OCCASIONAL LIST / BOSTON BOOK FAIR / NOV. 13-15, 2009 JAMES S. JAFFE RARE BOOKS 790 Madison Ave, Suite 605 New York, New York 10065 Tel 212-988-8042 Fax 212-988-8044 Email: [email protected] Please visit our website: www.jamesjaffe.com Member Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America / International League of Antiquarian Booksellers These and other books will be available in Booth 314. It is advisable to place any orders during the fair by calling us at 610-637-3531. All books and manuscripts are offered subject to prior sale. Libraries will be billed to suit their budgets. Digital images are available upon request. 1. ALGREN, Nelson. Somebody in Boots. 8vo, original terracotta cloth, dust jacket. N.Y.: The Vanguard Press, (1935). First edition of Algren’s rare first book which served as the genesis for A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). Signed by Algren on the title page and additionally inscribed by him at a later date (1978) on the front free endpaper: “For Christine and Robert Liska from Nelson Algren June 1978”. Algren has incorporated a drawing of a cat in his inscription. Nelson Ahlgren Abraham was born in Detroit in 1909, and later adopted a modified form of his Swedish grandfather’s name. He grew up in Chicago, and earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1931. In 1933, he moved to Texas to find work, and began his literary career living in a derelict gas station. A short story, “So Help Me”, was accepted by Story magazine and led to an advance of $100.00 for his first book. In 1934, Algren was arrested and jailed for stealing a typewriter. Somebody in Boots is based on his experiences in Texas, experiences that provided the material for many of Algren’s later works. The novel sold only 750 copies, and the disappointment put the author in the hospital. After the war, during which Algren served in the infantry and medical corps, Algren met Simone de Beauvoir, who fell in love with him and with whom he carried on a relationship for almost two decades. Although the relationship ended in bitterness, occasioned by de Beauvoir’s candor about her relationship with Algren in her autobiography Force of Circumstance (1963), de Beauvoir died and was buried wearing Algren’s ring. Somebody in Boots is notoriously rare in dust jacket: this is only the second copy we have encountered in the last twenty-five years, and the other copy was beneath the consideration of the fastidious collector. A beautiful copy in dust jacket with a half-inch closed tear at the top of the front panel. $9500.00 2. [ANTHOLOGY]. Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers. (Edited by Robert McAlmon). 8vo, original printed wrappers. (Paris: Contact Editions Three Mountains Press, 1925). First edition, published jointly by McAlmon’s Contact Editions & William Bird’s Three Mountains Press. One of 300 copies printed in Dijon by Darantiere, who printed Joyce’s Ulysses. Slocum & Cahoon B7. With contributions by Djuna Barnes, Bryher, Mary Butts, Norman Douglas, Havelock Ellis, Ford Madox Ford, Wallace Gould, Ernest Hemingway, Marsden Hartley, H. D., John Herrman, Joyce, Mina Loy, Robert McAlmon, Ezra Pound, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, Edith Sitwell, Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams. Includes Joyce’s “Work In Progress” from Finnegans Wake; Hemingway’s Soldiers Home, which first appeared in the American edition of In Our Time; Hanneman B3; andWilliam Carlos Williams’ essay on Marianne Moore; Wallace B8. A very fine bright copy, with a tiny nick at head of spine, and a touch of soiling at the base of the spine, otherwise as fine a copy as we have seen. $3500.00 3. [ART – BERMAN]. BERMAN, Wallace. Radio/Aether Series 1966/1974. A portfolio of 13 two-color offset lithographs, each photographed from an original verifax collage, and printed on star-white cover mounted on Gemini rag-board. Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1974. First edition. Limited to 50 copies, with 10 artist’s proofs, signed by Berman on the title-page. Each print represents a grid featuring the repeated image of a hand-held transistor radio, a Berman leitmotif that resonated with his role as a transmitter of images and ideas. As new in original screen- printed fabric-covered box. $12,500.00 4. ASHBERY, John. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. 8vo, original cloth-backed boards, dust jacket. N. Y.: Viking, (1975). First edition. Signed by Ashbery on the title page. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. One of 3500 copies printed. Kermani A22. An exceptionally fine copy, uncommon signed. $1000.00 5. ASHBERY, John & WINKFIELD, Trevor. Faster Than Birds Can Fly. Large, oblong 4to, full- page illustrations in colors by Trevor Winkfield, original cloth over boards, color onlay on both covers, publisher’s acetate dust jacket. New York: Granary Books, 2009. First edition. One of 40 numbered copies signed by Ashbery and Winkfield (the entire edition). “Though it may have ended up looking like a child’s coloring book (albeit one that’s already been colored using Technicolor crayons), my original intention was to produce an updated Codex Amiatinus painted by Northumberland monks in the seventh century, not far from where I grew up in the North of England. So much for intentions. though Ashbery’s poem has long struck me as liturgical. Is that bowler-hatted bird actually Thomas Traherne? And can that pretty butterfly really be the soul escaping from the body? I’ve tried to leave my images open to as many interpretations as every single one of Ashbery’s words.” – Trevor Winkfield. As new. $2500.00 6. AUDEN, W. H. Some Poems. Small 8vo, original printed boards, dust jacket. London: Faber, (1940). First edition, one of 3550 copies printed. Signed by Auden on the title page beneath his scored through printed name. Bloomfield & Mendelson A23. Fine copy in slightly sunned jacket. $850.00 7. (AUSTEN, Jane). Pride and Prejudice: A Novel. In Three Volumes. By the Author of “Sense and Sensibility.” 3 volumes, small 8vo, full contemporary calf with “Charleton” stamped in gilt on each cover, green morocco spine labels. London: Printed for T. Egerton, Military Library, Whitehall, 1813. First edition of Austen’s masterpiece, with all half-titles present. Gilson A3. There is no record of the number of copies of the first edition, but Keynes suggests 1500 as the probable print run. The book was well received and the first edition sold out within the year. Regency binders tended to remove the half titles, with the result that complete copies with the half-titles are extremely rare; Michael Sadleir, Sir Geoffrey Keynes, and R.W. Chapman all had copies that lacked the half-titles, as do the copies in the Bodleian and Cambridge University Libraries. Gilson A3; Keynes 8; Sadleir 62b. Minor restoration to outer hinges of the first two volumes, occasional foxing, bookplates on verso of front free endpapers, extremities of covers lightly worn, but still an attractive set of the most justifiably popular novel in the English language, with all of the half-titles. In a full red morocco folding box. $65,000.00 8. BECKETT, Samuel. Whoroscope. 8vo, printed brick-red wrappers, publisher’s printed wrap- around band. Paris: Hours Press, 1930. First edition of Beckett’s first separately published work. One of 200 numbered copies out of a total edition of 300 copies printed. Federman & Fletcher 5. Beckett wrote Whoroscope in a single night with the object of securing a prize of 1000 francs (ten pounds) from the Hours Press. The contest called for submissions of a poem, maximum length of which not to exceed 100 lines, on the subject of Time. Whoroscope consists of 98 lines and was declared the winner by Nancy Cunard, proprietress of the press, and Richard Aldington, the other judge. A bit dusty, occasional light foxing, otherwise a fine copy. $4500.00 9. BECKETT, Samuel. Fin de Partie, suivi de Acte sans paroles. [Endgame, followed by Act Without Words.] 8vo, original printed wrappers. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957. First edition, first issue on “grand papier”, published January 30, 1957. One of 50 copies printed on “velin pur fil du Marais”, this being – fittingly – number 13. Endgame is one of Beckett’s greatest works, the play which he called ‘more inhuman’ than Godot, and which Harold Bloom, in The Western Canon, acclaimed as the greatest dramatic work of the 20th century. Bloom argued that Endgame is a ‘greater yet more savage work than Godot: I cannot think of any other 20th century work of literature composed as late as 1957 that is nearly as original an achievement as Endgame, nor has there been anything since to challenge such originality. Beckett may have foresworn “mastery” as not being possible after Joyce and Proust, but Endgame reaches it’. An immaculate, unopened copy of this rare issue, preserved in a folding linen box with leather spine. $12,500.00 10. BERRIGAN, Ted. Red Wagon. 8vo, original boards, dust jacket. Chicago: Yellow Press, (1976). First edition. Presentation copy, inscribed by Berrigan to the poet Barbara Guest on the front free endpaper: “Love to Barbara from Ted, 1977, NYC”. A very fine copy in dust jacket. $1000.00 11. BERRIGAN, Ted. In The Nam What Can Happen? Illustrated by George Schneeman. Square 4to, loose sheets in clear plastic slipcase. N. Y.: Granary Books, 1997. First edition. Limited to 70 copies printed letterpress from magnesium plates on Rives 300 gm paper by Philip Gallo at The Hermetic Press, signed by the artist, of which 50 copies were for sale. A beautiful “simulation” of a one-of-a-kind collaborative book made by Berrigan and Schneeman in 1967- 68.