Rare books from Neil Pearson Rare Books

London: Cape, 1929. 8vo, pp. 448. Original salmon boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Bookplate to front pastedown. Boards a little marked, endpapers a trifle browned, but a very good copy in a very good, unclipped dustwrapper, browned at spine, chipping with slight loss to head of spine, and one or two very small closed tears. Photographic frontispiece of author by Albert Cracknell, seven illustrations through text. Illustrated dustwrapper by Len Lye. First edition, first issue, with the Sassoon poem on pp. 341-3 present. Viscount Esher's copy, with his bookplate. Sassoon's poem is missing from later copies; complaints and the threat of legal action from the poet resulted in its removal.

London: Park Lane Films, 1957. Shooting script, 33 mimeographed pp., stapled in to oversized red card wrappers. Typed title label to front cover, typed ownership label ('Park Lane Films Ltd., Quadrex House, Park Lane, W.1.') to inside front cover. Contents very clean, covers a little creased at edges, and with one small (1cm) closed tear to leading edge. MORDECAI RICHLER'S FIRST SCREENPLAY, FOR ONE OF PETER SELLERS' MOST RARELY-SEEN FILMS. In 1955 Peter Sellers was a huge radio star, thanks mostly to The Goon Show, but the film career which would later define him was yet to begin. 1955 was the year he appeared in The Ladykillers, his first major feature, with his idol Alec Guinness. Both the film and Sellers' performance garnered excellent reviews, but somehow it failed to launch him, and for the next two years he continued to work on The Goon Show, appearing on screen only in spin-offs from his radio work -- most notably The Case Of The Mukkinese Battle-Horn (1956), the… Read More

N.p. [London]: N.p. 1967-8. A small quantity of original typescripts, printed typescripts and photocopied typescripts, many secured with staple to top left corner, and many with handwritten amendments, additions and deletions. Housed in a blue card folder bearing a typed white paper label label reading TERRY JONES & MIKE PALIN. Some wear and toning consistent with their age, staples mostly rusted, otherwise in near fine condition. A SMALL QUANTITY OF ORIGINAL, PRINTED AND PHOTOCOPIED TYPESCRIPTS OF SKETCHES WRITTEN BY TERRY JONES AND MICHAEL PALIN FOR FROST ON SUNDAY AND THE FROST REPORT, WITH EXTENSIVE CORRECTIONS, AMENDMENTS AND REWRITES BY BOTH. Terry Jones and Michael Palin first met as undergraduates at Oxford and, after graduating, began writing together for TV comedy shows. All the future Pythons save Terry Gilliam worked together for the first time on The Frost Report (1966-7), which also featured, both as writers and performers, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. The show ran for… Read More

London: Faber, 1965. 8vo, pp. 186. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt on spine. Preliminaries age-toned and spotted, spine ends a little rubbed and worn, otherwise a near fine copy in a good only, price-clipped dustwrapper, inner and outer tape reinforcements to spine and spine ends, heavily rubbed and worn with some loss to corners. First edition, sixth impression, INSCRIBED IN 1968 TO TONY HANCOCK BY TED NOFFS, FOUNDER OF THE WAYSIDE CHAPEL, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: 'To my good friend Tony Hancock from Ted Noffs 1968.' In 1968, his life and career chasing each other ever downwards, Tony Hancock travelled to Australia to make a television series he hoped would rescue both. But the show was doomed from the start: poor scripts and the star's rampant alcoholism combined to catastrophic effect and, with only three of the projected eight episodes completed, Hancock killed himself with an overdose of barbiturates. Shortly after his arrival in Australia Hancock had been introduced to Ted Noffs, a… Read More

