Dawson, Llewellyn Styles. Memoirs of Hydrography Including Brief Biographies of the Principal Officers …Eastbourne, 1885.

Published as a description of the careers of Royal Navy officers in the mid and latter part of the 19th century, this also constitutes an important source book for the activity of the UK forces in the Arabian Gulf during a crucial period of British activity in the region. Contains plentifold references to places along the Gulf coast, Bahrein and Mascat, discussing in particular the survey of the Gulf undertaken by Captain Haines (p. 38f.), Captain Ethersey & Commodore Charles deployment in the Gulf (pp. 54f.), work performed by captain Felix Jones (p. 88ff.), publications of maps by Lieut. Whitelock on the Gulf and Oman (p. 90), map making (p. 100), Marine surveys in the Gulf and mapping (pp. 109f.), list of charts made for the "Persian Gulf Pilot" (p. 128), survey of the reefs near Bahrein (p. 153), Lieut. Wish's map of Bahrein (p. 158) and map making (p. 195).

Extremeties slightly rubbed and bumped; binding a little loosened. Chapters 1 and 2 have photographic portraits mounted at the head of the page; the article of Admiral Sir Edward Belcher has a photographic reproduction of an oil portrait from the National Portrait Gallery loosely inserted. Numerous handwritten annotations. From the library of J. A. Edgell, 1940s editor of the "Persian Gulf Pilot", with his bookplate to pastedown and handwritten ownership to flyleaf; also with bookplate of Allan Carruthers of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.

Pomet, Pierre. A compleat history of druggs. To which is added, what is further observable …London, 1725.

Second edition in English, the first having appeared in two volumes in 1712. William Bowyer printed both this second edition (500 copies) and the 1737 third edition. The original French edition was published in 1694, and drew upon Pomet's own travels, as well as his expertise and business as a practicing pharmacist. Contains many notices of oriental medicinal plants and herbs, including the famous "Balsam of Mecca": "The Turks, who go a pilgrimage every year to Mecha, bring from thence a certain dry white balsam, in figure resembling white copperas calcin'd, especially when it is stale. The person who made me a present of about half an ounce, assur'd me, that he brought the same from Mecha liquid, and that the smell is the same as observ'd before. The same person likewise did testify to me that it was as good as Balm of Gilead" (p. 205).

Pomet (1658-99) was appointed druggist to Louis XIV, and in the introductory notes to the online exhibition at the University of Wales, "The Weird World of Pierre Pomet," the curator observes: "Parisian Pierre Pomet's pharmacopoeia [...] was intended not only as a handbook for the medical trade but also as a rough guide to the exotic for armchair travellers. Much of its appeal, then as now, comes from the illustrations which pepper the book: pictures of weird animals and weird people doing weird things in weird countries." - Early bookplate ("IKJ") and ownership signature ("H. Jones"), occasional dusting or minor offsetting. A very good, crisp copy.

[Siam - Thailand]. McFarland, Samuel Gamble, ed. Siamese hymnal.Phetchaburi in Thailand, 1876.

Very rare first edition (first issue) of McFarland's Thai (Siamese) hymnal, one of the first books printed by the mission press at Phetchaburi (Petchabury) in Thailand, with the 86 hymns selected by donors who contributed at least five dollars for the production of the hymnal. Each hymn appears on a single double-page spread (with the music at the head of the left page) except the last, whose text continues on nine additional pages. The texts of the hymns themselves appear only in Thai, but the title, introductory note and hymn titles also appear in English and each hymn gives the name of the person or organisation that selected it in English only. Some of the donors who selected the hymns lived in Thailand (both Europeans and natives) but most lived in the United States. Each hymn also indicates the metre, either with abbreviations for the common, long, short, hallelujah or particular metre, or with an indication of the number of syllables per line. The music was apparently set and electrotyped by J.M. Armstrong in Philadelphia and the electrotype blocks shipped to Phetchaburi for printing, for the Newberry Library copy of the second issue has a manuscript note "Music typography by J.M. Armstrong, Philadelphia, Pa." (Armstrong advertised his services for music typesetting and electrotyping at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition).

