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LIST 216 - RECENT ACQUISITIONS.
Unrecorded Reform Catechism
101 SOAVE, Francesco. Catechismo Maggiore ad uso delle Scuole di Francesco Soave. In Venezia, nella Stamperia di Giacomo Storti. MDCCXCIV [1794].£ 350
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 124; a clean and crisp copy, with only occasional minor foxing just visible; uncut and stitched as issued in contemporary wrappers, upper wrapper and spine titled in ink in a slightly later hand, head of spine chipped and covers lightly dust-soiled, but still a very good copy.
First edition of one of Francesco Soave’s text books for modern schools in Northern Italy. The catechism was published for the schools organized along his principles and appeared without approbation of the church authorities. We could not establish whether it was ever in use; however, the rarity and the absence of a later reprint speaks for it not having found the approval of the church.
The Swiss-born Soave (1743-1806) was a member of the religious order Congregazione dei Padri Somaschi, dedicated to living with and educating the poor, and wrote a number of philosophical and educational works, including a study of Kant’s philosophy, one on logic as the sub-structure of language, a history of the Jewish people and translated works by Locke, Hugh Blair and others into Italian, as well as being the author of a number of short stories, the Novelle Morali (1782) by which he is best known.
Not in OCLC, ICCU, COPAC, KVK, any other database or catalogue consulted.
102 [STANCLERT, H.C.] DOGGIANA: by Cynophilus [cover title]. London, [Hullmandel] for Colnaghi and Son, 1827.£ 3,000
FIRST EDITION. Oblong 4to, lithographic title and seven hand-coloured lithographic plates; spotting mainly in the margins; original printed wrappers; frayed margins and spine worn; preserved in a custom-made cloth box with gilt-stamped lettering-piece on spine.
This rare series of dog studies opens with an iconographically unusual title-page: an Egyptian pyramid balanced on a large mushroom in a field with well-dressed dog, à la Napoleon, standing proudly on top. In most plates an English setter features in various circumstances: dancing, a challenge, in matrimony, suckling young, stealing a ham on a bone, or caught in a steel trap; the last showing passing a stone inscribed in dog Latin verse.
We have not been able to establish the author of this work with any degree of certainty, the reference to Stanclerc is given in an article from AB Bookman’s Weekly from 1991, but we have not been able to corroborate this attribution.
Not in Halkett & Laing; OCLC locates copies at Yale, the Library of the American Kennel Club, Texas Christian University and in the College of William and Mary.
The Inner Workings of the Suffragette Movement
103 [SUFFRAGETTES]. Small Archive relating to the North of England Society for Women’s Suffrage, Oldham Branch. Compiled by Anna Leigh Chadderton (born 1874, studied at Owens College, Manchester around 1900), the secretary, comprising original letters, pamphlets, ephemera and a large photograph of the committee members. [Oldham, 1899-c. 1914].£ 4,000
30 items in various formats.
The North of England Society for Women’s Suffrage had developed out of the Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage in 1897. In that year Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy reported that the North of England Society was so poor ‘that it had to dismiss one member of its staff, and that it had received many letters from former members who thought it was no use to subscribing to, or working for women’s suffrage any longer, since a bill never got further than its second reading. Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth set about building up support for the society from working women and were particularly successful in attracting those employed in the cotton trade. In 1901 and 1902 the NEWSWS presented petitions signed by 666,835 women factory workers in Yorkshire, Cheshire and Lancashire’ (Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, p. 464).
The archive consists of nine printed pamphlets, eleven broadsides and flyers, nine manuscripts, and one group photograph. A complete description of all the items is available on request.
