Social Graces

Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1984

SIGNED LIMITED FIRST EDITION, illustrated with 69 black and white images of Fink's photographs. One of 250 signed and numbered copies issued with an original photograph, "Tavern on the Green", signed and dated on the back.

Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1984. Quarto (262 x 224mm), gilt-lettered brown cloth; matching slipcase. A fine copy. Rare.

$2,600

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A Pale View of the Hills

FIRST EDITION of Ishiguro's highly acclaimed first novel. Winner of the 1982 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. LONDON: FABER & FABER, 1982. Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket; custom half-morocco box. Book fine, a touch of fading to dust jacket spine, otherwise fine. A beautiful copy.

$1,500

Self-Portrait

First edition, SIGNED and INSCRIBED by Man Ray: "for Arnold and Gus Newman affectionately Man Ray 1963". With an original line drawing by Man Ray and Newman's notations on front endpaper. An important association copy.

$10,000

Facile: Poemes de Paul Eluard, Photographies de Man Ray

"Although Man Ray participated in and produced hundreds of fruitful collaborative works in his life, Facile must be ranked among the most successful." --Roth, 101 BooksNumber 623 of 1200 copies on vein, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED by Paul Eluard on the half-title.Quarto, original wappers; custom half-morocco box. First gathering loose, a hint of wear to wrapper edges. A fine copy.

$15,000

Les Chiens ont Soif

LIMITED EDITION, WITH TWO SIGNED COLOR ETCHINGS BY MAX ERNST, and 25 additional color lithographs; one of only 250 copies (out of a total edition of 320). An evocative collaboration between the surrealist poet Prevert and the surrealist artist Ernst. The Livre d'Artiste in the Twentieth Century 46. Large folio, loose as issued in original lithographed paper wrappers; original buckram clamshell box. Fraying to box edges, some foxing to wrappers; interior and plates fine.

$2,500

Ultramarine

FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY LOWRY TO MONTGOMERY EVANS on the front free endpaper: To Montgomery Evans / from Malcolm Lowry-33 / Inglewood / Caldy Westkirby / Wirral / Cheshire. Provenance: Library of Roger Rechler (lot 203); Montgomery Evans (presentation inscription and bookplate).

$13,500

Rhetorica divina Guillermi Parisie[nsis]

THIRD EDITION of William of Auvergne's meditation on the subject of prayer. This work was first published in 1491 and again in 1492.Octavo. 152 printed leaves. Beautifully rebound in (early) printed leaf over boards with vellum manuscript leaves on paste-downs. Printers device on title and verso of final leaf; rubricated in red and blue. Small hole to margin of first few leaves; occasional light dampstaining to margins; a superb and quite desirable copy.

$3,750

On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference

FIRST EDITION of Jevons's explanation of his "logical piano"; a landmark in computer science.To the reader of the preceding paper it will be evident that mechanism is capable of replacing for the most part the action of thought required in the performance of logical deduction. Mental agency is required only in interpreting correctly the grammatical structure of the premises, and in gathering the purport of the reply... The machine is thus the embodiment of a true symbolic method or Calculus... Jevons invented a "logical piano" (so named because it resembled a small upright piano) that could perform, through a sequence of switches, various types of logical calculations. In doing so, he became "the first person to construct a machine with sufficient power to solve a complicated problem faster than the problem could be solved without the machine's aid" (Goldstine). "On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference," a paper Jevons read before the Royal Society on January 20, 1870, is his most detailed description of this early prototype of the modern computer. The logical piano now stands in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford.In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the year 1870, pp. 497-518, Vol. 160, Part II (the complete volume). London: Taylor and Francis, 1870. Quarto, modern half-calf over marbled boards, with the original wrappers bound-in. A fine copy.

$1,500

Love in the Time of Cholera

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. Octavo. Original cloth, original dust jacket. An excellent copy.

$125

Howl

FIRST EDITION, one of only 100 copies, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY GINSBERG. Signed and inscribed on title: "for Michael Rumaker / Allen Ginsberg / this historic particular copy of Howl which his eyes read for / Black Mt Review #7 / Signed White Plains N.Y. / March 12, 1976". Ginsberg also added 20 "ah"'s along the bottom of the page. With large flower and sun drawing by Ginsberg across title. Rumaker's ownership signature at top of page. WITH: The original issue of The Black Mountain Review #7 in which Rumaker's review of "Howl" appears. "In October 1955 Ginsberg read the first part of his new poem ['Howl'] in public for the first time to tumultuous applause at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco with the local poets Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and Philip LaMantia. Journalists were quick to herald the reading as a landmark event in American poetry, the birth of what they labeled the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran the City Lights Book Store and the City Lights publishing house in North Beach, sent Ginsberg a telegram echoing Ralph Waldo Emerson's response to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: 'I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?' Later Ginsberg wrote that 'in publishing 'Howl,' I was curious to leave behind after my generation an emotional time bomb that would continue exploding in U.S. consciousness in case our military-industrial-nationalist complex solidified into a repressive police bureaucracy' (Original Draft Facsimile Howl, p. xii). "Early in the following year Howl and Other Poems was published with an introduction by William Carlos Williams as number four in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series. In May 1956 copies of the small black-and-white stapled paperback were seized by the San Francisco police, who arrested Ferlinghetti and Shigeyoshi Murao, his shop manager, and charged them with publishing and selling an obscene and indecent book. The American Civil Liberties Union took up the defense of Ginsberg's poem in a highly publicized obscenity trial in San Francisco, which concluded in October 1957 when Judge Clayton Horn ruled that Howl had redeeming social value" (American National Biography). Introduction by William Carlos Williams. The Pocket Poets Series: Number Four. Small quarto, original printed wrappers; custom cloth box. Small quarto, original wrappers; custom box housing both Howl and The Black Mountain Review. A little toning to spine (as usual) and a small abrasion to rear cover. Overall an exceptionally fresh, clean beautiful copy.

Price On Request

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

LIMITED EDITION, 1/1000 COPIES. Folio. Two volumes. Original paper wrappers printed in red and black. Original glassine. Complete with 14 plates by Alastair. An outstanding set with light wear to glassine wrappers.

$400

Poems Chosen out of the Works

FIRST KELMSCOTT PRESS EDITION, ONE OF ONLY 250 COPIES ON PAPER (from an edition of 258). The Kelmscott Press "was far and away the most splendid of all private presses... quite without a peer." -Colin Franklin, The Private Presses Beautifully printed in red and black in Golden type. Exquisitely illustrated by William Morris with woodcut title page, first page (borders), and decorated initials throughout. Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1895 [issued 1896]. Small quarto, original limp vellum, yapp edges, gilt spine title, green silk ties; uncut. One tie loose, else fine.

$3,500

Photographs 1947-1977

"Avedon gravitates to those moments in which the oscillation between pretense and revelation is most intense. The subject of any of his photographs is likely to show in part isolation or grotesquerie, courage to the point of madness, isolation-and-defiance or sly amusement, desolation and wit, pride and sterility, pride and triumph. Victories, defeats mingle in the same moment sometimes or on adjoining pages..." –Harold Brodkey (from the Introductory Essay)FIRST EDITION. A spectacular production illustrated with Avedon's photographs of Lauren Bacall, Joan Baez, Bridget Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Anjelica Houston, Janis Joplin, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Yves Saint Laurent, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Vreeland and many more. A near fine copy with the original acetate jacket in very good condition with wear and chip at the top of the spine. An excellent copy signed and inscribed by Avedon. SOLD.

$650

Fink, Larry