Literature

Hardcover. NY, Hogarth Press, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in cloth with dark green buckram spine with gold lettering on the spine, no DJ, deckled edges. 359 pages, 6 full page plates and chapter head drawings by Philip Hagreen. Uncommon edition. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st thus, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Four-volume paperback box set represents Beckett's major works in prose, drama, poetry, and criticism edited by Paul Auster. The cardboard slipcase is Fine. 2047 pages. 6 1/2 x 8 1/2 " tall. Includes "Waiting for Godot," "Endgame," and "Happy Days." Samuel Beckett was one of the most important and influential figures of twentieth-century literature. His radically minimalist language, black humor, and surreal situations unleashed a brilliant vision uniquely Beckett's own and, in the process, forever changed literature. Still in publisher's shrink wrap. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. 410 pages, b&w illustrations. Best known as the author of "Windows for the Crown Prince, " an account of her years as English tutor to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, Elizabeth Gray Vining now tells the full story of her life, including impressions of Japan that she omitted from her earlier book. Previous owner'e signature on Front fly leaf otherwise clean.

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.

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.

Hardcover. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1st , 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 246 pages. Previous owner's signature on front flyleaf. Light spotting to edges. Very minor rubbing to cover edges. A nice, clean copy.

Hardcover. West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 468 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket unclipped, excellent. Green endpapers. Tan cloth cover boards, red title on spine. Pages clean, spine straight, binding tight. Excellent condition.

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. NY, Arcade Publishing, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 401pages. The 1990s saw a resurgence of interest in the Marquis de Sade, with several biographies competing to put their version of his life story before the public. But Sadean scholar Richard Seaver takes us directly to the source, translating Sade's prison correspondence. Seaver's translations retain the aristocratic hauteur of Sade's prose, which still possesses a clarity that any reader can appreciate. "When will my horrible situation cease?" he wrote to his wife shortly after his incarceration began in 1777. "When in God's name will I be let out of the tomb where I have been buried alive? There is nothing to equal the horror of my fate!" But he was never reduced to pleading for long, and not always so solicitous of his wife's feelings; a few years later, he would write, "This morning I received a fat letter from you that seemed endless. Please, I beg of you, don't go on at such length: do you believe that I have nothing better to do than to read your endless repetitions?" For those interested in learning about the man responsible for some of the most infamous philosophical fiction in history, Letters from Prison is an indispensable collection. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, The Beacon Press, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth covers, 289 pages. 12 pages of b&w photos. Fifty years of letters (1899-1949) by the crusader for liberal and humane causes as well as Jewish rights. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, McGraw-Hill, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 474 pages. This wonderful collection contains all of Bogan's criticism, most of it written during her many years as poetry critic for The New Yorker magazine. "One does not easily recall another writer of such stature who served her fellow writers, and the reading public, for so long, or with such pertinence and distinction." She lived from 1897-1970. Flap price crossed out with smaller price in ink. Otherwise like new condition.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth lettered in gilt at the spine. Illustrated with eight photographic plates. 422 pages. Extended passages from Jefferies' work, with a general introduction in two parts: 'The English Genius' and 'To the Two Types of Jefferies Readers', introductions to each section, notes on the text, and the Epigraph. No dust jacket, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a rubbed and edgeworn dust jacket. 433 pages, b&w illustrations. McClure was the father of the muckraking movement and brought about a revolution in American journalism in the days of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. His journalistic contributors included Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and he introduced authors such as O. Henry, Booth Tarkington, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane and Jack London to the American public. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Seven Stories Press, 2nd pr., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, illustrated in color by Joanna Concejo. The Lost Soul is a deeply moving reflection on our capacity to live in peace with ourselves, to remain patient, attentive to the world. It is a story that beautifully weaves together the voice of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and the finely detailed wash-and-ink drawings of illustrator Joanna Concejo, who together create a parallel narrative universe full of secrets, evocative of another time. Here a man has forgotten what makes his heart feel full. He moves to a house away from all that is familiar to him to wait for his soul to return. Originally published in Poland in 2017. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Frederick Ungar, 1st thus, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 263 pages. 1st American Edition of this Abridged Translation. This is Kraus's masterpiece, with half of Europe as its stage. It is presented here in English for the first time, in an abridged version that preserves the essence of the 800-page original. Its influence on Brecht, Ionesco, and other playwrights is acknowledged. Mingling actual quotations, news reports, and government orders with Kraus's own satiric dialogue, this immense drama (never meaning to be performed) offers a vast fresco of events at the front and at home during, as it prophesied, the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, Kraus anticipated the development of atomic warfare and its threat to all mankind. Some of Kraus is untranslatable, but, as Stanley Kauffmann wrote in his New Republic review, "Ungar has done us a benefit at least by bringing us a bit closer to this sharp-eyed, angry, prickly, lover-hater of mankind." INSCRIBED BY FREDERICK UNGAR, the editor and publisher on the half-title page. He also wrote the 14 page introduction. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 309 pages. A collection of essays from the famed literary critic. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, MInerva Press, reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 489 pages. Bright, clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Spuyten Duyvil, 1st, 1999, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 187 pages, Essays on contemporary American literature. Small bump to edge causing a slight wave to top edge, Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown & Company , 1st US, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 194 pages. Translated by Ewald Osers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Westport CT, Greenwood Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy boards, 174 pages. B&w frontispiece portrait. Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) had something to say about virtually all her contemporaries among the literati, and they returned the favor in full measure. This well articulated primary and secondary bibliography covers the complete canon and its critical reaction, with illuminating annotations complemented by a biographical sketch. Included also are three personal views of Parker-- by Joseph Bryan, III, Richard Lauterbach, and Wyatt Cooper. The accumulated evidence suggests that Parker should be considered a major figure in American letters not just America's wittiest woman who happened to write. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY/London, Marion Boyars, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 152 pages. Essays that deal with the shadow economy. Shadow Work is all the work people do who are not paid in cash. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 274 pages. Nine lectures. Contents: Introductory; What is Meant by Tradition; The Molpe; Drama; Metre; Poetic Diction; Unity and Organic Construction; The Heroic Age; Hamlet and Orestes; Poetry; Index. Clean copy. Top of cloth spine frayed. Remnants of dust jacket laid in.

