AGEE, James (1909-1955); Walker Evans (photographs)

[Photobook] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Boston / Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin / The Riverside Press, 1941. First Edition. Hardcover. First Printing of this tour de force of American photography and perennial classic of American journalism, a "highly experimental book, pushing the boundaries of the way documentary should treat the world." (Lionel Trilling, in the Kenyon Review, called it the "most important moral effort of our American generation.") Demy 8vo (205 x 144mm): [2],xvi,471,[1]pp, with 31 beautifully printed black & white full-page photographs by Walker Evans, "his only excursion into 'true' documentary—among the finest ever made." (Parr & Badger) Publisher's black cloth, spine lettered in silver; illustrated dust jacket, priced $3.50. A Fine copy, tightly bound and clean throughout; Near Fine or better jacket, head and toe of spine panel rubbed, with short tear and crease to bottom of front panel. A fresh, honest copy with no restoration. Parr & Badger I, p.144. Roth (101 Books), p. 108-09. In July and August of 1936, Agee and Walker Evans traveled to the American South to research a story on sharecropping for Fortune magazine. Their assignment, according to Agee's Preface, was to produce a "photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers." Throughout the book, "Agee writes with extraordinary moral passion and highly personal emotion. He considers the tenant families victims of a massive system of human injustice that is global in proportions. In questioning his purposes, including the difficulty of ever really seeing into the heart of another, especially of those as different as the sharecroppers, Agee raises important questions about the aesthetic limitations of the literature of social consciousness that comprised a major genre in the 1930s and early 1940s. The design of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men reflects the fierce independence and eccentricity of its youthful author. Book One consists of only three pages: a single page 'Preface' and two pages listing the 'Persons and Places' in the book. Book Two, over 400 pages in length, is divided into an elaborate 'Design,' including its own 'Preamble'; sections on tenant clothing, shelter, education, and work; an 'Intermission'; and other narrative, poetic, autobiographical and confessional passages. The tour de force of this section, however, and perhaps of the book as a whole, is a short section on 'Overalls'. In the 'delicate beauty' that the overalls take on with age and wear, Agee finds an appropriate image to represent the lives of the tenants as a whole." (Literary Encyclopedia) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine/Near Fine+.

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Book number: BB2619

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ALDINGTON, Richard (1892-1962); John Nash (illustrates)

Images (1910-1915)

London, The Poetry Bookshop, 35 Devonshire Street, Theobalds, W.C. 1915. First Edition. Pictorial Wrappers. First Printing of Aldington's first book of poems, published when he was literary editor of The Egoist. Crown 8vo (196 x 144mm): 31pp (title from cover, pagination begins cover verso). Original illustrated stapled wrappers, front panel with hand-colored block print by John Nash, priced 8d net on lower left corner, edges untrimmed; original glassine outer wrapper, toned and chipped at edges. Wrappers middy foxed (as often), but an unusually good copy in original outer wrapper. Kershaw 1. Ezra Pound coined the term imagistes for Aldington and his wife, Hilda Doolittle (H. D.) Aldington's poetry, championing minimalist free verse with stark images, constitutes almost one third of the Imagists's inaugural anthology Des Imagistes, in which six of these poems originally appeared. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Near Fine .

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Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ALDINGTON, Richard (1892-1962); Paul Nash (Illustrates)

[World War] Death of a Hero

London, Chatto and Windus, 1929. First Impression. Hardcover. First English Edition (appearing a few weeks after the American edition) of this canonical modernist novel. Thick crown 8vo (207 x 124mm): xii,440pp. With the author's note, commenting on the publishers' censorship and explaining the use of asterisks, and considering it "better for the book to appear mutilated than for me to say what I don't believe." Publisher's black cloth, spine lettered in gold, sepia dust wrapper illustrated by Paul Nash and priced 8s / 6d. A presentable example, better than very good, tightly bound and clean throughout; jacket spine panel toned, front panel still vibrant. Kershaw 53. Falls, pp. 261-62. Aldington's scathing take on early twentieth-century British society, openly discussing sex, death, mental health, class and a host of other 'indelicate' issues, which so mortified his publishers that they extensively censored the manuscript (an unexpurgated edition was published in Paris the following year). Orwell called Death of a Hero "much the best of the English war books." It gives a "thorough and solid account of not just the fear and despair, but also the dirt, illness and, above all, boredom and loneliness that soldiers experienced in the trenches, of which Aldington had first-hand experience. The novel has, in fact, an autobiographical basis; it is divided into three parts, with the first two devoted to the protagonist's coming of age, and only the last part set during World War I. This final part is significant for its disenchanted take on war, stressing not only the physical destruction of the body, but the obliteration of the sense of self and of one's place in the world." (Literary Encyclopedia) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Very Good+/Near Fine.

