the text, folding coloured map of Jammu and Kashmir showing Duncan’s route. Pale mark across lettering on spine, scattered foxing. A very good copy, with the publisher’s slip pasted to the front free endpaper (informing booksellers that they should not offer a discount). First edition, fascinating association copy that links two intrepid women travellers of the early 20th century, inscribed by the Scot- tish traveller Ella Robertson Christie (1861–1949), who is men- tioned several times in the present work , on the blank before the half-title “Mary E. Haldane, May 1906, from E.C. of C. [Ella Christie of Cowden Castle, her home in Perthshire]”, with a loosely insert- ed note in another hand, “From Miss Christie”. The recipient may be Mary Elizabeth Haldane ( née Sanderson, 1825–1925), mother of Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, writer and suffragist, and paternal grandmother of the writer Naomi Mitchison. Christie, the author of Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand (1925), is credited with nine pho- tographic contributions in this work, and makes a rather splendid entrance at p. 259: “Soon I heard the music, which had never com- pletely died away, coming very near, and on looking round saw, to my astonishment, a lady walk into the bagh [garden] accompanied by the band and followed by an immense crowd. I was having tea and sent Aziz Khan to give my salaam and ask if she would join me; she came at once, and proved to be a countrywoman of my own on her way from Leh to Skardo. In coming down the hill she had fall- en in with the procession, in which she was immediately made the leading figure and was immensely surprised, amused and delighted with her own dramatic entrance into Khapallu, and had no idea till I told her what it all meant”. Jane Duncan (1848–1909) was a Scottish explorer whose “travels are full of delight . . . She was so exhilarated by the clear air and the abandonment of her side-saddle (she chose most daringly to ride astride, like men) that when she chanced upon Ella Christie one day—both treating their meeting in the emptiest corner of Asia as the most natural thing in the world—she chose not to accompany her but to carry on alone” (Robinson, p. 43). See Howgego III C36 for Christie; Robinson, Wayward Women , pp. 40 & 43; Yakuzi D171. £650 [121097] 59 EARHART, Amelia. The Fun of It. New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1932 Octavo. Original brown cloth, title to spine and front cover in white. With the Bakelite 78 record in the pocket on the rear pastedown, seal lifted but in fine condition. Portrait frontispiece and 15 photographic plates. Spine ends a little frayed, tips a touch rubbed, a little faint foxing to plates, offsetting to rear free endpaper. A very good, bright copy. first edition, signed by the author on the front free end- paper. Uncommon signed, The Fun of It is Earhart’s account of her growing obsession with flying, the final chapter of which is a last-minute addition chronicling her historic solo transatlantic flight of 1932. Earhart set out from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on 20 May 1932, and after a flight lasting 14 hours and 56 minutes she landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ire- land. The work contains the Bakelite record of Earhart’s subse- quent international broadcast from London on 22 May 1932. The work also includes a list of other works on aviation written by wom- en, emblematic of Earhart’s desire to promote women aviators (see item 13). £2,750 [131298]
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57 DUNCAN, Isadora. Der Tanz der Zukunft (The Dance of the Future) eine Vorlesung. Leipzig: Eugen Diederichs, 1903 Octavo. Original cream wrappers printed in blue. Housed in a blue cloth folding case. Portrait frontispiece and a single double-sided plate. Text in German and English. Wrappers toned and rubbed, some wear at ends of spine, lower corner of wrappers and early leaves of contents a little creased and dulled. A very good copy of this fragile production. rare first edition of Duncan’s 1903 Berlin address, a volley of modernist feminism fired across the bow of the traditional art world, which became the manifesto of modern dance. Coupling Nietzschean philosophy with Greek classicism, Duncan theorised a completely new form of dance that originated in the body itself— the solar plexus—and was free and natural like the dance of the ancient Greeks. She decried the staidness of ballet as “deforming the beautiful woman’s body” and argued that, “the dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmonious- ly together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body . . . She will dance not in the form of a nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette but in the form of a woman in its greatest and purest expression”. Though OCLC records about 35 copies in institutional holdings, this book is rare on the market and we have traced just two copies at auction. £2,750 [83693] 58 DUNCAN, Jane E. A Summer Ride through Western Tibet. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1906 Octavo. Original olive-green cloth, gilt lettered spine, untrimmed. With 74 monochrome illustrations from photographs on 40 plates, illustrations in
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