Current Catalogues

Catalogue 187 - Autumn 2009

In her recent article in the excellently reborn Bookdealer magazine, Nancy Campbell waxes entertainingly lyrical on bookmarks. They 'show patterns of readership and tell stories about their owners. They reveal whether the reader finished a book or a chapter they considered worth returning to. Always ephemeral, sometimes playful, they are reminders of a world beyond the book. They betray their historical context: security advice in wartime; insurance advertisements in peacetime; tasselled, gilt leather souvenirs or magnetic clasps shaped like animals in an age of leisure. Some are designed for the purpose, others are random objects hurriedly plucked from the reader's surroundings when they are interrupted by urgent business. (Sleep does not respect bookmarks - the best we can hope for is that the book falls face down on the floor.)' One shudders at the potential damage wrought by 'magnetic clasps' animal or vegetable, and the ubiquitous leather souvenir can leave nasty grease marks as well as strain bindings, but the 'random objects hurriedly plucked from one's surroundings' have perhaps caused the most harm over the years. Dear Olive Cook was an avid breakfast-time reader (often of newly unpacked Private Press books), but seems to have had no compunction about marking her place with a passing rasher or egg-dipping bread soldier, if the idiosyncratically stained state of occasional openings in many of her books is to be explained. Our change in shop opening hours a year ago has left us with a stock of bookmarks advertising the old hours which, with apt ms. correction, we will be happy to supply with all books purchased from this catalogue!

Part I - Books published before 1833
Part II - Books published after 1832

1. Literature & History
2. Travel & Topography
3. Art, Illustrated & Children's Books
4. Natural History, Science, &c.

Part III - A miscellany of recent purchases

Catalogue 186 - Spring 2009

'I know of no town to be compared with Ipswich, except it be Nottingham; and there is this difference in the two; that Nottingham stands high... whereas Ipswich is in a dell, meadows running up above it, and a beautiful arm of the sea below it. The town itself is substantially built, well paved, everything good and solid, and no wretched dwellings to be seen on its outskirts. From the town itself you can see nothing; but you can, in no direction, go from it a quarter of a mile without finding views that a painter might crave, and then the country round about it so well cultivated; the land in such beautiful state, the farmhouses all white and so much alike; the barns, and everything about the homesteads so snug; the stocks of turnips so abundant everywhere... in short, here is everything to delight the eye, and to make the people proud of their county; and this is the case throughout the whole of this county. I have always found Suffolk farmers great boasters of their superiority over others; and I must say that it is not without reason.' Thus William Cobbett in his Rural Rides of March, 1830 (see item 59). With the arrival of Summer we once again invite customers to visit us in Ipswich (Thursday to Friday) or at our White Farmhouse where present stocks of turnips are less than abundant but many books may be found. We hope this catalogue offers something for all lovers of fine books while being particularly rich in those eccentric lacquered sycamore-clad souvenir books beloved of Victorian tourists (items 13-48), and the work of several distinguished contemporary artist/bookmakers, including Arabella Crum Ewing whom we found through her move to our home town of Saxmundham (via Edinburgh and the South of France).

Part I - Printing & the Art of the Book
Part II - Pickering & Whittingham Items
Part III - Type and Type Specimen Books
Part IV - Bibliography, Typography, &c.

