November 2009

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DESCRIPTIONS: every effort has been made to describe condition accurately and fully; price-clipping,
inscriptions, names etc. are always noted. Further details are available on request.
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Books and other items remain the property of Mark Sutcliffe, Ltd., until paid for in full.
Descriptions and images copyright © Mark Sutcliffe 2009.

	Ambler, Eric. CAUSE FOR ALARM. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938. First edition. Ambler, Eric. CAUSE FOR ALARM. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938. First edition. Very good in dust-wrapper (bump to lower right corner; cloth a little tanned and very slightly rubbed on edges; wrapper with wear to spine ends, small chips to the upper and lower left corners of the front panel not affecting any text or illustration, and with a few repaired closed tears, the longest of which, at the top right corner of the back panel, is about two inches long). 'Cause for Alarm' is Ambler's fourth great thriller, an uncommon title, especially scarce in the simple yet striking and atmospheric 'bullet-train' dust-wrapper illustrated by 'Thompson'; in our experience only the first two titles, 'The Dark Frontier' and 'Uncommon Danger', are harder to find. £2,000
	Amis, Kingsley. LUCKY JIM. London: Gollancz, 1953. First edition. No d/w. Near fine (front endpapers expertly replaced with vintage stock; two small dents to back board; slight spine fade; faint spotting to page edges and early pages). A sharp, square copy, hardly used, the corners strong, the spine still rounded, the pages clean and unmarked. £225
	Berkeley, Anthony. ROGER SHERRINGHAM AND THE VANE MYSTERY. London: Collins, 1927. First edition. No d/w. Very good (bright clean covers with faint marks to upper board; top edge dusty; foxing). According to Cooper and Pike, one of the author’s most difficult titles to find in a first edition. £195
	Berkeley, Anthony. NOT TO BE TAKEN. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938. First edition. Very good (faint foxing to front edge; tiny Cecil Court bookseller’s ticket to front free endpaper) in dust-wrapper (a few closed tears held on the verso with archival tissue tape; spine ends rubbed with small chips to corners; red spine lettering fading; a few creases; small marks to back panel). Uncommon in dust-wrapper. £695
	Carr, John Dickson. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS MURDER. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1936. First edition. No d/w. Very good (foxing, a few marks). £125
	Carr, John Dickson. THE MURDER OF SIR EDMUND GODFREY. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1936. First edition. No d/w. Very good or better (faint spotting to page edges, tiny bookseller's label to pastedown). £115
	Christie, Agatha. SAD CYPRESS. London: Collins Crime Club, 1940. First edition. Very good in price-clipped dust-wrapper (triangular patches of fading to foot of spine corresponding to chips on wrapper; small bookseller’s ticket to pastedown; one-inch-deep oblong cut from front free endpaper presumably to remove a name, short slit on page beneath repaired; minor foxing; a few closed tears and light wear to wrapper extremities). The chips to the foot of the wrapper spine just shave the edges of the ‘C’ and ‘B’ of ‘CLUB’. £750
	Christie, Agatha. FIVE LITTLE PIGS. London: Collins Crime Club, 1942. First edition. Very good (cloth a little dusty, fading and foxing to spine; bookplate to pastedown) in dust-wrapper (edge-wear, small corner chips, a few closed tears; lightly rubbed and worn). Faint mark around the ‘8/- net’ price on flap suggesting removal of a later price label. £250
	Cole, G.D.H. and M. MURDER AT THE MUNITIONS WORKS. Collins Crime Club, 1940. First edition. Near fine in price-clipped dust-wrapper (colour-fading to spine of book and wrapper; short closed tear to foot of front panel, back panel slightly dusty). An excellent copy of a very scarce title. £450
	Doyle, Arthur Conan. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. London: Newnes, 1902. First edition. No d/w. A well-used copy (covers worn and faded, hinges strengthened, replacement front free endpaper of vintage stock; institutional ownership stamp to front pastedown and title; pencilled previous owner’s name to half-title). The pages are in good, generally clean order, with a few corner creases and showing the occasional minor mark. Of the sixteen plates, one (p.118) is creased and marked around the edges and appears to have been trimmed slightly; and two (76 & 311) are supplied in facsimile. £350
	Doyle, Arthur Conan. HIS LAST BOW. London: John Murray, 1922. First edition, fifth impression (first cheap edition). Smaller format. About very good (old price removed from ffep) in edgeworn dust-wrapper (fingernail-size chips at spine ends not touching lettering, repaired closed tear to foot of spine). The wrapper carries the Abbey illustration of Holmes as per the first printing. £100
