Search Results: Titles starting with P from Fine Editions Ltd

London: Hogarth Press, 1978. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Impression (no further printings noted) of this war diary, presenting an intimate portrait of life at Ham Spray House. Tall 8vo: 215,[9]pp, with eight pages of plates. Publisher's cinnamon cloth, spine lettered in gilt, wraparound dust jacket illustrated by Angelica Garnett (nèe Bell—Virginia Woolf's niece and Vanessa Bell's daughter) and priced £5.95. A very attractive copy, dust-spotted top edge, else Fine in Fine jacket. At the outset of the Second World War, Ralph and Frances Partridge were confirmed pacifists. These extracts from Frances's war diary present a vivid picture of their life in Wiltshire ("where life revolved around conversation, long walks, and complicated love affairs," according the ODNB), a refuge for friends (here depicted in some 20 photographs), including many of their fellow "Bloomsberries," as well as a stream of refugees and the dispossessed. Frances's accounts candidly portray their domestic… Read More

New York: Press of the Woolly Whale, 1933. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Fine. One of 400 copies, only 150 of which were for sale. Crown 8vo (188 x 130mm): [6],8,[2]pp, with line-drawn portrait frontispiece of Bernard Kavier Phillippe de Marigny de Mandeville (1785-1868). Publisher's black cloth-backed gray decorative paper-covered boards, cream paper title label printed in grey to front cover, map end papers (of 1815 New Orleans), text printed in black and lime green on handmade paper. An exemplary example, tightly bound and clean and bright throughout. This brief treatise is dedicated to Bernard Kavier Phillippe de Marigny de Mandeville (1785-1868), a French-Creole American nobleman, playboy, and planter, who was also president of the Louisiana State Senate between 1822 and 1823. When Bernard de Marigny was 15 years old, his father died, and Bernard inherited his father's plantation just east of New Orleans's Vieux Carré. According to historians, his every whim was indulged while his father was… Read More

New York: Covici-Friede, 1937. First Printing. Hardcover. Fine-/Fine-. First American Edition of Lawrence Durrell's uncommon second novel, set on an imaginary Greek island reminiscent of Corfu, to which Durrell and his young wife had relocated from England in 1935. Crown 8vo (203 x 129mm): 372pp. Publisher's beige cloth, spine and upper cover lettered in red and stamped with green leaf device, top edge stained green; illustrated dust jacket priced $2.50. About Fine (top edge mildly faded, spine very lightly toned), tightly bound and virtually pristine (lightly read, if at all). About Fine jacket (archivally mended short closed tears to back spine and flap folds), crisp and bright. Potter & Whiting 14. Originally published the same year, by Faber & Faber in London; the publisher suggested the pseudonym, because Durrell's conventionally autobiographical first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers, had been a failure. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition,… Read More

San Francisco: Thomas C. Russell [and] Bedford Arts, 1990. Fine. Folding halftone (11 panels) of Eadweard Muybridge's famed 360-degree panoramic view of San Francisco made from the original seventeen-foot-long photograph. With margins, the folding halftone measures 1511 x 171mm and folds into the original red cloth binding lettered in gilt. Offered with the First Printing (so stated), trade issue, of Klett's accordion-fold book revisiting and reinterpreting Muybridge's panoramic view, with essays by Klett and Peter Bacon Hales. Royal 4to (305 x 241mm): 13ff accordion-fold black-and-white plates on card stock, 12pp of text. Bound concertina-style in publisher's pictorial covers (without dust jacket, as issued), saffron-yellow end papers. Signed by Klett on title page. Recto of accordion-fold reproduces the 360-degree mammoth panoramic view taken of San Francisco in 1878 from atop Nob Hill by Muybridge; on verso, same panoramic view taken in 1990 by Klett. In July, 1878, Eadweard Muybridge completed a… Read More

Philadelphia: The Paper Airplane Press, 1977. Limited Edition. Stiff Wrappers. Fine. No. 13 of 25 copies numbered for sale (there were also 25 copied lettered for private distribution (A-Y) of this scarce pamphlet. Demy 8vo (216 x 141mm): [2],12.[2] pp, including two full-page diagrams and vignette on limitation page. Signed by Koelewyn, who was then a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. Created on a manual typewriter and reproduced by a quick print shop on ecru handmade, watermarked paper; sewn in original slate blue stiff wrappers with French flaps, title label printed in black to front cover. Slight stains to label, else virtually pristine. First publication of the Paper Airplane Press, founded in Philadelphia, in 1977, when the author was a tour guide at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. The library sparked an interest in book collecting and particularly in small press publications. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition,… Read More

