Rare books from ReadInk

New York: George D. Hurst. Very Good-. [ca. 1895]. Unstated. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [gilt lettering on spine and front cover still bright; book has absorbed some moisture at some point, as there is dampstaining on the front cover and at the margins of both endpapers and pastedowns, and the book itself is a bit bowed; aside from that, however, this is a good solid copy, internally quite clean; there is a bit of damage (splitting) to part of the internal front hinge, but no separation, and the binding is completely intact]. (B&W photographs, diagrams) Very scarce early photography volume, printed in London (per a statement at the back of the book) despite the New York publisher's imprint, and bearing no date on the book itself (the Library of Congress's copy is catalogued as an 1895 publication). 54 illustrations, on 28 plates. .

New York: William Morrow & Company. Very Good. 1934. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [corners bumped, spine cloth browned/discolored, a little soiling to covers, some deterioration/fraying at top of spine; otherwise a decent, solid copy]. (B&W photographs) INSCRIBED and SIGNED on the ffep by Reuben Castang, at the New York World's Fair in 1939. A legendary trainer of circus animals, Castang worked for circus impresario Carl Hagenbeck, and also spent some time in Hollywood, training chimpanzees and other animals for the movies. The book's introduction is by Frank Buck, who considered it "not only a genuine pleasure, but a real duty to recommend this interesting book to every red-blooded boy in America." Signed by Biographee .

Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Near Fine in Near Fine dj. 1934. First Edition. Hardcover. [very nice copy, light shelfwear, a trace of foxing on fore-edge, bookplate on front pastedown; the jacket is remarkably clean and well-preserved, with some minor wear along the top and bottom edges, slight browning to spine, and one tiny nick mid-spine]. A beautiful copy of the author's first book, SIGNED by him directly beneath his printed signature on the title page, and just above one of illustrator Robert Lawson's drawings of the title character. Haines began working as a telephone lineman during summer vacations while in college (University of Pennsylvania), and took on the work full-time upon his graduation in 1931. His experiences on that job provided fodder for his literary efforts, including his first published short stories and two novels, this one and the subsequent "High Tension" in 1937. Time Magazine said of this novel that "in celebrating his craft and the… Read More

New York/Newark: Barse & Co.. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. (c.1931). First Edition. Hardcover. (price-clipped) [a lightly-worn book, with a minor bump to the top rear corner and some slight dust-soiling to the top edge; jacket is bright and colorful, with some very minor paper loss at spine ends (no loss of text), some internal dampstaining to the rear panel with only negligible effect to the exterior]. (frontispiece photo of Gertrude Berg) "The Rise of the Goldbergs" (the title was eventually shortened to simply "The Goldbergs") debuted as a 15-minute weekly program on NBC radio in November of 1929, and was an immediate hit. The show became a daily broadcast in 1931, the same year this book appeared, and by which time (per the book's introduction) NBC had received "so many requests .... for copies of the episodes that it has been found advisable to publish the first volume with subsequent volumes to follow." (Essentially, then, these are radio… Read More

New York: Simon and Schuster, in collaboration with Marc Barraud - Geneva. Near Fine. [1956]. First Edition. Hardcover. 23456 . (laminated pictorial boards; no dust jacket, but now protected by a custom-fitted mylar wrapper) [a very nice copy, the covers a little bit rubbed and with one tiny surface nick to the front cover and a short scrape to the rear cover, in both instances exposing a little bit of white beneath the otherwise black surface; there is also a neatly-inked gift inscription (dated April 1957) on the ffep]. (color photographs) Beautifully-produced companion volume to the 1955 Disney "True-Life Adventure Film" THE AFRICAN LION. Per the statement on the copyright page, the book was "designed by Armand A. Bigle and produced by Marc Barraud from the original French language edition 'Walt Disney Lions d'Afrique' [published in 1955]," and was printed in Switzerland. The text, in this edition at least, was credited to James Algar, who began at the… Read More

New York: Frank-Maurice, Inc.. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1926. First American Edition. Hardcover. NOISBN . [light shelfwear, spine very slightly turned; jacket moderately rubbed, 1-1/2" irregular piece missing from bottom of spine, light soiling to rear panel]. "Henry Stafford, well-known English prince of finance, wealthy, studious, precise to a fault, disappears into thin air somewhere between his home and the Liverpool Station on his way to his office -- leaving a young and exceedingly lovely wife behind. Mystery follows mystery, each becoming more baffling than the last. And it is not until the very last pages of the book that the reader has the slightest idea of what really did happen to Stafford, and why." (No peeking, now.) Very uncommon. .

