Resultados de búsqueda: Literature from Raptis Rare Books

London: Jonathan Cape, 1983. First edition of the third novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by John Gardner on the title page. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Uncommon signed. Mel Watkins writing in The New York Times Book Review praised Gardner for adding "a touch of the plot subtlety of less insistently action-oriented thrillers." He also applauded Gardner's updating of Bond. "Although Mr. Gardner's Bond is less raffishly macho and arrogant than previously depicted," observed Watkins, "the spirit of the 007 series remains intact, and few Fleming admirers are likely to object. There is, in fact, something appealing about a James Bond who can react to women with some sympathy and confusion at a crucial moment.

London: William Heinemann, 1909. In these essays on travels in Italy written from 1872 to 1909, Henry James explores art and religion, political shifts and cultural revolutions, and the nature of travel itself. James's enthusiastic appreciation of the unparalleled aesthetic allure of Venice, the vitality of Rome, and the noisy, sensuous appeal of Naples is everywhere marked by pervasive regret for the disappearance of the past and by ambivalence concerning the transformation of nineteenth-century Europe.

Paris: Delpire, 1957. First edition of the photographer's masterpiece with 83 black-and-white full-page photogravures. Oblong quarto, original boards illustrated by Saul Steinberg. In fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell and chemise box. ack Kerouac wrote in his preface of The Americans, "Robert Frank he sucked a sad poem out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message. You got eyes." Frank’s Américains eventually achieved legendary status as "the most renowned photobook of all It struck a chord with a whole generation of American photographers Many memorable photobooks have been derived from this mass of material. None has been more memorable, more influential, nor more fully realized than Frank’s masterpiece" (Parr & Badger I:247). "From the more than 20,000 images that resulted, Frank eventually chose 83 of them and arranged them into four chapters ‘With these photographs,’ he… Leer más

Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1900. In a moment of crisis, an idealistic ship's officer abandons his post, leaving several hundred passengers to drown. The event at the center of Joseph Conrad's acclaimed novel establishes the character and fate of Jim. Tormented by his defection from his code of conduct, Jim embarks on the globe-traveling quest to regain honor. In the process, he insinuates himself as a leader among a people unaware of his past. Arthur Symons and other critics read Lord Jim as an exploration of Conrad's own 'ideal of an applauded heroism', an ideal that confronts the demands of pragmatism. Others see an allegory for Conrad's guilt over abandoning his native Poland or, alternatively, a story of universal shame. Conrad has come under modern attack for associating 'natives' with chaos and evil. But in Conrad's novels, it is ultimately the colonial system itself that is fraught with horror." (NYPL Books of the Century 67). Listed by Modern Library as one of the 100… Leer más

New York: The Dial Press, 1951. Love in a Dry Season describes an erotic and economic triangle, in which two wealthy and fantastically unhappy Mississippi families, the Barcrofts and the Carrutherses, are joined by an open-faced fortune hunter from the North, a man whose ruthlessness is matched only by his inability to understand the people he tries to exploit and his fatal incomprehension of the passions he so casually ignites. Combining a flawless sense of place with a Faulknerian command of the grotesque, Foote's novel turns a small cotton town into a sexual battleground as fatal as Vicksburg or Shiloh, and one where strategy is no match for instinct and tradition.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. First edition of Spark's complex, suspenseful novel. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, warmly inscribed by the author in the year of publication to her American agent, Dorothy Golding, "Dorothy - happy remembrances & love - Mariel 4 October 1965." Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Typography, binding and jacket design by George Salter. The Mandelbaum Gate is set in Jerusalem in 1961 (with the backdrop of the Adolf Eichmann trial). While on a pilgrimage to Holy Land, half Jewish Catholic-convert Barbara Vaughan is planning to meet her fiance Harry Clegg, an archeologist working in Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found). To do this she must pass through the Mandelbaum Gate into Jordanian held Jerusalem; due to her Jewish roots this is a dangerous operation and she enlists the help of Freddy Hamilton, a staid British diplomat and various Arab contacts who may or may not be sympathetic to her cause. ''Takes the breath away . . . Pure adventure . . .… Leer más

London: Chapman and Hall, 1840. First edition of this classic collection of short stories. Large octavo, bound in full morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, raised bands, gilt medallion portrait of Dickens on the front panel, gilt signature on the back panel, inner dentelles, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, illustrated by George Cattermole and Hablot Browne. An exceptional presentation. Master Humphrey's Clock originally appeared in the form of a weekly periodical, published between April of 1840 and December of 1841. Entirely written and edited by Dickens, the magazine included both short stories and two novels (The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge). Many of the short stories acted as frame stories to the novels, and although Dickens' original artistic intent was to keep the short stories and the novels together, he himself cancelled Master Humphrey's Clock before 1848, and described in a preface to The Old Curiosity Shop that he wished the story to… Leer más

London: Faber and Faber, 1963. First edition of the author's second book. Octavo, original green cloth. Signed by the author on the title page with a transcription from the novel as follows, "The invitation would commit him to nothing more crucial than seeing that she had a pleasant evening and paying the bill. And a man was surely entitled to call his own publishers P.D. James." The inscription is from the final sentence of this novel. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Charles Mozley. Rare and desirable, especially with such a lengthy inscription and in this condition. The second book to feature Scotland Yard investigator Adam Dalgliesh, A Mind To Murder is a "superbly satisfying mystery" (Chicago Daily News). "P.D. James is one of the national treasures of British fiction. As James takes us from one life to another, her near-Dickensian scale becomes apparent" (Malcolm Bradbury).