London: Boosey and Sons, 1827. Paper-Covered Boards. Near Fine+. Uncommon English translations of these two works by German educator Bernhard Heinrich Blasche, providing "Instructive Amusement for young persons," calculated to "introduce children to the most common and practical applications of geometry." (Preface) Papyro-Plastics: Second Edition, "greatly enlarged and improved." 16mo (141 x 116mm): xiii,[3],102,[2]pp, with hand-colored engraved frontispiece of castle, 21 further plates (seven folding) and final leaf of publisher's advertisements. Publisher's bluish gray paper-covered boards, original printed pictorial circular label with compass, ruler, and other draftsman's tools and title to front cover. Binding rubbed, lacking front blank (opens to half-title, top corner of which skillfully repaired), frontispiece and several plates lightly spotted, else an excellent survival,e securely bound and clean throughout. Osborne I, p. 224. Pasteboard: First Edition. 16mo (144 x 111mm): 114,[2]pp, with… Read More

London: Hogarth Press, 1950. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Impression of one of the author's early collections, of 10 short stories. Small 8vo: viii,250pp. Publisher's tangerine cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge stained deep pink, bottom edge untrimmed; dust jacked, priced 8s/6d. Very Fine and unread. "William Sansom was once described as London's closest equivalent to Franz Kafka. He wrote in hallucinatory detail, bringing every image into pin-sharp focus. . . . He fell from favour, but now there is a movement to rediscover his finest works." (The Independent) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1957. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine-. First Printing (no additional printings noted) of the author's first novel, translated into English by Archibald Colquhoun. 8vo: [6],145,[1]pp. Publisher's coarsely woven sea-green cloth, spine lettered in black, fore-edge untrimmed; illustrated dust jacket priced $3.50. Fine (hint of rubbing to spine ends); about Fine jacket (spine panel very lightly faded and rubbed). First published, in 1947, in Italian (Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno), narrating an episode of the Italian Resistance from a child's point of view. Calvino witnessed the Second World War up close. Mussolini's first military operation was to invade the French Riviera adjacent to San Remo, where the college-bound Italo lived with his parents on the Ligurian coast, home to Calvinos for generations. His university career was interrupted by the collapse of Fascism, in 1943, and the ensuing civil war—the "Resistance"—between the partisans and the Fascist Salò Republic,… Read More

San Francisco: [Britton & Rey, printers], 1907. First Edition. Wrappers. Fine-. First (and apparently only) Printing of this work of xenophobic fiction. Slim demy 8vo (230 x 154mm): 28pp on coated stock, with folding map titled "Map of the World Showing the three Great Oceans as Units and our Unfortified Military Stations." Original stapled light grey-green paper wrappers printed in black. Cover edges very lightly toned, staples rusted, but an excellent example. "Antiquated military hardware, bureaucratic bungling, labor problems, and foreign-born U.S. resident saboteurs spell defeat for America in a war with China and Japan in 1912. Manson was San Francisco's City Engineer in charge of the water supply. His brief excursion into the world of fiction tells of a crisis precipitated by Asian-American racial animosity, resulting in a declaration of war by China and Japan. Within a few months, Asian forces invade and seize Pearl Harbor and other American bases in the Pacific and blockade the West Coast.… Read More

Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1976. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Impression of the first English language edition, originally published under the titled Díoltas. 8vo: 222pp. Publisher's mid-brown coarsely woven cloth, spine lettered in gilt, mustard-yellow end papers; dust jacket, illustrated by Jarlath Hayes, priced £3.60. Fine (apparently unread), in Fine, crisp jacket. O'Flaherty, a leading figure of the Irish Renaissance. abandoned his training for the priesthood and embarked on a varied career as soldier in World War I, lumberjack, hotel porter, miner, factory worker, dishwasher, bank clerk, and deck hand. In 1925, he scored literary success with one of his first novels, The Informer, about a confused rebel during the Irish War of Independence, which John Ford (O'Flaherty's cousin) adapted into a movie that was nominated for an Academy Award. Some of O'Flaherty's best short stories, including those in The Pedlar's Revenge, appeared first in Irish-language versions. N. B. With few exceptions (always… Read More

