A 1673 first edition of Francois Poullain de la Barre’s De l’Egalité des Deux Sexes, Discours Physique et Moral..., bound in crimson morocco gilt by Rivière, was sold at £310. Later issued in England under the title The Woman as Good as the Man, the book analyses the male monopoly of power and argues that the traditional view of the inferiority of women is little more than social prejudice. The English translation, by A.L., was reprinted as recently as 1988 by Wayne State University Press.
A six-vol. Histoire de la Prostitution of 1851-53 by Paul Lacroix [Pierre Dufour], the six vols. partly untrimmed in original cloth gilt and illustrated with 20 engraved plates, was sold at £300 (Lloyd). The work is more familiar in English language editions of 1926 and 1931.
A 1734 Paris edition of the works of Molière, the six vols. illustrated with 33 engraved plates after Boucher and others, and bound in contemporary calf with some early rebacking, went to Windmill Books at £450.
Lots in the British topography section of the sale included a 1781-82 first edition of Nash’s Collections for the History of Worcestershire, the two vols. complete with all maps and plates in rebacked contemporary calf, that sold at £700 (Rostron) and a group of seven late 18th century watercolour drawings depicting Shropshire subjects which did not live up to expectations of £2000-2500 but did find a private buyer happy to part with £1250. Six of the Shropshire pictures, among them views of Haughmond Abbey, Much Wenlock and Clun Castle, were by William Williams (1727-91), an artist said to hail from either Norwich or Shrewsbury.
Alexander Campbell’s A Journey from Edinburgh through Parts of North Britain of 1802, illustrated with 44 uncoloured aquatints, made £320.
Ann H. Judson’s Account of the Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire, an 1823 first in contemporary half calf, made £200.
An early treatise on the art of dyeing wool, a 1750 first edition of Hellot’s L’Art de la teinure des Laines, in a modern calf gilt binding with crimson title label, was sold at £200.
An 1871 first, in the original green cloth gilt, of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, illustrated with seven heliotype plates – one of the first books to employ heliotypes and the only one by Darwin to use photographic illustrations – sold at £230 to Fortsas, who also gave £190 for Ferdinand von Hochstetter’s Geologische Bilder der Vorwelt und der Jetzwelt, an 1879 work containing 30 double-page chromos and in the original cloth-backed pictorial boards.
In the 1850s, von Hochstetter, a geologist, was appointed a member of a government sponsored Austrian expedition around the world and is best known for a major work on the geography, geology and natural history of New Zealand.
‘Woman as good as Man’ and other Departmental Ditties…
SOLD AT £600 (Temple) in the April 25 sale held by Y Gelli (15% buyer's premium) in Hay-on-Wye was a “much nicer than average” copy of the 1886, privately printed, Lahore first edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Departmental Ditties and other Verses. One of 350 copies of this tall, narrow production, printed on one side only, it was in the original wrappers but with the flap removed, leaving an uneven fore-edge to the upper wrapper.
