Simon Beattie of New York

Simon Beattie
New York
Antiquarian Book Fair
11–14 April 2013
53rd New York Antiquarian Book Fair
The Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065
Booth A30
Cell +44 7717 707575
Cover illustration from item 21, Dreiser.
01. [ABINGDON, Willoughby BERTIE, Earl of.] An Adieu to
the Turf: a poetical Epistle from The E-L of A----N To His Grace
The A----P of Y--K. London: Printed for M. Smith; and sold by the
booksellers in the Strand, Temple-Bar, and Paternoster-Row.
1778.
4to (256 × 206 mm) in half-sheets, pp. [4], vii, [1], 24, with half-title;
typographical ornaments; minor marginal browning, a light waterstain
affecting upper and lower margins from p. 13, small paper repair/
reinforcement to gutter of pp. 6 & 7; preserved in modern quarter
morocco, spine lettered in gilt.
$4000
First edition, with two further editions following in the same year. Rare:
ESTC listing copies at Bodley, Cornell, Huntington, and Fisher Library,
Sydney only. A satire on the eccentric Earl of Abingdon’s former
attachment to sporting pleasures (racing, cricket and cards) and his
apparent new-found interest in politics, which he expressed in his
inflammatory pamphlet of 1777: Thoughts on the Letter of Edmund
Burke, Esq. to the Sheriffs of Bristol on the Affairs of America. Of An
Adieu to the Turf the Monthly Review noted: ‘Some court wit, a knowing
one too, has given, in arch numbers, the last words and dying speech of
a Newmarket peer. —Very severe on the Earl of Abingdon,— for turning
Patriot.’ Abingdon’s colourful youth is the butt of a stream of jokes: from
his preference for Hoyle over Horace, to his attempts to apply the rules
of cricket to courtship. ‘Scarce fourteen years has pass’d away / When
first I thought of am’rous play, / Of Women not afraid: / For them I left
more childish Cricket; / I only strove to hit their Wicket,... / And put-out
every Maid’ (p. 3).
Jackson, p. 60.
02. [ANSTEY, Christopher]. An Election Ball in poetical Letters,
in the Zomerzetshire Dialect, from Mr. Inkle, a Freeman of Bath, to
his Wife at Glocester: with a poetical Address to John Miller, Esq.
at Batheaston Villa. By the Author of the New Bath Guide. Bath:
Printed for the author by S. Hazard ... and sold by Dodsley ...
Wilkie ... London; Fletcher and Hodson ... Cambridge; and by S.
Hazard and all the other booksellers at Bath. 1776.
Folio (375 × 230 mm), pp. [2], 44; typographical ornaments; half-title
slightly dusty, very minor marginal fraying to this and a few subsequent
leaves, but generally very clean and fresh; old marbled limp wrappers,
grey paper spine.
$1100
First edition. An Election Ball was the closest Anstey ever came to
recapturing the wit and verve of his best-selling New Bath Guide and it
ran to several editions. The primary object of Anstey’s satire is the
prevailing fashion for elaborate head-dresses among women and the
dashing ‘macaroni’ style for men. There are, however, numerous
discursions, including a reference to Captain Cook’s South Sea voyage
and the observation of the transit of Venus. The verso of the half-title
reads: ‘The Profits which may arise from the Publication of the first Five
Hundred Copies of this Pamphlet (if so many should be disposed of) will
be applied to the Relief of the poor Prisoners confined in the new Goal
[sic] at Bath, and their distressed Families’.
Jackson, p. 44.
03. [ANSTEY, Christopher]. An Election Ball, in poetical Letters
from Mr. Inkle, at Bath, to his wife at Glocester: with a poetical
Address to John Miller, Esq. … The Second Edition, with
considerable Additions. By the Author of the New Bath Guide.
Bath: Printed for the author, by S. Hazard, ... and sold by Dodsley,
and Wilkie, London; Fletcher and Hodson, at Cambridge; and by
S. Hazard, and all the other booksellers at Bath. 1776.
4to (256 × 186 mm), pp. 64 (without half-title pp. [1-2] apparently as
often), engraved plate by Bampfylde; typographical ornaments; uncut in
early dull green wraps; slight fraying.
$950
Second edition, with the addition of the famous plate, facing p. 36,
depicting the heroine, Madge Inkle preparing her extravagant headdress for the ball, with feathers plucked from a live cockerel.
Jackson, p. 44.
‘AN EARLY WORK OF GERMAN ROMANTICISM’: PRESENTATION COPY
04. BECHSTEIN, Ludwig. Der Sonntag. Gedicht in sechs
Gesängen … nebst sechs Kupfertafeln, erfunden und radirt von
Ferdinand Berthold. Leipzig, Verlag von C. G. Börner. [1832.]
Oblong folio (332 × 520), pp. [2], 12; with 6 full-page etchings by
Berthold; printed on vélin; light offsetting from the plates, some spotting;
uncut, with wide margins, in the original printed wrappers, a few nicks,
spine defective in places.
$2800
First edition, very rare, the front cover inscribed ‘Erhalten von dem
Verfasser Febr. 1853’.
In 1831, Bechstein (1801–1860), prolific poet, novelist, and fairy tale
collector—his Deutsches Märchenbuch (1845) was more popular than
the Grimms’ collection—became librarian to the Duke of SaxeMeiningen, a post which gave him the financial security to pursue his
literary activities.
His exact contemporary, the artist Ferdinand Berthold (1800–1838), was
influenced by Cornelius, and ‘in his depiction of people … expressed the
Romantic in a graceful manner’ (Thieme–Becker). ‘The sequence Der
Sonntag with its six ornate illustrations … is an early work of German
Romanticism and later prompted Ludwig Richter [a friend of Berthold] to
produce his woodcut sequence of the same name’ (Allegemeines
Künsterlexikon X, 68).
OCLC
locates a handful of copies only, and all in Europe.
05. BENNET, John. Poems on several Occasions. London:
Printed for the author, and sold by T. Evans ... J. Southern ...
Mess. Prince, Fletcher, and Parker, Booksellers, in Oxford; and by
the author, in Woodstock, Oxon. 1774.
8vo (205 × 125 mm), pp. xxxiv, 156, numerous typographical ornaments;
contemporary ownership inscription ‘Margaret Giles’, pp. 139–140 with
long vertical tear to gutter, old paper repair, just touching one ornament,
but no text; contemporary polished sprinkled calf, spine gilt in
compartments with carnation tools, red morocco label; rubbed, joints
cracked but holding; a very nice copy.
$800
Sole edition of the collected poems of a Woodstock shoemaker. Very
much in the mould of Stephen Duck, Bennet’s work attracted few critical
notices. The Critical Review sarcastically paraphrased his Preface and
Dedication: ‘Mr. John Bennet derived his taste for poetry from an early
acquaintance with the pious strains of Sternhold and Hopkins, under the
tuition of his father, a very melodious psalmodist, the parish-clerk of
Woodstock. His rising genius was improved by the excellent instructions
of their curate, the celebrated Mr. Warton, late professor of poetry in the
university of Oxford. Under these happy auspices he made such a
proficiency in the art of versification, that he is now completely qualified
to become the poet-laureat of his native town …’ The subscribers’ list is
predominantly local, with a good many Oxford college members.
Jackson, p. 32.
06. BETHAM, Mary Matilda. Elegies and other small Poems ...
Ipswich: Printed by W. Burrell, and sold by Longman [London],
and Jermyn and Forster, Ipswich … [1797].
A fine collection of nine late eighteenth-century pieces in three volumes,
including several in first edition, uniformly bound in contemporary tree
calf, red and green labels, spines gilt, titles in gilt to upper covers;
contemporary ownership inscriptions of Edw[ard] Rogers.
$5500
Mary Matilda Betham (1776–1852) was a miniature painter and poet,
and a close friend of Charles and Mary Lamb, Coleridge and Southey;
Elegies is her first book. 8vo, pp. xii, [2], 128, with half-title but without
final advert leaf. First edition. Jackson, p. 217; Jackson, Women, 27.
It is bound with:
BRANDON, Isaac. Fragments in the manner of Sterne. Second edition.
London: Printed for the Author: and sold by Murray & Highley; and
Debrett, 1798; pp. [4], 139, [1], 3 engraved plates. Not in Jackson.
GIFFORD, William. The Baviad, and Maeviad ... a new Edition revised.
London: Printed for J. Wright, 1797; pp. xiv, [2], 145, [1], with half-title,
engraved frontispiece and one other plate. Jackson, p. 216.
DUDLEY, Sir H. Bate. Passages selected by distinguished Personages,
on the great literary Trial of Vortigern and Rowena! A comi-tragedy ...
Third edition. London: Printed for J. Ridgway, [?1796]. 3 parts (only, of
4), none of the copies listed in ESTC complete (most consisting of 1 or 2
parts only). Jackson, p. 210.
POETRY of the Anti-Jacobin. London: Printed for J. Wright, 1799; pp.
[8], 240, with half-title.By G. Canning, J.H. Frere, G. Ellis and others.
First edition. Jackson, p. 237.
BEATTIE, James. The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius: in two
Books. With some other Poems ... London: Printed by T. Gillet, for C.
Dilly, and W. Creech, Edinburgh, 1797; pp. [8], 120, 4 engraved
plates.Jackson, p. 236.
SMYTH, Willam. English Lyricks ... The second edition. Liverpool:
Printed by J. McCreery, for Cadell and Davies, London, 1798; pp. 62.
Jackson, p. 225; not in Johnson, which has the first edition of 1797.
GOODWIN, George. Rising Castle, with other Poems. Lynn: Printed for
the author by W. Turner; and sold by all the booksellers in Lynn; Messrs.
Robinson, London; Stevenson and Matchett, Norwich; and Gedge, Bury,
1798; pp. [15], 12-151, [1]. Jackson, p. 230; Johnson 387.
BLAIR, Robert. The Grave. A Poem ... London: Printed in the year,
1782; pp. 39, [1], vignette title-page. Not in Jackson.
TOLSTOY: ICONOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
07. BITOVT, Yury Yur’evich. Graf L. N.
Tolstoi v karrikaturakh i anekdotakh.
Sobral Iu. Bitovt. S 43 snimkami [Count Leo
Tolstoy in caricatures and anecdotes.
