Presented by Adam Douglas and Dominic Somerville of Peter Harrington.
52 works in 61 volumes. All are octavo unless otherwise stated, and in general found in at least very good condition, with occasional sympathetic restoration. Almost all titles contain Back’s bookplate, and his laid-in notes recording provenance and useful bibliographic information. A full description is available on request.
A remarkable collection of more than 50 books on polar, South American, and Australasian exploration, including rare high-spots of 18th-century Pacific and Antarctic exploration, a choice selection of Victorian attempts at the North-West Passage, and several rare narratives from the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, many with superb associations, and several of utmost scarcity in commerce.
Standing at the head of the collection is Phillip Parker King’s annotated copy of his extremely rare Sailing Directions for the Coasts of Eastern and Western Patagonia (1832), which he compiled as captain of the Adventure on her first surveying voyage with the Beagle (1826–30). It is accompanied by a presentation copy of his Sailing Directions for South America (1850), inscribed to Captain John Lort Stokes, who shared a cabin with Charles Darwin on the Beagle’s second voyage, and also containing King’s assiduous annotations. Of comparable scarcity is Viana’s Diario, the only full account of Spain’s greatest 18th-century voyage of Pacific exploration, led by Alessandro Malaspina: it was printed in 1849 on the itinerant press of the army besieging Montevideo in the Uruguayan War.
Other landmarks include the first edition of Pernety’s Journal (1769), an account of the first settlement on the Falkland Islands, established by French circumnavigator Louis de Bougainville, the Back family copy of George Back’s Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition (1836), and Richard King’s elusive and highly critical account of the same expedition, published the same year.
These books were gathered together over a period of 40 years by Eric Kenneth Prentice “Kenn” Back (b. 1942), meteorologist with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) from 1963 to 2002, and a descendant of Arctic explorer George Back.
During his distinguished career Back saw out eight Antarctic winters (which he believed to be “a BAS record”), completing postings as base commander at Halley, Faraday and Rothera stations, undertook several research secondments to the Canadian Arctic explored by his ancestor.
During what he describes as “a long period of vagrancy”, he worked and travelled widely in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. He is one of a select group of people to have received both the Fuchs Medal, in 1979, and the Polar Medal, awarded the following year. A copy of the full text of Kenn’s informative curriculum vitae, an agreeable.
Victor Gollancz (1893-1967) was one of the revolutionary figures of 20th-century publishing. Everything about his publishing house was distinctive, from his business practices – he flouted convention, backed newcomers extravagantly, and held unique sway over the Book Society choices – the the appearance of his books. The earliest titles have striking jackets designed by the great Edward McKnight Kauffer, but these were soon superseded by the famous yellow jackets, a collaborative design between Gollancz himself and the typographer Stanley Morison, bristling with blurbs, recommendations, and reviews in black and magenta.
All the books in the collection are deeply uncommon, if not seriously rare, in this state. Gollancz’s business model depended on keeping costs low. First impressions were often produced in remarkably small print runs to test the market; any successes would be quickly put into a second or third impression.
ARMSTRONG, Martin. Venus Over Lannery – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1936
Octavo. Original blue cloth. With the dust jacket. Spotting to pages, in the toned dust jacket. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to front free endpaper, title page and front panel of the dust jacket.
£95
Asa Baker. Mum’s the Word for Murder – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine red. With the dust jacket. Spine rolled, edges foxed. An excellent copy in the jacket with sunned spine.
First edition, first impression of the first of two mystery novels featuring El Paso sheriff Jerry Burke. From the publisher’s archive with their inkstamp to the front free endpaper.
£225
ASCH, Sholem. Mottke the Thief. Translated by Edwin and Willa Muir – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Edges foxed, spine slightly rolled; an excellent copy bin the jacket with sunned spine and some chips to extremities.
First edition in English, first impression. The novel was originally published in 1916 in Yiddish as Motke Ganev. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to the title page.
£225
BEVERIDGE, Albert J. Abraham Lincoln. 1809-1858. BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1928
2 volumes, octavo. Original green cloth, spines lettered in gilt. With the dust jackets. Photogravure portrait frontispiece with tissue guard to each volume, 16 half-tone plates. Light spotting to edges, faint offsetting from plates. An excellent copy in the very faintly marked dust jackets with a few minor chips to no loss of lettering.
