The Private Life of Catherine the Great of Russia -
Princess Lucien Murat, Garnett Saffery (translator)
1928 - Louis Carrier & Co, New York - Limited Collectors’ Edition, Number 214 of 500 copies.
A limited edition of this biography by Princess Lucien Murat, and part of the ‘Love Lives of the Great’ series, elegantly bound by Rivière & Son, in contemporary full calf, and printed on Utopian laid paper.
Illustrated with engraved colour frontispiece portrait of Catherine the Great.
Bound for Anna Eugenia Clark and then gifted to her daughter, Huguette Marcelle Clark (1906-2011). Huguette inherited the vast wealth built up by her father William A. Clark, she became well known again late in life as a recluse, living in a hospital for more than 20 years while her mansions remained empty. She was an accomplished artist and musician, having studied under famous portrait painter Tadeusz Styka, and her paintings were exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington in 1925.
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Price HK$ 6,000
1928 - Louis Carrier & Co, New York - Limited Collectors’ Edition, Number 214 of 500 copies.
A limited edition of this biography by Princess Lucien Murat, and part of the ‘Love Lives of the Great’ series, elegantly bound by Rivière & Son, in contemporary full calf, and printed on Utopian laid paper.Illustrated with engraved colour frontispiece portrait of Catherine the Great.
Bound for Anna Eugenia Clark and then gifted to her daughter, Huguette Marcelle Clark (1906-2011). Huguette inherited the vast wealth built up by her father William A. Clark, she became well known again late in life as a recluse, living in a hospital for more than 20 years while her mansions remained empty. She was an accomplished artist and musician, having studied under famous portrait painter Tadeusz Styka, and her paintings were exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington in 1925.
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Price HK$ 6,000
Five Children And It -
E. Nesbit
1902 - T. Fisher Unwin, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of this magical tale bound by Bayntun-Riviere of Bath, illustrated by H. R. Millar with forty-six black and white plates – Cyril, Athena, Robert, Jane, and baby brother, Lamb, are exploring the land around the house their parents have rented for the summer when they find the sandpit. They decide to dig a hole straight through to Australia. Their plan is interrupted when Athena discovers a magical creature hiding in the sand. It is a Psammead, and it can grant wishes.
‘The children stood around the hole looking at the creature they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey's.’
Psammead: I am a Sand Fairy!
Jane: A Sand Fairy? I thought fairies had little ballet dresses and wings and wands.
Psammead: What on earth have you been reading?
Jane: I'll call you Sandy.
Psammead: Why?
Jane: Because we found you in the sand.
Psammead: You're so funny. Have your parents tried boiling you?
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Price HK$ 12,500
1902 - T. Fisher Unwin, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of this magical tale bound by Bayntun-Riviere of Bath, illustrated by H. R. Millar with forty-six black and white plates – Cyril, Athena, Robert, Jane, and baby brother, Lamb, are exploring the land around the house their parents have rented for the summer when they find the sandpit. They decide to dig a hole straight through to Australia. Their plan is interrupted when Athena discovers a magical creature hiding in the sand. It is a Psammead, and it can grant wishes.‘The children stood around the hole looking at the creature they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey's.’
Psammead: I am a Sand Fairy!
Jane: A Sand Fairy? I thought fairies had little ballet dresses and wings and wands.
Psammead: What on earth have you been reading?
Jane: I'll call you Sandy.
Psammead: Why?
Jane: Because we found you in the sand.
Psammead: You're so funny. Have your parents tried boiling you?
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Price HK$ 12,500
The Works -
George Orwell, Peter Davison, Sonia Orwell, and Ian Angus (editors)
1996 - Secker & Warburg, London
An elegantly bound fourteen volume set of Orwell’s books, letters and essays, Michael Sheldon’s biography, and notes, introductions and detailed indices from Peter Davison, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus.
Comprising:-
Volumes I-IX – The nine books – Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, Coming Up for Air, Animal Farm, and Nineteen-eighty Four,
Volumes X-XIII – The four volumes of the collected essays, letters and journalism, selected and edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus – An Age Like This 1920-1940, My Country Right or Left 1940-1943, As I Please 1943-1945, and In front of Your Nose 1945-1950.
Volume XIV – Michael Sheldon’s Orwell, The Authorised Biography.
