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First edition of this children’s allegory of female education by one of the most prominent early British suffragists. Marion Wallace-Dunlop was involved in the suffrage movement from 1900 (the year after this book appeared) and was thrice imprisoned at Holloway: first, in 1908 for obstruction and second, in 1909 for stencilling an extract from the Bill of Rights onto the wall of St. Stephen’s Hall, Westminster. During her second incarceration she was the first suffragist to go on a hunger strike. In November 1911 she helped to organise a window-smashing campaign and was imprisoned once more and in 1928 she was a pallbearer at Emmeline Pankhurst’s funeral.

The Magic Fruit Garden is a ‘fairy tale about a girl struggling to write an essay on ‘Perseverance’. In her quest for wisdom, Doc finds a magic fruit garden where knowledge-fruit grows on bushes and trees. Here she picks ‘geography-plums and history-apples and grammar-pears and all the time her knowledge of everything kept growing bigger and bigger’. In a glass conservatory, Doc encounters piles of sweets ‘made from mixtures of the various fruits in the garden boiled in a syrup called Research. There was botany-sugar, zoology-candy, geology-toffee, and sugar-plums of every kind and colour’. When she gets home, her brother tells Doc it was only a dream and remarks that it’s ‘just like a girl to think that a dream is real. However, he then embarks on an adventure of his own which forces him to admit the magic garden is real (from the website of the University College London Exhibition, Disrupters and Innovators, 2018). Dunlop’s printed dedication reads simply: ‘To my Mother’.

‘Marion Wallace-Dunlop studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1903 (when she also exhibited a painting at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts), and in 1905 and 1906. Her paintings were also exhibited in Paris. She illustrated in art nouveau style two books, Fairies, Elves, and Flower Babies and The Magic Fruit Garden, both published in 1899’ (Oxford DNB). The Magic Fruit Garden was issued by Anglo-German publisher Ernest Nister, best known for his colourful moveable and popup books. Very scarce in both commerce and libraries. In the US, Worldcat lists copies at: Purdue, Princeton, Dartmouth and Universities of Rochester and Connecticut only.

A good and typical illustrated commonplace album with transcribed verses, drawings and watercolours. The selections are very much representative of the contemporary fashion among women for such manuscript collections: poems by Byron, Goldsmith and others, verses of friendship, loss and leave-taking, nature poems, riddles and aphorisms. A nicely self-aware inclusion here is Benjamin Franklin’s humorous ‘Paper a Poem’ relating paper types (gilt paper, copy paper, brown paper, foolscap, touch paper, waste paper and so on) to human analogues. The relatively few poems by women include Ann Radcliffe’s ‘To the Nightingale’ and ‘To Anne’ (unattributed here but by Mary Anne Browne, 1812-1845, entitled by her ‘Written in an Album’). Most of the contents have been entered within a few years of 1828 followed by a scatter of much later entries of the 1870s and 80s towards the end.

The best description of the album genre in the history of reading and writing is by William St Clair in The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004, pp. 224-9), a passage could aptly serve as a description of Ann Jordan’s album.

An April 1 satire on Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, who was accused of appropriating funds for non-naval purposes during his tenure as Lord of the Admiralty. His trial was a sensation and attracted a huge audience in Westminster Hall. In this print, when interrogated by John Bull in naval dress, he replies simply: ‘Indeed Mr Bull - I knaw nae more aboot it - than Johnny Groat o'the Highlands.’ The satire is revealing of the prevailing anti-Scottish sentiment provoked by the case.

Fores’s imprint advertises ‘Folios of Caracatures lent out for the Evening'.

Dundas was the most prominent Scottish politician of his era and instrumental in the progress of the Scottish Enlightenment. He is commemorated by one of the most prominent memorials in Edinburgh, the column and statue in St. Andrew’s Square. His commemoration is contentious — Dundas having effectively delayed the abolition of slavery for several years. BM Satires, 10381.

‘Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit / Death how certain Death how sur[e] / Sin the wound. And Christ the cure’. ‘Emma. Preest. Her work / Tuts Hill House / July. 20. 1847 Aged /12. Years. Old’.

Emma Preest is possibly the Emma born on the 8th June 1835 at Bream Eaves, Gloucestershire and baptised in the Wesleyan chapel at Monmouth — certainly that would accord with her given age (12) in 1847 when she made this sampler. The identity of Tuts Hill house is not straightforward, there having been two houses so named in the vicinity of Tidenham, Chepstow. We can find no pictorial evidence of either of them as a three-storey, four bay house as in Emma’s depiction, and no Preest family associated with either. But if one accepts the likelihood of Emma being Gloucestershire born, both houses would have been some ten miles from her birthplace, suggesting the possibility she entered service at one of them at the age of 12 (quite possible) and that this may have been an ‘apprentice’ piece. Young girls were taught this kind of sewing not so much as a primer in reading (still less writing) as in household needleork and linen labelling.

