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An autograph copy, in an arabesque binding. of this classic text of French orientalism, made by the author for his wife and inscribed by him: ‘À Etelka, ma femme bien-aimée, qui est pour moi toute la splendour du monde et toute la poësie. Franz Toussaint. Mai 1936.’

Le Jardin des caresses. Traduit de l'arabe, consisting of Toussaint’s sensuous translation/interpretation of Moorish erotic poems, partly anonymous, written in tenth-century Spain, first appeared serially in the Mercure de France and Revue de Paris in 1909-1911, then published together in 1911 and reprinted and translated in numerous editions throughout the twentieth century (the Golden Cockerel Press printed an English edition in 1934). Its numerous short stanzas, whose titles include: ‘Les Seins, les yeux, et la chevelure’, ‘Les oiseaux de la mosquée’, ‘La Sultane de l’amour’, ‘Al Maghreb’, ‘Les Sorciers’, ‘L’Astronome’ and ‘La Voluptueuse’ proved especially suitable for musical settings and so the work also found popularity in song.

Toussaint is an interesting figure, both a respected scholarly translator of Arabic and other eastern languages (Sanskrit, Hindi and Persian), and a director of silent films, the best-known of which is Inch’Allah of 1922. He had spent many years in the Orient as a young man on military service. This appealing little manuscript was evidently made by the author as a gift for his second wife, Turkish-born Adelaïde Etelca Stefania Braggiotti, who he married in 1925.

An attractive Bohemian daily prayer book, evidently made for a girl, with simple illumination depicting the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion and St John in the wilderness. The format and decoration are of a type familiar in Southern Germany at this date, but Bohemian examples are less common.

British and German aircraft drawn by an accomplished amateur during the first year of the German occupation of France. The aircraft include a Vickers Wellington, Miles Magister, Westland Lysander, Short Sunderland seaplane, Fairey Battle, Messerschmidt 109 and Heinkel He. 112.

I. 'J.B'. France, c. 1900.

Folio (335 × 210 mm), pp. [98], plus several blank leaves at end. Text in manuscript, full-page illustrations in crayon or pastel. Lightly browned throughout, fragile at edges with minor fraying, all the result of poor quality paper. In original cloth backed notebook. Binding rather worn. A handsome chanson manuscript, anonymous but for the decorative initials 'J.B'. The songs include: 'Le Pigeon blessé', 'Sous les Platanes', 'Carmen', 'Chagrins d'Amour', 'Juanita', 'La Femme est un jouette' and 'Mort pour la France'.

II. Émile LEBLOND. Dijon, c. 1904.

Manuscript, 4to (214 × 170 mm), pp. 1-12, 17-98, 101-102, 105-270, 280-320, several blanks at rear. Evidence of 3 leaves removed, perhaps by the maker. Numerous drawings in ink and crayon, decorative headings. Original cloth notebook. Rather rubbed. An illustrated chansonnier made by a soldier of the First Artillery, stationed at Dijon. This is an especially full example which gives some unusual details as to its making: Leblond occasionally records the number of weeks he has been in service and there is evidence of carbon tracing, demonstrating the use of illustrations from popular journals in making these chansonniers. The songs include: 'Berceuse militaire', 'L'Africaine', 'Chapeai bas devant la Marseillais', 'Vous êtes si jolie', 'Four frou' and 'Ma Ninette'.

III. Yvan LOREAU. Chemillé-sur-Seine, c. 1909.

Manuscript, small 4to (216 × 175 mm), pp. [2], 88, ruled paper. Drawings in ink and crayon. Original limp wrappers. Yvan Loreau writes on his title-page that this manuscript was made 'Sur le tour de France' and begun on 11th December 1909. Songs include: 'Voila la Parisienne', 'Le petit coeur de Ninon', 'Ah! Ma p'tit Lili', 'Le ruban bleu de l'hirondelle' and 'Pas sur la bouche'.

IV. Alexandre MOULLET, 'le gros bâtarde'. Valence, 1913-14.

Manuscript (on squared paper), 4to (222 × 170 mm), pp. [152]. Drawings in ink and crayon, partially unfinished. Some thumbing and fraying, one leaf loose. Original half cloth notebook. An illustrated chansonnier made on the eve of the Great War for one Alexandre Moullet, picturesquely nicknamed 'le gros bâtarde', of the 5eme Régiment d'Artillerie lourde, 8ème batterie, at Valence (Drôme). Songs include: 'Les petites Toulonnaises'; 'Soldat vierge', 'Marins de Marseille', 'Coeur Crise', 'Sur la Riviera' and 'Le dernier Tango'.

V. REDON. Valbonne (Ain), 1921.

Manuscript on paper, small 4to (216 × 170 mm), pp. [117], plus numerous blanks at rear, numerous drawings in pencil, ink and crayon (a couple cut from newspapers or journals, decorative headings. Original half cloth notebook. Songs include: 'Tu voudrais me voir pleurer', 'La vals du pastis', 'Vous rendez tous les hommes fou' and 'Le train fatale'. One verse is subscribed 'Fait a la Valbonne le 12-12-21 une soiré de grand froid'.

A remarkable manuscript account of a French campaign in Bavaria and Bohemia during the first Silesian War, in the form of extracts from (unpublished) letters from an artillery major. It is subtitled: ‘Extrait des lettres ecrittes par Mr. Du Gravier surtout ce qui s’est passé depuis le depart des Trouppes de France pour la Bavière, jusqu’au retour de celles que Mr. Le M[arécha]l de Belisle a ramenée de Prague.’ The campaign was led by the Maréchals de Broglie and de Belle Isle and the detailed extracts cover the march to Prague, its storming by French troops in 26 November 1741, the subsequent siege at the hands of the Austrian army and the escape of some 14,000 French troops from the city in December 1742.

