Nikolai Gogol

Norfolk: New Directions , [1944]

FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, INSCRIBED BY NABOKOV TO HIS WIFE, VERA. The inscription translates as "My beloved, here's a little book for you, my life, here's another little book for you, my love, there will be more little books". With small notations highlighting text throughout. Nikolai Gogol is one of Nabokov's earliest works in English.

12mo. Original cloth, first issue dust jacket. A fine copy.

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Ommateum

FIRST EDITION. Octavo. Original cloth, dust jacket. A fine copy. Custom box.

$2,700

Voyage au Bout de la Nuit

FIRST EDITION of Celine's highly influential first novel.  "'Journey,' published in 1932, burst like a bombshell on the Parisian literary scene, garnering huge sales and almost winning the Prix Goncourt... [The] novel is a furious attempt to place one man’s consciousness at the epicenter of a world that is exploding under the centripetal influences of capitalism, imperialism, consumerism and licentiousness. In this, Céline anticipates the essentially apolitical rodomontades of the American Beats, quite as much as he belongs with the excruciating Marxian posturing of the interwar French existentialists and Surrealists...   "If Ulysses is the great modernist novel most inspired by a desire for humanistic inclusion, then Voyage is its antithesis: a stream of misanthropic consciousness, almost unrelieved by any warmth or fellow-feeling” (Will Self, “Céline’s Dark Journey”). Octavo, original wrappers; custom cloth box. With ads in rear. A few creases to spine and a few spots of soiling. A beautiful copy of a fragile book.

$3,000

Claudius, The God

FIRST EDITION. "Two years have gone by since I finished writing the long story of how I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, the cripple, the stammerer, the fool of the family, whom none of his ambitious and bloody-minded relatives considered worth the trouble of executing, poisoning, forcing to suicide, banishing to a desert island or starving to death – which was how they one by one got rid of each other – how I survived them all, even my insane nephew Gaius Caligula, and was one day unexpectedly acclaimed Emporer by the corporals and sergeants of the Palace Guard." Octavo. Original cloth, original dust jacket.

$450

En attendant Godot [Waiting for Godot]

FIRST EDITION of Beckett’s masterpiece, one of the most influential works of modern drama. WITH: a small photograph of Beckett signed and inscribed by Beckett laid in. “Voted the most significant English language play of the 20th century in a British Royal National Theatre poll of 800 playwrights, actors, directors and journalists… Beckett's naked play about two tramps waiting for Godot has tapped into our 20th-century public consciousness. It seems to express our deepest fears and our deepest knowledge of ourselves and our predicament” (Norman Berlin).Notably, the first edition of the text provided the public with their first experience of the complete play—Les Editions de Minuit published it three months before the play’s debut (in French) in January 1953. Octavo, original wrappers; custom half-morocco box. A little toning to spine. A superb copy.

$4,000

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

Call it Sleep

BEAUTIFUL SIGNED LIMITED EDITION from the Arion Press. One of 300 numbered copies (out of a total edition of 326), signed by Roth. Illustrated with 48 photographs of New York City in the period of the novel. At the time it was written, "Few publishers expressed interest in Call It Sleep because its moody undertones and true-to-life depictions of social and family conflicts were thought to be unmarketable to the nation's readers, who were struggling with the depression." It took decades until a critic wrote of it favorably enough to bring it to the public's attention again, when in 1964 Irving Howe published a review on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, making it a national bestseller. "For its combination of realistic detail, psychological symbolism, and modernist techniques, [Call It Sleep] marks an important transition in Jewish-American literature from the works of early immigrant writers such as Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska to later modern voices such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth" (American National Biography). San Francisco: Arion Press, 1995. Quarto, green half morocco, original decorated cloth, original decorated slipcase. A fine copy.

$750

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

American Buffalo

FIRST EDITION, hardcover issue, SIGNED BY MAMET on dedication page. Winner of the 1976 Obie Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best American Play of 1977; made into a 1996 film starring Dustin Hoffman. Octavo, original yellow cloth, original dust jacket; custom half-morocco box. A FINE COPY.

$1,400

Springtide of Life

RACKHAM, ARTHUR; SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES.The Springtide of Life. Poems of Childhood by Algernon Charles Swinburne.SIGNED LIMITED FIRST EDITION, number 354 of only 765 copies signed by illustrator Arthur Rackham. Beautifully illustrated collection of Swinburne's children's poems, with nine mounted colored plates and 52 black and white drawings. One reason why Swinburne never brought out such a collection was his failure to find an artist who could interpret to his satisfaction the simplicity and freshness of his verses. We are fortunate in having secured, in Mr. Arthur Rackham, one whose delicate and romantic fancy is in sensitive harmony with Swinburne's, and who understands, no less than he did, ho 'Heaven lies about us in our infancy.'" –Edmund Gosse, Preface Quarto, original half vellum over parchment boards with gilt designs. Some soiling to endpapers, binding with only the slightest soiling; an exceptionally clean copy.

$850

Riprap

DEDICATION COPY OF SNYDER'S FIRST BOOK, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY SNYDER: "For Jim Baxtor / from Gary". Baxtor is one of 12 dedicatees. Octavo, original wrappers, japanese string tied binding. One of only 500 copies. Fine.

$3,500

Pansies

“So I should wish these Pansies to be taken as thoughts rather than anything else; casual thoughts that are true while they are true and irrelevant when the mood and circumstances changes. I should like them to be as fleeting as pansies, which wilt so soon, and are fascinating with their varied faces, while they last. And flowers, to my thinking, are not merely pretty-pretty. They have in their fragrance an earthiness of the humus and corruptive earth from which they spring. And pansies, in their streaked faces, have a look of many things besides hearts-ease.” - D.H. Lawrence “Lawrence himself never took Pansies as seriously as his hostile critics, as his two introductions make clear: he called them ‘rag poems’” (Keith Sagar, The Art of D.H. Lawrence). Nevertheless, this unexpurgated edition, considered by Lawrence to be complete with the full introduction and fourteen additional poems, was published privately due to concerns about pornography. The manuscript had recently been seized by the English police for suspicions of obscenity, which Lawrence took as an insult and perhaps prompted the publication of this and another edition of 500 copies. PRIVATELY PRINTED FIRST EDITION, number 48 of only 50 copies SIGNED BY LAWRENCE. Octavo, with frontispiece portait of Lawerence printed in brown. Title designed by W.G. West, printed in brown and blue, on Japanese vellum. Original soft grey/blue leather decorated in blue and gold, top edges gilt, others uncut. Bookplate of John Kobler (biographer of Al Capone) on frton pastesown. Spine faded, a little soiling to boards; original slipcase with a little fading and wear at edges; custom half-morocco box with gilt decoration on front board. A very nice copy. RARE.

$1,800

La Photographie n'est pas l'art

FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY MAN RAY. A FINE COPY. "I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence." -Man RayOctavo, stamped blue wrappers, with the black die-cut outer wrapper. A fine copy, signed by Man Ray on the title page. A FINE COPY.

$12,000

Nabokov, Vladimir