Search Results: Titles starting with E from Captain Ahab's Rare Books

Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1960. First Edition. Arguably the best possible copy of this key reference book on the work of e.e. cummings. George James Firmage (1928-2005) was an editor, literary critic, and an authority on cummings, having compiled and edited numerous volumes of his work. First Printing. Octavo (23.5cm); red cloth, blocked and titled in black and silver on spine; red topstain; dustjacket; x,129,[5]pp. Cummings's own copy, inscribed to he and his wife by the compiler: "For E.E. and Marion Cummings, whose "giving" made this possible, this first copy of a "valentine" to my "now-hero." With thanks and love, George Firmage / 3/12/60." Fine in a very Near Fine dustjacket, unclipped (priced $7.50), with some trivial wear and some subtle yellowing to extremities.

New York: Bantam Books, 1977. First Bantam Edition. Callenbach's self-published first novel, and ecological utopia now referred to as "the novel that predicted Portland." "Callenbach could not find a publisher for his book in 1974, and was told that it was neither a novel or a tract. "Somebody said the ecology trend was over," he says. "I was on the point of burning it." But he persevered, collecting small checks from friends to pay for 2,500 copies to be printed" (Vaughn, Jacqueline. Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions, p.316). Callenbach presents a vision of the future, 19 years after the northwestern U.S. has seceded, as viewed by an American reporter visiting and relaying his observations. "Appropriate technology, environmental concern, improved relationships, concern for the common good, natural recycling, decentralization, willingness to use those machines which are useful but will not harm the environment, cooperation, and careful planning have led to a society not yet… Read More

Boston & New York: Mariner Books, 1999. First Trade Edition. First Printing, advance issue. Octavo (21cm); printed card wrappers; xviii,126pp. A Fine, unread copy. Posthumously-published collection of Brautigan's earliest poems and short stories from the 1950's, given to his first girlfriend in Eugene, Oregon before he departed for San Francisco.

Boston & New York: Mariner Books, 1999. First Trade Edition. First Printing. Octavo (21cm); photo-illustrated card wrappers; xviii,124,[2]pp. A Fine, unread copy. Posthumously-published collection of Brautigan's earliest poems and short stories from the 1950's, given to his first girlfriend in Eugene, Oregon before he departed for San Francisco.

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918. Handsome edition of Adams's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. "Printed privately in 1907 and published to wide acclaim shortly after the author's death in 1918, The Education of Henry Adams is a brilliant, idiosyncratic blend of autobiography and history that charts the great transformation in American life during the so-called Gilded Age" (Modern Library). Early printing of the Trade Edition, without date in Roman numerals on copyright page. Octavo (24.25cm); full navy blue crushed morocco bound by Maurin, spine in seven compartments, with double-ruled border tooled in gilt on covers, and titling and decorative elements in gilt on spine; marbled endpapers; top edge gilt; x,[3],4-519,[1]pp. Gentle sunning to spine, light wear to lower board edges, with a small, faint impression to front cover; contents fresh, clean; Near Fine.

New York: Mysterious Press, 1985. First Edition. Handsome edition of the 38th novel in McBain's long-running 87th Precinct series, which he began with Cop Hater in 1956. Limited Issue, one of 300 numbered copies signed by the author, this being copy no.21. Octavo (21.75cm); full black cloth, with titling and decorations stamped in silver on spine and front cover; publisher's matching cloth slipcase; [xii],250,[4]pp. Fine in a Near Fine slipcase, with a few small scuffs to lower edge.

Augsburg: Maroverlag, 1990. First Edition. Small collection of pieces culled from Bukowski's 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man' column in the pages of Open City, translated into German by Carl Weissner and illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner, with a portrait of Bukowski by Jörg Fauser. Of the 2 mock-ups, one was given to Bukowski and the other (this copy) to photographer Michael Montfort. A scarce publication with no English language equivalent; OCLC notes just 8 copies in member institutions, only 2 of these in the US (U.Delaware, Huntington Library). One of 2 copies of a pre-publication mock-up for this title, marked "2/2" on the half-title page and signed by Bukowski next to a drawing of a smoking man next to a bottle. Small octavo; full black cloth, with glossy, illustrated title label applied to front cover; 61pp, [2]; with 18 color lithograph illustrations; text is in German. A Fine copy.

