Search Results: Titles starting with W from Sumner & Stillman

1944. With Decorations by J.J. Lankes. Boston: The Horn Book, 1944. Original light brown buckram printed in red, with front cover plate, with dust jacket. First American Edition. This edition, and Warne's UK edition, were published shortly after this tale's first appearance in the 20th Anniversary Number of The Horn Book (Boston, May 1944). Although Beatrix Potter did not write WAG-BY-WALL itself until 1940-1943, its roots went way back: in 1909 she had originally conceived of the tale (involving a singing kettle and "Wag-by-wall," a magical clock), with a working title of THE LITTLE BLACK KETTLE. She re-wrote it in 1929 (as "Wag-by-the-Wa'") for inclusion in THE FAIRY CARAVAN -- but it was left out, so more than a decade later, she revised it yet again for The Horn Book. She completed it in the autumn of 1943, but agreed with The Horn Book to hold it for their anniversary issue -- which unfortunately turned it into a posthumous publication, as she died three days before Christmas 1943. (Thus the… Read More

1890. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890. Original royal blue cloth decorated in black, page edges stained orange. First American Edition, published about two months after the edition in London (where Harte was then living). This copy is from the first printing, with (across from the title page) this title priced at $1.25 -- which would soon be reduced to $1.00. Harte was still trying to "mine" frontier tales, despite having permanently moved to Great Britain (without his wife and children) in 1878: this novel tells of the orphan Susy traveling the Oregon Trail in the summer of 1852 (three years later, Harte would continue her saga with SUSY: A STORY OF THE PLAINS). This copy is in good-to-very good condition (some whitish marks on the covers, minor shelf-wear, volume askew). Blanck 7350. Provenance: the front free endpaper bears Harte's inscription "Mrs Myers | from | Bret Harte | London, July 1890". Eveleen Tennant (1856-1937) in 1888 embarked on a career as a self-taught… Read More

1902. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1902. Original white wrappers. First Edition of Doyle's third piece of nonfiction, published two months before THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. He wrote this piece, drawing considerably from his THE GREAT BOER WAR (of 1900), in an effort "to stem the extraordinary outbreak of defamation" against Britain; it was issued in substantial numbers and was immediately translated into many languages, as a publicity campaign for Britain's purpose in the war. It is nonetheless scarce in desirable condition today, due to its fragility. This copy is remarkably near-fine, with very little soil or wear. One can see, at the top of the front wrapper, the erased signature of "L. Ropner" and the date "27.1.02" -- eleven days after publication. This was likely a member of the German-British shipbuilding / shipowner family (originally Röpner) in the UK, later elevated to the peerage. Green & Gibson B3a.

1908. And particularly how Mr. Bert Smallways fared while it lasted. With Illustrations by A.C. Michael. London: George Bell and Sons, 1908. 2 pp undated ads. Original blue cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition of this extraordinary tale of a Cockney cycle mechanic who is carried off by a drifting balloon and is then caught up in a surprise German air attack on New York City -- which in turn precipitates the collapse of civilization. Though this book typifies Wells's fantastic "fiction about the future" (and includes a remarkable forecast of aerial warfare), it is perhaps more noteworthy as one of his earliest warnings about "the German menace" -- a topic to which he would devote increased attention over the coming years. This copy is in Currey's binding "A" (with lettering in gilt on both the front cover and the spine, and with no mounted color plate). This is a very good-plus copy (general minor rubbing at the edges, spine slightly faded); atypically, the original endpapers are intact. Wells Soc.… Read More

1899. [Will Bradley's masterpiece] New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1899. Original grey paper boards pictorially decorated in black, with spine label. First Edition of Crane's eighth book, his second volume of verse (some of which had appeared in the 1896 Roycroft Quarterly as "A Souvenir and A Medley"). Crane wrote these poems in Havana, during his nine-month separation from Cora; he called them his "Intrigue" poems, as in general they concerned his love-conflict between Cora (then being foreclosed upon in England) and Lily Brandon Munroe. Mainly interesting as biography, these poems have been ignored or slighted by Crane's biographers and critics. They are memorable not as poetry but as poetic documents of personal feeling [Stallman]. But today this book is sought just as much for Will Bradley's book design and illustrations: the book is now regarded as typifying the best of American book design of the 1890s. The book was "arranged and printed by Will Bradley," with the text and his many… Read More

1938. Being Heretofore Uncollected Sketches published in the Golden Era in the Sixties... With Many Drawings by Lloyd Hoff. Collected and Edited, with an Introduction by Franklin Walker. San Francisco: George Fields, 1938. Original green paper-covered boards with black cloth spine and green spine label, with dust jacket. First Edition of this collection of sketches that Twain had written at the outset of his career, for Golden Era in San Francisco during the 1860s. He did not have them collected in book form earlier because he considered many of them too unrefined for his subsequent Eastern readers. This copy is in fine condition; the dust jacket is near-fine (spine slightly faded, a few tiny tears). Blanck 3559.