The verse is a variation of a popular gravestone epitaph: ‘Life is uncertain, death is sure, Sin the wound, and Christ the cure. If we have correctly identified Emma Preest, she married in 1854, had several children and emigrated with her family after 1870 and died in 1915 at Shawnee, Perry County, Ohio, USA, aged 80.

Number 2 of 15 copies.

Number 2 of 15 copies with the additional suite on chine.

Number 2 of 11 copies.

First edition in French of any part of Eden’s The State of the Poor. Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England (1797) one of the classic works in the history of economics and the foundation of the discipline of sociology. This extensive but partial translation formed numbers 21 and 24 of the rare Recueil de Mémoires sur les étabissemens d’humanité, continuously paginated across the two volumes. The editors’ preface notes the timeliness of such a translation at a time of revolutionary upheaval when no system of social security for the poor existed in France. Issued anonymously the translation is attributed to A.-C. Duquesnoy by Rochedieu. It precedes the edition translated by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt of 1800 and is very rare. Rochedieu, Bibliography of Translations of English Works 1700-1800, 95. Cf. Printing and the Mind of Man, 249 (the English edition). Besides the British library copy (incomplete, apparently the first volume only), Worldcat locates no other copies outside continental Europe.

First edition, one of 55 copies of a unique production, with the French text of the Song of Songs entirely in manuscript and 30 superb eroticised plates by Jean-François Favre. The entire edition was evidently produced over several years — the Neuchatel copy (which also contains a duplicated explanation not present in our copy) is dated 1954, where ours is 1956. Swiss artist Favre was born in 1940, studied in Paris and spent several years in Polynesia and Guyana. His figures certainly owe something to Gaugin. Worldcat locates a 2 copies (Neuchatel Bibliotheque publique and an unspecified location).

First edition, one of 500 copies, this one inscribed by Benvenuti to prominent French critic Robert de Sizeranne. A rare little treatise on the architectural ideas of painter, engraver and architect Benvenuti. He had been infuenced by Llewelyn Lloyd, Giovanni Fattori and Telemaco Signorini and pioneered a type of Divisionism as a painter. His architecture fused symbolism, art nouveau and an emergent geometric style approaching art deco. Worldcat lists the Stanford copy only in the US.

Alphabet (upper and lower case), several decorative lines and two verses: ‘Is there ambition in my heart / search gracious God and see...’ [Isaac Watts] and ‘Teach me to live / that I may dread/ the grave as little / as my bed // Teach me to die ‘ that so I may / with joy behold /the judgement day’ [Thomas Ken, and later sued by Thomas Hardy in Jude the Obscure]. Needlework samplers remain one of the most widespread manifestations of the teaching and learning of basic literacy among girls and young women and, as here, reflect a strongly moralistic background.

Greenaway’s ‘Procession’ greetings card set consisted of just two cards, but with each produced with variant verses.

This set includes all four variants of each.

Card 1 (Blue border):
(a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
(b) ‘My Valentine in every rose discern...’
(c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
(d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’

Card 2 (Pink border):
(a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
(b) ‘Let’s love and live together, dear...’
(c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
(d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’ Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 284.

The three greetings cards comprising the larger version of Greenaway’s Party Girl set, each present here in several variants, listed below according to Schuster & Engen 282.

Card 1 Girl with Badminton set
a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
c) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place!’.
d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘To bear my love to you to-day’.
e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.

Card 2 Girl in rust coat and beaver hat
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
d) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
d variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
e) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘From one who loves you dearly’.
g) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
h) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.

Card 3 Girl in green dress
a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
c variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘I bring you some flowers from your Valentine’.
e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
f) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 282.

One of two versions of this early set, this one apparently issued as Christmas cards. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 291.

First edition, apparently transcribed from a genuine Middle English original. The title-page notes: ‘The Manuscript to be disposed of. – Apply to the Printer’. pp. 61-70 is an ‘Astronomical and Astrological Appendix’ from a work published in 1647. Caleb Stower (d. 1816) was an interesting and prolific printer with Unitarian connections.

First edition, one of 250 copies (of a total edition of 280). Thomas Willement was one of the pioneers of the nineteenth-century gothic revival. He worked alongside his better-known contemporary Pugin on several projects, but never very happily: Pugin later (unfairly) accused Willement of being only interested in money. Willement is perhaps best known for his stained glass in the medieval style (St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Hampton Court, Barbados cathedral). Davington priory (acquired by him in 1845) was an exercise in the complete medieval revival of a much altered priory house and church, involving polychromatic painted decoration, stained glass, and designs for encaustic tiles, together with purchases of furniture and fittings. Much of the work described in the Historical Sketch remains intact. 250 copies of this descriptive publication were printed on ‘foolscap quarto’ paper, with a further 30 copies on tinted ‘crown quarto’.

