You don't currently have any items in your cart.
About this catalogue
The single copies, pairs and short runs of authors from the darker corners of secondhand and rare bookshops, often bundled together as the neglected, overlooked and underrated; in fact: the long deceased whose works continue to appear – Djuna Barnes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frederick Rolfe; whole worlds of black and white – John Deakin, Lee Friedlander, E.J. Bellocq, C.R.W. Nevinson; strangled by genre prejudice – David Stacton, Mary Renault, Derek Raymond, James Crumley, Nicolas Freeling; classification resistors – Gilbert Adair, James Hamilton-Paterson, John Berger, Penelope Fitzgerald; misshelved pseudonyms – Barbara Hooton, Chris Hunt, Claire Morgan; moonlighters – Daniel Fuchs, Mollie Panter-Downes, Sam Shepard, Adam Gopnik; expatriates – Julian Gloag, Gavin Lambert, Harry Mathews; the two World War volumes of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight and, yes, the genuinely, unfairly neglected – Charles Macomb Flandrau, Brocard Sewell, Robert Harbison and A.L. Barker.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. First American edition, 1993.
The consciousness of a Mexican literary critic against a backdrop of art theft and political games, introduced by an epigraph from Luis Bunuel, 'At the subconscious level nothing is accidental'. Inscribed by the author to Morris Lurie, '... the memory man - nothing slips his mind. Terrifying.', in the year of publication.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus. First English edition, 1925.
The author's first book, only play, and, like all his work, both fiction and non-fiction, intensely autobiographical.
Fine in very good dustwrapper darkened around perimeter, missing a fingernail size piece from the bottom of the front panel and cracked along the spine
Enquire about this book
$350.00 Add to cart
London: Bodley Head. First English edition, 1968.
A memoir circling the idea of 'there is nothing like the power of the dead among the living' and specifically, in this case, between a father and son.
Very good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Ian McKelvie. First English edition, 1972.
The long title poem is concerned with Henry Cook, 1812-1831, a victim of the 'Last Labourers' Revolt' in 1830. Introduction by Francis King, tipped-in frontispiece portrait by Don Bachardy; #331/350 numbered copies.
Plain wrappers, sewn. Very fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
London: Hutchinson. First English edition, 1982.
Ackerley's diaries, bequeathed to, edited and introduced by, Francis King; illustrated; and a sibling's relationship like no other.
Fine in very good dustwrapper sunned around top and bottom edges.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Constable. First English edition, 1989.
The life of J.R. Ackerley: playwright, novelist, poet, literary editor, autobiographer, World War One veteran, prisoner of war and the 'most gifted literary editor of his generation' who believed that 'people ought to be upset...life is so important, and in its workings, so upsetting that nobody should be spared.'
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: William Heinemann. First English edition, 1990.
Downstream from 'Death in Venice': Giles De'Ath sees Ronnie Bostock in 'Hotpants College II' at a multiplex, becomes obsessed, and goes in search of his fanboy; a movie version by Richard Kwietniowski followed in 1997.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus. First English edition, 1976.
The author's first, very funny novel featuring Ginny Babcock, the narrator, and her family '[who] has always been into death.'; inscribed by the author.
Extremities darkened, slight annotation rear pastedown, very good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Granta. Reprint, 2008.
Memoirs #6; at least three other volumes followed; the writer, after fifty years as a top-flight editor, grows old as an atheist and a single woman.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Jonathan Cape. First English edition, 1986.
The author's second volume of memoirs, mostly about her relationship with Egyptian writer Waguih Ghali ('Beer in the Snooker Club').
Fine in dustwrapper
Enquire about this book
$125.00 Add to cart
London: Sinclair-Stevenson. First English edition, 1993.
Black Power activist Hakim Jamal, his backstory, turbulent and hypnotic relationship with the author, and a complicated episode in the latter's life.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Granta. First English edition, 2002.
Norfolk, England in the 1920s, a very privileged English childhood before adult uncertainties intruded and 'the gates of Eden clanged shut'; autobiography #5.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Reaction Books. First English edition, 1999.
More of 'Lights Out for the Territory': photographs by Marc Atkins, texts by Iain Sinclair; from the publisher's wonderful 'Topographic' series – 'Depths lay hidden. Where? On the surface.'
