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About this catalogue
If you want to know about someone, and you’re limited to words and pictures, what’s the best way forward? Do you come at them through their family, correspondence, friends, their works or traumas, by asking their secretary, combine genres - psychobiographic fiction, autoanthroplogy, documentary narrative – rely on their utterances, modestly as an introduction, interview them to ‘set the record straight’, rely on the subject’s version, or continue through a succession of the above. They are all here and a few others besides in the list below.
Leyburn, North Yorkshire: Tartarus Press. First English edition, 2022.
The first full biography of 'a dreamer and a pragmatist', author of supernatural fiction (he called it ‘strange stories’), high profile conservationist and co-founder of a group dedicated to restoring Britain’s inland waterways; 1/500 numbered copies signed by the author and inscribed by him to Barry Humphries 'with the esteem of the biographer'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1989.
The letters of Ezra Pound, London foreign editor, to Margaret Anderson, editor and publisher of 'The Little Review', Chicago, from 1914 to 1929, and, early on during the period of these letters, serialising 'Ulysses'; edited by Thomas L.Scott and Melvin J. Friedman, with the assistance of Jackson R. Bryer; one hundred and fifty-six letters.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1993.
Surrealist, the Theatre of Cruelty, 'bloody when necessary', actor; born in Marseilles in 1896 and died in Paris fifty-two years later. ...; illustrated.
Extremities evenly tanned. Very good in good dustwrapper worn along edges.
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Boston: The MIT Press. First American edition, 1998.
Beginning, 'Antonin Artaud used to say he had really learnt to draw and paint during his stay in Dr. Dardel's establishment, Le Chanet, near Neuchatel in Switzerland. He arrived in the fall of 1918 and left in the beginning of 1920. Nevertheless two of his first preserved graphic works were dated 1915. In both cases the date was given – although far later – by his sister Madame Malaussena'; or welcome to the biographer's task; translation and preface by Mary Ann Caws.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: The Folio Society. First edition thus, 2003.
One hundred and sixty letters, 1796-1817, index, notes, bibliography; the publisher's treatment; the text of the third edition of the author's letters, first published in 1995, collected and edited by Deirdre Le Faye; 642pp.
Illustrated boards from an English design of woven and brocaded silk. Fine in maroon slipcase as issued.
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. First English editions and reprints, 2009-2016.
Four volumes, complete, a mixed set: 1929-1940 (third printing), 1941-1956 (first printing), 1957-1965 (first printing), and 1966-1989 (second printing); sixty years of the twentieth century covered; edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld (four volumes), Lois More Overbeck (four volumes), George Craig (three volumes), and Dean Gunn (three volumes); 3,000pp., 2,500 letters, quotations from 5,000 others in the annotations; indexes, chronology, illustrations.
Extremities a little dusty, else fine in dustwrappers. The four vols.
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New York: Viking Press. First American edition, 1981.
Fourteen pieces – essays and autobiographical – meetings with Boris Pasternak, Maurice Bowra, and the most famous meeting of all – Berlin's version of the fifteen hours spent with Anna Akhmatova in 1945; also 'Winston Churchill in 1940' and 'President Franklin Delano Roosevelt'; illustrated; edited by Henry Hardy, introduction by Noel Annan.
Spots of foxing top edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Chatto and Windus. First English edition, 1998.
Russian, English and Jewish; philosopher and diplomat, all through the twentieth century, starting with a childhood in Tsarist, then Bolshevik Russia, later an Oxford don and pillar of the British establishment, then back to Soviet Russia; a shared project between the author and his subject under agreement the subject would not read the manuscript and the book would be published posthumously.
Fine in dustwrapper
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. First English edition, 2004.
Beginning in his final year at school, then Oxford, to America with Guy Burgess, New York, Washington, Moscow and, in 1946, returning to Oxford; 750+pp., index, chronology, notes, edited by Henry Hardy.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Chatto and Windus. First English edition, 1998.
Gerald Tyrwhitt (1883-1950) – zany polymath, maverick eccentric; set against a portrait of a passing age; inscribed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press. First English edition, 2008.
Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson constructed via transcripts of friends' interviews produced for Lord Berners' centenary in 1983; contributors include: Richard Rodney Bennett, Harold Acton, Frederick Ashton, Daphne Fielding and Fiamma Nicolodi; unpublished writings by Lord Berners including the foreword to 'The Camel', re the 'Denton Welch' colour reproductions of his paintings (30pp.); and various bibliographies of books, art and musical compositions.
