“The beauty of things must be that they end.”
First edition of Jack Kerouac's Tristessa; signed by him.
This entire short novel Tristessa's a narrative meditation studying a hen, a rooster, a dove, a cat, a chihuahua dog, family meat, and a ravishing, ravished junky lady, first in their crowded bedroom, then out to drunken streets, taco stands, & pads at dawn in Mexico City slums" (Allen Ginsberg).
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We are pleased to announce the arrival of our new Fall 2020 Catalog featuring a fine selection of rare first editions and historic documents.
Highlights of the catalog include a scarce first complete edition in English of Cervantes’ masterpiece Don Quixote, an exceptionally rare first edition of Charles Darwin’s magnum opus On the Origin of Species, a first octavo edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, an exceedingly rare first edition of The Great Gatsby in the scarce original dust jacket, and the singular presentation collection of Faulkner’s selected works bound at his direction as a gift to his only child, Jill.
Browse the catalog here: https://buff.ly/2Gaq8H4
“To understand America, read Mark Twain."
The autograph edition of Twain’s selected writings. Twenty five volumes bound in full crushed green morocco; one of five hundred and twelve numbered copies signed by Twain on the limitation leaf.
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"I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman's equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling."
First edition of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg; signed by cultural and feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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"The most influential thinker of the Enlightenment."
Rare second edition this fundamental work in the history of Western thought, John Locke's An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding: In Four Books.
"It is Locke's second edition of the 'Essay on Human Understanding' that is the masterpiece we remember; the first, 1690, edition did not bear Locke's name, nor did it include a number of emendations that finished the work as Locke wanted it" (Matthews, Collecting Rare Books, 97).
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One of many New Arrivals: Scarce first edition of Slim Aarons' A Wonderful Time.
Since publication in 1974, A Wonderful Time has served as a source of inspiration for art designers and advertising gurus. Aarons' pictures appeared on the pages of Harper's Bazaar, Life, Vanity Fair and Holiday. "Attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places" was Aarons's mantra.
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“No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.”
Rare first British edition of Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa. An exceptional example, uncommon in this condition.
From 1914 to 1931, Danish aristocrat Baroness Karen Blixen owned and operated a coffee plantation in Kenya. After the plantation failed, she returned to Europe and began to write under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa reads like a collection of stories in which she adheres to no strict chronology, gives no explanation of the facts of her life, and apologizes for nothing. Basis for the film bearing the same name, directed by Sydney Pollack, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, which went on to win seven Academy Awards. Named by Modern Library as one of the 100 best non-fiction books of the twentieth century.
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"One of the most endearing books ever written for children."
First edition of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, which author A.A. Milne once referred to as a “household book,” “one of the classic read-aloud books that should not be missed by any family” (Silvey).
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“The first real, kindly agreeable, and infinitely amusing and charming illustrations for a child’s book in England” (Charles Welsh).
Rare first edition, first issue in English of both volumes of Grimm's famous fairy tales, including Snow White, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, and Sleeping Beauty.
As early as 1805, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began collecting German popular tales. They published the first and second volumes of Kinder-und Hausmärchen in 1812 and 1814. Its publication brought immediate and worldwide fame to the brothers Grimm and provided the foundation for their influential and groundbreaking studies in German philology and grammar (PMM 281).
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“The Raphael of 20th-century photographers.”
First edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment; inscribed by him to Eliot Elisofon, a fellow photographer and a founding member of the Photo League in 1936.
"Cartier-Bresson has a special interest in photographing people and in capturing the essence of what has not previously been seen. He is famous for his theory of the 'decisive moment'-that is seizing the split second when the subject stands revealed in its most significant aspect? Today he ranks as one of the most important and influential photographers of this century" (Blodgett, 96).
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One of many New Arrivals: Rare original Kahlil Gibran portrait of a woman, initialed and dated by him, "K.G. 1926."
