Search Results: Titles starting with F from Ash Rare Books

London : Michael Joseph, (1964). First edition. A collection of twelve short stories, "by a master, who, at his best, equals Chekhov and who seems incapable of writing a shop-worn phrase" (The Sphere, 4th April 1964). Not published in the USA. Post 8vo (21cm). 192pp. Original pale mauve-grey boards, blocked and lettered across spine in gilt; a very good copy in the Kenneth Farnhill dust-jacket, also very good barring a few faint marks and a couple of tiny nicks.

London : Michael Joseph, (1954). First edition. "If an impecunious author had not accidentally intercepted a telephone call, the mysterious case of Miss Faintley might have defied even Mrs Bradley's efforts at solution ... It seemed at first unlikely that she, a prim, quiet schoolmistress, could have anything to do with gang-work - or with currency smuggling" - F. E. Pardoe in the Birmingham Daily Post (13th April 1954) noted "It is certainly the best she has written for some years ... Mrs Bradley is a perennial joy", while for the News Chronicle, "Mrs Bradley is easily the best woman detective in fiction". Crown 8vo (20cm). (224)pp. Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge a touch dusty, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the Peter Rudland dust-jacket - just lightly rubbed, with a short tear to one corner, but otherwise very good.

London : Sydney J. Saunders & Co., [1889]. First edition. Charmingly illustrated poetic fancies for children, with "The Mermaid and the Zoophite", "Swinging - Swinging - To, and Fro", "The Fairies and the Bees" and "Said a Dewdrop to a Skylark". Seemingly a variant issue, with the imprint of Sydney John Saunders (1837-1923), stationer and manufacturer of Christmas cards, etc. - the handful of other copies traced bearing the imprint of the similar Sockl & Nathan firm. Undated, but the book, beautifully printed in Leipzig, was noticed in the press in the latter part of 1889 - "full of such wonderfully nice pictures" (Newcastle Courant, 14th December) - and here has a Christmas 1889 gift inscription. Oblong foolscap 4to (19 x 21cm). [24]pp. Illustrations throughout, mainly in sepia and grey, but with four pages in full colour, by Jessie Sophia Watkins (1850-1902). Original cloth-backed pictorial glazed boards; some wear and bruising to outer corners; boards lightly tanned; some mild internal browning and… Read More

Liskeard : Harry Chambers / Peterloo Poets, (1983). First edition. Signed by Philip Gross on the title-page. His first collection - nineteen poems, including "The Site of the Crystal Palace", "The Ice Factory", "A Plague of Jellyfish", etc. Demy 8vo (22cm). 32pp. Original green pictorial wrappers, printed in black; very good.

London : Victor Gollancz, 1969. First edition. Introducing Appleby's son, young Bobby - "Together they investigate an ingenious, amusing, and profitable art fraud with agreeable overtones of practical joke and problems of deduction ... pleasant characters behaving rather well; settings of various degrees of elegance; a whiff of 'Varsity nostalgia, and a clink of port glass and decanter. In short, civilized, beguiling reading ... consummate craftsmanship and expertise" (Illustrated London News, 11th January 1969). Later published in the USA as "Picture of Guilt". Post 8vo (21cm). (222),[ii]pp. Original orange-red boards, lettered in gilt; a touch of bruising to bottom edge, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket - the jacket price-clipped, a touch darkened, with some light wear and some short repaired tears, but still presentable.

London : Bodley Head, (1990). First edition. A collection of a dozen short stories, including "In Love with Ariadne", "Honeymoon in Tramore", "Coffee with Oliver", etc - "the bewildering complexities of the human condition ... devastating insight, elegiac compassion and densely textured economy". Demy 8vo (23cm). (252),[iv]pp. Original blue boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; tiny mark on p.122, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket - a design featuring a landscape by Paul Camille Guigou - very slightly marked at fore-edges but otherwise very good indeed.

London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1929]. First edition of this thousand-page-plus omnibus collection of all bar three of the Thorndyke short stories which had appeared in the five collections published between 1909 and 1927. The stories are here grouped into six "inverted" and thirty-one "direct" examples, with an absorbing new preface by the author on the nature and methodology of the detective story. "Mr Freeman's super-detective, Dr Thorndyke, needs no introduction ... each case has some new ingenuity to commend it" (The Scotsman, 14th October 1929). Crown 8vo (182 x 116mm). viii,1080pp. Diagrams and a plan. Bound in a handsome later half crimson crushed morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, banded and gilt; top edge gilt; faint mark to back cover; some light spotting of edges; a few tiny internal marks; one leaf with a repaired tear, a handful of others lightly creased, but still a handsome copy.

London : Michael Joseph, (1957). First edition. One of the most powerful of Masters' Indian tales, commencing in 1902 and charting the career of Peter Savage, administrator, mountaineer, soldier and a man of "ruthless will and stupendous ambition". Post 8vo (21cm). [ii],(416)pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; slight bruise to lower edge of upper board; slight production flaw affecting the tops of some leaves; endpapers a little tanned, but a good copy in the Donald Green dust-jacket - lightly worn and a touch tanned. Tiny inscription on front free endpaper.

