Poems, First Edition (Over 129,000 results)

Original Wraps. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 12mo. Black lettered blue jacket over beige wraps, enclosed in green cloth slipcase. Hemingway's first book. Although Bill Bird's Three Mountains Press' In Our Time was contracted earlier, Robert McAlmon's Contact Editions book was published and released first. Limited to 300 copies only. This copy inscribed by Hemingway on the front endpaper "This book is the property of James Cowan--he is not responsible for it--nor did he buy it. It was presented to him by the author--Ernest Hemingway" Cowan was a fellow reporter for the Toronto Star newspaper, for which Hemingway also worked. Included also is a sheaf of correspondence between former owners and James Cowan attesting to it's history and authenticity. Also included a dealer's catalogue in which this book was listed for sale back in late thirties or forties. This copy wrapped in glassine which is contemporary but not original. Wear and a few tears to the extremities but a particularly fine example of a fragile book, otherwise a very good copy. A great Toronto copy of an essential item in the Hemingway canon. Inscribed by Author(s). Book.

Evans, Walker (illustrator). First American edition. Blue boards, a near-fine copy, without dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece by Walker Evans. An amazing association copy, inscribed on the front end paper by Hart Crane to Walker Evans, whose three small photographs illustrated the first edition. To Walker Evans, - / 'clean animosity, - clear name." / from / Hart Crane / New York - Brooklyn in fact / March 25th '30", three days after official publication. Evans was involved in their arrangement in the book and, perhaps, also that of the larger, horizontal image used as the frontispiece in this edition: "With Walker Evans's ownership signature above the inscription. Spine gilt dulled; near fine in blue boards without jacket. From the collection of noted photographer and collector Arnold Crane. Schwartz & Schweik A 3.1. Although their fathers were business acquaintances, the poet and photographer first met in the fall of 1928, when both men were living in Brooklyn Heights, where they often met and shared their sympathetic literary and artistic tastes. Their mutual friend Hans Skolle credited Evans with rescuing the manuscript of "The Bridge" from Crane's destructive, drunken fits. Evans found Crane a file clerk job at the Henry L. Doherty Company, where he worked, but it lasted only a short time. Crane gave a party which Evans attended, along with Crane's other close friends,Sam Loveman, e.e. clummings, Gorham Munson, ands others, celebrating his departure for London and Paris. It was while Crane was in Paris that he met Harry and Caresse Crosby, who agreed to publish a limited edition of "The Bridge," which Crane was then struggling to complete, in the fall of 1929, around the time Evans made a series of portraits of Crane, as James Mellow, Evans's biographer, notes that "there is no definite date for when Crane asked Evans to provide photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge as illustrations for the Crosbys' edition of The Bridge. In January 1929, Crane was courting the painter Joseph Stella, hoping to use one of his dramatic paintings of the bridge as frontispiece.Even as late as Sepember 6 he was offering to get the Crosbys a photo of Stella's picture.Between then and late December the plans had been changed and Crane asked Evans to supply the illustrations," Crane wrote Caresse Crosby, in Janjuary 1930, how he thought Evans "the most living, vital photographer of any whose work I know. More and more", he wrote, "I rejoice that we decided on his pictures rather than Stella's". (O My Land, My Friends, p.422). Although at the beginning of 1930 Evans and Crane saw a good deal of each other, as Crane promoted Evans in advance of The Bridge's publication, by the end of March 1930 their relationship had deteriorated, and in May Evans wrote his friend Hans Skolle, that he was "fed up" and not seeing Crane, who was "beyond redemption" It's not clear to us whether the inscription refers to this quarrel. It was Evans, who in August 1931 bundled Crane, who had been for days drinking alone in his hotel room, and his luggage onto the S.S. Orizaba for his return trip to Mexico. Evans never saw him again.

First American edition. Photographic frontispiece by Walker Evans. Original dark blue cloth, uncut; spine faded and with slight wear at ends, a little mild spotting on front cover. Pictorial dust jacket reproducing the Walker Evans frontispiece photograph; jacket worn, ends of spine strengthened on verso. Dark blue half morocco slipcase. First American edition, which appeared three months after the Paris first and incorporated numerous changes (mostly minor), producing Crane's final text. An outstanding and rare presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper by Crane in a neat hand to John Augustus Roebling, the grandson of John Roebling (designer of the bridge) and son of Washington Roebling (the engineer who oversaw the construction of the very bridge which inspired the epic poem): "To John A. Roebling in hommage [sic] to the traditions and great achievements of the Roebling Family â " from Hart Crane, August â 30." A recent Crane biographer refers to this copy and quotes from a letter (of 18 August 1930) presenting it: "In mid-August he sent an inscribed copy of "The Bridge" to John Augustus Roebling . â My devotion to the Brooklyn Bridge as the matchless symbol of America and its destiny prompted this dedication [presentation inscription],' Crane wrote [in the letter], â as I dare say the particular view of the bridge's span from my window on Columbia Heights [in Brooklyn] . inspired the general conception and form of the entire poem.' Only now, with the poem already completed, had he learned that he'd actually shared the same address [in fact the same room at 110 Columbia Heights] with Washington Roebling, the creator of the bridge. He hoped that [Roebling] would find something to admire in the poem, which, Crane added modestly, was in its own way â as ambitious and complicated as was the original engineering project'" (Mariani, "The Broken Tower," p. 356). Affixed to the half-title (probably by Roebling, from a copy he is stated to have previously purchased - ?) under "The Bridge" is the Walker Evans dust jacket photograph cut from another jacket. [Schwartz & Schweik A 3.1]. The letter from Crane to Roebling that accompanied this presentation copy was reproduced in holographic form, along with commentary, in "The Hart Crane Newsletter," Vol. II, No. 2, Spring, 1979, pp. 13-14 (q.v.).The letter itself was last seen at auction at Sotheby's in 1979. Provenance: Unnamed consignor sale, Charles Hamilton Galleries, 4 March 1976, lot 90; Sotheby's Auction, New York, 13 April, 2004.

First edition, first impression, an "unmutilated" copy, with title page and final leaf intact, and including the poetic dedication to Harriet Shelley. Copies in this state and in the original boards are extremely rare; we can trace only three copies offered at auction in almost half a century. This "unmutilated" state has always been preferred by collectors and has consistently fetched far higher prices than "mutilated" copies. The "unmutilated" state offers one of the most inflammatory title pages of the era. Knowing that only a very few would see it, Shelley was free to give vent to his revolutionary and atheistical fervour. The title carries a quotation from every freethinker's favourite Latin author, Lucretius, and Archimedes's aphorism in Greek: "Only give me a place on which to stand, and I shall move the whole world." Bolder yet was the cry "Ecrasez l'Infame!" from the Correspondance de Voltaire. Voltaire was referring to the established Church, but the Illuminists had adopted the same phrase as their motto to refer specifically to Christ. As Harriet Shelley wrote to a friend in Dublin (21 May 1813), "Do you [know] any one that would wish for so dangerous a gift?" Queen Mab was Shelley's most provocative poem and a key radical text in the early years of the 19th century. The entire edition comprised 250 copies, published by Thomas Hookham for private distribution by Shelley himself. Because of its radical contents, Hookham refused to put his name on the title page. As a publisher's name and address had to be provided by law, Shelley agreed to provide his own name and address on the title and terminal page. Fearful of prosecution, when Shelley distributed the copies, he cut away the title page and excised his name from the final leaf. As his marriage with Harriet broke down with his elopement with Mary Godwin after the summer of 1814, Shelley also removed from the copies he distributed the poetic dedication leaf to Harriet as "the inspiration of my song". This copy is consequently one of the copies which survived "unmutilated", without excision of Shelley's name or the dedication to Harriet. It was the radical publisher Richard Carlile who issued the remainder shortly after Shelley's death in 1822. This copy has a distinguished provenance. A pencil note states that it was "from the private collection of A. S. W. Rosenbach". Known as "the greatest bookdealer in the World", Dr Rosenbach (1876-1952) was "the terror of the auction room" and remembered as "the Pied Piper of rare editions". In his autobiographical volume Books and Bidders (1927), Rosenbach refers to several copies of Queen Mab which passed through his hands. Of one he notes, "I also trembled when first holding this Queen Mab in my hands". Louis H. Silver (1902 63), an American book collector, started collecting in the 1930s. After his death, his collection was acquired by the Newberry Library of Chicago, who sold a number of books regarded as duplicates at auction. This copy was at Sotheby's, 9 November 1965, lot 301, when it was acquired by John F. Fleming, the bookdealer. Abel E. Berland, a Chicago real estate lawyer, was a bibliophile and collector of rare manuscripts. This copy sold in his sale at Christie's, New York, 8 October 2001, lot 105. Granniss pp. 28 35; Hayward 225; Wise, Shelley Library, pp. 39 40. Octavo (198 x 118 mm). Original drab boards without spine label, as issued. Housed in a custom red morocco-backed folding box. Book labels of Louis H. Silver and Abel E. Berland on front pastedown. "Fairy" added to margin of page 35 (leaf D2) in a contemporary hand. Joints cracked; else a remarkably fine copy.

