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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
Wise Blood -
Flannery O'Connor
1952 - Harcourt, New York - First Edition
‘Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.’
A superb copy, and scarce in such a bright dust jacket without the usual toning, fading or chipping to the spine.
Considered a cornerstone of the southern-gothic genre, this lovely copy of O’Connor’s first book delves into themes of depression, sin, and redemption, while retaining a biting sense of humour. Listed among the Guardian’s list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, this is a powerful exploration of character and motivation, reminiscent in style to other masters such as Kafka, Waugh, and Faulkner.
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Price HK$ 45,000
1952 - Harcourt, New York - First Edition
‘Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.’A superb copy, and scarce in such a bright dust jacket without the usual toning, fading or chipping to the spine.
Considered a cornerstone of the southern-gothic genre, this lovely copy of O’Connor’s first book delves into themes of depression, sin, and redemption, while retaining a biting sense of humour. Listed among the Guardian’s list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, this is a powerful exploration of character and motivation, reminiscent in style to other masters such as Kafka, Waugh, and Faulkner.
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Price HK$ 45,000
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.’
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Price HK$ 8,000
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.’
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Price HK$ 8,000
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values - Signed -
Robert M. Pirsig
1974 - William Morrow &, New York - First Edition
Signed true first edition of a modern classic that was rejected by 121 publishers before William Morrow stepped up.
Well, as Robert Pirsig points out, this ‘should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either’. The motorcycle being a 1966 Honda Super Hawk, now on permanent display at the Smithsonian.
‘Inspired, original. . . . The analogies with Moby-Dick are patent.’ – The New Yorker.
‘The truly great road trip novel. … Many former angsty teens will surely fondly recall their own dog-eared, heavily underlined copies of Pirsig’s book, and the initial joy that accompanied reading something that felt so specifically personal and yet so urgently universal.’ – GQ Magazine.
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Price HK$ 30,000
1974 - William Morrow &, New York - First Edition
Signed true first edition of a modern classic that was rejected by 121 publishers before William Morrow stepped up.Well, as Robert Pirsig points out, this ‘should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either’. The motorcycle being a 1966 Honda Super Hawk, now on permanent display at the Smithsonian.
‘Inspired, original. . . . The analogies with Moby-Dick are patent.’ – The New Yorker.
‘The truly great road trip novel. … Many former angsty teens will surely fondly recall their own dog-eared, heavily underlined copies of Pirsig’s book, and the initial joy that accompanied reading something that felt so specifically personal and yet so urgently universal.’ – GQ Magazine.
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Price HK$ 30,000
Tales of Mystery & Imagination -
Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Rackham (illustrator)
1935 - George G. Harrap &, London - First Rackham Edition
‘As for the murders, let us enter into some examinations for ourselves, before we make up an opinion respecting them. An inquiry will afford us amusement’ - Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin.
A fine copy in exceptional dust jacket, powerfully illustrated by Arthur Rackham with twelve colour plates tipped-in with captioned tissue guards, seventeen black and white plates, and in-text vignettes.
Presenting Poe’s three pioneering detective stories - ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’, and ‘The Purloined Letter’. In addition to Poe’s three detective stories, a further twenty six tales are contained within including ‘The Cask of Amontillado‘, ‘The Fall of The House of Usher‘, and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.
But for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound...
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Price HK$ 8,000
1935 - George G. Harrap &, London - First Rackham Edition
‘As for the murders, let us enter into some examinations for ourselves, before we make up an opinion respecting them. An inquiry will afford us amusement’ - Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin.A fine copy in exceptional dust jacket, powerfully illustrated by Arthur Rackham with twelve colour plates tipped-in with captioned tissue guards, seventeen black and white plates, and in-text vignettes.
Presenting Poe’s three pioneering detective stories - ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’, and ‘The Purloined Letter’. In addition to Poe’s three detective stories, a further twenty six tales are contained within including ‘The Cask of Amontillado‘, ‘The Fall of The House of Usher‘, and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.
But for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound...
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Price HK$ 8,000
The Jungle -
Upton Sinclair
1906 - Doubleday, New York - First Edition
‘Pierces the thickest skull and most leathery heart.’ - Winston Churchill
‘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$ 9,000
1906 - Doubleday, New York - First Edition
‘Pierces the thickest skull and most leathery heart.’ - Winston Churchill‘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$ 9,000
Maus. A Survivor's Tale in RAW Magazine - Signed -
Art Spiegelman
1980-86 - Raw Magazine, New York - First Editions
The true first appearance in print in RAW magazine of Art Spiegelman’s groundbreaking and Pulitzer winning ‘Maus. A Survivor's Tale’, the first chapter inserted into issue two is signed and dated by Spiegelman. Housed in two bespoke black cloth clamshell cases with red morocco labels lettered and ruled in gilt.
American cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s graphic retelling of his parents’ experience as Jews in Hitler’s Europe as well as an exploration of his own relationship with his father and his experience as the son of a survivor.
Maus won the cartoonist a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 – the first time the award had been given to a graphic novel, which was initially serialised as a little insert in RAW Magazine as presented here. Spiegelman depicted the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice and was considered “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” by the Wall Street Journal.
Consisting of seven large folio issues of RAW Magazine, 1980-1986, containing the first edition, first appearance of the first seven chapters, in seven issues (volume 1, nos. 2-8) of RAW magazine (Maus is produced as a separate small publication tipped into RAW, as issued (volume 1, no. 1 of RAW is not present as it did not contain Maus).
Together with: Three thick quarto issues of RAW Magazine, 1989-1991, containing chapters eight, nine, and ten of Maus, in three issues (volume 2, nos. 1-3), volume 2 issue 4, which presumably would have the last chapter of Maus, was never published.
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Price HK$ 20,000
1980-86 - Raw Magazine, New York - First Editions
The true first appearance in print in RAW magazine of Art Spiegelman’s groundbreaking and Pulitzer winning ‘Maus. A Survivor's Tale’, the first chapter inserted into issue two is signed and dated by Spiegelman. Housed in two bespoke black cloth clamshell cases with red morocco labels lettered and ruled in gilt.American cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s graphic retelling of his parents’ experience as Jews in Hitler’s Europe as well as an exploration of his own relationship with his father and his experience as the son of a survivor.
Maus won the cartoonist a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 – the first time the award had been given to a graphic novel, which was initially serialised as a little insert in RAW Magazine as presented here. Spiegelman depicted the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice and was considered “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” by the Wall Street Journal.
Consisting of seven large folio issues of RAW Magazine, 1980-1986, containing the first edition, first appearance of the first seven chapters, in seven issues (volume 1, nos. 2-8) of RAW magazine (Maus is produced as a separate small publication tipped into RAW, as issued (volume 1, no. 1 of RAW is not present as it did not contain Maus).
Together with: Three thick quarto issues of RAW Magazine, 1989-1991, containing chapters eight, nine, and ten of Maus, in three issues (volume 2, nos. 1-3), volume 2 issue 4, which presumably would have the last chapter of Maus, was never published.
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Price HK$ 20,000
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$ 6,000
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.
More details
Price HK$ 6,000