CHURCHILL, Winston S.
Clipped signatures of Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Field Marshall Alanbrooke, framed for display.
- $969
An attractively presented collection of the signatures of the three wartime figures, displayed beneath a photograph showing the men arriving at the Moscow aerodrome in 1944 for discussions with Stalin and Molotov. Provenance: the collection of Steve Forbes. Clipped signatures, each window mounted beneath early photograph, in black wooden frame (440 x 345 mm). Photograph and clipped paper a little toned. In very good condition.
More from Peter Harrington
Panoramic photograph of San Francisco earthquake and fire.
An early printed panoramic photograph of San Francisco ablaze during the fire that swept the city following the 1906 earthquake, curiously produced by the Dunlop rubber company, with "Compliments of the Dunlop Rubber Co. of Aus. Ltd" at bottom left. With the photograph showing their building safe and sound while the rest of the city burns, it is possible the implication is the resilience of their products. The original photograph was taken on the 18th April, the day of the earthquake, and was captured from the St Francis Hotel by Arthur Clarence Pillsbury (1870-1946). Pillsbury had worked for the San Francisco Examiner as a photojournalist from 1903 to March 1906, and, though at the time of the earthquake he had left to establish the Pillsbury Picture Company in Oakland, he still had his press pass. Using this pass and his personal contacts with policeman, Pillsbury was able to access parts of the city which were off limits to civilians while the authorities tried to control the blaze, resulting in unparalleled documentary evidence - and particularly arresting shots - of the destruction. Pillsbury is also remembered for his landscapes of Yosemite National Park, and his pioneering time lapse photographs of flowers. The panorama was sold by the photographer's Pillsbury Picture Company, who advertised it as the only panorama of burning San Francisco. The panorama was part of over 300 photographs of the earthquake and fire which the company were offering for sale within a month (see, for example, their advertisement in Camera Craft, vol. XII, May 1906, preceding p. 150). In this example the photograph has been edited, so that the Dunlop building has their name and slogan on the side - Dunlop presumably commissioned an edited form of the panorama from Pillsbury in the aftermath of the general issue, for use as promotion. The original photograph is displayed on the Library of Congress website (item 2007660561). Panoramic photograph, printed in colour (added to original photograph in production), in original dark grey card mount, 88 cm x 22 cm. In dark brown oak frame with conservation acrylic glazing, 92 x 26 cm. Mount a little worn at edges, a few trivial scratches to image; in good condition. Arms and the Covenant. Compiled by Randolph S. Churchill.
CHURCHILL, Winston S. First edition, first impression, of this important collection of Churchill's speeches on foreign policy, given during his "wilderness years" 1928 to 1938. The speeches warned of the dangers of a re-armed Germany, the threat of Hitler and Mussolini, and the inevitable failure of a policy of appeasement. These warnings were unpopular and largely unheeded, but soon proved remarkably prescient. The collection was also published later that year in America as While England Slept. Cohen A107; Woods 44a. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Photographic half-tone frontispiece of the author. Light sunning at spine and extremities, half-title toned: a near-fine copy.- $646
- $646
Great Contemporaries.
CHURCHILL, Winston S. First edition, first impression, of Churchill's collection of essays on the outstanding figures of his age, including reflections on T. E. Lawrence, Trotsky, and Hitler; "it is, of course, an important part of the canon and belongs in every library" (Langworth, p. 179). On receiving his advance copy, Neville Chamberlain wrote to Churchill immediately: "How you can go on throwing off these sparkling sketches with such apparent ease & such sustained brilliance, in the midst of all your other occupations is a constant source of wonder to me" (quoted in Cohen). Cohen A105.1.a (with first state uncorrected text on p. 53); Woods A43(a). Richard Langworth, A Connoisseur's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, 1998. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, top edge blue. With 21 photographic plates. Spine sunned, slight residue to half-title, contents slightly toned. A very good copy.- $484
- $484
Shizhuzhai jianpu (“Decorated Letter Papers from the Ten Bamboo Studio”).
