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Poetry
1914 and Other Poems -
Rupert Brooke
1915 - Sidgwick & Jackson Limited, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of Brooke’s second and most famous collection of poetry, published two months after his death, which contains, amongst others, both ‘The Soldier’ and ‘The Dead’. With portrait frontispiece from a photograph taken by Sherrill Schell in 1913, and the delicate and scarce dust jacket which is in two pieces but shows well on the book itself. Housed in later quarter red morocco slipcase.
‘If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.’
More details
Price HK$ 12,000
1915 - Sidgwick & Jackson Limited, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of Brooke’s second and most famous collection of poetry, published two months after his death, which contains, amongst others, both ‘The Soldier’ and ‘The Dead’. With portrait frontispiece from a photograph taken by Sherrill Schell in 1913, and the delicate and scarce dust jacket which is in two pieces but shows well on the book itself. Housed in later quarter red morocco slipcase.‘If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.’
More details
Price HK$ 12,000
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke: With a Memoir -
Rupert Brooke, Edward Marsh
1918 - Sidgwick & Jackson, London - First Edition
‘Out of the nothingness of sleep,
The slow dreams of Eternity,
There was a thunder on the deep:
I came, because you called to me.’ – The Call.
A comprehensive collection of Brooke’s poems, finely bound by Bayntun Riviere of Bath, and housed in matching fleece-lined morocco clamshell case.
Illustrated with two black and white plates from photographic portraits of Rupert Brooke. In addition this is the first edition of Edward Marsh’s ‘Memoir’ and an introduction to that memoir by Rupert Brooke’s father, published later as a separate volume.
‘If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.’ – The Soldier.
More details
Price HK$ 11,000
1918 - Sidgwick & Jackson, London - First Edition
‘Out of the nothingness of sleep,The slow dreams of Eternity,
There was a thunder on the deep:
I came, because you called to me.’ – The Call.
A comprehensive collection of Brooke’s poems, finely bound by Bayntun Riviere of Bath, and housed in matching fleece-lined morocco clamshell case.
Illustrated with two black and white plates from photographic portraits of Rupert Brooke. In addition this is the first edition of Edward Marsh’s ‘Memoir’ and an introduction to that memoir by Rupert Brooke’s father, published later as a separate volume.
‘If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.’ – The Soldier.
More details
Price HK$ 11,000
Selections from the Popular Poetry of The Hindoos -
Thomas Duer Broughton (editor translator)
1814 - Printed by Whittingham and Rowland for John Martin, London - First Edition
A pretty and scarce first edition of the first published anthology of Hindi Poets. Internally fine and unopened.
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Price HK$ 5,000
1814 - Printed by Whittingham and Rowland for John Martin, London - First Edition
A pretty and scarce first edition of the first published anthology of Hindi Poets. Internally fine and unopened.
More details
Price HK$ 5,000
Sick Heart River -
John Buchan
1941 - Hodder Stoughton Limited, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of Buchan’s last book, published posthumously.
The review in the April 1941 edition of Punch sums it up nicely:-
‘"If thou hast a woe, tell it not to the weakling, tell it to thy saddle-bow, and ride singing forth." John Buchan took this Proverb of Alfred as text for his book Sick Heart River (Hodder and Stoughton, 8/3) which is as good a sermon to lift the downhearted as has ever been given in the form of a novel. When Sir Edward Leithen, a former British Attorney-General, received his notice of death from a specialist, "his memory sprawled over places he had seen" and he decided to go to Quebec to make his soul and to "die standing". One journey led to another in quest of a famous French-Canadian who, in a mood of mental sickness, had suddenly left his wife and important office in New York; and was "wanted" by American people because of his genius over international affairs. The tale that follows of two white men, their half-breed guides and some "Hare Indians", their fight with and against Nature in a lonely place is soul-stirring in more than one way and makes as brave a book as the late Governor-General of Canada ever gave us.’
The fictional Sick Heart River is in the real region of the Nahanni River in Canada's Northwest Territories. It is in some of the most rugged terrain in Canada. The area was only just being mapped when Buchan, as Governor-General Lord Tweedsmuir, passed nearby during his voyage down the Mackenzie River in the summer of 1937. Having heard much about the mysterious South Nahanni, Buchan was fascinated by it and wanted to go there, but did not make it before he died in February, 1940. [Galbraith, 2001]
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
1941 - Hodder Stoughton Limited, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of Buchan’s last book, published posthumously. The review in the April 1941 edition of Punch sums it up nicely:-
‘"If thou hast a woe, tell it not to the weakling, tell it to thy saddle-bow, and ride singing forth." John Buchan took this Proverb of Alfred as text for his book Sick Heart River (Hodder and Stoughton, 8/3) which is as good a sermon to lift the downhearted as has ever been given in the form of a novel. When Sir Edward Leithen, a former British Attorney-General, received his notice of death from a specialist, "his memory sprawled over places he had seen" and he decided to go to Quebec to make his soul and to "die standing". One journey led to another in quest of a famous French-Canadian who, in a mood of mental sickness, had suddenly left his wife and important office in New York; and was "wanted" by American people because of his genius over international affairs. The tale that follows of two white men, their half-breed guides and some "Hare Indians", their fight with and against Nature in a lonely place is soul-stirring in more than one way and makes as brave a book as the late Governor-General of Canada ever gave us.’