Pictorial wrappers. Fine
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: The Hogarth Press. First English edition, 1963.
The author's fourth book and third collection of stories, really three novellas, almost 300pp., with some characters reappearing, albeit with changes to their circumstances, in all three stories; inscribed to Margaret Mason by the author.
Fine in very good dustwrapper sunned on the spine and with a small tear at the base.
Enquire about this book
$250.00 Add to cart
London: The Hogarth Press. First English edition, 1981.
Sixteen of the author's singular, autobiographical stories that she describes as 'explosions in the dark'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$45.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus, the Hogarth Press. First English edition, 1984.
On an unlikely, lifelong friendship of sorts; inscribed by the author to Elizabeth [Berridge] with affection and admiration.
Pages evenly tanned else fine in dustwrapper reproducing an illustration by Paul Signac.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Hutchinson. First English edition, 1987.
Doug Byshhe, English, ageing, former movie idol, now living in the south of France, with some complications; not too far from Dirk Bogarde; inscribed by the author to Lisa [novelist Elizabeth Berridge] in 1997.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux. Reprint, 1980.
'Spillway' (nine stories, published 1923), The Antiphon' (a play in verse, 1958), and 'Nightwood' (a novel, 1936), all complete; including T.S. Eliot's introduction to 'Nightwood'.
Faint foxing top edge, very good in fine dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
College Park, Maryland: Sun and Moon Press. First American edition, 1982.
Fourteen stories, first edition in book form, previously published in newspapers and magazines between 1914 and 1916; edited, introduction by Douglas Messerli.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Collins. First English edition, 1963.
Beginning, like a period of the author's life, on a train on the Italian Riviera in the 1920s; three generations of women clash, make poor decisions, pursue happiness against the Great War, rise of fascism, the Wall Street crash and depression era.
Owner's stamp. Foxing to prelims and extremities, just good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Hamish Hamilton. First English edition, 1989.
The author's fourth and last novel, a semi-autobiographical account of her youth or, further studies in, as she called it, her 'unsentimental education'.
Extremities evenly tanned, edgewear, very good in good dustwrapper with remnants of stain on reverse of the rear panel.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Picador. Third English edition, 1997.
From New York to Mexico, travels in the latter, very funny travels, as well as a wonderful introduction to the work of Charles Flandrau and, for this edition, an introduction by Bruce Chatwin.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus. Reprint, 2020.
Life between the World Wars for a German Jewish woman in Germany, the south of France, England and the United States, on through the century converting those experiences into a series of novels.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Museum of Modern Art. Reprint, 1970.
Thirty-three mysterious, erotic photographs, from Storyville, the red light district of New Orleans, c.1912; reproduced from prints made by Lee Friedlander, introduction by him.
Some foxing to prelims, else very good in dustwrapper worn at edges and with spots of foxing.
Enquire about this book
$125.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber and Profile Books. First English edition, 2011.
'The Greening of Mrs Donaldson' and 'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes', complete and definitely not prim; signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper in slipcase as issued.
Enquire about this book
$125.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus. First English edition, 1998.
Gerald Tyrwhitt (1883-1950) – zany polymath and maverick eccentric against a portrait of a passing age; inscribed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press. First English edition, 2008.
Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson constructed via transcripts of friends' interviews produced for Lord Berners' centenary in 1983; contributors include: Richard Rodney Bennett, Harold Acton, Frederick Ashton, Daphne Fielding and Fiamma Nicolodi; unpublished writings by Lord Berners including the foreword to 'The Camel', re the 'Denton Welch' colour reproductions of his paintings (30pp.); and various bibliographies of books, art and musical compositions.
Fine in dustwrapper featuring the author's self portrait on the front panel and a landscape by him for the endpapers
Enquire about this book
$100.00 Add to cart
London: Black Spring Press. Reissue, 1991.
After committing a crime, Karli Mortdecai Van Cleef flees Holland with a trunk full of fine china to sell in early Victorian London, but finds himself on board an opium clipper bound for the Indies.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$15.00 Add to cart
New York: Siamese Banana Press. First American edition, 1971.
