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E-list # 131

Books We Love

click for a larger image of item #32261, The October Country (Springfield), Gauntlet, 1997. The limited 40th anniversary edition (issued the year of the 42nd anniversary). Copy No. 249 of 500 numbered copies. Signed by Bradbury and by Dennis Etchison and Robert R. McCammon, two of the leading figures of the next generation of horror writers, who provide the introduction and afterword, respectively. Illustrated by Joe Mugnaini. With the bookplate of Stanley Wiater, horror fiction writer, editor, anthologist, and three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers of America. Fine in a fine dust jacket and slipcase. [#032261] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #16536, Indian Mountain and Other Poems Ithaca, Ithaca House, (1971). The second book, and first regularly published volume, by this writer of Abenaki descent, who has carved out a unique place in contemporary American Indian literature as a publisher, poet, novelist, anthologist, storyteller and chronicler of traditional stories. Warmly inscribed by the author to his grandmother: "For Grandma/ For her birthday./ July 4, 1972/ Love,/ Sonny." Joseph "Sonny" Bruchac was raised by his grandparents, and his grandmother influenced his early love of reading. Some staining to front cover and some rubbing and surface peeling there. Very good in wrappers. A nice association copy. [#016536] $375
click for a larger image of item #30130, Alaska. Thoughts and Images: Native Voices Speak (Gaithersburg), (Signature Book), (2012). Apparently a self-published anthology by Pedley (printed at Signature Book) of Native American writings on Alaska, with contributions by Fred Bigjim, Mary TallMountain, Nora Dauenhauer, Jim Schoppert, Edward Jackson Anawrok, and Glen Simpson. Quarto, featuring color photographs of Alaska by Pedley and commentary by him on the individual poets and their writings, and an introduction by Bruchac. This copy is signed by Pedley on the title page and inscribed by Pedley to Bruchac on the front flyleaf: "Joseph -- Many thanks for giving the book such a distinguished beginning! Bob/ 4-18-12." Fine in a fine dust jacket but for a corner crease to the front flap. A beautiful and little-known production: we could find no copies listed online or offered for sale anywhere, and suspect the book was privately printed and received little or no distribution. [#030130] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32694, John Burroughs. In Remembrance 1921. Tall, stringbound chapbook printing the readings and remembrances from Burroughs' funeral services held at Riverby and at the graveside. 24 pages, printing Biblical passages; poetry by Emerson, Wordsworth, and others; a selection by Earl W. Williams that, according to the chapbook, was, several years earlier, deemed appropriate for the occasion by Burroughs himself; "Selections from the Earliest and Latest Writings of John Burroughs," including the poem "Waiting" and excerpts from "Accepting the Universe"; poems for Burroughs by Charles Buxton Going, Edwin Markham, May Morgan, and Jean Dwight Franklin; and two tipped-in images: one of Burroughs in "The Nest" at Riverby, and one of C.S. Pietro's sculpture of Burroughs, entitled "The Seer." Ownership signature, in pencil, of Elspeth A. Edington. Minor wear and creasing to yapped edges; covers splitting at lower spine; very good in wrappers. Uncommon. [#032694] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31668, Waiting (n.p.), (n.p.), [c. 1910-1921]. A printed manuscript poem by Burroughs, his most famous, first published in Knickerbocker magazine in 1863, when Burroughs was 25; anthologized in Whittier's Songs of Three Centuries in 1875. At that time the poem had seven stanzas; over the years the weakest stanza (the sixth of seven) was dropped (by an unknown editor). "Waiting" appeared as the preface to Burroughs' Light of Day in 1900 with six stanzas, but even so the fifth stanza continued to trouble him. According to the Clara Barrus biography Our Friend John Burroughs, published in 1914, "a few years ago" Burroughs occasionally substituted a new fifth stanza, beginning, "The law of love binds every heart..." (Later renditions have this line reading "The law of love threads every heart.) But that too failed to satisfy him, and future renditions would have the original six (of seven) stanzas. This broadside has the six stanzas, with the short-lived "binds every heart" fifth stanza; it is printed in Burroughs' holograph, with an original water color of tree branches, and it is inscribed by Burroughs, for Barnard C. Connelly, and dated Feb. 9, 1921, the month before Burroughs' death. 7" x 9-3/4", bevel-edged on three sides; previously framed and sunned over most of the page; staining to two margins, touching only the date. A very good copy. Although Burroughs wrote "considerable poetry as a young man" (his words, from John Burroughs Talks), "a time came when I wrote no more poetry and destroyed most of what I had done previously...I am practically a man of a single poem." We have found reference to a smaller (4-1/2" x 6") leaflet of this poem being done earlier, by Alfred Bartlett, but have found no record of the printing history of this variation. [#031668] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32856, Mimeograph Typescript of Points of Destinction [sic] Between Sedative and Halucigen [sic] Drugs 1961. Unrecorded mimeograph typescript of a speech Burroughs gave at a meeting of the American Psychological Association, September, 1961, in New York City. Five pages, including personal and anecdotal experiences, arguing against the broad category of "narcotics" for both addictive sedatives and non-addicting consciousness expanding drugs. Together with a 1964 issue of Evergreen Review in which the speech is printed, with textual variations, including a change in the title, with "consciousness expanding" replacing "hallucigen." The talk/essay was included in two anthologies of writings about drugs, but the Maynard and Miles bibliography lists no separate printing of it, and this mimeograph would appear to be contemporary with the talk in 1961, making it several years earlier than any of the other appearances in print. Also, the term "halucigen" dates it as being prior to the point at which the term "hallucinogen" was settled on as the consensus descriptor. The magazine has a detached text block; the speech is stapled in an upper corner and fine. An unrecorded Burroughs typescript on one of the subjects that was most deeply embedded in his works. [#032856] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #24504, The Naked Lunch Paris, Olympia, (1959). The first issue of the first edition of his second book, a high spot of Beat and postwar American literature -- one of the three key volumes of the Beat movement, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Published only in paperback in Paris by Maurice Girodias' important and risk-taking small press, in an edition of 5000 copies, three years before it could be published in the U.S. Signed by Burroughs in 1996. Uneven sunning and a bit of creasing to the covers; rubbing to the folds. A very good copy in a supplied, near fine dust jacket with a small chip at the crown. Burroughs signed this for a bookseller in Lawrence, Kansas, where he lived during the last years of his life. [#024504] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #24022, Typed Letter Signed and Book Review 1982. A typed letter signed by Butler to poet Tom Clark, regarding Clark's review. In 1981, Butler, who would later win the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for his collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, published his first book, The Alleys of Eden. It was reviewed by Clark in the February 11, 1982 Los Angeles Times, with the headline "Vietnamization of a Deserter's Mind." On May 12, Butler wrote to Clark, saying, in part: "I have received twenty major reviews of the book but none of them was more sensitive or insightful than yours. The best literary criticism actually explains an author to himself. That's what your review did. I understand my own book better after reading your review and I want to thank you for that." The letter is signed "Bob Butler." Also included here is Clark's original, 3-page manuscript review, signed by Clark: "...Desertion, Butler seems to say, is an inevitable act, made necessary by the human state. Every small movement is an abandonment of the past, with death looming over everything as the greatest desertion of all..." Clark's review makes it clear that Butler's protagonist -- an Army intelligence officer who ends up deserting out of self-disgust over his involvement in the torture and death of a Viet Cong prisoner -- is an analogue for the larger society, which deserted both Vietnam and those who fought there, leaving both the Vietnamese and the veterans as "displaced persons," in both countries. Clark's review is penned on the back of copies from a book about Celine and folded in half; near fine. A photocopy of the published review is included. Butler's letter is folded for mailing; else fine in a near fine envelope. With a copy of Alleys of Eden [NY: Horizon (1981)], which is fine in a very near fine dust jacket with a short edge tear. An insightful review of one of the best novels to come out of the Vietnam war, and the author's appreciative response. [#024022] $1,500
click for a larger image of item #30104, La Ballade de la geôle de reading [The Ballad of Reading Gaol] (Paris), Falaize, (1952). An out-of-series copy of this bilingual edition of 3000 numbered copies of Wilde's poem, printed here with Camus' "L'Artiste en Prison," which delineates Wilde's journey from themes of ideal beauty to existential suffering. Inscribed by Camus (in French): "to Sylvestre,/ a remembrance of Iguape/ and with the friendly thoughts/ of Albert Camus." While context does not give explanation to the reference to Iguape, one of Camus' last stories, "The Growing Stone" -- the final story in Camus' last collection, Exile and the Kingdom -- is set in Iguape, Brazil. It has been said that this story is the clearest manifestation of Camus' ideals: in it, the protagonist sacrifices himself to help a friend, and behaves morally despite his own understanding of the absurdity of the world. Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, the year Exile and the Kingdom was published, and the Prize committee cited his "clear-sighted earnestness [which] illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times." As best we can tell, this is the first appearance in print of "L'Artiste en Prison," which was translated into English and published in Encounter magazine two years later. A very near fine copy in French wraps. Books inscribed by Camus are uncommon; the author died in 1960 in a car accident, at the age of 46. [#030104] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32638, Rivers of Death Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1962. An offprint from Silent Spring, printing Chapter 9 (pp. 129-152, plus footnotes). "Distributed as a public service by the National Wildlife Federation." Corner crease to one inner page, else fine in stapled wrappers. A scarce, ephemeral publication; we could find no listing for this in OCLC. Carson was posthumously inducted into the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Hall of Fame. [#032638] SOLD
(Santa Claus)
click for a larger image of item #32276, Small Archive Related to Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus (various), (various), (1956, 1968). In 1897, eight year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun, asking, in part, "Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?" The reply of Editor Francis P. Church read, in small part, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias...." Church's response became the most reprinted English language newspaper editorial in history. When Virginia O'Hanlon died, in 1971, friends formed a press to publish the editorial and its back story as a children's book; in 1974, the book became an Emmy Award-winning animated television special; and, in 2009, it became a CGI animated television special entitled simply, "Yes Virginia." The items offered here all predate the story's book and animation fame, and include the typescript of a 1956 television appearance by O'Hanlon, a Sun broadside of the editorial, and Two Christmas Classics, which is likely the editorial's first appearance in book form, in 1968. The lot is as follows: 1. The 3-page typescript of a 1956 segment of the television show The Children's Hour, hosted by Ed Herlihy, with guest appearances in this episode by Santa Claus and by Virginia O'Hanlon, who would have been in her late 60s. In it, Santa asks Herlihy if there really is a Virginia, and Herlihy introduces "Dr. Laura Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas," using her married name (kept after her divorce), acknowledging her doctorate (from her career as an educator), and revealing that "Virginia" was actually her middle name. Herlihy then recounts the story of the editorial, and O'Hanlon is given unscripted time to talk about events since, followed by her own reading of Francis P. Church's famous response to her younger self. These pages are stapled to: 2. An undated New York World Telegram/The Sun broadside of the full editorial, entitled "Is There a Santa Claus?," and adding a paragraph at the bottom on "How Editorial Happened to Be Written." 3. A cover letter is included, written on New York World Telegram letterhead and dated October 21, 1956, from a former employee of the paper to "Miss Clements" (Alice Clements, producer of The Children's Hour), saying that he is acquainted with O'Hanlon and feels he can convince her to appear on the show, adding, "Each and every year during the month of December I was shocked by the nation-wide demand for reprints of the Virginia O'Hanlon story." These three items are folded in half, and the corner staple is rusted; they are otherwise near fine. 4. Together with the chapbook Two Christmas Classics, issued by Columbia University Press, ca. 1968, and printing both Church's editorial and Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from Saint Nicholas ("Twas the night before Christmas") as a holiday keepsake, as both Church and Moore were graduates of Columbia College. (Coincidentally, O'Hanlon received her Masters Degree from Columbia.) The chapbook also prints brief, anonymous, introductions to each. Approximately 4-3/4" x 6-1/2", edge-sunning to the front cover; near fine in stapled wrappers, with a holiday greeting laid in that is signed by Carl B. Hansen, of Columbia University Press. A relatively early grouping of items in the enduring legacy of one child's curiosity and Church's timeless response embodying the meaning of Christmas. [#032276] $2,000
