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

Leaves of Grass. New York: [for Walt Whitman], 1867

This is the fourth Leaves of Grass. The failure of Thayer & Eldridge, publisher of the third edition (Boston, 1860), left Whitman in search of a publisher. The poet decided that the events of the Civil War called for another reimagining of Leaves of Grass. Whitman returned to his earlier practice and financed the publication himself, engaging the New York printer William E. Chapin. For the first time, the 1867 Leaves opened with the poem “Inscription,” which introduced the book in subsequent editions.

$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

“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

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

Essays in Tales and Prose. Vol. II. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1853

$3,000

A Tramp Abroad. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1880

$3,000

An Explanation of the Map of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Printed for the Author and sold by Nicholas Brooks, 1774

FIRST EDITION. This pamphlet was published in conjunction with “Reed’s Plan of First Purchasers,” a large and now rare landownership map, documenting the “First Purchasers” of Pennsylvania. The text includes copies of the original abstracts of communications from William Penn to the “first adventurers and purchasers in Pennsylvania,” abstracts of the charter of the city, reasons why the plan of the city was altered by Benjamin Eastburn, an alphabetical list of the first purchasers, and the courses, distances and dates of surveys of all the lots in the city of Philadelphia. Reed prepared this valuable document to bolster his family’s claims to land in the Philadelphia area.

$2,800