literature

Hardcover. Gloucester, MA, Peter Smith, Reprint, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 321 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Green cloth covered boards with light wear to edges & black titles to spine. Faint soil to top edge. Otherwise clean inside and out. Tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 272 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. This is the story of John McGahern's childhood, of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature.

Softcover. Merrick NY, Cross-Cultural Communications, 1st pbk, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 48 pages. Edited and translated from the Italian by Stanislao G. Pugliese. Ignazio Silone, anti-fascist and founding member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) offers a politically conscious and soul searching memoir which details his own PSI activities and the various factors engendering the "necessity for action on behalf of liberty and democracy among the working classes." Over the course of his political career, Silone wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction works, and was imprisoned in Italy, France, Spain, and finally in Switzerland where he composed this memoir in 1942. Often compared with Andre Malraux and Albert Camus, Silone was awarded an honorary degree by Yale University, was a recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, and was twice considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. INSCRIBED BY PUGLIESE on the title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1st, 1854, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 385 pages. Embossed brown cloth covers w/ gilt lettering. Chips from top and bottom of spine. Rubbing to cover corners. Previous owner's signature inside front cover. Else a nice, tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Seven Stories Press, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 431 pages. A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards by most French standards; formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Deguignet is unique not only as a literate Breton peasant, but in his skepticism for the church, his interest in science, astronomy and languages, and for his keen--often caustic--observations of the world and people around him. Born into rural poverty in 1834, Deguignet escapes Brittany by joining the French Army in 1854, and over the next fourteen years he fights in the Crimean war, attends Napoleon III's coronation ceremonies, supports Italy's liberation struggle, and defends the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico. He teaches himself Latin, French, Italian and Spanish and reads extensively on history, philosophy, politics, and literature. He returns home to live as a farmer and tobacco-seller, eventually falling back into dire poverty. Throughout the tale, Deguignet's freethinking, almost anarchic views put him ahead of his time and often (sadly, for him) out of step with his contemporaries. Deguignet's voluminous journals (nearly 4,000 pages in total) were discovered in a farmhouse in Brittany a century after they were written. This narrative was drawn from them and became a surprise bestseller when published in France in 1998. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 430 pages. James Olney, one of the most distinguished scholars of autobiography, tells the story of an evolving literary form that originated in the autobiographical writings of St. Augustine, underwent profound changes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life-writing trilogy, and found a momentary conclusion in the work of Samuel Beckett.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Panjandrum/Aris Books, 1st, April 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 251 pages plus index, b&w photographs. Light edge wear, rubbing to dust jacket. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Lewer, 1st, 1838, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in 3/4 leather with marbled boards, black calf spine labels with gilt lettering, 396 pages, American Edition noted on title page; its London parent, "The Metropolitan: A monthly journal of literature, science, and the fine arts" was a London monthly journal established by Thomas Campbell in 1831 and continued, under various editors, until 1850. Clean bright copy.

Softcover. US, Damiani, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 110 pages, softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Absence of Subject and Two Crowns of the Egg are Somoroff's most intriguing books of photography. In this edition of Two Crowns, the still life art work is as stunning as the female nudes. Of note, the rare combinations of objects (such. books of literature, high polished knives, exquisite dishes) and life matter (such pomegranates, honey, eggs, human skulls) set one's imagination in fire. These strange image compositions are as odd as the pairing of words by Postmodern poet Giannina Braschi who writes love poems to objects, animals, beings. The scholarly introduction by art historian Donald Kuspit is respectable but a bit dry. Regardless the imagery and poetry tower over any essay that one could write about them.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Princeton Studies in International Economics No. 89, May 2001. 58 pages. Gray stiff wrapper. Overall, a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st pbk, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 261 pages. This edition contains diaries of 1948 and 1949. Country houses, some grand and some by no means as grand as their owners think they are, form the backdrop to an endlessly entertaining procession of people, even more varied than the houses. A clean copy of the fourth volume of JLM's diaries.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 530 pages. Books about thinkers require a kind of unity that their thought may not possess. This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Clean, bright copy, as new.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st English, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 131 pages. With an introduction by award-winning author Alberto Manguel, Milongas is Edgardo Cozarinsky's love letter to tango, and the diverse array of people who give it life. Argentine writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky traces [tango's] fascinating journey through time and the seedy brothels and rough Argentine and European bars where the dance could be quite mannered or could spark with theatrical violence . . . Cozarinsky takes us through the ebbs and flows of the popularity of the tango, and also through a number of its evolutionary adaptive speciations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 429 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY EDITOR, JULIA COLLIER HARRIS. Light edge wear to covers, dust jacket. Inscribed on front fly leaf to Dr. Small from the Harrises. Tight copy.

