Our members list new acquisitions and recently cataloged items almost every day of the year. Below, you'll find a few highlights from these recent additions...
Small Town Tyrant (First Edition, review copy)
by Heinrich Mann
New York: Creative Age Press, 1944. First American Edition, published in the UK as "The Blue Angel" in 1930, and prior to that as "Professor Unrat" in 1905 in German. REVIEW COPY, with publisher's dated slip laid in.
Basis for Josef von Sternberg's classic 1930 film "The Blue Angel," the movie that catapulted Marlene Dietrich to stardom.
Near Fine in a bright, Very Good plus dust jacket. Dust jacket is especially nice for this cheaply-made title, with two small chips along the top edge and one at the spine heel.
Offered by Royal Books.
Issac Asimov
Shelton, Connecticut: The First Edition Library, 1978. Facsimile edition. Hardcover. Fine condition. Octavo. 253pp. Original red cloth with black-stamped vignette on cover, black lettering and ruling on spine, in original illustrated dustjacket in matching illustrated gray slipcase. True facsimile edition of the 1950 Gnome Press, Inc. Publication Date: December 1, 1950. Original Printing 5,000 copies. "To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. -Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed. But you haven't worked with them, so you don't know them. They're a cleaner, better breed than we are." (Publisher) Printed First Edition Library publishing information laid in.
Offered by Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller.
by Eve Babitz
New York: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1982. Half cloth boards, fine but for remainder stamp on bottom, which is the normal state of things in a cult book like this, in fine unclipped dust-jacket.
Offered by James Cummins Bookseller.
African-American Tennis Legend Althea Gibson Signed Photo
[African-American] Althea Gibson. Tennis legend, and first black athlete to cross the color line of international tennis. c. 1970. Photo signed. 10 x 8 in. Signed in black marker "To Ray Kenter with Best Wishes, Althea". Gibson became the first African-American to compete at the U.S. National Championships. Gibson had a jam-packed eight-year career, with all of her major championships coming from 1956 to 1958, when she appeared in a stunning 19 major finals and won 11 titles, including single and doubles championships at the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Nationals. Gibson was the first non-white woman to win a major tennis championship, and only one other woman of color had claimed this honor until Serena Williams won the US Open in 1999. At the height of her career, she was ranked No. 1 tennis player in the world; after she retired from tennis, Gibson became the first African-American to compete on the women's professional golf tour in 1960
Offered by Max Rambod, Inc.
by Kazuo Ishiguro
NY:: Putnam,. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. 1982. First US Edition. Hardcover. The author's first book. Stated first American edition. Near fine in an about fine (light age toning to flap edges) dust jacket.; 183 pages .
Offered by Grendel Books.
by LASKER, BRUNO (1880-1965, SOCIAL REFORM ADVOCATE)
Together seven three-ring binder notebooks (binders worn, boards on vol. VI broken off) -- retained by us as out of "respect du fonds" -- containing approximately 876 typescript and manuscript pages. TOGETHER WITH: 29 file folders of articles, ideas, proposals, and miscellaneous publishing materials, consisting of approximate 300 typescript and manuscript pages, housed in a new Hollinger box. TOGETHER WITH: two of Lasker's passports (1921 and 1926) and a large b/w studio portrait photograph (undated). An important discovery. This is the private, largely unpublished literary archive of the noted social reformer Bruno Lasker (1880-1965), containing well over a thousand pages of typed and hand-written manuscripts. These writings date from 1923 until the year of his death in 1965. Lasker's social work is well known, and concerned racial prejudice and justice, trafficking and human rights, immigration and immigrants' rights, poverty in America and economic inequality. The present literary archive is hitherto UNKNOWN; without it, a full and balanced assessment of Bruno Lasker's life and work cannot be undertaken.
That the materials herein are mostly unpublished is attested by Lasker's own statement in the first of seven folio notebook diaries named "Reflections." In addition to the "Reflections," the archive also contains working typescripts of 29 essays, speeches, and proposals, including 19 writings which were evidently destined for a collection (to be entitled "Rational Sympathy") that never appeared. It is instructive to present the transcription of Lasker's handwritten "To My Executors" in its entirety, which appears in the seventh and final volume of his "Reflections" diaries:
"This is the seventh volume of what might be called a diary, though entries never were made with the frequency suggested by that term. It consists of original reflections, observations, and discussions, suggested either by experiences, by reading, or by verbal colloquies. Only a minute portion of this material therefore has ever entered into literary use [i.e. publication], and the bulk of it constitutes a continuous though not intentional progression of my major concerns, sentiments, and ideas over a large part of my life. Or rather, it constitutes a collection which represents my un-professional pre-occupations (sic). Those connected with my work are more likely to be embodied in memoranda, articles, prefaces, book reviews, reports, and lectures. These are for the most part either on record as printed documents or in the parallel series of binders, much larger in number (which has now reached vol. XXX), which I call my workbooks and which properly form an appendix to my recorded autobiography, made for the Oral History Project at Columbia University, and will be deposited with it in the archives of the Butler Library of that institution. [NOTE: the 30 volumes were indeed deposited at Columbia University -- Bruno Laster Papers 1923-1951].
