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About this catalogue
You write something. A thought, something seen, an insight, overheard in the bus, you could draw it, it might have happened that day; then you add to it, continue adding; it can be something that someone else has written, you’ve read it, it strikes a chord and you make a note of it. You add, accumulate, and the pages take on a life of their own. You wonder what you’re making and why you can’t stop. Time passes and it’s a list, diary, sketchbook, or a journal; the pieces you’ve gleaned from elsewhere have become the blocks in your commonplace book. To what end? A picture of yourself; gathering moments together that would otherwise have slipped by unnoticed; the compulsion to record; the pleasure of not knowing what you will write next?
New York: Viking. First American edition, 1970.
A compilation that exploded onto the market just as commonplace books fell from favour; four hundred pages of the poet's selection of readings that have meant the most to him, which he called 'a sort of autobiography'; one hundred and seventy-three entries and personal commentaries arranged in alphabetical order; Auden in the round with plenty of surprises from the frivolity of 'letting rip a fart' to the seriousness of Homer and Tolkien; published shortly before the poet left New York to return to England.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Milsons Point, NSW: The Harvill Press. First Australian edition, 2005.
London, June 1970 to November 1974, before 'Contemporary Portraits' and Sydney, September 1988 to November 2003 after 'Eucalyptus'; passages, fragments, quotations; living up to his 'the biographer is a handbag snatcher'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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San Francisco: Re/Search Publications. First American edition, 2004.
'I can't resist dipping into it to find out what I think,' the author says of this selection of quotes from his own essays, stories, articles, interviews, with predictions on music, film, celebrity, the rise of corporate media, and much more; according to the editor – 'a book you can trust ... one of the few books published today which has no hidden profit-motive and agenda, except to expand and illuminate the reader's consciousness as rapidly as possible ... [a] Handbook for Deciphering the Future'; also includes: 'Guide to Virtual Death' by J.G.Ballard; glossary, a bibliography, photographs; 1/250 numbered copies signed by J.G. Ballard.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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Wimborne Minster, Dorset: Little Toller Books. First English edition thus, 2010.
The diary of Bruce Frederick Cummings (1889-1919), begun at age thirteen, childhood in Barnstaple, Devon, working at the Natural History Museum, London in 1912, attempted to enlist in World War One, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, whose progress he documents through his journal; introduction by Tim Dee, illustrations by Ed Kluz; first published in 1919.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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London: William Heinemann. First English edition, 1928.
One hundred and ten pieces, most English, some French, a couple Greek and German, translations for some at rear; 'A basket full of phrases and passages; stray pearls, shells, sea-anemones, and possibly in the eyes of some readers, weeds, which have been picked up during forty years of casual meandering, paddling and shrimping on the sands and in the rocky pools of the shore of literature'; 1/100 numbered copies, printed on Kelmscott handmade paper, and signed by the author.
Stiffened wrappers in paper dustwrapper with tipped-on label, both very good and the limited edition dustwrapper darkened on the spine, rubbed on the front and rear panel and missing a small piece at the crown of the spine.
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London: Impress. First English edition, 2014.
Fragments, aphorisms, jottings: 'How far will you come with me? The question at the heart of all tragic liaisons'; illustrations by the author; designed and typeset by Phil Cleaver, printed by hand by Patrick Thomas-Lawson at Basilica Letterpress; 150 copies (total edition 250).
Pictorial boards. Fine as issued without dustwrapper.
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Newnham, Herfordshire: Laverock Press. First English edition, 1963.
A description of a commonplace book together with a life of its first owner bookseller, land surveyor and collector, John Bell, 1783-1864; 'It was in 1807 that John Bell began to keep his Newcastle Commonplace Book, and it was to flourish for close on sixty years, hoarding an astonishing array of notes and autographs – events local and national, jokes mild, amusing and doubtful, accounts of the visits of giants and freaks, tales of high-tides and shipwreck, murders, hard frost and bad trade. A great many of the entries are contributions from his numerous visitors ...; eighty copies for members and friends of the Private Libraries Association Society of Private Printers.
