Search Results: Titles starting with W from Bauman Rare Books

1854. First Edition . THOREAU, Henry David. Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1854. Octavo, original brown cloth. $13,500.First edition of this important American classic, one of only 2000 copies published.""Thoreau's Walden occupies a special place in our American heritage. Moreover, the book is still alive and vibrant, and it reaches out to touch the life of each one of us who is receptive… it has come to be thought a central document in the American experience"" (Thorpe, Treasures of the Huntington Library). ""For almost a hundred years an inspiration to nature-lovers, to philosophers, to sociologists… and to persons who love to read the English language written with clarity"" (Grolier, 100 American, 63). With lithographed map of Walden Pond facing page 307; advertisements at rear dated April 1854. BAL 20106. Myerson A2.1.a. Johnson 73. Magazine photograph of a bust of Thoreau tipped-in opposite title… Read More

1851. First Edition . KENDALL, George W. and NEBEL, Carl. The War Between the United States and Mexico Illustrated, Embracing Pictorial Drawings of All the Principal Conflicts by Carl Nebel… with a Description of Each Battle by Geo. Wilkins Kendall. New York and Philadelphia: D. Appleton; George S. Appleton, 1851. Large folio (19 by 23-1/2 inches), contemporary marbled boards rebacked and recornered in morocco-gilt, original morocco-gilt front cover label. $27,500.First edition of one of the most important and impressive pictorial chronicles of the Mexican-American War, boasting 12 superb folio hand-finished full-color lithographic plates.Founder of the New Orleans Picayune and America's first war correspondent, George Kendall ""filed many reports… of combat during the Mexican-American War. Many newspapers reprinted Kendall's reports and Americans knew him to be [an] ardent annexationist and partisan supporter of the United States… After the war Kendall commissioned… Read More

1962. First Edition . Signed. CARPENTER, M. Scott, COOPER, L. Gordon, Jr., GLENN, John H., Jr., GRISSOM, Virgil I., SCHIRRA, Walter M., Jr., SHEPARD, Alan B., Jr., SLAYTON, Donald K. We Seven. By the Astronauts Themselves. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962. Octavo, original black cloth, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket. $2900.First edition of this comprehensive and engaging first-hand account of the genesis of America's manned space program, inscribed ""To J— John Glenn,"" richly illustrated with photographs, in original dust jacket.""The first seven American astronauts were an admirable group of individuals chosen to sit at the apex of a pyramid of human effort… In volunteering to entrust their lives to Mercury's spirit and Atlas' strength to blaze a trail for man into the empyrean, they chose to lead by following the opportunity that chance, circumstance, technology and history had prepared for them"" (Swenson, Grimwood… Read More

1928. First Edition . Signed. FROST, Robert. West-Running Brook. New York: Henry Holt, [1928]. Octavo, original half green cloth, mounted cover label, marbled endpapers, uncut, original dust jacket. $4500.First edition, first issue, of Frost’s fifth collection of verse, widely hailed as one of his greatest, boldly signed by the poet: “Robert Frost Wesleyan 1929.”In addition to the title poem, this volume contains ""Acquainted with the Night,"" ""Spring Pools, ""Tree at My Window"" and ""Once by the Pacific,"" among others. With four full-page woodcut illustrations by J.J. Lankes. ""Welford D. Taylor, a prominent Lankes scholar, describes the appreciation that the poet and the printmaker had for each other's work: 'What had impressed each man was a recognition of the aesthetic and thematic values he shared with the other—a ""coincidence of taste,"" as Frost put it. Both based… Read More

1945. First Edition . Signed. ELIOT, T.S. What Is a Classic? An Address delivered before the Virgil Society on the 16th of October 1944. London: Faber & Faber, (1945). Slim octavo, original light blue cloth, supplied dust jacket. $5200.First edition, ordinary issue, presentation copy, of this presidential address delivered to the Virgil Society in 1944, inscribed in the year of publication to Eliot's beloved first spiritual counselor, a longtime Anglican vicar who served at St. Stephen's in Kensington, where the deeply religious Eliot worshipped and served as churchwarden during the final decades of his life: ""To Fr. Eric Cheetham from T.S. Eliot. Ash Wednesday 1945.""""In his 1944 Presidential Address to the Virgil Society, Eliot placed the Latin poet 'at the center of European civilization'"" (Yeats Eliot Review). Eliot argued—perhaps inspired by British classicist and scholar Jackson Knight—that Virgil was a sort of… Read More

1940. Signed. KENNEDY, John F. Why England Slept. New York: Wilfred Funk, 1940. Octavo, original red cloth, dust jacket supplied from another copy of the same edition. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $16,000.First edition, sixth printing, of John F. Kennedy's first book, issued four months after the first printing, of JFK's striking analysis of Britain's lack of preparation for WWII, inscribed by him on the front free endpaper to his good friend and long-term neighbor Nancy Tenney Lloyd, ""To Ten from Ken!"" and further inscribed on the rear pastedown, ""Ten: It's my hope that this book will interest you—as it is pregnant with significance as are you.""Published the year JFK graduated from Harvard, Why England Slept was an expansion of his senior thesis. The title is a variation on the title of Churchill's While England Slept, issued about two years before. Kennedy's work focuses on why England was so poorly prepared for WWII and… Read More

