37
133.HUGO, Jean. Five costume designs and corresponding autograph letter. Five original gouache costume designs by Jean Hugo for characters in Les Misérables. Jean Hugo was the great-grandson of Victor Hugo who originally wrote the play in 1862.
£3,500
The letter is dated 19 October 1962 and addressed to Mr Bull, the headmaster of the boys preparatory school attended by Jean Hugo’s son Charles. The letter discusses the schools upcoming production of Les Misérables and the costume sketches provided, as well as Charles’s possible part of the police officer in the play “who has practically nothing to say, if he is not capable of taking any other.”
Hugo’s home address Mas de Fourques is included in the top right corner of the letter. There is also discussion about a Robert Fause who published Avec Jean Hugo (Presses du Languedoc, 2002).
Jean Hugo (1894 – 1984), was born in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century into a family of great artistic linage. Following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather the playwright Victor Hugo, his grandfather Charles and father George, all of whom shared the same passion for the arts and literature, Hugo was both an author and artist and designer of theatre sets and costumes. He experienced firsthand significant avant-garde movements as they unfolded in Paris, including surrealism during the 1920s. His associates and friends included those at the forefront of artistic circles such as Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso.
Provenance: Collection of the Bull family.
134. HUISH, Robert. Bees: Their Natural History and General Management: Comprising a Full and Experimental Examination of the Various Systems of Native and Foreign Apiarians; With an Analytical Exposition of the Errors of the Theory of Huber; Containing, Also, the Latest Discoveries and Improvements in Every Department of the Apiary. Henry G. Bohn. 1844.
£400
8vo. Contemporary full green morocco, gilt borders to sides, spine with gilt panels and tools and gilt lettering, gilt turn ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt; pp. xxvii, 9-451 (as issued), frontispiece portrait of Huish, numerous text illustrations; spine attractively sunned, very handsome binding, internally very clean, very good. Provenance: bookplate to front pastedown of Frederic Straker (1863 - 1941) of Angerton Hall, Morpeth. He was a keen racehorse breeder and huntsman and had a fine library of travel and natural history books.
New (fourth) edition, greatly enlarged. Robert Huish (1777-1850) has been generally regarded as a prolific hack on numerous subjects. Nevertheless, his book on bees, first published under the title A treatise on the nature, economy, and practical management of bees in 1815, proved popular and successful, running to several editions. He was in fact an experienced, knowledgeable and opinionated apiarist, and this edition of the work is notable for the inclusion of his one-man crusade against the great Swiss
entomologist Huber: “In the 1844 edition of A Treatise he set out in tabular form the thirty-four ‘errors’ of Huber. This tabulation shows how far Huber advanced scientific apiculture, whereas Huish, for all his technical skill, failed to make full observations and to interpret his observations correctly. He also assumed that his own conclusions, based on a single hive, were ‘normal’ for all colonies of bees. However, despite its faults, A Treatise offers a good insight into both British and European beekeeping in the opening decades of the nineteenth century.” (DNB).
British Bee Books 176.
135. HULME, F. Edward. Familiar Wild Flowers. Figured and Described. Cassell and Company, Ltd., [1878 - c. 1890].
£250
8vo. 7 vols. [“First Series”-”Seventh Series”]. Original olive green cloth, titled in gilt on spine and upper cover, both incorporating a swirling art nouveau trailing flower design in a paler green; 280 colour plates; extremities a little bumped, slight foxing to prelims and edges, very good.
First editions. Hulme (1841 - 1909)was the drawing master at Marlborough College when he began his ambitious project of illustrating and describing all the species of British wild flowers. The work was initially distributed in parts. A contemporary review from “The Spectator” states: “So much trouble is taken with these periodicals, so much ability is at the disposal of the conductors, that is is difficult to bestow the praise which is really deserved without seeming extravagant.” Two more volumes were published before the series culminated in 1900.
Nissen BBI 951.
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