![Alternative view of Riddell (Mrs J.H. [Charlotte]) Idle Tales](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/87829_2-300x300.jpg)
Weird & Supernatural
London, Ward & Downey, [1888].
First collected edition. 8vo. Original red pictorial cloth lettered in gilt to spine.
"A general collection containing Riddell's fine supernatural short story, 'The last of Squire Enmismore'." (Shadows in the Attic, p.423).
Historical Fiction
A Romance of Life and Death
London, Hutchinson, 1895.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
Historical fiction by Irish journalist, novelist, dramatist and poet, Frankfort Moore. "The book abounds with Gothic passages steeped in ritual eroticism...Egyptomania and Egyptology; occult and cult form, and ancient cults as a sociological and religious history of gothic taste." (The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic, p.245)
![Alternative view of Volney ([Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de]) The Ruins:](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/87826_2-300x300.jpg)
or a survey of the revolutions of empires
London, for J. Johnson, 1792.
First edition in English. 8vo. Later calf backed marbled boards, lettered in gilt.
A landmark Enlightenment meditation on the cyclical rise and collapse of civilisations, arguing that empires fall through superstition, political corruption and the misuse of religious authority, rather than divine design. Through a pioneering comparative analysis of ancient religions, Volney treats Christianity as one mythic system among many, anticipating the Christ Myth thesis and establishing the work as a foundational text of modern secular history and comparative religion.
![Alternative view of [Erskine (Thomas, 1st Baron Erskine)] Armata:](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/87825_2-300x300.jpg)
A Fragment
London, John Murray, 1817.
Fourth edition. 8vo. Contemporary half calf.
An early and curious work of speculative fiction in which Thomas Erskine, former Lord Chancellor, imagines a hidden counterpart to the known world. Following a violent storm and shipwreck in the far southern seas, the narrator is cast upon the island of Armata, part of a parallel planet whose geography and civilisation mirror, yet subtly distort, those of Britain. Through this imagined society, Erskine constructs a utopian thought-experiment, using displacement and planetary doubling to explore questions of political order, social justice, war, and economic excess in the aftermath of the Napoleonic era. Part travel romance, part philosophical allegory, Armata stands as an early example of British proto-science-fiction, anticipating later nineteenth-century speculative and utopian narratives.
Weird & Supernatural
A Romance
London, Trischler & Company, 1891.
'Third Thousand'. 8vo. Original blue cloth, lettered & decorated in yellow.
A weird novel of supernatural possession in which the soul of the dead Countess Agnes Adrian, a femme fatale who has studied occultism in the East, displaces the soul of a young American actress; a kind of vampirism.
London, T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1923.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original gilt pictorial cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
An attractively illustrated book on the Ancient East.
London, Methuen, 1926.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
An attractively illustrated book on southern India.
Detective Fiction
from the Memoirs of Hudson of Harley Street
Glasgow, Fraser, Asher, 1923.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
The first edition in book form of these medical crime stories, which originally appeared in The Sunday Mail.
Detective Fiction
London, Wright & Brown, 1964.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10/6.
A letter that could trigger a new world war is the latest headache for Major "Brains" Cunningham.
Detective Fiction
London, Wright & Brown, 1966.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 12/6.
A Cuban crisis leads to Haitian horror for Major "Brains" Cunningham.
Detective Fiction
London, Wright & Brown, 1966.
First edition, first impression. Inscribed & signed by the author. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 12/6.
Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, 'I don't think the book deserves quite such an awful cover! With best wishes E.P. Browne / 1966'.
Detective Fiction
London, Robert Hale, 1970.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 21/-.
This UK hardcover collects two novellas, Border Town Girl and Linda, originally published as paperback originals in 1956. The stories combine rustic Florida settings with MacDonald's signature social undercurrents.
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1945.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 9/6.
Every full moon, a Ripper runs amok on the streets of Brentford. Masters Simon and Keith Innes set out to catch the killer under the disturbing guidance of the repellently delightful sleuth, Mrs. Bradley.
Sports & Pastimes
London, Leonard Stein, 1931.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.
An anthology of English sporting stories.
![[Creeps series], Tales of Death, first edition, 1936](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/87808-300x300.jpg)
![Alternative view of [Creeps]. Tales of Death.](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/87808_2-300x300.jpg)
Weird & Supernatural
A collection of uneasy tales
London, Philip Allan, 1936.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
Published by Philip Allan as part of the celebrated 'Creeps' series, Tales of Death gathers macabre and supernatural stories from multiple authors under excellent editorial guidance, extending the interwar tradition of shilling shocker anthologies.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Philip Allan, 1935.
First edition, early issue. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
'Tales from a land which is still veiled by occult powers where things are felt but not seen. Unusual and uncanny happenings by a well-known Oriental writer' (jacket blurb). An uncommon title from the Allan stable, who also produced the 'Creep' series.
![[Arthur W. Marchmont], Isa. A novel, in two volumes, first edition, 1887](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/87805-300x300.jpg)
![Alternative view of [Marchmont (Arthur Williams)] Isa. A novel, in two volumes.](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/87805_2-300x300.jpg)
Victorian Literature
By the editor of the 'North Eastern Daily Gazette'
London, Remington, 1887.
First edition. 2 vols. 8vo. Original grey cloth stamped in black and lettered in gilt.
A surprisingly uncommon title, with only two copies recorded in institutional holdings by WorldCat, and one (Oxford) in Jisc. The author studied law, before turning to journalism, editing the North Eastern Daily Gazette and the Lancashire Daily Post. In the mid-1890s, he left journalism to devote himself to fiction. In total, he wrote some 35 novels which often featured exciting plots and foreign settings.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London & New York, Frederick Warne, 1890.
First UK edition. 8vo. Contemporary, presumed institutional, red cloth binding, gilt to spine.
The first edition of this significantly influential work of fin-de-siècle science fiction. The story follows a diverse group of idealistic explorers who travel to Mars in a steel sphere powered by an anti-gravity device. They discover a peaceful, co-operative utopia, promptly find it intolerably dull, and attempt to remake it along capitalist and imperial lines, with predictably disastrous results. The book later attracted controversy through a dubious claim of a foreword by Jules Verne and legal action by the author against H.G. Wells for alleged plagiarism. An important and unsettling anti-utopian work, ending in a fashion as extreme as anything in early science fiction.
Modern Literature
London, Hutchinson, [1923].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
One of several titles written by this husband & wife team, the former an Irish author of considerable literary output, the latter a renowned antiquarian (and swordsman).
Children's Books
London, Macmillan, 1908.
First edition with colour plates. 8vo. Original red cloth stamped in gilt.
The first edition in book form of Kipling's classic for children to feature the wonderful colour plates of Detmold (preceded by a limited edition portfolio).
Detective Fiction
London, Robert Hale, 1977.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
An Inspector Lovick title.