Rare books from Honey & Wax Booksellers

New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845. First edition in book form of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," the single most famous American poem of the nineteenth century, first published earlier that year in the New York Evening Mirror (under Poe's own name) and The American Review (under a pseudonym). Partly inspired by the early lyrics of Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning), to whom he dedicated this volume of poems, Poe composed "The Raven" in trochaic octometer, with a deranged musicality all his own. The elements are familiar even to those who don't read poetry: the "midnight dreary," the silk-curtained chamber, the raven perched upon the bust of Athena, the relentless refrain that drives the narrator mad. "'Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! / Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' / Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'" Even before publication, Poe knew he had a sensation on his hands. When… Read More

Italy, 1825. Album of dynamic original drawings chronicling the Napoleonic era, with an emphasis on the Italian campaigns. Events depicted include sieges and battles (Mantua, Lodi, Trebbia, Marengo); the signing of treaties (Campo Formio, Tolentino); the deaths of generals (Duphot, Joubert); and the royalist attempt to assassinate Napoleon with a "macchina infernale." Later scenes include the battles of Wagram, Ligny, and Waterloo, and Napoleon's exile to St. Helena. The drawings vary in their level of finish: some precise and detailed, others with a more fluid line, but all united by a shared style and graphic weight. An optimistic early bookseller's note identifies the drawings as the work of Jacques-Louis David, which is certainly not true, but the unknown Italian artist was clearly inspired by neoclassical French history painting. "Fine dalla giornata di Marengo" expands a detail of a battle scene by Carle Vernet (1758-1836), and "Napoleone all' Isola de Lobau" echoes a painting of Charles… Read More

London: Macmillan, 1886. First edition of Henry James's most overtly political novel, one of 750 copies, first published in the Atlantic Monthly. The Princess Casamassima traces the friendship of a radical London bookbinder and an idle princess with revolutionary sympathies: "By way of defending the aristocracy he said to her that it couldn't be true they were all a bad lot (he used that expression because she had let him know that she liked him to speak in the manner of the people)." The comparatively action-packed plot, which turns on a terrorist assassination attempt, shows the influence of Charles Dickens and Émile Zola on James more clearly than his introspective fiction. Edel & Laurence A29. A near-fine copy of a major novel. Three octavo volumes, measuring 7.5 x 5 inches: iv, 252; iv, 257, [3]; iv, 242, [2]. Original dark blue-green cloth, double-rule border and panel stamped in black and blind, spines lettered in gilt with gilt publisher's device and decorative rules at top and bottom… Read More

Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1858. First edition of George Eliot's first published work of fiction, three related stories of love and loss in an English village: "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," and "Janet's Repentance." The stories first appeared anonymously in Blackwood's Magazine in 1857, and were published together the following year as the work of "George Eliot," the first use of that pen name by Mary Ann Evans. Upon the book's appearance, Charles Dickens wrote Blackwood to congratulate the unknown author and to predict, correctly, that George Eliot would eventually be revealed as a woman. These early stories sound the depths of feeling experienced by everyday people, foreshadowing Eliot's major achievement in Middlemarch: "At least eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with… Read More

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: William Heinemann, 1932. First edition, second issue, of Graham Greene's thriller, focused on an uneasy group of passengers on the Orient Express as they make their way from Ostend to Constantinople: "the windows shook and sparks flickered like match heads through the darkness." The first issue of the novel was suppressed by Heinemann in response to novelist J.B. Priestley's complaint that the character of "Q.C. Savory" was too obviously a caricature of himself. In this second issue, the character of "Q.C." is renamed "Quin." Following two commercially disappointing novels, Greene was determined to have a success with Stamboul Train: "for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film." Greene has inscribed this copy with the rueful remark, "Not yet an Entertainment!" Stamboul Train would, however, be repeatedly adapted for film, radio, and television, most notably in the 1934 American picture Orient Express.… Read More

London: William Heinemann, 1930. First edition, in the first state dust jacket, of Graham Greene's elusive second novel. After the success of his 1929 debut The Man Within, Greene was given an unusually large advance to write The Name of Action, which introduces key elements of his later work: espionage, revolution, a doomed love story. In this case, a callow young Englishman's plot to overthrow the German dictator is complicated by his infatuation with the man's wife: "'Mr. Chant, of - of South-West London -- offering the post of mistress to the wife of the Dictator of Trier. Doesn't it strike you as amusing - as,' she added fiercely, 'impertinent?'" A critical and commercial disappointment, The Name of Action was a source of embarrassment to Greene, who suppressed further publication: "I was trying to write my first political novel, knowing nothing of politics." A near-fine copy of a scarce book, in a remarkably fresh jacket. Single volume, measuring 7.25 x 4.5 inches: [8], 344. Original navy blue… Read More

London: Eragny Press for Les Cent Bibliophiles, 1909. Fine press edition, one of 130 copies printed by the Eragny Press for La Société des Cent Bibliophiles; this is copy 44, printed for Carl De Geer. The Eragny Press was celebrated for its distinctive mix of French Impressionist and English Arts and Crafts styles, and for the quality of the wood engravings designed by Lucien Pissarro and engraved by Esther Pissarro. This edition of Gérard de Nerval's Romantic novel about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Histoire de la Reine du Matin, was first conceived by Lucien Pissarro in 1903, but its production was too expensive to contemplate. Six years later, Eugène Rodrigues, president of the Société des Cent Bibliophiles and a champion of fine printing, provided the Pissarros with the financial backing they required. Experimental and innovative in design, incorporating color printing and 23-carat gold leaf, Histoire de la Reine du Matin demonstrated the full capabilities of the Eragny Press, unique… Read More