The first European book printed in Thai type is said to be Jean Baptiste Pallegoix's 1854 Thai dictionary (with Latin, French and English translations) by the Imprimerie Impériale in Paris, but missionaries printed Thai books in Asia decades earlier. The Missionary George H. Hough set up a printing office in Yangon (Rangoon), Burma, where he had Thai type made and used it in 1819. His materials were taken to the mission press in Calcutta soon after. Claudius Henry Thomsen of the London Missionary Society brought a printing press to Singapore in 1822 and operated it with another missionary, Samuel Milton, who brought a fount of Thai type from the Calcutta mission, along with a set of matrices to cast more. Thomsen sold the press and materials to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in 1834 and John Taylor Jones printed Thai for them there in 1835. The ABCFM missionary Dan Bradley took one press and the Thai type to Bankok in July 1835 and produced Thailand's first printing with Thai type in 1836, and Jones moved there to take charge of the press. The Thai King Mongkut (Rama IV)'s interest in printing features in the musical "The King and I", based on Anna Leonowens's 1870 memoires. In 1861 Samuel McFarland, Daniel McGilvary and their wives set up the first Thai mission outside Bankok at Phetchaburi, where McFarland printed the present hymnal in 1876 (he is said to have printed a dictionary in 1866). A second edition appeared in 1885 and the fifth and last in 1920.

We have located five other copies of the 1876 edition. The four recorded in WorldCat have 181 pages, but the Pittsburg Theological Seminary has a second copy that has 148 pages, like the present copy. The preliminary note explicitly says the hymnal includes 86 hymns and they are all present, and there is no evidence that any leaves ever followed page 148, so the additional leaves sometimes included were probably added after copies had been distributed to donors. They probably add further hymns or possibly some other supplementary text. The presentation slip for the donors notes that the hymnal is already being used by the missionaries' congregations, so the present copy probably shows the book as the Thai people first saw it.

Pauli, Johannes / Boccacio et al. Kurtzweilige und Lächerliche Geschicht un[d] Historien, die wol in Schimpff …Frankfurt, 1583.

Extremely rare sole edition of this voluminous ‘Volksbuch’ bringing together nearly a thousand satirical tales in a rich vernacular, all here of course ‘enlarged and improved’, with additions ‘never before appearing in print’. Like Boccacio’s original, it seems that even in the late 16th century such tales were intended to be recited orally for the amusement of an audience of both sexes: Sigmund Feyerabend’s preface (iir-iiir) makes it clear that he intends the book for “jeden person, Mann oder Weib, jungen Gesellen und Jungkfrauwen zu lessen oder zu hören”, while the title-page specifically confirms that the book can be read unabashedly by ‘virtuous women and maidens, without deleterious offense”. Evidently surviving poorly, we have located just a few copies of the Kurtzweilige und Lächerliche Geschichte und Historien in libraries worldwide, with just one in the US (Illinois).

The compendium begins with Johannes Pauli’s famous collection Schimpf und Ernst, first printed in 1522 in the midst of the Reformation. Like his contemporary Luther, Pauli (ca. 1455-1535) was a monk himself (Franciscan) but here pokes endless fun the clergy of all levels, for example in his tale of a pope who ceremoniously washes the feet of paupers but is accused of looking for money between their toes (# 339). By some accounts an apostate Jew, Pauli became a friend of Geiler von Kaiserberg, and his oft-reprinted collection influenced an entire generation of Protestant German satirists including Hans Sachs.

Following Schimpf und Ernst is Arigo’s German translation of the Decameron (ca. 1473), which is here curiously called “der neuwen Zeitung”. Finally, at the end we find three extracts from original works of further German satirists: Jörg Wickram (ca. 1505-1560)’s Rollwagen (pp. 527-542); Jakob Frey (ca. 1520-1562)’s Gartengesellschaft (pp. 543-551); and Martin Montanus (ca. 1537-1566)’s Wegkürtzer (pp. 543-551). As the titles suggest, these jocular tales were expressly intended for the entertainment of travelers, as depicted in their ‘Rollwagen’ in the woodcut on p. 527.

VD16 shows just 5 copies in German and Austrian libraries; OCLC adds the British Library, Illinois, and the National Library of Sweden only. Individual 16th-century printings of each of the constituent parts also prove to be very rare in census.

Après de Mannevillette, Jean-Baptiste d' / Dalrymple, Alexander. A Brief Statement of the Prevailing Winds, from Monsieur d'Apres de Mannevillette.London, 1782.

First edition of a rare pamphlet on the monsoon winds in the Indian Ocean, of crucial importance for East India Company ships sailing to and from the East Indies.

