Search Results: Authors starting with L from Bernard Quaritch Ltd

Two vols, 8vo, pp. viii, 416, [2]; [iv], 464, vi, [2]; vol. 2 has two quires on light blue paper; occasional light foxing, a little light damp staining to the upper margins in vol. 2, small loss to blank margin at foot of final errata leaf in vol. 1; a good copy in near contemporary calf, gilt decoration and contrasting lettering-pieces to spines, marbled endpapers, joints a little worn but holding firm, abrasions and small losses to covers.
Uncommon first edition of La Salle's wide-ranging work in which he examines, inter alia, understanding, learning, reasoning, syllogism, the Baconian method, asking and answering questions, physiognomy, qualities of character, and eloquence. Having travelled widely in his youth – to Newfoundland, Africa, China, and India – La Salle (1754-1829) settled in Paris to devote himself to metaphysics, publishing Le désordre régulier (1786) and La balance naturelle (1788) before this work. After a period of exile in Italy writing against the French Revolution, he… Read More

Six volumes, 12mo, pp. pp. xvi, 501 [1]; viii, 476 [2]; [4] 383 [1]; viii, 460; [8] 399 [9] (including 4 pp. publisher's ads.); [4] 420; some browning in places, but otherwise clean and fresh; in contemporary calf, spines gilt in compartments with gilt-lettered morocco labels; some wear, but still an attractive copy, with presentation inscription to front free endpaper of volume I: "Ce livre a été donné a Francoise Arnaud sourde et muette de naissance pour recompense d'un exercice qu'elle a faiten francois, en latin, en Italian et en Espagnol sur le sacrement de confirmation. à Paris ce 8e Juillet 1772. De L'Epée Prêtre". First edition of this extensive work of meditations by the Jansenist Nicolas Le Gros (1675–1751), who had been a canon of Rheims Cathedral but became an exile in Holland and a member of the schismatic Church of Utrecht. A set of meditations just on the epistles of St. Peter had been published in 1736. The set was given as a school prize, 8 July 1772, by the pioneer in deaf… Read More

First edition of this collection of chronicles, covering sixteen hundred years of world history from the birth of Christ to its publication, composed by the ecclesiastical historian Aubert le Mire of Brussels, this copy from the library of Jacques Auguste de Thou.
The volume opens with Eusebius of Caesarea's chronicle to the year 329 AD, with St Jerome's supplement to 381. This is followed by Sigebert of Gembloux's medieval Chronicon covering the period between 381 and 1112, with additions up to the year 1225 by Anselm of Gembloux and others. The final part comprises Le Mire's own chronicle ('ex vetustis scriptoribus') from 1200 to 1608, ending with an index directing the reader to passages relating to, for example, Jerusalem and Rhodes, numerous emperors, kings and popes, religious and military orders, plagues and earthquakes, and the invention of printing, which is discussed at length under the year 1440. A pupil of Justus Lipsius, Le Mire (1573–1640) enjoyed a successful ecclesiastical and… Read More

First edition, no. 74 of 225 copies of the special edition, signed by Lewis, additionally inscribed, in c. 1951, 'To Geoffrey Bridson (through whom I am enabled to finish this book) – deepest thanks and friendliest greetings / Wyndham Lewis'.'In 1921 Lewis had embarked on another ambitious project, a Rabelaisian fictional anatomy of postwar Britain.' The first portion 'finally and circuitously achieved publication at the end of the decade: The Childermass (1928), a work of theological science fiction set in an encampment of the dead on the banks of the River Styx' (Trotter).When D. G. Bridson first read The Childermass in 1932, he had concluded that 'the setting of the drama is only to be seen convincingly in the imagination. It was that fact, when I reread The Childermass in 1950, that had assured me it would make magnificent radio'. The radio production of 1951 was the genesis of his friendship with Lewis, and their collaboration in turn enabled Lewis to finish the remaining two parts of what… Read More

