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Our monthly newsletter will alert you to new B & B Rare Books catalogues, upcoming fairs, special sales, and book collecting news.
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OCTOBER 2018
* Halloween Party at B & B *
* Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair *
* New Arrivals *
* Custom Book Boxes for the Holidays * |
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October 31 - Halloween Party at B & B!
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| A holiday that dates back thousands of years to the Celtic festival Samhain and All Hallows Eve, the modern Halloween has become a celebration of costumes and the macabre... Celebrate by visiting B & B on Wednesday, October 31st - we will have candy and adult beverages. Come in your costume - our theme this year is Animals in Literature! |
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November 16-18 - Boston Antiquarian Book Fair
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Join us next month in Boston, Massachusetts for the 42nd annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. On Sunday afternoon, Josh & Sunday will be appraising books at the Discovery Day event!
Show dates & times
Friday - Nov. 16th, 5pm-9pm (Preview)
Saturday - Nov. 17th, 12pm-7pm
Sunday - Nov. 18th, 12pm-5pm Show location
Hynes Convention Center
900 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02115
Booth #118 Admission is free on Saturday and Sunday! For a complimentary ticket to the preview on Friday, please call or email. Hope to see you there!
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[Defoe, Daniel]. A View of the Invisible World, or, General History of Apparitions.
First edition thus, contemporary brown paneled sheep.
A View of the Invisible World is a collection of anecdotes detailing various supernatural experiences, compiled by the author Daniel Defoe, who is most best known for his book Robinson Crusoe. This collection, published after Defoe's death in 1731, is attributed to the author as a later edition of his earlier work, Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, although its contents are distinct from the essay.
$2,500 |
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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles.
London: George Newnes, 1902. First edition, first printing.
The most popular of the Holmes canon, The Hound of the Baskervilles purports to be an episode earlier in the detective's career, prior in chronology to "The Final Problem." The story tells of a murder mystery at the Baskerville Hall country house that involves the Baskerville family's superstition surrounding a hellhound myth.
$3,000 |
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"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..."
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Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca.
London: Victor Gollancz Limited, 1938. First edition, first printing. In the rare original dust jacket.
Rebecca is a suspenseful, haunting novel about a mysterious first wife whose memory lives on in her husband's home, much to the horror of his new wife. The novel was the basis for the 1940 Academy Award-winnig psychological thriller by Alfred Hitchcock of the same name.
$6,000 |
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Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. First edition, first printing.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire tells the story of Harry and his friends in their fourth year at Hogwarts as they experience the Triwizard Tournament, an interscholastic competition between the three main wizarding academies in which Harry is erroneously entered as a superfluous fourth contestant.
$100
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Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
New York: Scholastic Press, 1999. First American edition, tenth printing.
In his third year at Hogwarts, Harry and his friends search for the villainous outlaw Sirius Black after his escape from the wizard prison Azkaban. Unlike the first two books in the series, The Prisoner of Azkaban does not end with a cut-and-dry triumph over evil, but rather begins to pose the question of how media portals and popular perception affect whether someone is considered good or bad- a notion that will reoccur and becoming increasingly central to the story line as the series progresses.
$50 |
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Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are. First edition, first printing, in the first issue dust jacket. Inscribed by the author to the book's designer, Janet Anderson.
Initially criticized for its dark undertones, Where the Wild Things Are is Maurice Sendak's iconic children's book about a young boy who is sent to bed without supper and imagines himself in a fantasy jungle world where he is the king of the ferocious "wild things." Sendak's keen ability to connect with the emotions and dreams experienced by children worldwide, paired with his exquisite illustrations, make this book a timeless classic.
$12,500
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Gorey, Edward. The Dwindling Party.
First edition, first printing. Inscribed by the author. A fine copy.
Gorey explores the parameters of the book's form in The Dwindling Party. The illustrations pop-up to be three-dimensional, physically bringing the story off of the pages.
$500 |
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Lear, Edward; and Gorey, Edward (illustrator). The Dong with a Luminous Nose.
