Search Results: Titles starting with N from Honey & Wax Booksellers

London: William Heinemann, 1930. First edition, in the first state dust jacket, of Graham Greene's elusive second novel. After the success of his 1929 debut The Man Within, Greene was given an unusually large advance to write The Name of Action, which introduces key elements of his later work: espionage, revolution, a doomed love story. In this case, a callow young Englishman's plot to overthrow the German dictator is complicated by his infatuation with the man's wife: "'Mr. Chant, of - of South-West London -- offering the post of mistress to the wife of the Dictator of Trier. Doesn't it strike you as amusing - as,' she added fiercely, 'impertinent?'" A critical and commercial disappointment, The Name of Action was a source of embarrassment to Greene, who suppressed further publication: "I was trying to write my first political novel, knowing nothing of politics." A near-fine copy of a scarce book, in a remarkably fresh jacket. Single volume, measuring 7.25 x 4.5 inches: [8], 344. Original navy blue… Read More

Boston: E.G. House, for the Author, 1817. First edition of Massachusetts sea captain Amasa Delano's account of his voyages between 1790 and 1810, covering the Hawaiian, "Pelew," and Galapagos islands; Manila, Canton and Macao; New Guinea, Australia, and the East Indies; and Chile and Peru. Delano's narrative is best remembered for his account of the capture of the Spanish ship Tryal off the coast of Chile, the inspiration for Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, in which an unsuspecting American captain boards a moored ship in the middle of a slave revolt, misinterpreting every action he witnesses. In Delano's original account: "the negro, who kept constantly at the elbows of Don Benito and myself, I should, at any other time, have immediately resented. . . . the Spanish sailors were then seen jumping overboard and making for our boat." This copy bears the ownership signature of fellow sea captain Edmund Fanning, "the Pathfinder of the Pacific," a native of Connecticut who set sail in 1792 for the South… Read More

London: Novello and Company, 1870. First edition of this collection of fifty-four traditional English nursery rhymes and songs, set to original music by J.W. Elliott and illustrated with wood engravings by the Brothers Dalziel. Featured rhymes include "Jack and Jill," "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," "Little Bo-Peep," "Little Jack Horner," "Humpty Dumpty," "Simple Simon," "Sing a Song of Sixpence," "Taffy Was a Welshman," "Georgie Porgie," and "The Death and Burial of Cock Robin." The publisher's preface notes that "among the old favourites a few new aspirants to popularity will be found; but it is hoped that their presence will be considered an additional attraction, and in no way lessen the pretensions of the present volume to be considered a compendium of National Nursery Rhymes." See Goldman, Victorian Illustrated Books 1850-1870, 235. A very good example of popular Victorian song and illustration. Single volume, measuring 10.25 x 7.25 inches: [8], 111, [1]. Original… Read More

London: Printed by G.P. for William Cooke [but privately printed by J. Moyes for Amos Strettell], 1820. Publisher's presentation copy of this nineteenth-century reissue of Martin Parker's 1632 ballad of Philomela, inspired by Book Six of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Parker was a prolific balladeer under Charles I, publishing popular broadsides and chapbooks, with a penchant for "moralistic tales of inconstant men and long-suffering or patient women" (ODNB). Styling himself "the Nightingale's Secretary," Martin tells the story of Philomela's rape, mutilation, and revenge from her own perspective: "Then let your minds suppose that you doe heare / A virgin ravish and depriv'd of tongue, / For so the nightingale that sings so cleare, / Was once, as Ovid long agoe hath sung." By the early nineteenth century, only one copy of Parker's 1632 first edition was known to survive, in the possession of book collector Amos Strettell, who arranged for the printing of this type facsimile in an edition of 27 copies.… Read More

[San Francisco]: Imagerie Pellerin Épinal (An Intrinsics Production), 1964. Oversized psychedelic reproduction of a nineteenth-century Épinal construction print, the first in a series of six European architectural models produced in San Francisco in the 1960s. In 1796, Jean-Charles Pellerin founded a workshop in the French town of Épinal, turning out inexpensive, hand-colored woodcuts of Catholic saints, Napoleonic battles, and storybook characters. By the end of the nineteenth century, lithography had emerged as the preferred process for Épinal prints, and the range of subjects had greatly expanded. One popular genre was the construction print, providing generations of French children with do-it-yourself toy models of architectural landmarks. This eye-popping modern series of lithographs reproduces six historic Épinal construction prints on a poster-sized scale, the images reimagined in the fluorescent Day-Glo colorways of the mid-1960s. The complete series includes: 1) the New Town Hall in… Read More