Rare books from Peter Harrington

Valence: , July 1791. The young Napoleon responds with delight to the foundational work of political economy An exceptional manuscript in Napoleon's hand revealing his initial response to Smith's Wealth of Nations. The manuscript is remarkable in establishing that Napoleon's first unguarded reaction to Smith's ideas was not in fact disdain, as he would later affect, but admiration. Napoleon was in garrison at Valence with the 4th Artillery Regiment from 16 June to 31 August 1791. He used his spare time to read the first volume of the French translation of Smith's Wealth of Nations by the poet Jean-Antoine Roucher (1745-1794), made from the fourth English edition (London, 1786), which had been published in 1790. Napoleon has captioned in the margin: "Notes diverses. Richesse des nations - Smith traduit par Roucher. Tome 1er. Valence juillet 1791", and has written at the top of the first page "Cayer -" (i.e. cahier), leaving a space blank for a projected numbering. He focuses in particular on five… Read More

Seville: Juan Canalla,, 1552. Directions for setting sail to America Very rare first edition of Medina's great navigational treatise, an appealing copy in contemporary vellum. Praised for its fine woodcuts, which are among the earliest to depict man's use of astrolabes, the Regimiento offers the essentials of seamanship in a practical format, and was intended for ship-born pilots; Francis Drake carried a copy during his circumnavigation. It is the natural successor to Medina's more theoretical Arte de navegar (1545). At the time of publication Pedro de Medina (1493-1567) held the role of royal cosmographer, having previously served for a time as tutor to the ducal house of Medina Sidonia, where he had benefitted from access to the library's valuable repository of scientific works. The publication of his first book, Libro de cosmografía (1538) earned him a pilot's license, and his subsequent career was built upon refining the instruments, books, maps, and training relied upon by those voyaging to the… Read More

Paris: Les Éditions du Solstice,, 1992. Ten etchings signed by Lichtenstein First edition, first printing, number 24 of 80 copies signed by Lichtenstein and Ginsberg on the limitation page from a total edition of 125; each print is initialled lower right by Lichtenstein, numbered lower left. In 1991, Lichtenstein was approached to provide illustrations for a French edition of Allen Ginsberg's The New Fall of America. Ginsberg selected 11 poems to be translated into French and Lichtenstein created 10 collages inspired by them, from which etchings were printed for the book. The imagery is characteristic of Lichtenstein's work in popular illustrations. "The image of Ginsberg as a Buddha in a lotus pose, for instance, was inspired by a vignette symbolizing meditation on a yoga class sheet. Cubistic visions of the city and emblems of explosions alternate with more peaceful landscapes to provide a visual counterpart to Ginsberg's vivid evocation of contemporary America" (Morgan Library and Museum). Folio.… Read More

London: printed for J. Johnson,, 1798. A cornerstone of economic theory Rare first edition of one of the most important and influential works in the history of economic thought. In this copy Q8 (pp. 239-40) is in its first state, with line 9 reading "the immortality of man on earth seems to be as completely established", as opposed to the later cancel with the correction "mortality". "The central idea of the essay - and hub of the Malthusian theory - was a simple one... If the natural increase in population occurs the food supply becomes insufficient and the size of the population is checked by 'misery' - that is the poorest sections of the community suffer disease and famine. Malthus recognises two other possible checks to population expansion: first 'vice' - that is, homosexuality, prostitution, and abortion (all totally unacceptable to Malthus); and second 'moral restraint' - the voluntary limitation of the product of children by the postponement of marriage" (PMM). "For today's readers, living in… Read More

Brussels: Rutger Velpius and Hubert Anthoine; Hubert Anthoine,, 1611 & 1616. An exceptional lifetime pairing An exceptional ensemble of lifetime editions, pairing the second printing of the second part (published only months after the first), with an early edition of the first part, with text corrections, published six years after the first. The first part was originally published in Madrid by Juan de la Cuesta in 1605; the second part was first published by Cuesta in 1615, the year before Cervantes's death. The first complete edition of Don Quixote, combining both parts with the same date, did not appear until 1617, in Barcelona. The first part here is the second Brussels edition, succeeding the first of 1607. It was published by Rutger Velpius, official printer to the court in Brussels, and his son-in-law Hubert Anthoine, who worked together from 1601 onwards. Based on the second Cuesta edition, it corrected several obvious errors in the text, although, astonishingly, only two of those corrections… Read More

