Literature

Hardcover. NY, The Free Press, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 330 pages. This book traces the central developments in American literature between and 1919. It opens with an account of the consolidation of realism as the dominant standard of critical value and brings the reader forward to the moment, at the end of World War I, when American writers began to take a recognized place among the masters of literary modernism. The ascendancy of the novel as the principal genre of the realists is presented against a broader cultural and historical background. Professor Berthoff reviews and evaluates American fiction from the time when Howells, Twain, and Henry James were still under attack by old-school idealizers, to the emergence of a new critical and testamentary realism with Crane, Dreiser, and Gertrude Stein. Clean copy.

Softcover. Bowling Green OH, Journal of Popular Culture, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages 1-258. Articles include: The tragedy of Bert Williams, mystery writer John D. MacDonald, Edward R. Murrow's WW2 radio broadcasts, the dance marathon craze, Spider-Man - Superhero in the Liberal Tradition, others. Clean.

Hardcover. San Antonio TX, Wings Press, reprint, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 208 pages, b&w photos. On October 28, 1959, John Howard Griffin underwent a transformation that changed many lives beyond his own he made his skin black and traveled through the segregated Deep South. His odyssey of discovery was captured in journal entries, arguably the single most important documentation of 20th-century American racism ever written. More than 50 years later, this newly edited edition which is based on the original manuscript and includes a new design and added afterword gives fresh life to what is still considered a contemporary book. The story that earned respect from civil rights leaders and death threats from many others endures today as one of the great human and humanitarian documents of the era. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, McGraw-Hill, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket, 269 pages. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, The Viking Press, 2nd pr., 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 309 pages. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 225 pages. Minor dust jacket edge wear and spotting on top edge, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Softcover. Bennington VT, Bennington College, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in green stapled wrappers. No. 628 of 1,000 numbered copies. Published in the Bennington Chapbooks in Literature series & in memory of William Trot. A speech delivered by Malamud at Bennington College as Lecture Seven in the Belitt Lectureship Series, October 30th, 1984. Introduction by Nicholas Delbanco. Illustrated with 3 full-page black & white photos of Malamud. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Charlottesville, University of Viginia, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 253 pages with index. This bibliography will fill the critical gap of intimation bout Carroll publications written during the significant post-1959 period. It attempts to include and annotate everything written by or about Lewis Carroll that has been published since 1959 in foreign languages, and it will provide collectors with information on the many fine translations of his work. The more than 1500 entries cover all aspects of Carroll's life and art, including his literary works, his photography, his work on logic and his relations with other Victorians. Clean copy.

Softcover. Columbus OH, Ohio State University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 189 pages. Looks at the response of American writers to Prohibition with an analysis of fictional portrayals of bootleggers, moonshiners, cabarets, speakeasies, and Prohibition-era characters. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Co , 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 331 pages, b&w illustrations. 'Born in Hull. But moved to London at the age of 3 and has lived in the same house ever since.', wrote Stevie Smith when asked by an editor for a biographical note. The lack of external events in her life is to many people the best known thing about her. Yet she was far from reclusive, as this new critical biography shows, and was actively involved in the social as well as intellectual life of literary London, with interruptions, from the early thirties. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st US, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly sunned, price-clipped dust jacket, 254 pages. "In this elegant memoir, Quennell turns from biographer of others to creating a self-portrait as well as frank and affectionate pictures of his parents. His father, C.H.B. Quennell, was an architect, a popular historian, and a formidable eccentric. The two men could scarcely have been more dissimilar, yet they shared many tastes and traits, and although they were lifelong adversaries the influence of the father had a determining effect on the education of the son." (from the jacket) Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf which is tanned from clipping laid in.

Hardcover. Lincoln NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with sunning to spine. No markings, light foxing to top of text block.