First edition, in the 'unmutilated' state, with the title and final leaf intact. Publisher's original drab paper covered boards. A near fine copy, with the joints cracked but holding and wear to the spine, but an extraordinarily well preserved copy. Internally perfect. An exceptional copy of Shelley's key radical text of the early nineteenth century, described in DNB as a "freethinking and socialistic gospel. couched in a rhetoric so exalted as to pass easily for poetry" (DNB). Shelley arranged for a mere 250 copies to be printed for private distribution. Given the contents, Shelley's printer, Thomas Hookham, refused to put his name to the work, so it is Shelley's name and address which are listed on the title page. In order to avoid the possibility of prosecution, Shelley 'mutilated' copies as he distributed them by removing the title page and final leaf bearing his name. Furthermore, as his marriage to Harriet broke down with his elopement with Mary Godwin in 1814, he took to removing the dedication leaf to his estranged wife. Copies which have survived unmutilated offer one of the most inflammatory title pages of the era. Knowing few would see it, Shelley felt able to give vent to his revolutionary fervour. It carries a quote in Latin from Lucretius and Archimedes' aphorism in Greek, "Only give me a place on which to stand,and I shall move the whole world." Bolder still is the statement from Correspondance de Voltaire, "Ecrasez l'Infame!", a phrase which had been adopted by the Illuminati as their motto to refer specifically to Christ. As Harriet Shelley wrote to a friend, about Queen Mab, "Do you [know] any one that would wish for so dangerous a gift?". This unmutilated state has long been highly sought by collectors and considered much more valuable than mutilated copies. Further, whilst unmutilated copies are rare, copies in boards are even more so and the combination of the two is almost unknown: we can discover only one other such copy offered for sale at auction since 1902. Ashley V, p.57; Granniss/Grolier Shelley 15; Hayward 225; Tinker 1886; Wise Shelley, pp.39-40.

FIRST EDITION. 165 x 92 mm. (6 1/2 x 3 3/4"). 3 p.l., 121 pp. EXQUISITE CITRON MOROCCO, GILT AND INLAID, BY THE CLUB BINDERY (stamp-signed and dated 1908 on front turn-in), covers with inlaid frame and cornerpieces of chestnut brown morocco outlined with double rules and densely tooled in gilt, central panel with rectangular extension at center of each side containing a gilt fleuron, raised bands, spine compartments with inlaid panel of chestnut brown morocco tooled with pointillé and small tools, gilt titling, turn-ins with floral roll, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. In a brown morocco-backed marbled paper chemise. Title page with the bust of a poet in laurel wreath. Front pastedown with armorial Cardiff Castle bookplate of the Marquess of Bute and morocco ex-libris of Beverly Chew. Tail margin of p. 109 with faint annotation in a 19th century hand. Hayward 231; Ashley III:9. â Leaves a little yellowed with age, isolated tiny rust spots or minor smudges but A FINE COPY, clean and fresh internally, IN A FLAWLESS BINDING. This is a volume with every desirable quality imaginable: the first edition of the first book of poems by one of the most important Romantic poets, offered in a splendid binding by the first great American workshop, in beautiful condition and with distinguished provenance. Though the publisher was disappointed in the sales of Keats' "Poems," Day finds the book "filled with youthful enthusiasm for various discoveries," among them poetry, the art and literature of classical Greece, and the beauty of Nature. Among the contents are Keats' first known poem, "Imitation of Spenser"; what Day calls his "first indisputably great poem," "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"; and his first important longer poem, "Sleep and Poetry." Although he lived but a short time, Keats (1795-1821) left a lasting mark on English literature, and his poetry remains popular to this day. In the words of the Poetry Foundation, "The urgency of this poetry has always appeared greater to his readers for his intense love of beauty and his tragically short life. Keats approached the relations among experience, imagination, art, and illusion with penetrating thoughtfulness, with neither sentimentality nor cynicism but with a delight in the ways in which beauty, in its own subtle and often surprising ways, reveals the truth." In addition to the importance of the content here, this item is memorable because of its beautiful binding. Once the Grolier Club was founded in 1884 as an organization to further the interests of America's most serious bibliophiles, it soon became apparent that the country's few established hand binders were overtaxed in providing repairs and rebinding for the club members' rapidly accumulating acquisitions. As a consequence, in 1895, Grolier members, along with Edwin Holden and other wealthy collectors, established the Club Bindery in order to attract European craftsmen to provide, close to home, fine quality binding work rivalling what was available abroad. The Club Bindery was in operation until 1909, with Robert Hoe being its most influential manager and client. It provided bindings that tended to be traditional in style--though frequently with elaborate decoration--and that lived up to its patrons' expectations in terms of excellence. The first members of the staff of the Club Bindery were the Englishmen R. W. Smith and Frank Mansell. They were subsequently joined by a number of French binders, chief among them being Leon Maillard, who had worked previously for Cuzin, Gruel, and Marius-Michel, and whose precise and intricate finishing is impressively demonstrated on our binding here. Our binding was commissioned by Grolier Club member Beverly Chew (1850-1924), a successful New York banker who was an extremely discriminating collector, first, of American literature and, subsequently and more importantly, British literature. He bought heavily in 16th and 17th century authors, and sold 2,000 choice titles in this area in one transaction to Henry E. Huntington, probably the most famous of all American book collectors. Dickinson says that Chew was one of the most respected collectors of his time, and that his contributions to the very useful Grolier Club catalogue "Wither to Prior" were invaluable.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. No Jacket. 1st Edition. Here is a unique Collection of Presentation copies of seven of Hodson's eight novels and short story collections published during his lifetime, including THE NIGHT LAND in the rare dark blue presentation binding. All the books are in handmade clamshell cases. Every book is in the first edition, fine condition, and all are inscribed to "Scraps" Bird, the young daughter of William Bird Jr., later Lt. Bird, with whose family Hodgson became quite close, especially "Scraps" (Wilhelmina) Bird. In addition, the collection includes a true rarity, related to the close bond between the two families: two additional unpublished poems handwritten by Hodgson in Scraps' small autograph album. This is a unique historical document, a true treasure for Hodgson collectors! See full description below. THE BOATS OF THE 'GLEN CARRIG' (1907). Red cloth. 1st Ed. Inscribed on front free endpaper: "Scraps/from/Hope./Xmas./07." Fine. THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND (1908). Red cloth. 1st Ed. Inscribed on front free endpaper: "Scraps/from/Hope,/(on her 13th Birthday.)/April 29th/08." Fine. THE GHOST PIRATES (1909). Red cloth. 1st Ed. Inscribed on front free endpaper: "Scraps/from/Hope--/Xmas/09." Front endpapers browned, fine. THE NIGHT LAND (1912). Dark blue/black, presentation binding. 1st Ed. With wonderful inscription on front free endpaper: "To Scraps,/That impudent maiden to whom/I first told the ever shaping tale/of The Night Land/From/Hope--/March 22nd/12/Do you 'member how you used/to shiver when The Night Land-Hounds/bayed; and how quietly it was/needful to get past the House of/Silence--eh?" Very Fine. Rare. MEN OF THE DEEP WATERS (1914). Red cloth. 1st Ed., 1st binding. Inscribed on slip of paper affixed to front pastedown: "Scraps/from/Hope./France./October 14th/14." Gilt spine lettering dull, else fine. THE LUCK OF THE STRONG (1916). Red cloth. 1st Ed. Inscribed on slip of paper affixed to front pastedown: "Scraps,/from/Hope--/June, 1916." Fine. CAPTAIN GAULT (1917). Red cloth. 1st Ed. Printed slip "With the Author's/Compliments" laid in. Touch of fading to spine extremities, some age darkening of text paper, fine (the best copy we have seen of this scarce book). Accompanying the seven books are several leaves from Miss Bird's small octavo autograph album with drawings and handwritten sentiments by friends. Hodgson's contributions comprise two (we believe, unpublished) poems, the first "The Fruit of the Tree of Life," eight lines dated 30 November 1906, the second, "Scraps! Scraps!! Scraps!!!," twelve lines of clever wordplay on the subject's nickname, dated 2 December 1906. The source of the relationship between Hodgson and the Bird family remains cloudy, but it surely was a close one, to have led to Hodgson staying with the family at times, dedicating a book to Bird?s wife, and maintaining a long term affectionate relationship with their daughter, who would have been eleven years of age at the time Hodgson added his poems to her album (see Frank, J "Under the Skin: A Profile of William Hope Hodgson" in Sargasso #2: The Journal of William Hope Hodgson Studies, 2014). We speculate that the last three books were not personally inscribed due to Hodgson's move to the South of France in 1913 and later military service during World War I. Two other books in matching clamshell boxes are also available: first, a rare first edition of CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER in Good condition, second, a Very Fine inscribed copy of THE NIGHT LAND in red binding and red clamshell with tipped in two-page handwritten letter by Hodgson to the presentee Please contact me if you are interested in either or both of these volumes. Many more pictures available.shipping and insurance to be determined. Inscribed by Author(s).

