Literature
Rare and first edition literature from Peter Harrington. On our shelves you'll discover rare poetry, English, American & modern literature, pre-1900 rare books, plays, world literature and much more.
From the blog: Nightingales and Roses: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Video: [PUTTENHAM, George.] The Arte of English Poesie. 1589.
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LINTON, Charles Ellsworth. The Earthomotor and Other Stories.Salem, OR : 1920
First edition, first printing, inscribed in pencil by the author on the front free endpaper, "To the Nat Hosp. Assoc. with best wishes of the author Dr. C. E. Linton". The utopian science fiction stories included in the collection are largely set in Alaska and the Arctic region. The stories relate tales of technological advancements that allow the protagonists... Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 139395
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MORRIS, William. Some Hints on Pattern-Designing.London : 1899
First edition, this copy in an attractive "Glasgow Style" art nouveau binding believed to be by Mary E. Sim, the rear turn-in stamped "M.S. 1905". Sim worked in the Glasgow area and her designs were published in The Studio and the Art Journal. The "Glasgow Style" was influenced by the arts and crafts movement and many of the tenets... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 139750
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WAUGH, Evelyn. Mexico. An Object Lesson.Boston : 1939
First US edition, first printing. With the author's presentation slip, tipped into the front endpaper, reading, "For H. A. Rappaport Evelyn Waugh". H. A. Rappaport was an eccentric American bibliophile, who had a habit of hand printing or binding offprints of his favourite author's works and sending them to the authors in exchange for presentation copies... Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 112497
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DOYLE, Arthur Conan. The Valley of Fear.London : 1915
First English edition, of the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel. Though the first English edition is preceded by the American edition published four months previously, it is far less common, with some 20,000 fewer copies issued in Britain. Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 122702
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[DE LA MARE, Walter.] RAMAL, Walter Songs of Childhood.New York & Bombay : 1902
First edition, first impression, of de la Mare's first book, presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "Walter de la Mare for Elbridge Adams with his best wishes" accompanied by the final stanza of his poem "The Buckle", "I had a secret laughter, I laughed it near the wall:, Only the ivy & the wind, May tell of it at... Learn More£850.00Stock Code: 126987
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PRITCHETT, V. S. The Spanish Temper.New York : 1954
First US edition, first printing, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to his parents on the front free endpaper, "To my dear father and mother, with love from Victor. April 15th '54". Published the same year as the London edition, Pritchett's study on Spain, which has elicited comparisons with Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, was based on the four... Learn More£225.00Stock Code: 140545
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DANTE ALIGHIERI. The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.London : 1819
Second and best edition of one of the most important translations of Dante of the Romantic era, following the very scarce first edition which appeared in 1814 in such a diminutive format that it was barely legible.
"In January 1797 Cary began his translation of Dante's Divina commedia into blank verse. He started with the Purgatorio in 1797-8, but... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 139502
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HOUSMAN, A. E. Autograph letter signed.1898
Housman answers one of his early fan letters: "Dear Sir, I am much obliged by your kindness in writing to me, and glad that my verses have pleased you. I am yours faithfully A. E. Housman". The letter dates two years after Housman had published A Shropshire Lad, his first and at that stage only book (excepting one university pamphlet). A second edition... Learn More£2,750.00Stock Code: 133590
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SCHUYLER, James, & Helena Hughes. Collab.New York : 1969
First edition, limited issue, one of 200 unnumbered copies. Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 140172
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WHITE, Gleeson, & Charles Shannon, eds. The Pageant.London : 1896-7
First editions, first impressions. All published of a typically unfeasible 1890s venture, an artistic and literary collaboration between the "Rhymers' Club" decadents and the pre-Raphaelite aesthetes, and others, including work by Max Beerbohm, Robert Bridges, Edward Burne Jones, Charles Conder, Walter Crane, Austin Dobson, Ernest Dowson, Richard Garnett,... Learn More£400.00Stock Code: 140450
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POWELL, Anthony. The Garden God.London : 1965]
Typescript of Powell's fantastical play The Garden God, set on an archaeological dig in Greece. The play was set to be produced in 1965 by Willie Donaldson; however, after several extensive lunches, Donaldson abruptly dropped the project and the play failed to be staged. The typescript has the stamp of Powell's theatrical agent Margery Vosper... Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 140152
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SCHUYLER, James. A Sun Cab.New York : 1972
First edition, limitied issue, one of 300 unnumbered copies, of which 26 were lettered A-Z and signed by the poet and the artist. Learn More£125.00Stock Code: 140170
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HUXLEY, Aldous. Brave New World.London : 1932
First edition, signed limited issue, number 88 of 324 copies signed by the author and specially bound. Learn More£6,000.00Stock Code: 131326
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CONRAD, Joseph. Victory.London : 1915
First UK edition, presentation copy inscribed on publication by Conrad, "To Caroline and Arthur Marwood from J. Conrad 1915" on the front free endpaper. Conrad met Arthur Marwood through their mutual friend Ford Madox Ford, who later based the hero of Parade's End, Christopher Tietjens, on Marwood's life and character.