104 [TINNEY, John]. The Young Painter’s Assistant in the Art of Drawing; A New Drawing-Book, containing Great Variety of Examples to copy after in every Branch of that noble Art; as Parts of the Face, Heads, Hands, Feet, Academy Figures, Antique Statues, Clothed Figures, Landskips, & c. Collected from the Works of the greatest Masters. To which is prefixed, An Essay on Drawing, With introductory Rules for the Use of Learners; in which the first Principle and general Rules of that curious Art are explained in such a Manner, that it may be attained in a short Time. London, John Tinney, 1753.£ 8,500
FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. 16, with 76 engraved plates (one folding, several with up to four engravings); plate 48 with ink spots on verso (3 seeped through to recto); text with a few minor spots; otherwise clean in contemporary calf, covers with gilt-stamped ornamental borders and fleurons in the corners, spine with raised bands and ornamented in gilt, gilt-stamped red morocco lettering-piece, marbled endpapers; light wear to extremities, front hinge with slit, but chords holding firmly.
First edition of this rare and highly illustrated drawing book, possibly one of very few copies printed, as the page numerals in the footnotes referring to Tinney’s Compendium anatomicum (see below) are entered by hand, as much as the numbering of the plates. The only other copy we were able to locate is in the British Library, containing only 59 plates. We were able to trace one other copy having been on the market, bound with Chippendale’s Sketches of Ornament, sold in the mid-1980s at auction.
Tinney based several of the studies of heads on Watteau and Boucher, whilst some landscapes show Dutch and Northern Italian influence. The folding plate explains the construction of central perspective.
John Tinney (c.1706–1761) was a London engraver and printseller specialising in material for artistic amateurs and maps. ‘He was apprenticed for seven years to the engraver John Sturt on 3 August 1721 and made free of the Goldsmiths’ Company on 8 April 1730. He was trading in Great Eastcheap, Cannon Street, in 1734 but is said to have spent some time in France. He took livery in the Goldsmiths’ Company in May 1737 and set up at the sign of the Carved Golden Lion in Fleet Street, between Peterborough Court and the Globe tavern. In 1745 the contents of his shop were insured for £300. There, according to his trade label, he sold ‘great variety of French prints and several fine prints done from his own new copper plates, in neat frames and glasses or without, and all sorts of maps; also several new drawing books, copy books and great variety of royal sheets, lotteries &c’ and ‘performs engraving in all its branches in the neatest manner’. He engraved competently in line and in mezzotint and trained a number of apprentices, of whom Anthony Walker, William Woollett, and John Browne became distinguished engravers. Advertisements in newspapers further reveal that Tinney published a wide variety of topical, satirical, and decorative prints. His Compendium anatomicum (1743) was an important early guide to human anatomy intended for artists’(Oxford DNB).
Provenance: Contemporary armorial engraved bookplate in Chippendale style of Elizabeth Bradburne on front paste-down; later Welsh engraved bookplate on opposite fly-leaf.
Not in UCBA; ESTC locates only one copy, in the British Library.
105 TOLSTOY, Leo. Rule by Murder. An Indictment of the Russian Government … Translated by L. & A. Maude … [drop-head title]. Published at the Office of THE OPEN ROAD, 11, Cursitor Street, London, E.C.’ [printed at the same address by C.W. Daniel], [n.d., 1910].£ 450
FIRST EDITION [?]. 12mo, pp. 16; text lightly dust-soiled throughout, traces of oxidation from paper clip and staple (missing), marginal tear to title.
First edition of this impressive piece of political writing dealing with the increase of public executions in Russia, by the ageing famous resident of Yasnaya Poliana, Count Leo Tolstoy, who died in the same year.
Tolstoy’s stance is uncompromising as ever, and he analyzes the logical, moral, and legal implications of capital punishment and describes their effect, detrimental to the whole of society and one’s own soul. ‘All this is carefully arranged and planned by learned and enlightened people of the upper class … This is awful, but mostly awful of all this is the fact that this is not done impulsively under the sway of feelings silencing reason … That is what makes these deeds so particularly dreadful. Dreadful because these acts - committed by men, who from the judge to the hangman, do not wish to do them - prove more vividly than anything else how pernicious to human souls is despotism; the power of men over men’ (p. 3).
