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As I Lay Dying Faulkner, William
Published by Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, New York.

Publication Date: 1930


First edition, first printing, first issue, with the misaligned “I” on page 11. Bound in the publisher’s original beige cloth, stamped in brown. The book is Fine, with faint darkening to the cloth at the gutters, light soiling to the text block edge, and minor soiling to the rear endsheet. In a Near Fine, price-clipped dust jacket with slight soiling, light edge wear, and a slight indentation along the front spine fold at the gutter. A beautiful, bright, and clean copy, in considerably nicer condition than typically encountered.


BelovedMorrison, Toni
Published by Chatto & Windus, London.


Publication Date: 1987

Details

    First British edition, first printing. Signed by Toni Morrison on the half-title page. [viii], 275 pp. Bound in the publisher’s green cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt. Contents with the typical age-toning, else fine; in a fine, unclipped dust jacket. A beautiful copy of Morrison’s historical and haunting novel set during the Reconstruction Era. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the year after publication.








Black BoyWright, Richard
Published by Gallimard, Paris.

Publication Date: 1947


    First edition of the book celebrating Stanley Kubrick's landmark film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's dystopian masterpiece. Octavo, original publisher's cloth.

Presentation copy, inscribed by Stanley Kubrick on the half-title, "To Mark, Best wishes, Stanley Kubrick." Signed by Anthony Burgess on the front free endpaper. Very good in a very good dust jacket with a few short closed tears. Books signed or inscribed by Kubrick are exceptionally scarce, and examples also bearing Burgess's signature are of the utmost rarity.

Kubrick came to A Clockwork Orange almost by chance. Screenwriter Terry Southern gave him a copy of Burgess's novel while Kubrick was immersed in preparations for his ambitious but ultimately abandoned film on Napoleon Bonaparte. When that project was cancelled, Kubrick returned to the novel and was immediately captivated. Reflecting on his first reading, he remarked: "I was excited by everything about it: the plot, the ideas, the characters, and, of course, the language. The story functions on several levels—political, sociological, philosophical—and, most importantly, on a dreamlike psychological-symbolic level."

Determined to preserve the power of Burgess's vision, Kubrick wrote a screenplay of remarkable fidelity to the novel, later observing, "I think whatever Burgess had to say about the story was said in the book, but I did invent a few useful narrative ideas and reshape some of the scenes." Released in 1971, A Clockwork Orange became one of the defining films of modern cinema, securing Kubrick's reputation as one of the twentieth century's greatest directors and introducing Burgess's novel to an even wider audience.




Blood MeridianMcCarthy, Cormac.
Published by New York: Random House.

Publication Date: 1985

Details

    
    First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: “for Al Lowman, all best wishes, Cormac McCarthy.” Lowman was a distinguished Texas historian whose lifelong study of the American Southwest aligned closely with the landscape and history that shaped McCarthy’s most celebrated works, including No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses, and his brutal masterpiece of the Old West, Blood Meridian.

Although McCarthy was raised in Tennessee and Appalachia, where many of his early works are set, his first visit to Texas in 1970 proved transformative. In 1974 he moved to El Paso to immerse himself in the region’s history, geography, and culture. The resulting novel, Blood Meridian, was “as close to history as novels generally get, drawn in sometimes verbatim tones from memoirs, chronicles, eyewitness testimony” (Mitchell). Given McCarthy’s extensive research into the Southwest and Lowman’s prominent role as a chronicler of Texas history, it is likely that the two met during the course of McCarthy’s preparation for the novel.

Lowman (1935–2013) curated special exhibitions and catalogues at the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio and served as president of the Texas State Historical Association, the Texas Folklore Society, and the Book Club of Texas. A member of the Grolier Club and the Philosophical Society of Texas, he authored several books, including Printing Arts in Texas (1975), described as “the best history of fine printing in Texas” (Jenkins), and This Bitterly Beautiful Land: A Texas Commonplace Book (1972), with an introduction by Carl Hertzog, El Paso’s master printer and an internationally renowned book designer.

The year before his death, Lowman reflected on the Texas of his youth in a moving tribute: “My earliest memories are of Aladdin lanterns, battery-powered radios, treadle sewing machines, and mud roads. The fecund black earth extended from our house in all directions. Four hundred years before my time Cabeza de Vaca saw part of Nueces County and described ‘vast and handsome pastures, with good grass for cattle. It strikes me the soil would be very fertile were the country inhabited and improved by reasonable people.’ Nothing waits more patiently than the earth itself.”