HU, Zhengyan. The exquisite 1952 Rongbaozhai facsimile edition of this famous 17th-century catalogue, which has served as a primer for generations of Chinese artists since the Qing dynasty. Jan Tschichold, who brought the work to the attention of a western audience in 1970, called this edition "the finest issue. An incomparably perfect facsimile" (quoted by Auckland). Chinese jianpu ("letter papers") were sheets of decorated stationary made for literati and poets. Decorated Letter Papers from the Ten Bamboo Studio was first printed in 1633 by Hu Zhengyan (1584-1674). Hu was a publisher, calligrapher and artist who produced and sold letter papers at his Ten Bamboo Studio in Nanjing. The work contains hundreds of exemplars drawn from the work of 50 artists (including Zhao Mengfu, Wen Zhengming, Shen Zhou, and other luminaries) and is categorized by subjects such as dragons, rocks, and orchids. For the next 200 years, together with the Jieziyuan huapu (Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden), it shaped the development of Chinese and Japanese painting and woodblock aesthetics. In the 1930s, given the abject rarity of imperial-era printings, the catalogue was reissued by Lu Xun and the historian Zheng Zhenduo. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a reinvigorated Rongbaozhai recut the Lu-Zheng edition while remaining faithful to the printing techniques of Hu's original. Here, the illustrations are printed with the douban (layered) technique. Some are enhanced with a sophisticated decorative technique known as gonghua, a form of blind stamping. "By sandwiching two blocks together and applying pressure manually, three-dimensional effects with protruding and concave lines can be created once the paper was completely dry. It is similar to metal stamping, but each piece was unique as the final result all depended on how much and where the pressure has been applied" (Wu). Founded in 1894 on the legacy of a studio dating back to 1672, Rongbaozhai's publications are typified by decorative silk brocade cases, volumes bound in the traditional Chinese xianzhuang style, and the use of xuan paper, long prized by artists and calligraphers. Post-1949, Rongbaozhai became a state-controlled publishing enterprise and continued to specialize in collectable art publications issued in small print-runs for a select political and cultural elite, as well as for overseas sale to art connoisseurs, book collectors, and institutions. Auckland Museum, "Shi zhu zhai jian pu [Ten Bamboo Studio letter paper", available online; Wu Xingyi, "A Glance at Jian-zhi Delicate Studio paper in Ancient China: Shi Zhu Zhai Jian Pu", University of Melbourne Special Collections blog. Four volumes, quarto. Original gold-flecked brown wrappers, brown silk thread xianzhuang stitching, spine ends capped with light blue silk, gold-flecked pink paper title labels with calligraphic titles blocked in black. Housed in original decorative silk brocade folding case, calligraphic title label, bone toggles, imprint label laid down on inner lining as issued. Colour woodblock and embossed illustrations throughout all 4 volumes. Wrappers fresh, a little of creasing and nicking, touch of sunning at foot of front covers, top and bottom edges toned, illustrations beautifully preserved: a near-fine copy in like case with light rubbing, title label toned, paste-action browning to internal paper lining.- $5,166
- $5,166
Voyage autour du monde sur la frégate Vénus, pendant les années 1836-1839.
DU PETIT-THOUARS, Abel Aubert. First edition of this superb work, "an important French voyage. noted for its magnificent panoramic views of ports and anchorages" (Forbes); "one of the most important and complete records of the Mexican period in California" (Hill). This set significantly enhanced by a pair of rare signed original watercolours by Theodore-Romuald-Georges Mesnard, one of the two artist-officers on the expedition, both on-the-spot views of Kamchatka. Mesnard (1814-1844) came from a naval family in Cherbourg and had been in the service for five years "when he embarked with the junior rank of élève [midshipman] (one of eleven of this rank) aboard the Vénus in 1836 under the command of Abel du Petit-Thouars. He is not thought to have had any official standing as an artist aboard the Vénus, but he was one of two juniors whose drawings were used as a basis for the lithographs published in 1841, in the Atlas pittoresque accompanying du Petit-Thouars' account. Lithographs were made from Mesnard's drawings of native peoples, and their dwellings and way of life, of European settlements like Kororareka [New Zealand] and of extensive coastal profiles. Du Petit-Thouars returned to France with the Vénus, presumably with Mesnard aboard, in 1839, but the artist must have come back to the Pacific again, since he was killed in a duel in Tahiti in 1844, aged only 29" (Minson, p. 19). The rarity of Mesnard's original artwork is highlighted by Minson, writing in 1994, "the Kororareka watercolour [in the National Library of New Zealand] is the only known example of Mesnard's original work in existence". By coincidence, in the mid-1990s a small number of original watercolours from the Vénus expedition appeared at auction, most notably a group of 16 that went through the rooms of Rouillac-Vendome (7 February 1993), misleadingly attributed to Francois Mesnard, making £22,230. Another single image (a view of Acapulco) made £3,000 at