Manuscripts & Original Documents

New Orleans: Parish of New Orleans, 1924. 1st Edition. 1st Edition. Signed. First Edition. Truman Capote's original Birth Certificate - issued in the parish of New Orleans & registered the 3rd day of October, 1924 & showing the birth of Truman Streckfus Persons, September 30th, 1924. A unique document. A bit tattered but still quite bright & clean. In 1928, when Truman was 4, the Certificate was given by Capote's mother, Lillie Mae Faulk Persons [soon to be Capote] to her sister, Lucille Faulk Ingram for safekeeping. Lillie Mae was off to New York to make a new life leaving Truman to the care & nurturing of his Monroeville relatives. Outside of the cousins Truman lived with as a child, Lucille Faulk Ingram & her daughter, Cecilia, were his closest kin. As a fledgling writer looking for solitude, it was in the comfort of Lucille Ingram's home that Truman began to write his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

First Edition. hardcover. Near Fine and quite exceptional. An undated early holograph version of Saul Bellow's only full-length play contained in a ledger-type notebook (8-1/4" x 11-3/8") with marbled paper boards and a black cloth spine. Bellow has subtitled this as "A Work in Progress." Acts I and II of this version are complete in 71 pages with 4 pages of preliminary material for an Act III, all handwritten by Bellow. The 1964 staged version was reduced to two acts. Bellow appears to have written out Acts I & II as a fair copy from previous versions and notes in preparation for completing the play with a new Act III. There are relatively few insertions and corrections in his text of the first two acts which take up about 75% of the notebook. The third act consists mostly of blank pages with 3 pages of rough notes and key speeches including what seem to be the climactic lines of his main character, the comedian Bummidge, who has been undergoing an obsessive self-analysis in the previous acts: "The… Read More

Hardcover. A unique look at human sexuality and literary Romantic love in the early part of the twentieth century during the colonial and modernist eras. As noted by the famous French philosopher Michel Foucault in his "repressive hypothesis," the age of Victorian repression clearly produced non-traditional expressions of lust. The epistolary consists of an original diary and correspondence between two lovers from 1912 to approximately 1916. It is written primarily in English with some excerpts in Italian. The primary diarist is presumed to be an Italian officer during the colonial era of the early 20th century involving Italy, Britain and the "Mad Mullah" in the Benadir region of East Africa. The other correspondent is probably a British lady living in Tuscany at the time. The epistolary includes more than one hundred original drawings of various sexual acts, most of which are in color and include detailed descriptions of the scenes depicted. Some images are watercolors, some pastels, and others are… Read More

First Edition. Hardcover. Fine and rare, beautifully bound. Folio (8-1/4" x 11-3/4") consisting of 53 pages numbered to 54 (one page contains two numbers) on lined yellow paper with a few additions at the end on white paper pasted to the yellow pages with a calligraphic title page facing a photographic reproduction of Miller. Bound in 3/4 maroon morocco leather and marbled boards housed in a slipcase of full burgundy morocco leather. Though some of the phrases, such as the title, are used in other of Miller's works, this long narrative poem appears to be unpublished. The poem begins: "In the morning of the world;/Ere the holy stars were born--/Early morning of the world;/O, that wondrous, wondrous morn!" We have at this point not read much else because our lives are short and Miller's handwriting is trying, but we are fairly confident that the text deals at least in part with the Alaskan Gold Rush of the 1890s as Miller visited the Klondike during that time returning to California after six months,… Read More

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943. The author's original hand-corrected typescript for his most important work, "Journey in the Dark," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. Donated by Flavin to the US Treasury Department "to help the war financing campaign," with a certificate from "The Books and Authors War Bond Committee" dated May, 1945. This typescript purchased by or for Seton Hill College in Greensburg, PA, as printed on the certificate. A note in the author's hand reads as follows: "This is the original MS of "Journey in The Dark," as I wrote it at the rate of about 500 words a day between April 1941 and July 1943. I compose on a typewriter, and though I may write a page a dozen times, when I finally leave it, it is finished. Indeed, long before this book was finished, it was going into galleys. I use loose leaf paper - keeping the work in binders as it progresses. Martin Flavin | May 15th 1944." Two cover sheets typed by the publisher with the title and list of other works by Flavin… Read More

