Books
Browse our collection of rare books, first editions, signed editions and valuable printed books, written by the world's greatest authors, in a wide range of subjects.
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ARDIZZONE, Edward (illus.); FORDHAM, Hallam (ed.) Hey Nonny Yes.London : 1947
First edition, first impression. An illustrated pocket anthology of "charming, rude, or delightfully odd" phrases and expressions from the Bard's plays. Learn More£75.00Stock Code: 143783
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BERESFORD, Charles. The Break-Up of China.London : 1899
First edition. Lord Beresford (1846-1919), a naval officer and MP, was sent by the Associated Chambers of Commerce on an investigative mission to China in 1898-9. The Break-Up of China is the resulting report, analysing the state of trade in China and advocating 'British reassertion of the "open door", and Chinese reforms, and warning against the Russian... Learn More£225.00Stock Code: 143576
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KEATS, John. The Poetical Works.London : 1854
A lovely copy of the first edition of Keats's poetical works with the memoir by Victorian poet and politician Richard Monckton Milnes, author of "Life and Letters of Keats" (1848). Edward Moxon, himself also a poet, was well known for his scholarly editions of Romantic and Victorian poetry. Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 143618
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ADAMS, Charles Kendall; John Alden. Representative British Orations.New York and London : 1900
An attractively bound set. With the bookplate of Woodrow Wyatt (1918-1997) - British politician, published author, journalist and broadcaster. The author, Charles Kendall Adams (1835-1902), was an American historian, who served as both the second president of Cornell University (1885-1892) and president of the University of Wisconsin (1892-1901). Learn More£225.00Stock Code: 143638
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POPHAM, Sir Home. Telegraphic Signals;London : 1812
First issued privately by Popham in 1801, this is the first edition published with Admiralty approval and is extremely uncommon: Library Hub locates only the British Library copy, OCLC adds copies at the National Maritime Museum, MIT and the US Naval Academy. Popham's was the first fully-developed, comprehensive flag signalling system for the Navy,... Learn More£4,500.00Stock Code: 143641
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LOW, Charles Rathbone. Battles of the British Army.London : 1901
A handsomely bound copy. Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 143643
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DICKENS, Charles. Bleak House.London : 1853
First edition, bound from the original parts as issued between March 1852 and September 1853. "The satire of Bleak House focuses on the obfuscations and delays of the court of chancery which result in widespread human misery and suffering, but the novel's complicated plot and centripetal organization bring into the picture a great cross-section of contemporary... Learn More£850.00Stock Code: 143645
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KAYE, John William. The Administration of the East India Company; A History of Indian Progress.London : 1853
First edition. "I offer this volume to the public as a contribution to the general stock of information relating to India and her affairs - information which, in the present juncture, it is very desirable to possess. It contains much that is scattered over a great number of printed books, and much besides that is not to be found in any printed books"... Learn More£600.00Stock Code: 143646
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[GRIDER, John McGavock.] War Birds.New York : 1926
First edition, first printing. With an original presentation watercolour by the illustrator, depicting a French biplane shooting down a German aircraft, inscribed by the artist "Clayton Knight to Norman Swan". The drawing, executed on a half-title sheet from a different copy of the book, is loosely inserted. Clayton Knight (1891-1969) was himself an... Learn More£350.00Stock Code: 136503
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LIARDET, Francis. Professional Recollections of Points of Seamanship, Discipline, &c.Portsea : 1849
First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to Queen Victoria on the front free endpaper: "Presented to Her Most Gracious Majesty by one of Her most devoted servants the Author. Dec. 17th - 1851".
Francis Liardet (1798-1860) entered the navy in 1809 as a second class volunteer on the Mercury. By the age of 14 he had seen service... Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 139373
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BORRADAILE, Colin, as Ben Assher. A Nomad Under Arms.London : 1931
First edition, first impression, of this "oddly written but rewarding" memoir (Lengel). Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 140884
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FERMOR, Patrick Leigh. Mani, Travels in the Southern Peloponnese; [together with] Roumeli, Travels in Northern Greece.London : 1958 & 1966
First editions, first impressions, of the author's celebrated travelogue of Greece, described as "two of the best travel books of the century" (Financial Times).
