Literature / Books and Authors

Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A.: Duke Univ Pr, 2005. Soft Cover. New/No Jacket. Photographs and Drawings. First edition? Imagine scholar Matt Cohen's surprise when, on a visit to his grandmother's Nebraska home, he discovered a collection of hundreds of letters, photographs, telegrams, postcards, and drawings saved by his great-grandfather Herbert T. Weston. They document a nearly fifty-year friendship between Weston and one of America's most popular authors, Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. Since Weston kept carbon copies of his own letters, the material comprises a record of a lilfelong friendship that had begun in the 1890s, when the two men met in military school. In these letters, Burroughs and Weston discuss their experiences of family, work, war, disease and health, sports, and new technology over a time period spanning two World Wars, the Great Depression, and wide political change. The correspondence trace a fascinatingly interwoven emotional and business relationship that evolved as the two men and their wives engaged in joint capital ventures, traveled, and navigated the difficult waters of child-rearing, divorce, and aging. This volume includes images never before published, and a critical introduction. 310 pages including notes and index. At the bottom right corner the pages have some discoloration, as though the edge was sticking out on something dusty. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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San Francisco, California, U.S.A.: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 2005. First Edition. Hard Cover. New/New. Downing, David C.. In this engaging and insightful book, C. S. Lewis expert David C. Downing invites readers to join his vivid exploration of the Chronicles of Narnia, offering a detailed look at the enchanting stories themselves and also focusing on the extraordinary intellect and imagination of the man behind the Wardrobe. Published in the 1950s, C. S. Lewis's seven Chronicles of Narnia were proclaimed instant children's classics and have been hailed in The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature as "the most sustained achievement in fantasy for children by a 20th-century author." Downing presents each Narnai book as its own little wardrobe - each tale an opportunity to discover a visionary owrld of bustling vitality, sparkling beauty, and spiritual clarity. Downing's examination of Lewis's personal life shows how the content of these classic children's books reflects his love of wonder and story, his affection for animals and homespun things. 238 pages including bibliographical references and an index. There is a small wrinkle at the top of the dust jacket. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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Jaffrey, New Hampshire, U.S.A.: David R Godine Pub, 1994. First Edition. Hard Cover. New/Near Fine. Universally recognized as one of today's premier writers of crime fiction, Nicolas Freeling here displays yet another side of his original mind in these "enviably perceptive and lyrical" essays (Kirkus) on other players in the same field. Freeling's definition of "crime fiction" is refreshingly broad, comprising not only the usual suspects - Sayers, Conan Doyle, Simenon, to name but a few of those he discusses, but also such unlikely candidates as Dickens, Kipling, Stendhal, and Conrad. For Freeling, the mystery genre embraces multitudinous forms and an astounding variety of practitioners, from great literary stylists to base hacks. As might be expected, he is never at a loss for word nor diffident in his judgments about either. In his own fiction, Freeling has defied every convention, to the delight of audiences worldwide. An original, unexpected, unfailingly rewarding writer, he here gives us further delight with these personal, opinionated, thoroughly provocative essays on his predecessors in mysterious excellence. This is a collection for anyone interested in the literature of crime, and indeed in literature tout court - for, as Freeling says, "The nature of crime is also the nature of art." The binding is half cloth; 155 pages. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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New York: Marlowe & Company, 2006. First Softcover Edition. Soft Cover. New/No Jacket. Catherine Friend was happy being an author and writing instructor. She always wore clean clothes. She never had anything disagreeable stuck to the bottom of her shoes. That all changed the day she agreed to help her partner Melissa embark on a rural odyssey filled with sheep, goats, chickens, llamas, and a host of other natural disasters. As it turns out, farming isn't all it's cracked up to be! This is a sort of coming-of-(middle)-age story of a woman trying to close the divide between who she wants to be and who she really is. After helping Melissa realize her dream, Catherine eventually finds a way to recapture her own in this unforgettable crash course in living off - and living with - the land. 240 pages. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A.: Penguin USA, 2001. First Trade Paperback Edition. Soft Cover. New/No Jacket. Photographs. Very Advance Praise for Casanova: "I laughed my head off." Marie Antoinette. Abraham Lincoln said "Can't wait for the play!" Everyone knows which books people buy, but who knows which books people steal? In this irreverent analysis of the book industry, John Maxwelll Hamilton - a longtime journalist and public radio commentator - answers this question and many more, proving that the best way to study books is not to take them too seriously. He provides a rich history of the book - from the early day when monks laboriously hand-copied texts to the recent tidal wave of movie tie-ins - and gives a succinct overview of the state of the industry today. Throughout, Hamilton peppers his prose with spicy tidbits of information that will fascinate bibliophiles everywhere. 351 pages, including appendices A, B and C (great information, but you'll have to read the book to find out what they are), endnotes, and an index. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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Madison, NY: William Morrow & Company, 1978. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Fine. Photographs. Here is a handy guide to literary landmarks from Maine to Maryland. Included are the homes of Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain, and New England towns with rich literry heritages like Concord and Cambridge in Massachusetts. Walking tours of Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia point out residences of writers, locales of literary works, gathering places for writers, and museums and libraries with important book exhibits. A combination of literary history and practical information make this indispensable for the traveler who wants to see American literature come alive, and a handy reference for the armchair traveler as well. On the ffep is a barcode, a stamp and a library pocket. The title page has a library stamp and a date stamp. There is alsoa stamp on the top edge of the pages. 218 pages including an index and ten pages of black and white photos. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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New York: Oxford Univ Press, 2003. First Edition. Soft Cover. New/No Jacket. What is the relationship between modernity and modernism? Between high modernism and what used to be called minority literature? For decades it has been a given that American modernism was the purview of a narrow group of white Euro-Americans. Writers on the margin - African Americans, Jews, and Latinos, for instance - have long been considered too political or too parochial to have a place in the modernist canon. The essays in this collection, written in tribute to the late African American historian Nathan Huggins by his colleagues and students, take as their premise that high modernism, as traditionally understood, was not the only significant reaction by American artists to the revolutionary changes that defined the modern era. The essays here examine the disputed relationships between modernity, modernism, and American cultural diversity. This volume insists on many modernisms and, in doing so, adds an important new dimension to our understanding of 20th century literature. 266 pages including an index. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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Amherst, MA: Univ of Massachusetts Pr, 1993. First Edition. Hard Cover. New/New. Best known for his experimental novel 'Cane', Jean Toomer (1894-1967) is associated with the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1920s as well as the postwar movement known as the Lost Generation. But Toomer was an enigmatic writer with a mystical vision of life. He followed his own path, which led him on a lifelong quest for spiritual truth. This book provides the first comprehensive survey of Toome's writings, including many unpublished works. Critiquing the subjective idealism that lies at the center of Toomer's oeuvre through the lens of Lukacs's theory of reification, Robert B. Jones frames his analysis in terms of Kierkegaard's stages of development - the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. The result is a thoughtful, well-written study that casts new light on Toomer's literary and intellectual development from a variety of critical perspectives. 191 pages consisting of the three spheres, notes, extensive bibliography from 1923-1992 and secondary sources, and an extensive index. The binding is light grey cloth. The jacket is in a protective cover. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.: Chicago Review Press, 2003. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Near Fine. Drawings. You mean those clothes of hers are intentional?" - Dorothy Parker, American Writer (1893-1967). Includes 20 peelable stickers with wonderful insults and curses printed on them! This book is a celebration of the creative language of abuse, insinuation, defamation and damnation. It includes colorful and complicated insults and curses from around the world and through many ages. Even the endpapers are covered with these great words. George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Horace, Lord Byron, and many, many others quoted! 80 pages on heavy paper. The jacket has a very small dent on the front near the spine. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall. more information

