Learn about rare books from the experts
Posted in First Editions on Oct 19th, 2009
“A Book Of Mine Where A Sound Heart And A Deformed Conscience Come Into Collision And Conscience Suffers Defeat.”
Critics blasted Twain’s dark, brilliant Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the moment of publication, vilifying the book for its “coarseness” and “blood-curdling humor.” Nonetheless, it emerged as arguably the defining novel of American literature, prompting Hemingway to [...]
Posted in First Editions on Mar 15th, 2009
No need for X-ray glasses from Q’s laboratory to see the value of Ian Fleming’s phenomenally successful James Bond books.
An officer in His Majesty’s Secret Service during World War II, Fleming burst onto the literary scene in 1953 with the first in his series of spy novels, thrilling readers for over fifty years.
007 is the [...]
Posted in First Editions on Nov 28th, 2008
“This mammoth work is a necessary part
of any Civil War library” (Eicher).
“Zealous in their work, often regardless of danger, and at all times handicapped by the vexing difficulties of the photographic process of that day,” pioneering photographer Mathew Brady and his assistants created an unprecedented photographic record of war, capturing “scenes of actual conflict, others [...]
Posted in First Editions, Rare Books on Aug 25th, 2008
“For 160 Days We Marched Through The Forest”
“Only a man of Stanley’s iron resolution and invincible resource could have carried through the awful marches and counter-marches in the tropical forests…” (DNB).
Stanley had already successfully completed three major expeditions in Africa by the time he accepted what would prove to be his most ambitious and most [...]
Posted in First Editions, Rare Books on Aug 20th, 2008
“One Of The Classics Of Antarctic Literature”
Apsley Cherry-Garrard served as assistant zoologist on Robert Scott’s 1910-12 expedition to Antarctica. While Scott set out for the South Pole, Cherry-Garrard and two companions headed for the base of Mount Terror to collect Emperor Penguin eggs; it proved a journey so treacherous that he later titled his account [...]
Posted in First Editions, Rare Books on Jul 11th, 2008
“Passages Of Unearthly Beauty”
Joyce began writing Finnegans Wake in 1922, the same year Ulysses saw publication. Compared to that book, Finnegans Wake “took longer to write… was conceived and executed under a greater range of symbolic and mythic guidelines, was dictated to more famous amanuenses, among them Samuel Beckett, was used as a weapon [...]
Posted in First Editions, Rare Books on Jun 20th, 2008
“A Woman Must Have Money And A Room Of Her Own If She Is To Write Fiction”
Based on two lectures she gave at a women’s college in Cambridge in 1928, Woolf’s foundational essay on women and writing has become a classic feminist text. “Her aim was to establish a woman’s tradition, recognizable by its circumstances, [...]
Posted in First Editions, Rare Books on Feb 4th, 2008
“America’s First Great Scientific Contribution”
Until the mid-18th century electricity was little more than a parlor trick used to delight kings and amaze crowds. One such itinerant “electrician” aroused Benjamin Franklin’s curiosity, and he embarked on a series of experiments that would “snatch lightning from the sky,” opening up the new field of electrical science and [...]
Posted in First Editions on Dec 9th, 2007
“The One Great Christmas Myth of Modern Literature”
Drawing on his childhood memories of extreme poverty and his indignation at society’s neglect of the destitute, Charles Dickens conceived A Christmas Carol during a solitary evening walk through the streets of Manchester in October 1843. Writing at a frantic pace, he completed in six weeks what would [...]