Literature

Hardcover. Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare Head Press, Ltd. Ed., 1908, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Eight hardcover volumes. The complete set published in an edition of 1060 copies. This set bound in gray boards with green cloth spines. Black lettering to spines, title pages in red and black, untrimmed edges. Mild wear to boards, Vol. 6 with cracked hinges and some pencil marking, otherwise a clean set. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. NY, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 204 pages. A collection of offbeat essays covering subjects like Santa Claus, Frankenstein's monster, Lot's wife, Albert Schweitzer and Herman Melville. Introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, N.H. Whitaker, reprint, 1831, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, white boards with green cloth spine with a paper spine label. 420 pages. B&w frontis "Genius of Romance", Opposite title page has a drawing of White. Henry Kirke White was an English poet and hymn-writer. He died at the young age of 21. This edition of his complete works includes his poetry, as well as his letters and other writings. The volume also includes an account of his life and a critical evaluation of his work by Robert Southey. Ex-lib with residue, stamping to endpapers, spine extremities worn, light soil to covers. Interior of the book is clean with minimal foxing.

Softcover. Louisville KY, Sarabande Books, 4th pr., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 40 pages, b&w photos. Lydia Davis is mathematician, philosopher, sculptor, jeweler, and scholar of the minute. Few writers map the process of thought as well as she, few perceive with such charged intelligence. The Cows is a close study of the three much-loved cows that live across the road from her. The piece, written with understated humor and empathy, is a series of detailed observations of the cows on different days and in different positions, moods, and times of the day. Clean copy.

Softcover. Saranac Lake NY, Outskirts Press , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 216 pages. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY SHAW. like new. Shaw's memoir and account of his friendship with Jon Cody, an older one-armed dope dealer and leather craftsman in the Adirondack backcountry.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, brown cloth stamped in gilt, 222 pages with line drawings by the author. In a very worn and chipped dust jacket. "Mr. Day here sets forth in his characteristic vein his observations about men and human nature and books--talks about Humpty-Dumpty, Prometheus, Shaw, Fabre and Noah--money, the nebular hypothesis, legs, cows and marriage. Also an attempt to describe our world to a fish." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grossman Publishers, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 272 pages. Discussion of Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler and Alfred Hitchcock. Clean copy.

Softcover. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 305 pages. "In The Dark End of the Street, Maria Damon brings a new sensitivity to modern poetic criticism. She adds an important dimension to cultural theory, revealing the struggles of one group of artists as they address improtant questions about art, social life, and the oppression they encounter. Taking as her premise that the intensity of poetic language is an appropriate venue for representing the 'dark end of the street' of social pain, Damon foregrounds the work and lives of a number of modern American poets in order to argue that the American avant-garde is located in the experimental literary works of social 'outsiders."

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf , 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 314 pages. Contrasting the Victorian system of virtues - respectability, self-help, discipline, cleanliness, obedience, orderliness - with the opportunistic, superficial morality of modern society, an intellectual historian calls for a deeper commitment to moral responsibility. According to Himmelfarb, Victorian "manners and morals" created a society that emphasized a strong family life for all classes and gave rise to a prosperous economy and the early feminist and social service movements. Furthermore, the influence of these virtues caused the incidence of illegitimate births and violent crimes to drop significantly and remain low until the 1960s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st US, 1982-85, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Four hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets. Fabian socialist, social researcher and reformer, and cofounder of the London School of Economics, Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) was at the center of British intellectual and political life for nearly seventy years. Her diaries offer a remarkable record of her achievements, and they reveal the private face behind a formidable public persona. From age fifteen until her death, Webb confided in her diary. She describes her obsessive and self-thwarted passion for politician Joseph Chamberlain, her work as a young woman in London's East End, and the troubled courtship that led to her marriage and famous partnership with Sidney Webb. She tells of the books they wrote together and the people they knew-Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, Leonard and Virginia Woolf-in pages rich in anecdote and insight. She describes their friendship with Bernard Shaw and despairs of H.G. Wells's peccadilloes. The Diaries chart the collapse of Liberalism and the rise of the Labour Movement, and set Beatrice Webb's faith in Social Communism against the growth of fascism in the 1930s. They encompass the Boer War and the devastation of two world wars, and bring to life the social and cultural changes that introduced the modern world. Alongside this record is an intensely moving account of a long life, of friendships and family, conviction, and self-doubt. From this unparalleled document emerges a woman whose shrewd judgement, skilled portraiture, and refreshingly ironic tone establish her as one of the greatest diarists of her time. No ownership inscriptions. Clean, bright and unfaded boards. Fresh pages and unmarked closed page edges. Tight bindings. No loose. No remainder marks. A handsome set. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, reprint, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy boards, 639 pages. Volume 3 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 pages. The Augustan Reprint Society Number 251-252. Introduction by Janet E. Aikins. Orig. tan card wrappers, stapled binding. An 18th century theatre critic's remarks regarding Otway's play. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Duke University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 440 pages. Black cloth, no dust jacket. The Edge of Surrealism is an essential introduction to the writing of French social theorist Roger Caillois. Caillois was part of the Surrealist avant-garde and in the 1930s founded the College of Sociology with Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris. He spent his life exploring issues raised by this famous group and by Surrealism itself. Though his subjects were diverse, Caillois focused on concerns crucial to modern intellectual life, and his essays offer a unique perspective on many of twentieth-century France's most significant intellectual movements and figures. Including a masterful introductory essay by Claudine Frank situating his work in the context of his life and intellectual milieu, this anthology is the first comprehensive introduction to Caillois's work to appear in any language. These thirty-two essays with commentaries strike a balance between Caillois's political and theoretical writings and between his better known works, such as the popular essays on the praying mantis, myth, and mimicry, and his lesser-known pieces. Presenting several new pieces and drawing on interviews and unpublished correspondence, this book reveals Caillois's consistent effort to reconcile intellectual rigor and imaginative adventure. Perhaps most importantly, The Edge of Surrealism provides an overdue look at how Caillois's intellectual project intersected with the work of Georges Bataille and others including Breton, Bachelard, Benjamin, Lacan, and Levi-Strauss.