"The present collection or diary, therefore, is unpublished literary raw material and on my decease may either be handed to some interested person to be mined for items worth preserving (perhaps even for the production -- such as I contemplate myself if I should find myself with enough time, energy and self-confidence for such a task -- of an unpretentious volume or two of short essays), or may also be appended to my MSS autobiography at Columbia University. Seattle, May 8, 1957. [signed] Bruno Lasker."
Offered by Michael Laird Rare Books.
Twenty Six Abandoned Gasoline Stations (Signed Limited Edition)
by BROUWS, JEFFREY
Santa Barbara, CA: Hand Job Press / Gas-n-Go Publications, 1992. First edition. Small softcover. One of only 1000 copies. Brouws homage to Ed Ruscha's first book, "Twenty Six Gasoline Stations." A fine copy in wrappers in a very near fine glassine dust jacket. Signed by Brouws on the limitation page although not called for.
Offered by Jeff Hirsch Books.
by RIFF, MOHAMMOD TI [PSEUDONYM OF CLIFF "RIFF" ATCHLEY]
Corvallis, OR: Motengator Press, 1983. First Edition. First edition. 354 pp. Bound in publisher's illustrated wraps. Very Good, corner crease to front wrap. A semi-autobiographical novel of drugs, adult bookshops, and politics by a Corvallis man who would run for governor of Oregon in 1986, a self-described "marijuana-smoking pornographer on a mission from God." The adult bookstore owner/author writes about a "porn king" from Albany, Oregon with many similarities to himself and speculates on the wonders that legalization of marijuana and prostitution would do for the state. Truly scarce; no copies in OCLC. In Givens Oregon Fiction Bibliography (2014), likely this very copy.
Offered by Burnside Rare Books.
by Mervyn Peake
London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1950. First edition. Hardcover. Very good +. 453 pp. Octavo. [22 cm]. Red cloth over boards with original dust jacket. Dust jacket is fully intact with two [1 cm] tears: one at head of spine and one on top right corner. Small [1 in x 1.5 in] scuff on front panel of dust jacket, slightly marring illustration. Corners ever so slightly bumped. Head and tail of spine exhibiting some minor signs of shelf wear. A rare first printing of the second installment of Peake's trilogy outlining the boyhood and adolescence of Titus Groan, the Lord of the titular Gormenghast Castle.
Offered by Ken Sanders Rare Books.
Bookbinding: its Background and Technique
by Edith Diehl
New York: Rinehard & Co, 1946. First Edition. First printing, with Rinehart device present on verso of each title page. Two volumes in publisher's card slipcase; octavo (24cm), black cloth, titled in gilt on spines; 251pp, [46] leaves of plates + 406pp; illus. Private embossed ownership stamp to each title page; front free endpaper of second volume slightly darkened from a laid-in clipping, still a tight, fresh, Near Fine set in the original slipcase which is clean but slightly bruised at bottom edge and with a brief split to lower joint, Very Good. Lovely copy of this authoritative and still indispensable reference work for collectors, binders, and historians.
Offered by Lorne Bair Rare Books.
by JOYCE, JAMES. HENRI MATISSE, ILLUSTRATOR.
ONE OF 250 SPECIAL COPIES SIGNED BY BOTH JOYCE AND MATISSE. Introduction by Stuart Gilbert.
Publisher's original brown buckram, embossed in gilt and titled on front cover and on flat spine, the decorations from a design by LeRoy H. Appleton. In the publisher's slipcase.
WITH 26 ILLUSTRATIONS BY HENRI MATISSE, depicting the Calypso, Aeolus, Cyclops, Nausicaa, Circe, and Ithaca episodes from Homer's "Odyssey."
Front pastedown with evidence of bookplate removal. Slocum & Cahoon A-22; Quarto-Millenary 71; "The Artist and the Book" 197.
Slipcase with only the most trivial signs of wear, text with half a dozen tiny, faint marginal smudges (from the printing process), but A VERY FINE COPY--clean and fresh internally, and in an unworn binding.
