Non-Fiction
London, Allan Wingate, 1959.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The author's own account of his alcoholism. Albert Raymond Blackburn (1915–1991) was a Labour MP who had been an alcoholic, later campaigned against alcohol abuse, and wrote this book in 1959. He won King's Norton for Labour in 1945 and moved to the new Northfield seat in 1950. The jacket back describes him as a solicitor, law lecturer and author of a legal textbook, and for one year the only Independent in the Commons. It also covers Rugby, Sandhurst, Wormwood Scrubs and Maidstone, and his claim that alcoholism is incurable.
Non-Fiction
A Record of Unspeakable Suffering [with] Escape from Russian Chains. Together 2 vols. Translated by Warren Harrow London, Williams & Norgate, 1938.2 vols. First UK editions, first impressions. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jackets, priced 12s6d.One of the earliest accounts of the Soviet labour-camp system, published decades before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago revealed the Gulags to a much wider audience. The first volume's direct translation is 'Russia in Concentration Camp'; it describes the conditions of Soviet imprisonment and forced labour; the second volume recounts Solonevich's extraordinary escape from the Soviet Union on his fourth attempt, escaping with his son Yuri (who illustrates the striking dust-jacket to Russia in Chains) from a labour camp on the White Sea–Baltic Canal. They succeeded in reaching Finland and eventually made their way to Bulgaria. Solonevich's subsequent anti-Soviet activities made him a target of Soviet intelligence. In 1938, a bomb intended for him in Sofia killed his wife, Tamara, and his secretary; Yuri survived. Scarce in dust-jackets. Escape from Russian Chains with the ex-libris of notable Russian literature collector Bayard L. Kilgour Jr.
Detective Fiction
London, Peter Garnett, 1949.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.
First edition of this crime novel, by an author who also wrote under the pen-names with the names Peter Conway, George Sava and Alec Redwood. Uncommon.
Detective Fiction
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1959.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A Dr Priestley case. One cousin seems to have killed himself, the second dies in a knife attack, and the third in a puzzling car accident, and Priestley establishes the common factor without leaving his chair. "John Rhode" was one of several pen names of Cecil John Charles Street (1884–1964), a British Army officer. He also wrote as Miles Burton and Cecil Waye, and the Priestley books are described as classics of scientific detection.
Victorian Literature
London, Smith, Elder, 1896.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth lettered in gilt with anchor device.
A Regency novel of the prize-ring, narrated by a Sussex boy taken to London by his uncle, Sir Charles Tregellis, a fashion arbiter. Doyle first conceived it as a play and began the novel in summer 1895; it was serialised in The Strand Magazine through 1896 with illustrations by Sidney Paget.
Children's Books
London, Methuen, 1925.
8th edition. 8vo. Original gilt-pictorial blue cloth.
Milne's first book of children's verse, decorated by E.H. Shepard. It is a best-selling book of poetry, first published in 1924, and several of the verses were set to music by Harold Fraser-Simson. It appeared in November 1924 and was such a success that the other three Pooh-related titles followed in quick succession.
Detective Fiction
Thayer (Lee, pseud. Emma Redington Thayer) Murder Stalks the Circle
London, Hurst & Blackett, [1949].
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price sticker 6/- to front inside flap.
A Peter Clancy mystery, mentioned by Addy as a locked room mystery. Lee Thayer was the pen name of Emma Redington Thayer (1874–1973), an American artist who wrote mystery novels about the well-mannered private investigator Peter Clancy and his valet, Wiggar. She published sixty mystery novels between 1919 and 1966, and all but one feature Clancy.
Non-Fiction
Revolutionary Terrorist.
London, Methuen, 1935.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A biography of the Socialist Revolutionary terrorist Maria Spiridonova, translated and edited by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher, with an introduction by Henry W. Nevinson. Spiridonova (1884–1941) was a Socialist Revolutionary terrorist and Left SR leader who spent most of her life in prison or exile, and her lifelong concern for the peasants ultimately turned her against the Bolsheviks. The jacket styles the author as Commissar for Justice in the First Soviet Cabinet.
