AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
by Conrad, Joseph
1896. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896. 10 pp undated ads. Original green cloth decorated in red and black. First American Edition of Conrad's second book, issued as #198 in Appleton's "Town and Country Library." Books in the "Town and Country Library" were issued in three formats: this standard one in cloth (priced at $1.00), one for half that price in wrappers, and a deluxe one (actually a separate printing) in half leather. "Because it was to... Read More
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THE SHADOW LINE. A Confession
by Conrad, Joseph
1917. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1917. Original blue cloth decorated in gilt, with dust jacket. First American Edition, published about a month after Dent's London edition, of one of Conrad's most autobiographical tales. To quote from the dust jacket, The "shadow line" is that dim boundary that divides youth from maturity. How a young first mate, who unexpectedly finds himself in command of a sailing vessel, leaves his carefree youth behind forever in the agonizing... Read More
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SOME REMINISCENCES
by Conrad, Joseph
1912. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912. 2 pp undated ads. Original dark blue cloth. First Edition of this autobiographical work, which initially appeared serially in Ford Madox Ford's newly-founded English Review. What is remarkable about Conrad's reminiscences is how clearly he employed fictional techniques worked out with Ford,... wherein the narrative intensity increases as the story develops. To achieve that, Conrad used a constantly interrupted narrative as a way of unsettling conventional sequences and, thereby, established anticipation of the... Read More
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THE ROVER
by Conrad, Joseph
1923. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, n.d.[1923]. Original dark green cloth. This is a hybrid copy of the First Canadian Edition (from the second English impression) -- a copy planned for the UK domestic market but redirected (with "The Ryerson Press" binding and with cancel title leaf undated on the verso) to the Canadian market. Per Supino: The second impression was bound both for domestic issue [in dark green cloth] and for the first Canadian issue published by the... Read More
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NOTES ON LIFE & LETTERS
by Conrad, Joseph
1921. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1921. Original olive-green cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition (preceded by a 35-copy privately-printed issue). This is a collection of pieces that had appeared, over the prior two years, as 25-copy pamphlets produced by Clement Shorter and by T.J. Wise. This copy is in the third and usual state, with a cancel leaf for pages xi-xii, to correct the "S" and "A" of "SEA" lacking in the Table of Contents.... Read More
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SUSPENSE: A Napoleonic Novel
by Conrad, Joseph
1925. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925. Original white parchment with blue fore-corners, with blue paper and tissue dust jackets, and with publisher's slipcase. First Edition, which consisted of 377 numbered copies, this being #354. This was Conrad's last novel, posthumously published. It was issued in a format identical to THE ROVER of 1923, similarly 377 copies; however, SUSPENSE was not signed, for the reason implied above. This is a remarkably complete copy: it has not... Read More
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THE INHERITORS. An Extravagant Story
by Conrad, Joseph and Hueffer, Ford M.