Collected by Yury Bitovt. With 43
illustrations]. Izdanie „M. V. Baldin i Ko“.
Moskva. Tipografiia Torgovago Doma M. V.
Baldin i Ko. … 1908.
8vo (178 × 129 mm), pp. 104; some page
numbers cropped, short tear to p. 25, a few
marginal chips from when the book was originally opened; some spotting
to the title, a little light marginal browning elsewhere; withal a very good
copy, complete with the original illustrated front cover, in later wrappers.
$2400
First edition thus, a rare work by the great Russian bibliographer. ‘The
present work, as far as I am aware, is the first attempt to look at the
extremely complicated chronology of the life and work of Leo Tolstoy
and was first printed in the book Gr. L. N. Tolstoi v literature i isskustve
[Count Leo Tolstoy in literature and art] … 1903. It appears here in with
considerable corrections and additions’ (p. 17).
Not found in OCLC.
RARE QUARTO WITH COLOUR-PRINTED TITLE
08. BOOKER, Luke. The Hop-Garden, a didactic Poem.
Newport: Printed by H.P. Silvester, for Messrs. Rivingtons ...
London. [1799.]
pp. [8], 118, [2], title within green
engraved roundel borders
depicting hop bines; early shelf
marks in red and black pencil to
head of title.
[Bound with:] Malvern, a
descriptive and historical Poem ...
dedicated to the Right Honourable
Julia, Viscountess Dudley and
Ward. Dudley: Printed by J. Rann;
for Brooke and Co. ... and
Rivingtons ... London; and sold by
the booksellers of Worcester,
Birmingham, &c. &c. 1798; pp. [ii],
x, [2], 124, [2], includes
subscribers’ list.
Two works in one vol., 4to (195 × 150 mm), sometime rebound
preserving boards and endpapers of nineteenth-century binding;
bookplates of Anne Charlotte De Lancey and Hobart College Library.
$1600
First editions, both provincially printed. The Hop-Garden appeared in
1799 in both octavo and in quarto, the latter with the green title border as
here. ESTC suggests that the latter is by far the rarest, with only 2 copies
(Senate House and University of Illinois) compared to 18 copies of the
octavo (though a sample of individual catalogues shows that several
copies of the quarto wrongly appear as the octavo in ESTC). Booker
explains in his preface that in the course of preparing his didactic poem
Malvern he found himself gathering so much material on the cultivation
of hops that it began to outstrip the other subjects of the poem, so he
extracted it for a complete poem, The Hop-Garden. He adds an
entertaining sequel on the subject of ale and its role in rural celebrations,
notably Christmas, while insisting ‘Drink to refresh, not to stupify the
soul’ (p. 106).
Hop-Garden: Jackson, p. 234; not in Johnson, Provincial Poetry; Aubin,
p. 45. Malvern: Jackson, p. 227; Johnson, Provincial Poetry 103.
09. [BOOTHBY, Sir Brooke]. Sorrows. Sacred to the Memory
of Penelope. London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. and sold by
Messrs Cadell and Davies ... Edwards ... and Johnson ... 1796.
Folio (300 × 218 mm), pp. 89, [1], complete with half-title; engraved
frontispiece by Fuseli (imprint cropped) and two vignettes in text (one, a
portrait of Penelope by Kirk after Joshua Reynolds), ornamental
tailpieces using motifs from the frontispiece; slight offsetting from
frontispiece to title, occasional light spotting; contemporary tree calf gilt,
green morocco spine label; corners worn, joints cracked but secure;
early inscription of Matthew Robinson (1797), later bookplates of Roger
Senhouse and Peter Scupham.
$1500
First edition of a poetic and artistic memorial to a six-year-old child. Its
importance lies not so much in its poetry but its illustrations, which
include a frontispiece, ‘The Apotheosis of Penelope Boothby’, after a
painting by Henry Fuseli; a portrait of the child at the age of 4 after a
painting by Joshua Reynolds; and an engraving of her stone memorial
by Thomas Banks. The poem, together with these three images,
eloquent reflections of the Romantic construction of childhood, are the
subject of a long and fascinating entry in Oxford DNB, in which
Rosemary Mitchell elaborates the ‘cultural afterlife’ of Penelope Boothby.
Sir Brooke Boothby (1744–1824) of Ashbourne Hall was a child of the
British Enlightenment. As a young man he was part of the Lichfield
circle which included Anna Seward, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, and
the Edgeworths, and he was personally acquainted with Rousseau, who
had stayed at Ashbourne in 1766 and who Boothby visited some years
later during his continental travels. Rousseau’s influence is felt in almost
all his published writings. Boothby married Susanna Bristow in 1784
and their daughter Penelope, born in 1785, was to be their only child. ‘In
1787 the Boothbys visited Paris, where Brooke met the French artist
Jacques-Louis David, and by April 1788 they were in London, where a
portrait of Penelope was commissioned from Sir Joshua Reynolds ...
Allegedly a warm relationship developed between the artist and the
sitter, who disappeared from her home one day and was found at
Reynolds’s house. The portrait, on loan at the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford, has been described as “one of Reynolds’ most successful childportraits, original in conception and brilliant in execution”: it depicts
Penelope sitting down against a wooded landscape, sporting an
oversized bonnet, which earned the painting the epithet of the Mob-Cap.
Higonnet comments that Penelope does not quite fit her clothes:
“endearingly miniaturized”, she is the classic Romantic child,
representative of an Edenic innocence, “absorbed in childhood”,
emblematic of “what we have lost and what we fear to lose”. Soon after
the portrait’s completion the Boothbys returned to their estate at
Ashbourne in Derbyshire,
where Penelope probably
spent the remainder of her
life. She died on Sunday 13
March 1791, at Ashbourne
Hall, after an illness of about
a month, during which she
was treated by Erasmus
Darwin … The grief of
Penelope’s parents led both
to memorialize her in their
separate fashions. A
monument to Penelope was
commissioned in 1793 from
the prominent sculptor
Thomas Banks. Made of
Carrara marble, it depicted
the little girl apparently
sleeping, and carried
inscriptions in English,
Italian, Latin, and French,
culled from the Bible,
Catullus, Petrarch, and
(unsurprisingly) Rousseau.
According to the sculptor’s
daughter, Brooke Boothby used to come daily to view progress on the
effigy, and often wept. When Banks’s model (now in the Sir John Soane
collection) was exhibited at Somerset House in 1793 Queen Charlotte
and her daughters were also apparently moved to tears … Boothby also
commissioned the artist Henry Fuseli to memorialize his daughter in a
painting entitled The Apotheosis of Penelope Boothby (1792). With its
strong resemblance to an altarpiece, Fuseli’s work depicts a winged and
elegantly clad angel sweeping down from heaven to receive an
elongated Penelope, while a figure representing the daystar indicates
the way upwards. On the ground, an urn and an oversized butterfly or
moth serve to symbolize death, the fleeting character of human life, and
the resurrection of the dead’ (Oxford DNB).
Jackson, p. 214.
10. BOWLES, William Lisle. St. Michael’s Mount, a Poem.
Salisbury: Printed by B.C. Collins, for T. Adams, Shaftesbury; and
sold by Dilly, London, and all other booksellers. 1798.
4to (238 × 172 mm), pp. 25, [3] including final errata and advert leaf, title
with tinted engraved view; slight dust-staining to outer margin of title;
modern blue wrappers.
$1100
Sole edition. The poet–antiquary Bowles was a major figure in the poetry
of the 1790s, though his works are now largely forgotten. Disappointed
in love in the 1780s, Bowles made
several tours in search of the picturesque
and sublime to Scotland, the Rhine and
Switzerland. His widely admired
collection Fourteen Sonnets, published in
1789, was read by Coleridge, Southey
and Wordsworth. St Michael’s Mount,
with its evocative illustrated title-page
depicting the Cornish landmark, was
printed in Salisbury shortly after Bowles
had given up the rectory of Chicklade
(Wilts.) in favour of a living at Dumbleton
(Glos.). It is dedicated to Lord Sommers
of Evesham. ‘The prospect is definitely
successful; and the historical retrospection, or rather imagination, with its
Druidic paraphernalia and wild charge of
Celtic Thor-worshippers ... prepares one for the concluding broadside at
Vice, Blasphemy, War, Massacre, and the French Revolution’ (Aubin).
Jackson, p. 230; not in Johnson; Aubin, pp. 103-4.
WITH A BEILBY VIGNETTE
11. BRAND, John. On Illicit Love. Written among the Ruins of
Godstow Nunnery, near Oxford. Newcastle upon Tyne: Printed by
T. Saint, for J. Wilkie ... London; J. Fletcher, Oxford; and W.
Charnley, Newcastle. 1775.
4to (270 × 222 mm), pp. [4], 20, with half-title, title with engraved
vignette depicting the ruins of Godstow by Ralph Beilby; uncut and stab
sewn in original pale blue wraps; slight nibbling to portion of lower
margin of upper wrap and first three leaves, spine perished; a very good
unsophisticated copy.
$800
Sole edition of a poem on the love of Henry II and his mistress ‘Fair
Rosamund’ Clifford, with an engraved title vignette by Ralph Beilby of
Newcastle (Thomas Bewick’s first master). ‘Godstow is at present a
Ruin on the Margin of the Isis, at a small distance from Oxford. It was
formerly a House of Nuns,
famous perhaps on no account
so much as for having been the
Burial-place of Rosamond,
daughter of Lord Clifford, the
beautiful Paramour of Henry the
Second. This Monarch is said to
have built a Labyrinth at
Woodstock to conceal her from
his jealous Queen, who, during
his Absence, when he was
called away by an unnatural
Rebellion of his Sons, at the
supposed Instigation of their
Mother, found means to get
Access to her, and compelled
her to swallow Poison. Frequent
Walks in this delightful Recess,
sacred to the Moments of
Contemplation, suggested the
following Thoughts, for the Publication of which, let the alarming
Progress of Lewdness, and consequently of Licentiousness of Manners,
which indeed threatens the Dissolution of our State, be accepted as an
Apology’ (Advertisement). The title vignette, an exquisite miniature of
the picturesque ruins at Godstow, is by Ralph Beilby, of the celebrated
Newcastle family of glass enamellers and engravers. ‘Ralph’s... artistic
work flourished through his collaboration with the historian John Brand,
which produced the engraving of Thornton’s monument plate for Brand’s
history of Newcastle and a plan of Newcastle in 1788. Yet he is mostly
remembered as Thomas Bewick’s master after the latter’s entry into the
Beilby workshop [as an apprentice]. Their collaboration produced,
among other works, A General History of Quadrupeds’ (Oxford DNB).
