Rare books from Ash Rare Books

London : Robert Sayer; John Bowles, and Carington Bowles, 1767. First edition. A handsome eighteenth-century road-atlas, showing the major roads and highways in scroll form, with mileages, local detail and directions to cross-roads, tables, etc. Based on earlier models, but the maps corrected, updated and with the addition of fresh material - not least two Hertfordshire roads (St. Alban's to Ware, and London to Hitchin) - "The two Roads laid down in this Plate were never before given in any Book of Roads whatever, but were purposely Measured and Engrav'd for this Work" - significant in that Kitchin was to move his base of operations to St. Alban's the following year. Long crown 4to (178 x 229mm). [8]pp + general map and 103 engraved strip-maps, printed back-to-back. Contemporary half calf, now neatly rebacked; marbled sides; corners a little rubbed; ink-splash to upper board; clean tear to one leaf neatly repaired; occasional mild tanning, but a very good copy of an attractive and interesting production.

London : G. & W. B. Whittaker / Geo. B. Whittaker / Whittaker, Treacher & Co., 1824-1832. First edition. A complete first edition set of the five-volume series of her much-loved and most famous work - sharp, affectionate, precise and amused sketches of village life in Regency England - "Our landlord has a stirring wife, a hopeful son, and a daughter, the belle of the village; not so pretty as the fair nymph of the shoe-shop, and far less elegant, but ten times as fine; all curl-papers in the morning, like a porcupine, all curls in the afternoon, like a poodle, with more flounces than curl-papers, and more lovers than curls". Walks in the Country, A Country Cricket-Match, A Christmas Party, Christmas Amusements, The Mole-Catcher, Children of the Village, The Cribbage Players, and so much more. Five volumes. Crown 8vo (180 x 108mm). viii,292; vii[i],(312); viii,315,[i]; viii,345,[i]; iv,362pp. Bound, without half-titles and advertisement leaves, in a smart twentieth-century half tan calf, banded and… Read More

London : by J. Streater, for Henry Twiford, George Sawbridge, Thomas Dring, and John Place, 1657. First edition. One of the earliest printed histories of London, second only to the early editions of Stow in terms of chronology. Compiled by the versatile and engaging Welsh author, royalist, politician and traveller, James Howell, after his release from a lengthy imprisonment at the time of the Interregnum. With accounts of St. Paul's and the other ancient churches; the individual wards and precincts; the governance of the City; the walls, streets, gates and prisons; the Inns of Court; the twelve great livery companies; the company halls; the Tower, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and other prominent buildings; the Thames; London Bridge; the mayoralty; the city of Westminster and the Abbey; the Strand; Covent Garden; Lincoln's Inn; Westminster Hall; Parliament, the Admiralty, etc. Pott folio (270 x 166mm). [x],1-128,301-(408),[viii]pp - collates as institutional copies and complete despite the lacuna… Read More

London : Faber & Gwyer / Faber & Faber, (1928-1936). A first edition set of the three separately published volumes - "This is fiction, but with a difference - for the author, who wishes at present to remain anonymous, has himself lived the life of a hero" - the first two volumes were published anonymously, the first in an edition of just 1,500 copies. "The most satisfying piece of autobiography to be published in our time. All the equipment of a novelist is Sassoon's. But what novel could equal in fascination this true story? The three books give him a place unique in English letters" (Howard Spring in the Evening Standard, 3rd September 1936). Three volumes. Crown 8vo (183 x 113mm). (396),[iv]; 334,[ii]; 280pp. Bound, without one initial blank leaf, in a handsome recent full navy crushed morocco, banded and gilt; all edges gilt; a couple of tiny marks; mild tanning of outer leaves in one volume, but a very good set.

