{"title":"New York 2026","description":"\u003cp\u003eA curated selection of highlights for the 2026 New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. \u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/objectstorage.uk-london-1.oraclecloud.com\/n\/lrkc843vpy6i\/b\/tometrack-media\/o\/catalogues\/sotheran-s-new-york-international-antiquarian-book-fair-2026.pdf\" title=\"https:\/\/objectstorage.uk-london-1.oraclecloud.com\/n\/lrkc843vpy6i\/b\/tometrack-media\/o\/catalogues\/sotheran-s-new-york-international-antiquarian-book-fair-2026.pdf\"\u003eClick here to browse the catalogue as a PDF\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"lagerlof-selma-author-nils-holgerssons-underbara-resa-genom-sverige-forsta-bandet-and-andra-bandet-the-wonderf","title":"LAGERLÖF, Selma. Nils Holgerssons underbara Resa genom Sverige. … första [–andra Banddet].","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eTravelling Through Sweden by Goose – By the First Woman Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLAGERLÖF, Selma.\u003c\/strong\u003e Nils Holgerssons underbara Resa genom Sverige. … första [–andra Banddet]. \u003ci\u003eStockholm: Albert Bonniers Forlag.\u003c\/i\u003e 1906-1907.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo volumes, 8vo. Publisher’s pictorial green wrappers, both vols priced to spine (Haft 3:50; Inb. 5 and Haft 3:50; Inb. 7) with publisher’s device, partly uncut; I: pp. [iv], 237; II: pp. [iv], 486, [2]; with numerous halftone photographic plates; wrappers slightly rubbed, a few small chips to extremities, spines chipped at head and foot (30 mm loss to foot of vol. I), vertical creasing to spines; internally very good; a handsome set, rare in the original wrappers and remarkably so in this condition, known in only a handful of copies.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, extremely rare in the publisher’s printed wrappers, of \u003ci\u003eNils Holgerssons underbara Resa genom Sverige\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Wonderful Adventures of Nils\u003c\/i\u003e), the beloved children’s book by the queer, disabled writer, educator, and suffragist Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940), the first female Nobel laureate for literature.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLagerlöf, an advocate of Swedish spelling reform, first conceived \u003ci\u003eNils Holgerssons underbara Resa\u003c\/i\u003e in response to a 1902 request for a new geography primer for schools by the Swedish National Teachers’ Association. It was one of the earliest works to adopt the new spelling system introduced with the 1906 royal order standardising orthography used in primary schools and the lower three levels of secondary schools. The eponymous Nils, shrunk to the size of a thumb by a vengeful elf, relates travels through Sweden on the back of a goose, with historical and geographical facts about the country’s various provinces embedded throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer work, formatted for use in schools, was simultaneously issued in wrappers (as here) and in pictorial cloth; \u003cstrong\u003ethe fragility of the version in wrappers makes it extremely rare in commerce; the few copies we have traced have had one or both wrappers bound into a later binding. All subsequent printings appeared solely in cloth.\u003c\/strong\u003e The success of \u003ci\u003eNils Holgerssons underbara Resa\u003c\/i\u003e was instrumental in the decision to award Lagerlöf the Nobel Prize 10 December 1909, making her the first woman – and the first Swede – to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1991 she became the first woman to be depicted on a Swedish banknote, the twenty-\u003ci\u003eKronor\u003c\/i\u003e note (replaced by Astrid Lindgren in 2016), an example of which is loosely inserted. Lagerlöf was affected by lifelong hip dysplasia and at the age of three fell ill, causing paralysis of her legs; although she regained the ability to walk, she encountered difficulties with mobility and walked with a limp for the rest of her life, deliberately slowing her pace to make her limp less obvious. ‘It is this disability that has forced me to sit still, to look within myself, and that is the reason I became a writer. If I had been healthy like everybody else, I should probably have become the wife of some factory manager (“bruksförvaltare”)’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e De Vrieze, p. 36). She stipulated that her love letters to women should not be published until fifty years after her death; she exchanged over three thousand letters with her longtime partner, the Swedish-Jewish writer Sophie Elkan, published in 1993 as \u003ci\u003eDu lär mig att bli fri\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eYou Teach Me to Be Free\u003c\/i\u003e); they travelled together to Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Egypt, and Palestine. Elkan was the dedicatee of Lagerlöf’s \u003ci\u003eJerusalem\u003c\/i\u003e, in which she is described as the author’s ‘companion in life and letters’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee De Vrieze, Fact and Fiction in the Autobiographical Works of Selma Lagerlöf (1958); ‘Selma Lagerlöf’, in Nobel Lectures (1969)\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2110259\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54812229992825,"sku":"2110259","price":4500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2110259_abd7cdbb-8a54-431c-9351-254c4f4051d2.jpg?v=1776515590"},{"product_id":"product-4","title":"DANTE Alighieri. Dante col sito, et forma dell’Inferno tratta dalla istessa descrittione del poeta.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘You Read Dante, My Lord’ – The Earl of Aberdeen’s Copy\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDANTE Alighieri.\u003c\/strong\u003e Dante col sito, et forma dell’Inferno tratta dalla istessa descrittione del poeta. [(Colophon:) \u003ci\u003eVenice, in the house of Aldo Manuzio and Andrea Torresano\u003c\/i\u003e. August 1515.]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Early nineteenth-century red straight-grained morocco, supralibros of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen blocked to boards in gilt, borders filleted in gilt, flat spine ruled and lettered directly in gilt, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, green silk place-marker; ff. [ii], 244, [2 (diagrams)], [1], italic type, woodcut Aldine devices to title-page, a1r, and final verso (supplied from another copy), three-line capital spaces with guide letters at the beginning of each canticle, three woodcut plates by Trifone Gabriele at end (two double-pages), one depicting the layout of Hell (ff. H4v-H5r), and other two with schematic diagrams of the sins in Hell (ff. H5v-H6r) and Purgatory (f. H6v); extremities and spine slightly rubbed; internally very good, lacking blank H7, upper margin of plates trimmed with loss of upper border, not affecting image but touching a few letters of Purgatory diagram; early ownership inscription ‘Di Thomaso C…’ to f. a1r (washed); nineteenth-century shelflabels to front pastedown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first illustrated Aldine edition of Dante’s Commedia, and the second overall, from the library of George Hamilton-Gordon (1784–1860), 4th Earl of Aberdeen, the last British Prime Minister to have undertaken the Grand Tour.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrompted by the Bembo family, Aldus Manutius drew upon manuscripts from the collection of Bernardo Bembo (1433–1519) to produce his authoritative edition of Dante. Bernardo’s son, scholar and future cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), collaborated with Aldus to refine the texts of the \u003ci\u003eCommedia\u003c\/i\u003e, which he published in 1502 as \u003ci\u003eLe terze rime\u003c\/i\u003e. This 1515 second edition, featuring Bembo’s diagrams of sins, was the first illustrated Aldine Commedia. It was published six months after Aldus’s death on 6 February 1515 and dedicated by Andrea Torresano, Aldo’s father-in-law, to the poet Vittoria Colonna (1492–1547).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: From the library of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, sometime Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister from 1852 until 1855. Educated at Harrow and St John’s College, Cambridge, Aberdeen embarked on the Grand Tour in 1802 during the peace of Amiens. His travels took him from Paris – where his connection to William Pitt the Younger secured a meeting with Napoleon Bonaparte – to Rome, Naples, Sicily, Malta, Constantinople, and Athens. In Athens, he sought to purchase friezes from the Parthenon (for which he was publicly critiqued by his cousin, Lord Byron) but found Lord Elgin had preceded him. He returned to England via Venice, Vienna, and Berlin in 1804. He was also a fellow of the Royal Society, president of the Society of Antiquaries from 1811–46, and a member of the Society of Dilettanti.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReputedly fluent in six languages, including Italian, Aberdeen was seemingly well-versed in Dante. In an August 1851 letter to Aberdeen addressing the Italian revolutions of 1848, Scottish writer Charles Macfarlane (1799-1858) invoked Purgatorio to describe the turbulence, writing, ‘Yet, even in the combustion of 1848, the passing from Turkey to Naples was like going from hell to purgatory. You read Dante, my Lord – Per correr miglior acqua, Alza la vela [sic] …’ (Macfarlane, p. 40). In the same letter, MacFarlane mentions Dante’s first canticle in relation to the assassination of a parliamentary deputy for Salerno by a priest called Peluso: ‘But, my Lord Aberdeen, send Peluso to the worst \u003ci\u003ebolgia\u003c\/i\u003e in the \u003ci\u003eInferno\u003c\/i\u003e of Dante, and still you will not criminate (for his act) either the King of the Two Sicilies or his Majesty’s Government’ (\u003ci\u003eibid\u003c\/i\u003e., p. 34). This Aldine edition, with Aberdeen’s crest and motto blocked to both boards in gilt, is most likely the copy he studied.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAhmanson-Murphy 136; BM STC Italian, p. 209; EDIT 16 CNCE 1150; Adams D-88; Index Aureliensis XI, pp. 261–62; Renouard, Alde 73, 8. See Macfarlane, A Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen (1851).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2120511\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55023985721721,"sku":"2120511","price":8000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2120511_84a105e5-3a4a-4911-868d-3bfb9f59a7f0.jpg?v=1776515575"},{"product_id":"rilke-rainer-maria-sonette-an-orpheus","title":"RILKE, Rainer Maria. Sonette an Orpheus.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eSonnets to Orpheus – a ‘Hurricane of the Spirit’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRILKE, Rainer Maria.\u003c\/strong\u003e Sonette an Orpheus. \u003ci\u003eLeipzig:\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003eW. Drugulin for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eInsel Verlag.\u003c\/i\u003e 1923.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original marbled boards, inlaid green paper label to upper board lettered in gilt and with gilt Greek key border, original olive green printed dust-jacket, fore-edge uncut, top-edge gilt; pp. 63, [1]; woodcut printer’s device to p. [1]; extremities lightly rubbed, dust-jacket slightly frayed at head of front cover, endpapers renewed; mild spotting and staining throughout as usual (heavier to last 6 pp.); else a very good copy; contemporary pencilled inscription to part I half-title ‘In memoriam Hiddensee. | A.B. | September 1923’ (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of Rilke’s \u003ci\u003eSonnets to Orpheus\u003c\/i\u003e, his powerful memorial to the nineteen-year-old dancer Wera Ouckama Knoop (1900–1919), our copy retaining the scarce dust-jacket and with an intriguing contemporary inscription.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRilke’s sequence of fifty-five sonnets came as a late and unexpected flowering after a period during which the poet was unable to write. He had begun writing the \u003ci\u003eDuino Elegies\u003c\/i\u003e in 1912, but a combination of private and personal circumstance (the approaching war uppermost) led to a depressive illness which postponed their completion for nearly a decade.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWera Ouckama Knoop, a childhood friend of Rilke’s daughter Ruth, was the daughter of his friends Gertrud and Gerhard Ouckama Knoop. In 1921, Werner Reinhart invited Rilke to stay at the Château de Muzot near Veyras in the Rhone Valley.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere, Rilke wrote his \u003ci\u003eSonette an Orpheus\u003c\/i\u003e, galvanised by a long letter from her mother, Gertrud, ‘with whom he maintained a correspondence … in which she recounted the details of Wera’s incapacitating illness and how when Wera was no longer able to dance, she turned to music, and finally to drawing. Rilke was deeply affected by Gertrud’s accounts, and a month later Wera’s death coalesced in his mind with Orphic legends … Rilke completed twenty-five sonnets in the first four days, almost the entirety of the first part of the two-part cycle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis burst of productivity carried over to the long-unfinished \u003ci\u003eElegies\u003c\/i\u003e, and within a few weeks (February 2–26) both the \u003ci\u003eElegies\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eSonnets\u003c\/i\u003e were completed’ (Vandegrift Eldridge and Fischer, p. 13). Rilke described this burst of creative energy as a ‘boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e); only three years after the publication of the \u003ci\u003eSonnets\u003c\/i\u003e, he would die of leukaemia – the cause of Wera Knoop’s death. Famously allusive (and elusive), the figures of Orpheus and Eurydice permeate rather than dictate the sequence, the titular Orpheus acting “as an agent of transition and transformation” (Görner) in poems where instability, metamorphosis, and the connection of seeming opposites – life\/death; nature\/culture – are paramount.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe inscription to our title, ‘In memoriam Hiddensee’, is dated only a few months after the work’s publication. The Baltic island resort of Hiddensee was frequented by the likes of Einstein, Kafka, Wilder, Brecht, Freud, Fallada, Kästner, Mann, Trier, and by some accounts Rilke himself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHünich, p. 92; Ritzer E46; Sarkowski 1357; Wilpert\/Gühring 39. See Leeder and Vilain (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Rilke (2010); Vandegrift and Fischer (eds.), Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus (2019).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122306\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55478416703865,"sku":"2122306","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122306.jpg?v=1774976880"},{"product_id":"wolman-gil-j-l-homme-separe-1","title":"WOLMAN, Gil J. L’Homme séparé. Inédits manuscrits.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Separation of Man (and Text)\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWOLMAN, Gil J.\u003c\/strong\u003e L’Homme séparé. Inédits manuscrits. \u003ci\u003eParis: Chez Nane Stern\u003c\/i\u003e. 1979.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Original printed wrappers; ff. [31], printed on recycled paper to rectos only; a few minor paperflaws not affecting legibility; very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, very rare, no. vii of 150 copies and one of the first twenty copies printed on recycled paper, of the first artist’s book by Gil Wolman, co-founder with Guy Debord of the Lettrist International (1952), signed by the artist.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the occasion of the publication of the work by gallerist Nane Stern, the gallery ‘also exhibited a plastic version in 29 frames with the texts written in ink on separate and overlaid sheets of tracing paper, in order to disturb the reading, as in his old Lettrist works, albeit in an altogether different way. This emblematic Wolman work showed once more that he was thinking simultaneously as a poet and as an artist’ (Acquaviva, ‘Wolman in the Open’ (2010)).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis blazing piece illustrates his concept of ‘separation’ and is, in many ways, closer to the Situationist International than to Lettrism. The text was physically torn in half – in an act of literal separation – and subsequently photocopied, here using recycled paper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC records four copies only, only one of which in the US (Yale); no copies traced in the UK\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123876\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56198424854905,"sku":"2123876","price":3500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123876.jpg?v=1763028637"},{"product_id":"debord-guy-aux-producteurs-de-lart-moderne","title":"DEBORD, Guy. Aux Producteurs de lʼArt Moderne.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eDebord Makes a Spectacle in Society\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDEBORD, Guy.\u003c\/strong\u003e Aux Producteurs de lʼArt Moderne. \u003ci\u003eBrussels: International Association of Art Critics\u003c\/i\u003e. 1958.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSingle strip of paper (20 x 900 mm); printed in black: ‘Aux producteurs de l’art modern. Si vous etes fatigues d’imiter les demolitions; sil vous apparait que les redites fragmentaires que l’on attend de vous sont depasses avant d’etre, prenez contact avec nous pour organiser a un niveau superieur de nouveaux pouvoirs de transformation du milieu ambient. Internationale Situationniste, 32 Montagne-Genevieve, Paris 5e’; some very light spotting, and slight creasing to edges; very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of the first flyers produced by the Situationist International, the European avant-garde alliance of writers, artists, and poets established in 1957, this one by Guy Debord, later the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Society of the Spectacle\u003c\/i\u003e and the ‘most important figure’ of the Situationist movement \u003c\/strong\u003e (\u003ci\u003eSituationist International Archive\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis response to artists is one of the first works produced by the Situationist International, which succeeded the Lettrist International (1952–1957), and brilliantly encapsulates Debord’s theory of \u003ci\u003edépassement de lʼart\u003c\/i\u003e (surpassing of art): ‘The current revival of both modern art and revolutionary politics can only be their surpassing, which is to say precisely the realization of what was their most fundamental demand’ (Debord, \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e. Levin, p. 159). This flyer, almost a metre in length, was created as a response by Debord, Pinot-Gallizio, Jorn, and others to the International Association of Art Critics in Brussels, who had assembled in Brussels in April 1958.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome two thousand of these flyers were thrown from the roof of the city’s Grand Bazaar on 12 April, two days before the critics’ international assembly. ‘To you, this gathering is just one more boring event. The Situationist International, however, considers that while this assemblage of so many art critics as an attraction of the Brussels Fair is laughable, it is also significant … [Critics] solicit official recognition from the completely outmoded but still materially dominant society, for which of most of them have been loyal watchdogs’ (Situationist International, \u003ci\u003eAction in Belgium Against the International Assembly of Art Critics\u003c\/i\u003e (1958), \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe boldness and simplicity of the present flyer demonstrate Debord’s capacity not only as a theorist, but also as a typographic designer. It reads ‘To the producers of modern art. If you are tired of imitating demolitions; if it seems to you that the fragmentary repetitions expected of you are outdated before even existing, get in touch with us to organize, at a higher level, new powers of transformation of the surrounding environment. Internationale Situationniste, 32 rue Montagne-Geneviève, Paris-5e’. This is a very rare survival of an important work of Situationist ephemera: although two thousand flyers were thrown into the crowd in April 1958, only a few were kept.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Debord (trans. Levin), ‘The Situationists and the New Forms of Action in Politics or Art’, in McDonough ed., Guy Debord and the Situationist International (2002).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123505\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56198429704569,"sku":"2123505","price":800.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123505_81a4d09d-8a04-4d13-8639-d74a5a38e0c3.jpg?v=1763028971"},{"product_id":"isou-isidore-l-agregation-d-un-nom-et-d-un-messie","title":"ISOU, Isidore. L’Agrégation d’un nom et d’un Messie.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eLettrism and Antisemitism\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISOU, Isidore.\u003c\/strong\u003e L’Agrégation d’un nom et d’un Messie. \u003ci\u003eParis: Gallimard.\u003c\/i\u003e[1947].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s wrappers printed in red and black, partly uncut; pp. 447, [5]; a few small chips to spine, split to upper joint neatly restored, slight dampstaining and a few spots to spine; uniformly browned; presentation inscription to half-title ‘à Elie Szapiro | avec les hommages d’un auteur à l’homme | qui a tant fait pour | introduire mon oeuvre à Toulouse, avec mes amitiés’; two newspaper clippings loosely inserted (1947 and 23 January 1967); a good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePresentation copy of the uncommon first edition of the second book by the founder of Lettrism, warmly inscribed by the author to the gallerist, bibliophile, and Judaica expert Elie Szapiro (1939–2013), co-founder of Galerie Saphir, with thanks for introducing Isou’s work to Toulouse.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eL’Agrégation d’un nom et d’un messie\u003c\/i\u003e was praised as early as 1948 by Georges Bataille, in his journal Critique, as being a book ‘childish, brilliant, as laughable and as embarrassing as a bare backside.’ This polemical work, which alone would suffice to establish Isou’s literary reputation, is an outstanding autobiography recounting the different stages of his formation, from his upbringing in Romania and his escape to France during the Second World War to his arrival in Paris with the aim of founding Lettrism, including his vision of himself as the New Messiah and marvellous descriptions of the act of reading.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGallimard, accused of antisemitism during the Second World War, may have tried to use the Jewish Isou’s self-promoting epic to avoid postwar problems.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNever reissued and rarely seen without false mentions of later editions and different covers, \u003cstrong\u003ethis original edition includes a very rare dedication by Isidore Isou to Elie Szapiro\u003c\/strong\u003e, inscribed on the occasion of a group of Lettrist events that took place in Toulouse some twenty years after the book’s publication. Loosely inserted is a fierce and critical 1947 newspaper clipping, itself tinged with antisemitism: ‘Talent bursts forth. The German atrocities have unleashed Mr Isou’s polemical genius. He does not want to lose his life in lamentations before the temple wall […] From p. 269 onwards, you will no longer be able to smile or yawn. Mr Isou’s childish pride becomes the pride of a miraculous rabbi. He will demonstrate to you that his people are the foundation of the world … \u003ci\u003eShema\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003eIsrael\u003c\/i\u003e]! Wake up … Mr Isou is calling his brothers to battle … and insults the Gospels, Christ, the Church’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e). Also inserted is a cutting related to the Toulouse Lettrist events of January 1967, where Isou met Szapiro.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds six copies in the US (Cornell, NYPL, SUNY Buffalo, Syracuse, Umass Amherst, Yale), to which Library Hub adds three copies in the UK (BL, Bodleian, Manchester).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123540\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56198430097785,"sku":"2123540","price":1800.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123540.jpg?v=1763028793"},{"product_id":"product-6","title":"ISOU, Isidore, Gabriel POMERAND, et al. La Dictature Lettriste: Cahier d’un nouveau régime artistique.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Foundations of Lettrism\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISOU, Isidore, Gabriel POMERAND, et al.\u003c\/strong\u003e La Dictature Lettriste: Cahier d’un nouveau régime artistique. \u003ci\u003eParis: A. Der\u003c\/i\u003e. 1946.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s wrappers printed in red and black; pp. 79, [1]; wrappers slightly dusty, c.  150-mm chip to head of spine and c. 50-mm at foot; light toning to first leaf, else internally clean; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first Lettrist publication, and the first and only issue of the journal of the self-proclaimed ‘only contemporary artistic avant-garde movement’, founded by Isidore Isou in Paris in 1946, containing the movement’s founding manifesto.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eLa Dictature Lettriste\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eLettrist Dictatorship\u003c\/i\u003e) was written collaboratively by Isidore Isou, Gabriel Pomerand, and other Lettrists, but their identities remain uncertain. The title was particularly provocative in the postwar context. This publication holds particular importance in the history of Lettrism for identifying the movement’s original members before they faded into obscurity and were supplanted by the now-iconic names of Dufrêne, Brau, Wolman, Debord, and Lemaître.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123545\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56198430228857,"sku":"2123545","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123545.jpg?v=1763028802"},{"product_id":"kennedy-john-f-profiles-in-courage-decisive-moments-in-the-lives-of-celebrated-americans","title":"KENNEDY, John F. Profiles in Courage: Decisive Moments in the Lives of Celebrated Americans.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eJFK  on American Heroes\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKENNEDY, John F.\u003c\/strong\u003e Profiles in Courage: Decisive Moments in the Lives of Celebrated Americans. \u003ci\u003eNew York: Harper \u0026amp; Brothers.\u003c\/i\u003e 1961.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s blue imitation leather, gilt Presidential Seal to bottom right corner of front cover, spine lettered in gilt, gilt turn-ins, all edges gilt, blue silk place-marker, in original blue box; pp. [ii], xxiii, [2], 266 + blanks, with 4 ff. double-sided plates with black-and-white photographic illustrations after p. 100; dedication leaf signed in a secretarial hand, the space for the dedicatee’s name left blank; a few chips to corners of box; a fine copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA de luxe copy, intended for donors to the Democratic Party and issued in honour of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, of his Pulitzer Prize-winning short biographies describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States Senators, first published in 1956 when Kennedy was Massachusetts Senator.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKennedy had long been interested in the topic of political courage, beginning with his senior thesis at Harvard. Later published as \u003ci\u003eWhy England Slept\u003c\/i\u003e, it dissects the failure of British political leaders in the 1930s to oppose popular resistance to re-arming, leaving the country ill-prepared for the Second World War. When he took a leave of absence from the Senate in 1954 to recover from back surgery, it was to the study of political courage that he dedicated his time. The result was this work featuring characters including John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, and Daniel Webster. When he became president in 1961, it seemed only right to mark the occasion with a special reprint of his esteemed work. Although Kennedy was the book’s guiding spirit and chief architect,  much of it was ghost-written by his speechwriter Ted Sorenson while the senator recuperated from his surgery. \u003cstrong\u003eAlso included is a John F. Kennedy funeral card (120 x 85 mm), with a photographic portrait of the president to the front and an extract from his inaugural address to the verso.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124457\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56867041935737,"sku":"2124457","price":2000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124457.jpg?v=1773758092"},{"product_id":"beardsley-aubrey-grotesques-by-aubrey-beardsley-facsimile-platinum-prints-by-frederick-h-evans-from-the-twelve-original-drawings-in-his-collection","title":"BEARDSLEY, Aubrey; Frederick H. EVANS. Grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley. Facsimile Platinum Prints by Frederick H. Evans from the Twelve Original Drawings in his Collection with a Portrait Frontispiece. Twenty-Five Copies Privately Printed.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eWith Evans’s Most Famous Beardsley Portrait\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBEARDSLEY, Aubrey; Frederick H. EVANS.\u003c\/strong\u003e Grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley. Facsimile Platinum Prints by Frederick H. Evans from the Twelve Original Drawings in his Collection with a Portrait Frontispiece. Twenty-Five Copies Privately Printed. \u003ci\u003eS.l.: s.n.\u003c\/i\u003e 1919.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Publisher’s printed wrappers, housed in a clamshell morocco-backed box with cloth sides, raised bands ruled in gilt; marbled edges, red gilt morocco lettering-pieces; ff. [13], comprising 12 platinum prints after drawings by Aubrey Beardsley and a portrait frontispiece within a handsome Art Nouveau woodcut border signed by Evans in pencil and dated 1919, the prints and frontispiece mounted on brown card, the last 4 ff. provided in facsimile and mounted on paper slightly warmer in colour; \u003ci\u003ec.\u003c\/i\u003e 60-mm split to spine, but holding, a few spots to wrappers; slight offset to blank versos; else very well preserved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of twenty-five privately printed copies, extremely rare, of this handsome collection of facsimile platinum prints after twelve original drawings by Beardsley from the collection of his friend, the Pictorialist photographer Frederick Evans, also including a signed photograph of Beardsley by Evans, perhaps the most famous portrait of the artist.