First UK edition, the Gollancz file copy with their ink-stamp to the dust jackets and front pastedowns, highly uncommon in this condition. Beveridge retired from politics in 1922 having unsuccessfully attempted to regain a seat in the Senate and dedicated his last few years to writing. “His great Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (posthumously published in 1928) was so thorough and professionalized a biography that he might have incorporated more of Lincoln’s Whiggish political roots into his work; but Beveridge, a Republican progressive and former senator from Indiana, had become so disillusioned with his own party that he actually found very little to admire in Lincoln as a politician” (Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln, p. 456).
£375
COE, Charles Francis. Gunman – BOOK SOLD
London: Mundanus Ltd, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1930
Octavo. Original orange cloth, title to spine black. With the dust jacket. Spine slightly rolled, tips bumped; an excellent copy in the jacket with some minor loss to foot of spine and nicks to head of spine.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive with stamp to front panel of the jacket, front pastedown and front free endpaper.
£325
CURTIS, Monica. Landslide – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1934
Octavo. Original black cloth. With the dust jacket. Spotting to pages, bumping to ends of spine, in the toned dust jacket with wear to extremities.
First edition, first impression. Publisher’s file copy with their ink stamp to front free endpaper and front panel of the dust jacket.
£150
DALY, Elizabeth. Unexpected Night – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1940
Octavo. Original black boards, title to spine red. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled; an excellent copy in the jacket with mildly toned spine.
First UK edition, first impression, of the first book in the “bibliomystery” series featuring the investigations of Henry Gamadge, an author, bibliophile, and forgery expert. It was first published in the US earlier the same year. From the publisher’s archive.
£250
De MEYER, John. God’s Children – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in yellow. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled in the toned dust jacket with light soiling to panels, spine sunned, wear to extremities. A very good copy.
First UK edition, first impression.
£125
De MEYER, John. Village Tale – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1938
Octavo. Original blue cloth. With the dust jacket. Light spotting to cloth and pages in the dust jacket with a sunned spine. A very good copy.
First UK edition, first impression. The publisher’s retained copy with their stamp to the title page, front free endpaper and front paste down of the dust jacket.
£125
10 DU MAURIER, Daphne. Gerald: A Portrait – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1934
Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Photographic portrait frontispiece. Publisher’s yellow wrap-around band laid in. Cloth very faintly mottled, edges foxed. A very good copy in the slightly soiled and chipped dust jacket.
First edition of Du Maurier’s significant first Gollancz title, the Gollancz archive copy, with their ink-stamp to the title-page.. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, “was published to considerable acclaim by Heinemann in February 1931. She immediately wrote second and third novels which confounded expectations by differing radically from her first, but it was her fourth book, Gerald, a frank biography of her father, written when he died in 1934, which made the greatest impact. It was published by Victor Gollancz, with whom she then began a long and fruitful partnership. Gollancz recognized that her strengths lay in narrative drive and the evocation of atmosphere. He encouraged her to develop these and the result was Jamaica Inn (1936), an instant best-seller” (ODNB).
£250
DUKE, Winifred. Skin for Skin.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in green. With the dust jacket. Edges and endpapers foxed. An excellent coy in the bright dust jacket with a sunned spine and two short closed tears to the rear panel.
First edition, first impression, the Gollancz archive copy with their ink-stamp to the front panel of the dust jacket and to the front pastedown. A scarce work of detective fiction, incorporating elements of true crime, scarce with just nine copies in libraries worldwide, and exceedingly hard to find in anything approaching this condition.
£225
(FASCISM.) SCHUTZ, W. W. Dr. German Home Front. – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1943
Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With the dust jacket. Pages toned in the dust jacket with toned spine, faint stain to lower end of spine, mild soiling, pencil mark to front panel. A very good copy.
First UK edition, first impression. The publisher’s retained copy with their ink notation on the half title. Work which looks into the oppositions which were rising up in Nazi Germany.
£55
GLASPELL, Susan. The Morning is Near Us – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1943
Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in dark blue. With the dust jacket. Pages toned, in the toned dust jacket. A very good copy.
First UK edition, first impression. The publisher’s retained copy with their stamp to the title page, front free endpaper and front panel of the dust jacket.
£85
GOODCHILD, George, & C. E. Bechhofer Roberts. We Shot An Arrow – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine orange. With the dust jacket. Minor spotting to edges; an excellent copy in the jacket with sunned spine.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to the front panel of the jacket and the front free endpaper.
£575
GREEN, Paul. Wide Fields – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1929
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in green. With the dust jacket. Edges spotted, light tanning to free endpapers. An excellent, tight copy in the dust jacket a touch sunned and chipped on the spine.