John Jenkins, Basic Texas Books, 1983; Al Lowman, “Some Recollections of Defining Events,” First Timers and Old Timers: The Texas Folklore Society Fire Burns On, 2012; Lee Clark Mitchell, “A Book ‘Made Out of Books’: The Humanizing Violence of Style in Blood Meridian,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 57, no. 3, 2015.

Octavo. Title page and facing page illustrated with a map of New Mexico. Original red quarter cloth, spine lettered in gilt and ruled in metallic red, red paper sides. With dust jacket. Very faint foxing to the top edge; a fine copy in a fine, unclipped jacket.






Brave New World

Huxley, Aldous.
Published by Chatto and Windus, London.


Publication Date: 1932


    First edition, first printing. Bound in publisher’s blue cloth, with the spine lettered in gilt. Near Fine, with a significant lean to the binding, light fading to the spine, foxing to the text block edges, and a slight perfume odor. In a Near Fine, unclipped dust jacket, with toning to the spine, light edge wear, and foxing. A striking copy of this dystopian classic.


Brideshead Revisited

Waugh, Evelyn.
Published by Chapman & Hall Ltd, London.


Publication Date: 1945

Details

    
    First trade edition of Waugh’s most enduring novel, in the fragile dust jacket produced to wartime economy standards. Waugh himself repeatedly referred to Brideshead Revisited as his magnum opus. He wrote the novel in early 1944 while recovering from a broken leg sustained during parachute training. In his autobiography, Waugh noted that the story “portrays some aspects of my Oxford life” (A Little Learning, p. 191), and identified the character Sebastian Flyte as being based on his memories of Alastair Graham, one of his close friends and “romances.”

The present trade edition was preceded only by a small pre-publication issue, privately printed for the author and circulated among friends, including Nancy Mitford, for comments and suggestions. In response to their criticisms, Waugh substantially revised the text before publication of this edition.

Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning: The First Volume of an Autobiography, 1964.

Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Spine ends bumped, with a few faint stains to cloth; jacket unclipped, lightly rubbed and toned, especially to the spine, with lightly creased and nicked edges and repaired rear folds. A very good copy in a very good jacket.








CandideVoltaire
Published by S.l. [Genève, Cramer].

Publication Date: 1759


    A remarkable collection of eighteenth-century texts, highlighted by the true first edition of Voltaire's Candide, one of the rarest and most sought-after editions of the work. The volume also includes first editions of works by Maubert de Gouvest and the Lettre du prince de Prusse mourant, au roi son frère. An exceptional survival, preserved in its contemporary marbled calf binding.


Catch 22Heller, Joseph.
Published by Simon and Schuster, New York.

Publication Date: 1961

Details

    
    An excellent signed copy of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, one of the defining novels of the twentieth century. Based on Heller's experiences as a U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier during the Second World War, the novel follows Captain John Yossarian's increasingly desperate attempts to evade the absurd logic of military bureaucracy. A landmark anti-war satire, Catch-22 became a cultural touchstone and remains Heller's best-known work. Signed by the author on the title page and preserved in its original illustrated dust jacket, this particularly attractive copy is housed in a modern morocco-backed clamshell box.



City of NightRechy, John
Published by Grove Press, Inc, New York.

Publication Date: 1963


First edition, first printing, in the second-state dust jacket. A very good signed copy of John Rechy's groundbreaking semi-autobiographical debut novel, warmly inscribed on the front free endpaper, "Best wishes, John Rechy." Featuring one of the first openly gay protagonists in modern American fiction, City of Night is a landmark of LGBTQ+ literature and a defining portrait of America's underground queer culture. In 1999, The Publishing Triangle ranked it among the 100 greatest gay and lesbian novels of the twentieth century.






CrashBallard, J.G.
Published by Jonathan Cape, Ltd. London.


Publication Date: 1973

Details

    First impression, signed on the title page. A rare proof copy of J. G. Ballard's Crash, his most celebrated and controversial novel. A landmark of postmodern fiction, Crash explores the intersections of technology, sexuality, and violence through Ballard's characteristically detached, clinical prose. Among the defining works of twentieth-century speculative literature, signed proof copies are seldom encounter






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