Angela Davis: An Autobiography [Inscribed]
First Printing. Octavo (21.75cm); red cloth, with titles stamped in black on spine and author's name in blind on front cover; dustjacket; xii,400,[4]pp. Inscribed by the author in a contemporary hand on the title page: "To Sally - Solidarity! Angela Y. Davis." Gentle sunning to spine ends and upper board edges, top edge dust-soiled, with lower corners bumped (though still sharp), and a small stain to lower right corners of the textblock; Very Good+. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $8.95), spine-sunned and shelfworn, with a few tiny nicks, tears, and attendant creases, and a few faint dampstains toward base of spine; Very Good. Attractive, inscribed copy of Davis's autobiography. Written shortly after her imprisonment and trial in the Soledad brothers murder case (she was found not guilty), the volume chronicles her life from her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama to her rise to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
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The Reivers: A Reminiscence
First Printing. Octavo; red cloth, with titling and rule stamped in gilt and orange on spine and front panel; red topstain; dustjacket; 305pp. Very Near Fine, with top-stain bright and unfaded. Dustwrapper is unclipped (priced $4.95 on front flap), clean and crisp with a tiny (1/8") closed nick at base of front panel and a hint of sunning to spine panel; Near Fine. Faulkner's final novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1963, and basis for the 1969 Mark Rydell film starring Steve McQueen. PETERSEN A37d. Brigham’s Destroying Angel: Being The Life, Confession, and Startling Disclosures of the Notorious Bill Hickman, the Danite Chief of Utah
Second edition. 12mo (17.5cm). Gilt-pictorial red cloth; 221,(7)pp; frontispiece portrait. Spine lettering dulled, still a firm, unmarked, Very Good copy in the original publisher's binding. Memoir of "Wild" Bill Hickman, the Mormon frontiersman and genocidal Indian fighter who was excommunicated in 1868 for his attacks on Brigham Young and other high-ranking LDS churchmen. The first edition was published in 1872. FLAKE 3991. The Life, Labors, and Travels of Elder Charles Bowles, of the Free Will Baptist Denomination. Together with an essay on the character and condition of the African race . also, an essay on the Fugitive Slave Law of the U.S. Congress of 1850 by Rev. Arthur Dearing
First printing. 12mo (20cm). Publisher's embossed brown cloth gilt; 288pp. Slight external wear, with some roughness to cloth at spine crown; final two pages faintly printed; pronounced foxing to endpapers but text generally tight, fresh, and clean; a Very Good copy. Early ownership signature on title page of "Jos. W. Reade, Clayton [NY?]," dated 1861. Later ownership signature in ink of a "Ruth Wells Jones." Lewis's biography is the principal source of information on Bowles (1761-1843), an African-American Revolutionary War veteran and itinerant Baptist preacher whose circuit included portions of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the entirety of Vermont, where he established a Free-Will Baptist Church at Huntington in 1839. The author, John W. Lewis (1809-1861) was a fellow Free-Will Baptist minister, associated, beginning around 1843, with the adventism of William Miller - one of few African American adherents to the Millerite movement. The Jungle Books
No. 411 of 1500 copies, signed by the illustrator. Large octavo (27cm). Olive cloth over marbled boards with gilt spine decorations; xiii,[5],383pp; color plates by David Gentleman. Bookplate of the distinguished American zoologist James G. Mead to front pastedown, with his dated ownership signature on front free endpaper. A fine copy in the original publisher's slipcase, with LEC monthly letter laid in. To Him That Hath. Illustrated from paintings by Sigurd Schou