First UK edition, originally published in the US the previous year, the publisher’s retained copy with their ink-stamp to the title-page. Wide Fields was first collection of short-stories by the noted dramatist who despite being “the son of a southern white farmer … from childhood was aware of the ills that beset blacks; he used literature to express his ardent belief in freedom and equality for all” (Encyclopaedia of the Harlem Renaissance: A-J p. 444-45). Among his admirers was Tennessee Williams, and a copy of Wide Fields was found among his possessions on his death in 1983 (Bradham Thornton, ed. Notebooks of Tennessee Williams, p. 314).
£250
HARGRAVE, John. The Imitation Man. BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1931
Octavo. Original green boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. A little foxing to edges; an excellent copy in the jacket with browned spine and a couple of chips to extremities.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to the half-title.
£175
HOLT, Gavin. The Theme is Murder – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1938
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine orange. With the dust jacket. Light foxing to edges; an excellent copy in the jacket with sunned spine.
First edition, first impression, featuring the first appearance of the series detective, Inspector Joel Saber. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to the title page.
£225
ILES, Margaret. Burden of Tyre – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939
Octavo. Original black cloth. With the dust jacket. In the lightly sunned dust jacket. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to front free endpaper, title page and front panel of the dust jacket.
£125
ISTRATI, Panait. The Bitter Orange-Tree – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1931
Octavo. Original green cloth, title to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Spotting to page edges, spine gently rolled, archival stamp to title page, in the dust jacket with a touch of wear to edges. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to the half-title.
£175
JOHNSON, Josephine. Jordanstown – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1937
Octavo. Original blue cloth, title to spine blue. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled, in the dust jacket with fading to spine, publisher’s pencil mark to front panel,
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to half title page.
£95
JONES, Doris Arthur. The Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1930
Quarto. Original orange cloth. With the dust jacket. Black and white photographs throughout. Spotting to pages, in the dust jacket with spotting and soiling to panels, wea, creasingr and closed tears to extremities. A good copy.
First edition, first impression. Publisher’s file copy.
£50
MANN, Heinrich. Berlin.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1929
Octavo. Original black cloth. With the dust jacket. Soiling to cloth, spotting to pages in the toned dust jacket with wear to extremites, shallow chipping to ends of spine. A good copy.
First UK edition,second impression.
£45
MANNING, Leah. What I Saw in Spain. An introduction by D. N. Pritt.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935
Octavo. Original red cloth. With the dust jacket. In the toned dust jacket with soiling to panels. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. Publisher’s file copy with their ink stamp to title page.
£50
MARSHALL, Bruce. The Uncertain Glory.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935
Octavo. Original black cloth. With the dust jacket. In the dust jacket with a faded spine, light chip to rear top edge and top end of spine. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. Publisher’s file copy with their ink stamp to half title.
£125
MAURIAC, Francois. Vipers’ Tangle.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1933
Octavo. Original black cloth. With the dust jacket. In the dust jacket with faded spine, wear to extremties, shallow chip to lower end of spine. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. Publisher’s file copy with teir ink stamp to title page.
£125
MEADOWS, Catherine. Friday Market.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1938
Octavo. Original black cloth. With the dust jacket. In the lightly sunned dust jacket. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. Publisher’s file copy with their ink stamp to title page.
£150
MOLONY, William O’Sullivan. New Armour For Old.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935
Octavo. Original black cloth. With the dust jacket. In the lightly soiled dust jacket with sunning to spine. A very good copy.
First UK edition, first impression. An Autobiography.
£85
MOON, Lorna. Dark Star.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1929
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in black and red, red top-stain. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled, edges lightly foxed; an excellent copy in the jacket with some shallow chips and nicks to extremities.
First UK edition, first impression. it was first published in the US earlier the same year. From the publisher’s archive, with their stamp to the title page.
£750
NEWTON CHANCE, John. The Devil in Greenlands – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine red, illustrated endpapers. With the dust jacket. Boards gently bowed, faint foxing to edges; an excellent copy in the jacket with sunned spine.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their stamp to the front panel of the jacket, the front endpapers and title page.
£325
NEWTON CHANCE, John. Rhapsody in Fear.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1937
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine red. With the dust jacket. Spine rolled, text block foxed to edges; an excellent copy in the jacket with sunned spine.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their stamp to the front panel of the jacket, the front pastedown, and title page.