1902. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1902. 32 pp ads dated "2/02". Original blue cloth lettered in white and pictorially decorated in orange, black and white. First Edition, first printing, first state -- of one of Buchan's earliest and scarcest fiction titles, and one of his creepiest. It is a collection of five fantastical tales, most with supernatural and horror elements that are drawn from Scottish folklore -- "No-Man's-Land," "The Far Islands," "The Watcher by the Threshold," "The Outgoing of the Tide" and "Fountainblue." Quoting from Bleiler regarding the fourth tale... If one goes to the Sker sands on Beltane Eve (April 30th), on the ebb of tide, after midnight, one becomes the property of the Devil. Heriotside and Allie are lovers, and each is urged to go to the sands for a tryst -- Heriotside by a shadowy demon in human form, Allie by her witch mother... (This title is not to be confused with a [1918] Buchan volume by the same title, by Doran of New York, which consisted… Read More

1896. London: Chatto and Windus, 1896. 32 pp ads dated Mar 1896. Original very dark blue cloth, beveled. First Edition of Stevenson's last fiction, left unfinished at his death. Stevenson began writing this book in 1892 (he called it THE JUSTICE-CLERK), but kept putting it aside to write others -- notably THE EBB-TIDE. "'He wrote [WEIR OF HERMISTON] hard all that morning of the last day,' Lloyd Osbourne wrote of the day Stevenson died, 3 December 1894" [Swearingen]. This is a just-about-fine copy, with scarcely any wear. Beinecke 629; Princeton 62A.

1899. [illustrated by himself] With 30 Illustrations by the Author. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1899. Original light green cloth pictorially decorated in orange, yellow-green, light blue and white. First American Edition of Hardy's first volume of verse, published about six weeks after the London one (which was dated 1898). This volume "marks the final emergence of Hardy's primary interest, verse. The thirty years that remained to him were devoted to the composition of poetry..." [Purdy]. Of particular interest are the 31 illustrations by Hardy himself (the number cited on the title page apparently excludes the frontispiece); they serve as "a pleasant reminder of Hardy's architectural training and his skill as a draughtsman." These illustrations were discarded when WESSEX POEMS was next reprinted (in 1912). This is a bright, nearly fine copy of this attractively-bound volume that is printed on heavy glossy paper; there is a touch of wear at the corners of the spine, and the front… Read More

1896. That is to say: An Imaginative Woman | The Three Strangers | The Withered Arm | Fellow-Townsmen | Interlopers at the Knap | and The Distracted Preacher. With an Etching by H. Macbeth-Raeburn and a Map of Wessex. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896. Original dark green cloth with monogram device in gilt. "Wessex Novels" edition -- containing the first American appearance of Hardy's short story "An Imaginative Woman," which he had recently written in 1893 (after TESS and before JUDE). WESSEX TALES was Hardy's first collection of short stories, originally published in two volumes in 1888; however it consisted of only the five other tales, which he had written by then. Osgood McIlvaine in the UK, and Harper in the US (as here), published this first uniform edition of Hardy's works, volume-by-volume during the period 1895-96. It is an important edition, because the text of every title was thoroughly revised by Hardy -- and with this title, he actually added a new tale. Hardy also wrote a Preface for… Read More

1934. London: Macmillan and Co., 1934. Original bright blue-green cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition, which consisted of 3000 copies -- dedicated to Lady Gregory, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, who had died in 1932. This volume consists of four plays that had appeared onstage at the Abbey Theatre -- "The Words upon the Window-pane," "Fighting the Waves," "The Resurrection" and "The Cat and the Moon." "Fighting the Waves" appears in book form here for the first time; the other three had appeared only as numbers of the Cuala Press, but are here accompanied by long Introductions written by Yeats for this book. The final section of the book is the music, by George Antheil, for "Fighting the Waves." This volume is in fine condition, the leaves still unopened; the dust jacket is just about fine as well (a few stray marks). Wade 175.

