Catalog 95, G-J
118. (GINSBERG, Allen.) KRAMER, Jane. Allen Ginsberg in America. NY: Random House (1969). A literary biography of the poet laureate of the Beat generation. Fine in a near fine dust jacket and inscribed by Kramer.
119. GIRARDI, Robert. Madeleine's Ghost. (NY): Delacorte Press (1995). His highly praised first novel, which has earned the author a passionate, if still small, following. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
120. GOLDEN, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha. NY: Knopf, 1997. The advance reading copy of this highly praised first novel written from the point of view of a young geisha, which became a surprise bestseller. Fine in wrappers.
121. -. Same title, the uncorrected proof copy. Light corner creasing on rear cover; else fine in wrappers. Considerably scarcer than the advance reading copy; we have seen no other copies of the proof offered for sale.
122. GOLDING, William. Lord of the Flies. London: Faber & Faber (1954). The uncorrected proof copy of the Nobel Prize-winning author's landmark first book, which has been made into two different movies and which exerted a powerful influence on a generation's ideas about the fundamental characteristics of human nature. Variations from the published version include the page numbering in the table of contents and the publisher's address. It was believed by Golding's editor, Charles Monteith, that the book had never been bound in proof form at all, as the title was rushed into production for entry into the Cheltenham First Novel Competition. One of four copies known. Foxing to page edges; spine faded; a very good copy of a scarce and fragile state of this important first novel. In custom clamshell box.
123. GOLDING, William. Free Fall. London: Faber & Faber (1959). His fourth novel. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Laid in to this copy is an autograph note signed, dated 1981. Folded unevenly in sixths and with a small erasure at the upper corner; else fine. Autograph material by Golding is quite scarce.
124. GORDIMER, Nadine. Not for Publication. London: Gollancz, 1965. A collection of stories by the South African Nobel Prize winner, her seventh book to be published outside her native country. Light offsetting to endpages; else fine in a near fine, spine-sunned dust jacket worn at the spine extremities and with a couple of very small edge tears. Signed by the author. An uncommon title.
125. GORDON, Caroline. The Forest of the South. NY: Scribner (1945). A collection of stories by this Southern writer who, with her husband, novelist and critic Allen Tate, was at the nexus of the movement toward a regional literature of the South in the 1930s and 1940s. A near fine copy in a very good dust jacket: lightly spine-sunned and rubbed with wear at the extremities and corners. Still a very nice copy of a cheaply produced wartime book.
126. GOYEN, William. The House of Breath. NY: Random House (1950). His first novel, one of A.C. Greene's "Fifty Best Books on Texas" and a book which was called in France "the best thing that America has sent us this century" and in Germany was compared to the work of Flaubert, Proust and Joyce. Warmly inscribed by the author to Christopher Isherwood: "Dear Christopher, here is this/ book we have talked, worried/ and wondered about. You/ helped get it onto these pages/ and between these beautiful/ bindings, and I am forever/ grateful./ All respect, and with love -/ Bill/ Aug., 1950." The book carries a blurb by Christopher Isherwood on the front flap. Offsetting to pastedowns and spotting to top edge; otherwise a near fine copy in a good dust jacket that is internally taped along the spine and the flap folds, but still managing to split along the edges of the tape. A remarkable association copy of an important first novel.
127. GRAFTON, Sue. Kinsey and Me. Santa Barbara: Bench Press, 1991. 16 stories: eight Kinsey Millhone stories and eight "Kit Blue" stories, each section with an introduction by Grafton ("I like looking at the dark side of human nature, trying to understand what makes people kill each other, instead of going into therapy"). Seven Kit Blue stories were previously unpublished. Of an edition of 326 copies, this is 1/300 numbered copies signed by the author. Fine in slipcase.
128. GREENE, Graham. "The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots from the point of view of one of her attendents [sic]." (n.p.: n.p.) [1919]. An essay written by Greene while at boarding school at St. John's, where his father was the headmaster. Approximately 400 words, written in pen on both sides of one legal sized sheet. Signed "Greene 4." The date "about 1919" has been added in a later hand. An interesting, fictionalized account of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, in which Mary's Catholic faith allows her to face her impending death with equanimity, her face "calm and unruffled, like to a saint's," even as the executioner misses on his first attempt, and just nicks the skin. Greene himself converted to Catholicism in 1927, and he has been viewed as among the leading Catholic literary voices of the 20th century--a writer who grappled mightily with questions of faith and grace in a secular age in which those very notions were, at best, called into question and more often dismissed entirely as antiquated and irrelevant. Greene's literary archive has been institutionalized, and manuscript material seldom turns up on the market. One seven-word phrase has been lined through but is still visible, and one word has been inserted, showing the last-minute revisions of the author. An early piece which sheds clear light on concerns that were to engage him his entire writing life. One quarter of the second side of the page is tanned from age; two edge tears; previously folded in eighths and fragile at the folds, but still near fine. In custom folding chemise. A unique and significant piece of writing by one of the important novelists of the 20th century.
