London, Faber & Faber, 1969.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 15s.
Heaney's second collection of poetry, preceded by his widely acclaimed Death of a Naturalist (1966). The poems graphically depict the author's rural upbringing, from the local forge to the banks of Lough Neagh, concluding with his iconic poem 'Bogland'.
Modern Literature
New York, Thomas Seltzer, 1923.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $2.00.
Constance Antonina (Nina) Boyle (1865–1943) was a British journalist, campaigner for women's suffrage and women's rights, welfare worker, and novelist, and one of the pioneers of female police officers in Britain. In April 1918, she was the first woman to submit a nomination to stand for election to the House of Commons. Apart from her journalism and campaigning, Boyle wrote mostly adventure or mystery novels featuring strong, capable women characters.
Detective Fiction
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1932.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Golden Age detective novel set in the world of theatre. Andreas (1898–1975) was a prolific German novelist, journalist and screenwriter.
Thriller Fiction
London, Odhams, [1921].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A thriller set against the backdrop of Revolutionary Russia, a popular subject for British popular fiction of the immediate post-war years. Jepson (1863–1938) was principally a writer of adventure and detective fiction, who also wrote supernatural and fantasy stories; he used the pseudonym R. Edison Page for some short stories and collaborated with John Gawsworth, Arthur Machen and others.
Modern Literature
London, Calder & Boyars, 1966.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The author's first novel, examining the strength of a marriage in modern times.
Modern Literature
London, Jonathan Cape, 1958.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth. Dust-jacket.
A novel dealing with the growing estrangement of a well-to-do married couple and the means by which harmony is restored, lauded by Philip Larkin as the subtlest of all Pym's books. Larkin sparked a resurgence of interest in this author when he named her one of the twentieth century's most underrated authors in a 1977 Times Literary Supplement survey.
Detective Fiction
London, Melrose, 1937.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
Uncommon edition of this murder-mystery about a string of rubies - the famous 'Blood of Buddha'.
Detective Fiction
London, Arthur Barker, 1953.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Spillane's sixth Mike Hammer novel, widely considered one of his most important, not least for its adaptation as Robert Aldrich's 1955 film noir classic of the same name, starring Ralph Meeker.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A Space Odyssey
London, Hutchinson, 1968.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
One of the most culturally significant novels science fiction has produced. The novel was based on the screenplay written by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, developed concurrently with Kubrick's landmark 1968 film. Both the American (New American Library) and this British first editions appeared in 1968; the first British printing is considered less common than its American counterpart.
American Literature
London, Cassell, 1947.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.
Mary Jane Ward (1905–1981) was an American novelist whose semi-autobiographical The Snake Pit was made into an Oscar-winning film. The novel was based on Ward's involuntary committal to Rockland State Hospital in upstate New York in 1941, and it generated public support for important political reforms in psychiatric institutions and mental health care.
Modern Literature
London, Hurst & Blackett, [1920].
Fifth edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/-.
The story of a woman who, while travelling through the Cornish countryside, discovers the journal of a couple who, unable to marry, remained devoted to one another. Gertrude Eliza Page (1872-1922) was an Anglo-Rhodesian novelist, best known for Paddy the Next Best Thing (1908), which was adapted as a British silent film in 1923.
Modern Literature
London, Jonathan Cape, 1970.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original blue boards. Dust-jacket.
A very nice first UK edition of this famous multi-generational story by Colombian writer and Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, published three years after the South American edition.
Detective Fiction
London, Stanley Paul, [1939].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
The gradual conquest of China by Japan as the foundation of a Pan-Asiatic Empire provides the backdrop for this tale about an eventual Japanese-led invasion of India and extension of dominion through Southern Asia, classified as a future war title by Bleiler (p.80).
Modern Literature
London, Rex Collings, 1972.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original brown cloth. Dust-jacket, priced £3.50.
An epic tale of a group of rabbits seeking a new home, exploring themes of survival and freedom, far removed from the more soporific tales of Beatrix Potter.
(and other incidents)
London, Hutchinson, [1935].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6. With loosely inserted promotional flyer.
A collection of short stories by the brother of journalist Sir Philip Gibbs and novelist Arthur Hamilton Gibbs, often with a focus on relationships and romance. Excellent jacket artwork by Hawes.
Modern Literature
London, Hurst & Blackett, 1938.
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
An uncommon title in the Youngman Carter jacket, especially signed by the author, a writer whose fiction engages with questions of human consciousness and illusion, apparently.
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.
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, 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.