Large 8vo. (234 x 168 mm). [102 leaves; pp. 203]. Title, leaf with explanation, verso and following leaves with contents, leaf with title in red and sonnet 'Bright star!' verso and Keats' verse, two leaves with 'Table of Years', final leaf with colophon recto. Printed text in red and black throughout, sheet size: 230 x 162 mm. Full scarlet crushed morocco by Frieda Thiersch with her signature gilt, boards with double gilt rules, banded spine with elaborate tooled decoration with title 'KEATS / 1815 - 1820' and dated 'MCMXIV' in six compartments, large turn-ins with gilt tools and rules to surround vellum doublures, board edges ruled in gilt, morocco-edged wool-lined marbled board slipcase. [PROVENANCE: From the collection of scholar and bibliophile Dr. Ernst Kyriss (1881 - 1974), with his discreet oval stamp to front free endpaper; Achilles Foundation, the collection of Edith and Barbara Achilles]. A very scarce copy of the vellum issue of the Doves Press' Keats in a highly accomplished binding of red morocco by Frieda Thiersch. From the edition limited to 212 copies, with this one of 12 examples printed on vellum. Apprenticed to the binder Charles McLeish who described her as the 'most skillful pupil we ever had . equal to any professional', Frieda Thiersch (1889 - 1947) was a prodigy: a highly talented, innovative and controversial binder. The daughter of a distinguished Munich-based architect, Frieda had a privileged upbringing before her seduction by her music master Ludwig Hess for a bet; the ensuing pregnancy caused her banishment to France for the birth of her child to avoid scandal. After the birth she was sent to London where she undertook an apprenticeship at McLeish & Sons that led to their endorsement and laid the foundations for her future as a binder. Thiersch clearly absorbed, along with the binding skills and knowledge of the McLeishs, the influence of the Doves Bindery: Charles McLeish Sr. had worked with Cobden-Sanderson from 1893 until the establishment of his own bindery in 1909. The austere but beautiful work with the emphasis on simple clarity with a highly restrained decor became a feature of Thiersch's own work and the signature of the many bindings designed by her and issued by the Bremer Press - she worked as the principal designer and her atelier was the principal bindery for the press - before the worsening economic situation in the late 1920s / early 1930s caused the press to close. Throughout the time she worked with the Bremer Press, Thiersch took commissions in her own right as the present binding, signed with her full name as opposed to her initials (when produced by an assistant) and likely produced in the late 1920s, attests. Thiersch exhibited her work internationally and showed books at the First Edition Club in London in 1929 (it is tempting to think that this binding was shown there), the World Exhibition in Barcelona in the same year, the Milan Triennale in 1930, 1933 and 1936 where she was awarded a gold medal and the Paris World Exhibition in 1937 where she was awarded another gold medal. Later in the 1930s Thiersch became associated with the German political establishment and undertook government contracts for the Nazis. Although she did execute personal commissions for, among others, Hitler, her own political views have never been established. The destruction of her archive and personal collection in a bombing raid in 1944, her death from lung cancer in 1947 and the confusion of the Second World War itself have ensured that both an aura of mystery has surrounded her work while adhering a considerable bibliophile cachet to it. Although Thiersch's bindings for the Bremer Presse are prized, even more so are the bindings that she undertook on commission. We can trace few of these, but notable examples are the luxusausgabe of 'Das Graphische Werk Max Pechsteins' (1921), Johanne Auerbach's 'Summa de Auditione Confessionis et de Sacramentis' (the second or third book printed in Augsburg probably in 1469 or 1470), Georg Martin Richter's unique copy of Thomas Mann's 'Walsengenblut' (1921) and Franz Liszt's copy of the first edition of Baudelaire's 'Les Paradis Artificiels' with a presentation from the author among others. [Tidcombe DP36; Tomkinson 58, 45].

Hardcover. Condition: Near fine. First. First editions, first state. London: Printed by M[iles] F[lesher] for Iohn Marriot, 1633 (Poems); London: Printed by E[lizabeth] P[urslowe] for Henry Seyle, 1633. Quarto (7 5/16", 5 3/16", 186mm x 133mm). [Full collation available.] Complete with all blanks. Bound in later (XIXc?) brown calf, with a triple blind gilt fillet border surrounding a blind roll on the boards. On the spine, four raised bands with a blind roll. Blind ornaments in the panels. Title gilt to brown calf label in the second panel. Imprint gilt to lower panel. Dashed gilt roll toward the corners of the edges of the boards. Blind roll inside dentelle. Brown end-papers. All edges of the text-block red. Presented in a brown calf solander box by Riviere & Son. Front board starting at the upper edge. Some rubbing at the extremities. Very good margins (20mm and more), and a very little foxing. With a XIXc armorial bookplate of Smith of Exeter (sable, a fess cotised between three martlets or; crest: a greyhound sejant collared) on the front paste-down. On A1r of the Poems an ownership inscription of Gilberd Spencer in a XVIIc hand. On the upper edge of the title-page of the Poems an ownership inscription of Ric[hard] Shuttleworth in an XVIIIc hand. Passim, but especially pp. 326-352 of the Poems (satyres and letters), substantial marginal commentary and emendation in a XVIIc hand. This is the chief collection of Donne's poetry, much of which was either unpublished or circulated privately (often in manuscript) while he lived. After his death in 1631, the publication of his poems (as well as the first appearance of several elegies written by Izaak Walton and others) did a little to elevate his stature in the English pantheon. It would not be till the end of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century that he would be given the place of esteem he now holds among English poets. The first edition is quite rare, and even rarer still is the first state of the Poems, with N1r altered to omit the headline to accommodate the thirty-five lines of verse. There is an additional leaf sometimes inserted in the first gathering - apparently a later addition - that is not present. The rarity and importance of the work is augmented in the present copy by its rich set of provenance and annotations. In reverse, the engraved armorial bookplate of the Smith family of Exeter cannot be placed exactly but appears to be late XVIIIc or early XIXc in its style. The Shuttleworth of the title-page (an ink-splotch obscures whether he is Ric[hard] or Rev[erend] Shuttleworth) has indicated his college; Alumni Oxonienses records only one Shuttleworth at Lincoln, Richard Shuttleworth of Durham, matriculated 1749 at the age of 17 and died in 1797. Mr. Shuttleworth seems to have given the surname of the author on the title-page. The earliest marks of ownership (on the basis of the hand) seem to be those of Gilberd (Gilbert) Spencer on the initial blank, who writes the following ditty: "Liber est meus/ Testus [sic] est Deus" (the book is mine, God is the witness (or, in better verse, the proof divine)). The hand is certainly rather more florid than that of the annotator, and may well be earlier, but it is an appealing connection. A lengthy reminiscence about the Drury family and Lord Theophilus Walden "At Padoa in Italy some 45 years agoe." (p. 351) places the annotation in the 1640's or 1650's, since Lord Walden was abroad in Italy 1603-1605. This is all against a letter to Hen. Goodeere, and the annotator writes above "My Lady Nethersole's father." The familiarity with the movements of these intimates of Donne's suggests that the annotator was himself at least at the periphery of Donne's circle. The emendations, which are quite subtle and sound, also suggest that he had access to manuscript versions of the poems. In all, a volume redolent of Donne. Grolier Donne 81; Grolier English 25; Hayward 54; Keynes 43 and 78; ESTC S121684 (STC2 7045, Poems) and S109980 (STC2 7043, Iuvenilia).

