Search Results: Titles starting with O from Sumner & Stillman

1915. [with letter from Theodore Dreise] New York: George H. Doran Company, n.d. [1915]. Original green cloth. First Edition, published one day earlier than Heinemann's edition in London. This was Maugham's famed autobiographical novel about Philip Carey, who has a club foot and who attends King's School, Tercanbury [Maugham had a stammer and attended King's School, Canterbury]; who rejects the idea of the ministry and who studies in Heidelberg and later becomes a doctor [like Maugham]; who becomes obsessed with a vulgar waitress, Mildred Rogers, who goes to a bad end [cf. Liza of Lambeth], etc. But the novel succeeds because of its unflinching honesty and its devastating account of loneliness, the most tragic of all human conditions. [CGEL] This copy is in the later state, with the error on the fourth line of p. 257 corrected (also on lighter weight paper). The binding is correspondingly later state, with the stamping in black rather than in gilt (due to the onset of the war). Condition is fine… Read More

1935. Told for Children by Russell Thorndike. London & New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, n.d.[1930s?]. Original color pictorial wrappers. Each of these is a pocket-sized abridgement, for children, of a Charles Dickens novel or character -- condensed into a booklet of just 16 leaves (the title page is on the inside rear cover, there are six full-page illustrations, and the final page 33 is on the inside rear cover -- so the text occupies only 27 pages). The front and rear cover have the same color illustration. A little light foxing, but all three are in fine condition. Housed together in a simple hard-board folder with typed label.

1891. London: Chapman and Hall, 1891. Original royal blue cloth decorated in black. First Edition of what is "generally considered the most stylistically opaque and tortured of his [Meredith's] novels" [Williams]. Victor Radnor, Nataly Dreighton and their daughter Nesta have been supremely happy for twenty years; but now that Nesta is of marriageable age, it is time she and her suitor know that Victor is in fact married to a much older woman -- whom he had married for money, but who ever since has not had the decency either to divorce him or to die. As usual with Meredith's novels, the comedy of this situation turns to tragedy. In this set the front free endpaper versos bear Meredith ads (in some copies they are blank -- priority uncertain). It is a bright, close-to-fine set (a touch of bubbling of the cloth near the top of one front cover, very minor rubbing at the corners). This is not a scarce book, but truly fine copies are difficult to find. Collie XIII; Sadleir 1700c; Carter p. 141.

1859. [in an unrecorded binding] London: Chapman and Hall, 1859. Original blind-stamped rose-brown cloth. First Edition of George Meredith's first full-length novel (preceded only by a volume of verse and two single-volume burlesques). FEVEREL is the tough tale of a father's "system" of raising his son, developed not so much out of concern for his son as out of revenge for the wife who had left him. Meredith wrote FEVEREL during the stressful years of the disintegration of his own marriage to Mary Ellen Peacock (daughter of Thomas Love Peacock). In 1858, in fact, she had left him for another man, whose child she bore while still Meredith's legal wife (she died of renal dropsy in 1861). FEVEREL was a complete failure upon publication. Periodical reviewers made such comments as "This 'Ordeal' is about as painful a book as any reader ever felt himself compelled to read through...", and suggested that proper matrons would be well-advised to avoid it. Complaints about the novel's "low ethical tone"… Read More

1901. With Illustrations by Launcelot Speed. London: Chapman and Hall, 1901. Original dark blue cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition of Gissing's last novel to be published during his lifetime. He had a tough time writing it: he began it as THE COMING MAN, then laid it aside to write AMONG THE PROPHETS (a novel which he destroyed, and which does not survive), and finally returned to it, not settling upon the final title until he was correcting the typescript. This was the third and last of his novels to be published by Chapman and Hall; the others had been two of his earliest, THE UNCLASSED and ISABEL CLARENDON. OUR FRIEND THE CHARLATAN is his only novel that was illustrated as a first edition; C&H commissioned the illustrations without telling Gissing, and he was not happy with them ("pictures have no place in a novel"). This is a very good-plus, perhaps near-fine copy (spine slightly faded, a touch of wear at the extremities). Coustillas A22.1a; Collie A22a; Spiers & Coustillas AA1.

1844. Edited by Charles Lever (Harry Lorrequer). With Numerous Illustrations on Steel by Phiz. [In Two Volumes.] Dublin: William Curry, Jun. and Co. [etc.], 1844. Original light grey-green paper-covered boards with red cloth spines, with printed spine labels. First Edition in book form (after serial parts) of this early Charles Lever tale -- about an exiled Irish patriot, earning military glory in France (Napoleon is one of the characters). Lever started out as a medical doctor, but during the 1830s began writing picaresque adventures during his spare time, which were published in 1839 as THE CONFESSIONS OF HARRY LORREQUER (the similarly-picaresque PICKWICK PAPERS, with illustrations likewise by "Phiz," had just been published with great success). This title, five years later, is likewise "edited by Harry Lorrequer." These volumes' title pages are confusing, in that the first volume reads "OUR MESS | Vol II | TOM BURKE OF "OURS" | Volume First" and the second has "Vol III ... Volume Second". This is… Read More

