Illustrated Books
Flight (Claude) The Art and Craft of Lino Cutting and Printing
London, B.T. Batsford, [1934].
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth-backed pictorial boards.
An attractive edition of this work by a pioneer of linocut technique in printmaking.
African literature
Poems... Foreword by Nadine Gordimer
Johannesburg, Renoster Books, 1971.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial wrappers.
A notable work in the history of the anti-apartheid movement, produced at a time when most authors associated with the movement were banned or exiled. Mtshali, who at the time worked as a messenger in Johannesburg, has since been credited with spawning the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. Jensma was a significant and troubled South African artist and poet whose own work is now keenly collected.
Non-Fiction
London, Dent, 1931.
First edition, second impression. 8vo. Original decorative cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 4/6.
A perceptive travel and social commentary on 1920s Germany by the novelist, playwright, feminist, and suffragette Cicely Hamilton. Surveying political, cultural and social life across the fragmented postwar states, Hamilton records both the optimism of the Weimar years and the tensions that would culminate in Nazism. First issued in 1931, this later, cheaper edition (likely late 1933) incorporates a newly added chapter, "Postscript: The New Order," addressing the Nazi regime - an unusually early and appended account of Hitler's Germany within an existing work.Illustrated with additional photographs, including images of Hitler at the Nuremberg Rally and of young Nazis, the volume also reflects Hamilton's feminist concerns. In discussing Nazi pronatalism and racial policy, she wryly questions how Germany would feed its projected population increase, only to be told, ominously, that all would be well "when we have colonies."
Non-Fiction
Brussels, Editions Est-Ouest, 1945.
First edition. 8vo. Original pictorial wrappers.
Scarce; OCLC locates only 5 copies in the US (USHMM, JHU, Hoover, LOC Harvard). One of the earliest substantial eyewitness accounts of Dachau, published only months after its liberation by American forces in April 1945. Arthur Haulot, a Belgian journalist and resistance member, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 and deported first to Mauthausen and then to Dachau. There he served as a nurse and helped found the International Prisoners' Committee. After liberation he remained in the camp to assist with its administration before returning to Brussels in June 1945. Haulot later travelled in Germany as a witness at the Dachau trials and wrote extensively on the atrocities of the Nazi regime and its assault on fundamental freedoms.
London, George Allen & Unwin, 1929.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original purple cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 12s6d.
Müller-Freienfels was a prominent social critic and philosopher whose work combined philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, emphasising the role of unconscious and symbolic forces in shaping culture. His ideas on the "collective soul" and national psychology resonated with the intellectual climate of 1930s Germany and, while his precise influence on official Nazi doctrine is difficult to measure, his thought aligned in part with contemporary nationalist currents. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933, later distanced himself, and by 1942 was declared "inactive" and placed on the Index of prohibited authors.His legacy became the subject of post-war controversy. In 1948, following the publication of his letter in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Dr Alfred Einstein publicly accused him of having been a "leading Nazi aesthetician," prompting a sharp exchange that illustrates the fraught reassessment of German intellectuals after 1945.
Non-Fiction
The Story of Franz Biberkopf
New York, The Viking Press, 1931.
First US edition. 2 vols. 8vo. Original light grey cloth blocked in red & black. Dust-jackets. Lacking original slip-case.
Translated by Eugene Jolas. First published in Germany in 1929, this landmark Weimar novel follows Franz Biberkopf, an ex-convict determined to go straight after his release from Tegel Prison, only to be drawn back into Berlin's criminal underworld amid economic hardship and mounting political extremism. Döblin's innovative, collage-like style weaves street slang, headlines, and interior monologue into a vivid portrait of the city. This is the first English translation, by Eugene Jolas, co-founder of the avant-garde journal transition—an important but often criticised version, noted for its difficulty in fully conveying the novel's linguistic energy and dense vernacular.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Heinemann, 1929.
New impression. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in red. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
A mystical supernatural novel of reincarnation: the village eccentric and egomaniac Peregrine Sark brings back a terracotta figure of the goddess Cybele to his English country house and becomes dangerously absorbed in worshipping the deity. Attractive jacket artwork by commercial and graphic artist Keely.
From the papers and diaries of Chief Gouvernante Baroness D'Alteville
London, Cassell, 1916.
First edition, Canadian Export issue. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 50 cents.