An idiosyncratic personal index of useful and curious facts, mainly geographical, in part forming an index to the Encyclopédie Méthodique (which had been issued in print without an index), a gazetteer to its Atlas, and an index to various other books, such as Valmont de Bomare’s Histoire Naturelle and Lacroix’s Géographie. A homespun affair, the volume is rather haphazardly arranged and presented in homemade boards covered in rather fine contemporary wallpaper. It includes references to regions, cities and landmarks in Europe, Asia, Africa and America (the latter including mentions of Cabot, Columbus and Penn) and several ingenious diagrams of the rivers of France.

The manuscript comprises 95 vignettes of London signs, often dated, including street signs dating from as early as 1623 and inn and shop signs. The key provides their original location.

The fine bookplate by William P. Barrett is of Herbert John Gladstone, 1st Viscount Gladstone, youngest son of the British Prime Minister.

A charming and accomplished series of diminutive watercolours of views in Ireland, including rugged landscapes, seascapes, woodland and buildings. Most are captioned and denote locations in Wicklow and Kerry. The owner has added initials ‘F.P.C. and an address in Hackney to the upper cover, and another inscription ‘Miss Collis’ gives an address in Harlesden.

The naive but elegant watercolours here include ginger, eggplant, hot pepper, strawberry, mulberry, lily, carnation, marigold, vetch, hypericum and orchid.

An elegantly produced autograph manuscript in gold ink of Mesnage’s satire in hexasyllables denouncing the arrivistes of the Second Republic. It is apparently unpublished. Born in 1821 at Evron (Mayenne), Mesnage claimed direct descent from Racine and published several poetical works, including Les Fleurs d’Avril (Laval, 1854 of which a copy is included here).

This portrait is a naive interpretation of the classic image of Ramon Llull (c. 1232- c. 1315), Catalan mystic and mathematician. It is derived from the engraved portrait which first appeared in the seventeenth century Bibliotheca Chalcographia published by Jacques Boissard and Theodor de Bry in 1664.

A contemporary sketch of the dedicatee of The Lark Ascending, signed by her at the Glastonbury Festival, 1919. Marie Hall (1884-1956) was the outstanding violinist of her generation and it was for her that Vaughan Williams wrote this most popular piece of English music. First written in 1914, performance of The Lark was delayed by Williams’ service in the Great War. He and Hall revised it together in 1920 for a piano and violin performance that year, before she performed it for the first time in a full orchestral version (under Sir Adrian Boult) later that year. Hill played a famous Stradivarius which later took her name.

First editions. Parts III and IV followed in 1794. All are scarce due, presumably, to their having been ‘suppressed on account of their personal allusions’ (DNB).

Halhed (1751–1830) was friends with Sheridan at Harrow, and they collaborated on the bawdy Love Epistles of Aristaenetus (1771). They shared, too, an affection for the singer Elizabeth Linley; when she married Sheridan, Halhed went to India, where he befriended William Jones and Warren Hastings, and set up what became the East India Company Press in Bengal.

These lively adaptations of Martial to the modern age were composed after Halhed’s return to Britain, with all manner of contemporary references, i.e. Rights of Man, Renwick Williams the ‘Monster of London’ condemned in 1790 for assaults on various women, Newgate, Grub Street, the poetry of Pindar. Alexander Gordon, writing in DNB, remarks that they ‘show a keen power of epigram’.

These copies, though recently preserved in modern wrappers, retain extensive manuscript notes, apparently by one W. P. Stawell, whose name appears on the front free endpaper. Some of these contains dates in the 1830s and 1840s and are all apparently in the same hand. Mostly verse, some are obviously extracts or copies from printed sources, but some may be original. They include ‘Lines of Buchanan on his Mistress’, ‘A Retort’ (beginning ‘A pert young Barrister Hibernia’s son’), a transcription from the tomb of Joseph Palmer in Exeter Cathedral’ and (most interestingly), ‘On the new Penny Postage Plan Jany 10 1840’ (’By corresponding circumstances fired / A rage for Letter-writing has mankind inspired / Millions write letters who ne’er wrote before / And those who wrote, write millions more...’). Jackson p. 183.

Contemporary caricature portraits of the great American millionaires Carnegie, Pierpont-Morgan, Gordon-Bennett, Harjes, Frick and Depew. The drawing was probably intended for reduction and publication in an (unidentified) journal. Rouveyre (1879-1962) was immensely prolific as a caricaturist and maintained friendships and correspondence with important figures such as Apollinaire and Matisse (having met the latter as joint students of the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau).

An eighteenth-century account book of the guild of hatmakers in the city of Antwerp, covering nearly 70 years. The Antwerp hatmakers were an important craft organization with a well-regulated structure. Their accounts were overseen by aldermen, each serving for several years, who recorded income (usually in the the form of entry fines for new members) and expenditure (usually payment for the guilds officials). One of the major expenditures was the payment of the ‘proefmeesters’ who exercised quality control by examining the products of prospective entrants before admitting them to membership.

The accounts provide a detailed record of the names of entrants to the guild and of guild officials. They also provide much incidental detail of the position of the craft within the regional economy, with frequent expenditures recording contact with the neighbouring towns of Brussels, Mechelen and Bruges.

An attractive vernacular mass and prayer book, characteristic of German Catholic devotion of this period, with decorative calligraphic headings and vignettes. The title translates loosely as Little Catholic Prayer Book in which the best morning, evening, mass confession [and] communion prayers as well as the best litanies have been put together with other different prayers, written by me....’