The Catcher in the RyeSalinger, J.D.
Published by Little, Brown & Co, Boston
Publication Date: 1951
Published by Little, Brown & Co, Boston
Publication Date: 1951
First edition, first printing, of the author's first book.
Fine in a near-fine example of the first-issue dust jacket, with the price on the front flap partially over the "R" in "Salinger" and Salinger's hair just touching the top edge of the portrait on the rear panel. The jacket is lightly toned, with minute wear at the corners. Copies in comparable condition are exceptionally uncommon; examples even marginally less fine are many times more frequently encountered.
Salinger's masterpiece remains the definitive modern coming-of-age novel and one of the enduring classics of twentieth-century literature in English. Despite the author's lifelong aversion to publicity, The Catcher in the Rye has retained an unparalleled cultural influence, its exploration of adolescent alienation continuing to resonate with successive generations of readers.
Housed in a custom half-calf case.
The Chocolate WarCormier, Robert
Published by Pantheon Books, New York.
Publication Date: 1974
First edition of the author's acclaimed young adult novel, a powerful exploration of authority, conformity, and the abuse of power within a Catholic boys' school. Widely regarded as a modern classic of young adult literature, the novel was adapted for the screen in 1988 in a film directed by Keith Gordon and starring John Glover and Ilan Mitchell-Smith.
Published by Pantheon Books, New York.
Publication Date: 1974
Details
First edition of the author's acclaimed young adult novel, a powerful exploration of authority, conformity, and the abuse of power within a Catholic boys' school. Widely regarded as a modern classic of young adult literature, the novel was adapted for the screen in 1988 in a film directed by Keith Gordon and starring John Glover and Ilan Mitchell-Smith.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1974. Octavo (21.5 cm). Original cloth-backed boards. With the pictorial dust jacket, priced $5.95 on the front flap.
Light shelf wear to the jacket and board edges, spine panel sunned, and very faint foxing to the top edge; otherwise a very good, sound copy.
The Color PurpleWalker, Alice
Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York
Publication Date: 1982
Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York
Publication Date: 1982
First edition, first printing. Signed by Alice Walker on the half title page. Bound in publisher's original paper-covered boards over purple spine cloth lettered in silver. Very Good+ with slight lean to binding and light rubbing to silver lettering on spine, toning at edges, and faint slit to front cover. Light soiling and wear. In a Very Good unclipped dust jacket with corresponding slit to front panel, light general wear. A great copy of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning novel. Later adapted into the 1985 Academy Award nominated film by Steven Spielberg starring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg.
Der Congreß an den Bund.Engels, [Friedrich] / Schapper, Karl.
Published by (London, 15 December "1848" [recte: 1847]).
Publication Date: 1848
Published by (London, 15 December "1848" [recte: 1847]).
Publication Date: 1848
Details
The only known copy of this foundational document of international communism, an extraordinary survival documenting the final stage in the development of the ideas that culminated in Marx and Engels's Manifesto of the Communist Party.
8vo. 8 pp. Disbound, with Japanese paper spine. Preserved in a custom red half morocco solander case.
This eight-page leaflet comprises a circular addressed to the Bund der Kommunisten ("Communist League") by the participants in its second and final congress. The League, a revolutionary socialist secret society, had been established only months earlier as the successor to the Bund der Gerechten ("League of the Just"). At its first congress, held in London from 2 to 9 June 1847, the organization adopted its new name under the influence of its recently admitted members, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose ideas transformed the League into an international movement with a coherent political programme. Although formally dissolved in 1852, the Communist League is generally regarded as the precursor of the International Workingmen's Association and the ideological nucleus of all later Marxist and communist parties.
The League's second congress met in Brussels from 29 November to 8 December 1847. Proceedings of both congresses were published under the title Der Congreß an den Bund: the first on 9 June, the present circular on 15 December, the printed date "1848" being a typographical error for 1847. Neither publication is recorded in standard bibliographies or institutional catalogues. Only one, and possibly a second, copy of the first congress circular is known: one preserved among the papers of the Hamburg socialist and League member Joachim Friedrich Martens (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, acquired in 1912), and another formerly in the Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus, now the Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv. While the first circular was reproduced by Bert Andréas in Gründungsdokumente des Bundes der Kommunisten (1969), the present report of the second congress appears to be the sole surviving copy and has remained entirely unknown to scholarship.
