Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, reprint, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 947 pages. Complete in one volume. Revised and annotated by Charles S. Singleton. Singleton preserves the genius of Payne's language and style, but removes the Victorianisms that intrude upon the enjoyment of contemporary readers. He adds essential annotation and original interpretation to round out this unexcelled English edition of Boccaccio's great work. Clean copy.
Softcover. Los Angeles, The Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 70 pages, a facsimile reprint of his fantastic tales first published in 1785. Horatio Walpole, also known as Horace Walpole, was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. His literary reputation rests on his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764) and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. "The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island, not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born." (From Walpole's own ntroduction). Clean copy.
Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Readers of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies have long noted the absence of readily explainable motivations for some of Shakespeare's greatest characters: Why does Hamlet delay his revenge for so long? Why does King Lear choose to renounce his power? Why is Othello so vulnerable to Iago's malice? But while many critics have chosen to overlook these omissions or explain them away, Millicent Bell demonstrates that they are essential elements of Shakespeare's philosophy of doubt. Examining Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra, Millicent Bell reveals the persistent strain of philosophical skepticism that runs throughout Shakespeare's plays. Like his contemporary Montaigne, Shakespeare repeatedly calls attention to the essential unknowability of our world. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 305 pages. The Rebecca Notebook provides an unparalleled insight into the mastery of a writer''s craft and the inner vision that made du Maurier a household name. One of the great international bestsellers, Rebecca also inspired a film, a play and television dramas. This perfect companion volume, The Rebecca Notebook, outlines just how Rebecca came to be written, tracing its origins, developments and the directions it might have taken. The author reveals how she first came upon the secret house, hidden deep in the Cornish woodland, that was to become the romantic setting for her most famous novel: a house which stood derelict, and which she lovingly restored to create her own home. The accompanying Memories introduce other members of her family: her father Gerald, the famous actor; her grandfather George, whose Punch drawings made him world famous; and her cousins, for whom J. M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan. Small ownership sticker on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
HighBridge Audio, 2004, Book: Very Good, Conducted by Fresh Air host Terry Gross in her signature, award-winning style, this is a collection of thought-provoking interviews with writers. Includes David Sedaris, Stephen King, Maurice Sendak, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, John Updike, Joyce Johnson, Fran Lebowitz, Billy Collins, Richard Price, and David Rakoff. Three CDs in it's cardboard package.
Hardcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 397 pages. This documentary history chronicles what in duration and volatile intensity was the most important love relationship in H.L. Mencken's life, one that he tried to obscure and hoped would remain buried within the copious record of his achievements as author and editor. The love between Marion Bloom and Mencken flourished during a period when he wrote frequently about women's issues. In Defense of Marion both illuminates Mencken's ambivalent attitudes toward the "New Woman" and presents a particularized social history of the intellectual and personal aspirations of many women during the early twentieth century. Bloom and Mencken met in 1914 and became lovers within a few months. Their intimacy continued, on and off, until about a year before Mencken's marriage to Sara Haardt in 1930. Edward A. Martin, who supplies a wealth of interpretive notes and commentary, tells of the Mencken-Bloom affair not only through selections from their letters and diaries but also through excerpts from the personal writings of others who were close to the two and who often complicated their relationship. Such relevant figures include Sara Haardt; Estelle Bloom, Marion's sister; Theodore Dreiser, Estelle's lover and employer as an editorial assistant; and the movie star Aileen Pringle, with whom Mencken was infatuated. Clean copy.
Softcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 309 pages. A major contribution to the cultural and literary history of the Victorian age, Rule of Darkness maps the complex relationship between Victorian literary forms, genres, and theories and imperialist, racist ideology. Critics and cultural historians have usually regarded the Empire as being of marginal importance to early and mid-Victorian writers. Patrick Brantlinger asserts that the Empire was central to British culture as a source of ideological and artistic energy, both supported by and lending support to widespread belief in racial superiority, the need to transform "savagery" into "civilization," and the urgency of promoting emigration.Rule of Darkness brings together material from public records, memoirs, popular culture, and canonical literature. Brantlinger explores the influence of the novels of Captain Frederick Marryat, pioneer of British adolescent adventure fiction, and shows the importance of William Makepeace Thackeray's experience of India to his novels. He treats a number of Victorian best sellers previously ignored by literary historians, including the Anglo-Indian writer Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug and Seeta. Brantlinger situates explorers' narratives and travelogues by such famous author-adventurers as David Livingstone and Sir Richard Burton in relation to other forms of Victorian and Edwardian prose. Through readings of works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, John Hobson, and many others, he considers representations of Africa, India, and other non-British parts of the world in both fiction and nonfiction. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Quadrangle Books, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 201 pages. Stated first edition, 1972, but actually a book club edition with the telltale little indentation at the bottom right of the rear cover, no price on dj flap. Warren served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969 and is generally considered to be one of the most influential Supreme Court justices and political leaders in the history of the United States. This is a great book on the foundations of our republic and on how to preserve it. Chief Justice Warren explains history and Constitutional law in common terms that are easy to digest. This book stresses the importance of civic engagement, the Bill of Rights, and the need for ethics and respect in a republic. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 306 pages, b&w photographs. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Previous price sticker on front fly leaf. In this memoir, Morris chronicles the development of his craft, allowing the reader to look inside the man as the creative process takes place. Never forgetting his Midwestern roots, Morris traveled extensively in this country and around the world photographing as he went. This volume is illustrated with many of those photographs and serves as a travelogue that takes us to places like the plains of Nebraska, sultry Mexico, and romantic Venice; Covers slightly bowed. Else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 480 pages, b&w illustrations. When Theodore Dreiser first published Sister Carrie in 1900 it was suppressed for its seamy plot, colloquial language, and immortality--for, as one reviewer put it, its depiction of "the godless side of American life." It was a side of life experienced firsthand by Dreiser, whose own circumstances often paralleled those of his characters in the turbulent, turn-of-the-century era of immigrants, black lynchings, ruthless industrialists, violent labor movements, and the New Woman. This masterful critical biography, the first on Dreiser in more than half a century, is the only study to fully weave Dreiser's literary achievement into the context of his life. Jerome Loving gives us a Dreiser for a new generation in a brilliant evocation of a writer who boldly swept away Victorian timidity to open the twentieth century in American literature. INSCRIBED BY LOVING ("Jerry") on the half-title page. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper's Magazine Press, BC Ed., 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 271 pages. 1st edition, 1st printing with complete number line at the last rear paper of: 74 75 76 77 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Lacks a price on unclipped jacket so an assumed Book Club Edition. Winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. B&w illustrations by Dillard. No markings.
Hardcover. Los Angeles, Rare Bird Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 312 pages. The highlight of Desolation Peak is the journal Kerouac kept, starkly revealing the depth of his poverty, the extremity of his mood swings, and the ongoing arguments with himself over the future direction of his life, his writing, and faith. Along with the journal, he worked on a series of projects, including "Ozone Park," another installment of the Duluoz Legend beginning in 1943, after his discharge from the Navy; "The Martin Family," an intended sequel to The Town and the City, and "Desolation Adventure," a series of sketches that became part 1 of Desolation Angels. In writing it, Kerouac was re-committing himself to his more experimental, then-unpublishable style, declaring in the journal that "the form of the future is no-form." Also included in Collected Writings is "The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing," Kerouac's "transliteration" of the Diamond Sutra, his "Desolation Blues" and "Desolation Pops" poems, and assorted prose sketches and dreams. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 368 pages, 33 illustrations + frontispiece and self-caricature. Prologue and epilogue by the editor. The autobiography of the author of the "Swallows and Amazon" books. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 512 pages. The second volume in this masterful biography finds Hughes rooting himself in Harlem, receiving stimulation from his rich cultural surroundings. Here he rethought his view of art and radicalism, and cultivated relationships with younger, more militant writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Bakara. Illustrated with black & white photographs, a few by Roy DeCarava with whom Hughes published "The Sweet Flypaper of Life" and a portrait by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Philadelphia, John Patterson and Friends, 1st, 1924, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 25 pages, b&w frontispiece portrait of Stevenson, green cloth spine over patterned boards. Some wear, fraying to spine, light residue to front pastedown where bookplate may have resided.
Hardcover. New York, Random House, reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 230 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean copy. An autobiography covering the first eleven years of the famed Nigerian poet and dramatist.
Softcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st pbk, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 123 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Very clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 260 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.
NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 188 pages. SIGNED BY OFFUTT on title-page.
Hardcover. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1974-1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, All six volumes. Hardcover with dust jackets. Release dates range from 1974-1981. All first editions. Volume six has clipped dust jacket. Light fraying to dust jackets otherwise, clean, tight copies. Decorative staining on top text block. Black and white dust jacket.
Hardcover. Gloucester, MA, Peter Smith, Reprint, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 321 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Green cloth covered boards with light wear to edges & black titles to spine. Faint soil to top edge. Otherwise clean inside and out. Tight copy.