Marwood was evidently a loyal... Learn More£7,500.00Stock Code: 131484
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HUGHES, Ted. Collected Animal Poems.London : 1995
Number 73 of 292 uncorrected proof copies, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to his son on the limitation page, "For Nicholas, Many beasts that escaped the albion, and some that didn't, love Daddy". This copy is from the library of Frieda Hughes, daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, though unmarked as such. Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 126477
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DURRELL, Lawrence. Justine.London : 1957
First edition. The first novel in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, and certainly the most difficult to find in nice condition. Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 127417
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TROLLOPE, Anthony. Kept in the Dark.London : 1882
First edition in book form. It was first published serially in Good Words from May to December 1882. The first US edition was Harper's, in the usual single-volume format, published just after the UK edition, in late September 1882. Learn More£615.00Stock Code: 128315
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DUNSANY, Edward Plunkett, Lord. Time and the Gods.London : 1922
Signed limited edition, number 61 of 250 copies, signed by Sime on each plate and by Dunsany on the preface. Only the first edition of 1906 and this 1922 edition contains illustrations by Sime. A close collaborator with Dunsany, Sime illustrated Dunsany's first book The Gods of Pegāna (1905) as well as a number of his later works. Time... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 128456
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DE LA MARE, Walter. The Three Mulla-MulgarsLondon : 1910
First edition, first impression, uncommon in the dust jacket; with a typed letter signed by de la Mare to a Mr Caulfield, declining amusingly an invitation to speak at the Gryphon Club, "any paper I could offer would be far too long and of the flat-back, hard-seat Victorian chair variety, and nothing of the armchair discourse in it which is the only... Learn More£450.00Stock Code: 128564
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SITWELL, Osbert. Left Hand, Right Hand! An Autobiography. [Together with a first edition of Passage to India.]London : 1945-1950
First editions, presentation copies, each volume inscribed and signed by Sitwell to E. M. Forster on the half-title, each beginning "For Morgan" and dated, vol. I with the additional epithet "With affection and admiration" and vol. III "whose only fault is his invisibility". Each volume bears Forster's booklabel to the front pastedown. In a 1954 letter... Learn More£2,500.00Stock Code: 112546
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ORWELL, George. Inside the Whale.London : 1940
First edition, first impression, of the first book-form publication of the essays of Orwell, often cited as among the finest English essayists of the 20th century. Besides the title essay about Henry Miller, the volume includes his studies of Charles Dickens and Boy's Weeklies. The print run was a 1,000 copies, of which some were destroyed in an air... Learn More£9,500.00Stock Code: 122898
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WODEHOUSE, P. G. The Gold Bat.London : 1904
First edition, first issue with two pages of adverts. Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 122911
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WAUGH, Evelyn. Black Mischief.London : 1932
First edition, large paper issue, out of series from 250 numbered copies, the dedication copy to Mary Lygon, inscribed by the author on the limitation page: "For Sweet Blondy with much love from BOAZ housed within swastika device". The book was dedicated to Mary and her sister Dorothy Lygon. Although known to her friends as Maimie, Lady Mary Lygon was... Learn More£15,000.00Stock Code: 123779
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WAUGH, Evelyn. Vile Bodies.London : 1930
First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author in the year of publication "Evelyn Waugh, London, 1930". Vile Bodies was Waugh's second novel. Learn More£6,000.00Stock Code: 124299
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JOYCE, James. Ulysses.London : 1936
First UK edition, first impression. The entire edition was limited to 1,000 copies, of which this is number 104 of 900 copies on japon vellum (a further 100 were printed on mould-made paper and signed). The Bodley Head Ulysses established the text for the succeeding 25 years and printed as appendices the International Letter of Protest against Samuel... Learn More£6,500.00Stock Code: 106878
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WAUGH, Evelyn. The Curse of the Horse Race.[1932]
The author's own proof sheets of his contribution to the 1932 work, "Little Innocents". Inscribed by Waugh to Diana Cooper on the reverse of the final leaf, "the Lady Diana Cooper 202", with the author's further annotation adding his age of 7 to the first page.
