The Karla Trilogy – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; Smiley’s People - Signed -
John le Carré
1974 - Hodder and Stoughton, London - First Editions
A first edition set of John le Carré’s acclaimed espionage trilogy – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People – featuring legendary master spy George Smiley pitted against his elusive Cold War rival, Karla.
Smiley’s People signed by Le Carré.
First edition, first issue of The Honourable Schoolboy with maps of Hong Kong for endpapers, these were not included in the second issue.
As a secret service agent, Le Carré moved from MI5 to MI6, and was in Berlin when the wall was erected. His experiences inspired him to write a novel which became 'Call For The Dead'; 'When I first began writing, Ian Fleming was riding high and the picture of the spy was that of a character who could have affairs with women, drive a fast car, who used gadgetry and gimmickry to escape.' Le Carré’s aim was to portray the intelligence world from a new view and he has earned a reputation for gritty, realistic, suspenseful spy novels based on a wide knowledge of international espionage or simply human behaviour. His famous recurring character, George Smiley, is an ageing, diffident, shadow-like member of the British foreign service, and the antithesis of James Bond; this trilogy of Smiley books is the author's masterwork, a thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain. 'Tinker Tailor...' was the basis for the Oscar-nominated 2011 film starring Gary Oldman.
‘Simply the world’s greatest fictional spymaster’ – Newsweek.
More details
Price HK$ 14,000
1974 - Hodder and Stoughton, London - First Editions
A first edition set of John le Carré’s acclaimed espionage trilogy – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People – featuring legendary master spy George Smiley pitted against his elusive Cold War rival, Karla.Smiley’s People signed by Le Carré.
First edition, first issue of The Honourable Schoolboy with maps of Hong Kong for endpapers, these were not included in the second issue.
As a secret service agent, Le Carré moved from MI5 to MI6, and was in Berlin when the wall was erected. His experiences inspired him to write a novel which became 'Call For The Dead'; 'When I first began writing, Ian Fleming was riding high and the picture of the spy was that of a character who could have affairs with women, drive a fast car, who used gadgetry and gimmickry to escape.' Le Carré’s aim was to portray the intelligence world from a new view and he has earned a reputation for gritty, realistic, suspenseful spy novels based on a wide knowledge of international espionage or simply human behaviour. His famous recurring character, George Smiley, is an ageing, diffident, shadow-like member of the British foreign service, and the antithesis of James Bond; this trilogy of Smiley books is the author's masterwork, a thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain. 'Tinker Tailor...' was the basis for the Oscar-nominated 2011 film starring Gary Oldman.
‘Simply the world’s greatest fictional spymaster’ – Newsweek.
More details
Price HK$ 14,000
The Karla Trilogy – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; Smiley’s People -
John le Carré
1974 - Hodder and Stoughton, London - First Editions
A finely bound first edition set of John le Carre’s acclaimed espionage trilogy – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People – featuring legendary master spy George Smiley pitted against his elusive Cold War rival, Karla.
As a secret service agent, Le Carre moved from MI5 to MI6, and was in Berlin when the wall was erected. His experiences inspired him to write a novel which became 'Call For The Dead'; 'When I first began writing, Ian Fleming was riding high and the picture of the spy was that of a character who could have affairs with women, drive a fast car, who used gadgetry and gimmickry to escape.' Le Carre's aim was to portray the intelligence world from a new view and he has earned a reputation for gritty, realistic, suspenseful spy novels based on a wide knowledge of international espionage or simply human behaviour. His famous recurring character, George Smiley, is an ageing, diffident, shadow-like member of the British foreign service, and the antithesis of James Bond; this trilogy of Smiley books is the author's masterwork, a thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain. 'Tinker Tailor...' was the basis for the Oscar-nominated 2011 film starring Gary Oldman.
