JAMES CUMMINS bookseller catalogue 116 Literature james cummins bookseller catalogue 116 Literature To place your order, call, write, e-mail or fax: james cummins bookseller 699 Madison Avenue, New York City, 10065 Telephone (212) 688-6441 Fax (212) 688-6192 e-mail: [email protected] jamescumminsbookseller.com hours: Monday – Friday 10:00 – 6:00, Saturday 10:00 – 5:00 Members A.B.A.A., I.L.A.B. front cover: item 51 inside front cover: item 27 inside rear cover: item 85 rear cover: item 83 terms of payment: All items, as usual, are guaranteed as described and are returnable within 10 days for any reason. All books are shipped UPS (please provide a street address) unless otherwise requested. Overseas orders should specify a shipping preference. All postage is extra. New clients are requested to send remittance with orders. Libraries may apply for deferred billing. All New York and New Jersey residents must add the appropriate sales tax. We accept American Express, Master Card, and Visa. dedication copy 2 1 BAUM, L. Frank. The Marvelous Land of Oz. Being an account ANDERSON, Sherwood. Dark Laughter. 8vo, New York: Boni of the further adventures of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman … & Liveright, 1925. First trade edition. Black cloth, yellow let- the story being A Sequel to The Wizard of Oz. 16 full-page color tering, pictorial endpapers in yellow and black. A fine copy in plates, full-page black and white illustrations, and black and a near fine, unclipped dust-jacket. Hogan book label. Byron white illustrations in the text by John R. Neill. Small 4to, Chi- Price book plate. In cloth slipcase and chemise. cago: The Reilly & Britton Co, 1904. First edition, second state Lovely copy of Anderson’s best-selling novel, which the jack- with “Published, July, 1904” on verso of title-page. Bound in et blurb announces as “an intense love story superimposed crimson cloth, lettered in dark blue and illustrated in black, upon a background of dark laughter, the mysterious, de- green and silver, pictorial endpapers. About fine. tached, strange laughter of the negro, the earth and the river The Oz books are considered to be the first American fanta- …” Inscribed to the dedicatee, Jane W. Prall, the mother of sies. Anderson’s second wife, Elizabeth Prall, whom he married in $3,500 1924. Elizabeth Prall had been the manager of Doubleday’s Bookstore in New York (where she met Anderson) and was well-known in literary circles. Dark Laughter has an impor- tant connection with Ernest Hemingway. In his novel The Torrents of Spring (1926), Hemingway parodied the styles of some of his contemporaries – in particular Sherwood Ander- son and Dark Laughter. $5,000 tyndale’s gift to the english language The English Bible, translated by scholar and protestant 3 martyr William Tyndale (ca. 1494-1537), Thomas Matthew’s (BIBLE, English) [The Byble: that is to saye, all the holye Scrip- version (first printed, 1537), this edition “closely following ture: in whiche are contayned the olde and new Testament, truly and Raynalde and Hyll’s Bible of 1549,” according to Herbert. purely translated into Englishe, & now lately with great industry & “The ability of every ordinary man, woman, and child to diligence recognysed]. Text in black letter, in double columns; 55 read and hear the whole New Testament in English, accu- lines. First Table and Kalendar printed in red and black. Wood- rately rendered, was Tyndale’s work, and its importance can- cut borders to sectional titles (O.T., Psalms, N.T.). Lacking not be overstressed. … Tyndale’s gift to the English language the general title; last leaf in fine facsimile. Folio, [London: by is unmeasurable. He translated into a register just above Wyllyam Bonham, dwellynge in Paules churche yarde, at the common speech, allied in its clarity to proverbs. It is a lan- sygne of the rede Lyon] [Colophon: Imprynted at London, by guage which still speaks directly to the heart. His aims were Nicolas Hyll, dwelling in Saynct Iohns streate, at the coste and always accuracy and clarity. King James’s revisers adopted charges of certayne honest menne of the occupacyon, whose his style, and his words, for much of the Authorized Version. names be vpon their bokes, 1551]. Rebound in period style At a time when European scholars and professionals com- in an Oxford binding, full dark English calf over contempo- municated in Latin, Tyndale insisted on being understood by rary pastepaper boards, spine with raised bands, extensiverly ordinary people” (ODNB). A beautiful and important English tooled in blind. Title leaf re-margined, some headlines and Bible. shoulder notes shaved (with minor losses), occasional mar- $25,000 ginal paper flaws, old paper repair on verso of N.T. sectional title. Pen starts a few words in ink on blank leaf before Psalms, dated 1579. A lovely and imposing volume. Herbert 92; STC 2086. 