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Ishiguro, Kazuo
The Remains of the Day
$3,500.00
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Faber & 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.
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Jarrell, Randall
Selected Poems
$1,500.00Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1955. First edition. Unique copy, inscribed on the front pastedown and featuring a holograph of ‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner’, commonly viewed as the poet’s most widely known and frequently anthologized work. From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. First published in 1945, the poem drew directly from Jarrell’s own involvement with military aircraft and airmen during WW2. “While the people and events of World War II are commonly found in Jarrell’s poetry, this poem is unique for its lack of wit. Indeed, the grim tone of this poem places it firmly in the Modernist movement of literature.” Jarrell reportedly “admitted to fearing most of his reputation as a poet is tied up in [this poem]. But, there are certainly worse outcomes for a poet’s career in this poem which has been referred to as the best war poem ever written.” Bottom corners a little scuffed, else nearly fine in good dust wrapper with unprofessional repairs to interior. less
moreOffered for Sale by: The Redbridge Book Co. -
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
moreOffered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
Carroll, Jim
Living At The Movies
$650.00New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973. First edition of the poet’s third collection of poems and first to be issued by a commercial publisher. Issued in both hardcover and wrappers simultaneously, this is the scarce hardbound edition. Estimates put the print run for the hardbound edition at a couple of hundred, with few likely distributed to the public. Signed by the poet on the title page and very uncommon thus. Darkening to board edges as is common for this title. Small spot to text block, last page has a small stain and some bleed through from the rust colored end paper. Overall, a better than very good copy. Pictorial dust wrapper, featuring wraparound cover artwork by Larry Rivers and Ted Berrigan blurb, presents very nicely indeed, overall very good, not clipped and without any tears, chips, fading or rubbing but a little tanned at the edges, slight staining to rear flap, front flap a little creased, and verso of dust wrapper is textured, cause indeterminable, with the result that the front and rear panels are not tactilely smooth. less
moreOffered for Sale by: The Redbridge Book Co. -
Frost, Robert
Selected Poems
$1,200.00New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1923. 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. less
moreOffered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller