The Savoy Cocktail Book -
Harry Craddock
1930 - Constable &, London - First Edition
An uncommon bright and sharp first edition of this Art-Deco highlight and legendary Mixologist’s Bible.
Featuring 750 cocktails, with marvellous art-deco colour illustrations and decorations throughout by Gilbert Rumbold, in original art-deco illustrated covers, using a shiny gold foil transfer which is usually encountered in a poor state.
‘The way to drink a cocktail is quickly, while it's still laughing at you.’
Harry Craddock (1876–1963) was an Englishman who became one of the most famous bartenders of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, Craddock moved to the United States in 1897, where he worked at Cleveland's Hollenden Hotel and New York's Knickerbocker Hotel and Hoffman House, becoming a United States citizen. He left America during Prohibition and sailed to Liverpool with his wife and daughter before joining the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel, London, in 1920. He became the star of the American Bar and is credited with inventing the White Lady and popularised classics such as the Dry Martini.
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Price HK$ 18,000
1930 - Constable &, London - First Edition
An uncommon bright and sharp first edition of this Art-Deco highlight and legendary Mixologist’s Bible.Featuring 750 cocktails, with marvellous art-deco colour illustrations and decorations throughout by Gilbert Rumbold, in original art-deco illustrated covers, using a shiny gold foil transfer which is usually encountered in a poor state.
‘The way to drink a cocktail is quickly, while it's still laughing at you.’
Harry Craddock (1876–1963) was an Englishman who became one of the most famous bartenders of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, Craddock moved to the United States in 1897, where he worked at Cleveland's Hollenden Hotel and New York's Knickerbocker Hotel and Hoffman House, becoming a United States citizen. He left America during Prohibition and sailed to Liverpool with his wife and daughter before joining the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel, London, in 1920. He became the star of the American Bar and is credited with inventing the White Lady and popularised classics such as the Dry Martini.
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Price HK$ 18,000
Rebecca -
Daphne Du Maurier
1938 - Victor Gollancz Limited, London - First Edition
‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’
A finely bound first edition of this iconic gothic mystery, the source for Alfred Hitchcock's haunting cinematic adaptation, produced in 1940. Part of Queen's Quorum, and a Haycraft-Queen cornerstone mystery.
Considered du Maurier’s finest work, the novel is narrated by the second Mrs de Winters, the naive second wife of wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, owner of the renowned estate, Manderley. As the story unfolds, the second Mrs de Winter increasingly finds herself haunted by her glamorous predecessor, Rebecca, and tormented by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, subsequently leading her to uncover an unexpected tragedy...
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Price HK$ 10,000
1938 - Victor Gollancz Limited, London - First Edition
‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’A finely bound first edition of this iconic gothic mystery, the source for Alfred Hitchcock's haunting cinematic adaptation, produced in 1940. Part of Queen's Quorum, and a Haycraft-Queen cornerstone mystery.
Considered du Maurier’s finest work, the novel is narrated by the second Mrs de Winters, the naive second wife of wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, owner of the renowned estate, Manderley. As the story unfolds, the second Mrs de Winter increasingly finds herself haunted by her glamorous predecessor, Rebecca, and tormented by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, subsequently leading her to uncover an unexpected tragedy...
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Price HK$ 10,000
Geek Love - Signed -
Katherine Dunn
1989 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
Signed and fine first edition of this classic cult novel. The story of an enterprising American family who, according to sound free market principles, decide to raise their own freakshow by breeding their own mutants – thereby cutting costs. In a splendid nod to the book's contents, designer Chip Kidd has given Knopf's logo of the "coursing Borzoi" 3 forelegs on the jacket spine above publisher's imprint.
When Katherine Dunn’s novel “Geek Love” became Sonny Mehta’s first purchase as editor-in-chief at Knopf, she became famous in the literary world, at the age of forty-three, after years of obscurity. The book is about what happens after the circus impresario Aloysius Binewski feeds “cocaine, amphetamines, and arsenic” to his repeatedly pregnant wife, a retired geek named Crystal Lil, to genetically engineer a family of circus freaks.
