Welcome

Since 1996 we have been buying and selling fine used books, from vintage collectibles to signed first editions. Search and browse our inventory online and follow "The Mouse" for updates.

Our Books

Click to Search
our inventory by Author, Title, Publisher, and Keyword at AbeBooks.com.

Click to Browse
our inventory at AbeBooks.com.

Contact

Phone: 631.725.8654

Mailing: PO Box 943,
Sag Harbor, NY 11963

blackcatbooks@yahoo.com

Archive for ‘Sold’

Lars Tunbjörk is one of Sweden’s most respected photographers. He was born in 1956 in Boras, on the western coast of Sweden. He is frequent contributor to leading international magazines and a member of the VU picture agency in Paris. Tunbjork is known for his unique vision of recreational and working environments. His more recent work is now devoted to the exploration of color, which he approaches in the style of 1970’s American photographers. This is his starting point for questioning the world, a series of interrogations more than observations, which he develops without pessimism but with an undeniable affliction softened by a biting humor. Over time, his approach has become radicalised and purified by being less and less anecdotal. Consequentially, his series no longer represents characters but rather the often absurd track of their presence and their actions. His work is among the permanent collection at MoMa and has been shown in museums and galleries throughout the world, including: The ICP, Museum of Modern Art: Stockholm, Museum of Photography: Tokyo, Hasselblad Center: Sweden, and The Akademie Der Kunste: Berlin.

Description: Hard bound, no dust jacket as issued. Published in conjunction with Goteborg’s Hasselblad Center. First edition stated. 49 color photographs of elegantly detached images of Swedish housing projects, yards and interiors devoid of their occupants. Text in English. Designed by Greger Ulf Nilson. With a bibliography and exhibition history. Very minor wear to dust jacket edges, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. A scarce first printing! After his earlier series on leisure time and the world of office labor, Lars Tunbjark returned to his childhood neighborhood to photograph his mother’s house. The experience intrigued him, and he continued shooting in similar areas around Sweden. Saturated with other people’s personal memories, his photographs convey the peculiar atmosphere of silence familiar in middle-class housing districts, not only in Sweden but in other countries as well. If on the surface his images purport to investigate the private domestic realm in terms of architecture, home decorating styles, and garden culture, as seen in Sweden during the latest two decades, under these multiple, quiet surfaces they reveal apocalyptically more. Home is the final book in a trilogy, following Country beside Itself and Office.

Bookseller Inventory #42890
SOLD

Home: Lars Tunbjork
Tunbjork, Lars; Odbratt, Goran

 

Title: Home: Lars Tunbjork
Publisher: Steidl
Publication Date: 2002
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Edition: 1st Edition

Umberto Eco is an Italian novelist, essayist, philosopher, literary critic. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory.

Description: (The Name of the Rose) Text In the original Italian. Hard bound in dust jacket. Gilt stamped red cloth. Signed & Inscribed by Umberto Eco on the front free end page. SIAE 1 edizione sticker, numbered 004995 on copyright page. Showing L10.000 original price on dust-jacket. This copy shows some minor age toning to pages, otherwise clean. The jacket shows some minor sunning to spine edge, and a few chips to edges. This now classic mystery is set within a medieval monastic library. In 1327, a time of tension between the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire, the English Brother William of Baskerville is sent to investigate heresy among the monks at an Italian abbey. His task is overshadowed by a series of bizarre murders. This is a tale of books, librarians, patrons, censorship and the search for the truth. Basis for the 1986 film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater. Winner of the Premio Strega, Prix Medicis Etranger and Premio Anghiari awards.

Bookseller inventory # 28519

Il Nome Della Rosa (The Name of the Rose)
Eco, Umberco

SOLD

Publisher: Romanzo Bompiani
Publication Date: 1980 Milano, Italy
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 2nd Edition – First Printing of the Second edition

Loretta Lux is a fine art photographer known for her surreal portraits of young children. She was born in Dresden, East Germany and currently lives and works in Monaco. Stare at a Loretta Lux portrait long enough, and you’re bound to feel completely mesmerized. Lux does not strive to create faithful photographic representations of her young subjects. Instead, each image is painstakingly composed and manipulated to create psychically charged explorations of the nature of childhood. The consistently forlorn expressions of her models combined with the hyperreality of the image create portraits that transcend their subjects and remind us that childhood is as chaotic and multidimensional as any other part of life.