Hardcover. Boston, Beacon Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 255 pages. A collection of essays that range from an autobiographical tour-de-force that describes a childhood spent with an alcoholic father to 'Looking at Women,' a reflection on male yearning and confusion, to a look at the place-or absence-of nature in recent American fiction. In these 15 earnest and ambitious essays (published in earlier form in Harper's, The Kenyon Review, etc.), Sanders looks for--and often finds--universal truths in the particulars of everyday life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and faded dust jacket, 267 pages. Novels affirm the power of fiction to portray the horizons of knowledge and to dramatize the ways that the truths of human existence are created and preserved. Professor Saldivar shows that deconstructive readings of novels remind us that we do not apprehend the world directly but through interpretive codes. Previous owner's name, stamp to front fly leaf.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, reprint, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 171 pages. One of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to create a luminous work that defies categorization. In stunning language, Darwish's self-elegy inhabits a rare space where opposites bleed and blend into each other. Prose and poetry, life and death, home and exile are all sung by the poet and his other. On the threshold of im/mortality, the poet looks back at his own existence, intertwined with that of his people. Clean Copy.

Indianapolis , Indiana Historical Society, 1st, 1949, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 303 pages, blue cloth spine, beige cloth covers. Library stamp on front fly leaf and title page, bottom edge. Internally clean.

Hardcover. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 2nd printing, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 259 pages. Biography by Issac Bashevis Singer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Paintings and drawings by Raphael Soyer. Slight yellowing to pictorial dust jacket, else a lovely copy in clear mylar cover.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 537 pages. Slight edgewear, rubbing to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. US, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 228 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket with light soil to rear cover.

Hardcover. New York, Random House , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 402 pages. Cloth boards in a bright dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. The subjects of Salman Rushdie's collection of non-fiction range from The Wizard of Oz, U2, India and Indian writing, the death of Princess Diana, and football, to twentieth-century writers including Angela Carter, Arthur Miller, Edward Said, J. M. Coetzee and Arundhati Roy. In a central section, 'Messages from the Plague Years', Rushdie focuses on the fight against the Iranian fatwa, presenting texts both personal and political, which show for the first time how it was to live through those days. Rushdie's columns for the New York Times confront current issues - Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Islam and the West - as well as lighter topics such as reality TV, sport and sleaze. The book ends with the lectures that give it its title - Rushdie's exploration of the theme of frontiers: crossing them, breaking taboos, and - in the light of September 11 - the world of permeable frontiers in which we all live.

Hardcover. Berkeley, California University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 164 pages. Hardcover. Illustrated with full color and black & white photographs. Dust jacket with light wear. Clean tight copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 338 pages, several b&w woodcut illustrations. Black cloth spine with marbled boards, top edge gilt. Author Theodore Morrison's copy with his signature on front fly leaf. Minor corner wear.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin and Company, Limited Ed., 1904, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 251 pages. Limited Ed. #205/750 copies. SIGNED BY BURROUGHS. Slight sunning to covers, else a clean, tight copy. Volume 1 only.

Hardcover. London, Chatto and Windus, 1st, 1960, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 260 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front flyleaf. Hardcover. Gilt title on spine. Covers bound in purple cloth. Boards have a touch of age wear at edges. Gutter split at title page, otherwise, binding tight. Clean inside. Edges and preliminary pages have some age-yellow and foxing. Still in great shape for its age.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st , 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Author's third book, very good in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. UK, Aquarian Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Black & white illustrations, 256 pages. "Arthur Machen (1863-1947) .was acclaimed in his day as one of the finest stylists in English prose.The sequences of letters to his friends A.E.Waite, Colin Summerford, and John Galsworth, and to fellow authors and publishers, illuminate Machen's courageous struggles against poverty and adversity, while reflecting his lifelong preoccupations with literature, the occult, the Christian faith, and Celtic myth."

Hardcover. Watertown, MA, Charlesbridge, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, non-paginated. Extensive b&w woodcut illustrations throughout. Gilt titles on spine and cover. Color illustration on front cover. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 429 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY EDITOR, JULIA COLLIER HARRIS. Light edge wear to covers, dust jacket. Inscribed on front fly leaf to Dr. Small from the Harrises. Tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2nd printing, 1939, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 597 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Faded spine. Tight copy.

