Rare books from Peter Harrington

Paris: , 1774. An attractive and impressive botanical print by the husband and wife collaboration of Nicolas and Genevieve Regnault, from their work entitled 'La Botanique Mise a la portee de tout le monde ou Collection des Plantes D'Usage...'. The work illustrates both helpful (medicinal) and decorative plants. Blunt says " The most impressive French botanical work of the period". Size: 456 x 336 mm. Copperplate engraving with original wash colour. Very good condition.

Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company,, 1956. First Japanese printing of the first English language edition, very scarce presentation copy inscribed by Mishima on the front free endpaper, "To Donald Warren-Knott with the author's best wishes, Yukio Mishima, 10th March '57". Donald Warren-Knott was a young expatriate based in Tokyo in the late 1950s, stationed as a junior member of the Information Section at the British Consulate, and went on to become Britain's Consul to Japan. Like Mishima he had theatrical interests, and directed the play The Love of Four Colonels by Peter Ustinov for the Tokyo International Players in February 1958. Later in life, Warren-Knott became the UK Administrator of the Great Britain-Sasakawa Foundation. The Sound of Waves was Mishima's third novel, written following his 1952 visit to Greece and incorporating elements of the story of Daphnis and Chloe. It was originally published in Japanese in 1954, and the English translation was first published by Knopf in New York in… Read More

London: printed by W. Strahan, for A. Millar, T. Longman, J. Dodsley, W. Strahan, J. Rivington, [& 15 others in London],, 1765. The third edition, in contemporary reversed calf Third edition of the most famous of all dictionaries, following the first edition of 1755, in the same imposing double-folio format as its predecessor. The creation of the dictionary was Johnson's greatest literary labour. Helped by a succession of needy amanuenses who worked in the surprisingly spacious garret of his house in Gough Square, he experienced the death of his wife and underwent agonies of procrastination before finally completing the task in his 46th year. As his use of 114,000 illustrative quotations shows, Johnson clearly intended to combine lexicography with entertainment and instruction. It was always to be called "Johnson's Dictionary", and the national pride taken in the project was expressed by the poet Christopher Smart when he wrote in the Universel Visitor: "I look upon [it] with equal amazement, as I do… Read More

Paris: Dondey-Duprè père et fils,, 1828. In the original wrappers First edition of Gérard de Nerval's translation of Faust, subsequently used by Berlioz for his La Damnation de Faust. This is one of Nerval's earliest works, which he translated when still in his early twenties, and helped to establish his reputation. Duodecimo. Original orange wrappers. Housed in a custom black cloth box. Lithograph frontispiece by Pineas. Pencilled notation at head of front wrapper. Wrappers expertly restored, occasional light foxing to contents. A very good copy. Carteret II p. 216.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, The Riverside Press,, 1884. The finest American Rubáiyát Signed limited edition, number 47 of 100 copies signed by the illustrator, printed on japon, and bound in full morocco; an unsigned trade issue bound in cloth was also released. Vedder's Rubáiyát is widely esteemed as the finest American edition of the poem ever to be published. "When Houghton Mifflin commissioned Elihu Vedder to illustrate The Rubáiyát, they employed an artist with a rich sense of classical interpretation. Vedder spent 11 months in Rome fulfilling the commission, producing monochrome illustrations in a Greco-Roman style, which caused the London journal Athenaeum to describe Vedder as the latest follower of Michelangelo. Nonetheless, the Grove Art Online encyclopaedia comments on the Vedder drawings as 'some of the earliest examples of Art Nouveau in America'... Houghton Mifflin reissued the Vedder Rubáiyát in different formats in 1886. New editions and reprints continued into the… Read More

London: The Nonesuch Press,, 1939. Pleasingly bound and illustrated First Nonesuch omnibus edition, released in the Compendious series, and presented here in a handsome binding. Reviewing the volume, Virginia Woolf declared that it leaves us "no excuse - Lewis Carroll ought once and for all to be complete. We ought to be able to grasp him whole and entire. But we fail, once more we fail...". Octavo, pp. 1293. Finely bound by the Chelsea Bindery in red morocco, spine lettered in gilt, raised bands dotted in gilt, twin gilt rule on turn-ins, dark green endpapers, edges gilt. Illustrated by John Tenniel. An excellent copy. A History of the Nonesuch Press 115. Virginia Woolf, "The upside-down world of Lewis Carroll", New Statesman, 9 Dec. 1939.

