Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1st US, 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 300 pages, maroon cloth covers with a chipped, edgeworn dust jacket. A collection of scholarly essays with subjects from Herodotus to Kipling, from Greek and Roman literature to Shakespeare.
Softcover. Munich, self-published, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 80 pages, bound in stiff paper wrappers illustrated by Edward Gorey. In an age-toned glassine wrapper. The paper spine has separated from the binding but sound and very repairable. Limited to 300 copies, this copy INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR to Nora and Roger(Roger Shattuck, literary historian and critic, and his wife).
Hardcover. Paris, Tchou, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 253 pages, b&w cartoon drawings by Copi. White cloth covers with black design. A collection of quotes from writers of the Surrealist movement in France. Long preface by Corvin. INSCRIBED BY BOTH AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR (HIS WITH A SKETCH OF A BIRD) to Roger Shattuck, author and chronicler of the period. Publishers complimentary card laid in. Small tan stain to cloth at top of front cover, otherwise very good.
Hardcover. Philadelphia, John Patterson and Friends, 1st, 1924, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 25 pages, b&w frontispiece portrait of Stevenson, green cloth spine over patterned boards. Some wear, fraying to spine, light residue to front pastedown where bookplate may have resided.
Softcover. New York, Viking Press, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 12 page booklet with light tan wrappers, reddish brown type. The text of the author's speech with a b&w photograph of him. Minor discoloration to top of wrapper, probably due to dampness at some time. Still very good.
Hardcover. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1st, 1982, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 191 pages, green cloth covers. A scarce study of the Caribbean writer which has been heavily annotated and underlined by Joyce Adler, the previous owner. Adler was a literary scholar and published two books on Harris herself.
Softcover. Canada, Prince Edward Island Heritage Foundation, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 229 pages, Softcover with light wear to wrappers. b&w photographs, bibliography. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 130 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Purple and orange striped boards with orange wrap-around title label. In a worn, chipped dust jacket currently covered in plastic. Chunk missing from dust jacket on rear bottom. Tight copy.
Hardcover. London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 201 pages, b&w illustrations. Dark red cloth with edgeworn dust jacket, some light pencil notes in preface and rear endpapers. Publisher's review slip laid in.
Hardcover. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press , 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 142 pages, Preface by Farrell. Green cloth binding with gilt on spine. Some light pencil marks in margins, on rear end papers.
Hardcover. Ohio, Kent State University Press , 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover,115 pages, cream cloth with black lettering on spine.
Softcover. Paris, Jose Corti, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 215 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on half title page. French text. Wraparound red band with light wrinkle, wear. Otherwise very good.
Chicago, Ivan Dee, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 239 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins has been hailed as "the father of the detective story." His own life story has a similar mysterious ring to it. When Collins died in 1899 he shocked Victorians by dividing his estate equally between two mistresses. He also acknowledged the three children of one of the mistresses as his own. In The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, William Clarke has pieced together the truth behind this menage a trois, uncovering and exploring, with insight and sympathy, the private relationships of a fascinating writer who was a contemporary of Dickens, Constable, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Rossetti. "A literary coup ... casts a fresh beam of light on the great, dark seam of Victorian sexual mores."--The Observer.
Hardcover. New York , Frederick A. Stokes, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 197 pages illustrated in b&w by Dick Rose. INSCRIBED BY LEAF on the front fly leaf. Leaf went on to write a number of successful children's books, including Ferdinand the Bull. Two-color dust jacket with light edgewear, chipping.
Hardcover. New York , Oxford University Press , 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. brown cloth stamped in gilt, 120 pages. INSCRIBED BY LEACH on the front fly leaf. Originally published by Caxton in 1485, Paris & Vienne marked a change in the style of Literature being written in Europe at the time. Instead of tales of Knightly Romance & Chivalry a move was made towards more realistic down to Earth tales, closer to actual life. Clean, bright copy, no dust jacket.
Hardcover. New York , Bollingen Foundation/Pantheon, 1st thus, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcovers, four volumes in a slipcase. Blue cloth covers with red spine labels, gilt lettering. Unclipped dust jackets. 345,547,540, and volume 4 index 109 pages and photo reproduction of the original 1837 edition in Russian. Bollingen Series LXXII. Slipcase is sound. Clean, bright set with only minoe shelf wear.
Hardcover. New York, Random House, reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 230 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean copy. An autobiography covering the first eleven years of the famed Nigerian poet and dramatist.
Hardcover. Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1st, 1863, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 319 pages. Portrait of Thoreau on frontispiece with tissue guard. First edition, one of 1,558 copies printed. Original publisher's blue-green pebbled cloth with blind-stamped borders and center wreath. Spine lettered in gilt. Brown-coated end papers. Ten essays including a 33 page biographical sketch by Emerson of Thoreau and nine essays by Thoreau, among them the famous "Walking."
