Rare books from Christian White Rare Books Ltd.

Hong Kong: Unpublished, 1886. Diary of a young British officer serving with the China Squadron, based in Hong Kong and patrolling Chinese and Japanese waters between 1886-1889. Parker writes in a small octavo which is bound in black textured cloth over thin boards, chipping to spine covering; decorative printed endpapers. Ruled leaves with most stapled gatherings now loose from the glued binding. The manuscript runs to 118 unnumbered pages written in an easily legible hand using black ink plus blanks. Parker sets out his remit on the first flyleaf: 'W.H. Parker. Diary of the 2nd Commission of H.M.S. Linnet Commissioned at Hong Kong on the 7th January 1886 and Paid off on the 24th January 1889.' The diary proper begins 17th November 1885 when Parker 'Embarked on board H M Troops Ship Oronto' in Plymouth arriving a few weeks later 'Anchored at Hong Kong ships lying there Audacious Flagship... Commodore's Ship Daring Linnet Midge Espoir Ramble Gunboats.' Parker's entries tend to be short and to the… Read More

Edinburgh: Unpublished, 1850. Family archive of the birth control pioneer and sexologist Marie Stopes which relates to her Scottish Carmichael forebears including a portrait in oils of her mother the women's rights campaigner Charlotte Carmichael painted by her grandfather the Scots landscape artist James Ferrier Carmichael. The collection is housed in a large portfolio on which Marie Stopes has written 'M C Stopes - art' as well as adding explanatory annotations to many of the works. Thus a portrait of Charlotte Carmichael has Stopes's note: 'By [James Ferrier] Carmichael - of mother etc - done in 1850? The stool is the one I still have'. Clearly Stopes took on the role of family archivist, preserving images of her distinguished Carmichael forebears and including in the portfolio just a single drawing of her own. Provenance: from the estate of Marie Stopes's son the philosopher Henry Stopes-Roe. Of the 30 or so items included, the most significant, in reverse chronological order are: ANN DURWARD… Read More

London: Harrison & Co, 1791. Very good, polished calf, gilt spine decoration, upper board becoming detached. Very good 1791

London: A Strahan and T Cadell, 1787. Fourth edition in most attractive contemporary binding of half polished calf over marbled boards with morocco spine labels. Both volumes have the book label of 'T Barton' and laid in 3 armorial bookplates of 'Kerrison'. Volume I has lost the top 2cm of the title page where a previous owner has neatly removed an earlier ownership inscription. A clean fresh copy internally. Moore, a Scottish medic by training, wrote the letters after undertaking a Grand Tour in the company of the youthful 8th Duke of Argyll. 1787

London: Thomas Kelly, J Tallis, 1821. Two volumes, volume 1 published by Thomas Kelly, volume 2 published by J Tallis and dated 1821. Very good in a contemporary binding of half calf over marbled boards, gilt titles on a red spine labels. Elaborate engraved title pages and frontispieces featuring the British royal family and the author Mrs Catherine G Ward. Very good 1821

Hollywood and England: Unpublished, 1934. Extensive Hollywood archive of the MGM child film-star Freddie Bartholomew, September 1934-1944, curated by his guardian and aunt, Cissie Bartholomew. The archive starts as the Bartholomews moved to Hollywood for Freddie's career-making debut as David Copperfield which was released early in 1935. This led to a decade of huge success for the child-star which is documented in this collection of photographs, postcards and diaries, including original photographs of Bartholomew with Judy Garland - his co-star in the 1938 picture, Listen Darling. FREDDIE BARTHOLOMEW POSTCARDS (9) Chronicling Californian road-trips in 1935 around the time of filming Anna Karenina with Greta Garbo. Freddie gushes about Yosemite and Palm Springs with just occasional hiccups as in October 'I have sprained an ankle and I am on crutches. It puts your whole body out of order. Love Freddie'. FREDDIE AND CISSIE POSTCARDS (6) Jointly written or on Freddie's behalf by Cissie B: 'We are… Read More