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Book number: BB2592

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ALDISS, Brian W. (1925-2017)

The Brightfount Diaries

London, Faber and Faber, 1955. First Edition. Hardcover. First Impression of the author's first book (first published mcmlv on copyright page). 8vo: 200pp. Publisher's French blue cloth, spine lettered in yellow, salmon-pink dust jacket illustrated by Pearl Falconer, who also contributed full-page line drawings throughout. Fine, square, and tight (apparently unread). Currey, p. 1. After the Second World War, Aldiss worked as a bookseller in Oxford, from which experience came this novel in diary form about the life of a bookshop assistant, which originally ran serially for two years in The Bookseller (Musings about publishers, authors, booksellers and buyers), under the pseudonym Peter Pica. ) According to Aldiss, the novel "did not entirely hatch, the parts being better than the whole," although it did serve to alert the reading public that a new novelist worth noting was afoot. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine-/Fine-.

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Book number: BB1773

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

AMES, Delano (1906-1987)

The Man in the Tricorn Hat

London, Methuen, 1960. First Edition. Hardcover. First Printing of this thriller set in a Spanish village. Crown 8vo (200 x 132mm): 200pp. Publisher's forest green finely woven cloth, spine lettered in silver, striking dust jacket illustrated by David Watson and priced 15s. A handsome example, tightly bound and clean throughout (jacket's back panel gently toned and dust-soiled, short closed tear to upper spine panel fold). The first of Ames's late series Juan Llorca stories, featuring a Spanish civil guard who, in this installment, falls for the prime suspect in a murder mystery. Followed by The Man with Three Jaguars (1961) and The Man with Three Chins (1965). N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine/Near Fine+.

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Book number: BB1767

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

AMIS, Kingsley (1922-1995)

Lucky Jim

Garden City, Doubleday, 1954. First Printing. Hardcover. First American Edition of Amis's first book, "the quintessential campus novel," in the superb Edward Gorey dust jacket, one of his first and finest. 8vo: 256pp. Publisher's brown cloth, spine lettered in white, illustrated dust jacket priced $3.50. About Fine (end leaves lightly offset), apparently unread, jacket about Fine (spine panel toned, as often), but an excellent example. From the collection of bibliophile Donald Kaufmann. Burgess 99. Time 100. Awarded the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. "Jim may be the single bitterest character in all of English literature; Amis certainly crafts the most brutally accurate description of a hangover ever written. A punishingly, viscerally funny attack on hypocrisy and self-importance in all their many and varied forms, Lucky Jim gave rise to much of the angry-young-man fiction that followed, but it never met its equal." (Time 100) "Widely acknowledged as the quintessential campus novel of the twentieth century." (Literary Encyclopedia) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine-/Fine-.

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Book number: BB1629

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ANDERSON, Sherwood (1876-1941)

Horses and Men. Tales, Long and Short, from Our American Life ["I'm a Fool"]

New York, B. W. Huebsch, 1923. First Printing. Hardcover. First Issue (with orange topstain), including the author's most famous short story, "I'm a Fool." 8vo: xiii,[1], 347,[1]pp. Publisher's orange cloth, printed paper label to spine, top edge stained orange, beige typographic dust jacket priced two dollars on spine panel. About Fine (endpapers slightly toned, spine tips bumped), the cloth bright and fresh; Near Fine or better dust-soiled jacket that has benefited from professional conservation to edges (not involving lettering). A desirable copy. Sherwood Anderson's third collection, after the successful short story cycle, Winesburg, Ohio. The book was dedicated to Theodore Dreiser and includes a prefatory tribute and nine stories, six of which are variations of previously published pieces. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. Fine-/Near Fine+.

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Book number: BB1555

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ANDERSON, Sherwood (1876-1941)

Tar : A Midwest Childhood

New York, Boni & Liveright, 1926. First Edition. Decorative Cloth. First Printing (no additional printings noted). 8vo: xviii,346pp. Publisher's brown pebbled cloth, spine lettered in gilt within blue title block, upper cover lettered in gilt with vignette of farmhouse and barn, top edge stained black, fore-edge untrimmed, title page printed in blue and black; cream-colored pictorial dust jacket printed in green and black and priced $3.00. Fine, bright copy, virtually As New, in jacket with shallow chipping, touching lettering at base of slightly tanned spine. Sheehy & Lohf 39. A fictionalized memoir constructed of episodes in the childhood of Edgar Moorehead (nicknamed Tar-heel, or Tar, because of his father's North Carolina origin), though fictional location of Tar bears a resemblance to Camden, Ohio, where Anderson was born and spent his first year. An episode from the book later appeared, in revised form, as one of Anderson's finest short stories, "Death in the Woods." N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. Fine/Near Fine+.

