Rare books from John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller

1857. London: Chapman and Hall, 1857. 8vo, vi, 403 pp. Original green cloth lettered in gilt, yellow endpapers, a remarkably good copy with two bookplates, in a quarter red morocco box. § First edition, scarce, an interesting association copy of this ground-breaking feminist work, inscribed by Watts Phillips, the popular Victorian playwright, to his mistress and the mother of his children: "Watts Phillips presents this book the work of a great female poet to Caroline Huskisson who lacks but time and perseverance to become one." Watts was a student and a lifelong friend of Cruikshank. He was accused of borrowing elements from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities for his most successful play, The Dead Heart, but it turned out Dickens had in fact borrowed them from him. Bookplates of John Thompson Fitz Adam, and Edwin Holden (dated 1894), president of the Grolier Club and a major collector of the time.

1941. New York: The Viking Press, 1941. Roy. 8vo, [67] pp. Letterpress text and drawings in lithographic crayon on zinc, printed throughout in brown with title page lettered in green, pictorial endpapers. Beige cloth, lettered and pictorially stamped in green. Dust-jacket printed in green and brown, $2.00 price flap unclipped. A little edge wear to dust-jacket and half inch chip to bottom of spine, some toning of pastedowns but otherwise a lovely bright copy inside and out. § From the library of Nobel Laureate in Physics Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, signed by him, with his bookplate and with a compliments card signed by the author both loosely inserted. First edition in an early dustjacket, still priced $2.00, and with the Caldecott Medal sticker for 1942. Chandrasekhar's seminal work in astrophysics led to the currently accepted theories on the lives of black holes.

1825. London: [plates dated] 1825 [but published 1826]. Folio, engraved title and 21 plates on India paper mounted on handmade paper. Each plate separately matted, a brilliant set, with the original printed label preserved. § First edition, limited to 150 proof sets (65 sets were also printed on French paper, and 100 sets on drawing paper with the word 'proof' removed). This is one of finest sets of the proofs I have ever seen, and far outshines the other two original printings and the later re-issue. The India paper set is the best printing of these famous plates which comprise Blake's major single achievement as a printmaker after the illuminated books. "Blake's twenty-two engraved Illustrations of the Book of Job are the culmination of his long pictorial engagement with that biblical subject. His first efforts were a small group of wash drawings of the mid-1780s showing Job in his misery with his wife and three friends...This may have stimulated Blake's chief patron, Thomas Butts, to… Read More

1859. London: Chapman & Hall, MDCCCLIX (1859). 8vo, [ix], [1]-254, 16 etched plates including frontis and title vignette. Full olive green fine-diaper cloth, entirely stamped in blind with a three line border which encloses a rectangular frame within which is is an ornament of leaves and stems in each corner and a chain-like design with each link enclosing a four-leafed flower. Housed in a green cloth slip-case. The head and tail of the backstrip are very slightly bumped with some sun toning; minor scattered foxing mostly near plates and some off-setting; a good clean copy in a beautifully preserved original cloth binding. § First edition in the rare secondary green cloth binding. Two of the eight internal flaws identified by Smith as necessary for the first issue have been corrected: "l" and "f" are printed on p.116 and 213 is numbered correctly. Of the latter point Eckel observes "The absence of this error does not invalidate a first edition but it fixes the priority of printing" and Smith… Read More

1838. London: Chapman and Hall, April, 1838 - October, 1839. Thick 8vo., 24[ads], 8[ads], 8[ads], 2[ads], [4 original wrappers], [4 ads], xvi, [1]-624, [4 ads], [6 ads], 8[ads], 8[ads] pp., 40 plates including frontisportrait. Full dark-brown calf, backstrip with maroon label and title stamped in gilt. All plates are foxed, though text and binding are bright; very good. § First edition, bound from the original parts, with blue wrappers from number eighteen, and numerous advertisements bound in. A unique selection and collation of choice advertisements and all relevant material to the novel, collected and handsomely bound.

1882. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882. 8vo, 411 pp. 192 illustrations in black and white. Original half brown pebbled morocco, marbled boards. Backstrip scuffed, generally good. § First American Edition. First Issue, with Franklin Press imprint on copyright page, p. 124, line 1 reading "estate"; p. 263 "do not"; p. 362 "reigned." BAL 3402; Peter Parley to Penrod, p. 65.

1880. London: John Murray, 1880. 8vo, x, 592, 32 (ads dated May 1878) pp. Illustrated with 196 in-text woodcuts. Original green blind-stamped cloth, backstrip titled in gilt, brown coated endpapers, hinges cracked, a little wear to crown and foot of backstrip, text block edges (but not pages) stained, an unsophisticated copy. § § First edition, first issue, inscribed in Charles Darwin's hand, "Elizabeth Darwin, From her Father." Presentation copies from Darwin, in his own hand, are exceptionally rare (most presentation copies were inscribed "from the author" by the publisher); a copy inscribed to a family member by Darwin himself is extraordinarily so. Elizabeth Darwin, known as Bessy, was Charles and Emma Darwin's youngest daughter and perhaps the most enigmatic of all their ten children. She is remembered as a quiet soul who lived in the family home until the death of her mother, and then in a cottage on her own near her three brothers until her death in 1926. The book which Darwin has… Read More

1928. London: Methuen and Co., 1928. 8vo, xi, 178 pp. Original rose cloth, boards stamped and panelled in gilt, backstrip gilt lettered, top edge gilt, in the original illustrated dust jacket. A near fine copy with bright and clean boards, subtle professional restoration to two faint patches of abrasion on the front free endpaper; dust jacket very clean and unfaded with light professional restoration. Bookplate tipped to verso of front free endpaper. § First edition, signed on the title-page by Milne. A handsome copy of the fourth book about Winnie-the-Pooh, Christopher Robin and friends, the first to introduce the irrepressible Tigger. Illustrated with E.H. Shepard's line drawings.