1901. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1901. Original tan cloth pictorially decorated in black, orange and gilt. First Edition of the first collaboration between Conrad and Hueffer -- a tale that combines science fiction with political satire, somewhat in the same vein as had recently been popularized by H. G. Wells. This is regarded as Conrad's only science fiction tale -- though the work is largely Hueffer's. The "I" narrator is Etchingham Granger, a writer of impeccable... Read More
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NOSTROMO. A Tale of the Seaboard
by Conrad, Joseph
1904. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1904. Original green cloth decorated in orange and black. First American Edition of Conrad's well-known novel involving a South American silver mine, and the corruption and dishonesty fostered by its riches. Conrad was extending his "Lord Jim" theme: that the man who slowly grows rich can be a victim of the silver, not its conqueror; that wealth is not something gained but a trap for those who relinquish, however momentarily,... Read More
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TYPHOON and Other Stories
by Conrad, Joseph
1903. London: William Heinemann, 1903. 2 pp preliminary ads plus 32 pp undated ads. Original grey cloth with life preserver in gilt. First Edition, which consisted of 1500 copies for the domestic market plus 1500 for the colonial market (same binding, different preliminaries). In addition to the title tale, the "other stories" are "Amy Foster," "Falk" and "To-morrow." "Typhoon" had been published in New York in 1902, prior to Conrad's final revisions that are reflected in the text... Read More
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NOSTROMO. A Tale of the Seaboard
by Conrad, Joseph
1904. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1904. Original green cloth decorated in orange and black. First American Edition of Conrad's well-known novel involving a South American silver mine, and the corruption and dishonesty fostered by its riches. Conrad was extending his "Lord Jim" theme: that the man who slowly grows rich can be a victim of the silver, not its conqueror; that wealth is not something gained but a trap for those who relinquish, however momentarily,... Read More
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THE THIRD VIOLET
by Crane, Stephen
1897. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Original tan cloth decorated in red, black and gilt. First Edition of Crane's sixth book, a romance about young impoverished artists. It was not long after he finished writing this, and before it was published, that Crane was shipwrecked near Jacksonville, as he was headed off to cover the war in Cuba (Crane had to spend three days in an "open boat"). THE THIRD VIOLET was something of a success,... Read More
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THE MONSTER and Other Stories. Illustrated
by Crane, Stephen
1899. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1899. 2 pp undated ads. Original red-orange cloth decorated in black. First Edition. "The Monster" is a tense tale about a black man who, rescuing a white boy from a fire, in effect loses his face to the flames -- becoming a "monster" to the local white citizenry in spite of his heroic deed. (The frontispiece illustration shows a group of white boys daring each other to walk over and... Read More
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![THE THIRD VIOLET [in dust jacket]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/189/914/1583914189.0.l.jpg)
THE THIRD VIOLET [in dust jacket]
by Crane, Stephen
1897. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Original tan cloth decorated in red, black and gilt, with dust jacket. First Edition of Crane's sixth book, a romance about young impoverished artists. It was not long after he finished writing this, and before it was published, that Crane was shipwrecked near Jacksonville, as he was headed off to cover the war in Cuba (Crane had to spend three days in an "open boat"). THE THIRD VIOLET was something... Read More
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GREAT BATTLES OF THE WORLD
by Crane, Stephen
1901. Sloan, John. Illustrated by John Sloan. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1901. Original red cloth decorated in silver and gilt. First Edition. Crane dreamed up the idea of dramatizing great battles as a money-making scheme: "such sure quick money," he wrote his agent Pinker. Crane was very familiar with recent battles: since 1895 he had been a war correspondent in Cuba and in Greece, and had just begun reporting on the Boer War when he died of consumption... Read More
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THE OPEN BOAT. And Other Tales of Adventure
by Crane, Stephen
1898. New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1898. Original olive-green cloth decorated in silver and dark green. First Edition of Crane's seventh book, believed to have consisted of only 1500 copies. Next to THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, the title story is Crane's best-known work: it is a tale based upon his own narrow escape from death when the "Commodore," on a surreptitious expedition to Cuba, went down off the coast of Jacksonville on New Year's Day 1897,... Read More
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MAGGIE. A Girl of the Streets
by Crane, Stephen
1896. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896. 12 pp undated ads. Original tan cloth decorated in red and black. First Published Edition of Crane's first book -- the sad tale of Maggie Johnson growing up (and forced into prostitution) in the Bowery slums of New York City; two years later appeared a very similar first-book in London -- Somerset Maugham's LIZA OF LAMBETH. Crane discovered, in 1893, that no publisher would touch a book with this subject... Read More
