The White Goddess

London: Cassell, 1948

FIRST EDITION. "It is ... arguable that [The White Goddess] marked the end of Modernism as the dominant mode in British and Irish poetry. Those stirred by its enchantments, from Hughes and Heaney to Simon Armitage, as well as those who turned away in distaste (Philip Larkin among them), have learned from Modernism but have no longer cared for its formal and emotional stringencies... The White Goddess has remained in tune with the times, reprinted time after time and quietly gathering new readers and enthusiasts iwth every generation." –Ian Firla and Grevel Lindop, Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves's The White Goddess

Octavo. Original cloth, original dust jacket.

$550

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Tableaux, statues, bas-reliefs et carnees de la Galerie de Florence et du Palais Pitti

FIRST EDITION. With 200 engraved plates reproducing the superb statuary, painting, bas-reliefs, cameos and gems of Florence. Four volumes. Royal folio. Contemporary morocco over cloth boards.

$15,000

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

FIRST EDITION of Vols II-VI, THIRD EDITION of vol I. This is the first issue of Volume I to set Gibbon's footnotes at page-bottom instead of an the end of the volume, a major iomprovement in readability. "To [his] task Gibbon brought a width of vision and a critical mastery of the available sources which have not been equalled to this day; and the result was clothed in an inimitable prose" (PMM). Six volumes. Quarto. Rebound in period style quarter calf over marbled boards, the spines gilt with red morocco title and volume labels. An attractive and desirable set. Clean throughout.

$7,500

Romanarum historiarum [Greek]

EDITIO PRINCEPS of Appian's histories of the various Roman wars from the earliest times to the campaigns of Trajan. Folio. 18th-century calf recently rebacked. Title leaf laid down and repaired; lower blank corners of last four leaves repaired (not affecting text). Greek type; Estienne's basilisk device as Royal Greek Printer on title; foliated and grotesque Greek initials with matching headpieces. An attractive copy.

$4,500

Monumenti Antichi Inediti Spiegati ed Illustrata

FIRST EDITION, illustrated with 208 beautiful copper-plate engravings and numerous in-text illustrations and vignettes.Winckelmann is best known for his monumental Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of the Art of Antiquity, 1764), which enjoyed tremendous popular success and permanently reshaped aesthetic criticism. The Monuments, his last published work, stands by itself as "a masterpiece of interpretation and explanation" and "a pioneering work in the field of archaeological methodology" (Catholic Encyclopedia; Lappmann). Significantly, it is also the only one of Winckelmann's works published in his lifetime to be extensively illustrated. Folio, contemporary vellum with original red leather label, decorated endpapers. Two volumes in one. Text in Italian. Bookplates. Light wear to binding, very small library number on dedication leaf, small tear to endpaper. Occasional light foxing. Plates very clean. A superb, wide-margined copy in contemporary vellum of the beautifully-illustrated first edition.

$7,000

Watt

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, number 19 of only 100 specially bound numbered copies. In 1942, "After spending several weeks on the run [from the Nazi's], [Beckett and his future wife Suzanne] lived out the rest of the war in the little village of Roussillon in the Vaucluse, where Beckett wrote his extraordinary novel Watt, partly as a stylistic exercise and partly in order to stay sane in a place where he was cut off from most intellectual pursuits. Written in English, it was a daring linguistic experiment and, because of its strange subject matter as well as its manner, was not published until 1953" (DNB). Octavo, half-cloth over boards. Spine a bit faded (as usual).

$375

You Can't Win

“The tone of the ‘beat’ world, as Burroughs first perceived it, chimed with the world of Jack Black.” –James Campbell, This is the Beat GenerationFIRST EDITION of Black's influential autobiography; with the extremely rare original dust jacket. This book is often hailed as the first "Beat " book.The memoir of a notorious thief, vagabond, and ‘honorable’ outlaw, You Can’t Win was a bestseller upon its publication in 1926. It would become a favorite book of William S. Burroughs (whose "Junkie" is modeled after it) and with its depiction of a free, loose, nomadic lifestyle, become one of the most influential works for the Beat movement. Burroughs claimed that, in his representation of the dying days of the Wild West, Jack Black “has recorded a chapter of specifically American life that is now gone forever,” a way of life that Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others would try to adapt and re-create for their own generation. Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket; custom box. Early owner signature on front endpaper. Book fine, dust jacket shows wear at spine, with large chip at tail. Scarce in dust jacket.

$7,500

Wessex Tales

FIRST EDITION, 1/634 COPIES, IN THE PUBLISHER'S CLOTH BINDING.Two volumes. Octavo, original green cloth with gilt spine titles. Edges uncut. Light wear to cloth at oints and extremities, corners slightly bumped, spine somewhat cocked. Elegant bookplate at front pastedowns. Cloth clean and bright, text clean. An excellent copy housed in custom slipcase and chemise.

$2,500

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

FIRST EDITION, with the twelve-line errata and two cancels. In 1773 Johnson, then sixty-four, set off with Boswell, aged thirty-three to tour the Hebrides and visit Boswell's ancestral home."The publication of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) marked an important moment in Scottish travel literature, despite the less than favourable impressions conveyed... Johnson declared that 'All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it', but found Scotland to be much worse than expected. Nevertheless, he single-handedly enhanced Scottish tourism, securing the peripheral areas of Britain as eligible destinations for travellers."–The Cambridge Companion to Travel WritingOctavo. Contemporary full calf. Bookplate. Skillful repairs at spine ends, clean throughout. A lovely copy. From the library of distinguished Johnsonian and bibliographer William B. Todd.

$3,000

Love in the Time of Cholera

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

$125

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

Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi di vetro ornati di figure trovati ne' cimiteri di Roma

FIRST EDITION. “[Buonarroti’s] combination of genuine (or perhaps contrived) religious devotion and true sensitivity to beauty that led him to make his remarkably original appraisal of early Christian art. Stimulated perhaps by what he himself had written nearly years before about the greater veneration likely to have been felt for the crudely carved gods of ancient Egypt than for the much more refined representations which could certainly have been made by later artists, he now carried this line of thought much further... by claiming that the lack of grace and design led to a certain reverential fear and majesty which were well suited to religious art... Buonarroti’s claims for the edifying value of clumsy artefacts produced by unskilled amateurs (claims backed up – to his own satisfaction and to that of his contemporaries – by specific examples carefully reproduced) do open a new chapter in the historian’s understanding of art. From now on it became increasingly accepted that weakness itself could be the best guarantee of purity and devotion.” –Francis Haskell, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the past. Folio. Contemporary vellum; 35 engraved plates, (3 folding, xxxi numbered and 1 unnumbered), woodcut text illustrations. Skillful repair at head of spine extending into front board; moderate wear to binding extremities. Occasional spotting, generally clean throughout. A very attractive copy.

$950

An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China

FIRST EDITION (Atlas volume lacking)."During the eighteenth century, the English were busy defining themselves in opposition to Catholic Europe, manoeuvring for their destined place in history. Late starters in the race for overseas trade, they were improving their odds at teh very time that the Jesuits' fortunes were on the wane. With them, there arose a new sinology... But before the sinological works came the travellers' tales, beginning with Anson's Voyage, continuing half a century later with [Staunton's] "Authentic Account" of the Macartney embassy, and then proliferating in extraordinary number through the nineteenth century." –Antonia Finnane, Changing Clothes in China.Two volumes (lacking the Atlas). Quarto. Quarter leather over cloth boards (library binding from Westminster Libraries, London). With a portrait frontispiece to each volume and 26 additional engravings. A fresh and clean copy. Small library stamps on frontispiece, title page and occasionally elsewhere.