Fine in dustwrapper featuring the author's self portrait on the front panel and a landscape by him for the endpapers
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Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press. First American paperback edition, 1991.
'Let none regret my end who called me friend,' wrote the poet in 'Last Poem'; here instead, celebrating his life and work are stories, essays, poems, paintings, and photographs by a stellar cast, including: Ron Padgett, Robert Duncan, Donna Dennis, Andy Warhol, Jim Carroll, Anselm Hollo, the editor and subject; fifty-six pages of photographs and illustrations; 250pp., indexed.
Pictorial wrappers. Very good.
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Great Barrington, MA: The Figures. First American edition, 1993.
One hundred and twelve pieces, longer than Joe Brainard's 'I Remember' pieces but on the same branch of the biography tree; illustrations; glossary of individuals' names; and, a biographical first (?) – an inventory of the subject's 45rpm collection in 1959 (5pp., single spaced).
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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Boulder, CO: Rodent Press. First American edition, 1994.
'It is important to emphasize that I knew Ted closely only in the last years of his life, and the Ted I knew was not necessarily the one others did'; dedicated to Anne Waldman.
Pictorial wrappers, stapled. Fine
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London: Peter Owen. First English edition, 1972.
Bowles' autobiography, sometimes referred to as 'Without Telling'; with the unintended effect of opening up a space for the next few titles; illustrated.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Fine in very good dustwrapper creased on the bottom of the rear panel.
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New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. First American edition, 1989.
The first biography of Paul Bowles, published ten years before his death, covering his travels all over the world and long residence in Morocco, lifestyle of recreational drugs, singular relationship with Jane Bowles ('Paul and I are so incompatible that we should be in a museum'), writer, composer, translator – a concoction reappraised by biographer upon biographer in the years ahead, as well as making him the subject of several documentaries.
Some foxing to extremities and prelims, remainder stamp bottom edge, very good in dustwrapper.
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London: Peter Owen. First English edition, 1992.
Reminiscences by thirty-three friends and acquaintances all picking away at their subject's inscrutable reticence.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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London: HarperCollins. First English edition, 1994.
Hundreds of letters written between 1928 and 1991; a useful antidote to 'Without Stopping'; edited by Jeffrey Miller, Bowles' bibliographer, with chronology, Arabic glossary, short biographies of correspondents (19pp.), notes and index.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Zurich: Scalo. First Swiss edition, 1994.
Edited by Simon Bischoff in collaboration with the Swiss Foundation for Photography. Landscapes, travels, portraits, social life, one hundred plus full page reproductions; transcripts of interviews with Bowles in Tangier, 1989-1991; English text.
Top edge dusty, else fine in dustwrapper.
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Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Reprint, 1998.
'A Portrait of Paul Bowles', by the biographer of Jane Bowles, 'I came to know Paul Bowles by indirection'; illustrated.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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New York: Clarkson Potter. First American edition, 2000.
Memoir and pictorial history of the American expatriate experience; also friendship, Paul Bowles, Morocco, specifically Tangier, and the author
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Fine in dustwrapper.
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New York: Scribner. First American edition, 2004.
The 'authorised' life by his friend who enjoyed Bowles's cooperation for ten years until his death in 1999.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. First American edition, 2013.
The first collection in English – six hundred and fifty letters – written between World War Two and the end of Calvino’s life in 1985; correspondents include Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Alberto Moravia, Gore Vidal, Natalia Ginzburg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Luciano Berio; insights about Calvino’s writing, about Italian, American, English and French literature, and about culture and politics – post-fascist Italy, his resignation from the Italian Communist Party in 1957, the events of May 1968 in Paris, Brazilian prisons, the war in Vietnam, his visit to the USA in 1959, trip to his birthplace in Cuba and meeting Che Guevara; selected and introduced by Michael Wood, translated by Martin McLaughlin.
Pictorial boards. Fine without dustwrapper as issued and with wide, printed wraparound band instead.
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London: Thames and Hudson. First English edition, 2023.
'The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington'; a protracted journey from Lancashire to Mexico City for the English novelist and artist; one hundred plus reproductions; 'Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with the walls, roofs and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and blood streams'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. First American edition, 2003.
