Antiquarian and Collectors’ Books

SCOTLAND. – [Alexander MUDIE.] ‘Philopatris’. Scotiae Indiculum: or the Present State of Scotland. London: for Jonathan Wilkins, 1682. First edition, 12mo (142 x 79mm.) Engraved frontispiece with ‘Explanation’ verso, 2pp. advertisement leaf to rear. (Front blank loosening, margins trimmed.) Near contemporary full calf (inner hinge weakened, rubbed and scuffed, spine ends chipped). Provenance: William Fuller Maitland (armorial bookplate to front pastedown). – And a further six volumes (including Matthew Mead’s ‘The Young Man’s Remembrancer, and Youth’s Best Choice’, 1718, 12mo, and Horace’s ‘Opera Omnia’, 1850, 12mo, and Erasmus Middleton’s ‘Biographia Evangelica: or, an Historical Account of the Lives and Deaths of the most eminent and evangelical Authors or Preachers’, 3 vols. [of 4], 1779-1780, 8vo, and Thomas Bradbury’s ‘The Mystery of Godliness’, vol. 1 [only, of 2], 1726, 8vo) (7).

HOPE, William. A New, Short, and Easy Method of Fencing: Or, the Art of the Broad and Small-Sword Rectified and Compendiz’d. Edinburgh: James Watson, 1707. First edition, 4to (200 x 152mm.) Title, errata leaf, folding ‘Scheme of Laws (According to the Author’s Sentiment)’, and folding engraved ‘New Scheme of Fencing’, 17pp. ‘Table’ and 3pp. ‘Postscript’ to rear. (Browning, small marginal paper repairs to title and first leaf, ‘New Scheme of Fencing’ repaired and laid-down, and ‘Scheme of Laws’ with repair and small, marginal tears.) 18th century calf (upper cover detached, spine panel loosely inserted). Note: William Hope published several books on fencing. His work showed a gradual but definite move away from the standard French short-sword fencing (he felt that it didn’t provide enough defence against blows) towards the English back-sword method.

ANGELO, Domencio. The School of Fencing with a General Explanation of the Principal Attitudes and Positions Peculiar to the Art. London: [for the Author], 1787. First edition, oblong 8vo (132 x 226mm.) Title, 44 engraved plates numbered as 1-47, 8pp. ‘Index’ to rear. (Offsetting, occasional finger-mark, one plate loosening.) Contemporary calf (some loss to upper cover, extremities rubbed). Note: Angelo was an Italian fencing master, celebrated swordsman, and winner of duels.  He opened a fencing school in London and tutored the British Royal family. Angelo’s ideas- with an emphasis on fitness, grace and poise- evolved the art of fencing from one of war to sport. Provenance: David Baird (ink name to front blank, dated 1809).

RAVEN PRESS (publisher). The Book of Tobit From The Apocrypha, According to the Authorised Version. Harrow Weald, Middlesex: The Raven Press, 1931. Limited edition, this being number 8 of 250 copies only, 4to (224 x 151mm.) 5 colour wood-engravings by Horace Walter Bray, hand-coloured decorations and initials. Original quarter vellum over marbled paper covered boards, gilt raven to upper cover, t.e.g., slipcase (lightly rubbed). Note: after working together at the Greynog Press, Maynard and Bray set up The Raven Press in 1931 and this was their first publication.

BINDING. – Coventry PATMORE. Poems. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906. 8vo (183 x 118mm.) (Toning.) Contemporary maroon crushed full morocco by Rivière, gilt turn-ins, g.e. (rubbed spine bands).

OCCULT. – J. MICHAUD. The Golden Star, a Mystic Crescendo in Twelve Visions. London: Uma Press, 1946. First edition, 8vo (213 x 136mm.) Yellow pentagram to title. (Toning.) Original blue cloth (inner hinge weakened). Note: Michaud published six books on the occult between 1939 and 1950. The Golden Star was re-published in 2021. Provenance: Atlantis Bookshop, London (label to front pastedown); E.C. Skill (ink name to front endpaper, dated 1946); Lorna Skill (gift inscribed from on front endpaper, dated 1960).