Tolstoy does not spare the Tsar, who as the highest in the monarchy carries most responsibility. ‘But you all, from the Secretary of the Court to the Premier and Tsar - you indirect participators in the inequities perpetrated every day - do not seem to feel your gilt … It is true that, like the executioner, you fear men, and fear the more the greater your responsibility for the crimes: the General Governor more than the President; the President of the Councel of Ministers more still and the Tsar most of all’ (p. 11). This pamphlet, certainly one of the last written by Tolstoy was most likely smuggled out of Russia by his admirer, friend, and translator Aylmer Maude (1858-1938), who together with his wife Louise Shanks Maude (1855-1939) were the main translators of Tolstoy and advocates of his thought in the English-speaking world.
The rather obscure publishers, located off Chancery Lane, were involved in health food, mysticism, things we would call new age nowadays; however, there seems to have been a link with the Independent Labour Party as well.
OCLC records copies at Alberta, and New Mexico State University in North America, and one copy in the UK, at Oxford; COPAC does not give additional locations; not in the British Library.
A Masterpiece of Ineptitude during the Peninsular War
106 TOMLINS, W. E. The Whole Proceedings of the Court of Enquiry upon the conduct of Sir Hew Dalrymple, Late Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Forces in Portugal, relation to the Convention of Cintra: Held in the Great Hall, Chelsea College, From Monday, Nov. 14 to Wednesday, dec. 14, 1808 with an Introductory Account of the Campaign, and the circumstance which led to that memorable convention; the state of the public mind; and a Sketch of the Life of Sir Hew Dalrymple, accompanied with a correct likeness. London: Printed for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, (Successors to Mr. H.D. Symonds), 20, Paternoster-Row. 1808.£ 350
8vo, pp. [ii], vi, 104, 2 (advertisements), 4 (advertisements), with engraved portrait uncut and stitched as issued, a bit dusty, final two leaves with a few folds, number in ink on title.
Sir Hew Whitefoord Dalrymple (1750–1830) was born in Ayr and followed his father into the military. In late summer of 1808 he was sent to Portugal to oust the relatively weak French troops; however, ‘presumably from lack of confidence and intelligence’ (Oxford DNB) he negotiated an armistice and evacuation of the French with British ships. At the convention of Cintra on August 30 the deal - very advantageous for the French - was struck, and Dalrymple faced harsh criticism from his superior Wellesley, who called the treatise ‘a very extraordinary paper.’ The historian Michael Glover judged that ‘on Dalrymple’s side it was a masterpiece of ineptitude’ (Britannia sickens: the convention of Cintra, p. 138). After Dalrymple delayed reporting to London, the British public, including Byron, Cobbett and Wordsworth, were enraged, Dalrymple was recalled to England and the government staged an inquiry resulting in a whitewash report. - This book, written and compiled by a barrister, who put together a host of material on the Dalrymple case, is the best contemporary documentation of this episode.
Provenance: John Walpole Willis, (1793 - 1877) the English-born judge, and a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
Social welfare of “Jack” in India
107 [TOYNBEE, Captain Henry]. Sailor’s Institute. Proceedings of a public meeting held in Calcutta. [Calcutta] Printed by Saunders and co., No 23, Loll Bazar. [1863].£ 285
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 28; drop-head title; stab sewn as issued, a desirable copy inscribed presentation copy from Henry Toynbee to “Woodfield Eagels Esq. Ship Hotspur. Christmas 1863”.
First edition, and as far as we are aware unrecorded, of this report of proceedings consisting mainly of Captain Toynbee’s address pointing out the dangers “for the gratification of the lowest tendencies of their nature” to which British seamen - referred to collectively as “Jack” - are exposed when they go on shore in Calcutta. He recommends the provision of a Sailors’ Institution “with cricket, quoit, and skittle grounds attached”, equipped also with a library, lecture room, swimming pool and where light food and non-alcoholic drinks can be had.
