The Jungle -
Upton Sinclair
1906 - Doubleday, New York - First Edition
‘Pierces the thickest skull and most leathery heart.’ - Winston Churchill
A fine example of the first edition, with none of the usual rubbing and loss to the white lettering, or foxing to the pages that is usually encountered.
‘The brutally grim story of a Slavic family who emigrates to America, The Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and social and economic despair.
‘Sinclair's nightmarish narrative of the immigrant Rudken family instigated a series of legislative measures that were highly successful. His lurid scenes of a meat packing industry that ground both rates and fingers into sausage aroused the middle class to demand sanitary conditions for food preparation.
Yet far less effective by comparison was his severe indictment of the working conditions that regularly reduced laborers to impoverished insanity. As Sinclair later wryly observed, “I aimed for the heart and hit the stomach of America”.’ – Emory Elliot, The Columbia Literary History of the United States.
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Price HK$ 15,000
1906 - Doubleday, New York - First Edition
‘Pierces the thickest skull and most leathery heart.’ - Winston ChurchillA fine example of the first edition, with none of the usual rubbing and loss to the white lettering, or foxing to the pages that is usually encountered.
‘The brutally grim story of a Slavic family who emigrates to America, The Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and social and economic despair.
‘Sinclair's nightmarish narrative of the immigrant Rudken family instigated a series of legislative measures that were highly successful. His lurid scenes of a meat packing industry that ground both rates and fingers into sausage aroused the middle class to demand sanitary conditions for food preparation.
Yet far less effective by comparison was his severe indictment of the working conditions that regularly reduced laborers to impoverished insanity. As Sinclair later wryly observed, “I aimed for the heart and hit the stomach of America”.’ – Emory Elliot, The Columbia Literary History of the United States.
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Price HK$ 15,000
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West -
Wallace Stegner, Bernard DeVoto
1954 - Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston - First Edition
A fine first edition of Wallace Stegner’s epic work, with an introduction by Bernard DeVoto.
With a large folding panoramic frontispiece painting of the Grand Canyon by William H. Holmes, and illustrated throughout from engravings, paintings, sketches, maps, and photographs.
Stegner recounts the successes and frustrations of John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of Indian tribes of the American Southwest.
‘This book goes far beyond biography, into the nature and soul of the American West. It is Stegner at his best, assaying an entire era of our history, packing his pages with insights as shrewd as his prose.’ – Ivan Doig.
‘Wallace Stegner ... has summarized the frontier story and interpreted it as only one who was a part of it could do. The result is a memorable and rewarding book.’ – Hal Borland, New York Times Book Review.
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Price HK$ 4,500
1954 - Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston - First Edition
A fine first edition of Wallace Stegner’s epic work, with an introduction by Bernard DeVoto.With a large folding panoramic frontispiece painting of the Grand Canyon by William H. Holmes, and illustrated throughout from engravings, paintings, sketches, maps, and photographs.
Stegner recounts the successes and frustrations of John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of Indian tribes of the American Southwest.
‘This book goes far beyond biography, into the nature and soul of the American West. It is Stegner at his best, assaying an entire era of our history, packing his pages with insights as shrewd as his prose.’ – Ivan Doig.
‘Wallace Stegner ... has summarized the frontier story and interpreted it as only one who was a part of it could do. The result is a memorable and rewarding book.’ – Hal Borland, New York Times Book Review.
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Price HK$ 4,500
East of Eden -
John Steinbeck
1952 - The Viking Press, New York - First Trade Edition, First Issue
Steinbeck ‘considered Eden to be his magnum opus, the crowning achievement of his life's work.
‘The subject is the only one man has ever used as his theme - the existence, the balance, the battle, and the victory in the permanent war between wisdom and ignorance, light and darkness - good and evil.’
‘I have written each book as an exercise, as practice for the one to come. And this is the one to come. There is nothing beyond this book-nothing follows it. It must contain all in the world I know and it must have everything in it of which I am capable’.
- John Steinbeck writing to his editor and publisher Pat Covici, The East of Eden Letters.
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Price HK$ 15,000
1952 - The Viking Press, New York - First Trade Edition, First Issue
Steinbeck ‘considered Eden to be his magnum opus, the crowning achievement of his life's work. ‘The subject is the only one man has ever used as his theme - the existence, the balance, the battle, and the victory in the permanent war between wisdom and ignorance, light and darkness - good and evil.’
