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Three albums filled with English and German manuscript memoranda, newspaper cuttings and mimeographed reports, relating to the Great War and 1898-1909 periods, assembled by an Anglo-German stockbroker in the City of London.

Author: 
[an Anglo-German stockbroker in the City of London during the Great War and 1898-1909 periods]
Publication details: 
Manuscript album, in German, 1898 to 1909, with label of a Hamburg stationer. Two other albums from 1917, with labels of London stationers.
£800.00

The three items come from the papers of an Anglo-German City of London stockbroker, with Item One, below, indicating that he was based in Germany between 1898 and 1909, and that he had moved to England by 1917. A major point of interest is the fact that the material has been assembled by an educated, intelligent and well-informed individual with good knowledge of both German and English economic realities, at a time of high conflict between the two nations. ONE: 94pp., folio. In black cloth quarter-binding with brown marbled boards, and label of W. Harneit, Hamburg. Consisting of 88pp.

[Booklet; Ist World War] Triolets from the Trenches

Author: 
Lt. C.G.L. du Cann
Publication details: 
London: Erskine Macdonald Limited, MCMXVII [1917]
£120.00

[40]pp., 16mo [c.12cm], paper boards, good+ condition, bookplate of Thomas Hutchinson of Morpeth inside front cover. Scarce. {Du Cann later wrote "The Loves of George Bernard Shaw" and other works.]

[Book; Ist World War Poetry] Cot 5

Author: 
[Edward Knoblock; Knoblauch]
Publication details: 
Methuen, London, 1917
£220.00

[viii].35 pp., 12mo, 17cm, decorated paper wraps, hinge strain, edges sl. worn, topt and bottom of spine damaged, ow good. Inscribed "From Tim | to | Tilda with love. | January 1918". COPAC and WorldCat only record the second edition ("Cot 5 and Rose Vacquette of La Boisselle", but Harvard have a copy of this first edition, naming Knoblock as the author. [Harvard have the Knoblock archive.]

Signatures on fragment of a document "Nugent / J Grenville / North".

Author: 
Lord North
Publication details: 
21 March 1760.
£60.00

Fragment of document, c.1.5" x 4", irregular shape, also containing words ". . . thereof 15 Jany / 21 March 1760 and, on the reverse "Witnes[seth]". North at this time a Treasury official, was to become the Prime Minister whose policies led to the American Revolution.

The Immanent Goddess

Author: 
George Sims, bookseller and author (poetry and detective stories).
Publication details: 
The Fortune Press, [1947]
£120.00

First edition. 8vo, 32pp., original mottled blue cloth, gilt titling to spine, bumped, dustwrapper, browned at edges. Small bump to front board, good copy in good dustwrapper. Enclosed more by accident than design: George Sims' Compliments slip, 11.5 x 7.5, light blue, edges browned, featuring a design by Eric Gill (whose archive Sims rescued) of an athleticllly poised swordsman. Sims has typed on the verso, "for the Rota Foundation - this good piece of printing - these [the Gill engraving presumably] passed through my hands 25 years ago!".

[Book; Inscribed by Author, Edith Sitwell, and by bookseller, Bertram Rota] In Spring

Author: 
Edith Sitwell
Publication details: 
'Privately Printed in London Anno Domini MCMXXXI'
£120.00

Wood Engravings by Edward Carrick.8vo, [11]pp., printed privately for Terence Fytton Armstrong [John Gawsworth, ]Number 7 of 290 (305) copies printed on Charles I hand-made paper, engraved title-page and two other decorations, mottled pale green paper-covered boards, sl. speckled, with original glassine-type thin paper wraps, sl. chipped and speckled, yellow printed label with an additional engraving on the front, endpapers sl. browned, a little faded, generally good to very good.

[Manuscript] Diary of Sergeant Browne, principal flautist in the Royal Artillery band, Woolwich

Author: 
[The International Exhibition 1862 and other events in 1862 ] Sergeant Brown, flautist
Publication details: 
1862
£1,250.00

1862 Diary of Sergeant Browne, principal flautist in the Royal Artillery band, Woolwich, Over 425 pages. Played at the opening ceremony of the International Exhibition under Costa, having been at the rehearsal attended by Meyerbeer - good descriptions of both events - and at the Horticultural Gardens next door throughout the length of the exhibition and elsewhere (Crystal Palace, Willis's Rooms, private houses, Lord Mayor's Show "nonsensical custom").

