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One of 25 pre-publication draft copies of what would become The Testament of Beauty, printed for the author and distributed to his friends for comment and feedback. This is a known but previously unlocated copy which was presented to the historian and novelist Ernest Thompson as an invitation to criticise and improve his friend’s work. In his 1944… Read more…

The elusive fifth volume of Jacob Tonson and Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition of Shakespeare's Works offering several hundred early 18th century annotations to the text. The annotator has made dozens of manuscript textual emendations, introduced additional handwritten stage directions, and attempted to elucidate difficult words in Shakespeare’s text. I… Read more…

Extraordinary 17th century manuscript diary and day-book written by the ‘Keeper of the Palace at Westminster’ which offers an insider’s perspective on the torrid months around the collapse of the Cromwellian regime and the Restoration of Charles II, culminating on: ‘Tuesday Aprill 23 1661 Coronation day at night left in my charge the Globe & 2 Scep… Read more…

Autograph manuscript bound up with a bespoke typed transcript of Arthur Symons’ essay on translation, cased by Sangorski and Sutcliffe. This manuscript essay does not appear to have been published, and previously formed part of the collection of the bibliophile and performer Barry Humphries who had a particular interest in the theory and practice o… Read more…

Gloriously rudely scrawled-on 1910s children’s tale in which the trio of Goons have played off each other’s surreal suggestions to create a new and outrageously humorous hybrid book-manuscript, recalling the style of Joe Orton’s legendarily defaced library books. In this extraordinary object the Goons have misused and subverted in the most energeti… Read more…

An extensive collection of diaries, photographs, blueprints, letters and documents - and even a painted sample sheet of Longwood’s famous wallpaper from the 1920s - which together record the rescue and rebuilding of Napoleon Bonaparte’s dilapidated home on St Helena. Longwood housed Napoleon from December 1815 to his death in 1821, was bought by th… Read more…

‘Reminiscences of HMS Gloucester. Commissioned at Plymouth 30th January 1913 - NOT FOR PUBLICATION’, a diary cum memoir seemingly intended as a rejoinder against those who criticised the inactivity of the British navy during the early years of the Great War. This small folio, 349pp, originally intended as a W/T Cabinet Log book is full of well pres… Read more…

Very uncommon signed copy of the first British edition, elaborately inscribed on the half-title by Warhol for the Yorkshire art collector Ronnie Duncan and his wife Henriette. Above a carefully executed Campbell Soup tin Warhol has written ‘Ronnie and Henriette’, continuing below, ‘London 1976 Andy Warhol’. Warhol undertook a British tour to promot… Read more…

Archive of the Liverpool University educated architect, academic architect at the university and town-planner, Wesley Dougill, who died suddenly at the age of 50 in 1943 while working as Chief Town Planning Assistant for the London County Council, planning post-war reconstruction. Dougill (1893 -1943) was a much admired draughtsman, architect and t… Read more…

Minutes of an important but almost forgotten organisation, the ‘Medical Defence Association’, a collective, well-supported attempt made in Britain by members of the profession in the 1870s to target and outlaw malpractice and charlatanry by purported members of the medical profession. Predating the better known Medical Defence Union, the first minu… 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…

Manuscript fair copy of the German classical scholar Johan Georg Graevius’s commentary on Suetonius Lives of the Caesars, possibly compiled by someone with connections to Graevius himself. No later than the mid 18th century this is an imposing manuscript with an end note that appears to read: ‘Datore officiore codillos’ - suggesting it might be the… Read more…

Labour Prime Minister Clement Atlee’s signed autobiography from the personal library of the influential Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman. In original dust jacket in good condition, a little bumped to corners and edges. Nicked to spine top and tail. Red cloth covered boards in very good condition, titled in gilt to spine, a little shelf worn to top and tai… Read more…

Mint copy of this Folio Society edition which was limited to 1,000 copies, this being number 138, signed and numbered by the illustrator Charles Van Sandwyk to the etching tipped in before the title page. Small folio bound in half vellum over decorative paper-covered boards, top edge gilt; pictorial endpapers followed by a limitation statement, and… Read more…

A handwritten reversioning of George Lorimer’s text which adds 2 original documents including one in the hand of the covenanter - and later moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - David Williamson (1694), minister at the church in the 17th century. Additionally there is a document in the hand of his succesor at the Kirk, Neil… Read more…

Inscribed first edition from the private collection of Yorkshire art collector Ronnie Duncan who befriended many artists and poets during their time at the University of Leeds as Gregory Fellows, subsequently inspiring his life-long love of innovative 1950s and 1960s British art and culture. The copy is annotated and signed by the author to Ronnie… Read more…

Restoration comedy owned by the Shakespearian actor John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) with well-documented subsequent provenance, passing through the Arbury library of Sir Francis Newdigate-Newdegate via George D Smith (Anderson Galleries 1920); unsold at Sotheby Parke Bernet 1972), later owned by the Pennsylvania State literary scholar Robert D Hume.… Read more…

Unrecorded silk playbill for two performances given before King George III during one of his summer stays in the southern English coastal resort of Weymouth. George III first came to Weymouth in 1789 to convalesce and returned many times over the next 16 years making the town highly fashionable. The playbill has strong overtones of Jane Austen’s no… Read more…

165 pieces of Conservative Party electoral ephemera gathered together by the victorious candidate in the General Election of 1922 in East Dorset. It is a collection of original letters (handwritten and typed), postcards, telegrams and cables sent to Gordon Ralph Hall Caine on his election victory for the East Dorset seat. The letters have been tipp… Read more…

A photographic and documentary archive which combines to chart the identities, geographies and practice of a family of engravers and printers on Brompton Road in west London from the mid-19 th century onwards. An apprenticeship indenture dated 6 th November 1866 legally binds the son of John Brown, William Henry Brown, ‘to learn the Art, Trade or B… Read more…

Small octavo manuscript record book in original marbled wrappers dating from 1762, written for Thomas Townshend who was serving as one of the Commissioners for the City of Westminster. Ownership inscription in a contemporary (secretarial) hand to verso of upper cover reads ‘Mr Townshend’; an address of Cleveland Court is given for him within the mi… Read more…

RESERVED Unrecorded broadside edition of Hannah More’s poetic dialogue shared between a pair of weavers. Accompanying the broadside is a letter from the bibliophile Eric Quayle presenting the broadside to the Yorkshire art collector Ronnie Duncan. DESCRIPTION: Tall format (37x21cm) printed on paper with horizontal chainlines for the ‘Cheap Reposito… Read more…

Reissue of Jim Ede’s groundbreaking study of Henry Gaudier Brzeska whose archive and many of whose sculptures he owned. Ede has inscribed the book on the title page to his friend and fellow art collector Ronnie Duncan: ‘For Ronnie and Henriette Duncan most gratefully Jim Ede 30.9.71’. Laid in is a letter from Ede to Duncan, written a year later, on… Read more…

Congratulatory letters to Sir Alfred Stanley Fordham K.B.E., C.M.G. (1907-81) who was educated at Eton and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge  before joining the Foreign Service and becoming a career diplomat. He was Vice-Consul in San Francisco in 1932. Other stations in his career included Lima (1933–1936), Guatemala (1936–1943), Los Angeles (… Read more…

Self binder album given away with the Children’s Newspaper for February 4, 1933. Contains the original 4 pages of Lifelike Pictures given away on the day of issue and also several more sheets issued week by week dating 11/2, 18/02, 25/02, 4/03/ 11/03, 18/03 and 25/03. These early 3-D images, eclectic and often rather simplistic, reveal the contempo… Read more…