Weird & Supernatural
London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1901.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth.
A seemingly extremely rare collection of 'barrack room' short stories, some with supernatural content. Only four copies recorded in institutional holdings (all in the UK), and no records found at auction. An introductory note from the author reads:
"The following stories are chiefly based upon incidents and experiences connected with a rather lengthened professional career. It is hoped that the book may serve to enliven a dull hour, and may perhaps also enhance the widespread interest recently revived in all phases of military life. Some of the stories have already appeared in The United Service Magazine and The Church Monthly."
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Orbit, 1998.
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
An "attempt to write a Culture novel that wasn't", from the author of Consider Phlebas and (as Iain Banks) The Wasp Factory.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Macmillan, 1987.
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The first of Banks' Culture novels, Consider Phlebas launched the 'Culture' series of space operas for which he is best known today, in sci-fi circles at least, not least for the integration of sentient machines with humans and other organic lifeforms.
Modern Literature
London, Jonathan Cape, 1969.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Gysin was a painter and composer who collaborated with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs on many occasions. The Process was his first full-length novel.
Modern Literature
London, Phoenix House, 1950.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A novel about a man who has returned to the coal seams of Durham after a period spent away seeking education. The novel provided the inspiration for Alan Plater and Alex Glasgow's musical Close the Coalhouse Door.
Modern Literature
London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The first edition of Chaplin's most famous work, considered a classic of 'working class existentialism', set in Newcastle upon Tyne at the very beginning of the 1960s.
Detective Fiction
London, Ward, Lock, 1899.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth.
A collection of short detective and mystery stories by one of the most prolific crime writers of the late Victorian period.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Hamish Hamilton, 1940.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
A prolific playwright, drama critic and author active in English literary circles from around 1910. This ghost story is one of the author's few dalliances with the supernatural.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1945.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, unpriced suggesting intended for export.
An attractive edition of this later title by "the American Agatha Christie."
Horror & Gothic
A Gothic Story London, for Charles Dilly, 1780.Second edition. 8vo. Contemporary calf, rebacked in modern calf.One of the foundational texts of the Gothic novel. First published in 1777 as The Champion of Virtue, retitled for this 'second edition'. Reeve noted in the 1778 preface that "This Story is the literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto, written upon the same plan, with a design to unite the most attractive and interesting circumstances of the ancient Romance and modern Novel, at the same time it assumes a character and manner of its own, that differs from both; it is distinguished by the appellation of a Gothic Story, being a picture of Gothic times and manners." Rare.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Dent, 1919.
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
Rare. A collection of psychic tales, mostly dealing with astral projection, out-of-body experiences and, in some cases, travel to 'other worlds'. Allen Clarke (1863–1935), also known under the pseudonym Teddy Ashton, was primarily a working-class journalist and novelist of Lancashire industrial life.
Modern Literature
London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
A pivotal work in Simenon's development as a serious novelist, distinct from the Maigret series. Somewhat scarce in the Routledge UK first.
Modern Literature
London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
One of Simenon's romans durs (hard novels) rather than the Maigret detective series. The non-Maigret psychological fiction, often first published in English by Routledge & Kegan Paul, was widely regarded by critics as his most serious literary work.
Victorian Literature
London, Cassell, 1852.
First Cruikshank edition. 8vo. Later half green morocco on marbled boards.
A handsome example of this important early English edition, preceded by the Clark & Co. edition of 1852.
Modern Literature
A Romance
London, Cranley & Day, 1933.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
A tale of social realism set against the backdrop of a university town, published by a relatively obscure imprint. Uncommon.
The Final Mysteries of Exploration
London [&c.], Thomas Nelson, 1923.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.
A work of popular geography and exploration writing by the author of The 39 Steps, covering the remaining relatively unknown regions of the world as of the early 1920s, the poles, the depths of the ocean, the interiors of New Guinea and Arabia, and Everest (which had just been first attempted).
Thriller Fiction
London, The Modern Publishing Company, n.d. [1920].
Third edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 6/-.
One of only two (alongside Dinevah the Beautiful) non-supernatural novels O'Donnell published, making it something of an anomaly in his canon. Rare thus in a jacket.
Weird & Supernatural
A Two-Fold Romance
London; New York; Toronto, John Lane The Bodley Head; John Lane Company; Bell & Cockburn, 1914.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
A late, mostly epistolary novel set partly in the 20th century and partly in the 17th, involving communications between the bewitching Lady Venetia and a young archaeologist, with hints of the supernatural. Paget's last novel.
Detective Fiction
London, Robert Hale, 1964.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10/6.
A popular US author, writing twenty-two crime novels between 1942 and 1962, today best known for her thirteen-novel Gridley Nelson police detective series, about an empathetic Princeton-educated, private-income-blessed, prematurely white-haired New York City cop.
Modern Literature
Eastgate, Mackays, 1931.
