Search Results: Literature from The Book Collector ABAA, ILAB, TBA

[2 Piccadilly ad]+[6]+311+[1 blank]+[32 ad] pages. Small octavo (7 1/" x 6") bound in original publisher's red cloth with gilt lettering to spine black pictorial bank-note to spine and cover with addition pictorial rendering to cover. 32 ad pages date March 1893. First edition. The £1,000,000 Bank-Note charts the magical rags-to-riches ascent of a virtuous and resourceful mining broker's clerk from San Francisco who arrives in London with a single dollar in his pocket, and proceeds to ultimate and splendid financial success and fame in London society a paean to ingenuity and a celebration of its cunning confidence-man narrator. It is illustrated by Daniel Carter Beard. The other pieces include "Mental Telegraphy," a serious essay reflecting Twain's continuing interest in the occult he and his wife would later try several seances, poignantly and unsuccessfully, to contact their daughter Suzy; "The German Chicago," contrasting Berlin of his era with the American city, "About All Kinds of Ships," about… Read More

273 pages. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6 `1/4") bound in original publisher's half red paper with black lettering to spine over black boards blind stamped with a horse and the initial DF. First American edition. Benedict Juliard is an aspiring jockey who must bypass his dreams of horse racing to help his father, George, in his quest to enter the world of politics. At 18, the reserved Benedict is asked by his father to enter into a pact: Neither of the two will do anything that could somehow hinder or destroy George's blossoming political career. Young Benedict, who has no stronger ambition than to ride steeplechase as an amateur jockey, agrees to the pact, without possibly knowing what lies ahead.Twelve years pass, and Ben has since abandoned his dream of making a career on the racetrack. Like his father, Ben enters the political arena, becoming George Juliard's closest ally and most trusted confidant as he makes his move to become prime minister. However, Ben suddenly finds himself the target of a fierce… Read More

Warner Books 1994 New York, 1994 Very fine in a very fine dust wrapper 1st Hardbound Tall 8vo viii, 293p. Hardcover.

v+523 pages with frontispiece, two plates and ten illustrations. Octavo (8" x 5 1/2"). bound in original publishers red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and author's initials on front board encircled by stamped corn with the same design blind-stamped on back board. With the boxed ad on copyright page (BAL 3492) designating first edition, second state. The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories is a collection of thirty comic short stories by the iconic American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The stories contained span the course of his career, from "Advice to Young Girls" in 1865 to the titular tale in 1904. Although Twain had ample time to refine his short stories between their original publication date and this collection, there is little evidence to suggest he took an active interest in doing so. "A Burlesque Biography" contains only a few minor technical revisions which make it different from the 1871 version found in Mark Twain's "(Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance". "Advice to Little… Read More

[x]+98 typescript pages on recto only with drawings Michael Fruge. Quarto (11" x 8 1/2") bound in original publisher's pictorial wrappers with plastic spiral binding. First edition. This guide to poetry for children come with the author's illustrations which will totally enhance the reading experience. Condition: Corners bumped, edges rubbed else very good.

519 pages. Royal octavo (9 1/2" x 6 1/4") bound in original publisher's quarter black cloth with gilt lettering to spine over black boards in original pictorial jacket. First edition. From the bestselling author of Mercy and Body of Truth comes a new novel taking readers deep into the shockingly sophisticated and corrupt world of international drug and arms trading. Brilliant, literate suspense from an author who has been called a "master of the genre", and compared to John LeCarre. Condition: Front heal edge bumped. Jacket price clipped else very good to fine in a near fine jacket.

[iv]+169+[1 ad]+[1 blank] pages, frontispiece with tissue guard by Gordon Grant. Small Octavo (7" x 4 3/4"). Issued in olive cloth stamped in yellow and dark green on front cover and spine. Inscribed by Becky London. (Sisson and Martens page 70) First edition variant binding.The Abysmal Brute is a novel by American writer Jack London, first published in book form in 1913. It is a short novel, and could be regarded as a novelette. It first appeared in September 1911 in Popular Magazine. In the story, a successful boxer, who was brought up in a log cabin and knows little of the real world, begins to realize the corrupt practices in the game of boxing. In 1910, when the story was written, London had become a famous writer but he was worried that he had exhausted his ideas. The Abysmal Brute was based on one of several plot outlines he bought from Sinclair Lewis, an admirer of London who was at the beginning of his career. Other stories by Jack London about boxing are his novel The Game, published in… Read More

273 pages with illustration. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6 1/4") bound in original publisher's quarter white cloth with red lettering to spine over read boards in original pictorial jacket. Inscribed by the author. First edition. New York private eye Stanley Hastings can't say no when he gets the chance to play the lead in a summer stock production. But when the stage manager is murdered, Stanley is the main suspect--and he must not only learn his part, but uncover the killer as well. Condition: Inscription to title else a near fine copy in a fine jacket.

Delacorte Press 1999 New York, 1999 Fine in a fine dust wrapper 1st Hardbound Tall 8vo 387p. Hardcover.

109 pages with portrait frontispiece. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine and cover in original jacket. First edition. John Galsworthy devoted virtually his entire professional career to creating a fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians- the Forsytes. He made their lives and times - loves and losses - fortunes and deaths so real that readers accused him of including as characters in his drama real individuals whom they knew. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. Contents: At the Lowell Centenary American and Briton From a Speech at the Lotus Club, New York From a Speech to the Society of Arts and Sciences, New York Address at Columbia University To the League of Political Education, New York. Condition: Corners bumped. Jacket corners chipped, spine ends one inch loss, edges chipped else very good in better than good jacket.