[Agricultural Restoration of Belgium and North-Eastern France] Printed scheme (by Sir Rider Haggard?) of an appeal to British farmers and landowners for crops and breeding stock, 'to be offered and sent to French agriculturalists ravaged by invasion'

Author: 
Edward T. Brown, Secretary, Agricultural Restoration of Belgium and North-Eastern France [Sir Henry Rider Haggard; the Great War]
Publication details: 
Agricultural Restoration of Belgium and North-Eastern France, 39, Queen Anne's Chambers, Westminster, London, SW. Main document undated (late 1914 or early 1915), with appended letters dated 25 November and 1 December 1914.
£180.00

4pp., 4to. On four leaves attached at one corner by a brass stud. In very good condition, on lightly-aged paper. The proposal of the 'scheme' covers the first two pages, with the first page headed with the associations name and address, with a list of the eleven members of the 'Central Committee', headed by the Marquis of Lincolnshire, and including 'Sir RIDER HAGGARD' (who must surely have had a hand in the document's composition), and the secretary E. T. Brown.

[Duplicated First World War school magazine.] Our Own. The Magazine of Sidmouth St Boys' Demonstration School. Boys' Dept. HULL. [The first fourteen issues, including a 'Shakespere Tercentenary Number'.

Author: 
[Sidmouth Street Boys' Demonstration School, Hull, Yorkshire.] [Shakespeare Tercentenary, 1916; Sidmouth Street Football Club; Dudley Murton Freeling (b.1899), Royal Flying Corps]
Publication details: 
[Sidmouth Street Boys' Demonstration School, Hull.] Issues 1 to 14. Dating from between 1913 and April 1919.
£250.00

Totalling 280pp., 8vo (each issue 20pp), with aditional grey card printed covers to issues 13 and 14. The first twelve issues are bound up, without covers, in a black leather half-binding with black cloth boards. As the covers are lacking it is only possible to date these issues from the gilt title on the spine: 'OUR OWN | 1913-6'. Ownership inscription on front free endpaper: 'Cecil Thom | 22 Nov. 1916.' (Henry E. Thom appears to have been a music teacher at the school.) Modern bookplate of John Gadd on front pastedown. Issues 13 (March 1917) and 14 (April 1919) are loosely inserted.

[First World War postcard poem by the 'Bath Railway Poet', Henry Chappell.] The Day. ['You boasted the Day, and you toasted the Day, | And now the Day has come.']

Author: 
Henry Chappell (1874-1937), the 'Bath Railway Poet' [Daily Express, London; First World War poetry]
Publication details: 
London: "Daily Express". Undated [1914]. 'Reprinted from the London "Daily Express" (Copyright).'
£160.00

Chappell gained a degree of fame with the publication of this poem in the Daily Express of 22 August 1914. The poem is addressed to the German people, and concerns the supposed toast among German army officers in the lead-up to the First World War, 'Der Tag' (i.e. 'the day' on which the war with England would commence). The poem is printed in portrait alignment on one side of a 14 x 8.5 cm postcard, within red and blue ink borders, giving a 'red white and blue' effect. Beneath the title in square brackets is the following: 'The author of this magnificent poem is Mr.

[Inscribed printed booklet.] Christmas Roses for Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen.

Author: 
F. W. Bourdillon [Francis William Bourdillon [1852-1921)] [Arthur L. Humphreys, 187 Piccadilly; Lord Roberts]
Publication details: 
London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 187 Piccadilly, W. [1914.]
£180.00

[v] + 25pp., 12mo. In grey card wraps, with white label on front cover, carrying title in black and red. Internally good, in worn wraps with front hinge torn at head around a third of the total length. Inscribed on front free endpaper: 'with affectionate remembrance | from | F. W. Bourdillon'. The booklet contains ten poems, tastefully printed, and all relating directly or indirectly to the Great War. Titles include: 'The Coming of the Oversea Armies', 'A Lamentation over Belgium' and 'Lord Roberts'. Not common: seven copies on COPAC.

