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>STOWE, Lyman E. Poetical Drifts of Thought or, Problems of Progress. Treating upon the mistakes of the church ... the formation of a solar system - evolution - human progress - possibilities of the future - including spicy explanatory matter in prose. Detroit, Lyman E. Stowe 1884. Largish octavo publisher's illustrated red green blocked in gilt and black; 319pp, heaps of wood engraved illustrations throughout including a long folding panorama of Detroit. A hint of flecking, an outstanding copy. Au$750
First edition of a book that surely has something for everyone. From the big ideas - philosophy, religion, cosmology, evolution, physics, and utopian visions - to local history, naive literature and folk art; it's all here. For me it's art and the future: flight - with warfare, revival of the dead, food from nutritive gases, garments from water and electricity, transport by air tube and by electricity, and Detroit as a city covered by glass, lit by electricity and warmed by the "internal heat of the earth", making every day a summer day. Stowe's researches in the future run to printing a 1983 news story on the New York - Chicago air tube disaster in which 35 passengers were killed by a tunnel collapse; all 35 victims are named.
Stowe casts a curious, singular, perhaps undiscerning but not unthoughtful eye over a lot of disparate topics, remiscent of John Aubrey, without the cunning humour. He begins by establishing himself as an unlearned and unlettered man who will choose vernacular rather than correct grammar, which is not a bad ploy when making pronouncements on the mistakes of Voltaire, Paine and Ingersoll. Whitman he claims as a poet of the future, two hundred years before his time, and elsewhere he sings a teeth-grinding but well meant lachrymose ditty of race equality.
A lot of the illustrations are borrowed from all over the place but much is original and enough of the best are signed by one E.A. Young of Detroit for me to claim for him a place among the great masters of American wood engraving.
In 1882 Stowe had a mirror, picture and frames store in Detroit and I think this book launched him as a writer and publisher but I can't see that he ever matched the ambition and scope of this again.
* Click on the picture to see a couple more.
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>Okamoto Ippei. [Manga Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shufunotomosha 1929 (Showa 4). Broadside 64x94cm; colour printed. Folded, a tear without loss and fairly minor signs of use. Au$650
A spendid large and lively sugoroku - racing game - by the illustrator/cartoonist whose place in modern manga history is still being argued. Issued as a New Year supplement to the magazine The Housewife's Friend, the game is an intriguing melange, to me, of the modern and traditional, whether in conflict or harmony or all round mocked I don't know. The winning post - the joyful family of plump plutocrats with both husband and wife looking remarkably like lucky gods - is the dream of the modern young woman being hatched from an egg in the upper right but she is not the starting point of the game. There seems to be several starting points. Did any young western woman ever dream of being rich and fat?
Okamoto Ippei began as a newspaper cartoonist for the Asahi Shimbun in 1912, travelled to the US in the twenties and brought back an enthusiasm for American comic strips which quickly spread through Japan. A prolific artist naturally, he has a long bibliography and much of it is found in scatterings in western libraries but I found no entry for this.
*Click on the picture to see a couple more.
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Aviation Sugoroku. 歐訪大飛行記念飛行遊戯 [Oho Daihiko Kinen Hiko Yugi]. Osaka, Asahi Shimbun 1925 (Taisho 14). Broadside 545x785mm; printed in colour. Folded and bit of worming in the left margin. Au$400
A sugoroku - racing game - celebrating the first Japanese flight to Europe by four aviators in two planes in 1925. We start in Tokyo and follow the aviators across Russia, zigzag around Europe and finish in Rome. This was issued as supplement by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun who sponsored the flight.
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>Hashizume Kanichi. 續編世界商賣往來 [Zoku hen Sekai Shobai Orai]. Tokyo, Gankinya Seikichi 1872 (Meiji 5). 180x120mm publisher's wrapper without title label (cover marked); 26 double folded leaves; one double page illustration and several small illustrations through the text, title page framed in blue Fairbanks standing scales. Mildly used. Au$350
First edition I think of this handy bilingual vocabulary of world trade giving the English, with Japanese explanations, of a wide range of terms, quantities, goods, professions, and so on. I used to think the bibliography of Hashizume's handbooks on foreign trade was straightforward - three, the first in 1871 following it up with two more in 1873. Since then I've discovered variants and variants of variants. This book isn't 'Zokuzoku Sekai Shobai Orai' as I first thought. The contents are completely different.
