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First edition. Astronomer Pontécoulant correctly predicted the return of Halley’s comet in 1835. This little guide contains a history of its previous appearance and observers, a discourse on comets in general, an account of Halley’s comet’s appearance in 1759, and De Pontécoulant’s predictions for the passage of the comet in August-October 1853. The folding chart by Eugène Bouvard illustrates its course through the heavens. Worldcat: Cambridge (England), King’s College, London, National Maritime Museum and Huntington Library only outside France.

A well-known London panorama from Western Stone Wharf by the New Palace of Westminster to the Royal Victualling Office at Deptford Dockyard in two long views. The buildings at Westminster show the Houses of Parlaiment as they are today, but before the building of St. Stephen’s tower (Big Ben) in 1859. The publisher, Bondy Azulay, occupied several booths beside the Thames Tunnel, then under construction, selling a wide range of London souvenirs including panoramas and peepshows.

Sole edition of the first published work on grouse shooting. It was well known to Wordsworth, who quoted it in his poem An Evening Walk. Jackson, p. 133; Schwerdt I, p. 218 (‘Exceedingly Rare’); ESTC: Brighton Central Library, BL, Cambridge (UL and St John’s), Longleat, Bodley, NT (Dunham Massey), Huntington, Princeton, UC Berkeley and Yale.

A very scarce colour printed Shakespeare compendium, one of the characteristic illuminated gift books printed by Ashbee and Dangerfield in the 1860s. Ruari Maclean, in Victorian Book Design, p. 100 notes that Samuel Stanesby produced at least eleven illuminated books between 1857 and 1865.

Morison’s pocket edition of Dunbar commences with a Life of Gavin Douglas, from a manuscript then in the possession of the Literary and Antqiuarian Society of Perth.

First edition in French of this translation (mainly in prose) of Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810) which also contains Les Fiançailles de Trierman, a prose translation of Scott’s poem The Bridal of Trierman. It is by Amedée Pichot, and was preceded by a novelised treatment of the poem by Elisabeth le Bon (1813). Pichot is a significant figure in the translation of English works into French―in the course of his long career he translated Byron, Dickens, Sheridan, Thackeray and Lytton. The first volume contains a publisher’s statement disavowing a spurious work entitled Le Chateau de Pontefract which had recently appeared in Paris under Scott’s name. In common with most of the Scott titles first published in French in the 1820s, the first edition of La Dame du Lac was to form part of the grwoing ‘complete works’ series and contains half-titles marked Oeuvres complètes Rare: Worldcat lists copies at Texas only outside continental Europe. Jisc/Libraryhub (formerly COPAC) locates no British copies.

First edition in French of ‘the most influential’ of all Scott’s novels in France (Dargan), the tale of a Scottish archer in the service of the French King Louis XI (1423–1483). Issued separately, it also formed vols 69-72 of Oeuvres complètes de Walter Scott. Scott experience uncommon success in France, where his novels inspired a host of romantic and medievalist admirers (Hugo, Delavigne and Balzac among them). Quentin Durward, in particular, helped rekindle among novelists an interest in French history and the era of Louis XI, and Scott’s gothicism is rightly credited as one of the origins of a movement for the conservation and restoration of French national monuments culminating in the work of Viollet-le-duc.

The translations (usually by Defaucompret) were approved by Scott and appeared almost simultaneously with the British editions, with Cadell delivering advance sheets to the French publishers. E. Preston Dargan, ‘Scott and the French Romantics’, PMLA, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun 1934), 17 (May 31) and p. 605 ff.; Garside, Raven and Schöwerling, The English Novel 1770-1829, 1823: 74. For all their celebrity, the French editions are rare aoutside Europe: OCLC lists copies at NLS, Aberdeen and University of Toronto only outside continental Europe.

First edition of this patriotic poem on the Battle of Bussaco, 1810, in which the French were defeated by Anglo-Portuguese forces under Wellington (to whom the poem is dedicated). ‘The following poem was suggested by an evenings excursion, during the Autumn of 1810, upon the hills of Cintra, in which spot indeed many of the lines themselves were written’. George Grenville (1788-1850) of Carlanstown, Co. Westmeath became lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands and was prominent in the cause of anti-slavery, parliamentary reform, and religious liberty. Jackson, Annals of English Verse, p. 362.

First and only edition of an exceptionally rare novel. Not a translation, but with long episodes set in London and in Constantinople, occasioning cross-cultural comparisons between English, Turkish and French mores. A rather improbable love story full of incident, Voila comme on aime recounts the elopement of two young lovers escaping tightly-constrained family circumstances. In London the pair make a living when they find the heroine (Sophie) proves talented as a society portrait painter. Gay IV, 1368. Worldcat lists a sole copy (Halle).