Although perhaps best known for his great walk from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul in 1935, Fermor was also a committed Hellenophile who devoted much of his life his adopted country.... Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 142883
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GOREY, Edward. Gorey Posters.New York : 1979
First edition, first printing. The posters include some of Gorey's best known characters, with works from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Curious Sofa, The Doubtful Guest, and others. Learn More£45.00Stock Code: 143269
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WELSH, Irvine. Filth.London : 1998
First edition, first impression. Signed on the title page by Irvine Welsh and inscribed by Welsh on the pornographic dust jacket "Authorized by me, Irvine Welsh". The pornographic dust jacket is limited to 50 copies hand numbered, and was sold with signed first editions of the book. Blurb on the jacket states that it is not authorized by author or... Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 143304
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ACTON, Eliza. Modern Cookery, in all its Branches:London : 1845
First edition, with the advertisements dated January 1845. Modern Cookery established Eliza Acton as the first of the modern cookery writers. This first edition is notably uncommon with just six copies traced institutionally worldwide, four of which are held in the UK.
This copy has the appealing signs of use, with a number of recipes... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 132125
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CHURCHILL, Winston S. The Second World War.London : 1948-54
First editions of Churchill's masterpiece, the single most important historical account of the Second World War. As Max Beloff observed, there was no statesman of the twentieth century "whose retrospective accounts of the great events in which he has taken part have so dominated subsequent historical thinking". A man who had always primarily made his... Learn More£2,000.00Stock Code: 129157
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HOBBES, Thomas (trans.); THUCYDIDES. The History of the Grecian War: in eight books.London : 1676
Second edition of Hobbes's translation, the first made into English directly from the Greek, originally published in 1629. Though Hobbes was then in his early 40s, it was his first printed work. It was reissued twice, in 1634 and 1648, and Hobbes prepared this second edition towards the end of his life. "Forty years later, in Vita Carmine Expressa,... Learn More£5,000.00Stock Code: 128690
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TOYNBEE, Arnold J.; C. A. Macartney et al. Survey of International Affairs 1920 - … 1926London : 1926-8
First editions. An interesting run of the BIIA's annual volumes, offering a comprehensive survey of the global political situation in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Compiled by Toynbee in his capacity as Research Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, and Director of Studies at the British Institute of... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 143860
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STEADMAN, Ralph (illus.); CARRICKFORD, Richard. This is Television.London : 1967
First edition, third impression, with a postcard laid-in from Steadman, "To whom..... sic This is Television, 1958. I haven't seen this book for over 40 years - 1958. It was a commission I got by accident. I had a small studio space in London, when I worked for Kemsley Newspapers. The office belonged to Alex Harrison, a literary agent. One of his authors... Learn More£200.00Stock Code: 143838
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THOMPSON, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.San Francisco, CA : 1973
First edition, first printing, in which "Thompson took the increasingly popular journalist-covers-campaign-coverage genre to an extreme in a garishly opinionated, gaudily caustic blast at journalism, politics, and politicians" (ANB). Learn More£450.00Stock Code: 143839
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SIEG, Harvey W. The ABC of Wall Street.New York : 1939
First edition, first printing. A guide to the history and functioning of Wall Street for investors without specialist knowledge, including a detailed glossary of financial terms and lists of contemporary stock exchange members. The book covers the general history of the exchange and features chapters on important corporate players like the "railroad... Learn More£200.00Stock Code: 143840
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LOCKER, Frederick. London Lyrics.London : 1881
First edition, large paper issue with frontispiece and illustration (not present in the ordinary issue); "Austin Dobson made the selection for the privately printed edition, and prefixed the prefatory sexain... very few copies were printed" (Murray); the attractive presswork was by the Chiswick Press. London Lyrics was first published in 1857, and went... Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 143842
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WHITMAN, Walt. Good-Bye My Fancy.Philadelphia : 1891
First edition, sole printing, in binding variant A, a deep red V cloth, with the frontispiece in style 1 without the caption, one of 1,000 copies printed in May of 1891. An exceptional copy, with the priority varieties, of the separate issue of Whitman's "annex to Leaves of Grass". Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 143843
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DEFOE, Daniel. A Tour Thro' the whole Island of Great Britain, Divided into Circuits or Journies.London : 1724-25-27
First edition. Defoe's Tour is the first and best known of a series of respected books written by him on broadly economic subjects.
