Look to Windward. - Rare Book Insider
Look to Windward.

BANKS, Iain M.

Look to Windward.

London: Orbit, 2000: 2000
  • $325
First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the half-title, "To Dave, best wishes, Iain M. Banks". Banks (1954-2013) published his first science fiction title, Consider Phlebas, in 1987, in which he introduced an anarchist utopian society named "The Culture". Look to Windward is a further title in the Culture series. Octavo. Original black boards, spine lettered in bronze, black endpapers. With dust jacket. Spine ends a little bumped; unclipped jacket edges lightly creased: a near-fine copy in like jacket.
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Autobiography of a Chinese Woman. Put into English by Her Husband, Yuanren Chao.

First edition, second impression, one of the author's retained copies, later inscribed by her on the front free endpaper recto, "To Clement Galante, compliments of Buwei Y. Chao", with her accompanying Chinese signature. Chao (1889-1981) is also remembered for her writings on Chinese cookery, which helped delineate "Chinese cookery" as a specific aspect of culinary culture in the post-war US. Galante (1922-2017) was the proprietor of Maison Mendessolle, the California-based purveyor of elegant clothing for women, and in 1965 he was awarded Italy's Star of Solidarity Medal for his work in US-Italian commercial relations. His receipt of this copy likely occurred shortly after the award: loosely inserted is the addressed portion of the mailing envelope used to send Galante this copy, the stamp dating the envelope to no earlier than 1966. Chao's earlier ownership signature and address is written in ballpoint pen on the rear free endpaper recto. After the Second World War, Chao moved to Berkeley, California, with Chao Yuanren, where she spent the remainder of her life. Her first book, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (1945, also published with the John Day Company) coined important parts of the modern lexicon of Chinese cookery, including "stir fry" and "pot sticker". Octavo. Original brown boards, spine and front cover lettered in silver. With dust jacket. With 16 half-tone plates, maps and musical score in text. Extremities lightly bumped; jacket without price as issued, a little nicked and rubbed, offsetting on rear flap: a fine copy in near-fine jacket.
uvres Complètes. Pompes Funèbres

uvres Complètes. Pompes Funèbres, Le Pêcher du Suquet, Querelle de Brest.

KEROUAC, Jack (his copy) - GENET, Jean. First edition thus, first printing, Jack Kerouac's copy, with his estate's ink and blind stamps on the half-title. Genet's controversial work was suppressed in Britain and America, but "the Beats passed around a smuggled translation of the forbidden Miracle of the Rose and declared Genet their pulp poet. His exquisite beauty, his affirmation of betrayal, crime, and homosexuality filled the guts of Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac" (Smith). This is Volume III of Gallimard's collected works of Genet, which was published between 1951 and 1979. A letter dated 28 December 1952 refers to Kerouac's borrowing of an earlier volume in the series: "Allen - I've been digging your mad little pad and I took the terrible liberty of borrowing The Complete Oeuvres Genet, upon my word I won't lose it and'll return it very soon" (Charters, p. 392). Gallimard's was the first collected edition of Genet. The two novels included in this volume - Querelle de Brest and Pompes Funèbres (1948) - were revised by the publishers to elide the more shocking sections. Nevertheless, this represents the first complete publication of the story of Querelle de Brest, it having first appeared incomplete in 1947. This volume also includes Genet's long poem Le Pêcher du Suquet, first published in 1948. Ann Charters, ed., Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters 1940-1956, 1995; Patti Smith, "Pain and Ink", Details, November 1993, accessible online. Octavo. Original wrappers lettered in red and black. Short splits to joints at spine ends, wrappers creased and soiled, very faint damp stain to fore edge. A very good copy.
  • $1,952
  • $1,952
Legends of Ancient China.

Legends of Ancient China.