London : Constable & Co., (1941). First edition. Emmeline Pocock, daughter of the warden of All Saints, tries to see out the war in her sound-proof room – disturbances from the university town – tangled love drama, the eccentric provost, the sensational reports of Mr Jericho, the volcanic Lady Caroline Paltry, the melancholic Lord FitzCricket, poltergeists, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [xii],(194),[ii]pp. Three plates by the author. Original magenta cloth, lettered across spine in silver; slight touch of wear at foot; some spotting, mainly of endpapers and edges, but a very good copy in the original Berners dust-jacket – lightly worn and very slightly tanned, with some minor chipping at extremities (not affecting design or lettering), but also very good.

London : Hodder & Stoughton, (1957). First British edition. Drowned some eighty-six years earlier, the Herr Graf materialises to play himself in a movie. Crown 8vo (20cm). 190,[ii]pp. Original dark green boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few faint marks, but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket - a touch sunned, slightly nicked and just lightly worn at extremities.

London : A. C. Fifield, 1910. First edition : with the advertisements at rear and on lower cover dated February 21, 1910. Thirty-seven poems, including "On Expecting Some Books". Foolscap 8vo (18cm). 60,[iv]pp. Original grey boards, printed in black; some spotting, mainly of edges, endleaves and prelims, but a very good, crisp and partly unopened copy of this fragile production.

London : Hamish Hamilton, (2004). First edition. Signed by William Boyd on the title-page. A collection of sixteen short stories of love and fascination, some in experimental form, and ranging widely in time and place. "His best writing, observing tiny moments of love, lust and epiphany with extraordinary sensitivity" (The Spectator). Medium 8vo (25cm). [x],(210),[iv]pp. Original orange boards, lettered in silver; just the merest hint of bruising, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket - the jacket likewise with a hint of bruising, but also very good.

New York : Pocket Books, (1943). First paperback edition. "Rare Books and Raw Murder Mix". Originally published in 1938 - and made into a film starring Melvyn Douglas the same year, a sequence of events that led to the former reporter Harry Kurnitz becoming a witty and stylish Hollywood screenwriter (Hatari, Pretty Baby, Shadow of the Thin Man and many more). Foolscap 8vo (17cm). [iv],204pp. Original pictorial wrappers - a design by Leo Manso (1914-1993); all edges red; spine a little worn and lightly sunned; a reasonable copy.

London : Bradbury & Evans, 1860. Two early and amusing Thackeray pieces originally written for the "Comic Almanacks" of 1839 and 1840 and first published in this format in 1855. Crown 8vo (20cm). 100pp. Original yellow decorative wrappers; a little worn, marked, chipped and creased, but a reasonable copy of a fragile production. Housed in a custom-made cloth box.

London : Hurst & Blackett, [ca.1930]. First paperback edition. First published in 1926 - "One has to take it from Mr Le Queux that the truth about the mystery around which this excellent story revolves was known only at Downing Street ... Lady Mignon of course, might have been poisoned by the drug that baffled the doctors ... But instead of that, she marries; and it is not the clever Paillard whom she marries; though she forgives him ..." (The Scotsman, 17th May 1926). Demy 8vo (22cm). 96pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; slightly chipped and a little worn; some minor spotting and browning, but a good copy. No copy of this edition located in any major library worldwide.

London : Victor Gollancz, 1957. First edition. A father and three daughters – "A normal part of life may not be a thing to dispense with". "This great author has made blood-relationship and its attendant psychological maladies her subject. Grim would be the result were it not for Miss Compton-Burnett's exquisite humour, and the breath-taking twists and turns of each household drama" (The Tatler, 28th August 1957).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (208)pp. Original maroon boards, lettered in gilt; a couple of spots, but a very good and bright copy in the original Gollancz yellow dust-jacket, printed in magenta and black – just lightly tanned, lightly marked and slightly worn at tips.

New York : [Phoenix Bookshop], 1979. First edition : limited to 250 copies. Privately published as a Christmas Greeting - and inscribed and signed by Wilson. An account of his discovery of the original typescript of Faulkner's first novel, together with the manuscripts of unpublished poems and stories. Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],(8)pp. Facsimile. Original stapled wrappers; staples just a touch rusted, but a very good copy in the original Phoenix Book Shop envelope.

Faversham : Faversham Society, 1996. First edition. Biographical notes on over 100 individuals in some way connected with the book trade through Faversham's history - booksellers, stationers, printers, etc. Faversham Papers No. 51. Pott folio (30cm). (xx),(54)pp. Plates. Original stapled sheets; lower cover a little creased and spotted, otherwise very good.

London : George Virtue, 1830. A handsome antique print - a view from the churchyard of the parish church of St. Mary of Charity, with its eighteenth-century crown spire. Engraved by Henry Adlard (1799-1893) from an original study by the landscape painter Thomas Mann Baynes. Originally produced for the "England's Topographer" series of Kent views (London : 1828-1831). Steel line engraving on paper. Later hand colour. Engraved surface 104 x 150mm (approx. 4-1/8" x 5-7/8"). In very good and clean state. A guaranteed genuine antique print.

London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1929]. An early reprint of the original 1928 edition. Bulldog Drummond has rid the world of Carl Peterson, but Irma lives on - Mrs Drummond is abducted, "hair-raising adventures in haunted houses, deserted mills, at Stonehenge at midnight, and in Irma's fantastic room. The probabilities of the tale may be far-fetched, but that will not prevent its being hailed as worthy successor to the stories of the series that have preceded it" (The Scotsman, 16th August 1928). Crown 8vo (20cm). 312,4pp. Original mustard-yellow cloth, lettered in black; a few minor marks and slight creases; mild spotting of edges; outer leaves lightly tanned, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary (1929) gift inscription.