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA friend of George Bernard Shaw, Evans was a proprietor of Jones’ and Evans’ Bookshop near the Guildhall in Cheapside until 1898, when he turned to photography full-time; a monumental photographer of architecture, he was a member of the Linked Ring photographic society and soon befriended Alfred Stieglitz; he was the first British photographer to have his work featured in Stieglitz’s seminal photographic journal \u003ci\u003eCamera Work\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvans met the seventeen-year-old Beardsley in 1889, when Beardsley was working as a clerk for an insurance company. The shop was ‘but a minute’s walk for Beardsley within a twelvemonth of his coming to London town … Here Beardsley would turn in after his city work was done, as well as at the luncheon hour, to discuss the new books; and thereby won into the friendship of Frederick Evans who was early interested in him’ (Macfall, p. 39). Within a year, he was visiting daily. ‘Thus it came about that Beardsley made his first literary friendship in the great city. He would take a few drawings he made at this time and discuss them with Frederick Evans. Soon they were on so friendly a footing that Evans would “swap” the books for which the youth craved in exchange for drawings’ (\u003ci\u003eibid.\u003c\/i\u003e). Indeed, it was Evans who secured Beardsley’s first commission, recommending him to J.M. Dent for Malory’s \u003ci\u003eMorte d’Arthur\u003c\/i\u003e. The portrait of Beardsley included here is one of two famous photographs Evans took of Beardsley around 1894: here, Beardsley gazes downwards, his head in his hands. The portrait frontispiece is here signed by Evans and dated 1919.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe present illustrations, from original drawings of Beardsley from Evans’s collection, were first published in the 1893 \u003ci\u003eBon-Mots\u003c\/i\u003e of Sydney Smith and Richard Brindsley Sheridan, a small-format volume in which Beardsley’s illustrations appear as minute in-text illustrations or tailpieces, measuring not more than four centimetres; they can be appreciated in Grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley not as mere ornaments to the text, but as works of art in their own right. Beardsley died of tuberculosis on 16 March 1898, aged only twenty-five. Published some two decades after Beardsley’s death, the present work appears to follow a similar set, in larger format, issued in a limited edition of ten copies in 1913, under the title \u003ci\u003eGrotesques by Aubrey Beardsley. Enlarged Facsimiles in Platinotype\u003c\/i\u003e, comprising reproductions of the twelve drawings included here but issued without the portrait (we find only one copy, at Princeton).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWe find a single copy in the UK, at the National Art Library, and one in the US (Metropolitan Museum of Art, the portrait of Beardsley unsigned).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124801\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56909938983289,"sku":"2124801","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124801.jpg?v=1776515566"},{"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":"ashbery-john-w-h-auden-foreword-some-trees","title":"ASHBERY, John; W. H. Auden ( foreword ). Some Trees.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eAuden on Ashbery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eASHBERY, John; W. H. Auden (\u003ci\u003eforeword\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Some Trees. \u003ci\u003eNew Haven: Yale University Press\u003c\/i\u003e. 1956.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the publisher’s yellow printed dust-jacket; pp. 87, [1]; cloth a touch bumped to lower spine end, jacket minimally toned and rubbed to lower spine; a fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout, in the fine, bright dustwrapper; front free endpaper signed by John Ashbery in blue ink.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA particularly attractive signed first printing of Ashbery’s first book, chosen by W. H. Auden as winner of the 1955 Yale Younger Poets competition, with Auden’s introduction.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSome Trees\u003c\/i\u003e, Ashbery’s first full-length collection, was submitted in manuscript for the 1955 Yale Younger Poets competition (an earlier chapbook, \u003ci\u003eTurandot, and Other Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, had been issued by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1953). Established in 1918, the Yale Prize for the best debut collection by an American poet is the longest-running annual literary award in the United States, with the winning collection published each year by Yale University Press. In 1955, W. H. Auden was in his ninth year as the competition’s judge, having taken over the job from Archibald MacLeish in 1947. During his tenure, he had chosen Adrienne Rich and W. S. Merwin as winners and would later choose James Wright and John Hollander.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe curious story of Ashbery’s success in 1955 has been described by the poet: ‘I had submitted my poems to the Yale University Press according to the requirement of the competition. […] Frank O’Hara had also submitted a manuscript that year, and both of us had our manuscripts returned by the Press. They’d been screened out from the manuscripts that were sent to Auden … Later we heard that Auden hadn’t liked any of the manuscripts that they’d sent to him and decided not to award the prize that year, and then someone, a mutual friend, possibly Chester Kallman, told Auden […] that Frank and I both submitted. And he asked us through this friend to send our manuscripts, which we did, and then he chose mine, although I never had felt that he particularly liked my poetry, and his introduction to the book is rather curious, since it doesn’t really talk about the poetry. He mentions me as being a kind of successor to Rimbaud, which is very flattering, but at the same time I’ve always had the feeling that Auden probably never read Rimbaud’ (quoted in Kermani, \u003ci\u003eJohn Ashbery\u003c\/i\u003e (1976)).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSome Trees\u003c\/i\u003e is lyrical and formally adventurous, suffused with the young poet’s debts (to Auden, Bishop, Moore, Stevens, Pasternak, Raymond Roussel) but already speaking in Ashbery’s own unmistakable voice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124832\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57261399933305,"sku":"2124832","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124832.jpg?v=1778660636"},{"product_id":"beckett-samuel-ohio-impromptu-and-catastrophe-unpublished-bound-offprint-of-typescripts","title":"BECKETT, Samuel. Ohio Impromptu and Catastrophe [unpublished, bound offprint of typescripts].","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eTwo 'Dramaticules', Presented to the Director of their Debut Performances\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBECKETT, Samuel.\u003c\/strong\u003e Ohio Impromptu and Catastrophe [unpublished, bound offprint of typescripts]. [S.a. (not before 1982).]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBound A4 facsimile of typescript; limp faux-leather wrappers secured with two marginal brass fasteners, upper cover lettered ‘“Ohio Impromptu”| “Catastrophe” | by Samuel Beckett’ in gilt, 1 f. blue paper bound in after \u003ci\u003eOhio Impromptu\u003c\/i\u003e; ff. [1], 4; [1], 5, printed to rectos only; minor wear to edges and corners; some offsetting to blank versos from the ‘sticky’ raised ink-surface characteristic of early xerography, else internally clean throughout; Beckett’s presentation inscription ‘for | Alan, Jean [Schneider] | with love | from Sam’ to first leaf.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFacsimile typescripts of two of Beckett’s late plays in a presentation binding, warmly inscribed by the author to Alan Schneider – director of the first productions of both works – and his wife Jean.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOhio Impromptu\u003c\/i\u003e was written late in 1980 for a 1981 symposium in Columbus, Ohio, to mark the author’s seventy-fifth birthday, produced at the request of Beckett scholar and Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University Stanley Gontarski. The premiere (9 May 1981), a single performance at the Stadium II Theatre, Ohio State, was directed by Schneider, with David Warrilow as the Reader and Rand Mitchell as the Listener. Onstage, both sit at a table, the former reading from a book recounting a story of solitude, loss, and vain consolation. Beckett later disclosed that the ‘dear face’ evoked by the Reader was that of his wife Suzanne: ‘I’ve imagined her dead so many times. I’ve even imagined myself trudging out to her grave’ (conversation with James Knowlson). The play, however, ‘through its visual and verbal imagery […] manages to transcend any purely personal inspiration’ (Knowlson).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWriting to Beckett after the premiere, Schneider reported that ‘the play went very well. Audience response was excellent […]. The visual image was very strong. The two men completely alike in the coats and wigs (which I was, luckily, able to have made without charge by the best wig-maker in New York.) There are some laughs, not entirely expected by me, related to L[istener]’s knocking, wanting R[eader] to go back in his reading’ (16 May 1981). \u003ci\u003eCatastrophe\u003c\/i\u003e, bound here with \u003ci\u003eOhio Impromptu\u003c\/i\u003e, was written in French in 1982 and translated by Beckett in the same year. Dedicated to Czech dramatist Václav Havel, it was first performed in French at the Avignon Festival on 21 July 1982, ‘as part of a tribute by various writers to Václav Havel’ (Beckett to Schneider, 22 May 1982). Among the starkest of Beckett’s late miniatures, it presents a silent, passive Protagonist manipulated by a Director and his Assistant, who adjust his posture, clothing, and bearing with clinical precision for an unseen audience. At once a study in political oppression as well as of authorship, performance, and the ethics of representation, the play is ‘a fitting tribute to the leader of the Velvet Revolution, at a ‘turning point’ (the literal meaning of ‘catastrophe’) in his own and his country’s fortunes’ (Ackerley and Gontarski).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSchneider expressed his enthusiasm for the play, noting the suitability of David Warrilow for the Protagonist and proposing a double bill with \u003ci\u003eOhio Impromptu\u003c\/i\u003e as ‘an interesting contrast of vocal and physical image’ (11 July 1982). Beckett agreed (Paris, 23 July 1982): ‘Like your suggestion of doing it with David in conjunction with Impromptu’), their correspondence leading to a New York run of \u003ci\u003eOhio Impromptu, Catastrophe\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eWhat Where\u003c\/i\u003e at the Harold Clurman Theatre (15 June 1983–15 April 1984; 394 performances). \u003cstrong\u003eIt is likely that this presentation copy of the typescripts of Ohio Impromptu and Catastrophe was printed in association with the occasion.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: From the library of Alan and Eugenie (‘Jean’) Schneider; Jean Schneider died in the summer of 2025 at the age of one hundred and one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Schneider, Entrances: An American Directors Journey (1986); Harmon ed., No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett \u0026amp; Alan Schneider (1998); Ackerley and Gontarski, The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (2006); Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124812\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57261400523129,"sku":"2124812","price":4000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124812.jpg?v=1778660651"},{"product_id":"ariosto-lodovico-pietro-molini-editor-orlando-furioso","title":"ARIOSTO, Lodovico; Pietro MOLINI ( editor ). Orlando furioso","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eQueen Charlotte's \u003ci\u003eOrlando furioso\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eARIOSTO, Lodovico; Pietro MOLINI (\u003ci\u003eeditor\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Orlando furioso \u003ci\u003eBirmingham: John Baskerville for P[ietro] and G[iovanni Claudio] Molini\u003c\/i\u003e. 1773.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour vols, 4to. Contemporary red straight-grained morocco, boards filleted in gilt, spine gilt-ruled in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, raised bands, edges gilt, board-edges with a single gilt fillet, turn-ins roll-tooled in gilt, marbled endpapers, green silk place-markers; I: pp. [vi], lviii, 362, with copper-engraved portrait frontispiece by Etienne Fiquet after Charles Eisen, and a further 12 copper-engraved plates; II: pp. [ii], 450, with 11 copper-engraved plates; III: pp. [ii], 446, with 12 copper-engraved plates; IV: pp. [ii], 446, [26 (list of subscribers)], with 11 copper-engraved plates, issued without errata leaf 5*2 as usual; light, variable foxing and browning, slight offset from plates, vol. II with marginal paperflaw to H2; generally a very good, crisp set in a well-preserved and unrestored binding, with all the cancels called for by Gaskell; nineteenth-century ink inscriptions to vol. I frontispiece verso in two hands, ‘coll: perf: H. Drury. Harrow.’, and ‘LARGE PAPER. C. 153.3. from Queen Charlotte’s Collection, where it was bought 1819. bound by Roger Payne’ (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e); recent bookseller’s tickets to front pastedowns.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe dedication copy of John Baskerville’s \u003ci\u003eOrlando furioso\u003c\/i\u003e, a handsomely bound large-paper copy from the library of Queen Charlotte, later in the possession of Lord Byron’s tutor and friend Henry Drury, with an uncensored plate defaced by the disgruntled engraver.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmong the most accomplished productions of the Baskerville Press, this edition of Ariosto’s epic poem was commissioned by the brothers Giovanni Claudio (\u003ci\u003ec.\u003c\/i\u003e 1724–\u003ci\u003ec.\u003c\/i\u003e 1812) and Pietro Molini (c. 1730–1806), members of a prominent Florentine family of publishers and booksellers active in Italy, France, and England. Pietro, who styled himself ‘Librajo dell’Accademia Reale’ at Haymarket, is documented in London from at least 1769 – when he acted as the London representative for the Livorno edition of the \u003ci\u003eEncyclopédie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(1770–79) – to 1795. In his preface, Pietro Molini emphasises the correctness of the text (partly based on Francesco de Franceschi’s 1584 Venetian edition), the diligence of its printer (the ‘notissimo Giovanni Baskerville’), and the collaboration of ‘the most celebrated artists of London and Paris’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is followed by a detailed life of Ariosto by Giovanni Andrea Barotti (1701–1772), a scholar from Ferrara, whose edition of the complete works of the poet (first published in 1741) was among the first to draw on the poet’s autograph manuscript rather than relying solely on printed sources. Baskerville appears to have printed the letterpress in 1770, while the copperplates were completed by 1774. Each of the forty-six cantos opens with a facing engraving, the illustrations signed by twenty-one artists and engravers active in London and Paris. The designers include Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune, Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Charles Monnet, and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. The result was widely admired. Dibdin described it as the finest edition of Ariosto known to him: ‘Paper, printing, drawing, plates – all delight the eye, and gratify the heart, of the thorough-bred bibliomaniacal virtuoso. This edition has hardly its equal, and certainly not its superior in any publication with which I am acquainted’ (pp. 758–59).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis copy features an early uncensored state of the plate to Canto XLIII, engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815) after Giovanni Battista Cipriani. Apparently exasperated by delays and insults from Molini – who ‘one day in a passion called him an ass, a poltroon, an animal’ (Benton, p. 42). Bartolozzi defaced his own work, incising on the tomb of the Saracen knight Brandimarte the words ‘d’asino, de poltrone, d’animale’, removed in subsequent states\u003c\/strong\u003e (\u003ci\u003ecf.\u003c\/i\u003e the Princeton copy).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAriosto dedicated his \u003ci\u003eOrlando furioso\u003c\/i\u003e to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este (1479–1520), son of Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. While centred on the paladin Orlando and his unrequited love for the pagan princess Angelica – which drives him mad – the poem interweaves multiple narrative strands within a famously complex episodic structure. Among these are the trials leading to the union of Ruggiero – a pagan knight descended from Hector – and the Christian knight heroine  Bradamante, culminating in Ruggiero’s conversion and their marriage. From this union, Ariosto mythically derives the House of Este. In his dedication to Queen Charlotte, Molini explicitly draws on this genealogy, invoking the ‘heroes of the most glorious House of Este, from which the august progenitors of your royal consort trace their origin, [who] did not have to envy Achilles Homer, nor Augustus Virgil’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis alludes to the eleventh-century union of Alberto Azzo II, founder of the House of Este, and Kunigunde of Altdorf, whose son Welf I founded the younger House of Welf, ancestors of the dukes of Brunswick and the Hanoverian monarchs of Britain. This dynastic connection had long played a role in the political and genealogical self-fashioning of the House of Hanover. In 1676, Sophia of Hanover, mother of George I, commissioned genealogical research to substantiate the traditional claim that her house descended from the Este through the Welf line. These investigations established that the House of Hanover could also claim English royal descent through Mathilda of England, daughter of Henry II. \u003cstrong\u003eMolini thus constructs a deliberate bridge between Ariosto’s original Este dedication and the British royal family, linking the poem’s chivalric mythology to the lineage of George III and his consort.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn avid reader from an early age, Queen Charlotte began to form a substantial personal library after her marriage to George III in 1761. Initially housed in London, her collection was later moved to Windsor Castle, increasingly used as a royal residence from the mid-1770s, and partly to Frogmore House, which was expanded to accommodate the growing collection. In 1803, the Queen appointed Edward Harding (1755–1840) as her personal librarian at Frogmore, a position he held until her death. The 1819 Christie’s sale catalogue records over 4,500 titles in German, French, Italian, and English, mostly recent publications.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe King and Queen head the long list of subscribers to the Baskerville Orlando (George III’s copy is now in the King’s Library at the British Library;\u003c\/strong\u003e see Bibliothecae regiae catalogus, vol. I, p. 123). This list forms a veritable ‘who’s who’ of eighteenth-century Britain, including aristocrats, artists, writers, and booksellers. Among the most notable subscribers are Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782), Edmund Burke (1729–1797), David Garrick (1716–1779), and Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792). Several women are also included, among them Society hostess Margaret Clive, Baroness Clive (\u003ci\u003enée\u003c\/i\u003e Maskelyne, 1735–1817), sculptor Anne Seymour Damer (\u003ci\u003enée\u003c\/i\u003e Conway, 1748–1828), and Susanna Leveson-Gower, Marchioness of Stafford (\u003ci\u003enée\u003c\/i\u003e Stewart, 1742–1805), one of the most influential women in eighteenth-century British politics.  The list extends internationally, including subscribers from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, and Italy. In Naples appear Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), British envoy and antiquarian, and the architect Luigi Vanvitelli (1700–1773). The subscription price was four guineas or \u003ci\u003elouis d’or\u003c\/i\u003e with the plates.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing Queen Charlotte’s death, her Baskerville \u003ci\u003eOrlando furioso\u003c\/i\u003e was sold at auction with the rest of her books and personal effects, an event that gave rise to a national scandal; after passing through the London trade, this copy was acquired by Henry Drury,  classical scholar and assistant master at Harrow School from 1801 until his death, serving as master of the lower school from 1833 to 1841. He was also a member of the Roxburghe Club and Fellow of the Royal Society. Among his many friends were Dibdin (Drury appears in his \u003ci\u003eBibliographical Decameron\u003c\/i\u003e) and Lord Byron, who stayed in his house at Harrow and later corresponded with him ‘in affectionate terms and without much regard to the propriety later thought usual to preserve in a correspondence with a clergyman’ (\u003ci\u003eODNB\u003c\/i\u003e). Drury’s vast library, including numerous Greek and Latin classics, was dispersed in 4729 lots by Robert Harding Evans in a sale lasting twenty-three days in 1827, and a second by Christie \u0026amp; Manson in 1841, after his death.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough the binding has been attributed to Roger Payne, he is not known to have bound for the Royal family; however ‘he strongly influenced many who did, more particularly [Christian Samuel] Kalthoeber, who bound many of the books in the King’s Library at the British Museum’ (Davenport, p. 91).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e1.  \u003cstrong\u003eCharlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Consort of Great Britain and Ireland\u003c\/strong\u003e (\u003ci\u003er.\u003c\/i\u003e 1761–1818); her sale, Christie’s, 9 June–16 July 1819, lot 1766 (‘4 vol. 4to. Cuojo turch. Birm. 1773’).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.  Evidently bought at Queen Charlotte’s sale by the bookseller and publisher Robert Triphook (1781\/2–1868), active on St James’s Street c. 1809 and on Old Bond Street from 1815 to 1825, no. 2648 (‘Ariosto … large paper, fine impressions of plates, red morocco, gilt leaves … The Queen’s Copy’) listed for £12 in the supplement to his Catalogue for 1819, of \u003ci\u003eRare Books, in Various Languages\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.  Henry Joseph Thomas ‘Harry’ Drury (1778–1841), bibliophile, Harrow master, and friend and correspondent of Lord Byron; his sale, R. H. Evans, 19 February–23 March 1827, lot 339 (‘Ariosto (L.) \u003ci\u003eOrlando Furioso\u003c\/i\u003e, 4 vol. LARGE PAPER. Plates by Bartolozzi, \u0026amp;c. red morocco, gilt leaves, Queen Charlotte’s copy, Birmingham, Baskerville, 1773’), sold for £10 10s (see \u003ci\u003eThe Classical Journal\u003c\/i\u003e vol. xxxvi, Sept.–Dec. 1827, p. 145).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4.  The booksellers Dulau and Co. at 37 Soho Square, ‘Valuable and Choice Works’, in \u003ci\u003eBent’s Literary Adviser\u003c\/i\u003e, September 1842 (‘ARIOSTO … large paper, … red morocco, by Roger Payne … From the Collection of Queen Charlotte’), listed for £11 11s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBrunet I, col. 438 (‘belle édition’) Cohen-de Ricci 95 (‘Très belle édition’) Gaskell 48(b); Graesse I, p. 199 (this copy ‘Drury’ mentioned in note); ESTC T133620; Lowndes I, p. 61 (this copy ‘Drury’ mentioned in note); Ray, French 64. See Benton, John Baskerville (1914); Davenport, Royal English Bookbindings (1896); Dibdin, The Library Companion (1824); Schellenberg, Book Illustration in the Long Eighteenth Century (2015). \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124605\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57261401801081,"sku":"2124605","price":20000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124605.jpg?v=1778660683"},{"product_id":"apollinaire-guillaume-alcools-poemes-1898-1913","title":"APOLLINAIRE, Guillaume. Alcools. Poèmes (1898–1913).","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eRevolutionising Poetry\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAPOLLINAIRE, Guillaume.\u003c\/strong\u003e Alcools. Poèmes (1898–1913). [\u003ci\u003eLyons: E. Arrault et Cie for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eParis: Mercure de France\u003c\/i\u003e. 1913.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s printed wrappers with beige caduceus and winged helmet device to upper cover; pp. 204, [2 (colophon, blank)]; with half-title and lithographic frontispiece portrait by Pablo Picasso, with tissue guard, winged helmet device to title; small chip to lower cover, slight creasing to spine, a few minute chips to spine subtly repaired, text block slightly coming away from spine at head of last few quires; sporadic light foxing, some browning to last 2 ff.; else a very good copy, partially uncut.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRare first edition of this pivotal collection of poems by Apollinaire, instrumental in cementing his reputation, with a striking Cubist frontispiece portrait of the author by his friend Picasso, our copy in the original printed wrappers.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBorn Wilhelm Apollinaris Kostrowicki in Rome to a Polish–Lithuanian mother, Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) moved to Paris \u003ci\u003ec.\u003c\/i\u003e 1898–1900, where he became a pioneer in Cubist and Modernist circles, befriending the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Rouveyre, Braque, Duchamp, and Metzinger, coining the term ‘Surrealism’ in 1917, seven years before the emergence of Breton’s Manifesto.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApollinaire had published his first volume of poetry, \u003ci\u003eLe Bestiaire\u003c\/i\u003e, in 1911, but it is \u003ci\u003eAlcools\u003c\/i\u003e – the first work in which the poet chose to abandon punctuation entirely – that his reputation rests, along with his typographically experimental \u003ci\u003eCalligrammes\u003c\/i\u003e of 1918.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter Apollinaire had added the opening poem, ‘Zone’, at the last minute, and changed the name of the collection from \u003ci\u003eEau de Vie\u003c\/i\u003e to Alcools in November 1912, printing was completed on 20 April 1913 in a limited edition of 567 numbered examples (nos. 1–23 on Hollande paper), although certain examples ‘of service de presse or those offered by the author have numbers over six hundred’, as here. The copy sent by the author to Emile Verhaeren, for example, was no. 898 (Décaudin,\u003ci\u003e Le dossier d’ ‘Alcools’\u003c\/i\u003e (1996), p. 42, \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.); Apollinaire also sent copies to André Gide and Blaise Cendrars, amongst others.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf the fifty poems contained here, a third are dedicated to individual friends of Apollinaire’s, including Picasso (’Les fiançailles’), Max Jacob (‘Palais’); André Billy, to whom Apollinaire sent copy no. 822 of \u003ci\u003eAlcools\u003c\/i\u003e ('L’émigrant de Landor Road’); the painter André Derain (‘Rosemonde’); the art critic Félix Fénéon, coiner of the term ‘Neo-Impressionism’ (‘L’ermite’); and the Cubist painter and printmaker Marie Laurencin, Apollinaire’s lover \u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 1907–12. Of particular note are ‘Le Pont Mirabeau’ (pp. 18–19) and ‘Zone’ (pp. 7–17), the latter shifting between the first and second person and tracing a sunrise-to-sunrise walk through Paris in which the poet–narrator touches on Christianity, Paris’s Jewish district, and immigrants, as well as courtesans, disillusionment, and lost loves. ‘Zone’ also seemingly includes an allusion to Apollinaire’s arrest in 1911, when he was falsely accused of stealing the Mona Lisa (p. 14). The resulting week he spent in prison would become his inspiration for ‘A la Santé’ (pp. 178–83).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds nine copies in North America (Getty, Harvard, Indiana, MoMa, Northwestern, NYPL, Université de Montréal, UT Austin, and Yale), and only one in the UK (BL).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eConnolly, The Modern Movement 22.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124592\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57261402653049,"sku":"2124592","price":12500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124592.jpg?v=1778660698"},{"product_id":"barbier-georges-illustrator-theophile-gautier-le-roman-de-la-momie-compositions-de-george-barbier-gravees-sur-bois-par-gasperini","title":"BARBIER, Georges ( illustrator ); Théophile GAUTIER. Le Roman de la momie. Compositions de George Barbier, gravées sur bois par Gasperini.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Mummy Speaks – an Art Deco Masterpiece\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBARBIER, Georges (\u003ci\u003eillustrator\u003ci\u003e); Théophile GAUTIER.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Le Roman de la momie. Compositions de George Barbier, gravées sur bois par Gasperini. \u003ci\u003eParis: A \u0026amp; G Mornay\u003c\/i\u003e. 1929.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original pictorial paper wrappers with fold-over flaps, with glassine dust jacket; pp. [6], 323, [1], untrimmed, with colour illustrations by Barbier, wood-engraved by Emile Gasperini (including frontispiece, title page, chapter headings, tail pieces and illustrations in the text); light shelf wear to spine ends, corners a little bumped, spine and top edge of rear wrapper gently toned, else a near-fine, bright copy; printed publisher’s note loosely inserted.8vo. Original pictorial wrappers by Gasperini after Barbier with fold-over flaps, with glassine dust-jacket, partially untrimmed; pp. [vi], 325, [2 (colophon, blank)]; over 30 wood-engraved illustrations by Gasperini after Barbier (including frontispiece, title-page, head- and tailpieces, initials, and in-text illustrations); spine lightly bumped at head and foot, slight wear to corners, spine and head of rear wrapper lightly toned; else a near-fine, bright copy; printed bifolium (quire 21) and printed publisher’s note on green paper loosely inserted (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUncommon first edition of Gautier’s novel – set partly in the nineteenth century and partly in ancient Egypt – to be illustrated by Georges Barbier, no. 289 of 834 copies printed on Rives paper, from a total edition of 1091.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eLe Roman de la momie\u003c\/i\u003e follows a young English aristocrat and a German Egyptologist on an expedition to the Valley of the Kings, where they uncover a sarcophagus containing the perfectly preserved mummy of Tahoser, the beautiful daughter of a high priest. The narrative then unfolds her past life and lovers. This edition is beautifully illustrated by Georges Barbier (1882–1932), celebrated designer of stage costumes and one of the most renowned French Art Deco illustrators, and was one of the last illustrative projects executed before his death.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThéophile Gautier (1811–1872) was a prolific and influential author whose work became a touchstone for later literary movements including Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence, and Modernism, and was much admired by the likes of Charles Baudelaire, T. S. Eliot, and Marcel Proust. First serialised in \u003ci\u003eLe Moniteur universel\u003c\/i\u003e in 1857 and published in book form the following year by Hachette, \u003ci\u003eLe Roman de la momie\u003c\/i\u003e remains one of the most successful literary products of nineteenth-century Egyptomania.