Search Results: Authors starting with B from Timeless Tales Rare Books

First edition of the rare illustrated description of Hindostan by the Belgian Painter Francois Balthazar Solvyns.
Folio (384 x 270 mm). Text in English and French; 60 hand-colored engraved plates by Scott or Vivares after Solvyns watermarked 1800, 1802, or 1804, occasionally with tissue guards. Contemporary red morocco-backed boards, red morocco corners, sides with central gilt "E A" cypher, smooth spine gilt, uncut (short vertical tear on spine panel, a few neat repairs to spine ends). The text is in English and French, there is very slight offsetting from plate to text.
Provenance: Eugène Rose de Beauharnais (1781-1824), French general in the Napoleonic Wars, and Viceroy of Italy (cypher on binding); Princess Augusta Amalia Ludovika Georgia of Bavaria (1788-1851), wife of Eugène Rose de Beauharnais and daughter of Napoleon's ally Maximilian I of Bavaria (cypher on binding); Eugene de Savitsch (bookplate dated 1948).
Solvyns was a Belgian painter and engraver who lived in Calcutta from 1791 to… Read More

First edition of the Baskerville Bible, 1760.
Exquisite fore-edge painting adorning a desirable Baskerville imprint. The Hereford Cathedral is pictured from the other side of the river Wye, with an old stone bridge leading to the church.
About 284 leaves. Final leaf 2M2; lacks gatherings x-2b and 2N-2Q, as often in other copies. 22.5x14 cm (9x5½"), period straight-grain crimson morocco, covers and turn-ins with gilt floral border, flat spine decorated and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, fore-edge painting of Hereford Cathedral.
Binding gently rubbed and soiled, more so to spine, front board nearly loose; title page foxing, only minor spotting throughout; fore-edge painting very well preserved; very good or better.
Provenance: Bookplate of N. Brinsley Acworth, front flyleaf with inscription of John and Elizabeth Willett, Stoke, 1808.

Second Edition, Fulton's "A" issue.
2 parts in 1. [16], 120, 123-126, [4]; 184, 193-376, 387-416, [18] pp. Woodcut headpieces & initials. (4to) 19.5x15.3 cm (7¾x6"), period calf with covers double-ruled in blind, floral cornerpieces, raised spine bands, morocco lettering piece.
Significant work by the 17th century Anglo-Irish chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor, regarded as one of the founders of modern chemistry, and a pioneer of modern experimental scientific method.
The 1663 first edition was printed in June in a very small number and published anonymously. This is one of two issues of the second edition dated 1664, but the only one published that year, the other believed not to have been printed until 1671. This earlier issue has a comma after "naturall philosophy" in the title, whereas the 1671 variant has "natural philosophy" followed by a full stop. Fulton 51; Madan 2655; Wing B4030A. Armorial bookplate of Sr. Rd. Bempde Johnstone.

6 volumes octavo (219 x 140 mm). Exceptional contemporary leather binding with marbled boarded paper inside. Stylised fleuron gilted lettering and numbering on spine.
Austin Dobson, the period's leading authority on eighteenth-century literature, provided the preface and notes for this edition. Portraits and numerous plates, including 48 half-tone plates, two double-page, 3 folding facsimiles, maps and plans and facsimiles to the text are distributed throughout the six volumes. A very clean, bright and handsomely-bound set with text inside in fine condition.

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855-1856., First Edition.
3 volumes. 4to. 14 plates, including 5 chromolithographic plates and 8 tinted lithographic plates, one folding engraved map, 3 plans (2 folding), 24 pp publisher's catalogue (dated September 1854) at end of volume I.
Publisher's blue cloth stamped in black on covers, gilt lettered on spine, terracotta printed endpapers, binder's ticket of Edmonds & Remnants on rear paste-down of volume III. Rubbed, corners bumped, partially removed library check-out list on front paste-down of volume III, very minor and scattered browning.First Edition of "one of the greatest works of travel ever published" (Penzer). Burton, the first English Christian to enter Mecca (performing the Hajj disguised as a Muslim), was also the first to travel between the Holy Cities of Islam by way of the Eastern route. Abbey Travel 368; Penzer, pp 49-50.

Lord Byron's The Corsair, A Tale. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE. 1814 London: John Murray. 1814. 8vo. 108 pp. Bound in light brown calf, with gilt tooling, marbled endpapers. This narrative poem about the pirate Conrad, this poem was ORIGINALLY printed as 108 pages AS IN THIS COPY; the second and third issues were released without the last four leaves containing "To a Lady Weeping," because of the controversy the poem had generated on the very first day after publication of this very first issue. However, Randolph states that all four of the four "issues" of the first edition were available and issued to the public on the same day.

NOTE (as per King's College, London)-- Following Byron's initial requests to his publisher to
make public his authorship of 'Lines to a Lady Weeping'
by publishing the verses with The Corsair, Murray
cautioned on 20 January 1814 that "as the present work
is to be read by women & the lines would disturb the
political feeling, they should instead be slipped quietly
into a… Read More