Some foxing, notably heavy to preliminary pages in vol.II; some rubbing and bumping, crease to one lower cover.
Plates and maps.
£750
A record of travel & exploration
London, Constable, 1922.
First edition. 2 vols, 8vo. Original dark green cloth lettered in gilt to spines.
A travel narrative: Philby describes his expedition across central Arabia (from the Arabian Gulf via Al Uqayr, through the desert, meeting Ibn Sa’ud in Riyadh, then crossing towards the Red Sea, arriving in Jeddah at end-1917).
Out of stock
Some foxing, notably heavy to preliminary pages in vol.II; some rubbing and bumping, crease to one lower cover.
Plates and maps.
Detective Fiction
London, Constable, 1924.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6, with publisher's 'file' sticker to spine. Publisher's promotional card loosely inserted.
A tale of mild villainy and opportunism featuring a parasitical couple on the fringes of cosmopolitan society. Attractive jacket artwork by A. Mary Ryland.
Detective Fiction
Keverne (Richard, pseud. Clifford James Wheeler Hosken) Crook Stuff.
Some stories of crime and detection
London, Constable, 1935.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6 (reissue?).
The first of Hosken's short story collection under this pseudonym, and is relatively scarce with the original Youngman Carter dust-jacket.
London, Constable, 1912.
First edition, first impression. Inscribed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10/6.
A travel narrative of a journey through the Carpathian mountain region, of interest as a pre-First World War account of a part of Central Europe that would soon be radically transformed.
Modern Literature
A novel
London, Constable, 1935.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.
Naomi Mitchison's most controversial and long-suppressed novel, drawing on her 1932 visit to the Soviet Union to treat contraception, abortion, rape and sexual politics with a candour few 1930s publishers would touch. Victor Gollancz refused it outright, warning that "publication of the book would cause a real outcry"; it was passed over elsewhere, extensively rewritten and toned down, and reached print only through Constable - and even then the government privately weighed a prosecution, as files declassified in 2005 revealed. A landmark of interwar feminist and socialist fiction, uncommon in the first edition in jacket.
Non-Fiction
London, Constable, 1937.
'New edition'. 8vo. Original cloth.
First published in 1922, Belloc's controversial study argues that the Jews constitute not a minority religion but a separate nation.