Rare & Out-of-Print Literature Books - pg. 6 including The Von Richthofen Sisters: The Triumphant and Tragic Modes of Love: Else and Frieda Von Richtofen, Otto Gross, Max Weber, and D. H. Lawrence in the Years 1870-1970 by:

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.

Softcover. NY, Unmuzzled Ox, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 117 pages. publisher's ads, introduction, libretto, illustrated with photos and collages, very good literary arts journal. Clean copy. The libretto of an almost-forgotten opera is translated by a poet of the very first rank, W.H. Auden.

Hardcover. NY, John Day/Reynal & Hitchcock, 1st, 1937, Hardcover, red cloth. 119 pages, drawings by Bernadine Custer. Told for the first time, 40 years after author Rudyard Kipling and his family hurriedly left their home in Vermont, this story fills some blank pages in Kipling's life story. Author Fredric Van de Water had heard the true account from Kipling's brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, which followed smoldering tensions and a public trial. The Kiplings left in 1896, never to return. Several of Kipling's writings were put to paper in the Vermont home. First trade edition after a limited edition of 700. Clean.

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

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 270 pages. In the early eighties, Jennie Erdal was hired by a flamboyant British publisher she calls Tiger to be his specialist editor for Russian books. By degrees he co-opted her time and loyalty, to the point where she ended up becoming his ghostwriter for a huge nonfiction book on women, two glossy novels, and hundreds of newspaper columns, all published under his own name. She also wrote any number of his love letters. With often ironic directness and quiet comedy, Erdal relates how she became seduced into this peculiar job. On the way she makes fascinating excursions into her own private history, from vivid evocations of her Scottish Presbyterian childhood to moving observations on being an abandoned wife and lone parent to piercing insights into the very nature of literary creation. One of the smartest books about writing in years, Ghosting is a tour de force in which the author renders both Tiger and herself as compelling characters, connected to each other by a strange symbiosis. Their interaction is bizarre and also quite spooky; in the end this is a book about the very nature of identity, literary and otherwise. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Parchment, Paper, Pixels offers an engaging exploration of the impact of three technological revolutions on the law. Beginning with the invention of writing, continuing with the mass production of identical copies of legal texts brought about by the printing press, and ending with a discussion of computers and the Internet, Peter M. Tiersma traces the journey of contracts, wills, statutes, judicial opinions, and other legal texts through the past and into the future. Clean copy.

Softcover. Newark DE, Juan De LA Cuesta , 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 139 pages. clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This book examines the far-reaching legacy of one of the great myths of classical antiquity. According to Greek legend, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, secretly buried her brother in defiance of the orders of Creon, king of Thebes. Creon sentenced Antigone to death, but, before the order could be executed, she committed suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon - between the state and the individual, between young and old, between men and women - has captured the Western imagination for more than 2,000 years. Antigone and Creon are as alive in the politics and poetics of our own day as they were in ancient Athens. Here, Steiner examines the treatment of the Antigone theme in Western art, literature and thought, leading us to look again at the unique influence Greek myths exercise on twentieth-century culture.

Hardcover. Chicago, Swallow Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, green pebbled cloth with gilt lettering on spine. 463 pages. Dust jacket worn, fading to spine with chunk gone from spine.Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lughtly worn dust jacket. 589 pages. Light shelf wear, chipping and closed tear to dust jacket. Review slip laid in.

