Our first catalogue focussed on women spans the centuries from Sappho to Maya Angelou, showcasing the world of exceptional women in many different fields.
IN HER OWN WORDS WORKS BY EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN
VAT no. gb 701 5578 50 Peter Harrington Limited. Registered office: WSM Services Limited, Connect House, 133–137 Alexandra Road, Wimbledon, London sw19 7jy. Registered in England and Wales No: 3609982 Cover illustrations from VOW: Voice of Women, item 169; figurines on title page (opposite) from Pank-a-Squith , item 174. Design: Nigel Bents. Photography: Ruth Segarra. O ur first catalogue focussed on women spans the centuries from Sappho to Maya Angelou, showcasing the work of exceptional women in many different fields. These were women who pushed legal, intellectual, and physical boundaries. Millicent Fawcett Garrett signed our copy of Women’s Victory in July 1928, the same month the Equal Franchise Act gave British women electoral equality with men (item 66). Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s Analytical Institutions is the first advanced mathematics book by a woman (1). Trailblazers such as Fanny Parks, “characterized by remarkable physical stamina” (112), Amelia Edwards, who carried out the first general archaeological survey of Egypt’s ruins (60), and Lady Hester Stanhope, “Queen of the Desert” (144), cleared the way for later intrepid travellers such as Gertrude Bell (21) and Freya Stark (145). The Pinnacle Club Journal , one of our favourite finds, is a scarce survival issued by one of the earliest British women- only climbing clubs (102). Several standout presentation copies, inscribed by women to women, attest to the ways they supported and connected with each other: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist Utopian novel Herland inscribed to Californian suffragette Alice Locke Park, who was instrumental in gaining the vote for Californian women (73); the four lifetime volumes of Susan B. Anthony’s “bible” of the women’s suffrage campaign to her cousin Anna with volume-by-volume commentary (6); two works by Dorothy Parker to the most renowned female screenwriter of the 20th century, Frances Marion (111); the de facto dedication copy of Jacob’s Room , presented by Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell (176); and the début novel by Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, to her Danish translators Ida Falbe-Hansen and Elisabeth Grundvig, key to popularising Lagerlöf’s work in Europe (88). Some women here are household names: Jane Austen (10 and 11), the Brontë sisters (30 and 31), Agatha Christie (39 and 40), J. K. Rowling (126), and Mary Wollstonecraft (166 and 167).
Others have been overlooked despite brilliant contributions to their fields. Early works by Joan Robinson (122 and 123) and Rosa Luxemburg (96) are well-known to economists, but less well-known are those by Helen Makower (97) and S. F. Porter (118). Rosalind Franklin and Jocelyn Bell were both denied Nobel prizes, despite playing crucial roles in the discovery of the structure of DNA and radio pulsars respectively (70 and 22). In the suffrage movement, the works of Christabel (109) and Sylvia Pankhurst (110) sit alongside work by their exiled sister, Adela (108), comparatively overlooked, yet no less fierce a Pankhurst for it. Within the catalogue, works on paper appear alongside items in different media. Amelia Earhart’s Fun of It , inscribed (59), complements the pearl carried on the maiden voyage of the Hindenburg by her contemporary Clara Adams, the first woman to cross the Atlantic as a ticketed passenger (13). A strikingly bound annual of the Pethick-Lawrences’ Votes for Women (113) sits beside the board game Pank-a-Squith (174), a rare hand-painted WSPU donation tin (172), and a Women’s Freedom League sash, once owned by the suffragette Hodgson sisters (171). So many women have left an inspiring legacy in the world of books through bookselling, publishing, and collecting—such as Sylvia Beach, founder of the legendary Shakespeare and Company (19); Frances Mary Currer Richardson, the first major female book collector (48); and Belle da Costa Greene, the African American librarian who shaped the Pierpont Morgan library (77). We hope that this catalogue, and the continuing growth of our stock in this area, will encourage collectors to discover or appreciate anew these remarkable women and their works. Please direct all enquiries to: Theodora Robinson (theodora@peterharrington.co.uk) Emma Walshe (emmawalshe@peterharrington.co.uk)
Peter Harrington 1 9 6 9 l o n d o n 2 0 1 9
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IN HER OWN WORDS WORKS BY EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN
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1 AGNESI, Maria Gaetana. Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventu’ Italiana. Milan: Nella Regia-Ducal Corte, 1748 2 volumes, quarto (245 × 185 mm), pp. 1,020. Contemporary mottled calf, twin red and green morocco spine labels, compartments elaborately tooled in gilt with floral and scrollwork motifs, raised bands tooled in gilt, mar- bled endpapers, edges red, green cloth book markers. Engraved vignette title pages, historiated headpieces and initials, decorative tailpieces. With 59 engraved folding plates, plus 2 folding tables to vol. II (not included in pagination, at pp. 705 and 708). With the errata leaves. Contemporary paper library labels to front pastedown of each volume, inscribed in ink “S T[o] mo 41” and “S T[o]mo 42” respectively. Extremities worn with a little loss to spine ends and a single puncture to foot of vol. I, front joints partly split but still firm, a few very faint marks to boards, discreet paper repair to tear at bottom edge of vol. I title leaf, small tear to plate mark of engraved head- piece of vol. I p. 1, some dampstains throughout. In all a very good copy, the contents crisp and bright. first edition of the author’s best-known work, “believed to be the first advanced mathematics book by a woman. The text is one of the earliest by anyone to provide a comprehensive introduction to alge- bra, geometry, differential calculus, integral calculus, and differen- tial equations” (Grolier, p. 73). It is also notable for supplying the first formal presentation of calculus terminology in the Italian language. Relatively well-held institutionally, it is far scarcer in commerce. A native of Milan, Agnesi (1718–1799) quickly distinguished her- self as a prodigy in the subjects of natural philosophy and math- ematics, growing up in a household filled with contemporary scientific works and instruments. The present work, completed after a decade of preparation, was the culmination of her mathe- matical studies. Agnesi dedicated it to Empress Maria Theresa, whose reforms had recently aided the opening of Italian culture to Enlightenment ideas. “To produce the book, a printing press was installed in the family house so that Agnesi could supervise the typesetting—a challenge because of the mathematical symbols and equations. Agnesi’s special interest was the characteristics of plane curves, which are depicted on fifty-eight folding plates” (p. 75). A later mistranslation of the name of one of the cubic curves, which confused the correct “versiera” with “versicra” (meaning witch), led to one particular curve becoming known as the “Witch of Agnesi”.
