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Dear Friend,
Regardless of whether you seek them, books and manuscripts from a bookseller's geographical area will just flow/ flood into stock! To mark this week's Ilkley Book Fair (25th & 26th July) we've put together a Yorkshire & Lancashire collection: a set of Haworth sketchbooks are the headline act alongside a good slice of northern radicalism and playgoing. And let's not forget those sons of Bradford (UK City of Culture 2025) J B Priestley and artist William Rothenstein; nor Harold Wilson and poet Anthony Thwaite from neighbouring Huddersfield.
Best wishes,
Christian
1628-1897 HAWORTH COLLECTION of Legal Manuscript Leases, Mortgages, Wills and Conveyances — [James Greenwood; John Greenwood; Joseph Greenwood; Christopher Holmes; Robert Ffoulds; Joseph Midgley; Robert Butterfield (Cliffe Hall) — 1628
Fascinating collection of signed and sealed legal documents which together detail three and a half centuries of property leases and sales in Haworth, beginning in the early 17th century and concluding at the end of the 19th century. Fourteen of the documents (1824-1876) follow the activities of John, James and Joseph Greenwood all of whom were well known to the Bronte family, with a cluster of documents around 1848-1849 which chronicles the disastrous bankruptcy of James Greenwood and the conseq…… Read more
FOUR 1790s MANCHESTER IMPRINTS Ancient Ballads, Songs and Poems [with] Scotish [sic] Ballads and Songs [with] The Story of Father Nicholas [with] The Story of La Roche — [Henry Mackenzie] — 1794
Four Manchester imprints bound together by Dr William Woollcombe a graduate of Edinburgh University in the 1790s who went on to publish on consumption. An elegant little volume which barely contains Woollcombe’s large armorial bookplate. DESCRIPTION: Quarter roan over marbled boards with vellum corners. Armorial bookplate of William Woollcombe M.D. on the front pastedown; upper boards attached by strings only. Staining to early leaves: Ancient Ballads, Songs and Poems, 1796, G Nicholson [2] pp82…… Read more
HAMLET IN HULL PLAYED BY CHARLES KEMBLE A THE THEATRE ROYAL: Hamlet, Henry IV, Foscari and Provoked Husband — Theatre Royal Hull — 1827
Four playbills featuring the prominent actor and theatre manager, Charles Kemble performing Shakespeare in the Yorkshire coastal city of Hull. Part of the renowned Kemble acting family which included his siblings John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddon, his playbills, in very good condition, promote the benefit and last performance of ‘Mr C Kemble’ over a three-night run which culminates in a final appearance, no doubt by popular demand, in a fourth night on February 23rd, 1827. Each playbill is age…… Read more
BARR’S COLLECTION No. 31 - The Child's Dream - A Story of Heaven — Unknown — c1840
An uncommon Leeds broadside ballad in very good condition printed in Leeds by R Barr, Printer and Stationer, 58 Meadow Lane. Titled The Child’s Dream. Sub titled A Story of Heaven. Illustrated to top. Barr’s Collection. No. 31. A little nicked and age toned to top and left hand edge, otherwise crisp, clean and in really pleasing condition. Measures 25cm x 18cm.
RARE LEEDS CHARTIST PERIODICAL: The People: Their Rights and Liberties, Their Duties and Their Interests — Joseph Barker; Chartism — 1849
Complete set of 52 weekly periodicals dated 1848/1849, the first year of publication, in one volume. Compiled, printed, published and predominantly written by radical printer and preacher Joseph Barker, The People attempted to adapt Chartism to new needs and conditions declaring itself to be republican and ultra democratic with many articles advocating republicanism for England, the right to vote and participate in government for all, the repeal of the Act of Union for Ireland and the nationalis…… Read more
HUDDERSFIELD AUTHOR & IMPRINT: The Cyclopaedia of Botany or a History and Description of all Plants British or Foreign Forming a Complete Book of Herbs and Family Herbal — Richard Brook — 1854
A beautifully illustrated and charming encyclopaedia of botany and herbs in two volumes with over 95 full page, hand-coloured plates. The text provides comprehensive descriptions of British and foreign flora alongside accompanying illustrations with tips on cultivation and care. Especially useful is its concise discussion of the medical properties of hundreds of plants. Produced by the Huddersfield printer and amateur botanist Richard Brook, the work is undated though the W M Clark published edi…… Read more
MANCHESTER IMPRINT The Language of the Walls and A Voice from the Shop Windows — James Dawson Burn — 1855
