\u003ci\u003eBlurb\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter leaving Cornell, Fariña became a staple of the Greenwich Village art scene, befriending the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, whose younger sister – Mimi – he would go on to marry in 1963. Fariña is often viewed as a bridge between the Beat Generation, and the hippie counter culture movement of the late 1960s. His life tends to raise more questions than it answers; tragically, he died in a motorcycle accident on the same day he signed copies of his book at the Carmel bookshop and café in California, published only two days before.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee, Barnett, Richard Fariña: lost genius who bridged the gap between beats and hippies (Guardian, 2016).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124653\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57122282471801,"sku":"2124653","price":375.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124653.jpg?v=1776858577"},{"product_id":"picquet-gilles-jaques-ecole-chrestienne-ou-le-miroir-de-la-jeunesse-auquel-elle-trouvera-comme-elle-doit-honnestement-converser-aller-venir-parler-plusieurs-autres-vertueuses-instructions-tres-utiles-necessaires-a-la-jeunesse-poetiquement","title":"PICQUET, Gilles Jaques. Ecole Chrestienne, où le Miroir de la jeunesse, auquel elle trouvera, comme elle doit honnestement converser, aller, venir, parler; \u0026 plusieurs autres vertueuses instructions tres-utiles; \u0026 necessaires à la jeunesse: poëtiquement…","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eMirror for Young Catholics\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePICQUET, Gilles Jaques.\u003c\/strong\u003e Ecole Chrestienne, où le Miroir de la jeunesse, auquel elle trouvera, comme elle doit honnestement converser, aller, venir, parler; \u0026amp; plusieurs autres vertueuses instructions tres-utiles; \u0026amp; necessaires à la jeunesse: poëtiquement composé. \u003ci\u003eBrussels: Chez Martin de Bossuyt, Imprimeur juré de la ville\u003c\/i\u003e. 1668.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Recent half calf with marbled sides, spine ruled and lettered directly in gilt; pp. [viii], 63, [1 (printer’s device)]; woodcut initials, head-, and tailpiece, woodcut vignette to title, large woodcut printer’s device to final verso; trimmed close at head touching title and running-titles, uniform light toning; else a very good copy; contemporary inscriptions ‘XII.’ and ‘Oratorij Bruxellensis’ to title-page (see below); contemporary markings in ink to a few pages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst and only edition, exceedingly rare, of this educational work in French verse on proper conduct for Catholic children.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten in French alexandrine verse, \u003ci\u003eL’Ecole Chrétienne, or Miroir de la jeunesse\u003c\/i\u003e offers a comprehensive guide to cultivating civility and moral integrity in young people. The work is organised into thirty-five chapters, each providing practical advice with titles such as ‘Avoid incivility’, ‘Learn Latin’, ‘Respect the priests’, ‘How to behave in churches’, and ‘How to serve the table’. Nearly every facet of youthful propriety is addressed. Chapter twenty-five, ‘Avoid the Huguenots’, warns that ‘all their false loyalties are held together like the strings of a gated instrument, whose discordant sounds serve only to offend the ear’ – a sentiment that foreshadows the revocation of the Edict of Nantes more than fifteen years later.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVirtually nothing is known about the author, Gilles Jacques Picquet, who here styles himself as ‘Maistre de la plume d’or’ (‘master of the golden quill’). The volume is dedicated to Antoine de Dyn, who became écolâtre (headmaster) of the cathedral school of Brussels in 1664 (see d’Hoop, \u003ci\u003eInventaire général des archives ecclésiastiques du Brabant\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is also a dedicatory poem in French by the printer, Martin de Bossuyt the Younger with the chronogrammatic title ‘Etreines De L’an MILLe soIXante-hVIt’, on the act of printing the present work and the importance of its contents for young readers, describing the pages of the text as the glass of the titular mirror for youth. De Bossuyt would later be investigated by the Council of Brabant, along with Jan Mommaert and Philippe Vleugaert, for ‘the printing of books without a privilege or books suspected of heresy, and for the sale of defamatory booklets’ (Adam, p. 117).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: From the library of the Oratory of Brussels. The Congregation of the Oratorians was invited from France by Jacobus Boonen (1573–1655), Archbishop of Mechelen, to counter the expanding influence of the Jesuits. The Oratory was demolished in 1795, and its library dispersed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2119408\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313441382777,"sku":"2119408","price":850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2119408a_40b14c5e-fc83-454c-be66-a6dceed07bbb.jpg?v=1787056386"},{"product_id":"ruggle-george-ignoramus-comoedia-coram-regia-maiestate-jacobi-regis-anliae-etc","title":"RUGGLE, George. Ignoramus, comoedia coram regia maiestate Jacobi regis anliae etc.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eSuch Vice the King Saw It Twice\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRUGGLE, George.\u003c\/strong\u003e Ignoramus, comoedia coram regia maiestate Jacobi regis anliae etc. \u003ci\u003eLondon: [Thomas Purfoot for] I. S[pencer].\u003c\/i\u003e 1630.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e12mo. Contemporary English sheep, spine gilt-ruled in compartments, boards filleted in gilt with gilt floral centrepiece, preserved in a modern clamshell book-form burgundy morocco box (upper cover lettered ‘Phillip C. Broughton | 21.9.80’ in gilt; pp. [iv], 187, [1], with copper-engraved frontispiece depicting the titular Ignoramus; typographic headpieces, woodcut and typographic head- and tailpieces, woodcut labore et constantia device to title; somewhat rubbed and worn, a few slight abrasions to upper board, small loss to headcap; gift inscription in violet pencil to front free endpaper dated 2 October 1882, contemporary ownership inscription to title, ‘?J Nicholls’, contemporary annotation to rear free endpaper and pastedown (see below); a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of the celebrated early Stuart Cambridge comedy, ‘by some distance the most successful of all the university plays’\u003c\/strong\u003e (D. K. Money).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe literary reputation of George Ruggle (bap. 1575, d. 1621\/2), Latin playwright and fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, rests on this virtuoso college farce, which was performed to great success at Trinity College during James I’s visitation in March 1615. The production was staged at considerable expense, with seating fitted in the hall to accommodate a large audience of courtiers and academics, reportedly as many as two thousand people. The contemporary letter-writer John Chamberlain reported that ‘the thing was full of mirth and varietie, with many excellent actors…but more then halfe marred with extreme length’ (Nelson, pp. 539–41). Despite its five-hour length, the play was enthusiastically received by the king, who requested a repeat performance at Royston on 13 May 1615. Less enthusiastic, however, was the actor Samuel Fairclough, who in the first performance refused to wear women’s clothes for the part of Surda, the old woman; as his biographer noted, ‘Thus did this youth choose to lose the smiles of the Court, and to bear the frowns of the Vice-Chancellour, rather than to hazard the loss of the light of Gods countenance’ (\u003ci\u003eibid\u003c\/i\u003e., p. 543).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten in Latin, with passages in English and French, Ruggle’s college farce is based on the comedy \u003ci\u003eLa Trappolaria\u003c\/i\u003e by Giambattista Della Porta (1535–1615), itself an adaptation of Plautus’ \u003ci\u003ePseudolus\u003c\/i\u003e with additional elements drawn from several other Roman comedies. Satirising common lawyers, the subject was allegedly prompted by a local Cambridge dispute in 1611–12 which had led to friction between Francis Brakin, the town recorder, and the university. Brakin, evidently an unpopular figure, had previously been ridiculed in the third of the Cambridge \u003ci\u003eParnassus\u003c\/i\u003e plays (1602). Ignoramus’ titular character is a blustering lawyer whose mangled learning, professional arrogance, and misuse of barbarous law-Latin make him both fool and target. The play’s frontispiece depicts Ignoramus with his law books and manuscripts declaring ‘Currat lex’ (the law will run its course). Ruggle’s work provoked much resentment among lawyers, who retaliated with numerous rhymes and ballads in their defence; Chamberlain wrote that the play ‘hath so netled the Lawiers that they are almost out of all patience’ (p. 542). Subsequently the poet Abraham Cowley warned poets not to quarrel with scholars, ‘lest some one take \/ Spleene, and another Ignoramus make.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRuggle’s hero Ignoramus is often credited with popularising the English noun for an ignorant person, a meaning recorded almost immediately after the Cambridge performances.\u003c\/strong\u003e It appeared in two editions in 1630 (of which this is the earliest), and these were followed by a total of eleven subsequent editions throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was first translated into English by Fernando Parkhurst in 1660, followed by Robert Codrington in 1662, and was adapted for the stage by Edward Ravenscroft in 1678.\u003cbr\u003eRuggle was a major donor of books, over three hundred of which survive at the fellows’ library at Clare College, including many scarce French, Spanish, and Italian plays, and Latin treatises.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: the front pastedown of our copy is inscribed by a contemporary reader ‘I know’, perhaps a playful rejoinder to the title’s Latin Ignoramus (‘we do not know’).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eESTC S116280; Greg II, L8(a). See Nelson ed., Cambridge (Records of Early English Drama) (1989).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125023\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313935589753,"sku":"2125023","price":1250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125023e.jpg?v=1779383239"},{"product_id":"southey-robert-all-for-love-and-the-pilgrim-to-compostella","title":"SOUTHEY, Robert. All for Love; and The Pilgrim to Compostella.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eParis-Printed Poems for a ‘Sister Poetess’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSOUTHEY, Robert.\u003c\/strong\u003e All for Love; and The Pilgrim to Compostella. \u003ci\u003eParis: A \u0026amp; W Galignani\u003c\/i\u003e. 1829.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e24mo. Contemporary straight-grained red roan, covers with gilt- and blind-tooled border and central lozenge, flat spine gilt in compartments with gilt black morocco lettering-piece, speckled edges, corners of board-edges roll-tooled in gilt; pp. [6], 159, [1 (blank)], with half-title; corners, upper joint, and spine ends lightly worn, a few small scuffs to rear board at head; light spotting throughout (heavier to first and final leaves); a very good copy; neat early ownership inscription ‘Annette Newton, Paris’ to front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA delightful and very rare Parisian edition of Southey’s two late narrative poems, published in the same year as the first, dedicated to his ‘dear friend, […] sister Poetess’ and future wife, Caroline Bowles, our copy in a charming contemporary binding.