The complex relationships between Chagall's three cultural identities: Jewish, Russian, French, 1887-1985, correspondence, documents, quotations, ephemera, narrative, twentieth century events and ideologies, his deep roots in folk culture, personal relationships and loves, involvement with the art of the Russian Revolution, with Surrealism, Communism, Zionism, Yiddish literature and the state of Israel, his meteoric rise from the 'ghetto' of the Russian Pale of Settlement to the centres of modern culture; illustrations, 1,000+pp.
Very good in dustwrapper.
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Canberra, ACT: NLA Publishing. First Australian edition, 2017.
The archive as historical mechanism. Letters from Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton's papers held at the National Library selected to follow the tragic event and subsequent phenomenon, or 'A Nation Responds to the Loss of Azaria', illustrated with facsimiles of letters; chronology; and foreword by the recipient of the correspondence.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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Manchester: Manchester University Press. First English edition, 2024.
The first biography of the singular English novelist and artist who was rescued and revived professionally by the establishment of Virago.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Watkins. First English edition, 2011.
Another shot at the subject, an extreme example of the 'show me a man with only one side' school of thought: poet, magician, artist, astral traveller ...; illustrated.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Fine in dustwrapper.
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St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. First Australian edition, 2001.
'A Story in Letters': the intertwined lives of Dymphna Cusack, Florence James and Miles Franklin; turning letters into biographies; illustrated, 400+pp.
Pictorial wrappers. Tanned around perimeter. Very good.
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New York: The Vendome Press. First American edition, 1996.
One hundred and eleven duotones and seven colour plates; the darkest of the twentieth century English photographers arrives in America.
Fine in dustwrapper with a short nick on the rear panel.
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London: Cheerio. First English edition, 2024.
Laden with sub-titles: 'John Deakin and the Soho Court around Francis Bacon', 'A Psychobiographic Fiction'; London, Rome, Tangier, Paris, Greece: 'While Deakin glories in his difference, his solitude. The others knew he was there, wanted him there: his rancid suits, his sandpaper tongue. No need to ask where Deakin was. Just where you didn't need him. Stirrring. Snapping.'
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Virago. First English edition, 2010.
Dramas at Emily's, the toxic feud over wills, copyright, and rival editions that followed the poet's death, a provocative thesis about her mystery illness, dispelling the myth of the shrinking violet; the title is from a line of the poet's, 'My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun'; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper
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Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. First American edition, 2012.
The life of the American poet (1919-1988) and his memberships of, and relationships with, the most diverse literary communities; foreword by Michael Davidson; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper
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New York: Random House. First American edition, 2019.
The writer's letters, 1933-1993; the Afro-American experience in America; chronology, index, 1,000+pp; edited by John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner, introductory essays by John F. Callahan.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Oxford: Oxford University Press. First English edition, 2012.
The life of the painter, actor, poet and much else (1916-2001), between England and France, who had a lot to say about his surrealist contemporaries, including this description of Rene Magritte: 'An image of the painter with his left hand in a bucket, and his right hand stroking a cat, as he lies in bed, with a stone beneath his head'; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper
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London: Allen Lane. First English edition, 2004.
Edwardian London, early Modernism, co-founder of the Vorticists, living and working under a railway arch, killed on the Western Front in 1915, aged twenty-three.
Foxing to extremities, else very good ij dustwrapper.
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London: Bloomsbury. First English edition, 2008.
The subject, the biographer, their relationship, the planning and writing, the famous line, 'not even the people of Glasgow live init imaginatively', all conspire to become this book.
Foxing to prelims and extremities, else very good in dustwrapper.
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London: Reinhardt Books. First English edition, 1989.
Indexed, though not numbered, 'inveterate' springs to mind, from dry jokes to moral judgments, advocating fair pay for postmen to the damnation of American foreign policy, and exposing the illegal dealings of the Papal Bank; selected and introduced by Christopher Hawtree; 269pp.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Jonathan Cape. First English editions, 1989-2004.
Three volumes, a complete set: 1904-1991, letters, diaries and hundreds of interviews; a good bite out of the twentieth century.
Fine in dustwrappers. The three vols.
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New York: W.W. Norton and Co. First American edition, 2008.
Pieced together from extracts of his letters to Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell. R.K. Narayan, Vaclav Havel, many others; from individual and institutional collections; edited and annotated by Richard Greene.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Port Townsend, WA: Process. Second American edition, 2013.
