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The Redbridge Book Co.
A Fictitious Bookstore in Delaware County
Membership(s): ABA
Prologue to Ask the Dust
$650.00
Fante, John
Magnolia Editions, Okeanos Press: San Francisco, 1990. Â
John Fante’s gritty, tersely lyrical novel Ask the Dust has been praised by critics and writers for more than 60 years; Charles Bukowski once wrote that “Fante was my god.” This previously unpublished manuscript, found by Joyce Fante five decades after its composition, was written by Fante as a condensed preview of the novel for his publisher.Â
Issued by the Black Sparrow Press a year later, this is the scarce limited edition, one of only 75 copies (110 total) accompanied by a series of etchings excised in hardground, aquatint, and drypoint by John Register and is signed by the artist.
A fine copy, slipcase with small area of damp staining (book unaffected).  A lovely production.
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First Edition Frost in Scarce Dust Wrapper
Selected Poems
$1,200.00New 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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Scarce Publication in the Burroughs Canon, Signed
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.
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Classic Analysis of U.S. History, Signed by Author
The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
$900.00New York: Knopf, 1948. First Edition. Inscribed to Bill Smith and signed by Hofstadter.  While not definitively established, the recipient could be fellow historian William E(rnest) Smith, whose work The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics is cited by Hostadter as a source and influence on his interpretations on anti-bank views (pages 355-56). Some pencil annotations sprinkled sporadically throughout the book.  A very good copy married to later printing dust wrapper.
Offered for Sale by: Founding Lines -
Historian's First Book with Warm Inscription
The New England Mind in Transition
$400.00New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973. First edition of author’s first book, warmly inscribed to Ellis’ close associates: “For Rik & Margot / Who have had / the dubious privilege to / watch young Ellis in / transition as he wrote / this book. Johnson was no / more indebted to that “School / of the Prophets” than I am / to you” Signed as “Joe Ellis” and dated in the year of publication. A fine copy in near fine dust wrapper with some slight fading to the spine, trifle rubbing to the spine tips, one tiny nick, and a little soiling. Ellis won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his work Founding Brothers, exploring how the interactions between the leading figures of the US Constitutional era profoundly influenced the early development of the Republic. Ellis is also credited with leading a revival of interest in John Adams, a President he viewed as under-appreciated for both his character and achievements. The New England Mind grew out of Ellis’ PhD dissertation at Yale (The Puritan Mind in Transition: The American Samuel Johnson (1696-1772)). While at Yale, Ellis became close friends with Richard “Rik” Warch, a fellow graduate student and then member of the faculty, and his wife Margot. Warch was the author of a history of Yale in the early 18th century, attended by Johnson, and Ellis cites Warch’s doctoral dissertation as “the best secondary account of the intellectual and religious climate at early Yale” in the bibliographical essay of his work. The “School of Prophets” in the inscription refers to the title of Warch’s own book-length treatment of his dissertation (School of Prophets. Yale College, 1701 – 1740 also published by the Yale University Press).
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