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New York, New York, U.S.A.: Owl Books, 1998. First Trade Paperback Edition. Soft Cover. New/No Jacket. Photographs. Vanity Fair said about this book "The tumultuous life of Dawn Powell, the vastly undervalued comic literary novelist who could arm-wrestle Dorothy Parker to a draw, is fabulously rendered in Tim Page's entertaining book." The author explores the fascinating ironies and sad complexities of Powell's life and work. Powell lived in New York City for forty-seven years but always maintained the perspective of a "permanent visitor." She distilled this into her many poems, stories, articles, plays, and her dizzying and inventive novels. Gore Vidal once referred to her as our best comic novelist, deserving to be as widely read as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Page's biography is a celebration of her triumphant rise from the ashes of near oblivion to her stablishment among the giants of twentieth-century American literature. 362 pages including notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, and an index. 16 pages of photographs are present. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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New York, New York, U.S.A.: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 2002. First Edition. Hard Cover. As New/Near Fine. Photographs. A moving, powerful and sympathetic biography of a talented, frail woman who deserves to be rescued from the obscurity to which she was condemned." - The Spectator. This book is about the long-suppressed truth about Vivienne Eliot's influence on T.S. Eliot's genius. By the time she was committed to an asylum in 1938, Vivienne Eliot was a lonely, distraught figure. Shunned by literary London, she was the "neurotic" wife whom Eliot had left behind. She had become a phantomlike shape on the fringe of Eliot's life, written out of his biography and literary history. This astonishing portrait of Vivienne Eliot gives a voice to the woman who, for seventeen years, had shared a unique literary partnership with Eliot. Vivienne longed to tell her whole story: She wrote in her diary "You who in later years will read these very words of mine will be able to trace a true history of the epoch." She believed (as did Virginia Woolf) that she was Eliot's muse, the woman through whom he transmuted life into art. Yet Vivienne knew the secrets of his separate and secret life - which contributed to her final abandoment. The binding is maroon and grey, with deep blue end papers. 698 pages including notes, a bibliography, and index. The jacket has a bit of rubbing on the back. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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New York, NY, U.S.A.: Random House, Incorporated, 1974. First Edition. Hard Bound, Cloth. Fine/Good. A very clever book, this novel is actually two stories set in different times. The earlier is about Allard Benson and his friend Harold Roux who, bald at age 23, has covered his head with a wig unskillfully meant to deceive. It is just after WWII and takes place in a college town, and is about Benson and his friends and others, including unforgettable girls. The story set in our time is about Aaron Benham, professor of English, middle-aged and uneasy about his life and work. He is writing a novel called The Hair of Harold Roux in which there are wonderful surprises including a short story, a delightful childrens tale and a fragment of a novel written by Harold Roux, a romance. The jacket has a 1/4" tear at the bottom and several chips near and at the spine on both ends. There is also a repaired tear at the top back. 372 pages, no marks or tears. A few of the pages have been slightly bent. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. more information

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