London: Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, Printers-Street | For Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orne, and Brown, Paternoster-Row, 1819. So-called "Second Edition," but largely a reprinting from standing type of the first edition, with first gathering reset and advertisement added to half title verso. Demy 8vo (222 x 135mm): viii,88,[4]pp, complete with half-title, engraved frontispiece by J. C. Bromley (after a painting by Sir George Beaumont), and four pages of terminal advertisements, for Chalmers's County Biography and Watts's Bibliotheca Britannica (many copies lack both half-title and ads; Read notes these ads, says others also may be present). Original drab (light greyish brown) wrappers lined with white paper, printed paper spine label (partly perished); on front wrapper, possibly in Rossetti's hand, "Peter Bell / by / Wm Wordsworth / 1819." William Michael Rossetti's copy inscribed on half-title: "To / WM Rossetti / from / J. Deffett Francis," with "1876" added in another hand. And in Rossetti's… Read More

Boston: J. E. Tilton and Company, 1864. Decorative Cloth. Fine-. First Edition under this title (see below) of this early work on a fashionable Victorian pastime. 8vo (191 x 119mm): 96pp, with six tissue-guarded plates, head pieces, and historiated initials. Original dark green ribbed and beveled cloth, covers paneled in blind, gilt vignettes to spine and front cover, chocolate brown end papers, illustrated title page. Gift inscription to Mary D. Ballou (perhaps the Rhode Island suffrage pioneer), dated 1865 and her manuscript ex-libris in elegant script, with "Providence," to front fly leaf. Slight scuff to cover vignette,else tightly bound and virtually pristine (tissue guards lightly foxed but plates generally bright), with interesting provenance. First published in Philadelphia, in 1863, by Edward Parrish, under the title Phantom Bouquet : Skeletonizing Leaves and Seed Vessels. Producing skeleton leaves involved removing chlorophyll from leaves to create intricate designs in imitation of those… Read More

London: printed for P. Vaillant in the Strand, and W. Mears and F. Clay without Temple-Bar, 1721. Half-Calf. Fine. First Edition in English of the "first treatise on cuttings and graftings." (Hunt) Demy 4to (276 x 214mm): [24],300,[4]pp, with 31 (i.e. 33: in the numbering of plates, XXIII and XXVIII are repeated) engraved plates inserted on 22 sheets (some folding); head- and tail-pieces and historiated initials. Recent half calf over marbled boards, spine in sic compartments divided by gilt-ruled raised bands, small gilt ornaments, red morocco lettering piece gilt, title page printed in red and black, end papers renewed. An excellent example, beautifully bound to period style, generally fresh and bright (occasional light spotting and dust-soiling), with excellent impressions of the plates. Henrey II, 443-46 and III, 411. Hunt II, 452. First published in two volumes in German ("High-Dutch"), in 1716, as Neu-und nie erhörter doch in der Natur und Vernunfft wohlgegründeter Versuch der Universal-… Read More

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. First Edition. Pictorial Boards. Fine-. First Printing (U.S. issue, with "Scribners" to tail of spine) of the photographer's first book, introduced by Raymond Mortimer. Royal 8vo (235 x 180 mm): 8pp, with 63 full-page captioned gravure plates by Brandt. Publisher's glazed photographically illustrated boards, spine and upper cover lettered in red, photographic end papers. Wanting the rare unprinted acetate dust jacket. Spine and covers lightly toned, else a clean, bright, firmly bound copy. Roth (101), p. 90. Roth (Open Book), pp. 122-23. Parr & Badger I, p. 138. Auer, p. 230. Brandt's first foray into print, contrasting the English social classes and panning between urban and rural milieus, with the photographer showing himself "not only to be an artist but an anthropologist. He seems to have wandered about England with the detached curiosity of a man investigating the customs of some remote and unfamiliar tribe." (from the Introduction) Most of the… Read More

Minneapolis: Privately printed for Edmund D. Brooks and Alvin Langdon Coburn & their friends . . . by Chiswick Press, 1914. Quarter-Cloth. Fine-. Limited Edition of this landmark of of early 20th-century photography, inscribed by the publisher. Tall, slim 8vo: 19,[1]pp, with portrait frontispiece (showing G. K. and Frances Chesterton with Edmund D. Brooks, the Minneapolis bibliophile who financed this book) and 10 photogravures by Coburn, numbered I-X, mounted on the rectos with versos blank. Original cream-colored paper-covered boards quarter-bound in beige canvas, upper cover and spine lettered in black, all edges uncut. Inscribed by Brooks on the fly-leaf, "For my old friend / Richard Burton / with the kindest regards / of Edmund Brooks / Minneapolis / Oct. 13th 1915." Boards very lightly soiled, spine slightly toned, end sheets embrowned, but a handsome copy: pages clean and bright (text leaves unopened), images fine. Imagining Paradise, p. 225. Coburn (Autobiography), p. 141. Sullivan 34. Books… Read More