Hardcover. Gloucester MA, Peter Smith , reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 342 pages. Beige cloth with black lettering on spine. Light underlining to about 10 pages, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Hawthorn Books, 3rd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 279 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 2nd pr., 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 671 pages. Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 554 pages. This compilation of correspondence is aptly titled. British travel writer and novelist Chatwin traveled widely, constantly, and obsessively--everywhere under the sun, in other words. He possessed a restless soul, to be sure. And to a large degree, he was secretive; information about his homosexuality and his affliction with the AIDS virus was closely guarded. He cast a personal spell with his charm and a lasting one through his works, which are so imaginative they are pure excitement to read; at the same time, however, it can be confusing to determine whether to see them as fiction or nonfiction. Nevertheless, beginning with his first published book, In Patagonia (1977), Chatwin maintained a reputation among discerning readers for his riveting characters--invented or not is unimportant, even in his travel books--and his rigorously precise writing style. Chatwin's wife and his biographer (Bruce Chatwin, 2000) combined efforts over a two-decade period to retrieve more than 90 percent of Chatwin's correspondence from childhood to immediately before his untimely death at 48. Chatwin's many appreciators will see the compilation in its overall significance as a personal visit with one of their literary heroes, as much as that is possible now. Remainder line on bottom edge otherwise like new.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, cream color cloth stamped in blue, 308 pages. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, WW Norton , 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 382 pages.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 867 pages. Over the course of a nearly sixty-year career, Norman Mailer wrote more than 30 novels, essay collections, and nonfiction books. Yet nowhere was he more prolific or more exposed than in his letters. All told, Mailer crafted more than 45,000 pieces of correspondence (approximately 20 million words), many of them deeply personal, keeping a copy of almost every one. Now the best of these are published most for the first time in one remarkable volume that spans seven decades and, it seems, several lifetimes. Together they form a stunning autobiographical portrait of one of the most original, provocative, and outspoken public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Compiled by Mailer s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, and organized by decade, Selected Letters of Norman Mailer features the most fascinating of Mailer s missives from 1940 to 2007 letters to his family and friends, to fans and fellow writers (including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth), to political figures from Henry Kissinger to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to such cultural icons as John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and even Monica Lewinsky.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman. Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty--a poet, a New Yorker, and an American--keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work. What is it then between us? Whitman asks. In search of an answer, Doty explores spaces--both external and internal--where he finds the poet's ghost. He meditates on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet's enduring work: a radical experience of transformation and enlightenment, queer sexuality, and an obsession with death, as well as unabashed love for a great city and for the fresh, rowdy character of American speech. In riveting close readings threaded with personal memoir and illuminated by awe, Doty reveals the power of Whitman's persistent presence in his life and in the American imagination at large. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Milwaukie OR, M Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The third installment of Playboy interviews gives their claim some validity (although probably not enough). The first two collections were grouped under the topics of sports figures and film directors, while the latest simply has the designation "Larger Than Life," and indeed those interviewed were awfully big for their britches. The interviewees include Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Bob Dylan, Mae West, and Muhammad Ali, among others. The interviews--in true Playboy fashion--are revealing, but also fascinating to realize are the periods in which they occurred. Sinatra was interviewed in 1963, and the cold war was definitely on his mind. Bette Davis, in 1982, had a long career of ups and downs to sound off about. But Muhammad Ali is the perfect example of how honest these personalities could become when allowed to digress; asked why he flunked the army's preinduction test, he replied, "I have said I am the greatest. Ain't nobody ever heard me say I was the smartest." 398 pages, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Allen Lane, 2008, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The writings of Lewis Carroll have inspired and entertained generations of readers and have influenced the work of everyone from James Joyce to John Lennon. But the extraordinary imagination that created Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, was not limited simply to fantasy, logic and word play. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was for many years lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and published works in the fields of geometry, logic and algebra. He also made significant contributions to subjects as varied as voting patterns and the design of tennis tournaments, and he created large numbers of imaginative recreational puzzles based on mathematical ideas. For the first time, Lewis Carroll in Numberland explores both his serious and his recreational work and places it in the context of his many other activities, mathematical and otherwise. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, William Pickering, 1st, 1835, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 298 pages. Black leather covers with gilt rules, faded gilt title on ribbed spine. All edges gilt. Covers with edgewear and the top 6th of the spine leather is gone. Marbled endpapers with bookplate inside front cover. Rear flyleaf with a chunk cut out. Interior is very good. Medieval and Renaissance French poetry, translated into English by an acclaimed poet, travel writer, historian, and painter. Louisa Costello (1799-1870), was an accomplished Anglo-Irish artist and prolific poet and author. She was also a fine miniature painter, and her illustrations show her exquisite sensibility. 4 beautifully hand-colored lithograph plates by the author. Not all copies contain these plates.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lughtly worn dust jacket. 589 pages. Light shelf wear, chipping and closed tear to dust jacket. Review slip laid in.