Zokuzoku beings with foreign measures of quantity, this begins with foreign currencies. Like that the English text has been cut in wood, it isn't type. There are some endearing spelling mistakes, mishapen or reversed letters and odd truncations - fewer than in the later book - but more puzzling than these are some of the chosen terms for Japanese traders to learn. The tools of trade for printers and binders are included, which makes sense - as do fruit and vegetables - but how many merchants dealt in camels and leopards?
* Click on the picture to see a couple more.
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>WESTHOFEN, W. The Forth Bridge. [from] Engineering, Feb. 28, 1890. Largish quarto publisher's flexible cloth; pp213-288, 19 plates (most double page) and several illustrations, plans and sections through the text. Some browning but nothing serious. Au$350
One of two essential books on this monumental bridge (the other is Phillips' 'The Forth Bridge'), this book exists in two forms: as an offprint or publisher's extract as here, or as a monograph - they are the same thing. Westhofen was an engineer on the project, an assistant to William Arrol.
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>Catalogue - Ironmongery &c. W.S Friend & Co. Sydney. Catalogue, 1905. W.S. Friend & Co. Wholesale Ironmongers, Iron Merchants. The company 1905. Quarto publisher's cloth (covers insect chewed); profusely illustrated throughout. Some staining to first and last few pages, an outwardly shabby but very worthwhile copy and absolutely complete. The collation is a nightmare - here is a simplified precis: [6],6,4, 76 (& 4 bis),[2],24,[2],2-20,[1],[2],40 (& 4 bis),[2],1-42 (& 24 bis), 49-88 (& 4 bis),[2],6,[2],14,[2],48 (& 12 bis),[2],16,5-6,[2],7-28,[2],26 (&2 bis),[2],10,[2],26,[2],10,[2],11,[1],xiv. This varies a bit in two sections from the other copy I've seen. Au$2,500
Why are the early Friend catalogues so rare? They are substantial and must have been produced in substantial numbers and widely circulated - offering as they do so much to so many different customers - but what happened to them? I know of four copies of the famous 1886 catalogue but I didn't know a 1905 catalogue existed until one popped up five years ago. Then the State Library of Victoria had the horticultural and gardening bit - section C (24 pages) - but that's all I could find anywhere. Since then the Mitchell has unearthed a copy but I don't think I'm flooding the market with this copy.
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BROWN, Ernest W. The Inequalities in the Motion of the Moon Due to the Direct Action of the Planets. An essay which obtained the Adams Prize in the University of Cambridge for the year 1907. Cambridge University Press 1908. Large octavo, very good in somewhat marked publisher's cloth; xii,92pp and errata leaf. Au$125
First edition and quite scarce. "The remaining parts of the lunar theory, and, more especially, the planetary perturbations in the moon's motion are among the most difficult subjects in celestial mechanics. Brown's most original work was in this field." (Schlesinger & Brouwer). It's a bit off the point but this extract from a letter on teaching by Professor W. Edwards Deming of New York University caught my attention: "No luster of personality can atone for teaching error instead of truth. One of the finest teachers that I ever knew could hold 300 students spellbound, teaching what is wrong. The two poorest teachers that I ever had ... were Professor Ernest Brown in mathematics at Yale and Sir Ronald Fisher at University College in London. Sir Ernest will be known for centuries for his work in lunar theory ... People came from all over the world to listen to their impossible teaching, and to learn from them, and learn they did".
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>MULLER, John. Elements of Mathematics ... to which is prefixed, The first principles of algebra ... the third edition improved: with an addition of a New Treatise on Perspective. London, for J. Millan 1765. Octavo contemporary calf (rubbed and a bit worn at the tips, with a chipped ms paper label); xxxvi,312pp and 28 folding plates - 21 plates in the main work and seven in the section on perspective. Title a bit dusty or browned, light browning here and there but a rather good, quite fresh copy. Au$375
This seems to be the definitive or best edition of this standard work. Muller was professor of fortifications at the Royal Military Academy and was a respected, though not remarkable, mathemetican. He was called the "scholastic father" of the best engineers of later 18th century England (E.G.R. Taylor cites Boswell's Life of Johnson for this epithet).
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SMITH, David Eugene & Yoshio MIKAMI. A History of Japanese Mathematics. Chicago, Open Court 1914. Octavo publisher's cloth; viii,288pp, illustrations & diagrams. An excellent copy. Au$150
First edition of this still essential study.
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LANGLEY, Samuel Pierpont and Charles M. MANLY. Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight. Washington, The Smithsonian 1911. Solid quarto publisher's cloth; xii,320pp and 101 plates, illustrations and diagrams through the text. A fairly splendid copy. Au$600
Langley's experiments in flight from 1887 to 1903; those up until 1896 written by him, those subsequent written by his assistant Manly.
