Verse from Sumner & Stillman

1909. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909. Original very dark grey-green ribbed cloth decorated in gilt. First and only Edition, first printing (the only other printing was 250 copies printed three months later for Macmillan's London edition). This was Edith Wharton's second volume of verse, preceded only by her rare first book, the anonymous 1878 volume VERSES (of… Read more about this item

1910. With Illustrations by Frank Craig. London: Macmillan and Co., 1910. 6 pages of front-and-rear endpaper ads. Original blue-grey wrappers lettered in black. First Colonial Edition of this collection of tales and poems that form a continuation of the Puck stories begun in PUCK OF POOK'S HILL (1906) -- introduced by Robin Goodfellow and told to young Dan… Read more about this item

1899. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899. Original olive-green cloth decorated and embossed in gilt. First Edition of this early title by this African-American poet whose parents, before they met, had both been Kentucky slaves; his father escaped to Canada, and wound up fighting in the Civil War for the Massachusetts 55th Regiment; his mother escaped to… Read more about this item

1833. Translated into English prose, with remarks on former translations, and notes, by The Translator of Savigny's "Of the Vocation..." [Abraham Hayward]. London: --MDCCCXXXIII. First Edition in the English language of Goethe's final version of the legend of Faust -- this being a copy of the private issue printed for the translator (considered to have preceded the trade… Read more about this item

1877. Presented by Enoch Morgan's Sons Co., New York. Five Points NY: Donaldson Brothers, n.d. [1877]. Original light blue wrappers decorated in black and sepia. First Edition of this illustrated poem -- quite possibly an earlier state than either of those documented by Blanck. Written as hack-work at a time when Harte badly needed cash, this is his… Read more about this item

1876. With Nine Illustrations by Henry Holiday. London: Macmillan and Co., 1876. 1 page undated ads. Original deep red cloth pictorially decorated in black, all page edges gilt. First Edition, special dark-red binding, which consisted of 100 copies. This is a poetical nonsense tale, both funny and subtle, that "describes with infinite humour the impossible voyage of an… Read more about this item

1839. London: Charles Tilt, 1839. 8 pp undated ads. Original dark green cloth wrappers pictorially decorated in gilt. First Edition, first issue, of this unusual collaboration between Thackeray, Dickens and Cruikshank. The volume consists of 31 quatrains of amusing verse, illustrated with Cruikshank's eleven full-page etchings (as well as the front cover design). According to Van Duzer, "It… Read more about this item

1899. [Will Bradley's masterpiece] New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1899. Original grey paper boards pictorially decorated in black, with spine label. First Edition of Crane's eighth book, his second volume of verse (some of which had appeared in the 1896 Roycroft Quarterly as "A Souvenir and A Medley"). Crane wrote these poems in Havana, during his nine-month… Read more about this item

1899. [illustrated by himself] With 30 Illustrations by the Author. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1899. Original light green cloth pictorially decorated in orange, yellow-green, light blue and white. First American Edition of Hardy's first volume of verse, published about six weeks after the London one (which was dated 1898). This volume "marks the final emergence… Read more about this item

1878. [the fine Bradley Martin copy] Recited in The Theatre, Oxford, June 26, 1878. Oxford: Thos. Shrimpton and Son, 1878. Original grey printed wrappers. First Edition of Oscar Wilde's first book, the Newdigate Prize-winning poem that he wrote while a student at Magdalen College. To quote from Pearson: He [Wilde] left Oxford in a blaze of glory. The… Read more about this item

1885. [a handsome copy] London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885. Original blue cloth, beveled. First Edition, first printing (which consisted of 1000 copies). Stevenson began writing these verses as early as 1881: supposedly after perusing through Kate Greenaway's BIRTHDAY BOOK FOR CHILDREN, he observed "These are rather nice rhymes, and I don't think they will be difficult to… Read more about this item

1923. London: Constable & Co., (1923). Original brown paper boards with buff cloth spine and red leather spine label, with dust jacket. First Edition of Katherine Mansfield's verse, collected by her husband John Middleton Murry and published just ten months after her death by tuberculosis at age 34. The verse is divided into "Poems: 1909-1910," "Poems: 1911-1913," "Poems… Read more about this item

1801. Not Contained in Any Edition of His Works Hitherto Published. Glasgow, Printed by Chapman & Lang, for Thomas Stewart, Bookseller and Stationer, 1801. Early but not original green morocco-grain cloth. First Edition of this early collection of 29 poems "not... hitherto published," spread over 94 pages. The word "ascribed" is key, because, in the preliminary three-page "Advertisement,"… Read more about this item

1812. Illustrated by Engravings. Edinburgh: Printed by John Brown, for Bell & Bradfute, Edinburgh, W. Anderson, Stirling, and Thomas Hamilton, London, 1812. Original drab paper-covered boards with plain green cloth spine. First Edition of the first "critique" of the poems of Robert Burns, which though anonymous was written by George Gleig (1753-1840), Bishop of Brechin and Primus of… Read more about this item

1936. With an Introduction by W.B. Yeats and a Drawing by Sir William Rothenstein. London: Macmillan and Co., 1936. Original pale yellow linen, with dust jacket. First Edition. Dorothy Violet Ashton (1889-1956) married the Duke of Wellington (Gerald Wellesley) in 1914, but left him and their children eight years later, for a relationship with Vita Sackville-West. According to… Read more about this item

1900. Also Letters from Julian Ralph, Charles E. Hands and Douglas Story. Santiago de Chile: Hume & Co., 1900. Original printed fawn wrappers. First Edition (unauthorized), issued as a volume in the publisher's "Libreria Inglesa." This volume published in Chile includes three poems and two stories that Kipling wrote during the Boer War, plus four poems written earlier;… Read more about this item

1917. London: Macmillan and Co., 1917. 4 pp undated ads. Original olive-green cloth with monogram device in gilt. First Edition of Hardy's largest collection of verse, consisting of 159 poems. The recurrent theme, excluding the war poems, is the death of Hardy's first wife and the re-creation of their old romance. Few of these poems had appeared in… Read more about this item

1921. Nicholson, William. [in dust jacket] With Portrait and Title Page Engraved on Wood by William Nicholson. London, Liverpool and Boston: Philip Lee Warner, Publisher to the Medici Society, 1921. Original blue-grey paper-covered boards with natural linen spine with cover and spine labels, with dust jacket. Riccardi Press Edition, being copy #663 of 1000 copies. Hardy and Macmillan… Read more about this item

1892. [with original early photograph] Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1892 [actually late 1891]. Original mauve cloth decorated in both glossy and matte gilt. First Edition of the first book by Frank Norris, a romantic narrative poem of medieval chivalry, written when he was a freshman student at the University of California. (He would not graduate there, but rather… Read more about this item

1889. [inscribed by Lewis Carroll] With Forty-six Illustrations [each] by Harry Furniss. [Together, two volumes.] London: Macmillan and Co., 1889/1893. 3 pp / 5 pp undated ads. Original red cloth pictorially decorated in gilt, all page edges gilt. First Editions of Carroll's rather serious fairy tales. SYLVIE AND BRUNO, with its conclusion in 1893, was the last considerable… Read more about this item