Search Results: Titles starting with M from Honey & Wax Booksellers

Zeiningen, Switzerland: Kurt Naef, 1978. Original example of this graphic wooden puzzle by Japanese designer Aoi Huber-Kono for the Swiss toymaker Kurt Naef. The MOTIVO blocks combine to form eight images: red apple and sunburst, yellow bird and flower, green leaf and butterfly, blue house and fish. An iconic modern design object. Eight wooden cubes, screenprinted in four colors, each measuring 1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 inches. "Naef / Swiss made" printed at base of leaf image. Lacking original box.

Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart, 1835. First book appearance of Edgar Allan Poe's "Manuscript Found in a Bottle," first published in 1833 as the winner of a story contest in the pages of The Baltimore Daily Visiter, and later collected in Poe's 1840 Tales of the Grotesque. Poe's chilling tale of a trapped sailor drifting toward the South Pole is a classic of American horror: "a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death. It is evident that we are hurrying onwards to some exciting knowledge, -- some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction." In addition to Poe, this Philadelphia gift annual features work by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Washington Irving, Lydia Sigourney, Samuel Griswold Goodrich, and William Gilmore Simms, and is edited by "Miss Leslie." BAL 16126. A very good copy. Octavo, measuring 6 x 3.75 inches: x, [3], 18-292. Full crimson publisher's morocco signed… Read More

Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1860. First edition, mixed issue, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's expatriate romance, inspired by his encounter with the Faun of Praxiteles in Rome. The novel follows three American artists in Italy who become entangled with the enigmatic Donatello, Count of Monte Beni: "There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him outside of rules." This copy accords, in collation and pagination, with Blanck's first printing. First issue points: the preface precedes the table of contents in Volume I; "on" is uncorrected to "for" on page 225, line 22, of Volume I; no "Conclusion" in Volume II. Second issue points: page ix of Volume I and page 197 of Volume II unsigned. Second state of the publisher's catalog, dated March 1860. BAL 7621. A very good copy of a Gothic classic. Two volumes, measuring 7 x 4.5 inches: xiv, 15-283, [5], 16; 284, [4]. Original full brown ribbed cloth ruled and decorated in blind, spines lettered in gilt, reddish-brown coated endpapers. Publisher's… Read More

London: Printed for Lackington, Allen, and Co. Finsbury Square; and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster Row; Reprinted for Robert Triphook, St. James's Street, by Harding and Wright, St. John's Square, 1815. Deluxe large-paper reissues of two classic sixteenth-century source texts, the inspiration for some of the most important Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Featuring chapters by a number of English poets, Mirror for Magistrates was at first suppressed by the Lord Chancellor in 1555, then published under Elizabeth in 1559, and expanded by new contributors over the decades to come. The anthology offers pointed verse portraits of historic rulers, good and bad, with an eye to instructing those in power; Philip Sidney, in his Defence of Poesy, recommends "Mirrour of Magistrates meetly furnished of beautiful parts." The chapter on "Queene Cordila" served as a key source for Shakespeare's King Lear: "I must assay your friendly faithes to prove: / My daughters, tell mee how you doe mee… Read More

No place, 1923. Original illustration, published on the cover of the French magazine Nos Loisirs, December 1, 1923. An illustrated Sunday supplement to the daily newspaper Le Petit Parisien, Nos Loisirs (Our Leisure Time) was published between 1906 and 1940, with a break during World War I. This idyllic family scene is representative of the imagery of Nos Loisirs after 1920, when it adopted the subtitle "Revue de la Femme et du Foyer" in a post-war turn to domesticity. The interior's vibrant colors and patterns, its curvilinear couch and enameled metallic table, all display "le style moderne." In addition to good design, the importance of literature in the home is reflected in the stylish mother, affectionately cuddled with her children beside a prominently displayed book table, while her daughter peruses what may be a copy of Le Petit Parisien. Little is known of the illustrator who signed as "Djoz;" the René Malevy to whom the illustration is inscribed was likely the editor of the 1920s French… Read More

New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1956. First edition of this midcentury anthology, containing the first appearance of film critic Pauline Kael's manifesto "Movies, the Desperate Art." Published while Kael was struggling to manage a two-screen art house in Berkeley, this essay predates her hiring at The New Yorker by a dozen years. The concerns that dominate Kael's later criticism are already evident in this early salvo: her contempt for bland, bloated studio productions; her attraction to "individual creative responsibility" in directors and actors; her distrust of overtly moralizing and edifying pictures; and her celebration of the movies as "an extraordinary education of the senses." Most notably, she insists on taking the movies seriously, however "desperate" that art may be: "Object to the Hollywood film and you're an intellectual snob, object to the avant-garde films and you're a Philistine. But, while in Hollywood, one must often be a snob; in avant-garde circles one must often be a… 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: Grove Press, 1957. First American edition of Samuel Beckett's first novel, originally published in London in 1938. Although best remembered for his groundbreaking work for the stage, Beckett first developed his bleakly comic vision of the human experience in his fiction: "Murphy never wore a hat, the memories it awoke of the caul were too poignant, especially when he had to take it off." This first American edition was published by Barney Rosset's Grove Press shortly after the American premiere of Waiting for Godot, in a dust jacket designed by painter Francine Felsenthal. A near-fine copy. Single volume, measuring 8 x 5.5 inches: [4], 282, [2]. Original cream textured cloth, spine lettered in brown, original unclipped pictorial dust jacket printed in black and grey. Grove Press rubber stamp to copyright page. Spine and edges of jacket toned, with 2.5-inch split at lower flap fold; edges of cloth boards toned.