Christie's, London (15 July 1994), similarly attributed. Since then, no other original artwork has appeared at auction. The confusion over Mesnard's first name appears to arise from the fact that he forms his Christian names into a rather contorted monogram resembling an "F". Mesnard "appears to have had no official responsibilities on the Vénus as a draughtsman but it is clear that his enthusiasm and activity in this field were appreciated by his commanding officer" (Collins, p. 55). The two watercolours, both views of Kamchatka, were evidently made from the deck of the Vénus, which was the first French ship since that of La Perouse in 1786 to visit the area; they are tipped to stubs overlaying the relevant lithographic plates in the Atlas pittoresque: "Basse des Trois-Frères et pointe de phare, a l'entrée de la baie d'Avatscha (Kamtschatka)" and "Vue de Petropawlowski (Kamtschatka)". Both retain their vibrant colouring and although manifestly the work of an amateur draughtsman are nevertheless quite accomplished, capturing strongly the atmosphere of time and place. Each has an inked plate number and pencilled caption at head. As was often the case, for the finished plate that would appear in the book, an experienced printmaker would "tidy" the original image and smooth out any infelicities of perspective or composition; the two lithographers employed here being Léon Jean-Baptiste Sabatier and Émile Lassalle. Sabatier in particular has insured that the sky in his rendering has taken on a more brooding aspect, reflecting a Romantic view of what was, to the Western mind, an obscure region cloaked in mystery; Mesnard's original could almost be a view of a sunny day off the coast of his native Normandy. To this day the "Trois-Frères" or Three Brothers, a group of steep white islets in the Sea of Okhotsk, remains a favourite destination for photographers. Petropavlovsk, on the sheltered Avacha Bay, had been used as an anchorage by Vitus Bering in 1740, the city being named after his two ships, the St Peter and St Paul. Menard's view shows it as a still sparsely populated town huddling around the church of Saints Peter and Paul, dwarfed by the snow-clad Koryaksky volcano. "A goal of the voyage was to assert French presence in the Pacific; scientific investigations were also fully provided for and carried out. In the course of the voyage Captain du Petit-Thouars undertook to obtain accurate charts of imperfectly surveyed harbours where his ships anchored. These included Valparaiso, Chile; Callao, Peru; Honolulu; the bay of Avatcha, Kamchatka; Magdalena Bay, Baja California; Acapulco, Mexico; the Galapagos Islands; and the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. [After stopping at Kamchatka] the Vénus continued to the California coast, then to Mazatlan, Acapulco, Chile and Peru, and the Galapagos and Easter Islands. Sailing across the Pacific, they stopped at New Zealand, Sydney, and Tahiti. The Vénus returned to France via the Cape of Good Hope, anchoring June 24, 1839" (Forbes). The Atlas zoologique is described by Forbes as "a major scientific publication. with plates of outstanding quality"; and of the Atlas hydrographique he remarks, "a magnificent, and very rare, atlas of Pacific maps. All of these include profile land views at the top or bottom of each sheet". Published at a considerably later date were two text volumes, Zoologique (1855) and Botanique (1864); these are not present here and are rarely found with sets. The celebrated Hill Collection of Pacific voyages had only the four volumes of the Relation and the Atlas pittoresque, "essentially the historical narrative". This is an impressive, unusually complete set, given additional allure by the presence of Mesnard's compelling watercolours. Roger Collins, New Zealand Seen by the French: 1769-1846, Wellington, National Library of New Zealand, 2009; Hill 518; Forbes 1198, 1333, 1526, 1586, 1588; Howes P267; Howgego, II D38; Marion Minson, "Early French Views of the Antipodes: Two recent additions to the Alexander Turnbull Library's Drawings and Prints Collec- $64,580
- $64,580
Octopussy and The Living Daylights.
FLEMING, Ian. First edition, first impression, of the final instalment in the original James Bond series, posthumously published two years after the author's death. Its two stories were adapted into the films Octopussy (1983), starring Roger Moore, and The Living Daylights (1987), starring Timothy Dalton. Gilbert A14a (1.1). Octavo. Original dark brown boards, spine and front cover lettered in silver, marble-patterned endpapers. With dust jacket. Negligible bump to spine foot; jacket unclipped, spine lightly toned, sharp overall: a fine copy in near-fine jacket.- $646
- $646
The Subtle Knife.
PULLMAN, Philip. First edition, first impression, of the second book in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, following Northern Lights (1995) and followed by The Amber Spyglass (2000). The fantasy series is recognized as among the finest of 20th-century children's literature. Octavo. Original green boards, spine lettered in gilt, large device of the subtle knife stamped on front cover in gilt. With dust jacket. Devices and vignettes in the text. Spine ends bumped, slight lean to spine, toning to margins; bright, unclipped jacket a little creased at edges, negligible splash mark on verso: a very good copy in like jacket.- $323
- $323
Original artwork for Happy Rabbit: title page illustration.
