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Inscribed to one of the leading rare book dealers of his generation, Bertram Rota, by a host of members of Chicago’s Caxton Club. A calligraphic inscription on the front free endpaper, "Presented to Anthony Rota on the occasion of the September 28, 1988 meeting of the Caxton Club with the appreciation of the members and guests whose signatures appe… Read more…

Number 94 of 100 copies, inscribed by the publisher as ‘Mrs Somerville No.94’ - Mary Somerville’s copy. Smith (1771-1845) founded the Edinburgh Review and lectured extensively at the Royal Institution as recorded here in these posthumously published texts. Mary Somerville (1780-1872) met Sydney Smith as a young woman in Edinburgh, describing in her… Read more…

Movingly inscribed first edition from the author to another of the (at first) 65 Irish Volunteers in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison who demanded Prisoner of War status. Accompanied by mounting demonstrations across Ireland, the British government capitulated and many of these prisoners were released before greater harm was done. This printed edition of G… Read more…

The headmistress’s copies of a sequence of otherwise unrecorded Cambridge University printed and compiled manuscript reports (30 in total) on a pioneering London school for girls. Queen’s College, London in fashionable Harley Street is a girl’s school founded for governesses, and then open to any young woman, started in 1848 and numbering Gertrude… Read more…

Society minutes for monthly meetings of one of the leading regional birdwatching societies of the mid-century period, given extra interest as it was based in Oxford. In addition to the manuscript entries there are printed programmes, a set of rules and a single poster tipped in. The minutes include notes on lectures by Fraser Darling, Ludwig Koch,… Read more…

First edition, bound in quarter black roan over worn marbled boards. Ownership signature of ‘Midgley Rushworth’ from 1840 on front flyleaf; similar inscription on final flyleaf. Foxing and browning but internally very good. Lacking the frontispiece. Martineau’s novella about industrial conflict is set in Manchester. BLx3 only. Read more…

Half crimson morocco boards with marbled sides in good condition. Spine rubbed. Moderate bruising to corners and edges. This binding has been used to cover part of an older book which lists Acts of Parliament relating to duties to be paid on goods, each page titled ‘49 George III. Cap.98’. The pages have been appropriated to form a new book in whic… Read more…

A ring bound grey Conrad’s sketchbook depicting an individual, unique and somewhat wry, historical insight into the role of women in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during WW2. The binding is in good with a little wear and slight bruising to the front cover. A slight tear on each corner where the top page attaches to the ring binder. All pages with… Read more…

A moralising chapbook dated Stockport, November, 1837. Homemade, vernacular, card wrappers in very good condition with old folds. Hand stitched to the printed leaves and inscribed on the wrapper: ‘Mess.rs Geo Wilson & Co’ in black ink. Vignette of a blacksmith at work on the title page. 12 pages all intact, in very good condition. Read more…

23-page pamphlet dedicated to the description and promotion of the R. 100 commercial airship, the first ever designed for world operation, designed and constructed in Howden, Yorkshire by the Airship Guarantee Company, Ltd, Maiden flight on the morning of 16 th December 1929. A little wear and darkening to the edges of the original, illustrated pri… Read more…

First Edition of the translation of a unique Arabic Manuscript on archery of circa. A.D. 1500 which is part of the Garret Collection of manuscripts in Princeton University Library. Includes an inlaid note card stamped and dated Princeton, August 11th 1942 to Dr Robert Elmer from the author, signed Nabih. In very good plus condition with very slight… Read more…

Letters home from a second generation Glaswegian surgeon describing the ‘horrors of war’ he experienced in China as a Naval Surgeon during the Taiping Uprising of 1861-2. The Rebellion - actually a pan-Chinese civil war - was the most bloodthirsty conflict of the 19th century, estimated to have cost between 20 and 30 million lives and Grieve’s rema… Read more…

