FRANKLAND, Sir Robert; COPLOW, Billesdon

Indispensable Accomplishments

London: H. Humphreys, 1811. Six Humorous Hand-Colored Engraved Hunting Scenes FRANKLAND, Sir Robert. COPLOW, Billesdon (pseudonym). Indispensable Accomplishments..London: Published..by H. Humphrey, 1811. First edition. Oblong folio (10 5/8 x 14 5/8 inches; 270 x 370 mm.). Engraved title and six numbered hand-colored engraved plates with interleaves. Seventeen blank leaves at rear. Bound by Morrell (stamp-signed) in later full green crushed morocco with gilt frame and equine-themed gilt corner-pieces. Gilt-ruled raised bands. Gilt ornamented and decorated compartments. Broad gilt dentelles. Top edge gilt. With the leather bookplate of Joseph Widener and armorial bookplate of Clarence S. Bemens. An excellent copy of this rare series of hunting scenes. OCLC locates only one copy (at Harvard). "Ev'ry species of ground ev'ry Horse does not suit;/What's a good Country Hunter may here prove a Brute;/And, unless for all sorts of strange fences prepar'd,/A Man and his Horse are sure to be scar'd" (engraved title). "As every Country Gentleman may not comprehend the force of this expression, he ought to know, that the Meltonians hold every Horse cheap, which cannot Go along a slapping pace, Stay at that pace, Skim ridge & furrow, Catch his Horses, Top a flight of Rails, Come well into the next field, Charge an Ox fence, Go in and out clever, Face a Brook, Swish at a Rasper, and in short, Do all that kind of thing, phrases so plain & intelligible, that it's impossible to mistake their meaning. That Horse is held in the same contempt in Leicestershire, as a Coxcomb holds a Country Bumpkin. In vulgar Countries, (i.e. all others) where these Accomplishments are not Indispensable, he may be a Hunter." Signed: Billesdon Coplow (engraved title). Sir Robert Frankland (1784-1849), Seventh Baron of Thirkelby, was an MP and artist, a talented amateur who later succeeded to the baronetcy as Sir Robert Frankland-Russell. He was the almost exact contemporary of Henry Alken Senior and this set of engravings was the inspiration for Alken's Qualified Horses and Unqualified Riders. In 1815, Henry Alken published a rejoinder to Indispensable Accomplishments: Qualified Horses and Unqualified Riders, or The Reverse of Sporting Phrases Taken from the Work Entitled Indispensable Accomplishments: "In looking over that very amusing work call'd Indispensable Accomplishments sign'd Billesdon Coplow with which I was very much delighted but could not forbear remarking that he consider'd it only necessary that the horse should come well into the next field, charge an ox fence, go in and out clever, face a brook & swish at a rasper he does not mention that to do all that kind of thing it is necessary he should be mounted by a rider of judgment and courage. I have undertaken beging [sic] his pardon to mount well qualified horses with unqualified riders and to shew the figure those horses are likely to cut during the day" (Tooley 44: "The first of Alken's coloured books"). The Plates: 1. Going along a slapping pace. 2. Topping a flight of Rails, and coming well into the next Field. 3. Charging an Ox-fence. 4. Going in and out clever. 5. Facing a Brook 6. Swishing at a Rasper." The London bindery of W. T. Morrell was established c. 1861 as successor to the firm begun by Francis Bedford, who, in turn, had assumed control of the esteemed bindery of Charles Lewis. Sarah T. Prideaux, in "Modern Bookbindings," states that Morrell had a very large business that supplied "all the booksellers with bindings designed by his men," bindings that were "remarkable for their variety and merit." Schwerdt I, pp. 186-187. Silzer, p. 122. Tooley 158 (under Billesdon Coplow). Not in Abbey. .