	Doyle, Arthur Conan. THE POEMS OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE – COLLECTED EDITION. London: John Murray, 1922. First edition. Green & Gibson A43. One of only 1,516 copies. Near fine (top edge a little dusty and marked) in a very good dust-wrapper (partial price cut from spine, although '7/6' remains to the front). Very scarce in the dust-wrapper. £295
	Fleming, Ian. OCTOPUSSY. London: Jonathan Cape, 1966. First edition. Fine in dust-wrapper (fading to spine background colour). Publisher’s later price sticker to front flap. A crisp, clean copy with a superb dust-wrapper. £95
	Freeman, R. Austin. DR. THORNDYKE INVESTIGATES. London: University of London Press, Ltd., 1930. First thus. No d/w. Collects ‘The Blue Sequin’, ‘The New Jersey Sphinx’, ‘The Magic Casket’. ‘The Pathologist to the Rescue’, and ‘The Touchstone’. Very good (top edge slightly dusty). Uncommon. £18
	Freeman, R. Austin. THE RED THUMB MARK. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1937. Later printing (first published by Collingwood in 1907, then by Hodder in 1911). Thick '3/6 net' octavo printing. Near fine (edges a little spotted) in dust-wrapper (a few minuscule nicks to edges). Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. £110
	Freeman, R. Austin. THE SINGING BONE. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931. Fifth printing. Thick '3/6 net' octavo printing. Near fine (edges a little spotted) in very good plus dust-wrapper (a few small corner chips and closed tears held on verso with archival tissue tape). Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. Uncommon in an early printing in dust-wrapper. £110
	Freeman, R. Austin. DR. THORNDYKE'S CASE-BOOK. London: Hodder and Stoughton, no date [1932]. Later printing. Thick '3/6 net' octavo. Near fine (edges a little spotted) in slightly dusty dust-wrapper (a few tiny nicks to corners). £65
	Freeman, R. Austin. THE MAGIC CASKET. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935. Fifth printing. Thick '3/6 net' octavo. Very good plus to near fine (offset fading to upper board, mark to fore-edge) in slightly dusty dust-wrapper. Scarce in wrapper. £65
	Freeman, R. Austin. A CERTAIN DR. THORNDYKE. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1944. Later printing. Very good plus to near fine (top edge spotted) in a very good dust-wrapper (small chips to corners). £25
	Freeman, R. Austin. MR. POTTERMACK'S OVERSIGHT. London: Hodder and Stoughton, no date [1932]. Later printing. Slightly smaller '2/- net' format. Very good plus to near fine (edges a little dusty and slightly spotted) in slightly dusty very good plus dust-wrapper (a few short closed tears held on the verso with archival tissue tape). £30
	Freeman, R. Austin. DR. THORNDYKE INTERVENES. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935. Later printing. Slightly smaller ‘2/- net’ format. Near fine in slightly dusty dust-wrapper. £30
	Freeman, R. Austin. THE PENROSE MYSTERY. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1937. Later printing. Slightly smaller '2/- net' format. Near fine (edges spotted) in slightly dusty dust-wrapper (small nicks to corners). Nice wrapper illustration by 'Thompson', with a small photograph of Freeman to the spine. £30
	Freeman, R. Austin. THE STONEWARE MONKEY. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1940. Later printing. Slightly smaller '2/- net' format. Near fine (edges spotted) in slightly dusty dust-wrapper (a few tiny closed tears). £30
	Gilbert, Michael. THE DOORS OPEN. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1949. First edition. Near very good in dust-wrapper (spotting to cloth edges and mark to upper board; mild stain to gutter of pages 78/79; wrapper with loss to head and tail of spine taking part of 'The' and most of publisher's imprint; paper repairs to extremities on verso). Wrapper artwork by Bip Pares. Very scarce. £150
	Hammett, Dashiell. RED HARVEST. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1943. First edition, sixth printing. Very good (small bumps to corners, pages tanned, previous owner’s details on pastedown) in dust-wrapper (some rubbing; internally lined with white paper). The spine and front panel artwork are as the Knopf first impression. £25
	Hammett, Dashiell. THE GLASS KEY. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, c.1935. First edition, presumed sixth printing (printed from the Knopf plates). This is a well-made early reprint, the cloth decoration as per the Knopf first, with the key and border to the front and the Art Deco diamond design to the spine, and the same spine and front panel jacket artwork (Clara Bow), albeit with highlights in red instead of green. Scarcer than the later Alan Ladd movie printing, and usually seen with the front-flap corners clipped and a silver bar printed at the bottom right corner of the front panel, this copy has both corners intact, the upper with the price of 75c, the lower with a note about being printed from the ‘original edition’ plates; and for the first time we see what lies beneath that silver bar at the lower right corner: ‘A Paramount Production / Starring George Raft’. Near fine in a very good dust-wrapper (small chips to foot of spine affecting part of publisher’s imprint; two-inch closed tear to lower left corner of front panel held on verso with old clear tape). Scarce in this first-state jacket with the price, printing statement and George Raft note intact. £100