Published during the First World War, this sensational work claims to reveal the private life of Bertha Krupp, heiress to Germany's vast armaments empire, through the supposed diaries of her governess, Baroness d'Alteville. Casting Krupp as an agent of the Kaiser in a campaign against Britain, the book presents itself as exposé but is in fact a transparent work of wartime fiction. Contemporary reviewers dismissed it as a dubious "shocker," filled with implausible private conversations and speculative "information" that strained credulity.
Historical Fiction
A Drama of Divided Germany
London, Macmillan, 1932.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original yellow cloth. Dust-jacket, clipped to front inside flap but with stamped price $2.00 present, possibly for export.
A political novel set amid the turmoil of late Weimar Germany, portraying a society destabilised by economic collapse, ideological extremism, and the erosion of democratic institutions. Its protagonist, a schoolteacher who persuades himself he can remain apolitical, is drawn into a world squeezed between "Hitlerites, Agrarians, and Communists." Written from a broadly left-democratic perspective, the novel captures the febrile atmosphere of the early 1930s; the original German edition appeared in 1932.The author Frank, an Austrian-born writer, journalist, and screenwriter would later be associated with films produced during the Nazi period, including Reitet für Deutschland, a commercially successful work endorsed by the regime and subsequently banned by the Allies in 1945.
His State and His Mind
London, Putnam, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in gilt. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.
Written under the pseudonym E.B. Ashton, Ernst Basch offers a mid-1930s analysis of fascist theory and practice, completed in autumn 1936. A German-born writer and translator (later resident in the United States), Basch was married to Austrian author Hertha Pauli and translated major works by Karl Jaspers, including The Future of Germany. Though not incorporating the latest developments in Germany, Italy, and Spain, Basch notes that events there only confirm his conclusions. Featuring the fasces, the Roman emblem from which fascism takes its name, on its cover, the work is both a study of Fascism and a measured defence of democracy.
War, Invasion & Spy
A novel
London, John Lehmann, 1947.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
Translated from the German by Stuart Hood. A chilling, dreamlike allegory of a peaceful pastoral society corrupted by the sinister "Head Forester," a thinly veiled embodiment of Nazi power and nihilism. First published in Germany in 1939, the work astonishingly escaped an immediate ban, likely owing to Jünger's status as a war hero and the subtlety of its critique (though it faced censorship in 1942). Notable for its early and unsettling prefiguration of the death camps, the narrative depicts a "factory of death" where perfect order masks spiritual annihilation.
Non-Fiction
London, Secker & Warburg, 1939.
First UK edition. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
Signed with the author's compliments to front free endpaper. A perceptive study of the historical, cultural, and political roots of German antisemitism. German-born Jewish economist and writer F.R. Bienenfeld traces the long evolution of anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany and the forces that enabled its transformation into state policy under National Socialism. After fleeing to England in 1939, he worked with the World Jewish Congress, helped draft German reparations claims following the Second World War, and later contributed to the legal preparations for the Nuremberg Trials.
Sports & Pastimes
Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1901.
First edition, second issue (title-page dated 1901). 8vo. Original pictorial cloth.
Fairman Rogers (1833-1900) was an American civil engineer, educator, and equestrian who taught civil engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He founded the Philadelphia Coaching Club and was the first person to drive a four-in-hand carriage in Philadelphia. The Rittenhouse bibliography calls it "one of the three or four finest books on coaches - a cornerstone for any collection of books on carriages."
Detective Fiction
Jay (Charlotte, pseud. Geraldine Mary Jay) The Knife is Feminine
London, Collins, 1951.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.
The author's scarce first book, and the only one of her works set in Australia.
Detective Fiction
A novel of epic revenge
New York, Stonehill Publishing, 1979.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced $10.95.
The former teen heart-throb and actor's first book.
Detective Fiction
London, Robert Hale, 1972.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
"There were overtones of witchcraft at work when the body of Mrs. Lovibond, a vicious-tongued cleaning woman, was discovered at the bottom of the Guy Fawkes bonfire in a Sussex village." (jacket blurb)
Horror & Gothic
Collected and edited, with an introduction by Harrison Dale
London, Herbert Jenkins, 1931.
First edition, second impression. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
A renowned anthology compiled and with an introductory essay on the ghost story by Harrison Dale. Uncommon in the original dust-jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Wright & Browne, 1965.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6 but with publisher's price sticker '9/6' overlaid.