129. GREENE, Graham. Babbling April. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1925. Greene's first book, a collection of poems, published in an edition of approximately 300 copies the year Greene graduated from Oxford. In later years, Greene disparaged this book, saying that he learned early that he would never be a good poet; he refused to allow the book, or any of the poems in it, to be reprinted. This is a very near fine copy in a mildly edge-sunned dust jacket, and exceptionally uncommon thus, as it is an extremely fragile production, in a soft paper jacket. A remarkable copy of a scarce first book by one of the 20th century's most important writers, who is viewed as the leading exponent of a mature, contemporary Catholic literature, which struggles with questions of faith and morality while confronting the evils of humanity head-on. Wobbe A1. In custom folding chemise and gilt stamped quarter leather slipcase.
130. (GREENE, Graham). Speakers at the "Sunday Times" Book Exhibition. November, 1936. Program for the exhibition, permanently mounted to 8" x 11" board. Signed by 14 participants, including Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, Lord Dunsany, Stephen Spender and Arthur Rackham. Greene's portion was on the theme "The Novelist's Belief." A remarkable memento, with a virtual "Hall-of-Fame" roster of literary speakers. Near fine.
131. HARPER, Michael S. Debridement. Garden City: Doubleday, 1973. The uncorrected proof copy of this collection of poems by the African-American poet. His collection, Images of Kin, was a National Book Award nominee in 1978. Signed by the author. Extremely tall wrappers, worn at the edges; very good. Uncommon and fragile format.
132. HARRISON, Jamie. Going Local. NY: Hyperion (1996). Review copy of the second book by the daughter of novelist Jim Harrison. A humorous, well-received mystery, set amid the upscale literary and artistic community of contemporary Montana that her father and his friends helped create, and which lampoons that community while revealing a substantial amount of insider knowledge of it. Fine in a fine dust jacket, with review slip laid in.
133. HARRISON, Jim. Locations. NY: Norton (1968). Harrison's second collection of poetry, which precedes his first novel by two years. This is the hardcover issue; there was a simultaneous paperback. 1250 copies of the hardcover were done, making it scarcer than even his elusive first book, Plain Song, which had a 1500-copy hardcover first printing. This copy has a very small gutter nick to both the book and the jacket; overall very near fine.
134. HARRISON, Kathryn. The Kiss. NY: Random House (1997). The advance reading copy of her controversial book, a memoir of an incestuous affair the author had with her father when she was in her twenties. Fine in wrappers.
135. HEARON, Shelby. Now and Another Time. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976. The uncorrected proof copy of her fourth book. Signed by the author. Partial title ("Another") written on bottom page edges; glue residue showing through publisher's printed label on the front cover; near fine in tall wrappers.
136. HEINLEIN, Robert A. Time Enough for Love. NY: Putnam (1973). One of Heinlein's greatest novels, which introduced one of his most memorable characters, Lazarus Long. The year after this was published, Heinlein was given the Grand Master Award by the Nebula judges, for lifetime achievement; he also won the Hugo Award four times, an unprecedented accomplishment. Bookplate of one of the world's foremost institutional collections of science fiction (this being a discarded duplicate), otherwise fine in a fine dust jacket with minuscule wear to one corner. A beautiful copy of an important science fiction novel by the author of Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and many others.
137. HELPRIN, Mark. A Dove of the East and Other Stories. NY: Knopf, 1975. His highly praised first book, a collection of stories, many of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. Signed by the author. Very near fine in like dust jacket with a tiny tear at the crown.
138. HELPRIN, Mark. Refiner's Fire. NY: Knopf, 1977. His second book, first novel. Fine in a fine dust jacket with a hint of rubbing to the top edge.
139. HELPRIN, Mark. Ellis Island and Other Stories. (NY): Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence (1981). His third book, a collection of stories that was nominated for the National Book Award. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
140. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. NY: Scribner (1929). A later printing of Hemingway's second great novel, after The Sun Also Rises, printed two months after the first edition. 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 went through 10 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, the book that is generally credited with triggering his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. This copy is inscribed by the author on the front endpaper: "To ____ __ ____/ with admiration and affection/ Ernest Hemingway/ Sun Valley/ 1939." Offsetting to pastedowns; rubbing at edges of spine label; handled boards; a very good copy, lacking the dust jacket. In custom folding chemise and slipcase.
141. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Contract for A Farewell to Arms. December 13, 1929. A contractual agreement for the dramatization of Hemingway's novel. The contract is between the writer Lawrence Stallings and the producer A.H. Woods. Written in the top margin, in the hand of Pauline Hemingway, is the statement: "The terms of the following contract are hereby approved." This statement is initialed by Hemingway in pencil. Stallings' dramatization of the novel was a failure, closing just three weeks after it opened in New York in September, 1930. The demise of the play, however, opened the way for a movie sale to Hollywood which netted the author (who received only $750 as an advance against royalties for the play) $24,000--a huge sum in those days. The movie was directed by Frank Borzage, who had won an Academy Award for Best Director a year earlier for Bad Girl, and starred Helen Hayes, who had also won an Academy Award a year earlier for her role in The Sin of Madelon Claudet. Lieutenant Frederic Henry, the hero of the novel, was played by Gary Cooper, one of the hottest male stars in Hollywood at the time. Nevertheless, Hemingway refused to see the movie when a print of it was rushed to Arkansas, where he was visiting, for its world premiere. Eight stapled legal sheets, printed on both sides, folded into wrappers. Near fine. A unique document in the post-publication history of one of the important American novels of the 20th century.
142. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Across the River and Into the Trees. NY: Scribner, 1950. Second printing of Hemingway's last full-length novel to be published in his lifetime, printed in the same month as the first edition. It had been a decade since his previous novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, had partly redeemed the author's fading reputation, and publication of this book was eagerly awaited by the literary world. However, despite its being a bestseller for 21 weeks (with 7 weeks at #1), the novel was thoroughly savaged by the critics, who used such phrases as "a thoroughly bad book," "Hemingway at his worst," and "a synthesis of everything that is bad in his previous work [which] throws a doubtful light on the future." "It is so dreadful," one important critic wrote, "that it begins to have its own morbid fascination and is almost impossible, as they say, to put down." At the time, the word was that Hemingway had another major novel in the works and that this was just a stop-gap effort. In fact, his next book turned out to be the novella, The Old Man and the Sea, which is by consensus one of his great fictional accomplishments. Still, one can almost watch the Hemingway tragedy unfolding, with the early success of his first novels casting a shadow over his future writings from which the author could never quite emerge. This novel and the extremely negative reaction it provoked represent a significant chapter in the life of a man many consider to be the greatest American writer of the 20th century. Inscribed by the author: "To ____/ with all best wishes/ Ernest Hemingway." Near fine in a very good dust jacket with several edge tears and edge creases.
143. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Autograph Letter Signed. January 24, 1959. Two full pages, addressed to his eldest son "Bum." Written from his home in Ketchum, Idaho, on stationery bearing his Cuban address, "Finca Vigia." A noteworthy letter, written the month that Fidel Castro toppled the Batista regime in Cuba, Hemingway's adopted home. The gravity of the political situation in Cuba is alluded to only in passing: Hemingway writes at length about the death of his son's dog, during the general strike that paralyzed Cuba during the revolution. He also gives instructions for Bum to buy Mary (Ernest's wife) 10 shares of AT&T stock, despite the fact that he already had 10 "in a certificate at either K.W. [Idaho] or Finca safe I bought when Roosevelt came in." Folded in thirds for mailing, one edge nick; else fine. Signed with a partly Spanish closing: "Sin mas nada - mucho love - Papa." The postscript is initialed "E.H." Pencilled annotations indicate that Hemingway included two checks with the letter, one for $108.75 and one for $8000, for the stock, with the leftover balance from the AT&T purchase to be held "to my account and I'll let you know what to buy with it." An interesting, revealing letter, written at a time when world events were conspiring to unravel the world he had so carefully made for himself over the years. Hemingway committed suicide two years later at his home in Ketchum; Fidel Castro and the Cubans continued to treat his home at Finca Vigia as an historical site.
144. HERBST, Josephine. Typed Letter Signed. (date missing, probably the early 1940s). One dense page, mostly reactions and insights brought on from having gone through an attic and the letters and papers therein from twenty years before. Herbst had been an aspiring young expatriate writer in Paris and Berlin in the years following World War I, had had an affair with noted playwright Maxwell Anderson, whom she alludes to in the letter (finding "a whole stack of poems too, written on paper napkins where we used to go to breakfast from a man famous only for plays"). She later adopted the left wing causes of the 1930s, traveling to Spain in 1937 to report on the Civil War there, as had Ernest Hemingway. After her divorce in 1940, she became a recluse at her home in Erwinna, Pennsylvania, but later returned to New York, where this letter was written, and began writing again, gaining a new circle of admirers. She won a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1966, culminating nearly a half century of writing. Acidic paper browned and edge-chipped, splitting at the folds; good only, and fragile. With a number of holograph pencil emendations and annotations.
