Rare books from Triolet Rare Books, ABAA

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. First edition. One of 500 copies printed, signed by Seidel on the half-title. 55 pp. Matte black perfect-bound wrappers, stamped in silver on the front cover. Very minor handling wear, near fine or better. Seidel's signature is very rare. As Jonathan Galassi wrote in the introduction to his interview with Seidel in The Paris Review, "Seidel's reserve has involved an absolute refusal to participate in the public life of poetry. He has never given a reading and, as this writer, who is also his publisher, can ruefully attest, he doesn't lift a finger to make himself known. Nevertheless, his work has slowly gathered a remarkably intelligent body of critical recognition along with a growing following among younger readers, and there is now a broad consensus that this reclusive, proud writer of willfully 'disagreeable' poems is one of the great living practitioners of his art." OCLC locates four copies.

Miami: Pandanus Press, 1951. First edition. [8], 10, [6] pp. Hand-sewn blue wrappers, printed title label on front cover. One of 240 copies, hand-set and printed by Preston H. Dettman. Some edgewear and surface wear to covers, very minor old staining, contents clean. The very rare first publication by an important American poet, preceding his first regularly published book The Summer Anniversaries by nine years. Justice earned his PhD at Iowa in 1954 and was long associated with the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Despite the limitation, quite scarce; OCLC locates eleven copies.

New York: Poets Press, 1966. First edition. String-sewn and bound into full red cloth, lettered in gilt on the front board. Introduction by John Wieners. Drawings by Erin Matson. Minor darkening to the spine, else fine. Matson's first book, signed on the half-title. According to Peter Howard's penciled notes within, only twenty copies were thusly bound.

Devon: Richard Gilbertson, 1970. First edition. Original Wraps. Near Fine. First separate edition. [8] pp. Original marbled wrappers with two metal rivets and woodcut illustration from Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Slight edgewear to the bottom edge, else fine. First issue, which was withdrawn due to the transposition of two lines in the third stanza of the poem. One of about 100 copies thus. The poem was previously published in Hughes' first book, The Hawk in the Rain. Sagar & Tabor A21a.1.

Prairie City, IL: The Decker Press, 1949. First edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 117 pp. Light green paper-covered boards over brown cloth backstrip, spine lettered in silver and front board lettered in brown. Corners heavily rubbed, minor general edgewear. An uncommon Rexroth book- although 500 copies were slated to be published, far less than that were bound, and the sheets were later used under different imprints. This copy unnumbered. Inscribed by Rexroth on the front free endpaper and dated Xmas 1950, an early inscription. The ink from the inscription has offset onto the front pastedown. Errata slip laid in.

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1934. First edition. 273 pp. Full lavender cloth, lettered and decorated in black, with the dust jacket. Top edge spotted, head and tail of spine a bit discolored. The jacket has an inch chip on the top edge of the front panel, affecting the title lettering, and some minor chipping at the tail of the spine, front flap almost detached but holding. Fast's second book, which he later disowned as a "half-assed, hysterical novel." Inscribed on the front free endpaper, "to ---- / Merry Christmas / Happy New Year / 1944-1945 / Howard." Scarce in any format, especially in jacket and inscribed.

London: Elkin Mathews, 1913. First collected edition. 52, 64, [4] pp. Brown paper boards lettered in gold on the front cover and spine. Gallup notes that "not more than 500 copies issued." The book consists of first edition sheets of the two earlier books with a new half-title and title-leaf for the volume. Rebacked with original spine laid down, nick to top edge of rear board skillfully and professionally repaired. A scarce early Pound volume. Gallup A7b.

Cummington: The Cummington Press, 1944. Hardcover. Near fine/very good. 74, [1] pp. Quarter calf over black silver-flecked boards, spine lettered in blind, with the original unprinted jacket. One of three hundred copies printed, illustrated with wood engravings by Gustav Wolf and a textual note by Alfred Y. Fisher. Jacket scuffed and stained with a couple of chips, book slightly rubbed at the head and tail of the spine but overall near fine. An elaborate edition and an early production of the press, the first Cummington book to be chosen by the American Institute of Graphic Arts for its Fifty Books of the Year.

Oxford: H. Daniel, 1894. First edition thus, one of 250 numbered copies. Original printed wrappers, glassine and slipcase. 61 pp. Spine slightly darkened, else a fine copy. Madan 33. "First printed in Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 38 (1878), p. 313, it is here for the first time reprinted with loving care.

New York: Grove Press, 1954. First English language edition. 61 pp. Black cloth boards, lettered in blind, silver and copper, with the dust jacket. Jacket spine a bit browned, as usually seen, with some very slight edgewear to the top edge and lower spine edge; book is close to fine. An excellent copy, far better than usual. The original French language edition was published two years prior; the Faber edition was published two years later.

London: Trigram Press, 1972. First edition. Hardcover. Fine/near fine. First edition, hardcover issue (also issued in paperback and a limited signed edition of 100 copies). A fine, fresh copy which has a trace of rubbing to the fore-edge and the head and foot of the spine of the jacket, but is otherwise fine.

First edition. One of 500 numbered and signed copies, printed at the Spiral Press from the original blocks. Marbled paper over boards with printed cover label. Nine fables of Aesop, with full page woodcut illustrations on Goyu paper. Lower corners slightly rubbed, still a fine copy, with the original glassine, which has some chips and edgewear. In addition to Frasconi's signature on the colophon, he has inscribed this copy on the first blank leaf to Herman Cohen of the Chiswick Bookshop, dated December 1964.

First edition, one of 215 copies printed. 40 pp. Marbled paper boards over black cloth backstrip, printed spine label. Fine copy. Bolton's first book, and only lifetime publication. Donald Justice wrote of Bolton's poems: "Effortlessly they transcend the merely anecdotal; they are always edging towards something emblematic. And they can be immensely moving in their modesty." A beautiful and dark cycle of verse, full of loss, winter and poverty, yet transcendent in its language and clear-eyed vision.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1962. First edition of the first major collection by the 1992 Nobel laureate, preceded by three volumes of verse and several plays only published in the West Indies. 80pp. Green paper marbled boards over white cloth backstrip, spine lettered in gilt. A beautiful copy, fine in a fine jacket with a couple of minor age spots on the endpapers, this copy also has the extremely rare dark green wraparound band with the Robert Graves quote ("Derek Walcott handles English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most (if not any) of his English-born contemporaries."). This copy is signed on the front free endpaper by Walcott and dated April 99.

New York: Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, 1942. First edition. [49] pp. Stapled wrappers designed by Duchamp, cover punched with five holes, as issued. Corners a bit rubbed, abrasion to lower edge of front cover and first several leaves, minor edgewear. Catalog of an exhibition held at 451 Madison Avenue, the Whitelaw Reid Mansion, in New York, October 14 to November 7, 1942. It was the first major show of Surrealist art in America and included work by Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, Rene Magritte, Hans Arp, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Joan Miro, Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington, Andre Masson, Pablo Picasso, Kay Sage, and many others. Many of the artists, including Breton, Ernst, Carrington, and others, had fled to New York due to the war, and their presence there energized the Surrealist scene.