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRobert Southey (1774–1843), with his friends Wordsworth and Coleridge was, during the revolutionary 1790s, something of a radical spirit. With Coleridge, he devised the idealistic and never-realised scheme of pantisocracy, an imagined egalitarian settlement in North America. Like them, however, he grew more conservative with age, and in 1813 was appointed Poet Laureate, a post he held until his death thirty years later.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis attractive and uncommon little volume – more often encountered in its John Murray edition issued the same year – was among Southey’s final poetic works and appears to have been animated by his growing attachment to the poet Caroline Bowles. The book is dedicated to her with a twelve-line poem, located and dated ‘Keswick, 21 Feb. 1829’, which prompted Bowles to write to Southey of ‘a sense of deep unworthiness, a gush of tears, and an inward prayer to become more worthy of such friendship.’ Southey claimed his intention was merely to bring Bowles’ name as a poet before a wider public (she is addressed as his ‘dear friend, and sister Poetess’), but the dedication reads unmistakably as a love poem. They were married ten years later, two years after the death of Southey’s first wife.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘All for Love’ (not to be confused with Dryden’s play) and ‘The Pilgrimage to Compostella’ were both commissioned for literary annuals (where, for different reasons, neither appeared). In mid-February 1828, Charles Heath, publisher of The Keepsake, travelled to the Lake District to commission contributions from its distinguished residents, offering Wordsworth one hundred guineas for five short poems and Southey fifty for a single long one (Coleridge was also enlisted). ‘I sold him,’ Southey explained in a letter to his friend Allan Cunningham (24 February 1828), ‘a ballad-poem entitled “All for Love, or a Sinner well Saved”, of which one-and-twenty stanzas were then written. I have added fifty since, and am only half-way through the story. It is a very striking one […].’ The poem outgrew the limits of the commission and was replaced by two shorter pieces. ‘The Pilgrimage to Compostella’, written a few weeks later for Cunningham’s annual, The Anniversary, was omitted by the publisher, who feared it might prevent the annual from selling in Roman Catholic circles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth poems recall Southey’s early experiments with the narrative ballad with Wordsworth and Coleridge. Their subject matter is drawn from Iberian Catholic legend and miracle, to which Southey was clearly drawn while regarding the stories as mere superstition. Reserving his more explicit anti-Catholic polemic for his prose works, the poems invite the reader to suspend disbelief and engage with the narratives on their own terms. ‘All for Love’ tells the story of a young suitor who sells his soul to the devil to win his bride, eventually escaping through the intercession of St Basil. Its companion piece relates the fate of a young pilgrim executed for a theft he did not commit; miraculously immune from death, he is saved when the judge who condemned him is punished when the roast chickens he eats spring back to life. The volume was well received, The Monthly Review praising ‘All for Love’ as ‘an admirable poem,’ asserting that ‘both in invention and pathos’ it placed Southey higher ‘in the rank of poets […] than any of his former productions’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSouthey clearly had readers abroad, as evidenced by this uncommon Parisian pocket edition, published the same year as the London edition by Jules Didot, founder of the Royal Printing House in Brussels and inventor of round-edged initials, for the Galignani brothers. The Galignanis, noted publishers of English books for the continental market, sometimes paid authors for advance sheets (and sometimes not). In 1826, Sir Walter Scott recorded a visit to their Parisian premises – their ‘old pirate’s den’ – emerging, ‘after some palaver’, with an offer of one hundred guineas for sheets of his Life of Napoleon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds copies at the Royal Danish Library, British Library, and Bibliothèque nationale de France only. No copies traced in the US. See Fulford et al, eds., Southey, Later Poetical Works, 1811–1838 IV (2024); Dowden ed., The Correspondence of Robert Southey and Caroline Bowles (1881).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124369\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313939161465,"sku":"2124369","price":300.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124369.jpg?v=1779383263"},{"product_id":"lessing-doris-the-golden-notebook","title":"LESSING, Doris The Golden Notebook.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eSocietal and Psychological Fragmentation\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLESSING, Doris\u003c\/strong\u003e The Golden Notebook. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Michael Joseph.\u003c\/i\u003e 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine, iconic yellow dust wrapper designed by William Belcher with author’s photograph to rear panel, priced at 30s to front flap; pp. 567, [1]; a little wear to jacket especially to hinges of flaps, a few chips and small closed tears, slight toning to spine, a couple of short pen marks to spine and one to front panel, slight pushing to crown of spine; endpapers lightly offset, some toning to edges of textblock; else a near-fine copy in a very good dust-jacket.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first impression of the Nobel Prize winner’s masterpiece.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eGolden Notebook\u003c\/i\u003e centres on Anna Wulf, a writer who is attempting to unify the four fragmented notebooks in which she has compartmentalised her life into a single ‘golden’ volume. Lessing’s inspiration for the novel arose out of a desire to write a book about the act of writing itself. Initially, she resisted this ambition, feeling as though the trope had been overworked, but over time she realised her individual approach could render it entirely new.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith an explicit focus on the position of women in society, Lessing explores wider societal breakdown through the mental break Anna is experiencing. Written at the dawn of second-wave feminism, the work resonates with the era’s emergent discourses on sexual liberation and the women’s movement.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2120161\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313950073209,"sku":"2120161","price":600.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2120161.jpg?v=1779383428"},{"product_id":"ravenscroft-edward-the-english-lawyer-a-comedy","title":"RAVENSCROFT, Edward The English Lawyer; a Comedy: Acted at the Royal Theatre.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eRavenscroft's Ruggle\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRAVENSCROFT, Edward\u003c\/strong\u003e The English Lawyer; a Comedy: Acted at the Royal Theatre. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Printed by J. M. for James Vade at the Cock and Sugar-loaf near St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-street. \u003c\/i\u003e1678.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall 4to. Twentieth-century brown morocco by Sangorski \u0026amp; Sutcliffe for Phillip C. Broughton (initials P.C.B. gilt to upper board), turn-ins ruled in gilt, two raised bands, spine lettered directly in gilt, edges stained red; pp. [iv], 67, [3], bound without final blank K4; inner margin of title subtly reinforced, not affecting printed area, uniform toning, slightly foxed throughout; overall very good; twentieth-century Sotheran’s stamp, Sackville Street, to front pastedown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVery scarce first edition of Ravenscroft’s adaptation of George Ruggle’s celebrated Latin comedy Ignoramus, first printed in 1630.\u003cbr\u003eEdward Ravenscroft (fl. 1659–1697), playwright, was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1659 and to the Middle Temple in 1667, though there is no evidence that he was called to the bar, and he appears to have devoted his attention mainly to literature. By the early 1670s he had turned to the theatre, becoming one of the period’s more active refashioners of earlier plays for the Restoration stage.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe English Lawyer is Ravenscroft’s English adaptation of Ruggle’s Latin comedy, first printed in 1630. Ravenscroft brings the celebrated university comedy to the public theatre, retaining the biting satirisation of loquacious and avaricious lawyers, but reducing the original five-hour performance to less than three hours. In addition to Ruggle’s original, Ravenscroft’s sources likely include earlier English translations by Fernando Parkhurst in 1660 and Robert Codrington in 1662, both of which represent faithful translations rather than attempts to adapt the play to the commercial stage. The result is a notable revival of one of the most famous academic plays of the Jacobean period, here recast for performance at the Royal Theatre in 1677.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRavenscroft’s deftly crafted farce of mistaken identity follows the convoluted and ultimately unsuccessful attempts of the English lawyer Ignoramus to marry the Moroccan ward of a Portuguese merchant living in Smyrna, while offering a sharp critique of the jargon of common law. Ignoramus’ fondness for delivering pompous legal maxims in Latin self-consciously evokes the habits and speech of ‘the archetypal English lawyer of the early modern period’, Sir Edward Coke. Although the former Chief Justice had died in 1634, his writings remained the subject of debate throughout the seventeenth century. In the epilogue to The English Lawyer, Ignoramus exactly reproduces phrases drawn from Coke’s Institutes of the Laws of England: ‘Criticks are all free Subjects, and to be debar’d of their Liberty is directly against Magna Charta, the very fundamental Laws of the Realm’ (Raffield, p. 385).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRavenscroft’s own legal associations give the choice of subject particular interest. His connection with the Inns of Court appears to have been somewhat unsettled: four years prior to the staging of The English Lawyer, on 30 May 1673, Ravenscroft’s chamber was seized for arrears in rent. More broadly, Ravenscroft is remembered as the first critic to posit that Titus Andronicus was not originally the work of Shakespeare, a position now known as the ‘Ravenscroft tradition’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis copy is the only example of any edition to have appeared at auction since 1993.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eESTC R7262; Wing R2211. See Raffield, ‘A Discredited Priesthood’ (2005).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125024\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57317136597369,"sku":"2125024","price":2000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125024c.jpg?v=1779441775"},{"product_id":"macneice-louis-autumn-journal-1","title":"MACNEICE, Louis. Autumn Journal.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMACNEICE, Louis.\u003c\/strong\u003e Autumn Journal. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Faber and Faber\u003c\/i\u003e. 1939.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original terracotta cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust-jacket, priced 6s. net to front flap; pp. 96; small abrasion to the cloth at the foot of the spine, affecting the upper edge of the final ‘F’ in the gilt ‘F[aber] \u0026amp; F[aber]’, small area of abrasion to foot of jacket spine, minor loss to spine tips, light edgewear and marking along the upper edge of rear panel; a near-fine copy in a very good jacket.