Rare books from Riverrun Books & Manuscripts

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. First edition. Cloth spine somewhat toned, jacket lightly rubbed and with several tears at ends of spine panel. 8vo. Illustrated by Joseph Schindelman. Original cloth-backed boards; dust jacket.

New York: New Directions, 1947. 8vo. Original boards; dust jacket designed by Alvin Lustig. A near-fine copy with slightest wear at extremities; fresh price-clipped jacket with some toning and pale shadow. Overall a very handsome copy of a jacket so susceptible to fading. FIRST EDITION, first printing. This classic play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The 1951 film adaptation won four Academy Awards.

Milan: Achille Mauri, 1968. Thermoformed plastic multiple: 11.75 x 11.75 inches; 30 x 30 cm. Some minor age darkening at the edges, generally in fine condition, without cracks or abrasions. The book: 44 pages. Text by Vincenzo Agnetti. In Italian, French, and German. Photographs by Giorgio A. Colombo, Franco Angeli, Ugo Mulas, and Uliano Lucas. Original printed wrappers. Both enclosed in original publisher's printed cardboard box. One of 1000 copies of this multiple and catalogue, issued together in 1968 by Mauri. The multiple shares the characteristic play with light and shade created by Castellani's monochrome painted canvases stretched over nails. "Enrico Castellani strives for immateriality, to the point that even the paint materials lose their physical-empirical, sensual character, a means of emphasizing the intended otherness of the pictorial object. Castellani does not operate with concrete cultural references or archaic, mythical metaphors, for he is more concerned with creating… Read More

London: John Murray, 1912. A very good copy, light wear and pale spotting to cloth, endpapers discolored, tissue guards creased, some pale intermittent foxing. Two volumes, 8vo. Photogravure frontispiece to each volume, 92 similar plates, 2 plates of manuscript facsimile, 6 maps and charts (3 folding), 16 charts and tables to the text. Original dark red cloth, gilt titles and enamelled Norwegian flags to spines and within simple red frame to front boards, top edges gilt, others untrimmed. Provenance: W. S. Godfrey (ownership signatures on front free endpapers). FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, first impression, of Amundsen's legendary narrative of his race to the Pole.

New York: W. W. Norton, 1932. A near-fine copy with a few small areas of discoloration to cloth, in a very good price-clipped jacket with losses at ends of spine and at lower rear panel. 4to. 240 pages. 82 full-page photographs of contemporary buildings, accompanied by plans. Cloth; dust jacket. Provenance: Samuel M. Nickerson (pencil inscription dated Sept. 11 1934 on front free endpaper), possibly a descendent of Samuel M. Nickerson (1830-1914) of Chicago, banker and owner of the famed Gilded Age Nickerson House, now the home to the Richard H. Driehaus Museum. FIRST EDITION of this seminal book on Modernist architecture, designed by Werner Helmer. The book illustrates buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, J. J. P. Oud, Mies van der Rohe, Raymond M. Hood, Howe & Lescaze, Richard J. Neutra, and other architects. It was published on the occasion of MoMA's exhibition "Modern Architecture, International Exhibition," and includes an introduction by the museum's director Alfred… Read More

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928. An internally bright and clean copy in a worn binding, with a large stain on cover affecting title [without the dust jacket]. 8vo. 216, [1] pages. Plates by Gibran. Original black cloth. FIRST EDITION. A SCARCE PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED by Gibran in Arabic on the front free endpaper: "Ila al-Akh Jawaad [To the brother Jawaad], Jibran, 1928." A work seldom found signed or inscribed. Gibran portrays the life of Jesus through the words of 77 contemporaries who knew him: enemies and friends; Syrians, Romans, Jews, priests, and poets.

Leipzig: Georg Voss, 1804. Title creased and dust-soiled, final plate creased, lower wrapper detached. Oblong folio (18 x 10.75 inches; 455 x 273 mm). Engraved title in the form of a sampler, 52 pages, 50 engraved plates, consisting of 25 plates in two states, colored and uncolored. 19th-century stiff marbled paper wrappers; modern cloth-backed fitted case. SCARCE: Only the Metropolitan Museum of Art copy of this edition is located in the US. Copies of the 1802 French edition are held by the Smithsonian and Winterthur, and of the 1800 edition at U. Michigan and the Clark Art Institute. European online library databases record only a handful of copies of each edition in German, Swiss, French and British libraries. No copies have appeared at auction in the past century, according to databases. A beautifully illustrated manual for knitting and crocheting. This is the second, enlarged edition in German and the third edition overall, following a French version published in 1802. Netto's goal was to… Read More

New York: Townsend MacCoun, 1909. A fragile set with the maps printed on delicate, thin paper that, despite the condition issues outlined separately, has remained fresh and bright, with strong coloring and a lack of offsetting; the portfolio a bit faded and soiled and with some light wear at the extremities. Portfolio containing five loose folding color maps printed by L. L. Poates Engineering Co., NY: 1. 1609. The Island of Manhattan (Mannahtin) at the Time of Its Discovery. 410 x 132 cm. Based on the early colonial surveys of Ratzer, Montresor, Knypthausen, Bradford, Duyckinck and the 1867 survey by E. L. Viele. (A few small holes and separations along folds.) - 2. 1609 The Hudson River (Cahohatatea) at the Time of Its Discovery by Henry Hudson. 22 x 85 cm. (Upper and lower sections separated along folds.) - 3. 1653-1664 Amsterdam in New Netherland. The City of the Dutch West India Company. 61 x 43 cm. (A few small separations along folds). - 4. 1730 New York. The English Colonial City. 60.5 x… Read More

Frankfurt: van Dùren, 1749. Some wear to binding, small areas of worming along spine, light browning of text, one plate with short tear at one fold and some browning along another, otherwise a clean copy, the plates in generally fine condition. Volume one (of 34) only, 4to (24.5 x 20 cm). Title printed in red and black. Engraved frontispiece (caption shaved), title vignette, and 7 engraved plates, of which four are folding. Contemporary German half calf, speckled paper boards, morocco lettering pieces on spine. Monogrammed bookplabel on front pastedown. The first volume of Loen's extensive illustrated collection of travel narratives, histories, and fables.

