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March 2019
* Highlights from the New York Antiquarian Book Fair
* New Arrivals (Twain, Steinbeck, Chandler, and others) |
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Josh, Sunday, and Patricia representing B & B in Booth D4
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Thank you to all those who were able to join us last weekend for the 59th annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair, which marked B & B's tenth year as an exhibitor.
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| We had a great show, and were delighted to see some familiar faces, as well as to meet new fellow bibliophiles! If you weren't able to join us at the fair: don't worry, we have some exciting new items available in this newsletter. |
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Both owners of B & B spent part of their Sunday at the fair appraising books for the public. Every year the NYABF features a Discovery Day event, during which anyone with a ticket to the fair can bring a few books to be evaluated by an expert.
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For an in-depth look into Discovery Day, check out this Forbes article by David Seideman, which features Sunday and Josh with some insightful advice on evaluating antiquarian books.
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Voices from RBMS: A Special Collections Roundtable
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On Saturday, Sunday spoke on a panel with three other representatives from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, part of a division of the American Library Association. The only bookseller on the panel, she spoke about the wide range of special collections material B & B has worked with over the years, and how a customer's interests may influence a bookseller's buying and selling strategy. She also fielded questions from the audience about how B & B sources books, and about the obstacles facing women and people of color working in the trade.
The panel was moderated by Diane Dias De Fazio of the NYPL and RBMS. Other panelists included Dr. Jesse Ryan Erickson of the University of Delaware, Peter Kruty of Peter Kruty Editions Brooklyn, and Karin Suni of the Free Library of Philadelphia. |
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Please call or email with any questions about the items listed below, or feel free to order directly through our website.
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Burns, Robert. Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.
Edinburgh: Printed for the author and sold by William Creechn, 1787. First Edinburgh edition, first printing. Contemporary brown marbled calf, professional repair to front hinge. Preceded only by the Kilmarnock edition, issued in a print run of 600 copies in 1786.
Often referred to as the "Stinking" Burns, this second edition is identified by two misprints in the text, including the word "stinking" on p. 263, mistakenly set in place of "skinking," a Scottish word meaning "watery." Notably, Burns' reputation as the national poet of Scotland has its foundations in this collection, which features Scottish peasant life, pastoral landscapes, and local dialects.
$2,200 |
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables.
Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851. First edition. Finely bound by Bayntun.
The House of the Seven Gables is a Gothic novel, inspired by Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll's house with seven gables in Salem, Massachusetts, and his ancestor's involvement in the Salem witch trials. The plot features an archetypal New England family, the Pyncheons, who live in the seven-gabled house, which has been haunted since its construction.
$800 |
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Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1876. First American edition, first issue. A very good copy free of any repairs or restoration, exceedingly rare in this condition.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer story features the episodic adventures of the titular character, a mischievous young boy from Missouri. Considered the archetypal "All-American boy," Tom is a pure-hearted rascal whose trouble-making antics liven his small rural town and its inhabitants. The novel is set in the antebellum South and the dialog of the text features local dialects drawn from Twain's experiences living in the South.
$30,000 |
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Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
New York: Charles L. Webster, 1889. Early edition.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a pseudo companion novel to Twain's highly successful The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876); although both are set in the antebellum South, Tom Sawyer is the tale of a young boy's mischievous adventures, while Huckleberry Finn involves a disenfranchised youth's moral dilemmas about social conflict.
$500 |
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Milne, A. A. (Alan Alexander). Winnie the Pooh.
London: Methuen & Co., 1926. First edition, first printing. Rare in the original dust jacket.
Winnie-the-Pooh is the second in Milne's series of children's books featuring the adventures of the teddy bear character Winnie the Pooh and his friends. Each telling an individual and complete story, the chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh can be read independently of one another.
$4,500 |
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Milne, A. A. (Alan Alexander). The House at Pooh Corner.
London: Methuen & Co., 1928. First edition, first printing.
The House at Pooh Corner is a children's book that comprises the fourth of four volumes in The Pooh Books, Milne's series of children's books featuring the adventures of the teddy bear character Winnie the Pooh and his friends of the Hundred Acre Wood. Notably, this text marks the debut of Pooh's friend Tigger, a tiger who loves to bounce on his tail.
$1,250 |
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[Melville, Herman]; Kent, Rockwell.Moby Dick; Or, The Whale.
New York: Random House, 1930. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent. First illustrated edition. A gorgeous copy, rare in the dust jacket.