The fictional Sick Heart River is in the real region of the Nahanni River in Canada's Northwest Territories. It is in some of the most rugged terrain in Canada. The area was only just being mapped when Buchan, as Governor-General Lord Tweedsmuir, passed nearby during his voyage down the Mackenzie River in the summer of 1937. Having heard much about the mysterious South Nahanni, Buchan was fascinated by it and wanted to go there, but did not make it before he died in February, 1940. [Galbraith, 2001]
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
Trouble A-Brewing. A Novel of Detection -
John Bude (Pseud. Ernest Carpenter Elmore)
1946 - Macdonald and Co.(Publishers) Ltd., London - First Edition
An exceptional example of this scarce first edition, in the dust jacket without price-clipping and only a little colour touch-up to spine and outer corners.
Featuring Chief Inspector Meredith who ‘proves himself more than a match for any murderer; even for one who first poisons his victim and then hides the body in a hogshead of beer’.
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Price HK$ 3,000
1946 - Macdonald and Co.(Publishers) Ltd., London - First Edition
An exceptional example of this scarce first edition, in the dust jacket without price-clipping and only a little colour touch-up to spine and outer corners.Featuring Chief Inspector Meredith who ‘proves himself more than a match for any murderer; even for one who first poisons his victim and then hides the body in a hogshead of beer’.
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Price HK$ 3,000
East of Mansion House -
Thomas Burke
1928 - Cassell and Company, London - First Edition
‘A London native, Burke knew the city intimately and brought it to life in essays, mood pieces, and short stories, most of which had a melodramatic atmosphere of crime.’ – Stenbrunner & Penzler.
More details
Price HK$ 1,800
1928 - Cassell and Company, London - First Edition
‘A London native, Burke knew the city intimately and brought it to life in essays, mood pieces, and short stories, most of which had a melodramatic atmosphere of crime.’ – Stenbrunner & Penzler.
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Price HK$ 1,800
High Sierra -
W. R. Burnett
1940 - Alfred A Knopf, New York. London - First Edition in First State Dust Jacket
‘In the darkness, in a vivid flash, he saw old Barmy’s thin wise face. Dead and buried now, poor guy! What was it he’d said about being buried? Yeah. Barmy said when they planted him he’d be wearing ‘the turning globe’ for an overcoat. Now, who’d think of a thing like that but him? It made you see the little earth lost in space, turning slowly through the night.’
‘In High Sierra, Burnett, one of the most influential of the ‘Hard-Boiled’ crime writers, changed the typical characterisation of the gangster story from the aggressive, ambitious figure characterisation of the 1930’s to the ageing Roy Earle, a gangster well past his prime. A sense of fatalism pervades the story, and Burnett and John Huston scripted a film version for Warner Bros, which was released in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart as Earle.’ – Encyclopedia of Film Noir.
Housed in custom cloth slipcase.
More details
Price HK$ 8,000
1940 - Alfred A Knopf, New York. London - First Edition in First State Dust Jacket
‘In the darkness, in a vivid flash, he saw old Barmy’s thin wise face. Dead and buried now, poor guy! What was it he’d said about being buried? Yeah. Barmy said when they planted him he’d be wearing ‘the turning globe’ for an overcoat. Now, who’d think of a thing like that but him? It made you see the little earth lost in space, turning slowly through the night.’‘In High Sierra, Burnett, one of the most influential of the ‘Hard-Boiled’ crime writers, changed the typical characterisation of the gangster story from the aggressive, ambitious figure characterisation of the 1930’s to the ageing Roy Earle, a gangster well past his prime. A sense of fatalism pervades the story, and Burnett and John Huston scripted a film version for Warner Bros, which was released in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart as Earle.’ – Encyclopedia of Film Noir.
Housed in custom cloth slipcase.
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Price HK$ 8,000
Nova Express -
William S. Burroughs
1964 - Grove Press, New York - First Edition
‘A masterpiece of fantasy and reality, a carnival of horrors, a doomsday confrontation of man and his world.’
Burroughs’ ferociously political and prophetic novel – a parody of bureaucracy and human frailty, and the third in his linguistically ‘cut-up’ trilogy, following The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded –fires the reader into the diabolical world of the Nova Mob, poised to wreak havoc and destruction upon the planet. Can Inspector J. Lee of the Nova Police stop them before it’s too late…?
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Price HK$ 1,600
1964 - Grove Press, New York - First Edition
‘A masterpiece of fantasy and reality, a carnival of horrors, a doomsday confrontation of man and his world.’Burroughs’ ferociously political and prophetic novel – a parody of bureaucracy and human frailty, and the third in his linguistically ‘cut-up’ trilogy, following The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded –fires the reader into the diabolical world of the Nova Mob, poised to wreak havoc and destruction upon the planet. Can Inspector J. Lee of the Nova Police stop them before it’s too late…?
More details
Price HK$ 1,600