MODERN FIRSTS from

Lugd. Batavorum [Leiden]: Apud Franciscum Hackium, 1650. Full Calf. Near Fine+. Early issue of the first Latin edition of Browne's first and most celebrated work, a spiritual testament and meditative essay originally not intended for publication. 12mo (128 x 73mm): 235,[5]pp, with engraved title page after a design by William Marshall of a figure falling headlong into the… Read more about this item

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine-. First Printing of this important debut, awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Selected and introduced by Dudley Fitts. Slim crown 8vo (203 x 124mm): xiii,[1],62,[2]pp. Publisher's coarsely woven plum-colored cloth (also issued in decorative wrappers), spine lettered in black; illustrated dust jacket priced $3.00.… Read more about this item

London: Archibald Constable, 1907. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. A superb unopened First Impression collecting these three plays, the first commissioned by W. B. Yeats. Crown 8vo (176 x 119mm): lix,[3],293,[3]pp. Publisher's olive-green vertically ribbed cloth, spine lettered in gilt; top edge gilt, others uncut; dun-colored dust jacket lettered in black and priced 6/-. An unopened, virtually flawless copy… Read more about this item

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons [from 1880], 1887. First Edition. Pictorial Cloth. Fine-. Seldom seen Second Printing (no copy appears in auction records) of this cornerstone of baseball literature. Binding and text duplicate the first printing, excepting date on title page and advertisements (eight pages vs. six in first printing). Crown 8vo (178 x 112mm): viii,[2],188,[8]pp, with tissue-guarded… Read more about this item

London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955. First Impression. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First British Edition of this classic account of the perhaps greatest speculative boom in history, setting the stage for the Great Depression. Demy 8vo (212 x 134mm): 186pp, with frontispiece reproduced from The New Yorker Magazine. Publisher's blue cloth, spine stamped in gilt. Neat manuscript ex-libris in red ink to… Read more about this item

Groombridge & Sons, 5, Paternoster Row, 1855. Original Cloth. Fine-. Scarce First Edition of Hibberd's first book, with extensive tables of annuals and perennials. Foolscap 8vo (142 x 91mm): 172,20pp. Publisher's olive-green pebbled grain cloth paneled in blind and lettered and decorated with vine motif in gilt. Handsome bookseller's and binder's tickets to front (Fry, Chelmsford) and rear… Read more about this item

New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine+. First Printing, First State (with "Shit!" uncensored on final line of p. 219), of the poet's first novel, an account of his imprisonment in a French military detention center during the First World War. Crown 8vo (199 x 135mm): [2],viii,,9-271,[1]pp. Publisher's coarse tan cloth, spine and front… Read more about this item

Cambridge & London: Macmillan, 1861. First Edition. Original Cloth. Fine. Scarce First Impression of this spectacularly successful anthology, collecting the best-loved English poems from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries (from Shakespeare to Shelley, with a heavy dose of the Romantics), establishing a canon of the "best" poems in English literature. Only 2,000 copies of the first… Read more about this item

Boston and New York / Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin / The Riverside Press, 1899. First Trade Edition. Pictorial Cloth. Near Fine+. First Printing of the author's first book, seven interrelated folk tales set in antebellum North Carolina and told "in Negro dialect" by an old gardener. Crown 8vo (175 x 110mm): [4],229,[3]pp. Publisher's finely woven brown pictorial cloth, front… Read more about this item

London and New York: Macmillan, 1886. First Edition. Decorative Cloth. Fine-. First American (and first single-volume) Edition, First Issue (with 1886 title page), of James's only overtly political novel. Crown 8vo (187 x 117mm): [4],596pp. BAL first-state binding: blue-green S cloth, front cover and spine stamped in gilt and black, rear cover stamped in blind, spine lettered in… Read more about this item

Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1912. Pictorial Cloth. Near Fine+. Scarce First Edition ("extremely rare") of this classic collection of antiquarian ghost stories dedicated to M. R. James. (Tymn) Crown 8vo (182 x 119mm): [8],187,[1]pp. Original pictorial coarse sky-blue cloth, spine lettered in black, front cover stamped in black and grey with scene of vicar Batchel in… Read more about this item

New York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall, Nassau-Street, 1850. Decorative Cloth. Near Fine+. Three First Editions (second printings of volumes 1 and 2, per BAL; first printing of volume 3) of the first collection of Poe's poetry and prose, edited by N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell, and R. W. Griswold. Crown 8vo (185 x 113mm): xx,483,[5]; vi,[7]-495,[1];… Read more about this item

Boston: Houghton Mifflin [Riverside Press]??, 1941. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine+/Fine-. First Printing of McCullers's second novel, a "hothouse tale of twisted desire and simmering violence." (Terrence Rafferty) Crown 8vo (202 x 129mm): [6],182,[2]pp. Publisher's two-tone grey and beige cloth lettered in yellow and black on front cover and black on spine, fore- and bottom edges rough-trimmed, double-page… Read more about this item

Leipzig: Heinemann and Balestier, 1900. Vellum. Fine. Later edition of Howells's guide to Florence and Pisa enriched with literary portraits of their most illustrious citizens. Crown 8vo (150 x 109mm): 264pp, with 27 tipped-in full page albumen prints, many by the Florence firm Fratelli Alinari. Full decorated vellum over beveled boards, spine and covers richly gilt, brown leather… Read more about this item

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. First Edition. Pictorial Boards. Fine-. First Printing (U.S. issue, with "Scribners" to tail of spine) of the photographer's first book, introduced by Raymond Mortimer. Royal 8vo (235 x 180 mm): 8pp, with 63 full-page captioned gravure plates by Brandt. Publisher's glazed photographically illustrated boards, spine and upper cover lettered in red, photographic… Read more about this item

Bombay: Thacker & Co Ltd, 1914. Stiff Wrappers. Fine-. Scarce album of original photographs of Bombay locales from the dawn of the twentieth century. Oblong crown 8vo (148 x 195mm): [48]pp, with 24 postcard-sized photographs, each titled to lower margin and mounted on heavy brown stock to obverse of each leaf. Publisher's stiff deep beige card covers decorated… Read more about this item

London: Empire Printing & Publishing Co, 1888. Pictorial Boards. Near Fine+. Second Edition of this angling title. Crown 8vo (184 x 118mm): [6],58,[6]pp, with fascinating illustrated angling advertisements bound front and backs. Original olive green pictorial cloth, covers paneled in blind, upper cover lettered in gilt with gilt trout vignette. An excellent example, securely bound and general clean… Read more about this item

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine-. First printing (with "A" and Scribner's seal on copyright page) of Wilson's first collection of critical essays, charting the influence of the French Symbolist poets on such revolutionary twentieth-century texts as Joyce's Ulysses and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Crown 8vo (203 x 136mm): [12],319,[1]pp. Publisher's finely… Read more about this item

London: John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, 1863. First Edition thus. Near Fine+. First Edition (under this title) of this "foundation stone" of The New English Dictionary. Slim demy 8vo (219 x 139mm); vii,[1],102,[2]pp. Contemporary green quarter roan over marbled paper-covered boards, recent red leather lettering piece gilt, top edge gilt, matching marbled end papers. Tightly bound and generally clean… Read more about this item

Florence: [The School for the Art of the Theatre], 1913. First Edition. Illustrated Wrappers. Near Fine+. First Issue (with "Fo rterms" on front cover verso) of this beautifully produced (and lesser known) title by the theatre director, stage designer, actor, and dramaturge. 8vo (228 x 158mm): 73,[7]pp, with 22 full- and partial-page illustrations "setting forth the aims and… Read more about this item