Catalogue 185 - Winter 2009
English Poetry - the Property of a Gentleman

'My wife Joan and I had a common enthusiasm for poetry... Our collection of poets grew backwards rather than forwards; the War Poets, Auden and the 'thirties poets (C. Day Lewis was my predecessor by several years as President of the Wadham JCR) and the Romantics. Keats is everyone's first love but we had to be content with only one of the three key first editions. I missed the essential 1820 volume in 1946 when Sexton catalogued it at £15 (and I still had some of my Navy gratuity). Arnold [Muirhead: bookseller, friend and sometime classics teacher to Joan & Claude] advised against it - 'It'll be a poor copy - it's a £20 book!' Many years later Diana Cooper's copy came up at Sotheby's. I determined to have it even at £1,000. I did not get a bid in. Quaritch paid more than twice that on behalf of some rich bibliophile. Some Shelley first editions have come our way and Mary Shelley's four volumes of his Collected Poems, with her notes and introduction, add much to one's appreciation of the poet. Coleridge is a delight to collect. There is so much of him and so much to him... His Poems, 1796, and 2nd ed., 1797, with Charles Lamb's first published poems, were not vastly expensive. Leigh Hunt has almost too dominant representation on our shelves and the sale of Horace Pym's books a few years ago allowed us to just about complete our holding. Of the Victorians we have targeted Tennyson - an easy target for the most part, but Poems Chiefly Lyrical, 1830, in boards, is not easy; nor is Poems, 1833, similarly attired. We have not been able to beat the millionaires to a copy of Poems by Two Brothers.' The late Claude Cox, writing in A Modest Collection, Private Libraries Association, 2007.

Part I - Eighteenth & Nineteenth Century
Part II - Twentieth Century Poets

Catalogue 184 - Autumn 2008

We offer this very miscellaneous assemblage of recent acquisitions and selections from stock, primarily as an introduction for new customers to the sort of books in which we like to trade. Having given up exhibiting at Book Fairs around 1982 when we took over Tom Cook's College Gateway Bookshop in Ipswich, we have decided to take to the road once more by setting up our stall at the annual Book Fair held in Chelsea Town Hall on November 7th & 8th. Our stand is located about as far as one can go walking in a straight line from the main entrance, so having made a bee-line for us on arrival you will be well placed to browse the remaining 75 exhibitors on your way out! A ticket admitting two to the fair is is available from us on request (admission at the door is £5 per person). In a further new departure, we are now able to offer self-contained holiday accomodation at our farmhouse in Kelsale. One mile East of the A12 and just North of Saxmundham, we invite you to share the tranquility of the Suffolk countryside (just occasionally disturbed by the rattle of trains on the branch line to Lowestoft a couple of fields away, or the shriek of the peacock - mainly in the Spring). Details I am most grateful to Ray Atkinson who kindly undertook the photography for this catalogue.

Part I - A Miscellany for Chelsea
Part II - Publications & Distribution Titles

Catalogue 183 - Summer 2008

'James Shand was proud of having been born in Scotland and spent his early days in Glasgow. As a boy, he had to sweep the pavement outside his father's small printing works, and was pelted with filth by other boys on the Clydebank streets - 'and' he would add pensively, 'people have gone on doing that to me ever since' - not entirely without foundation, since James, passionate and sincere, was never afraid of exchanging insults with anyone. He attended the London School of Printing... [then] joined Oxford University Press... Then, in 1930, he founded the Shenval Press imprint... A high proportion of the best designed and printed commercial books produced in England since 1930 have borne the Shenval Press imprint... He was gifted both as a writer and designer. Many witty but unsigned shorter pieces appeared in Typography, Alphabet & Image, Image and Motif...' Ruari McLean in Motif 13. We are pleased to offer fifty or so books from the library of James Shand in Part IV of this catalogue. Two fine new books on Eric Ravilious are also listed here and not to be missed by his many admirers (items 124 & 128). Our cover picture is from item 125.

Part I - Fine Printing & Book Production
Part II - Pickering and Whittingham
Part III - Type and Type Specimen Books
Part IV - Books from the library of James Shand
Part V - Printing, Typography & Bibliography
Part VI - Books at Bargain Price

Catalogue 182 - Summer 2008

Apart from a handful of interlopers from neighbouring counties, this catalogue is devoted to material relating to our home patch, including recent purchases, a selection from stock and a few new books. The back cover lists our own publications and distribution titles together with a couple of special offers, all of which are available at a quantity discount to trade colleagues. Do let us know if the Suffolk item you want is not listed here. We will be pleased to search for titles that we cannot supply from stock. We are also grateful to hear of anyone who would like to be added to our embryonic Suffolk mailing-list as we don't automatically send this catalogue to recipients of our regular antiquarian & fine print listings. Regular reference is made to: Steward's Suffolk Bibliography - SB (item 475); Tony Copsey's excellent Dictionaries of Suffolk Writers - SWI & SWII (items 557/8) and his Book Distribution & Printing in Suffolk - Copsey. Paul Grinke's Suffolk Catalogue also provides useful notes on many occasions - Grinke (item 474).