This is an unusually well-preserved copy of the only book illustrated by Matisse to be published in America, and one of the great collaborations of artist and author in the annals of 20th century private press publication. In the opinion of art publisher Monroe Wheeler, "it was a great idea to bring [Joyce and Matisse] together" since they were "celebrities of the same generation, of similar virtuosity." Newman says that this work and the Limited Editions Club "Lysistrata" "stand as landmarks in the history of the illustrated book," and that "Ulysses" is almost certainly the most famous work among LEC publications designed by George Macy. Matisse's illustrations are curious in that they were based not on "Ulysses," a work the artist had not read when he was asked to make etchings for the text, but on Homer's "Odyssey," from which Joyce's book obviously derives. "Following Matisse's wishes, the preparatory studies were grouped in front of each corresponding print, allowing the viewer to see the progression from sketch to finished composition." (Grolier Club Exhibition) Joyce was furious when he learned that Matisse had chosen to illustrate scenes from Homer's "Odyssey," rather than from Joyce's novel, and as a consequence, he stopped signing the present Limited Editions Club printing in a fit of pique, after affixing his signature to 250 copies (whereas Matisse signed them all). Although the LEC edition of "Ulysses" is far from a rare book in the marketplace, obtaining a copy of the volume and the slipcase in the very fine condition seen here is becoming increasingly difficult.
Offered by Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books.
by J.D. Salinger
Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1951. First edition. Near Fine/Near Fine. A Near Fine copy of the book in like dust jacket. Book with a previous owner's name, "Cole," written on the closed lower text-block, black mark to the upper text block, some bleed through to the upper margin of the corresponding pages, and one small mark on the half-title. Otherwise clean boards, bright spine gilt and clean internally. Near Fine dust jacket with slight wear at the spine ends, white color on the spine just a trifle toned and lower front corner bumped (book as well). All wear to jacket matching up with the book, making this an authentic copy, not a marriage with a later issue jacket. With all relevant issue points, including original price (in the correct place on the flap), Salinger's hair touching the upper edge of the rear panel, and "First Edition" stated on the copyright page.
Salinger's novel was not the first coming-of-age story to highlight teenage angst, but it sits squarely as the pinnacle of those efforts. It offers Holden Caulfield's perspective on school, New York City, sexuality, family and friends, and, of course, phonies, with a subtext on alienation and loneliness running throughout the book. "In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: 'Huckleberry Finn,' 'The Great Gatsby,' and 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Of the three, only 'Catcher' defines an entire region of human experience: it is—in French and Dutch as much as in English—the handbook of the adolescent heart" (The New Yorker). Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket.
Offered by Whitmore Rare Books.
by James Joyce
Paris: Shakespeare and Co, 1922. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN UNRESTORED ORIGINAL WRAPPERS.
Number 349 of 750 printed on handmade paper (out of a total edition of 1000). Paris: Shakespeare and Co., 1922. Quarto, original blue-green wrappers, early custom half-leather box. Wrappers with light rubbing to edges, wear to spine with approximately one-inch chip below first spine band, very mild crease to about first 30 leaves; front wrapper holding, but very tender at joint. Some wear to slipcase.
A very good copy of what is generally considered the most influential novel of the twentieth-century; rare in unrestored original wrappers.
Offered by Manhattan Rare Book Company.
by KENT, NIAL [PSEUDONYM OF WILLIAM LEROY THOMAS]
New York: Greenberg: Publisher, 1949. First Edition. First edition. [iv], 447, [1] pp. Bound in publisher's blue cloth with silver lettering. Very Good+ with light mottling to cloth, light wear, in an About Very Good example of the fragile dust jacket, price intact, with chips at extremities and wear along folds, vertical crease to spine panel, two tape mends to verso, spine dampstaining visible on verso only. A decent copy of a book typically found in very rough shape.
An uncommon gay coming-of-age novel mentioned in Anthony Slide's Lost Gay Novels. Slide calls it "very much a novel for gay readers of the day" with "some wonderful description of New York gay life in the 1940s," although savaged by critics for its sentimentality.
Offered by Burnside Rare Books.
by Gore Vidal (Writing as Katherine Everard)
New York: Pyramid, 1950. First Edition. First Edition, a paperback original.
Very Good plus in wrappers, with light wear and creasing at the corners, and reader creases along the spine.
Offered by Royal Books.
[Flyer]: Demonstrate Against the KKK and White Supremacists Attacks: Death to the Klan!
San Francisco: Committee to Free the Pontiac Brothers and Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, 1980. Unbound. Fine. Photomechanically reproduced flyer on 8.5" x 14" paper. About fine with slight edgewear.