New York: Ives Washburn, Inc.. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1957. First American Edition. Hardcover. [spine slightly turned, a little wear to top and bottom edges of covers, age-toning and minor soiling to edges of text block; jacket slightly chipped (with old small internal tape repairs) at spine ends (no impact on text), faint (almost invisible) vertical crease in spine, light soiling to rear panel, a couple of tiny nicks in bottom edge of rear panel]. Yep, it's the book from which Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO -- anointed The Greatest Film of All Time by the British Film Institute's "Sight and Sound" panelists' poll -- was (rather freely) adapted. It's a must-have if you're a "books into film" collector, and considerably scarcer for some reason in the American edition than in the British, which preceded it by a year -- although if you're into that "true first edition" business, you really ought to be on the lookout for the French… Read More

New York: Mason Publishing Co.. Very Good+ in Very Good+ dj. 1932 (c.1929). Reprint. Hardcover. [spine turned, light wear to base of spine and bottom corners; jacket slighty faded at spine, with tiny tears at several corners, one-inch closed tear and associated creasing at top of front panel]. An early reprint of the prolific Ms. Mitchell's first novel (first published in the U.S. by Dial Press in 1929), in which a famous arctic explorer is found dead in a bathtub at an English country house -- and is discovered to have been a woman! (Much, I suppose, like a purchaser of this book by "G.M. Mitchell," as she is called in the front jacket panel, might have been surprised to have learned the author's gender only upon turning to the title page.) As Michele Slung wrote of Mitchell, she's "a special taste" whose work "has been little published in the United States since the beginning of her career [yet] to mystery readers in England who have followed the… Read More

(n.p.): Editions for the Armed Services, Inc.. Very Good. [1944] (c.1934). First Edition Thus. Stapled wraps. [moderately worn copy, slght fading along spine, short diagonal crease at bottom corner of front cover; internally quite clean, with typical signs of aging to cheap paper]. An outstanding association copy of Cain's most famous novel, INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the title page -- an amusing inscription to film producer and fellow screenwriter Carey Wilson which reads: "To Cary [sic] Wilson / The best edition / of all / Jim." Wilson was the producer of the long-delayed MGM film version of the book, released in 1946, and in fact had been the first writer assigned to the property when MGM resuscitated it in 1944 (having owned the rights for several years but been put off by the censorship challenges), although the screenplay credit on the finished film was shared by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch. The inscription is undated, but almost certainly dates from the… Read More

London: International Publishers / Martin Lawrence Ltd. (see notes). Very Good in Very Good- dj. 1934. 1st American Edition(?) [see notes]. Hardcover. [modest wear to extremities, spine slightly turned, top edge a bit dust-soiled; jacket spine darkened, one-inch triangular chip at top of spine (losing part of the title), a bit of paper loss at lower spine extremities]. (pen and ink drawings) The writing of this "Robin Hood for Boys and Girls" was inspired by the author's discovery of a translated Russian children's book which dramatized the Soviets' first Five-Year Plan; this led him to conceive this "left-wing update of Robin Hood that showcased a radical approach to historical literature for young people" (per Wikipedia). The jacket blurb declares that Robin Hood "was not just an outlaw [but also] the leader of the dispossessed and disinherited of Merrie England, the sturdy Anglo-Saxon peasantry who were bounded off their common lands, harried and… Read More