Part I - Books A - E
Part II - Books F - L
Part III - Books M - Z
Part IV - A New Publication & other titles we distribute.

Catalogue 181 - Spring 2008

After a peripatetic early childhood in rural England with youth-hostel-managing parents, Josephine Atkinson (née Cooper) left home to attend the London Arts Educational School. By the age of 15 she was mopping-up after ageing prima donnas and understudying 3rd spear-carriers as an ASM in rep. at Minehead. The next 10 years brought wide dramatic experience from Christie to Coward while refining musical performance skills on the solid foundation of her fine contralto. Marriage to Ray in 1966 led from Fleet Street to Belfast with Mirror Group Newspapers and then Ipswich when he moved into Further Education. Jo joined Dick Tuckey's fine ensemble at Ipswich's Wolsey Theatre and over 10 years her many roles included Lady Thiang in King & I and the Mother in Equus. While raising two sons, she also sang with Olive Quantrill, taught at Ipswich Dance Studio and potted for pleasure & profit. We first met in the late '90s. Stephen Boswell, another noted local thesp., had been helping in the shop while 'resting', when a career upturn prompted retirement from Silent St. servitude. He introduced Jo and College Gateway Bookshop came to be run for 3 days a week by a multi-tasker well known to the literate & glitterate of Ipswich. She has been a great help & friend over the last 8 years but is now pretending to have reached 66 - despite all available evidence - and determined to retire and spend more time with Ray, her potter's wheel, and four (nearly five) delightful grand-children. She will be much missed though we intend to exploit mercilessly her rash offer to 'do the odd day' when a catalogue is just out or I have to take a break! In response we have adjusted our opening hours.

Part I - Books published before 1716
Part II - Books published 1716-1832
Part III - Books published after 1832

1. Literature & History
2. Travel & Topography
3. Art, Illustrated & Children's Books
4. Natural History, Science, &c.

Part IV - A miscellany of recent purchases

Catalogue 180 - New Year 2008

John Hadfield was one of our first local customers with an interest in the miscellany of literature, the humanities and fine book production which we aimed to make our staple fare. Before we took over the shop from Tom Cook in 1982, John came to The White House at Kelsale and enjoyed coffee and a wander round the garden as well as some serious browsing. By then he had left the elegant garden he'd laid out with his first wife Anna at Barham Manor and was relatively confined by the walls of Suffolk reds at his Georgian town house in Woodbridge. As often happens with collectors of advancing years his regular purchases were sometimes balanced by choice offerings in our direction. After a lifetime of collecting he had a few treasures with which he was prepared to part. Then suddenly we were offered the much-prized heart of his antiquarian library, the Eighteenth Century verse. Of course we were delighted if a little surprised that it came to us when John regularly sent higher value items to the London rooms. The collection formed the nucleus of catalogue 140 and quickly sold.

Part I - Printing & the Art of the Book
Part II - Pickering and Whittingham
Part III - from the Library of John Hadfield

