Browse categories
  1. Home >
  2. Book Categories >

Rare & Out-of-Print Literature Books - pg. 4 including The Richer, the Poorer: Stories, Sketches, and Reminiscencesby: Dorothy West

Sort By:
The Richer, the Poorer: Stories, Sketches, and Reminiscences by: Dorothy West
Click Image To View Larger

The Richer, the Poorer: Stories, Sketches, and Reminiscences
by: Dorothy West

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 254 pages. The collected short stories and autobiographical writings of the last survivor of the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties and thirties describes growing up in Boston's black middle class, her relationship with Langston Hughes, and other subjects.

Record # 374548

Price: $12.00
Price: $12.00 

A Thoreau Profile by: Meltzer, Milton And Walter Harding
Click Image To View Larger

A Thoreau Profile
by: Meltzer, Milton And Walter Harding

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.

Record # 374997

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The Personal Letters Of Stephen Wise by: Wise Polier Justine, Waterman Wise James (Ed.)
Click Image To View Larger

The Personal Letters Of Stephen Wise
by: Wise Polier Justine, Waterman Wise James (Ed.)

Hardcover. Boston, The Beacon Press, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth covers, 289 pages. 12 pages of b&w photos. Fifty years of letters (1899-1949) by the crusader for liberal and humane causes as well as Jewish rights. Clean copy.

Record # 375154

Price: $20.00
Price: $20.00 

Plain Speaking by: MULOCK, Dinah Maria,
Click Image To View Larger

Plain Speaking
by: MULOCK, Dinah Maria,

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

Record # 377810

Price: $30.00
Price: $30.00 

The Heavenly Guest with Other Unpublished Writings by: Celia Thaxter (edited by her brother Oscar Laighton, from material in the granddaughter's possession)
Click Image To View Larger

The Heavenly Guest with Other Unpublished Writings
by: Celia Thaxter (edited by her brother Oscar Laighton, from material in the granddaughter's possession)

Hardcover. np, Oscar Laighton, 1st, 1935, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt, 177 pages. Many years ago Celia Thaxter wrote a poem adapted from one of the short stories of Count Tolstoy, she called it "The Heavenly Guest". It was later found by her granddaughter, Rosamond Thaxter, in a portfolio which had been loaned to the late Sara Orne Jewett, which was returned after her death. Also found were many unpublished papers of Celia Thaxter's. They are gathered here. This copy INSCRIBED BY ROSAMOND THAXTER on the front fly leaf, Clean copy.

Record # 377811

Price: $25.00
Price: $25.00 

Sandpiper-The Life & Letters Of Celia Thaxter And Her Home On The Isles Of Shoals Her Family, Friends & Favorite Poems by: Rosamond Thaxter
Click Image To View Larger

Sandpiper-The Life & Letters Of Celia Thaxter And Her Home On The Isles Of Shoals Her Family, Friends & Favorite Poems
by: Rosamond Thaxter

Hardcover. Francestown NH, Marshall Jones Company, 3rd pr., 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt. Dust jacket edgeworn, chipped. 295 pages. Revised Edition. Third Printing. INSCRIBED by Rosamond Thaxter ("Rosie") on half title page.

Record # 377814

Price: $28.00
Price: $28.00 

Literary Masterpieces: The Stranger /Vol. 8 by: Raymond Gay-Crosier / Albert Camus
Click Image To View Larger

Literary Masterpieces: The Stranger /Vol. 8
by: Raymond Gay-Crosier / Albert Camus

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.

Record # 377856

Price: $20.00
Price: $20.00 

Literary Masters: Albert Camus/Vol. 8 by: Catherine Savage Brosman/ Albert Camus
Click Image To View Larger

Literary Masters: Albert Camus/Vol. 8
by: Catherine Savage Brosman/ Albert Camus

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.

Record # 377857

Price: $20.00
Price: $20.00 

The Voice of James M. Cain: A Biography by: David Madden
Click Image To View Larger

The Voice of James M. Cain: A Biography
by: David Madden

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Lyons Press , 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 300 pages. James M. Cain was among the prominent member of the "hard-boiled" school of writing that characterized the 1930s and 1940s, one of the masters of the genre that included Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His novels became such popular film noir classics as The Postman always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce, and his 1937 novel Serenade boldly portrayed its hero as a bisexual. Cain also taught journalism at various colleges in Maryland, wrote editorials for the New York World, and was for a brief time managing editor at The New Yorker. This is the first biography of James M. Cain written with the full cooperation of the late novelist's family.

