Robert Browning - Paracelsus & Sordello - First Editions [1835 & 1840] - $800

BROWNING, Robert. Paracelsus and Sordello. First Editions bound as one volume.

London: Effingham Wilson, 1835 and Edward Moxon, 1840. First Editions. Octavo (6.75" x 4.5"); [xii], 216p; [iv], 253p +1 ads. Three quarter brown leather over brown cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Oxford Cambridge University Club Library bookplate on front pastedown with club stamp occasionally throughout, but with no other library markings or additions. Front board very lightly curved with bumping to corners and spine ends, scuffing down joints, and some general light smudging. Covers open easily with an obvious thin gap at center where the volumes were joined, but binding is still tight and sound. Pages a bit toned along edges but unmarked. [Pearsall A4 and A14]

The author's second and third collections of poetry, but the first to bear his name. Browning suppressed his first collection--the anonymously-published Pauline: A Confession, which sold no copies and which John Stuart Mill wrote revealed an author "possessed with a more intense and morbid self-consciousness than I ever knew in any sane human being"--until being discovered as its author by Dante Gabriel Rosetti and eventually reluctantly including it in his 1868 Poetical Works. Unlike Pauline's personal reflection, and likely due to criticism such as Mills's, Paracelsus and Sordello (and the play Stafford published between them in 1837) marked a shift from the personal and sentimental to a narrative dramatic style that he would come to master in his famous dramatic monologues. This copy bearing the bookplate and occasional stamps of the Oxford Cambridge University Club Library, a London club for Oxford and Cambridge alumni and official affiliates.

$800
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Carl Van Vechten - Excavations: A Book of Advocacies - First Edition SIGNED to Algonquin Hotel owner Frank Case - $200

VAN VECHTEN, Carl. Excavations: A Book of Advocacies

Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. First Edition. Octavo (7.75" x 5.5"). [xii], 285p. SIGNED by the author with Christmas gift inscription to Algonquin Hotel owner Frank Case and his Wife Bertha, with Case's bookplate on front pastedown. Printed blue dustjacket; book in blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Dustjacket is in sections with back and spine missing. Remainder is chipped along edges with a few small tears, along with some creasing and toning. Boards square with some darkening to spine and along edges and tugging/bumping to head and tail. Opens easily to between gatherings but binding is holding soundly. Pages a bit toned but unmarked.

As a young hotel manager, Frank Case convinced Albert Foster to change his hotel's name from the Puritain to the Algonquin. Years later he bought the place, and when writers, actors, and critics such as Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, Ruth Hale, and Robert Benchley began showing up for lunch, it was Case who moved them to the more prominent Rose Room and their now famous "Round Table." Van Vechten was also active in the New York arts scene as a patron and promoter of the Harlem Renaissance, famously hosting racially mixed cocktail parties at which, according to biographer Emily Bernard, "powerful whites were able to meet black artists on the most intimate terms."

$200
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John Gunther - The Bright Nemesis - First Edition - SOLD

GUNTHER, John. The Bright Nemesis.

Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932. Stated First Edition. Octavo (7.75" x 5.5"); 309pp. Original illustrated dustjacket showing $2.00 price; green boards with black lettering. Unclipped dustjacket shows a few very small tears and some rubbing, bumping, and light creasing along edges, but is crisp overall with bright colors. Boards show light shelfwear with some bumping to corners. Scraping and leftover adhesive from removed bookplate on front pastedown, mostly obscured by jacket flap, with some toned offsetting opposite. Binding is sound and pages lightly toning but unmarked. 

One of eight novels, and this the only mystery, by the Death Be Not Proud author. A contemporary blurb in The Spectator describes it as "Murder in the Balkans, described as if the crime report, the gossip paragraphs, and the foreign news of a go-ahead paper had got badly mixed in proof."

$70
SOLD

Elmore Leonard - The Bounty Hunters - Signed First Edition, 1954 - $1500

LEONARD, Elmore. The Bounty Hunters.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954. Octavo. First Edition. Signed without inscription by the author on full title. Dustjacket with original $2.00 price shows some chipping at head and tail of spine as well as some small tears along edges, a bit of scuffing, and some general fading to face and sunning to spine.  Boards are square with solid lettering, showing darkening to spine and some soiling with tugging to head and tail and some scuffs/chips to joints. Binding is sound and pages are unmarked.

Though he became better known for mysteries, Leonard began his career writing Westerns. The Bounty Hunters tells the story of an Army scout and a young lieutenant tasked with tracking down a renegade Apache chief south of the border. This was Leonard's debut novel.

$1500
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Larry McMurtry - In a Narrow Grave - First Edition, Second Printing in First State Dustjacket - $695

First Edition, Second Printing of Larry McMurtry's In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas in a First State dustjacket, published by the Encino Press in 1968 and conforming to all edition points: no edition statement or letter on copyright page, "skycrapers" misprint corrected on line 12 of page 105, dustjacket showing no price and with the "wtih" and "head" misprints in the fifth and final paragraphs, respectively. Unclipped dustjacket is clean and crisp with just some light rubbing to the top edges, but no chips, tears, or marks. Jacket also shows some light rubbing to top corner of front flap and a thin crease down spine, but is very nice overall and protected in a removable Brodart cover. Boards are clean and square with some very light scuffs. Previous owner's brief gift inscription on front free endpaper, obscured by flap. Thin crease showing down the very edge of page 105/106. Binding is solid and pages are unmarked. Not an ex-library copy. 