Printed wrappers. A little darkened around spine, else fine.
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New York: W.W. Norton. First American edition, 1983.
Mary Berenson's beautifully written diaries and letters see her leave behind a dissatisfying marriage to live in Italy with Bernard Berenson, the foremost expert of his time in Italian Renaissance Art. She herself becomes an authority on art history, influencing American collectors during the first decade of the twentieth century. From this distance, her diaries and letters have become her portrait of the period through the relationships forged at Villa I Tatti, the family home in Florence; edited by Barbara Strachey and Jayne Samuels
Fine in very good dustwrapper.
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London: Bodley Head. First English edition, 1967.
An anthology of 'brazen' double entendres contributed by members of the public who each received a prize of two guineas; most bloomers far cheekier than this: 'Soon after came the Prince of Wales, and Prince Edward; and then the Lady Augusta, all quite undress'd, and took their stools and sat round the fire with us' – from a political journal.
Plain wrappers, stapled. Fine in very good dustwrapper darkened around perimeter.
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Philadelphia: Typophiles. First American edition, 1957.
Observations about books ' for a jollie good booke whereon to looke, Is better to me than golde'; expanded from an earlier compilation 'O for a Booke', prepared for the Philadelphia opening of the American Institute of Graphic Arts 'Fifty Books of the Year' exhibit in 1955; 400 copies for Typophile subscribers, 100 sale; printed for Typophile Chapbook XXXIII; title illustration from an early nineteenth century wood engraving.
Original grey blue cloth. Two pages detached, else fine as issued without dustwrapper.
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New York: Angel Hair Press. First American edition, 1973.
'I remember ...', the third instalment of this modest, influential franchise; fifty years on and as fresh and mysterious as ever.
Pictorial wrappers, stapled. Covers a little rubbed and darkened around perimeter, very good.
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New York: Seabury. First American edition, 1978.
The author's reflections from 1942 to 1972, at first never intended for publication, eventually so important to him that he felt he would 'suffocate' without them.
'There are books that one has for twenty years without reading them, that one always keeps at hand, that one takes along from city to city, from country to country, carefully packed, even when there is very little room, and perhaps one leafs through them when removing them from a trunk; yet one carefully refrains from reading even a complete sentence. Then, after twenty years, there comes a moment when suddenly, as though under a very high compulsion, one cannot help taking in such a book from beginning to end, at one sitting: It is like a revelation. Now one knows why one made such a fuss about it. It had to be with one a long time; it had to travel; it had to occupy space; it had to be a burden; and now it has reached the goal of its voyage, now it reveals itself, now it illuminates the twenty bygone years it mutely lived with one. It could not say so much if it had not been there mutely the whole time, and what idiot would dare to assert that the same things had always been in it.'
Fine in dustwrapper a little sunned on the spine.
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London: Hutchinson. Reprints (vol.1 and 2), first English edition (vol.3), 2021-2022.
Three volumes., 3244pp., photographs, indexes; edited by Simon Heffer.
'“Chips” Channon, a busy socialite and minor MP, would now be a mere footnote in political history, the fleeting flibbertigibbet of one or two other people’s diaries, if it weren’t for his own diary, the teeming, two-million-word monument to himself that he built up secretly, with occasional gaps, between 1918 and his death forty years later. ... Simon Heffer, says that cuts have been made “solely on the grounds of lack of interest,” and I guess he has included about 60 percent of the original. ... The unfolding of a diary is always an adventure, a novel in which the writer has no prior knowledge of the plot. There is self-revelation both calculated and unconscious. It sounds perverse to say that Channon’s snobberies and prejudices make the diaries, but the unabashed exposure of these failings gives you an oddly impressive picture of a person in the setting of his time—the picture, I mean, is absorbing, whatever the subject’s shortcomings.' Alan Hollinghurst.
Fine in dustwrappers. The three vols.
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London: Jonathan Cape. First English edition., 1993.