Three years after their invention stick-on notes become Art. Is this a record? No surprise about the inventor.
Printed wrappers, stapled. A little sunned around perimeter, else fine.
Enquire about this book
$100.00 Add to cart
New York: The Ecco Press. Reissue, 1974.
Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, trying to keep the Romans at bay; first published in 1935; its opium pipe-smoking author, described in the 1920s as 'the English Chekhov' and 'belonging to the immortals' (however, 'Malignant Mary' to Virginia Woolf), unlike Cleo, was forgotten as soon as she died.
Top edge dusty, else very good in dustwrapper creased on the front inside fold.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
Boston: Little Brown and Company. First revised American edition, 1992.
One hundred and fifty-five duotone reproductions – all full page, 18 x 26.5cms., captions at rear – by the most famous photographer of the twentieth century; foreword by Yves Bonnefoy; first published in 1979.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Reprint, 1940.
1856, Virginia before the Civil War; the third reprint before publication, and the reticent author's twelfth and final novel, returning to her roots – "her end was her beginning".
Owner signature, very good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Bloomsbury. First American edition, 2011.
An adult A to Z of never-before published illustrations about anxieties, fears and pet peeves, from 'alien abduction' onwards, by the popular long-time cartoonist for 'The New Yorker'; and a brief appendix; text and illustrations by the author.
Pictorial boards. Fine as issued without dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
Boston: David R. Godine. First American edition, 1985.
Serbo-Italian American cop Mario Balzic #7, down and dirty and deeper into the Rust Belt of Rocksburg, Pennsylvania; inscribed by the author.
Tiny mark on front free endpaper, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
New York: Mysterious Press. First American edition, 1988.
Mario Balzic #8, on the way to fifteen novels, family justice in Rocksburg; signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
New York: Mysterious Press. First American edition, 1990.
Mario Balzic #9; beginning with a Lutheran minister, well that's what we thought he was, entering Mario Balzic's office; signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
London: Peter Owen. First English edition, 1953.
Inside the house of sleep and even deeper into the author's obsession with the varieties, practices and benefits of laziness; 'The Idlers of the Fertile Valley', a Greek movie version, appeared in 1978.
Spots of foxing to prelims and extremities, very good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$100.00 Add to cart
London: MacGibbon and Kee. First English edition, 1957.
A distinguished academic unravels, under the effects of hashish, and his own attempt at 'non-attachment' among the poor of Cairo; translated from the French by P.D. Cummins, published as 'Proud Beggars' in America in a different translation in 1981.
Extremities evenly tanned. Very good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
New York: Poseidon Press. First American edition, 1992.
Beginning in a boarding house in Jacksonville, Florida; Pete Butcher is running from a traumatic past.
Small mark bottom of front free endpaper, faint foxing to foredge, very good in fine dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
Los Angeles: Graham, Blood and Guts Press. First American trade edition, 2006.
Sub-titled, 'The Baby with the Curious Markings'; Freudian revenge fantasy starting with domestic conflict and suspicion, leading to violence and pit bulls.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
New York: Random House. First American edition, 1978.
C.W. Sughrue on the trail of Betty Sue Flowers, and what a trail it is – the author's best known book; signed by James Crumley.
Remainder stamp bottom edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
New York: Mysterious Press. First American edition, 1996.
C.W. Sughrue and Milo Milodragovitch, protagonists of the author's earlier mysteries, team up, if that's the word, for the first time, along the Mexican and US border; signed by the author.
Spots of foxing to foredge, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
New York: The Vendome Press. First American edition, 1996.
One hundred and eleven duotones and seven colour plates; the darkest of the 20th century English photographers arrives in America.
Fine in dustwrapper. Image is the rear panel of the dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
New York: Pantheon. First American edition, 1987.
A Durasian version of obsessive love.
Small bump bottom edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Collins. First English edition, 1984.
Setting the record straight on 'far and away the best living poet who will be read when others are forgotten' (Thomas Hardy); and also, according to this biographer, a prisoner of a 'self-tormenting, self-doubting temperament, over anxious to give, but too nervous to receive.'
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Collins. First English edition, 1990.
St. Angelicus, a fictional college, at Cambridge in 1912; her only novel with a 'happy ending' according to its author.
