CUNNINGHAM, E.

The Principle of Relativity.

Cambridge Univ Press 1914. Octavo, very good in publisher's cloth, spine faded; xiv,221pp.
¶ First edition. Called the first English book on relativity, which may well be true. Certainly Cunningham was at the forefront of English relativitism for many years - Dirac went to Cambridge hoping to work on relativity under him but by that time - 1923 - Cunningham decided that he had his hands full and was falling behind the latest research and passed him on to Fowler.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 7751

Keywords: science physics mathematics relativity Einstein Lorentz Minkowski

DAGLESS, Thomas.

The Light in Dends Wood and Other Stories.

London, Greening & Co 1903. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in black and white. Marks and splodges, a well read but decent copy.
¶ Only edition. This would be a long forgotten book but for trumping Amanda M'Kittrick Ros, beating her 'Irene Iddesleigh' for first place in the prestigious 'Fifty Worst Books' gathered by Harry Graham for a select circle that consisted of himself, E.V. Lucas, Anthony Hope, Barry Pain, Edmund Gosse, Belloc and Frank Richardson. Graham had copies of maybe the first five titles specially bound. I still don't what volumes three and four are. It's taken me fifteen or so years to find a copy of this and learn whether it deserves to be volume one - ahead of Irene Iddesleigh as volume two. No. It doesn't. The title story has a decent premise - half caste Anglo-Zulu youth in England unknowingly falls in love with the woman who spurned his father and drove him off to Africa. Then it gets complicated and Dagless seems unable to remember, paragraph to paragraph, whether he's writing a horror story or a crime mystery and who his main characters are. It's near senseless but it's no Amanda Ros. All four stories are consistent in that you finish them wondering what the hell happened. The other three have plenty of inter-racial lust, murder and maniacs. Don't forget the voluptuous mummy and the vampire apes.

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Book number: 10344

Keywords: literature fiction thrillers c20th England fantasy horror mystery

DANA, James D.

Characteristics of Volcanoes, with contributions of facts and principles from the Hawaiian Islands.

London, Sampson Low [1890]. Largish octavo half gilt morocco; xvi,399pp, 16 plates (four are folding maps, these mounted on linen at the time of binding), numerous illustrations through the text. Ex parliamentary library with their gilt crest on the front board and incorporated into the spine, no other markings; a few spots, a handsome copy.
¶ English edition using the American sheets with a cancel title. Almost sixty years of volcanic activity (so to speak) on the part of Dana have gone into this book - beginning with his ascent of Vesuvius in 1834, continuing with his first explorations of Hawaii in 1840 with the Wilkes Expedition right through to a second Hawaiian sojourn in 1887. This is, in part, a call for the attention of vulcanologists - a litany of what had been and what may be learned from the volcanoes of Hawaii that had not been learnt from better known favourites such as Vesuvius and Etna.

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Book number: 6008

Keywords: science geology volcanoes vulcanism c19th travel Pacific Hawaii

DANBY, Frank. [ie Julia Frankau].

Baccarat.

Philadelphia, Lippincott 1904. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth bocked in red, black and white (a pair of playing cards); seven colour plates (one an unlisted tailpiece).
¶ First American edition, the London edition appeared in the same year. Frankau kept her real name for art and biography and presumably earnt her living knocking out novels as Frank Danby - she published about twenty in fourteen years. Though listed by Hubin this is not proper crime fiction but a domestic tragedy. A loving but too vivacious wife left unattended falls victim first to gambling then to the croupier. It grinds on to inevitable death and the suspense comes from whose death it will be.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 8736

Keywords: literature fiction c20th England thrillers

DANE, John Colin.

Champion.

NY, Dillingham 1907. Octavo, very good in publisher's red cloth with mounted colour illustration; eight plates.
¶ First American edition - the English is contemporaneous - of an anthropomorphic racing thriller with plenty of dark deeds and a moustachioed, possibly even half-Spanish, villain. The narrator, Champion, is a revolutionary new racing car.

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Book number: 754

Keywords: literature fiction c20th thrillers automobiles cars motoring

DANIELS, Heber K.

Dol Shackfield, a novel.

London, F.V. White 1901. Octavo publisher's decorated blue cloth blocked in black. Light signs of use, an attractive copy.
¶ First edition of a melocomic crime thriller so far unknown to Hubin. The heroine could kindly be labelled irrepressible and so she is to the extent that you might wish her secret husband did succeed in murdering her.