[Bert Thomas, cartoonist.] Print of Thomas's celebrated ' "Arf a mo' Kaiser!' First World War cartoon of an English Tommy lighting his pipe, on the front of a brown-paper envelope addressed by Thomas to Suffolk artist William Henry Booth.

Author: 
Bert Thomas (1883-1966), Welsh cartoonist associated with 'Punch' [William Henry Booth (1861-1928), Suffolk artist]
Publication details: 
Without place or date. [1918.] Green halfpenny George V postage stamp, with postmark of 'S.W.' beneath the two uprights of a triangle (no base).
£120.00

The envelope is 27.5 x 12.5 cm, and the cartoon is printed lengthwise (around 15cm long including caption) on the front in brown ink, with facsimile signature. In good condition, lightly-aged and worn, with the flap of the apparently-empty envelope gummed back into place. The stamp is attached in its customary place, with the address in Thomas's autograph beneath it: 'Wm. Booth Esq | The Rosery | Cambridge Rd. | Felixstowe'. Thomas's original cartoon had been drawn in ten minutes for the Weekly Dispatch 'Smokes for Tommy' campaign.

[E. Cecil Mornington Roberts.] Holograph Poem (signed 'Cecil Roberts'), a sonnet titled 'Liberty Challenged' ('Not without cause just and unshakeable').

Author: 
E. Cecil Mornington Roberts [Cecil Edric Mornington Roberts] (1892-1976), writer and editor
Publication details: 
On his 'E. CECIL MORNINGTON ROBERTS' letterhead, 'c/o Clarke & Co. | 13 & 14 Fleet St. EC.'
£100.00

1p., 4to. In fair condition, on aged, creased and worn paper. The poem features under the title 'Liberty Imperilled' in Roberts's collection 'Charing Cross and Other Poems of the Period' (1919), and the context suggests that the poem was composed at the commencement of the First World War. The sonnet begins: 'Not without cause just and unshakeable | Will we surrender up the cherished prize | Of individual liberty, so well | and nobly held'.

Unpublished Holograph First World War Poem (signed 'H W Aubrey') by English army officer Captain Henry Wentworth Windsor Aubrey [H. W. Aubrey], titled 'To our offspring - America' ('You're blood of our blood, & bone of our bone').

Author: 
Captain Henry Wentworth Windsor Aubrey [H. W. Aubrey] (c.1859-1934), M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
Publication details: 
No place. Dated 24 July 1918.
£120.00

Henry Wentworth Windsor Aubrey was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment Militia on 21 April 1875, and resigned his commission three years later. He qualified as a Doctor in 1885 and practiced in Clifton, where he was a keen cricketer and golfer. During the First World War he served in the RAMC, reaching the rank of Temporary Captain (Home) on 1 December 1917. 2pp., 8vo. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper, with a couple of minor water stains to one corner.

['Flighty', First World War magazine of the Royal Naval Air Service (Kingsnorth Airship Station).] Complete run of seventeen issues, each filled with features, cartoons, illustrations, features, gossip. bound in one volume with some covers.

Author: 
'Flighty' ('The Premier Air Service's Journal'), First World War magazine of the Royal Naval Air Service, published at the Airship Construction Station, Kingsnorth, Rochester, Kent
Publication details: 
R.N.A.S. Kingsnorth [later Kingsnorth Airship Construction Station], Rochester, Kent. From May 1917 (No. 1 Vol. 1) to Christmas 1918 (Vol. 2 No. 5).
£1,500.00

Issues of this magazine are excessively scarce, and a full run would appear to be well-nigh unique. The only other copy traced, either on COPAC or on WorldCat, is at the Imperial War Museum (whose inadequate entry implies that it only holds a single issue, stating that it 'lacks advertisement pages before page 1'). The seventeen issues present in this set (vol. 1 nos. 1-12; vol. 2 nos. 1-5) total 448pp., 4to, in a contemporary textured blue-cloth binding, with 'FLIGHTY | KINGSNORTH | AIRSHIP | STATION | 1917-18' in faded gilt on spine (binder's note in pencil on last page).

