Literature Essays

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. NY, Knopf, 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 112 pages. Tanning to rear endpapers otherwise clean, very good in an unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Brick cloth covered boards with gilt titles to spine. Light foxing to endpapers. Frontis illustration, Eden Phillpotts, in black & white. Toning throughout, tight binding with clean pages throughout.

Hardcover. Athens OH, Ohio University Press, 2nd pr., 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 373 pages. Editors Groth and Castronovo have chosen from Wilson's previously uncollected works to present materials illuminating his growth as a literary critic and writer. The works are arranged chronologically, beginning with essays published in the High School Record in 1911 proceeding to works penned for the Nation, New Republic, and the New Yorker in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, and winding up with an acceptance speech delivered by Wilson in 1966. Among the subjects of the essays are underrated pleasures (including Edith Wharton, satin breeches, and the human body), overrated experiences (such as afternoon tea, youth, summer, and weddings), and literary critiques, both admiring and scathing. Many libraries already own the source periodicals, but this collection includes a few items that would be difficult to obtain.

Hardcover. NY, Library of America, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 679 pages. Gathered for the first time in a single volume and completing the definitive Library of America edition of his works, here is the essential prose of our "poet laureate of deep ecology": philosophical essays, travel journals, poetic notebooks, reflections on Buddhism, environmental polemics, memoirs, speeches, interviews, letters, and other writings spanning the entire arc of Snyder's lauded, seventy-year career. All of Snyder's published prose collections are represented, omitting only items he feels are repetitious or merely occasional, followed by a selection of from his private journals. Remainder dot to botom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Peacham VT, The Perpetua Press, 1st, 2002, Hardcover in the publisher's cream-colored linen over boards with spine and upper board gilt-stamped black leather labels. No dust jacket, as issued. 88 pages, only 500 copies printed. A collection of interviews done with Shaw from 1924 - 1945. Bright and clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St Martins Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 558 pages. Edited by Ian T. Macauley. An anthology of futuristic nonfiction essays by the best-selling author of 2001: A Space Odyssey spans more than sixty years of work in a collection, organized chronologically, that includes his prophetic predictions about geosynchronous satellites, space travel, and the Internet. Light sunning to spine, clean copy.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 349 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Baker and Taylor, 1st, 1910, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. 348 pages. Contains some black & white illustrations and color frontispiece with tissue-guard. Green cloth covers with gold lettering and decoration. Color illustration pasted on front cover. Gilt top edge. Light rubbing to front cover, corners, spine. Both hinges starting to crack.

Hardcover. Prague, Twisted Spoon Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly soiled dust jacket, 150 pages. B&w frontis. The works of the Czech Symbolist Otokar Brezina (1868-1929), a writer twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, influenced an entire generation of artists in Bohemia and Moravia. Hidden History (published posthumously in 1935) is one of the most important works of 20th century Czech prose and represents the apotheosis of Brezina's endeavors in the essay form. In this finely crafted collection, he discusses the role of art as a vanguard of developments in science and as a force for social change. These essays also contribute to an understanding of Brezina's poetry, for which he is better known. They comprise the most systematic exposition of his aesthetic creed, which served to inspire the Czech writers and literary critics who followed in his footsteps. This edition is the first complete English translation of any complete volume of Brezina's work. Afterword by Petr Holman. Light foxing, no markings.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lughtly worn dust jacket. 589 pages. Light shelf wear, chipping and closed tear to dust jacket. Review slip laid in.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A collection of his writings on his home country. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Seeley And Co., reprint, 1895, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth with gilt lettering and decoration, 296 pages. B&w frontis portrait with tissue guard. Ex-lib with stamping, bookplate to endpapers, interior clean.

Hardcover. London, B. T. Batsford, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 264 pages, b&w illustrations. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Penguin, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 180 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. US, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 228 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light edgewear to dust jacket with light soil to rear cover.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st US, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 222 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black & white illustrations throughout. Clean, tight copy.

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. 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.

Softcover. Bowling Green OH, Journal of Popular Culture, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages 701-909. Articles include: Philip Gordon on Ayn Rand. Louis F. Helbig on Struwwelpeter: an inquiry into the effects of violence in children's literature. French folk songs. D. L. Ashliman on the American Indian in German Travel Narratives and Literature. Clean.

Softcover. Bowling Green OH, Journal of Popular Culture, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages 1-258. Articles include: The tragedy of Bert Williams, mystery writer John D. MacDonald, Edward R. Murrow's WW2 radio broadcasts, the dance marathon craze, Spider-Man - Superhero in the Liberal Tradition, others. Clean.

Softcover. San Rafael CA, Coracle Press, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 330 pages, b&w frontis. A new printing of the journal and letters of Stephen Mackenna (1872-1934), a vivid and representative thinker whose life intersected with many of the leading figures of his day, and especially those of the Irish literary renaissance. The editor, E. R. Dodds, writes: Stephen MacKenna's working life was divided among three countries, and was further broken by two complete changes of occupation and by continual changes of residence. When he died, he left behind him no wife, child or lifelong friend; . . . and with the exception of the 1907-9 Journal no papers of any considerable biographical value. He left instead a legend. In the Memoir which follows I have endeavored to recover and present the facts underlying the legend. Best known for what AE (George William Russell) called his 'noble translation of Plotinus', MacKenna nonetheless harbored views that collided with those of Plotinus, and so speaks to us as an authentic forerunner of the 'modern' human being, by which is meant those who, once their individual inner light is lit-and no matter how it may gutter in the wind of uncertain freedoms-must, even while hallowing earlier and magisterial records of paths of spiritual ascent, accept the need for a complete 'descent' (without which the whole engine of creation will have had no final purpose), with all the provisional darkness this may entail, so that the final ascent may be made in personal love and freedom. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Livingston, MT, Clack City Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 318 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to edges.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 426 pages. How do we evaluate the power and utility of language when it has been made to articulate falsehoods in certain totalitarian regimes or has been charged with vulgarity and imprecision in a mass-consumer democracy? How will language react to the increasingly urgent claims of more exact speech such as mathematics and symbolic notation? These are some of the questions Steiner addresses in this elegantly written book, first published in 1967 to international acclaim. Clean, bright copy.