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LANG, John. Wanderings in India: and other sketches of life in Hindostan. London, Routledge 1861. Octavo contemporary half gilt calf. A handsome copy with the bookplate of Lang champion and biographer Victor Crittenden who brought many fugitive Lang pieces back into print. Au$350
Undoubtedly a re-issue of the original 1859 sheets with a new title page. While long heralded as Australia's first native born novelist until Mr Crittenden came along it was near impossible to read more than one or two of Lang's books and still most are elusive. Most titles have fragmentary representation in Australian libraries - Trove finds three copies of this title: two copies of the 1859 and one of this 1861 edition.
Not all Crittenden's reprints - which don't include this title - make sense. I am baffled by Crittenden attributing Violet (1836) to Lang; perhaps someone can explain to me how he came to this conclusion. In any case these Wanderings are a mix of memoir and fiction - which is which I leave up to you.
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WYLIE, I.A.R. [Ida Alexa Ross]. The Paupers of Portman Square. London, Cassell [1913]. Octavo publisher's cloth blocked in black. A bit of browning, a rather good copy. Au$165
First edition? Published in London and New York in 1913. I wonder how much Wylie drew on her own childhood for this novel of feckless parenthood. The ever reliable Spectator dismissed it with customary contempt: "Seldom have we met people so amazingly unlike real men and women," but I suspect they would have regarded a biography of Wylie's father equally unlikely. She wrote this of her father: "From the day of his birth to the hour of his death he never had a penny that he could legitimately call his own. If by some strange chance he had earned it, he already owed it several times over, and it was only an additional reason for borrowing more. Quite often he didn't have a penny of any sort, and there were days in our large absurd house in London when there was no food for anyone except the bailiff occupying our one completely furnished room." (My Life With George).
For those who care, I find no copy of this Melbourne born author's book in any Australian library.
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EASTWICK, Mrs. Egerton. The Rubies of Rajmar or, Mr. Charlecote's Daughters. A romance. London, Newnes 1895. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth (a touch dusty). A rather good copy. Eight page publisher's list at the end announcing this as just ready. Au$250
First edition of this jewel ridden thriller of murder and interracial marriage. The Guardian was kind "There is plenty of sensation ... mysterious Indians and secret passages, and ... a murder, and altogether the authoress contrives to keep up a most praiseworthy atmosphere of creepiness throughout the book." The Athenaeum was more guarded - "not without interest, and the sense of mystery is fairly well sustained" - but not cruel. Unlike H.G. Wells in the Saturday Review: "Mrs. Eastwick imitating Wilkie Collins is quite unforgivable." The usually reliable Spectator shocked me, the staff must have been on a bender: "A story, indeed, that is readable from the first page to the last, disarms criticism."
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DANIELS, Heber K. Dol Shackfield, a novel. London, F.V. White 1901. Octavo publisher's decorated blue cloth blocked in black. Light signs of use, an attractive copy. Au$185
First edition of a melocomic crime thriller so far unknown to Hubin. The heroine could kindly be labelled irrepressible and so she is to the extent that you might wish her secret husband did succeed in murdering her.
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[Alice]. LEWIS, Caroline. [ie Harold Begbie, Stafford Ransome and M.H. Temple]. Lost in Blunderland. The further adventures of Clara. London, Heinemann 1903. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth blocked in black and red; xvi,160pp, forty illustrations by S.R. [Stafford Ransome]. A few small blemishes and signs of use but quite a good copy. Au$50
First edition; a follow up to Clara in Blunderland. One of the more attractive and faithful-to-the-appearance-of-the-original of the political Alices though, as the preface makes clear, the artist is "entirely incapable of a portrait which the mother of the patient would recognise."
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SLADEN, Douglas. The First Duke of Cornwall. n.p. Reprinted from "The West of England Magazine" [c1888]. One sheet folded to form four pages quarto (the last blank); smallish pieces torn from three corners (probably rudely disinterred from an album); old folds. Inscribed to "Miss Ruth A Smith, Chicago with compts from Douglas Sladen". Au$75
Rare of course; I can't find a record of it anywhere. The 'First Duke ...' occupies two pages and relates to his play 'Edward the Black Prince'; the third page advertises his works (ten copies left of his first book 'Frithjof and Ingebjorg') and prints press opinions of 'Edward'. The most recent work mentioned is his anthology 'Australian Ballads and Rhymes'.