1886. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. January 1886 - October 1888 [and] London: The Chiswick Press, January 1889 - October 1892. 4to. 28 volumes illustrated by woodcut and photogravure, in the original printed wrappers. Expectable browning to the untrimmed edges and occasional foxing and offsetting; issue no. 9 front wrapper spotted and rear wrapper very creased; issue 12 slight red staining to rear wrapper; issue 21 upper wrapper torn with large loss; issue 28 lower wrapper soiled and with a large chip. Despite the few flaws listed above the overall condition is in general clean and quite beautiful, remarkably well-preserved for a large format, elegant journal in its original wrappers. All enclosed in two modern cloth boxes. § A complete run of the main series of the Century Guild Hobby Horse, the first significant magazine dedicated to the visual arts in England, preceding both the The Yellow Book and The Savoy and more egalitarian than either in its mission to create a unified vision of the… Read More

1899. London: Leonard Smithers, 1899. 8vo, 213, (1, imprint)pp. Original salmon cloth stamped in gold, backstrip dull, internally very good. Wilmerding bookpate upside down in back. § First edition, one of 1000 copies. "Although Wilde's third play opened in 1895, it was not published until four years later and after Wilde had been released from prison. The success of The Ballad of Reading Gaol persuaded [Wilde] to publish his last two plays (the other being The Importance of Being Ernest). All three were published by Leonard Smithers, one of very few remaining publishers prepared to handle Wilde's work" (Sotheby's). Mason 385. "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance

1961. Toronto: Hawkshead Press, 1961. Small thin 4to, [16pp.], loosely inserted (once glued) into stiff white card wrappers with a black and white design on the upper cover repeated in reverse on the lower cover. Staining where the glue bled through the cover, otherwise in very good condition as issued. § Rare first state of Margaret Atwood's first book, a collection of poetry published letterpress in the Market Book Series as Book One of the series. This copy is one of the first state where the glue attaching the booklet to its cover dried up and the booklet is loose in the covers. It is estimated there were 80 or 90 of these. Atwood then decided to staple the remainder to the cover, for a possible total of 200 to 220 copies in all. Today they are all but unfindable in acceptable condition. Margaret Atwood is probably best known for her speculative fiction such as The Handmaid's Tale, though her published works range so widely as to defy description.

1878. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1878. Folio. Full page plates with tissue guards, plus title vignette and other decorations. Original burgundy cloth, stamped in gilt and blind, green coated endpapers, all edges gilt. Scattered foxing, backstrip faded. Ex-library copy with shelf mark in white pen on backstrip, bookplate on front pastedown, blind-stamp on title, and library pocket on rear pastedown. Letter presenting the book to the library tipped to front free endpaper. § First American edition. (First London edition was 1875.) A respectable ex-library copy (properly released) of an uncommon book very hard to find in good condition.

1951. London: Trianon Press, [1951]. 4to, (6), ix text, and 100 color plates. Original blue cloth, folding box repaired, very good. § Limited to 516 copies, this is #351. The first of the magnificent series of facsimiles by the Trianon Press of Blake's illuminated books, edited by Geoffrey Keynes. Bentley, Blake Books, 78. Butlin noted in the Blake Quarterly: "The long list of color facsimiles produced by the Trianon Press under Arnold Fawcus for the William Blake Trust were above all objects of beauty, recreating as near to perfection as possible Blake's original achievements.".

1885. Edmonton: William Muir, 1885. 4to, 1p.preface by Muir, 27 leaves hand-colored, 1p.appendix, 2 leaves at the end in facsimile of Blake's manuscript arrangement of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and the separate uncolored plate 'A Divine Image'. Original printed wrappers, backstrip and edges strengthened with brown paper, covers soiled. Internally very good as issued. § The superb Muir facsimile, limited to 50 copies, this copy signed and numbered 47 by Muir . Reproduces copy A - the Beckford-Harvard copy. See Bentley, BB, #249e. "This book is Blake's Principia, in which he announced a new concept of the universe." (Damon, Blake Dictionary). "Through the voice of the "Devil," Blake parodies and attacks the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, the cosmology and ethics of Milton's Paradise Lost, and biblical history and morality as constructed by the "Angels" of the established church and state. Energy and passion are positively valorized; reason and temperance are characterized as… Read More

1883. [England]: William Simpson, 1883. 8vo, 49 pp. containing pasted and tipped in manuscript and printed sheets including 10 pp. autograph MS signed by Simpson; 2 pp. ALS from George Grove to Simpson; 2 pp. ALS from Alfred "Hajj" Browne to Simpson; 2 pp. ALS from Father A. Richardson to Simpson; various manuscript transcriptions by Simpson of others' work; and extracts from printed books and periodicals. Original red buckram, Simpson's Tibetan device in gilt on upper cover, title "Kissing" in gilt on backstrip. Simpson's bookplate on front pastedown. Cloth lightly sunned and slightly bubbled, contents with scattered foxing and offsetting unsurprising for the number and variety of unconventional papers bound. Very good overall. § A fascinating compilation of manuscript and printed texts on the symbolic and mystical significance of kissing, assembled by the Victorian war artist William Simpson with contributions from several learned friends. Simpson appears to have been considering publishing a… Read More