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Archive for ‘Literary First Editions’

Anias Nin, feminist icon, diarist, model and dancer is probably one of the finest writers of female erotica of the last century. Known for her elegant and sensual style, she has the ability to convey the most intimate of thoughts in a way that we can almost feel. Winter of Artifice, a trio of novellas, the second work of fiction by Nin, was first published by the Obelisk Press in Paris during the summer of 1939. Shortly after the book’s publication, her publisher, Jack Kahane died, and World War II broke out. Nin moved to New York; taking a few copies of the book with her. Knowing censorship laws would prevent her from issuing an unexpurgated version in America, she deleted one of the stories and revised the other two. Still unable to find a publisher, she acquired a used printing press, and, with the help of Gonzalo Moré, her current companion and lover, she produced the book herself. Although Nin would later publish a few books, written by herself and some friends, under the name of the Gemor Press, this title was the first she produced, and, like much that happened in those early years of the Second World War, more an accident of fate than an intentional act. Accordingly, there is no publication information.

Description: Hard bound with printed boards. Limited edition of 500 printed copies self published by the author. No dust Jacket, as issued. The colophon states: “The present edition is limited to five hundred copies. It has been set by hand and printed by the author in Spartan type of twelve points on Copper Plate paper.” Line engravings by Ian Hugo.  Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory #28966

$250

Winter Of Artifice
Nin, Anais

Publisher: Self Published
Publication Date: 1942
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No dust jacket, as issued
Edition:
1st U.S. Edition

Henry Miller was an American novelist known for developing a new sort of ‘novel’ that was a mixture of autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, and surrealist free association. Around 1930 Miller moved to Paris where he would live until the outbreak of  WWII. This period was highly creative for Miller, and many of his best known works were written during his time there. In 1940 Miller returned to the United States, settling in Big Sur, California. Henry Miller’s work challenged contemporary American cultural values and was banned in the United States on the grounds of obscenity. His novels were smuggled into the country, building Miller an underground cult reputation. He would go on to become a major influence on the new Beat generation of American writers, most notably Jack Kerouac. Miller also wrote travel memoirs, essays, and was an accomplished painter. It is estimated that Miller painted 2000 watercolors during his life.

Description: SIGNED BY HENRY MILLER! Hand bound hard back copy with green cloth backed paper over boards, & paste down spine label. No dust jacket. #197 in a limited edition of 250 numbered copies signed by Henry Miller. Printed by Mackintosh & Young. Six essays including, “On Seeing Jack Nicholson for the First Time.” A nice copy with only the most minor wear to boards. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory #30171

$125

Gliding into the Everglades and Other Essays
Miller, Henry

Publisher: Lost Pleiades Press
Publication Date:
1977
Binding:
Hard Bound
Book Condition:
Very Good
Edition: First Printing – SIGNED!

Franz Kafka was an influential German-language author regarded as among the greatest writers of the 20th century. The term “Kafkaesque” has entered the English language to describe his unique style. Kafka was born in a middle class, German-speaking, Jewish family, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He wrote his novels in German while working for an insurance company there. The Trial is his best known work, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote and inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed to neither to him or the reader.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket. First printing of the First U.S. Edition. Illustrated by Georg Salter. First published in German in 1925, the year following Kafka’s death, by his literary executor and against Kafka’s express wish that all his remaining papers be burned. This title would become one of the author’s most famous works and one partially responsible for turning the author’s name into an adjective. This copy shows some minor edge wear to boards, and slight age toning to end pages. The dust jacket shows a few very small tears, some wear and rubbing, otherwise a near fine copy, with interior clean and binding tight. A rare and sought after book, now considered to be a modern classic.

Bookseller Inventory #30047

$2500

The Trial
Kafka, Franz

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
Publication Date: 1937
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Printing of the First American Edition

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an American author and aviator. Gift from the Sea was written by Lindbergh, while on vacation on Florida’s Captiva Island in the early 1950s. Written in an essay-style, with shells on the beach for inspiration, Lindbergh reflects on the lives of  American women of the mid-twentieth century. With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth & age; love & marriage; peace, solitude and contentment during her visit. Gift from the Sea has sold over 3 million copies and has been translated into 45 languages. Ground-breaking for it’s time, it stands today as a seminal work of inspirational literature.

