First Editions from Lightholder Books

The Land Surveyor's Daughter by Ellen Gilchrist. 1979 Lost Roads, first edition, 46 pages. Gilchrist is a Southern author who won the National Book Award for her story collection Victory Over Japan. Her work is steeped in the Southern tradition, witty and wise. Land Surveyor's Daughter was her first book, a collection of poetry, with a small print run. Condition: Good,… Read more about this item

The Piscean Age: System of World Prophecy by Manly Palmer Hall. 1942 Philosophical Research Society, first edition, 47 pages. Hall was a Canadian Freemason, astrologer, and mystic. Condition: Good, pencil markings and underlining

Blue Movie by Andy Warhol. 1970 Grove Press, first edition, 123 pages. "The complete dialogue with over 100 photos." Blue Movie was the first erotic film to receive wide theatrical release in 1969, and was an influence for Last Tango in Paris. Condition: VG

voices/I hear/voices by William Packard. Illustrated by Steffan. 1972 Barlenmir House, first edition. Packard was a novelist, playwright, and poet who founded the poetry magazine New York Quarterly, known for publishing poems and interviews by the likes of Sexton, Ashbery and Bukowski. Voices was his third book of poems. Condition: Inscribed by the author. Jacket in good- condition with stain on… Read more about this item

Nigeria in Costume.1960, first printing, original blue cloth gilt. 102 pages. Illustrated by John Danford, preface by W.L Stewart. Includes illustrations with accompanying text explaining the dress. Condition: VG. No jacket.

Angels by Denis Johnson. 1983 Knopf, first edition, 209 pages. Johnson was a novelist and poet who garnered acclaim for his short-story collection Jesus's Son and award-winning novel Tree of Smoke. According to New York Times, "[His] novels and short stories about the fallen — junkies, down-and-out travelers, drifters and violent men in the United States and abroad — emerged… Read more about this item

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. 1952 Scribners, first edition, 140 pages. According to a review in the New York Times: "'The Old Man and the Sea' is a short novel, only 27,000 words. It is much simpler and enormously better than Mr. Hemingway's last book, 'Across the River and Into the Trees.' No phony glamour girls… Read more about this item

An Academic Question by Barbara Pym. 1986 Dutton, first American edition, 182 pages. Pym was an English novelist, forever forgotten and rediscovered. In a retrospective in the New York Times: "However remote her themes may seem — a churn of parish politics and petty romances — beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit… Read more about this item

The Land Surveyor's Daughter by Ellen Gilchrist. 1979 Lost Roads, first edition, 46 pages. Gilchrist is a Southern author who won the National Book Award for her story collection Victory Over Japan. Her work is steeped in the Southern tradition, witty and wise. Land Surveyor's Daughter was her first book, a collection of poetry, with a small print run. Condition: Good,… Read more about this item

A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes. Translated by Richard Howard. 1978 Hill and Wang, first U.S. edition, 234 pages. Barthes was a French philosopher, theorist, critic, and intellectual, who died in 1980 by laundry truck. According to the Washington Post: "In "A Lover's Discourse," he wrote that his investigation of love and desire "has been restored to its fundamental person,… Read more about this item

The Soldier from Virginia by Marjorie Bowen. 1912 D. Appleton Company, first U.S. edition, 357 pages. Bowen was a prolific British author with many pseudonyms who published historical and gothic romances, this one about George Washington. According to christopherfowler.co.uk "Bowen's first novel, 'The Viper Of Milan', set in fourteenth century Italy, was published to acclaim when she was just twenty… Read more about this item

The Crazy Ladies by Joyce Elbert. 1969 New American Library, first edition, 438 pages. Elbert, who died in 2009, had a slight resurgence recently with the release of a book of eight essays. In an article for the Star Tribune, Kathleen Rooney starts her review of A Tale of Five Cities : "A contemporary of Jacqueline Susann, credited by Cosmopolitan… Read more about this item

Sweet Desserts by Lucy Ellmann. 1989 Viking, first U.S. edition, 145 pages. Ellman most recently has had success and acclaim with her beast of a novel Ducks, Newburyport, a stream of consciousness, nearly single-sentence novel on the banalities of motherhood told in more than a thousand pages, shortlisting her for the Booker Prize. Sweet Desserts was Ellman's debut and won… Read more about this item

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim (Author of Elizabeth and Her Gardens). 1921 Doubleday, first U.S. edition. Cousin of Katherine Mansfield, von Arnim was a literary success in her time, writing more than twenty books. Her first marriage made her a Countess, and this novel is based on that disastrous relationship. Condition: Acceptable. No DJ, wear and soiling to boards, head of… Read more about this item

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. 2008 Random House, first edition, 270 pages. Strout's third novel of interwoven stories that take place in rustic Maine won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into one of my personal favorite mini-series. Condition: VG, remainder mark, bump to board "Autumn now, November, and so many years later that when Henry runs a comb through his hair… Read more about this item

Confessions of Love by Uno Chiyo. 1990 Peter Owen, first UK edition (c/r 1935),157 pages. Chiyo was a Japanese author, magazine founder, and kimono designer who shocked Japanese society with her public love affairs and short bobbed haircut. Later in life she was recognized as a legend and her novels recognized as masterpieces. Confessions was her debut novel and depicts… Read more about this item

Cliffs of Fall and other stories by Shirley Hazzard. 1963 first U.S. edition, 192 pages. Hazzard was an Australian-American author and essayist best known for her novels Transit of Venus and the Great Fire. Cliffs was her debut, a short-story collection in which all but one of the stories was published in the New Yorker (she was one of the… Read more about this item

An Excursion to the Sky by Grozdana Olujic. 1961 Dutton, first U.S. edition, 156 pages. Olujic was a Serbian author of novels, essays, fairy tales, and children's books. Excursion was her debut novel, published when she was twenty-four years old and inspired comparisons to Francoise Sagan (but make it bleak) and criticism from the "socialist realism" school of thought. Condition: Jacket… Read more about this item

Green Song by Edith Sitwell. 1946 View Editions, first U.S. edition, 49 pages. Sitwell was a British critic and poet, known for her lavish costumes, which became the butt of many jokes, and for her wit and support of other writers. The Green Song was published in the middle of her career. Condition: Jacket acceptable with chips and tears, book in… Read more about this item

Seven Ages by Louise Gluck. 2001 Harper Collins, first edition, 68 pages. Gluck is a Nobel-winning poet and essayist. This was Gluck's ninth volume. According to Kirkus Reviews: "The genius of her poems lies in their ability to sear the summertime onto our souls in such a way that its 'light will give us no peace.'" Condition: Near fine. "It came to… Read more about this item