Light rubbing to cloth boards and slipcase, text lightly browned. Lithographic document in Japanese,accordion form, 14 x 4 inches (350 x 105 mm). The formal announcement of a state of war delivered to the Japanese people, comprising title panel and 8 pages. Purple boards, upper cover with Imperial chrysanthemum device, and titled, edges lightly rubbed; matching original blue/green card slipcase. Laid-in: mimeograph translation in English (presumed contemporary). The document provides Japan's reasons for declaring war in December 1941, stating Japan's position in Asia as a supporter of peace, accusing the United States and Great Britain of aiding Nationalist groups in China. This is a contemporary reissue of the declaration for use in military academies. The Declaration of War was generally republished on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor throughout the War, to reinforce to the people the Japanese Right for the war.

Paris: Centre Culturel de Paris, 1978. Light scuffing to the evenly toned spine, generally in fine, well-preserved condition. Folio (380x280 mm; 15x11 inches, sheets). 7 wood engravings, one collage hand painted with gouache on gold paper, and one etching with color. Publisher's gilt- and blind-stamped burgundy calf. Extra-suite of plates in folding portfolio. Slipcase. INSCRIBED WITH A FULL-PAGE DRAWING BY DALI TO HIS ATTORNEY, the drawing depicting St. George: "A mon amie Michael Stout Dali 979." Limited edition, number 13 of 90 copies on Rives paper from a total edition of 395. With an extra suite of three progressive plates, comprising one woodcut signed Dali 1976 in the plate, and two trial proofs for the same work depicting the brain, the brain and a bed with a woman jumping rope, and a black form with woman fleeing (together loose in separate portfolio). Dali had conceived of the surrealist film Babaouo in 1932. The present work revives the original conceit of the unmade film following the… Read More

[Washington, D.C.]: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943. In unusually fresh condition, the wrappers with slightest of toning and a few tiny spots, the staples lightly rusted. 5.25.x 4.25 inches. 32 pages. Pictorial wrappers, stapled. A SCARCE EARLY WORK BY DR. SEUSS. First edition, first inner rear wrapper variant reading "U.S. Government Printing Office: 1943 - 543637". This copy, with two staples, is considered the earliest. During World War II, Theodore Geisel took a hiatus from writing children's books (his first, from 1937, was 'And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street'). Having previously been a commercial illustrator, Geisel worked during these years as a political cartoonist, and worked in the animation and film department of the United States Army. 'This is Ann,' a cautionary tale about malaria rendered in characteristic Seussian style, stems from this early period, before Geisel's emergence as one of the greatest children's book author/illustrators of the 20th century. Younger 78.

Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1855. From the Bart Auerbach Collection. Very faint spotting to sides. 8vo. Original chocolate brown cloth, decorated in blind, spine gilt-lettered; in a blue quarter morocco slipcase. First American edition, first printing, with the letter "n" missing in the word "one" on p. 278 line 4 up; 12-page publisher's catalogue at end (dated November 1855). Ink gift inscription dated in November 1855 on front free endpaper. The American edition was published several months after its publication in London. A fine copy. BAL 12112; Grolier/American 66. (BA).

London: John W. Parker and Son, 1853. Some uneven toning to the cloth, light wear at extremities, generally a handsome copy. Two volumes, 8vo. xxiv, 323; iv, 377, 6 [ads]. Publisher's brown grained cloth, ruled in blind on sides, gilt-lettered on spine; in a somewhat worn folding case. Provenance: Mrs. J. Insley Blair (Blairhame bookplate; sale Sotheby's New York, 3 December 2004, lot 184). First edition in book form. Considered one of Kingsley's finest novels, and among his most widely read, Hypatia is the fictionalized account of the life of the eponymous philosopher - a 19th century religious apologia following the young monk Philammon's travels to Alexandria. Hypatia was originally serialized in 1852 in Fraser's Magazine from January 1852 to April 1853, and it was then published in book form in 1853. It is said to have been Queen Victoria's favorite novel by Kingsley, but modern criticism has attacked its anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism while conceding that "Hypatia stands as an excellent… Read More

Los Angeles: Edward Ruscha, 1967. A fine, well-preserved copy with the slightest of toning and one small chip to the glassine; slight spotting to upper sheet edges, discreet contemporary price stamp on front flyleaf. 4to (25.4 x 20.1 cm; 10 x 7 7/8 inches). [48] pages. 34 black-and-white photographic reproductions; the final image has a small flap attached to the right-hand page. Printed wrappers; original glassine wrapper. Wittenborn sticker on verso of title. First edition of the artist's fifth book. The photos are aerial views of 34 Los Angeles parking lots. "When he was working on Thirtyfour Parking Lots, Ruscha commissioned aerial photographer Art Alanis to take the photographs and told him to shoot all the empty lots he came across. While the images in the book are striking, especially those lots with herringbone patterning, Ruscha found even more to interest him in the photographs' unexpected visual features, such as the oil droppings on the ground revealed by photographing the lots without… Read More