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Book number: 02598

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: COPLOW, Billesdon Color-Plate Books Fine Bindings Caricatures Nineteenth-Century Literature

GALSWORTHY, John

Swan Song

London: William Heinemann Ltd. [1928]. The Sixth Novel of John Galsworthy's Prize Winning Saga 'The Forsyte Chronicles' GALSWORTHY, John. Swan Song. London: William Heinemann Ltd. [1928]. First edition. Octavo (7 3/16 x 4 3/4 inches; 186 x 121 mm.). [ix], [1, blank], 347, [1, blank] pp. Publisher's dark blue cloth, front cover stamped and lettered in gilt, spine lettered in gilt, rear cover with publisher's blind-stamp, top edge stained blue. A fine crisp copy in the original color pictorial dust jacket, spine minimally darkened, otherwise fine. The sixth of the nine novels which make up The Forsyte Chronicles - one of the most popular and enduring works of twentieth century literature - chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women. The author has drawn a fascinating and accurately detailed picture of the British propertied class. Often incorrectly called The Forsyte Saga - the nine novel sequence properly known as The Forsyte Chronicles contains three trilogies- of which the first trilogy is The Forsyte Saga (The Man of Property - In Chancery- To Let). The second trilogy- A Modern Comedy (The White Monkey- The Silver Spoon- Swan Song) is followed by the third and concluding trilogy- End of the Chapter (Maid in Waiting- Flowering Wilderness- One More River). "Michael Mont is succeeding in his public life in Parliament, but holds grave doubts about his private life and his wife, Fleur. Fleur's original love, Jon Forsyte, her cousin and the son of her father's ex-wife, returns to England where a meeting is inevitable. Fleur's undying love for Jon is disclosed. Other members of the Forsyte family are included in this imminently readable saga." John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906-1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. .

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Book number: 04945

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Modern Firsts

CRUIKSHANK, George and Robert; EGAN, Pierce

Diorama Anglais

Paris: chez Jules Didot [and] Baudouin Frères, 1823. Tom, Jerry, and Bob Logic en Français Twenty-Four Hand-Colored Aquatint Engravings [CRUIKSHANK, George and Robert, illustrators]. EGAN, Pierce. Diorama Anglais, ou Promenades Pittoresques a Londres, Renfermant les Notes les plus Exactes sur les Caracteres, les Moeurs et usages de la Nation Anglaise, Prises dans les Differentes Classes de la Societe. Par M. S... Ouvrage orné de vingt-quatre Planches Gravées et Enluminées, et de Plumieurs Sujets Caracteristiques. Paris: chez Jules Didot [and] Baudouin Frères, 1823. First edition in French of Egan's Life in London. Octavo (8 1/2 x 5 9/16 inches; 217 x 141 mm). [4], 235, [1, blank] pp. Twenty-four hand-colored aquatint engravings, with tissue guards, after George and Robert Cruikshank, unsigned, but similar to those used in the English version of Egan's classic, which contained thirty-six plates. Contemporary quarter red roan over red diaper pattern paper boards. Smooth spine with five decorative gilt rules, lettered in gilt. Engraved bookplate of Sir David Lionel Goldsmit-Stern-Salomons on front paste-down. Old booksellers description pasted onto front flyleaf. Some light foxing to text. An excellent copy with great provenance. "By finding the right men [the Cruikshanks] for his work [Egan] made Life In London one the great successes of the day, comparable to that other triumphant alliance of humour and art in the pages of Dr Syntax" (Prideaux). "A journalist, and a well-known character in his day, [Pierce Egan] wrote nothing so popular as this Life in London. Indeed, the taste for it amounted to a craze. For his illustrations, Egan went to two brothers, Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank..the success of the work was so great that the artists could not colour the engravings fast enough for the demand. It suited the taste of the time, when a ‘fast' life had become a sophisticated and conscious aim. Life in London is a guide to a fast life.. Part of the success enjoyed by [Pierce Egan's Life in London] was due, no doubt, to its readers' belief that they could name the originals of the fictitious characters. Imitations came swift and frequent.." (The Cambridge History of English and American Literature ). Cohn 263. .