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first impression, a notably bright copy of MacNeice’s great autobiographical poem written in the months leading up to the outbreak of war.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten between August and December 1938, Autumn Journal records the author’s state of mind as war seemed increasingly inevitable. ‘On the one hand it comprises events, places seen, subjects thought about, even nightmares; on the other hand it has a dramatic aspect, as the different types of person combined in the author are each given their opportunity to speak’ (jacket). ‘It is’, MacNeice wrote to T. S. Eliot while preparing the work for publication, ‘my best work to date; […] both a panorama and a confession of faith.’ In print ever since, it remains, alongside Eliot’s Four Quartets, one of the great poetic works of the period. Published in May 1939 in an edition of 5,975 copies.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArmitage A12a.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125158\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57327530508665,"sku":"2125158","price":400.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125158.jpg?v=1793274210"},{"product_id":"lang-andrew-translator-aucassin-and-nicolette","title":"LANG, Andrew ( translator ). Aucassin and Nicolette.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLANG, Andrew (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Aucassin and Nicolette. \u003ci\u003eLondon: David Nutt\u003c\/i\u003e. 1887.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Contemporary red crushed morocco by Riviere \u0026amp; Son (ticket to front free endpaper) with publisher’s illustrated wrappers printed in red and black bound at end, spine lettered directly in gilt, raised bands, turn-ins richly roll-tooled in gilt, top-edge gilt, other edges uncut; pp. [4], xx, 70, [2], with engraved frontispiece signed ‘P. J.-Hood; text printed in red and black; extremities gently rubbed; the odd mark, else an excellent copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, one of 550 copies (of which 500 for sale) on Japanese paper, of this translation of this French medieval romance by Andrew Lang, author of The Lang’s Fairy Books (including The Blue Fairy Book), this copy in a fine contemporary binding.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten in Old French by an anonymous author in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, Aucassin and Nicolette is the only known example of a chantefable (literally ‘sung story’), a hybrid form combining prose and verse. The text survives in a single manuscript, discovered and published in 1752 by French medievalist Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye. A playful parody of the medieval romance, it recounts the tale of Aucassin, son of Count Garin of Beaucaire, whose love for Nicolette, a Saracen captive raised as a daughter by one of the count’s vassals, leads him to forsake chivalry and even to refuse to defend his father’s lands against attack.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScottish anthropologist, classicist, and historian Andrew Lang (1844–1912), collector of folk stories and fairy tales, is perhaps best known for the Langs’ Fairy Books (also called Andrew Lang’s ‘Coloured’ Fairy Books), twelve collections of fairy tales produced in collaboration with his wife, Leonora Blanche Lang. This translation of Aucassin and Nicolette appeared in the same year as that of the English poet and translator Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921), published by Kegan Paul, Trench \u0026amp; Co. Lang’s rendering was particularly admired by Ezra Pound, who remarked that ‘Lang was born in order that he might translate it perfectly […] bringing into his English all the gay, sunlit charm of the original.’ (p. 84).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wonderful engraved frontispiece is the work of George Percy Jacomb-Hood (1857–1929), who was, with Walter Crane, the illustrator of Wilde’s 1888 The Happy Prince and Other Tales; he sent Wilde a copy of the present work (see Wilde’s autograph letter to Jacomb-Hood, Sotheby’s, 29 October 2004, lot 32).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Pound, Spirit of Romance (1910).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124441\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63734938861945,"sku":"2124441","price":300.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124441.jpg?v=1781081162"},{"product_id":"charles-i-john-gauden-εἰκὼν-βασιλικὴ-eikon-basilike-the-pourtraicture-of-his-sacred-majestie-in-his-solitudes-and-sufferings","title":"CHARLES I [John GAUDEN]. Εἰκὼν Βασιλικὴ [Eikon Basilike]. The pourtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in his solitudes and sufferings.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCHARLES I [John GAUDEN].\u003c\/strong\u003e Εἰκὼν Βασιλικὴ [Eikon Basilike]. The pourtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in his solitudes and sufferings. [\u003ci\u003eLondon: William Dugard\u003c\/i\u003e.] “1648” [\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003c\/i\u003e 1649].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Contemporary black morocco, rebacked with original spine, covers with double fillet border, central floral lozenge and cornerpieces, flat spine gilt ruled in compartments with later gilt lettering, gilt edges, endpapers renewed; pp. [6], 208, 107-154, 255-302, [8], with double-page engraved frontispiece after William Marshall, woodcut initial and typographic headpieces; spine a little discoloured, extremities very lightly rubbed; the occasional spot, but generally a very good, crisp copy; presentation inscription “Louisa Davis given by her affectionate mother Selina Jawin January 1815” to front free endpaper; earlier signatures of John Hox and John Symes to rear endpaper, ticket of Salisbury Bookbinders to rear pastedown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEarly edition of the \u003ci\u003eEikon Basilike\u003c\/i\u003e, Charles I’s spiritual biography and a bestseller of Royalist propaganda, handsomely preserved in a fine contemporary binding.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst published on 9 February 1649, only ten days after Charles I’s execution, the \u003ci\u003eΕἰκὼν Βασιλική\u003c\/i\u003e (Eikon Basilike, lit. “Royal portrait”) rapidly became one of the most widely read and influential books ever printed in English. Written in a plain yet poignant diaristic style, it blends irenic prayers seeking forgiveness of the king’s executioners with a defence of royalism and of Charles’s political and military conduct. Although long attributed to Charles himself, authorship is now generally credited to John Gauden (1605-1662), Bishop of Worcester, who may have incorporated genuine writings of the king.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDespite Parliamentary efforts to suppress it, the book was a runaway success: thirty-six editions in 1649 alone, including the present one. Central to its impact was William Marshall’s famous allegorical frontispiece, here in a version re-designed specifically for this edition. Depicting Charles as a Christian martyr, the image helped foster the cult of the king as \u003ci\u003eMartyr Rex\u003c\/i\u003e: Charles holds a crown of thorns symbolising Christ’s Passion and heavenly glory, while his discarded royal crown lies at his feet. In response to the book’s immense success, Parliament commissioned a scathing rebuttal by John Milton, the \u003ci\u003eEikonoklastes\u003c\/i\u003e (“Icon-breaker”), published later that same year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis edition is notable for omitting reference to the “Prayers” on its title page or in the contents, suggesting that they were added in haste. Bound at the end is “A true relation of the Kings speech to the Lady Elizabeth, and the Duke of Gloucester, the day before his death” and “An Epitaph upon King Charles”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMadan 21; ESTC R29848.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125413\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63801003114873,"sku":"2125413","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125413_62046dca-d95f-4fca-b394-68a6ac2133f2.jpg?v=1787054872"},{"product_id":"wotton-henry-reliquiae-wottonianae-or-a-collection-of-lives-letters-poems-with-characters-of-sundry-personages-and-other-incomparable-pieces-of-language-and-art-by-the-curious-pensil-of-the-ever-memorable-sr-henry-wotton-kt-late-provost-of-eto","title":"WOTTON, Henry. Reliquiae Wottonianae. Or, A collection of lives, letters, poems; with characters of sundry personages: and other incomparable pieces of language and art. By the curious Pensil of the Ever Memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt, Late, Provost of Eto…","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWOTTON, Henry.\u003c\/strong\u003e Reliquiae Wottonianae. Or, A collection of lives, letters, poems; with characters of sundry personages: and other incomparable pieces of language and art. By the curious Pensil of the Ever Memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt, Late, Provost of Eton Colledg. \u003ci\u003eLondon: printed by Thomas Maxey, for R. Marriot, G. Bedel, and T. Garthwait.\u003c\/i\u003e 1651.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e12mo. Contemporary sheep, covers with double fillet borders in blind, rebacked, flat spine blind-ruled in compartments, gilt lettering direct; pp. [60], 540, with 4 engraved portraits, frontispiece engraving of author by Pierre Lombart (1613-181) (outer margin slightly trimmed as usual), portrait of George Villiers trimmed and mounted (shaving caption), title with typographic border of fleurons, woodcut initials and typographic headpieces; moderate wear to boards and corners, lighter square patch to spine, pages bright and clean; overall a very good copy; neat contemporary marginal annotations in ink, predominantly to ‘A Surveigeh of Education’ (pp. 315-35), small tear to upper corner of N12; elegant and intricate diagram of a staircase (‘A Stayrecase’) in the same hand to the first blank (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of this wonderfully various, posthumously published, Collected Works.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eReliquiae\u003c\/i\u003e, essentially a posthumous Collected Works, amounts to a portrait of an exemplary Renaissance English gentleman (‘the most widely cultivated Englishman of his time’ [Pearsall Smith]). Compiled by Wotton’s friend and fishing companion, Issak Walton (1593-1683), the volume reflects the sheer breadth of Wotton’s private and public interests and enthusiasms, and the many facets of his career. Dedicated by Walton to Mary Lady Wotton née Throckmorton (Wotton’s niece by marriage), and her three daughters, the preliminary ‘Advertisement to the Reader’ begins with three ‘Testimonies’, the second, notably, ‘that of the Great Secretary of Nature, the Lord Chancellor [Francis] \u003ci\u003eBacon\u003c\/i\u003e, who thought it not beneath Him to collect some of the Apothegmes and sayings of this Author.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn informal guide to the wonderful miscellany of the volume follows: ‘Thou shalt find in it many curious things about Architecture, Picture, Sculpture, Landskip, Magneticall experiments., Gardens, Fountains, Groves, Aviaries, Conservatories of rare beasts, Fish-ponds […] And also many observations of the Miseries and Laberinths in Courts and States delivered in Lives, Letters to, and Characters of sundry Personages’. An extensive indexed list of these characters and personages is given.