Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 867 pages. Over the course of a nearly sixty-year career, Norman Mailer wrote more than 30 novels, essay collections, and nonfiction books. Yet nowhere was he more prolific or more exposed than in his letters. All told, Mailer crafted more than 45,000 pieces of correspondence (approximately 20 million words), many of them deeply personal, keeping a copy of almost every one. Now the best of these are published most for the first time in one remarkable volume that spans seven decades and, it seems, several lifetimes. Together they form a stunning autobiographical portrait of one of the most original, provocative, and outspoken public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Compiled by Mailer s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, and organized by decade, Selected Letters of Norman Mailer features the most fascinating of Mailer s missives from 1940 to 2007 letters to his family and friends, to fans and fellow writers (including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth), to political figures from Henry Kissinger to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to such cultural icons as John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and even Monica Lewinsky.
Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman. Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty--a poet, a New Yorker, and an American--keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work. What is it then between us? Whitman asks. In search of an answer, Doty explores spaces--both external and internal--where he finds the poet's ghost. He meditates on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet's enduring work: a radical experience of transformation and enlightenment, queer sexuality, and an obsession with death, as well as unabashed love for a great city and for the fresh, rowdy character of American speech. In riveting close readings threaded with personal memoir and illuminated by awe, Doty reveals the power of Whitman's persistent presence in his life and in the American imagination at large. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Milwaukie OR, M Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The third installment of Playboy interviews gives their claim some validity (although probably not enough). The first two collections were grouped under the topics of sports figures and film directors, while the latest simply has the designation "Larger Than Life," and indeed those interviewed were awfully big for their britches. The interviewees include Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Bob Dylan, Mae West, and Muhammad Ali, among others. The interviews--in true Playboy fashion--are revealing, but also fascinating to realize are the periods in which they occurred. Sinatra was interviewed in 1963, and the cold war was definitely on his mind. Bette Davis, in 1982, had a long career of ups and downs to sound off about. But Muhammad Ali is the perfect example of how honest these personalities could become when allowed to digress; asked why he flunked the army's preinduction test, he replied, "I have said I am the greatest. Ain't nobody ever heard me say I was the smartest." 398 pages, clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Allen Lane, 2008, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The writings of Lewis Carroll have inspired and entertained generations of readers and have influenced the work of everyone from James Joyce to John Lennon. But the extraordinary imagination that created Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, was not limited simply to fantasy, logic and word play. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was for many years lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and published works in the fields of geometry, logic and algebra. He also made significant contributions to subjects as varied as voting patterns and the design of tennis tournaments, and he created large numbers of imaginative recreational puzzles based on mathematical ideas. For the first time, Lewis Carroll in Numberland explores both his serious and his recreational work and places it in the context of his many other activities, mathematical and otherwise. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with minor wear, 278 pages. A re-examination of the roles played by authors, readers, scribes and texts in medieval literature, which describes how consideration of marks on the physical manuscript - elements added by scribes and readers - can shed light on interpretive issues that have puzzled modern readers. Light underlining to 18 pages in first chapter.
Hardcover. London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1st, 1817, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 3/4 brown calf over marbled boards, black leather spine label with gilt lettering. 303 pages. Containing, among others, many letters from Alexander Pope, and three from Dr. Johnson, being addressed to Francis Fowke, Joseph Fowke and Samuel Richardson. Mild wear to spine, otherwise a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Hogarth Press, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in cloth with dark green buckram spine with gold lettering on the spine, no DJ, deckled edges. 359 pages, 6 full page plates and chapter head drawings by Philip Hagreen. Uncommon edition. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, letters, and diaries, an authorized biography of the critically acclaimed philosopher and novelist traces her personal life and literary and philosophical career, from her student days at Oxford, through her marriage to John Bayley, to Murdoch's remarkable influence on literary England, from 1940 to the present day.
Hardcover. NY/Oxford UK, Routledge, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 190 pages. This book examines Gore Vidal's lifelong engagement with the ancient world. Incorporating material from his novels, essays, screenplays and plays, it argues that his interaction with antiquity was central to the way in which he viewed himself, his writing, and his world. Divided between the three primary subjects of his writing - sex, politics, and religion - this book traces the lengthy dialogue between Vidal and antiquity over the course of his sixty-year career. Broughall analyses Vidal's portrayals of the ancient past in novels such as Julian (1964), Creation (1981) and Live from Golgotha (1992). He also shows how classical literature inspired Vidal's other fiction, such as The City and the Pillar (1948), Myra Breckinridge (1968), and his Narratives of Empire (1967-2000) novels. Beyond his fiction, Broughall examines the ways in which antiquity influenced Vidal's careers as a playwright, an essayist and a satirist, and evaluates the influence of classical authors and their works upon him. Clean copy.