£325
O’FLAHERTY, Liam. Hollywood Cemetery.
London: Gollancz, 1935
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in green. With the dust jacket. Spine lightly bumped at head and very gently rolled. An excellent copy in the dust jacket sunned on the spine and with a small chip at the foot.
First edition, first impression; the only edition in English (Czech and Italian translations appeared in 1936 and 1943 respectively), this the publisher’s retained copy, with their ink-stamp to the half-title. O’Flaherty wrote Hollywood Cemetery while in Los Angeles preparing the script for motion picture The Informer, for which he won an Academy Award. Scarce in this condition with the dust jacket.
£375
OKE, Richard. Frolic Wind.
London, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1929
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine green. With the original dust jacket. Some spotting to endpapers, but elsewhere a clean and bright copy in the dust jacket with just a few small nicks to edges, and some small stains to both panels. An excellent copy.
First edition, first impression. The publisher’s file copy with their stamp to the front panel of the dust jacket and front free endpaper, and small pencil annotations to jacket.
£250
OWEN, John. Many Captives – SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1930
Octavo. Original black cloth lettered in yellow. With the dust jacket. Offsetting to endpapers in the dust jacket with sunning to spine, publisher’s pencil note to front panel, ink number to rear panel. A very good copy.
First edition first impression.The publisher’s file copy with their ink stamp to the half title.
£45
OWEN, John. The Shepard and the Child.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1929
Octavo. Original black cloth lettered in yellow. With the dust jacket. Spotting to pages, in the toned dust jacket with large chip to top of spine, light chipping to lower end of spine, soiling to panels, publisher’s pencil notation to front panel, ink number to rear panel. A good copy.
First edition first impression.The publisher’s file copy with their ink stamp to the half title.
£25
PAUL, Leslie. Men in May – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1936
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in green. With the dust jacket. Spine very gently rolled, light spotting to fore edge. An excellent copy in the spine-sunned dust jacket.
First edition, first impression of the author’s first novel, based on the General Strike of 1926. The publisher’s file copy, with their ink-stamp to the title-page and pencil-mark to the front panel of the dust jacket.
£275
PERRY, Tyline. The Owner Lies Dead – SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1930
Octavo. Original black cloth lettered in red. With the dust jacket. Occasional spotting to pages, front hinge starting, in the dust jacket with faded spine, light soiling to panels, publisher’s pencil notation to front panel, ink number to rear panel. A very good copy.
First edition first impression.
£200
PHELAN, Jim. 10-A-Penny People – SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1938
Octavo. Original blue cloth, title to spine blue. With the dust jacket. In the dust jacket with light sunning to spine, publisher’s pencil mark to front panel and ink number to rear panel. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to half title page.
£150
PHILLIPS, Wendell.
Qataban and Sheba. Exploring Ancient Kingdoms on the Biblical Spice Routes of Arabia – SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1955
Octavo. Original dark red cloth-textured boards, titles and vignette to spine gilt. 32 photographic plates, 5 diagrams to the text, double-page sketch map to centre of volume, map endpapers. An excellent copy in the bright dust jacket.
First edition. “In the spring of 1950 Wendell Phillips, a young palaeontologist turned explorer and archaeologist, led the first American archaeological team to excavate the major ancient cities along the spice routes of South Arabia. The project was sponsored by the American Foundation for the Study of Man (AFSM), which was founded by Phillips in 1949” (Potts, ed. Araby the Blest: Studies in Arabian Archaeology, p. 91). They excavated Timna, the ancient capital of the Qataban kingdom, and Marib, the Sabaean city believed by some to be the Sheba of the Old Testament. Scarce in this condition with the dust jacket.
£325
POLLACK, William. Talking About Cricket.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1941
Octavo. Original blue cloth. With the dust jacket. Mild fading to cloth along edges in the toned dust jacket with wear along top edges, publisher’s pencil note to front of panel. A very good copy.
£75
POWELL, S. W. A South Sea Diary.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1942
Octavo. Original blue cloth. With the dust jacket. black and white photographs throughout. Wear to extremities, tiny chip to mid rear panel, publisher’s ink number to rear panel and pencil note to front panel. A very good copy.
First edition, first impression. Publisher’s file copy with their ink stamp to title page. Travel narrative of an Englishmen who went to Tahiti and purchased a coconut plantation.
£65
SAYERS, Dorothy L. Begin Here. A War-Time Essay.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1940
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in gilt. With the dust jacket. Dent to front board, boards mottled; a very good copy in the jacket with toned spine and some nicks to extremities.
