Search Results: Titles starting with M from The Second Shelf

The heroine's mother is a militant Suffragette; she is not. Final pages include reviews of other titles by the same author, by William Locke and "John Lane's List of Fiction".
Original red embossed cloth boards, with gold lettering to cover and spine. 19 x 14 x 4.5. 311 pages. Hardcover.

London: Macmillan, 1965. First edition. Hardcover, 329. Green cloth binding is clean, some spotting on book edge. Dust jacket in near fine condition. Named after the former checkpoint between the Israeli and Jordanian sectors of Jerusalem, The Mandelbaum Gate won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965. The story of a Jewish-Catholic man on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Barbara Vaughan, a "half London Jewish Catholic convert" (Spark herself was a Catholic convert, her father was Jewish and her mother was Anglican) who is trying to locate her Dead-Sea scrolls archaeologist fiance, and has been warned she is in some danger due to her heritage. There's abduction, espionage, murder! Everything distrubing and often wickedly funny. A favourite of Anthony Burgess.

Small Octavo. Bound in maroon limp calf, rubbed, scuffed, and well used but still strong. Internally a little grubby and smudged by handling, much as might be expected of a working kitchen book. 22pp. of handwritten recipes, rather enthusiastically jammed onto each page as if the author was afraid of running out of space, there's a rather youthful exuberance to the putting together of this little pocket recipe book. The recipes are dominated by cakes, puddings and breads, including Raspberry Fool, and various sponge cakes, with some complex preserved meat dishes like Calves' Feet Jelly, and a recipe for Mock Turtle Soup involving a Calf's Head with the skin on. The spelling is a little erratic, the composition pretty makeshift, but that doesn't detract from it being a handy little household reference.

Limited signed and numbered edition, 94 of 250, revised edition. Marlene Dietrich's alphabet of all her favourite things. This book is a window to the interior life of the German-American Hollywood star, from her political preoccupations, to her views on marriage. From an entry on Goethe: "My idol. [...] He sanctioned love without condition, without pride", to a definition of love: "Love for the joy of loving, and not for the offerings of someone else's heart", this book shows the depths and range of an important figure of the twentieth century, celebrated not only for her artistry and glamour, but also for her humanitarian efforts, which won her Medal Freedom for her stance against Nazism and her support of Allied Troops. A special revised copy. Includes photographs of Dietrich throughout her life.
Hardcover, 183 pp. White cloth binding in pristine condition. Original dust jacket, very slightly worn on edges. Toning on the spine. Overall in very good condition.

London: Macmillan, 1959. Signed first edition. Hardcover, 266 pp. Green cloth binding shows moderate toning on edges and some bumping to the corners. Slight lean, but binding is strong, and overall in good condition. Dust jacket shows a few 2mm tears at top and bottom of spine. Moderate soiling to back cover. Some pen marks on the cover, mostly unnoticible. Inscribed to the writer-couple June and Neville Braybrooke at free leaf end paper: " June + Neville, Love from Muriel". A lovely association. An omniscient narrator follows a circle of elderly posh Britons and their tangled relationships and secret histories. Everyone dies, obvs. Dark and comic.

Convent-raised Marguerite de Launay lived a comfortable life until her benefactress died and poverty compelled her to become a lady-in-waiting. Her clever literary gifts emerged at court, where she assisted the Duchess due Maine with her Mémoire des princes légitimes. She was involved in scandals and romances and eventually married to a more secure station. Her memoirs are compelling and humorous reading, and are very much of the time.
Handsome limited edition of the amusing and clear-sighted memoirs. Here with a preface by Mme La Baronne Double and 41 etchings par A.D. Lalauze. In French.
Paris: Edition Jouaust, Librarie des Bibliophiles, 1890. 204, 212 pages. Each volume 19 x 12 x 3cm. Three quarter leather binding with four bands to spine. Very pretty, though most pages cockled and stiff, and so overall condition good only.

Signed advanced reading copy of Ward's memoir, examining the lives and deaths of five men in her life in Mississippi between 2000-2004. The title of the book references Harriet Tubman's words: "…and when we came to get the crops, it was dead men that we reaped."
Ward is a two-time National Book Award winner for Fiction and on the Advisory Board of our magazine, The Second Shelf: Rare Books & Words by Women. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Award - unofficially nicknamed the "genius" grant. She is one of America's preeminent writers and her stunning work focuses on the American South and the impact of racism on Black lives.
USA: Bloomsbury, 2013. 256 pages. 21 x 14 x 2cm. Paperback. Signed advance reading copy. In very good condition, no dust jacket as issued.

Harper & Row, 1970. It's not Eloise! It's Miss Pooky Peckinpaugh's boyfriend slam book in verse, arranged by alphabet. "P/PETER is POMPOUS/he is so pompous I could perish he's so pompous/he is possessed/with this purple portfolio/of/PICTURES of PETER…" Riff on a young woman's little black book by Kay Thompson, the author of Eloise Lives at the Plaza. A fantastically fun book.
First edition. Hardback. 28.5 x 20 cm. White cards have slight bumping, almost fine. Dust jacket has creases on top margin and intact tear. Small chip on bottom margin. Very good book in very good jacket.

