Rare books from Type Punch Matrix

New York: Harper & Row, 1952. Reprint. Fine in near-fine jacket.. Inscribed later printing of the modern children's classic, an exploration of innocence and change, death and courage. One spider's efforts to save a pig from slaughter charmed audiences immediately upon publication, showing that "that human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders." The book was published by Harper under the editorship of Ursula Nordstrom, who was the primary force in fashioning modern children's literature away from morality and education towards imagination and affection. While the inscription is in a later reprint likely dating from the time it was signed (1983), White was not known for signing many books, making this is a special copy. Newbery Honor Award. 8'' x 5''. Original full tan cloth, front board and spine stamped in blue with illustrated title. Original pictorial dust jacket. Blue web-patterned endpapers. Illustrated with black-and-white line drawings by Garth Williams throughout. [8],… Read More

London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Fine.. Inscribed first printings of the deluxe editions in the fantasy series, all dedicated to the same family, with three additionally signed "Jo." These deluxe editions, slightly larger in format and produced with higher quality materials, were one way Bloomsbury responded to reader demand, especially in the gift market. Unfortunately, the Harry Potter market has been so hot in recent years that her signature is now notorious for its proliferation of forgeries, with even Rowling commenting on the problem (Deadline, "Rowling reveals many books 'signed' by her are fakes"). In such a market, a set like this - inscribed to a single family, friends of the author who called her "Jo," is exceptional. 7 volumes. Each volume in original cloth of various colors with tipped-in illustration, gilt-lettered front boards and spines, original silk ribbon markers. Without dust jackets as issued. Every volume inscribed to the same recipients; Philosopher's Stone, Half-Blood Prince, and… Read More

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929. Very good plus in very good plus jacket.. First edition, first printing of the acclaimed tragedy of ill-fated love amidst the fighting of World War I. Based in part on Hemingway's own experiences as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, this novel is a disillusioned indictment of war. Heavily influenced by the modernist approach to fiction developed by Gertrude Stein (especially in THREE LIVES), Hemingway's prose largely directed the critical judgments of style in the second half of the 20th century. "Hemingway's words strike you, each one, as if they were pebbles fetched fresh from a brook. They live and shine, each in its place. So one of his pages has the effect of a brook-bottom into which you look down through the flowing water" (Ford Madox Ford, intro to the Modern Library Edition, 1932). 7.25'' x 5''. Original full black cloth, gold metallic printed paper labels on front board and spine. Original unclipped ($2.50) blue pictorial dust jacket… Read More

[New York]: Harper & Brothers, 1955. First printing. Very good plus in very good jacket.. First edition of the beautiful meta-picture book on the power of the creative imagination, rarely seen with the original dust jacket so intact. Legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom nearly turned down this book, which she later viewed as an instructive error in judgment. Besides becoming immediate bestsellers, the minimalist Harold books - simultaneously simple and profound - have become an influential favorite of many other artists and authors: in his 1982 acceptance speech for the Caldecott Award for JUMANJI, Chris Van Allsburg explicitly thanks "Harold, for his purple crayon"; Maurice Sendak praised the "supreme inventiveness" of Harold; Rita Dove recalled the book as her earliest favorite, and names Harold in her poem "Maple Valley Branch Library, 1967." A terrific copy of perhaps the perfect children's book. 5.75'' x 4.5''. Original quarter black cloth, color pictorial boards. In original… Read More

London: Methuen, 1928. First editions. Overall fine in near-fine jackets.. Complete set of first editions of the Pooh Books, all in original dust jackets, with WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG signed by Milne and Shepard. In 1933 Compton Mackenzie described the publication of the first Pooh Book, WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG as marking "an epoch as positively as any children's book has ever marked one. It is not extravagant to surmise that a distant posterity may find in that volume of children's verse a key with which to unlock the present more easily than with any contemporary novel, poem, or play" (quoted in Thwaite). The series is an evocative reflection of English childhood in the 1920s, yet transcends the time and place of its making for each new generation to discover - and fall for. As the first book in the series, WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG is the most difficult to find signed, making this an especially desirable set. 4 volumes, 7.5'' x 5'' each. Original blue, green, red and pink cloths. In original color… Read More

