Secondhand | Invisible Books

New In – November 2023

Please click on the titles to view images of the books listed below.

ART

William Blake; Meira Perry-Lehmann (ed.) | There was a Man in the Land of Uz | Israel Museum | 1992 | Reproductions of Blake’s engravings, watercolours & studies for the Book of Job. Text in English & Hebrew. White jacket is lightly marked, blue lettering faded on its spine. Some wear to edges of boards. | £30

ATLAS PRESS

ESOTERICA

Zsuzsanna Budapest; Carol Clement (illus.) | Selene: the Most Famous Bull-Leaper on Earth | Diana Press | 1976 | Some discoloration to cover, with a light damp mark at the lower corner of the front panel/spine. Thin biro mark on back panel. Text pages & illustrations look very good indeed. | £40

Susan Evasdaughter | A Sacred Island: A Guide to Crete | n.p. | 1984 | Unbound pamphlet in rough condition. Cover is marked, edge foxed & worn. Both upper corners of the book are dampstained. | £15

Susan Evasdaughter | The Home of the Labrys | n.p. | 1985 | Stapled pamphlet. Pale cover is foxed & marked, outer edge of pages foxed & worn. | £15

Robert Kirk; R. J. Stewart | Robert Kirk: Walker between Worlds (The Secret Commonwealth) | Element | 1990 | 9781852301415 At first glance, a very good copy. But, at the time of cataloguing, the book retains a faint lingering scent of tobacco smoke. | £40

Shingo Ohgami | Karate Katas of Wadoryu | Japanska Magasinet | n.d. | Some wear to edges of boards, label traces to front panel & pastedown, pencilled name on ffep, outer edge of page-block rather worn & marked. This book has been used for study & practice, & many pages have annotations. Several page corners have been folded over. A reading copy only. | £25

FICTION

Giambattista Basile; E. F. Strange (ed.); Warwick Goble (illus.) | Stories from the Pentamerone | Macmillan | 1911 | Small splash marks to both front & back panel. The spine is worn & faded with a 1cm split to the cloth about three-quarters of the way down. 1919 gift inscription on ffep. Text pages are foxed. All plates are present: there is a small mark at the outer edge of the margin of the illustration facing p.42, & the tissue guard protecting the illustration facing p.86 has come loose & is worn & sunned at its edge, but there is no problem with the plate itself. Still quite lovely, but very evidently secondhand. | £50

Edgar Allen Poe | Essays and Stories | G. Bell | 1914 | Bright, fresh copy still in its original jacket. Pencilling on front panel of jacket, back panel lightly marked, some loss to extremities of spine, top of spine reinforced on reverse. Book in very good condition indeed. | £30

FILM

S. M. Eisenstein | Selected Works Volume II: Towards a Theory of Montage | BFI | 1991 | 9780851702117 Ex-BFI copy, with their stamp on ffep. Spine of unclipped jacket a little sunned. Blotchy foxing to outer edge of page-block. The outer margin of the long foldout section between pp.396-7 has become folded over: this does not intrude upon the film stills or graphics. | £25

FOLKLORE & FOLKSONG

Ian Russell (ed.) | Singer, Song and Scholar | Sheffield Academic Press | 1986 | At first glance, a very good copy with a slightly sunned spine & lamination just starting to peel at the top corner of the front panel BUT the book has a lingering smell of tobacco smoke. | £20

Enid Welsford | The Fool | Faber | 1968 | Reissue in jacket. Original price has been snipped off front flap & a decimal price added. A few closed tears to edge of jacket, a little loss around extremities of spine. Book itself in excellent condition. | £100

Blanche Winder; Harry G. Theaker (illus.) | Stories of King Arthur | Ward Lock | n.d. | An attractive copy, with some wear & discoloration to its cloth cover. The book is undated, but there is an ownership inscription dated 1949 on the reverse of the ffep. All plates are present, & look very good indeed, but there is a light crease in the blank area of the page featuring an illustration of the Questing Beast on p.172, & the lower outer tip of p.319 has become folded over, well outside the area occupied by the illustration. | £30

GRAPHIC NOVELS

GG | I’m Not Here | Koyama | 2017 | 9781927668498 Top of spine bumped, small mark to lower edge. | £25