A interesting and unique copy of this monumental pictorial record of European coins and medals struck in the Napoleonic era, including many commemorative medals of battles and truces. A printed book, with a London imprint, with portions (including title) in manuscript copy, and plates dissected, partly copied in manuscript and re-arranged. It is difficult to interpret the unusual hybrid form here, but it would appear to be a contemporary collector or curator’s production allowing the illustrations to be consulted alongside their descriptions in the text. The plates in the printed edition presented the coins and medals in a different order to the text, with corresponding numbers linking the illustrations, but turning from text to plate may have been a tiresome business. The fact that the titles, preliminary text and indexes are given as manuscript copies is less easy to explain, though at least one of the manuscripts indexes is more comprehensive than that of the printed edition. Many of the illustrations are marked with a small flower shaped inkstamp, perhaps also a collector’s demarcation.

Millin de Grandmaison (1759-1818) had been curator of the Cabinet des médailles et antiques of the former French royal library but died before this survey could be published. The manuscript was passed to the British-born James Millingen, formerly of the French mint, later an antiquary and dealer, who collated it and published it in London in both French and English versions. The imprints are faithfully copied in manuscript in our version, but it is likely a French rather than a British production.

First edition. Not, despite the title a genuine work by Sterne, but an original novel by Rutledge (or Rutlidge) of French-Irish parentage born at Dunkirk. La Quinzaine angloise à Paris tells the story of rapid demise of a young English aristocrat during his brief sojourn in Paris. He is seduced by the glittering Parisian beau monde, attending balls, horse races, galleries and theatres and (naturally) he falls in love. Through various unfortunate twists of fate he loses all his money and finds himself imprisoned for debt. The novel’s critique of French society made it notorious in its day, especially since he failed to disguise several of its characters: notably the painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) whose atelier the hero visits, occasioning an interesting discussion of the decadence of contemporary French art. Despite its obvious caricatures, it is a serious comparison of English and French character.

‘Rutlidge’s principal claim to fame was his promotion of English literature in France. In Observations à messieurs de l’Académie française (1776) he provided a spirited defence of Shakespeare’s superiority over French dramatists, attacking Voltaire for his earlier criticisms of the English writer. (Alger and Carter, Oxford DNB). This criticism appears also in La Quinzaine angloise, with the 12-page preface devoted to a defence of Shakespeare against the claims of Voltaire, and with several incidental reflections on the comparative merits of French and English literature appearing throughout.

The work appeared in English the following year as The Englishman’s Fortnight in Paris. Rutledge went on to play a significant part in the Revolution, becoming a champion of the Paris bakers in the affaire des boulangers: accusing Louis XVI’s minister, Necker, of conspiring to deprive the capital of bread (briefly costing him his liberty). Cioranescu 57877; Gay III, 912-3.

First edition. Edward Burnaby Greene (d. 1788) was variously a poet, translator, brewer and bibliophile. In 1765 he produced The Laureate, a poem in which Samuel Johnson was extensively abused. He was a prolific translator from the classics, though his version were rarely praised. One critic in 1782 remarked that ‘Greene's versions of Pindar, Anacreon, and Juvenal.. may all be seen “at Mr Brich's Pastryshop (late Horton's) opposite the Royal Exchange, and at all the principal Cheesemongers in London and Westminster”’ (cited in the Oxford DNB).

Delille’s French translation of Georgiana Cavendish’s best-known poem, The Passage of the Mountain St Gothard (1799) appeared twice in 1802: here, and in a separate edition with plates (also published by Prosper in London). It is unclear which appeared first. The poem was written during Georgiana’s exile, and the translation is preceded with reciprocal poems of dedication between author and translator.

Agnes Maria Bennett’s Minerva Press novel, The Beggar Girl (1797) first appeared in Mme. Brayer-St.-Léon’s translation earlier in 1798, in 7 volumes. This pretty set in 10 volumes, each with a frontispiece illustration, though separately bound (and numbered on the spines 1-10) was issued as vols 5-14 of the Oeuvres complètes

‘The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors was published in seven volumes in 1797; it was supposedly based on existing characters at Tooting and was dedicated to the duchess of York, near whom Anna Bennett then lived. The Beggar Girl was very popular, and had some distinguished admirers’ (Oxford DNB).. cf. Rochedieu p. 21 (for the 7 volume edition of the same year).

