
The Accidental Bookseller
Specializing in Interesting and Uncommon Books in Unusually Nice Condition
Membership(s): IOBA, FABA
Frost, Robert
Selected Poems
$1,200.00
Frost, Robert
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1923. Â First Edition.
A very good copy with cloth-backed green patterned boards, erasable pencil writing to rear free endpaper, tight other than a little gingerness to the hinge in the middle of the book, corners rubbed (one scuffed) and curling inward in a very good unclipped dust wrapper, lightly chipped, spine toned, small tear to side of front flap.
First printings in dust wrapper are scarce with only three appearing in auction since 2000.
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Ishiguro, Kazuo
The Remains of the Day
$3,500.00Faber & Faber: London, 1989.  First Edition. Lovely copy of this Booker Prize winning novel, the third from future Nobel Prize for Literature winner, basis for movie of same name starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Boldly signed by the author to title page.  Accompanied by a bookmark promoting upcoming Booker Prize announcement, also signed by Ishiguro.  Author’s signature has changed over time, and this example as well as the bookmark appear to be contemporaneous with the novel’s publication.  Very scarce and desirable thus. A fine copy in fine dust wrapper.  less
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Peterkin, Julia
Black April
$800.00Bobbs Merrill: Indianapolis, 1927.  First edition, first issue with ‘ducks quacked’ on page 17 (Ahearn Collected Books).  “An extraordinary novel of Negro life on an isolated plantation” signed by the author on front free endpaper.  Black April was “accepted by the critics as being one of the best books ever written about the southern negro” (The Sunday Oregonian). A very good copy, gilt on spine and front cover dulled as usual in very good, first issue dust wrapper without Crawford blurb, price intact, extremities of spine a little chipped, one small edge tear to rear. Peterkin went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1929, the first southern novelist to receive that honor.  A household name for the better part of three decades, “Peterkin’s accomplishment lay in her upending the traditional plantation novel by replacing its gross stereotypes with rural black southerners of complexity, stamina, integrity, and courage, while valorizing the African spiritual inheritance as a transcendent force of cultural regeneration. Because no Uncle Toms, Aunt Jemimas or Colonels clad in white linen inhabited Peterkin’s fiction (indeed, white characters made rare appearances), and because she dared depict tender love and sex between black people, prickly white southerners viewed her suspiciously, perceiving her work as inflammatory and pornographic. In a letter to her mentor H.L. Mencken, Peterkin admitted the sting of her own family’s disdain. Her grown son, she relayed, urged her to write about ‘beautiful white men and women, not n-words.’  In a poignant confession of her alienation she tersely wrote, ‘No beautiful white people live in my head.'” (Life out of Darkness: The Recovery of Julia Peterkin, Forgotten Pulitzer Prize Winner by Elizabeth Robeson, M.Phil, Columbia University). less
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Rorem, Ned & Rivers, Larry
Paul’s Blues
$1,200.00New York: Red Ozier Press, 1984.  Large 4to quarter cloth.  Limited to 115 copies (90 in wrappers) signed by composer and artist, this is one of 25 copies bound in Claire Maziarczyk’s wastepapers over boards.  Very slight indentation lower front board, still easily a fine, unread and bright copy. In an essay on Red Ozier, press bibliographer Michael Peich highlights this title: “Red Ozier published dozens of titles that are distinguished examples of the physical book. One book, Paul’s Blues, deserves mention for its combination of solid typography and interesting art. The text reproduces songs that the composer Ned Rorem wrote based on lyrics composed by Paul Goodman. In the introduction Rorem discusses his association with Goodman and how the songs were written in 1947. Following the introduction is a reproduction of Rorem’s fair-hand manuscripts for each of the three songs, the printed lyrics of the songs, the composer’s journal entries from around the date of Goodman’s death on 3 August 1972, and an afterword by Rorem. The manuscript is a complex mixture that is both solemn (Rorem’s tribute to his friend) and entertaining (the songs themselves). [Press founders] Ken and Steve solved the textual complexity by choosing a straightforward, elegant typographic presentation. The only adornment in the book is Rivers’ energetic title page which addresses the creative collaboration between poet and composer; in an almost excited way it prepares the reader for the text that follows. The finished product is a masterful job of keeping all the elements of the text in perfect balance and harmony. It is a high point of production from the press because it combines, with almost disarming ease, classical typography with a new technology (the title page was reproduced by color Xerox and transferred to the sheets).” less
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Burroughs, William S.
Port of Saints
$1,200.00Covent Garden Press/Am Here Books: London/Ollon (Switzerland).  Dated 1973 though not issued until 1975 due to paper supply shortage. The true first and only edition with this text. A revised edition was issued by Blue Wind Press in 1980.  Only 200 copies printed, 100 numbered and signed, the remainder unsigned.  This is one of the 100 unsigned copies which has been subsequently signed by Burroughs on the title page. A not terribly well made book, this is a nice near fine copy, boards slightly dust soiled, in a near fine example of the fragile dust wrapper, a bit rubbed to the extremities. One of the scarcer publications in the Burroughs canon. less
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