One of the great American novels, Moby Dick was originally published in 1851, but was met with little commercial success. In 1926, prolific illustrator and artist Rockwell Kent created the now iconic series of woodcut prints for the book, including the matching covers and dust jacket, helping to accelerate a renewed appreciation of the book in critics and readers alike.
$1,750 |
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Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940. First edition, first printing, in the first state dust jacket.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway's account of the Spanish Civil War, based on his experiences living as a journalist in Spain during the conflict. It tells the story of protagonist Robert Johnson, an American fighting for the republicans during the war. Notably, For Whom the Bell Tolls describes the struggle of the Spanish people without glorifying the war effort.
$1,750 |
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Christie, Agatha. Five Little Pigs.
London: Collins Crime Club, 1942. First edition, first printing.
Five Little Pigs is a work of detective fiction featuring Christie's fictional detective character Hercule Poirot. First published in the United States as Murder in Retrospect and the following year in London in the present format, the story tells of Carla Lemarchant who enlists Poirot's help in having her mother acquitted of a murder conviction from sixteen years earlier.
$1,000 |
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Steinbeck, John. East of Eden.
New York: The Viking Press, 1952. First edition, first printing. Signed and inscribed by Steinbeck in blue ink to front free endpaper: "For -- / with many thanks / for two fine bits / of thorn / John Steinbeck / New York 1953". With some repairs and restoration to backstrip and dust jacket extremities.
East of Eden features the intertwining stories of the Hamilton and Trask families. Considered by the author to be his masterpiece work, East of Eden is a culmination of the major themes and strengths of Steinbeck's other novels: an affinity for nature, the pervasive struggle between good and evil, familial relationships, and American history.
$4,500 |
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Bachelard, Gaston; [Chagall, Marc]. Drawings for the Bible.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1960. Illustrated by Marc Chagall. Text by Gaston Bachelard. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. First American edition, published the same year in Paris by Verve. Professional repairs to spine ends.
Drawings for the Bible is a unique presentation of the Hebrew Bible and a collection of striking and beautiful artwork by a modern master, containing 96 heliogravure (photogravure) reproductions of Chagall's drawings from 1958-1959 "on biblical themes which in general he had not dealt [with] for his illustrations for the Bible reproduced in Verve 33/34." Additionally, this edition has 24 color lithographs that Chagall designed specifically for this volume, including a color pictorial cover.
$3,200 |
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A Collection of Raymond Chandler First Editions
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Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939. First edition, first printing. One of 5,000 copies.
The Big Sleep marks the debut of Chandler's hard-boiled detective character Philip Marlowe. Unlike Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op and Sam Spade, who are widely considered the archetypal hard-boiled detective figures, Marlowe possesses a sensitivity underneath his tough exterior that distinguishes him from similar detective characters in the genre.
$7,500 |
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Chandler, Raymond. Farewell, My Lovely.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940. First edition, first printing. One of 7,500 copies.
Farewell, My Lovely is the second novel to feature Chandler's hard-boiled detective character Philip Marlowe. Notably, it has been adapted into three films: The Falcon Takes Over (1942), Murder, My Sweet (1948), and Farewell, My Lovely (1975). A Haycraft Queen Cornerstone.
$1,750 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The High Window.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942. First edition, first printing.
In The High Window, private investigator Philip Marlowe searches for the wealthy Murdock family's missing rare coin, the Brasher Dubloon. What seems to be a simple case turns into a complicated web of crime and deceit.
$1,750 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Lady in the Lake.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943. First Edition, first printing. Rare in the original dust jacket, free of repair or restoration.
Published on November 1, 1943, 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.
$4,500 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Little Sister.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949. First edition, first printing.
The Little Sister is the fifth detective novel in Chandler's series featuring his protagonist Detective Philip Marlowe. Like many of Chandler's novels, The Little Sister is set in Los Angeles and the novel illuminates much of the day to day life in that city.
$650 |
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Chandler, Raymond. Playback.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958. Uncorrected proof copy.
In this hard-boiled detective novel, Chandler's fictional detective Philip Marlowe is hired to tail a travelling woman, but ultimately must turn on his client, whom he realizes has malicious intent. Although the plot has been critiqued as weaker than the other Marlowe novels, Playback, based on an unused screenplay of the same name, is no less compelling, and has been commended for the beauty of Chandler's writing.
$800 |
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Chandler, Raymond. Playback.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958. First edition, first printing.
