literature

Hardcover. US, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 229 pages. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration gathers tributes, reflections, and commentaries on the great thinker and his philosophy, politics, and life-including contributions from Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, Ronald Dworkin, Stephen Spender, and many others.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 304 pages. In 1976, the critic Paul Nelson spent several weeks interviewing his literary hero, legendary detective writer Ross Macdonald. Beginning in the late 1940s with his shadowy creation, ruminating private eye Lew Archer, Macdonald had followed in the footsteps of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but ultimately elevated the form to a new level. "We talked about everything imaginable," Nelson wrote-including Macdonald's often meager beginnings; his dual citizenship; writers, painters, music, books, and movies he admired; how he used symbolism to change detective writing; his own novels and why Archer was not the most important character-"my God, everything." It's All One Case provides an open door to Macdonald at his most unguarded. The book is far more than a collection of never-before-published interviews, though. Published in a handsome, oversized format, it is a visual history of Macdonald's professional career, illustrated with rare and select items from one of the world's largest private archives of Macdonald collectibles. Featuring in full color the covers of the various editions of Macdonald's more than two dozen books, facsimile reproductions of pages from his manuscripts, magazine spreads, and many never before seen photos of Macdonald and his friends (such as Kurt Vonnegut), including those by celebrated photojournalist Jill Krementz. It's All One Case is an intellectual delight and a visual feast, a fitting tribute to Macdonald's distinguished career. Full-color illustrations throughout

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 202 pages. Natalia Ginzburg, arguably the most important woman writer of postwar Italy, always spoke of herself with irrepressible modesty. Yet the woman who claimed she "never managed to climb up mountains" in fact wrote the history of twentieth-century Italy with her sparse and captivating prose, chronicling Fascism, war, and the Nazi occupation as well as the intimacies of family life. Intensely reserved, Ginzburg said that she "crept toward autobiography stealthily like a wolf." But she did openly discuss her life and her work in an extraordinary series of interviews for Italian radio in 1990. Never before published in English, It's Hard to Talk about Yourself presents a vivid portrait of Ginzburg in her own words on the forces that shaped her remarkable life-politics, publishing, literature, and family. This fluid translation will join Ginzburg's autobiography, Family Sayings, as one of the most important records of her life and, as the editors write in their preface, "the last, unexpected, original book by Natalia Ginzburg."

Hardcover. NY, Philosophical Library, 1st US, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers, 265 pages. B&w frontis. portrait. Previous owner's long inscription on front fly-leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 181 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt & Company, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 332 pages. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket with slight crease to rear cover, else a clean, tight copy.

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.

Softcover. St. Louis, Washington University Libraries, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 32 pages in stapled wrappers. An exhibit of printed materials and manuscripts drawn from the Modern Literature Collection of Washington University. Illustrated. Clean copy.

Softcover. St. Louis, Washington University Libraries, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. First edition. From an edition of 1500 copies. Small quarto. illustrated wrappers. 40 pages. With many facsimiles of pages from James Merrill manuscripts, correspondence, etc. Includes short essays on several different aspects of his work as well. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 516 pages. A biography of a brilliant literary figure, a poet, critic, political and social reformer of mid-nineteenth century America. Clean copy.

Softcover. Durango CO, Logbridge-Rhodes, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 150 pages, b&w illustrations. Poems by Wright, with letters, interviews, memoirs, elegies, a chronology, and bibliography. Light fade to spine, otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. Burlington, VT, Ashgate Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 162 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Softcover. New York, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 112 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. This book selects from Jane Bown's whole range of her photography during the forty-five years she has worked for London's Observer, starting with scenes typical of the fifties and ending with others characteristic of the nineties. The portraits, sandwiched between these and forming the body of the book, themselves range widely - from such proven classics as those of Samuel Beckett, Mick Jagger and John Gielgud, to early studies of the Beatles and recent photos of Alan Bennett, Archbishop Tutu, Boy George and Woody Allen among a great variety of famous people in the worlds of music, literature, stage, screen, politics and the arts.

Softcover. New York, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 112 pages. This book selects from Jane Bown's whole range of her photography during the forty-five years she has worked for London's Observer, starting with scenes typical of the fifties and ending with others characteristic of the nineties. The portraits, sandwiched between these and forming the body of the book, themselves range widely - from such proven classics as those of Samuel Beckett, Mick Jagger and John Gielgud, to early studies of the Beatles and recent photos of Alan Bennett, Archbishop Tutu, Boy George and Woody Allen among a great variety of famous people in the worlds of music, literature, stage, screen, politics and the arts. Clean. bright copy.

