Literature

Softcover. University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 320 pages. Here is a collection of interviews that cover the period from 1967 through 1993. Many are translations of interviews that originally appeared in French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, or Swedish periodicals. Several are published here for the first time in any language. Giving attention to Sontag's education and the development of her aesthetic and moral temperament, they cover Sontag's rich career as a distinguished writer, filmmaker, dramatist, and cultural critic. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 112 pages. Tanning to rear endpapers otherwise clean, very good in an unclipped dust jacket.

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.

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, William Morrow, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dustjacket. An enthralling collection of nonfiction essays on a myriad of topics--from art and artists to dreams, myths, and memories--observed in #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman's probing, amusing, and distinctive style. An inquisitive observer, thoughtful commentator, and assiduous craftsman, Neil Gaiman has long been celebrated for the sharp intellect and startling imagination that informs his bestselling fiction. Now, The View from the Cheap Seats brings together for the first time ever more than sixty pieces of his outstanding nonfiction. Analytical yet playful, erudite yet accessible, this cornucopia explores a broad range of interests and topics, including (but not limited to): authors past and present; music; storytelling; comics; bookshops; travel; fairy tales; America; inspiration; libraries; ghosts; and the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating, which recounts the author's experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood.

Hardcover. Albuquerque NM, University of New Mexico Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 217 pages. Includes essays on William Everson, Robert Duncan, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, Nathaniel Tarn, Thom Gunn and more. Notes, bibliography. Clean copy.

Athens GA, University Of Georgia Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 464 pages. Caroline Ferguson Gordon (1895-1981) was a notable American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, was the recipient of two prestigious literary awards, a 1932 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 1934 O. Henry Award . Offers the most complete and accurate portrait to date of the writer. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 472 pages with index. The editor, Joanne Trautmann Banks, previously was co-editor of the six volume 'Letters of Virginia Woolf.' For this volume, Ms. Banks selected 'jewels' from the earlier compilation, and has provided explanatory footnotes throughout. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1965, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. A collection of Updike's nonfiction prose written the previous decade, with topics including Ted Williams, J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Muriel Spark, Max Beerbohm, among others. Yellow cloth covers with spotting, concealed by the dj. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY/Oxford UK, Berghahn Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 232 pages, pictorial boards. Milena Jesenska, born in Prague in 1896, is most famous as one of Franz Kafka's great loves. Although their relationship lasted only a short time, it won the attention of the literary world with the 1952 publication of Kafka's letters to Milena. Her own letters did not survive. Later biographies showed her as a fascinating personality in her own right. In the Czech Republic, she is remembered as one of the most prominent journalists of the interwar period and as a brave one: in 1939 she was arrested for her work in the resistance after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and died in Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1944. It is estimated that Jesenska wrote well over 1,000 articles but only a handful have been translated into English. In this book her own writings provide a new perspective on her personality, as well as the changes in Central Europe between the two world wars as these were perceived by a woman of letters. The articles in this volume cover a wide range of topics, including her perceptions of Kafka, her understanding of social and cultural changes during this period, the threat of Nazism, and the plight of the Jews in the 1930s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Arthur Baker, 1st, 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover in a poor, worn dust jacket with a large chunk gone from front panel. Book is bright and clean, 180 pages. Illustrated with color and b&w plates by John Leech. A biography of the novelist who wrote of country sports like hunting in a comical way.

Hardcover. NY, The Macmillan Company, 1st Ltd. Ed., 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a tan dust wrapper with black lettering, 111 pages. A tight, lovely first edition of Brown's first book, a study of the works of the just-deceased and little-known New England poet and essayist Guiney (1861-1920). The frontispiece, a head and shoulders wood engraving of a young woman (presumably Guiney) wearing a crown of laurels, is signed boldly in pencil just below the image by famed wood engraver TIMOTHY COLE (1852-1931). ALSO INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR BROWN on the front fly leaf. Number 11 of 100 special copies.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth stamped in gilt, 3 colors. Beautiful gilt and sihouette vignette of the London skyline. 80 black and white drawings by Joseph Pennell. Top edge gilt. A collection of periodical pieces written over a span of thirty years by James, all about his travels in England. Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare Head Press, Ltd. Ed., 1908, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Eight hardcover volumes. The complete set published in an edition of 1060 copies. This set bound in gray boards with green cloth spines. Black lettering to spines, title pages in red and black, untrimmed edges. Mild wear to boards, Vol. 6 with cracked hinges and some pencil marking, otherwise a clean set. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Lexington Books , 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glazed boards, 299 pages. John McWilliams has written the first, much needed account of the ways the promise and threat of political revolution have informed masterpieces of the historical novel. McWilliams provides close readings of some twenty historical novels, from Scott and Cooper through Tolstoy, Zola and Hugo, to Pasternak and Lampedusa, and ultimately to Marquez and Hilary Mantel, but with continuing regard to historical contexts past and present. He traces the transformation of the literary conventions established by Scott's Waverley novels, showing both the continuities and the changes needed to meet contemporary times and perspectives. Although the progressive hopes imbedded in Scott's narrative form proved no longer adaptable to twentieth century carnage and the rise of totalitarianism, the meaning of any single novel emerges through comparison to the tradition of its predecessors. A foreword and epilogue explore the indebtedness of McWilliams's perspective to the Marxist scholarly tradition of Georg Lukacs and Frederic Jameson, while defining his differences from them. This is a scholarly work of no small ambition and achievement. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Meadville PA, The Chautauqua-Century Press, reprint, 1892, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, tan cloth with gilt lettering and gilt and white decorations on front cover, beveled edges, top edge gilt. Illustrated with a frontispiece of King George I, and other b&w drawings and decorations by George Wharton Edwards. 211 pages, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, The Cresset Press, 1st UK, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 189 pages. 3rd volume of the autobiography of this celebrated thinker and writer on philosophical and metaphysical matters. The greater part deals with the period he spent in England, in Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere, and his circle of brilliant friends and acquaintances.

