Peter Harrington

    Member of ABA - United Kingdom


    Early Printing Illustrated Books Literature Manuscripts Science & Technology Voyages & Exploration

Peter Harrington is one of the most respected and dynamic names in the world of rare books, with permanent galleries in London and New York. From its beginnings in London in 1969, the firm has built an international reputation for sourcing and selling the finest first editions, signed and inscribed books, rare manuscripts, fine bindings, and library sets. Over more than fifty years, Peter Harrington has handled thousands of significant works, from incunabula, early illuminated manuscripts, and Shakespeare folios to landmark works of science, literature, political thought, travel, philosophy, and the arts. With a team of subject specialists and bibliographers, the firm brings exceptional depth of knowledge to every item it handles, and works closely with collectors, libraries, and institutions to build collections of lasting cultural and scholarly value. Its galleries in Chelsea and Mayfair in London, as well as New York’s Upper East Side, offer a welcoming, elegant setting to explore rare books and works on paper. The firm also exhibits at leading rare book and art fairs across the globe, from New York and Los Angeles to Hong Kong, Maastricht, Abu Dhabi, and Melbourne – reflecting its place at the heart of the international rare book community.

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100 Fulham Rd. London, SW3 6HS United Kingdom Get Directions


Store Hours

Mon - Sat 10 am - 6 pm

Sunday Closed

Highlights

ABNEY, Hephzibah. Manuscript with hundreds of original watercolour illustrations of shells.
$26100
A conchological labour of love: an attractive album of “shells from nature” by the talented watercolourist Hephzibah Abney (née Need, 1758-1841) and a record of the conchylomania that swept Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This is the only recorded example of Abney’s shell illustrations and has re-entered the market almost 50 years after its last appearance.
AUSTEN, Jane - TEMPLE BOOK CLUB. Remarkable manuscript archive of a private subscribers’ library.
$62700
An intriguing collection of book lists, invoices, and receipts from the Temple Book Club, which operated between 1812 and 1819, a period during which first editions of works such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park were acquired at discounted rates and circulated among its members, a select group of barristers from one of London’s Inns of Court.
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CHIVERS BINDING - TENNYSON, Alfred. Poetical Works.
$14100
A “vellucent” style binding, with delicately rendered Arthurian figures after Dorothy Carlton Smyth (1880-1933), the most prolific of Chivers’s female designers. Smyth was particularly involved with the Glasgow School of Art, who appointed her as their first female director. Her stained glass Tristan and Iseult, the subject of one of Tennyson’s Arthurian poems, garnered wide acclaim at the 1901 International Exhibition.
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CURIE, Marie. “Radio-Active Substances.”
$31400
First edition in English of Curie’s famous dissertation, rare in such excellent condition in the original parts. Serialized across 15 issues of The Chemical News, it was applauded by the examination committee for being the greatest scientific contribution ever made in a doctoral thesis. Later the same year, Curie received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of radioactivity.
DOUGLAS, William Bloomfield. Diary kept while captain of a mail ship, commander of a government coastal survey, and government resident of the Northern Territory.
$104500
The valuable journal of the overly ambitious and power-hungry Captain Bloomfield Douglas, encompassing three important aspects of Australian colonial history: the evolution of the colony’s communications with the wider world, the quest to survey its coasts accurately, and the placing of control over colonized fringes in the hands of ill-suited soldiers of fortune.
THOMPSON, Theophilus. Chess Problems.
$73200
Scarce first edition of the author’s sole work, marking the starting point of chess book publishing in African American history. Born into slavery in Maryland, Thompson became a house-servant following his emancipation and learned the game in 1872 after meeting John Hanshew, later the editor of the Maryland Chess Review. Thompson published this collection of 101 prodigious problems the next year, aged 18.