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWalton’s affectionate memoir of Wotton (now famous as part of Walton’s series of \u003ci\u003eLives\u003c\/i\u003e) opens the collection proper. Two chapters (of parallels and disparities) are devoted to Wotton’s insights, as an insider, into Robert Devereux and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, infamous favourites of Elizabeth and James I respectively. ‘A Panegyrick to King Charles’ follows, preceding what purports to be a history of English Kings (grandly titled ‘A Conceipt of Some Observations Intended upon things most Remarkable in the Civil History of this Kingdom; And likewise in the State of the Church, From the Norman Invasion, till the Twelfth yeer of our virtuous Soveraign Charles the First, Whom God have in his precious Custody’). Following the account of William I (the Conqueror), however, it ends. This copy includes a pleasing contemporary marginal ink inscription beside William’s name: ‘This is the only history here mentioned’, as if short-changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA substantial part of the volume is devoted to \u003ci\u003eThe Elements of Architecture\u003c\/i\u003e, Wotton’s seminal translation and adaptation of Vitruvian principles and theories (previously published alone in 1624), a fine example of his engagement with continental thought and arguably the first significant work of architectural theory in English. The section devoted to the construction of staircases (pp. 249-51) inspired a contemporary owner of this copy to sketch, in some technical detail, a staircase to the blank recto of the frontispiece. \u003ci\u003eA Surveigh of Education\u003c\/i\u003e (1630) follows, complete with ‘An Epistle Dedicatory’ to King Charles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are essays on philosophy, religion, and diplomacy, poems, and a section of Wotton’s letters addressed to such luminaries as the Queen of Bohemia, Bacon, King James, and not least, the young John Milton, who visited the aging provost in 1638, before embarking upon his famous trip to Italy. Wotton praises Milton’s \u003ci\u003eComus\u003c\/i\u003e as ‘a dainty piece [sic] of entertainment […] Wherein I should much commend the Tragicall part, if the Lyricall did not ravish me with a certaine Dorique delicacy in your Songs and Odes; whereunto I must plainly confesse to have seen yet nothing Parallel in our Language: \u003ci\u003eIpsa mollities. \u003c\/i\u003e‘\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton in Two Volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eESTC R209190; Wing W3648. See Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton in Two Volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125412\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63801003213177,"sku":"2125412","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125412.jpg?v=1784215332"},{"product_id":"anon-riviera-palace-nice","title":"ANON. Riviera Palace, Nice.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eANON.\u003c\/strong\u003e Riviera Palace, Nice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginal hotel luggage label, c.1929. 120 x 120 mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Riviera Palace Hotel was designed by architect Sebastian-Marcel Biasini in 1889. The hotel was located on a one hectare park on Boulevard de Cimiez. The hotel was owned by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits (CIWL).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy the 1920's Nice had become very popular not just as a Winter resort but also a Summer destination. CIWL had introduced the Calais-Mediterranee Express (Blue train) in 1886 which carried most of the wealthy customers staying at the various palace hotels. After the second World War the hotel was converted to apartments. The building has mostly kept its Belle Epoque charm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrinters: Schwob \u0026amp; Richard, Paris.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRare.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125085\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63823617196409,"sku":"2125085","price":170.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125085.jpg?v=1782229015"},{"product_id":"anon-le-grand-hotel-saint-raphael","title":"ANON. Le Grand Hotel Saint-Raphael.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eANON.\u003c\/strong\u003e Le Grand Hotel Saint-Raphael.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginal hotel luggage label, c.1925. 80 x 100 mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Grand Hotel of Saint-Raphael inaugurated in March 1880, was the Citys first hotel designed specifically for foreign tourists. It was designed by architects Pierre Auble and Laurent Vianay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts popularity lead to a major expansion in 1888 with the addition of two more wings. As the first luxury establishment in the area, the Grand Hotel became the primary venue for high society receptions and events.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1958 it became a home for people of Armenian origin, but today welcomes all origins.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrinters: Eug, De Loche, Lyon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRare.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125064\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63823620112761,"sku":"2125064","price":180.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125064.jpg?v=1782229086"},{"product_id":"wotton-henry-the-state-of-christendom-or-a-most-exact-and-curious-discovery-of-many-secret-passages-and-hidden-mysteries-of-the-times-written-by-the-renowned-sr-henry-wotton-kt-ambassadour-in-ordinary-to-the-most-serene-republique-of-venice-and","title":"WOTTON, Henry. The state of Christendom: or, A most exact and curious discovery of many secret passages, and hidden mysteries of the times. Written by the renowned Sr Henry Wotton, kt. Ambassadour in Ordinary to the most serene republique of Venice, and…","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWOTTON, Henry.\u003c\/strong\u003e The state of Christendom: or, A most exact and curious discovery of many secret passages, and hidden mysteries of the times. Written by the renowned Sr Henry Wotton, kt. Ambassadour in Ordinary to the most serene republique of Venice, and late provost of Eaton Colledg. London \u003ci\u003eLondon: printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his shop at the Prince’s Arms in St Paul’s Church-yard.\u003c\/i\u003e 1657.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall folio. Contemporary speckled sheep, double fillet borders in blind, rebacked, red morocco lettering piece and gilt lettering to spine; pp. [20], 262, [2 (blank)], [2], 32, with engraved portrait of the author aged 72, woodcut initials, woodcut and typographic headpieces; bound without final blank, rear free endpaper renewed; extremities slightly worn, boards a little cuffed, two small abrasions to rear board; tiny wormholes and trails to inner margin of [*]1-Ee3 (not affecting text), to L3-ad finem (occasionally touching a few letters but not affecting legibility), and lower margin of Rr3-ad finem (far from printed surface), occasional mark; a very good, clean copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of this ambitious, densely argued work, written in 1594 but unpublished until 1657, which may, in manuscript, have been instrumental in cementing the lifelong friendship between Wotton and John Donne.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe State of Christendom\u003c\/i\u003e, written when the author was twenty-four years old, is cast as a report by an English Catholic abroad who, having ‘lived many years in voluntary exile and banishment’ and witnessed ‘the malicious and hostile Attempts which the Spanish Monarch [Philip II] […] practised against my gracious Soveraign [Elizabeth], and invincible State and Kingdom […]’, begins ‘to despair of my long desired return into my native Countrey’. (Pearsall Smith offers a persuasive account of Wotton’s narrative ruse.) Meeting with ‘an honest and kind English Gentleman, […] lately come out of \u003ci\u003eItaly\u003c\/i\u003e, […] to sojourn a few moneths in \u003ci\u003eFrance\u003c\/i\u003e, […] then return into \u003ci\u003eEngland\u003c\/i\u003e’, the pair strike a deal. In return for an analysis of some pressing political and religious issues and their causes (redolent of Wotton’s own work for Essex), the Gentleman promises to ‘purchase [the fugitive’s] return home with credit and countenance’. Erudite and rhetorically elaborate, \u003ci\u003eThe State of Christendom\u003c\/i\u003e purports to be the resulting text.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe work offers an overview of Europe’s turbulent political and religious past and the ongoing bloody conflicts between Catholic and Protestant powers. The dominance and danger of Spain and Philip II is a recurrent theme, while the plight of English Catholics abroad and need for religious toleration is implicit. England, under Elizabeth, is cast throughout as a model of Protestant moderation, unity, and strength. Wotton’s position will have appealed to his friend, John Donne, who, like many Elizabethans, balanced long-standing Catholic allegiances with loyalty to queen and state. A late-1590s letter from Donne to Wotton, confesses to having ‘almost condemned you of forgetting me but you are saved by your booke which I will keep till it pleaseth to dispose it otherwise’. The book in question, Dennis Flynn argues, was a manuscript copy of \u003ci\u003eThe State of Christendom\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe volume concludes with a supplementary justification of Antonio Pérez, former Spanish state secretary and protégé of the Earl of Essex (undertaken by Wotton at Essex’s request). Framed as a response to Pérez’s 1594 \u003ci\u003ePedaços de historia […]\u003c\/i\u003e (gifted to Wotton by the author), it analyses the scandal that led to the Spaniard’s exile: the poisoning of Juan Escobedo on Philip II’s orders, his imprisonment by Philip, and escape into France, where he became a figurehead for anti-Spanish dissent. The supplement reinforces the work’s broader warning against tyranny, religious persecution, and unchecked royal power.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe timing of book’s publication in 1657, during Cromwell’s Protectorate (and another Anglo-Spanish conflict), is pertinent. Humphrey Mosely, its publisher, was known as a publisher of Royalist texts. Wotton’s patriotism, exaltation of the Virgin Queen, and religious tolerance may have chimed with the Royalist cause, but this unusual, semi-fictional, treatise is subtler than such binaries suggest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eESTC R21322; Wing W3654. See Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton in Two Volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907); Dennis Flynn, ‘Donne, Henry Wotton, and the Earl of Essex’, John Donne Journal, Vol. 14 (1995); Lisa Jardine and William Sherman, ‘Pragmatic readers: Knowledge transactions and scholarly services in late Elizabethan England’, in Gabriel Harvey and the History of Reading (London: UCL Press, 2024).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123081\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64021719941497,"sku":"2123081","price":1250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123081.jpg?v=1784626247"},{"product_id":"scott-thomas-attributed-robert-earle-of-essex-his-ghost-sent-from-elizian-to-the-nobility-gentry-and-communaltie-of-england","title":"[SCOTT, Thomas, attributed .] Robert Earle of Essex his ghost, sent from Elizian: to the nobility, gentry, and communaltie of England.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eHandsomely bound by Sangorski \u0026amp; Sutcliffe\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[SCOTT, Thomas, \u003ci\u003eattributed\u003ci\u003e.]