Detective Fiction
A Sheep Detective Story. Translated by Anthea Bell
London, Doubleday, 2006.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A flock of anthropomorphic sheep set out to solve the murder of their shepherd in the Irish village of Glennkill. It was first published in German in 2005 as Glennkill: Ein Schafskrimi, with Anthea Bell translating. It has been translated into sixteen languages. The source for the 2026 film starring Hugh Jackman with the voice talents of the recently-deceased Patrick Stewart, amongst an all-star cast.
Modern Literature
London, Arthur Barker, 1938.
First edition, first impression. Inscribed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Striking jacket artwork on this inscribed first edition of a novel set in Provence about the unwanted son of a poor woman who attaches herself to a travelling troupe of bullfighters; it was the author's third novel. Alun Llewellyn (David William Alun Llewellyn, 1903–1988) was a lawyer and author who worked in several genres, with nonfiction generally focused on Wales. He is best remembered for the scientific romance The Strange Invaders (1934), set after a world war and a new ice age. His other fiction includes the political satires Confound Their Politics, also 1934.
Children's Books
London, Methuen, 1931.
11th edition. 8vo. Original dark green gilt-pictorial cloth.
The first book of stories dedicated to Pooh, the bear of the Hundred Acre Wood, originally published in 1926.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, November 1942.
First edition, fourth impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
A wartime impression of Christie's 1939 masterpiece, the best-selling crime novel ever written, and now published as And Then There Were None. Ten strangers are lured to an island and killed off one by one.
Non-Fiction
London, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1924.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original green cloth lettered in gilt to spine. Dust-jacket, priced 12/6.
Cecil Herbert Prodgers' second book of travel yarns, following his Bolivian volume, covers Bolivia, Chile and Peru; the jacket calls it a record of "strange travel experiences in the wilds of Peru" and quotes R.B. Cunninghame Graham's description of Prodgers' style. Adventures in Bolivia (1922) was successful enough to prompt this sequel.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Philip Allan, [1936].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
Pragnell's first science-fiction novel, serialised in Wonder Stories (July–September 1935) as 'The Green Man of Graypec', describes a voyage into a miniature world. Pragnell (1905–1977) was a British policeman and pulp author active in British science-fiction circles. The Philip Allan book is the first book appearance, and a revised US edition, The Green Man of Graypec, followed in 1950.
Weird & Supernatural
Oxon (M.A., pseud. William S. Moses) Ghostly Visitors: a series of authentic narratives.
By "Spectre Stricken." With an introduction by M.A. Oxon
London, E.W. Allen and The Psychological Press Association, 1882.
First edition. 8vo. Original blind-tooled red cloth.
A collection of purportedly true ghost narratives. William Stainton Moses (1839–1892) was an Anglican priest and teacher who described mediumship experiences in a private circle; he wrote as "M.A. Oxon" and helped found the London Spiritualist Alliance in 1883.
Weird & Supernatural
Tales of the Sea and Second Sight, and Reminiscences of Australia, New Zealand, and a Voyage to San Francisco
Pontefract, Printed by R. Holmes, "Advertiser" Office, 1884.
First edition. 8vo. Related newspaper clippings tipped onto dedication page. Original red cloth decorated in black and lettered in gilt.
A rare book by the oldest of Sir John Everett Millais' children. Includes two nautical weird tales: 'How Ernest Adams Met his Wife,' a disaster at sea is averted by supernatural intervention, and 'The Captain of the Bella,' a ghost story in which a spectre warns the captain that his ship is doomed to be wrecked and his crew killed in the Antarctic if the seaman does not heed his advice; the ship is destroyed and all hands lost; the second half of the book consists of three nonfiction sketches of life in Australia, New Zealand, and at sea. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978) or Reginald (1979; 1992). Not in Larnach or Blackford.
Weird & Supernatural
Conway (Hugh, pseud. Frederick John Fargus) Bound Together. Tales
New York, Henry Holt, 1884.