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[GORDON, Adam Lindsay]. Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric. Melbourne, Clarson, Massina 1867. Octavo publisher's green cloth. An ink splash on the back cover but a rather good copy. Au$125
First edition of Gordon's second book and the beginning of his brief and dramatic attempt to achieve literary and popular success. His first book 'The Feud' had appeared three years' earlier but was a very private affair - for all purposes nonexistent. His third book followed this one by a week, like this a financial loss, and his next book killed him. His suicide was a clever career move and the publishing boom began.
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GEIKIE, James. Fragments of Earth Lore. Sketches and addresses geological and geographical. Edinburgh, John Bartholomew 1893. Octavo publisher's cloth (tips worn); 428pp, 6 maps, 6 folding plates. Au$80
Robert Logan Jack's copy, inscribed "with the authors compliments". These papers "deal chiefly with the history of glacial times and the origin of surface-features" (preface).
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MERRITT, Henry. Dirt and Pictures Separated in the Work of the Old Masters. London, Holyoake & Co 1854. Octavo later cloth; iii-xvi,72pp. With half title; possibly without a first blank or advertisement leaf? Au$165
First edition of this pioneering work on picture cleaning and restoration - the term conservation was still a few years away - published by his landlord, George Holyoake. Holyoake, in his autobiography, claimed, perhaps justly, credit for pushing his lodger into print and for establishing his reputation. His memoir of Merritt is equal parts praise and complaint - he says he asked Merritt to quit as lodger 19 times before it worked but they remained friends and Merritt took on Holyoake's son Manfred as a student. Manfred is credited with introducing the term conservation to art.
Eastlake was a mentor and Merritt is among the first cleaners and restorers who were scrupulous about uncovering the original rather than improving it. A significant number of Britain's art treasures have had the Merritt treatment, not always without subsequent recrimination: in his work with George Richmond removing 18th century overpainting on the portrait of Richard II they removed most of the background diaper pattern, considering it a later addition. Apparently it wasn't. However, like modern conservators they purposely left some in the corner and kept a careful record of their work.
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Merritt again
>EASTLAKE, Charles Lock. Materials for a History of Oil Painting. London, Longman &c 1847. Octavo publisher's blindstamped cloth (sometime recased and rebacked preserving the original spine (spine rubbed and corners worn); xii,561pp and publisher's catalogue. Solid and acceptable outside, a rather good copy inside.
With the ownership inscription of H. Merritt - undoubtedly Henry Merritt the picture restorer and writer who worked on pictures in the Royal collection and the National Gallery. To him goes also the credit for inspiring Manfred Holyoake to become a picture restorer. Au$300
"Mr. Eastlake has alike withdrawn license from experimentalism and apology from indolence. He has done away with all legends of forgotten secrets" (Ruskin) and indeed this was a significant step in the science and technology of art. "The first to enable the Restoration of pictures to be treated as a science."(Holyoake; The Conservation of Pictures).
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SCOTT, C.W.A. Scott's Book. The life and Mildenhall - Melbourne Flight of C.W.A. Scott told by himself. London, Hodder 1934. Octavo publisher's cloth and lightly used dustwrapper; photo plates (one double page) and folding map. A bit of browning as usual, an uncommonly good copy. Au$100
First edition. Not a rare book but seldom seen in such good shape. The winner of the MacRobertson air race rushed into print - all except the final chapter, cabled from Australia, was ready when the race started.
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>Japanese textiles. Sample book of textiles titled Tozakire Honcho [album of textiles we have handled - more or less] and dated March Taisho 4 [1915]. 360x225mm card cover titled in ink; some 311 samples on 116 leaves followed by a large number of blanks. Au$1,850
A working Kyoto draper or textile merchant's sample album of large swatches of luxurious fabrics which I'm told include Kinran (gold brocade), Kando (woven stripes or checks) and Donsu (damask silk). These are presumably Nishijin textiles. There isn't an owner's name though there is a small red stamp inside the covers which looks like an 'm' inside an oval and part of some inscription. It's possible this came from the venerable Kyoto textile house of Daimaru - forerunner of the current department store empire - a number of sample and pattern albums from Daimaru emerged in Kyoto in recent years, but I don't know and I'm not sure it matters.
This is serious fabric. I find it interesting that while there is no shortage of tasteful bling - silver and gold - the bright, lurid, colours that came into fashion at the end of Meiji and rampaged through Taisho are significantly absent. These are for the most part pre-aniline colours. The designs, to me, range from insipid to spectacular but even my dull and ignorant eyes can see that no workman's wife wore this stuff round the house.
*Click on the picture to see more in the gallery.
