WISE (Thomas J.) A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of S.T. Coleridge. FIRST EDITION. With illustrations and facsimiles, sm. 4to, pp.326, orig. quarter linen and boards, spine neatly repaired. Bibliographical Society, 1913     £125.00
Todd 122b. Wise after the Event p.8. Accompanying this copy is Wise's Coleridgeiana: a Supplement to the Bibliography, pp.40, orig. wrappers, Bib. Soc., 1919 (Todd 123b).

-- A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of A.C.Swinburne. FIRST EDITION. With many plates, 2 vols, sm. 4to, pp.523 & 423, orig. printed boards, spines neatly repaired, sides of vol I faded and a little damp marked not affecting text. Printed for private circulation, 1919-20     £150.00
Todd 385b. Wise after the Event p.9. Wise's first full bibliography of Swinburne, and perhaps his favourite among his author bibliographies. From the old reference library of Pickering & Chatto.

-- A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Algernon Charles Swinburne. Pp.587, orig. green buckram, printed label. London, Heinemann, and New York, Gabriel Wells, 1927     £75.00
Vol XX of the collected Bonchurch edition, limited to 780 copies. The fifth and last of Wise's Swinburne bibliographies, following the prentice work in Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century (1896), the full dress 2 vol work of 1919, A Swinburne Library, 1925, and Vol IX of the Ashley Library Catalogue, 1927.

-- A Byron Library; a Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts and Autograph Letters. Introduction by Ethel Colburn Mayne. With plates, cr. 4to, pp.172, orig. maroon buckram gilt, gilt top, binding and few margins little damp marked. Printed for Private Circulation, 1928     £150.00
Ashley X, p.72. Todd 117b. Wise after the Event p.10. FIRST EDITION; only 200 copies printed. From the old reference library of Pickering & Chatto with neat annotation on half a dozen pages, and, loosely inserted, a cutting from TLS, 27 April 1933, containing the first of John Carter's 'Notes on the Bibliography of Byron', which took issue with a number of Wise's findings. Because of the animosity generated by these exchanges, it was deemed prudent for Carter to step aside and allow his fellow Enquirer Graham Pollard to have the fateful meeting with Wise at 25 Heath Drive on 12 October 1933.

-- A Conrad Library; a Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts and Autograph Letters. Introduction by Richard Curle. With plates, cr. 4to, pp.85, orig. maroon buckram gilt, gilt top, nice copy. Printed for Private Circulation, 1928     £180.00
Ashley X, p.86. Todd 148b. Wise after the Event p.11. FIRST EDITION; only 180 copies printed. Conrad was the only author of whom Wise attempted a serious bibliography in the subject's lifetime. A Conrad Library was his final bibliographical account, following the Conrad Bibliographies of 1920 and 1921. The Addendum contains a particularly choice demolition of a forgery NOT of his making – 'One of the must impudent examples of exploitation I have yet encountered … extortionate … rubbish … not a legitimate "Conrad First Edition" … miserable scrap.' From the old Pickering & Chatto reference library.

-- A Bronte Library; a Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts and Autograph Letters by Members of the Bronte Family. Introduction by C.W. Hatfield. With plates, cr. 4to, pp.105, orig. maroon buckram gilt, gilt top, nice copy. Printed for Private Circulation, 1929     £220.00
Todd 67b. Wise after the Event p.11. FIRST EDITION; only 120 copies printed.

-- A Bibliography of the Writings in Verse and Prose of George Gordon Noel, Baron Byron. With many plates and facsimiles, 2 vols, 4to, orig. slate buckram gilt, gilt tops, other edges untrimmed. 1932     £250.00
ORIGINAL EDITION of Wise's last and perhaps still his most serviceable bibliography; only 180 copies were printed for private circulation. PRESENTATION COPY inscribed by the author 'For F.J. Higginbottom, with affectionate regards from Thos. J. Wise'. PROVENANCE: J.R. Abbey, with his book label in each vol (sale of Sotheby & Co, 16 Nov 1966, £30 to Frances Edwards). Todd 118b. Wise after the Event p.12.

-- Letters of Thomas J. Wise to John Henry Wrenn; a Further Inquiry into the Guilt of Certain Nineteenth-Century Forgers. Edited by Fannie E. Ratchford. FIRST EDITION. With 20 plates, pp.620, roy. 8vo, cloth gilt, with d/w. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1944     £120.00
Wise after the Event, p.58. Todd p. 122. One of the most important items in the Wise dossier, a full length exposure, in Wise's own correspondence, of his activities as a dealer. With Graham Pollard's anonymous TLS review loosely inserted.

