Rare books from Honey & Wax Booksellers

New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845. First edition in book form of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," the single most famous American poem of the nineteenth century, first published earlier that year in the New York Evening Mirror (under Poe's own name) and The American Review (under a pseudonym). Partly inspired by the early lyrics of Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning), to whom he dedicated this volume of poems, Poe composed "The Raven" in trochaic octometer, with a deranged musicality all his own. The elements are familiar even to those who don't read poetry: the "midnight dreary," the silk-curtained chamber, the raven perched upon the bust of Athena, the relentless refrain that drives the narrator mad. "'Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! / Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' / Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'" Even before publication, Poe knew he had a sensation on his hands. When… Read More

London: Bradbury & Evans, 1848. First edition of Thackeray's comic masterpiece, illustrated by the author. "A novel without a hero," Vanity Fair follows the entangled adventures of two school friends, the gentle, trusting Amelia Sedley and the calculating Becky Sharp, as they come of age during the Napoleonic Wars. "Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history? Let us then step into the coach with the Russell-square party, and be off to the Gardens." First issue, with the heading on page 1 in rustic type, the woodcut of the debauched Marquis of Steyne on 336 (suppressed in later issues, as based too obviously on the late Lord Hertford), and "Mr. Pitt" for "Sir Pitt" on 453. A fine copy, splendidly bound by Riviere & Son. Octavo, measuring 8 x 5 inches: xvi, 624. Early twentieth-century polished calf, boards triple-ruled in gilt, raised bands, spine compartments ruled and decorated in gilt, red and green morocco spine labels,… Read More

London: William Heinemann, 1909. Signed limited first edition, number 425 of 1000 copies, of Arthur Rackham's illustrated version of this German tale, first published in 1811. Celebrated for his depictions of fairy creatures, Rackham is ideally suited for this tale of a water spirit seeking a soul: "below sparkle, stately and solemn, many noble ruins, washed by the loving waters which win from them delicate moss-flowers and entwining clusters of sea-grass. Those who dwell there are very fair." Rackham's wave designs, in particular, lend a Japanese woodblock-inspired Art Nouveau element to the work, as in the image of Undine sinking into the Danube. A near-fine example of the best of the Golden Age of Illustration. Quarto, measuring 11.5 x 9 inches: viii, 136. Original full vellum, front board lettered and decorated in gilt with vignette by Rackham, spine elaborately ornamented in gilt, top edge gilt, other edges uncut, stiff brown endpapers. Half-title, with limitation signed by Rackham on verso.… Read More

London: Printed for Lackington, Allen, and Co. Finsbury Square; and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster Row; Reprinted for Robert Triphook, St. James's Street, by Harding and Wright, St. John's Square, 1815. Deluxe large-paper reissues of two classic sixteenth-century source texts, the inspiration for some of the most important Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Featuring chapters by a number of English poets, Mirror for Magistrates was at first suppressed by the Lord Chancellor in 1555, then published under Elizabeth in 1559, and expanded by new contributors over the decades to come. The anthology offers pointed verse portraits of historic rulers, good and bad, with an eye to instructing those in power; Philip Sidney, in his Defence of Poesy, recommends "Mirrour of Magistrates meetly furnished of beautiful parts." The chapter on "Queene Cordila" served as a key source for Shakespeare's King Lear: "I must assay your friendly faithes to prove: / My daughters, tell mee how you doe mee… Read More

(London): Hodder & Stoughton, 1934. First English edition of James Hilton's tale of the shy schoolmaster Mr. Chipping, who over the course of a long career becomes a legend at Brookfield, "a good school of the second rank." Deeply Victorian in sympathy, "Mr. Chips" rises to the challenge of the First World War, and survives into the 1930s, beloved by generations of boys: "In my mind you never grow up at all. Never." Originally issued as a supplement to The British Weekly in 1933, Goodbye, Mr. Chips was reprinted in The Atlantic in April 1934, followed by book publication in the United States in June and England in October; the nostalgic novel was a runaway bestseller during the Depression, inspiring the Oscar-winning 1939 Hollywood film starring Robert Donat. This first English edition is wonderfully illustrated by Ethel "Bip" Pares, one of England's leading Art Deco book designers. Accompanied by two typed letters written and signed by Hilton, during his stint as a Hollywood screenwriter, to… Read More