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Supreme Court, Sydney, New South Wales ... Report of the Trial The Bank of Australasia v. Thomas Chaplin Breillat, Chairman of the Bank of Australia. Sydney: printed by Kemp and Fairfax 1845. Largish octavo later (but old) cloth, original plain wrappers bound in; 96pp. Some spotting of the outer few pages. With the ownership inscription of legal luminary W.J.V. Windeyer whose ancestor Richard Windeyer was head counsel for the defendant and won plaudits for his closing speech. Au$375
A rare bit of Australian legal and banking history. The Bank of Australia got into trouble in 1843, due to the debt of Hughes and Hosking, and approached their fellow bank for a loan of some quarter of a million pounds to get them out of trouble - and incidentally pay an 8% dividend to their shareholders. They then decided not pay their debt on the basis that the borrowers had no authority to borrow on behalf of the bank. The result is too complicated for me to digest, it's enough to say that the conclusion of this report is modern in terms of narrative but doubtless standard in mercantile law.
Trove finds two locations and OCLC adds a copy in New Zealand.
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PEEL, Mrs. C.S. The New Home, treating of the arrangement, decoration and furnishing of a house of medium size to be maintained by a moderate income. London, Constable 1903. Octavo publisher's cloth (a bit rubbed); numerous illustrations and photo illustrations, most full page. A bit of inoffensive marginalia. A second hand copy. Au$50
A new edition, some five years after the first, much revised to encompass changes. There has been no positive change, however, to the servant problem and their tiresome demands for higher wages for less work. In fact, since the general introduction of electric lighting they are usually found to be the reason for high electricity costs - which can be alleviated by using gas lighting in the servants' quarters and electricity elsewhere.
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CLARK, Colin. The National Income 1924 - 1931. London, Macmillan 1932. Octavo publisher's cloth. Au$80
First edition. Inscribed presentation from the author to the theologian and writer Rev W.R. [Walter Robert] Matthews.
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BOWLEY, A.L. The Mathematical Groundwork of Economics. Oxford Univ Press 1924. Octavo publisher's cloth. Au$100
First edition. Economist C.S. Soper's copy.
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SPEISER, Ephraim A. Mesopotamian Origins. The basic population of the Near East. University of Pennsylvania & Oxford University Press 1930. Octavo publisher's cloth; xiii,198pp. Au$50
First edition. "The unusual prominence given to the footnotes, which have taken up one-third of the total space .. may help justify the existence of the book, though they will hardly enhance its outward appearance."
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HUNTER, Monica. Reaction to Conquest. Effects of contact with Europeans on the Pondo of South Africa. Oxford Univ Press for International Inst African Langauges &c 1936. Plump octavo publisher's cloth; xx,582pp, photo illustrations, maps. A rather good copy. Au$75
First edition of one of the first attempts to systematically document the effects of contact and European influence, with sections on family life, economic organization, upbringing, marriage, ancestor cult, witchcraft and magic, beef and beer parties, political organization, urban communities, &c.
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QUATREFAGES, A. de. The Pygmies. London, Macmillan 1895. Octavo, rather good in publisher's cloth; 255pp, 31 illustrations. With the White of Belltrees bookplate. Au$100
First English edition, using the American sheets.
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>SCOTT, Walter. The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland .. architecture and sculpture, and other vestiges of former ages .. London, for Longman &c 1814-17. Two volumes quarto straight grain morocco elaborately panelled in gilt and blind (scuffed, tips worn); 2 engraved titles and 92 plates. Some occasional light browning, one of the four spine labels missing and the others chipped but still a decent set. Au$300
First edition. While not an architecture book in the proper sense this was the pattern book for the nationalist Romantics. The gloomy, desolate, brooding ruins enraptured the picturesque imagination as fiercely as Greek purity fired the classical revivalists and neo-classicists. Not everything is ruinous but most plates are unrepentantly romantic and the best of these are usually after Luke Clennell who, and who could expect less, having made his reputation with this work promptly went mad and spent the rest of his life in an asylum.
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C., H.J. [H.J. Cooper]. The Art of Furnishing on Rational and Aesthetic Principles. London, Henry S. King 1876. Small octavo publisher's ribbed cloth blocked in gilt with printed paper labels (a bit worn and marked); viii,116pp and an 1874 publisher's list. Au$90
First edition; there was an American edition in 1881. "Never, perhaps, have the twin subjects of furniture and decoration received so large a share of public attention' but apart from Eastlake's 'eminently sericeable, though somewhat severe and inflexible" Hints on Household Taste no ready handbook existed. Maybe almost true in 1876, it wouldn't be for long. There was a flood of such books in the next few years but this is one I've never come across before.