263 pages. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's black coth with gilt lettering to spine in original pictorial jacket. First edition. Mathematician sleuth Dan Brodsky becomes embroiled, once again, in murder when a fellow participant in a conference at Oxford University is killed and close friend, Paul Hobart, is accused of the crime. Condition: Fine in like jacket.

438+[52 ad] pages with frontispiece and numerous illustrations. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and cover and black decorative figures to cover and spine. First edition, first state with the publisher's ads dated 1884, precedes the American edition which was released in February 1885 and the British edition was released in December 1884.The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. The book was widely criticized upon release because of its extensive use of coarse language. Throughout the 20th century, and despite arguments… Read More

366 pages with frontispiece and 174 drawings illustrated by E W Kemble. Octavo (8 3/4" x 6 3/4") bound in original publisher's full sheep with four raised spine bands with gilt lettering in black and red labels. Points: on page 13 the uncorrected 88; on page 57 the uncorrected "was" for "saw" and on page 9 the uncorrected "Decided" instead of "Decides". The first printing was completed by November 1884 and comprised 30,000 copies before the various bindings. The above corrections were all made in the second and third printings of 10,000 copies each (Firsts: Vol 8, number 9, page 31). The American edition was released in February 1885 and the British edition was released in December 1884. First issue of the First American edition.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry… Read More

220 pages. Octavo (8 1/2" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's pictorial wrappers. Foreword by Lewis Branscomb. y First edition. Ohio State has a good representative collection of Black materials, many in first editions, of the slavery and reconstructions periods which were acquired as published over the years. For some unexplained reason , Ohio State did not acquire Black literature systematically for 1955 to 19260 and is now trying to obtain it before it becomes critically scarce. The really big problem in the publication of Black materials began shortly after the 1954 Supreme Court school decision and the beginning in 1960 of the Civil Rights protest movement. Condition: Light soiling of wrappers else very good.

278 pages. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's quarter black cloth with gilt label to spine with black lettering over beige boards in original pictorial jacket. First edition. Remainder mark at heal end pages. Make it new, said Pound, and Dobyns always does: this account of four extraordinary weeks in the life of a large Chilean family, sheltering from a series of earthquakes, is his best novel yet. The Big One rocked southern Chile on May 22, 1960, to be followed by months of smaller quakes and tremors, mudslides and tsunamis. Four thousand people were killed; the moon turned blood-red; many believed the end of the world was at hand. The solidly bourgeois Droppelman family of Puerto Varas experiences convulsions of its own, culminating in scandal. The story is told by eight-year-old Lucy, whose father, a cattle merchant, is killed by a falling chimney brick; she and her two brothers take refuge in their grandparents' farmhouse. Lucy's grandmother is overjoyed by the quake, since… Read More

159 pages. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine with gilt facsimile signature to cover. Ah, Wilderness! is a comedy by American playwright Eugene O'Neill that premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on October 2, 1933. It differs from a typical O'Neill play in its happy ending for the central character, and depiction of a happy family in turn of the century America. It is O'Neill's only well-known comedy. The play was successful in its first Broadway production and the touring production that followed. It has since become a staple of community repertory. Condition: Some pencil notations and underlining of text. Edge wear with some rubbing, some staining to back cover else about very good.

viii+126 pages. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine. First edition.
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830.
Condition: Former-library copy with usual library marks and stamps, front end paper clipped else a good.

187 pages. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bund in original publisher's grey quarter cloth with gilt lettering to spine over red boards in original pictorial jacket. First edition.
Only weeks ago, Basil Killingsley was looking at a rare old book in the Smedley Library. Now he is back to take another look, and the book is gone—gone from the shelves, gone from the computer listings, gone from the memories of everyone who works there.Basil is as indefatigable as he is eccentric. He will not rest until he finds the book and proves to all concerned that he is not imagining things. But more than Basil's (considerable) ego is involved here: it is not just any book that is missing, but a 1495 Wynkyn de Worde edition of Ranulf Higden's Policronicon, a book of historical and literary significance that is crucial to Basil's research.
As Basil and his equally formidable wife, Hortense, are busy searching the Smedley for clues, members of the staff keep turning up murdered, more books mysteriously appear on the… Read More

373 pages. Royal octavo (9 1/2" x 6 1/4") bound in original publisher's quarter black cloth with red lettering to spine over grey boards in original jacket. First edition. All That Remains is a crime fiction novel by Patricia Cornwell. It is the third book of the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series. The book is closely based on the Colonial Parkway Killer, a suspected serial killer who is thought to have murdered 8 people in Virginia in the 1980s. n Richmond, Virginia, young lovers are dying. So far, four couples in the area have disappeared, only to be found months later as mutilated corpses. When the daughter of the president's newest drug czar vanishes along with her boyfriend, Dr. Kay Scarpetta knows time is short. Following a macabre trail of evidence that ties the present homicides to a grisly crime in the past, Kay must draw upon her own personal resources to track down a murderer who is as skilled at eliminating clues as Kay is at finding them. Condition: Inscribed on half title page else a near fine… Read More

xxx+313+[4 ad] pages with photographs, drawings and index. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6") bound in original pictorial wrappers. Edited by Gordon Ball. First edition. Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet of Jewish origin, and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation during the 1950s and the counterculture that soon followed. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. He was one of many influential American writers of his time known as the Beat Generation, which included famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. In Ginsberg's freshman year at Columbia he met fellow undergraduate Lucien Carr, who introduced him to a number of future Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes. They bonded because they saw in one another an excitement about the… Read More