1903. From Letters, Diaries, and Recollections. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1903. Original dark green cloth. First American Edition, first state, of this bibliographically-complex biography by James. William Wetmore Story (1819-1895) graduated from Harvard College in 1838 and Harvard Law School in 1840, but after practicing under his father for a decade, in 1850 he moved permanently to Rome to follow his real passion, sculpture. HJ had met Story in Rome in the 1870s. After Story's death, his family asked HJ to write a biography -- which HJ did, but with difficulty, because he thought Story was more of a wealthy dilettante than an accomplished artist. Hence the "and His Friends" -- HJ concentrated on Robert and Elizabeth Browning, James Russell Lowell, and others of greater fame than Story. According to E&L, a total of about 2250 sets were printed by Blackwood in five indistinguishable printings, and of these, 1800 were exported to the U.S. and issued with Houghton Mifflin title pages dated… Read More

1916. New York: John Lane Company | London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1916. Original orange-brown cloth decorated in black and gilt. First Edition of Sherwood Anderson's first (and most autobiographical) novel -- a rags-to-riches-to-unhappiness tale of an Ohio newsboy, complete with alcoholic father and martyr mother who in trying to feed her children works her way into an early grave. Sam McPherson strives for and achieves fortune, only to realize (after driving his father-in-law to suicide) that there is more to life than money. In 1922, this novel would be re-published with a different ending (less vague, more optimistic -- though many have argued that either ending is too unlikely). In any case, this was Anderson's initiation into the art of writing fiction -- which would come to fruition three years later, with WINESBURG, OHIO (1919). This is a fine copy of this early midwestern novel (complete with ear of corn on front cover and spine). Housed in a (slightly wrinkled) slipcase with leather label.

1900. Also Letters from Julian Ralph, Charles E. Hands and Douglas Story. Santiago de Chile: Hume & Co., 1900. Original printed fawn wrappers. First Edition (unauthorized), issued as a volume in the publisher's "Libreria Inglesa." This volume published in Chile includes three poems and two stories that Kipling wrote during the Boer War, plus four poems written earlier; it is the first edition in book form, anywhere, of the poems "Pharaoh and the Sergeant" and "Kitchener's School," and of the Boer War tales "With Number Three" and "Surgical and Medical." "It has been said that this is the only case on record of a first edition of a book being published in a country never visited by the author, and where people did not speak his language" [Richards]. Hume, the proprietor of Santiago's main bookstore, was a huge Kipling fan, but it appears that he overestimated the Chilean Kipling market: he supposedly printed 400 copies, but few sold and the remainder were either burnt in 1906 or pulped at a paper… Read More

1892. ["Little Boy Blue"] New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892. Original pale blue paper-covered boards with white parchment spine and fore-tips. First Edition -- which is to say, the large-paper issue, preceding the trade issue -- of this famous collection of children's verse. Some poems had appeared in a couple of earlier Field books, but much had appeared only in newspapers or magazines. Included are Field's best-known poems such as "Wynken, Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue." This is #146 of the 250 Van Gelder large-paper copies signed by "Charles Scribner's Sons"; according to Blanck (citing the publisher's records), these 250 copies were issued on November 21st, while the trade copies came out on December 3rd. It is in just-about-fine condition, with scarcely any of the cover soil typically found on such a light-colored binding. Blanck 5750.

1895. London: F.V. White & Co., 1895. 16 pp undated ads (paginated as the end of the book). Original rose-mottled cloth. First Edition. This is one of Henty's historical tales for adults, rather than for boys, which is why it is not published by his usual publisher Blackie. This is a very good-plus copy: the spine is a little faded and the gilt lettering does not stand out well against such light-colored cloth, and there is a small mark near the bottom of the front cover; that said, there is very little actual wear, and the brittle original patterned endpapers have only minor cracking. These Henty tales for adults are much scarcer than his tales for boys. Newbolt 65.1.

1894. Shannon, Charles. London: John Lane at the Sign of the Bodley Head, 1894. 16 pp ads dated March 1894. Original violet cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition of Wilde's satirical play about upper-class social scandal, which consisted of 500 copies (so stated -- half as many copies as the following year's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST). Wilde wrote this play for production by Herbert Beerbohm Tree (Max's elder brother), of the Theatre Royal in Haymarket, where it opened on 19 April 1893. The sophisticated Lord Illingworth has appointed young Gerald Arbuthnot to be his Secretary, but Gerald's mother, "a woman of no importance," guards a long-concealed secret that prompts her to advise her son to decline the appointment -- but is reluctant to say why... Mason quotes an April 1893 theatrical review: "...the scene between Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Arbuthnot at the end of the second act of this play [pp 76-82] is the most virile and intelligent -- yes, I mean it, the most intelligent -- piece of… Read More