Record # 377863

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941-1945 by: Kurt Vonnegut / Edith Vonnegut
Click Image To View Larger

Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941-1945
by: Kurt Vonnegut / Edith Vonnegut

Hardcover. NY, Random House;, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 220 pages. Kurt Vonnegut's eldest daughter, Edith, was cleaning out her mother's attic when she stumbled upon a dusty, aged box. Inside, she discovered an unexpected treasure: more than two hundred love letters written by Kurt to Jane, spanning the early years of their relationship. The letters begin in 1941, after the former schoolmates reunited at age nineteen, sparked a passionate summer romance, and promised to keep in touch when they headed off to their respective colleges. And they did, through Jane's conscientious studying and Kurt's struggle to pass chemistry. The letters continue after Kurt dropped out and enlisted in the army in 1943, while Jane in turn graduated and worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. They also detail Kurt's deployment to Europe in 1944, where he was taken prisoner of war and declared missing in action, and his eventual safe return home and the couple's marriage in 1945.

Record # 377884

Price: $18.00
Price: $18.00 

The Books in My Life by: Miller, Henry
Click Image To View Larger

The Books in My Life
by: Miller, Henry

Softcover. NY, New Directions, 2nd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, second printing, 316 pages plus index, sewn paperback cover price $2.45, very good lightly used copy.

Record # 378053

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The Broken Angel: Myth and Method in Val
Click Image To View Larger

The Broken Angel: Myth and Method in Val

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.

Record # 378097

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The Undiscovered Country by: Hay, John
Click Image To View Larger

The Undiscovered Country
by: Hay, John

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 192 pages. Through the distillation of a lifetime of experiences, John Hay describes in The Undiscovered Country his quiet, profound search for our place in the natural world. In considering snails, alewives, terns, woodland moths, and other forms of natural life, Hay shares with his readers a discovery that few have experienced and no one has written about so eloquently. Clean copy.

Record # 378101

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home (SIGNED COPY) by: Mosher, Howard Frank
Click Image To View Larger

The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home (SIGNED COPY)
by: Mosher, Howard Frank

NY, Crown, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY MOSHER on the title page. Documents the author's road trip across twenty-first-century America, where he shared personal encounters with homeless people, country performers, and readers and writers from all walks of life. Clean copy.

Record # 378145

Price: $30.00
Price: $30.00 

Furthering My Education: A Memoir (SIGNED COPY) by: Corbett, William
Click Image To View Larger

Furthering My Education: A Memoir (SIGNED COPY)
by: Corbett, William

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Zoland Books, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY CORBETT on the dedication page. A memoir by poet William Corbett recounts the story of his relationship with his father whose sudden and peculiar abandonment of his family in 1965 left numerous unanswered questions. Clean copy.

Record # 378307

Price: $28.00
Price: $28.00 

Virgil's Book of Bucolics, the Ten Eclogues Translated into English Verse: Framed by Cues for Reading Aloud and Clues for Threading Texts and Themes by: Van Sickle, Jo
Click Image To View Larger

Virgil's Book of Bucolics, the Ten Eclogues Translated into English Verse: Framed by Cues for Reading Aloud and Clues for Threading Texts and Themes
by: Van Sickle, Jo

Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in publisher's cloth backed boards and issued without a jacket. 260 pages. Clean, bright copy.

Record # 378313

Price: $12.00
Price: $12.00 

The Bird that Swallowed Its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte by: Walter Murch (Translator), Lawrence Weschler (Foreword)
Click Image To View Larger

The Bird that Swallowed Its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte
by: Walter Murch (Translator), Lawrence Weschler (Foreword)

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, Counterpoint, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 144 pages. Walter Murch first came across Curzio Malaparte's writings in a chance encounter in a French book about cosmology, where one of Malaparte's stories was retold to illustrate a point about conditions shortly after the creation of the universe. Murch was so taken by the strange, utterly captivating imagery he went to find the book from which the story was taken. The book was Kaputt, Malaparte's autobiographical novel about the frontlines of World War II. Curzio Malaparte, an Italian born with a German heritage, was a journalist, dramatic, novelist and diplomat. When he wrote a book attacking totalitarianism and Hitler's reign, Mussolini, in no position to support such a body of work, stripped him of his National Fascist Party membership and sent him to internal exile on the island of Lipari. In 1941, he was sent to cover the Eastern Front as a correspondent for Corriere della Sera, the Milano daily newspaper. His dispatches from the next three years would be largely suppressed by the Italian government, but reverberated among readers as painfully real depictions of a landscape at war.