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy pictorial boards, 374 pages. This new biography of Ian Fleming presents a fresh and illuminating portrayal of the iconic creator of James Bond. Oliver Buckton provides the first in-depth exploration of the entire process of Ian Fleming's writing--from initial conception, through composition, to his involvement in the innovative publication methods of his books. He also investigates the vital impact of Fleming's work in naval intelligence during World War Two on his later writings, especially the wartime operations he planned and executed and how they drove the plots of the James Bond novels. Buckton considers the vital role of wartime deception, disinformation, and propaganda in shaping Fleming's later techniques and imaginative creations. Offering a radically new view of Fleming's relationships with women, Buckton traces the role of strong, independent, and intelligent women such as Maud Russell, Phyllis Bottome, and his wife, Ann, on Fleming's portrayal of female characters. The book concludes with a thorough analysis of the James Bond films from Eon productions, and their influence in promoting, while also distorting, the public's recognition of Fleming's writing. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, John Lane, 1st, 1896, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, polished blue calf with ornate gilt rule to edges of both covers, spine with brown calf label with gilt lettering. Top edge gilt, blue and gray pattern endpapers. Decorative gilt design overall on spine. 107 pages, 6 etchings by E. Philip Pimlott. Edited by R.H. Case. A fine anthology of angling poetry, compiled by Buchan and published while he was still a student at Oxford. Sources include William Shakespeare, John Dennys, Phineas Fletcher, WilliamBrowne, Edmund Waller, John Floud, Sir Henry Wotton, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, William Basse, Izaak Walton, John Donne, John Chalkhill, Charles Cotton, John Bunyan, Alexander Pope, John Gay, James Thomson, John Armstrong, and others. Mild sunning to top edge of covers, ink name and short inscription dated '96 on first blank page. Otherwise clean and tight.

Hardcover. Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 201 pages. A fascinating look at the theories behind fairy tales and fantasy. The works of J.R.R.Tolkien and his essay 'On Fairy Stories' is a major focus of the book as are German fairy tales or Marchen and Marx and Fairy tales. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 259 pages. When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O'Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started forty years earlier. As a lifelong O'Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O'Hara's past, but also her father's, and her own. The result is a groundbreaking and kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. Also a Poet explores what happens when we want to do better than our parents, yet fear what that might cost us; when we seek their approval, yet mistrust it.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 328 pages. William Logan has been a thorn in the side of American poetry for more than three decades. Though he has been called the "most hated man in American poetry," his witty and articulate reviews have reminded us how muscular good reviewing can be. These new essays and reviews take poetry at its word, often finding in its hardest cases the greatest reasons for hope. Logan begins with a devastating polemic against the wish to have critics announce their aesthetics every time they begin a review. "The Unbearable Rightness of Criticism" is a plea to read those critics who got it wrong when they reviewed Lyrical Ballads or Leaves of Grass or The Waste Land. Sometimes, he argues, such critics saw exactly what these books were-they saw the poems plain yet often did not see that they were poems. In such wrongheaded criticism, readers can recover the ground broken by such groundbreaking books. Logan looks again at the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Frank O'Hara, and Philip Larkin; at the letters of T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell; and at new books by Louise Gluck and Seamus Heaney. Always eager to overturn settled judgments, Logan argues that World War II poets were in the end better than the much-lauded poets of World War I. He revisits the secretly revised edition of Robert Frost's notebooks, showing that the terrible errors ruining the first edition still exist. The most remarkable essay is "Elizabeth Bishop at Summer Camp," which prints for the first time her early adolescent verse along with the intimate letters written to the first girl she loved. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 248 pages. Errata slip laid in. Name on blank prelim pages. Otherwise clea.

Softcover. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 305 pages. "In The Dark End of the Street, Maria Damon brings a new sensitivity to modern poetic criticism. She adds an important dimension to cultural theory, revealing the struggles of one group of artists as they address improtant questions about art, social life, and the oppression they encounter. Taking as her premise that the intensity of poetic language is an appropriate venue for representing the 'dark end of the street' of social pain, Damon foregrounds the work and lives of a number of modern American poets in order to argue that the American avant-garde is located in the experimental literary works of social 'outsiders."

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

Hardcover. Charlestown MA, Printed and Sold By Samuel Etheridge, Revised Ed., 1810, Book: Very Good, Hardcovers, two volumes complete, 432 and 448 pages. bound in 3/4 calf, with red leather spine labels intact, bindings tight. New corrected edition. A collection of biographical studies on the life of important poets in the cannon of English literature, including: Cowley, Milton, Blackmore, Granville, Somerville, Thomson, Mallet, and Lyttelton. Written by Samuel Johnson, an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. With the original advertisement to the first edition. originally published in 1779-81. Light edgewear to covers, mild water stain to first 4 pages of Vol. 2, otherwise clean, mild foxing, very good set overall.

