Popular Science
Westell, W. Percival | British Mammals
£15.00
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A charming, illustrated children's book by the prolific natural history author William Percival Westell (1874-1943).
Westell was a self-educated naturalist who served as the curator of the Lechworth Museum for three decades and “strove to make his publications accessible to all by eschewing technical language” (Moore, “William Percival Westell”, Archives of Natural History, volume 42, issues 2). It is estimated that he sold around half a million copies of his many books, published by an astonishing 37 different publishers (Moore).
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...Illustrated by Doris Meyer. London: Chapman & Dodd, Ltd., [1920s].
Quarto. Original grey cloth blocked in dark blue with illustrations of various animals. Colour frontispiece and 1 plate, illustrations throughout the text. Prize bookplate of the Aldeborough School dated 1927, bookseller’s ticket of W. E. Harrison of Ipswich. Spine tanned and rolled, cloth spotted and a little worn at the extremities, light spotting to contents and edges of text block, damage to the edges of pages 105-112 caused by an attempt to open the leaves which were accidentally left closed during production, small pieces of excess paper on the edges of pages 123 and 127. Very good condition.
Williams, Paige | The Dinosaur Artist
£175.00
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First edition, first printing. Inscribed by the author on the title, “Paige Williams, Tucson Book festival, March 2, 2019”.
This best-selling true-crime tale centers on the remarkable 2013 legal case The United States of America v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton, in which the court decided the fate of a skeleton smuggled to the US from Mongolia by fossil dealer Eric Prokopi. Author Paige Williams, of the New Yorker, explores important questions that have surrounded the practice of palaeontology since its earliest days — who gets credit for, and benefits from, fossil discoveries, and is it ever ethical to sell fossils on the open market? An important contribution to the public’s understanding of the history and ethics of fossil hunting.
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...The Dinosaur Artist. Obsession, Betrayal and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy. New York: Hachette, 2018.
Octavo. Original white boards, titles to spine in copper. With the dust jacket. Corners very slightly bumped. An excellent copy in the fresh jacket with a little rubbing at the tips.
Wood, J. G. | Insects at Home
£95.00
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An attractively bound and copiously illustrated work on British insects by the naturalist John George Wood (1827-1889), originally published in 1872.
Wood began his career in the Church of England, but from the early 1880s "was developing a career as a natural historian; his first book, The Illustrated Natural History, was published in 1851. Several more works had followed by 1856, when he began to give occasional lectures on natural history subjects. Wood's appeal as a populariser of natural history was spotted by the publisher George Routledge. Routledge asked him to contribute to a shilling series of handbooks, starting with Common Objects of the Seashore (1857), which enjoyed huge popularity among holiday-makers to the coast. Common Objects of the Country (1858) had an even greater success, and Routledge followed this with a three-volume Illustrated Natural History (1859) by Wood. Many future naturalists were said to have been inspired by reading these books at an early age" (ODNB)
"Wood wrote more than seventy books, some under the pseudonym George Forrest. The majority of them were on natural history, but he also published works on the history of the biblical period and English scenery... and edited titles as diverse as Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbourne and the Boy's Own Magazine. His own natural history titles, such as Our Garden Friends and Foes (1863) and Handy Natural History (1886), were not rigorously scientific but were influential in popularizing the subject. His works on microscopy such as Common Objects of the Microscope (1861) and Nature's Teaching (1877) are still in use by amateur microscopists who hold him in affection" (ODNB).
- ...Being a Popular Account of British Insects, their Structure, Habits, and Transformations. With Upwards of 700 Figures by E. A. Smith and J. B. Zwecker, Engraved by G. Pearson. New Edition. Large octavo (215 x 140 mm). Contemporary tan calf prize binding, spine elaborately gilt in compartments, black morocco label, double lines rules to boards and Hanley Castle Grammar School Crest to upper board gilt, marbled edges and endpapers, turn-overs ruled in blind. Contemporary presentation inscription to the front blank. Colour frontispiece and 20 engraved plates, engravings throughout the text. Boards a little rubbed and scuffed, small gouge from top edge of lower board, blank piece of paper pasted over an inscription on the verso of the front free endpaper, light spotting to contents. A very good copy.
[Masudaya] Modern Toys | Distant Early Warning Radar Station
£500.00
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A remarkable relic of the Cold War, this interactive tin toy allowed a child to pretend that they were manning a distant early warning station with a radar “scope” showing the silhouette of a moving plane, as well as a rotating radar dish and blinking lights. It was made by the famed Masudaya firm of Tokyo, which was founded in 1923 and became the leading producer of battery and mechanical-operated toys during the post-war period (fabtintoys.com). This toy has been tested and is only partially functional, with two of the lights and the rotating wheel of plane silhouettes not working at present, possibly due to loose connections. it is nevertheless a lovely example, and rare in the original box with the paper signal key, as here.
Though early warning radar systems had been in use since Britain’s deployment of Chain Home in 1938, the post-war threat of nuclear bombers led to the development of increasingly sophisticated long-range systems, particularly to monitor activity over the Arctic. The most successful of these was the DEW Line, which was constructed primarily in Canada’s far north, with additional stations in Alaska, Greenland, and Iceland. It went on-line in 1957 but quickly became semi-obsolete as the nuclear threat shifted from bombers to ICBMs, though it continued to operate until the early 1990s to provide an early warning of airborne invasion forces that might have proceeded a missile strike by several hours. The militarisation of the Canadian Arctic had significant effects on Canadian politics, and resulted in increased government interference in the lives of the Inuit as well as serious environmental damage.