London: Selwyn & Blount (1928) Ltd.. Very Good in Very Good- dj. 1929 (c.1925). 11th printing. Hardcover. [modest wear to extremities, pages tanned with age, but generally a good sound copy of a cheaply-manufactured book; former owner's initials plus date & place of purchase written along edge of rear pastedown (concealed by rear jacket flap); the jacket is a bit soiled on the rear panel, with a handful of tiny nicks and edge-tears, minor paper loss at a couple of corners, and a vertical crease along the left edge of the front panel]. ("Not at Night" series, No. 1) Series A very presentable copy of the first entry in the long-running "Not at Night" horror-fiction anthology series. The series was a publishing hit, as evidenced not only by the fact that this title had gone through eleven printings by November 1929 (the daet of this printing, four years after the first edition), but also that it had already spawned four more entries in the series, all blurbed… Read More

[Los Angeles]: "A National Excelsior Publication". Poor. 1962 [1963]. First Edition. Softcover. [externally in pretty bad shape (see images and notes), with part of the front cover torn (or eaten) away, and general overall soiling and discoloration; the binding, however, is intact, and the internals are perfectly OK]. (B&W photographs) Here, my friends, we have that most lamentable and problematic of objects: a unique and highly collectable item that we must honestly acknowledge is in distinctly uncollectable condition -- the very sort of thing that the overworked verbal shrug "it is what it is" was coined to describe. And yet -- and yet -- there's no denying that it IS a thing, and quite a thing at that: an INSCRIBED copy of the FIRST printing of renowned artist Ed Ruscha's iconic first book, published under his own imprint in a numbered edition of just 400 copies (this being No. 87). The work itself is not "rare" -- there was a second edition… Read More

[Norfolk CT]: New Directions. Very Good in Very Good dj. [1950]. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. [a good sound copy, with some shelfwear to the lower edges of the paper-covered boards, and a modest bump to the upper rear corner; the jacket has suffered some very shallow paper loss at and surrounding the top of the spine, and is edgeworn along the spine-folds, with small bit of additional paper loss at the base of the spine and the lower corners; all in all still quite presentable]. (The New Classics Series) Series INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author/poet on the front endpaper: "Norman Lloyd - / - a man with some / good ideas. Here's / hoping / William Carlos Williams / 11/6/50." (It's to be noted that the inscription is written in WCW's flowing, "pre-stroke" hand, executed as it was just a year or so prior to a debilitating stroke which left him partially paralyzed and made his later signatures exceedingly shaky.) As each new installment of Williams's… Read More

New York: Simon and Schuster. Fine in Near Fine dj. (c.1990). First Edition. Hardcover. [the book itself is flawless; the jacket shows only the tiniest traces of handling wear]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the title page: "For Kitaj -- / from his struggling / friend -- / P.R. / London / March 1990." Novel about "a married, middle-aged American named Philip living in London and the married Englishwoman who is his mistress." A very nice association copy; the inscribee was artist R.B. Kitaj, who became a close friend after the two met in London in 1985. Kitaj had positioned himself as an explicitly Jewish artist from the 1970s onward, and it's been noted that much of his thinking, particularly on the question of his Jewish identity, was influenced and inspired by Roth's writings. Kitaj executed a portrait of the writer, in charcoal on handmade paper, around the time they met, which was singled out for praise when it was included in the Tate… Read More

San Francisco: The Arion Press. Fine. 1983. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. (quarter-bound black leather over blue-gray cloth-covered boards, with the Falcon in black leather (with silver trim and red eye) on both front and rear covers; silver lettering on spine; in slipcase, with no dust jacket, as issued) [a beautiful copy, with both book and slipcase utterly unblemished]. (B&W photographs, endpaper maps) The best edition of Hammett's hard-boiled classic, issued in a printing of 400 copies, each signed on the limitation page by the director of the Arion Press (whose 11th book this was), Andrew Hoyem. Beautifully printed and bound, with the red-eyed Black Bird in leather on both covers, the book is illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs (44 in all, a mixture of vintage and contemporary shots) of the many San Francisco locations that were the setting for the novel, plus a tipped-in frontispiece portrait photo of Hammett and a double fold-out panoramic photo,… Read More