Jun 25, 2016 | Videos
Presented by Sammy Jay of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Octavo. Original cream boards, spine lettered in red, pictorial block of two dancing cats to front board. With the dust jacket. Housed in a red quarter morocco solander box made by the Chelsea Bindery. With numerous colour and monochrome illustrations by Nicolas Bentley. Spine slightly toned, cloth a touch soiled, mild foxing throughout, text block strained in a couple of places but firm. A very good copy in a lightly toned and soiled jacket with slightly nicked and creased extremities and a couple of minor chips.
First illustrated edition. An excellent association copy, signed by Eliot as Old Possum and inscribed on the front free endpaper to the Tandy family (Geoffrey, Doris “Polly”, and their three children), whose second child Alison was one of the dedicatees: “To the Tandy family from O.P.” Eliot initially met Geoffrey Tandy, a writer, broadcaster and scientist who worked at the Natural History Museum, in a pub. As their friendship deepened, Eliot would frequently visited the Tandys and they also kept up a regular correspondence. Throughout the 1930s, the family would be the first audience on which Eliot tested out the cat poems, both in letters and on visits to the family’s Hampshire cottage. In addition, Geoffrey would be the first to present the cat poems to a wider public, as he read parts of Practical Cats on BBC radio on the Christmas Day of 1937, two years before the book was published.
Jun 25, 2016 | Videos
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Rare Book Specialist at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
One page, creased where folded. Docketed XXXVII at head in red pencil and with faint red mark. Very good.
Darwin writes late at night to report that “I have this minute finished your Address to Geolog. Socy. & I must just thank you for sending it me. – I have read it with uncommon interest. It is a wonderful condensed & original summary on Palæontology, & I should think & hope will do much good. – I hope you are not killing yourself with too much work – Good night – yours very sincerely, C. Darwin”. A remarkable and generous letter from Darwin to his best known supporter. Huxley had delivered the anniversary address to the Geological Society on 21 February 1862, standing in for the absent president. Darwin did not attend, but the address was printed in the Quarterly Journal of the society. This is the report that Huxley had sent and Darwin just read. Huxley had already established himself as “Darwin’s Bulldog” by this date, especially after the famous debate at Oxford University in June 1860, where Huxley took on Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, Huxley defending evolutionary theory and attacking adherence to scripture as a scientific document. But the relationship was never entirely simple, as Huxley was a significant scientist in his own right and sometimes seemed to question Darwin’s theory. Huxley responded to this letter on 6 May, saying that he had indeed been ill, but not through over-work, and demanding to know if Darwin “agree with what I say about contemporaneity or not and whether you are prepared to admit as I think your views compel you to do – that the whole Geological Record is only the skimmings of the pot of life”. Darwin’s reply suggests that Huxley has pushed his ideas too far and includes the curious phrase “I cannot help hoping that you are not quite as right as you seem to be”.
Jun 25, 2016 | Videos
Presented by Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Octavo. Original orange cloth, spine and front board lettered in black between blind rules, publisher’s device in blind to lower outer corner of both boards. With the dust jacket.
First edition, first impression, the rare case-bound “library” issue, variant binding with the spine lettering reading “India – Churchill” only. Of utmost rarity in the dust jacket, with just three other such copies traced at auction in the last fifty years. Cohen does not record the initial print-run for India, but this is moreover the only case-bound copy we have handled.
The 1930s are characterized as Churchill’s wilderness years, with his unrelenting opposition to Hitler being seen as main cause for his ostracism. However “another, and earlier reason lay in his bitter opposition to Baldwin’s India policy … Churchill had always hit hard; not for him a round of gentlemanly sparring between friends. His fight to maintain full control of India employed not just the clenched fist but the bludgeon” (Woods, Artillery of Words).
Jun 25, 2016 | Videos
Presented by Sammy Jay of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
12 volumes, large octavo. Original full vellum by Zaehnsdorf, gilt lettered spines with gilt Arabic motifs and red morocco onlays, sides elaborately gilt stamped on a red morocco background, top edges gilt, others untrimmed, richly gilt turn-ins, pale blue & gilt patterned endpapers. Housed in the original polished mahogany cabinet, embellished with fretted darker wood, the doors glazed and overlaid with brass lattice work, with two locks and key of “Oriental” design.
Jun 25, 2016 | Videos
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Rare Book Specialist at Peter Harrington.
Octavo (166 104 mm). Finely bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe in early 20th-century green straight-grain morocco, title and decorations to spine gilt with gilt raised bands, gilt rules to covers, marbled endpapers, turn-ins and top edge gilt. With the original green cloth bound in at rear (Parrish binding II). Spine faded, a little rubbing to spine ends and tips, internally fresh. An exceptional copy.
First edition, first issue of the Brontë sisters’ first publication. Extremely rare, the first issue is extant in tiny numbers: it was published in an edition of 1,000 copies, but just 39 copies sold. Following the success of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the unsold stock of 961 copies was purchased by Smith in September 1848. Hoping to capitalise on the novel’s success, they re-issued this collection of verse the following month with a cancel title-page, retaining the original date. Published pseudonymously to forestall possible prejudice against female writers, the slim volume contains 19 poems by Charlotte (“Currer”), and 21 each by Emily (“Ellis”) and Anne (“Acton”). Though a commercial failure, its literary merits did not go entirely unrecognized. A reviewer in the Athenaeum wrote that Ellis had “a fine quaint spirit … which may have things to speak which men will be glad to hear” (4 July, 1846).
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