Catalog 107, G-H
146. GARDNER, John. The Construction of Christian Poetry in Old English. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U. (1975). One of only 1574 copies. Gardner, in addition to being a writer and teacher of fiction -- the author of Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues and October Light, among others -- was also a scholar of Old English literature. His scholarly books such as this one had first printings that were a tiny fraction of the size of the first printings of his novels. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
147. GARDNER, John. The Poetry of Chaucer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U. Press (1977). A scholarly study of Chaucer published to complement his biography, The Life and Times of Chaucer. Done by a university press, this title had a very small first printing -- 1819 copies, vs. 10,000 for the Chaucer biography and 25,000 for October Light, his most recent novel prior to this publication. Fine in a fine dust jacket. A beautiful copy.
148. GASS, William. Typed Note Signed. December 19, 1971. Three paragraphs, in which Gass declines to write a book review or article of criticism as his novel "has dragged on too long while I blabbed about other books in newspapers and magazines. . . . I'm sorry to say no, even if saying no makes me feel a little like the old whore who has at last managed to repulse one advance - both foolish and virtuous." Signed by the author. Typed on blue ribbon; folded for mailing; else fine.
149. GASS, William. Typed Note Signed. April 23, 1972. Gass thanks his recipient for passing alone a valentine from a reader and looks beyond the present time wherein "Teaching has really consumed me . . . quite unwillingly" to the summer when "some present scraps, plans, and puddles may complete themselves . . ." Signed by the author. Folded for mailing, else fine.
Poet Larry Eigner's Copy of Howl
150. GINSBERG, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights (1956). The first issue of the first trade edition of Ginsberg's first regularly published book, printed in an edition of 1000 copies and since reprinted dozens of times with the total number of copies printed in the hundreds of thousands. "Howl" has been called the most important American poem since Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." This copy belonged to poet Larry Eigner and bears his ownership signature ("Larry") on the front cover and several pencilled notes in the text. Eigner was closely associated with the Black Mountain School of Charles Olson, Cid Corman, Robert Creeley, and others. His early work was published in Corman's influential literary magazine, Origin, as well as in the Black Mountain Review. His first book was published by Creeley's Divers Press. Eigner was afflicted with cerebral palsy from a childhood injury and was non-ambulatory throughout his life. As a result of his physical difficulties, this book, like many in his library, is heavily soiled and dampstained, and the spine is splitting from use. Despite difficulty speaking, Eigner gave readings as often as possible and was part of a regular reading series in the Bay Area after he moved there in 1978. In 1973, a documentary was made about his life, which included poetry readings by Allen Ginsberg. This is at best a good copy in wrappers of a work that defined the new poetic aesthetic that came to be associated with the Beat movement, but it is a significant association copy from the library of a widely respected postwar poet.
151. GODWIN, Gail. Untitled Typescript. August, 1984. Seven pages, ribbon-copy typescript, with holograph corrections, on the subject of the character of the DeVane's house in her novel The Finishing School. Together with a typed letter signed transmitting the piece to an editor at Art & Antiques (and complaining that she has to sign 15,000 tear sheets for the Franklin Library edition of the novel). Both the typescript and the letter have some slight edge creasing; else fine. Also together with a two-page (one sheet) typed letter signed from July, 1984, in which Godwin discusses the furnishing of the fictional houses in Violet Clay and A Mother and Two Daughters and the building (in progress) of her upstairs study. In a postscript, she suggests Robb Foreman Dew be asked to write an article on a bed Dew owns that was made by a slave around 1840. Stapled to this letter is a photocopy in which an editor has underlined salient points from the magazine's point of view, as well as a sheet of handwritten editorial notes, and a retained copy of the editor's letter confirming that Godwin will be writing the above piece. This letter is folded for mailing and, as mentioned, has stapled attachments; else fine. Finally, together with an autograph letter signed from December, 1984 offering her schedule in the event there are questions, announcing a publication party, and suggesting Josephine Humphreys for an article involving houses of Charleston, VA. On yellow-lined paper; fine. A nice, small archive, with original manuscript material.
152. GOLDEN, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha. NY: Knopf, 1997. A review copy of this highly praised first novel written from the point of view of a young geisha, which became a surprise bestseller, staying on the bestseller lists for over a year. The book has been reprinted dozens of times, and the first printing has become somewhat scarce. Fine in a fine dust jacket with review slip and promotional sheet laid in.
153. GOLDING, William. Rites of Passage. London/NY: Faber & Faber, 1980. Two states of the printer's sample pages, printing the text of pp. 15-17, specs, and title pages for the American and British editions. Dated March 5, 1980 and April 1, 1980, in between which the lengthy subtitle was dropped and the author's name was moved above the title. Both states fine. Interesting, rare publisher's ephemera from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Lord of the Flies.