Softcover. Dublin NH, William L Bauhan, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 163 pages. An unconventional family idyll in pastoral Bucks County, Pennsylvania of the 1930?s is suddenly broken to pieces by the arrival of a band of writers led by poets Robert Graves and especially Laura Riding. Told from the perspective of her 12-year-old self, the author paints an evocative portrait of a family, friends, childhood adventures and events against the background of a countryside still threaded with dirt roads winding past meadows and woodland, not a shopping mall in sight.
Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 461 pages. This, the final volume of the Clarendon Press edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, contains commentary on the Third Partition, in which Burton considers two especial forms of the disease, Love and Religious Melancholy. The volume includes an index which gives biographical and bibliographical information concerning the more than 1550 authorities cited in the Anatomy, most of whom are little known today. Also included are an index of the major topics discussed in the Anatomy, and a complete bibliography of all the works mentioned in the commentary. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 64 pages, facsimile reprint of a pamphlet, an early feminist document in the form of a poem with a 14 page introduction by Gae Holladay. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, William Morrow,, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 309 pages, b&w illustrations. Novelist Anne Bernays and biographer Justin Kaplan -- both native New Yorkers -- came of age in the 1950s, when the pent-up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Written in two separate voices, Back Then is the candid, anecdotal account of these two children of privilege -- one from New York's East Side, the other from the West Side -- pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books. Infused with intelligence and charm, Back Then is an elegant reflection on the transformative years in the lives of two young people and New York City. Marked by their youthful passions, this double memoir marries the authors' distinct literary styles with a riveting narrative that captures the density and texture of private, social, and working life in the 1950s. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Jill Norman and Hobhouse, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with a mild crease to the front panel. 144 pages. Selections from the several volumes of family albums in the archive at Charleston; portraits cover most of the Bloomsbury circle's members, relations and/or adherents over a 50-year period. Introduction by Quentin Bell. Top edge scrape to front board. Bookplate on inside front cover, small ownership stamp to front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Canongate, 2nd pr., 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. A re-telling of the story of Odysseus, with his wife Penelope and her twelve maids narrating from their viewpoint and with their insights. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a chipped, tape repaired dust jacket. Maroon cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 266 pages. INSCRIBED BY SIPE on the front fly leaf to fellow professor Roger Mitchell. English majors are used to being told that Shakespeare frequently broke the rules of iambic pentameter, and that as he matured artistically, his usage became bolder and freer. Well, it isn't true. Shakespeare's iambics turn out to be extremely orthodox (which just makes all the more impressive the variations he was able to create within the rules). In 1968 Dorothy Sipe went to the remarkable labor of demonstrating this objectively through a painstaking analysis of over 13,000 lines of verse. She also supplied information I've never found anywhere else on the prosodic rules taught by poets to poets in Shakespeare's day. All this said, including a five star rating for the perfect achievement of its goal, the book is definitely not for everyone interested in Shakespeare's verse and methods. It is devoted to proving a highly specific case by means of many, many examples that non-specialists are likely to find tedious. But if you are deeply interested in some subjects -- Shakespeare's iambics, his coinages, and the history of English iambic technique -- it is well worth your time. Dust jacket tanned, otherwise a clean, tight 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.
Softcover. NY, Anchor Press/Doubleday, reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 578 pages, b&w illustrations. Story of North Carolina's Black Mountain experimental community, tracking its existence from 1933-1956. Includes many black and white period photos. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 225 pages. Minor dust jacket edge wear and spotting on top edge, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. Paris, Tchou, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 253 pages, b&w cartoon drawings by Copi. White cloth covers with black design. A collection of quotes from writers of the Surrealist movement in France. Long preface by Corvin. INSCRIBED BY BOTH AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR (HIS WITH A SKETCH OF A BIRD) to Roger Shattuck, author and chronicler of the period. Publishers complimentary card laid in. Small tan stain to cloth at top of front cover, otherwise very good.
Hardcover. Boston, William D. Ticknor, 1st, 1847, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped with gilt design on front and spine, 144 pages, all edges gilt. An anthology of English and American poetry edited by Longfellow, with his prefatory "Proem" (later collected as "Pegasus in Pound"). Other contributors: Blake, Keats, Emerson, Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Tennyson, etc. Edition of 1,150 copies. Previous owner's bookplate, previous owner's signatures on front end paper. Otherwise a clean, bright copy with only minimal foxing.
Hardcover. Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 214 pages. Minor shelf-wear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy in excellent condition.
Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt & Company, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 332 pages. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket with slight crease to rear cover, else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 1997, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 304 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Some soiling to top page block, otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Adhesive residue on rear dust jacket.
Hardcover. Amherst, University of Massachusetts, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 217 pages. Previous owners inscription at top right corner of front endpaper. Dust jacket shows light wear. Clean, tight copy.
San Marino, Huntington Library, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 446 pages. Hardcover. Black covers with title and decoration in silver. Black & white illustrations. Some light pencil marking scattered throughout. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, John Day Company, 1st, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 177 pages. Boards illustrated with duotone illustration, black cloth binding, b&w illustrations by Covarrubias. Spine lightly cocked, light edgewear to covers, previous owner's signature to front endpaper, pages crisp and unmarked; overall, a very clean, tight copy.