1865. Stone, Marcus. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers, n.d.[1865]. 10 pp Vol II ads, undated (though one page cites 1866 as a future date). Original blind-stamped black cloth with gilt vignette on spines. Second American Edition, which is to say Peterson's two-volume "Uniform Duodecimo Edition." Harper paid for advance rights to serialize this novel and to publish it as an octavo book on 11 November 1865; they also sold their plates to Peterson, in such a way that Peterson was able to publish their sub-edition on the very same day, "probably a few hours after Harper's edition." (Peterson would use these same octavo plates for several years, such as for their 1867 Green Cloth Edition.") But Peterson also created its own duodecimo plates, for publication that very same day of this two-volume, single-column edition, with the plates separately printed -- which was priced at $4.00 compared to $2.50. Condition appears to be just about fine, but the volumes were professionally recased -- very early… Read More

1865. Stone, Marcus. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers, n.d.[1865]. 6 pp undated ads. Original blind-stamped purple cloth. First American Edition, "Peterson sub-edition" [all quotes from Smith]. Having paid 1,000 for advance rights, Harper serialized this novel in Harper's New Monthly Magazine and, to protect their investment, published the first American edition, both in two parts in wrappers (2 February 1865 and 11 November 1865) and then complete in wrappers or in cloth on the latter date. But Harper also sold their plates to Peterson, in such a way that Peterson was able to publish this sub-edition on the same day, "probably a few hours after Harper's edition." "The added [four full-page] illustrations to this sub-edition account for the differences in the page count," compared to Harper's edition. This copy has the title page identical to that described by Smith, with the list of 23 titles in "Peterson's Uniform Edition"; some copies, believed to be later, have a paragraph describing the… Read More

1865. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1865. 2 pp undated ads. Original purple cloth. First Complete American Edition. Harper paid for the advance rights to issue OUR MUTUAL FRIEND serially in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, and then issued it in several book forms. One format was in two wrappered volumes, beginning with Part I on 2 February 1865. Then on 11 November 1865, Harper issued both part II of that format (at 50¢) , AND the entire book either in cloth (as here, at $1.50) or in wrappers (at $1.00). All of these formats include 34 of the 40 illustrations that has appeared in the UK. This more or less mirrored when the two volumes were being issued in England. Meanwhile John Bradburn of New York, "borrowing" from Harper's serialization, was issuing the book in four volumes (after aborting his effort to do it in monthly numbers); Bradburn's first volume came out in October 1864, constituting the first appearance of any part of the novel in book form on either side of the Atlantic (and likewise… Read More

1895. Reveries and Studies in New Japan. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1895. 2 pp undated ads. Original yellow cloth decorated in silver. First Edition, first printing (with the leaves bulking 1-1/8 inches, and with the preliminary and terminal ads as indicated by Blanck). This is a collection of eleven pieces by Hearn, about his adopted country. The binding design is by Sarah Whitman. This copy is in near-fine condition (scarcely any wear at all, but with very minor darkening of this extremely soil-prone yellow cloth). Blanck 7927. Housed in an open-backed slipcase, this copy bears the small leather "Blairhame" bookplate of the noted collector Mrs. J. Insley Blair.

1896. [Shakespeare & Co. copy] London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896. 1 page preliminary undated ads. Original dark green cloth. First Edition of Conrad's second book, preceded only by (and containing many of the same characters as) ALMAYER'S FOLLY. After Edward Garnett (then a reader at Unwin's) had "discovered" Conrad and had published his first book, he worked very closely with Conrad on this one -- so much so that some biographers have suggested that Garnett's name should have appeared on the title page as co-author. AN OUTCAST is considered the middle volume of Conrad's only trilogy; the third volume, which he began right after AN OUTCAST but could not complete for almost a quarter of a century, was ultimately published in 1920 as THE RESCUE. The front endpaper of this copy bears the inkstamp of "Shakespeare and Company / Sylvia Beach Whitman / Kilometer Zero Paris". This legendary English-language bookshop / free library / publisher was run by Sylvia Beach from 1919 to 1941 (supposedly shut down then… Read More

1919. Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. London: George Newnes, [Nov 1919 - Nov 1920]. Original color pictorial wrappers. First Appearance of this grandiose work, in the 24 fortnightly wrappered parts as originally issued. [Wells] and his friends on the League of Nations committee had discussed text­books and methods of education, as a way of preventing further wars, but... they refused, on the grounds of lack of time, lack of formal preparation, and unwillingness to give the effort. Wells decided that he must do it himself. He and Jane agreed to take a year to research, formulate, and write a book designed to replace the histories then available. It was a remarkable gamble. The income from Wells's past writing would inevitably dry up during such a year. The boys were still at school and in university,... [and] Wells was responsible for the care and education of his child by Rebecca West... So, late in 1918, about Christmas, H.G. and Jane sat down to begin work on what would be one of the… Read More