A very rare, if not unique, individual issue of Waugh's first piece of fiction, written... Learn More£6,000.00Stock Code: 112489
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WAUGH, Evelyn. Edmund Campion.London : 1935
First edition, signed limited issue, number 45 of 50 copies signed by Waugh "for private distribution". Learn More£4,000.00Stock Code: 112493
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WAUGH, Evelyn. Put Out More Flags.London : 1942
First edition, first impression. Further adventures of the incorrigible Basil Seal, who previously featured in Waugh's novel Black Mischief. Seal is "fondly expected by his sister, his mother and his mistress to "make good" in wartime" (blurb). Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 112499
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[BLOXAM, John Francis.] The Priest and the Acolyte.1907
First edition thus; the copy of Anthony Powell, with his bookplate to the front pastedown. Originally published anonymously in The Chameleon in December 1894, this was mistakenly attributed to Oscar Wilde and was included in his libel case against the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895. In this edition Mason refutes the erroneous authorship and quotes widely... Learn More£450.00Stock Code: 103926
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CONRAD, Joseph. Victory.London : 1915
First UK edition, presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the front endpaper, "To Sir Sidney and Lady Colvin with great affection from J.C. 1915". Sir Sidney Colvin had been Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge and Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum between 1884 and 1912. He was introduced to Conrad by... Learn More£8,500.00Stock Code: 93580
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WODEHOUSE, P. G. Quick Service.London : 1940
First edition, first impression. Learn More£750.00Stock Code: 94917
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(DULAC, Edmund) STEVENSON, Robert Louis. Treasure Island.London : 1927
First Dulac edition, signed limited issue, number 45 of 50 copies signed by the illustrator, bound in vellum and printed on handmade paper, and notably rare due to the unusually small limitation. Hughey describes Dulac's watercolour illustration for Treasure Island as his "most careful and superb painting", and Dulac himself considered them... Learn More£7,500.00Stock Code: 98341
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CONRAD, Joseph. The Secret Agent.London : 1920
Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Catherine Willard from her friend Joseph Conrad 1st Jan 1921". Catherine Willard (1898-1954) was a noted screen actress and leading lady. She met Conrad in about 1920 through her mother, Grace, who was an interior designer and helping the Conrads furnish their new home, Oswalds,... Learn More£3,750.00Stock Code: 93578
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VONNEGUT, Kurt, Jr. Slaughterhouse-FiveNew York : 1969
First edition, first printing, of Vonnegut's best known novel. Though infused with science fiction elements, the plot centres on the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945 which Vonnegut himself experienced. Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 139811
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MIÈVILLE, China. The City & The City.London : 2009
First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the title page in the year of publication, "To Terry, 'mendacious & delusive streets' - Schulz, China Mieville, 9/6/09". The quote is from the book's epigraph, taken from Bruno Schulz's The Cinnamon Shops and Others Stories, "Deep inside the town there open up, so to speak, double streets,... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 139392
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MORRIS, Kenneth. The Secret Mountain.London : 1926
First edition, first impression, in the scarce dust jacket, of the author's second book, and his only collection of short stories to be published in his lifetime, attractively illustrated with striking "symbolic designs" by Towndrow. Ursula le Guin named the Welsh novelist Morris (1879-1937) one of the three great prose stylists of modern fantasy, his... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 138975
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VANCE, Jack. The Dying Earth.San Francisco : 1976
First hardcover edition, first printing, signed by author and inscribed by the illustrator on the title page "To Terry, Best always, George Barr".
