FIRST EDITION. Folio (30.5 x 24 cm). pp.296. Original turquoise cloth, spine lettered in gilt, pale-yellow endpapers, pictorial dust-jacket. The faintest of wear to dust-jacket, generally an excellent copy. Profusely illustrated in colour and monochrome throughout. The word Bloomsbury most often summons the novels of Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster or images of artists and intellectuals debating the hot parlor topics of 1910s and 1920s London: literary aesthetics, agnosticism, defining truth and goodness, and the ideas of Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, and G. E. Moore. But the Bloomsbury Group also played a prominent role in the development of modernist painting in Britain. The work of artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, and their colleagues was often audacious and experimental, and proved to be one of the key influences on twentieth-century British art and design. This catalogue, published to accompany a major international exhibition of the Bloomsbury painters originating at the Tate Gallery in London and travelling to the Yale Center for British Art and the Huntington Art Gallery, provides a new look at the visual side of a movement that is more generally known for its literary production. It traces the artists' development over several decades and assesses their contribution to modernism. Catalogue entries on two hundred works, all illustrated in color, bring out the chief characteristics of Bloomsbury painting--domestic, contemplative, sensuous, and essentially pacific. These are seen in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes set in London, Sussex, and the South of France, as well as in the abstract painting and applied art that placed these artists at the forefront of the avant-garde before the First World War. Portraits of family and friends--from Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes to Aldous Huxley and Edith Sitwell--highlight the cultural and social setting of the group. Essays by leading scholars provide further insights into the works and the changing critical reaction to them, exploring friendships and relationships both within and outside of Bloomsbury, as well as the movement's wider social, economic, and political background. With beautiful illustrations and a highly accessible text, this catalogue represents a unique look at this fascinating artistic enclave. In addition to the editor, the contributors are James Beechey and Richard Morphet.
LAWRENCE, T.E.
FIRST TRADE EDITION. 4to. (25 x 19 cm). pp.(6)-672. Original brown buckram with gilt-lettered spine and crossed swords device to upper cover gilt, top edge dyed brown, others uncut. Light fading to cloth, mainly to spine, generally a good solid copy. 54 black and white illustrations and 4 maps. With the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial tucked inside. "Lawrence had taken part in the preliminary planning of the Arab uprising and, in October 1916, was ordered to Jiddah to assess the military situation. What followed is recorded in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a personal, emotional narrative of the Arab revolt in which Lawrence reveals how by sheer willpower he made history. It was a testimony to his vision and persistence and a fulfilment of his desire to write an epic which might stand comparison in scale and linguistic elegance with his beloved Morte d'Arthur and C. M. Doughty's Arabia deserta. Subtitled 'A triumph', its climax is the Arab liberation of Damascus, a victory which successfully concludes a gruelling campaign and vindicates Lawrence's faith in the Arabs. In a way Seven Pillars is a sort of Pilgrim's Progress, with Lawrence as Christian, a figure sustained by his faith in the Arabs, successively overcoming physical and moral obstacles" (ODNB).
RASPE, R.E.
8vo. (20 x 13 cm). pp.xlvi+178. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt, unclipped dust-jacket. A very good copy. 14 monochrome illustrations by Leslie Wood, 5 of which full-page (including frontispiece). Munchausen is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer author in his 1785 book. The character is loosely based on a real baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen. The fictional Baron's exploits, narrated by himself, focus on his impossible achievements as a sportsman, soldier, and traveler, such as riding on a cannonball and traveling to the Moon
KIPLING, Rudyard.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo. pp. 413+[2, ads]. Handsomely bound in full red morocco, sides ruled with single gilt filet, spine with raised bands and gilt-decorated compartments, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. An excellent copy. 10 full-page monochrome plates including frontispiece. Considered by many to be Kipling's masterpiece, Kim unfolds against the backdrop of The Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia. The novel made the term "Great Game" popular and introduced the theme of great power rivalry and intrigue. It is set after the Second Afghan War which ended in 1881, but before the Third, probably in the period 1893 to 1898. The novel is notable for its detailed portrait of the people, culture, and varied religions of India. "The book presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road." Considered by many to be Kipling's masterpiece, opinion appears varied about its consideration as children's literature or not. Roger Sale, in his history of children's literature, concludes "Kim is the apotheosis of the Victorian cult of childhood, but it shines now as bright as ever, long after the Empire's collapse."
LEWIS, C.S. (1898-1963), [BAYNES, Pauline, illustrator].