(New York): HarperCollins, 1981. Fine in fine jacket.. Inscribed later printing of Silverstein's beloved second collection of children's poetry. Silverstein's illustrated verses, combining his singular voice and instinct for whimsy with the slightest, mostly buried hint of a mean streak. Silverstein's assured style and strength of personality enabled him to pull off the rare trick of writing more than one classic - classics not only inflicted on children by nostalgic parents, but loved by children themselves. Winner of the 1984 William Allen White Children's Book Award, A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC was the occasional target of censorship for, allegedly, encouraging children to break dishes ("How Not To Have To Dry The Dishes") and threaten to die of broken hearts in order to get their way ("Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony"). The poet was unbothered, saying: "I think if you're a creative person, you should just go about your business, do your work and not care about how it's received." 8.75'' X 7''.… Read More

New York: Vanguard, 1938. Very good in very good plus to near fine jacket.. First edition of Seuss's second book, a HORNBOOK review copy with their name stamped on the front endpaper. In this fairy tale a little boy finds himself in trouble with a king when he is unable to remove his hat, growing another as each is displaced. The story was inspired in part by a train ride in which Seuss became annoyed with a neighboring rider's hat - which he then began to daydream about removing by force. The proliferation of hats, however, was more directly influenced by Seuss's own collecting: he had almost 100 different hats, including "fire hats, a feathered admiral's cap, and a particularly ornate Czech army helmet" (Jones). Perhaps the hardest to find first edition of all of Seuss's books, this copy comes directly from the stock of Aleph-Bet Books, the firm of Seuss bibliographers Helen Younger and Marc Younger. 11.75'' x 8.75''. Original cloth backed pictorial boards. In original unclipped ($1.50) dust… Read More

Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press, 1938. Fine overall.. Uncommonly complete and exquisitely preserved set of the landmark Nonesuch Press publication, one of the most fully realized and beautifully executed Dickens collections ever produced - this with the original packing material and documents and in the rare original dust jackets. "[P]ortable and handy enough even for those who like to read their Dickens in bed; imposing enough for those to whom a shelf of fine books is the most pleasant of pictures": such were Francis Meynell's goals when he designed the Nonesuch Dickens. Meynell had a hand in all the aesthetic decisions that make this set an achievement, from the choice of paper (which "delights the paper fancier") to the typeface ("of conscious 'beauty' it is happily free") to the cloth chosen for the bindings ("a brave array of reds and yellows and blues and browns"). The Nonesuch Dickens includes classic titles such as OLIVER TWIST, NICHOLAS NICKELBY, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, and BLEAK HOUSE, as well… Read More

[New York]: Harper & Row, 1963. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. Lovely first edition of the subversive Caldecott-award winner, in the rare original first-issue dust jacket. After illustrating nearly 50 other books, WILD THINGS was Sendak's first full-color picture book with his own text and illustrations. He took full advantage of that control to push the boundaries of the children's picture book genre. The story of a boy who gets in a fight with his mother and lets out his pent up feelings in a fantastical Wild Rumpus, WILD THINGS focused on the complex inner experience of little Max, acknowledging the reality that children deal with anger, frustration, and fear just as adults do. For this reason, the book was initially not well received: before the rise of New Realism in children's literature, many critics felt children's books ought to model ideal behavior rather than accurately reflect children's emotional experiences. The book made a splash from the very beginning, as Sendak expected it… Read More

New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989. First printing. Near fine in near fine dust jacket.. Inscribed first edition of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a pair of Cuban brothers who make it big on the American Mambo scene in the 1950s, told as a series of recollections. THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE was the first novel by a US-born Hispanic writer to win the Pulitzer. It was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 1992, starring Antonio Banderas. 9'' x 6''. Original red cloth binding. Original unclipped ($18.95) color pictorial dust jacket, designed by Fred Marcellino. 408 pages. Inscribed by Hijuelos to half title page, "For Shelly with / many songs of love," dated 1990. Jacket with mild edgewear. Binding with a touch of bumping to spine ends; a dash of faint foxing to edges. Tight.

