You searched for:
The Complete Works - Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion; Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Letters -
Jane Austen
1911-12 - John Grant, Edinburgh - The Winchester Edition
‘I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.'
An elegantly bound twelve volume set, comprising all of Austen's works. With a portrait frontispiece to first volume, and title pages printed in red and black with a vignette 'JA' monogram.
‘Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.’
More details
Price HK$ 35,000
1911-12 - John Grant, Edinburgh - The Winchester Edition
‘I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.'An elegantly bound twelve volume set, comprising all of Austen's works. With a portrait frontispiece to first volume, and title pages printed in red and black with a vignette 'JA' monogram.
‘Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.’
More details
Price HK$ 35,000
National Velvet -
Enid Bagnold, Laurian Jones (illustrator)
1935 - William Morrow and Company, New York - First American Edition [Same Year as the English Edition]
Illustrated throughout with pretty line drawings by Laurian Jones.
The classic story of a teenage girl who rides her horse to victory in the Grand National.
The 1944 film version featured the first starring role of Elizabeth Taylor, then only twelve years old.
More details
Price HK$ 4,000
1935 - William Morrow and Company, New York - First American Edition [Same Year as the English Edition]
Illustrated throughout with pretty line drawings by Laurian Jones. The classic story of a teenage girl who rides her horse to victory in the Grand National.
The 1944 film version featured the first starring role of Elizabeth Taylor, then only twelve years old.
More details
Price HK$ 4,000
Ismailia. A Narrative of The Expedition to Central Africa for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. Organized by Ismail, Khedive of Egypt -
Sir Samuel W. Baker, Pacha
1874 - Macmillan And Co., London - First Edition
A near fine two-volume first edition by one of the great explorers of the era, in which Sir Samuel White Baker describes leading a military expedition beginning in 1869 to annex the lawless upper Nile, suppress its barbaric slave trade, establish trade routes and open up navigation on the Great Lakes for the cotton trade.
Profusely illustrated with fifty two full-page plates and two maps in colour, one folding.
Tasked with the assignment by the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt at a ball in Cairo, Baker was given four years, the rank of major-general, and the title of pasha – the most senior positions ever given to a European under an Egyptian administration. The books begin in the same way as the expedition: with the commission of four boats, including a 251-ton paddle steamer that were shipped from England, and with hundreds of camels and an additional nine steamers and 55 sailing boats in Egypt.
In Baker’s view the slave trade led to ‘treachery, devastation and ruin.’ ‘It is impossible to know the actual number of slaves taken from Central Africa annually; but I should imagine that at least fifty thousand…the loss of life attendant upon the capture and subsequent treatment of the slaves is frightful.’
More details
Price HK$ 11,000
1874 - Macmillan And Co., London - First Edition
A near fine two-volume first edition by one of the great explorers of the era, in which Sir Samuel White Baker describes leading a military expedition beginning in 1869 to annex the lawless upper Nile, suppress its barbaric slave trade, establish trade routes and open up navigation on the Great Lakes for the cotton trade.Profusely illustrated with fifty two full-page plates and two maps in colour, one folding.
Tasked with the assignment by the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt at a ball in Cairo, Baker was given four years, the rank of major-general, and the title of pasha – the most senior positions ever given to a European under an Egyptian administration. The books begin in the same way as the expedition: with the commission of four boats, including a 251-ton paddle steamer that were shipped from England, and with hundreds of camels and an additional nine steamers and 55 sailing boats in Egypt.
In Baker’s view the slave trade led to ‘treachery, devastation and ruin.’ ‘It is impossible to know the actual number of slaves taken from Central Africa annually; but I should imagine that at least fifty thousand…the loss of life attendant upon the capture and subsequent treatment of the slaves is frightful.’
More details
Price HK$ 11,000
Vermilion Sands -
J. G. Ballard
1973 - Jonathan Cape, London - First Edition
First edition of this short story collection, all set in Vermilion Sands, 'a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishing in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions – a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners' neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.'
'No one ever comes to Vermilion Sands now, and I suppose there are few people who have ever heard of it. But ten years ago, when Fay and I first went to live at 99 Stellavista, just before our marriage broke up, the colony was still remembered as the one-time playground of movie stars, delinquent heiresses and eccentric cosmopolites in those fabulous years before the Recess. Admittedly most of the abstract villas and fake palazzos were empty, their huge gardens overgrown, two-level swimming pools long drained, and the whole place was degenerating like an abandoned amusement park, but there was enough bizarre extravagance in the air to make one realize that the giants had only just departed’
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
1973 - Jonathan Cape, London - First Edition
First edition of this short story collection, all set in Vermilion Sands, 'a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishing in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions – a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners' neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.''No one ever comes to Vermilion Sands now, and I suppose there are few people who have ever heard of it. But ten years ago, when Fay and I first went to live at 99 Stellavista, just before our marriage broke up, the colony was still remembered as the one-time playground of movie stars, delinquent heiresses and eccentric cosmopolites in those fabulous years before the Recess. Admittedly most of the abstract villas and fake palazzos were empty, their huge gardens overgrown, two-level swimming pools long drained, and the whole place was degenerating like an abandoned amusement park, but there was enough bizarre extravagance in the air to make one realize that the giants had only just departed’
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
The Player of Games -
Iain M. Banks
1988 - St. Martin's Press, New York - First American Edition
A fine first American edition of the second volume in Banks’ acclaimed ‘Culture Series’.