SOPER, Eileen A. Published within Happy Rabbit (Macmillan, 1947) on page 1. Eileen Soper (1905-1990) is best remembered for her illustrations for books by Enid Blyton. However, she wrote and illustrated several books herself, of which Happy Rabbit, a story about a pair of betrothed rabbits, was the first. The book was described by the publishers as "a delightful nursery book for children". It was ready in 1945, but wartime paper shortages delayed publication until 1947. The book was so successful that a new adventure, Dormouse Awake, followed in 1948. "Miss Soper has drawn many black and white sketches of rabbits and other woodland creatures, who are 'full of a desire to do all kinds of hoppity-skippity, up-in-the-airish things', for her story, and has painted. full-page pictures in lovely colors" (Christian Science Monitor). Provenance: the estate of George and Eileen Soper; Chris Beetles Limited. Christian Science Monitor, 9 December 1947, p. 16. Original drawing (185 x 140 mm) on card (292 x 222 mm), watercolour, pen and ink, unsigned, mounted, framed and glazed (framed size 442 x 340 mm). Minor toning, some foxing below mount: very good.- $484
- $484
The Lives of Christopher Chant. The Childhood of Chrestomanci.
JONES, Diana Wynne. First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page and rare thus. This work is the fourth instalment in the Chrestomanci series, which documents Chant's "good-humoured attempts to control the abuse of magic throughout the world" (ODNB). It follows the series's opening novel, Charmed Life (1977), which won the 1978 Guardian children's fiction prize. Diana Wynne Jones (1934-2011) was a hugely influential fantasy writer and has been cited as a key inspiration by fellow authors such as Philip Pullman, Terry Pratchett, and J. K. Rowling. She read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she was taught by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Her "extensive knowledge of myth, legend, and fairy tales sat easily with descriptions of contemporary young people, sometimes quarrelling but fundamentally of good heart" (ODNB). In 1999, she was awarded the Karl Edward Wagner prize for "important contribution to the genre" by the British Fantasy Society. Octavo. Original pale green boards, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket by Cathy Simpson. Contents lightly toned but clean; jacket sharp and unclipped: a near-fine copy in fine jacket.- $969
- $969
Twenty-Five Poems.
THOMAS, Dylan. First edition, first impression, one of 730 copies of Thomas's second book, here in superb condition. This landmark collection includes "And death shall have no dominion". Commenting on the blossoming writer, the jacket blurb notes that the "young Welsh poet" has "attracted an unusual amount of attention with his Dionysiac verse. How that voice will develop remains to be seen". Rolph B3. Crown octavo. Original grey boards, spine lettered in blue, top edge blue, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. With dust jacket. Printed in Eric Gill's Perpetua type. Publisher's advert slip loosely inserted. Foxing to edges and endpapers, text clean; jacket sharp and unclipped: a near-fine copy in fine jacket.- $2,583
- $2,583
George Eliot’s Life as Related in her Letters and Journals.
ELIOT, George - CROSS, John Walter (ed.). First edition, presentation copy, sent by the editor, Eliot's widower John Walter Cross, to an appreciated collaborator of Eliot's, her letters to whom are printed in Volume III. The front free endpaper has a mounted card inscribed by Cross in the publication month, "To Professor James Sully, in memory of his kind helpfulness to George Eliot in 1879 & with grateful thanks from J. W. Cross, London, 29 Jan. 1885". Professor Sully (1842-1923) assisted Eliot in 1879 by penning a 20-page biography of her late partner George Henry Lewes (1817-1878) in New Quarterly Magazine and by proofreading, as an expert in psychology, the final volume of Lewes's Problems of Life and Mind (1874-9). Sully paid frequent visits to Eliot and Lewes from 1874 until Lewes's death in 1878, meeting during these occasions Tennyson and Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf. Sully was later a member of Stephen's walking group the Sunday Tramps. Sully's ownership inscription, dated 1885, is on the front free endpapers verso and his neat pencil annotations occasionally feature in the margins. Volume III prints five letters from Eliot to Sully. Four of these are dated 1879 and discuss the legacy of Lewes. In one letter, Eliot thanks Sully "for the help you have given me in