Illustrated Books
3 issues, comprising: Vol.6, No.10 May 1947; Vol.7 No.10 July 1948; July-August 1949
London, Our Times Publications, 1947-49.
3 issues. 4to. Original pictorial wrappers.
Three issues of this left-wing periodical, designed to bring art and culture to the common man. These were the only issues to feature cover artwork by the illustrator & artist John Minton, including an illustration from his work based on the quays and wharves around Southwark and Bankside and another entitled 'Jam Session', reflecting Minton's own interest in Jazz music. Uncommon.
Detective Fiction
A thrilling romance of the East and the Antipodes
London, Arthur H. Stockwell, 1935.
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
An uncommon romantic thriller, by an obscure imprint often associated with vanity publications (i.e. self-funded by the author and similar).
Modern Literature
Translated from the German by Willa and Edwin Muir
London, Martin Secker, 1930.
First edition in English. 8vo.. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
This stands as the first English translation of any of Kafka's works, appearing some seven years before English editions of either The Trial or The Metamorphosis, which makes it considerably the rarer book.
The Castle was first published in German in 1926. It is the longest and last of Franz Kafka's novels (1883-1924), begun in the final two years of his life and left unfinished at his death. The novel works a quiet transformation on the medieval grail narrative, substituting the quest for the grail with its protagonist's dreamlike struggle against a remote and impenetrable bureaucracy - the kind Kafka had encountered at first hand in the unsettled years following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy. What Kafka intended the novel to mean has never been satisfactorily resolved; this first English edition inclines toward the text's religious symbolism, with the repeated and frustrated attempts to reach the castle read by some critics as an allegory of the search for salvation, rather than emphasising the partially autobiographical strand that led Kafka to begin the book in the first person.
The translation is made from the first German edition, incorporating the posthumous revisions of Kafka's friend and literary executor Max Brod, who prepared the manuscript for publication.
The book was banned in Germany between 1933 and 1945 under the National Socialist regime.
African literature
London, Heinemann, 1964.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Set during the Mau Mau Uprising of the 1950s, the novel centres on the interactions between British colonists in Kenya and the Kikuyu people, following a young boy's coming of age against the backdrop of the struggle for independence. James Ngugi (born 1938) later adopted the name Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and became the pre-eminent East African novelist of his generation; Weep Not, Child was the first major English novel published by an East African, and the first to deal with the Mau Mau guerrilla war from an African point of view. It was published in the Heinemann African Writers Series, which was launched with Chinua Achebe as its first advisory editor.
Detective Fiction
London, Wright & Brown, 1961.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10/6.
Hubin-listed spy thriller.
Modern Literature
and The Extraction of Confession
London, Hurst & Blackett, 1951.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A descriptive study of the Russian purges of 1936–39 drawn from numerous personal experiences by a Soviet historian and a German scientist writing under pseudonyms, outlining the anatomy of the purge process including methods of selecting victims, securing denunciations, fabricating charges, and extracting confessions. The authors were Fritz Houtermans, a German physicist who had fled to the USSR and been imprisoned by the NKVD, and Konstantin Shteppa, a Kiev University historian who had been Houtermans's cellmate; they used pseudonyms to protect their friends and colleagues still in the USSR.
"Horne worked as a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph from 1952 to 1955, stationed in Berlin. In 1953, he was recruited by MI6 and used his job as a journalist as a cover for his spying. He left the world of espionage for history when he was sacked from the Telegraph in 1955, allegedly for offending the wife of the chairman of the newspaper". (Wikipedia)
New York, George H. Doran, 1927.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced $2.
Concordia Merrel (1885–1962) was a British stage and silent film actress, photographer's model, and prolific author of romantic fiction.
Detective Fiction
London, John Hamilton, [1938].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, rather clumsily price-clipped to front inside flap.
Serial character Inspector Jackson of Scotland Yard ranges from London to Liverpool in this complicated crime caper.
Modern Literature
London, Hutchinson, [1942].
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author, inscribed on title-page. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
An attractive example of this collection of Wheatley's short stories, uncommon in the dust-jacket. This copy has been inscribed by the author to prolific autograph collector and hotelier Eileen Cond (1911-84).
Modern Literature
London, Ward, Lock, 1936.
First edition, first impression. Signed & dated by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original cloth.
An early work by the Poldark author, signed and dated 1939.
War, Invasion & Spy
Stepdaughters of War
London, Albert E. Marriott, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.
Originally commissioned to parody Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), this spirited and somewhat brutalising account of the First World War instead became a serious, harrowing novel, in part based on the (now lost) diaries of Winifred Young, who served in France during the war as an ambulance driver. Uncommon.
Non-Fiction
London, Lutterworth Press, 1959.First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.An account of Attenborough's animal-collecting expedition to Paraguay as part of the BBC's Zoo Quest television series (1954–1964), the fourth volume in the Zoo Quest sequence.
Detective Fiction
London, John Long, 1965.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A stand-alone crime thriller set in a Nottinghamshire housing development, in which a doctor investigates the suspicious death of a disliked man apparently killed by wasp stings at his wife's birthday party.
Ghost Stories
London, Psychic Press Limited, 1948.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
The case of a spectral presence in an 1880s Cheltenham mansion, a tall, veiled woman in black, reported repeatedly to the daughters of the Despard family and investigated by the then newly founded Society for Psychical Research.
Horror & Gothic
London, Heinemann, 1903.
