Gift Ideas

  1. [GUARINI, Giovanni Battista.]

    Il Pastor Fido.

    ‘In Parigi, appresso Tomaso Iolly, 1706’.

    Scarce Parisian edition of Guarini’s immensely popular ‘pastoral tragi-comedy’, charmingly illustrated by Antonio Luciani.

    £175

  2. WALTON, Izaak, and James THORPE, illustrator.

    Complete Angler or contemplative man’s recreation … with illustrations...

    London & Edinburgh, T.N. Foulis, [1925].

    A very attractive illustrated edition of Walton’s classic fishing manual in a deluxe Bayntun binding.

    £500

  3. BRULL, Mariano, and Mathilde POMÈS, translator.

    Solo de Rosa. Poemas.

    Con dos rosas de Mariano y Portocarrero. [Havana,] ‘La Veronica’, 1941.

    First edition, no. 186 of 300 copies, printed in Cuba and inscribed by the author to his French translator, Mathilde Pomès, with Pomès’s manuscript translation of one of Brull’s poems from Solo de Rosa loosely inserted.

    £650

  4. RUSH, John; Jacob F. SHEEK, editor.

    The Hand-Book to veterinary Homoeopathy, or the homoeopathic Treatment of the Horse,...

    New York & San Francisco, Boericke & Tafel, 1876.

    Later American edition of a rare hand-book to veterinary homoeopathy. The text, first published in 1853, offers homoeopathic remedies for a variety of ailments, prefaced by a defence of the principles of the practice.

    £275

  5. PALAFOX Y MENDOZA, Juan de. 

    The History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars. Together with an Account of several remarkable...

    London, W. Godbid for M. Pitt, 1671. 

    First edition in English of Palafox's Historia de la conquista de la China (1670), an account of the Manchu conquest of Ming China based on reports sent to him from Macao and the Philippines.

    £1750

  6. Aristotle: From Antiquity to the Modern Era.

    Preface by Martin J. Gross. Essays by Benjamin Morison and Barbara Scalvini.

    Lewes, D. Giles Ltd for the Martin J. Gross Family Foundation, 2021.

    Aristotle’s influence towers over western philosophy and science. His astonishing range and depth – philosophy and logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics – make him indisputably the most important intellectual figure in the western tradition before the modern age.

    £30

  7. POWYS, John Cowper.

    Autobiography.

    London, John Lane, The Bodley Head, [1934].

    First edition, signed on the half-title ‘John Cowper Powys, April 1935’. A very nice copy of a work not often found signed.

    £250

  8. LEWIS, Wyndham, and Anne Gladys LEWIS.

    Christmas card to the Bridsons.

    [1950s].

    ‘To Joyce [née Thirlaway] + Geoffrey with Christmas love from Froanna + Wyndham …’

    £50

  9. PRINCE, F[rank].

    T[empleton]. Soldiers Bathing and other Poems.

    London, The Fortune Press, [1954].

    First edition, Prince’s second collection, inscribed ‘with good wishes from the author, F. T. Prince. 23 April, 1954.’

    £200

  10. RACHEWILTZ, Boris de.

    L’Elemento magico in Ezra Pound.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1965.

    First edition, no. 182 of 1000 copies, an essay by Pound’s son-in-law published on the occasion of Pound’s eightieth birthday.

    £150

  11. MITCHISON, Naomi; Wyndham LEWIS, illustrator.

    Beyond this Limit …

    [London,] Jonathan Cape, [1935].

    First edition. This was Lewis’s only collaboration with Mitchison but she arranged for the publication of his Left Wings over Europe the following year, and they remained friends until his death. 32 designs by Lewis served as the inspiration for Mitchison’s narrative.

    £75

  12. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...

    Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

    A finely bound deluxe copy, one of twenty copies, of Mark Andrews’s lavishly illustrated catalogue tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period.

    £675

  13. HOLLAR, Wenceslaus, attributed.

    [Portraits of celebrated Courtezans.]

    Nineteenth century?

    A famous series of portraits depicting Restoration-era London courtesans, long attributed to Hollar, but that attribution rejected by Pennington and New Hollstein.

    £1200

  14. RUSKIN, John.

    The stones of Venice … With illustration drawn by the author. Fourth edition.

    Orpington, Kent, George Allen, 1886.

    A deluxe copy, one of 220 copies, of the fourth expanded edition, printed on Van Gelder laid paper with the plates on India paper.

    £375

  15. YRVEN, Marcelle. 

    La comédienne et le féminisme. 

    Paris, L. Pichon, 1914. 

    First edition of this feminist work on the necessity of a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre, by the celebrated actress Marcelle Yrven, presented to the editor-in-chief of Le Figaro’s literary supplement. 

    £250

  16. STEPHENSON BLAKE. 

    A Book of Types – SL1. 

    Sheffield & London, [1956]. 

    Two beautiful type specimen books from the last typefoundry in England.  A Book of Types (‘SL1’) is the first in a series of five type specimen lists issued by Stephenson Blake from 1956-1963.  In this first issue, among some of the various original designs of the foundry, such as...

    £85

  17. POPE, Alexander.

    The Dunciad. With Notes variorum, and the Prologomena of Scriblerus. The second Edition, with some Additional Notes.

    London: Printed for Lawton Gilliver … 1729.

    ‘Second’ octavo edition, revised. This is Griffith’s variant d, with an extra unpaginated leaf of terminal errata (printed on the same half-sheet as the cancel P3).

    £450

  18. POPE, Alexander.

    The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, with his last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, in four Volumes,...

    London, ‘printed under the direction of J. Bell, British Library, Strand, bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ 1787...

    A good set of Pope’s works, printed for inclusion in Bell’s The Poets of Great Britain. Initially imported from Edinburgh and issued with new titles, Bell’s Poets of Great Britain was intended to provide attractive and portable works of British poets ‘from Chaucer to Churchill’,...

    £175

  19. NELSON, John.

    An Extract of John Nelson’s Journal, being an Account of God’s Dealing with his Soul from his Youth to the forty-second...

    Bristol, E. Farley & Co., 1767.

    Rare first edition, printed in Bristol, of the autobiography of the preacher and pioneer of Methodism in Yorkshire John Nelson (1707–1774).

    £600

  20. BISSON, Louis-Auguste. 

    ‘Wildfire’. 

    Paris, c. 1844. 

    An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times. 

    £14500