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One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.

One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.

One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.

One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.

An ingenious calculator aimed at a juvenile audience.

First and only edition of this delightful illustrated gift book, describing the four ages of women and depicting them in a series of elegant hand-coloured plates. The dedication printed in civilité type is to the author’s wife (and mother of his children). The final 10 pages comprise a calendar for 1820 (in common with the V&A copy). Worldcat: V&A and Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg only.

First edition, rare. M. Baboulard is something of a dandy (notably sporting tartan trousers of a type then fashionable in both Britain and France) but he also has a wife and family of seven children and a taxing job in the ministry. Grands déplaisirs à l’occasion d’un train de plaisir is a graphic satire in the mould of Daumier on the aspirations of the newly-leisured middle classes seeking recreation on the railways. Tempted by newspaper advertisments, Baboulard books a trip to Le Havre, only to be assailed by friends and family loading him parcels, packages and a pair of dogs to deliver. The trip turns out to be a holiday from hell, and Baboulard returns to Paris duly chastened. Only one of the plates is signed by Adam, though all are demonstrably his. Among his numerous lithograph collections reflecting the rise of modernity in France this must be one of the rarest and it is especially so in coloured form. Gumuchian, Livres de l’Enfance, I, p.18. Worldcat lists the Bn copy only, there is also a copy in the National Library of Scotland (probably on account of the hero’s tartan trews).

An attractively illustrated juvenile natural history and universal history with six aquatint plates, one showing the arrival of Columbus in America and another a hot air balloon. In dialogue form. Originally published as Récréations morales de l'enfance in 1823. There were editions under the title Beautés d’Histoire naturelle of 1832 and 1835. Worldcat: Smithsonian (Dibner copy).

A spectacular and unique interpretation of Baudelaire by Neville Lytton including twenty original watercolours with illuminated borders. Each of Lytton’s images is in the visionary tradition ―most have an otherworldly quality, and some border on Surrealism.The twenty poems comprise: Le Calumet de la Paix - Bohémiens en voyage - La Géante - Le Cygne - La Beauté - L’Idéal - La Vie antérieure - Sisina - Un Voyage à Cythère - XVIII - A une Passante - L’Albatros - L’Ennemi - Bien loin d’ici - Une gravure fantastique - L’Amour et le Crâne - La Cloche fêlée - Le Voyage - Le Balcon - Les Bijoux.
Most of the poems are given in two calligraphic versions, one probably written with a steel nib, the other with an oblique nib, perhaps a quill-pen. Three poems appear in only one version: La Cloche fêlée in steel nib version only and Le Balcon and Les Bijoux only in quill pen.
Neville Bulwer-Lytton (1879-1951) was grandson of the novelists Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Rosina Doyle Wheeler and his siblings included the suffragette Constance Lytton and Emily Lutyens. He was a man of many parts: a military officer, cricketer, Olympic athlete and artist ― educated at Eton and the École des Beaux-Arts. He was also an accomplished morris dancer and played an ivory flute.
Among several notable portraits, he painted George Bernard Shaw in papal robes (in imitation of Velazquez) and a series of fashionable women in sumptuous velvets and silks, but he is best known for the series of First World War frescoes for the Victory Hall at Balcombe, Sussex. Throughout his career he also painted watercolour miniatures, intensely detailed with a distinctive coloration ― a style entirely suitable for these Baudelaire illustrations. His first wife was Judith Blunt, daughter of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (divorced in 1923), and he was an important member of circles of artists and connoisseurs around the turn of the 20th century. He was friendly with Sydney Cockerell, spent weekend with the Churchills, and Eddie Marsh claimed that it was meeting Lytton that inspired his love of collecting. In 1924 Lytton married Rosa Alexandrine (Sandra) Fortel of St Rambert-en-Bugey, near Lyon and settled in France, asborbing himself deeply in French artistic culture. He wrote: ‘‘I love France because I am an artist, and in this glorious country artists are considered to be sacred --- to them gratitude is shown for the renouncing of material wealth and worldly values and the adoption of a life of struggle which as a rule is only understood by a small number of contemporaries’ (‘Reasons why I love France’ in Life in Occupied France, 1942).