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLoosely inserted is a printed notice from the publishers, apologising for the colophon’s erroneous statement that this is the forty-seventh volume in their \u003ci\u003eBeaux Livres\u003c\/i\u003e series (it was the forty-eighth), along with a printed bifolium in which the error has been corrected. ‘Four of the five titles which Barbier undertook between 1924 and 1931 for Mornay’s series, \u003ci\u003eLes Beaux Livres\u003c\/i\u003e, are tales by Henri de Régnier, also with 18th century settings … More attractive is Gautier’s Le roman de la momie of 1929, thanks in large part to the harmonious engravings printed in color by which Gasperini rendered the artist’s designs. Barbier seems to have welcomed the opportunity offered by Gautier’s Egyptian setting to rival the middle eastern subjects which preoccupied Schmied at this time’ (Ray, p. 43).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOutside continental Europe, OCLC finds eight copies, of which six in North America (Fisher, Morgan, RIT, Royal Ontario Museum, SMU, University Club Library), one in Japan (Waseda), and only one in the UK (NLA).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Ray, The Art Deco Book in France II (2005); this edition not in Cartier (cf. vol. III, p. 179).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123802\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57261403144569,"sku":"2123802","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123802.jpg?v=1778660713"},{"product_id":"beale-thomas-the-natural-history-of-the-sperm-whale-to-which-is-added-a-sketch-of-a-south-sea-whaling-voyage","title":"BEALE, Thomas. The Natural History of the Sperm Whale ... To Which is Added, A Sketch of a South-Sea Whaling Voyage.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eMelville’s Primary Reference for \u003ci\u003eMoby Dick\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBEALE, Thomas.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Natural History of the Sperm Whale ... To Which is Added, A Sketch of a South-Sea Whaling Voyage. \u003ci\u003eLondon: John van Voorst.\u003c\/i\u003e 1839.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Contemporary half calf with marbled sides, rebacked, gilt morocco lettering-piece relaid to spine; pp. [iii]–vi, [7]–12, 393, bound without half-title; wood-engraved frontispiece and 2 wood-engraved plates, wood-engraved illustrations in the text; a few minor abrasions to corners; internally remarkably clean and fresh; ownership inscription of Brian Birley Roberts to front free endpaper and his posthumous bookplate to front pastedown (see below).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSecond edition, considerably revised and expanded, of this monumental early work on sperm whales by ship’s surgeon Thomas Beale, the edition owned by Herman Melville and his ‘primary source book … in composing the cetological section of \u003ci\u003eMoby Dick\u003c\/i\u003e’\u003c\/strong\u003e (Vincent, p. 128).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMelville acquired a copy of Beale’s \u003ci\u003eNatural History of the Sperm Whale\u003c\/i\u003e – procuring it from London through Putnam’s in New York – on 10 July 1850, annotating it throughout and adding checkmarks in the margins to note his progress. \u003cstrong\u003eIndeed, Beale’s work receives explicit mention in \u003ci\u003eMoby Dick\u003c\/i\u003e, in which it is praised as one of ‘only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree succeed in their attempt’, and Beale’s drawings of the sperm whale are characterised ‘by great odds’ as ‘the best’.\u003c\/strong\u003e The first edition had been published in 1835 in an edition of only 133 copies.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘From its first appearance Beale’s book has been recognized as an essential reference for studies of whales and whaling. It provides for the sperm whale and the British Southern whale fishery, a handbook similar to that supplied for the Greenland Right whale and the Northern whale fishery by William Scoresby junr in his \u003ci\u003eAn Account of the Arctic Regions\u003c\/i\u003e […] Beale was one of the first observers, if not the first, to provide an accurate description of the sperm whale’s appearance, habits, and general biology’ (1973 reprint, p. v).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProvenance: Polar ornithologist and researcher Brian Birley Roberts (1912–1978) organised and led the Cambridge University Expedition to Vatnajökull in Iceland in 1932 whilst an undergraduate at Emmanuel College, as well as the Cambridge University Expedition to the Scoresby Sund in East Greenland in 1933. In 1946 he joined Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute as a part-time research fellow, and was ‘often thought to be the \u003ci\u003eéminence grise\u003c\/i\u003e of the UK’s Antarctic policy and also of the founding of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty’ (\u003ci\u003ePolar Record\u003c\/i\u003e 52.6 (2016)).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eChavanne 1006; Denucé 1254; Sabin 4108; Spence 105. See Vincent, The Trying-Out of Moby Dick (1949).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2118252\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57261403603321,"sku":"2118252","price":1800.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2118252.jpg?v=1778660729"},{"product_id":"dante-alighieri-pietro-bembo-editor-le-terze-rime-title-verso-lo-nferno-e-l-purgatorio-e-l-paradiso-di-dante-alaghieri-sic","title":"DANTE Alighieri; [Pietro BEMBO ( editor )]. Le terze rime. [ Title verso :] Lo’nferno e’l Purgatorio e’l Paradiso di Dante Alaghieri [ sic ].","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe First Aldine Dante – With a Portrait of the Poet\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDANTE Alighieri; [Pietro BEMBO (\u003ci\u003eeditor\u003ci\u003e)].\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Le terze rime. [\u003ci\u003eTitle verso\u003ci\u003e:] Lo’nferno e’l Purgatorio e’l Paradiso di Dante Alaghieri [\u003ci\u003esic\u003ci\u003e]. \u003ci\u003eVenice: Aldus Manutius\u003c\/i\u003e. 1502.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Eighteenth-century speckled calf, arms of William Bagot, first Bagot Bromley blocked in blind to boards, spine gilt in compartments with gilt crowned fleurs-de-lys; ff. [243] of [244]; a7 b–z8 A–G8 H4; lacking f. a8 (Inferno III, lines 79–136), f. l2 blank, quires a and b and f. s8 supplied (during the eighteenth century or earlier); italic letter, capital spaces with guide letters, woodcut Aldine device to final verso; joints repaired, front free endpaper previously laid down, obscuring bookplate of Charles Ford (recently renewed with bookplate and label relaid); slight marginal dampstaining to head of Inferno VI–XV and to inner margin of Inferno XXXIII–Purgatorio IV, some browning and light soiling to first and final leaves, the odd mark; else a very good copy; sixteenth-century underlining and reading marks to annotation to c. 50 pp., early inscription to final leaf ‘?andai in Farnesina … al sinodo’; title-page with sixteenth-century ink portrait of Dante in profile within border enclosing printed text (see below), inscribed ‘Φρὰνκισχῶς Αλφάνῶς Νεοπολιτσίν εποιει Εποῦ κυρὶακου’, eighteenth-century armorial bookplate of Charles Ford to front pastedown with motto ‘Noli irritare leones’ (Franks 10949), ?nineteenth-century ownership inscription ‘R. Washbourne’ to head of title, twentieth-century booklabel of D.S. Robertson to front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first Aldine edition of Dante, our copy with a magnificent ink portrait of Dante in profile executed in 1555 and with the bookplate of Charles Ford, Jonathan Swift’s confidant, close correspondent, and most trusted friend, who played an instrumental role in bringing \u003ci\u003eGulliver’s Travels\u003c\/i\u003e to print, clandestinely delivering the manuscript to the publisher and, for the second edition, providing the final corrected copy of \u003ci\u003eGulliver’s Travels\u003c\/i\u003e on Swift’s behalf to rectify the unauthorised changes made to the first edition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis edition – the only appearance of Dante’s \u003ci\u003eCommedia\u003c\/i\u003e under the title of \u003ci\u003eLe Terze rime\u003c\/i\u003e – appeared as part of Aldus’s pocket-format octavo series of works, beginning with his Virgil in 1501 and followed by the series’ first vernacular work, Petrarch’s \u003ci\u003eLe cose volgari\u003c\/i\u003e, in July 1501, edited by the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) as here; it was one of the earliest Aldines to employ Aldus’s iconic dolphin-and-anchor device. Bembo’s recension of the \u003ci\u003eCommedia\u003c\/i\u003e, instrumental in cementing Dante’s importance as a vernacular poet, eliminates abbreviations introduced by Landino and draws largely upon the text of the fourteenth-century manuscript sent by Boccaccio to Petrarch in the 1350s as opposed to early, textually flawed printed editions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Aldine Dante formed ‘“il presupposto concreto” (“the concrete prerequisite”) for Bembo’s programme to found a new literary language upon the works of illustrious writers. Fundamental to the humanistic principles of Bembo and Aldus was the idea that language is to be learned not from rules, but from examples. To create illustrious vernacular models in these editions, Bembo applied the esteemed methods of philology that he learned from Poliziano and Barbaro to historical, vernacular texts. The result was editions that both validated the vernacular as a serious field of study and made the authors’ texts available in such a way that they could stabilize the language and hold in check the forces of linguistic change’ (Brammall).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOur copy bears a magnificent ink profile portrait of Dante wearing his traditional \u003ci\u003ecappuccio\u003c\/i\u003e, the outline of his white coif present more faintly under his hood. For a work dated 1555 (if Robertson’s dating is to be trusted, see below), it is notable that the depiction of Dante should bear more resemblance to representations of the \u003ci\u003esommo poeta\u003c\/i\u003e from the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscript tradition – or in early woodcut illustrations of scenes from the \u003ci\u003eCommedia\u003c\/i\u003e, generally shown in continuous narrative – than to sixteenth-century depictions in painting, or from woodcut frontispiece in printed books.  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy this time, Dante’s image had become highly stylised, with increased emphasis on his poetic auctoritas, conveyed by the inclusion of a laurel wreath, and his aquiline nose, severe countenance, and strong jaw, as well as the increased rigidity and gradual shortening of his hood. Holbrook (1911) complains of the diversity of Dantes before the consolidation of his iconography, finding in manuscript sources ‘Dantes with pudgy expressionless faces, Dantes with a feeble jaw and receding chin, Dantes in feminine form with feminine faces, Protean Dantes ever assuming new yet never Dantesque shapes […]’ in which Dante is identified through clothing and gesture rather than what Holbrook also refers to disparagingly as ‘the profile of an old hag’.  The departure from later developments in Dante’s iconography largely positions him as pilgrim or Everyman rather than imposing auctor. There are particularly interesting parallels between our portrait and Dante’s dress in Priamo della Quercia’s illustrations to MS Yates Thompson 36, and Guarneriana MS 200, for example, as well as the engravings attributed to Baccio Baldini after designs by Botticelli for the first illustrated edition of the \u003ci\u003eCommedia\u003c\/i\u003e, printed in 1481 by Niccolò di Lorenzo. ‘Through his active role in the visual narrative the artists represent Dante the pilgrim as an “Everyman”, showing his allegorical role, his role representing mankind itself as “the personification of Christian endeavor, after whom the reader should mold himself in mind and heart” […] While Dante’s actions are painted as his own, the lack of a specific portrait in the early illuminations allows those actions to represent a wider experience, the experience of Everyman rather than those of a particular individual fixed in a specific historical moment. It may be that the illustrators resisted realistic portraits in the \u003ci\u003eCommedia\u003c\/i\u003e for so long (long after they had emerged elsewhere) because the Everyman concerned them more than an image of the illustrious poet. Such a portrait would confine those actions to the “io” “che è solo io” and limit the breadth of the poet’s experience for the reader\/viewer’ (Owen).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe portrait was executed by one Francesco Alfani. The inscription in Greek (‘Φρὰνκισχῶς Αλφάνῶς Νεοπολιτσίν εποιει Εποῦ κυρὶακου’, i.e. ‘?Francesco Alfano the Neapolitan made [this] here for the Lord’) to either side of the portrait is dated by D.S. Robertson to 1555 by means of isopsephy, using the first letter of each word of the inscription (where A=1, Φ=500, N=50, and E=5). This is likely the Francesco Alfani who was doctor of medicine and philosophy and professor of medicine at the University of Salerno, ‘in those days reputed to be the greatest medical school in the world’ and prior of the collegio medico from 1578 (Eager, \u003ci\u003eEarly History of Quarantine\u003c\/i\u003e (1903), p. 15; his 1577 Naples-printed \u003ci\u003eOpus, de peste, febre pestilentiali, \u0026amp; febre maligna\u003c\/i\u003e, reprinted in Hamburg in 1589 and 1618 according to Crescimbeni. The work was particularly notable for its claim that corrupt air can carry plague over long distances by land or sea.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere was also a translator and vernacular poet of the same name about whom little is known, although he is thought to have been a Florentine descendant of the \u003ci\u003edolce stil novo\u003c\/i\u003e poet Gianni Alfani and active during the second half of the fifteenth century, although the Florentine branch of the Alfani family (as opposed to the Neapolitan or Perugian branches) was all but extinct at the time, and traditional attributions to the late fifteenth century, following Crescimbeni, are ‘based on the somewhat generic dating of a manuscript (which Quadrio and Mazzucchelli then followed)’ (Lodone, p. 149, \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.). Although Alfani’s verse remained unpublished, several of his poems are preserved, for example, in MS Riccardiano 1118 (sixteenth century, containing twelve sonnets by Alfani) alongside extracts from Dante’s \u003ci\u003eVita nuova\u003c\/i\u003e and works by Boccaccio, Guinizelli, Cino da Pistoia, and others, and he was the interlocutor, with Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542), of a notable \u003ci\u003etenzone\u003c\/i\u003e, or poetic exchange. The Laurenziana’s MS Plut. XLI.33 contains works by Alfani alongside those of Bembo, Ariosto, and Machiavelli, and his sonnets also appear in Chig. M. VII.142 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, composed during the first half of the sixteenth century for Giovanni Girolamo de’ Rossi (Bishop of Pavia between 1530 and 1564).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe front free endpaper bears the bookplate of Charles Ford of Woodpark (Wood Park), some ten miles from Dublin. \u003c\/strong\u003eBorn to an Irish father and an English mother, Ford was educated at Eton and admitted as a fellow-commoner at Trinity College Dublin, graduating B.A. in 1699. His enduring friendship with Jonathan Swift likely began while Swift (then aged forty-one) was vicar at Laracor, and Ford was twenty-six. In 1712 Swift appointed Ford editor of the \u003ci\u003eLondon Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e, and Swift’s close friend and muse Esther Johnson (better known as ‘Stella’) spent six months at Ford’s home at Woodpark; Swift’s poem ‘Stella at Wood Park’ was written to thank Ford, affectionately referred to as ‘Don Carlos’, for his hospitality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFord had acted as Swift’s intermediary in bringing the final corrected copy of \u003ci\u003eGulliver’s Travels\u003c\/i\u003e to the publisher Benjamin Motte, making sure that Motte’s insertions, deletions, and alterations to the first edition  – made without Swift’s consent – were rectified. In the twentieth century, it was revealed through Ford’s letters that \u003ci\u003eGulliver’s Travels\u003c\/i\u003e had been composed almost a decade later than previously thought, proving that Swift authored Part I in 1721–2, Part 2 in 1722–3, Part IV in 1723, and Part III (written after Part IV) in 1724–5. Two copies of Swift’s novel survive with significant corrections to the text in Ford’s hand, one at the Morgan and the other at the Forster Collection. Ford named Swift as executor of his will, a role Swift was unable to carry out due to his own declining health. Ford likely obtained this copy of the \u003ci\u003eCommedia\u003c\/i\u003e during his two-year Grand Tour to Italy in 1717 and 1718; he had previously travelled to the Continent with Bolingbroke. In a poem written for Ford’s birthday in 1722, Swift refers both to his friend’s Italophilia and to his desire to leave Ireland. ‘When to your Friends you would enhance | The Praise of Italy or France | For Grandeur, Elegance, and Wit, | We gladly hear you, and submit: | But then, to come and keep a Clutter | For this, or that Side of a Gutter, | To live in this or t’other Isle, | We cannot think it worth your while’. Ford served as an important source of information for Swift during the satirist’s years in Ireland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e1.  Early ownership inscription to final leaf perhaps indicating Roman clerical provenance (’?andai in Farnesina … al sinodo’), with underlining, manicules, and reading marks (‘comp.’) to \u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 50 pp., largely evenly spaced but slightly more concentrated within the Purgatorio. There are also occasional manuscript corrections to the text as edited by Bembo, \u003ci\u003ee.g.\u003c\/i\u003e in Paradiso XIV, in which our reader adds ‘non’ after ‘Si pia l’ombra d’Anchise si porse’, indicating familiarity with an uncommon variant of the terzina, called by Alessandro Piccolomini ‘incorrect, although it appears in some printed editions’ (Piena, et larga parafrase (1572), p. 167, \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.  Sixteenth-century portrait of Dante in brown ink to title, with Greek ownership inscription of Francesco Alfani in the same hand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.  Bookplate of Charles Ford (c. 1681\/2–1743) of Woodpark, near Dublin. Six of Ford’s other Aldines, including the five-volume set of Aldus’s incunable Aristotle (1495-98), are now at Eton, having been given to the school by Lord Berkeley of Stratton, a mutual connection of Swift’s, in 1743.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4.  William Bagot, 1st Baron Bagot of Bagot’s Bromley (1728-1798); seemingly not in the sale of books removed from the Bagot estate at Blithfield Hall (Sotheby’s, 26 November 1945), although the sale included his copy of the 1481 Niccolò di Lorenzo edition (lot 74).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5. ?Nineteenth-century ownership inscription of R. Washburn, perhaps the bookseller of the same name on Paternoster Row specialising in Catholic literature and theology.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e6. Booklabel of Donald Struan Robertson, scholar of Apuleius, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, and friend and correspondent of A. E. Housman. He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge. ‘It is not remembered for which birthday he asked for a guinea-pig and a pocket Homer, but a love for literature and the possession of books was his from early days. He would often make the long walk back to Hampstead bearing a volume that he had, by saving his bus-fare, been able to secure in the Charing Cross Road … in Italian he had read all Ariosto and Dante, to whom he constantly returned. He had a series of small notebooks, in which he had copied out favourite passages from these … each day one was carried, in a silk case, in a pocket of his coat, to be read in trains or when the business of a meeting grew tedious’ (F. H. Sandbach, obituary). Not in the Hodgson \u0026amp; Co. sale of his library (22-23 March 1962).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBM STC Italian, p. 209; EDIT16 CNCE 1144; USTC 808768; Index Aureliensis XI, p. 260. See Brammall, ‘Fixity and Fluidity in Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua’, in Multilingual Texts and Practices in Early Modern Europe (2023); Holloway, The Pilgrim and the Book (1992). On Alfani the physician, and Alfani the poet, see Crescimbeni, p. 469; De Renzi, Storia documentata della scuola medica di Salerno (1857) 233; Lodone, ‘Per un profilo di Francesco Alfani volgarizzatore e poeta’, in Medioevo e rinascimento XXXII (2018). On Ford, see Smith ed., The Letters of Jonathan Swift to Charles Ford (1935). On the iconography of Dante, see Holbrook, Portraits of Dante from Giotto to Raffael (1911); Landner, Depicting Dante in Anglo-Italian Literary and Visual Arts (2017); Owen, ‘The Image of Dante, Poet and Pilgrim’, in Dante on View (2016).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124915\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267122372985,"sku":"2124915","price":11000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124915a.jpg?v=1778693936"},{"product_id":"beckett-samuel-rockaby-and-other-short-pieces","title":"BECKETT, Samuel. Rockaby and other Short Pieces.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eInscribed by Beckett’s ‘Favourite Actress, Almost at Times His Muse’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBECKETT, Samuel.\u003c\/strong\u003e Rockaby and other Short Pieces. \u003ci\u003eNew York: Grove Press\u003c\/i\u003e. 1981.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original pale blue cloth, spine lettered in silver, in the dust-jacket designed by Janet Odgis, priced $12.50 to upper edge of front flap; pp. 80; spine somewhat sunned, slight pushing and fading to spine tips, jacket lettering a little faded, small loss of laminate (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 15 × 15 mm) to upper edge of rear cover, light creasing to head of spine; a near-fine copy in like jacket; signature of Billie Whitelaw to front free endpaper, dated 16 February 1984; with a dated Rockaby faceted paperweight, engraved with the text ‘Rockaby 1984’, made by the renowned Belgian crystal manufacturer Val St. Lambert (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst US edition, first printing, of the first appearances in print of \u003ci\u003eRockaby\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOhio Impromptu\u003c\/i\u003e, the first in book form of \u003ci\u003eA Piece of Monologue\u003c\/i\u003e, and first US appearance of the prose \u003ci\u003eAll Strange Away\u003c\/i\u003e, signed and dated by Billie Whitelaw, who gave the first performances of \u003ci\u003eRockaby\u003c\/i\u003e, Beckett’s ‘favourite actress, almost at times his muse’\u003c\/strong\u003e (Ackerley and  Gontarski).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eRockaby\u003c\/i\u003e was written for a conference at the Center for Theater Research, Buffalo, where it was directed by Alan Schneider with Whitelaw as the Woman and the Voice (respectively ‘W’ and ‘V’ in the text) first performed on 8 April 1981; the London première – reprising Buffalo – followed at the Cottesloe Theatre in December 1982. The role had originally been intended for Irene Worth, who withdrew shortly before rehearsals: ‘She’s gotten an offer to do a film, needed the money, etc’ (Alan Schneider to Beckett, 15 February 1981). Whitelaw’s assumption of the role was a relief to author and director alike: ‘Can’t tell you how delighted I am finally to be meeting Billie and working with her’ (\u003ci\u003eibid\u003c\/i\u003e.).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA woman in a black evening gown sways rhythmically in a rocking chair, her movements precisely synchronised with the incantatory movement of her own recorded voice, which she intermittently joins with. The play may be seen and heard as a solemn, highly stylised counterpart to the earlier \u003ci\u003eKrapp’s Last Tape\u003c\/i\u003e, both turning on the interplay between live and recorded voices. Both draw upon early memories, Rockaby recalling Beckett’s ‘maternal grandmother, “little Granny”, Annie Roe, dressed in “her best black” sitting in a rocking chair at the window of Cooldrinagh, where she lived out the final years of her life’ (Knowlson). More distantly, we may recall the rocking chair in \u003ci\u003eMurphy\u003c\/i\u003e, the author’s first novel. Following the premiere, Schneider wrote to Beckett that ‘the general audience response has been excellent. They have sat fascinated and mesmerized […] The tape Billie made in London is superb, a real piece of music. […] How true and right your instincts and demands were on this one’ ([18] April 1981).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis copy of \u003ci\u003eRockaby and Other Short Pieces\u003c\/i\u003e, from the library of director Alan Schneider, was signed and dated by Whitelaw during the run of a Beckett triple bill – \u003ci\u003eRockaby, Footfalls\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eEnough\u003c\/i\u003e – given at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, New York, opening 16 February 1984, Whitelaw appearing in all three works. The production was both critically and commercially successful. ‘Presumably by this time you are aware that the ROCKABY evening is the most sought-after theatre event of the season’, Schneider reported to Beckett. ‘All hell is breaking loose. We are selling out […], turning away hundreds on weekends. We are the talk of the town, and Billie has been absolutely besieged by newspaper and TV people; she has had hardly a moment to herself’ (2 March 1984). Whitelaw was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in the category of Outstanding Solo Performance, which may explain the faceted Val St. Lambert \u003ci\u003eRockaby\u003c\/i\u003e 1984 paperweight\/ornament accompanying this volume.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: From the library of Alan and Eugenie (‘Jean’) Schneider (d. 2025).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124811\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267123421561,"sku":"2124811","price":550.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124811.jpg?v=1778693945"},{"product_id":"deshoulieres-antoinette-du-ligier-de-la-garde-poesies","title":"DESHOULIÈRES, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde. Poësies.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eA Widow’s Unused Sheets\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDESHOULIÈRES, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde.\u003c\/strong\u003e Poësies. \u003ci\u003eParis: Jean Villette.\u003c\/i\u003e 1691.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo in 4s. Eighteenth-century speckled calf, edges speckled red and green, spine gilt in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, board-edges roll-tooled in gilt; Villette’s woodcut monogram device to title, woodcut and typographic headpieces; upper hinge cracked, small abrasions and short splits to joints subtly restored, sporadic light foxing, slight dust-soiling at foot of last 2 ff.; cancelled 1773 ownership inscription ‘de la bibliothèque de Philippe-René ?Prevel’ to front free endpaper, late eighteenth-century ownership inscriptions ‘Ex libris Brelay’ to title and p. 220, Brelay’s printed ownership slip pasted to title (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e); a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExtremely rare reissue reusing the sheets of the first edition of 1688 – printed by Françoise Loir, widow of the printer Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy – of the poems of Antoinette Deshoulières (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 1634-1694), published to coincide with the reading of Deshoulières’s work at the Académie française in the spring of 1691, our copy owned by a resident of Niort during the French Revolution.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVoltaire called Deshoulières the most successful of French female poets, as ‘her verses have been the most widely remembered’ (quoted in \u003ci\u003eNouvelle biographie universelle\u003c\/i\u003e XIII, col. 828, \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.). She was named a member of the Paduan Accademia degli Ricovrati and of the Academy of Aries, and in 1688 she received a pension of 2000 livres from Louis XIV. Although she was unable to join the Académie française due to her sex, her poems were recited as part of the official proceedings for the election of Bernard de Fontenelle in 1691. Our copy, with a cancel title (although retaining Loir’s 1687 \u003ci\u003eprivilège du roi\u003c\/i\u003e), was evidently issued by Villette to capitalise on this event.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVillette bought much of Cramoisy’s unsold stock from Loir in 1691 and would eventually publish his own ‘second edition’ in 1693, after the publication rights had been ceded to him. Pasted to the title-page is a Revolutionary-era printed ownership slip, ‘661 au cit[oyen] Brelay, rue de la Liberté, a Niort. Deux-Sèvres’, the egalitarian designation citoyen was popularised following the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and was used as a universal form of address during the Revolution.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds only two copies in the US (Cornell, Minneapolis) and none in the UK; not in Library Hub. CCfr records three copies only.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTchemerzine II, p. 807. For the 1688 Cramoisy edition, see BM STC French F-170; Brunet II, col. 626; Cioranescu II, pp. 738-39; Gay III, p. 17; Graesse II, p. 368; USTC 6129821.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124634\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267123519865,"sku":"2124634","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124634a.jpg?v=1778693966"},{"product_id":"bruno-of-cologne-saint-zaccaria-ferreri-opera-vita-post-indicem-serie-literaria-indicanda","title":"BRUNO of Cologne, Saint ; [Zaccaria FERRERI]. Opera \u0026 Vita post indicem serie literaria indicanda.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eBruno's Bruno\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBRUNO of Cologne, \u003ci\u003eSaint\u003ci\u003e; [Zaccaria FERRERI].\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Opera \u0026amp; Vita post indicem serie literaria indicanda. [\u003ci\u003eParis\u003c\/i\u003e] : \u003ci\u003eJodocus Badius Ascensius\u003c\/i\u003e. [27 March 1524.]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFolio. Bound in pigskin over boards in 1939 by W. H. Smith and Son (rear turn-in signed in blind) for Sotheran’s (twentieth-century ink stamp to front free endpaper), preserving a few deckle edges; ff. [8 (contents)], DXX; †8 a–z8 A–H8 2A–2Z8 3a–3g8 3h10 2A8 2B6 2C8, f. DVIII misfoliated, f. CCCXCVIII blank; roman letter, gothic running-titles, text in two columns, 6 large in-text woodcut illustrations, 2-, 6-, and 10-line woodcut criblé initials, title printed in red and black within an elaborate woodcut architectural border depicting a printer at work; a few scratches to rear board; slight worming at inner upper margin of first 4 ff. subtly repaired, last 4 ff. reinforced at gutter; light soiling to f. CCLXXXIXr, small marginal oilstain to quire 2Z; pinhole wormhole to first 3 quires touching a single character per page, light marginal spotting to quire D, pale marginal dampstaining to Vita; twentieth-century bookplate and ownership inscription of Bruno Scott James to front pastedown (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e); a handsome copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of the collected works of St Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030–1101), founder of the Carthusian Order, with an illustrated life of the saint and a lengthy poem on the foundation of the Order by the Benedictine-turned-Carthusian Zaccaria Ferreri, our copy from the library of the Benedictine-turned-Carthusian Bruno Scott James.