[1966]. The most substantial Dahl manuscript in private hands Original manuscript first draft of Roald Dahl's screenplay for the screen adaptation of Fleming's You Only Live Twice, released in 1967 starring Sean Connery, with Dahl's signature boldly across the title leaf. This is the most substantial Roald Dahl manuscript to exist in private hands and to come on the market in decades. Roald Dahl, though a good friend of Ian Fleming, was an unlikely choice to write the adaptation, having never worked with screenplays before. As in virtually all film projects, several drafts were needed before the screenplay was finally approved, and Dahl quickly managed to provide a finished screenplay to the satisfaction of the producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman (though some additional story material was supplied by the television writer Harry Jack Bloom). Dahl admired Ian Fleming's writing, and later also adapted his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the screen. Many critics have commented on how much the… Read More

Boston: Little, Brown and Company,, 1951. The reclusive author makes a rare presentation to the teenage son of his childhood friend First edition, first printing, extremely rare presentation copy, inscribed by the author to the teenage son of his childhood friend Ada on the front free endpaper: "To Charles Kirtz with every good wish from J. D. Salinger (extra greetings to Ada and Victor from Sonny Salinger) New York 10/18/56". This is an exceptional rarity: signed or inscribed copies by the reclusive author are legendarily rare. The informal sign-off, "Sonny", was the nickname given to Salinger by his parents when he was born. Salinger, who grew up alongside Ada and her brother Victor in the same New York apartment house, presented Ada's sons, Charles (then around the same age as Holden Caulfield) and William, each with an inscribed first edition. He passed on the copies to the boys via Ada's mother, Ann, whose bookplate is on the front pastedown. An inscribed copy of Catcher in the Rye is perhaps… Read More

Sendai: Hayashi Shihei,, 1786-91. Epoch-making First edition of this landmark geopolitical analysis, one of only 38 copies completed before it was suppressed and the author imprisoned. Completed 60 years before Commodore Perry's arrival, it first suggested that Japan could not remain isolated and needed an outward-facing military policy and modernized weaponry. Today, eight copies survive institutionally; this is the only copy traced at auction. In the late 18th century, Japanese intellectual society was electrified by the discovery of a letter from the exiled Hungarian aristocrat Count Maurice Benyovszky to a Dutch factory trader in Nagasaki, thanking him for provisioning Benyovszky's ship and describing Russian plans for an attack on Hokkaido and its neighbouring islands. While the count's claims concerning Russia were wildly incorrect, in Japan his warnings "started a new type of thinking about the problems of war. Apart from two abortive attempts by the Mongols to invade the country in the… Read More

Huzhou: , [c.1250]. A treasure of Chinese early printing A remarkable surviving fascicle from a famous early Chinese edition of the Buddhist canon, printed during the Song dynasty at the Yuanjue (later Zifu) temple in Huzhou. The respect given to Buddhists texts has ensured the institutional survival of a couple of near-complete Yuanjie sets, but any examples of Chinese printing of this age are exceptionally scarce in commerce. We have traced only three works on paper printed before 1300 in Western auctions since 1980. Multiple characteristics suggest that this particular example is from the Yuanjie edition. Phonetic glosses at the end of the fascicle, the size of the printed area, and the number of pages, columns and characters per sheet, are consistent with other known examples. The first sheet also gives the name of the block carver as Shi Hong. A carver of the same name is known to have been active in the Huzhou region during the Southern Song period and was involved in other projects including… Read More

Paris: Antoine Vérard,, [about 1506]. Handsomely illustrated chivalric romance The earliest feasibly obtainable French edition, the fourth overall, of the romance of Tristan and Iseult (Isolde), giving Tristan his place among the knights of the Round Table. Considered the father of the French illustrated book, the Parisian bookseller Antoine Vérard issued four editions of Tristan, the most popular of the chivalric prose romances he published. His first, printed for him by Jean Le Bourgeois of Rouen and dated 30 September 1489, is the editio princeps, but it is not illustrated or decorated. Second and third editions, with illustrations, followed in c.1496 and c.1499. This fourth and last edition is also illustrated, but with some changes. "The same number of large woodcuts is used in the same places in the text, but they are not always the same woodcuts. Some were cropped, others must have worn out entirely, for they were replaced by new ones. In volume one, the combat of knights in the countryside… Read More