Softcover. Los Angeles, The Augustan Reprint Society , reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 12 page introduction by Peter Sabor plus a 56 page facsimile reprint of Sarah Fielding's (Henry"s sister) criticism of Samuel Richardson's novel. Clean copy.

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. NY, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 530 pages. A captivating exploration of A. E. Housman and the influence of his particular brand of Englishness. A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad made little impression when it was first published in 1896 but has since become one of the best-loved volumes of poetry in the English language. Its evocation of the English countryside, thwarted love, and a yearning for things lost is as potent today as it was more than a century ago, and the book has never been out of print. In Housman Country, Peter Parker explores the lives of A. E. Housman and his most famous book, and in doing so shows how A Shropshire Lad has permeated English life and culture since its publication. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 145 pages. Gordimer examines the tension for a writer between life's experiences and narrative creations. She tries to unravel the mysterious process that breathes "real" life into fiction by exploring the writings of revolutionaries in South Africa and the works of Naguib Mahfouz, Chinua Achebe and Amos Oz. Ending on a personal note, Gordimer reveals her own experience of "writing her way out of" the confines of a dying colonialism.

Hardcover. London, B. T. Batsford, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 264 pages, b&w illustrations. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 263 pages. Clean copy.

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, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages 701-909. Articles include: Philip Gordon on Ayn Rand. Louis F. Helbig on Struwwelpeter: an inquiry into the effects of violence in children's literature. French folk songs. D. L. Ashliman on the American Indian in German Travel Narratives and Literature. Clean.

Softcover. Ft., Texas Christian University, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 435 pages. INSCRIBED BY BONAZZI on the title page. This authorized biography by Robert Bonazzi, is based on John Howard Griffin's Journals from 1950-1980. Griffin was blinded in the South Seas during WWII, but regained sight in 1957, after which he wrote the classic Black Like Me. Bonazzi follows Griffin year by year after 1961, when Griffin toured the globe as a lecturer on human rights.

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. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, red cloth in a worn and chipped dust jacket with closed tears, 191 pages with index. Dr. Worcester presents a theory of satire, surveying the whole field since Dryden's Discourse of the Origin of Satire and drawing illustrations not only from English but from classical, French, German, and American literature. At the same time he makes a penetrating study of irony and its uses. Name on inside front cover otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Cambridge University Press /Macmillan, 1st, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 174 pages, color frontis. portrait of the author, several b&w plates. Flap price crossed out otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1st US, 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 300 pages, maroon cloth covers with a chipped, edgeworn dust jacket. A collection of scholarly essays with subjects from Herodotus to Kipling, from Greek and Roman literature to Shakespeare.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Claredon Press, 1st, 1888, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 690 pages plus 3 folding maps in rear. Greek text with English introduction and commentary. Ex-library copy with light stamping, residue. Rebound with spine labels. Clean, unmarked text.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Still in shrink-wrap. Spine faded. Else very good. As the acclaimed author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) has been publishing stories and novels for more than sixty years. His brilliant portrayals of race, community, and culture in rural south Louisiana have made him one of the most respected and beloved living American writers. Ernest J. Gaines: Conversations brings together the author's own thoughts and words in interviews that range from 1994 to 2017, discussing his life, his work, and his literary legacy. The interviews cover all of Gaines's works, including his two latest books, Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays (2005) and The Tragedy of Brady Sims (2017). The book provides a retrospective of his work from the viewpoint of a senior writer, now eighty-five years old, and gives an important international perspective on Gaines and his work.

