Rare books from Wykeham Books

Charles Knight & Co., Shaftesbury, first edition, large-paper copy, 1823,. Half-leather and marbled boards, leather spine-label, 4to,. xxvi, 127 pp, 13 plates (as called for - but without the additional plate sometimes found), folding plan, genealogical tables, list of subscribers, text illustrations. A complete copy of Rutter's appealing and timely work on William Beckford's extraordinary creation at Fonthill Abbey : within just two years of the book's publication the Abbey's huge tower was to come crashing down leading to the demolition of the Abbey buildings shortly afterwards. This copy has all the "embellishments" listed by Rutter within the book, arranged as intended there, including the three coloured aquatints ( the frontispiece/plate VIII : Altar Piece, Plate VII: Interior of St Michael's Gallery and Plate VI : King Edward's Gallery), the 10 black-and-white plates and the folding plan "Fonthill Domain". Also present are the three genealogical… Read More

Maggs Bros., London, for the Broxbourne Library, first edition, 1956. Limited edition of 300 copies. Quarter vellum and cloth, leather spine-label, top edge gilt, folio, 35 cm,. ix, [1], 250, [1] pp, ills (some mounted, some colour). 119 entries. A selection of bindings from the famous library of Albert Ehrman. This is one of Howard Nixon's most important catalogues since it focusses on previously unpublished bindings and aims to describe and illustrate as wide as possible a selection of typical styles, so producing a history of taste and design in European bookbinding. Nixon provides a wealth of information which is not limited to the particular bindings described, but often relates them to examples in the British Library collection. Printed by Brooke Crutchley at the Cambridge University Press. Boards slightly rubbed, vellum somewhat darkened with some spotting, spine-label showing some wear with some loss of gilt text, contents Very Good.

Harvey Miller Publishers, London, first editions,1978-1996. 6 vols in 9, cloth, folio,. illustrations, some colour and tipped in. The set comprises: I Alexander, J.J.G. : Insular Manuscripts 6th-9th Century, 1978; II Temple, E. : AngloSaxon Manuscripts 900-1066, 1976; III Kauffmann, C.M. : Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190; IV Morgan, N.J. : Early Gothic Manuscripts, 1190-1285, 2 vols, 1982-88; V Sandler, L.F. : Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, 2 vols, 1986; Scott, K.L. : Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, 2 vols, 1996. A few pencil ticks to one volume, otherwise a Very Good set in in dustwrapper with minor wear and some skewing of the two-tone colour to that of Volume I.

Faksimile Verlag Luzern, Lucerne, first edition, 2005. Limited edition of 980 facsimile copies numbered in Arabic numerals. Facsimile bound in red velvet with four gilded silver fittings by Steinbrener of Schärding, with accompanying commentary volume in red cloth, 8vo, presented together in a plexiglass case, 22 cm,. Facsimike: 73 folios with 46 miniatures and 74 painted initials; commentary: 411, [1] pp, ills (some colour). A very fine facsimile of the only illuminated manucript of Jacques Bruyant's "The Way of Poverty or Riches", together with the commentary volume (in German). Commentary includes: Eberhard König - Vorwort: Ein Buch in Philadelphia; William Lang - Die Handschriftensammlung der Free Library in Philadelphia und das Livre du Chastel de Labour; Gabriele Bartz and Eberhard König - Das Buch vom erfüllten Leben; Die Gestaltung des Textet durch die Malerei; Der Maler; Ein fürstlicher Aufwand für bürgerliche Weitsicht; Zusammenfassung in… Read More

Printed for presentation to the members of the Roxburghe Club, London, first edition, 1999. Edition of 300 copies of which 160 were for sale. Elephant folio, navy blue quarter morocco Roxburghe binding with vellum corners, 64 cm,. xiii, 282 pp, portrait and 42 colour plates, together with a separate 32 page monochrome facsimile booklet of the "Icones" housed in a pocket on the inside back cover (as issued). A vast volume - the largest Roxburghe Club book - containing the text of the English translation of the Itinerario published in London by John Wolfe, 1598, and with a facsimile of:Icones, habitus gestusque indorum ac lusitanorum per Indiam viventium ... (Amstelreodami: Apud Cornelium Nicolai, 1604). The copies for sale comprised (A) 40 specials numbered I-XL bound in quarter-morocco and with an extra portfolio set of 40 plates; and (B) 120 ordinary copies numbered 1-120 bound in buckram without the extra plates. This copy - one of the not-for -sale 140 - falls somewhere between the… Read More