The life of Louis Hardin (1916-1999), music and poetry on 6th Avenue, around 52nd Street; preface by Philip Glass; link to the free downloads of Moondog's music at rear; first published in 2007.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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London: HarperCollins. First English edition, 1998.
'In the following pages, I trace Seamus Heaney's development as a poet from 1966 to 1996'; moving from ‘the matter of Ireland’ to ‘what was the matter with Ireland’ – the poet’s first collection ‘Death of a Naturalist’ drew on his rural background for its earthy imagery such as ‘The Seed Cutters’ on the family farm. But as Northern Island descended into violence after 1968, into ‘a quarter century of life waste and spirit waste’, the Catholic poet was forced to become a poet of public as well as private life, a role whose pressures are reflected in the darkness of works such as ‘North’ and ‘Station Island’, in images like a bloody dream ‘of bodies raining down like tattered meat’. In the struggle to be both socially responsible and creatively free, his art, he said, ‘makes space for the marvellous as well as for the murderous'; inscribed, 'Especially for Barry [Humphries] by John Olsen '09'.
'Ex libris John & Katherine Olsen' on the half-title. Fine in dustwrapper.
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Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. First American edition, 1993.
Poetry and correspondence from the foreign correspondent of 'Poetry: a Magazine of Verse' to its associate editor, 1912-1949, most 1912-1917, or the author's Imagist period; edited by Ira B Nadel.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1982.
'Birds from the first were his great love, and snakes he found irresistible', taxidermy catering to the glass-case parlour trade and hunting for sport were pitiless slaughter that had no place in 'earth life' – the field naturalist's own term for his vision of harmony between birds and man. From a childhood among Argentinian shepherds, to a wanderer in rural England, and the author of 'Green Mansions', who transformed the world's attitude to wildlife conservation, ecology and survival; 'unsurpassed as an English writer on Nature,' a 'Times' obituary said.
George Sims' copy with his book label. Faint foxing to extremities, else fine in very good dustwrapper a little sunned on the spine.
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London: Viking. First English edition, 2000.
Impersonators, opportunists, adventurers, serial impostors elaborating on a single monumental lie, escapologists seeking excitement, money or lives which could never in the normal course of events, have been theirs: welcome to, yes, our species; signed by the author.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Very good in dustwrapper.
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London: Bloomsbury. First English edition, 2017.
A daughter's memoir, if that's the word, of her incestuous, abusive relationship with her father.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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New York: Alfred A. Knopf. First American edition, 1947.
'I have tried to present here a particular kind of biography, the biography not of an individual but of a family, and of a family of minds'; with selections from the writings of Henry James, Senior, William, Henry, and Alice James; 700+pp., illustrations.
Edgewear. Very good in fair dustwrapper missing a piece from the top of the front panel, other chips and tears around perimeter.
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London: Chatto and Windus. First English edition, 1998.
Constance Fenimore Woolson, Minny Temple, and Henry James; a biography of the third via his relationships with the first two; illustrated.
Short gift inscription, else very good in dustwrapper.
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Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. First American edition, 2002.
Collects letters to Hendrik Andersen (1872-1940), Dudley Jocelyn Press (1873-1943), Howard Overing Sturges (1855-1920), and Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), written during the last decades of the author's life; edited by Susan E. Gunter and Steven H. Jobe.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Review copy with publisher's embargo slip laid in. Fine in dustwrapper.
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Cheddar, Somerset: Tallis Press. First English edition, 1985.
'This book is the product of a long and thoughtful involvement with Gwen John's lifework. The author has based his sequence of poems on a knowledge of her character which he skilfully blends with an exploration of her pictures. The result is a fine example of the complementary natures of poetry and painting' - Michael Holroyd; laid in are three typed letters, signed by Brian Louis Pearce to Michael Holroyd (1995-1996), requesting and organising the passage above and a photocopy of Michael Holroyd's sending it.
Michael Holroyd's copy with his pencil notes for a puff piece for the paperback edition (1996) on the rear endpaper; very good in dustwrapper a little faded on the spine.
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London: The Many Press. First English edition, 1989.
Poems celebrating and inspired by the life and works of Gwen John combined with short essays about her life and work; #4 from The Many Press, Third Series.