Jackson, p. 39.
12. BUCK, Pearl. Three rare early translations of her novels
into Russian. Moscow, 1934–6.
Together: $2800
Zemlia. Perevod s angliiskogo N. L. Daruzes [The Earth. A translation
from the English by Nina Daruzes]. Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo
khudozhestvennoi literatury, Moskva – Leningrad, 1934.
8vo (192 × 128 mm), pp. 266, [2]; offsetting to the endleaves and
(faintly) to the gutter of the title, ink ownership inscription to front free
endpaper; original publisher’s cloth, decorated in black and red, a few
insignificant marks only.
Very rare first edition in Russian of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Good
Earth (1931), the first work by Buck to appear in Russian. preceded only
by extracts from Daruzes’ translation in Internatsional’naia literatura
earlier in the year. Libman 1127. Not in OCLC.
Synov’ia. Perevod s angliiskogo N. L. Daruzes [Sons. A translation
from the English by Nina Daruzes]. Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo
«Khudozhestvennaia literatura», Moskva 1935.
8vo (194 × 132 mm), pp. 396, [4]; old ink inscription to title; original
publisher’s cloth, decorated in blue and green, small stain to upper
board, light soiling elsewhere.
First separate edition in Russian of Sons (1933); Daruzes’ translation
first appeared in the journal Krasnaia nov’ earlier in the year. Libman
1132. Not in OCLC.
Mat’. Perevod s angliiskogo N. L. Daruzes [The Mother. A translation
from the English by Nina Daruzes]. Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo
«Khudozhestvennaia literatura», Moskva 193[6].
8vo (190 × 128 mm), pp. 214, [2]; with frontispiece illustration; original
publisher’s cloth, decorated in red and green, a trifle dulled, a few short
tears to joints, but sound.
First edition in Russian of The Mother (1933); Daruzes’ translation first
appeared in Internatsional’naia literatura in 1935. Libman 1131. OCLC
locates a sole copy, at the University of Hawaii.
13. BÜRGER, Gottfried August. The Wild Huntsman’s Chase.
From the German of Bürger, Author of Lenore. London: Printed
and sold by Sampson Low … sold also by R. Faulder, and E.
Booker … 1798.
4to (258 × 196 mm), pp. 15, [1]; twentieth-century three quarter calf, gilt;
Schwerdt and Gloucester bookplates; a fine copy.
$1250
First edition in book form, the Schwerdt and Duke of Gloucester copy, of
an anonymous translation of Bürger’s ‘Der Wilde Jäger’. A note on the
leaf following the title states: ‘The following Translation appeared in one
of the public prints on the 26th of October, 1796. A few weeks after an
elegant version of the Ballad, which had been advertised about the
same time, was given to the Public by another hand, under the title of
The Chase’ (referring Sir Walter Scott’s first published literary work The
Chase and William and Helen: Two Ballads from the German of
Gottfried Augustus Bürger). The present translation received
surprisingly few contemporary notices and the Critical Review remarked
that the work would probably never have been translated had it not been
for the ‘great and deserved reputation of Lenore’, the work which
brought Bürger European fame.
Jackson, p. 231; Schwerdt I, p. 87; ESTC lists 4 UK copies (BL, Bodley,
Cambridge and NLS) and 5 in the US (Clark, Missouri, North Carolina,
Texas and Yale).
14. CARLYLE, Joseph Dacre. Specimens of Arabian Poetry,
from the earliest Time to the Extinction of the Khaliphat, with some
Account of the Authors, by J. D. Carlyle … Professor of Arabic in
the University of Cambridge. Cambridge: Printed by John Burges
printer to the University; and sold by W. H. Lunn and J. Deighton,
Cambridge; T. Payne & Son ... B. & J. White, Fleet Street; R.
Faulder ... and J. Sewell ... London; and Fletcher and Cooke,
Oxford. 1796.
4to (232 × 180 mm), pp. [4], ix, [3], 71, [1], 1-48, [3], 49-180, text in
Arabic and English, one page of engraved music, ornamental tailpieces
throughout; lately rebound to style in calf, gilt.
$1200
Second edition (first 1795, of which only 3
copies are recorded in ESTC: Cambridge,
Whitchurch, Wellesley). The poems are
printed in both English and Arabic and
there is one engraved musical example of
the work of ‘Isaac Almousely’, i.e. Ishaq
al-Mawsili (767–850): ‘Arab musician of
Persian origin … a court musician … an
upholder of the classical Arab music style,
... [who] provided Arab music with a
theoretical system based on local traditions...’ (New Grove). Carlyle
entered Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1775, moving to Queens’ in
1778. ‘During his residence at Cambridge he profited from the
instructions of a native of Baghdad, who passed in Britain under the
name David Zamio. As a result, Carlyle became so proficient in oriental
languages that he was appointed professor of Arabic on the resignation
of Dr Craven in 1795 … In 1792 he published Rerum Aegyptiacarum
annales, translated from the Arabic of Yusuf ibn Taghri Birdi. Four years
later there appeared his well-respected translation, Specimens of
Arabian Poetry (which included biographical sketches of selected
authors)’ (Oxford DNB). In 1799 he was appointed chaplain to Lord
Elgin’s mission to Constantinople and travelled extensively through Asia
Minor, Palestine, Greece, and Italy, collecting Greek and Syriac
manuscripts for a proposed new version of the New Testament.
Jackson, p. 214.
DEPLORING THE WAR IN AMERICA
15. [CARTWRIGHT, Edmund]. The Prince of Peace; and other
Poems. London: Printed for J. Murray. 1779.
4to (264 × 205 mm), pp. [2], 44, [i.e. 48], [2], with half-title, title with
engraved vignette by Grignion after William Hamilton (depicting the
scalping of Jane McCrea; title and half-title lightly browned, some foxing
throughout; preserved in modern grey wraps.
$950
First edition, apparently the large-paper issue judging by the gutter
margin (see ESTC). Cartwright (1743–1823), younger brother of the
political reformer, Major John Cartwright, and a friend of Crabbe, was a
literary clergyman who later invented the power loom. ‘The Prince of
Peace’, an ode deploring the war in America, is his ‘most important work’
(Oxford DNB). Other verse here includes ‘Elegy to Mr. Gray, from the
Latin of Mr. Ansty, prefixed to his Translation of the Elegy written in a
Country Church Yard’ and ‘Ode from the Latin of Mr. Gray, written at the
Grande Chartreuse’.
Jackson, p. 74; not found in Sabin; Zachs, The First John Murray 213.
16. THE CELESTIAL BEDS; or, a Review of the Votaries of the
Temple of Health, Adelphi, and the Temple of Hymen, Pall-Mall.
London: Printed for G. Kearsley. 1781.
4to (234 × 184 mm), pp. 34, [2] with half-title and final blank leaf; upper
margins cropped, just touching ‘The’ on title and pagination elsewhere;
half-title and final blank slightly dust-stained; preserved in modern
boards with title label to upper cover.
$4800
Sole edition, scarce. An anonymous verse satire on the ‘Celestial Bed’
of quack doctor James Graham, and on some of the celebrated women
(including the Duchess of Devonshire) who were reputedly his patients.
In 1779 Graham established the Temple of Health on the Royal Terrace,
Adelphi, facing the Thames, at a cost of £10,000. There he ‘promised
relief from impotence and sterility to those who hired his “celestial bed”,
which was 12 feet long by 9 feet wide and “supported by forty pillars of
brilliant glass of the most exquisite workmanship”; it was also engraved
with the legend, “Be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth”, and linked
up to 15 cwt of magnets and electrical machines. Apparently he
charged £50 a night for the privilege of slipping between the sheets. The
temple attracted large audiences, the ladies going “incog”, according to
Henry Angelo. Sightseers included Horace Walpole, who remarked on
23 August 1780 that Graham’s was “the most impudent puppet-show of
imposition I ever saw, and the mountebank himself the dullest of his
profession, except that he makes the spectators pay a crown apiece” ...
Graham became a celebrity, and on 2 September 1780 George Colman
the elder produced at the Haymarket Theatre an extravaganza, The
Genius of Nonsense, in which John Bannister appeared as Emperor of
the Quacks, mimicking Graham’s absurdities. The farce had received
twenty-two performances by July 1781. Various squibs and burlesques
satirizing Graham were also published …’ (Oxford DNB).
Jackson, p. 85.
17. [CHARPENTIER, Jean-Baptiste]. Élémens de la langue
russe ou Méthode courte et facile pour apprendre cette langue
conformément à l’usage … Seconde édition. A Saint
Pétersbourg. De l’Imprimerie de l’Academie Impériale des
Sciences. 1791.
8vo (193 × 124 mm), pp. [12], 368 (the last mispaginated ‘668’); the odd
mark, some light waterstaining in places, but inoffensive; contemporary
mottled calf, spine chipped at head.
$1500
Second edition. Svodnyi katalog 614. OCLC locates only 3 copies (BnF,
Oxford, British Library).
Based on Lomonosov’s important grammar of 1757, Charpentier’s book
was the eighteenth-century market leader for Westerners wanting to
learn Russian. Before it was first published, in 1768, there was nothing
at all available in Russia, and as no Russian grammar or dictionary was
published in Britain at all in the eighteenth century, it was to Charpentier
that Britons also turned.
See Anthony Cross, By the Banks of the Neva, p. 393.
18. CHURCHILL, Charles. The Prophecy of Famine. A Scots
Pastoral ... Inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq; The fourth Edition.
London: Printed for the author, and sold by G. Kearsly. 1763.
4to (245 × 185 mm), pp. [4], 28, with half-title, plus engraved frontispiece
depicting a starving and ragged Scot.
$800
Apparently the first edition to include the extraordinary engraved
frontispiece. Though ESTC contains a note to the third edition record that
some libraries report a plate this seems to be a confusion of editions.
19. CUNNINGHAM, John. Poems, chiefly pastoral. London:
Printed for the Author; and sold by J. Dodsley ... J. Almon ... W.
Richardson and L. Urquhart ... G. Robinson and J. Roberts ... W.
Nicoll ... and T. Slack, in Newcastle. 1766.
8vo (228 × 128 mm), pp. xvi, 240, plus engraved frontispiece by Isaac
Taylor, subscribers’ list; contemporary inscription to head of title ‘El.
Rose’; uncut in the original paper backed blue boards; spine slightly
worn with minor loss; contemporary engraved armorial bookplate of Miss
[Elizabeth] Rose of Kilraviock, later bookplate of Abel Berland; a fine
copy preserved in modern red morocco-backed slipcase with chemise.
$2000
A fine copy in boards of the first edition, second issue (a reissue of the
Newcastle edition of the same year, with a new title-page). Dublin-born
Cunningham intended to pursue a career as an actor in England, but
turned to poetry in the 1760s and began gathering his works for a
collective publication, encouraged by David Garrick. ‘His best efforts
were in the poetry of landscape, and here he was influenced by current
interests in the Gothic and the picturesque. In these respects
Cunningham owes something to both the landscape poets and the
graveyard school. His handling of rhyme and rhythm demonstrates his
good ear, and in general his poetry, in reflecting popular taste, is clear
and accessible’ (Oxford DNB).
Hayward 186; Roscoe, J139.
20. DĘBICKI, Stanisław Franciszek. Souvenir pour ma chère,
et aimable femme Marie Thérèse, comtesse de Dembicki.
Montpellier, quinze Juillet mille-huit cent trente-deux [15 July
1832].
Manuscript, 8vo (199 × 123 mm), pp. [14],
204, with 9 engravings (four by Schön, the
others unsigned; two are coloured)
mounted on additional leaves, each
engraving within a coloured stencil frame,
plus one extra leaf, likewise stencilled but
with no engraving; manuscript on paper,
attractive title-page in imitation of an
engraved title; contemporary polished
green straight-grain morocco gilt, all edges
gilt, the front board lettered ‘Souvenir pour
ma chère et aimable femme Marie
Thérèse comtesse de Dembicki’, the rear
‘Par Stanislas François comte de Jaxa
Dembicki capitaine polonais’.
$1800
An attractive ‘book of daily worship collected from different authors and
written in France in Lons-le-Saulnier, Département Jura, 1 May 1832’ (p.
[3]), extra-illustrated with religious engravings and presented to the
writer’s wife, the front flyleaf stating further that it was ‘composed during
our time of exile in France, on the Mediterranean Sea, in Montpellier’
where it was ‘finished and bound’ (15 July).
Though obviously devoted to his wife, Dębicki seems to have been quite
a character. He had only arrived in France the month before writing this
manuscript, seeking exile after his participation in the November
Uprising as a captain in the Polish National Guard. It is recorded that he
then began to move around France, cheating people out of their money,
posing as a count and, later, a major in the US Army. In 1840 he was
summoned to court for wrongfully wearing the Légion d’honneur and
was finally deported in 1848 (Bielecki, Słownik biograficzny oficerów
powstania listopadowego, 1995).
By 1863, Dębicki’s book was in England, in an East End bookshop,
where it was bought by the antiquarian J. A. Grimes. There is a pencil
note to this effect on the blank verso of the title. So intrigued was he by
the book that he wrote about it to Notes and Queries (3rd Series, 27
June 1863, pp. 505–6): ‘I venture to trouble you with the description of a
MS. book of Polish Prayers and Litanies, just come into my possession,
simply to give … an opportunity of reacquiring it to any remaining branch
of the family, to whom it must, I think, be considered a treasure; indeed, I
purchased it for no other purpose …
‘The work alluded to is an 8vo vol. of prayers in, I believe, Polish, all by
one hand, bound in elegant green morocco, gilt tooled, and lettered …
The MS. is carefully paged and indexed, with a title in the same hand as
the text, and an exquisitely beautiful (apparently) pen and ink one the
same as the cover, dated Montpellier, 1832, but all written in French.
This title has a floral border delicately executed in a tint much like a
gnat’s wing. Nine engravings of an ordinary kind, some coloured, are
affixed to fly-leaves; a tenth seems to have been taken off … It appears
to be a touching memorial of a refugee nobleman’s affection to a
separated wife, and the memento is, perhaps, to himself …’
WITH THE DUST-JACKET
21. DREISER, Theodore. N’iu-Iork. Perevod s angliiskogo P.
Okhrimenko [New York. Translated from the English by Pyotr
Okhrimenko]. Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, Moskva – Leningrad,
1927.
8vo (182 × 122 mm), pp. 125, [3]; wood engravings by Ivan Pavlov
(1872–1951) within the text throughout; creases to p. 7 (during printing)
and upper corner of p. 71; a very good copy in the original illustrated
boards designed by A. Levin, corner worn, complete with the original
dust-jacket, tears along spine, nicks at extremities.
$1800
First edition. 1927 saw two Russian translations of The Color of a Great
City (1923), Dreiser’s classic memoir of early twentieth-century New
York: Gosizdat’s, by Okhrimenko, and one for “Mysl’” (Kraski N’iu-Iorka)
by V. P. Steletsky. Both are very rare.
Pyotr Okhrimenko (1888–1975), a translator for the Komintern, produced
numerous translations of American literature in the 1920s and ’30s: Jack
London, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood
Anderson. A staunch Tolstoyan, he had decided to emigrate to America
after the 1905 Revolution. But he was unable to find work, so he asked
Tolstoy himself for help and was provided with a letter of
recommendation to Thomas Edison, who took him on in one of his
factories. He returned to Russia in 1911.
Dreiser, alongside Mark Twain, was to become the most popular
American author in Russia, hailed by Soviet reference works and critics
as the foremost ‘progressive’ American writer of all time. In 1950, when
Goslitizdat announced a twelve-volume edition of Dreiser’s collected
works was to be published, in a staggering 900,000 copies,
subscriptions sold out within days.
Libman 2357. OCLC locates 3 copies only (Indiana, Princeton, Penn).
AMERICAN WAR, IRISH INDEPENDENCE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
22. EUSTACE, John Chetwood. An Elegy to the Memory of
the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. London: Printed for F.
and C. Rivington and J. Hatchard. 1798.
4to (262 × 205 mm), pp. 15, [1]; marbled wrappers, perhaps original; a
fine copy.
$400
First edition. An Irish Catholic priest and antiquary, ‘Eustace was the
intimate friend of Edmund Burke, his confidential adviser, and his
companion in his last illness’ (DNB). ‘THE AUTHOR takes the Liberty of
observing, that after having alluded, in the eighth Stanza, to Mr. Burke’s
elegant Treatise on the Sublime, which first introduced him to public
Notice, he has attempted to sketch out his political conduct in the
American War, during the debates on Irish independence, and, at the
beginning of the French Revolution ...’ (Advertisement). Eustace later
became known for his two-volume Tour through Italy (known in later
editions as A Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily).
Jackson, p. 225; not in Sabin.
IRISH SHOOTING
23. FITZGERALD, Gerald. The Academick Sportsman; or, a
Winter’s Day: a Poem. Dublin: Printed: London, Reprinted for E.
Johnston ... and S. Bladon. 1773.
4to (235 × 180 mm), pp. 32, including half-title; partially uncut; lightly but
persistently foxed throughout; modern half morocco; Schwerdt and
Gloucester bookplates.
$2400
First London edition (after the Dublin issue of the same year) of a poem
by an Irish parson (and ‘Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin’) with a
fondness for fowling. ‘Next to the pleasure of passing a winter’s day in
the sport Mr. Fitzgerald describes, we relish the representation he has
given of it. The poem is poetically descriptive of the exercise of shooting,
and the principal subject is intermixed with several episodes, which are
properly introduced and agreeable’ (Critical Review).
Jackson, p. 18; Schwerdt I, 175 (‘describing a day’s rough shooting in
the district of the Wicklow mountains’).
BUILDING A LIBRARY
24. [FORMEY, Johann Heinrich Samuel]. Conseils pour
former une bibliothèque peu nombreuse, mais choisie. Nouvelle
édition, corrigée et augmentée. Suivie de l’Introduction générale à
l’étude des sciences & belles-lettres par M. de la Martinière. A
Berlin, chez Haude et Spener, 1756.
8vo (163 × 103 mm), pp. xxiv, 380, [4]; ink ownership inscription to title,
light waterstain in upper margin of final couple of leaves; a very good
copy in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, headcap
chipped.
$375
New edition of a popular work on which books to include in one’s library
by Formey, Secretary of the Prussian Royal Academy of Sciences, first
published in 1746, and greatly expanded here by the inclusion of Bruzen
de La Martinière’s Introduction générale à l’étude des sciences & belleslettres (1731).
RARE BOOKS, IN A PROVINCIAL SCHOOL LIBRARY
25. FREYTAG, Friedrich Gotthilf. Analecta litteraria de libris
rarioribus … Lipsiae in officinal Weidemanniana. 1750.
8vo (195 × 115 mm), pp. [8], 1138, [8]; browning and offsetting
throughout due to paper stock, but a nice unsophisticated copy, uncut in
the original carta rustica, ms ink to spine, shelfmark at foot; modern
private blindstamp to front free endpaper.
$600
First edition. Freytag (1687–1761) was rector of Schulpforta, the famous
school near Naumburg—former pupils include Klopstock, Fichte, Ranke,
and Nietzsche—and its fine library served as the basis for his book,
which discusses hundreds of rare books, German, French, English,
Italian, Spanish, Russian, etc.
Freytag’s is not a rare book per se, but it certainly is like this, uncut in its
original binding. A trimmed copy, for example, would lack the printed
note to the binder across the foot of C4v and C5r.
Brunet II, col. 1394; Graesse II, 634.
26. GEIGER, Peter Johann Nepomuk. Peter Joh. Nep.
Geiger’s historische Original-Handzeichnungen bestehend in
neunzig Blättern mit einem erklärenden Texte. Herausgegeben
von Anton Ziegler. [Vienna, 1861.]
6 vols, 4to (298 × 225 mm), pp. [2], 50 (pagination continuous); with a
frontispiece and 90 full-page illustrations; the odd light marginal
waterstain, loose in the original printed wrappers, some spotting and
dust-soiling, a few nicks to spines, but a remarkable survival over all.