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Book number: 04314

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: EGAN, Pierce Color-Plate Books Books in French Nineteenth-Century Literature Cruikshankiana

GOLDSMITH, Oliver; Cunningham, Peter; Forster, John

Works of Oliver Goldsmith, the

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900. The Library Edition of the Works of Oliver Goldsmith GOLDSMITH, Oliver. The Works of Oliver Goldsmith. Edited by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. Illustrated. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900. Library Edition. Twelve large octavo volumes (8 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches; 221 x 147 mm.), including The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, by John Forster (in four volumes). Photogravure frontispieces and plates from photographs and from drawings and paintings by Arthur I. Keller, Albert Sterner, Alfred Fredericks, F. Luis Mora, W.P. Snyder, Charles Broughton, and others. With an introduction by Austin Dobson. Title-pages and half-titles printed in red and black. Publisher's (stamp-signed on the verso of the front free endpaper: Bound by Harper & Brothers) three-quarter dark green morocco, ruled in gilt, over marbled boards. Spines in four compartments with three raised bands, gilt-lettered in two compartments, the remaining two compartments decoratively tooled in gilt in a floral design with red morocco onlays. Top edge gilt, others uncut. Spines uniformly sunned to brown. A near fine set. Oliver Goldsmith (1731-1774), Irish-born English poet, playwright, and novelist. "His literary fame began with The Traveller (1764), a didactic poem surveying national modes of happiness, which was praised by Samuel Johnson and other members of his famous Literary Club. His major works include An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759), a prose essay attributing the decline of polite learning to the inferiority of poets; The Bee (1759), a periodical containing perhaps his most famous tales, ‘Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern' (1760) and ‘Asem, An Eastern Tale' (1759); The Citizen of the World [1762], a satiric epistolary novel in imitation of Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721); The Vicar of Wakefield [1766], a novel; The Deserted Village [1770], a poem; and The Good Natur'd Man [1768] and She Stoops to Conquer [1773], comedies. A beloved member of Johnson's circle, he was noted for his comic verbal faux-pas, though it seems that Goldsmith buffooned purposely on occasion without his friends ever suspecting it. At the end of his life he retorted to their raillery in a series of brilliant caricatures, The Retaliation (1774)" (Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia). .

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Book number: 00120

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Cunningham, Peter Forster, John English Literature Sets Bindings Fine Bindings and Sets Literature Plays Poetry

GREENAWAY, Kate; Foster, Myles B.; Evans, Edmund

Day in a Child's Life, A.

London: George Routledge and Sons, 1881. One of the Books That Relieved John Ruskin's Depression Rare in Dust Jacket [GREENAWAY, Kate]. FOSTER, Myles B. A Day in a Child's Life. Music by Myles B. Foster. Engraved and Printed by Edmund Evans. London: [n.d. 1881]. First edition. Quarto (9 11/16 x 8 1/4 in; 246 x 209 mm). Color-printed wood-engraved text illustrations, most accompanied with musical notations. Publisher's gray glazed pictorial boards, beveled edges with green cloth backstrip, light green coated endpapers, all edges stained blue. Minimal soiling and rubbing to board edges and corners only, small split to front inner hinge,otherwise an exceptionally clean and near fine copy. In the publisher's printed dust jacket with most of spine missing and small piece missing from front panel not affecting text or image. Thomson variant 31d with trellis-like border and garland of roses surrounding two seated girls. "..By Christmas, Ruskin had recovered and was ready to advise her. Although he was still depressed by his uncontrollable health..his depression was somewhat relieved by Kate's latest books. which rekindled his interest in her ability to depict children and reminded him of his departed beloved [little Rose La Touche]. Mother Goose had a title-page drawing of a baby lying in a basket of roses. A Day in a Child's Life was even more evocative, with its rose wreath half-title page; a blonde girl lying in bed, so reminiscent of a child Rose on her sick bed; and young girls in white frocks dancing over a hillside to 'A Romp' - so like his Winnington Hall frolics" (Engen p.81). Schuster & Engen 66. Thomson 31a. Engen, Kate Greenaway. A Biography. .

