DURAS, Marguerite (1914-1996) [BORCHARDT, Anne and BRAY, Barbara, translators]
[Modern literature] FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDITION. Octavo (21 x 14cm), pp.126 [2]. Publisher's orange cloth, silver titles to spine. With the pictorial dust-jacket priced at 18s to front flap. Offsetting to endpapers with rear flyleaf heavily toned. Jacket toned, marked, and rubbed. Large, approximately 7cm closed tear to flap joint. Minor edgewear. Loose newspaper clippings inserted. A short story and the first publication of a play from the highly accomplished author, screenwriter, and filmmaker Marguerite Duras, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her work on Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
WALTON, Izaak (1593-1683), [RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]
[Fishing] leather-bound FIRST RACKHAM EDITION. Quarto (26 x 20cm), pp.224. With 12 chromolithographic plates, and occasional in-text illustrations by Rackham. Recent navy half morocco, with raised bands, gilt titles and decoration to spine, and the original publisher's cloth over boards, with gilt pictorial titles to upper. Original pictorial endpapers to front; top edge gilt. A clean copy in an attractive new leather binding. Using the text of the 1897 Bodley Head edition, being the text of the 1676 edition with modernised spellings.
CLARKE, Arthur C. (1917-2008)
[Space Exploration] FIRST AMERICAN EDITION USING BRITISH SHEETS. 'A' on title below imprint, 'A*' to half-title. Octavo (19 x 13cm), pp.viii; 164; [2]. Publisher's blue cloth lettered in blue to spine, illustrated dust-jacket with printed price of $2.50 to front flap. Sixteen photographic pages, fourteen diagrammatic illustrations. White speckling to cloth, jacket rubbed and worn to spine, some chips and tears, toned to rear panel. Very good. Clarke is writing at the time when society was on the precipice of space exploration 'about to enter the age of interplanetary travel - first by radio-controlled, unmanned rockets and, later, by true "spaceships."' He aims also to make his books accessible to those who are not professionals in the field of interplanetary flight.
KEATS, John (1795-1821), [BUXTON FORMAN, Harry, editor]
[Poetry] LEATHER-BOUND FIRST THUS, oxford edition. Octavo (21 x 14cm), pp.lxxvii; 491 [1]. With a frontispiece portrait and illustration of Keats' life-mask, as well as three facsimile title-pages. Contemporary green half-calf, borders gilt-ruled, green cloth over boards. Gilt titles, gilt tooling, and raised bands to spine. Decorative endpapers, top edge gilt. Margins toned, faint spotting to prelims and rear blanks. A few leaves still unopened. Sunning to calf, especially to spine. Gentle edgewear. Very good. Edited by Keats scholar and infamous forger Harry Buxton Forman - who with accomplice Thomas James Wise forged many 19th century first editions, their most famous being Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'Reading Sonnets.' This edition was published by the OUP 27 years before the pair were exposed.
CRAKE, [Rev.] A.D. (1836-1890)
[Historical fiction] FINE PRIZE BINDING, revised edition. Octavo (18 x 13cm), pp.320. With a frontispiece in black and decorative chapter headpieces. Green full calf, boards gilt-ruled, gilt armorial device to upper. Spine with red label lettered in gilt, raised bands, and gilt-tooling. Dentelles in blind to turn-ins. Gold vein marbled endpapers, marbled textblock edges. Preliminaries and rear leaves toned and spotted, lighter toning and spotting throughout. Prize bookplate to front pastedown, dated 1907. Some dustiness to textblock edges. Light scuffing to boards with two small chips to lower. Spine and lower lightly sunned, some minor rubbing to joints and extremities. Very good. One of Crake's juvenile historical novels surrounding ancient Britain. He was also a deacon, Bloxham schoolmaster, and historian.