Search Results: Titles starting with L from W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera

Paris: Théâtre de la Ville, [1974]. 29.5 cm. [1],152 pp. (mimeographed leaves printed recto only). In French. Original cloth-tape-backed printed cloth over card covers. Signed by Arthur Miller on the title page. Cloth backing worn, with two-inch split at head of front cover, covers moderately soiled, inch-long pen mark on title page. Good to very good. French script adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1972 play, THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND OTHER BUSINESS, by Jean Mercure (1909-1998), who directed it at the Théâtre de la Ville in 1974. Avant Scène published a trade edition of the script in the same year. OCLC locates no copies of the present version.

Paris: Librairie Maç, V. Gloton, 1930. 18.5 cm. 430,[2] pp. In French. Publisher's printed wrappers. Wrappers lightly worn at edges and lightly scuffed, leaves toned. Very good. Anti-Fascist work by the Italian journalist and anarcho-syndicalist Maria Rygier (1885-1953), examining the history of Freemasonry in Italy and the rise of Fascism in the context of anti-Masonic persecution. In 1914, committed to Italian interventionism in World War I, Rygier briefly worked as an editor at Mussolini's IL POPOLO D'ITALIA newspaper but was jailed the same year for syndicalist activism. By 1926, Rygier was openly opposing Mussolini and Fascism and fled to France, where she remained until the end of World War II. The preface of the book is written by noted French pacifist Lucien Le Foyer (1872-1952), who at the time of its publication was serving as the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France.

Paris: Le centre de documentation anti-maçonnique et anti-marxiste, 1935. 7,[2],8-91 pp., including double-page chart, plus [2] pp. of publisher's advertisements. In French. Original printed wrappers. Newspaper clipping from August 29, 1940, on "Les responsabilités de la Maçonnerie" laid in.Wrappers moderately worn, front wrapper creased at upper-outer corner, contents toned, occasional contemporary pencil marks. Very good. A far-right, anti-Masonic, anti-Semitic screed listing scores of pro-masonic organizations and hundreds of contemporary "agents of freemasonry" in contemporary French politics and media by name. An illuminating double-page chart, "Pouvoir Occulte Judeo-Maçonnique," maps the collaboration between the Freemasons, Socialists, Communists, and bankers from their international organizations to their representation in the French Senate. The author, Henri Coston (1910-2001), enjoyed a long career of writing anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic tracts before, during, and after his enthusiastic… Read More

[Brussels]: Ligue nationale belge contre le péril vénérien, 1929. Large octavo. 44 pp., containing eight in-text graphs, plus one double-page map. In French. Contemporary blue half morocco and marbled boards, stamped, ruled, and lettered in gilt, original stiff printed wrappers bound in. Spine lightly worn and sunned, light stain in upper margin of p. 23 (touching some text), else fine. An account of the progress of the Belgian National League Against the Veneral Perils fight against syphilis, by its president, Professor Adrien Bayet (1863-1935), delivered on December 8, 1928, and published in 1929. The League had held its first conference in the great hall of Brusellss Palais des Académies on October 8, 1922, with its founding patron, Elisabeth, Queen of Belgium, and various other dignitaries in attendance, to address the spread of syphilis in Belgium in the aftermath of the First World War. Six years later, Bayet delivered the speech printed here to report on the League's overwhelming success.… Read More

[New York: The Lambs, 1927]. Quarto. [8] pp. Pictorial self-wrappers. 78 unique contemporary ink autograph signatures on front and rear wrappers. Early soft vertical fold (affecting all leaves), minor soiling to wrappers, with two-inch stain in rear wrapper. Very good. Program for the Lambs Club's 1927 Public Gambol, held May 15 at the Knickerbocker Theatre, benefiting the victims of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The cover art, by W. Spencer Wright, features a nude satyress with a shepherd's crook and a lamb at her feet peering through a crack in a fence. The program is signed by Wright and 77 fellow Lambs, including such stage luminaries as Walter Catlett, Bill Desmond, Leon Errol, Lew Fields, Eddie Foy, David Warfield, and "Shepherd" Tom Wise.

Worcester, Massachusetts: Metacom Press, 1985. 6 3/4 inches. 4 gatherings of 16 leaves, printed recto only: 2 sets printed with pictures, 2 with text. Original pictorial wrappers in three folding panels, stitched. Prospectus card laid in. Lettered and signed by the artist. Fine. Letter M of 26 signed and lettered copies reserved for the use of the artist and publisher (an additional 500 signed and numbered copies were issued for sale). The prospectus advertises the work as a "collection of 32 memorable Gorey characters, presented in a delightful variation on the traditional heads-legs-bodies book. Each of the four sections - two for drawings, two for captions - opens independently of the others, so that the characters and their affectingly hapless remarks may be rearranged in thousands of combinations." One of Gorey's eleven movable books and three cut-apart books. Toledano A90b.