Hardcover. Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, faded dust jacket. 191 pages. John Chamberlain, a veteran newspaperman and reviewer for the New York Times and other prestigious publications, shares the story of his career. INSCRIBED BY CHAMBERLAIN on the front fly leaf. Introduction by William F. Buckley.

Hardcover. London, W. H. Allen & Co., 1st, 1883, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine and gilt titles and gilt rules to front board. Prefatory note by Bertha Thomas plus 247 pages plus four-page publisher's advertisements for titles in the Eminent Women Series to the rear. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf , 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 408 pages. In this illuminating study of the "crucial century" (1830-1930), Alfred Kazin views the major figures in American writing, beginning when Ralph Waldo Emerson left the church and inspired a national literature on the basis of a religious revolution, and ending with the triumph of modernism - Eliot, Pound, Hemingway, Fitzgerald - and with the revelation after World War I of the "postponed power" of those who had been modern before their time: Henry Adams, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson.

Softcover. Oakville Ontario , Mosaic Press , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 276 pages. B&W illustrations. Here is an affectionate look back at the outsized heroes who once occupied the imagination of millions of loyal readers. The Shadow. Tarzan. Doc Savage. Captain Future. The Spider. Zero. They were the original super guys - godfathers and inpsiration to the likes of Superman, Batman, and James Bond. Fascinating and informative, The Great Pulp Heroes is a lively and entertaining history of those fabulous characters, of them gaudy, glorious magazines that spawned them, and of the amazing wordsmiths who churned out their monthly adventures. Bright, clean copy.

Softcover. Boston, David R. Godine, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 368 pages. Eagerly exchanging an existence of idle privilege and social intrigue for one of hard work and literary distinction, Origo led a life characterized by vitality and commitment. Born in 1902 into a wealthy American family, she and her British mother permanently left the U.S. after the untimely death of her father in 1910. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, they eventually settled outside of Florence, becoming prominent members of the stuffy Anglo-Florentine community of expatriates. Asserting her trademark independence, she married Antonio Origo, the illegitimate son of a cavalry officer-sculptor. Together Antonio and Iris purchased and totally revitalized an arid Tuscan valley and renovated a crumbling estate. With virtually no experience and few practical skills, they transformed themselves into agrarian pioneers and their extensive acreage into a prosperous working community supporting more than 200 people. During the war years, they quietly supported the Allies, offering refuge to countless numbers of partisans and prisoners of war. In addition to these accomplishments, Iris also buried one child and raised two more, conducted several heart-wrenching extramarital affairs, and distinguished herself as both a biographer and a literary critic. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 166 pages. Pindar (c. 518-438 B.C.), one of ancient Greece's most famous lyric poets, is perhaps best known for his victory (epinicean) odes, written to honor the winners at various sets of games, such as the Olympiad. In Crown of Song, Deborah Steiner's study of these odes, she writes "If Pindar is remote from us in genre, his style strikes the reader as vivid and immediate. And in my reading of the epinicean odes, it is the poet's use of metaphor that accounts for the dynamic quality of his verse." Steiner begins her analysis by exploring both ancient and modern theories of metaphor, and then turns to specific imagery employed by the poet--plant life, athletics, minerals and numerous others--as a way of understanding how these metaphoric complexes function in the poet's praise of the victor, his assertion of his own place as perpetuator of the victor's immortal fame, and in his vision of human achievement and glory in the context of mortal life and immortal gods. Written in a lively, readable style, Crown of Song opens up the sometimes difficult verse of this celebrated ancient poet to modern readers. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New Castle DE, Oak Knoll Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 500 pages plus CD. This bibliography documents all phases of Vidal's ongoing remarkable work. It focuses on Gore Vidal as a writer from 1940 through June, 2009. In two volumes (second on CD containing text and images plus 120 pages), this is the definitive, comprehensive, and descriptive bibliography of his work and is a valuable reference book for libraries, collectors, scholars, booksellers. Lacks dust jacket, a clean, bright copy.