-- A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of the Members of the Bronte Family. With plates and facsimiles, sm. 4to, pp.270, with d/w. 1917, reprinted Dawsons, 1965     £45.00

-- A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow. With 68 facsimile plates, pp.338, with d/w. 1914, reprinted Dawsons,1966     £25.00

-- A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Algernon Charles Swinburne. With 170 portraits, facsimiles of titles and MSS., and other illustrations, 2 vols, pp.524+424, with d/ws. Dawsons, 1966     £35.00
The fullest of Wise's separate bibliographies of Swinburne, first issued in 1919-20 in a privately printed edition of only 125 copies.

-- A Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. With 2 portraits and many facsimiles, 2 vols in 1, pp.592, with d/w. 1908, reprinted Dawsons, 1967     £65.00

-- A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. With plates and facsimiles, pp.260, with d/w. 1918, reprinted Dawsons 1970     £45.00

WISE (T.J.) and James P. SMART. A Complete Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of John Ruskin. Edited by Thomas J. Wise. With frontispieces and facsimiles, 2 vols, well bound in contemp. half maroon morocco, spines gilt lettered and decorated, gilt tops, other edges untrimmed, bindings slightly rubbed but a nice set. For subscribers only, [1889]-93     350.00
Ashley IV, p.197. Todd 220b. Wise after the Event p.7. FIRST EDITION. Only 250 copies were printed on Dutch handmade paper. With the orig. ochre printed wrappers and prospectus bound in. Affixed to the prospectus is an ALs, pp.2, 29 May 1893, from J.P. Smart to George Marsden, a subscriber, acknowledging receipt of his sub., reporting 'parts 17 and 18 will be ready in about a fortnight' and inquiring 'did you buy any Ruskin books or pamphlets at the sale?'.
'The work is primarily by James P. Smart' observes Prof. Todd, 'Wise's function being limited to the editing and commentary, and the interpolating of ''new'' material'. Nevertheless, Wise was the moving force, contriving to get his name on the title page twice, and the work was his first major essay in bibliography. Among the proof readers to whom tribute is paid were Alexander Wedderburn and Sydney Cockerell, both of whom were later to question the bona fides of some of the forgeries.

MORRIS (William) Letters on Socialism. With 4 leaves of facsimile, pp.8+30, orig. parchment boards, edges untrimmed. Privately Printed for the Ashley Library, 1894     £250.00
Ashley III, p.177. Buxton Forman 157 – 'A choice little private print'. Todd 185d. Partington p.333. Wise after the Event p.37. FIRST EDITION. Although William Morris was subject to the attention of the forgers, the present item was Wise's only legitimate private printing of a Morris title. Wise stated that only 34 copies were printed, 4 of them on vellum.

WISE (T.J.) and W. Robertson NICOLL. Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. Contributions towards a literary history of the period. With 44 plates, illus. and facsimiles, 2 vols, thk. 8vo, pp.646 & 511, orig. maroon buckram gilt, from a library with stamp on titles and a few other leaves, gilt press marks on spines, some pencil annotation. Hodder & Stoughton, 1895-96     £250.00
Ashley I, p.191. FIRST EDITION. Decent ex- Kings College London library copy of a work which is scarce and of fundamental importance in Wise's career. Robertson Nicoll, editor of The Bookman, was named as the principal author, but Wise was clearly the driving force. As Carter and Pollard observed in their Enquiry, '[the forgeries] figure fairly prominently in every one of these bibliographical studies, and the authoritative acceptance and description of them in a publication of this kind undoubtedly played a large part in establishing them in the eyes of the literary and collecting world.' Todd 186a. Wise after the Event p.2. Looking again at our note 'some pencil annotation', it is perhaps worth observing that Vol II, pp.292-374, Wise's proto-Swinburne bibliography, is heavily annotated and marked up in pencil as if for reproduction elsewhere.

SWINBURNE (A.C.) Posthumous Poems. Edited by Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise. FIRST EDITION. Pp.220, orig. cloth. Heinemann, 1917     £45.00
Wise, Swinburne, 176. Todd 363a. Wise after the Event p.4.