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>Murakami Yasokichi. 入墨の履歴 [Irezumi no rireki - Why I Got My Tattoo (more or less)]. Privately printed 1929. Octavo (187x127mm) publisher's printed wrapper; 12pp and three photo plates and tipped in colour woodcut. Mounted on the front cover is a slip with the characters for 'Murakami' and his seal. Au$950
A rare tattoo autobiography; there are no common old books on tattooing but I doubt there are many scarcer than this. Murakami Yasokichi (1857 - 1933) who by the time he wrote this had become president of the Edo Choyukai - the tattooist association - was first tattooed in Taiwan in a ploy to save his life when he had been taken prisoner. The serious tattooing began as a way of hiding that Taiwan marking. The colour woodcut here is Murakami following orders during the Sino-Japanese war of 1894. If you want to know what happened to Murakami afterwards you can find photos of his skin pinned onto a wall in the Tokyo University.
I can't find a record of this in any library.
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WAINEWRIGHT, Jer. [Jeremiah]. A Mechanical Account of the Non-Naturals: Being a brief explication of the changes made in humane bodies, by Air, Diet, &c. Together with an enquiry into the nature and use of baths ... the fifth edition, revis'd. To which is added, An Anatomical Treatise of the Liver, with the diseases incident to it. London, for John Clarke 1737. Octavo contemporary calf (rebacked and corners repaired); 224;64pp. A little browning but quite a good copy. The Treatise of the Liver is separately paginated. Au$350
First published in 1707; this seems to be the last edition. The Treatise of the Liver was published in 1722 and the two works appear together only in this edition. This second part is a different setting to the first and starts at B1 (B1-E8). I would have confidently claimed this to be the original 1722 sheets except that it doesn't collate with that printing.
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Japan - gymnastics. 体操教範 [Taiso Kyohan - Manual of Gymnastics]. Ministry of War, Meiji 17 (1884) 150x110mm in what appear to be original cloth backed boards (spine a touch nibbled); 37 double folded leaves (ie 74pp) and 73 full page illustrations (5 folding) numbered to 32 with several bis. A little worming, nothing notable, and a couple of small stains; a quite good fresh copy. Possibly lithographed throughout. Au$300
The Japanese first got in French experts on military physical training in the late 1860s and the first Japanese book I've been able to trace was a translation of part of an 1847 manual the French visitors brought with them. That is I've traced mention of it, not the book itself. This manual also has the look of coming from a French manual but, being light on in French gymnastic manuals of the mid nineteenth century here, I don't know which one. Certainly it models the fine mustachios that became de rigueur for dashing Japanese officers. The Taiso Kyohan apparently also became the model for gymnastics in secondary schools as the idea of physical education was introduced into Japan. There were many editions of the Taiso Kyohan, presumably updated and changed as the decades went on but I'm unable to trace any copy this early in a library catalogue.
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BURN, Robert Scott. The New Guide to Masonry, Bricklaying and Plastering. Theoretical and practical. Glasgow &c, M'Gready [187-?]. Quarto publisher's half morocco (scuffed); extra illustrated title, xii,440pp, 160 plates. An uncommonly decent copy. Au$300
The standard mid-Victorian text, up to date and solid like all of Burn's books.
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GRIFFITH, George. Gambles With Destiny. London, F.V. White 1899. Octavo publisher's cloth (tips a little worn). Endpapers spotted, a pretty good copy with Ronald E. Graham's Virgil Finlay bookplate. Au$185
First edition of this collection of shorter things, mostly sci-fi or fantasy - one of which introduces the countdown: 10, 9, 8 ... ; another involves a Faustian bargain made with "haschisch".
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GRIFFITH, George. The Gold-Finder. London F.V. White 1898. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth (a bit used, spine wrinkled); frontispiece. An ok copy. Au$75
First edition of this thriller involving the Gold Magnet, high speed yachts, merciless modern piracy and tangled family secrets.
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OWEN, Eric R. Doctor Zollinoff's Revenge. A mystery and detective novel. London, Modern Publishing [193-?]. Octavo publisher's boards and frayed and chipped but very decent dustwrapper. Natural browning of the paper, a rather good copy. Endpaper advertisements for quack remedies and fortune tellers. Au$145
Only edition presumably of this scarce bit of occult ridden detective trash. Scotland Yard's best could make no headway with the case as they were mesmerised.