"A strange, deadly black rust is slowly creeping through the grain crops of Northern India. Geoff Fennell, ace reporter, is sent out to investigate." (jacket blurb)
War, Invasion & Spy
A 'Man on the Spot' Story
London, Wright & Browne, 1967.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 12/6 but with publisher's price sticker '13/6' overlaid.
Thorne's career ran from 1935 to at least 1968, encompassing exotic adventure novels set in India and the Far East, a long-running series of detective mysteries featuring a character called Q.E.D., a "Brains" Cunningham series, and a later group of Cold War thrillers. By the 1960s he had settled into two overlapping series: the Q.E.D. detective stories and a spy/adventure series featuring a character called "Man on the Spot," a recurring subtitle that appears on both Assignment Haiti (1963) and this one The Moscow File.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
[Selected Works]. Foreword by Emil Petrov
Sofia, , 1958.
First Bulgarian edition, limited to 8000 copies. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Printed in Bulgarian. Original terracotta cloth.
Signed and warmly inscribed by Svetoslav Minkov on the half-title in Bulgarian, the inscription translates as: "To good friends Brigitte and Peter, with much warmth and devotion - Sv. Minkov, London, 29.11.60." The recipients were the Bulgarian author & journalist Brigita Yosifova, and the British poet & translator Peter Tempest - an inscription that speaks to Minkov's literary friendships and his continuing engagement with intellectual circles beyond Bulgaria.This is a scarce collected selection by one of the most distinctive voices in 20th-century Bulgarian literature. A central figure in Bulgaria's interwar avant-garde, Minkov introduced the grotesque, the fantastic, and speculative futurism into a literary culture largely shaped by realism & social narrative. His coolly ironic prose, fascination with technology and sharp sense of the absurd place him in dialogue with the broader European modernist tradition; he is frequently regarded as the father of Bulgarian science fiction & horror. Themes of mechanisation, alienation and the fragility of identity run through his work, lending it a striking modernity that still resonates.The volume is arranged in four sections: first, twenty-five short stories — including his celebrated The Lady with the X-Ray Eyes, alongside The Hydrogen Gentleman and the Oxygen Girl, The Woman in the Golden Coffin, and others; secondly, a group of travelogues; thirdly, fairy tales; and finally, a series of feuilletons and satirical sketches, which display his characteristic wit and satirical edge.Svetoslav Minkov (1902-66) travelled extensively across Europe, Asia, and South America both before and after the Second World War. He worked as a journalist for several Communist newspapers and later served in an official capacity within the Bulgarian government's cultural office, navigating a complex cultural landscape while maintaining a voice that remained distinctly his own.
[Various] London, Leeds, &c., [various], 1817-c.1908.
Mixed edition. 8vo. Later buckram cloth.
A rare and fascinating collection of pamphlets from the early nineteenth century through to the early twentieth century, encompassing an array of subjects, including a rare pamphlet on the SS Great Eastern (1886):
1. England's Hope Suddenly Cut Off: Authentic Particulars of the Last Illness, and Much Lamented Death of Her Royal Highness The Princess Charlotte, Who Expired at Half Past Two O'clock, on Thursday Morning, November 6, 1817. Author not stated, printed by R Edwards, Fleet Street, 1817. 32pp. Second edition. First and last pages foxed and tanned but main body of text in good readable condition.
[3pp adverts for cigar importers and outfitters in Ramsgate and Margate, the third page of adverts with a newspaper clipping concerning the following pamphlet laid in]
2. An account of the wreck of the Indian Chief (lacking covers). The Indian Chief was a barque that was wrecked in a storm in 1881 on the Long Sand, off the mouth of the Thames. Twelve of her crew were rescued by the Ramsgate life-boat. Good readable condition but a printing error has left the bottom corner of page four lack a few words of text.
[4pp adverts Thanet businesses, some damage to one page].
3. Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public by William Banting. Published by Harrison, London, 1864. Third edition, 50pp. Good clean pages, bound without covers. [A rare early diet plan, and the first to advocate the low carbohydrate method to achieve weight loss].
4. End of this Age on April 23, 1908 by Rev. M Baxter (The Prophet Baxter). 32pp, Biblical prophecies, the end of the world, etc etc in the light of political events and so on. Foxed but readable.
