Rare books from Allington Antiquarian Books, LLC

Paris: No Publisher Named, 1894-1899. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Very good. A Very Good set of four small volumes (each measuring approximately 6 3/4 inches X 4 1/2 inches), each consisting of notes taken (presumably by a student) at lectures given by Auguste Honoré Longnon at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, one of France's Grands Etablissements, a set of schools considered to be among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions. The notes are written in blue ink with some of the notes written over pencil notes previously taken, presumably from another class. The Volumes are in Very Good condition with some damage to the spines, are hand-numbered "I", "II", "IV", and "V" and hand-titled "Noms de Lieu" or "Noms de Lieux" (each title meaning "Place Names"). French Historian and Archivist Auguste Honoré Longnon was known for his research in France's… Read More

London, 1879. First Edition, First Printing. No binding. Very good. A Very Good or better illustration of author Bret Harte published in Vanity Fair magazine for July 4, 1879, including the Vanity Fair profile of Harte, being Vanity Fair's "MEN OF THE DAY. No. 191." with evidence of the two pages having been removed from a larger volume which once likely held them. Examples of this original material are surprisingly uncommon to the market. A Very Good or better UNCOMMON piece of Bret Harte literary ephemera.

[None Stated]: [None Stated], [1884]. First Edition. No Binding. Very good. A Very Good RARE ORIGINAL WOODBLOCK POSTER for a stage play featuring Peck's Bad Boy. Civil War Veteran, Politician, and Author George Wilbur Peck (1840-1916), who owned a Wisconsin newspaper known as the "Sun", authored a humorous weekly newspaper column which often featured a character of his own invention named Henry "Hennery" Peck who first appeared in 1882. The character was tremendously popular and became known as "Peck's Bad Boy". Peck went on to write a series of books' featuring Hennery Peck who was known for pulling pranks on members of the town, but most especially on his father, for the pure joy of causing trouble and chaos. Peck began writing these stories, which were turned into books as well, in the early 1880s. 'Peck's Bad Boy' became a household name in the United States and was so popular that he entered the American lexicon with the dictionary definition of "Peck's bad boy" being "one whose bad behavior… Read More

London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. (Ernest Benn Ltd.), 1927. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Fine/fine. A Fine copy of the first edition, first printing (a bit of pushing to the spine ends, offsetting to the free endpapers, bookseller's sticker to the front pastedown's lower right corner), in an Essentially Fine example of the EXCEEDINGLY SCARCE dust jacket (a bit of edge wear, general soiling); a work providing information that allows anyone who uses it to identify the principal types of Eastern rugs, the book having been issued at a time when all but the experts in the field identified all hand-woven floor coverings from the East simply as "Persian", and providing useful information (via the text, an Index, and many illustrations, including 45 Plates. [The illustrations, including the 45 Plates illustrations are primarily in black and white. Four plates in colour are provided with each such colour plate having its own tissue guard printed with useful information on it.] Copies of the first… Read More

Berlin: Hermann Freises, 1912 and 1914. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Fine/fine. A Fine set of this First German Edition of Rembrandt's Drawings: issued in two volumes, Volume I presents 56 tipped-in illustrations and Volume II presents 176 tipped-in illustrations. The text is in German. Each Volume is in Near Fine condition (with Volume I's spine somewhat toned and showing oxidation to the gilt spine lettering and with each volume showing some scattered foxing to the cloth). Each Volume wears its RARE ORIGINAL DUST JACKET in Fine condition and each Volume is housed in its RARE ORIGINAL SLIPCASE. The slipcase to Volume I is open (as made) to one side for insertion and removal of its Volume, bears its original applied label, and shows a crack where the front panel meets the spine panel which crack runs from the lower corner for approximately 65% of its height and a crack to the rear which runs a much shorter distance. The slipcase to Volume II surrounds the entire volume and has a… Read More

