BATES, Ralph.
First edition. Signed and inscribed by the author to his wife, under his scored out printed name on the title-page, 'Ralph Bates. / to Winifred.' Fore-edge, endpapers, and prelims a trifle spotted, else a very good copy in slightly soiled dust jacket, with 4cm. tear at head of upper edge of spine, and browning to spinal lettering and decoration. The author's second novel, set in southern Spain. 'The Olive Field will last', wrote Valentine Cunningham, in his obituary of Bates for the 'Guardian'. 'It stands out among the "proletarian" fiction of the 1930s as a revelatory and sympathetic inside story of people making a living at the jagged edges of survival.'
ENRIGHT, D.J. (ed.).
First edition. Inscribed by the editor, 'Brian Hill - with all good wishes - D.J. Enright. Jan 1956, Kobe, Japan. "Torn were my only trousers at the knees."', with the recipient's pictorial bookplate to front pastedown. Very nice copy in very lightly dust-marked jacket, slight crinkled at spine, and with a tiny tear at edge of spine. An important anthology, often credited with introducing the 'Movement', with contributions (including prose prefaces) by Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Elizabeth Jennings, Donald Davie, John Wain, Robert Conquest, John Holloway, and the editor.
GRAY, John.
First edition. Sm. 8vo. Bookplate to corner of front pastedown, 'Ex Libris / B.V.M. de Bona Spe., / Colwich.', inscribed, 'D. Justina's Golden Jubilee, 1947, The kind gift of Lady Abbess of Stanbrook'. Spine faintly faded, else a very good copy. Surprisingly uncommon. The bookplate is that of St Mary's Abbey, Colwich, now affiliated with Stanbrook Abbey. The Abbess mentioned in the inscription was Dame Laurentia McLachlan, remembered in part for her friendships with Sydney Cockerell and Bernard Shaw.
GRAY, John.
First edition under this titie. 12mo. Green cloth, lettered in gilt on upper board, t.e.g. Strip of light offsetting to free endpapers, else an extremely nice copy in slightly soiled original unprinted tissue jacket, with chip to corner of upper panel. First issued the previous year, under the title 'Fourteen scenes in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary', in a small privately printed edition, now all but impossible to find. Even the edition above, though not institutionally rare, is extremely hard to find, particularly in the clothbound issue.
[GRAY, John.] COUPERUS, Louis.
First edition in English. Inscribed by one of the translators, 'To Richard Egan, from A. Teixeira de Mattos. 6 Feb., 1893'. Cloth slightly rubbed and soiled, free endpaper cracked, else a very good copy. Oscar Wilde was a great admirer of the author's earlier novel, 'Noodlot', translated into English by Clara Bell, as 'Footsteps of Fate', in 1891. He sent Couperus a letter of praise, accompanying it with a copy of 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray'. The Dutch-born Teixeira de Mattos is a particularly interesting translator of the period, and would marry Lily Wilde, widow of Oscar's older brother, Willie, in 1900, but the most notable element of the book above is perhaps John Gray's nine-page prefatory note.
[FIRBANK, Ronald.] [WILSON, Sandy.]
Mechanically reproduced typescript, rectos only, Pp. [i]+1-83+1-56. Plain wrappers, brad-bound, printed title label on upper wrapper, and with the stamp of the secretarial and copying service, 'May Hemery Ltd.', on verso. Spine lettered in ink; very good copy. An early draft of Sandy Wilson's musical adaptation of Firbank's novel, though neither name appears on the typescript.
GRAY, John.
First edition. Unbound signatures laid into pictorial printed wrappers, as issued. Fine, unopened copy, in handsome cloth solander case, with morocco spine label, lettered in gilt. The first appearance in print of this curious doppelgänger story, autobiographical in nature, and, as Gray's biographer, Jerusha Hull McCormack, writes, 'perhaps too intimate in its implications about Gray and his relationship with Wilde' to have been published in the author's lifetime. The drawing by Beardsley is a reproduction of Garcons de Café. Edition limited to 50 copies, printed on handmade paper, of which 40 numbered copies were for sale.
WILLIAMSON, Henry.
First edition. Inscribed by the author, 'To W.F. Martin, late Machine Gun Corps, who served in 1916-17 at Grantham and in France with the author of this book, who had the privilege of riding alongside him many times and in all weathers. Henry Williamson, March 1936. Twenty years after. Shallowford, Devon. With the good wishes of one old soldier to another.' An excellent inscription in a copy that has evidently had rather a tough life: spine slightly cocked, cloth soiled and marked, free endpapers cracked, edges tanned, some soiling and grubby fingering to margins. A novel closely drawn from the author's own experiences, praised by T.E. Lawrence, and described by Ted Hughes as 'one of the very best records of trench warfare'.
VAN VECHTEN, Carl.
First edition thus (the boards decorated with Ralph Barton's map of Paris), a dummy or sample copy, with prelims and text to p.14, the remainder of the book blank. Illustrated. Barry Humphries' copy, with his bookplate to front pastedown; spine patchily faded, corners bruised, else a very good copy. The author's first novel. The free endpaper bears a note in the hand of Peter Howard, of Serendipity Books, in Berkeley: 'rare for Knopf', presumably referring to dummy copies of books from this publisher.
[BRIDGES, Elizabeth.]
First edition. Cloth-backed boards. Barry Humphries' copy, with his bookplate to front pastedown. Spine browned, boards soiled, corner-tips chafed, offsetting to free endpapers, else a good copy. The anonymously published first book by Robert Bridges' daughter, slightly better known under her married name of Daryush. 'When an unprejudiced literary history of our century comes to be written,', wrote Donald Davie, 'our failure to recognize Elizabeth Daryush will be one of the most telling and lamentable charges that can be laid at our door.'
SEFERIS, George.
First edition. Original wrappers. Inscribed by the author, on half-title, to his publisher, 'To Max Reinhardt, with best wishes from his friends [signature of Rex Warner] and George Seferis'. Spine faded, upper corner of rear wrapper creased, and with a very small chip to tip of opposite corner, else a very good copy. A larger selection of Seferis's poetry than The King of Asine, and other poems, published by John Lehmann in 1948. At the reception held by Reinhardt, in honour of the book, Eliot remarked to Seferis, "You are a master now".
[SPENDER, Stephen.] GATHORNE-HARDY, Jonathan.
First edition. Plates. Stephen Spender's copy, with his bookplate by John Craxton, occasional marginal markings, and extensive pencil and ink notes to half-title and verso, title-page and verso, and head of contents leaf and tail of last page of index, as well as the entire verso of the rear free endpaper. Subsequently, Barry Humphries' copy, with his bookplate. Cloth lightly marked, edges of cheap paper stock lightly browned, else a very good copy. Amongst Spender's notes is one on the title-page, in which he writes in pencil, 'the sexual entanglements undisentangleable / an affair between Gerald who is impotent and C[arrington] who is Lesbian', and then underneath in ink, 'Rather embarrassing to read all these inter-affairs not just because one feels hypocritical - as though their eyes ought to be looking back at one's own messes. I couldn't help feeling that Mr GH is far too nosey. It keeps the reviewer on the hop'.