Description: SIGNED BY LORETTA LUX on the title page. INSCRIBED BY LUX TO THE PHOTOGRAPHER DAVID GAMBLE on page 5 “This book is for David Gamble 10th May 20054. East Hampton Please sign anything”. Hard bound, no dust jacket as issued. 45 color plates. Introductory essay by Francine Prose. Biographical notes, exhibition history. A selection of the surrealistic photographic portraits of children by Loretta Lux in which the subjects are posed and then digitally altered. Internally clean and unmarked with sound binding. A rare signed association copy.

Bookseller Inventory #30131

SOLD

Loretta Lux
Lux, Loretta & Prose, Francine

Publisher: Aperture
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Hard Bound, no dust jacket as issued
Book Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition
Signed: Signed & Inscribed by Loretta Lux

The 1952 National Book Award winning author James Jones was known for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath. His wartime experiences inspired some of his most famous works, the so-called war trilogy. He witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which led to his first published novel, From Here to Eternity (1951). The Thin Red Line (1962) reflected his combat experiences on Guadalcanal and Whistle was based on his hospital stay in Memphis, Tennessee, recovering from surgery. James Jones died in 1977 before finishing Whistle. The final three chapters were completed by Willie Morris based on taped conversations with the author and extensive notes he’d already written. Jones expected that his novel would say, “Just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war.”

Description: First Edition – Limited Presentation Edition.  #1172 of 1500 Numbered Copies Signed by James Jones! Black boards with slightly faded gilt title to spine edge. Some minor foxing to page edges, and end pages, otherwise with interior clean and binding tight. The dust jacket shows some wear, foxing and a few small closed tears. The author’s first book & winner of the 1952 National Book Award.  Noted as one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library and a key title in the literature of the Second World War. Adapted into the Academy Award-winning Fred Zinnemann directed film with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra and Ernest Borgnine. A scarce title.

Bookseller Inventory #30109

SOLD

From Here to Eternity
Jones, James

Publisher: Scribners
Publication Date: 1951
Binding: Hard Bound
Condition:
Very Good
Book Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by James Jones
Edition:
First Edition, #1172 of 1500 Numbered Copies Signed by James Jones

Slim Aaron photographs comprise the definitive insiders look into the private lives of the Leisure Class of the 1950’s and 60’s. Aarons as part of the Jet-set photographed from Beverly Hills, to the French Riviera, capturing the Kennedys, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, and other elite jet-setters. Aarons worked without stylists or elaborate lighting, preferring to photograph celebrities in their own clothes and own surroundings. As a faithful chronicler of the High Society he has no equal.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket.  First Edition. Harper & Row 1974. Dust Jacket shows wear along its edges and corners with a rip at the top of the front panel and the remains of stickers and tape on its front and back panels, but no major chips or missing pieces. The book shows minor wear along the edges of its boards and has light foxing on the edge of the text block, but is otherwise in very good condition. Interior clean and binding sound! RARE!. Settings include Aspen, Bermuda, Newport, Palm Springs, Beverly Hills, Scottsdale, Palm Beach, Montego Bay, San Francisco, and other places the jet set congregated.

Bookseller Inventory# 62244

A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life

Slim Aarons

SOLD

William S. Burroughs is considered to be one of the most politically subversive, culturally influential, and innovative writers of the twentieth century. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who affected popular culture as well as literature. Much of his work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived and worked is various parts of the world, such as Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, and most famously Tangier.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First Printing of the First American Edition with $6.00 price on inside flap of dust jacket. Black boards and black topstain, with tile in gilt to spine edge. Dust jacket shows a few small chips to edges and minor sunning to spine edge. Notation and underlining in pen to several pages and rear end page, otherwise a good working copy with binding tight. One of the greatest and most controversial novels in American literary history. Originally published in 1959 in Paris. It was not published in the US until 1962 due to US obscenity laws. Published by Barney Rosset, of Grove Press, in a tiny edition of only 3500 copies. It won the last major literary censorship battle in America. A landmark work! A scarce first edition of this seminal Beat novel.

Bookseller Inventory # 26009

SOLD

Naked Lunch
Burroughs, William S.