First edition. Original publisher's plain grey boards with original title label. A very good copy with repairs to the the front joint and base of the spine. Rear joint with split at the base and spine darkened, but boards clean and well preserved. Internally, front hinge cracked, but notably clean and fresh. A well preserved example of Keats's first work, seldom encountered in an original state. Wood engraving of Edmund Spencer to the title page. Keats's first book, published on 3 March 1817 by Charles and James Ollier, who were already publishing Shelley. The first of a mere three lifetime publications, it is a work of mainly youthful promise Keats had appeared for the first time in print less than a year earlier, with a poem in the radical weekly The Examiner on 5 May 1816. The 1817 Poems attracted a few good reviews, but these were followed by the first of several harsh attacks by the influential Blackwood's Magazine, mainly by critics who resented Keats's avowed kinship with the despised Leigh Hunt. The best-known poem in the book is the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer", "by common consent one of its masterpieces in this form, having a close unsurpassed for the combined qualities of serenity and concentration" (Colvin), and described by ODNB as "an astonishing achievement, with a confident formal assurance and metaphoric complexity which make it one of the finest English sonnets. As Hunt generously acknowledged, it 'completely announced the new poet taking possession' (Hunt, Lord Byron, 249)" (ODNB).

Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. First Edition, First Printing. A wonderful copy bound in the original blue wraps. The binding is tight, with light wear to the edges and minor discoloration to the panels. The pages are clean, with NO writing, marks or bookplates in the book. A lovely copy housed in a custom clamshell slipcase for preservation.

Full Description: DONNE, John. Poems, By J.D. With Elegies on the Authors Death. London: M.F. [Miles Fletcher] for John Marriot, 1633. [BOUND WITH]: Juvenilia, or Certaine Paradoxes and Problemes. London: E.P. [Elizabeth Purslowe] for Henry Seyle, 1633. First edition of the collected poems of the greatest of the metaphysical poets, bound with a first edition of his "perfectly impudent" Juvenilia. Small quarto (7 1/8 x 5 1/8 inches; 180 x 130 mm). [10], 406, [2, blank]; 62 pp. Both volumes bound without A1 blanks, but Poems retains the final blank. Poems with the first state of leaf Nni, (pg 273) with no running title and 35 lines of text. Several lines in the Satyres on pages 330, 331 and 341, originally containing lines offensive to the king and church, are left blank. In Juvenilia, the license granted by Herbert printed twice (leaf F1v and H4v). Woodcut printer's device on title, woodcut and typographic head- and tailpieces, and woodcut initials. Contemporary calf, rebacked, with original spine laid down. Spine stamped in gilt. Red morocco spine label, lettered in gilt. Some chipping and scuffing to boards. Some pale dampstaining to title and preliminaries in Poems. Poems with some very small marginal discoloration to the edges of leaves from signature Ccc to the end of the work, not affecting text. Overall a very good copy of this most desirable literary landmark. This first edition of the Poems was based on manuscripts derived from the author's papers and provided the best 17th-century text of Donne's verses. Although his poetry was circulated in small bundles of manuscript copies among the cultured circles of Elizabethan and Jacobean society, Donne deliberately kept most of it out of print, fearing to tarnish his reputation in the religious establishment. Thus, almost none of his poetry appeared in print during his lifetime. "The first editors of Donne's poetry divided his work into about a dozen groupings. The Songs and Sonnets which open the volume are generally amorous in theme; the Divine Poems, which close it, are described in their title. Early scholars took for granted that all the bawdy, cynical and lecherous poems were written by young Jack Donne, while all the somber, penitent, devotional poems were written by the godly divine. The more we learn about the matter, the less this easy division seems to stand up. The poetry of Donne represents a sharp break with that written by his predecessors and most of his contemporaries. Whether he writes of love or devotion, Donne's particular blend of wit and seriousness, of intense feeling, darting thought, and vast erudition, creates a fascination quite beyond the reach of easier styles and less strenuous minds" (Adams). "With Donne begins a new era in the history of the English love lyric. The spirit of his best love poetry passed into the most interesting of his elegies and his religious verses, the influence of which was. perhaps even greater, than that of his songs" (Rosenbach 30:127). The Juvenilia consist of "bits of logical horseplay, loaded with legal aphorisms perversely applied, and perfectly impudent in their cheerful, brassy assurance"' (Adams). "Owing to their rather free nature they could not be published during Donne's lifetime" (Keynes, 93). Keynes 78, 43. STC 7045, 7043. Grolier 100 25. Pforzheimer 296. Hayward 54. HBS 68863. $55,000.

First edition of Donne's collected poems, issued two years after his death. This posthumous collection represents the first printing of some of the greatest poems in the English language, including "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning", "The Good Morrow", "The Sunne Rising", and "The Flea". It is here bound in contemporary calf with the second edition of his Paradoxes and Problems, published the same year as the first. Though his poems were widely circulated in manuscript in his time, Donne rarely published them in print, and regretted the few small pieces he did: "the fault that I acknowledge in my self, is to have descended to print any thing in verse" (Donne, Letters to Severall Persons of Honour). Donne wrote most of his poems in the late 16th century when he was in his twenties; in his later years, as Dean of St Paul's, he was anxious to emphasize that those early works were "written by Jack Donne, not by Dr. Donne" (ibid.), the youthful libertine, rather than the mature divine. Despite Donne's own reported attempts to destroy his work, the poems were, in Isaak Walton's phrase, "scattered loosely (God knows too loosely)", and after his death the surviving manuscript copies of his work provided the basis for this edition, for which the original compiler made use of more than one group of scribal copies. The 1633 edition remains "the best text" of the poems, and "has more authority than any other in print" (Keynes). Notably absent is Donne's more explicitly erotic elegy "To His Mistress Going to Bed", which the licenser refused to include, and which was not printed until 1669. The book closes by printing a clutch of Donne's letters along with a group of elegies by, among others, Izaak Walton, Henry King and, most notably, Thomas Carew; the latter's contribution to the volume is "considered by many to remain the finest example of literary criticism in verse, imitating Donne's style in order to encapsulate and celebrate his achievement" (ODNB). This copy has the leaf Nn1 (page 273) in the uncorrected state, with 35 lines of text instead of 30 or 31 and with the omission of the usual running headline. It is bound without the two preliminary leaves "The Printer to the Understanders" and the publisher John Marriot's "Hexastichon Bibliopolae", which were "inserted only in a portion of the edition" (Keynes). Several lines on pages 330-31 and 341 are left blank, as usual. Donne's bibliographer Geoffrey Keynes concludes that various corrections in the text do not differentiate earlier and later states, but occurred "by chance" in the preparation of the text. The present copy is bound with the suitably contemporary edition of Paradoxes and Problems - re-titled Juvenilia and published the same year as the first - displays of wit which were not published during Donne's lifetime. ESTC S121864; Grolier, Langland to Wither, 286; Hayward 54; Keynes 78; Pforzheimer 296. Small quarto (192 x 142 mm). Contemporary calf, sympathetically rebacked, recornered, and relined, red morocco label, spine ruled in blind and gilt, twin blind rule to covers, board edges rolled in gilt, red edges. Housed in a custom brown quarter morocco folding box. Woodcut printer's device to title page of Paradoxes and Problems, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initial letters throughout. Occasional faint damp stains to lower margins, discreet repair to upper outer corner of final leaf, contents otherwise remarkably fresh. An attractive, well-margined copy.