[Winston Churchill, as First World War Minister of Munitions.] Typed minute 'From. Minister of Munitions, Mr. Winston Churchill. | To. The War Cabinet.', regarding 'the Munitions Programme for 1918'.

Author: 
Winston Churchill, as Minister of Munitions during the First World War [The War Cabinet; War Office, Whitehall]
Publication details: 
[War Office, Whitehall, London.] 21 October 1917.
£450.00

19pp., foolscap 8vo. Found in a tatty file marked 'War Office' (discarded!). Not duplicated, rather a carbon copy in purple ink of a typescript, with the indentation of the type apparent on the reverse. Minor correction on p.14: 'practises' to 'practised'. In very good condition, on lightly-aged paper, with each of the nineteen leaves carrying punch-holes for a ring binder. An important document, written in characteristic style, quoted in the fourth volume of Churchill's 'World Crisis'. Divided into 31 numbered parts, beginning: '1.

[Post Office Jubilee of Uniform Penny Postage at South Kensington Museum, 2nd July, 1890.] First day cover, with envelope with printed designs containing printed card. [Addressed to himself by Andrew W. Tuer of the Leadenhall Press.]

Author: 
Post Office Jubilee of Uniform Penny Postage [Andrew White Tuer (1838-1900), Scottish publisher in London, proprietor of the Leadenhall Press]
Publication details: 
Postmarked from South Kensington [London]. 2 July 1890.
£150.00

In fair condition, on lightly-aged paper, with the envelope with one small tear in the flap. The cover of the envelope carries designs in light blue printed by Thomas De La Rue & Co, including 'The North Mail making for Highgate, 1790, at 8 miles an hour' and 'The North Mail, 1890, approaching Carlisle at 48 miles an hour'. It is addressed by Tuer himself to 'And: W.

[Printed prospectus with 'Form of Application' completed in manuscript.] Prospectus of Commonwealth of Australia 4 1/2 Per Cent. 3 Years' War Savings Certificates.

Author: 
Commonwealth Bank of Australia; Commonwealth of Australia 4 1/2 Per Cent. 3 Years' War Savings Certificate; Lieut. J. Moss, Selborne Chambers, Howard Street, Perth
Publication details: 
Commonwealth Bank of Australia, 24th March, 1917.
£56.00

2pp., 4to. On worn and aged paper, unobtrusively repaired with archival tape. The prospectus is on one side of the leaf, headed in capitals 'Money obtained by the sale of war savings certificates will be used by the Commonwealth for war purposes only.' The reverse carries the 'Form of Application for Commonwealth of Australia 4 1/2 Per Cent. 3 Years' War Savings Certificate.' The form has been completed and signed by Lieutenant J. Moss, at Selborne Chambers, Howard Street, Perth, with an application for £875.

Two Holograph Books of Poetry, written while a Broadmoor patient by the Ham Common killer Sidney Stewart Hume, the first titled 'Book Of Verse: Nbr. 1. - By & Of Sidney S. Hume' and the second 'Book Nbr. 5 (FIVE) S. S. Hume's Copy of Police Witness.'

Author: 
Sidney Stewart Hume (1886-1976), English First World War fighter pilot, incarcerated in Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, 1919-1968, for the 1918 killing at Ham Common of Private Robert Aldridge
Publication details: 
Both volumes written in Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Crowthorne, Berkshire. 'Book of Verse: Nbr. 1': written between c.1938 and 1949 (bound in 1950). 'Book Nbr. 5 (Five)': 1953 to 1958.
£850.00

These volumes bear tragic testimony to a diseased mind. A native of Argentina, Hume saw service in the First World War with the 1st County of London Yeomanry at Gallipoli, before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps (66 Squadron, RFC and RAF). In May 1917, while on his second patrol, he was shot down over France. It was while incarcerated in several POW camps (he escaped from one) that Hume's mental illness appears to have begun to manifest itself, and he was exchanged for German prisoners in August 1918.

Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Corps News.