As the League still operated clandestinely, the first circular bore the pseudonymous signatures "Heide (Sekretär)" and "Karl Schill (Präsident)", representing Wilhelm Wolff and Karl Schapper respectively. In the present circular Schapper signs under his own name, while the secretary appears as "J. Engels", a form that may represent something more significant than a mere typographical error.
The circular is of exceptional importance for the textual history of the Communist Manifesto. In his 1885 essay On the History of the Communist League, Engels recalled that, after Marx had expounded the new theory at the second congress, "all contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest" and the two men were commissioned to draft the Manifesto. This document reveals a more complex process than that retrospective account suggests. References to a Manifest der kommunistischen Partei are not entirely consistent: the circular states that a work under this title, intended to replace the earlier Communist Creed adopted at the first congress, had already been drafted, translated into several languages, and formally adopted, although it had not yet appeared in print. Elsewhere, the congress resolved that such a manifesto should thereafter be published annually in multiple languages. The text further records that the 1847 manifesto had been prepared only after incorporating suggestions from League members, and that it had already given the communist movement its definitive expression.
The present circular is itself described as the League's official organ "in its new appearance", marking the transition from a clandestine revolutionary society to an organization with a defined ideological programme and international aspirations. As the only known surviving copy, it constitutes one of the most significant documentary witnesses to the origins of the Communist Manifesto and one of the rarest survivals from the formative years of the international communist movement.
The Da Vinci Code
Brown, Dan
Published by Doubleday, New York.
Publication Date: 2003
Brown, Dan
Published by Doubleday, New York.
Publication Date: 2003
First edition, first printing, signed by the author.
Octavo. Original black cloth-backed boards, spine lettered in gilt. In the original pictorial dust jacket. 454 pp.
A very fine copy, signed by Dan Brown, presenting in virtually pristine condition.
Signed copies of The Da Vinci Code are readily obtainable, but true first editions, first printings signed by the author—and preserved in such exceptional condition—have become increasingly elusive.
Published in 2003, The Da Vinci Code became one of the defining literary phenomena of the early twenty-first century. Blending detective fiction, historical speculation, religious symbolism, and conspiracy thriller, it established Robert Langdon as one of contemporary fiction's most recognizable protagonists. The novel sparked worldwide debate over the Holy Grail tradition, the role of Mary Magdalene in early Christianity, and the relationship between history and religious belief, while selling tens of millions of copies and remaining an international bestseller for years.
Upon publication, Clive Cussler praised it as "one of the finest mysteries I've ever read," describing it as "an amazing tale with enigma piled on secrets stacked on riddles." In The New York Times, Janet Maslin similarly commended its "riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy" narrative, concluding with a single-word recommendation: "Wow."
An outstanding example of one of the most influential and commercially successful novels of the modern era.
The DecameronBoccaccio, Giovanni
Published by Isaac Jaggard, London.
Publication Date: 1620
Published by Isaac Jaggard, London.
Publication Date: 1620
Details
First edition in English of Boccaccio's masterpiece, printed by William Jaggard only three years before his production of Shakespeare's First Folio, one of the great monuments of early English printing.
Folio. Two volumes. Bound by Riviere in full morocco, spines richly gilt with raised bands and gilt lettering, all edges gilt. Woodcut title pages, each with six vignette illustrations; 98 woodcut illustrations in the text, largely repeating the title vignettes; woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. Errata leaf at the end of Volume I; B1 a cancellans. A near-fine set.
First editions of the first English translation are of the utmost rarity, particularly in so handsome a binding and preserved in such excellent condition.
Completed by 1353 in the aftermath of the Black Death, The Decameron is among the foundational works of Renaissance literature and the masterpiece of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). Its celebrated frame narrative gathers seven young women and three young men who flee plague-stricken Florence to a secluded villa, where over ten days they entertain one another with one hundred tales. The stories range from the comic and satirical to the tragic and erotic, combining wit, psychological insight, and moral reflection in a work of remarkable narrative variety.