HISTORY

T. E. Lawrence | Seven Pillars of Wisdom – 2-volume set | World Books, Reprint Society | 1939 | Two-volume set in jackets. Some sunning & miscellaneous marks to pale jackets. Coloured lettering on spines of jackets is rather faded, most evidently in the case of the red lettering on vol. I. Bookplates on front pastedown of each volume, signature of same owner on ffep. Outer edge of page-blocks foxed, lower edges a little dust-marked. Still a handsome set. | £50

JOURNALS & MAGAZINES

KULCHUR

Rayner Banham | Theory and Design in the First Machine Age | Architectural Press | 1967 | Unclipped jacket is rather worn, with some loss around corners & at top of spine. Outer edge of page-block foxed. Intermittent pencil underlining & marginal marking. A sturdy reading copy. | £15

Hermann Hesse | My Belief | Triad Panther | 1978 | A good reading copy. Book is a little slant from storage, with the lower corner of its front cover bumped. One crease to the spine. Name on ffep. No problem with text pages apart from the inevitable darkening of the paper with age. | £30

LITERARY CRITICISM

Wolfgang Gortschacher | Little Magazine Profiles | University of Salzburg | 1993 | Lower corner of the front panel/spine bumped. Outer edge of page-block rather worn & marked. Lower corner of back panel & closing pages creased, well outside the text area. | £25

MODERN FIRSTS

Raymond Carver | No Heroics, Please | Harvill | 1991 | 9780002712163 First printing in unclipped jacket. Reduced price label over printed price on front flap. A couple of short tears (approx 5mm & 2mm) to top of spine. Small light mark to spine. Top edge of page-block lightly foxed. Book appears to be in unread condition. | £40

Nikolai Leskov; David Magarshack (tr.); V. S. Pritchett (intr.) | Selected Tales | Secker and Warburg | 1962 | First printing. Endpapers & outer edge of page-block foxed, very top of spine sunned. The jacket is in less good condition than the book itself, being marked, with some loss to the edges, & with a sunned spine upon which the title is no longer legible: I would have jettisoned it if not for the rather pleasing design. | £15

V. S. Pritchett | The Complete Short Stories | Chatto & Windus | 1990 | First printing in unclipped jacket with a very slightly faded spine. At first glance, a very good copy, but the lower corner of the back panel has been exposed to damp at some time, & some of the colour from the boards has offset onto the reverse of the jacket. | £30

Mary Stewart | The Hollow Hills – SIGNED BY AUTHOR | Hodder and Stoughton | 1973 | First printing, signed by author on title page. The book itself is in very good condition, but the jacket is faded on the front panel & spine, & price-clipped at the top of the front flap. | £400

MUSIC

Julie Burchill & Tony Parsons | The Boy Looked at Johnny – SIGNED BY AUTHORS | Pluto | 1978 | First printing, signed by both authors on half-title page. Light pressure marks to cover. Fore-edge is marked with a drink stain. Otherwise in very good condition. | £40

PAPERBACKS & PULPS

Harry Crews | Car | Quill | 1983 | Book is lightly bowed. Lower front corner bumped. Outer edge of page-block foxed. A good reading copy of a hard to obtain book. | £30

Harlan Ellison | The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World | Pan | 1979 | Top corner lightly bowed. Paper tanned with age. Still a handsome copy. | £25

C. Day Lewis; Edward Ardizzone (illus.) | The Otterbury Incident | Puffin | 1961 | First Puffin printing. A handsome copy with a very light crease to the lower corner of the front cover, name & address in a child’s careful handwriting on the reverse of the front cover. | £30

Andre Norton, Sylvia Engdahl, Arthur C. Clarke | The Puffin Science Fiction Galaxy: Catseye, Heritage of the Star, Islands in the Sky, Of Time and Stars | Puffin | n.d. | Four science fiction novels in a slipcase. All books were printed in 1975-76. The upper corner of the slipcase’s front panel/spine is bumped, & the case is rather scuffed around the outer edges & on its lower edge. The spine of the case lists a fifth novel, but there is absolutely no space available to include any more than the four contained here. OF TIME & STARS has a light crease to its spine, & some wear around its edges. There are light pressure marks to the back cover of CATSEYE, & the lower outer corner of its back cover is creased. Despite these faults, this remains a good-looking set. | £20

Ross Russell | The Sound | Macfadden | 1962 | Book still looks impressive, but is noticeably cocked, with front cover set forward. Page 99 projects very slightly from the page block. Although the binding still holds firm at the time of cataloguing, it is entirely possible that it might come adrift in the course of reading. | £30

