Search Results: Titles starting with V from Sumner & Stillman

1895. [1/100, in unbound signatures] Being Correspondence addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin. November 1890 - October 1894. In Two Volumes. Chicago: Stone & Kimball, 1895. Original folded unbound signatures. First Edition, Large Paper Issue, consisting of 100 numbered copies on John Dickinson & Co. paper -- this copy unnumbered, and in fact still in its unbound signatures. VAILIMA LETTERS was published in Chicago in late October 1895, about a week before the London edition, in the year following Stevenson's death; "Vailima" ("five rivers") was the name Stevenson gave to the home he and his family made for themselves in Samoa. This is a remarkable, never-issued copy, a complete set of the folded sheets which never went to the binder -- where the two volumes would have been bound in grey paper-covered boards, and where each volume would have had a frontispiece inserted (here absent). Condition is just about fine (one small damp-mark at the top edge of the first couplet of Vol I).… Read More

1895. Being Correspondence addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin November 1890 - October 1894. London: Methuen & Co., 1895. Original pinkish-tan buckram decorated in gilt. First English Edition, domestic issue (with title page in red and black), published about a week after the two-volume Chicago edition. "Vailima" ("five rivers") was the name Stevenson gave to the home he and his family made for themselves in Samoa. This copy is fine except that (as always with this color cloth) there is some fading of the spine. Beinecke (Yale) 613; Princeton 60B (copy 2 - no ads, as with this copy).

1870. Woods, H.. With Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870. Original purple straight-grain-morocco cloth. First one-volume, first hard-bound, and first obtainable American edition of this novel "written chiefly with the idea of exciting not only pity but also sympathy for a fallen woman" [per Trollope's autobiography]. Carry Brattle, the Bullhampton miller's daughter, seduced and then rejected by a lover, was "exiled" to London with her illegitimate child -- who in turn would years later be accused of a murder; the town Vicar, who had earlier befriended the young boy, steps in to solve the case by finding the real murderers. For decades, it was believed (per Sadleir) that Lippincott's authorized edition and Harper's pirated edition came out at about the same time, May-June 1870. But then Walter Smith's 2002 bibliography told a different story. Keeping up with UK serialization, Lippincott published a Part I in wrappers in September 1869, and a Part II in wrappers in April 1870 -- both… 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

1878. A Comic Opera. In Two Acts. The Music by John Hullah. London: Richard Bentley, 1836 [but ca. 1878]. Original printed self-wrappers. This is the ca. 1878 facsimile reprint of the 1836 first edition of Dickens's first play to be published -- which by 1878 was already a rare item. It is identifiable by the "A Facsimile Reprint" on the title verso, but also by the width of "Richard Bentley," reduced to 2-3/8 inches. Spine deftly restored but this is otherwise a fine copy with unopened leaves. Podeschi (Yale) B39; see Carr (UTexas) B526; Eckel pp 157-158.

1930. Florence: G. Orioli, 1930. Original cream paper boards decorated in orange-red, with printed spine label, with dust jacket. First Edition (issued as No. 4 in the publisher's "Lungarno Series"), consisting of 810 numbered copies -- of which this is No. 743. Lawrence had actually written this back in late 1925, after he and Frieda had returned from Taos to Europe for the last time. This Florence edition came out in May 1930, two months after D.H. Lawrence died in France; Secker's UK edition and Knopf's US edition came out that October and November respectively. It is the tale of the virginal daughter of a rector in a secluded English village, who yearns for something beyond what she knows, when a swarthy gipsy happens along... -- the basis for the 1970 film starring Honor Blackman. This volume is in fine condition, without soil or wear, and includes the spare label tipped in at the back; "fine" also describes the jacket ("... a green paper dust-jacket printed in black which is usually found to… Read More

1881. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881. 32 pp ads dated July 1881. Original orange cloth decorated in black, beveled. First Edition, first issue, of Stevenson's first volume of collected essays (which had appeared in periodicals such as The Cornhill during the late 1870s). These essays epitomize Stevenson's early expository style. It is good to have been young in youth and, as years go on, to grow older... These papers are like milestones on the wayside of my life... [from this book's dedication to W.E. Henley] The title essay (Latin for "For Girls and Boys"), which he wrote in 1876 (as his relationship with Mrs. Sitwell was waning, before he met Fanny Osbourne), is largely upon the subject of marriage. The first issue is identifiable by the "C. Kegan Paul & Co." at the foot of the spine -- the same as on the title page; later copies bound up read "Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.," reflecting the firm's change of name, and still later copies read "Chatto & Windus" after that firm bought up Kegan Paul. The… Read More

1919. New York: George H. Doran Company, n.d.[1919]. Original grey-green cloth, with dust jacket. First American Edition of this sequel of sorts to THE NEW REVELATION, on the subject of spiritualism -- Doyle's new focal point after losing his son Kingsley in 1918 and his brother Innes earlier in 1919; "one sees more clearly and broadly what our new relations with the Unseen may be," says Doyle in his preface. Included are plates with examples of "spirit photography." This copy is from the first issue (ending at page 160, without the later-added fourth appendix). The volume is in fine condition, unusual for such a cheaply-produced book; the uncommon dust jacket (which asks "ARE THE DEAD REALLY DEAD?") is nearly fine as well, with one tiny hole in the rear panel. Green & Gibson B25b.

1900. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1900. Original tan cloth decorated in dark green. First Edition of Ellen Glasgow's third book -- a tale of the Reconstruction Era -- the first volume in a trilogy (followed by BATTLE-GROUND in 1902 and THE DELIVERANCE in 1904) that deals with life in Virginia from the end of the Civil war until the turn of the century. THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE is set in Kingsborough, Virginia (modeled upon Williamsburg), and portrays the social stress caused by the rise of the rural lower class during the years immediately after the Civil War. Ellen Glasgow, born and raised in Richmond, would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1942, for IN THIS OUR LIFE. This is a handsome copy, fine except for the slightest of darkening of the spine.