First edition, first impression, of the author’s essay written with the purpose of suggesting “to a few readers some creative line of action which they, as individuals, can think and work towards the restoration of Europe.” (Preface).
£125
SAYERS, Dorothy L. The Devil to Pay.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939
Octavo. Original blue cloth, title to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Spine a little faded, an excellent, bright copy in the mildly toned jacket.
First trade edition, first impression. It was preceded by the first acting edition printed for the first production of the play at Canterbury in June 1939. The publisher’s file copy, with their inkstamp to the front panel of the dust jacket, front pastedown, and title page.
£375
SAYERS, Dorothy L. The Man Born to be King. A Play-Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Written for Broadcasting. Presented by the British Broadcasting Corporation Dec. 1941–Oct. 1942. Producer: Val Gielgud – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1943
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Mildly toned contents; an excellent copy in the jacket with toned spine and some nicks to extremities.
First edition, first impression. From the publisher’s archive, with their inkstamp to the title page.
£175
SITWELL, Edith. I Live Under a Black Sun. A Novel.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1937
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With the dust jacket. Foot of spine and upper outer corner of front board very lightly bumped. An excellent copy in the spine-sunned and lightly soiled dust jacket.
First edition, first impression of Sitwell’s first novel, “based on the life and loves of Jonathan Swift” (ODNB). The publisher’s retained copy with their ink-stamp to the half-title. Scarce in the dust jacket.
£275
(SOVIET RUSSIA; FRENCH POLITICS.) HERRIOT, Edouard. Eastward from Paris. Translated by Phyllis Megroz.
London: Victor Gollancz, 1934
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Spine bumped and creased, boards slightly bowed, some foxing to contents. A very good copy in the jacket with some nicks to edges, and shallow chip and short closed tear to foot of spine.
First edition, first impression of the book in which the thrice-elected Premier recounts his visit to Soviet Russia in the summer of 1933. Herriot largely avoids political issues in his narrative, and instead presents himself as an enquiring traveller. The book was first published in Paris earlier the same year under the title Orient. From the publisher’s archive, with their stamp to the front panel of the jacket and front pastedown.
£65
STRAHAN, Kay.
Footprints – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1929
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine orange. With the dust jacket and green wraparound band. Spine rolled, small bump to foot of front board; an excellent, bright copy in the jacket with toned spine.
First UK edition, first impression. It was first published in the US earlier the same year, and won the USA Scotland Yard Prize for the best detective story of the year. From the publisher’s archive.
£375
STRAHAN, Kay Cleaver. Death Traps.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1930
Octavo. Original black cloth lettered in red. With the dust jacket. Front hinge cracked, offsetting to end papers, in the dust jacket with light soiling to panels, light shelf wear, publisher’s pencil notation to front panel and ink number to rear panel. A very good copy.
First edition first impression. The publisher’s file copy with Archive stamp to half title.
£150
STRAHAN, Kay Cleaver. October House.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1931
Octavo. Original black cloth lettered in red. With the dust jacket. Occasional spotting to pages, in the dust jacket with chip to front top edge and top end of spine, creasing and several inch closed tear to lower end of spine and lower front panel. A good copy.
First edition first impression. The publisher’s file copy.
£75
TAYLOR, Gay. No Goodness in the Worm.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1930
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in green. With the dust jacket. Spine-ends lightly bumped, even strip of browning to each free endpaper as usual. An excellent copy in the dust jacket with a sunned spine lightly rubbed at the extremities.
First edition, first impression, the publisher’s retained copy with the corresponding pencil-mark to the front panel of the dust jacket. The author’s first novel, also published in the US later the same year, was partly based on her illicit relationship with writer A. E. Coppard. Taylor, born Ethelwyne Stewart McDowall, married Harold Taylor in April 1920 and with him co-founded the Golden Cockerel Press, together publishing Coppard’s first collection of short stories, Adam and Eve Pinch Me, in 1921 (ODNB).
£475
TEILHET, Darwin and Hildergarde. The Broken Face Murders. A Baron von Kaz Detective Story – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1940
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in orange. With the dust jacket. Scattered faint mottling to spine and rear board. A very good copy in the spine-sunned dust jacket with a blue ink-stain to the foot of the rear panel.
First UK edition, first impression, the publisher’s retained copy with their ink-stamp to the title-page. Originally published in the US earlier the same year, this first UK edition is highly uncommon in this condition with the dust jacket.