Plain wrappers, stapled. Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Chatto and Windus. First English edition, 2001.
One hundred and fifty-eight known oils, nowhere near as many books about her yet but she stands well clear professionally of her relationship with Augustus, her brother, and, personally, with Rodin; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Constable. First English edition, 2003.
Fixing the subject in the British tradition of painter and author and artist and writer; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Jonathan Cape. Reprint, 2017.
And adding 'Engraver, Soldier, and English Modernist to the previous title; illustrated.
A little edgewear, very good in dustwrapper.
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New York: W.W. Norton. First American edition, 1997.
The outstanding figure in the study of human sexuality during the twentieth century; 900+pp., including index.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. First American edition, 2014.
The life of James Laughlin (1914-1997), poet, founder of 'New Directions', skier, and beginning, 'Born handsome, brilliant, and rich, all his life James Laughlin courted the art of self-effacement'; illustrated.
Remainder dot bottom edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Hamish Hamilton. First English edition, 2006.
The editor's shot at his version of the metropolis; fifty-nine contributors – Martin Stone, Marina Warner, Patrick Keiller, Anna Sinclair, Derek Raymond, Sarah Wise, Driffield – 600+pp; 'London is a kennel city populated by vanished animals, kidnapped domestic pets'.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Fine in dustwrapper.
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Auckland, NZ: David Ling. First New Zealand edition, 1997.
Collects interviews with former students of the artist as well as members of his family; illustrated.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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Auckland: Auckland University Press. First New Zealand edition, 2010.
Biographical monograph, 'On the Life and Art of Colin McCahon'; illustrated throughout.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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New York: Touchstone. Reprint, 2004.
'A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945', or after leaving his father's bookshop in Charing Cross Road and before writing the screenplay for Michael Powell's 'Peeping Tom'; 600+pp., illustrated, indexed.
Pictorial wrappers. Very good.
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New York: Thames and Hudson. First American edition, 2015.
'I paint with my back to the world'; Minimalism in Taos, New Mexico, before that, in New York among the abstract artists and, before that, a childhood in Saskatchewan; illustrated.
Fine in very good dustwrapper a little rubbed on the covers.
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London: Secker and Warburg and The British Film Institute. First English edition, 1971.
A book length interview with the French director: autobiography, relationship with American movies, then a slow trawl through his own; illustrated; working the legend into factual form.
Very good in dustwrapper.
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London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 1990.
Reaching past the children's stories that made the author so famous and trapped him in a reputation he didn't want, his plays and essays in 'Punch' largely forgotten, a golden early life that later soured; inscribed by the author on the title-page, 'from Ann Thwaite May, 1990'; laid in is an autograph note, signed from the author to Michael Holroyd, 'I thought you and Maggie [Margaret Drabble] might like a copy of this though heaven knows if you'll ever find time to read it.'
Extremities evenly tanned, else fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Jonathan Cape. First English edition, 2019.
When an artist writes an autobiography; 'Celia Paul’s memoir, Self-Portrait, is a different animal altogether. Lucian Freud, whose muse and lover she was, is rendered here—and acutely—but as Paul puts it, with typical simplicity and clarity, “Lucian…is made part of my story rather than, as is usually the case, me being portrayed as part of his.” Her story is striking. It is not, as has been assumed, the tale of a muse who later became a painter, but an account of a painter who, for ten years of her early life, found herself mistaken for a muse, by a man who did that a lot. Her book is about many things besides Freud: her mother, her childhood, her sisters, her paintings' – Zadie Smith; illustrated; the author's first book
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Constable. First English edition, 1962.
The French artist, 1863-1944, deep in the stages of Impressionism, illustrated; introduction by John Rewald.
Extremities a little darkened, else fine in dustwrapper.
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Durham, NC: Duke University Press. First American edition, 1988.
A complex relationship, ended suddenly; a darker story of an American in Paris; their correspondence, edited by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo, introduction and conclusion by the editors, illustrated, appendixes, including, Margaret Cravens' place in 'Asphodel' by H.D.
Review copy with publisher's slip laid in. Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Hamish Hamilton. Reprint, 2017.
Through the subject's life and twentieth century literary London, embarked on with its subject's blessings, finished long after his death; exploring his friendships and love affairs, revealing the writing process behind his magnum opus, the twelve-volume 'A Dance to the Music of Time' – who he collaborated with, which autobiographical details he included, who he based some of the characters on.
