Rare books from Ash Rare Books

New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951. First edition. His first and most famous novel, based on his own army experiences in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, which he witnessed. An immediate success, winner of the National Book Award, always included in lists of the major novels of the twentieth century, and the basis of the memorable and multiple Oscar-winning 1953 film, with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, etc. Demy 8vo (207 x 136mm). [xii],(862)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half black morocco, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endleaves; very faint crease to the final leaves, but otherwise an excellent copy, clean and sound.

London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. First edition. Beyond the early pamphlets and offprints, Douglas's first book and his first venture into fiction. He later claimed that just eight copies were sold - a slight exaggeration, but close on 600 copies of the original 750 were still unsold in 1903 and almost certainly pulped. Contains fifteen short stories (including "Elfwater", "Nocturne", "The Devil's Oak", and "Belladonna") as well as the fantasy femme fatale novella "Nerinda", most of the former written in collaboration with his then wife, Elsa Fitzgibbon (1876-1916). Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). (viii),(248)pp. Bound in a most attractive mid twentieth-century full red morocco, banded and gilt, by William Root & Son of London; top edge gilt; red silk marker; original pictorial cloth upper cover preserved at rear; a few very minor signs of age and use; a few faint spots, but overall a very good copy in a fine binding.

London : John Murray, 1845. First edition. A key novel in the whole Tractarian, Young England, Oxford Movement controversies of the times - a lament for the loss of Anglican faith, hostility to the industrial world, profound opposition to Rome and the Jesuits - and yet also a lurid and sensational novel, widely read and hugely popular, especially in the United States. "Hawkstone has the rare merit of being written throughout with more or less of intellectual power. It does not contain a single page in which the evidence of mind is not apparent" (John Bull, 29th March 1845). Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (159 x 99cm). viii,396; [ii],422pp. Bound, without half-titles, in a neat contemporary half tan calf, banded, gilt, and worked in blind; black labels; marbled sides, edges, and endleaves; some very minor wear; a handful of internal spots, but a very good set. Contemporary ownership inscriptions of Mary Hobson, and later owner's 1909 name.

London : Tinsley Brothers, 1877. First edition : in the primary binding. "The leading idea in the tale is this: at Birmingham there is an immense property without an owner, and two years ago over 100 claimants from America and other countries held a family council there ... Something similar (under different names of localities etc.) forms the nucleus of my novel which shows how this vast property influences the lives of many people" (Jefferies in a letter of July 1876). His rare third novel, intended to appeal to lovers of the sensational in the style of Wilkie Collins - "He certainly succeeds in seizing on his reader's attention from the first start, and his story, with all its faults, is never for a moment dull or trivial" (The Graphic, 25th August 1877). Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],(250),[ii]; [iv],278; [iv],(290)pp. Original dove-grey cloth, lettered in gilt, and ruled and blocked in black and gilt; spines a little darkened; a little rubbed; some slight splash-marks and faint spots;… Read More

London : for W. Bent, (1792). An interesting late eightenth-century edition of both parts of this popular devotional guide, constantly in print since its first appearance in the 1730s. The present copy was bound, almost certainly in Liverpool, for "Pudsey Dawson, Esqr. Bailiff, 1797", whose name is unusually but prominently tooled in gilt on the upper cover. Dawson (1752-1816) was rather more than just a bailiff, serving as Mayor of Liverpool at one time (Pudsey Street is named after him and there is a portrait in the Liverpool Record Office). A man of notable piety, as well as wealth, remembered as one of Liverpool's "most active, enlightened and useful citizens", he was also the founder of the first school for the blind in the country. An internal inscription records his gift of the book to his eldest daughter, Mary Dawson (1779-1855) on Christmas Eve, 1803. Crown 12mo (160 x 94mm). [iv],[2],viii,142,144pp. Engraved frontispiece. Contemporary full blue-black goatskin, ruled… Read More

London : Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830. First British edition. Alida de Barbérie is abducted by pirates - the brigantine "Water Witch" is pursued by Captain Ludlow. Set in and around the still half-Dutch New York of the early eighteenth century - the press was unanimous: "the mystery of the story, and the life and spirit of his characters, have, indeed, seldom been equalled, and is nowhere surpassed" (Morning Chronicle) - "Cooper, the American novelist, has no living superior" (The Scotsman). Precedes the American edition by two months, although a slightly earlier edition improbably published in Dresden is known in a handful of copies. Three volumes. Demy 12mo (188 x 114mm). viii,(322); [ii],316; [ii],308pp. Bound, without the advertisement leaves, in a smart contemporary half blue-green calf, banded and gilt; red labels; marbled sides; sprinkled edges; a few internal marks and spots, but still overall an excellent set. With the contemporary armorial bookplate in each volume of the… Read More

London : Saunders & Otley, 1836. First edition. Marryat's amiable and abidingly popular tale of the making of a seaman - although as one modern critic has it, "there's something here to offend almost everyone". Contemporary critics found it "a work of great power and surpassing beauty, sufficient of itself to have established his reputation as a man of genius" (London Courier, 19th December 1836). Three volumes. Demy 12mo (186 x 112mm). (viii),(292); (viii),306; viii,314pp. Bound, without half-titles and advertisement leaves, in a neat contemporary half tan calf, banded and gilt; red labels; marbled sides, edges and endleaves; just a touch sunned; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good and sound set. With the contemporary armorial bookplates of John Wingfield (1769-1862) of Onslow, Sheriff of Shropshire and Mayor of Shrewsbury, in each volume - and the more recent nautical bookplate of the notable collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016).

London : Rare Book Society, 2011. First edition. An illustrated dictionary of well over 1,500 members of the map-trade in the British Isles from the beginnings until the mid nineteenth century, including all the known engravers and lithographers, all the known globemakers and retailers, the principal mapsellers and publishers, the key cartographers, the makers of map-based games and puzzles, and others. Each entry includes a list of published work, the known biographical facts (in most cases based on fresh and original research), addresses and dates, details of apprentices, etc. Twenty-five years in the making, the book contains previously unpublished material on almost every page. Royal 8vo (25cm). xxxii,744pp. Over 600 illustrations; apprentice charts, etc. Original buckram; very good in the dust-jacket.

London : for Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1808. First edition. Lamb's hugely influential rediscovery of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans, many of the specimens of their work culled from "plays which are to be found only in the British Museum and in some scarce private libraries" - Francis Beaumont, George Chapman, Thomas Decker, John Fletcher, John Ford, Fulke Greville, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, John Marston, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton, George Peele, Cyril Tourneur, John Webster, and many more - "the most striking anthology perhaps ever made from English literature" (Edmund Blunden). Crown 8vo (185 x 113mm). xii,484pp. Bound, without half-title, in a very handsome later (early twentieth-century) full blue crushed morocco, banded and richly gilt, by Robert Riviere & Son; all edges gilt; inner gilt dentelles; marbled endleaves; some very minor rubbing and a hint of bruising, but a very good copy.

[North Tawton] : Morrigu Press, (1982). First edition : one of just seventy-five numbered copies, signed by Ted Hughes. A poem hand-printed on and bound in hand-made Fabriano papers, with a colophon by Leonard Baskin. Loosely inserted are the original hand-printed press flyer for the publication and two signed autograph notes to the great poetry collector and publisher Alan Clodd (1918-2002) on Morrigu compliments slips, the first from Nicholas Hughes (Ted Hughes' teenage son), dated 27th August 1984, offering Clodd a copy of the publication - "our best piece of work so far" - and the second from Carol Hughes (Hughes' second wife) dated 27th September, confirming receipt of the order and the despatch of the book. Royal 8vo (25cm). [12]pp. Original grey-brown stitched wrappers, with a white title label printed in red; a very good copy of a scarce and fragile publication, with an attractive provenance.