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Robert Earle of Essex his ghost, sent from Elizian: to the nobility, gentry, and communaltie of England. \u003ci\u003e‘Printed in Paradise’ [i.e. London: John Beale?]\u003c\/i\u003e. 1624.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo parts in one vol., small 4to. Twentieth-century red morocco signed by Sangorski \u0026amp; Sutcliffe, London, boards with gilt lozenge at centres, spine with raised bands lettered directly in gilt, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges, house in a red morocco and cloth slipcase; pp. [2], 18, [2 (blank)], [2], 11, [1 (blank)], woodcut initials, typographic headpieces; first and final leaf lightly dust-soiled, otherwise very good; bookplates of Walter T. Shirley II (1933-1992), an American real estate developer, to front pastedown, and of the Fox Pointe Collection to front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, very rare, of this anonymous attack on the proposed ‘Spanish Match’, the marriage negotiations between the future Charles I and the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, thinly disguised as an autobiographical sketch of the second Earl of Essex.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAttributed to the radical Protestant polemicist Thomas Scott (c. 1580-1626), this anti-Spanish pamphlet denounced the protracted and deeply unpopular diplomatic effort to unite Prince Charles (later Charles I) with the Catholic daughter of Philip III of Spain. Negotiations for the match, pursued between 1614 and 1623, became a lightning rod for debates over England’s foreign policy and religious identity during the reign of James VI \u0026amp; I, fuelling widespread fears of a Catholic resurgence and the betrayal of Protestant values.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe pamphlet takes the form of a posthumous speech delivered by the ghost of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex (executed for treason in 1601), from the Elysian Fields. By chronicling his own life and experiences, the ghost warns of Spanish malice and duplicity, and frames the match as a threat to the very soul of the English state. The second part, titled ‘A Post Script’, continues the polemic, recounting in vivid detail ‘cruell plots… practised in my time on earth, by the King and State of Spaine, against the Queen and State of England’. These include \u003cstrong\u003ereferences to the atrocities recorded by Bartolomé de las Casas against the ‘poore naked Indians in America’\u003c\/strong\u003e; the 1570 papal bull \u003ci\u003eRegnans in Excelsis\u003c\/i\u003e, which excommunicated Elizabeth I; the queen’s imagined poetic ‘Answere’ to that bull in 68 lines of rhymed verse (supplied, Essex says, because ‘you have not else-where seene it’); and a catalogue of attempted assassinations and conspiracies (Throckmorton, Parry, Babington, Dr. Lopez, Yorke and Williams) culminating in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and, ‘since my time on earth’, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, ‘hatched in hell’ and ‘consulted on and approved of in the Spanish King’s court’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe text includes two sonnets – one ascribed to King James and ‘received’ by Essex, the other supposedly translated from the original by the French Calvinist theologian Theodore Beza (1519-1605) – both of which are almost certainly apocryphal.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eESTC S101222 (in this edition A2r line 10 ends: ‘parti-’). Freeman, Bibliotheca Fictiva (2nd edition) 381.1.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122555\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64021720301945,"sku":"2122555","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122555.jpg?v=1784626262"},{"product_id":"farr-florence-the-dancing-faun","title":"FARR, Florence. The Dancing Faun.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eSociety as Sham\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFARR, Florence.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Dancing Faun. \u003ci\u003eBoston: Roberts Brothers and London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane\u003c\/i\u003e. 1894.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s light blue cloth, spine lettered directly in gilt, upper board illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley and lettered in teal; pp. 169, [1 (blank)], [4 (advertisements)], lithographic title-page illustrated by Beardsley; spine ends and corners lightly bumped, spine lightly sunned, a few small flecks to boards, hinges cracked; front free endpaper excised; half-title inscribed ‘Martha ?Chaites Waters | from her cousin Clara’, dated 26 May 1911, occasional underlining in pencil.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, published simultaneously in London and Boston as the second instalment of Elkin Mathews’ \u003ci\u003eKeynotes\u003c\/i\u003e series; \u003ci\u003eThe Dancing Faun\u003c\/i\u003e is the first book by the actress, director, composer, and suffragist Florence Farr, friend of both Wilde and Beardsley.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFarr studied at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and was a childhood friend of May Morris; at the age of nineteen, she posed with Morris and other friends for Burne-Jones’s \u003ci\u003eThe Golden Stairs\u003c\/i\u003e (now at the Tate Britain). She subsequently studied at Queen’s College, the first British educational institution to grant women academic qualifications, and turned to acting; Farr wrote extensively on the ‘New Woman’ and on women’s rights, was a close friend and collaborator of both Yeats and Shaw, and was instrumental in establishing the New Stage Club, which staged the first performance of Wilde’s \u003ci\u003eSalomé\u003c\/i\u003e in England.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe was also a friend of Beardsley, from whom she commissioned a poster for her first directorial project at the Avenue Theatre on the Embankment, a joint production of Yeats’s \u003ci\u003eThe Land of Heart’s Desire\u003c\/i\u003e (written at Farr’s request) and \u003ci\u003eA Comedy of Sighs\u003c\/i\u003e by John Todhunter on 29 March 1894. The faun to the frontispiece ‘has the eyeglass and features of J[ames] McNeill Whistler’ (Vallance).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFarr was ‘a writer with a gift for witty, epigrammatic dialogue in the Oscar Wildean mode. Set in the world of actors and social poseurs with which Farr was personally familiar, \u003ci\u003eThe Dancing Faun\u003c\/i\u003e brilliantly illustrated the proposition that society itself was the greatest of stages – a realm composed entirely of “sham” in which, as the character noted, one’s only consolation was to recognise “that you would shudder a good deal more if you for one moment saw the truths which underlie these shams.”’ (Stetz and Samuels Lasner, p.42).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGertner Zatlin 826; Samuels Lasner 26; Vallance 69.ii; see Stetz and Samuels Lasner, England in the 1890s (1990).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125387\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64326483083641,"sku":"2125387","price":500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125387.jpg?v=1787325110"},{"product_id":"beardsley-aubrey-reproductions-of-eleven-designs-omitted-from-the-first-edition-of-le-morte-darthur-half-title-morte-darthur-portfolio","title":"BEARDSLEY, Aubrey Reproductions of Eleven Designs Omitted from the First Edition of Le Morte Darthur … [ Half-title :] Morte Darthur Portfolio.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003ePreviously Omitted Arthurian Illustrations\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBEARDSLEY, Aubrey\u003c\/strong\u003e Reproductions of Eleven Designs Omitted from the First Edition of Le Morte Darthur … [\u003ci\u003eHalf-title\u003ci\u003e:] Morte Darthur Portfolio. [\u003ci\u003eEdinburgh: Turnbull \u0026amp; Spears for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eLondon: J. M. Dent \u0026amp; Sons Ltd.\u003c\/i\u003e 1927.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Original calf-backed boards with vellum sides, floral design by Beardsley blocked to upper board in gilt, spine lettered directly in gilt, top-edge gilt, the others uncut; pp. [2 (blank, limitation)], 45, [3], with half-title; half-title within woodcut border, woodcut Dent device to title, initials, headpieces, cartouches, and 14 illustrations by Beardsley; light soiling and a few small scuffs to boards, short splits to joints unobtrusively repaired; slight offsetting to blank versos and to colophon, else internally very good; a handsome copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBeardsley’s \u003ci\u003eMorte d’Arthur Portfolio\u003c\/i\u003e, no. 19 of 300 copies on handmade paper, issued in conjunction with the 1927 third Beardsley-illustrated edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s \u003ci\u003eBirth, Life, and Acts of King Arthur.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Portfolio\u003c\/i\u003e contains fourteen drawings by Beardsley (intended as chapter headings but omitted from the 1893–94 first edition), an enlarged reproduction of his ‘Merlin’ drawing, an unused front wrapper design (adhered to p. 43), and a reproduction of the front wrapper as issued. The publisher J.M. Dent had planned, at the end of the nineteenth century, to create a lavish and beautiful illustrated version of Malory’s \u003ci\u003eMorte D’Arthur\u003c\/i\u003e, in a similar vein to Morris’s Kelmscott Press books, but using a less expensive printing process. Loath to pay the elevated fee Morris would have charged for this commission, Dent was persuaded to employ twenty-year-old Aubrey Beardsley, who became disillusioned with the project when several images needed to be dramatically reduced for printing. The first edition was published in 1893–94, with a second edition appearing in 1909.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDue to increasing demand, a third edition was issued in 1927, with ten new designs omitted from the first but included in the second, as well as three new drawings never before printed – two for the paper cover of the first edition issued in parts, and an eleventh chapter heading. A facsimile reproduction of the Merlin drawing was also included in a reduced form. This portfolio was created so that possessors of the original large paper edition could own the additional illustrations instead of having to purchase the third edition in its entirety.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Morte d’Arthur Portfolio contains a foreword by Aymer Vallance, associate of William Morris and contributor of the list of drawings to Beardsley’s \u003ci\u003eBook of Fifty Drawings\u003c\/i\u003e, the first attempt to list Beardsley’s works; there is also a note on the omitted designs by R.A. Walker.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGertner Zatlin 370; Samuels Lasner\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e22d; see Reade 55.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124716\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64326542557561,"sku":"2124716","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124716e.jpg?v=1787325438"},{"product_id":"malory-thomas-sir-aubrey-beardsley-illustrator-le-morte-darthur-the-birth-life-and-acts-of-king-arthur-of-his-noble-knights-of-the-round-table","title":"MALORY, Thomas, Sir; Aubrey BEARDSLEY ( illustrator ). [Le Morte Darthur.] The Birth Life and Acts of King Arthur of His Noble Knights of the Round Table …","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eBeardsley's First Big Commission\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMALORY, Thomas, Sir; Aubrey BEARDSLEY (\u003ci\u003eillustrator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e [Le Morte Darthur.] The Birth Life and Acts of King Arthur of His Noble Knights of the Round Table … [\u003ci\u003eEdinburgh: Turnbull \u0026amp; Spears for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eLondon: J.M. Dent\u003c\/i\u003e. June 1893–November 1894.