Search Results: Authors starting with M from Ash Rare Books

London : Quartet Books, (1976). First British edition. The Scottish poet with a torrid tale of a far-right Japanese grouping - with the theft of some antique Japanese swords in London, the British secret services become involved. Rejoiced in by "The Library Journal" as having "too much action in this wild, hilarious, ultimate take-off on the Bond-type novel for one to bother with analysis ... If you can manage to slow down for a second, you may also notice that Macbeth can write". Demy 8vo (23cm). [x],242,[iv]pp. Original violet boards, lettered in silver; a very good copy in the Dave Roe pictorial dust-jacket - the jacket flaps lightly tanned, but otherwise also very good.

London : Priory Press, 1910. First edition. Beginning as a spirited defence of the much derided Cockney dialect (in fact the first standard and the first written English), MacBride goes on to explore its origins and then the importance of dialects in general, with much on the dialects of other parts of the country. Crown 8vo (19cm). 62,[iv]pp. Original wrappers; wrappers lightly tanned, slightly marked and a little creased; a handful of internal spots, but a good copy of a fragile item.

London : Macmillan & Co., 1939. First edition : in a dust-jacket over-printed with Macmillan's Overseas Library information and restrictions on lower flap. An epistolary novel in which the hero flies round the world to escape the "cold blue eyes" of the lady. Crown 8vo. viii,(308),[ii],[2]pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in gilt and blind; a few slight marks; endpapers and edges a little tanned; a very good copy in the original Bip Pares dust-jacket - cream, lettered in red and decorated in sky-blue - price-clipped, lightly worn, very slightly chipped and a little tanned. Small bookseller's label of Angus & Robertson of Sydney on front paste-down.

London : MacGibbon & Kee, (1969). First collected edition of the celebrated London trilogy - the powerful MacInnes novels originally published separately between 1957 and 1960, and treating in full-on fashion the social phenomena of the era - the first wave of black immigration, the emergence of the teenager as an economic entity, and the eternal trinity of prostitutes, ponces and policemen - "themes of which no other contemporary novelist has yet shown himself properly aware ... No responsible novelist before Mr MacInnes had taken the trouble to find out" (from the introduction by Francis Wyndham). Medium 8vo (24cm). [2],x,626,[ii]pp. Original grey canvas; red title-panel, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; a few faint marks and minor signs of age of use, but a good and sound copy in the Horace Ové dust-jacket - the jacket lightly worn, with a few short tears, a light patch of mild discolouration at head, and slight spotting to the flaps, but complete and striking still.

Manchester : R. Aikman & Son for the Presbyterian Historical Society of England, [1947]. First edition. An absorbing account of missionary publishing - much of it concerned in the provision of vernacular texts in far-flung parts of the world. Includes a bibliography of publications. The Society's Annual Lecture for 1947 and its Special Publication No.3. Demy 8vo (24cm). 46pp. Original printed wrappers; a little minor wear and tanning; a few faint marks, but a good copy.

London : Alan Ross, 1965. First edition. Recollections of "Fitzrovian Nights" - and of Francis Bacon, Cyril Connolly, Graham Greene, Nina Hamnett, John Minton, Elizabeth Smart, Stevie Smith, Tambimuttu, Dylan Thomas, Woodrow Wyatt, and many more - together with six of the best of the Maclaren-Ross short stories of the period, including "I Had to Go Sick" and "A Bit of a Smash in Madras". "With its glimpses of Connolly in his Bloomsbury office and Graham Greene at home in Clapham Common, [it] is one of the great literary source-books of the age" (D. J. Taylor in The Guardian, 7th December 2012). Post 8vo (21cm). [vi],344,[ii]pp. Plates. Portraits. Facsimiles. Original black cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt; edges spotted; a few spots to endpapers, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket - just very slightly rubbed and with hint of tanning, but also very good.

[Glasgow] : W. & R. Holmes (Books), 1953. First edition. An expanded version of a paper given to the Glasgow Biblographical Society, etc. - a history of Scottish publishing, with a bibliography. Demy 8vo (22cm). 28pp. Original stapled wrappers; just a touch sunned; staples very lightly rusted; small stamp of the British Library of Political & Economic Science Pamphlet Collection on verso of title-page (and with their accountant's receipt for the book's purchase loosely inserted); overall a very good copy of a scarce work.

London : J. & E. Bumpus, 1932. First edition : limited to 400 numbered copies. "Including a catalogue of the exhibition, with notes; an essay on Dodgson's illustrators by Harold Hartley; and additional literary pieces (chiefly unpublished). With six illustrations". A charming catalogue of the centenary exhibition, describing over six-hundred Carroll related items and rarities, together with the Hartley essay, and also including a number of previously unpublished (or unpublished in book form) short pieces by Carroll - juvenilia, articles, acrostics, extracts from letters, etc. Crown 8vo (20cm). (xx),(140)pp. Frontispiece and five plates. Original cloth; cloth a little bubbled; edges slightly spotted, but a very good, bright and clean copy, in a just slightly nicked and dulled dust-jacket.

