Search Results: Authors starting with H from Honey & Wax Booksellers

Neuallschwil/Basel: Heuwinkel, 1961. First edition of this illustrated storybook, featuring two magical tales: "The Carousel Horse and the Blue Flower" and "The Fairy and the Wall." In the first, a carousel horse escapes the fairground to join the child who hoped to ride him; in the second, a runaway fairy transforms a village wall under cover of night. The vibrant linocuts are the work of Swiss artist Claude Schaub-Filliol, noted for her work in ceramics and sculpture as well as graphic design. Text in German. A very good copy. Single volume, measuring 8.25 x 8.5 inches: [28]. Original brown cloth spine, glossy color pictorial paper boards. Text and illustrations printed on board, featuring thirteen full-page color linocuts. Faint foxing to pastedowns, binding slightly bowed, staples rusted.

London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1878. First edition of Thomas Hardy's sixth novel, one of 1000 copies. Set amid the wild landscape of Egdon Heath, the tension between two unhappy couples, pulled together and then apart, produces the mounting sense of dread so characteristic of Hardy's later fiction: "To be conscious that the end of the dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious situations along the whole course between the beginning of a passion and its end." First issue, with the closing quotation mark around 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' dropped on the title page of Volume I. Purdy, 24-27. A near-fine copy. Three volumes, measuring 7.5 x 5 inches: [6], 303, [1]; [6], 297, [3]; [6], 320. Original brown cloth stamped in black and blind, spines decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt and black; cream-coated endpapers. Frontispiece map, after a drawing by Hardy, facing title page in Volume I; two pages of publisher's advertisements at end of… Read More

London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co, 1896. First edition of Thomas Hardy's controversial final novel, the eighth volume in his uniform series of Wessex Novels, accompanied by a letter to his friend Edward Clodd reporting his progress on the work. The story of a stonemason whose higher aspirations are brutally crushed, Jude the Obscure was the subject of immediate backlash: "his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small." Hardy's attack on class snobbery and compulsory marriage, and his sympathetic portrayal of a family created out of wedlock, so outraged readers that he abandoned the writing of novels altogether, turning to poetry in his final decades. Tipped into this copy is a four-page letter, dated September 2, 1894, sent by Hardy to his longtime friend, banker and man of letters Edward Clodd. Hardy regrets not seeing more of Clodd that summer, and confides that "the announcement in the D. Chronicle represents me as being considerably more advanced than I am with the tale [of Jude the… Read More

Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1860. First edition, mixed issue, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's expatriate romance, inspired by his encounter with the Faun of Praxiteles in Rome. The novel follows three American artists in Italy who become entangled with the enigmatic Donatello, Count of Monte Beni: "There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him outside of rules." This copy accords, in collation and pagination, with Blanck's first printing. First issue points: the preface precedes the table of contents in Volume I; "on" is uncorrected to "for" on page 225, line 22, of Volume I; no "Conclusion" in Volume II. Second issue points: page ix of Volume I and page 197 of Volume II unsigned. Second state of the publisher's catalog, dated March 1860. BAL 7621. A very good copy of a Gothic classic. Two volumes, measuring 7 x 4.5 inches: xiv, 15-283, [5], 16; 284, [4]. Original full brown ribbed cloth ruled and decorated in blind, spines lettered in gilt, reddish-brown coated endpapers. Publisher's… Read More

(London): Hodder & Stoughton, 1934. First English edition of James Hilton's tale of the shy schoolmaster Mr. Chipping, who over the course of a long career becomes a legend at Brookfield, "a good school of the second rank." Deeply Victorian in sympathy, "Mr. Chips" rises to the challenge of the First World War, and survives into the 1930s, beloved by generations of boys: "In my mind you never grow up at all. Never." Originally issued as a supplement to The British Weekly in 1933, Goodbye, Mr. Chips was reprinted in The Atlantic in April 1934, followed by book publication in the United States in June and England in October; the nostalgic novel was a runaway bestseller during the Depression, inspiring the Oscar-winning 1939 Hollywood film starring Robert Donat. This first English edition is wonderfully illustrated by Ethel "Bip" Pares, one of England's leading Art Deco book designers. Accompanied by two typed letters written and signed by Hilton, during his stint as a Hollywood screenwriter, to… Read More

Basel: Basilius Presse, 1968. Inscribed first edition of Swiss artist Warja Lavater's dynamic panorama charting the development of painting in the West, from the prehistoric cave art of Pech Merle to Jackson Pollock. Originally a designer of corporate logos and trademarks, Lavater had a genius for the symbol, producing inventive artist's books constructed of minimalist graphic codes and keys. The visual narrative of Sketch...Book is a historical one, focused on the disruptive figure of the painter, the "Disobedient," who is represented by two eyes stacked on top of each other: "With his exterior eye he sees, with his interior eye he thinks." As the centuries and millennia rush by, populated by the flowing black dots who represent the Disobedient's contemporaries, we see glimpses of the painter's radical power of sight: Sumerian glyphs, the golden ratio, medieval illuminations, Renaissance perspective, modern abstraction, captured in flashes and fragments. "This story is history, because the visions… Read More

Zeiningen, Switzerland: Kurt Naef, 1978. Original example of this graphic wooden puzzle by Japanese designer Aoi Huber-Kono for the Swiss toymaker Kurt Naef. The MOTIVO blocks combine to form eight images: red apple and sunburst, yellow bird and flower, green leaf and butterfly, blue house and fish. An iconic modern design object. Eight wooden cubes, screenprinted in four colors, each measuring 1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 inches. "Naef / Swiss made" printed at base of leaf image. Lacking original box.

Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1938. First edition of this modern Danish children's book, featuring brilliant color lithographs by Aage Sikker Hansen. The narrative celebrates stork life around the world, from Scandinavia to Africa. Hansen's striking cover image would be adapted for use as an iconic travel poster, "Meet You in Denmark," the following year. Text in Danish. A very good copy of a stunning book. Square quarto, measuring 10 x 10.5 inches: [28]. Original tan linen spine, color lithographed boards, pictorial title page and twelve full-color lithographed plates throughout text. Light shelfwear and soiling to boards, occasional spotting to text. Front free endpaper glued to pastedown, upper hinge reinforced.