Rare books from Heldfond Book Gallery, ABAA-ILAB

1932. 1934.1942. (1) in plain red boards. Illustrated with a small gravure of the author. 24mo. (2) in pictorial printed red boards. Faint RAC shield embossing to front cover. Various official stamps to internals. Handwritten bibliography in rear pocket. 12mo. (3) in titled blue cloth. Ruled pages as per contemporary log type. 8vo. Privileged and refined from the Oxbridge mill house, Sgt. G.S. Standring was typical of many pilots who fought the Battle of Britain. The three items herein presented composite to a brief tale of a young fellow caught up in the hurricane of history. In item (1) we see Standring was issued his Driver's Certificate from the Royal Automobile Club - Pall Mall - in December 1932. His photo accompanies this document. Item (2) presents his service record noting in great detail his 1934 enlistment, training and service with the prestigious Royal Horse Guards of the Household Cavalry - the renowned " Blues " - based at Combermere Barracks , Windsor. This… Read More

New York. E.P Dutton and Co. 1928. Bound in half green cloth and decorated yellow pictorial paper over boards. Square 8vo. This edition on large paper is limited to 250 numbered and signed copies of which this is number 19. Signed in ink by Milne and Shepard on the limitation page. Illustrated with drawings and decorations by E.H Shepard. Several small light specks of foxing to front and rear paper covered boards. Usual light discoloration to front and rear pastedown from binding process. Small previous owners bookplate to front free endsheet. Some light needle thin patches of foxing encroaching onto the yellow papered board from just beneath the edge of the front pastedown. Book is wrapped in original glassine, which shows 4 or 5 pin sized specks of foxing and housed in publishers original pictorial slipcase which is somewhat darkened along edges with scattered foxing inside. A Lovely copy of this most rare signed edition.

July 1938 - November 1940. Approx. 150 pages. Square 8vo. Titled blue cloth over boards. Ruled pages as per contemporary log type. Various official stamps to internals. Manuscript in holograph.  The keeper of this precision crafted log remains excruciatingly hidden in his 150 page memoir of war. The reader should not expect to find him anywhere but in the hard tack data and details he so fastidiously records. He was a young man at a tremendous moment. One of many who became known as " the few ". His log breaks history down to numbers and aircraft types and operational duties. The machinery of the Battle of Britain squeezed into columns. He remains anonymous to us - like the wizard behind the curtain. What we know of Sgt. Stedman begins in January 1938 with his first training flights in Tiger Moths. Precisely detailed in wonderful hand, he records months of continued training with specific detail given to Exercise and Duty Results. Quite notable is the progression of planes mastered… Read More

Paris. Moreau Librairie D'art Industriel. 1925. Plates are laid-in to a highly stylized pictorial paper over boards string tied portfolio. Covers printed in red and black in a fabulously intense Art Deco design. Oblong small folio (13.5" x 10"). First Edition. Illustrated with 60 loose full page monochrome photographic plates of Art Deco Parisian store front facades and interiors. Includes 4 page Table Des Planches. Complete as issued. An exquisite collection of detailed photographs depicting Paris at the zenith of the Art Deco era. Magnificently evocative representations of Deco architecture and interiors for a diverse variety of Parisian Cafe's, Parfumeries, Bars, Curiosity Shops, Clothing Stores, Patisseries, Clubs, etc. A true treasure trove of deco Paris between-the-wars. Covers lightly rubbed, particularly at bottom edge. Spine lightly rubbed with some neat but obvious restoration to cloth at hinges. Tiny pinhead sized paint fleck to front cover. Corners bumped. Plates are… Read More

New York and London. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1902. Handsomely bound in elaborately gilt tooled and titled 3/4 gilt ruled vellum and grey paper over boards. Vellum tips. t.e.g. This set encased in the rare original publishers imprinted dustwrappers. Thick 8vo (6.25" x 9"). The Book-Lover's Camden Edition. This edition of The Complete Works of Walt Whitman is Limited to 500 Numbered sets, of which this is number 242. Edition number stipple to limitation page as required. Illustrated by a photogravure frontis to each volume and further by tissue-guarded full page mounted photogravures throughout. This rare and important set was issued under the editorial supervision of Whitman's Literary Executors. Also contains additional bibliographical and critical material prepared by Oscar lovell Triggs. Previous owners small and attractive bookplate to front pastedowns. Small circular burn mark (4mm) to front of dustwrapper and front board of one volume (innocuous). Some very mild scattered foxing to prelims. A Fine,… Read More