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.
NY, Paddington Press, reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice dust jacket, light fading to spine. Black & white illustrations, 569 pages.
Hardcover. New York , Times Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 273 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY NOEL on title-page. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.
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. NY, Norton, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 530 pages. An affectionate portrait of the prolific twentieth-century comic writer discusses his creation of such characters as Jeeves, Psmith, and the Empress of Blandings; describes his contributions to Broadway and the London stage; details his internment in Berlin during World War II; and reveals a following of literary figures who are among his top fans.
Hardcover. NY, Prentice Hall, 2nd pr., 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 258 pages, b&w photographs. The story of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan in the movies.
Hardcover. NY, Arcade Publishing, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 401pages. The 1990s saw a resurgence of interest in the Marquis de Sade, with several biographies competing to put their version of his life story before the public. But Sadean scholar Richard Seaver takes us directly to the source, translating Sade's prison correspondence. Seaver's translations retain the aristocratic hauteur of Sade's prose, which still possesses a clarity that any reader can appreciate. "When will my horrible situation cease?" he wrote to his wife shortly after his incarceration began in 1777. "When in God's name will I be let out of the tomb where I have been buried alive? There is nothing to equal the horror of my fate!" But he was never reduced to pleading for long, and not always so solicitous of his wife's feelings; a few years later, he would write, "This morning I received a fat letter from you that seemed endless. Please, I beg of you, don't go on at such length: do you believe that I have nothing better to do than to read your endless repetitions?" For those interested in learning about the man responsible for some of the most infamous philosophical fiction in history, Letters from Prison is an indispensable collection. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 310 pages, 250 b&w illustrations. The life of one of America's major literary artists, Henry David Thoreau: , born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts: a schoolmaster, tutor, surveyor, mason, gardener, farmer, house painter, carpenter, day-laborer, abolitionist, pencil-maker. lecturer, naturtalist, writer. Small name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday & Company, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. A thoughtful biography of the too-short life of the woman who wrote one of the most controversial American novels of the 20th century.
Hardcover. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt, 166 pages. Virtues's place in Spanish drama is partly as one of the few to attempt tragedy, partly as one of the precursors of the national comedia, but above all as a pivotal figure in an important transitional period of Spain's political and cultural history. Clean copy.
NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Uphill with Archie is a beautifully written and deeply involving look at the life and the world of the great literary icon, poet Archibald MacLeish, by his youngest son. Partly an homage, partly an attempt to come to terms with the man (and the legend), Uphill with Archie speaks to all sons and daughters who have never completely resolved their feelings about powerful parents. Young William MacLeish grew up both captivated and cowed by the fame of a father who won Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry and comparable honors for his work as a lawyer, playwright, teacher, and government official. William's mother, Ada, began her marriage as a successful concert singer in Paris but later felt compelled to give up her art for her family. When Archie was working for Henry Luce and Fortune magazine, his younger children, watched over by a governess, stayed with their grandfather in Connecticut. But it is of the time spent with his family at Uphill Farm, a beautiful old house above a Massachusetts hilltown, that MacLeish has his fondest and most telling memories: "Archie and Ada gave me great gifts: music, the sound of the language beautifully spoken, the draw of knowledge, the arts of humor," William writes. "I learned to perform for them, and in time found myself addicted to getting a nice tan from Archie's sun. And the more I bathed in his light, the harder I found it to go looking for my own."
Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of seven essays. Clean copy.
 "The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture:Glossing the Libro de Buen Amorby: Dagenais, John")
 "Original Letters, from Richard Baxter, Matthew Prior, Lord Bolingbroke, Alexander Pope, Dr. Cheyne, Dr. Hartley, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Mrs. Montague, Rev. William Gilpin, Rev. John Newton, George Lord Lyttleton, Rev. Dr. Claudius Bucha")
 "The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius by: Apuleius; William Adlington, Translator; F. J. Harvey Darton, Editor;")
 "Vanessa Bell's Family Album by: Compiled by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett")
 "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviewsby: Cowley, Malcolm (Ed.)")
 "Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats: A Portrait by: Miles, Barry")
 "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novelsby: Grossman, Anne Chotzinoff")
 "Fairy Tale of My Life, The - An Autobiographyby: Andersen, Hans Christian")
 "In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing - A Geography of Grief (SIGNED COPY)by: Noel, Christopher")
 "WALDEN THEN & NOW : AN ALPHABETICAL TOUR OF HENRY THOREAU'S PONDby: McCurdy, Michael")
 "Japan: An Attempt at Interpretationby: Hearn, Lafcadio")
 "Big Swingers, The - A Biographyby: Fenton, Robert W.")
 "E. E. Cummings: A Life by: Cheever, Susan")