Author: 
Royal Army Medical Corps, British Salonika Force, World War I
Publication details: 
February, 1917. ['British Salonika Force. General Headquarters, British Salonika Force, December 1, 1916.']
£100.00

8vo: 36 pp, paginated [17] to 52. Disbound and unbound. Grubby, but with text clear and entire. Outer bifolium in poor condition. Lacking stitching, so with each bifolium loose. Mainly consisting of lists of individuals receiving awards.

[Dame Ethel Locke King and Winifred Bidwell.] Autograph Letter Signed to Miss Martin Wood from Bidwell, enclosing another to Bidwell from Dame Ethel Locke King, regarding the employment of Wood at Caens Hill Auxiliary Military Hospital.

Author: 
Dame Ethel Locke King (1864-1956), Vice-President of the North Surrey Division, British Red Cross; Winifred Bidwell [Miss Martin Wood; Caens Hill Auxiliary Military Hospital; Brooklands]
Publication details: 
Both on (different) letterheads of the British Red Cross Society, North Surrey and Kingston Division. Dame Ethel Locke King's letter, 21 September [1915]. Winifred Bidwell's letter, 22 September [1915].
£120.00

Caen's Hill was the property of Mrs Locke King's husband, and opened as a hospital with 32 beds in 1914, with Mrs Locke King as Commandant of the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Two years later it had 44 beds. It shut in 1919. After the war the Locke Kings developed motor racing in the area, with the celebrated Brooklands track. For more on Locke King and her distinguished war work, see her entry in the Oxford DNB and two articles in The Times, 6 and 14 August 1956. Both items 1p., 4to, in good condition, on lightly-aged paper.

Anonymous manuscript First World War narrative poem titled 'The Message of the King', concerning a blinded soldier who asks a doctor to kill him.

Author: 
[First World War dramatic monologue; Royal Army Medical Corps, Delhi Barracks, Tidworth, Wiltshire]
Publication details: 
[RAMC Delhi Barracks, Tidworth, Wiltshire.] Circa 1918.
£80.00

Four pages, 4to. Bifolium. Good, on lightly-aged ruled paper, with watermark 'D. K & Co. | LONDON'. Sixty-four lines, arranged in eight eight-line stanzas. Apparently unpublished. Evocative of the sensibilities of a more naive age: sincerely meant, but coming across somewhat in the style of a Stanley Holloway monologue.

[MS. copy] Letter from James I to the University of Cambridge. In Latin, commencing, "Si ius civitatis [...]". and concluding "Valete" (no copy signature).

Author: 
[James I; Francis Bacon]
Publication details: 
[Palace of Westminster] 4o Kal. Mar. 1616
£600.00

One page, sm. folio, sl. crumpled and stained, C17th hand. Another copy (BL Sloane MS. 3562, f.99, to Spedding, the "best copy") is reproduced in Spedding, ed., 'The Works of Francis Bacon', vol. XIII, p.144, with the suggestion that, though James was capable, Bacon himself could have written it. A copy is also to be found in the Harley MS., and presumably elsewhere. The Sloane and Harley copies differ in small matters from this one (one of several examples, "nobis" for "Sloane's "vobis" in 'quam nobis suspecta'). One obvious anomaly.

[First edition.] Poems by Wilfred Owen. With an introduction by Siegfried Sassoon.

Author: 
Wilfred Owen [Siegfried Sassoon]
Publication details: 
London: Chatto & Windus, 1920.
£1,500.00

xi + [1] + 33 + [1]pp., 4to. Frontispiece engraving of photograph of Owen, with creased tissue guard. In red buckram, with white printed label on spine. Internally good, on lightly-aged paper, in worn and sunned binding. Ownership stamp and ownership signature on front free endpaper, and a third ownership signature, with address, on rear free endpaper.

[First edition.] A Room of One's Own.

Author: 
Virginia Woolf
Publication details: 
Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London, W.C. 1929.
£120.00

172pp., 12mo. In pink cloth, gilt. No dustwrapper. Good, on lightly-aged paper, in binding with slight spotting and slight wear at tail of spine. Neat small ownership signature in pencil on front free endpaper.

