Browse

First edition, one of 500 copies. A copiously-illustrated homage to the Parisian landmark. An English translation appears at the end, concluding: ‘O Moulin Rouge! Thou dost dominate Paris, France, the world. Thy sails turn forever, for the breeze that moves them is the breath of the men who come to admire thee and to adore thee, Mill of Voluptuousness, Tower of Delight, Ark of Alliance, Vessel of Caresses, Star of the Evening, House of Pleasant Weariness, Palace of Languidness, Mystic Rose also, of which each petal is a moving sail capped by a bonnet, O Carnal Vase held towards all men who approach unto love....’ You get the idea.

First edition of the second title in the series Paris qui souffre devoted to the world of prisons in the capital. Criminalité et répression - Les anciennes pénalités - Les anciennes prisons de Paris - Les chemins de la prison - La responsabilité - Aliénés criminels - Crimes passionnels - La prison de tout le monde - Les prévenus - Les femmes - Les enfants - Les condamnés - Pauvreté et vice - La dernière étape - Les cahiers des prévenus - L'intérêt social.

First edition: a survey of the city in 1860 (its buildings and infrastructure, ),with long sections on the Asile impérial de Vincennes, founded in 1855 for convalescent workers, the Maison Eugène-Napoléon, a school for poor girls set up in 1858, and the history of Paris’s theatres after Napoleon limited the number of theatres in the city to twelve, then eight.
Vicaire V, 1021.

First edition, by the journalist and champion of political reform, William Carpenter (1794–1874). ‘The following little work pretends not to the character of a history; but it will be found to embody, in consecutive order, the leading events of the late glorious revolution in France, derived from the most authentic sources, and interspersed with such remarks and reflections as they naturally call forth’ (Preface).

First edition, elephantine in ambition and appetite; 1155 pages of culinary erudition and extravagance. Penned with the same gusto that sent Edmond Dantès leaping from the Château d’If and Athos lunging for his rapier, Dumas père’s Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine is a feast in alphabetic form. Here, the humble garlic clove receives as much affection as a noble pheasant stuffed with truffles. Recipes jostle alongside meditations on oysters, memories of lavish banquets, and philosophical musings on the proper preparation of a stew. Begun in his later years with the intention of bestowing upon France a culinary monument, the dictionary reads as a dialogue between gourmand and gastronome, peppered with wit and unapologetically subjective declarations (’England has only three sauces, and two of them are mustard’). This is not a manual — it is a memoir in flavours, a patriotic act of seasoning, and a final course served by one of literature’s great lions. Bitting p.135; Cagle 171; Oberle 238; Vicaire 297.

First edition of a rare erotic novel strongly influenced by Cleland’s Fanny Hill. ‘Alongside the marquis d’Argens’s Thérèse philosophe, Margot la ravaudeuse is one of the crown jewels of what was once the ‘Enfer’ section of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It relates the story of an attractive stocking-darner who manages to climb the social ladder and eventually retires to ‘enjoy with a few intimate friends the best that life has to offer’...’ (Sciuto, Review of Margot la ravaudeuse, by Louis-Charles Fougeret de Monbron. French Studies: A Quarterly Review, vol. 70 no. 4, 2016. The imprint is clearly false as to its date (’1800’) but may be accurate in giving ‘Hambourg’ as the place of publication: the engraved frontispiece is by the Hamburg engraver Christian Fritsch.
Fougeret de Monbron spent time in London, and paraphrased Fanny Hill (1749) which he published in French as La Fille de joye in 1751. Margot la ravadeuse as published here in the first years of the 1750s contains a number of obvious borrowings from Cleland in its explicit narrative, but in fact the author had been at work on a version of the novel before Fanny Hill appeared. He was probably writing it in 1748 when he was denounced to the authorities by a clandestine bookseller and arrested. The manuscript was seized and destroyed and had to be rewritten after his release from prison, by which time Fanny Hill was in print. His introduction to Margot reads (English translation):
‘Here at last is Margot la ravadeuse, a novel which General de la Pousse, encouraged by the corporation of harlots and their infamous henchmen would have us believe constitutes a crime against the State. The author, accused of nothing less than having attempted to undermine the authority of religion, the government and the Sovereign, and fearing that his silence was in itself an admission of guilt, he had no choice but to publish the work, leaving the question of guilt or innocence entirely in the hands of the public’ Dutel, I, A-676 (stating 12mo, incorrectly); Gay III, 34; Pia 466; Darnton, Corpus of Candestine Literature in France, 416. Langille, [Introduction to] Margot la Ravaudeuse, MHRA, 2015.