AI DAO WOMEN'S BIBLE SCHOOL. An album of handmade papercuts by Chinese students at the Ai Dao Women's Bible School attached to the American Presbyterian Mission in Chefoo. Throughout the 1930s, the school produced various themed papercut collections to raise funds, and comparison with other copies of the same title reveals that each was bound in brocade of a unique design. The collection includes popular legends such as the "Outwitting of Wang Shen": "The Sage Wang Shen had two disciples - Sen Bin and Pan Djuen. One day they came along and found him sitting in a cave. Wishing to test their ingenuity, he told them that neither of them could make him leave this cave. They tried every way they could, but to no avail. One said, 'O come out and see those two dragons fighting on the hills!' But the sage did not believe him. The other said, 'Now you will have to come out, for here comes the neighboring lord and his retinue. You will have to come and receive him.' 'Not I,' said Wang Shen, 'for that lord has just gone past here within the hour.' 'Well,' said one in despair, 'if only I could get you out once, I could make you go back in again.' At once the sage came out of the cave. 'Now, make me go back in again.' 'Ah, no,' said the disciple, 'All I really wanted was to get you out!'" The education of women became a priority for social reformers in the wake of the May Fourth Movement, and schools like Ai Dao were at the forefront of this revolution in education. Landscape octavo (181 x 230 mm), ff. [8]. Original decorative silk brocade, black thread xianzhuang stitching, edges untrimmed. Explanatory sheet loosely inserted as issued. Papercut showing rural Chinese scene mounted on title page, 7 similar papercuts with captioned glassine guards. Contemporary bookplate of one Patricia Bleecker. Brocade slightly faded, inner covers and glassine guards toned, a little finger soiling, papercuts unaffected, insert creased. A very good copy.
  • $846
Archive of Phillis Grace Jan Wong.

Archive of Phillis Grace Jan Wong.

HONG KONG WOMEN'S NAVAL VOLUNTEER RESERVE. A visual guide to the military career of one of the first enrolees in the Hong Kong Women's Naval Volunteer Reserve (WNVR) following its formation in 1949. Phillis Wong eventually rose to the position of officer-in-charge, retiring from this leadership role in 1962. Wong (1904-1988) was a long-time Chinese-Australian resident of the colony. St Paul's College has prizes named after both her and her husband, Preston Wong, who was executed by the Japanese in 1943. After enlisting in the WNVR, her early years of hard work were rewarded with a 23 February 1954 citation, included here, awarding her the Staple Shield and commending her "untiring and unstinted service". A promotion to third officer soon followed on 1 January 1955, and on 22 September 1958 she was promoted to second officer and officer-in-charge. Photographs - in which she is recognizable by her thick black glasses - chronicle her progress through the ranks. A formal picture from the 1955 Governor's Review shows her in a third officer's uniform (a single stripe on the cuff), while photographs from the 1958 Queen's birthday parade capture her leading the female naval reservists. A large number of photographs document parades, training assignments, formal occasions, and the women with whom she served. Wong's retirement in 1962 was marked by an invitation to dine in the officer's mess onboard HMS Cornflower on 8 November. Several photographs commemorate the occasion, and a typescript headquarters notice (dated 2 October) is accompanied by an invitation card and the text of the speech she gave to the dinner, in which she thanks those present for 13 extraordinary years: "we often get asked what the Wrens actually do. Well, that would take me too long to describe, I can only tell you that in my 13 years' service I've been round the Island on the MFV and round the Queen's Birthday Parade circuit on foot more times than I care to remember". The dinner also presented an opportunity to welcome her successor as officer-in-charge, and a number photographs record this happy culmination to Wong's long period of dedication to Hong Kong. Small archive, 75 items: 65 photographs (1 colour), mostly gelatin silver, each 57 x 57 mm to 160 x 210 mm, some with annotations and wet stamps on verso; 3 typescript sheets (175 x 137 mm), text across 4 sides; 330 x 208 mm commendation typed one side only; 220 x 208 mm duplicated typescript mess notice, text one side only; 113 x 138 mm printed invitation card completed in manuscript; 3 small newspaper clippings; mailing envelope. Occasional creasing, overall a well-preserved collection.
  • $1,041
  • $1,041
The Descent of Man

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. In Two Volumes. With Illustrations.