A collection of finely-executed miniatures reproducing in colour sixteenth-century printer’s ornaments and initials: 39 selected initials, three tailpieces, one headpiece and one printer’s device (Giunta, dated on verso 1567). Some are signed, minutely, ‘A. Baudon’ who we have been unable to trace. The artist has copied, in remarkable detail, these metalcut ornaments, reproducing in many cases the speckled backgrounds typical of punched or ‘criblé’ designs.

A series of calligraphic models or exercises of impressive size and quality. The writer, who signs his (or just possibly, her) name, minutely, at the foot of the first leaf, has chosen two edifying texts to transcribe. The first three sheets contain passages (including one on the immorality of duelling) from Varietés serieuses et amusantes of 1765, while the other eight, rather unusually contain letters from a father to a daughter (Émilie), being extracts from Abbé Gerard’s epistolary novel Le Comte de Valmont, ou les égarements de la raison of 1774. It would be unusual if this denoted a female scribe, but the choice of these extracts is tantalsing.

Each leaf is ruled in leadpoint and bears a large calligraphic cartouche, some have an additional penwork initial roundel and most exhibit a variety of scripts of exceptional neatness and regularity.

Becker, Practice of Letters, Hofer collection.

An unusual and rather beautiful variant of the lithographed prayerbook illuminated by hand. Such books, printed with broad blank margins could be purchased with a range of more-or-less unique embellishments in manuscript by talented anonymous ecclesiastical artists, usually women. This example is unusual for the range of its decorative motifs, including flowers, insects, stained glass windows, a sailing boat, elephants, a frog and peacocks. It combines consciously medieval imagery (notably a lady with a unicorn) with a delightful fin-de-siècle lightness, with elements of japonisme and art nouveau.

The final full page images include a nativity scene with named bells on the opposing page: Jacques, Marie and Magdelain, perhaps a personalisation for its particular owner, again, almost certainly a woman.

Grimm’s Iron John, the classic tale of male rights-of-passage, is here rendered in calligraphy and a series of fine historiated initials by a young Maria Elizabeth Passini. The style is medievalist, paying homage to the chivalric manuscripts of earlier age, but is unmistakably of the 1930s. We have been unable to find any other examples of manuscripts by Passini, and it must have to have been a student project. Her later works were figurative drawing and paintings, often portraits and graphic designs for commercial clients.

Elizabeth Passini was born in Innsbruck in 1911 into a family of notable Austrian painters and emigrated to England in the late 1920s where she studied at the Slade School. She also studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, the Central School and St Martins. She was a member of the Pastel Society, Contemporary Portrait Society and a founder member of the Hampstead Artists Council. She was a key member of the Hampstead art scene and regularly took part in the Open Air Exhibitions in Heath Street there from the late 1940s and, later on, the Royal Free Hospital Exhibitions. She taught at the Camden Arts Centre for many years. She died in 1995. Burgh House & Hampstead Museum holds a number of her works.

A unique book, entirely hand-illuminated by the artist. ‘A Dream in Winter’ is an enigmatic meditation on the theme of hibernation and dreaming, in which the artist places her human and animal figures in a winter land- and skyscape, with fallen leaves, bare branches, starlit skies and snowfall. Here, there is sleep, dreaming and sadness, tempered with a mood of love, longing and expectation. The successive pages invite us to read them as a narrative, but, as always with De Bournazel, the narrative is not linear or straightforward, with windows cut out and opening onto other pages, sometimes letting us see right through the book, linking the beginning to the end and inviting us to look always backwards, forwards and, most importantly, beneath the surface.

The colophon reads: ‘Ce livre est unique. Je l’ai fait à Marliac au début de l’année 2018. Armelle Guégant l’a relié avec delicatesse’.

Third edition (first 1771). Maude’s best-known work and a very popular poem, according to Aubin, who quotes from it extensively. The preface contains ‘his well considered observations on the nature of descriptive poetry... Like Crabbe, Maude fully realizes that the English bumpkin is too greatly harassed by cares to be the ideal poetic rustic.’ Jackson, p. 84. It occupies a curious place in the canon of works about Isaac Newton: apart from the plate depicting Newton’s paternal home, it represents the sole source for an oft-repeated anecdote of Newton’s rebuke to his pet dog Diamond (’Oh Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done’) for upsetting a candle and burning his papers (Gjertsen, The Newton Handbook, p. 177). The anecdote is almost certainly apocryphal. Aubin, pp. 367; Jackson p, 84.