(Sixties)
click for a larger image of item #30812, Blinds & Shutters (Surrey), Genesis Hedley, (1990). Tall thick folio printing a large number of Cooper's photographs from the Sixties, many of them centered around London and the Rolling Stones. Cooper was the photographer who shot the album covers for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request. An elaborate production, with contributions by most of the people pictured, including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Jim Dine, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Larry Rivers, Terry Southern, and many others. Southern contributes not only the usual comments and clips that accompany the photographs but also the Introduction for the book, and Jagger and Richards provide Forewords. A fine copy, bound in three-quarter black leather and yellow cloth, resembling a Kodak film container, laid into a near fine black-and-yellow box, with a shutter window with an original photograph bound in. Copy 2720 of 5000 copies. All the copies were signed by a random collection of the contributors (only Bill Wyman, who conceived the project, signed every copy). This copy is signed by 13 contributors, including Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, and Harry Nilsson. An elaborate memento of the era. [#030812] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #20178, Aegypt NY, Bantam, (1987). The uncorrected proof copy of the first book in an ambitious tetralogy that also includes Love and Sleep, Daemonomania, and Endless Things. Signed by the author. Crowley's first book after the World Fantasy Award-winning Little, Big, this was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and was selected as one of David Pringle's 100 best fantasy novels of all time. According to Crowley, there were textual differences between this proof and the final published book. Near fine in wrappers. [#020178] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31600, Twilight At Chocorua Watercolor of a sunset sky over Mount Chocorua. 18" x 12". This painting is signed by Cummings on the verso. Undated. [#031600] $9,750
click for a larger image of item #32760, Falling Man Typescript NY, Wallace Literary Agency, (2006). A photocopied typescript of DeLillo's 2007 "9/11" novel. 398 hand-numbered, double-spaced pages, albeit with one page numbered as though ten pages ("189-199"). DeLillo is known to use an actual typewriter, so "photocopied typescript" does apply, rather than computer printout. At least three pages (45, 46, 54) are supplied twice, the duplicates having been faxed (with the name of the literary agency and the 2006 date in bottom margin): these pages show revisions. Multiple, small (photocopied) hand-corrections throughout. And at least one page (apart from the duplicate pages mentioned) showing text that differs from the published version. Loose sheets, with the title page on heavier paper stock and with the stamp of the Wallace Literary Agency. Near fine. A rare view of a DeLillo novel as a work-in-progress. DeLillo was given a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2015 -- in effect a National Book Award for lifetime achievement. [#032760] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32866, Typed Letter Signed and Notes for a Scientific Theory of Theological Experiences 1975. A letter dated January 27, 1975 and written to Paul [presumably Paul Williams, Dick's close friend and eventual biographer] transmitting chapter one of Confessions [of a Crap Artist] (not included here) and, included here, two pages of "theological ramblings" related to Dick's "beginning to fashion a scientific theory about [his] theological experiences..." The letter covers a bit about the retrograde forces such as tachyons bleeding back at Earth due to the weakening field of time; one of the two pages of notes considers humans' (and Dick's) roles as avatars, with knowledge received from the Holy Spirit; the other page considers our inability to recognize God and postulates a "SF novel: Hefestus as VALIS" -- a very early mention of the acronym Dick developed for the "Vast Active Living Intelligence System" that he considered to be the nature of reality and the universe, after his psychological/religious epiphanies that he experienced in February and March of 1974. The theological writings are from the early pages of what came to be known as his Exegesis, which, by the time of his death in 1982, had reached over 8000 pages of religious and metaphysical insight and speculation. The letter, signed by Dick, runs about 225 words; the theological musings about 950 words. Near fine. [#032866] $8,500
click for a larger image of item #32762, Original Painting of Primo Levi Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Holy the Firm, and For the Time Being, among many others, has painted a portrait of Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table. Dillard has reportedly stopped writing, dedicated her time to painting instead. Signed "Annie Dillard" in the lower left corner. No date, 6" x 8-1/2". Fine. [#032762] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31684, The Living (NY), HarperCollins, (1992). Her first novel, set in the Pacific Northwest of the nineteenth century. Inscribed by Dillard to Peter Matthiessen and his wife: "For Maria and Peter Matthiessen, with best wishes (and much admiration for the author of Far Tortuga, especially), from your nephew John Matthiessen and from Annie Dillard/ September 1993/ Middletown, CT." Small bump to upper board edge; near fine in a near fine dust jacket. [#031684] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32714, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (Columbia), University of Missouri Press, (1974). Her first book, a collection of poetry, which begins: "Today I saw a wood duck/ in Tinker Creek." Inscribed by the author to her second husband, prior to their marriage: "For Gary/ from Annie/ February 13, 1976/ Lummi Island." Dillard and Gary Clevidence were married from 1980-1988. "Ex Libris Annie Dillard" bookplate on the half title, which we are told was applied by the author prior to a selection of her books going to auction. Mild foxing to the page edges and thin, flexible cloth boards; near fine in a near fine, spine- and edge-sunned dust jacket. A notable association copy: the book is dedicated to her first husband, Richard, and this copy is inscribed to her second husband, after her divorce but before her second marriage. [#032714] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32727, Flashbacks: Twenty-Five Years of Doonesbury Kansas City, Andrews and McMeel, (1995). Inscribed by Trudeau to Annie Dillard: "For Annie -- Get ready to feel old...Cheers, Garry/ Feb 1 '96/ NY." With Dillard's bookplate on the front flyleaf. Dillard and Trudeau each won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 (for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Doonesbury, respectively). Spine- and edge-sunned; near fine, lacking the dust jacket. There was a signed limited edition put out by the Easton Press; signed copies of the trade edition are uncommon, and association copies particularly so. Trudeau provided dust jacket praise for Dillard's 2016 book, The Abundance, a "best of" selection from her works, and one gets the sense that the respect and mutual admiration of each for the other goes back to nearly the beginnings of their writing careers, over 40 years ago now. [#032727] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #30111, This House of Sky [NY], [HBJ], [(1978)]. Ivan Doig's own set of page proofs of his first publication for the general book trade. Signed and titled by Doig on the dedication page (the first sheet present) and with several corrections in his hand. Numbered to 314 pages, printed on rectos only; roughly 7" x 9" sheets, in a 3-ring binder. With a signed letter of provenance from Doig, on his stationery, attesting to the set as being from his archives and with his corrections. A memoir of growing up in Montana with his father and grandmother, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind was voted one of the five best books ever written on Montana; it won the Christopher Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Doig also received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association. Tape to copyright page and a few paper clips scattered throughout; else a fine set. A unique copy of a modern classic, with impeccable provenance. [#030111] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32868, The Last Worthless Evening Boston, Godine, (1986). A collection of four novellas and two stories by one of the writers who helped to resurrect the short story as a literary form in America in the 1970s and 80s. This copy is inscribed by Dubus to Kurt Vonnegut: "For Kurt/ with gratitude to my old neighbor and with my deep love -/ Andre/ 1 February 1987." Additionally signed in full on the title page. Laid in is a carbon receipt for travel on the Eastern Airlines Shuttle on February 5th, signed by Vonnegut. Also laid in is a silent auction bidding form for two round trip tickets on Pan Am Airlines, to benefit The Friends of Andre Dubus Literary Series. Dubus was severely injured when he went to the aid of a disabled motorist and was himself hit by a car, causing him to lose one leg and the use of his other. A number of writer friends, spearheaded by Vonnegut, John Updike and several others, arranged a series of literary events to benefit Dubus and help offset his medical bills. Dubus and Vonnegut had gotten to know each other decades earlier, in the 1960s, at the Iowa Writers Workshop, where Vonnegut was teaching and Dubus was a student, at time Dubus refers to when he mentions his "old neighbor." An excellent association copy between two of the most highly regarded American writers of the second half of the 20th century. A fine copy in a good dust jacket, with several jagged tears. [#032868] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #27361, Taxi Driver Typescript [NY], [Bantam], [1976]. Partial typescript for Elman's novelization of the Paul Schrader screenplay for the classic Martin Scorcese film, ranked 52nd on the American Film Institute's top films of all time. Approximately 75 typescript pages total, about evenly split between multiple reworkings of the first eight pages and the final 13 pages, with five drafts of the first page alone. Approximately nine pages from the middle of the book. Most pages are ribbon-copy; some are carbon typescript; only 13 pages are photocopy. The majority of the pages bear extensive holograph corrections in Elman's hand, showing a labored, almost pained attempt to do justice to the Schrader screenplay, a copy of which is also included, with an additional 19 revision pages of its own. Accompanied by a typed letter signed by Paul Schrader to Elman (although apparently after the fact as it is written on "American Gigolo" stationery and dated 1980), transmitting a copy of the 1974 script and saying that he "subsequently did more work on the script, but this is a fair representation of what was intended." Also included is a cassette tape labeled "Taxi 2," on which Elman dictates portions of his novelization. Elman's pages are in a variety of conditions: some are wrinkled and edgeworn; some are on acidifying paper; some are fine. The screenplay is near fine; the revisions are heavily coffee-stained but entirely legible. Elman studied writing at Stanford with Yvor Winters and wrote a number of novels, several books of nonfiction and reportage, and published four poetry collections. His novelization of Taxi Driver, one of the greatest films of the last century, was clearly a more literary undertaking than most such novelizations are. Also included, for reasons unknown to us, is one page of lyrics of an Australian folk song. A unique archive pertaining to a great film. [#027361] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #28636, The Long War Dead (NY), Avon, (1976). Poems, written as epitaphs to the dead of an imaginary company. Simple, direct, and moving. Published as a paperback original by the most literary of the mass-market publishers, and later reprinted in a trade paperback by Permanent Press. Several of the poems were included in the anthology Unaccustomed Mercy, but the complete text is difficult to find in any edition and scarce in the true first. This copy is inscribed by Floyd to the poet Ai, winner of the National Book Award. Slight edge and corner rubbing; near fine in wrappers. One of the books on our list of the 25 Best Book on the Vietnam War. [#028636] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #912505, A Convergence of Birds (NY), Distributed Art Publishers, (2001). The limited edition of this collection of original writings inspired by the work of Joseph Cornell and edited by Foer, who also contributes both a chapter and the introduction. Precedes the publication of his first novel by a year. Number 41 of 225 numbered copies, of a total edition of 300. Signed by Foer and all contributing authors, including Barry Lopez, Rick Moody, Howard Norman, Diane Ackerman, Siri Hustvedt, Lydia Davis, Robert Coover, Bradford Morrow, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul West, Joanna Scott and others. An elaborate and attractive production: each piece of writing in the book is preceded by a tipped-in color photograph of one of Cornell's works, and the sheets signed by the authors are bound in opposite them. Fine in a fine slipcase. [#912505] SOLD
