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First published in Latin in 1520, this is considered the first ethnographic compendium of the Early Modern period in Europe, a collection of the manners and customs of all mankind, as it was then known to most Europeans. It considers Africa, Asia and Europe. It first appeared in French in 1540. Its first appearance in English was as William Waterman’s The Fardle of Facions in 1555 and it was printed in forty-seven editions between 1535 and 1620. British Library and Bibliothèque nationale only in WorldCat. Atkinson, La Littérature géographique fraņçaise de la Renaissance: répertoire bibliographique (Paris, 1927), n° 73.

First edition of Olive Custance’s second collection (after Opals of 1897), published in the year of her elopement and marriage to Lord Alfred Douglas and containing the suite written for him, ‘The Fairy Prince’. Custance’s marriage, frowned upon by her parents, had come only a year after her supposed affair with Natalie Clifford Barney in Paris, and the Rainbows contains poems of desire from various points in the spectrum, notably ‘A Dancing Girl’ and ‘The White Witch’. Barney recounted that Custance had written the lines ‘Her face is like the faces the Dreamer sometimes meets, A face that Leonardo would have followed through the streets’ on seeing a version of Barney’s portrait [which] later appeared in ‘The White Witch’ (Pulham, ‘Tinted and Tainted Love: The Sculptural Body in Olive Custance’s Poetry’, Yearbook of English Studies, 37, 1, p. 164).
The elaborate contemporary binding is signed ‘E. Dreyfous’, the Grosvenor Square dealer in antiques, Edouard Henry Dreyfous who counted the Royal Family among his customers.

Copy number 5 of 111 copies only printed for Les Cent Une, Société de femmes bibliophiles, with two original pencil drawings and a suite of proof plates. All copies were printed on paper watermarked ‘Les Cent Une’ and this is a tirage de tête copy printed for member, Celeste Pigasse. The text is after the 1556 French edition by André Jaulme (complete with authentic contractions) while the superb visual interpretations by Mariette Lydis include two of her characteristic decorated maps (both are signed). This is one of the early publications for the women’s book collecting club founded in Paris by the Princesse Schakhowskoy in 1926 as a direct riposte to ‘Les Cent’ — a bibliophile circle which then included no women among its members. Les Cent Une issued editions limited to the 101 members only and a handful of collaborators, usually no more than once a year, and the club is still in existence. Celeste Pigasse (née Crouzat) was a founder member and served as the club’s general secretary in its formative years (her husband founded the publishing house Librairie des Champs-Élysées ‘LCE’ whose Le Masque imprint published popular crime and detective fiction, including the French editions of Agatha Christie). Carteret IV, 322.

Cf. King 151 (1853 edition, but the same binding stamps, by John Leighton).

First edition to contain the engraved frontispiece and title. Marked ‘troisième édition’ on the title-page, this edition, is actually the fourth — following the edition printed privately (in just 25-40 copies) in 1823 and the first two trade editions of 1824. The illustrated edition is considerably rarer (at least in commerce) than the preceding two trade editions (and the true first virtually unobtainable). The plate shows Ourika at the moment of realisation of her isolation and her fate in white European society. Ourika, based on fact, and influenced by Rousseau and Chateaubriand, is the complex story of a black African child, bought (some said rescued) from the slave trade and raised in aristocratic circles in Revolutionary France. It is the first fully developed attempt to portray a black heroine in Europe and the first French novel with a black female narrator. It proved controversial from the start and remains so. On the one hand it has been interpreted as a compassionate account of both racial and female alienation (Duras certainly projects her own experience onto that of her heroine) while on the other it has been described as a sustained act of appropriation and even as an apology for slavery. Whatever is the case, it caused a sensation with the first trade edition of 1824 becoming a bestseller and later editions very widely read in France and further afield (with early translations into English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Danish).

First edition of a gothic drama recounting the trials of an incarcerated nun — a theme with obvious anticlerical and libertarian potential which attracted several French novelists of the Revolutionary era, including Olympe de Gouges (in Le Couvent ou les voeux forcés) and Chénier (in Fénelon ou les religieuses de Cambrai). Julie was Pougens’ only drama and was evidently given salon performances by the actor François-Joseph Talma, and William Godwin read it in 1801 (Diary, 4 July 1801 http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/diary/). Charles de Pougens (1755–1833) is an interesting figure — the natural son of the Prince de Conti, he was highly educated and began a diplomatic career in Rome 1776, cut short by smallpox which left him blind. He travelled to England and was associated with Cagliostro and the transgender Chevalier D’Eon. Sentenced to death by the French Revolutionary authorities, in 1794, he survived when the execution of Robespierre brought an end to the Reign of Terror. The National Convention awarded him a pension, and in 1795 he opened a business in Paris selling books on commission. He best known for his early speculative lost-race novel Jocko (1824). Gay, II, 749; Cioranescu 51120; Quérard VII, 302. Worldcat: Hagley Library, Harvard, Texas, Toronto and Victoria (BC) in North America.