Analytical Institutions enjoyed great popularity and was praised for its accessibility, particularly in presenting young scholars with more advanced material than that found in other contemporary Europe- an mathematics treatises. In recognition of this, in 1750 Agnesi was awarded the chair of Mathematics and Analytical Geometry at the University of Bologna by Pope Benedict XIV, making her the second woman ever to be granted professorship at a university. Grolier, Extraordinary Women in Science & Medicine , 68. £5,500 [131473] 2 ALLEN, Mary S. The Pioneer Policewoman. London: Chatto & Windus, 1925 Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in silver, top edge blue, bottom edge untrimmed. With the dust jacket. Photographic portrait frontispiece and 10 photographic plates. A little fading to spine, touch of wear to tips, faint fox- ing to endpapers, tiny mark to head of plates; a very good copy in the scarce, soiled, jacket with loss to spine ends and tips, sticker residue to spine, scuffs to edges and folds, small puncture to rear cover. Together with autograph note on Women’s Auxiliary Service-headed postcard (88 × 140 mm). first edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “with every good wish, from Mary S. Al- len”, and with an autograph note by her loosely inserted: “Hoping you will accept this—If in your part of the world I will certainly let you know. M. S. Allen”. The Pioneer Policewoman was Allen’s (1878– 1964) first published work and details her role as commandant of the Women’s Auxiliary Service from 1920 onwards. It is dedicated to her predecessor in the role, and sometime lover, Margaret Dam- er Dawson, who founded the service in 1914 as the Women Police Volunteers, an independent organisation whose members were trained, uniformed, and prepared to work full time, and which was funded by subscriptions and private donations. Allen was a pio- neering figure in the introduction of women into the British police force. Prior to her role in the WPV Allen was an active suffragette, serving three prison terms in 1909 for her militant activities. While imprisoned she took part in a number of hunger strikes and was repeatedly force-fed. She first “envisaged the idea of women police,
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4 (ANDERSON, Marian.) Signed 10 × 8 inch glossy studio portrait. [With:] Ebony magazine promotional poster. Early 1940s and 1947 Original silver gelatin photograph (image 238 × 188 mm; overall 250 × 207 mm), numbered in the negative, wet stamp on verso “Marian Anderson”. Original Ebony magazine point-of-sale poster (337 × 258 mm) on heavy card stock, printed in colour to recto. Photograph: light signs of handling with a few small creases and nicks to extremities, else in excellent condition. Post- er: a little rubbed at extremities, else near-fine. Two striking portraits of the renowned African American contral- to, the original photographic portrait inscribed by Anderson in ink on the image, “To Mr Harry L. Aiken best wishes Marian An- derson”. The recipient was president of the Crucible Steel Casting Company of Cleveland and a patron of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Orchestra: Anderson gave a recital at Public Hall, Cleveland, in November 1942. In 1955 Anderson (1897–1993) became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She is also remembered for her Lincoln Memo- rial concert (1939), having previously been refused permission to sing in Washington’s Constitution Hall because of her race, and her performances at the inaugurations of Presidents Eisenhower (1957) and Kennedy (1961). The studio portrait is a delightful “off guard” image: Anderson appears full-length wearing an ornate gown, one arm raised to ar- range and admire the flowers in the vase to her left, but her atten- tion drawn instead to the right as she smiles at someone beyond the camera. The same session which resulted in a much-reproduced image which was used for the cover of the 1942 RCA 10-inch disc Songs and Spirituals . The present image is slightly blurred, however, and almost certainly not used for regular promotional purposes. It is accompanied by the promotional poster for the Ebony magazine April 1947 issue, featuring Anderson as she appeared on the cover. £750 [130557]
to arrest women offenders, attend them at police stations, and es- cort them to prison and give them proper care” while serving these terms ( ODNB ). Following a subsequent period of illness Allen was forbidden by Emmeline Pankhurst from participating in any further militant activities and was the first woman to be awarded a hunger strike medal from Mrs Pethick-Lawrence in August of that year. Allen joined the WPV in the rank of constable in November 1914. During the First World War she assisted in the training of police- women for munitions factories across the country, for which she was appointed OBE in February 1918. £1,750 [131558] 3 AMBROSE, Alice. Fundamentals of Symbolic Logic. New York: Rinehart & Company, 1948 Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt on black ground. Ink ownership stamp to front free endpaper. Spine slightly sunned, faint rubbing to extremities. A near-fine copy. first edition of the classic textbook on logic and mathematical philosophy. American philosopher Alice Ambrose (1906–2001) completed her post-doctoral research at Cambridge University, where she studied alongside G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and became a close disciple of the latter. Ambrose, along with fel- low academic Margaret MacDonald, was instrumental in the re- cording and circulation of Wittgenstein’s 1932–5 lectures—their notes were published as Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge, 1932–1935 in 1979—and she was one of two students (the other being Francis Skinner) to whom Wittgenstein dictated the Brown Book. £125 [125537]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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5 ANGELOU, Maya. Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie. New York: Random House, 1971 Octavo. Original red cloth-backed orange boards, silver titles to spine, titles to front cover in blind, pale brown endpapers. With the dust jacket. A couple of tiny spots to top edge; else a fine copy in the jacket with negligible creas- ing to extremities. first edition, presentation copy of angelou’s first book of poetry, warmly inscribed by the author on the front free end- paper, “For Bob, More Poetry, More Joy! Thank you! Write On! Di- rect On! Maya Angelou”. It was a rapid bestseller and was nominat- ed for the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. Inscribed copies of Maya Angelou’s works are notably uncommon; she customarily signed books with just her name and the salutation “Joy!”, making copies with lengthy inscriptions particularly unusual. £400 [131524] 6 ANTHONY, Susan B. History of Woman Suffrage. Rochester: Susan B. Anthony, 1886–1902 4 volumes, large octavo (235 × 155 mm). Recent dark brown half morocco, spines ruled and tooled in gilt with twin red and green morocco labels and floriate centrepieces in blind, raised bands, marbled boards, tan endpapers. Numerous steel engravings with tissue guards to vols. 1–3; copperplate and photogravure engravings to vol. 4; all four with frontispieces. A few minor pencil annotations to front matter of vol. 1. Some dampstain to vols. 1–3, vol. 2 partly unopened with one tiny nick to fore edge of title page, else a very good set, the contents toned and clean. Presentation set of the four lifetime volumes of the “bible” of the women’s suffrage campaign, each volume affectionately inscribed by the author to her cousin , Anna Anthony Andrews, with didactic volume-by-volume commentary on the contents. Anthony’s warm and lengthy inscriptions to her cousin, dated 26 August 1905, are full of hope for the future of the women’s movement: “May you and your dear girls become familiar with these struggles for liberty is the wish of your affectionate cousin” (vol. 1); “Now it is left for the present and future generations to carry forward the work to final
success. How soon it will be an accomplished fact that women will stand the peer of man—socially, morally, industrially and political- ly—remains for the future to tell” (vol. 4). History of Woman Suffrage offers “a vast compendium of reminis- cences, reports, arguments, and commentaries unevenly shaped by the logic of the suffrage cause and its leading proponents . . . The making of the History was at once a profoundly personal and self-consciously political venture. Few social movements have been graced with leaders who could assemble, organise, and comment on such a vast amount of information [and] the prime mover for the History was Susan B. Anthony” (Buhle, pp. xvii–xviii). Handsomely bound, this set comprises mixed editions: vols. 3 and 4 first editions; vol. 1 second edition; vol. 2 a later reprint. These four volumes were the only ones published during Anthony’s lifetime; it was extended to six volumes in 1922. Buhle, Jo Mari, & Paul (eds.), The Concise History of Women Suffrage , University of Illinois Press, 2005. £18,750 [124579]
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7 (ANYTE OF TEGEA.) The Poems. Cleveland: The Clerk’s Press, 1917 Sextodecimo. Original wrappers, title label to front cover. Sunning to spine and somewhat around edges, faint offset tanning at endpapers, but an ex- cellent copy. limited edition, number 35 of 40 copies only, printed on Tuscany handmade paper. This little production prints Aldington’s translation (first published the preceding year) alongside the Greek text of 25 surviving poems by Anyte of Tegea ( fl . early third centu- ry bce). Antipater of Thessalonica, a first-century literary critic, hailed her as the female Homer. £250 [121080] 8 ARENDT, Hannah. Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess. London: published for the Leo Baeck Institute of Jews from Germany by the East and West Library, 1957 Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt. With the dust jacket. Portrait frontispiece. Spine and extremities bleached, spine ends a little bumped, dust jacket extremities lightly rubbed and with a few nicks, jacket spine faded, lower front panel marked, tape repair to inner spine, a very good copy. first edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author, “For Harry Zohn, cordially, Cambridge, April 6, 1967”. The recipi- ent, Harry Zohn (1923–2001), was an educator, writer, and transla- tor of important works of German literature. Arendt edited Zohn’s translation of Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations (1968). This is the German-born Jewish political theorist’s first commer- cially published book, which she began writing in the late 1920s, translated from the German. The work was nearly complete when Arendt was forced to leave Germany, and she did not return to her project until nearly two decades later, at which point much of the archival material she had planned to consult had been destroyed. It is a biography of the woman Arendt called “my closest friend, though she has been dead for some hundred years”: German-Jew-
ish writer Rahel Levin (1771–1833), who hosted one of the most prominent salons of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. See The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress, Correspondence File, 1938–76. £4,250 [118211] 9 ATWOOD, Margaret. The Circle Game. Toronto: Contact Press, 1966 Octavo. Original wrappers, printed in red and black. Spine and wrapper edg- es toned, very mild rubbing to extremities, but an excellent copy. first edition, superb presentation copy of atwood’s first regularly published book, inscribed by the author on the half-title, “For Jim Carscallen with thanks for help on earlier MSS., & remembrance of large Vancouver slugs, Peggy Atwood. 