Photographs, travel notes from Mauritania, Afghanistan, Niger; aims of his 'nomad book': 'I must write that bloody book of mine in a sensible, clear way. I opened the first page this afternoon rather like someone disposing of a letter-bomb. It was horrible. Pretentious. But I still like: 'The best travellers are illiterate; they do not bore us with reminiscences'';' edited by David King and Francis Wyndham.
Fine in very good dustwrapper creased at the crown of the spine and along part of top edge.
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Carlton, Vic: The Miegunyah Press. First Australian edition, 2014.
A tour of the author's most treasured artworks that can be found in Australian galleries; illustrated; landing somewhere between a guide and a visual commonplace book.
Stiffened pictorial wrappers, vertical elastic holder, simulating a notebook, all fine.
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London: The author. First English editions, 1980-2018.
Thirty-nine volumes: A complete run from 1980 to 2018; 'John Julius Norwich (1929-2018), produced his first Cracker in 1970, as a little Christmas gift for his friends. The Cracker format never changed: twenty-four pieces, selected from the ever-expanding collections in his commonplace books, each with a different, mostly patterned, cover. As a fresh Cracker appeared every year, friends and strangers began sending him their own literary plums. He welcomed these additions with typical enthusiasm, generously crediting the contributor, starting little threads and themes and conversations – so that over the years, the Christmas cracker grew into an unofficial club, open to anyone who wanted to join.' (The introduction to the final volume.)
The crackers are an eclectic, modest, alternative record of individuals' activities, reading and listening for almost forty years, gleaned from signs for tourists, reports, obituaries, letters, dinner exchanges, titles, Shakespeare, opening sentences of books, the Bible, lists; shorter crackers: 'Sixteen kisses are mentioned in Jane Austen's novels, not one exchanged by a pair of lovers. Sex never intrudes.' (2017); 'And all dishevelled wandering stars' (John Keats, 2002); 'Our wines leave you nothing to hope for' (Swiss menu, 2006); 'How can one be sure / If true love will endure? / My thoughts this morning are / As tangled as my hair' (The Lady Horikawa, 12th century, 2009).
The last volume, the forty-ninth, was issued in 2018, the proofs corrected by the author from his hospital bed before his death in June.
'I am old. Nothing interests me now,
Moreover I am not very intelligent,
And my ideas have travelled no further
Than my feet. You ask me
What is the greatest happiness on earth?
It is to hear a young girl
Singing along the road.
After she has asked you the way.'
Wang Wei (thirteenth century), the last entry in the final volume.
Pictorial wrappers, stapled. Four vols. inscribed by the author. All fine.The thirty-nine volumes
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England: Penguin Books. Reprint, 1982.
Collects the crackers from 1970-1979, the first decade, of prose and poetry that the author sent to friends each year as a Christmas card.
'Then a strange thing happened. In the splendour of their new environment, the various passages of prose and poetry that I had copied out seemed to take on a new corporate identity. What had started off as a pile of literary odds and ends, to be added to at the whim of the moment, suddenly became a collection, something to be nurtured and cultivated and cared for. ... it was my commonplace book'
Printed wrappers. Faint erasure mark front free endpaper, very good.
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England: Viking. Reprint, 1990.
Collects the crackers from 1980-1989, the second decade. 'Since a commonplace collection is unaffected by monetary considerations, its only limitations are those which the collector himself decides to impose'; or thoughts on pig-sticking, the Papacy, the culinary preparation of puffins, and the worst-ever novel.
Spots of foxing to foredge, else fine in dustwrapper
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England: Viking. First English edition, 2000.
The third decade (1990-1999) of Crackers. A generous helping including: the instruction book for a new washing machine, a notice in a hotel room, the etiquette governing revolving doors, Napoleon ordering the dancers of the Paris Opera to perform without their underwear, Adam and Eve conversing in palindromes, the story of Oedipus told in car number plates, an Oxford professor swallowing the heart of Louis XVI.
Fine in very good dustwrapper faded on the spine.
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New York: Bouwerie Editions. First American edition, 1972.
The writer's notebook, June 7 to June 19, 1970; twenty-one photocopied sheets; three hundred and fifty copies.
Plain wrappers, stapled, with printed label. Perimeter a little darkened, else fine.