Privately printed, New York, first edition, 1940. Limited edition of 150 copies, printed at the Morrill Press. 3 vols, leather spine-labels, 4to, 31 cm,. xli, 377, [2] + v, 379-791, [2] + 793-1303, [2] pp, lx leaves of plates, frontispiece signed by Carl H. Pforzheimer. 1105 entries for books; plus manuscript entries numbered 1a-169. The splendid first edition of the catalogue of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library of English Literature, 1475- 1700. The Collection -acquired in 1986 by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center - is "principally one of ‘classical' English books from the beginning of printing to 1700; that is, of major literature between Henry VII and William and Mary. It contains most of the great monuments of Renaissance poetry and prose, from Caxton, Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare to Bacon, Donne, Milton, the English Bible, Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration drama, and the earliest translations of major foreign authors. The heart of it is set out fully in the famous… Read More

Original drawing for James Ingram's The Memorials of Oxford, 1834-37 (in an engraving by John Le Keux). Drawing, matted and framed,. 93 x 141 mm (image size). This is Frederick Mackenzie's original pencil and wash drawing of the Reading Room of the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, heightened with gum arabic, 93 x 141 mm (image size), signed by the artist "F. Mackenzie", matted and framed. The drawing, as engraved by John Le Keux, was published in James Ingram's The Memorials of Oxford, 1834-37. The Reading Room was designed by James Gibbs and is one of the finest Baroque interiors in England, set in one of Oxford's most striking buildings. Very Good.

Printed for presentation to members of the Roxburghe Club, Oxford, first edition, 1950. Edition of 100 copies of which 50 were offered for sale. Roxburghe quarter-morocco and boards, large 8vo, 35 x 25 cm,. lxvi, 383 pp, 7 collotype plates. The volume presents some 541 letters in Latin with English introduction and annotations.From the introduction: "The Liber Epistolaris is a collection of Latin letters written throughout, it is thought, in the hand of Richard de Bury, the later Lord Chancellor, Bishop of Durham, diplomat and bibliophile. In this volume Bury stands revealed twenty years before the Philobiblon was written, as a calligrapher, a careless copyist, and no textual critic. This judgement undoubtedly reflects upon some of the more extravagant claims put forward on behalf of Bury as a scholar, or even as a 'humanist'; to what extent it has also a bearing on the authorship of the Philobiblon must be left to the editor, when he appears, of the definitive edition of that work.… Read More

e typographeo Clarendoniano [/Academico], Oxonii, first editions, 1787 - 1821 - 1835. 2 vols in 3, mixed set, 1787 and 1821 volumes contemporary boards, folio, 1835 volume recent black library buckram, gilt spine-title, folio, 45 x 28 cm,. ii, 98, 327, [41] + [2], 143 + viii, [145]-730 pp, 9 plates. Rare in the market - only one copy traced at auction, in 1959 (£1500) when Sotheby's appear to have been understandably misled into thinking that one of four parts was missing. In fact the work comprises three confusingly named elements: Pars Prima (1787), Partis secundae volumen primum.. (1821) and Pars secunda (1835), all present here. The 1787 first part of the Catalogue of the Oriental MSS., comprising those in Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Coptic, was compiled over many years by John Uri, a Hungarian, who had studied Oriental literature under Schultens, at Leyden. Uri's work was a pioneering attempt to make the Bodleian's already substantial… Read More

The "Civil and Military Gazette" Press, Lahore, first edition,1885. Edition of 250 copies. Contemporary blind-patterned cloth, (original printed wrappers and advertisement leaves if any not retained*), 8vo,. 125 pp. *David Richards' authoritative bibliography notes that the advertisements present in many though not all copies do not form part of the book. Includes the first appearance of 'The Phantom Rickshaw'. Quartette was sold, on the 19-year old Kipling's initiative, as the 1885 Christmas supplement to the Civil & Military Gazette, the Indian newspaper for which he was then journalist and general provider of material. It includes 16 works - eight in prose and eight poems - by Kipling himself and by his parents and sister, the most notable being Rudyard's "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes, C.E." and "The Phantom 'Rickshaw". Only 250 copies were printed and Kipling wrote amusingly to his cousin Margaret Burne-Jones about the chaotic… Read More

Printed for presentation to members of the Roxburghe Club, Oxford, first edition, 1952. Cloth, top edge gilt, folio, 40 cm, title printed in red and black,. 22 pp, 12 plates printed by Emery Walker. The manuscript is now known as the Hunterian Psalter. Millar's volume includes a transcript of the kalendar and litany. The ms. was acquired in 1945 by E. G. Millar for his own library, with the British Museum in view as its ultimate destination. This is one of the most hard-to-find of the Roxburghe Club's palaeographical volumes. Barker 2016. Boards somewhat splayed and with a few marks, otherwise Very Good.

