Literature
Rare & Antiquarian Books
Prose, poems and drama are some of the most lasting expressions of beauty to which humankind can aspire. What sort of literature charms you the most? Enjoy browsing the options below:
The first editions of the modern era strike a unique emotional connection.
"Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change." ~ David Brin
Publishers typically report that poetry represents less than 1% of new book sales. That makes poetry one of the scarcest genre of collectible literature!
The dividing line between literature and "mere" popular reads is difficult to define. Usually only time will tell us when a book is ready to be added to this canon.
Cozy, hard-boiled, police procedurals and locked room mysteries. We have something to satisfy your inner detective...in the conservatory, with a lead pipe.
Many of the greatest movies were great books before they came to screen. (The book is always better than the movie!)
Before the hippies freed American culture from the strictures of 1950's, these individual thinkers formed a new path. Can you dig it, man?
Comic books have given unique voice to cartoonists since at least the 19th Century. Not always funny, comic books can be a way of communicating serious thoughts in an appealing way.
Somewhere between dream and primal myth lies horror fiction. From the 19th centuries gothic horror works and the penny dreadfuls that they later evolved to until the contemporary works of Stephen King and Ira Levin that have lost us countless hours of sleep.
The roots of romance fiction extend into the 18th century. Without Jane Austen there would be no Harelequin Romances. Explore love and literature in this collection of the best in Romance Fiction.
From Camus and Flaubert to great French works less known to the non-Gallic world. Great literature is best appreciated in the language in which it was written.
Cervantes and El Cid to Octavio Paz and Che Guevara.
From the Yucatan to Catalonia.
The greatest works written in the Spanish language.
Nabokov was said "I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate brand of English". Here are great works in their original form.
The land that created the Brothers Grimm, Friedrich Nietzsche and Goethe, to mention only a few of history's influential writers who penned their works in German.
The Netherlands was of the greatest colonial powers in history, and one of the greatest sources of art and culture, from Van Gogh to Louis Couperus.
When Speligman's Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, the mainstream world finally caught on to this genre-bending category where the narrative combines words with original art.
Gunslingers, Sheriffs, big bad outlaws with big, bad mustaches...all the kitsch and grit of the American West in popular literature.
Sleazy criminals, bombshells in slinky dresses (if that!), and Johnny Law with his pistol ready...pulp fiction has provided easy reads and charmed fans since the early 20th century.
Elves, fairies, unicorns and the worlds they inhabit...the doors of imagination opened wide to the possibilities of what could have been, or what could yet be.
Imagine the conversations that JRR Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and other luminaries of fantasy had when they met at Oxford in the 1930's and 40's!
The birth of the modern and post modern. These are some of the great works that shaped our love of literature.
A century of some of the greatest luminaries of the literary cannon. Dickens, the Bronte sisters, and even Alice in Wonderland!
The Age of Enlightenment saw a range of great authors and works from the satires of Jonathan Swift to the lyricism of William Wordsworth.
The plays of Shakespeare, the adventures of Don Quixote, Milton's epic poems, all put to paper in the 17th Century.
