Humes was a co-founder of The Paris Review in 1953, along with Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. He studied writing with Archibald MacLeish at Harvard, graduating in 1954. A Scientist, novelist, activist, inventor, filmmaker, architect, prophet, healer, madman, Harold “Doc” Humes was, by all accounts, an exhilarating, infuriating and terrifyingly brilliant man. He participated in Leary’s LSD experiments and later continued his own experiments, guiding the first LSD experiences of several famous literary friends. He reinvented himself as a “guru on campus”, a self-appointed visiting professor, and spent the next 20-odd years living on or near-campus at Columbia, Princeton, Bennington, and Harvard.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of this now cult-classic title set during a build-up to an inevitable war, in which the US Navy assigns an all black crew to work under three white officers on an insanely dangerous munitions base located on a tiny Caribbean island. Wear and tanning to dust jacket edges. Previous owners stamp to front free end page, otherwise very good. A scarce copy from a legendary forgotten novelist!

Bookseller Inventory # 23011

$225

Men Die
Humes, H.L.

Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1959
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Literary First Editions ·

Tess Slesinger wrote fiction that combined jazzy, up-to-the-minute reports on the state of marriage, sexuality, political culture, and work in 1930s America with a biting, yet emotionally revealing style typical of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker where she published frequently. Slesinger moved in the same circles as Lionel Trilling, Clifton Fadiman and other famed liberal intellectuals, who seem to have provided her with rich material. The Unpossessed invites comparison with the best work of Dawn Powell and Mary McCarthy. “It’s sophisticated … satiric, then ecstatic, alternating social criticism with displays of sexual and intellectual coquetry.” — The Village Voice
Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Blue cloth over boards with red/gold titles. Red top stain. Dust jacket with tipped in author photo, as issued. Wear and minor sunning to edges of boards. Some soiling to page edges, and foxing to endpages. Dust jacket shows some tanning, with one small red stain to rear pannel. Interior pages clean and binding tight.  SCARCE!

Bookseller Inventory # 23013

$300

The Unpossessed
Slesinger, Tess

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 1934
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Literary First Editions, Recent Acquisitions ·

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Second Edition, first printed August 1945, reprinted August of the same year. Dust jacket has Second Edition printed below the blurb on the inner flap. Green cloth boards with white titles on spine edge. Wear to corners and edges of boards, and previous owners stamp to front free endpage. Dust jacket shows some wear, with some chipping to lower spine edge and lower edge of rear pannel. SCARCE!

Bookseller Inventory # 23012

$350

Animal Farm – A Fairy Story
Orwell, George

Publisher: Secker & Warburg, London
Publication Date: 1945
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: Second Edition

· Category: Literary First Editions, Recent Acquisitions ·

Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. She was born Edith Newbold Jones to a wealthy New York family, and first gained attention for several influential design books including her first published work, The Decoration of Houses (1897). In  1901 she built The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. There she wrote The House of Mirth (1905) and the Pulitzer Prize winning The Age of Innocence (1920). She entertained authors, and Henry James was a close personal friend. In addition to her famous novels, Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories. She was a highly regarded garden designer and wrote the classic design book Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904). Wharton in part helped chronicle New York’s upper-class and  their vanishing world in the first part of the 20th century.

Description: Hard bound in red cloth with gilt titles. True first edition published September, 1908. Collected short stories. A nice clean copy with only the most minor sun fading to spine edge. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 13737

$300

The Hermit & the Wild Woman
Wharton, Edith

Publisher: Charles Scribner’s Sons
Publication Date: 1908
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Literary First Editions, Recent Acquisitions ·

Celine’s second masterpiece was written as a prequel to Journey to the End of the Night. A work constructed with an immediate prose style, shocking for the time. Celine aspired to present humanity as is, without the stylistic trappings, and pretense he saw in his contemporaries. Offensive, vulgar, raw, and cynical; he was directly influenced by the tension felt in Europe between the wars. In this existential masterpiece, Celine explores the darker side of the psyche. His influence is far reaching, inspiring such authors as John Fante, Charles Bukowski, and Henry Miller.

Description: Hard bound first U. S. printing with unclipped dust jacket. 593 pages. Corners and edges of dust jacket worn. Minor chipping to edges, and one large chip to lower rear corner of dust jacket. Some sunning to red title on spine edge, otherwise good. Interior clean and binding strong.

Bookseller Inventory # 17150

$300

Death on the Installment Plan
Celine, louis Ferdinand

Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Publication Date: 1938
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Literary First Editions ·

$350

· Category: Literary First Editions, Signed & Inscribed ·