literature

Hardcover. NY, John Day/Reynal & Hitchcock, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light tan cloth, 119 pages. B&w line illustrations by Bernadine Custer. Rudyard Kipling lived with his wife on a small estate in Dummerston, Vermont, in a house they built called Naulakha, from 1892 to 1896. It was while he was here that he wrote both "The Jungle Book" and "Captains Courageous". Kipling would have been content to live out his life there but in 1896, a dispute arose between the Kiplings an a neighbor led to a court case and the Kiplings left Vermont never to return. This volume, written by a Dummerston native and historian, tells the story of that dispute. Lacks dust jacket, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, John Day/Reynal & Hitchcock, 1st, 1937, Hardcover, red cloth. 119 pages, drawings by Bernadine Custer. Told for the first time, 40 years after author Rudyard Kipling and his family hurriedly left their home in Vermont, this story fills some blank pages in Kipling's life story. Author Fredric Van de Water had heard the true account from Kipling's brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, which followed smoldering tensions and a public trial. The Kiplings left in 1896, never to return. Several of Kipling's writings were put to paper in the Vermont home. First trade edition after a limited edition of 700. Clean.

Softcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 309 pages. A major contribution to the cultural and literary history of the Victorian age, Rule of Darkness maps the complex relationship between Victorian literary forms, genres, and theories and imperialist, racist ideology. Critics and cultural historians have usually regarded the Empire as being of marginal importance to early and mid-Victorian writers. Patrick Brantlinger asserts that the Empire was central to British culture as a source of ideological and artistic energy, both supported by and lending support to widespread belief in racial superiority, the need to transform "savagery" into "civilization," and the urgency of promoting emigration.Rule of Darkness brings together material from public records, memoirs, popular culture, and canonical literature. Brantlinger explores the influence of the novels of Captain Frederick Marryat, pioneer of British adolescent adventure fiction, and shows the importance of William Makepeace Thackeray's experience of India to his novels. He treats a number of Victorian best sellers previously ignored by literary historians, including the Anglo-Indian writer Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug and Seeta. Brantlinger situates explorers' narratives and travelogues by such famous author-adventurers as David Livingstone and Sir Richard Burton in relation to other forms of Victorian and Edwardian prose. Through readings of works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, John Hobson, and many others, he considers representations of Africa, India, and other non-British parts of the world in both fiction and nonfiction. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 236 pages. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. In the three decades following Stalin's death, major underground Russian writers have subverted Soviet ideology by using parody to draw attention to its basis in utopian thought. Referring to utopian writing as diverse as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and Orwell's Animal Farm, they have tested notions of truth, reality, and representation. They have gone beyond their precursors by experimenting with the tensions between ludic and didactic art. Edith Clowes explores these "meta-utopian" narratives, which address a wide range of attitudes toward utopia, to expose the challenge that literary play poses to dogmatism and to elucidate the sense of renewal it can bring to social imagination. Using both structural analysis and reception theory, she introduces readers outside Russia to a fascinating body of literature that includes Aleksandr Zinoviev's The Yawning Heights, Abram Terts's Liubimov, Vladimir Voinovich's Moscow 2042, and Liudmila Petrushevskaia's "The New Robinsons."

Softcover. Los Angeles, Rare Bird Books, 1st US, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 122 pages. Advance Readers Copy. 'A great Russian novel in the grand Russian tradition' - LE FIGARO. Years after the death of their beloved son, there is a knock at the door of Nikolai and Vera's apartment. Introducing himself simply as 'Sergeant Bertrand', the unknown visitor triggers a precipitous journey into the depths of the human soul. Hailed as an early masterpiece of post-Soviet literature, Russian Gothic is now available in English for the first time. Three decades after it was written, its complex portrait of grief, misogyny, violence and love is as fresh, shocking and relevant as ever. Aleksandr Skorobogatov was born in Grodno in what is now Belorussia. He is one of the most original Russophone writers of the post-communist era. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press , 1st, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 292 pages. Light edgewear, rubbing to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1st, 1936, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 148 pages. Black & white illustrations by Rockwell Kent. 1st edition review copy. "Review Copy" with date and price stamped on front endpaper. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Tanning along top edge of pages. Darkening to spine, and top edges of covers. Clean, tight copy.