Top edge a little dusty, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus. Reprint, 2013.
'Her life is partly a story about lateness – patience and waiting, a late start and a late style'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
Boston: Copeland and Day. First American edition, 1897.
The first book, reputedly the first American college novel, by the colleague of F.Scott Fitzgerald and resident of St. Paul, Minnesota, Majorca, and traveller in Mexico.
Original red cloth elaborately embossed. Spine faded, gift inscription from 1898; very good.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
London: Bodley Head. First English edition, 1972.
A young Flaubert's 1849 voyage from Cairo down the Nile to the Red Sea; translated and edited by Francis Steegmuiller, using diaries, letters and travel notes; includes the side story of his travel companion Maxime Du Camp, the first person to photograph Egypt.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Belmont Press. First English edition, 2002.
First separate edition, originally published in 'The New Yorker'. Jonathan Franzen's award-winning memoir of his father's death in the 'slow motion way of Alzheimer's'; #81/200 copies, signed by the author.
Blue corrugated wrappers, sewn. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$175.00 Add to cart
New York: Harper and Row. First American edition, 1972.
The death of Van Der Valk and, long before 'Kill Bill', Arlette, his 'widow of erratic intuition and thin-nerved vulnerability' tracks down the killer; published as 'A Long Silence' in England; inscribed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
New York: Pantheon. First American edition, 1980.
Arlette Van Der Valk moves to centre stage for the first of two mysteries before Freeling replaced her with Henri Castang; inscribed by the author.
Spots of foxing to top edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
New York: Pantheon. First American edition, 1981.
The second, and sadly last, Arlette Van der Valk mystery; inscribed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
Boston: David R. Godine. First American edition, 1994.
Ten essays: Stendhal, Dickens, Conrad, Kipling, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy L. Sayers, Simenon and others, 'Errant Essays on Perpetrators of Literary License', by the detective fiction novelist and chef.
Edgewear. Very good in dustwrapper chipped along the bottom edge and base of the spine.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Haywire Press. First American edition, 1970.
Forty-two influential self-portraits, predating the current trend by forty years; the photographer's first book.
Pictorial wrappers. Mark on inside front cover where price sticker has been removed, else fine.
Enquire about this book
$300.00 Add to cart
Boston: David R. Godine. First American edition, 2005.
Nine pieces, the Hollywood stories of the Brooklyn writer and movie scriptwriter; introduction by John Updike.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
Jeffrey, NH: David R Godine. Reissue, 2006.
One volume edition of Daniel Fuchs' three wonderful novels of immigrant life in New York: 'Summer in Williamsburg' (1934), 'Homage to Blenholt' (1936) and 'Low Company' (1937); introduction by Jonathan Lethem, 900+pp.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. First American edition, 1978.
Fifteen long essays, including: 'The Doomed in Their Sinking', 'Proust at 100', 'Three Photos of Colette', and 'The Ontology of the Sentence or How to Make a World of Words'; signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$200.00 Add to cart
Northbridge, CA: Lord John Press. First American edition, 1979.
'I carried certain glorious credentials, and we were both ready to make a start in life, as the saying was then. It proved a bitter winter in every respect.' #57/275 numbered copies (total edition 301), signed by the author.
Original blue cloth and boards. Fine as issued without dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$125.00 Add to cart
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. First American edition, 1985.
Two close friends: one alive, the other recently murdered; mid-career from the expatriate English novelist.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Riverrun. First English edition, 2019.
Change via humane processes; 'the moral adventure of liberalism'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: The Bodley Head. First English edition, 1982.
An extract from 'The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene', published the following year by Bodley Head, issued here for private distribution in an edition of 225 copies, printed at the Stellar Press; inscribed by Max Reinhardt, the publisher.
Plain wrappers. Fine in printed dustwrapper with a small mark at the bottom of the rear panel.
Enquire about this book
$300.00 Add to cart
London: Macmillan. First English edition, 1986.
Twelve stories, introduced by the author who gives something of the background to the title - Chimerides, the Cynic philosopher, exiled to Mount Dog for the 'excessive venom of his political criticisms' and whose works 'survive only in fragments quoted by contemporaries', eg 'Belief is merely a failure of doubt: beware' - and the tone of some of the stories.
