The Waves

London: Hogarth Press, 1931

FIRST EDITION of Woolf's most experimental novel. With original dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell.

“Part of Virginia Woolf's greatness lay in her continuation of Henry James's aim to define the novel as a form of art. She fulfills its inherent flexibility when she blends the novel with other genres to create new forms... Her most formally inventive fiction, The Waves appears to owe its inspiration more to poetry and drama than the novel… Woolf freely manipulated conventional elements of fiction… in a concerted attempt to take the novel beyond its customary compass” (Dictionary of National Biography; Eric Warner, Virginia Woolf, The Waves).

Octavo, original purple cloth, original dust jacket. Book fine, dust jacket with a hint of toning to spine and a slight bit of edgewear. A beautiful copy, rare in such fine condition.

$3,500

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Aeschyli tragoediae VII

FIRST COMPLETE EDITION OF AESCHYLUS. With the editio princeps of the Agamemnon. “An excellent and beautiful edition... It is a much more valuable impression than either of its precursors.. what enhances the value of the edition is, that the Agamemnon is published in it, for the first time, complete.” -Dibdin, An introduction to the knowledge of rare and valuable editions of the Greek and Latin Classics Quarto. Early full tree-calf skillfully rebacked, spine in six compartments, red leather label. Gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Text generallly clean throughout; repaired tear to the lower portion of title page. A handsome copy of an important and distinguished edition.

$7,500

The Man in the High Castle

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING of what is considered to be Dick’s finest work and winner of the 1963 Hugo Award. A beautiful copy in the original dust jacket.First printing with D36 of page 239. Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, 37. Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. Book with slight bump at heel of spine and a hint of edgewear to dust jacket. A beautiful, bright copy.

$2,600

Half of Paradise

FIRST EDITION OF JAMES LEE BURKE'S FIRST BOOK, WITH A LENGTHY INSRIPTION TO HIS FRIEND AND FELLOW WRITER, JAMES CRUMLEY. "To the Crum and Charlie with best wishes from Jim Burke. Notice that the pages are bound loosely if you ever need anything to wrap your coffee grinds in or if needed for other purposes while reading in the bath" –– Your friend, J.B. 8/27/66" "In this era of 'awakening' for the hard-boiled genre, many post-Vietnam works confronted the traumatizing effects of the Vietnam War head-on by employing detectives openly characterized as Vietnam veterans in order to reveal the disillustionment and frustrations concerning the legality of the war and the subsequent treatment of American veterans. James Crumley, James Lee Burke and, to some extent Newton Thornburg, employ characters who are private investigators or characters attempting to unravel mysteries. These writers in particular expose a society ignorant of individual trauma and direct their anger toward a government that abandoned its soldiers upon their return from combat." – Sarah Trott, The Detective as Veteran Octavo, original cloth, orignal dust jacket. A near-fine copy in an excellent example of the original dust jacket. Lengthy inscription from Burke to Crumley on front free endpaper. Additionally signed and dated (8/8/96) by Burke on the title page. A superb association. Custom cloth box.

$4,500

Laughter in the Dark

FIRST U.S. EDITION; the first book to be published by Nabokov in the United States and the first appearance of Nabokov's English translation (from the Russian). The first English-language edition of Laughter in the Dark appeared in England under the title Camera Obscura in 1936 but Nabokov so disliked the translation (by Winifred Roy) that he decided to produce his own translation for the U.S. edition. "Laughter in the Dark is one of the finest works of Vladimir Nabokov's early Russian-language period, a dazzling, cinematic masterpiece, beautiful, cruel and horribly funny. Written in 1932, it displays the thirty-three-year-old genius in the full enjoyment of his powers. It is the least self-consciously 'literary' of his novels--never again would he write with such meticulous delicacy and dash--and perhaps the most directly enjoyable" (John Banville). The story of a middle-age man falling in love with a young girl would later be revisited (to much greater notoriety) in Nabokov’s Lolita.Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket; custom half-morocco box. Book fine, dust jacket with creasing at edges and chips to spine ends and corners. With none of the usual fading that typically affects this dust jacket.

$3,500

Mexico City Blues

FIRST EDITION, with slip (with printed header "Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac") signed and inscribed by Kerouac laid-in: "To Robert Wilson / from / Jack Kerouac". Robert Wilson was an influential literary critic, publisher, bookseller, and champion of Beat Literature.The collection of poetry (or "choruses") was written over the span of three weeks, and the subjects vary widely, based on what Kerouac saw and heard as he was writing the volume. In fact, the only truly consistent element to the choruses is their style, their poetic sound, reflecting the stream of consciousness manner in which they were written and the attempt to reproduce jazz styles and rhythms. The poems, in spite of their vast array of content, overall described “Kerouac’s melancholy… his blues, his feeling down and out, lonely and alone in Mexico City" (Charters, Kerouac: A Biography).Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket; custom half-morocco box. Book fine, dust jacket with a few smudges and a little wear to top of spine.

$4,000

Octopussy and The Living Daylights

"...And all this because of a man called Bond, Commander James Bond, who had turned up at ten thirty that morning in a taxi from Kingston."FIRST EDITION. Original cloth, first state dust jacket with the price intact on the front flap. Near fine copy in a very good or better example of the original dust jacket. A very desirable copy.