Not in OCLC, COPAC, BLC or NSTC.
108 [VEITCH, John]. A Curious and Humorous Arrangement of Surnames, in Systematic and Scientific order, containing the Names of about 800 Living Characters In the City of Edinburgh and its Vicinity, with their Professions, Addresses, and other local Circumstances. Edinburgh, [James Clarke & Co.] for Andrew Brown, 1825.£ 185
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, pp. [ii], 34; occasionally very light browning; stitched as issued in the original plain wrappers.
A satirical directory of Edinburgh, where the names with their descriptive adjectives are arranged in syntactic order, thus forming more or less nonsensical sentences and phrases. However, it is a directory of Regency Edinburgh, with professions and addresses of the businesses given. This list went through two more editions, which came out in the following two years. All we know about the author is based on Halkett & Laing, who state that John Veitch was a dentist.
Halkett & Laing I, p. 468; OCLC locates copies at Glasgow University, the National Library of Scotland, and at Edinburgh University.
Including poems by Vico, from the year of the Scienza Nuova
109 [VICO]. Rime e Versi per le nozze degli eccellentissimi signori Giacomo-Francesco Milano Franco D’Aragona, Principe di Ardore, ed Arrighetta Caracciolo De’ Principi di Santobuono … In Napoli, presso Francesco Ricciardo, 1725.£ 1,650
FIRST EDITION. Small 4to, pp. [xxxviii], XLVIII; without the final blank; with engraved coat of arms at head of p. [v]; apart from a few minor marks, a clean crisp copy throughout; in eighteenth century mottled boards, light rubbing to extremities, nevertheless a highly desirable copy of this rare work.
An appealing collection of poems written on the occasion of the wedding of Giacomo-Francesco Milano Franco d’Aragona and Arrighetta Caracciolo.
Divided into three parts, the collection consists firstly of an extended poem in ottava rima by Niccolo Garofano, the editor of the volume, before a set of Italian poems, and finally a number of verses in Greek and Latin. Among the contributors is Vico, who offers one Italian and one Latin poem; he had also contributed poems to a similar volume printed to mark the wedding of Caracchiolo’s sister Laura in the same year, and both volumes give an idea of the intellectual and social circles in which Vico was moving in the year of the publication of the Scienza nuova.
Croce, Bibl. Vichiana, p. 57; not in OCLC.
Non-academic Logic
110 VILLAUME, Peter. Practische Logik für junge Leute die nicht studiren wollen. Berlin und Libau, bey Lagarde und Friedrich, 1787.£ 850
FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo, pp. xvi, 344; a crisp, clean copy in contemporary sprinkled boards, contrasting gilt label to the spine, extremities a little rubbed; a very attractive copy.
Rare first edition of a very early example of a work on logic written in German (a pirated edition bearing the indicative Frankfurt/Leipzig imprint appeared in the same year). Intended in part for use in the classroom, Villaume presents a pragmatic view of logic for a lay readership, conscientiously avoiding the arcane formalism of contemporary scholars. Central to this approach is the belief that a scrupulously sceptical approach to ‘truth’ could provide practical benefits to people who, through choice or circumstance, had not attended university. Conversely, Villaume suggests that the strict formalism of bookish scholars was an unlikely route to any useful practical application: ‘Meiner Beobachtung nach sind wenige Gelehrte, die von den figuris & modis syllogismorum und von barbara, celarent &c. vielen Nutzen ziehen’ (Foreword).
Peter von Villaume (1746-1806) was a clergyman who gained fame as a progressive educationalist, ultimately becoming ‘Professor der Moral und schönen Wissenschaften’ at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium. Together with his wife, he founded an educational institute for women (a description of which was published in 1780). His views on the benefits of physical exercise attracted the attention of educational reformer Christian Salzmann, who visited Villaume in 1783.
OCLC locates two copies, in Göttingen and Texas Tech University.