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Book number: 01404

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Foster, Myles B. Evans, Edmund Children's Books Music Illustrated Books Children's Books Illustrated Books Music Nineteenth-Century Literature

GREENAWAY, Kate

Kate Greenaway Pictures

London: Frederick Warne and Co. 1921. Kate Greenaway's "Pictures" [GREENAWAY, Kate, illustrator]. Kate Greenaway Pictures. From Originals Presented by Her to John Ruskin and Other Personal Friends (Hitherto Unpublished). With an Appreciation by H.M. Cundall..London: Frederick Warne and Co. 1921. First edition. Quarto (12 x 9 3/4 inches; 305 x 245 mm.). [7], 8-11, [12-52] pp. Mounted frontispiece portrait of Greenaway (ca. 1895) and twenty mounted color plates, with descriptive tissue guards. Original olive green cloth over beveled boards with beige cloth spine. Front cover lettered in gilt and dark green. Spine lettered in dark green. Top edge trimmed, others uncut. Green marbled endpapers. Slight staining to bottom left corner of front cover. Previous owner's neat gift inscription dated 1921. A very good copy. In the original beige dust jacket printed in olive green, lightly rubbed and with small piece missing from front flap. This work looks at her original art, presented by her to John Ruskin, and other friends of hers. Catherine Greenaway (1846-1901) was an English Victorian artist and writer, known for her children's book illustrations. She received her education in graphic design and art between 1858 and 1871 from the Finsbury School of Art, the South Kensington School of Art, the Heatherley School of Art, and the Slade School of Fine Art. She began her career designing for the burgeoning holiday card market, producing Christmas and Valentine's cards. In 1879 wood-block engraver and printer Edmund Evans printed Under the Window, an instant best-seller, which established her reputation. Her collaboration with Evans continued throughout the 1880s and 1890s. The depictions of children in imaginary 18th-century costumes in a Queen Anne style were extremely popular in England and internationally, sparking the Kate Greenaway style. Within a few years of the publication of Under the Window Greenaway's work was imitated in England, Germany, and the United States. This work looks at her original art, presented by her to John Ruskin, and other friends of hers. Greenaway was a Victorian artist, well beloved for her children's book illustrations, produced in the Golden Age of book illustration. Most of her drawings depiction Queen Anne style costume, an imaginary eighteenth century style rather than Victorian. Schuster & Engen 229. Thomson 90. .

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Book number: 00126

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Children's Books Illustrated Books Children's Books Illustrated Books Literature

HEATH, William

Life of a Soldier, the

London: William Sams, 1823. Rarely Found in the Original Boards HEATH, William. The Life of a Soldier. A Narrative and Descriptive Poem. With Eighteen Engravings by William Heath. London: William Sams, 1823. First edition. Quarto (10 1/2 x 7 5/8 in; 268 x 195 mm). [8, incl. half-title], 150, [2, adv.] pp. Eighteen hand-colored untitled aquatint engravings. Original pictorially lithographed boards, rebacked. Joints starting yet firm, boards a little rubbed and marked, still an excellent copy. Chemised in a red cloth jacket within a full red morocco pull-off case. One of the better imitations of The Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome (1815). "Watercolourist and caricaturist William Heath (1795-1840)..worked mostly under the pseudonym of Paul Pry. He called himself 'Portrait and Military painter' and was reputed to be an 'ex-captain of dragoons' but is not recorded in the Army List. Heath began life as a draughtsman and his main claim to fame rests on his having produced the first caricature magazine in Europe, The Glasgow later Northern Looking-Glass, 1825-1826. Although this was a provincial work and without much text, it does pre-date Charles Philipon's similar publication. The height of his popularity fell between the years 1809-34, after which his humour was displaced by that of Robert Seymour and John Doyle" (Houfe, p. 338). Abbey, Life 361; Tooley 257; Ogilby, British Military Costume Prints, 415; Priddeaux, p. 340. .

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Book number: 02607

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Color-Plate Books Caricatures Nineteenth-Century Literature Poetry