145. HIAASEN, Carl. Lucky You. NY: Knopf, 1997. The uncorrected proof copy of his latest comic mystery, set in South Florida, as his previous novels have been. Fine in wrappers. Because there was a widely distributed advance reading copy, this proof is, in our experience, quite scarce.
146. -. Same title, the advance reading copy. Fine in wrappers.
147. HOAGLAND, Edward. The Edward Hoagland Reader. NY: Random House (1979). Edited and with an introduction by Geoffrey Wolff. Collects pieces from his earlier nonfiction books, and includes a checklist of his published writings to that point. The Washington Post called Hoagland "a Thoreau of our time," and John Updike has called him the finest essayist of his generation. Fine in a fine, price-clipped dust jacket and signed by the author.
148. HOAGLAND, Edward. City Tales. (Santa Barabara): (Capra Press)(1986). Corrected galley sheets for this collection of stories published in the Capra Back-to-Back series with Gretel Ehrlich's Wyoming Stories [see above]. Forty-two pages, 8 1/2" x 14". Printed on rectos only, with dozens of Hoagland's holograph and typed corrections throughout. Together with Hoagland's ribbon-copy typescript introduction, 3 pages, which he revised in the galleys. The introduction traces Hoagland's literary career, beginning with a novel that won the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award, continuing to his writing short fiction, and then changing dramatically so that for over fifteen years he wrote nothing but essays. Finally, he returns to fiction, including these stories, and he alludes to the novel he was writing at the time, which turned out to be Seven Rivers West, his first novel in over twenty years. Overall fine, and unique.
149. IRVING, John. Setting Free the Bears. NY: Random House (1968). The first book by the popular and award-winning author of The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany, among others. Fine in a very near fine dust jacket with one very tiny edge tear and wrinkle. A very attractive copy of his scarcest book: Setting Free the Bears sold just over 6000 copies, through two printings; recent Irving novels have had initial printings in the range of 250,000-300,000 copies.
150. IRVING, John. The World According to Garp. NY: Dutton (1978). The author's fourth novel, his breakthrough book and one of the best-loved novels of recent times, winner of the National Book Award when it was reprinted in paperback the following year. Garp had a first printing variously reported as 25,000 or 35,000 copies--a large number for a young, critically respected but commercially unsuccessful writer whose novels had never sold as many as 7000 copies previously. It was reprinted in hardcover numerous times, became a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, and eventually sold millions of copies when it came out in paperback. Later it was made into a successful film. Although copies of the first edition of Garp are not especially uncommon, it was the kind of book that was read, passed around, sometimes re-read, and most copies that show up are well-worn. This is a fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with two short, closed edge tears.
151. -. Same title, the uncorrected proof copy. This is the first issue proof, in mustard-colored wrappers. The promotional sheet laid into the proof begins: "We invite you to read one of the finest novels Dutton has ever published," a view that the critical and commercial success of Garp seems to have borne out. Fine in wrappers. Because there was a widely distributed advance reading copy (reported to have been printed in an edition of 1500 copies--a huge number, in those days, for a literary novel), copies of the proof are extremely scarce. There was also a later issue proof, in blue-green wrappers. This is the earliest printed version of one of the landmark novels of the 1970s.
152. JACKSON, Jon A. Ridin' with Ray. Santa Barbara: Neville Books, 1995. A limited edition, comprising two short pieces--a memoir of Raymond Carver and a short story, which was the first appearance of Jackson's character Fang Mulheisen, and is here restored to its original form. Of a total edition of 326 copies, this is one of 300 numbered copies, clothbound and signed by the author. Fine without jacket, as issued.
153. JOHNSON, Charles. Faith and the Good Thing. NY: Viking (1974). The highly praised first novel by this African-American author, whose later novel, Middle Passage, won the National Book Award in 1990. This is a review copy, and is inscribed by the author in 1975. Fine in a fine dust jacket, with review slip, author photos, and much promotional information laid in. An exceptional copy of an important first novel.
154. -. Same title, the uncorrected proof copy. Inscribed by the author to noted New York bookman, Burt Britton, with an allusion to Britton's then-forthcoming book of author self-caricatures, which was published in 1976 and to which Johnson was presumably a contributor. Fine in wrappers, with a different price indicated than that of the published book.
155. JUST, Ward. Ambition and Love. Boston/NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. The advance reading copy of this novel by the author of The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert, among others. Fine in wrappers.
156. JUST, Ward. Echo House. (n.p.): Houghton Mifflin (1997). Ringbound photocopied typescript of his most recent novel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Holograph corrections reproduced throughout. 8 1/2" x 11" format, the earliest printed state of this book, presumably created primarily for in-house use. Fine.