US 'Author's Edition', Leisure Hour Series No.162. 8vo. Original brown pictorial cloth lettered in gilt to spine.
A collection of short tales by Conway, the pen name of Frederick John Fargus (1847–1885), a Bristol auctioneer's son. His novel Called Back (1883) sold some 350,000 copies, and he died only two years later. The tales first appeared in two volumes from Remington in London in 1884, a dozen of his minor tales collected under this title, some of a supernatural bent; Holt issued this one-volume edition the same year.
Horror & Gothic
and other Ghost Stories
London, Edward Arnold, 1927.
First edition, 5th impression. 8vo. Original brown cloth lettered in black.
James's fourth and final collection of ghost stories gathers antiquarian tales including 'A Warning to the Curious', 'The Haunted Doll's House' and 'An Evening's Entertainment'. The book was first published in October 1925 at 5s.
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1967.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The 40th Mrs Bradley novel, the title and chapter epigraphs taken from Treasure Island, and the island here is Portland Bill in Dorset. Mitchell won the CWA Silver Dagger in 1976 and is ranked with Christie and Sayers among the "Big Three" English women mystery writers. Uncommon.
Detective Fiction
Sydney, Dymock's Book Arcade, 1937.
First Australian edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A Golden Age detective novel. According to the jacket flap, a most unpleasant man dies suddenly. His wife, step-children, two outside friends and a shrewd old Scottish nanny are all involved in suspicion before Scotland Yard is called in. Wolseley's real name was Stella Tower. Writer and crime fiction historian Martin Edwards confirms the connection in his discussion of Which Way Came Death? (1936). He identifies two earlier detective novels published as Stella Tower, including Dumb Vengeance.
Horror & Gothic
Sauk City, Wisconsin, Arkham House, 1954.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A short horror novel in which something is sapping the health of Colonel Habgood's young son Denis, whose behaviour turns evasive. Metcalfe was born in Heacham, Norfolk, in 1891. His work has been compared to M.R. James, and T.E.D. Klein called him "a writer of subtle, finely crafted supernatural tales". The edition was 1,242 copies, the only Arkham House book of 1954.
Children's Books
London, Methuen, 1925.
11th edition. 8vo. Original gilt-pictorial blue cloth. Dust-jacket.
Milne's first book of children's verse, with decorations by E.H. Shepard, and the first of the four Pooh books. Milne (1882–1956) initially doubted that Shepard's style suited him before using him. The first edition appeared in 1924, from Methuen, and the book was just going into its tenth edition in 1925, so this is an early reprint of a huge success.
Detective Fiction
London, G. Heath Robinson & J. Birch, 1922.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
The third of four Ashton-Kirk novels. A young amateur criminologist is called on by a friend of Bat Scanlon, a prizefighter's trainer, who is troubled by a run of alarming events. John Thomas McIntyre (1871–1951) was an American playwright and mystery author, born in Philadelphia. The Ashton-Kirk novels belong to the American "scientific detective" strand of the period.
Modern Literature
A Novel of the Life of the Educated Class Under the Soviet. Trans. from the Russian by Leonid Zarine. Edited and with an introduction by Stephen Graham
London, Ernest Benn, 1931.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
Three Pairs of Silk Stockings is the first English edition of Panteleimon Romanof's Soviet novel Tovarishch Kislyakov (Comrade Kislyakov), retitled for Western readers and translated by Leonid Zarine, with an introduction by Stephen Graham. It follows two arcs: Kislyakov, an educated bureaucrat who breaks with tradition to join the Bolsheviks, and Tamara, a stage-struck young woman, 'a butterfly broken on an elaborate wheel' of Bolshevism, whose mysterious and grisly death closes the book and is vividly echoed in the dust-jacket artwork. The jacket flap calls Romanof one of the best of the younger generation of Russian authors, whose English reputation rested on the short stories collected as Without Cherry Blossom. The satirical eye of those stories is evident here, above all in his treatment of sex and the post-1917 sexual revolution, summed up in a foreigner's remark that 'the Russian woman has lost all moral standards': 'give her three pairs of silk stockings and she is yours'. From the library of Adrian H. Goldstone (1897–1977), collector and bibliographer of Arthur Machen and John Steinbeck, with his bookplate.