154. GORDIMER, Nadine. None to Accompany Me. NY: FSG (1994). First American edition of this novel set in the period just before South Africa's change from the apartheid system to a system of majority rule based on free elections. Fine in a fine dust jacket and signed by the author.
155. GOREY, Edward. Autograph Postcard Unsigned. [January 25, 1989]. "Greatest present I ever got. I think I hear the Getty Museum eating its collective heart out. A thousand thanks." Written in Gorey's characteristic calligraphic hand on the verso of a Cape Cod postcard; unaddressed. In pencil in the upper corner are the notes, presumably in the hand of the recipient: "Ted Gorey 1/25/89 w/elephant beanbag." Fine.
Suppressed Proof Copy
156. GREENE, Graham. Stamboul Train. London: Heinemann, 1932. Rare proof copy of this early Greene novel, his fourth, with textual differences from the published book. Novelist and critic J. B. Priestly read one of the advance copies of this book and concluded that the portrait of the popular novelist "Mr. Savory" was a caricature of himself. Under threat of a libel suit from Mr. Priestly, Heinemann insisted that Greene make a small number of rather trivial alterations as demanded by Priestley. The published book therefore differs in historically significant details from the present text. Spine slightly faded, but this is a very good copy or better in wrappers of a modern rarity.
157. GREENE, Graham. The Quiet American. London: Heinemann (1955). A novel set in Saigon during the early years of the French Indochina war and based on several actual incidents involving Colonel Edward Lansdale, the CIA operative who has been called "the attending physician at the birth of South Vietnam." Greene's novel might have passed entirely from view among the bulk of his more ambitious writings had it not so clearly foreshadowed the moral terms of the coming American involvement in Vietnam with its theme of Western innocence/arrogance and good intentions gone awry. Greene, perhaps more than he expected, anticipated the failure of the half-hearted and conflicted Western efforts in Vietnam. Fine in a very near fine dust jacket with a thin, faint strip of sunning on the rear panel and some unnecessary internal tape strengthening. Lacking the publisher's wraparound band. A very attractive copy.
158. GREENE, Graham. May We Borrow Your Husband? London: Bodley Head (1968). A collection of stories, this being the limited edition. One of 500 copies signed by the author. Fine, in an acetate dust jacket.
159. GREENE, Graham. The Third Man. Helsinki: Eurographica (1988). A limited edition of Greene's 1950 work, originally written as a screen treatment and made into what critics have called one of the greatest films of all time, the 1949 classic starring Orson Welles. Greene considered the film version to be the more finished version of his story, and the movie won a Grand Prize at Cannes and a British Academy Award for Best British Film. One of 500 numbered copies signed by the author. Boards splayed; else fine in dust jacket.
160. GREENE, Graham. The Tenth Man. London: Bodley Head and Blond (1985). A story originally developed for a film in 1948, but never produced or published. Also includes two short, previously unpublished story ideas, apparently intended to have been developed for film. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
161. (GREENE, Graham). Victorian Detective Fiction. A Catalogue of the Collection Made By Dorothy Glover and Graham Greene. London: Bodley Head (1966). The Glover-Greene collection, spanning the years 1846-1901 and catalogued by Eric Osborne. With an introduction by the famous bibliophile John Carter and a preface by Greene. One of 500 numbered copies signed by Greene, Glover and Carter. Boards bowed; near fine in a near fine, spine-sunned dust jacket.
162. GROOM, Winston. Forrest Gump. Garden City: Doubleday, 1986. The advance reading copy of the author's fifth book, a comic novel of a Vietnam vet whose simple-minded perspective provides fertile ground for satirical social commentary: a Jim Harrison blurb calls it "a line bred out of Voltaire and Huck Finn." Near fine in illustrated wrappers, which reproduce in a single color the artwork that was later incorporated onto the dust jacket of the finished book.
163. GRUBB, Davis. The Night of the Hunter. (NY): Harper & Brothers (1953). A fine copy in a very good dust jacket chewed at the flap folds. There is a review slip laid in, but either the review slip or the jacket would appear to be supplied, as the slip states that review copies are being sent out before the jacket is finished and provides the absent author bio; this jacket, however, has the bio printed on the rear flap. Night of the Hunter was made into a memorable film noir by Charles Laughton in 1955, which starred Robert Mitchum and had a screenplay written by James Agee. An important first novel.
164. HAMILTON, Jane. A Map of the World. NY: Doubleday (1994). The second book by the author of The Book of Ruth, this one was a finalist for the National Book Award. Fine in a fine dust jacket and signed by the author.
