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Tropic of Cancer - with - Tropic of Capricorn -
Henry Miller, Ana
1945 - The Obelisk Press, Paris - Second Edition, Fourth Impression
Two early printings of Miller’s classics, controversial at the time. In the wonderful paper wrappers as published in Paris by the risk taking Obelisk Press of Jack Kahane. Consisting of the sixth Obelisk printing of Tropic of Cancer with a preface by Anaïs Nin and the second Obelisk printing of Tropic of Capricorn. Both printed in August of 1945 after the Obelisk Press reopened for business, to take advantage of the huge numbers of Allied Forces present in Paris immediately after the war.
Rare to find such a brace in their delicate paper wrappers in such wonderful condition, especially considering their likely arduous journey from a war torn Paris of 1945 to the United States.
Henry Miller's collaboration with the French Obelisk Press in the 1930s produced three phenomenal works, all promptly banned in America and Great Britain. The groundbreaking Tropic of Cancer published by Jack Kahane in 1934 after Anais Nin helped cover costs, its followup Tropic of Capricorn, finally printed in 1939, and Black Spring, a collection of vignettes and tales from 1936.
Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer was banned in the U.S.A. as obscene for 27 years after its first publication in Paris by Jack Kahane of Obelisk Press in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards – and the tireless efforts of Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset – permitted the U.S.A. publication in 1961 of this famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s.
Tropic of Capricorn, the companion volume to Tropic of Cancer, chronicles Miller’s life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn’s ethnic neighborhoods and Miller’s outrageous sexual exploits.
More details
Price HK$ 5,500
1945 - The Obelisk Press, Paris - Second Edition, Fourth Impression
Two early printings of Miller’s classics, controversial at the time. In the wonderful paper wrappers as published in Paris by the risk taking Obelisk Press of Jack Kahane. Consisting of the sixth Obelisk printing of Tropic of Cancer with a preface by Anaïs Nin and the second Obelisk printing of Tropic of Capricorn. Both printed in August of 1945 after the Obelisk Press reopened for business, to take advantage of the huge numbers of Allied Forces present in Paris immediately after the war.Rare to find such a brace in their delicate paper wrappers in such wonderful condition, especially considering their likely arduous journey from a war torn Paris of 1945 to the United States.
Henry Miller's collaboration with the French Obelisk Press in the 1930s produced three phenomenal works, all promptly banned in America and Great Britain. The groundbreaking Tropic of Cancer published by Jack Kahane in 1934 after Anais Nin helped cover costs, its followup Tropic of Capricorn, finally printed in 1939, and Black Spring, a collection of vignettes and tales from 1936.
Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer was banned in the U.S.A. as obscene for 27 years after its first publication in Paris by Jack Kahane of Obelisk Press in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards – and the tireless efforts of Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset – permitted the U.S.A. publication in 1961 of this famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s.
Tropic of Capricorn, the companion volume to Tropic of Cancer, chronicles Miller’s life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn’s ethnic neighborhoods and Miller’s outrageous sexual exploits.
More details
Price HK$ 5,500
Portrait of Jennie -
Robert Nathan
1940 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
The basis for the 1948 William Dieterle film starring Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones, which won academy award for special effects, and was nominated for Best Cinematography.
The supernatural love story of a depression era artist in New York and a young girl slipping through time’, a modern Dorian Gray...
‘So brilliant is Nathan's execution that one is entirely lost in the tender love story of two immortally designed for each other, one a spirit out of the past seeking to catch up with the present, the other a man rooted in the present and caught in an urgency to accept the gift of the past . . . Portrait of Jennie will perhaps most vividly recall Balderston's Berkeley Square, for, like that, it is a love story that transcends the boundaries of time. It is told with tenderness and with beauty. Its mood lingers in the heart, and its planes challenge the mind.’ – New York Times.
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Price HK$ 3,000
1940 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
The basis for the 1948 William Dieterle film starring Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones, which won academy award for special effects, and was nominated for Best Cinematography.The supernatural love story of a depression era artist in New York and a young girl slipping through time’, a modern Dorian Gray...