$950
First edition, privately printed: finely executed scenes from Austrian
history, from the Middle Ages to the Archduchess Leopoldina’s arrival in
Rio de Janeiro in 1817 as Empress of Brazil. It was published
commercially the same year (Historische Handzeichnungen, Vienna,
kaiserlich-königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei).
Geiger (1805–1880) was a respected painter and illustrator, producing
popular images for editions of Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare, as
well as Austrian authors such as Grillparzer and Stifter. It was his work
for an earlier project of Ziegler’s (Vaterländische Immortellen, 1839–40)
which first brought him public attention.
OCLC
locates 3 copies only, all in Germany.
27. GIORDANO, Umberto.
Manoel Theatre [Valletta,
Malta]. Friday, 27th
November 1908 at 8.30 p.m.
Fisso of Thursday under the
hight Patronage of Their
Royal Highnesses the Duke
& Duchess of Connaught in
aid of the sufferers of the s.s.
Sardinia Siberia an Opera in
3 acts by Mro. U. Giordano.
New for Malta … Printed
gratis by the Firm A. G.
Cousis & Co. [Valletta, 1908].
Slim folio playbill (358 × 220
mm), printed in blue on silk;
creased where previously
folded, edges frayed.
$375
An opera bill, printed on silk, for a charity relief performance of
Giordano’s Siberia at the Manoel Theatre in Valletta (one of the oldest
working theatres in the world), staged just two days after the SS
Sardinia, en route from Liverpool to Mecca, sank just outside Malta’s
Grand Harbour, with the loss of over 100 lives.
Giordano (1867–1948) wrote a number of operas. ‘His grandest work
(his own favourite) is Siberia [1903], which achieved the rare distinction
of a performance at the Paris Opéra in 1911, having won the approval of
Fauré and Bruneau’ (New Grove). The librettist was Luigi Illica, who
also wrote for Puccini (La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly). It has
been suggested that the inspiration for the opera was Tolstoy’s
Resurrection (1899).
SEX IN VENICE
28. GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von. Die [anderen
unbekannten] Venezianischen Epigrammen. [Hannover, Banas
& Dette, 1919.]
8vo (210 × 138 mm), pp. 57, [1]; printed in red and blue; uncut in the
original publisher’s boards.
$2800
Limited edition (500 copies printed, this being no. 3), designed by
Leopold Fuchs, after which the types were destroyed.
This copy contains 53 original colour illustrations, many of them erotic,
one below each epigram, by the Expressionist artist Erich Büttner, who
has also removed the title-page (noting on the stub: ‘Was einst der Herr
von Goethe bewitzelt hat nun ein Maler ausgekritzelt’, quasi ‘What once
Goethe poked fun at a painter has now scribbled out’), decorated the
endpapers and painted over the covers. A pencil note, by Büttner,
below the colophon reveals that this copy was made as a Christmas
present for the bibliophile Emil Tuchmann in 1927.
Büttner (1889–1936) was a member of the Berlin Secession, producing
portraits of fellow artists George Grosz, Lovis Corinth, Arno Holz, and
Heinrich Zille. He also designed book plates, notably Albert Einstein’s in
1917.
Rodenberg, Deutsche Pressen, p. 408 (the first of Banas & Dette’s
‘Hölderlin-Drucke’, 1919–22).
29. GOLDSMITH, Oliver. Retaliation: a Poem. By Doctor
Goldsmith. Including Epitaphs on the most distinguished Wits of
the Metropolis. London: Printed for G. Kearsly. 1774.
4to (255 × 185 mm), pp. [4], 20, including half-title, title with engraved
portrait vignette; nineteenth-century straight-grain green morocco gilt by
Riviere; bookplate of Frank Brewer Bemis.
$1200
First edition, this copy with the addition of two leaves of ‘Explanatory
notes.’ These were added to the second edition, but were also given
away free to purchasers of the first edition, and are thus not indicated on
the title-page of those copies (as here). Dedicated to George Kearsley,
the bookseller, this is Goldsmith’s last published work; composed shortly
before his death following a dinner with old friends Reynolds, Johnson,
Burke, and Garrick at which the guests improvised epitaphs. Here
Goldsmith plays on the gastronomic theme, imagining each of his friends
personified as a dish: ‘... Our Garrick’s a sallad, for in him we see / Oil,
vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree: / To make out the dinner, full certain
I am, / That Ridge is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb; / That Hickey’s a
capon, and by the same rule, / Maganimous Goldsmith, a goosberry
fool.’
Jackson, p. 33; Rothschild, 1038; cf. Tinker 1133.
30. [HAAGE & SCHMIDT.] Trade Seed List of Haage & Schmidt
Nursery- and Seedsmen Erfurt … [1890].
8vo (213 × 137 mm), pp. 114; with the original gilt-printed wrappers;
bound between a copy of Engros-Saamen-Verzeichniss von Haage &
Schmidt …, pp. 122, and Prix-courant de graines—sans remise—pour
marchands et horticulteurs Haage & Schmidt …, pp. 112, in
contemporary red half cloth, pencil notes to front endpapers, ms. spine
label.
$825
Presumably a file copy of a rare seed catalogue,
bound up here in German, English, and French
versions. Haage & Schmidt in Erfurt was one of
the largest, if not the largest nursery in Europe.
This, their seed catalogue for the 1890–1 season,
with prices in shillings and pence, lists asters,
balsams, larkspurs, stocks, wallflowers, annuals,
biennials, perennials, stove and greenhouse plants,
ornamental grasses, cacti, ferns, palms, conifers,
deciduous trees, fruit and vegetables. Among the
novelties for 1891, with illustrations, are a jewel
aster and a ‘large yellow Erfurt market cabbagelettuce’.
The catalogue also advertises electrotypes of woodcuts ‘on the condition
that they are only used to printing by the purchaser and are not
multiplied for sale’. Not in COPAC or OCLC.
UNDERCOVER TRANSLATION
31. HERBERT, Frank. Diuna [Dune] … Moskva – 1976[–77]g.
[And:]
—————. Messiia Diuny [Dune Messiah] … 1981g.
Typescript, 2 works in three vols, 8vo (198 × 141 mm); Dune: pp. 408;
571, [1]; Dune Messiah: pp. 331, [1]; some light browning due to paper
stock; contemporary decorated boards.
$9000
Illegal samizdat translation of Frank Herbert’s seminal works of science
fiction Dune (1965) and Dune Messiah (1969).
Copying out banned books is a centuries-old means of letting people
read proscribed texts. In the Soviet Union, with the formal publishing
houses, even mimeograph and other duplication machines, controlled by
the state, dissident literature circulated in manuscript form, copied over
and over by hand or typewriter, as here. Despite these difficulties,
underground samizdat (literally ‘self-published’) writing flourished and
exerted a significant cultural and political influence.
The earliest published Russian translation of Dune was in 1990, in
Yerevan, Armenia. A number of other translations followed in Russia in
the 1990s, after the fall of Communism. The present samizdat is
testament to the extraordinary lengths people will go to in order to read.
32. [LEATHER.] LECLUYSE, Alfons. 3e Jaar Patroon-Maken.
[Netherlands], 1938–9.
Large folio (520 × 340 mm), ff. 41. Title with
coloured drawings of four ladies’ shoes,
most leaves with full-page diagrams
showing the cutting of shoe-leathers from
full hides (2 double page), title and
captions, all in bold indian ink, coloured
final leaf showing leather grains, text in
Dutch. Contemporary half cloth, marbled
boards, green decorative endpapers. Signs
of a label removed from upper cover, but
otherwise neat and tidy.
$2800
A Dutch student’s manuscript from the third
year in a course of shoemaking. The many
diagrams are schemes for making the most
of complete skins by carefully marking out
the different types (calf, goat, ‘basane’ etc)
with the components of each shoe style,
interlocking for maximum economy. The hides are boldly rendered in
indian ink, with the shoe parts left blank, making for a series of strangely
beautiful monochrome designs.
33. LONDON, Jack. „Byki“ [Bulls]. [Moskva,] „Novaia Moskva“
1924.
8vo (182 × 135 mm), pp. 29, [3]; light marginal waterstaining, leaves
toned due to paper stock; still a very good copy, uncut in the original
illustrated wrappers, faint old stamp to rear cover.
$750
First edition thus, published as part of the series Biblioteka rabochei
molodezhi (‘Library of Working-class Youth’). Jack London’s short story
‘Bulls’ (from The Road and other Stories) had
first appeared in Russian in a volume of
Collected Works, in 1913. Here it is
remarketed for a younger readership.
’Until the 1950’s, Jack London was by far the
most popular American author in Soviet Russia.
Over thirteen million copies of his works have
been printed since the Revolution. Even today
[1962] he continues as a popular classic, and it
is probable that over the Soviet period as a
whole he has been read more widely than any
other non-Russian author.
‘At the time of the Revolution, London had already been the favourite
American writer in Russia for a number of years. He had been
introduced shortly after the Revolution of 1905, and by 1916 his vogue
was described as “truly extraordinary.” In 1941, recalling London’s
influence on the pre-Revolutionary generation, the poet Ilya Selvinski
wrote that “whoever has not passed this view of life cannot be a real
man … This is the first cigar we smoked in our youth” … Despite the
curtailment of printing under War Communism, London’s books
continued to come out. Only in 1921, when almost all book production
ceased, did a work of his fail to appear’ (Deming Brown, Soviet Attitudes
toward American Writing, pp. 219–20).
Parchevskaia, Dzhek London 541. OCLC locates a sole copy, at the
Getty.
34. McCULLERS, Carson. Chasy bez strelok. Roman.
Perevod s angliiskogo E. Golyshevoi [Clock without Hands. A
novel. Translated from the English by Elena Golysheva].
[Moscow:] Izdatel’stvo TsK VLKSM „Molodaia gvardiia“ 1966.
8vo (166 × 130 mm), pp. 270, [2]; light
marginal browning due to paper stock; a very
good copy in the original illustrated boards,
rubbed, cloth spine lettered in silver.
$800
First edition in Russian of Clock without Hands
(1961), McCullers’ treatment of the
disintegration of lives, and life, in the Old
South. It is the first separate appearance of
anything by her in Russian.
Libman 3742. OCLC locates 4 copies only
(Springfield City Library, Miami University,
Ohio State, Texas).