Hardcover. NY, Fleming H. Revell, 1st, 1913, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt on spine and front cover, 224 pages, top edge gilt. Vermonter Humphrey was known as a prolific writer of essays with regional, nature, travel, and religious themes. The pieces in this volume were originally published in various periodicals of the period. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 140 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st US, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a price-clipped dust jacket. A memoir of the real Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. An attractive copy of Christopher Milne's book about the origins of the Pooh stories, his childhood, and his family. Previous owner's inscription, sticker on front fly leaf.

Hardcover. NY, Sheed and Ward, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with faded spine, 480 pages. Richard Kostelanetz's monumental evisceration of the American book world circa 1974--the self-appointed backslapping elites, the perpetual disdain for the unconventional, the laziness in book reviewing and fear of losing one's status when criticising the wrong thing--remains, as a final sadness, itself a rare out of print tome. Kostelanetz has written perhaps the most fearless exploration of literary politics in print, taking on and naming the titans at the top of the heap, dissecting the power structures that emerged in the 1950s and 60s, and the emergence of the plutocratic hierarchies that continue to dominate publishing. Outing the various cliques as mobs, and using apt and amusing mafia parallels, Kostelanetz is unrelenting in his meticulousness, and counteracts the status quo with a passionate defence of the avant-garde, using the second half of the book to bring light to the various emerging authors of experimental poetry, fiction, and mixed media works around the time. At times a touch long-winded and overfed with quotes, this nevertheless is an essential read for those requiring a hard slap as to the inherent evil of the corporate book world and why indie is the only way forward. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with minor wear, 278 pages. A re-examination of the roles played by authors, readers, scribes and texts in medieval literature, which describes how consideration of marks on the physical manuscript - elements added by scribes and readers - can shed light on interpretive issues that have puzzled modern readers. Light underlining to 18 pages in first chapter.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in lightly worn dust jacket, 446 pages. A full review of the history of this initially small band of middle class intellectual socialists, the Mackenie's are undaunted in tackling what becomes a full and multi-character biography of the group that became and remains influential in British politics. This study includes a full and sensitive account of the lives and thought of the Webbs (usefully exploring their differences as well as their points of agreement), Shaw, Pease and Podmore, and even H.G. Wells, amongst others, as well as the history of the relationship of this band with the diverse groups and individuals in the broader British socialist movement - and their ambivalent relationships with the liberal and then the labour governments. Remainder stamp to bottom edge. Otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 346 pages. An intimately perceptive account, by a poet who knew them all, of the brilliant circle of poets who lived and worked in Boston through the half-decade beginning in 1955. That was the year Peter Davison, coming to Boston as a book editor. was swept up in a world -- in a tumult -- of poetry. He rediscovered his father's old friend Robert Frost. He briefly squired Sylvia Plath. He came to know Robert Lowell (whose poems and private disasters dominated the period) and Adrienne Rich, Stanley Kunitz, Richard Wilbur. Anne Sexton, W. S. Merwin, and others who, closely bound together in friendship or rivalry or both, defined the shape of American poetry at mid-century Through their eves as well as his own, and often in their words, Davison presents a sharply fresh vision of the shift from confidence to a troubled questioning that overtook America -- a transformation that was, in a sense, foreshadowed in the sensibilities, in the writings, sometimes in the lives, of some of our finest poets. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 248 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Nicholas Brealey, 1st US, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 326 pages. In this far-ranging quest, award-winning author Nicholas Jubber unearths the lives of the dreamers who made our most beloved fairy tales: inventors, thieves, rebels and forgotten geniuses who gave us classic tales such as 'Cinderella', 'Hansel and Gretel', 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Baba Yaga'. Clean copy.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st pbk, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 279 pages. Much recent critical theory has dismissed or failed to take seriously the question of the self. French theorists--such as Derrida, Barthes, Benveniste, Foucault, Lacan, and Levi-Strauss--have in various ways proclaimed the death of the subject, often turning to German intellectual tradition to authorize their views. Stanley Corngold's heralded book, The Fate of the Self, published for the first time in paperback with a spirited new preface, appears at a time when the relationship between the self and literature is a matter of renewed concern. Originally published in 1986 (Columbia University Press), the book examines the poetic self of German intellectual tradition in light of recent French and American critical theory. Focusing on seven major German writers--Holderlin, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Mann, Kafka, Freud, and Heidegger--Corngold shows that their work does not support the desire to discredit the self as an origin of meaning and value but reconstructs the allegedly fragmented poetic self through effects of position and style. Offering new and subtle models of selfhood, The Fate of the Self is a source of rich insight into the work of these authors, refracted through post-structuralist critical perspectives. Clean copy.