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The Manhattan Rare Book Company
Specializing in the beautiful, important, and very hard to find.
Membership(s): ABAA, ILAB
Dickinson, Emily Poems by Emily Dickinson Second Series
$11,000.00
”I’m nobody! Who are you?”
FIRST EDITION, one of only 960 copies printed. A beautiful copy.
When Emily Dickinson died in 1886, very few people knew of the existence of her poetry. After her death, however, her sister Lavinia discovered a box of manuscript poems by Dickinson and immediately recognized their value. Determined that the public should not be deprived of Dickinson’s poetry, Lavinia enlisted the help of her sister’s friends, the literary scholar Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd (her brother’s mistress) to edit and publish the poems.
The first volume, Poems, appeared in 1890 in an extremely limited run of only 500 copies. It was received favorably, encouraging Higginson and Todd to prepare more works for publication. As Todd explains in the Preface to this, the first edition of the “Second Series” of poems:
“The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson’s poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes,—life and love and death. That ‘irresistible needle-touch,’ as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling power. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to form with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties.”
Poems: Second Series was published in November 1891, a year after the first volume. It had a print run of 960, still very limited, but nearly double that of Poems.
It contains 166 poems, including many of her most famous, such as “I’m nobody! Who are you?”, “Wild nights! Wild nights!”, “Hope is the thing with feathers”, and many, many others. A third volume (Poems: Third Series) followed in 1896.
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891. Octavo, original decorated olive cloth; custom chemise and slipcase. Note: There were two bindings for the first edition, first printing (this one, in olive decorated cloth, and one in two-tone cloth, no priority established). Binding with only the slightest wear; text nearly immaculate. An outstanding copy – the finest we’ve handled – of a book particularly prone to wear.
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Boardinghouse Culture
Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809–1894) The Autocrat Of The Breakfast-Table [Fine Binding, H M Brock Illustrations, Temple Classics Era, Gift Book Leather] A turn of the century ‘breakfast table’ classic dressed like a jewel box, all gilt flowers and marbled panels.
$225.00A handsome 1902 illustrated edition of Holmes’s famous conversational essays, a book that reads like a series of bright table-talk performances, witty, humane, and sharply observed. This Dent and Houghton Mifflin issue is strengthened by H M Brock’s line drawings and offered here in an eye-catching leather binding with bold marbled inlays, the sort of small-format book that was meant to be handled, gifted, and kept. Physical description: Leather binding in green, with gilt ruled frame and gilt floral tools to spine compartments, large marbled inlay panels to front and rear boards framed by gilt rules, marbled endpapers, tope edge gilt, illustrated throughout by H M Brock, printed title page states London, J M Dent & Co, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin & Co, dated 1902, text pagination reported as xxi, [1] 2-318 pp for this illustrated Dent issue, small format at approximately 7.5 × 4.5 in Condition statement: The bindings are tight and square, text is clean, light, even age-toning, modest shelf handling wear, gilt remains bright on the spine, marbled endpapers and board inlays present well, 1902 illustrated Dent and Houghton Mifflin issue Holmes frames the book as a series of morning conversations led by an ‘autocrat’ at the boarding-house table, then uses that setup to range widely, personality, education, medicine, literature, religion, reform, habits of mind, and the small vanities that make people both ridiculous and lovable. The voice is quick and companionable, closer to a brilliant magazine column than a formal essay, with sudden turns into tenderness and then back to satire. Brock’s illustrations reinforce the social comedy, giving the reader faces and gestures for the scenes Holmes keeps tossing across the table Contextual or historical significanceHolmes helped define a distinctly American mode of public intellectual writing for the mid 19th century, playful, moral without being heavy, and skeptical of fashionable certainty. This 1902 illustrated issue reflects the long afterlife of the book as a classic of reading culture, revived for gift and library shelves in a compact, decorative format, no major film tie-in applies Subjects: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, 19th century American essays, Boardinghouse culture, Conversation and manners, Satire, Boston intellectual history, Illustrated books, Fine bindings, H M Brock, Genres, American Literature, Essays, Humor, Social Commentary.
Offered for Sale by: Blind Horse Books [ABAA] -
A reflective, non-sentimental meditation on belief
Porter, Katharine Anne (1890–1980) A Christmas Story Author SIGNED – Drawings by Ben Shahn (1898–1969)
$450.00New York: Delacorte Press, 1967. Limited Edition. Hardcover in a slipcase. The design and production place this squarely within the tradition of American literary livre d’artiste projects of the postwar period, pairing a canonical author with a major modern artist in a deliberately limited format. Octavo, green cloth in matching slipcase. Limited to 500 numbered copies, this being no. 306 and signed by Katherine Anne Porter on the limitation page (Ben Shahn’s name in facsimile). Designed by Ben Shahn, with a special frontispiece drawing and additional illustrations throughout. Condition: The bindings are tight and square. Text is clean; light, even age-toning. Slipcase shows minimal handling. Signed limitation page present and complete. Originally published in Mademoiselle, A Christmas Story is a reflective, non-sentimental meditation on belief, innocence, and moral inheritance, written late in Porter’s career and widely regarded as one of her most affecting shorter works. Shahn’s linear, symbolic drawings—angels, floral fields, architectural motifs—complement the text with restraint and gravity, aligning the book with mid-century fine-press sensibilities rather than commercial illustration. Historical Context:Katharine Anne Porter is a central figure of American modernism, best known for Ship of Fools and her finely wrought short fiction. This late work reflects her long-standing preoccupation with moral clarity and mythic structures. Ben Shahn, a leading figure in American social realism, brings a spare, emblematic visual language that elevates the book beyond holiday literature into the realm of serious artistic collaboration Subjects: Katharine Anne Porter, Ben Shahn, Signed Limited Editions, Mid-Century American Book Design, Literary Illustration, Christmas Literature, American Modernist Prose, Livre d’Artiste Tradition, American Literature, Modernism, Fine Press, Artist-Illustrated Books
Offered for Sale by: Blind Horse Books [ABAA] -
Signed ltd ed #18/100 of Lewis' suppressed satire
Lewis, Wyndham; Allen, Walton; Ayrton, Michael The Roaring Queen
$280.88 *
* estimated currency conversionSecker and Warburg, 1973. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Signed Limited Edition #18/100. VG 1973 slipcased special edition issued by Secker and Warburg, with signed etching of Lewis by Michael Ayrton. Facing this is the limitation notice, further signed by Mrs Wyndham Lewis, Walton Allen and Michael Ayrton. Slipcase a little warped at top of spine, a little rubbing to case and previous shop label to rear of slipcase, otherwise VG bright and unmarked. Scarce. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 2kg. Category: Fiction; Signed by person(s) connected with book. ISBN: 0436247151. ISBN/EAN: 9780436247156. Inventory No: 097237. Collectable – Very Good Condition. Item #097237 ISBN: 0436247151
Offered for Sale by: 84 Charing Cross Rare Books -
A FIRST EDITION IN DJ OF BALDWIN'S MASTERPIECE
Baldwin, James ANOTHER COUNTRY
$275.00New York: Dial Press, 1962. . Hardcover first edition – A powerful novel set in New York City from Harlem to Greenwich Village – considered Baldwin’s masterpiece. 436 pp. Condition: Very good to near fine in dark gray boards with white lettering in a fair only dustjacket with several small chips, especially at the ends of the spine, splitting along the front fold of dj flap with inconspicuous repair to interior. Original price of 5.95 on dj flap.
Offered for Sale by: Bookfever.com
