Eton, Printed by George New, 1892.
First edition, ?trade issue (i.e. unsigned and without the limitation details/'privately printed'). 8vo. Original yellow printed wrappers. Slip-case.
The first edition of A.C. Benson's first collection of poems. 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 repeating the Ricketts design, 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 repeating the Ricketts design, 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 supernatural fiction, this volume collects five spine-tingling tales by Montague Rhodes James that satisfy even the most demanding need for ghoulishly "excellent stories" (Bleiler). Highly collectable in the jacket, even when, as in this case, a subsequent impression.
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 children's book with former lover and fellow Victorian crime fiction collector Dorothy Glover (illustrating as Dorothy Craigie). Fully embracing his shared billing, Greene delivers a vigourous attack on corporate monopoly, championing a small neighbourhood grocer, his three cats, and a lone pony against a sterile, displacing conglomerate.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Victorian Literature
London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1886.
First edition. 8vo. Original gilt-pictorial blue cloth.
A collection of fairy tales from Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1st Baron Brabourne, a British politician who moonlighted as a children's author, producing a book or two of these stories each year from 1869 to 1894.
American Literature
London, Jonathan Cape for The Travellers' Library, 1951.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket.
The first edition of this compilation, with no US equivalent. This volume, number 226 in the series, was the final title issued in the New Travellers' Library, the short-lived 1950–51 revival of Jonathan Cape's prestigious inter-war reprint series
Non-Fiction
The science of the super-normal
London, G. Bell & Sons, 1933.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Hans Driesch (1867–1941) was an eminent German experimental embryologist and philosopher, famous for the neo-vitalist concept of "entelechy" and for his Gifford Lectures (The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, 1907–08); he was also a serious psychical researcher, a member of the Society for Psychical Research from 1913 and its President in 1926–27. He was also, in 1933, the first non-Jewish academic to be dismissed from his chair (at Leipzig) by the Nazi regime, on account of his pacifism and open hostility to Nazism. Translated by Theodore Besterman. With a foreword by physicist & prominent spiritualist Sir Oliver Lodge.
Antiquarian
Practical Man (A) The Vintner’s, Brewer’s, Spirit Merchant’s and Licensed Victualler’s Guide
London, W. Wetton [&c.], 1826.
First edition. 12mo. Half-title. 19th century full calf with gilt-roll border to covers, spine gilt compartments within gilt-decorated raised bands, with contrasting leather title label.
This work collects hundreds of recipes for fermented beverages - wines (foreign and domestic), malt liquors, cider, perry, vinegar, spirits, liqueurs, cordials, and compounds - alongside a wealth of supporting information. It opens with a history of wine and a treatise on brewing (porter and various ales), then turns to the fermentation and distillation of spirits "of every denomination," including alcohol, brandy, rum, geneva (gin), and whisky. A fourth section covers cider, perry, mead, and vinegar, followed by chapters on cellaring wines, beers, porters, ales, and spirits, with guidance on refining and managing flavour, colour, and concentration as they age. The book closes with three technical chapters: data on hydrometers and saccharometers for the distiller, the Parliamentary laws governing licensed vendors (innkeepers and publicans among them), and several tables for converting weights and measures.
Detective Fiction
London, Secker & Warburg, 1978.First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.Originally published in the US as a Dell paperback, this hardback edition is considered one of the scarcer Leonard editions, particularly in such good condition.
Translated by Claud W. Sykes London, The Ace Publishing Co., [1938].First Ace edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.FFA 17 memoir, drawn from the author's own combat reports and illustrated with photographs he took on observation duties - jaunty in tone against a grim backdrop of heavy casualties, and the second of a trilogy of his air-war memoirs.
Detective Fiction
Latham, NY, British American Publishing, 1990.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced $19.95.
The American author's first novel, published when he was 26. The author has gone on to win multiple awards for his tightly wrought thriller fiction.
Children's Books
London, Methuen, 1948.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
The third of Enid Blyton's six Malory Towers boarding-school novels (1946–51), set at a clifftop Cornish girls' school modelled on Benenden, where Blyton sent her daughters.