Record # 378316

Price: $18.00
Price: $18.00 

Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 by: Salman Rushdie
Click Image To View Larger

Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002
by: Salman Rushdie

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.

Record # 378317

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Jean Jacques the Early Life and Work of Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 by: Cranston, Maurice
Click Image To View Larger

Jean Jacques the Early Life and Work of Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754
by: Cranston, Maurice

Hardcover. NY, WW Norton , 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 382 pages.

Record # 378323

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos: Best Nonfiction by: Friedman, Bruce Jay
Click Image To View Larger

Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos: Best Nonfiction
by: Friedman, Bruce Jay

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 236 pages. A butler school in Houston, a livestock auction in Little Rock, a home for "frozen guys" in California, JFK's humidor in Manhattan--all are jumping off points for Friedman's baleful and sharply satirical scrutiny of American life and behavior in the second half of the twentieth century. Travel with Friedman from Harlem to Hollywood, from Port-au-Prince to Etta's Eat Shop in Chicago. In these pieces, which were published in literary and mass-circulation magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s, you'll meet such luminaries as Castro and Clinton, Natalie Wood and Clint Eastwood, and even Friedman's friends Irwin Shaw, Nelson Algren, and Mario Puzo. Friedman is a master of the essay, whether the subject is crime reporting ("Lessons of the Street"), Hollywood shenanigans ("My Life among the Stars"), or his outrageous adventures as the editor of pulp magazines (the classic "Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos"). We could sing his praises as a journalist, humorist, and social critic. But, as Buckley tells us, being Bruce Jay Friedman is enough. Clean copy.

Record # 378372

Price: $18.00
Price: $18.00 

Peeling the Onion by: Grass, Gunter; translated by Michael Henry Heieadi
Click Image To View Larger

Peeling the Onion
by: Grass, Gunter; translated by Michael Henry Heieadi

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Inc., 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Nobel Prize winning author Gunter Grass' autobiography causing controversy because of his admission of volunteering for the submarine corps at the age of 15 and then being drafted into the Waffen SS, the combat force of the SS, in 1944 when he was 17. Much of the German novelist's work has dealt with the idea of morally dealing with one's past, in this case Germany's collective conscious. Clean copy.

Record # 378381

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The Honest Rainmaker; The Life And Times Of Colonel John R Stingo by: Liebling, A.J.
Click Image To View Larger

The Honest Rainmaker; The Life And Times Of Colonel John R Stingo
by: Liebling, A.J.

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.

Record # 378504

Price: $18.00
Price: $18.00 

Literary History of the United States (3 volumes) by: Robert E.Spiller, Willard Thorp, Thomas H. Johnson, Henry Seidel Canby (editors)
Click Image To View Larger

Literary History of the United States (3 volumes)
by: Robert E.Spiller, Willard Thorp, Thomas H. Johnson, Henry Seidel Canby (editors)

Hardcover. NY, The Macmillan Company,, 1st, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Three hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets, complete set. Blue cloth covers and gilt spine lettering. Volumes 1 & 2 are historical and cover the development of American literature from its European roots, and volume 3 is a comprehensive bibliography. This is a standard work in its field. Vol. 1: 636 pages, Vol.2: 639-1422; Vol. 3: 817 pages. The contents are clean and unmarked--there are no bookplates or ownership names. Dust jackets in protective mylar, no slipcase.

Record # 378609

Price: $60.00
Price: $60.00 

Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side by: Ed Sanders
Click Image To View Larger

Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side
by: Ed Sanders

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Fug You is Ed Sanders's unapologetic and often hilarious account of eight key years of "total assault on the culture," to quote his novelist friend William S. Burroughs. Fug You traces the flowering years of New York's downtown bohemia in the sixties, starting with the marketing problems presented by publishing Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts, as it faced the aboveground's scrutiny, and leading to Sanders's arrest after a raid on his Peace Eye Bookstore. The memoir also traces the career of the Fugs -- formed in 1964 by Sanders and his neighbor, the legendary Tuli Kupferberg (called "the world's oldest living hippie" by Allen Ginsberg) -- as Sanders strives to find a home for this famous postmodern, innovative anarcho-folk-rock band in the world of record labels.

Record # 378610

Price: $40.00
Price: $40.00 

Marquesan Encounters: Melville and the Meaning of Civilization (SIGNED COPY) by: Herbert Jr, T. Walter
Click Image To View Larger

Marquesan Encounters: Melville and the Meaning of Civilization (SIGNED COPY)
by: Herbert Jr, T. Walter

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with sunning to spine, 237 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf. Herbert offers a fresh perspective on Melville's Typee by considering it in the context of his encounters with the natives (including being held captive for a time) in the Marquesan Islands. Clean copy.