YATES, Frances A. The Art of Memory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972. 8vo (215 x 132mm.) Plates, 1 folding. (Toning.) Original blue cloth, dust-jacket (price-clipped, spine browned).

SIGNED BOOK. – Vera BRITTAIN. Testament of Youth. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1937. Eleventh impression, signed by the author, 8vo (197 x 124mm.) (Mild toning.) Original blue cloth (spine browned, minor staining). Note: signed to the title page ‘Vera Brittain, ‘For nobler men may yet redeem our clay/ When we and war together, one wise day/ Have passed away’. These are the closing lines of Vera’s own poem ‘The War Generation: Vale’.

SIGNED. – Walter SCOTT. Tales of My Landlord. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1832. Vol. 47 of ‘The Waverley Novels’, 8vo (161 x 98mm.) Engraved frontispiece, additional engraved title, a 3-line manuscript clipping in Walter Scott’s hand with signature loosely folded in a mounted envelope to front endpaper. (Plates damp-stained.) Contemporary green half morocco (upper cover nearly detached, rubbing). Note: the clipping reads: ‘Selkirk 14 July 1828. The Sheriff-Depute Grants[?] to officers of court to summon witnesses for the [?] in exculpation in circumstancia [Latin?], Walter Scott’. Scott served as the Sherrif-Depute for Selkirkshire from 1799 until his death in 1832. The envelope also contains a piece of folded paper within which are some leaves. In hand-writing (circa 1830’s) on the side of the paper it says: ‘From the Grave of the late Sir Walter Scott, Dryburgh Abbey’. Provenance: ‘Miss Gladstone, Juvenal Street’ (ink inscribed from inside the envelope on front endpaper).

MACREADY, William Charles. – William WORDWSWORTH. The Poems. London: Edward Moxon, 1849. New Edition, signed and inscribed by actor W.C. Macready with a mounted envelope containing a lock of hair from the Macready family mounted on the front endpaper, 8vo (240 x 139mm.) Engraved portrait frontispiece of Wordsworth. (Toning, occasional ink annotation.) Original brown blind-stamped cloth (extremities rubbed, minor staining). Note: the actor William Charles Macready was a serious and significant figure in mid-Victorian theatre. Celebrated for his Shakespearean roles that he toured around America, he was also known for returning ‘King Lear’ to a tragedy rather than using the sentimental Nahum Tate ending that was popular at the time. He was good friends with Charles Dickens. They were godfathers to each other’s children and in 1839 Dickens dedicated ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ to Macready. Provenance: Catherine Macready (gift inscribed to from her father verso frontispiece).

STEVENSON, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. London, New York etc.: Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1911. Limited edition, this being number 208 of 250 copies, 4to (228 x 151mm.) 12 mounted colour plates by John Cameron, captioned tissue-guards, woodcut illustrations in the text. (Faint spotting to endpapers, and to fore-edge.) Original full vellum with pictorial gilt of a galleon on the upper cover and spine, foliate gilt borders, t.e.g.

[DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge.] ‘Lewis Carroll’. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, [circa 1920.] Half-title, name inscribed to half-title with small mounted photograph, 44 colour plates by Margaret W. Tarrant, illustrated endpapers, 12pp. publisher’s catalogue to rear. (Scattered spotting.) Original olive-green cloth with onlaid colour illustration to upper cover (some fading to spine, slight fraying to spine panel), dust-jacket (chipping to extremities, creases). Note: complete with 44 plates as per list. Provenance: ‘Bunty Still’ (ink name and photograph to half-title).

ADAMS, Richard. Watership Down. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books & Kestrel Books, 1976. Signed by the illustrator, first illustrated edition, 8vo (230 x 149mm.) Illustrations. Original brown cloth-backed boards, dust-jacket, slipcase. – And a further thirty-volumes of children’s books (including A.A. Milne’s ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’, third edition, 1927, 8vo, and ‘Now We Are Six’, first edition, 1927, 8vo, and ‘When We Were Very Young’, fourth edition, 1924, 8vo, and Beatrix Potter’s ‘The Tale of Little Pig Robinson’, 1930, 4to, and ‘The Pie and the Patty-Pan’, [circa 1905], 4to) (31).

