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Number 40 of 100 copies signed by Woolf, reserved for sale in Great Britain, from a total edition of 450.

‘Virginia Woolf entered the political arena with A Room of Ones Own (1929). It originated as two papers read to women undergraduates in the Arts Society at Newnham College and the ODTAA Society at Girton College, Cambridge, in October 1928. The aim was to establish a woman’s tradition, recognizable through its distinct problems: the age-old confinement of women to the domestic sphere, the pressures of conformity to patriarchal ideas, and worst, the denial of income and privacy (’a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write’). A brief history of women’s writing tries to prove that their works were deformed by inward strife—not convincingly when we are pressed to agree that Jane Eyre is flawed by its author’s protest against the limitations imposed upon women. On the other hand, Virginia Woolf is brilliantly persuasive when she ridicules the power bias of male history narrowing in on war and kings with golden teapots on their heads. A counter-history waits in the wings: the untried potentialities of women, nurtured but unspoilt in women’s colleges, who are not to be imitation men but are to think back ‘through their mothers’. Virginia Woolf wants to retrieve rather than discard the traditions of womanhood, a position forecast in 1906 at the outset of her career with a historical story, ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn’, set during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses. It suggests that women excluded from historical record were the true makers of England as they passed their unnoticed code of preservation from mother to daughter, cultivating domestic order and the arts of peace, as opposed to militarized thugs who repeatedly destroyed it.’ (Lyndall Gordon, Oxford DNB). Kirkpatrick A12a.

First edition. This important anti-slavery act, now approaching its bicentenary, was a direct result of the formation of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823, and renewed political agitation by key abolitionist figures such as Wilberforce and Clarkson. The society was founded on 31 January 1823, when a group well known for their opposition to the slave trade met at the King’s Head tavern in the City of London. ‘Its purpose was to rouse public opinion to bring as much pressure as possible on parliament, and the new generation realized that for this they still needed Clarkson... He rode some 10,000 miles and achieved his masterpiece: by the summer of 1824, 777 petitions had been sent to parliament demanding gradual emancipation’. Also in this year, Wilberforce published his Appeal to the Religion, Justice and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire in behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies, in which he ‘dwelt on the moral and spiritual degradation of the slaves and presented their emancipation as a matter of national duty to God. It proved to be a powerful inspiration for the anti-slavery agitation in the country’ (Oxford DNB).

‘The Consolidated Slave Act repealed previous legislation on slavery and brought together all slave laws into one act. The act was designed to eliminate the more vicious provisions of the West Indian slave codes while simultaneously setting out new guidelines for the better treatment of slaves and free people of color. As recommended by the commission, the act included clauses that facilitated manumission’. Newton, ‘The King v. Robert James, a Slave, for Rape: Inequality, Gender, and British Slave Amelioration, 1823-1834’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 47, no. 3, 2005, pp. 592-3. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3879392. Accessed 12 Mar. 2024.

First edition. Boydell’s tables allowed dealers in beer, wine and spirits to accurately assess the true contents of part-used casks through measurement of ullage (the empty portion of any barrel) — an essential calculation in tax and excise assessments. Several new editions were advertised in the nineteenth-century but all editions are rare.
The author was probably the same Boydell who described himself as ‘ships-husband’ on the title of his The Merchant Freighter’s and Captains of Ships Assistant - Being Tables Calculated with the Greatest Accuracy (‘London: printed for the author... and to be had at Lloyd's, the New York, the New England, the Jamaica, and the Pensylvania coffee-houses; and of any bookseller in Great Britain, 1764). ESTC: Leeds, NLS, Glasgow, St Andrews, U Kentucky, UVA, Saint Olaf (MN) and State Library of Tasmania.

First edition of this Covenanter propaganda pamphlet of the era of the Bishops’ Wars, purporting to offer intelligence as to the parlous and divisive state of the English nation, particularly the English forces, who the author ‘L.D.’ claims to have infiltrated. It is full of fascinating gossip and opinion, albeit mainly fictional, sometimes in verse form.

‘What will you fight for a Booke of Common Prayer?
What will you fight for a Court of High Commission?.... [English]
Wee fight to have our true Religion stand:
Wee fight to keepe our Lawes unvilified...’ [Scots].

The spy-narrator recounts various sorties into England. At Canterbury he visits Becket’s tomb and scrawls on the cathedral wall, hears a sermon at Lambeth, visits Guy Fawkes’s house and reports a dissolute Whitehall, with the King having fled. Wing L10 (another edition of 22 pages is L11); Thomason E.153[22].