Sole edition, this copy signed and inscribed by the artist to Pierre Toreilles. For the Shakespeare 400 year centenary Hugo painted 13 very large panels depicting an imagined journey of Shakespeare from Stratford to Oxford, a path the artist apparently traced on foot. His scenes comprise: Charlecote Park, Fowlers and the Red House of Tysoe, Gentry at Compton Wyngates, Mummers on the Green, Nearing Oxford, Chipping Camden Fair, The Road to Market,The Cotswold Games, Plough and Pasture, Hawking in the Stour Valley and Meon Hill.

‘The French artist Jean Hugo (1894-1984) produced... a set of six canvases he painted for the Shakespeare Festival Exhibition, organised by the ballet critic Richard Buckle in Stratford-upon-Avon. Opened by Prince Phillip on 23 April 1964, the exhibition celebrated the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth and aimed to portray the world of Tudor England as it may have appeared to Shakespeare... Jean Hugo was born in Paris the great-grandson of the poet and novelist Victor Hugo. He was a painter, illustrator, theatre designer and author, whose artistic career spanned the 20th century and whose work brought him into contact with many of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th century including Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Paul Elouard, Francis Poulenc, Max Jacob, Cecil Beaton and many others.’ (V&A website). Not found in JISC/Libraryhub. Worldcat lists copies at National Gallery of Canada and University of Strasbourg only.

A good example of ‘Flecht-schule’ exercises for young girls, in which dexterity, accuracy, patience and creativity were encouraged through intricate pattern weaving in paper. This could be applied to the practical arts of embroidery but had been encouraged as an independent exercise. In addition to the 25 abstract designs here, the final two panels give the maker’s initials ‘L.W.’ and the date ‘1912’.

Number 142 or 220 copies, signed by the author and with all plates signed in pencil. Belgian born, but spending much of his life in Bolivia and Argentina, Delhez (1902-1985) was known for his exceptionally accomplished large-format woodcuts, often in the surrealist mould.

With a delightful contemporary heart-shaped ex libris belonging to a young girl (probably the bookplate of Marie Josephe Briot, later Bartoulot of Belfond, Franche-Comté), d. 1840) A rare Vesoul imprint of a popular prayer book first published in 1681 and reprinted widely into the nineteenth century. The printer Poirson is not listed in the Répertoire d’imprimeurs/libraires (which lists a single Vesoul printer, Jean-Claude Bogillot, 168.-1760) though the CCFr does list a handful of ephemeral Poirson imprints of the 1790s.

First editions of these two separately-issued Acts of Parliament in which the British government sought to legalise the detainment of Napoleon as a prisoner of war on the island of St. Helena.

An attractive portable atlas. A reissue of the plates of the 1790 edition, with the dates altered to ‘Sepr. 1, 1792’ on all of the maps except the map of Yorkshire. Letterpress printed by C. Rickaby, whose name appears at foot of first page.

Second edition (first 1637) of this rare proto-feminist essay, probably first written around 1620 in response to the misogynist pamphlet Hic mulier, or, The Man-Woman. Austin’s title Haec Homo is an epicene (ungendered or binary) construction which joins a female definite article (Haec) with the masculine noun homo (man) to introduce the author’s thesis that men and women share common humanity as well as ‘the same reasonable soule; and, in that, there is neither hees, or shees.’ It was dedicated to ‘Mistress Mary Gifford’ and both first and second editions were issued with an engraved portrait of her, which is lacking in this copy (and in the EEBO copy). The book includes four woodcut illustrations of a ‘Vitruvian woman’. This copy was rebound in the first decades of the nineteenth century by Auguste Marie Comte de Caumont, an aristocratic French emigré who worked as a bookbinder at addresses around Soho, London for more than 20 years from 1790. ‘He is considered a very great binder, in an age when English bookbinding was temporarily at a high level, and actually far ahead of contemporary French binding’ (Ramsden, French Bookbinders 1789-1848, p. 49). This example of his work bears his Gerrard Street address, his final workshop before returning to France around 1814-15. Interestingly there is no evidence that he had experience of bookbinding before leaving France.
STC 975. ESTC: BL (lacks letterpress title), Cambridge (lacks leaf A4 and engraved title), Folger (lacks letterpress title and portrait), LC (lacks letterpress title), Illinois (lacking portrait), Minnesota, Yale.