Original wraps. Condition: Near Fine. A remarkable Association copy of the 1956 correct 1st edition. This copy not only conforms to all the original issue points but is in beautiful, near-pristine condition. Furthermore, THIS COPY IS SIGNED BY 5 OF THE KEY FIGURES IN THE BOOK'S GENESIS: 1) ALLEN GINSBERG (on the title page); 2) LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (on the copyright page); 3) LUCIEN CARR (on the dedication page); 4) WILLIAM BURROUGHS (also on the dedication page); and 5) CARL SOLOMON (on the first blank endpaper). In other words, this copy is signed by the book's author, its publisher and by 3 of its 5 dedicatees (only Jack Kerouac's and Neal Cassady's signatures are missing from this copy). Notably, of the 5 signatures, all critically important to the birth and evolution of "Howl", Lucien Carr's appears to be the most elusive. We know that Carr's relationship with the Beats grew tense early on and that he insisted his name be removed from all subsequent printings of "Howl". We also know that Carr himself introduced William Burroughs (an old friend from their St. Louis upbringing) to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg --and that Carr's infamous career at Columbia (as documented in the 2013 film "Kill Your Darlings") saw him as a very important muse to this budding literary scene. A fresh, tight copy, immaculate internally and easily Near Fine overall, while legitimately approaching Fine (even down to its unrusted staple). Also includes a hand-made chemise (signed by Ginsberg at a later date), a folded cardboard reproduction of the book's front cover which, among other things, capably protects the fragile 1st edition and no doubt helps to explain its remarkable condition. Of the 1,000 copies of "Howl" initially published, this must certainly rank as among the very most historic and significant.

No Binding. Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. 20 yrs or so ago, I wrote a poem a day/nite (usually at 3 in the morning) posted on the UB-Poetics list, in protest of the monopoly power by the bureacrats (spelling) of poetry, who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. Not so eventually, just a short matter of time, I was disappeared/cancelled, as a zionist,troll, cosmopolite,so vat's new. I'm offering the copy right of these poems/posts/play for 50 grand. Some written as DrN.(dee rabbi nada) and some as Harry Nudel) & dead poets forward march.prefer cash, will field inquiries.

Gogol's masterpiece with "All of Russia" --- First edition of Gogol's landmark masterpiece: with the very rare printed upper wrapper. "One of the great novels of nineteenth-century Russia" (Fekula) by "19th-century Russia's greatest comic writer [and] one of the supreme masters of Russian prose" (Terras). Of Ukrainian birth and Russian expression, Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) began writing his "paradoxical epic" in 1836 at the encouragement of his friend, then already Russia's main poet Aleksand Pushkin who quickly "recognized [in Gogol] a unique and exceptional phenomenon" (Terras). Most of the next six years Gogol spent in Italy where he created his quintessential image of Russia in its diversity and contradictions. "The novel, in other words, is an artistic document that sought to include, alongside comic and lyric delight, "all of Russia" Russian types, manners, speech presented as a statement about Russia's current spiritual state, and about its ultimate destiny" (Terras). "Perhaps never had Gogol put so much worldly experience, heartfelt endearments and feigned anger into his work as he did in 1842 when he began publishing Dead Souls," the critic Pavel Annenkov later recalled. The novel's first censor in Moscow was afraid to give his permission for printing; Gogol then sent the manuscript to St. Petersburg through the influential critic Vissarion Belinskii, having asked for help Prince Vladimir Odoevskii, poet Petr Viazemskii, and his good friend, a maid of honour to the Imperial court, Aleksandra Smirnova-Rosset. Finally, Gogol rewrote some of the sensitive parts and allowed to change the title from "Dead Souls" to "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls", thus shifting the emphasis from political satire to a picaresque novel. The "poem" was finally published in 1842 in 2400 copies; and Gogol's status of a contemporary classic became firmly established in Russian society: "with almost unanimous enthusiasm [.] he was now read by everyone, from Nicholas I to ordinary people and literary critics of all political views" (Babitskaia). Terras notes that Dead Souls galvanised "the powerful energies of 19th-century Russian fiction itself". The young Fedor Dostoevsky knew the novel by heart; in his Diary of a Writer he describes how he went "to see one of his old friends; we talked about Dead Souls all night long and read it I don't even remember how many times" (quote from Babitskaia). The next ten years of Gogol's life (1842-52) would centre around his vain struggles to complete the next two parts, as a parallel to Dante's Divine Comedy, but he deemed none of what he wrote worthy of publication. Shortly before his death, Gogol burned the second volume of his poem; its accidental surviving pieces and the writer's draft were later recomposed by the heirs and published in 1855 as an unfinished, posthumous second part; a third volume was never written. Provenance: Physical description:Large 8vo (25 x 17 cm). 475 pp. incl. half-title and title. Original illustrated upper wrapper bound in near-contemporary black half-sheep over brown marbled boards, flat spine with direct lettering in gilt, date at foot, dark grey floral endpapers, top edge red. Condition:Wrapper a bit stained and tightly bound in gutter, no lower wrapper; small spotting, foxing or staining throughout, mostly marginal, first lower fly-leaf with handwritten table of contents in Russian (such a leaf was never printed so it is not missing), small illegible ink stamp to last lower fly-leaf. Bibliography:Victor Terras, Handbook of Russian Literature, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1991, pp. 175-176. Varvara Babitskaia, "Mertvye dushi, Nikolai Gogol" // Polka academy, 2018. Fekula 4716; Kilgour 345; Smirnov-Sokolskii, Moia biblioteka, 610.

First edition of Milton's masterpiece, "one of the greatest works of the human imagination" (DNB). Small octavo, bound in full contemporary sprinkled calf, smooth spine gilt, red morocco lettering-piece gilt. Title-page and text within ruled border; woodcut headpieces and initials opening each book. (Without blank A1 after cancel title, F3 with paper flaw affecting rule border and shoulder notes, tiny mostly marginal wormhole to a few leaves.) Provenance: Elizabeth Gordon (signature on title verso dated 1686); Robert Chilton Pearson (bookplate); Patrick & Julie Pearson (bookplate). With the cancel title-page corresponding to Amoryâ s fourth issue, title page with "Angel" in the imprint in italic, and no note from the printer to the reader. Amoryâ s subissue 4â with signature Z in the original setting with "illustrous" in line 109 of the seventh book, and with Vv reset reading "far" in line 2 ov Vvlr. Hugh Amory â Things Unattempted Yetâ in The Book Collector, Spring 1983, pp. 41-66; see ESTC R13352; Grolier Wither to Prior 603; Pforzheimer 718; Wing M-2142. In near fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An exceptional example, rare and desirable. First published in 1667, â Paradise Lost is generally conceded to be one of the greatest poems in the English language; and there is no religious epic in English which measures up to Miltonâ s masterpieceâ ¦ Milton performed an artistâ s service to his Godâ (Magill, 511, 515). The present issue includes "Milton's synopsis of each book ("the Arguments" of Books 1-10), his defense of "the Verse," and a list of errata, adding sixteen pages of preliminary matter to the book. Simmons's note to the reader states that he had procured this explanation from Milton because readers of the poem had "stumbled" on first encountering it, asking "why the Poem Rimes not." Milton's strident defense of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) is printed in large type that fills two pages. His chosen meter, although no longer fashionable by 1667, was the dominant mode of Shakespeare's plays and is the closest to the natural rhythms of English speech. Samuel Johnson later commented sarcastically that, "finding blank verse easier than rhyme, [Milton] was desirous of persuading himself that it is better" [Morgan Library]. Simmons issued the first edition over the course of several years, adding an updated title page with seven variations bearing dates of 1667, 1668 and 1669. Bibliographer Hugh Amory argued that the 1668 title page was issued earlier than the one bearing the date 1667.