Faint foxing to top edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
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Sydney: Tyrrell's Limited. Second Australian edition, 1918.
'... Being Reminiscences of Australian Artists and Writers ...'; twenty-eight reproductions: twelve illustrations, sixteen photographs; beginning with 'Bohemian Boys'; Tom Roberts' copy, inscribed to him, now faintly, by the author, and with an autograph note, signed from him to Tom Roberts, hoping to organise a date 'to get the 'Old Supper Club' brethren together'; more recently Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate.
Grey green cloth stamped in gold. Spots of foxing to prelims, wear to corners. Very good.
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London: Andre Deutsch. First English edition, 1979.
A no prisoners collection of vignettes, Interrupted by her death: a white Creole childhood in Dominica, off to England – ‘It began to grow cold’, marriages, novels, retreat, rediscovery; illustrated; foreword by Diana Athill and her own biographical sketch of the writer.
Owner signature, top edge dusty, else fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Victor Gollancz. First English edition, 1983.
The author's relationship to three accomplished women writers ... Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, Germaine Greer; not a biography of Rhys but an infamous stitch-up; plus a collation of sorts (20pp.), arranged alphabetically by keywords: 'abortion' to 'women'.
Fine in dustwrapper with a small shadow on the front panel where a price sticker has been removed.
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Boston: Little Brown. First American edition, 1990.
Rhys didn't want to be the subject of a biography and destroyed her letters and ripped out pages from her journals but that didn't deter the editor in adding her sixpence in this first and most definitive biography. Elusive, haunted, nicknamed 'Johnny Rotten' to her friends, and a talented writer whose stories dealt with race and colonialism, gender, class, and nation – rich pickings for biographers trying to pin down the Dominican-born writer for years to come.
Fine in very good dustwrapper sunned along spine and around perimeter.
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London: Bloomsbury. First English edition, 2009.
'A portrait' of Jean Rhys, really an interpretive biography, styled in the tradition of its subject and the second shot at her enigmatic, problematic life story.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: William Collins. First English edition, 2022.
Are the biographers getting any closer? Maybe. In this third major biography, Rhys is treated with more nuance than previously and a clearer separation is made between her and her heroines; the author slips in a reason why this may not be the last biography – 'Writing from pitiless self-knowledge, Jean Rhys addresses the watchful and lonely outsider who lurks within us all. And here, I believe, lies the answer to the enduring power of a novelist whose softly insistent, knowing and sui generis voice speaks with more power to our times even than to her own'; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: William Heinemann. First English edition, 1924.
The Rimbaud biographies are underway; plus thirty pages of translations from 'The Drunken Boat', 'Illuminations', and 'A Season in Hell'.
Green cloth. Darkened on spine and perimeter of cloth, spots of foxing to extremities. Good. No dustwrapper.
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New York: Norton. First American edition, 2000.
Mythic satanic adolescent, intrepid explorer, symbolist poet, gun-running slave trader! ... 'Many biographers of Rimbaud preferred the sentimental, schoolboy adventure stories of Rimbaud's early memorialists to the poet's own savage cynicism. ... I have tried at least to allow Rimbaud to grow up.'
One page of illustrations detached. Very good in dustwrapper.
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New York: Welcome Rain. First American edition, 2001.
Another shot at the life of the poet: 'a thirty-six-year-long pursuit of desire'; translated by Jon Graham; 450+pp.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Sedro-Woolley, WA: Grey Spider Press. First American edition, 1996.
A poetic memoir of the author's childhood during and after World War Two; photomontages by the author; 1/175 numbered copies.
Original black cloth stamped with an arabesque pattern. Printed letterpress; designed, printed and bound by Chris Stern and Jules Remedies Faye.
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New York: Penguin. First American edition, 2020.
'My Friendship with Philip Roth'; by the dedicatee of 'Exit Ghost' and the subject's friend for the last couple of decades of his life.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. First American edition, 1967.
'Introduction to the life and work' of the idiosyncratic French writer, to coincide with his books beginning to be translated into English, by the francophile, of sorts, English writer, critic and broadcaster.
Extremities evenly tanned, very good in dustwrapper.
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London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 2000.
The first biography in English, appearing the year before the English translation of Francois Caradec's, of, in a tight field, the most enigmatic of early twentieth century French writers.
