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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1921. [one of 35 (now 21) copies] London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1921. Original olive green cloth. First Edition, of which this is one of 35 (Wise says 33) privately-printed advance copies that "were sent to friends of the publisher." These pieces primarily come from the limited pamphlets that were privately printed for Thomas J. Wise during the two preceding years; Conrad's friend Richard Curle was instrumental in having them combined into this volume. These advance copies are slightly taller, and somewhat slimmer, than trade copies -- and read "Privately Printed..1921" on the title verso; as with all known advance copies, the contents leaf is in the earliest state, with the "S" and "A" missing from the word "SEA". As Supino gleaned from Conrad's letters, "Sixteen copies were given by Conrad and J.M. Dent to friends, Conrad kept five copies, which he sold through Wise, and the remaining copies were destroyed" -- which, if accurate, means that today a maximum of 21 copies might be extant. This… Read More

1912. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912. 2 pp undated ads. Original dark blue cloth. First Edition of this autobiographical work, which initially appeared serially in Ford Madox Ford's newly-founded English Review. What is remarkable about Conrad's reminiscences is how clearly he employed fictional techniques worked out with Ford,... wherein the narrative intensity increases as the story develops. To achieve that, Conrad used a constantly interrupted narrative as a way of unsettling conventional sequences and, thereby, established anticipation of the next episode. Conrad needed a method that permitted intimacy, up to a certain point, and then withdrawal, when he had revealed enough... so his reminiscences would be matters of attack and retreat [Karl]. SOME REMINISCENCES is generally believed to have slightly preceded the American edition -- which, as with English editions beginning in 1916, was titled A PERSONAL RECORD. Wise claimed that only 1,000 copies were printed (apparently including some bound by… Read More

1917. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, (1917). 18 pp undated ads. Original sage green cloth decorated in brown, with dust jacket. First Edition, first impression (so stated), of Conrad's third autobiographical work -- this copy printed on laid paper. As Supino explains in detail, the first impression consisted of 5,000 + 80 copies, of which 3,000 were on laid paper for the domestic market, and 2,000 were on (slimmer) wove paper for the colonial market -- but "only 600 copies of the first impression were ever bound for the colonial market, and the remaining 1,400 were diverted to the domestic market." Neither Cagle nor Supino was able to locate a colonial copy in Dent's colonial binding; both bibliographers deduce that the wove-paper copies in the standard binding constitute those 1,400 re-directed copies. This is a remarkably fine, bright copy, essentially as new; the quite uncommon dust jacket, which above Conrad's portrait poses the question "Why did the captain and the silent crew of the… Read More

1923. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, n.d.[1923]. Original dark green cloth. This is a hybrid copy of the First Canadian Edition (from the second English impression) -- a copy planned for the UK domestic market but redirected (with "The Ryerson Press" binding and with cancel title leaf undated on the verso) to the Canadian market. Per Supino: The second impression was bound both for domestic issue [in dark green cloth] and for the first Canadian issue published by the Ryerson Press [in red cloth, with 1923-dated copyright page]... Due to considerable Canadian demand, a portion of the second impression was also devoted to a second Canadian issue with a cancelled [undated] title leaf [in dark green cloth]. The undated Ryerson copies in green are considerably scarcer than the standard Ryerson dated copies in red. This copy is in very good condition, without dust jacket (if ever so issued): there is a small scar in the spine just below the title panel, plus minor wear at the head of the spine. Supino… Read More

1923. London: T. Fisher Unwin, (1923). Original red cloth. First English Edition, first impression, of which this is a copy of the colonial "Overseas Edition" (so printed on the title page). This copy is in very good condition (minor edge-wear, spine dull). Supino A24.7.0 (binding A -- this copy). Provenance: discreet bookplate of the Conrad bibliographer David J. Supino.

1904. London and New York: Harper & Brothers, 1904. Original dark blue cloth decorated in light blue. First Edition of Conrad's great novel involving a South American silver mine, and the corruption and dishonesty fostered by its riches. Conrad was extending his "Lord Jim" theme: that the man who slowly grows rich can be a victim of the silver, not its conqueror; that wealth is not something gained but a trap for those who relinquish, however momentarily, their sense of themselves... It was no coincidence that Conrad was in severe financial straits during the years that he wrote these novels. Despite (or perhaps reflecting) the two and a half years Conrad spent laboring over NOSTROMO, the book was not widely acclaimed upon its publication: The reviews were nearly all bound to discourage the reader. [John] Buchan's estimation is characteristic: "It is not a book which the casual reader will appreciate. The sequence of events has to be sought painfully through the mazes of irrelevancy with which the… Read More

1898. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898. Original tan cloth decorated in brown. First Edition of Conrad's fourth book and his first collection of short stories (including "An Outpost of Progress," a Congo tale along the same vein as his later "Heart of Darkness"). This was issued about ten days before the London edition, and consisted of 1,250 copies. TALES OF UNREST was not a big seller in America: Scribner did not print a second and third impression (250 copies each) until 1906 and 1912; after the success of CHANCE in 1914, they printed 250 + 260 more copies in 1915, before selling the rights, the plates, and the unbound sheets to Doubleday Page the following year. We consider this one of the scarcer Conrad American editions; when it does turn up the volume's spine is usually severely darkened. This is a near-fine copy (spine design slightly dull, but not as bad as usual); the volume is otherwise essentially without wear. Supino A4.1.0; Cagle A4b. Provenance: discreet bookplate of the Conrad… Read More

1906. London: Methuen & Co., (1906). 40 pp ads dated August 1906. Original green cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition (consisting of 1,511 copies) of Conrad's first volume of nonfiction, a rambling discourse about life on the sea. Though originally planned as a collection of sketches, during preparation for publication Conrad converted it into a continuous book. As he wrote to his agent: "My idea is a sort of reminiscent discourse running on like this: I. II. III. IV. etc etc XX. XXI. and so on, with no titles or blank or half blank pages between; something, in short, like poor Gissing's Ryecroft papers; and only the headings at the top of pages being changed according to the matter created." ... Conrad's method, which was mainly followed, was exceptionally shrewd as a way of getting around the unmarketability of short pieces or even short stories. A continuous book, even his, stood some chance of sales" [Karl]. This was the first of the five Conrad titles that Methuen bound in this… Read More