An Original Manuscript Constitution
by [Teutonic Knights]
1606. Original handwritten document (in German and Latin), on vellum (parchment) in red and black ink, of the new charter of structure and re–organization for The Teutonic Knights. 2 parts, each halved, in 34 chapters (19 and 15), with 3 hand-colored plates, and decorative initials in red and black throughout. Original stitched vellum, warped and soiled, text with a few stains, bookplate (Hamilton College), else good condition. Collation: Manuscript. 4to. 66, (1), 3, 4, leaves, i.e. 148 pages. Laid... Read More
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Poor Archie's Girls
by Knox, Kathleen
London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1882. First Edition. 3 vols., 8vo (195 x 137mm), pp. [4], 272; [4], 277, [3]; [4], 288. Publisher’s smooth tan cloth with a decorative design blocked in olive-green over boards, lettered in gold on the spines, blocked in blind on the back covers, floral-patterned endpapers in burgundy. Modest foxing to the back of the free endpapers and facing title and final text pages, light rubbing to the extremities, else near fine and scarce. OCLC... Read More
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Six Offprints on Immunochemistry, Inscribed to Hans Sachs
by Landsteiner, Karl
1925. First Edition. Landsteiner received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for his discovery of the human blood groups, a finding whose practical consequences (the safety of blood transfusion, the foundations of forensic serology, the understanding of hemolytic disease of the newborn) have made it one of the most consequential contributions in the history of medicine. But the blood group work was only one episode in a scientific career of exceptional range and depth. Over four... Read More
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The Blue Fairy Book
by Lang, Andrew [editor]
London: Vizetelly & Co, 1889. First Edition. 8vo (188 x132mm), pp. viii, 390. The first of Lang's fairy books, the best of them and the scarcest. Blue cloth decorated and titled inn gilt, coated black (dark brown?) endpapers. A fine copy, with a small stain to the recto of the read endpaper and points of rubbing at a couple extremities of the incredibly delicate glossy cloth. Half morocco box. illustrations by H.J. Ford and G.P. Jacomb Hood. A significant... Read More
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The System of the World
by Laplace, Pierre-Simon
London: Richard Phillips, 1809. First Edition. First edition in English. 2 vols., large 12mo (218 x 130mm), pp. [4], viii, 379, [1]; [4], iii, [1], 380. Original paper-backed boards, with half-titles and all the ads present in both volumes. Pages uncut, with some toning to the page edges and light rubbing to the extremities, else fine, with no repairs. A notably well-preserved copy, fresh and unrestored. Translated from the French, first published in 1796 as "Exposition du système du... Read More
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![DENDRAL-64. A System for Computer Construction, Enumeration and Notation of Organic Molecules as Tree Structures and Cyclic Graphs.; Part II, Topology of Cyclic Graphs. Interim Report to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Grant NsG 81-60. CR-63838. [Artifical intelligence in its earliest practical working form]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/748/107/1741107748.0.l.jpg)
DENDRAL-64. A System for Computer Construction, Enumeration and Notation of Organic Molecules as Tree Structures and Cyclic Graphs.; Part II, Topology of Cyclic Graphs. Interim Report to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Grant NsG 81-60. CR-63838. [Artifical intelligence in its earliest practical working form]
by Lederberg, Joshua
Palo Alto: Stanford University, 1965. First Edition. December 15, 1965. 4to (280 × 215mm), pp. 81, [1]. Photomechanically reproduced typescript, staple-bound, some creasing, file number sticker to the front page, else very good. Presentation copy, inscribed by Lederberg on the front page: "I think you will enjoy this. J." Ex–Abraham Pais. Part II of Lederberg’s DENDRAL-64 series, supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health, and submitted from the Department of Genetics, School of... Read More
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Cider with Rosie
by LEE, Laurie
London: Hogarth Press, 1959. First edition, the suppressed or withdrawn first issue which includes the account of the fire at the piano factory. Neat owner's name on the front fly, and some modest foxing else fine in fine dustwrapper. The first volume in the author's acclaimed novelistic autobiographical trilogy, this volume concentrating on sketches of the author's childhood in the Gloucestershire village of Slad. A lovely copy.