111 [VOLTAIRE]. CIRILLO, Giuseppe. Preservativo contro alla seduzione del secolo corrente preparato dal Canonico D. Giuseppe Cirillo nel Giudizio Filosofico-Cristiano, sul Maometto, e sul Bruto di M. Voltaire. [Naples, 1794].£ 450
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. [viii], 178; lightly foxed in places, but generally clean throughout; uncut in recent mottled red boards, to style, with printed label on spine; a desirable copy.
First edition of this anti-republican and anti-enlightenment work, written by a Neapolitan priest, who picks out Voltaire, especially his 1741 play Mahomet, which incites deism and anarchy. The enraged clergyman analyzes in detail the incriminating passages of Voltaire’s play on religious fanaticism. On page 104 he sets out to do the same with Voltaire’s 1730 play Brutus. On page 157 follow letters of approval by members of the theological faculty of Naples University, and laudatory verses.
The fact that over 50 years after the first staging of the play a reactionary priest saw the necessity to publish a book against it, sheds light on the significance of Voltaire in a Catholic absolutist state, such as the Kingdom of both Sicilies.
Not in OCLC or COPAC.
‘“Person” includes woman’
112 [VOTES FOR WOMEN]. The Statutes of New Zealand: Passed in the Fifty Seventh Year of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria and the fourth session of the eleventh parliament of New Zealand, begun and holden at Wellington on the Twenty-second Day of June, One thousand eight hundred and ninety-three. His excellency the Right Honourable David, Earl of Glasgow, Governor. Wellington. 1893.£ 750
FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. viii, 539, [1] blank; light foxing to title and a few minor spots in places, but otherwise clean throughout; in contemporary cloth, spine lettered in gilt, expertly recased, spine and boards rather sunned, back board creased along centre; with the contemporary ownership stamps of ‘Hampden Borough council’ at head of title and front free endpaper; a very good copy of this important document.
First edition of The Statutes of New Zealand, fourth session of the eleventh parliament, 1893, an important social document as it contains the first printed acknowledgement of women’s eligibility to vote.
On 19 September 1893 the governor, Lord Glasgow, signed a new Electoral Act into law. This is found in the present work as Act 18, ‘An Act to amend and consolidate the Law relating to the qualification and registration of electors, and the conduct of elections of members of the house of representatives’ (p. 35) in which it is noted that where the context of “person” is stated this ‘includes woman’ (p. 37). As a result of this landmark legislation, New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.
‘The suffrage campaign in New Zealand began as a far-flung branch of a broad late-19th-century movement for women’s rights that spread through Britain and its colonies, the United States and northern Europe. This movement was shaped by two main themes: equal political rights for women and a determination to use them for the moral reform of society (through, for example, the prohibition of alcohol).
New Zealand’s pioneering suffragists were inspired both by the equal-rights arguments of philosopher John Stuart Mill and British feminists and by the missionary efforts of the American-based Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). A number of New Zealand’s leading male politicians, including John Hall, Robert Stout, Julius Vogel, William Fox and John Balance, supported women’s suffrage. In 1878, 1879 and 1887 bills or amendments extending the vote to women (or at least female ratepayers) only narrowly failed to pass in Parliament.
Outside Parliament the movement gathered momentum from the mid-1880s, especially following the establishment of a New Zealand WCTU in 1885. Skilfully led by Kate Sheppard, WCTU campaigners organised a series of huge petitions to Parliament: in 1891 over 9000 signatures were gathered, in 1892 almost 20,000, and finally in 1893 nearly 32,000 were obtained – representing almost a quarter of the adult European female population in New Zealand’ (see http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/brief-history).
In most other democracies - notably Britain and the United States - women did not win the right to the vote until after the First World War.
Not listed separately on OCLC, but found amongst various sets of the Statutes recorded.
