antiquarian bookseller - Peter Harrington

Peter Harrington Antiquarian Bookseller
262.LEAR, Edward.
Journal of a Landscape Painter in
Corsica.
London, Robert John Bush, 1870 [18169] £600
Large 8vo (263 × 184mm). Modern burgundy full calf,
wavy line panel to the boards, raised bands, spine gilt in
compartments, top edge gilt. Frontispiece and 39 other plates,
full-page map, numerous text illustrations. Slight foxing to the
half-title, else a good clean copy.
FIRST EDITION. “With the failure of his artistic ambition,
he began to consider living permanently abroad. The
savings from his publications, and a small legacy from
[his mother], meant that he could afford to build a house
where he would live quietly and paint. He needed now to
find a suitable place: in winter 1864–5 he was in Nice…
the following winter Lear went via Venice to Malta…
and a year later he was in Egypt, keeping a detailed diary
of his voyage down the Nile, one of several which he
planned, but failed, to publish. In 1867–8 he wintered in
Cannes, wondering if France might be the best place to
settle, and from there he visited Corsica, the subject of
his last… travel book…” (ODNB). All but six of the large
plates and ten of the vignettes were “drawn on wood” by
Lear himself; this is the only one of his travel journals not
illustrated in lithography.
263.LEWIS, John Frederick.
132
Sketches and Drawings of the
Alhambra. Made during a Residence
in Granada in the Years 1833–4.
Drawn on Stone by J.D. Harding,
R.J. Lane, A.R.A.W. Gauci.
London, Hodgson Boys & Graves, n.d. [1835] [22566] £3500
Folio (560 × 385mm) Recased in publisher’s burgundy skiverbacked
matching moiré cloth boards, rubbed, corners worn
through, boards somewhat mottled. Tinted lithographic title
page vignette and 25 lithographs all with well-applied later
colour. Internally very clean, a very good copy.
FIRST EDITION. “‘Spanish’ Lewis was much praised
by Ruskin, in company with Prout, in a passage from
Elements of Drawing … which incidentally shows the
common view of lithography: ‘Let no lithographic work
come into the house if you can help it, nor even look at any
except Prout’s and those sketches of Lewis’s.’ In Praeterita
Ruskin calls Lewis ‘the painter of the greatest power, next
to Turner, in the English school,’ and says of him ‘No artist
ever I read of was treated with such injustice as John
Lewis’” (Abbey).
Abbey Travel 148.
264.MAKHAIRAS, Leontios.
Recital concerning the Sweet Land of
Cyprus entitled “Chronicle.” Edited
with a Translation and Notes by R.
M. Dawkins.
Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1932 [39957] £295
2 voluems, 8vo. Original black buckram, title gilt to the
spines. Folding map at the rear of vol. I, a folding genealogical
table in vol. II. Externally a little rubbed, corners bumped, else
very good.
FIRST EDITION thus. Dawkins was for some time the
director of the British School at Athens, later Bywater
and Sotheby professor of Byzantine and modern
Greek at Oxford. He was involved in the excavations at
Palekastro on Crete and was responsible for four seasons
of excavations at Sparta, which set a new standard in
methods of excavation for Greece. However his main
interests were philological and his major work in the
field, Modern Greek in Asia Minor, was a study of the Greek
spoken by the inhabitants of the Cappadocian plateau,
which he had researched during three expeditions in
1909, 1910 and 1911. The present work is a translation
of the mediaeval Cypriot history of the Lusignan dynasty
1359–1432, from the manuscript held at the Bodleian.
This copy from the library of Norman Douglas with his
pencilled initials and purple ink hand-stamp to the
endpapers and a couple of marginal annotations. Dawkins
and Douglas were friends. “Himself an original, he liked
originals. His taste in men as in books was catholic. By
no means all his friends were academical and his range
of acquaintance extended from Norman Douglas, of
whom in 1933 he published a perceptive study, to the
egregious Baron Corvo (Frederick William Rolfe)… He
never married” (ODNB).
265.NARDI, Jacopo.
Istorie della Città di Firenze di
Iacopo Nardi. Ridotte alla Lezione
de’Codici Originali con l’Aggiunta
del Decimo Libro Inedito e con
Annotazioni per Cura e Opera di
Lelio Arbib.
Florence, A Spese della Società Editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del Varchi,
1838–41 [39938] £250
8vo (230 × 135 mm). Contemporary Italian tan half sheep on
marbled boards, raised author and title panels, compartments
gilt with arabesque, floral and lozenge tools. Some browning,
bindings somewhat rubbed at the extremities, corners
stripping, but remains pleasing.
FIRST EDITION. Newly edited from the original sources
with annotations and a life of Nardi by Arbib. Nardi’s
history of the city was first published posthumously in
1582. A follower of Savanarola, Nardi was attached to the
Republican party but remained on good terms with the
Medici after their restoration in 1512, even composing
pageants for them. “Having been concerned in the
Republican revolution of 1527, he was banished from
Florence in 1530, and took a leading part in the efforts
of the exiles to return, pleading their cause against the
tyranny of Duke Alessandro before Charles V, in 1536. He
finally settled at Venice, where he died in poverty. All his
contemporaries bear witness to his upright and noble
character” (Catholic Encyclopaedia). Nardi wrote his history
a few years before his death in 1563; it covers the tragic
period of Florence’s history from 1494 and “is especially
noteworthy for its high moral tone and its faithful record
of the events in which he himself had shared.”
Catalogue 57: Travel Section 6: Europe, including Constantinople
263. LEWIS, John Frederick.
Sketches and Drawings of the Alhambra.
133