England, 1900. Original watercolor by British artist Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945), first exhibited in her career-making 1901 solo exhibition: "Rarely, if ever has a woman painter made a great reputation as quickly and as thoroughly as Miss Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, whose series of watercolour drawings has, during last month, drawn the whole of artistic London to the Dowdeswell Galleries" (The Artist, June 1901). The young Fortescue-Brickdale was inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite movement of Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais. She studied with John Ruskin as a teenager, and befriended John Byam Shaw, a protégé of Millais, at the Royal Academy, later teaching at Shaw's school of art. An outlier in a male-dominated field, she built a successful career as a fine art painter and book illustrator, becoming the first female member of the Institute of Painters in Oils, and working in sculpture and stained glass as well. Throughout her life, she was drawn to… Read More

London: George Routledge & Sons, 1886. First edition, the Grolier 100 copy, inscribed by Kate Greenaway with three original sketches of young girls. First published in the eighteenth century, the ABC rhyme "The Tragical Death of A Apple Pye" appeared in countless chapbooks before Greenaway produced this colorful large-format edition. Her vibrant illustrations depict a crowd of children in Regency dress tussling over the oversized pie of the title. Finally, in Greenaway's original closing rhyme, "U V W X Y Z / All had a large slice / and went off to bed." A Apple Pie was a resounding popular success, although the book caused some tension between Greenaway and her friend John Ruskin, who disliked the stylized feet, "literal paddles and flappers," of Greenaway's children. Greenaway has inscribed this copy to Joan Ponsonby, born in 1887, the granddaughter of her close friends Gerald and Maria Ponsonby. The ink sketches of young girls that frame the gift inscription may be portraits of little Joan… Read More

Tokyo: Wunternaum Press, 1964. First edition of Yoko Ono's self-published first book, one of 500 stated copies (though likely fewer) printed, preceding the first trade edition by six years. This copy was inscribed by Ono at the March 10, 1966 opening of The Stone, the New York Fluxus group show in which she played a central role: "To Helen, / 1966, opening / Judson Church Gallery / NYC, NY / Yoko Ono." Grapefruit collects instructions for Ono's early conceptual art pieces, organized under the headings of Music, Painting, Event, Poetry, and Object. Some works can be enacted by readers, like Shadow Piece: "Put your shadows together until they become one." Others can be realized only in the imagination. The directions for Clock Piece read: "Make all the clocks in the world fast by two seconds without letting anyone know about it." Wind Piece instructs: "Blow hats all over the city." Fly Piece demands of the artist: "Fly." Ono inscribed this copy at the opening of The Stone, the 1966 Fluxus performance… Read More

New York: Aeolian Hall, 1924. Original program for Paul Whiteman's experimental concert on February 12, 1924, featuring the premiere of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Whiteman intended the event at New York's Aeolian Hall "to be purely educational," showcasing "the tremendous strides which have been made in popular music." Through new arrangements and original material, most notably Gershwin's bold rhapsody, Whiteman hoped to legitimize a scored version of "modern Jazz" in the context of the classical concert hall. In the program's opening section, titled "The Why of This Experiment," Whiteman elevates jazz into the sphere of high culture while remaining pointedly silent on the African-American roots of that controversial genre, "which sprang into existence about ten years ago from nowhere in particular." The program provides biographies of Whiteman's musical collaborators and extensive notes on the featured compositions. Whiteman reserves his highest praise for George Gershwin: "He is capable… Read More

New York: New Directions, 1947. First edition of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams's first play to win the Pulitzer Prize, signed by the entire original cast, including Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. Produced by Irene Mayer Selznick and directed by Elia Kazan, the original stage production opened in New Haven on October 30, 1947: the program for that first performance is present here, with three ticket stubs from the Shubert Theatre. The show then moved to Boston and Philadelphia before arriving on Broadway, where Tandy would win the Tony for her performance as the fragile, self-deluding Blanche DuBois: "Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Wolcott Gibbs, in a rave review for The New Yorker, regretted that "there is no way . . . to convey the effect Mr. Williams achieves in his last act of a mind desperately retreating into the beautiful, crazy world it has built for itself." A wonderful association copy, with related ephemera… Read More

New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1938. First edition of Rex Stout's fifth Nero Wolfe mystery, in the uncommon dust jacket, with a scarce contemporary inscription. Too Many Cooks finds the orchid-loving, gourmand detective at a meeting of Les Quinze Maîtres, the fifteen greatest world's chefs, as their guest of honor. Wolfe is reluctantly pulled into service when one of the chefs is murdered during a taste-test challenge, and is ultimately satisfied not so much by solving the case as by having obtained a coveted secret recipe for Saucisse Minuit. Too Many Cooks was serialized in The American Magazine before publication, and promoted with a national tour that sent Stout and a cast of actors across the country in a dedicated Pullman car. Each stop featured reenactments of the novel's scenes and special press luncheons that served dishes from the recipes included in the novel's appendix: "dishes as hearty and robust as the crimes which he undertakes to solve," including Terrapin Stewed in Butter, Avocado… Read More

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949. First American edition, published three months after the British, of the fifth title in the Philip Marlowe detective series, signed by Raymond Chandler. The Little Sister follows the private eye to Hollywood, where Marlowe investigates a scandal involving a starlet, her gangster beau, and her missing brother. Chandler's disdain for the film business, informed by his own experiences as a screenwriter, is evident: "Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood -- and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else." The Little Sister inspired the 1969 semi-noir film Marlowe, starring James Garner, who would go on to portray the equally sardonic detective Jim Rockford in the 1970s NBC television series The Rockford Files. Bruccoli A8.2.a. A scarce signed copy, in the original dust jacket designed by… Read More