Hardcover. Concord MA, Albert Lane/Erudite Press, 2nd Ed., 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray-green boards over green cloth spine, 35 pages, frontis. portrait plus 3 halftone plates. First published in 1890, "It is a pious duty to his memory to correct the errors of fact that were ... reported in the first edition of the Glimpse 1890." Jones was part of the rehabilitation of Thoreau's reputation and appreciation. Previous owner's bookmark on inside front cover, Paper label on spine mostly gone, otherwise clean, very good.
Hardcover. Boston, Charles E. Goodspeed, 1st, 1901, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 71 pages, number 410 of a 500. French hand-made paper, printed by D. B. Updike at the Merrymount Press. Illustrated with one plate and two facsimiles of Thoreau's journal. Gray-green boards with a beige cloth spine with a paper label. Spine and covers darkening, light shelf wear.
Hardcover. Gutersloh GR, C. Bertelsmann,, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 438 pages, chipped dust jacket. GERMAN TEXT. JULIA CHILD'S COPY with her signature, address and 1956 on the front fly leaf.
Hardcover. Boston, David R Godine, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 218 pages. Dust jacket spine slightly sunned, else like new. 21 black & white plates (some folding), and facsimiles. Edited by Nicholas Barker, and published posthumously. Printed at the Stamperia Valdonega. A major work examining the history and development of early Italian writing books from one of the world"s most noted typographic historians.
Hardcover. New York, Scribner's, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 428 pages. Light wear to dust jacket, else a very nice, tight copy. The author probes the complex life and work of Joseph Conrad, a Polish exile in England, his friendships with Ford, Crane, James, and Galsworthy, his varied works, and his affair with American journalist Jane Anderson.
Hardcover. New York, Viking Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 274 pages. Faint foxing to upper edge of brodart protected dust jacket and to top edge, else a very nice, tight copy.
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. New York: , Henry Holt, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 210 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with minor if any wear to edges.
Hardcover. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 464 pages, b&w photographs. Light foxing to top edge. Else a clean, tight copy.
Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Still in shrink-wrap. Spine faded. Else very good. As the acclaimed author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) has been publishing stories and novels for more than sixty years. His brilliant portrayals of race, community, and culture in rural south Louisiana have made him one of the most respected and beloved living American writers. Ernest J. Gaines: Conversations brings together the author's own thoughts and words in interviews that range from 1994 to 2017, discussing his life, his work, and his literary legacy. The interviews cover all of Gaines's works, including his two latest books, Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays (2005) and The Tragedy of Brady Sims (2017). The book provides a retrospective of his work from the viewpoint of a senior writer, now eighty-five years old, and gives an important international perspective on Gaines and his work.
Hardcover. New York, Knopf, Reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 129 pages. Color illustrations by James McMullan. Dust jacket unclipped with slight rubbing. Otherwise, clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 255 pages. A very clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 214 pages. Minor shelf-wear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy in excellent condition.
Hardcover. New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and clean copy.
Softcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st pbk, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 123 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Very clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 225 pages, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on half-title page. Minor dust jacket edge wear and spotting on top edge, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. Saint Paul, Minn., Graywolf Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 245 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Thomas Dunne Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 324 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. B&w photographs, spotless and tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, April 30, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 274 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. In The Shadow Man, the bestselling author of Final Payments and The Company of Women elevates the memoir into an uncompromising and unforgettable art form as she seeks to learn the truth about her lost father. 20 photos.
Hardcover. New York, W W Norton & Co Inc, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 568 pages. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition. Profiles the enigmatic soldier, statesman, and man of letters, offering a wealth of never-before-published missives that shed light on his role in the Arab revolt, his sexuality, and his retreat into obscurity.
Hardcover. University Park, Pa., Penn State University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 348 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Baudelaire's illustrations throughout. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean, bright and tight copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 493 pages. Sun-fading to dust jacket spine, two small closed tears to front cover. Faint foxing to edges, previous owner's signature on front end paper, else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, Volume 2. 438 pages. Light sunning to dust jacket spine, previous owner's signature on front end paper, faint foxing to edges, else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2008, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 873 pages. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Robert Lowell once remarked in a letter to Elizabeth Bishop that "you ha[ve] always been my favorite poet and favorite friend." The feeling was mutual. Bishop said that conversation with Lowell left her feeling "picked up again to the proper table-land of poetry," and she once begged him, "Please never stop writing me letters-they always manage to make me feel like my higher self (I've been re-reading Emerson) for several days." Neither ever stopped writing letters, from their first meeting in 1947 when both were young, newly launched poets until Lowell's death in 1977. Presented in Words in Air is the complete correspondence between Bishop and Lowell. The substantial, revealing-and often very funny-interchange that they produced stands as a remarkable collective achievement, notable for its sustained conversational brilliance of style, its wealth of literary history, its incisive snapshots and portraits of people and places, and its delicious literary gossip, as well as for the window it opens into the unfolding human and artistic drama of two of America's most beloved and influential poets.
