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We have recently published our Summer 2008 catalogue, which includes a wide variety of rare and valuable books, association copies, and livres d’artistes. Among the noteworthy literary first editions are exceptional copies of Nelson Algren’s first book, Somebody In Boots (1935); Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621); Robert McAlmon’s Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers (Paris: 1925); John Ashbery’s first book, Turandot and Other Poems (1953); Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) uncut in original calf-backed boards; Baron Corvo’s masterpiece, Hadrian the Seventh (1904); Philip Larkin’s The Less Deceived (1955); a mint copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel (1965); Anthony Powell’s rarest book, What’s Become of Waring? (1939); John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939); Edward Thomas’s rarest book, Six Poems by Edward Eastaway (1916); the limited signed edition of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929); and one of W. B. Yeats’s rarest books, the Cuala Press Poems (1935), one of only 30 copies, hand-colored, this copy being from the collection of Elizabeth Corbett Yeats, the poet’s sister and the printer of the book.
Among our association copies are first editions of important works by three major Italian writers – Giorgio Bassani, Italo Calvino, and Umberto Eco – inscribed to their English translator, William Weaver; D. H. Lawrence’s Amores (1916) inscribed to Katharine Mansfield; the Thomas B. Hess and Elaine de Kooning copy of Frank O’Hara’s first book, A City Winter (1952), one of only 20 copies with an original drawing by Larry Rivers; Sylvia Plath’s The Colossus (1960) inscribed to Theodore Roethke; Ezra Pound’s Cathay (1915) inscribed to Harriet Monroe; and Dylan Thomas’s Twenty-Six Poems (1949), one of only 10 copies printed on Japanese vellum, inscribed to his wife Caitlin.
Works of literary art and livres d’artistes include Wallace Berman’s portfolio Radio/Aether Series (1974); Joel Oppenheimer’s The Dancer (Black Mountain College, 1951), with one of Robert Rauschenberg’s earliest graphics; the magnificent New York School of poets collection published by the Tiber Press, comprising four volumes of poems by Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler, with original lithographs by Joan Mitchell, Michael Goldberg, Grace Hartigan and Alfred Leslie; the Plain Wrapper Press’s masterpiece, Jorge Luis Borges’s Seven Saxon Poems (1974), with intaglio engravings and a bronze bas-relief by Arnaldo Pomodoro; Hart Crane’s The Bridge (Paris, 1930), illustrated with photographs by Walker Evans, one of 50 copies printed on Japan vellum and signed by Crane; and a beautiful copy of F. L. Schmied’s masterpiece, Le Paradis Musulman (Paris: 1930).
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