£225
TEILHET, Darwin and Hildergarde. The Crimson Hair Murders. A Baron von Kaz Detective Story – BOOK SOLD
London: Victor Gollancz 1937
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in orange. With the dust jacket. Edges lightly foxed, faint spotting to margins of prelims. An excellent copy in the bright dust jacket.
First UK edition, first impression, the publisher’s retained copy with their ink-stamp to the front pastedown, title-page and front panel of the dust jacket. Originally published in the US the previous year, this first UK edition is represented in only five copies in libraries worldwide (of which two in the British Library), and is considerably scarce in commerce in this condition with the dust jacket.
£500
52 WOLFERT, Ira. Tucker’s People.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1944
Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With the dust jacket. An excellent copy in the jacket with sunned spine and some nicks to extremities.
First UK edition, first impression of this novel about a New York gangster. First published the previous year in the US. From the publisher’s archive with their stamp to the front panel of the dust jacket, the front free endpaper, and the title page.
£250
Here at Peter Harrington Dover Street we like to showcase the very best in rare books, encompassing everything from the keenest heights of political economy to the most nostalgic depths of children’s literature. There really are some astounding things here and, since it would be a little selfish to keep them all to ourselves, we have decided to share a special selection of three exceptionally interesting items every week with the wider world. I hope you enjoy reading about these books from time to time – you can click through from the picture to the full entry on our website, where you can also browse our entire gallery and rare book stock. Additionally, if you find yourself in the area, please drop by 43 Dover Street and I’d be happy to show you around.
Moon in Aquarius; Mars in Leo; Saturn in Libra; Venus in Taurus; or, yours Zodiacally, W. B. Yeats [#78199]
Yeats’s obscure but excellent Stories of Red Hanrahan is one of my favourites. In it Yeats, ever the hungry mythographer, conjures up his own folkloric figure, a wandering poet (or “gleeman”), the passionate, bitter and generally out-on-his-arse Owen Hanrahan, and sends him careering across ancient Ireland, loving, hating, drinking, grubbing food, stealing wives and weaving both spells and curses with his magic words. It’s worth a read. Fourteen years later, in The Tower (1928), Yeats would remember his creation in some of his best lines:
“I myself created Hanrahan
and drove him drunk or sober through the dawn
…
He had but broken knees for hire
and horrible splendour of desire”.
As such, it was a great privilege when I was thrown a first edition of this book (Dun Emer Press, 1904), inscribed by Yeats himself, and was asked to decode the inscription:
Plainly enough it was inscribed to a Mrs Worthington “from her friend the writer, with pleasant memories of the Hudson”. The recipient was an American society hostess, and W.B. would have met her on his American literary tour. No surprise, really – Jack Yeats described her as “a sort of duchess over here”, and W.B. had a thing for aristocrats. The trouble, or the fun, came with the symbols beneath Yeats’s signature:
A layman might recognise in the first a moon (or banana), and perhaps in the fourth and seventh the standard signs for Male and Female. After some time engaged in that feverish process of alchemical research whereby the bookseller turns from layman into professor, I worked out that these symbols were astrological. They are comprised of four sets of two – with four celestial bodies and four zodiacal signs. The male and female ones are in fact Mars and Venus, and the whole set reads thus: Moon in Aquarius, Mars; Saturn in Libra; Venus in Taurus. The third character is hard to decipher, but the seven provide enough information to find the link to Yeats – these are the zodiacal positions of the celestial bodies as they were on June 13th 1865, which was Yeats’s birthday, making this his Zodiacal signature. Anyone who knows about Yeats’s dealings with the Golden Dawn, who understands the obsession with alchemy that governed Yeats’s imagination in the second phase of his life as surely as the gods of Gaelic folklore had governed it in the first, or who has read A Vision (1925, in which he codified in particular how one’s astrological birthmark dictates the thematic arc of one’s life), will appreciate the resonance of this inscription. We know of no other book so inscribed.