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Book number: BB1196

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ARAGON, Louis (1897-1982)

[Surrealism] Paris Peasant

London, Jonathan Cape, 1971. First Printing. Hardcover. First English-language Edition (a limited American edition followed in 1994), translated from the French and with an introduction by Simon Watson Taylor, of this key text of the surrealist movement. Crown 8vo (196 x 120mm): 222pp. Publisher's paper-effect brown cloth, spine stamped in gold, top edge stained lavender, lavender end sheets; lavender and lime-green illustrated dust jacket by Stanley Chapman, priced £1.90. Very Fine, virtually pristine and apparently unread. Originally published in Paris (as Le Paysan de Paris), in 1926, and dedicated to the surrealist painter André Masson. In this novel, Aragon abandons conventional tropes of fiction, including linear narration and character development, instead employing magical realism to create "a new kind of novel that would break all the traditional rules governing the writing of fiction, one that would be neither a narrative (a story) nor a character study (a portrait)." N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine .

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Book number: BB2306

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ASHBERY, John (1927-2017)

The Tennis Court Oath. A Book of Poems [Inscribed to William Targ]

Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1968. Early Reprint. Hardcover. First Edition, Third Printing, of this touchstone of contemporary American avant-garde poetry. Crown 8vo (203 x 152mm): 94,[2]pp. Publisher's gray cloth, spine stamped in red and black, pictorial dust jacket (price-clipped) printed in black and salmon pink. Inscribed by Ashbery on title page to book editor and publisher William Targ. About Fine copy, square and tightly bound, crisp and clean throughout, of the scarce clothbound issue. Near Fine or better jacket, spine ends lightly rubbed, back panel slightly dust-soiled. The poet's second trade publication, first published by Wesleyan in 1962, collecting 30 poems. "On one level, 'The Tennis Court Oath' is a poem about the possibilities of poetry itself. For John Ashbery, the purpose of poetry is not communication in the sense of a message delivered or of an idea expressed. It is, instead, communication as the continuous encounter between ideas and things in language on the page and in language in the mind. In the fragmentary rhetoric of this poem, one can never be certain whether a given word is the object of one verb or the subject of the next. One does not know what to subordinate to what, just as one cannot determine plot from subplot or reality from dream in the inconstant landscape of the poem's progress. For Ashbery, this indeterminacy represents the liberation of poetry from poetic precedent, a chance for the poem to be read only by its own and its readers' own lights. The poem becomes an exemplary act of literary sabotage, a bomb tossed into the anthologies that readers carry in their minds from one work of literature to another." (enotes) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine-/Near Fine+.

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Book number: BB1862

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

ATGET, E. [Eugène, 1857-1927]; Berenice Abbott (1898-1991)

[Photobook] Atget Photographe de Paris [Ben Shahn's Copy]

New York, E. Weyhe, 1930. Decorative Cloth. First Edition of this high point of twentieth-century documentary photography, from the library of one of the foremost documentary photographers. Preface (in French) by Pierre Mac-Orlan. Royal 8vo (267 x 207mm): [4],23,[1]pp, with frontispiece portrait of Atget by Berenice Abbot, 96 full-page sepia collotype plates from photographs of turn-of-the-century Paris by Atget, and 6-panel fold-out letterpress Table of Photographs. Original maroon wave-pattern silk-covered boards lettered in gilt, top edge stained saffron-yellow. Ben Shahn's copy, with estate book plate to front paste-down. Spine sunned (as usual) but titling legible, plate margins very gently toned, lacking the slipcase, else a fresh, tightly bound copy, clean throughout. Roth (101 Books), pp. 60-61 ("Atget's photographs have come to be seen by many as the beginning of modern photography"). Roth (Open Book), pp. 90-91. Parr & Badger I, p. 127 ("giving exquisite visual pleasure—the most striking images from more than thirty years spent documenting the streets, buildings, parks, and gardens of Old Paris.") Fotographia Publica, p. 50. Published simultaneously by Henri Jonquières, in Paris and Leipzig, on the occasion of a one-man exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery in New York; based on auction records, the New York issue seems the most desirable, although the Leipzig edition is rarest. In the early 1930s, Ben Shahn (1898-1969) shared a Greenwich Village studio with Walker Evans, from whom he learned the technical craft of photography and began splitting his time between taking photographs and paintings and drawings. Soon after, Shahn traveled extensively throughout the South and Midwest for the Farm Service Agency, documenting the plight of depression-era homesteaders and industrial workers and small town American life. In 1938, when Shahn's association with the FSA ended, so did his serious involvement with taking photographs. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Near Fine+ .

