Search Results: Authors starting with M from W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera

Kathmandu: [Angus Maclise and Francis Brooks], 1973. Folio (18 1/4 inches). [16] pp., including numerous woodblock illustrations (printed variously in black and red) plus 1 full-page woodblock print tipped in. In original pictorial wrappers, all on handmade rice paper. Small closed tears at head of front wrapper, light discoloration from original paste affixing large print, else fine. Numbered 102 of 150 copies. The second of three issues of TING PA, one of the early publications of the circle of American and European expatriate writers and artists living in Kathmandu during the 1970s. The woodblock illustrations include Himalayan and East Asian subjects, chiefly from religious traditions, as well as images drawn from the Rider-Waite Tarot.

[Kathmandu, Nepal: Angus Maclise], 1972. Folio (15 inches). [10] pp., including in-text woodblock illustrations and 4 full-page woodblock prints tipped in. In original pictorial wrappers, all on handmade rice paper. Fine. Numbered 144 of 150 copies, with editor's manuscript note in colophon, "corrections: | print 2: Arhat | print 3: Yabyum." The first of three issues of TING PA, a periodical of "Nepali poetry and songs, Tibetan magics & mantras old and new - in translations - and of course our poets/freaks writing in their native tongue, and woodblock prints, a specialty of Kathmandu, both traditional and original" (colophon). The numbered prints, from woodblocks supplied by Ian Alsop and Francis Brooks and hand-printed in Swayambhu by Ato Tamting Sija, show figures of Tibetan and Nepali Buddhism: Dakini, Arhat, Yabyum, and "Dancing Skeletons" (Citipati).

Bonn: J. F. Carthaus, 1963. First Edition. Broadside, approximately 61 x 43 cm. Artist's monogram in print in top-left corner (artist unkown). Original three folds for mailing. Mild wear and toning along folds, soft crease in lower-right corner, else near fine. A striking poster advertising Karl Magersuppe's Die Holzköppe puppet troupe's performance of Marcel Achard's MARLBOROUGH S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE ("Marlborough Goes to War") in the 1953 Bonn International Puppet Festival. Karl Magersuppe (1900-1981) was a popular German puppeteer, whose troupe (translated as "The Woodenheads") has performed since 1949, initially as a traveling ensemble and, since 1955, at its own theater in Steinau an der Strasse, birthplace of the Brothers Grimm. We have located one institutional copy, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Scarce, and in remarkably fine condition for the fragile, thin paper on which it is printed.

[New York?]: Poetry on Films, Inc., 1970. First Edition. 11 inches. [2],61,[1] pp. Photographic covers, side-stapled. Pink and blue tissue endpapers. Light wear to covers and minor soiling to rear cover. Very good to near fine. One of 474 copies in the trade edition (of 500 copies total). A series of 61 "poemworks" Gerard Malanga composed chiefly on May 10, 1970 at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, in the presence of Cristina. The final eight poems were written on May 11 and 12, en route to and upon arrival in New York City. When Malanga published the work two months later, he dedicated it "to cristina who continues to make everything possible." But, Cristina remains a mystery - she appears to be Cristina Miller of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, home of Andrew Wyeth, but beyond this and her dazzling effect on Malanga little is known. One poem in the series, "the world #19," records Malangas ecstatic reaction to the latest issue of the mimeo associated with St. Marks Poetry Project as he lay in bed with… Read More

Barcelona: Tipográfia de Espasa Hermamos [sic] y Salvat, 1879. Hardcover. Fair. 931 pp. Half title. In Spanish. Contemporary tree calf, spine gilt, gilt red leather label, marbled endpapers. Binding scuffed, extremities worn. Significant dampstain in lower-outer front board and text block (mostly in margins), causing light loss to corner of binding and front endpapers and chipping to first several leaves. Fair to good. After the first edition of 1878. "Satanism, that is, The throne of Satan fought from the throne of the Holy Spirit. Refutation of the errors of the Spiritist school": an anti-Spiritist polemic by the Spanish priest and Carlist politician, Vicente de Manterola y Pérez (1833-1891). Spiritism was an early offshoot of Spiritualism, codified in the mid-19th century by the French educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1804-1869), under the name Allan Kardec.

New York: Aperture, 1999. Folio. 151,[1] pp. including numerous in-text photographic images. Publisher's cloth, spine stamped in silver. Signed and inscribed by the author/photographer, "For Valeria + Johnny - I also _love_ the side show Fondly Mary Ellen 2003 New York." Some rubbing and a few small dents in dust jacket. Fine in a very good dust jacket. 36-year portrait retrospective of the late Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015), who was named the previous year "Most Influential Woman Photographer" by AMERICAN PHOTO magazine. This copy was warmly inscribed to Johnny Fox and his wife at the time, Valeria Duarte, in the year of publication. Johnny Fox (1953-2017) was a celebrated American sword swallower, sleight-of-hand artist, and proprietor of the Freakatorium / El Museo Loco, the first dime museum to appear in New York since the closing of Hubert's Museum in 1969. Located in a Lower East Side storefront from 1999 to 2005, the Freakatorium housed a collection of oddities, relics, photographs, and ephemera… Read More

New York: Aperture, 2003. First Edition. Folio. [85],86-94,[2] pp. including numerous in-text photographic images. Publisher's cloth, spine stamped in silver. Signed and inscribed by the author/photographer, "For Valeria Johnny + Isabella With Love Mary Ellen 2005." Dust jacket lightly rubbed. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Portraits of twins by the late photographer, Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015), known for her work with unusual people. Mark photographed and interviewed the subjects at the annual Twins Days festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, in 2001 and 2002. This copy was warmly inscribed to Johnny Fox and his wife at the time, Valeria Duarte (and their dog, Isabella). Johnny Fox (1953-2017) was a celebrated American sword swallower, sleight-of-hand artist, and proprietor of the Freakatorium / El Museo Loco, the first dime museum to appear in New York since the closing of Hubert's Museum in 1969. Located in a Lower East Side storefront from 1999 to 2005, the Freakatorium housed a collection of oddities,… Read More

