Search Results: Authors starting with U from Ash Rare Books

London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1870. Forty-fourth edition. A quite extraordinary compilation for the nineteenth-century child, condensing into under 500 pages an encyclopaedic amount of information on all manner of topics. Conceived in the form of Socratic question-and-answer dialogue, we learn of everything from acorns to zinc - from just one opening at random, "What is goulard?", "What is benzoin?", "What is storax", "What is gum-guaiacum", "What forms the famous diamond cement?" - all confidently and succinctly answered. Originally published as "262 Questions and Answers" in 1825, the book rapidly became a standard text, much expanded through multiple editions until at least a sixty-third edition in 1913, the text initially augmented after the author's death by her nephew Robert Arthur Ward (1826-1898). Foolscap 12mo (139 x 88mm). (vi),474pp. Bound in a smart recent full tan calf, banded and tooled in blind; red label; marbled endpapers; a few faint signs of age and use, but a very good copy.… Read More

London : George Allen & Unwin, (1934). First edition. A handsomely illustrated journal of a pre Great War world tour by the publisher Stanley Unwin and his companion. The tour takes in Rhodesia, South Africa, Australia (Adelaide & Melbourne), Tasmania, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, New Guinea, the Philippines, Japan, etc. Medium 8vo (24cm). (512)pp. Plates. Original cloth; a very good copy in a very clean dust-jacket - price-clipped and just slightly nicked.

London : Oxford University Press, [1951]. Second edition : the second impression of the 1937 American sheets. Originally published in 1922, but here much augmented - Updike's magisterial history and survey of the printing types of the western world - "stands foremost among the classic books of the printing trade" - the invention; the font and its case; the Latin alphabet; fifteenth-century types in Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Spain and England; the Aldine italic; type specimens; types and foundries to 1800, country by country; the American colonies; the nineteenth century; English types 1800-1844; the revival of Caslon and Fell; industrial conditions and more. Two volumes. Medium 8vo (25cm). xl,292; (xx),326pp. Over 350 illustrations, facsimiles, etc. Original buckram; just a hint of fading at foot; a few edge-spots; text very faintly tanned in places, but a very good set.

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. First edition. The sequel to "Rabbit, Run" (1960), set against the background of the Summer of Love - "Ten years have passed; the athletic escapist has become a paunchy conservative, and Eisenhower's becalmed America has become 1969's lurid confusion of technology, fantasy, and emergency. Rabbit is abandoned and mocked, his home is invaded, the world of his childhood decays into a mere sublunar void; still he clings to semblances of patriotism and paternity". Acclaimed on first publication - "A rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece" (Time Magazine), "Without doubt, the finest novel John Updike has written" (Julian Symons in the Sunday Times), and acclaimed now, "One of the most gifted American realists ... John Updike's surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country" (Joyce Carol Oates in 2015). Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(407),[i]pp. Original red cloth, ruled and lettered in silver and gilt; top edge blue;… Read More

London : André Deutsch, (1989). First British edition. Updike on his home town, his psoriasis and stuttering, Vietnam, his ancestors, his faith and sense of self. Royal 8vo (24cm). x,(246)pp. Original boards; just lightly bruised, but otherwise very good in a slightly creased dust-jacket. From the collection of the well-known bookseller and crime-writer, George Sims (1923-1999), with his attractive book-label.

London : for G. B. Whittaker / Bath : John Upham / Exeter : Charles Upham, 1824. First edition. "One of the most intellectual and imaginative productions of the age" (Monthly Critical Gazette, 1st December 1824). Bookseller, orientalist and quondam mayor of Exeter, Upham intended his anonymous tale to introduce readers to the full glories of ancient Egypt - "a series of data, whereby may be formed a knowledge and appreciation of this ancient and illustrious kingdom, resorted to by the wisest and best of the philosophers, the sages, and legislators of Greece, and pronounced by them to be 'the mother of arts, and the fountain of wisdom'". Each volume concludes with copious historical notes. Three volumes. Crown 8vo (187 x 111mm). viii,(342); [ii],(322); [ii],328pp. Bound, without half-titles and a final blank, in an attractive near contemporary half blue-green polished calf, worked in blind on broad bands, ruled and lettered in gilt; red labels; marbled sides; some mild rubbing and a few minor signs of… Read More

London : William Heinemann, (1962). First edition. The first novel in the "Spiral Ascent" trilogy - failed poets and communism in the 1930s - "I believe that it may well be the first part of one of the greatest and most original novels of our time" (Christopher Isherwood). Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],282pp. Original green boards, lettered in white; a very good copy in the Brian Russell dust-jacket - a stylish architectural design in mauve and tan - also very good.

London : Enitharmon Press, 1994. First edition : [one of 1,000 copies in wrappers]. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page. Six short stories, including "A Ship in the Sky", with an introduction by Frank Kermode. Demy 8vo (22cm). 102,[ii]pp. Original pale blue-grey wrappers, with a Glenn Sujo design, printed in blue and black; very good. Walker A7a.

London : Penguin Books, (1988). A reprint, in the Penguin Modern Classics series, of this collection originally published by Heinemann in 1969. Signed by Edward Upward on the title-page. Post 8vo (20cm). (234),[vi]pp. Original colour-printed Paul Leith wrappers; text edges very mildly tanned; a few very small spots on title-page, but otherwise in very good state. Walker A3c.