WISE (T. J.) and Stephen WHEELER. A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Walter Savage Landor. With portrait and facsimiles, sm. 4to, pp.450, orig. quarter linen and boards, fore edges of cover stained and slightly warped. Bibliographical Society, 1919     £100.00
Ashley III, p.95. Todd 178b. Wise after the Event p.9. FIRST EDITION.

BROWNING (Robert) Letters. Collected by Thomas J. Wise. Edited with introduction and notes by Thurman L. Hood. FIRST EDITION. With 16 plates, lge. 8vo, pp.410. Yale U.P., 1933     £75.00
Ashley XI, p.12. Partington p.278. Todd 102i. Wise after the Event p.6. First printing of the Browning correspondence in Wise's possession. As Partington and others have pointed out, it was a letter in this very volume which proved that the Reading Sonnets could not have been printed in 1847. Contemp. ownership signature of Robert J. Kane, May 1933.

BROWNING (Robert) Cleon. Sm. 8vo in half sheets, pp.23, unbound as issued, preserved in a folding book form cloth case by Rivière. E. Moxon, 1855     £450.00
Ashley I, p.115. Enquiry p.177. Todd 84f. Wise after the Event p.14. The first of the group of three Browning forgeries; probably produced in 1890, as they are first mentioned in William Sharp's Life of Robert Browning (see below). Browning had died in December 1889, having already given the seal of authenticity to the forgery of his wife's The Runaway Slave; the time was clearly ripe to exploit his reputation, then at its height.

-- The Statue and the Bust. Sm.8vo in half sheets, pp.21, unbound as issued, preserved in a folding book form cloth case. E. Moxon, 1855    £450.00

Ashley I, p.115. Enquiry p.179. Todd 85f. Wise after the Event p.14. The second Browning forgery of (probably) 1890. All these occur as folded sheets without wrappers or stitching in the great majority of cases. Their unbound state was accounted for by Wise in the Swinburne bibliography. The old stock of the Moxon firm was disposed of in two sales in 1873 and 1888. 'From these sales', he notes, 'but particularly from the latter, came the "remainders" of Swinburne's Laus Veneris, Browning's Cleon and The Statue and the Bust, Tennyson's A Welcome, and other items then regarded as of small account, but now both interesting and valuable.' By 1908, Walter T. Spencer was quoting Cleon and The Statue and the Bust at     £70 the pair.

ARNOLD (Matthew) SMART (Thomas B.) The Bibliography of Matthew Arnold. Pp10+90, orig. brown cloth, J. Davy, 1892     £75.00
Ashley I, p.12, describing one of the 30 copies on hand made paper. FIRST EDITION, and one of the earliest bibliographical records of the Wise forgeries; the two Arnold titles, Saint Brendan ('1867'), and Geist's Grave ('1881') are both listed on p.14, As Carter and Pollard observe (Enquiry, pp.128 etc.), both titles were omitted from Smart's second edition of 1904.

ARNOLD (William Harris) Ventures in Book-Collecting. FIRST EDITION. With 17 plates, one in colour, and many facsimiles in text, pp.374, quarter cloth and boards, spine dull. New York & London, Scribners, 1923     £65.00
With foreword (pp.vii-x) by Wise. Arnold was one of the first of the wealthy American collectors who assembled large holdings of the forgeries. As early as 1901, portions of his library were sold, and Wise was keenly interested in the prices the forgeries realised. Tantalisingly, Wise arranged for his correspondence with Arnold to be burnt.

BROWNING (Robert) Pauline; a Fragment of a Confession. A reprint of the original edition of 1833. Edited by Thomas J. Wise. Cr. 8vo, pp11+73, orig. boards, neatly rebacked with lettering piece, ownership signature of Vernon Randall, 1909, on half title. Printed by Richard Clay & Sons, 1886     £150.00
Only 400 copies printed for the Browning Society. It was the publication of this reprint of Browning's rare first book that started Wise's connection with the firm of Richard Clay, who went on to print most of his forgeries. Gorfin purchased 'a bundle' of unsold copies in 1910. Todd 109a.

BROWNING (Robert and Elizabeth) TEXAS UNIVERSITY. Catalogue of the Browning Collection. Compiled by Warner Barnes. With 4 plates, pp.120, with d/w. Humanities Research Center, Austin, 1966     £85.00
FROM THE LIBRARY OF JOHN CARTER, with his ownership signature on d/w and ms. notes on more than 20 pages, mostly in his characteristic red biro; on binding terminology and variants, and particularly on T.J. Wise and Buxton Forman and their forgeries, piracies and private printings, in which the Texas holdings (incorporating the Wrenn library) are rich. Also present is Carter's anonymous TLS review (referring inter alia to 'his prentice work, Binding Variants').