London: Printed by Jno. Nichols and Sold for the Society by Rivingtons, Dilly, Johnson & Hookham,, 1795. From the philanthropic friend of the architect of the Capitol From the library of President George Washington, with his bold signature on the half-title. The volume was presented to Washington, accompanied by a letter dated 15 July 1795, by the English physician Dr John Coakley Lettsom (1744–1815), and remained in his library until his death. Lettsom's letter, no longer present, mentions his American sympathies and shows that he is aware of Washington's lifelong devotion to the improvement of American agriculture: "Having been born an American, and early imbibed principles of liberty as established on that continent, I have probably received a stronger disposition, to promote, its prosperity, and particularly its agriculture, and the knowledge of its natural history and mineralogy." Along with the book, Lettsom enclosed some rhubarb seeds for Washington's use. Although they never met, the… Read More

Venice: Petrus Maufer de Maliferis et Socii,, 1486. The father of early modern medicine An exceptional copy of this rare early Venetian printing of Ibn Sina's medical encyclopaedia in Latin, issued with De viribus cordis as often. This copy is in a beautifully preserved Italian period binding. No complete copies are traced at auction in over 80 years. The first edition of Avicenna's Canon, in the standard Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona, appeared in Padua in December 1472. The original Arabic text was first printed in Rome in 1593. De viribus cordis, a treatise on psychiatry, was translated into Latin by Arnaldo de Villa Nova and featured as an addendum to early editions of the Canon from 1476. Drawing from the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle, as well as from the author's own experience as physician to the Emir of Bockhara, Canon "stands for the epitome of all precedent development, the final codification of all Graeco-Arabic medicine" (Neuburger, p. 368). Published in 17… Read More

London: for H. Herringman, and are to be sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders,, 1685. The fourth folio, the last of the 17th-century editions of Shakespeare's works and the most grandly produced, this issue with the imprint naming Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, the booksellers to whom Herringman had entrusted his retail business. There were three issues, with slightly different imprints. John Macock printed the title page for Herringman's copies, "to be sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders". Robert Roberts printed the title pages for the other issues from a single type setting, with either three or four booksellers named. There is no known precedence among the three issues, but Macock's title is much the rarer of the two settings; the online Shakespeare Census locates thirty-five extant copies, only five in private hands. The 1623 first folio, edited by John Heminge and Henry Condell, contained thirty-six plays, to which seven plays were added in 1664 by Philip Chetwin for the… Read More

London: printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell,, 1776. The foundation of modern economics First edition of "the first and greatest classic of modern economic thought" (PMM). The first edition is thought to have had a press run of either 500 or 750 copies (Tribe). In his Wealth of Nations, Smith "begins with the thought that labour is the source from which a nation derives what is necessary to it. The improvement of the division of labour is the measure of productivity and in it lies the human propensity to barter and exchange... The Wealth of Nations ends with a history of economic development, a definitive onslaught on the mercantile system, and some prophetic speculations on the limits of economic control" (PMM). "The Wealth of Nations had no rival in scope or depth when published and is still one of the few works in its field to have achieved classic status, meaning simply that it has sustained yet survived repeated reading, critical and adulatory, long after the circumstances which prompted it… Read More

Nuremberg: Hans Schönsperger the Elder,, [1517]. One of the finest illustrated books of the German Renaissance A deluxe copy, printed on vellum for presentation by Emperor Maximilian, of the first edition of this privately printed chivalric poem celebrating the heroic deeds of Emperor Maximilian, one of the finest illustrated books of the German Renaissance. Theuerdanck was conceived as a deluxe production and Maximilian himself was closely involved in all aspects of its creation, from its composition to its distribution after printing. Maximilian had composed first drafts in 1505-8, portraying himself as Theuerdanck overcoming the difficulties of his journey to win his bride, Mary of Burgundy (Kunigin Ernreich in the poem). He turned over the completion and general editing of the work to Melchior Pfintzing, his private secretary. Maximilian called Schönsperger from Augsburg to the imperial city of Nuremberg; it was the only work Schönsperger printed there. A remarkable series of woodcut… Read More