HOFLAND, Mrs

Czarina, the

London: Henry Colburn, 1842. Borscht and Caviar In the Court of Catherine I HOFLAND, Mrs. [Barbara]. The Czarina; An Historical Romance of the Court of Russia. By Mrs. Hofland..In Three Volumes. London: Henry Colburn, 1842. First edition. Three twelvemo volumes (7 5/16 x 4 5/8 inches; 186 x 118 mm.). [2], 302; [2], 317, [1, blank]; [2], 325, [1, blank] pp. Bound without half-titles (possibly as issued?). Contemporary half plum calf, decoratively ruled in blind, over marbled boards. Spines decoratively ruled and numbered in gilt and ruled in blind with four raised bands and brown morocco gilt lettering labels, edges sprinkled red. Spines faded to brown, corners lightly rubbed, spine labels a tiny bit chipped. Some light foxing and browning. Volume I with a few ink smudges on the verso of the title and on the first page of text and a printing flaw (slight ink smear to a few words) on pp. 258 and 259. A very good copy. One of the last novels by Hofland, an extremely prolific - and moralistic - writer. "The patient reader who has followed Mary [our princess] through her many trials, and, we trust, rejoiced in the development of her virtues as a daughter and sister, will not doubt that she became an exemplary as a wife, a mother, and a mistress " (p. 318). Mrs. Barbara Hofland (1770-1844) "was the daughter of Robert Wreaks, a Sheffield manufacturer, who died when she was an infant. She was brought up by an aunt and in 1796 married T. Bradshawe Hoole, a merchant, by whom she had a son. Hoole's death from consumption two years later left her wealthy but the money was subsequently lost through a bad investment, and she turned to writing. A volume of Poems (1805) attracted 2,000 subscribers, mainly out of sympathy. She opened a boarding school at Harrogate on the proceeds, and when this failed she began to write fiction. The History of a Clergyman's Widow (1812) sold 17,000 copies in various editions. In 1808 she married the landscape painter Thomas Cristopher Hofland (1777-1843). The precariousness of an artist's life together with Hofland's natural improvidence and subsequent illness meant that she had to work even harder at her fiction. By 1824 she had produced upwards of twenty titles, the most successful of which, and probably her best, was The Son of a Genius [1812], which drew on her experience of the artistic temperament and also on the emotional legacy of her son's death from consumption. She followed it with The Daughter of a Genius (1823). She was a poplar as well as prolific writer although her fiction, which extended to nearly seventy works, was remorselessly didactic in tone. Towards the end of her career she turned out conventional Victorian three-deckers, including The Czarina (1842), The King's Son (1843), The Unloved One (1844), and Daniel Dennison (1846). She was also an energetic journalist, having begun as early as 1795 with ‘Characteristics of Some Leading Inhabitants of Sheffield', which she published in the Sheffield Courant. She expanded this vein later by contributing gossipy letters about London literary life to provincial newspapers. Her children's books include both history and travel and, despite their moralizing, are attractive and readable. Hofland was a friend of Mary Russell Mitford" (The Oxford Companion to British Women Writers). "[Mrs. Hofland's] work for children includes imaginative textbooks (she centres both histories and travels on invented young people). Some simplified moral judgements apart, it is intelligent and readable. Depth and variety is added in adult works like Iwanowa, or The Maid of Moscow, 1813 (Richardsonian letters; clash of armies and cultures), Katherine, 1828 (delicate psychological analysis of misunderstandings in love), The Captives in India, 1834 (effective use of Eliza Fay), and The King's Son, 1843 (fictional vindication of Richard III)" (The Feminist Companion to Literature in English). Block, pp. 109-110. CBEL III, 734. CBEL (3) IV, 934. Not in Sadleir or in Wolff, who had only two of her works—The Captives in India, A Tale; and A Widow and a Will (1834) and A Season in Harrogate (1812). .

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Book number: 00735

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: English Literature Nineteenth-Century Literature Women Nineteenth-Century Literature Women

HOLLAND, John; [Privately Printed]

Song of a Boy

London: Privately Printed, 1939. Posthumously Published Signed by the Author's Mother HOLLAND, John. Song of a Boy. London: Privately Printed, 1939. First edition. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author's mother on the front free endpaper: "To thank you for your/appreciation of my/son's work./Phyllis Holland." Small quarto. [2, blank], [6], 177, [1, blank] pp. Twenty-five plates, twenty-three in color (including frontispiece portrait) and two portraits from photographs. Descriptive tissue guards. Original cream-colored cloth pictorially stamped in gilt on front cover and lettered in gilt on spine. Top edge gilt on the rough, others uncut. Inner hinges hint at starting. Minimal foxing at beginning and end. A near fine copy, largely unopened. A memorial book dedicated to the life of John Holland, who tragically died at the age of nineteen. An accomplished artist and poet, he attended Winchester and was destined for Oxford when he died of polio in Dalmatia in 1936. This volume collects his poetry and reproduces a number of his drawings and paintings in color. "John Douglas Holland was born at Basing Houre, Southsea, on August 30th, 1917, and was the only son of Rear-Admiral L.E. Holland. He entered Winchester College when just thirteen..On leaving Winchester he went to the Architectural Association for one term and then decided to go to Oxford and was to have entered Magdalen College in October 1936, but while on a short sketching tour in Yugoslavia he caught infantile paralysis and died at Split, Dalmatia, on July 30th, after six days' illness..These poems and rhymes were written from the age of fourteen. They are not arranged in any particular order of writing as, though some were written out carefully, others were found scribbled here and there in his books and on odd pieces of paper. His paintings, some of which are also reproduced in this book, were, like his poems, quick and unlaboured—done at any moment he might feel in the mood" (preliminary p. [3]). .