Description: TRUE FIRST EDITION. Hard bound with dust jacket. Beige boards with decorative shells, blue cloth spine with white lettering. Meets points of issue – $2.75 price, beige boards, no additional printings listed on copyright page, author photo to rear of dust jacket. Some wear to edges and corners of boards. Minor soiling to dust jacket that shows a few small tears and chips, now in protective Brodart cover. Foxing to page edges and end pages, otherwise with interior clean and binding sound. A scarce first printing of this modern inspirational classic and perennial bestseller!

Bookseller inventory # 28519

Gift From The Sea
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow

$300

Publisher: Pantheon
Publication Date: 1955
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

T. S. Eliot was arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. He was also a well respected social critic and playwright. When T. S. Eliot died, wrote Robert Giroux, “the world became a lesser place.” Certainly the most imposing poet of his time, Eliot was revered by Igor Stravinsky “not only as a great sorcerer of words but as the very key keeper of the language.” For Alfred Kazin he was “the mana known as ‘T. S. Eliot,’ the model poet of our time, the most cited poet and incarnation of literary correctness in the English-speaking world.” Northrop Frye simply states: “A thorough knowledge of Eliot is compulsory for anyone interested in contemporary literature. Whether he is liked or disliked is of no importance, but he must be read.”

Description: First U.K. Edition. Hard bound with dust jacket. Some minor wear to dust jacket and one very small closed tear, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.  An Eliot drama written about Thomas A. Becket (the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162, until he was assassinated in 1170 as a result of his conflicts with King Henry II of England over the rights and privileges of the Church).

Bookseller Inventory # 30048

$650

Murder in the Cathedral
Eliot, T. S.

Publisher: Faber and Faber, London
Publication Date: 1935
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First U.K. Edition

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 dust jacket. First printing of the First U.S. Edition. V. Bell designed dust wrapper. Some wear and age toning to dust jacket that shows chipping to edges. Offsetting from news paper to front end pages, otherwise with interior clean and binding sound. Her second collection, which includes the essays, The Niece Of An Earl, Beau Brummell, Dr. Burney’s Evening Party, How Should One Read A Book, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Bookseller Inventory # 30051

$150

The Second Common Reader
Woolf, Virginia

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York
Publication Date: 1932
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First U.S. Edition

Kaui Hart Hemmings first novel The Descendants was a New York Times Bestseller and the basis of the 2012 Oscar-winning film. The Descendants has been published in twenty other countries. A descendant of one of Hawaii’s largest landowners, Matthew King finds his luck has changed. His two daughters – Scottie, a feisty ten-year-old, and Alex, a teenage recovering drug addict – are out of control; his thrill-seeking, high-maintenance wife, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident and will soon be taken off life support. Suddenly the King family must come to terms with this tragedy – and with the shameful sense of freedom that comes with it. As Matt gathers Joanie’s friends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation is made worse by the discovery that one person hasn’t been told – the man with whom Joanie has been having an affair. Forced to examine what he owes not only to the living but also to the dead, Matt takes to the road with his daughters to find his wife’s lover on a memorable journey of painful revelations and unforeseen humor.

Bookseller Inventory# 30324

$200

The Descendants
Hemmings, Kaui Hart

Title: The Descendants
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 2007
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition

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

$400

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

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 aeroplane. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 30053

$250

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

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

$150

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

Tess Slesinger’s writing invites comparison with the best work of Dorothy Parker, Dawn Powell and Mary McCarthy. She will be remembered for her modern & up-to-the-minute report on the state of marriage, sexuality, political culture, and work in 1930s America. Her style was biting, yet emotionally revealing, 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. Tess Slesinger’s cult classic 1934 novel, The Unpossessed details the ins and outs & ups and downs of left-wing New York intellectual life and features a cast of litterateurs, layabouts, lotharios, academic activists, and fur-clad patrons of protest and the arts. This cutting comedy about hard times, bad jobs, lousy marriages, little magazines, high principles, and the morning after.

“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 end pages. Dust jacket shows some tanning, with one small red stain to rear. Interior pages clean and binding tight.  Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 23013

tess

$300

The Unpossessed
Slesinger, Tess

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

$200

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

hlhumes_author_photo2H. L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton founded The Paris Review in 1953. 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. Meets points of issue – First Edition with “4/58″ date code and $4.95 price on flap, no mention of any later books and no reviews. This is one of Random House’s known anomalies, with no statement of printing evident on the copyright page. Blue cloth boards with title in gilt to spine edge. Front board blind stamped with the image of the Eiffel tower. Red top stain. Some wear to spine edge of boards. Dust jacket with several large chips and a few small closed tears, now protected in removable clear dust jacket cover. 755 pages. Ownership book plate of the New York literary agency “McIntosh, McKee & Dodds” affixed to front free end page. The author’s elusive first novel, a tale of the French underground during the last years of WWII. Humes, along with Peter Matthiessen & George Plimpton, founded the Paris Review. For many years he slipped into obscurity; this novel has only recently been reissued to glowing acclaim. The true first edition, and a  scarce copy from a legendary forgotten novelist!

