London: Chatto & Windus, 1902. Inscribed by Author; Brown cloth lettered in gilt and black with colour pictorial label on front cover. pp (iii), x, 340, (4,ads) + title leaf printed in red and black + 32 pp publisher's March, 1902, catalogue + frontispiece with tissue guard and 14 other plates by a noted illustrator. Yellowing to endpapers and page edges; label has light rubbing, slight ripple from damp; else a VG unworn copy. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS UNCLE " 'Oh my prophetic soul ! / Mine uncle !' To J.D. Watson from his nephew Robert Barr". Barr's mother was Jane Watson. An historical novel of 16th century Scotland; young King James V wanders his kingdom incognito. In some 40 years of dealing in more than a casual way in this author, this is only the second time I have encountered his signature. This UK edition is much less common than the 1902 US edition. AMICUS locates four copies. ; Octavo; Signed by Author

London: Thomas Nelson, 1939. Green cloth, spine lettered in yellow. pp (346), [2]. Light soil spot on spine, small tan spot to rear free endpaper, light yellowing to page edges and endpapers, else a fine, bright copy. Dust jacket has chips, rubbing and small tears to ends of lightly darkened spine but only a small part of two letters affected; fingernail size chip to front panel; small chips to outer corners; two inch split to lower rear spine fold; rear panel lightly soiled, with a skinned spot to blank lower margein; generally VG otherwise, colours bright, flap price (7/6) intact, decent in appearance. A crime novel in which we are told at the outset that the K.C. who is defending an accused man is himself the murderer. Features an authentic murder trial. "Jack" Kennedy, born in London, UK, was a member of Toronto's Arts and Letters Club where he knew Canadian crime writer William Lacey Amy ("Luke Allan") and where he bet Amy he could write a crime novel as good as any of the Luke Allan tales. After taking his degree at Cambridge, he was sent to British Columbia to be a fruit farmer. He instead chose to study law and was called to the BC bar in 1918. He next moved to Port Arthur, ON, and then to Toronto, being called to the Ontario bar in 1921. He became an outstanding lawyer and a partner in Manning, Mortimer and Kennedy. He was also an outstanding tennis player, though he had only one usuable arm owing to a childhood bout with polio. Kennedy became a more than competent watercolourist, claiming that Lawren Harris taught him how to paint while he taught Harris how to play tennis. He wrote the official history of the Dept. of Munitions and Supply in WWII, and in 1952 moved to Peterborough where he served as a judge until his retirement in 1963. The present book is the second of his three crime novels. Skene-Melvin p 120. Uncommon book, scarce in jacket. ; Octavo

1894. 6 x 8 inch sheet of lined paper. Horizontal crease to middle, yellowing and nicks to fore edge, VG otherwise. First draft with numerous changes of a poem beginning (in the first version) "By God's will here I am". The first version has nine lines, with changes. There is a middle section of three lines, followed by a second version of four lines beginning "By God's will here" (one word crossed out). The hand is difficult and I have not been able to decipher it all., nor have I determined whether or not it has been published in any form. I have recently compared this unsigned and untitled ms. with a known extensive sample of his hand and am morally certain this is indeed by Ross (having long suspected such). "William Wrightson Eustace Ross (June 14, 1894 - August 26, 1966) was a Canadian geophysicist and poet. He was the first published poet in Canada to write Imagist poetry, and later the first to write surrealist verse, both of which have led some to call him 'the first modern Canadian poet.' " - Wikipedia. Ross began writing poetry around 1923. The next year he married and bought a house on Delaware Ave. in Toronto, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He developed a distinctly Canadian verse form he called "laconic". He was published in the noted American little mags "Poetry" and "The Dial". He privately published his first book "Laconics" in 1930, which garnered a favourable review by Marianne Moore. "Sonnets", also privately published, followed in 1932. Some prose poems influenced by Max Jacob and Franz Kafka were published New Directions in Prose & Poetry for 1937, which are considered to be the first published prose poems written in Canada. His 1956 Contact Press book "Experiment 1923-29" was the last book published in his lifetime. "Shapes and Sounds" (1968), a posthumous and substantial collection contained some new poetry. Ross holograph, including even a signature, is rare in the market.; Manuscript

Toronto: Author, 1976. Blue buckram, spine lettered in silver. Approximately 200 leaves from typescript photocopied on rectos only. Many photos. Fine copy. From page following half-title: " Dear Spenser - Here is an incomplete copy of my 'Jarvis book' - all that is missing are faint pictures of tiny village churches which my Father re-designed or re-built. The recollection of pasting all these photographs in and making labels for them still leaves me shuddering...#10, lacking some pictures." "This is a light-hearted and uninhibited story for the amusement and edification of my own immediate family." - title page. The original manuscript, with pastedin photos, is at Library and Archives Canada. AMICUS locates at Toronto Public Library only. OCLC locates one copy (Family History Library, Salt Lake City). A rare and obviously important Toronto genealogy. ; Quarto

London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1956. Variant in red boards, spine stamped in black (also noted in blue boards). pp 190. Page edges tanned, text paper toned, just a mite leaned, covers a little bowed, else fine. Black dust jacket (art by Lowen, a sinister face holding a hypodermic needle) has minor rubbing and creased nicks to spine ends; quite minor wear to outer corners; near fine otherwise, flap price intact, no sunning to the red spine lettering. A crime novel set in Montreal. "The glaring lights above the operation table had been burning for most of the day. A man's brain lay exposed, and silent, whiite figures examined it and worked it over it with urgent skill and care. The surgeon poised, then lowered the scalpel to the damaged area. A barely heard moan, and the patient was unconscious. The patient in his own country was an important political figure, and his opponents knew that the only chance of success for their revolt lay in taking advantage of his absence. Which was why, in a hotel somewhere in Montreal, three men were plotting what to do, in case the operation succeeded." - jacket flap. The patient is the President of an unnamed South American country. This was Moore's seventh novel overall, the sixth of his seven potboiler crime novels, and the first of the two under the "Michael Bryan" pseudonym. Published in the USA as a Dell paperback original in 1956, which is fairly common; this, the first hardcover edition, is, along with his other E&S hardcover MURDER IN MAJORCA (1958), his scarcest book. It was also the first of a number of his novels to be the basis of a film (Intent to Kill, 1958), starring Richard Todd, Betsy Drake, Herbert Lom, Warren Stevens, Alexander Knox, and Jackie Collins, and filmed in Montreal. Rees A7b. ; Small octavo