“I will leave judgements on this matter to history – but I will be one of the historians.” – Winston Churchill
“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.” Churchill penned his monumental six-volume History of the Second World War only a few years after the war’s end, including in it details privy only to him as Prime Minister, and offering his singular observations and memories of the people and events that shaped the course of history.
While he has published a number of books prior to the war, this was the work that would seal his literary reputation. Published separately from 1948-1954, the six volumes in Churchill’s masterpiece achieved immediate popularity in both Britain and the United States and earned Churchill the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. We offer a fine six-volume set of first editions, handsomely bound in morocco-gilt. Browse our current inventory.
Tags: first edition, rare book, second world war, winston churchill
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“One of these mornin’s you’s gonna rise up singin’.”
George Gershwin had wanted to write an opera about the African-American experience long before he read DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy in 1926. But in Heyward’s portrayal of life on “Catfish Row”—based on the very real Cabbage Row in Heyward’s hometown of Charleston—Gershwin recognized his material. He immediately wrote to Heyward to suggest a joint project. Heyward agreed to the proposal, but both he and Gershwin were busy with other projects and the two men delayed their collaboration.
In 1934 Gershwin finally began work on the opera. When Porgy and Bess premiered in 1935, it was not successful, but it was controversial. Some questioned the use of African-American dialect and even Gershwin’s use of the opera form was criticized as being unconvincing and too “popular.” In the end, Gershwin and Heyward both lost money on the project. It was not until years after Gershwin’s death that the opera became popular with audiences, and it was decades before it finally received acceptance within the opera world. Today, Porgy and Bess represents the best that American opera has to offer.
We offer a deluxe limited edition of the piano-vocal score, signed on the limitation page by George and Ira Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Rouben Mamoulian, who produced the premiere. This copy is additionally inscribed and signed again by both George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. Because of Gershwin’s tragic early death in 1937, inscribed copies of any of his works are exceedingly rare. View our current Porgy and Bess inventory.
Tags: gershwin, Inscribed Books, porgy and bess, rare book
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“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” (Constitution, Article II).
A reluctant if inevitable choice for the presidency, George Washington had hoped he might find some way to decline. After his brilliant leadership, however, any successor’s road to the nation’s highest office seemed as unsteady as America’s place in history. With the course of a presidential election eloquently described by Jefferson as a “bloodless revolution,” America’s leaders stand at the center of its very identity—even if, as Abigail Adams wisely pointed out, their election comes after the course of a “whole year” in which its citizens seem to hear “nothing else but abuse and scandal.”
As America prepares to choose its next president, Bauman Rare Books is especially privileged to offer this select group of important presidential books, speeches, treaties, correspondence, photographs and more. In the words of Lincoln, Madison, Grant, Reagan, Kennedy, Truman, Jackson, Clinton, FDR, Carter, Nixon, Wilson, Monroe and others—found in these exceptional items—we find confirmation of the ongoing strengths and difficult choices of America’s leaders, as well as affirmation of the “bloodless revolution” that continues to steadfastly author our future. Browse our inventory.
Tags: presidential rare books
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Why collect children’s classics? There is the familiarity of a beloved book that impressed us in our earliest years, the images that stir our recognition, the words and phrases that resonate in our memories. We carry so many of those first-loved, often best-loved books with us for a lifetime, and when we choose to approach them as a collector would, a fascinating world opens up.
Often not printed in large quantities, these first editions survived more perilous paths than many other books, as they usually ended up in children’s hands, where they were read, carried, dropped, drawn upon, tossed, clutched and loved.
These first editions have survived the vagaries of time because they were treasured, and in collecting them, we keep them safe for yet another generation. There is a tremendous pleasure in devoting one’s time, focus and energy to collecting such wonderful classics, and we invite you, in the books that follow, to rediscover the books you loved in your earliest years.
Tags: antiques, gift childrens books, rare childrens books. childrens first editions
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“Flashes Of Genius By An Expert In Self-Destruction”
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 skill than any of them; but circumstances have prevented you from realizing upon the fact for a long time.”
