Search Results: Authors starting with C from Sumner & Stillman

1906. London: Methuen & Co., (1906). 40 pp ads dated July 1906 (plus two loosely-inserted Methuen ad slips). Original bright red cloth stamped in gilt. First Edition by this prolific (and at the time very popular) author of many novels, often with elements of the supernatural and mystery -- such as OUR LADY OF DARKNESS, THE SECRET IN THE HILL, THE GREEN PARROT and THE SKELETON KEY. At age 62 his writing career was cut short by the 1918 flu epidemic. This is a remarkably fine, bright copy -- of a curiously uncommon book. Hubin p. 64.

1876. With Nine Illustrations by Henry Holiday. London: Macmillan and Co., 1876. 1 page undated ads. Original deep red cloth pictorially decorated in black, all page edges gilt. First Edition, special dark-red binding, which consisted of 100 copies. This is a poetical nonsense tale, both funny and subtle, that "describes with infinite humour the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature" [WM&G]. The crew consists of a Bellman, a Bonnet-Maker, a Barrister, a Broker, a Billiard-Maker, a Banker, a Butcher, a Baker, a Beaver and (the only one not illustrated) "a Boots." In his dedicatory verse to Gertrude Chataway, Carroll hid the child's name twice. Standard copies were issued in buff-colored cloth (with the same elaborate pictorial decoration, but in black). According to WM&G, "It is doubtful whether any variant coloured bindings were for sale, other than buff or red; the other colours seem to have been bound specially for Dodgson, who wrote to Macmillan on 21 Mar. 1876… Read More

1889. [inscribed by Lewis Carroll] With Forty-six Illustrations [each] by Harry Furniss. [Together, two volumes.] London: Macmillan and Co., 1889/1893. 3 pp / 5 pp undated ads. Original red cloth pictorially decorated in gilt, all page edges gilt. First Editions of Carroll's rather serious fairy tales. SYLVIE AND BRUNO, with its conclusion in 1893, was the last considerable work by Dodgson. Though he fully explains in the Preface... the principles on which he introduces many solemn pages into his fairy tale, the serious subjects of life and science cannot be thus inserted without marring the effect of the whole... Somehow the light and airy touch of ALICE is wanting, but there is plenty of amusing incident and entertaining verse. There is hardly any plot: Sylvie and Bruno, after living with a Warden, Sub-Warden, Professor, Beggar, Gardener, Uggug (the young artist) and others, are conducted by the Gardener into Elfland, ride on a lion, visit Dogland, and so on... [The illustrations] are rightly… Read More

1915. With Many Illustrations. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, [1915]. Original maroon cloth lettered in gilt with pictorial panel on the front cover, with dust jacket. First Edition, second printing (the first to have a dust jacket) -- of the autobiography of the Irish-American investigative publisher Samuel Sidney McClure -- ghost-written by his managing editor, Willa Cather. McClure (1857-1949) emigrated with his widowed mother from County Antrim to a farm in Indiana when he was nine; after attending Valparaiso schools, between 1874 and 1882 he gradually worked his way through Knox College in Galesburg Illinois. In 1897 McClure teamed up with F.N. Doubleday to create Doubleday & McClure publishers, and upon its dissolution in 1900, McClure created McClure, Phillips & Co. (which in turn would sell its assets back to Doubleday in 1908). When in 1905 McClure's cousin brought to his attention the writings of one Willa Cather, MP&Co published her first work of fiction, THE TROLL GARDEN. A year… Read More

1918. With Illustrations by W.T. Benda. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918. Original brown linen-grain cloth lettered in light orange. First Edition, first printing (with the date on the FRONT of the title leaf), first state (with the illustrations on coated paper, rather than on text paper). This was Cather's second great novel of immigrant life on the Nebraska frontier, following O PIONEERS! (1913) -- and the third and last of her great "prairie novels," after O PIONEERS! and THE SONG OF THE LARK (1915). It tells of a Bohemian immigrant girl's life there, and of the pioneer strength that carries her through numerous adversities. Cather took a major role in the production of this book, choosing the illustrator and negotiating with Houghton Mifflin regarding many aspects of the book (especially the advertising budget, which HMC would not increase above $300.00!). She was particularly upset when she learned that HMC had ordered the illustrations printed on coated plate paper; she… Read More

