Search Results: Authors starting with N from Sumner & Stillman

1903. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. Original grey boards with printed spine label. First Edition, first issue (with the J.J. Little device and "First Edition" on the copyright page). This was the second volume in Norris's planned trilogy on human suffering and sacrifice, "The Epic of the Wheat." THE OCTOPUS (1901) had described the struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad interests in California, and THE PIT then follows the same wheat through the manipulation of the markets in Chicago. The third volume, which would have been titled THE WOLF, was going to follow the wheat to its destination, relieving a famine in Europe; however, Norris died in 1902 (after an appendix operation, at age 32), so the third volume was never written. This is one of the "Special Presentation Edition" copies, bound in grey boards with printed spine label (rather than the trade copy's red cloth decorated in gilt). These copies include a frontispiece portrait, and also a pre-printed "presentation" passage on… Read More

1917. An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General Shafter, July 17, 1898. San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company, 1917. Original tan wrappers pictorially decorated in black and orange. First Edition in book form (having originally appeared in The Sun); included is a frontispiece portrait of "Pecos Bill" Shafter, with his printed facsimile signature. Norris had gone to Cuba in 1898 to report on the Spanish-American War, where he covered the Siege of Santiago; this wrappered volume was issued during the next war, to benefit the Red Cross Funds. Fine condition. Blanck 15047; also see Gaer, p. 9.

1903. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. Original red cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition, first printing (with the J.J. Little device and "First Edition" on the copyright page). This copy is in the first state, with integral title leaf. This was the second volume in Norris's planned trilogy on human suffering and sacrifice, "The Epic of the Wheat." THE OCTOPUS (1901) had described the struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad interests in California, and THE PIT then follows the same wheat through the manipulation of the commodity markets in Chicago. The third volume, which would have been titled THE WOLF, was going to follow the wheat to its destination, relieving a famine in Europe. However, Norris died in 1902 (after an appendix operation, at age 32), so the third volume was never written. This copy is in the standard bright red cloth binding (there were also "presentation copies" in grey paper boards), and is in fine, bright condition (signature erased from front endpaper).… Read More

1903. A Story of Chicago. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. Original red cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition, first printing (with the J.J. Little device and "First Edition" on the copyright page). This was the second volume in Norris's planned trilogy on human suffering and sacrifice, "The Epic of the Wheat." THE OCTOPUS (1901) had described the struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad interests in California, and THE PIT then follows the same wheat through the manipulation of the commodity markets in Chicago. The third volume, which would have been titled THE WOLF, was going to follow the wheat to its destination, relieving a famine in Europe. However, Norris died in 1902 (after an appendix operation, at age 32), so the third volume was never written. This copy is in the standard bright red cloth binding (there were also "presentation copies" in grey paper boards), and is in bright, near-fine condition (one small mark on the rear cover). Blanck 15038; a Johnson High Spot (though… Read More

1892. [with original early photograph] Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1892 [actually late 1891]. Original mauve cloth decorated in both glossy and matte gilt. First Edition of the first book by Frank Norris, a romantic narrative poem of medieval chivalry, written when he was a freshman student at the University of California. (He would not graduate there, but rather in 1894 he transferred to Harvard.) His interest in France (he had spent a year at an art school in Paris) would shift toward the realistic fiction of such authors as Zola and Flaubert, with the result that this would be Norris's only such book: his next, seven years later, would be MORAN OF THE LADY LETTY in 1898, followed by his own well-known realistic novel McTEAGUE in 1899. This is a handsome example of book production -- remarkable for being effected for a college student! This is because his family kicked in the money for Lippincott to go all out -- in fact, this is considered to be one of Lippincott's snazziest… Read More

1899. New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1899. 4 pp undated ads. Original red cloth decorated in white. First Edition, with the title page in a three-panel single line border, and with "moment." the last word on p. 106; copies of the revised second printing (not so identified) unfortunately get mistaken as first editions. This copy is in the third, usual, and proper state, with the leaves of signature 25 (pp 379-394) in proper sequence (a few copies got out with either of two binding errors, the result of the pages initially being misplaced on the folio plate). Frank Norris's masterpiece is McTEAGUE. It is the most purely Zola-esque novel in English, with its cold, careful study of the growing devastation wrought by miserliness on the lives of the Polk Street dentist and his wife. As a motion picture, under the name of "Greed," it was almost equally effective, and gave Zasu Pitts almost her only opportunity as a tragedian. [K&H] Though the tale's end has been criticized as melodramatic, it is not… Read More

1884. Illustrated by F. Opper, of "Puck." New York and Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1884. Original light brown wrappers stamped in black. First Edition of this volume of humor, by a 19th-Century master of that genre. Nye (1850-1896) was born in very rural Maine, he grew up and was educated in northern Wisconsin, and he settled in Laramie, Wyoming Territory -- where he was postmaster, superintendent of schools, and journalist at the Laramie Boomerang... where he became known nationally for his humor. He took the name "Bill Nye" from Bret Harte's poem "The Heathen Chinee," and a politically-incorrect quote on the title page is from Harte & Twain's "Ah Sin." Later in his (meningitis-shortened) life, he wrote with James Whitcomb Riley, and traveled with Luther Burbank. In his last decade he penned his credo: There is a grim and ghastly humor -- the humor that is born of a pathetic philosophy -- which now and then strikes me in reading the bright and keen-witted work of our American paragraphers. It… Read More