First edition, inscribed by the author, a symbolist collection, comprising ‘Le Porcher’, ‘Eurythmie’ and a final Envoi.

Francis Vielé-Griffin (pseudonym of Egbert Ludovicus Viélé, 26 May 1864 – 12 November 1937), was a French symbolist poet. He was born at Norfolk, Virginia, USA. ’In 1890 Viélé-Griffin cofounded the review Les Entretiens politiques et littéraires, in which appeared many of his essays calling for the liberation of verse from the strictures of traditional poetic form. He accomplished such liberation in his own poems through his pioneering use of vers libre (free verse). Viélé-Griffin’s work is marked by a fundamental optimism that is grounded in his delight in nature and his belief in the spiritual dimension of human life’ (Britannica).

The holy grail — the crucified Christ standing within a chalice, his wound from the soldier’s spear bleeding freely into it, his arms supported by angels. A host of kneeling figures with candles, one swinging a censer kneel on either side. The lower panel depicts the Last Supper (complete with a small dog) with the text: ‘Sia laudato il santissimo sacramento’ (’Let the most holy sacrament be praised’). Early Christian tradition held that Christ’s blood was collected by Mary Magdalen at the time of the crucifixion in a vessel, though in images like this the symbolism is developed to depict blood flowing directly into the chalice in which Christ stands, emphasising the traditional connection between this vessel and the cup used at the Last Supper, and expressing the essence of transubstantiation at the Eucharist.

The image may be comprised of two woodblocks, though the borders are continuous around the whole print. Though probably dating from the seventeenth century, the block was clearly old when this impression was made, it shows some degradation, cracking and several circular wormholes. The area around Christ’s face is notably rubbed and soiled, possibly from kissing or touching as a mark of pious veneration.

An original lease granted by George II to Sir Matthew Decker of lands once part of the royal park of Richmond at Richmond Green, formerly known as the Bakehouse. Sir Charles Hedges (died 1714), Secretary of State to Queen Anne had built a fine house here, which was enlarged by Decker (1679-1749), a wealthy Dutch merchant, who settled in London in 1702, becoming and MP and director of the East India Company. He created a celebrated garden on this land, widely commented on by contemporaries and the site of the first successful cultivation of the pineapple in Britain.

This is one of the most prized works by this important member of the Belgian avant-garde (1879-1957), published while he was a refugee in London during the Great War

Tijtgat, apprenticed in his father’s lithographic studio, had long been an expert printmaker, but was without a press in London and developed his immediately recognisable style by printing from both woodcuts and linocuts using simply a handroller (his woodcut colophon here shows him at work, pulling a print on a simple table top). The prints of Le Petit Chaperon rouge, painstakingly produced under difficult circumstances, exemplify an invention born of necessity, aptly combined with the apparent naivety of Tijtgat’s art and his artistic interest in the pleasures and fears of childhood. Cyril Beaumont’s support for this refugee artist exemplifies the wider British patronage of exile artists among the tens of thousands of Belgians who fled to Britain between 1914 and 1918, who made a significant impact on British modernism. Besides Le Petit Chaperon rouge, Beaumont published the illustrated poetry collection New Paths with contributions by Tijtgat (1918) as well as the artist’s Carrousels et baraques in 1919. After the war Tijtgat remained for some time in London, before returning to Belgium in the twenties. He is rightly considered an important member of the group later called the ‘Brabant Fauvists’, which had included Tijtgat’s great friend and collaborator, Rik Wouters, who died in 1916 following his internment by the Germans.