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnder Pope Leo X, the liturgical feast of Bruno of Cologne was authorised on 19 July 1514, and he was made a saint through the process of equivalent canonisation, renewing broader interest in his life and work. The printing of this work was explicitly authorised by the Order: ‘It might be expected that religious orders would authorise a particular edition or publisher when printing liturgical or other books for the use of the order, and discourage the circulation of others. In practice it seems that this was rarely done, at least explicitly. An exception must however be recognised in the case of the Carthusians. ‘For many years the order had laboured to produce an edition of the works of its founder, St Bruno, and by 1524 this project was completed … [Badius Ascensius] received the manuscript, sent to him by the Prior of the order, Gulielmus Bibaucius or Bibaut, from the Grande Chartreuse, and printed in a handsome folio volume in 1523’ (Armstrong, p. 60). Bade’s magnificent woodcut title-page, incorporating his device of a printer at work, is Renouard’s Marque II, in the fourth state, used from April 1522 to September 1529.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing Bruno’s works is a detailed biography of the saint with six striking woodcut illustrations illustrating episodes from his life, as well as laudatory epigrams, choriambic and hendecasyllabic verse by several poets, and a thirteen-page poem on the life of Bruno in heroic verse by Zaccaria Ferreri of Vicenza (1479–1524). Ferreri had entered the Benedictine monastery of Santa Giustina in Padua at the age of fifteen, and in April 1508 entered the Charterhouse of Venice; the following year, however, he was forced to return to his original Order under a new Carthusian decree preventing the transfer of monks. His preface to the poem is dated five days before the kalends of May 1508, almost immediately after his turn to the Carthusian Order, and he died in 1524 as Bishop of Guardalfiera in Molise only a few months after the publication of the present work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProvenance: the somewhat eccentric Catholic priest Bruno Scott James (1906–1984) had entered the Anglican Benedictine Monastery at Pershore as a young man and studied the works of the Church Fathers extensively before taking instruction from the Carthusians at Parkminster; following stints at Downside Abbey and the Certosa of Florence, he was appointed canon of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere with the title of Monsignor. His health issues caused him to return to England later in life; a member of the Travellers Club, he is perhaps best known for his translation of the \u003ci\u003eLetters of St Bernard of Clairvaux\u003c\/i\u003e, aided by Thomas Merton, and his biographical work \u003ci\u003eSaint Bernard of Clairvaux\u003c\/i\u003e, of which C. S. Lewis owned a copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAdams B-2936; Basler Buchillustration 62; BP16 104798; BM STC French, p. 84; Brunet I, col. 1296; CLC B2494; Moreau III 624; Pettegree and Walsby, French Books 59297; Renouard, ICP III 624; Renouard, Badius Ascensius II, pp. 227–8; Renouard, Imprimeurs et libraires parisiens II 535; USTC 145663. See Armstrong, Before Copyright: The French Book-Privilege System 1498–1526 (2002).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123942\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267124011385,"sku":"2123942","price":1850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123942a.jpg?v=1778693982"},{"product_id":"burton-robert-the-anatomy-of-melancholy-what-it-is-with-all-the-kinds-causes-symptomes-prognosticks-severall-cures-of-it-by-democritus-junior-the-second-edition-corrected-and-augmented-by-the-author","title":"[BURTON, Robert.] The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, \u0026 severall cures of it […] by Democritus Junior […] The Second edition, corrected and augmented by the Author.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘All the Learning of the Age as Well as its  Humour – and Its Pedantry – Are There’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[BURTON, Robert.]\u003c\/strong\u003e The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, \u0026amp; severall cures of it […] by Democritus Junior […] The Second edition, corrected and augmented by the Author. \u003ci\u003eOxford: John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps.\u003c\/i\u003e 1624.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFolio. Twentieth-century full brown mottled morocco, boards triple-filleted in blind, raised bands, spine blind-filleted in compartments with central gilt floral ornaments; pp. [4], 64; [4], 188, [4], 189–332, [2], 333–379, 370–557, [7]; a–g4 h6 A–Z4 2A–2Z4 3A–3Z4 4A–4D4; printer’s device of the University of Oxford to title, woodcut initials and headpieces, printed marginalia; paperflaw to f. E4 with resultant closed L-shaped marginal tear at foot (touching text but without loss), occasional spots, light marginal dampstaining to last three quires, small rust mark to f. 3P3 with minute hole touching two characters; occasional early underlining, early manicules to 2 pp., minute later marginal marks in pink ink to first few pp.; occasional spots, and a few small marks in pink ink, else bright and clean; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first folio edition, and second edition overall (first 1621), of one of the most influential and intellectually ambitious works in English literature, at once a medical treatise on melancholy, a philosophical compendium, and a vast literary commonplace book.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRobert Burton (1577–1640), scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, first published the \u003ci\u003eAnatomy\u003c\/i\u003e in 1621 in quarto, under the pseudonym of ‘Democritus Junior’, an allusion to the ancient Greek ‘laughing philosopher’. Himself prone to melancholia, Burton explains in ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’, ‘I write of Melancholy, by being busie to avoid Melancholy’ (p. 4). What begins ostensibly as a medical enquiry expands into a work of remarkable encyclopaedic breadth, drawing together material from classical, medieval, and contemporary authorities across medicine, philosophy, theology, cosmology, and natural science.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eAnatomy\u003c\/i\u003e catalogues with remarkable thoroughness the causes, symptoms, and varieties of melancholy, whether arising from love, study (with a ‘digression on the misery of schollers’), religion, witchcraft (with side effects of ‘dried up womens pappes’ vomiting pieces of iron or lead, and one victim speaking ‘such Languages as he had never beene taught’), or imagination, while also proposing a correspondingly wide range of remedies. At the same time, it offers a rich record of contemporary intellectual life and reveals Burton’s delight in English literature, with extracts from Shakespeare, Jonson, Daniel, Drayton, and Florio’s Montaigne. In composing it, Burton followed the counsel offered at its close to those threatened by the disease – ‘be not idle’ (p. 293) – and the result is a work whose very profusion of learning may be read as an antidote to the condition it anatomises.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA notable publishing success, the \u003ci\u003eAnatomy\u003c\/i\u003e appeared in eight editions (with additional issues) between 1621 and 1676, seven of which in folio. \u003cstrong\u003eThe present edition marks a decisive stage in its development: not only is it the first to be issued in folio, but it represents a substantial enlargement of the work, expanding it by roughly one-fifth, from some 880 pages in quarto to 652 pages in the considerably larger format.\u003c\/strong\u003e Here Burton introduced, for the first time, his characteristically idiosyncratic index. Far from a purely utilitarian finding aid, it offers a revealing glimpse into the author’s habits of thought and self-presentation. Among its entries Burton includes himself – ‘Burton, Robert (Democritus Junior), silent, sedentary, solitary, i. 17; no traveler, 18; bold to imitate, 20; offended with M. [melancholy], 21, 22, 35 […] grateful to patrons, 189 […]’ – a pleasingly ironic gesture which encapsulates the reflexive and often playful nature of the work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eAnatomy\u003c\/i\u003e was ‘one of the most popular books of the seventeenth century. All the learning of the age as well as its humour – and its pedantry – are there. It has something in common with Brant’s \u003ci\u003eShip of Fools\u003c\/i\u003e, Erasmus’s ~i.Praise of Folly\u003ci\u003e, and More’s \u003c\/i\u003eUtopia\u003ci\u003e, with Rabelais and Montaigne, and like all these it exercised a considerable influence on the thought of the time’ (\u003c\/i\u003ePrinting and the Mind of Man\u003ci\u003e). A favourite book of Samuel Johnson, he famously told Boswell that this was ‘the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise’ (\u003c\/i\u003eLife of Samuel Johnson\u003ci\u003e, p. 438).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn early owner of our copy has added manicules to the section on religious melancholy, particularly to Burton’s condemnation of those who are over-zealous in countering ‘Romish ceremonies and superstitions’, and ‘will quite demolish all, they will admit no […] kneeling at Communion, no Church musicke […] No not so much as degrees some of them will tolerate, or Universities, all humane learning’ (pp. 524–5).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eESTC S122247; Jordan-Smith 2; Madan 521. See Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791); Printing and the Mind of Man 120. ~i~\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123934\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267125027193,"sku":"2123934","price":5000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123934.jpg?v=1778693990"},{"product_id":"university-of-bologna-privilegia-domini-bernardini-maggii-luganensis-diploma-in-arts-and-medicine-issued-to-bernardino-maggi-of-lugano-9-february-1607","title":"[UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA.] Privilegia Domini Bernardini Maggii Luganensis [Diploma in Arts and Medicine Issued to Bernardino Maggi of Lugano, 9 February 1607].","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eCountersigned by Galileo's Interlocutor in Medicean Debate\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA.]\u003c\/strong\u003e Privilegia Domini Bernardini Maggii Luganensis [Diploma in Arts and Medicine Issued to Bernardino Maggi of Lugano, 9 February 1607]. \u003ci\u003eBologna\u003c\/i\u003e. 1608.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eManuscript on vellum, 4to. Contemporary Bolognese brown morocco, boards richly gilt to a panel design, floral roll-tooled border within single and double fillets, large foliate cornerpieces, central tool of crucified Christ to upper board, and of Virgin and Child to lower, each surrounded by vase of flowers and marguerite tools, spine gilt in compartments, gilt edges, spine lined with manuscript waste on vellum; ff. [20], calligraphed in a fine Italianate humanist hand in brown and gold ink, up to 14 lines to a page, all leaves excluding title-page surrounded by elaborate border in gold and brown (\u003ci\u003esee contents below\u003c\/i\u003e); light wear to spine and corners, spine slightly worn with chip at head, hole through lower inner corners and text block where tassel and university seal formerly affixed, traces of 4 pairs of red silk ties; first quire largely detached, light variable marginal staining; signature of Petrus Sementius Procancellarius of the University in ink to f. 10v; ink notarial sign ‘IBR’ of Iohannes Baptista Rusticelli to f. 11r; signatures of Antonius Gandulphus and Flaminius Papazzonius in ink (see below), and ink notarial sign ‘BA’ of Bartholomeus Albertinus to f. 19v; contemporary ink inscription ‘1607. die 9. Februarij Laurea Doctoralis Equestri Dignitatis Collatio’ to front free endpaper; early twentieth-century bookseller’s ticket ‘C. E. Rappaport … Rome’ to front pastedown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA sumptuous Arts and Medicine diploma from the University of Bologna, handsomely illustrated and calligraphed throughout, and preserved in a contemporary richly gilt Bolognese binding.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the medieval and early modern periods, university degree ceremonies followed a precise ritual: rigorous examination, collective approval, and finally the symbolic bestowal of books, a doctoral cap, and a gold ring – tokens binding the graduate to their discipline. The title carried real authority, granting the right to teach and practise across wide territories. As legal instruments countersigned by notaries, early diplomas took the form of large, handwritten sheets on parchment; later they evolved into more compact, bound booklets, often richly decorated with coats of arms, religious imagery, and gold illumination (cf. Maggiulli). This diploma confers a degree in Liberal Arts, Sacred Philosophy, and Medicine on Bernardino Maggi (Bernardinus Maggius or Madius in Latin), a citizen of Lugano. Granted on 9 February 1607, the manuscript was completed the following year, as recorded on the title-page. The Latin text comprises a description of the duties attached to his new status, testimonials by academic members of the university, and notarial attestations with stamps and signatures.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA surname common in Lombardy, the Maggi family is also recorded in Ticino, with a branch attaining some notability in Mendrisio (Oldelli, p. 105). In 1593, a Fabrizio Maggi of Lugano is documented among the contractors for the fortifications of Casal Monferrato on behalf of the Duke of Mantua (\u003ci\u003eBollettino storico della Svizzera Italiana\u003c\/i\u003e 20–25 (1898), p. 181). As a native of Ticino, the southernmost canton of Switzerland, Bernardino belonged to the natio of the Citramontani (non-Bolognese Italians) rather than to the Ultramontani, the foreign students (French, English, Spanish, German, Polish, and Hungarian). His diploma, however, includes a portrait of Arnoldus, a fashionably dressed gentleman with a large white ruff, identified as the commander of the Swiss troops stationed in Bologna. Together with the depiction of the Swiss Confederacy’s Wappenbaum (cantonal tree), the portrait underscores Bernardino’s connection to the Confederacy. This fluidity between Italy and the Swiss Confederacy is further stressed by the arms of the Odescalchi family on the title-page likely alluding to the Italian family’s ties with Lugano: prominent bankers from Como, the Odescalchi maintained in fact close links with the region, much of which then fell under the diocese of Como. The presence of the arms of Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Castro (r. 1592–1622) may reflect his connection with the Collegio Ancarano of Bologna, where he studied and of which he later became ‘dominus ac patronus’ (see Lines, p. 111).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Bolognese Aristotelian Flaminio Papazzoni (d. 1614), Prior of Philosophy at Bologna and one of the signatories of the diploma, later obtained a chair at the University of Pisa on the recommendation of Galileo Galilei. In 1612 he was required by the Medici to engage in a debate with Galileo on the question of floating bodies. Apparently reluctant to oppose his benefactor, Papazzoni lost the dispute and, after it attracted considerable attention, was required to repeat it at the Medici court in the presence of the Grand Duke and Duchess, and the cardinals Maffeo Barberini (who supported Galileo) and Ferdinando Gonzaga (who sided with Papazzoni).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eContents\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003eTitle-page ‘Privilegia Domini Bernardini Maggii Luganensis. M.D.CIIX’, within an elegant gold cartouche surrounded by coats of arms, including the civic arms of Lugano, the arms of the Maggi family of Lugano (?) and those of the Odescalchi family of Como, flanked by four allegorical emblems, the whole within a magenta drape (f. 1r); portrait of Arnoldus (‘Duci Arnoldi Helvetiae stationis imago’) with Latin verses (f. 1v); Swiss \u003ci\u003eWappenbaum\u003c\/i\u003e (displaying, from the top, the arms of Zürich, Bern, Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Glarus, Basel-Stadt, Fribourg, Solothurn, and Schaffhausen), superimposed on a double-headed eagle and surmounted by a crown and \u003ci\u003etreue Hände\u003c\/i\u003e (loyal hands); blank aside the decorative frame (f. 2v); coat of arms of Ranuccio I Farnese, within an exuberant gold cartouche decorated with cornucopiae and encircled by the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece (f. 3r); ‘In Christi Nomine Amen’ with a large and finely historiated initial ‘G’ incorporating grotesque human and animal heads (f. 3v; cf. similar initial ‘C’ on f. 5v); f. 20 blank aside the decorative frame.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: From the Bibliotheca Altempsiana, formed by the Austrian cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps (Mark Sittich von Hohenems Altemps, 1533–1595), nephew of Pope Pius IV, and housed in Palazzo Altemps. In 1740, a substantial portion of the manuscripts entered the Vatican Library; the remainder, largely dispersed, was sold at auction in London in 1907 (Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge) and in Rome in 1908 (Rossi, Catalogue des livres et des manuscrits composant la bibliothèque des ducs d’Altemps; this manuscript lot 2838).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Lines, The Dynamics of Learning in Early Modern Italy Arts and Medicine at the University of Bologna (2023); Maggiulli, ‘I diploma di laurea: una fonte per la storia dell’università’, DigItalia (2021); Montalbani, Notitia doctorum: sive catalogus doctorum qui in collegiis philosophiae et medicinae bononiae laureati fuerunt ab anno 1480 usque ad annum 1800 (1962), p. 112 [9 February 1607: D. Bernardinus Madius Luganensis in U.C. Acta 1605–1607, c. 32v]; Oldelli, Dizionario storico ragionato degli uomini illustri del Canton Ticino (1807). \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123668\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267126927737,"sku":"2123668","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123668.jpg?v=1778694005"},{"product_id":"cocteau-jean-opium-journal-d-une-desintoxication-dessins-de-l-auteur","title":"COCTEAU, Jean. Opium: Journal d’une désintoxication. Dessins de l’auteur.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eRecovery from Opium Addiction in Text and Image\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCOCTEAU, Jean.\u003c\/strong\u003e Opium: Journal d’une désintoxication. Dessins de l’auteur. \u003ci\u003eParis: Librairie Stock, Delamain et Boutelleau\u003c\/i\u003e. 1930.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original cream printed wrappers, spine and upper cover lettered in black and gold, partially uncut; pp. 264, [2], with 40 plates after line drawings by Cocteau (included in pagination) and a further 3 plates after collages by Cocteau; very slight lean, creasing, and spotting to spine, spine ends a little worn, very light toning and dust-soiling to covers; internally clean; overall a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, number 14 of 28 copies printed on Japon Impérial, of Cocteau’s extraordinary account of the physical and mental anguish of his withdrawal from opium addiction, extensively illustrated by the author.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCocteau had largely been introduced to opium by the French musicologist and sinologist Louis Laloy (1874–1944) in 1924, during a period of profound depression following the unexpected death of the writer Raymond Radiguet. ‘Cocteau shut himself away with the amateur Sinologist and the musicians in a room in their hotel … A hundred times he tried to absorb [opium], more bitter than bromide; a hundred times he complained about not feeling any benefit from it. Finally, after three months, the anguish fell away’ (Arnaud, pp. 351–2). Cocteau wrote and illustrated \u003ci\u003eOpium\u003c\/i\u003e between 16 December 1928 and April 1929, while undergoing treatment at a clinic in Saint-Cloud, and it was during this time that he wrote \u003ci\u003eLes Enfants terribles\u003c\/i\u003e (1929) – arguably his most famous work – over the course of three weeks, his illustration to p. 241 bearing the same title.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHis haunting illustrations from the early stages of his recovery – featuring a screaming figure with his eyes scratched out, a limbless man, a nude figure holding his four-faced head in his hands, and a weeping sun, \u003ci\u003einter alia\u003c\/i\u003e – give way to eerie figures composed of tubular structures, and finally to images of freedom and hope. The third collage, \u003ci\u003eJe quitte Saint-Cloud\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eI Am Leaving Saint-Cloud\u003c\/i\u003e) shows a classical statue fleeing on horseback through a star-studded sky, and the final illustration, \u003ci\u003eLa Destinée de l’oiseleur\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Fate of the Bird-Catcher\u003c\/i\u003e) shows an outstretched hand, allowing Cocteau himself (the self-portrait on p. 27 titled \u003ci\u003eOiseau\u003c\/i\u003e) to fly away at last. ‘The drawings done under the influence of opium are a marvel. They allow us a glimpse into the life of a tortured soul who cries out in lines that excite the senses and cause us to wonder about the daily nightmare of addiction’ (Emboden, p. 36).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAddressed to ‘opium smokers, the sick, and those unknown friends found through books who are the only excuse for writing’ (\u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.), \u003ci\u003eOpium\u003c\/i\u003e was perhaps unsurprisingly taken up by the American Beat poets. The book featured on the shelves of William S. Burroughs’s library, which so impressed Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the mid-1940s. Although Burroughs does not name Cocteau’s \u003ci\u003eOpium\u003c\/i\u003e in his preface to \u003ci\u003eJunkie\u003c\/i\u003e (1953), he would later explicitly acknowledge its importance: ‘I always had a romantic literary relationship to drugs, like you find in De Quincey or in Cocteau’s \u003ci\u003eOpium\u003c\/i\u003e’ (Lane, p. 106).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCrosland, p. 229; not in Carteret (cf. vol III, p. 107). See Arnaud, Jean Cocteau: a Life (2016); Emboden, The Visual Art of Jean Cocteau (1989); Lane, The French Genealogy of the Beat Generation (2017).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122802\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267143377273,"sku":"2122802","price":3750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122802.jpg?v=1778694021"},{"product_id":"crane-hart-walker-evans-photographs-the-bridge-a-poem","title":"CRANE, Hart; Walker EVANS ( photographs ). The Bridge: A Poem.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Brooklyn Bridge as Muse\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCRANE, Hart; Walker EVANS (\u003ci\u003ephotographs\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e The Bridge: A Poem. \u003ci\u003eParis: The Black Sun Press\u003c\/i\u003e. 1930.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original printed wrappers with fold-over flaps, within glassine jacket, printed in red and black and with black woodcut sun to rear wrapper, housed in the publisher’s silver paper-covered slipcase; pp. [100]; printed in red and black, three tipped-in photogravures by Walker Evans with glassine and tissue guards (see below); a few small chips to glassine at spine and extremities (with small loss at foot of spine); subtle repairs to slipcase with some wear to corners and edges; internally fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, no. 154 of 200 copies on Holland paper, of Crane’s poems using the Brooklyn Bridge as the central symbol of an epic ode to America, accompanied by some of the earliest photographs by Walker Evans and printed at the Black Sun Press, the Parisian English-language publishing house founded in 1927 by American expatriates Harry and Caresse Crosby.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCrane (1899–1932) is a singular figure in American poetry, seeking a Whitmanesque voice in the era of high Modernism. \u003ci\u003eThe Bridge\u003c\/i\u003e, his most significant work, constructs an optimistic response to Eliot’s \u003ci\u003eThe Waste Land\u003c\/i\u003e, which he admired greatly but found too bleak, finding hope where Eliot saw only despair. This is sadly ironic given Eliot’s long life and Crane’s suicide at the age of thirty-two (the poet had jumped off the USS Orizaba into the Atlantic en route to New York from Vera Cruz). Particularly vibrant are the opening poem, ‘To Brooklyn Bridge’; ‘National Winter Garden’, on the Houston Street burlesque; and the five-part ‘Powhatan’s Daughter’, including ‘Van Winkle’ (in which Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle awakens not in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, but amidst the Brooklyn tenements of the twentieth century).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Black Sun Press published the early works of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and Ernest Hemingway, among others. The press was one of the longest-running of its kind, closing only in 1970 following Caresse Crosby’s death. The present volume, printed in hand-set Dorique type, was published by Caresse Crosby shortly after Harry Crosby’s suicide at the age of thirty-one: during a trip to New York to celebrate the completion of The Bridge, Crosby shot and killed himself and his lover, Josephine Noyes Rotch.\u003cbr\u003eThis edition, dedicated to Crane’s patron, the philanthropist, collector, and investment banker Otto H. Kahn, is listed as being ‘for sale at the bookshop of Harry F. Marks’, the Black Sun Press’s US distributor, at 31 West 47th St.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Missouri-born photojournalist and photographer Walker Evans (1903–1975) – best known for his Great Depression-era photographs for the Farm Security Administration and the Resettlement Administration – had helped Crane find work as a file clerk on Wall Street in 1928, and their fathers had been acquainted beforehand. ‘Evans had taken up photography in earnest in 1928, and Crane, whose interest in the medium had been awakened and nurtured by his friendship with Alfred Stieglitz, occasionally joined the artist in his explorations of Brooklyn, the waterfront, and lower Manhattan’ (Trachtenberg, p. 187). His striking photographs ‘call attention to the bridge itself as a physical object, as a palpable presence in the poem’ (\u003ci\u003eibid.\u003c\/i\u003e, p. 185).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eConnolly 64; Minkoff A-32; Rowe B1; Schwarz and Schweik A2. See Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol (1979).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121209\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267166249337,"sku":"2121209","price":11000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121209.jpg?v=1778694037"},{"product_id":"crosby-harry-henrietta-grew-crosby-editor-war-letters","title":"CROSBY, Harry; Henrietta Grew CROSBY ( editor ). War Letters.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eGrieving Mothers in Solidarity – ‘Our Boys are at Rest’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCROSBY, Harry; Henrietta Grew CROSBY (\u003ci\u003eeditor\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e War Letters. \u003ci\u003eParis: The Black Sun Press\u003c\/i\u003e. 1932.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Original marbled calf-backed boards with patterned paper sides, spine gilt-ruled in compartments with two green morocco lettering pieces, patterned endpapers, tricolour silk place-marker, tail-edge uncut; pp. [8], vii, [1 (blank)], 312, [6], photographic portrait frontispiece of Crosby in uniform, with tissue guard, p. 305 with twelfth line from bottom blacked out as usual; extremities a little rubbed, light spotting to text block and to prelims, otherwise a very good copy; loosely inserted printed visiting card of ‘Mrs Stephen Van Rensselaer Crosby’, inscribed in ink ‘Dear Rita | It was lovely seeing you yesterday. I wish we met oftener. I hope you’ll enjoy these letters. I always feel a great bond with you but our boys are at rest and saved from the hard things of life. Much love | Rita’ (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, limited to 125 unnumbered copies printed on Navarre paper, of these letters from the front by Harry Crosby – founder of the Black Sun Press – edited by his mother, Henrietta Van Rensselaer Crosby (\u003ci\u003enée\u003c\/i\u003e Grew, 1872–1957) and published in the aftermath of Crosby’s death by suicide in 1931, our copy with a loosely inserted visiting card inscribed by Henrietta to another mother who had lost her son.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBorn into New England’s influential and long-established Van Rensselaer family, Harry Crosby, a nephew of J. P. Morgan Junior and a direct descendant of Peggy Schuyler (sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton), was educated at Nobles and St Mark’s. At the age of nineteen, he – like Ernest Hemingway – volunteered with the American Ambulance Corps during the First World War. \u003ci\u003eWar Letters\u003c\/i\u003e gathers the letters he sent home to his mother, father, and sister from the front, edited by his mother Henrietta, who added a chronology and a brief preface; she was able to see her son multiple times during the war, travelling to Lunéville in January 1918 ‘under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A. to work in a Foyer du Soldat’, where mother and son were ‘able to pass several “permissions” together’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCrosby returned from the war in March 1919 and studied at Harvard from 1919–21, and in 1922, sick of the ‘Boston virgins who are brought up among sexless surroundings’, as he would later recall in his diaries, moved to Paris with his wife Caresse (called by Time ‘the literary godmother to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers in Paris’). \u003cstrong\u003eThere, the two American expatriates founded the Black Sun Press, publishing the early works of writers including Hart Crane, D.H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway, amongst others.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe returned to the United States for a party held in New York by his friend Hart Crane, whose poem \u003ci\u003eThe Bridge\u003c\/i\u003e was to be published by the Black Sun Press the following week. On 10 December 1910, Crosby shot and killed himself and his lover, Josephine Noyes Rotch. After his death, Caresse and Henrietta collaborated to bring his War Letters to print. One line on p. 305 has been censored in ink, as usual: ‘How did that damn fool H.S. ever make the Porcellian?’