American Literature

An early issue of the first UK edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.<ul><li>Mark Twain (American).</li><li>London: Chatto &amp; Windus, 1884 (but 1886).</li><li>438 pages.</li><li>With frontispiece and 173 black and white illustrations by E.W. Kemble.</li><li>Bound in original decorative red cloth stamped in black and gilt, floral patterned ochre endpapers.</li></ul>

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The first appearance in print of The Old Man and the Sea, preceding Scribner’s publication by 11 days.<ul><li>Ernest Hemingway (American).</li><li>Text illustrated with drawings by Noel Sickles.</li><li>Chicago:&nbsp;TIME, Inc,&nbsp;September 1, 1952.</li><li>88 pages.</li><li>Bound in photographically illustrated front wrapper.</li></ul>

The Old Man and the Sea LIFE Magazine

A single leaf from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's work The Gilded Age.<ul><li>Single manuscript leaf, taken from a set.</li><li>Written in Mark Twain's hand.</li><li>This page is from chapter 34.</li><li>Removed from binding.</li><li>Embossed stamp at top left.</li></ul> Written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age was hatched over the dinner table when Clemens and Warner were challenged by their wives to write a work that would be better than those they were busy complaining about. Clemens wrote the first eleven chapters, based on members of his family including his father and mother, while Warner wrote the next twelve chapters, purely fictionally. The remaining chapters were generally written by one or the other, while the resolution was written in tandem.

The Gilded Age Manuscript Leaf

Signed Author's Edition of The Complete Writings of Elbert Hubbard with three pages of Hubbard's handwritten manuscript.<ul><li>Elbert Hubbard (American).</li><li>The Roycroft Shop, New York: 1914.</li><li>20 volume set.</li><li>Quarter red leather with impressed gilt decoration and spine.</li><li>Edition number 357/1000 copies.</li><li>Signed with tipped-in manuscript page; vol. 1 with three pages of Hubbard's handwritten manuscript pasted to front free endpaper.</li><li>Each volume autographed by Hubbard in purple on limitation pages (20).</li><li>Quarter red leather with impressed gilt decoration and spine.</li></ul>

The Complete Writings of Elbert Hubbard 

A finely bound copy of William Cullen Bryant's Picturesque America.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 2 volumes.</li><li>William Cullen Bryant (American).</li><li>New York: D. Appleton &amp; Co., 1872.</li><li>Includes Illustrations by eminent American artists.</li><li>Bound in full brown morocco with the covers and raised band spines displaying ornate gilt and open-tooled detailing, all edges are gilt with gilt-tooled dentelles and marbled endpapers.</li></ul>

Picturesque America

Seasons in Massachusetts volumes from Thoreau's journals.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 4.</li><li>Henry David Thoreau (American).</li><li>Early Spring in Massachusetts, Summer, Autumn, Winter.</li><li>Boston:&nbsp;Houghton Mifflin Company,&nbsp;1881-1892.&nbsp;</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>Bound in green cloth with gilt text.</li></ul>

Early Spring in Massachusetts

First-edition copy of Whitman's November Boughs, inscribed by Horace Traubel, Whitman's friend and literary executor.<ul><li>Walt Whitman (American).</li><li>Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888 [1891].</li><li>Includes portrait in the text but no frontispiece photograph inserted (as issued).</li><li>Inscribed by Traubel on the front blank endleaf, "To Mary &amp; Joseph Tels, February Eighteen Hundred Ninety-Five, Traubel".</li><li>Bound in the publisher's gilt-stamped green cloth, top edge tinted red, others uncut and unopened as issued.</li></ul> "These sheets are probably the 400 copies printed in May, 1891. . . . It seems probable . . . that after Whitman's death his executors had these sheets and the remainder of Good-Bye My Fancy bound in uniform, but separate, bindings." (BAL 21430, printing 3).

November Boughs

First-edition presentation copy of The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers, signed twice by the author.<ul><li>Langston Hughes (American).</li><li>Boston: Little, Brown &amp; Co., 1967.</li><li>Inscribed in green ink on the half-title "To the (Jack) Aistrops—Happy Holidays and Bon Voyage Sincerely, Langston Hughes New York. Christmas, 1966."</li><li>Additionally signed on page xiii and page 73.</li><li>Hardbound in publisher's original gilt stamped brown cloth.</li></ul>

The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers

First edition of Burroughs' memoir, an 18th-century New Englander, reprinted from the Albany edition of 1811, signed by Robert Frost, of which this is his second prose appearance in a book.<ul><li>Stephen Burroughs (American).</li><li>Preface by Robert Frost (American).</li><li>New York: The Dial Press, 1924.</li><li>Bound in the publisher's original cloth-backed boards.</li></ul>

Memoirs of the Notorious Stephen Burroughs of New Hampshire

First edition, first issue of Beecher Stowe's seminal text, signed by her inspiration for Uncle Tom, Rev. Josiah Henson.<ul><li>Harriet Beecher Stowe (American).</li><li>Boston:&nbsp;John P. Jewett &amp; Company,&nbsp;1852.</li><li>[iii]-x, [13]-312; 322 pages.</li><li>Duodecimo. </li><li>Extra-illustrated with an autograph signature by Rev. Josiah Henson, Stowe’s inspiration for Uncle Tom, in vol. 1, on The Christian Age letterhead and dated by the recipient 1876 and with an autograph letter tipped in.</li><li>Inscribed by Stowe in vol. 2, to her publisher James Osgood.</li><li>Vol. 1 with original cloth gilt extra covers bound in.</li><li>Modern full green morocco gilt, red morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt.</li></ul> “In the emotion-charged atmosphere of mid-nineteenth-century America Uncle Tom's Cabin exploded like a bombshell. To those engaged in fighting slavery it appeared as an indictment of all the evils inherent in the system they opposed; to the pro-slavery forces it was a slanderous attack on 'the Southern way of life.' Whatever its weakness as a literary work -— structural looseness and excess of sentiment among them — the social impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin on the United States was greater than of any book before or since” (PMM). Published at the end of March 1852, 5000 copies of the first issue were published, with a second issue of an additional 5000 copies published on the first of April. By the middle of the month, both had been exhausted, with the publisher writing in the National Era: "Three paper mills are constantly at work, manufacturing the paper, and three power presses are working twenty-four hours per day, in printing it, and more than one hundred book-binders are incessantly plying their trade to bind them, and still it has been impossible, as yet, to supply the demand." By mid-October, 120,000 copies had been sold. The Stowe autograph letter, signed, inserted into this set is to her publisher James Osgood concerning an illustrated edition published by Houghton, Osgood, and Co. in 1878, reading in part: “Would it be any injury to delay the issuing of the book to the 13th of Jany — the reason is that Thursday I sail from Florida and should be out of the way of the noise of it. I am sick and tired of the fuss of the press that I want to escape it altogether. — There are three corrections that must be made in the plate proofs and I must trust you to see them done immediately ...”.

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly

Inscribed first edition, first printing of Dunbar's poem; born to formerly enslaved parents, he became known for his use of dialect to capture the African American experience.<ul><li>Paul Laurence Dunbar (American).</li><li>Decorations by Margaret Armstrong.</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Dodd Mead and Co.,&nbsp;1903.&nbsp;</li><li>144 pages.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>Inscribed by Dunbar from his poem 'Philosophy': "It's easy enough to titter w'en de stew is smokin' hot, But hit's mighty ha'd to giggle w'en dey's nuffin in de pot." Interestingly, he spells out 'enough' rather than using the published version '‘nough'.</li><li>Contains a different ownership name dated 1903 below Dunbar's inscription.</li><li>Bound in publisher's pictorial cloth binding, gilt titling and pink and green vines to spine.</li></ul>

When Malindy Sings

A photo postcard showing Twain smoking a pipe in a windowsill at Stormfield, flanked by his business advisor, Ralph Ashcroft, and his secretary, Isabel Lyon.<ul><li>Mark Twain [S.L.&nbsp;Clemens] (American).</li><li>[Stormfield, Redding, Connecticut], N.p: "Xmas Day", 1908.</li><li>Inscription reads: "Dear Mr. Coe: I am smoking your health in your noble cigars. I wish you &amp; Mrs. Mai were here to assist. In the picture it is family worship. I am trying to do the Beatitudes, &amp; Ashcroft is prompting. With love to you both – SLC".</li><li>The photo was taken by William Ireland Starr just a few weeks earlier, and Twain had several postcards printed up using the image.</li></ul> William Robertson Coe (1869-1955) was a famous rare book collector (Coe Collection at Yale), insurance and railroad executive and American Studies pioneer. His wife, Mai Rogers Coe (1875-1924), knew Twain through his friendship with her parents, the wealthy industrialist Henry Huttleston Rogers and Abbie Palmer Rogers. Rogers was Twain's greatest friend towards the end of his life, and was at times believed to be the richest man in America, outdoing his partner John D. Rockefeller.

Mark Twain Autographed Postcard

First edition copy with original dust jacket and a typewritten letter by the author.<ul><li>Margaret Mitchell (American).</li><li>First edition, with “Published May, 1936” on the copyright page.&nbsp;</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Macmillan,&nbsp;1936.</li><li>1037 pp. 1 vols.</li><li>8vo.</li><li>Original gray cloth lettered in blue.</li><li>Unclipped, with “$3.00” cost and with the “Spring Novels” advertisement on the lower panel, showing this work as the second title in the right-hand column.</li><li>Half green morocco slipcase and cloth chemise.</li></ul> Laid in is a one-page typed letter, signed (“Margaret Mitchell Marsh”), from Mitchell to bookseller Robert Wilson, then a student at Johns Hopkins University, on a sheet of personal stationery headed “Margaret Mitchell,” dated Atlanta, Georgia May 21, 1941 and reading in full, “My dear Mr. Wilson, … I have read the letter which my secretary wrote to you and I find I have little to add to it. As she wrote to you, I am no speaker and have never made any lectures of any type, so I regret that I must refuse your invitation. I do feel so flattered that The Johns Hopkins University wanted me to make this talk, and I thank you so much for asking me. Cordially, [signed in ink] Margaret Mitchell Marsh. Mrs. John R. Marsh.”

American Literature

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Mark Twain

Ernest Hemingway

Mark Twain

William Cullen Bryant

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Langston Hughes

Stephen Burroughs

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Mark Twain

Margaret Mitchell