Scarce First Edition written by County Down born Irishman James Dawson Burn, a self-educated writer who remained functionally illiterate until his early adulthood. Throughout his travels, he often felt like a social pariah, referring to himself as a wandering outcast and adopting the persona of the ‘Irish traveller’ as he moved from city to city throughout England and New York. This scarce volume is one of at least 5 books written in his lifetime. The preface states, ‘The author has endeavoured…… Read more
MECHANIC'S HALL HALIFAX PLAYBILL: Saturday Evening Concert for the People... A Popular Concert — Mechanic's Hall Halifax; Miss Hirst, Mr Westmoreland, Mr Garner — 1860
Rare Halifax playbill in good condition promoting a Saturday Evening Concert for the People on 7th January 1860 at the Mechanic’s Hall, Halifax. Billed as a trial concert with more to follow ‘if appreciated’. Vocalists including Miss Hirst, Mr Westmoreland and Mr Garner. Tickets available from Messrs Pohlmann & Son,Waterhouse St., Messrs T & W Birtwhistle, Mr Foreman and Mr King, Booksellers Northgate. Nicked to left edge and top right corner, small hole to title line, age toned. Otherwise a cha…… Read more
ENGAGEMENT OF MR WYBERT ROUSBY... THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK: 1859 Bradford Theatre Playbill — Theatre Royal Press, Bradford [Alexander Dumas] — 1859
A scarce Bradford Theatre playbill for Monday Evening March 21st, 1859. The main performance of the evening is billed as the popular historical play by TJ Serle Esq entitled The Man in the Iron Mask featuring the English actor Wybert Rousby; to be followed by the Haymarket Interlude of Box and Cox featuring Mr James, Mr Eugene O’Reilley and Madlle. Floretta Camille; concluding with a New Comic Piece called Flying Colors also featuring Wybert Rousby and Mr Mackay. PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION Original pl…… Read more
Phases of Distress: Lancashire Rhymes — Joseph Ramsbottom - A Lancashire Lad — 1864
Lancashire cotton famine title, scarce and edited by John Whittaker, the ‘Lancashire Lad’ of the title. PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Hardbacked green paper bound boards in good condition incorporating attractive embossed decoration front and rear, titled and illustrated in gilt to front and spine. Corners very slightly bumped. Spine tips slightly frayed. Endpapers clean front and rear. Small sticker to front pastedown possibly ex library. Text block age toned as expected, a little spotted throughout. C…… Read more
THE LIVERPOOL ARCHITECTURAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, FROM October 16th 1867 to July 4th 1887 — Francis Horner; Thomas Kilpin; Henry Hill Vale, Thomas D Barry; Joseph Boult; Henry Sumners, Charles Aldridge etc — 1867
Manuscript records from one of the world’s oldest architectural societies containing hundreds of signatures of leading members including the architect of the Walker Art Gallery. Quarto manuscript book, half green morocco over marbled boards, stationer’s ticket of ‘Joseph A D Watts... Liverpool’ on marbled front endpaper with details for reordering. Red morocco label to upper board: ‘Architectural Society - Council Minute Book’. Manuscript title page on verso of first flyleaf followed by minutes…… Read more
SCARCE LEEDS CHAPBOOK: Sergeant Dale, his Daughter and the Orphan Mary — Mary Martha Sherwood — 1870
An unrecorded chapbook exploring themes of family, love, sacrifice and faith presented in a simple and accessible style, written by Mary Sherwood, a prolific writer of children's literature in the early 19th century. In good condition. Printed by J Johnson, Printer by Steam Power, Kirkgate Leeds. Opposite the Front Entrance of the Corn Exchange. Post Free to any Address for 20 Stamps. Paper covers age toned, edge worn, sewn spine a little tender and nicked in part but holding well. A clean 2 cm…… Read more
ARCHITECTS DRAWINGS for the ‘Harrods of the North’: Brown Muff in Bradford — Messrs Brown Muff & Co, Milnes & France Architects — 1870
A set of Architect’s Drawings by Milnes & France of Bradford (and others) for Messrs Brown Muff & Co, detailing proposed alterations to Brown Muff’s luxury department store on the prime retail corner of Market Street and Ivegate in Bradford. Original architects’ drawings for the 1870 iteration of the shop. Brown Muff & Company - ‘the Harrods of the North’ - with origins going back to 1814 - was closed by House of Fraser, in 1995. The building from 1870 - to which these drawings apply - still sta…… Read more
‘WOODHOUSE GROVE PUDDING’: A Leeds Recipe Manuscript Book — Miss Carr, Mrs Sykes, Mrs Shaw, Miss Shipley, Mrs Copley, Ida Jenkins etc — c1870