London : by J. Streater, for Henry Twiford, George Sawbridge, Thomas Dring, and John Place, 1657. First edition. One of the earliest printed histories of London, second only to the early editions of Stow in terms of chronology. Compiled by the versatile and engaging Welsh author, royalist, politician and traveller, James Howell, after his release from a lengthy imprisonment at the time of the Interregnum. With accounts of St. Paul's and the other ancient churches; the individual wards and precincts; the governance of the City; the walls, streets, gates and prisons; the Inns of Court; the twelve great livery companies; the company halls; the Tower, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and other prominent buildings; the Thames; London Bridge; the mayoralty; the city of Westminster and the Abbey; the Strand; Covent Garden; Lincoln's Inn; Westminster Hall; Parliament, the Admiralty, etc. Pott folio (270 x 166mm). [x],1-128,301-(408),[viii]pp - collates as institutional copies and complete despite the lacuna… Read More

London : Charles Knight & Co., [1838-1843]. The first Charles Knight edition. Comprises two volumes each of the comedies, histories and tragedies, as well as the poems, a volume of seventeen doubtful plays sometimes ascribed to Shakespeare (or Shakspere, as Knight insists on having it), together with commendatory verses, a history of critical opinion, material on Shakespeare in Germany, indexes, and a final volume of Knight's full-length biography. All furnished with introductory notices, notes, variant readings, a glossary, music to the songs, etc. - and profusely illustrated throughout by the leading wood-engravers of the day from the designs of William Harvey (1796-1866) and others. Using the latest technology, Charles Knight (1791-1873) was in the vanguard of bringing the price of books within everyday reach and bringing education and edification in their train with the use of copious illustration - here insisting on illustrations of "the realities upon which the imagination of the poet must have… Read More

London : Macmillan & Co., 1887. First edition : one of just 860 copies in the primary binding. The story of Grace Melbury, the faithful Giles Winterborne, and the faithless Edred Fitzpiers. Controversial for its time, but "his loveliest if not his finest book" (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) and "the most beautiful and most noble of Hardy's novels" (William Lyon Phelps) - and indeed Hardy's own favourite - "On taking up 'The Woodlanders' and reading it after many years, I like it as a story best of all". Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],302,[ii]; [iv],328; [iv],316pp. Original holly-green cloth, ruled in black and lettered in gilt; a touch dulled; lightly worn at extremities; endpapers strained at hinges (two with neat repair); vol. i. recased and tightened; vols ii and iii a little shaken and slack; a handful of minor flaws, but a rare cloth set. Purdy pp.54-57.

London : Geoffrey Bles, (1950). First edition. Illustrations and colour frontispiece by Pauline Baynes. The first and best-known of the Narnia chronicles. "It is a kind of modern fairy tale about four children evacuated to an old house in the country during the war. They discover that merely by stepping into a wardrobe they have access to a wonderland of strange creatures and stranger adventures ... his little book may well become a children's classic" (a prophetic review in the Belfast News-Letter, 30th October 1950). Post 8vo (198 x 130mm). (174)pp. Coloured frontispiece. Illustrations. Bound, without final blank, in an elegant recent full green morocco, banded and gilt; a few very minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

London : Macmillan & Co., 1877. A standard edition of the poetry, printed on india paper and published in Macmillan's "Globe Edition" series. Bound in 1883 in a very handsome binding, with fore-edge painting, for the Cambridge scholar-bookseller Robert Bowes (1835-1919) as a gift for his wife Fanny Bowes (1831-1903) on her birthday in June of that year. Inscribed and initialled by Bowes with his wife's name and the date - with a further later inscription in a different hand commemorating her death in 1903. With Bowes' personal "Quod Vis Potes" bookplate bound in. Bowes was a nephew of the publisher Alexander Macmillan (1818-1896) and his partner in the Cambridge bookshop of "Macmillan & Bowes", while his wife Fanny Bowes was Macmillan's sister-in-law. Sold together with the companion edition of "Poetical Works of Walter Scott" (1878), bound to match and evidently part of the original gift. Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (174 x 115mm). (xii),(626); (xliv),(560)pp. Bound in handsome full citron morocco,… Read More