“It is a woman’s writing, but whose?” – (William Thackeray on the authorship of Jane Eyre)

The pseudonymous publication of Jane Eyre in 1847 by “Currer Bell” sparked one of the greatest literary controversies of the 19th century. The novel proved an immediate and almost unprecedented success, selling out within three months while the public clamored for any information on the identity of its mysterious author.

Speculation was rampant in contemporary papers, with many reviewers attributing the book to a man because of the quality and complexity of the prose. However, William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte’s literary hero and later an important member of her circle, wrote, “It is a fine book… I have been exceedingly moved & pleased by Jane Eyre. It is a woman’s writing, but whose?” Bronte’s identity was revealed only after the work had gone through several editions. By that time, it was already clear that she had written a classic of English literature. View our current selection.

 “The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli is the whole of later history.” —Lord Acton”

Almost immediately upon its 1532 first appearance in print, The Prince exerted a formidable and far-reaching influence. Henry VIII’s agent Thomas Cromwell obtained a manuscript copy only a few years after the first publication. The works of Shakespeare and Marlowe abound with references to the author, and while Machiavelli’s seemingly amoral stance earned him a villainous reputation in Elizabethan England, his keen and practical analysis was admired by major Enlightenment figures such as Bacon, Rousseau and Hume. But The Prince was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559— in the “banned absolutely” category—and did not appear in a printed English translation until the Episcopal censorship broke down in 1640, when it was published in a small-format volume that is now exceedingly scarce.

We are currently pleased to offer this very rare and important 1640 Machiavelli’s Prince first edition in English, a seminal work in the foundation of modern political theory and a great classic of political science. Browse our inventory of Niccolo Machiavelli rare books or contact us for more information.

“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 declare: “All modern writing comes from one book by Mark Twain. It’s the best book we’ve had. There was nothing before. There has been nothing since.” Published in 1885, Huck was a labor of love and frustration that had taken Twain eight years, and he was devastated that its introduction failed to elicit the same enthusiasm as his beloved Tom Sawyer. View our current selection.

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 ultimate man of action, his high-stakes missions propelling him to exotic locales where he seduces exceptional (and exceptionally named) women. He bests some of literature’s most sinister masterminds and he does it all mixing glamour and grit, subterfuge and style.

The first editions of Bond’s adventures, like diamonds, are forever. And you don’t have to be richer than Goldfinger to start a collection. Call or visit us today to begin building a library whose value will never be shaken—but whose contents will surely leave you stirred. Browse our current Fleming selection.

“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 of places devastated by gunfire, of troops on the march or in bivouac, and of individual officers and men” (DAB).

The photographers depicted the soldiers and their leaders, the forts, the camps, the marches, the battlefields where the Blue met the Gray… and the horrendous aftermaths. In 1911 Francis Trevelyan Miller’s renowned Photographic History of the Civil War brought together over a thousand of Brady’s dramatic images—many previously unpublished—in ten large quarto volumes, with contributions from distinguished historians as well as veterans of both Confederate and Union forces. We have in our collection a fine first edition of this vital and indispensable photographic history. Browse our current inventory.

“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 dangerous attempt. An Austrian convert to Islam, Emin Pasha had been appointed by English General Charles Gordon as governor of the southernmost province of the Sudan. After the Islamic fundamentalist armies of El Mahdi expelled all Europeans and Egyptians from the Sudan and killed General Gordon at Khartoum, it was learned that Emin Pasha still held out, surrounded on all sides and cut off from civilization.

Stanley organized an elaborate rescue force of 650 men who traveled up the Congo and then overland through the dense Ituri forest. After enduring harrowing hardships and devastating losses of men and supplies, Stanley reached Emin in April 1888—only to discover that he was quite content and refused to be rescued. Ultimately Stanley insisted, carrying the reluctant leader and many of his followers to the east coast, thereby becoming the first to cross the width of Africa from coast to coast in both directions, discovering along the way Lake Edward and Mount Ruwenzori, the fabled “Mountains of the Moon.”

We are pleased to offer the deluxe signed limited edition of Stanley’s account of the expedition, In Darkest Africa, two large thick quarto volumes bound in morocco and vellum, profusely illustrated, including 38 mounted plates on India paper and six full-page etchings each signed by the artist, one of only 250 copies signed by Stanley. Browse our current selection.

“One Of The Classics Of Antarctic Literature”

Cherry-Garrard served as assistant zoologist on Robert Scott’s tragic 1910-12 expedition to Antarctica. Dr. Wilson chose Bowers and Cherry-Garrard as his companions for a winter journey in 1911 to Cape Crozier to collect Emperor Penguin eggs. “On their return five weeks later Scott described their journey as ‘the hardest that has ever been made’—a phrase which later suggested to Cherry-Garrard the title of his narrative” (DNB).

The following summer he accompanied Scott’s polar party as far as the summit of the Beardmore Glacier, helping to establish supply and fuel depots. Scott arrived at the Pole only to find that a Norwegian team had beaten him there by a month.

On the return journey, plagued by blizzards and illness, the sledge party perished near One Ton Depot, where their bodies and diaries were found eight months later by a search party that included Cherry-Garrard. “A very literate, detailed account of the expedition… one of the classics of Antarctic literature” (Conrad, 173).

We are pleased to offer a lovely, near-fine copy of The Worst Journey in the World, two volumes in the scarce first-issue binding. Browse our current selection.

“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 of revenge by Joyce, who mocked in it the people who had offended him… in short, it was the inscription on the walls of eternity of James Joyce’s feelings, his prejudices and his obsessions” (Arnold, 55).

“Joyce insisted that each word, each sentence had several meanings and that the ‘ideal lecteur’ should devote his lifetime to it, like the Koran” (Connolly, 81).

Seventeen years after Joyce began working on Finnegans Wake, his publishers issued the finished work in a signed limited large-paper edition of only 435 copies for England and the United States. We are pleased to offer one of the 310 copies issued in America, signed by Joyce, complete with the original slipcase, a beautiful copy in fine condition. Browse our current Finnegans Wake selection.

“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, subject-matter, and its distinct problems… A Room of One’s Own chartered this vast territory with an air of innocent discovery which itself sharpens the case against induced ineffectiveness and ignorance that for so long clouded the counter-history of women” (Gordon, 182).

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” said Woolf, “and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unresolved.”

A signed limited edition of only 492 copies, each signed by Woolf in her characteristic purple ink, was published by the Woolf’s own Hogarth Press. Browse our current selection.

“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 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 inventory.