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• Signed UK (True) First Edition Without Inscription

  

  Watson, James D.

  Genes, Girls and Gamow

  $400.00

  The Accidental Bookseller

  Oxford University Press: Oxford (UK), 2001.  The true first edition, preceding the US edition published by Knopf later that year. Signed by the author, a Nobel Laureate for the discovery (along with Francis Crick) of the structure of DNA. Spine a little leaning, minor bump to top front board and one corner, otherwise nearly fine in very good or better dust wrapper, slightly edgeworn and with one minor snag. While signed copies of the US edition are not uncommon, signed copies of the UK first are difficult to find — even more so without an inscription. less

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• Scarce Beats Item, Inscribed to "Allen (Ginsberg?

  

  McClure, Michael

  Unto Caesar

  $450.00

  The Accidental Bookseller

  (San Francisco): (Dave Haselwood), (1965).  A non-commercial publication, with most copies given away to friends of the author and printer. Hand-sewn in printed wrappers, 6.5″ x 4″,  24 pages, circa 60 copies. The first publication from Dave Haselwood after he left Auerhahn Press in the hands of his partner, Andrew Hoyem.   This copy inscribed “For Allen”, signed “Michael”, and dated Halloween, 1965.  Additionally, McClure has added a self-portrait drawing. Although not definitively established, it seems likely that the recipient is Allen Ginsberg.  Ginsberg and McClure both lived in San Francisco at the time, and the famous photograph of them with Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson in the alley behind City Lights Books was taken shortly after the date of the inscription. A very good copy, front wrap unevenly and lightly tanned, rear wrap with one light crease, spine a little rubbed, some interior pages don’t quite align to wraps (potentially as issued). less

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  Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller

• Diane di Prima's Copy with Orig. Drawing by Dunca

  

  Duncan, Robert

  A Selection of 65 Drawings from one drawing book 1952-1956

  $400.00

  The Accidental Bookseller

  Black Sparrow Press: Los Angeles, 1970.  65 loose prints, not bound (as issued).  A signed presentation copy from Duncan to Diane di Prima and her second husband Grant (Fisher), with a full page original drawing on card stock, measuring 6″ X 9″, in the style of drawings from the book.  The Black Sparrow Press item appeared with a publisher’s chemise and signed colophon page — these are not present here and presumably weren’t included in the author’s copies of the book. A few minor age spots to card stock, otherwise fine. When speaking of the impact of Duncan’s teachings, di Prima cited the lesson that poetry intensifies life. In an interview with fellow Beat poet David Meltzer, she recalled, “Robert was probably one of the closest, most intimate lovers I ever had, even though we never had a physical relationship. I learned a lot of different kinds of things from him. One of the things I learned—in a way no teacher of Buddhism ever showed me—was how precious my life was. How precious the whole ambience of the time. A real sense of appreciating every minute.” di Prima recalled their personal relationship in an August 2001 interview with poet David Hadbawnik: “Robert used to come and hang for days, he’d move into my house in Marshall in the ’70s, and bring his French mysteries that he was teaching himself idiomatic French from, and his notebook, and he’d stay for days. And he always came to Christmases with the kids, because Jess doesn’t like holidays, and so I’d have to say mid-’70s, through ’75 on, he was there many weekends, many mornings…. Eating fried herring from the bay for breakfast.” less

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• Signed by First Southern Pulitzer Winning Novelist

  

  Peterkin, Julia

  Black April

  $800.00

  The Accidental Bookseller

  Bobbs 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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