Modern Literature
London, Hutchinson, [1942].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A collection of short stories. According to the author's foreword more than half form a series of Mediterranean-set tales that gives the book its title. The rest is made up of a few stories set elsewhere, six short spy stories of the war and "a few freak scripts". Each story has a short introduction on how it came to be written.
Weird & Supernatural
Sauk City, Wisconsin, Arkham Press, 1947.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $3.00.
A collection of supernatural and weird stories, the only collection of Asquith's stories published by Arkham House. It includes 'The Corner Shop', 'The Playfellow' and 'The Lovely Voice'. Lady Cynthia Asquith (1887–1960) was born Cynthia Charteris and married Herbert Asquith in 1910. She was an author and anthologist especially devoted to ghostly and supernatural fiction.
An Indian Tapestry
Edinburgh & London, William Blackwood, [1934].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Diver specialised in imperial romance, charted on the bestseller lists of her day, and has since been largely forgotten. This is one of her later novels, subtitled "an Indian tapestry", and set in India.
Non-Fiction
London, Frederick Muller, 1939.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5s.
A topical case for an Anglo-Soviet understanding, built around the questions printed on the front panel (is Russia reliable, will it make terms with Hitler, have the purges weakened its army). Pat Sloan was born in Northumberland in 1908 and took a first in economics at Cambridge. The jacket says he lived and worked in Russia, and Beatrice Webb's blurb on the rear panel dates this to 1931–37. He was later secretary of the British-Soviet Friendship Society. The book appeared weeks before the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939.
Modern Literature
London, Robert Hale, 1968.
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author, 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Sorel Mander, discarded by her lover, a Harley Street doctor, goes to Rome and becomes entangled with his new mistress, a film company and assorted acquaintances. The jacket biography says her travels supplied the settings for several novels, and that a recent visit to Rome produced this one.
Modern Literature
London, Robert Hale, 1968.
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author, 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A novel set in a hospital for disabled servicemen on a hill, following the matron, a ward sister, the staff nurse Martin and the nursing auxiliary Ruth, who loves him. Rosemary Timperley (1920–1988) was born in Crouch End. She was a novelist, short-story writer and scriptwriter, and edited several of the Barrie & Rockliff Ghost Book anthologies.
Detective Fiction
London, Methuen, 1945.
21st edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 6/-.
A death in a locked office during a country-house party, investigated by the amateur Antony Gillingham. A.A. Milne is best known as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, and this is generally called his only detective novel, though Four Days' Wonder is the stated exception. It is a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. Woollcott called it "one of the three best mystery stories of all time"; Chandler criticised the claim in 'The Simple Art of Murder' (1944).
Weird & Supernatural
Talks by "Dr. Lascelles"
London, Rider & co., 1932.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A third collection of 'spirit-talks', given according to the jacket flap through the mediumship of Mr C.A. Simpson and offering messages of hope and comfort on spirit guidance. Simpson, a New Zealand-born electrical engineer, founded the healing centre now known as The Seekers in London in 1926 under the direction of the spirit guide "Dr. Lascelles", and the rear panel advertises the earlier The Seekers and Beyond. The book is a primary document of British Spiritualist healing literature.
Non-Fiction
London, William Rider & Son, 1923.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
A short popular account of the Buddha's life, doctrine, ethics and the Brotherhood, with a closing 'In Defence of Buddhism'. Charles Theodore Strauss (1852–1937) was the first Western convert known to have taken Buddhist refuge publicly on American soil, at Chicago on 26 September 1893.
Detective Fiction
Doyle (Arthur Conan) and others. In The Strand Magazine, vol.VI
London, Newnes, 1893.
