Search Results: Authors starting with L from Sumner & Stillman

1886. Authorized Edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1886. 2 pp undated ads. Original yellow wrappers printed in black. First American Edition of this mystery by the noted Scottish novelist, poet and literary critic -- perhaps now best known for the twelve "Fairy Books" for children (1889-1910) that he adapted and edited. Lang's THE MARK OF CAIN is one of the earliest novels to feature, in a big way, tattoos -- a man has his body tattooed exactly like someone else's, then kills that man and impersonates him in order to claim his inheritance. (Along the same vein, two years later H. Rider Haggard wrote MR. MEESON'S WILL, in which a critical will is tattooed upon a woman's body.) THE MARK OF CAIN also involves, in a smaller way, a "flying machine" -- and thus is science fiction for its time. This copy is bound in yellow wrappers, which was Scribner's less-expensive option (to hard-bound cloth) during the 1880s. It is in remarkably near-fine condition (very light soil, but scarcely any wear);… Read More

1923. London: Martin Secker, (1923). 6 pp undated ads. Original brown cloth lettered in gilt, with dust jacket. First (English) Edition, which consisted of 3,000 copies. KANGAROO is Lawrence's Australian novel; at one time he expressed the desire to write a novel for each of the world's continents, and he might have accomplished this ambition had he been permitted a few more years of work...[Roberts] But he and Frieda moved on to Taos in September 1922, and had settled in by the time both this UK edition and Seltzer's US edition were published in September 1923 (priority uncertain, but both that month: the UK edition includes several paragraphs at the end that are absent from the US edition). This volume is in fine condition, with the gilt still bright; the dust jacket is near-fine, with one chip at the foot of its spine, and minor wear at other edges and folds. In our experience, this UK dust jacket is quite uncommon. Roberts A26. Housed in a handsome clamshell case of marbled paper-covered boards,… Read More

1922. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1922. Original blue-grey cloth lettered in gilt, with dust jacket. First Edition of this novel, published about two months before Secker's UK edition. It is the picaresque tale of Aaron Sisson, a flute-playing coal miner -- who abandons his wife and the mines to try to make a living with his flute. According to the dust jacket, this constitutes the final volume in Lawrence's trilogy beginning with THE RAINBOW and WOMEN IN LOVE. Everyone, even Frieda, hated the book except Seltzer, who had written from America that the book was wonderful. Secker apparently had some difficulty in accepting the manuscript as it was and begged Lawrence to make alterations, which Lawrence refused to do... However, someone, perhaps without Lawrence's knowledge, excised sections [including one about the Royal Family] from the Secker text which remained in the American edition... and which have not been replaced in any English edition of the novel. [Roberts] An example of this is the… Read More

1926. London: Martin Secker, (1926). 4 pp undated ads. Original chocolate brown cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition of this 476-page novel sited in Mexico. Lawrence began it in 1923 when he and Frieda lived on Lake Chapala near Guadalajara; they returned to Oaxaca in 1924-1925 so that he could complete it. It is a tale of political upheaval in Mexico (but featuring an Irish tourist named Kate) -- in which a local armed religious sect manages to overthrow Christianity and replace it with the worship of Quetzalcoatl. Although when he completed it Lawrence considered this to be his most important book, it was NOT well-received: it was condemned as being fascist, anti-Christian, and also racist (generating fear about the decline of the white race). This volume is in fine condition; the dust jacket is very good-plus (spine faded and with a few small holes, other minor wear at the spine ends and the folds). This extremely fragile jacket is quite uncommon. Roberts A33. Housed in a clamshell case with… Read More

1923. London: Martin Secker, (1923). Original brown cloth lettered in gilt, with dust jacket. First Edition of this collection of three novellas, published eight months before Seltzer's American edition that was titled THE CAPTAIN'S DOLL: Three Novelettes. All three involve relationships during (and affected by) the waning months of the Great War, then just five years earlier... "The years 1916 and 1917 were the years when the old spirit died for ever in England. But Lady Beveridge struggled on. She was being beaten... Society was beginning to jeer at this little worn bird of an out-of-date righteousness and aesthetic. [from the second page of "The Ladybird"]." This volume is in fine condition; the dust jacket, unclipped, is very good-plus (its spine browned as usual, minor wear at the spine ends; there is a faint vertical crease in the top half of the front panel, a feature we have seen before and thus perhaps a production flaw). This jacket is quite uncommon. Roberts A24a. Housed in a cloth… Read More