1919. First Edition . Signed. ANDERSON, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1919. Octavo, original yellow cloth, printed paper spine label, cartographic front pastedown. $17,500.First edition, scarce first issue of ""Anderson's first important work, and possibly his finest"" (Sheehy & Lohf), ""To Florence D. Briscoe, Sherwood Anderson.""Although he had already published two novels and a book of poetry, Anderson did not receive widespread attention until he produced this book, ""establishing him as a leading figure in the Chicago literary renaissance"" (Stringer, 20). ""These stories of small-town people voice the philosophy of life expressed in all his later works. Adopting a naturalistic interpretation of American life, he believed that the primal forces of human behavior are instinctive and not to be denied, as he supposed they are, by the standardization of a machine age"" (Hart, 31).… Read More

1983. First Edition . Signed. DAHL, Roald. The Witches. London: Jonathan Cape, (1983). Octavo, original blue-green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $13,500.First edition, presentation copy, of Dahl's Whitbread Award-winning children's novel, with in-text illustrations by Quentin Blake, warmly inscribed in the year of publication across the entire front endpaper to a close friend of Dahl's son, Theo, and a frequent visitor to Dahl's writing hut during the writing of Boy: ""To Justin with love, Roald Dahl. Oct. 28th 1983.""""Roald Dahl knows every bit as well as Bruno Bettelheim that children love the macabre, the terrifying, the mythic. In his latest book, The Witches, a 7-year-old orphan boy, cared for by his Norwegian grandmother, discovers the true nature of witches and then has the misfortune to be transformed into a mouse by the Grand High Witch of All the World… It is a curious sort of tale but an honest one, which… Read More

1846. First Edition . ANDERSEN, Hans Christian. Wonderful Stories for Children. Translated from the Danish by Mary Howitt. London: Chapman and Hall, 1846. Small octavo, original blind-stamped blue cloth gilt, all edges gilt. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $17,000.First edition of the extraordinarily rare first translation into English of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, with four hand-colored plates, in original cloth.""Wonderful Stories for Children was the first translation into English of the 'modern' fairy tales of Andersen, although his stories had been appearing in his native Denmark since 1835… During an early visit to Britain he met Charles Dickens and befriended Mary Howitt, the author of a number of natural history books for children… Due to her meeting with Andersen she conceived the idea of translating his stories, then almost totally unknown in Britain, actually learning Danish to enable her to do this"" (Quayle, 74-6). Because of the… Read More

1904. CLAY, Henry. The Works of Henry Clay. Comprising His Life, Correspondence and Speeches. Edited by Calvin Colton, LL.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904. Ten volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter dark blue morocco gilt, raised bands, top edges gilt, uncut. $3500.""Federal Edition"" of Clay’s writings, number 98 of 1000 sets, with ten frontispiece portraits, an introduction by Thomas B. Reed, and a ""History of Tariff Legislation, 1812-1896"" by William McKinley, handsomely bound.Senator, Congressman, Speaker of the House of Representatives, presidential candidate, Secretary of State: ""No man in American public life has had more ardent supporters or more bitter enemies than Clay, and no one has depended more for his happiness on the friendship of the people… In his ability to appeal to the common reason, and his absolute fearlessness in stating his convictions, he was unexcelled by any of his contemporaries""… Read More

1760. First Edition . Signed. STERNE, Laurence. Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Nine volumes. WITH: The Sermons of Mr. Yorick. Seven volumes. WITH: A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Two volumes. WITH: Letters of the Late Rev. Mr. Laurence Sterne to His Most Intimate Friends. Three volumes. London: R. and J. Dodsley et al., 1760-67, 1766-69, 1768, 1775. Twenty-one volumes in all. Small octavo, 20th-century full speckled calf, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, burgundy and green morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. $28,000.First editions of the principal works and letters of Sterne, with three volumes of Tristram Shandy signed by Sterne as is called for in first edition copies. Beautifully bound in full mottled calf gilt by Riviere and Son. A splendid first edition collection.Tristram Shandy's huge popular success made Sterne, a Yorkshire parson, the toast of the London literary world. When some volumes were pirated, Sterne began… Read More

1863. SHAKESPEARE. The Works. Cambridge and London: Macmillan, 1863-66. Nine volumes. Octavo, early 20th-century three-quarter red morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut. $7800.First edition set of the “Cambridge Shakespeare,” extra-illustrated with over 250 plates (many of which are hand-colored) of views and scenes and actors and actresses, very handsomely bound by Bayntun.""Shakespeare is the Canon. He sets the standard and the limits of literature"" (Harold Bloom). ""The Cambridge Shakespeare,"" first published in this 1863-66 edition, has ""become the standard text of Shakespeare… The introductions contain the safest guide as to authorities for the text and the notes form a complete apparatus criticus of the text… [It] is a monument of editorial judgment and accurate scholarship"" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature V § 20). Jaggard,… Read More

1929. Signed. BARRIE, J.M. The Works. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929. Fourteen volumes. Tall octavo, contemporary three-quarter blue morocco gilt, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and mostly unopened. $18,500.Limited “Peter Pan” Edition of Barrie’s Works, number 8 of 1030 sets produced, this set one of only 30 presentation copies signed by Barrie on the limitation page in Volume I.Contains the novels and stories, including Peter and Wendy and The Little White Bird, in which his immortal character Peter Pan first appears. Beautifully bound by Stikeman. A beautiful set in fine condition.