Publisher: Grove Press
Publication Date: 1959
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U.S. Edition

Joseph John Campbell was the leading authority on mythology and comparative religion in the 20th century. He was an American writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. James Joyce was an important influence on Campbell. His seminal work  A Hero With A Thousand Faces discusses what Campbell called the monomyth (in the cycle of the journey of the hero) a term that he borrowed directly from Joyce.

Description: First Edition. Hard bound with dust jacket.  Some minor wear to dust jacket. Age toning to jacket, mostly to spine edge. Interior clean and binding sound. The 365 page “1st Key” edition. Lime green cloth with gilt-lettered spine. The definitive literary analysis and the first important book-length critical work on Finnegans Wake. This was Joseph Campbell’s second book, the first being Where the Two Came to Their Father, A native American story published the year before.  A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake is considered to be a seminal work on the text.

Bookseller Inventory # 30055

SOLD

A Skeleton Key To Finnegans Wake
Campbell, Joseph; Robinson, Morton

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Publication Date: 1944
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

William S. Burroughs is considered to be one of the most politically subversive, culturally influential, and innovative writers of the twentieth century. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who affected popular culture as well as literature. Much of his work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived and worked is various parts of the world, such as Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, and most famously Tangier.

Description: Hard bound in price clipped dust jacket. Stated First printing. Some wear to dust jacket and edges and boards. Spine edges of dust jacket show small chips. sunning to edges of black cloth boards. Foxing to end pages, otherwise with interior clean and binding tight. Compared to his Nova Tetralogy, Burroughs has adopted a more conventional style here, borrowing liberally from genre fiction. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, The Wild Boys tells the story of teenage gangs of marauders that emerge from North Africa in 1969. One of Burroughs’ most thought provoking works and now  rather scarce.

Bookseller Inventory # 29876

SOLD

The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead
Burroughs, William S.

Publisher: Grove Press
Publication Date: 1971
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

Ernest Hemingway is probably the most recognizable American author of the first part of the 20th century. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Men Without Women is his second collection of short stories. The volume consists of fourteen stories, ten of which had been previously published in magazines. The story subjects include bullfighting, infidelity, divorce and death, and are considered to be among Hemingway’s best work.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of the First edition. Meets all points of issue. Scribner’s “A” on copyright page, no mention of Book of the Month edition or Pulitzer Prize. Original $3.00 price in inside flap of dust jacket, and brown tinted author photo to rear of dust jacket. Sea blue cloth boards show minor wear to corners and edges. Slight offsetting from dust jacket to end pages. Minor foxing to inside flaps of jacket. Previous owners name and 1952 date to front fixed end page, otherwise a tight and clean copy. Dust jacket shows some wear to edges and corners, and one small chip to upper spine edge, otherwise fine. An increasingly scarce copy of a seminal work of modern fiction.

Bookseller Inventory # 30997

SOLD

Men Without Women
Hemingway, Ernest

Publisher: Scribner’s
Publication Date:
1927
Binding:
Hardcover
Dust Jacket Condition:
No Jacket
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition:
First Edition – First State

84, Charing Cross Road is a charming record of bibliophilia, cultural difference, and imaginative sympathy. For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carried on an increasingly touching correspondence. Helen Hanff, in search of obscure classics and British literature titles she had been unable to find in New York, first contacted the shop in 1949. It fell to Doel to fulfill her requests. In time, a long-distance friendship evolved, not only between the two, but between Hanff and other staff members as well, with an exchange of  birthday gifts, and food parcels to compensate for post WW II food shortages in Britain. Their letters included discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the coronation of Elizabeth II. Many of her letters are laugh-out-loud funny, made more so when juxtaposed with Frank Doel’s typically proper and reserved English responses. The book went on to become one of the most unlikely New York Times bestsellers ever. It was adapted into the 1987 film directed by David Hugh Jones. Now almost 50 years later, 84, Charing Cross Road has achieved a sort of cult status, with early printings and signed copies highly sought after

Description: INSCRIBED BY HELEN HANFF on the front free end page “To Alan’s Aunt Pearl from Alan’s neighbor Helen Hanff”. Hard bound with price clipped dust jacket. Stated 7th impression January 1983. Some foxing to end pages, and some very minor sheld wear to dust jacket, otherwise very good. A rare inscribed copy of the now classic tale about the twenty-year correspondence between her and Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co, antiquarian booksellers located at the eponymous address in London, England.