Hardcover. Knoxville, University Of Tennessee Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 432 pages. Shields shows how both the myth of Adam and the myth of Aeneas, in crossing over to America from Europe, dynamically intermingled in the thought of the earliest American writers. This rearticulation of the myths of Adam and Aeneas became peculiarly adapted to the demands of the American adventure in freedom. Shields argues that uncovering and acknowledging the classical roots of our culture can allay the American fear of "pastlessness" that the long-standing emphasis on the Adamic myth has generated. The authors probing analysis sheds new light on the works of such seminal figures as Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather, Phillis Wheatley, George Washington, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 139 pages. How does a poet repeatedly make art over a lifetime out of an arbitrary assignment of fate? By asking this question of the work of four American poets--two men of the postwar generation, two young women writing today--Helen Vendler suggests a fruitful way of looking at a poet's career and a new way of understanding poetic strategies as both mastery of forms and forms of mastery. Fate hands every poet certain unavoidable "givens." Of the poets Vendler studies, Robert Lowell sprang from a family famous in American and especially New England history; John Berryman found himself an alcoholic manic-depressive; Rita Dove was born black; Jorie Graham grew up trilingual, with three words for every object. In Vendler's readings, we see how these poets return again and again to the problems set out by their givens, and how each invents complex ways, both thematic and formal, of making poetry out of fate. Clean copy.