Vance wrote his first instalment in the Dying Earth series during the Second World War, while he served in the United States Merchant Marine, and it was first published, in wrappers, in 1950.... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 138947
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WOLFE, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.New York : 1968
First edition, first printing, inscribed, of the author's most enduring and influential work, recording the LSD-fuelled adventures of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, aboard the colourfully painted bus named "Further", driven by Neal Cassady. This copy is inscribed by Wolfe on the front free endpaper, "For Kup! The fastest mind in the West and now... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 138847
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DAWSON, Jennifer. The Ha Ha.London : 1961
First edition, first impression. The Ha-Ha was Jennifer Dawson's first novel, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Based on Dawson's own experiences, the novel tells of a young woman's struggle with mental illness following a hallucination at a university tea-party where she experiences her peers as "even-toed ungulates... files of... Learn More£675.00Stock Code: 137387
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HESSE, Hermann. Steppenwolf.London : 1929
First edition in English, first impression. It was first published in its original German in Berlin, 1927, before its translation into English by Basil Creighton. Now a classic of international literature, in its time Der Steppenwolf was castigated by the Nazis as a corrupting force for its depiction of a disaffected outsider and his lapse... Learn More£675.00Stock Code: 137164
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GLOAG, John. Manna.London : 1940
First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "G. L. Pilkington from the author. Mar. 1940". The recipient was Geoffrey Langton Pilkington (18851972) chairman of the glass manufacturers Pilkington, for whom Gloag worked as a board member (Sadar, p. 95). Gloag (1896-1981) was a prolific science... Learn More£650.00Stock Code: 137210
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HEANEY, Seamus. Beowulf.London : 1999
First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page. Heaney's translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, which he dedicated to the memory of Ted Hughes (1930-1998), won the 1999 Whitbread Book of the Year award. Learn More£550.00Stock Code: 135703
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LEWIS, C. S. Till We Have Faces.London : 1956
First edition, first impression, of Lewis's retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, a work first referred to in his diary in 1923, but not finished for a further three decades. Finally written in a "full flush of inspiration... it was certainly his most unexpected book, and his greatest tour de force; to many readers, and probably to himself, his... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 132184
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COLLIER, John. Tom's A-Cold. A Tale.London : 1933
First edition, first impression. Presentation copy from the author to Edith Sitwell, inscribed on the front free endpaper: "My dear Edith, This is a rather uncertain venture into a new genre. I fear you will not find it possible to look so kindly on it as you did my last, but I am still your most devoted, most enthusiastic admirer, John Collier". A... Learn More£675.00Stock Code: 126769
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HOUSMAN, A. E. Autograph letters to Professor Donald Robertson.Cambridge : 1920-36
An exceptional collection of autograph letters signed from poet and classicist A. E. Housman (1859-1936) to Donald Struan Robertson (1885-1961 - a stellar Greek scholar attached to Trinity College, Cambridge, from his undergraduate days until his death) and his wife. He was particularly respected for his work on Apuleius, and was Regius Professor of... Learn More£10,000.00Stock Code: 119798
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HOBAN, Russell. Riddley Walker.London : 1980
First edition, first impression, presentation copy inscribed by Hoban on the title page to fellow writer John Baxter (b. 1939). Hoban's vision of post-nuclear-apocalpyse England returned to Iron Age levels of civilisation, and speaking a similarly crude language, won the book "a unique and beloved place among the few after-Armageddon classics". Harold... Learn More£475.00Stock Code: 94342
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DUNSANY, Lord. Time and the Gods.London : 1906
First edition, first impression, of this influential fantasy text, with a four-page autograph letter signed from the author to William Roughead tipped-in to the front free endpaper, and Roughead's bookplate to the front pastedown. Roughead (1870-1952) was a Scottish lawyer and popular true crime author with whom Dunsany shared a long-held correspondence... Learn More£675.00Stock Code: 139315
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(SCOTT, Walter.) REMY, Nicholas. Daemonolatreiae libri tres,Lyon : 1595
Rare first edition of this seminal work on the worship of demons, Sir Walter Scott's copy, with his ownership inscription on the title page and his library shelf mark on the front free endpaper: "Abbotsford Library O13". Scott's fascination with witchcraft led him to spend years gathering "perhaps the most curious library of diablerie that man ever... Learn More£27,500.00Stock Code: 123052
