Search Results: Authors starting with B from The Second Shelf

1875. An album dated 1875 featuring the work of the "Beehive Club", with over 150 uniform postcard sized watercolour and pen works, gathered into themes. The output of a very talented, most likely youthful, or at the very least gleefully amateur, Victorian sketching club, possibly executed via correspondence, each member being given a brief to work with, and the results being carefully added to the album.The artworks are arranged around a regularly changing theme, often literary, such asworks centered on Longfellow's "Evangeline", or Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", and sometimes the themed suites are broader and open to interpretation, as in the collection merely entitled "Winter", or the section titled "Ruins." Most of the offerings are titled and captioned in red ink, in one hand, presumably that of "M.B.O." who seems to have had the duty of being club archivist, carefully initialling each work according to artist ("E.D.", "M.P.K.", "F.M.B." etc.), recording the theme or subject in an elaborate gothic… Read More

Harlin Quist, 1980. First edition, first printing. Paperback, graphic cover. Wraps are slightly worn at edges. Binding is slightly loose at some pages but holding together very well. Very good condition. Fiorucci is stunning book, not only for the writing of Eve Babitz, critically acclaimed for her writing about Los Angeles, pop culture, fashion and rock and roll in the 70's and 80's, which analyses the fashion phenomenon that was, and continues to be, Fiorucci, as a brand and as an aesthetic, but because the book in itself is an incarnation of said aesthetic. A fantastic example of graphic design for fashion writing. A book for lovers of art, design and fashion.

When you close your eyes and imagine Paris at the 20th turn-of-the-century, La Belle Époque, you wouldn't be wrong to conjure a picture of Natalie Clifford Barney. The American expatriate poet and playwright nicknamed 'The Amazon' was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1876. She and her family had a brief life-altering encounter in a New York City hotel with Oscar Wilde, moved to Washington DC and soon after left for a boarding school in France with her sister.
She came out as a lesbian at the age of 12 to her family, declaring that she was sent by Sappho and never looked back. She began writing explicitly about lesbianism in 1900 at the age of 24.
Pensées d'une amazone explores sexual adversity, war, and feminism and boldly includes chapters on incest, sadism, and coupling (Barney was an advocate for polyamory). Upon receiving his dedicated copy of this book, Proust wrote to Barney that it was "ravishing and profound".
In addition to her writing, Barney was known for her often love affairs, with such notable… Read More

Seattle: Lynda J. Barry, 1979. Evette, how old do you have to be before you know if you are a failure or not?/Older than nine./Are you sure?/(Pause)/No." With title page "Two Sisters Xerox Book", 69 unbound Xeroxed sheets with illustrations and text by Lynda Barry, contained in a unique, illustrated, hand-coloured envelope tied with brown and white yarn. Envelope stamped with the name Adrienne Salinger, Barry's contemporary and an important photographer. 69 pages, black-and-white illustrations throughout. 30.5 x 22.5 cm. First edition, first printing. Extremely scarce, unique in this wrapper. Fine in near fine manila envelope with some wear and closed tears at the extremities.

New York: Random House, 1973. Uncorrected First Proof copy. Octavo. 190pp. Publisher's red paper wraps titled in black to front cover. Some light scuffing, and a couple of spots of grubbiness to the covers, but essentially a clean, tight copy. Internally clean, a pencil annotation "April..?" to the title page. A scarce proof copy of the first book on Black reparations and which Morrison guided into print as an editor at Random House. Written by a white professor at Yale, Morrison felt the book was "an important contribution to the fledgling reparations debate." A significant proof on its own, of a book that was an origin point for the intellectual debate about reparations for many decades, but also because it documents Morrison's incredible tenure and astute publishing history during her tenure at Random House. Necessarily scarce.

Published when she was 53, A Start in Life is Brookner's first published novel, a darkly funny tale of an academic who cannot stop comparing her life to that promised by literature. Brookner's author biography of 1981 defines her an international authority on art history, and a past Slade professor at Cambridge, a career perhaps later overshadowed by her 24 novels and Booker prize. Striking dust jacket design by Suzanne Perkins.
This copy of Brookner's first book belonged to her publisher, Tom Maschler, the managing director of Jonathan Cape. Maschler died in 2020 and his collection was sold via Heywood Hill. This book is scarce in unclipped state due to a late price change.
London: Jonathan Cape, 1981. First edition. Hardback. 176 pages. 20.5 x 13.5 cm. Grey boards with gilt lettering to spine. Small Maschler/Heywood Hill bookplate to front endpaper, remains of a new price label over printed price on dust jacket flap. Fine book in near fine dust jacket.

London: By the Author, 1887. First edition. 8vo. 213pp. Original maroon cloth titled and decorated in gilt, white and blue to spine and front board. Some cracking in places to the cloth of the spine, with a square flake of loss affecting the title at the head of the spine. Minor scuffing and shelfwear, light bumping to extremities, a strong and solid copy with some cosmetic problems. Internally clean, glazed brown endpapers, rather opulent altogether for a self published title. Inscribed by the author to James Lancaster Pollitt on the verso of the front flyleaf, at the American Exhibition in London in 1887 where Brown had her Norse Exhibit. The American Exhibition that year was notable for the appearance of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show. The book is also annotated throughout in pencil, although the vagaries of late 19th century handwriting mean that the notes could be those of Brown, Pollitt, or a later owner. James Pollitt was something of a roving freelance reporter, with a keen eye for… Read More

The Museums Association, 1940. Booklet detailing conservation treatment of textile costumes in Scandinavia, produced after Buck completed a research tour. Text enriched by photographs of costumes and diagrams. First published in The Museums Journal, Vol. 40, April, 1940. Blue paper covers with stitched binding. 44 pages. 25 x 18.5 cm. Small pen note to cover, in very good condition.

Hurst Street Press. Oxford: Hurst Street Press Ltd., 2017. First Edition. Fine press. Acetate dust cover,white card cover with title embossed in red. Hand-stitched. 56 pages. Limited to a print run of 100 copies. Printed using a mixture of letterpress and risograph. Bought new, condition as new. As new in as new dust-jacket.