. Harvard’s Porcellian Club, established in the 1790s, is one of the university’s oldest and most prestigious social clubs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: Given by Henrietta Crosby to a close friend, Rita – a woman who, like her, had lost a son. She writes on her loosely inserted calling card ‘ I always feel a great bond with you but our boys are at rest and saved from the hard things of life’, expressing her hope of meeting more frequently and that her friend might enjoy Harry’s letters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMinkoff A-43.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121126\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57267189481849,"sku":"2121126","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121126.jpg?v=1778694052"},{"product_id":"fugger-wolfgang-ein-nutzlich-und-wolgegrundt-formular-manncherley-schoner-schriefften-als-teutscher-lateinischer-griechischer-unnd-hebrayscher-buchstaben","title":"[FUGGER, Wolfgang.] [Ein nutzlich und wolgegrundt Formular manncherley schöner Schriefften. Als teutscher, lateinischer, griechischer, unnd hebraÿscher Buchstaben …]","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘How Could Art and Knowledge Exist if There Were No Art of Writing?’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[FUGGER, Wolfgang.]\u003c\/strong\u003e [Ein nutzlich und wolgegrundt Formular manncherley schöner Schriefften. Als teutscher, lateinischer, griechischer, unnd hebraÿscher Buchstaben …] [\u003ci\u003eNuremberg: Katharina Dieterichin for Wolffgang Starck\u003c\/i\u003e. Not before 1576.]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall oblong 4to. Recased in its original eighteenth-century binding reusing a ?fourteenth-century German manuscript fragment on vellum (see below); ff. [97] of [104]; wanting ff. A1 (title), A2–B1 (dedication, note to reader), L2 (italic minuscule) and 2C4 (colophon); rear hinge cracked, final quire loose, quire B reinforced at inner margin; numerous woodcut illustrations and diagrams in the text; light marginal dampstaining at head (heavier to quire B), light spotting and toning; else a good copy; small booklabel removed from front pastedown at an earlier date, eighteenth-century German bibliographical note to front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRare second edition – the contents unchanged save for the colophon – of the Nuremberg printer Wolfgang Fugger’s (1519-1568) extremely important calligraphic manual (first 1553), printed by Katharina Dieterichin (d. 1605), widow of Dietrich Gerlach.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFugger’s manual is ‘supreme as an example of engraving. The specimens are cut in relief, apparently on soft metal, with extreme accomplishment, and in this respect it surpassed earlier writing-books in beauty and clearness […] \u003cstrong\u003ethe book was intended, secondarily, as an aid to cutters of printers’ types, and it has a place in the history of typography as the earliest to deal in any way with the design of types'\u003c\/strong\u003e (Carter, preface to 1955 reprint).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn his dedication to Joachim Tetzel, Fugger writes, ‘How could art and knowledge exist if there were no art of writing? […] Any language which is not well written (being ugly or illegible) is a disadvantage; for a clumsy hand appears ugly to all men’ (\u003ci\u003eibid., trans.\u003c\/i\u003e Plaat). The present writing manual describes how to properly cut a quill and the appropriate position of the hand and the arm for writing (showing examples of ‘clumsy’ and proper techniques) before detailing a variety of German (Kurrent, Kantzlei, Fraktur), blackletter (Textura and Rotunda, the description of the latter making reference to the Schwabacher and Wittenberger types), Roman (italic, antiqua, Roman capitals), Greek, and Hebrew scripts. \u003cstrong\u003eA significant portion of the text is dedicated to Hebrew, including passages from the Book of Esther, an explanation of the theory of gematria, and three pages of sheet music; Fugger also makes reference to the work of Hebraist Sebastian Münster.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe eighteenth-century German bibliographical note mentions the earlier calligraphic work of Johann Neudörffer the Elder – Fugger’s teacher (to whom he refers in the present text) and the author of the first notable German calligraphy manual in 1519, who in turn had collaborated with Durer – adding a reference to Doppelmayr’s 1730 \u003ci\u003eHistorische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern\u003c\/i\u003e. Fugger also owes much to Dürer, his geometric Roman capitals in the final portion reminiscent of Dürer’s 1525 \u003ci\u003eUnterweysung der Messung\u003c\/i\u003e. The second edition reuses the plates of the first and the content of the text is unchanged, the date of 1553 from the first edition appearing as a part-title to both editions. Gerlach (also known as Dieterichin) likely acquired the plates from the heirs of the printer of the 1553 edition, Valentin Gessler (d. 1576). In this edition, however, Gerlach employs a variety of sizes of text and distinctly more elaborate woodcut initials than Gessler, replacing his fleurons with elaborate woodcut tailpieces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe binding reuses a fragment of German manuscript waste (?first half fourteenth century), comprising c. 11 lines of visible text in three columns, from verses 34 and 35 (front board: ‘qualitate factor[um]. iudex ver[us e]t iustus […] non putam[us] ite[randa]’; rear board: ‘[complec]tatur velut quib[usdam] fid[e]i sue brachiis […] Prophetavit itaq[ue] Simeon’) from St Ambrose of Milan’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke, this portion, on the Nunc Dimittis, cited by Aquinas in his \u003ci\u003eCatena aurea\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBoth the first and second editions are rare both institutionally and in commerce. Collectively, OCLC finds ten copies in the US (Columbia, Harvard, Huntington, Illinois, LoC, Morgan, Newberry, SMU, Stanford, Yale) and only two in the UK (BL, NAL).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBecker 56; BM STC German, p. 327 (imperfect); Brunet II, col. 419 (1553 edition but not mentioning printer); Graesse II, p. 645 (‘Nürnb. 1553’); Jessen 2269; VD16 3336\/3338. Not in Adams.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124967\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312180863353,"sku":"2124967","price":5000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124967b.jpg?v=1779361150"},{"product_id":"washington-george-stuttgarter-bilderbogen-georg-washington-1ter-president-der-vereinigten-staaten-von-nord-america-george-washington-the-first-president-of-the-united-states-of-america-no-46","title":"[WASHINGTON, George.] Stuttgarter Bilderbogen. Georg Washington 1ter President der vereinigten Staaten von Nord America. George Washington the first President of the United States of America … No. 46.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Life and Death of ‘Georg’ Washington\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[WASHINGTON, George.]\u003c\/strong\u003e Stuttgarter Bilderbogen. Georg Washington 1ter President der vereinigten Staaten von Nord America. George Washington the first President of the United States of America … No. 46. \u003ci\u003eStuttgart. Fried\u003c\/i\u003e[\u003ci\u003erich\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eG\u003c\/i\u003e[\u003ci\u003eustav\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eSchulz\u003c\/i\u003e. [Not after 1853.]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLithographic broadside (420 x 320 mm), mounted on old card (442 x 352 mm); partly hand-coloured; minute rust-mark at foot, else very well preserved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn extremely rare Stuttgart-printed broadside depicting scenes from the life of George Washington, with text in German and English, produced as part of a series of Bilderbogen on notable figures by the prolific publisher Friedrich Schulz, prominently featuring depictions of people of colour and highlighting his role as the only Founding Father to emancipate all of the enslaved people he owned in his will.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSchulz, a lithographer, stationer, and producer of cartes de visite who had exhibited at the Erste allgemeine deutsche Industrieausstellung   (General German Industrial Exhibition) in Munich in 1854, published several of these Bilderbogen, or picture sheets, frequently brightly coloured and ‘showing multiple images on the same sheet of paper to portray a fairytale or historical event in narrative frames with a short text. Among the common topics and genres are religious, military battle, and sentimental scenes; portraits and caricatures; and landscapes and city views’ (Library of Congress, \u003ci\u003eonline\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSchulz seems to have specialised both in bilingual material and in Bilderbogen depicting notable figures. Nos. 1 to 48 had already been issued by 1853, available coloured or uncoloured, bound or sold as individual sheets; his 1853 advertisements describe sheets in German and facing Dutch, English, and French depicting the lives and deeds of, inter alia, Charlemagne, Christ, Cromwell, Peter the Great, Columbus, Wellington, Luther, Catherine of Russia, Queen Elizabeth I, and Muhammad, also mentioning the George Washington picture sheet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHis earlier works include sheets on Sleeping Beauty, the lives of soldiers, and folk scenes, perhaps indicating a general shift in interest towards the lives of notable leaders. Here, Washington is depicted in three-quarter profile within a wreath, flanked by American flags. The scenes beside and below him depict his youth (’Washington, a Geometrician’); Washington taking Boston ‘by storm’; his inauguration (’Washington’s entry when President’); Washington discharging his army; and his death. At the foot is a brief bilingual biography of Washington, the English portion full of charming errors and Germanicisms: he was, ‘howewer, distinguisched’ by his probity and docility ‘in such a high degree that all his fellow sholars every contention they had committed to his judgment’; from 1755 he ‘principally got celebrated by his wars of independency’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf particular note is the final line: Washington died on the 14 of December 1799 after haven given his slaves their liberty’. Washington had ordered his one hundred and twenty-two slaves to be freed following the death of his wife, Martha, and his will guaranteed the immediate manumission of his enslaved valet, William Lee, as well as a thirty-dollar annuity. Washington was, however, unable to free the so-called dower slaves who had come to Mount Vernon from Martha’s first marriage. Washington’s will expresses his ‘desire that all the Slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom. To emancipate them during [?Washington’s] life, would, tho’ earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties on account of their intermixture by Marriages with the dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations’. Washington also left provisions in his will for the emancipated who were infirm, elderly, or under orphaned and under the age of twenty-five to be ‘comfortably cloathed \u0026amp; fed’ by Washington’s heirs and taught to read and write. The present broadside, incorporating depictions of enslaved people celebrating Washington’s inauguration, was issued c. twelve years before slavery would be abolished in the United States, and less than a decade before the outbreak of the American Civil War. The theme of slavery and of the Civil War appears to have become particularly popular, with 1860s depictions of the battles of Pea Ridge, Springfield, and Murfeesboro printed in Neuruppin, for example.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds a single example, at the KB National Library of the Netherlands. Schulz subsequently produced a French\/German rendition of the present broadside, under the title Le général George Washington (no. 70), also held at the KB National Library of the Netherlands only.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNot in KvK, Library Hub, or the Dietrich Hecht collection of Bilderbogen at the Library of Congress. On Schulz, see Beschreibender Katalog der Württembergischen Erzeugnisse in der allgemeinen Deutschen Industrie-Ausstellung zu München 408 (6740).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124942\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312182043001,"sku":"2124942","price":1000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124942.jpg?v=1779361160"},{"product_id":"kafka-franz-die-verwandlung","title":"KAFKA, Franz. Die Verwandlung.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eFirst Edition of Kafka’s \u003ci\u003eMetamorphosis\u003ci\u003e in German\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKAFKA, Franz.\u003c\/strong\u003e Die Verwandlung. \u003ci\u003eLeipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag.\u003c\/i\u003e [1915].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s green printed boards, printer’s device to upper board, top-edge stained blue; pp. 72, [1 (blank)], [5 (advertisements)], [1 (blank)]; woodcut printer’s device to title, title within triple-filleted border; wanting the pictorial dust-jacket by Ottomar Starke, as often (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e), spine bumped and somewhat chipped, corners slightly worn; small mark to title, else a very good, clean copy; erased contemporary ownership inscription ‘Lieber …’ to front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition in book form of Kafka’s \u003ci\u003eDie Verwandlung \u003c\/i\u003e(\u003ci\u003eThe Metamorphosis\u003c\/i\u003e), issued simultaneously in boards and in wrappers.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeipzig publisher Kurt Wolff, at the suggestion of Franz Werfel, had been in touch with Kafka about the manuscript of \u003ci\u003eDie Verwandlung\u003c\/i\u003e as early as 1913, and the work’s first appearance in print would be as pp. 1177-1230 in the journal \u003ci\u003eDie weißen Blätter \u003c\/i\u003ein October 1915, which had resumed publication after a pause at the start of the First World War. The journal was, ‘at the time, if not legally, then de facto an organ of the Wolff publishing house … The first volume of \u003ci\u003eDie weißen Blätter\u003c\/i\u003e (1913\/1914) already contained essays and poems by the Prague group and their friends’ (Dietz, \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first separate edition was simultaneously issued in December 1915 in boards with a pictorial dust-jacket by Ottomar Starke, and in wrappers with the same illustration, both the dust-jacket and wrappers dated 1916. Kafka had explicitly warned Starke not to illustrate Gregor Samsa’s altered form: ‘the insect itself cannot be drawn. It cannot be shown even from a distance’ (\u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eDietz 26; Flores, p. 4; Hemmerle, p. 21; Smolen 22\/23.1.B; Wilpert\/Gühring II, 4.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124642\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312182436217,"sku":"2124642","price":5000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124642.jpg?v=1779361190"},{"product_id":"eusebius-caesariensis-rufinus-aquileiensis-translator-historia-ecclesiastica","title":"EUSEBIUS CAESARIENSIS; RUFINUS AQUILEIENSIS ( translator ). Historia ecclesiastica.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eChurch History as Mirror for Princes\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEUSEBIUS CAESARIENSIS; RUFINUS AQUILEIENSIS (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Historia ecclesiastica. \u003ci\u003eMantua: Johannes Schallus\u003c\/i\u003e. [Not before 15 July 1479.]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFolio. Eighteenth-century vellum over boards, gilt red morocco lettering-piece to spine; ff. [171], [1 (blank)]; roman letter, 2- to 6-line capital spaces with guide letters, initials and paraphs supplied in red and blue, running-titles in brown ink; lettering-piece chipped, slight wear to corners, a few small marks; washed (initials in blue faded to light grey, running-titles and annotation faded), occasional light marginal thumb-marks, slight soiling to blank first and final pages and to corners of first few leaves, old repair to f. 6~sup~v~sup~, a few pinhole wormholes to contents and dedication; overall a very good, wide-margined copy; near-contemporary annotation to f. 22~sup~r~sup~, eighteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate of Amadeo Svajer and eighteenth-century ink shelfmarks to front pastedown, later manuscript quiring in pencil.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFourth edition of Eusebius’ (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 260–339) important history of the church, the last book printed by the German physician and printer Johannes Schallus at Mantua, our copy from the library of the influential eighteenth-century Venetian merchant and bibliophile Amadeo Svajer, who funded the 1757–8 production of Zatta’s important edition of Dante’s Commedia, the first since 1544 to feature new illustrations.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe dedication by Schallus – who worked primarily as a physician and printed seven books in Mantua between 1475 and 1479 – to Federico I Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua (1441–1484), praises Eusebius as ‘shining like a moon amongst small fires’ and hopes that the work will benefit ‘modest and pious minds’ (\u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.). Schallus may have worked with an assistant of Mentelin; Dibdin writes that ‘the volumes which issued from his press are of equal beauty and rarity; and it is seldom that we behold a more elegant specimen of ancient typography than that which is now before us’ (Dibdin, \u003ci\u003eBibliotheca Spenceriana\u003c\/i\u003e, on the present edition of Eusebius).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSchallus presents Eusebius’ work not only as a valuable historical resource, but also as a \u003ci\u003especulum principis\u003c\/i\u003e of sorts, in which Federico could ‘read of the excellent deeds of Christian princes’ and ‘marvel at their virtues and emulate their wisdom and piety’, especially as Gonzaga was at this time ‘fighting bravely and courageously for the Tuscans, and through frequent victories acquiring an immortal name for [himself] and [his] nation’: shortly before publication, Gonzaga had been involved in the war that emerged in the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy of April 1478, Mantua having allied itself with the Florentine Republic against Pope Sixtus IV.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e From the library of Amadeo Svajer (also Schweyer, 1727–1791), who financed Zatta’s publishing endeavours and influenced the material he published, including ‘Dante, the Church Fathers, and Petrarch’s \u003ci\u003eRime\u003c\/i\u003e, which appear to be amongst Svajer’s interests at the time … Zatta had attempted to move, in 1752, to Rovereto, [Svajer’s] place of residence’ (Mangani, pp. 81-2). Svajer was a renowned bibliophile, and his collection of three thousand books in Latin, five thousand in Italian, twelve hundred in French, and fourteen hundred manuscripts (including the will of Marco Polo) was sold by Jacopo Morelli in 1794, significant portions being purchased by the Manins, the Biblioteca Marciana, the Museo Correr, the Republic of Venice, and the Paduan bookseller Scapin. Svajer’s only known work, a biography of Frederick II of Prussia, was printed by Zatta in 1759. Morelli’s catalogue indicates that Svajer also owned a copy of the 1476 third edition of Eusebius’ \u003ci\u003eHistoria ecclesiastica\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHain 6711; Proctor 6908; GW 9437; Goff E-127; BMC VII 933; BSB-Ink E-112; ISTC ie00127000; USTC 995892; AGAPE 322. For this copy, see Morelli, Catalogo di libreria posta in vendita in Venezia nell’anno MDCCXCIV, (1794), p. 10 (‘exemplar nitidissimum’). See Mangani, ‘Antonio Zatta editore veneziano di libri geografici’, in Gerardo Mercatore (1996).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124412\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312185713017,"sku":"2124412","price":8000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124412c.jpg?v=1779361280"},{"product_id":"drelincourt-laurent-sonnets-chretiens-sur-divers-sujets-divisez-en-quatre-livres","title":"[DRELINCOURT, Laurent.] Sonnets chretiens. Sur divers sujets. Divisez en quatre livres.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eProtestant Poetry and a Persecuted Printer\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[DRELINCOURT, Laurent.]\u003c\/strong\u003e Sonnets chretiens. Sur divers sujets. Divisez en quatre livres. \u003ci\u003eNiort: Widow of Philippe Bureau\u003c\/i\u003e. 1677.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Near-contemporary sheep, spine gilt in compartments, title lettered directly in gilt, raised bands, speckled edges; pp. [xii], 171, [1 (blank)]; woodcut armillary sphere to title, typographic head- and tailpieces, woodcut factotum initials; corners and joints subtly restored, small abrasion to lower board, headcap and small portion of lower board chipped, small wormhole at foot of spine; small marginal paperflaw to title, closed paperflaw to f. I7 touching four words but not affecting legibility, pale dampstain at inner margin of quires H-L (heavier to quires K and L); else a very good copy; early ownership inscription ‘Jane Parker her book’ to front free endpaper, eighteenth-century ownership inscription ‘John Morton Junior’ to title.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, very rare, of these devotional sonnets by the Protestant poet, pastor, and theologian Drelincourt, printed in Niort by the Huguenot printer Anne Bureau, and dedicated to Princess Émilie von Hesse-Kassel, our copy with early English female provenance, likely brought to England by Bureau’s sons who had fled France in the aftermath of the Edict of Fontainebleau.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLaurent Drelincourt (1625–1680), son of the noted Protestant divine Charles Drelincourt, studied theology and philosophy at Saumur before settling in Niort in 1663. His \u003ci\u003eSonnets\u003c\/i\u003e, written during a period of sleepless nights, are divided into four parts: on nature and its creator; the Old Testament; the New Testament; and miscellaneous themes (including, vice, virtue, the Sacraments, Hell, and the death of an only daughter). \u003cstrong\u003eParticularly notable is the extent of his Marian veneration within a Protestant context, most visibly in his ode to the Virgin Mary (book III, sonnet II, p. 88), renowned for the ‘richness of its language and the clarity of its theology … The method of the poet-theologian touches on classical tradition; so does his understanding of images’\u003c\/strong\u003e (\u003ci\u003eMarienlexikon\u003c\/i\u003e, ‘Reformierte Theologie’, p. 427).  The footnotes to his sonnet to the Virgin approve of the First Council of Ephesus’s anathematisation of those who would deny Mary the title of Mother of God (\u003ci\u003eTheotokos\u003c\/i\u003e), and quote Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘Mary is the mythical paradise that produced the tree of life’ (\u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnne Bureau (\u003ci\u003enée\u003c\/i\u003e Le Morme) married the Niort printer Philippe Bureau in 1652 and succeeded him after his death in 1674. Persecuted for her Huguenot faith, she unsuccessfully attempted to sell her home and workshop to the Catholic printer and bookseller Girard Reverchon; both properties were later ransacked by royal dragoons, and in 1685 converted to Catholicism. She sent several books to Holland for distribution and went into exile \u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 1686–7. \u003cstrong\u003eBoth of her sons, also printers, immigrated to England, François (who would later move to New York) in 1683–4 and Thomas in 1687, and it is likely that this copy – with the early English ownership inscription of one Jane Parkland – arrived in England at an early date through her children.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Calvinist Princess Émilie von Hesse-Kassel (1626–1693) became estranged from her French husband after his reconversion to Catholicism; she ‘remained faithful to the Reformed faith … [after his death in 1672] Emilie lived for a time in Paris with her niece. With the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the onset of the persecution of Protestants, she finally returned to Germany’ (\u003ci\u003eHessische Biographie, trans\u003c\/i\u003e.). A second edition was published in 1678, and the work remained popular throughout the eighteenth century, later editions frequently issuing Drelincourt’s \u003ci\u003eSonnets \u003c\/i\u003ealongside his \u003ci\u003ePsaumes pénitentiaux\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds a single copy in the US, at Harvard; no copies traced in the UK\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCioranescu II, 26285; USTC 6089081; not in BM STC French (cf. D-837 for the 1680 edition). See Clouzot, L’imprimerie à Niort (1891), p. 57\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123576\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312185745785,"sku":"2123576","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123576a.jpg?v=1779361295"},{"product_id":"gill-eric-wood-engravings-being-a-selection-of-eric-gill-s-engravings-on-wood","title":"GILL, Eric. Wood-Engravings. Being a Selection of Eric Gill’s Engravings on Wood …","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe End of a Friendship – Gill and the Dominicans\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGILL, Eric.\u003c\/strong\u003e Wood-Engravings. Being a Selection of Eric Gill’s Engravings on Wood … \u003ci\u003eDitchling, Sussex: S. Dominic's Press.\u003c\/i\u003e 1924.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLarge 4to. Original oatmeal cloth with exceedingly rare blue dust-jacket with woodcut of Virgin and Child to front, lettered ‘Wood-engravings: E. Gill’; ff. 36, comprising 34 wood engravings; title-page and two plates printed in red and black; dust-jacket with very light horizontal crease to upper edge of front cover, spine slightly sunned, a little spotting to cloth; very faint marginal toning; a very good copy; plate ‘She Loves Me Not’ numbered by hand in minute digits, large bookplate of Andrew and Mary Henderson Bishop of Lanarkshire; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA beautiful compendium of Gill’s (1882–1940) wood engravings, rare in the dust-jacket, produced without his knowledge or consent by the printer and poet Douglas Pepler (1878–1951), Gill’s artistic collaborator at the religious commune of artists at Ditchling, Sussex and founder of St Dominic’s Press, no. IV of fifty numbered copies of an edition of 150.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSt Dominic’s Press was the publishing arm of the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic in Ditchling; Pepler had moved there in 1915 to collaborate with Gill, but financial disagreements between the two men contributed to Gill’s decision to leave Ditchling for Capel-y-Ffin in 1924. Gill wanted to take the woodblocks for these engravings with him, but Pepler considered them to be the property of the Dominican Order, of which he was a lay member and for whom the works had been intended. He refused to let Gill take the blocks and instead produced this magnificent collection of images, featuring the artist’s characteristic mixture of the divine and the profane. Gill never spoke to Pepler again, although Pepler’s son David (d. 1934) was married to Gill’s daughter Betty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: With the bookplate of Andrew and Mary Henderson Bishop of Lanarkshire, best known for lending their name to one of the most prestigious ladies’ curling competitions in Scotland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGill 410; Taylor \u0026amp; Sewell A129a.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122169\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312189776249,"sku":"2122169","price":3000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122169.jpg?v=1779361304"},{"product_id":"kafka-franz-the-metamorphosis-1","title":"KAFKA, Franz. The Metamorphosis.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eFirst Edition of Kafka’s \u003ci\u003eMetamorphosis\u003ci\u003e in English\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKAFKA, Franz.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Metamorphosis. \u003ci\u003eLondon:\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003eThe Favil Press for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eThe Parton Press\u003c\/i\u003e. 1937\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s blue buckram-backed boards with black paper sides, blue printed label to upper board; pp. [vi], [1 (blank)], 74; twentieth-century collector’s bookplate to front pastedown; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst complete English translation of Kafka’s \u003ci\u003eDie Verwandlung \u003c\/i\u003e(\u003ci\u003eThe Metamorphosis\u003c\/i\u003e), printed by the publisher of Dylan Thomas’s first book and translated by the influential folklorist Bert Lloyd.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe translator, the London-born folk singer, ethnomusicologist, and broadcaster Albert Lancaster Lloyd (also known as Bert Lloyd, 1908-1982), is perhaps best remembered for his instrumental role in popularising British folk music in the 1950s and 1960s; in 1959 he was the co-editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Penguin Book of English Folk Songs\u003c\/i\u003e, with Ralph Vaughan Williams. At the age of sixteen, he went to Australia to work as a shepherd and farmhand, returning to England in the early 1930s, where he worked briefly at the Foyles Foreign Books Department, spent a great deal of time in the British Museum’s reading room, befriended Dylan Thomas and Jack Lindsay, joined the Communist Party, and produced a translation of poems by Lorca. It is perhaps through Thomas that he became connected with David Archer of the Parton Press and bookshop in Red Lion Square in London; the Parton Press had published, in collaboration with the Sunday Referee, Dylan Thomas’s first book, \u003ci\u003e18 Poems\u003c\/i\u003e (1934), here advertised on the half-title verso.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNabokov owned a copy of the present translation \u003c\/strong\u003e(the 1946 Vanguard Press edition, his copy now at the New York Public Library), \u003cstrong\u003efeaturing copious drawings, annotations, and amendments to Lloyd’s translation, which he annotated in preparation for his lectures on \u003ci\u003eDie Verwandlung\u003c\/i\u003e at Cornell.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHemmerle, p. 22.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121173\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312190628217,"sku":"2121173","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121173.jpg?v=1779361320"},{"product_id":"wells-h-g-the-time-machine","title":"WELLS, H. G. The Time Machine.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eA Victorian Scientist’s Travel Through Time\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWELLS, H. G.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Time Machine. \u003ci\u003eLondon: William Heinemann\u003c\/i\u003e. 1895.