Peter Davison, has ‘an unchallenged and unrivalled knowledge of the writings of George Orwell’,‘The nine volumes of corrected texts are models of bibliography and textual research’ - Daniel J. Leab, The Grolier Club.
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Price HK$ 32,000
1996 - Secker & Warburg, London
An elegantly bound fourteen volume set of Orwell’s books, letters and essays, Michael Sheldon’s biography, and notes, introductions and detailed indices from Peter Davison, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus.Comprising:-
Volumes I-IX – The nine books – Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, Coming Up for Air, Animal Farm, and Nineteen-eighty Four,
Volumes X-XIII – The four volumes of the collected essays, letters and journalism, selected and edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus – An Age Like This 1920-1940, My Country Right or Left 1940-1943, As I Please 1943-1945, and In front of Your Nose 1945-1950.
Volume XIV – Michael Sheldon’s Orwell, The Authorised Biography.
Peter Davison, has ‘an unchallenged and unrivalled knowledge of the writings of George Orwell’,‘The nine volumes of corrected texts are models of bibliography and textual research’ - Daniel J. Leab, The Grolier Club.
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Price HK$ 32,000
The Chronicles of Crime: Or, The New Newgate Calendar. Being a series of Memoirs and Anecdotes of Notorious Characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841. Including a number of Curious Cases never before published. -
Camden Pelham Esq. of the Inner Temple Barrister-at-Law, Phiz (illustrator)
1891 - T. Miles & Co., London
Two thick volumes finely bound by George Bayntun of Bath, illustrated throughout with forty-eight engravings from original drawings by “Phiz” (Hablot K. Browne).
Well the title tells it all, and the illustrations by “Phiz” who illustrated many of Dickens’ books are perfectly suited.
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Price HK$ 4,500
1891 - T. Miles & Co., London
Two thick volumes finely bound by George Bayntun of Bath, illustrated throughout with forty-eight engravings from original drawings by “Phiz” (Hablot K. Browne).Well the title tells it all, and the illustrations by “Phiz” who illustrated many of Dickens’ books are perfectly suited.
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Price HK$ 4,500
Scottish and Irish Diaries: From the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century -
Baron Arthur Ponsonby
1927 - Methuen & Co. Ltd., London - First Edition
A finely bound work. In addition to notes and extracts for the major diarists, Ponsonby provides a detailed introduction, and notes on minor Scottish and Irish Diarists, chronological lists of both. Those he considers major diarists include Sir Walter Scott, Lord Cockburn, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Richard Boyle, John Wilson Crocker, Swift, Wolfe Tone, Daniel O'Connell, Tom Moore, and John Mitchel, among others.
Arthur Ponsonby, first Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede (1871-1946), was an English politician, writer and peace campaigner. He was born in Windsor Castle, the youngest son of Queen Victoria's private secretary. - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
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Price HK$ 1,000
1927 - Methuen & Co. Ltd., London - First Edition
A finely bound work. In addition to notes and extracts for the major diarists, Ponsonby provides a detailed introduction, and notes on minor Scottish and Irish Diarists, chronological lists of both. Those he considers major diarists include Sir Walter Scott, Lord Cockburn, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Richard Boyle, John Wilson Crocker, Swift, Wolfe Tone, Daniel O'Connell, Tom Moore, and John Mitchel, among others.Arthur Ponsonby, first Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede (1871-1946), was an English politician, writer and peace campaigner. He was born in Windsor Castle, the youngest son of Queen Victoria's private secretary. - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
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Price HK$ 1,000
The Works of Alexander Pope - with a Memoir of the Author, Notes, and Critical Notices on each Poem, by the Rev, G. Croly, LL.D. -
Alexander Pope
1835 - A.J. Valpy, London - First Edition
In four small finely bound volumes, with engraved frontispiece and engraved title to each volume.
