East of Eden by Steinbeck, John (1902-1968) - 1952

[i-viii]+[1]+301+[302-04] pages. Octavo (8" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's red cloth with gilt title and author's name on spine and embossed "SL" on cover in original jacket. (Pastore: 251) First state, limited to 10,000 copies with title page 1/4 inch shorter at bottom than surrounding leaves, corrected in later print run. Lewis had commented to several parties privately that Doubleday, Doran was putting too much focus on the Nobel Prize and too little on him. Word reached the publisher and the result was the addition of Lewis's initials to the olive branch motif on the cover of this and subsequent novels. The novel in an attack on the Communist left as a response the way It can't Happen Here was an attack on the totalitarian right; it deals with the "generation gap" and was soundly criticized by Lewis's former socialistic associates, Upton Sinclair, in particular, who vied the book as an apologia for middle-class values and mores, those same values and mores which Lewis had so well… Read More

316+[6 ad] pages. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's black cloth with silver lettering to spine and cover in original jacket. Has the "A" on the title verso. First edition. Wright wrote as a critic and journalist until 1923, when he became ill from what was given out as overwork, but was in reality a secret drug addiction, according to John Loughery's biography Alias S.S. Van Dine. His doctor confined him to bed (supposedly because of a heart ailment, but actually because of a cocaine addiction) for more than two years. In frustration and boredom, he began collecting and studying thousands of volumes of crime and detection. In 1926 this paid off with the publication of his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright took his pseudonym from the abbreviation of "steamship" and from Van Dine, which he claimed was an old family name. Wright wrote a series of short stories for Warner Brothers film studio in the early 1930s. These stories were used as the basis for a… Read More

vii[1]+240+4 ad pages, frontispiece and seven plates. Small Octavo (7 1/2" x 5") Bound in red cloth with black ship's wheel decoration on front cover boarder by two black bands black lettering, Decoration (sailboat with seagulls) on spine and lettering in gilt. 4378 copies printed. [Inscribed by Becky London] London's second daughter to his first wife. [Sisson & Marten's 103] First edition. "I've never written a line that I'd be ashamed for my young daughters to read, and I never shall write such a line!" Thus Jack London, well along in his career. And thus almost any collection of his adventure stories is acceptable to young readers as well as to their elders. So, in sorting over the few manuscripts still unpublished in book form, while most of them were written primarily for boys and girls, I do not hesitate to include as appropriate a tale such as "Whose Business Is to Live." Condition: Becky London's inscription on front end paper, Corners gently bumped and rubbed, spine ends gently rubbed.… Read More

149 pages with two frontispiece plates. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's green cloth with gilt lettering to spine and front cover and gilt head page ends in original jacket. (McBride page 233; Blanck:3509; Firsts volume 8, number 7/8 page 7) First American edition, second state with the publisher's note bound in after the title page.Twain was sincerely on the side of the Baconians in the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy and he explains why in this essay. It also contains revealing autobiographical passages, and so is not without interest. Harper & Brothers was not eager to publish this volume, but they prepared a large edition, the size of which is unknown.Condition:Slight bump ant front edge with the Greenwood reference tipped in. Jacket chipped at edges with some loss to spine ends. Jacket first state. Slight bump ant front edge with the Greenwood reference tipped in. Jacket professionally restored by Octavaye Studios. A very good to fine copy with a very good but scarce jacket.

322 pages. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's yellow cloth with green lettering and illustration to spine in original pictorial jacket. (Firsts volume 13, number 1, page 46) First American edition.Summer Moonshine is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on October 8, 1937 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom on February 11, 1938 by Herbert Jenkins, London. It was previously serialized in The Saturday Evening Post (US) from 24 July to 11 September 1937 and in Pearson's Magazine (UK) between September 1937 and April 1938. Former big-game hunter Sir Buckstone Abbott, finding himself hard up, takes in paying guests at his pile, Walsingford Hall, while hoping to sell the place to a wealthy Princess. Pretty soon, all kinds of schemes, plots and romantic entanglements are going on. Condition:Light sunning to top edges. Jacket spine sunned, spine ends chipped, some wear with small chips and closed tears to edges else a very good copy in… Read More

