Rare Finds – A Guide to Rare Book Collecting

” Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind…” (Printing and the Mind of Man).

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 important 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. “By 1643 censorship was again firmly in place in England, and it would be over twenty years before another edition of The Prince would appear in English” (Books that Changed the World, 26).

In 1675 John Starkey published the first collected edition in English of Machiavelli’s complete writings, which includes, in addition to his controversial masterpiece, his Discourses on Livy, The History of Florence, The Art of War, his analyses of the states of Germany and France, and his Letter in Vindication of Himself and His Writings. We are pleased to offer a copy of this scarce and handsome folio volume, bound in contemporary calf.

“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. 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. Heyward accepted Gershwin’s proposal for a joint project, but both he and Gershwin were busy with other projects and agreed to put off their collaboration until a later date.

In 1934 Gershwin finally began to compose his “American folk opera,” incorporating blues and jazz elements into the classical opera form. When Porgy and Bess premiered in 1935 – with an entire cast of classically trained African-American vocalists – it was not popularly successful, but it was controversial. Some found the use of African-American dialect offensive and Gershwin’s use of the opera form was deemed unconvincing. Although Gershwin considered it his finest work, in the end both he and Heyward lost money on the project.

For decades, Porgy and Bess was not seriously regarded as a legitimate opera, but in 1976 the Houston Grand Opera production changed the fate of Gershwin’s visionary work, helping to establish it as a standard in the operatic repertoire.

This deluxe edition of the piano-vocal score was published in 1935, the year of the opera’s premiere, and is boldly signed on the limitation page by George and Ira Gershwin and the other principal creators of Porgy and Bess: librettist DuBose Heyward and director Rouben Mamoulian. It has been further inscribed and signed by Gershwin in the year of publication, “To —– my sincere good wishes, George Gershwin, Oct 16, 1935.” Because of Gershwin’s tragic early death in 1937, inscribed copies of any of his works are exceedingly rare.

“No equal in American Literature.” (DAB)

On a cold day in 1853, one of the most disastrous blazes in the history of New York City lit up the darkness of Pearl Street. Accidently ignited by a plumber, the fire claimed the publishing headquarters of Harper & Brothers, destroying thousands of books, sheets, plates and proofs. Among the many volumes destroyed in the fire were 297 copies of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

The fire consumed all but 60 of the remaining unsold copies of the initially unpopular novel. The publishers had been unenthusiastic in their small printing of the first American edition, and to Melville’s profound disappointment, Moby-Dick had been neither a popular nor a commercial success.

The fire marked the beginning of Melville’s descent into literary oblivion; it was not until the 1920′s that interest in his novel was revived. After years of obscurity, Moby-Dick finally began to attract readers as well as scholarship, ultimately taking its place in the ranks of American masterpieces. “Melville’s permanent fame nust always rest on the great prose epic of Moby-Dick, a book has no equal in American literature for variety and splendor of style and for depth of feeling” (DAB). We offer a first American edition in original cloth of Melville’s classic.

“In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, the Decline and Fall is unsurpassable.” (DNB)

“It was at Rome,” Gibbon writes, “on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.” He set seriously to the task in 1768, and eight years later achieved instant and lasting fame with the publication of the first volume of his comprehensive masterwork, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

All 1000 copies of the first edition were sold within two weeks of publication in January 1776. Gibbon continued to work for the next decade, finishing the sixth and final volume in 1788. His History remains the authority on the decay of the Roman Empire, and his extraordinary scholarship is still considered impeccable.

“This masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style has remained one of the ageless historical works” (PMM 222).

We offer an excellent nearly full first edition set (Volume I third edition, issued just one year after the first; Volumes II through VI first editions) of Gibbon’s masterpiece, complete with three engraved folding maps of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires and of Constantinople, bound in handsome 18th-century calf.

“The experiences of his five years in the Beagle, how he dealt with them, and what they led to, built up into a process of epoch-making importance in the history of thought.”

The son of a well-to-do country doctor, Darwin finished at Cambridge with an unexceptional record, anticipating only a comfortable position in the clergy. He pursued his interests in geology and natural history essentially as the hobby of an educated parson with plenty of leisure time.

In 1831, shortly after graduating, a letter arrived offering the 23-year-old Darwin an unpaid position as the naturalist on board the HMS Beagle. The proposition came as a complete surprise, and his father initially convinced him to decline. He thought better of his decision, however, and hurried to London to interview with the equally young and decidedly aristocratic Captain Robert Fitzroy, who had taken over command of the Beagle on its previous voyage to South America.

Though they came from substantially different backgrounds, the two formed an immediate friendship, sharing a small cabin during the Beagle’s five-year circumnavigation, from 1831-36. It was on this trip that Darwin first read Lyell’s Principles of Geology, on this trip that he observed the strange flora and fauna of the Galapagos Islands, on this trip that he began to form the ideas that would go on to become On The Origin of Species.

In 1839 the four-volume report of the Beagle’s two expeditions appeared; Volume III of the report consisted of the detailed journal Darwin kept during the voyage – the great scientist’s first book. We are pleased to offer an excellent set of the four-volume report, in original cloth and complete with the eight folding maps.