Bookseller Inventory # 29821

$225

The Underground City
Humes, H.L.

Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1958
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

Patrick Leigh Fermor widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest travel writers. Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE (1915–2011) was a British author, scholar and soldier. A BBC journalist once described him as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.” He played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. For a year and a half Leigh Fermor, disguised as a Cretan shepherd endured a perilous existence, living in freezing mountain caves while spying on German troops. In April of 1944, dressed as German police corporal, he stopped the car belonging to General Karl Kreipe, the island’s commander. The chauffeur disposed of, Leigh Fermor donned the general’s hat and, with his accomplice Moss driving the car, they bluffed their way through 22 checkpoints. The General meanwhile, was hidden under the back seat. For three weeks the group evaded German search parties. Hunted by German patrols, the group moved across the mountains to reach the southern side of the island, where a British Motor Launch was to pick them up. Eventually, on 14 May 1944, they were picked up and transferred to Egypt with their prisioner. Patrick Leigh Fermor was awarded a military OBE in 1943 and was appointed a Companion of Literature in 1991. He received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List, 2004.

Fermor  lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife, Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani. Roumeli is not to be found on present-day maps. It is the name once given to northern Greece—stretching from the Bosporus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth, a name that evokes a world where the present is inseparably bound up with the past. His books His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. Celebrated not only for his books but for his wartime exploits, He is, perhaps, the last of a breed of writer-travelers whose reputation has an aura of genuine action and courage.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First edition stated. Wear to dust jacket that shows sunning to spine edge. Some edge wear to blue cloth boards, otherwise with interior clean and binding sound. Scarce! Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Roumeli takes the reader among Sarakatsan shepherds, the monasteries of Meteora and the villages of Krakora. Roumeli is not on modern maps: it is the ancient name for the lands from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth.

Bookseller Inventory# 28626

$175

Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece
Fermor, Patrick Leigh

Publisher: Harper & Row, Publishers, New York
Publication Date: 1966
Edition:First U.S. Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

In 2003 Hilary Thayer Hamann self published an ambitious coming of age novel that went on to become an underground classic. Anthropology Of An American Girl, Hamann’s breakout first novel explores the sexual and intellectual awakening of a young American woman struggling to remain true to herself.  At it’s core it is a moving depiction of first love, following Eveline Auerbach from her high school years in East Hampton, through her early adulthood in the high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s. Now revised and reissued by Spiegel & Grau, it has gone on to rave reviews, and is a current best seller.

Description: SIGNED BY H. T. HAMANN on the front free end page. TRUE FIRST EDITION of the now classic novel. Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated First edition with # line 10-1. Published September, 2003. Green cloth with gilt title to spine edge. Rare first state with “E”  for “Eveline” stamped in gold foil to front board. Very minor edge wear to dust jacket, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory# 23071

$150

Anthropology of an American Girl
Haman, Hilary Thayer

Publisher: Vernacular Press
Publication Date: 2003
Binding: Hardbound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

hlhumes_author_photo2Humes 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

hlhumes

$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

JOHN STEINBECK

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of the First U.K. edition. Some wear and minor foxing to dust jacket. Previous owners small Spanish language stamp affixed to front free end page. Slight foxing to page edges, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 24246

$100

The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Steinbeck, John

Publisher: Heinemann
Publication Date: 1958
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Edition: First U. K. Edition

EDWARD ABBEY

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated first printing. Black boards with yellow title on spine edge. Some minor wear to dust jacket, otherwise very good. A fictional account of the author’s time spent as a fire lookout near Arches National Monument, and loosely based on Carol Turner who disappeared into Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Many friends of Abbey have claimed the author called Black Sun his favorite work.

Bookseller Inventory # 24280

$120

Black Sun
Abbey, Edward

Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Publication Date: 1971
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

JOHN IRVING
Description: Hard bound limited edition with glassine dust jacket in publishers green cloth slipcase. #22 of 795 hand numbered and signed copies. A very nice copy with only the most minor wear to edges and corners of slipcase.
Bookseller Inventory # 17254


$350

Cider House Rules
Irving, John

ISBN: 0688057624
Publisher: William Morrow & Co, Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1985
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition:Near Fine
Edition: First Edition
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