Humour

Mother Goose and Her Friends – Adventures in the Old Woman’s Shoe – Maude Radford Warren and Eve Davenport – illustrated by Charles Federer

Absurdly wonderful book of tales, published by Hodder & Stoughton, first English edition 1923. Large thick octavo, 309 pages, with ten tipped in coloured plates, fancy end papers, coloured plate pasted to front board. A trifle age – really a super copy, by any standards very good for a book now over a century old.

Traditional children’s stories with no prejudice and positive messages and lots of fun. Old King Cole was a merry old soul and Simple Simon’s pieman had a very large pie on his head.

Stories for children that pass the test of time

$50.00

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Covent Garden Drollery: Printed at The Whitefriars Press for the Fortune Private Press 1927

A seriously special book. Octavo, vi,2,123pages bound in quarter cloth over paper boards, in pictorial speckled paper dust jacket. Illustrated frontispiece, facsimile title from 1672 first, decorated with vignettes. A lovely reprint of the original work. Couldn’t be a better copy.

Subtitled .. A Collection of all the Choice Songs, Poems, Prologues and Epilogues, Sung and Spoken at Courts and Theaters, never printed before. Written by the refined’st Witts of the Age. And collected by A.B. With explanatory notes at the end. Edited by Montague Summers (1880-1948) author and clergyman, who wrote on the occult.

This book is numbered 342 of a limited number of 575 copies. All printed on English unbleached handmade paper … absolutely lovely paper.

Drollery from the past still amusing in the present and beautifully presented

$70.00

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Ice in the Bedroom – P.G. Wodehouse – First Edition 1961

Wodehouse First UK Edition 1961. Octavo, 223 pages, red cloth covered boards with silver titling to spine and front. Dust jacket near complete, a little aged, sunned on spine. A trifle spotted on page edges, clean inside. A pretty good copy.

Freddie Widgeon has slaved a a solicitors clerk. His meagre days seem over as his holding in Silver River Oil Stock has ramped up following the recommendation of American Thomas G. Molloy. Where will it all end and with what hilarity an what is this Ice in the Bedroom.

Wodehouse Financial Humour – First UK Edition

$40.00

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Il Pentamerone; or, The Tale of Tales – Basile – Translated Sir Richard Burton KCMG – First and Limited Edition – 1893

Being a Translation by the Late Sir Richard Burton, K.C.M.G., of Il Pentamerone;OveroLo Cuntode Li Cunte, Trattenemiento de Li Peccerille, of Giovanni Battista Basile, Count of Torne (Gian Alessio Abbattutis).

First edition in two volumes published by Henry and Co, London 1893. Published posthumously by his devoted wife Lady Burton.

A limited edition of 1,500 copies. Two volumes, octavo, 282 pages, [283]-562 pages. Original dark blue (near black) buckram cloth, gilt lettered. Minor rubbing to spine ends. Overall a very good clean set of a sought after Burton work.

The stories in the Pentamerone were collected by Basile and published posthumously by his sister Adriana in Naples in 1634 and 1636 under the pseudonym Abbatutis. The stories were later adapted by a number of authors including the Brothers Grimm who acknowledged the use of stories in the Pentamerone in Cinderella, Rapunzel, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel.

Basile recorded the stories in Neapolitan and is regarded as the first writer to record the Neapolitan intonations. The style is heavily Baroque with many metaphorical expressions.

The term Pentameone comes from the Greek “pente” or five and “hemera” day. The work is set within a “frame story” with fifty separate tales being told over the course of five days … referencing Baccaccio’s Decameron of 1353 which has a ten day structure.

Beautiful stories translated by the genius that was Sir Richard Burton. Limited first edition.

$170.00

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Mother Goose and Her Friends – Adventures in the Old Woman’s Shoe – Maude Radford Warren and Eve Davenport – illustrated by Charles Federer

Covent Garden Drollery: Printed at The Whitefriars Press for the Fortune Private Press 1927

Ice in the Bedroom – P.G. Wodehouse – First Edition 1961

Il Pentamerone; or, The Tale of Tales – Basile – Translated Sir Richard Burton KCMG – First and Limited Edition – 1893

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