Oxford: Printed by John Baskett, Printer to the University,, 1739 & 1751. A large Bible and prayer book for the Georgian lectern An imposing early Georgian lectern bible, together with the Prayer Book, both preserved in matching contemporary reversed calf bindings, and unusual thus. Baskett monopolized English bible production for decades, with his folio editions the grandest and most imposing, designed for use in churches. His great bible of 1717 was a truly impressive edition, of which Harry Carter, the historian of Oxford printing, writes "only Baskerville's Bible (Cambridge, 1763) is its equal among English Bibles for beauty of type, impression, and paper" (The History of the Oxford University Press, 1975, I, p. 171). Two works, folio (Bible: 464 x 288 mm; Prayer Book: 400 x 246). Contemporary panelled reversed calf. Engraved frontispiece in Prayer Book. Divisional title for New Testament with verso recording births and deaths in the Holgate Family in Whixley from 1809 to 1913. Both with minor… Read More

Amsterdam: Jacobus Wagenaar,, 1667. First translation of Leviathan, likely the edition read by Spinoza First edition of the first translation of Leviathan, into Dutch, almost certainly the second edition overall following the English edition of 1651, and the text probably read by Spinoza. Leviathan offers the fullest and most famous expression of the indivisibility of sovereignty, the necessity for the state's leader to be absolute in their power, unchecked by constitutional or institutional limitations. Leviathan's thesis is exemplified by the iconic frontispiece – "the State, it seemed to Hobbes, might be regarded as a great artificial monster made up of individual men... the individual (except to save his own life) should always submit to the State, because any government is better than the anarchy of the natural state" (PMM). Much influenced by the chaos of the English Civil War, Hobbes deemed stable monarchies as the most rational and effective system of governance; any restrictions or attempts… Read More

Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel,, 1843; 1855. Reconciling ethical duty with social norms First edition of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, his re-imagining of the story of Abraham and Isaac and its implications for moral law, one of the foundational texts in the development of existentialist thought; together with the second edition of The Concept of Dread (first published 1844, one of the rarest of Kierkegaard's works in its first edition), and which set the terms of his existential philosophy. "Kierkegaard, however, recognizes duties that cannot be justified in terms of social norms. Much of Fear and Trembling turns on the notion that Abraham's would-be sacrifice of his son Isaac is ineffable in terms of social norms, and requires a 'teleological suspension of the ethical'. That is, Abraham recognizes a duty to something higher than both his social duty not to kill an innocent person and his personal commitment to his beloved son, viz. his duty to obey God's commands. However, he cannot give an… Read More

London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd,, 1937. Wishaw's cigars have cheered us all up" - presented to his host at Isfahan First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To H. A. Wishaw, my host in Isfahan and chaperone to the Chihil Sutun, in gratitude, from Robert Byron". Wishaw was Isfahan branch manager of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, described affectionately by Byron as "captain of oil" (p. 190). Wishaw hosted Byron at Isfahan in March and April 1934 and is mentioned several times here, his hospitality noted with enthusiasm: "three bottles of Shahi wine, an orange salad, and Wishaw's cigars have cheered us all up" (p. 235). The Chihil Sutun (or Chehel Sotoun) of Byron's inscription is the beautiful 17th-century pavilion built for Shah Abbas II. The Road to Oxiana is "an enquiry into the origins of Islamic art presented in the form of one of the most entertaining travel books of modern times" (ODNB). In his introduction to the 1981 re-issue, Bruce… Read More