Bookseller Inventory # 29820

SOLD

84, Charing Cross Road
by Hanff, Helen

Bibliographic Details:

Title: 84, Charing Cross Road
Publisher: Andre Deutsch
Publication Date: 1983
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition

William Carlos Williams was a revolutionary figure in American poetry. He was a major writer in the modernist movement, helping to create a clear American voice. Although Williams had a successful literary career as a poet, he lived a remarkably conventional life, working as a medical doctor for more than forty years. Early in his career, he briefly became involved in the Imagist movement through his friendships with Ezra Pound and H.D. Williams’s deep sense of humanity pervaded both his work in medicine and his writings. In 1915 Williams also began to associate with a group of New York artists and writers known as “The Others”. Founded by the poet Alfred Kreymborg and the artist Man Ray, this group included Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore and Marcel Duchamp. In his later years, Williams took on the role of elder statesman and mentored and influenced younger poets. He had an especially significant influence on many of the American literary movements of the 1950s, including the Beat movement, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the New York School. One of Williams’s most dynamic relationships was as a mentor to the young Allen Ginsberg. Williams included several of Ginsberg’s letters in Paterson, stating that one of them helped inspire the fifth section of that work. Williams also wrote the introduction to Ginsberg’s important first book, Howl. Williams was a highly acclaimed writer, two of his many honors include the first National Book Award for Poetry in 1950 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1963.

Description: SIGNED BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS on the front free end page. Hard bound, no dust jacket. Wear and some minor foxing to cloth boards. Previous owners notes in pencil to rear free end page, otherwise very good. Considered to be amongst his best work. A scarce signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory # 29187

SOLD

Journey To Love
Williams, William Carlos

Title: Journey To Love
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1955
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition

In the early 1960s Joe Brainard met Kenward Elmslie in New York, they  became life partners and collaborators until Brainard’s untimely death death from AIDS in 1994 at the age of 52. They were both part of a second generation of NY poets & artists following in the tradition of  the The New York School of poetry, an avant-guarde movement comprised of mid-century poets & artists such as John Ashbery, Alex Katz, Larry Rivers, Fairfield Porter, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O’Hara. Heavily influenced by surrealism and modernism, the poetry of the New York School was serious but also ironic, and incorporated an urban sensibility into much of the work. Abstract expressionism was also a major influence, with many poets having personal relationships with artists such as Jackson Pollock & Willem DeKooning. The second generation of New York School poets that arose during the 1960s included Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Joe Brainard and Kenward Elmsile among others. Their work contained much of the same humor and collaborative spirit. They were closely associated with the now famed Poetry Project at St. Marks Church. Founded in 1966 it was a crucial venue for new and experimental poetry and helped launch the careers of many poets including Allen Ginsburg. The downtown scene in New York’s East Village became the center for beat culture, and the new emerging pop-art movement. In 1973 Elmslie became the editor of the Poetry Project’s literary magazine, Z. He was also editor and publisher of Z Press, publishing work by the close knit group of writers, artists and poets of the East Village scene. It was the start of the mimeograph revolution, a new support system in the form of a small presses, which was the most accessible and spontaneous way to spread information about the growing scene. Joe Brainard & Kenward Elmslie in many ways opened the door for the PoP movement and artists such as Ed Ruscha & Robert Rauchenberg who were to follow.

Description: SIGNED BY both BRAINARD & ELMSLIE, and inscribed Merry Christmas! Happy new Year! Paperback copy, with side-stapled mimeo wraps. Some age toning to wraps. One small tear to upper spine edge of tape binding. Interior clean and binding sound. The first of many published Brainard/Elmslie collaborations. Limited edition, one of 500 printed copies. This is a unnumbered and apparently out-of-series, with “Jack” hand written in the limitation line. A very rare signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory# 29455
The Baby Book
Brainard, Joe; Elmslie, Kenward

SOLD

Title: THE BABY BOOK
Publisher: Boke Press, NY
Publication Date: 1965
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

Czeslaw Milosz is an important contemporary poet, and ranks among the most respected figures in twentieth-century Polish literature. He was born June 30, 1911 in Seteiniai, Lithuania. He was the 1980 Nobel Prize winner for Literature! He recEIved a Guggenheim Fellow for poetry 1976; received a honorary degree Doctor of Letters from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1977; won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1978; received the “Berkeley Citation” (an equivalent of a honorary Ph.D.) in 1978; nominated by the Academic Senate a “Research Lecturer” of 1979/1980.