London, New York, and multiple other locations, Multiple Publishers, Varied Bindings; Some Items staples, some never bound [WORLD WAR I - INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/PROPAGANDA] LONERGAN, C. James. Archive Relating to the United States Speaking Tour of British Captain C. James Lonergan. London, New York, and others, 1918. Collection of thirty (30) items relating to the special duty speaking tour of British Captain C. James Lonergan. The archive consists of typed and mimeo documents detailing Lonergan's orders prior to embarking for New York from London; typed letters signed regarding the organization of the tour once Lonergan had arrived in New York; numerous memos from the American National Red Cross Atlantic Division regarding individual speaking engagements throughout the Northeast; and letters of gratitude from the organizers. Highlights of the archive (and Lonergan's speaking tour) include the program of an event organized by the Flatbush Motor Corps on December 9, 1918, at which Harry Houdini… Read More

Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1889. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Fine/fine. Fine, Superior, tight (and apparently unread) copy of the first edition, first printing, of this collection of African-American stories by a female author, with illustrations by E. W. Kemble [who also illustrated Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and other books] in a Fine example of the Rare Dust Jacket. During her life and in her social circle, a woman working as a writer was seen as inappropriate. Consequently, Dana published under the pen name Olive A. Wadsworth which stood for "Only A. Woman". As this work was published posthumously, it was published under her given name, making it the first of her works so published. [The story "Our Phil" and the "Other Stories" in this book first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly under her pen name.] The book is in Fine, Superior, condition with hardly any wear, and comes in an excellent example of the RARE DUST… Read More

London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1867. Hardcover. Very good +. Very Good + copy of the First edition, First Issue, bound from the original parts (without the original wrappers and advertisements found in the original wrappered Parts); with the Publisher's rights printed on the verso of both title pages (omitted from verso of title page in vol. 2 for the book form edition) with the plate facing p. 297 of Volume with the semicolon present after "Hoggle-Stockians" (missing in the bound edition), and the plate facing p. 370 spelling "Consent" with a capital "C". On Page 157 of Volume I the final "D" of the running headline is perfect (it appears broken in the second edition), and in Volume 2, p. 298 line 21, third word is "Crawley" (which was changed to "Toogood" in the second edition). The leaves have been rebound in 3/4 blue leather with coordinated blue cloth, the closed page blocks, the pastedowns, and the facing side of each free endpaper of each Volume is marbled as well. Each volume's binding… Read More

London: Printed and Published by Emily Faithfull and Co., Victoria Press, (for the employment of Women). 1861., 1861, 1861. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good +. A Very Good + copy of "The Victoria Regia" printed and published by Emily Faithfull and Co.'s Victoria Press, in the Publisher's original green cloth with the front board decorated in gilt and the spine lettered and decorated in gilt, TOGETHER WITH AN ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LETTER SIGNED BY EMILY FAITHFULL on the recto of a small piece of headed stationary bearing the address of "52, BRYANSTON STREET. // HYDE PARK. W." The closed page block's edges are also in gilt. The volume shows general wear with some rubbing through (as shown in the images). The page block gilt is a bit dulled by age and the binding's gilt remains in the best condition of any copy we ever have seen. Within, the leaves are in nice condition and show scattered foxing, and the volume is partially over-opened in one place as shown in one of the images provided. The… Read More

London: Isbister and Company, 1882. First Edition. Original cloth. Very good +. A Very Good + copy of Good Words for 1882 in the publisher's original green cloth with some modest wear to the front joint and to the binding's edges, the rear hinge is cracked open. The volume contains the FIRST APPEARANCE OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE'S NOVEL "KEPT IN THE DARK". (The tale contains an illustration by Millais.) Good Words was a monthly magazine first published in 1860 by Alexander Strahan and edited by Norman Macleod. Upon his death, his brother Donald Macleod became the periodical's Editor, and Isbister eventually took over Strahan's publishing enterprises. The magazine was directed at evangelical Protestant Christians as well as those known as "nonconformists" [Protestants who did not conform to the governance and usages of the established church (the Church of England) and who were consequently restricted from many spheres of public life such as public office, civil service careers, and degrees at… Read More