165. HAMMETT, Dashiell. The Thin Man. NY: Knopf, 1934. The fifth of Hammett's hard-boiled detective mysteries, which changed the genre irrevocably. This novel became the basis not only of a movie adaptation in 1934, but a series of film sequels over more than a decade based on the same main characters, Nick and Nora Charles, and combining mystery and comedy to become some of the signature films of the era. Hammett, who had redefined the detective novel as well as the modern notion of the Hero with such books as The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key, never published another novel after this book, despite being universally acclaimed as the pre-eminent mystery writer of his time and the one most widely respected in literary circles. Cloth heavily edge-sunned; otherwise a near fine copy in a spine-faded dust jacket rubbed at the spine extremities and flap folds. With a "Recommended by the Book of the Month Club" sticker on the front panel. Protected by a custom clamshell box. A very attractive copy of one of the great mystery novels of the classic era.
166. HANSEN, Ron. Desperadoes. NY: Knopf, 1979. The author's highly praised first novel. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
167. HANSEN, Ron. Atticus. (NY): HarperCollins (1995). The advance reading copy of this novel by the author of Desperadoes and Mariette in Ecstasy, among others. A finalist for the National Book Award. Fine in wrappers.
168. HARRIS, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. NY: St. Martin's (1988). His highly acclaimed third novel, and the first to feature Hannibal Lecter as a main character, introducing one of the archetypal villains in contemporary literature and film. Basis for the Jonathan Demme film with Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, winner of five Academy Awards and one of the American Film Institute's top 100 Films of the Century. This copy is signed by the reclusive author, and is reportedly the scarcest of his books to find signed. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
169. HARRISON, Jamie. The Edge of the Crazies. NY: Hyperion, 1995. A well-received first novel of the "new Montana," written by the daughter of novelist and poet Jim Harrison. With blurbs by Peter Matthiessen, James Crumley, Rick Bass, and others. Fine in a fine dust jacket and signed by the author.
170. HARUF, Kent. Plainsong. NY: Knopf, 1999. The advance reading copy of the author's highly praised third novel, a National Book Award nominee. Fine in wrappers. Uncommon in the first edition, let alone as an advance copy.
171. HAUTMAN, Pete. Drawing Dead. NY: Simon & Schuster (1993). The author's first novel, which several critics called the best mystery novel of the year. Signed by the author. Faint stain to top edge; a few page corners inadvertently turned; near fine in a fine dust jacket.
172. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. NY: Scribner, 1929. Hemingway's second great novel, after The Sun Also Rises. A Connolly 100 title and a book that has been called the greatest war novel of all time, although only a small part of it has to do directly with the war. After the critical acclaim and commercial success of The Sun Also Rises, which had gone through ten printings by 1929, Hemingway, together with F. Scott Fitzgerald, was widely seen as the leading spokesman for the "Lost Generation" of American expatriate writers in the years following World War I. His novels and stories captured and defined that experience in a way that has helped shape all views of it since. A Farewell to Arms was, by far, his most commercially successful book to date, and its success overshadowed everything he was to write for the next decade or more. With this novel Hemingway, in effect, created a legacy that he himself was unable to live up to until much later, with the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. A light bump to a lower board edge; fine in a bright, very near fine, first issue dust jacket with only faint traces of the fading and rubbing endemic to this title. A beautiful, unrestored copy of one of the high spots of 20th century American literature. In a custom clamshell box.
173. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. To Have and Have Not. NY: Scribner, 1937. A novel about a reluctant Caribbean gun runner, which brought the author criticism for its heavy-handed attempt to infuse the story with the fashionable left wing politics of the time. As his first novel since A Farewell to Arms, any book would have been found wanting; and even though we do not look to Hemingway's novels for piercing political analysis, the sympathies expressed in this book are exactly those that drove him to Spain during the Spanish Civil War in futile support of the Spanish Republic -- one of the defining events of Hemingway's life. Boards bowed, one page corner turned, minor fading to boards; very good, lacking the dust jacket. One of the half dozen full-length novels published in Hemingway's lifetime and the basis for a memorable Howard Hawks film with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall -- their first film together.
174. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. NY: Scribner's, 1940. Hemingway's last great (full-length) novel, a partisan tale of the Spanish Civil War, which he had covered as a journalist, and which was charged with great portentousness in the days leading up to the Second World War. For Whom the Bell Tolls has been called Hemingway's most ambitious novel, and it is the one in which his political convictions reveal themselves most fully: he effectively conveys the idea that a people's freedom is worth fighting, and even dying, for. This passionate defense of the ill-fated Spanish Republic was so compelling that 30 years later, under the Franco government, the book was still entirely banned in Spain; copies were smuggled into the country and passed around surreptitiously. Strips of offsetting to the endpages; otherwise a fine copy in a good, edge-chipped, first issue dust jacket with an abrasion on the front panel partly obscuring the "Whom," spotting to the rear panel, and weak, tenuous folds.