The limitation states this is one of 50 copies only: number 23 of 40 copies on papier antique (after 10 copies on chine, signed). This is Tijtgat’s definitive edition (after the very few copies of a large paper trial edition of 1917 and before the Brussels reprint of 1921). The book appears in Tijtgat’s painting of 1922, Ma chambre-atelier, lying on a table, together with the artist’s pipe, a bowl of fruit and a vase of flowers (Milo, Tijtgat, 1930, plate 3). The present copy copy from the collection of Tijtgat’s bibliographer, Pascal Taillaert. Pascal Taillaert, Edgard Tytgat (1999), 38 (noting variations between copies and unbound copies, as well as the 10 additional copies on chine, not listed in the limitation, made for the Ministère des Sciences et des Arts de Belgique). Ridley, Beaumont 10.

First edition. A remarkable and delightful book by a member of the Belgian artistic avant-garde, published while in exile in London during the Great War. Edgard Tijtgat (1879-1957) attained something of a cult status among artists in the early twentieth-century, known for his quiet interpretation of Fauvism. His playful, nostalgic compositions, infused with melancholy, feel (to me, at least) like a graphic counterpart to the the music of Erik Satie or the Alain-Fournier’s novel Le Grand-Meaulnes.

This copy of Carrousels et Baraques is number 148 of 150 copies, one of 110 copies with plates on chine (after 40 hand-coloured and signed copies). contains six superb coloured woodcuts in Tijtgat’s instantly recognisable naive style, and the text reproducing the artist’s wood or linocut lettering with ornaments (it is unclear, and perhaps unlikely, that this is printed directly from the block, though the contents leaf confirms it was printed ‘sur la presse a main de l’éditeur, Cyril W Beaumont. The illustrations are directly from boxwood cuts, printed by the artist at his ‘Imagerie de Watermael’ which must stand for his makeshift tabletop press in London rather than the village of Watermael itself, since Tijtgat was still living in London in 1919 since his flight from Belgium at the outbreak of the Great War. He printed with rollers rather than a press, and the vibrant colouring shows elements of pochoir colouring, though probably also applied with rollers to judge by the ink surfaces.

Three of the prints show Belgian processions and fairs (including a fantastic baraque or booth with musicians and conjurors) and three are British scenes: showing carousels, swingboats and traveller caravans (a familiar part of British fairgrounds until the 1970s). The artist’s introduction is a delightful meditation on the effects of exile on the emotions and imagination, with an affectionate evocations of the Belgian fairground of his youth, still subjects of his painting stacked against his wall, and the fairs of Hampstead with their elegant carousels.

This little pocket book has been densely filled with diary notes by a young girl or young woman, presumably one Flora Keene. She copies out several hymns at the opening, and then completes every day of her diary, with dense and minute notes, now very hard to read, mainly noting family comings and goings. The frontispiece by John Leech entitled ‘Volunteer Movement — Jones & Family go under Canvas’ is a satire on the British volunteer rifle corps, formed in 1859 as a response to public fears of a French invasion. There is also a series of delightful vignettes by Tenniel on Shakespearean quotations.

A singular illuminated manuscript, an echo of the Celtic Twilight, interpreted in Chicago by an Italian-born American poet of considerable notoriety. ‘The Heart-Cry of the Celtic Maid’ had been first printed in Iris’s poetical collection, Lyrics of a Lad, a slim volume published by Chicago’s Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co. in 1914. But it is here given full calligraphic treatment by the illustrator Gordon Ertz, in a unique volume with five full-page miniatures and the other pages with illuminations, the colophon signed by both poet and illustrator, stating it was ‘especially done for “A Delicate Wine Glass” sometimes known as “Covelli” and at others as “Zada”’.

Though the manuscript is both genuine and attractive it soon exposes Iris’s career of deception, plagiarism, forgery and obfuscation, which stretched over the first six decades of the twentieth century. His poem ‘The Heart-Cry’ was approved of in at least one review of Lyrics of a Lad — one Milo Winter (otherwise apparently unknown) called it ‘graceful’ in the Little Review of December 1914 — but others accused Iris of plagiarism, noting the poem’s similarity to the English poet Laurence Hope’s ‘Love Lightly’ (1902). Plagiarism seems to have been the mildest literary crime practised by Iris, whose trademark strategy was to place fictional reviews of his work by famous authors in his publications. Across his career he published a series of collections often containing endorsements or approvals by association by: Ruskin, Swinburne, Gosse, Francis Thompson, Yeats, Eliot, Sarah Bernhardt, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Robert Frost, G. B Shaw and Edith Sitwell. It is probable that none of these figures had ever heard of Sharmel Iris, who remained a persistent if marginal figure in Chicago literary society until his death in 1967. The whole saga has been recounted by Craig Abbot in ‘The Case of Scharmel Iris’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 77, no. 1, 1983, pp. 15–34 and more recently in his monograph Forging Fame: The Strange Career of Scharmel Iris (2007).