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwelve parts in two volumes, 4to. Publisher’s cream cloth (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e), gilt floral designs by Beardsley to spine and upper board, spine lettered in gilt, top-edges gilt, the others uncut, multicoloured cloth place-markers (that of vol. I detached); vol. I: pp. lxiv, 456; vol. II: pp. [8], lxv–xc, 457–990, [2 (colophon, blank)]; photogravure frontispieces to both vols and 18 wood-engraved plates by Beardsley (of which 5 double-page with tissue guards); numerous wood-engraved borders, initials, chapter headings, and ornaments by Beardsley, woodcut Dent device to title; light soiling and spotting to boards, vol. I with a few small chips to foot of spine and short splits to joints at head (very neatly repaired at an early date); vol. I lightly browned throughout, occasional light offsetting from plates, short closed marginal tear to pp. 391–92; a very good set; 1898 ownership inscription of M.L. Sumner to front pastedown of vol. II.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition to be illustrated by Beardsley, one of 1,500 ordinary-issue copies, of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘The \u003ci\u003eMorte d’Arthur\u003c\/i\u003e is the most famous version and the first in English prose of all the legends which have collected about King Arthur. It is the only true English epic […] The matchless style, the humour, the magnificence, the magic that takes away the breath, combine in a masterpiece of legendary narrative’ (\u003ci\u003ePMM\u003c\/i\u003e 29). This was twenty-year-old Beardsley’s first major commission; he was recommended to J.M. Dent by his friend (and later a major collector of Beardsley’s works), the photographer and bookseller Frederick H. Evans. Beardsley produced some three hundred and fifty designs, including chapter headings and ornaments, several of which are repeated.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe ordinary issue was produced in twelve parts in green wrappers, from June 1893 to mid-1894; the purchaser could then choose to have it bound in two volumes ‘by the publisher or another binder – in cream cloth cases … supplied by Dent’ (Samuels Lasner).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGertner Zatlin  338–69, 371–675; Reade 56–152; Reade \u0026amp; Dickinson 212–13; Samuels Lasner 22; Vallance 59.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124714\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64326549045625,"sku":"2124714","price":2000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124714.jpg?v=1787325466"},{"product_id":"maxim-sir-hiram-s-artificial-and-natural-flight","title":"MAXIM, Sir Hiram S. Artificial and Natural Flight.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003ePioneers of Flight and Engineering\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMAXIM, Sir Hiram S.\u003c\/strong\u003e Artificial and Natural Flight. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Whittaker \u0026amp; Co. \u003c\/i\u003e1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s purple cloth lettered in gilt to upper board and spine; pp. xv, [i (blank)], 166, [2],  black-and-white photographs and diagrams throughout; sunning to boards, especially to spine, pushing to foot of spine, minor spotting along top-edge; small numerical sticker affixed to upper corner of front free endpaper; very good; manuscript corrections in black ink to p. x likely in Maxim’s hand, presentation inscription to Dugald Clerk to front free endpaper \u003ci\u003e(see below).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, inscribed by the author to Sir Dugald Clerk, known for his pioneering work on the two-stroke engine, bringing together two significant figures in the development of early twentieth-century engineering and flight.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmerican-born British inventor Sir Hiram Maxim (1840–1916) is best remembered for his invention of the automatic machine gun; he also held patents for hair-curling irons, a mousetrap, and steam pumps, and was an early pioneer of electric lighting (a rival of Thomas Edison). Aviation was also a long-lasting passion. In the preface to the present work he writes: ‘it was in 1856 that I first had my attention called to the subject of flying machines. My father, who was a profound thinker and a clever mechanician, seems to have given the subject a great deal of thought, and to have matured a plan identical with what has been proposed by hundreds since that time.' (p. v)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1894, Maxim jumped a full-scale steam-powered aeroplane off the ground, but this model would later be discarded because of the weight of the engines. Aeronautics significantly developed between Maxim’s trial flight and the publication of \u003ci\u003eArtificial and Natural Flight\u003c\/i\u003e: the Wright brothers successfully flew their glider in 1902, and in 1903 they fitted a four-cylinder engine into one of them. In the year of publication (1908), Henri Farman managed to complete the first European 1-km closed circuit flight. Maxim provides a photograph of Farman’s flying machine, remarking that ‘as the length of the machine is not very great, it requires very close attention on the part of the man at the helm to keep it on an even keel; if one is not able to think and act quickly, disaster is certain.’ (pp. 112–3)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis copy has been inscribed to the engineer and inventor Sir Dugald Clerk (1854–1932). His invention of The Clerk Cycle (Two-Stroke Engine) in 1878, created a separate charging cylinder which laid the groundwork for the supercharger (first used in a plane in the late 1910s). Clerk’s invention indirectly helped address many of the problems that Maxim, and other early aviators contended with..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBrockett 8214.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2126002\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64400037380473,"sku":"2126002","price":550.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2126002a.jpg?v=1787935901"},{"product_id":"huysmans-joris-karl-keene-wallis-translator-la-bas-down-there","title":"HUYSMANS, Joris Karl; Keene WALLIS ( translator ). Là Bas (Down There).","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘The Strangest Book Ever Written’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHUYSMANS, Joris Karl; Keene WALLIS (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Là Bas (Down There). \u003ci\u003eChicago: The Black Archer Press\u003c\/i\u003e. 1935.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original red cloth, spine blocked in gilt, black endpapers, in dust-jacket designed by William Mazur; pp. 327, [1], with frontispiece designed by John Groth, title-page by G. Arthur Gillis printed in red and black; spine ends a little worn, slight staining to lower edge of front cover, spotting to upper edge of text-block, jacket with spine toned, and spine ends and corners chipped with tiny losses; light dampstaining to lower margin of frontispiece and prelims, slight foxing to prelims, but overall a very good, clean copy; early ink ownership stamp of Kenneth Ness, possibly the Michigan artist (1903–2001), to verso of front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSecond US edition, limited to only 850 copies for subscribers, of ‘the strangest book ever written’ (blurb), in the rare dust-jacket and with a haunting frontispiece by John Groth (1908–1988).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst published in French in 1891, Là-Bas is one of the most influential literary explorations of fin-de-siècle decadence and occultism. The novel follows the writer Durtal, who, disenchanted with modern life, immerses himself in the worlds of medieval mysticism, Satanism, and the occult. Assisted by his lover, Madame Chantelouve, he investigates contemporary black masses while researching the notorious fifteenth-century nobleman and serial killer Gilles de Rais (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 1405–1440).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first English translation, by Keene Wallis, appeared in New York in 1924 from Albert \u0026amp; Charles Boni and was privately reprinted in Paris in 1928. This Black Archer Press edition, issued in Chicago in 1935 under the direction of bookseller and editor William Targ (1907–1999), was produced by arrangement with Boni using Wallis’ copyrighted translation, but with the text entirely reset. Featuring a frontispiece by John Groth, a title-page by G. Arthur Gillis, and a striking dust-jacket design by William Mazur, it was limited to 850 copies and prefaced by a note restricting its sale to \u003cstrong\u003e‘members of the Clergy, members of the learned professions and serious adult students of psychology, religion and occultism’\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125810\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64400065888633,"sku":"2125810","price":550.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125810.jpg?v=1787935945"},{"product_id":"orwell-george-the-collected-essays-journalism-and-letters","title":"ORWELL, George. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eORWELL, George.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Secker and Warburg.\u003c\/i\u003e 1968.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour volumes, 8vo. Publisher’s blue cloth lettered in gilt to spine, typographic dust-jacket designed by Bernard Higton with printed price of 50s to front flaps, blue endpapers; pp. I: xxiii, [1 blank], 574, [ii blank]; II: xv, [i blank], 477, [iii blank]; III: xv, [i blank], 435, [1 blank]; IV: xvii, [i blank], 555, [3 blank], all vols with double-frontispiece; a small area of discolouration to cloth at the base of the spine of vol. II; a few light spots to edges of text-block, minor shelf wear; some light, irregular offsetting from frontispieces, otherwise the volumes are clean and in notably bright jackets; near fine; small bookseller’s label for Henry Sotheran Ltd (at the time located at Sackville Street) to front pastedown of vol. I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst editions of the first comprehensive collection of George Orwell’s non-fiction writing, bringing together a body of previously unpublished material.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis ambitious, meticulously edited, four-volume edition of Orwell's Essays, \u003ci\u003eJournalism and Letters\u003c\/i\u003e (most of the contents previously uncollected) was compiled with great care by the author's widow in collaboration with Ian Angus, librarian at University College London, and one of the founders of the Orwell Archive.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArranged in chronological order, the four volumes (issued simultaneously in 1968), are packed with essays, book reviews, columns, letters and broadcasts written between the ages of seventeen and forty-six (when he died). They offer fresh insight into the richness, complexity, and sheer variety of Orwell’s interests and concerns, casting light on the energies and thinking that fed into the novels. ‘One's first, awed, response,’ Ian Hamilton wrote at the time, ‘is simply to the \u003ci\u003eamount\u003c\/i\u003e Orwell wrote. How did he manage it?’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFenwick D12.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124865\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64400103145849,"sku":"2124865","price":650.