Shop — page 5 of 48

A bound collection of circulars - 81 documents dated 1948/49 - which comprise the new guidance and policies which drove the transition towards and practical implementation NHS, setting out how the UK managed one of the most radical social reform in its history. The collection appears to have been compiled by Brockhall Hospital in Langho, Blackburn,… Read more…

Unpublished, lost work by the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, the Reverend W Awdry. A devoted railway enthusiast and expert, it is well documented that Awdry began writing a biography on J.E. McConnell in the 1980s but no other copies have been located. This substantial typed manuscript is corrected throughout in Awdry’s hand and tells the story… Read more…

Fine late 18th century English manuscript atlas beautifully drawn, almost certainly by a child, and offering 68 full-page maps, 32 in outline and a further 36 with keyed explanatory apparatus. The manuscript’s creator, probably in or around London, details a colonial-era map of North America (California as peninsular) entitled ‘Ten Northern America… Read more…

A collection of English Rebellion narratives owned by one of George Washington’s fellow commanders in the French and Indian War, the Scots army officer and politician Archibald Montgomerie, who raised the 77th Foot Regiment of Highlanders and led them alongside Washington’s Virginia Regiment in the capture of Fort Duquesne in 1758. Going back anoth… Read more…

An exceptional woman’s album compiled 1820s-1880s containing an inscription by Samuel Johnson presenting a gift to his friend Hester Thrale. Johnson promises something ‘Brought from Scotland’ - a tantalising suggestion given the writer’s famous trip to Scotland and the Hebrides in 1773, immortalised in A Journey to the Western Islands. Johnson’s in… Read more…

Compellingly annotated and interleaved early 18th century edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost which shows the deep influence exerted by Joseph Addison’s mass circulation writing about English literature. This single volume of Milton’s Paradise Lost (Books I-VI) has been interleaved throughout, seemingly by ‘Richard Blundell’ who signed the book at th… Read more…

Inscribed by Janet and William Beveridge, a first edition hardback. Large octavo. viii, 193 pp. An ex libris bookplate in the name of ‘W H Beveridge’ is attached to front pastedown. Front free endpaper contains a pasted photograph of Janet and William Beveridge and a gift inscription in their hand ‘To Will Davis’ dated July 6, 1953. William Beverid… Read more…

A beautifully preserved set of rules and regulations and a golf score card from the Jharia Club Golf Club in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India. The club, located in the coal mining heartland of India became a hub for British and European mining interests which began in the late 1890s and the golf course itself was developed in 1915 becoming a central part… Read more…

This framed, iconic 1942 photograph of Winston Churchill taken during WW2 is mounted on card and signed ‘Walter Stoneman’. In excellent condition, measures 19 cm x 15 cm, protected within contemporary frame. Paper backing age toned with label reading ‘William’s Artists Supplies, King St, Lancaster’. Walter Stoneman is celebrated for taking photogra… 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…

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…

An Appointments diary-plus which covers Marianne Faithfull’s 2005 US tour journal in support of her album Before the Poison. The tour took her to The Town Hall, New York (March 12) and in the following days Park West, Chicago and the Henry Fonda Theater, Los Angeles. The diary charts Faithfull’s busy Parisian life during the early months of 2005 be… Read more…

Remarkable unpublished autobiography of a young French immigrant to the USA in the 1890s, who became a ranch-owner in Montana before turning to civil engineering and finally, after his return to France, publishing extensively on occultism and founding the Societe Unitive - a sort of psychic wellness group avant la lettre. Written in English and cle… Read more…

Journal of a tour of Palestine containing landscape and architectural sketches by the wealthy Catholic priest Anthony Hutchison as he visited the holy places in 1857, with an eye for the history and culture of the towns, villages, synagogues and mosques that he visited, and their inhabitants. A friend and London-based supporter of John Henry Newman… Read more…

Unique copy of a pornographic novel written in letter form by Louisiana-born ‘Madge Buford’ and addressed as a stimulant to her ‘lonely lover’, Captain Jack Gardner ‘way out in camp there in the Rocky Mountains’. Divided into 26 short chapters of non-stop debauchery, the heroine’s erotic adventures begin when she is rescued at 16 from the Convent o… Read more…

‘A Trip to America’, recorded by a young, bumptious traveller from a successful English military family (his father was Commander of British Forces in China at the time), determined not to be overawed by New York City, and then completely overawed by people, elevated railways and high-rise architecture: ‘The structures at first sight, strike one as… Read more…

Two fine volumes owned by the infamous chairman and director of the White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay who failed to provide sufficient lifeboats for the Titanic but managed to survive the 1912 sinking of the company’s flagship when he boarded one of the last to be launched from the doomed liner. Appropriately enough for copies owned by a trans-At… Read more…

A collection of song lyrics, correspondence and set lists spanning nearly half a century of performing life of the singer and actor, Marianne Faithfull. This includes a song from 1964 that was intended to be Faithfull’s debut single - except that she found it ‘awful’ and refused to record it. Three of Faithfull’s albums are particularly well repres… Read more…

The first published description of Archaeopteryx, one of the most significant fossils ever discovered. This is Richard Owen's classic Philosophical Transactions paper, illustrated with an exceptional lithographic folding plate showing a life-sized image of the type specimen. The first glimpse of Archaeopteryx occurred in 1861, when a single feather… Read more…

A collection of six of the most influential works on democracy ever written, all published contemporaneously with Paine’s censure in England, formerly owned by a significant figure in London’s radical intellectual history. This volume includes a copy of Rights of Man, the Second Part (1792), printed in the same year as the first printing. (Howes pl… Read more…

Inscribed with drawings and doodles by the artistic super-couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the unveiling of Rivera’s newly completed masterpiece, the Detroit Industry Murals at the city’s Institute of Art, early in 1933. With these drawings into a child’s autograph album, made a few days before their departure for New York City, Kahlo and Riv… Read more…

The first publication of any of Mary Anning's fossils, with spectacular plates showing two ichthyosaur specimens. These two papers, by the anatomist Everard Home, comprise the first scientific description of ichthyosaurs. In the first paper (1814, four plates; two folding) Home describes Mary Anning's landmark discovery, remaining unsure if it is a… Read more…

Two-volume sammelband of late-eighteenth - and early nineteenth-century radical pamphlets, owned by James Paul Cobbett, the radical campaigner who, with his father William Cobbett, disinterred the skeleton of Thomas Paine in New York state and shipped it back to England in 1819. Thirty-eight separately published pamphlets bound in two large octavo-… Read more…

Four collections of printed songs owned by the Glasgow bibliophile David Murray (1842-1928) much of whose collection wen to Glasgow University. A handsome early 20th c binding in very good condition in half brown calf over marbled boards, titled in gilt over black ground to an attractively tooled spine; ‘Glasgow 1865’ in gilt to spine tail. The ex… Read more…

First British editions of The Sea of Fertility quartet in very good conditions, in original unclipped dust jackets. 1. Spring Snow: 1972. 389 pp. Foyles bookshop label to front pastedown. Ownership inscription ‘Barbara Osborne’ neatly written to top of front free. Very good copy; sound, square, unmarked. Good plus illustrated, unclipped jacket has… Read more…