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.

Privately Printed for the Author by the Arden Press, 1st, 1912, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, ochre cloth covers with gilt title on spine, 132 pages, 3 b&w plates. A biographical study of Samuel Johnson's Jamaican servant. Mild shelf wear. Clean copy.

Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, original blue cloth-backed boards. Quarto. 17 pages & 8 plates. From a limited printing of 385 copies under the direction of Bruce Rogers. Also laid in :2 color photos and one b&w photo of the medallion. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1928, Hardcover, 190 pages, text clean and sound, marbled boards and green quarter-cloth. Contains a collection of letters by the playwright and author Oliver Goldmith, author of She Stoops to Conquer and The Vicar of Wakefield, written between 1752 and 1774. Balderston includes letters which only exist in a fragmentary form, as well as doubtful and forged letters.

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

Hardcover. Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, faded dust jacket. 191 pages. John Chamberlain, a veteran newspaperman and reviewer for the New York Times and other prestigious publications, shares the story of his career. INSCRIBED BY CHAMBERLAIN on the front fly leaf. Introduction by William F. Buckley.

Hardcover. London, The Art Union of London, 1st thus, 1851, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, half-leather, maroon calf over maroon boards with gllt rules, spine with gilt decorated raised bands and lettering. Portrait frontispiece by J[ohn] Gilbert after Sir Joshua Reynolds. 14 pages of Goldsmith's verse followed by 30 plates engraved on wood by J.Thompson, W.T.Green, J.W.Whymper, G.Dalziel, E.Dalziel, &c. after the designs of C.Stanfield, J.Leech, E.H.Corbould, W.L.Leitch, E.M.Ward & others. Some cloth fade to covers, front fly leaf gone, bookplate on inside front cover. Mild foxing.

Softcover. Cambridge UK/US, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 321 pages. Virgil's agricultural poem, the Georgics, forms part of a long tradition of didactic epic going back to the archaic poet Hesiod. This book explores the relationship between the Georgics and earlier works in the didactic tradition, particularly Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"). It is the first comprehensive study of Virgil's use of Lucretian themes, imagery, ideas and language; it also proposes a new reading of the poem as a whole, as a confrontation between the Epicurean philosophy of Lucretius and the opposing world views of his predecessors. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, John Wiley & Son, 1867, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt design and lettering on spine, beveled cloth boards, later printing (1867), 349 pages, top edge gilt. A compilation of 'hidden treasures' within Ruskin's writings. A must for anyone who appreciates the writings of John Ruskin. Some light stain to top margin of first 30 pages, not affecting text, otherwise clean.

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. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 835 pages. Sergey Prokofiev, a compulsive diarist and gifted and idiosyncratic writer, possessed an incorrigibly sardonic curiosity about individuals and events. When he left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, his diaries were recovered from the family flat in Petrograd and later hidden at considerable personal risk by the composer Nikolai Myaskovsky. Prokofiev himself smuggled them out of the country after his first return to the Soviet Union in 1927. The later diaries, written in the West, were brought back by legal decree after the composer's death in 1953, to be kept in an inaccessible section of the Soviet State Archive. Eventually Prokofiev's son Sviatoslav was allowed to transcribe the voluminous contents. When he and his son Sergei eventually emigrated to Paris, they undertook the gigantic task of reproducing the partially encoded manuscript in an intelligible form.Diaries, 1907-1914, the first of three volumes that extend to 1933, covers Prokofiev's years at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Simultaneously attached to and exasperated by the tradition exemplified by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, and Tcherepnin, the brash young genius relishes the power of his talent to irritate, challenge, and finally overcome the establishment. Clean copy.

NY, Coward-McCann, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt title on spine, 383 pages. INSCRIBED BY ROREM on front fly leaf. Clean copy, lacks dust jacket.

Softcover. San Francisco, North Point Press, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, white wraps, 439 pages, b&w photos. INSCRIBED BY ROREM on the frontfly leaf. Clean copy.