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Junkie
by Lee, William (pseud. of William S. Burroughs)
New York: Ace, 1957. First Edition. First edition. His first book. Wrappers. Fine condition and a rare book this sharp. Cloth box. The pro–drug wanderings of writing’s man on a wire, and heroin’s model literary champion, more erudite and entertaining than most autobiographies. A pivotal literary achievement that functions simultaneously as raw autobiographical testimony and as the stylistic foundation for Burroughs’ later experimental works in the Nova Trilogy. Written in a clinical, detached narrative voice—what Burroughs termed his "factual"... Read More
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Dodsworth
by Lewis, Sinclair
New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929. First Edition. Wrappers. Raw proof of the 1st edition. Printed on proofing paper (7 7/8” X 6 1/2”) on 1 side of the page (rectos) only, and hand bound by the publisher (HB) in brown paper wrappers tied with snips of shoelace (all original). Small control numbers “8476” neatly inked on spine and fly-title, else very good (unrepaired). Need we say primary? Need we say unique? Ok. Literally so for both. Cloth case. A... Read More
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Doom of Youth
by Lewis, Wyndham
London: Chatto and Windus, 1932. First Edition. A little soiling to the boards, else near fine in a spine-toned, good dust jacket with a few short tears with archival reinforcement and shallow loss at the spine ends. Originally suppressed due to a lawsuit brought by Alec Waugh who felt he had been maligned in the book. A caustic polemic against the interwar cult of youth, wherein Lewis attempts to dismantle what he perceives as a pernicious cultural ideology that... Read More
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The Sun Shines Over Sangkan River
by Ting Ling
Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1954. First Edition. 1st edition in English. Original silk over boards, spine faded half a shade, else near fine, in a jacket with chips at the edges, and a short pen line to the front panel, else very good. I am no panegyrist of Ting Ling (1904?–1986), in fact I know nothing about her, beyond her oft–altered biography, but she was “the” Chinese feminist novelist, and the ultimate Asian uberfrau, bravery indeed in China under... Read More
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![On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscess [...] [with] On the Antiseptic Principle [...] [with] The Antiseptic System [...]; in The Lancet, A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine [...]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/232/781/1514781232.0.l.jpg)
On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscess [...] [with] On the Antiseptic Principle [...] [with] The Antiseptic System [...]; in The Lancet, A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine [...]
by Lister, Joseph
London: Elsevier, 1867. First Edition. Hardcover. 2 vols., 4to (281 x 201mm), pp. 818; 826. the first appearances in print of Lister’s seminal papers on antiseptic surgery. Contemporary cloth, splits to the cloth of the spine but holding, spine ends with small chips, library blind stamps on the title pages, else very good. Complete volumes, not extractions. Vol. I contains four of the five parts of Lister’s “On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscess, etc.,” pp.... Read More
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The First 40 Scratch–Off Tickets
by [California Lottery]
California: California State Lottery Commission, 1990. A complete and continuous, unbroken run from the first 5 years of the California lottery, a total of 40 tickets, games 1 to 40 (#26 is a proof). Each ticket is unscratched. Fine condition (as new), alluringly printed in glowing colors, the silver coatings are unblemished. Rare. Though individual, used (scratched) tickets are sometimes available, we have seen only a couple of unused tickets from this vintage for sale in the last 35... Read More
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King Kong
by Lovelace, Delos; Edgar Wallace; Merian C. Cooper
New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1932. First Edition. Novelization of the 1933 RKO film (the first draft screenplay by Edgar Wallace). Original lime green cloth, some white spots, most prominent along the top edge of back cover (the spots an endemic hallmark of this book), else very good, in the original 1st printing dustjacket, identified by the redundant use of the word “by” (“conceived by/by Edgar Wallace”), small chips and tears at edges, a crease to upper back panel,... Read More
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Ultramarine
by Lowry, Malcolm
London: Jonathan Cape, 1933. First edition. A fine copy, lacking the dust jacket. The author's first book. Very scarce. A youthful experiment in maritime modernism, chronicling the voyage of Dana Hilliot, a middle-class Cambridge student working as a deckhand aboard a freighter bound for the Far East.
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The Blue Rajah Murder
by MacGrath, Harold
Garden City: The Crime Club, 1930. First Edition. A beautiful copy of one of MacGrath’s last novels. Some light foxing to the page block edges, and minor soiling to the cloth, else near fine in a fine, unrestored dustjacket. This is not a scarce jacket in fine condition and most copies (as this likely is) are married, so it is likely several remainder jackets were discovered at some point.