‘If poets are “liars by profession,” Sharmel Iris was truly professional. Poet, plagiarist, imposter, and forger, Iris engaged in a lifelong campaign of self-promotion that linked him to a constellation of leading writers and public figures, among them T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, Ezra Pound, Dame Edith Sitwell, Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, William Wrigley, and Woodrow Wilson. “Of poets writing today, there is no greater,” states a preface, signed by W. B. Yeats, to one of Iris’s volumes of poetry―although at the time of publication Yeats had been dead for several years’ (Abbot).

The illuminator Gordon Ertz (b. 1891), while not widely known, was sought after as a magazine illustrator and designer of book covers and jackets.

First edition of an early collection of poetry by Fletcher (1863–1935), perhaps better known for his detective fiction.  This copy inscribed by the English poet Olive Custance to the American writer and salonnière Natalie Clifford Barney —‘To Natalie … The Poet and Lover … from the “Little Princess”’— on the front flyleaf.   
‘An avid reader of Pre-Raphaelite and aesthetic literature’, in the 1890s, Custance (1874–1944) ‘developed somewhat flirtatious relationships with John Lane, Henry Harland, and Richard Le Gallienne—respectively the publisher, editor, and reader of The Yellow Book.  Custance was one of the most prolific women poets published in this notorious journal, with poems appearing in eight of its thirteen volumes …
‘Custance’s first poetry volume, Opals, was published in 1897 by The Bodley Head [the same year as Fletcher’s] …  The poems addressed to John Gray were also included in this volume, along with several other love poems directed at ambiguously gendered beloveds.  Such sexual ambiguity was reflected in Custance’s love life during this period.  In the winter of 1900 she received an admiring letter from Natalie Barney, the openly lesbian author and salon hostess.  Custance was invited by Barney to Paris, where she also befriended the symbolist poet Renée Vivien (Barney’s former lover).  Accounts of this ménage are contradictory.  Barney’s autobiography stated that Vivien was jealous of Custance; however, Vivien’s letters and her roman-à-clef A Woman Appeared to Me (1904)—in which Custance appeared as Dagmar—suggest that she and Custance enjoyed a brief love affair during the winter of 1901 
‘During this period, in June 1901, Custance wrote a letter of admiration to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945).  The poets began to correspond, using the personas of “Fairy Prince” for Douglas, and “Princess” and “Page” for Custance’ (Oxford DNB), which may account for the inscription here.
 

A rather astonishing survival: the signal book of the Redoutable, a French ship captured and burnt by the British ship Prince under captain Joseph Peyton and vice admiral Thomas Broderick at the Battle of Lagos. On the 18 August 1759, the Rédoutable, as part of a French fleet intended for an invasion of Great Britain, was engaged by Peyton’s Prince off the Portuguese coast, an action that became known and the Battle of Lagos. The contemporary cover annotation on this signal and logbook dramatically explains both its provenance and condition: ‘Taken from the Rédoutable — burnt by the Prince Capt. Jos. Peyton Com. Vice Adm. Broderick’s was onboard / on the Coast of Portugal - in Augt. 1759’.

In 1759, during the Seven Years War, the ship was part of the fleet assembled at Toulon under French Admiral de la Clue which was destined to reinforce the main French fleet at Brest for the planned invasions of Great Britain. The signal book contains current orders and signals governing the fleet, which consisted of the Oriflamme, Lion, Centaure, Fantasque, Triton, Souverain, Ocean, Guerrier, Temeraire, Fier and Modeste. It details six ordres de marche or sailing formations, six ordres de bataille and one ordre de retraite, in each case a flag being illustrated to denote the formation to be adopted by the twelve ships of the fleet. These must have been copied up before, or at the time of embarkation, and they are followed by Rédoutable’s sailing specifications, with 30 different sails and two tenders. There is a also a log for August 1759, covering the days between the 4th and 14th, including the record on the order on the 8th to pursue a Neapolitan craft ‘venant de Londres chargé de bèjout [bijoux?] pour le comte des anglais’. From Tuesday 14th August, the log is blank, with the following pages ruled but never completed.