1923. With Eight Pictures in Colour by Jan Juta. London: Martin Secker, (1923). Original brown cloth, with dust jacket. First English Edition, published two years after Thomas Seltzer's New York edition. "In her book LORENZO IN TAOS, Mabel Dodge Luhan says it was after reading SEA AND SARDINIA that she wrote Lawrence inviting him to come to New Mexico; his descriptions of the island had convinced her that he was the only one who could adequately portray the Taos country." D.H. and Frieda Lawrence did indeed visit Luhan in Taos (as did Willa Cather, Georgia O'Keeffe, Martha Graham, Thornton Wilder and others) -- but they remained there, buying a ranch outside of town... The [eight] paintings were done during the summer of 1921 by Jan Juta, a young painter from South Africa, who with his sister had accompanied Lawrence and other friends on a trip to Syracuse [Sicily] in April" [Roberts]. The two paste-downs bear a map (drawn by Lawrence) of the trip, a loop between Italy, Sicily and Sardinia. The… Read More

1925. London: Martin Secker, (1925). Original brown cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition, in the usual primary state (chocolate-brown cloth, with the error on the Contents page); Knopf's American edition, published two weeks later, did not include "The Princess." The heroine of ST. MAWR abandons her husband and post-war England and moves to a ranch near Taos, New Mexico -- exactly as D.H. and Frieda Lawrence had done the year before. This volume is in fine condition except for slight damage to the front endpaper gutter; the dust jacket is near-fine, with a few speckles on the front panel and only very light edge-wear. Roberts A31a. Housed in a two-piece cloth slipcase with leather label.

1923. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923. Original blue-grey cloth lettered in gilt, with pictorial dust jacket. First (American) Edition, published in the same month as Secker's UK edition, with priority uncertain. KANGAROO is Lawrence's Australian novel; at one time he expressed the desire to write a novel for each of the world's continents, and he might have accomplished this ambition had he been permitted a few more years of work...[Roberts] But he and Frieda moved on to Taos in September 1922, and had settled in by the time both this US edition and Secker's UK edition were published in September 1923 (the UK edition includes several paragraphs at the end that are absent from this US edition). This volume is in fine condition, though as usual the cover gilt is not exactly bright; the color pictorial dust jacket, unclipped, is in very good-plus condition (minor wear at its extremities, though even at the head of the spine, print is not affected). In our experience, both the UK dust jacket and this US… Read More

1930. Florence: G. Orioli, 1930. Original cream paper boards decorated in orange-red, with printed spine label, with dust jacket. First Edition (issued as No. 4 in the publisher's "Lungarno Series"), consisting of 810 numbered copies -- of which this is No. 743. Lawrence had actually written this back in late 1925, after he and Frieda had returned from Taos to Europe for the last time. This Florence edition came out in May 1930, two months after D.H. Lawrence died in France; Secker's UK edition and Knopf's US edition came out that October and November respectively. It is the tale of the virginal daughter of a rector in a secluded English village, who yearns for something beyond what she knows, when a swarthy gipsy happens along... -- the basis for the 1970 film starring Honor Blackman. This volume is in fine condition, without soil or wear, and includes the spare label tipped in at the back; "fine" also describes the jacket ("... a green paper dust-jacket printed in black which is usually found to… Read More

1856. With Illustrations by "Phiz." London: Chapman and Hall, 1856. Original blind-stamped green cloth. First Edition in book form, following publication in monthly serial parts. [This novel] depicts the fall of a Connemara estate in the period between Catholic Emancipation (1829) and the Great Famine (1845-1849)... Even as he asserts that the fall of the landed gentry brings disastrous upheaval to a traditional society, Lever insists on the inevitability of such collapse... Lever's reforming Anglo-Irish heroine Mary Martin is doomed to defeat and early death, unable to stem the costs of her absentee family's arrogant isolation from their tenants and neglect of their responsibilities as landlords. [Kreilkamp] Included are forty plates (including frontispiece and vignette title) by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). This is a hefty 625-page volume, bound in simple blind-stamped green cloth -- much like Dickens's novels of the same era like BLEAK HOUSE and LITTLE DORRIT -- which is too big a book for the… Read More

1845. Illustrated by Phiz. London: Chapman & Hall, 1845. Original grey-green cloth decorated in gilt, all page edges gilt. First Edition of this children's book -- "It was on the 16th of March, the eve of St. Patrick, not quite twenty years ago..." -- modeled on the Christmas books of Charles Dickens, at that time quite the rage, coming out annually. Included are four plates (including the frontispiece), plus vignettes in the text, by "Phiz" -- Hablot K. Browne. This copy is in the first binding state, with all page edges gilt, with the gilt vignette on the front cover, and with the blind-stamped harps in the corners of both covers. It is in very good-plus condition (cloth a little rubbed and mottled, one plate reinforced on its backside). Sadleir 1420; Wolff 4103.

