Leaves of Grass, with Sands at Seventy and A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads.
Whitman, Walt

Seventh edition, fourteenth printing. One of 300 copies, signed by Whitman on the title page. Frontispiece portrait of Whitman consists of an original photograph mounted to stiff paper; this is followed by five additional portraits of the author throughout the text from photographs and engravings. Unobtrusive ink stain across bottom edge, else quite fine internally, in Myerson's binding A, which shows less wear than usual to the flap enclosure, and has a shallow chip to spine head, in addition to some moderate rubbing.

A Message to Garcia and Thirteen Other Things.
Hubbard, Elbert

Small quarto. 166, (4)pp. One of 450 copies signed by Hubbard and with illumination by Emma Johnson. Although most copies of this book contained facsimiles of Hubbard's original manuscript, the present copy contains two leaves in pencil: McKenna notes that a few copies were issued with original manuscript pages bound in. The pages included in this copy are from Hubbard's essay "Art that Wins," which was not included in this collection. Slightest chipping to yapp edges, else extremely fine in original tan limp suede, housed in publisher's box.

Go Down, Moses.
Faulkner, William

Octavo. 383pp. First edition. One of 100 copies, signed by the author. Though several sections of this work were published previously as short stories, Faulkner intended this as a novel, and most sections were considerably rewritten for this publication. The most limited of Faulkner's signed editions and, due to the fragility of the binding, one of the most difficult to obtain in fine condition. This is a fine copy in textured salmon paper boards, backed in red cloth, gilt-stamped on spine. T.e.g.

Minding the Store / Quest for the Best.
Marcus, Stanley

Two volumes. 383; 228pp. Minding the Store is one of 500 signed copies. Quest for the Best is one of 850 copies, inscribed by the author. Both volumes illustrated with black & white photographs. Two memoirs by the former chairman of Neiman-Marcus, who was also a passionate collector and publisher of miniature books. Miniature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny Treasures, by Anne Bromer and Julian Edison, is dedicated to and contains a preface by Marcus. The miniature version of Minding the Store was commissioned for Marcus's 70th birthday by his wife and was the first book produced by the Somesuch Press. The two books are miniaturized editions of the original, full-sized books, bound in cloth with dust wrappers bearing photographs of Marcus on the rear panel. Light wear to extremities of dust wrappers, else fine. (Bradbury, p. 280; see Bromer/Edison, p. 7). (3 by 2 1/8; 77x55mm).

Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Lawrence, D. H

Small quarto. 365pp. First edition. One of 1,000 copies, numbered and signed by the author. Lawrence had the book privately printed in Italy by the Tipografia Giuntina for subscribers after being refused by British and American publishers who questioned the novel's subject and language. Open, legitimate publication of the novel was not allowed in either country until 1960, more than thirty years later, after several landmark trials. Light foxing to a few page edges, else a brilliant copy in brown boards printed with the insignia of a phoenix on the front cover, with paper spine label. In original unprinted, cream-colored dust wrapper, which is lightly chipped and faintly soiled.

Harmonium.
Stevens, Wallace

Second edition, third binding. This edition contains fourteen new poems, while dropping three from the original edition. The complete printing of the second edition consisted of 1,500 copies, which were bound over a period of thirteen years. This copy is inscribed by Stevens on a preliminary blank. The inscription reads: "The basis of poetry is response" and is dated "Sept. 14, 1943." If one could condense Stevens's particular approach to literary creation into a single sentence, this could certainly be it. For Stevens, the pursuit of the real in poetry -- his Supreme Fiction -- is rooted in its immediacy: "Part of the res itself and not about it. / The poet speaks the poem as it is, / Not as it was." Poetry, in Stevens's view, is language used in response to life as it is lived, making this an extraordinary inscription. Stevens signed very infrequently, and inscriptions appear even less often. As a basis for comparison, the Neville copy of this edition, which sold in 2004, was signed ten days after Pearl Harbor and contained a single sentence inscription about war. This is a fine, bright copy in cloth-backed pale blue boards and with the dust wrapper, which is toned along the spine, has a nearly invisible split along the front fold, and has a chip in the upper left corner of the front panel.