DARWIN, Charles. First edition, first issue, of the first of Darwin's works to contain the word "evolution", on page two of the first volume, preceding the term's appearance in the sixth edition of the Origin of Species the following year. In the Descent, Darwin finally applied the Origin's theory of evolution to the development of humanity. Prior to the Descent, Darwin carefully neglected to draw out the implications of his theory when applied to human beings and hoped that one of his supporters, such as Lyell or Huxley, might tackle the thorny question of human evolution. When none did, he set to work writing. Darwin laid out a clear family tree for humans, tracing their affinity with primates, and expounded his views on the evolutionary origins of morality and religion. By doing so, the Descent "brought the full force of evolutionary proposals directly into the heart of ordinary Victorian life" (ODNB) and "caused a furore second only to that raised by the Origin" (Norman). The first issue can be distinguished from the second by a number of textual differences. The first issue of Volume I is identified through the appearance of "transmitted" as the first word of page 297; Volume II has the printer's note on the half-title leaf verso, the errata on the title leaf verso, and a tipped-in "Postscript" (pp. [ix-x]) referring to errors which were entirely reset for the second issue. The second issue begins page 297 with "When" and lists works by the same author on the title leaf verso of Volume II. Norman states that there were 2,500 copies of the first issue and 2,000 copies of the second issue printed. Freeman 937; Garrison-Morton 170; Norman 599. 2 volumes, octavo. Original green cloth, spines lettered and decorated in gilt, covers panelled in blind, dark green coated endpapers. Housed in a custom black morocco slipcase. Numerous woodcut illustrations within text. 16 pp. publisher's advertisements dated January 1871 at rear of each volume. Spine ends expertly restored, corners worn, covers a little marked but cloth otherwise bright, light foxing to endleaves and advertisements, inner hinges neatly repaired, remnant of label to front pastedown of vol. I, a handful of nicks and chips to contents, internally clean: a very good copy.
  • $16,270
  • $16,270
A New History of China

A New History of China, Containing a Description of Most Considerable Particulars of that Vast Empire. Done out of French.

MAGAILLANS, Gabriel. First edition in English, in an unrestored contemporary binding, of this account by a Jesuit missionary present in China during the crucial Ming-Qing transition. The folding plan shows Beijing's Inner City idealized as a neat grid-pattern of blocks. As the centre of imperial power, the Forbidden City is shown to an exaggerated scale. Born into the same family as Magellan, the author (also known as "de Magalhães", 1610-1677) travelled through China between 1640 and 1648, an eventful period straddling the demise of the Ming dynasty in 1644. Under the Qing, he spent his remaining decades living in the Chinese capital as a highly respected technical advisor to the court, and the Emperor Kangxi perhaps helped to pay for the costs of his funeral. The manuscript of his History, completed in 1668, was carried to Europe by Phillipe Couplet, a contributor to Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), and published in French in 1688 under the patronage of Cardinal Caesar d'Estrees. The preface to the French edition "emphasized the originality of Magalhães' relation and its importance as a genuine contribution to the improvement of Europe's knowledge. Others must have recognized its quality, for it was almost immediately translated into English by John Ogilby" (Lack & Van Klay, p. 362). Magaillans strikes a lighter, more popular tone than the scholarly Confucius Sinarum. Chapters cover economics and governance, language, public works, social hierarchies, literary culture and Confucianism, and the imperial architecture of Beijing. He repeatedly stresses China's antiquity and accomplishments: "they understand with ease when they read the Books which the Fathers of our Society have written, the most subtil and difficult. Questions as well in Mathematicks, and Philosophy, as in Theology. The Chronicles of the Chineses are almost as Ancient as the Deluge" (pp. 88-9). He is often struck by Chinese advancements in such disciplines as engineering, observing that the Grand Canal "surpasses all other Works of this Nature which are upon the Earth" (p. 114). In 1688, the first French Jesuits arrived in the Chinese capital, and a flurry of accounts built on the foundation established by Magaillans. "Around the mid-eighteenth century, the public in France or Germany was better informed about China than about many countries on Europe's periphery" (Osterhammel, p. 115). ESTC notes copies of the first edition with a variant title page distinguished by the presence of a comma after the author's name. Provenance: Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort (1684-1714), with his ornate 1705 armorial bookplate and the Badminton pressmark (M6=14) below. "As a 'thorough-going tory' Beaufort removed himself from mainstream court politics during the years of the whig junto, establishing instead a high-tory drinking society, the Honourable Board of Loyal Brotherhood, in 1709" (ODNB). Cordier 36-37; ESTC R12530; Löwendahl 1584 & 189 (for first edition in French); Lust 58 (for 1689 edition). Donald Frederick Lach & Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, volume III, 1965; Jürgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: the Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia, 2018. Octavo (179 x 110 mm). Contemporary speckled calf, spine with 4 raised bands with scrolling foliate roll in gilt, red spine label lettered in gilt, compartments with paired elaborate foliate tools in gilt enclosing hollow gilt diamonds, boards panelled in blind, board edges dotted in gilt, edges sprinkled red. Folding plan of Beijing by Claude Bernou, Chinese characters and vignette plan in text. With the usual pagination jump from K2 to N1. Loss at spine ends, extremities worn in places, front joint cracking but holding firm, old paper repair to map stub, map with 120mm closed tear, expertly repaired with Japanese tissue, small closed tear on F2 (touching a few letters but legibility unaffected), loss to lower margin L2: a very good copy.
  • $9,762
  • $9,762
A Memoir of the Rev. W. A. B. Johnson. Missionary of the Church Missionary Society

