Literature

Hardcover. London, The Art Union of London, 1st thus, 1851, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, half-leather, maroon calf over maroon boards with gllt rules, spine with gilt decorated raised bands and lettering. Portrait frontispiece by J[ohn] Gilbert after Sir Joshua Reynolds. 14 pages of Goldsmith's verse followed by 30 plates engraved on wood by J.Thompson, W.T.Green, J.W.Whymper, G.Dalziel, E.Dalziel, &c. after the designs of C.Stanfield, J.Leech, E.H.Corbould, W.L.Leitch, E.M.Ward & others. Some cloth fade to covers, front fly leaf gone, bookplate on inside front cover. Mild foxing.

Hardcover. NY, John Day Publishers, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn. chipped dust jacket, 215 pages. Contains the first appearance of numerous letters from Ezra Pound and documents relating to the trial. Written by his lawyer, Julien Cornell. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 480 pages. A fascinating figure of English literary and political history, Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 in Bournemouth, England. Hall suffered through an exceedingly unhappy childhood until her father's death. With her inheritance, Hall leased a house in Kensington and began to live the way she pleased. She started dressing in chappish clothes, called herself Peter, then John, and wrote her first collection of verse. She was a political reactionary, a reformed Catholic, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, fussy about food and obsessive about work. She got her pipes from Dunhill's, wore brocade smoking jackets, spats in winter, and had her hair cropped off at the barber's. Hall is most famous today for her book, The Well of Loneliness, which she wrote in 1928. A novel about lesbian love, the book caused an enormous scandal on its publication and it was suppressed both in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, where Hall was put on trial under the Obscene Publications Act.

Athens GA, University Of Georgia Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 464 pages. Caroline Ferguson Gordon (1895-1981) was a notable American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, was the recipient of two prestigious literary awards, a 1932 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 1934 O. Henry Award . Offers the most complete and accurate portrait to date of the writer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 192 pages. Through the distillation of a lifetime of experiences, John Hay describes in The Undiscovered Country his quiet, profound search for our place in the natural world. In considering snails, alewives, terns, woodland moths, and other forms of natural life, Hay shares with his readers a discovery that few have experienced and no one has written about so eloquently. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Frontiepiece photograph of the author as Lord Beaconsfield. 392 pages. Autobiography dealing with the author's life up to the mid 1930s. He was the brother of A E Housman, and was well-known in his own right as a writer of plays, as well as being active in the women's suffrage campaign and in the pacifist movement. A prolific writer with around a hundred published works to his name, Housman's output eventually covered all kinds of literature from socialist and pacifist pamphlets to children's stories. He wrote an autobiography, The Unexpected Years (1937), which, despite his record of controversial writing, said little about his homosexuality, the practice of which was then illegal. Mild shelf wear. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ann Arbor MI, Ardis, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. VOLUME 3 ONLY. 204 pages. Fading to dj spine, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W W Norton, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 724 pages. Illustrated in b&w and color. A revisionist panorama of the nineteenth century examines the era's material and spiritual changes in the wake of emerging British capitalism and imperialism, as told through the writings of such figures as Darwin, Marks, George Eliot, and Kipling. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dustjacket. An enthralling collection of nonfiction essays on a myriad of topics--from art and artists to dreams, myths, and memories--observed in #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman's probing, amusing, and distinctive style. An inquisitive observer, thoughtful commentator, and assiduous craftsman, Neil Gaiman has long been celebrated for the sharp intellect and startling imagination that informs his bestselling fiction. Now, The View from the Cheap Seats brings together for the first time ever more than sixty pieces of his outstanding nonfiction. Analytical yet playful, erudite yet accessible, this cornucopia explores a broad range of interests and topics, including (but not limited to): authors past and present; music; storytelling; comics; bookshops; travel; fairy tales; America; inspiration; libraries; ghosts; and the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating, which recounts the author's experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Limited to 504 signed copies, this being no 265. Bound in original publishers quarter vellum, with green cloth boards, vellum dusty, cloth faded. An anthology of the author's writings from 1921 to 1930. The work concerns the history of an unnamed fictional village, and is divided into alternating chapters with different headings. Vellum-backed cloth, lettered in gold at the spine and with Williamson's familiar owl logo gold-stamped to the upper board. With a portrait frontispiece and two brief sketches by the author. Top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Some uneven fading to the cloth and a little darkening to the vellum backstrip, as is common with this production.

