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Henry Sotheran Ltd

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book (2)

Two Poems.

PLATH, Sylvia (author). Knotting, Bedfordshire; The Sceptre Press. 1980. Square 8vo.; publisher's tan card wrappers, hand-sewn; pp. [8]; a fine copy. First edition thus, number 71 of only 75 "especial" copies, printed on Zerkall Rauh paper and hand-sewn at Skelton's Press, Wellingborough: an additional 225 regular copies were published. A private press editin of two poems, "Incommunicado" and "Firesong". "Incommunicado" was first published in The American Poetry Review, volume 10, No. 5 (Sept/Oct 1981). "Incommunicado", written in 1958 when Sylvia and her husband Ted Hughes were teaching in the U.S.; Sylvia at Smith College, her alma mater and compares the poet's experiences with the groundhop to a romantic version of the animals found in fairy tales, "where love-met groundhogs love one in return". The soon decided to forego their structured career to devote more time to poetry. In the Summer they were in Cape Cod until they removed to Boston, where they stayed until the following June. Early tensions in the marriage may have been responsible but during this time Sylvia found writing problematic and tended to apply herself to exercises in style to afford creative release. Firesong was first drafted in April 1956 and Sylvia was still working, interruptedly, on it in September of that year. Early in 1956 Plath was at Cambridge University reading Engilsh on a Fulbright Fellowship. In February she met her future husband Ted Hughes and by June they were married and vacationing in Spain. By Christmas they were staying at the Hughes's family home in Wet Yorkshire. The poem "Firesong" has been described as a response to an important news story of the day, the disappearance of the Royal Navy diver Lionel Crabb who has been sent on a reconnaissance mission to the Soviet Cruiser "Ordzhonikidze", berthed at Portsmoth Dockyard in 1956. The ship had transported Nikita Khruschev and the Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin to Britain on a diplomatic trip. Frogman Crabb went missing and his body, lacking head and hands, was not discovered until June of the following year. His story was portrayed in the movie "The Silent Enemy", in 1958, and also in James Bond's "Thunderball". It resonated profoundly with Plath as she had met Bulganin herself during the same trip and had been impressed by him, c.f. "History and a Case for Prescience: Short Studies of Sylvia Plath's 1956 Poems" by Julia Gordon Bramer.
  • $174
book (2)

Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert: being the Result of a Second Expedition undertaken for the British Museum.

LAYARD, Austen Henry. John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1853. 8vo. Original brown cloth, overall image of Assyrian monument blind-stamped to covers and spine, lettered in gilt to spine; pp. xxiii, 686, [2, advertisements]; 8 tinted lithographs, one uncoloured lithographic plate of Assyrian script, 2 folding engraved plates, 2 large folding maps and 3 folding plans, numerous wood-engravings (some full-page) in the text; minimal marking to cloth, one plan with old repair on verso, gift inscription, dated 1853 to front paste-down; else a very good and clean copy. First edition. Layard's discoveries, made on his first expedition to Mesopotamia during the years 1842-7 and described in his Nineveh and its Remains of 1849, met with popular acclaim back in Britain. In consequence, the British Museum funded a second expedition, of which Layard gives an account in the present work. This enabled Layard to return innumerable cuneiform documents from the 'King's Library' at the Kuyunijk Mound near Mosul, the eventual decipherment of which proved conclusively that ancient Nineveh had been located there. The binding is a three-dimensional representation of a colossal statue of a winged bull (lamassu), similar to the ones kept in the British Museum. It was produced by Remnant & Edmonds, who employed as well Owen Jones as designer and produced the cloth bindings for Murray's Darwins. Blackmer 969.
  • $1,241
  • $1,241
Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand. The Remarkable Story of a Woman's adventurous Journey alone through the Deserts of Central Asia to the Heart of Turkestan.

Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand. The Remarkable Story of a Woman’s adventurous Journey alone through the Deserts of Central Asia to the Heart of Turkestan.

CHRISTIE, Ella R. Edinburgh, Riverside Press] for J.B. Lippincott in Philadelphia, 1925. 8vo. Original cloth, decorated and lettered in gilt; pp. 280, plates after photographs; only very light marking to cloth, internally light even toning and very few mild spots only here and there, neat ownership inscription to front fly-leaf; a very good copy in the superior binding. Scarce first edition, the US issue of a remarkable Central Asian travelogue. 'Lured by the exotic names of Samarkand and Bukhara, and the desire to see the lands east of the Caspian Sea, she embarked on her first journey, armed with the necessary permits from the Russian authorities, carrying a camp bed, a spirit lamp and cooking pots, a bag of oatmeal, biscuits and butter, and a samovar for boiling the water. She travelled from Constantinople and the Black Sea across Georgia to the Caspian, and from there by boat and train to Ashkabad, in the Turkestan desert, travelling mainly by train, and on to Merv, where she played tennis with Prince Bariatinsky, manager of the imperial estate, before moving on through Buhkhara and Samarkand on the old Silk Road to Kokand, and reached Andhizan, on the border of Chinese Turkestan. On her second journey, from St Petersburg, she travelled 3000 miles by train to Tashkent and, deciding not to proceed by camel, went by military steamer and then droshky from Samarkand to Khiva, where she was received by the khan in his palace: she was the first British woman, and the first Briton since 1875, to reach Khiva. On all her journeys she kept diaries, wrote long letters to her sister, and took photographs, an activity she always referred to as Kodaking' (ODNB).
  • $874
The Marsh Arab Haji Rikkan.

The Marsh Arab Haji Rikkan.

London, Chatto & Windus, 1927. 8vo. Publisher's original cloth, lettered in black to spine, in original not price-clipped illustrated dust-wrapper; pp. xiii, 288, plates after photographs, map, printed in black and blue at rear; dust-wrapper with light chipping and spotting, very light spotting internally; a very good copy. Scarce first edition. An account of the life of a Marsh Arab from the region north of Basra compiled anonymously by the civil servant C.E. Hedgecock and his wife. The book was to have had a foreword by Gertrude Bell, the appearance of which was precluded by Bell's death. 'A wonderfully vivid book about the people he administered called Haji Rikkan: Marsh Arab, using (because officials are not purposed to write books when they are on the job) the pseudonym Fulanain' (Gavin Young, Return to the Marshes, p. 69). After Pietro Dell Valle (17th century) and George Keppel (19th century) this is the third Western text to deal with the region and the inhabitants, at the same time the first monograph. 'During the last year I had read what I could about the Madan. It was little enough. The only book seemed to be Haji Rikkan: Marsh Arab [sic] by Fulananain …, a sympathetic description of a Marshman's life at the end of the First World War … Certainly the Madan had a bad name with Arabs and Englishmen alike' (Wilfred Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs, p. 49). The work deals mainly with two tribes, the Albu Mohammad and the Bani Lam.