113 [WOLLSTONECRAFT]. GODWIN, William. Vie et Mémoires de Marie Wollstonecraft Godwin, auteur de La défense des droits de la femme, d’une résponse à Edmond Burck, des Pensées sur l’education des filles. Traduit de l’Anglais. Par le Citoyen D*****n. Paris, Testu … Fuchs … Desenne … Le Prieur … Petit … An X = 1802.£ 1,750
FIRST FRENCH TRANSLATION. 12mo, mezzotint frontispiece portrait of Wollstonecraft, pp. [iv], xii, 156; apart from some minor foxing in places, a clean copy throughout; in contemporary half calf over mottled boards, spine ruled in gilt with red label lettered in gilt, minor chipping at head, and rubbing to corners, but still a very desirable copy.
Rare first edition in French of the first and standard biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, by her lover and husband William Godwin. It was first published in English under the title Memoir of the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1798. Godwin’s frank account of his wife’s life shocked contemporary readers. ‘The modern reader is likely to be moved by the life and by Godwin’s spare, honest account of it. But at the time of violent reaction against the French revolution, its ideology and its British sympathisers, the frank record was a gift to conservative polemicists and it was lavishly exploited: Wollstonecraft became a whore, whose books aimed, in the words of the Anti-Jacobin, at the propagation of whores (Todd & Butler, p. 12-13).
OCLC records just three copies in North America, at Harvard, Pennsylvannia and the New York Public Library, with further copies at the National Library of New Zealand, Oxford, and Munich; CBEL II, 1250; sec Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler in the preface to Pickering Masters edition of The Works Mary Wollstonecraft, 1989, pp. 12-13).
114 [WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE]. A Bill intituled An Act for extending the right of voting at Parliamentary Elections to Women. (Presented by The Lord Denman). Ordered to be printed 2nd March 1885. London: Printed by Eyre and Spottiswoode … [1885].£ 185
Tall 4to, pp. [4]; lightly browned to edges, expertly repaired along fold where split, otherwise in good original state.
Obviously the bill wasn’t passed - if it had, it would have been known as the Women’s Suffrage Act, 1885!
Not in OCLC.
A Survivor’s Souvenir
115 [WORLD WAR II]. Arnhem … 1st Airbourne Division. September 1944. [London, ] Produced by the Photographic Section First British Airborne Division. 1944].£ 850
Folio [380×300 mm.] ff. 36 on photographic paper each containing a montage of photographs, plans, and maps; some age toning to paper, but images still generally in a good state; comb bound in original photographed boards the upper cover with a romantic silhouette of a windmill and a formation of aircraft and gliders; the back cover with the Divisions emblem; with three original photographs loosely inserted; comb back broken due to degrading of plastic resulting in several leaves being loose, light dust-soiling to boards and wear along edge where cloth once protected the comb back, nevertheless, still an appealing item, housed in a custom made cloth box.
Scarce photographic record of the 1st Airborne Division’s assault on Arnhem during September 1944, produced as a souvenir for survivors of the battle.
‘There can be few episodes more glorious than the epic of Arnhem, and those that follow after will find it hard to live up to the standards that you have set … in years to come it will be a great thing for a man to be able to say: “I fought at Arnhem” (Sgd) B.L. Montgomery. Field Marshall’ (p. 1)
The work was produced by the photographic section of the 1st Airborne Division and probably designed in-house while the result of the battle was still undecided. The format includes, one photograph dated and stamped on the verso ‘22 Nov. 1944 Secret.’ Clearly events overran production of the work and it became more a record of a heroic and ultimately futile attack than a hoped for celebration of victory. The photographs depict troops in action, a number of aerial shots, maps and pictures of the enemy, several of which are of a graphic nature, three showing the bodies of General Major Kussin, Field Kommandant of Arnhem Area, his interpreter, driver and batman who were all killed soon after the initial landing.