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The Florentine Historie
by Machiavelli, Niccolò [Translated by Thomas Bedingfield]
London: Printed by T.C. [Thomas Creede] for W.P. [William Ponsonby], 1595. First Edition. First edition in English. Folio, pp. [12], 222. Contemporary (likely original) vellum, fragment of the original printed paper label on spine. Woodcut engraved ornamental title page, the upper right corner chipped and replaced with paper appropriated from the lower left corner of the rear free endpaper, otherwise a very good, complete (222 pages) copy, and this is an unexpected binding to find surviving on this book.... Read More
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The Lie Detector Test
by Marston, William Moulton, C. Daly King, and Elizabeth H. Marston
New York: Richard R. Smith, 1938. First Edition. Octavo. 179, [4]pp. 8 plates. Red cloth gilt. Faint dampstain on rear board, near fine in a very good dust jacket with a corresponding stain on the rear panel and encroaching a little at the crown and edge of the front panel. In this comprehensive treatise, Marston traces the millennia-long quest for reliable truth detection, establishing the scientific principle that blood pressure elevates measurably when subjects knowingly employ deception. The work... Read More
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A Song of Ice and Fire
by Martin, George
London: voyager, 2011. First Edition. Hardcover. 5 vols. 1st editions. Near fine (1 faint crease, 1 small dent) in fine dustjackets, more satisfying than an unsolicited hug from a child. Vol. 5 is signed. Every book in the series that’s been published so far (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons). These precede Bantam’s U. S. editions, the lame placebos often sold as 1st editions, raising... Read More
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Tesla's Oscillator and Other Inventions; in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. XLIX, No. 6, pp. 916-933
by Martin, Thomas Commerford [Nikola Tesla]
New York: The Century Co, 1895. First Edition. April 1895. 8vo (250 x 175mm), pp. viii, 803-960, complete with 84 pages of front and rear ads. Original publisher's printed wrappers, spine with some chips, rubbing to the extremities, light toning, else very good, solid, and about as nice as these ever-scarce issues get. The first appearance of the most important popular account of Tesla's electrical discoveries, lavishly illustrated with fifteen photographs taken in Tesla's laboratory, several of them now... Read More
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Handwritten Lyrics of Lovely Rita, Meter Maid
by The Beatles (written by Paul McCartney)
1967. Paul McCartney’s handwritten, working manuscript (as Beatle) for “Lovely Rita,” from the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. the most famous album in the entire panorama of modern music. This is the very first (rough) draft, 10 lines (in ink), all in Paul’s handwriting and all written on a single side of an irregular scrap of lined paper (7 1/2” X 5”) torn from a spiral notebook. 7 lines in black are Paul’s first concept. 3 lines... Read More
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Radioactive Recoils from Uranium Activated by Neutrons; from The Physical Review, Vol. 55, No. 5, p. 510
by McMillan, Edwin M.
Lancaster, PA: American Institute of Physics, 1939. First Edition. Offprint, 8vo (267 × 200mm), p. 1, printed on the recto only. Some short marginal tears and old tape stains, else very good. Signed by McMillan. This single-page note, dated February 17, 1939, from Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory, was published within weeks of Hahn and Strassmann's announcement of uranium fission and belongs to the intense, disorienting period in which laboratories around the world were racing to characterize what neutron bombardment of... Read More
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The Dancing Bears
by MERWIN, W.S.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. First edition. Fine in fine dustwrapper. A spectacular copy of Merwin's second book.
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Influence of Motion of the Medium on the Velocity of Light; in The American Journal of Science
by Michelson, Albert [and] Morley, Edward
New Haven: The American Journal of Science, 1886. First Edition. 8vo (243 x 152mm), pp. viii, 488, plus 10 inserted plates at the back.The American Journal of Science, Vol. XXXI, January to June, the full semiannual volume, containing (pages 377–386) the first experiments with Michelson’s own invented instruments, the continuation of which (in 1887), negated classical scientific theories on the existence of a universal ether. The findings held revolutionary implications that led directly to (and through) Lorentz (the Lorentz... Read More
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Prayer to Persephone" Manuscript Poem, Signed
by Millay, Edna St. Vincent
1918. Holograph poem, signed, 1p., recto only, rough torn on the left edge (likely extracted from a book), offsetting and staining, lightly browned, 4 ¾" x 7 ¾". Signed at bottom "Edna St. Vincent Millay." Written in memory of Dorothy Coleman, Millay's close friend at Vassar who died in 1918 during the influenza pandemic. The poem addresses the Greek goddess Persephone, asking her to comfort Coleman's spirit, likened to a lonely child in the underworld: "Be to her, Persephone,... Read More
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