You searched for:
Vermilion Sands -
J. G. Ballard
1973 - Jonathan Cape, London - First Edition
First edition of this short story collection, all set in Vermilion Sands, 'a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishing in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions – a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners' neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.'
'No one ever comes to Vermilion Sands now, and I suppose there are few people who have ever heard of it. But ten years ago, when Fay and I first went to live at 99 Stellavista, just before our marriage broke up, the colony was still remembered as the one-time playground of movie stars, delinquent heiresses and eccentric cosmopolites in those fabulous years before the Recess. Admittedly most of the abstract villas and fake palazzos were empty, their huge gardens overgrown, two-level swimming pools long drained, and the whole place was degenerating like an abandoned amusement park, but there was enough bizarre extravagance in the air to make one realize that the giants had only just departed’
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
1973 - Jonathan Cape, London - First Edition
First edition of this short story collection, all set in Vermilion Sands, 'a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishing in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions – a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners' neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.''No one ever comes to Vermilion Sands now, and I suppose there are few people who have ever heard of it. But ten years ago, when Fay and I first went to live at 99 Stellavista, just before our marriage broke up, the colony was still remembered as the one-time playground of movie stars, delinquent heiresses and eccentric cosmopolites in those fabulous years before the Recess. Admittedly most of the abstract villas and fake palazzos were empty, their huge gardens overgrown, two-level swimming pools long drained, and the whole place was degenerating like an abandoned amusement park, but there was enough bizarre extravagance in the air to make one realize that the giants had only just departed’
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
Myths of the Near Future -
J. G. Ballard
1982 - Jonathan Cape, London - First Edition
First edition of this collection of ten short stories, including the brilliant and titular ‘Myths of the Near Future’, as well as ‘The Dead Time’ set in a civilian internment camp run by the Japanese just outside Shanghai, later to become Ballard’s autobiographical ‘Empire of the Sun’.
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
1982 - Jonathan Cape, London - First Edition
First edition of this collection of ten short stories, including the brilliant and titular ‘Myths of the Near Future’, as well as ‘The Dead Time’ set in a civilian internment camp run by the Japanese just outside Shanghai, later to become Ballard’s autobiographical ‘Empire of the Sun’.
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
The Player of Games -
Iain M. Banks
1988 - St. Martin's Press, New York - First American Edition
A fine first American edition of the second volume in Banks’ acclaimed ‘Culture Series’.
The story of Gurgeh, one of the Culture’s greatest game masters who, bored with success, travels to the cruel and wealthy Empire of Azad, where he becomes entangled in the most dangerous and complex game he has ever played.
More details
Price HK$ 2,400
1988 - St. Martin's Press, New York - First American Edition
A fine first American edition of the second volume in Banks’ acclaimed ‘Culture Series’.The story of Gurgeh, one of the Culture’s greatest game masters who, bored with success, travels to the cruel and wealthy Empire of Azad, where he becomes entangled in the most dangerous and complex game he has ever played.
More details
Price HK$ 2,400
The Deadly Percheron -
John Franklin Bardin
1947 - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London - First English Edition
A clean sharp copy in a fine and thus rare example of the delicate Gollancz dust jacket.
The first of Bardin’s acclaimed trilogy, which was followed by ‘The Last of Philip Banter’ and ‘Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly’.
More details
Price HK$ 2,500
1947 - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London - First English Edition
A clean sharp copy in a fine and thus rare example of the delicate Gollancz dust jacket.The first of Bardin’s acclaimed trilogy, which was followed by ‘The Last of Philip Banter’ and ‘Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly’.
More details
Price HK$ 2,500
The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland in Three Vols. -
Alfred Barnard
1889 - Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, London - First Editions
The first three volumes of this landmark work on British and Irish brewers, over 1,500 pages illustrated throughout, covering the history and production of all 68 major ‘noted’ brewing establishments together with the great maltings of Meakin Bros. in Burton-on-Trent and H. Baird in Glasgow.
With numerous illustrated beer and whisky related advertisements to the rear of each volume.
‘In 1889 Alfred Barnard published the first volume of a remarkable work, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland. It took the form of a series of reports on visits to breweries. Barnard's primary focus was on the brewery as a production unit rather than as the vertically integrated retailers into which brewing companies were slowly evolve... he gives detailed accounts of the premises, plant and product range of a wide range of breweries close to the height of the late Victorian brewery boom. Noted Breweries is unique as a historical source for these aspects of the brewing industry.’
‘Overall he provides a unique insight into a wide cross section of the plant and the personalities behind one of the major industries of the Victorian world.’ - Paul Bayley, Brewery History Society.
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
1889 - Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, London - First Editions
The first three volumes of this landmark work on British and Irish brewers, over 1,500 pages illustrated throughout, covering the history and production of all 68 major ‘noted’ brewing establishments together with the great maltings of Meakin Bros. in Burton-on-Trent and H. Baird in Glasgow.With numerous illustrated beer and whisky related advertisements to the rear of each volume.
‘In 1889 Alfred Barnard published the first volume of a remarkable work, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland. It took the form of a series of reports on visits to breweries. Barnard's primary focus was on the brewery as a production unit rather than as the vertically integrated retailers into which brewing companies were slowly evolve... he gives detailed accounts of the premises, plant and product range of a wide range of breweries close to the height of the late Victorian brewery boom. Noted Breweries is unique as a historical source for these aspects of the brewing industry.’