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Book number: 00041

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: [Privately Printed] English Literature Poetry Modern Firsts Inscribed Copies Modern Firsts Fine Printing Inscribed Copies Literature

JOHNSON, Samuel; Fitzgerald, Percy; Hill, G. Birkbeck

Critical Examination of Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill's "Johnsonian" Editions Issued by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, A.

London: Bliss, Sands & Co. 1898. Fitzgerald on Hill's Johnson [JOHNSON, Samuel]. FITZGERALD, Percy. A Critical Examination of Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill's "Johnsonian" Editions Issued by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. London: Bliss, Sands & Co. 1898. The first edition of this celebrated instance of the pot calling the kettle black. Quarto (10 1/8 x 7 1/2 inches; 258 x 191 mm.). [8], 86, [2, advertisements] pp. Original gray printed wrappers. Unopened. A fine copy. .

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Book number: 00872

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Fitzgerald, Percy Hill, G. Birkbeck English Literature Johnsoniana Literature

JOHNSON, Samuel; Fitzgerald, Percy; Hill, G. Birkbeck

Critical Examination of Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill's "Johnsonian" Editions Issued by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, A.

London: Bliss, Sands & Co. 1898. Fitzgerald on Hill's Johnson [JOHNSON, Samuel]. FITZGERALD, Percy. A Critical Examination of Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill's "Johnsonian" Editions Issued by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. London: Bliss, Sands & Co. 1898. The first edition of this celebrated instance of the pot calling the kettle black. Quarto (10 1/8 x 7 1/2 inches; 258 x 191 mm.). [8], 86, [2, advertisements] pp. Original gray printed wrappers. A fine copy. .

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Book number: 00873

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Fitzgerald, Percy Hill, G. Birkbeck English Literature Johnsoniana Literature

JOHNSON, Samuel; Fitzgerald, Percy; Hill, G. Birkbeck

Critical Examination of Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill's "Johnsonian" Editions Issued by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, A.

London: Bliss, Sands & Co. 1898. Fitzgerald on Hill's Johnson [JOHNSON, Samuel]. FITZGERALD, Percy. A Critical Examination of Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill's "Johnsonian" Editions Issued by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. London: Bliss, Sands & Co. 1898. The first edition of this celebrated instance of the pot calling the kettle black. Quarto (10 1/8 x 7 1/2 inches; 258 x 191 mm.). [8], 86, [2, advertisements] pp. Original gray printed wrappers. A fine copy. .

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Book number: 00874

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Fitzgerald, Percy Hill, G. Birkbeck English Literature Johnsoniana Literature London

KIPLING, Rudyard; German, Edward

Just So Song Book, the

London: Macmillan and Co. 1903. The Songs from Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories" KIPLING, Rudyard. The Just So Song Book. Being the Songs from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. Set to Music by Edward German. London: Macmillan and Co. 1903. First edition. Large quarto (12 1/4 x 9 3/4 inches; 311 x246 mm). [2], 62 pp. Music. Original dark red cloth pictorially stamped in black on front cover and lettered in gilt on front cover and spine. Small area of slight discoloration on back cover. Front hinge hints at starting. Title tissue guard slightly browned and with a short tear at lower margin. Otherwise a fine copy. "The texts of the twelve poems contained in the Just So Stories (1902) are here set to music by Edward German. The last song, ‘Rolling down to Rio,' is substituted for ‘I've never sailed the Amazon,' which is here omitted" (Stewart). Livingston 270 (describing the first American edition). Stewart 269-A. .