As Dalrymple states in the introduction, the text for the pamphlet has been translated by him from Jean Baptiste d'Après de Mannevillette's "Mémoire sur la navigation de France aux Indies". Dalrymple had extensive correspondence with Mannevillette, hydrographer to the French East India Company and Dépôt de la Marine, from 1767 to 1780, much of which is preserved in Paris in the Archives nationales and the Bibliothèque de l'institut de France. Dalrymple had such high regard for d'Après - the author of the "Neptune Oriental" in 1745, at the time the most authoritative work on oriental navigation - that he often sent charts for comment and inclusion into his work, as the following letter attests: "You have full consent to make what use you please of the Charts I have sent you [...] You will undoubtedly find many mistakes which escaped my observation; And therefore you will do me a favour in communicating your remarks to me" (10 Nov. 1772). In the present work Dalrymple has augmented the d'Après text with information from a Mr. William Woodville of Liverpool, and a Captain Jones of the ship Mary, "whom we met at Grenville 5th June 1775, to the Westward of Sierra Leon. It is obvious Mr Woodville's Account differs considerably from M. D'Aprés but I cannot presume to decide who is right".

The extract not only shows Dalrymple's continuing quest for any and all sources of information regarding a passage to the East Indies, and the rather ad hoc nature in which he obtained it, but also his willingness to question Mannevillette's findings, at the time the leading authority on such matters.

Some waterstaining to title with marginal fraying. Rare: we are only able to trace one other example appearing at auction since the war (Sotheby's, the Franklin Brooke-Hitching sale 2014).

Jawhari, Isma'il ibn Hammad / Muhammad al-Wani (ed.). [Sihah al-Jawhari - Turkish: Kitab-i Lughat-i Vanqulu].Constantinople Istanbul, 1802-04 CE = 1217-18 H.

Uncommon second edition of this classic Arabic dictionary, al-Jawhari's "Tag al-luga was-sihah al-'arabiya" (The Crown of Language and the Correctness of Arabic), translated into Turkish by Muhammad al-Wani (d. 1592), deriving its title from the Turkish genitive form of the author’s name, Wangulu or Vankulu.

Jawhari himself reached only the letter Dad before he died in an unsuccessful attempt at human flight from the roof of a mosque in 1003 AD (the work was subsequently completed by his student Ishaq Ibrahim bin Salih al-Warraq). To this day the dictionary remains an indispensable companion of Arabic philologists in both the East and the West; "manuscripts are to be found in almost every library" (Brockelmann). "In this great dictionary [the author] codified pure Arabic as based on the criticism of his predecessors' preparatory studies as well as his own experiences and collections. The 'As-sihâh’ is arranged in an alphabetical order, according to the final, and not the first, rooter of the words [...] This system, which was later adopted by other large Arabic dictionaries, attempts to supply those in search of rhyming words with a handbook" (Goldziher, A Short History of Classical Arabic Literature, 1966, p. 70).

Dampstains at end of vol. I and intermittently to vol. II, minor staining to fore-edge. A few scuffs and rubs to binding, but a sound and imposing set, generally clean internally.

Provenance: from the library of the British diplomat and linguist Sir Gore Ouseley (1770-1844), first baronet, with his contemporary signature to the front flyleaf of each volume. Ousely travelled to India in 1787 and established a cloth factory. He lived a relatively solitary existence and spent his leisure time studying Persian, Bengalese Hindi, Arabic, and Sanskrit, becoming an elegant speaker and writer of Persian. An acquaintance of the oriental scholar Sir William Jones, Ouseley was named ambassador extraordinary to the court of Fath Ali Shah in Persia in 1810, negotiated several treaties, and returned to England. He was one of those responsible for the founding of the Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1823 and was associated with the formation of the oriental translation committee, of which he was elected chairman. He became president of the Society for the Publication of Oriental Texts, formed in 1842.

Launay, [Victor] Marie de / Montani Effendi. [Usul-i mimari-î Osmanî]. L’Architecture Ottomane. Ouvrage autorisé …Constantinople, 1873.

First and only edition of "the earliest comprehensive study on the history and theory of Ottoman architecture" (Ersoy, p. 117). Only a few copies of this rare work, produced to the most exacting standards of the day, appear to have been printed. It was produced under the patronage of Edhem Pasha, president of the Imperial Ottoman Commission for the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. The text (in German and French, followed by Turkish) consists of a series of monographs. The entire work was "prepared [...] by a diverse group of artists, architects, and bureaucrats who had close professional ties with the palace. The text begins with a lengthy historical overview that embodies a pioneering attempt to define and represent the entire Ottoman architectural past according to the norms of modern historiography [...] The editor of the whole volume, and the author of a substantial portion of the original text, was the amateur historian and artist Victor Marie de Launay, a 'naturalized' Frenchman who held a secretarial position in the Ministry of Trade and Public Works [...] With a keen scholarly interest in architecture, art, and traditional crafts, Marie de Launay, throughout his lengthy bureaucratic career in the imperial capital, was deeply involved in the representation of the Ottoman state in the world expositions [...] The expertly crafted plates that supplement the text of the 'Usul' include plans, elevations, and section of various Ottoman buildings as well as a rich panoply of decorative details and ornamental patterns, all meticulously depicted in accordance with the academic standards of the Beaux-Arts model [...] Accompanying the monochrome illustrations are fourteen chromolithographic plates (printed in the Sébah studios in Istanbul), skillfully drafted with vibrant and sharply delineated colors. In the superior technical quality and graphic precision of its illustrations, the 'Usul' is duly comparable to its highly acclaimed European counterparts, such as Owen Jones's 'The Grammar of Ornament' (London, 1956), Auguste Racinet's 'L'ornement polychrome' (Paris, 1869), or Jules Bourgoin's 'Les arts arabes' (Paris, 1873). Thus, leaving aside the intellectual scope of its text, the 'Usul' must be considered an artistic specimen in and of itself, conceived as a unique showcase of Ottoman technical competence in the art of publishing" (ibid., p. 117-120). The set is not infrequently encountered incomplete: even the Blackmer copy lacked a plate, and that of William Morris (now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Library) lacked three.

