Literature

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1999, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 292 pages. In the teens and twenties, New York was home to a rich variety of literary subcultures. Within these intermingled worlds, gender lines and other boundaries were crossed in ways that were hardly imaginable in previous decades. Among the bohemians of Greenwich Village, the sophisticates of the Algonquin Round Table, and the literati of the Harlem Renaissance, certain women found fresh, powerful voices through which to speak and write. Enda St. Vincent Millay and Dorothy Parker are now best remembered for their colorful lives; Genevieve Taggard, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Helene Johnson are hardly remembered at all. Yet each made a serious literary contribution to the meaning of modern femininity, relationship, and selfhood. Making Love Modern uncovers the deep historical sensitivity and interest in these women's love poetry. Light shelf wear. Clean copy.

Softcover. Minneapolis, Milkweed Editions, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. 107 pages, b&w engravings by Steven Sorman. Light edge wear to wrappers. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Paris, Jose Corti, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 215 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on half title page. French text. Wraparound red band with light wrinkle, wear. Otherwise very good.

Hardcover. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 464 pages, b&w photographs. Light foxing to top edge. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2008, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 873 pages. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Robert Lowell once remarked in a letter to Elizabeth Bishop that "you ha[ve] always been my favorite poet and favorite friend." The feeling was mutual. Bishop said that conversation with Lowell left her feeling "picked up again to the proper table-land of poetry," and she once begged him, "Please never stop writing me letters-they always manage to make me feel like my higher self (I've been re-reading Emerson) for several days." Neither ever stopped writing letters, from their first meeting in 1947 when both were young, newly launched poets until Lowell's death in 1977. Presented in Words in Air is the complete correspondence between Bishop and Lowell. The substantial, revealing-and often very funny-interchange that they produced stands as a remarkable collective achievement, notable for its sustained conversational brilliance of style, its wealth of literary history, its incisive snapshots and portraits of people and places, and its delicious literary gossip, as well as for the window it opens into the unfolding human and artistic drama of two of America's most beloved and influential poets.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1998-10-26, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 181 pages, illustrated throughout with photos in b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. In this moving autobiography, Lois Lowry explores her rich history through personal photographs, memories, and recollections of childhood friends. Lowry's writing often transports readers into other worlds. Now, we have the opportunity to travel into the real world that is her life.

Hardcover. London, UK, Frederick Warne , 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 446 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Red leatherette, silver lettering to spine, top edge with red cosmetic stain. Pictorial, price clipped dust jacket. Slight wear to edges and spine, light scratching to covers, else a very nice, tight, clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st US, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Non-paginated. Hardcover. Illustrated with full color photographs. Price clipped dust jacket with light wear to edges. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Garden City, NY, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 277 pages. Dust jacket with extensive ripping and wear. Covered in mylar for protection. Dark red boards with gilt title to spine. Red staining to top edge. Soiling to ell edges. Overall, a tight copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press , 1st, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 292 pages. Light edgewear, rubbing to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, McGraw Hill, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 230 pages. Cultural commentary and autobiography of life in Alabama. The euthor's second book.

Hardcover. New York, Fred De Fau & Company, 1901, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two volumes, hardcovers.798 pages total. B/w frontispieces with tissue guards. B/w illustrations throughout. Top edges gilt. Dark green cloth boards, gilt titles on spines, some light shelf wear. Tanning to pages and edges from age. Bindings good. Pages unmarked. Spines straight. A sequel to The Three Musketeers in which the four soldiers were brought together again after years of separation. They will live to repeat the glorious performances of their youth.

Hardcover. Boston, David R Godine, 1st US, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 389 pages. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition.

Hardcover. New York, Bowling Green Press, 1st, 1927, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 59 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. SIGNED and NUMBERED #824 of 1240. Pages darkening on edges, only light wear to cover boards.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 752 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy. Never before has Gordimer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, published such a comprehensive collection of her nonfiction. Telling Times represents the full span of her works in that field-from the twilight of white rule in South Africa to the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime, and most recently, her role over the past seven years in confronting the contemporary phenomena of violence and the dangers of HIV. The range of this book is staggering, and the work in totality celebrates the lively perseverance of the life-loving individual in the face of political tumult, then the onslaught of a globalized world. The abiding passionate spirit that informs "A South African Childhood," a youthful autobiographical piece published in The New Yorker in 1954, can be found in each of the book's ninety-one pieces that span a period of fifty-five years.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st thus, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 204 pages. With a portrait frontispiece. Original publisher's brown cloth, lettered in gilt, pictorial dustwrapper. Very minor shelf-wear, some spotting to dustwrapper. A 1973 reprint of the unexpurgated edition of T. E Lawrence's The Mint. Two editions were published simultaneously in 1955; an unexpurgated text in a limited edition, and an expurgated version (reprinted once in the same year); the present publication is a reissue of the former. The memoir records his service in the ranks of the R.A.F. Lawrence enlisted in 1922; in an effort to escape public and media attention he assumed the name John Hulme Ross. Upon the discovery of his identity he was discharged, but two and a half years later was permitted to re-enlist, this time using the name of Shaw, under which he had meanwhile served in the Tank Corps.