Hardcover. New York, Holiday House, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 152 pages. Hardcover with black & white illustrations. Light edgewear to dust jacket with closed tears to front cover. Protected by mylar cover. Clean, tight copy. History of this children's book publishing house followed by chronological listing of all their publications.

Hardcover. Lathem, New York, British American Publishing, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 269 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 221 pages. Top edge stained red. Light wear to pictorial dust jacket, else a very neat, tight copy.

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. Boston, Houghton Mifflin , 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, SIGNED BY AUTHOR. 68 pages. Blue covers w/ light edge wear/soil. Previous owner's signature on title page. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Duffield & Company, reprint, 1909, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 557 pages, originally compiled by C. M. Ingleby, L. Toulmin Smith and Dr. F. F. Furnivall. Gilt top edge and title on green cloth board. Minor foxing on fore edge, light edge wear and slight spine cock, otherwise, very clean and bright.

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. London, Picador, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, SIGNED BY NAIPAUL. Like new condition in a bright dust jacket. The author's fourteenth and final novel.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 140 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

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.

Hardcover. London, Geoffrey Bles, 1st, 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt title on spine, 268 pages. In an edgeworn dust jacket with a crease lengthwise. Copy of literary critic and historian Roger Shattuck with his pencil signature and "Mindoro, Philippines 1945" (presumed where he served in WW2) on the front fly leaf. Some pencil markings and notations in text.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that's unclipped. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1971, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 378 pages. From dust jacket notes: "For most Americans, the Second World War started on December 7, 1941, and much of the fighting took place in strange, faraway places. For the British, the war started on September 3, 1939, and much of the action took place in the skies over England. In the spring of 1940, after months of uneasy calm, Germany invaded the Lowlands and conquered France within a few days, leaving England without her only meaningful ally on the Continent. A year would pass before the Soviet Union was drawn into the war, and eighteen months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The United Kingdom, with a land area about the size of Wyoming, was alone, all alone, with only the Straits of Dover separating the island from Hitler's war machine. For six years Mollie Panter-Downes covered the war for The New Yorker magazine from her native England. Even at the height of the air war over London, when 'all that is best in the good life of civilized effort appears to be slowly and painfully keeling over,' she continued to file her fortnightly reports in an understated but dramatic fashion that reflected the fortitude of her fellow countrymen: 'The announcements of the first air-raid deaths are beginning to appear in the obituary columns of the morning papers. No mention is made of the cause of death, but the conventional phrase "very suddenly" is always used.' William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, has assembled Miss Panter-Downes' 'Letter from London' columns into a consecutive, on-the-spot chronicle of the war in England."

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 374 pages.Translated by Joan Pinkham, notes, bibliography, index, b/w photo plates, white boards/black cloth. Originally published Librairie Flammarion, Paris, 1988. First American Edition.

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, Random House, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 416 pages. The essays, speeches, and opinion pieces assembled in Step Across This Line, written over ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects. The collection chronicles Rushdie's intellectual odyssey and is also an especially personal look into the writer's psyche. With the same fierce intelligence, uncanny social commentary, and very strong opinions that distinguish his fiction, Rushdie writes about his fascination with The Wizard of Oz, his obsession with soccer, and the state of the novel, among many other topics. Most notably, delving into his unique personal experience fighting the Iranian fatwa, he addresses the subject of militant Islam in a series of challenging and deeply felt responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The book ends with the eponymous "Step Across This Line," a lecture Rushdie delivered at Yale in the spring of 2002, which has never been published before and is sure to prompt discussion.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 644 pages, b&w illustrations. After a protracted squabble over private papers with the playwright's estate, Leverich delivers this hefty first volume of a projected two-volume life of Tennessee Williams (1911-1983). In it, Leverich, who produced several of Williams's plays and calls himself Williams's "chosen biographer", covers the years through 1945, when The Glass Menagerie opened on Broadway. Treated are Williams's youth in Mississippi and St. Louis; the college years at the universities of Missouri and Iowa; bumming around (but always writing) in New Orleans and Greenwich Village; the disaster of his first Broadway play (it closed in Boston); script writing, or avoiding it, at MGM's Hollywood mill; and, finally, the evolution of Menagerie, a wonderfully detailed and dramatic case history in itself. Leverich's overworked conceit, which he restates at intervals, is that this is the life of Tom Williams, a "repressed puritan" poet, who in time created a more flamboyant public persona called Tennessee. A few matters are set straight. Leverich maintains his subject's active homosexual life started in his late 20s, later than Williams stated in his memoirs, and that his sister's infamous lobotomy came later than his mother claimed. Although the accumulation of information is impressive, the lower Leverich keeps his own profile and editorial commentary the better his book is, which means it is at its best when it simply reproduces Williams's sporadically kept journal. If you believe that all the details of a life are but preparation for a single event, in this case, the opening of a remarkable play, this is an impressively argued biography.