Record # 378650

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics by: Morson, Gary Saul /Emerson, Caryl
Click Image To View Larger

Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics
by: Morson, Gary Saul /Emerson, Caryl

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 530 pages. Books about thinkers require a kind of unity that their thought may not possess. This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Clean, bright copy, as new.

Record # 378703

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams by: Lyle Leverich
Click Image To View Larger

Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams
by: Lyle Leverich

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.

Record # 378817

Price: $18.00
Price: $18.00 

Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism by: Yegenoglu, Meyda
Click Image To View Larger

Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism
by: Yegenoglu, Meyda

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 196 pages. investigates the intersection between post-colonial and feminist criticism, via the Western fascination with veiled women of the Orient. Her original and compelling argument calls into question dualistic conceptions of identity and difference, West and East masculinist assumptions of Orientalism, and Western feminist discourses that seek to 'liberate' the veiled woman. Clean copy.

Record # 378838

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Home Sweet Home: My Canadian Album by: Richler, Mordecai
Click Image To View Larger

Home Sweet Home: My Canadian Album
by: Richler, Mordecai

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of his writings on his home country. Clean copy.

Record # 378842

Price: $12.00
Price: $12.00 

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by: Akwaeke Emezi
Click Image To View Larger

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir
by: Akwaeke Emezi

Hardcover. NY, Riverhead Books, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times bestselling author, a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self (Esquire)In three critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Clean copy.

Record # 378923

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by: Gaiman, Neil
Click Image To View Larger

The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
by: Gaiman, Neil

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.

Record # 378952

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad by: John Stape
Click Image To View Larger

The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad
by: John Stape

Hardcover. Canada, Bond Street Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 378 pages. Published to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad is a brilliant and highly readable biography of a literary figure of world-wide reputation. Conrad's impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point. Such phrases as "heart of darkness" and "The horror! The horror!" have entered the language, often cited without an awareness of their original contexts. His popular legacy extends to Latin American fiction, to the spy novel, to the terrorist and anarchist character, and to film. The writers he has influenced range from T. S. Eliot to William Faulkner to V. S. Naipaul and John Le Carre. For a writer of "difficult" fiction he has enjoyed a remarkably wide impact, yet as Marlow proclaims in Lord Jim of the figure whose story he tells,"he was one of us," and so Conrad remains in fascinating ways.

Record # 378958

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany by: Charles Portis/Jay Jennings (Editor)
Click Image To View Larger

Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany
by: Charles Portis/Jay Jennings (Editor)

Hardcover. Little Rock AK, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 358 pages. For those who care about literature or simply love a good laugh (or both), Charles Portis has long been one of America's most admired novelists. His 1968 novel True Grit is fixed in the contemporary canon, and four more have been hailed as comic masterpieces. Now, for the first time, his other writings--journalism, travel stories, short fiction, memoir, and even a play--have been brought together in Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany, his first new book in more than twenty years. All the familiar Portis elements are here: picaresque adventures, deadpan humor, an expert eye for detail and keen ear for the spoken word, and encounters with oddball characters both real and imagined. The collection encompasses the breadth of his fifty-year writing career, from his gripping reportage of the civil rights movement for the New York Herald Tribune to a comic short story about the demise of journalism in the 21st century. New to even the most ardent fan is his three-act play, Delray's New Moon, performed onstage in 1996 and published here for the first time.

Record # 378971

Price: $25.00
Price: $25.00 

Selected Letters of Norman Mailer by: J. Michael Lennon (Author, Editor)
Click Image To View Larger

Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
by: J. Michael Lennon (Author, Editor)

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.

Record # 379004

Price: $28.00
Price: $28.00 

Stay: threads, conversations, collaborations by: Nick Flynn
Click Image To View Larger

Stay: threads, conversations, collaborations
by: Nick Flynn

Hardcover. NY, ZE Books, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with white lettering. No dust jacket issued. With Stay, acclaimed poet, artist, and bestselling memoirist Nick Flynn presents a self-portrait via a constellation of topics that have circled his work. Ranging from the impact of suicide and homelessness to addiction, political engagement, and the vital power of artistic friendships, Stay is a mixed-media retrospective that shows nothing is created in isolation. Mirroring Flynn's life, this work of visual and literary memoir is populated by examples of his collaborations since the 1980s with such luminaries as the photographers Amy Arbus and Catherine Opie, composer Guy Barash, actor Robert De Niro, cartoonist Josh Neufeld, author Sarah Sentilles, filmmaker Paul Weitz, and artists John Baldessari, Marilyn Minter, and Bill Shuck. In Flynn's refusal to conform to narrative or the safety of his own perspective, Stay grasps for an essential truth, an answer to what art, in the end, can and cannot reflect. Illustrated in color, b&w.