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.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 2nd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a pric-clipped dust jacket that has a bright red cover but fading to spine. 372 pages, clean copy. Describes the influence of Cesar Chavez, leader of the United Farm Workers. The growth of that influence among Mexican-Americans and many other concerned Americans. The years when Chavez called for boycotts, and the greatest agricultural labor strike in U.S. and the greatest agricultural labor strike in U.S. history, the struggle for justice and a means to reverse the order of the system. A book about the man. Cesar Chavez.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 3rd pr., 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 231 pages. Frontispiece facsimile manuscript page showing names of the accused at Salem. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion, individual and organized, which had been growing for more than a generation before the witch trials. Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it. From rich and varied sources-many previously neglected or unknown-Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the events of 1692 more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the already massive literature on Salem. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, reprint, 1835, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound, gilt lettering on spine, 262 pages. VOL. 2 ONLY. The first original work by Washington Irving (after a collaboration with Howard Payne). A whimsical collection of essays poking fun at the tastes, activities, and political trends of New York, and reflecting the aristocratic, Federalist sympathies of the authors. The "Whim-Whams and Opinions" include contributions by Irving, James Kirke Paulding, and Irving's younger brother William Irving Jr. During his lifetime, Irving refused to permit Salmagundi to be reprinted in his collected works. Originally printed in 20 periodical pamphlets (1807-1808). Clean copy of the second volume. Top of spine chipped.

Softcover. University of Chicago Press, 1st pbk, 1999, Softcover, 327 pages. Few cultures have received as much attention in the study of erotic desire, sexuality, and gender as the Sambia of Papua New Guinea. Here, for the first time, is a collection of groundbreaking essays and a new introduction on the Sambia's sexual culture by the renowned anthropologist Gilbert Herdt. Over the course of 20 years, Herdt made 13 field trips to live with the Sambia in order to understand sexuality and ritual in the context of warfare and gender segregation. Herdt's essays examine Sambia fetish and fantasy, ritual nose-bleeding, the role of homoerotic insemination, the role of the father and mother in the process of identity formation, and the creation of a "third sex" in nature and culture. He also discusses the representation of homosexuality in cross-cultural literature on premodern societies, arguing that scholars have long viewed desires through the tropes of negative western models. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Barnes & Noble, reprint, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 194 pages. Includes a bibliography of Bannerman's books and 47 reproductions of the first British and first American editions and her illustrations for them. Phyllis Yuill and Justin Schiller helped with the publishing history and supplied illustrations. Hay shows that it was the illustrations of later artists that provoked the controversy over THE STORY OF LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, not Bannerman's original text or pictures. Bound in the original gilt-stamped red boards. From the dust jacket: "This first biography of Helen Bannerman covers much new ground and is based on the vast collection of letters to the children, usually lovingly illustrated, in the possession of the Bannerman family. As well as telling the story of one of the most popular children's books of all time, Elizabeth Hay's biography offers an intimate picture of the daily life of a British memsahib in the heyday of the Raj." Clean copy.

NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 188 pages. SIGNED BY OFFUTT on title-page.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt stamping, 85 pages. First edition, first printing with date to title page matching that copyright page. Seven b&w plates by the author. A 1926 work by Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran. It contains eighty-five pages of aphorisms, poems, and parables that demonstrate Gibran's characteristic ability to masterfully encapsulate profound concepts in just two or three lines. Gilt lettering on spine faded. There is a previous owner's name in red ink on the front fly leaf, otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1st Edition, 1860, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 267 pages. Hardcover. Black cloth cover boards, Blind-stamped with decoration, gilt title on spine. Very Good condition. Rubs to the corners and spine tips. Gilt top edge (faded). Edges and pages have tanning from age. Dark endpapers. Binding good. Spine straight. Pages unmarked except title page with original owner's name and address in top right corner. 19 tales.

Hardcover. Francestown NH, Marshall Jones Company, 3rd pr., 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt. Dust jacket edgeworn, chipped. 295 pages. Revised Edition. Third Printing. INSCRIBED by Rosamond Thaxter ("Rosie") on half title page.