my sad and anxious task. Your eyes have been a most precious aid" (p. 380). In another, she states of his biography of Lewes, "I think that he would himself have regarded it as a generally just estimate. Your selection of subjects for remark, and the remarks themselves, are in accordance with my feeling to a comforting extent; and I shall always remain your debtor for writing the article" (p. 378). The earliest letter to Sully printed here, dated 1877, is well-known among literary historians and is cited in the OED for Eliot's line "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word 'meliorist' except myself" (p. 301). The meliorist worldview, that human effort can slowly make the world a better place, was vital in Eliot's fiction to such a degree that her contemporaries, including Sully, erroneously credited her with coining the term (see Pessimism, p. 399). Eliot (1819-1880) spent decades cohabiting with her soulmate Lewes, though they never married. Following his death, Eliot wedded the younger John Walter Cross (1840-1924) in 1880 before dying later that year. Cross then laboured on her legacy just as Eliot and Sully had done for Lewes. Styled by Cross as an "autobiography", the work consists of Eliot's selected personal writings, arranged in chronological order and presenting her comprehensive life story to the public for the first time. Unfortunately, Eliot "suffered a temporary decline in reputation in the decades following her death. This was largely due to her husband's well-meaning but misguided efforts, in the biography he published in three volumes in 1885, to portray her as respectable despite her unorthodox relationship with Lewes [and] as a stuffy, sibylline figure" (ODNB). James Sully, Pessimism: A History and a Criticism, 1877. Three volumes, octavo. Original brown cloth, spines lettered in gilt, spines and covers ruled and tooled in black, black coated endpapers, edges untrimmed. Frontispieces and 7 plates, all with tissue guards, double-page facsimile of Eliot's handwriting. Errata slip tipped in at end. Loosely inserted card from the Chiswick-based music dealer Charles Bernard. Spines cocked and lightly toned, small frays to spine ends, short split to head of vol. III rear joint, vol. I with small red mark on rear cover and cracked front inner hinge, remaining sound, other inner hinges with cosmetic splits, occasional spots to contents. A very good set.- $1,615
- $1,615
Original artwork for Happy Rabbit: “He Went Back to his Work”.
SOPER, Eileen A. Published within Happy Rabbit (Macmillan, 1947) on page 10. Eileen Soper (1905-1990) is best remembered for her illustrations for books by Enid Blyton. However, she wrote and illustrated several books herself, of which Happy Rabbit, a story about a pair of betrothed rabbits, was the first. The book was described by the publishers as "a delightful nursery book for children". It was ready in 1945, but wartime paper shortages delayed publication until 1947. The book was so successful that a new adventure, Dormouse Awake, followed in 1948. "Miss Soper has drawn many black and white sketches of rabbits and other woodland creatures, who are 'full of a desire to do all kinds of hoppity-skippity, up-in-the-airish things', for her story, and has painted. full-page pictures in lovely colors" (Christian Science Monitor). Provenance: the estate of George and Eileen Soper; Chris Beetles Limited. Christian Science Monitor, 9 December 1947, p. 16. Original drawing (60 x 100 mm) on card (101 x 128 mm), pen and ink, unsigned, mounted, framed and glazed (framed size 260 x 330 mm). Minor toning, some foxing below mount: very good.- $355
- $355
New Tales of Horror. By Eminent Authors.
HORROR - GAWSWORTH, John (ed.). First edition, first impression, in the uncommon dust jacket. This macabre anthology prints 17 of the 30 stories for the first time. Its contributors comprise Arthur Machen, Stephen Graham, Richard Middleton, E. H. Visiak, M. P. Shiel, John Gawsworth, Frederick Carter, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sir Ronald Ross, Herbert De Hamel, E. H. W. Meyerstein, Charles Duff, Herbert Palmer, R. L. Mégroz, Nugent Barker, and Marcus Magill. Bleiler 1230; Locke I, p. 2. Octavo. Original orange cloth, spine and front cover lettered in black. With dust jacket. Spine lightly faded, spots of soiling to covers, pulp paper stock toned; unclipped jacket spine a little toned, bright front panel with 2 cm closed tear at head, occasional nick: a very good copy in like jacket.- $872
- $872
Annals & Memoirs of the Court of Peking. (From the 16th to the 20th Century).
