MASTERMAN READY; or, The Wreck of the Pacific
by Marryat, Captain [Frederick]
1841. Written for Young People. [In Three Volumes.] London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1841/1842/1842. 16 pp preliminary Vol I and Vol II ads dated April 1842; 32 pp terminal Vol III ads dated Oct 1842. Original pictorially-blindstamped blue-violet cloth. First Edition of the first of Marryat's seafaring tales that were "written for young people"; in 1922 Sadleir observed, "MASTERMAN READY is as fresh to-day as when, eighty years ago [now 185 years!], it first appeared." As... Read More
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SALT-WATER BALLADS
by Masefield, John
1902. London: Grant Richards, 1902. Original blue cloth. First Edition of Masefield's first book, which consisted of only 500 copies. Encouraged by Yeats and with the title chosen by the publisher, Masefield quit his bank job and decided to try his hand at nautical verse and (later) prose. The title unfortunately led to comparisons with Kipling and his "Barrack-Room Ballads" (whose verse Masefield "hated") -- especially as both poets used the vernacular in their ballads. In Masefield's opening... Read More
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THE BISHOP'S APRON. A Study in the Origins of a Great Family
by Maugham, W. Somerset
1906. London: Chapman and Hall, 1906. Original rose linen-grain cloth. First Edition, believed to have consisted of no more than 1500 copies. In 1900 Punch Magazine had asked Maugham to contribute a couple of stories, one of which was "Cupid and the Vicar of Swale." Over the next few years he converted this story in two ways: into the play LOAVES AND FISHES (written in 1902 but not performed until 1911 and not published until 1924), and into... Read More
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Autograph Letter Signed
by Maugham, W. S[omerset]
1937. To "Dear Mr. Seale," one page on "5 Portland Place, W.1." stationery. No legible date, but 1937-1938. This is Maugham's response to a Mr. Seale who had apparently asked about a good introductory book on philosophy. The text of this letter is: Cyril Joad brought out with Gollancz last year or the year before a book called, I think, a Handbook to Philosophy, which is very clear and readable, with a very good bibliography at the end... Read More
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![THE BOOK-BAG. [1/725 copies signed]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/598/977/1702977598.0.l.jpg)
THE BOOK-BAG. [1/725 copies signed]
by Maugham, W. Somerset
1932. [1 of 725 signed copies] Florence: G. Orioli, 1932. Original light blue boards with cream cloth spine, with dust jacket. First Separate Edition, issued as No. 9 in Orioli's "Lungarno Series," limited to 725 numbered copies (this being #234) signed by Maugham on the frontispiece portrait. This tale has a strange history. Maugham had submitted it to Cosmopolitan years earlier, but its editor Ray Long rejected it because he feared readers would be offended by the subject... Read More
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CATALINA. A Romance
by Maugham, W. Somerset
1948. Nicoll, Gordon. London: William Heinemann, (1948). Original red cloth lettered in silver, with dust jacket. First Edition of Maugham's last novel, published two months before the American one. Set in Spain during the Inquisition, it told of a crippled girl to whom the Blessed Virgin appears in a vision. She will be healed by one of three brothers, the one who has best served God. One brother is a bishop, another is a soldier, and the third... Read More
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PAVED WITH GOLD or The Romance and Reality of the London Streets
by Mayhew, Augustus "(one of the Brothers Mayhew)
1857. [13 serial parts, FINE] An Unfashionable Novel. With Illustrations by H.K. Browne. [In thirteen monthly serial parts.] London: Chapman and Hall, March 1857 - March 1858. Original cream-colored printed wrappers. First Edition, complete in the 13 monthly serial parts. Per the sub-title, this is a novel of the London streets, specifically of boys drawn into lives of crime (Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger come to mind). Augustus and Henry Mayhew were journalists and novelists, perhaps best... Read More
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BATTLE-PIECES and Aspects of The War
by Melville, Herman
1866. [one of Melville's scarcest] New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866. Original violet cloth, beveled board edges. First Edition of Melville's first published volume of verse, about the just-concluded American Civil War -- "dedicated to the memory of the Three Hundred Thousand who in the war for the maintenance of the Union fell devotedly under the flag of their fathers." In 1857 Melville stopped writing fiction after the publication of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN -- though he would live 34... Read More
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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS. In Three Volumes
by Meredith, George