1892. HOLMES, Oliver Wendell. Works. Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892. Fifteen volumes bound in thirty. Octavo, later three-quarter navy morocco, raised bands, patterned boards and endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and unopened. $4200.“Artist’s” edition, number 672 of 750 sets, illustrated with steel-engraved portraits and photogravures, some of which are hand-colored.Father of the celebrated jurist of the same name, Holmes (1809-94) ""reigned supreme in Boston society and club life and became the unofficial poet laureate of all important gatherings in the intellectual ""hub of the Universe"" (Hart, 176). BAL 9214. Fine condition.

1902. FISKE, John. The Works. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1902. Twenty-four volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter red morocco gilt, raised bands, uncut. $4700.Superb limited “Edition de Luxe” set of Fiske’s works, number 313 of 1000 copies. Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of full-page maps and plates, many in color.Fiske was considered ""one of the most important intellectual influences in the last quarter of the 19th century. He was probably the most admirably fitted among all his contemporaries to lead the fight for evolution among his countrymen, and the charm of his historical writings and lectures not only instilled an interest in the subject into a vast number of people but was the prime cause of not a few of the distinguished scholars of today first turning to history as their life-work"" (DAB). Includes Fiske's classic historical works on America, as well as his scientific and philosophical writings. BAL 6067. Fine condition.

1923. First Edition . CHURCHILL, Winston. The World Crisis. London: Thornton Butterworth, (1923-31). Six volumes. Octavo, original navy cloth. $6000.First English editions of Churchill’s important history of World War I. ""Not only the best account of the most tremendous convulsion the world has ever seen, but one of the most brilliant treatises on war that has ever been written"" (Spectator).During WWI, Churchill served variously as the head of the British Navy, Minister for Munitions, and as a foot soldier in the trenches. The World Crisis offers his first-hand account of the British government's massive efforts to win the war, and depicts the political events that would serve as object lessons for Churchill when WWII broke out. Illustrated with numerous maps (many folding), charts, facsimiles, photographs, and a large folding colored map at rear of last volume. Preceded by the American editions, although ""the English is more aesthetically desirable…… Read More

1962. First Edition . L'ENGLE, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time. [New York]: Ariel, (1962). Octavo, original half blue cloth, original dust jacket; housed in a custom clamshell box. $11,000.Rare first edition in original dust jacket of L'Engle's landmark novel, winner of the 1962 Newbery Medal, handsomely housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.""At once a science fiction story, a philosophical meditation on the nature of Evil and Love and a coming-of-age novel, Wrinkle broke new ground in what was considered appropriate for young readers. Rejected by several publishers for being too complex, this title has amply proven L'Engle's belief that 'children are excited by new ideas' and has been credited with bringing science fiction into the mainstream of children's literature. This is L'Engle's best work"" (Silvey, 401). ""First printing, 1962"" stated on copyright page; first state dust jacket without embossed gilt… 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

1908. Signed. ELIOT, George. The Writings. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1908. Twenty-five volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown crushed morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated boards and spines, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and largely unopened. $11,000.Splendid large-paper edition of Eliot’s writings, number 29 of only 750 sets produced, with over 150 illustrations including hand-colored frontispieces in double-suite, with a signed autograph letter by Eliot bound into Volume I.Eliot, who pioneered the method of psychological analysis characteristic of modern fiction, has been praised for the qualities that make her ""a supreme novelist in an age of great novelists"" (Kunitz and Haycraft, 212). The illustrations reproduce original drawings by Charles Brock, Frederick Pegram, Ambrose Dudley, Henry Paget Archibald Hartrick and others, as well as photogravures by C. E. Walmsley, many taken for this edition, of English estates and countryside… Read More

1896. Signed. HARTE, Bret. The Writings. WITH: MERWIN, Henry Childs. The Life of Bret Harte. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, (1896-1914); 1911. Together, twenty-one volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, covers, and full morocco doublures, raised bands, watered silk endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and mostly unopened. $9500.""Autograph Edition"" of Harte’s tales, essays and poems, number 336 of 350 sets signed and dated by him, illustrated with vignette title pages, 103 engraved plates—including one signed by Frederic Remington—and two-page color map of the Pacific coast, beautifully bound in full morocco-gilt with morocco doublures. Together with a 1911 first edition of Merwin's biography of Harte uniformly bound with the rest of the set.With the success of The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches (1870)—""Eastern critics went headlong into eulogies"" (Kunitz & Haycraft,… Read More