London: Printed for Dan. Brown at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple-bar, and Andr. Bell at the Cross-keys and Bible in Cornhil, 1700. First edition of this verse translation of the Song of Songs by Joseph Stennett (1663-1713), the first important Baptist hymnwriter in England: "Thy Lips, my Spouse, that move with skill, / Drops like the Hony-comb distil. / Hony and Milk's beneath thy Tongue, / Which feeds the Weak as well as strong." In his scholarly preface, Stennett is quick to assure readers that the Hebrew text is not about sexual desire, despite appearances: "some have denied that [Solomon] wrote it by Divine Inspiration; and make his Design to be only that of celebrating his Amours with Pharoah's Daughter, or some other person." The passion of the bridegroom and the bride is to be understood, however, as a divine allegory of Christ's love for his church, the same "mystical Espousals" found in the 45th Psalm, which Stennett also translates here. Wing B2633AC, ESTC R212810. We locate four… Read More

Birmingham: Baskerville, 1773. First edition of the Baskerville Ariosto, octavo issue, with forty-six engraved plates. Set during the Saracen invasion of France, Orlando Furioso (1516-1532) follows the adventures of Charlemagne's high-strung knight Orlando, who goes mad for love. Ariosto's comic epic was hugely influential, going on to inspire works as various as The Faerie Queene, Much Ado About Nothing, Don Quixote, and Don Juan. Gaskell 48. Text in Italian. A very good set, in handsome contemporary bindings. Four octavo volumes: [34], lviii, 362, [2]; [2], 450, [2]; [2], 446, [2]; [2], 446 [2]. Contemporary full tree calf, Greek key border and floral cornerpieces in gilt to boards, raised bands, spine compartments ruled and patterned in gilt, red and black morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers. Copperplate frontispiece of Ariosto and forty-six engraved plates. Associati and Errata bound before Vita in Volume I (all present). Bookplates of Francis Broderip and… Read More

New York: New World Records, 1977. Pop artist Robert Indiana's vivid serigraph poster for the 1977 New World Records release of The Mother of Us All, Virgil Thomson's 1947 opera about Susan B. Anthony, with a libretto by Gertrude Stein: "The right to sleep is given to no woman." Indiana had long been an active admirer of The Mother of Us All, designing sets for several stage productions, including the Santa Fe Opera's 1976 bicentennial production, whose recording is advertised here. The typography features Indiana's signature tipped O in MOTHER, a design element that recalls his iconic LOVE sculpture and stamp. For more on Indiana and The Mother of Us All, see David Littlejohn, "Artists on the Opera Stage" in The Ultimate Art (1992). A really attractive promotional poster, whose minor flaws would be mitigated by proper framing. Promotional poster, measuring 36 x 24 inches, screenprinted in red, yellow, black, white, and purple. Three corners creased, several short closed tears to bottom edge.

(Hammersmith): (The Doves Press), 1912. Doves Press edition of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra ("Antony" given as "Anthony," following the First Folio), the third of the Doves Shakespeare productions, one of 200 copies on paper out of a total print run of 215. Inspired by Thomas North's great Renaissance translation of Plutarch, and first performed in 1607, the play features one of Shakespeare's most complex heroines: "Age cannot wither her, nor custome stale / Her infinite variety: other women cloy / The appetites they feede, but she makes hungry, / Where most she satisfies." Founded by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, the Doves Press departed from the decorative medievalism favored by earlier English private presses: "The publication of the first Doves book, a few days after the death of Queen Victoria, marked the end of that age, and set the standard for printing in the twentieth century." One year after the appearance of Anthony and Cleopatra, as his partnership with Walker was… Read More

Italy, 1825. Album of dynamic original drawings chronicling the Napoleonic era, with an emphasis on the Italian campaigns. Events depicted include sieges and battles (Mantua, Lodi, Trebbia, Marengo); the signing of treaties (Campo Formio, Tolentino); the deaths of generals (Duphot, Joubert); and the royalist attempt to assassinate Napoleon with a "macchina infernale." Later scenes include the battles of Wagram, Ligny, and Waterloo, and Napoleon's exile to St. Helena. The drawings vary in their level of finish: some precise and detailed, others with a more fluid line, but all united by a shared style and graphic weight. An optimistic early bookseller's note identifies the drawings as the work of Jacques-Louis David, which is certainly not true, but the unknown Italian artist was clearly inspired by neoclassical French history painting. "Fine dalla giornata di Marengo" expands a detail of a battle scene by Carle Vernet (1758-1836), and "Napoleone all' Isola de Lobau" echoes a painting of Charles… Read More