More details
Price HK$ 22,000
1974 - Hodder and Stoughton, London - First Editions
A finely bound first edition set of John le Carre’s acclaimed espionage trilogy – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People – featuring legendary master spy George Smiley pitted against his elusive Cold War rival, Karla.As a secret service agent, Le Carre moved from MI5 to MI6, and was in Berlin when the wall was erected. His experiences inspired him to write a novel which became 'Call For The Dead'; 'When I first began writing, Ian Fleming was riding high and the picture of the spy was that of a character who could have affairs with women, drive a fast car, who used gadgetry and gimmickry to escape.' Le Carre's aim was to portray the intelligence world from a new view and he has earned a reputation for gritty, realistic, suspenseful spy novels based on a wide knowledge of international espionage or simply human behaviour. His famous recurring character, George Smiley, is an ageing, diffident, shadow-like member of the British foreign service, and the antithesis of James Bond; this trilogy of Smiley books is the author's masterwork, a thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain. 'Tinker Tailor...' was the basis for the Oscar-nominated 2011 film starring Gary Oldman.
More details
Price HK$ 22,000
Cider with Rosie -
Laurie Lee, John Ward (illustrator)
1959 - The Hogarth Press, London - First Edition. First issue with the mention of the piano works fire.
A fine first edition of this wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past. With the dust jacket and illustrations throughout by John Ward.
‘Remains as fresh and full of joy and gratitude for youth and its sensations as when it first appeared. It sings in the memory’ - Sunday Times.
‘An enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood, and boyhood, but also to an England that has vanished’ - J. B. Priestly.
More details
Price HK$ 4,000
1959 - The Hogarth Press, London - First Edition. First issue with the mention of the piano works fire.
A fine first edition of this wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past. With the dust jacket and illustrations throughout by John Ward.‘Remains as fresh and full of joy and gratitude for youth and its sensations as when it first appeared. It sings in the memory’ - Sunday Times.
‘An enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood, and boyhood, but also to an England that has vanished’ - J. B. Priestly.
More details
Price HK$ 4,000
A Way of Seeing. Photographs of New York -
Helen Levitt, James Agee
1965 - The Viking Press, New York - First Edition
A fine first edition, of this important photographic work.
In 1945 Photographer Levitt and Pulitzer Prize winning author James Agee worked together in 1945 on a documentary film shot in Harlem, these photographs were taken on the streets of Harlem and the Lower East Side in the late 1930’s and 1940s, but the project remained unpublished until ‘A Way of Seeing’ in 1965.
In James Agee's words, ‘‘Levitt’s photographs seem to me as beautiful, perceptive, satisfying, and enduring as any lyrical work that I know… an uninsistent but irrefutable manifesto of a way of seeing, and, in a gentle and wholly unpretentious way, a major poetic work’.
‘Since its first publication in 1965, Helen Levitt’s collection of photographs taken on the streets of New York in the 1940s has been a classic of its kind. Produced in collaboration with writer James Agee, who provided the book’s introduction. Levitt’s focus on marginalized children and communities offers a compassionate perspective. His work also set a new standard for authenticity and poetic storytelling in street photography. A Way of Seeing remains a benchmark for those seeking humanity in their images.’ – The 50 Most Influential Photobooks of All Time – Blind Magazine, January 2025.
'Levitt’s photorgaphs are beautiful – major, underrated works of dazzling poetry; 'like Henri-Cartier Bresson, she achieves a rare balancing act: her pictures have sentiment without being sentimental... her sympathy is tempered by an underlying clear-sightedness' [Roth].
More details
Price HK$ 10,000
1965 - The Viking Press, New York - First Edition
A fine first edition, of this important photographic work.In 1945 Photographer Levitt and Pulitzer Prize winning author James Agee worked together in 1945 on a documentary film shot in Harlem, these photographs were taken on the streets of Harlem and the Lower East Side in the late 1930’s and 1940s, but the project remained unpublished until ‘A Way of Seeing’ in 1965.