Large 8vo. Original blue pictorial cloth, spine gilt, gilt edges.
The half-year volume for July–December 1893, containing 'The Naval Treaty', which ran in two parts in October and November, in which Holmes recovers a stolen secret naval treaty for the Foreign Office clerk Percy Phelps. The same volume holds 'The Crooked Man', 'The Resident Patient', 'The Greek Interpreter' (the first appearance of Mycroft Holmes) and 'The Final Problem' (December), in which Doyle sent Holmes over the Reichenbach Falls. All of these were collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893/4). Sidney Paget illustrated the Strand Holmes stories.
Children's Books
London, Methuen, 1913.
First edition thus (7th edition). Small 4to. Original green cloth lettered in gilt with illustrations to upper cover.
The first British edition illustrated by Paul Bransom (1885–1979), the American animal illustrator. It is the seventh Methuen edition of the text, which Methuen first published unillustrated in 1908. The story follows Mole, Rat, Badger and the reckless Toad along the river and in the Wild Wood. Grahame (1859–1932) was Secretary of the Bank of England and wrote this one durable classic of English children's literature.
Weird & Supernatural
Tales Told on a Sinking Raft
London, Quality Press, 1940.
First edition, signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth.
First edition, signed presentation copy: inscribed 'To E.R. Voigt(?), with kind regards', signed 'J. Jefferson Farjeon' and dated 21 February 1940. Farjeon (1883–1955) was a prolific English crime & mystery writer, the brother of Eleanor Farjeon, and is best known today for Mystery in White (1937), whose 2014 British Library Crime Classics reissue revived interest in his work.
Detective Fiction
Doyle (Arthur Conan) and others. In The Strand Magazine, vol.V
London, Newnes, 1893.
Large 8vo. Original blue pictorial cloth, spine gilt, gilt edges.
The publisher's half-year volume for January–June 1893, with 'The Cardboard Box' (January 1893), in which Miss Cushing receives a parcel containing two severed ears and Holmes unpicks a domestic tragedy. The volume also carries five further Holmes stories: 'The Yellow Face', 'The Stockbroker's Clerk', 'The Gloria Scott', 'The Musgrave Ritual' and 'The Reigate Squires'. 'The Cardboard Box' was left out of the British book edition of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and was first collected in His Last Bow (1917), which gives the magazine appearance particular interest.
Detective Fiction
Doyle (Arthur Conan) and others. In The Strand Magazine, vol.XXVII
London, Newnes, 1904.
Large 8vo. Original blue pictorial cloth, spine gilt, gilt edges.
The bound half-year volume (Nos. 157–162). It contains the first UK appearances of the Return of Sherlock Holmes stories 'The Solitary Cyclist' (January, Sidney Paget's seven illustrations), 'The Priory School' (February), 'Black Peter' (March) and 'Charles Augustus Milverton' (April). It also has H. G. Wells' 'The Country of the Blind' (April) and Sarah Bernhardt's memoirs.
Modern Literature
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1963.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A realist novel of teenage life in early-1960s London, which the flap describes as juvenile delinquency among a group of Teds in Fulham. Jane Gaskell (b. 1941) wrote her first novel, Strange Evil, at fourteen. She is best known for the Atlan fantasy sequence, and she won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1970 for A Sweet, Sweet Summer. This is her first realist novel, and it is little reprinted.
War, Invasion & Spy
Ashton-Kirk
London, G. Heath Robinson & J. Birch, 1921.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial brown cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
The third Ashton-Kirk book to reach print in this form, issued in London in the publisher's half-crown series. The American first edition came from the Penn Publishing Company of Philadelphia in 1912. Ashton-Kirk is a scholarly private investigator whom the US government calls on in delicate matters. Here he is drawn into the persecution of a former Russian army surgeon, whose death raises the question of a missing diplomatic document linked to the Russo-Japanese War. John T. McIntyre (1871-1951) was a Philadelphia novelist and playwright, and Ashton-Kirk was his best-known creation.