FIRST KELMSCOTT PRESS EDITION, ONE OF ONLY 250 COPIES ON PAPER (from an edition of 258). The Kelmscott Press “was far and away the most splendid of all private presses… quite without a peer.” -Colin Franklin, The Private Presses Beautifully printed in red and black in Golden type. Exquisitely illustrated by William Morris with woodcut title page, first page (borders), and decorated initials throughout.  Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1895 [issued 1896]. Small quarto, original limp vellum, yapp edges, gilt spine title, green silk ties; uncut. One tie loose, else fine.

FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of de Broglie’s presentation of his revolutionary theory of the wave-particle duality of matter. PMM 417. De Broglie’s work “served as the basis for developing the general theory nowadays known by the name of wave mechanics, a theory which has utterly transformed our knowledge of physical phenomena on the atomic scale.” Octavo, original printed wrappers; custom cloth box. Modest bookplate on inside front wrapper; tape repair to initial blank. Minor discoloration to wrapper edges; an excellent copy.

FIRST EDITIONS of The Hunger Games Trilogy. A fine set in the original dust jackets.

FIRST EDITION of Jevons’s explanation of his “logical piano”; a landmark in computer science. To the reader of the preceding paper it will be evident that mechanism is capable of replacing for the most part the action of thought required in the performance of logical deduction. Mental agency is required only in interpreting correctly the grammatical structure of the premises, and in gathering the purport of the reply… The machine is thus the embodiment of a true symbolic method or Calculus… Jevons invented a “logical piano” (so named because it resembled a small upright piano) that could perform, through a sequence of switches, various types of logical calculations. In doing so, he became “the first person to construct a machine with sufficient power to solve a complicated problem faster than the problem could be solved without the machine’s aid” (Goldstine). “On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference,” a paper Jevons read before the Royal Society on January 20, 1870, is his most detailed description of this early prototype of the modern computer. The logical piano now stands in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the year 1870, pp. 497-518, Vol. 160, Part II (the complete volume). London: Taylor and Francis, 1870. Quarto, modern half-calf over marbled boards, with the original wrappers bound-in. A fine copy.

FIRST EDITION, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY JULIA CHILD. Octavo, original cloth, original jacket. An exceptional copy. Rare signed.

FIRST EDITION of Lawrence’s account of his journey on foot through northern Syria. Illustrated with 129 photographs taken by the author. Octavo. Original cloth, original brown paper dust jacket. First issue with page 16 mis-numbered. Fine in a superb dust jacket with only very minor occasional rubbing.

FIRST EDITION OF SENDAK’S THIRD BOOK, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY SENDAK. Gilt lettered red cloth, original dust jacket ($12.95 on front flap). Outside Over There is Sendak’s story of Ida, a pre-adolescent girl who must contend with sibling jealousy, new responsibilities and goblins who kidnap her young sister. A splendid copy, with Sendak’s enchanting illustrations.

LIMITED EDITION, WITH TWO SIGNED COLOR ETCHINGS BY MAX ERNST, and 25 additional color lithographs; one of only 250 copies (out of a total edition of 320). An evocative collaboration between the surrealist poet Prevert and the surrealist artist Ernst. The Livre d’Artiste in the Twentieth Century 46. Large folio, loose as issued in original lithographed paper wrappers; original buckram clamshell box. Fraying to box edges, some foxing to wrappers; interior and plates fine.

FIRST EDITION, with the twelve-line errata and two cancels. In 1773 Johnson, then sixty-four, set off with Boswell, aged thirty-three to tour the Hebrides and visit Boswell’s ancestral home. “The publication of Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) marked an important moment in Scottish travel literature, despite the less than favourable impressions conveyed… Johnson declared that ‘All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it’, but found Scotland to be much worse than expected. Nevertheless, he single-handedly enhanced Scottish tourism, securing the peripheral areas of Britain as eligible destinations for travellers.”–The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing Octavo. Contemporary full calf. Bookplate. Skillful repairs at spine ends, clean throughout. A lovely copy. From the library of distinguished Johnsonian and bibliographer William B. Todd.

THE ESTIENNE EDITION of the letters of Pliny the Younger (A.D. 61-113). Pliny is one of the three earliest non-Christian writers to mention Christ and the Christians. Quarto (240 x 170mm). Woodcut Estienne printer’s device on title-page. Woodcut ornamental initials and headpieces. 19th-century tan calf, decorated in blind; joints split near top but holding. Hinges reinforced; occasional unobtrusive early underlining, scholarly notations and marginalia. This edition was printed by Paul Estienne (Paulus Stephanus), a member of the eminent Estienne (Stephanus) dynasty of French scholar-printers, and the son and successor of the great Henri Estienne.