First edition, first impression. Inscribed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A sequel to Dickens' unfinished work The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Inscribed by the author to the publicity manager for The Rochester Pageant.
American Literature
London, Michael Joseph, [1947].
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10/6.
Rare. The author's first novel, and a literary precedent, being the first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies. The story follows Lutie Johnson, a young Black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s.
London, J.M. Dent, 1946.
First edition, first impression. 16mo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3s6d.
The collection that established Thomas's reputation as the most important Welsh poet of the 20th century. It contains 'Fern Hill,' 'A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,' and 'Poem in October', ranked by many among the most celebrated poems in the English language.
Biography
London, Leonard & Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, 1928.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original patterned cloth with paper spine label.
An early and influential English-language critical essay on Proust by one of the central figures of the Bloomsbury Group. Bell was among the first British critics to engage seriously with Proust's work.
Modern Literature
London, Hutchinson, 1916.
First edition. 8vo. Original mauve cloth.
Rare. A novel completed by Frankau on her deathbed, about a female author on her deathbed who is inspired to write about the death of a female author.
Detective Fiction
London, Pilot Press, 1945.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
A mystery novel featuring Audemars's early series detective Hercule Renard, set in France. The second in the short-lived Renard series.
Modern Literature
Translated by Norman Cameron...and the original French text...
London, John Lehmann, 1949.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 15s.
Rimbaud's semi-autobiographical prose poem sequence, written at the age of 18-19 following the breakdown of his relationship with Verlaine. It constitutes a spiritual and artistic reckoning, a hallucinatory confession, rejection of his own poetic ambitions and farewell to literature. The Keith Vaughan lithographs provide the perfect accompaniment to the sequence, defining this edition as a significant illustrated book
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Frederick Muller, 1956.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A reworking of Clarke's earlier novella Against the Fall of Night (1948).
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
An enquiry into the limits of the possible
London, Gollancz, 1962.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 21/-.
Non-fiction essays where Clarke speculates on scientific and technological advances, from space flight and telecommunications to bioengineering, and coins the celebrated 'Clarke's Third Law' ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic").
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1973.
First edition. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced £2.00.
A near fine copy of one of Clarke's most important science fiction titles, subsequently extended to several sequels, written by Clarke and Gentry Lee.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1961.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A tightly plotted, optimistic near-future thriller.
Victorian Literature
Dickens (Charles); Edwards (Amelia) and others. Mugby Junction,
The Extra Christmas Number of All the Year Round
London, Chapman & Hall, 1866.
8vo. Original printed wrappers.
A composite work in which a disenchanted man pauses at a railway junction and experiences a series of encounters and ghost stories. The frame story is by Dickens; the interior tales were contributed by various authors including, notably, 'The Engineer' by Amelia Edwards and Dickens himself ('The Signalman' appears here in its first publication). Uncommon in the original wrappers.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1981.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Some 3,500 years after the events of Children of Dune, Leto II - now a vast worm-human hybrid - rules the galaxy as a tyrant, executing a millennia-long plan for humanity's survival.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1984.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Set 1,500 years after God Emperor, the Bene Gesserit and a new faction, the Honoured Matres, are in conflict as the effects of Leto II's "Golden Path" continue to unfold.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1978.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
On a sealed planet of extreme overcrowding, a human-Gowachin population has been subjected to a secret behavioural experiment by manipulative alien powers.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1985.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The final novel Herbert completed, in which the Bene Gesserit attempt to survive a galactic purge. Herbert died before writing the planned sequel.
Image of Britain 2
Austin, The University of Texas, Winter 1960 - Autumn 1961.
2 vols. 8vo. Original pictorial wrappers.
The first issue inscribed by the editor on the title-page; the second with inscribed post-it note from the same, both inscribed to 'Kathleen', the British novelist Kathleen Farrell, who contributed to the periodical, including the piece 'Colour on my mouth'. Farrell's papers are held by the University of Texas, Austin, and include drafts and notes for several unpublished novels and stories. Other contributors include Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
African literature
Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1966.
First edition. 8vo. Original wrappers.
An extended narrative poem in the voice of Lawino, a rural Acholi woman in Uganda, who laments that her husband Ocol has taken a Westernised mistress and abandoned his own cultural identity. The work founded what is now known academically as the "Okot School" or "East African Song School" of poetry.
![Alternative view of [New Writers Group]. New Writing from Zambia](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/88054_2-300x300.jpg)
African literature
Zambia, , September, 1964.
Vol.I No.I. 8vo. Original printed wrappers.
New Writing from Zambia was a foundational publication of Zambia's literary culture in English, started in 1964 just prior to Zambia's independence by the New Writers Group - a small cosmopolitan grouping of educationalists, journalists and enthusiasts eager to kick-start a Zambia-based literary culture in English. The journal ceased publication in 1975, during which period it published the works of more than 150 authors. The first issue includes contributions by E.M. Chipimo, Kelvin Mlenga, William Mukone and F.O. Bennett.