Pickering & Chatto's latest List 235 are recent acquisitions which they showcased at the New York Bookfair and which may or may not have sold.  There are a  variety of  items ranging from the first facsimile of the Domesday Book, the earliest use of photography for the purpose of reproducing a complete manuscript, to a rare late eighteenth century double sided hornbook, 'the first book of children' (Johnson). 

The hornbook is late 18th or early 19th century and is valued at £3,750. It is unusual in that it has the five vowels and the addition of the archaic form of the lower case letter ‘s’. The lower case letter ‘s’ began to be dispensed with in the 1790s with most London printers taking the lead and those in the provinces a decade or so later when they could afford to purchase a new font. This type of carefully made educational tool was for children of well-to-do families and is comparatively expensive to buy in relation to the wooden and paper examples used in Sunday schools. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of 1755 describes The Hornbook as the first book of children, used from the 15th  to the end of the 18th  Century.

A screen fan is available from the list priced at £875. Although there is no trade label the fan is quite typical of Alphonse Giroux, as with his other recognised fans that show his keen interest in the use of novelties and optics for clever effect. The scene is of two lovers with a young man placing a garland of flowers on a girl’s head whilst another lady looks on. The other elements of the scene include a fountain, two swans, a turned over flowerpot, a statue of entwined lovers, and a flowing red cloak which all add to the quasi eroticism of the scene. When held to the light the translucent image transforms into a sunlit scene.

A specially bound volume List of Cases for Trial at the Glasgow Spring Circuit by David Cathcart is for sale at £3,850. This was prepared for one of the two Judges sitting for the Glasgow Spring Circuit of 1828. This was an unusual circuit in a fetid atmosphere in 93 hours over eight days from the 16th to 23rd April 1828, 78 cases and 115 defendants were put on trial then constituting the greatest number of cases brought at one time in a Scottish court. The number of cases being so unusual the indictments for each trial were bound together with a printed summary list acting as contents for the judge to use as the trials took place.