Search Results: Titles starting with P from Alembic Rare Books

London: Collins, 1967. Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Bookplate of Eric J. Hosking. Tail of spine a little bumped, lightly rubbed at the edges. An excellent copy in the jacket that is also a little faded on the spine panel and edges, and lightly rubbed at the extremities. First edition, first impression of this masterpiece of 20th century nature writing, cited by Ted Hughes, Andrew Motion, Werner Herzog, and others, as one of the most important works of its kind. Uncommon in such nice condition in the dust jacket. This copy from the library of eminent bird photographer Eric J. Hosking, with his owl bookplate. Author J. A. Baker (1926-1987) was a librarian who spent ten years tracking peregrine falcons in coastal Essex during the 1950s and 60s. This, the first of his two published works, distils his observations of the birds and their changing habitat into a lyrical account of a single year, beginning in autumn with the birds' migration from Scandinavia.… Read More

London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1932. Octavo. Original burgundy cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt Frontispiece, illustrations throughout the text. Integral ads for photographic and printing supplies in the front and back matter, 24 separately-paginated pages of publisher's ads at rear. Ownership signature of G. E. Smith to both front endpapers, inked note "no 26" to front free endpaper, library stamp of the Sun Engraving Co. of Watford to the front free endpaper and the rear pastedown. Spine rolled and a little toned, text block slightly shaken, some small marks and spots to the cloth, small nick and crease in the edge of the title page and the following leaf. Very good condition. First edition, first impression of this technical guide to printing from photographs, co-authored by the pioneering bird photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940). Turner became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic… Read More

London: The Royal Society, 1963. Tall quarto. Original light brown wrappers printed in black. Double-sided plate, diagrams within the text. Spine rolled and slightly faded, vertical creases to the lower wrappers, small abrasion to the top corner of the upper wrapper. Excellent condition. First edition, first printing. The full issue of the journal, containing a single paper by the accomplished marine biologist Howard Barraclough Fell (1917-1994), who worked at Victoria University of Wellington and then Harvard. He was considered one of the world's foremost experts on fossil sea urchins.

London: Printed for the Ray Society, sold by Dulau & Co., Ltd., 1930. Octavo. Original blue cloth elaborately blocked in blind, titles to spine and floral roundel to upper board gilt, yellow coated endpapers, top edge gilt. Ray Society half title with portrait vignette, 4 plates, engravings throughout the text. 16-page Ray Society membership and recent publications lists dated January 1930 at rear. Cloth just a little rubbed at the extremities, spine and edges of the boards tanned, free endpapers partially tanned. An excellent copy. First edition, first impression. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to her sister on the front free endpaper, "To dear Yvonne, From M. V. L." (see Lebour's obituary in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, volume 52, p. 778). Diatoms — microscopic algae with silica shells that live in both freshwater and marine environments — are one of the earth's keystone species. They produce an amount of oxygen comparable to all terrestrial… Read More

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979. Quarto. Original green cloth, title to spine and design to upper board gilt. With the dust jacket. Colour illustrations throughout. A fine copy. First edition, first printing of this key reference on hallucinogenic plants by two leaders of the 20th-century psychedelics movement. Copies in fine condition such as this one are particularly uncommon. Widely considered the founder of modern ethnobotany, Richard Schultes (1915-2001) spent most of his career travelling the Amazon, where he consulted with indigenous people and investigated the plants they used for religious and medicinal purposes. His co-author, Albert Hoffman (1906-2008), was the Swiss chemist who first synthesised LSD and discovered its hallucinogenic effects, and who later isolated psilocybin and psilocin, the primary psychedelic compounds in mushrooms. This volume, copiously illustrated and written for a popular audience, describes the primary species of psychoactive plants and explores their use around the… Read More

Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922. Octavo. Contemporary library binding of marbled boards with black cloth backstrip, titles to spine gilt. Illustrations from photographs throughout the text. Inked shelf number to the title, and ink stamps of the Leipzig Surgical Hospital to the title and 9 other leaves. Binding a little worn at the edges. Very good condition. First edition, first impression of "the first German textbook that provided detailed instructions on tissue culture methods and indicated how they might be applied for cancer research", by the pioneering cytologist Rhoda Erdmann (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 424). Rare, with only one institutional copy listed in WorldCat, at the University of Groningen. Erdmann (1870-1935) struggled throughout her career, despite being recognised by her peers as a talented and forward-looking researcher. Her father opposed science as a career, so she only pursued it following his death. After qualifying in 1907, she worked at the… Read More

London: Spring Books, [1956]. Folio. Original buff, heavy-grain cloth, titles to spine and Stegosaurus design to upper board in brown. With the dust jacket. 60 lithographic plates of which 31 are in colour. Lower corner of the binding knocked, which has also slightly creased the corner of the text block and the jacket, spine rolled. A very good copy in the bright jacket that is lightly rubbed at the extremities with a few nicks and short closed splits. First English language edition, first impression of this vibrantly illustrated work, originally published in Prague under the title Tiere der Urzeit in the same year. Rare in the dust jacket in such nice condition. Between the 1930s and 1960s "the foremost painter of dinosaur restorations was Zden k Burian (1905-1981). His canvasses were used to illustrate a number of popular books on prehistoric life by Joseph Augusta, and in the late 1950s and 1960s these were translated into English and widely circulated. So the Burian illustrations offered an… Read More

Lancaster, PA & Ithaca, NY: The American Physical Society, June 1918. Octavo. Original green wrappers printed in black. 1 plate, 3 leaves of ads at rear. Spine and edges of wrappers tanned, wear along the spine with a closed tear in the upper wrapper near the tail and loss from the head of the spine. Very good condition. First edition, the journal issue in original wrappers, of a significant paper by two early professional female chemists. Frances Wick (1875-1941) became interested in physics after teaching a high school course in the subject. In 1904 she enrolled at Cornell where her mentors, Edward L. Nichols and Ernest Merrit, were supportive of women students and introduced her to what would become her primary interest, the study of luminescence. After graduating she taught in women's colleges, did research at General Electric, Harvard, Cornell, Cambridge, Berlin, and Vienna, and worked on gun sights and radio during the First World War. Wick "took part in comprehensive studies of the… Read More

London: John Murray, 1910. Large octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt, borders blocked in blind. 30 plates of which 3 are folding, tables and graphs within the text. 4 leaves of ads at rear. Ink stamps of the John Holt Company, Liverpool to the front free endpaper, pages 95, 241, 273, 289, and 481 as well as two of the folding plates. Cloth a little rubbed at the extremities, spotting to the edges of the text block and the early and late leaves, and scattered spotting throughout the contents. Very good condition. First edition of this significant work by the doctor who identified the transmission pathway of malaria. Ronald Ross (1857-1932) was a physician in the Indian Medical Service who became interested in malaria during the 1890s. He was mentored by Patrick Manson, the leading British specialist in tropical diseases, and set out to prove Manson's mosquito hypothesis. Ross's first breakthrough was proving that the parasite in question could be transmitted to mosquito… Read More