‘I have written each book as an exercise, as practice for the one to come. And this is the one to come. There is nothing beyond this book-nothing follows it. It must contain all in the world I know and it must have everything in it of which I am capable’.
- John Steinbeck writing to his editor and publisher Pat Covici, The East of Eden Letters.
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Price HK$ 15,000
The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon - Signed & Inscribed -
Au-Young Sum Nung
1938 - March & Greenwood, New York - Number 73 of 350 numbered copies
Inscribed ‘With the best wishes of the author’ and signed in both English and Chinese.
A rare copy of Au-Young’s poem, with an introductory note. The front title page illustrated in silver, the remaining leaves lettered in red, all housed in yellow-gold silk covers bound in the traditional Chinese stitched accordion style.
Au-Young (1893-1942) was a Chinese diplomat, poet, and philosopher, educated in China, and then George Washington University and Columbia. After graduating he moved to Shanghai to practice law and then enter the diplomatic service, after which he emigrated to the U. S. founding the School of Chinese Philosophy and Cultural Studies in New York City.
In 1918 George Washington University’s magazine Cherry Tree wrote that ‘Sum Nung Au-Young is one of our illustrious students from the Far East who has absorbed all the knowledge in the Political Science Courses and is going back to China to run the country.’
The book is dedicated to Ruth St. Denis ‘Symbol of Rhythm and Grace’, famous American dancer and choreographer, who followed various Oriental doctrines and founded the ‘Society of Spiritual Arts’. In 1934 she began an affair with the young Au-Young who taught her the rudiments of Taoism.
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Price HK$ 3,000
1938 - March & Greenwood, New York - Number 73 of 350 numbered copies
Inscribed ‘With the best wishes of the author’ and signed in both English and Chinese.A rare copy of Au-Young’s poem, with an introductory note. The front title page illustrated in silver, the remaining leaves lettered in red, all housed in yellow-gold silk covers bound in the traditional Chinese stitched accordion style.
Au-Young (1893-1942) was a Chinese diplomat, poet, and philosopher, educated in China, and then George Washington University and Columbia. After graduating he moved to Shanghai to practice law and then enter the diplomatic service, after which he emigrated to the U. S. founding the School of Chinese Philosophy and Cultural Studies in New York City.
In 1918 George Washington University’s magazine Cherry Tree wrote that ‘Sum Nung Au-Young is one of our illustrious students from the Far East who has absorbed all the knowledge in the Political Science Courses and is going back to China to run the country.’
The book is dedicated to Ruth St. Denis ‘Symbol of Rhythm and Grace’, famous American dancer and choreographer, who followed various Oriental doctrines and founded the ‘Society of Spiritual Arts’. In 1934 she began an affair with the young Au-Young who taught her the rudiments of Taoism.
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Price HK$ 3,000
The Rolling Pearl - Signed & Inscribed -
Au-Young Sum Nung, Edwin Markham
1930 - March & Greenwood, New York - First and Limited Edition
Inscribed ‘With the best wishes of the author’ and signed in both English and Chinese.
A rare collection of Au-Young’s poems, with an introductory note by the American poet Edwin Markham. With a portrait frontispiece and housed in the delicate silver coated dust jacket. One of a limited number printed.
In the delicate silver coated dust jacket.
With a typed letter to Miss N. Margaret Campbell, of the New York advertising agency Alley Richards & Co., about making a sound film in Chinese, dated February 26, 1941 and signed by Au-Young. Also several other loose typed papers.
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Price HK$ 3,000
1930 - March & Greenwood, New York - First and Limited Edition
Inscribed ‘With the best wishes of the author’ and signed in both English and Chinese.A rare collection of Au-Young’s poems, with an introductory note by the American poet Edwin Markham. With a portrait frontispiece and housed in the delicate silver coated dust jacket. One of a limited number printed.
In the delicate silver coated dust jacket.
With a typed letter to Miss N. Margaret Campbell, of the New York advertising agency Alley Richards & Co., about making a sound film in Chinese, dated February 26, 1941 and signed by Au-Young. Also several other loose typed papers.
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Price HK$ 3,000
The Marsh Arabs -
Wilfred Thesiger
1964 - Longmans, London - First Edition
‘His voyage through desert waters will remain, like his Arabian Sands, a classic of travel writing.’ - The Times.