![Alternative view of [Phillipps (Thomas)] Scenes and Occurences in Albany and Caffer-Land, South Africa](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/88294_2-300x300.jpg)
London, for William Marsh, 1827.
First edition, issue with corrected frontispiece title. 8vo. Later half morocco with marbled boards.
The frontispiece was erroneously published with the title 'Entrance to the Rownie River'. This copy has the corrected title pasted down - 'Entrance to the Kowie River'. Anonymously published selection from the letters of the 1820 settler, Thomas Phillips, to his sister, Mrs Catherine Richardson.
Detective Fiction
London, John Long, [1948].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 6s.
John Creasey (1908–1973) was one of the most prolific authors who ever lived: around 600 books under his own name and some two dozen pseudonyms, and the founder of the Crime Writers' Association and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. The Toff is the Hon. Richard Rollison, his debonair gentleman-sleuth, who began in the story-papers in 1933 and ran to nearly sixty novels.
Detective Fiction
A Peter Chambers Caper
London, Boardman, 1964.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
One of the 'American Bloodhound Mystery' series. Another hardboiled Chambers caper, in the Denis McLoughlin jacket.
Detective Fiction
A Peter Chambers Caper
London, Boardman, 1963.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
One of the 'American Bloodhound Mystery' series, in the jacket by collectable artist Denis McLoughlin.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1959.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
'Victor Gunn' was one of several pseudonyms of Edwy Searles Brooks (1889–1965), a phenomenally prolific writer (estimated at some 40 million words) who, under his own name and as Berkeley Gray, supplied the Sexton Blake and Nelson Lee story-papers, created the St Frank's school stories, and wrote the Berkeley Gray 'Norman Conquest' thrillers. As Victor Gunn he created Chief Inspector Bill "Ironsides" Cromwell of Scotland Yard, who this title features.
Detective Fiction
London, Ward, Lock, 1937.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, with code '736' to spine, price-clipped.
The Wonderful Scheme (issued in the US the same year as The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne) belongs to Keeler's Marceau Case sequence, offering "a third solution" to that case.
Modern Literature
A tale of an island
London, George Allen & Unwin, 1927.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Constance Antonina "Nina" Boyle (1865-1943) was a militant suffragette (a leader of the Women's Freedom League, imprisoned three times), a journalist, a pioneer of women police (she co-founded the Women Police Volunteers with Margaret Damer Dawson in 1914), and, most strikingly, the first woman to attempt to stand for election to the UK Parliament, submitting a nomination at the 1918 Keighley by-election and so opening the way for women candidates. A contemporary Times Literary Supplement reviewer noted the feminism The Rights of Mallaroche carried over from her suffragette days (she had by the 1920s moved politically rightward).
statistically determined from the latest extensive word counts
Tokyo, Matsumura Sanshoho, 1932.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket.
A quietly significant book that its obscurity belies. Lawrence William Faucett (1892–1978) was, alongside Harold E. Palmer and Michael West, one of the three most influential figures in the development of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching between the wars; he worked in China and Japan, wrote The Teaching of English in the Far East (1927) and the Oxford English Course (1933), the first UK-published general EFL course. Decidedly scarce in the jacket.
Poetry
London, L, & V. Woolf at The Hogarth Press, 1931.
Number 270 of 350 signed copies. Early issue with comma after 'L' in imprint. 8vo. Original patterned wrappers with printed title label. Original plain glassine dust-jacket.
George "Dadie" Rylands (1902–1999), Cambridge literary scholar, King's College fellow, Shakespeare authority and theatre director (later famous for coaching John Gielgud and directing the Marlowe Society) who moved in the Bloomsbury and Cambridge Apostles circles and briefly worked as an assistant at the Hogarth Press in 1924. The Woolfs published two volumes of his verse, Russet and Taffeta (1925) and this collection of pastoral lyrics, together with his dissertation Words and Poetry (1928).