New York. The Macmillan Company 1907. Bound in pictorial decorated brown buckram 8vo. First Edition.This copy inscribed boldly in ink by Jack London to his Sister, Ida London Byrne and his Brother-In-Law Jack on the Front free endsheet In a strong,broad hand requiring the majority of the Front Free Endsheet, London writes :"Dear Ida & Jack- With love and lots off (sic) it from your brother, Jack London. Oakland, Calif. April 17,1907 " A most ironic spelling error ( "off for "of " )by one of history's great writers !Accompanying this volume is a postcard loosely laid-in. The front of the postcard is a photograph of Jack and Charmian London outside their home ( Wake Robin Lodge) in Glen Ellen.Portions of the rear of the card present old scrapbook adhesive remnants which obscure portions of the postmark and stamp as well as the address and message. Postmarked Oakland, January 1913 ( day obscured ) it is addressed to Mrs. Alice shade in San Francisco.… Read More

New York. Limited Editions Club. 2005. Bound in full crimson cloth over boards. Gilt-titled grain morocco label inset to front cover. Encased in like covered Solander box with gilt-titled grain morocco label inset to spine. Elephant Folio. 17" x 22". This Edition Limited to 300 numbered copies of which this is #24. Signed by Benny Andrews to Colophon. Illustrated with six original colour etchings by Benny Andrews, hand printed on BFK Rives by Peter Pettengill Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of short stories written by Flannery O'Connor during her final illness. The title of the collection and of the short story is taken from a passage from the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The collection was published posthumously in 1965.Just one year before her death in 1963, Flannery O’Connor won her second O. Henry Award for ‘‘Everything That Rises Must Converge,’’ a powerful depiction of a troubled mother-son relationship. In 1965 the… Read More

New York. George D. Sproul Company. 1902. Lavishly bound in Publisher's Deluxe custom, 3/4 burgundy crushed morocco and marbled boards. Gilt-tooled spine compartments with fleural motifs.Gilt-tooled raised bands. Marbled endsheets. t.e.g. 8vo. 5.5" x *.25". The Monticello Edition. This Edition Limited to only 1000 numbered sets of which this is #330. Illustrated throughout with delightful, tissue-guarded monochrome plates Editied by renowned Poe scholar James A. Harrison, the Monticello Edition of Poe's Works is one of the scarcest of early compilations, with no complete set appearing at auction in more than thirty years.The 17 Volumes are comprised of: Tales, Poems, Biography, Literary Criticism, Essays, Miscellanies, Literati, Autography, Marginalia, Eureka and Letters. Spines delicately and evenly sunned with first 2 volumes slightly less so. A number of volumes uncut. A Fine, greatly appealing, very rare set.

London. The Shakespeare Press, by W. Nichol, for John Major, Fleet-Street. 1828. Lavishly bound in full scarlet tri-gilt ruled straight grain morocco. Gilt-ruled spine compartments with ornate gilt-tooled fleural motifs. Gilt-ruled raised bands. Gilt titles. Exceptionally ornate gilt-tooled Inner Dentelles. Marbled endsheets. t.e.g. 4to. 6.5" x 10.0". Illustrated throughout with full page Copper Plate Engravings. The most authoritative work on early English painting, here presented in a most breathtaking binding. Very Fine flawless set.

Berlin. Frensel Und Engelbrecher. 1931-1934. Bound in pictorial wrappers. 4to. 9.25" x 12.25 Profusely illustrated throughout by chromolithographs, colour and monochrome plates - many tipped-in, illustrations en texte, drawings,die cuts, etc. reproducing period advertising from a myriad of international sources. " Gebrauchsgraphik, Monatschrift zur Förderung künst-lerischer Reklame (Commercial Graphics, Monthly Magazine for Promoting Art in Advertising), which was published in Berlin from 1924 until 1944, was the leading voice of the Avant-Garde influence on the European Commercial Art and Advertising industries before World War II. In the thirties, all roads led through Berlin, and Gebrauchsgraphik spotlighted all of the aesthetic trends fermenting in Europe -- Art Deco and Surrealism from Paris, Constructivism from Moscow, Futurist Fascism from Rome, De Stijl and Dutch typography from Amsterdam, and of course the spreading influence of the Dessau Bauhaus. A journal that was… Read More