First edition, first issue with all the first issue points called for by Dufour: the erroneous spelling of the author as ‘Jaques’, the accent to ‘conformé’ added in manuscript the publisher on p. 11, the three cancels (pp. LXVII-LXVIII, 111-112, and 139-140) and the final leaf with instructions to the binder for placing the cancels.

The Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, also commonly known as the ‘Second Discourse’ examined social inequality and its origins and was Rousseau’s entry in a competition by the Academy of Dijon. Rousseau sets out to demonstrate how the growth of civilization corrupts man’s natural happiness and freedom by creating artificial inequalities of wealth, power and social privilege. Contending that primitive man was equal to his fellows, Rousseau believed that as societies become more sophisticated, the strongest and most intelligent members of the community gain an unnatural advantage over their weaker brethren, and that constitutions set up to rectify these imbalances through peace and justice in fact do nothing but perpetuate them. Rousseau’s political and social arguments in the Discourse were a hugely influential denunciation of the social conditions of his time and one of the most revolutionary documents of the eighteenth-century.

The inscription ‘F.H. Bothe’ is possibly that of Friedrich Heinrich Bothe (1771-1855), German poet, translator and classical philologist. Tchemerzine, X, 32; Dufour-Plan 55-56.

First edition, inscribed by Keller to artist and illustrator W. Graham Robertson: ‘To Mr Graham Robertson I send this book, hoping that it may convince him of the reality of my cordial admiration. Helen Keller. September 24th 1938’ and loosely inserted is an envelope containing a telegram from Alexander Woollcott to Graham Robertson at Sandhills, his Surrey home saying, ‘Helen Keller and I send our love to you at Christmas’. Keller’s inscription is reproduced in Robertson’s Letters. In a letter of 29 December 1938 he recorded receiving ‘to my inordinate pride, an affectionate message from that eighth wonder of the world, Helen Keller. What have I ever done that she should think of me’. Several days later he outlined the background of their connection. ‘Helen Keller began some time ago to send me little messages through a mutual friend who had spoken to her of Time Was. I felt compelled to tell her (very gently and tactfully, I hope) that I was quite unable to believe her existence, and that she and her impossible career were quite obviously a beautiful fairy tale invented for the encouragement and comfort of the world. She then sent me one of her books, inscribed (of course she can write―that is quite a minor miracle) … And then she got Time Was in Braille and seemed to like it. And that’s how it happened that am privileged to call myself a friend of Helen Keller’s’.

First edition. The first volume of the first English edition of Grimm’s fairy tales. The copy belonged to G.M Robertson, artist and illustrator Graham Robertson’s father and loosely inserted is a letter from Kerrison Preston (dated Christmas 1970) to Gillian Preston where he notes, ‘This Grimm belonged to Graham Robertson’s father Graham Moore Robertson and must have influenced the child’s upbringing, and so it has some association value’.

Indeed, Robertson wrote in his memoir, Time Was of his early and defining interest in fairy-tales: ‘I had reached the ripe age of thirteen and had for years been an earnest student of fairy-tales, ballads and romances. In the course of my studies I was continually coming across dazzlingly beautiful ladies, princesses lovely as the day, radiant fairies, exquisite though distressed heroines. There was never any doubt as to the beauty of these ladies; it took you flat aback at first sight and you knew at once that you were in the presence of a Fairy or a Princess or at least of an ill-used stepdaughter — which came to the same thing in the end … I looked round me in the solid, comfortable, mid Victorian world. There were pretty girls and girls who were not pretty; there really seemed very little difference between them. They roused no particular interest, and as to taking one flat aback — well, it was not in their line. I concluded, after some research, that the race of Fairy Princesses was extinct, and I didn’t much mind’. (p. 53).

First edition. Number 43 of an edition of 50 copies. The poet Gordon Bottomley, an invalid since his childhood, lived away from the stress of cities in Carnforth, Lancashire. He donated his extensive collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings to the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle. ‘Gordon Bottomley has never enjoyed robust health … He can only work very very slowly and must husband his physical strength with the utmost care. … his work, appearing at rare intervals, is of great perfection. … He stands among the greatest’ (Old Vic Magazine, November 1922). Graham Robertson, who described Bottomley as a ‘dear friend’ wrote of the plays: ‘They have real stuff in them I think, especially King Lear’s Wife and his new one Gruach, just published, being an incident in the early life of Lady Macbeth; (Letters, p. 76). ‘Bottomley, who had a luxuriant beard and hair well into later life, was liked and admired. He maintained the standards and culture which he knew historically and aesthetically with a generous courtesy. He believed in rural tradition, community, and craftsmanship. His influence on the minority who are sensitive to the power of poetry, and especially of poetry heard communally, was due to his gift of friendship and direct encouragement as well as his writings’ (Oxford DNB). 