London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co, 1896. First edition of Thomas Hardy's controversial final novel, the eighth volume in his uniform series of Wessex Novels, accompanied by a letter to his friend Edward Clodd reporting his progress on the work. The story of a stonemason whose higher aspirations are brutally crushed, Jude the Obscure was the subject of immediate backlash: "his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small." Hardy's attack on class snobbery and compulsory marriage, and his sympathetic portrayal of a family created out of wedlock, so outraged readers that he abandoned the writing of novels altogether, turning to poetry in his final decades. Tipped into this copy is a four-page letter, dated September 2, 1894, sent by Hardy to his longtime friend, banker and man of letters Edward Clodd. Hardy regrets not seeing more of Clodd that summer, and confides that "the announcement in the D. Chronicle represents me as being considerably more advanced than I am with the tale [of Jude the… Read More

New York: Grove Press, 1957. First American edition of Samuel Beckett's first novel, originally published in London in 1938. Although best remembered for his groundbreaking work for the stage, Beckett first developed his bleakly comic vision of the human experience in his fiction: "Murphy never wore a hat, the memories it awoke of the caul were too poignant, especially when he had to take it off." This first American edition was published by Barney Rosset's Grove Press shortly after the American premiere of Waiting for Godot, in a dust jacket designed by painter Francine Felsenthal. A near-fine copy. Single volume, measuring 8 x 5.5 inches: [4], 282, [2]. Original cream textured cloth, spine lettered in brown, original unclipped pictorial dust jacket printed in black and grey. Grove Press rubber stamp to copyright page. Spine and edges of jacket toned, with 2.5-inch split at lower flap fold; edges of cloth boards toned.

London: Oxford University Press, 1959. First edition, publisher's presentation copy, of this midcentury collection of American men (and only men) of letters, signed by contributor Robert Penn Warren. Editor Harold Beaver construes "American" broadly, "not interpreting the word by place of birth or parentage only, but also by passport and length of residence," a decision that allows him to include W.H. Auden's essay on Henry James. Warren's contribution surveys the whole of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fiction: "he writes of two Souths: he reports one South and he creates another." Other essayists include R.P. Blackmur, Cleanth Brooks, Van Wyck Brooks, Richard Chase, Malcolm Cowley, Horace Gregory, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Harry Levin, F.O. Matthiessen, H.L. Mencken, Ezra Pound, Philip Rahv, I.A. Richards, Allen Tate, Lionel Trilling, Austin Warren, Edmund Wilson, Yvor Winters, and Morten Dauwen Zabel. A fine copy of a literary time capsule, published at the height of the New Criticism. Pocket… Read More

London: Macmillan, 1886. First edition of Henry James's most overtly political novel, one of 750 copies, first published in the Atlantic Monthly. The Princess Casamassima traces the friendship of a radical London bookbinder and an idle princess with revolutionary sympathies: "By way of defending the aristocracy he said to her that it couldn't be true they were all a bad lot (he used that expression because she had let him know that she liked him to speak in the manner of the people)." The comparatively action-packed plot, which turns on a terrorist assassination attempt, shows the influence of Charles Dickens and Émile Zola on James more clearly than his introspective fiction. Edel & Laurence A29. A near-fine copy of a major novel. Three octavo volumes, measuring 7.5 x 5 inches: iv, 252; iv, 257, [3]; iv, 242, [2]. Original dark blue-green cloth, double-rule border and panel stamped in black and blind, spines lettered in gilt with gilt publisher's device and decorative rules at top and bottom… Read More

Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1860. First edition, mixed issue, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's expatriate romance, inspired by his encounter with the Faun of Praxiteles in Rome. The novel follows three American artists in Italy who become entangled with the enigmatic Donatello, Count of Monte Beni: "There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him outside of rules." This copy accords, in collation and pagination, with Blanck's first printing. First issue points: the preface precedes the table of contents in Volume I; "on" is uncorrected to "for" on page 225, line 22, of Volume I; no "Conclusion" in Volume II. Second issue points: page ix of Volume I and page 197 of Volume II unsigned. Second state of the publisher's catalog, dated March 1860. BAL 7621. A very good copy of a Gothic classic. Two volumes, measuring 7 x 4.5 inches: xiv, 15-283, [5], 16; 284, [4]. Original full brown ribbed cloth ruled and decorated in blind, spines lettered in gilt, reddish-brown coated endpapers. Publisher's… Read More