San Francisco: The Auerhahn Press, 1959. First Edition. An extraordinary copy of the Italian-American poet's second collection of verse. "For California's poetry community of the 1950s and 1960s - and for Wallace Berman, in particular - Philip Lamantia served as a direct link to European Surrealism. More than any poet of his generation, Lamantia shared the Surrealists' enchantment with the irrational and he hungered for ecstatic experience. Lamantia was willing to pay the full price of admission for experiences demanding a conscious disordering of the senses, too, and his life was marked by drug addiction and the periodic bouts of depression that invariably afflict those who fly too close to the sun" (Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle, p.206). His connection to Berman was a significant one: Berman would include Lamantia's work in Semina 4, his photos of Lamantia shooting heroin would end up on the cover of Lamantia's first book, Narcotica. The inscription here by Berman to his… Read More

Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, S.A., 1952. Second Edition. An exemplary copy of this key collection of short fiction by Borges, including the title story - a literary and metaphysical masterpiece. The second edition adds four new stories and a brief afterword which did not appear in the first (1949), along with newly-designed cover art. A high-point of Latin American literature. Becco 38. Octavo (20.5cm); pictorial card wrappers with French flaps; [6],7-157,[3]pp. Light wear to joints, flap folds, and extremities, with publisher's rubber-stamped export price on rear endpaper; contents quite fresh; Near Fine.

New York: Mercury Music Corporation, 1943. First Edition. Slim quarto (31cm); orange wrappers, with text printed in green; 4pp. Signed by Bowles on the front wrapper. Light wear to extremities, faint creases to upper corners of text, with a faint vertical stain toward left edge of front wrapper and an old sticker shadow to same; Very Good+. Music for a piano solo. First performed 18 October 1944 at Carnegie Hall, with Sidney Foster as pianist. Terminal leaf prints a half-page of biographical matter on Bowles. Scarce; OCLC notes a single holding (NYPL), and we note one other at the University of Maryland. Miller E18.

Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1968. Second Argentine Edition (and third Spanish language edition overall, following Colombia and Mexico). An early edition of the author's highly-regarded 1961 novella, written between 1956-57 while he lived in Paris. This copy was originally owned by Ramiro de la Espriella (1921-2015), a lawyer, politician, and career journalist from Cartagena, Colombia, who was both a lifelong friend of García Márquez, and a fellow journalist at El Espectador. The two men, along with de la Espriella's brother Óscar, Clemente Manuel Zabala, Gustavo Ibarra Merlano, and Héctor Rojas Herazo, were part of a brilliant nucleus of authors, poets, and journalists who were credited for modernizing thought and enlightening an entire generation of Colombians during the 1940's-50's. García Márquez was a frequent visitor at the Espriella's family home - Loma del Diablo in Turbaco - where he would read excerpts from his novel in progress, La Casa, often late into the… Read More

Buenos Aires: Editorial SUR, 1948. First Edition. A rare presentation copy of the Argentine author and physicist's second book and first novel, an existential classic centered around an insane painter, who narrates from his jail cell the story of his obsession with a woman he ultimately murders. Sabato (1911-2011) wrote the first draft in a Zurich train station, and turned the manuscript over to Adolfo Bioy Casares for editing. The process was somewhat contentious, and Sabato's manuscript was rejected by several publisher's before one of his friends lent him the money to publish it under the auspices of SUR magazine. After publication, the book found its footing both among the reading public and prominent literary figures like Graham Greene, Thomas Mann, and especially Albert Camus. In a 1949 letter to Sabato, the French-Algerian author thanked him for the novel, praising its dryness and intensity, and mentioned he had petitioned Gaston Gallimard to publish it, in hopes it would find the broader… Read More

Barnstable, MA: Crane Duplicating Service, Inc. for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968. First Edition. Wolfe's third and most enduring book, a major work of the New Journalism and one of the defining books of the 1960's, in which he recounts his experiences traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Essentially the earliest obtainable format of the text, created directly from the publisher's long galley sheets by Crane Duplicating Service, a small print shop in Barnstable, MA whose sole function was the printing and binding of publisher's advance copies. A preliminary leaf prints a half-page statement by Crane's, with some chapter headings, a few small corrections, and page numbers written by hand (in copy), along with a potentially libellous two-line passage struck through (p.149, again in copy). A side-by-side reading against the finished text shows a few dozen mis-spelled words, dropped letters, and a few awkward spaces. While no hard numbers are known for how many such proofs were printed,… Read More