A manuscript recipe book recording the existence of the ‘Woodhouse Grove Pudding’ - no doubt connected in some way to Woodhouse Grove School which has been on its site by the River Aire since the early 19th century and where the Bronte patriarch, Patrick Bronte, taught, and met his future wife Maria Branwell. Small format black-roan bound recipe book; blind ruled in gilt to edges and five panelled spine. Marbled endpapers. Text block crisp and clean. Recipe No 1 for Woodhouse Grove Pudding comes…… Read more
An Architectural and General Description of the Town Hall, Manchester to Which is added a Report of the inaugural Proceedings, September 1877. — William E.A. Axon — 1878
Large folio in good condition. Brown cloth boards lightly scuffed to edges, worn to corners and lightly watermarked to front and rear. Decoratively embossed in gold gilt to front and titled to spine. Yellow endpapers clean and sympathetically repaired along gutters. Frontispiece incorporates an engraving of the architect A Waterhouse in good condition, protected by a dust sheet. Contents include Introduction, The Architectural Competition, The Exterior, The Plan,The Ground Floor, The First Floor…… Read more
FIN DE SIECLE OXFORD ASSOCIATION COPY: The Sonnets of William Shakspere edited by Edward Dowden — William Shakespeare [William Rothenstein] — 1882
Bradford-born William Rothenstein’s copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, given to him in 1893 by his Oxford contemporary Claud Schuster in the year that he drew his intimate lithographic portrait of a knowing, boyish Schuster which appeared in Volume I of the Yellow Book. Rothenstein’s splendid ex libris appears on the front pastedown with an inscription in the artist’s hand in brown ink to the recto of the first blank recording: “Will Rothenstein, from Claud Schuster. Oxon, 93”. Rothenstein has read…… Read more
HARD TIMES: A TALE OF THE LANCASHIRE COTTON FAMINE - VERY HARD TIMES OR THE TRIALS AND SORROWS OF THE LINWOOD FAMILY — David Pae — 1893
Pocket Edition published at the Yorkshire Factory Times Office in Huddersfield. Heavily worn colour pictorial boards show wear and tear; browned, corners bumped, spine panel distressed but intact. Text block shaken but intact. Front clean endpapers cracking over gutter with pencilled ownership initials read JSM. Rear endpapers clean. Leaves unmarked throughout, age toned as expected and in sound condition. 351 pp. Originally serialised in various newspapers like the Ashton Reporter and the North…… Read more
ELECTION POSTERS AND EPHEMERA FROM THE URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL OF MARSDEN, WEST YORKSHIRE CIRCA 1895 — Unknown — 1895
A bound collection of advertisements, election posters and ephemera from the Marsden area of Yorkshire collated circa 1895. Contains: 5 full page and double page pasted in election posters dated 1894 promoting the candidates to the electors of the Urban District Council of Marsden. Candidates include Fred Beaumont (Liberal), George Henry Cotton, Sam Firth Cheetham, John Moorhouse (Independent Labour Party), Dan Lunn, Alfred Hirst and Proctor (The Popular Candidate). All in good condition. Additi…… Read more
BRADFORD SUNDAY SCHOOL PRIZE: Lady Audley's Secret — Mary Elizabeth Braddon —
‘Stereotyped’ edition of Lady Audley's Secret, the first of two 'bigamy novels' which made Mary Elizabeth Braddon's name, with an inscribed sheet by Elizabeth Braddon laid in. In good condition. Bound in the publisher's red embossed boards with gilt lettering to spine and a decorative embossed signature to front board. Just cracking over front and rear gutters but text block solid. Age toned and age spotted particularly to early leaves. Laid in in is a hand written card signed Yours very truly M…… Read more
BRADFORD-BORN NOVELIST’S 1930s NOVELS: Angel Pavement (1st & Ltd Edition) They Walk in the City — J B Priestley — 1930; 1936
Three of Bradford born novelist JB Priestley’s best known novels from the 1930s including two first editions and one limited edition. Angel Pavement. London:Heinemann, 1930. First Edition. Original DJ in good condition, some age toning to spine and edges. a little chipped to spine tips. Midnight blue cloth hardcover boards titled in gilt to spine in good condition. Endpapers clean, a little spotting to early leaves but otherwise a sound copy. 613 pp. They Walk in the City. London: Heinemann, 193…… Read more
HAROLD WILSON’S GLADSTONE PRIZE COPY: Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century: Being the substance of lectures delivered at Cambridge University in the year 1919 to students of economics — Charles Ryle Fay [Harold Wilson] — 1933