First expanded edition. The one volume edition of 1817-19 was written by John P. Gandy and illustrated by Gell. Excavations continued throughout the 1820s. The 1832 edition was written by Gell himself and covers the recent excavations. “Pompeiana, published in 1817-19 brought the first comprehensive account of the excavations to English-speaking readers… Numerous editions issued over the next six decades influenced popular culture through a skillful illumination of fact with lively pictorial images. The first edition is a topographical tour covering major public and domestic structures… while the revised sequel of 1832.. presents the results of recent exploration, in the course of which a number of spectacular residences and baths were uncovered. Bringing to light noteworthy examples of mythological paintings, excavations carried out during the 1820s opened a window into the living quarters of Romans whose libraries and walls were replete with the texts and images of classical mythology.” –Claire L. Lyons and Marica Reed, Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum Imperial octavo. Two volumes. (17×26.5cm) Contemporary silken green cloth with gilt labels to spine. Complete with 87 full page plates. With an additional 30 vignettes tipped on india. Untrimmed. Minor foxing to preliminaries; an excellent set in an attractive early binding.

FIRST AMERICAN TRADE EDITION. Octavo. Original pictorial cloth lettered in gilt. Introduction by Theodore Roosevelt, foreword by Gilbert H.Grosvenor. With 8 full page illustrations, 100 illustrations in black and white, and color map bound in at rear. An excellent copy.

FIRST EDITION of the ninth book in the James Bond series, in colorful “skeleton” dust jacket designed by Richard Chopping. Octavo, original black cloth with blind-stamped skeletal hand, original dust jacket. Book fine, small bookseller sticker at lower front paste down, dust jacket light toning at spine, small closed tear at spine head, small residue on back cover. A bright and handsome copy.

First edition of Faulkner’s powerful and influential novel on race relations in the American South, centered on the trial of Lucas Beauchamp, a black farmer accused of murder. Intruder in the Dust “has the disturbing emotional power that [Faulkner] can generate at his best” ––Edmund Wilson Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket. Book fine; bright dust jacket with slightest edgewear; small spot on rear panel. A lovely copy.

FIRST EDITION of Woolf’s most experimental novel. With original dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell. “Part of Virginia Woolf’s greatness lay in her continuation of Henry James’s aim to define the novel as a form of art. She fulfills its inherent flexibility when she blends the novel with other genres to create new forms… Her most formally inventive fiction, The Waves appears to owe its inspiration more to poetry and drama than the novel… Woolf freely manipulated conventional elements of fiction… in a concerted attempt to take the novel beyond its customary compass” (Dictionary of National Biography; Eric Warner, Virginia Woolf, The Waves). Octavo, original purple cloth, original dust jacket. Book fine, dust jacket with a hint of toning to spine and a slight bit of edgewear. A beautiful copy, rare in such fine condition.

FIRST EDITION of Hemingway’s most comprehesive collection of short stories, published with The Fifth Column, Hemingway’s only full-length play. “Five years after publishing Winner Take Nothing (1933), he collected the three separate volumes of stories and added to them a handful of other pieces– four stories written after 1933: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936), “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936), “The Capital of the World” (1936), and “Old Man at the Bridge” (1937); one early story previously bypassed for commercial publication, “Up in Michigan” (1923, Three Stories and Ten Poems); and The Fifth Column, a play set in Civil-War Spain- to make up The Fifth Column and The First Forty-Nine Stories (1938), the only collective gathering of his stories to appear during his lifetime” (Bendixen, A Companion to the American Short Story). Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket; custom box. Book near fine, dust jacket bright and clean with only trivial wear. An excellent copy.

FIRST EDITION, first issue of one of the most influential works of American literature. The Red Badge of Courage, Crane’s “most popular work, and the classic American treatment of the Civil War… interprets military experience through the perspective of an untried volunteer who receives his wound-badge while fleeing from a battle but eventually proves himself by fighting bravely. The book was so convincing that a Union colonel said he recalled serving with Crane at Antietam. The epic sweep of the novel arises in part from Crane’s ability to convey a common soldier’s rite of passage from fear to confidence. It also arises from Crane’s ability to blend a variety of literary modes, including irony, the mock-heroic, comedy, and the grotesque. Crane’s strikingly original use of colors, partly inspired by Goethe and already on display in Maggie, became a trademark, as did his penchant for offbeat insights and arresting turns of phrase. The autumn 1895 publication of The Red Badge of Courage in the United States and England brought Crane international fame as the book went into fourteen printings within the year” (American National Biography). BAL 4071. Octavo, original buckram stamped in red, black, and gilt; early custom box. Book with foxing to cloth edges and toning to spine. Text exceptionally clean. With Appleton ads in rear.

FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH of this most important work in art history and criticism. THE HAGUE: E. VAN HARREVELT, 1766. Octavo.Two volumes bound as one. Recent crushed morocco, rebacked with the original spine laid down, marbled endpaper. Illustrated throughout. A handsome copy.