Search Results: MEMOIR AND BIO from Back Lane Books (Member of IOBA)

40 Years on the Yukon Telegraph, Lawrence, Guy. Published by Caryall Books Ltd, Quesnel, British Columbia, 1990. Card covers. 8vo up to 9½" tall., 122pp. with photographs, appendix, index. Stamped name to free endpaper, light shelf wear to covers and otherwise in fine condition. Guy Lawrence was for 40 years a lineman and telegrapher on the famous Yukon Telegraph Line. This is the story of those years and how he first came to Canada from England in 1898 to take part in the great gold stampede.

Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic, by Niven, Jennifer, Hyperion, New York, 2003. Stated First Edition. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., 431 pp with maps and black and white plates. Maroon cloth boards with gilt spine titles; rough cut edges. Volume is in unread, pristine condition; dust jacket is price clipped with very slight top edge wear.

In 1921, four men and one woman ventured deep into the Arctic. Two years later, only one returned. When 23-year-old Inuit Ada Blackjack signed on as a seamstress for a top-secret Arctic expedition, her goal was simple: earn money and find a husband. But her terrifying experiences--both in the wild and back in civilization--comprise one of the most amazing untold adventures of the 20th century. Based on a wealth of unpublished materials, including Ada's never-before-seen diaries.

Against the Current: Selected Writings, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Published by McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1996. First Edition. 340pp. Black boards with silver titles. Volume is in fine, unread condition; unclipped jacket has very light shelf wear.

London, England: Harper Collins, 1998. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Fine/Fine. The Age Of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters, Dalrymple, William. Published by Harper Collins, London, 1998. First Edition, Second Printing. Blue cloth boards, silver spine titles; mapped endpapers. Unclipped dustjacket. In fine, unmarked condition. Introduction, 6 chapters, glossary and index. (Chapter 2 on Rajasthan and Chapter 6 on Parkistan). The brilliance of this book lies in its refusal to reflect any cultural pessimism. Dalrymple's love for the subcontinent, and his feel for its diverse cultural identity, comes across in every page, which makes its chronicles of political corruption, ethnic violence, and social disintegration all the more poignant. The scope of the book is particularly impressive, from the vivid opening chapters portraying the lawless caste violence of Bihar, to interviews with the drug barons on the North-West Frontier, and Dalrymple's extraordinary encounter with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.… Read More

Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual, Nicholas Murray. Published by Abacus, 2003. Card covers. 12mo up to 7½" tall. 496pp with index, chronology and section of glossy black and white plates. Toning to pages and otherwise this is an unread, unmarked copy in fine condition.A fascinating reassessment of one of the most interesting writers of the twentieth century.

Alexander the Great: Journey to the End of the Earth, Cantor, Norman F. Published by Harper, 2005. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½" tall., 180pp. with bibliography and notes. Quarter black over brown boards. In unread condition with remainder mark outside bottom edge.

All Yesterday's Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print 1966-1971, Heylin, Clinton (Ed). Published by Da Capo Press, Cambridge, 2005. 278pp., illustrated with photos and posters etc. Quarter black over yellow boards. In fine condition with very light shelf wear to unclipped jacket. pages, illustrations
All Yesterday's Parties, gathers for the first time, almost all the published writings contemporary with the band's existence and the most complete VU discography assembled to date, as well as a biographical overview by editor and author Clinton Heylin.

Along with Youth: Hemingway, The Early Years, Griffin, Peter. Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 1985. First Edition, First Printing. Quarter black cloth over tan boards, gilt titles to spine; orange front titles. xii + 258 pp. with sources notes, index. Illustrated with 16 pages of black and white photographs. Forward by Jack Hemingway. es. Volume one of Griffin's biography examines Hemingway's midwestern childhood, his journalistic apprenticeship and his experiences as a Red Cross Volunteer in Italy during WW1. With previously unpublished material including numerous letters and five of Hemingway's early short stories that appear here in their entirety. Volume is in fine condition and appears unread without markings; unclipped jacket has the very lightest of shelf wear.

Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939, Nicholson, Virginia. Published by Harper Perennial, 2005. Card covers. 362pp. Light toning to pages and otherwise in fine, unread condition. Virginia Nicholson, the granddaughter of painter Vanessa Bell and the great-niece of Virginia Woolf, explores the subversive, eccentric, and flamboyant artistic community of the early twentieth century in this "wonderfully researched and colorful composite portrait of an enigmatic world whose members, because they lived by no rules, are difficult to characterize" (San Francisco Chronicle).

The Amusement Park: 900 Years of Thrills and Spills, and the Dreamers and Schemers Who Built Them, Silverman, Stephen M. Published by Black Dog & Leventhal, USA, 2019. First Edition. 432pp. with index; illustrated throughout. Blue boards eith white titles, illustrated endpapers. Both volume and unclipped jacket are as new without marks.The Amusement Park is a rich, anecdotal history that begins nine centuries ago with the "pleasure gardens" of Europe and England and ends with the most elaborate modern parks in the world. It's a history told largely through the stories of the colorful, sometimes hedonistic characters who built them.

Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s, Wolf, Reva. Published by University of Chicago Press, 1997. Card covers. 210pp. with illustrations and photos. Contents are in fine, unread condition; very light shelf wear to covers.
Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, including interviews, personal and public archives, tape recordings, documentary photographs, and works of art, Wolf offers dramatic evidence that Warhol's interactions with writers functioned like an extended conversation and details how this process impacted his work. This highly original and fascinating study gives us fresh insight into Warhol's art as practice and reformulates the myth that surrounds this popular American artist.

Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child, Fitch, Noël Riley. Published by Doubleday, 1997. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., 569 pages with photos, notes, bibliography and index. Quarter ivory cloth over ivory boards, gilt spine titles; red endpapers. Light weakening of the spine with marks to pastedown from a removed label; unclipped jacket has light top edge ruffling and otherwise fine.

Arabia Felix, The Danish Expedition of 1761 - 1767, Hansen, Thorkild. Translated by James and Kathleen McFarlane. Published by Harper and Row, New York, 1962. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½" tall., 381pp., index, illustrated with maps and black and white plates. Turquoise cloth boards with gilt titles. Bookplate to pastedown, name to versus of contents page, light outer edge toning and otherwise contents in fine condition; dustjacket has tiny chips and tears.A true story of a scientific expedition gone disastrously awry. On a winter morning in 1761 six men leave Copenhagen by sea—a botanist, a philologist, an astronomer, a doctor, an artist, and their manservant—an ill-assorted band of men who dislike and distrust one another from the start. These are the members of the Danish expedition to Arabia Felix, as Yemen was then known, the first organized foray into a corner of the world unknown to Europeans. The expedition made its way to Turkey and Egypt, by which time its members were already actively… Read More

The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914, Bell, Gertrude; Rosemary O'Brien, editor. Published by Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2000. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½" tall. 258pp. Illustrated with Bell's own black and white photographs and map of her journey through the Syrian Desert. Blue cloth boards with gilt spine titles, red endpapers. Volume is in fine condition without markings, tears or folds; unclipped dustjacket has the lightest of shelf wear and is otherwise fine.'The Englishwoman Gertrude Bell lived an extraordinary life. Her adventures are the stuff of novels: she rode with bandits; braved desert shamals; was captured by Bedouins; and sojourned in a harem. Called the most powerful woman in the British Empire, she counseled kings and prime ministers. Bell's colleagues included Lloyd George and Winston Churchill and numbered among her closest friends were T.E. Lawrence, St. John Philby, and Arabian sheiks…. This particular journey of Gertrude Bell by itself earned her professional recognition… Read More

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Cellini, Benvenuto. Published by The Folio Society, London, 1966. Translated by George Bull. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall., 447pp. with 18 black and white plates. Crimson cloth boards decorated in gilt to front and spine; grey endpapers, grey top edge; house din a grey slipcase. Volume is in fine, unread condition; a few pin-prick rubs to front hinge line of front board; light rubbing to slipcase corners.
Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author. His best-known extant works include the Cellini Salt Cellar, the sculpture of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and his autobiography, which has been described as "one of the most important documents of the 16th century".

An Autobiography: Sowing; Growing; Beginning Again; Downhill All the Way; The Journey Not the Arrival Matters, Leonard Woolf. Published by The Hogarth Press, London, 1962 to 1969. First four volumes are second printings; fifth volume is a first printing. A complete set of five volumes: Sowing (1880 to 1904); Growing (1904 to 1911); Beginning Again (1911 to 1918); Downhill All the Way (1919 to 1939); and The Journey not the Arrival Matters (1939 to 1969). 8vo up to 9½" tall., Blue cloth with gilt spine titles. Contents are clean with a few pencil notations; spines are uniformly lightly leaning. Unclipped dustjackets have a few chips, small closed tears and light soiling. A hard to find complete set in very good condition. Leonard Woolf (1880-1969) was a political historian and author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a founding member of the Bloomsbury group. Together with his wife Virginia Woolf, he established The Hogarth Press which published 474 titles including the early work of T. S. Eliot,… Read More

Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris, Alex Kershaw. Published by Broadway Books, 2016. Card covers. 320pp. with black and white photographs. Light splay to front cover, contents in fine, unmarked condition.

The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography, Crawford, Robert. Published by Jonathan Cape, UK, 2009. Signed, dated and inscribed by author to title page. 8vo up to 9½" tall., xii, 465pp. with frontis-portrait, bibliographical references, and index. Black boards with gilt titles. Volume is in fine condition; dustjacket has light top edge ruffling and is otherwise fine.
Drawing on a surprising variety of untapped sources — from rediscovered poetry by Burns to manuscript journals, correspondence, interviews and oratory by his contemporaries — this new biography presents the remarkable life, loves, and struggles of the great poet. Robert Crawford outlines how Burns combined a childhood steeped in the peasant song-culture of rural Scotland with a consummate linguistic artistry to become not only the world's most popular love poet but also the controversial master poet of modern democracy.

Basin and Range, McPhee, John. Published by Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 1981. Second printing. 8vo up to 9½" tall.215pp. Quarter black cloth over beige boards with copper titles, geological chart to endpapers. Light spine lean and otherwise volume is in fine condition; dustjacket has very light edge wear. The first book in the author's Annals of the Former World series which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize as a collected volume.

Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe: Four Weeks That Shaped a Pandemic, Dr Bonnie Henry, Lynn Henry. Published by Allen Lane, Canada, 2021. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½" tall., 207pp. Blue boards with black spine titles. Both volume and unclipped jacket are in unread, unmarked condition. Dr. Bonnie Henry has been called one of the most effective public health figures in the world by The New York Times. She has been called a calming voice in a sea of coronavirus madness, and our hero in national newspapers. But in the waning days of 2019, when the first rumours of a strange respiratory ailment in Wuhan, China began to trickle into her office in British Colombia, these accolades lay in a barely imaginable future.... Coincidentally, Dr. Henry's sister, Lynn, arrived in BC for a long-planned visit on March 12 [2020] just as the virus revealed itself as a pandemic. For the four ensuing weeks, Lynn had rare insight into the whirlwind of Bonnie's daily life, with its moments of agony and gravity as well as its… Read More