Initially ‘Operation Market Garden’ (September 17–25, 1944) was successful and several bridges between Eindhoven and Nijmegen were captured. However the ground force’s advance was delayed by the demolition of a bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son, delaying the capture of the main road bridge over the Meuse until September 20. At Arnhem the British 1st Airborne Division encountered far stronger resistance than anticipated. In the ensuing battle only a small force managed to hold one end of the the Arnhem road bridge and after the ground forces failed to relieve them they were overrun on the 21st. The rest of the division, trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge, had to be evacuated on the 25th. The Allies failed to cross the Rhine, which remained a barrier to their advance until the offensives at Remagen, Oppenheim, Rees and Wesel in March 1945.
Loosely inserted are three photographs, one depicting British troops of the Airborne division having their first drink after arriving in Nijmegen following their evacuation from Arnhem, a second showing Horsa gliders coming in to land somewhere in Britain. A third shows a British Frigate ‘Entering Malta, Grand Harbour, November 52’.
Provenance: This copy of Arnhem belonged to Oliver Frazer MBE. Born and educated at Dulwich, south-east London, Oliver showed an interest in natural history from an early age. He went to live on the Isle of Wight in 1936 and has lived there ever since, except for the period of the Second World War, when he served in the Glider Pilot Regiment in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day and at Arnhem. It was here that, having dug himself a slit trench for his Bren Gun position, as darkness fell, he was intrigued to find that the roots protruding from the side of the trench were brightly luminous, giving enough light to read by. He put a portion of the root in the top pocket of his battledress and resumed the battle. On his safe return, he sent the root to the British Museum (Natural History) and had a most interesting reply from the then Keeper of Botany, stating that the root was infected by the Honey Fungus, Armillaria Mellea, which naturally started another interest, in fungi, which has persisted to this day.
We have been unable to find any record of other copies of the present item ever appearing on the market.
‘Polish Modernism’
116 ‘WSPOLNOTA’. Kto zamierza wydawac: Plakaty, ulotki, prospecty, wydawnictwa. Warsaw, [Edward Szmigielski] for “Wspolnota”, [c. 1935].£ 225
8vo, pp. [54], the first leaf (with quotation of the President of the Polish Republic, Jozef Pilsudski) printed on a green ornamental background, most pages printed in blue and black, several in red and blue, with many photographic illustrations; well preserved in the original wrappers printed in red and black.
This advertisement publication by a Warsaw printer specialised in the production of trade catalogues and pamphlets is an outstanding example of Polish modernism before the Second World War. It is a self-referential trade catalogue in itself, including one fotomontaz showing a selection of the the printer’s modernist brochures, type specimens and examples of book design by Tadeusz Przybylski.
Not in OCLC, or other databases consulted.
117 [WYCHE LIBRARY SALE]. CURLL, Edmund [auctioneer]. Bibliotheca Wichiana: Being a Catalogue of the Library of the late Honourable Sir Cyrill Wich. Consisting Of the most Valuable Authors … with a curious Collection of Civil, Canon, and Common Law: Books of Medals, Sculpture, Painting, & c. The whole Digested under proper Heads, Printed from his MSS Catalogue. [London], for Edmund Curll, 1710.£ 3,850
8vo, pp. [ii], 5, [1], 63, [1, advertisement]; evenly browned; uncut and unopened; stitched as issued; preserved in a modern cloth box, with gilt-stamped red morocco lettering-piece on the front.
A rare and early book auction catalogue, offering the books owned by Sir Cyril Wyche, a government official who was born in Constantinople about 1632 and, after after having served several governments, died in 1707, left a good selection of books, many of which with manuscript corrections and addenda in his own hand.
The collection offered by the bookseller Edmund Curll contained some rarities, such as an Aldine Petrarca printed on vellum and some drawings of Turkish costume. Edmund Curll was a prolific publisher, who more than once got fined or imprisoned for libel, unauthorized publishing and publishing immoral books.
Munby p. 23; ESTC locates copies in the British Library, at Glasgow University Library, Oxford (2) and University of Kansas; OCLC adds a copy at Yale.