First edition, in the original dust jacket. A fine copy.
The Dong with a Luminous Nose is a nonsense poem by Edward Lear about the lovestruck Dong who searches for his Jumbly Girl with a homemade lantern attached to his nose. Gorey's endearing illustrations add a fantastical and spooky element to the story, expanding on Lear's rhyming verse to impart upon readers a melancholy love story that appeals to adults and children alike.
$100 |
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King, Stephen. Blockade Billy. Baltimore: Cemetery Dacne Publications, 2010. First edition, first printing.
In this novella, King, a devout Boston Red Sox fan, combines his affinities for baseball and macabre literature to tell the story of the fictional baseball player William "Blockade Billy" Blakely, who played catcher for the New Jersey Titans in 1957. Narrated by the Titans' retired third base coach "Granny" Grantham, Blockade Billy tells how Blakely brought the Titans a new wave of good fortune after joining the team, but, like most figures in King's novels, Blakely carries a dark secret. Although, as Richard Sandomir notes in his New York Times Review, "Billy's darkness is not as frightening as many of King's characters," it ultimately poses a threat to the wellbeing of those around him.
$100
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Mason, A. E. W. At the Villa Rose.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910. First American edition.
Originally published in The Strand Magazine, At the Villa Rose is a detective novel that introduces Mason's fictional protagonist Inspector Gabriel Hanaud. Considered by the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection to be the "first official policeman of importance in twentieth century detective fiction," Hanaud is a French detective who uses logic and psychology to solve crime.
$80 |
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Irving, Washington; and Rackham, Arthur (illustrator). Rip Van Winkle.
London: Heinemann, 1905. Signed with an original hand-drawn illustration by Arthur Rackham. First edition, second impression.
Originally published in 1819, Rip Van Winkle is a short story about a man living in the Catskill Mountain range in the years before the onset of the American Revolution. While walking his dog in the woods one day, Van Winkle meets some ghosts of the original Dutch settlers of New York and, after drinking some of their spirits, he falls into an enchanted sleep. He wakes up an elderly man in a changed society; during his sleep, the American colonies won their independence from England and his children matured into adulthood.
$2,750 |
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James, Henry. The Two Magics.
London: Heinemann, 1898. First edition, second impression, colonial issue.
The Two Magics collects two pieces of James' short fiction: the novella "The Turn of the Screw" and the short story "Covering End." Now a classic and one of James' best known tales, "The Turn of the Screw" is a gothic ghost story that tells of a governess' experience caring for two children who are haunted by the ghosts of their past caretakers.
$1,500 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Lady in the Lake.
New York: Knopf, 1943. First edition, first printing. In the original dust jacket.
The Lady in the Lake takes Detective Philip Marlowe out of Los Angeles, his usual stomping grounds, to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy businessman's estranged wife Crystal. The investigation quickly becomes complicated when the man Crystal claimed to have run off with is also unaware of her whereabouts, and Chandler adds stolen identities, police corruption, and a shootout with American sentries to further twist the plot.
$6,000 |
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Stoker, Bram; and Irving, Henry. Autograph Letters Signed by the author of Dracula.
New York: 1893. Three letters signed by Stoker and two signed by Irving.
Although now well-known for his 1897 novel Dracula, the Irish author Bram Stoker first made a name for himself during his lifetime by working as the personal assistant and business manager to Henry Irving, an English stage actor. Scholars have agreed that the titular character in Stoker's Gothic horror novel was largely inspired by Irving, whose manipulative personality and calculated, courteous mannerisms inspired both fear and awe in his assistant when he was first beginning to write.
$3,500 |
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Fleming, Ian. Thunderball.
London: Jonathan Cape, 1962. First edition, first impression. Price-clipped dust jacket.
Thunderball is the first of Fleming's novels to involve the notorious villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of the secret spy organization SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion). In this novel, Bond is in the Bahamas at a health clinic when SPECTRE steals two atomic bombs.