-- SHARP (William) Life of Robert Browning. Sm. 8vo, pp. 2+220+22+6 adverts, orig. navy cloth. Great Writers, Walter Scott, 1890     £75.00
Ashley I, p.137 (a large paper copy). Enquiry p.174. Todd 115i. FIRST EDITION. Sharp's little book, 'rather rhapsodical and inaccurate' (Enquiry) as it no doubt is, has an important place in the authentication of the forgeries. The bibliography, by John P. Anderson of the British Museum, is the first list of Browning's works to include Cleon, The Statue of the Bust and Gold Hair. 'These leaflets or half-sheetlets' observes Sharp, 'are among the rarest "finds" for the collector, and are literally worth a good deal more than their weight in gold.' By 1894, Wise was confidently declaring that they were 'worth ten or twelve guineas each'.

CARTER (John) and Graham POLLARD. An Enquiry in to the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets. With 4 plates, pp.410, orig. buckram, gilt top, nice copy with d/w. Constable, 1934     £150.00
FIRST EDITION. The essential cornerstone in the literature of the Wise forgeries. 'The classic quality of the original text' writes Nicolas Barker, 'was the one fact about it that Carter and Pollard appreciated least.' Loosely inserted are several relevant cuttings from The Times, including the original, guarded, review of An Enquiry, an account of the Ashley Library, John Carter's obit, etc. Ashley XI, p.52. Wise after the Event p.55.

-- The Firm of Charley Ottley, London & Co., Footnote to An Enquiry. FIRST EDITION. With 3 illus, sm. 8vo, pp.95, orig. stiff wrappers, text little browned as usual. London, Hart-Davis and New York, Scribners, 1948     £45.00
Essential sequel to the Enquiry. Wise after the Event p.59

-- Working Papers. COMPLETE SET. Together 4 nos., pp. 25, 22, 22, & 37, orig. pale blue stiff wrappers. Oxford, Blackwell, for the Authors, 1967-70     £120.00
TITLES: 1) Précis of Paden, or the sources of 'The New Timon'; 2) The Forgeries of Tennyson's Plays; 3) The Mystery of 'The Death of Balder'; 4) Gorfin's Stock. The Working Papers were the last of the Enquirers' researches to be published; Carter died in 1975, Pollard a year later. Only a few hundred copies of each were printed, at a guinea each, and perhaps because of their ephemeral and interim nature – being avowedly 'Working Papers for a second edition of An Enquiry' – although of relatively recent date, they are already very uncommon.

-- An Enquiry in to the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets. With BARKER (Nicolas) and John COLLINS. A Sequel to the Enquiry: The Forgeries of Forman and Wise re-examined. Together 2 vols, with plates, pp.465 & 370, with d/ws. 1992     £85.00
The definitive scholarly account of the forgeries.

CLAY (Richard, printers) MORAN (James) Clays of Bungay. FIRST EDITION. Numerous illus. in half tone, coloured frontispiece, pp.160, with d/w. Bungay, 1978     £45.00
'No history of the firm of Clays could avoid dealing with the case of Thomas J. Wise' - see pp.116-127. This copy comes from the library of Percy Muir (whose Minding My Own Business provides a memorable vignette of TJW brandishing his dentures).

COLLINS (John) The Two Forgers; a Biography of Harry Buxton Forman and Thomas James Wise. With 67 illus, pp.330, with d/w. 1992     £35.00
The latest word on the activities of Forman and Wise.

FORMAN (H. Buxton) The Books of William Morris described, with some account of his doings in literature and in the allied crafts. With 30 plates and many illus. in text, pp.15+224, orig. maroon buckram gilt, gilt top, binding little faded as usual. Frank Hollings, 1897     £150.00
Ashley II, p.130. Colbeck 105. FIRST EDITION. With ownership signature and stamp of J. Visser, Rotterdam, on title. With the various catalogues and bibliographies of Wise, this book was the primary document for establishing the bona fides of the Wise and Forman forgeries. As Nicolas Barker and John Collins have shown, Forman's speciality lay in the manufacture of fake wrappers, either for his own forgeries or for embellishing items which originally appeared without wrappers. John Collins estimates that perhaps 10% of the contents of the Morris bibliography are Forman's own productions. Nevertheless, a century on, it remains a standard reference.