Hardcover. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1st UK, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an edgeworn , unclipped dust jacket. A biography of poet Harry Crosby, who inexplicably took the life of another man's bride of six months, and subsequently his own life, in 1929. INSCRIBED BY WOLFF on the blank prelim page: "To the yeoman of Chittenden, and to Steve, from the guy whose fat they pulled from the fire/Geoffrey Wolff/Repayment Day, 1977/Waitsfield, Vt".

Hardcover. NY, George H. Doran Co., 1st, 1916, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, Small octavo, tan boards with paper labels on top cover and spine. 93 pages. Doyle's account of visiting the military fronts during World War I. Clean, some scraping to paper covered board on rear otherwise very good.

Softcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 398 pages. Mystery writer Dorothy Sayers is loved and remembered, most notably, for the creation of sleuths Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. As this biography attests, Sayers was also one of the first women to be awarded a degree from Oxford, a playwright, and an essayist--but also a woman with personal joys and tragedies. Here, Reynolds, a close friend of Sayers, presents a convincing and balanced portrait of one of the 20th century's most brilliant, creative women. 30 b&w photos. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putman's Sons, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice, unclipped dust jacket, 447 pages. B&w photos. Although he aspired to Princeton, Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff (aka Shaw) had to settle for local Brooklyn College, where he seems to have enjoyed football more than his studies. From his mid-20s, however, Shaw (1913-1984) was a highly regarded New Yorker short story writer ("The Girls in Their Summer Dresses") and left-wing playwright ( Bury the Dead ), and later became a successful Hollywood script writer and novelist ( The Young Lions ; Rich Man, Poor Man ). This sympathetic, objective biography, by a Vanity Fair contributing editor, convincingly shows how Shaw's career, character and fiction, influenced more by Hemingway's lifestyle than by his writing, were marked by incongruities. Far from abating with age, his romantic and alcoholic appetites overwhelmed him. Years of high living in Europe, surrounded by adoring friends, softened his self-judgment, and he took to writing "fluffy essays for swells." The New Yorker dropped him, and "serious" critics panned his novels. Shnayerson capably contrasts Shaw's inclinations and personality with his subject matter and literary output, and is especially astute at explaining the complications of being a commercially successful midcentury American writer. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, New Directions, 2nd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, second printing, 316 pages plus index, sewn paperback cover price $2.45, very good lightly used copy.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 530 pages. Books about thinkers require a kind of unity that their thought may not possess. This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Clean, bright copy, as new.

Softcover. NY, Applause, 1st pbk, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 896 pages. A facsimile edition of the original 1623 publication of the bard's works. Recounts the background of the first folio, the earliest and most authoritative collection of Shakespeare's thirty-six plays.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, unclipped. The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage. Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry's landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the twentieth century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics' Circle Award. Charles J. Shields's authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century's most admired playwrights examines the parts of Lorraine Hansberry's life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband-her best friend, critic, and promoter. Many of the identity issues about class, sexuality, and race that she struggled with are relevant and urgent today. This dramatic telling of a passionate life-a very American life through self-reinvention-uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions about a life not fully described until now.

Hardcover. NY, Philosophical Library, 1st US, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers, 265 pages. B&w frontis. portrait. Previous owner's long inscription on front fly-leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 663 pages. Clean copy. Edited and with an introduction by Leon Edel. This is the highly acclaimed fourth volume in the series that began with The Twenties and it is complimented with photographs and journal excerpts of some of the most interesting characters of the decade.

Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 259 pages. When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O'Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started forty years earlier. As a lifelong O'Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O'Hara's past, but also her father's, and her own. The result is a groundbreaking and kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. Also a Poet explores what happens when we want to do better than our parents, yet fear what that might cost us; when we seek their approval, yet mistrust it.