LIBELLOUS LIBRARIAN
35. MARÉCHAL, Pierre Sylvain de. Livre échappé au déluge,
ou Pseaumes nouvellement découverts; composés dans la langue
primitive par S. Ar-Lamech, de la famille patriarchale de Noë;
translatés en françois par P. Lahceram, parisipolitain. ‘A Sirap, ou
à Paris, chez l’éditeur, P. Sylvain Maréchal, Bibliothèque
Mazarine … L’an de l’Ere Vulgaire 1784.’
12mo in half-sheets, pp. [8], 99, [1]; title slightly
dusty; contemporary red paper-covered boards in
imitation of straight-grained morocco, spine ruled
and lettered in gilt ‘Pseaume’; extremities very
slightly bumped; title with contemporary
manuscript addition to imprint ‘Rue des Prêcheurs
no. 29’ (see below).
$1900
First edition of a rare work by the utopian anarchist
Maréchal (1750–1803), ‘one of the most
audacious sophists of the 18th century … In 1784,
he published the Livre échappé au déluge, an
imitation or rather indecent parody of the prophets.
This work, in which he libelled his benefactors,
made him lose his position as sub-librarian at the
Collège Mazarin [hence the imprint here] and
forced him to live by his pen, supported by the booksellers’ (Biographie
universelle).
In this copy, ‘Rue des Prêcheurs no. 29’, the address of Maréchal’s
family home, has been appended in contemporary manuscript to the
imprint, presumably an alteration dictated by necessity after Maréchal’s
dismissal. It is possibly authorial.
Four years later, Maréchal published his Almanach des honnêtes gens,
a calendar in which the names of the saints were replaced by those of
famous men from the Ancient World and modern times, which earned
him a prison sentence.
Martin & Walter III, 23028; Peignot, Livres condamnés au feu, I, 286.
36. MÉHÉE DE LA TOUCHE, Jean-Claude-Hippolyte. Die
verrätherischen Plane Englands und der Jakobiner wider das
Leben des Kaysers, und die Freyheit des franz. Volks. Aus
Originalquellen und dem Briefwechsel Drake’s, dargestellt von
Mehe’e. Aus dem Französischen frey übersetzt. Mit einer illum.
Karrikatur. Strassburg [i.e. Erfurt, Hennings], 1804.
8vo (186 × 110 mm), pp. [2], 245, [1]; with a large coloured engraved
frontispiece; some light offsetting and spotting; uncut in modern full calf,
spine gilt.
$2000
First edition in
German of Alliance
des Jacobins de
France avec le
ministère anglais
(Paris, 1804), an
account of an antiNapoleon British spy
ring based in Europe.
The author was a French spy, first in
Russia, then Poland, and finally
England, where he kept tabs on those
French émigrés who opposed
Napoleon. Posing as a sympathiser,
Méhée inveigled himself into their circle,
and was recommended to the British
Foreign Office, which sent him to
Francis Drake (1764–1821), ambassador to Bavaria and head of the
British East European spy network, who provided him with codes and
names of agents. In 1804, Drake was embarrassed when some letters,
revealing plans of a French uprising against Napoleon, were intercepted
and passed on to ministers in Paris, and duly published (Geheime
Instruction und Briefe des englischen Gesandten in München an die
englischen Agenten in Paris).
This German version of Méhée’s account is very rare and, unlike the
French original, is furnished with a wonderful, large caricature of Drake,
fleeing from Munich after the affair broke clutching books, papers, and
phials of invisible ink.
Weller I, 201. OCLC locates no copies outside Continental Europe.
37. POTAPOV, S. M. Slovar’ zhargona prestupnikov (blatnaia
muzyka). Sostavil po noveishim dannym [A Dictionary of Criminal
Slang (thieves’ cant). Compiled from the latest information] …
Moskva – 1927.
12mo (130 × 89 mm), pp. 196; ‘408’ (presumably the copy number)
printed at head of title; a very good copy in the original printed cloth,
rubbed.
$1500
Printed for the People’s Commissariat for Internal
Affairs (i.e. the Soviet secret police), and marked
‘confidential’ on both the title-page and the front
cover. Hundreds of headwords are included, and
presented in a handy pocket format, as the
introduction says, so it can be carried around easily.
This is apparently the second edition, greatly
expanding an earlier version from 1923 (likewise a
confidential publication, and not found in OCLC).
locates copies of a 1990 reprint, but none of
the original edition.
OCLC
‘PIONEER WORK’
38. PRICE, Jorge Wilson. Las bases científicas de la
música … Bogota (Colombia) Tip. de “El Mensajero” … 1897.
8vo (235 × 155 mm), pp. vi, 126, with one plate printed in red and black;
short tear at head of two leaves (pp. 69–71, text unaffected); first and
final pages lightly browned, couple of stains and closed tears to final
leaf, a few tears elsewhere from the original stab-holes, vertical crease
where previously folded; still a very good copy in old binder’s cloth, front
cover lettered gilt.
$1200
First edition of a ‘pioneer work in the Spanish language’ on music (New
Grove). OCLC locates a sole copy, at the Biblioteca nacional de Chile.
Not in COPAC or KVK.
Jorge W. Price (1853–1953) was the son of London-born composer and
painter, Henry Price (1819–1863), who took him from Colombia to New
York in 1855. ‘After Henry’s death the boy’s mother took Jorge back to
Bogotá in 1864. Having completed his college studies there,
Price divided his time between a business career (1869–89) and music.
Aided by a grant from President Rafael Núñez he founded on 22
February 1882 the Academia Nacional de Música (Conservatorio
Nacional de Música from 1910). While he was its director (1882–99,
1909–10) he translated seven texts by Stainer, Cummings, Pauer and
Ridley Prentice, and in 1889 inaugurated the degree of Maestro en
Música. After his retirement he published a valuable summary of events
leading to the foundation of the national music academy. His 72-page
brass instruments method (1882) and 126-page treatise on acoustics
(1897) [i.e., the present work] were pioneer works in the Spanish
language’ (New Grove).
39. RAYNAL, Guillaume, abbé. The Revolution in America …
Dublin: Printed by C. Talbot, for Messrs. Price, W. Watson,
Sleator, Whitestone, Sheppard, Lynch, Colles, Wilson, Williams,
Chamberlaine, R. Cross, T. Stewart, Wogan, Burnet, Jenkin,
Moncrieffe, Potts, Walker, White, Beatty, Burton, M’Donnel, Mills,
Parker, Higly, Talbot, Byrn, Exshaw, and Webb. 1781.
12mo (162 × 99 mm), pp. xx, 244; complete with half-title; front
endleaves a little ragged; contemporary calf, a few marks, rubbed. $300
First Dublin edition of apparently the first English translation of the abbé
Raynal’s hugely popular Révolution de l’Amérique (1781).
‘The translator procured a copy of the original unpublished manuscript
from the Abbé Raynal, and without his knowledge or consent, published
it in French, at the same time as this translation’ (quote in Sabin 68104).
ART NOUVEAU ILLUSTRATIONS
40. RÉVÉSZ, Béla. Találkozás Hamupipőkével [Meeting
Cindarella] … Singer és Wolfner, Budapest, 1909.
2 vols, 4to (306 × 235 mm), pp. 153, [5], plus final blank; [80]; first
gathering in the plates volume loose (spine glue perished); still a very
good copy in the original printed stiff-paper wrappers, spines a little
darkened with the odd nick, housed in the original slipcase, printed
paper label, some light waterstaining, tears along upper edge; ms. ink
shelfmarks to initial blank leaves and slipcase; a very nice set overall.
$1800
First edition: the first volume
comprises original tales by
Révész (1876–1944; he died in
Auschwitz), the second Lajos
Kozma’s 30 striking full-page
illustrations.
Kozma (1884–1948) was an
artist, architect, and furniture
designer. His Art Nouveau
designs here, clearly influenced
by Klimt, are emblematic of what
was taking place in Hungarian
book illustration at the time.
‘There was a new style born
covering the whole period
[1896–1910], and it was
specially Hungarian in its language. Some good examples of this new
tendency are the important artists who have dealt with illustration only
occasionally and those creative artists as well who concentrate their
whole oeuvres on illustration. But first and foremost those artists who
achieved a homogenous style combining, merging independent graphics
and literary illustrations into one another: such as Lajos Kozma, Resző
Mihály, Sándor Nagy, Attila Sassy and Gyula Tichy’ (Katalin Gellér, A
szecessziós könyvillusztració Magyarországon (1895–1925), pp. 113–
4).
OCLC
locates copies at Yale, Northwestern, and Columbia.
41. ROVINSKII, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich. Podrobnyi slovar’
russkikh gravirovannykh portretov [A detailed Dictionary of
Russian engraved Portraits] … Sanktpeterburg. Tipografiia
Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk … 1886[–1887, 1888, 1889].
4 vols, 4to (270 × 198 mm); with 700 mounted illustrations in the text;
light offsetting only; contemporary half calf, spines lettered gilt, sunned.
$2250
First edition: one of the great reference works on Russian art compiled
by the pioneering collector, Dmitry Rovinsky (1824–1895). While the
focus is portraits of Russians, the engravings listed are from across
Europe. From the Alexandre Sementchenkoff collection, sale Christie’s
22 October 1987, lot 701 (£2800).
42. ROVINSKII, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich. Podrobnyi slovar’
russkikh graverov XVI–XIX vv [A detailed Dictionary of Russian
Engravers from the 16th to the 19th Centuries] … Sanktpeterburg,
1895. Prodaetsia u kommissionerov Imperatorskoi Akademii
Nauk: I. I. Glazunova, M. Eggersa i Komp. i K. L. Rikkera v S.Peterburge, N. P. Karbasnikova v S.-Peterburge, Moskve i
Varshave, N. Kimmelia v Rige. Foss (G. Gessel’) v Leiptsige.
4to (276 × 198 mm), pp. [6], col. 344, pp. [2], col. 806, plus final blank
page; marginal browning due to paper stock; contemporary half roan,
rubbed, corners worn, joints cracked at head and foot.
$750
First edition, published posthumously. From the Alexandre
Sementchenkoff collection, sale Christie’s 22 October 1987, lot 700
(£360).