1966”, and extensively annotated by Carscallen in pencil through- out the copy and on a laid-in leaf of notepaper. Professor James An- drew Carscallen (1934–2016) was studying for his English literature PhD under Northrop Frye at Victoria University, Toronto, when At- wood was an undergraduate also studying with Frye. The reminis- cence of “large Vancouver slugs” seems to suggest that Carscallen visited Atwood during her brief teaching placement at the Univer- sity of British Columbia in 1965, and their familiarity is reflected in Atwood’s use of “Peggy” in the inscription. The Circle Game won Atwood the first of her many awards, the Gov- ernor-General’s Award. This is one of just 200 copies issued in wrap- pers aside from a “Library edition” issue of 50 hardback copies. £2,750 [124421]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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10 [AUSTEN, Jane.] AUSTEN, James. The Loiterer. Oxford: printed for the author and sold by C. S. Rann [others in later parts], 1789–90 Octavo (208 × 125 mm) in 60 parts, with printed part-titles for each. Con- temporary pale tan polished calf, spine divided in 6 compartments by raised bands, red morocco label, other compartments gilt with central flower tools. Contemporary ownership inscription of R. Ekins at head of front free endpaper. Joints starting, some light chipping and wear, part-title for No. 2 mounted on a stub, Q1 with small marginal tear in corner with loss, margin- al worming to a few leaves, a very good copy. first edition, possibly jane austen’s first appearance in print. This scarce periodical was written by James and Henry Aus- ten while they were at Oxford, and some scholars have suggested that in issue number 9, the letter signed “Sophia Sentiment” was the work of their sister Jane when she was 14. Although Gilson does not include this work in his bibliography, there is a strong case that the work was written by Jane Austen. According to the British Li- brary, “critics such as Paula Byrne have noted that there are various correspondences between the letter and Jane Austen’s juvenilia. Her early, epistolary novel Love and Freindship [ sic ], for example, has two heroines quite as shallow as Sophia. But other critics, such as Kathryn Sutherland and Claire Tomalin, find it unlikely that Austen would have written a letter so critical of women’s reading choices. They suggest that Sophia Sentiment’s letter was probably written by one of Austen’s brothers”. Even if “Sophia Sentiment” cannot be definitively linked with Jane Austen, the experience her brothers had in printing this work no doubt had some influence on her. Gilson suggests that it was through the publication of The Loiterer that she became acquainted with Eger- ton of Whitehall (who were the London distributors of this work from the fifth number on) who later published Sense and Sensibility . See Cope, Sir Zachary, “Who was Sophia Sentiment? Was she Jane Austen?”, Book Collector 15, 1996, pp. 143–151; Litz, A. W., “ The Loiterer : a reflection of Jane Austen’s early environment”, Review of English Studies 12, 1961, pp. 251–261. £5,000 [102817]
11 [AUSTEN, Jane.] Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion. London: John Murray, 1818 4 volumes, duodecimo (169 × 107 mm). Contemporary continental half sheep, red lettering pieces and white numbering pieces lettered in black, marbled sides, pale blue-green endpapers. Housed in a burgundy quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. With half-title in vol. I only, the others discarded by the contemporary binder, as often. Spines worn at ends with neat repair at foot of vol. I, tips worn, contents lightly browned throughout, early reinforcement with blue paper in gutter at two places (vols. I and IV, between quires B and C), marginal waterstaining at head of prelims in vol. I and at upper outer corner of first few leaves of vols. II and IV, a few stains, strongest at vol. IV, D 2 v –D 3 r , and fainter to the leaves either side. Overall, a good copy in a contemporary binding, no doubt continental, the labels somewhat eccentrically lettered. first edition of Austen’s final published work, pairing her last completed novel with the light-spirited satire that was probably the first full-length novel she wrote. It contains the first acknowledge- ment in print of Jane Austen as the author of her six novels. This copy has an appealing provenance, with the early ownership inscriptions of the Polish countess Calista Rzewuski (1810–1842) on
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the title pages: her daughter Ersilia was the first woman admitted to the oldest scientific academy, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
Gilson A9. £12,500
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12 AUSTIN, Sarah (tr.) Characteristics of Goethe. London: Effingham Wilson, 1833 3 volumes, large duodecimo (186 × 118 mm). Contemporary half calf by Webb & Hunt, Liverpool, marbled paper-covered boards, spine lettered in gilt, brown endpapers. Engraved frontispieces to each volume. Without the
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half-titles to vols. 2 and 3. Armorial bookplates of Henry Robertson Sand- bach; ownership signatures of M[argaret] Roscoe (1787–1840), née Sand- bach, to half-title of vol. 1 and title page of vol. 3. Spines expertly refurbished and recoloured, plates foxed as typical, occasional mark to contents but oth- erwise clean, else a very good set. first edition of Austin’s celebrated and most important trans- lation, “which was based on recollections by Falk and others and included some of Goethe’s poetry. It prompted Carlyle to exclaim, ‘you can actually translate Goethe’, something, he added, only a few in England could do [ Troubled Lives , 70]. She was already known, according to the publisher Dionysius Lardner, as ‘our best living translator’ (ibid., 71), and the three volumes on Goethe gave her some celebrity and much more work” ( ODNB ). £500 [130540] 13 (AVIATION.) ADAMS, Clara. Souvenir from the maiden voyage of the Hindenburg . [1936] Cream envelope (110 × 140 mm), with a single pearl embedded in the centre, tied with white string inked in gilt, manuscript inscription to front panel, manuscript decoration in gilt, red, blue and black to both sides. Faint foxing to rear panel and slight creasing; in near-fine condition. A unique and remarkable souvenir made and inscribed by the pio- neering passenger aviator Clara Adams: “To my friend Bill Schnei- der Jr. with kindest regards / Clara Adams—Cabin 19 Airship Hin- denburg , May 8, 1938 [ sic ] / First flight from Germany to the United States / Real pearl carried on this historic flight”. The Hindenburg’s maiden voyage left Frankfurt on 6 May 1936 and arrived in Lake- hurst, New Jersey, on 9 May, Adams being one of the 11 women on board. Although we have traced no folklore surrounding carrying pearls on maiden voyages, various photos of Adams show her wear- ing a string pearl necklace, from which this souvenir pearl may have been taken. The recipient, Bill Schneider Jr, her friend, fellow avia- tion enthusiast, and editor of the Airpost Journal, was in correspond- ence with a number of pioneering aviators, including Amelia Ear- hart. A few days after Adams landed, both she and Earhart spoke at an event organised by the American Air Mail Society on 14 May, at which Schneider, who was a member, was likely present, and it is