English essayist, critic, satirist, and one of the greatest poets of Enlightenment, also known for his translation of Homer. Alexander Pope [1688-1744] wrote his first verses at the age of 12. His breakthrough work, An Essay on Criticism appeared when he was twenty-three. It included the famous line ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’. Pope's physical defects made him an easy target for heartless mockery, but he was also considered a leading literary critic and the epitome of English Neoclassicism. His translation of Homer is still considered
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Price HK$ 8,000
1835 - A.J. Valpy, London - First Edition
In four small finely bound volumes, with engraved frontispiece and engraved title to each volume.English essayist, critic, satirist, and one of the greatest poets of Enlightenment, also known for his translation of Homer. Alexander Pope [1688-1744] wrote his first verses at the age of 12. His breakthrough work, An Essay on Criticism appeared when he was twenty-three. It included the famous line ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’. Pope's physical defects made him an easy target for heartless mockery, but he was also considered a leading literary critic and the epitome of English Neoclassicism. His translation of Homer is still considered
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Price HK$ 8,000
A Dance to the Music of Time -
Anthony Powell
1952 to 1975 - Heinemann, London - First Editions (Vol.I third printing), in First Edition dust jacket (Vol.II second issue)
A bright and complete twelve volume set of Anthony Powell’s dodecahedral masterpiece 'A Dance to the Music of Time', tracing a colourful group of English acquaintances across a span of many years from 1914 to 1971.
The slowly developing narrative centres around life's poignant encounters between friends and lovers who later drift apart and yet keep reencountering each other over numerous unfolding decades as they move through the vicissitudes of marriage, work, ageing, and ultimately death.
Until the last three volumes, the next standard excitements of old-fashioned plots (What will happen next? Will x marry y? Will y murder z?) seem far less important than time's slow reshuffling of friends, acquaintances, and lovers in intricate human arabesques’ [Robert L Selig; Time and Anthony Powell, A Critical Study.]
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Price HK$ 15,000
1952 to 1975 - Heinemann, London - First Editions (Vol.I third printing), in First Edition dust jacket (Vol.II second issue)
A bright and complete twelve volume set of Anthony Powell’s dodecahedral masterpiece 'A Dance to the Music of Time', tracing a colourful group of English acquaintances across a span of many years from 1914 to 1971.The slowly developing narrative centres around life's poignant encounters between friends and lovers who later drift apart and yet keep reencountering each other over numerous unfolding decades as they move through the vicissitudes of marriage, work, ageing, and ultimately death.
Until the last three volumes, the next standard excitements of old-fashioned plots (What will happen next? Will x marry y? Will y murder z?) seem far less important than time's slow reshuffling of friends, acquaintances, and lovers in intricate human arabesques’ [Robert L Selig; Time and Anthony Powell, A Critical Study.]
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Price HK$ 15,000
Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character -
Edward B. Ramsay
1871 - Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh - Twentieth Edition
A fine and magnificently bound edition. Important association copy, inscribed by Ramsay to Doctor Robert Carruthers of Inverness, with Ramsay’s hand written note going on to say that this ‘is the 20th edition and I suppose to be my last - the concluding part from page 316, on the subject of a “closer union amongst Christians is entirely new in the Edition’. Dr. Carruthers is also thanked by Ramsay in the introduction (see page X). This work actually went through a further two editions before Ramsay’s death in 1872.
First published in 1857, and extended throughout Ramsay’s life, it consists of his personal recollections, anecdotes and opinions. In addition to the entertaining preface, chapters cover Scottish Religious Feelings, Old Scottish Conviviality, The Old Scottish Domestic Servant, Humour Proceeding from Scottish Expressions Including Scottish Proverbs, and Scottish Stories of Wit and Humour.
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Price HK$ 5,500
1871 - Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh - Twentieth Edition
A fine and magnificently bound edition. Important association copy, inscribed by Ramsay to Doctor Robert Carruthers of Inverness, with Ramsay’s hand written note going on to say that this ‘is the 20th edition and I suppose to be my last - the concluding part from page 316, on the subject of a “closer union amongst Christians is entirely new in the Edition’. Dr. Carruthers is also thanked by Ramsay in the introduction (see page X). This work actually went through a further two editions before Ramsay’s death in 1872.First published in 1857, and extended throughout Ramsay’s life, it consists of his personal recollections, anecdotes and opinions. In addition to the entertaining preface, chapters cover Scottish Religious Feelings, Old Scottish Conviviality, The Old Scottish Domestic Servant, Humour Proceeding from Scottish Expressions Including Scottish Proverbs, and Scottish Stories of Wit and Humour.
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Price HK$ 5,500