Playback is the eighth and final complete detective novel in Chandler's series featuring his protagonist Detective Philip Marlowe, published in the year before the author's death. Unlike many of Chandler's other novels, Playback is not set in Los Angeles, but rather in the fictional town of Esmeralda, California - a representation of the real town of La Jolla, where Chandler lived towards the end of his life.
$150 |
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Chandler, Raymond. Playback.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1958. First American edition, first printing.
Playback is the eighth and final complete detective novel in Chandler's series featuring his protagonist Detective Philip Marlowe, published in the year before the author's death.
$125 |
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Chandler, Raymond. Killer in the Rain.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964. First edition, first printing.
Killer in the Rain is a collection of eight short stories first published in pulp magazines: "Killer in the Rain" (1935), "The Man Who Liked Dogs" (1936), "The Curtain" (1936), "Try the Girl" (1937), "Mandarin's Jade" (November 1937), "Bay City Blues" (1937), "The Lady in the Lake" (1939), and "No Crime in the Mountains" (1941).
$250 |
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Chandler, Raymond. Killer in the Rain.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. First American Edition.
Notably, the stories in Killer in the Rain remained uncollected during Chandler's lifetime at his own request. Most of them predate his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), and are what Chandler referred to as his "cannibalized" stories, as he reworked much of the material to be used in his novels.
$175 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Smell of Fear.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1965. First edition, first printing.
A collection of short stories, The Smell of Fear contains the text of two previously published collections, The Simple Art of Murder (1950) and Trouble is My Business (1950), along with two stories that appear here for the first time in book form, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (1933) and "The Pencil" (1959).
$300 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep.
New York: Avon Book Company, 1942. Early printing, in pictorial paper wrappers.
The Big Sleep, originally published in 1939 and reprinted here as No. 7 of Avon Book Company's Murder Mystery Monthly, marks the debut of Chandler's hard-boiled detective character Philip Marlowe.
$85 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep.
San Francisco: The Arion Press, 1986. Illustrated with original photographs by Lou Stoumen. First Arion Press edition, one of 425 copies. Signed by the photographer. With publisher's poster and prospectus laid in.
The Big Sleep marks the debut of Chandler's hard-boiled detective character Philip Marlowe, as he investigates a case of blackmail serving as a red herring for a more sinister crime.
$1,500 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Raymond Chandler Omnibus.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953. First edition, first printing.
The Raymond Chandler Omnibus is a collection of Chandler's first four novels: The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The High Window (1942), and The Lady in the Lake (1943). Each of the four novels included in this anthology features Detective Philip Marlowe as the main investigator of each story's murder mystery.
$150 |
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Chandler, Raymond. The Second Chandler Omnibus.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1962. First edition, first printing.
Containing Chandler's final three full-length novels, The Little Sister (1949), The Long Good-Bye (1953), and Playback (1958), along with his short essay The Simple Art of Murder (1944), this omnibus represents the second half of Chandler's most notable works. It follows The Raymond Chandler Omnibus (1953), which included the author's first four novels.
$100 |
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[Chandler, Raymond]; Gardiner, Dorothy; and Walker, Kathrine Sorley (editors). Raymond Chandler on Writing.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Uncorrected proof copy.
This thin volume is an uncorrected proof copy of a chapter from the 1962 book Raymond Chandler Speaking. The finished product, published by Hamish Hamilton in London and Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, included six chapters in total, each with excerpts from Chandler's letters, notes, and essays on various subjects.
$300
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Books from the personal library of Marshall Efron
Marshall Efron (b. 1938) is an American actor, humorist, and author associated with the art and literary scene in San Francisco and New York, particularly the Beat community. Most famous for his satirical television show on PBS, The Great American Dream Machine (1971-1972), and his radio shows on WBAI and KPFK, Efron also worked as a clerk at City Lights Books in San Francisco, a bookstore and publishing house founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953 that served as a creative hub for writers of the Beat generation. Well known among the community, Efron remained friends with Ferlinghetti and other writers like Allen Ginsberg and Dylan Thomas throughout his career.
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Brautigan, Richard. The Galilee Hitch-Hikers.
San Francisco: David Sandberg / Cranium Press, 1966. Limited edition of 700 copies, preceded only by an edition of 200 copies printed six years earlier. From the personal library of Marshall Efron.
The Galilee Hitch-Hikers, Brautigan's second book of poetry, is a short poem in nine parts. Connected by their brief descriptions of events involving the character named Baudelaire, the poems are humorous and whimsical, written in Brautigan's characteristically imaginative style.