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possible that Adams presented him with the souvenir at this event (Adams has dated the inscription as 1938 in error). Adams (1884–1971) was the first woman to cross the Atlantic as a ticketed passenger, aboard the Graf Zeppelin on its return flight from New York in October 1928. In 1939 she set the unofficial record for passenger travel around the world via commercial air travel, in a trip lasting 16 days and 19 hours and covering 24,609 miles. Her interest in aviation led to a close friendship with fellow female pio- neers such as Amelia Earhart, Alys McKey Bryant, and Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, the latter of whom accompanied Adams on the Hindenburg’s voyage. (For Earhart, see item 59.) £425 [131273] 14 BABITZ, Eve. Eve’s Hollywood. [New York:] Delacorte Press/ Seymour Lawrence, 1974
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in silver and pink, star motif to front cover in pink, grey endpapers. With the dust jacket designed by Irving Bogen featuring photos by Annie Leibovitz. Portrait frontispiece, photograph- ic plate, and 24 page photo ‘scrapbook’ printed on grey paper. Ticks and un- derlining in ink throughout first 52 pages, annotation in red to p. 23. Spine minimally rolled, faint toning to edges of book block; else a near-fine copy. first edition, inscribed by the author on the front free end- paper, “Too [ sic ] Anselma, love Eve Babitz”. Uncommon signed, Eve’s Hollywood was Babitz’s first work. Billed as a confessional LA novel, the work gives a semi-fictional account of Babitz’s early life in Hollywood. A photographer, author, and mainstay of Hollywood culture, Babitz (b. 1943) first gained her notoriety through Julian Wasser’s iconic photograph of her as a nude 20-year-old playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. In recent years Babitz’s works have grown in popularity, with many being reissued and published in translation for the first time. A television programme based on her life, L.A. Woman , is due to be released in 2019. £3,000 [130476] 13 13
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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15 BAKER, Joséphine. Les mémoires. Recueillis et adaptés par Marcel Sauvage. Avec 30 dessins inédits de Paul Colin. Paris: KRA, 1927 Octavo (182 × 112 mm). Contemporary art deco brown and white geomet- rically patterned boards, dark brown calf label, fore and bottom edge un- trimmed, red cloth page marker. Original printed wrappers bound in. With 30 illustrations by Paul Colin. Partially erased pencilled ownership inscrip- tion to head of front free endpaper. Negligible rubbing to spine ends and tips, contents toned as often; a near-fine copy. first trade edition, a superb presentation copy, inscribed by Baker and Sauvage on the blank before the half-title, “a Pierre Lagarde son ami Marcel Sauvage” and “From Joséphine Baker July 13/27 Paris”; subsequently by the artist on the half-title, “á Jacques Baril á l’amateur d’art á l’ami Paul Colin”. The first recipient, Pierre Lagarde (1903–1959), was a writer and journalist, winner of the 1944 Grand prix du roman de l’Académie française for his novel Valmaurie . This copy may have been inscribed at the launch party when Baker “invited friends for a glass of cham- pagne to celebrate the publication of the little volume. She greeted guests, signed books, spilled ink on one of her publisher’s shoes. Many people praised Marcel Sauvage’s artistry—‘It is a book of poems for which Joséphine is the Muse’—and the painter Maurice de Vlaminck admired every word. ‘She dances, eats what she likes, and ignores immorality. Life to her is an apple she bites with all her teeth’” (Baker & Chase, p. 148).
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Paul Colin’s presentation, to the writer on dance, Jacques Baril (1924–1984), author of Dictionnaire de danse (1964) and La danse moderne (1977), was almost certainly made some years later. In his memoirs Colin remembers his first sight of Baker: “naked but for green feath- ers about her hips, her skull lacquered black, she provoked both anger and enthusiasm . . . I still see her, frenzied, undulating, moved by the saxophones’ wail. Did her South Carolina dances foretell the era of a new civilisation, finally relieved of fetters centuries old?” (Colin, p. 74). Baker, Jean-Claude & Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart , Cooper Square Press, 2001; Colin, Paul, La Croûte: souvenirs , Editions de la Table Ronde, 1957. £1,650 [130852] 16 BAKER, Joséphine; Felix Achille de la Cámara; Pepito Abatino. Mon sang dans tes veines. Paris: Les editions Isis, 1931 Octavo “en carré”. Original white illustrated wrappers, titles in white, red, and black on pink ground over black and red portrait of Baker. With the glassine jacket. Portrait of Joséphine and 5 half-tone plates, decorated ini- tials, all by Georges de Pogédaïeff. Slight creasing and nicks to faintly foxed exposed fore edge; else a near-fine copy. first and limited edition, number 73 of 250 copies printed on vergé baroque paper. In the novella, “Joséphine devises the char- acter of Joan (also called Jo), a young mulatto girl whose mother is the maid in the home of a Boston millionaire, Ira Cushman Barclay, and his son, Fred. Joan selflessly saves Fred’s life through a blood transfusion. The primal Baker and the new saintly image meld in Mon sang dans tes veines . Baker continued to develop this image as part of her humanitarian self-sacrifice in World War II and in the domestic experiment with her adopted Rainbow Tribe at Les Mi- landes” (Jules-Rosette, p. 4). The attractive art deco illustrations are by the Russian painter, illustrator and theatre designer Georges Anatolyevich Pogédaieff (1894–1971), resident in Paris from 1925.