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original tan cloth, maroon lettering to front cover and spine, brown winged sphinx vignette to upper board, brown publisher’s device to lower board, uncut; pp. [viii], 151, [33 (advertisements)]; spine lightly sunned, a few spots to upper edge; minimal offsetting to pastedowns; else near fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst UK edition, published in the same month as the first, of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, a foundational work of both the science-fiction genre and the modern time-travel narrative.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntroducing the term ‘time machine’ in print for the first time, Wells’s post-apocalyptic novella – recounting the journey of a Victorian scientist 800,000 years into the future – captivated readers on the cusp of a new technological age. Even before its serialisation by The New Review had concluded in May 1895, Wells had been hailed as ‘a man of genius’, and the book heralded the beginning of a fifty-year career as one of the most influential cultural and political controversialists of his time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe work offers a sardonic rejection of Victorian ideals of progress and improvement, and a pointed satirical commentary on the Decadent culture of the 1890s, reflecting Wells’s criticism of the social consequences of industrialisation. As George Orwell later wrote: ‘I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920 […] influenced the young so much. The minds of all of us […] would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHenry Holt and Company in New York published the first book edition on 7 May 1895; Heinemann published this British edition on 29 May. The binding device of the winged sphinx, chosen by Wells himself, alludes both to its traditional symbolism of mystery and to its role in the narrative as the monument beneath which the Morlocks conceal the Time Machine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Luckhurst, Introduction to The Time Machine (2016); Orwell, “Wells, Hitler and the World State” (1941).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2120291\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57312191119737,"sku":"2120291","price":4500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2120291.jpg?v=1779361336"},{"product_id":"heyerdahl-thor-the-kon-tiki-expedition-by-raft-across-the-south-seas-translated-by-f-h-lyon","title":"HEYERDAHL, Thor. The Kon-Tiki Expedition. By Raft Across the South Seas, translated by F.H. Lyon.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eFrom Peru to Polynesia by Balsa Raft\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHEYERDAHL, Thor.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Kon-Tiki Expedition. By Raft Across the South Seas, translated by F.H. Lyon. \u003ci\u003eLondon: George Allen \u0026amp; Unwin\u003c\/i\u003e. [1950].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original brick cloth, gilt device blocked to upper board, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, illustrated dust-jacket, not price-clipped; pp. 235, [3 (colophon, advertisements)]; title printed in black and ochre with mask device, photographic frontispiece and 8 ff. photographic plates; a few small chips to dust-jacket at corners and edges; otherwise a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVery rare first English edition, first impression of Heyerdahl’s account of his legendary sailing raft expedition across the Pacific from Peru, undertaken to demonstrate the possibility that indigenous North and South Americans could have crossed the Pacific to Polynesia.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe expedition ended when the raft was wrecked on a coral reef in the Tuamoto Archipelago, having covered 4,300 miles, but Heyerdahl had demonstrated the plausibility of his hypothesis. The 1950 film detailing the journey, starring and directed by Heyerdahl, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1951.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124066\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313379549561,"sku":"2124066","price":450.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124066.jpg?v=1779379403"},{"product_id":"prayerbook-illuminated-manuscript-prayerbook-in-latin-and-italian-nineteenth-century-manuscript-title-to-flyleaf-missa-beatae-virg-aliae-orationes","title":"[PRAYERBOOK.] Illuminated manuscript prayerbook in Latin and Italian. [Nineteenth-century manuscript title to flyleaf:] ‘Missa Beatae Virg. \u0026 aliae Orationes’.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e10,000 Years' Indulgence\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[PRAYERBOOK.]\u003c\/strong\u003e Illuminated manuscript prayerbook in Latin and Italian. [Nineteenth-century manuscript title to flyleaf:] ‘Missa Beatae Virg. \u0026amp; aliae Orationes’. [\u003ci\u003eBologna. c.\u003c\/i\u003e 1490–1500.]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eManuscript on vellum (95 x 70 mm). Nineteenth-century dark brown morocco, borders tooled in blind to a rope design, unidentified Italian arms blocked in blind to boards, blue silk endleaves, housed in a modern custom-made black cloth box; ff. ii, 144, ii; 1–28, 3–810 (f. 31 in 4, apparently in original condition on a stub and with outer edge made-up), 9~sup~8~sup~, 10–15~sup~10~sup~, complete; written in a round gothic bookhand in brown ink for 11 lines to a page, ruled in light brown, early manuscript foliation to upper corners (ff. 98 and 138 numbered twice), written space \u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 60 x 45 mm; rubrics in red, 1-line initials alternately in red and blue, 2-line initials of liquid gold on blue, red, or green grounds with fine penwork, large illuminated 7-line initial ‘S’ (f. 31~sup~v~sup~) enclosing Virgin and Child against a black ground, initial entwined by elaborate foliage, painted in green and blue, heightened in gold, and set against a magenta ground, with accompanying panel border including jewels and pearls, and large 5-line historiated initial ‘D’ (f. 86~sup~r~sup~) painted magenta and green including jewels and pearls, against blue and gold grounds, with matching full-page partial border; extremities of binding very lightly rubbed; a little smudging to page with historiated initial, occasional small stain, but generally very well preserved; title to second front flyleaf and ownership inscription to lifted rear pastedown in an early nineteenth-century hand in black ink, late nineteenth- century bookplate after sixteenth-century design with initials ‘T.N.D.L.’, twentieth-century bookplates to front free endpaper (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn elegant manuscript prayerbook on vellum, produced in Bologna in the 1490s, apparently the result of collaboration between the calligrapher Pierantonio Sallando and an illuminator from the circle of the great painter and jeweller Francesco Marmitta, featuring numerous devotional indulgences with guidance in the vernacular.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIllumination\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003eThe Mass of the Virgin (‘Missa Beatae Mariae Virginis’, f. 31~sup~v~sup~) opens with a large illuminated initial ‘S’ depicting a half-length Virgin adoring the Christ Child, and an elaborate full-page border. The colour palette (dark red, blue, green, black and gold) and the use of attenuated architectural forms, jewels and foliage place this manuscript alongside a group of Books of Hours produced for aristocratic patrons in Bologna around 1500 (cf. Medica). Many of these manuscripts resulted from the partnership between illuminators in Bologna – the most influential among them Francesco Marmitta (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 1460-1505) – and the prolific calligrapher Pierantonio Sallando (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 1460-1540). Together Marmitta and Sallando developed the sophisticated architectural borders, such as those of the present prayerbook, that became a hallmark of Bologna’s finest High Renaissance manuscripts. Their most celebrated and luxurious joint effort is the Offiziolo Durazzo (Genoa, Bib. Civ. Berio, m.r.cf.Arm.I).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur prayerbook was apparently also written by Sallando. The illumination may be ascribed to the same painter who collaborated with Marmitta on the Rangoni-Bentivoglio Hours (Baltimore, WAG, ms W.469) and contributed to other Hours written by Sallando in Oxford (Bodleian Library, ms Canon. Liturg. 260), Bassano del Grappa (Bib. Civ., Esp. 4 ms 1564), and the Hours of Giovanni II Bentivoglio (Morgan Lib. Ms M.53). In the present manuscript, the two large initials and borders on f. 31~sup~v~sup~ and f. 86 share similar forms and colour palette. Stylistically closely related borders are found in one of Sallando’s most famous commissions, the Hours of Bonaparte Ghisilieri illuminated by Amico Aspertini, Perugino and Matteo da Milano (BL, Yates Thompson 29).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eContents\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003eCalendar (ff. 2~sup~r~sup~–19~sup~v~sup~); Confessio generalis (ff. 20~sup~r~sup~-21~sup~r~sup~); Gospel Extracts (ff. 21~sup~r~sup~-31~sup~r~sup~); Missa Beatae Mariae Virginis (ff. 31~sup~v~sup~-49~sup~r~sup~); Prayer of St Augustine opening ‘Deus propicius esto mihi peccatori’ (ff. 49~sup~v~sup~-51~sup~v~sup~); Fifteen prayers on the Passion as said daily by St Bridget and indulgenced by Boniface VIII, opening ‘O domine iesu christe eterna dulcedo’ (ff. 51~sup~v~sup~–80~sup~r~sup~); Apostles Creed (ff. 80~sup~r~sup~–81~sup~r~sup~); Sequence of prayers (ff. 81~sup~v~sup~-85~sup~r~sup~), to be said daily while kneeling before an image of Christ to keep from the pain of Hell, to gain divine assistance, counsel and favour, and when body or soul are in danger; Seven Penitential Psalms and Litany (ff. 86~sup~r~sup~-116~sup~v~sup~); Prayers and devotions addressed to God, opening with Psalm 68 \u003cstrong\u003eand including two prayers naming the owner, ‘famulo tuo Jacobo’ \u003c\/strong\u003e(ff. 125~sup~v~sup~, 126~sup~v~sup~, and 133~sup~r~sup~), and ending with a prayer to protect when travelling and a prayer to the Guardian Angel (ff. 117–134); Prayers attributed to St Bernard and other indulgenced prayers (ff. 135-143~sup~v~sup~).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom f. 79~sup~v~sup~ (the heading opening the sequence of devotional prayers to be recited before an image of Christ), the subject headings for individual orations appear in the vernacular to more clearly remind our Jacobus of the function of each prayer, even through the prayers themselves are to be recited in Latin.\u003c\/strong\u003e ‘In formal books of hours, manuscript or printed, the prayers are almost always in Latin – even if the pardon or promise is in [the vernacular]. This again raises questions about whether the prayers were actually understood, or merely recited as a mechanistic device to procure the pardon’ (Swanson, p. 222). The final prayers deal with indulgences, \u003ci\u003ee.g.\u003c\/i\u003e ‘the following verses are those which we read that the devil appeared to St Bernard. And they bring great virtue and merit to he who reads them every day; he will not die without confession, nor experience the punishments of Hell; and he will know the day of his death’ (f. 136, \u003ci\u003etrans\u003c\/i\u003e.); another offers 6666 days’ indulgence for each time a given prayer is recited after the elevation of the Body of Christ (ff. 139~sup~v~sup~–140~sup~r\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe final indulgence accompanies the elevation prayer Domine Iesu Christi qui hanc\u003ci\u003e, written by Pope Boniface VIII ‘for King Philip IV, and for its recitation after true confession 2,000 years’ indulgence were granted. It was so effective a prayer that it was sometimes copied apart from other eucharistic prayers,’ (Rubin, p. 157). The version contained within this prayerbook grants a whopping 10,000 years of purgatorial pardon, ‘as conceded by Pope Boniface VI at the behest of King Philip of France’ (\u003c\/i\u003etrans\u003ci\u003e.). ‘Pardons and promises tied to prayers were part of a highly fluid culture […] Even with print, the pardons were essentially unstable, and in either print or manuscript the same prayer may appear […] with pardons which appear very different […] Papal numbers were confused; days of pardon became years (or vice versa)’ (Swanson, p. 222). The corresponding pardon in Cambridge University Library Dd.6.1, f. 82~sup~v~sup~, conversely, refers to an unspecified Pope Boniface. ‘A papal numeral is not always given. Where it is, the pardon is often ascribed to Boniface VI, or to Boniface VII. In the printed tradition of Paris-produced primers, the pardon became 10,000 years, the pope Boniface VI’ (\u003c\/i\u003eibid\u003ci\u003e., p. 223), as in this manuscript prayerbook.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProvenance\u003ci\u003e:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1.  The Calendar includes the feast of St Petronius, the patron saint of Bologna, in red, indicating that the manuscript was made in or for use in that city. It was written for a man who is named as ‘Jacobus’ in prayers on ff. 125v, 126v, and 133. His coat of arms was presumably painted to the border of f. 31v but has since been overpainted with a golden eagle on a light blue ground and the initials ‘N. M.’ (arms unidentified).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.  Nineteenth-century manuscript title ‘Missa Beatae Virg. \u0026amp; aliae Orationes’ on the second front flyleaf and ownership inscription, ‘Di Me Gracia Maria Isabella Sofia Comercati’, on the lifted rear pastedown, likely contemporary with the present armorial binding (arms unidentified). She is likely related to Giuseppe Carlo Commercati of Bologna, correspondent of Cardinal Gualterio (BL Add MS 20548-20550, 1719) and the priest and scholar Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1707) – discoverer of the Muratorian Fragment – or to the Prospero Comercati who was involved in the construction of the Tempio della Beata Vergine della Ghiara in Reggio Emilia in the 1620s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.  Sir Thomas North Dick-Lauder of Fountainhall, 9th Baronet (1846–1919), with his undated bookplate (Hamilton, p. 186, attributed to 1890) bearing the initials T.N.D.L., designed in imitation of the sixteenth-century bookplate of Johannes Clein. Likely sold at his 1891 sale to:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4.  Michael Tomkinson of Franche Hall, near Kidderminster (1841–1921), collector of books and Japanese art, with his bookplate to front free endpaper. At least two other Italian works from Lauder’s library – an eighteenth-century Missal in a velvet binding and the 1476 edition of Bracciolini’s history of Florence – later came into Tomkinson’s possession. Not traced in Tomkinson’s sales, Sotheby’s, April and July 1922.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5.  Pamela and Raymond Lister, with their booklabel to front free endpaper; sold Sotheby’s, 10 July 1967, lot 68, to Maggs. Christie’s London, Valuable Manuscripts and Printed Books (4 June 2008), lot 55.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSee Medica, ‘La miniatura a Bologna al tempo di Giovanni II Bentivoglio’, in Il Libro d’Ore di Bonaparte Ghislieri (2008), pp. 44–104; Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (1991); Swanson, ‘Praying for Pardon’, in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (2018).~i~\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123427\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313428865401,"sku":"2123427","price":20000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123427b.jpg?v=1779379658"},{"product_id":"hennix-catherine-christer-henry-flynt-editor-modalities-and-languages-for-algorithms","title":"HENNIX, Catherine Christer; Henry FLYNT ( editor ). Modalities and Languages for Algorithms.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Intersection of Music and Mathematics\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHENNIX, Catherine Christer; Henry FLYNT (\u003ci\u003eeditor\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Modalities and Languages for Algorithms. \u003ci\u003eBearsville, New York:\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003eself-published\u003c\/i\u003e]. 1983.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlack binder with clear plastic front panel (c. 290 x 230mm); ff. ‘42’ (i.e. 47) unbound photocopied typescript, printed to rectos only; a few small marks to covers, else very good; Hennix’s address inscribed in her hand to foot of first leaf.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVery rare typescript ‘second edition’ of \u003ci\u003eToposes and Adjoints\u003c\/i\u003e, in fact a parsing by Henry Flynt of the work of the same name by the pioneering Swedish transgender avant-garde composer, mathematician, poet, visual artist, and musician Catherine Hennix, conceived as part of a visual installation of the same name exhibited at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1976.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eModalities and Languages for Algorithms\u003c\/i\u003e seemingly circulated only in typescript until its inclusion in Hennix’s \u003ci\u003ePoësy Matters and Other Matters\u003c\/i\u003e (2019). Catherine Hennix (born Christer Hennix, 1948–2023) studied bio-chemistry and linguistics at Stockholm University; in 1968 she met Dick Higgins and Allison Knowles of the Fluxus movement and began collaborating with Henry Flynt.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHennix and Flynt co- founded the guitar and drum duo Dharma Warriors, recording in her rented house in Bearsville (Woodstock, NY) at the same time as they revised her book. The resulting record, consisting of two wild improvisations, are seemingly at odds with the quote from Alain-Robbe Grillet which features both in \u003ci\u003eToposes and Adjoints\u003c\/i\u003e and in this revised edition: ‘Nothing is more fantastic, ultimately, yet precision’, yet in spite of their musical chaos they embody the mathematical principles presented in this work. Hennix taught at MIT’s AI lab in the 1970s and studied under Alexander Esenin-Volpin, whose influence is present in this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNo copies traced in OCLC or Library Hub\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123098\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313432240505,"sku":"2123098","price":2000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123098.jpg?v=1779379688"},{"product_id":"hennix-catherine-christer-notes-on-toposes-adjoints","title":"HENNIX, Catherine Christer. Notes on Toposes \u0026 Adjoints.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Canvas as Logical Space\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHENNIX, Catherine Christer.\u003c\/strong\u003e Notes on Toposes \u0026amp; Adjoints. \u003ci\u003e[Stockholm:] Moderna Museet.\u003c\/i\u003e 1976.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlue paper folder (301 x 219 mm); pp. 67 ff. unbound photocopies, hole-punched to left margin; spine of folder slightly creased with small chip at head; numerous diagrams in the text; near fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, extremely rare, of the first published work by the transgender Swedish polymath Catherine Hennix (1945–2023), issued in conjunction with her only solo exhibition of visual art, Toposes and Adjoints, at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in 1976, our copy presented by the author to the painter Jasper Johns.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘“Notes on Toposes and Adjoints” was originally written for an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and installation works, with the idea of a canvas as a logical space, and “4-color algebras” computing in that logical space’ (Boon). The present work, central to Catherine Hennix’s (born Christer Hennix) artistic output, explores mathematical concepts of space and relationships around which Catherine Hennix (born Christer Hennix), a maths professor as well as an artist and musician, created her visual and musical works.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe exhibition contained black-and-white and colour expressions of her equations, while musically she explored the mathematical relationships within just intonation, a non-Western tuning system in which the interval between each note is a whole number ratio. She had learnt this as a disciple of the raga master Pandi Pran Nath and took it into musical collaborations with La Monte Young and Henry Flynt in a quest to combine logic, altered consciousness, and non-Western philosophy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds three copies only (Getty, MoMA, and Stanford); no copies traced in the UK.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSee Boon, The Politics of Vibration: Music as a Cosmopolitical Practice (2022).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123097\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313434861945,"sku":"2123097","price":3500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123097.jpg?v=1779379703"},{"product_id":"haldane-j-b-s-callinicus-in-defence-of-chemical-warfare","title":"HALDANE, J. B. S. Callinicus. In Defence of Chemical Warfare.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘Chemical Warfare Will Not Assume Importance Until the Outbreak of the Next Serious War’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHALDANE, J. B. S.\u003c\/strong\u003e Callinicus. In Defence of Chemical Warfare. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Kegan Paul\u003c\/i\u003e. 1925.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall 8vo. Publisher’s glazed black boards with printed labels to front board and spine, in the original printed dust-jacket; pp. [viii, with initial blank], 84, [4 (blank)]; small chip to dust-jacket at head of spine and small inkspot to front cover, slight foxing to top- and fore-edges, the odd spot internally; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUncommon first edition, first printing, rare in the dust-jacket, of this curious and controversial work by one of the twentieth century’s great geniuses, polymaths and scientific minds, a cult figure since the 1920s.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), without any higher scientific degree, became one of the leading geneticists and lecturers at Cambridge and coined the terms ‘clone’ and ‘cloning’ as understood in the modern sense. A committed Marxist, his influence reached from Aldous Huxley (\u003ci\u003eBrave New World\u003c\/i\u003e) to science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, who called Haldane ‘perhaps the most brilliant science populariser of his generation’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWriting in the aftermath of the First World War (in which he served as a captain), Haldane here examines the fifteen different types of poisonous gas used during the Great War and discusses their effects: ‘Some soldiers poisoned by these substances had to be prevented from committing suicide; others temporarily went raving mad, and tried to burrow into the ground’; in spite of this, Haldane argues that the effects are only temporary, and that the large majority of soldiers recovered after forty-eight hours. Ever the realist, he prepares his audience for the likelihood of the use of chemicals in future wars. ‘I doubt whether objecting to it [war] we are likely to avoid it in the future, however lofty our motives or disinterested our conduct.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWar will be prevented only by a scientific study of its causes, such as has prevented most epidemic diseases’ (p. 3). \u003cstrong\u003eNotably, he argues that the government should ‘seriously consider the provision of gas-masks for the population of London and other large towns, and the instruction of school-children in their use’\u003c\/strong\u003e (p. 36), \u003cstrong\u003ehis observations preceding the UK government’s 1939 decision to issue gas masks to civilians by fifteen years. ‘If this is not done, there is at least the possibility of a disaster of the very first magnitude at an early stage in the next war’\u003c\/strong\u003e (\u003ci\u003eibid.\u003c\/i\u003e). He also emphasises the importance of scientific education for civilians and soldiers in preparation for future wars; his methods – if slightly unorthodox – would play a significant role during the Second World War. ‘Though I have seen a good many scientific experiments on animals, I have never seen one which […] I should object to having performed on myself’ (p. 75).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaldane’s father, the physiologist John Scott Haldane (1860–1936), conducted extreme experiments on both himself and his son in an attempt to study gas poisoning, \u003ci\u003ee.g.\u003c\/i\u003e breathing in toxic gases in contained spaces, using his observations to develop early gas masks during the First World War. \u003cstrong\u003eDuring the Second World War, J. B. S. Haldane’s own self-experiments on decompression sickness, or ‘the bends’, were instrumental in allowing him and his team to develop breathing apparatuses and miniature submarines used in the Allied landing on D-Day.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA second, revised edition appeared later in the same year, as did a New York edition published by E.P. Dutton and Co.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121132\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313440924025,"sku":"2121132","price":1000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121132.jpg?v=1779379779"},{"product_id":"schneerson-yosef-yitzchak-courage-and-safety-through-faith-and-trust-in-g-d-a-message-to-the-jewish-servicemen-רעכיז-ןוא-גיטומ-ןעמ-זיא-ד-ג-ןיא-ןוחתב-ןוא-הנומא-טימ","title":"SCHNEERSON, Yosef Yitzchak. Courage and Safety through Faith and Trust in G-d. A Message to the Jewish Servicemen … רעכיז ןוא גיטומ ןעמ זיא ד-ג ןיא ןוחתב ןוא הנומא טימ","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eEncouragement for American-Jewish Soldiers During the Second World War\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSCHNEERSON, Yosef Yitzchak.\u003c\/strong\u003e Courage and Safety through Faith and Trust in G-d. A Message to the Jewish Servicemen … רעכיז ןוא גיטומ ןעמ זיא ד-ג ןיא ןוחתב ןוא הנומא טימ \u003ci\u003eBrooklyn: Machne Israel.\u003c\/i\u003e Elul (\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003c\/i\u003e August\/September) 1944.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e16mo. Stapled as issued in the publisher’s wrappers printed in English and Yiddish; pp. 20, iv; text in English (pp. 1–20) and in Yiddish (pp. i–iv), with occasional Hebrew; small rust-marks to spine and to inner margin from staple, some spotting and staining to pp. 1, 12-13 (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e), a few leaves loose or detached.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExtremely rare pocket-sized prayerbook containing words of encouragement from the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson (1880–1950), printed in English and Yiddish in the midst of the Second World War and distributed to American-Jewish soldiers fighting in Europe by Machne Israel, the social service branch of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEstablished by Schneerson in 1941, Machne Yehuda aimed to ‘protect Jewish rights and to represent and defend Jewish spiritual and material interests’, and, in the context of the Second World War, to ‘assist the spiritual and material well-being of Jews in the armed forces by furnishing them with books, reading materials, kosher food, etc.’ (inner cover).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis bilingual pamphlet, small enough to be stored in soldiers’ pockets, contains the text of the \u003ci\u003eShema\u003c\/i\u003e and several Psalms as well as a message from the Rebbe on the importance of maintaining faith and courage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe section headed ‘Read this Message Frequently!’ was evidently read frequently by its original owner, and appears to be lightly spattered with traces of mud; here, a message of ‘renewed hope, renewed strength, and fortitude’ is directed at Jewish soldiers, marines, and pilots in the hopes of calming feelings of ‘apprehension and fear of the future’, wishing that ‘the better world be victorious over the common enemy of mankind, and may we, together with our suffering Jewish brethren, merit the Complete Redemption through our righteous Messiah’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds copies at YIVO and National Library of Israel only. Not in Library Hub.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124966\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347033760121,"sku":"2124966","price":800.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124966.jpg?v=1780042399"},{"product_id":"tzara-tristan-francis-picabia-illustrator-sept-manifestes-dada-quelques-dessins-de-francis-picabia","title":"TZARA, Tristan; Francis PICABIA ( illustrator ). Sept manifestes Dada. quelques dessins de Francis Picabia.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘Dada Means Nothing’ – Presented by Tzara, with an Autograph Letter\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTZARA, Tristan; Francis PICABIA (\u003ci\u003eillustrator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Sept manifestes Dada. quelques dessins de Francis Picabia. \u003ci\u003eParis: Éditions du Diorama, Jean Budry \u0026amp; Co.\u003c\/i\u003e [1924.]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Mid-twentieth-century pebbled morocco, upper board lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, uncut edges, silk page-marker, original black wrappers with blue label to front bound in, housed in a custom-made slipcase; pp. 97, [7], with full-page portrait of Tzara to p. 7 and a further 11 in-text illustrations by Picabia; spine and joints expertly restored at head; subtle marginal repairs to wrappers and upper corner of half-title, uniform light toning (more pronounced to first and final pages); overall a very good, clean, copy; presentation inscriptions to Armand Salacrou to half-title (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e), respectively dated April 1925 (signed ‘TZARA’ and accompanied by a small ink drawing of a finger piercing a heart) and 10 February 1946 (signed ‘Tristan TZARA’ and with a small ink drawing of a flower), autograph letter to Salacrou (8vo, pp. [1], signed ‘Tristan TZARA’ and dated 1 June 1956) and press photograph of Salacrou at the Académie Goncourt (typescript caption dated 5 January 1949 adhered to verso, photographer’s blue ink stamp to verso) loosely inserted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst complete edition of Tzara’s seven revolutionary Dada manifestos, no. 216 of 250 copies printed on Lafuma paper from a total edition of 300, twice inscribed – first in 1925 and again in 1946 – by the author to the dramatist Armand Salacrou (1899–1989), with a 1956 letter from Tzara to Salacrou loosely inserted.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Romanian-born French writer Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) was an early pioneer of the Dada movement in Zurich. His \u003ci\u003eSeven Dada Manifestos\u003c\/i\u003e – subverting the traditional aim of a manifesto and establishing the Dadaist disavowal of meaning – were originally published separately between 1916 and 1920, and here appear together for the first time. This reaffirmation of the movement’s principles (or lack thereof) was published in the aftermath of Surrealism’s definitive split from Dadaism, which had culminated in a riot at the July 1923 restaging of Tzara’s play \u003ci\u003eLe Cœur à gaz\u003c\/i\u003e (The Gas Heart) instigated by André Breton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBreton leapt onstage and purportedly broke an actor’s arm with his cane. Picabia, whose illustrations - including a portrait of Tzara - appear here, would formally renounce Dada in 1921, briefly positioning himself within the Surrealist movement.