London: N.p. [BBC], 1956. 34 mimeographed pp., 5 typed inserts, all secured with split pin to top left. A little edgeworn and dusty, but a well preserved copy. First edition. TERRY NATION'S EXTENSIVELY REVISED WORKING COPY, WITH HIS SIGNATURE, AND WITH A SIGNED HANDWRITTEN NOTE TO PRODUCER ALASTAIR SCOTT JOHNSON TO TITLE PAGE. NO RECORDING OF THIS EPISODE EXISTS. Floggit's, starring Elsie and Doris Waters, ran for three series on BBC Radio between 1956 and 1959. Transplanting their Workers' Playtime characters to a family-run general store, this unexceptional and now very dated show featured a phenomenal supporting cast: Anthony Newley, Joan Sims (whose name is misspelt 'SIMMS' on the title page of this script), Hugh Paddick -- and Ronnie Barker, whose first radio appearance this was. It's writing team was equally stellar. At the same time (1956) as providing scripts for this middle-of-the-road radio comedy, Freeman, Junkin and Nation were also working on Idiot's Weekly… Read More

London: Faber, 1972. 8vo, pp. 80. Original printed card wrappers. Some offsetting to preliminaries caused by newspaper clippings once held in the book, slight darkening to spine (which is uncreased), small ownership signature to ffep.. A better than very good copy. First edition, SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR. This issue precedes the hardbound edition. This, Heaney's third full collection, is strangely scarce -- especially signed.

Verona: Plain Wrapper Press, 1977. 8vo, pp. 12, unpaginated. Original olive stiff paper wrappers with foldover flaps, title in brown to front panel. Sewn binding. Uncut and unopened. A fine, unread, unopened copy. Woodcut illustration by Fulvio Testa to [p.6] opposite the single page of text. First edition, one of 180 copies. 2pp. TLS FROM THE PRINTER RICHARD-GABRIEL RUMMONDS TO NOVELIST AND ART CRITIC FREDERIC TUTEN LAID IN, DISCUSSING THE RECENT MOVE OF THE PLAIN WRAPPER OPERATION TO VERONA, AND PLANS FOR THE PRINTING AND PUBLICATION OF BOOK. One of the pre-eminent handpress printers of the twentieth century, the American Richard-Gabriel Rummonds founded his Plain Wrapper Press in the mid-1960s. A meeting with Verona-based Giovanni Mardersteig, master printer at the Officina Bodoni, convinced Rummonds to move his operation to Verona in 1971. The letter accompanying the book is packed with information about the press in general, and this title in particular: 'Burgess wrote this poem one… Read More

London: Secker and Warburg, 1971. 8vo, pp. 249. Original printed orange wrappers. Spine a little rolled, a little light edgewear and bumping. About near fine. Uncorrected advance proof copy. EDITOR JOHN BLACKWELL'S COPY WITH HIS INITIALS TO FRONT WRAPPER, AND HIS CORRECTIONS THROUGHOUT. John Blackwell joined Secker and Warburg in the late 1960s when the imprint was still an independent company run by Fredric Warburg himself, and was a constant presence through the company's innumerable corporate takeovers, mergers and changes of managing director. As well as editing Sharpe, John Blackwell played literary midwife to J. M. Coetzee, Michael Moorcock, Tom McGuane, Malcolm Bradbury and Louis de Bernieres, among many others. His emendations in this, his own copy, are made in red ink, and are mostly typographical and grammatical corrections; here and there, deletions have been made in blue.

London: N.p. [BBC], 1956. 23 mimeographed pp., secured with split pin to top left. Revisions, annotations and doodles throughout, some dampstaining to upper half. First edition. CO-WRITER LARRY STEPHENS' COPY, WITH HIS OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE TO FRONT PAGE AND WITH HIS REVISIONS AND ELABORATE DOODLES THROUGHOUT. 'Larry was an ex-commando captain, who had seen some tough service in the Far East. He had a natural flair for comedy scriptwriting and shared with the Goons their irreverence and sense of the ridiculous, and also their artistic and musical leanings. He was both an able pianist and a meticulous illustrator of the definitive Goon character, with which he was wont to adorn the pages of his script.' (Jimmy Grafton, The Goon Show Companion). Larry Stephens is one of the more elusive figures in British comedy history. He and Spike Milligan were kindred spirits. Both were jazz fanatics (Stephens was a skilled pianist); both had faced the terror of war (Stephens as a Commando… Read More

London: N.p., 1953. 4pp. typed legal document, horizontal fold across centre. Some old staining across the lower portion of the document, which is otherwise very well preserved. Legal contract dated 1 December 1953, SIGNED BY ENID BLYTON. The contract is an agreement between Darrell Waters of Darrell Waters Ltd., the company set up by Enid Blyton in 1950 to handle her affairs; a representative of the publishers Latimer House Ltd., and Enid Blyton herself. Under the terms of the contract, Latimer House undertake to pay a royalty of five per cent to Blyton for the publishing rights to My Third Enid Blyton Book, which was eventually published in 1955. A very scarce piece of signed Blyton ephemera.

