Search Results: Authors starting with M from Biblioctopus

Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1937. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/very good. 1st edition of the 3rd Mr. Moto. Original cloth, near fine in a very good dustjacket with small chips to the spine's top and a very soft crease, and among bookselling's most pathetic lies is to call chipping, rubbing, unless the potential customer is both blind and lacking even a cursory sense of touch. Not a common 1st edition in any manner of jacket. RBH lists only 2 copies sold at auction since 1975, one of them with a hefty chip to the jacket's spine, and the other one better, and more recent, but still in a soiled and worn jacket. "Young Wilson Hitchings is ready to take his place in the venerable family firm of Hitchings Brothers, Bankers and Commission Merchants: Honolulu, Shanghai, Canton. His first real assignment is to travel to Hawaii and deal with the Hitchings Plantation, a gambling house started by a black sheep of the family and maintained after his death by his lovely daughter, Eva Hitchings. Wilson's… Read More

New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1924. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/very good. 1st edition. Near fine in a 1st printing jacket (having all points as above) with a chip at the base of the front panel, some wear, rubs, and 1 fold strengthened, otherwise very good. Grosset published mostly reprints, but not this one. There was a 1919, abridged version in All-Story Magazine titled The Curse of Capistrano, followed by an expansion of the story (McCulley, Eugene Miller and Douglas Fairbanks using his pen name, Elton Thomas) for the 1920 U. A. film and for our 1924 novel, but reports of a 1920 book edition are a hoax.

New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1924. First Edition. Hardcover. fine/near fine. 1st edition of the California epic. Fine in the 1st printing dustjacket without the Grosset and Dunlap logo ("G&D") on the spine, and with Dec. 1924 ads on the verso. The dustjacket has small chips to the corners else it's near fine, and 1st editions of Zorro in the correct jacket are plenty scarce (despite us having 2 of them), and most copies in jacket are in the reprint jacket, and those few that are correct, usually look like they've been tortured by Torquemada and then shot by the Death Star. And copies without a jacket are just a submission to hasty expediency.

New York: Putnam, 1856. First Edition. Wrappers. Very good. March issue, 1st appearance and the only publication of it during Melville's life, on pages 269-283 of the March issue (no. XXXIX). Original wrappers, chip from inner, lower corner of back wrapper (no loss), tiny chips from spine tips (no loss), still very good, and scarce in wrappers. A first person short story narrative in which a chimney is ascribed unique and eccentric characteristics, attributing human-like qualities to it. The chimney becomes a central figure in the narrator's life and he begins to see it as an indispensable companion. The story delves into the narrator's thoughts on home, solitude, and the interconnectedness between man and his environment.

New York: Harper's, 1854. First Edition. Wrappers. Very good. September issue, 1st appearance and the only publication of it during Melville's life, on pages 536-538 of the September issue (no. LII). Original wrappers, small chip to the top of the spine, larger one to the bottom else very good and scarce in wrappers.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. First edition. Fine in fine dustwrapper. A spectacular copy of Merwin's second book.

New Haven: The American Journal of Science, 1886. First Edition. Wrappers. Very good. 1st edition, 1st printing, 2nd issue (preceded by the individual May 1886 issue) of The American Journal of Science, Vol. XXXI, January to June, the full semiannual volume, containing (pages 377-386) the first experiments with Michelson's own invented instruments, the continuation of which (in 1887), negated classical scientific theories on the existence of a universal ether. The findings held revolutionary implications that led directly to (and through) Lorentz (the Lorentz contraction equations) and Einstein (special relativity), to the acceptance of new reference standards of time and space from geometry and cosmometry (measurement of the universe). Michelson won his 1907 Nobel Prize in physics, both for creating the instruments he used, and for his achievements with them, in his experiments. Original wrappers, covers, spine and page edges brittle and chipped, internally clean, pages unopened, very good. Scarce.… Read More

Paris: The Obelisk Press, 1939. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine. 1st edition (in English despite the Paris imprint). 1st issue, but the price has been scratched out on front flap and spine, though a part of the ‘0' is legible on the front flap, so it was not stamped over and there is no ‘175.00' printed on the rear wrapper. Despite this, we will pretend it's a 2nd issue and price it that way. Extremities of the wrapper are a bit pushed from being larger than the page block, otherwise fine and bright in the original wrappers, with errata sheet tipped in before title page. Custom cloth clamshell box. Miller's semi-autobiographical prequel to Tropic of Cancer (there were actually 3 other books in-between the 2), set in New York in 1920, where the central character (Henry V.Miller) works for the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, paralleling Western Union where the real Miller actually worked. But (other than some of the scenes with his first wife) this is the closest of the book's analogies, and… Read More

London: John Murray, 1828. First Edition. Boards. Near fine. Adventures of Hajji Baba": 3 vols.  1st edition of the first peek into Persia, and the best ever capturing of it, in that time, fact or fiction.  1st issue with the dedication to Dr. Fundgruben intact.  Original boards, sympathetically rebacked with identical gray paper, original paper labels laid down (vol. I label 70% chipped, vol. III label with a smaller chip), owner's name on paste downs, else fine.  With a custom 1/4 morocco box. "Hajji Baba of Ispahan in England": 2 vols.  1st edition of the sequel.  Original boards and paper labels, joints worn but holding, spine tips chipped, owner's name in pencil to title pages, still very good and unrepaired. At a pressing point of British colonial power, the Crown established a mission in Persia with an 1809 treaty of alliance. In 1810 they sent James J. Morier as Secretary of Embassy, and from 1814 to 1816 he served as Chargé d'Affaires. The choice was a brilliant one. Sir James… Read More

New York: Knopf, 1987. First Edition. Near fine/very good. 1st edition, 1st printing, inscribed by Morrison on the half title: "To David / Toni Morrison". Toning to the endpapers, some foxing along the top-edge, else near fine in a jacket with light toning and wear along the extremities, else very good. Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, tells of the pain and torment harbored by the formerly enslaved. Her skillful narrative presents a ghost story, as a means to explore psychological and emotional scars of the formerly enslaved, while confronting the dehumanizing legacy of America.