1852. With Illustrations by Phiz. London: Chapman and Hall, 1852. Front endpaper of Vol II printed with Chapman & Hall ads. Original blind-stamped rose-brown cloth. First Edition in book form of this tale of "the downside of an irresponsible lifestyle when one enters middle age. The picaresque hero has now become a family, rather poor, but convinced of its aristocratic entitlement as it dwells on its recent Irish past and travels the Continent" [Murphy]. The Irish Lever had himself left Ireland to travel the Continent. This pair of volumes is in what Cater labels as "binding B" -- rose-brown blind-stamped cloth with a gilt vignette on the spines. As Carter points out, the "A" binding of dark brown cloth was used for the binding-up of parts (with stab-holes evident on the leaves); this "B" binding was used for copies initially issued, as here, in cloth. (One could argue that the sheets in "A" copies were first issued earlier than those in "B" bindings, but also that bound "B" copies preceded bound… Read More

1844. Edited by Charles Lever (Harry Lorrequer). With Numerous Illustrations on Steel by Phiz. [In Two Volumes.] Dublin: William Curry, Jun. and Co. [etc.], 1844. Original light grey-green paper-covered boards with red cloth spines, with printed spine labels. First Edition in book form (after serial parts) of this early Charles Lever tale -- about an exiled Irish patriot, earning military glory in France (Napoleon is one of the characters). Lever started out as a medical doctor, but during the 1830s began writing picaresque adventures during his spare time, which were published in 1839 as THE CONFESSIONS OF HARRY LORREQUER (the similarly-picaresque PICKWICK PAPERS, with illustrations likewise by "Phiz," had just been published with great success). This title, five years later, is likewise "edited by Harry Lorrequer." These volumes' title pages are confusing, in that the first volume reads "OUR MESS | Vol II | TOM BURKE OF "OURS" | Volume First" and the second has "Vol III ... Volume Second". This is… Read More

1913. Illustrations by W. Herbert Dunton and J. N. Marchand. New York: G. W. Dillingham Company, (1913). 4 pp undated ads. Original red cloth. First Edition of the sixth and last volume of Southwestern tales sited in Lewis's fictional town of "Wolfville" -- following WOLFVILLE (1897), SANDBURRS (1900), WOLFVILLE DAYS (1902), WOLFVILLE NIGHTS (1902) and WOLFVILLE FOLKS (1908). This volume consists of twelve tales, such as "Dead-Shot Baker," "Old Monte, Official Drunkard" and "How Tutt Shot Texas Thompson." This copy is in Blanck's state "A" (priority unknown), with the first page of ads listing "Seven Splendid Novels by William MacLeod Raine" (state "B" lists three Lewis books instead, including this title). Also, state "A" has a flat spine with a publisher's imprint 1/8-inch high, while state "B" has a rounded spine with a publisher's imprint 5/32-inch high. Condition is near-fine, with scarcely any external wear or soil (endpapers a bit damaged near the hinges). Blanck 11764.

1808. [in the 1808 original boards] London: Printed by D.N. Shury... for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808. Original grey-brown paper-covered boards with purple cloth spines and printed spine labels. First Edition of this collection of Gothic tales of the macabre, which Matthew Gregory Lewis adapted from original German, French and Spanish stories. As he indicates in his Preface, "Even in those Tales which are least my own, I have made so many and such important alterations, omissions, and interpolations, that it would have been less trouble to write an entire new work". Lewis (1775-1818) is often referred to as "Monk" Lewis because of his famous (infamous?) 1796 Gothic horror tale THE MONK -- replete with ghosts, murders and ravished maidens; some critics, notably Samuel Taylor Coleridge, considered the book blasphemous and Lewis never entirely escaped the resulting licentious reputation. He followed that up with three collections of tales of the macabre -- TALES OF TERROR in 1799, TALES OF… Read More