This toy was probably inspired by DEW, and it might be a coincidence, but the illustration on the box looks remarkably similar to a 1955 ad in Time magazine extolling Raytheon’s role in designing and manufacturing the radar for that undertaking. Though the toy is undated it was probably sold in the late 1950s or early 1960s, given the short period during which distant early warning radar was of military significance. Work at these stations would have involved fairly dull duties, monitoring radar screens for the start of World War III in an isolated and harsh environment, and it’s strangely charming that someone chose to produce a colourful toy based on what must have been one of the more demoralising jobs in the Air Force.
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...Battery operated. With revolving radar scope, blinking warning lights, telegraph key and light blinker. Japan: [Masudaya] Modern Toys, [c. 1960].
Enamelled tin toy, approximately 19.5 x 12 x 14cm. Opaque backlit “scope” with moving airplane silhouette on the interior, red and green lights, red signal key button, and on/off button. With the detachable beacon tower in tin with red light, the plastic radar dish, and the paper with signal key in morse code. The battery compartment accommodates two D batteries. All together in the original card box (20.5 x 14 x 13cm). Price of 39/6’ in ink to the box lid. Some scuffs and wear commensurate with use, some loss of the green and red paint from the lightbulbs, occasional tiny spots to the tin, on/off button slightly cracked, morse code card torn at the top where there was originally a string, light wear and some creasing and toning of the box. This toy has been tested and is only partially functional, possibly due to loose connections. Both the red light on the body and the light at the top of the tower are not working, and the interior wheel with airplane silhouettes does not rotate. The “morse code” buzzzer works, as does the green light and the backlight. A very good example.
[Woodhead, Joseph] | Catalogue or Guide to the Liverpool Museum of Anatomy.
£350.00
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The rare catalogue of the Liverpool Museum of Anatomy, describing in detail the Museum’s contents and policies, and illustrating its interior by an engraving on the lower cover.
The Liverpool Museum of Anatomy was one of a number of such museums in the UK and US that specialised in wax anatomical models and, unlike many of the museums of professional medical organisations, were open to the public. Though the stated goal was always education, particularly regarding reproduction and the dangers of sexual vice, these museums also traded on the shock or titillation value of their exhibits and some were targeted by the medical establishment as purveyors of vice and quackery.
The proprietor of the Liverpool Museum was the physician Joseph Thornton Woodhead, who describes himself as “having spent thirty years in the study and treatment of diseases affecting the mental and generative organs, nervous and dyspeptic debility, either constitutional or acquired, decline of physical vigor, loss of mental energy, and the numerous concomitants to sexual disorganisation” and writes that those afflicted can consult him “personally at his establishment daily from 11am till 9pm, Sundays excepted”, while those living outside town could write (p. 63).
The Liverpool Museum offered a wide variety of exhibits on the human body, including most of the internal organs; the skeleton; digestion (”articles of human food, and what they are converted into”); common surgical procedures such as the removal of kidney stones; and the usual exhibits on STDs, obstetrics (including a caesarian section model and anatomical venuses), masturbation, circumcision, hermaphrodites, and “freaks of nature”. The admittance of women into such museums was controversial, but defended by many proprietors as an important educational opportunity for women who cared for their families’ health. This booklet advertises the Museum’s hours of admission for ladies as being Tuesdays and Fridays from 2-5pm, and also offers a course of six lectures on midwifery (p. 26). One of the exhibits aimed specifically at women was on the “dreadful effects of tight lacing”, being “a magnificant full-length figure in wax, the model of a young lady... who having from her earliest childhood accustomed herself to the pernicious habit of tight lacing, suddenly dropped down dead in the arms of her partner while dancing” (p. 52).
The Museum’s timeline is difficult to determine from historical sources (and it seems to have moved between Liverpool and Manchester several times), but in this booklet Woodhead claims that it had already been open for forty years. It appears to have been tolerated by the medical establishment until 1874, when Woodhead was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. “To Woodhead's justification ‘that the Royal College of Surgeons possesses, and admits the public to, an exhibition similar to his own”’, the magistrate replied that ‘he could understand museums of the character of the defendant's being connected with the hospitals and medical colleges, but when they came into the hands of private individuals they were likely to produce serious evils’ (Bates, “Indecent and Demoralising Representations: Public Anatomy Museums in mid-Victorian England”, Medical History vol. 52, January 2008). The Museum was closed and the exhibits sold to Louis Tussaud’s waxworks show.
This catalogue is rare. A search on WorldCat locates only four copies, at the Wellcome Library, Harvard, the University of Rochester, and the Getty Research Institute.
Bibliography: Hoolihan, An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine & Health Reform S-741.1
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...29, Paradise Street. This superb collection with all the latest additions, comprising upwards of 1000 models and diagrams, procured at the anatomical galleries of Paris, Florence, and Munich. Now forms the largest collection of anatomical preparations in England, with one exception only, namely of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Museum...
Liverpool: Matthews Brothers, Printers, [c. 1870s].
64 page pamphlet. Original light blue wrappers printed in black. Engraving depicting the museum on the lower wrapper, 1 engraving within the text. Wrappers rubbed, dulled, and spotted, minor crease to the upper corner slightly affecting the contents. Very good condition.