ROBERT TEMPLE BOOKSELLERS CATALOGUE: - updated: 2 March, 2008 Bibliographical Resource

Nineteenth Century Fantasy & Science Fiction. All books first editions and first printings, except as stated.

IMPORTANT!

This is the ROBERT TEMPLE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ARCHIVE. It contains descriptions and notes relating to almost 18,000 titles in the fields of British and American literature, being the bulk of the stock that has passed through our hands since 1984, with the addition of a few earlier items of especial interest. Books currently in stock are not included, and it is therefore necessary to supplement your search by looking at our Current Catalogues. For the most part full bibliographical descriptions are given, though for some earlier items, catalogued when computing space was more restricted the details given are quite brief. For an account of the conventions adopted, the abbreviations used, and reference sources consulted, please see our information pages.

Please note: The arrangement here is the same as that adopted in our current catalogues, and as there our larger files are presented in sections for ease of downloading. At the end of each section you are invited to browse the next.

ROBERT TEMPLE BOOKSELLERS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ARCHIVE, File E: Nineteenth Century Fantasy & Science Fiction. All books first editions and first printings, except as stated.

WHITEING (Richard). The island Or An adventure of a person of quality. Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888. Half-title not called for; integral blank, followed by publisher's inserted 16pp. catalogue at end, dated August 1887; diagonally fine ribbed dark turquoise cloth, ruled and blocked blind on sides, ruled, blocked, and lettered gilt on spine; t.e. uncut, others rough-trimmed; end-papers coated dark chocolate. Spine a trifle dull; otherwise a nice copy.

Not in Locke's ‘Spectrum'; Wolff, 7192. The second edition, published in 1899, was revised. A Utopia, set on Pitcairn - but a Pitcairn that has suffered a sea-change; also a love-story. A well-written, and sometimes witty, book, with only one chapter (of philosophising) that rather drags. A nineteenth century precursor of Huxley's ‘Island'. In the present copy the following typographical errors have been noted: p.103, l.11, ‘e' lacking in ‘modest'; p.156, ‘al' for ‘all' at end of l.1; p.188, l.4, ‘-' lacking at line end; p.245, l.2, ‘awhile' for ‘a while': issue significance, if any, not known.

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ROBERT TEMPLE BOOKSELLERS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ARCHIVE, File E: Nineteenth Century Fantasy & Science Fiction. All books first editions and first printings, except as stated.

WIDNALL (S.P.). A Mystery Of sixty centuries. Or A Modern St. George And the Dragon. Written, printed, illustrated and published, by S.P. Widnall, Grantchester, Cambridge, 1889. Globe 8vo; half-title not called for; frontispiece showing ‘The dragon's head' (an actual photograph, laid onto a captioned sheet!), and four wood-engraved plates, three of them apparently hand tinted (in pale greyish brown); pp.[iv]+195+[i (blank)]; quarter dark red morocco cloth, paper spine label, red, grey, and black marbled sides; a.e. scarlet; end-papers coated yellow. Slight wear to edges of boards, but a very nice copy. Scarce.

Well printed; and the plates, though crude, are effective, largely on account of the tinting. There is no list of illustrations, but they are tipped in to face pp.28, 78, 118, and 185. Locke's ‘Spectrum', p.231, describing all the plates as tinted; not in Sadleir or Wolff. A precursor of Doyle's ‘Lost World'.

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WILSON (John, M.A.). The Carrisford tablets: Discovered on English soil by H. Pennant, LL.D., And F.P. Wyndhurst, Esq., and recording The voyages and adventures of Simran The Babylonian, specially on his Mission of search to the tin Mines of Albion, B.C. 1325-50. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, E.C., 1896. Extra.cr.8vo; half-title not called for; integral advertisement leaf at end, verso blank; pp.[4]+[xvi]+[17]-229+[i (blank)]+[ii]; diagonally fine ribbed reddish brown cloth, blocked pictorially gilt with a design signed ‘Lee', and lettered gilt within gilt embossed-rule box, on front cover, lettered, and with short rule gilt, and with gilt-ruled box, on spine; a.e. uncut. Virtually fine copy.

Not in Locke, Sadleir, or Wolff. Rather a handsome volume, also known in a similarly blocked, ruled and lettered pale blue cloth: precedence, if any, undetermined.

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WRIGHT (Thomas). The Chalice of Carden. A story of pertinacity and perseverance, the scenes Of which are laid in the neighbourhoods Of Bedford and Newport Pagnell. Temp. 1745. Skeffington & Son, 163, Piccadilly, W., 1889. Blank before half-title; wood-engraved frontispiece with tissue guard, and one plate; integral advertisement leaf at end; scarlet fine morocco cloth, blocked and lettered gilt on front cover, lettered and with short rule gilt on spine; t.e. uncut, fore-edges rough trimmed; end-papers printed florally in grey. Cover just a trifle dull and marked; otherwise a nice copy.

Not in Locke's ‘Spectrum', or Sadleir; this title not in Wolff. The first novel by the antiquarian schoolmaster Wright, in the first third of which we see him learning to write fiction, his prose overloaded with antiquarian detail, and his characters for the most part unpromising pasteboard eccentrics. Gradually they come to life, however, and he develops the lightness of touch that was to serve him so well in his next, and masterly, novel, ‘The Blue Firedrake'. There is some carelessness of detail in this book, which has been badly edited, but Wright's complicated mind produces, as always, an interesting and carefully worked-out plot. A mystery story involving theft and murder, with a strong vein of fantasy: inherited alchemical decoctions, and the gradual working out of a prophecy supposingly left by the Rev. Richard Napier, reputedly the last of the alchemists, who died in 1634 (here, for the purposes of the story, 1684). The plate faces p.33. A very early Skeffington title.