1929. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, (1929). Original dark blue cloth lettered in orange. First Edition of the fifth and last of Lewis's great novels of the 1920s -- preceded by MAIN STREET, BABBITT, ARROWSMITH and ELMER GANTRY. In these novels, Lewis savagely mocked the provincialism, conformism and hypocrisy he saw at the heart of middle American culture. His central characters strive to escape their emotionally and intellectually repressive environments... [DAB] The year after DODSWORTH was published, Lewis became the first American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; ARROWSMITH had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, but Lewis had turned it down. This is a just-about-fine copy. [Note: this copy came to us with a facsimile first-edition dust jacket, which we shall pass along if a buyer wishes.].

1927. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, [1927]. Original dark blue cloth lettered in orange. First Edition of Lewis's scathing satire about a fraudulent itinerant preacher (shades of Bakker and Swaggart!) -- since immortalized on the screen by Burt Lancaster. This was the fourth of Lewis's five great novels of the 1920s -- preceded by MAIN STREET, BABBITT and ARROWSMITH, and succeeded by DODSWORTH. When ELMER GANTRY was published, a minister in Virginia invited Lewis to come down and be lynched, and one in New Hampshire tried to have him jailed. [K&H] This copy is in the second binding state, with the spine plainly reading "GANTRY" (in the first state, the "G" resembles a "C"). Just about fine condition (a little faint speckling of the rear cover cloth). [Note: this copy came to us with a facsimile first-issue dust jacket, which we shall pass along if a buyer wishes.].

1925. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, [1925]. Original dark blue cloth lettered in orange. First Trade Edition, preceded only by a 500-copy limited edition. This was the third of Lewis's great novels of the decade, after MAIN STREET and BABBITT and before ELMER GANTRY and DODSWORTH. ARROWSMITH won the Pulitzer Prize, but Lewis declined the award. This is the tale of Martin Arrowsmith, medical doctor, who settles first in Wheatsylvania, South Dakota, next in Nautilus, Iowa, then in Chicago, and finally at a research clinic in New York City -- "hoping to find in altruistic research the relief he desires from publicity-seeking and money-grabbing commercial medicine" [OCAL]. But he falls out of favor when he administers his cure for a plague indiscriminately, in order to save lives, thus ruining the results of the experiment -- and ultimately winds up back in rural America, this time in Vermont. This copy is in very good condition (the usual fading of the spine, minor edge-wear, slight cracking… Read More

1914. London: Mills & Boon, (1914). [4]+32 pp ads. Original dark green cloth. First English Edition. This tale, serialized as "Sea Gangsters," involves a mutinous voyage around Cape Horn. London hoped to explain his own "Snark" voyage's failure by laying the blame on Anglo-Saxons' problems with the tropics (per the theories he had read in Woodruff's EFFECTS OF TROPICAL LIGHT ON WHITE MEN). Jack wrote THE ELSINORE soon after he and Charmian returned from his "Millergraph" trip to New York City; their five-month return was on the clipper ship "Dirigo," out of Baltimore around Cape Horn, in mid-1912. (His last acts on shore were to shave his head bald and to have a photograph taken of himself standing by Poe's grave.) Since there was no alcohol on board, Jack went through withdrawal from his dependence upon it, and proclaimed that he was not an alcoholic -- though Charmian knew that would last only until the pain in his kidneys and bowels would again become unbearable.[Sinclair] Jack, with major… Read More

1913. New York: The Century Company, 1913. 1 page undated ads. Original light green cloth decorated in dark green and black, with dust jacket. First Edition of London's prizefighting tale about "a white backwoods giant who would rather read Browning than slug his opponents" [Sinclair], prompted by his coverage of the Johnson-Jeffries fight in Reno. The very title of this book indicates London's preoccupation with the concept of the "brute" which underlies the social behavior of men and animals alike. London had recently left Macmillan in a dispute over royalties, but would find Century to be much less patient or understanding; he ultimately had to beg his former publisher to take him back. THE ABYSMAL BRUTE includes a frontispiece by Gordon Grant. This copy is in the second binding state, which is identical to the first except for color, and is in fine condition. The three-color pictorial dust jacket shows a man carrying a rifle with a buck slung over his shoulder; this jacket is near-fine, with a… Read More