Occasional slight brownstaining (not concerning plates), but entirely complete and finely bound to style.

Freud, Sigmund, Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939). Autograph draft letter signed ("Freud").Vienna, undated, but ca. 1925.

A remarkable, hitherto unpublished letter draft, apparently to the British journalist James Louis Garvin ("Dear Sir"), London editor of the 13th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which he offers to contribute an article on psychoanalysis: "You remember in your last letter of Sept 17th you took into account my remark that the E.B. of 1911 contained no mention of [PsA] and agreed to my intention to report on its condition before that term. As the year 1911 makes no epoch in the history of [PsA] I could not but neglect that artificial border-line and send you an article on the development, contents and achievements of [PsA] from the very beginning. So I am uncertain whether it will fit in with what you require. It is extremely condensed, I found it impossible to give an intellig[i]ble account of the intricate subject in a more shortened frame. If - from any motive - you cannot accept it let me suggest, you should apply for another article to my pupil Dr Ernest Jones in London, 81 Harley St., the foremost among English analysts. If you adhere to my composition please let it be translated by Mr James Strachey … (brother to the famous historian Lytton Str.), one of my English translators. [PsA] has created a lot of special German terms, whose English equivalents have been fixed by English analysts. It would be a pity if the E. Br. did not use the same technical denominations [...]".

Freud spoke highly of J. L. Garvin (1868-1947) in a September 1924 letter to Franklin Hooper, the Britannica's U.S. editor, describing in very similar terms the essay on psychoanalysis that Freud had contributed to Hooper's recently published collection "These Eventful Years": "My complete admiration goes to the introductory essay by Garvin [...] I am very proud that you have granted psychoanalysis a chapter to itself. I hope that the future will justify your assessment. If my essay has turned out longer than you wished it to be, my excuse is that a shorter description of the difficult topic would have offered nothing comprehensible to the reader" (Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, vol. 51 [1961], 354). Garvin was keen to maintain the encyclopedia's reputation for scholarship and saw the publication as an opportunity to restore international unity through intellectual cooperation, whilst in turn making it more cosmopolitan and accessible. With that in mind he commissioned the best possible authority on each subject, as shown here. Other illustrious contributors to the edition included Marie Curie writing on Radium, Albert Einstein on Space-Time, Henry Ford on Mass Production, Suzanne Lenglen on Lawn Tennis, Andrew Mellon on Finance, Marconi on Wireless, Nansen on Polar Exploration, and Leo Trotsky on Lenin.

Sun Yat-sen, Chinese revolutionary, first president and founding father of the Republic of China (1866-1925). Autograph letter signed ("Very truly yours / Y. S. Sun")."On board R.M.S. 'Adriatic'", 8 Nov 1911.

After a series of failed uprisings in the years leading up to the date of our letter, the exiled Sun Yat-sen was in the United States seeking further support when news reached him of the success of Huang Xing's second military uprising at Wuchang, on 10 October 1911. Within weeks he set sail for London, as the present letter attests, where he sought to arrange British financing for the new Chinese republic. After an unsuccessful month in London, Sun left for China, arriving on 21 December, and was immediately named "Provisional" President of the newly founded Republic of China, before resigning and relinquishing the title to Yuan Shikai shortly after.

Born in Guangdong province, Sun had qualified as a medical doctor in 1892 in Hong Kong, and it was here that he met Dr. (later Sir) James Cantlie (1851-1926), an Aberdeen-trained physician who became a pioneer of first aid (when it was largely unknown) and an expert in tropical diseases. Cantlie went to practice in Hong Kong in 1887, and one of his earliest achievements was to help establish a medical training college for native students, the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, which later became the University of Hong Kong. One of his first students was the future president of China, who, after graduating, remained in contact with Cantlie and his wife Mabel, periodically appealing to the British government and public for support for democratic China through their good offices (see Cantlie's papers, which were later donated to the Wellcome Institute by his descendants).