FOXON (D.F.) Thomas J. Wise and the Pre-Restoration Drama. A Study in Theft and Sophistication. With 4 plates, pp.50, printed wrappers. Bibliographical Society, 1959     £18.00
Wise after the Event p.59. A study of T.J.W. at his most malign.

GOSSE (Edmund) The Life of Swinburne. With a letter on Swinburne at Eton by Lord Redesdale. Title in red and black, sm. 8vo, pp.52, orig. blue grey boards with printed label and tissue wrapper, edges untrimmed, fine copy. Privately printed at the Chiswick Press, 1912     £120.00
Ashley VII, p.79. FIRST EDITION of Gosse's brief biography of Swinburne specially written for DNB, and limited to 30 numbered copies only for presentation. This copy is inscribed by Gosse to W.F. Prideaux, bibliographer and collector; both were friends (and dupes) of Wise. Prideaux in turn presented it a mere three months later to E.H. Blakeney, who ran private presses in Ely and Winchester from 1914 to 1952 (see Ridler pp.25-34).

-- COX (E.H.M.) The Library of Edmund Gosse; being a Descriptive and Bibliographical Catalogue of a Portion of his Collection. With introductory essay. FIRST EDITION. Portrait, pp.300, gilt top. Dulau, 1924     £85.00
Ashley IX, p.82. Todd 164i – 'As compared with Gosse's 1893 catalogue, which included none of Wise's productions, this lists 21, 4 with authenticating letters and notes from Wise.' The dedication leaf reads: Inscribed with respect and admiration to Thomas J. Wise. Wise after the Event p.5. From the old reference library of Pickering & Chatto, with occasional neat (and usually acerbic) notes in the text.

GROLIER CLUB. STEVENSON (R.L.) Catalogue of First Editions of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, with other Stevensoniana. Sm. 8vo, pp.82, printed wrappers. New York, 1914     £35.00
Not in the standard Wisean references, but it must be noted that the three attested forgeries are all listed. A Folger Shakespeare Library duplicate, with small disposal stamp at end.

JOHNSON (Charles Plumptre) Hints to Collectors of Original Editions of the Works of Charles Dickens. – Hints to Collectors of Original Editions of the Works of William Makepeace Thackeray. Together 2 vols, cr. 8vo, orig. cream parchment, bindings dust soiled, edges untrimmed. George Redway, 1885     £150.00
Ashley II, p.46, and VII, p.170. FIRST EDITIONS; only 550 copies of each work, printed on thick laid paper. Johnson's were among the earliest attempts at author bibliographies, designed to cater for the burgeoning collector's market of the 1880s. These copies were formerly in the reference library of Pickering & Chatto, then at 66 Haymarket. The Dickens volume has the initials of Tom Chatto and Charles Massey, proprietors, and each volume contains a number of annotations in their hands and those of A.J. Bowden and other members of the firm, relating to collation, pieces realised at auction, etc. There is, of course, no mention of To Be Read at Dusk, An Interesting Event, or A Leaf out of a Sketch Book, though Carter and Pollard note that it was Johnson himself who drew attention to the first two items in letters to the Athenaeum in 1890 and 1891 (Enquiry, pp.185 and 347). Bowden subsequently went to America, and, it seems, was one of the first to be 'wise before the event'; for we find him, in the Literary Collector, March 1901, denouncing what can only be, by implication, the Wise forgeries (see Ratchford, p.270).

LEWIS (Roger C.) Thomas J. Wise and the Trial Book Fallacy. With 7 illus, pp.266, with d/w. 1995     £45.00

MEREDITH (George) FORMAN (Maurice Buxton) A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of George Meredith. 1922. – Meredithiana, being a Supplement to the Bibliography. 1924. Together 2 vols, with plates and facsimiles, sm. 4to, orig. quarter linen and boards. Bibliographical Society, 1922-24     £120.00
Ashley III, p.142, and IX, p.78. Barker & Collins p.106. FIRST EDITION. Printed by William Clowes, who, as Barker and Collins observe, were also the printers of the piracy Twenty Poems (1909). From the old reference library of Pickering & Chatto, with a few neat annotations in text in the hand of Dudley Massey, and a rubbing of the spine of Richard Feverel illustrating a binding variant in P & C's possession differing from Michael Sadleir's copy. It was done in September 1940, while the Battle of Britain raged.