Remainder mark bottom edge, very good in dustwrapper
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Macmillan. First English edition, 1989.
With Edward Elgar, on the RMS Hildebrand, during November 1923, en route to Brazil, continuing up the Amazon to Manaos
Edgwear, ink mark top edge. Very good in fine dustwrapper
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Hutchinson. First English edition, 1990.
Laki, a native of the imaginary Asian holy city of Malomba acts as a guide for an eccentric visiting English family; the author's third novel – begins lightheartedly, ends seriously; published as 'That Time in Malomba' in the United States.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$45.00 Add to cart
New York: Soho Press. First American edition, 1990.
In the holy city of Malomba; published as 'The Bell-Boy' in England, or a person for English readers and an experience for Americans.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Granta Books. First English edition, 2001.
The life of Raymond Jerningham Jebb, aka 'JayJay', 1918-1998, which 'The Guardian' said was 'at times like a heavily disguised autobiography with a lot of pornography thrown in'; signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Secker and Warburg. First English edition, 1988.
'The Secret Life of Stories': from Gilgamesh to Proust, stops in between, and the struggle of fortune, magic and the supernatural against the power of the individual protagonist in Literature.
Fine in dustwrapper with the shadow of price sticker on the rear panel.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Methuen. Reprint, 1952.
Twenty-four cases, all first published in 'Punch'; the fourth of the author's five collections of 'false documents' designed to highlight irregularities in the workings of the law; what!, 'irregularities', there can't be; inscribed by the author 'to the Warden RMS Media with salutes and thanks' by the author; the Warden and others have subsequently presented the copy to D.P. Johnstone.
Very good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$50.00 Add to cart
London: Jarrolds. Reprint, 1957.
A dude ranch, the sea change of the late 1950s, 'as confided' to Patrick Dennis, and basis for the fondly remembered sitcom.
Good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Thames and Hudson. First English edition, 1991.
Monograph, biography of sorts, containing: twenty-nine illustrations, thirty-nine colour and one hundred and sixty one duotone plates – portraits, fashion, landscapes, still life, travel.
Small abrasion to title page, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: GMP. First English editions, 1986-1999.
Eight volumes: A complete set of the stubbornly pseudonymous author's series of historical novels featuring gay themes and characters. Titles are 'Sweet Lavender' (1986), 'Mignon' (1987), 'Thornapple' (1989), 'N for Narcissus' (1990), 'Gaveston' (1992), 'The Bisley Boy' (1995), 'Duval's Gold' (1997) and 'The Honey and the Sting' (1999), all published by the now defunct Gay Men's Press.
All pictorial wrappers. One or two with spots of foxing to the bottom edge, else all fine. The eight vols.
Enquire about this book
$500.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1992.
Too tough for Adam Dalgleish: England, 2021, no babies have been born for 25 years when ...
Edgewear, extremities evenly tanned. Good in dustwrapper sunned around the spine.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Viking. First American edition, 1993.
Collects essays, reviews, interviews, memoirs; seventy-five pieces – 'a chorale of my own assumed voices'; see adjacent image for some subjects, also on board: Thomas Bernhard, Brian Friel, Samuel Beckett, Frank Sinatra, Julio Cortazar and Paul McCartney.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux. First American edition, 2013.
Five essays: 'Heine and the Consequences' (1910), 'Nestroy and Posterity' (1912), 'Afterword to 'Heine and the Consequences'' (1911), 'Between Two Strains of Life: Final Word' (1917), and 'Let No One Ask' (1934); translated and annotated by Jonathan Franzen, assistance and additional notes by Paul Reitter and Daniel Kehlmann; parallel German English text for the essays.
Remainder dot bottom edge, else fine in dustwrapper
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: William Morrow. First American edition, 2001.
Crime across the generations in Boston; a Clint Eastwood movie in 2003; signed by the author, who said, 'In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.'
Fine in dustwrapper designed by Chip Kidd.
Enquire about this book
$50.00 Add to cart
New York: Library of America. First American edition thus, 2002.
Sinclair Lewis from 1925 to 1929: 'Arrowsmith', 'Elmer Gantry' and, a different version of Americans in Europe, 'Dodsworth'; all complete, 1,300+pp.