A Memoir of the Rev. W. A. B. Johnson. Missionary of the Church Missionary Society, in Regent’s Town, Sierra Leone.

JOWETT, William. First edition, in a charming contemporary binding, of Jowett's memoir of the beloved priest William Johnson, whose popularity as a minister in the village of Regent saw the residents nickname him the "Apostle of Regent". William Augustine Bernard Johnson (1787-1823) travelled to Sierra Leone in 1816 and became an ordained minister in 1817. He was placed in the nearby village of Regent as a minister, a position funded by the Church Mission Society. Johnson's popularity saw the church's congregation exceed its 500-person capacity, and a gallery was built to accommodate the additional 200 attendees. Johnson was forced to travel back to England after falling ill but never reached his destination, instead dying at sea aged 36. William Jowett (1787-1855) was an author and missionary who volunteered overseas for the CMS. He wrote several works and memoirs of Christianity and missionaries overseas and helped organise the publication of the first Amharic Bible. Octavo (170 x 110 mm). Contemporary smooth calf, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, black morocco label, covers panelled in gilt, board edges gilt, turn-ins rolled in blind, marbled endpapers, edges gilt, blue silk book marker. With folding map. Binder's instructions bound in at end, "brown calf, gilt edges, Marriette?"; ownership signature crossed out on recto of front flyleaf. Contemporary shelf label to head of spine, binding lightly rubbed, gutter slightly cracked before rear free endpaper but holding. A very good copy, attractively bound.
  • $781
Homer's Iliads in English. To which may be added Homer's Odysses Englished by the same Author.

Homer’s Iliads in English. To which may be added Homer’s Odysses Englished by the same Author.