A flyer for a weekend protest against the KKK with conferences and demonstrations urging people to "fight white supremacy;" "support black and Chicano Mexicano liberation and all national liberation struggles;" "defeat U.S. imperialism." Depicted are police in riot gear and Ronald Reagan's face behind the white sheet of the Klan. The protests were organized by the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee who were known for using violent gestures and bombings to get their point across. Beginning in 1978 by white anti-racists, with possible ties to the leftist group, The Weather Underground, members would hand out flyers during the infamous punk shows of the Bay Area in the 1980s. Soon bands like the Dead Kennedys were proud sponsors, advancing the group's messages with benefit concerts. Participants in the JBAKC were linked to numerous other radical groups and some believe they were merely a front for the May 19th Communist Movement.
Offered by Bolerium Books.
The First KKK Parade in the Northeast - Racist Anti-Immigrant March
This real photo postcard shows racism rearing its head in rural Milo, Maine with the Ku Klux Klan parading in white hoods in their first Northeastern public march. Milo, Maine: Clement Studio, 1923. September 3rd, 1923. Black and white silver gelatin photograph. 5.25" x 3.5" inches.
This event was the first Klan parade in the Northeast as well as the shadowy organization's first daylight parade nationwide. Milo is a small town in central Maine whose centennial anniversary included the march of 75 Klansmen pictured. The Klansmen are seen in their fully white hooded regalia, some with American flags in tow, marching through the sleepy town. The Klan in this area directed its intimidation at the Catholic population including the French-Canadians and Irish who formed sizable minorities in the state. Maine had an active and conspicuous Klan revival in the 1920s, with Milo being but one of a handful of locations within the state to see shows of force by the KKK as well as open recruitment.
Anti-immigrant sentiment was high in the 1920s, a time when the Klan was flourishing following D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, a hallmark in white supremacist propaganda, mythologizing the founding of the first Klan. The Klan employed marketing techniques and a fraternal structure to maintain white supremacy, opposing Jews, the Catholic Church and African Americans as rightful members of American society. Its membership peaked between 1.5 and 4 million in 1924 before declining rapidly in the late 1920's. Minor small stain along upper margin, not affecting image. Overall in very good condition and rare.
Offered by Max Rambod, Inc.
The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel
by Edward Gorey
New York / Boston: Duell, Sloan and Pearce / Little, Brown and Company, 1953. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/near fine. Gorey, Edward. First printing of Gorey's first book, duodecimo size, 64 pp., signed by Edward Gorey. "The Unstrung Harp has the distinction of being virtually the only Gorey book where the written word is as lengthy as the illustrations are detailed. It is said that you should write about that which is familiar to you, and Mr. Gorey did just that in this book." Often referred to as "a small masterpiece", "The Unstrung Harp" is clearly an autobiographical work and offers insights into his creative process in a manner which draws the reader both into the work itself and into the mind of Edward Gorey.
Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000) is well-known and well-loved for his poisonously funny picture books which are complex, humorous, serious, and provocative. However, this book, his first published work, may be a bit different than many Gorey fans might expect; he was still developing his signature style and therefore the illustrations "are wonderfully complex while still exhibiting a looseness of line that is not present in later works." The "tale is of an author struggling to find the right story to fit a title plucked at random from a list of hopeful book titles (a practice Gorey indulged in). It goes on to detail all the attendant difficulties involved in writing a novel" - indeed, one can clearly envision Gorey experiencing the same exact agonies as his title character (n.b., above quotes from the web site of the Goreyana blogspot).
DESCRIPTION: Pictorial paper-covered boards, the illustration a wrap-around by Edward Gorey in three colours, black lettering on both boards and spine, brown endpapers, signed by Edward Gorey on the title page in his usual style (beneath his printed name which has been crossed through), "First Edition" stated on title page (matches the first issue points in Toledano), the story unfolds with text on the verso of each page and a full-page illustration on the recto of each facing page; duodecimo size (7.5" by 5"), unpaginated with 32 leaves (64 pages). In the original dust jacket with the same wrap-around Gorey illustration as on the boards, the front flap with a summary of the book and showing the original price of $2.00, the back flap with a "review" by C.F. Earbrass, followed by a short bio of the author.
CONDITION: Near fine, the paper boards clean, the corners straight without rubbing, a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and it is entirely free of prior owner markings; some minor edgewear to the bottom edges of the boards, gentle bumping to the head and tail of the spine, and a very small area of light soiling to the lower corner of the front board (not obstructing text or the illustration). The dust jacket is also near fine, unclipped, with a minute amount of edgewear to the head and tail of the spine and where the flaps meet the panels, one light stray mark to the front panel near the joint. Overall a near fine copy of Gorey's first book, somewhat scarce in marketplace, particularly when signed.
CITATION: Toledano A1a.
Offered by Swan's Fine Books.
View all new listings on abaa.org...
Browse recent catalogs of rare books and print ephemera from ABAA members...
Please note, all items are unique, so if a link takes you to a blank page, the book has been sold!