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe present copy testifies to the enduring friendship between Tzara and his artistic collaborator Salacrou over the course of some three decades; Salacrou had been introduced to Tzara – as well as Artaud – by the Surrealist painter André Masson. ‘Adumbrating Surrealist moods, Salacrou’s first plays are almost totally introspective’ (Silenieks, p. 1); in 1923, Tzara had some of Salacrou’s earliest works (\u003ci\u003ePièces a lire\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMagasin d’accessoires\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eLes Trente tombes de Judas\u003c\/i\u003e) sent to a Belgian magazine, pieces ‘intended to be read rather than acted’ in which Salacrou ‘conjures up weird images and fantastic forms that pass by in a continuous flow’ (ibid., p. 11). A member of the Académie Goncourt from 1949 and a Grand Officer of the Légion d’honneur, he was president of the jury of the 1963 Cannes Festival (which opened with Hitchcock’s \u003ci\u003eThe Birds\u003c\/i\u003e, the Palme d’Or awarded to Visconti’s \u003ci\u003eIl Gattopardo\u003c\/i\u003e). Around 1923 Salacrou was closely connected with the avant-garde Rue Blomet circle, centred around the studio of painter André Masson, where he befriended the likes of Joan Miró and Max Jacob.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the first inscription to Salacrou on the half-title, written in verse and dated April 1925, Tzara makes reference to the drama of his friend \u003ci\u003eLe Casseur d’assiettes\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Plate Breaker\u003c\/i\u003e), which premiered in that same year: ‘To Armand Salacrou | who breaks the plates of my heart | and knows how to fill the holes with cries of dreams and with tears. The flower of all my friendships.’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e), adding a symbolic drawing of a flower and of a finger poking through a heart. Tzara revisited this copy twenty-two years later (presumably at Salacrou’s request), adding another drawing of a flower in tribute of their friendship and the inscription ‘with the same friendship always’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e). Loosely inserted is autograph letter from Tzara to Salacrou, dated  1 June 1956, in which Tzara ‘highly recommends a friend, Miss Sophie ?Wenck, who is charming and capable of doing of being useful to you’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAdes 8.58; Meyer 218. See Silenieks, ‘Themes and Dramatic Forms in the Plays of Armand Salacrou’, in University of Nebraska Studies 35 (1967).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124897\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347034448249,"sku":"2124897","price":5000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124897.jpg?v=1780042414"},{"product_id":"powell-anthony-a-dance-to-the-music-of-time","title":"POWELL, Anthony. A Dance to the Music of Time","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Powell Family Copies of \u003ci\u003eA Dance to the Music of Time\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePOWELL, Anthony.\u003c\/strong\u003e A Dance to the Music of Time \u003ci\u003eLondon: Heinemann\u003c\/i\u003e. 1951–1975.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Twelve volumes, ten of them Powell family copies. Original red cloth, spines lettered in gilt to black lettering-pieces, in the original James Broom Lynne dust-jackets; a few scattered spots to text-block edges of \u003ci\u003eAt Lady Molly’s\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Kindly Ones\u003c\/i\u003e; the ten family copies are uncommonly well-preserved and fresh, the Broom Lynne wrappers remarkably bright, the colours vivid, the volumes seemingly unread; occasional light edge-wear; with the Powell family bookplate to each pastedown, the remaining two titles, \u003ci\u003eA Buyer’s Market\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Valley of Bones\u003c\/i\u003e are supplied non-family copies of the first printings, both in wrappers, the former in the first state wrapper with wide inner flaps (the front neatly clipped) with some discreet repairs to spine ends and folds and a small date neatly stamped to the lower corner of the rear flap, previous owner’s name neatly in ink to front free endpaper, light spotting to fore-edges; \u003ci\u003eThe Valley of Bones\u003c\/i\u003e, a near-fine copy, in like, unclipped wrapper, just a touch rubbed to spine tips and corners.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnthony Powell’s own, and family, copies of ten of the twelve volumes of \u003ci\u003eA Dance to the Music of Time\u003c\/i\u003e, all first printings, with first printings of the two remaining volumes supplied; the author’s masterpiece and one of the monuments of twentieth-century fiction in English; four volumes are inscribed by the author: two to his younger son John, and two – the first, \u003ci\u003eA Question of Upbringing\u003c\/i\u003e dated on the day of publication – almost certainly for his wife Violet. All ten bear Powell’s \u003ci\u003eEx Libris\u003c\/i\u003e plate to front pastedowns; condition is immaculate, the wonderful Broom Lynne jackets vibrant and fresh.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Question of Upbringing\u003c\/i\u003e (1951)\u003c\/strong\u003e, inscribed in pencil to the front free endpaper ‘|With love \/ from Tony \/ 22 Jan 1951|’. Published 22 January 1951 in an edition of 7,500 copies. Powell later explained in his Memoirs (III, p. 215) that ‘it was my intention that an additional half-title, indicating the name of the whole sequence, \u003ci\u003eThe Music of Time\u003c\/i\u003e (followed by asterisks denoting the number of the volume), should appear on the page preceding that opening the narrative. After I had passed proofs some over-enthusiastic supervisor altered this subheading to \u003ci\u003eA Question of Upbringing, already used on the first page as half-title. This was soon put right, so that a “first state’ exists in the first edition.” This copy is of that first state, ‘1st state with incorrect half-title before p. 1’ pencilled (in Powell’s hand?) at the head of the front free endpaper.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAt Lady Molly’s\u003ci\u003e (1957)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e, inscribed in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘with love | from | Tony’; additionally signed ‘Anthony Powell’ to the title page beneath the struck-out printed name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Soldier’s Art\u003ci\u003e(1966)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e, inscribed in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘John | with love | D’; additionally signed ‘Anthony Powell’ to the title page above the struck-out printed name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTemporary Kings\u003ci\u003e (1973)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e, inscribed in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘John | from D | with love’; additionally signed ‘Anthony Powell’ to the title page above the struck-out printed name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA Dance to the Music of Time\u003ci\u003e, published between 1951 and 1975, holds a special place in British fiction of the twentieth century.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Comparisons with Proust’s great novel also spanning twelve volumes (and which Powell admired), are inevitable, and both authors achieve effects that exploit the possibilities of breadth and depth opened up by the capaciousness of the form.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe work unfolds across more than half a century, from 1914 to 1971, each volume at once self-contained and part of the larger design. The scale of the canvas allows for the subtly traced, slowly evolving examination of the inner and outer life of its narrator Nicholas Jenkins, as well as the manners and mores of twentieth-century England, or at least those facets of political, cultural and military life that Powell knew best (it is inevitably, if guardedly, a semi-autobiographical work). Watching a milieu in which ‘the more raffish elements of the establishment commingle with the upper echelons of bohemia’, Jenkins discerns ‘a pattern dictated by the rhythm of life’ (ODNB\u003ci\u003e), like the seasons in the Poussin painting from which Powell took his title, described by Jenkins at the opening of the first volume. The unfolding sequence invites visual parallels: Powell’s biographer Hilary Spurling likening it to ‘a Chinese scroll painting, a vast canvas streaked with violence and perturbation, suffused with humour, at once passionate and dispassionate, lyrical and absurd, almost disintegrating at points into gloom and chaos, rising at others to fierce, complex, brilliantly coloured climaxes.’\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnthony Powell met Violet \u003cstrong\u003ePowell (née\u003ci\u003e Pakenham)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e, daughter of the fifth Earl of Longford, in 1934, through the London literary and social circles they both frequented. Their marriage lasted more than sixty years. ‘I had never asked another woman to marry me’, Powell later remarked, ‘and […] have never wished to be married to another woman’ (The Times~i~, 16 January 2002). Violet was herself an active literary figure, publishing criticism, journalism, and books including studies of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and E. M. Delafield, as well as three volumes of autobiography. Powell acknowledged her as one of the most important first readers of his work. She survived him by a year, dying in 2001.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohn Powell (b. 1940)\u003c\/strong\u003e, is the younger son of Anthony and Violet. Compared with his elder brother Tristram, he has always maintained a relatively private public profile. After his parents’ deaths, John was involved in matters relating to the family library and literary estate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLilley A.8(a) \/ 11(a) \/ 12(a) \/ 13(a) \/ 14(a) \/ 17(a) \/ 18(a) \/ 19(a) \/ 21(a) \/ 22(a).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124829\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347035169145,"sku":"2124829","price":25000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124829.jpg?v=1780042431"},{"product_id":"read-herbert-naked-warriors-london-pelican-press-for-art-letters-1919-with-the-end-of-a-war-london-faber-and-faber-1933-and-collected-poems","title":"READ, Herbert. Naked Warriors. London : [ Pelican Press for ] Art \u0026 Letters . 1919. [ with: ] —. The End of a War. London: Faber and Faber. 1933. [ and: ] —. Collected Poems.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eREAD, Herbert.\u003c\/strong\u003e Naked Warriors. \u003ci\u003eLondon\u003ci\u003e: [\u003ci\u003ePelican Press for\u003ci\u003e] \u003ci\u003eArt \u0026amp; Letters\u003ci\u003e. 1919. [\u003ci\u003ewith:\u003ci\u003e]  —. The End of a War. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Faber and Faber.\u003ci\u003e 1933. [\u003ci\u003eand:\u003ci\u003e]  —. Collected Poems. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Faber and Faber.\u003c\/i\u003e 1946.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNaked Warriors\u003c\/i\u003e: 8vo. Original card wrappers, printed in red, woodcut illustration by Wyndham Lewis to upper cover; pp. 60; wrappers a little dusty, a few small nicks to extremities, small chip to foot of spine; a very good copy; presentation inscription to half-title ‘for F. S. Flint \/ Herbert Read’, dated 16 March 1920.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe End of a War\u003c\/i\u003e: 8vo. Original cream printed boards, in the dust-jacket priced 2s. 6d. net to front flap, tail-and fore-edges untrimmed; pp. 31, [1]; corners and extremities rubbed, lower edge of spine bumped with small loss (old adhesive repair), offsetting to endpapers, wrapper variously rubbed, torn and nicked with small losses to corners and spine ends, larger loss at head of rear cover, a few small adhesive repairs; a good copy in like wrapper; inscribed by the author to the dedication page, with an autograph letter signed from Read to the book’s dedicatee, Captain Lancelot Simpson (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCollected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e: 8vo. Original pale blue cloth, spine lettered in silver to red lettering piece on spine, in the dust-jacket priced 8s. 6d. net to front flap, fore-edges untrimmed; pp. 201, [3 (blank)]; spine lightly sunned (particularly at head and foot), spine ends slightly bumped, losses to wrapper at head and foot of spine, affecting one or two letters at each end, small nicks and closed tears to edges; a very good copy in a good wrapper; presentation inscription to Huntington Cairns to front free endpaper, dated 1960.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAssociation copies – one the dedication copy – of Herbert Read’s two volumes of war poetry, the first written during the war itself and the second returning to it more than a decade later, together with a presentation copy of Read’s 1946 \u003ci\u003eCollected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHerbert Read’s reputation as a poet has perhaps suffered from the breadth of his interests (as literary critic, educationalist, anarchist, philosopher, art critic and eloquent advocate for modern art and design).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe was, however, a poet first, and, like his friend and publisher T. S. Eliot, a distinguished ‘poet-critic’ – a role that may have inhibited his verse (he was fearsomely self-critical). These volumes – including his two principal works addressing the war in which he served, and which continued to haunt him – represent distinct phases in his poetic development and corresponding approaches to the subject.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNaked Warriors\u003c\/i\u003e embodies the tensions at the heart of this early poetics. An angry book, its epigraph (‘War through my soul has driven \/ Its jagged blades: \/ The riven \/ Dream fades […]’) sets the tone. The poems, many written during the early stages of the war, still adhere to the tenets of Imagism (influenced by Read’s friends and mentors T. E. Hulme, F. S. Flint, and Pound), ‘the abstract clarity of the […] technique [offering Read] a coping strategy for the horrors of war’ (Adams). In the best of these, Read renders experience with unsentimental precision (‘Mute figures with bowed heads \/ They travel along the road: \/ Old Women, incredibly old \/ and a hand-cart of chattels’ – ‘The Refugees’), yet he soon came to feel that the unmediated presentation of image or idea was inadequate to the emotional pressures animating the poems. \u003cstrong\u003eThis copy of \u003ci\u003eNaked Warriors\u003c\/i\u003e is presented by Read to F. S. Flint (1885–1960)\u003c\/strong\u003e, fellow Imagist and author of the 1913 essay in the \u003ci\u003ePoetry Review\u003c\/i\u003e which provided a theoretical basis for the movement, and of the influential volumes \u003ci\u003eCadences\u003c\/i\u003e (1915) and \u003ci\u003eOtherworld: Cadences\u003c\/i\u003e (1920).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThirteen years later, \u003ci\u003eThe End of a War\u003c\/i\u003e marks Read’s closest approach to a reconciliation of poetry and war, aesthetics and experience. His treatment of the incident upon which the volume is based – and, indirectly, of his own wartime experience – is at once subtler and more oblique than in the earlier work. His poetics now drew upon his reading of Freud, centring on the role of ‘personality’ (for Read, something like a union of Freud’s ego and id), as against ‘character’, which he defined as ‘[a] disposition in the individual due to the repression of certain impulses which would otherwise be present in the personality.’ Although Read and his publisher and friend T. S. Eliot remained close, this poetics of ‘personality’ brought them into friendly conflict. Eliot had famously written that poetry was not an expression of personality but an escape from it – the obverse of Read’s position – and Read later recalled that when Eliot declared himself to be ‘a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics and an Anglo-Catholic in religion, I could only retort that I was a romantic in literature, an anarchist in politics and an agnostic in religion.’ (\u003ci\u003eThe Cult of Sincerity\u003c\/i\u003e, 1968). In his 1933 Page Barbour lectures (published as \u003ci\u003eAfter Strange Gods\u003c\/i\u003e the same year as \u003ci\u003eThe End of a War\u003c\/i\u003e), Eliot went as far as to cite Read’s statements on personality as one of his four examples of modern heresy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe End of a War\u003c\/i\u003e first appeared in Eliot’s \u003ci\u003eCriterion\u003c\/i\u003e at the end of 1932 and was published by Faber the following year. The title is both literal (the poem is set on the eve of the Armistice) and indicative of retrospective catharsis (\u003ci\u003ecf.\u003c\/i\u003e Robert Graves’s \u003ci\u003eGood-Bye to All That\u003c\/i\u003e, 1929). The three-part poem is based on a real incident, set out in the opening prose Argument: an advancing British regiment headed by ‘Lieut. S—’, preparing to enter a French town in pursuit of retreating German forces, encounters a wounded German officer who assures the Lieutenant that his compatriots have departed. The troops advance, only to be ambushed. As they withdraw, a group of survivors return and kill the German officer; others discover the mutilated body of a French girl in an abandoned house. ‘When the discovery was reported to Lieut. S—, he went to verify the strange crime, but there was nothing to be done; he was, moreover, sick and tired. He found a bed in another cottage near the château, […] fell into a deep sleep, and did not wake until the next morning, the 11th of November, 1918.’ The three sections are devoted respectively to the internal dialogue of the German officer, the body and soul of the French girl, and a British officer [based on Lieut. S—] waking to hear church bells announcing the Armistice. Many have speculated on the source of the episode: ‘There is no possibility of this being a disguised account of an episode in which Read took part, since on Armistice Day he was in England.’ (Woodcock); ‘Read must have heard the story from his fellow Green Howards, but about a unit other than his own, for although the Second Green Howards were involved in just this sort of fighting throughout October and November 1918 in the same part of France as described in the poem, their battalion diary does not tally in detail with his account.’ (Cecil).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis, the dedication copy, with Read’s laid-in letter, makes clear that the episode was based on the experiences of Captain Lancelot Simpson M.C., to whom the volume is dedicated.\u003c\/strong\u003e Signed and dated by Read (10 November 1933, the date of publication and anniversary of the incident recounted) beneath the printed dedication, the accompanying manuscript letter, on Read’s own headed notepaper (also dated 10. xi. 33.), informs Simpson that the poem appears ‘in book form [and] I have taken the liberty of dedicating it to you.’ Read refers to ‘the notes you once lent me \u0026amp; which you wanted back’, now lost in the confusion of moving, adding that ‘as I gradually straighten things it will turn up again \u0026amp; then I will send it on.’ Little is known of Simpson, but it is significant that \u003ci\u003eThe End of a War\u003c\/i\u003e (both the poem and this copy) is dedicated to a fellow soldier.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003ePoetry and Experience\u003c\/i\u003e (1967), Read observed that the experience of war had been his lifelong preoccupation, but eventually concluded that war could not be written: ‘I have never written about the real horror of fighting, which is not death nor the fear of mutilation, discomfort or filth, but a psychopathic state of hallucination in which the world becomes unreal and you no longer know whether your experience is valid - in other-words whether you are any longer sane.’ Yeats similarly maintained that poetry written in the immediacy of war lacked ‘significant distance’ between mind and event, excluding what we now regard as the central poetry of the conflict from his influential \u003ci\u003eOxford Book of Modern Verse\u003c\/i\u003e (1936). He included, however, a substantial portion of Read’s \u003ci\u003eThe End of A War\u003c\/i\u003e, recognising its ability to transmute experience from a sufficient distance (a Wordsworthian ‘recollection in tranquillity’).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe accompanying copy of Read’s first \u003ci\u003eCollected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e (1946) is inscribed to Huntington Cairns (1904–1985), writer and lawyer who worked at different times for the U.S. Treasury, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and Johns Hopkins University. Read’s inscription was made in May 1960 at Rock Creek Cemetery and includes the phrase ‘the inevitable acceptance of the intellectual’, which seems to be Read’s own.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Cecil, ‘Herbert Read and the Great War’ in Goodway ed., Herbert Read Reassessed (1998); Woodcock, Herbert Read: The Stream and the Source (1972); Adams, ‘Herbert Read and the Fluid Memory of the First World War’, in Historical Research, 88.240 (2015).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124823\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347035332985,"sku":"2124823","price":1650.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124823.jpg?v=1780042445"},{"product_id":"owen-wilfred-edmund-blunden-editor-the-poems-of-wilfred-owen-a-new-edition-including-many-pieces-now-first-published-and-notices-of-his-life-and-work-by-edmund-blunden-london-chatto-windus-1931-with-cohen-joseph-owen-agonistes","title":"OWEN, Wilfred; Edmund BLUNDEN ( editor ). The Poems of Wilfred Owen: A New Edition, Including Many Pieces Now First Published, and Notices of His Life and Work, by Edmund Blunden. London: Chatto \u0026 Windus. 1931. [ with :] COHEN, Joseph, Owen Agonistes. […","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eUncovering the ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ Surrounding Owen’s Homosexuality\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOWEN, Wilfred; Edmund BLUNDEN (\u003ci\u003eeditor\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e The Poems of Wilfred Owen: A New Edition, Including Many Pieces Now First Published, and Notices of His Life and Work, by Edmund Blunden. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Chatto \u0026amp; Windus.\u003ci\u003e 1931.  [\u003ci\u003ewith\u003ci\u003e:] COHEN, Joseph, Owen Agonistes. [\u003ci\u003ePrivately printed offprint from:\u003ci\u003e] English Literature in Transition vol. VIII, no. 5, December 1965. \u003ci\u003eS.l.: s.n.\u003c\/i\u003e [Not before 1965.]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCohen\u003c\/i\u003e: 8vo. Pale blue printed card wrappers, stapled as issued; pp. 24. With accompanying envelope addressed to Cohen in typescript ‘from Professor Blunden’, typescript letter from Blunden to Cohen (175 x 135 mm, single leaf, pp. [2]) dated 12 January 1967 and signed ‘E. Blunden’, and facsimile typescript letter from Cohen to Blunden dated 12 December 1966 (280 x 215 mm, \u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOwen\u003c\/i\u003e: 8vo. Original brown buckram over bevelled boards, spine lettered in gilt, top-edge gilt, tail- and fore-edges untrimmed, partly unopened; pp. [ii], vii, [1 (blank)], 135, [1 (blank)]; photographic portrait frontispiece with tissue guard; light spotting to endpapers and prelims, spine ends slightly rubbed; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNo. 11 of 160 ‘special edition’ copies (of which 150 were for sale) of the first edition of Edmund Blunden’s landmark edition of Wilfred Owen’s poems, this copy signed by Blunden at the foot of his biography of the poet; offered with Blunden’s copy of the scarce offprint of Joseph Cohen’s controversial pamphlet, \u003ci\u003eOwen Agonistes\u003c\/i\u003e, with Cohen’s letter to Blunden on Owen’s homosexuality and Blunden’s dismissive reply.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlunden’s extended edition of Owen’s poems appeared eleven years after the slimmer volume edited by Seigfried Sassoon and Edith Sitwell in 1920. A war veteran and distinguished poet himself, Blunden was urged to edit the volume by Sassoon, who was never pleased with the earlier edition. ‘[A] more experienced and exacting editor’ (Stallworthy), Blunden added 37 poems to the 23 in the 1920 edition, as well as a memoir of Owen and notes to the poems. Like Sassoon and Sitwell, he reprints Owen’s short sketch for a preface, adding the poet’s own table of contents (‘with its perplexities’).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe edition ‘helped to consolidate Owen’s reputation and elevate him to the iconic status he was to hold for poets and readers of poetry in the 1930s and after’ (Stallworthy); it was the volume that endeared Owen to Auden, and later Larkin. \u003cstrong\u003eBlunden has signed this copy at the foot of his memoir and to Owen’s preface.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoseph Cohen, the owner of this copy, scholar of First World War poetry, and biographer of Isaac Rosenberg, was a professor at Tulane University. In 1965, Cohen published the influential article ‘Owen Agonistes’ \u003ci\u003eEnglish Literature in Transition\u003c\/i\u003e, 1965, later issued in the pamphlet offered here. The essay, which sought to uncover what Cohen describes as a ‘conspiracy’ of silence regarding Owen’s homosexuality, was greeted with some hostility among existing Owen scholars. A reaction against Sassoon’s claim in the introduction to the 1920 edition of Owen’s poems that ‘[a]ll that was strongest in Wilfred Owen survives in his poems; any superficial impressions of his personality, any records of his conversation, behaviour, or appearance, would be irrelevant and unseemly’, the essay broke new ground and has been influential for later scholars. The signed copy of \u003ci\u003eOwen Agonistes\u003c\/i\u003e is accompanied by a facsimile copy Cohen’s letter to Edmund Blunden, sent with a copy of the pamphlet (presumably this copy), along with Blunden’s original typed, hand-signed reply to Cohen, on Blunden’s printed writing paper and complete with the stamped envelope. The short, but fascinating letter is at once heartfelt and angry, while remaining civil.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e‘Your kindness in sending me the inscribed pamphlet on W. Owen I much appreciate,  though as you wrote in your letter I might not enjoy your thesis. You seem (p. 4 and elsewhere) to describe me as a deliberate writer of untruth about Owen. The word “conspiracy” is not a pleasant one in such connections, if any. Your conclusion on p. 24 connects me with a “windy and empty legend” etc. I can only say that I wrote, long ago, by request, quite simply about Owen, from all see sources I had, and had no wish to do anything but record him and edit his poems. \u003cstrong\u003eFrom his father, mother, sister and brother I had no evidence (why should they think as you say about his private life)?\u003c\/strong\u003e Having been in the army myself I can follow what you say, but I believe Wilfred merely gave his life, and was given a decoration for gallantry, in 1918. [\u0026amp;c].’\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOwen Agonistes: OCLC finds eight copies in the US (UT Austin, UC Davis, Kansas State, Historic New Orleans Collection, Ohio, Tulsa, and Texas A\u0026amp;M), and only one in the UK (Edinburgh Napier).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhite, p. 13; Kirkpatrick B47b. See Stallworthy, Owen: A Biography (1974).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124815\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347036578169,"sku":"2124815","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124815.jpg?v=1780042461"},{"product_id":"owen-wilfred-siegfried-sassoon-introduction-edith-sitwell-poems-by-wilfred-owen","title":"OWEN, Wilfred; Siegfried SASSOON ( introduction ); [Edith SITWELL]. Poems by Wilfred Owen.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe Poet, the Editors, and the Scholar\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOWEN, Wilfred; Siegfried SASSOON (\u003ci\u003eintroduction\u003ci\u003e); [Edith SITWELL].\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Poems by Wilfred Owen. \u003ci\u003eLondon. Chatto \u0026amp; Windus.\u003c\/i\u003e 1920.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Original red buckram, printed paper spine label; pp. ix, [iii], 33, [iii]; photographic portrait frontispiece with tissue guard; slightly sunned, label toned but legible, corners and extremities rubbed, spine chipped at head and foot, some browning to endpapers, light abrasion to front pastedown (erased old inscription ‘Esmé …’); a very good copy; half-title inscribed by Edith Sitwell to Joseph Cohen (‘For Joseph Cohen | who protects this great poet | in memory of a most |happy evening’), dated 9 April 1957, from Cohen’s library with his small printed shelflabel to rear pastedown, two loosely inserted printouts, highlighted and annotated on ‘Dulce et decorum est’ and on the present edition of Owen’s poems presumably in Cohen’s hand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA remarkable association copy of the first collection of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, widely considered the finest poems to emerge from the First World War, this copy inscribed by Edith Sitwell, the volume’s acknowledged though uncredited editor, to Tulane University professor Joseph Cohen (d. 2013), scholar of First World War poetry.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilfred Owen (1893–1918) died one week before the Armistice, his mother reportedly receiving news of his death as bells were tolling to announce the war’s end. Only four of his poems were published during his lifetime, but he is best remembered for a group of poems mostly written between August 1917 while he was being treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh (where he met Siegfried Sassoon), and his return to the front line in France in early summer 1918.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis slim volume appeared two years after Owen’s death and is at once marked by friendship and loss.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSassoon’s heartfelt introduction remains one of the finest early tributes to the poet: ‘The importance of his contribution to the literature of the War cannot be decided by those who, like myself, both admired him as a poet and valued him as a friend. […] I can only affirm that he was a man of absolute integrity of mind.’ This is followed by Owen’s own brief preface, found ‘in an unfinished condition, among [his] papers’:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAbove all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe subject of it is War, and the pity of War.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Poetry is in the pity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Edith Sitwell, who had never met Owen (but had published seven of his poems in the November 1919 issue of Wheels, dedicated to his memory), expressed a wish to edit a selection of Owen’s work, Sassoon, ‘stirring himself at last, insisted that Owen had wished him to do this’ (Egremont). Owen’s mother sent any manuscripts she could find, but ‘the rush of Sassoon’s life [soon] intervened’. In January 1920 he went to New York, leaving the material with Sitwell, having done no work on it. The slim volume that appeared in December 1920 includes a brief acknowledgment: ‘For the preparation of this book thanks are primarily due to Miss Edith Sitwell.