Record # 379006

Price: $20.00
Price: $20.00 

Quiet Pilgrimage by: Vining, Elizabeth Gray
Click Image To View Larger

Quiet Pilgrimage
by: Vining, Elizabeth Gray

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.

Record # 379071

Price: $18.00
Price: $18.00 
 

The Man Who Found Thoreau: Roland W. Robbins and the Rise of Historical Archaeology in America by: Donald W. Linebaugh
Click Image To View Larger

The Man Who Found Thoreau: Roland W. Robbins and the Rise of Historical Archaeology in America
by: Donald W. Linebaugh

Lebanon NH, University of New Hampshire Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 294 pages, b&w illustrations. Presents a succinct, articulate examination of the work of the pioneering but controversial archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins (1908-1987) and the development of historical archaelogy in America. In 1945, the self-taught Robbins discovered the remains of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond. He excavated the site, documented his findings, and in 1947 published a short book, Discovery at Walden, about the experience. This project launched Robbins's career in archaeology, restoration, and reconstruction, and he went on to excavate at a number of New England iron works and other sites, including the Philipsburg Manor Upper Mills in New York, Stawbery Banke in New Hampshire, and Shadwell, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia birthplace. Although lacking academic training, Robbins quickly developed remarkably sophisticated techniques for the period. However, his "pick and shovel" methods were considered suspect and increasingly frowned upon by the emerging American historical archaeological establishment. Clean copy.

Record # 379102

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (SIGNED COPY) by: Shattuck, Roger
Click Image To View Larger

Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (SIGNED COPY)
by: Shattuck, Roger

Hardcover. NY, St Martins Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY SHATTUCK on the half-title page. 369 pages. An intellectual tour-de-force, Forbidden Knowledge is a study of the ethics of literary and scientific inquiry. Shattuck first approaches his subject indirectly, conducting an engaging tour of Western literature: Adam and Eve, Prometheus, Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He then uses these tales to address the moral questions raised.

Record # 379116

Price: $50.00
Price: $50.00 

Saving the Text: Literature/Derrida/Philosophy by: Geoffrey H. Hartman
Click Image To View Larger

Saving the Text: Literature/Derrida/Philosophy
by: Geoffrey H. Hartman

Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 184 pages. Saving the Text cuts through Jacques Derrida's complex blend of philosophy, commentary, and elaborate wordplay to ascertain his place in the history of criticism and the significance of Glas as a literary event. Distinguished critic and scholar Geoffrey Hartman explores the usefulness of Derrida's style of close reading for English and American scholarship and establishes its relevance to the division that has arisen between European and Anglo-American critical approaches.

Record # 379152

Price: $12.00
Price: $12.00 

The First Folio of Shakespeare 1623 by: William Shakespeare/Doug Moston
Click Image To View Larger

The First Folio of Shakespeare 1623
by: William Shakespeare/Doug Moston

Softcover. NY, Applause, 1st pbk, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 896 pages. A facsimile edition of the original 1623 publication of the bard's works. Recounts the background of the first folio, the earliest and most authoritative collection of Shakespeare's thirty-six plays.

Record # 379209

Price: $80.00
Price: $80.00 

Dante's Thought and Poetry by: Montano, Rocco
Click Image To View Larger

Dante's Thought and Poetry
by: Montano, Rocco

Softcover. Chicago, Gateway Books, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 517 pages. Clean copy.

Record # 379211

Price: $12.00
Price: $12.00 

WALDEN THEN & NOW : AN ALPHABETICAL TOUR OF HENRY THOREAU'S POND by: McCurdy, Michael
Click Image To View Larger

WALDEN THEN & NOW : AN ALPHABETICAL TOUR OF HENRY THOREAU'S POND
by: McCurdy, Michael

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.