$400 |
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[San Francisco Diggers]. Digger Dollar.
[San Francisco: Communication Company, 1967]. 8.5" x 3". Printed with a Gestetner mimeograph machine to both sides of one sheet of off-white paper. From the personal library of actor, humorist, and radio personality Marshall Efron.
This piece of alternative currency was created by the publishing branch of the San Francisco Diggers, a radical community anarchist and street theater group based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood whose purpose was to create a mini-society that could operate without money or capitalist structures. The "Digger Dollar," handed out for free in the streets of San Francisco like most of their publications, was symbolic of this mission, bearing the statement: "A manifestation of the new economic spirit arising out of the radical changes now facing Western man."
$500 |
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Ginsberg, Allen. Howl, and Other Poems.
San Francisco: City Lights Books / Pocket Poets Series No. 4, 1966. First edition, sixteenth printing. From the library of Ginsberg's friend Marshall Efron.
Published as the fourth installment of City Lights' Pocket Poets Series, Howl and Other Poems is Allen Ginsberg's first collection of poetry, which opens with the iconic line "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness." In many ways the mantra of the Beat Movement, "Howl" observes and addresses problems in American society.
$50 |
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Ginsberg, Allen. Kaddish, and Other Poems.
San Francisco: City Lights Books / Pocket Poets Series No. 14, 1966. Fifth edition. From the library of Ginsberg's friend Marshall Efron.
First published in 1961, Kaddish, and Other Poems stands as one of Ginsberg's two most important works, alongside Howl (1956). The titular poem, Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894-1956), is named for the Jewish mourner's prayer known as the Kaddish, and explore's Ginsberg's relationship with his mother, who suffered from schizophrenia until her death in 1956.
$75 |
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Ginsberg, Allen. Reality Sandwiches, 1953-1960.
San Francisco: City Lights Books / Pocket Poet Series No. 18, 1963. First edition, fourth printing. From the library of Ginsberg's friend Marshall Efron.
The title of this work comes from a line in the poem, "On Burroughs Work," in which Ginsberg muses on the meaning of Burrough's Naked Lunch (1959), which he edited, alongside Jack Kerouac. Like much of Ginsberg's work, these poems pay homage to his friends and fellow writers, through mentions of their work and through variations in his style that emulate other writers.
$75 |
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Marx, Groucho. Many Happy Returns! An Unofficial Guide to your Income Tax Problems.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942. First edition, first printing. From the library of actor, humorist, and radio personality Marshall Efron.
Published during World War II when the top earners in the United States were paying marginal tax rates of up to 88% on the highest levels of their income, the book addresses some common concerns and misconceptions about taxes while poking fun at the system as a whole.
SOLD |
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Faulkner, William. Requiem for a Nun.
New York: Random House, 1951. First trade edition, first printing. From the personal library of Marshall Efron.
In Requiem for a Nun, Faulkner revisits the story of Temple Drake, a young Mississippi woman who becomes the victim of the criminal assistant of a notorious Tennessee moonshiner. Now a grown and married woman, Temple must reconcile with the horrors of her past as she attempts to provide a more normal life for her own child.
$50 |
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Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.
New York: Random House, 1971. Illustrated by Ralph Steadman. First edition, first printing. From the personal library of Marshall Efron.
Originally published in Rolling Stone, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the author's best known "failed but essentially noble experiment in Gonzo journalism," a literary genre that subjectively blends truth and fiction. The plot is loosely based on the author's adventures with American attorney and activist Oscar Zeta Acosta and is supplemented with Thompson's reflections on the 1960's counterculture movement.
$400 |
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Vonnegut, Kurt. Mother Night.
New York: Harper & Row, 1966. First edition, first printing. From the library of Marshall Efron.
Mother Night tells the story of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American who was living in Germany during World War II and imprisoned in Israel, awaiting trial for war crimes. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut examines Campbell's relative guilt and cautions the reader that "we are what we pretend to be."
$250 |
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Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions; Or, Goodbye Blue Monday.
New York: Delacorte Press / Seymour Lawrence, 1973. First edition, first printing. From the library of Marshall Efron.
Vonnegut's seventh novel, Breakfast of Champions marks a departure from the author's usual cast of characters, leaving only the fictional sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout to continue on. The story tells of Trout's interactions with a wealthy Pontiac dealer named Dwayne Hoover; through their discussions of free will and human nature, Vonnegut provides readers a satirical commentary on social issues in the United States.
$125 |
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