Beautifully extra-illustrated edition with five full-page original pen and ink drawings by the New Zealand artist, Richard de Bohun Lovell Smith interpreting Huxley's Leda poem.Expensively bound in half crushed dark green morocco over light green buckram by the London bindery, Sangorski and Sutcliffe. A little rubbing only to outer hinges; a very attractive binding. Light offsetting to the handmade paper flyleaves from the green leather turn-ins. Huxley has signed the limitation page in blue ink, copy number 57. Internally a fine copy with the frontispiece after Michelangelo: [8] pp 80; Frontispiece & 5 inserted original illustrations.Lovell Smith's five pen and ink drawings (22x17cm) each have a tissue guard. The first 'When Leda with her maidens the shore Of bright Eurotas came...' precedes the Leda poem on page 1, showing naked nymphs dancing in a glade, pen and ink with highlighting in grey and white gouache. The pictures are framed in a large cartouche, each signed by 'R de B Lovell Smith 1949',… Read More

J J Thomson announces the discovery of the first sub-atomic particle, the electron, in this journal article published in the Philosophical Magazine in October 1897.Bound together as Volume XLIV, 44 - Fifth Series - for the period July-Decembe 1897, this volume has been deaccessioned from the library of Venice's Istituto Veneto Scienze Lettere e DArti - small oval stamp at the tail of the title page only. Small shelfmark label: 'Periodici B. 171' to the tail of the front pastedown. Bound in half sheep over handsome marbled boards, gilt decoration to spine and a second 'Periodici' paper label at the tail of the backstrip. Some browning to margins of end leaves, otherwise a near fine copy.Thomson's ground breaking paper occupies pp. 293-316, of Vol. 44, no. 269 (October 1897) of this volume. It is preceded by a sequence of fold-out diagrams from a previous paper. In 1897 Thomson solved the riddle about the nature of cathode rays by proving that the they consist of negatively charged particles, the mass… Read More

Archive of letters, photographs, drawings, published books and articles of Percy A Wells (1867-1956), a cabinet maker and disciple of William Morris, who lectured, taught and wrote extensively during the later phase of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. Wells, whose typescript autobiography is included in the archive followed an apprenticeship in London's City Road with early practice as a cabinet maker before working alongside William Lethaby at the Central School and subsequently leading the cabinet department at the Shoreditch Technical Institution in London. His two most significant works, both published by Batsford, were Modern Cabinet Work (1909) which brought him to a wider audience and Furniture for Small Houses (1924) but as revealed by this archive, his work went much wider. PERCY WELLS' SKETCHBOOK c1900-1920Small quarto, c200 pages, bound in quarter roan over textured black boards; back strip largely missing; binding remains intact. Inscribed in ink to first blank 'Percy A Wells' with… Read More

Paris: 'Chez la veuve Etienne libraire Rue St. Tarquer, vis a vis la rue du Plastre' manuscript facsimile title page, 1747. Fair copy in French from the 1740s of much of Rollin's Histoire Ancienne together with an original continuation of the work up to the present day: 'De L'histoire depuis. J.[esus] C[hrist]' which deals with 'Le Royaume d'Angleterre' and the execution of Mary Stuart by Elizabeth I. Small quarto bound in parchment over pasteboard with traces of printed material visible within the binding; scuffing to extremities but overall a very good binding. Written in black ink on paper with horizontal chain lines, watermark incorporating a Fleur de Lis design - apparently a different paper stock later in the manuscript: [4] pp361; [4] [pp] 34 [6] [pp] 26. Calligraphic manuscript half title 'Histoire Ancienne' with a signature below, closed tear near gutter; full manuscript title page, partially calligraphic, again with a signature presumably of the copyist - perhaps 'M. Bayle' or 'M. Royle'?… Read More

