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

· Category: 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 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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·

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

· Category: Sold ·