Scarce, Collectible and Specialist Books
This stock list of our Scarce, Collectible and Specialist section was updated on 8th April 2026.
Many of the books chosen for this section are priced at a significant discount to their normal market value. Please use our Enquiry form if you have questions about the books here.
ANTHROPOLOGY
E. Pritchard, The Nuer, OUP, 1940 £12.50
Joy Adamson, The Peoples of Kenya, Collins, 1967 £8.50
ANTIQUES, ARCHITECTURE, ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, DESIGN
Antique Porcelain Book £8.50
W. A. Poucher, Escape to the Hills, Country Life £8.50 - SOLD
Helen Allingham, Cottage Houses of England, Bracken Books, 1978 £6.00
Staffordshire Portrait Figures, Antique Collectors Club, 1970 £12.50 - SOLD
E. J. Wall, The Dictionary of Photography, Iliffe & Sons £6.00
Colette Mansell, The Collector's Guide to British Dolls since 1920, Robert Hale, 1983 £8.50
Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture, B.T. Batsford, 1950 £15.00 - SOLD
Bryan Catley, Art Deco Figures, Chancery House, 1978 £10.00 - SOLD
Gertrude Jekyll, Gardens for Small Country Houses, Country Life, 1927 £32.50
Chartres: the making of a miracle, Folio Society, 1986 £4.50
BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPY/MEMOIRS
More Biography £6.50
The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, Gollancz £7.50
Joan of Arc, Sheed & Ward, 1930 £6.00 - SOLD
Charles Rowe, A Quaker Boy Growing Up, 1961 £7.50
Sybille Bedford, Aldous Huxley: a Biography (vol 1), Chatto Collins, 1973 £4.50
Diana Cooper, The Light of Common Day, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959 £12.50 - SOLD
Diana Cooper, Trumpets from the Steep, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960 - SOLD
Fonteyn, Spring Books, c.1950 £4.50
Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography, Bodley Head, 1964 £10.00
Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, Cresset Press, 1949 £6.00
The Life of General Gordon, Walter Scott, 1878 £8.50 - SOLD
L.T.C. Rolt, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Longmans, 1964 £12.50 - SOLD
L.T.C. Rolt, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Book Club Associates, 1971 (7th impression) £4.50
Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali, Faber, 1997 £15.00 - SOLD
Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson, Faber, 1st English edition, 2 volumes £18.00
Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill 1939-41, Heinemann, 1983 £7.50
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
The Princess Elizabeth’s Gift Book, Hodder & Stoughton £4.50
Girl Annual no. 2 £5.00
Elsie J. Oxenham, Schoolgirl Jen of the Abbey, Collins, 1958 £4.50
Elsie J. Oxenham, Song of the Abbey, Collins, 1958 £4.50
Beatrix Potter, The Complete Tales, Warne, 2006 £27.50 - SOLD
W. E. Johns, Gimlet Lends a Hand, Brocks Books, 1949 £15.00
Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories, Macmillan, 1983 facsimile reprint £4.50 - SOLD
Beatrix Potter, The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Warne, boxed set - SOLD
W. E. Johns, Comrades in Arms, Hodder & Stoughton, 1947 1st edition £6.50 - SOLD
W. E. Johns, Biggles Hunts Big Game, Hodder & Stoughton, 2nd impression 1950 £4.00
W. E. Johns, Biggles: The Second Case, Hodder & Stoughton, 2nd impression 1950 £6.00 - SOLD
W. E. Johns, Biggles Fails to Return, Hodder & Stoughton, 2nd impression 1951 £4.00 - SOLD
W. E. Johns, Biggles Sweeps the Desert, Hodder & Stoughton, 2nd impression 1950 £4.00 - SOLD
W. E. Johns, Biggles in the South Seas, Oxford £4.00
W. E. Johns, Biggles Sees it Through, Oxford, 1951 £4.00
C. S. Lewis, The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, Collins £8.50 - SOLD
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Wendy, Hodder & Stoughton, 1981 facsimile reprint £7.50