Condition: Fine. Original autograph manuscript of one of Plath's earliest poems, in a version preceding the 1946 revision published in her junior high school literary magazine and collected nowhere else. "The Snowflake Star" was one of a small cluster of early poems in which Plath first began experimenting with a group of images that would in many ways come to define her later work. In "A Winter Sunset," written around the same time (and published in the same issue of her junior high literary magazine THE PHILLIPIAN), the moon hangs above "the bare, black skeletons of trees." And in "To Miss Cox," from later in 1946, "The winter skies are leaden / The flying snowflakes sting." Plath biographer Heather Clark identifies the beginnings of Plath's "mature poetic voice" in these poems, a voice also heard in "The Snowflake Star." Its opening lines ("On a dark and cloudy day / I wandered in the woods away") point, in all their simplicity, directly ahead to 1956, when Plath would write "I stalk like a rook, / brooding as the winter night comes on [.] Who'd walk in this bleak place?" ("Winter Landscape, With Rooks"); to 1960: "Winter dawn is the color of metal / The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves" ("Waking in Winter"); to 1962: "The woods are a well" ("Stars over the Dordogne"). "The Snowflake Star" revolves around subjects and images that would become enduring in her work: snow, winter, stars, trees. The list of poems in which these ideas are central is long and includes many of her best-known works: "Crossing the Water," "Words" ("fixed stars / Govern a life"), "Winter Trees," "Snow Blitz," "Wintering," "The Snowman on the Moor," "The Munich Mannequins" ("The snow has no voice"), "Winter Words," "To A Jilted Lover" ("a mosaic of stars / diagrams the falling years"), "Elm" - to name only a selection. Metrically precise and lettered in a dauntingly perfect hand, this three-stanza version of "Snowflake Star" was composed before the poet turned 14. Plath's juvenile diaries record that on January 10th, 1945, assigned to write a poem or story about a star, she wrote two: "King of the Ice," and "another even better 'The Snowflake Star.'" The poem was completed by February 21 of that year, but would not appear in THE PHILLIPIAN until the following year (the only time it was published in any version), in February of 1946. Notably, scholar Edward Butscher's assessment of Plath's juvenilia quotes words and phrases not present in this sparer, starker draft: the "temporary return to strained gaiety and a continued pursuit of the conventional" characteristic of her other winter poems from the same period have not yet been written into the close of this version. Avoiding the "happy thought" which "lingers on" in the final stanza of the published version, this draft ends simply with the word "star," the poem's only unrhymed line, the snowflake just caught, still frozen, in the mittened hand - an ending more in keeping with Plath's later work, where danger always lurks just below the surface of beauty. Material of any kind entirely in Plath's hand is rare on the market. While typescripts of her poems appear from time to time (many submission copies to periodicals and publishers), almost all original handwritten drafts remained with Plath's papers (which now reside variously at Smith College, the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, and Emory University). This manuscript, which originates with Plath's mother's estate, represents one of just a tiny handful of occasions when a handwritten poem of Plath's has come to market, and the first we've traced in almost 15 years. A rare opportunity not only to own an original work in Plath's own hand, but one that prefigures many of her most important images and themes. 10.5'' x 8''. Single ruled leaf. Handwritten in pencil in three stanzas, with title and "by Sylvia" above. Minor edgewear, very slight creasing. Housed in a custom gilt-stamped black cloth clamshell case with black leather spine.

Evans, Walker (illustrator). First American edition. Photographic frontispiece by Walker Evans. Original blue cloth, gilt-lettered on front cover and spine (few soil marks); pictorial dust jacket (some minor chipping at edges, a few old tape repairs on verso). Provenance: Kathryn and Nick Kenney (presentation inscription). First American Edition. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY CRANE TO KATHRYN AND NICK KENNEY on the front free endpaper: "For Kay and Nick | With the most affectionate regards | of the 'last | bear, shot drinking in the Dakotas' | Hart Crane | Brooklyn, '30." Kathryn Kenney and Crane met in the spring of 1921 in Cleveland, when she was "a vivacious, enormously talented girl who seemed the focus of every group in which she moved"; she was Crane's "happiest companion as, singing, laughing, alive with irrepressible wit, they would turn their troubles into comedy" (John Unterecker, Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane, New York, 1970, p.210). Kenney later wrote the society column for the Cleveland Times Commercial, though Crane still preferred to think of her as "the famous vaudeville songster" (p.296). Thirty years after Crane's suicide, in 1962, Kenney recollected: "The great laughter which was Hart's most distinctive and charming feature has never, to my knowledge, ever been touched. Not really. And yet, it colored and saved (I am certain) him to the end of his life" (p.201). Connolly, The Modern Movement 64 [Schwarz and Schweik A 3.1]. Christie's New York, Rockefeller Plaza; Masterpieces of Modern Literature: The Library of Roger Rechler Sale, Oct 11, 2002. Lot Number 58, Sale Number 1098; Christie's cataloguer butchered the inscription, rendering it (a phrase from Crane's "Powhatan's daughter") nonsensically as "'last | bear, shit-drinking with | L'Abotas".

58 [1] pp. 12mo, publisher's blue wrappers lettered in black, preserved in a later quarter blue morocco slipcase and chemise. First edition of Hemingway's first book. A fresh, bright, unworn copy with very slight browning to the top 1/8" of the front wrapper. Pages 25-28 are roughly opened resulting in the loss of a few letters of the text in the upper outside corners. Otherwise a spectacular copy.