(Marijuana)
click for a larger image of item #32305, Romance of Plants Calcutta, H.C. Gangooly, (1912). Small volume comprising several essays on medicinal and psychoactive plants by an Indian physician. A printed label on the half title reads: "Graciously accepted & Read with interest by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales." Sections on hemp, ganja, hasheesh, and more, all first appearing in Indian Agriculturist. Green cloth binding has some wear and fraying, especially at the extremities; a very good copy and apparently uncommon: OCLC lists only one copy held, that being at the British Library. [#032305] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32693, Excerpts from the Acid Test San Francisco, Sound City Productions, [1966]. The first recording by the Grateful Dead, who, up until a month earlier, had been known as The Warlocks. A 7" 33 RPM promotional record, labeled "For Radio Play Only, Not for Sale," with excerpts from the Acid Test album that Sound City was producing. The recording was made at the Sound City studio which was the site of the seventh Acid Test: the Acid Tests were communal events/happenings that Kesey and others had developed that were open to the public and at which LSD -- aka "acid," which was still legal in California at the time -- was distributed to the attendees. The Sound City Acid Test, because it took place in a recording studio, was more of a private event than earlier, or later, Acid Tests. It was also the last one Kesey himself participated in. He had been arrested for marijuana possession for the second time two weeks earlier, and had had to show up in disguise at the sixth Acid Test a week earlier at Longshoremen's Hall in San Francisco, in order to avoid reporters and the police. Within a week of the Sound City Acid Test, with his court case pending, Kesey left the country and went into hiding in Mexico. The Grateful Dead had been the house band for the Acid Tests since they began in 1965, but under their earlier name of The Warlocks. By December 1965 they were starting to use their new name, and at the Acid Tests in January they were being billed as The Grateful Dead. This is the first time they were recorded as the Dead in a recording made for general release. The promo record was issued in March, 1966, and preceded the full length album released later that month. The only earlier recordings of the Grateful Dead are private ones that have made it into circulation as bootlegs or survive in their archives; this, and the Acid Test album from which it was excerpted, were not only intended for public release but were also covered by "a couple of radio stations and a photographer for Look magazine" according to the Sound City press release, although the Look article apparently never appeared. "The purpose of the recording was to produce an album of unusual sounds, mental manipulations of the sometimes considered genius of Mr. Kesey and his cohorts during the actual happenings of a 'sugar' [i.e., LSD] party. The results are different to say the least..." The Acid Test album itself is quite scarce; it was re-released in the 1980s in a limited edition. This promotional giveaway record is exceedingly uncommon, and a landmark for one of the most influential and long-lasting rock and roll bands to come out of the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1960s. The Grateful Dead went on to a 30-year career and became the most popular improvisational "jam band" of its time, triggering any number of similar jamming, touring bands in its wake, and capturing an essence of the hippie counterculture that has lived on long after its historical moment passed. Fine, in a plain white sleeve. A scarce recording from the San Francisco counter-culture, and a seminal recording of one of the great rock bands of all time. [#032693] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32705, The Big Sky NY, Sloane, (1947). The first in his series of historical novels about the settling of the American west in the 19th century. The second book in the series, The Way West, won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. This book was a Pulitzer Prize nominee in 1948, is one of Jeff Dykes's "Western High Spots," and was the basis for the 1952 Howard Hawks movie starring Kirk Douglas that was nominated for two Academy Awards. Inscribed in Lexington, Kentucky in the year of publication to fellow Lexington residents: "For Elizabeth and Virgil [Steed], with the best of wishes," and signed "Bud Guthrie." Guthrie spent 22 years as a reporter and editor for the Lexington Leader, before moving back to Montana shortly after The Way West was published. Moderate dampstaining to cloth, with loss to the spine lettering; very good in a very good, spine-sunned dust jacket with small, internally tape-reinforced edge chips. [#032705] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31395, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Promotional Mobile London, Jonathan Cape, 2003. A promotional cardboard mobile with five Volkswagens: 2 red, 1 blue, 1 black, 1 yellow; therefore, according to the code of the book, signifying neither a Good Day nor a Black Day. Fine. The only such mobile we have seen. [#031395] $150
On Sale: $98
click for a larger image of item #30121, We Have Always Lived in the Castle NY, Viking, (1962). A novel of the macabre. This book was one of Time magazine's 10 best books of the year for 1962. Inscribed by Jackson to her [husband's] aunt and uncle: "For Aunt Anna and Uncle Henry. With love. Shirley." Some tanning to the spine cloth; near fine in a near fine dust jacket. An interesting association copy of the last of her books published in her lifetime, and in which, among other events, an aunt and an uncle are poisoned. Along with The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House, this book is in part responsible for there being a set of annual literary awards named after Shirley Jackson, "for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic." [#030121] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29930, Verbannte [Exiles] Zurich, Rascher & Cie., 1919. The first German edition of Joyce's play Exiles and the first of his works to be published in translation in any language. One of 600 copies printed: Joyce was living in Zurich at the time and he paid for the publication of this book out of his own pocket. This copy is inscribed by the author: "To J.R. [sic] Watson, Jun / with grateful regards / James Joyce / 8. ix. 1919." J.S. Watson, Jr. was at the time the co-owner of the modernist literary journal The Dial, which he bought from Martyn Johnson with his friend and fellow Harvard graduate, Scofield Thayer. Watson became president of the magazine and Thayer became its editor. The "grateful regards" refers to a gift of $300 that Watson had sent Joyce earlier in the year at the urging of Thayer, who had himself sent Joyce $700. These sums bailed Joyce out of dire financial straits, allowed him to settle a court case against him, and helped him support the theater group that he had associated with in Zurich, the English Players. In 1920 The Dial published a piece by Joyce, and in 1921 Thayer was one of his most ardent and influential supporters in the censorship case in New York against Ulysses and its publication in the Little Review. A notable association copy of Joyce's first translation. Slocum & Cahoon D44. Pages browned and acidified, and covers strengthened at all the edges and spine with tape, with a hole cut in the spine for the title to show through. The first blank, on which the inscription appears, is also strengthened at the edges with tape. Fragile, and a candidate for de-acidification, but a significant association copy from a critical point in Joyce's life and career. [#029930] $10,000
(Basketball)
click for a larger image of item #31331, Let's Get a Good Shot Walden, Robert M. Knight, 1969. The first book by "Bobby" Knight, the legendary basketball coach and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. At the time he retired, Knight was the winningest basketball coach in NCAA history. His teams won the national championship three times and he was named national Coach of the Year four times. He also coached the U.S. national team to an Olympic Gold Medal in 1984. This book was written while Knight was coaching at Army, before he took the job at Indiana where he earned most of his honors, including 11 league championships and eight league Coach of the Year awards. Knight's 1976 Indiana team, which won the national championship, was the last major college team to go undefeated for a full season. Knight was also a controversial figure, famous for his temper: on one occasion he threw a chair across the court during a game; and Hall of Fame player Larry Bird dropped out of school and quit basketball for a time rather than play for Knight. 28 numbered pages; several scuffs to covers. Owner name, a high school basketball coach at the time, inside both front and rear covers. Very good in stapled wrappers. Scarce. [#031331] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32887, Unknown Man No. 89 NY, Delacorte, (1977). The dedication copy of this mystery. Inscribed by Leonard on the dedication page in the month before publication: "For son Peter Leonard with love, Elmore Leonard 5/77." The printed dedication reads simply, "For Peter." Peter Leonard would have been about 25 when this book was published; he wouldn't become a crime novelist himself for another 25 years. When Elmore Leonard died, in 2013, Peter first considered finishing his father's final novel, to be called Blue Dreams, but has reportedly abandoned that idea in favor of writing his own Raylan Givens novel as a tribute to his father, one that would bring Givens to Detroit. An early Leonard mystery, before he had firmly established his reputation as a mystery writer (his early novels were Westerns; his early mysteries were issued as paperback originals), and thus before his books were bestsellers upon publication, with large first printings. Slight spine lean and offsetting to the front boards; a very good copy in a very good dust jacket albeit with a little staining to the front flap fold and a long closed tear at the rear spine fold. The best possible association. [#032887] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29326, ukanhavyrfuckincitibak. D.A. Levy: A Tribute to the Man, An Anthology of His Poetry Cleveland, Ghost Press, (1968). A compilation and tribute to Levy, one of 1000 copies, published after Levy was indicted on obscenity charges. 8-1/2" x 11" x 1" thick, with photographic cover, bound with black tape spine, silkscreen prints bound in. "Proceeds, if any, from the sale of this book will go to the levy defense fund, the yet-to-be-conceived levy substinence fund, and the subsequent levy offense fund." Levy was one of the important underground poets of the 1960s counterculture, and deeply involved in the self-publishing and mimeograph movement of the era. He was constantly at odds with the powers that be in Cleveland, and committed suicide in 1968, leaving a legacy as a martyr to art and social protest. Some handling and sunning evident on covers; near fine. [#029326] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32888, It Can't Happen Here [NY], Doubleday, Doran, [1935]. An advance excerpt of Lewis' potentially prescient political novel, printing the first three chapters. 