Modern Literature
An autobiography
New York, Modern Age Books, 1940.
First US edition, first printing. Signed & dated by the author on half-title. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Uncommon in the jacket, let alone signed. The author has signed 'Haru Matsui' in English and Japanese, written in hiragana (for the given name Haru) and kanji (for the surname Matsui, 松井).
Ayako Ishigaki (1903–1996) was an Issei journalist, activist, and feminist, born Tanaka Ayako in Tokyo, the daughter of a college professor; she first came to the United States in 1926, moved to New York, and married the painter Eitaro Ishigaki in 1931; she adopted the pseudonym Haru Matsui to protect her family in Japan from possible retaliation for her left-wing activism. Restless Wave is a semi-autobiographical memoir detailing Ishigaki's coming of age in a privileged Japanese family, her rebellion against strict codes of women's behaviour, her political awakening, and her immigration to the United States; her critiques of Japanese society and militarism brought negative attention from the Japanese government, while the book was widely praised in the US.
Children's Books
London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, n.d..
Later edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth with inset colour illustration. Dust-jacket.
Originally published in 1909, this work draws directly on the author's years at Peradeniya and was very popular in the Edwardian period, running to sequels.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Michael Joseph, 1951.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket.
The first edition of Wyndham's Sci-Fi classic: '"Triffid" has become part of the literary vocabulary, much as "robot" entered every-day English - through science fiction ("Robot" first appeared in Karel Capek's science fiction drama R.U.R., 1920.)... In terms of popularity, Triffids stands as one of the most successful science fiction novels of the twentieth century.' (Bleiler, Science Fiction Writers).
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Michael Joseph, 1957.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Wyndham's classic sci-fi novel, described by Margaret Atwood as his "chef d'œuvre", while the dramatist Dan Rebellato described it as "a searching novel of moral ambiguities" dealing with rape, abortion, motherhood, and the struggle between men and women quite as much as with alien invasion.
Horror & Gothic
London, New English Library, 1975.
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on front free endpaper. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Herbert's second horror novel, which he described as making horror accessible by writing about working-class characters in recognisably ordinary England rather than remote castles or Gothic mansions.
Detective Fiction
London, Harrap, 1934.
Harrap's Shilling Library issue. 8vo. Original decorative cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.
The Harrap's Shilling Library ran from 1931 to 1935, focusing on mystery, crime and adventure novels, and represented in the words of one bibliographer "the last, cheapest cloth-bound printings of back catalog titles".
Detective Fiction
London, Sampson Low, Marston, [1930].
First edition, early issue. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
One of the earliest works by Knight, as often with distinctive and attractively designed dust-jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Sampson Low, Marston, [1931].
First edition, early issue. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
The second of five novels featuring Knight's series detective Jerry Scant, a gypsy and amateur sleuth in Wales. As often with Knight's works, in distinctive and attractively designed jacket.
![[Shanghai]. The Life of Shanghai](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/88339-300x300.jpg)
![Alternative view of [Shanghai]. The Life of Shanghai](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/88339_2-300x300.jpg)
Tokyo, Shobido Printing Office, 1934.
8vo. Original near black, bevelled pictorial cloth. Original brown pictorial slip-case.
The first edition in English of an "attempt to visualize the unique customs of the bewitched metropolis" (Parr & WassinkLundgren), presenting Shanghai as a haven away from the raging Chinese civil war: Chinese statesmen and wealthy persons wishing not to suffer from internal turmoils took their refuge in this great town. The photographs are wide-ranging in their content, showing pedlars selling food, books, sandals and curios, the municipal fire brigade in action, policemen, customs officials, parks, shopping streets, and the racecourse.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Robert Holden, 1927.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
Australian writer Knowles' best work appears in the three books of stories and sketches, The Street of Queer Houses and Other Tales (1925), Here and Otherwhere (1926) and Silver Nutmegs (1927), notable for their humour and satire. Knowles's work is in the tradition of Richard Garnett and has affinities with the work of Lord Dunsany and Donald Corley, but he affects a more naive and relaxed style than any of these. Uncommon in the jacket.
