Rare & Out-of-Print Literature Books

Hardcover. Edinburgh/London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1st thus, 1893, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 187 pages plus publisher's catalog in rear. "Carefully Re-Edited, with Sketches never before published." Mainly a reprint of Hawker's contributions to "Notes and Queries", "Household Words", "All the Year Round". Frontis. photo of Morwenstow Church, protected by tissue guard. Also pasted to inside front cover a clipping of two photos: Hawker and his second wife, taken about the time of their marriage.

Hardcover. NY/London, G. P. Putnum's Sons, 1st illust. thus, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt stamping, 242 pages. 24 woodcuts and some decorations by Tunnicliffe. First Illustrated Edition which has been enlarged by the author and contains several new essays. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 274 pages, with b&w photographs. Very clean and tight copy. Unauthorized biography of Hunter Thompson. Perry takes us on a journey through Thompson's booze and drug fueled rise to fame. From a young yahoo in Louisville, Kentucky-drinking heavily and playing with his rifle, to the first hand secrets of Thompson's inventive and irreverent gonzo jounralism. A look at a man who was a horror to some, a hero to others.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 3rd pr., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 541 pages. It wasn't all black or white. It wasn't a vogue. It wasn't a failure. By restoring interracial dimensions left out of accounts of the Harlem Renaissance--or blamed for corrupting it--George Hutchinson transforms our understanding of black (and white) literary modernism, interracial literary relations, and twentieth-century cultural nationalism in the United States. What has been missing from literary histories of the time is a broader sense of the intellectual context of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hutchinson supplies that here: Boas's anthropology, Park's sociology, various strands of pragmatism and cultural nationalism--ideas that shaped the New Negro movement and the literary field, where the movement flourished. Hutchinson tracks the resulting transformation of literary institutions and organizations in the 1920s, offering a detailed account of the journals and presses, black and white, that published the work of the "New Negroes." This cultural excavation discredits bedrock assumptions about the motives of white interest in the renaissance, and about black relationships to white intellectuals of the period. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Frederick Ungar, 1st thus, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 263 pages. 1st American Edition of this Abridged Translation. This is Kraus's masterpiece, with half of Europe as its stage. It is presented here in English for the first time, in an abridged version that preserves the essence of the 800-page original. Its influence on Brecht, Ionesco, and other playwrights is acknowledged. Mingling actual quotations, news reports, and government orders with Kraus's own satiric dialogue, this immense drama (never meaning to be performed) offers a vast fresco of events at the front and at home during, as it prophesied, the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, Kraus anticipated the development of atomic warfare and its threat to all mankind. Some of Kraus is untranslatable, but, as Stanley Kauffmann wrote in his New Republic review, "Ungar has done us a benefit at least by bringing us a bit closer to this sharp-eyed, angry, prickly, lover-hater of mankind." INSCRIBED BY FREDERICK UNGAR, the editor and publisher on the half-title page. He also wrote the 14 page introduction. Clean copy.

Softcover. Bowling Green OH, Journal of Popular Culture, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages 701-909. Articles include: Philip Gordon on Ayn Rand. Louis F. Helbig on Struwwelpeter: an inquiry into the effects of violence in children's literature. French folk songs. D. L. Ashliman on the American Indian in German Travel Narratives and Literature. Clean.

Softcover. Ft., Texas Christian University, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 435 pages. INSCRIBED BY BONAZZI on the title page. This authorized biography by Robert Bonazzi, is based on John Howard Griffin's Journals from 1950-1980. Griffin was blinded in the South Seas during WWII, but regained sight in 1957, after which he wrote the classic Black Like Me. Bonazzi follows Griffin year by year after 1961, when Griffin toured the globe as a lecturer on human rights.