Catalogue 179 - Autumn 2007

Sixty years on from Eric Blair's dystopian account of life under a future totalitarian regime which controls the masses by controlling the mass media, we learn, from Jeanette Winterson's estimable Times column, that there is now one CCTV security camera in Great Britain for every 14 citizens. Astonishingly, she claims, our sceptred isle has no less than four million cameras watching our every move. Well hopefully not every move, but if one can place any trust in such a rounded statistic it represents an astonishing collection of town, highway, building & public space observers, affording Big Brother ample opportunity to be watching even if he may not choose to do so all of the time. The author of 1984 took his nom de plume from the river port where we have a shop full of the books which Ms Winterson identifies as our best chance to escape the brain-washing tendencies of the superstate. 'A good book does more than ask questions, or offer different realities; by using language honestly and accurately, literature keeps us alive to the slippage so common in media-babble and newspeak. Real language, like real feeling, shows up its counterfeit... To carry a book in my pocket is a reminder of my freedoms, my values, my life, not the one the Governemnt has prepared for me. Next time you see a CCTV camera, read to it.' We humbly offer 392 opportunities to fill your pockets with our first miscellany catalogue of the year

Part I - Books published before 1833
Part II - Books published after 1832

1. Literature & History
2. Travel & Topography
3. Art, Illustrated & Children's Books
4. Natural History, Science, &c.

Part III - A miscellany of recent purchases

Catalogue 178 - Summer 2007

Like most booksellers we have long known of Brian North Lee as the premier authority on Ex Libris, whose British Bookplates has oft been scoured to confirm an interesting provenance. He purchased a book or two from us over the years without our establishing regular contact or making his acquaintance. It was a mutual friend, the local antiquary and writer on bookplates, Dr John Blatchly, who suggested to Brian, as he stoically sought to order his affairs in his final illness, that we might catalogue his library rather than the books be despatched to the auction house along with his remarkable bookplate collection. So it was that I followed in the footsteps of numerous artists, collectors, dealers and enthusiasts of many & varied persuasion, in visiting Brian at home in Barrowgate Road, Chiswick. In a room lined with books, papers, prints & watercolours, he somehow found the energy to josh me for dealing rather than collecting, and question my sanity for being prepared to catalogue all his 'junk & scribblings' which of course he knew would be eagerly sought by bookplate collectors worldwide. I am most grateful to John Blatchly for his part in bringing Brian's library to Silent Street and his assistance with the cataloguing. Josephine Atkinson and Martin Crook have also, as ever, been a great help.

This is the working library of the man who for almost thirty years was the unrivalled authority on British ex-libris. He left teaching in 1986 to write full time and produced over twenty books and monographs, but sadly died while his latest work was in the press. He wrote Scottish Bookplates for the Bookplate Society members’ volume for 2007 jointly with Sir Ilay Campbell Bart, a work which reminds us how good a herald he was.

Early Printed Book Labels (P.L.A. and Bookplate Society, 1976) was a confident piece of scholarship, and Brian was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries soon after it appeared. British Royal Bookplates (Scolar Press, 1992) brought that subject up to the beginning of the present Queen’s reign. These were the two books of which he was, justly, most proud. Two early works were the copiously illustrated British Bookplates (David and Charles, 1979) and his first study of the work of a major British engraver, The Ex-Libris of Simon Brett in 1982.

Most of us, I suspect, forge ahead with our pursuits without pausing long to examine our motives. Brian knew why bookplate lore was his principle passion and stated the reason memorably in the Introduction to British Bookplates:
"There is something beguiling in the prospect of an exploration which could fill lifetimes of leisure."

His work on bookplates and labels, considering them as artistic examples of ephemera, illuminated the history of collecting, taste and genealogy of collectors in all centuries and all continents.

Brian’s admiration of the work of British engravers and designers of the twentieth century led him to commission and use personal ex-libris from most of them. In turn they trusted him to comment knowledgeably on their work. One leading wood-engraver wrote to Brian shortly before he died:
"You have done so much for many people and in particular for many artists, from Joan [Hassall] onwards. It is by the response of the ‘happy few’ like you [to our work] that we know if we are doing anything at all, let alone getting it right."

Brian worked hard to create and sustain the Bookplate Society (for long as its President) he edited the Bookplate Journal through many volumes. Members of the Society and others may, if they have caught some of his infectious enthusiasm for the subject, build soundly on his scholarly achievements. JMB

Part I - Bookplates, Heraldry, Books about Books & Other Items
Part II - Books by & about Joan Hassall