Non-Fiction
or The Feminine Principle in Evolution. Essays of Illumination
London, Ernest Bell, 1906.
First edition, first impression. Inscribed with the author's compliments to front free endpaper. 8vo. Original cloth.
Swiney (1847-1922) was a significant figure in both British feminism and theosophy, founding the Cheltenham Women's Suffrage Society in 1896 and lecturing widely on women's education and esoteric subjects. Her writing blended theosophy with feminist advocacy and eugenicist ideas typical of spiritual feminists of the period. In 1909 she established The League of Isis, which promoted sex education for women and veneration of the Divine Mother - a subject addressed in this volume. A scarce work from an important figure in British esoteric and suffrage movements.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hurst & Blackett, 1956.
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
MacArthur settled in Rhodesia in 1947, engaging in tree-farming as well as writing, and in all wrote over 40 books between 1945 and 1981 - travel books, adventure stories for boys and murder stories, some under the pseudonym David Wilson. Simba Bwana draws on his intimate knowledge of East and Central Africa, gained through numerous safaris following his settlement in Rhodesia, and on his earlier wartime travel writing.
n.p., , Sunday 13th November 1921.
8vo. Original pictorial wrappers sewn at top edge with tricolour ribbon.
A Remembrance Day/Armistice Day souvenir - the date of Sunday 13th November 1921 falls precisely on the third anniversary of the Armistice, and the tricolour ribbon binding identifies the publication as a memorial in the Allied commemorative tradition; the "Honor Rolls" format records union members who served and/or fell in the Great War.
Eton, Printed by George New, 1892.
8vo. Original yellow printed wrappers. Slip-case.
The first edition of A.C. Benson's first collection of poems, this issue without the limitation indicating one of 200 copies and not signed, also without 'privately printed' to head of title-page. Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925) was an English poet and essayist who served as the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was one of six children of Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his siblings included the novelist E.F. Benson and the Egyptologist Margaret Benson. After graduating from Cambridge, Benson returned to Eton, publishing this collection in the year he was made housemaster; he went on to spend eighteen years there. It was his libretto for Elgar's "Coronation Ode" of 1902 that brought him national fame, the words "Land of Hope and Glory" being his.
Modern Literature
London, Macmillan, 1925.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original green blind-tooled cloth after design by Charles Ricketts, lettered in gilt to spine. Dust-jacket, priced 10/6.
Gathering Yeats' early poetry and prose fiction, including the Celtic Twilight material, 'The Secret Rose', and the Stories of Red Hanrahan, as well as the lyrics of his first period.
Modern Literature
London, Macmillan, 1923.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original green blind-tooled cloth after design by Charles Ricketts, lettered in gilt to spine. Dust-jacket, priced 10/6.
Gathering Yeats' major prose writings on the Irish dramatic movement alongside six plays including 'The Countess Cathleen', 'The Land of Heart's Desire', and the Four Plays for Dancers ('At the Hawk's Well', 'The Only Jealousy of Emer', 'The Dreaming of the Bones', and 'Calvary').
Modern Literature
London, John Murray, 1934.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
The debut novel of the author of On the Night of the Fire (1939). He remains chiefly remembered for Odd Man Out (1945), which spawned a film adaptation in 1947 directed by Carol Reed and starring James Mason.
Horror & Gothic
London, Edward Arnold, 1925.
First edition, fourth impression. 8vo. Original decorative cloth with spider's web design. Dust-jacket, priced 4/6.
A gem from the golden age of Gothic horror, these spine-tingling tales by Montague Rhodes James would satisfy even the most demanding need for ghoulishly "Excellent Stories" (Bleiler).
Detective Fiction
New York Evanston, London, Harper & Row, 1965.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth-backed boards. Dust-jacket, priced $3.50.