[Berlin]: Peperoni Books, 2015. First Printing. Hardcover. Fine. First Edition (so stated), collecting photographs of back streets and dilapidated spaces in the Berlin neighborhoods of Mitte, Tiergarten, Wedding, and Kreuzberg. Oblong royal 8vo (243 x 300mm): 120 pp, including 49 full-color illustrations (of broken architecture, neglected parks, vacant lots, and discarded belongings) from photographs printed on rectos only (excepting frontispiece and plate on p. 114). Text in English and German. Publisher's finely woven sage green cloth lettered in black, upper cover with full-color photographic reproduction laid on, dark grey end papers; without dust jacket (as issued). A superlative example, virtually pristine (and probably unread), very tightly bound and clean and bright throughout. Taken between 2007 and 2011 on overcast days under metallic skies, these photographs are full of refuse and graffiti, and devoid of human presence. Badger writes in his brief afterward, "Essentially, what I am showing… Read More

Hamburg: Kellner Verlag, 1989. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. First Printing (of four) of this "gentle mediation on death." (Parr & Badger) In German. Tall, slim 8vo (339 x 237mm): unpaginated [24]ff, with 13 full-page black-and-white photographs. Publisher's scarlet paper-covered boards, spine and front cover lettered in black, small black-and-white photograph mounted on cover. Without dust jacket, as issued. Parr & Badger II, p. 270. A very fine copy, virtually as new. Preface by Jean Cocteau ("Vom Tod"); interview with Gerhard Bott and Rudolf Schäfer. "Schäfer photographs the head of each corpse, with the obligatory white sheet pulled down to reveal it, so that each individual in the 13 portraits, varying from young to old, might be lying in bed asleep. The warm-toned gravure in which the series is printed gives the images the quality of etchings, which also mitigates the full reality." (Parr & Badger) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition,… Read More

Munich / Paris / London: Schirmer / Mosel, 1994. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Inscribed First Printing of this catalogue for an important retrospective touring exhibition of the New York photographer's work. Edited by Heinz Liesbrock, with texts (in German) by Hilla and Bernd Becher, James L. Enyeart, and Thomas Weski. Oblong royal 8vo (230 x 277mm): 131,[1]pp, including 52 four-color and 7 duotone plates and 10 additional color and black and white illustrations. Publisher's light and dark grey paper-covered boards, spine and upper cover lettered in grey, dark grey end papers; photographically illustrated dust jacket, unpriced (as issued). Title page signed and dated by the photographer. A superlative copy, virtually pristine, very tightly bound and clean and crisp throughout. Quite scarce, especially signed. Parr & Badger II, p, 35. Mainly drawn from Shore's landmark early series, Uncommon Places, collecting photographs he made in color with an 8 x 10 view camera, with the addition of… Read More

Sante Fe, New Mexico: William Clift Editions, 1987. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Trade Issue, signed by the photographer on title page and inscribed by the designer above her name (Catherine Waters) on final page. (A limited edition of 250 copies, signed by the photographer on title page and initialed "W.C." on limitation label, also was published). Squarish royal 8vo (279 x 300mm): 44 unnumbered leaves, including frontispiece and 21 tritone photographs, largely landscapes, printed on rectos with brief captions on versos. Publisher's quarter black cloth over dark grey paper-covered boards, spine and front cover lettered in gold, mid-grey end papers; original dark grey dust jacket, unpriced with flaps blank, lettered in gold on spine and front panels. A superb copy, virtually pristine, tightly bound and fresh and bright throughout. "Published on the occasion of an exhibition of seventy-nine photographs by William Clift at the Art Institute of Chicago, April 25 through June 21, 1987, and… Read More

New York: Amphoto, 1961. Hardcover. Fine/Fine-. First Edition of this seminal work in which Brandt's "formal inventiveness and keen eye for the surreal are most evident." (Roth 101) With preface by Lawrence Durrell and introduction by Chapman Mortimer. Squarish royal 8vo (275 x 240mm): 14,[2], with 90 numbered gravure plates (some double-page) divided by six numbered leaves into chronological sections. Publisher's patterned paper-covered boards, spine and upper cover lettered in red; photographically illustrated dust jacket printed in red and black and priced $7.95. Fine, tightly bound and clean throughout; about Fine jacket (skillful, almost imperceptible restoration to crown of spine). Parr & Badger 1, 216. Roth (101 Books), pp 160-61. Roth (Open Book), p. 188-89. Auer, p. 408. Brandt began study of the nude in 1945 and continued off and on until his death, in 1983 (for a broader but less in-depth survey, see our copy on offer of Nudes:1945-1980). But the series of nudes he made between 1947 and… Read More