London: Printed at the Chiswick Press for George Bell and Sons,, 1903. First Chiswick Press edition, number 84 of 220 copies, an attractive edition. More's celebrated description of an ideal commonwealth, a "quintessential humanist dialogue" (ODNB), was first published in Louvain in 1516. Influenced by Plato's Republic, St Augustine's De civitate dei, Vespucci's accounts of the New World, and Erasmus's Institutio principis christiani, it was "a tract for the times, to rub in the lesson of Erasmus; it inveighs against the new statemanship of all-powerful autocracy and the new economics of large enclosures and the destruction of the old common-field agriculture, just as it pleads for religious tolerance and universal education" (PMM, for 1516 edition). This edition follows the text of the first English translation of 1556. The limitation page is often found signed by the publisher, and is not signed here. This copy is from the library of the Anglo-Irish novelist Joyce Cary (1888-1957), with his his… Read More

New York: Random House,, 1980. Signed by Capote First edition, first printing, signed by the author on the front free endpaper, and additionally with a signed photograph and letter loosely inserted (discharging his bank from a forged cheque). Music for Chameleons was Capote's final book, a collection of short stories "consisting of some of his most effective prose" (ANB). Octavo. Original black cloth, spine and front cover lettered in silver. With dust jacket. Housed in custom pink cloth solander box. A fine copy, in near-fine jacket with hint of rubbing at extremities.

London: Adam and Charles Black,, 1909. A visually and textually interesting edition, handsomely presented First edition of this iteration of James's visual interpretation of the Rubáiyát, much enhanced by Nicholson's scholarly apparatus, and here finely bound. Liverpool-born Gilbert Penrose James (1865-1941) was a self-taught artist-illustrator who worked mainly in an "art nouveau style, [employing] strong contrasts and very mannered and symbolic subjects often with an Eastern setting" (Houfe). This style was ideally suited to Omar Khayyám, whose quatrains James illustrated multiple times over his career, starting with the illustrations he published in Clement Shorter's The Sketch in the late 1890s. The illustrated text is accompanied by a substantial scholarly introduction and annotations by Cambridge orientalist Reynolds Alleyne Nicholson (1868-1945). Nicholson had studied with Goeje and Nöldeke in Leiden and Strasbourg, and worked in partnership with E. G. Browne at Cambridge, whom he… Read More

London: printed for A. Millar,, 1762; 1759; 1759. 1,800 years of English history First edition of first four volumes, second edition of the last two volumes (originally published in 1754 and 1757). "As a whole, The History of England... was a remarkable testimony to the coherence of English history across its entire period, despite the evident changes which had occurred in its form of government... Hume triumphantly [demonstrated] that it was possible to write such history in a manner which combined good historical argument with good writing, and thereby appealed to an extensive readership" (ODNB). Three works in Six volumes, quarto (256 x 207 mm). Contemporary calf, rebacked with original spines laid down, twin red and green morocco labels, gilt heraldic device (lion atop castle) at foot of spines; initial two volumes a little taller and with slightly different finishing. Complete with half-titles and errata. Light wear to corners and scratches to calf, contents with some light foxing and a few… Read More

New York: Harper & Brothers,, 1851. His masterpiece, in the original cloth First US edition of Melville's greatest work, in the first issue binding (BAL's "A" state, with the publisher's device on the covers and orange endpapers), a very smart copy notably free from any of the usual foxing. The US edition was the first to appear under the familiar title and contains 35 passages and the epilogue omitted from the slightly earlier British edition. Moby-Dick was originally issued in London earlier the same year, set from the New York sheets and titled The Whale. Now universally acclaimed, at the time the novel was a "complete practical failure, misunderstood by the critics and ignored by the public; and in 1853 the Harpers' fire destroyed the plates of all his books and most of the copies remaining in stock" (DAB, vol. 12, p. 523). Copies in first issue bindings appear in black, blue, grey, green, purple-brown, red, and slate-coloured cloth, without any priority. As Sadleir notes, it was the custom of… Read More