Twelve superb paintings on silk (six pairs), each a couple making love, with one image showing faces, the other, their genitals, in each case provocatively and playfully framed to present a detail only. The paintings of each pair are linked by subtle details of clothing, sometimes suggested through a small glimpse of a pattern or a colour found in its counterpart. They are probably cuttings rescued from a refined and elegant hand scroll or hanging scroll of a larger size, wittily preserved in pairs. These are rare survivals of very high status shunga painting of the decades around 1800. The later title label on the album cover attributes them to the so-called ‘Maruyama School’ of Kyoto, but they have more in common with the sophisticated erotic silk paintings of high status artists such as Chôbunsai Eishi working around 1800. Several such paintings, on scrolls, are reproduced in the British Museum exhibition catalogue Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (2013), see illustrations 56 and 57.

First edition thus, subscriber’s copy, number 77 of 210 copies, complete with a suite of cancelled plates in monochrome. With its title a nod to Le Maistre’s famous confinement narrative, Voyage autour de ma chambre (1794) Uzanne’s Voyage autour de sa chambre is ‘Une ancienne chanson d’amour voltige dans la solitude; dans ce nid charmant où l’on était si bien à deux, il ne reste que des rêves de volupté indécise et la sarabande enlaçante, mystérieuse et sinistre des souvenirs, ces revenants de l’âme qu'on évoque, qu’on chasse et qu’on appelle encore’.

A delicious bibliophilic production and one of Octave Uzanne’s rarest books: the limitation noting: ‘Après tirage les cuivres ont été lacérés.’ The additional suite consists of the cancelled plates, in which central portions left blank for the overprinting of the text from other plates have been filled in with etched croquis, often humorous, of: fashionable women, a devil, a bat, a rat and so on. The two sets of original wrappers are preserved, one with the design by Henry Thiriet. Uzanne’s productions are the zenith of a certain strand of 1890s Parisian bibliophilia: with precision and exactitude of the latest printing techniques harnessed to produce a series of works of rare beauty. Caruchet’s illuminated borders are perfect examples of art nouveau’s decadent themes, though lightened throughout with delicate and elegant botanical forms.

Uzannes’s text had first appeared in his Calendrier de Vénus (1880, page 127 à 150). Not in Carteret. Outside continental Europe, OCLC lists copies at the British Library (with one additional suite, as here) and Texas (with two additional suites). Uzanne is extensively discussed in Silverman’s excellent The New Bibliopolis: French Book Collectors and the Culture of Print, 1880-1914 (Studies in Book and Print Culture, 2013).

First edition of this graphic companion to the life of the great French corsair captain Du Guay-Trouin, and specifically to the Memoires (Amsterdam, 1740), for the use of young mariners who are urged to examine and draw copies of the detailed engravings. The work includes a précis of his exploits (the text also engraved) a glossary of marine terms.

Besides the two maps, the engraving is the work of the remarkable Ozanne family: Nicolas (or Nicolas-Marie) and his sister, Jeanne Françoise, whose names appear as artist and engraver respectively at the foot of the title plate. Hailing from Brest, the young Nicolas (1728-1811) had begun a career as a naval artist when his father died, leaving him responsible for three siblings (a brother and two sisters) all of whom he enlisted as contributors to his business. He rose to some prominence and was named as a royal ‘dessinateur de la marine’ in 1757, still assisted by his siblings. Jeanne François (1735-95) seems to have been the most active of these, and is named as engraver in several other collections and single plates besides this one, usually marine prints.

Duguay-Trouin is remembered as one of the greatest French naval commanders. In 1704-1705 he commanded the ship Jason and captured the British ships of the line HMS Elizabeth and HMS Coventry; then on 21 October 1707, together with Claude de Forbin, he achieved his greatest victory against a British squadron, in the Battle at the Lizard (part of the War of the Spanish Succession); in 1709 he captured the British ship of the line HMS Bristol, while the triumph of his career came on 21 September 1711, in an 11-day battle, where he captured Rio de Janeiro, then believed impregnable. The two double-page maps (both signed ‘Drouet’) depict his battles around the French and British Coasts and his capture of Rio. Une famille d’artistes brestois au XVIIIe siècle: les Ozanne, Charles Auffret (Rennes, 1891). Borba de Moraes, p. 273; Bosch 244; Polak 7235; Rodrigues 908; not in Sabin.

A wonderful satire on contemporary women’s fashion. The 1820s had seen considerable change in women’s fashions, with neoclassical straight lines and sparse adornments giving way to a more exhuberant and romantic style with more emphasis on curvaceous shapes, cheekily satirised here with wine glass and fruit. BM Satires 15611.