Description: SIGNED BY CZESLAW MILOSZ on the half title page. Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of the Ecco Press edition. First collection of new poems since receiving the Nobel prize for Literature in 1980. Some minor wear to dust jacket, now in protective Brodart cover. The end pages and page edges show some foxing, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound. Verse, prose poems, prose jottings, pensees, quotations, translations and even fragments from personal letters have been gathered into the shape of a writer’s notebook. Sustained mediation on sexuality, language, and problems of belief, the life of the streets of cities and the mysterious annihilating power of time.

Bookseller Inventory # 29367

SOLD

Unattainable Earth
Milosz, Czeslaw

Title: Unattainable Earth
Publisher: Ecco Press
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Hard Bound with Dust Jacket
Edition: First Edition
Book Condition: Very Good
Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Author

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English author, feminist, publisher, and is regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society, and probably the best known member of the Bloomsbury Group. In 1917 along with Leonard Woolf she founded the Hogarth Press, which subsequently published Virginia’s novels along with works by T.S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, and others. Throughout her life, Woolf was plagued by periodic nervous breakdowns and associated illnesses. Though this instability often affected her social life, her literary productivity continued with few breaks until her suicide on 28 March 1941.  After the final attack of mental illness Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse near her home where she drowned. Woolf’s suicide, like Sylvia Plath’s, have much colored the interpretation of both her work and her life.

Description:
Hard Bound In Black Cloth With Silver Titles. Missing original dust jacket. Wear To Boards With Spine Edges Chipped. Corners Bumped. Previous Owners Bookplate Affixed To Front Fixed End Page. A Comic Novel Of Manners Concerning Five Young People Struggling With Issues Of Love And Work, Engagement And Marriage, In London In The Early Years Of The Twentieth Century. It Is The Most Linear And ‘Plotted’ Of Woolf’s Novels. A Good Working Copy of Woolfe’s second novel. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 24604

SOLD

Night And Day
Woolf, Virginia

Publisher: Duckworth, U.K.
Publication Date: 1919
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: 1st Edition

Jawaharial Nehru was was the first Prime Minister of India, serving from 1947 until 1964. Nehru was a charismatic and radical leader, who advocated complete independence from the British Empire. In the long struggle for Indian independence, Nehru was eventually recognized as Gandhi’s political heir.

Description: SIGNED BY NEHRU on the first white page “Jawaharial Nehru – Oct. 1949”. Hard bound with dust jacket. Charming illustrations by Shakuntala Masani throughout. First written for the children of India, this edition adapted for American children. The story of Nehru from the time he was a small boy until he became the first Prime Minister of India. Contents include chapters – Jawaharial Sees the World – Kamala and Kashmir – First Taste of Jail – President of the Congress – At the foot of the Himalayas – and others. Green cloth boards show some minor wear to corners and edges. Minor age toning to pages, otherwise fine with interior clean and binding tight. Dust jacket shows some wear and toning, with two small closed tears, otherwise very good. A increasingly scarce title and Quite rare signed by Jawaharial Nehru.

Bookseller Inventory # 26101

SOLD

Nehru’s Story
Masani, Shakuntala & Nehru, Jawaharial

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 1949
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition

Erich Maria Remarque was a German author best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. His was born on July 22, 1898, in Osnabrück, Germany, the only son of a bookbinder. The family was poor and moved at least eleven times during Remarque’s childhood. During World War I he was drafted into the army. While recovering in a German hospital from wounds suffered during the war, Remarque worked on his first novel. Like many other authors of his generation the horrors of World War would permanently alter his viewpoint. Around this time he switched to the original French spelling of his last name. The immense success of the landmark anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929 established Remarque as an author. This novel helped define a new genre of antiwar & anti-military fiction that grew rapidly in Germany in the late 1920s. The pacifism in his work and their strong sense of sadness & suffering made them very unpopular with the Nazi government, who subsequently banned his work in 1933. In 1938, in fact, Remarque was stripped of his German citizenship. Remarque arrived in the United States in 1939, and later became an American citizen.  Arc de Triomphe (1946), the story of a German refugee doctor in Paris, France, just before World War II, returned Remarque’s name to the best-seller lists. Remaque’s heartfelt indignation about human suffering made him a spokeman against fascism in all forms. His literary career opened the door of world of  Hollywood, where he worked briefly. His numerous lovers included Marlene Dietrich & Natasha Paley Wilson. He counted among his friends Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, and many other Hollywood stars of the day.

