[Twain's first book] And other Sketches. Edited by John Paul. New-York: C.H. Webb, 1867. Original brown cloth, beveled, with gilt frog in lower left corner of front cover (and in blind on rear cover). First Edition, second printing, of Mark Twain's first book -- a collection of anecdotes and sketches...
[Poker Flats & Roaring Camp] Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870. Original green cloth. First Edition. This is Harte's third and best-known book, one which he spent the rest of his life unsuccessfully trying to equal. These tales had originally appeared in the Overland Monthly, of which he was the...
By Quiz [sic]. Illustrated by Phiz. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin; and 596 Broadway, New York, n.d. [1869]. 2 pp undated ads. Original bright green cloth decorated in gilt, black and red, beveled. First American Collected Edition of all three "Sketches" -- two of which actually were written by Charles...
Dedicated to Young Ladies. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1838. Original dark green cloth with front cover label. First American Edition. Dickens wrote this as a protest against SKETCHES OF YOUNG LADIES, pseudonymously written by "Quiz" (subsequently attributed to Rev. Edward Caswall) the year before. That volume classified these "interesting...
London: W. Collins Sons & Co., (1917). Original blue-black cloth. First Edition of this unfinished, posthumously-published novel -- about America's Gilded Age, and specifically about two dying millionaires and the corruption in their wake. "It was composed during the summer of 1914... [and] had reached the point where it breaks...
["Presentation Copy"] London: Methuen & Co., (1911). 32 pp ads dated August 1911. Original green cloth with gilt-decorated spine. First Edition (English), issued simultaneously with the American. According to James himself, "The Outcry" deals with a question sharply brought home of late to the conscience of English Society -- that of...
["Presentation Copy"] London: Methuen & Co., (1910). 32 pp ads dated Sep 1910. Original rust-brown cloth with spine decorated in gilt. First English Edition (1500 copies published on 13 October 1910, one week after the American) of this collection of five tales. The tales are "The Velvet Glove," "Mora Montravers,"...
Illustrated by W.T. Smedley. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1909. Original red cloth. First Separate Edition. JULIA BRIDE's first appearance in book form had been in Vol. XVII of the New York Edition of James's works, published earlier the same year; there was no separate English edition. Per...
[In Two Volumes.] New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904. Original light brown-rose cloth. First Edition, published on 12 November 1904, three months earlier than the one-volume 1905 London edition by Methuen. When penniless Charlotte Stant's former lover, Prince Amerigo, marries her wealthy friend Maggie Verver, Charlotte considers as a gift...
[a handsome copy] Translated from the French. With Numerous Illustrations. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, & Searle, 1873. 32 pp ads dated October 1872. Original green cloth pictorially decorated in black and gilt, beveled, all edges gilt. First British Edition, also the first edition in the English language. Three Englishmen... and...
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901. Original light brown cloth. First Edition (published nine days before the London edition). This is a strange novel in which an unnamed narrator goes to a weekend gathering in the English countryside, where he tries to figure out -- learn the truth about the...
London: William Heinemann, 1899. 2 pp undated ads. Original blind-stamped blue cloth. First Edition of this novel, written almost entirely in dialogue, of Nanda Brookenham's "awkward age" of transition away from her mother's marriage-marketing and toward taking charge of her own life. This appears to have been a colonial copy that...
London: Duckworth and Co., 1898. 16 pp undated ads. Original light buff cloth with telegraph lines in black. First Edition (which consisted of only 1,500 copies), issued a month before the considerably more common Chicago one. This is a short novel about a telegraph girl ("in the cage"), who willingly...
[an association copy] Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1897. Original olive green cloth decorated in gilt. First American Edition, consisting of 1,500 copies, issued about a week after Heinemann's London edition. This is James's short novel in which one spineless man and the contents ("spoils") of his...
The Figure in the Carpet ... Glasses ... The Next Time ... The Way It Came. London: William Heinemann, 1896. 32 pp undated ads. Original aqua blue cloth blind-stamped with four irises. First Edition of this self-deprecatingly-titled collection of four tales, each of which occupies about 65 pages. This first...
The Death of the Lion | The Coxon Fund | The Middle Years | The Altar of the Dead. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1895. 6 pp undated ads. Original light green cloth decorated in dark green and gilt. First American Edition of this collection of four tales, published a....
London: Macmillan and Co., 1888. 2 pp undated Vol I ads. Original dark blue-green cloth with gilt lines. First Edition, which consisted of a mere 500 copies. George Flack is the Paris correspondent for an American scandal sheet called The Reverberator. Francie Dosson, a pretty but not always tactful American girl...
Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. [In Two Volumes.] Illustrated from Drawings by F.O.C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: James G. Gregory, 1861. Original dark green cloth. Very early American Edition -- the first to deposit copies at the Library of Congress -- of one of Dickens's most-loved novels.....
[inscribed by Curle] With a Preface by Joseph Conrad. London: Macmillan and Co., 1923. Original mottled red cloth lettered in gilt. First Edition of this volume of travel notes on what were then called Burma and Malaya, by this Scotsman who was a good friend of Joseph Conrad. Conrad, whose...
Allahabad: Published by Messrs. A.H. Wheeler & Co., n.d.[1889]. 2 preliminary pp + 7 pp undated ads. Original decorated cream wrappers. First Edition of this collection of eight early Indian tales by Kipling -- one of only 1,500 copies published as No. 3 in Wheeler's Indian Railway Library, priced at...
["Civil Disobedience" -- fine] Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866. Original green cloth stamped in gilt on the spine. First Edition, which consisted of only 1500 (Borst) or 1546 (Blanck) copies. This is a posthumous collection of essays, edited by William Ellery Channing and Sophia Thoreau (the author's sister). Its best-known...
[Tennyson's masterpiece -- fine] London: Edward Moxon, 1850. Original blind-stamped purple-brown cloth. First Edition -- of what is "widely considered to be one of the greatest poems of the 19th century" [Oxford p. 607]. As indicated on the dedication (but not title) page, this volume is in memory of "A.H.H."...
Illustrated by George du Maurier. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881. 6 pp undated ads. Original dark olive cloth pictorially decorated in brown and gilt. First Edition, published actually in December 1880, a month before the two-volume London edition that included two additional pieces. WASHINGTON SQUARE, a rare example of...
With Two Designs by D.G. Rossetti. London: Macmillan and Co., 1866. Original green cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition of Christina Rossetti's second book, published four years after GOBLIN MARKET. The title verse is a romantic allegory on the "Sleeping Beauty" theme, only in this case the Prince arrives too...
With Two Designs by D.G. Rossetti. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1862. Original dark blue cloth decorated in gilt and blind. First Edition of Christina Rossetti's first volume of verse (other than her 1847 one, privately printed by her grandfather when she was only 17). "Goblin Market" is an intensely erotic...
