Search Results: The Blind, the Halt, the Lame from Lorne Bair Rare Books

New York: Appleton-Century, 1937. First American Edition. Octavo (21cm). Blue cloth boards, lettered in red on spine and front cover; dustjacket; 298pp. Fine, tight copy in original, unclipped dustwrapper, lightly, evenly soiled, still Near Fine. Odd and uncommon working-class novel, concerning a murder and a love triangle involving two blind basket-weavers. The setting is Cape Town; the author was an Australian-born South African. There were American and British editions but no South African edition that we can find; the American edition precedes the British by a year. Not widely held in institutions, and scarce in nice condition.

Los Angeles: Crescent Publications, 1975. First Edition. Octavo (21.5cm); illustrated wrappers; 98pp. Top edge of text lightly foxed, else Fine and unread. "The haunting novel of a tormented young woman who has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of two from polio..." The novel mirrors the author's life; Tillman, a Compton, CA woman, suffered an attack of polio at the age of 2, and was confined to a wheelchair since. She writes her books by holding a pencil in her mouth and striking the keys of a typewriter.

Boston: Howe Memorial Committee; Printed by Albert J. Wright, 1876. Octavo (21cm). Original grey paper wraps, printed in black on front; [viii], 127pp; frontispiece portrait. Ex-library, with rubber and embossed stamps to front cover, frontispiece, and title page. A sound copy, light soil and minor chips to wraps, rear wrap creased, internally clean: Very Good. A separate edition was printed at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, "in raised letters," for blind readers (v-vi). Proceeds from this edition were to be given to the Howe Memorial Fund, which would pay for other books printed for the blind. Howe (1801-1876) was a pioneer in special education and education of the blind; he "developed an embossed-letter system for the blind to read," which was "used at Perkins until Braille came into common usage" (ANB). Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), his wife, was a prominent writer and activist for female suffrage. BAL9448.

Boston: Thomas Todd, (1904). First Edition. 16mo (15.5cm x 8.5cm); staple-bound, printed card wrappers; 16pp. Faint crease to text block, else a fine, unworn example. Transcript of Keller's 1904 address, calling for reform in the area of blind education. A very fresh copy.

Albany: New York State Temperance Society, 1835. Third edition. Octavo (21cm). Sewn, printed self-wrappers; 96pp; untrimmed. External soil and scattered foxing to contents; old damp-stain in gutter throughout; complete and Good. AMER. IMPRINTS 30906.

Rutland: Geo. A. Tuttle & Co, 1855. 12mo (16.5cm.); publisher's brown pictorial gilt-stamped cloth; [2],173pp. Partial orange paint ringstain to upper cover, spine cloth sunned, textblock a bit shaken in covers, late 19th-century ownerhsip rubberstamps to front pastedown and endpaper, else Very Good and sound. The blind Vermont author's second published work, aboult Lizza, the daughter of a "Gypsy," inspired by the success of the blind Boston author Helen De Kroyft. Unlike De Kroyft, however, Pratt wrote not to alleviate poverty, but to "devote...to the causes fo self-culture and Christian liberalism" (James Emmett Ryan, "The Blind Authoress of New York," in the "American Quarterly," Vol. 51, no. 2, June, 1999, p. 405). WRIGHT II 1949, citing the first (1854) edition.