Hartley Wintney: Unpublished, 1935. Family photo-album recording the Arts and Crafts Hampshire home and garden built for himself by the Scottish-born architect Robert Weir Schultz who lived there for 50 years. 116 photographs mounted in a commercially produced oblong photo album, 33x25cm, 'The Beaumont Album', Johnson London. Bound in deep reddish/black shiny cloth with silk ties through the spine. Bookseller's ticket of 'W E Baxter Lewes' on the front paste-down. The silver gelatin photographs are in a mixture of formats, early images 9x13cm with later snapshots a little smaller. 116 photographs appear through the album, a few loose, beginning with a portrait photograph of Schultz before the front door of the house now known as Weirs Barn, aged around 75, dating the album to the middle 1930s. The early pages of the album picture the arts and crafts garden at Hartley Wintney, a long semi-covered walk, statuary, before moving on to a sequence of images of the garden peopled by extended family… Read More

New England & Old England: Various, 1970. Twenty six books and magazines containing criticism or works by Sylvia Plath, owned by the poet's sister in law, Olwyn Hughes, at least one of which bears her critical annotation relating to Plath. Olwyn Hughes only met Plath half a dozen times and their relationship wasn't easy. After the American poet's early death Ted Hughes' sister became one of the guardians of Plath's reputation, dealing with publishers, critics and biographers. These volumes bear witness to these decades of service to her brother and to Plath herself. Olwyn Hughes' annotations to Ariel Ascending pay particular attention to Ted Hughes' essay on Sylvia Plath and her Journals and Alvarez's memoir. After Hughes' death in 2016 these books were inherited by Plath and Hughes' daughter Frieda Hughes who consigned them to auction earlier this year; most still have the Bonhams bookmark from this sale inserted. Please contact Christian White Rare Books Ltd for more information or images of… Read More

Los Angeles & London: Unpublished, 1986. Remarkably extensive Eliott Kastner archive of the production of Pierce Brosnan's first leading role in which he played a French anthropologist in New York who discovers a group of urban nomads who are not who they seem. The pile of documents sits 10 inches thick and comprises, in brief: Production - Central Files Kastner: Chain of Title original and copy documents October 1983 to February 1986; Settlements of Agreement, Assignments of Rights, Registration of Copyright, Library of Congress Certificate of Recordation, Certificate of Authorship etc with loose copies and originals of similar c.100 pages; Collected Correspondence- 'All Past Correspondence Including Casting Notes for Nomads, MGM/UA Entertainment Co, Washington Boulevard, Culver City, CA - photocopies of letters 1981/1982, approx 100 pages, yellow card covers ref John McTiernan, Jane Fonda declining a role, and casting of Eileen Flax. 'Nomads' the new novel by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, paperback, Bantam… Read More

Mills College, Oakland: Unpublished, 1891. Richly varied photo album depicting student life at Mills College in Oakland shortly after it was chartered as the first women's college west of the Rockies. Large oblong album (15x11inches) 'Photographs' in gilt to upper, textured cloth covered board. Light wear to edges but the binding remains sound, though some weakening to the cloth covering over the inner hinges. Bookseller label of 'Hirsch, Kahn & Co.... Photo Supplies, 333 Kearny Street - San Francisco' to front pastedown, above a pressed plant laid diagonally across the leaf. 25 card leaves on which are mounted 39 large format photos (c8x5 inches) in rectangular, square and circular formats and 150 smaller format image (c4x3 inches) including one cyanotype on the first leaf, otherwise albumen prints, mostly annotated with places, dates and names. Much finger marking to the textured cloth covering the cardboard pages, a little insect damage to some leaves but images almost entirely unaffected. Almost… Read More

High quality photo-album by an Anglo-Canadian artist who became a leading figure in the depiction of indigenous peoples in British Columbia and Alaska. The collection is housed in a commercially produced photo album bound in red buckram, slightly stained and scuffed, 'Reminiscences' in gilt on the upper cover; 12 card leaves with 8 window-mounted sepia photographs per leaf, so 96 images in all, 10.5x7.5 cm each. Inside the front cover in white ink, Pitts records that the album is 'Containing principally, photos taken during walking tour round Norfolk and Suffolk coast August 1911.' In fact this covers three quarters of the album; the last section is devoted to African images made while Pitts worked on railway construction in South Africa. Pitts' East Anglian photos begin around Orford on the Suffolk coast and follow the coastal route that Pitts described in his diary (held by the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives) with mostly architectural images of Dunwich, Walberswick, a beach scene at… Read More