1935. London...: Cassell and Company, (1935). Original dark blue cloth with spine lettered in gilt, with dust jacket. First Edition of this collection of eight cases solved by Father Brown, the diminutive Roman Catholic priest / amateur detective. This was the fifth and last collection of Father Brown cases, preceded by THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN (1911), THE WISDOM... (1914), THE INCREDULITY... (1926), and THE SECRET... (1927); Chesterton died the year after this one was published. ...It was in his series of Father Brown stories that Chesterton gave life to one of the most famous and best-loved of fictional detectives... The little Roman Catholic priest's main preoccupation is with the moral and religious aspects of the crimes he is solving, rather than the apprehension of the criminal and the administration of legal punishment. With his psychological approach to the problems of human frailty, and his endowment of the guilty with good as well as bad qualities, Chesterton's works of detective… Read More

1888. or, Vladimir the Monk. New York: Robert Bonner's Sons, 1888. Original buff wrappers. First Edition in book form, published in the year following the death of this prodigious New England writer (born in Maine). This tale had first appeared in the New York Ledger in 1856, the year in which Cobb began his lifelong association with that periodical. To it [the Ledger], in thirty-one years, he contributed 130 novelettes, 834 short stories, and 2,305 brief sketches! (There already lay behind him 36 published novelettes and 200 short stories.)... As a literary figure Cobb hardly exists; but he is of interest as the first American to apply "mass production" methods to writing. His stories were immensely popular, since they were nicely fitted to the viewpoints and opinions of the semi-literate public at which they were aimed; they were at once moral and sensational, romantic and naive, pious and sentimental. He had real dramatic skill and a certain knack for rough-and-ready characterization, but his… Read More

1850. [first fiction, in original cloth] A Romance of the Fifth Century. London: Richard Bentley, 1850. 2 pp undated ads in Vols II and III, as well as printed endpaper ads in all three volumes. Original cream embossed cloth with blind-stamping on the covers and gilt stamping on the spines. First Edition of Wilkie Collins's first fiction, preceded only by his two-volume "memoir" of his father, the renowned landscape painter. Actually Collins began ANTONINA in 1846, then (after his father died in early 1847) he paused to write the biography, after which he resumed and completed the novel. ANTONINA sold well, with a "revised" edition coming out three months later (in May 1850), followed by another three-volume printing in 1853; it "was reprinted throughout Collins's lifetime and into the twentieth century." Drawing upon Collins's own 1837 visit to Rome, ANTONINA is modeled after Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 novel THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII... The plot is absurd, and many passages read like a cross between a… Read More

1862. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Co., 1862. Original blind-stamped pebbled orange cloth with gilt-decorated spines. First Edition of "the most unjustly neglected of all Wilkie Collins's novels" [Robinson]. Written at the peak of Collins's career just after THE WOMAN IN WHITE, Sampson Low paid Collins 3,000 for NO NAME, and then produced 4,000 copies -- all but 400 of which were sold by the afternoon of the first day [Gasson]. The novel centers about the theme of illegitimacy, and Collins's condemnation of the laws that govern it. It is the story of 18-year-old Magdalen Vanstone's attempt to regain control of her father's fortune (she and her sister are the children of a common-law marriage; just when their parents finally are able to marry, the father suddenly dies before writing a new will -- leaving the two girls with "no name" and thus with no claim upon his fortune). Though her elder (and quieter) sister Norah resigns herself to her impoverished fate, Magdalen enlists the aid of the "delightful… Read More

1863. [a handsome set] London: Sampson, Low, Son, & Co., 1863. 16 pp ads dated Nov 1863 in each volume. Original green cloth with spines stamped in gilt. First Edition of this collection of twenty-five essays, sketches and other pieces (including some fiction). All of them had initially appeared between 1856 and 1861 either in "Household Words" or in "All The Year Round," the two periodicals founded and edited by Collins's brother's father-in-law, Charles Dickens. (Collins's most famous works, THE WOMAN IN WHITE and THE MOONSTONE, also first appeared in "All The Year Round.") Most of the pieces are categorized by Collins as "Sketches of Character," "Nooks and Corners of History," "Social Grievances," "Curiosities of Literature," "Fragments of Personal Experience" and "Cases Worth Looking At." Andrew Gasson in his bibliography provides a one-clause recap of each piece, enough to get across that many demonstrate Collins's wit and his disdain for Victorian sensibilities -- for example "Talk Stoppers"… Read More