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Book number: 9642

Keywords: literature fiction thrillers mystery crime detective c20th England

DARWIN, G.H.

The Tides and Kindred Phenomena in the Solar System.

London, Murray 1901. Octavo publisher's gilt cloth; 20,346pp, 43 illustrations. A rather good, bright copy.
¶ Second edition with corrections, additions and revisions - not the least being Darwin's change of opinion as to the actual measurement of the moon's attraction on the earth's surface. "A masterpiece of semi-popular scientific exposition" according to James Jeans in the DNB, it is based on his 1897 Lowell Institute lectures and is, in a way, a summary of the theories and investigations that occupied most of his working life. Darwin published his first papers on tides and tidal friction in the 1870's (his method of harmonic analysis was in use for decades in many parts of the world) and over the years his focus widened to encompass the formation of the solar system and of star systems.

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Book number: 7552

Keywords: science astronomy c19th c20th cosmogony tides mathematics physics geology

DAVIES, Charles Maurice.

Heterodox London: or, Phases of Free Thought in the Metropolis.

London, Tinsley 1874. Two volumes octavo publisher's brown cloth blocked in black and gilt. A quite good pair.
¶ First edition. I must admit I took no notice of Davies' more successful books 'Orthodox London' and 'Unorthodox London' in the past, dismissing them as church stuff. Thanks to an article by Arnold Hunt in the Book Collector, in their handy occasional series 'Uncollected Authors', I learnt that both Davies and his books are more interesting than that. Davies was an Anglican cleric who turned to scribbling and ended up a disgrace. His 'London' books are frontline, occasionally undercover, reportage of the wild and woolly boomtime spiritual life of London. In 'Heterodox London', apparently the least successful of the series (it never made it into a second edition - the Freethought crowd bought and remaindered a fair number of copies), he has turned to the secularists, the free-thinkers, working-men's associations, radicals, atheists, vegetarians, socialists, spiritualists ... rabble rousers of all creeds. He attends a debate of the Dialectical Society on cremation, listens to Bradlaugh argue away the existence of God, attends a Positivist school. Davies is chatty, amiable, tolerant and thorough and the reader gets the impression that the further he travels from the acceptable the more he likes it. And it seems to have been true. His final disgrace in the church was not due to any forgiveable heresy - he was accused of the attempted rape of a teenage girl - but he continued to regard himself as a churchman; the minister of an increasingly bizarre personal church. Hunt's article obliges with excerpts from reviews of his books, appreciative to the first but increasingly scathing or indignant as each book appeared. This one was "vulgar, often offensive" and evil in "the undue prominence it gives to nobodies and their very unimportant opinions" (Pall Mall Gazette and Tinsley's Magazine respectively).

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Book number: 8453

Keywords: social history c19th England religion reform progress

DAVIES, J. [John].

The Innkeeper and Butler's Guide, or, a Directory in the Making and Managing of British Wines; together with directions for the managing, colouring and flavouring of foreign wines and spirits, and for making British compounds, peppermint, anniseed, shrub, &c. Sixth edition.

Leeds, printed by George Wilson 1808. 12mo (in sixes) contemporary calf (scuffed and a bit worn at the top of the spine but solid and presentable); [4],200pp. A rather good, fresh copy.
¶ To this edition are "added many more receipts of equal value" and you don't have to read far to be scared; by page four the recipes for English claret and English champagne had me queasy. A successful book, this first appeared, I think, in 1805 and had gone through seventeen editions by the mid 1820s when it was taken over by Davies' son. However the sixth to the eleventh editions were apparently all printed in 1808; maybe success, maybe fudging.

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Book number: 8475

Keywords: technology food drink wine alcohol trades c19th England science economics

DAVIES, Charles.

A Treatise on Shades and Shadows, and Linear Perspective.

NY, Barnes 1846. Tallish octavo (publisher's?) quarter calf and cloth; 159pp and 21 folding plates. Some spotting but a pretty good, fresh copy.
¶ A worthy and well regarded book, first published in 1832 and reprinted a few times. Is this the first American book on the subject? Gwilt's 'Sciography' (1822) was apparently the first book on shadows in English but Gwilt started translating an earlier French work and, deciding the mathematics was too complex for simple architects, dumbed it down. Davies was a mathematician and this is firmly based in mathematics. He may have made allowances for the artistic - long a euphemism for inept - but I can't tell.

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Book number: 8596

Keywords: art technique drawing architecture theory perspective c19th America mathematics

DAVIS, Richard Harding.