Hardcover. London , B. Blake, 1st Thus, 1837, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 848 pages. Hardcover. Marbled edges and endpapers. Raised bands on spine. Clipping of a silhouette of Edward Gibbon pasted on to front end paper. Previous owners notes in pencil on front endpapers. Wear to covers, especially corners. Rubbing. Chipping at spine. Clean, unmarked text.

Hardcover. NY, Sterling, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with blue cloth spine, 12 pages with 6 pop-up spreads. Call me Ishmael." Three of the most famous words in all literature, they begin Herman Melville's masterpiece, Moby-Dick. Now, the epic saga of Captain Ahab's obsessive quest for the white whale comes vividly to life in this three-dimensional graphic novel, the first of its kind. This phenomenal work is the creation of multi-talented artist Sam Ita, apprentice to Robert Sabuda, one of the world's master paper engineers. Every amazing element is awe-inspiring: there's not just one pop-up per spread, but several, surrounded by colorful comic book-style panels that convey the story's drama. Some of the pops-ups are huge and incredibly detailed, like the Pequod itself, which rises gloriously from the page, complete with rigging. Others, smaller but no less wonderful, hide beneath flaps and folds. In one instance, readers actually get to look through a 3-D periscope and see Ishmael through the lens, drifting in the ocean. Clean copy w/o any flaws to paper.

Hardcover. NY, Brewer & Warren, 1st US, 1930, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, marbled boards with green cloth spine, 494 pages. A scholarly biography of the great French dramatist, b&w illustrations. Light shelf wear. Top of spine has some fading/sunning, no markings.

Hardcover. NY , Harper Brothers, 1st, 1904, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover light gray boards stamped with a white and gilt design, gray cloth spine. Top edge gilt. Originally published in France in 1902, this is the first US edition of a play set in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. B&w frontis of the author with a tissue guard. Previous owner's name on the front fly leaf, otherwise an exceptionally clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a price-clipped dust jacket with light wear, 408 pages. The circumstances surrounding Montaigne's writings are described in a review of his life and important personal relationships. Gutter crack after front fly leaf. A sound, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 178 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket with light wear - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 897 pages. John Updike's fiftieth book and fifth collection of assorted prose, most of it first published in The New Yorker, brings together eight years' worth of essays, criticism, addresses, introductions, humorous feuilletons, and - in a concluding section, 'Personal Matters' - paragraphs on himself and his work. Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Dawn Powell, Henry Green, John Cheever, Vladimir Nabokov, and W. M. Spackman are among the authors extensively treated, along with such more general literary matters as the nature of evil, the philosophical content of novels, and the wreck of the Titanic. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, Little, Brown, and Company, 1st, 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 48 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations including frontispiece. [The Children's Friend Series]. Green cloth, Gilt Lettering On Front Cover, Pink Lettering On Spine, Front Cover decorated in three-color design. First Published In A Periodical In 1887, New Copyright 1903 by adopted son, John S.P. Alcott. Some slight rubbing to top and bottom of spine and corners of cover boards. In very good condition.

Hardcover. NY, Hill and Wang, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 261 pages. The day after his mother's death in October 1977, the influential philosopher Roland Barthes began a diary of mourning. Taking notes on index cards as was his habit, he reflected on a new solitude, on the ebb and flow of sadness, and on modern society's dismissal of grief. These 330 cards, published here for the first time, prove a skeleton key to the themes he tackled throughout his work. Behind the unflagging mind, "the most consistently intelligent, important, and useful literary critic to have emerged anywhere" (Susan Sontag), lay a deeply sensitive man who cherished his mother with a devotion unknown even to his closest friends. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 421 pages. A selection of vintage Hellman profiles, interspersed with certain shorter masterpieces of humor that have a quality all their own. Brilliant series of studies of extraordinary people: publisher Alfred A. Knopf, the Countess Mara of cravat-creating fame; the architect Le Corbusier, Alexander Calder, designer Norman Bel Geddes, and many more. Dust jacket rubbed, spine faded. Clean copy.