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WRIGHT (Thomas). The blue firedrake, Or The wonderful and strange relation Of the Life and adventures Of Nathan Souldrop: Showing how he was forspoken by that terrible sorceress Elinor Shaw, the which for her various and abominable crimes Was brought to tryal at Northampton in the year 1705; Together with particulars of her amazing pranks and Remarkable actions both before and after her apprehension, The like never before heard of: Written by himselfe and now set forth By Thomas Wright, Principal of Cowper School, Olney, Author of "The Life of William Cowper," "The Town of Cowper," "The Chalice of Carden," &c. Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co., 1892. Sm.cr.8vo; blank before half-title; half-tone frontispiece, after a period model, with tissue guard; numerous illustrations in text, of buildings in the Northampton area; leaf bearing type ornament on recto, blank on verso, follows Contents leaf; 3pp. integral advertisements at end, included in the pagination; pp.296; bright blue patterned sand grain cloth blocked and lettered gilt on front cover, lettered gilt on spine; end-papers printed with a flower and leaf design in pale brown. Covers very slightly dull and spotted; otherwise a fine copy. Scarce.

Not in Locke's ‘Spectrum', or Sadleir; Wolff, 7332. A ‘wierd' novel, taking as its starting point the assumption that the last witch burnt in England was guilty as found, and had the enormous and strange powers ascribed to her. Despite the unpromising antiquarian title-page and frontispiece illustration (after a drawing by the author's father, W.S. Wright - praised, however, by Wolff), a beautifully written book with a light touch, that aims to convince by the circumstantiality of its account of a daily life in early eighteenth century England in which a belief in the possibility of witchcraft is so unemphatically embedded as to make the remarkable events of the story appear as unquestionably natural and real. In this copy the following misprints have been noted (issue significance, if any, unknown): p.167, l.11, unnecessary inverted commas at end of paragraph; p.190, l.7., ‘longre' for ‘longer'; p.191, l.6, raised ‘h' at start of line; p.247, l.10, ‘afte' for ‘after'; p.282, l.15, ‘powered' for ‘powdered'.

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WYLDE (Flora F.). The life and wonderful Adventures Of ‘Totty Testudo': An autobiography. Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1873. Wood-engraved presentation leaf printed in gold and colours by Banks & Co., Edinburgh, precedes wood-engraved frontispiece with tissue guard; five other wood-engraved plates; half-title not called for; pp.xii+468; publisher's inserted 16pp. Catalogue at end; bevelled diagonally fine ribbed midnight blue cloth, ruled and blocked blind on back cover, ruled and very elaborately blocked black and gilt, embossed with lettering black through gilt, on front cover, ruled and very elaborately blocked black and gilt, lettered gilt, on spine; a.e.g.; end-papers coated dark chocolate. Very slight foxing of plates; otherwise a very nice copy.

The autobiography of a giant tortoise brought by Columbus from the West Indies, relating chiefly to his adventures in Elizabethan England - written when he had attained the age of 220 years, and supposedly discovered concealed in a pillar by workmen repairing the Bishop's Palace at Peterborough ‘in the spring of the year 1760'. Despite the Presentation leaf and publisher, not obviously a juvenile, and in fact presented in 1887 to one William Gamble "for regular attendance as Teacher" at a Male Adult Bible Class. There is no list of plates, but they are marked to face pp.18, 85, 194, 353, and 412, and are here so tipped in. Issued as volume 7. of ‘Nimmo's Select Library', the Catalogue here listing the series to volume 8. The series was issued in two simultaneous forms: "elegantly bound in cloth extra, plain edges, price 3s. 6d. each" or "richly bound in cloth and gold, and gilt edges, price 5s. each", the present example being of the more expensive issue. Not in Locke's ‘Spectrum'.

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Z. (M.A. [?Mary Anne Zimmerman, nee Brown or Browne].). Trifles For Leisure hours. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., Stationers'-hall-court; John Heaton, [7, Briggate,] Leeds, [Yorkshire,] 1838. Lge.12mo; binder's blank at front and back; half-title, title, author's Advertisement leaf, leaf of Contents, and single inset Errata leaf, on a different stock, precede first leaf of text; integral blank at end; pp.[viii]+[ii]+290+[ii]; fine diaper puce cloth, ruled and blocked blind on sides, lettered gilt, from type, in two lines (‘LEISURE HOURS'), on spine; top- and fore- edges uncut; end-papers coated yellow. Slight mottled fading of covers; otherwise a virtually fine copy. Rare.

Not in Block, Summers, Wolff, Locke's ‘Spectrum', Halkett & Laing, or the London Library Catalogue. According to a note on the Errata leaf, "The first eighty-five pages are from the pen of a professional man, who resigning it, it was consigned to M.A.Z." - from which we are tempted to suspect that M.A.Z. was the professional man's wife. If this were so, it might not be without significance that five of the epigraphs in the latter portion of the book are attributed to ‘Mary Anne Brown[e]', and one in the earlier part to ‘Zimmerman'. The first part consists of episodic anecdotal essays, some approaching the short story form - one a ghost story concerned with the posthumous reflections of a cataleptic who had been buried alive. Of ‘M.A.Z's' 205pp., the first thirteen continue the anecdotal form, the rest comprising accomplished short stories, one, ‘The Secret of a Life', being an occult story concerning the working out of a horoscope; set partly in India. Both of the authors appear to have Indian connections. In this copy, the following errors have been noted in addition to the ten errata listed: p.99, l.1 of epigraph, ‘Lockinar' for ‘Lockinvar'; p.112, l.7, ‘paper' for ‘papers'; p.226, l.9, inverted comma lacking at start of line. Printed in Leeds.

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