Jim Thompson | Omnibus 2: After Dark My Sweet; A Hell of a Woman; Savage Night; A Swell Looking Babe; Nothing More than Murder | Picador | 1997 | 9780330344517 Cover is worn, with pressure marks to the front panel, bumped upper corner of the front panel/spine, & a fingernail impression to the top edge of the back panel. Outer upper corner a little bowed. Text pages in very good condition. | £40

PHILOSOPHY

Gaston Bachelard | The Psychoanalysis of Fire | Routledge & Kegan Paul | 1964 | First UK printing in unclipped jacket. Some wear to edges of jacket. Red lettering faded on spine, lightly faded on front panel. Publisher’s revised price sticker on front flap. Top of spine lightly bumped. Some foxing. Name on ffep. | £50

PHOTOGRAPHY

Mirella Ricciardi | Vanishing Africa | Collins | 1978 | Revised edition in jacket. Jacket is lightly faded, with loss at the top of the back panel & the corner of the back panel/spine. A couple of separate gift inscriptions to ffep. Outer edge of page-block foxed, with a couple of darker marks about half way down the fore-edge. Foxing extends very slightly onto the main page area: otherwise text pages & plates remain in very good condition indeed. | £30 |

POETRY

Sorley Maclean; Iain Crichton Smith (trans.) | Poems to Eimhir | Gollancz | 1971 | First printing in unclipped jacket. A couple of 1 cm closed tears to the upper edge of the front panel, spine lightly sunned. The original price has been struck through & not one, but two, discounted prices marked on the front flap. |£30

Pedro Salinas; Willis Barnstone (tr.,intr.) | My Voice because of You & Letter Poems to Katherine | Chicago | 2010 | 9780226734262 First printing of this translation in unclipped jacket. Jacket is a little scuffed near the bottom of the fold of front panel/spine, light wear to back panel. Fore-edge is a little worn & marked. | £200

George Seferis; Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard (tr., ed., intr.) | Complete Poems | Anvil | 1995 | 9780856462139 First printing of this translation in unclipped jacket. Jacket is lightly worn & marked, with a diagonal crease to the edge of the front flap. | £30

POLITICS

PSYCHOLOGY

Wilhelm Reich | The Cancer Biopathy | Farrar Strauss Giroux | 1973 | First printing. A reading copy. Boards are worn & marked, outer edge of page-block is foxed & marked. Writing on the rear pastedown, partly torn away at the outer corner. No problem with text pages or plates. | £40

September 2023

ART

William Blake | Illustrations of the Book of Job | Methuen | 1904 | Boards are worn & marked, with loss to extremities of spine. Label on spine is worn & rubbed. Name on ffep. A previous owner has numbered each plate in pencil in the upper right hand corner of the page, well away from the illustration itself. | £100

COMIC & CURIOUS

CRIME

Patricia Highsmith | The Talented Mr Ripley | Heinemann | 1966 | Edition of 1966. No jacket. Some wear to boards & upper edge of page-block. Book is a little bowed from storage. A couple of blue pencil ticks against the list of other Highsmith titles at the front of the book. | £50

DRAMA

ESOTERICA

Sheila Broun | Listen to the Earth | n.p. | 1990 | Stapled pamphlet. White cover is sunned & lightly marked. A couple of the pages have an uneven dark-toned background (I’m not sure whether this was a mishap with the photocopier or a design choice) but remain readable. | £50

Marian Green | Magic for the Aquarian Age | n.p. | n.d. | An early (I assume the first) edition of Marian Green’s classic work. Stapled 36 page pamphlet with light foxing to the cover & a mark on the outer edge. | £100

J. A. Johnston | Esoteric Irish Folk Tales (Nine Volume set) | Keltia | 1984 | Set of 9 stapled pamphlets. Each contains two generic introductions, one to the tales themselves, the other to the qabalah, followed by the text of a tale drawn from Jeremiah Curtin’s collection, accompanied by Johnston’s commentary. Volumes are as follows: 1. Gold Apple, Son of the King of Erin; 2. Sgiathan Dearg and the Daughter of the King of the Western World (small light mark on back cover); 3 The Bird of the Golden Land (lower edge marked); 4. The Son of the King of Erin and the Queen of Moving Wheel (pale cover rather worn & marked); 5. The Three Sons of the King of Antua (minor wear to cover, outer edge of pages foxed); 6. Baranoir, Son of a King in Erin, and the Daughter of King under the Wave (pale cover is foxed/marked, minor wear to edge); 7. The King’s Son in Erin and the King of Green Island; 8. Fainne Oir, Daughter of the King of Erin, and the Son of the King of Three Seas (fore-edge marked); 9. Sal Fhada, the King’s Son and Finn Mac Cumhaill | £200