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Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins. First German edition, 1978.
Facsimile edition. Three years in the artist's working universe: drawings, most with captions, text; his familiar subjects and obsessions: women, reality, time and the Bible, c.300+pp; booklet containing the German text for all the drawings and captions laid in (36pp.)
Maroon and black cloth. Fine as issued without dustwrapper in original plain cardboard slipcase.
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Toronto: Oasis. First Canadian edition, 1975.
First published in 1925 during the fervour of French surrealism; three versions here: the original French, English translated by John Robert Colombo and Irène Currie, Spanish by Susana Wald and Ludwig Zeller; three collages by Ludwig Zeller; 1/200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator.
Pictorial wrappers, sewn. Publisher's promotional material laid in. Fine.
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Berkeley, CA: North Point Press. Facsimile edition, 1985.
Broadsheet promoting the facsimile edition of 'A Commonplace Book of Cookery'; an opinionated history of food and eating.
Broadsheet measures 45 x 26cms., printed two colours, rolled, near fine.
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San Francisco: North Point Press. Facsimile edition, 1985.
'Commonplace books are rarely compiled by commonplace people ... this book plucks gastronomical crumbs from off and from under the tables of the great, sub-great, superficial wits and thinkers of History' to form a collection of proverbs, anecdotes, opinions and obscure facts on food, drink, cooks, cooking, dining, diners and dieters, dating from ancient times to the present; a facsimile of the limited edition produced by the Arion Press in 1975, designed by Andrew Hoyem, preface by M.F.K. Fisher. 'The poor seek food, the rich seek an appetite'. Hindi proverb.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Scolar Press. Second English edition, 1985.
'It takes two to make a hero'; organised chronologically – dreams, jokes, excerpts from letters, criticisms, broodings and reactions to the events of the day – begun in 1925, and continued until 1968, eighteen months before his death, first published as a facsimile of the manuscript in 1978; edited by Philip Gardner.
Fine in very good dustwrapper creased at the base of the spine.
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London and New Haven: Quartet. First English editions. Yale University Press. First American edition, 1988-1993.
'The faithful dog of my soul', according to the author, or three volumes of autobiography covering the second half of Witold Gombrowicz’s life in Argentina, a small part of his life in Germany and France after his return to Europe in 1963, and bits and pieces of Poland which he left in 1939, never to return. Together with a separately published collection of autobiographical sketches of his childhood, youth, early literary career and colleagues, written for Radio Free Europe while living in Argentina through the late 1950s.
All fine in dustwrappers. The four vols.
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London: Methuen. First English edition, 1937.
Short passages from Kenneth Grahame's works as a spiritual guide for the year. You could do worse, "Don't for goodness sake keep on saying 'Don't'; I hear so much of it and it's monotonous, and makes me tired."
Foxing to extremities and faintly throughout. Very good in dustwrapper.
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London: Granta and Faber and Faber, 2004-2010.
Five volumes: 'The Smoking Diaries' (second impression), 'The Year of the Jouncer', 'The Last Cigarette and Coda' (all first English editions), 'The Early Diaries' (first collected edition) – droll, acerbic, obsessive entries, 'Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who was given six months to live, and here they are, only just dead, eight years later.'
Spots of foxing to extremities in the set, else four volumes fine in dustwrappers and one volume pictorial wrappers, also fine. The five volumes
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London: The Nonesuch Press. First English edition, 1989.
An autobiographical, commonplace book that collects the epigraphs from all of Graham Greene's books that have one, and adds, for some, his partial explanations of their relevance to that book; 'I have had them printed in chronological order, for an author's work changes, as his ideas change, with the years, and the epigraphs he uses, like his books, form a sort of autobiography, beginning with the innocent disclosures of immaturity and ending with the uncertainties and fears of old age'; 1/950 numbered copies, signed by the author.
Original olive green cloth, stamped in gold. Fine as issued in transparent dustwrapper.
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New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. First American edition, 1984.