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124865.jpg?v=1787936014"},{"product_id":"eliot-t-s-knowledge-and-experience-in-the-philosophy-of-f-h-bradley","title":"ELIOT, T.S. Knowledge and Experience in the philosophy of F.H. Bradley.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eELIOT, T.S.\u003c\/strong\u003e Knowledge and Experience in the philosophy of F.H. Bradley. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Faber and Faber\u003c\/i\u003e. 1964.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original blue cloth, spine printed in gilt and black, with unclipped dust jacket; pp. 216; light wear to spine ends and extremities of jacket, jacket slightly toned, otherwise a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of T.S. Eliot's unpresented doctoral thesis at Harvard on the British philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEliot completed his doctoral dissertation at Harvard in 1916, following years of research both there and at Oxford under the supervision of Bradley's disciple Harold Joachim. While his thesis received praise from Josiah Royce, then head of Harvard’s Department of Philosophy, Eliot never returned to defend it in the \u003ci\u003eviva voce\u003c\/i\u003e examination.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEliot's admiration for Bradley became publicly evident in the notes to \u003ci\u003eThe Waste Land\u003c\/i\u003e, where he quoted the philosopher. The dissertation was eventually published in 1964, with Eliot describing it in the preface as 'only a curiosity of biographical interest'. Nevertheless, the work has since been acknowledged as a significant contribution to the study of the idealist philosopher.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGallup A75.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121208\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64738336113017,"sku":"2121208","price":225.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121208.jpg?v=1790755745"},{"product_id":"couch-jonathan-a-history-of-the-fishes-of-the-british-islands","title":"COUCH, Jonathan. A History of the Fishes of the British Islands.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Earliest Colour-Illustrated Work on British Fishes\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCOUCH, Jonathan.\u003c\/strong\u003e A History of the Fishes of the British Islands. \u003ci\u003eLondon: George Bell \u0026amp; Sons.\u003c\/i\u003e 1877–1878.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour volumes, 8vo. Original publisher’s blue pebbled cloth, borders decorated in blind, gilt-stamped design of three fishes to upper boards, dark brown endpapers, top-edges untrimmed; vol. I: pp. vii, [1], 245, [1]; vol. II: pp. iv, 265, [1]; vol. III: pp. iv, 208; vol. IV: pp. iv, 439, [1]; with 252 hand-coloured, tissue-guarded copper-engraved plates by Benjamin Fawcett of Driffield, each volume with 8 pp. of advertisements tipped in to rear; minor loss to headcaps of vols. 1 and 4., discreetly reinforced with cloth,  extremities bumped, spines lightly sunned; lightly toned with occasional foxing; else very good; 1883 ink ownership inscription of A. Phipson to title-page of Vol. 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn early reissue of this ‘major contribution to ichthyology … the earliest work on British fishes to be illustrated in colour’ (\u003ci\u003eODNB\u003c\/i\u003e), with 252 hand-coloured engraved plates.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginally published between 1860 and 1865, \u003ci\u003eA History of the Fishes of the British Islands\u003c\/i\u003e was the principal work of Jonathan Couch (1789–1870), physician and naturalist of Polperro, Cornwall. Couch practised medicine in the village for some sixty years, whilst pursuing extensive research into the natural history of the surrounding coast. Local fishermen frequently supplied him with uncommon marine specimens, allowing him to make detailed observations of the fishes of the western English Channel. The plates here were engraved from watercolours made by Couch from freshly caught specimens, and their remarkable fidelity was such that they subsequently enabled later ichthyologists to identify several species which Couch and his contemporaries had themselves misidentified.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCouch was a prolific contributor to the scientific journals of his day and maintained a wide correspondence with naturalists in \u003ci\u003eBritain and Europe\u003c\/i\u003e. He had corresponded with Thomas Bewick concerning Bewick’s proposed, but never completed, work on British fishes, and assisted William Yarrell’s \u003ci\u003eHistory of British Fishes\u003c\/i\u003e (1836) by lending him coloured illustrations and notes. Although Couch’s particular strength lay in the fauna of the western English Channel, his correspondence with leading naturalists enabled him to incorporate information on less familiar species; his knowledge of the northern fauna and freshwater fishes was less extensive. The text is nevertheless notable for its numerous original observations on the natural history of sea fishes and for the close attention paid to their habits and habitats.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCouch also devoted considerable attention to fishes of economic importance, particularly the pilchard and mackerel, both central to the Cornish fishing industry. His investigations into these species reflected not only his scientific interests but also his concern for the fishing community upon which the local economy depended. The resulting work combines detailed field observation with pioneering colour illustration, providing an important record of the British ichthyological fauna and a landmark in the illustrated natural history of British fishes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFreeman, British Natural History Books 828.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125975\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64741406802297,"sku":"2125975","price":1150.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125975h.jpg?v=1790768543"},{"product_id":"gosse-philip-henry-actinologia-britannica-a-history-of-the-british-sea-anemones-and-corals","title":"GOSSE, Philip Henry. Actinologia Britannica. A History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eGosse’s Pinnacle as Illustrator and Naturalist\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGOSSE, Philip Henry.\u003c\/strong\u003e Actinologia Britannica. A History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals. \u003ci\u003eLondon: John Van Voorst.\u003c\/i\u003e 1860.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original dark green cloth, title within gilt banner with a design of corals to spine and upper board; pp. xl, 362, [2 (advertisements)], 12 plates (of which 11 chromolithographs by William Dickes), numerous engravings in the text; small stain to upper board, internally extremely bright; a handsome copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, published three years after his disastrous anti-evolutionary \u003ci\u003eOmphalos\u003c\/i\u003e, of the first detailed investigation of British corals and sea-anemones.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the only edition in book form, although it had previously been issued in twelve parts that differ from the final version, mainly in the brevity of the descriptions. The keen reception of the parts issue, the first detailed survey of its subject – and, until at least the 1980s, the only work to illustrate the British corals – led to a large initial print run of 4,000 copies of the book. It proved to be a slow seller, but nonetheless it retained its reputation as Gosse’s most important work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough Freeman and Wertheimer complain that he did not ‘pay enough attention to the internal comparative anatomy of the sea-anemones’, rendering some of his classifications unsatisfactory, the book displays his talents for observation, description, and analysis without any hint of the religious dogma that crippled his attempts to engage in the evolutionary debate. It also shows him at the height of his powers as an illustrator; the plates are simultaneously meticulous, accurate and, partly due to the work of the printer Dickes, eerily beautiful. The production of the book was itself a ‘major advance in natural history book illustration intended for the mass market’ (\u003ci\u003eODNB\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: front pastedown with the bookplate of Sir Henry Wade Deacon, 1852–1932, Lancashire industrialist and educationalist, Pro-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 1930 to 1932. Wade Deacon High School in Widnes is named after him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFreeman and Wertheimer 108, binding variant a; Freeman 1390.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125971\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64741420401017,"sku":"2125971","price":700.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125971.jpg?v=1790768592"},{"product_id":"da-costa-emanuel-mendes-historia-naturalis-testaceorum-britanniae-or-the-british-conchology-containing-the-descriptions-and-other-particulars-of-natural-history-of-the-shells-of-great-britain-and-ireland-illustrated-with-figures-in-english-and-in-f","title":"DA COSTA, Emanuel Mendes. Historia naturalis testaceorum Britanniæ, or, The British Conchology: Containing the Descriptions and Other Particulars of Natural History of the Shells of Great Britain and Ireland: Illustrated with Figures, in English and in F…","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Major Work of a Scientific Embezzler\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDA COSTA, Emanuel Mendes.\u003c\/strong\u003e Historia naturalis testaceorum Britanniæ, or, The British Conchology: Containing the Descriptions and Other Particulars of Natural History of the Shells of Great Britain and Ireland: Illustrated with Figures, in English and in French. \u003ci\u003eLondon\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003ci\u003e Printed for the Author\u003c\/i\u003e. 1778.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Contemporary half calf with marbled paper sides, flat spine ruled in gilt and with red gilt morocco lettering-piece, sometime rebacked with original spine relaid; pp. xii, 1–138, [2], 139–254, vii, [2]; 17 ff. hand-coloured plates, parallel English and French text; pp. 237–242 misbound between pp. 226 and 227; bound without final leaf of subscribers; binding rubbed to extremities with slight loss to marbled paper at edges, calf to corners largely perished; light marginal spotting, mainly to prelims; occasional pencilled marginal notes mainly referring to the misbinding; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of the first major British malacological work to follow the Linnean binomial system.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDescended from a Portuguese Sephardi family, Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717–1791) was, on the one hand, the first Jewish Fellow of the Royal Society, elected on the strength of his knowledge of shells and fossils. On the other hand, as clerk of the Royal Society he was found guilty of embezzling members’ subscription fees and in 1767 was sentenced to five years in debtors’ prison. Upon his release, he was able to scrape a living as a lecturer and shell dealer and began to rebuild his relationships. He secured the patronage of Sir Ashton Lever, the owner of the great collection that was displayed at Leicester House in London from 1775 to 1786 as the Leverian collection, and subscriptions from Thomas Martyn, Thomas Pennant, and the Dowager Duchess of Portland in order to produce this, his last and most ambitious scientific work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDa Costa’s work was unprecedentedly comprehensive, as he paid attention to even the smallest species and gave binomial names that are still in use today. The work’s usefulness in addressing species that extend beyond British waters is shown in the bilingual text, and the book did receive a wide scientific audience. It became noted for da Costa’s approach to the Linnean system, in which he challenged and refined several of the descriptors used by Linnaeus, and for the delicacy of the plates.