Results 25 - 32 of 56 results

JR - Signed - William Gaddis

1975 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
First edition, signed.

‘At the center of J R is J R Vansant, a very average sixth grader from Long Island with torn sneakers, a runny nose, and a juvenile fascination with junk-mail get-rich-quick offers. Responding to one, he sees a small return; soon, he is running a paper empire out of a phone booth in the school hallway. Everyone from the school staff to the municipal government to the squabbling heirs of a player-piano company to the titans of Wall Street and the politicians in Washington will be caught up in the endlessly ballooning bubble of the J R Family of Companies.

Winner of the National Book Award in 1976, J R is an appallingly funny and all-too-prophetic depiction of America’s romance with finance. It is also a book about suburban development and urban decay, divorce proceedings and disputed wills, the crumbling facade of Western civilization and the impossible demands of love and art, with characters ranging from the earnest young composer Edward Bast to the berserk publicist Davidoff. Told almost entirely through dialogue, William Gaddis’s novel is both a literary tour de force and an unsurpassed reckoning with the way we live now.’ –
New York Review of Books. 
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Price HK$ 8,000



1956 - City Lights Pocket Bookshop, San Francisco - First Edition, First Printing
Nice example of Ginsberg's revolutionary poem, which had been seized by the U.S. Collector of Customs Chester MacPhee soon after publication, setting off one of the most important episodes in the battle for freedom of the press, and against censorship.

This is the first printing, with the dedication to Lucien Carr still present, a period after "Harlem" on the rear cover, and "75 cents" lettered in light blue on rear cover.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
 
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Price HK$ 32,000



1952 - Crown Publishers, New York - First Edition
A rare first edition in unfaded dust jacket. The first novel by Harry Grey (Herschel Goldberg) later to become Sergio Leone’s epic ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984) starring Robert DeNiro loosely playing Harry's life as David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson.

A partly autobiographical account of Goldberg, a Ukrainian born Jewish gangster in New York's Lower East Side between 1910 and 1933, legend has it that this was written whilst incarcerated in the notorious Sing-Sing prison, using the pseudonym Harry Grey to protect his family.

Housed in a bespoke black clamshell case with red morocco spine label lettered in gilt.
 
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Price HK$ 17,000



The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

1952 - Charles Scribner's Sons, New York - First Edition, First Issue
‘I am a strange old man’.

‘But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?’

‘I think so. And there are many tricks’.

A bright first edition, housed in custom blue cloth clamshell box with swordfish design and navy spine label lettered in gilt.
 
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Price HK$ 25,000



Darkey Ditties. Poems. - Elliott B. Henderson

1915 - Self Published, Columbus - First Edition
Elliott Blaine Henderson’s ninth collection of African-American poetry.

Amongst the poems are such titles as ‘
Cispus Attucks’, ‘De Bes’ State in de Lan’’, ‘A Plantation “Step-erbout”’, ‘Some Negro Characteristics’; ‘A Retrospection’, and ‘Sich an Itchin’ in Mah Shin’. 
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Price HK$ 1,200



1907 - The McClure Company, New York - First Edition
First edition of this collection of 19 short western stories set mostly in Texas, by the American master of short stories with his characteristic twists and turns.

William Sydney Porter (pseud. O.Henry, 1862-1910) lived in Texas from the age of 19 to 35, including a stint working on a sheep ranch south of San Antonio.
 
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Price HK$ 2,500



The Outsiders - Susan Eloise Hinton

1967 - The Viking Press, New York - First Edition
Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.

A superior example of the rare first edition of S.E. Hinton's first book, written while she was 16 and still in high school. Set in Oklahoma in the 1960s, the book was inspired by two rival gangs at her high school, the Greasers and the Socs; it was the basis for the 1983 cult film directed by Francis Ford Coppola which included a number of then unknown actors such as Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, and Diane Lane.

The dust jacket without chips, tears, or fading to the spine where the colours are still bright red, as they should be.

‘The Outsiders transformed young-adult fiction from a genre mostly about prom queens, football players and high school crushes to one that portrayed a darker, truer world.’ –
The New York Times. 
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Price HK$ 35,000



Confessions of Another Young Man - Bravig Imbs

1936 - Henkle-Yewdale House, New York - First Edition
‘We liked Bravig, even though as Gertrude Stein said, his aim was to please’ – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The charming memoir of Bravig Imbs, an amiable, pleasant, and enthusiastic Norwegian-American writer who, upon their first encounter in 1926, became one of Gertrude Stein’s reverent admirers in the years between the wars. Here, he eagerly recounts the fleeting cavalcade of artists, writers, musicians, pseudo-intellectuals, and
poseurs who frequented Gertrude’s salon in Paris.

Unfortunately, despite his devotion – Imbs would often play Miss Stein her favourite tune, ‘
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’ on the violin – Stein ended their friendship due to her aversion to childbirth, after Bravig brought his pregnant wife to a boarding house near Gertrude’s country home. 
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Price HK$ 2,500



 
Results 25 - 32 of 56 results