Search Results: Original Manuscript from Charles Agvent

First Edition. hardcover. Near Fine and quite exceptional. An undated early holograph version of Saul Bellow's only full-length play contained in a ledger-type notebook (8-1/4" x 11-3/8") with marbled paper boards and a black cloth spine. Bellow has subtitled this as "A Work in Progress." Acts I and II of this version are complete in 71 pages with 4 pages of preliminary material for an Act III, all handwritten by Bellow. The 1964 staged version was reduced to two acts. Bellow appears to have written out Acts I & II as a fair copy from previous versions and notes in preparation for completing the play with a new Act III. There are relatively few insertions and corrections in his text of the first two acts which take up about 75% of the notebook. The third act consists mostly of blank pages with 3 pages of rough notes and key speeches including what seem to be the climactic lines of his main character, the comedian Bummidge, who has been undergoing an obsessive self-analysis in the previous acts: "The… Read More

[New York]: [Viking Press], [1943]. First Edition. Manuscript. Last page torn, not affecting text. Near Fine. Complete text, 1034 pages continuously numbered with variations; numbered consecutively by chapters. Placed into three large binders. Sinclair's own working copy, apparently a second draft and first complete early copy to be located. Extensive pencil annotations by the author with thousands of corrections, deletions, and additions to the text, from single words to entire pages. Many revisions greatly differ from the published novel. For instance, at the end of the first paragraph after describing Lanny Budd's inner convictions--"...that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of Hosts"--Sinclair has added, then crossed out: "For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot." After a narrow defeat in a bitter… Read More

First Edition. Hardcover. Fine and rare, beautifully bound. Folio (8-1/4" x 11-3/4") consisting of 53 pages numbered to 54 (one page contains two numbers) on lined yellow paper with a few additions at the end on white paper pasted to the yellow pages with a calligraphic title page facing a photographic reproduction of Miller. Bound in 3/4 maroon morocco leather and marbled boards housed in a slipcase of full burgundy morocco leather. Though some of the phrases, such as the title, are used in other of Miller's works, this long narrative poem appears to be unpublished. The poem begins: "In the morning of the world;/Ere the holy stars were born--/Early morning of the world;/O, that wondrous, wondrous morn!" We have at this point not read much else because our lives are short and Miller's handwriting is trying, but we are fairly confident that the text deals at least in part with the Alaskan Gold Rush of the 1890s as Miller visited the Klondike during that time returning to California after six months,… Read More