Description: INSCRIBED BY ERICH MARIA REMARQUE on the front free end page “With all good wishes, Erich Maria Remarque – New York, 27 January 1946”. Hard bound, no dust jacket. Wear to blue cloth boards that show sunning and age toning to spine edge. Hinges weak, but holding well. interior clean. Previous owners book plate affixed to front fixed end page, otherwise very good. Translated from the German by Walter Sorell and Denver Lindley. Published in 1945, Arch of Triumph is a about stateless refugees  life in Paris before World War II. It was the second book of his, after All Quiet on the Western Front, to appear on bestseller lists worldwide. It was made into a feature film in 1948. A RARE signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory# 28710

Arch of Triumph
Remarque, Erich Maria

SOLD

Title: Arch of Triumph
Signed: Inscribed by Author
Publisher: D. Appleton – Century Co., New York
Publication Date: 1945
Binding: Blue Cloth HC + Gilt Lettering
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dj
Edition: First Edition

Ludwig Bemelmans was an Austrian-American author, an internationally known gourmet, writer and illustrator. He is remembered today for his Madeline books, six of which were published from 1939-1961. Throughout the 1920s Bemelmans struggled to become a recognized artist, while employed by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. During this time he wrote and drew more than any other period of his life.  The Hotel Splendid, a thinly disguised version of the Ritz, defined him for an adult readership much the same way Madeline did for his younger audience. Besides his beloved Madeline books, Bemelmans was a contributor to Vogue, Town and Country, The New Yorker, Fortune, & Harper’s. Bemelmans also did many cover illustrations for The New Yorker, as well as Broadway set design, and several projects in Hollywood. He painted the murals at the New York’s Carlyle Hotel which are quite famous.

Description: HAND SIGNED AND NUMBERED BY LUDWIG BEMELMANS Hard bound “in the in the silk damask draperies of a famous New York Hotel”, with paste down title to spine edge. No dust jacket, as issued. #220 in a Limited First Edition of 245 numbered copies for sale. Some minor wear to edges and corners of silk cloth over boards, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. The Hotel Splendide is a thinly disguised version of the Ritz Hotel, brimful of anecdotes, adventures, love tales, murder tales, and droll tales, from the limitless memory and imagination of a man who for many years looked out from his post behind the potted palms with the eyes of an artist and the heart of a poet. Illustrated throughout with the Author’s inimitable drawings. A scarce copy of the signed limited edition.

Bookseller Inventory # 27178

SOLD

Hotel Splendide
Bemelmans, Ludwig

Publisher: Viking
Publication Date: 1941
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Signed: Signed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition, Limited #220/245

Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre pen-and-ink drawings of beady-eyed Edwardian characters. He was first noticed in The New Yorker in 1959. His work has been described simultaneously as both an artist who wrote and a writer who drew. By the age of 20, Edward Gorey was studying French Literature at Harvard where he was befriended by future poet Frank O’Hara, who called Gorey  “the oddest person I’ve ever seen”. One thing that Edward Gorey was decidedly fond of was ballet. He spent 30 years attending very nearly every performance by the New York City Ballet. His costume design for the Broadway production of “Dracula” won a Tony Award in 1978. Mr. Gorey also wrote at least 90 books and illustrated 60 others. Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species including bats and insects.

Description: A wonderful story about Jack from Cornwall, and how he defeated the giant that lived there. One single sheet of paper folded 9 times to form a 2 x 3 inch booklet. Volume four in the lucky mini-book series put out by Scholastic. A rare Edward Gorey title! Illustrated by Gorey in orange and black. Some wear and a small stain, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory # 11635

SOLD

Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: 1973
Binding: Soft Cover
Book Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

Walker Evans was one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers. For three years beginning in the winter 1938 he rode the Lexington Avenue Local along with the photographer Helen Levitt, Evans with his 35mm camera hidden between the buttons of his coat. He surreptitiously photographed the subway passengers in his quest to document the “real”. Evans had developed his unique style of photography while working for the Farm Security Administration, photographing the rural poor of the deep south. Like Dorothea Lang and Margaret Bourke White, Walker Evans created some of the most iconic images of the depression era. He attempted to show his subjects without their “mask on”, in the still moments of quiet introspection when their guard was left down. The photographs lay unpublished for 25 years. In 1966 ninety were chosen from over six hundred and paired with an essay written by James Agee in 1941. Evan’s body of work went on to inspire a generation of photographers. Each portrait captures a real person within a singular moment, as unique as a thumb print or a snowflake.

