Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, Arthur Rackham. Signed Limited Edition, 1932. London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd. 1932.
Presented by Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Quarto (263 × 194 mm). Deluxe binding of green full morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe, spine lettered and panelled in gilt, sides bordered in gilt with large gilt devices at corners designed by Rackham, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, others uncut. In the original card slipcase with printed label numbered by hand “9”. Frontispiece and 11 full page plates by Arthur Rackham printed in full colour, with captioned tissue guards; uncoloured illustrations in text, of which 9 are full page; title page in black and brown. Spine even faded as often with this shade of green, else a fine copy.
Signed limited edition, special issue. The book is signed on the limitation page by Rackham and opposite is a humorous original ink and watercolour image, “An Old Wife’s Tale”, signed in full by the artist and dated 1932. This is one of the nine special copies commissioned by Harrap, with the deluxe leather binding and an original watercolour, of which eight were for sale. The publisher has added a manuscript note to that effect on the limitation page. The entire edition was limited to 525 copies, of which 500 were for sale. Each of the nine watercolours depicts a different scene. Describing his artistic method for these “specials”, Rackham pointed out that, “my little sketches must inevitably be of a light hearted or joking nature… They have to be spontaneous and free handed. The nature of the paper is such that there can be no preparatory drawing and no alterations”.
Singapore Album of Maps & Photographs, 1884 -1907, studio of Charles J Kleinrothe. Singapore: .
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior specialist in Rare books at Peter Harrington.
Quarto half cloth album (256 × 208 mm), skilfully restored with contemporary black combed cloth, and old marbled paper, title gilt to the spin, foliate roll gilt to the turn-ins, white moiré-textured endpapers. 50 matt silver gelatin prints (166 × 117 mm), mounted both sides of 25 linen-hinged, gilt-edged, heavy card leaves.
Occasional staining or spotting on the mounts, a few with erased captioning, but the photographs themselves largely well-preserved, some faint mottling, but retaining mid-dark tone, very good.
An extremely interesting album offering a wonderful visual record of Singapore at the turn of the century, containing an excellent range of topographical views and architectural studies in and around the city-state, together with a smaller number of portrait “types” – a rickshaw driver, a hairdresser attending to a plaited queue, fishermen, etc.
Many of the waterfront offices and landing points are shown – Collyer Quay, Raffles Quay, Finlayson Green, and South Boat Quay – together with other well-known sights such as the famous Botanical Gardens in Tanglin, South Bridge Road, the main thoroughfare of Chinatown, the location of the twin-minaretted Jamae Mosque, and European buildings such as St Andrews Church, Orchard Road Presbyterian Church, the entrance to the Cavenagh Bridge, and the Cricket Club, whose pavilion was built as shown here in 1884 before its extension in 1907, thus giving bracket dates for the album. Well composed and developed, these are clearly the work of a professional studio, but cannot be definitively identified, though they are possibly from the studio of Charles J. Kleingrothe, a German photographer working in Singapore during the late 19th century, one of the few studios using matt silver prints at this time.
Now We Are Six, A.A Milne. First Edition, 1927. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1927. You can view our first edition of Now We Are Six here. Presented by Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books. Octavo. Original full vellum with yapp edges, gilt lettered front cover, untrimmed. Housed in a custom made blue cloth chemise and quarter blue morocco slipcase. Illustrated throughout by Ernest H. Shepard. Slipcase a little used. An exemplary copy, largely unopened. First and limited edition, number 4 of 20 large-paper copies printed on Japanese vellum and signed by the author and illustrator; the most luxurious and exclusive format in which Milne’s Pooh books were issued. Following the success of When We Were Very Young Milne began planning a second book of poetry for children. In a January 1926 letter to his brother Ken he included it as number one in a list of “things which ought to be done”: “A book of verses (about 15 done to date) to appear in 1927 or 1928” (Thwaite p. 293). By the time that Winnie-the-Pooh was published in late 1926 half the poems for this third book were already complete. Published on 13 October 1927, it took only two months for Now We Are Six to eclipse the sales records of the previous two books. Full of Milne’s charming verse, this collection is also notable for including Shepard’s timeless illustrations from the world of Pooh and Piglet.
From Russia, With Love. Ian Fleming. First Edition, 1957. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957.
You can view our first edition of From Russia, With Love here.
Presented by Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine and revolver and rose motif to front board in metallic red and silver. With the dust jacket. Some spotting to contents, rear board lightly creased, very good in the little worn dust jacket.
First edition, first impression. With the author’s signed presentation inscription to the front free endpaper, “To R. Singleton-Ward In (I hope) Gratitude. Ian Fleming 1957”. The recipient was the writer and physiotherapist Richard Singleton-Ward. The anticipation of gratitude expressed in the inscription is most likely in anticipation of a successful chiropractic treatment but it is perhaps no coincidence that Fleming included a quite detailed description of such therapies in Thunderball on which he was working at that time. Presentation copies of From Russia With Love are very scarce indeed.
Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, William Shakespeare. 3rd Folio Edition, London: for H. Herringman, E. Brewster, and R. Bentley, 1685.
You can view our first edition of Comedies, Histories and Tragedies here.
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Literature at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Folio (368 × 235 mm). Contemporary mottled calf, red morocco label, red sprinkled edges, rebacked preserving most of the original spine, tips restored. Engraved portrait by Martin Droeshout above the verses To the Reader on verso of the first leaf, title with fleur-de-lis device (McKerrow 263), double column text within typographical rules, woodcut initials. Minor occasional light browning, a few tiny burn-holes, small tear with loss to margins of Gg3, Rr6, Uu3, *Ddd6, 3E4 and 3Y2 (not affecting text), slight staining to 3B5 with short tear at lower margin (not affecting text), a few other tiny oil and other stains, the condition generally very good, and a notably tall, well-margined copy.
Fourth folio, and the last of the 17th-century editions of Shakespeare’s works, edited by John Heminge (d. 1630) and Henry Condell (d. 1627), the seven plays added by Philip Chetwin (d. 1680), publisher of the Third Folio. A reprint of the ill-fated Third Folio, this edition was issued by Henry Herringman in conjunction with other booksellers, and has three settings of the title-page. Of the seven additional plays, also included in the Third Folio, only Pericles is today recognised as the work of Shakespeare. In common with the Third, the Fourth Folio dropped the final “e” from Shakespeare’s name, a spelling that persisted until the beginning of the 19th century.
The printer of the Comedies has been identified from the ornaments as Robert Roberts. Although this is the only edition in which each play does not start on a fresh page, it is in a larger fount and more liberally spaced than the three earlier editions. (The two pages of L1 are set in smaller type, presumably after the discovery that some text had been omitted.) The Fourth Folio remained the favoured edition among collectors until the mid-18th century, when Samuel Johnson and Edward Capell argued for the primacy of the First Folio text.
Provenance: The lawyer and politician Simon Harcourt, first Viscount Harcourt (1661?–1727), his bookplate affixed to verso of title, thence by descent (armorial bookplate of Edward William Vernon Harcourt (1825–1891) on front pastedown). Simon Harcourt was the only son of Sir Philip Harcourt (d. 1688), the landowner and politician of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, and his first wife, Anne (d. 1664), the daughter of Sir William Waller of Osterley Park, Middlesex. In a distinguished political career he became Queen Anne’s solicitor-general on 30 May 1702, subsequently promoted to attorney-general in 1707 after his close involvement in the negotiations for the Union with Scotland. He became lord chancellor in April 1713.
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