MILES (Alfred H., editor) The Poets and the Poetry of the Century, [Vol 3]. John Keats to Edward, Lord Lytton. Thk. sm. 8vo, pp.15+640, orig. green cloth, gilt top, armorial bookplate and ownership signature of Edward Andrew Donaldson. Hutchinson, [1892]     £45.00

-- The Poets and the Poetry of the Century, [Vol 6]. William Morris to Robert Buchanan. Thk. sm. 8vo, pp.13+596, orig. buckram, gilt top, book label of J.C. Cochrane. Hutchinson, [1894]     £60.00
'Alfred H. Miles was plodding through his ten volume compendium The Poets and the Poetry of the [19th] Century, 1891-97. The major entries comprised a biographical and critical account followed by a selection; it is still a work of great interest, particularly for minor figures. Forman contributed Charles Wells, R.H. Horne and Thomas Wade to volume 3 and William Morris to volume 6.' – Collins, The Two Forgers

MORRIS (William) Under an Elm-Tree; or, Thoughts in the Country-Side. FIRST EDITION. Pp.16. Aberdeen, James Leatham, 1891     £120.00
Ashley III, p.175. Buxton Forman 131 – 'This is a 16 page pamphlet, demy 16m, stitched through the middle, uncut. It was sold without a wrapper; but special copies are occasionally found with a pale green printed wrapper.' The pamphlet is quite genuine; but, as Barker and Collins make clear (Sequel to An Enquiry, p.212), it was Buxton Forman himself who provided a pale green wrapper to go round a batch of 50 copies that he bought, thus creating a chimaera (in horticultural parlance, a graft hybrid).

MUIR (Percy) Minding My Own Business; An Autobiography. FIRST EDITION. With 7 plates, pp.232, with torn d/w. 1956     £45.00
Wise after the Event p.62. Not only the best memoir by an English antiquarian bookseller; it also includes a chapter on the Carter and Pollard exposures, with extracts from the Gullible Papers.

PARTINGTON (Wilfred) Thomas J. Wise in the Original Cloth: The Life and Record of the Forger of the 19th century Pamphlets. FIRST EDITION. 27 plates, pp.372, buckram gilt, with d/w. Hale, 1946     £65.00
Wise after the Event p.58. The first 'popular' account, and still a good read.

POPE (Alexander) GRIFFITH (Reginald Harvey) Alexander Pope; a Bibliography. Vol I (all published). In 2 vols, lge.8vo, pp.670, orig. buckram, spines faded, margins of text damp stained. Texas U.P., 1922-27     £150.00
Ashley IV, p.65 & IX, p.107. ORIGINAL EDITION. Very scarce, the first copy we have handled in many years. This copy was formerly in the reference library of Pickering & Chatto, the distinguished antiquarian booksellers and specialists in 18th century literature, and contains their occasional notes in text. Also present are the following insertions: 1)Various cuttings from TLS, c.1935-58, on Popeian matters, by Norman Ault,DavidFoxon,A.N.L.Munby,etc. 2)GRIFFITH (R.H.) A Tentative List of the Varieties of the Dunciad issued in 1729. Galley proofs on two sheets. c.1920. 3) WISE (T.J.) Galley proofs on four sheets of the Ashley Library Catalogue entry for the Dunciad. Three sheets are marked in pencil with minor corrections; the fourth sheet carries some extensive marginal additions in WISE'S OWN HAND. These additions were incorporated in the text (see Ashley IV, p.21).

RICCI (Seymour de) The Book Collector's Guide. A practical handbook of British and American bibliography. Roy. 8vo, pp.667, buckram, spine dull, paper little browned. Philadelphia & New York, The Rosenbach Company, 1921     £85.00
Limited to 1100 copies. De Ricci's heroic and painstaking attempt to update Lowndes, including extensive sales records as well as new bibliographical data. Todd 191i. Wise after the Event p.5. See also John Carter's rather mixed view in Taste and Technique, pp.38-41.

RUSKIN (John) The Unity of Art. Pp.38, orig. brick red printed wrappers, spine trifle worn but a very good copy of a fragile production. Manchester, T. Sowler, 1859     £75.00
Cook & Wedderburn XVI, pp.247. FIRST EDITION. The second of the five lectures which were subsequently collected as 'The Two Paths' later in the same year. It was 'pre-firsts' such as this pamphlet that provided the inspiration for Wise and his forgeries.