London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Low, & Searle, 1875. First edition in English in book form of the first volume of Verne's Mysterious Island trilogy, preceding the Scribner Armstrong's first American edition. Octavo, original publisher's cloth decorated in gilt, all edges gilt, illustrated, tissue-guarded frontispiece. Translated from the French by W.H.G. Kingston. In fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Armorial bookplates to the pastedown and front free endpaper. An exceptional example, scarce in this condition. Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction", French novelist Jules Verne had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty… Leer más

New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961. First edition of Malamud's third novel. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to his cousins, "For Min and Marshall, In appreciation of your hospitality Bernie." Near fine in a very good dust jacket with chipping to the spine extremities. Jacket design by Milton Glaser. An overlooked masterpiece. It may still be undervalued as Malamud's funniest and most embracing novel" (Jonathan Lethem).

New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929. Early printing of Frost's second published book. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper with an excerpt from his poem, The Wood Pile, "I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself, the labor of his axe. And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay. Robert Frost For Mrs. R.R. Chappell." With the recipient's bookplate to the pastedown. In near fine condition. Frost's North of Boston represents a pinnacle of his career, containing such classic poems as "Mending Wall," "The Death of the Hired Man," "Home Burial," and "The Wood-pile.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1965.

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961. First edition, early printing of this classic work which Ernest Hemingway called "beautifully observed and incredibly conceived." Octavo, original half cloth, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper to his publisher , "For Cass Jr.- one of the greatest lefties ever to wear a right-handed mitt in action. I refer, of course, solely to the environs of Bedford Village- more specifically, Crowfields. George 28 March 1961." The recipient, Augustus Cass Canfield was an American publishing executive who was the longtime president and chairman of Harper & Row Publishing. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with some rubbing and wear. Photograph on the front panel by Garry Winogrand. An exceptional association copy, rare and desirable signed and inscribed. The first of Plimpton's remarkable forays into participatory journalism, Out of My League chronicles with wit, charm, and grace what… Leer más

Boston: The Stratford Company, 1925. First edition of "arguably the first major work of American science fiction" (The Economist). Octavo, original cloth. Signed by the author on the front free endpaper, "With the compliments of the author H Gernsback 1925." Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Bookplate on the front pastedown. In 1908 Gernsberg established 'Modern Electrics,' a radio catalog that rapidly became a monthly magazine; one of its editorials was instrumental in establishing the Wireless Act of 1912. In April 1911 'Modern Electrics' began serializing Gernsback's Ralph 124C 41 , written to exemplify his contention that fiction could serve to teach science... Thoroughly deficient as fiction, the story nevertheless predicts radar, microfilm and microfiche, tape recorders, television, wireless transmission of power, planet hormones, and weather control" (American National Biography).

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973. First edition of this collection of short stories by the author of The Natural. Octavo, original half cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the year of publication to his cousins, "For Minnie and Marshall Greetings! Bern May 1973." Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Jacket design by Muriel Nasser. Jacket photograph by Janna Malamud.

Ashland: Origin Press, 1959. First edition of the author's first book. Octavo, original wrappers as issued. Limited to 500 copies. Boldly signed by Gary Snyder on the title page. In near fine condition. Rare and desirable in this condition.

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1931. First American edition of the sequel to Remarque's masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Paul Wenck. We have never seen another signed example of this title. Set a few weeks after the end of All Quiet on the Western Front, The Road Back details the experience of young men in Germany who have returned from the trenches of World War I and are attempting to integrate back into civilian life. Its most salient feature is the main characters' pessimism about contemporary society which, they feel, caused the war and does not wish to reform itself. It was first serialized in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung between December 1930 and January 1931, and published in book form in April 1931.

New York: Coward-McCann, 1934. First American edition of the Nobel Prize-winning author's final novel in his classic August Trilogy. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, "B.A. Abel with greetings Knut Hamsun Norholm 11.8.34." Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Jacket art by John Alan Maxwell. Translated from the Norwegian by Eugene Gay-Tifft. Books inscribed by Hamsun are rare. August, who had to flee from Polden at the end of August (the second book in the trilogy), reappears fifteen years later in Segelfoss. He is now in his sixties, and he works for the town's largest merchant and eventually also consul, Gordon Tidemand, the son of Theodor at Bua (known from the books Children of the Age and Segelfoss Town). August is only referred to by the people of the town as Altmulig 'the Handyman', and his former desire to create development, change, and greatness seems to be gone. August is now a helper… Leer más

Amherst, MA: Jones Library Inc, 1937. First edition of this bibliography on the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece of Frost. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Jack Gelchrist from his friend Robert Frost Boston November 1940." Foreword by David Lambuth.

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1914.