“His eye fell on the yellow book” (from The Picture of Dorian Gray) – a superb first edition copy in the original yellow wrappers of A Rebours by Joris Karl Huysmans [#59280]
One of the especially innervating experiences of working in this world is that you occasionally run across real copies of books that you had only hitherto encountered within other books – the whole thing tends to bring the world of fiction that much closer to reality, which is probably not healthy. Nevertheless, here at Dover Street we have a little yellow book – unremarkable, perhaps, except that this is the “yellow book” that “absorbed” Oscar Wilde’s character Dorian Gray into a world of utterly abandoned sensual decadence. The yellow wrappers were used in Paris to signify lascivious content, and, by the time Wilde was writing The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Huysman’s A Rebours (1884) had become the notorious archetype of such books. It tells of a Parisian aristocrat who devotes his life to aesthetic experimentation. He keeps, as two infamous examples, a garden of poisonous flowers and a jewel-encrusted tortoise (which eventually dies under the weight of its decorations). I shall give you Wilde’s incantation of it here:
“His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He … flung himself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed. It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.”
All bit sickly perhaps – but thankfully the book is locked behind glass, and I have only schoolboy French, so I should be safe.
“The Devil can speak quite bad French very well though some who have heard him say that he has a strong Dublin accent” – The Cat and the Devil, by James Joyce [#99491]
James Joyce is not generally known as a children’s book author (though once can tell perhaps from the opening lines of A Portrait of the Artist that he had a feel for it). He did, however, write just such a book, The Cat and the Devil, which told of a small Loire-side town’s pact with the Devil, and how it resulted in an unlikely feline friendship. It was written especially for his grandson Stephen, and was never published in his lifetime. This is the first UK edition, wittily illustrated by Gerald Rose, and would make a great gift for Joyce-freaks, cat-lovers, and Satanists alike.
It may be the most loved Christmas Story ever written. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was a bestseller when it was published in 1843, and has never been out of print. It has inspired hundreds of stage and film adaptations and has influenced the way people around the world view Christmas. Dickens wrote four other Christmas books in the years following, yet none of them had the same impact. What makes A Christmas Carol so special?
In February of 1843, Charles Dickens and his friend the Baroness Burdett-Coutts became interested in the Ragged Schools, a system of religiously-inspired schools for the poorest children in Britain. Bourdett-Coutts had been asked donate to them, and she requested that Dickens visit the school at Saffron Hill and report back to her. The author, having experienced poverty and child labour himself, was deeply concerned with its elimination, and believed that education was an important way to achieve this. But he was shocked by what he saw at Saffron Hill. “I have seldom seen”, he wrote to Bourdett-Coutts, “in all the strange and dreadful things I have seen in London and elsewhere, anything so shocking as the dire neglect of soul and body exhibited in these children” (Mackenzie, Dickens, pp. 143-44).
All that year the Saffron Hill children stayed in Dickens’ mind, and he briefly considered writing a journalistic piece on their plight. Then in October, while visiting a workingmen’s educational institute in Manchester, he suddenly thought of a way to address in fiction his concerns about poverty & greed, and A Christmas Carol was born. Once back in London, Dickens began writing “at a white heat” (ODNB), telling his friend Cornelius Felton that while composing he “wept and laughed and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner… and thinking whereof he walked about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles many a night when all the sober folks had gone to bed” (Letters of Charles Dickens, Macmillan & Co., 1893, pp. 101-02).
It was a deeply personal and cathartic experience. Though Dickens hoped to elicit concern for poor children, represented in the story by Tiny Tim, he also wrote from a darker place. He had grown up poor and was still acutely conscious of money, never feeling comfortable that he had enough (one of the reasons he wrote A Christmas Carol was to increase his earnings during a slow period). And yet he distrusted the instinct to hoard it, and donated much to the needy. It was from these anxieties that he created Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the greatest examples of redemption in all of literature, with a life story remarkably similar to Dickens’. Scrooge is Dickens imagining “what he once was and what he might have become” (Ackroyd, Dickens, p. 412).
Dickens finished writing in only six weeks, though he was also working on Martin Chuzzlewit, and celebrated “like a madman” (Letters, p. 102). He arranged with Chapman & Hall to publish the story on a commission basis, giving him the freedom to design the book to his own high standards. Bound in pinkish-brown cloth, it included elaborate gilt designs on the cover and spine, as well as gilt edges, hand-coloured green endpapers (which were later changed to yellow because the green tended to rub off), four coloured etchings, and four uncoloured engravings. Despite the expense of printing and binding such a volume, the price was set at a low five shillings, which contributed to its popularity.
A copy of the first edition of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843).
As soon as it appeared, A Christmas Carol was “a sensational success… greeted with almost universal delight” (ODNB). William Makepeace Thackeray called it, “a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness” (Fraser’s Magazine, February 1844). Published only a week before Christmas, six thousand copies sold by Christmas Eve, with sales continuing into the New Year and a pirated edition also selling briskly, much to Dickens’ dismay.