Chicago. C.J. Howard. 1927. Collection is contained in original imprinted cardboard C.J. Howard packaging box. 7"x4.75" when closed (horizontal folding card).7"x9.5" when opened. Each card presents a striking Art Deco multicolored lithograph and various coloured borders and decorations printed upon folded heavy card stock. Early in the 1920s Charles Mather, who worked for his family’s Chicago printing house, the Mather Company, took an idea brought to him by one of the firm’s salesmen, Charles Howard Rosenfeld. What Rosenfeld proposed was a series of posters whose focus was to give workers incentive to work better and to work harder. Mather called these prints, “Constructive Organization Posters.” These posters were made to be placed on office and factory walls and were expected to inspire workers to do their best. Mather sold his posters by subscription and produced more than 300 varieties between 1923 and 1929.In 1925 Rosenfeld and another employee… Read More

New York. Alfred A. Knopf. 1930. Extravagantly bound in full, gilt ruled ebony Morocco by Zahensdorf for Asprey of London. gilt-ruled spine compartments with gilt titles. Gilt-tooled raised bands, head and tailpieces. Extremely elaborate fleural turn-ins. Marbled endsheets. All edges gilded. 8vo.(5"x7.5"). The First Printing of The First Edition. Innocuous tiny patch of rubbing to front cover, else a Very Fine, flawless, exquisitely bound copy of perhaps the most significant work of American Crime Fiction.

Boston. Roberts Brothers. 1885-1890. Bound in High Victorian, gilt titled, pictorial decorated cloth over boards.Blind embossed branch design to covers. Gilt Title panels with elaborate gilt and red fleurettes to spines.Decorative endsheets in green cloth, 2 in brown cloth. 12mo. (4.5"x6.5) Later Printings. Illustrated throughout with full page monochrome plates after engravings. A set of 7 Alcott novels in very attractive Victorian bindings. The set is comprised of: Little Women, Little Men (2 copies),Rose In Bloom, Jack and Jill,Old-Fashioned Girl,Jo's Boys. Laid down on the front paste-down of Little Women is a white card, cut to cover proportion, which bears Alcott's signature ( L.M. Alcott) in ink. Beneath her signature,Alcott has inscribed the names of the novel's characters -"Meg Jo Beth Amy Teddy & Jo". A very rare and unique inscription by one of America's most notable authors. All books are in Very Good condition with tight bindings which present various… Read More

New York. Halcyon House. 1940. Bound in gilt titled green cloth over boards. Thick 8vo. 5.75" x 5.5 The Third Printing.This copy presents Frost's 4 line poem "Immigrants" inscribed boldly in ink and initialed by Frost on bound-in Front Free Endsheet. Additionally, this copy is inscribed,dated and signed in ink by Frost on bound-in title Page. Illustrated with a photographic Frontis of Robert Frost. Robert Lee Frost (1874 – 1963) was, arguably the most important but,certainly the most popular American poet of the 20th century."Although his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost was anything but a mere regional poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he was a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in… Read More

16 Radio Telegrams including detailed Action Reports, Tactical Operation Commands, Battle Assessments, Damage Reports, etc. spanning the full duration of The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 24 October - 28 October 1944. Imprinted upon wartime, U.S. Communication Service (USS Hector - 20M Sets) yellow onionskin paper. 8" x 6.5". 7 designated "Secret- Urgent", 4 designated "Operational Priority-Secret", 2 designated "Priority-Secret", 1 designated "Top Secret-Operational Priority", 1 designated "Secret-Op-Op-Op",1 designated "Routine-Confidential". TRANSCRIBED DESPATCHES#24031510/24/44 06;14From: CTF 77-(Vice-Admiral Kinkaid--7th Fleet - King II Attack Force)Action: CTG 77.2 - (Rear-Admiral Olendorf - Bombardment & Fire Support Group)CTF 78 - (Rear Admiral Barbey - Northern Attack Force)CTF 79 - (Vice-Admiral Wilkinson - Southern Attack Force)CTG… Read More