Softcover. Los Angeles, The Augustan Reprint Society , reprint, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, Introduction by Vincent Carrata plus 52 pages. Facsimile reprints. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press;, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages. Saul Steinberg (1914-99) described himself as a "writer who draws," thus inspiring curator Smith to characterize Steinberg's brilliantly satiric drawings as "illuminations," thus linking his work to illuminated manuscripts and, given Steinberg's love of literature, to a particular favorite, Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations. Smith also explores Steinberg's mission to illuminate the overlooked and the absurd. In the biographical sections of his beautifully crafted critique, Smith affectingly recounts Steinberg's life as a Jew in anti-Semitic Romania and an architecture student in Fascist Milan whose distinctive cartoons served as his ticket out of Nazi Europe and onto the pages of the New Yorker. Both Smith and renowned poet Charles Simic associate Steinberg's fascination with documents with his harrowing refugee experiences, while Simic, a fellow immigrant from the Balkans and a friend of Steinberg's, offers striking insights into the artist's comic sensibility. Both commentators reflect on the great change in Steinberg's work after 1960, as his images turned hallucinatory and nightmarish, his protest against tyranny more intense. As instantly recognizable as Steinberg's kinetic, punning, and slyly skewering art is, there hasn't been a comprehensive Steinberg book in years, making this outstanding volume invaluable in its reclamation of Steinberg's agile, philosophic, and category-defying art.

Hardcover. Nevada City NV, Underwood Books, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 112 pages illustrated in color. Showcases the popular period illustration which prefigured and helped create the violent visual language in today's popular aboveground cinema, comic books, and ultra-violent multi-million copy video games. Featuring full-page illustrations by pulp artists Walter Baumhofer, Rafael de Soto, Margaret Brundage, Jerome Rozen, Virgil Finlay, Norman Saunders, H.J. Ward, Harold McCauley, Austin Briggs, Emsh and others, this beautifully produced full-color collection documents Depression-era masculine violence, in fantasy and reality, as depicted on the covers of popular literature. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 184 pages. Saving the Text cuts through Jacques Derrida's complex blend of philosophy, commentary, and elaborate wordplay to ascertain his place in the history of criticism and the significance of Glas as a literary event. Distinguished critic and scholar Geoffrey Hartman explores the usefulness of Derrida's style of close reading for English and American scholarship and establishes its relevance to the division that has arisen between European and Anglo-American critical approaches.

Hardcover. London, Ashgate, reprint, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 248 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Silver gilt on spine. 'Like "the ring" itself, this book is viral: it gathers into itself literature and film, disease and survival, cultural studies and aesthetics, Japan and America, technology and the family. We won't read Suzuki's novels or watch the films in the same way again. A thoroughly readable and teachable text!' Steven Bruhm, Robert and Ruth Lumsden Professor of English, The University of Western Ontario, and author of Reflecting Narcissus: A Queer Aesthetic 'Taking as its point of departure the phenomenon of The Ring in all its manifestations"the Japanese novel, the Japanese film, the American film, and the various sequels"The Scary Screen offers an in-depth and sustained speculation about the anxiety created by the development of communication technologies. The collection introduces startling insights into the relationship between changes in media forms and widespread fears of contagion, while also identifying a new universal form of horror that has emerged in recent decades as the status of reproduction"both technological and biological"has undergone a profound transformation. The essays included here represent a powerful theoretical response to this transformation.' Todd McGowan, University of Vermont, and author of The Impossible David Lynch and The Real Gaze '... The Scary Screen is a useful contribution to studies of The Ring, horror film, and cultural anxieties evoked by technology.' Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury Academic, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glazed pictorial boards, 362 pages. The essays collected in this volume were written to mark the centenary of the birth of Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the twentieth centurys most influential classical scholars. Between them, they explore the two major sides of his career: his groundbreaking scholarship on Greek language, literature and history, and the more public-facing roles he assumed in universities and at the British Academy which brought him into the national spotlight, not without some notoriety, in his later years.The contributors consider the various facets of Dover's life and work from a range of perspectives which reflect the burgeoning field of the history of scholarship. Some contributors were students and colleagues of Dovers at different stages of his career, while others are themselves leading experts in areas of Classics to which he devoted his energies. Chapters on his academic publications and on the controversies he faced in the public realm are not bland celebrations of his legacy but offer critical assessments of his motivations and achievements, cumulatively demonstrating that there is much to be learned not just about Dover himself but also about the fields he helped to shape. Clean copy.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps, 490 pages. By explaining how to sire multicolored horses, produce nuts without shells, and create an egg the size of a human head, Giambattista Della Porta's Natural Magic (1559) conveys a fascination with tricks and illusions that makes it a work difficult for historians of science to take seriously. Yet, according to William Eamon, it is in the "how-to" books written by medieval alchemists, magicians, and artisans that modern science has its roots. These compilations of recipes on everything from parlor tricks through medical remedies to wool-dyeing fascinated medieval intellectuals because they promised access to esoteric "secrets of nature." In closely examining this rich but little-known source of literature, Eamon reveals that printing technology and popular culture had as great, if not stronger, an impact on early modern science as did the traditional academic disciplines. Clean copy.