Printed for the editor, and sold by Mr. T. Payne and Son, Mr. Benjamin White, Mr. L. Davis, Mr. Dodsley, Mr. Robson, Mr. Nichol, Mess. Leigh and Soleby [sic], Mr. Collins, and the rest of the booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland. London, second edition, 1785-1790. 3 vols, modern calf-backed marbled boards, 4to,. [8] xliv [=xliii], 684, [1], + [2], 685-1308, [2] + [2], 1309-1875, [1] pp, 3 portraits and 8 plates of specimen printing, ills. Complete with the list of subscribers, index pages, Directions to binder and portrait and specimen plates as listed in those Directions (the fourth specimen being bound before p 309 rather than p 307). A further folded plate of specimen printing appears in volume 1 after p 508, perhaps inserted by a previous owner.. Volume I is the1785 first issue with the error "Soleby" in the imprint. According to Bigmore & Wyman: "The Typographical Antiquities is the great storehouse for the History of English Printing. The original edition [of 1749], for… Read More

typis Johannis à Waesberge, bibliop., Trajecti ad Rhenum, first edition, 1653. Later wrappers and paper spine-label, woodcut printer's vignette on title-page, title in red and black, 4to, 20 cm,. [8].,465, [32] pp.Signatures: [three dots]4 A-3R4 [-3R4]. Scarce first edition, and a handsome copy, of this early modern discussion of auctions and the complex laws governing them. Matthaeus' work is one of the earliest and most extensive works on auction sales in the 17th century from a legal point of view; the rules governing them, their location, the sale of confiscated merchandise, etc. Anton Matthaeus was an eminent Dutch professor of jurisprudence and criminal law at Utrecht and according to Pollard and Ehrman 'produced the most elaborate of all these treatises on auctions'. - Matthaeus commences by defining the requisites for auctions as being: advertisement, admission to the public, and a system of bidding. In the case of stolen or confiscated property, for example,… Read More

Public Records Office of Ireland, Dublin, first edition, 1874 - 1884. 5 volumes, elephant folio, title-pages in brown and red, or black and red, with vignettes, top edges gilt, 56 cm,. plates, maps, plans, charts, facs, tables, genealogical tables, coats of arms, including numerous double and folding plates. The superb record of major Irish manuscripts, an early success for Sir Henry James' photozincography reproduction. A complete set, comprising vol. 1 to c. 1150; vol. 2 c. 1150 to c. 1300; vol. 3 c.1300 to c. 1550; vol. 4 part 1 c. 1550 to c. 1620; vol. 4 part 2 c. 1620 to c. 1720. The volumes include extensive introductions, the facsimiles, transcriptions of manuscripts in Latin, Gaelic, Anglo-Norman and English, with translations into English. Some of the documents collected by Gilbert were destroyed when the Public Records Office was burned down in 1922, making this work an essential record. As an indication of the nature of the contents, Part I includes reproductions of content from:… Read More

'Printers' Register' Office, London, first book edition "reprinted from the Printers' Register", 1883. Edition of "a very limited number" - from the preface. Contemporary green half-morocco and marbled boards, gilt spine-title, marbled endpapers, 4to, 27.5 cm. xvii, 1 blank leaf, 144 pp, occasional text illustrations, 24 lithographic plates. A rare and interesting work by the printer and bibliographer William Blades in which he aims " to give a descriptive list of Medals connected with Printers or the Art of Printing, accompanied by such illustrative remarks as may be deemed instructive or interesting. These medals are much more numerous and of much greater importance than any one at first would believe; and no attempt has hitherto been made to edit them, although they open up the whole field of historical and practical printing, and without any metaphor may be described as containing in themselves a complete history of the art." Blades' work was… Read More