Hardcover. New York, Holiday House, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 152 pages. Hardcover with black & white illustrations. Light edgewear to dust jacket with closed tears to front cover. Protected by mylar cover. Clean, tight copy. History of this children's book publishing house followed by chronological listing of all their publications.
Softcover. Washington, Library of Congress, 1st thus, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 139 pages, illustrations in b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers.
Record # 460528
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.
 "Many Minds by: Hutton, Maurice")
 "Petite Folie Collective by: Corvin, Michel and Copi")
 "Five Poems and Letters from Robert Louis Stevenson to Charles Warren Stoddard 1880 by: Stevenson, Robert Louis")
 "Wilson Harris by: Maes-Jelinek, Hena")
 "Years Before \"Anne\": The Early Career of Lucy Maud Montgomery by: Bolger, Francis W.P.")
 "David: A Play by: Lawrence, D.H.")
 "Bibliography of Norman Douglas, A by: Woolf, Cecil")
 "Bibliography of James T. Farrell's Writings 1921-1957 by: Branch, Edgar")
 "Anais Nin: A Bibliography by: Franklin V, Benjamin")
 "Bibliography of Booth Tarkington 1869-1946 by: Russo, Dorothy Ritter and Thelma Lois Sullivan")
 "La Gauche Divine: Chronique des annees 1977-1984 by: Baudrillard , Jean")
 "La Canne de Balzac (SIGNED COPY) by: Dallenbach, Lucien")
 "Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, The by: Clarke, William M.")
 "Selections from Polybius by: Strachan-Davidson (Ed.), James Leigh")
 "Listen Little Girl: Before You Come to New York (SIGNED COPY) by: Leaf, Munro")
 "Paris and Vienne: Translated from the French & Printed by William Caxton. Early English Text Society 234 (SIGNED COPY) by: Leach, MacEdward")
 "Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Translated from the Russian, with a Commentary, by Vladimir Nabokov (4 Vols.) by: Nabokov (Transl.), Vladimir and")
 "Ake: The Years of Childhood by: Soyinka, Wole")
 "Excursions by: Thoreau, Henry D.")
 "Thoreau: A Glimpse by: Jones, Samuel Arthur")
 "Personality of Thoreau, The by: Sanborn, F.B.")
 "Till Eulenspiegel (Julia Child's copy) by: Hauptmamm / Julia Child, Gerhart")
 "Early Italian Writing-Books: Renaissance to Baroque by: Morison, Stanley")
 "Joseph Conrad: A Biography by: Meyers, Jeffrey")
 "Of Outlaws, Con Men, Whores and Politicians & Other Artists by: King, Larry L.")
 "Lost in America by: Singer, Isaac Bashevis")
 "Borrowed Finery: A Memoir by: Fox, Paula")
 "Little Original Sin, A: The life and work of Jane Bowles by: Dillon, Millicent")
 "Conversations with Ernest Gaines by: Lowe, John (Editor)")
 "Toward the Poetics of Surrealism by: Matthews, J. H.")
 "Particularly Cats ... And Rufus by: Lessing, Doris/ James McMullan")
 "Airing Dirty Laundry by: Reed, Ishmael")
 "Something About a Soldier by: Willeford, Charles")
 "Maritime Fiction: Sailors and the Sea in British and American Novels, 1719-1917 by: Peck, John")
 "This Boy's Life; a Memoir (SIGNED COPY) by: Wolff, Tobias")
 "Resistance to Poetry, The (SIGNED COPY) by: Longenbach, James")
 "African Silences (SIGNED COPY) by: Matthiessen, Peter")
 "Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction (SIGNED COPY) by: Baxter, Charles")
 "Friends, Writers, and Other Countrymen: A Memoir (SIGNED COPY) by: Offit, Sidney")
 "Shadow Man, The by: Gordon, Mary")
 "T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters by: Lawrence, T. E. (Malcolm Brown)")
 "Marquand: An American life by: Bell, Millicent")
 "Baudelaire and Caricature: From the Comic to an Art of Modernity by: Hannoosh, Michele")
 "Letters of Henry James, Volume I: 1843-1875, The by: James, Henry")
 "Letters of Henry James, Volume II: 1875-1883, The by: James, Henry")
 "Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell by: Travisano, Thomas (Ed.)")
 "Holiday House: The First Fifty Years by: Freedman, Russell")
 "Stepping away from tradition : children's books of the twenties and thirties : papers from a symposium by: Jagusch, Sybille A.")