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. First American Edition. First Printing. Octavo (22cm); pale grey paper-covered boards and black cloth backstrip, with titles stamped in silver on spine; dustjacket; [viii],[4],5-327,[1]pp. Signed by the author on the front endpaper in a contemporary hand, in English and Japanese, dated about a month after publication. Faint foxing to upper edge of textblock, with a hint of sunning to upper board edges; very Near Fine in a Fine, unclipped dustjacket (priced $21.00). Murakami's third English-language publication and his first collection of short fiction, gathering 17 stories, including "The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women," "Sleep," "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning," and "TV People." Murakami has always been a reluctant signer who does very few publicity events; contemporary signatures in early titles are uncommon. Rubin 16.

Hollywood, CA: Shelley Gross, 1963. First Edition. Slim octavo (21cm); illustrated wrappers, stapled; 68pp; illus. Light wear to extremities, with subtle toning to front wrapper, and more moderate toning to rear wrapper; Very Good+ or better. Contains three early appearances by Bukowski ("Experience," "Weather Report"), including the first appearance of his poem "Part of an Ordinary Day of an Inordinate Man." Includes contributions by John Hawkes, Denise Levertov, Gerard Malanga, A.R. Ammons, William Stafford, Jack Gilbert, and others. Dorbin C184.

Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1997. First Edition. Deluxe Issue, one of no more than a half-dozen copies specially bound and signed by the author for members within the inner circle of the press, each with an original signed illustration tipped in (this one marked "Binder's Copy" on the colophon). Octavo (23.5cm); decorative paper-covered boards and patterned cloth backstrip, with title label mounted to spine; publisher's original acetate dustjacket; [10],11-232,[4]pp. Fine, in a lightly rubbed, Near Fine dustjacket. A collection of poems documenting the maritime fur trade.

Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1997. First Edition. First Printing, cloth issue, one of 200 copies. Octavo (23.5cm); decorative paper-covered boards and blue cloth backstrip, with title label mounted to spine; publisher's original acetate dustjacket; [10],11-232,[4]pp. Tiny spot on front cover, else Fine in a lightly rubbed, Near Fine dustjacket. A collection of poems documenting the maritime fur trade.

Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. / The Crime Club, 1931. First American Edition. Second volume in Charteris's series featuring his long-lived and internationally famous anti-hero Simon Templar, a.k.a. The Saint. While Templar made his debut in the 1928 novel Meet the Tiger, Charteris was dissatisfied with the book, later declaring its only value was to introduce the character, and claiming the series actually began with Enter the Saint. The book contains a series of three novellas, detailing how the Saint began his career: "The Man Who Was Clever," "The Policeman with Wings," and "The Lawless Lady." Hubin, p.76. First Printing. Octavo (19.5cm); black cloth, with titling and decorations stamped in red on spine and front cover; red topstain; dustjacket; 320pp. Light wear to extremities, some faint, scattered spotting to front cover, with a small abraded and discolored spot on upper front pastedown, showing an old price beneath; Very Good+. In a supplied dustjacket, with a few tiny rubbed… Read More

Lawrence, KS: T. Williams, Publisher, 1967. First Edition. Broadside printing a poem written by Ginsberg at midnight, February 12, 1966, on his way to Kansas. Lino-cut of the title, Ginsberg's name, and his trademark three-headed fish uncredited. Morgan AA7. Original illustrated broadside, offset printed in black on light brown wove paper, measuring 38cm x 61cm (15" x 24"). Light wear to upper and lower right corners, two tiny tears along upper margin, else Near Fine.

Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1988. First Edition. Deluxe Issue, one of probably a handful of copies specially bound and designated for the author and members within the inner circle of the press, this one marked "Binder's Copy" and signed by the Hindus on the colophon. Octavo (23.5cm); printed paper-covered boards and patterned cloth backstrip, with title label mounted to spine; [8],9-181,[5]pp. Fine in a lightly rubbed, Near Fine dustjacket. A collection of autobiographical essays and literary criticism by the scholar and faculty member at Brandeis University.