Softcover. Boston, Exact Change, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 342 pages. INSCRIBED BY ESHLEMAN in red ink on the half-title page. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 301 pages. Stated First printing on copyright page, $5.95 price on front flap. A collection of articles written for The New Yorker 1958-1965. Some tanning to dj. small price stamp on front flap, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Ann Arbor MI, The University of Michigan Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 354 pages. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on title page. Light pencil marking to 5 pages, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Bennington VT, Bennington College, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in green stapled wrappers. No. 628 of 1,000 numbered copies. Published in the Bennington Chapbooks in Literature series & in memory of William Trot. A speech delivered by Malamud at Bennington College as Lecture Seven in the Belitt Lectureship Series, October 30th, 1984. Introduction by Nicholas Delbanco. Illustrated with 3 full-page black & white photos of Malamud. Clean copy.

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

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

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon/Bollingen Foundation, 1st, 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 384 pages. Translated by Mary Hottinger, Tania Stern and James Stern, with introduction by Hermann Broch. Previous seller's price on front fly leaf in crayon, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket, 404 pages. Reed Whittemore vividly re-creates the complex mix of intensity, humor, anguish, modesty, pride, lustiness, and domesticity that was William Carlos Williams, and gives an admirably focused picture of the turbulent and creative era on which he had such a formative influence. This is a biography of unusual acuteness, energy, and warmth.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2nd pr., 1945, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn and chipped dust jacket, 247 pages. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on the title page. Illustrated with 10 b&w plates.

Softcover. Fayetteville AK, University of Arkansas Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 131 pages. Ciardi records his days and nights as a gunner on a B-29 in the South Pacific during four of the last terrible months of World War II. Clean copy.

Softcover. DeKalb IL, Northern Illinois University Press, 1st pbk, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 232 pages. From the time of the first written sacred texts in the West, taboo has proscribed the act and art of translation. So argues the author of this book, exploring the age-old prohibition of translation of sacred texts. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 171 pages. One of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to create a luminous work that defies categorization. In stunning language, Darwish's self-elegy inhabits a rare space where opposites bleed and blend into each other. Prose and poetry, life and death, home and exile are all sung by the poet and his other. On the threshold of immortality, the poet looks back at his own existence, intertwined with that of his people. Clean Copy.

Indianapolis , Indiana Historical Society, 1st, 1949, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 303 pages, blue cloth spine, beige cloth covers. Library stamp on front fly leaf and title page, bottom edge. Internally clean.

Hardcover. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 2nd printing, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 259 pages. Biography by Issac Bashevis Singer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Paintings and drawings by Raphael Soyer. Slight yellowing to pictorial dust jacket, else a lovely copy in clear mylar cover.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 537 pages. Slight edgewear, rubbing to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. US, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 228 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket with light soil to rear cover.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, Counterpoint, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 288 pages. In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to northern California, to a homestead in the Sierra foothills where he intended to build a house and settle on the land with his wife and young sons. He had just published his first book of essays, Earth House Hold. A few years before, after a long absence, Wendell Berry left New York City to return to land near his grandfather's farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and lived there with his wife as they restored an old house on their newly acquired homestead. In 1969 Berry had just published Long-Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture and of the new environmental movement had yet to meet, but they knew each other's work, and soon they began a correspondence. Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on American political and literary culture, nor could they have appreciated the impact they would have on one another. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Scribners, Reprint, 1957, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 226 pages. Cover cloth slightly faded with rubbing at corners. Dust jacket worn with chipping along edges. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Paris, J. Hetzel, Reprint, 1867, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 636 pages. Hardcover. French text only. Previous owners name at top left corner of preliminary page dated 1868. Gilt title and decorations on red leather spine with embossed pebbled cloth covers. Satirical black & white illustrations by Jean-Jacques Grandville. Marbled endpapers. All edges gilt. Light rubbing to cover edges and spine. Small area of discoloration on lower section of front cover. Clean, bright pages.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, reprint, 1892, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 260 pages. Gilt top edge. Light edge wear, rubbing to covers. Bookplate inside front cover. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1st ed., 1982, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 220 pages. Purple cloth boards with gilt lettering along spine. Few pages of light pencil underlining. Dust jacket has some foxing, mainly on flaps, and discoloring. Tight copy. The idea of man as an essentially irrational being has preoccupied some of the most influential of Russian thinkers, including the three important Soviet writers considered by Dr Edwards in this book. Since the 1917 Revolution the polemic between rationalists and irrationalists has become directly relevant to the way life is lived in the Soviet Union, and a knowledge of the irrationalist point of view is essential for an understanding of much of Soviet literature and of the foundations of Soviet dissidence. As with other titles in this series, this book is not intended simply for the specialist. The broad speculations arising from the subject will fascinate all those who take a serious interest in the Russian literary tradition; a tradition whose principal figures have been concerned to reject philosophical and political creeds that, in seeking to produce a perfect human being in a perfect society, point in fact towards a vision of hell.