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. New York, W W Norton & Co Inc, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 568 pages. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. Profiles the enigmatic soldier, statesman, and man of letters, offering a wealth of never-before-published missives that shed light on his role in the Arab revolt, his sexuality, and his retreat into obscurity.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2nd pr., 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Donald Hall lived a remarkable life of letters, one capped most recently by the New York Times bestseller Essays After Eighty, a "treasure" of a book in which he "balance[s] frankness about losses with humor and gratitude" (Washington Post). Before his passing in 2018, nearing ninety, Hall delivered this new collection of self-knowing, fierce, and funny essays on aging, the pleasures of solitude, and the sometimes astonishing freedoms arising from both. He intersperses memories of exuberant days--as in Paris, 1951, with a French girl memorably inclined to say, "I couldn't care less"--with writing, visceral and hilarious, on what he has called the "unknown, unanticipated galaxy" of extreme old age. "Why should a nonagenarian hold anything back?" Hall answers his own question by revealing several vivid instances of "the worst thing I ever did," and through equally uncensored tales of literary friendships spanning decades, with James Wright, Richard Wilbur, Seamus Heaney, and other luminaries. Cementing his place alongside Roger Angell and Joan Didion as a generous and profound chronicler of loss, Hall returns to the death of his beloved wife, Jane Kenyon, in an essay as original and searing as anything he's written in his extraordinary literary lifetime.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Crime, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 544 pages. It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and award winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie. Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Christie's books still sell over four million copies each year--more than thirty years after her death--and it shows no signs of slowing. But who was the woman behind these mystifying, yet eternally pleasing, puzzlers? Thompson reveals the Edwardian world in which Christie grew up, explores her relationships, including those with her two husbands and daughter, and investigates the many mysteries still surrounding Christie's life, most notably, her eleven-day disappearance in 1926.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, First Edition, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 249 pages. Hardcover. Grey cloth covered boards with white titles to spine. Dust jacket with light, marginal wear, now protected with a plastic sleeve. Black & white illustrations, tight binding, clean & unmarked pages throughout.

Hardcover. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1st US, 1941, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 352 pages. Translated from Russian by Malcolm Burr. Cloth covers, blue stamped titles, 3 b&w illustrated maps, blue top edge stain. Rubbing and light soiling to covers, spine lightly cocked, previous owner's bookplate and signature to front endpapers, light foxing and discoloration to endpapers, discoloration to page block ends; otherwise, a neat, tight copy of a scare book.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press , 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 142 pages, Preface by Farrell. Green cloth binding with gilt on spine. Some light pencil marks in margins, on rear end papers.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 352 pages. Translated by Sam Taylor. As a bilingual bestselling novelist with a mixed Franco-British bloodline and a host of eminent forebears, Tatiana de Rosnay is the perfect candidate to write a biography of Daphne du Maurier. As an eleven-year-old de Rosnay read and reread Rebecca, becoming a lifelong devotee of Du Maurier's fiction. Now de Rosnay pays homage to the writer who influenced her so deeply, following Du Maurier from a shy seven-year-old, a rebellious sixteen-year-old, a twenty-something newlywed, and finally a cantankerous old lady. With a rhythm and intimacy to its prose characteristic of all de Rosnay's works, Manderley Forever is a vividly compelling portrait and celebration of an intriguing, hugely popular and (at the time) critically underrated writer.

Hardcover. Burlington, VT, Ashgate , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 232 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers.

Softcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st pbk, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 123 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1st, 1936, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 148 pages. Black & white illustrations by Rockwell Kent. 1st edition review copy. "Review Copy" with date and price stamped on front endpaper. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Tanning along top edge of pages. Darkening to spine, and top edges of covers. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Macmillan Company,, 1st, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Three hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets, complete set. Blue cloth covers and gilt spine lettering. Volumes 1 & 2 are historical and cover the development of American literature from its European roots, and volume 3 is a comprehensive bibliography. This is a standard work in its field. Vol. 1: 636 pages, Vol.2: 639-1422; Vol. 3: 817 pages. The contents are clean and unmarked--there are no bookplates or ownership names. Dust jackets in protective mylar, no slipcase.