The connection between Sun and the Cantlies became more widely known following Sun's kidnapping in London in 1896, which was the subject of Sun's own account in "Kidnapped in London: Being the Story of My Capture by, Detention at, and Release From, the Chinese Legation", published a year after the events. When Sun had arrived in London in October 1896, Cantlie helped him find lodgings in Gray's Inn Place (the site is marked with a wartime plaque). However, his route to the Cantlies' house happened to take Sun past the Chinese Legation building at 49 Portland Place (now the Chinese Embassy), and one Sunday he was approached by some Chinese men who, ostensibly stopping for a chat, hustled him into the Legation, where he was locked in a windowless upstairs room. Sun eventually managed to get a servant to smuggle out a message to the Cantlies but his release was far from immediate. Cantlie's protestations to the Legation, the local police, Scotland Yard, lawyers and the Foreign Office were initially not believed or fruitless, but eventually he managed to secure an article in "The Globe" which helped persuade the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, to insist upon Sun's release, 12 days after his capture.

Cantlie's own account of the kidnapping was published, on the day of Sun's release, in "The Globe", where he stated that Sun had at one stage considering suicide, that he managed to throw further messages out of his window, and that Cantlie had employed a private detective to watch the legation. More recently, J. Y. Wong in "The Origins of a Heroic Image: Sun Yat Sen in London, 1896-1987" (Hong Kong, 1986), has written that Sun entered the building voluntarily, and that the plan was to execute him and return his body to Beijing for ritual beheading. He also mentions that Cantlie was refused a writ of habeas corpus because of the Legation's diplomatic immunity. Sun spent some time recovering with the Cantlies, who became his frequent correspondents and remained his closest friends and allies outside China for the rest of his life. James Cantlie's book about Sun and the situation in China, "Sun Yat Sen and the Awakening of China", co-authored with C. Sheridan Jones, was published in 1912.

Autograph letters from Sun Yat-sen rarely appear at auction - only four (three in English, one in Chinese) are listed in records for the last twenty years. One of the greatest leaders of modern China and the "Father of the Nation", Sun holds a unique position in the Chinese-speaking world as the only 20th century leader who is revered by those in both the People's Republic of China, for his instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911, and in the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Provenance: Sir James and Mabel Cantlie; acquired from their heirs.

Rosen, Robert, Australian fashion, social and fine art photographer (born 1953). The Rosen archive of autographed polaroids, containing unique vintage portraits …London, Sydney and other places, 1980-2001.

The present collection, predominantly featuring portraits from London in the early 1980s, is an exceptional chronicle of an era and its cultural icons. A photographer for Rolling Stone and other music magazines, Robert Rosen was as much a part of the elite social circles as the celebrities he captured. His journey into vintage portraiture began with Andy Warhol: Rosen recounts meeting Warhol in 1980 at a London party, where he was inspired by Warhol's use of polaroids. This encounter (from which Warhol gave Rosen a lift home) prompted the young photographer to approach Polaroid in London with a proposal to create a collection of signed polaroids of famous personalities. The company equipped him with a camera and unlimited film, leading to a two-decade-long project, preserved here in its entirety. Rosen, today renowned as Australia's pre-eminent social photographer and recently celebrated in an exhibition in Sydney, amassed over 300 celebrity portraits at parties and nightclubs. He had each subject sign their portrait on the spot, using one of the various coloured pens he always carried for that purpose. These portraits stand out for their naturalness and spontaneity, in stark contrast to the rigid poses more typical of society photographs. As a collection they not only capture the glamour and charisma of the social scenes in London, Paris, and Sydney, but also serve as an important record of key figures from diverse fields - actors, rockstars, and other luminaries.

The collection contains the now-famous photo of Paul and Linda McCartney kissing, as well as signed portraits of both, in one of which Linda is holding up the very snapshot of the pair taken by Rosen a minute earlier. In the vibrant setting of Regine's nightclub, Rosen snapped a memorable Polaroid of David Bowie. Amidst garden greenery, Bowie, amused by Rosen's distinct mirror bowtie, remarked, "Robert Rosen with the looking glass bowtie". The developed Polaroid had Rosen's nervous fingerprints on it. Suggesting a retake, Bowie instead declared, "No, I like it, it's art", and signed it. The only unsigned Polaroid in the collection is of Charlie Watts: when asked by Rosen to sign it, Watts declined, explaining that John Lennon had passed away that very day.