A Tour "has been lauded by the most eminent historians as a prime source of understanding for Britain", both in the 18th century and in "the birth of the modern on a global scale" (Pat Rogers, The Text... Learn More£4,750.00Stock Code: 143795
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SUEZ CANAL - VETCH, James. Inquiry into the Means of Establishing a Ship Navigation between the Mediterranean and Red Seas.London : 1843
First edition. Uncommon, this copy inscribed "from the Author" to the Institute of Civil Engineers on the title page. Vetch was a Royal Engineers officer who served in the Peninsular War and from 1819 to 1823 was employed on the Ordnance Survey, surveying in Ireland, Orkney and the Shetlands. Subsequently he worked for the Birmingham and Gloucester... Learn More£850.00Stock Code: 143835
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PIPER, John. Buildings and Prospects.London, : 1948
First edition, first impression, with a bookplate signed by John Piper to pastedown. Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 143837
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SEWELL, Anna; KEMP-WELCH, Lucy (illus.) Black Beauty.London : 1941
A handsomely bound copy of Black Beauty with Lucy Kemp-Welch's illustrations which were first published in 1915. This copy forms part of The King's Treasuries of Literature and was first published in this format in 1920. Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 143657
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DIDEROT, Denis. Œuvres philosophiques et dramatiques.Amsterdam : 1772
First edition of Diderot's collected philosophical and theatrical works. It is rare to find a complete set as each volume has both a collective title page and its own, and could have been sold separately.
There were two editions of published in Amsterdam that year, the other being the octavo-format edition of Marc Michel Rey, though the present... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 128660
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SHAKESPEARE HEAD PRESS: SPENSER, Edmund. The Works.Oxford : 1930
Shakespeare Head Edition, number 183 of 375 sets printed on handmade paper and bound thus, with hand-coloured woodcuts by Hilda Quick. The edition, with the text newly prepared, is one of the Press's crowning achievements, this being a particularly appealing unopened copy. A further eleven copies were issued on vellum.
Hilda Quick (1895-1978)... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 142984
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CHRISTIE, Agatha. Dead Man's Folly.London : 1956
First edition, first impression. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Carlo, from Agatha, Jun. 1956". The recipient was Charlotte ("Carlo") Fisher (1895-1976), with her retrospective book label to the front pastedown. Fisher was Christie's secretary, close friend, and amanuensis, with whom she wrote several major... Learn More£2,750.00Stock Code: 143027
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CHRISTIE, Agatha. Hercule Poirot's Christmas.London : 1939
First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "from Agatha Christie". The novel "brings together two of the favourite devices of the thriller writer of the period, the country-house party and the locked-room murder, to stunning effect" (Wagstaff & Poole, p. 153). Learn More£3,000.00Stock Code: 143563
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LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth. The Poetical Works.London : [c.1890]
A highly attractive copy of Longfellow's poetry, in a superb binding, anonymous though very much in the Sangorski & Sutcliffe style with elaborate use of coloured morocco inlay to a floral pattern. Learn More£475.00Stock Code: 143687
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DU PRAISSAC, Sieur. The Art of Warre, or Militarie discourses of leavying, marching, encamping; and embattailing an armie.Cambridge : 1639
First edition in English, John Cruso's translation of Les discours militaires (first edition, Paris 1614), one of a series of military works by Cruso that were the first to make the new continental, primarily Dutch, military literature available to an English-speaking audience.