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eESTC T113819; Nissen 2785.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125788\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64741440422265,"sku":"2125788","price":1300.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125788a.jpg?v=1790768674"},{"product_id":"montagu-george-testacea-britannica-or-natural-history-of-british-shells-marine-land-and-fresh-water-including-the-most-minute-systematically-arranged-and-embellished-with-figures-part-i-ii","title":"MONTAGU, George Testacea Britannica, or, Natural History of British Shells, Marine, Land, and Fresh-Water, Including the Most Minute: Systematically Arranged and Embellished with Figures. Part I [–II].","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eExtra-Illustrated with Original Watercolours\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMONTAGU, George\u003c\/strong\u003e Testacea Britannica, or, Natural History of British Shells, Marine, Land, and Fresh-Water, Including the Most Minute: Systematically Arranged and Embellished with Figures. Part I [–II]. \u003ci\u003eLondon: J.S. Hollis.\u003c\/i\u003e 1803.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo parts in one, 4to. Modern half calf with marbled sides, spine gilt-ruled in compartments with raised bands, lettered directly in gilt, marbled edges; pp. [2], xxxvii, [3], 1–291, [3], 293–606, [4]; with 2 hand-coloured additional engraved titles and 16 hand-coloured copper-engraved plates at end; variable foxing (most severe to first two quires of vol. 2), offsetting from titles of each part, staining from previously inserted paper slip to pp. 331–334 and pp. 435–438, marginal paperflaw to Xx1, occasional spotting, but generally good; with contemporary watercolour illustrations of shells in the margins to 20 pp. (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of Montagu’s pioneering study of British molluscs with plates by Elizabeth D’Orville, his self-taught collaborator and long-term partner, an especially attractive copy, with contemporary hand-colouring and original watercolour marginalia depicting shells.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGeorge Montagu (1753–1815), soldier, naturalist and fellow of the Linnean Society, is best known for his \u003ci\u003eOrnithological Dictionary\u003c\/i\u003e (1802), but \u003ci\u003eTestacea Britannica\u003c\/i\u003e was his most important contribution to the field of conchology. Published in December 1803, it was the first comprehensive monograph on the molluscs of the British Isles, describing some 470 species of marine, freshwater and land shells, around 100 of them new. His specimens were largely drawn from his own cabinet, collected ‘from their native places’, particularly in the West Country; at Salcombe, for example, he observed \u003ci\u003ePholas dactylus\u003c\/i\u003e and related species boring into submerged tree stumps, where local fishermen collected them for bait. His insistence on observing molluscs as living organisms, rather than treating their shells in isolation, gave his descriptions an unusually empirical character and helped shape the subsequent study of British malacology.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMontagu was not, however, always able to establish a secure British provenance for the shells submitted to him. \u003ci\u003eTestacea Britannica\u003c\/i\u003e includes a number of foreign species which do not belong to the British malacofauna, and Montagu himself acknowledged the difficulty of specimens whose origins were uncertain. His reluctance to reject material supplied by correspondents, even where provenance was doubtful, resulted in several anomalous inclusions which have continued to perplex later malacologists and complicate the nomenclatural history of the work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe illustrations were prepared by Elizabeth D’Orville, a largely self-taught artist who became Montagu’s mistress, collaborator and long-term partner.\u003c\/strong\u003e Working directly from specimens, she engraved and partly coloured the figures, and Montagu acknowledged that her assistance was particularly important in depicting the smaller species, writing that without it ‘this work might never have seen the light’. Their relationship was a scandalous one. Montagu’s marriage to Ann Courtenay, niece of the 3rd Earl of Bute, had produced six children, but his involvement with D’Orville eventually resulted in his court-martial and dismissal from the Wiltshire militia. By 1798 he had left his wife and established a household with D’Orville in Devon, thereafter devoting himself to natural history. His will entrusted D’Orville with his library, natural-history collections, manuscripts and other property, acknowledging ‘the very great assistance she has given me in my pursuits of natural history’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA particularly appealing feature of the present copy is the presence of original watercolours on some twenty pages, chiefly devoted to land snails. Neatly and skilfully rendered, with several species shown from different aspects, the drawings appear to be the work of a knowledgeable contemporary reader and perhaps collector. They provide an especially charming counterpoint to D’Orville’s printed illustrations, extending Montagu’s project of close observation into the margins of the book itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter Montagu’s death, his natural history collection descended to his son, Henry D’Orville, before entering the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter in 1874. The museum retains examples of roughly 300 species treated in \u003ci\u003eTestacea Britannica\u003c\/i\u003e, among them some 120 type specimens; the collection was awarded Designation status by Arts Council England in 2020 in recognition of its international importance to science. Montagu died in 1815 from tetanus after stepping on a rusty nail. \u003ci\u003eTestacea Britannica\u003c\/i\u003e was followed by a \u003ci\u003eSupplement\u003c\/i\u003e in 1808 and further papers, but remains the principal monument to his pioneering work in British malacology.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNissen ZBI 28.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125048\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64741451366777,"sku":"2125048","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125048a.jpg?v=1790768731"},{"product_id":"anon-hotel-tivoli-lucerne-switzerland","title":"ANON. Hotel Tivoli, Lucerne (Switzerland).","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eANON.\u003c\/strong\u003e Hotel Tivoli, Lucerne (Switzerland).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginal hotel luggage label, c.1930. 115 x 145 mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTear to left centre.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125822\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64790193799545,"sku":"2125822","price":570.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125822.jpg?v=1791184274"},{"product_id":"simenon-georges-tony-white-translator-account-unsettled","title":"SIMENON, Georges; Tony WHITE ( translator ). Account Unsettled.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSIMENON, Georges; Tony WHITE (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Account Unsettled. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Hamish Hamilton\u003c\/i\u003e. 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in silver to spine, in unclipped illustrated dust jacket by P. Youngman Carter (12s. 6d to front flap); pp, 159, [1,(blank)]; shelf wear to crown and base of cloth and dust jacket, minor toning to text block; very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst UK edition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125661\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64821589901689,"sku":"2125661","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125661.jpg?v=1791443131"},{"product_id":"simenon-georges-stuart-gilbert-translator-black-rain","title":"SIMENON, Georges; Stuart GILBERT ( translator ). Black Rain.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSIMENON, Georges; Stuart GILBERT (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Black Rain. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Routledge \u0026amp; Kegan Paul\u003c\/i\u003e. 1949.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s yellow cloth, lettered in black to spine, in unclipped illustrated dust jacket (6s. To front flap); pp. [vi], 264, [2,(blank)]; minor wear to top and base edge of dust jacket, text block lightly sunned; near fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRemarkably bright first UK edition. Publisher’s price sticker pasted to front flap.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125650\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64821598585209,"sku":"2125650","price":175.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125650.jpg?v=1791443201"},{"product_id":"simenon-georges-geoffrey-sainsbury-translator-the-house-by-the-canal","title":"SIMENON, Georges; Geoffrey SAINSBURY ( translator ). The House by the Canal.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSIMENON, Georges; Geoffrey SAINSBURY (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e The House by the Canal. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Routledge \u0026amp; Kegan Paul\u003c\/i\u003e. 1952.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s yellow cloth, lettered in black to spine, in the unclipped illustrated dust-jacket (priced 6s. To front flap); pp. 266, [2, (blank)]; minor wear to crown edge of dust jacket spine, textblock lightly sunned; near fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRemarkably bright first UK edition. Publisher’s price sticker pasted to front flap.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125649\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64821600354681,"sku":"2125649","price":350.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125649.jpg?v=1791443212"},{"product_id":"simenon-georges-nigel-ryan-translator-the-little-man-from-archangel","title":"SIMENON, Georges; Nigel RYAN ( translator ). The Little Man from Archangel.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSIMENON, Georges; Nigel RYAN (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e The Little Man from Archangel. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Hamish Hamilton\u003c\/i\u003e. 1957.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s blue cloth lettered in gilt to spine, in unclipped illustrated dust jacket by Fritz Wegner (10s. 6d. To front flap); pp. 159, [1,(blank)]; shelf wear to crown and base of cloth and dust jacket, chipping to crown and base of dust jacket spine; very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst UK edition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125632\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64821613429113,"sku":"2125632","price":55.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125632.jpg?v=1791443336"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/collections\/Promo_chelsea_2026.jpg?v=1793188864","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/collections\/chelsea-rare-book-fair-2026.oembed?page=2","provider":"Sotheran's","version":"1.0","type":"link"}