Poems … selected and edited by William Michael Rossetti. London: John Camden Hotten, 1868

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION of Whitman’s poems.

$850

Extra. Senseless Panic. New York: New York Daily Bulletin, September 24, 1873

The Panic of 1873 was set off by the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., the leading American banker of its day. Because of financial crises in Europe , the Credit Mobilier scandal, and related problems, the firm declared bankruptcy on September 18, 1873. The bank’s failure set of a chain of events including the failure of many insurance companies and banks and the ten-day closure of the New York Stock Exchange starting on September 20. Within two months 55 railroads had failed. The downturn, which lasted for the rest of the decade, was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s depression took that name.

$800

“Plancks Gesetz und Lichtquantenhypothese” in Zeitschrift fuer Physik, vol. 25-26. Braunschweig and Berlin, 1924

“With their work Bose and Einstein established the field of quantum statistics one year before the appearance of quantum mechanics” (Brandt, The Harvest of a Century)

$800

Specimen Days & Collect. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1882-'83

FIRST EDITION, second printing, first issue. Thomas Harned’s copy, with his bookplate. Whitman’s friend Harned was one of the poet’s literary executors, alog with Horace Traubel and Richard B. Bucke.

$800

Walt Whitman … to which is added English Critics on Walt Whitman edited by Edward Dowden. Glasgow: Wilson and McCormick, 1884

FIRST EDITION, first British issue, comprising the American sheets (1883) plus a new section (pp. 237-255), Dowden’s work on the English critics of Whitman.

$800

The Importance of Being Earnest: Collection of 11 photographs of the Theatre Royal Haymarket production. Angus McBean, photographer, 1968

This West End revival of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest opened on February 8, 1968 and ran for 283 performances at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The production starred Isabel Jeans, Daniel Massey, Helen Weir, and John Standing, among others.

$800

Space Flight … When? [and] Space Flight. Westwood, New Jersey, 1946

This rare fanzine was printed in tiny numbers. We have found traces of the 1946 number on the Internet, but the 1947 number appears to be even more rare. Each number publishes the result of the author’s survey of science fiction writers, editors, and aficionados concerning the likelihood of space travel for humans.

two volumes: $750

OLD PLAYS; being a continuation of Dodsley’s collection, with notes, critical and explanatory. London: Rodwell and Martin, 1816

Contains the following:  Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Lust’s Dominion; John Lyly, Mother Bombie, Endymion, and Midas; Middleton, Women Beware Women, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Spanish Gypsy, The Changeling, More Dissemblers Besides Women; Dekker, Wonder of a Kingdom, Old Fortunatus; Rowley, A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vext; Webster, Appius and Virginia; Chapman, May Day, Monsieur D’Olive, Bussy D’Ambois; Webster and Rowley, Thracian Wonder; Marston’s Antonio and Mellida, What you Will, and Parasitaster: or, the Fawn; Heywood, The English Traveller, The Royal King and Loyal Subject, A Challenge for Beauty.  According to the title-page, this is a continuation of Dodsley’s Collection of Old Plays (1744).

$750

Chinese Currency. Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1901

FIRST EDITION of this standard work on the history of Chinese currency. Edkins was a British Sinologist and Protestant missionary who spent 57 years in China, 30 of them in Beijing.

$700

Horse-Hoeing Husbandry: or, An Essay on the Principles of Vegetation and Tillage. Designed to Introduce A New Method of Culture; whereby The Produce of Land will be Increased, and the Usual Expense Lessened. Together with Accurate Descriptions and Cuts of the Instruments Employed in it … fourth edition, very carefully corrected. London: Millar, 1762

The edition that Thomas Jefferson owned.  Jefferson wrote from Monticello in 1817, “While I was an amateur in Agricultural science (for practical knowledge my course of life never permitted me) I was very partial to the drilled husbandry of Tull.”

$600