SHELLEY (P.B.) Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude: and other poems. A facsimile reprint of the original edition, first published in 1816. Sm. 8vo. pp.8+8+103, orig. buckram, printed label, uncut and unopened. Reeves & Turner, and B. Dobell, 1885     £250.00
Ashley V, p.62. The publishing history of this facsimile of Shelley's first regular volume of verse is complex. Dobell put out the present edition (350 copies on toned paper, 50 on handmade paper and 4 on vellum) in 1885, using, as he acknowledges in his preface 'the excellent copy of my friend Thomas J. Wise'. According to the Ashley Library Catalogue, unsold copies were then purchased from Dobell by the Shelley Society (secretary T.J. Wise), who reissued them unchanged except for a new dress of Shelley Society boards. The following year there was another edition with a new titlepage, now dated 1886, and introductory matter, with hand made paper and vellum issues; and finally a second edition in 1887. To complete the saga of Alastor in the Wise/Buxton Forman camp, it is worth mentioning that Forman had already issued his own private printing of the poem in 1876 (on ordinary and hand made paper and vellum), though this was merely an offprint from his otherwise irreproachable edition of Shelley.
The present copy was BERTRAM DOBELL'S OWN. It is one of the issue of 50 copies on hand made paper and contains his ownership signature and two leaves of the ordinary paper issue.

-- Rosalind and Helen. A type facsimile of the original edition of MDCCCXIX edited by H. Buxton Forman. Pp.24+100, orig. turquoise printed boards, nice copy. Reeves & Turner, 1888     £75.00
Ashley V, p.69. Printed by Richard Clay; as Carter and Pollard pointed out (Enquiry, pp.255 etc.) the display type used in the title of Rosalind and Helen was the same as that employed in several of the Wise-Forman forgeries.

SHEPHERD (Richard Herne) Translations from Charles Baudelaire with a few Original Poems. Cr. 8vo, pp.120, bound in near contemp. unlettered cloth. Pickering & Co., 1879     £150.00
Second, enlarged edition, of Shepherd's only volume of verse; despite the title, most of the lyrics are his own, the three opening poems alone being translated from Baudelaire, though they were probably the earliest English versions to appear. The present copy is the Pickering reissue of the 1877 sheets with cancel title; it was limited to 100 numbered copies only. PRESENTATION COPY inscribed ' K.G., with grateful regards from the author, October 19, 1887'. In addition, neatly written in red ink on the front free endpaper is a HOLOGRAPH SONNET to K.G., initialled and dated October 1887. We have not conclusively identified K.G., though we would like to suggest Kate Greenaway. A copy of this volume was in the Pariser sale of 5 December 1967 (item 481, a presentation copy to V. de Payen Payne).

-- Tennysoniana. Sm. 8vo, pp. 8+208, orig. green cloth, spine gilt lettered. Pickering & Co., 1879     £75.00
Ashley VII, pp.161. Second edition of Shepherd's critical account of Tennyson; with Bibliography, pp.15, containing, naturally, no mention of the Wise Forgeries. From the library of John Johnson, Printer to O.U.P., 1925-46, with his book label and occasional pencil marking in margins of the bibliography.

-- The Bibliography of Swinburne. Cr. 8vo. pp.40, orig. vellum gilt, edges untrimmed, binding slightly spotted, withdrawn from Grimsby Public Library with bookplate and stamp on title and last leaf, press mark on spine, still a very good copy. George Redway, 1887     £75.00
Ashley VII, p.74 — 'This was a revised edition of Herne Shepherd's pamphlet of 1884'; actually the fourth edition, the preface states. Includes a record of the genuine Siena, 1868, and A Word for the Navy, 1887 – but no Cleopatra, etc. PRESENTATION COPY inscribed 'F.J. Hytch, with kindest regards from the Author, Aug. 29, 1887'. Only 250 copies were printed.

-- The Bibliography of Tennyson. A Bibliographical List of the Published and Privately Printed Writings of Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, from 1827 to 1894 inclusive. Cr. 8vo, pp.7+88, orig. printed wrappers, little dust soiled. Printed for subscribers only, 1896     £85.00
Ashley VII, p.163. FIRST EDITION, and the definitive version of Shepherd's Tennyson bibliography (an earlier attempt appeared in his Tennysoniana, 1879). It was his last publication in an ill-remunerated life of literary hackwork, varied by the occasional piracy, including two editions of The Lover's Tale. With an inserted advert leaf for Shepherd's other bibliographies, and for a facsimile of 'Mr. Thackeray, Mr Yates and the Garrick Club', which was itself to be forged in due course. The publisher of these was Frank Hollings; he was born James Francis Hollingshead Shepherd, younger brother of RHS and it is just possible that he may have been involved with the forgers; he published Forman's Morris bibliography in 1897.