Leonard de Vries, Flowers of Delight, Dobson, 1965 £8.50
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses, Spring Books, 1989 fascimile £7.50
M. Lawson Bell, Tales from Beatrix Potter, Warne, 2006 £27.50 - SOLD
CLASSIC LITERATURE
Thomas Campbell, The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, Warne & Routledge, 1859 £45.00 - SOLD
The Works of William Shakespeare, Albion Edition, Frederick Warne £22.50 - SOLD
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Black £4.00 - SOLD
Plato, The Republic, Everyman's Library £3.00 - SOLD
Lytton Strachey, Old Victorians, Chatto & Windus, 1924 £5.00 - SOLD
Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Barnes and Noble, 1971 £10.00 - SOLD
FICTION (NOVELS and SHORT STORIES)
Judge Parry, Don Quixote, illustrated by Walter Crane, Blackie & Son, 1900 £25.00 - SOLD
J-K Huysmans, Against the Grain, Fortune Press, 1950 £25.00 - SOLD
Baroness Orczy, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Cassell, 1926 £5.00 - SOLD
Franz Kafka, Description of a Struggle, Secker & Warburg, 1960 (ex-library) £6.50
Jean Plaidy, The Regent’s Daughter, Robert Hale 1971 (first edition) £5.00
L. Van der Post, A Far-off Place, Hogarth Press, 1974 £6.50 - SOLD
Howard Fast, Spartacus, Bodley Head, 1968 (5th edition) £15.00 - SOLD
William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis, Smith Elder, 1869 2 volumes £35.00
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, Nelson £6.50
Pierre C de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, 1782 1 volume 1st edition £65.00
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Putnams, 1955 (lacking dust wrapper) £15.00
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Easton Press, 1997 £12.50
FOLIO SOCIETY EDITIONS
English Stories £4.50 - SOLD
Book of Short Novels £5.00 - SOLD
Irish Short Stories £4.50 - SOLD
R. S. Surtees, Jorrocks' Jaunts, 1949 £3.00
Tim Heald, ed., The Best After Dinner Stories £4.00
Beverley Nichols, Down the Garden Path £4.50 - SOLD
John Donne, No Man is an Island £4.50
The Plums of P. G. Wodehouse £4.50
The Pick of Punch £4.50
The Cream of Noel Coward £4.50
Ovid, The Art of Love £4.50 - SOLD
Anthony Trollope, The Bertrams £5.00 - SOLD
Anthony Trollope, Cousin Henry £5.00 - SOLD
Herodotus, The Histories £7.50 - SOLD
Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped £7.50 - SOLD
Hilaire Belloc, CautionaryTales £6.50 - SOLD
The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes £4.50
Boccaccio, The Decameron (2 volumes), 1953 £8.00
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths £10.00 - SOLD
The Wit of Oscar Wilde £6.00 - SOLD
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 2009, illustrations by Charles Van Sandwyk £25.00 - SOLD
A Treasury of Mark Twain £4.50
The Face of Battle £6.00
An Innkeeper's Diary £4.50
French Short Stories £4.50
Rare Adventures of William Lithgow £5.00
Anthology of Autobiography £4.50
The Diary of a Village Shopkeeper £5.00
Our Village £5.00
Brief Lives £5.00
The Jubilee Years £5.00
Life on the Mississippi £5.00
J. B. Priestley, English Journey £6.50
Bestiary £5.00
Our Life in the Highlands £4.00
Historic Speeches £4.50
Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby £7.50
Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm £6.00
Jerome K. Jerome, My Life and Times £6.50
The Smith of Smiths £4.50 - SOLD
The Quest for Corvo £4.50
Little Book of Forewords £4.00
Historic Speeches (further copy) £4.50
Memoirs of a Seafaring Life £5.00
Shakespeare's Life and World £6.00
The Boer War £7.00
The Amateur Emigrant £4.50
Scott's Last Expedition £6.50 - SOLD
The Grand Tour £4.50- SOLD
Short Novels from the Strand £6.00 - SOLD
Nicholas and Alexandra £7.50 - SOLD
Father Brown Stories £4.50 - SOLD
William Russell £7.50 - SOLD