Circumstances, indeed: in the intervening years the country plunged into the Great Depression, his wife Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and had to enter a sanitarium for long-term care, and Fitzgerald struggled with alcoholism and the difficulty of ever surmounting his own reputation following the near-miraculous Gatsby. “The man who started the novel,” he remarked after publication of Tender Is the Night in 1934, “is not the man who finished it.” Reception was mixed and while the novel sold well for the Depression era, Fitzgerald had hoped for so much more.
It was the last novel he would publish in his lifetime, perhaps the final solid step before the dissolution that would so closely parallel the tragic decline of Dick Diver in Tender Is the Night. Browse our current inventory.
Tags: f scott fitzgerald, first edition, signed edition, tender is the night
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“We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident…”
By 1820 the original Declaration of Independence showed serious signs of deterioration and wear from handling. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned William Stone to engrave an exact copy of the original onto a copper plate, and in 1823 Congress ordered 200 official copies printed on vellum. (Fewer than 40 of Stone’s printings on vellum are known to have survived.) All subsequent exact facsimiles of the Declaration descend from this Stone plate. Twenty years later Congress commissioned Peter Force to compile and publish The American Archives.
Basing his work on Stone’s original plate, Force prepared full-size prints of the Declaration of Independence on special rice paper – his printing proved to be one of the best representations of the original manuscript Declaration, with remarkably exact renditions of the signers’ signatures. While Congress authorized the printing of 1500 copies of American Archives, subscriptions for this elaborate and expensive multi-volume edition did not sell well; perhaps as few as 500 sets were ultimately issued.
We are pleased to offer a fine copy of what has come to be called the Force Declaration, unfolded to its majestic 26 by 29 inches and very handsomely framed. Browse our current selection.
Tags: declaration of independence
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“Their Destiny As A Race Is Sealed.
They Will Soon Be Lost To Our Sight Forever”
In 1822, Thomas McKenney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs under four presidents, commissioned artist Charles Bird King to paint the portraits of famous Indian leaders as they visited Washington.
Over the course of 15 years dignitaries from more than a score of tribes sat for King. As the number of portraits grew, McKenney determined to publish the paintings in book form, to make this rich archive available to the American people and to future generations.
The expensive undertaking almost ruined him and his publishers, but it is fortunate that he persevered: in 1865 fire ravaged the Smithsonian, destroying many of King’s original oil paintings.
We are pleased to offer a very handsome set of this landmark American work, three large octavo volumes in the publisher’s deluxe morocco bindings, complete with 120 splendid lithographs, each finely colored by hand. Browse our current inventory.
Tags: indian tribes history, thomas mckenney
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“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.
Tags: in darkest africa, signed henry stanley
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“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.
Tags: apsley cherry-garrard, First Edition Books, north pole, rare literature, worst journey
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“A Human Panorama of Love, Courage, Cowardice…
Deceit And Folly”: Boccaccio’s Decameron
“Could there be stories without a moral, of human adventure and misadventure? The horrors of the plague provided Boccaccio with the incentive and the opportunity…Boccaccio creates a human panorama of love, courage, cowardice, wit, wisdom, deceit and folly… If he does not teach the art of living virtuously, he does the ‘art of living well’” (Boorstin, 266-70).
Boccaccio composed his masterpiece sometime between 1348 and 1352, and his realistic – rather than moralistic or allegorical – characters proved enormously influential through the centuries; Shakespeare drew on Boccaccio for Troilus and Cressida, and as many as 54 early English plays derived their plots from the Decameron (Pforzheimer 71).
We are pleased to offer an excellent copy of the first complete edition in English, comprising the 1625 second edition of Volume I together with the 1620 first edition of Volume II – as virtually always found – in lovely 19th-century morocco-gilt. Browse our current selection.
Tags: boccaccio, decameron, first edition, rare books, rare finds
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