HOBBES, Thomas. First edition of Hobbes's Iliad, in the rugged English verse of the late 17th century. These editions have often been interpreted as a means of subverting the ban on Hobbes writing controversial material. The 1676 edition is notably scarce in commerce: we trace two auction listings only in the 21st century. Hobbes's translation, which Pope knew "intimately, frequently using it as a crib" (Ball, p. 2), was written at the age of 88. In his earlier introduction to the Odyssey, Hobbes wrote that he composed the work "because I thought it might take off my adversaries from showing their folly upon my more serious writings" (quoted in Macdonald and Hargreaves, p. 58). However, since 1662 books were required to be licenced by the episcopal authorities. From that point on, Hobbes, whose rejection of the authority of the church was deeply controversial among bishops, could publish nothing further in the fields of politics, law, history, or religion. In these seemingly uncontroversial translations, Hobbes greatly strengthens the legitimacy of Greek and Trojan monarchy. He modifies the Homeric condemnations of certain monarchs, and "the gap between rulers and ruled is [made] more decisive than Homeric vocabulary allows" (Condren, p. 75). Hobbes's translation of the Odyssey was first published in 1673: William Crooke reissued works together in 1677. Provenance: Dr. Richard Luckett (1945-2020), lecturer in seventeenth-century literature at Cambridge, and Pepys Librarian at Magdalene College, with his book ticket on the front pastedown. Macdonald and Hargreaves 79. Jerry L. Ball, "The Despised Version: Hobbes's Translation of Homer", Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, vol. 20, no. 1, 1996; Conal Condren, "The philosopher Hobbes as the poet Homer", Renaissance Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, Feb. 2018. Duodecimo (154 x 89 mm). Contemporary mottled calf, professionally rebacked with modern spine ruled in black and with red morocco label, covers bordered in gilt and with central diamond foliate motif in blind, marbled edges. With 6 pages of bookseller's advertisements between contents and text. Signature of Rev. Henry Purefoy Fitzgerald (1867-1948), naturalist, to front free endpaper. Miniscule contemporary "SHe" initials to title page. Joints neatly restored. Light rubbing, minor foxing and browning to endpapers and contents, several spots of light inking, closed tear to outer margin of H5, tape repair on recto: a very good copy.
  • $11,389
  • $11,389
Autograph letter signed

Autograph letter signed, to Maria Sophia Bentham. With a conjoined autograph letter from Jeremy Bentham to his brother.

MILL, James. A letter from James Mill, apparently never published in its entirety, making arrangements for the foreign education of the teenage John Stuart Mill. The third page carries a supplemental letter by Jeremy Bentham, discussing personal matters and the impending divorce of George IV. Mill's letter demonstrates the importance of feminine guidance for the young John Stuart Mill. Maria Sophia Bentham (c. 1765-1858) was a botanist and the wife of General Sir Samuel Bentham (1757-1831), the only surviving sibling of Jeremy Bentham. In June 1820, when John Stuart Mill was 14, his father sent him to spend a year in Samuel Bentham's household in the south of France. In August, the family left their accommodation in Toulouse, settling in Montpellier for the winter. In the letter, James Mill agrees to John accompanying the family to Montpellier, which he hopes will broaden his horizons beyond exclusively intellectual matters - both he and Maria having observed that John's "exclusive adherence to books has blunted the quickness of his attraction to other things". Earlier in the letter, Mill proclaims that "I can have no doubt of its being a matter of first rate importance for John to remain in your society, & under your tuition for a few months longer". While John Stuart Mill's subsequent feminism is well known, he wrote in later life of his mother's "shallowness of feeling and lack of 'strong good sense'" (ODNB). Maria Bentham, by contrast, discussed science and mechanics with her husband (a naval architect) and worked as Jeremy Bentham's research assistant in the early years of their acquaintance. During Mill's stay, she advised him on his programme of reading, set various academic assignments, and discussed his conclusions with him - Mill notes that "the boy writes to me with a strong sense of the importance of all that you point out to him, & with infinite gratitude [for] both for your suggestions & for the manner of them". For the scholar Marion Filipiuk, "Lady Bentham was, without doubt, a contributing factor to Mill's views about the capability of women" (p. 455). Mill notes that he is sending the letter on to London, with "room for Mr Bentham to add something, if he has any thing to say". Bentham's additions are unsigned and in the constrained hand sometimes seen in his later writings. The fourth page includes a postscript, in a different hand, on sending "the wheel-making apparatus", which Maria has recorded as written by "Jeremy Bentham's amanuensis" - possibly Richard Doane (1805-1848). Mill's letter is acknowledged by, and selectively quoted in, Catherine Pease-Watkin's paper The Influence Of Mary Bentham On John Stuart Mill (2006). It does not appear to have been published in any collection of Mill's correspondence. Provenance: sold at Christie's on 28 June 1995. Marion Filipiuk, ed., George Bentham: Autobiography, 1800-1834, 1997; Catherine Pease-Watkin, "The Influence Of Mary Bentham On John Stuart Mill", Journal of Bentham Studies, vol. 8, 2006. Octavo bifolium (page size 227 x 185 mm). Three pages of writing, the fourth with address, postage stamps, and postscript from Bentham's amanuensis. Minor foxing and creasing, small hole of 5 mm to inner margin of rear leaf: an excellent example.
  • $16,270
  • $16,270
The Theory of Agreeable Sensations. In Which After the Laws observed by Nature in the Distribution of Pleasure are discovered

