Weird & Supernatural
and other stories of the supernatural
London, John Murray, 1903.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original green pictorial cloth lettered in gilt to spine.
A notable collection of American ghost stories by Mary E. Wilkins (later Wilkins Freeman), whose work brought psychological depth and New England atmosphere to supernatural fiction; a respected voice in late-Victorian/Edwardian weird literature. Wilkins is now recognised as a key work in the tradition that fuses domestic realism with the ghost story, frequently cited in modern horror and fantasy bibliographies.
Detective Fiction
London, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1924.First edition, first impression. 8vo. 12 page publisher's catalogue at rear. Original cloth.Eleven early short stories highlighting Hercule Poirot's emerging methods and mannerisms.
Detective Fiction
London, W. Collins Sons, 1929.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Facsimile dust-jacket.
A collection of linked short mysteries featuring Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, taking over a detective agency and gleefully pastiching contemporary crime-fiction styles.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
The first full-length novel to feature Miss Marple, as a village murder exposes layers of gossip, deceit and social tension in St Mary Mead...
Detective Fiction
London, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1924.First edition, first impression. 8vo. 6pp. advertisements. Original cloth.A fast-moving thriller in which independent heroine Anne Beddingfeld uncovers murder, stolen diamonds and political conspiracy from London to South Africa.
American Literature
London, Heinemann, 1954.First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.Settle's debut novel, an acid satire about a wealthy, small-town theatrical group manipulated by a charismatic, wheelchair-bound director, blending elements of Southern Fiction and historical fiction with sharp social commentary. It marks the starting point of a career that would later encompass the acclaimed "Beulah Quintet," for which Settle won the National Book Award.
Modern Literature
London, Longmans, Green, 1955.
First edition, second impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A London-set novel exploring class, sexuality and shifting post-war morals, characteristic of Freeman's sharp observational style; she later gained notoriety for The Leather Boys (1961), a landmark in queer British fiction.
Children's Books
London, Longmans, Green, 1896.First edition. Landscape 4to. Original cloth-backed pictorial boards.The second book in the series by the Uptons, and considered by many one of the most collectable, understandably perhaps given it also features bicycles.
Children's Books
London, Longmans, Green, 1903.
First edition. Landscape 4to. Original cloth-backed pictorial boards.
One of the later titles in the Uptons' illustrated picture-book series featuring the character Golliwogg and a troupe of dolls, following their adventures as they join and attempt to run a circus. Written by Bertha Upton and illustrated by her daughter, Florence K. Upton, whose bold chromolithographs were widely praised. The series played a notable role in turn-of-the-century children's book design.
Children's Books
London, Macmillan, 1902.
First edition. Small 4to. Original pictorial red cloth.
A collection of whimsical origin tales, including 'How the Leopard Got His Spots' and 'The Elephant's Child', written and illustrated by Kipling.
or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions
London, Rest Fenner, 1817.
First edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 19th century half morocco with marbled boards.
Coleridge's somewhat divisive fusion of autobiography, literary criticism and German Idealist philosophy, reflecting on the origins of Lyrical Ballads, the nature of imagination, and the principles of poetry.
American Literature
New York, Macmillan, 1918.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original pictorial boards, rebacked in later plain board. Facsimile dust-jacket.
A posthumous collection of short stories, the title piece following a naturalist's encounter with a mysterious extraterrestrial artefact in the South Pacific, blending adventure with emerging sci-fi themes.
London, Hutchinson, 1915.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Title printed in red & black. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 6s.
Albanesi was a popular bestselling novelist of the early twentieth century, highly readable, though never canonised, and early first editions in jacket are distinctly uncommon.
Illustrated Books
London, J.M. Dent, 1902-3.'The Temple Classics' edition, 5th edition. 4 vols. Small 8vo. Original dark blue cloth, spines gilt, upper cover blind-stamped.An attractive multi-volume edition of Malory's Arthurian classic; Dent of course were the publishers of Beardsley's famous 1890s edition.