Owen was in the film business - the utilitarian section: news reels and so on - from about 1918. It's likely that he was director of photography for the classic 1960 documentary of Blackpool: 'Playground Spectacular'. He is reputed to have written a few novels but this is the only one that has been identified. OCLC and Copac find two copies, one in England and one in the US.
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HUME, Fergus. A Creature of the Night. An Italian enigma. London, Sampson Low 1891. Octavo later cloth, original illustrated front wrapper bound in (this quite rubbed). Signs of use and a few small flaws, a pretty good copy with the bookplate of Harry Austin Brentnall, Sydney medico and bookmaker and book collector. Au$275
First edition of this scarce thriller which within few pages has us transfixed, with our British singing student narrator, by a ghoul - perhaps a beautiful vampire - in an old Vernona graveyard.
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LINDEN, Annie. Gold. A Dutch-Indian Story for English People. London, John Lane 1896. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth blocked in blind; 285pp and 1896 publisher's list. A little browning; a rather good bright copy. Au$475
First edition of this rare Indonesian lost race fantasy; there was also a New York edition which looks no easier to find. I'm not sure exactly where the dread lost land of Moa and its mountain of gold is but our explorers sail through the Moluccas on their way from Java; once we leave the Banda Islands the geography turns imaginary. Ms Linden starts slow but ends pretty ruthless; most of her worthy characters die miserably while our hero is pretty much a faithless greedy madman well before book's end. There is enough, more than enough, local colour to convince me that first hand experience is at work here. I found mention of a couple of short stories - one about untameable half-caste women (who populate these pages too) - by Linden and one other novel, in English: a domestic drama dismissed as "Dutch fiction" in the one notice I saw; nothing else in English or Dutch.
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KERNAHAN, Coulson. Captain Shannon. London, Ward Lock 1897. Octavo publisher's near black cloth titled in red; 16 plates by F.S. Wilson. Inner front hinge cracked by insertions but solid. A rather good copy. The insertions are a signed cabinet photo of Kernahan (top gone from this); a signed card with an aphorism and a one page letter from Kernahan. Au$300
First edition of this thriller, one of Kernahan's more successful. Captain Shannon was what is now called an Irish terrorist.
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KERNAHAN, Coulson. The Dumpling. A detective love story of a great labour uprising. London, Cassell 1906. Octavo publisher's black cloth titled in white with an illustrated onlay; four plates by Stanley L. Wood. A very second hand copy, rubbed and worn at the tips, one plate loose ... but, inscribed by Kernahan 'To "S.L.H." (Sledge Hammer") from C.K.' Au$50
First edition of this cleverly subtitled thriller. It doesn't leave a lot to say about the book - except for the opium den of course.
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FEVAL, Paul. The White Wolf; or, The Secret Brotherhood. A romance. London, J.S. Pratt 1849. [Yorkshire printed, by Pratt in Stokesley]. 16mo; wood engraved frontispiece, title leaf and pp11-444, complete and seemingly as issued. Inserted into a blindstamped cloth binding of a title in Milner & Sowerby's Cottage Library with a small printed paper title label added to the spine, front hinge splitting. Certainly a used copy, with marks and smudges and corners off the last two leaves but still quite decent. Au$185
First English edition? It seems likely, perhaps even the first edition in English. I find nothing earlier except for a dubious listing of an 1848 New York edition of which no copy is located. It doesn't seem natural for a small provincial publisher to be first in with a major piece of translation but Pratt - apparently a family concern that had specialised in sermons and improving tracts - went sensational in the forties publishing such titles as Arwed Gillenstern, or the Robber Captain's Bride; Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain; and The Gipsy of the Highlands: or, the Jew and the Heir.
It took me a while to be convinced that this is a home made remboitage rather than a repackaging of Pratt sheets by Milner & Sowerby with later fiddling but I am sure. I'm not going to removed the title label to see what's underneath, it's too much a part of the book's history now. This was in Walter Stone's collection - he had a reasonably impressive collection of bloods, gothics and similar trash - and it's possible he did it but the endpapers and what look like bookseller's pencilling make me think it was done before he got it.
Someone thought it worth saving and they were right. Searches of all the expected catalogues finds one copy, also in the colonies - in the University of Queensland.
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SMITH, Albert. Pictures of Life at Home and Abroad. London, Bentley 1852. Octavo near contemporary cloth, original printed glazed wrappers bound in; 158pp; illustrations by Leech through the text. Au$75
First edition (I think) of these amusing trifles. One of Bentley's Shilling Series.
