Search Results: Titles starting with M from Ash Rare Books

London : George Routledge & Sons, 1899. First British edition. "For those who like plenty of action, a jumping from sensation to sensation, in fact, a progress so exciting that the reader, gripped by the story, has no time to question its probabilities, this is just the book ... a smart detective ... a Wall Street firm believed to be fraudulent ... the detective personates a dead man ... burglars, fires, and dynamite ... certainly the best novel Mr. Gunter has given us for a long time past" (Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 24th September 1899). First published in New York earlier in 1899. Crown 8vo (19cm). (290),[vi]pp. Original pictorial boards; a little worn and slightly scuffed; hinges a little tender; some spotting to endpapers; text a little tanned; a touch shaken, but a better than average copy of a fragile production.

New York : Falcon Books, (1952). First edition. His first novel - "Her beauty is fabulous, her passion insatiable" - Mabel deals with the suave rogue, the happy clown, the romantic hero and the virile lover. Falcon No. 23. Crown 8vo (19cm). [iv],7-128,[ii]pp. Photo illustrations of "professional models". Original pictorial stapled wrappers - Mabel smokes and smoulders; a couple of tiny nicks and a few spots, but a very good copy indeed. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

New York : Magazine Productions, (1952). First edition. "Six dames wanted Johnny - but five wanted him dead" - murder, mayhem, love and passion - "as believable as if it were happening today to the nice young boy next door - and just as shocking!" Rainbow No. 122. Foolscap 4to (20cm). [iv],(130)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; some wear and creasing; a couple of minuscule chips; a few slight marks, but a good copy of a difficult book. No copy located in any major library worldwide.

London : William Heinemann, 1896. First British edition. His first book, "regarded as the first work of unalloyed naturalism in American fiction" (Milne Holton) and immediately inviting comparison in Europe with Hardy, Zola and Arthur Morrison's "Tales of Mean Streets". Originally published under a pseudonym at Crane's own expense in 1893, but not issued under his own name until after the success of "The Red Badge of Courage" on both sides of the Atlantic. The British edition has a telling introduction by William Dean Howells (1837-1920) - "the girl herself, with her bewildered wish to be right and good, with her distorted perspective, her clinging and generous affections, her hopeless environments ...". Foolscap 8vo (17cm). (viii),(148),4pp. Original decorative navy buckram gilt; top edge gilt; endpapers a little tanned; a touch shaken; a few minor marks and spots, but overall a very good copy. With the dated (October 1896) ownership inscription and armorial bookplate of Walter Wren (1833-1898),… Read More

London : Macmillan & Co., 1879. First edition. A physician dies leaving his widow with a medical discovery to be passed on to whichever of his sons is best equipped to perfect it and most apt to benefit the world with it. "The chief interest of the novel, however, is due to Miss Yonge's never-failing genius for working up minute and photographic details, stroke by stroke, until we know her characters so well that it will be strange if we ever forget them" (The Globe, 30th January 1880). Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). iv,314; iv,(315)-636; iv,(637)-956pp. Original green decorative cloth gilt; some mild rubbing and slight bruising; some spotting of edges and prelims; a few slight creases, but overall a very good set. Not listed in Sadleir or Wolff.

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.

Cleveland : Kaywin Publishers, (1952). First American edition. Private eye Nick Cranley "up to his big ears again in luscious lovelies and trigger-happy hooligans". First published in England in 1949. Crown 8vo (18cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers - a stylish design by John Pollack; spine worn and slightly split; small chips to upper wrapper; larger chips and some mild creases to rear wrapper; text tanned, with some light creasing, but overall a good copy. Just one copy (Bowling Green State) of this edition located in major libraries worldwide.

London : HarperCollins, (2018). First edition. "Successful novelist Kit Carradine has grown restless. So when British Intelligence invites him to enter the secret world of espionage, he willingly takes a leap into the unknown". Medium 4to (25cm). [viii],358,[ii]pp. Original black boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; just a touch bruised but otherwise a very good copy in the Claire Ward dust-jacket - the jacket likewise a touch bruised, and with the small and faint residue of a price-sticker on front panel.

London : Victor Gollancz, 1955. First edition. "I doubt if ever he has started a novel better than this; a man emerging from the sea to interrupt a lover's rendezvous, his pursuers sweeping the shore in obvious agitation, the thwarted lovers no less agitated, and for the first few pages no reader any the wiser and full of expectancy" (The Sphere, 12th February 1955). Crown 8vo (20cm). (224)pp. Original red boards, lettered in gilt; a very good, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket - the jacket with a few slight marks and spots, but still bright and with minimal wear.

London : Scion, (1952). First edition. Meteorites with rivets light up a Sussex night, a curious stranger rescues sparky young journalist Glenda Carlyle from unwanted attentions in an alley off Fleet Street. Crown 8vo (19cm). 112pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Ron Turner; spine a little tanned, worn and slightly torn; some rubbing and scuffing; lower wrapper a little discoloured; staples rusted; a poor copy. Aside from the Liverpool copy and a microform at the Bodleian, no copies located in any major UK library.

London : Scion, (1953). First edition. Playboy millionaire with a demanding girl-friend has an alien doppelganger. Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by John Richards; shallow and tiny chip at foot; some very minor creasing; staples lightly rusted, but a very good and otherwise clean copy. No copy located in any major UK library.