N.p. [London]: N.p. 1967-8. A small quantity of original typescripts, printed typescripts and photocopied typescripts, many secured with staple to top left corner, and many with handwritten amendments, additions and deletions. Housed in a blue card folder bearing a typed white paper label label reading TERRY JONES & MIKE PALIN. Some wear and toning consistent with their age, staples mostly rusted, otherwise in near fine condition. A SMALL QUANTITY OF ORIGINAL, PRINTED AND PHOTOCOPIED TYPESCRIPTS OF SKETCHES WRITTEN BY TERRY JONES AND MICHAEL PALIN FOR FROST ON SUNDAY AND THE FROST REPORT, WITH EXTENSIVE CORRECTIONS, AMENDMENTS AND REWRITES BY BOTH. Terry Jones and Michael Palin first met as undergraduates at Oxford and, after graduating, began writing together for TV comedy shows. All the future Pythons save Terry Gilliam worked together for the first time on The Frost Report (1966-7), which also featured, both as writers and performers, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. The show ran for… Read More

Cannes. 1966. NP. 1966. Quarto (285mm x 233mm). 20 typed sheets in French (rectos only), legibly hand-corrected throughout by Brassai in black ink. Housed in a black cloth album, with each sheet in a separate clear plastic file. In excellent condition, the final page a little creased and with minor loss to right-hand side, affecting one letter. Overall fresh and clean. ------ A superb unpublished and heavily corrected manuscript in French, in which Brassai recounts his visit to Picasso, a long-standing friend, at his home near Cannes. Brassai, who photographed much of Picasso's work in the 1940s, had published Conversations with Picasso in 1964, in which he created an intimate portrait of Picasso, covering their friendship and artistic collaboration, and recording each of their meetings with minute detail. Picasso said of the volume, "Read this book if you want to understand me." This account is written in a similar style, and during the course of the afternoon, Picasso speaks about his nostalgia… Read More

Handwritten. As New. Hardcover. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. 118 PP, VERY FINE ARABIC TA'LIQ SCRIPT WITH GOLDEN DOTS BENEETH THE PROVERBS. FINE OTTOMAN STYLE HEADING ILLUMINATION IN BRIGHT GOLD AND NATURAL COLORS. ALL PAGES OUTRULED IN GOLD. CHAPTER AND CEGNIFICANT WORDS IN RED. MARGINAL NOTES IN FINE TA'LIQ SCRIPT. COLOPHON WITH SCRIBE NAME: MUHAMMAD B. AHMAD. OWNERSHIP ON THE FIRST PAGE AND SMALL TUGRA. THIS WORK WAS MAINLY WRITTEN FOR THE OTTOMAN SULTAN MURAD KHAN B. SELIM KHAN B. SULEYMAN KHAN. CONTEMPORARY OTTOMAN STYLE BINDING. 12th - 18th C. SCARCELY TO BE EXIST ON THIS SUBJECT. 0.

1900. The Only Known Mathematical Manuscript of Alfred North Whitehead [Whitehead, Alfred North]. Mathmatical Manuscript Notebooks. Whitehead (1861-1947) Writing in manuscript. [Unsigned and undated, circa: 1900]. Two composition notebooks. Quarto (202 x 160 mm). 50 ff each, written primarily on rectos in black ink, with a few notes on versos, each page with approx. 15-20 lines of manuscript. Ruled paper self-wrappers, first and last leaves toned and worn, some chipping to edges, corners worn, lower right corner of last 2 ff in vol.I missing with some loss to text. Fragile. Two sequential notebooks, divided into three sections as follows: Part 1: 21 pp, on ff 1r-20r of first notebook. In black ink, written on versos. Treating Karl Weierstrass's 1858 "Über ein die homogenen Functionen zweiter Grades betreffen des Theorem." Part 2: 64 pp, on ff 24r-50r of first notebook, and 1r-32r of second notebook. Treating Karl Weierstrass's 1868 "Zu theorie der bilinearen und quadratischen Formen." Part… Read More

Large oblong folio. Spiral bound. 53 pp. Notated in pencil on 18-stave manuscript paper with numerous revisions, additions, and annotations in lead and blue pencil. Commissioned jointly by the New York Philharmonic and Kölnmusik and the Orchestre National de Lyon, Through the Ancient Valley was first performed on 14 March 2001 by the New York Philharmonic with Kurt Masur conducting and Yo-Yo Ma as soloist; Mr. Ma was also soloist in the first performances in France and Germany. "Both [of Danielpour's] cello concerti... embrace dualities. In Through the Ancient Valley (2000), several of these are specific to the work and are suggested by the title. There was a literal valley through which ancient travelers passed from East to West. This trade route, in use for about 1,500 years beginning in the second century B.C., is part of ancient history, thus one dichotomy that Danielpour examines is that of ancient versus modern eras. In addition, the valley represents the physical distance between East and… Read More