A Christmas Carol struck such a chord because it was informed by Dickens’ own troubled life, his ambivalence toward the wealth he was accruing as a successful author, and his deeply held beliefs about goodness, charity, and the sin of institutionalized poverty. His skill as an author was drawing from the world around him, and from within himself, universal themes that have resonated with millions of readers across the years. Indeed, there seems to be something for almost everyone, at every time, in this little book. As the novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd put it,
A Christmas Carol takes its place among other pieces of radical literature in the same period… But clearly, too, there are many religious motifs which give the book its particular seasonal spirit; not only the Christmas of parties and dancing but also the Christmas of mercy and love… But it combined all these things within a narrative which has all the fancy of a fairy tale and all the vigor of a Dickensian narrative. There was instruction for those who wished to find it at the time of this religious festival, but there was also enough entertainment to render it perfect ‘holiday reading’; it is rather as if Dickens had rewritten a religious tract and filled it both with his own memories and with all the concerns of the period. He had, in other words, created a modern fairy story. And so it has remained. (Ackroyd, p. 413.)
There are many great YouTube clips from film versions of A Christmas Carol. Here’s Patrick Stewart in his acclaimed role as Scrooge, in this scene meeting Marley’s ghost for the first time. And, wonderfully, the 1935 film starring Seymour Hicks is available in its entirety.
Rare first edition of The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence, 1915.
The story of the 1960 trial of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel of sexual awakening, is well known. But fewer are aware of the circumstances surrounding one of the author’s earlier books, The Rainbow, which was nearly as controversial as its successor.
Methuen published The Rainbow in September 1915, but quickly withdrew it from sale in the face of almost universally hostile reviews and impending prosecution. “Its religious language, emotional and sexual explorations of experience, and sheer length had given its readers problems, but it was Ursula’s lesbian encounter with a schoolteacher in the chapter ‘Shame’ which had finally condemned it in the eyes of the law and of a country now focused on conflict” (ODNB). At Bow Street magistrates’ court on November 13 it was banned as obscene, with the result that half of the print run of 1250 copies was destroyed.
One of the copies that survived is the one depicted above, which we recently acquired (BOOK SOLD). What makes this copy evocative of the time and circumstances is that the original owner cut from the Times an account of the book’s suppression and pasted it on to the inside of the rear cover, as if to say, “This copy and I are part of this”:
Newspaper account of the suppression of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, pasted into the back of a first edition.
As an account of the attempted destructed of ideas the report dire, and the circumstances almost destroyed Lawrence’s writing career. But, given the end result for his novels and literary reputation, I think we can allow ourselves a little chuckle at the authorities’ expense. Here’s the complete text of the piece:
At Bow-street Police Court on Saturday, Messrs. Methuen and Co. (Limited), publishers, Essex-street, Strand, were summoned before Sir John Dickinson to cause why 1,011 copies of Mr. D. H. Lawrence’s novel “The Rainbow” should not be destroyed. The defendants expressed regret that the book should have been published, and the magistrate ordered that the copies should be destroyed and that the defendants should pay £10 10s. costs.
Mr. H. Muskett, for the Commissioner of Police, said that the defendants, who were publishers of old standing and recognized repute, offered no opposition to the summons. The book in question was a mass of obscenity of thought, ideas, and action throughout, wrapped up in language which he supposed would be regarded in some quarters as an artistic and intellectual effort, and he was at a loss to understand how Messrs. Methuen had come to lend their name to its publication. Mr. Muskett read extracts from some Press criticisms of the work and continued that upon the matter being brought to the notice of the authorities a search warrant was at once obtained. This was executed by Detective-inspector Draper, who was given every facility by the defendants. He seized a number of copies of the book at their premises and afterwards obtained other copies from the printers, Messrs. Hazell, Watson, and Viney.
A representative of Messr.s methuen said that the agreement to publish the book was dated July, 1914. When the MS. was delivered it was returned to the author, who at the defendant’s suggestion mad ea number of alterations. The firm did not receive it back until June 4 last and again they protested against certain passages. Other alterations were then made by the author, after which he refused to do anything more. No doubt the firm acted unwisely in not scrutinising the book again more carefully, and they regretted having published it.
The Magistrate, in making an order as above, said it was greatly to be regretted that a firm of such high repute should have allowed their reputation to be soiled, as it had been, but the publication of this work, and that they did not take steps to suppress it after the criticisms had appeared in the Press.
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