Crusade in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower. First Edition, 1948. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1948.
You can view our first edition of Crusade in Europe here
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Literature at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Octavo. Publisher’s deluxe presentation binding of full red morocco by Gaston Pilon (Garden City, NY), gilt banded spine, Eisenhower’s “flaming sword” motif in gilt and silver on front cover, top edges gilt, others untrimmed, map endpapers. 16 plates, numerous maps in the text. Spine just lightly sunned. An excellent copy.
First edition, one of 35 copies specially bound for presentation, generously inscribed by Eisenhower to the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and his wife: “For The Prime Minister of Great Britain and Mrs Atlee . With best wishes for a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year. From their friends Mamie D. and Dwight D. Eisenhower December, 1948”. Books inscribed by Eisenhower on behalf of himself and Mamie are most uncommon. Eisenhower has also signed at the foot of the facsimile of his famous D-Day Order of the Day.
This copy is number 31 of the edition of 1,426 copies. The unusual limitation suggests that 26 copies were originally planned for personal presentation, but in 1949 a number of US newspapers reprinted an interview with the binder, French-born Gaston Pilon, in which he stated that one of his prized possessions was a letter from Eisenhower thanking him for hand-binding “35 special, goatskin leather-covered volume” of this book.
Eisenhower’s account of his war is widely thought to be one of the finest American military biographies, the New York Times considering that it gave “the reader true insight into the most difficult part of a commander’s life.”
A most desirable copy, linking two wartime leaders: Attlee served as deputy prime minister under Churchill from February 1942 to May 1945, succeeding him as prime minister in July 1945, following the Labour landslide. Eisenhower would have been impressed with Attlee’s military record during the Great War, when he served as an officer in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and France; ODNB describing the War as providing Attlee “with a test of leadership which he grasped fully”.
Fourth Collected Edition, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer, London: for Wyllyam Bonham, 1550, presented by Sammy Jay, Rare Books Specialist at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
You can view our first edition of The Workes of Geffray Chaucer here
Folio (286 × 178 mm). Late 19th-century full grosgrain morocco in antique style by Hayes of Oxford, tooled in blind and decorated in gilt, marbled endpapers, wide turn-ins richly gilt, gilt edges. Housed in a morocco-backed folding case. Printed in black letter in two columns. Title page and separate title for “Romaunt of the Rose” within decorative border, woodcut of the Knight on B1r, woodcut of the Squire on E6v, woodcut initials throughout. Provenance: John Hawes (contemporary ownership inscription inked to title and colophon); Thomas A. Hendricks of Indianapolis (bookplate); Rosenbach Collection (typed label on printed header); Sylvain Brunschwig (morocco bookplate); Paul Peralta-Ramos (small Japanese-style inkstamp); the collection of Cornelia Funke, author of the Inkheart trilogy. Joints tender, lacking final blank, mild browning, dampstaining to first gathering and to margins of last gathering, head of B1 shaved just touching foliation, tear to f. 90 affecting a few letters of text, pen-trials to outer margin of f. 227, discreet ink doodles to woodcut of Knight, “Squier” inked to scroll on woodcut of same, last leaf coming away at head, overall a very good copy.
Fourth collected edition, one of four variants each with a different publisher’s name in the colophon: the others were Richard Kele, Thomas Petit, and Robert Toye. Pforzheimer notes that, to judge from the relative numbers of extant copies, it is probable that they shared equally in the edition. The woodcuts of the pilgrims that had first been printed in Caxton’s 1483 edition are here replaced by two new cuts, of The Knight and The Squire, which were then reprinted in later black letter editions through to 1602. The history of the woodcuts is traced by David R. Carlson, “Woodcut Illustrations of the Canterbury Tales, 1482–1602,” The Library, 6th ser., 19 (1997): 25–67.
Winner Take Nothing, Ernest Hemingway. First Edition, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Literature at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
First edition, first printing, presentation copy to his third wife Martha Gellhorn, inscribed by Hemingway in pencil on the front free endpaper “To /M. Gellhorn my old Professor in aesthetics from E. Hemingstein” and further inscribed by him “PS 1939 I love you EH”. The leaf is also blindstamped with Martha Gellhorn’s London address. The book was presumably given by Hemingway to Martha Gellhorn around the time of their first meeting in Florida towards to end of 1936 and inscribed for the second time by Hemingway when in 1939 they moved together to Cuba, where they married on 22 November 1940.
Tales of Space and Time, H G Wells. First Edition, & New York: Harpers & Brothers Publishers, 1900.
You can view our first edition of Tales of Space and Time here.
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Literature at Peter Harrington.
First edition, first impression. Presentation copy to Henry James, inscribed by the author at publication on the first blank, “Henry James from H G. Wells”. Beneath the inscription Wells has sketched a drawing of a club-wielding cave man—probably a reference to the third story in this collection, “A Story of the Stone Age”. Though dated 1900, the book was actually published in November 1899 and James wrote to Wells on 20 November 1899 to thank him for the gift of this and another book: “These new tales I have already absorbed and, to the best of my powers, assimilated. You fill me with wonder and admiration” (Edel and Ray 62).
Henry James and H. G. Wells appear to have met in 1898. Three years earlier Wells had, as a drama critic, witnessed James’s public discomfiture at the first night of Guy Domville, when the gallery booed the American novelist as he came out to take a bow before a fashionable London audience. In 1900, when Wells moved to Spade House, Sandgate, across Romney Marsh from James’s house at Rye, the two began to meet with some frequency. They spent long hours in the Lamb House garden or in the library, in endless talk. Their friendship eventually foundered on their fundamental differences of outlook, both social and literary, but this presentation dates from the time when their friendship was in its first flush.
Winnie the Pooh, A.A Milne. First Edition, Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1926
You can view our first editions of Winnie the Pooh here
First edition, first impression, With Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard.
Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt, gilt rules, vignette to front board gilt, top edge gilt, yellow map endpapers. With the pi dust jacket. Illustrated throughout by Ernest H. Shepard. Extremities a little rubbed, tail of spine lightly crumpled, faint spotting to endpapers and fore edge of prelims. An exceptionally bright copy in a jacket with minor chipping at extremities; spine panel mildly toned and with first word of title slightly rubbed.
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