John Cruso (fl. 15951655) was the son of parents who had fled Flanders... Learn More£3,250.00Stock Code: 139405
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DIDEROT, Denis. Œuvres philosophiques et dramatiques.Amsterdam : 1772
First edition of Diderot's collected philosophical and theatrical works. It is rare to find a complete set as each volume has both a collective title page and its own, and could have been sold separately.
There were two editions of published in Amsterdam that year, the other being the octavo-format edition of Marc Michel Rey, though the present... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 141232
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WILKINS, John. Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger:London : 1641
First edition of "the first book on cryptology in English" (Kahn, p. 870), guiding the reader through the many ways to disguise their messages, including letter ciphers, but also by using points, lines, mathematical symbols, and musical notation.
Wilkins explains how the letters of the alphabet can each be represented by five bits and thus transmitted,... Learn More£2,500.00Stock Code: 140377
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BRONTË, Charlotte. The Professor, a Tale.London : 1857
First edition. This is one of 719 copies noted by Smith as being thus bound up "on or before 30 June 1859" (p. 162). The Professor was written before Jane Eyre (1847) and originally submitted to publishers along with both Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, then independently, and rejected many times; eventually it... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 139007
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BRONTË, Charlotte, Emily, & Anne. The Works.London : 1949
The Heather edition, handsomely bound by Baytun Riviere. The Heather edition was arranged and introduced by Phyllis Bentley (1894-1977), novelist and expert on the Brontë family. Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 136650
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DINET, Alphonse-Étienne, & Sliman Ben Ibrahim. The Life of Mohammad The Prophet of Allah.Paris : 1918
Limited edition of 875 numbered copies of which this number 74. Alphonse-Étienne Dinet (1861-1929), a French-born and Paris-trained painter, lived and worked for almost fifty years in Algeria. His conversion to Islam in 1908 was made formal in 1913. This is one of many collaborative works he produced with Sliman Ben Ibrahim, who originally served as... Learn More£2,000.00Stock Code: 136218
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DAHL, Roald. The Enormous Crocodile.London : 1978
First edition, first impression, of the first of Dahl's works to be illustrated by Blake. Learn More£3,250.00Stock Code: 135664
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LONDON, Jack. The Call of the Wild.New York : 1903
First edition of this classic of childhood literature, set in the Klondike Gold Rush and inspired by Egerton Ryerson Young's book My Dogs in the Northland, published the previous year. Learn More£2,250.00Stock Code: 135747
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CAVAFY, C. P. The Poems.London : 1951
First edition, first impression, of the first translations of Cavafy's collected poems into English, translated by John Mavrogordato (1882-1970, Oxford professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek), published by the Hogarth Press, and now quite scarce. Constantine P. Cavafy (1864-1933) is now acknowledged as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century,... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 135772
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SHEPARD, Ernest H. (illus.); GRAHAME, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows.London : 1931
Signed limited edition, number 115 of 200 large paper copies signed by both Grahame and Shepard. Wind in the Willows was first published in 1908 with only a frontispiece for illustration, and Shepard, well-known by then for his illustrations of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh series, was asked to illustrate a new edition, following on from Milne's popular... Learn More£7,500.00Stock Code: 135649
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GOLDING, William. Lord of the Flies.London : 1954
First edition, first impression, of Golding's first and best known novel. Learn More£2,750.00Stock Code: 135373
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BLIXEN, Karen. Out of Africa.London : 1937
First edition, first impressiono of Blixen's masterpiece, her memoir of her 17 years in British East Africa. Learn More£2,250.00Stock Code: 135374
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RANSOME, Arthur. Swallows and Amazons.London : 1931
First fully illustrated edition, published a year after the first edition. Ransome disliked the proposed illustrations by Steven Spurrier for the first edition, and it had been issued only with a frontispiece. Learn More£2,950.00Stock Code: 133864
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LOWTHER, George. The Adventures of Superman.New York : 1942