The author's notebook – fragments, single lines to half a page, inching towards a diary – while living in Paris from November 1975 through March 1977, the world of 'The Left-Handed Woman'; translated by Ralph Manheim. 'Someone watching television said, 'Why does there have to be news every day?''
Bookseller's small stamp to corner of front free endpaper, else fine in dustwrapper reproducing 'Black and White Flowers' by Jim Dine on the front panel.
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New York: Simon and Schuster. First American edition, 2002.
Quotations, guides, tips, and wisdom from the long-running series; everything from lessons on how to cry on the spot, a quick lesson in botany, how to handle vampire bats, as well as catchphrases for every occasion.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Pushkin Press. First English edition, 2022.
The author's wartime notebooks (and 11pp. of sketches): posted to Paris in 1940 as a researcher, disappeared from Berlin in the final days of World War Two; translated from the German by Simon Beattie, introduction by Rudiger Gorner.
Fine in dustwrapper
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London: Bloomsbury. First English edition, 1999.
They were only 'Notebooks' when first published in the United States, then crossed the Atlantic and became 'Secret', containing screenplays, notes, storyboards, diagrams; 560+pp., indexed and illustrated with linking and explanatory narrative by the editor, and if there is a 'secret', it remains intact.
Extremities evenly and lightly tanned, else fine in dustwrapper.
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Paris: Editions du Chene. First French edition, 1986.
Facsimile edition of David Hockney's sketchbook, c.100pp., colour, pencil, pen and ink; fragments, working drawings, annotations; laid in is a booklet with a text (in French, 30pp.) by David Hockney setting the context of how he uses his notebooks, introduction by Nikos Stangos.
Marbled boards for the sketchbook. Fine. Pictorial wrappers for the booklet. Very good. Both in original slipcase, worn and with one crack along a fold. Very good.
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Kenthurst, NSW: Geebung Studios. First Australian edition, 2002.
Thoughts on creation, drawing, painting, light, colour, space, style, abstraction, history, internationalism and epiphany; collected from the artist's sketchbooks; illustrated; selected and edited by Kate and Zoe Hodgkinson.
Pictorial wrappers. Barry Humphries' copy with his ownership stamp. Fine.
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New York: Bell Publishing. First American edition, 1965.
'There are photographs and merry japes galore, for this is essentially a family book, and one which we confidently expect will stand on every shelf between 'Pears Encyclopaedia' and 'Mrs Beeton' – Barry Humphries. A collection of 'Bizarrerie to address the jaded palate': 'Handy Household Hints for the Mutilation of the Mona Lisa', 'Labiomancy: the Language of the Lips', 'On Recovering from Idiocy', 'Artificial Noses', 'The Mathematics of Sewers', 'Potato Poisoning', 'Flogging with a Frying-pan', and idiosyncratic erotica. Illustrated throughout.
Very good in dustwrapper.
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London: Virago. First English edition, 2001.
A visitor's book for the peninsula – Turner, Goethe, Shelley, Hemingway, Truman Capote, Eric Newby, Keats, Cecil Beaton, Stendhal, Dickens – as well as locals' thoughts – Dante, Primo Levi, Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Verga, Italo Calvino – from one line to a couple of pages each and organised, inexplicably, according to the four classical elements of earth, water, fire and air.
Review copy with publisher's embargo slip tipped in. A couple of pencil annotations in the margins, extremities evenly tanned, very good in dustwrapper
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Berkeley, CA: Ian Jackson. First American edition, 2018.
Jan Cosinka's lexicon, 'My old friend Alan Davidson was commemorated in 2004 with what I believe was the first funeral cookbook in English. Why not, I thought, a funeral lexicon, with all of the corpse's favorite words and sayings? ... the bulky manuscript of 'A Glossary of Cosinkan' ... will remain a work-in-progress until finally 'crystallised' for posthumous publication, may be printed verbatim on my decease.' Ian Jackson, aka Jan Cosinka, died on 18 February 2018. 250 copies.
Printed wrappers. Fine.
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New York: Oxford University Press. First American edition, 1947.