[Printed first edition of a satirical political novel, in original cloth.] Pantalas and what they did with him.

Author: 
Edward Jenkins [John Edward Jenkins (1838-1910), Liberal Member of Parliament; Richard Bentley and Son, London publishers]
Publication details: 
London: Richard Bentley and Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. 1897. [Billing and Sons, Printers, Guildford. | G., C. & Co.]
£220.00

[7] + 243pp., 8vo. On aged paper, with slight damage at top edge of first few leaves; in heavily-worn binding with blind-stamped decoration; corner torn away from front free endpaper, and glue spots to front pastedown. Described in an advertisement by the publisher in The Times, 16 July 1897, as 'A SOCIAL SATIRE.' Six copies on COPAC, but now a scarce item. Note: "In Pantalas Mr. Jenkins is at his best.

[First edition, in dustwrapper.] Now We Are Six.

Author: 
A. A. Milne; E. H. Shepard
Publication details: 
London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1927.
£120.00

x + [2] + 103 + [1]pp., 8vo. In original burgundy cloth decorative binding, gilt, with top edge gilt. In very good condition, in worn and chipped unclipped dustwrapper, with brown paper repair to closed tears on reverse. Pencil ownership inscription to front free endpaper, and bookseller's ticket on front pastedown.

[Two 'Répertoire Lecombe' French First World War lyrics, printed on one handbill.] 'Verdun on ne passe pas! Marche populaire.' and 'Ce sont les Yeux'.

Author: 
[Jules Cazol; Eugène Joullot; René Mercier; Lecombe; the Battle of Verdun, 1916]
Publication details: 
'Imp. F. LAMBERT, Marché-au-Charbon, 12, Brux' [Brussels, Belgium; circa 1917.
£120.00

2pp., 4to. On a single leaf, both sides of which are headed 'Répertoire Lecombe'. Printer's slug at foot of 'Verdun on ne passe pas!' Both lyrics printed in two columns (no score to either). In good condition, on aged and worn high-acidity paper. 'Ce sont les Yeux' begins: 'Chacun dans la vie cherche son idéal.' The 'Dernier Refrain' reads: 'Et bien des yeux de mère, | Sont tournés vers la frontière | Où là-bas leurs chers petits enfants | Pour sauver la France donnent leur sang.

[Offprint, 'Reprinted by kind permission of "The Morning Post."'] [on cover:] The True Story of the Tank [drophead title:] A Miscarriage of Justice. | How the Tank was devised. | Lord Kitchener's Foresight.

Author: 
[Captain Bede John Francis Bentley (1878-1939), Royal Army Service Corps, claimed inventor of the tank; Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener [Lord Kitchener] (1850-1916)]
Publication details: 
On cover: 'Morning Post. [London] | Wednesday, August 9 [1922].' At rear: 'Printed by St. Clements Press, Ltd., Portugal Street, Kingsway, W.C.2.'
£65.00

[2] + 11 + [1]pp., 12mo. Printed in black on cream paper, with the wraps printed in blue in 'Stop Press' style. In very good condition, with minor spotting from staples. Presumably printed up by Bentley himself, and taking the story of his claim to 29 March 1922, the Home Office response to his petition to the king. The text begins: 'When Earl Kitchener called in Captain Bentley, a pioneer of motor transport, to embody in actual design the famous car which became known in the war a a "Tank," he promised that his interests as an inventor would be safeguarded.

[Dickens first edition, in original binding.] Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. Edited by "Boz." With illustrations by George Cruikshank. In two volumes.

Author: 
"Boz" [Charles Dickens], ed.; Joseph Grimaldi; Richard Bentley
Publication details: 
London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street. 1838. [London: Printed by Samuel Bentley, Dorset Street, Fleet Street.]
£500.00

2 vols: xix + [1] + 288; ix + 263. With frontispieces to both volumes (both with tissue guards) and the eleven other plates called for. First edition, first issue, with the plate facing p.238 of vol.2 in its first state (without the 'grotesque' border), and the 36-page undated publisher's catalogue bound-in at the end of vol.2. In primary binding of pink cloth with floral pattern, and the gilt titles on the spine held up by an image of a clown.

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