5. Britain (or Israel), The Fifth and Last, and The Unconquerable Empire as Depicted in Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and its Interpretation, to which is added Britain (or Israel) The "Ancient of Days" by John Gilder Shaw. Published by S W Partridge, London. Undated, c1879, includes fold-out map of "J G Shaw's Illustrative Prophetic Map" with hand-coloured figure stretching from France through to Persia. The first of a number of British Israelism texts, the movement that believed the people of Great Britain are the direct descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel.
6. Forty-Seven Identifications of the British Nation with the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, Founded upon Five Hundred Scripture Proofs, by Edward Hine. Published by S W Partridge, undated c1874. 54pp. Good condition, some spotted foxing. Bound without covers. British Israelism.
7. Are Englishmen Israelites? A Three-Nights' Debate between Mr Edward Hine and Mr Robert Roberts in Exeter Hall, London, 1879, together with A Lecture by Mr Roberts in the Myddleton Hall, Islington, Sunday 27th April, 1879. Published by F Pitman, London, 1879. 128pp. Assumed first. The subject of the lecture being "the true position of Britain in relation to Israel's coming Restoration and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of David."
8. Are we Israelites, The Testimony of History, Philology, and Ethnology on the Subject, by Rev Bourchier Wrey Savile, with an introduction by Philo-Israel. Published by W H Guest, London, 1879. 63pp. Good condition, foxed to page edges.
9. A Complete History of the "Great Eastern" from her First Projection in 1850 to her Visit to the Mersey in 1886. Published by Lewis's of Liverpool, 1886. 32pp. An incredibly rare pamphlet produced by Lewis's, the famous Liverpool department store, documenting the history of Brunel's the ship from it's launch in 1858 and transatlantic crossings, to its mooring as a floating advertisement for Lewis's The S.S. Great Eastern was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and was was broken up in 1889. This pamphlet has few illustrations including the Great Eastern at Sea, and as the floating advert. Readable condition, but delicate. Pages quite heavily tanned and bound without covers. Pages starting to work loose a little but the text is complete.
10. Croquet; The Laws and Regulations of the Game with a Description of the Implements etc by John Jaques. Published by Jaques and Son, London, undated c1866. 48pp, many illustrations with adverts to rear. Green cover bound in, contents in very good condition.
11. Thirteen plates of Thomas Rowlandson's works (Vauxhall Gardens, Harmony, Racing Incidents etc) followed by a 4pp copy of "Rowlandson's Tour in a Post-Chaise to the Wreck of the Royal George, 1782" [Probably the 1891 reprint published in The Graphic].
12. The History of the Convict Hulk "Success" and "Success" Prisoners, A Vivid Fragment of Colonial History by Joseph C Harvie. Published by Petty & Sons, Leeds, 1900. Early reprint, 80pp, illustrations. Some tanning but good.
13. Montalembert on Constitutional Liberty, A Picture of England, Painted by a Frenchman, being a Complete Translation of the Memorable Article entitled 'A Debate on India in the English Parliament' which has Subjected the Author to the Now Pending State Prosecution, by M. Le Comte de Montalembert. Published by Effingham Wilson, London, 1858. First edition. 76pp. Quite a rare Montalembert title in which he praises English political freedom, particularly its parliamentary system and religious neutrality in India, and which left him facing prosecution in France. This copy slightly tanned and with some spotted foxing but in strong readable condition. Signature to the head of the title page is George Henry Maberly, a noted London coach builder in London, and founder of Thrupp and Maberly.
Horror & Gothic
London [&c.], Hodder & Stoughton, 1988.First edition, limited issue, one of 250 copies signed by the author. 8vo. Original boards. Matching slipcase.The 14th novel by the author of The Rats and The Fog, here in the signed limited edition issue.
Victorian Literature
Lindsay (Mayne, pseud. Rosina Margaret Hopkins) The Valley of Sapphires
London, Ward, Lock, 1899.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
Short stories set in India, inspired in part by the author's own experiences living there for three years. The author's first book.
London, for John Murray, 1810.
First edition. 8vo. Modern morocco-backed marbled boards.
Bell is one of the towering figures of early 19th-century medicine; his original ideas on the nervous system have been likened to those of William Harvey on the circulation of blood, and his privately published pamphlet detailing his ideas about the brain has been called the Magna Carta of neurology. He is remembered today chiefly for Bell's palsy, the Bell-Magendie law on spinal nerve function, and his remarkable draughtsmanship (his paintings of the wounded from the Napoleonic Wars are among the most extraordinary medical images of the period). This work presents his observations on various types of strictures in the urethra. Uncommon.