The story of Gurgeh, one of the Culture’s greatest game masters who, bored with success, travels to the cruel and wealthy Empire of Azad, where he becomes entangled in the most dangerous and complex game he has ever played.
More details
Price HK$ 2,400
1988 - St. Martin's Press, New York - First American Edition
A fine first American edition of the second volume in Banks’ acclaimed ‘Culture Series’.The story of Gurgeh, one of the Culture’s greatest game masters who, bored with success, travels to the cruel and wealthy Empire of Azad, where he becomes entangled in the most dangerous and complex game he has ever played.
More details
Price HK$ 2,400
The Deadly Percheron -
John Franklin Bardin
1947 - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London - First English Edition
A clean sharp copy in a fine and thus rare example of the delicate Gollancz dust jacket.
The first of Bardin’s acclaimed trilogy, which was followed by ‘The Last of Philip Banter’ and ‘Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly’.
More details
Price HK$ 2,500
1947 - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London - First English Edition
A clean sharp copy in a fine and thus rare example of the delicate Gollancz dust jacket.The first of Bardin’s acclaimed trilogy, which was followed by ‘The Last of Philip Banter’ and ‘Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly’.
More details
Price HK$ 2,500
The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland in Three Vols. -
Alfred Barnard
1889 - Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, London - First Editions
The first three volumes of this landmark work on British and Irish brewers, over 1,500 pages illustrated throughout, covering the history and production of all 68 major ‘noted’ brewing establishments together with the great maltings of Meakin Bros. in Burton-on-Trent and H. Baird in Glasgow.
With numerous illustrated beer and whisky related advertisements to the rear of each volume.
‘In 1889 Alfred Barnard published the first volume of a remarkable work, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland. It took the form of a series of reports on visits to breweries. Barnard's primary focus was on the brewery as a production unit rather than as the vertically integrated retailers into which brewing companies were slowly evolve... he gives detailed accounts of the premises, plant and product range of a wide range of breweries close to the height of the late Victorian brewery boom. Noted Breweries is unique as a historical source for these aspects of the brewing industry.’
‘Overall he provides a unique insight into a wide cross section of the plant and the personalities behind one of the major industries of the Victorian world.’ - Paul Bayley, Brewery History Society.
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
1889 - Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, London - First Editions
The first three volumes of this landmark work on British and Irish brewers, over 1,500 pages illustrated throughout, covering the history and production of all 68 major ‘noted’ brewing establishments together with the great maltings of Meakin Bros. in Burton-on-Trent and H. Baird in Glasgow.With numerous illustrated beer and whisky related advertisements to the rear of each volume.
‘In 1889 Alfred Barnard published the first volume of a remarkable work, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland. It took the form of a series of reports on visits to breweries. Barnard's primary focus was on the brewery as a production unit rather than as the vertically integrated retailers into which brewing companies were slowly evolve... he gives detailed accounts of the premises, plant and product range of a wide range of breweries close to the height of the late Victorian brewery boom. Noted Breweries is unique as a historical source for these aspects of the brewing industry.’
‘Overall he provides a unique insight into a wide cross section of the plant and the personalities behind one of the major industries of the Victorian world.’ - Paul Bayley, Brewery History Society.
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
The Sot-Weed Factor -
John Barth
1960 - Doubleday, Garden City - First Edition
First edition of John Barth's satirical epic set in the 1680s–90s in London and colonial Maryland, cementing his reputation as one of the leading experimental writers of his generation. Accompanied by two examples of the scarce and delicate dust jacket, suitably designed by Edward Gorey.
The main character - Ebenezer Cooke - was considered by Time to be ‘one of the most diverting... to roam the world since Candide’.
The Sot-Weed Factor ‘recounts the widely chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father’s tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates and Indians; the loss of his father’s estate to roguish impostors; love for a former prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities. “ [Atlantic]
More details
Price HK$ 6,000
1960 - Doubleday, Garden City - First Edition
First edition of John Barth's satirical epic set in the 1680s–90s in London and colonial Maryland, cementing his reputation as one of the leading experimental writers of his generation. Accompanied by two examples of the scarce and delicate dust jacket, suitably designed by Edward Gorey.The main character - Ebenezer Cooke - was considered by Time to be ‘one of the most diverting... to roam the world since Candide’.
The Sot-Weed Factor ‘recounts the widely chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father’s tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates and Indians; the loss of his father’s estate to roguish impostors; love for a former prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities. “ [Atlantic]
More details
Price HK$ 6,000