Search Results: Titles starting with S from Neil Pearson Rare Books

London: Faber, 1971. 8vo, pp. 178. Original pale yellow boards, lettered in gilt on spine. Small, unobtrusive stain and very slight discoloration to rear panel, otherwise a fine copy. First edition. Three short novels: The Scorpion God; Clonk Clonk; and Envoy Extraordinary. Gekoski and Grogan 11a. Gekoski and Grogan 11a.

London: Faber, 1976. 8vo, pp. 75. Original turquoise, lettered in silver to spine. Illustrated dustwrapper. A fine copy in a fine dustwrapper. Dustwrapper design by Leonard Baskin. First edition. A fine copy.

New York: Atheneum, 1973. 8vo, pp. 167. Original pale blue boards, lettered in dark blue on front panel and spine. A fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper with just the lightest of edgewear. First US edition. Fantasy coming-of-age novel, Cooper's first after completing The Dark Is Rising series for which she is best known.

Paris: The Olympia Press, 1962. 8vo, pp.188. Original green stiff wrappers, lettered in black. A little cocked, a little light bumping to corners, otherwise a near fine, unread copy with no creasing to spine. First edition, second issue. Originally written in French and, according to its author, translated into English by a defrocked priest from New Zealand, this free -- very free -- retelling of the Crusoe story ran into immediate legal trouble on its first appearance for Olympia in 1955. This second issue (as scarce as the first) appeared a year before the first French edition, where it was published as part of the Circle du Livre Precieux series. Kearney 5.13.2

Paris: Olympia Press, 1957. 12mo, pp. 181. Original green stiff paper wrappers, printed in black on front and rear panel and spine. Printed price on rear panel inked out, very light edgewear, but a near fine, unread copy. First edition, suppressed by the French authorities in 1959. No. 45 in the Traveller's Companion series. Robert Desmond (Thompson) was one of the more prolific Olympia authors, with eight titles to his credit. Kearney: 5.45.1

New York: William Morrow, 1967. 8vo, pp. 318. Original orange quarter boards, lettered in black and red to white spine. Yellow endpapers, top edge black. Illustrated dust jacket, author's photographic portrait to rear flap. Small owner's signature and mark to front free endpaper otherwise a fine, unread copy in a fine dust jacket. First edition of the author's second novel, and a fine, unread example. HUBIN, p. 402

Bridgend: Poetry Wales Press, 1983. 8vo, pp. 187. Original green boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Dustwrapper. A little spotting to top edge, otherwise a fine, unread copy. First edition. With an introduction by Ned Thomas. A fine copy.

London: Hopwood & Crew, 1904. 4to, pp. 16. Original paper wrappers, printed in black. A little age-toned and rubbed, and with dog-earing to the front lower corners (common in scores, the pages of which need to be turned quickly when being used). A very well-preserved copy. First edition. PRODUCER FRANK CURZON'S COPY, WITH HIS OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE TO FRONT WRAPPER. The musical Sergeant Brue opened at the Strand Theatre in London on 10 December 1904 and ran for a highly respectable 260 performances, and for a further 152 performances when it opened at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York the following year. It was produced by Frank Curzon (whose copy this was), and featured P.G. Wodehouse's first ever show lyric, for the song Put Me In My Little Cell. Wodehouse was in the audience on the show's opening night in London. His lyric was a big hit with the audience, and Wodehouse went to the second performance too, to watch it be a hit all over again. He wrote in his diary: 'Encored… Read More

London: Herbert Jenkins, 1962. 8vo, pp. 192. Original red boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Illustrated dustwrapper. Bookplate to front pastedown, otherwise a fine, unread copy in a very near fine dustwrapper with just the slightest of wear to head of spine. First UK edition, preceded by the US edition of October 1961. An extremely nice copy. McIlvaine A-85b

New York: Joe Madden, 1939. 8vo, pp. 136. Original orange boards, lettered in blue on front panel and spine. A fine, tight copy, bookplate to front pastedown, in a near fine dustwrapper, entirely unfaded and unrestored, with two tiny closed tears. Illustrated by John Rupe. First edition, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ON FFEP: 'Most Sincerely, Joe Madden'. (A little smudging to 'Joe'). Anecdotage from a 1930s brawling barman, complete with period racism. Dodgy book, but a fabulous copy.

