“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.
Tags: finnegans wake, first edition, james joyce, rare book
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“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.
Tags: first edition book, rare books, room of ones own, virginia woolf
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“Americans! In Your Congress At Philadelphia… You Laid Down The Fundamental Principles… Life, Liberty And Property”
John Adams’ highly contested Discourses on Davila was prompted by Jefferson’s firm declaration of “his faith in reason and democracy… as the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs.” Alarmed by the fresh violence of the French Revolution, Adams disagreed, feeling that “the will of the majority, if out of hand, could lead to ‘horrible ravages’… Adams stressed the perils of unbridled, unbalanced democracy” (McCullough 420-421). (Though published anonymously, Adams was commonly known to be the author.)
We have recently obtained a rare association copy of Adams’ important Discourses from the library of David Humphreys, whose long friendships with Washington, Adams and Jefferson placed him at the center of the dispute surfacing in these pages. The volume is twice signed by Humphreys, who served as Washington’s trusted aide-de-camp during the Revolution and later, in Europe, worked closely with “Franklin, Adams and Jefferson, the old Revolutionary trio” (McCullough, 322). We are pleased to offer this copy, entirely uncut in original boards, with an exceptional association. Browse our current inventory.
Tags: discourses on davila, first edition, john adams, rare books, rare finds
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“First In The Hearts Of His Fellow Citizens”
Washington’s life story is inextricably linked to that of the founding of the United States, and no man was better suited to the task of depicting the actions and character of the first President than Chief Justice John Marshall: as a personal friend, Marshall announced the President’s death in 1799, offered the eulogy, chaired the committee that arranged the funeral rites, and led the commission to plan a monument in the capital city.
This is the life of a great man – and the birth of a great nation – written by a man very nearly the equal of his subject, drawn chiefly from Washington’s own diaries, letters and secret archives. Marshall’s “indispensable” five-volume Life was accompanied by an atlas volume containing ten engraved folding maps of Revolutionary War battlefields and troop movements, and is graced by Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait.
We are pleased to offer a complete set of this scarce and important first edition set, including the scarce atlas volume, in comtemporary American calf bindings. Browse our current inventory.
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“A Bona-Fide English Hero”
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 our current inventory.
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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 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. Browse our current inventory.
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“We ain’t gonna die out. People is going’ on – changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”
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 inventory.
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“It was a great idea to bring them together; celebrities of the same generation, of similar virtuosity” - Monroe Wheeler on the Joyce-Matisse Ulysses
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 inventory.
Tags: henri matisse, james joyce, ulysses
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“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.
Tags: benjamin franklin, electricity observations
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“Leave My Book, I Beg You, To The Immortality That It Deserves” - Oscar Wilde
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. View our current Picture of Dorian Grau inventory.
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