Beautifully bound illustrated souvenir missal evoking the great places of Marian pilgrimage in France: Notre-Dame du Loos, Verdelais, Pontmain, Sainte Radegonde, Notre-Dame de Liesse, Fourvière, La Délivrande, Buglose, La Salette, etc.
Missali et Brevario Romano, 1899. 12mo. No. 511. Maison Alfred Mame et Fils. 15 x 11.5 x 2.5. 507 pages. Rich blue-green morocco decorated in red, blue and gilt on all boards, all edges decorative gilt in a floral design reflecting the design of illustrations on the interior pages, raised bands to spine gilt. Monogrammed (J.M.) silk moire endapers, dated in gilt MAI 1906, thus binding near-contemporary. Light spotting throughout but otherwise incredibly fresh and clear. Loving contemporary inscription to 'Jeanne Momerat' in celebration of her confirmation on the front free endpaper. Presented in the original binders box. A funeral card dated 1916 of a French Brigadier tucked in pages. Stunning in every way.

Heanor: Albert Hand Publications, 1964. The May Issue of this Mod fashion magazine was the third produced, sold for one shilling and a sixpence. A wild romp through Mod fashion, from a photo of men in lace shirts at the "Ready Steady Go" Mod Ball at Wembley Stadium to a photo essay on options in mod headgear. 16 pages in paper covers. 24.5 x 18.5 cm. In very good condition, crease to centre.

Edwynn Houk Gallery, 1997. This is the eleventh publication of Sally Mann's work in book form, a collection of soft focused, low contrast, ghostly landscape photographs of the American South. Mann produced this series using antique lenses, which contribute to the particular aesthetic she intends to convey, seeing landscape as a reflection of mood and psyche. First edition, signed on title page. In very good condition.

First edition, limited print run. Edith Sitwell was a British poet and critic. Sitwell equated quietness in the female artist as a failure of female nerve: "a woman's problem in writing poetry is different to a man's... I had to learn everything –learn, amongst other things, not to be timid... And I think that I started getting the thing into very strict limits it might bear the marks of a return to timidity." [Telegraph] This work was the author's first work and part of a print run of around 500, and it was extremely well received. "But in all of these poems one thing is clear. They come from within. Miss Sitwell does not describe, she lives in her verse."
Softcover, 8vo, 19 pages. Original wraps. Edges are worn, with some slight tearing. Spine is slightly worn nevertheless, binding is holding tightly together. Some fading on the cover. Very slight foxing throughout, but overall in good condition.

Miriam Tlali was the first Black South African woman to publish a novel in English in South Africa. Muriel at the Metropolitan is a devastating portrayal of life of a Black woman working a clerical job at a white business called 'Metropolitan' in Johannesburg under Apartheid. According to Dr. Barbara Boswell, 45 different editions of the novel were published and translated into several languages between 1975 and 2005, including this Polish edition.
Muriel w Metropolitan [Muriel at the Metropolitan] Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1989. 20.5 x 14.5 x 1.5. 183 pages. First Polish Edition. Translated by Maryla Topczewska-Metelska.

My Home is Far Awayby Dawn Powell, considered the most closely autobiographical of her novels, set in Ohio.
London: W. H. Allen, [c. 1945]. 284 pages. First U.K. Edition, First Printing. Hardback.

New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. Proof copy. Paperback, light blue wraps. Very slight wear on corners, otherwise in near fine condition. Laid in is a folded proof of the publisher's dust jacket, with black ink stamp in verso. Kathy Acker's thirteenth novel, My Mother: Demonology is an exploration of love, desire and power, that takes the character back to her childhood's memories and experiences. This experimental and boundary pushing novel, composed of fragments and references to cult and canonical works of literature and film, is a fantastic example of Kathy Acker's impulse to turn literary and aesthetic precepts inside out. An acclaimed novel by a countercultural icon.

London: Eveleigh Nash, 1913. Poetry collection by lesbian partners Katharine Harris Bradley and niece Edith Emma Cooper, who pseudonymously published their poetry as "Michael Field" beginning in 1884. Cooper died in 1913, the year Mystic Trees was published, and Bradley nine months later. Their poetry, often on paganist themes and exploring transgressive sexuality, was well-received by peers. Mystic Trees combined earlier themes with a Catholic mysticism centred on the Virgin Mary, Saint Teresa and an interest in Spanish mystic poets. Initially identifying as atheists in 1877 the pair moved to paganism in 1897, and in 1907 converted to Catholicism. Cover decoration on Mystic Trees includes "Jesu Maria".Notable gift inscription dated 1937 reads "HME Stanton, wishing her a joyous Christmas from AHE Lee". AHE [Arthur Hugh Evelyn] Lee was the editor of The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse and later a vicar. Reportedly an esoteric initiate, Lee convened small groups for mystical or esoteric meetings… Read More