BLAND, J. O. P., & Edmund Backhouse. First edition, first impression, US issue, from the library of the China-based plant hunter William Purdom. Loosely inserted is a letter from his sister, Nellie, to Purdom's close friend and financial backer Charles Henry Hough, in which she gifts him this copy - one of "Billy's" favourite reads - and discusses the winding up of her brother's affairs in China following his untimely death. William Purdom (1880-1921) was born into a gardening family and joined the Veitch nursery at the age of 18. In 1902, he moved to Kew Gardens and led the 1909-12 Veitch-Arnold Arboretum plant hunting expedition to China. In 1914-5, he returned to China with Reginald Farrer to explore Gansu and collect specimens suitable for the British climate. While Farrer decided to return to Britain, Purdom remained in China and worked as a forestry advisor to the Chinese government until dying of illness in 1921. Before his extended stay in China, Purdom became friends with Charles Hough (1855-1933), a physician and former county and MCC cricketer. In 1904, Purdom helped Hough design and construct a garden for his arts and crafts home at Loughrigg Fell, and Hough covered part of the cost of Purdom's expedition with Farrer the following decade. Nellie Purdom (1889-1985) followed her brother to China and taught at Tientsin Grammar School in the 1910s and 1920s. Following his death, she assumed responsibility for dispersing his library and possessions. Writing to Hough from the grammar school on 28 February 1922, she states that "I sent you a book from Billy's library by book post a fortnight ago. I hope you have not got a copy already. He was very fond of those "Annals" and it was one of the books he took on his railway car. I am selling the Chinese section of his library to the Rockefeller Institute in Peking as it is useless to bring it home. It is very comforting to hear from my sister that you all have been so kind to father & mother and they I know appreciate it as much as we are grateful. If you have any home seeds of a tree which Billy admired and you would like them planted near his grave, if you forward me some I will get the Constable to sow them. Many people are planting trees to his memory but they are all Chinese trees and it would be so nice to have a little bit of Brathay too". J. O. P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse collaborated on two popular and controversial histories of imperial China, the first being China Under the Empress Dowager (1910). In both cases, Bland was taken in by material supposedly written by Chinese court insiders but, in actuality, almost entirely fabricated by Backhouse. "Bland's elegantly written histories left him remembered as unwitting dupe of one of the strangest British participants in the China scene" (ODNB). The extent of Backhouse's duplicity, and the broader Bland-Backhouse drama, was exposed in Hugh Trevor-Roper's Hermit of Peking (1976). The US issue is bound with the same sheets and case as the British issue and can be distinguished by a variant title page. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered in black, front board blocked in gilt. Tissue-guarded half-tone photographic frontispiece, 23 plates, folding panorama of Forbidden City. Recent Japanese bookseller's ticket on front pastedown, mid-century pencil inscription on front free endpaper. Spine and rear cover lightly sunned, front board bright, occasional spotting internally: a near-fine copy.- $646
- $646
Through Jade Gate and Central Asia. An Account of Journeys in Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert.
CABLE, Mildred, & Francesca French. First edition, first impression, presentation copy to Rev. John Stuart Holden, the author of the introduction. The front free endpaper is inscribed by Cable, "With our warmest regards and thanks, A. Mildred Cable", and signed by French below. The near-contemporary ownership inscription of Holden's wife, Jessie Findlay Holden, is at the head of the endpaper. Through Jade Gate and Central Asia is the second work by the "trio" - Mildred Cable (1878-1952), Francesca French (1871-1960), and Eva French (1869-1960) - and concentrates on the first of their "astonishing evangelical journeys" (Robinson) through Gansu and across the Gobi Desert. Setting out in 1926 and heading north-west, they followed the main trade route across the desert - decided by the location of oases - to Urumqi and onwards to the Russian frontier, heading home to London by train via Moscow. After recounting an expedition of some 6,000 miles, the work ends with their difficulties finding a hotel for the night near Victoria Station in London; eventually, a kindly landlady ("See 'ere, you can have the beds for six shillings a 'ead" - p. 301) came to their rescue. "During the next fifteen years they crossed the Gobi Desert five times, travelling often at night and always either on foot or on their two carts, christened the Gobi Express and the Flying Turki. They dressed in Chinese gowns, carried supplies of Bibles and a portable harmonium, and left the moot question of their survival to the Lord. Survive they did, to write eagerly and humorously of their nomadic lives as the most sympathetic and gentle of proselytizers" (ibid.). In 1942, Cable became the first female individual winner of the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal for her pioneering work exploring the Gobi. John Stuart Holden (1870-1934) was ordained in 1899 and served as the Home Director of the China Inland Mission, having visited China in 1904. As he notes in his introduction, "The three ladies of whose hazardous journey across the largely untracked spaces of North-Western China and Central Asia this book tells, are distinguished members of the China Inland Mission. their journey takes high rank in the stories of pioneer heroism and endurance". After her husband's death, Jessie Holden (1874-1947) moved to 25 Evelyn Gardens, London - this address is included in her ownership inscription. The Holdens are also known for narrowly escaping the Titanic disaster. John held a first-class ticket but cancelled his travel plans when Jessie became ill on 9 April 1912. His ticket, framed with the words "Who Redeemeth Thy Life From Destruction" printed below, is held by the Liverpool Maritime Museum. Robinson, pp. 155-6. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine and front cover lettered in green, top edge green, others untrimmed. Half-tone photographic frontispiece showing a Tibetan Chorten, 11 similar plates, large folding route map. Cloth lightly faded with touch of soiling only, contents and plates fresh, map sheet with usual stub tear not affecting printed area: a near-fine copy.- $1,162
- $1,162
All About Tea.