1868. [a handsome copy] With Many Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868. 4 pp preliminary undated ads (with list of Select Novels ending at No. 316). Original dark blue-green pebbled cloth. First American (and first illustrated) Edition of this classic of detective fiction, issued in the same year as the London three-decker. THE MOONSTONE marked the end of Collins's peak period as a novelist: it was preceded by THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1860), NO NAME (1862) and ARMADALE (1866), and was followed by a transition into sensation or propaganda fiction -- especially regarding marriage and inheritance laws. Commenting on T.S. Eliot's opinion of this book ("the first, the longest, and the best of detective novels"), John Carter wrote Mr. Eliot is inaccurate in his first adjective, a little rash perhaps in his second, but unlikely to meet with much disagreement over his third. If Poe created the short detective story, Wilkie Collins is the undisputed father of the full-length variety... The American… Read More

1879. London: Chatto & Windus, 1879. Bound in three-quarter red morocco with gilt-paneled spines, red cloth boards, marbled endpapers. First Edition of this novel about "fallen leaves... the people who have drawn blanks in the lottery of life... the friendless and the lonely, the wounded and the lost." The novel follows the fortunes of four women, all in one way or another 'fallen leaves', who are linked by their relationship with the hero, Amelius Goldenheart, and also by secrets from the past. Their histories are looked at from two perspectives: that of the ruthless capitalist society of England in which they live, and that of the Christian Socialism of the hero who has been brought up in a Utopian community in America. Collins modeled his description on the Oneida communities of New England, in which sexual relationships were not restricted to marriage but had to be sanctioned by the elders [Gasson]. Perhaps appropriately, Collins dedicated this book "To Caroline [Graves]", the woman with whom he… Read More

1870. With Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870. 4 pp ads dated July 1870. Original violet straight-grain-morocco cloth. First American (and first illustrated) Edition -- and possibly the first edition overall. The English three­decker -- considered to be the scarcest of all of Collins's UK firsts -- was published in 1870 by F.S. Ellis during the fortnight June 15-30 (priority between the UK edition and this US one is uncertain: first serialization was in Harper's Weekly, December 1869 - August 1870, followed by Cassell's Magazine in the UK a month later). This was a popular novel, praised for the excitement and cleverness of its plot, but it is particularly noteworthy for Collins's preoccupation with marriage law and its injustices. MAN AND WIFE was "Collins's first propaganda novel, in which he draws attention not only to such injustice in both Scottish and Irish marriage law, but also presses for the 'right of a married woman, in England, to possess her own property and keep her own… Read More

1868. With Many Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868. 2 pp preliminary undated ads. Original purple-brown cloth. First American (and first illustrated) Edition of this classic of detective fiction, issued in the same year as the London three-decker. THE MOONSTONE marked the end of Collins's peak period as a novelist: it was preceded by THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1860), NO NAME (1862) and ARMADALE (1866), and was followed by a transition into sensation or propaganda fiction -- especially regarding marriage and inheritance laws. Commenting on T.S. Eliot's opinion of this book ("the first, the longest, and the best of detective novels"), John Carter wrote Mr. Eliot is inaccurate in his first adjective, a little rash perhaps in his second, but unlikely to meet with much disagreement over his third. If Poe created the short detective story, Wilkie Collins is the undisputed father of the full-length variety... The American edition includes 66 wood engravings interspersed throughout the text. This is… Read More

1915. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page & Company 1915. Original navy blue cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition (published on March 26th, six months before the London edition) of Conrad's sad tale of Axel Heyst and the evil (for which read "Germanic") Schomberg. Due to the six-month delay of Methuen's edition, with the Great War raging, Conrad added to that edition a preface that discusses the "Teutonic psychology" of Schomberg. This American edition is noteworthy for its front endpaper map of the world, showing where Conrad's previous tales had all taken place. This is a clean, near-fine copy (slight rubbing at the extremities, some cracking of the endpapers). Supino A19.1.0; Cagle A19a. Provenance: there is a penciled signature dated "March 1915", the month of publication. Also, this was the copy of Walter E. Smith (who wrote the 1979 bibliography of Conrad) -- with a tender 1969 inscription TO him; laid in is a slip of his penciled bibliographic notes, which became the "Internal Flaws" on pp… Read More