Beyond its literary brilliance, The Decameron provides one of the most vivid contemporary portraits of fourteenth-century Italian society. Written in the Florentine vernacular, it helped establish Italian prose as a major literary language and exerted an enduring influence on European literature, most notably on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, as well as on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molière, Keats, and countless later writers.
An exceptional copy of one of the defining books of the Western literary canon, produced by the printer whose name would soon become inseparable from Shakespeare's First Folio.
The Diary of A Young Girl
Het Achterhuis
Frank, Anne
Published by Uitgeverij Contact, Amsterdam.
Publication Date: 1947
Het Achterhuis
Frank, AnnePublished by Uitgeverij Contact, Amsterdam.
Publication Date: 1947
First edition, first printing, in the original Dutch, of one of the most influential and widely read books of the twentieth century.
Bound in the publisher's original paper-covered boards stamped in terracotta. Light lean to the binding, with toning and rubbing to the boards and light wear at the spine ends. Pages toned as usual, with foxing chiefly to the text block edges and the preliminary and terminal leaves. A very good or better copy.
First published in Amsterdam in 1947, Het Achterhuis (The Diary of a Young Girl) preserves Anne Frank's diary, written while she and her family lived in hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam from 1942 until their arrest in 1944. More than a personal record of adolescence, the diary is an extraordinary testament to resilience, hope, and humanity in the face of persecution. Anne Frank's perceptive observations and remarkable literary voice
The GiverLowry, Lois
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
Publication Date: 1993
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
Publication Date: 1993
Details
First edition, inscribed and dated by the author.
Octavo. Publisher's full red paper boards. In the original dust jacket designed by Lois Lowry, priced $14.95. Preserved in a protective mylar cover.
Inscribed by Lois Lowry on the title page: "for Sandrine. with best wishes, Lois Lowry, 1999."
A near-fine copy with a lightly stained top edge and very slight impressions to the spine tips; in a fine dust jacket with gentle rubbing.
In The Giver, Lois Lowry presents a haunting vision of a seemingly perfect society stripped of pain, conflict, and choice. In Jonas's community, every aspect of life is carefully controlled: occupations are assigned, family units are regulated, and collective memory has been surrendered in exchange for stability. When Jonas is selected as the next "Receiver of Memory," he begins to experience the colors, emotions, and complexities that have been erased from his world.
Winner of the Newbery Medal, The Giver stands among the most influential works of modern young adult fiction. Alongside dystopian classics such as Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Lowry's novel examines conformity, authority, and the cost of sacrificing individual freedom for the illusion of harmony. Its enduring power lies in its invitation to young readers to question accepted assumptions and reconsider the meaning of humanity itself.
A desirable signed and dated copy of Lowry's landmark dystopian novel.
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The Giving TreeSilverstein, Shel
Published by Harper & Row, New York
Publication Date: 1964
Published by Harper & Row, New York
Publication Date: 1964
First edition, later printing, signed by the author.
New York: Harper & Row, [1964]. Octavo (8 5/8 x 7 inches; 220 x 178 mm). Publisher's original pictorial paper-covered boards. In the later issue dust jacket, priced $3.95, with the portrait without hair, the "0964" code on the front flap, and the three reviews for Lafcadio.
Signed by Shel Silverstein on the half-title: "Best Wishes. Shel Silverstein."
The binding is tight, with crisp, bright boards; the book appears unread. The dust jacket is about fine, with a one-inch closed tear to the lower front panel and minimal darkening to the inner edges. A near-fine presentation copy.
First published in 1964, The Giving Tree is Shel Silverstein's beloved tale of the enduring relationship between a boy and a tree, exploring themes of generosity, love, sacrifice, and the passage of time. Written and illustrated by Silverstein, the book has become one of the most celebrated works of children's literature of the twentieth century, translated into more than thirty languages and embraced by generations of readers.
An attractive signed copy of one of Silverstein's most enduring and recognizable books.
HBS 69629.
The Glass Castle
Walls, Jeannette
Published by Scribner
Publication Date: 2005
Walls, Jeannette
Published by Scribner
Publication Date: 2005