In James Agee's words, ‘‘Levitt’s photographs seem to me as beautiful, perceptive, satisfying, and enduring as any lyrical work that I know… an uninsistent but irrefutable manifesto of a way of seeing, and, in a gentle and wholly unpretentious way, a major poetic work’.
‘Since its first publication in 1965, Helen Levitt’s collection of photographs taken on the streets of New York in the 1940s has been a classic of its kind. Produced in collaboration with writer James Agee, who provided the book’s introduction. Levitt’s focus on marginalized children and communities offers a compassionate perspective. His work also set a new standard for authenticity and poetic storytelling in street photography. A Way of Seeing remains a benchmark for those seeking humanity in their images.’ – The 50 Most Influential Photobooks of All Time – Blind Magazine, January 2025.
'Levitt’s photorgaphs are beautiful – major, underrated works of dazzling poetry; 'like Henri-Cartier Bresson, she achieves a rare balancing act: her pictures have sentiment without being sentimental... her sympathy is tempered by an underlying clear-sightedness' [Roth].
More details
Price HK$ 10,000
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe -
C. S. Lewis, Pauline Baynes (illustrator)
1950 - Geoffrey Bles, London - First Edition
‘Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.’
A finely bound first edition, of the first novel in the Chronicles of Narnia, which C.S. Lewis had beautifully dedicated to his goddaughter Lucy, ‘I wrote this story for you, but when I began I had not realised that girls grow quicker than books... but some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again...’
Magically illustrated throughout by Pauline Baynes, a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, after Lewis had admired Baynes's illustrations for Tolkien's ‘Farmer Giles of Ham’.
More details
Price HK$ 40,000
1950 - Geoffrey Bles, London - First Edition
‘Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.’A finely bound first edition, of the first novel in the Chronicles of Narnia, which C.S. Lewis had beautifully dedicated to his goddaughter Lucy, ‘I wrote this story for you, but when I began I had not realised that girls grow quicker than books... but some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again...’
Magically illustrated throughout by Pauline Baynes, a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, after Lewis had admired Baynes's illustrations for Tolkien's ‘Farmer Giles of Ham’.
More details
Price HK$ 40,000
The Call of the Wild -
Jack London
1903 - The Macmillan Company, New York - First Edition, First Issue
‘Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and . . . he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire, and to plunge into the forest’
A fresh first edition of Jack London's best and most enduring work, with covers showing bright gilt, and little of the usual rubbing to the white.
Illustrated with eleven full page colour plates, including frontispiece with tissue-guard, five in-text colour illustrations, and numerous full page and in-text single tint decorations and illustrations, by Philip R. Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull, decorations by Charles E. Hooper.
‘What projects The Call of the Wild towards immortality is London's urgent and vivid style, and his astonishing identification with the world he's describing’ - The Guardian Newspaper (2014), 100 best novels.
More details
Price HK$ 30,000
1903 - The Macmillan Company, New York - First Edition, First Issue
‘Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and . . . he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire, and to plunge into the forest’A fresh first edition of Jack London's best and most enduring work, with covers showing bright gilt, and little of the usual rubbing to the white.
Illustrated with eleven full page colour plates, including frontispiece with tissue-guard, five in-text colour illustrations, and numerous full page and in-text single tint decorations and illustrations, by Philip R. Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull, decorations by Charles E. Hooper.
‘What projects The Call of the Wild towards immortality is London's urgent and vivid style, and his astonishing identification with the world he's describing’ - The Guardian Newspaper (2014), 100 best novels.
More details
Price HK$ 30,000
Whisky Galore -
Compton MacKenzie
1947 - Chatto and Windus, London - First Edition
A finely bound first edition of this whisky highlight.
‘Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whisky makes it go round twice as fast’
It's 1943, and the war has brought rationing to the Hebridean Islands of Great and Little Todday. When food is in short supply, it is bad enough, but when the whisky runs out, it looks like the end of the world. Morale is at rock bottom. George Campbell needs a wee dram to give him the courage to stand up to his mother and marry Catriona. The priest, the doctor, and, of course, the landlord at the inn are all having a very thin time of it. There's no conversation, no jollity, no fun, until a ship-wreck off the coast brings a piece of extraordinary good fortune.