Sketches by "Boz," Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. In Two Volumes. Together with Sketches by Boz . . . The Second Series. Complete in One Volume.
Dickens, Charles

Three small octavo volumes. viii, 348 pp.; (iv), 342pp.; viii, 377pp., + (19)pp. of advertisements. First edition, first issues in book form of Dickens's first work. Illustrated throughout with engravings by George Cruikshank, volumes I and II each with a frontispiece and seven subsequent illustrations, and the Second Series with frontispiece, engraved title-page, and eight subsequent illustrations. Volume I Preface dated February, 1836, and both volumes with all but one or two internal flaws as called for by Smith. Second Series is one of the few early copies without the list of illustrations, with thirteen rather than seventeen lines on the first page of the Contents; legible commas on the Free and Easy imprint; and with Vol. III unerased from the foot of each plate. According to Sadleir, these points "certainly seem to represent an earlier (and perhaps suppressed) issue of the book . . . the only possible explanation seems to be that [the publisher] and Dickens planned Sketches by Boz as a three-volume work, and that the plates were prepared for the third volume in uniform style with those of Volumes I and II. Possibly Dickens then insisted on adding more material than a normal third volume could accommodate, and a second series in one bulky volume was forced on the publisher." Eckel even more definitively states that the missing list of plates "prove[s] to be a mark of the first issue of the book." Although most of the sketches in this work were originally published as separate entries in various magazines and journals between 1833 and 1836, this edition does represent the first appearance of five of the sketches: "A Visit to Newgate," "The Black Veil," "The Great Winglebury Duel," "Our Next-Door Neighbours," and "The Drunkard's Death." The first two volumes are bound in publisher's olive green cloth, with a gilt cartouche and lettering on the spines. Corners lightly bumped, some minor spotting to cloth, else about fine. Second Series is bound in the rare original rose-colored cloth with blind-stamped wreath on the front cover and spine in four compartments, top compartment lettered in gilt within a decorative gilt frame. The gilding has been applied without black pigment, again indicating one of the early copies, as mentioned by Smith. Some bumping to corners, spine slightly sunned, and a few short closed tears in cloth at foot of spine. Nearly fine. Each volume in a green cloth chemise, the three volumes housed together in a quarter morocco slipcase lettered in gilt on the spine. This set came from the collection of William E. Self, former president of Twentieth Century Fox, and bears his bookplate. Both volumes also with the bookplates of noted collectors Winston Henry Hagen and E. Hubert Litchfield. A very nice set of a seminal work of modern Western literature, with excellent provenance.

Great Expectations.
Dickens, Charles

Three octavo volumes. (iv), 344pp.; (ii), 351pp.; (ii), 344, + 32pp. of advertisements dated May, 1861. First edition, first impression. One of 1,000 copies. Widely acknowledged as Dickens's masterpiece, Great Expectations was one of only two novels not published in monthly parts and published without illustrations. It was serialized in the weekly periodical All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861; the first edition appeared on 6 July 1861. Great Expectations is the rarest of Dickens' larger books in that most of the first edition was purchased by libraries; those copies that survive, therefore, are usually not in good condition. This copy conforms to nearly all points established in the Clarendon edition; the exceptions all occurring in Vol. III, which points to a later state occurring within the first impression of that volume. Four additional printings, which were designated "editions," quickly followed, with all misprints preserved. This is a fine copy in publisher's bright violet cloth stamped in blind and gilt, showing minor toning to the spines. Inner hinges of volumes 1 and 3 barely starting. Housed in a full-morocco folding case which bears the bookplates of noted Dickens collectors Kenyon Starling and William E. Self.

North of Boston.
Frost, Robert

First edition. From an edition of 1,000 copies, this is one of 200 in the sixth binding state. This was one of two binding states that were done by the Dunster House Bookshop in 1923 in Cambridge, MA when the remaining first edition sheets were sold off by Simpkin Marshall. Signed by Frost on the front endpaper, dated "Amherst 1924," and with a notation as to the name and location of the cottage in England where Frost wrote the poems for this, his second book. A fine copy in leaf-green cloth, gilt-titled. Book label from the Hampshire Bookshop of Northampton, MA on rear pastdown.