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSassoon later conceded that Sitwell had done all the editing, blaming her for the volume’s shortcomings.\u003c\/strong\u003e This copy is inscribed by Sitwell “For Joseph Cohen \/ who protects this great poet \/ in memory of a most \/ happy evening, the 9th of April \/ 1957, from Edith Sitwell.” No other copies inscribed by Sitwell have been traced in commerce. Cohen, a scholar of First World War poetry and biographer of Isaac Rosenberg, was a professor at Tulane University. In 1965, a year after Sitwell’s death, \u003cstrong\u003eCohen published the influential article ‘Owen Agonistes’ (\u003ci\u003eEnglish Literature in Transition\u003c\/i\u003e, 1965, later issued in pamphlet form) which sought to uncover what described as a ‘conspiracy’ of silence regarding Owen’s homosexuality.\u003c\/strong\u003e His work on Owen can be seen as a reaction against Sassoon’s claim in the introduction ‘[a]ll that was strongest in Wilfred Owen survives in his poems; any superficial impressions of his personality, any records of his conversation, behaviour, or appearance, would be irrelevant and unseemly.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWe have been unable to find any record of other copies inscribed by Sitwell.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhite, p. 12. See Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography (2005).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124814\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347036774777,"sku":"2124814","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124814.jpg?v=1780042476"},{"product_id":"thomas-dylan-18-poems-london-the-favil-press-for-the-sunday-referee-and-the-parton-bookshop-1934-with-thomas-dylan-twenty-five-poems","title":"THOMAS, Dylan 18 Poems. London [ The Favil Press for ] The Sunday Referee and The Parton Bookshop. 1934. [ with ] THOMAS, Dylan. Twenty-Five Poems.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTHOMAS, Dylan\u003c\/strong\u003e 18 Poems. \u003ci\u003eLondon\u003ci\u003e [\u003ci\u003eThe Favil Press for\u003ci\u003e] \u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Referee and The Parton Bookshop. 1934.\u003ci\u003e [\u003ci\u003ewith\u003ci\u003e] THOMAS, Dylan. Twenty-Five Poems. [\u003ci\u003eLetchworth: Temple Press for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eLondon: J.M. Dent\u003c\/i\u003e. 1936.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e18 Poems\u003c\/i\u003e: 8vo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, lacking the dustwrapper; pp. 36, [4]; corners and extremities slightly worn, small chips to three of four corners and head of spine; light spotting to endpapers and half-title, a few isolated marginal spots throughout; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTwenty-Five Poems\u003c\/i\u003e: 8vo. Original grey boards, sympathetically in pale blue cloth, spine lettered in dark blue in imitation of the original, endpapers and pastedowns renewed, lacking the dust-jacket; pp. vii, [1 (blank)], 47, [1]; light rubbing to edges and extremities, a few marks to boards; a very good copy; presentation inscription to Aubrey Douglas-Smith, dated January 1938 to original front flyleaf.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth volumes housed in an emerald-green, cloth-covered solander box lettered in gilt to front panel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first issue of Dylan Thomas’s debut, 18 Poems, together with a second impression of its successor, Twenty-Five Poems, the latter presented by the author to Aubrey Douglas-Smith.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e18 Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eThomas’s first book\u003c\/strong\u003e, followed a circuitous route to publication. Leaving the Swansea school where his father taught in 1931, aged sixteen — ‘an undistinguished pupil’ (\u003ci\u003eODNB\u003c\/i\u003e) — he found work at the local evening newspaper, contributing on literary matters whenever possible. Already writing poems and consciously cultivating the life of a poet (which, for Thomas, invariably involved alcohol), the notebooks he filled between 1930 and 1934 contain a significant proportion of the poems on which his reputation rests.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘And death shall have no dominion’, his defiantly resonant refusal of mortality, appeared in the \u003ci\u003eNew English Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e in May 1933, followed that October by ‘The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’ in \u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Referee\u003c\/i\u003e, a poem central to \u003ci\u003e18 Poems\u003c\/i\u003e and which encapsulates Thomas’ preoccupation with ‘the pantheistic union of man and nature’ (Christie). Appearing on 29th Oct. 1933, the poem won the annual prize for poetry awarded by the paper, part of which consisted of publication, under the aegis of the Referee, of a book of the winning poet’s work. These early poems had also attracted the attention of T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender, the former considering Thomas for his Faber list. The book was eventually issued jointly by the press at the Parton Bookshop and \u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Referee\u003c\/i\u003e. Run by David Archer – ‘the effete left-leaning scion of a Wiltshire landowner’ (Ferris) – the bookshop at 2 Parton Street, between Southampton Row and Red Lion Square, was a gathering place for young writers and poets, George Barker and David Gascoyne among them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough \u003ci\u003e18 Poems\u003c\/i\u003e proved both a critical and commercial success, Thomas remained dissatisfied with his publisher. Writing to George Reavey in 1938, he complained that he had ‘lost badly on that book, owing to my ignorance \u0026amp; Archer’s vagueness: I was given, in small irregular sums […], no more than £4 or £5, and have not received a halfpenny royalty although the book, for poetry has sold […] remarkably well.’ Five hundred sets of sheets of the volume were printed, bound in two issues of two hundred and fifty copies; this copy is the first state with flat spine, untrimmed upper and fore-edges and lacking the extra sheet between half title and title page.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy the time Dent ‘t[ook] him by surprise’ (Lycett) by publishing \u003ci\u003eTwenty-Five Poems\u003c\/i\u003e in 1936, Thomas’s work was selling in greater numbers: the first impression of 750 copies sold quickly and was followed by three further impressions. This copy of the second impression was inscribed by Thomas in 1938 to \u003cstrong\u003eAubrey Douglas-Smith\u003c\/strong\u003e (1899–1963), later the author of \u003ci\u003eGuilty Germans?\u003c\/i\u003e (Left Book Club, 1942; subsequently issued in a Gollancz trade edition). Thomas may have known Douglas-Smith through the Parton Bookshop circle (the shop closed in 1939, a year after the present inscription). The poet’s political sympathies were firmly with the radical left, without, it seems, formally joining any party or group.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eRolph B. 1(a), B. 3. See Christie, Dylan Thomas: A Literary Life (2014); Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Biography (1999); Lycett, Dylan Thomas: A New Life (2003); Ferris ed., Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters (1985).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124733\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347037725049,"sku":"2124733","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124733.jpg?v=1780042491"},{"product_id":"rimbaud-arthur-une-saison-en-enfer","title":"RIMBAUD, Arthur Une saison en enfer","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eRimbaud’s Season in Hell – Concealed for Thirty Years\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRIMBAUD, Arthur\u003c\/strong\u003e Une saison en enfer \u003ci\u003eBrussels: Alliance Typographique\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eM.-J. Poot et Compagnie\u003c\/i\u003e). 1873.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. In the original publisher’s wrappers, printed in red and black, housed in a suede-lined black morocco-backed chemise with orange marbled sides, within a matching slipcase; pp. 53, [1 (blank)]; the slightest trace to foxing to fore-edge; else an excellent copy, uncut and unopened.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, in exceptional condition, of Rimbaud’s highly influential, confessional prose poem \u003ci\u003eUne saison en enfer\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eA Season in Hell\u003c\/i\u003e), the only work published at Rimbaud’s expense, printed shortly after the dissolution of his turbulent relationship with Verlaine.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eUne saison en enfer\u003c\/i\u003e, the eighteen-year-old Rimbaud (1854–1891) ‘gathers and reassembles the chaos of his life, leaving behind him the burning, powerful lines of a delayed poetic art’ (\u003ci\u003eEn français dans le texte, trans.\u003c\/i\u003e). Rimbaud had met Verlaine in Brussels in July of 1873, where Verlaine shot him in the arm with a revolver. Verlaine, charged with attempted murder, was sentenced to two years in prison, and Rimbaud returned to Charleville to complete the present work, begun in April and finished in August. At the time of publication, only six copies were known, distributed by Rimbaud to Verlaine, Delahaye, and his childhood friend Ernest Milllot, amongst others, the remainder thought to have been destroyed by Rimbaud along with his manuscripts; the completion of \u003ci\u003eIlluminations\u003c\/i\u003e the following year would mark the beginning of \u003ci\u003ele silence de Rimbaud\u003c\/i\u003e, his promise never to return to poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe opening poem positions Rimbaud as ‘the infernal bridegroom’ (\u003ci\u003el’époux infernal\u003c\/i\u003e) and Verlaine ‘the foolish virgin’ (\u003ci\u003ela vierge folle\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRimbaud had made an initial payment to the printer for \u003ci\u003eUne saison en enfer\u003c\/i\u003e but failed to settle his subsequent accounts, and the majority of the print run was retained in the printer’s warehouse in Brussels for nearly three decades. 425 copies (the remainder discarded due to water damage) were discovered in the printer’s warehouse by Belgian lawyer and bibliophile Léon Losseau in 1901, although he would not publicise the discovery until 1915. Despite attempts by Rimbaud’s brother-in-law (and posthumous publisher), Pierre-Eugène Dufour, to convince Losseau to destroy the newly discovered copies in keeping with Rimbaud’s wishes, Losseau secretly distributed copies to a group of close friends, whom he had sworn to secrecy, sent others to Stefan Zweig, Emile Verhaeren, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Viele-Griffin, and on 24 November 1912 presented several copies to his fellow members of the Société des bibliophiles belges.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC finds ten copies in the US (Dartmouth, Harvard, Indiana, Morgan, Newberry, Northwestern, NYPL, UCLA, UT Austin, Yale), and only one in the UK (BL).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCarteret II, p. 271 (calling for a total print run of c. 300 copies); En français dans le texte 299 (pp. 278–9, ‘this edition is all the more valuable as it is the only work whose publication was intended by its author’, trans.). Not in Vicaire (cf. vol. VI, cols 1134–5). See Michaelides, ‘Stefan Zweig’s Copy of Rimbaud, “Une saison en enfer” (1873)’, in The British Library Journal 14.2 (1988), pp. 109–203.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124601\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347037888889,"sku":"2124601","price":25000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124601.jpg?v=1780042507"},{"product_id":"owen-wilfred-edmund-blunden-editor-the-poems-of-wilfred-owen-a-new-edition-including-many-pieces-now-first-published-and-notices-of-his-life-and-work","title":"OWEN, Wilfred; Edmund Blunden ( editor ). The Poems of Wilfred Owen. A New Edition Including Many Pieces Now First Published, And Notices of his Life and Work.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eEdith Olivier’s Owen, Inscribed by Sassoon\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOWEN, Wilfred; Edmund Blunden (\u003ci\u003eeditor\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e The Poems of Wilfred Owen. A New Edition Including Many Pieces Now First Published, And Notices of his Life and Work. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Chatto and Windus\u003c\/i\u003e. 1931.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original purple cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the dust-jacket (printed in burgundy and black) priced 6s. net to the front flap; pp. vii, [1 (blank)], 135, [1 (blank)]; photographic portrait frontispiece with tissue guard, fore- and tail-edges untrimmed; spine and upper edge sunned, slight soiling and rubbing to spine, a few marks to covers, some wear to spine ends and corners; else a very good copy in like wrapper; Siegfried Sassoon’s monogrammed presentation inscription to Edith Oliver to half-title, dated 21 March 1931; housed in a custom drop-back solander box of red quarter morocco with cloth sides, spine lettered directly in gilt.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eInscribed by Owen’s first editor and instigator of this edition, Siegfried Sassoon, to his friend, confidante, and matchmaker Edith Olivier (1872–1948).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlunden’s extended edition of Owen’s poems appeared eleven years after the slimmer volume edited by Siegfried Sassoon and Edith Sitwell in 1920. A war veteran and distinguished poet himself, Blunden was urged to edit the volume by Sassoon, who was never pleased with the earlier edition. ‘[A] more experienced and exacting editor’ (Stallworthy), Blunden added thirty-seven poems to the twenty-three in the 1920 edition, as well as a memoir of Owen and notes to the poems. Like Sassoon and Sitwell, he reprints Owen’s short sketch for a preface, adding the poet’s own table of contents (‘with its perplexities’). The edition ‘helped to consolidate Owen’s reputation and elevate him to the iconic status he was to hold for poets and readers of poetry in the 1930s and after’ (Stallworthy); it was the volume that endeared Owen to Auden, and later Larkin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe recipient of this copy, Edith Olivier, was founder of the Women’s Land Army (for which she was appointed MBE in 1920), and later mayor of Wilton from 1938 to 1941. Her duties as mayor included becoming president of the local St John Ambulance Brigade. She clearly had a talent for friendship, her friends including much of ‘the artistic circle of the day’ (\u003ci\u003eODNB\u003c\/i\u003e), including Rex Whistler, Cecil Beaton, and William Walton. Olivier described Sassoon as ‘the best of friends’, his character ‘by turns violently intolerant, sympathetically appreciative, and savagely satirical. I suppose that everyone talks best in an intimate circle of friends, but this applies to Siegfried more than to anyone I know. When he does wake up and begin to talk, his conversation is very racy and amusing. He makes fun of himself as well as of other people and his descriptive powers are quite astonishing.’ (\u003ci\u003eWithout Knowing Mr Walkley\u003c\/i\u003e) \u003cstrong\u003eA trusted confidante, and a mediator between Sassoon and the larger-than-life figure of his lover, Stephen Tennant, she would also help facilitate the relationship between Sassoon and his wife Hester in 1933.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOlivier wrote novels, a biography of Alexander Cruden (1934), a book on Wiltshire, and her autobiography, \u003ci\u003eWithout Knowing Mr Walkley\u003c\/i\u003e (1938), which remains in print. She died in 1948. ‘There was honour’, Cecil Beaton wrote of the mood at her funeral, ‘for what she had done; but there was love for what she was and is’ (\u003ci\u003eSalisbury Journal\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhite, p. 13; Kirkpatrick B47\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124414\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347037987193,"sku":"2124414","price":4250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124414.jpg?v=1780042522"},{"product_id":"terence-publii-terentii-afri-comoediae-1","title":"TERENCE Publii Terentii Afri comoediae.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eCut-and-Paste Terence\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTERENCE\u003c\/strong\u003e Publii Terentii Afri comoediae. \u003ci\u003eBirmingham: John Baskerville.\u003c\/i\u003e 1772.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Nineteenth-century calf, central octagonal panel tooled in blind to a diapered design, borders roll-tooled in blind and ruled in gilt, plum morocco lettering-piece to spine, spine decorated in gilt and black, edges gilt, later marbled endpapers; pp. [ii], 364; pp. 203 and 299 misnumbered; this copy with 44 copper engravings by Picart mounted to interleaved blanks (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e); ruled in red throughout, typographic ornaments to title; rebacked and recornered in nineteenth-century brown morocco; sporadic light foxing (heavier to first quire), small marginal loss to head of last leaf not touching text; else a very good copy; nineteenth-century inscription ‘Acheson | Coll: Perf. Harrow’ to first plate verso, Beaufoy Library bookplate to front pastedown, armorial bookplate of Boies Penrose II to front free endpaper, 1920s catalogue cutting pasted to front free endpaper (price cancelled in ink).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBaskerville’s handsome quarto edition of Terence’s comedies, our copy extra-illustrated by Archibald Acheson, 3rd Earl of Gosford (1806–1864) using handsome engravings by Picart cut from a copy of the 1717 Rotterdam-printed French edition of Terence.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBaskerville also published Terence’s \u003ci\u003eComoediae\u003c\/i\u003e in octavo in the same year. Gosford’s interest in books began at the age of nine, and the family library in County Armagh, Northern Ireland (for which he was later MP) ‘became a refuge when Gosford was thirteen and his father, a politician embroiled in battles between Catholics and Protestants and mistrusted by both, sought legitimacy and status through an audacious project: replacing the family home with a 242-room Norman Revival Castle’ (Davies). This copy of Terence’s comedies was evidently acquired by Gosford at an early age, bearing his collation note from Harrow; he subsequently matriculated at Christ Church Oxford in 1825, graduating B.A. in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe significant library he later built, with the help of his friend, the bibliographer Beriah Botfield, included a Gutenberg Bible (later acquired by Estelle Doheny), a First Folio, and a substantial collection of Aldines; it was sold after his death at the age of fifty-seven (from an ‘attack of gout in the head’) to cover his son’s gambling debts, passing \u003ci\u003een bloc\u003c\/i\u003e by private contract to the bookseller James Toovey in 1878.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe library was dispersed in several parts, with numerous books held back from auction at every stage: the first portion of the library was sold in Paris in 1882, with a subsequent sale by Puttick \u0026amp; Simpson in April 1884. After Toovey’s death, his son, Charles James Toovey, ‘retained the choicer portion of the library, including the whole of the Aldines and a number of books in beautiful bindings. This collection he sold in 1899 to the late Mr J. Pierpont Morgan and it may be considered one of the notable sections of the latter’s great library’ (De Ricci, p. 157)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOur large-paper quarto copy of Baskerville’s Terence has been extra-illustrated with engravings by Picart cut from the 1717 octavo edition. Curiously, this points to a seemingly unstudied wider practice of Grangerising within Gosford’s library.\u003c\/strong\u003e Each engraving by Picart has been mounted to a blank leaf facing the corresponding text in the Baskerville edition. Gosford’s copy of the 1711–16 Rigaud edition of Homer was seemingly extra-illustrated according to the same method, ‘with Picart’s plates for the \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e inserted’, taken from the 1731 Amsterdam edition of \u003ci\u003eLes Oeuvres d’Homère\u003c\/i\u003e translated by Anne Dacier (Lewine, p. 244). He applied the same practice to his copy of the 1749 edition of Henault’s \u003ci\u003eNouvel abrégé chronologique de l’histoire de France\u003c\/i\u003e: ‘The Gosford copy of the 1752 edition with supplement, dated 1756, both vols. in 1, containing 240 portraits of illustrious persons engraved by Desrochers, and the two plates of the massacre of Saint-Barthelemy and of the assassination of Henry IV. inserted’ (\u003ci\u003eibid.\u003c\/i\u003e, p. 238). With regard to our Terence, it would seem that Gosford kept duplicate copies of both the 1717 and 1772 editions, both of which appeared in the first auction of his library as sold by Toovey, in Paris in 1882 and were subsequently sold by the French booksellers Damascene Morgand the following year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e1.  Archibald Acheson, 3rd Earl of Gosford, with his collation note. Seemingly not in the catalogues of 1 May 1882 (Porquet) nor 21 April 1884 (Puttick \u0026amp; Simpson).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.  With the family bookplate of Henry Benjamin Hanbury Beaufoy FRS (1786–1851), MP for Hackney, philanthropist, vinegar factory owner, and keen hot-air balloonist. Christie’s, \u003ci\u003eCatalogue of a Portion of the Valuable Library of Books \u0026amp; Manuscripts formed during the early part of the last century by Henry B.H. Beaufoy, Esq.\u003c\/i\u003e (7 June 1909), lot 238 (’ruled in red throughout, and illustrated with the series of plates by Picart, calf extra (rebacked with morocco)’).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.  James Tregaskis, \u003ci\u003eThe 851st Caxton Head Catalogue\u003c\/i\u003e (1922), no. 100, offered at £5 10s; a cutting of another Tregaskis catalogue of the 1920s (in which this is no. 266) has been pasted to the front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4.  Bookplate of the bibliophile travel historian Boies Penrose II (1902–1976), evidently entering the market before the sale of his library in two parts in 1971.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5.  Purchased from a London bookseller in 1960 and presented to Theo Zinn, senior Classics master at Westminster School, as a gift from some of his pupils.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eESTC T137489; Brunet IV, col. 718; Gaskell 46; Dibdin II, p. 477 (’printed in the usually beautiful style of the impressions of ancient classical authors by this printer’; Straus and Dent 93. See Davis, \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Gutenberg\u003c\/i\u003e (2019); De Ricci, pp. 156–7; Lewine, \u003ci\u003eBibliography of Eighteenth Century Art and Illustrated Books\u003c\/i\u003e (1898).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124309\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347038085497,"sku":"2124309","price":1850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124309.jpg?v=1780042541"},{"product_id":"snyder-gary-a-curse-on-the-men-in-washington-pentagon-om-a-ka-ca-ta-pa-ya-sa-svaha","title":"SNYDER, Gary. A Curse on the men in Washington, Pentagon. Om a ka ca ta pa ya sa svāhā.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eCursing the Men in Washington\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSNYDER, Gary.\u003c\/strong\u003e A Curse on the men in Washington, Pentagon. Om a ka ca ta pa ya sa svāhā. [\u003ci\u003eSanta Barbara: Unicorn Press\u003c\/i\u003e.] 1968.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLetterpress broadside (400 x 305 mm). Small pale dampstain to third stanza, else very well preserved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first of the Unicorn Broadsheet series (1968–70), Gary Snyder’s powerful anti-war poem criticising American foreign policy concerning the Vietnam War in particular.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe opening Sanskrit mantra, from the Buddhist \u003ci\u003eHevajra Tantra\u003c\/i\u003e, is intended to cause a cities to tremble, and the final line, ‘Hi’niswa’ vita’ki’ni’ (’we shall live again’), is from the chorus of a Cheyenne Ghost Dance song, performed from the mid-nineteenth century to oppose American westward expansion, usher in peace, and communicate with the spirits of the dead. Here, the San Francisco-born poet, environmentalist, and essayist (b. 1930) Gary Snyder combines both Buddhist and Native American influences to condemn ‘the white man, | the “American” | in me | And dance out the Ghost dance: | To bring \u003ci\u003eback\u003c\/i\u003e America, the grass and the streams’, and to imbue the next generation with love and connection with nature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Unicorn Press, established in Santa Barbara in 1966 by Teo Savory and Alan Brilliant in conjunction with Ken Maytag’s Unicorn Book Shop, printed several poetry postcards, broadsides, and books. This is the first of the press’s series of broadsides, which also included Rexroth’s ‘All Year Long’, Bly’s ‘In a Boat on Big Stone Lake’, and Tate’s ‘The Torches’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124096\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347038511481,"sku":"2124096","price":250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124096.jpg?v=1780042554"},{"product_id":"metastasio-pietro-and-alessandro-barbosi-translator-avviso-strasordinario-de-una-cummedia-de-tre-atti-che-se-chiama-gnente-de-meno-che-la-didona-der-metastazzio-gran-poeta-romano","title":"[METASTASIO, Pietro, and Alessandro BARBOSI ( translator ).] Avviso strasordinario de una cummedia de tre atti che se chiama gnente de meno che la Didona der Metastazzio gran poeta romano.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eDido in Dialect\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[METASTASIO, Pietro, and Alessandro BARBOSI (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Avviso strasordinario de una cummedia de tre atti che se chiama gnente de meno che la Didona der Metastazzio gran poeta romano. \u003ci\u003eRome: 'A la Stamparia ar Curso n. 336'\u003c\/i\u003e. 1838.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. In the publisher’s printed self-wrappers, title within typographic border, woodcut angel within typographic border to rear cover, upper cover lettered ‘Treato Palaccorda Carnoval 1838’; slight foxing to title; small marginal paperflaws to 2 ff., variable marginal spotting to last 5 ff.; else very well preserved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, extremely rare, of this lively programme in Romanesco, or Roman dialect, issued for the 3 February 1838 Carnival performance of \u003ci\u003eLa Didona\u003c\/i\u003e, an adaptation in Romanesco of Metastasio’s 1724 \u003ci\u003eDidone abbandonata\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe opera is thought to have been translated into Romanesco by the poet and abbot Alessandro Barbosi. This anonymously authored programme, advertising the opera as being in the ‘Roman language of Trastevere’ (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e), was to be distributed at the box office (‘dar buteghino de la cummedia’) at Rome’s Teatro della Pallacorda on the night of the opera, staged back-to-back with a prequel by Luigi Randanini, \u003ci\u003eUn teatro drento na casa ciovè er provemio de la commedia\u003c\/i\u003e, also in Romanesco.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur programme, which encourages viewers to attend both showings if they can, provides an engaging and colloquial summary of the context of the play, glowing reviews of the set design, and a blow-by-blow account of the plot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘So, you want me to give you the long and short of it, without going on and on? He, the man who wrote [\u003ci\u003eDidone abbandonata\u003c\/i\u003e], did everything to inspire anyone who goes to see it. Sound good? The clothes are just like the ones they wore a thousand years ago. The scenery is all made of medium-thick Frabbiano [\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003c\/i\u003e Fabbriano] paper made of white rags, all painted on the spot … by a painter so gifted that even the sun appears as it would in real life’ (p. 8, \u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e), and the prop weapons gleam like silver.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe summary is deliberately kept light in tone and brief so that it can be ‘better understood by those who – poor things! – are not especially literate and cannot read a story as old as this one detail by detail’ (p. 9, \u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eAvviso\u003c\/i\u003e is not only a significant resource with regard to nineteenth-century Roman dialect, but also provides insights into the use of plays and operas in Romanesco as a means of ‘making the classical repertoire known to a wider audience. [The \u003ci\u003eAvviso\u003c\/i\u003e] is a true translation. It is neither a pure intellectual exercise in and of itself, nor an adaptation, a parody, or worse, an irreverent remake. With the exception of a few adjustments designed to justify space–time collocations inevitably connoted by the dialect, the fidelity to the original text is absolute, and the care is such that the work’s dramatic impact is in no way taken away, altered, or diminished’ (Barboni, p. 118).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Teatro Pallacorda, famous for staging plays and operas in Romaneseco, was renamed Teatro Metastasio in 1841, closed during the First World War, and was demolished in 1936; it was formerly a tennis court, thought to be the site at which Caravaggio murdered Ranuccio Tomassoni in 1606, prompting his flight from Rome. The libretto of Barbosi’s \u003ci\u003eDidona\u003c\/i\u003e would not be published until 1851, without the author’s name and with commentary by Filippo Tacconi.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNo copies traced in the US or the UK; not on Library Hub. OPAC SBN (attributing authorship to Gaspare Randanini) finds a single copy, at the Biblioteca comunale Mozzi-Borgetti in Macerata. Ludovisi traces another, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSee Biancini, ‘Didone o Didona: un successo nel tempo’, in Acquaro and Ferari eds, I Fenici: L’Oriente in Occidente (2004); Ludovisi, ‘L’Avviso strasordinario e il Bollettone: studio linguistico con un’ipotesi attributiva’, in Vox Romanica \u003ci\u003e82 (2023), pp. 75–101\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123996\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57347038609785,"sku":"2123996","price":1750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123996.jpg?v=1780042564"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/collections\/claret_8ce865a7-d0cd-4a88-a937-fb21f3de8eed.jpg?v=1780501017","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/collections\/ny26.oembed?page=2","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}