‘So brilliant is Nathan's execution that one is entirely lost in the tender love story of two immortally designed for each other, one a spirit out of the past seeking to catch up with the present, the other a man rooted in the present and caught in an urgency to accept the gift of the past . . . Portrait of Jennie will perhaps most vividly recall Balderston's Berkeley Square, for, like that, it is a love story that transcends the boundaries of time. It is told with tenderness and with beauty. Its mood lingers in the heart, and its planes challenge the mind.’ – New York Times.
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Price HK$ 3,000
The Third Policeman -
Flann O'Brien
1967 - Walker and Company, New York - First American Edition
‘The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe, " he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.
The last of O’Brien’s novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O’Brien’s other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, and The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland’s great comic geniuses.’ [blurb from later publisher]
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Price HK$ 2,200
1967 - Walker and Company, New York - First American Edition
‘The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe, " he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.The last of O’Brien’s novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O’Brien’s other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, and The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland’s great comic geniuses.’ [blurb from later publisher]
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Price HK$ 2,200
The Paper Chase -
John Jay Osborn
1971 - Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston - First Edition
John Jay Osborn’s ‘Paper Chase’ is the story of a young midwesterner, James Hart, who finds himself in the great classrooms of Langdell Hall at Harvard Law School, locked in a zero-sum game with a dominating, omniscient deity: Professor Kingsfield. Osborn wrote this, his first novel, whilst studying at Harvard Law School. It was made into a movie starring John Houseman and Timothy Bottoms. Houseman won an Oscar for his performance as contracts professor Kingsfield, it was also turned into a television series.
Included with this copy is the HUL (News Notes of the Harvard University Library) dated September 1971, it contains a rather critical review of the novel.
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Price HK$ 3,200
1971 - Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston - First Edition
John Jay Osborn’s ‘Paper Chase’ is the story of a young midwesterner, James Hart, who finds himself in the great classrooms of Langdell Hall at Harvard Law School, locked in a zero-sum game with a dominating, omniscient deity: Professor Kingsfield. Osborn wrote this, his first novel, whilst studying at Harvard Law School. It was made into a movie starring John Houseman and Timothy Bottoms. Houseman won an Oscar for his performance as contracts professor Kingsfield, it was also turned into a television series.Included with this copy is the HUL (News Notes of the Harvard University Library) dated September 1971, it contains a rather critical review of the novel.
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Price HK$ 3,200
After Claude -
Iris Owens
1973 - Farrar, New York - First Edition
Rare in first edition, even more so in dust jacket, and here you have a fine and signed first edition.
Cult classic and the first of only two books published under the author’s own name. The rest of her career was spent writing pornography as ‘Harriet Daimler’ for the Olympia Press in Paris.
‘After Claude’ features Harriet one of the first anti-heroines, it is ‘a foulmouthed comic tour de force, still capable of offending the offendable and casting a blue-streaked spell of hilarity over everyone else.’ [Gerald Howard]
There is too much written about Iris Owens and ‘After Claude’ to do either justice in this short note, below are a few short reviews, and extracts from articles.
‘If there’s one thing on this earth that irritates me, it’s when a dumpy, frigid, former nymphomaniac assumes that my tongue is hanging out, thirsting for marital bliss.’
More details
Price HK$ 7,900
1973 - Farrar, New York - First Edition
Rare in first edition, even more so in dust jacket, and here you have a fine and signed first edition.Cult classic and the first of only two books published under the author’s own name. The rest of her career was spent writing pornography as ‘Harriet Daimler’ for the Olympia Press in Paris.
‘After Claude’ features Harriet one of the first anti-heroines, it is ‘a foulmouthed comic tour de force, still capable of offending the offendable and casting a blue-streaked spell of hilarity over everyone else.’ [Gerald Howard]
There is too much written about Iris Owens and ‘After Claude’ to do either justice in this short note, below are a few short reviews, and extracts from articles.