First printing, verso of title page dated July, 1907. Octavo (20.5cm). Publisher's gray cloth, pictorially stamped in gilt and colors; x,401pp; frontispiece and three inserted leaves of plates. A lovely copy, gilt bright on spine and front cover, with minimal rubbing to pictorial elements. Very Near Fine, and unusual thus. Second novel by Scott, a prolific reform novelist whose first book, The Walking Delegate, is a key early title in Walter Rideout's bibliography of American twentieth-century radical fiction. In the aforementioned work Scott tackled graft and corruption in a New York labor union; Rideout notes that novel's hero ".is not a Socialist, he never mentions Socialism as a theory; yet he acts from an implicit acceptance of class warfare." (Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States, p.29). In the current work Scott focuses these same class sensibilities on the milieu of urban mission work on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where his main character, a Christ-like settlement worker who allies himself with the tenement-dwellers and street urchins in his midst, overcomes a corruption scandal and an unjust prison sentence to finally win the love of his benefactress and foil her millionaire father, a so-called "industrial bandit." Though the plot is convoluted, To Him That Hath touches sensitively on a number of key Progressive Era concerns including slum welfare, penal reform, and wealth inequality. Scott would publish another dozen or so novels - mostly romances with a New York setting - through the end of the Twenties, but none seems to have lived up to the promise of his first two books. HANNA 3156. SMITH S-213. Lively Days: Some Memoirs of Margaret Homer Shurcliff
Octavo (24cm). Brown cloth spine over pale blue linen-covered boards; 112pp; illus. Slight bowing to boards; still a tight, clean, Very Good or better copy. Lengthy presentation inscription to front endpaper from a Betty Spencer, who from context appears to have been acquainted with the author and an avid member of the Boston bell-ringing community; to a "Dorothy and Dick" (unidentified), dated January 1966. Posthumously edited and published memoir of Margaret Homer Shurcliff (1879-1959), the daughter of Boston physician (and amateur campanologist) Arthur Nichols and the wife of prominent American landscape architect A.A. Shurcliff. She was known as "the mother of American handbell ringing," and much of her memoir is devoted to her and her family's activities in this field, first as "change ringers" at Boston's Old North Church; later in the discipline of handbells, at which Shurcliff was a leading practitioner. She was also a pioneering woman woodworker - one of few American women of her era to operate her own shop and produce furniture commercially; a competitive amateur tennis player, and a prominent figure in progressive political circles in the Boston area, active in the League for Democratic Control and the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, all subjects discussed here. A fascinating and uncommon memoir, edited posthumously from her manuscript and published privately by her daughter in Taiwan. Selected Writings of Charles Olson
First Printing, cloth issue. Octavo (21cm); russet cloth, with titles stamped in yellow on spine; dustjacket; [viii],280pp. Trivial wear to extremities, else a fresh, Fine copy. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $7.95), with light wear to extremities and two small tears; Near Fine, with the spine notably unfaded. A collection of poetry and essays, presenting Olson "in the dual role of poet and theoretician" (from front flap). Edited and with an introduction by Robert Creeley. The People, Yes [Malcolm Cowley’s Review Copy, Signed]
First Printing, a review copy, with the publication date and price rubber stamped on front endpaper. Octavo (21.25cm); blue cloth, with titles stamped in copper on spine; dustjacket; [viii],286,[2]pp. Critic Malcolm Cowley's copy, with his ownership signature in black ink on front endpaper. Gentle sunning to upper board edges, very subtle discoloration to joints, with some offsetting to endpapers; contents clean; Near Fine. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $2.50), spine-sunned, modestly worn, with a few small tears and shallow losses to extremities; Very Good. HEISE 28. Cowley reviewed a number of Sandburg's works, beginning with his 1922 review of Slabs of the Sunburnt West; however, Eisenberg's Cowley checklist does not note a review of this mid-Depression work, a book-length cycle of poems celebrating the common man. Flowering Judas [Presentation Copy, Inscribed to Jordan Massee, Jr.]