Softcover. Madison WI, Coda Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Square softcover. Two titles bound in one volume, texts in English and French. The Voice in the Closet by Raymond Federman has text in English. Bound upside down at other end of book is La Voix Dans le Cabinet de Debarras by Federman, now in French, plus Echoes by Maurice Roche, also in French. English cover is white; French cover is black. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the title page.

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Lyons Press , 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 300 pages. James M. Cain was among the prominent member of the "hard-boiled" school of writing that characterized the 1930s and 1940s, one of the masters of the genre that included Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His novels became such popular film noir classics as The Postman always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce, and his 1937 novel Serenade boldly portrayed its hero as a bisexual. Cain also taught journalism at various colleges in Maryland, wrote editorials for the New York World, and was for a brief time managing editor at The New Yorker. This is the first biography of James M. Cain written with the full cooperation of the late novelist's family.

Softcover. NY, New York University Press, 1st pbk, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 272 pages. With bibliography and index. A complete biography of Dahlberg's life and career with an examination of the writings. Contains fourteen illustrations. Clean copy.

Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, original blue cloth-backed boards. Quarto. 17 pages & 8 plates. From a limited printing of 385 copies under the direction of Bruce Rogers. Also laid in :2 color photos and one b&w photo of the medallion. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 51 pages, illustrated with wood engravings by Michael McCurdy. Bly's commentary sheds important new light on the intellectual and spiritual development of a major American literary figure. Mild fade to dj spine. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions Books, 1st, 1941, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with black title on spine. Collected stories and essays "not for readers who hate to think," Mild shelf wear, clean.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf , 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. The author's first book about growing up in Stockton, California with her immigrant parents from a small peasant village in China.

Hardcover. London, Methuen, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 256 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Ernest Howard Shepard was an English artist and book illustrator, best remembered for his charming illustrations of the beloved anthropomorphic animals in The Wind in the Willows and Winnie-the-Pooh. This fascinating study of Shepard, detailing his childhood, education and artistic development, is richly illustrated throughout with his works. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, J. And P. Knapton, S. Birt, T. Longman, et al., 1st thus, 1747, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Eight volumes, in uniform red calf with ornate gilt decorations to covers, spines. All edges gilt. Prefaces by William Warburton and Alexander Pope. Mild foxing to pages. Vol. 1 with a frontispiece engraving of Shakespeare. An attractive set with light shelf wear, minor soiling. Bindings firm.

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy pictorial boards, 374 pages. This new biography of Ian Fleming presents a fresh and illuminating portrayal of the iconic creator of James Bond. Oliver Buckton provides the first in-depth exploration of the entire process of Ian Fleming's writing--from initial conception, through composition, to his involvement in the innovative publication methods of his books. He also investigates the vital impact of Fleming's work in naval intelligence during World War Two on his later writings, especially the wartime operations he planned and executed and how they drove the plots of the James Bond novels. Buckton considers the vital role of wartime deception, disinformation, and propaganda in shaping Fleming's later techniques and imaginative creations. Offering a radically new view of Fleming's relationships with women, Buckton traces the role of strong, independent, and intelligent women such as Maud Russell, Phyllis Bottome, and his wife, Ann, on Fleming's portrayal of female characters. The book concludes with a thorough analysis of the James Bond films from Eon productions, and their influence in promoting, while also distorting, the public's recognition of Fleming's writing. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 341 pages. This is the first collection of essays in seven years by the author of Omensetter's Luck, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and Fiction and the Figures of Life. In it, one of America's most brilliant and eclectic minds examines literature, culture, writers (their lives and works), and the nature and uses of language and the written word. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Co., 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 299 pages. The author investigate the trauma behind poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz. They formed one of the great constellations of talent in American literature. In the decades after World War II, they changed American poetry forever by putting themselves at risk in their poems in a new and provocative way. Their daring work helped to inspire the popular style of poetry now known as 'confessional.' But partly as a result of their openness, they have become better known for their tumultuous lives-afflicted by mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide-than for their work. This book reclaims their achievement by offering critical 'biographies of the poetry'-tracing the development of each poet's work, exploring their major themes and techniques, and examining how they transformed life into art. Clean copy.