of traditional tales including the ‘Cries of London’ and the ‘Arabian Nights’” ( ODNB ). Sexagesimo-quarto (46 × 33 mm). Original black morocco, flat spine ruled and decorated in gilt, gilt rules, rolls, and floral toolings on covers, red morocco inlay with the Christogram “JHS” lettered in gilt to covers, board edges gilt, marbled endpapers, edges gilt. Housed in a custom velvet drawstring bag and archival cream card folding case. With 15 plates. Minor rubbing to extremities, inner hinges partly cracked but firm, printing error to leaf Q2 affecting a few words, tiny puncture to caption of plate facing p. 192, small folds to a few corners, internally bright. A very good copy. £1,250 [146941] 11 BLAGG, Mary A. Four Fairy Tales. [Together with a manuscript copy of one of the tales.] Cheadle: J. Lowndes, 1911 An astronomer’s private fairy tales, presented to her loved ones First and sole edition of this collection of fairy tales, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: “Félicité Hardcastle, With good wishes for her birthday, July 1 from the authoress, 1911”, with a textual correction on p. 71. Accompanying the printed work is an
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her authoritative text defining lunar nomenclature, Named Lunar Formations (1935, with Karl Müller). This copy of Four Fairy Tales has a superb association: Félicité Hardcastle was the daughter of the astronomer Joseph A. Hardcastle; it was through his university extension course that Blagg first began studying astronomy in 1905. Hardcastle also arranged her first astronomical publication – her analysis of a year’s worth of star observations, totalling 4,000 in all. The work was presented to Félicité for her tenth birthday, and is suggestive of the longstanding friendship Blagg and Hardcastle developed. Félicité went on to become an archaeologist, historian, and amateur botanist noted for her work in the area of Burley, Hampshire. Four Fairy Tales : octavo. Original blue cloth, front cover lettered and tooled with floral design in gilt initialled H.N.A., green ivy leaf-patterned endpapers. Spine faintly toned, extremities rubbed, sporadic light foxing; an excellent copy. Manuscript of “The Ugly Prince”: quarto (198 × 165 mm). Original commercial dark blue diaper-grain limp cloth, title label made from paper tape on front cover written in manuscript (“The Ugly Prince”), edges blue, 64 pages written entirely in manuscript, 20 lines per page. Slight scuffing and marking to covers, outer leaves and margins a little browned, text all legible, a very good copy. £2,250 [149717]
series, a film, and a chart-topping band. Wimbledon Football Club has, at various times, adopted Wombles as club mascots. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Frontispiece and 15 full-page illustrations with other illustrations in the text, all by Oliver Chadwick. Head and foot of spine slightly bumped, minor foxing to edges; a near-fine copy. Price-clipped dust
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8 BALLANTYNE, R. M. The Gorilla Hunters. A Tale of the Wilds of Africa. London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1861 First edition of Ballantyne’s adventure in which the three characters from his most successful novel, Coral Island (1858), meet up some years later and set off in pursuit of gorillas. The first edition is rare: only two copies appear in auction records and the copy that Sadleir describes was not his own. “Few copies of the first edition appear to have survived, and to find one in the original cloth binding is a rare occurrence. This may well be a measure of the popularity of the tale, the book having been ‘read to death’ in the first few years of its existence to be finally consigned to the dustbin, dog-eared and tattered” (Quayle). Octavo. Original light reddish-purple vertical wave-grain cloth, spine and covers decoratively lettered and blocked in gilt and blind, yellow endpapers. Frontispiece, extra engraved title, 5 plates. Ownership inscription on front free endpaper obscured. Spine faded and with slight lean, a couple of ink stains to rear cover, some pencilled crosses in the text, a little very light spotting to early leaves, an excellent copy. ¶ Osborne, p. 322; Quayle 26a; Sadleir, XIX Century Fiction , 110; not in Wolff. £3,500 [144253] 9 BERESFORD, Elisabeth. The Wandering Wombles. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1970 First edition, first impression, presentation copy of the second Wombles book, inscribed by the author (“To David, with best wishes from Elizabeth Beresford”) and the illustrator (“and Oliver Chadwick”) on the front free endpaper. Copies signed by both the author and illustrator are rare. The furry eco-friendly inhabitants of Wimbledon Common featured in a series of novels, a classic television
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earlier manuscript version of one of the tales, “The Ugly Prince”, written entirely in Blagg’s hand and inscribed to her niece, Alice Nancy Bowers: “The Ugly Prince By M. A. Blagg. For Miss A. N. Bowers. From the author, January 1906”. Blagg’s Four Fairy Tales was published in her hometown of Cheadle, Staffordshire, and appears to have been issued in a small print run for private circulation. It is consequently scarce, with only one copy traced institutionally worldwide (British Library). The publisher, Jesse Lowndes, listed in the 1911 census as a letterpress printer, was part of a local well-respected family of photographers. That the recipient of “The Ugly Prince” was Mary’s niece indicates that the stories eventually published as Four Fairy Tales were initially written for her loved ones. Mary Adela Blagg (1858–1944) was a noted astronomer. In 1916 she was among the first four women elected to the Royal Astronomical Society, with reports at the time stating that “it was largely in consequence of Miss Blagg’s work that the RAS recently altered its constitution so that ladies might be admitted” ( Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal , 4 February 1916). Blagg was appointed to collate the various named lunar forms and adapt them into a definitive state. Her Collated List of Lunar Formations (1913, with S. A. Saunder) laid the groundwork for
jacket worn at extremities, some surface abrasions, some foxing to reverse; a good example. £475 [155504] 10 BIBLE. Bible in Miniature, or a Concise History of Both Testaments. London: J. Harris, late [Elizabeth] Newbery, & for Darton & Harvey, [c.1800] From the Newbery children’s press An exquisite miniature Bible, first published by Elizabeth Newbery in 1780, adorned with pictures and paraphrased for the use of children. Newbery took over the famous children’s publishing firm of her uncle-in-law John Newbery (bap. 1713, d. 1767), who lends his name to the John Newbery Medal prize for American children’s literature. Elizabeth Newbery’s (1745/6–1821) “control spanned the decades in which children’s books became an established branch of the publishing industry, and her list included abridgements of Richardson and Fielding, English writers such as Sarah Trimmer and Priscilla Wakefield, and versions
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
CHILDREN’S BOOKS & ORIGINAL ARTWORK
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