COMPLETE LEATHER-BOUND FIRST EDITIONS. Seven volumes. 8vo (21 x 15 x 19cm). Finely bound in recent green full morocco, with gilt titles to spines, raised bands, marbled endpapers, and all edges gilt. The maps from Prince Caspian, The Horse and His Boy, The Silver Chair, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader are bound into the preliminaries of those books. Housed in green cloth slipcase with ribbon-pull. Contents mostly clean and tidy, with some infrequent minor handling; dropped-quad to Prince Caspian, p.53. Externally as new. A striking set, handsomely presented in a matching fleece-lined cloth slipcase. With illustrations by Pauline Baynes
[SCOTT, Michael].
FIRST EDITION IN BOOK FORM. 2 vols. 12mo. (16 x 9.5 cm). pp.387+452. Contemporary half calf over marbled boards, spines lettered and decorated in gilt with twin red morocco labels. Boards lightly rubbed, some light toning and occasional light foxing, generally a very good set. Michael Scott was a Scottish author and autobiographer who wrote under the pseudonym Tom Cringle. The son of a Glasgow merchant, in 1806 he went to Jamaica, first managing some estates, and afterwards joining a business firm in Kingston. The latter post necessitated his making frequent journeys, on the incidents of which he based his best known book, Tom Cringle's Log. In 1822 he left Jamaica and settled in Glasgow, where he engaged in business. Tom Cringle's Log began to appear serially in Blackwood's Magazine in 1829. Scott's second story, The Cruise of the Midge, was also first published serially in Blackwood's in 18341835. Both stories - autobiographical portraits of Jamaica in the 1820s - were originally published anonymously, and their authorship was not known till after Scott's death at Glasgow.
Original chromolithographed folding map of New York (74 x 67 cm) and its environs, with inset map of New Jersey, embellished with decorative border showing famous people and sites associated with New York. The top left corner shows the sky line of NY, and the right one a scene along the Hudson. Designed by C.E. Riddiford after Albert H. Bumstead, for the National Geographic Magazine, printed by A.Hoen & Co., Baltimore, MA. A very good copy. "Showing places of interest such as Historic Monuments, Shrines, Ruins, noteworthy Architecture, etcetera. Towns of similar interest well worth a visit. Some old Churches. Battlefields. Dates. County Seats. State Capitals. Highways. Railroads. Canals".
FIRST EDITION. 8vo. (23 x 15 cm). pp.xxxiii+371. Original white cloth, spine lettered in black, pictorial dust-jacket. An excellent copy, as new. Extensively illustrated with figures, maps, and tables throughout. The Archaeology in Annapolis project has been one of the most important undertaken by historical archaeologists. Notable for its emphasis on public education and its use of citywide research, it has carried out an innovative analysis of material culture to show how a wide range of social and economic classes residing in Maryland's capital responded over time to a changing world.Annapolis Pasts offers a close look at the trend-setting project. Drawing on more than a decade of study, it provides a cross-section of the substantive and theoretical issues that Archaeology in Annapolis has explored. The volume gathers the work of some of the most innovative authorities in historical archaeology along with that of younger scholars who participated in the project, all of whom demonstrate the cutting-edge approaches that have won it wide respect. And despite differences in theoretical orientations, all the contributors have used Annapolis's archaeological data to interpret the emergence of capitalism as both a dynamic market force and an equally dynamic body of social rules. In studies of sites ranging from eighteenth-century formal gardens to nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American neighborhoods, the book explores the development of modern society as reflected in such examples of material culture as food, printer's type, tableware, and landscape architecture, showing how these features of everyday life were used to reproduce, modify, and resist capitalist society over three centuries. It also investigates subordinated groups in Annapolis -- African Americans, women, the working class -- to provide insight into racism, class structure, and consumer society in the early years of theindustrial revolution.Annapolis Pasts clearly demonstrates that traditional objects of study like Georgian mansions and colonial crafts cannot be understood without considering their complete social and economic milieu. It presents a fascinating mosaic of human activity that shows how archaeologists can interpret the different social, temporal, and theoretical pieces of a city's history, and it provides anthropologists, economists, and historians with an example of the multifaceted effects of capitalism and industrialization in one corner of America.
FIRST EDITION. 4to. (26.5 x 20 cm). pp.304. Original purple cloth lettered in gilt, yellow endpapers, dust-jacket. An excellent copy, as new. 282 illustrations including 40 in colour. Examining the complex set of political, social and cultural circumstances that produced one of the most important art movements of the 20th century, this book also serves as the catalogue for an exhibition of Dada at the Whitney Museum of American Art. More than 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and related documentary material explore the branch of Dada that flourished in New York from about 1915 to the early 1920s. Included are works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia, Charles Demuth, Katherine Dreier, Charles Sheeler, Joseph Stella, Florine Stettheimer, Clara Tice and Beatrice Wood.