Search Results: Titles starting with U from Whitmore Rare Books

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881. First edition. Near Fine. First printing with "presumptive" on page 9 and the correct ads in the back. (BAL 7100) A lovely, Near Fine copy of the book with bright gilt and clean boards. Light rubbing at the spine ends, minor separation within the page block and a short 1/4 inch tear at the inner margin of the title page. A total of eight plates, including the frontis, with several other illustrations within the text. First published in 1881, Uncle Remus was a landmark collection of African American fables and oral tradition that was adapted and edited by Joel Chandler Harris. The work includes 185 tales, which are woven together through the character of Uncle Remus, an older formerly enslaved man who tells the stories to a group of children. The stories were actually written in eye dialect and many of them center around the character of Br'er (Brother) Rabbit, a kind of clever trickster. Read widely, the book was extremely popular as many people had not been… Read More

Leicester and London: Raithby, Lawrence & Co. Ltd, 1915. First Thus. First edition with illustrations by Harry Rowntree and René Bull. Thin large quarto (12 1/8 x 9 5/8 inches; 308 x 243 mm.). Original gray linen over boards, front cover lettered in orange and brown. A Fine copy. Original textured tan paper dust- jacket, front panel lettered in black and with an illustration from the book Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox (facing page 20) pasted-on. Jacket price-clipped, otherwise near fine. Collating 110, [1], [1 blank] with twelve magnificent full color plates by Harry Rowntree and eighty-four delightful pen-and-ink drawings in the text by René Bull. First published in 1881, Uncle Remus was a landmark collection of African American fables and oral tradition that was adapted and edited by Joel Chandler Harris. The work includes 185 tales, which are woven together through the character of Uncle Remus, an older formerly enslaved man who tells the stories to a group of children. The stories… Read More

Paris: Walt Disney, Hachette, Silly Symphonies, 1936. First edition. Publisher's color pictorial blue boards, color pictorial endpapers. Forty-three black and white drawings of which twelve are full-page. Three magnificent double-page color pop-ups. Some very light toning to blank margins. Small faded area at top of front board, minimal rubbing to extremities, still a Near Fine copy. Mickey, Donald and Goofy play in a polo match against several Hollywood stars including Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and Harpo Marx. Clark Gable and Mae West are spectators. This highly amusing little book features three vibrantly colored pop-ups plus color pictorial endpapers and many line illustrations throughout the text. This title was never published in America.

London: Printed and Sold by J. Pitts, 1802. Early edition. Folio broadside measuring 240 x 365mm and printed to recto in four columns with two woodcuts. A very nearly Fine example with lower margin untrimmed and several marginal paper flaws not affecting text. Scarce across its early formats, Bodleian Ballads reports six different editions from 1797 to 1846; and OCLC reports no copies of this version at institutions (while documenting 12 copies across all other editions). The present is the only example on the market. An unexpected call and response ballad, in which one narrator speaks from the grave, The Unhappy Lady of Hackney tackles the serious topics of incestuous assault and pregnancy. Within the ballad's first two columns, the narrator focuses in third person on the story of "a gentleman who had two comely daughters, And one was married to a squire who caused this disaster." Centering the damage done to a father by his poorly behaved children, the narrator explains that "the youngest daughter… Read More

New York: Random House, 1938. First Edition. Near Fine. Octavo, original half burgundy cloth and patterned paper boards, top edge gilt. Number 164 of two hundred fifty signed copies. Complete with author's signature on the limitation page. A Near Fine copy of the book with the spine a bit faded and a previous owner's stamp on the half-title, otherwise a very pleasing copy. Lacking the publisher's acetate jacket, but with a new mylar. Personal responsibility and the fall of Old Southern gentility take center stage in Faulkner's The Unvanquished. Set in Mississippi and spanning the Civil War and Reconstruction, the story follows the Sartoris family and their attempt to maintain a sense of identity as the nation changes. "Having chosen warfare as the exciting backdrop for The Unvanquished, Faulkner writes of it well. By the time of the fall of Vicksburg, when the novel begins, the Confederate defeats at Shiloh and Corinth had opened northern Mississippi to the Federal armies...the border region of… Read More

Massachusetts, 1862. Black roan stamped in gilt and blind. Measuring 190 x 155mm and containing 29 manuscript entries in various hands, several examples of calligraphic illustration, and one lock of blonde hair. Occasional later annotations in green ink, seemingly from a descendant or amateur genealogist connecting the Plimpton, Amidon, and Welde families through their entries (suggesting that A. E. and Jane Plimpton were aunt and niece, with A. E. Plimpton being the mother of the three half-sisters Mary Amidon, and Sarah and Amy Welde all of whom make entries). Presented to Mary when she was about eleven years old, the present commonplace book reflects the hopes and sentiments that older women have for the younger girls coming to adulthood behind them. The calligraphic dedication articulates this from the start: "Oo, herald of my fondest hopes, and call from every flower their sweetest odours." Most entries are from older women, and they encourage the girl to remember how friendship is "the… Read More