‘If there’s one thing on this earth that irritates me, it’s when a dumpy, frigid, former nymphomaniac assumes that my tongue is hanging out, thirsting for marital bliss.’
More details
Price HK$ 7,900
The Oldest Inhabitant. A Comedy -
Eden Phillpotts
1934 - The Macmillan Company, New York - First American Edition
A fine first edition in fine dust jacket.
A plot based in a small Devonshire village, and centred around one of it’s oldest residents, a sly old scamp and about whom his oldest friend says “a artfully and more utterly devious and downy old man than he is don’t draw breath”...
More details
Price HK$ 1,800
1934 - The Macmillan Company, New York - First American Edition
A fine first edition in fine dust jacket.A plot based in a small Devonshire village, and centred around one of it’s oldest residents, a sly old scamp and about whom his oldest friend says “a artfully and more utterly devious and downy old man than he is don’t draw breath”...
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Price HK$ 1,800
Johnson Over Jordan - The Play. And All About It (An Essay) -
J. B. Priestley
1939 - William Heinemann Ltd, London - First Edition
‘J.B. Priestley is one of our literary icons of the 20th Century. And it is time that we all became re-acquainted with his genius’ – Dame Judi Dench
A smartly bound copy of J.B. Priestley’s ‘adventure in theatre’, Johnson Over Jordan – the story of ‘everyman’ Robert Johnson who attempts to make sense of a life half lived – was the play he considered his finest and most ambitious achievement. Also features an essay by Priestly on the writing of the play and its origins, and the critical reception of the stage production.
Illustrated with 8 full page black and white photographic plates of the original 1939 stage production, which starred Ralph Richardson and featured a musical score by Benjamin Britten.
With a black and white photographic portrait of the playwright tipped in to front endpaper and the front panel of the original dust jacket laid in.
More details
Price HK$ 1,500
1939 - William Heinemann Ltd, London - First Edition
‘J.B. Priestley is one of our literary icons of the 20th Century. And it is time that we all became re-acquainted with his genius’ – Dame Judi DenchA smartly bound copy of J.B. Priestley’s ‘adventure in theatre’, Johnson Over Jordan – the story of ‘everyman’ Robert Johnson who attempts to make sense of a life half lived – was the play he considered his finest and most ambitious achievement. Also features an essay by Priestly on the writing of the play and its origins, and the critical reception of the stage production.
Illustrated with 8 full page black and white photographic plates of the original 1939 stage production, which starred Ralph Richardson and featured a musical score by Benjamin Britten.
With a black and white photographic portrait of the playwright tipped in to front endpaper and the front panel of the original dust jacket laid in.
More details
Price HK$ 1,500
The Crying of Lot 49 -
Thomas Pynchon
1966 - J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia New York - First Edition
The first edition in which Pynchon, the man who turned paranoia into a literary style, plays with us....
‘Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream; onto a network by which X number of Americans are truly communicating….Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you, so expensive and elaborate, involving items like the forging of stamps and ancient books, constant surveillance of your movements, planting of post horn images all over San Francisco, bribing of librarians, hiring of professional actors and Pierce Inverarity only knows what else besides, all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your non-legal mind to know about....Or you are fantasying some such plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull.’
‘The comedy crackles, the puns pop the satire explodes.’ – New York Times.
More details
Price HK$ 7,000
1966 - J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia New York - First Edition
The first edition in which Pynchon, the man who turned paranoia into a literary style, plays with us....‘Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream; onto a network by which X number of Americans are truly communicating….Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you, so expensive and elaborate, involving items like the forging of stamps and ancient books, constant surveillance of your movements, planting of post horn images all over San Francisco, bribing of librarians, hiring of professional actors and Pierce Inverarity only knows what else besides, all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your non-legal mind to know about....Or you are fantasying some such plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull.’
‘The comedy crackles, the puns pop the satire explodes.’ – New York Times.
More details
Price HK$ 7,000