1891. London: Chapman and Hall, 1891. Original royal blue cloth decorated in black. First Edition of what is "generally considered the most stylistically opaque and tortured of his [Meredith's] novels" [Williams]. Victor Radnor, Nataly Dreighton and their daughter Nesta have been supremely happy for twenty years; but now that Nesta is of marriageable age, it is time she and her suitor know that Victor is in fact married to a much older woman -- whom he had married... Read More
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LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA: A Novel. In Three Volumes
by Meredith, George
1894. London: Chapman and Hall, 1894. Original olive green cloth decorated in black. First Edition of Meredith's last three-decker novel, which consisted of 1,500 copies -- published, in fact, in the final year of the three-volume format, as the lending libraries had finally lost their decades-long control over the publishing of English fiction. The next year would see Meredith's last multi-volume novel, THE AMAZING MARRIAGE in two volumes, which would carry through with the same topic as LORD... Read More
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LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA: A Novel. In Three Volumes
by Meredith, George
1894. London: Chapman and Hall, 1894. Original olive green cloth decorated in black. First Edition of Meredith's last three-decker novel, which consisted of 1,500 copies -- published, in fact, in the final year of the three-volume format, as the lending libraries had finally lost their decades-long control over the publishing of English fiction. The next year would see Meredith's last multi-volume novel, THE AMAZING MARRIAGE in two volumes, which would carry through with the same topic as LORD... Read More
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THE BUILDING OF THE CITY BEAUTIFUL
by Miller, Joaquin
1893. Cambridge & Chicago: Stone & Kimball, 1893. Original grey cloth decorated in gilt, beveled. First Edition, which consisted of only 500 copies (so stated). This tale, by the Hoosier who migrated to the Pacific Northwest, takes place in Jerusalem and the Holy Lands at the time of Christ. It is today collected largely as a fine production by the publisher Stone & Kimball. A fine copy. Kramer 6.
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THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER
by Milne, A.A.
1928. With Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. London: Methuen & Co., (1928). Original pink cloth pictorially decorated in gilt, with dust jacket. First Edition of this the fourth and last Milne/Shepard collaboration (and the second of them in prose, after WINNIE THE POOH). This is also the book in which Tigger first makes an appearance. Tales include "A House is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore," "Tigger Comes to the Forest and has Breakfast" (Tigger's first appearance in... Read More
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TWO PEOPLE
by Milne, A.A.
1931. London: Methuen & Co., (1931). Original oatmeal cloth with green panels, with dust jacket. First Edition (of Milne's first attempt at seriously tackling the novel form, according to the jacket). It is a study, almost stream-of-consciousness style, of a marriage between two people who have virtually nothing in common, other than their love for each other. This is a fine copy, in a nearly fine jacket (very slight wear at the spine head -- as usual, since... Read More
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![NOW WE ARE SIX. [signed by the illustrator]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/706/800/1618800706.0.l.jpg)
NOW WE ARE SIX. [signed by the illustrator]
by Milne, A.A.
1927. [signed by Ernest H. Shepard] With Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. London: Methuen & Co., (1927). Original maroon cloth pictorially decorated in gilt. First Edition of the third of the four famous Milne/Shepard books, and the second to consist of verse. "We have been nearly three years writing this book. We began it when we were very young... and now we are six" [from the Introduction]. This is a fine, bright copy (one bump on the bottom... Read More
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THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER
by Milne, A.A.
1928. [in fine jacket] With Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. London: Methuen & Co., (1928). Original pink cloth pictorially decorated in gilt, with dust jacket. First Edition of this the fourth and last Milne/Shepard collaboration (and the second of them in prose, after WINNIE-THE-POOH). Tales include "A House is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore," "Tigger Comes to the Forest and has Breakfast" (Tigger's first appearance in a book), "Piglet does a Very Grand Thing," and "Christopher Robin... Read More
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![THE CITY OF THE SAINTS, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California. [with A.L.s.]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/474/212/1654212474.0.l.jpg)
THE CITY OF THE SAINTS, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California. [with A.L.s.]
by (Mormon) Burton, Richard F.
