The Marble Faun: or, The Romance of Monte Beni
by Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1860. First edition, mixed issue, of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s expatriate romance, inspired by his encounter with the Faun of Praxiteles in Rome. The novel follows three American artists in Italy who become entangled with the enigmatic Donatello, Count of Monte Beni: “There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him outside of rules.” This copy... Read More
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Catch-22
by Heller, Joseph
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961. First edition of Joseph Heller’s groundbreaking anti-war novel, inspired by Heller’s experiences as a bombardier in World War II. Catch-22 was the product of almost a decade of revision; editor Michael Korda recalls that an “aura of myth hovered around the book” in the hallways of Simon and Schuster. The character of John... Read More
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The Hesperides & Noble Numbers
by Herrick, Robert; Swinburne, A.C. (preface); Pollard, Alfred (editor)
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1891. Striking nineteenth-century edition of Cavalier poet Robert Herrick, one of the inaugural titles in Lawrence & Bullen’s Muses’ Library series. One of the “tribe of Ben” who followed Ben Jonson’s lead in pubbing and poetry, Herrick celebrated the pleasures of the world in hundreds of sparkling neoclassical lyrics. Highlights include “Delight in Disorder,” “To... Read More
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Goodbye, Mr. Chips
by Hilton, James; Pares, Ethel “Bip” (illustrator); [Barrows, Marjorie]
(London): Hodder & Stoughton, 1934. First English edition of James Hilton’s tale of the shy schoolmaster Mr. Chipping, who over the course of a long career becomes a legend at Brookfield, “a good school of the second rank.” Deeply Victorian in sympathy, “Mr. Chips” rises to the challenge of the First World War, and survives into the 1930s, beloved... Read More
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MOTIVO (wooden puzzle)
by Huber-Kono, Aoi (designer)
Zeiningen, Switzerland: Kurt Naef, 1978. Original example of this graphic wooden puzzle by Japanese designer Aoi Huber-Kono for the Swiss toymaker Kurt Naef. The MOTIVO blocks combine to form eight images: red apple and sunburst, yellow bird and flower, green leaf and butterfly, blue house and fish. An iconic modern design object. Eight wooden cubes, screenprinted in four colors,... Read More
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Serigraph poster for the Santa Fe Opera recording of The Mother of Us All
by Indiana, Robert (artist); Stein, Gertrude (libretto); Thomson, Virgil (music); [Anthony, Susan B.]
New York: New World Records, 1977. Pop artist Robert Indiana’s vivid serigraph poster for the 1977 New World Records release of The Mother of Us All, Virgil Thomson’s 1947 opera about Susan B. Anthony, with a libretto by Gertrude Stein: “The right to sleep is given to no woman.” Indiana had long been an active admirer of The Mother... Read More
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Washington Square. The Pension Beaurepas. A Bundle of Letters
by James, Henry
London: Macmillan, 1881. First English edition of Henry James’s moving New York story about a downcast heiress and an upstart suitor, successfully serialized on both sides of the Atlantic, and published in the United States in 1880: “Love demands certain things as a right; but Catherine had no sense of her rights; she had only a consciousness of immense... Read More
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The Tragic Muse
by James, Henry
London: Macmillan, 1890. First English edition of Henry James’s The Tragic Muse, one of only 500 copies, issued the same month as the first American edition. Originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, The Tragic Muse was the last novel that James completed before his mid-career turn to writing for the stage, a failed experiment that would throw into relief... Read More
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The Ambassadors
by James, Henry
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903. First American edition, in dust jacket, of James’s great comic novel, which follows a series of “ambassadors” sent to extricate an American industrial scion from his adventures in Paris. Through the figure of Lambert Strether, whose failure as an ambassador will have lasting consequences for him back in Massachusetts, James explores what we... Read More
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The Princess Casamassima
by James, Henry
London: Macmillan, 1886. First edition of Henry James’s most overtly political novel, one of 750 copies, first published in the Atlantic Monthly. The Princess Casamassima traces the friendship of a radical London bookbinder and an idle princess with revolutionary sympathies: “By way of defending the aristocracy he said to her that it couldn't be true they were all a... Read More
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Roderick Hudson
by James, Henry
London: Macmillan, 1879. First English edition of Henry James’s first novel, one of only 500 copies, significantly revised from the 1875 first American edition. A talented American sculptor working in Italy, Roderick Hudson finds himself distracted by his encounters with the “dangerous” Christina Light: “If beauty is immoral, as people think at Northampton, she is the incarnation of evil.”... Read More
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“Movies, the Desperate Art” in The Berkley Book of Modern Writing, Number 3
by Kael, Pauline; Phillips, William (editor); Rahv, Philip (editor)
New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1956. First edition of this midcentury anthology, containing the first appearance of film critic Pauline Kael’s manifesto “Movies, the Desperate Art.” Published while Kael was struggling to manage a two-screen art house in Berkeley, this essay predates her hiring at The New Yorker by a dozen years. The concerns that dominate Kael’s later criticism... Read More
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Max Makes A Million
by Kalman, Maira
New York: Viking Press, 1990. First edition of the first of Kalman’s iconic Max books. Max Makes a Million documents the struggling dog poet’s early days in New York, that “triple-decker sandwich kind of city:” “every day I pause on the corner of Salami and Pastrami Street and tape a poem on the wall.” A fine inscribed copy, with... Read More