Record # 379486

Price: $20.00
Price: $20.00 

Mailer's Last Days: New and Selected Remembrances of a Life in Literature by: J. Michael Lennon
Click Image To View Larger

Mailer's Last Days: New and Selected Remembrances of a Life in Literature
by: J. Michael Lennon

Softcover. Wilkes-Barre PA, Etruscan Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 304 pages. This book of essays by Norman Mailer's biographer, Dr. J. Michael Lennon, collect personal and literary reminiscences, insights, and investigations from the last half century. Through the rising action of his life in literature, Lennon's remembrances track the influence not only of his literary pater familias, Norman Mailer, but his actual father, a booze-bitten blue-collar bibliophile with his own reputation for genius, and how together these mentors forged and focused the 20/20 literary vision Lennon takes to the work of some of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century, from Baldwin and Bishop to Didion and DeLillo and, not least, Mailer himself.

Record # 379560

Price: $20.00
Price: $20.00 

The Japanese Novel of the Meiji Period and the Ideal of Individualism by: Janet A. Walker
Click Image To View Larger

The Japanese Novel of the Meiji Period and the Ideal of Individualism
by: Janet A. Walker

Hardcover. Pinceton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 315 pages. The Western ideal of individualism had a pervasive influence on the culture of the Meiji period in Japan (1868-1912). Janet Walker argues that this ideal also had an important influence on the development of the modern Japanese novel. Focusing on the work of four late Meiji writers, she analyzes their contribution to the development of a type of novel whose aim was the depiction of the modern Japanese individual. Professor Walker suggests that Meiji novels of the individual provided their readers with mirrors in which to confront their new-found sense of individuality. Her treatment of these novels as confessions allows her to discuss the development of modern Japanese literature and "the modern literary self" both in themselves and as they compare their prototypes and analogues in European literature. The author begins by examining the evolution of a literary concept of the inner self in Futabatei Shimei's novel Ukigumo (The Floating Clouds), Kitamura Tokoku's essays on the inner life, and Tayama Katai's I-novel Futon (The Quilt). She devotes the second half of her book to Shimazaki Toson, the Meiji novelist who was most influenced by the ideal of individualism. Here she traces Toson's development of a personal ideal of selfhood and analyzes in detail two examples of the lengthy confessional novel form that he created as a vehicle for its expression.

Record # 379852

Price: $30.00
Price: $30.00 

Cristobal De Virues by: John G. Weiger
Click Image To View Larger

Cristobal De Virues
by: John G. Weiger

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.

Record # 379853

Price: $20.00
Price: $20.00 

Seven Voices: Seven Latin American Writers Talk to Rita Guibert by: Guibert, Rita
Click Image To View Larger

Seven Voices: Seven Latin American Writers Talk to Rita Guibert
by: Guibert, Rita

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 436 pages. Interviews with: Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Angel Asturias, Octavio Paz, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Guillermo Cabera Infante. B&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Record # 379855

Price: $18.00
Price: $18.00 

The Sun Is But a Morning Star: Studies in West Coast Poetry and Poetics by: Lee Bartlett
Click Image To View Larger

The Sun Is But a Morning Star: Studies in West Coast Poetry and Poetics
by: Lee Bartlett

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.

Record # 379858

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 

The Wisdom Of The Heart by: Henry Miller
Click Image To View Larger

The Wisdom Of The Heart
by: Henry Miller

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

Record # 379903

Price: $25.00
Price: $25.00 

Letters of Ayn Rand by: Rand, Ayn (edited by Michael S. Berliner)
Click Image To View Larger

Letters of Ayn Rand
by: Rand, Ayn (edited by Michael S. Berliner)

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of the letters by the influential writer of Atlas Shrugged and other acclaimed works offers a unique view of her world, in both the personal and the professional spheres. 681 pages, clean copy.

Record # 379956

Price: $25.00
Price: $25.00 

What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life by: Mark Doty
Click Image To View Larger

What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life
by: Mark Doty

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.

Record # 379959

Price: $15.00
Price: $15.00 


  

Rare & Antiquarian Literature

Our literature shelves hold used, rare and out-of-print books on writers and writing: literary criticism, essays, letters, autobiography and multi-volume collected works. Titles include Hans Christian Andersen's The Fairy Tale of My Life, Albert Murray's South to a Very Old Place and Thomas Fensch's Steinbeck and Covici.

Collectors will find substantial sets and antiquarian printings, such as Thomas Moore's seventeen-volume The Works of Lord Byron and works in the original language like Georges Simenon's Le Roman de l'Homme. Editions range from later reprints to scarce cloth-bound hardcovers, and each is described down to its edition and binding.

As these are used and rare books, condition and availability vary from copy to copy. Order online and add it to your shelf.