Description: First Edition. Hard bound in Dust jacket. Stated “First Printing R”on the copyright page. 178 pages. Published in association with the Riverside Press, Cambridge. Wear to dust jacket that shows several large chips and tears, now protected in clear removable Brodart cover. Introduction by James Agee. An important collection of Evans’ photographs taken on the New York subway. Errata slip present. Interior clean and binding sound. RARE!

Bookseller Inventory # 49259

SOLD

Many Are Called
Walker Evans

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Publication Date: 1966
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

William Klein is often cited as among the fathers of street photography. Klein is a New York born photographer and film-maker, who in the 1950s and ’60s, used unconventional techniques that jolted the photography world. Klein’s work was considered revolutionary for its extensive use of wide-angle and telephoto lenses, natural lighting and motion blur. He worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue throughout these years, thereby financing his personal projects – photography books and film. In 1956, a 28-year old William Klein arrived in Rome to assist Federico Fellini on his film Nights of Cabiria. Filming was delayed, and so Klein instead strolled about the city in the company of Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia and other avant-garde Italian writers and artists who served as his guides. It was on these walks that Rome, a pioneering and brilliant visual diary of the city, was born. It has gone on to become one of the most celebrated photography books of the twentieth century.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Black cloth-covered boards with title stamped in white on spine edge. Photographs and text (in English) by William Klein. Includes notes on the plates. 192 pages with numerous black and white photogravure plates richly printed in France. 11-1/8 x 8-7/8 inches. Divided into five sections (Roman Citizens, The Street, the Eternal City, Youth, and the Catholic World), Klein’s Rome is a collective and definitive portrait of a living, yet ancient city. This is William Klein’s second book, and one of his five signature ‘city books. Minor wear to corners and edges of boards. The edges of dust jacket show a few small chips and tears, no in clear mylar protective cover. Rare and sought after!

Bookseller Inventory # 26002

SOLD

Rome
Klein, William

Publisher: Viking Press
Publication Date: 1959
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

Description: Hard bound, missing original plastic dust jacket . Burlap-covered book with text and design by Kaprow. Pages 145-208 are entirely text, printed on brown paper, while the rest of the 341 pages consist entirely of photographs printed on white. This scarce and important book, out of print for about 30 years, seriously examine and records the emergence of assemblage, environment and happening arts practiced in New York in the 1950’s through the mid 1960s. Allan Kaprow, one of this loose art movement’s seminal artists , edited the contents and designed the book as a reflection of the wild creativity of the Happenings. Lavishly illustrated with black and white photographs of the live events, the pictures appear both candid and documentary in nature and the pages are handsomely designed with an unorthodox graphic sensibility. Features Kaprow’s theory of the evolution of abstract expressionist painting into Proto-Pop, Neo-Dada, assemblage, environments and Happenings of the early 1960s. Documents works by Kaprow, Jean Follett, Robert Rauschenberg, Gloria Graves, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Jackson Pollock, Renee Miller, Martha Edelheit, Jim Dine, Clarence Schmidt, Yayoi Kusama, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Ay-o, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Jean Tinguely, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Wolf Vostell, Ken Dewey, Milan Knízák & othrers.  Extensive photographs of works and performances by photographers Robert R. McElroy and Peter Moore. A critical volume documenting the precursors of contemporary performance art. This copy shows wear to boards and some minor chipping to spine edges. A scarce and sought after volume!