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Textile screenprinted with image of “Head (Venus)”
by Kentridge, William
Cape Town: Norval Foundation, 2019. Original keepsake produced in conjunction with South African artist William Kentridge’s 2019-2020 retrospective, “Why Should I Hesitate” at the Norval Foundation and Zeitz MOCAA galleries in Cape Town. A hemmed square of woven undyed cotton bears the image of Kentridge’s 2016 “Head (Venus),” with a red embroidered signature. Kentridge’s original laser-cut piece, made of... Read More
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The Jungle Book; with: The Second Jungle Book
by Kipling, Rudyard
London: Macmillan, 1895. First English editions of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, in pictorial morocco bindings by Bayntun-Riviere. Inspired by the folk tales that the young Kipling encountered in India, these stories follow the adventures of the boy Mowgli, who learns the law of the jungle from the animals who adopt him: “The man’s... Read More
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Looking for Luck
by Kumin, Maxine; [Wallace, Emily]
New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. First edition, wrappers issue, of Pulitzer winner Maxine Kumin’s tenth collection of poetry, inscribed by Kumin to modernist poetry scholar and longtime Bryn Mawr professor Emily Wallace (1936-2019) and her husband Gregory Harvey. Kumin’s careful attention to the details of the natural world reflects her experience living on a farm in rural New Hampshire:... Read More
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The Colt from Moon Mountain
by Lathrop, Dorothy
New York: Macmillan, 1941. First edition of this magical tale of a woodland colt who grows into a unicorn, inscribed by award-winning children’s author Dorothy Lathrop. The book follows a young girl as she bonds with the elusive creature: “Never had she had so lovely or tantalizing a pet. It was hers and it was not hers at all.”... Read More
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Original signed drawing of two children from Fair Play
by Leaf, Munro
No place, 1940. Original signed drawing by Munro Leaf (1905-1976), featuring characters from Fair Play, his 1939 storybook on the subject of good citizenship. The little boy, “Justme,” characterized by his frown and distinctively drawn baggy pants, serves as an example of selfish, rude behavior throughout the book, shouting in the library and shoving at the water fountain. Leaf... Read More
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To Kill A Mockingbird. 40th Anniversary Edition
by Lee, Harper
(New York): HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. First printing of the 40th Anniversary Edition of To Kill A Mockingbird, originally published in 1960. Harper Lee’s account of racial politics in a sleepy Alabama town, told from the perspective of a quick-tempered young girl, won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction: “Scout, simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets... Read More
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Time Bites: Views and Reviews
by Lessing, Doris
London and New York: Fourth Estate, 2004. First edition of this collection of critical essays by Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing, most dealing with the unpredictable aftershocks of reading: “I do not believe that one can be changed by a book (or by a person) unless there is already something present, latent or in embryo, ready to be changed.” Lessing’s... Read More
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Blue Daffodils (signed color etching)
by Levine, Marion Lerner
[New York], 1991. Original color etching, number 1/3, of American artist Marion Lerner Levine’s all-blue variant of “Daffodils.” Daughter of renowned LSE economist Abba Lerner, Levine (1931-2023) emigrated to the United States as a child and enjoyed a long career as a painter and printmaker, represented for decades by the Prince Street Gallery in New York City. An example... Read More
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Daffodils (signed color etching)
by Levine, Marion Lerner
[New York], 1989. Original color etching, number 1/1, of American artist Marion Lerner Levine’s “Daffodils,” printed in red, yellow, blue, and green. Daughter of renowned LSE economist Abba Lerner, Levine (1931-2023) emigrated to the United States as a child and enjoyed a long career as a painter and printmaker, represented for decades by the Prince Street Gallery in New... Read More
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Specimens of Penmanship written by Mas. F.B. Leach at the High School, Oldham, Conducted by the Rev. Hugh Tait, B.A. (two volumes)
by [MANUSCRIPT]; Leach, Francis B.
Leeds: Bean, Stationer, 1865. Two highly decorative penmanship albums produced by a Victorian schoolboy in Oldham, outside Manchester. Each album contains six examples. The first volume includes three poems and two pages of neatly copied practice sentences: “Eminence demands our most earnest endeavours” and “Magnanimous persons deserve great commendation.” The final page contains the sample text of a promissory... Read More
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Pedagogie
by [MANUSCRIPT]; Tacher, Simonne
France, 1935. Remarkable manuscript of original illustrated and collaged teaching materials created by a French art teacher between the wars. In her opening outline, Simonne Tacher aims to do more than teach her students the fundamentals of line, form, and perspective: she hopes to develop “observation, mémoire visuelle, imagination, goût et esprit créateur.” The materials collected here, intended for... Read More
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Three original illustrations for Miss Flora McFlimsey and the Little Red Schoolhouse
by “Mariana” (Curtiss, Marian Foster)
No place, 1957. Two original published illustrations and one preliminary study by Marian Foster Curtiss, better known as “Mariana,” for her 1957 children’s book Miss Flora McFlimsey and the Little Red Schoolhouse. The drawings depict the encounter between the adventurous doll Flora McFlimsey, described by her creator as “a cross between Queen Victoria and Mae West,” and the brusque... Read More
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