Rare books from Charles Agvent

New York: Henry Holt, 1915. First American Edition. Hardcover. Gilt bright, very minor rubbing to the spine tips. The scarce dustwrapper has the correct spelling of "faint" on the front. Some mild chipping to the head of the spine just affecting "North" in the title and slightly extending to both panels. Near Fine in a Very Good dustwrapper. Stated "Third Edition" on the copyright page but actually the Second Edition and the first edition printed in America; Crane A3.2: 1300 copies published. Tipped to the front pastedown is an @50 word AUTOGRAPH LETTER dated 12 May 1923 from South Shaftsbury, Vermont, SIGNED by the author, mentioning this book and how Frost would be happy to sign it if it is sent to his Ann Arbor address. On the first blank is a fourteen-line HOLOGRAPH FRAGMENT of Frost's famous poem "Birches," also SIGNED by the author with the dedication beneath his signature "To Maurice Frink," the same person to whom the letter is addressed. The fragment is the heart of the 59-line poem, first… Read More

Concord: G. F. Bemis/John Stacy, 1835. First Edition. Hardcover. The Shattuck title page reinforced at the gutter. Near Fine, neatly rebacked retaining the original spine. Original blindstamped publisher's dark brown cloth containing in this order: Shattuck's HISTORY OF CONCORD (viii, 392 pages with folding map); an offprint REVIEW OF A HISTORY OF CONCORD FROM THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, No. XCI (20 pages); and importantly, Emerson's address on the Second Centennial Anniversary of the incorporation of Concord (52 pages), INSCRIBED by the author on the top of the title: "Mr. Lemuel Shattuck/with Mr. Emerson's comp." The end of the final word in the inscription was trimmed and the original blue wrappers discarded when bound with the other two items, the original size 6-7/16" x 9- 3/4" trimmed to 5-1/2" x 8-3/4". BAL 5178; Myerson A2.1: second state with signature mark 3 present, but he notes that the order of states is arbitrary. Emerson's first separately published substantial publication, preceded… Read More

Washington: Government Printing Office, 1935. First Edition. Hardcover. Some mild foxing to the endpapers and the title page, not affecting the inscription. Very Good. VETO MESSAGE ON THE ADJUSTED COMPENSATION ACT, 1935. Original blue cloth with gilt lettering and the Presidential Seal in gilt on the front cover; [2], 11 pages. Franklin Roosevelt's first Christmas book (there would be seven more), issued in an edition of only 50 copies. SIGNED by the author at the conclusion of the text. In addition, on the front endpaper is the following INSCRIPTION in Roosevelt's hand: "For Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr./with love from Father" and below that also in FDR's hand: "One of 50 copies." From the text: "A government, like an individual, must ultimately meet legitimate obligations out of the production of wealth by the labor of human beings applied to the resources of nature.... The herculean task of the United States Government today is to take care that its citizens have the necessities of life. We are… Read More

Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, 1930. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine with wonderful inscription. Original full red crushed levant morocco leather with gilt-lettered maroon calf label on the spine, recently and neatly rebacked retaining the original spine. Halter T-482. James Roosevelt's copy with his name in gilt on the front cover. INSCRIBED and SIGNED on the front blank: "For my own boy Jimmy/from his affectionate Pa/Franklin D. Roosevelt." Roosevelt had copies of this book specially bound for his children. James, eldest son of FDR, would become an assistant to his father in the White House and a decorated Marine brigadier general in World War II. As a ten-year member of the House of Representatives, he was one of the first politicians to attack the tactics of Joseph McCarthy and was the only member of the House to vote against giving the House of Un-American Activities money.

1949 - 1955. Letter. Very Good to Near Fine. Exceptional archive of 15 pieces including 4 TYPED LETTERS SIGNED from Merton to his typist, Ann Skakel (mother of Ethel Kennedy); a wonderful TYPED LETTER from Merton (signed in type) to his friend and teacher, Donald Walsh; 8 retained TYPED LETTERS from Skakel to Merton; a TYPED LETTER SIGNED from Walsh to Skakel; and a photograph of Merton's ordination annotated on the verso by Walsh. Superb content throughout with Merton's letters, SIGNED as "Father Louis" or "Father M. Louis Merton," containing much discussion of his work, including forwarding the carbon copy of his manuscript of his new book THE ASCENT TO TRUTH (not present here). There are maybe a dozen or so holograph additions by Merton in the letters. Merton's lengthy letter to Walsh discusses more spiritual matters: "The fact that I get scared of Our Lord and have to trust Him blindly about the present and the future is, however, sufficient pledge of what one must expect. So I turn to jelly on… Read More