First edition, inscribed 'To Geoffrey Bridson – you who did so much to make the completion of this book possible, and who was chiefly responsible for its translation into Radio drama – I salute you. / Wyndham Lewis'. After the broadcast of Bridson's production of The Childermass (1928) on 18 June 1951, the BBC commissioned Lewis to complete the trilogy 'on the condition that when they were finished similar broadcast dramatizations would precede book publication. As a result of this sponsorship – largely the work of B.B.C. producer D. G. Bridson – Lewis was able to write Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta' (Morrow & Lafourcade). When the two novels had been completed, 'a set of the galley proofs was then made over to me, and I sketched out what had to be done. Briefly, this was a matter of writing additional scenes which would be necessary to bridge the gaps left by cutting such a lengthy work. The extra scenes were written by me along the lines that I had indicated, and the whole was trimmed… Read More

First edition, inscribed 'To Geoffrey / my best copy / Wyndham'. Lewis breaks here with abstraction in the arts, naming Michael Ayrton, Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Ceri Richards and others as 'the finest group of painters and sculptors which England has ever known'. Ayrton collaborated on many illustrations and dust-jacket designs after Lewis lost his sight.Pound & Grover A39; Morrow & Lafourcade A39a.

First English edition, one of Lewis's scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction). Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published in book form in New York. Of the 1518 copies printed only 411 had sold by the time Chatto and Windus faced two separate suits for libel, from Godfrey Winn and Alec Waugh (author of The Loom of Youth; his brother Evelyn, also satirised, took his charges on the chin). Lewis's publishers were already annoyed with him for his failure to provide them with the sequels to The Childermass, and avoided legal proceedings by withdrawing the book, returning 138 copies to Lewis and pulping 968. It was the last book he published with Chatto. 1932 was to prove an annus horribilis for Lewis, this the first of three books to be withdrawn from the market. See Bridson, The Filibuster, 'Thou Hast Robbed Me of My Youth', pp. 120–139.… Read More

8vo, pp. [xvi], 234, [10]; author's name stated at end of preface; occasional very light browning or spotting, some very discrete modern pencil annotations and corrections in Italian and English; contemporary mottled calf, gilt panelled spine decorated in compartments, gilt lettering-piece, all edges sprinkled in blue; joints cracked but holding, slight loss to spine ends and to gilt lettering-piece, spine somewhat worn, a few worm-holes affecting only the margins of marbled end-papers; a good copy of a scarce book. 8vo, pp. [xvi], 234, [10]; author's name stated at end of preface; occasional very light browning or spotting, some very discrete modern pencil annotations and corrections in Italian and English; contemporary mottled calf, gilt panelled spine decorated in compartments, gilt lettering-piece, all edges sprinkled in blue; joints cracked but holding, slight loss to spine ends and to gilt lettering-piece, spine somewhat worn, a few worm-holes affecting only the margins of marbled end-papers; a… Read More

A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784). Born at Haarlem in the Netherlands, Loo spent most of his life in his native city where he was registered with the Painters Guild as a 'painter of flowers'. He is perhaps best known for his watercolours of hyacinths, a collection of which – entitled 'Choix de Jacintes' and comprising thirteen images by Loo and Cornelis van Noorde painted between 1765 and 1769 – is preserved at the Oak Spring Garden Library in Virginia. The vibrantly coloured and beautifully executed images here run in more or less alphabetical order from 'l'Asther à fleur blanche' to 'la Gimauve' in volume 1, and from 'Hépatique' to 'Verveine' in volume 2, each set neatly within a ruled frame, through which they occasionally burst – as in the case of 'Chelidoine de l'Amerique' for example – with considerable exuberance. Of particular note in the first volume… Read More

[with:]—. The Tribes of the Upper Xingú River. Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1948. [and:]—. The Nambicuara. Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1948. [and:]—. Tribes of the Right Bank of the Guaporé River. Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1948. A set of offprints of four articles by Lévi-Strauss from the Smithsonian's Handbook of South American Indians, inscribed by the author. In each article Claude Lévy-Strauss (1908–2009) provides an illustrated introduction to an Amazonian group, recording their history, social and political customs, religion, dress, food, and manufacture, as well as critically discussing earlier anthropological accounts. In exploring familial and marital structures, the articles are important texts in the development of Lévy-Strauss's structural anthropology.4 works, 8vo, pp. 1: [2], 299-305, [1 (blank)], pll. 24-26, 2: [2], 321-348, pll. 27-34, 3:[2], 361-369, [1 (blank)], pll. 36-37, 4:… Read More