London : Scion, [1953]. First edition. London department store salesman gets struck by freakish lightning in the Lake District - with curious effects. Crown 8vo (19cm). 128pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers in a design by Ron Turner; a little worn, rubbed and slightly split; upper wrapper creased, nicked and a little chipped; lower wrapper a little discoloured, with two short tears; staples lightly rusted, but a reasonable copy of a scarce title. Aside from the Liverpool copy and a microform at the Bodleian, no copies located in any major UK library.

London : C. Arthur Pearson, [ca.1933]. First edition. Lord Inchmere encounters a frail, beautiful and penniless flower-girl on the corner of Piccadilly. In the "Pearson's 4d Novels" series. Undated, but a cheaper threepenny edition appeared in 1934. Crown 8vo (19cm). 112pp. Original pictorial wrappers; a few very minor signs of age and use, but a very good copy. No copy of this edition located in any major library worldwide.

[New York] : Hanro Corp., (1954). Second edition, although the first under this title. Originally published in 1952 as "Pleasure Bound" by "Kermit Welles" (another of Stokes' pseudonyms). "She was a girl of the slums who thought she had a chance of escape by becoming a - Man-Chaser". Carnival Books No. 949. Foolscap 4to (20cm). [ii],5-(130)pp. Original pictorial stapled wrappers; slightly worn and creased; text a little tanned, but a good copy. No copy of either edition located in major libraries worldwide.

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, (1971). First edition : the American issue. A full-length history of the newspaper from 1821 to 1956 - John Edward Taylor, Jeremiah Garnett, C. P. Scott, A. P. Wadsworth, etc. Medium 8vo (24cm). 702,[ii]pp. Plates. Genealogical tables on endpapers - that at front inserted upside down. Original cloth gilt; very good, clean and sound in just slightly dusty dust-jacket.

Edinburgh : for Archibald Constable & Co., 1817. First edition. "Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain" - the originator of the psychological novel, "intimately skilled in the perversity of the human mind, and in all the blackest and most horrible passions of the human heart" (Quarterly Review, 1817), takes on the issues of the English Civil War. Published not long before his daughter Mary Shelley produced "Frankenstein" and much admired by Shelley himself, who immediately sent a copy to Byron, describing it as Godwin's best. Three volumes. Demy 12mo (186 x 105mm). xii,306; [iv],316; [iv],(368)pp. Bound in a pleasant later (early twentieth-century) half tan polished calf, banded and gilt; olive labels; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; text a little browned and spotted in places; neatly repaired tears to a couple of leaves, but overall a very good set. With the nautical bookplate of the book-collector Robert James Hayhurst (1929-2016). Wolff… Read More

London : Frederick Warne & Co., (1955). First Joan Storey edition. An endlessly reprinted Victorian guide to etiquette, which had reached its forty-eighth edition by 1929, but is here fully revised and updated by Joan Storey to take cognizance of the post-war world. With chapters on the hostess; introductions; accidental meetings; hand-shaking; invitations; cards; parties; luncheons; dinners; bridge and cocktail parties; garden parties; tennis; children's parties; balls; engagements; weddings; christenings; anniversaries; mourning; present giving; special points of etiquette for men; travelling by air, and much else besides. Crown 8vo (20cm). x,(198)pp. Original cloth; mild tanning of endpapers, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket - the jacket just lightly used and slightly spotted on flaps.

London : William Heinemann, (1933). First edition. International Aircraft and Airways Inc. collapses in 1987 after fifty years of oligarchy in guarding and upholding peace (by war and tyranny if necessary) - a "Pax Aeronautica" tale, providing an interesting contrast and a rather less optimistic vision than that of H. G. Wells's "The Shape of Things to Come", which was published in the same year. "Truthfully, I am not certain of Mr. Arlen's conclusions. At any rate, he has given us a story the tremendous drive of which shatters all criticism, leaving only an excited admiration ... a splendid story splendidly told" (Richard King in "The Tatler", 1st February 1933). Crown 8vo (21cm). [4],xx,(380)pp.Original black cloth, lettered in gilt; a few very minor marks and spots; top edge a touch dusty, but a very good, bright, clean and sound copy in the dust-jacket - the jacket with some mild edge-wear, but also very good.

London : Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1948. First edition. A short history of Egyptian, Roman and Venetian glass, followed by full sections on composition and properties (including colour; plant; manufacture (cut glass, pressed glass, window glass, plate glass, tubing, optical glass, etc.), products and uses, etc. The numerous illustrations include photographs of glassware from the "Britain Can Make It" exhibition of 1946. With a bibliography. Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,274,[ii]pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; mild discolouration of edges of covers, but otherwise a very good copy.

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1971). First British edition. "Jammed into the hundred-acre plaza of the Gate of Heavenly Peace one August morning in 1966 were over a million young Chinese. Their bright crimson armbands proclaimed them the Red Guard. They were waiting to see their leader, Mao Tse-tung, 'the red, red sun in our hearts', waiting for the words that would send them streaming out over China in an outbreak of destruction and terror stimulated by idealism, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". A detailed and penetrating history from the multiple award-winning Anglo-American author and journalist, head of the Hong Kong Bureau of the Los Angeles Times in the years that mattered, as well as advisor to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Demy 8vo (23cm). xiv,478,[iv]pp. Original red boards, ruled and lettered in gilt; top edge pink; a touch bruised; some spotting of edges, but otherwise very good in the Keith Davis / Graham Berney dust-jacket - the jacket a touch dusty, lightly edge-worn,… Read More