Kaledon Naddair | Druidism: An Assessment | n.p. | 1987 | 906590841 Stapled pamphlet with lightly foxed/marked cover. The following items are loosely inserted: College of Druidism Newsletter No. 3; Reading List for C.O.D. students; individual sheets of Terms & Kennings, Regions Suitable for Shamanistic Attunement, & Requirements Need to “Journey” through One of the Four Elements; a couple of handwritten pages of notes. | £50

Kaledon Naddair | Keltic Bird Lore and Shamanism | n.p. | n.d. | 906590833 Stapled pamphlet with heavily foxed/marked back cover. Internally in very good condition. | £50

FICTION

Isaac Babel; Walter Morison (ed., tr.); Lionel Trilling (intr.) | The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel | Methuen | 1957 | First printing in unclipped jacket. Spine of jacket is somewhat faded. Top 3cm or so of the jacket’s spine is missing, the exposed area of the book’s spine is faded. | £25

Albert Camus | The Myth of Sisyphus | Hamish Hamilton | 1979 | 024190465X Reprint in jacket. Front flap has been priceclipped, & updated with a revised publisher’s price label. Name & address on ffep. Paper tanned with age. Fingernail nick to the very top edge of pp.145-150. | £100

Yasunari Kawabata; Yukio Mishima (intr.); Edward G. Seidensticker (tr.) | House of the Sleeping Beauties | Quadriga | 1969 | 9000608001 First British edition in unclipped jacket. Boards are very slightly bowed. Pale jacket is rather worn & marked. A couple of small marks on outer edge of page-block. | £35

Wyndham Lewis | Snooty Baronet | Cassell | 1932 | First printing. Very worn copy. Cover is marked, & threadbare at edges, with short splits at extremities of spine. Times Book Club label on rear pastedown, pencilling on both pastedowns. Some foxing to text pages. Still a perfectly good reading copy, & quite a nice trophy. | £15

Vladimir Nabokov | The Real Life of Sebastian Knight | Editions Poetry London | 1945 | First printing, issue b, in variant jacket. Information on the copyright page is the same as the issue in the more familiar red jacket. Jacket is unclipped, but worn at edges, with some loss at corners & extremities of spine. Boards are lightly marked, bumped & faded at extremities of spine. | £50

Joseph Roth; John Hoare (tr.) | The Emperor’s Tomb | Chatto & Windus, the Hogarth Press | 1984 | 701128267 First British printing in unclipped jacket. Spine of jacket is faded but still legible, label trace on back panel. Paper tanned with age, lower corner of title page very lightly creased. | £30

Denton Welch | In Youth is Pleasure | Routledge | 1944 | First printing. The boards are very worn indeed, the spine faded to near illegibility. Bookshop stamp of Higginbotham’s of Madras on ffep, along with a price in rupees marked in ink. Text pages still look very good. The sewn binding has loosened a little, but all pages remain firmly attached. | £30

Stefan Zweig | Beware of Pity | Cassell | 1956 | Hallam Edition copy in unclipped jacket, very lightly sunned at spine. Inscription on ffep. Book appears to be in unread condition, & looks very good indeed, but has a rather fusty, old bookish smell, hence grading. | £30

Stefan Zweig | Stories and Legends | Cassell | 1955 | Hallam Edition copy in unclipped jacket with publisher’s price sticker on front flap. Edges of jacket are worn, with a little loss, spine is faded, rear flap creased. Book itself in very good condition. | £30

KULCHUR

Backlist

The lists below give a snapshot of our older stock. We have more books available online and in our stall, but this gives a reasonable impression of our range and interests. Please contact us if you are interested in any of these titles, and we will then confirm their availability, and send you a PayPal invoice.

Art
Atlas Press
Comic & Curious
Drama
Esoterica
Fiction
Film
History
Journals & Magazines
Kulchur
Paperbacks & Pulps
Philosophy
Poetry
Politics
Psychology