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59 individual chapbooks printed in Glasgow ‘for the Booksellers’ and bound together as one at a later date. The volume contains a single sequence of Popular, Favourite, Sentimental and Excellent songs and ballads, many featuring home grown Scottish content, satire, and local characters, printed either in groups of 3, 5, 7 or 9 songs or as individua… Read more…

Rare, satirical lithographed publication on the complex etiquette of making morning calls - making the right impression, avoiding unwanted visitors, or politely turning people away are explained. 12 lithographs and a single title page of letter press (12x18cm), all the images by a single unidentified artist, the sketches reflect the Regency preoccu… Read more…

Four great poems, owned and annotated by the writer and Bloomsbury group member, Roger Senhouse who has noted on the flyleaf: ‘Roger Senhouse Review Copy Jan ‘45’ - a puzzling inscription since the book was published the previous autumn. Senhouse’s annotations are mostly explanatory, so he has translated Eliot’s two epigraphs opposite the first pag… Read more…

First edition in the splendidly illustrated publisher’s cloth binding and with adverts dating to May 1885. Germinal is widely considered ‘the most important single contribution Zola made to literature’ (Harold Bloom) and its story of the struggle for social change continues to thrill and inspire subsequent generations. It is an uncommon first editi… Read more…

Eleven separate publications bound together and presented by the prolific and influential Newcastle mining engineer and pit owner Thomas Young Hall. This volume covers the gamut of Hall’s professional activities, with papers on safety measures to deal with dangerous gases, a paper deriving from his American experiences in Virginia’s coal mines and… Read more…

Very good first edition of Lessing's masterpiece, in black boards with bright gilt lettering, light bumps to corners and speckling to edges of text block. Lessing has signed and dated the book on the front flyleaf: ‘Doris Lessing 23rd May 1962’ - her addition of a date is often found in signed copies of The Golden Notebook from the year of publicat… Read more…

Limbird’s illustrated edition of Ann Radcliffe containing 3 of her novels including the Gothic classic, The Mysteries of Udolpho, noted as an inspiration for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Half calf over marbled paper boards in good condition; bumped to corners; moderately rubbed to edges. Both volumes titled ‘British Novelist’ in gilt on a red mo… Read more…

First Edition in very good condition. Half calf binding over marbled boards a little scuffed to top of spine; vellum corners; spine panel very good, gilt ruled and titled in gilt over red morocco label. A very sound and square copy. Endpapers clean other than ‘6/6’ in a contemporary hand to front pastedown; text block remarkably fresh and unmarked.… Read more…

35 Scottish chapbooks bound together in one volume in very good condition. An interesting white paper over boards binding titled decoratively by hand to upper ‘BALLADS... COPIES’; age toned; sound and square. Marbled endpapers very good; red text block edges; a list of contents written in pencil to verso of front free; signature in a contemporary h… Read more…

A collection of 13 Scottish popular songster volumes - pocket-sized, cheap anthologies of song texts - that played a role in 19th-century Scotland by democratizing music access, preserving traditional repertoire, and reinforcing Scottish cultural identity This small, sturdy volume contains 12 Glasgow and 1 Edinburgh songsters, bound in red cloth ti… Read more…

An excellent Leavisite association copy in Queenie Leavis’s best regarded work, inscribed to the couple’s long term collaborator and friend, Denys Thompson. First edition in blue cloth, externally nearly very good; cracking along the inner hinges, upper and lower; gatherings a little shaken; spine lean. Queenie Leavis has inscribed the flyleaf: ‘A.… Read more…

Inscribed by the composer to the singer and vocal coach Hilda Beal who took part in the premier: ‘In memory of the v. first performance of this work, from the composer. Michael Tippett’. Born in 1922 Beal fled her native Germany in 1939, studying music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before singing professionally in concerts and opera, a… Read more…

Lavishly produced record of a high society late Victorian Fancy Dress Ball photographed by the Richmond (west London) photographic company George Tuohy & Co. Fancy dress balls were one of the grandest and most fashionable ways for a wealthy family to make their mark, a display of wealth and status - and a lot of fun. At this event on January 11th 1… Read more…