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Book number: 00136

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: German, Edward English Literature Children's Books Music Children's Books Literature Music

[NONESUCH PRESS]; Laver, James

Stitch in Time; or Pride Prevents a Fall, A.

London: Printed for the Nonesuch Press by Richard Clay & Sons, Ltd. Bungay, 1927. James Lever's "Stitch in Time" [NONESUCH PRESS]. LAVER, James. A Stitch in Time; or Pride Prevents a Fall. London: Printed for the Nonesuch Press by Richard Clay & Sons, Ltd. Bungay, 1927. First edition. Limited to 1,525 copies. Small folio (11 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches; 292 x 191 mm). 27, [1 colophon], [1 blank] pp. Printed on Arches cream laid paper in 18pt Caslon. Sewn into semi-stiff boards loosely covered with predominantly brown, green, and yellow marbled paper folded over inside. Printed paper label on front cover. A near fine copy. In the original (worn) glassine dust wrapper. "James Laver (1899-1975) matriculated at Oxford in 1917. In 1921 he won the Newdigate Prize for a poem on Cervantes, and in 1922 he was appointed an assistant keeper in the Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he was to remain for 37 years" (Dreyfus). Laver wrote in his autobiography, Museum Piece (1963): "For my own amusement and without very much hope of publication I had written a Popeian poem called A Stitch in Time. It was quite frankly a pastiche of The Rape of the Lock but transposed into modern times. I showed it to my Director, Sir Eric Maclagan, who seemed to like it. I then showed it to Herz, who passed it on to Dorothy Moulton Mayer. She happened to be a friend of Stephen Gooden, who was then producing his miraculous line engravings for the publications of the Nonesuch Press, and she invited him to dinner to meet me and hear the poem. He carried it off to show to Francis Meynell and to my astonishment and delight Meynell offered to publish it..The small edition was soon exhausted and it became something of a collector's piece, so that even The Financial Times was moved to comment upon the bullish qualities of a publication which had risen in price in a couple of weeks, from 3s. 9d. to 35s" (quoted in Dreyfus). Dreyfus 46. The Nonesuch Century 46. .

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Book number: 00871

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: Laver, James Fine Printing Poetry Modern Firsts Fine Printing Literature Poetry Limited Editions

LEE, Laurie; WARD, John

Cider with Rosie

London: The Hogarth Press, 1959. With the Suppressed Piano Factory Scene LEE, Laurie. Cider With Rosie. With drawings by John Ward. London: The Hogarth Press, 1959. First edition, the suppressed or withdrawn first issue which includes the account of the fire at the piano factory (p. 272). Octavo (7 3/4 x 5 in; 197 x 127 mm). 280 pp. Black and white line drawings throughout, some full page, including frontispiece. Publisher's green cloth with gilt lettered spine. Original pictorial dust jacket slightly darkened on spine. Two inch tear on front of jacket, one and a half inch x half inch chip on back of jacket. A very good copy in a fair dust jacket. The novel, the first of an autobiographical trilogy, is an account of Lee's childhood in the village of Slad, Gloucestershire, England, in the period soon after the First World War. It chronicles the traditional village life which disappeared with the advent of new developments, such as the coming of the motor car, and relates the experiences of childhood seen from many years later. The identity of Rosie was revealed years later to be Lee's distant cousin Rosalind Buckland. "It has got a marvellous morning freshness. There is hardly a sentence in it that does not set the sense of touch and smell, as well as sight and hearing, tingling" (Daily Mail ). "Remains as fresh and full of joy and gratitude for youth and its sensations as when it first appeared. It sings in the memory" (Sunday Times). "One of the great writers of the twentieth centur"y (Independent). "An enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood, and boyhood, but also to an England that has vanished" (JB Priestly). "He had a nightingale inside him, a capacity for sensuous, lyrical precision" (Guardian ). .

David Brass Rare Books (ABAA/ILAB)Professional seller

Book number: 02306

Catalogue: English Literature

Keywords: WARD, John Modern Firsts