‘The genre of Scotch whisky fiction is not an expansive one, and would barely make a credible Mastermind specialist subject, but one title stands out above all others in terms of its profile with both aficionados and the general public. That title is Whisky Galore’ – Gavin D. Smith, Famous Whisky Drinkers, (ScotchWhisky.com).
‘Compton Mackenzie's timeless text is a triumph. Inspired by the real events of 1941, when a cargo ship ran aground in the channel between Eriskay and South Uist, Whisky Galore is the gentle, comical story of how the booty on board became appropriated by a group of Scottish islanders. ‘ - 100 Best Scottish Books of All Time, The List.
More details
Price HK$ 4,500
1947 - Chatto and Windus, London - First Edition
A finely bound first edition of this whisky highlight. ‘Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whisky makes it go round twice as fast’
It's 1943, and the war has brought rationing to the Hebridean Islands of Great and Little Todday. When food is in short supply, it is bad enough, but when the whisky runs out, it looks like the end of the world. Morale is at rock bottom. George Campbell needs a wee dram to give him the courage to stand up to his mother and marry Catriona. The priest, the doctor, and, of course, the landlord at the inn are all having a very thin time of it. There's no conversation, no jollity, no fun, until a ship-wreck off the coast brings a piece of extraordinary good fortune.
‘The genre of Scotch whisky fiction is not an expansive one, and would barely make a credible Mastermind specialist subject, but one title stands out above all others in terms of its profile with both aficionados and the general public. That title is Whisky Galore’ – Gavin D. Smith, Famous Whisky Drinkers, (ScotchWhisky.com).
‘Compton Mackenzie's timeless text is a triumph. Inspired by the real events of 1941, when a cargo ship ran aground in the channel between Eriskay and South Uist, Whisky Galore is the gentle, comical story of how the booty on board became appropriated by a group of Scottish islanders. ‘ - 100 Best Scottish Books of All Time, The List.
More details
Price HK$ 4,500
An Essay on the Principle of Population -
Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus
1826 - John Murray, London - Sixth Edition
A finely bound early edition of this classic text proposing a limit to global human population, an important and influential work on economics. ‘There can be no doubt that [Keynes’] importance for economists today rests mainly on Principles of Political Economy. It was because of the latter work that J. M. Keynes reinstated Malthus as a major figure in modern economic thought’ - (New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics).
In his Theory of Economic Analysis, Schumpeter, reviewing ‘Principles of Political Economy’, and Malthus’ presentation of the theory of demand and supply, comes to the conclusion that Malthus should ‘stand in the history of analysis not only as the author of a valid alternative to Ricardo's theory but as the sponsor (or rather as one of the sponsors) of the victorious one.’
‘If only Malthus, instead of Ricardo, had been the parent stem from which nineteenth-century economics proceeded, what a much wiser and richer place the world would be today’ - J. M. Keynes.
More details
Price HK$ 8,000
1826 - John Murray, London - Sixth Edition
A finely bound early edition of this classic text proposing a limit to global human population, an important and influential work on economics. ‘There can be no doubt that [Keynes’] importance for economists today rests mainly on Principles of Political Economy. It was because of the latter work that J. M. Keynes reinstated Malthus as a major figure in modern economic thought’ - (New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics). In his Theory of Economic Analysis, Schumpeter, reviewing ‘Principles of Political Economy’, and Malthus’ presentation of the theory of demand and supply, comes to the conclusion that Malthus should ‘stand in the history of analysis not only as the author of a valid alternative to Ricardo's theory but as the sponsor (or rather as one of the sponsors) of the victorious one.’
‘If only Malthus, instead of Ricardo, had been the parent stem from which nineteenth-century economics proceeded, what a much wiser and richer place the world would be today’ - J. M. Keynes.
More details
Price HK$ 8,000