$375

An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History, BOUND WITH: Gibbon's A Vindication Bound w/Davis' "Reply"

FIRST EDITION. With 'Advertisement' after the title page. BOUND WITH: Davis, Henry Edwards. A Reply to Mr. Gibbon's Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." London: J.Dodsley, 1779. First edition. Octavo, bound in recent 3/4 calf over marbled boards preserving early spine. Internally clean and sound throughout; a very attractive volume of this rare edition. In 1778 three people, including Henry Edwards Davis, a tutor of Balliol College, Oxford, wrote treatises publicly attacking Gibbon in hysterical terms for the anti-Christian remarks in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', which contain remarks condemning the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. The philosopher David Hume had warned Gibbon that this might happen. It gave Gibbon the opportunity to overmatch Davis with a public reply (here included) which was quite devastating in its superior learning, and its contrasting coolness. Gibbon had it printed in octavo so that it could not be bound with his (quarto) 'History'. Davis' further reply is also included here.

$3,500

Howl

AN EXCEPTIONAL INSCRIBED COPY: FIRST EDITION, one of only 1000 copies, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY GINSBERG (with additional amusing commentary) and fellow Beat poet GREGORY CORSO.First inscribed by Corso on title "For Gergory, love Allen Ginsberg / S.F. -1956"; with Ginsberg's inscription beneath "This is Gregory Corso's Natural hand - A. Ginsberg 1977". Signed also by Ginsberg on title: "Allen Ginsberg Cambridge 1977 / This is Allen Ginsberg's Hand - Allen Ginsberg / 1977/ Dec 4". All surrounded with Ginsberg's characteristic flower and sun drawing (with "AH" in the "O" in "Howl"). On the verso of the title page Corso has written "Gregory. Here's one to harm [?] yr eyes / Allen Ginsberg / 1956"; with Ginsberg writing beneath "This is Gregory Corso's fake hand / Allen Ginsberg / Cambridge Dec 4, 77"."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 half-morocco box. Front wrapper spotted and toned, small damp stain to top last leaf. An outstanding signed and inscribed association copy.

Price On Request

Ralph 124C 41+

SCARCE FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY GERNSBACK, of one of the foundational texts in science fiction."In April 1911 'Modern Electrics' began serializing Gernsback's Ralph 124C 41+, written to exemplify (Gernsback's) contention that fiction could serve to teach science... Thoroughly deficient as fiction, the story nevertheless predicts radar, microfilm and microfiche, tape recorders, television, wireless transmission of power, planet hormones, and weather control" (American National Biography).Ralph 124C 41+ was published when many other magazines were struggling, and it led Gernsback to almost single-handedly establish a place for science fiction stories, as he allowed contemporary writers space in his science magazines. The success of these stories may have induced Gernsback to create the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, which started publication the year after Ralph 124C 41+ was printed in book form. The Hugo Awards, science fiction's most prestigious prize, were named in honor of Hugo Gernsback.Signed on the front free endpaper. Octavo, original blue cloth with gilt lettering, original dust jacket. Bookplate of Roy V. Hunt, editor and artist for the science fiction magazine The Alchemist on front pastedown. Book fine with cloth exceptionally bright; original dust jacket with some tape reinforcement at verso edges; closed tear at top of front panel and very minor edgewear. Rare signed.

$9,500

Metamorphoses D'Ovide en Rondeaux

Quarto. Contemporary calf, recently rebacked. Marbled endpapers, bookplates. Engraved allegorical frontispiece, engraved title & 226 engraved vignettes after Lebrun. A clean, wide-margined copy; a few gatherings lighly toned, archivally repaired tear to margin of Xiii. An attractive copy.

$4,000

The Red Badge of Courage

FIRST EDITION, first issue of one of the most influential works of American literature.  The Red Badge of Courage, Crane's "most popular work, and the classic American treatment of the Civil War... interprets military experience through the perspective of an untried volunteer who receives his wound-badge while fleeing from a battle but eventually proves himself by fighting bravely. The book was so convincing that a Union colonel said he recalled serving with Crane at Antietam. The epic sweep of the novel arises in part from Crane's ability to convey a common soldier's rite of passage from fear to confidence. It also arises from Crane's ability to blend a variety of literary modes, including irony, the mock-heroic, comedy, and the grotesque. Crane's strikingly original use of colors, partly inspired by Goethe and already on display in Maggie, became a trademark, as did his penchant for offbeat insights and arresting turns of phrase. The autumn 1895 publication of The Red Badge of Courage in the United States and England brought Crane international fame as the book went into fourteen printings within the year" (American National Biography). BAL 4071.  Octavo, original buckram stamped in red, black, and gilt; early custom box. Book with foxing to cloth edges and toning to spine. Text exceptionally clean. With Appleton ads in rear.

$4,500

Oriental Assembly

FIRST EDITION of Lawrence's account of his journey on foot through northern Syria. Illustrated with 129 photographs taken by the author. Octavo. Original cloth, original brown paper dust jacket. First issue with page 16 mis-numbered. Fine in a superb dust jacket with only very minor occasional rubbing.

$500

WOOLF, VIRGINIA

The Waves

Aeschyli tragoediae VII

The Man in the High Castle

Half of Paradise

Laughter in the Dark

Mexico City Blues

Octopussy and The Living Daylights

An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History, BOUND WITH: Gibbon's A Vindication Bound w/Davis' "Reply"

Howl

Ralph 124C 41+

Metamorphoses D'Ovide en Rondeaux

The Red Badge of Courage

Oriental Assembly

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