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quaintances, including Romaine Brookes, Janet Flanner, Elisabeth de Gramont, Radclyffe Hall, Mina Loy, Solita Solano, Lady Trou- bridge, and Dolly Wilde. As is common in some copies of this edition, the imprint on the title page has been blacked out. According to Barnes’s biographer Phillip Herring, the Parisian bookseller Edward Titus “persuaded Barnes to put his name on the title page of Ladies Almanack , as if he were the publisher, in exchange for selling the book in his shop”. However he asked for “a large cut of the royalties in addition to the retail mark-up which infuriated Barnes and reinforced her disillu- sionment with the book trade” (pp. 152–3). Barnes subsequently had his name removed from many copies. See Herring, Phillip, Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes , Viking, 1995. £1,750 [127242] 18 BARNES, Djuna. Nightwood. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1936 Octavo. Original purple cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge stained purple. With the dust jacket. With a printed green card Faber and Faber Ltd order form laid in. Spine rolled, ends slightly bruised, else an excellent copy in the lightly soiled jacket, one closed tear to foot of spine panel (20 mm) and some chips to head of spine and top edge. first edition, scarce in the dust jacket, of Barnes’s masterpiece. “Highly charged . . . linguistically complex, and riven with pain and loss. It centres on the anguished narratives of Matthew O’Connor, a transvestite gynaecologist, and Nora Flood, who is in love with the enigmatic and boyish woman Robin Vote”, and is considered to have “one of the most shattering endings in modern literature. It took years for Barnes to find a publisher, until [her friend Emily] Coleman pressured T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber to accept it. Eliot, who wrote the preface, thought it was like an Elizabethan tragedy for its ‘quality of horror and doom’” ( ODNB ). It is considered one of the most important gay novels of the first half of the 20th century in the English language (Slide). See Slide, Anthony, Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide , Routledge, 2011. £1,350 [131418]
Decidedly uncommon: no copy listed by Copac; OCLC locates just six copies internationally. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image , Univer- sity of Illinois Press, 2007. £1,250 [131543] 17 [BARNES, Djuna.] Ladies Almanack. Paris: printed for the author, and sold by Edward W. Titus, 1928 Small quarto. Original cream card wrappers with woodcut-style illustration to front and rear wrapper. With 22 woodcut-style illustrations by Barnes in the text. Spine chipped with some loss to spine ends, covers lightly dust soiled with a few spots, occasional spotting to preliminaries. A very good copy. first edition, limited issue, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: “To Madge Garland With love—Djuna Barnes Paris—1932”. The recipient, Madge Garland (1898–1990), was a pioneering fashion journalist and teacher who had a major influence on the British fashion scene throughout the mid-20th century. In 1922 Garland started working at Vogue under Dorothy Todd, and introduced Cecil Beaton’s work to the magazine in 1927. She developed friendships with many of the Bloomsbury and bohemian intellectuals that Todd recruited for Vogue , includ- ing Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Rebecca West, and Vita-Sackville West. Garland and Barnes likely first met during this time, as Barnes was working as a journalist and interviewed many of the major fashion icons of the day, including the French couturiers Jenny and Jeanne Lanvin and Coco Chanel. Both women were also involved in the lesbian social circles of the 1920s avant-garde and were rumoured to have been lovers. After a short hiatus working as a freelance writer for New York’s influential Women’s Wear Daily and the women’s section of the Illustrated London News , Garland rejoined Vogue in 1932, the year of this inscription, as fashion editor. The present work is a privately printed and distributed pseudon- ymous satirical novel: this is number 45 of 1,000 copies on Alfa, from a total edition of 1,050. Barnes based her story on the lesbian social circle at Natalie Clifford Barney’s salon in Paris, and many of the the characters that are pseudonymous portraits of notable ac-
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19 BEACH, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959 Octavo. Original cream cloth, titles to spine in gilt, bookshelf design in blind to head of front cover and spine, brown endpapers. With the dust jack- et. Illustrated title page and 8 photographic plates. Foxing to cloth and a little to edges; else a near-fine copy in the faintly soiled jacket with small chips to spine fold ends and creasing to edges. first edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, “For my nephew Fred, from his loving aunt Sylvia, Paris, October 6th 1959”. The recipient, Frederic Dennis, was the son of Sylvia’s older sister Holly (pictured on p. 108) who provided support, both financial and moral, in the early days of Shakespeare and Company. On 17 November 1919 Beach (1887–1962) opened Shakespeare and Company with the help of her lifelong compan- ion, Adrienne Monnier. “Together they orchestrated much of the exchange of English and French literature for the first half of the 20th century”, including the publication of Ulysses ( ODNB ). £2,750 [122518] 20 BEAUVOIR, Simone de. Les Mandarins. Roman. Paris: Gallimard, 1954 Octavo. Original white wrappers, titles to spine and front cover in red and black. With the glassine wrapper. Light offsetting to front free endpaper due to presentation card; else a fine copy in the scarce glassine wrapper.