A detective novel which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel for author John Ball, and the basis of the iconic 1967 Oscar-winning film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier.
![Doyle (Arthur Conan) Eachtraí Sherlock Holmes [Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/88328-300x300.jpg)
![Alternative view of Doyle (Arthur Conan) Eachtraí Sherlock Holmes [Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/88328_2-300x300.jpg)
Proinnéias Ó Drógáin d'aistrigh go Gaeilge [translated into Irish Gaelic by Prendergast O'Drogan]
Dublin, Oifig Díolta Foillseacháin Rialtais [the Government Publications Sales Office], 1936.
First Irish Gaelic edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket.
The first and only edition of the first-ever Irish Gaelic translation of Sherlock Holmes - produced during the Irish language revival period, published by the government's own publications office, and now genuinely scarce.
Children's Books
London, Max Parrish, 1952.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.
Greene's third book for children, and the first to be published with his name attached, The Little Horse Bus is a vigorous attack on the cruel displacement of small neighbourhood grocers with three cats and one pony by sterile corporations.
London, Cassell, 1956.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Slim was commander of the 14th Army, which, in concert with American and Chinese forces, defeated the Imperial Japanese Army during the Burma Campaign. This work is widely regarded as a classic memoir of high command.
Non-Fiction
Some Footnotes on East and West
London, Chatto & Windus, 1930.
First trade edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A work prompted by Douglas's reading of Katherine Mayo's Mother India (1927), a polemical indictment of Indian civilisation: Douglas's response is a characteristically acerbic defence of European cultural values... Excellent jacket concept.
With an introduction by Dr Willam M. Marston
New York [&c.], Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A curiosity at the intersection of academic psychology, the Gurdjieff tradition, and the career of an author who would go on to produce some of the most intellectually unusual Golden Age detective novels: his "Obelist" series, in which the suspects are subjected to formal psychological profiling, praised by Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Boucher and Martin Edwards among others.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1942.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
The unspeakably wealthy Jonathan Royal has decided to throw a party and, just for fun, has studded the guest list with people who loathe one another... This is the eleventh novel in Marsh's Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn series, and a textbook example of the snowbound-country-house variant of the Golden Age form.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macmillan, 1956.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 12s6d.
An attractively jacketed edition of this romantic thriller set in wartime Marseilles in 1943. A 1957 British film of the same name was made from the novel, directed by Hugo Fregonese and starring Stephen Boyd and James Robertson Justice. The biographical context of Croft-Cooke's life adds another dimension: he had been imprisoned in 1953 for homosexual offences and, on release, moved abroad; after his release from prison in 1954, Croft-Cooke lived until 1968 in Morocco, fearing continued persecution in Britain for homosexuality. Seven Thunders was written during this self-imposed exile.
Horror & Gothic
The Mystery of Sir William Wolf
New York, The Macmillan Company, 1938.
First US edition, first printing. 8vo. Original grey cloth decorated in black. Dust-jacket, priced $2.00.
Sir William Wolf begins to think he is turning into a werewolf and finds many signs pointing in that direction... Listed in Wilson's Shadows in the Attic and Hubin's Crime Fiction IV. Both the UK first edition and this US first edition are known to be scarce.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1951.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original grey boards lettered in gilt to spine. Dust-jacket, priced 12s6d.
The first UK edition of Bradbury's famous 'Martian Chronicles', with slightly different content to the US edition and its coeval Argentinian counterpart.
Thriller Fiction
a novel
Indianapolis & New York, Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1935.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
An American novelist and former diplomat, Chamberlain's early diplomatic postings in Africa gave him direct experience of the continent, and Two on Safari draws on this background, following a romantic adventure narrative in an African setting.