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[Lord Howe Island. Its zoology, geology, and physical characteristics]. [Sydney, Australian Museum 1889]. Five parts octavo plain blue wrappers (these variously chipped, a couple detached); 42; 6; 26; 24; 28pp, five plates, four folding maps. The fragile wrappers have suffered but the parts have clearly never been used. Au$250
Rare - a set of the parts produced as offprints, separately paginated and each with the stamped title at the top of each section title: 'Australian Museum, Sydney Memoirs No .2, "Lord Howe Island, its Zoology &c" Sydney 1889.' The parts are Etheridge on general zoology, North on Oology, Ogilby on reptiles and fishes, Olliff on insects, Etheridge on geology. The two plates of molluscs which were included in the book edition though the accompanying paper itself never appeared are not, naturally, included here. A quick hunt through Trove found three parts in two libraries, no complete set.
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BUXTON, Thomas Fowell. An Inquiry, Whether Crime and Misery are Produced or Prevented, by Our Present System of Prison Discipline. Illustrated by descriptions ... sixth edition. London, for John & Arthur Arch &c. 1818. 12mo, uncut in modern boards; viii,184pp; some spotting or browning but a very acceptable copy. Au$300
Six editions of this inflammatory little book appeared in 1818; all and any are uncommon. Much of its power must be attributed to the fact that the descriptions of all prisons, except Philadelphia, are first hand - dates and names are specified - and that, despite some repugnance, he has not suppressed "scenes which may be considered as reflecting discredit on those who ought to have prevented them". The immediate result of this was the Society for the Reformation of Prison Discipline and more indirect influences can be followed through translations into French and Italian over the next few years.
Buxton was born, bred and then married into the heart of British philanthropy - his mother was a Quaker do-gooder and he married Hannah Gurney, Elizabeth Fry's sister - and his life was devoted to reform: his first book (this) is on prison reform and his last (1839) on slavery.
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RUSKIN, John. John Ruskin on Himself and Things in General. Liverpool, Cope's Tobacco Plant 1893. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper; [10],64pp, including some adverts. A nice unopened copy. Cope's Smoke Room Booklets No.13. Au$175
A wonderful cover image by John Wallace that manages to appoint Ruskin to the racist image cadre, offend economists if anyone cares, and puzzle the rest of us. Why is the slaughtered figure clutching the "Wealth of Nations" sack and carrying the book 'The Dismal Science' black? After posing the same question David Levy and Sandra Peart in 'The Secret History of the Dismal Science' lead us straight to Carlyle and the paragraph in which he coined the term: "Exeter Hall Philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it, —will give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities". This seems to me to call for unnatural erudition on the part of the average commercial illustrator but Wallace wasn't average.
The booklet itself offended Ruskin or his publishers but it wasn't the cover, it was the unauthorised printing of his words that angered them and they mounted a successful case against the Cope Brothers for breach of copyright. If Ruskin was still aware of anything much by 1893 certainly he would have been unhappy with tobacco merchants co-opting him, devoutly anti-tobacco as he was, for marketing.
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von HALLE, Ernst. Trusts or Industrial Combinations and Coalitions in the United States. NY, Macmillan 1895. Octavo publisher's cloth. Quite a good copy. Au$125
First edition of this influential and widely circulated book; it was circulating in Japanese by 1900.
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MAFFEI, [Scipione]. A Compleat History of the Ancient Amphitheatres. More peculiarly regarding the architecture of those buildings, and in particular that of Verona ... made English ... by Alexander Gordon. London, for Harmen Noorthouck 1730. Octavo contemporary calf (spine worn, hinges cracked but holding); xvi,423pp, 15 engraved plates (9 folding). Occasional light browning, rather good. Au$750
First English edition, a second appeared some five years later; from the Italian of 1728. Designed to be part of Maffei's Verona Illustrata (which followed later) particular point is made of the decision to publish in octavo rather than a "pompous" folio - part of which is its purpose as a guide to be used on the spot. Also emphasized is Maffei's hands on approach, excavating and measuring himself. He gently censures, in "a handsome manner," the errors of Lipsius and Fontana but much less gently reproves the "destroyers of ancient monuments", exposing their names to "the perpetual Reproach of Mankind".
Maffei's re-evaluation of the architecture and rewriting of the history of amphitheatres was generally well received but his discovery of the entablature of the Tuscan order in the amphitheatre at Verona sparked a sharp rebuke from at least one architect - Matteo Lucchese - who published a scornful reply to this book in 1730. While Maffei's desire to record and preserve was noble - and quite a new phenomenon -he couldn't help a little optimistic re-creation.
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