Feb 2, 2015 | Videos
First edition, presentation copy to his friend Henrietta, Countess of Airlie, inscribed by the recipient on the half-title of each volume.
She and her husband were friends of the author; the family archive contains correspondence that indicates Henry James saw them both in London and on visits to Scotland.
The Countess of Airlie was grandmother of Clementine Churchill and great grandmother of the famous Mitford sisters. Edel & Laurence state that the first printing was of 500 copies, published 16 February 1886, with a second undifferentiated impression of 100 copies the following month.
Feb 2, 2015 | Videos
First edition of one of the major novels of the nineteenth century, Charlotte Brontë’s first published novel and the first published novel by any of the Brontë sisters. Published at 31s. 6d. on 19 October 1847, in an edition of 500 copies, Jane Eyre followed the unsuccessful publication of Poems by the three sisters in May 1846, and the rejection of Charlotte’s first novel The Professor.
Though this item is now sold, all our catalogued works by the Brontë sisters can be viewed online here.
Feb 2, 2015 | Videos
…Under the Command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher during the years 1843-1846.
Adam Douglas presents this extremely uncommon first edition of this official publication of the zoological results of Belcher’s extensive surveying voyage.
For more information on this exceptional work, view it online by clicking here. (BOOK SOLD)
Feb 2, 2015 | Videos
First edition of Hume’s first great work, complete with the supplementary third volume, rarely found together.
Hume composed the first two books before he was 25 during his three years in France. He returned to London with the finished manuscript by mid-September 1737, but he did not sign articles of agreement with a publisher, John Noon, for another twelve months, and the two volumes finally appeared, anonymously, at the end of January 1739.
Already fearing that they would not be well received, Hume had meanwhile begun a third volume, Of Morals, in part a restatement of the arguments of these first two books, which was not published until 5 November 1740, by a different publisher, Thomas Longman. Hume treated the third volume as a discrete work in its own right in so far as he later “cast anew” its contents alone as An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).
As a result of this broken-backed publication history, the three volumes of the Treatise are rarely found together. “The book comes up for sale so seldom that one may doubt whether more than one or two hundred can be extant” (Keynes and Sraffa, in their introduction to Hume’s Abstract).
Though this item is now sold, all our catalogued works by David Hume can be viewed online here.
Feb 2, 2015 | Videos
First edition of the first Federal budget, prepared by Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury and submitted to F, A, Muhlenberg, Speaker of the House of Representatives. “As America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton stands alone in the annals of American financial history. One of the founding era’s key political figures, Hamilton’s influence on our fledgling country’s early finances set the wheels in motion for the United States to become the economic super-power it is today laying the foundations for the U.S. capitalist system.
While this item is not currently available to view online, the rest of our catalogued shelves can be browsed on our website by clicking here.
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