Softcover. Los Angeles, CA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Reprint, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 77 pages. Softcover. Augustan Reprint Society. Pamphlet with staple binding. Light tanning to cover, cover is becoming detached from bound pages. No pages missing or ripped. Very good condition. Previous owner's name written on front cover. Some underlining and brief notes written inside (pencil)."The most satisfactory of Collins' many pamphlets and books..."

Hardcover. New York, Viking, 1st thus, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 135 pages. Previous owners name at top right edge of front endpaper. Minor foxing to preliminary pages. Maroon cloth covers with narrow section of fade at top edge of front cover. Dust jacket with edgewear, light chipping and tiny holes along folds - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, tight copy.

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. Lincoln NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 153 pages. SIGNED BY KOOSER on title page. Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the Bohemian Alps of southeastern Nebraska.

Hardcover. Jackson, FL, San Marco Bookstore, rep., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 98 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Dist jacket faded and sunned on spine and partly rear.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. 410 pages, b&w illustrations. Best known as the author of "Windows for the Crown Prince, " an account of her years as English tutor to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, Elizabeth Gray Vining now tells the full story of her life, including impressions of Japan that she omitted from her earlier book. Previous owner'e signature on Front fly leaf otherwise clean.

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

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

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Illustrated by Al Hirschfeld. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with mild edgewear, 253 pages. Considered depraved by some and magnificent by others, Lady Chatterley's Lover was a genetic controversy the world over, inspiring landmark judicial opinions. After 50 years it's literary reputation is not yet secure -- the scent of pornography still clings. In DH Lawrence's" Lady " outstanding critics, assessing the work from a different perspective, reveal vast importance to her literature and our culture. Edited by Michael Squires and Dennis Jackson, these essays offer vigorous and perceptive readings that see the novel as it could not have been viewed at the time when it first appeared.

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, 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, 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. NY, Harper & Row, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 119 pages. A book on linguistics by Noam Chomsky, written with the purpose of deepening 'our understanding of the nature of language and the mental processes and structures that underlie its use and acquisition'. Chomsky wished to shed light on these underlying structures of the human language, and subsequently whether one can infer the nature of an organism from its language. Cartesian linguistics refers to a form of linguistics developed during the time of RenE Descartes, a prominent 17th century philosopher whose ideas continue to influence modern philosophy. In Cartesian Linguistics, Chomsky traces the development of linguistic theory from Descartes to Wilhelm von Humboldt, that is, from the period of the Enlightenment directly up to Romanticism. The central doctrine of Cartesian linguistics maintains that the general features of grammatical structure are common to all languages and reflect certain fundamental properties of the mind. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Atlanta, Peachtree Publishers, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 281 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Biblioasis, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 290 pages. Bruce Jay Friedman has done it all, charming the glitziest industries of American golden-age culture for more than half a century. Lucky Bruce is his long-awaited memoir, and it's everything we'd expect and more: here is Friedman at his best, waltzing from Madison Avenue to Hollywood and back again, and reilluminating with brilliant clarity the dazzle of post-war American life. Cameos by Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Mario Puzo, Lillian Hellman, Warren Beatty, Marlene Dietrich, Brian Grazer, Candida Donadio, Crazy Joe Gallo, Joyce Carol Oates, Jack Richardson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kurt Vonnegut, and the irreplaceable Elaine. Clean copy.