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LACROIX, Paul. Science and Literature in the Middle Ages, and at the period of the Renaissance.London : 1878
First edition in English, first published in Paris the preceding year. The rich illustrations by German printmaker Franz Kellerhoven (1814-1872) are a fine example of 19th-century colour lithography. "Paris in the latter part of the nineteenth century had seen a rise in popular medievalism The rise of chromolithography made it possible to expand the... Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 140595
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ARNOLD, Matthew. Poetical Works.London : 1910
Handsomely presented copy of Arnold's complete poems, first published in 1890, this being the 14th impression. Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 140552
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LEWIS, Norman. The Volcanoes Above Us.London : 1957
First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the front free endpaper. Learn More£200.00Stock Code: 140480
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WILDE, Oscar, & Henry-D. Davray (trans.) Ballade de la Geôle de Reading.Paris : 1898
First edition in French, with the original English text facing the translation. It was first published in the same year in London under the pseudonym "C.3.3." after Wilde's cell in Reading Gaol (cell 3 on the third landing of Gallery C). The first edition sold out rapidly, and a second edition was printed within weeks. Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 140497
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OWEN, Wilfred, & Jon Stallworthy (ed.) The complete poems and fragments.London & Oxford : 1983
First edition, review copy, with the loosely inserted publishers' review and press release sheets, of wartime poet Wilfred Owen's works. The first collection of Owen's poems was published two years after his death, in 1920, with an introduction by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), and was followed by another in 1931, edited by the poet Edmund Blunden (1896-1974).... Learn More£450.00Stock Code: 140499
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THOMAS, Dylan. Conversation About Christmas.New York : 1954
First separate edition, first impression, printed as a Christmas gift for friends of James Laughlin, founder and director of New Directions. This work was first published as an article for Picture Post on 27 December 1947. It was reprinted in A Prospect of the Sea in 1955. Learn More£125.00Stock Code: 140526
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DICKENS, Charles. Barnaby Rudge;London : 1841
First separate edition. Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 140190
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GRAY, Thomas. An Elegy.Chicago & New York : [c.1900]
An attractive edition of Gray's Elegy in a charming unsigned contemporary binding. Gray's Elegy was originally published privately by Horace Walpole in June 1750 and distributed amongst his connections in the fashionable classes. It was then published for the public in a quarto pamphlet on 15 February 1751; "the poem was an instant... Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 139593
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(GONNE, Maud, illus.) YOUNG, Ella. Celtic Wonder-Tales.Dublin : 1910
First edition, first impression, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the original front free endpaper "To John Varian, With Greeting from Ella Young", and with over ten annotations in ink by Young.
The recipient, John Osborne Varian (1863-1931), was an Irish-American poet and a leader within the theosophist utopian community of Halcyon,... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 139842
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(EDGEWORTH, Maria.) SCOTT, Sir Walter. The Miscellaneous Prose Works.Edinburgh : 1827
A set in the original boards with a fine association, presented to Maria Edgeworth from Sir Walter Scott, and then from Edgeworth to her beloved brother-in-law Richard Butler; the first edition of Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works, comprising all but the second volume (the Life of Swift) of the six-volume set.
Passing first from Scott to... Learn More£3,500.00Stock Code: 139864
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(WILDER, Thornton Niven). The Memorial Service.Battell Chapel : 1976
First edition, sole impression, inscribed by Wilder's sister Isabel on the front panel "For Peter & Kenneth, remembering Thornton's affection & admiration for Bart & the many memories we share with affection Isabel Feb - 24, 1977", and with a manuscript note also from Isabel laid-in loose "and ALWAYS greetings & affection to Jan from Isabel Wilder".... Learn More£175.00Stock Code: 140296
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WALLER, John, et al. The Cherwell, Vol. LIX, No. 7.1940
First edition, sole impression, John Waller's own copy, inscribed and double signed by him on the front cover "John Waller My copy. Ruth Douglas published my poems and he was the greatest illegible... John Waller". John Waller was an English author, poet and journalist, and a member of the Cairo poets during the Second World War Learn More£125.00Stock Code: 140314