A remarkably rich wartime sketch-book in which John Piper recorded his 1943 summer tour of Devon and Cornwall in the company of Geoffrey Grigson, sketched Welsh landscapes as well as the Victorian villas and churches of the English Midlands while he stayed at Renishaw Hall, home of his friends Edith and Osbert Sitwell. Piper’s sketches include chur… Read more…

A collection of 32 interleaved playscripts and cookbooks, technical handbooks, pocket almanacs, botanicals and bibliography which contains hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of work freely given by the books’ owners as they added to the printed texts on subjects as diverse as gothic architecture, early music, surgery, roses, illicit marriages, a… Read more…

Twelve year diary (1907-1919) of a distinguished Scottish servant of the British Empire, who represented Scotland as an international footballer in the very earliest of all competitive matches with England in 1870 - and loathed his ministerial boss, the young Winston Churchill. Scion of the aristocratic Baillie-Hamilton family (Earls of Haddington)… Read more…

‘The Daredevil Aeronaut’, Vincent Lunardi’s account of his first balloon flights made in Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh in a collection of pamphlets which was owned by a leading Newcastle attorney and Clerk of the Peace, Thomas Davidson, who seems likely to have acquired this book in connection with Lunardi’s disastrous subsequent balloon ascent out… Read more…

A 10 page manuscript extract from Talbot Rothwell’s original screenplay for Carry on Cleo together with his hilarious typescript proposal/ synopsis of the movie and a full ‘First Draft’ typescript screenplay which contains perhaps the earliest appearance of the oft-voted funniest ever line, ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.’ Talbot Rot… Read more…

Unknown except for a single copy held by the De Morgan Foundation, this is a full length memoir written by the artist and writer Emilie Russell Barrington in which she recalls her decades-long friendship with the preeminent Arts and Crafts designer, potter and friend of William Morris, William de Morgan. In this memoir which she wrote in the final… Read more…

A beautiful set of Davies’ 48 photogravure plates depicting the Norfolk Broads still in their original portfolios as first issued, with a distinguished Norfolk provenance. These beautiful and evocative photographs by ‘the man who found the Broads’, (Charles Carrodus) are the works of the first of the great Broads photographers and a landmark in Eng… Read more…

Two sketchbooks drawn and painted by the children’s author Alison Uttley and two by her husband James whose early death, she would later claim, inspired and necessitated Uttley’s prolific output. The first sketchbook records Alison Uttley’s honeymoon with James Uttley when they travelled along the south coast of England and matches the third item i… Read more…

20 letters and notes from the artist Eric Gill to his friend the publisher, book collector and artistic patron of his work, Desmond Flower. In these letters Gill writes about his work at the BBC and creating a sculpture on the Lancashire coast in Morecambe, makes corrections and emendations to his book Art Nonsense which was published by Flower’s f… Read more…

The first printing of one of the most important 19th century Acts of the British Parliament which ended the slave trade in 1807. The passing of this bill into law on 25 March 1807 marked a turning point in the campaign led by William Wilberforce against this cruellest of trades transporting human cargoes between Africa, the West Indies and the Amer… Read more…

Unusually lively Irish-flavoured pamphlet collection from the turn of the 18th century including the notorious sex scandal of Mervyn Touchet (second Earl of Castle Haven), two items attributed to Jonathan Swift and a scarce Dublin printing of An Inquiry into some of the Causes of the Ill Situation of the Affairs of Ireland. Full sheepskin binding,… Read more…

The artist William Hatherell’s collection of letters and documents relating to his work as an illustrator in the 1890s-1920s. Among c70 items is Hatherell’s retained copy of a famous letter to him by Thomas Hardy praising his 1895 illustrations for Jude the Obscure, which the novelist wrote ‘to express my sincere admiration for the illustrations of… Read more…

True first edition, first issue of E M Forster's family saga with the motto 'Only Connect', considered by many to be his masterpiece. This edition has absolute primacy with four pages only of advertisements following the printed text - in the second issue from later in 1910 the advertisements extend to eight pages and include a notice of this novel… Read more…