1862. [with a relevant A.L.s.] With Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1862. 2 pp undated ads. Original blind-stamped dark brown cloth with gilt-lettered spine. First American Edition, published in the same year as the UK edition. Burton is best-known for his travels in the Middle East and (1855-1859) in Central Africa, especially searching for the sources of the Nile, but in April 1860 he sailed to America, primarily to visit Salt Lake City: "I had long determined... Read More
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YVERNELLE. A Legend of Feudal France
by Norris, Frank
1892. [with original early photograph] Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1892 [actually late 1891]. Original mauve cloth decorated in both glossy and matte gilt. First Edition of the first book by Frank Norris, a romantic narrative poem of medieval chivalry, written when he was a freshman student at the University of California. (He would not graduate there, but rather in 1894 he transferred to Harvard.) His interest in France (he had spent a year at an art school in... Read More
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The Epic of the Wheat. THE PIT. A Story of Chicago
by Norris, Frank
1903. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. Original red cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition, first printing (with the J.J. Little device and "First Edition" on the copyright page). This was the second volume in Norris's planned trilogy on human suffering and sacrifice, "The Epic of the Wheat." THE OCTOPUS (1901) had described the struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad interests in California, and THE PIT then follows the same wheat through the manipulation of the... Read More
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The Epic of the Wheat. THE PIT. A Story of Chicago
by Norris, Frank
1903. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. Original grey boards with printed spine label. First Edition, first issue (with the J.J. Little device and "First Edition" on the copyright page). This was the second volume in Norris's planned trilogy on human suffering and sacrifice, "The Epic of the Wheat." THE OCTOPUS (1901) had described the struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad interests in California, and THE PIT then follows the same wheat through the manipulation of... Read More
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The Epic of the Wheat. THE PIT. A Story of Chicago
by Norris, Frank
1903. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. Original red cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition, first printing (with the J.J. Little device and "First Edition" on the copyright page). This copy is in the first state, with integral title leaf. This was the second volume in Norris's planned trilogy on human suffering and sacrifice, "The Epic of the Wheat." THE OCTOPUS (1901) had described the struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad interests in California, and THE... Read More
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BALED HAY. A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass.
by Nye, Bill [pseudonym of Edgar Wilson Nye]
1884. Illustrated by F. Opper, of "Puck." New York and Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1884. Original light brown wrappers stamped in black. First Edition of this volume of humor, by a 19th-Century master of that genre. Nye (1850-1896) was born in very rural Maine, he grew up and was educated in northern Wisconsin, and he settled in Laramie, Wyoming Territory -- where he was postmaster, superintendent of schools, and journalist at the Laramie Boomerang... where he became... Read More
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THE BARCLAYS OF BOSTON
by Otis, Mrs. Harrison Gray [née Eliza Henderson Boardman]
1854. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1854. Original blind-stamped olive-green cloth. First (only?) Edition of this 419-page novel of Boston high society, written by a major member of that group. This a book about Boston's most prominent family, "the Barclays" (for which, read "the Otises") -- their rise to power, and how they shaped the City of Boston. Eliza was the wife of HGO Jr, not to be confused with her husband's mother (née Sally Foster), who also... Read More
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![Autograph Letter Signed, to "My dear Mr [John] Lane.](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/345/970/1297970345.0.l.jpg)
Autograph Letter Signed, to "My dear Mr [John] Lane.
by Page, Thomas Nelson
1899. Two pages of stationery printed with the address "17 R Street, Corner | New Hampshire Avenue" [Washington DC]. Dated by hand "June 4, 1899". The text of this letter reads as follows: I have waited to answer your letter of a week or two ago. I refer to its receipt [?] because I did not know what to say. I am, however, now engaged in writing a story which I believe would meet your requirements and which... Read More
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Autograph Letter Signed, to "Dear Lady Randolph Churchill.
by Parker, Gilbert
1899. Two pages (first and third pages of one folded leaf of stationery printed with the address "20, Carlton House Terrace, S.W." Dated by hand "5th May '99". The text of this letter reads as follows: Herewith I send you a programme of tonight's affair. You will witness that your name is on the list, but the programme was printed before we had word that you preferred not to speak. The hour of reception is six o'clock, when... Read More
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