An attractive Venetian edition by Johannes Tacuinus de Tridino, which, like the first edition of 1499 consists of the first three books on the ‘origin of things’. In this encyclopaedic work, Vergil addresses questions of origins, from the origin of the gods, man and languages to the origin of wine and liqueurs, marriage, magic, medicine, poetry, drama, geography and law. It notably includes an account of the invention of printing, attributing its birth to Peter Schoeffer, rather than Gutenberg.

A rare perspective peepshow depicting a boar hunt in a forest, with horses and dogs. Engelbrecht (1684-1756) produced many different designs of these sets in three sizes, of which ours is an example of the smallest (and rarest). They were designed to be viewed when slotted successively into a perspective viewing box but can equally be appreciated when standing in simple slots or stands. One of the parts is marked ‘N. 87’ in the plate. In this example the prints have been mounted in the early nineteenth-century. cf. Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows (2015), pp. 14–15 and David Robinson, ‘Augsburg Peepshows’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 188–191.�

A rare perspective peepshow depicting a stag hunt in a forest, with horses and dogs. Among the hunters is one with a rifle, and two with horns. Engelbrecht (1684-1756) produced many different designs of these sets in three sizes, of which ours is an example of the smallest (and rarest). They were designed to be viewed when slotted successively into a perspective viewing box but can equally be appreciated when standing in simple slots or stands. One of the parts is marked ‘N. 87’ in the plate. In this example the prints have been mounted in the early nineteenth-century. cf, Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows (2015), pp. 14–15 and David Robinson, ‘Augsburg Peepshows’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 188–191.�

― An Act for establishing certain Regulations for the better Management of the Affairs of the East India Company, as well in India as in Europe. London: Charles Eyre and William Strahan, 1773. Folio (318 × 195 mm), pp. [2]. 1299-1327, [1] including general title with woodcut royal arms.
― An Act for the better Regulation and Management of the Affairs of the East India Company, and of the British Possessions in India; and for establishing a Court of Judicature for the more speedy and effectual Trial of Persons accused of Offences committed in the East Indies. [London, 1784]. Folio (310 × 195 mm), pp. 351-395, [1]. Without general title.
― An Act for the better Government of India. [2^nd August 1858.] [London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1858]. Folio (301 × 186 mm), pp. [1], 854-874. Woodcut arms to head of first page.
— Indian Independence Act 1947. 10 & 11 Geo. 6. Ch. 30. [London: Sir Norman Gibb Scorgie for HMSO, 1947]. 8vo (235 × 140 mm), pp. [ii], 18, [2]. Stamp ‘Supplied for the Public Service’ to first leaf.

First editions of the three British Parliamentary Acts which shaped the colonial history of India and the Indian Independence Act — the foundation of modern India.

The 1773 act entrusted government of India to the East India Company; the 1784 act established power-sharing between the Company and the British government; and 1857 established direct British rule and the Raj after the rebellion (the so-called ‘Indian Mutiny). ‘The act of 1773, also known as the Regulating Act, set up a governor-general of Fort William in Bengal with supervisory powers over Madras (now Chennai) and Bombay (now Mumbai). Pitt’s India Act (1784), named for the British prime minister William Pitt the Younger, established the dual system of control by the British government and the East India Company, by which the company retained control of commerce and day-to-day administration but important political matters were reserved to a secret committee of three directors in direct touch with the British government; this system lasted until 1858 … The act of 1858 transferred most of the company’s powers to the crown.’ (Britannica). 

‘The [1947 Independence] act created two new independent dominions; India and Pakistan. Pakistan was split into Pakistan and East Pakistan which is now Bangladesh. The Bengal and Punjab provinces were partitioned between the two new countries. These dominions separated the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh population and caused the biggest forced migration which has ever happened that was not the result of war or famine (Parliament UK website).

Though separately published with a general title for a complete sitting of Parliament, individual Acts of Parliament were paginated to be bound together in yearly volumes hence the paginations here. Of the two eighteenth-century acts, only the first retains its general title. All four acts preserved in recent wrappers to style’.