$850 |
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Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
London: Chapman and Hall, 1870. First edition in the original monthly parts.
The story is named after the titular character Edwin Drood, although the text largely focuses on his uncle John Jasper, an opium addict and choir master who is romantically interested in his nephew's fiancé. In the story, Drood disappears under mysterious circumstances, and, due to Dicken's premature death at 58, the mystery is never resolved. Accordingly, many of the novel's fans speculate as to whether or not Drood is dead and, if so, who killed him. Many authors have attempted to resolve the plot, including Dickens' son Charley in 1873 and Thomas James, a Vermont-based printer and con artist who claimed to have channeled the deceased Dickens and learned his intended ending for the novel.
$500 |
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Kerouac, Jack. Doctor Sax.
New York: Grove Press, 1959. First edition, first printing.
Throughout Doctor Sax, Kerouac mixes his childhood memories with his youthful fantasies, the two of which have become inextricably intertwined. The central fantasy centers on the mythical Great World Snake, a villainous, slumbering creature who is predicted to devour the whole world upon its awakening. Similarly, the fictional Doctor Sax, a dark yet friendly entity who is hallmarked by his black cape, black slouch hat, and eerie laughter, spends his days preparing a poison that will destroy the snake should it ever awake.
$175 |
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Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)
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| An American poet and playwright, Millay first became known to the literary world at the age of nineteen when she published "Renascence," a poem that remains one of her most famous works. Indicative of her skill as a lyric poet, "Renascence" was the first of what would become a large body of poetry and prose. Millay was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, and has been acclaimed for her feminist activist and progressive political stance, which is evident throughout her work. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Make Bright the Arrows.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1940. First edition.
Make Bright the Arrows is one of Millay's most political works, and one of her most poorly received, as it was largely denounced as anti-fascist propaganda. Lamenting the destruction caused by the attacks in Europe during the first world war, her writing discusses the experience of wartime on the home front through the eyes of a female persona, relying on emotions and allegory to convey the evils of the war.
$25 |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Conversation at Midnight.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1937. First edition.
Conversation at Midnight is a work of dramatic verse that falls somewhere in the space between a narrative poem and a theatrical drama. The text features the conversations of seven distinguished men who are having after-dinner discussions in a comfortable dining room in New York City.
$25
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1923 [1924]. First edition, third printing.
The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems is a collection of sixty-eight of Millay's poems, many of which were previously unpublished in book form. Specifically, this volume includes "My Heart, Being Hungry," "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver," "Memory of Cape Cod," and "A Visit to the Asylum," in addition to nearly forty untitled sonnets.
$20
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1928. First edition, first printing.
Published five years after she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, The Buck in the Snow is a collection of Millay's verse that includes "The Bobolink," "Northern April," "Being Young and Green," "Wine From These Grapes," "Evening on Lesbos," "Dirge without Music," and "On First Having Heard the Skylark," among others.
$25
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Aria da Capo, A Play in One Act.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, [1920]. Early edition.
Aria Da Capo is a one-act verse play written in three parts and named for the style of the traditional aria da capo, a musical form in which the first section is repeated as the third and final section. This play within a play juxtaposes two classical theatrical forms, the harlequinade and the pastoral scene, in a political allegory that criticizes the greed and inhumanity that Millay observed during the first world war.
$15
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Renascence, and Other Poems.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, [1917]. Early edition.
Published the same year she received her undergraduate degree from Vassar, Renascence is Millay's first collection of poetry and includes "God's World," "The Suicide," "The Dream," and "Afternoon on a Hill" in addition to the eponymous "Renascence." Written when she was only nineteen, "Renascence" is hailed as both one of Millay's finest poems and the verse that won her recognition in the poetry world.
$25
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Fatal Interview, Sonnets.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1931. First edition, first printing.
In this collection of 52 sonnets, Millay conveys the modern complexities that accompany being in love, while relying on the traditional format of the sonnet. Her sonnets draw upon inspiration from her own life, particularly her relationship with the editor and poet George Dillon, whose personal copy of Fatal Interview was allegedly found to contain a note written by Millay that read, "These are all for you, my darling."