Van Bibber and Others.

NY, Harper 1892. Octavo publisher's decorated green cloth; four plates by Charles Dana Gibson (still unattributed at this date). A fine copy.
¶ First edition, first printing according to BAL. Early in the Davis canon, the first half takes us around the high society of New York before diving to the lower depths in the second.

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Book number: 8823

Keywords: literature fiction c19th America New York

DAVISON, Ralph C.

Concrete Pottery and Garden Furniture.

NY, Munn 1910. Octavo, very good in publisher's decorated cloth; xiv,196p and publisher's list, 140 photo illustrations, diagrams and line drawings.
¶ First edition. Exactly the sort of information which, in the wrong hands, leads to unspeakable evil. In general I'm in favour of knowledge for the masses and the unveiling of secrets held within cabalistic trades but this steps over the line. There isn't anything in here to take exception to, the examples are unremarkable, sometimes handsome, but I've seen too much of what happens when just anyone is given access to concrete and the means to knock up a mold.

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Book number: 8619

Keywords: architecture landscape gardens design materials concrete c20th technology trades

Design.

An album of designs for textiles and/or paper.

c1913-1920's? Large folio cloth [620x430mm]; 24 card leaves with 39 mounted original colour block prints (3 double page). Expected signs of use but nothing drastic; one print removed.
¶ Doubtless the designer's album of designs, these are proof prints from the blocks, each show the shape where the repeat pattern fits. The first pages are annotated with details of the client ('Achete a George. 9 Rue St Fiacre Paris' - in earlier decades this was the home of a calico manufacturer, which makes sense, and now houses a public relations firm and Ella Bache, which is neither here nor there) and the engraver (Gillet, sometimes in concert with someone else); the details dwindle as the album proceeds until we reach the large and dramatic geometric design in black and white which was "vendu a Mrs Bosset". Dating these designs to 1913 would seem foolish but for the first few leaves being dated 1913 in the top corner; two or three are dull, traditional floral patterns but the rest, while by no means radical avant garde, would sit more happily in the next decade or two - some are really quite stylish. The theme is floral, or at least botanical although one is based on a Chinese cloud pattern; several are oriental in style or inspiration and one is a very stylish piece of Japanese abstraction. I'm pretty sure this is the work of a Japanese designer in Paris, partly because it most recently came from Tokyo and partly because of the modern simplicity of several designs.

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Book number: 8166

Keywords: graphic art design c20th textiles interiors France modernism pattern colour printing japan

Kimono design.

[Miyuki].

Koizumi Gofkuten [190-?]. 37x25cm colour printed boards, ribbon tied (rubbing, edges with some wear); [2]pp & 30 colour lithographs. Some tissues creased and rumpled, signs of use but a perfectly acceptable copy.
¶ A large and fairly deluxe chromolithographed pattern book of kimono designs. The current Kyoto Koizumi Co deals in kimono and fashion and trace their history back to the early 18th century. Presuming this is the same company they have come down in the world since the days of pattern books like this.

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Book number: 10971

Keywords: applied art design textiles c20th Japan costume fashion kimono pattern books meiji

Japanese graphic design.

Proof 1963 : Graphic Design for Practical Use.

Tosho Printing Co. [1963?]. 24x26cm publisher's flexible printed card, plastic comb bound; 106pp and a sheet with cut outs to be placed over the colour chart at the end. Corners of two adjacent leaves have been clipped, one at the top and one at the bottom, not for any discernible reason. I first wondered whether this was part of the design but I'm sure it's not.
¶ Industrial Jansenism on the outside and show printing and art on the inside. This is advanced, sharp edged sixties graphic design, sweeping away the suburban roccoco curlicues of the fifties and before the basement nouveau curlicues of psychedelia. Hip but not hippy. Artists include Manabe Hiroshi, Kiyohara Etsushi, Iwasaki Kenji, Matsunaga Kenichi, Nakagawa Keiji, Takasugi Jiro, and Sato Tomoshige, the colour chart by Katsui Mitsuo.Tosho was no shrimp in 1963 and now seems a massive corporate slug despite having shed imagination, style, any sense of excitement, and other such encumbrances along the way. I base this near impartial judgment on a few minutes survey of their website.Worldcat finds no entries, neither does NDL; Cinii finds one copy, in Nara.

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Book number: 11155

Keywords: graphic art design printing c20th Japan advertising trade catalogues typography