London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882. First edition : one of 1,000 copies of the first issue text, before the corrections made for the virtually identical second impression. One of Hardy's most original, interesting and controversial novels - a Wessex tale of star-crossed lovers in which he aimed "to make science, not the mere padding of a romance, but the actual vehicle of romance" - "We have known military novels, sporting and dramatic novels, law and police novels, but an astronomical novel never ... The author, in fact, has imagined and described a woman with whom few of his male readers will not fall in love" (contemporary review in The Athenaeum). Three volumes. Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [iv],246,[ii]; [iv],240; [iv],(224)pp. Bound, complete with half-titles, in a very attractive later (early twentieth-century) full tan morocco, banded and extra gilt, by Birdsall; original cloth preserved at rear; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; a couple of faint… Read More

London : J. & C. Brown & Co., (1856). First edition : with the variant undated title-page. "I returned to Scotland Yard to report ..." - the very first appearance in fiction of a Scotland Yard detective - indeed, the first English detective stories. "Waters" of the Yard was the invention of journalist William Russell - the stories originally published in Chambers' Edinburgh Journal between 1849 and 1852, with some of the stories appearing in book form in New York in 1852. The present publication is the first appearance of all eleven, with a final twelfth tale not previously published. Foolscap 8vo (18cm). (310)pp. Wood-engraved frontispiece, engraved by George Measom (1818-1901), later knighted for his charitable work. Original pictorial boards, a dramatic yellowback design in red and black; rebacked with a neat paper spine replacing the fragile lost original; some rubbing and wear; internally a few small marks, spots and slight creases, but overall an attractive copy of a cornerstone of the genre.

London : Charles Knight & Co., [1838-1843]. The first Charles Knight edition. Comprises two volumes each of the comedies, histories and tragedies, as well as the poems, a volume of seventeen doubtful plays sometimes ascribed to Shakespeare (or Shakspere, as Knight insists on having it), together with commendatory verses, a history of critical opinion, material on Shakespeare in Germany, indexes, and a final volume of Knight's full-length biography. All furnished with introductory notices, notes, variant readings, a glossary, music to the songs, etc. - and profusely illustrated throughout by the leading wood-engravers of the day from the designs of William Harvey (1796-1866) and others. Using the latest technology, Charles Knight (1791-1873) was in the vanguard of bringing the price of books within everyday reach and bringing education and edification in their train with the use of copious illustration - here insisting on illustrations of "the realities upon which the imagination of the poet must have… Read More

London : Macmillan & Co., 1887. First edition : one of just 860 copies in the primary binding. The story of Grace Melbury, the faithful Giles Winterborne, and the faithless Edred Fitzpiers. Controversial for its time, but "his loveliest if not his finest book" (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) and "the most beautiful and most noble of Hardy's novels" (William Lyon Phelps) - and indeed Hardy's own favourite - "On taking up 'The Woodlanders' and reading it after many years, I like it as a story best of all". Three volumes. Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],302,[ii]; [iv],328; [iv],316pp. Original holly-green cloth, ruled in black and lettered in gilt; a touch dulled; lightly worn at extremities; endpapers strained at hinges (two with neat repair); vol. i. recased and tightened; vols ii and iii a little shaken and slack; a handful of minor flaws, but a rare cloth set. Purdy pp.54-57.

London : Geoffrey Bles, (1950). First edition. Illustrations and colour frontispiece by Pauline Baynes. The first and best-known of the Narnia chronicles. "It is a kind of modern fairy tale about four children evacuated to an old house in the country during the war. They discover that merely by stepping into a wardrobe they have access to a wonderland of strange creatures and stranger adventures ... his little book may well become a children's classic" (a prophetic review in the Belfast News-Letter, 30th October 1950). Post 8vo (198 x 130mm). (174)pp. Coloured frontispiece. Illustrations. Bound, without final blank, in an elegant recent full green morocco, banded and gilt; a few very minor marks and spots, but a very good copy.

Bath : Old School Press, 2001. First edition : one of twenty copies (of 230) reserved in sheets for binders and signed by both Andrew Motion and the illustrator, Simon Brett. Four extended poems from the then Poet Laureate, delicately hand-printed on Magnani paper, illustrated with evocative and atmospheric wood-engravings by Simon Brett. Post 4to (271 x 190mm). [48]pp. Four wood-engraved illustrations. Bound in black morocco, with delicately shaded pale morocco onlays, in an exquisite designer binding by Kate Holland, winner of the 2006 Mansfield Medal and First Prize for Best Book in the annual Designer Binders competition - the present binding dating from the same period; delicately marbled edges and endpapers; the binding housed in its original velvet-lined black cloth box, decorated with a crescent moon. A fine copy of a beautiful book.