The Theory of Agreeable Sensations. In Which After the Laws observed by Nature in the Distribution of Pleasure are discovered, the Principles of Natural Theology, and Moral Philosophy, are established. To which is subjoined, relative to the same subject, A Dissertation on Harmony of Style.

LÉVESQUE DE POUILLY, Louis-Jean. First edition in English of this study of pleasure, sensation, and moral philosophy, including a seven-page preface by the Swiss theologian Jacob Vernet (1698-1789). Louis-Jean Lévesque de Pouilly (1691-1750) is best known as a disciple and correspondent of Newton and a friend of Bolingbroke, both of whom he had met during his stays in England. He explores "the source and genuine standard of our several inclinations, pleasures, and duties, by which means we obtain as it were the key to the whole system of humanity and morals" (p. vi). This edition is scarce in commerce. Pouilly's text was originally published in Paris in 1736 at the behest of Bolingbroke and without the author's knowledge. The text was reworked into the Encyclopédie article "Plaisir", which is attributed to Diderot. ESTC T79281. Duodecimo (157 x 91 mm). Contemporary sprinkled calf, spine ruled in gilt and with raised bands, covers with double-rule panel in gilt. Engraved head- and tailpieces. Engraved bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst, 20th-century pharmacy proprietor, on front pastedown. Eighteenth-century signature of "G. Doughty" on half-title. Illegible 19th-century ink signature on front free endpaper. Light bumping and rubbing, minor loss to spine ends, joints cracked but holding firm, browning to endpapers and outer leaves, slight foxing to contents: a very good copy.
  • $1,952
  • $1,952
Outline of a New System of Logic

Outline of a New System of Logic, With a Critical Examination of Dr. Whately’s “Elements of Logic”.

BENTHAM, George. First edition of this youthful work of logical iconoclasm, illustrating a lesser-known side of the great botanist. This work is scarce in commerce: we trace one auction listing only in the 21st century. George Bentham (1800-1884) is best known as a botanist who outlined an authoritative taxonomy of plant genera and species. He was also the nephew, secretary, and amanuensis of Jeremy Bentham. In his early years, George managed his family estate near Montpellier: Jeremy Bentham sent several of his friends, including John Stuart Mill, to study French there. In 1826, Bentham moved to live with his uncle in London while reading for the Bar. This work, written during his stay with Bentham, is primarily a critique of Richard Whately's Elements of Logic (1826), a highly popular textbook of Aristotelian logic. Bentham acknowledges the influence of his uncle in the preface: writing that the leading principles of his system "must be considered as founded on those of Mr Bentham" (p. x). The work includes the first articulation of the quantification of the predicate. The publishers went bankrupt during publication: many copies were either pulped or used for waste paper. Octavo. 20th-century grey quarter paper, printed paper label to spine, green marbled paper sides, edges uncut. Tables and formulae in the text. Elaborate 19th-century signature to initial blank of "J. Peachey", possibly John William Peachey (1788-1837), son of the 2nd Baron Selsey; later signature of "S. P. Duval" underneath. Occasional pencil annotations and underlining to contents. Light bumping and rubbing, slight creasing and damp staining to spine, minor browning and foxing to endpapers and content margins: a very good copy.
  • $2,278
  • $2,278