“But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way,
in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest,
a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”
- A.A. Milne

Trapped indoors during a rainy holiday in Wales, writer and editor A.A. Milne turned his hand to a series of short verses for children, inspired by his young son Christopher Robin: “There on the side of the lawn was a child with whom I had lived for three years….and here within me were unforgettable memories of my own childhood.”

Accompanied by Ernest Shepard’s whimsical line drawings, Milne’s verses were published in 1924 as When We Were Very Young. The success of that book, which introduced the character of “Mr. Edward Bear,” prepared the way for the following three volumes of Milne’s “Pooh Quartet”: Winnie the Pooh, Now We Are Six, and The House at Pooh Corner. We offer a lovely first edition set of all four Pooh books in scarce original dust jackets.

“One of the greatest lithographic works ever printed.”

Out of the romance of Napoleon’s ill-fated 1798 adventure in Egypt and Lord Byron’s Eastern travels, memorialized in his exotic poetry, came a fascination for the Near East and the places of scripture and revelation. It was a fascination that touched Scotsman David Roberts, the leading landscape painter of his day, who had honed his technique and established his reputation as an artist of the scenic and exotic with his sketches of Spain and Morocco, published in the early 1830′s.

But the appetite of the Victorian book-buying public for views of the mysterious East, still relatively unseen by Western eyes, set Roberts on the course that would determine his immortality. As a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, Roberts was given unfettered access to the tombs, temples, monuments and ruins of Egypt, Syria and the Holy Land.

Louis Haghe, the impresario of the new illustration technique of lithography, oversaw the publication in six extraordinary books all the detailed grandeur of 250 of Roberts’s drawings. Tinted in color, and published a few short years before the advent of photography, these images permanently fixed in the popular imagination such sites as the Great Sphinx of Giza and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

We offer an exceptional first quarto edition of Robert’s Holy Land, three volumes in beautiful publisher’s morocco-gilt.

“Laid the foundations of Jefferson’s high contemporary reputation as a universal scholar and of his present fame as a pioneer American scientist.”

In 1781, exhausted by the burden of governing war-torn Virginia, stung by criticism of his conduct during Benedict Arnold’s and Charles Cornwallis’ invasions, discouraged by the futility of his own efforts, Jefferson resolved to quit government altogether. His retirement was brief – the death of his wife in 1782 spurned him to retur to congress – but during this time he penned the only book he would ever publish during his lifetime: Notes on the State of Virginia.

Written in the form of answers to a French diplomat’s questions about Virginia, the Notes describe the state’s geography and provide an abundance of supporting material and unusual information. He reluctanctly published the book in 1785 in an edition of only 200 copies while in Paris. A poor translation into French followed in 1786, but it included for the first time Neele’s map of Virginia.

The exceptionally rare first English edition was issued by Stockton in 1787 in an edition of 1000 copies with Neele’s map. The first American edition followed in 1788 but did not include a map. This second American edition contains for the first time the famous color-outlined Samuel Lewis folding map of Virginia, and is the first American edition to include a map.

We offer a copy from this second American edition bound together with an 1800 first edition of Jefferson’s controversial Appendix – in which he presentsthe evidence on which he charged Captain Cresap and his party with the murder in 1774 of peaceable Indians – in contemporary American sheep binding.

“The author was at the height of her powers” – A.S.W. Rosenbach 

Emma was the fourth and last novel which Jane Austen published in her lifetime. “When it was written the author was at the height of her powers, and she write the book rapidly and surely, encouraged by the success of her previous novel to express herself with confidence in the way peculiarly her own” (Rosenbach).

Austen published all her novels analymously, but they nevertheless brought her some fame. In 1815 she visited London to see Emma through the press and to nurse her brother Henry through an illness. The Prince Regent, later George IV, heard of her visit and sent his chaplain, Mr. Clarke, to wait upon her and to give her a tour of the magnificent library at Carlton House.

Through his chaplain the Prince Regent also extended his permission for Austen to dedicate her next novel to him; Emma is her only novel to contain a dedication. “Austen’s self-knowledge, her love of detail…[helped her] to create a proud, self-willed, self-guided, vexing, and outrageous Emma and her greatest novel” (Honan).

We are pleased to offer an excellent copy of the novel many consider to be Austen’s best, one of only 200 copies printed, this copy from the private collection of Scottish peer Hugh Montgomerie, Twelfth Earl of Eglinton, in unrestored original boards and complete with all half titles.

“You are all a lost generation.” – Gertrude Stein, in conversation.

In 1975, noted Hemingway scholar Lawrence Broer interviewed Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Mowrer, for an article in the Lost Generation Journal. During the course of teh interview, she described The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s first and perhaps greatest novel as “my book” – she is not only the dedicatee, but also “had been Hemingway’s constant companion during perhaps the most important formative years of his career.”

At the end of a long afternoon of reminiscing over the years they spent in Paris and their trips throughout Europe, Mowrer presented Broer with a wonderful gift: her own personal copy of The Sun Also Rises. She inscribed it to him, “Best wishes, from one who saw the Sun Also Rise. Sincerely Hadley R. Mowrer.”

We are pleased to offer this first-issue copy, Hadley’s own and wonderfully inscribed by her, without the exceptionally scarce original dust jacket.