First Rackham edition. Number 65 of 500 copies. Gettings, Arthur Rackham, p. 139; Hudson, Arthur Rackham, pp. 118-119.

A unique album written and illustrated by the artist and illustrator W. Graham Robertson for Marion (‘Binkie’), daughter of artist Arthur Melville who had died in 1904. It is one of several (another is in the Ray collection in the Morgan Library, New York) devoted to the young girl who became Robertson’s muse in the years following Melville’s tragic death. It comprises ‘Six Songs of the Day’ and ‘Six Songs of the Dusk’, the typed poems accompanied by his illustrations, usually depicting himself ‘Ba’ and the infant Binkie, and bear titles such as ‘Glad Day’, ‘Sea Pinks’, ‘Sand Castles’, ‘The Nowhere Place’ and ‘The Lady Dream Come True’. The larger watercolours are on Robertson’s Rutland Gate stationery.

First edition, deluxe issue, inscribed to ‘To my dear Graham [Robertson] Sep 1908 ET Nelleanora’ on half-title, with a small collection of associated and autograph material. The book was limited to 1000 copies for sale of which the first 250 copies are signed copies this being 122. With the book is an envelope containing a small collection marked ‘Items linked to Ellen Terry’s Story of my Life’, which includes four Terry autograph fragments (two on an envelope, one on a photo postcard with a family group), several photographs (early copies) of Terry, items concerning the G.F. Watts portrait, newspaper cuttings, an autograph letter from Sir John Gielgud, letters from Terry’s daughter Edith Craig (‘Edy’, to whom Terry dedicates the book) and her grandson, Edward Craig.
Ellen Terry was pre-eminent among the figures who defined the artist and illustrator W. Graham Robertson’s early life, dubbed by him ‘Our Lady of the Lyceum’ (Time Was) and his reminiscences of his time with her are among the most satisfying of his memoirs. He drew her several times, and The Story of my Life contains one of his portraits.

A superbly executed manuscript miscellany of short works by the eccentric antiquary and bibliophile Laurent de Crozet (1809-1872). The volume was edited posthumously by his son Amédée de Crozet (1847-1896) and is in the hand of a master scribe, Alphonse Pelletier of Marseille. The choice of contrasting quires of coloured papers aptly reflects some of the author’s curious bibliophilic practices. A prolific author of pamphlets and articles, it was said that he preferred to have each work printed in small editions by different printers, sometimes even ordering different gatherings from different printers. His aim was to make collecting his works as challenging as possible, so that only he and one other ever achieved a complete collection. Notably modest, de Crozet also published anonymously and adopted pseudonyms (such as the ‘Chevalier Apicius à Vindemiis’), a characteristic alluded to in the the author’s portrait (’Auctoris vera effigies’ which mentions a limitation of 50 copies) depicting a man sitting on an immense barrel, his pockets stuffed with pipes and bottles and his head in a book, so that his face is entirely obscured). De Crozet was a major collector of earlier French books (Perrier, Bibliophiles et les collectionneurs provencaux, 1897).

The contents comprise: Volume I: Du Coeur de l’homme selon la Philosophie ancienne; Reflexions; Notes de voyage (Hôtels, Registres des Etrangers; Enseignes; Voyageurs en Suisse, L’Amateur); Sur Cicéron; Lucrèce Borgia; Les Fiancés par Manzoni; Messe en Fa de Chérubin; Cicéron et Lord Byron; De la Décentralisation littéraire; Pensées; Histoire de l’Angleterre par Hume; Considérations sure les premiers siècle de notre histoire; Sur la foi. Volume II: De la Recherche des plaisirs’ De la Connaissance de Dieu; De l’Esclavage en Turquie; Memoires d’un Président de Conférences; Réponse de Mr. Casimir Bousquet; Notes sur Haitze’ Rapport; Notes bibliographiqes.

KingVictorian Decorated Trade Bindings 36 ( variant of this binding by Robert Dudley).

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 735 (Albert Warren, King’s example in blue).

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 361 (Red, John Leighton).

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 361 (John Leighton).

First edition. A novel illustrating the contemporary vogue for fiction based on the records of the French law courts. A contemporary reviewer in the Revue encyclopèdique savaged the novel itself but evidently found the 38-page introduction interesting - being a commentary on the merits of the relatively recent development of trial by jury in France. The book found several other reviews in the same year and evidently divided opinion. The Revue bibliographique du Royaume des Pays-bas simply noted ‘Cet ouvrage a été saisi par la police’.

Dubergier, who did not put his name on the title, was prolific both as a translator from English and as a novelist in his own right — usually favouring popular literature of the Walter Scott variety, sometime with Scottish or Irish settings. Querard, 11, p. 115. Worldcat lists the Bn and Princeton copies only.