UKERS, William Harrison. First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the half-title of Volume I, "William H. Ukers, New York, Jan. 31. 1940". This encyclopaedic treatment of tea's history and consumption contains 1,700 illustrations and 54 chapters, and it remains the authoritative work on the subject. Ukers (1873-1945) founded the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal in 1901 and spent almost all of his professional life researching tea's history. He also wrote a history of coffee, for which he was awarded a gold medal at the 1923 Brazilian Centennial Exposition. The publisher's folding advertisement is loosely inserted in Volume I. Two volumes, quarto. Original green vertically ribbed cloth, spines and front covers lettered in gilt, front covers with decorative teapot vignette in gilt and blind double panel, decorative map endpapers. With dust jackets. Frontispieces (Volume I in colour), hundreds of illustrations in text. New York ownership inscription of Charles Gilman Tufts (1880-1978), a businessman, on the half-title. Cloth and contents clean, jacket flaps without price as issued, toned and scuffed, small losses to spines, recent archival tape repairs on versos: fine copies in very good jackets.- $3,552
- $3,552
Original artwork for Happy Rabbit: “Spring, when all the little birds and animals are glad, and full of a desire to do all kinds of hoppity-skippity, up-in-the-airish things”.
SOPER, Eileen A. Published within Happy Rabbit (Macmillan, 1947) on page 5. Eileen Soper (1905-1990) is best remembered for her illustrations for books by Enid Blyton. However, she wrote and illustrated several books herself, of which Happy Rabbit, a story about a pair of betrothed rabbits, was the first. The book was described by the publishers as "a delightful nursery book for children". It was ready in 1945, but wartime paper shortages delayed publication until 1947. The book was so successful that a new adventure, Dormouse Awake, followed in 1948. "Miss Soper has drawn many black and white sketches of rabbits and other woodland creatures, who are 'full of a desire to do all kinds of hoppity-skippity, up-in-the-airish things', for her story, and has painted. full-page pictures in lovely colors" (Christian Science Monitor). Provenance: the estate of George and Eileen Soper; Chris Beetles Limited. The Christian Science Monitor, 9 December 1947, p. 16. Original drawing (230 x 175 mm) on artist's board (325 x 245 mm), watercolour, signed lower right ("Eileen A. Soper"), framed and glazed (framed size 430 x 330 mm). Minor toning, some foxing: very good.- $743
- $743
Original artwork for Happy Rabbit: preliminary drawing for dust jacket.
SOPER, Eileen A. This illustration was developed and published as the front panel of the dust jacket for Happy Rabbit (Macmillan, 1947). Eileen Soper (1905-1990) is best remembered for her illustrations for books by Enid Blyton. However, she wrote and illustrated several books herself, of which Happy Rabbit, a story about a pair of betrothed rabbits, was the first. The book was described by the publishers as "a delightful nursery book for children". It was ready in 1945, but wartime paper shortages delayed publication until 1947. The book was so successful that a new adventure, Dormouse Awake, followed in 1948. "Miss Soper has drawn many black and white sketches of rabbits and other woodland creatures, who are 'full of a desire to do all kinds of hoppity-skippity, up-in-the-airish things', for her story, and has painted. full-page pictures in lovely colors" (Christian Science Monitor). Provenance: the estate of George and Eileen Soper; Chris Beetles Limited. Christian Science Monitor, 9 December 1947, p. 16. Original drawing (215 x 140 mm) on card (230 x 155 mm), watercolour and pencil, unsigned, artist's ink stamp on reverse ("Eileen A. Soper, Harmer Green, Welwyn, Herts. Tel:- Wel. 75"), mounted, framed and glazed (framed size 444 x 342 mm). Minor toning and foxing, minor crease: very good.- $484
- $484
Flush. A Biography.
