literature

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1938, 522 pages. Hardcover. Green tweed cloth covers with black & gilt printed design to cover & spine. Dust jacket with moderate toning, now protected with a plastic cover. Light toning & several illustrations in bw throughout. A clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st BC Ed., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with gilt titles, 687 pages, b&w photos. Has the A_3.69 (C), small embossed circle at bottom of rear cover indicating a book club printing. Bright, clean copy, missing the dust jacket.

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.

Hardcover. New York, Esquire, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. SIGNED BY GINGRICH on copyright page. Slip case slight foxing on label. Top edge gilt. Limited Edition.

Softcover. Los Angeles, The Augustan Reprint Society , reprint, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 56 pages. Introduction by Frank Ellis. A facsimile reprint.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 134 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY HALL ON BOOKPLATE ON FRONT END PAPER. Gutter crack on page 132, otherwise tight copy. Newspaper clipping laid in.

Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton & Company, 1st, 1852, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with black title to front board and to spine. 261 pages, publisher's ads. Contains of an early review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as accounts of travels to the Nubian Desert and Arctic, a history of Spanish literature, and literary essays and reviews of works by Dickens, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Hawthorne. Mild foxing, some light chipping and wear to spine.

Hardcover. Christie's, 1987-1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Complete 7 volume set including index, bound handsomely in red cloth over boards with gilt lettering and insignia to front covers, gilt titles to spines. Part I, Eighteenth Century Books Including the Gutenberg Bible; Part II, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts; Part III, Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Western Americana; Part IV, Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Early Printing, Literature, and Fine Bindings; Part V, Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Americana, Literature, and Fine Bindings; Part VI, Printed Books and Manuscripts Concerning William Morris and His Circle; Index and Price Lists. (12" x 9"). 302pp, 125pp, 320pp, 344pp, 316pp, 102pp, 99pp. Color and b/w plates throughout.

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. Knoxville TN, University of Tennessee Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 235 pages. Evelyn Scott was a significant literary figure in American letters of the 1920s and 1930s, an important contributor in the experimental forms and techniques of the modernist movement. She wrote and published in many genres -- the novel, short fiction, poetry, memoir, criticism, and drama. Since that time, Scott's work has been forgotten by most readers and critics, and her reputation as an important writer of her day has been obscured. This collection, which features an introduction and thirteen critical essays, is the first volume to focus on Scott's work rather than her intriguing yet troubled life and initiates a long-needed examination of Scott's innovations in fiction, memoir, and other genres. The various essays take diverse critical approaches to Scott's canon, including her best-known works -- Escapade and The Wave -- and explore her views on topics such as women, politics, religion, art, and the South. Clean copy.

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. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1996, Hardcover, 106 pages, color plates. Edited with an Introduction by William Benton. Illustrated with full-page color reproductions of 40 paintings by Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Bump to bottom lower corner of book. Clean copy.

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. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket with mild tanning, 254 pages. Bound in bright blue cloth in white dust jacket printed in red and black. First Printing stated. A collection of Isherwood's writings from nearly four decades. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 512 pages. B&w illustrations. With this handsome book, David Sweetman, a biographer of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, brings together the dissolute lives of various artists who came to represent decadent fin-de-siecle Paris: Oscar Wilde, Felix Feneon, Alfred Jarry, and, of course, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. As the author reminds us, imitations of the latter's work adorn the walls of French-themed bars worldwide and have become a shorthand for sanitized debauchery. Toulouse-Lautrec--absinthe drinker and brothel frequenter--was instrumental in the development of the poster, but what is his artistic legacy? Although Toulouse-Lautrec dominates the book's subtitle, Sweetman's sweep is much grander. In much the same way as his main subject was, Sweetman proves a sympathetic host to the women of Montmartre, tragic figures such as La Goulue, Jane Avril, and Suzanne Valadon, and he is particularly insightful on the singer Aristide Bruant's influence on the fledgling artist. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Co., 1st, 1993, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 298 pages. A late-life memoir by the notable fiction writer, biographer and critic. Covers a relatively short period of her life, with deeper reflections on a life spent in reading, writing, and observing the world around her. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 335 pages. Five Faces of Modernity is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: modernity, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch, and postmodernism. The concept of modernity-the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours-is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, Name on front fly leaf, several pages with light ink markings.

Hardcover. New Haven , Yale University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages. Examines concepts of female beauty in terms of the ideal and the real, investigating paradigms of beauty as represented in art and literature and how beauty has been enhanced by cosmetics and hairstyles. Images of some of the most beautiful women in history, both real and ideal, accompanied by illustrations from costume books, fashion plates, advertisements, caricatures, etc. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages. Examines concepts of female beauty in terms of the ideal and the real, investigating paradigms of beauty as represented in art and literature and how beauty has been enhanced by cosmetics and hairstyles. Images of some of the most beautiful women in history, both real and ideal, accompanied by illustrations from costume books, fashion plates, advertisements, caricatures, etc. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap.

NY, Paddington Press, reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a nice dust jacket, light fading to spine. Black & white illustrations, 569 pages.

Softcover. NY, Schocken Books, reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 222 pages, b&w illustrations. The Falashas, who are the most isolated and most ancient Jewish community extant, have preserved their own religious writings through the centuries. No one knows for certain how Judaism reached this part of Africa. They observe the Sabbath as indicated in the Torah, eat only kosher food, pray in straw-roofed synagogues, and use only unleavened bread during the seven days of Passover. This book offers a cross section of their sacred literature, translated for the first time into English from Ethiopic sources. In addition, the translator provides a detailed description of the life and mores of the Falashas, based on his personal experience and observation during a prolonged stay in their community. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 337 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Essays by the New York City cultural critic; examines the work of artists, filmmakers and writers ranging from Anton Chekov to J. K. Rowling, including Stanley Kubrick, The Sopranos, Sex in the City, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and Barbara Kingsolver. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2nd pr., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with fading to spin, 530 pages. 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. Clean 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.