Literature

Softcover. Paris, Sotheby's, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 336 pages, color plates throughout. FRENCH TEXT. Sotheby's catalog for Sale No. PF7014 held in Paris on November 29, 2007. 298 lots. Illustrated in color. Text in French.. The volume is in perfect, pristine condition; unmarked, tight, square, and clean.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 572 pages. The author as written an admirable book that pulls no punches in recounting Hellman and Hammett's flaboyant lives and compulsions. like new in a protective brodart.

Hardcover. Gale Group, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 195 pages, b&w illustrations. A scholarly examination of Camus's famous short novel. Like new, clean.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday and Co., 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, beige cloth with titles in black and blue on spine, no dust jacket, 317 pages. These are the life and times of Col. John R. Stingo, fabulous figure of track and ring. The Colonel who Was a raconteur In The Grand Tradition; He shares his tales Oo rainmaking, horse racing, newspaper writing; and other exploits of his long and kaleidoscopic career. Paper tanning slightly but a clean copy.

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. University AL, University of Alabama Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, red cloth covers in a lightly worn dust jacket. Here are the passionate memoirs of the French Communard leader, a hero, saint and martyr to the socialists and anarchists battling the injustices of the Third Republic. 202 pages with a bibliography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, McGraw-Hill, 1st, 1951, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with fading to spine, 263 pages. Discusses the works of postwar writers of the Forties, such as Norman Mailer, John Horne Burns, Truman Capote, Paul Bowles, Alfred Hayes and others; along with three writers of the Twenties: Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Clean copy.

Softcover. Middlebury VT, Paul S. Eriksson, 1st pbk, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps. 248 pages. Appendix, bibliography and notes. A study of the relationship between John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and his editor, Pascal Covici, based upon their correspondence. Clean 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. London, Hutchinson, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lughtly worn dust jacket. 589 pages. Light shelf wear, chipping and closed tear to dust jacket. Review slip laid in.

Hardcover. London, S. Highley, Fleet-Street, 1st, 1792, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, half-leather over marbled boards, 556 pages. A collection of essays, letters, dedications, poems and other pieces purported to be the work of Johnson in the editor's Preface. The anonymous compiler makes the case that the pieces should have been included in the Dr. Johnson's Works lately published. Their authenticity may be questionable in some cases. A penciled note inside the front cover suggests this is Vol. 14 of his works with a new title page and "without Stockdale adds(?)..." Curious edition not found elsewhere. Front cover and first page detached, a solid binding, two bookplates, otherwise clean.

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, Criterion, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 603 pages. Classic study of American Fiction from 1789 till 1960. Tight and square. Unmarked, clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Morrow, reprint, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 331 pages. A remarkable pre-Freudian account of schizophrenia written by the son of a prime minister of England. Certifiably insane from 1830 to 1831, he wrote the autobiography of his illness and recovery with vigor and insight. Clean copy.

Softcover. Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 287 pages. Because Naipaul's work occupies such an important place in English literature today, it is necessary to understand the forces that shape his work and the issues with which he is concerned. If this study raises some of the more important questions about Naipaul's work and demonstrates that is cannot be seen as an unproblematic guide to post colonial "reality," then it would have gone a long way toward opening up the terrain in which the most meaningful discussion of his work can take place. Like it or not, Naipaul's work represents an important postcolonial impulse/response that begs to be understood and interpreted. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber Limited, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an edgeworn dust jacket, 334 pages. The editor has chosen excerpts from de Tocquville's 14 notebooks he kept on his visit to America 1831-32. The detailed notes were the raw material that became his classic Democracy In America. Many of these observations never made into the final work. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Barcelona Spain, Galaxia Gutenberg, 1st thus, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets, housed in a cardboard slipcase. ALL TEXT IN SPANISH. 1.368 and 1.454 pages. Clean set. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Frederick A. Stokes, 1st thus, 1890, Hardcover, 3/4 decorated white cloth with gilt stamped decorative pattern. Vignette edition with engraved frontispiece and 100 illustrations by Thos. McIlvaine. An Oriental romance, originally published in 1817, consisting of four narrative poems connected by a prose section. Small blank label on inside front cover, otherwise a tight, clean copy.

Softcover. Totonto, University of Toronto Press, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 444 pages, b&w illustrations. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 pages. The Augustan Reprint Society Number 251-252. Introduction by Janet E. Aikins. Orig. tan card wrappers, stapled binding. An 18th century theatre critic's remarks regarding Otway's play. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 338 pages, b&w illustrations. A remarkable literary hybrid--part biography, part detective story--about the enduring figure of Robinson Crusoe. January 1719. A man sits at a table, writing. Nearly sixty,Daniel Defoe is troubled with gout and mired in political controversy and legal threats. But for the moment he is preoccupied by a younger man on a barren shore--Robinson Crusoe. Several miles south, another old man, Robert Knox, sits bent over a heavy volume--published nearly forty years before.Knox's Historical Relation was a best seller when it was published in 1681, just a year after he escaped from Ceylon and returned to England. Where did Crusoe come from? And what is the secret of his endurance? Crusoe explores the intertwined lives of two real men, Daniel Defoe and Robert Knox, and the character and book that emerged from their peculiar conjunction. It is the biography of a book and its hero: the story of Defoe, the man who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and of Robert Knox, the man who was Crusoe. Clean copy.