Modern Literature
London, Constable, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Rural novel set in the village of Thornhill, dominated by the violent farmer-squire George Raker. The land itself is the true tyrant - binding all the characters, including Raker's wife, Esther Marlowe, James Baxter, and a labourer called Shandy, through possession or toil to its impersonal seasonal rhythms.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, George Allen & Unwin, 1964.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Facsimile signature to title-page as issued. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
This volume includes the essay 'On Fairy Tales', in which Tolkien discusses the nature of fairy tales and fantasy, and reclaims the genre that some have sought to relegate to children's literature. Also includes the short story 'Leaf by Niggle'.
Detective Fiction
Burton (Miles, pseud. Cecil Street) The Hardway Diamonds Mystery
London, Collins Crime Club, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
An early title by this prolific author crime and thriller fiction.
London, Newnes, 1938-39.
3 issues (complete). Large 8vo. Original pictorial stapled wrappers.
Published by George Newnes Ltd, which paid respectable rates and obtained good-quality material, these three issues comprise a complete run of the magazine Fantasy, edited by T Stanhope Sprigg. The short-lived periodical included stories by significant authors such as John Wyndham, Eric Frank Russell and John Russell Fearn. John Beynon was one of the pseudonyms used by John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (1903–1969), the British science fiction writer best known for The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Midwich Cuckoos.
Modern Literature
London, Hurst & Blackett, 1956.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The novel centres on Joseph Mbagawa, an East African student and chief's son with artistic leanings, living in a London hostel with other African students; chafing against its insularity, and against the aggressive race-consciousness of his influential friend Aiyedumni, he moves to a boarding house, setting himself at the intersection of two worlds.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Burke, 1959.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The fourth of MacVicar's 'Lost Planet' series, created for radio and also popular in book and TV versions - in these stories a pacifist theme came through strongly. The series was the first science fiction series ever translated into Hebrew, and had considerable impact on the development of the genre in Israel.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Burke, 1960.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The fifth of MacVicar's 'Lost Planet' series, created for radio and also popular in book and TV versions - in these stories a pacifist theme came through strongly. The series was the first science fiction series ever translated into Hebrew, and had considerable impact on the development of the genre in Israel.
Modern Literature
Mishima (Yukio, pseud. Kimitake Hiraoka) Confessions of a Mask
translated by Meredith Weatherby
London, Peter Owen, 1960.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Mishima's second novel, exploring themes of sexuality, societal pressure, and body image, surrounding the life of a young homosexual man named Kochan who struggles with his sexuality and finding his place in Japanese society. The novel achieved Mishima national fame despite his young age.
Detective Fiction
London, Wright & Brown, [1936].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
Roland Daniel, full name William Roland Daniel, was an actor turned writer born in 1880 and died in 1969, who was incredibly prolific, producing a very large output of crime and thriller fiction for Wright & Brown.
Detective Fiction
Keverne (Richard, pseud. Clifford James Wheeler Hosken) Crook Stuff.
Some stories of crime and detection
London, Constable, 1935.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6 (reissue?).
The first of Hosken's short story collection under this pseudonym, and is relatively scarce with the original Youngman Carter dust-jacket.
Non-Fiction
Sex, Courtship and Marriage
London, Hutchinson, 1954.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A seemingly uncommon work, placeable within a recognisable genre of British popular psychology publishing that flourished in the early 1950s in the wake of the Kinsey Reports and the broader post-war liberalisation of discussion about sex and personal relationships. Hutchinson were themselves active in this area, also publishing Eustace Chesser's The Sexual, Marital and Family Relationships of the English Woman in 1956.
Horror & Gothic
London, Folio Society, 2015.
Folio Society edition. 8vo. Original pictorial purple cloth.
Folio Society first published Frankenstein with the specially commissioned Harry Brockway illustrations in 2004: this 2015 reissue features a different binding and was issued without a slipcase. Featuring the Introduction by Mary Shelley from the 1831 edition.
Detective Fiction
London, George G. Harrap, 1932.
Third impression. 8vo. Original decorative cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.
Harrap Shilling Library imprints with surviving dust-jackets are genuinely uncommon. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote of the author "unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures."