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Is She a Lady? A Problem in Autobiography -
Nina Hamnett
1955 - Allan Windgate, London - First Edition
A rare dust jacketed first edition of Nina Hamnett’s second autobiographical work, the first being ‘A Laughing Torso’ [1933], and published only a year before her death.
Although more famous as the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ in Paris and written about first and foremost as a subject for the art of others (from Henri Gaudier-Brzeska to Roger Fry to Walter Sickert, ), she was a well trained and versatile artist in her own right and one of few emerging female artists of the first half of the 20th century.
‘Reading her story as a tale of the emergence of a young woman into the modern art world, her writing – breathless as it can be – creates a pithy, vivid and often amusing picture of what it felt like to throw off the constraints of the Edwardian lady and reinvent yourself as an artist’ - Alicia Foster, Art UK.
Illustrated with seven photographs and six reproductions of her drawings, including one of Anthony Powell from 1927.
Beginning in 1926, Nina Hamnett ‘proceeds to unleash a reckless Niagara of hilarious anecdotes and preposterous incidents of the vintage Bohemian life of London and Paris in the late twenties and early thirties. This was a world of pubs and clubs and parties, of painters, patrons, poets, boxers and tarts, of champagne drunk with the rich, quiet visits to the pawnshop and studio free-for-alls...’
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Price HK$ 5,000
1955 - Allan Windgate, London - First Edition
A rare dust jacketed first edition of Nina Hamnett’s second autobiographical work, the first being ‘A Laughing Torso’ [1933], and published only a year before her death.Although more famous as the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ in Paris and written about first and foremost as a subject for the art of others (from Henri Gaudier-Brzeska to Roger Fry to Walter Sickert, ), she was a well trained and versatile artist in her own right and one of few emerging female artists of the first half of the 20th century.
‘Reading her story as a tale of the emergence of a young woman into the modern art world, her writing – breathless as it can be – creates a pithy, vivid and often amusing picture of what it felt like to throw off the constraints of the Edwardian lady and reinvent yourself as an artist’ - Alicia Foster, Art UK.
Illustrated with seven photographs and six reproductions of her drawings, including one of Anthony Powell from 1927.
Beginning in 1926, Nina Hamnett ‘proceeds to unleash a reckless Niagara of hilarious anecdotes and preposterous incidents of the vintage Bohemian life of London and Paris in the late twenties and early thirties. This was a world of pubs and clubs and parties, of painters, patrons, poets, boxers and tarts, of champagne drunk with the rich, quiet visits to the pawnshop and studio free-for-alls...’
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Price HK$ 5,000
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
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
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
Heart of the West -
O. Henry (Pseud. William Sydney Porter)
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
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 Northern Clemency - SIGNED -
Philip Hensher
2008 - Fourth Estate, London - First Edition
‘Hensher’s novel is tremendously adroit, reminding us of what it’s like to sink luxuriously into the great novels of an earlier era: all-inclusive, interconnected, and lavishly detailed…’ – The New York Times
Set between the quiet suburbs of Sheffield and the bustle of London, and spanning twenty years, Philip Hensher’s epic novel – which follows the lives of two not quite upper-middle-class families who first encounter one another living on the same Sheffield street overlooking the Yorkshire moors – revisits the dawn of Thatcher’s Britain of the 1970s, and traces the volatile confidence and despair of the 80s, all the way through to the awakening of a new Britain in the 1990s.
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Price HK$ 1,000
2008 - Fourth Estate, London - First Edition
‘Hensher’s novel is tremendously adroit, reminding us of what it’s like to sink luxuriously into the great novels of an earlier era: all-inclusive, interconnected, and lavishly detailed…’ – The New York TimesSet between the quiet suburbs of Sheffield and the bustle of London, and spanning twenty years, Philip Hensher’s epic novel – which follows the lives of two not quite upper-middle-class families who first encounter one another living on the same Sheffield street overlooking the Yorkshire moors – revisits the dawn of Thatcher’s Britain of the 1970s, and traces the volatile confidence and despair of the 80s, all the way through to the awakening of a new Britain in the 1990s.
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Price HK$ 1,000
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
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
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. ToklasThe 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
Transition - A Complete Run - Numbers 1-27. -
Eugene Jolas (editor)
1927 to 1938 - Transition Press, Paris - First Editions
A rare complete set of the most influential and important literary magazine between the wars. Edited by Eugene Jolas, contributors are a whose who of writers, poets and artists of this magnificent period, including but not limited to James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Georges Braque, Kay Boyle, Elliot Paul, Man Ray, Robert McAlmon, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Picasso, André Breton, William Carlos Williams, Robert Graves, Hart Crane, André Gide, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Malcolm Cowley, Djuna Barnes, Franz Kafka, Harry Crosby, Archibald MacLeish, Samuel Beckett, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Cartier-Bresson, Dylan Thomas, Louis Aragon, Le Corbusier and Aaron Copland.
Numbers 1-20 published between April 1927 and June 1930 by Transition with Shakespeare and Co., in Paris. Numbers 21-24 published between March 1932 and June 1936 by The Servire Press in The Hague. Volumes 25-27 published between fall 1936 and May 1938 by Transition in New York.
Included with the set is the Gertrude Stein’s ‘An Elucidation, printed in Transition, April 1927’ in original wrappers, and ‘Transition Pamphlet No 1’ (supplement to Transition no 23, 1934-35) containing the ‘Testimony against Gertrude Stein’.
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Price HK$ 45,000
1927 to 1938 - Transition Press, Paris - First Editions
A rare complete set of the most influential and important literary magazine between the wars. Edited by Eugene Jolas, contributors are a whose who of writers, poets and artists of this magnificent period, including but not limited to James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Georges Braque, Kay Boyle, Elliot Paul, Man Ray, Robert McAlmon, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Picasso, André Breton, William Carlos Williams, Robert Graves, Hart Crane, André Gide, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Malcolm Cowley, Djuna Barnes, Franz Kafka, Harry Crosby, Archibald MacLeish, Samuel Beckett, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Cartier-Bresson, Dylan Thomas, Louis Aragon, Le Corbusier and Aaron Copland.Numbers 1-20 published between April 1927 and June 1930 by Transition with Shakespeare and Co., in Paris. Numbers 21-24 published between March 1932 and June 1936 by The Servire Press in The Hague. Volumes 25-27 published between fall 1936 and May 1938 by Transition in New York.
Included with the set is the Gertrude Stein’s ‘An Elucidation, printed in Transition, April 1927’ in original wrappers, and ‘Transition Pamphlet No 1’ (supplement to Transition no 23, 1934-35) containing the ‘Testimony against Gertrude Stein’.
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Price HK$ 45,000