	Hammett, Dashiell. THE GLASS KEY. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, c.1942. First edition, reprint. A reprint of the Photoplay edition. Inscribed on the front free endpaper by Alan Ladd, who played Ned Beaumont in the 1942 movie: "To Rita / Remembering / your interest - / Thanks / Alan Ladd / July 22 / 1945." Very good (pages browned) in dust-wrapper (chips to top edges of front and back panels and spine corners, but with no loss of lettering apart from the top of the word 'The' on the front). Rare inscribed by Ladd, this being the only example we have seen. £450
	(Hammett, Dashiell) DASHIELL HAMMETT: A DESCRIPTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979. First edition. No d/w, as issued. Review copy, with slip giving publication date of August 24, 1979 and price of $17.50. Fine (upper front corner tips very slightly pushed). With many black-and-white illustrations of first edition jackets. Also covers first appearances in periodicals and newspapers; radio and television plays based on Hammett’s work; movies and syndicated works. Essential reference. £50
	Irish, William (pseu. of Cornell Woolrich). THE DANCING DETECTIVE. London: Robert Hale, no date [1948]. First British edition. Narrowly missing inclusion in Queen’s Quorum, the editors instead choosing ‘After-Dinner Story’ but calling ‘The Dancing Detective’ ‘equally brilliant’. One of the stories, ‘Two Fellows in a Furnished Room’, was filmed in 1947 as ‘The Guilty’ (see Kevin Johnson’s ‘The Dark Page: Books that inspired American Film Noir’). The earlier American edition is not uncommon, but the British edition is scarce, especially in anything approaching collectable condition. Ours is near fine in a near very good example of the extremely thin and fragile dust-wrapper (some creasing and closed tears held on verso with archival tissue tape; a few chips including a medium-sized one at the top left of the spine but only white paper loss). There is a publisher’s lower price sticker over the original on the flap. £125
	King, C. Daly. BEYOND BEHAVIOURISM by 'Robert Courtney'. New York: Grant Publications, 1927. First edition. King's first book, published pseudonymously before he gained his Masters Degree in Psychology from Columbia University, and pre-dating 'Obelists at Sea' by five years. 'Beyond Behaviourism' offers a 'bird's-eye view of the principal schools of psychology' including Gurdjieff, Orage and William James and, as such, provides interesting reading for students of King's detective novels, which featured the integrative psychologist, 'Dr. L. Rees Pons'. Near fine in a very good dust-wrapper (contemporary gift inscription to ffep; wrapper with slightly rubbed spine, surface loss to a small area of the back panel losing four or five words, small chips to corners and spine ends, and a few closed tears held internally with archival tissue tape). A very scarce title, rare in dust-wrapper. £175
	Lorac, E.C.R. POST AFTER POST-MORTEM. London: Collins Crime Club, 1936. First edition, first issue wrapper on a second impression book (same month as the first). Wrapper is superb, unrestored and near fine (slight rubbing to spine ends and barely visible crease to spine), book is only good plus (endpapers replaced, marks and stains to some pages and page edges, cloth somewhat dusty). The wrapper is price-clipped, probably by the publisher: when first acquired by us it carried a publisher's lower-price sticker (which we subsequently had removed, without damage). Whilst book and wrapper were purchased by us together, they have obviously been married, a previous owner presumably settling for a second printing book in order that the rather superb wrapper could be displayed on the shelf. We ourselves have thus far been unable to find a first printing, hence our offering the item 'as is'. The photographic illustration to the front and spine is one of the iconic images of 1930s detective fiction. A first of the book will set you back between £100 and £200, so we price this item accordingly. Rare. £2,000
	Milne, A.A. WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG. London: Methuen, 1924. First edition. Contents page numbered. Near very good in dust-wrapper (cloth a little dull and dusty and rubbed at extremities; previous owner’s 1934 inscription to front free endpaper; three oval stamps of Poltimore College Library but none of the usual signs of library usage; on close examination p.51 shows some dulling to the paper where a child’s scribbling has been removed; the wrapper with a crease to the lower right corner of the front panel and small chips to the spine ends taking part of ‘When’). The scarcest of the four Pooh books with only 4,500 copies printed. £2,500