FORESTRY, FARMING, LAND MANAGEMENT
Ian Niall, The Poacher's Handbook, Heinemann, 1950 (1st edition, illustrated B. Greg) £6.00 - SOLD
V. C. Fishwick, Pigs, Crosby, 1948 £5.00
HISTORY
Nancy Mitford, Voltaire in Love, Hamish Hamilton, 1957 £35.00 - SOLD
John W. Dodds, The Age of Paradox, Gollancz, 1953 £4.50
LOCAL HISTORY, TOPOGRAPHY, VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
Sydney Jones, Thames Triumphant £3.50 - SOLD
J. Farbrother, Shepton Mallet: notes on its history, ancient, descriptive and natural, Arthur Byrt, 1860 £35.00 - SOLD
N. Pevsner, Herefordshire, Penguin, 1953 £15.00 - SOLD
N. Pevsner, Leicestershire and Rutland, Penguin, 1960 £15.00 - SOLD
N. Pevsner, Leicestershire and Rutland, Penguin, 1973 £6.50 - SOLD
N. Pevsner, North East Norfolk, Penguin, 1962 £12.50 - SOLD
N. Pevsner, North Somerset and Bristol, Penguin, 1958 £12.50
N. Pevsner, South and West Somerset, Penguin, 1958 £17.50
N. Pevsner, Surrey, Penguin, 1952 £15.00
N. Pevsner, Warwickshire, Penguin, 1966 £12.50
N. Pevsner, Wiltshire, Penguin,1963 £17.50 - SOLD
J. Simmons, Leicester Past and Present, Eyre Methuen, 1974 £6.50 - SOLD
W. G. Hoskins, Shell Guide to Leicestershire, Shell, 1970 £8.50 - SOLD
E. Storey, The Fen Country, Robert Hale, 1971 (signed) £6.50 - SOLD
W.H. Potts, Roaming Down the Wye, Hodder & Stoughton, 1949 £4.50 - SOLD
Robert Ovens & Sheila Sleath, The Heritage of Rutland Water, Rutland Local History Society, 2008 £30.00 - SOLD
John Betjeman, Cornwall Shell Guide, Faber, 1969 £7.50 - SOLD
Alfred Harvey, Leicestershire and Rutland, Methuen, 1912 £6.50 - SOLD
John Barber, The Story of Oakham School, Sycamore Press, 1983 £8.50 - SOLD
John Barber, The Story of Oakham School, Sycamore Press, 1983 £20.00
Crichton Porteous, Portrait of Peakland, Robert Hale, 1963 £4.50
G. Ornsby, Sketches of Durham, George Andrews, 1846, bound together with: T. Bell, Local Monuments, T & J Pigg, 1856; Bruce Collingwood, The Wall of Hadrian, A. Reid, 1874; and E. Charlton, Society in Northumberland in the 18th Century, A. Reid, 1874 £85.00
Jean Lang, A Land of Romance - The Border: its history and legend, T C and E C Jack, 1930 £7.50
William Sitwell, The Border from a Soldier's Point of View £10.00
MILITARY HISTORY/MARITIME
Frank Carr, The Yachtsman’s England, Seely Service, c.1950s £5.00
Len Deighton, Blitzkrieg, Jonathan Cape, 1979 (first edition) £8.50 - SOLD
Len Deighton, Fighter, Jonathan Cape, 1977 (1st edition) £5.00 - SOLD
Winston Churchill, The Second World War, 6-volume set, Reprint Society, 1950 £12.00 - SOLD
Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Cassell, 6-volume set, 4 first editions £65.00 - SOLD
G. Phillips, Rutland and the Great War, Padfield, 2014 reprint £20.00 - SOLD
K. Langmaid, The Sea Thine Enemy, Jarrolds, 1966 £4.50 - SOLD
Fred T. Jane, The British Battle Fleet, Vol. II, Library Press, 1915 £8.50 - SOLD
Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle, Collins, 1966 £25.00
The U-Boat War, HMSO, 1989 reprint £12.50 - SOLD
David Chandler, Marlborough Military Commander, Military Books, 1973 £12.50
MODERN FIRST EDITIONS
Truman Capote, Other Voices Other Rooms, Heinemann, 1948 (first edition lacking dust wrapper) £10.00 - SOLD
W. Somerset Maugham, The Partial View, Heinemann, 1954 (first edition lacking dust wrapper) £7.50 - SOLD
Dirk Bogarde, A Gentle Occupation, Chatto & Windus, 1980 (first edition) £6.50
NATURAL HISTORY
The Scallop, Shell £6.50
The Countryman's Bedside Book, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1941 (illus. Watkins Pitchford) £5.50 - SOLD
Edward Step, Animal Life of the British Isles, Warne, 1948 £6.00 - SOLD
Wood & Pycraft, The British Bird Book, A & C Black, 1921 £8.50 - SOLD
Charles Tunnicliffe, Shorelands Summer Diary, Holloway, 1984 £7.50 - SOLD
PASTIMES, HANDICRAFTS, TECHNICAL SKILLS