Hardcover. London, John Murray, 1st definitive ed., 1832-33, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Pub. orig. as 14 vols. then 3 more were added. Uniform complete 17 volume set in stunning condition: 3/4 black leather with elaborate design on spines with raised bands, marbled boards and end papers, top edge gilt . Black & white engraved frontis in each volume. Previous owner's bookplate (one on each front end paper), The slightest bumping to a few corners.
Hardcover. Watertown, MA, Charlesbridge, reprint , 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. London, Macmillan Company, 1st, 1904, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 541 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Light fraying on edges of cover boards. Previous owner's name on front end paper. Gilt lettering on spine, light brown covers.
Hardcover. New York, Doubleday, 1t, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 256 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy. Color illustrations throughout.
Hardcover. Carbondale IL, Southern Illinois University Press, reprint, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcovers in dust jackets, two volume set reproducing the 1783 first edition. Edited and introduced by Harold F. Harding. "The Lectures went through at least 130 editions between 1783 and 1911. Because of its size and cost, the two-volume work invariably was abridged or issued as cheap one-volume reprints. No other edition available today combines the readability and beauty of the first Edinburgh edition, which is here faithfully and completely reproduced, so that scholars may have access to it again." (dust jacket copy). 496, 550 pages plus index. Clean set, some toning to dust jackets.
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.
Softcover. Leopard Publishing Ventures, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 60 pages, illustrated. Built in the cottage orne style from a plan by the Regency architect John Nash (1752-1835), Old Came Rectory is the historic home of the poet philologist, William Barnes (1801-1886), Thomas Hardy's mentor. Amid gatherings of poets, writers and historical figures, how many discussions around the fire of this homely home have gone on to shape the world we know today? INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on Dedication page.
Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 654 pages. From the more than 4000 letters that have survived, the editors have selected some 400 letters of one of the most important 20th century authors, Edith Wharton. These range from a letter written when Wharton was twelve years old to a letter penned just before her death. The collection shows Wharton at her epistolary best and most characteristic and in all the striking variety of her many voices. Clean copt.
Softcover. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina , 1st, 1984, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, cream paper covers with red and black titling, 137 pages. There is underlining and notations to text in red ink to about half the pages.
Hardcover. Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with a touch of fading to edges, 177 pages. Essays, literary and philosophical, on the state of the humanities and the implications of conceiving dialogue as the root condition of human being. Translated from the Russian by Vern W. McGee. Clean copy of the hardcover edition. Book review laid-in.
Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st US, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a price-clipped dust jacket. A memoir of the real Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. An attractive copy of Christopher Milne's book about the origins of the Pooh stories, his childhood, and his family. Previous owner's inscription, sticker on front fly leaf.
Softcover. Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 209 pages. This groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. Christa Schwarz focuses on Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers' sexually dissident or gay literary voices. The portrayals of men-loving men in these writers' works vary significantly. Schwarz locates in the poetry of Cullen, Hughes, and McKay the employment of contemporary gay code words, deriving from the Greek discourse of homosexuality and from Walt Whitman. By contrast, Nugent-the only "out" gay Harlem Renaissance artist-portrayed men-loving men without reference to racial concepts or Whitmanesque codes. Schwarz argues for contemporary readings attuned to the complex relation between race, gender, and sexual orientation in Harlem Renaissance writing. Clean copy.
Hardcover. San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dist jacket, 616 pages, b&w illustrations. These letters were written to his wife, Virginia Woolf, and to a number of friends and family members. They provide a fascinating look into the life and work of one of the most important British writers of the 20th century. Clean, like new.
Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 2nd pr., 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Whitman's genius, passions, poetry, and androgynous sensibility entwined to create an exuberant life amid the turbulent American mid-nineteenth century. In vivid detail, Kaplan examines the mysterious selves of the enigmatic man who celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang the praises of democracy and the brotherhood of man. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 246 pages. In 1956 W. E. B. Du Bois was denied a passport to attend the Presence Africaine Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris. So he sent the assembled a telegram. "Any Negro-American who travels abroad today must either not discuss race conditions in the United States or say the sort of thing which our State Department wishes the world to believe." Taking seriously Du Bois's allegation, Juliana Spahr breathes new life into age-old questions as she explores how state interests have shaped U.S. literature. What is the relationship between literature and politics? Can writing be revolutionary? Can art be autonomous, or is escape from nations and nationalisms impossible? Du Bois's Telegram brings together a wide range of institutional forces implicated in literary production, paying special attention to three eras of writing that sought to defy political orthodoxies by contesting linguistic conventions: avant-garde modernism of the early twentieth century; social-movement writing of the 1960s and 1970s; and, in the twenty-first century, the profusion of English-language works incorporating languages other than English. Spahr shows how these literatures attempted to assert their autonomy, only to be shut down by FBI harassment or coopted by CIA and State Department propagandists. Liberal state allies such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations made writers complicit by funding multiculturalist works that celebrated diversity and assimilation while starving radical anti-imperial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist efforts. Clean, like new.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 530 pages, b&w illustrations. The dramatic story of W. E. B. Du Bois's reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I-and a new understanding of one of the great twentieth-century writers. When W. E. B. Du Bois, believing in the possibility of full citizenship and democratic change, encouraged African Americans to "close ranks" and support the Allied cause in World War I, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Seeking both intellectual clarity and personal atonement, for more than two decades Du Bois attempted to write the definitive history of Black participation in World War I. His book, however, remained unfinished. In The Wounded World, Chad Williams offers the dramatic account of Du Bois's failed efforts to complete what would have been one of his most significant works. The surprising story of this unpublished book offers new insight into Du Bois's struggles to reckon with both the history and the troubling memory of the war, along with the broader meanings of race and democracy for Black people in the twentieth century. Drawing on a broad range of sources, most notably Du Bois's unpublished manuscript and research materials, Williams tells a sweeping story of hope, betrayal, disillusionment, and transformation, setting into motion a fresh understanding of the life and mind of arguably the most significant scholar-activist in African American history. In uncovering what happened to Du Bois's largely forgotten book, Williams offers a captivating reminder of the importance of World War I, why it mattered to Du Bois, and why it continues to matter today. Remainder mark on top edhge, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, Frog Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Amy Wallace's first meeting with Carlos Castaneda, the infamous anthropologist-turned-shaman, whose books described meetings with Yaqui Indian spiritual teacher Don Juan. Castaneda's rise was meteoric in the late 1960s as he wrote massive bestsellers, inspired many to experiment with psychedelics, and was dubbed "The Godfather of the New Age". The possibility that Castaneda's experiences may have been fabricated did little to compromise his legend. As the daughter of best-selling novelist Irving Wallace, Amy was rarely shy around famous people. When her father insisted she meet Castaneda, she at first demurred. Little did she know that a delightful first meeting would begin a 20-year friendship, followed by her descent into the dramatic and deeply troubled affair chronicled in this book. Wallace reveals the inner workings of the "Cult of Carlos", run by a charismatic authoritarian in his sixties who controlled his young female followers through emotional abuse, mind games, bizarre rituals, dubious teachings, and sexual excess. Bright, clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light gray cloth with maroon and gilt title on spine, 608 pages. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin, reprint, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Illustrated in color by the Reys. A reprint of a title first published in 1944. The story of Pretzel, the longest dachshund in the world. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 480 pages. A fascinating figure of English literary and political history, Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 in Bournemouth, England. Hall suffered through an exceedingly unhappy childhood until her father's death. With her inheritance, Hall leased a house in Kensington and began to live the way she pleased. She started dressing in chappish clothes, called herself Peter, then John, and wrote her first collection of verse. She was a political reactionary, a reformed Catholic, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, fussy about food and obsessive about work. She got her pipes from Dunhill's, wore brocade smoking jackets, spats in winter, and had her hair cropped off at the barber's. Hall is most famous today for her book, The Well of Loneliness, which she wrote in 1928. A novel about lesbian love, the book caused an enormous scandal on its publication and it was suppressed both in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, where Hall was put on trial under the Obscene Publications Act.
Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Frontiepiece photograph of the author as Lord Beaconsfield. 392 pages. Autobiography dealing with the author's life up to the mid 1930s. He was the brother of A E Housman, and was well-known in his own right as a writer of plays, as well as being active in the women's suffrage campaign and in the pacifist movement. A prolific writer with around a hundred published works to his name, Housman's output eventually covered all kinds of literature from socialist and pacifist pamphlets to children's stories. He wrote an autobiography, The Unexpected Years (1937), which, despite his record of controversial writing, said little about his homosexuality, the practice of which was then illegal. Mild shelf wear. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Fordham University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 387 pages. Focusing on major authors and problems from the Italian fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Machiavelli, Ariosto and Tasso, A Local Habitation and a Name examines the unstable dialectic of "reality" and "imagination," as well as of "history" and "literature." Albert Ascoli identifies and interprets the ways in which literary texts are shaped by and serve the purposes of multiple, intertwined historical discourses and circumstances, and he equally probes the function of such texts in constructing, interpreting, critiquing, and effacing the histories in which they are embedded. Throughout, he poses the theoretical and methodological question of how formal analysis and literary forms can at once resist and further the historicist enterprise. Mild damp wrinkle to bottom corner of first 10 pages, otherwise very good, clean.