[i-viii+452+[453-56] pages. Octavo (8 1/8" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's medium blue cloth with gilt on spine with concentric impressed rectangle enclosing a gilt laurel branch on cover in original pictorial jacket. 50,000 copies of the first edition in dust jacket issued. (Pastore: 13) First edition. This is the "hotel novel" as it has become to be called, and it shows that odd dichotomy of Lewis that is the decisional measuring stick separating those who love Lewis and those who don't. Here is the story of an artist set against the story of a hotel clerk and here is Lewis equating art and hotel management. Most critics feel that this is not Lewis at his best because of this equation, that in setting out to talk about art, he ends up knee-deep in the hotel business. Of course, this misses the point. Lewis was the master of finding "art" in the commonplace and there is hardly a novel of his that does not touch on this issued. This second Doubleday book firmly established the format… Read More

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912 unpaginated with 10 color issustrations. Royal octavo (9 3/4" x 6 3/4") issued in green cloth with decorative color pictorial in gilt lettering on front cover. 1st edition. Jessie Willcox Smith (September 6, 1863 May 3, 1935) was a United States illustrator famous for her work in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and for her illustrations for children's books. Born in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Smith studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, graduating in 1888. A year later, she started working in the production department of the Ladies Home Journal, for five years. She left to take classes under Howard Pyle, first at Drexel and then at the Brandywine School. She was a prolific contributor to books and magazines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrating stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's Weekly, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's,… Read More

316+[6 ad] pages. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's black cloth with silver lettering to spine and cover in original jacket. Has the "A" on the title verso. First edition. Wright wrote as a critic and journalist until 1923, when he became ill from what was given out as overwork, but was in reality a secret drug addiction, according to John Loughery's biography Alias S.S. Van Dine. His doctor confined him to bed (supposedly because of a heart ailment, but actually because of a cocaine addiction) for more than two years. In frustration and boredom, he began collecting and studying thousands of volumes of crime and detection. In 1926 this paid off with the publication of his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright took his pseudonym from the abbreviation of "steamship" and from Van Dine, which he claimed was an old family name. Wright wrote a series of short stories for Warner Brothers film studio in the early 1930s. These stories were used as the basis for a… Read More

[i-vi]+vii-viii+[ix-x]+390 pages. Octavo (8 7/16" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's red cloth with initials "SL" impressed on cover decorated with impressed laurel branch superimposed over cover initials; gilt title in black rectangle on spine; author's name in black on gilt rectangle on spine. Dust jacket in blue with red and white banner on cover lettered in verso, gilt and white on spine. 33,250 printed of the first edition in dust jacket. (Pastore:259) First edition. In the Summer of 1939, Lewis and Fay Wray collaborated loosely on a play titled (and unpublished) Angela is Twenty-Two. Lewis did the writing with the intention of playing the male lead; Fay Wray helped with the staging and visual dramatics. Lewis became more involved with drama and acting, even so far as joining Actors Equity, sponsored by Helen Hayes. When the play opened on December 30, 1939, it was well-received leading Lewis to take it on the road where he not only acted but directed as well. This tour became the narrative… Read More

314 pages. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's black cloth with red lettering to spine and front cover in pictorial jacket. (First's January 2003 pg 45) First American edition limited to 12,000 copies.Heavy Weather is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on July 28, 1933 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, and in the United Kingdom on August 10, 1933 by Herbert Jenkins, London. It had been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post from 27 May to 15 July 1933. It is part of the Blandings Castle series of tales, the fourth full-length novel to be set there, and forms a direct sequel to Summer Lightning (1929), with many of the same characters remaining at the castle from the previous story. It also features the re-appearance by Lord Tilbury, who had previously appeared in Bill the Conqueror (1924) and Sam the Sudden (1925).Condition:Previous owner's name on front end paper verso. Jacket with the number .25 under the unclipped price of $2.00, edges… Read More