John Wilding, 30 Hour Alarm Clock £25.00
Hugard, Expert Card Technique, Faber, 1954 £22.50
B. E. Jones, The Practical Woodworker (4 volumes), Waverley £35.00 - SOLD
Harris, Model Stationary and Marine Steam Engines, Model and Allied, 1969 £6.50 - SOLD
Vita Sackville-West, In Your Garden, Oxenwood Press, 1996 facsimile reprint £15.00 - SOLD
Dion Clayton Calthrop, The Charm of Gardens, A & C Black, 1911 £6.50 - SOLD
H.E. Dudeney, A Puzzle Mine, Nelson, c.1940 £4.00 - SOLD
PHILOSOPHY
J. Ruskin, Unto this Last, George Allen, 1902 £15.00
POETRY and DRAMA
Acting Games, University of London Press, 1946 £3.50
Robert Herrick, Collected Poems, 1906 £45.00
Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry, Nonesuch, 1938 (first edition) £15.00 - SOLD
The Poems of Ossian (W. Sharp intro), John Grant, 1926 £6.00 - SOLD
Samuel Beckett, Endgame, Faber, 1958 (1st English edition) £28.00 - SOLD
Louisa Stuart Costello, The Rose Garden of Persia, Foulis, 1913 £25.00 - SOLD
The Poetical Works of Robert Burns, OUP, 1921 £15.00 - SOLD
C. S. Lewis, Narrative Poems, Geoffrey Bles, 1969 (first edition) £18.00 - SOLD
Robert Graves, The Song of Songs, Collins, 1973 (illustrated by Hans Erni) £6.50 - SOLD
Tom Stoppard, Jumpers, Faber, 1976 paperback reprint £4.00
Rabindranath Tagore, The Post Office, Macmillan, 1914 first edition £16.50 - SOLD
John Milton, Poetical Works, Warne (half green calf) £6.50 - SOLD
John Donne, The Complete English Poems, Everyman's Library £3.00
John Milton, The Complete English Poems, Everyman's Library £3.00
Robert Service, Songs of a Sourdough, Briggs, 1909 £6.50 - SOLD
Gilbert and Sullivan, Songs of Two Savoyards, Routledge, 1892 £8.50
R.H. Cromek, Reliques of Robert Burns, Cadell & Davies, 1808 (first edition) £110.00
The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside, 1807 £25.00
REFERENCE
N. Webster, Webster's Dictionary, Collins, 1861 £30.00 - SOLD
Ruth Richardson, Vintage Papers from The Lancet, 2006 £10.00 - SOLD
Brooke-Little, A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Bloomsbury, 1985 £8.50
Frank Adam, The Clans, Septs and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands, Johnston and Bacon, 8th edition 1970 £6.50
RELIGION
W. Farrar, The Life and Works of St Paul, Cassell, 1885 £20.00 - SOLD
SCIENCE
E.P. Poulton, Taylor's Practice of Medicine, Churchill, 1930 student prize £12.50 - SOLD
SOCIAL HISTORY
John Arlott, The Snuff Shop, Michael Joseph, 1974 £8.50 - SOLD
Ian Bevan, Top of the Bill: the story of the London Palladium, Muller, 1952 £12.50
Pontefract and Hartley, Yorkshire Heritage, Dent, 1950 £6.00 - SOLD
Winston Churchill, The Island Race, Cassell, 1954 £8.50
Edmund Burke, The History of Archery, Heinemann, 1956 £12.50 - SOLD
A.Haley, Roots, Doubleday (early edition) £6.50 - SOLD
Williamson, The Story of a Norfolk Farm, Faber, 1948 £5.00 - SOLD
John Austen, Historical Note on Old Sheffield Druggists, 1961 £6.00
Richard Blakeborough, Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, E P Publishing, facsimile reprint 1973 £12.50
SPORTS AND GAMES
G. R. Gent, Aldin Book of Outdoor Games, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1933 £5.00 - SOLD
Vivian Bailey, Come Fishing and Shooting, 1961 (first edition) £4.50 - SOLD
Tani Yukio, The Art of Ju-Jitsu, Foulsham, sm. pb. c.1960 £5.50
Jim Clark, Jim Clark at the Wheel, Arthur Barker, 1964 (ex Boots Library) £10.00 - SOLD
G. Gauld, Jim Clark. Portrait of a Great Driver, Hamlyn, 1968 £4.50 - SOLD
Crascredo, Horse Sense and Sensibility, Country Life, 2nd impression 1927 £6.50
TRAVEL, MOUNTAINEERING AND EXPLORATION
Pompeo Molmenti, Venice, Medici Society £4.00
I Wilson, Indian Excursion, Travel Book Club, 1964 £4.50 - SOLD
John Hunt, The Ascent of Everest, Hodder & Stoughton, 1953 (first edition in very good dust wrapper) £27.50