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.

First edition of Keate’s famous ‘ruin’ poem. ‘The Remains of Netley Abbey... are situated on the Side of the Southampton River, about three Miles from that Town... The grand and extensive Ruins which are still standing, added to the Beauty of the Scenery around them, much attract the Curiosity, and Admiration of Strangers’ (Advertisement). Aubin, Topographical Poetry, p. 353.

First edition, rare. John Wesley had delivered a sermon at the laying of the foundation stone of the Methodist mother church in City Road in April 1777. In this critical pamphlet the ‘gentle Strictures’ promised by evangelical preacher Hill on the title-page turn out to be vitriolic criticisms of Wesley laid out in 37 chapters, attacking his self-centred address. Chapter 31 takes issue with Wesley’s perfidy in his perceived encouragement of the American revolution in Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs, in which he had stated the the British government’s attitude towards the Americans’ could no longer be defended. ESTC: UK: Birmingham, BL, Congregational Library, Rylands (3 copies), US: SMU and Wesley Theological Seminary.

First edition. The subscribers included Samuel Johnson.

First edition. Number 9 of 12 copies on japon impérial, printed for ‘M,’ (there are a further 300 copies on simili-japon. Total edition 312). A Symbolist novel by Retté, following a series of his glorious and sinister dreams.

First edition. A French translation by the author, of his 1940’s science-fiction novel written in Breton Enez ar Rod (Island of the wheel). Langlais was a prolific Breton writer, who also worked as a painter and printmaker. He studied art in Nantes and Paris and became professor of design at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, also writing a book on techniques of oil painting which is still authoritative and has been translated into several languages.

First edition. One of 30 copies on japon impérial, (there were a further 5 hors commerce. Total edition 35). A short novel by J.-H Rosny aîné, a French writer of Belgian origin, whom, alongside his brother J.-H Rosny jeune was considered to be among the pioneers of science fiction. Together they wrote stories about natural, prehistoric and fantasy subjects.

First edition. A short fantasy novel by Gourmont, the Symbolist poet and founder of Mercure de France. Much of his writing stemmed from an interest in medieval Latin literature, he was widely read in his time and an important influence on the likes of Blaise Cendrars and Georges Bataille.

First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to the French writer and poet Jean Ajalbert. A short fantasy novel by Gourmont, the Symbolist poet and founder of Mercure de France. Much of his writing stemmed from an interest in medieval Latin literature, he was widely read in his time and an important influence on the likes of Cendrars and Bataille.

First edition. One of 5,000 copies on vélin. A collection essays in French on the reception of Nabokov’s scandalous novel, Lolita including two excerpts of the original book, a preface by Jean Desternes and discussions by E.W Dupee, Girodias and Bécourt. L’Affaire Lolita was issued by Gerodias’s The Olympia Press, known for the publication of the original Lolita and notorious for producing pornographic content.

First edition. One of 5,000 copies on vélin, this copy printed especially for Monsieur B. Manceau. A collection essays in French on the reception of Nabokov’s scandalous novel, Lolita including two excerpts of the original book, a preface by Jean Desternes and discussions by E.W Dupee, Girodias and Bécourt. L’Affaire Lolita was issued by Gerodias’s The Olympia Press, known for the publication of the original Lolita and notorious for producing pornographic content.

The revised and corrected edition of L’Anglais décrit dans le Château fermé, first published in 1953, with theatre critic Paul Chambrillons’ bookplate. The second book by French Surrealist novelist Pieyre de Mandiargues, written before his popular 1963 novel La Motocylette which was adapted into a film in 1968.

First edition. A rare novel by Bodier, known for his writings on spiritualist morals which he studied with Delanne, a notable French spiritist and physical researcher.

First French edition, with author’s inscription to the French theologian Lagrange (1877-1964). The first novel written in 1932 by Neagoé an American writer and painter, personally acquainted with James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Brâncusi, (whom he studied with at the Romanian Academy of Fine Arts). Originally written in English, this work has been translated by Llona, an important Peruvian born translator who gained the confidence of many Parisian publishers, such as Gallimard, Payard and Stock. He has translated over forty books into French, including works by authors Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, Pound and Hemingway.

A fiftieth anniversary edition, large paper copy (first published 1880). This copy printed on Alfa Vergé Chesterfield for the French novelist Lucien Descaves. A collection of six short stories, each concerning the Franco-Prussian war, by six different writers associated with Naturalism. The most prominent story within the book being Boule de Suif, which immediately launched the career of Maupassant.

First edition. A collection of sonnets, philosophical dialogues and stories by Ménard, a French Socialist and versatile artist who worked in poetry, painting, history and chemistry. He was condemned to imprisonment for his Prologue d’un revolution, 1848 after which he escaped to London, only returning to Paris in 1852 where he occupied himself with classical studies.

First edition. One of 525 copies on simili-Japon (there are a further 15 copies on Japon impérial and 25 on papier d’Arches. Total edition 560). A decadent novel by Lorrain, the openly gay dandy who spent most of his time in fashionable artistic circles, perusing the cafés and bars of Montmartre. He wrote numerous poems, novels, plays and short stories and is remembered particularly for his 1887 Monsieur de Bougrelon.

First edition, large paper copy, with author’s inscription to the French novelist and playwright Paul Hervieu. A novel by the Franco-Swiss journalist Binet-Valmer, a figure who initially studied medicine, but then later turned to writing novels and reviews. He wrote for magazines such as Mercure de France, Le Matin and Revue de Paris. His trademark element in novel writing was his ability to disect the pyschologies and motivations of his characters with clinical precision. Not in bibliothèque nationale or CCfr.