Search Results: Authors starting with W from Honey & Wax Booksellers

No place, 1957. Original caricature by George Wachsteter (1911-2004) of the 1957 Broadway musical Shinbone Alley, starring Eartha Kitt, published in the New York Journal American on April 11, 1957. Co-written by Mel Brooks in his first Broadway book credit, Shinbone Alley was a stage adaptation of Don Marquis' popular Archy and Mehitabel tales, featuring a philosopher-poet cockroach "who had to express himself or die," and his muse, a free-spirited alley cat. Though Shinbone Alley ran only for forty-nine performances, the show was well-received: New York Times reviewer Brooks Atkinson wrote that composer George Kleinsinger "improvised an animal and insect world out of music with humor, drollery, street tunes and juke-box pandemonium." Wachsteter's vibrant image centers Kitt as Mehitabel, dancing in the sparkly tabby-patterned bodysuit that earned costume designer Motley a Tony nomination. Behind her is Eddie Bracken's Archy, hoisting a giant pencil to erase a line on his typewriter, the running gag… Read More

New York: Aeolian Hall, 1924. Original program for Paul Whiteman's experimental concert on February 12, 1924, featuring the premiere of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Whiteman intended the event at New York's Aeolian Hall "to be purely educational," showcasing "the tremendous strides which have been made in popular music." Through new arrangements and original material, most notably Gershwin's bold rhapsody, Whiteman hoped to legitimize a scored version of "modern Jazz" in the context of the classical concert hall. In the program's opening section, titled "The Why of This Experiment," Whiteman elevates jazz into the sphere of high culture while remaining pointedly silent on the African-American roots of that controversial genre, "which sprang into existence about ten years ago from nowhere in particular." The program provides biographies of Whiteman's musical collaborators and extensive notes on the featured compositions. Whiteman reserves his highest praise for George Gershwin: "He is capable… Read More

Boston: Beacon Press, 1958. First edition of this retrospective "autobiography of the works of a poet," a collection of interviews with editor Edith Heal. Williams recounts the stories behind the writing and publication of his major works, with occasional wry interjections from his wife Florence, better known as "Floss": "We used to laugh . . . at how often Bill appeared in the last issue of a magazine. As soon as they published him, the magazine would blow up." A very good copy of a compelling descriptive bibliography. Single volume, measuring 9 x 6 inches: xii, 99, [1]. Original tan cloth, spine lettered in white, original unclipped color pictorial dust jacket. Text printed in red and black. Lightest edgewear, spotting to rear endpapers and rear panel of dust jacket, tape repair to verso of jacket.

New York: New Directions, 1947. First edition of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams's first play to win the Pulitzer Prize, signed by the entire original cast, including Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. Produced by Irene Mayer Selznick and directed by Elia Kazan, the original stage production opened in New Haven on October 30, 1947: the program for that first performance is present here, with three ticket stubs from the Shubert Theatre. The show then moved to Boston and Philadelphia before arriving on Broadway, where Tandy would win the Tony for her performance as the fragile, self-deluding Blanche DuBois: "Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Wolcott Gibbs, in a rave review for The New Yorker, regretted that "there is no way . . . to convey the effect Mr. Williams achieves in his last act of a mind desperately retreating into the beautiful, crazy world it has built for itself." A wonderful association copy, with related ephemera… Read More

New York: Caedmon, 1959. Midcentury Caedmon recording of English actress Celia Johnson reading from two of Virginia Woolf's most important novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). The striking album cover, depicting faces illuminated in a lighthouse beam, is the uncredited work of husband-and-wife illustration team Leo and Diane Dillon. The Dillons would win numerous awards over the course of their long career, including back-to-back Caldecott Medals in 1976 and 1977. Caedmon TC 1105. A very good copy. Single LP housed in original paper sleeve and glossy color pictorial album cover, measuring 12.375 x 12.375 inches. Light shelfwear to cover, corners bumped.

New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923. First edition of poet Elinor Wylie's fantastic Orientalist romance, her first novel, inscribed to Sinclair Lewis. The narrative follows an indolent English bride's travels across the East through a comic pastiche of eighteenth-century fictional clichés: "a Supreme Councillor returning to Bengal once had the audacity to send a glass of champagne and a magnificent pineapple to her cabin, with his respectful queries as to her welfare; only this personage's obvious senility prevented Gerald from giving him a glance over the card-table which would have curdled his blood forever against the most torrid suns of India." This copy of Jennifer Lorn was presented in the month of publication to Wylie's friend and mentor Sinclair Lewis, "who persuaded her that writing fiction was the way to earn money." The novel received bewildered but respectful reviews from contemporary critics. Lewis himself approved of her first effort: "At last, a civilized American novel." See E.H.… Read More