Most people, when asked about their favorite book, will invariably include a book they read as a child. Hemingway famously proclaimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn". Twain's book, like its predecessor, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, were books whose intended audience was young readers. Such books speak to us on multiple levels. As literature, they are well-crafted and clever with memorable characters and conflicts, but they matter to us for more than these reasons because we discovered them at a formative period of our lives. Their ideas helped to form our own, and so they are more personal ...
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Paris: Librairie Gründ, 1950. Quarto. 237pp., + 48 plates, nine of which are in color. One of 700 copies. This authoritative text and bibliography on the French “Game of the Goose” and its derivatives is illustrated throughout with images relating to the game, including many whimsical geese. The plates are..... More
(Middle Falls, NY: Toy Works), 1980. This bean bag bat with wings outstretched measures approximately fifteen inches from wingtip to wingtip. The fabric is printed with a black & white crosshatched pattern that is shaded on the wings and body to give the figure more dimensionality, evoking Gorey’s characteristic drawing..... More
(1994-1999). A charming, useful array of Gorey-related gifts: a rubber stamp set, a pack of gift tags, sticker sheets, and a large sheet of wrapping paper with panels from Gorey tales depicted against a red background. All as new, except the wrapping paper, which is a piece from a larger..... More
(Middle Falls, NY: The Toy Works), 1979. A cotton beanbag of a smiling pink pig, measuring seven inches from toe to eartip, and wearing a brown tweed jacket. In back, the turned-up vent shows that the jacket is lined to match his tasteful goldenrod bow-tie. This is one of five..... More
(Middle Falls, NY: The Toy Works), 1979. A cotton beanbag of a smiling pink pig, measuring seven inches from toe to eartip, and wearing a brown tweed jacket. In back, the turned-up vent shows that the jacket is lined to match his tasteful goldenrod bow-tie. This is one of five..... More
Philadelphia; NY: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1961. First edition. Drawings throughout by Edward Gorey accompany Ciardi's ribald poetry. Bound in full yellow cloth with a drawing reproduced in red on the upper cover. Mild toning to edges, faint foxing to paste-downs, else a very good copy with a mildly soiled..... More
NY: Meredith Press, 1968. First edition. "An opera book without libretto or score". Mild rubbing to corners, else near fine in near fine dust wrapper. (Toledano A27a). More
Zurich: Diogenes, 1979. Set of nine square 24mo volumes. A selection of some of Gorey's most popular works, printed by Diogenes for a German- and English-speaking audience. One volume offers the text in German for the remaining eight volumes, which are: The Loathsome Couple, The Pious Infant, The Iron Tonic..... More
NY: Young Scott Books, (1969). First edition. Signed by Gorey. Near fine in pictorial boards and good dust wrapper with edgewear and mild toning to spine. More
NY: Young Scott, 1968. First edition. Signed by Gorey. The first poem in Lear's Book of Nonsense, adorned with illustrations, which Gorey dedicated to Foss, Lear's celebrated cat. Scant wear to extremities of pictorial boards, else near fine. Some toning and minor rubbing to matching dust wrapper. (Toledano B38a). More
NY: Charles Scribner's, 1979. Folio. 21ff. First edition, first printing. The sets and costumes of the Broadway production of Dracula, which were designed by Gorey, and for which he won a Tony Award. Printed on cardboard, with instructions for cutting out and assembling the stage set, with furniture and characters..... More
NY: Charles Scribner's, 1979. Folio. 21ff. First edition, first printing. The sets and costumes of the Broadway production of Dracula, which were designed by Gorey, and for which he won a Tony Award. Printed on cardboard, with instructions for cutting out and assembling the stage set, with furniture and characters..... More
NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973. Square octavo. (88)pp. First edition. Inscribed by the author/illustrator, Hardie Gramatky, on the title page, with an ink drawing of Little Toot. Fourth in the series of children's books that started with 1939's Little Toot, Little Toot on the Mississippi tells the story of the..... More
NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964. Square octavo. 86pp. First edition. Inscribed by the author/illustrator, Hardie Gramatky, on the title page. The first sequel to Gramatky's first children's book, 1939's Little Toot, tells the story of the adventurous tugboat's journey across the Atlantic to London. There he encounters London Bridge, the..... More
Great Britain: Frederick Warne & Co., (1925). Oblong 64mo. Each page with colored illustrations by Greenaway, which first appeared in her 1887 Almanack. Bound in cloth-backed pictorial boards. Some soiling to exterior, else near fine in mildly chipped original glassine. More
London: Routledge, 1882-1895, 1897. Fourteen 24mo. volumes. All in first issue bindings with the following exceptions: 1884 is the fifth variant; 1886 is the third variant; 1888 is the seventh variant; 1893 is the second variant. Each volume is illustrated throughout with full-color images by Greenaway, many of which are..... More
Worcester, MA: J. Grout, Jr., (c. 1840). 32mo. 24pp. Illustrated with a frontispiece, title-page vignette, four woodcuts, and a tailpiece. Bound in green printed wrappers illustrated with a small vignette to the front cover, and a larger woodcut of a man herding cattle to the rear cover. Corners of covers..... More
Worcester: Jonathan Grout, Jr., (c. 1840). 32mo. 24pp. Illustrated with a frontispiece, title-page vignette, six woodcuts, and a tailpiece. Bound in green printed wrappers, illustrated with a small vignette to the front cover and a larger woodcut of a man next to a stream to the rear cover. Gift inscription..... More
Bern & Biel, Switzerland: Ernst Kuhn, 1920. Square 16mo. (45)ff., printed on rectos only. First issue. A striking picture book in the Swiss dialect, illustrated with forty-two brightly colored full-page woodcuts by Erna Haas in the style of the Wiener Werkstätte. The scenes depicted in the woodcuts are charming and..... More
Franklin, NH: Hillside Press, 1966. xvii, 42pp. One of 375 copies. Various texts by Shakespeare with twelve silhouettes by Paul Konewka. Fine in burgundy cloth over boards, faintly rubbed. (2 5/16 by 1 15/16; 60x50mm). More
Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1945. Folio. (14)ff., two of which fold out, + (7) strips. Intact and unused paper activity book designed by Italian artist Edina Altara. Includes a wide variety of colorful paper toys and dolls: an illusionist, finger-puppet dancing girls, a three-dimensional carousel, a regiment of soldiers, birds and..... More
Boston: Henry Hoyt, (1860). 12mo. 164pp. Each lesson is illustrated with wood engravings, and contain passages from the New Testament followed by questions and an explanatory verse. There was a second edition of this work published in 1876, issued by Hoyt's successor. This edition is known in six institutional holdings..... More
London: MacMillan, 1895. Octavo. xxxviii, 260, (4)pp. With Frank Calderon's ten black & white plates, and many smaller illustrations in the text. Introduction and notes by Joseph Jacobs. In an attractive publisher's binding of blue cloth, liberally gilt-stamped with a picture of the fox and some chickens among twining Art..... More
NY: Viking Press, 1933. First edition. Inscribed by the illustrator, Boris Artzybasheff, to Dorothy Lathrop. Twenty of Artzybasheff's inventive, cartoonish wood engravings illustrate ninety of Aesop's famed fables. Artzybasheff's work, both in book illustration and commerical art, adopted the graphic and the grotesque, imbuing humanity, both in implicit emotion and..... More
London: Heinemann, 1912. Quarto. xxx, 224pp. One of 1450 copies, signed by the artist, Arthur Rackham. Contains thirteen color plates tipped-in on brown paper, and 53 illustrations in black & white. Translated by V.S. Vernon Jones, with an Introduction by G.K. Chesterton. Bound in tan paper-covered boards backed with dark..... More