Vietnam, Thailand, and elsewhere in Asia as well as the United States, Europe, and the Middle East ca. 1964-1974: Compiled by Jacob Harris, an American who served as a Senior Police Advisor in Vietnam and Thailand during the Vietnam War, 1964 - 1974., 1964 - 1974. First edition. A large and remarkable archive of images from Vietnam and Thailand, covering the decade from the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the beginning of the buildup of American forces in Vietnam to a year before the evacuation of the American embassy. Most notable are the many images showing the training of local security forces by American civil and military advisors. The collection was compiled by Jacob Harris, an employee of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Public Safety (OPS), whose task was to train Vietnamese and Thai police and counterinsurgency forces. Most of the images, in the form of photographs and photographic slides, were created by Harris, his wife, or his associates, and… Read More

México (Varios lugares), 1685. 317x219mm. (12½x8½").. [Manuscrito]. México, varios lugares de la frontera norte, 1685-1686. En folio (317 x 219)mm. (1), 23 folios, 1 bl. En total 97 Autos redactados, algunos con tinta azul, en papel timbrado. Firmas autógrafas de Gabriel de Istúriz y Jacinto de Fuensaldaña en todos los autos. Sin encuadernar, cosido con hilo, dentro de carpetilla. posiblemente la fuente historiografica original mas importante para el conocimiento de los primeros años de la colonizacion en la frontera norte de mexico. Importantísima colección de los autos del visitador general Gabriel de Istúriz a los pueblos y haciendas que consigna, todos firmados de su mano, que sin duda complementan el manuscrito de la crónica del viaje a la provincia de Sonora que se conserva en los Archivos del Parral (México). Los pueblos, misiones y haciendas que visita durante su viaje entre 1685 y 1686 son: Mátape, Real de Minas de San Miguel Arcángel, pueblo de Guepaca, pueblo de Aconche… Read More

s.l.|(Londres,|Paris,|Toulon...), 1791. Fine. s.l. (Londres, Paris, Toulon...) 1791-1832, 12 000 feuillets de divers formats, en feuilles. - Exceptionnel ensemble des archives manuscrites inédites et complètes de Louis, Chevalier de Sade (1753-1832), auteur du Lexicon politique et cousin du Divin Marquis représentant environ 12 000 feuillets manuscrits dont plusieurs milliers inédits et écrits de sa main. Le Chevalier y expose un système de pensée de type «?holistique?», comprenant à la fois des réflexions historiques, politiques et scientifiques. Précieuses archives géopolitiques, historiques et scientifiques d'un aristocrate érudit, témoin privilégié de la fin de l'Ancien Régime, de la Révolution française, du Consulat, de l'Empire et de la Restauration. Fonds unique de recherches sur la mise en place d'une monarchie constitutionnelle. Si l'on regarde la Révolution Française comme la naissance de l'expérimentation de l'idéologie laïque et… Read More

5 illustrated text-volumes and 3 volumes with original pen- and ink drawings by the traveller (= complete). Text-volumes illustrated with 281 original photographs (each ca 75 x 74 mm to 125 x 82 mm) of places and people and 276 photographs with reproductions of pen- and ink sketches (each ca 126 x 72 mm) pasted onto to 183 plates. 443 unnumb. leaves, including a photo portrait of the author, and 3 maps. Atlas-volumes illustrated with 287 original pen- and ink sketches by the author (each ca 135 x 80 mm), mounted to 36 cardboard leaves with views of towns, landscapes and local residents. Compehensive and detailed description of a world tour by Friedrich Zahn-Geigy (1848-1929), a 23-year-old descendant of a Swiss banker's family from Basle. The journey, not only undertaken for educational purposes solely, but as is related in the text also for business reasons, visiting long-standing business partners and looking out for new fields of business especially in the US and South East Asia, first led them to… Read More

Chile and Bloomington, Indiana An important archive of manuscript music and writings along with an early photograph album and a typed poem, SIGNED, with SIGNED hand drawn abstract artwork and two original artist's sketchbooks, one 12" x 9" ring-bound water color paper with 34 drawings, 23 in charcoal, 9 in pastels, 1 water color and 1 in pencil, most titled and dated in 1955; the second 11" x 7 1/2" ring-bound with 53 pencil drawings, including 3 with color pencil, the drawings mostly dated and titled, several with manuscript writing in Spanish, the dates beginning in 1959, then resumed 1979, taken up again in 1992 and with the last drawings dated 2001.verso and a program for the 100th birthday celebration of noted Chilean composer and musicologist Juan Orrego Salas. While living in Chile Juan Orrego Salas studied with Domingo Santa Cruz and Pedro Humberto Allende, Orrego-Salas received grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations that facilitated his travel to the… Read More