8vo, original green cloth, dust jacket. Signs of use, but a very good copy in worn and soiled dust jacket. Signs of use, but a very good copy in worn and soiled dust jacket First edition of Plath's first regularly published book. Presentation copy, inscribed by Plath on the front free endpaper: "For Luke & Cynthia / with love - / Sylvia / April 13, 1961." A highly important association copy, rich in personal interest and history: E. Lucas (Luke) Myers, an aspiring writer from Tennessee, was intimately connected to Ted Hughes and Plath. Plath met Luke Myers at Cambridge, where she and Myers were studying, and admired his poetry and fiction. In her journal entry for February 25, 1956, she wrote: "I have learned something from E. Lucas Meyers (sic) although he does not know me and will never know I've learned it. His poetry is great, big, moving through technique and discipline to master it and bend it supple to his will. There is a brilliant joy, there, too, almost of an athlete, running, using all the divine flexions of his muscles in the act. Luke writes alone, much. He is serious about it; he does not talk much about it. This is the way." - Sylvia Plath, The Journals (London: Faber & Faber, 2000), p. 207. On March 3, Plath commented on Myers' fiction: "A chapter - story from Luke's novel arrived, badly typed, no margins, scrawled corrections, & badly proofread. But the droll humor, the atmosphere of London & country which seeps indefinably in through the indirect statement: all this is delicate & fine. The incidents & intrigues are something I could never dream up . . . Nothing so dull & obvious & central as love or sex or hate: but deft, oblique. As always, coming unexpectedly upon the good work of a friend or acquaintance, I itch to emulate, to sequester." - Plath, The Journals, p. 344. Luke Myers was a close friend of Ted Hughes, and it was outside the chicken coop behind the rectory of St. Botolph's Church that Myers rented from Mrs. Helen Hitchcock, the widow of a former rector, that Hughes used to pitch his tent on weekend visits to Cambridge University, from which he had graduated a year and a half before. St. Botolph's rectory "was a poets' haven, anarchic and unjudgmental", with Mrs. Hitchcock "turning a blind eye to the capers, bibilous and otherwise, of her undergraduate lodgers, of whom she was very fond." - Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Viking Penguin, 1989), p. 73. In February, 1956, a group of young Cambridge poets including Luke Myers, Ted Hughes, Daniel Huws and David Ross, among others, had just put together a little magazine appropriately named the St. Botolph's Review after Luke Myers' digs where they often gathered, and the launch party for the magazine (of which only one issue was published) was to be the occasion for the first fateful meeting between Plath and Hughes on Saturday, February 25, 1956. Plath, who had read some of the poetry by the St. Botolph's group - and two of whose own poems had been criticized recently by one of them, Daniel Huws, in the student magazine Chequer - purchased a copy of the Review on the morning of the party, and memorized several of Hughes's poems in anticipation of attending the party and meeting him. According to Plath's journal entry, after dancing for a while with a drunken, "satanic" Luke Myers, she ran into Hughes. Amid the crush of the party, "I started yelling again about his poems and quoting: â most dear unscratchable diamond' and he yelled back, colossal, in a voice that should have come from a Pole, â You like?' and asking me if I wanted brandy, and me yelling yes and backing into the next room . . . And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn't I, and I stamped and screamed yes, . . . and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hair band off, my lovely red hairband scarf which has weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face." - Sylvia Plath, The Journals, pp. 211-212. As Diane Middlebrook put it: "Ted Hughes may not have been looking for a wife that night, but Sylvia Plath was looking for a husband, and Ted Hughes met her specifications exactly." - Diane Middlebrook, Her Husband: Hughes and Plath - A Marriage (London: Viking, 2003), p. 5. A month later in London, Hughes, not wanting "to declare his interest . . . asked Lucas Myers to play go-between. Myers could meet Plath for a drink somewhere, then just drop in on Hughes at the flat on Rugby Street, as if by chance. Myers admits in his memoir that he had taken a dislike to Plath, and that he agreed to this ploy reluctantly. He duly invited Plath to join him and Michael Boddy, another of Hughes's friends, at a pub called the Lamb, in Conduit Street - a poets' hangout - and shortly afterward suggested a visit to Hughes. It didn't take long to see that Hughes and Plath wanted to be alone." Later that night, at Plath's hotel, they spent - in Plath's words - a "sleepless holocaust night" together. - Middlebrook, p. 24. Soon after, Hughes left the job he had in London and moved to Cambridge, sharing a flat with Myers in Tenison Road, meeting Plath every day, and abruptly marrying her on Bloomsday, June 16, 1956 - secretly, with Plath's mother, Aurelia, the only family member at the wedding. In later years, Myers was witness to the difficulties in the marriage, and aware of its tenuous nature. In a measured attempt to explain "Sylvia's behavior and volte-faces between pleasantness and bitchiness" to Olwyn Hughes in a letter dated March 12, 1960, Myers wrote: "I have the feeling that it is best to think of Sylvia as being always pretty much as she was this weekend . . . Ted suffers a good deal more than he would ever indicate or admit, but he.

Paperback. Condition: Fine. First Edition. A fine copy of Ernest Hemingway's rare first book (Hanneman A1a), one of only 300 copies issued. A nearly perfect copy in the original grayish-blue wraps. The only defect is a tiny nick to the top of spine. Housed in a custom burgundy cloth clamshell box for protection. One of the great literary rarities of the 20th century, and of American literature as a whole.

First editions of both titles. Raven with half title, "Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books", name of stereotyper T. B. Smith on the title verso; Tales, third printing with three-line copyright. Raven: [i-viii] [1]-91 [92, blank] [93-96, ads]. Tales: [i-v] [1]-228 [229-232, ads]. 1 vols. 8vo. Students all over the world know of the title poem, and many know others as well: "The Conqueror Worm", "Eulalie", "Leonore" "To Helen", etc. "The most important volume of poetry that had been issued up to that time in America." - Grolier American 56 A choice set of the major books published during Poe's lifetime, BAL's "reissue B", issued by Wiley and Putnam in April 1846, comprising the first edition sheets of The Raven and The Tales in either second or third printing (here in BAL's third printing, distinguishable by the three-line copyright notice). BAL notes that "impressions from the plates of several pages vary in an anomalous way. For instance, the first three letters of the last three lines of p. 160 appear both battered and intact within the three printings." This copy has slight battering to "I" and "o" on p. 160, while the "v" is intact. The E in the running head on p. 187 is broken here (as in most copies of all printings. BAL cautions, "It is possible that the printings designated below as second and third are in fact two states of the same printing." This copy is textually complete in both books, including the integral ads; the volume has been rebound without the separate gatherings of advertisements that followed the text. BAL 16146, 16147; Heartman & Canny 92-94, 97-108; Grolier American, 56 Three quarter blue morocco gilt, t.e.g., by Riviere & Son. Binder's endsheets with foxing, text with slight toning and a few stray traces of foxing Raven: [i-viii] [1]-91 [92, blank] [93-96, ads]. Tales: [i-v] [1]-228 [229-232, ads]. 1 vols. 8vo First editions of both titles. Raven with half title, "Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books", name of stereotyper T. B. Smith on the title verso; Tales, third printing with three-line copyright.

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. About the book: Soft cover. Thread tied wrappers. Inscribed by author on first blank page. Inscribed to John (Ashbery, perhaps).Decorative wrappers are in fair to good condition. Some chipping, tearing, and missing sections. Interior has a few small blemishes. Overall, the interior is in very good condition. A slender volume. This copy is un-numbered. Poet's first book is extremely rare and hard to find copy. Even harder to find signed by poet. Additional photos available upon request. We're not satisfied unless you are. Inscribed by Author(s).

First edition of Apollinaire's first collection of poems, signed by him and Pablo Picasso. Octavo, bound in three quarter morocco with gilt titles and raised bands to the spine, patterned endpapers, frontispiece portrait of the poet by Pablo Picasso. Association copy, inscribed by both Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso on front free endpaper, "A A P.N. Roinard son admirateur Guillaume Apollinaire" and "et pour Robert Valançay Picasso Paris Janvier 1940 et I." Apollinaire has also made five corrections to the text in ink on pages 71, 77, 92, 110 and 189. The recipient of Apollinaire's inscription, Paul-Napolà on Roinard, was a French libertarian painter and poet whom Apollinaire befriended in 1903 and considered "one of the most powerful precursors of the new poetry." Apollinaire dedicated his poem Le Brasier (included in the present volume on p. 129) to Roinard. The recipient of Picasso's inscription, Robert Valançay, was a poet, translator and literary critic who worked with and admired many of the artists and poets of the surrealist group. He published two major volumes of poetry but was most appreciated and sought after for his translations. He was considered the official translator of Max Ernst and Hans Arp. In near fine condition. Original wrappers bound in. A remarkable association copy, linking four major figures of the literary and artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century. French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the most impassioned defenders of Cubism and a forefather of Surrealism. At the turn of the 20th century, he became one of the most popular members of the artistic community of Paris (both in Montmartre and Montparnasse). His friends and collaborators in that period included Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Gertrude Stein, Max Jacob, Andrà Salmon, Andrà Breton, Andrà Derain, Faik Konitza, Blaise Cendrars, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Pierre Reverdy, Alexandra Exter, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Ossip Zadkine, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Metzinger. He is credited with coining the term "Cubism" in 1911 to describe the emerging art movement, the term Orphism in 1912, and the term "Surrealism" in 1917 to describe the works of Erik Satie.

Condition: Very Good. First Edition. First edition, first issue with Lucien Carr listed on the dedication page and a period after Harlem on the rear cover. Signed by Allen Ginsberg and inscribed to a former owner on the title page; additionally signed by this book's publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the copyright page, and by William S. Burroughs, Carl Solomon and Gregory Corso on the dedication page. Bound in publisher's original stapled black wraps printed in grey with with white paste-on printed in black. Very Good with light toning and light rubbing to covers with a small abrasion to the top right of the front cover of the white paste-on. Pencil notations to text. The poem that defined a generation and an undisputed cornerstone of beat poetry, signed by five heavy-weights of that era.

Evans, Walker (illustrator). First edition. One of 50 copies on Japanese Vellum, signed by Crane. Quarto, original white printed wrappers, with original glassine cover and gilt paper covered slipcase (slipcase slightly rubbed, 1-inch piece missing from bottom edge). A beautiful copy of one of the rarest and most important books of twentieth century poetry, and the first book publication of Evans's work, it was illustrated with three gravures printed actual size from his 1-3/8 inch by 2- 1/2 inch photos.

