The Road from Arras to Bapaume. Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson.

Signed and dated lower right in pencil by Nevinson. First exhibited Leicester Galleries, London, March 1918. “Nevinson first learned lithography in 1912 … All Nevinson’s lithographs were made on stone, not zinc or transfer paper. ‘I got back (to London in 1918) to find that a bomb had fallen on the printing works where my lithographs were kept and my stones were damaged. The reason for the extra ridge on my lithograph of the Arras-Bapaume Road is because I had to put it in to cover the injury done to my original stone”

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The Roman Hat Mystery. Ellery Queen

First edition, first printing of the authors’ first book. Of all the first books by American golden age crime writers (Stout, Carr, Gardner, Chandler, Hammett, etc.), this has been, in common experience, the scarcest.

We have handled just one other copy in a slightly defective dust jacket. This example is the best we know. A Haycraft Queen Cornerstone.

All our catalogued works on detective fiction can be viewed online here.

The Viviparous quadrupeds of North America. John James Audubon & John Bachman.

In the early 1840s, at the same time Audubon was producing the commercially successful octavo edition of his masterpiece, The Birds of America, he and his sons also began production of The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, an elephant folio of 150 lithographs meant to match the lavishness of the Birds. Unlike the double-elephant folio Birds, the Quadrupeds was produced entirely in the United States, making it the “largest single color plate book to be carried to a successful conclusion during the century ” (Reese). It took the Audubon family five years to publish the 150 plates and there were at that time three hundred subscribers. The book was the product of Audubon’s collaboration with John Bachman, a pastor who had studied quadrupeds since he was a young man and who was recognized as an authority on the subject in the United States.

All our catalogued works on natural history can be viewed online here.

 

 

Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences compiled upon a new plan.

Sammy Jay presents this first edition Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences compiled upon a new plan.

Contributors to this first edition included many of the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment movement such as David Hume, James Balfour, George Campbell, Lord Kames, and Sir James Steuart.  The long article, nearly 50 pages in length, on bookkeeping, is by John Mair.

Update BOOKS SOLD

The Bar-Tenders’ Guide. A Complete Cyclopaedia of Plain and Fancy Drinks, Jerry Thomas

First edition of the first ever guide to mixed drinks, the cocktail, “the first legitimate American culinary art … the first uniquely American cultural product to catch the world’s imagination” (Wondrich, Imbibe! … a Salute in Stories and Drinks to ‘Professor’ Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar, p. 11), this copy in the earliest possible state, titled, on the title page, as The Bar-Tenders’ Guide … and priced at $1.50 on the upper board. OCLC records just nine copies under this original title, that which most closely matches that originally registered, no copy in Library of Congress.

All our catalogued works on cookery and wine can be viewed online here.