Rare books from Peter L. Stern & Company, Inc.

London: Chapman & Hall, 1930. First Edition. A fine copy in a very good dust jacket with some small chips, not affecting illustration or lettering and with very minor internal archival mends. An observant bibliographically inclined collector of our acquaintance, in comparing this example with another at hand, discovered subtle differences in the titles listed on the back panel. Both jackets were priced at the first edition’s issued price of 7/6 (in pre-paperback days, English publishers generally reduced prices quickly to 3/6), but one ends with Jeffery’s Second Choice, while this example lists Jeffery’s Miss Vell Intervenes and follows with Winder’s Sin-Offering. His research indicates that this would have logically followed the former. It can then be presumed that this is at least a second state of the dust jacket.

Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1860. First Edition; three volumes; original publisher’s cloth; without the ad leaf in volume one (Carter’s first state); publisher’s catalogue in volume three; endpapers replaced at what appears to be an early date (evidenced by matching foxing on the preliminaries); minor cloth wear; scattered foxing; a very good set.

San Francisco: Arion Press, 1986. First Edition, thus. Publisher’s binding of decorated plastic hinged with cloth. A fine copy in the original cardboard box. Included are two original 8 x 10” photographs used in the book: “Raymond Chandler’s Grave” (page 6) and “Agnes in Geiger’s Bookshop” (page 40). Each of these has been signed in the lower margin, the second also captioned by Stoumen “from ‘The Big Sleep’.” The photographer was a two time Academy Award winner (1957 and 1962) in the documentary category, and was also nominated for his film about Weegee, “The Naked Eye” in 1956.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1961. First Edition. Near fine in dust jacket. Presentation copy; inscribed by the author, “To Jonathan Miller from the Author.” Fleming, an antiquarian book collector himself, was clearly very much aware of old conventions slipping away, and often adhered to this old custom of inscribing books from “the Author.” In the nineteenth-century, it is not uncommon to find the closest associations; to a wife, mother, child, friend, etc., presented in this manner. In our day, this would seem cold, peculiar, or incomplete, but it does have a certain old-fashioned charm that antiquarian books are supposedly cherished for.

London: George Newnes, 1901. First English Edition; first binding. An extraordinary copy in the rare dust jacket. Aside from minor dust soiling of the edges and slight bumping at the foot of the spine, the book is as fine and bright as one might expect from the more than one hundred years of protection afforded by the jacket, which is virtually free of wear and has slight dust soiling to the spine of the dust jacket,

Each drawing measures approximately 13 x 8”, framed, matted, glazed, and captioned in ink on separate pieces of paper, overall 15 x 22”. One scene is captioned “The Smallweed Family/ Bleak House” and the other “Lord Chancellor Krook and his cat/ Bleak House.” Each is signed by the artist in the lower right corner. The artist was born and began his artistic career in Halifax, Nova Scotia, moving to Boston in the 1850s, where he illustrated for magazines and worked for Prang. Towards the end of his career, from 1896-1899, he did over a hundred illustrations for Dickens’s work. The watercolors are in excellent condition and attractively framed. The pair:

New York: George H. Doran, 1917. First American Edition. A near fine copy in a very good dust jacket with a number of chips and tears. The largest chip at the top of the front panel is about an inch wide, but shallow, affecting the “His” of the title. Another chip obliterates much of the publisher’s imprint at the foot of the spine.

London: Heinemann, 1957. Later edition. A very good copy. Presentation copy; inscribed by the author, "For Betty and Gerard Wellesley with many thanks this pot pourri (some say de chambre) is affectionately inscribed, John Steinbeck, Hedge Hoy Corner 1958.”

New York: Edward Arnold, 1897. First American Edition; with some minor textual differences and an epilogue not included in the English edition. Some cloth soiling and wear; some old, hardly noticeable mending to the front endpaper; very good in a custom clamshell box. Presentation copy; inscribed by Wells with two drawings, “[drawing of a fireplace and a chair and a steaming bowl] To J. Maclaren Cobban, from H.G. Wells [drawing of a small figure - presumably Wells - with a bowl labeled ‘GRUEL’] When they were both ill. 1898.” Cobban was primarily a novelist of adventure and fantasy fiction, and was also a contributor to the Strand Magazine. Inscribed copies of the Wells “scientific romances” are especially scarce.

New York: Scribner’s, 1940. First Edition. A scarce book, of which only 1174 copies were printed. Front endpapers browned from a formerly laid in newspaper clipping, else near fine in a dust jacket with minor browning and spotting.

New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1965. First Edition. Very slight marginal stains on a few leaves; a very good plus copy in a very good dust jacket; in a custom cloth clamshell box. An excellent presentation copy; inscribed by the author, “ For Dean Wayne C. Booth, In thanks for his Rhetoric of Fiction, which I will teach most respectfully next semester. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Nov. 8, 1965.” The title mentioned is Booth’s best-known work. He was Vonnegut’s advisor at the University of Chicago. While Vonnegut books are commonly found signed, genuine contemporary, meaningful presentations are especially scarce.

New York: Scribner’s, 1927. First Edition; first printing. Very good in dust jacket. With Glenway Wescott’s ownership label. Contains “The Killers” and other stories.

New York: Viking Press, 1942. First Edition; first state (printing?) of page 112. Very good in a price-clipped dust jacket. Presented by the author to the senior editor at Viking, “For Marshall Best, John Steinbeck, 1942.”

New York: Vanguard Press, 1944. First Edition of the author’s first book. A fine copy in a dust jacket with very light wear.

London: Gollancz, 1929. Later printing. Bound with a printed cover label in home made wrappers (apparently wallpaper); very good. Some fifteen original individual photographs of the cast, in character, are mounted and interleaved, each signed on the mount by the photographer “Tanqueray.” The leaves are approximately 4 x 7”, and each photo occupies most of the leaf except for the final one, which is half-size. The photos show some oxidation, but are generally in excellent condition. Additionally presented by the photographer on the first blank, “To Ralph [Richardson?] because of our interest in ‘Journey’s End’ from Paul, 1930.” Paul Tanqueray was the most successful theatre photographer of his day, employing the young Cecil Beaton as an assistant.