Dawsons of Pall Mall (London)

(26 cm), 130 pp., colour frontispiece, [19] leaves of plates (pls.I-XXVII), text illustrations. 99 items; priced. Publisher’s cloth-backed printed boards. - An extraordinary catalogue, showing the range and quality of the Dawson stock outside the fields of science and medicine. Foremost among the manuscripts are an unrecorded early 15th century manuscript of Walter Hilton’s “The Scale of Perfection” and “Of Angels Song” (item 6, £3750; see Toshiyuki Takamiya, “A Hilton manuscript once in the possession of Luttrell Wynne” in The Book Collector: A special number to Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 1997, pp.85-93); a Book of Hours, produced for Besançon use, Phillipps Ms 4795 (item 14, £4250; consigned to Sotheby’s, 18 June 1962, lot 122); and a three-page holograph Galileo manuscript (item 20, £5000; now Bibliotheca Bodmeriana). Notable books include John Dee’s very heavily-annotated copy of Strabo 1549 (item 42, £3500; now Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, LP 3414C); the painted portrait (announced on the title-page) is a studio version of Michael Dahl’s portrait of Alexander Pope (item 86, £500; now National Portrait Gallery, 4132). Catalogue preface signed E.A.O. (Eric Allen Osborne, born 1906). ¶ Paper lettering-piece peeling from cloth spine. Good, unmarked copy.