$25 |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Wine from these Grapes.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1934. Second printing.
Wine from These Grapes is a collection of poetry that delves into themes of death and passion, showing a more mournful side of Millay's characteristic lyrical style. The title poem describes Millay's persona crushing grapes into wine as she awaits her death: "Death, fumbling to uncover / My body in his bed, / Shall know / There has been one /Before him."
$15
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. The King’s Henchman, A Play in Three Acts.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1927. Early edition.
The King's Henchman is a story inspired by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a set of manuscripts written in the ninth century that detail the history of the Anglo-Saxons in England. Millay's story tells of the travels of Aethelwold, a henchman to the fictional king of England, who falls in love with the woman that the king is supposed to marry and finally kills himself out of guilt for denying them both a marriage to each other.
$20
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. The Lamp and the Bell, A Drama in Five Acts.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, [1921]. Early edition.
Millay wrote The Lamp and the Bell for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Vassar College Alumni Association and dedicated the play to fellow members of the Class of 1917. The play was performed at Vassar in June 1921 and featured an all-female cast of Vassar alumnae playing both male and female roles.
$20
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Huntsman, What Quarry?
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1939. First edition.
Huntsman, What Quarry? is a collection of Millay's lyric poetry that includes "The Princess Recalls Her Own Adventure," "The Ballad of Chaldon Down," "To Say That We Saw Spain Die," "Not So Far as the Forest," and "To a Calvinist in Bali," among others.
$20
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. The Murder of Lidice.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, [1942]. Fourth edition.
Written following the Nazi-led destruction of the Czechoslovakian village of Lidice during World War II, this book-length elegy celebrates the town for what it once was and laments the devastation caused by the 1942 massacre of the village’s residents. The massacre, initiated in response to the assassination of a Nazi leader, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of men, women, and children through mass execution in the village and in Nazi death camps. Millay’s book-length poem was one of several international responses to the massacre that honored the town of Lidice. First published in Life Magazine, the poem went on to be broadcast widely over the radio and sold as its own book by Harper & Brothers publishers.
$25
Additional copies available here. |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Three Plays.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1926. First edition, first printing.
This volume consists of three of Millay’s previously published plays, Two Slatterns and a King, The Lamp and the Bell, and Aria da Capo. All verse dramas, the plays show Millay’s range of topics, with The Lamp and the Bell drawing on her feminist ideals and focusing on relationships between women and Aria da Capo representing her political ideologies.
$35 |
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Second April.
New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1921. Third edition.
Second April is a collection of Millay's early poetry that includes "The Poet and His Book," "Spring," "Ode to Silence," "The Bean-Stalk," "City Trees," and "The Blue-Flag in the Bog," among others. This collection was first published by Mitchell Kennerley in 1921 before being published by Harper in 1925. Notably, Second April is indicative of Millay's changing focus from the "gaiety and impudence" of Renascence to a "delicate melancholy" that would crystalize themselves in her later verse.
$25
Additional copies available here. |
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Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923. First edition, first printing.
The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's second novel and is considered his most important work. The text tells the story of American and British expatriates who travel to the Festival of San Fermínin in Pamplona, Spain. The plot, which is based on Hemingway's own experience at the Festival of San Fermínin with literary expatriates then living in Paris, unites Hemingway's main interests that continue to appear in his subsequent novels.
$1,750 |
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Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929. First edition, second printing.
Set in Italy during World War I, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of a romance between the protagonist Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse tending to wounded soldiers. Unlike many of the other war novels by contemporary writers, A Farewell to Arms addresses not only the aftermath of WWI but the events of the war itself, specifically the Italian Front around the Battle of Caporetto of Autumn 1917.
$300 |
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Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963. First edition, first printing.
A Moveable Feast is Hemingway's posthumously published memoir about his life in Paris between the years of 1921-1926. During this time period, young Hemingway developed his writing skills and socialized with contemporary creative minds, including James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miró, among others. In reaction to the social and emotional implications of World War I, many young writers and artists settled in Paris, which was not only the literary center of the world in the early 20th century but also attractive for its general openness to experimentation and innovation.