Best known for his best-selling work, The Prophet, Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, Kahlil Gibran 's drawings were displayed for the first time at Day's studio in Boston in 1904. With the financial help of a newly met benefactress, Mary Haskell, Gibran studied art in Paris from 1908 to 1910 where he worked in Marcel-Béronneau's studio and became "confirmed in his aspiration to be a Symbolist painter" (Waterfield). Gibran worked primarily in pencil and watercolor and drew inspiration from the raw color fields of William Turner's haunting landscapes. Gibran created more than seven hundred works of visual art during his lifetime and his drawings and paintings are currently on display at the Gibran Museum in Bsharri, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha; the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
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“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
The complete works of William Shakespeare bound by Bayntun-Riviere in an elaborate Cosway-style binding.
Cosway bindings (named for renowned 19th-century English miniaturist Richard Cosway) were popularized, if not invented, in the early 1900s by the renowned London bookselling firm of Henry Sotheran. The earliest Cosway bindings were created by Miss C.B. Currie who faithfully imitated Cosway's detailed watercolor style of portraiture from designs by J.H. Stonehouse, Sotheran’s manager. These delicate miniature paintings, often on ivory, were set into the covers or doublures of richly-tooled bindings and protected by a thin pane of glass.
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“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am…"
First edition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; the first edition published using the author’s real name.
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
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"Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor…"
The Amontillado edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe finely bound in full morocco by P.B. Sanford. One of 315 numbered copies signed and dated by the publisher on the limitation leaf of each volume, this is number 290.
Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, American Romantic writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe is credited with inventing the genre of detective fiction and contributing to the genre of science fiction, only just emerging at the turn of the 20th century. Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe's most memorable tales include: The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Gold-Bug, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Premature Burial, and The Tell-Tale Heart.
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“What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so in exorable as one's self!”
Finely bound example of Hawthorne’s tale of an early 19th-century household “solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse" bound in full crushed crimson levant morocco by Bayntun-Riviere.
“The House of the Seven Gables was an extended description of such houses and households as [Hawthorne] had dealt with in many of his sketches. This house was described from an actual house in Salem, and this household was in some respects like the household of Hawthorne’s own youth— withdrawn, solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse… With The House of the Seven Gables Hawthorne said farewell to the Salem in which he had grown up” (DAB).
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October 26th: On this day in 1883, Napoleon Hill, best remembered for his mega-bestseller, Think and Grow Rich, which has sold an estimated 20 million copies worldwide, was born.
Published in 1937, Think and Grow Rich was inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and (later) philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. While the book's title and much of the text concerns increased income, the author insists that the philosophy taught in the book can help people succeed in any line of work, to do and be anything they can imagine. It remains the biggest seller of Napoleon Hill's books.
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"The mother of the English 19th-century novel."
The Winchester edition of The Novels of Jane Austen; elaborately bound in three quarter morocco by Zaehnsdorf.
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"But man is not made for defeat." he said, "A man can be destroyed by not defeated."
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; inscribed by him to Karen Pierce, the daughter of one of his oldest friends, Waldo Pierce, often referred to as “the Ernest Hemingway of American painters.”
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"To know another man well, especially if he be a noted and illustrious character, is a great thing not to be despised."
Finely bound first edition of the celebrated Countess intimate biography of her lover, Lord Byron.
Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli was the married lover of Lord Byron while he was living in Ravenna and writing the first five cantos of Don Juan. Teresa married an elderly diplomat, Count Alessandro Guiccioli, who was 50 years older than her on January 19, 1818, and three days later met Lord Byron at the home of Countess Albrizzi.
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“And it's finally only in the woods you get that nostalgia for cities."
First edition of Kerouac’s poignant masterpiece of self-reflection, Big Sur.
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance.
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One of many New Arrivals: Scarce edition of Thomas Commerford Martin’s landmark work in the field of electrical engineering, detailing the research and inventions of brilliant inventor, Nikola Tesla; inscribed by Nikola Tesla to Civil War Major General Daniel Butterfield.
Inventor, electrical engineer, and physicist, Nikola Tesla is perhaps best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. A brilliant inventor, Tesla conducted a range of experiments involving mechanical generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early x-ray imaging, in an attempt to develop inventions he could patent and market. He became well-known as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab, and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures.
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One of many New Arrivals: the complete works of Ivan Turgenieff bound in full red morocco.
The works of Turgenieff present a "realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and [his] penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age His greatest work was always topical, committed literature, having universal appeal in the elegance of the love story and the psychological acuity of the portraiture" (Britannica).
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