Voyager Rare Books Maps & Prints » Products » Fiction » 19th Century and Prior Classics

19th Century and Prior Classics

Pages: « First < Previous 7 8 9 1011 12 Next >Last »

Voyage autour de ma Chambre – Xavier de Maistre – Beautifully Illustrated by Maggy Monier

Published by Nilsson, Paris the “Collection Emeraude [Emerald]” c 1930 with twelve aquarelles (watercolours) by Maggy Monier tipped in at front and throughout. A striking and delightful production.

The author Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852) wrote this work in 1790 and it was published in 1794 when he was under arrest in Turin as a result of a duel.

Voyage autour de ma chambre is a parody set in the tradition of the grand travel narrative. An autobiographical account of how a young official, imprisoned in his room for six weeks, looks at the furniture, engravings, etc., as if they were scenes from a voyage in a strange land. He praises this voyage because it does not cost anything, for and he recommends it to the poor, the infirm, and the lazy. “When I travel through my room,” he writes, “I rarely follow a straight line: I go from the table towards a picture hanging in a corner; from there, I set out obliquely towards the door; but even though, when I begin, it really is my intention to go there, if I happen to meet my armchair en route, I don’t think twice about it, and settle down in it without further ado.” Later, proceeding North, he encounters his bed, and in this way he light heartedly continues his “Voyage”.

It was later quoted or referenced by Somerset Maugham, D H Lawrence. Jorge Luis Borges and other literary greats.

Another beautiful french illustrated book

$120.00

Updating cart…
Candide – Voltaire – With Beautiful Full Page Pochoir Illustrations

Voltaire wrote Candide in three days in 1759. It is hilarious and must have inspired many comedic scribes. Martin Seymour-Smith regarded Candide as one of “The 100 Most influential Books Ever Written”.

This beautiful edition from the 1920’s published in Paris on the Champs-Elysees. It contains six unusual and striking aquarelles (watercolours) by Robert Polack.

Candide Beautifully Illustrated- French

$140.00

Updating cart…
Shelley – Poetry & Prose

Our favourite Modern Library point of reference on Percy Bysshe Shelley with Carlos Barker English Prof at Princeton’s expert view

Very good condition in a near perfect dust jacket.

Contains narrative poems and lyrical dramas including Promethues Unbound, Adonais and The Sensitive Plant … and Lyrical and reflective poems including Mont Blanc, Sonnet to the Nile and

To A Skylark ….

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest….

Shelley a large dose … makes for a lovely gift …

$50.00

Updating cart…
Poems by Charles Kingsley – 1884 – Superb Fine Binding Deep Blue Leather

Published by Macmillan. London in 1884 and bound in deep blue polished calf with five raised bands to spine separate red leather title label and elaborate gilt work to each compartment, gilt outline to boards, marbled endpapers and edges etc – really nice.

Charles Kingsley was a priest in the Church of England. A friend of Darwin and early supporter of the theory of evolution (Darwin mentions his view in later editions). Author of the Water Babies and Westward Ho and a collection of beautiful poems, songs and ballads beautifully presented here.

Victorian Poetry bound in blue

$90.00

Updating cart…
The Possessed – Dostoyevsky

Published by Modern Library a 1940′s copy in a very presentable dust jacket.

Dostoyevsky followed “Crime and Punishment” with another monumental and direct attack on the danger of Nihilism. This edition contains a translation of the suppressed chapter for the first time

Should be Possessed!

$30.00

Updating cart…
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes

The first novel was of course Don Quixote – Ozell’s revision of the Motteux translation. A Giant of a book about a Giant of a Man

Fear no Windmills

$30.00

Updating cart…