First edition, first issue (with Chapter XVI present). 8vo. Original red cloth with blind-tooled scarab motif to covers, lettered in black to upper cover, with gilt lettering to spine.
One of the rarer Stoker titles as a first edition, probably due to the fragile nature of the production. This edition features the original ending, before it was updated to a slightly more upbeat version.
Edinburgh, for Archibald Constable and Company; Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1812.
First edition. 4to. Contemporary calf, gilt-roll borders and decorative blind-tooled border to boards, spine elaborately gilt-tooled compartments within raised bands.
Maria Graham (née Dundas; 1785-1842) later Maria, Lady Callcott, was a British writer of travel books and children's books, and also an accomplished illustrator. She moved to India in 1808, marrying a Scottish naval officer in 1809. The couple returned to England in 1811, where Graham published this work, Journal of a Residence in India, followed soon afterwards by Letters on India.
Soviet Russia, 1920... with an introduction by Col. John Buchan
London, Methuen, 1931.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
A fascinating insight into life in Soviet Russia in the early days of Bolshevik rule, from the rescue of Prince Peter Wolkonsky by his wife, who had succeeded in escaping Russia in 1919 but returned on foot to Petrograd to secure the release of her husband from a Moscow prison. It recounts her travels and the conditions she found, and their eventual crossing of the border into Estonia.
Detective Fiction
London, The Cresset Press, 1958.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original baords. Dust-jacket, priced 15/- (though scored out by hand and changed to 2/6).
Set aboard a small passenger ship sailing from Liverpool to Barbados, the novel presents a series of fatal "accidents" among a mixed group of passengers, investigated by an amateur sleuth, a middle-aged conductor named Edgar Cantrell.
Weird & Supernatural
Twenty-One Tales
London, Percival Marshall, [1951].
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Rare collection of weird tales by Irish author Barker, perhaps best known for his ghost story 'Whessoe'. Inscribed by him to the front free endpaper.
Disaster Story
London, Sampson Low, Marston, [1936].
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, clipped to inside front flap but with price 5/- present.
The only Hubin-listed title by this presumed Canadian author; uncommon.
Modern Literature
A Comedy in Three Acts
London, Chatto & Windus, 1926.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original stiff card printed wrappers.
Awarded the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, this comedy was the basis for Frank Loesser's acclaimed Broadway musical The Most Happy Fella (1957). Howard also wrote the screenplay for Gone with the Wind (1939).
Modern Literature
A play in three acts
London, Heinemann, 1934.
First edition. 8vo. Original boards, printed spine label. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.
Set in pre-First World War Europe, the play tells the story of two brothers who are composers, sharing a flat and in love with two women; the original West End run starred Elisabeth Bergner, for whom the play was written.
Translated from the Portuguese by J.B. Wood
Clarksburg, VA., Saucerian Books, 1960.
First US edition, first printing. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced $3.75.
A story in the vein of classic contactee George Adamski, in which a nameless alien from the moons of Jupiter, described as a good Christian, conveyed to Felix a series of unorthodox scientific claims and prophecies. Felix later resurfaced as a cult leader and prophet, making predictions about natural disasters and terrorist attacks during a politically turbulent period in Brazil.
Non-Fiction
London, Lutterworth Press, 1963.First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.An account of a four-month journey through the Northern Territory of Australia, the book ranges from the Tropic of Capricorn across desert landscapes and mangrove coasts, focusing substantially on Aboriginal culture and art.
Detective Fiction
London, Methuen, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
One of two Hubin-listed titles by this author, featuring Inspector Digby. Seemingly rare.
Modern Literature
London, Heinemann, [1939].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
Maugham's most political novel, written just before the outbreak of World War II. In 1944 it was adapted into an American film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly, often classified as a film noir.
Detective Fiction
Macdonald (John Ross, pseud. Kenneth Millar) The Barbarous Coast
London, Cassell, 1957.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Lew Archer's attempt to locate a missing young woman associated with an upscale Malibu country club, an early foreshadowing of Macdonald's later treatment of cross-generational themes.
Modern Literature
London, Hogarth Press, 1950.
First edition, second impression. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 8/6 and stating 'second impression'.
An attractive second impression of this work by Guyanese author Mittelhölzer, particularly notable in the context of Caribbean literature. The author sadly killed himself in 1965, at the age of 55. An important book.
Detective Fiction
London, Chapman & Hall, 1904.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth.
A collection of adventure stories featuring Don Quebranta Huesos, a fearsome Spanish bandit who operates as a kind of antihero.
![Alternative view of Bishop (Major [W.A.]) Winged Warfare.](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/88182_2-300x300.jpg)
Hunting the Huns in the Air
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1918.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
A vivid account of the early days of aerial combat, describing Bishop's Nieuport Scout and his battles against the Baron von Richthofen's squadron. Air Marshal William Avery Bishop, VC, CB, DSO & Bar, MC, DFC, ED (1894-1956) was a Canadian flying ace officially credited with 72 victories, making him the top Canadian and British Empire ace of the First World War.
Detective Fiction
An account of the hitherto unknown circumstances connected with the extraordinary affair of Charles Michael Haworth
London, Cassell, 1928.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
First published in the US the year before, this is the only novel by the actor Gillette, famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. "The mystery addict who wants... horrors tempered by novelty and a good style will be entranced both by the originality of the plot and by Mr. Gillette's unfolding of it... a mystery that will puzzle the most seasoned reader of detective thrillers. It is a most amazing and baffling crime." (US jacket blurb)