In August 1907, Ernest Shackleton, who had initially gained fame as a member of Scott’s 1901-02 expedition, left London as commander of his own expedition on board the Nimrod. He achieved worldwide acclaim for having reached within 97 miles of the South Pole, almost four years before Amundsen’s and Scott’s expeditions would finally reach the Pole itself.

Shackleton would later recall the expedition as “high adventure, strenuous days, lonely nights, unique experiences, and above all, records of unflinching determination, supreme loyalty, and the generous self-sacrifice on the part of my men.” The Heart of the Antarctic is his record of the Nimrod expedition; Heinemann issued a special limited large-paper issue of only 300 numbered copies that - in addition to being printed on much larger, handmade paper than the two-volume trade edition - included an additional volume, The Antarctic Book, which was signed by Shackleton and every member of the expedition.

We are pleased to offer a splendid copy of this very rare deluxe edition - this copy additionally inscribed and personally presented in 1911 by Shackleton himself - complete with The Antarctic Book, in publisher’s lovely vellum-gilt bindings. Browse other Shackleton items.

In 1925 Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby to immediate critical acclaim and popular success. Eight years later, he was no closer to delivering another novel.

His editor at Scribner’s, the legendary Maxwell Perkins, worried about Fitzgerald but never lost faith, writing to him in August of 1933, “Whenever any of these new writers come up who are brilliant, I always realize that you have more talent and more skills than any of them.”

While Tender is the Night sold well for the Depression era, Fitzgerald had hoped for so much more. This would be the last novel he would publish in his lifetime, perhaps the final solid step before the dissolution and disappearance that would so closely parallel the tragic decline of Dick Diver.

We offer several quality selections including a first edition, in a lovely first-issue dust jacket boldly signed by him.

In November of 1933, a vast dust cloud rose over an area stretching from Texas to the Great Plains, the beginning of an ecological disaster that would blacken the sky all the way to Chicago. Over the next five years, the Dust bowl forced thousands of Americans to take to the road in search of work.

John Steinbeck, witnessing the bleak conditions in the California migrant camps, resolved to write a “big book,” chronicling the ordeal of the displaced and disenfranchised. That book was The Grapes of Wrath, his most celebrated and controversial novel, a national bestseller and winner of the 1939 Pulitzer Prize. Browse our current selection.

George Macy’s decision to commission Henri Matisse to illustrate Ulysses was a bold move for his fledgling Limited Editions Club in 1935. Scandal still swirled around James Joyce’s masterpiece, which had been banned in the United States until 1933. In preliminary conversation with Macy, Matisse confessed to not having read Ulysses; Macy provided him with a French translation. “The very next morning, M. Matisse reported that he had read the book, that he understood its eighteen episodes to be parodies of similar episodes in the Odyssey, that he would like to give point to this fact by making his illustrations actually illustrations of the original episodes in Homer!” (Macy).

Matisse created 26 beautiful full-page illustrations, including six soft-ground etchings - his only use of that particular medium. Macy had planned for 1500 copies of the work to be produced and signed by both author and illustrator. Matisse signed all 1500, but legend has it that when Joyce realized that Matisse had been working from Homer’s Odyssey rather than his novel, he refused to sign any more than the 250 or so that he had already signed - making double-signed copies of this lavish illustrated edition very scarce.

We often carry copies of this collaboration between two of the 20th-century’s finest artists, one of the great modern illustrated books, signed by both author and illustrator. Browse our current selection.

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 ultimately making possible all of the electrical conveniences on which we depend today.

In his Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia, Franklin offered the first clear evidence that lightning is an electrical phenomenon: “the greatest [discovery], perhaps, since the time of Isaac Newton” (Priestly). Included in this renowned work are accounts of Franklin’s famous kite and key experiment, his work with Leyden jars, lightning rods and charged clouds.

Always the practical experimenter rather than the abstract theoretician, Franklin coined a number of terms that we still use: positive and negative, charged, battery, neutral, condense, conductor. Browse our current selection or contact us for more information.

When The Picture of Dorian Gray first appeared in Lippincott’s simultaneously in Philadelphia and London, on June 20, 1890, the story sparked a sensation. “No novel had commanded so much attention for years, or awakened sentiments so contradictory in its readers” (Ellman, 323).

Since Oscar wrote Dorian Gray,” his wife said, “no one will speak to us.” Many critics attacked the work for being immoral, to which Wilde responded, “Leave my book, I beg you, to the immortality that it deserves” (Mason 328). But he also substantially revised the work for book publication, adding six new chapters.

In addition, he composed a series of aphorisms about art and morality - many of which are now famous in their own right, such as “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That’s all. He published these separately in The Fortnightly Review and then again as a Preface to Dorian Gray when it was published in book form. We offer a lovely copy of the first authorized book publication, in the original vellum binding.

An Oxford professor who also wrote literary criticism, fiction for adults and Christian apologetics, C.S. Lewis is primarily known for his extraordinary fantasy series, the Chronicles of Narnia. “All my seven Narnia books,” Lewis once wrote, “began with seeing pictures in my head… The Lion began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was 16. Then one day, when I was about 40, I said to myself, ‘Let’s try and make a story about it’” (Brown, 19). “Adored by children and academics alike, these books are extremely collectible, sought-after and scarce” (Connolly, 186).

We offer a full first edition set of the Chronicles of Narnia, each in the original dust jacket, including the increasingly scarce first volume The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Browse other Chronicles of Narnia editions.

Arguably among the greatest and most fascinating figures in British exploration, the brilliant and intrepid Burton was granted permission by the Royal Geographical Society in 1853 to map the as yet unknown portions of the eastern and central Arabian peninsula.

Burton resolved to wend his way to Mecca to observe Muslim rites witnessed by few westerners. Donning a variety of disguises and learning the local customs - how to speak (using his skills as a linguist), dress, eat, sit, sleep, pray etc. - Burton was accepted as a native.

Over the course of his journey he visited the prophet Mohammed’s tomb (which was located, not in Mecca, as many Christians had hitherto believed, but in Medina) and brought back the first accurate observations by a westerner of the holiest of Moslem holy cities, Mecca.

He recorded his riveting experiences in A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, published in 1855 to great acclaim. Search through our website for any available copies or contact us to request one.

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 become his most famous work, creating characters, scenes and sentiments that would engender an entirely new concept of Christmas.

Dickens supervised every aspect of the book’s elaborate production, resulting in a beautiful volume in cloth-gilt with John Leech’s hand-colored illustrations. A resounding success from the time of its publication, the entire first edition of 6000 copies sold out by the end of Christmas Day in 1843.

The other titles in this series quickly followed: The Chimes, 1845; The Cricket on the Hearth, 1846; The Battle of Life, 1846; The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, 1848.

Browse our current Dickens selection.

Arthur Rackham’s captivating illustrations of fairies, goblins and a host of other-worldly creatures firmly established his reputation as one of the preeminent illustrators of the “Golden Age” of children’s literature. Without question, one of his finest and most desirable works is Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, published in a deluxe signed limited edition in 1906 and containing 50 stunning color plates.

“The glimpses Rackham provides of stylized London reality effectively set off the fairy life that exists in unsuspected conjunction with it, and he captures the loveliness of the Gardens themselves with masterly skill” (Ray).

We offer a fine copy of this much-sought-after volume in the original pictoral vellum-gilt with silk ties intact, and signed by Rackham.