first and limited edition, presentation copy, with an au- tograph presentation card inscribed by the author loosely inserted: “Souvenir de plaisirs heureux séjours à l’Aichi S. de Beauvoir” (“In reemembrance of a happy, pleasurable stay at Aichi”). In 1966 Beau- voir undertook a three-week lecture tour of Japan with Jean-Paul Sar- tre, giving lectures in both Tokyo and Kyoto: Aichi is a prefecture of Japan which lies between the two. Asabuki Tomiko (1917–2005) who guided the tour, and her brother, Sankichi, translated a number of Beauvoir’s works into Japanese, including Les Mandarins in 1956. This is number 93 of 110 copies on Lafuma Navarre paper, from a total edition of 885. It won France’s highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. Signed copies of the work are notably uncommon. £950 [130910] 21 BELL, Gertrude Lowthian. The Arab of Mesopotamia. Basrah: published by the Superintendent, Government Press, 1917 Small octavo. Original green cloth, title in gilt to front board. Housed in a green cloth slipcase and chemise, maroon morocco label to spine. Frontis- piece map of Mesopotamia. Spine and extremities rubbed, a little cockling around spine, gilt of title slightly rubbed, interior browned. A very good copy. first edition of this fragile official publication, uncommon, par- ticularly so in such relatively sharp condition. Though purporting to be a “series of brief essays on subjects relating to Mesopotamia, written during 1916, by persons with special knowledge of the sub- jects dealt with” (preface), it was later confirmed that “Gertrude Bell admits to having written it” (Sluglett, p. 295). The second sec- tion (pp. 100–202) has a separate title page entitled “Asiatic Tur- key” and is explicitly attributed to her. Bell notes in her preface, dated October 1917, that “these articles were written at the request of the War Office during June and July, 1917. It has been suggested that they might be of some interest to members of the Force serv- ing in Mesopotamia who may not have had opportunity to make acquaintance with the Dominions of the Sultan beyond the battle- fields of Gallipoli and the ’Iraq”. Sluglett, Peter, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country , I. B. Tauris, 2007. £500 [129951]
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“One of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the 20th century”
source was soon determined to be a pulsar: a rapidly spinning neu- tron star which emits an intense beam of electromagnetic radiation. Bell’s supervisor, Hewish, a well-established astronomer who had planned the experiment and had a major role in explaining the observation, was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics—the first Nobel prize awarded in recognition of astronomical research—for his role in the discovery, sharing the honour with Bell’s other super- visor, Martin Ryle. Despite the fact that Bell was the first to notice the stellar radio source, however, she was not formally acknowledged, and Hewish defended the Nobel decision, calling Bell’s contribution “useful” but “not creative”. It was, and still is, seen by many as one of the greatest injustices in the history of the prize. Bell remained remarkably magnanimous, even joking when she attended the prize ceremony as the guest of another astronomer, Joseph Taylor Jr, in 1993 that she “did get to go in the end” (Harg- ittai, p. 130). Bell later explained that, “at that time there was still around the picture that science was done by great men (and they were men). These great men had under them a group of assistants, who were much more lowly and much less intelligent, and were not expected to think, they just carried out the great man’s instructions . . . What has happened in the last 30 years is that we’ve come to understand that science is much more a team effort, with lots of people contributing ideas and suggestions” (ibid., p. 72). Proof of this change in perspective arose in September 2018, when Bell (now Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell) won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics both for her discovery of pulsars and for her inspiring leadership over the past five dec- ades. She donated the entirety of the £2.3 million prize money to initiatives which support women, ethnic minority, and refugee stu- dents in the study of physics. Notably rare: Copac locates just one copy of this offprint, in the collections of the Royal Society; none traced on OCLC. In commerce, two copies of the issue of Nature in which the article appears have been traced at auction (Bonhams 2010), but none of the offprint. Hargittai, Magdolna, Women Scientists: Reflections, Challenges, and Breaking Boundaries , Oxford University Press, 2015. £7,500 [131009]
22 BELL, Jocelyn; A. Hewish; J. D. H. Pilkington; P. F. Scott; R. A. Collins. “ Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source.” [Offprint from:] Nature , Vol. 217, No. 5130, pp. 709–713, February 24, 1968. London: Macmillan, 1968 Quarto (260 × 210 mm). Original blue printed stiff wrappers. Bound eleventh with 18 other offprints and separate publications relating to pulsars and ra- dio astronomy in contemporary red cloth, spine lettered “Radio Astronomy XVIII” in gilt, with a 2 page typed index loosely inserted. With the library stamps of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cambridge to sever- al of the works; the occasional pencil and ink annotations noting the same provenance. Spine and inner edges of boards faintly sunned, a few stab holes and rust marks from previous staples visible at gutters of publications, one closed tear. All in fine or near-fine condition. first edition, the extremely rare offprint of the landmark paper which announced the discovery of pulsars, co-authored by British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell, her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, and three others; with meaningful provenance, from the library of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, where the research leading to this discovery was carried out. This ground-breaking paper documented “one of the greatest as- tronomical discoveries of the 20th century” (Royal Society): in 1967 Bell (b. 1943), while a doctoral student at Cambridge University, made her discovery using a telescope that she and Hewish had origi- nally built to study the recently detected star-like quasars. Over time she noted a regular signal, unlike that produced by stars, galaxies, and solar wind, that pulsed approximately once every 1.3 seconds; they nicknamed the signal LGM–1 for “Little Green Man 1”, a hu- morous nod to the quickly-dismissed thought that they might have recorded extraterrestrial contact. Bell and Hewish announced their findings in the present paper, despite not having yet determined the nature of the source, and it immediately prompted speculation. The
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23 BISHOP, Elizabeth. Geography III. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976 Octavo. Original brown cloth boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jack- et. Small chip to tail of the jacket, otherwise a fine copy. first edition, inscribed by the author on the title page, “Sister Lynn Conroy—all best wishes—Elizabeth Bishop, February 1st, 1978”, with the recipient’s blind stamp to the first page. Lynn Conroy was a poet and teacher who graduated as an English ma- jor from Catholic liberal arts college Seton Hill, Pennsylvania. She taught in Duquesne, Indiana, and Washington, DC, before return- ing to Seton Hill to teach English and creative writing. Geography III includes such classic poems as “One Art” (“The art of losing isn’t hard to master”) and “The Moose”. £2,750 [124937] 24 BLACKWELL, Elizabeth. The Laws of Life, With Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1859 Octavo. Original reddish-brown morocco-grained cloth, spine lettered in rustic font in gilt, blind-stamped geometric panelling to boards, light brown coated endpapers, edges uncut. With the 4 pp. publisher’s advertisements at the rear. Yellow paper advertisement clipped and pasted to front free endpaper, contemporary ownership inscription, “MAB 1859” to front free endpaper with some light offsetting to pastedown, binder’s ticket to rear pastedown. Spine ends bruised and extremities just a little rubbed, book block and contents occasionally faintly foxed, some small chips and nicks to leaf edges, else a very good copy in unrestored contemporary condition. first uk edition of the British physician’s first published work: a collection of her popular lectures, delivered in New York during the spring of 1852, on the topics of moral and physical education of girls. First published in the US that year, the London edition includes additional prefatory comments addressed “To English Women”. The first US edition is quite common institutionally, but the present edition is far scarcer, OCLC tracing just nine copies.