STEVENSON (R.L.) PRIDEAUX (W.F) A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. New and revised edition, edited and supplemented by Mrs Luther Livingston. Portrait and facsimiles, roy. 8vo, pp.409, buckram, gilt top, some dampstaining of foremargins mostly at the beginning. Frank Hollings, 1917     £65.00
Bound uniform with the Pentland Edition of the collected works. From the old Pickering & Chatto reference library with a few notes in the hand of Dudley Massey. Wise after the Event p.63 – 'This has the expanded note on Ticonderoga, 1887. This bibliography includes all the identified and suspect Wisean forgeries of Stevenson'.

TENNYSON (Alfred) Poems. MDCCCXXX. MDCCCXXXIII. Sm. sq. 8vo, pp.8+112, well bound in late 19th cent. half dark green levant morocco, spine gilt decorated with lettering piece, gilt top, other edges untrimmed, by Rivière. Privately Printed, 1862     £275.00
Ashley IX, p.148. Carter & Pollard, Enquiry, p.120. Wise's account remains the fullest we have: 'The text of the interesting little volume is composed of the suppressed poems of Tennyson, taken from the Poems, Chiefly Lyrical of 1830, and the Poems of 1833. It was compiled by James Dykes Campbell, who from April 1860 to the summer of 1862 resided in Canada as the representative of Messrs. Cochrane & Co., of Glasgow. During his stay in Toronto, Campbell caused the book to be privately printed in Toronto at his own cost. The work was done at the printing-house of Messrs. W.C. Chewitt & Co., of that City. About fifty copies, Campbell told me, were brought by him to London. Some of these came into the possession of John Camden Hotten. His attempt to circulate them ended in legal proceedings, and on July 31st, 1862, an injunction was granted restraining Hotten from selling any copies of the book, and from circulating the catalogue in which it was advertised.' A note in Edmund Gosse's library catalogue, 1893, states that about 150 copies were printed. From the library of Lord Rosebery, with blind stamp of The Durdans on fly title.

TODD (William B., editor) Thomas J. Wise Centenary Studies. Essays by John Carter, Graham Pollard, William B. Todd. FIRST EDITION. With portrait, roy. 8vo, pp.137, with d/w. Austin, Texas U.P., and Edinburgh, Nelson, 1959     £65.00
Wise after the Event, pp.59. The most important mid-century review of the Wise phenomenon; with essays by the Enquirers, hitherto unpublished letters by Wise, revelations of further forgeries and W.B. Todd's invaluable Handlist (pp.44).

-- Suppressed Commentaries on the Wisean Forgeries; Addendum to an Enquiry. With folding facsimile, pp.49, blue cloth with printed labels, with glassene d/w. Austin, Humanities Research Center, 1974     £45.00
Only 500 copies printed at Texas U.P. PRESENTATION COPY inscribed by the author to Dr. and Mrs. [Marc] Fitch.

WHISTLER (J. McN.) Nine Letters to Th. Watts-Dunton. FIRST EDITION. Pp.18, square 8vo, orig. printed wrappers. Chelsea, printed for private distribution, A.E., 1922     £45.00
One of only 50 copies (out of series) printed at the Chiswick Press for A.E., whom B.L. General Catalogue (Supplement) reveals as the famous collector Albert Ehrman. In the preface he expresses gratitude to T.J. Wise for the loan of the letters, probably part of Wise's haul from The Pines. It is surprising that Wise did not, as one of his sidelines, print the letters himself. Ashley VII, p.204. Not in Norman Colbeck's extensive Whistler collection. BAL 21347.

WILKINSON (Cyril H.) Worcester College Library. With plates, sm. 4to, pp.62, orig. wrappers. 1927     £48.00
Offprint from Oxford Bibliographical Society Transactions. Presentation copy from the author to Percy Dobell with note inserted. Wise after the Event, p.78. Wise, in his capacity as Hon. Fellow of Worcester, had given several mss and 128 of his private printings to the college. Wilkinson was one of those who rallied to his support after the Enquiry.

'How easy it is to be wise after the event'-- T.J.W.