A beautifully unsophisticated example of this very scarce English dancing manual found here in the publisher’s original paper covered boards with printed spine label. Printed on high quality wove paper, the text and plates are in excellent condition, many leaves unopened. Publisher’s binding of brown paper over boards, chipping to the paper coverin… Read more…

Fine fourth impression of the Bloomsbury true first edition of the first Harry Potter novel. Number line: ‘10 9 8 7 6 5 4’; no gap between ‘Thomas Taylor1997’ as called for; young Dumbledore and priced at £10.99: fine in fine dustjacket. The book hasn’t been read; there are no marks of ownership or blemishes of any kind and no fading to the spine c… Read more…

A book presented to Ely Cathedral Library by Bishop Symon Patrick (1626-1707) during the 1690s as part of his drive to revive the Cathedral where he rebuilt the Bishop’s Palace and strengthened the holdings in the Cathedral library as well as supporting the Cambridge University Press and founding the S.P.C.K. On the last page of text Patrick has wr… Read more…

Elaborately inscribed by Frost to an ‘old old friend’ from his time in England with the Dymock Poets in rural Gloucestershire just before the First World War. Writing on the first flyleaf Frost has inscribed the book ‘For Robin Haines of Gloucester from his old old friend Robert Frost once of not far from Gloucester, Amherst Mass, November 27 1937’… Read more…

Tenth edition of the foundational work of modern economics by Adam Smith, attractively bound in half black calf over marbled boards. A good looking set in a binding from a few decades after its publication. Octavo volumes (21x13cm) Vol III is the only one of the three with its spine label. Volumes I and III are bound without their half title; Vol I… Read more…

Artist Gordon King’s original artwork for this ‘colourful and stimulating introduction to Shakespeare’s England’ from the 1970s comprising 10 surprisingly powerful pieces in a mixture of watercolour, oil and acrylics which portray a performance at the Globe Theatre, figures from Elizabethan life and a large idealised depiction of a performance of A… Read more…

Pete Seeger in environmental mode, writing to his friend and long term artistic collaborator the photographer Dan Budnik, who took the portrait of Seeger that appears on the lower panel of the book’s dustjacket. Four letters to Budnik from Pete Seeger are laid into the book, two concerning Seeger’s advocacy for ‘some crucial river scenes which may… Read more…

Early edition with beautifully executed and seemingly contemporary hand colouring to initial letters, printer’s ornaments and armorials. This volume is bound in a 19th century half parchment over marbled boards with the spine hand titled in black ink. Pleasingly firm and square, a little rubbed to corners and age toned to spine. Endpapers clean, ag… Read more…

First edition of the 1954 security hearing held by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that revoked the clearance of the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, Robert Oppenheimer. Over four weeks, it investigated his loyalty, past left-wing associations, and opposition to the hydrogen bomb, marking a peak of Cold War-era anti-communist McCarthyism. These proce… Read more…

Rare printed collection of heartfelt mid 19th century poetry written by an aristocratic woman and printed to a remarkably high standard by an otherwise almost unknown provincial press new Newcastle. DESCRIPTION: Large quarto format (22x28cm) bound in ribbed red cloth with gilt decoration; a few marks to boards but very good; all edges gilt. Vibrant… Read more…

Three works that form part of the outpouring of commentary and mourning that followed the execution of Charles I in January 1649. The most famous of these works, Eikon Basilike appears first but lacks its portrait. The third text in the work, the Apophthegms, may be the version that appeared alongside this edition of the Eikon. Between the two impr… Read more…

Two unrecorded anti-slavery pamphlets addressing the forced migration of labourers from the Polynesian islands and of so-called ‘coolie emigration’ from ‘French West Indian and South American possessions’ to British India. These otherwise unknown texts have been bound alongside two classic British pamphleteering texts attacking American slavery, du… Read more…