Blackwell (1821–1910) overcame remarkable adversity to become the first woman to graduate MD—and above all the 150 male stu- dents in her cohort—from an American college in January 1849, an event that received widespread international press coverage. She then went to Paris, where she enrolled at La Maternité, the leading school for midwives, having been refused admittance as a doctor by all other Parisian hospitals, and later to London. There her ac- ceptance at St Bartholomew’s Hospital made her the first woman to practise as a doctor in Britain and, subsequently, the first woman to be admitted to the General Medical Council’s register (1859). Dur- ing the 1850s she returned to America where she set up the private practice which would eventually become the New York Infirmary for Women: a hospital run by women for women. £4,500 [123303] 25 BLAVATSKY, Helena Petrovna. Signed cabinet portrait photograph. London: Enrico Resta, [1889] Original albumen print mounted on grey heavy card stock studio mount printed in dark grey (image: 140 × 103 mm; mount: 162 × 109 mm). Slight rounding of mount corners, a couple of faint marks to photo edge; else a near-fine example. A signed cabinet photo of renowned occultist and founder of the- osophy Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891). This photo, often referred to as the “Sphinx” portrait, shows Blavatsky in her most common pose, with her head resting on her hand gazing directly to the viewer. It was one of six portrait photos she had done on 8 January 1889, at Resta’s studio at 4 Coburg Place, Bayswater. Blavatsky was pleased with the resultant photos and ordered a number of copies, especially of this shot, her favourite of the six. Resta (1858/9–1942) later donated the six original glass plates to the Theosophical So- ciety. Signed photos of Blavatsky are notably uncommon, with no other examples traced in commerce. Blavatsky moved to America in 1873, where she befriended Henry Steel Olcott, and came to prominence as a spirit medium. In 1875 Blavatsky, with the support of Olcott and William Quan Judge, founded the Theosophical Society, an organisation designed to
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study various spiritual schools of thought, with the aim of finding universal truth. In 1887 she established her own esoteric Blavatsky Lodge in London, together with a theosophical magazine, Lucifer the Light-Bringer . It was there that Blavatsky wrote her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine , which “covers cosmic evolution, the origins of the universe, the history of humankind (derived from higher beings of lunar origins), and reincarnation” ( ODNB ). Noted theosophists in- clude women’s rights activists Annie Besant (who was confirmed as Blavatsky’s de facto successor in 1895), Clara Codd, and Henriette Muller, as well as W. B. Yeats. £9,250 [131540] The first collection of biographies devoted exclusively to women 26 BOCCACCIO, Giovanni. De claris mulieribus. [Strassburg: Georg Husner, about 1474–75, not after 1479] Folio (290 × 203 mm). Mid-19th-century blue half-morocco, by White of Pall Mall dated 1850, spine in six compartments with raised bands, lettered in the second, third and fourth compartments. 83 leaves, unpaginated. Hus- ner type with red initials and occasional red rules, 2- to 6-line spaces for capitals, with guide letters in nearly all cases. One leaf with ink marginalia depicting a hand pointing to the manuscript words “Amoris preludia”. Ex- tremities scuffed, some spotting and browning, minor marginal dampstain- ing, one leaf torn with minor loss to margin. With the bookplate of Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe (1858–1945), possibly by inheritance from his father Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton; from the family library removed from West Horsley Place, Surrey. Second edition of the first collection of biographies devoted exclu- sively to women , following the first printed edition at Ulm by Jo- hann Zainer in 1473. First composed between 1355 and 1359, it “rep- resents Europe’s first postclassical history of women” (Gaylard,
p. 287). Boccaccio includes women from mythology, legend, and history, intentionally rescuing some nearly lost to obscurity, and choosing famous, not necessarily virtuous, women as his examp- lar. In the preface Boccaccio talks directly to his imagined female audience: “by emulating the deeds of ancient women, you spur your spirit to loftier things . . . call on the powers of your intellect, in which you excel, and do not allow yourself to be surpassed” (Bell, p. 174). He excuses his preference for pagan as opposed to religious women by noting that saints’ lives are heavily recorded elsewhere, wishing to draw attention to less well-served women. A popular work, known in over 100 manuscripts, it was widely translated by the end of the 15th century, and was a source for Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Edmund Spenser, and others. Boccaccio was inspired to write it as a companion to Lives of Famous Men by his elder contem- porary and mentor, Petrarch. The first printings of the book in Germany are an important wit- ness to Renaissance humanism north of the Alps. This edition is like- ly to date from around 1474–75, and no later than 1479 (see Polain). BMC I 83; Goff B717; GW 4484; Polain (B) 710. See Bell, Susan Groad, “Christine de Pizan: Humanism and the Problem of a Studies Woman”, Feminist Studies 3:3-4, 1976. £15,000 [126672]
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