Search Results: Authors starting with N from Bauman Rare Books

1934. First Edition . WEST, Nathanael. A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin. New York: Covici-Friede, (1934). Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. $5000.First edition of West's ""brilliantly successful"" satire, in rare variant green cloth, a handsome copy in the colorful original dust jacket.A Cool Million, West's wickedly funny third novel, was ""conceived as a satire on the American dream of success—one of the most illusory and bitterly disappointing dreams during the depression. More personally, West's family's fortunes and his own had suffered considerable decline. As a child he had read Horatio Alger, and his parents had been inspired by the American Dream, but the success story was now thoroughly revealed as mythical. West's hero, Lemuel Pitkin, is a classic schlemiel, whose every effort at success is a failure"" (ANB). ""It describes, in prose that is like a long heavy wink, the adventures of… Read More

1900. Signed. HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. The Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1900-05. Twenty-four volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter blue morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and partially unopened. $4500.""Autograph Edition"" of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works, number 452 of only 500 sets signed by his daughter Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, illustrated with 135 plates, including an engraved frontispiece in each volume signed by the artist. Contributing artists' signatures include Howard Pyle and Jesse Willcox Smith. An impressive, beautifully bound set.Includes not only The Scarlet Letter—arguably the author's most celebrated work, which ""changed his fortune and gave to our literature its first symbolic novel"" (Bradley et al., 652)—but also The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun, as well as his… Read More

1850. First Edition . HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter, a Romance. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850. Octavo, 20th-century three-quarter red morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers, top edge gilt. $5500.First edition of Hawthorne's American classic, one of only 2500 copies printed, handsomely bound.""Since 1837, when he had written [the short story] 'Endicott and the Red Cross,' he had often been tormented by a symbol—a scarlet 'A,' worn by an adultress in that tale—which had, at last, worked its way into a full-length book"" (Kunitz & Haycraft, 349). The first edition of The Scarlet Letter sold out in ten days and ""made Hawthorne's fame, changed his fortune and gave to our literature its first symbolic novel a year before the appearance of Melville's Moby-Dick"" (Bradley et al., 652). The novel ""glows with the fire of a suppressed, secret, feverish excitement… a fire… Read More

1957. First Edition . Signed. SHUTE, Nevil. On the Beach. London: Heinemann, (1957). Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. $6500.First edition of Shute's chilling vision of nuclear war and humanity's end, signed on the title page with the author's full name: ""Nevil Shute Norway.""An aviation engineer who helped develop secret weapons for the British during World War II, Shute's depiction of nuclear warfare's futility has been credited by many with having a direct effect on global policy. ""Nevil Shute's novel and [1959] film On the Beach may have played a part in avoiding nuclear war (so far at least)"" (Frederick Pohl). ""An effective warning of an all-too-real possibility"" (Anatomy of Wonder II-1012). A lovely, near-fine copy, quite scarce and desirable signed.