IN PUBLISHER’S BOXES AND ‘WASHABLE’ CLOTH
43. SCHEIBLER, Sophie Wilhelmine. Allgemeines Deutsches
Kochbuch für alle Stände. Ein unentbehrliches Handbuch für
Hausfrauen, Haushälterinnen und Köchinnen … Neu bearbeitet
von Luise Quaas … Neununddreißigste Auflage. Leipzig, C. F.
Amelangs Verlag. 1904.
8vo (193 × 127 mm), pp. [1a]–32a, 574, plus final advertisement leaf;
with 4 chromolithograph plates by August Kürth; other black-and-white
illustrations in the text; a fine copy in the original publisher’s illustrated
‘washable’ cloth, in the original illustrated box, rubbed, short tear along
one corner of the lid.
SCHEIBLER, Sophie Wilhelmine. Allgemeines Deutsches
Kochbuch oder gründliche Anweisung alle Arten Speisen und
Backwerk auf die wohlfeilste und schmackhafteste Art
zuzubereiten. Ein unentbehrliches Handbuch für Hausfrauen,
Haushälterinnen und Köchinnen … Mit fünf Tafeln in
Farbendruck, Text-Abbildungen und dem Pilzmerkblatt bearbeitet
im Kaiserl. Gesundheitsamte in Berlin. Unter Benutzung der alten
bewährten Original-Rezepte nach den neuesten praktischen
Erfahrungen und Fortschritten auf dem Gebiete der Kochkunst
neu bearbeitet von Emma Held. Berlin … Globus Verlag …
[1911].
8vo (193 × 130 mm), pp. lxiv, 599, [1]; with 5 colour plates (the one of
mushrooms double-page); other black-and-white illustrations in the text;
a very good copy in the original publisher’s illustrated cloth, in the
original illustrated box, a couple of small stains, rubbed, tape repair to
one corner of the lid, another torn, but sound.
Together: $900
Scheibler’s Kochbuch was a phenomenal publishing success. It first
appeared in 1815; over a century later, in 1927, it had reached its 47th
edition. These two editions both retain their original publisher’s boxes,
something perhaps normally associated with gift editions. They have
certainly helped keep both books in a remarkable state of preservation.
Cf. Cagle 509–510 for other editions.
44. TCHAIKOVSKY, Pyotr Ilyich. Perpetuum mobile. Final de
la sonate en la bémol de Ch. M. de Weber arrangé pour la main
gauche … Moscou chez P. Jurgenson. St.-Pétersbourg chez J.
Jurgenson. Varsovie chez G. Sonnewald. [1871.]
4to (332 × 260 mm), pp. 11, [1]; plate number 1025; title printed in blue
and black; old stain to upper outer corner, some light finger-marking;
mild spotting, tear along spine and lower corner of final leaf.
$1800
First edition, very rare. Tchaikovsky produced this adaptation of the
Finale of Weber’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major for Aleksandra ZografDulova (1850–1919), a young pianist at the Moscow Conservatoire as a
study for her to practise playing with her left hand. The original part for
the right hand is transferred to the left; the new right hand part is entirely
Tchaikovsky’s own.
ČW 411; Poznansky & Langston 181. OCLC locates the British Library
copy only (title in a different setting, in black only; suggested date 1873).
45. [TWAIN, Mark, et al.] [Cover title:] Dollaropoklonniki.
Satiricheskie rasskazy amerikanskikh pisatelei [The Dollarworshippers. Satirical stories by American writers]. [Moskva,]
Voennoe izdatel’stvo Ministerstva vooruzhënnykh sil SSSR. 1950.
Small 8vo (141 × 113 mm), pp. 63, [1]; illustrations by V. Briskin; a very
good copy in the original illustrated wrappers.
$800
First edition, published by the Ministry of Armed Forces in the series
Bibliotechka zhurnala Sovetskii voin (‘Little Library of the magazine
Soviet Warrior’).
Included are pieces by Mark Twain (‘Senator Clark
of Montana’, ‘The Palladium of Freedom’), Stephen
Leacock (‘100% American’), Richard Connell (‘King
[Karney: the rise and fall of an overlord who ruled
the empire of crime]’ and ‘The Last of the Flatfeet’),
Willis K. Larue (‘Conversation with an atom’ and
‘Rates halved’), Mike Quin (‘The Dreams of Mr
Atombomb’), and Charles Weston (‘An exclusive
circle’).
Libman 898. Not found in OCLC.
46. VELIKHOV, Lev Aleksandrovich. Sravnitel’naia tablitsa
russkikh politicheskikh partii (sistematizatsiia sovremennykh
politicheskikh napravlenii). Vtoroe izdanie (ispravlenn. i
dopolnennoe) desiataia tysiacha [A comparative table of Russian
political parties (a systematization of contemporary political
tendencies). Second edition (corrected and supplemented) tenth
thousand] … SPBurg … 1906.
Large folding table (815 × 1094 mm); creased where previously folded,
old tears expertly repaired.
$1500
This large table explains over 20 of the active political parties in Russia
following the 1905 Revolution, from the ultranationalist Black Hundreds,
through Slavophiles, Tsarists, socialist revolutionaries, and Tolstoyans,
to anarchists. Among the information given are the parties’ essence,
their history, tactics, printed publications if any, their attitude towards the
new State Duma, and their views on peasants, workers, economics,
religion, war etc.
The First State Duma, Russia’s first ever elected parliament, was the
direct result of the 1905 Revolution, and sat between April and July 1906
at St Petersburg’s Tauride Palace (built by Catherine the Great for
Potemkin in the 1780s). It was always going to be difficult, even though
the Bolsheviks and others had boycotted the elections, and after only ten
weeks of debate among the 478 deputies tensions between the Duma
and the Tsar, who had been reluctant to share power from the start,
became too much and the army was sent in to dissolve the parliament.
It is clear that demand for information on the various parties was high.
Velikhov’s table went through at least three editions, with thousands of
copies printed, but due to its ephemeral nature few examples survive,
certainly in Western libraries. OCLC locates only 2 copies (edition not
stated), at Columbia and Kansas, plus a sole copy of printing from 1917,
at the New York Public Library.
THE EARLIEST ENGRAVED MUSIC
47. VERDONCK, Cornelis. Magnificat … Antwerpiae [Jean
Sadeler] 1585.
Copperplate engraving (205 × 286 mm) by Jean Sadeler after Marten de
Vos; a strong, dark impression; a nineteenth-century German illustration
pasted to the verso, but in very good condition; matted and preserved in
a cloth portfolio.
$7500
The music of Cornelis Verdonck (1563–1625) was the first to be
printed from engraved plates. Engraving had been used for lute
tablature in 1536, but its first use for a piece of music using mensural
notation was in Antwerp in 1584, when the Flemish engraver Jean
Sadeler (1550–1610) produced Verdonck’s four-part Ave gratia plena,
followed by his five-part Magnificat in 1585. ‘The engravings are superb
as pictorial compositions, and the notation of the music, though small, is
clear and accurately reproduced’ (New Grove).
The engraving here is in its first state. A later version has the Virgin’s
head facing the other way.
Extremely rare: BUCEM, p. 1038; RISM V 1239 (BSB and BL only). OCLC
adds no further copies.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FOR GERMAN CHILDREN
48. WAGNER, Peter. Vier und achtzig verschiedene
Handschriften. Ein Lesebuch für Volks- und Gewerbsschulen,
enthaltend: „Der arme Richard, oder der Weg zum Wohlstand, von
Benj: Franklin.“ sodann Auszüge aus Theophron von J. H. Campe.
Carlsruhe Verlag der P. Wagnerischen Lithographie. 1836.
Oblong 8vo (171 × 216 mm), pp. 55, [1]; lithographed throughout; some
spotting, but still a good copy in the original illustrated wrappers, a little
ragged, traces of old stamp, spine chipped at extremities; early printed
ticket of the Ulm bookseller Ernst Nübling.
$600
First edition, comprising 84 specimens of German handwriting as
reading practice for schoolchildren. It is similar to Wagner’s earlier
Verfassungs Urkunde für das Grossherzogthum Baden (1831), compiled
‘for the benefit of local schools, with each of the statutes written out by a
different member of the local government in his own style of handwriting’
(Twyman, p. 233). But this time the text is a little less dry, being Ben
Franklin’s The Way to Wealth and Johann Campe’s improving
Theophron.
Extremely rare: not in OCLC, which lists a sole copy of the second
edition, 1846, at Freiburg.
THE RING COMES TO LONDON
49. [WAGNER, Richard.] Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Haymarket … Season 1882. Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des
Nibelungen. A Festival Play for four Nights.
Director, Mr. Angelo Neumann, who has
been entrusted by Herr Richard Wagner
with the sole right of its Performance, and
under whose management the brilliant
renderings of this unique work were lately
given in Berlin and other German Cities with
extraordinary success … First Cycle: May
5, 6, 8, 9 … [London:] Mallett, Printer …
[1882].
Playbill, slim folio (480 × 161 mm); creased
where previously folded; in very good condition
overall; matted.
Mr. J. H. Mapleson has the Honor to
announce the Production of Richard
Wagner’s »Der Ring des Nibelungen« …
a Festival-Play for four Nights at Her
Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket under the
Management of Mr. Angelo Neumann.
Artistic-Director. In the Presence of the
Poet-Composer Richard Wagner. By
special Permission of the H. M. the King of
Bavaria. The gorgeous Scenery,
magnificent Costumes, Armours etc. which
have been so much admired at the Bayreuth
Festival-Plays will also be used at Her
Majesty’s Theatre. [Colophon:] Leipzig, Giesecke & Devrient,
Printers. [1882.]
Small 4to (275 × 219 mm), pp. [4]; printed in red and black, with portrait
of Wagner to p. [1] and a vignette depicting characters from each part of
the Ring to p. [4]; untrimmed, as issued; creased where previously
folded, some light dust-soiling, short tear along spine.
Together: $2600
Very rare: an original playbill for the first London cycle of Wagner’s Ring,
the complete work’s first performance outside the German-speaking
world, and a promotional flyer for the performance, produced in
Germany for distribution in London.
The Austrian impresario Angelo Neumann secured the performing rights
for the Ring (and the Bayreuth stage equipment) from Wagner himself,
intending to give 36 cycles in nine months. He planned to open his
campaign in London, and visited in October 1881 to inspect the stage at
Her Majesty’s Theatre, and again in April 1882 with his entire technical
staff, just a month before the first performance was to take place.