175. HENDRICKS, Vicki. Miami Purity. NY: Pantheon Books (1995). The author's first novel -- noir fiction set in south Florida, with blurbs by James W. Hall and James Ellroy. Signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
176. HENDRIE, Laura. Stygo. Aspen: Macmurray & Beck, 1994. Her first book. Signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket with blurbs by Andre Dubus, Russell Banks, E. Annie Proulx and Bob Shachocis.
177. HERLIHY, James Leo. Midnight Cowboy. NY: Simon & Schuster (1965). The author's second novel, about a small-time urban hustler, and the basis for one of the landmark films of the Sixties, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture and one of the American Film Institute's top 100 Films of the Century. A bit of dampstaining to the spine base and a spot on the bottom page edges; about near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a crease on the rear flap.
178. HERR, Michael. Dispatches. NY: Knopf, 1977. One of the enduring classics of the literature of the Vietnam war. Herr, reporting for Rolling Stone and Esquire from Vietnam, was one of the first of the young writers to bring the sensibilities of the 1960s and the conventions of the New Journalism to the "first rock-and-roll war," and it was a fortuitous match: nobody had recounted the kinds of tales Herr found in Vietnam and sent back in a riveting series of dispatches, eagerly awaited and legendary at the time. "Hell Sucks," "Illumination Rounds," "Khe Sanh," and his other pieces told the stories of the war in voices so authentic -- the uncensored words of the participants themselves -- that their impact was shattering. The official picture of an orderly progression to the war -- Body Counts, Vietnamization, Winning Hearts and Minds -- bore no relation to the madness and hell that Herr found by scratching the surface and getting a glimpse of the grunts'-eye view of the war. Writings such as these helped define the "credibility gap" that made Vietnam so different from earlier wars. The prose is crystalline: nothing is wasted; each nuance makes horrible sense. Each piece is powerful and complete in itself, and the whole adds up to much more than the sum of its parts by virtue of its sheer intensity. Fine in a very near fine dust jacket with only trace rubbing to the gold foil lettering. An important book and scarce in fine condition.
179. (HILLERMAN, Tony). HIEB, Louis A. Tony Hillerman: A Bibliography. Tucson: Press of the Gigantic Hound, 1990. The bibliography of the mystery writer who arguably has had more impact on the genre than any other single writer of the past 30 years, by introducing Navajo detectives and thus making a foreign (to mainstream American readers) culture and ethnicity an integral part of the plot, action, and motivation in detective fiction, a trend that has been followed by dozens of writers since. One of 1000 copies. Signed by Hieb and Hillerman. Fine, in acetate dustwrapper.
180. HILTON, James. Goodbye Mr. Chips! (London): Hodder & Stoughton, 1934. The correct first edition (after its appearance as a British Weekly supplement) of perhaps his most famous novel; Lost Horizon, which introduced "Shangri-La" to the language, is the other book that would compete with this as his most well-known. Inscribed by the author. Pages foxed; very good in a very good, spine-darkened dust jacket with several small edge chips. With the wraparound band announcing the book's selection as the Evening Standard's Book of the Month.
181. (HITCHCOCK, Alfred). TRUFFAUT, François. Hitchcock. NY: Simon & Schuster (1967). The second printing of the first American edition of this study of Hitchcock by the important French New Wave filmmaker (The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, and others), consisting of a series of dialogues on film between the two men, covering Hitchcock's entire career. Inscribed by Hitchcock with his self-caricature and signed "Hitch." Quarto; heavily illustrated with black-and-white photographs from his films, a filmography, and a selected bibliography. Highlighting in introduction; near fine in a very good dust jacket with the lamination peeling. Laid in is a program for the American Film Institute's two month tribute to Hitchcock in 1973.
182. HUXLEY, Aldous. Island. London: Chatto & Windus (1962). The uncorrected proof copy of the last novel by Huxley, one of the most prolific and important British authors of the century, who became a countercultural icon during the 1960s. Huxley began to explore Eastern religions and mysticism in the 1930s, after he had written Brave New World, and in the early 1950s he experimented with mescaline and other psychedelic drugs, finding a strong parallel between the drug-induced state and the mystical experiences he had previously only read about. He wrote two short books on his drug experiences -- The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell -- describing the psychedelic experience in terms borrowed from oriental mystical traditions. The two were later reprinted in one volume, which became an underground bestseller in the Sixties. Island is Huxley's vision of a utopia founded in a shared experience of religious bliss, and a direct rebuttal to the vision he proposed in Brave New World. Publication date rubber-stamped on front cover. Spine slanted, lightened and lightly creased; overall near fine in wrappers. Not a particularly uncommon book, but scarce in proof form.
183. HYMAN, Mac. No Time for Sergeants. NY: Random House (1954). First edition of this humorous novel of the military, which was made into a movie and later became the basis for a TV series. Spine-cocked and some handling to cloth; very good in a very good, price-clipped dust jacket with shallow chipping at the spine crown.