Philadelphia: Frederick W. Greenbough, 1838. First Edition. Hardcover. Some rubbing to the binding; plates clean and bright. About Fine. The first volume of this magnificent three-volume set. Folio (14-3/4" x 21") bound in contemporary half red morocco leather with matching corners and marbled boards, gilt-decorated spine with six raised bands and matching black morocco spine labels. Illustrated with 48 beautiful hand-colored lithographs of Native Americans based on original oil portraits painted from life in the studio of Charles Bird King, to whom McKenney brought many of the subjects. The rest were copied from watercolors executed in the field by a young frontier artist named James Otto Lewis. The finished portraits were housed in the Smithsonian where all but four were destroyed in a fire in 1865. Their appearance here is not only the best but in many cases the only likenesses of many of the most prominent Indian leaders of the nineteenth century. Bennett, p. 79; BAL 6934; Field 992; Howes M129:… Read More

Washington: Government Printing Office, 1939. First Edition. Hardcover. Text block pulling from covers a bit but still very tight; some spotting to leather. Near Fine in a custom clamshell box. Specially bound in black morocco leather, covers with single-fillet gilt border, front cover gilt-lettered; blue watered silk linings, the front lining centering the Presidential seal stamped in gilt. Illustrated with photos; 47 pages. INSCRIBED BY THE PRESIDENT TO HIS SON on the front endpaper: "FDR Jr. from FDR 1939." Included in the text is FDR's address on pages 35-42. One of the scarcest of the Christmas book series, this title has neither a printed nor autograph colophon, and the number of copies made remains unknown. While never achieving the renown of his father, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. was a successful congressman (1949-1954) who twice ran for governor of New York and who was a close friend and early backer of John F. Kennedy. He later became a successful businessman. Housed in a custom blue silk… Read More

London: David Nutt, 1913. First Edition. Hardcover. A spectacular copy with an exceptional association. Original bronzed brown pebbled cloth, gilt-lettered on the front cover. Crane A2: First Issue, Binding A of Frost's first book. Less than 350 copies of the first issue in the first binding were issued, from a total edition of 1,000. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper: "To William Stockhausen/this a first of my first/Robert Frost/and pleased to meet it/again so fresh after all/these years/Dec 26 1960." In addition on the front endpaper is the pencil ownership signature of Henry James, Jr. with a 55 East 65th St. address. According to the SOTHEBY PARKE BERNET catalog of THE WILLIAM E. STOCKHAUSEN COLLECTION, 1974, "this copy is most certainly from the library of Henry James the novelist. The owner name is in the hand of his nephew Henry James but appears to be an identification of source. The nephew inherited a large part of the novelist's library on the author's death in 1916.… Read More

Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1948. First Edition. Hardcover. Slight sunning to the spine, about Fine, lacking the slipcase. First Edition preceding the trade edition. Illustrated with drawings and photographs. There were 1426 deluxe numbered copies SIGNED by the author on the facsimile page of the D-Day Order to send the troops to storm the beaches of Normandy, which begins: "You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you." Of those 1426 copies, the first 25 were bound in full red morocco leather and put aside for Eisenhower's personal use. This is Copy #4 and in addition to having the SIGNED order is INSCRIBED by the President to his brother on the limitation page: "For my brother Edgar,/In the hope that herein/he may find some small/thing to compensate him for/all the trouble caused him/by the soldier member of the/family, with lasting devotion./Ike." Edgar N. Eisenhower (19 January 1889 - 12 July 1971)… Read More

First Edition. Hardcover. Fine and rare, beautifully bound. Folio (8-1/4" x 11-3/4") consisting of 53 pages numbered to 54 (one page contains two numbers) on lined yellow paper with a few additions at the end on white paper pasted to the yellow pages with a calligraphic title page facing a photographic reproduction of Miller. Bound in 3/4 maroon morocco leather and marbled boards housed in a slipcase of full burgundy morocco leather. Though some of the phrases, such as the title, are used in other of Miller's works, this long narrative poem appears to be unpublished. The poem begins: "In the morning of the world;/Ere the holy stars were born--/Early morning of the world;/O, that wondrous, wondrous morn!" We have at this point not read much else because our lives are short and Miller's handwriting is trying, but we are fairly confident that the text deals at least in part with the Alaskan Gold Rush of the 1890s as Miller visited the Klondike during that time returning to California after six months,… Read More