The account eight years spent living with the tribes people of the Marshes of Iraq. This book by one of the century's greatest explorers describes a way of life which lasted for thousands of years, but has now all but vanished. Travelling with his medicine boxes and his teams of canoemen around the junction between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Thesiger visited nearly every village in the Central Marshes and came to know intimately the people who inhabit this landscape of islands, lakes and waterways, living with them in their reed houses and sharing their unique way of life. He beautifully evokes the landscape and its teeming wildlife and vividly brings to life the many friends he made among the Marsh Arabs.
Thesiger’s 110 extraordinary photographs which illustrate this book provide a stunning record of the last remnants of a people and their culture.
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Price HK$ 900
1964 - Longmans, London - First Edition
‘His voyage through desert waters will remain, like his Arabian Sands, a classic of travel writing.’ - The Times.The account eight years spent living with the tribes people of the Marshes of Iraq. This book by one of the century's greatest explorers describes a way of life which lasted for thousands of years, but has now all but vanished. Travelling with his medicine boxes and his teams of canoemen around the junction between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Thesiger visited nearly every village in the Central Marshes and came to know intimately the people who inhabit this landscape of islands, lakes and waterways, living with them in their reed houses and sharing their unique way of life. He beautifully evokes the landscape and its teeming wildlife and vividly brings to life the many friends he made among the Marsh Arabs.
Thesiger’s 110 extraordinary photographs which illustrate this book provide a stunning record of the last remnants of a people and their culture.
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Price HK$ 900
A Confederacy of Dunces -
John Kennedy Toole
1980 - Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London - First Edition, First Printing
‘I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.’
‘A masterwork... the novel astonishes with its inventiveness... it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.’ – NY Times
Ignatius J. Reilly is unforgettable.
A fine copy in clean sharp and bright dust jacket, designed by Ed Lindlof, that even Ignatius would have approved of, one of only 2,500 copies printed, and unlike this example they are usually found with creases, tears or restoration. Toole committed suicide at 31, apparently after having failed to interest countless publishers in this magnificent masterpiece. The foreword is by Walker Percy, who recognised it’s brilliance and assisted in getting it published, after being forced into reading the enormous, smeared, carbon copy of the manuscript by Toole’s mother who found it in his bedroom. 11 years after the author’s death it was published, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
‘Employers sense in me a denial of their values... They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library.’
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Price HK$ 50,000
1980 - Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London - First Edition, First Printing
‘I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.’‘A masterwork... the novel astonishes with its inventiveness... it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.’ – NY Times
Ignatius J. Reilly is unforgettable.
A fine copy in clean sharp and bright dust jacket, designed by Ed Lindlof, that even Ignatius would have approved of, one of only 2,500 copies printed, and unlike this example they are usually found with creases, tears or restoration. Toole committed suicide at 31, apparently after having failed to interest countless publishers in this magnificent masterpiece. The foreword is by Walker Percy, who recognised it’s brilliance and assisted in getting it published, after being forced into reading the enormous, smeared, carbon copy of the manuscript by Toole’s mother who found it in his bedroom. 11 years after the author’s death it was published, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
‘Employers sense in me a denial of their values... They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library.’
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Price HK$ 50,000
Antiquitates Culinariae -
Rev. Richard Warner
1791 - Printed for R. Blamire, London - First Edition
First edition of ‘one of the first signs of scholarship being applied to the history of early English cookery, a development which occurred in the last three decades of the Eighteenth century’ [Maclean].
Illustrated with an engraved title-page, the magnificent double-page terracotta aquatint plate of 'A Peacock Feast', a single-page terracotta aquatint plate of 'A Saxon Entertainment', and an engraved tailpiece on page lvii.
The double-page plate present here was removed from unsold copies after Warner lost the case to Carter over copyright infringement [Maclean].
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Price HK$ 3,200
1791 - Printed for R. Blamire, London - First Edition
First edition of ‘one of the first signs of scholarship being applied to the history of early English cookery, a development which occurred in the last three decades of the Eighteenth century’ [Maclean].Illustrated with an engraved title-page, the magnificent double-page terracotta aquatint plate of 'A Peacock Feast', a single-page terracotta aquatint plate of 'A Saxon Entertainment', and an engraved tailpiece on page lvii.
The double-page plate present here was removed from unsold copies after Warner lost the case to Carter over copyright infringement [Maclean].
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Price HK$ 3,200