WOOLF, Virginia. First edition, first impression, of Woolf's imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog Flush, "the spaniel who shared the sickroom of Elizabeth Barrett and accompanied her when she eloped with Browning" (ODNB). Kirkpatrick A19a. Octavo. Original light brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Frontispiece and 9 plates, 4 of which are by Vanessa Bell. Bookseller's ticket to rear pastedown. Spine and edges toned, light foxing to cloth, edges, and outer leaves, contents otherwise clean; jacket slightly rubbed and foxed, spine toned, small nicks and creases to extremities, flaps without price as issued: a very good copy in very good jacket.- $646
- $646
Ying huan zhi lue (“Brief Records of the World”).
XU, Jiyu. First Japanese edition of this extraordinary geographical and historical compendium, containing 43 detailed maps and printed only a few years after the Perry Expedition. Compared to the first Chinese edition (1848), the hemisphere maps exhibit more technical cartographic knowledge and are printed in colour, while the volumes as a whole reflect the high standard of woodblock printing for which Edo Japan is well known. Brief Records of the World was compiled by the Qing dynasty official Xu Jiyu (1795-1873), who served as the governor of Fujian province during and after the First Opium War. In the wake of China's defeat, Xu recognized the urgent intellectual need for more knowledge of the world beyond Asia. "As a scholar and researcher, but with a realistic official's commitment to ascertain the true nature of his environment, Hsu sought to portray the world outside of China as it was shown on Western maps and described in materials written by both Westerners and Chinese. He embarked on a project to plumb the mysteries of the earth, to chart the oceans and continents, to present the peoples and states of the watery globe. Hsu's comprehensive manual of the world's states. manifested a quality of objectivity and credibility which made it a popular world history and geography for decades in China. The book began to fill the vacuum in China's geographical appreciation of the non-Chinese world. A world never before in clear focus now came into view for nineteenth-century China" (Drake, p. 206). For political reforms such as Liang Qichao, Xu's work, emphasizing the means by which states become powerful, also provided valuable information concerning the benefits of embracing modernization and degrees of westernization. The text reached Japan in 1859 and had a similarly broad impact. This edition (Japanese title: Eikan shiryaku) carries Japanese reading marks and romanizations of foreign place-names provided by an unknown Dutch scholar resident in the country. For intellectuals of the late Tokugawa era such as Narushima Ryuhoku, Xu's compendium was essential reading. It "provided Japanese readers a readily accessible scholarly framework for understanding the 'West' as a congeries of individual nation-states rather than simply a monolith. The text's survey of South Asia, the Americas, and Africa also provided a clearer picture of European colonial administrations than had previously been available" (Fraleigh, p. 182). This knowledge fed into the reforms of the Meiji Restoration and the profound shift in the Japanese worldview witnessed in the second half of the 19th century. Brief Records begins with the states and territories of Asia, centring the Qing empire and moving on to its neighbours, considered in a broadly clockwise sweep from Japan to India. Volumes IV to VII discuss Europe and the Ottoman empire, the maps including one showing the geographical significance of the Levant. Western Europe including Britain is very much at the fringes of Xu's worldview, appearing towards the end of Volume VII. The final three volumes concern Africa (one of the maps shows Egypt and Sinai) and the Americas. Fred W. Drake, "A Mid-Nineteenth-Century Discovery of the Non-Chinese World", Modern Asian Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 1972; Matthew Fraleigh, Plucking Chrysanthemums: Narushima Ry hoku and Sinitic Literary Traditions in Modern Japan, 2020; Peter Francis Kornicki, Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia, 2018. Ten volumes, octavo (264 x 177 mm). Original yellow wrappers, recently renewed yotsume toji stitching, spine ends capped with blue silk as issued, woodblock title labels on front wrappers. Housed in custom brown cloth folding case. With 2 folding colour woodblock maps showing both hemispheres, 41 folding maps. Title page printed on blue paper and tipped onto inner front cover of Vol. I; text in Chinese with Japanese reading marks. Several old red ownership stamps on first page of volumes, large red seal on final page of last volume. Wrappers lightly soiled and rubbed but on the whole still bright, blue silk lacking at several spine ends, Vol. I with a few losses to title label and a little browning at foot of text block, colour maps bright with a few worm trails touching printed area and nearly repaired on verso with tissue, southern tip of South America slightly affected, very occasional worming to other maps and contents, all repaired with tissue: a well-preserved copy, the maps in splendid condition.- $10,010
- $10,010
Clipped signatures of Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Field Marshall Alanbrooke, framed for display.: https://rarebookinsider.com/rare-books/clipped-signatures-of-churchill-anthony-eden-and-field-marshall-alanbrooke-framed-for-display/
