Search Results: Titles starting with A from Acme Book & Anvil

This is a copy of the first UK trade edition of Arthur Rackham's treatment of Andersen's Fairy Tales. Quarto in red cloth, pictorial gilt lettering and art by Rackham on front and spine, pictorial endpapers, gilt top. The 12 full page color plates have with printed tissue guards. Water stains on front and back boards, spine slightly sunned with darkened gilt. Binding is tight, square and straight. Interior VG+ with only dots of foxing on the reverse of the frontis title page and several other interior pages. Printed endpapers are present and entire, but faded, especially at recto. Verso ffep has a continuation of the front water stain on its edge. Stain does not continue past that page. I'm being meticulous in describing the book's condition -- the front board water stain and spine gilt are the only things that would bother a reasonable person.

This is a copy of the first US trade edition of Rackham's Andersen's Fairy Tales, published by David McKay & Co. using the sheets, printed in England, of the first UK trade -- that is, the editions are identical except that Harrap gilt-stamped 'David McKay' on the bottom spine. There have been innumerable small-format reprints of the book, generally missing some of its 12 full-page color plates and most of its charm, leaving a choice between a copy of this first trade edition or the deluxe limited vellum edition of 525 numbered copies which neither of us can afford.

The only other decision to make is whether to go for one of the strangely numerous copies of this edition that still have their original dust jacket and (sometimes) original gift box. I don't know where all these jackets and gift boxes suddenly started coming from, but I'm not ready to say I'm suspicious yet. Those are also expensive, and this one isn't cheap, but at least the price won't give you a nosebleed. I may also have a cheaper,… Read More

This is the familiar large Wyeth book from the late '60s, once as abundant as it was important, but now approaching endangered status due to years of debinding at the hands of print sellers.
It's an oblong elephant folio. Binding is straight and solid, quarterbound in cloth with beige boards and chocolate brown spine with silver lettering. Beige cloth looks clean from a couple of feet away, up close shows some signs of age and handling including edge foxing. Pages are complete, in all cases straight and white, crisp and square-cornered, and unmarked.
The DJ is a kind of paper that has often doomed heavy, very large-format books like this one to cosmetic wear from normal handling in the bookstore. The DJ here has clearly been around the block a couple of times since initial purchase. Short tears on the bottom edge have been closed from behind with archival tape to stabilize things, and also to decent cosmetic effect. The main jacket issue is an overall toning combined with stipples of foxing. It… Read More

This is an original 1st edition copy of the Mary Gregor text (published by Nijhoff in 1974) -- with 'copy' and 'text' expressly meaning a published book, and not one of the PDF reproductions of it now available for a similar price. 'Mary Gregor' means that it's the correct one, in this zany, anything-goes era of purchasing Gregor's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, and then the Dowdell text shows up. 
Perfect-bound paperback, binding is tight and straight with pages crisp and unmarked save for pencil notes, mostly pre-erased, on pages x-xi of the introduction. 
The cover is of a familiar Postwar paper stock often seen on technical manuals and self-published items that's subject to aging, but quite presentable here.
The color is a light tan (as above), mildly textured in a leather pattern. Physical wear includes several very light concavities in the front cover, not highly visible, but worth mentioning, that look exactly as though somebody had propped the book up, walked backward several… Read More