Charles Agvent
Specializing in Signed Books & Autographs, Modern & 19th Century First Editions, Limited Editions Club, Presidential Books & Autographs, Hand-Colored Plate Books, Early Printing
About
We carry a diverse stock with major specialties including Modern and 19th Century Literary First Editions, Signed Books, Presidential Autographs, Illustrated Books, and the world's largest inventory of Limited Editions Club books. We have been in business since 1987 and are proud to be members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB).Terms of Sale
All books subject to prior sale. Cash with order; institutions may be billed. Postage additional: $11.00 for the first book, $6.00 each thereafter. Overseas postage billed at approximate cost. Pennsylvania residents must add 6% sales tax. Mastercard, Visa, American Express and Discover accepted. Books may be returned within 10 days of receipt for any reason provided they are in the same condition as sent and prior notice is given. Please insure returns for their full value.
Appraisals
Available for appraisals
Members
- Charles Agvent
Recently Added Books
WESTWARD HO!
by KINGSLEY, Charles
OLD GORIOT
by BALZAC, Honore de
THE SPECTATOR
by ADDISON, Joseph; STEELE, Richard; et. al
THE BLACK TULIP. A ROMANCE
by DUMAS, Alexandre (Pere)
THE SONNETS OF PETRARCH
by PETRARCH
CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH
by TOLSTOY, Leo
THE WANDERER. LE GRAND MEAULNES
by ALAINE-FOURNIER
Recently added catalogues
Ourr new catalog contains 25 select items, mostly African-Americana and Magic/Circus items. Highlights include the First Commercially Published Book Written by an African American in the United States; a Signed Limited George Gershwin PORGY & BESS; an Important Association Copy of Lyndon Johnson’s VANTAGE POINT; Original Teletype Pages from the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Gaspar Schott’s Richly Illustrated PHYSICA CURIOSA, 1697; an Inscribed Copy of Booker T. Washington’s UP FROM SLAVERY; and much more.
Our new catalog, LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS, Part II, contains 55 select items, mostly new arrivals, including Archives, Letters, Manuscripts, and Signed Photographs. Highlights include important Handwritten Manuscripts by Amiri Baraka, John Burroughs, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Cowper Powys, among others; Archives by Paul Bowles, Sinclair Lewis, and E. H. Shepard, among others; Letters with fine content by Raymond Carver, James Fenimore Cooper, Rudyard Kipling, and William Wordsworth, among others; and much more.
Our new catalog, SPRING MISCELLANY, contains 55 select items, all new arrivals, including Signed Books, Letters, & Illustrated Books; Poetry; and much more.
Our new catalog--SUMMER MISCELLANY 2017--contains 85 select items, all new arrivals, in a variety of fields, especially African-Americana, Botany, Japan, Ornithology, and Poetry. Highlights include THE FIRST COOKBOOK WRITTEN BY AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN (1829); an 18th Century Illustrated Japanese Manuscript of Floral Arrangements; Latham's GENERAL HISTORY OF BIRDS with 193 hand-colored engravings; Ninagawa's study of Japanese pottery with 125 hand-colored plates; Randall Jarrell's THE SEVEN-LEAGUE CRUTCHES with a MANUSCRIPT VERSE; signed books and documents by Louis Armstrong, Charles Chesnutt, T. S. Eliot, Joel Chandler Harris, Dorothy Parker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, etc.; a selection of fine bindings and illustrated books, and much more.
Our new catalog--WINTER MISCELLANY 2017--contains 61 select items, all new arrivals, in a variety of fields. Highlights Bickham’s 1741 entirely engraved THE UNIVERSAL PENMAN; SCARCE German and Japanese bookplate collections; Plattes’s 1639 A DISCOVERY OF INFINITE TREASURE; signed books & documents by Fidel Castro, Florence Nightingale, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Elizabeth Bishop, Samuel Beckett, etc.; a selection of fine bindings and illustrated books, and much more.
All 126 items in our new catalog are from the library of William Meredith with nearly all INSCRIBED to the poet. Writers include Vonnegut, Updike, Ginsberg, and many luminaries of poetry. William Meredith began writing while a student at Princeton University where he wrote a senior thesis on Robert Frost. His first volume of poetry, LOVE LETTER FROM AN IMPOSSIBLE LAND, was selected by Archibald MacLeish for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1944. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for PARTIAL ACCOUNTS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS and a National Book Award in 1997 for EFFORT AT SPEECH. From 1978 to 1980, Meredith was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the position which in 1985 became the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the first gay poet to receive this honor. He died in 2007 at the age of 88.
Our new catalog--WINTER MISCELLANY--contains 60 select items, all new arrivals, in a variety of fields. Highlights include beautiful hand-colored plate books (McIntosh's FLORA AND POMONA, 1829 and GALLERIA STORICA DELL'ITALIA, 1846; signed presidential books (James Polk, Benjamin Harrison, Millard Fillmore, Barack Obama, etc.); signed books by Thomas Hardy, Margaret Sanger, Daniel Webster, W. H. Auden, etc.; first editions of Emerson's ESSAYS, Herman Hesse's SIDDHARTHA, etc; a selection of fine bindings, and much more.
Our new catalog--SPRING MISCELLANY 2015--contains 60 select items, all new arrivals, in a variety of fields. Highlights include fine Cookery items, including the second American cookbook and Alice B. Toklas's cookbook inscribed to Eleanor Roosevelt; the true First Edition of SIDDHARTHA signed by Hesse; Thoreau's WORKS with a leaf of manuscript; the first American botanical book; Robert Lowell's first book inscribed to Randall Jarrell; Paul Muldoon's virtually unknown first book; several signed books by Theodore Roosevelt including his scarce Inaugural Address; signed books and letters by Elizabeth Bishop, T. S. Eliot, Henry Ford, Billie Holiday, W. H. Taft, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf; and much more.