Faint foxing to extremities, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$45.00 Add to cart
New York: W.W. Norton. First American edition, 1976.
An anthology of 'Esquire' writers, championed by 'Captain Fiction' and bad-boy editor, himself a writer of provocative fictions and teacher of fiction writing, reviled and revered by his students; see adjacent image for contributors.
Printed wrappers. Very good.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: W.W. Norton. First American edition, 1991.
From monologue at a writers' conference to novel: Is this a first? A writer with psoriasis who comes from a family of hat makers and feels culpability for his father's death, spills his guts in two paragraphs.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Jonathan Cape. First English edition, 1980.
Dispatches from countries south of the Sahara and north of the Zambezi one decade after independence framed by a title phrase from Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'.
A little edgewear and spots of foxing to extremities, else fine in dustwrapper with endorsements from Graham Greene, Doris Lessing and Paul Theroux.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Jonathan Cape. First English edition, 1985.
Over the border from California and through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua; Central America and the United States regard one another with both fear and longing.
Very good in dustwrapper with some foxing on inside front flap.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Bloomsbury. First English edition, 1992.
Another shot at unravelling the legends and facts about the prolific author – forty-four stories in just one year, over four hundred books, seventy-six 'Maigret' novels, and world sales amounting to five hundred million copies in fifty five languages; then there's his private life...nothing in moderation.
Review copy with publisher's annotation on front free endpaper, mark bottom edge. Very good in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus. Reprint, 2006.
'When I think of the time I've wasted going to bed with old Etonians'; keeping up with bohemian rule-breaker Mary Wesley, across two world wars, intelligence work for MI5, and her generally rackety life.
Spots of foxing to extremities, very good in fine dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: The Grenfell Press. First American edition, 1988.
'Imagination moves by angles, along a black line inscribed on a white ground that is itself bordered by blackness.' #25/75 numbered copies (total edition 90cc.); signed by the author and Trevor Winkfield, the artist. Printed at the Grenfell Press on Arches 88, bound by Claudia Cohen, the type cast by Michael Bixler. Four full page illustrations and numerous decorations throughout by Winkfield.
Original black cloth with illustrated paper label. Fine in original glassine dustwrapper which is nicked around the edges. Prospectus and errata slip laid in.
Enquire about this book
$200.00 Add to cart
Boston: David R. Godine. First American edition, 1994.
The protagonist – not a journalist – begins to keep a journal, stops his medications, obsession seeps into his consciousness, his self-imposed task takes hold, and ...
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: William Heinemann. First English edition, 1990.
The late subcontinent's most well known Non-Resident Indian's third and last look at contemporary India; signed by the author.
Top edge dusty, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
Oxford: The Softback Preview. Reprint, 1992.
Over 500 nursery rhymes: text, origins, variants, some illustrations; by the world-famous authorities on children's lore and customs.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
Oxford: Oxford University Press. First English edition, 1993.
Playground duty by the most qualified of practitioners; her fieldwork diary from her local school, observing seven to ten year-olds' games, rhymes, songs and lore 1978-1980.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Hodder Children's Books. First separate edition, 1996.
Originally published in 'Sometime Never' in 1956; a boy (Titus of the Gormenghast novels) escapes his home only to find himself on 'evil ground'; illustrations by P.J. Lynch.
Fine in dustwrapper with a couple of tiny marks on the rear panel.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Ballantine Books. Reprint, 1989.
The Factory Novel #1, inscribed to John Baxter by the author as Robin Cook, and with a printout of the former's obituary of Cook published in 'The Australian' here in 1994.
The crime genre on its way to another level, 'He Died' is an act of courage – 'like sticking one's head into a nest of snakes, being bitten, and telling the truth about it'.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Abacus. First English paperback edition, 1985.
Factory Novel #2, another case from the 'unexplained deaths', the A14 section, of the Met; inscribed by the author, as Robin Cook, in 1991.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Andre Deutsch. First English edition, 1979.
'An unfinished autobiography' sets the record straight over the author's hurt that people judged her as a drifter, and for her 'vagabondage'.
Part 1: her childhood as a white Creole in the West indies; Part 2: 'It Began to Grow Cold' is her life in England.