2 | james cummins bookseller 4 (BINDING, French) Traicté de la Forme et Devis Comme on Faict les Tournois par Olivier de la Marche, Hardouin de la Jaille, An- thoine de la Sale etc. Mis en Ordre par Bernard Prost Enrichi de 16 Planches, Dont 9 Doubles Coloriées au Pinceau Avec le Plus Grand Soin et Rehausées d’Or. 17 plates (16 hand-colored and height- ened in gold), half-title and title printed in red and black. [i-ii], xix, [i], 259, [1], [iv] pp. 8vo, Paris: A. Barraud, 1878. No. 8 of 258 (of 260) copies on papier vergé fort. Contemporary vellum by Ch. & L. Hilaire, covers stamped in gilt with wide border of arabesque tools with initial “F” at each corner, surround- ing a central panel with a semé of fleur-de-lys and ermine-tail tools, the upper cover with a large initial “F” surmounted by a King’s helm with mantling, spine in six compartments with raised bands, titled in the second, the rest with repeat tooling of a decorative border surrounding an initial “F,” gilt turn-ins, cream moiré paper pastedowns and free endpapers, gilt and gauffered top edge, original wrappers bound-in. First edition under this title, and the first to include the plates. The first appearance of Prost’s text was with the title “Traités du duel judiciaire,” published in 1872 by Léon Willem in an edition limited to 400 copies. For the present edition publisher Barraud changed the title and added 16 colored plates, adapted from ms 2692 in the French Biblio- thèque Nationale (“Portraicts du tournoi de Monseigneur de Gruthuse appelant, et de Monseigneur de Ghistelle deffen- dant”). The binding is possibly a pastiche of a binding done for François I. $1,250 5 (BINDING, Publisher’s) Milton, John. The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a Memoir and Critical Remarks on his Ge- nius and Writing by James Montgomery. 120 engravings by John Thompson, S. and T. Williams, O. Smith, J. Linton, and oth- ers, after William Harvey. [iv], lii, 378, [2, ads]; vii, 341, [1], [2, ads] pp. 2 vols. 8vo, London: Tilt and Bogue, Fleet Street, 1843. Tilt’s Illustrated Edition. Publisher’s full pebbled moroc- co, covers blocked in gilt with cross and crown of thorns and sword and serpent, spines blocked in gilt with Adam and Eve, dove and laurel, and title, a.e.g. Fine. Lowndes, p. 1557. A stunningly-fine copy of Tilt’s illustrated edition of Milton in the publisher’s binding. $750 catalogue 116 | 3 “to the extravagant mr. wilson” (of phoenix book shop) 6 BISHOP, Elizabeth. Poems. 40 pp. 8vo, London: Chatto & Windus, 1956. First edition. Yellow paper boards. Near fine in like dust-jacket. Elizabeth Bishop’s first collection printed in Great Britain (no American edition appeared), being a selection of poems from North & South, and A Cold Spring. The dust-jacket blurb from the publisher praises her work as being “unclouded by any facile glumness.” This copy is inscribed on the title page: “Elizabeth Bishop / March 19th, 1973 / — to the extravagant Mr. [Robert] Wilson.” $1,250 7 BLUNDEN, Edmund. The Harbingers. Poems by E.C. Blunden, (Late of Christ’s Hospital). [4], 67 pp. 16mo, [Framfield, Uckfield, Eng.]: Private- ly printed, “To be had of G.A. Blunden” printed on upper cover, 1916. First edition. Original printed purple wrappers. Beautiful copy, mint as issued. In a custom gray cloth folding case with recessed compart- ment. Beautiful copy of Blunden’s rare and fragile third book. $2,000 the original american gothic 8 [BROWN, Charles Brockden]. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793. By the Author of Wieland. [i-iv], [1] – 224. 12mo, Philadelphia: H. Maxwell, 1799. First edition. Contemporary tree sheep, rebacked with period gilt-ruled spine, red morocco label. Fine. BAL 1498; Evans 35243; Wright I 418. Charles Brockden Brown may not unjustly be termed “The Father of American Novelists.” Under an equable exterior, he concealed the tormented state of mind in which, in all his novels, he was so much interested. “In Arthur Mervyn Brown managed to give a sense of the horror of silent streets disturbed only by the rattling of the dead cart, of the terror of empty houses abandoned to the dead and the dying, of the atmosphere of disease and death hanging over the panic- stricken city in which neither food nor shelter could be bought. He describes the flight of the living, the atrocities of the hospital, and the hearse men dragging out the still breathing bodies, and illustrates the general desolation by the experiences of Arthur who, attacked by the fever, could only drag himself to a deserted house to die out of reach of the hospital cart. Brown’s descriptions are of an unshrinking real- ism, he never trusts in suggestion or in the imagination of his reader, and yet from his loathsome catalogue of disgusting details there results an effect of simple horror” (Loshe, The Early American Novel).