“Geek Love” is historically beloved by dark and eccentric artists, many of whom are famous. Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Flea, and the Monty Pythonite Terry Gilliam were all outspoken fans. According to Gilliam, Johnny Depp wanted to play the book’s most interesting character, Arturo the Aqua Boy, so badly that he tried to get Gilliam to make “Geek Love” into a movie—Tim Burton ended up buying the rights. The book was so resonant for Gilliam that as recently as 2010 he was still trying to adapt the novel, this time as a West End stage play.’ - Eric Rosenblum, New Yorker, 1st December 2022.
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Price HK$ 6,000
1989 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
Signed and fine first edition of this classic cult novel. The story of an enterprising American family who, according to sound free market principles, decide to raise their own freakshow by breeding their own mutants – thereby cutting costs. In a splendid nod to the book's contents, designer Chip Kidd has given Knopf's logo of the "coursing Borzoi" 3 forelegs on the jacket spine above publisher's imprint.When Katherine Dunn’s novel “Geek Love” became Sonny Mehta’s first purchase as editor-in-chief at Knopf, she became famous in the literary world, at the age of forty-three, after years of obscurity. The book is about what happens after the circus impresario Aloysius Binewski feeds “cocaine, amphetamines, and arsenic” to his repeatedly pregnant wife, a retired geek named Crystal Lil, to genetically engineer a family of circus freaks.
“Geek Love” is historically beloved by dark and eccentric artists, many of whom are famous. Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Flea, and the Monty Pythonite Terry Gilliam were all outspoken fans. According to Gilliam, Johnny Depp wanted to play the book’s most interesting character, Arturo the Aqua Boy, so badly that he tried to get Gilliam to make “Geek Love” into a movie—Tim Burton ended up buying the rights. The book was so resonant for Gilliam that as recently as 2010 he was still trying to adapt the novel, this time as a West End stage play.’ - Eric Rosenblum, New Yorker, 1st December 2022.
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Price HK$ 6,000
The Name of the Rose - Signed -
Umberto Eco
1983 - Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego - First Edition in English
Signed first edition in bright dust jacket without fading.
‘Whether you're into Sherlock Holmes, Montaillou, Borges, the nouvelle critique, the Rule of St. Benedict, metaphysics, library design, or The Thing from the Crypt, you'll love it. Who can that miss out?’ - Sunday Times.
Originally published in Italian in 1980, this is the first edition in English, published simultaneously by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in San Diego, and Martin Secker & Warburg in London, both using the same illustration taken from a manuscript of the Apocalypse.
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Price HK$ 12,000
1983 - Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego - First Edition in English
Signed first edition in bright dust jacket without fading.‘Whether you're into Sherlock Holmes, Montaillou, Borges, the nouvelle critique, the Rule of St. Benedict, metaphysics, library design, or The Thing from the Crypt, you'll love it. Who can that miss out?’ - Sunday Times.
Originally published in Italian in 1980, this is the first edition in English, published simultaneously by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in San Diego, and Martin Secker & Warburg in London, both using the same illustration taken from a manuscript of the Apocalypse.
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Price HK$ 12,000
JR - Signed -
William Gaddis
1975 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
First edition, signed.
‘At the center of J R is J R Vansant, a very average sixth grader from Long Island with torn sneakers, a runny nose, and a juvenile fascination with junk-mail get-rich-quick offers. Responding to one, he sees a small return; soon, he is running a paper empire out of a phone booth in the school hallway. Everyone from the school staff to the municipal government to the squabbling heirs of a player-piano company to the titans of Wall Street and the politicians in Washington will be caught up in the endlessly ballooning bubble of the J R Family of Companies.
Winner of the National Book Award in 1976, J R is an appallingly funny and all-too-prophetic depiction of America’s romance with finance. It is also a book about suburban development and urban decay, divorce proceedings and disputed wills, the crumbling facade of Western civilization and the impossible demands of love and art, with characters ranging from the earnest young composer Edward Bast to the berserk publicist Davidoff. Told almost entirely through dialogue, William Gaddis’s novel is both a literary tour de force and an unsurpassed reckoning with the way we live now.’ – New York Review of Books.