Despite a resurgence of interest in 'Wild Sargasso Sea', after being forgotten for 20 years, Rhys hit tough times, none of which is sugar-coated in these short vignettes.
Foreword by Diana Athill, with her own biographical sketch.
Owner signature, top edge dusty, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Chatto and Windus. Reissue, 1969.
'An eventful day in 1495' for a young man caught up in the intrigues of the Borgias, and on a dangerous mission on behalf of the Pope's son; first published in 1905.
Review copy with publisher's slip, noting publication as 10th April 1969, laid in. Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$45.00 Add to cart
Padstow, Cornwall: Tabb House. First English edition, 1992.
Born in Bangkok, childhood in Cornwall, a friar who tried out three religious orders, member of the Distributist League and literary figure, patron of young poets, and connoisseur of 1890s decadence ... the author's autobiography; illustrated; signed by Brocard Sewell.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
Padstow, Cornwall: Tabb House. First English edition, 1982.
Thirteen essays and memoirs, subjects include: Henry Williamson, Ann Quin Olive Custance, Frederick Rolfe, George Anne Bellamy, and the contrast between G.K.Chesterton and Thomas Hardy; introduction by Colin Wilson, illustrated; #435/500 numbered copies, signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
London: Odhams Press Limited. Reprint, nd.
Collects forty-four prefaces: Sociological (12 prefaces), Political (11), Religious (5), Autobiographical and Professional (14) and Miscellaneous (2); introduction by the author; 800+pp., indexed.
Owner stamp, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$50.00 Add to cart
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. First American edition, 1996.
Forty tales of people, sadly and hilariously, at the end of their tether in the wide open spaces.
Faint spots of foxing top edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
East Hampton, NY: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller. First American edition, 2000.
First exhibition of these two series of early work produced in 1976: 'Bus riders' (fifteen prints) and 'Murder Mystery People' (seventeen); cd by The Glove Compartment, laid in at rear, designed to be played while reading the catalogue; signed by Cindy Sherman on the title page.
Pictorial boards. All fine, as issued without dustwrapper. 1,000 copies.
Enquire about this book
$300.00 Add to cart
New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. First American edition, 1943.
One of the author's self-described psychological 'romans durs' (as opposed to 'romans populaires' – think Maigret), set in Gabon, West Africa; degeneracy and corruption in a colonial outpost, beginning in quintessential Simenon style, 'Try as he might, he could not account for it'.
A couple of marks to prelims and extremities, else fine in dustwrapper nicked at the crown of the spine.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich. First American edition, 1984.
Another version of himself in the form of a long letter to Marie-Jo, his daughter, who had suicided three years earlier; together with her 'Marie-Jo's Book', transcripts of tape recordings left for the author by his daughter and edited by him for publication here; 815pp.
Review copy with publisher's promotional material laid in. Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
London: Hamish Hamilton. First English edition, 2013.
'Journeys to the End of Light – a Fiction of Memory'; Iain Sinclair gets off the M5 and collects twenty-six pieces of psycho-geography on visits to America between 1967 and 2012; signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Jonathan Cape. First English edition, 2002.
Forty-one essays, subjects include: Machado de Assis, Robert Walser, Witold Gombrowicz, Fassbinder's 'Berlin Alexanderplatz', Howard Hodgkin, 'On being translated', E.J. Bellocq, and 'Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux. First American edition, 2007.
Sixteen essays and speeches, subjects include: Dostoyevsky, Victor Serge, Halldor Laxness, Pasternak, Rilke, Tsvetayeva, Photography, Torture, and 9/11.
Fine in dustwrapper
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
New York: Random House. First American edition, 1960.
Guy Grand pursues his 'Everyone has their price' theory in a book about the power of money and billionaires who don't pay taxes – so what's changed?
A movie version directed by Joseph McGrath, driven by Peter Sellers, followed in 1969.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$300.00 Add to cart
London: Museum Press. First English edition, 1954.
A biography, Stacton-style, of Victor Jacquemont, the French botanist and geologist who had a short, eventful career in India early in the nineteenth century.
Original red cloth stamped in black. Fine. No dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1958.