London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1902. First edition. Mason's enduring tale of courage, cowardice and redemption - made into popular films on at least seven occasions from 1915 onwards, of which perhaps the most memorable is that directed by Zoltan Korda and starring Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith, and June Duprez. Crown 8vo (181 x 117mm). viii,338,[vi]pp. Bound in a handsome recent full walnut crushed morocco, banded and gilt, by Bayntun-Riviere; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; very occasional mild spotting, but overall a very good copy indeed, most attractively bound.

London : Macmillan & Co., 1877. A standard edition of the poetry, printed on india paper and published in Macmillan's "Globe Edition" series. Bound in 1883 in a very handsome binding, with fore-edge painting, for the Cambridge scholar-bookseller Robert Bowes (1835-1919) as a gift for his wife Fanny Bowes (1831-1903) on her birthday in June of that year. Inscribed and initialled by Bowes with his wife's name and the date - with a further later inscription in a different hand commemorating her death in 1903. With Bowes' personal "Quod Vis Potes" bookplate bound in. Bowes was a nephew of the publisher Alexander Macmillan (1818-1896) and his partner in the Cambridge bookshop of "Macmillan & Bowes", while his wife Fanny Bowes was Macmillan's sister-in-law. Sold together with the companion edition of "Poetical Works of Walter Scott" (1878), bound to match and evidently part of the original gift. Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo (174 x 115mm). (xii),(626); (xliv),(560)pp. Bound in handsome full citron morocco,… Read More

London : Chapman & Hall, 1879. First edition. A scarce late Trollope, featuring on Sadleir's "A"-list of rarities (XIX Century Fiction, 1951). Disinherited son makes good in the goldfields of Australia, returning home a wealthy man to marry Hester Bolton, but the delightfully wicked Euphemia Smith turns up to claim a prior marriage. Trollope makes interesting use of his Post Office experience to hinge the story on a forged postmark. "Mr Trollope has perhaps never hit upon a story that more strongly arouses the reader's attention and sympathy, and never told one with more mastery of the whole situation, in small things no less than in great" (The Graphic, 26th July 1879). Three volumes. Crown 8vo (181 x 120mm). vi,290; vi,296; vi,302,[ii]pp. Bound, complete with half-titles and final blank, in a most handsome later half morocco, gilt on wide bands and decorated with small onlay flowers, by Zaehnsdorf; all edges gilt; marbled sides and matching endpapers; just a hint of rubbing; a few minor internal… Read More

London : Chapman & Hall, 1881. First edition. Lucy and Ayala Dormer left destitute by the death of their gifted but improvident artist father. "Possibly the most unjustly neglected of all Trollope's novels ... and yet it is one of the most charming ... the lightest and airiest of them all, it has a gaiety and happiness and playfulness that Trollope ... never exceeded ... what vigour of scene and creation, what vitality of action and dialogue it contains" (Hugh Walpole). "The author has not written a better or pleasanter novel for a good many years" (Pall Mall Gazette, 28th May 1881). Three volumes. Crown 8vo (189 x 121mm). iv,280; iv,272; iv,(278)pp. Bound (without final blank, no half-titles or advertisements called for) in an elegant later (mid-twentieth-century) half red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; top edges gilt; one or two tiny marks and edge-spots, but a very good, clean and fresh set of an uncommon late title.

London : Bradbury & Evans, 1848. First edition, bound from the original monthly parts published between January 1847 and July 1848. The parts in first state, with the "rustic" heading to the first chapter, the inadvertent "Mr. Pitt" rather than "Sir Pitt" on p.453, and the notorious "Marquis of Steyne" wood-engraving (p.336) - an illustration said to have been suppressed, under threat of court action, for its allegedly libellous resemblance to the Third Marquis of Hertford. This has been disputed, but the portrait certainly only appears in the earliest copies of the book - and disappeared very early in the book's life cycle. Demy 8vo (214 x 131mm). xvi,624pp. Etched plates and highly entertaining text illustrations by Thackeray himself. Bound, without half-title, in a recent half green calf, banded and richly gilt, with burgundy label, in a pleasing imitation of contemporary style; marbled sides; plates spotted in varying degrees, but the text clean; a… Read More