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Price HK$ 8,000
1975 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
First edition, signed.‘At the center of J R is J R Vansant, a very average sixth grader from Long Island with torn sneakers, a runny nose, and a juvenile fascination with junk-mail get-rich-quick offers. Responding to one, he sees a small return; soon, he is running a paper empire out of a phone booth in the school hallway. Everyone from the school staff to the municipal government to the squabbling heirs of a player-piano company to the titans of Wall Street and the politicians in Washington will be caught up in the endlessly ballooning bubble of the J R Family of Companies.
Winner of the National Book Award in 1976, J R is an appallingly funny and all-too-prophetic depiction of America’s romance with finance. It is also a book about suburban development and urban decay, divorce proceedings and disputed wills, the crumbling facade of Western civilization and the impossible demands of love and art, with characters ranging from the earnest young composer Edward Bast to the berserk publicist Davidoff. Told almost entirely through dialogue, William Gaddis’s novel is both a literary tour de force and an unsurpassed reckoning with the way we live now.’ – New York Review of Books.
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Price HK$ 8,000
Howl and Other Poems -
Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams (introduction)
1956 - City Lights Pocket Bookshop, San Francisco - First Edition, First Printing
Nice example of Ginsberg's revolutionary poem, which had been seized by the U.S. Collector of Customs Chester MacPhee soon after publication, setting off one of the most important episodes in the battle for freedom of the press, and against censorship.
This is the first printing, with the dedication to Lucien Carr still present, a period after "Harlem" on the rear cover, and "75 cents" lettered in light blue on rear cover.
‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,’
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Price HK$ 32,000
1956 - City Lights Pocket Bookshop, San Francisco - First Edition, First Printing
Nice example of Ginsberg's revolutionary poem, which had been seized by the U.S. Collector of Customs Chester MacPhee soon after publication, setting off one of the most important episodes in the battle for freedom of the press, and against censorship.This is the first printing, with the dedication to Lucien Carr still present, a period after "Harlem" on the rear cover, and "75 cents" lettered in light blue on rear cover.
‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,’
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Price HK$ 32,000
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy -
Hannah Glasse
1765 - A. Millar, London - Ninth Edition
An early edition of this classic 18th century cookbook, which ‘revolutionised the way the British cook’.
‘She's the first domestic goddess, the queen of the dinner party and the most important cookery writer to know about. No, not Isabella Beeton; not Delia Smith nor Nigella Lawson, but an earlier incarnation of a kitchen trouble-shooter, Hannah Glasse’ - Rose Prince, The Independent (2006).
‘The Art of Cookery has a River Cafe Cookbook quality - in fact her excessive use of butter, which can have a lovely clear flavour, can be likened to the liberal dribbling of olive oil in Rogers' and Gray's recipes. The power of the book, though, is the clarity of the writing. She's authoritative but she is also intimate, treating you as an equal’ – Bee Wilson (food journalist and author).
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Price HK$ 5,000
1765 - A. Millar, London - Ninth Edition
An early edition of this classic 18th century cookbook, which ‘revolutionised the way the British cook’.‘She's the first domestic goddess, the queen of the dinner party and the most important cookery writer to know about. No, not Isabella Beeton; not Delia Smith nor Nigella Lawson, but an earlier incarnation of a kitchen trouble-shooter, Hannah Glasse’ - Rose Prince, The Independent (2006).
‘The Art of Cookery has a River Cafe Cookbook quality - in fact her excessive use of butter, which can have a lovely clear flavour, can be likened to the liberal dribbling of olive oil in Rogers' and Gray's recipes. The power of the book, though, is the clarity of the writing. She's authoritative but she is also intimate, treating you as an equal’ – Bee Wilson (food journalist and author).
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Price HK$ 5,000
The Old Man and the Sea -
Ernest Hemingway
1952 - Charles Scribner's Sons, New York - First Edition, First Issue
‘I am a strange old man’.
‘But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?’
‘I think so. And there are many tricks’.
A bright first edition, housed in custom blue cloth clamshell box with swordfish design and navy spine label lettered in gilt.
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Price HK$ 25,000
1952 - Charles Scribner's Sons, New York - First Edition, First Issue
‘I am a strange old man’.‘But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?’
‘I think so. And there are many tricks’.
A bright first edition, housed in custom blue cloth clamshell box with swordfish design and navy spine label lettered in gilt.
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Price HK$ 25,000