London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1883. First edition, early issue. Very good.. First printing of this beloved tale of pirates and treasure maps, the touchstone for the modern concept of the peg-legged pirate with unexpected depth of character. With numerous film, TV, and theater adaptations that cast everyone from Orson Welles to Tim Curry and the Muppets as Long John Silver and company, the cultural reach of TREASURE ISLAND is extremely broad. Robert Louis Stevenson penned what would become his breakout success while recovering from one of his many illnesses, and it originally appeared serially in YOUNG FOLKS magazine. William Francis Prideaux observes that TREASURE ISLAND was "a comparative failure" in its serial form, and only found success when it was published as a complete work (27). Prideaux notes that TREASURE ISLAND was first issued in several different colors of cloth with no priority, however the first print run of 2000 copies was split into groups issued over a few months at the end… Read More

Philadelphia: H.C. Carey & I. Lea, 1826. Very good plus.. First printing, first issue of this classic of US literature, a major influence on the development of the Western, American Romanticism, and North American-set historical fiction. One of the earliest writers born in the United States to achieve success on an international scale, Cooper has had a formative influence on the path of American literature that is difficult to overstate. Cooper was perhaps the most significant popularizer of "key forms of American fiction - the Western, the sea tale, the Revolutionary romance" (Franklin, xi). His works sought to build a uniquely American tradition, and his books' sales went a long way towards doing so. In defining the path for future writers, Cooper laid the groundwork for American masterpieces like Hawthorne's SCARLET LETTER and Melville's MOBY-DICK. Even those who disliked his work, like Mark Twain, owe him a debt (which Twain well knew): as Wayne Franklin puts it, "without Cooper, there could… Read More

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925. Very good plus.. First edition, first printing of the famed novel exploring the poisons laced into the American dream. THE GREAT GATSBY has long captivated readers with its tragic lyricism; as a core text of English curricula, it is also one of the most read novels in US literature and has become a highly sought first edition on the rare book marketplace. 7.5'' x 5.25''. Original green cloth stamped in blind on front board, gilt-lettered spine. Lacking original dust jacket. Fore-edge machine deckle. Scribner's seal on copyright page. With "sick in tired" on page 205, and all other textual points for first printing according to Bruccoli. [6], 218 pages. Early bookplate and same ink owner name on front pastedown; early bookshop ticket to rear pastedown. Spine lean, a bit of rubbing to spine and gilt lettering. Interior with a few spots of soil else largely clean. Hinges strong.

New York: Random House, 1960. Near fine in very good jacket.. First edition, first state of this spellbinding read-aloud masterpiece. Seuss's knockout success with limited-vocabulary stories for beginning readers, especially CAT IN THE HAT, led his publisher Bennett Cerf to offer a wager: 50 dollars that Seuss couldn't create a children's book using only 50 words. Composing GREEN EGGS AND HAM was a trial that went far beyond Cerf's fifty-dollar bet. According to biographer Brian Jay Jones, Seuss "would rise to meet Cerf's challenge - and it was probably not entirely a coincidence that the central plot point of the resulting book was all about convincing someone to do something he didn't really want to do." The outcome was the best-selling Dr. Seuss book of all time. This copy comes directly from the stock of Aleph-Bet Books, the firm of Seuss bibliographers Helen Younger and Marc Younger. 9'' x 6.25''. Original orange glazed pictorial boards. In original unclipped (195/195) color pictorial dust… Read More

[Various]: [Various], 2011. About very good overall.. Collection of almost 230 books from the library of legendary singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse - a narrative of her life and career through her personal reading, from her school days through her rise to fame and career. Winehouse was a known reader; both she and her family commented on this aspect of her personality over the years in interviews. These, her own copies of her books, make it easy to recognize the teenager who loved Salinger, the nerd who acquired numerous graphic novels, the training vocalist reading multiple Frank Sinatra biographies, and the touring musician just looking for a good read to pass the time on the road. Among the books are well-read favorites (like Jackie Collins) and gifts from friends (such as a photobook inscribed by Dave LaChapelle, who directed her music video "Tears Dry on Their Own"). Winehouse's annotated copy of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, in which she starred for a school production, shows the 1960s roots of… Read More