EINSTEIN, Albert. Sidelights on Relativity. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1922. First English edition, 8vo (189 x 119mm.) Half-title, 8pp. publisher’s advertisements to rear. (Occasional light spotting.) Original blue cloth, lettered in black (spine browned). – And a further four volumes related to Albert Einstein (including Erwin Freundlich’s ‘The Theory of Relativity’, 1923, 8vo, and Lillian R. Lieber’s ‘The Einstein Theory of Relativity’, 1949, 8vo, and A.S. Eddington’s ‘Space Time and Gravitation’, 1929, 8vo) (5).

[HEMINGWAY, Ernest.] American Big Game Fishing… Eugene V. Connett, Editor. New York: The Derrydale Press, 1935. Limited edition, this being one of 850 copies only, 4to (314 x 242mm.) Colour plates by Lynn Bogue Hunt, photographic illustrations, tissue-guards. (Mild toning.) Original blue decorated cloth, t.e.g. (small tear at top of spine, lightly rubbed). Note: contains Hemingway’s essay ‘Marlin Off Cuba’.

CLARKE, Harry (illustrator). – Edgar Allan POE. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1919. First edition, 4to (267 x 197mm.) Half-title, 24 black and white plates. (Mild toning, occasional scattered spotting, and also to endpapers.) Original green cloth (slight weakening to inner hinge, lightly rubbed). – And a further three illustrated volumes (William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1926, 4to, and ‘The Sleeping Beauty, Told by C.S. Evans’, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1920, 4to and Laurence Housman’s ‘Stories From The Arabian Nights’, illustrated by Edmund Dulac, 1911, 8vo) (4).

RACKHAM, Arthur (illustrator). – William SHAKESPEARE. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. London: William Heinemann, 1908. First trade edition, 4to (252 x 183mm.) 40 tipped-in colour plates, captioned tissue-guards, numerous black and white illustrations. (Mild toning, light spotting to tissue-guards, and to p.95.) Original beige cloth, pictorial gilt (spine ends slightly frayed, spotting to edge of upper cover). – And a further three illustrated volumes (Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, illustrated by John Tenniel, 1898, 8vo, and Richard Wagner’s ‘The Rhinegold and the Valkyrie’, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1912, 4to, and Charles and Mary Lamb’s ‘Tales From Shakespeare’, illustrated by Arthur Rackam, [1939], 8vo) (4).

CRANE, Walter (illustrator). Flowers From Shakespeare’s Garden, a Posy from the Plays. London: Cassell & Co., 1909. 4to (249 x 182mm.) Colour illustrations. (Toning.) Original cloth-backed pictorial boards (lightly rubbed). – And a further seven volumes, four of them illustrated by Walter Crane (including ‘A Flower Wedding’, 1905, 4to, and ‘A Masque of Days’, 1901, 4to) (8).

ALDIN, Cecil (illustrator) and Walter EMANUEL. A Dog Day, or The Angel in the House. London: Heinemann, 1905. 4to (278 x 218mm.) Illustrations by Cecil Aldin. (Toning.) Original pictorial boards (light rubbing). Provenance: Beatrice Muller, dated 1906 (ink name inscribed to front blank). – And a further eight volumes illustrated by Cecil Aldin (including Maurice Maeterlinck’s ‘My Dog’, 1913, 8vo, and ‘Cecil Aldin’s Happy Family’, 1912, 4to, and Cecil Aldin’s Painting Book No. 5 ‘The Baby Book’, [1910], 4to, and ‘A Dog Day’, 1911, 12mo, and ‘Puppy Tails’, [1912], 12mo, and ‘Dogs of Character’, 1930, 4to, and ‘The Red Puppy Book’, [1910], 4to, and ‘The Mongrel Puppy Book’, [1912], 4to) (9).