Weird & Supernatural
Boston, Mass., Ruth Hill, 1934.First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.A short novel and apparently the only mystery title by an author better known for her work in the American theatre, including for her acquisition of the old Diamond Paper Mill in Millburn, New Jersey, which she subsequently transformed into the Paper Mill Playhouse. The publisher, Ruth Hill of Boston, was a very small imprint of the period specialising in limited and semi-private literary productions.
Children's Books
London, Hutchinson, 1908.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
The second of two novels featuring Lady Noggs, the whimsical aristocratic child protagonist introduced in Lady Noggs, Peeress (1906).
Weird & Supernatural
London [&c.], Cassell, 1926.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
A collection of short stories by an author & playwright best known for his association with mythic tales such as 'The Wandering Jew' and 'The Flying Dutchman'.
Weird & Supernatural
London, for J. Andrews, 1823.
First edition. 8vo. Original paper-covered boards with later title-label affixed to spine.
A significant and now rather scarce compilation belonging to a small cluster of serious ghost-narrative anthologies published in the 1820s. Jarvis is otherwise unknown, and the name may be a nom de plume.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Alston Rivers, 1928.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Original upper and lower panel of the dust-jacket cut-down and loosely inserted.
Although better known as a writer of crime fiction, this sole venture into science fiction by Grierson does make it one of his more collectable titles. The book is cited in Gerber's Utopian Fantasy (1973), Negley's Utopian Literature: A Bibliography, Sargent's British and American Utopian Literature, and Bleiler (1978), and is considered scarce.
Weird & Supernatural
London, J.M. Dent, 1910.
First edition. 8vo. Title printed in red & black. Original cloth decorated & lettered in gilt.
The first collection of short fiction by William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937), a writer now firmly established in the canon of British supernatural and horror fiction. The collection contains sixteen tales of the weird and supernatural, and is notable above all for containing the first appearance of "August Heat", a story about two men, unknown to each other, whose contemplation of each other's possible future suggests that one will be murdered and the other will be the murderer.
Victorian Literature
London, Greening & Co., 1906.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original orange cloth blocked in gilt.
A scarce title, and a quietly distinctive supernatural novel by Balfour (1846–1909), a British sinologist, editor and novelist who spent much of his career in Shanghai, where he served as editor of the North China Daily News and other publications. The novel concerns a lame teenage boy surrounded by friendly ghosts, who ultimately joins his dead mother in Heaven.
![Alternative view of [Craik (Dinah)] Romantic Tales](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/87836_2-300x300.jpg)
Victorian Literature
London, Smith, Elder, and Co., 1866.
'A New Edition'. 8vo. Original orange cloth lettered & ruled in black.
A gathering together of stories of an imaginative or fantastical character, drawing on legend, classical antiquity and historical romance, distinct in tone from the domestic realism for which Craik was primarily celebrated. Craik was one of the most widely read Victorian novelists of her day, best known for John Halifax, Gentleman (1856).
Modern Literature
London, Hutchinson, [1941].
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth.
Winifred Graham was an English novelist and anti-Mormon activist, born Matilda Winifred Muriel Graham on April 21, 1873, in London. She authored 88 books during her lifetime, encompassing romantic novels, thrillers, and critical works on various subjects.
Detective Fiction
Being some further adventures of the admirable Tinker, child of the world
London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1906].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth with inset illustration to upper cover, rebacked preserving original backstrip.
A sequel to Jepson's earlier The Admirable Tinker: Child of the World (1904), continuing the Edwardian comic adventures of Tinker, a preternaturally resourceful and charming boy described repeatedly as an angel child. Jepson shared the pseudonym "Tod Claymore" with the crime writer Hugh Clevely, with whom he co-wrote The Man With the Amber Eyes.
Weird & Supernatural
A Chapter from a Family Chronicle
London, Chapman & Hall, 1889.
One-shilling edition. 8vo. Original pictorial boards, priced one shilling.
An early edition, originally published the previous year, of this ghostly tale about a family curse, written by the Rector of St Alban's, Manchester and later Canon of Worcester Cathedral, author also of The Broken Vow (1887). Scarce in the original boards.