32 pages. A very good copy in stapled, glossy wrappers with promotional text on both covers. Scarce, ephemeral advance publication. [#032888] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31713, Glistenings (Princeton), (Self-Published), (1970). The author's first book, poems written over the preceding five years and collected by him during his senior year at Princeton. Arranged in three sections: "Time-like," "Space-like," and "In-between," and as such evidence of his early interest in combining his studies of literature and of physics -- preceding his acclaimed book Einstein's Dreams by nearly a quarter century. 83 pages, including a two-page Foreward [sic] by the author. Photocopied typescript, printed on rectos only; hardbound with author and title gilt-stamped on the cover. Covers mildly splayed; near fine. No copies listed in OCLC WorldCat. [#031713] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29938, Crossing Open Ground NY, Scribner, (1988). A collection of essays on "the bond between mankind and the land and man's heartbreaking betrayal of [it]." Inscribed by Lopez to a fellow writer in the field, "your support has made my road easier, my life richer - in simple gratitude" and signed "Barry." Dated in Lopez's home town, in February of the year of publication. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a short snag at the front spine fold. A very nice inscription and association. [#029938] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #27032, Desert Notes Kansas City, Sheed Andrews McMeel, (1976). His first book, a collection of "narrative contemplations" of the desert, told in a poetic, lucid prose, the clarity and simplicity of which is uncommonly suited to the subtleties of perception and expression it contains. Inscribed by the author in the month prior to publication: "For ___/ a woman of courage/ Barry." Additionally signed in full on the title page. Light splaying to boards; near fine in a rubbed, near fine dust jacket with wear at the spine tips. A nice personal inscription, and the earliest we have seen. [#027032] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29327, Field Notes and Typed Letter Signed NY, Knopf, 1994. A collection of stories, the third in a trilogy that began with Desert Notes and continued with River Notes. This copy was sent by Lopez in the month of publication to William Rueckert, literary critic, coiner of the term "ecocriticism," and the author of "Barry Lopez and the Search for a Dignified and Honorable Relationship with Nature," which appeared in the North Dakota Quarterly in 1991. With a typed letter signed from Lopez to Rueckert conveying the book, in part: "You were so insightful about River Notes, I thought you would want to see the book, though I know you've moved on to other things." The letter is approximately 125 words, folded in fourths to fit into the book, else fine. The book has Rueckert's signature on the front pastedown under the flap, and is otherwise fine in a fine dust jacket with a corner crease to the front flap. In its early conceptualization, the trilogy was going to include Desert Notes, River Notes and Animal Notes. Animal Notes was never written: Lopez turned his inspiration for Animal Notes into the groundbreaking nonfiction work Of Wolves and Men, and Field Notes then completed the sequence. [#029327] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32496, The Rediscovery of North America (Lexington), University Press of Kentucky, (1990). An essay on the ongoing consequences of the Spanish "conquest" of the New World and the need to rediscover the land the Spaniards "discovered." Warmly inscribed by the author to Peter [Matthiessen]: "respectful bow, abrazos fuertes." Laid in is a typed letter signed from Lopez to Matthiessen, dated in 1991, thanking Matthiessen for sending his book African Silences and sending this book in return: "As I grow older, or see more of this ravaged Earth, I find my voice less tempered." Folded, else fine. The book is near fine in a fine dust jacket. [#032496] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32889, Archive of Crow and Weasel 1981-1983. Lopez's Crow and Weasel, a fable in the style of North American Indian tales, with beautiful water color illustrations by Tom Pohrt, was published by North Point Press in 1990. This archive predates publication by 7-9 years, and represents a path not taken, documenting the guidance of Lopez, the painstaking work by Pohrt, and the over-arching influence of designer Joel Schick, who amassed this collection during the collaboration, but who did not ultimately serve as the book's designer. According to Lopez, worked stopped on this title in 1983 and began again in 1989, by which time David Bullen had replaced Schick as the designer. Much of the groundwork for the finished product remains visible however, in over 60 pages of text and images, including three signed letters from Lopez to Schick; three copies of letters from Lopez to Pohrt; 6-1/2 (one page missing) letters from Pohrt to Schick; nine retained copies of letters from Schick to Pohrt, Lopez, or both; one retained letter from Schick to Lopez's agent, Peter Schultz; and approximately 15 pages of sketches by Pohrt. Included are meticulously detailed discussions on how to involve the reader; how to anthropomorphize the characters; the characters' motivations at the points of illustration; the overall aesthetic of the book; the smoothing over of the personalities collaborating; etc., all carried out via the primitive means of type, pen, and postal service. As just one example, of Schick writing to Pohrt: "You give up a lot in order to avoid drawing that fore-shortened muzzle and the farther eye. An aspect of composition that we should probably not discuss in front of Barry. Better that our motives always be pure, or at least seem to be, even if misguided...Barry's note about the horse concerned about himself may be handled by facing him away from the action, and toward the edge of the book...Back Cover: No Dead Things!..." Again, when the book was published, in 1990, David Bullen was named as designer. However, included here is a copy of the first edition, (second state, without the gold stamping on the front cover that was removed by request of the second designer, Bullen), inscribed by Lopez to Schick, "with gratitude and affection, and a sense of delight in our long friendship." It's worth noting that Schick was Lopez's designer on his 1979 John Burroughs Medal winning book, Of Wolves and Men. All items fine. [#032889] SOLD
(Mexican Codex)
click for a larger image of item #29143, Codice Messicano Vaticano no. 3773 Roma, Stabilimento Danesi, 1896. An 1896 facsimile of a Precolumbian Mexican codex produced by the Duke of Loubat from the original housed in the Vatican library. Joseph Florimond Loubat, whose title was conferred on him by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his large gifts to the Catholic Church, was an American philanthropist who had, among other things, an interest in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican history and archaeology. In particular, he studied and wrote commentaries on a number of the surviving pre-Columbian codices, including this one. In 1896, to correct an error in an earlier description and transliteration of this particular codex, he commissioned a facsimile edition to be done using photochromography, reproducing the entire 48 leaves of the folding codex, as well as reproducing the wooden binding of the codex. Fifty copies of the facsimile were created, each housed in a folding wood-and-leather box along with three pamphlets about the codex, one in English, one in Italian, and one in Spanish. The facsimile codex and the three pamphlets are here present and complete as issued; each bears ex-library markings from a no longer extant Catholic school. A rare edition: OCLC locates only three copies. Very good, in the (damaged) original quarter leather wooden box. [#029143] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31717, The Natural World (Omaha), (Images of Nature), (2007). The limited edition of Mangelsen's extraordinary book of 115 panoramic images, chosen from a library of 20,000 images spanning 20 years. With an introduction by Jane Goodall. Copy 63 of 500 clothbound copies, signed by Mangelsen, with a signed and numbered giclee print, also number 63 of 500, of two lions in Tanzania, laid in. Additionally, this copy is inscribed by Mangelsen to the author Peter [Matthiessen]: "To Peter -- With fond memories of an evening with you and talking over a glass of wine at my cabin in Moore in 2000/2001, a much too brief encounter. Hope our paths cross again soon -- With love, Tom Mangelsen/ 2013 Oct 21." Horizontally bound folio, 19" x 11". Fine in blindstamped cloth with a photo laid onto the front cover, without dust jacket as issued, in a fine clamshell case, with publisher's original shipping box. Mangelsen was named the 2011 Conservation Photographer of the Year by Nature's Best Photography; his photograph Polar Dance, of two "dancing" polar bears, was selected by the International League of Conservation Photographers as one of the 40 Most Important Nature Photographs of All Time. A beautiful book, a stunning production, and an outstanding association copy. While copies of the trade edition, and the 2010 reprint, can be found online, we could locate no copies of the limited edition for sale or having been sold at auction. [#031717] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32349, Indian Country NY, Viking, (1984). Matthiessen's two working copies of this collection of essays on various issues related to American Indians, especially those issues having to do with the culture clash between corporations looking to exploit natural resources and tribes asserting their rights to control their land and its uses, while retaining a connection to the traditions by which they lived in harmony with their environment and held the land sacred. According to published reports at the time, it was during the course of researching this book that Matthiessen came upon the story that evolved into In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, which effectively sidelined this work for several years. Two copies from Matthiessen's library: one, marked by Matthiessen, "PM Copy," and with his corrections to (mostly) Chapter 5, "Akwesasne." A very good copy in a very good dust jacket, each of which bears a couple of coffee stains. The second copy is even more extensively marked by Matthiessen with underlinings, cuts, rewrites, and coffee stains. Laid in are a brief tribute to Maezumi Roshi and a two-page, heavily hand-corrected outline for a 2006 "Dharma Talk," in which Matthiessen mentions, among other things, the passing of William Styron and the passing of Craig Carpenter, who appears in Indian Country and to whom the book is dedicated. First ten pages of text detached, heavily corrected, and laid in; as mentioned, coffee-stained and also dampstained; a fair copy in an edgeworn dust jacket heavily stained, predominantly on the verso. For the two heavily marked author's copies, talk manuscript, and short tribute. [#032349] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32348, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (n.p.), (n.p.), (1983). Matthiessen's own working copy of the samizdat edition of his controversial and suppressed book about the confrontation between American Indian activists and the FBI in the early Seventies at Pine Ridge Reservation near Wounded Knee that left two federal agents and one Indian dead, and resulted in AIM activist Leonard Peltier being imprisoned for life, convicted of the agents' murder in a case that Matthiessen describes as rife with government malfeasance. Matthiessen, his publisher, and even some bookstores who had stocked the book were the targets of lawsuits brought by two government officials who claimed they were slandered by the hard-hitting book, which made no bones about its advocacy of the Indians' case. Until a landmark Supreme Court decision upholding Matthiessen's (and Viking's) First Amendment rights nine years after the lawsuits were filed, the book was shelved with remaining copies of it being pulped; paperback publication, as well as foreign publication, were blocked for nearly a decade. This edition was pirated during the years that the book was unavailable through normal channels. This copy has dozens of Matthiessen's corrections throughout. Plain white printed wrappers, with just the title and author indicated; comb-bound in an acetate cover. The acetate has yellowed; the binding is broken; the title page and prelims have suffered insect damage in the lower outer corners. Mediocre condition, but probably, in every other respect, the best copy of this book extant. [#032348] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32351, Lost Man's River NY, Random House, (1997). The second novel in the trilogy that began with Killing Mr. Watson, based on a series of events in Florida at the turn of the last century and using the novel form to explore the settling and development of that frontier, with an awareness of the ecological implications of that development. Inscribed by Matthiessen to author