1907. [the Charlie Watts copy] London: Methuen & Co., (1907). 40 pp ads dated Sept 1907. Original deep red cloth with gilt-decorated spine. First Edition of Conrad's tale of espionage sited in Russia. The idea for the story came from an actual 1890s revolutionary attempt to blow up the Observatory at Greenwich. Conrad initially planned this to be a short story (titled "Verloc"); however, as he "got into" it, he lengthened it into a full-blown novel. He then strove to make it a popular novel, one that would provide him with the cash he needed to get out from under pressing debts; however, after an initial flourish, sales dropped off and the book was not reprinted until 1914, after the success of CHANCE reawakened interest in Conrad. The initial printing consisted of 2,500 copies, including 500 for the colonies and 500 for Canada. However, the good initial reception of the book prompted the publisher to use the colonial copies for the domestic market instead, replacing the colonial half-title and… Read More

1920. [one of 25 copies] London: Printed for The Author | By Richard Clay and Sons, Ltd., 1920. Original tan wrappers. First Edition, being one of 25 numbered copies, of which this is No 14. This was the nineteenth of the twenty very-limited-issue Conrad productions by Thomas J. Wise. This tale (one of only a few fictional pieces among the 26 Shorter and Wise 25-copy pamphlets) had originally appeared in the October 1911 issue of the Oxford and Cambridge Review, and would later be collected in TALES OF HEARSAY. This is a fine copy, with the leaves still unopened and with the light-colored wrappers still remarkably clean. Cagle A47. Housed in an attractive morocco-backed slipcase with inner chemise.

1895. [the leaves still unopened] London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895. Original dark green cloth. First Edition of Joseph Conrad's first book. "In the absence of publisher's records, the number of copies printed has been estimated to be between 600 and 3000, with approximately 1100 being the most likely number" [Supino]. Conrad, after meeting the real "Olmeijer" in East Borneo in 1887, gradually produced the manuscript of this book over the six years 1889-1895. He submitted it to Unwin for consideration in their "Pseudonym Library", using the pseudonym "Kamudi" (Malayan for "rudder") -- enclosing the return postage, so sure was he of its rejection. However, Unwin's reader Edward Garnett saw the manuscript's promise and accepted it for non-pseudonymous publication. This copy is in the first state (as are most copies), with the letters missing from the last two lines of page 110. The leaves of this copy, though untrimmed on the fore- and bottom edges as issued, are still unopened (i.e. un-read). Condition… Read More

1907. London: Methuen & Co., (1907). 40 pp ads dated Sept 1907. Original deep red cloth with gilt-decorated spine. First Edition of this tale of espionage sited in Russia. The idea for the story came from an actual 1890s revolutionary attempt to blow up the Observatory at Greenwich. Conrad initially planned this to be a short story (titled "Verloc"); however, as he "got into" it, he lengthened it into a full-blown novel. He then strove to make it a popular novel, one that would provide him with the cash he needed to get out from under pressing debts; however, after an initial flourish, sales dropped off and the book was not reprinted until 1914, after the success of CHANCE reawakened interest in Conrad. The initial printing consisted of 2,500 copies, including 500 for Canada and 500 intended for the colonies; however, the good initial reception of the book prompted the publisher to use the colonial copies for the domestic market instead, replacing the colonial half-title and title with the standard… Read More

1895. [a handsome copy] London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895. Original dark green cloth. First Edition of Joseph Conrad's first book, an edition believed to have consisted of 1000-1250 copies. Conrad, after meeting the real "Olmeijer" in East Borneo in 1887, gradually produced the manuscript of this book over the six years 1889-1895. He submitted it to Unwin for consideration in their "Pseudonym Library", using the pseudonym "Kamudi" (Malayan for "rudder") -- enclosing the return postage, so sure was he of its rejection. However, Unwin's reader Edward Garnett saw the manuscript's promise and accepted it for non-pseudonymous publication. This copy is in the first state (as are most copies), with the letters missing from the last two lines of page 110. Condition is unusually fine, with virtually no wear at all (there are no nicks or chips in the spine ends, and only hair-line cracking of the original endpapers); about the only flaw we can come up with is the almost-unavoidable slight browning of the olive… Read More