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THE THIRD VIOLET
by Crane, Stephen
1897. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Original tan cloth decorated in red, black and gilt. First Edition of Crane's sixth book, a romance about young impoverished artists. It was not long after he finished writing this, and before it was published, that Crane was shipwrecked near Jacksonville, as he was headed off to cover the war in Cuba (Crane had to spend three days in an "open boat"). THE THIRD VIOLET was something of a success,... Read More
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THE THIRD VIOLET
by Crane, Stephen
1897. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Original tan cloth decorated in red, black and gilt. First Edition of Crane's sixth book, a romance about young impoverished artists. It was not long after he finished writing this, and before it was published, that Crane was shipwrecked near Jacksonville, as he was headed off to cover the war in Cuba (Crane had to spend three days in an "open boat"). THE THIRD VIOLET was something of a success,... Read More
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GEORGE'S MOTHER
by Crane, Stephen
1896. New York / London: Edward Arnold, 1896. 8 pp undated ads. Original tan cloth. First Edition of Crane's fourth book (just after THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE). This is a tale of a church-going mother and her idealistic expectations for her saloon-going son (Crane's mother and brother are much in evidence). Like Crane's first book, MAGGIE (A Girl of the Streets), this is a tale of the degradation of life in the slums of New York City's... Read More
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![Dealings with the Firm of DOMBEY AND SON [20 parts in 19]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/548/895/1562895548.0.l.jpg)
Dealings with the Firm of DOMBEY AND SON [20 parts in 19]
by Dickens, Charles
1846. Browne, Hablot K.. [a handsome set] Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. With Illustrations by H.K. Browne. [In 20-in-19 monthly serial parts.] London: Bradbury & Evans, 1846-1848. Original light blue-green pictorial wrappers. First Edition, as issued in 20-in-19 monthly serial parts beginning in October 1846 and ending in April 1848. The serialization of this novel began upon the end of serialization of OLIVER TWIST (the scarcest of all "Dickens in parts," occurring eight years after its publication in... Read More
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![A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [in Two Volumes.]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/734/830/1268830734.0.l.jpg)
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [in Two Volumes.]
by Dickens, Charles
1854. Boston: Jenks, Hickling & Swan, 1854. Original blind-stamped dark brown cloth with gilt-decorated spines. Early American edition, just possibly the first complete one. Since Harper published the two volumes of its edition separately in March 1853 and in March 1854 (so dated on the title pages), it is considered to be the first American edition. The date in 1854 when these two Boston volumes were published is unknown, so it is possible that this two-volume Boston edition... Read More
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All 18 Christmas Numbers from HOUSEHOLD WORDS and ALL THE YEAR ROUND
by Dickens, Charles
1850. This is a complete set Dickens's annual "Extra Christmas Numbers" -- all nine of HOUSEHOLD WORDS, followed by all nine of ALL THE YEAR ROUND. London: Dec. 1850 - Dec. 1858 and Dec. 1859 - Dec. 1867. Original self-wrappers (first 13 numbers) and original blue printed wrappers (last five numbers) -- as issued. First Editions of all eighteen pieces. Dickens was the editor (or "conductor") of both of these periodicals -- one rising out of the ashes... Read More
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A ROUND OF STORIES by The Christmas Fire
by Dickens, Charles
1853. New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1853. Original greyish-pink printed wrappers. Early (first?) American edition of this the third of Dickens's nine "Extra Christmas Numbers" of his weekly periodical Household Words. This came out in London in December 1852, and then was published in America in early 1853 by several publishers (McElrath & Lord doing the authorized American issue of HhW, plus Harper, plus this effort). Dickens himself wrote only the first two stories -- "The Poor Relation's... Read More
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MR. NIGHTINGALE'S DIARY: A Farce in One Act
by Dickens, Charles
1877. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1877. Original terra-cotta cloth decorated in black. First "Collectible" Edition of this play first performed in 1851. We say first "collectible" because there are only four known copies of the original 1851 pamphlet; supposedly a fifth, from which Osgood printed this edition, was destroyed in the Boston fire of 1879. This is a volume in the publisher's "Vest Pocket Series," so named for its diminutive size (a second Dickens "comic burletta"... Read More
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THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, and Some Uncollected Pieces
by Dickens, Charles
1870. With Illustrations. Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870. Original green cloth. First American Edition, second issue with added material -- of the tale left unfinished at the time of Dickens's death in June 1870. In addition to DROOD, this second issue adds James T. Fields's introductory "Some Memories of Charles Dickens," plus Dickens's "George Silverman's Explanation," "Holiday Romance," "Sketches of Young Couples," "New Uncommercial Samples" plus "The Will of Charles Dickens." Since 1867, Ticknor & Fields (and... Read More
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