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ZARSigned/Inscribed Books, Association Copies
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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 -
An Early 250th Birthday Present
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams
$250.00University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1959. Two volumes. Complete correspondence between founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Includes the correspondence between Abigail Adams and Jefferson. Inscribed by editor Lester J. Capon. Spines lightly sunned otherwise fine. Slipcase rubbed at extremities with a few tape repairs. No dust wrappers as issued. The correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson spanned half a century and embraced government, philosophy, religion, quotidiana, and family griefs and joys. First meeting as delegates to the Continental Congress in 1775, they initiated correspondence in 1777, negotiated jointly as ministers in Europe in the 1780s, and served the early Republic–each, ultimately, in its highest office. At Jefferson’s defeat of Adams for the presidency in 1800, they became estranged, and the correspondence lapses from 1801 to 1812, then is renewed until the death of both in 1826, fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence. One of the monuments of American scholarship and, to quote C. Vann Woodward, ‘a major treasure of national literature.’
Offered for Sale by: Founding Lines -
Signed by Nobel Prize Winning Economist
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
$450.00Little, Brown and Company: Boston, 1974. First edition. Signed and dated by Fogel with a warm inscription to Henry Rosovsky, economist and academic administrator who served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University. Rosovsky is among a large group of scholars cited in the book’s Acknowledgments who contributed to the development of the book. The date of the inscription precedes by several weeks the New York Times’ review of the book. Fogel went on to win the 1993 Nobel Prize for Economics for “having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change,” according to the Nobel citation. In the biography Fogel wrote for the Nobel, he acknowledges Rosovsky for providing research assistants, a computer programmer, and the computer time needed to conduct his research while at Harvard in the late 1970s. This groundbreaking book reexamined the economic foundations of American slavery, marking “the start of a new period of slavery scholarship and some searching revisions of a national tradition” (C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books). The book generated somewhat of a firestorm of media coverage when it was first published due to its controversial hypothesis: that slavery was a highly efficient, profitable enterprise, that the South was generally flourishing economically on the eve of the Civil War, that the slaves were treated reasonably well, and that they had a standard of living compared favorably with many northern white industrial workers. “It is a rare monograph in economic history that gets reviewed in magazines and newspapers such as Newsweek, Time, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post among others; or whose authors appear on television talk shows. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman’s Time on the Cross was one such book — perhaps the only one.” A near fine copy in a very good dust wrapper owing to a tear on the rear panel.
Offered for Sale by: Founding Lines -
With Holograph of Poet's Most Widely Known Work
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.
Offered for Sale by: The Redbridge Book Co. -
One of 15 Copies Bound in Full Morocco
Innocence in Extremis
$500.00New York: The Grenfell Press, 1985. From the colophon: “118 copies have been printed & published at The Grenfell Press, New York City, in spring/summer 1985. Copies numbered 1-85 are printed on Saunders paper and bound in quarter morocco with the covers and frontispiece by T. L. Solien. Roman numeral copies I-XV are bound in full morocco hand-colored by the artist and contain a frontispiece. Lettered copies A-R are for the author and artist. Bindings are by Claudia Cohen; Michael Bixler has set the text in Dante. Each copy has been signed by John Hawkes and T. L. Solien.” Copy XIII of the Roman numeral edition. T. L. Solien’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions across the country and is included in public and private collections around the world. Selected collections include: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Milwaukee Art Museum; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Tate Gallery, London; National Gallery of Australia; Singapore Art Museum, among others. (source: Tory Folliard Gallery). Near fine, slight uneven tanning to boards, small and shallow abrasion to rear cover. In publisher’s plexiglass slipcase, one seam split as appears to be common to be this title, small chip and a couple of cracks, neither affecting the case’s integrity.
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
Signed by First Southern Pulitzer Winning Novelist
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).
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
Signed by Winner of 2015 Nobel Prize
Second-Hand Time. The Last of the Soviets
$800.00London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016. First UK edition. A paperbound original. Signed to the title page by the author, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, and dated in the latinate style as is her wont. Not to be confused with the 2024 Fitzcarraldo edition, limited to 1000 copies signed on a bookplate. Few small finger smudges, else fine in wrappers.
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
Signed Booker Prize Winner with Extras
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.
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
Beloved Book, Signed by Author with Drawing
Guess How Much I Love You
$1,500.00New York: Candlewick Press, 1996. Early reprint. Inscribed to “Bean”, signed and dated by author McBratney, signed by illustrator Jeram and with an original drawing by her titled “Jumping Bean”. A publishing phenomenon from the start, as of its 25th anniversary in 2019, the book had sold more than 43 million copies worldwide in 57 languages. A near fine copy in like dust wrapper. Signed copies are scarce indeed and especially desirable with the original drawing.
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
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.
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
Printer’s Copy Signed by Baskin
A Checklist of the Publications of Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland Maine: MDCCCXCI-MDCCCCXXIII
$275.00Northampton, MA: The Gehenna Press, 1966. Limited edition, one of 500 Copies, printed on Fabriano Paper in Monotype Van Dijck. Illustrated with 19 Mounted Letter Press Facsimiles of Title pages in Red and Black on Paper closely Simulating those used by Mosher. This is the printer’s copy, inscribed by Baskin and presented to Stanley Clifford “with the affection of” Leonard Baskin, dated 1967. Clifford started as a hand leather bookbinder at Bennett Book Studio in Manhattan. He came to be respected as one of the finest craftsmen practicing this trade, a reputation that allowed work to follow him to Deer Isle, ME where he and fellow islander Leonard Baskin became close friends, attracted by a mutual interest in the book arts. Ironically, an unbound copy in 20 signatures. Some staining to rear page and signature spines.
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller -
Everest Expedition Story In Designer Binding
The Ascent Of Everest
$1,200.00London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1953. First edition. Signed by the author, the expedition leader of the first successful British team to reach Mount Everest’s peak. In a designer mountain-themed binding from Jane Francis of the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (U.K.) in dual blue Oasis morocco and alum tawed pigskin with foil tooling. Exhibited at the 1969 Thomas Harrison Craft Bookbinding Memorial Competition. Accompanied by exhibition pamphlet and Miss Francis’ invitation to the event. Prelims lightly foxed, spine a little faded, some tanning to the pigskin. Very good or better in custom slipcase with uneven fading.
Offered for Sale by: The Accidental Bookseller