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Book number: BB2247

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

AUDEN, W[ystan]. H[ugh]. (1907-1973)

About the House

London, Faber and Faber, 1965. First Printing. Hardcover. First Printing, one of 4000 copies. Tall, slim 8vo: 94pp. with errata slip tipped in facing page 7. Publisher's pale blue linen cloth, spine stamped in gold; price-clipped typographic dust jacket printed in black, olive green and purple. About Fine (owner's name to fly-leaf) and apparently unread; about Fine jacket (trivial nicks to spine panel ends, very lightly dust-soiled back panel). Bloomfield & Mendelson A49b. Late collection of 28 poems, many about the rooms of Auden's Vienna house, preceded by the American edition published six months earlier. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine-/Fine-.

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Book number: BB1772

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

AUDEN, W. H. (Wystan Hugh, 1907-1973)

Thank You, Fog : Last Poems

London, Faber & Faber, 1974. First Impression. Hardcover. First Impression of the poet's last-published collection. Slim demy 8vo (216 x 137): 57,[1]pp. Publisher's quarter-bound blue cloth stamped in gold, pale blue paper-covered boards; grey and black price-clipped dust jacket. Fine (and unread) in like jacket. Prepared for publication by Auden's literary executor Edward Mendelson. In addition to the title poem, the collection includes "Aubade," "Address to the Beasts," "Archaeology, " and "No, Plato, No," among others. Mendelson also included an "anti-masque" titled "The Entertainment of the Senses," written in 1973 by Auden and Chester Kallman for a planned production of James Shirley's masque Cupid and Death, as as well two lyrics Auden wrote for the musical Man of La Mancha, but which were rejected by the original librettist. "When Auden died, on 29th September 1973, he had already collected the poems in this book, had decided its title and had given it its dedication . " (From dust-jacket flap) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine/Fine.

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Book number: BB0460

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

AUDEN, W. H. (Wystan Hugh, 1907-1973)

Thank You, Fog : Last Poems

London, Faber & Faber, 1974. First Impression. Hardcover. First Impression of the poet's last-published collection. Slim demy 8vo (216 x 137): 57,[1]pp. Publisher's quarter-bound blue cloth stamped in gold, pale blue paper-covered boards; grey and black dust jacket priced at £1.75. Fine (and unread) in like jacket. Prepared for publication by Auden's literary executor Edward Mendelson. In addition to the title poem, the collection includes "Aubade," "Address to the Beasts," "Archaeology, " and "No, Plato, No," among others. Mendelson also included an "anti-masque" titled "The Entertainment of the Senses," written in 1973 by Auden and Chester Kallman for a planned production of James Shirley's masque Cupid and Death, as as well two lyrics Auden wrote for the musical Man of La Mancha, but which were rejected by the original librettist. "When Auden died, on 29th September 1973, he had already collected the poems in this book, had decided its title and had given it its dedication . " (From dust-jacket flap) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). Fine/Fine.

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Book number: BB0561

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS

AUDEN, W. H. (Wystan Hugh, 1907-1973); [A. Edward Newton]

Three Songs for St. Cecilia's Day [Flodden W. Heron's Copy]

n.p. Privately Printed [for Caroline Newton], 1941. Limited Edition. Stiff Wrappers. One of 250 copies issued by Caroline Newton as a Christmas keepsake for friends of her father, A. Edward Newton. In original mailing envelope with Caroline Newton's printed return address, postmarked Philadelphia, 1941, and hand-addressed to bibliographer and collector of rare materials on Lewis Carroll Flodden W. Heron in San Francisco. Crown 8vo (185 x 124mm): [16]pp. Stitched with blue cord in original French blue stiff paper wrappers printed in black. A Fine copy, virtually pristine. Bloomfield A25. The three poems were published originally in Harper's Bazaar, December, 1941. They are: "In a garden shady this holy lady ." "I cannot grow ." and "O ear whose creatures cannot wish to fall . " N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). .

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Book number: BB2552

Catalogue: MODERN FIRSTS