Softcover. NY, George Braziller, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 437 pages. New Zealand's preeminent writer Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here for the first time in a single volume. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student, and years of incarceration in mental hospitals, eventually followed by her entry into the saving world of writers and the "Mirror City" that sustains them, we are given not only a record of the events of a life, but also "the transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of mirrors." Frame's journey of self-discovery, from New Zealand to London, to Paris and Barcelona, and then home again, is a heartfelt and courageous account of a writer's beginnings as well as one woman's personal struggle to survive. Small patch of tanning to bottom corner of last 80 pages. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Macmillan Company, 1st, 1904, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 541 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Light fraying on edges of cover boards. Previous owner's name on front end paper. Gilt lettering on spine, light brown covers.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with a red cloth spine, 174 pages. A gorgeous look at popular illustrators of the Jazz Age and their influential role in the dynamic culture of the 1920s and '30s The 1920s in the United States was characterized by economic prosperity and dramatic social change. Known as the Jazz Age, it was a time when Black music, art, and literature became a powerful cultural force. Shifting roles for women and trends in youth culture coalesced in the figure of the flapper, causing a moral panic chronicled in the expanding popular press. Exploring how the art of popular illustration helped shape this new consciousness and impacted publishing, politics, and daily life, this volume features works by artists such as Aaron Douglas, Nell Brinkley, John Held Jr., and Lois Mailou Jones. Their striking images illustrated the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Crisis, Liberty, and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as newspapers, novels, and books for children. Essays foreground the contributions of women and Black artists; draw parallels between music, fashion, and the aesthetics of popular illustration; discuss the impact of the Harlem Renaissance and the national growth of the Black press; highlight the legacy of illustrator Howard Pyle and his students; and consider the appropriation of the subversive jazz culture by a white audience. Clean copy.

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

Hardcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 2nd pr., 1967, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 182 pages, 5 pages with red underlining. Brookes examines how Harris drew on his extensive knowledge of African American folklore and culture to create the characters in his work. Brookes classifies the Uncle Remus books under seven major categories: trickster tales, other "creeturs," myths, supernatural tales, proverbs, dialect, and songs.

Softcover. privately printed, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, program for the Memorial services held for the writer/naturalist at the Nest in Riverby, April 2, 1921. A selection of Bible passages, poetry and Burrough's own writings. Two tipped b&w plates. Folded gray wrappers with a string tie, 24 pages printed on gray charcoal paper. Very good, clean.

Hardcover. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 160 pages. This book offers eleven essays on Fante's career, ranging from close thematic analysis of individual stories and novels to broadly informed assessments of Fante's life and art in the context of his times. Major areas explored in the book include Fante's treatment of the Italian-American experience; his relationship to other American writers of the 1930s and beyond; the deeply Catholic nature of Fante's fiction; his unique and still-seminal vision of Los Angeles; and his lifelong concern to render in fiction both the comedy and the horrors of the writing life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Library of America, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 860 pages. Writing with equal insight about New York City, Hollywood, and the small-town Pennsylvania world where he grew up, John O'Hara cultivated an unsentimental and often unsparing realism, aiming, he said, "to record the way people talked and thought and felt . . . with complete honesty." Praised by contemporaries including Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, he wrote about sex, drinking, and social class with a frankness ahead of its time. The fiction he published in The New Yorker (more than any other writer to this day) came to epitomize the kind of short story featured in that magazine, and his impeccable ear and skillful dialogue have influenced later writers such as Raymond Carver. Bringing together sixty stories written over four decades--the largest, most comprehensive collection of O'Hara's stories ever published--former New York Times Book Review editor Charles McGrath presents a fresh and arresting new perspective on one of American literature's master storytellers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in very good dust jacket with mild fading to spine. 184 pages plus index, b&w photographs. Light edge wear, protected by mylar cover. A very clean, tight copy. Written from personal recollection and years of research by the friend and writer Steinbeck knew would one day be his biographer. Emphasizes Steinbeck's formative years: boyhood in Salinas, farmhand, seaman, road-gang flunkie, hod carrier, dam builder and pursuit of wine, women and song.

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.