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156 RUSKIN, John. The Stones of Venice. London:
“The first really cheap version” (St Clair, p. 681) of Queen Mab , a rare survival in the original yellow wrappers, issued by the radical printer Jane Carlile in 1832, with the wrappers showing the re-issue of sheets by John Brooks in 1833 with his imprint. “The small-format 1832 edition became a touchstone text for the Chartist movement” (Behrendt, p. 95). The “edition was an important one: I take it to have been largely consumed by the Owenites, with whom Brooks was connected, and to whom Queen Mab is said to have stood in the position of a gospel. It is a re-arranged edition: Shelley’s notes are transferred from their place at the end of the book to the position of foot-notes; and this arrangement of course facilitated the studies both of the special sect of Owenites and of the general body of radicals to whom Queen Mab was now appealing in all seriousness” (Buxton Forman, p. 32). Due to its radical nature, Queen Mab was heavily suppressed from its first publication in 1813. Its publication history, riddled with piracies and surreptitious editions, is marked by various prosecutions of publishers, as late as that of Edward Moxon in 1840. The poem was a favourite of the radicals, often cited as “the Chartist’s Bible”; cheap, pocket editions, such as the present version and its successors, brought the poem to a far wider and to a broader working-class readership. The rear wrapper advertises various other radical titles: The Reformer’s Catechism , The People’s Charter , Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man and Common Sense ,
misbound at pp. 354 and 366. Spines slightly cocked and sunned, wear to vol. I corners, slight rubbing to cloth but otherwise in fresh condition, contents foxed, occasional pencil notes, upper outer corners of vol. III plates with small splashmarks, illustrations unaffected. A very good copy indeed. ¶ Printing and the Mind of Man 315 (for the first edition). £2,000 [155113] 157 RUSSELL, Bertrand. Power: A New Social Analysis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938 First US edition of Russell’s analysis of the nature of power, its ethics, and means to control it; scarce in the jacket. The US and UK editions were both published in September 1938, with priority not established by Blackwell & Ruja. Octavo. Original black cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt on blue ground. With dust jacket. Bookplate on front pastedown. Slight bumping at spine ends, near-fine in very good jacket, slight chip at foot of rear fold and at spine panel ends and tips, short closed tear at foot of front fold, light rubbing and toning. ¶ Blackwell & Ruja A72.2a. £675 [154328] 158 SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe. Queen Mab. London: Printed and Published by Mrs. Carlile and Sons [reissued by John Brooks], 1832 [1833]
Smith, Elder, and Co., 1874 A REVOLUTIONARY SUCCESS
Signed limited edition, one of 1,500 copies signed by the author at the end of the preface. One of the key texts of the aesthetic movements, The Stones of Venice was first published in parts from 1851 to 1853 and was “a revolutionary success” ( PMM ). Its importance lies “in its celebration of the Byzantine and the Gothic, which had an immediate effect on Victorian architects, who began to introduce Romanesque forms and Venetian and Veronese colour and sculptural features into their designs”. In the most famous chapter, “The nature of Gothic”, which was twice reprinted in his lifetime (first for the inauguration of the London Working Men’s College in 1854, and second by William Morris in 1892), “Ruskin argued that under conditions of industrialization and the division of labour, social disharmony and industrial unrest were bound to occur, because the previously expressive craftsman – Ruskin’s ideal working man – had been reduced to the condition of a machine” ( ODNB ). 3 volumes, imperial octavo. Original brown cloth, spines lettered and decorated in gilt, spines and covers stamped in blind, gilt centrepiece on sides, brick-red endpapers, top edges gilt, others untrimmed. With 53 tissue-guarded plates, including 5 hand-coloured, by Thomas Lupton, J. C. Armytage, R. P. Cuff and others after Ruskin, illustrations in the text. Vol. II plates intended to face pp. 254 and 266
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