and Florida marine biologist Randy Wayne White, a longtime friend, addressed as "Cap'n Randy," adding "Abrazos!" For reasons unknown to us, not given to White; from Matthiessen's own library. Fine in a fine dust jacket. [#032351] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32369, Shadow Country NY, Modern Library, (2008). Matthiessen's own copy of the uncorrected proof copy of the single volume "rendering" of the "Watson Trilogy." The trilogy (Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone) had been a publishing idea that Matthiessen never quite made his peace with, causing him to rework the book back into the single volume Shadow Country, a "director's cut" of sorts, which won the National Book Award and later the William Dean Howells Medal, an award that is given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters only once every five years "in recognition of the most distinguished American novel published during that period." It also led to Matthiessen's becoming the first writer to have won the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction. This edition includes an Author's Note about the process of rewriting the trilogy, with a half dozen of Matthiessen's corrections to the text. Matthiessen has also corrected the spacing of the fragmented prose on the final page and noted several other pages where he has corrected typos. A bulky proof, more than 900 pages, and with some spine creasing and a bit of sag to the text block. A very good copy in wrappers and, in our experience, a very uncommon proof. [#032369] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32371, The Snow Leopard NY, Viking, (1978). A second printing of his first National Book Award winner, which recounts a trip to the Himalayas with naturalist George Schaller in the hopes both of encountering a snow leopard in the wild and of coming to terms with his wife's recent death from cancer. From Matthiessen's own library and with more than a dozen passages marked in pen by Matthiessen, all having to do with the porter and camp assistant Tuktken. There are a couple of other passages marked in pencil, with page notations in the prelims. Rear blank excised, else a very good copy, lacking the dust jacket. [#032371] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32381, Wildlife in America NY, Viking, 1959. The dedication copy of his first book of nonfiction, which raises many of the issues that became the author's lifelong concerns and the subjects of many of his writings -- the impact of humans on the animals and plants of the ecosystems that we invade and then inhabit. The book was dedicated to his parents (by their initials), and is inscribed there by Matthiessen: "Sept. 18/ The very first copy of this book, taken, with its glue still wet, from the binder's warehouse on W. 20th [?] St. some five days before its publishers received their copies: [For E.C.M. and E.A.M. with love and many thanks] from Pete." That binding, which apparently hadn't dried when Matthiessen first picked up the book, is now cracked at the hinges; modest staining to boards; a good copy, lacking the dust jacket. [#032381] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32444, The View from Lazy Point NY, Holt/Macrae, (2010/2011). A year in the life of a naturalist / marine biologist. Winner of the Orion Book Award for 2012. Near fine in a fine dust jacket, with a Peter Matthiessen blurb on the rear panel. Unmarked, but from the library of Peter Matthiessen. Together with the advance reading copy, without the Matthiessen blurb, but with a signed note from the publisher, John Macrae, to Matthiessen laid in. Fine in wrappers. Also together with a copy of SGI Quarterly, a Buddhist journal, April, 2010, with an interview with Safina and an inscribed Post-It note from Safina to Matthiessen on the front cover: "Peter - Buddhism and the sea - right up your alley. Best, Carl." [#032444] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32890, The Bill McKibben Reader NY, Henry Holt, (2008). Two items: first, the first edition, a paperback original, of this collection of essays by the author of The End of Nature, among others. With a new introduction by the author. Signed by McKibben. And second: the uncorrected proof copy, dated 2007, and including six essays that were not included in the finished book. An announcement of the expected change in contents is affixed to the front cover, as is a label announcing a 2008 publication date. In addition to the presence of these six essays, the proof differs from the published text at least by small changes in the titles of a few of the essays. McKibben's The End of Nature, published in 1989, was the first book for general audiences on the science of global warming and climate change. McKibben has since become one of the most outspoken and visible activists against climate change, founding the organization 350.org, which is now active in nearly 200 countries. The proof copy of this collection is fine in wrappers; the book has a small owner name and date on the flyleaf; otherwise it is also fine in wrappers. An uncommon proof, and also a book that is uncommon signed. [#032890] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #22057, Hue and Cry Boston, Little Brown, (1969). The first book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Elbow Room, who is on the permanent faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Inscribed by McPherson to the former President of the University of Iowa: "For Jim Freedman, Friend. With love, Jim McPherson." Fine in a near fine, price-clipped dust jacket with light rubbing and one small externally tape-mended edge tear. McPherson is an extremely private author, and books signed or inscribed by him are uncommon. [#022057] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #27431, Signed Henry Miller Postcards Alhambra, Museum Reproductions, (n.d.). Eight unused postcards, each reproducing a Miller watercolor from the 40s or 50s, and each signed by Miller on the verso. The paintings included are: "Val's Birthday Gift," "Deux Jeunes Filles," "Marine Fantasy," "Banjo Self-Portrait," "A Bridge Somewhere," "Girl with Bird," "The Ancestor," and "The Hat and the Man." Previously framed, the frames darkened the back of the cards, but the signatures were protected. The lot is near fine. [#027431] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32663, Three Cups of Tea (NY), (Viking), (2006). Two volumes: signed copies of both the advance reading copy and the first printing of the first edition. The first edition is signed by Mortenson; the advance reading copy is signed by both Mortenson and David Relin. Textual differences exist between the advance copy and the first edition. An inspirational, then infamous, account of Mortenson's quest to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan in response to kindnesses bestowed on him by locals while he was lost in Pakistan after an unsuccessful ascent of K2, a quest that led to his founding the Central Asia Institute and to an ongoing effort that has resulted in the building of hundreds of schools. The hardcover edition sold only 20,000 copies; the paperback sold over four million copies in more than 40 countries and stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for more than four years, until, in 2011, author Jon Krakauer revealed on 60 Minutes that Mortenson and Relin had taken liberties with the narrative and, in Mortenson's case, liberties with his financial relationship to the Central Asia Institute. The first edition is signed by Mortenson, who has added the word "Peace!" The advance reading copy is signed by Mortenson and by Relin, who at one point claimed sole authorship of the book, saying it was published with Mortenson as co-author over his objections. Relin committed suicide the year after the controversy broke. The advance reading copy has a mild corner tap and slight cover splaying and is very near fine. The first edition is fine in a fine dust jacket, with a ticket and a program for a Mortenson reading (of the sequel, Stones Into Schools) laid in. Each book has a custom clamshell case. A bestselling story of a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated attempt to achieve peace through education, flawed only by its being more inspirational than true. Note: proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Room To Read, an unassociated organization of similar vision. [#032663] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32805, Publisher's Dummy for The Writings of John Muir Boston/NY, Houghton Mifflin, [ca. 1917]. The Writings of John Muir was published over several years as a ten-volume set. This publisher's dummy, in green cloth, with gilt lettering, has the author name and publisher on the front cover; uses a "Writings of John Muir" cover as a front pastedown; with a Sierra Edition Vol. VI and Vol. I spine as a front flap, in two styles: gilt on cloth, and black leather label stamped in gilt; the title page is from a 1917 edition of The Story of My Boy-Hood and Youth. The dummy includes portions of a least five of the first six volumes, and approximately two dozen illustrations, including a frontispiece of Muir. The rear pastedown is an example of the three quarter leather binding with marbled paper boards. Offsetting to the endpages, wear to the covers and edges; only a very good copy, but an interesting amalgam, conveying a great deal of information about the forthcoming project in a very small volume that could be easily carried and shown to prospective purchasers. [#032805] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #24948, Pinball, 1973 (Tokyo), Kodansha, (1985). The first English language edition of his second book and the second book in the "Trilogy of the Rat," following Hear the Wind Sing and preceding The Wild Sheep Chase. A small, pocket-sized paperback, in the Kodansha English Library series, a series intended to allow Japanese readers to read Japanese books in English; the notes in the back -- themselves an unusual feature in a book of fiction -- translate English colloquialisms into Japanese characters. Owner name and date inside the rear cover under flap; otherwise a near fine copy in wrappers in a near fine dust jacket nicked at the crown and with a corner crease to the front flap. [#024948] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #27369, Early American Stone Sculpture Found in the Burying Grounds of New England NY, Sweetwater Editions, (1981). The limited edition of this handsome book of photographs by Ann Parker, and gravestone rubbings, with text by Avon Neal. One of 175 numbered copies bound in full mottled calf, blind stamped and with raised bands and green leather spine label, and signed by Neal and Parker. In addition, there are two selenium-toned silver prints by Ann Parker laid in, matted, numbered and signed by Parker and an original gravestone rubbing, also matted, numbered, and signed by both authors. The book is fine. Enclosed with the prints in a clamshell box, which is also fine. A handsome and important production, many copies of which were destroyed when the publisher was bought and the new owner discarded existing inventory. This copy from the library of the authors, with a letter of provenance available. [#027369] $2,500
click for a larger image of item #4792, The Nuclear Age Portland, Press-22, (1981). The only separate publication of O'Brien's poetry. One of 26 lettered copies, the entire hardcover edition, signed by the author. Prints O'Brien's four stanza (five page) poem, "The Balance of Power," ["...The balance of power,/ our own,/ the world's/ Grows ever fragile."], an excerpt from O'Brien's work-in-progress at the time, which appears, much changed, in Chapter 4 of the finished novel, The Nuclear Age. This is Copy "G" and is fine in a fine dust jacket. [#004792] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29952, Screenplay of Going After Cacciato 1996. Typescripts of O'Nan's screenplay based on Tim O'Brien's National Book Award-winning Vietnam novel. Two clean copies, each signed by O'Nan on the title page. 126 pages each, and in a Kinko's box that is hand-labeled "Going After Cacciato/ 27 August 96/ Original - Top/ Copy - Bottom." The screenplays are fine; the box has two broken corners. This same year, O'Brien provided a jacket blurb for O'Nan's highly regarded Vietnam novel The Names of the Dead. Several years back it was rumored that Cacciato would be filmed, with Nick Cassevetes as director, and with a different screenwriter. For now, we have only O'Nan's vision. [#029952] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #4267, Tell Me a Riddle London, Faber & Faber, (1964). The first British edition of her first book, one of the key works in the renaissance of women's writing that accompanied the feminist movement in the late 1960s. Inscribed by the author to Seymour Lawrence under the front flap: "For the Lawrence of WAKE who still is / Tillie Olsen/ June 1965." Laid in is an autograph note signed: "This for you personally & your wife who looks/ like my Karla / I hope you can reissue these someday, with other/ pieces / And other books./ TLO/ A scrawled on picture where we met." Included is a 3-1/2-inch square black and white photo of Olsen at her desk ("scrawled