N.p. [New York]: N.p., N.d. [1950]. 10 pp. loose leaf, corrected typescript, rectos only, business card to top left of p.2. Two pages in each of five acid-free plastic sleeves, the whole housed in a red plastic binder. First page heavily browned, others lightly age-toned. Very well preserved. AMENDED TYPESCRIPT OF THE SHORT STORY Mr. McGEE'S BIG DAY, PREPARED FOR ITS PUBLICATION IN ELLERY QUEEN MAGAZINE. UNSIGNED, BUT WITH THE CARD OF WODEHOUSE'S AGENT SCOTT MEREDITH AFFIXED TO TOP LEFT OF SECOND PAGE. Wodehouse managed to smuggle his way into Ellery Queen, a magazine rather more hard-boiled than his usual outlets, with this story of how a hotel detective's day goes rapidly downhill when he recognises in the lobby a face from his crime-fighting past. The typescript has a small number of minor textual amendments, possibly Wodehouse's, and many pencilled editorial and typesetting instructions in an unknown hand. The story was never reprinted or anthologised. Published as McIlvaine D21.1

London: Herbert Jenkins, 1940. 8vo, pp. 284, 4 pp. advertisements bound in at rear. Original red boards, lettered in black to spine. Illustrated dustwrapper. Offsetting to endpapers, otherwise a near fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper with just the lightest of wear to corners and head of spine. First edition. A wonderful collection of short stories featuring Ukridge, Mr. Mulliner, and Bingo Little -- a different roster of stories featured in the US edition of this title, published a month later -- and here presented in a beautifully preserved copy. McIlvaine A62a

London: Alston Rivers, 1909. Small 8vo, pp. 122, 4 pp. advertisements bound in at rear. Original illustrated stiff paper wrappers. Housed in a red folding box, title in gilt to spine. Corners a trifle bumped, rear endpaper a little dusty, two small pieces of clear tape to ffep. strengthening join with spine. Ffep. also bears an early ownership inscription. Otherwise a much better than very good copy. Line drawings throughout by C. Harrison. First edition. 'There was once a millionaire who, having devoted a long life to an unceasing struggle to amass his millions, looked up from his death-bed and said plaintively, 'And now, perhaps, someone will kindly tell me what it's all been about.' I get that feeling sometimes, looking back. Couldn't I, I ask myself, have skipped one or two of these works of mine and gone off and played golf without doing English literature any irreparable harm? Take, for instance, that book The Swoop, which was one of the paper-covered shilling books so prevalent around 1909.… Read More

London: A&C Black, 1902. 8vo, pp. 272. Original blue boards, lettered in silver to spine, loving cup in silver to front panel. One small and slight scuff mark to centre of spine, light wear to spine ends, corners a trifle bumped. Offsetting to endpapers, and very light and very occasional spotting to text edges. Lettering bright, and with no sunning to spine. Frontispiece and nine plates by R. Noel Pocock. First edition of the author's first book. First issue, with no advertisements, and with silver loving cup to front board. First published in serial (and slightly condensed) form in Public School Magazine, January--March 1902. '[I]n 1900, [boys' magazine] The Captain appeared, and in the first number was a serial by Fred Swainson called Acton's Feud. It began, I remember, 'Shannon, the old international, had brought a hot side down to play the school...' and if there has ever been a better opening line than that, I have never come across it. It was something entirely new in school stories -- the real… Read More

London: Collins, 1971. 8vo, pp. 222. Original pale green coarse grain boards, lettered in brown to spine. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrated dust jacket. A near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with just a little dulling to spine. Illustrations by Mary Shepard. Seventh reprint, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO FRONT FREE ENDPAPER: 'Mary & Raymond McGrath, with many greetings - PL Travers September 1973'. Small Father Christmas label affixed beside the inscription.