$300 |
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Hemingway, Ernest. Number One of The Library of Living Poetry: The Suppressed Poems of Ernest Hemingway, Originally Published in Paris.
No place: no publisher, no date [circa 1960]. [24] pp. White paper wrappers. Variant issue of the second pirated edition described in Hanneman (A26a), with "Suppressed" for "Collected" in the title.
This collection of Ernest Hemingway's short verse includes six miscellaneous poems originally published in literary journals like the German Der Querschnitt, along with the ten first published in Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923), along with six miscellaneous poems, many of which were first published in Der Querschnitt, a German literary journal.
$50 |
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[Hemingway, Ernest]; Greene, Philip. To Have and Have Another.
New York: Perigee, 2012. First edition, third printing. Inscribed by the author and Ernest Hemingway's son and grandson.
To Have and Have Another is a book of cocktail recipes inspired by Ernest Hemingway's life and works. Written by the cocktail connoisseur Philip Greene, one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, the book delves into the specifics of cocktails that Hemingway and his characters enjoyed.
$300 |
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Martin, Kingsley. Thomas Paine.
London: Fabian Biographical Series No. 10, 1925. First edition. Gray paper wrappers.
Thomas Paine, a philosopher, political theorist, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, is best known for promoting his Enlightenment-era theories on human rights and political rebellion. His two most famous works were Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776), both of which were politically charged pamphlets intended to spur revolutionary ideas among Americans during the fight for independence from the British.
$25 |
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Beethoven, Ludwig van. Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics: Sonatas for Pianoforte Solo.
New York: G. Schirmer, 1894. Two volumes. Later edition. With a short biography of the composer by Theo Baker. Finely bound in three-quarter red morocco.
Beethoven, a German composer, is recognized as one of the major driving forces of Romanticism in music, and completed much of his work during the time of transition between the Classical and Romantic eras. Today, his works are some of the most widely performed amongst classical musicians.
$300 |
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Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics: Nineteen Sonatas for the Piano.
New York: G. Schirmer, 1894. Later edition. With a short biography of the composer by Philip Hale. Finely bound in three-quarter red morocco.
This volume contains the musical notation for Mozart's nineteen sonatas for solo piano, composed between 1774 and 1789. A musical prodigy throughout his childhood, Mozart began writing music around age five and travelled internationally with his family, performing in cities around the world. He is regarded as one of the most prolific composers of the classical period, and his work spanned across various forms, including sonatas, symphonies, concertos, and operas.
$250 |
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Costello, Louisa Stewart. Specimens of the Early Poetry of France, From the Time of the Troubadours and Trouveres to the Reign of Henri Quatre.
London: William Pickering, 1835. First edition. Illustrated with three hand-colored plates and a frontispiece. Finely bound by Whitman Bennett in full blue morocco.
This collection of early French poetry explores the range of writing styles that, according to the editor, are underrepresented in contemporary English discussions of poetry. The poems span from the 12th century, during the medieval period, through to the 16th century, when King Henry IV was in power.
$250 |
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B & B continues to offer custom box-making services for any book in your collection. Whether you have a design in mind or would like a recommendation, we'd be happy to consult with you. Every box is unique. To receive a custom box before Dec. 25th, please contact us by November 2nd. We look forward to collaborating with you!
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Several options are available, from traditional cloth to detailed designs in leather. We can even stamp your name or a special gift message. Prices start at $225 and the boxes are made to the specific measurements of your copy. Not only do they protect and prolong the lifespan of a rare book, but they add a personal touch that will stay with it forever.
If you'd like to inquire about a box, please call, email, or visit us in the gallery by Friday, November 2nd.
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As always, visit our gallery in the Gramercy/Flatiron neighborhood in Downtown Manhattan.
Our gallery hours are Monday-Friday 12-7pm, and by appointment.
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