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Posted in First Edition Books on Oct 19th, 2009
“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 [...]
Posted in Rare Books on Nov 10th, 2008
“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 [...]
Posted in Inscribed Books, Signed Books on Oct 27th, 2008
“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 [...]
Posted in First Edition Books, Rare Books on Jul 11th, 2008
“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 [...]