From an author who kept notebooks throughout his career and died leaving one behind with over sixty ideas for future novels, this selection is from November 1878 to May 1911; 'The only balm, and the only refuge, the real solution of the pressing question of life, are in this frequent, fruitful, intimate battle with the particular idea, with the subject, the possibility, the place'; edited by F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock; 400+pp., indexed
Top edge dusty and faint foxing, very good in dustwrapper darkened around perimeter.
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Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University Press. First American edition, 1966.
On board the whaler 'Addison', captained by Samuel Lawrence, her husband, from 1856-1860, and with their daughter along for the journey; edited by Stanton Garner; illustrated.
Review copy with publisher's slip tipped to front pastedown. Faint foxing top edge. Very good in dustwrapper.
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Berkeley, CA: Black Oak Books, [1989].
Broadside on the occasion of a reading by the author promoting 'Get Shorty'. A droll passage from HR introducing Chili to the nature of his work, the character of the clientele he'll encounter, the required customer service, and ending with the now discredited, 'In other words, don't talk when you don't have to. What's the point?' Inscribed by Elmore Leonard.
Grey card, measuring 33 x 24cms., printed in two colours. Fine.
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New York: Black Dog and Leventhal. First American edition, 2005.
A singular mind and compulsive journaler during the Renaissance: notes, fragments, aphorisms and drawings: architecture, anatomy, science, painting, mechanical inventions, art; the seeds of the atomic bomb; drawn from seven thousand manuscript pages; 334pp., indexed, edited by H. Anna Suh.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Allen Lane. The Penguin Press. Reprint, 2001.
The author's anthology of writings he considered to be essential reading – thirty pieces by familiar and less familiar voices, many with their roots in Levi's experience of Auschwitz, based on salvation through laughter, knowledge, and understanding the injustice of suffering and the stature of man; translated with an introduction by Peter Forbes, afterword by Italo Calvino setting out the background to the project – many writers invited etc. – and his way in to Primo Levi's selection.
Spots of foxing to foredge, else fine in dustwrapper.
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Boston: Beacon Press. First American edition, 1959.
'Whoever has two pairs of pants, sell one and buy this book!' – Lichtenberg. Divided into three parts: 'Aphorisms'; 'Selections from the Göttingen Pocket Almanac'; and 'Letters'; an anthology of the author's wit and nuggets of wisdom – men and morals, the soul, bathing machines, pumpernickel, women, love – all grist to his mill. Translated, edited, and introduced by Franz Mautner and Henry Hatfield who has inscribed this copy to James Laughlin of New Directions.
Very good in dustwrapper darkened on the spine and with a couple of chips.
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London: Penguin. First English edition, 1990.
A collection of one thousand and eighty-five aphorisms and brief writings, the physicist and satirist's 'Sudelbücher', a rendition of the English 'waste books', each volume accorded a letter of the alphabet from A, begun in 1765 to L, breaking off at the year of his death in 1799; translated with an introduction and notes by R.J. Hollingdale.
Pictorial wrappers. Foxing to prelims and extremities. Good.
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New York: New York Review. First American paperback edition, 2000.
One thousand and eighty-five aphorisms and other short writings by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), scientist and satirist, a select group, whose 'Sudelbücher' – notebooks deflating social pretensions and jostling with philosophical questions – built him a following through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Tolstoy, Einstein, Breton, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche; translated and introduced by R.J. Hollingdale; originally published by Penguin in 1990.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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London: Nobrow Press. First English edition, 2014.
A multi-directional flow chart of aspects of modernism in Southern California featuring, among many, Frank Sinatra, Dennis Hopper, Rudi Gernreich, Mary Blair, Richard Neutra ...
Pictorial boards housing four metre concertina frieze, laid in the folded dot map to guide you through the frieze. All fine.
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Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive Press. First American edition, 1988.
Selection from the author's journal from March 1983 to June 1984; produced by his determination to write, in Stendhalian fashion, at least 20 lines a day, 'I have nothing to write in particular, I'm writing these lines because of my rule that I must write them. I know that I want to get back to writing the last chapter of 'Cigarettes' (December 13, 1983)'
Fine in dustwrapper
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London: John Murray. First English edition, 1996.