	Scarce early wrapper Reeve, Arthur B. THE EXPLOITS OF ELAINE, 'The Famous Craig Kennedy Clutching Hand Novel'. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915. First British edition in the RARE dust-wrapper, correctly priced at '1/- net'. Very good (cheap paper tanned at edges, lower corners bumped) in slightly dusty dust-wrapper (medium chip to foot of front panel; smaller chips at corners). A hugely popular and successful author in his day, Reeve wrote many silent movie scripts featuring his heroine, Elaine and her constant rescuer, Craig Kennedy. £140
	[Rock Music] Clapton, Eric. BLUESBREAKERS SESSION by David Wedgbury. London. Photograph no. 5 from a limited edition of 150 prints of 7"x 7" image size/10" x 8" paper size. The iconic image from the back sleeve of the 1966 Bluesbreakers album, showing Clapton tuning his Les Paul, his Marshall amplifier in the background, a combination that inspired a generation of guitarists and shaped the sound of modern rock and pop music. Produced from the original negative, the white space below the image carrying the limitation number and circular blind-stamp 'The Not Fade Away Archive / Photographs By / David Wedgbury'. £75
	[Rock Music] Clapton, Eric. ERIC CLAPTON: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. London: Century, 2007. First edition, this being copy number 4 from the limited edition of only 1,000 signed by Eric Clapton, issued without dust-wrapper in a custom slip-case designed to resemble a Fender Twin amplifier. Fine (unread) in slipcase (if I'm being very picky there's a small dint to the front free endpaper and next page, a tiny scrape to the fore-edge, probably from production, and a minute rub to the lower right corner of the case, but most of the two-dozen or so others we've seen have all had similarly tiny flaws). Clapton is one of the most influential, revered and iconic musicians of the last century, and, like Elvis, Hendrix and The Beatles, his status at the pinnacle of popular music and culture is assured. For these 1,000 special copies of the autobiography, the initial re-sale market, perhaps inevitably, was eBay, where even high-numbered examples sold for between £250 and £400. We ourselves handled around ten copies which we sold in that range. Supply appears to be drying up; the pass-the-parcel exercise has run its course and the books are finding themselves in private collections and on the shelves of investors. Clapton himself is the owner of copy number 1; numbers 2 and 3 will probably be in similarly important hands. The present example, number 4, is almost certainly the lowest and therefore most desirable copy one can reasonably hope to obtain (we can't recall seeing any others even below 100 let alone in single digits). £1,250
	Stevenson, Robert Louis. A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES. London: Longmans Green, 1895. First edition, second impression (but states 'Second Edition' on title). No d/w. Foxed, endpapers browned, marks to cloth. Near very good. £45
	Taylor, G.P. SHADOWMANCER. Four items: (1) SHADOWMANCER. Scarborough: Mount Publishing, 2002. First edition. Paperback original. Very good (a few marks to page edges, slightly bumped but no creasing to spine). One of only 2,500 copies printed. (2) SHADOWMANCER. London: Faber & Faber, 2003. Second edition, being the first Faber printing. Paperback original. Fine. Signed by G.P. Taylor to the title page. (3) SHADOWMANCER. London: Faber & Faber, 2003. Bookmark. Fine. Signed by G.P. Taylor. This appears to be a pre-publication promotional item, stating, 'Available from 21/6/2003'. (4) SHADOWMANCER. London: Faber & Faber, 2003. Map of key locations. Fine. Signed by G.P. Taylor. Stiff card. The four items: £175
	Taylor, Phoebe Atwood. SANDBAR SINISTER. London: Gollancz, 1936. First edition. Very good in d/w (front endpaper neatly replaced; wrapper missing two-inch piece at head of spine and with a long closed tear to the left edge of the front panel, held on the verso with archival tissue tape). Taylor's Gollancz titles are extremely scarce, this being the first I have handled. £120
	Tolkien, J.R.R. A MIDDLE ENGLISH VOCABULARY. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1922. First edition, early issue (184 ornaments in front-panel border; undated ads to back; 'Printed in England' at foot of title page. Near very good (spine worn, lacking lower quarter taking part of title; Rugby School ownership plate to inside front wrapper). £175
	Tolkien, J.R.R. THE LORD OF THE RINGS. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966, 1967. Second edition, first printings in first state wrappers (all points correct, including overstamped titles on flaps). Overall, a very good set (name and inscription to first two volumes; some rubbing and small chips to wrappers; staining to back panel of Two Towers wrapper). £175
	Walters, Minette. THE ICE HOUSE. London: Macmillan, 1992. First edition. Near fine (faint mark to upper board; page edges slightly tanned and showing a few tiny foxing spots) in dust-wrapper (faint creasing to lower edge of back panel; slight foxing to very top edge of flaps). A clean, attractive copy. £195

 

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