Literature

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.

Hardcover. MA, University of Massachusetts Press , 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 268 pages. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. Dust jacket with light edgewear and sunning and a small sticker-stain to front cover.

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. NY, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. The author, a German prisoner during WW2, using his prison camp diary tells of his experiences. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 2008, Hardcover, 524 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED BY BOTH HEANEY & O'DRISCOLL on title page. Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces the poet's steps from his early works, through to his receipt of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature and his post-Nobel life. It is supplemented with a large number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time.

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

Softcover. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 305 pages. "In The Dark End of the Street, Maria Damon brings a new sensitivity to modern poetic criticism. She adds an important dimension to cultural theory, revealing the struggles of one group of artists as they address improtant questions about art, social life, and the oppression they encounter. Taking as her premise that the intensity of poetic language is an appropriate venue for representing the 'dark end of the street' of social pain, Damon foregrounds the work and lives of a number of modern American poets in order to argue that the American avant-garde is located in the experimental literary works of social 'outsiders."

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. New York , Oxford University Press , 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. brown cloth stamped in gilt, 120 pages. INSCRIBED BY LEACH on the front fly leaf. Originally published by Caxton in 1485, Paris & Vienne marked a change in the style of Literature being written in Europe at the time. Instead of tales of Knightly Romance & Chivalry a move was made towards more realistic down to Earth tales, closer to actual life. Clean, bright copy, no dust jacket.

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. Brattleboro, VT, Stephen Daye Press, 2nd Printing, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 39 pages, dust jacket edge fade and small chunks missing, otherwise, internally very clean and tight.

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. 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.

Softcover. San Francisco, North Point Press, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, white wraps, 439 pages, b&w photos. INSCRIBED BY ROREM on the frontfly leaf. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st US, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 512 pages, b&w illustrations. Penelope Fitzgerald was a great English writer whose career didn't begin until she was nearly sixty. She would go on to win some of the most coveted awards in literature--the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in an impeccable match of talent between biographer and subject, Hermione Lee, a master biographer and one of Fitzgerald's greatest champions, gives us this remarkable writer's story. Lee's critical expertise is on dazzling display on every page, as it illuminates this extraordinary English life. Fitzgerald, born into an accomplished intellectual family, the granddaughter of two bishops, led a life marked by dramatic twists of fate, moving from a bishop's palace to a sinking houseboat to a last, late blaze of renown. We see Fitzgerald's very English childhood in the village of Hampstead; her Oxford years, when she was known as the "blonde bombshell"; her impoverished adulthood as a struggling wife, mother and schoolteacher, raising a family in difficult circumstances; and the long-delayed start to her literary career.

Hardcover. NY, Fleming H. Revell, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt on spine and front cover, 224 pages, top edge gilt. Vermonter Humphrey was known as a prolific writer of essays with regional, nature, travel, and religious themes. The pieces in this volume were originally published in various periodicals of the period. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Prospect Heights IL, Waveland Press, Revised Ed., 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 280 pages. An account of a massive earthquake in the small city of Yungay, Peru in 1970. The author lived in the area and documents the survivors efforts to rebuild. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dial Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 300 pages, b&w illustrations. The children's book author has won the Newberry Medal and National Book Award. Now in these fascinating stories from her life, she reveal the origins of her book characters from events in her life; from China with missionary parents to single life in Japan to life in Maryland with four children. Filled with personal photos and letters. 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.

Hardcover. New York, Oxford University Press, 3rd Ed., 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Five volumes complete, 594, 576, 543. 645 and 593 pages. Olive cloth binding with gilt lettering on spine, top edge gilt.Couple hinges tender. Bright, clean set. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 432 pages. Biography of Edward Gibbon, who wrote arguably the most famous work of history ever, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789). Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, John Murray, 1st, 1899, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth stamped with gilt lettering, 262 pages. Frotis. portrait. A supplemental volume to the two-volume set The Lif and Letters of Benjamin Jowett published in 1897. Name on inside front cover, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 341 pages. This is the first collection of essays in seven years by the author of Omensetter's Luck, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and Fiction and the Figures of Life. In it, one of America's most brilliant and eclectic minds examines literature, culture, writers (their lives and works), and the nature and uses of language and the written word. 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. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 95 pages. Sontag's classic essay about the sociology of AIDS, published as an extension of her thoughts about the stigma of illness originally expounded in her book Illness as Metaphor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Seeley And Co., reprint, 1895, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth with gilt lettering and decoration, 296 pages. B&w frontis portrait with tissue guard. Ex-lib with stamping, bookplate to endpapers, interior clean.

Hardcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with fading to the spine. "Cary Nelson performs an invaluable service to the reader by recovering the work of dozens of forgotten poets, especially women, blacks, and writers on the left, while making it clear that the texts we recover inevitably gain new meaning from their positioning within contemporary culture." Nicely illustrated in b&w and some color, mostly book jackets and title pages of books discussed. Some light pencil marking in margins.

