Hyperion: A Romance. New York: Samuel Colman, 1839

Hyperion is one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s first published works. It was published in 1839, and is a prose romance that follows a young American named Paul Flemming as he travels through Germany. The journey of the character is partially inspired by the death of a friend, and the romance in the tale is based on Longfellow’s own failed marriage proposals to his beloved.

$3,500

Works. Chapman and Hall, [1870s]

A very handsome set of the famous “Illustrated Library Edition,” here in an early printing. The dedication at the front of the first volume (Pickwick Papers) states, “This the best edition of my books is, of right, inscribed to my dear friend John Forster, biographer of Oliver Goldsmith, in affectionate acknowledgment of his counsel, sympathy, and faithful friendship during my whole literary life.” “The Library Edition came about largely because of the suggestion of Forster that while Dickens’s works were available in volumes in the Cheap Edition and in reprints of the serial parts, there was no high-quality edition that would appeal to the wealthy. Dickens eventually came round to the idea that an elegant edition could raise the stature of his writings.

$3,500

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948

FIRST EDITION of this classic, a book that helped usher in the sexual revolution.

$3,500

The Naked and the Dead. New York and Toronto: Rinehart, 1948

First edition of Norman Mailer’s landmark first novel. This is the first printing, with the Rinehart colophon on copyright page, and in the first issue dust jacket without reviews on rear flap.

$3,500

“Ueber die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Waerme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Fluessigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen” in Annalen der Physik, 4. Folge, 17 Band, No. 8. Leipzig, 1905

FIRST EDITION. “On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid Demanded by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat” appears here on pp. 549-560. This landmark paper on Brownian motion is one of the three great papers from 1905, Einstein annus mirabilis.

$3,500

Le Deuxieme Sexe [The Second Sex]. Paris: Gallimard, 1949

FIRST EDITION. One of 2000 numbered copies (from an edition of 2,150).

$3,500

[Plan of London.] Urbium Londini et Westmonasterii nec non Suburbii Southwark. Nuremberg: Homann Heirs, 1736

This famous three-sheet plan of London, Westminster, and Southwark gives names of streets, drainage, parish boundaries, buildings, parks and other places. The right sheet has inset views of St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. James Square, Custom House and the Royal Exchange on right sheet.

$3,200

Autograph letter signed to “My dear Friend.”. Danvers, March 28, 1882

Whittier poignantly writes, “Thy word of sympathy in view of the death of dear Longfellow was very welcome. It is a mighty loss to us all. It leaves me with a feeling of loneliness, as if I had outlived the world. …. All English-speaking people have a common interest in the great world-singer. I am very truly thy friend John G. Whittier.”

$3,200

Specimens of American Poetry, with Critical and Biographical Notices. Boston: S.G. Goodrich, 1829

First edition. This important work, which contains the first mention of Poe’s work in a book, is the earliest bibliography of American poetry. This set includes the work of nearly 200 poets up to 1829, with Kettell supplying biographical sketches for each writer, ranging from Cotton Mather to Francis Scott Key, Washington Irving, and Sarah J. Hale. The Catalogue of American Poetry at the end lists “Tamerlane, and other poems, by a Bostonian, Boston, 1827”—the first mention of any work by Poe in a printed book. According to Roger Stoddard, this catalogue is the beginning of the bibliography of early American poetry.

$3,000

A Tramp Abroad. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1880

$3,000