A superb ‘game of goose’ on the theme of the peoples of the known world, with fine engraved corner vignettes representing Africa, America, Europe and Asia and 63 vignettes representing different peoples. They include native Americans (of California, Mexico, the Amazon, Iroquois, Brazil, Chile, Tierra del Fuego, Paraguay and Nootka Island), inhabitants of Java, Sumatra, China, Japan, Tahiti, Australia (Nouvelle Hollande) and New Zealand, as well as Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In common with other games of this type, the cultural attitudes represented by the symbolism and mode of play is worthy of decoding. With dice and counters, the players are to navigate (culturally, not geographically) from China (evidently still at the furthest reaches of the European geographical imagination) to France, via the 63 numbered squares, with their various characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Mexico (square 6) is shown as a bridge and players landing there jump straight to square 12 (the Amazon); at 19 (Tahiti) the islanders’ hospitality detains players for two turns; at 31 (Siberia) the players waits in exile until another player reaches the same square and rescues them, at square 42, traditionally the ‘puzzle’ square (Japan) the player is refused landing and goes back to 30 (Abyssinia) and just before the end, square 58 (New Zealand) the player encounters the reputed anthrophages (man-eaters) and returns to the start. Ciompi/Seville Collection 32; Adrian Seville, ‘The geographical Jeux de l'Oie of Europe. Les Jeux de l’Oie géographiques de l’Europe’, Belgeo, 3-4, 2008, 427-444 (56).

First edition of this British political satire, co-opting Aesop’s animals of in a series of witty verses, capitalising on the popularity of the Aesop in English via the editions of Ogilby and L’Estrange. ‘In 1698 a whole series of fables began to appear anonymously which set Aesop on a journey through England and the rest of Europe. He comments through his animal characters about the Jacobite threat, William’s government of England, and Louis XIV’s ambitions on the continent. As one writer put it, “It is now the Mode, it seems, for Brutes to turn Politicians,” and Aesop was chosen as their main expositor. Aesop at Tunbridge (1698) was a structured attack on William and on Whig principles in general. In the same year Aesop at Bath criticized the Jacobites; Aesop Return d from Tunbridge committed the hapless supporter of the Jacobites to Bedlam; Old Aesop at Whitehall defended the government; and Aesop at Amsterdam objected to the very monarchical forms of government supported in one way or another by Whig, Tory, and Jacobite factions’ (Daniel, ‘Political and Philosophical Uses of Fables in eighteenth-century England’, The Eighteenth Century, 23, 2, 1982, p. 153).
Wing O196. ESTC lists US copies at Clark (UCLA), Folger, Harvard, Cincinnati and Texas.

One of Heath’s famous graphic satires on the theme of The March of Intellect, which expressed contemporary anxiety over technological progress and social change in England brought about by science, education, industrialisation and commercialisation. This one shows a London street corner at the edge of open country and the sea, with numerous figures, including a street-sweeper, horse-drawn carriage, two men playing chess, musicians and singers and street-sellers, with wealthy figures being sent down a mechanical lift beside giant shop window stuffed with milliner. A steam carriage full of redcoat soldiers is seen in background, along with passenger balloons and a flying warship (raining canon-fire at ships below) in the air beside bridge crossing the English Channel between Dover and Calais.

[bound with:] [CORNÉ, J. J.]. Album du dessinateur en cheveux, [Paris, n.d., c. 1840s]. ff. 8 lithographed plates. Soiled, some old repairs to versos. One further additional lithograph design (smaller) bound in at end. Contemporary quarter roan (worn). Evidently well used, but still good copies.

Two exceptionally rare albums of designs by Parisian hair artists — not hairdressers but creators of popular memorial and funerary pictures created from the cut hair of the deceased of which numerous examples are depicted here. The Hanssen album has an additional price list (including prices for frames); the Corné album is without a title-page (it is unclear if it was issued thus). Both artists are mentioned by André Chanlot in Les Ouvrages en cheveux; leurs secrets, p. 36. Chanlot dates the Corné album to c. 1845 and records the death of Hanssen in 1846. Exceptionally Rare. Worlcat lists three copies of the Hanssen album (all in France) and none of the Corné.

First edition of this extensive pocket guide to London, England and Wales for a juvenile audience. The description of London is admirably complete, with notes on the principal monuments as well as its people and customs (‘The Lord of Merry Disports’ and ‘Itinerant Musicians’ among them). The plates (originally appearing London, or interesting Memorials published by Thomas Boys in London in 1823) depict The Custom House, Somerset House, Hanover Terrace and Westminster Abbey. Adams, London illustrated, 1604-1851 (1983), 150. No US copies in Worldcat and JISC/COPAC records the Bishopsgate Institute and Bodley copies only.

First edition. In this polemical work the Republican, Constant warned the French people of the consequences of a potential restoration of the monarchy in France. He considers the undesirable consequences of the British Restoration and cites the histories of Clarendon, Hume, Burnet and Ludlow, often giving footnote excerpts in English. It was published shortly before the events of the 18th Brumaire and in the year Constant was also translating Godwin. The manuscript corrections in this copy appear to be editorial. Cioranescu 20698. Worldcat gives US copies at the University of Connecticut, Harvard, Michigan State, Missouri and American Philosophical Society.

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).

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’.

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.

― 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’.

First published in 1819, Le Poupée bien élevée proved popular among children on both sides of the English Channel, with numerous editions in both French and English (the latter as The Well Bred Doll). Jeanne Sophie Mallès de Beaulieu (176-1825) was the author of numerous moral and entertaining stories for children including Le Robinson de douze ans (1820).

A curious copy of this popular edition, removed from its original boards or wrappers at an early date and placed in a board chemise with ties and manuscript labels, perhaps for a personal or circulating library.