on" on verso). Olsen's hope was realized: Lawrence re-published this book in 1969; he also published her next books. The note is on 4" x 6" paper; paperclip imprint, else fine. The book is near fine in a very good dust jacket with tiny chipping at the extremities. [#004267] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32902, In the Skin of a Lion NY, Knopf, 1987. The uncorrected proof copy of the first American edition of his highly praised novel set in the aftermath of World War I, the novel that immediately preceded his award-winning The English Patient, and the first of his novels to be published by Knopf in the U.S., which earned him a larger audience in this country than he had had previously. Written on the back cover, in pencil, is a 125 word review of the book by Maxine Hong Kingston, signed by Kingston. This blurb appeared on the Picador edition of In the Skin of a Lion; the Knopf edition featured a blurb of hers for Ondaatje's Running in the Family. Newspaper review laid in, causing offsetting; some spotting and sunning, a short tear at the spine base. A very good copy in wrappers. [#032902] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #26366, Selected Writings London, Heinemann, (1958). The uncorrected proof copy of this posthumous collection of thirteen essays, edited by George Bott. This is a working copy, with copyeditor's marks throughout. A fragile example, with several small stains to cover; still holding out at very good in wrappers. Scarce. Together with an ex-library copy of the first edition for reading or reference: a very good copy with splayed boards. Extremely uncommon to see a working copy of an Orwell proof. [#026366] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29162, The Little Disturbances of Man Garden City, Doubleday, 1959. A wonderful association copy of her first book, a collection of stories, by a writer who helped define the role of women and politics in contemporary literature: engaged without being didactic, Paley focused on both the ordinariness and the wonder of everyday life. Inscribed by Paley to Jean Stafford and her third husband, the journalist A.J. Liebling: "To Jean & Joe -- Grace Paley." Like Paley, Stafford's greatest medium was the short story: her Collected Stories won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. Paley's Collected Stories, which included stories from this title, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, 25 years later. Offsetting to the endpages; near fine in a very good dust jacket with spotting to the rear panel and rubbing to the folds. [#029162] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #28516, Slow Learner Boston, Little Brown, (1984). One of two leatherbound copies prepared by the publisher, one of which went to Pynchon; this one belonged to Pynchon's editor, Ray Roberts. Small bookplate of Ray Roberts on the pastedown, and a letterhead note card identifying the issue laid in. Fine. This collection of stories featured a new introduction by Pynchon. [#028516] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #27817, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and the Chamber of Secrets, and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the Goblet of Fire, and the Order of the Phoenix, and the Half-Blood Prince, and the Deathly Hallows London, Bloomsbury, 1999-2007. The first printings of the deluxe editions of the (at the time) full Harry Potter series. Clothbound with pictorial onlays, all edges gilt; fine without dust jackets, as issued. The Azkaban, which was the first volume published in a British deluxe edition (Philosopher's Stone and Chamber being issued in a deluxe edition retroactively) had the smallest printing, (reportedly 7000 copies) and names "Joanne Rowling" rather than "J.K. Rowling" on the copyright page. Here together with the collector's edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard [London: Children's High Level Group, 2008]. The leatherbound Beedle is in a drawstring bag, which, with ten illustrations by Rowling, are housed together in a large box made to look like a textbook, which is contained in the publisher's sleeve. Also included is the Sotheby's catalog for the auction of one of seven copies of the manuscript of Beedle the Bard, with an introduction by Rowling. Since the time of the last deluxe edition's release, the Harry Potter franchise has expanded with the completion of the 8-film series (with an additional three-movie prequel having debuted in 2016); original Rowling content on the Pottermore website; two Wizarding World theme parks; and a two-part stage play sequel (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), which premiered in London, the script of which was released as the eighth book in the series. [#027817] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32360, On the River Styx NY, Random House, (1989). The uncorrected proof copy. Published in 1989, with, on the last blank, Matthiessen's notes on the subject of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, beginning with, "Like the Ayatollah, I would like to make a very few brief [illegible] and ill-conceived remarks about a book I have just read - The Satanic Verses." The notes seem to suggest that his remarks are not to be concerned with Rushdie's "guilt," but that rather, like Leonard Peltier, "whether innocent or not, he was framed." Roughly 75 words, written on the blank facing the rear cover: the rear cover is beginning to detach; both covers are coffee-stained; a good copy in wrappers of the second issue proof, with the story "Horse Latitudes" in place of "A Replacement." Together with Matthiessen's copy of the first American edition of The Satanic Verses, unmarked but with a paragraph about Rushdie taped to the rear pastedown, with "Hitchens" written in the margin. The proof copy also has a number of annotations and markings in Matthiessen's hand in the story "Lumumba Lives," but these changes were not incorporated into the published book. [#032360] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #28107, The Catcher in the Rye Boston, Little, Brown, 1951. Salinger's classic first book, a coming-of-age novel that has influenced successive generations of young people with its adolescent hero's rejection of the "phoniness" of the adult world around him combined with the authenticity of his voice. Salinger's book retains the freshness it had when first published, and it stands as one of the great fictional accomplishments of 20th century American literature, included on every list of the 100 best novels of the century, and listed as number 2 on the Radcliffe list and number 6 on the Waterstone's list. Minor foxing to top and bottom edges of text block; offsetting to hinges from binder's glue; a very near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with offsetting to the front flap, tanning to the spine, slight rubbing to the spine folds and light wear to the crown. A very nice copy with distinguished provenance: it was a gift from publisher Alfred A. Knopf to a young writer who was interviewing him for a biography, and who later went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in the 1980s. Letter of provenance available. [#028107] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #30813, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (London), Macmillan, (2010). The advance reading copy of the British edition of Skloot's biography of Henrietta Lacks and her descendants, which in broad definition includes the HeLa cell line, the first human cells to survive in perpetuity outside of a human body, and which were taken from the dying Lacks in the 1950s without her or her family's knowledge or consent, and used to create both miracles (cures) and money (though not for the Lackses, an impoverished black family in Maryland). Originally to be published by W.H. Freeman, who was bought out by Henry Holt in 2003; Holt reportedly wanted less of the Lacks family in the narrative, so Skloot pulled out and the title was auctioned to Crown. The book was published in 2010; the first U.S. printing sold out in a day, and Crown reprinted the book three times in two days. A surprising bestseller; the U.S. paperback issue remains on the New York Times bestseller list four years later. Oprah is reportedly producing a film version for HBO; in 2013 the HeLa genome was sequenced and published (an agreement for which was reportedly reached with the family after-the-fact). Smudges to foredge, else fine in wrappers (which are designed so as to appear worn and aged, like the photograph of Henrietta on the front cover). Scarce in any advance format. [#030813] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #30138, Just Kids (NY), Ecco/HarperCollins, (2010). The uncorrected proof copy of Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir of her pre-fame life with Robert Mapplethorpe, with textual differences from the published version. One of the most highly regarded memoirs to come out of the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. This copy is signed by the author. Trace rubbing to the spine lettering; still fine in wrappers. An uncommon proof, especially signed. [#030138] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #30814, A Range of Poems London, Fulcrum Press, (1967). Second printing of this volume of collected poems, identified on the copyright page as a "second edition." Includes the contents of Snyder's early volumes, Myths & Texts and Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems, as well as about half the poems that appeared later in the year in the collection The Back Country, plus one more group of unpublished poems. Inscribed (apparently twice) by Snyder to Clayton Eshleman: "For Clayton Eshleman from these days in Kyoto. Gary Snyder." And then: "until III 92/ with gratitude for his Bodhi Sattva generosity to poetry -- a life work --." With Eshleman's 1967 ownership signature. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with small chips at the spine extremities and the start of splitting to the folds there. A wonderful association copy between two poets and longtime friends. [#030814] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31781, Broadside Set (San Francisco), (Four Seasons Foundation), (1963-1964). Three broadsides: Gary Snyder's Nanao Knows, Lew Welch's Step Out Onto the Planet, and Philip Whalen's Three Mornings. [McNeil A7.] Each reproduced by photo-offset from the author's own calligraphy and printed in an edition of 300 copies on the occasion of a reading by the three poets at Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco, June 12, 1964. Each broadside is signed by its author. Snyder, Welch and Whalen first met when they attended Reed College, a progressive school in Oregon; the friends later became three of the most influential poets of the Beat generation. Don Carpenter, a friend of Richard Brautigan and an important figure in the Bay Area literary scene, organized the Free Way Reading with the three poets; Don Allen, another key figure in the Bay Area literary scene -- his nascent publishing company, the Four Seasons Foundation, would later publish both Snyder and Brautigan -- printed the broadsides to commemorate the reading. An important occasion, linking three key poets of their time. Welch disappeared in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1971; Snyder found a suicide note at his camp, but no body was ever found and his fate remains one of the mysteries of that time. Each broadside is 9-1/2" x 12-1/2", with a mild edge crease in the left margin that would disappear with framing; near fine. A nice set. [#031781] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #30042, Women NY, Random House, (1999). A professional collaboration between the longtime companions, with photographs by Leibovitz and text by Sontag. Inscribed separately by both Sontag and Leibovitz, "to Joyce." Sontag, a winner of the National Book Award for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction; a MacArthur Fellow; and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Artes y des Lettres, among other honors, died in 2004. This joint project by two of the most respected figures in their respective fields is scarce signed by both. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a hint of edge wear and very mild damp rippling near the crown that is visible mostly on the verso. [#030042] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32531, Last Survivors NY, World Publishing, (1970). "The Natural History of Animals in Danger of Extinction." Fine in a near fine dust jacket and original cardboard slipcase, which is inscribed by Terry Southern to Peter Matthiessen: "Dear Pete - Spotted this tome en passant so to speak, and thought 'what the heck, that looks very much like the great Math's bag!', so I snapped one up (that's the kind of guy I am, Pete, just snapped it right up) and am sending it along in hopes you may groove on it. Some boss-pix. Best, yr. T." A fine Terry Southern letter on a cardboard slipcase of a gift, and an indication of the friendship between the two, which is not as widely known as some of Matthiessen's other literary friendships. [#032531] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32678, Archive of 1952 Presidential Campaign Speeches Springfield, Stevenson Campaign Headquarters, 1952. The transcriptions of 56 speeches given by Stevenson during the Presidential election season of 1952, beginning with his welcoming address to the Democratic National Convention on July 21, when he was speaking as Governor of the host state of Illinois and before he was drafted as the Democratic Party's Presidential candidate. The second speech here begins: "I accept your nomination and your program. I should have preferred to hear those words uttered by a stronger, wiser, better man than myself." 54 more speeches follow, all issued as news releases and most on Stevenson Campaign Headquarters letterhead. The final speech was given on November 1 (Election Day was November 4). Stevenson lost to Eisenhower, winning 44% of the popular vote but carrying only 9 states. A chronological record of Stevenson's entire first run for President: each release runs 3-10 pages, so hundreds of pages of Presidential politics from a half century ago, with equal opportunity to note how much things have changed and how much they have not. Photo-reproduced legal-sized sheets; minor edge wear; a few pages detached from corner staples; large coffee ring on the first page of the second news release. In all, a near fine lot, representing these speeches' first appearance in printed form. A number of them were published in book form by Random House prior to the 1952 election, with a Foreword by John Steinbeck. [#032678] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #8297, Bear and His Daughter Boston/NY, Houghton Mifflin, 1997. His first collection of stories, spanning the years 1969 to 1997. Bound galley sheets; 8-1/2" x 11"; tapebound in cardstock covers. Presumably produced for in-house use only; we've never seen any indication of these having been distributed outside the publishing house. Fine. [#008297] $125