Worcester, Massachusetts: Metacom Press, 1985. First Edition. Softcover. Fine. 6 3/4 inches. 4 gatherings of 16 leaves, printed recto only: 2 sets printed with pictures, 2 with text. Original pictorial wrappers in three folding panels, stitched. Prospectus card laid in. Numbered and signed by the artist. Fine. Number 57 of 526 signed copies (500 numbered copies for sale, 26 lettered copies reserved for the use of the artist and publisher). The prospectus advertises the work as a "collection of 32 memorable Gorey characters, presented in a delightful variation on the traditional heads-legs-bodies book. Each of the four sections - two for drawings, two for captions - opens independently of the others, so that the characters and their affectingly hapless remarks may be rearranged in thousands of combinations." One of Gorey's eleven movable books and three cut-apart books. Toledano A90b.

Paris: Éditions Lemarget, 1930. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. 34 cm. 79,[6] pp. including 3 etchings by Sanyu, plus frontispiece portrait of the poet after Hwang Shen. Modern ochre red silk over boards, brass plate stamped through with title in Chinese on front board, original wrappers bound in. In red cardboard portfolio with red ribbon tie. Portfolio moderately worn, torn at corners. Brass plate faintly scratched and lightly oxidized, else fine, in a very good portfolio. Numbered 56 of 290 copies on vélin d'Arches (of a total edition of 306), specially bound in silk with a brass title cover plate. T'ao Ts'ien (365-427) (best known in English today as Tao Qian or by his birth name, Tao Yuanming), was a major Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties period, regarded as a founder and leading representative of the Fields and Gardens movement. Tao's translator is Liang Zongdai (1903-1983), a Guangxhi-born poet who had arrived in Europe in 1924 to study Western languages. He dedicates the work to his… Read More

Montreal: H. & G.M. Rose, 1855. Softcover. Very good. [129]-160 pp. Original printed wrappers. Some wear to edges of wrappers, else fine. Anglophone Quebecer Unitarian periodical, including an article on the Crimean War by Canada's first Unitarian minister, the Rev. John Cordner.

Dennis, Massachusetts: Salt-Works Press, 1973. 5 1/8 inches. Brown printed wrappers, stitched. [4] illustrated leaves, printed on rectos only. Signed by the author on the front wrapper. Fine. First separate issue (together with issue in orange wrappers, with no priority between them) of a work first published the same year as part of SOMA-HAOMA, No. 3 ("Trajectories"), a collection of 16 booklets, prints, and photographs by different authors. Toledano A54.

Accra, [Ghana]: Liberty Press Limited, 1971. Pictorial broadside, 20 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches. Lithograph mounted to board. Mild rubbing and toning and moderate warping; 3/4-inch abrasion from apparent sticker removal in lower-left corner, affecting border. Good to very good. A visual guide to the symbolism of the Ghanaian linguist's staff, showing and describing 30 different finial motifs. In traditional Akan societies, linguists are the most important non-royal court officials, serving mixed roles as counselors, ambassadors, legal experts, and historians. Every linguist (okyeame) carries a wooden staff (okyeame poma), topped with a carved finial of a symbolic figure. "The symbol he carries is the symbol (usually proverbial) of the state he represents. Some depict animal or human forms while others depict just simple abstract forms. Whatever stands on that staff or stick represents the beliefs and aspirations of the entire state or clan. The staff itself is made of wood wrapped with either silver or gold… Read More

London: Smith, Ainslie, & Co., 1895. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. [1895]. Publisher's pictorial cloth. xi,227 pp. including eight plates. Mildly cocked, cloth lightly worn at edges. Very good. Late 19th-century English thriller, laced with criminal flash, set partly in the Wormwood Scrubs prison.

Paris: Chez l'auteur... Laurent d'Houry... Jean Boudot, libraire..., 1699. 12mo. [18],300;112 pp. plus 26 plates (three folding). Contemporary speckled calf, spine richly gilt, gilt leather label, raised bands, edges rouged. Light institutional inkstamp in title page. 18th-century inscription in titlepage and signature of Theophile Leonard in title page and final page of the dedication. Occasional 18th-century marginalia. Minor wear. Near fine. First edition of the first major work of Nicolas Bion, complete with 26 plates of terrestrial and celestial maps, diagrams, and images of globes. Bion (ca. 1652-1733) was a Paris-based cosmographer and maker of mathematical and astronomical instruments, holding the title of "king's engineer for mathematical instruments" under Louis XIV (DSB II, pp. 132-1330). A landmark in its field.