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, Sheed and Ward, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with faded spine, 480 pages. Richard Kostelanetz's monumental evisceration of the American book world circa 1974--the self-appointed backslapping elites, the perpetual disdain for the unconventional, the laziness in book reviewing and fear of losing one's status when criticising the wrong thing--remains, as a final sadness, itself a rare out of print tome. Kostelanetz has written perhaps the most fearless exploration of literary politics in print, taking on and naming the titans at the top of the heap, dissecting the power structures that emerged in the 1950s and 60s, and the emergence of the plutocratic hierarchies that continue to dominate publishing. Outing the various cliques as mobs, and using apt and amusing mafia parallels, Kostelanetz is unrelenting in his meticulousness, and counteracts the status quo with a passionate defence of the avant-garde, using the second half of the book to bring light to the various emerging authors of experimental poetry, fiction, and mixed media works around the time. At times a touch long-winded and overfed with quotes, this nevertheless is an essential read for those requiring a hard slap as to the inherent evil of the corporate book world and why indie is the only way forward. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Six matching volumes, red cloth bindings with black/gilt titling on spines, gilt initials on front board. Covers Emerson's letters from 1813 to 1881. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an influential American essayist, philosopher, and poet, known for leading the Transcendentalist movement. His works emphasized individualism, nature, and self-reliance, significantly impacting American literature and thought. NOT ex-lib, clean complete set. Due to weight DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

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

Hardcover. Santa Barbara CA, Black Sparrow Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 59 pages. Edition of 750 copies. This is one of the unsigned copies. Quarter black cloth with paper title label. Printed boards. Acetate dust jacket with light soil.

Softcover. Merrick NY, Cross-Cultural Communications, 1st pbk, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 48 pages. Edited and translated from the Italian by Stanislao G. Pugliese. Ignazio Silone, anti-fascist and founding member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) offers a politically conscious and soul searching memoir which details his own PSI activities and the various factors engendering the "necessity for action on behalf of liberty and democracy among the working classes." Over the course of his political career, Silone wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction works, and was imprisoned in Italy, France, Spain, and finally in Switzerland where he composed this memoir in 1942. Often compared with Andre Malraux and Albert Camus, Silone was awarded an honorary degree by Yale University, was a recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, and was twice considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. INSCRIBED BY PUGLIESE on the title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Washington DC, University Press of Washington D.C., 1st, 1953, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good,

Hardcover. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 266 pages. Ex-lib with a small stamp to title page and top edge, label on spine. Otherwise a clean, bright copy. After Franz Kafka died in 1924, his novels and short stories were published in ways that downplayed both their author's roots in Prague and his engagement with Jewish tradition and language, so as to secure their place in the German literary canon. Now, nearly a century after Kafka began to create his fictions, Germany, Israel, and the Czech Republic lay claim to his legacy. Kafka's Jewish Languages brings Kafka's stature as a specifically Jewish writer into focus. David Suchoff explores the Yiddish and modern Hebrew that inspired Kafka's vision of tradition. Citing the Jewish sources crucial to the development of Kafka's style, the book demonstrates the intimate relationship between the author's Jewish modes of expression and the larger literary significance of his works. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. Leipzig, Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1884, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Copyright Edition, 326 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.

Softcover. University of Toronto Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 264 pages. Two critical discourses central to current Canadian literary theory emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s: post-colonialism as a political paradigm and postmodernism as a literary practice in Canadian and Quebecois fiction. Sylvia Soderlind considers the current debate about the relationship between these two discourses, and proposes a methodology that makes it possible to identify and distinguish between features pertaining to the two. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin , 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, 540 pages. A comprehensive collection of letters from Jarrell. Edited by his second wife Mary Jarrell with the assistance of Stuart Wright. Jarrell's letters span over fifty years and document his life, thoughts, and writing. The letters are insightful and often humorous, and provide a unique perspective on the author's life and work. Paper covered boards with a cloth spine, dust jacket with mild soil, stain. No markings.

Softcover. New York, Viking Press, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 12 page booklet with light tan wrappers, reddish brown type. The text of the author's speech with a b&w photograph of him. Minor discoloration to top of wrapper, probably due to dampness at some time. Still very good.

Hardcover. Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1st, 1863, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 319 pages. Portrait of Thoreau on frontispiece with tissue guard. First edition, one of 1,558 copies printed. Original publisher's blue-green pebbled cloth with blind-stamped borders and center wreath. Spine lettered in gilt. Brown-coated end papers. Ten essays including a 33 page biographical sketch by Emerson of Thoreau and nine essays by Thoreau, among them the famous "Walking."

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

Hardcover. Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 150 pages. Light edgewear and sunning to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. Biography of the American Southern novelist which includes study of her later novels, when she was no longer content to imitate fashionable male novelists.

Hardcover. London , B. Blake, 1st Thus, 1837, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 848 pages. Hardcover. Marbled edges and endpapers. Raised bands on spine. Clipping of a silhouette of Edward Gibbon pasted on to front end paper. Previous owners notes in pencil on front endpapers. Wear to covers, especially corners. Rubbing. Chipping at spine. Clean, unmarked text.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt Brace , 1st US, 1957, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 200 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. This copy previously owned by author Roger Shattuck and includes his underlining and editing of text in various colors of ink. Upper right corner of front cover bumped. Foxing to endpapers and edges. Dust jacket quite worn.

Hardcover. New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1st Edition, 1920, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 370 pages. Hardcover. Green cloth covers with gilt titles to cover & spine. Fraying, scuffing to edges. Light sunfade to spine. As is, with light pencil marking throughout. Cracked rear hinge.

Hardcover. East Aurora, New York, The Roycrofters, 1st, 1906, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 164 pages, portraits of the author and subjects in the book with tissue guards. Embossed Half leather binding and decorated pages. Gilt top edge. Author's signature (in plate) on frontispiece portrait. Number 18 in The Little Journeys Series. A very handsome book.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st US, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 222 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black & white illustrations throughout. Clean, tight copy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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