Harold Wilson's Gladstone Prize copy, specially embossed for him in gilt to the upper cover: 'Oxoniensis Academia'. The 'Gladstone Memorial Prize' bookplate appears on the front paste-down with Wilson's ownership signature and his undergraduate college: 'J H Wilson, Jesus College, 1936'. Bookseller's ticket from Blackwells, Oxford. 6 pages of notes in Wilson’s hands are laid in: a notecard contains notes for a speech to a D’Oyly Carte-related audience (Wilson was a lifelong fan) with mention of…… Read more
BRONTE-COUNTRY SKETCHBOOKS CONTAINING c100 WATERCOLOURS — William Parker of Haworth — 1959
Four Haworth sketchbooks, containing around 100 watercolours created by a Yorkshire artist who lived and painted in the Bronte’s home village and depicted the surrounding countryside and villages. Parker has painted Haworth itself, the moorland behind the Parsonage Museum as well as the famous inspiration for Wuthering Heights - Top Withens - alongside nearby towns and villages such as Oxenhope further up the Worth Valley; Bolton Abbey, Addingham and Ilkley in Wharfedale and Keighley, Silsden an…… Read more
RECOMMENDING CONTEMPORARY POETS: A Letter from Anthony Thwaite about Geoffrey Hill, Elizabeth Jennings, Kingsley Amis etc — Anthony Thwaite — 1953
A fascinating letter from the Oxford undergraduate poet Anthony Thwaite to his fellow ‘Yorkshireman’, recent Oxford graduate and poetry publisher, Ronnie Duncan. Having been asked for advice on potential contributors to the slightly older man’s poetry magazine, Chance, Thwaite rattles off a series of recommendations in a substantial two page typed letter with extensive annotation in ink. Writing just before returning to Oxford in September 1953, Thwaite offers ‘a few names to be going on with, I…… Read more
ROYAL ACADEMICIAN KENNETH ARMITAGE TO ART COLLECTOR RONNIE DUNCAN – ‘I’m so pleased your career is booming even though your native land is characteristically neglecting you in comparison with Europe and the New World’ — Kenneth Armitage; Ronnie Duncan — 1989
This correspondence comes from the personal archive of Yorkshire art patron and collector Ronnie Duncan, who through great vision and creative curiosity has developed an astonishing art collection and fostered friendships with some of Britain’s major artists along the way. Kenneth Armitage RA, one of the most significant British sculptors of the 20th century and known in the 1950s as part of the ‘Geometry of Fear’ group of artists writes to Ronnie Duncan on Christmas Eve 1989. Within the typed a…… Read more
DAVID HOCKNEY’S 1989 BRADFORD PHONE BOOK — British Telecom — 1989
In superb condition in its original, sealed polythene bag as delivered through Bradford letterboxes. In 1989 David Hockney, who was born and grew up in Bradford, was invited to design the front cover of the district's telephone directory. No more were printed after the first edition and no more will be printed. 7 Hockney entries are included in the book from the artist’s immediate family living in Bradford at that time include his mother Laura, listed at his childhood home, 18 Hutton Terrace and…… Read more
HOCKNEY’S FAX ART EXHIBITION CATALOGUE: Fax Cuadros: Fax Dibujos — David Hockney — 1990
Beautifully produced illustrated catalogue of the Mexican exhibition of Hockney’s fax art. Large quarto with spiral binding; shiny wrappers and illustrated throughout, frequently with fold-out images. A near fine copy of an uncommon work.
ALFRED ORAGE AND THE LEEDS ART CLUB 1893 – 1923 — Tom Steele — 1990
First edition. Hand written gift inscription on front free endpaper by the author dated 2015. Hard backed red boards titled in gilt to spine in very good condition. Clean, fresh and crisp throughout. Original dust jacket in good condition showing very slight shelf wear to edges and spine ends. A fascinating book which rightly celebrates the cultural significance of the city of Leeds and Leeds Arts Club within the historiography of British cultural modernism, challenging along the way traditional…… Read more
CHRISTO IN YORKSHIRE Christo & Jean-Claude – Sculpture and Projects 1961-96 — Christo & Jean Claude; Yorkshire Sculpture Park — 1997
Signed exhibition catalogue which accompanied a 1997 exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park of drawings and collages by the influential artist duo Christo and Jean-Claude. Contains text and 25 images which combined alongside the physical exhibition to give an insight into the development of the partnership’s most important outdoor projects including Wrapped Coast Australia, 1968, Valley Curtain, Colorado 1971, The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris 1981 and Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin 1994. PHYSICAL DES…… Read more
Dr. Christian White
Christian White Rare Books
287 Leeds Road, Ilkley, LS29 8LL
07811 455398
info@christianwhiterarebooks.com
www.christianwhiterarebooks.com
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