Although the Theatre was in theory ready, it reneged on its contract and
it fell to Neumann to arrange everything, from the orchestra and chorus
to the advertising (presumably why the flyer here was printed in Leipzig),
even the carpets in the foyer. Wagner’s health prevented his attending
either rehearsals or performance, but Neumann was nevertheless ‘very
successful with his first production of the Ring in London. Thanks to an
introduction from the German Crown Prince he managed to get the
Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) to attend no fewer than
eleven of the performances. [He was particularly taken with the
swimming Rhine Maidens.] Neumann’s company was an excellent one,
including as it did Hedwig Reicher-Kindermann, Scaria, Schelper, the
two Vogls, and Reichmann, with Seidl as conductor’ (Newman, The Life
of Richard Wagner, IV, 673), ‘according to Richard Wagner’s own
opinion, the best interpreter of his works’ (p. [2] of the flyer here).
50. WEIPPERT, Johann Erhardt. An illustrated notebook,
London, Margate and elsewhere, c.1791–6, in which is also
bound: John EDWARDS. Directions for making the best
Composition for the Metals of reflecting Telescopes and the
Method of casting, grinding and polishing, and giving them the true
parabolic Figure … published by Order of the Commissioners of
Longitude. London, [c.1783].
3 parts in one vol., the third portion beginning at the rear, with the
volume inverted, 8vo (200 × 125 mm), pp. 60 (printed text); 151, [9]
(manuscript); [136] (manuscript), with over 100 drawings and diagrams
in the text, mostly views, plans and elevations of instruments, but also
including 3 volvelles or working instruments with moving parts (a
coloured stellar planisphere and 2 astronomical calculators, one with 5
moving dials and 1 fixed dial in several colours and the other in red,
black and yellow for calculating phases of the moon) plus a gouache
coastal landscape with a ship, building, shepherd and sheep with a star
chart in the sky; text mainly in German with some English (see note);
contemporary sheep, sometime neatly rebacked and repaired with minor
restoration to endpapers.
$24,000
A copiously illustrated manuscript by an ingenious German émigré who
later found celebrity as a harpist and impresario, but who on arrival in
England (c.1791) appears to have taught himself the art of scientific
instrument making. Weippert’s book, mainly written in his native
German, is full of detailed and complex diagrams. The first part includes
illustrations of telescopes (both reflecting and refracting varieties),
planetaria (including several clockwork orreries), a chronometer,
barometer, lathe, stellar planisphere, clocks of
various sorts and pantographs. These are
often signed by the author to imitate engraved
makers’ marks on finished instruments; the
volvelle instrument to p. 115 (a sophisticated
revolving calendar) is entitled ‘Rotula’, an
appellation Weippert later reused for a volvelle
for interpreting musical keys printed in his
Instructions for the Pedal Harp (1800).
The book was then turned over to begin the
second part devoted to sundials, with dozens
of illustrations, as well as the red, black and
yellow movable dial for calculating (and
ingeniously illustrating) the phases of the
moon. Much of this part is taken and translated
from William Leybourn’s Dialing (London,
1682), including the title and imprint transcribed
on p. 26.
The printed pamphlet included in the book, Directions for making the
best Composition for the Metals of reflecting Telescopes, is by John
Edwards, Shropshire clergyman and an amateur astronomer, who made
significant refinements to the coatings of telescope reflectors. This is
known in two issues (both undated) of 48 and 60 pages respectively; the
one here is the latter (Cambridge, Chatsworth, Huntington, and Stanford
only in ESTC), including an appendix by Neville Maskelyne.
Weippert’s later musical career is well documented. He and his brother
Johann Michael Weippert (also a harpist) were familiar at Queen
Victoria’s court—his music was much published and performed—and his
band is mentioned by Thackeray and Thomas Hood. Weippert was a
popular attraction at Covent Garden and he became a member of the
Royal Society of Musicians in 1797. He later moved to Margate, where
he managed and performed at the Assembly Rooms for many years.
His notebook contains several references to Margate on the endpapers,
including a sketch plan of the grounds of his cottage at Dean Hill there,
which is still called ‘Weippert’s Cottage’.
‘THE BEST, MOST DARING, TRUTHFUL, AND HUMANE BOOK WRITTEN ...
DURING THE COURSE OF THIS ACCURSED WAR’ (GORKY)
51. WELLS, H[erbert]. G[eorge]. Mister Britling i voina.
Roman. Avtorizovannyi perevod s angliiskago M. Likiardopulo [Mr
Britling and the War. A Novel. Authorized translation from the
English by Mikhail Likiardopulo]. Izd. “Parus”, P[e]t[ro]g[rad].
1918.
8vo (213 × 148 mm), pp. 387, [1]; inkstain to p. 189; uncut in the original
printed wrappers, spine defective in places, old paper repair to tear on
front cover.
$1800
First edition in Russian in book form (it was
serialized in Letopis’ in the second half of
1916) of Mr Britling sees it through (1916), in
Gorky’s words ‘the best, most daring, truthful,
and humane book written in Europe during the
course of this accursed war’ (Selected Letters,
1997, p. 195).
Mikhail Likiardopulo (1883–1925), Oscar
Wilde’s major Russian translator, was
secretary of the Symbolist journal Vesy (The
Scales). He acted as a foreign correspondent
for various Russian newspapers during the First World War, and was
subsequently on the staff of The Morning Post in London. It is thought
that he also worked for the British secret service. He died in England
and is buried at Brighton.
Levidova & Parchevskaya, Gerbert Dzhordzh Uells: bibliografiia russkikh
perevodov … 1898–1965 (1966), 239, listing no further editions. Not in
COPAC or OCLC.
52. WELTI, Hanns. 12 Drawings. New York! Copyright und
Verlag: Schweiz. wirtschaftliche Studienreise nach Nordamerika.
Druck: Graph. Anst. Hofer & Co. … Zürich. [1927.]
Large folio (575 × 470 mm), 12 full-page lithographs, each signed by
Welti in pencil, loose in the original illustrated wrappers; a few spots to
the first leaf, else in excellent condition.
$7000
First edition: one of 200 copies signed by the artist (this being no. 141),
out of a total edition of 500.
Like the architect and sculptor Max Bill, Welti (1891–1934) belonged to
the artistic new wave which characterised Zurich in the late 1920s,
experimenting with abstract art and Dadaism. In 1932, it was Welti who
was asked by Wilhelm Wartmann, director of the Zurich Kunsthaus,
which was mounting a major Picasso retrospective, to look after the
Spaniard during his visit. These early lithographs arose out of a visit
Welti made to New York thanks to a ‘Swiss Economic Study Tour to
America’, an initiative begun after the First World War.
Not found in OCLC.
53. WILLIAMS, R. C. G. Two photo albums documenting visits
to the Soviet Union and East Berlin during the height of the Cold
War. Guildford, Surrey, 1954 and 1960.
Two black pebble-grained oblong folio albums with 230 original
photographs (measuring 122 × 122 mm and 130 × 130 mm), all with
typescript caption labels; in good condition.
$1500
Williams was chairman of the Electronics Divisional Board, some sort of
interface between electronic research and the industry. The photos are
of more than one trip to the Eastern Bloc. The first volume opens with
views of Moscow in winter, street scenes, traffic, the hotel were the
British trade delegation stayed, Metro stations, planes at Moscow
airport, summer houses on the banks of the frozen Moskva, and a visit
to the Betkin Hospital. Twelve photos show Stalingrad being rebuilt. A
long section documents the election on 14 March 1954 with photos of
polling booths, registration desks and voters casting their ballots. The
next stop on the trip was Warsaw, which was under reconstruction with
Stalinist skyscrapers shooting up amid the ruins. The delegation then
moved on to Berlin and this section opens with photos of the
Brandenburg Gate seen from both East and West, a police checkpoint
between two sectors, the ruins of the Reichstag, the Stalinallee and the
centre of West Berlin. Four photos show the destroyed ‘bunker’ on the
border of East Berlin. ‘Some Personal Photographs’ conclude the first
album; they are of views from Williams’ Moscow Hotel, men at work in
the ‘Mullard Office’ in Moscow, which was apparently a hotel room.
Mullard was a manufacturer of valves, semiconductors and lamps. One
photo shows the recently installed Mullard sodium lamps along the
Leningrad–Moscow highway and these British lamps illuminating the
Ministry of Weights and Measures.
The second album documents another trip to the Soviet Union,
undertaken in 1960 and opens with photos of Moscow, market scenes,
and—shockingly—’Shops open on a Sunday’ as one caption reads.
Other photos show Moscow University, which in 1954 had not been
completed. To underline the professional character of the journey,
Williams took photos of television sets exhibited at the Exhibition of
National Economic Achievement, views of an experimental colour TV
studio and the Sputnik radio transmitter. The delegation was also sent
to the exhibition of the wreck of the US American spy plane U2, which
had been shot down by the Soviets on the first of May 1960—a major
incident in the relations between the two superpowers. President
Eisenhower tried to cover up the loss of the aircraft, which officially did
not exist. However, the Soviets had the hard, twisted evidence that the
USA had breached their airspace on a military mission.
FOUNDER OF THE PROMS
54. [WOOD, Sir Henry.] Large signed cabinet portrait
photograph of Henry Wood with five performers from the
Promenade Concerts. W. Whiteley Ltd Photographers London.
[1897].
Oversized cabinet portrait (128 × 205 mm), on Whiteley’s personalised
mount, remains of old paper to rear, presumably from when in an album.
$1200
A fine portrait of the young Henry Wood (then only 28), founder of the
Proms, with Albert Fransella (flute), Désiré Lalande (oboe), Friedrich
Borsdorf (horn), Manuel Gomez (clarinet), and Edwin James (bassoon).
Fransella, Borsdorf, Gomez, and James had all played in the first ever
Prom concert, in 1895; Lalande first appeared at the Proms with them in
1897, which perhaps suggests a date for the photo.
Simon Beattie
84 The Broadway, Chesham
Buckinghamshire HP5 1EG
United Kingdom
Tel. +44 (0)1494 784954
Cell/voicemail +44 (0)7717 707575
E-mail [email protected]
www.simonbeattie.co.uk