Autograph verse, signed.
Wordsworth, William

Single leaf measuring 7 3/8 by 8 1/2 inches, with small embossed stamp in upper left corner. Wordsworth writes out a six-line stanza from "The Epistle to William Simson" by Robert Burns, which reads, in full: "O Nature! a' thy shews an' forms/ To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms/ Whether the summer kindly warms/ Wi' life an light;/ Or winter howls, in gusty storms, The lang, dark night!" Wordsworth is believed to have been one of Burns's earliest English admirers, and Burns's influence on Wordsworth is well-documented and extensive. Leaf shows some slightly irregular trimming and has been mounted. Scattered light foxing, mostly to margins, otherwise very good.

Doctor Thorne.
Trollope, Anthony

Small octavo. iv, 480pp., + 32pp. of advertisements. Fifth edition. The third novel of Trollope's "Chronicles of Barsetshire," a sequence of six novels set in the imaginary town of Barsetshire. This copy bears a presentation inscription from the author to Blanche Thwaite. While we cannot positively identify Ms. Thwaite, it is noteworthy that the surname appears twice in Trollope's fiction, once as the name of a hall in "The Mistletoe Bough," written in 1861, and again as a family name in the 1874 novel Lady Anna, in which a working-class tailor, Daniel Thwaite, marries outside his class. This copy includes a manuscript ABC poem written in Trollope's hand on a leaf that has been bound into the back of the book. Aside from occasional alterations by Trollope, the poem's text is essentially that of the famous "The Siege of Belgrade," written by Reverend B. Poulter but often erroneously attributed to Alaric Watts. In the poem, about the unsuccessful Ottoman raid on the Serbian city, each letter of the alphabet appears as the first letter of each successive line, and that same letter begins every word in the line. Hence: "An Austrian army, awfully arrayed/Boldly by battery beseiged Belgrade...." Perhaps the most intriguing of Trollope's alterations is to the line that begins with the letter I. In the original poem, that line reads: "Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill." Trollope has changed the beginning to read: "Ibraham, Islam, Ismael...."This copy of Doctor Thorne has a special provenance, having at one time belonged to A. E. Newton, the renowned bibliophile and founder of the Trollope Society, who once remarked that Trollope had "written a greater number of first-class novels than Dickens or Thackeray or George Eliot," an opinion shared by many a Trollope enthusiast. Along with Newton's bookplate, the inside front cover also bears the plate of another noted bibliophile, Carroll Atwood Wilson. The book is bound in quarter red leather and pastepaper boards, with gilt lettering to spine. A small chip to the spine head, else a fine copy of a remarkable book, made all the more so by its connection to the author.

Shapes of Clay.
Bierce, Ambrose

First edition, second issue. A collection of Bierce's later poems. Inscribed in pencil by Bierce to Dr. J. W. Robertson in the month of publication. Robertson was a prominent physician in Livermore, California, whose daughter married Edwin Grahborn. This copy is from the collection of Edwin and Irma Grabhorn. A fine copy in decorated cloth binding.

Fantastic Fables.
Bierce, Ambrose

First edition, first issue. A collection of 243 "updates" of many classic fables, including a section titled "Aesopus Emendatus." Inscribed in pencil by Bierce to Dr. J. W. Robertson in the year of publication. Robertson was a prominent physician in Livermore, California, whose daughter married Edwin Grabhorn, co-founder of the Grabhorn Press. This copy is from the collection of Edwin and Irma Grabhorn. Spine uniformly darkened, else nearly fine in publisher's decorated tan-yellow cloth.

Twenty-Five Poems.
Thomas, Dylan

First edition of Thomas' second published book. One of only 730 copies printed. The first edition sold out quickly and three more impressions were produced afterward, making this one of the most successful poetry books of the time. Although this collection was published only two years after his first, the poems show a more mature style, exploring themes of spirituality and politics. This is a presentation copy, inscribed by Thomas to noted collector Norman Unger on the half-title page. As with all books from the Unger collection, this is a very fine copy in grey boards, with original gray printed dust wrapper.