PORTER, Katherine Anne One of 600 copies. Inscribed and signed in full "with best wishes" to Jordan Massee Jr., dated May, 1939. Octavo (21.25cm); gray paper-covered boards and brown cloth backstrip, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; [x],145,[1]pp. Spine lettering dulled, else a tight, Near Fine copy, lacking the original glassine and printed slip. A nice association copy, inscribed to Jordan Massee, Jr. (1914-2002), scion of a wealthy industrial family of Macon, Georgia who became an intimate acquaintance of many prominent twentieth-century writers including Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Isak Dinesen, Gore Vidal, and others. His father, Jordan Massee Sr., is generally acknowledged to have been the model for "Big Daddy" in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.- $935
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For Whom The Bell Tolls
HEMINGWAY, Ernest First Printing. Octavo (21.5cm); beige linen, blocked and titled in red and black on spine, with Hemingway's facsimile signature stamped in black on front cover; brown topstain; dustjacket; [x],471,[1]pp. Typical offsetting to pastedowns from binder's glue, previous owner's printed bookplate to front pastedown; top-stain mildly faded, spine titling mildly rubbed; contents fresh; Very Good or better. In the first state dustjacket, without photo credit on lower rear panel; price-clipped, with shallow chips at crown and heel (not affecting printed title), slight overall rubbing; Very Good. A presentable, sound copy, retaining decent color on the spine. Hemingway's celebrated novel of the Spanish Civil War, centered around a young American in the International Brigades. Basis for Sam Wood's Oscar-winning adaptation, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. HANNEMAN 18a.- $550
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Story of the Eye
BATAILLE, Georges (writing as Lord Auch); SONTAG, Susan and Roland Barthes (essays) First Impression. Octavo (22.25cm); black cloth-covered boards, with titles stamped in white on spine; dustjacket; [9],10-127,[1]pp. Base of spine gently bumped, else very Near Fine. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced £5.95), showing some light surface wear and a tiny wrinkle at base of spine panel; Near Fine. First English-language edition of Bataille's inflammatory 1928 erotic novel, with essays by Susan Sontag ("The Pornographic Imagination") and Roland Barthes ("The Metaphor of the Eye"). First U.K. Edition (and First in the English Language).- $55
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The Witches of Eastwick [Signed]
UPDIKE, John Octavo; dark green leather, with titling and decorations stamped in gilt to spine and covers; all edges gilt; 307pp, [5]; illus. Signed by Updike on the first blank page. Single, small spot of foxing to fore edge of signature page, else a tight, Near Fine copy with minimal evidence of use. Printed for members of the Signed First Edition Society, with a special introduction by the author not present in the trade edition. Illustrated by Michael Deas. Basis for the 1987 film staring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer.- $44
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Selected Poems
ASHBERY, John First printing. Octavo (24cm). Cloth-backed mauve boards; dustjacket; [viii],350pp. Tight, straight, clean copy with a touch of foxing to upper edge of text block; Near Fine. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $22.95 on front flap), spotted on verso with tiny bit of wear at crown; Near Fine.- $44
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Wild Night Irises: A Book of Poems
MILLER, Steve (poems); DOMBROWSKI, Paul (illustrations) One of 120 numbered copies, this being copy no.26. Slim octavo (22.5cm); text letterpress printed on Arches paper, sewn into lavender handmade paper wrappers with French flaps; [26]pp; illus. A Fine copy. Slim collection of five poems, with illustrations by Paul Dombrowski. This was the first book volume published by the press, preceded by the broadside "The Balloon People Poem."- $165
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The Crack-Up
FITZGERALD, F. Scott; Edmund Wilson (ed) First printing, one of 2520 copies printed. Octavo; cloth-backed patterned boards; 348pp; title page printed in brown and black. Touch of wear at bottom board corners; mildly sunned at extremities; still a straight, attractive, Very Good or better copy, lacking the dustwrapper. Collects Fitzgerald's last works and periodical pieces, all but one of which saw their first book publication here. Later printings were bound in full beige cloth with the title pages printed in black. BRUCCOLI A19.1.a.- $165
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The Complete Poems
KEATS, John (poems); BRETT, Simon (illustrations) Third Printing. Large octavo (28cm); patterned cloth and quarter dark green morocco backstrip, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; green topstain; publisher's slipcase; xx,472,[4]pp; illus. Fine in a Fine slipcase. Edited by John Barnard, with an introduction by Andrew Motion, and engravings by Simon Brett.- $55
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An Oration Spoken Before “The Connecticut Society, for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage.” Convened in Hartford, on the 8th Day of May, A.D. 1794
AFRICAN-AMERICANA] DWIGHT, Theodore Early such piece arguing against slavery, delivered by the Federalist lawyer and cousin of Aaron Burr. The Society was founded just four years previously, in 1790, and Dwight would work assiduously as an attorney representing free black New Yorkers who had been kidnapped to be placed on the slave market. "Although he wrote too much and too rapidly for lasting fame, his political articles were bright and spicy" ("Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography (1888), Vol. II, p. 282). EVANS 26922; SABIN 21530. Octavo (19.5cm.); disbound; 24pp.; [A]-C4. Title page and last leaf of text (serving as upper and rear wrappers) separated but present, upper wrapper rather soiled, extremities chipped and a bit brittle. A Good, serviceable copy only.- $550
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