Admiral Joseph Peyton (1725–1804) was to become commander of the Mediterranean fleet and saw further service in the Battles of Ushant and Cape St Vincent. The manuscript has remained in the Peyton family by descent.

Second edition in English (after the first, Edinburgh and Perth, 1792) abridged and translated from Niebuhr’s Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Laendern (1774) and volume two from Niebuhr’s Beschreibung von Arabien (1772). It recounts Niebuhr’s travels in the Middle East, Egypt, Persia, India and Arabia, the first scientific expedition to this area which was subsidised by the Danish king. The plates depict: An Arab on horseback; Dancing girls in Egypt; Procession at an Egyptian marriage; The way to Mount Sinai; Mount Sinai and the Convent of St. Catherine; Dress of the women in the back parts of Yemen and Scene in Arabia Petrea. Howgego, to 1800, N24

Unique artist’s book in manuscript. Les Yeux au ciel contains one of the densest concentrations of De Bournazel’s unique symbolism to date, its sixteen pages bearing a plethora of human, animal and hybrid figures (some prominent, others slyly hidden) and a vortex-like mise en page. Like several other works by this artist, it explores the boundary between the conscious and unconscious, and expresses an elastic sense of time and space. Using the unique quality of the successively-turned book page as her primary medium, De Bournazel encourages her ‘readers’ to look forwards, backwards and inwards with cut windows opening unexpected sightlines and pathways through the codex.

This manuscript provides a chronology of English history in the form of a list of ennoblements (’Creations’) made in all the reigns from William the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth I. It was probably written up in the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, with some small later additions at the end, adding three ennoblements made in 1597-8. Each name in the roll is accompanied by a short paragraph, sometimes with some additional biographical detail, followed by an abbreviated account of their arms, usually in italic script. This follows the pattern of numerous other manuscript lists of creations, some of which are illustrated with coats of arms. In this unillustrated version each device is instead described in the abbreviated technical terms essential for all students of heraldry and such knowledge formed the background of historical knowledge for all educated gentlemen of the Elizabethan age.

At the head of each reign a large title in italic script additionally gives a heraldic description of each monarch’s arms. Henry VII’s, for example are described as ‘Fraunce et Angli’ quaterly / Dragon, volante de ore / Grayhounde de Ar’ collere d’or’. The creations themselves provide a detailed list of the most powerful members of society in every reign. They are especially interesting in the Tudor period, when creations of title provided the background of powerbroking between the court and families rising in influence through patronage and economic success. For Henry VIII’s reign we find, among others, the ennoblement of Thomas Boleyn or ‘Bullen’ (father of Anne Boleyn); Thomas Cromwell; Arthur, illegitimate son of Edward IV, and William Parr (brother of Catherine Parr). For the reign of Edward VI we find, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (brother of Jane Seymour) and William Parr (now as Earl of Essex), and for Elizabeth, Robert Dudley and William Cecil.

Two final completed leaves contain a long note on Richard, Earl of Arundel, a list of ‘The nobilite of Englande accordinge to their Creaciones’ [a list of Elizabethan nobility]

Provenance: Sotheran’s, Catalogue of Ancient and Modern Books, 5 (1852), number 348, 12 shillings; Sir Charles George Young (1795–1869) ex dono T. R. Weeton; John Paul Rylands FSA, 1874; Harry Rylands [1847-1922]; J. Lambarde, 1928; Cecil Humphery Smith; Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Research, Canterbury.

Two attractive devotional cards on the theme of love. Both invoke the imagery of the hunt. One reads: ‘L’amour en forme de veneris / chasse les renards de mon coeur’ [Love in the form of hunters chases the foxes from my heart]; the other: ‘Il advient bien ou plus fin / de chasser pour son voisin’ [it would be better or finer to hunt for one’s neighbour]. Each has its central scene within a polygonal cartouche and is surrounded by elaborate floral borders. De Boudt and Bouché were both active as printmakers in late seventeenth-century Antwerp, the former being the pupil of the latter. De Boudt, in particular, produced many thousands of such small engravings and they continued to be printed well into the following century.