With the festive season upon us, our specialists have selected their favourite items our new Christmas Gifts page.
To see the full list, please follow this link.
All items can be bought directly from our website, but for any questions or enquiries, please contact [email protected]
Claire
Cataloguer
The first UK edition of this classic of American literature, with a landscape that evokes the winter season. One of my all-time favourite books!
Fuchsia
Travel
No one understood better than M.R. James that Christmas is a time for ghost stories. Many of his most famous tales were read aloud by him to friends and students during the holiday season, and in the 1970's some were adapted by the BBC in their series called A Ghost Story for Christmas. My favourite, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" is included in this collection, and tells a cautionary tale to the amateur antiquarian about the perils of inaccurate Latin translation. Something we can all relate to I think!
Bonny
Modern Literature
Few things feel more Christmassy than cosying up to read a Sherlock Holmes story, making this first edition of the Hound of the Baskervilles the perfect festive gift.
Hazel
Early European
An extravagantly rococo edition of Dante's complete works, lavishly illustrated, in a handsome contemporary binding of bright Italian vellum - what's not to love?! This is one of two editions of the Divine Comedy on our Christmas gift (and wish!) list; the other, printed two hundred years before, in 1564, is equally lavish.
Euphemia
Far East – China & Japan
These two books pair really well: Enroku [Tobacco Record] is an illustrated history of tobacco printed during the Edo period, and Tabako Toraiki [On the Arrival of Tobacco] – printed over 130 years later – is a wonderful book by artist Kawakami Sumio inspired by the history of how tobacco entered Japan. In the cataloguing process, I loved looking at these books side-by-side! I would be very happy if someone gifted this pair to me...