click for a larger image of item #32829, Unpublished Typescript about George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four (n.p), (n.p.), [ca. 1983]. In 1983, Robert Stone, National Book Award-winning novelist, was commissioned to write a piece on George Orwell and his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, as that calendar year approached. In the piece, Stone made an effort to reclaim Orwell from the conservative right wing, which had taken his most famous, anti-totalitarian novels -- Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm -- to be explicit condemnations of the Soviet Union and Communism, and by implication all leftist thought itself. Instead, Stone argues that Orwell's writing in Homage to Catalonia -- not to mention his fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War -- identifies Orwell as someone with both a socialist sympathy and "a certain affinity with what I believe is best about the United States," a kind of Puritanism that is characterized by "rectitude...conscience and common sense." He goes on to point out that Orwell "was the sort of radical who makes enemies on both sides of epic struggles," owing to his "originality and intelligence, [and] above all his thoroughgoing honesty, [which] always got him in trouble. A writer and man more predictable and dull, less infernally scrupulous would have had a better time of it." Stone adds that Orwell was idealistic but non-ideological -- as Stone was himself -- and deeply committed to the kind of "pragmatism that has characterized American moral thinkers from Jefferson to James to Neibuhr." He concludes that "We may never produce a greater political novel than Nineteen Eighty-Four" and that "it has done its work for us" in shaping our fears and cautions sufficiently for us to have avoided the totalitarian dystopia that was latent in the post-War years of the Cold War. The confluence of writer and subject here was, in many ways, a near-perfect one but the piece seems never to have been published; we can find no record of it; a cover letter from Stone's wife, Janice, indicates this was done for Thames Television, but whether it was produced or used remains unknown to us. One of Stone's novels includes an allusion to a critical moment in Nineteen Eighty-Four: Stone's character explains that one has "to look the gray rat in the eye" -- an allusion to the torture by rats that Winston Smith, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, is faced with, which causes him to "break" and betray himself and his loved ones. 18 pages, ribbon copy typescript, with Janice Stone's cover letter, laid into an agent's folder. Fine. An unknown Robert Stone piece, on a subject that touches close to many of the central and pervasive themes of his own writings. Unique. [#032829] $8,500
click for a larger image of item #28978, Typed Letter Signed, with If All Else Fails... Garden City, Doubleday, 1980. A full-page letter from Strete to another writer, in part transmitting a copy of his book If All Else Fails (included here). In the letter, Strete laments the science fiction classification the book received, touches on recent kidney troubles that landed him in the hospital, recommends his recipient connect with Jamake Highwater, and expresses displeasure with Doubleday and their offer for Death in the Spirit House (although Doubleday did eventually publish that novel). The bulk of the letter, however, concerns Strete's attempt to enlist the recipient in (while simultaneously warning him about) a suggested trip north for a vision quest "guided by a shaman who is left sided as I am. I know for certain though that I myself could take you to a place where you could see Saquatch and a few other things you have not seen, not even in dreams. It would be dangerous for us both. I was up there this summer and saw the one who has no name... I hate going up there. It takes me years to get over the nightmares. There are things in this world that are truly evil." Strete says that he has been working for seven years on a book about his experiences with shamans that he hopes will be published after he's dead. The letter is on personal stationery, signed by Strete, and is folded in half to fit into the book; near fine. The book, If All Else Fails..., is fine in a near fine dust jacket with a lower edge tear at the front flap fold. Introduction by Jorge Luis Borges, who calls the book "a collection of small nightmares of great consequence." [#028978] SOLD
(The Paris Review)
click for a larger image of item #32813, Paris Review, Numbers 1-50, Complete (Paris), (The Paris Review), (1952-1970). A complete run of the first 50 issues of the groundbreaking literary journal started by Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton and Harold Humes, which introduced a large number of the most highly respected 20th century writers to their first readers, including Philip Roth, V.S. Naipaul, Adrienne Rich, and others. Jack Kerouac's first excerpt from On the Road was published within, as was Beckett's Molloy and the first pieces from Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries. The "Writers at Work" series of interviews included was another unparalleled feature and included talks with such writers as William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, William Burroughs, Joan Didion, and others. The first four issues are signed by one or more of the founders: Issues 1 & 2 by Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton, and issues 3 & 4 by Plimpton alone. Consecutive runs of the early issues, which included so many notable debuts, are difficult to assemble these days, let alone with the early copies signed by the founders, who are now deceased. One of the influential literary journals of the postwar years. All issues are in very good or better condition. [#032813] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29537, X-Ray Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4 San Francisco, Pneumatic Press, 1995. The fourth issue of this artist book/magazine, produced by Johnny Brewton. This issue features a Thompson contribution on the inside rear cover, and a cover photo shot through by Thompson with a .45. The image is of porn star Marilyn Chambers posing in the nude, holding a box of Ivory Snow detergent, which is illustrated with a photograph of her holding a young baby. Chambers starred in the ground-breaking porn movie Behind the Green Door, produced by San Francisco porn kings Jim and Artie Mitchell, longtime friends of Thompson. Their theater, the O'Farrell, was considered the Carnegie Hall of pornography in those days, and Thompson made such regular visits there that at one time he had business cards made up reading "Hunter S. Thompson Night Manager the Mitchell Brothers Theater." Chambers' posing as the idealized young mother for Ivory Snow before it was known that she made her living in porn was a scandal for the detergent company, which recalled hundreds of thousands of boxes and replaced Chambers' photo with a painted image, although the woman still bore a striking resemblance to Chambers. This cover image is torn through with two jagged holes, and is stamped inside the cover: "Front Cover Shot With A .45 By Hunter S. Thompson." Unlike other copies of this image we have seen shot by Thompson, this one also bears lips prints, so both shot and kissed (owner of the lips not determined). Hand-assembled and velobound; fine. An extravagant production; the entire run of X-Ray Magazine consisted of ten issues. [#029537] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32329, Future Shock NY, Random House, (1970). A review copy of Toffler's massively successful book naming the disorientation caused by the accelerated pace of cultural and technological change. Laid in are three different 2-legal-page press releases: "Future Shock May Be Key Disease of Tomorrow," "Movement for 'Responsible Technology' Needed to Combat Future Shock," and "To Prevent Future Shock, Schools Must Teach About Tomorrow." From the first: "When people complain they can't cope, what is it they can't cope with?" From the second: "... technological questions can no longer be answered in technological terms alone. 'They are political questions...we need a machinery for screening machines.'" From the third: "Today events are moving so swiftly that only another [post-John Dewey] radical shift in our 'time-bias' can save our children. The schools must develop future-consciousness." The press releases are folded in fourths; the book has mild edge-foxing and is near fine in a very near fine dust jacket with a shallow crease to the rear panel. Uncommon in the first edition, with jacket, and with promotional material. A book so correct in its premises that it now seems almost quaintly outdated. [#032329] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #23976, The History of Middle Earth, Volumes 1-12, and The Silmarillion London, Allen & Unwin/Unwin Hyman/Harper Collins, 1977, 1983-1996. A complete set of the first editions of these tales, poems, and songs underlay The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien began writing these tales while in college, 40 years before LOTR was published. He was a student of philology, the study of historical linguistics and the rules by which languages evolve, and in his writing he invented archaic languages and the stories told in those languages, and then tracked the evolution of both the stories and the language until they became the legends and mythology that informed Middle Earth. This is part of what gives the Trilogy its powerful sense of reality and immediacy, but the stories are compelling in and of themselves, beyond the degree to which they inform his masterpiece. In particular, these stories, most of them written between 1913 and the early 1940s, give the lie to the simplistic notion that Tolkien's trilogy is a mere analogue for the conflicts involved in World War II. If anything, it was the First World War -- with its senseless, mechanized destruction on a heretofore unimaginable scale -- that influenced Tolkien in his view that battle between the forces of good and evil was not a struggle of ideologies so much as one between a world view in harmony with nature and one that focused on unchecked industrial development. Published over the course of more than a dozen years, complete sets are difficult to assemble as all of the volumes had small first printings, and some were positively tiny -- 1500 copies or so. Volume 5 has a small nick at the upper rear spine fold; otherwise a fine set in fine, unclipped dust jackets. The Silmarillion and Volumes 1, 2 and 4 have no printed prices, as issued; Volume 4 has an A&U price sticker. Volumes 10 and 11 have printed prices on the flaps (in contrast to the unprinted export edition dust jackets, which, by the usual standards of the publication process, probably preceded those with printed prices). The ultimate history of the worlds that underlay The Lord of the Rings. [#023976] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32691, A Confederacy of Dunces Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1980. Signed by Walker Percy. A posthumously published novel that was the first work of fiction published by the LSU Press: and which had a very small first printing (reportedly 2500 copies), Initially the book was rejected by dozens of publishers and the author committed suicide in 1969. Years later the author's mother brought the manuscript to Walker Percy, insisting that he read it. Percy overcame his initial hesitations and championed the book, arranging for its publication and contributing an introduction. Excellent reviews and word of mouth led to its becoming a best-seller, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. One tiny foredge spot, else a fine and tight copy (the boards tend to splay on most copies) in a very near fine, first issue dust jacket with only trace wear to the corners and a hint of rubbing near the spine crown. A high spot of American fiction over the last half century. [#032691] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #23981, Correspondence 1951, 1952, 1970. One typed letter signed, one autograph letter signed, and one autograph postcard signed by the controversial author of Worlds in Collision, Earth in Upheaval, and others. Velikovsky's books suggested that Earth's history was defined more by sudden catastrophes than by slow evolution. They became quite popular during the 1960s, when conventional wisdom of all sorts was being called into question. Each letter is written to a Mr. Tereshchenko: the first refutes two notions in a book by "Beaumont;" the second letter assures the recipient that the second volume of Ages [in Chaos] will be published and is being held up by Velikovsky himself; the third voices intent to send along a 1946 publication and explains that Ages in Chaos grew to a tetralogy. "Beaumont" is William Comyns Beaumont, a British author whom some claimed had advanced the notions put forward by Velikovsky a generation earlier. The first letter is secured across the midpoint fold with tape; very good. The second letter is on airmail paper; folded and opened as designed; else fine. The postcard is fine. Correspondence, or any autograph material, by Velikovsky is quite scarce, especially with significant content. [#023981] $1,750