Hardcover. NY, John Wiley & Son, 1867, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt design and lettering on spine, beveled cloth boards, later printing (1867), 349 pages, top edge gilt. A compilation of 'hidden treasures' within Ruskin's writings. A must for anyone who appreciates the writings of John Ruskin. Some light stain to top margin of first 30 pages, not affecting text, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st thus, 1882, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth with red, black, and gilt embossed spine title, cover title, and bright cover illustration and decoration. Boards have beveled edges. All edges gilt. 70 pages, tissue-guarded frontispiece, 30 full-page illustrations; artists include A.B. Frost. Howard Pyle. Fredericks, J. S. Davis and others. A ballad written in Paris in 1841 at the time of the second funeral of Napoleon and is a narrative of French military history. Slender piece of cloth chipped away on rear cover, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 119 pages. A book on linguistics by Noam Chomsky, written with the purpose of deepening 'our understanding of the nature of language and the mental processes and structures that underlie its use and acquisition'. Chomsky wished to shed light on these underlying structures of the human language, and subsequently whether one can infer the nature of an organism from its language. Cartesian linguistics refers to a form of linguistics developed during the time of RenE Descartes, a prominent 17th century philosopher whose ideas continue to influence modern philosophy. In Cartesian Linguistics, Chomsky traces the development of linguistic theory from Descartes to Wilhelm von Humboldt, that is, from the period of the Enlightenment directly up to Romanticism. The central doctrine of Cartesian linguistics maintains that the general features of grammatical structure are common to all languages and reflect certain fundamental properties of the mind. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. Through a series of trade-ups, the nephews turn Donald's old pencil stub into -- a steamship ticket to India! Off they go, and Donald is soon declared to be "Maharajah Donald" -- but there's a catch! Then, Donald accidentally buys a houseboat at an auction that leads to an encounter with a giant sea serpent! Next, "Santa's Stormy Visit," a Christmas story with none of the trimmings -- no man in a red suit, no snow (but a tropical hurricane!), no presents under the tree (no tree!) But still a charming holiday tale. And don't miss "Donald Duck's Atom Bomb!"As we circle back to Carl Barks's earlier stories, the Good Duck Artist delivers another superb collection of surprise, delight, comedy, adventure, and all-around cartooning brilliance. 193 pages of story and art, each meticulously restored and newly colored. Insightful story notes by an international panel of Barks experts. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard , 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 244 pages. Notable collection of writings about children's books by such contributors as Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Paula Fox, Arnold Lobel, etc. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 447 pages, b&w illustrations. Sylvia Beach ran a bookshop in Paris in the 1920s and 30s and was at the heart of the literary world there which also included Hemingway, Pound, Flanner, Gide, and of course Joyce whose novel "Ulysses" she published. Clean, bright 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.

Hardcover. London, Cecil Woolf , 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 80 pages, b&w illustrations by Brigid Peppin

Hardcover. NY/London, G. P. Putnum's Sons, 1st illust. thus, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt stamping, 242 pages. 24 woodcuts and some decorations by Tunnicliffe. First Illustrated Edition which has been enlarged by the author and contains several new essays. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 274 pages, with b&w photographs. Very clean and tight copy. Unauthorized biography of Hunter Thompson. Perry takes us on a journey through Thompson's booze and drug fueled rise to fame. From a young yahoo in Louisville, Kentucky-drinking heavily and playing with his rifle, to the first hand secrets of Thompson's inventive and irreverent gonzo jounralism. A look at a man who was a horror to some, a hero to others.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 248 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers with faded gilt title on spine, 426 pages. A collection of profiles on great thinkers and writers through the ages. B&w frontis of Walt Whitman, 9 other b&w portraits. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 76 pages. Annie Dillard's collection of observations of events over three days from her location on a small island in Puget Sound. Stated 1st edition, no number line (1st printing). There is soiling/discoloration to boards (not visible under dust jacket), small chip to bottom of dj spine, clean interior.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover 320 pages. The second volume in Frank's monumental five part biography of the great Russian writer. No date on copyright page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Santa Rosa CA, Black Sparrow Press, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 67 pages. Printed paper over boards backed in brown cloth with matching paper spine label. Acetate dust jacket. Remainder mark to top edge.

Hardcover. Columbus OH, College Printers at The Champlin Press, 1st, 1916, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, First edition, hardcover in wood-grain paper, gilt lettering on cover, 22 pages, b&w frontis. Signed by Meeker and # 92 of 200 on a limitation page. Bottom corner of front cover worn otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Henry Holt & Co., reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 406 pages. Second edition of this national best seller, with a personalized inscription signed by the author on the half-title.

Hardcover. Leipzig, Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1883, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Copyright Edition, Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1883, 312 pages, illuminated vellum binding, with front-edge flaps, leather stitching, 6.5 x 4.5", beautiful binding reminiscent of Medieval manuscripts with latticed cords and illuminated initial. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, price-clipped dust jacket with short closed tears. 14 original and thoughtful interviews - Burroughs discusses Paris in the 50s, the Olympia Press and the issue of obscenity, Norman Mailer on the Jack Abbott issue, Paul Theroux on Americans abroad, Scott Spencer on the experience of having a movie made from his book 'Endless Love' and more. Biographical information and photographs of each author. 324 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 302 pages. Celebrated Author Roger Angell has warmly Inscribed to an friend and signed on the title page ("For Carl - All best, Roger Angell ". The book contains the childhood baseball recollections from America's premier observer of the world of baseball and life. Angell was the long time contributor to The New Yorker. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 201 pages, b&w illustrations. Dark red cloth with edgeworn dust jacket, some light pencil notes in preface and rear endpapers. Publisher's review slip laid in.