Thriller Fiction
Verne (Jules) The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century
London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1880.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original brown cloth stamped in black and lettered in gilt.
A substantial non-fiction work surveying major voyages of discovery, Cook, Bougainville, La Pérouse and others, combining Verne's narrative flair with detailed geography, maps and illustrations.
London, Robert Hale, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
One of a handful of thrillers by Edwards published before the Second World War, with the uncommon Youngman Carter jacket.
Horror & Gothic
London, Heinemann, 1909.
First edition. 8vo. Original deep red cloth titled & decorated in gilt & black.
Most other works by Stoker tend to suffer somewhat in the shadow of the monolith that is Dracula, and The Lady of the Shroud is in this category; a brisk and enthusiastic foray into disquieting spectres and family obsessions that opens with an excerpt from "The Journal of Occultism" in a rather trademark Stoker fashion.
War, Invasion & Spy
London, Sampson Low, [1936].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Early reissue dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A scarce espionage novel set against rising international tensions, from an author also noted for the thriller Deadman's Bay.
Modern Literature
London, André Deutsch, 1972.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The first edition of this pivotal work in Naipaul's career, for which he won the Booker Prize.
Detective Fiction
New York, Random House, 1943.First US edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $2.50.A psychologically driven mystery-thriller which seemed to excite both its UK & US publishers as much as its readership... One of around twenty novels by British writer Chris Massie, best known for Corridor of Mirrors, adapted for film in 1948, the cinematic debut of Christopher Lee.
American Literature
and the first forty-nine stories
London, Jonathan Cape, 1939.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Collecting Hemingway's only full-length play, set amid espionage and moral conflict in the Spanish Civil War, alongside nearly all of his short stories published to that date, this volume is central to understanding his influence on 20th-century short fiction.
American Literature
London, Jonathan Cape, 1952.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial boards. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
A symbolic tale of endurance and dignity, one of Hemingway's late masterpieces and the work that secured his 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
American Literature
New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $2.50.
Following Florida fishing-boat captain Harry Morgan's descent into smuggling and violence during the Depression, Hemingway blends social critique with his spare, hard-edged style; it is his only novel set largely in the United States and reflects the economic dislocation of the era.
Detective Fiction
a mystery London, Cassell, 1945.First UK edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6.One of Gerald Heard's key works of fiction under (in the US) his crime-writing pseudonym H.F. Heard, sitting alongside the Mycroft Holmes novels and The Great Fog in blending mystery with philosophical and psychological unease; it was lauded in contemporary reviews, including the New York Times, as a 'psychological horror story…of spine-tingling originality and excellence.'
Detective Fiction
London, Heinemann, 1960.First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 16s.A dark, enigmatic psychological mystery surrounding a missing girl, treading '...the same crepuscular territory that Henry James explored in The Turn of the Screw' (jacket blurb).
Biography
A biography
London, Ernest Benn, 1933.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A biography of Edith Nesbit, pioneering author of The Railway Children, Five Children and It and other classic children's fantasies, examining her literary output, Fabian politics, unconventional domestic life and influence on later writers.
Modern Literature
O’Brian (Patrick, pseud. Richard Patrick Russ) The Wine-Dark Sea
London, HarperCollins, 1993.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The sixteenth novel in O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series continues Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin's maritime adventures during the Napoleonic Wars, here voyaging across the Pacific with espionage, pursuit and scientific intrigue.
Victorian Literature
or, The Parish Boy's Progress
London, for the author by Bradbury & Evans, 1846.
First one-vol. edition, 'A New Edition, Revised and Corrected'. 8vo. Original blind-tooled cloth stamped in gilt to upper cover and spine. Presented in 19th century leather-backed cloth solander, spine gilt.
An attractive example of the first one-volume edition of Dickens' second novel, following orphan Oliver from the grimness of the workhouse into the criminal underworld of London, confronting poverty, exploitation, and corruption before eventual rescue. Uncommon, especially in such good condition.