8 Volumes. 12mo. (6 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches). Vol.1: Title [2] Frontispiece [2] [i-iii] iv-xlviii, [1-3] 4-384. 432 pp. Vol. 2: [1-7] 8-412. 412 pp. Vol. 3: [1-7] 8-432. 432 pp. Vol. 4: [1-7] 8-447 [1]. 448 pp. Vol. 5: [1-7] 8-392. 392 pp. Vol. 6: [1-7] 8-388. 388 pp. Vol. 7: [1-7] 8-452. 452 pp. Vol. 8: [5] 8-304, [i-iii] iv [5-7] 8-128. 432 pp. Contemporary tree sheep, rebacked, preserving spines in six compartments ruled gilt with red and brown morocco lettering-pieces in second and fourth compartments and gilt foliate in rest, [SHAKSPEARE'S | WORKS] in second compartment and volume number in fourth compartment. Some early ownership signatures on titles A complete copy of the rare first American edition of the works of Shakespeare, here spelled "Shakspeare." This is the first edition to be printed outside the British Isles, with the first engraving of Shakespeare printed in the New World, in contemporary bindings in fine condition. "Old World, he is not only thine! Our New World too has part, in his stupendous mind and heart." - Inscription on a Shakespeare statue in Central Park, erected 1872 In a time of high anti-British sentiment in the newly-formed United States, after the American Revolutionary War and before the War of 1812, Joseph Hopkinson, son of Founding Father Francis Hopkinson, decided to edit and publish an eight-volume set of that most English of writers, William Shakespeare. Later to be a US Congressman, Joseph brought out the first three volumes in 1795, and the remaining five in 1796. Joseph, whose father was also America's first composer, wrote the preface and "Life of the Author," marking the first publication of American literary criticism of Shakespeare. Befitting an American, Hopkinson, in his preface, takes issue with the competing "authoritative" British editorial interpretations of Shakespeare, in favor of a less-guided, more individual reckoning with his writing and its meaning. It was only sixty years prior, in 1730, that an American audience first saw a performance of a Shakespeare play, an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet in New York. At that point, Shakespeare had been dead for 114 years. It would seem that part of American tardiness on this matter was due to conservative public morality, as the preface to the first American edition is consumed with defending Shakespeare's plays against claims of moral indecency. Hopkinson assures his readership that the poet is a genius, if still yet imperfectly known, and asides, his contemporaries were even more base: "[W]e contend that none of his personages are expressly drawn to recommend vice, and that his plots are never, like those of Farquhar, and others, in a state of oppostition to conjugal virtue. His works indeed abound with exquisite maxims of morality." The stipple engraved frontispiece portrait of Shakespeare is the first published image of the author in America. The engraver, Robert Field, was a British artist, trained at the Royal Academy, who worked in Philadelphia, and made engravings of images of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Field first appeared in America in 1794 and worked in the young country for over a decade, spending time in Washington DC, and later, Canada and Jamaica. In a 1927 guide to Field's work, the author Harry Piers calls Field's Shakespeare portrait, "a poor reproduction of the original, and does not equal Field's other engravings" but to the modern eye there is a freshness to the less restrained marking method in Field's engraving that evokes the populism of Shakespeare's work and brings him to life. As Anna Kerr at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library writes, Shakespeare, from this first American edition forward, became imbricated in our nation's public life, inseparable from the United States and its conception of itself: "This first American edition, nonetheless, foreshadows the American engagement with Shakespeare throughout history, by people from every walk of life. Abraham Lincoln, for example, invoked the words of Shakespeare as political rhetoric during the Civil War, even as soldiers from both sides of the conflict performed his plays in between battles. Pioneers, miners, and farmers moving West often performed his plays as a form of entertainment during times of hardship. African-American actors and playwrights developed their own theatres in the early 19th century, from which Ira Aldridge, the noted Shakespearian actor, found his beginning, and subsequent immigrant movements to the United States have continued to engage with Shakespeare as a means of sharing in the American spirit, from Yiddish King Lear to Kabuki Macbeth." Contents: Vol. 1. Frontispiece; Title; Preface; The Life of Shakspeare; Shakspeare's Will Extracted from the Registry of the Archbishop of Canterbury; A Glossary, Explaining the Obsolete and Difficult Words in Shakspeare's Works; Tempest; Two Gentlemen of Verona; Merry Wives of Windsor; Measure for Measure; Comedy of Errors; Erratum. Vol. 2. Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labours Lost, Midsummer-Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, As You Like It. Vol. 3. Taming of the Shrew, All's Well that Ends Well, Twelfth Night: or, What You Will, The Winter's Tale, Macbeth. Vol. 4. King John, Richard II, Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part 2; Henry V. Vol. 5. Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Part 2; Henry VI, Part 3; Richard III. Vol. 6. King Henry VIII, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra. Vol. 7. Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Titus Anronicus, Cymbeline, King Lear. Vol. 8. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Advertisement, Dedication, and The Author's Poems including "Venus and Adonis," "Tarquin and Lucrece," Sonnets, "Passionate Pilgrim," and "A Lover's Complaint." Evans 29496, 31180. ESTC W28892. Jaggard, p.507. Piers, Robert Field: Portrait Painter in Oils, Miniature and Water-Colours and Engraver, pp. 16, 194. Sabin 79727.

First edition. 2 volumes, 8vo, original drab boards with pink paper-covered spines as issued. First edition of Wordsworth's single greatest collection of poetry, one of 500 copies printed; with the cancels D11-12 in Vol. I and B2 in Vol. II. Volume I has the half-title and the erratum leaf H8. Volume II has the half-title, the sectional half-title leaf B1, and the first state of sheet F9(i) in volume 2 (with the misprint "Thy fnuction" on page 98, last line). Wise 8. Tinker 2334. Ashley 8:12-14. Healey 19 (locating just six copies in original boards). Cornell/Healey 19-21. Wordsworth's Poems includes many of the poet's most beloved poems, including "She was a Phantom of delight", "To A Skylark", "Resolution and Independence", "The world is too much with us.", "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free", "The Solitary Reaper", "My heart leaps up when I behold.", "I wandered lonely as a cloud.", and the last, but certainly not the least, poem in the collection, Wordsworth's great "Ode", since known by its longer title "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". Contemporary ownership inscription to Anne Watson in Vol. I, with her pencil ownership signature on the title-page; bookplates of Simon Nowell-Smith and his wife. Light foxing, covers slightly chipped and worn, but a very good set.

Evans, Walker (illustrator). First edition. Quarto, original white printed wrappers. Expert restoration to the paper on the spine, otherwise a bright, fresh copy with all tissue guards present; original glassine replaced; enclosed in a new slipcase. Copy number 30 of only 50 copies printed on Japan Vellum, signed by Crane. There were an additional 200 copies in the regular issue. One of the most important American poetic works of the twentieth century as well as a significant collaboration between writer and photographer. The Bridge, called "cubism in poetry" when it was initially reviewed in The New York Times, stands as one of the great epics of 20th-century poetry. Cyril Connolly writes that of the poems "some of them. are near perfect and the whole allegory a masterpiece of neo- romanticism" (The Modern Movement, p.62). Its publication was initiated when Crane met Harry and Caresse Crosby on his trip to Europe in 1929. After reading drafts of "The Bridge", they agreed to publish a limited edition under their Black Sun imprint. Crane took up residence in an old mill on the estate of the Conte de la Rochefoucauld which the Crosby's had made into their weekend retreat. Crane hoped to finish the poem that summer, but was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct and briefly incarcerated in July. Crosby brought Crane's return ticket to the U.S. In December, he and his wife visited Crane in New York. A few days after their visit, Harry committed suicide. Despite her husband's death, Caresse Crosby returned to Paris to see The Bridge through the press. Numerous changes, mostly minor, were incorporated in the American edition, which appeared three months after the first. [Schwartz & Schweik A 2].