London: Bloomsbury 1989. 8vo, pp. 167. Original dark blue boards lettered in gold, blue silk bookmark. A near fine copy in a dustwrapper with the slightest of wear to top edge. First edition. The fourth novel by the author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

New York: Random House, 1955. 8vo, pp. 84. Original three-quarter black boards, lettered in grey to spine. A near fine copy in very good, price-clipped dustwrapper with a single closed tear to top of front panel at spine. First edition, preceding the first UK edition published later the same year. Bloomfield and Mendelson A-35

Liverpool: Charles Birchall, N.d. [c.1930]. 8vo, pp. 111. 3 folding maps to rear, fold-out sidereal chart bound in text. Author's photographic frontispiece. Patterned endpapers. Original beige illustrated boards. Closed tear to leading edge of first map, boards darkened, and with wear to spine ends. Illustrations by D.W. Sorrell. Photographic plates throughout. First edition, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR: 'To my old shipmate "Annan", RMS "Franconia" New York 27/5/26 JPG Bisset'. Lt. Commander Sir James Bisset [1883-1967] was a British merchant sea captain who spent most of his career with the Cunard shipping line. In 1912, he was second officer on Cunard's RMS Carpathia when it responded to distress calls from RMS Titanic, taking 703 survivors aboard and taking them to New York. His manual Lifeboat Efficiency [1924] was the British Merchant Marine's house text on the subject until the Second World War; this title, a more general text, was published around 1930 and distributed to interested passengers… Read More

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. 8vo, pp. 200. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Illustrated dust jacket, author's photographic portrait to rear flap. Small scuff to lower inside edge of front board, otherwise a fine, unread copy in a fine dust jacket. First edition of Pelecanos's third novel, and a fine, unread example.

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910. 8vo, pp. 401, 6pp. advertisements bound in at rear. Original dark green illustrated boards, lettered in whit to front panel and spine. Tissue guard to frontispiece. A tightly bound, near fine copy with just a little bumping to spine ends. Colour frontispiece and text illustrations by C. Coles Phillips and Reginal Birch. First edition. Meredith Nicholson [1866-1947] was a diplomat and leading light of the US Democratic Party, who served as his party's representative in three South American countries. Before embarking on his political career he wrote some thirty novels in a variety of genres; this is a light comedy with the gentlest whiff of mystery (with the biggest mystery being how it got itself listed in Hubin's bibliography of crime fiction). HUBIN, p. 306

London: Viking: 1994. 8vo, pp. 276. Original grey boards lettered in gilt on spine. A fine copy in fine dustwrapper.

London: N.p., 1953. 4pp. typed legal document, horizontal fold across centre. Some old staining across the lower portion of the document, which is otherwise very well preserved. Legal contract dated 1 December 1953, SIGNED BY ENID BLYTON. The contract is an agreement between Darrell Waters of Darrell Waters Ltd., the company set up by Enid Blyton in 1950 to handle her affairs; a representative of the publishers Latimer House Ltd., and Enid Blyton herself. Under the terms of the contract, Latimer House undertake to pay a royalty of five per cent to Blyton for the publishing rights to My Third Enid Blyton Book, which was eventually published in 1955. A very scarce piece of signed Blyton ephemera.

New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1947. 8vo, pp. 284. Original blue boards, lettered in black to spine. Leading edge uncut. Illustrated dust jacket. Light offsetting to endpapers, but a near fine copy in a very good dust jacket with a small closed tear at spine, some inevitable discoloration to the (white) rear panel, and an area of abrasion to the front. First edition. An Otis Beagle title. (Yes. Otis Beagle.) 'Everything was grist, every avenue of publication was explored. Every type of writing that offered a buck was attempted. Nothing was too low, nothing too cheap. I wrote Sunday School stories, I wrote spicy sex stories, I tried detective stories, sport stories, love stories. I wrote short-shorts and I even wrote a novel.' (Frank Gruber, Brass Knuckles, Sherbourne Press, 1966). The superhumanly prolific Frank Gruber, one of the kings of pulp fiction, was being modest: he wrote more than fifty novels -- as well as sixty-five screenplays, dozens of TV scripts, and many hundreds of… Read More

London: Secker & Warburg, 2005. 8vo, pp.265. Original card wrappers. Very lightly marked here and there, otherwise a fine, unread copy. Uncorrected proof copy, seldom found in such good condition.

Idaho: Caxton, 1936. 8vo, pp. 144. Original grey boards, lettered in black on front panel and spine. A fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper with just a little wear at folds and spine ends. First edition. Murrell Edmunds (1898-1981) was from a distinguished Southern family, and abandoned a legal career to become a writer. A native of Virginia, his outspoken opposition to racial segregation made him unpopular in Lynchburg (the clue may be in the name), and he settled in the more cosmopolitan New Orleans. Edmunds' commitment to equality covered all social groups, as this deeply weird novel-cum-parable demonstrates. A very nice copy in the dustwrapper (on the reverse of which is printed the Caxton list: an intriguing mix of obscure poets and New West Americana).