‘Overall he provides a unique insight into a wide cross section of the plant and the personalities behind one of the major industries of the Victorian world.’ - Paul Bayley, Brewery History Society.
More details
Price HK$ 15,000
Observations Historical, Critical, and Medical, on the Wines of the Ancients. And the Analogy between them and Modern Wines. With General Observations on the Principles and Qualities of Water, and in particular those of Bath. -
Sir Edward Barry
1775 - T. Cadell, London - First Edition
‘The earliest work of any importance written in English about wines.’ - Andre Simon.
A fine and finely bound first edition of this classic text on the history of wine-making from the ancient times to the late 18th century. The appendix provides a survey of the principal wine-making regions of Europe. This is also the first book in English to discuss ‘modern wines’ [Gabler]. Illustrated with the wonderful engraved frontispiece and two engraved vignettes on title-page.
More details
Price HK$ 40,000
1775 - T. Cadell, London - First Edition
‘The earliest work of any importance written in English about wines.’ - Andre Simon.A fine and finely bound first edition of this classic text on the history of wine-making from the ancient times to the late 18th century. The appendix provides a survey of the principal wine-making regions of Europe. This is also the first book in English to discuss ‘modern wines’ [Gabler]. Illustrated with the wonderful engraved frontispiece and two engraved vignettes on title-page.
More details
Price HK$ 40,000
The Sot-Weed Factor -
John Barth
1960 - Doubleday, Garden City - First Edition
First edition of John Barth's satirical epic set in the 1680s–90s in London and colonial Maryland, cementing his reputation as one of the leading experimental writers of his generation. Accompanied by two examples of the scarce and delicate dust jacket, suitably designed by Edward Gorey.
The main character - Ebenezer Cooke - was considered by Time to be ‘one of the most diverting... to roam the world since Candide’.
The Sot-Weed Factor ‘recounts the widely chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father’s tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates and Indians; the loss of his father’s estate to roguish impostors; love for a former prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities. “ [Atlantic]
More details
Price HK$ 6,000
1960 - Doubleday, Garden City - First Edition
First edition of John Barth's satirical epic set in the 1680s–90s in London and colonial Maryland, cementing his reputation as one of the leading experimental writers of his generation. Accompanied by two examples of the scarce and delicate dust jacket, suitably designed by Edward Gorey.The main character - Ebenezer Cooke - was considered by Time to be ‘one of the most diverting... to roam the world since Candide’.
The Sot-Weed Factor ‘recounts the widely chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father’s tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates and Indians; the loss of his father’s estate to roguish impostors; love for a former prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities. “ [Atlantic]
More details
Price HK$ 6,000
Aquatic Notes -
John Fitzherbert Bateman, Robert Coombes
1852 - J. Deighton, Cambridge - First and Sole Edition
A fine and thus extremely scarce first edition of this work, written by J. F. Bateman, founder and first president of the Lady Margaret Boat Club (L.M.B.C.) and inscribed by Batemen to Edward Woodley Bowling of the L.M.B.C. and author of many a Cambridge rowing poem including ‘The Lady Margaret 5th Boat’ and ‘The Great Boat Race’.
Chapter headings include Foundation of the Principal Clubs, A Day at Henley, and Hints on Rowing and Training by Robert Coombes, who was a notably distinguished Thames waterman, oarsman and sculler.
Coombes’s first public race took place in 1838. He pioneered the successful use of skill, technique and training, thereby beating men of superior size and strength, and was Champion of the Thames from 1846-1852. His knowledge was exploited successively by the Oxford (1840) and Cambridge (1846, 1849 both races) Boat Race crews. Cambridge asked him to coach again in 1852, but a dispute broke out about the use of professional trainers, with the result that for many years both sides avoided professionals and men of working class origins. Sadly, Coombes descended into poverty in later life, and died in the Kent Asylum in 1860. A fine monument to him was raised at Brompton Cemetery by public subscription in 1866.
More details
Price HK$ 7,000
1852 - J. Deighton, Cambridge - First and Sole Edition
A fine and thus extremely scarce first edition of this work, written by J. F. Bateman, founder and first president of the Lady Margaret Boat Club (L.M.B.C.) and inscribed by Batemen to Edward Woodley Bowling of the L.M.B.C. and author of many a Cambridge rowing poem including ‘The Lady Margaret 5th Boat’ and ‘The Great Boat Race’. Chapter headings include Foundation of the Principal Clubs, A Day at Henley, and Hints on Rowing and Training by Robert Coombes, who was a notably distinguished Thames waterman, oarsman and sculler.
Coombes’s first public race took place in 1838. He pioneered the successful use of skill, technique and training, thereby beating men of superior size and strength, and was Champion of the Thames from 1846-1852. His knowledge was exploited successively by the Oxford (1840) and Cambridge (1846, 1849 both races) Boat Race crews. Cambridge asked him to coach again in 1852, but a dispute broke out about the use of professional trainers, with the result that for many years both sides avoided professionals and men of working class origins. Sadly, Coombes descended into poverty in later life, and died in the Kent Asylum in 1860. A fine monument to him was raised at Brompton Cemetery by public subscription in 1866.
More details
Price HK$ 7,000