[Los Angeles]: Selznick International Pictures, Inc., 16 October 1936. First Edition. Softcover. Expected wear for working scripts but Very Good and stunning. Quarto (8-1/2" x 10-7/8") in stiff yellow wraps with the left margins punch-holed with metal clasps. The archive includes two copies of the Final Shooting Script (one belonging to Director William A. Wellman and the other, a partial script, to screenwriters Dorothy Parker and her husband, Alan Campbell); a SIGNED 8" x 10" Photograph of Fredric March who starred as Norman Maine (INSCRIBED "To Zoila/all good wishes/always/Fredric March/1937"); a formal 8" x 10" photograph of Parker and Campbell; and a small photograph of Wellman's secretary, Zoila Conan, holding two Oscar statues and annotated on the verso in an unknown hand: "Zoila Conan at Paramount Studios with Bob Carson's Oscar + Wm. Wellman's Oscar awarded for A STAR IS BORN made at Selznick Studios with Janet Gaynor & Fredric March." The film was nominated for 7 awards, including Best… Read More

London: Walter Scott, 1887. First Edition. Hardcover. Toning to paper. Neat professional repair to hinges. Very Good. Original dark blue cloth with a printed paper spine label. Part of the Camelot Series. BAL 21428: Binding A. Most of the material within first appeared 5 years earlier in SPECIMEN DAYS & COLLECT published by Rees Welsh and Company in Philadelphia. This edition is "Newly Revised by the Author, with Fresh Preface and Additional Note." INSCRIBED by the poet on the front endpaper to his niece: "Jesse L. Whitman/Oct: 1888--/to my Dear Jess:/from Uncle Walt." SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA contains largely personal reminiscences, including hospital scenes and incidents during the Civil War. An exceptionally scarce family Association Copy of what is considered the largest and most important work of Whitman's old age, a new form of autobiography linking personal and national history. Jessie Louisa Whitman was the daughter of Walt Whitman's brother, Jeff. She and her older sister Manahatta… Read More

Leipzig and Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1900 [1899]. First Edition. Hardcover. Clean and fresh, inside and out. A few minor scratches to the leather. Near Fine and scarce. Bound in modern full blue morocco, not retaining the original wraps (6" x 8-1/2"); [iv], 371, [5] pages including table of contents and bibliography. With the motto after Virgil on the title page: “Flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo” (“If heaven does not hear me, then I call hell to help”). The true first edition of THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS in the original German, considered the foundational work of psychoanalysis and containing the central theses and themes of Freudian theory, including the unconscious (introduced here), repression, the Oedipus complex, the libido, early childhood sexuality, etc. Appearing in an edition of only 600 copies and published on 4 November 1899 (the publisher deliberately dated the title page to the 20th century), the book sold so slowly that a second edition was not needed until 1909.… Read More

Boston & New York: Munroe and Francis; Charles S. Francis, 1828. Second Edition. Hardcover. A Fine example of this scarce title. Duodecimo (4-1/4" x 6-3/4") bound in contemporary calf, recently and neatly rebacked; 180 pages. A rare example of the FIRST COMMERCIALLY PUBLISHED BOOK WRITTEN BY AN AFRICAN AMERICAN IN THE UNITED STATES and THE FIRST COOKBOOK WRITTEN BY AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN. A guide for house servants to help them to understand the rules of keeping a prominent white household, it includes recipes and advice to black servants on how to properly clean plates, what to wear, what time to arise for work, how to deal with drunk people, how to restore furniture, and how to take care of themselves. More household-management manual than cookbook, Roberts gives suggestions for employers on how to manage domestic help (very unusual for the time), but he was more interested in teaching young black men how to succeed in their work and ensure their advancement. Roberts begins the book: "In order to get… Read More

London: T. Bensley for the author, 1797-1815. First Edition. Hardcover. Fairly large copy in comparison to others sold in the recent past. Occasional minor foxing, toning, or off-setting; some light pencil notes/corrections to some leaves. In all, rather clean and attractive examples of these volumes with the plates generally bright and vivid with offsetting to text. Rubbing and light scuffs to bindings. Near Fine. Twelve large quarto volumes (8-1/2" x 10-1/2") volumes consisting of volumes 1-6 bound in full green morocco leather gilt with all edges gilt and volumes 5-10 in half brown morocco with marbled boards and matching morocco corners, gilt-lettered spines; marbled endpapers. A complete 10-volume set made up from two different incomplete sets resulting in duplicate volumes of 5 and 6 resulting in a total of 12 volumes. Illustrated with 664 plates with 64 folding/double, in the complete set, plus 144 plates with 4 folding/double bringing the grand total to 808 plates with 68 folding/double.… Read More