Literature Essays

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday , 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 118 pages, b&w photographs by John Ranard. A very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, reprint, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn and lightly soiled dust jacket, unclipped with $4.50 price. Essays on a wide range of topics, including the assassination of Gandhi, Vassar, anti-Semitism, the Communist party, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, etc. No first printing indicated so assumed 2nd pr. No markings.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, Reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 129 pages. Color illustrations by James McMullan. Dust jacket unclipped with slight rubbing. Otherwise, clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, 1st, 1936, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in black cloth with design of a phoenix on the front cover. No dust jacket. First edition with Published in October 1936 on copyright page and no additional printings noted. Fading to the spine. 852 pages. A complete collection of D H Lawrence's unpublished essays. Discoloration to black cloth along bottom of front cover and spine, Interior is bright and clean.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. First edition of this collection of pieces penned in the first half of the 1970s, by four-time Pulitzer nominee. Included are reflections on man and nature in rural Georgia ("Travels in Georgia"), a profile of an Arkansas horseman hoping to make it big in an important horse race ("Ruidoso"), a quest to discover the true location that inspired the "Marvin Gardens" square in the Monopoly game, ("In Search of Marvin Gardens"), and more. Very bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st US, 1882, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt stamping. 249 pages plus publisher's ads Candid opinions, in a series of essays on literature, music, fashion and character by the author of "John Halifax Gentleman". 'If I say somewhat hard things, I beg my readers to believe me that it is not out of a hard heart, careless of giving pain, but a sad heart, knowing pain must be given.' (Preliminary.) Uncommon. Mild spotting to covers otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 676 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Nice copy.

Hardcover. NY, John Wiley & Son, 1867, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt design and lettering on spine, beveled cloth boards, later printing (1867), 349 pages, top edge gilt. A compilation of 'hidden treasures' within Ruskin's writings. A must for anyone who appreciates the writings of John Ruskin. Some light stain to top margin of first 30 pages, not affecting text, otherwise clean.

Softcover. UK, Oxford University Press, Revised Ed., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. Published here for the first time is much of a final and long-anticipated work on the philosophy of history by the great Oxford philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943). The original text of this uncompleted work has only recently been discovered and is accompanied here by Collingwood's shorter writings on historical knowledge and inquiry. Besides containing entirely new ideas, these incredible writings discuss many of the issues which Collingwood famously raised in The Idea of History and in his Autobiography. This book also includes two conclusions written by Collingwood, which were eventually revised and published as The Idea of Nature. and a lengthy editorial introduction that puts Collingwood's writings in their context and discusses the philosophical questions they initiate. A landmark publication, this work will appeal not only to those studying Collingwood but also to anyone broadly curious about philosophy of history. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In English at last, Borges's erudite and entertaining lectures on English literature from Beowulf to Oscar Wilde. Writing for Harper's Magazine, Edgardo Krebs describes Professor Borges: "A compilation of the twenty-five lectures Borges gave in 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires, where he taught English literature. Starting with the Vikings' kennings and Beowulf and ending with Stevenson and Oscar Wilde, the book traverses a landscape of 'precursors,'cross-cultural borrowings, and genres of expression, all connected by Borges into a vast interpretive web. This is the most surprising and useful of Borges's works to have appeared posthumously." Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 219 pages. Clean, bright copy. "I doubt very much that I'm the only person who's finding it more and more difficult to want to read or write novels," David Shields acknowledges in Reality Hunger, then seeks to understand how the conventional literary novel has become as lifeless a form as the mass market bodice-ripper. Shields provides an ars poetica for writers and other artists who, exhausted by the artificiality of our culture, "obsessed by real events because we experience hardly any," are taking larger and larger pieces of the real world and using them in their work. Reality Hunger is made of 600-odd numbered fragments, many of them quotations from other sources, some from Shields's own books, but none properly sourced--the project being not a treasure hunt or a con but a good-faith presentation of what literature might look like if it caught up to contemporary strategies and devices used in the other arts, and allowed for samples (that is, quotation from art and from the world) to revivify existing forms. Shields challenges the perceived superiority of the imagination and exposes conventional literary pieties as imitation writing, the textual equivalent of artificial flavoring, sleepwalking, and small talk. I can't name a more necessary or a more thrilling book.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 333 pages. Reporting Always collects a wide range of Lillian Ross's New Yorker articles and "Talk of the Town" pieces spanning sixty years, bringing readers into Robin Williams's living room; Harry Winston's office; the afterschool hangouts of Manhattan private-school children; the hotel rooms of Ernest Hemingway, John Huston, and Charlie Chaplin; onto the tennis court with John McEnroe; and into the lives of many other famous and not-so-famous characters. Ross's portraits are filled with rich details that reveal her subjects in amusing and perceptive ways. Remainder dot to bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 227 pages. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf, else a clean, tight copy. Naipaul presents here four essays about the "half-made" societies, those still suffering from the profound deprivations of colonialism and prey to corruption." He examines the role of Eva Peron as the catalyst for violence in Argentina, with its yearning for a European culture and the physical, historical, cultural reality of the land in which the native Indians were wiped out and the colonialists took over. He writes of the infamous Michael X in Trinidad whose pretensions to power and destiny led to the man's insanity and execution following two pointless murders. Shorter essays address nihilism in the Congo and Naipaul's take on Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness.

Softcover. London, The Hogarth Press, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover pamphlet, pink covers faded slightly at spine edge, 44 pages. Day to Day Pamphlet No. 29 with 1500 copies printed. Previous owner's name, date 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.

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.

Hardcover. Boston, Beacon Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 255 pages. A collection of essays that range from an autobiographical tour-de-force that describes a childhood spent with an alcoholic father to 'Looking at Women,' a reflection on male yearning and confusion, to a look at the place-or absence-of nature in recent American fiction. In these 15 earnest and ambitious essays (published in earlier form in Harper's, The Kenyon Review, etc.), Sanders looks for--and often finds--universal truths in the particulars of everyday life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon/Bollingen Foundation, 1st, 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 384 pages. Translated by Mary Hottinger, Tania Stern and James Stern, with introduction by Hermann Broch. Previous seller's price on front fly leaf in crayon, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Merrill and Baker, reprint, 1871, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Three Lectures: 1. Of Kings' Treasuries; 2. Of Queens' Gardens; 3. Of the Mystery of Life. 179 pages. Red cloth cover with gilt title to front and spine. Top edge gilt. Overall, a clean, tight copy.

NY, Coward-McCann, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt title on spine, 383 pages. INSCRIBED BY ROREM on front fly leaf. Clean copy, lacks dust jacket.

Softcover. NY/London, Marion Boyars, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 152 pages. Essays that deal with the shadow economy. Shadow Work is all the work people do who are not paid in cash. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Leipzig, Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1883, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Copyright Edition, Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1883, 312 pages, illuminated vellum binding, with front-edge flaps, leather stitching, 6.5 x 4.5", beautiful binding reminiscent of Medieval manuscripts with latticed cords and illuminated initial. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Willamette, Willamette Week, 1st wraps, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Columns from her early column in the Willamette Week newspaper. SIGNED BY DUNN.

Hardcover. New York , Lyons Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Limited to 250 copies SIGNED by McGuane and publisher Nick Lyons. Slipcased. B&w illustrations by Buckeye Blake.