click for a larger image of item #27144, March 15th 1994 (n.p.), [Spiffing Books], 1994. A bootleg production printing a lecture Vonnegut gave at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on March 15, 1994 and also including the text of the question and answer session that followed. Two dozen pages of single-spaced text, plus as many pages of illustrations, mostly drawings by Vonnegut taken from Breakfast of Champions. Roughly 15000 words by Vonnegut that don't appear elsewhere. Fine in stapled wrappers. Rare: this is the only copy we have ever seen. [#027144] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #25012, You've Never Been to Barnstable? Barnstable, Crane Duplicating Service, (1966). The first separate appearance of this essay, which first appeared in Venture Magazine in 1964 and was later collected under a different title in Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968. Here printed as a Christmas greeting for friends of Crane Duplicating Service, located in Barnstable, a town where Vonnegut lived while raising a family and managing a Saab dealership. Two sheets folded to make eight pages; slight upper corner crease; else fine. Rare. [#025012] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32338, C: A Journal of Poetry. Vol. 1 No. 4 New York, Lorenz Gude & Ted Berrigan, 1963. The fourth issue of this mimeographed poetry journal, this issue being devoted to the work of poet Edwin Denby, with contributions by him as well as pieces about his work by Berrigan, Frank O'Hara and John Wieners. It is most famous at this point for the cover, which "was designed by Andy Warhol from photographs of poets Edwin Denby and Gerard Malanga." Warhol took a number of Polaroid photographs of Denby and Malanga and then created a silk screen from them for the covers. The clarity and resolution of the images vary from copy to copy of the production, either as a result of the screen getting clogged by re-use or as a result of deliberate manipulation by Warhol; in this copy, the images on the front are clearly two individuals but the resolution is limited and the image presents almost as an abstraction; the rear cover, which is a shot of the two poets kissing, is in this copy virtually entirely abstract. An early and important Warhol production: this is the first known instance of Warhol using Polaroid photographs for making silkscreen images, a practice he came back to later and became his standard approach for portraits. Corrections to the text in Berrigan's or Denby's hand. Some edge wear to the covers and the spine, and a tear at the base of the spine; overall very good in stapled wrappers. [#032338] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #25809, Riding the Earthboy 40 NY, World, (1971). The first book by this author of Blackfoot-Gros Ventre heritage, who was one of the most important and accomplished Native American writers of the post-1968 generation. Welch was a respected poet and an award-winning novelist, and wrote, with great power and sensitivity, fiction focused on both contemporary Indian life (e.g., Winter in the Blood) and historical material (the award-winning Fools Crow). Riding the Earthboy 40, a collection of poems, was never properly distributed as the publisher folded at the time of publication. It was re-published five years later in a revised and expanded form by Harper & Row. This is the first edition. Inscribed by the author to poets Sandra McPherson and Henry Carlile "with best wishes and hopes for another fishing trip soon. Love, Jim." Carlile's ownership signature and stamp; a fine copy in a very near fine dust jacket with slight wear at the spine extremities. A nice association copy. [#025809] $250
click for a larger image of item #32700, A Cool Million NY, Covici Friede, (1934). The third book by the author of Miss Lonelyhearts and the classic Hollywood novel The Day of the Locust. This is West's sister's copy, with her ownership signature, "Laura Weinstein," on the front flyleaf. West dedicated this copy to his college friend, the comic writer S.J. Perelman, who married Laura in 1929; she was Perelman's co-writer on several screenplays, including Around the World in Eighty Days and two Marx Brothers films, among others; she would later be the dedicatee of West's The Day of the Locust. Nathanael West was born "Nathan Weinstein." Although his sister, Lorraine Weinstein, would later change her name to Laura West and then to Laura Perelman, this book and other of her brother's books that came out of S.J. Perelman's library (and are now in the Special Collections of Brown University) were signed as "Laura Weinstein." Modest foxing to boards, endpages and page edges; a very good copy in a very good dust jacket with a bit of sunning on and near the spine and a few very small edge chips. A much nicer than usual copy of this novel and a unique family association copy as well as being owned by the wife of the dedicatee; one of the best copies imaginable. In a custom clamshell case. [#032700] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #26911, Italian Villas and Their Gardens with Autograph Letters Signed NY, Century, 1904. The first and only edition of this nonfiction volume, heavily illustrated with photographs, drawings, and 26 full-color plates by Maxfield Parrish. This copy has a three-page autograph letter signed from Edith Wharton tipped in, written to Mrs. Sage, who, along with her husband, were friends of Maxfield Parrish and collectors of his paintings. Wharton's letter is a gracious response: apparently Mrs. Sage had indicated that Wharton's book had been a great help to her and that she was sending Wharton a Piranesi etching of Villa d'Este as a thank you. Also tipped-in is a two-page autograph letter signed from Parrish, written in his elegant, calligraphic hand, and referring to four of his paintings from the Eugene Field children's book, Poems of Childhood, that the Sages own and that Scribner's wanted permission to reproduce. The Field book was the first publication in which Parrish's paintings were reproduced in full color. One of the paintings mentioned, Wynken, Blynken and Nod, sold recently at Sotheby's for $845,000. This copy of Italian Villas and Their Gardens has been extra-illustrated, presumably by Mrs. Sage, with images of various Italian villas, including a large image of Villa d'Este on the front free endpaper and another on the verso of the Parrish illustration of it in the body of the text. The owner's small, tasteful bookplate adorns the front pastedown. A unique copy of this beautiful book, with a history of personal connections to the author and illustrator and subject matter. [#026911] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #29620, Spider, Egg, and Microcosm NY, Knopf, 1955. White provides a foreword to this book about three Russian-born scientists: an arachnologist, an embryologist, and a microbiologist. Three pages, beginning: "The egg! The spider! The protozoan! Promise of life, web of life, life invisible to the naked eye..." Mild offsetting to rear endpages; else fine in a near fine dust jacket with trace fading to the red on the spine. Not an uncommon book, but difficult to find in nice condition. [#029620] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31772, Deep Shadow NY, Putnam, (2010). A mystery novel in the Doc Ford series, featuring a marine biologist living on the Florida Gulf coast. Inscribed by White to fellow author and friend, Peter Matthiessen, in the month of publication: "For Peter M./ My dear traveling partner and brother by another mother." Foxing to edges of text block, boards mildly splayed; very good in a near fine dust jacket. A wonderful inscription and association copy. [#031772] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #31545, The Man Who Invented Florida NY, St. Martin's, (1993). A dedication copy of the third of White's popular Florida mysteries featuring marine biologist, Doc Ford. Inscribed by White to Peter Matthiessen: "For Peter Matthiessen, to whom this book is dedicated. Thanks for your friendship over many years. Randy Wayne White/ Pineland, Florida/ January, 1994." Matthiessen is the sixth of 15 people White names on the dedication page as "allies who have, during many travels and trails, proven steadfast in their friendship and unfailing in their support." White has been called "the rightful heir to John D. MacDonald" for his Doc Ford series; Ford is a marine biologist and the mysteries have been highly praised for their sensitivity to the Florida environment and ecology. Matthiessen of course won the National Book Award for his Florida trilogy that became Shadow Country. Light foxing to the endpages and page edges; near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a bit of wear to the crown. [#031545] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #15426, Pieces of White Shell NY, Scribner, (1984). Subtitled "A Journey to Navajoland," with illustrations by Navajo artist Clifford Brycelea. Winner of the 1984 Southwestern Book Award. Inscribed by the author in 1989: "For ____/ We are told a story/ and then we tell our/ own./ Bless you & these/ sacred lands." Pages 131-134 bear a small puncture wound, not affecting text; thus near fine in a very near fine dust jacket with slight rubbing at the edges. [#015426] SOLD
click for a larger image of item #32922, The Barracks Thief NY, Ecco Press, (1984). An association copy of his third book, a novella, about three paratroopers waiting to be shipped to Vietnam. Warmly inscribed to Andre Dubus and his wife: "For my dear friends Andre and Peggy, on the occasion of the annual Dubus-Wolff cut-up, foot-stomp, and blue-fish slaughter - may their finny souls swim in peace. Until next time, Love, Toby/ Bradford, August 19, 1984." Bradford would be Bradford College, where Dubus taught. In addition to being masters of the short story and memoir, Wolff and Dubus, relatively early in their friendship at the time of this inscription, were close friends through their lives, until Dubus' death in 1999. Wolff provided the introduction to Dubus' 1991 collection Broken Vessels. Dubus would review this book, The Barracks Thief, in September, 1989 in the periodical America; in part: "If words on paper could make sounds, you would hear me shouting now, urging you to read this book." Winner of the PEN Faulkner Award. A bit of dampstaining to the lower front board; near fine in a dust jacket with some dampstaining to the verso, thus very good. A wonderful literary association. [#032922] SOLD
(Film)
click for a larger image of item #6782, After-Dinner Story NY, Lippincott, (1944). A collection of six stories including "Rear Window," basis for the classic Hitchcock film starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. Also includes the story "Marihuana." A Queen's Quorum title, and a fragile wartime production, printed on thin, cheap paper. The first page of "Rear Window" (p. 145) has a hinge tear, affecting a couple of letters. Label remnants on front flyleaf; minor watermarks to lower rear board and lower corner of rear pages; a very good in a very good dust jacket with modest edge wear. A very presentable copy of one of the high spots of the mystery novel, according to "Ellery Queen." [#006782] SOLD
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Catalog 174 Spring List