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

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt lettering on the spine. No dust jacket. 384 pages, b&w illustrations. The biography of an influential critic gives a vivid picture of American cultural life from the 1880s to the 1920s. INSCRIBED BY ERIK HUNEKER, SON OF JAMES on the front fly leaf. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1974, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, first American edition. SIGNED BY BEDFORD on the half-title page. 769 pages plus index, b&w illustrations. Light damp-wrinkling to pages in last third of book. Lacks dust jacket.

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. Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Blue cloth covers with embossed design, gilt lettering on spine. Writings from the author best known for "The Story of an African Farm". 214 pages, no markings. Owner's small embossed stamp on front fly leaf.

Hardcover. NY, Rarity Press, 1st thus, 1932, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, burgundy cloth covered boards, silver lettering on spine and sliver decoration on front cover still very bright. In a bright, edgeworn dust jacket with minor close tears. 100 b&w illustrations by Norman Lindsay.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, reprint, 1882, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcovers, two-volume set complete. Matching dark brown cloth covers stamped in black and gilt, top edge gilt. 639; vi, 653 pages; index, bibliography, frontispiece portrait in each volume - one a quite formal portrait of Voltaire in his prime, the other a sketch of him in old age. Covers show light wear, name on title pages. This is the second printing, the first published a year earlier. A comprehensive life of the great Enlightenment writer. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, burgundy cloth, 281 pages. Translated and edited with an introduction by Francis Steegmuller. Light fading to spine, name on front fly leaf, otherwise tight and clean copy.

Hardcover. London, W. H. Allen & Co., 1st, 1883, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine and gilt titles and gilt rules to front board. Prefatory note by Bertha Thomas plus 247 pages plus four-page publisher's advertisements for titles in the Eminent Women Series to the rear. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, D.C. Heath & Co., 1st, 1912, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 12mo. 193 pages, beige pictorial paper covered boards, maroon cloth spine, gilt lettering on spine, Folding plate in front. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. After the composition of the Decameron, and under the influence of Petrarch's humanism, Giovanni Boccaccio(1313-1375) devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is Famous Women, the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted exclusively to women. The 106 women whose life stories make up this volume range from the exemplary to the notorious, from historical and mythological figures to Renaissance contemporaries. In the hands of a master storyteller, these brief biographies afford a fascinating glimpse of a moment in history when medieval attitudes toward women were beginning to give way to more modern views of their potential. Famous Women, which Boccaccio continued to revise and expand until the end of his life, became one of the most popular works in the last age of the manuscript book, and had a signal influence on many literary works, including Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Castiglione's Courtier. This edition presents the first English translation based on the autograph manuscript of the Latin.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st thus, 1882, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth with red, black, and gilt embossed spine title, cover title, and bright cover illustration and decoration. Boards have beveled edges. All edges gilt. 70 pages, tissue-guarded frontispiece, 30 full-page illustrations; artists include A.B. Frost. Howard Pyle. Fredericks, J. S. Davis and others. A ballad written in Paris in 1841 at the time of the second funeral of Napoleon and is a narrative of French military history. Slender piece of cloth chipped away on rear cover, otherwise clean, very good.

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.

Softcover. NY, Grove Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 239 pages. Hettie Jones presents an intimate memoir of her life--from her middle-class Jewish family in Queens to her marriage to the controversial black poet LeRoi Jones and her search for her own artistic voice. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st US, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 512 pages, b&w illustrations. Penelope Fitzgerald was a great English writer whose career didn't begin until she was nearly sixty. She would go on to win some of the most coveted awards in literature--the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in an impeccable match of talent between biographer and subject, Hermione Lee, a master biographer and one of Fitzgerald's greatest champions, gives us this remarkable writer's story. Lee's critical expertise is on dazzling display on every page, as it illuminates this extraordinary English life. Fitzgerald, born into an accomplished intellectual family, the granddaughter of two bishops, led a life marked by dramatic twists of fate, moving from a bishop's palace to a sinking houseboat to a last, late blaze of renown. We see Fitzgerald's very English childhood in the village of Hampstead; her Oxford years, when she was known as the "blonde bombshell"; her impoverished adulthood as a struggling wife, mother and schoolteacher, raising a family in difficult circumstances; and the long-delayed start to her literary career.