First edition, first printing. This book is the first novelization of a comic book character, and also the first Superman story credited to someone other than Jerry Siegel. It was Lowther who first provided many now-familiar details of Superman's birth and early life. Learn More£2,750.00Stock Code: 134335
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WILDE, Oscar. Salome. Drame en un acte.Paris & London : 1893
First edition, trade issue. One of 600 copies in this issue, there were also 50 copies printed on handmade paper. Composed by Wilde in French and not published in English until the following year. A lovely copy of this delicate publication. Learn More£2,000.00Stock Code: 133806
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GRAHAME, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows.London : 1908
First edition, first impression, of Grahame's children's classic. Learn More£3,750.00Stock Code: 133863
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![[The Pooh books:]](https://d3dzzbbvj9im7s.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/cache/ae0834d12b7cf129fc73bcc000ea526a/1/3/133547_3.jpg)
MILNE, A. A. [The Pooh books:]London : 1924-8
First editions, first impressions. When We Were Young is a first first state, with the contents page ix unnumbered and also has a presentation stamp to the title page. The little bear described by Christopher Milne in his autobiography as his "inseparable companion" has also become the inseparable companion of generations of children, often remaining... Learn More£9,750.00Stock Code: 133547
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SEUSS, Dr. The Cat in the Hat.New York : 1957
First edition, first issue. Learn More£2,750.00Stock Code: 132903
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TWAIN, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.Hartford : 1876
First US edition, first printing, printed on wove paper, versos of half-title and preface blank. "The irresponsibility, the love of odd adventure, and the sense of natural justice as opposed to the village code, which characterize the heroes of this book and its sequel Huckleberry Finn, presented a sharp contrast to the Sunday School or rags-to-riches... Learn More£8,750.00Stock Code: 132079
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DULAC, Edmund (illus.); Edward FitzGerald (trans.) Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.London : [1909]
First Dulac edition, first impression. Learn More£2,000.00Stock Code: 132279
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HUXLEY, Aldous. Brave New World.London : 1932
First edition, first impression. A fantastic example of the Chelsea Bindery's work. Learn More£2,500.00Stock Code: 132469
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KIPLING, Rudyard. Just So Stories.London : 1902
First edition, first impression of Kipling's famous collection of twelve stories and twelve poems, including "How the Camel Got His Hump" and "How the Leopard Got His Spots." Learn More£3,000.00Stock Code: 132012
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BULGAKOV, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita.London : 1967
First Glenny edition, first impression. Although the Glenny translation was beaten to the press in 1967 by that of Mirra Ginsburg, Ginsburg had taken as her copy text the heavy bowdlerized Soviet version. This version is complete and remains the standard English translation of one of the 20th century's literary masterworks. Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 132074
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LAWRENCE, D. H. Women in Love.New York : 1920
Limited first edition of 1250 copies of which this is number 1198. Learn More£2,000.00Stock Code: 132076
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KAZANTZAKIS, Nikos. The Odyssey. A Modern Sequel.London : [1958]
First edition, first impression. Kazantzakis is best known for his critically acclaimed novels, Zorba The Greek, The Greek Passion, and Freedom or Death but it is his version of The Odyssey which is considered his crowning achievement. Learn More£1,375.00Stock Code: 131936
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ROWLING, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.London : 1997
First edition, first impression, with all the requisite points: Bloomsbury imprint, 10-down-to-1 number line, copyright Joanne Rowling, and the repeated "1 wand" on the list of equipment on p. 53. The first and most scarce of the Harry Potter books. Learn More£12,500.00Stock Code: 131696
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PASTERNAK, Boris. Doctor Zhivago.London : 1958
First English-language edition, first impression, of Pasternak's classic novel. First published in Italy in 1957, the original manuscript had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the same year. It was an immediate success and has been adapted to screen a number of times, most famously in the 1965 film adaptation staring Omar Sharif, Julie Christie,... Learn More£2,500.00Stock Code: 131737
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KIPLING, Rudyard; Maurice & E. J. Detmold (illus.) The Jungle Book.London : 1908.
First Detmold edition, and their most celebrated joint achievement. The Jungle Book was first published in 1894. Learn More£2,000.00Stock Code: 131834