Bookseller Inventory # 29406

SOLD

Assemblage, Environments & Happenings
Kaprow, Allan

Publisher: Abrams
Publication Date: 1966
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Missing original dust jacket
Edition: First Edition

Joe Brainard (1941–1994) was an American artist and writer of the 1960s New York School (an informal group of American artists active in the late 1950s & 1960s in New York City). Postmodern by nature, his work has a certain affinity with early Pop Art. Brainard’s work transformed the everyday into something revelatory. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes. Brainard moved to New York City in the early 1960s, he quickly met a galaxy of literary and artistic stars who became his friends, such as Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, Alex Katz, James Schuyler, Larry Rivers, Fairfield Porter, Andy Warhol, John Ashbery, Jasper Johns, as well as younger poets later associated with the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, such as Anne Waldman & Tom Clark. The breakthrough moment for Joe came when Larry Rivers picked him as a companion artist for a group show. His work is now held in the Permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Yale University Art Museum and many other major institutions. Brainard’s writings fall into several categories: memoir, diaries, Pop Art, short essays, and verbal-visual collaborations with himself. His I Remember has been described by Paul Auster as “a masterpiece . . . one of the few totally original books I have ever read,” a judgement shared by the many admirers.

Description: Paperback copy. Peach colored paper wrappers with title in navy blue. Designed by Ron Padgett. This is a collection of nearly fifty of the late Joe Brainard’s poems, essays, musings, and diary entries dating from between 1969 and 1971. Some minor damp staining, and sunning to spine edge. Wear to wrappers, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. A scarce early book of Brainard’s writings!

Bookseller Inventory #008730

SOLD

Selected Writings 1962 – 1971
Brainard, Joe

Publisher: The Kulchur Foundation
Publication Date: 1971
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition

Paul Rand is acknowledged as one of the greatest graphic designers of all time. He began his career in an era when working by hand was a given. He developed a fresh and individual design language drawn from European art movements including Russian constructivism, de Stijl, and the Bauhaus. He is probably best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC. He taught design at Yale University, and was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated First edition. Illustrated with 94 half tone illustrations and 8 color plates. Intro by E. McKnight Kauffer. Some wear and age toning to dust jacket, now protected in removable Brodart mylar cover. Black cloth boards show some minor wear, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound.  A scarce and sought after design monograph!

Bookseller Inventory# 29409

SOLD

Thoughts On Design
Rand, Paul

Publisher: Wittenborn and Company
Publication Date: 1947
Binding: Hard bound with dust jacket
Book Condition: Very Good
Jacket Condition: Good

Peter Newell built a reputation in the 1880s and 1890s for his humorous drawings and poems. He often illustrated the works of other authors, most famously Lewis Carroll. Charles Ludwige Dodgson, better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician and photographer. He is best known for his famous writings, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, & The Hunting of the Snark.

Description: ALL 3 PETER NEWELL ILLUSTRATED LEWIS CARROLL EDITIONS! All First Editions of the Peter Newell illustrated edition. Hard bound with dust jackets in publishers box, as issued. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Published by Harper & Brothers, October 1901. Through The Looking Glass – Published by Harper & Brothers, October 1902. The Hunting of the Snark and Other Poems – Published by Harper & Brothers, October 1903. Ivory paper covers and olive green dust wrappers, with both lettered in gilt front and spine, with a small figures in gilt lower front. Gilt top stain and deckled page edges. Each a beautifully designed volume, with page borders decorated in sage green. Text block and illustrations clean and crisp. Very minor foxing to boards. Some fading to olive green dust jackets. Wear and foxing to publishers box, otherwise very good. It’s quite unusual to see all 3 of Lewis Carroll’s classics for sale together. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 28699

SOLD

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Through The Looking Glass
The Hunting of the Snark and Other Poems
Carroll, Lewis; Newell, Peter

Publisher: Harper and Brothers
Publication Date: 1901 -1903
Binding: Hard Bound with jackets in Publishers Box
Illustrator: Newell, Peter
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Printings of the Peter Newell Edition

David Garnett was British Writer and a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group. He ran a bookshop near the British Museum with Francis Birrell during the 1920s. He also founded (along with Francis Meynell) the Nonesuch Press. Garnett had relationships with several members of the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group including Francis Birrell & Duncant Grant. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname “Bunny”, by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket. First printing of the First U.K Edition. Some wear and age toning to dust jacket, otherwise very good, with interior clean and binding sound. A wonderful collection of notes from a diary kept while learning to handle an airplane. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 30053

SOLD

A Rabbit in the Air
Garnett, David

Publisher: Chattos & Windus, London
Publication Date: 1932
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U.K. Edition

©2008 Black Cat Books. Site designed by AndreMora.com.