First Edition or First of Type

Garden District – Two Plays .. Something Unspoken and Suddenly Last Summer – Tennessee Williams – First Edition 1959

A first UK edition published by Secker and Warburg, London in 1959.

Octavo, 72 pages, very good condition.

Two plays … a short one Something Unspoken a type often referred to as a curtain-raiser; and the longer Suddenly Last Summer.

Both had just been performed in England at the London Arts Theatre to much acclaim

Suddenly Last Summer is a gothic psychological drama. It was adapted and made into a brilliant movie with Katherine Hepburn, Montgomery Cliff and Elizabeth Taylor …. Elizabeth Taylor stole the show …. it is a must watch movie … particularly if you cannot find the play in progress.

Entertaining and still challenging from T.W. …

$30.00

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Wild Geese – Martha Orstenso – 1926 First Photoplay Edition

A very good first Photoplay [movie connected] edition published in 1926 by Grosset and Dunlap. Octavo, 256 pages, superb dust jacket and beneath that striking pictorial boards. Designs by H.o.H … not sure who that was?

This is a special edition with images from the silent movie made from this book directed by Phil Stone and released in 1927.

An Epic of the Northern Frontier, the prairies of northern Manitoba, and packed with living character.Regarded as a new standard in Modernist writing … love, tyranny, destruction and survival ….

A special book of the era

$50.00

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Jack O’Lantern – George Goodchild – First Edition 1930 – Dust Jacket Designed by “Gene”

First edition published by The Mystery League in 1930. Scarce and in very good condition albeit the dust jacket chipped at the corners and spine ends … but what a beauty

Jack O’Lantern the cleverest of criminals ever to pit his wits against the machinery for man-finding! Superb entertainment and the “Gene” Art Deco dust jacket a Voyager favourite.

Could anyone beat Jack O’Lantern?

$60.00

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Not Proven – Bruce Graeme – First Edition 1935 – Scarce

Very scarce first edition crime novel from 1935 published by Hutchinson, London.

Part of the Superintendent Stevens and Inspector Pierre Allain series .. and following on from his novel of earlier in 1935 … Satan’s Mistress.

Octavo, 286 pages and one page catalogue. Red cloth covered boards with black designs and titling to front and spine, a pretty good dust jacket. A very good copy of a near impossible to get first edition.

Based in London, a well thought after, but regarded as a bit peculiar, detective comes home early to find his wife with a French lover … she does not know he has spotted her in action – so to speak. Ravaged with jealousy he plans the perfect murder, and carries it out with some triumph … but he does not account for the arrival of Pierre Allain from Paris. By a series of ingenious deductions and unusual police work Allain nails his man … but it doesn’t quite end as you would think … au reviour! We love it!

Bruce Graeme was a “nom de plume” of Graham Montague Jeffries (1900-1982).

Rare crime first edition 1935.

$60.00

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The Knightly Quest – A Parody of Espionage Thrillers – (A Novella and Twelve Short Stories) – Tennessee Williams -1968

A first UK edition of this collection published by Secker and Warburg, London in 1968. A novella and twelve short stories. Three of the short stories had appeared in “One Arm” published in 1959 – see our copy.

Octavo, 253 pages, the novella “the Knightly Quest”, a parody of espionage thrillers comprises eighty odd pages. The short stories common with the earlier edition are .. The Poet; Chronicle of a Demise and Desire and the Black Masseur.

The new short stories are … Hard Candy; Rubio y Morena; The mattress by the Tomato Patch; The Vine; The Mysteries of the Joy Rio; Mama’s Old Stucco House; Man Bring This up Road; The Kingdom of Earth and “Grand”. The first two are variations on the same theme, with the same setting but with very different results … interesting idea.

The great Tennessee Williams -his shorter stories and one slightly longer

$40.00

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The True-born English-man: A Satyr – Daniel Defoe – This Copy Published in 1716

A rare item by Daniel Defoe. The scarce “enlarged” edition printed and sold by James Roberts, London in 1716.

Pocket sized 12 mo, 12, 26 pages, bound in contemporary calf backed boards, some age and wear but solid and rare in this original state.

First edition thus. After the accession of Hanover Defoe added a new passage of 49 lines satirising the English temper. It was hastily published and contains a number of hasty error which ironically confirm its pedigree

A True-born English-man, satirical poem of length about xenophobia … a few could learn from it today. Dutch born William of Orange has become King of England, and there was much tittle tattle about his lack of English-ness. Defoe, forever a wit, wrote this is support of old William of Orange, ridiculing the notion of English racial purity. Well the evidence is there.

Defoe … much quoted from his opening rant

“that het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot
Whose gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infused betwixt a Saxon and a Dane
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.”

Daniel Defoe and his True-born a delicious antiquarian rarity … over three hundred year old!

$280.00

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Garden District – Two Plays .. Something Unspoken and Suddenly Last Summer – Tennessee Williams – First Edition 1959

Wild Geese – Martha Orstenso – 1926 First Photoplay Edition

Jack O’Lantern – George Goodchild – First Edition 1930 – Dust Jacket Designed by “Gene”

Not Proven – Bruce Graeme – First Edition 1935 – Scarce

The Knightly Quest – A Parody of Espionage Thrillers – (A Novella and Twelve Short Stories) – Tennessee Williams -1968

The True-born English-man: A Satyr – Daniel Defoe – This Copy Published in 1716

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