Hardcover. Nashville TN, Vanderbilt University Press, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light gray cloth with black and gilt title block on spine. 224 pages, Introduction by Louis D. Rubin Jr. B&w frontis portrait of participants: Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren,Merrill Moore, and others. The Fugitive was a poetry magazine published in the 1920s and this is a record of their gathering some 30 years later with their commentaries. Small name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 311 pages. A perceptive visitor's report of life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, one of the poorest places in the United States. Profiles the Oglala Sioux living there and along the way a female basketball star. Clean copy.

Softcover. San Francisco, Re/Search Publications0642247, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 240 pages, b&w illustrations. 16 cutting-edge performance artists discuss critical questions regarding revolutionary feminism. Contributors include Kathy Acker, Annie Sprinkle, Wanda Coleman, Lydia Lunch, Bell Hooks, others. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Mcdowell, Obolensky, 1st, 1957, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with faded gilt lettering to spine, 347 pages. Edited with an introduction by John C. Thirlwall. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 2nd pr., 1926, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pale orange cloth with title on spine label. Former copy belonging to COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946), with his signature on the front fly leaf. Cullen was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance. 248 pages, b&w frontis. Small paper scars to front endpapers, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 164 pages. An autobiographical memoir, set for the most part in London in the 1940s and 50s, by the author of "At the Jerusalem", "Trespasses" and "An English Madam: The Life and Work of Cynthia Payne". It is composed of fifty scenes or fragments of memory which describe Bailey's parents, relatives, friends and acquaintances as he was growing up fatherless in working class Batterseas. Remainder line bottom edge.

Softcover. NJ, Citadel Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 292 pages. Studies the distinctive personalities, problems, and cultural contributions of such women as Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, examining the extent to which romanticism encouraged intellectualism among women during the three decades prior to the Civil War. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions Books, 1st, 1941, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with black title on spine. Collected stories and essays "not for readers who hate to think," Mild shelf wear, clean.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PROSE on the title page. In a brilliant, wry, and provocative book, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose explores the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. In so doing, she illuminates with great sensitivity and intelligence the elusive emotional wellsprings of the creative process. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 347 pages. In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written--or even read--a biography before. The next seven years comprised of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other--and lived essentially on the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair's own feminist beliefs.Parisian Lives draws on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

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. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 272 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. This is the story of John McGahern's childhood, of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature.

Hardcover. Gale Group, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 196 pages, b&w illustrations. A scholarly examination of Camus and his work. Like new, clean.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Co., 1st, 1993, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 298 pages. A late-life memoir by the notable fiction writer, biographer and critic. Covers a relatively short period of her life, with deeper reflections on a life spent in reading, writing, and observing the world around her. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 400 pages. Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) is considered the first modern writer for children and the inventor of the children's adventure story. In The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit, award-winning biographer Eleanor Fitzsimons uncovers the little-known details of her life, introducing readers to the Fabian Society cofounder and fabulous socialite who hosted legendary parties and had admirers by the dozen, including George Bernard Shaw. Through Nesbit's letters and archival research, Fitzsimons reveals "E." to have been a prolific lecturer and writer on socialism and shows how Nesbit incorporated these ideas into her writing, thereby influencing a generation of children--an aspect of her literary legacy never before examined. Fitzsimons's riveting biography brings new light to the life and works of this famed literary icon, a remarkable writer and woman.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st US, 1882, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt stamping. 249 pages plus publisher's ads Candid opinions, in a series of essays on literature, music, fashion and character by the author of "John Halifax Gentleman". 'If I say somewhat hard things, I beg my readers to believe me that it is not out of a hard heart, careless of giving pain, but a sad heart, knowing pain must be given.' (Preliminary.) Uncommon. Mild spotting to covers otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1939, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, textured beige cloth, moderately soiled. No edition or printing stated on copyright page. Illustrated with 32 pages of b/w photographs, as well as endpaper maps, red and black frontispiece illustration. The story of the trip Auden and Isherwood made to China during its war with Japan, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Includes 32 pages of photographs, as well as several sonnets and one long poem by Auden. Narrative written by Isherwood. There is a tan stain that goes across pages 68-69, that looks like a rorschach test. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, L. C. Page & Company, 1st US, 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gilt-stamped light gray cloth with Dickens' escutcheon in red & gold on cover, top edge gilt, frontispiece photographic profile of Dickens & 18 B&W photographic illustrations. Nice retrospective of London in reference to Charles Dickens life, book provides a brief look at Dickens' literary life, manner and customs, history of the area and more. 300 pages including index,

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 676 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Nice copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 134 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY HALL ON BOOKPLATE ON FRONT END PAPER. Gutter crack on page 132, otherwise tight copy. Newspaper clipping laid in.

Chicago, Ivan Dee, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 239 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins has been hailed as "the father of the detective story." His own life story has a similar mysterious ring to it. When Collins died in 1899 he shocked Victorians by dividing his estate equally between two mistresses. He also acknowledged the three children of one of the mistresses as his own. In The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, William Clarke has pieced together the truth behind this menage a trois, uncovering and exploring, with insight and sympathy, the private relationships of a fascinating writer who was a contemporary of Dickens, Constable, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Rossetti. "A literary coup ... casts a fresh beam of light on the great, dark seam of Victorian sexual mores."--The Observer.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 319 pages, several b&w woodcut illustrations. Black cloth spine with marbled boards, top edge gilt. Minor corner wear.

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.