'When words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom', Confucius. Laid in the Murray's Christmas card with a short, signed note by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper
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London: John Murray. Reprint, 1996.
'Thrift is what you do to yourself; meanness is what you do to others.'
Fine in dustwrapper.
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North Sydney, NSW: Richmond Ventures. First Australian edition, 2002.
Unattributed 'tidbits in papers and mags are circled and stored. Stray comments at corporate conventions are captured, then twisted to my purpose' to become a 'Handbook for the Third Millennium' by the self-described 'travel-worn author, stirrer, futurist and windbag' and presented in the limbo form of info graphics pointing towards artist's book; signed by the author in 2007.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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London: Penguin. Reprint, 2008.
From deep in the quotations, 'Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.' Wallace Stevens.
Pictorial wrappers. Ownership stamp of Barry Humphries. Fine.
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Boston, MA: MIT Press. First American edition, 2007.
Aphorisms – 'every conviction is a virus' – poems, plays, occasional writings, 1917-1953 and a small amount that were posthumously published; illustrations of programs and other covers by the author; 450+pp.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 2000.
An exact transcription of the twenty-three journals and journal fragments held by Smith College, Massachusetts, written by Sylvia Plath between the ages of eighteen and thirty, illuminating her student years, marriage to fellow writer Ted Hughes, and two years of living and working in New England; with the full text of the two journals which Ted Hughes unsealed just before his death in 1998; edited and annotated by Karen V. Kukil.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Kent: Private Eye Productions. First English edition, 1966.
Collected from 'Private Eye', who collected them from English newspapers and magazines, and also from the collection of Fritz Spiegl, Austrian musician (1926-2003), who had arrived in England in 1939, not speaking a word of English, once he did, he focussed on its ambiguities and not infrequent malapropisms; illustrations by Ralph Steadman.
Pictorial wrappers. Very good.
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San Francisco: Grace Hoper Press. First American edition, 1960.
Thirty-five quotations from sources as varied as a Japanese primary school reader, Horace, a Chinese curse, Kashmiri wisdom, Afghani aphorism, all appearing under enigmatic titles, for example: Are You Listening? A Crime for Dying, Rock and Roll of Ages, Let Them Hunt Foxes, Why Buy a Cow? Some Like it Cold; printed in thirty-five typefaces, listed at rear, many two colour, handmade paper; 75 copies.
Spots of foxing to prelims, very good in dustwrapper darkened around spine and with a section cut out of the spine of the dustwrapper to make the title visible.
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London: Atlas Press. First English illustrated edition, 2017.
Fifty-four pieces, divided into three main categories: 'Written for Performance' and 'Written for Publication' and 'Private Writings' and including 'Childish Prattle ...', 'Book-loving', 'On Dizziness', 'The Musician's Day', 'Hidden Corners of My Life'; edited and introduced by Ornella Volta, translations by Antony Melville; catalogue of the author's literary and musical works; first published in the Atlas Arkhive series in 1996, illustrations from the archives of the Erik Satie Foundation.
Pictorial boards. Fine as issued without dustwrapper.
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New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich. First American edition, 1971.
Notebooks: beginning 25 June 1960, through to, 342pp. later, 15 February 1963; photographs; 'I've thought for a long time, in fact since I began to observe people, that I learn more about them when I talk than when I listen.'
Gift inscription, ownership signature and Barry Humphries' bookplate. Very good in dustwrapper.
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Oxford: The author. First English edition, 1999.
'The dead are invisible but not absent'; verses, meditations and 'links and clues' or, as the title suggests, 'odds and ends'; printed by the author for his friends, and inscribed, ''To David and Judy [Gascoyne] with all our love R&S' [Waterfield].
Printed wrappers, stapled. With the book label of David and Judy Gascoyne. Fine.
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[London]: [Heywood Hill, for private circulation], [1992].
Archibald Percival Wavell (1883-1950), senior officer in the British Army during both World Wars, Commander in Chief, then Viceroy in India between 1941 and 1947.