Hardcover. Livingston, MT, Clack City Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 318 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to edges.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st transl., 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 246 pages. Philosophical aesthetics has seen an amazing revival over the past decade, as a radical questioning of the very grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that some antinomies of aesthetic experience-and in particular of the limits of the aesthetical-can be viewed as a general, yet necessarily open model for human understanding. In this revival, no text in the classical corpus of Western philosophy has been more frequently discussed than the complex paragraphs modestly inserted into Kant's Critique of Judgment as sections 23-29: the Analytic of the Sublime.This book is a rigorous explication de texte, a close reading of these sections. First, Lyotard reconstitutes, following the letter of Kant's analysis, the philosophical context of his critical writings and of the European Enlightenment. Second, because the analytic of the sublime reveals the inability of aesthetic experience to bridge the separate realms of theoretical and practical reason, Lyotard can connect his reconstitution of Kant's critical project with today's debates about the very conditions-and limits-of presentation in general.

Hardcover. Evanston IL, Northwestern University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, pages. Oversize hardcover art book. This is the first publication of the complete body of noted Polish Author and artist Schulz's known artwork. A great engraver-draftsman, Schulz earned his living as a menial art teacher. He was one of the first Modern writers to incorporate his own drawings in his stories, one of which, "The Age of Genius", is about his artistic childhood. "His art, like his writing, is deeply infused with a sense of personal and cultural degradation, an ominous, prescient aura of the horrors in store for the fragile and rapidly disappearing world in which he lived.

Hardcover. Paris, J. Hetzel, Reprint, 1867, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 636 pages. Hardcover. French text only. Previous owners name at top left corner of preliminary page dated 1868. Gilt title and decorations on red leather spine with embossed pebbled cloth covers. Satirical black & white illustrations by Jean-Jacques Grandville. Marbled endpapers. All edges gilt. Light rubbing to cover edges and spine. Small area of discoloration on lower section of front cover. Clean, bright pages.

Hardcover. NY, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 310 pages, 250 b&w illustrations. The life of one of America's major literary artists, Henry David Thoreau: , born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts: a schoolmaster, tutor, surveyor, mason, gardener, farmer, house painter, carpenter, day-laborer, abolitionist, pencil-maker. lecturer, naturtalist, writer. Small name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Cassell, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 157 pages Hardcover with dust jacket. clean, tight copy. Black and white pictures in center. Dust jacket has light rubbing on fore edge.

Hardcover. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 521 pages, b&w illustrations. Remarkable photographs and fifty essays by renowned contemporary writers--such as Margaret Drabble, P. D. James, and Michael Holroyd--celebrate the British and Irish literary legends of the last four hundred years and takes us through the homes of famous writers- Robert Burns, James Joyce, Kipling, Keats, Dickens, Potter, Virginia Wolff and many more. Clean copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dist jacket, 616 pages, b&w illustrations. These letters were written to his wife, Virginia Woolf, and to a number of friends and family members. They provide a fascinating look into the life and work of one of the most important British writers of the 20th century. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. NY, Spiegel & Grau, 1st, 2009-10-20, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 198 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Photos in color and b&w. SIGNED BY MORGAN on title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Gloucester MA, Peter Smith , reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 342 pages. Pink cloth with black lettering on spine. Light pencil marking to about 15 pages, spine fading, otherwise very good.

Hardcover. Chicago, Swallow Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, green pebbled cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 463 pages. Dust jacket worn, fading to spine with chunk gone from spine.Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

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. NY, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, burgundy cloth, 281 pages. Translated and edited with an introduction by Francis Steegmuller. Light fading to spine, name on front fly leaf, otherwise tight and clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton & Company, 1st, 1852, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with black title to front board and to spine. 261 pages, publisher's ads. Contains of an early review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as accounts of travels to the Nubian Desert and Arctic, a history of Spanish literature, and literary essays and reviews of works by Dickens, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Hawthorne. Mild foxing, some light chipping and wear to spine.