After Ludwig II of Bavaria as protagonist comes Pharaoh Akhenaten in fourteenth century Egypt, joined by Queen Nefertiti in their religious revolution to worship one god only; The Invincible Questions triptych #2.
Fine in very good dustwrapper lightly worn around the perimeter.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1958.
Medieval Japan; The Invincible Questions Tripytch #3; the best-received of the trilogy, in which a Buddhist monk searches for his brother, a painter.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1960.
The author's retelling of John Webster's 'The Duchess of Malfi'; the lust for power and greed for torture in Renaissance Italy.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1960.
A tale of the Maya of sixteenth century Yucatan and their strange adopted son, a Spanish gypsy, who tries to keep the doomed civilisation alive; 'American Triptych I'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
New York: Pantheon Books. First American edition, 1961.
The American Civil War, John Wilkes Booth, and, in keeping with its author's other books, 'One learns from what one does. A parable shows one what one is. It is inevitable, but each time we experience it, the times have changed, we have changed, and so also changes the meaning of the parable itself. Such is the malice of events. The whole world is a parable.'
Fine in very good dustwrapper chipped and creased at edges.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1962.
The career of presidential nominee Wendell Wilkie; after 'A Signal Victory' and 'The Judges of the Secret Court', the final volume in the author's American Triptych.
Spots of foxing to foredge, else fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1963.
Pre-Trafalgar – one of history's great love affairs between Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson; the Sexes Triptych II.
Fine in very good dustwrapper with light wear along edges.
Enquire about this book
$100.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1965.
'A Quarrel with the Gods', the story of Siva and Kali retold via Charlie and Denise, an American couple in Switzerland; the final volume of 'The Sexes trilogy'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1965.
During the Thirty Years' War in seventeenth century Europe – the twinned fortunes of Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus and two orphaned children undertaking a perilous journey across Germany; the author's last novel.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$100.00 Add to cart
Oakland, CA: Limited Editions Incorporated. First American edition thus, 1977.
One poem from each of the author's five collections; 250 copies (total edition 261), handset, and printed at South Hall Press, Berkeley.
Pictorial wrappers, tied. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$85.00 Add to cart
New York: John Day. Reprint, 1929.
The first 'dime' novel, published in 1860, and sold for ten cents; reissued here in celebration of its publishing history. The cover of the first issue of the first edition reproduced as frontispiece, the second issue cover as the front panel of dust wrapper; includes the publisher’s note from the 1860 edition, and a longer introduction by Frank O’Brien setting out the history of the novel’s publication.
Fine in about very good dustwrapper faded on spine and with a short closed bottom corner of the front panel.
Enquire about this book
$100.00 Add to cart
Manchester: Carcanet. First English edition, 1984.
Work, family and patterns of dependence in Strauss' Germany; translation by Michael Hulse.
Fine in dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: MacDonald. Reprint, 1966.
'A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight' – the life and times of Phillip Maddison, #6: 1916, Battle of the Somme, and dedicated to Richard Aldington.
Michael Boddy's copy, with his signature, else fine in very good dustwrapper, illustrated by Broom Lynne, nicked at the crown and base of spine.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
London: Macdonald. First English edition, 1967.
'The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight' #15, the World War Two volume (1940 to the uneasy 'sunrise' of peace in 1945) portrays the effects of war on rural England; dedicated to Brocard Sewell.
Spots of foxing along top edge, else fine in very good dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$35.00 Add to cart
Derry, NH and Ridgewood, NJ: Babcock and Koontz. First American edition, 1986.
A story, originally published in 'The Atlantic Monthly' earlier that year; title page illustration by Gaylord Schanilec; #45/200 numbered copies (total edition 240); signed by the author.
Original grey cloth with printed label. Fine as issued without dustwrapper.
Enquire about this book
$150.00 Add to cart
Antwerp: FotoMuseum. First Flemish edition, 2014.
Exhibition catalogue. Exhibition built around two comprehensive private collections and divided into 'Battlefield', 'Death', 'Enemy', 'Souvenir' and 'Ravage', and ending with images of the results of surgery carried out on the wounded into the 1920s; hundreds of reproductions, essays, index, 211pp; English text.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
Enquire about this book
$60.00 Add to cart