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Little Machinery - Mary Liddell - 1926 First Edition - Modernist Children's Book - SOLD

First Edition of Mary Liddell's Little Machinery, published by Doubleday Page & Co. in 1926. Covers smudged, with some bumping/chipping to corners and rubbing along edges. Boards split down front joint and separated at spine, but back board is still holding. Christmas gift inscription from publication year on front free endpaper, and previous owner's name on back free endpaper. Title page has a one inch horizontal tear near top at gutter. Very light foxing and a few border smudges to one or two pages, but most are clean with vibrant colors. Opens easily between gatherings but binding is holding. Not an ex-library copy.

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Thomas Mann - Mario and the Magician - Signed First Edition - 1930, in Dustjacket - $850

Signed First Edition of Thomas Mann's Mario and the Magician, published in 1931 by Alfred A. Knopf. Book is signed without inscription by the author on front free endpaper. 1931 copyright with no subsequent printings listed. Unclipped dustjacket shows a small, clean tear at top near spine along with a good bit of scuffing to face and edges, smudging to back, and rubbing to top and bottom. Jacket is now protected in a removable Brodart cover (removed for photos). Boards show some darkening/soiling, with the front board starting to curve outward just a bit. Binding is solid and pages are unmarked. Not an ex-library copy.

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The Spanish Heritage of the Southwest - Jose Cisneros, Francis Fugate, & Carl Hertzog - Signed By All - Color Plate - SOLD

FUGATE, Francis. The Spanish Heritage of the Southwest: Twelve Drawings by José Cisneros.

El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1952. Deluxe Edition. Folio (12.5" x 9.25"). Signed by Francis Fugate, Jose Cisneros, and Carl Hertzog. Original dustjacket over adobe block design boards. Of the 525 numbered copies, this is one of 50 printed on tan Ticonderoga Paper, one of a reported 24 with the first plate hand colored by Cisneros [Lowman, Printer at the Pass #78], and one of likely even fewer with the hand colored border on the frontis map. Dustjacket shows a clean 1/2 inch tear at top, as well as a few smaller tears along bottom edge. Back shows a 1.25" puncture near top and a smaller puncture near bottom at spine fold, as well as some light dampstaining along spine and some toning to the lower 1/4 of the back panel. Head and tail of spine are chipped. Boards are clean and square with only very light shelfwear. Pages have toned a bit, but are clean and unmarked. Binding is sound.

The initial release of Hertzog's Texas Western Press, with type hand-set by his students under his supervision. Lowman states nine copies with all drawings hand painted and bound in morocco, and 24 with just the first drawing colored. A 1983 William Reese catalog, however, mentions a letter from Hertzog stating that only one copy had all the plates hand colored, and that Lowman's description of the various bindings is incorrect. Regardless, this edition is the scarcest after the all-plates-colored copy.

$700
SOLD

Indian Depredations in Texas - John Wesley Wilbarger - 1889 First Edition - O. Henry illus. - SOLD

First Edition of John Wesley Wilbarger's Indian Depredations in Texas: Reliable Accounts of Battles, Wars, Adventures, Forays, Murders, Massacres, Etc., Etc., Together With Biographical Sketches of Many of the Most Noted Indian Fighters and Frontiersmen of Texas, published by Hutchings Printing House and sold by subscription only in 1889. First Edition with no additional printings listed. Three-quarter leather binding. Covers are darkened and scuffed, with rubbing and bumping along edges and at corners. Tugging to head and tail of spine with chipping to top of title strip. Previous owner's name lightly on flyleaf. A few dog-eared pages throughout. Binding is sound and pages are unmarked. Not an ex-library copy. 

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Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own - Signed First Edition - SOLD

Signed Limited First Edition of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, published by The Fountain Press of New York and The Hogarth Press of London in 1929. True First Edition, numbered 253 of 492 copies on colophon at back (numbers one through one hundred were reserved for sale in Great Britain). Signed by the author without inscription in purple ink on the half title. No dustjacket, as issued. Boards show light edgewear and minor curving, with a white scuff on back. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown with shadow opposite, as well as some oxidization along gutter from previously laid-in description slip. Stamp-sized bookplate attached on back pastedown at top near gutter. Binding is sound and pages are unmarked. 

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude - True First Edition - SOLD

True First Edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude in a first state dust jacket, published by Harper & Row in 1970. Stated First Edition with no number row on last leaf and with the exclamation point ending the first paragraph of dust jacket copy. Unclipped dust jacket shows a clean tear at top front with some small chips along edges and head/tail of spine. Some dampstaining to inside of jacket down spine and along bottom back which has not rippled and only barely shows through at bottom back. Jacket is now protected in a removable Brodart cover (removed for photos). Bottom back board shows shows some light rippling and dampstaining at corner, but again this does bleed through into book's interior. Spot to fore-edge. Boards are square. Binding is sound and pages are unmarked. Not an ex-library copy

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History of Dallas County Texas From 1837 to 1887 - John Henry Brown - First Edition - SOLD

First Edition of John Henry Brown's History of Dallas County, Texas, From 1837 to 1887, printed by Milligan Cornett & Farnham in 1887. Printed wraps show some soiling and edgewear, a few small punctures, and some chipping at head and tail of spine. Parts of spine rubbed away, revealing gatherings beneath. Abrasion to inside front cover matching a small, clean puncture to title page. Binding is sound and pages are unmarked. Not an ex-library copy. 

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