John Saumarez Smith, working at Heywood Hill bookshop, found an unedited copy of the original edition of 'Notes and Ideas' and was keen to reprint it. The Wavell family refused, he produced this informal edition, photocopied from the original, to be issued in ‘a handful of facsimile copies’ for private circulation.
'The darkest place is under the lamp. (Eastern proverb)'
Plain wrappers with typed label. Fine.
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Frankfort, Kentucky: Gnomon Press. First American trade edition, 1979.
'They are a record of a series of friends in the arts with faces too interesting to be missed even by a poet on the run'; thirty tipped-in colour prints with text re the subject on facing page; subjects include: Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton, R.B. Kitaj, Ezra Pound, Mina Loy, Christopher Logue, David Hockney, Dorothy Brett; 1/1800 numbered copies.
Fine in dustwrapper with original transparent cover and slipcase.
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Highlands, North Carolina: Jordan Davies. First American edition, 1983.
'Ranshacking and Shorings' #1, collected by a self-proclaimed 'insatiable collector of petalled wit, wisdom, absurdity, and insolence' from 'imaginations in full flower', or, for example, 'For Christ's sake, can't you get them to turn off the television!' (Bob Brown's last words), and 'Aesthetics is for the Artists like Ornithology is for the Birds' (Barnett Newman); 1/25 copies printed on Penshurst paper (total edition 100 copies), inscribed by the author to Al Hirsch.
Quarter vellum and green paste paper boards with printed label. Fine as issued with transparent dustwrapper.
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[Highlands, North Carolina]: Otis Editions. Second American edition revised, 1984.
'Ranshacking and Shorings' #2; from this distance, a computer generated artefact: 'This version of 'In the Azure Over the Squalor' produced on a DEC Rainbow 100 by Thomas Meyer is based on a fine, limited edition published by Jordan Davies, bookseller. The text has been edited by Edix and formatted by Wordix onto a DEC LA 100 printer fitted with a Courier-10 dot-matrix character set. The spelling was checked with Spellix, and the index compiled using Indix. There are fifty copies for friends'; subject and individual index; 1/50 copies inscribed by the author.
Pictorial wrappers, reproducing 'Baseball Player' by folk artist Juanita Rogers, with handwritten title label attached. Fine.
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Frankfort, Kentucky: Gnomon Press. Third American edition, 1985.
'Ranshacking and Shorings' #3. 'Anything simple always interests me (David Hockney)'. Set in Goudy's Village No. 2 and Italian Old Style types by out of Sorts Letter Foundry, printed by Thomson-Shore; 1500 copies.
Pictorial wrappers, cover illustration by James McGarrell. Fine.
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New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. First American editions, 1975-1993.
Five volumes: The complete set – the historical and cultural events and dominant individuals from half the twentieth century dissected through the journals of the writer and literary critic – beginning with him as managing editor of 'Vanity Fair' in 1920-1921 and ending, 3,000pp. later, with 'June 11, 1972: The Stone House' written the day before his death. Volumes 1-4 edited and introduced by Leon Edel, volume 5 by Lewis M.Dabney.
All fine in dust wrappers. The Sixties is a review copy with publisher's promotional material laid in. The five vols.
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London: Macmillan. Reprint, 1952.
Two volumes: Beginning 20 January 1798 and ending on the Isle of Man, 19 July 1828, in between: Scotland, Germany, Switzerland ... by 'the most remarkable and the most distinguished of English writers who never wrote a line for the general public', Ernest de Selincourt who edited these two volumes; 850+pp., first published 1941.
Original blue cloth. Covers of vol.2 a little marked, same owner's signature in both volumes. Very good. No dustwrappers. The two vols.
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[New York]: CZ Publications. First American edition, 1979.
Not a commonplace book or journal or diary or a sketchbook, but too striking not to include and right at home with the preceding books. An enlarged reproduction from part of the manuscript draft of 'Bottom: on Shakespeare', published in 1963. This page, torn from a spiral-bound notebook, later destroyed, is held at the Humanities Research Center, Austin; #190/200 copies (total edition 226).
Broadside measures 51x41 cms. Printed in three colours. Fine.
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