Three Years Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China,: including a visit to the tea, silk and cotton countries: with an account of the agriculture and horticulture of the Chinese, new plants, etc. by Fortune, Robert - 1847

FIRST EDITION, THIRD PRINTING. RARE SIGNED BY AUTHOR with personal note: "for Jack Beahan from Michael and all best from Michael's colleagues - John McPhee". Jack Beahan was editor of local Winter Haven, FL newspaper and met McPhee and was a great fan of the author's non-fiction. (Michael was Jack's nephew). This book is first part of of McPhee's Pulitzer-prize-winning "Annals of the Former World."

Tan leather binding with red title plate, gilt banding and lettering on the spine.
The Man of Feeling is a sentimental novel published in 1771, written by Scottish author Henry Mackenzie. The novel presents a series of moral vignettes which the naïve protagonist Harley either observes, is told about, or participates in. This novel is often seen to contain elements of the Romantic novel, which became prolific in the years following its publishing. The Man of Feeling, Mackenzie's first and most famous novel, was begun in London in 1767. It was published in April 1771, sold out by the beginning of June, and reached its sixth edition by 1791. Mackenzie wrote The Man of Feeling in the latter half of the eighteenth century, by the end of which the concept of sentimentalism had steadily become merely laughable and entertaining. An 'Index to Tears', which was first included in the 1886 edition of The Man of Feeling edited by Professor Henry Morley, indicates how the "repertory of sentimental effects...has… Read More

Leather binding with gilt title and decoration on the spine.
The first three volumes of Theobald's great work Theobald's fame and contribution to English letters rests with his 1726 Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this poet; designed not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever published. Theobald's 1733 Shakespeare edition was far the best produced before 1750, and it has been the cornerstone of all subsequent editions. Theobald not only corrected variants but chose among best texts and undid many of the changes to the text that had been made by earlier 18th century editors. Edmond Malone's later edition (the standard from which modern editor's act) was built on Theobald's.
Lewis Theobald (baptised 2 April 1688 – 18 September 1744), British textual editor and author, was a landmark figure both in the history of Shakespearean editing and in literary… Read More

Beige cloth binding with title and coloured child pictures on the front board. Similar on the spine.
This edition has unique colour illustrations by Margaret Winifred Tarrant The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862–63 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863. It was written as part satire in support of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species. The book was extremely popular in the United Kingdom and was a mainstay of British children's literature for many decades, but eventually fell out of favour in America in part due to its claimed prejudices against Irish, Jews, Catholics and Americans. The story: The protagonist is Tom, a young chimney sweep, who falls into a river after encountering an upper-class girl named Ellie and being chased out of her house. There he appears to drown and is transformed into a "water-baby", as he is told by a caddisfly—an insect that sheds its skin—and… Read More

Tan leather binding with red title plate, gilt banding and lettering on the spine. Questionable, a first tourist guide - In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was fashionable to take a boat tour down the Wye Valley, to view its romantic sites and picturesque landscape. 'Tourists' dined at specific locations, took walks to particular viewpoints and visited specific romantic ruins, making the 'Wye Tour' one of the first package holidays. In 1768 Gilpin published a popular Essay on Prints, where he defined the picturesque as "that kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture" and began to expound his "principles of picturesque beauty", based largely on his knowledge of landscape painting. During the late 1760s and 1770s, Gilpin travelled extensively in the summer holidays and applied his principles to the landscapes he saw, committing his thoughts and spontaneous sketches to notebooks. Gilpin's tour journals circulated in manuscript to friends such as the poet William Mason and a… Read More

1901. New edition with Illustrations. Very good. 15 20 8. Red calf spine with gilt titles and decoration. Black cloth boards. Has recently been professionally rebound.
. A superb rebound edition now reconditioned for a further 50 years good use. The book best known as Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, also published as Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book, is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in 1861. Previously published in parts, it initially and briefly bore the title Beeton's Book of Household Management, as one of the series of guide-books published by her husband, Samuel Beeton. The recipes were highly structured, in contrast to those in earlier cookbooks. It was illustrated with many monochrome and colour plates. Although Mrs Beeton died in 1865, the book continued to be a best-seller. The first editions after her death contained an obituary notice, but later editions did not, allowing readers to imagine that… Read More

Blue cloth binding with gilt title and ship on the front board. Gilt title and shipboard figures on the spine.
An early revised edition Anna "Annie" Brassey (née Allnutt), Baroness Brassey (7 October 1839 – 14 September 1887) was an English traveller and writer. Her bestselling book A Voyage in the Sunbeam, our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months (1878) describes a voyage around the world. Lady Anna Brassey (1839-1887) was one of the great Victorian travellers and her accounts on board her luxury yacht the Sunbeam are classics of the genre and were bestsellers in their day. The images here all date from the final voyage on the Sunbeam (1886-87) during which Brassey died of malaria and was buried at sea. Pritchett was educated at Kings and made a career at Enfield gunmakers until the dissolution of the East India Company in 1858, which was the firm's major client. At that point, having exhibited at the Royal Academy several times from 1851, he devoted his life to painting. He joined the staff of… Read More