London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1920. Second edition : a revised and corrected version of the original 1893 publication. A clear and timeless guide to manuscript studies, with chapters on writing materials and forms of books; the history of writing; scribes; illuminations; scribal errors; famous libraries; famous manuscripts; literary forgeries; treatment and cataloguing; public and private records, etc., and with appendices on public collections, existing catalogues, bibliography, etc. Demy 8vo (22cm). (xvi),208pp. Eight plates. Original buckram, paper label; some very minor wear and light scuffing; title-label a little rubbed; some spotting of edges; corner cut from front free endpaper, but a good, sound and serviceable copy.

London : Parochial Church Council of St. George & St. Ethelbert, 1987. First edition. An illustrated jubilee history. Demy 8vo (21cm). (160)pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Facsimiles. Original stapled wrappers, very good. With the ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield.

London : Magpie Press, (1966). First edition : one of about 100 numbered copies in wrappers (of about 130). A selection of fifteen poems of love and urgency, designed and printed by Derek Maggs - Herrick, Waller, Spenser, Keats, Shakespeare, Jonson, and of course Marvell, etc. Crown 8vo (19cm). (26),[ii]pp. Original grey textured wrappers, lettered and decorated in green; very good.

Boston : Horn Book, (1970). A reprint of the original 1947 edition. An extensive overview of the subject, with chapters on the period before 1800; nineteenth-century England; early American illustration; Howard Pyle; foreign picture books; graphic processes; illustrators of children's classics; animated drawing; twentieth-century developments, etc., supplemented with biographies of living illustrators worldwide, bibliographies, etc. Demy 4to (28cm) . xvi,(528)pp. Numerous illustrations. Original cloth; a few faint spots to top edge, but a very good and bright copy.

New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1971). First edition. A Jewish writer with writer's block and a black writer, "between soul and revolution", in a New York tenement - co-tenants of a landlord keen to evict. "Malamud in his novels and stories discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of New York. He was a myth-maker, a fabulist, a writer of exquisite parables ... He is a rich original of the first rank" (Saul Bellow). Demy 8vo (22cm). [viii],230,[ii]pp. Original orange cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge charcoal; a few slight marks, but still a very good, clean, and sound copy in the Muriel Nasser dust-jacket - the jacket also very good.

London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1876. First edition. A valuable and beautifully illustrated history of coaching - with chapters on most aspects of the history, the coaches and the roads, as well as "some road slang terms". Illustrated with striking colour-printed plates (finished with hand colour) by Hanhart and woodcuts in the text. As well as Captain Malet's own work, this edition also collects together for the first time all the "Nimrod" [Charles James Apperley] essays on the subject. Foolscap 4to (24cm). (xvi),(404)pp. Errata slip. Coloured frontispiece and nine coloured plates. Woodcuts in text. Original pictorial cloth gilt; very lightly worn at spine tips and a little sunned; a few minor internal marks, nicks and slight creases, but a very good copy.

London : A. A. Quin (Publishers), [ca.1952]. First edition. It's 1912 and young Jim Starling is summoned to see the dictatorial boss of the London department store he works in. He is engaged to the boss's secretary. Crown 8vo (18cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some wear, chipping, splitting and creasing, but a serviceable copy of a scarce book from the highly obscure "Quin Cover the World Publications". Just a single copy (British Library) located in major libraries worldwide.

Manchester : T. A. & E. Pemberton, [1951]. First edition. "The Bowmans were a genteel family, and their gentility was their undoing. They had always been genteel - all except Diana, and she was inclined to jib at the shackles of intense respectability, perhaps because she knew of the conventional immorality that was expected of her. 'You've got to marry money, Di' ...". Crown 8vo (19cm). 160pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; slight wear; small chip to upper wrapper; some creasing to wrappers and text; staples rusting; some minor tanning and spotting, but a serviceable copy of an uncommon book. Just a single copy (Trinity College, Dublin) located in major libraries worldwide.

London : Bantam Press, (2008). First edition. Brigadier Mallinson with a further instalment of the much-lauded adventures of Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons- South Africa in 1828, Hervey escorts an embassy to Shaka, King of the Zulus. Medium 8vo (25cm). x,(338),[ii],[2]pp. Endpaper maps. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; very good in the pictorial Robert Papp dust-jacket - just faintly creased.

London : Bantam Press, (2000). First edition. Fresh from the battle of Waterloo, Matthew Hervey departs on a secret mission to India. Medium 8vo (25cm). (xiv),320,[ii]pp. A very good copy in the Chris Collingwood dust-jacket - also very good. Contemporary ownership inscription of R. K. Gilkes (April, 2000).

Ann Arbor : Arbor Libri Press, 1995. First edition. Recollections and reminiscences of the American book and map dealer F. J. Manasek (of G. B. Manasek of Vermont) - with chapters on what things are worth; dealers; the London bookshops; auctions; fairs, etc. Medium 8vo (24cm). [ii],146,[iv]pp. Original cloth; a very good copy indeed, in an equally very good dust-jacket.

London : Harvill Press, (2003). First British edition. The disappearance of a blameless estate agent in Southern Sweden leads Kurt Wallander to a plot against the newly freed Nelson Mandela. First published as "Den Vita Lenjoninnan" in Stockholm in 1993 and here in the translation by Laurie Thompson first published in the United States in 1998. Medium 8vo (25cm). [viii],440pp. Maps. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; a touch bruised; edges very faintly tanned, but a very good copy in the Peter Dyer dust-jacket - the jacket just slightly nicked in a couple of places, but also very good. Waterstone's sticker on front panel.