New York: Harper & Brothers, Undated [1866]. First Edition, later impression. Wrappers. Very good. TEMPORARILY DISCOUNTED. WAS $4,250. NOW $1,850. A RARE SURVIVING copy of this VARIANT, LATER, BUT EARLY, IMPRESSION, OF THE RARE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, in the Publisher's original wrappers housing the FIRST EDITION STATE (perhaps, and we think likely, first printing) OF THE TEXT LEAVES of this Anthony Trollope novel first published in the United States on May 6, 1862 and not published in the UK until November, 1870, making this American Edition the TRUE FIRST EDITION OF THIS TROLLOPE NOVEL. The tale centers on a Partnership in a haberdashery amoung Brown (a retired Butter dealer), Jones (Brown's son-in-law), and Robinson (a strong advocate of advertising and an aspirant to the hand of Brown's youngest daughter, Maryanne). Due to Brown's timidity, Jones's embezzlement, and Robinson's extravagance, the Firm went bankrupt. This wrappered copy has been bound in brown half-cloth and marbled… Read More

New York: Bretano's; Doubleday; and F. Tennyson Neely, [1898 and 1899]. First Editions. Original Cloth and Original Wrappers. Very good +. TEMPORARILY DISCOUNTED. WAS $1,250. NOW $375. A Very Good copy of the TRUE FIRST AMERICAN Separate EDITION (a piracy) [1898] meeting all of the detailed bibliographic requirements of that edition, together with a Near Fine copy of the slightly later First Authorized American separate edition, the first having been published by Bretano's and the first Authorized separate edition published by Dana Estes and Company in 1898. The true first separate edition (which shows a closed tear to the outer margin of one page) precedes the first authorized one and is, in our experience, is -- by quite a bit -- the scarcer of the two. This copy is the first of multiple undated editions of the tale published by Bretano's (of which we have seen several for sale with the same outer appearance but which are not the true first separate American edition), -- with this… Read More

Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, [Undated]. [Edition Unstated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. A Very Good copy of the undated Alta edition of this famous work issued by Porter & Coates. The binding is in Very Good or better condition and shows minor rubbing to the spine ends and to each board's leading corners. The first (rear) free endpaper shows damage near the gutter. While undated, the front free endpaper bears a presentation inscription dated 1892 (as well as and prior seller's price in pencil). First published in 1857, the tale, set in the 1830s tells of Rugby School, an English boys school, with much of it centered on the author's experiences there, with the Tom Brown character being based on the author's brother, George Hughes. The volume is illustrated by a frontispiece, decorative initial chapter letters, and fancy illustrations at the end of each chapters, was the basis for the a number of television and film productions, and influenced the genre of British school novels. The… Read More

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1901. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good. A Very Good copy of the first edition, first printing in the Publisher's original boards (the leading edge of which show some lightening), with each volume wearing the QUITE SCARCE DUST JACKET (each of which shows edgewear and loss), being the only jacketed set we have seen. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was a leading English Biologist and anthropologist who specialized in comparative anatomy. He was seen as an intellectual powerhouse and pugnacious and unyielding debater and was such a strong advocate of Darwin's theory of evolution that he was frequently described as "Darwin's Bulldog". Copies of this work in the original dust jackets are quite difficult to find. SCARCE INDEED.

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1989. First Editions. Hardcover. Fine/very good +. A Fine copy of the first edition, first printing in a Fine dust jacket, SIGNED BY TOM CLANCY on the half-title, TOGETHER WITH AN ORIGINAL SIGNED LETTER FROM TOM CLANCY TO THE WIDOW OF JOHN BALL TO WHOM THIS BOOK WAS DEDICATED. The letter is in excellent condition and shows two horizontal folds for mailing and some slight bending to its upper left corner. The book itself is sharp, unfaded, with bright gilt lettering and is without the concavity to the spine that plagues most copies and the dust jacket has only modest bits of loss to the laminate (another matter that we frequently have seen on this dust jacket) and some wear to the extremities at the spine ends and to the edges where the spine turns to each flap. [In spite of such small flaws, this is otherwise easily the nicest example of the dust jacket that we ever have seen. The book's first edition was published both in a silver jacket and in a bronze jacket,… Read More