[London, 1968]. Folio (14 x 11 1/4 inches). [1],1-117 pp. Manuscript sheet music, inscribed and signed on the final page by the composer, "End | London 7 April 1968 | Tyringham-Cleveland-London 1966-1968 | John Stewart McLennan." Occasional manuscript corrections in pencil. In cardboard plastic-comb binder, manuscript paper cover label. Covers moderately worn, nearly all of binding comb perished. Contents toned, especially at edges, else fine. Overall very good. Original holograph musical score for the unpublished SONATA FOR ORGAN, by 20th-century American composer John Stewart McLennan, Jr. (1903-1996). McLennan was the son of the Canadian senator of the same name (1853-1939) and the American writer Grace Seeley Henop Tytus McLennan (1875-1928). He was born in Tyringham, Massachusetts, at Ashintully, his maternal family's estate. He acquired that property in 1937 and lived there for the remainder of his life. After the estate's Georgian-style mansion was destroyed by fire in 1952, McLennan moved into… Read More

Venice, California: Jeffrey Reiss Publications, 1964. Very good. [3],42,[1] pp. Original pictorial wrappers, stapled. Inscribed to Kenward Elmslie and signed by the author in the flyleaf. Wrappers lightly rubbed and edgeworn, with a few small creases and two small chips at heads of wrappers. Very good. Third printing of Taylor Mead's first book (after the first printing of 1961) and first volume of his four-part series of poetical memoirs, warmly inscribed, "To Kenward (sweetie-pie) from Taylor Meadie." "This is all I could afford to print right now from my fabulous main book but watch for it in all gleeming 6 or 800 pages. And anyone knowing the whereabouts of the many hundreds of pages that have been conned or stolen from me please tell me. Taylor Mead | genius" (from the preface). OCLC locates no copies of this printing. From the library of Kenward Elmslie.

Baltimore, [ca. 1989]. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches. Felt pen, rubber stamps, and photoreproduced collage, all in colors, on foam core board; 25-cent stamp with cancel. Inscribed and intitialed by the artist. Board mildly worn at extremities, board creased (visible only on verso). Very good. Sally Mericle, a.k.a. Mars Tokyo (b. 1952), is a Baltimore-based multimedia artist, who became involved in the Stamp and Mail Art movement in the mid-1970s and from 1990 to 2000 operated the Mars Tokyo Rubber Stamp Company. She warmly inscribes the postcard to Matty Jankowski (1948-2019), a fellow visionary artist and active Mail Art movement member. Jankowski, also a celebrated tattoo artist, was born in Brooklyn and based there for most of his adult life before moving to Panama City, Florida, in the early 2000s. The postcard was sent to Jankowski's Midwood, Brooklyn, address, where he was operating Circle Arts., Inc., a mail-art exchange program. Mericle's message reads: "Matty - This isn't exactly a recipe for your… Read More

Paris: Théâtre de la Ville, [1974]. 29.5 cm. [1],152 pp. (mimeographed leaves printed recto only). In French. Original cloth-tape-backed printed cloth over card covers. Signed by Arthur Miller on the title page. Cloth backing worn, with two-inch split at head of front cover, covers moderately soiled, inch-long pen mark on title page. Good to very good. French script adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1972 play, THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND OTHER BUSINESS, by Jean Mercure (1909-1998), who directed it at the Théâtre de la Ville in 1974. Avant Scène published a trade edition of the script in the same year. OCLC locates no copies of the present version.

Washington, D. C.: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 1934. xvi,440 pp., including numerous in-text charts, many printed in red and black. Original publisher's cloth, stamped in gold. No dust jacket, as issued. Head of front board bumped, else fine. First edition of the magnum opus of Romanian-American psychiatrist Jacob Levy Moreno (1889-1974), the pioneering work of sociometry that introduced the use of sociograms. The work, an answer to the dehumanizing promises of eugenics and technocracy, contains studies of voluntary interpersonal relationships formed at schools and other institutions, including the famous "Hudson study," conducted with Helen Jennings at the New York State Training School for Girls, a reformatory near Hudson, New York. Moreno dedicates the book to the school's superintendent, Fannie French Morse, "Educator and Liberator of Youth." "Moreno founded psychodrama, and pioneered group psychotherapy. Apart from its psychiatric and sociological significance, this work contained… Read More

New York: Printed by Lew Ney for Gotham Book Mart, 1935. Small quarto. Single sheet folded twice. [4] pp. Lettered "HC" in contemporary red ink in the colophon. Near fine. The "deluxe" edition of a satirical poem composed by Christopher Morley and designed and printed by Lew Ney to help their friend and patron, Frances Steloff, founder and owner of Gotham Book Mart, during a moment of financial insecurity at the store in the mid-1930s. It "has been printed in this limited edition of 350 copies from Inkanabula type, imported from Italy. It was set by hand, and the type has been distributed." In the 1975 "Special Gotham Book Mart Issue" of JOURNAL OF MODERN LITERATURE (Vol. 4, No. 4), Frances Steloff describes the origin of the poem and its publication. One day in 1935, Steloff was dictating correspondence in the back of the shop, unaware that her friend and Gotham Book Mart regular Christopher Morley had stopped by. "He asked why I looked so glum, and I told him that I had been dictating dunning… Read More