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Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness - Edward Abbey, Peter Parnall (illustrator)

1968 - McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York - First Edition
A bright first edition of Abbey’s powerful work of nature writing and environmental concern, based on the inner and outer observations Abbey made during three summers at Arches National Park, Utah. His first book of non-fiction and most famous and defining work. Only 5000 copies of the first edition were printed, it has since sold more than 2,000,000 copies.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.’

With drawings throughout by Peter Parnell.

The desert is... atonal, cruel, clear, neither romantic nor classical, motionless and emotionless at one and the same time... Like death? Perhaps. And perhaps that is why life nowhere appears so brave, so bright, so full of oracle and miracle as in the desert.’ 
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Price HK$ 7,000



The Yellow Book - Aubrey Beardsley

April 1894-April 1897 - Elkin Mathews &, London
A complete, clean and better than normally encountered thirteen volume set of this groundbreaking art nouveau publication, in the publisher’s bright yellow illustrated covers with designs by Aubrey Beardsley. Together with ‘A Selection’ published in 1950 and bound in yellow cloth to match the earlier set. Fourteen volumes in total.

From its initial visually arresting issue, for which Aubrey Beardsley was art editor and for which Max Beerbohm wrote an essay, ‘
A Defence of Cosmetics’, ‘The Yellow Book’ attained immediate notoriety.

Published by John Lane and edited by Henry Harland, ‘
The Yellow Book’ attracted many outstanding writers and artists of the era, such as Arnold Bennett, Charlotte Mew, Henry James, Edmund Gosse, Richard Le Gallienne, and Walter Sickert.

Although dominated by the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley, and his decadent fin de siècle aura, many other distinguished artists contributed to the quarterly, notably Frederic Leighton, Will Rothenstein, Walter Sickert and Philip Wilson Steer; contributors to the text included Max Beerbohm, John Buchan, Baron Corvo, Edmund Gosse, Kenneth Grahame, Henry James, E. Nesbit and W. B. Yeats.
 
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Price HK$ 10,000



Advice from a Lady of Quality to her Children - Louis-Antoine Caraccioli, Samuel Glasse (translator)

1778 - Printed by R. Raikes and Sold by J. F. and C. Rivington, Glocester - First Edition in English
An extremely rare first edition of this 18th century ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’, first published in 1769 as ’Les adieux de la Maréchale de *** à ses enfants’. Two pretty little volumes In 18th century full calf bindings.

A popular courtesy book written in a series of twenty one ‘conferences’ held between mother, her daughter and sons. Topics covered during these conferences include Virtue, Pride, Generosity, Female Conduct, Friendship, Love of Truth, Brotherly Love, Study, Pleasure, Ambition, Vanity, Relative Duty, Patriotism, Social Duties.

Unlike most courtesy books, Caraccioli's has the semblance of a plot and reads somewhat like a novel, which ends with the death of the main character.
Advice from a Lady went through numerous later editions in England and America.

The Translator, Samuel Glasse, dedicates this work to Queen Charlotte (1744-1818), consort of King George III of Great Britain.
 
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Price HK$ 11,000



1939 - The Nonesuch Press, London - First Nonesuch Edition
A finely bound volume of Lewis Carroll’s works.

Includes: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass; Sylvie and Bruno; Sylvie and Bruno Concluded; The Hunting of The Snark; Puzzles From Wonderland; Phantasmagoria; Acrostics, Verse, Stories and A Miscellany.

The two Alice titles are illustrated with John Tenniel’s original drawings, and the book begins with an introduction by Alexander Woollcott.
 
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Price HK$ 6,000



Alice's Adventures in Wonderland... with a Poem by Austin Dobson - Lewis Carroll, [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], Austin Dobson, Arthur Rackham (illustrator)

1907 - William Heinemann, London - First Rackham Illustrated Edition
A lovely example of the first edition of Alice to be magically illustrated by Arthur Rackham, with thirteen tipped-on coloured plates as well as black and white drawings throughout. 
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Price HK$ 8,000



Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy s Progress - Charles Dickens ( Boz )

1838 - Richard Bentley, London - First Edition, First Issue
Please, Sir, I want some more.’

First edition in fine contemporary bindings, first issue with the 'fireside' plate’ (i.e. Rose, Maylie and Oliver) between pages 312-13 (Vol.III), which was suppressed in the second issue. Illustrated throughout with frontispieces and twenty-one plates etched by George Cruikshank.

Dickens was severely criticised for introducing criminals and prostitutes in Oliver Twist to which he responded - ‘
I saw no reason, when I wrote this book, why the very dregs of life, so long as their speech did not offend the ear, should not serve the purpose of a moral, at least as well as its froth and cream’. 
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Price HK$ 32,000



1949-1951 - William Heinemann, London
A finely bound twelve volume set of Dostoevsky’s novels and short story collections, first translated by Constance Garnett between 1912 and 1920, and now difficult to assemble in this format. 
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Price HK$ 32,000



The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1892 - George Newnes Ltd., London - First Edition
A smart bright and thus scarce first edition, first issue of Doyle’s first and classic short story collection, twelve in total including A Scandal in Bohemia, introducing Irene Adler and The Speckled Band. These legendary Sherlock Holmes stories all initially appeared in The Strand Magazine, the year before.

Magnificently illustrated throughout from wood engravings by Sidney Paget.

When the publisher Newnes accepted a Doyle piece for the very first issue in 1891, he did so with the hope that it would provide him access, through Doyle's agent, to another writer in the agent's stable - Rudyard Kipling - but then beginning in the very first year, "Sherlock Holmes" took off and
The Strand  was a phenomenal success. 
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Price HK$ 45,000



 
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