Extremities evenly tanned, very good in dustwrapper with a nick on the rear panel
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London: Atlas Press. First English edition, 2001.
The French reading of Raymond Roussel's eccentric life and influential work; illustrated; translated by Ian Monk; author and translator both members of OULIPO.
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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Paris: Flammarion and Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme. First French edition, 2019.
Exhibition catalogue. Six essays, one by Helena Rubinstein, an interview with Suzanne Slesin, biography of Helena Rubinstein; cosmetician, art patron, 'pursuer of the new'; illustrated throughout; English text.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Pictorial boards. Fine as issued without dustwrapper.
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New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. First American edition, 2001.
Really the life of Olga Rudge (1895-1996), concert violinist, companion to Ezra Pound, and driving force behind the completion of 'The Cantos'; 'what thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross'.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Oxford: Oneworld. First English edition, 2000.
Thirteenth-century Persian poet and mystic, Jala al-Din-Rumi – 'The Life, Teachings and Poetry'; 600+pp; the standard work.
A couple of marks to prelims, else fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Viking. First English edition, 1985.
'How I wish I had another fifty years to look forward to and ten gardeners and ten thousand pounds'. 'A Gardening Biography', or through the garden to the person, beginning at Knole House and ending at Sissinghurst Castle; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Granta Books. First English edition, 1998.
'I was born on May 25, 1954, in Verviers, Belgium, the only child of ...; the author's first volume of autobiography – Verviers' collapsed textile industry, economic hardship and immigration to America, growing up with two cultures – a Jersey boy from Belgium ... 'My mask merged with my skin', 1989 – his first return visit to Verviers.
Pictorial wrappers. Very good.
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London: Hutchinson Heinemann. First English edition, 2024.
In the midst of the pandemic ...'Between February 28 and March 1, 2021, I sent the following text as an email attachment to around thirty people I considered my closest, most consistent, day-to-day friends'; the author's second volume of autobiography, the years of 'living under water', yet it's never too late to escape 'the prison of denial'; photographs throughout.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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New York: New Directions. First American edition, 1984.
Two hundred plus letters, from their first meeting and leading up to their marriage in 1914; edited by Omar Pound and A.Walton Litz; inscribed by Omar Pound in the year of publication.
Faint foxing along top edge, else fine in dustwrapper.
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New York: Oxford University Press. First American edition, 1999.
Letters between Dorothy Shakespear and Ezra Pound, her husband, the latter in detention and indicted with treason at the end of World War Two; edited and annotated by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo.
Corner of front top edge bumped, edgewear, very good in dustwrapper.
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Woodbury, NJ: Mystic Light Press. First American edition, 2002.
‘Now listen to me closely, I’ll endeavour to explain, What separates a Charlatan from a Charlemagne.’ – ‘Pippin’ (Broadway musical), Stephen Schwartz; the psychic powers of mental illusionists – magicians, mind readers, fortune tellers, puzzlers, mystics, ‘thieves of thoughts’ and ‘mitt readers’, evocatively billed as The Talking Tea Kettle, The Girl With The Thousand Eyes, Baby Yvonne - The World’s Youngest Mental Marvel, The Man With The Radar Mind, The Edison Of Magic, The Hypnotic Humorist …; inscribed to Barry Humphries by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. First American edition, 2003.
Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943), inheritance, Paris, marriage, widowed; patron of the arts, sciences, letters; salon host; the real Proustian Paris; illustrated.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Fine in dustwrapper.
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Jakarta: Afterhours Books. First Indonesian edition, 2011.
Decades in the making, a biography that corrects some myths about the painter and ‘master escapologist and dreamer’, who chose Bali as his home in the 1930s, for its ‘incredibly advanced and fabulous culture’; draws on private letters and interviews with Balinese artists who knew the artist; covers the whole of his artistry: music, dance, painting; full-page reproductions of paintings, a checklist of all the known works, and an analytical index; inscribed to Barry Humphries by the author in 2012; English text.
Barry Humphries' copy with his bookplate. Fine in dustwrapper.
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Munich: Hirmer. First German edition, 2021.
Illustrated life of the American artist (1871-1944), twenty plus years after the Whitney retrospective, or can a 'wealthy society bohemian who never had to work for a living and who had the habits and manners of her class and kind, be an outsider artist of sorts because she does not need to make money from her art'; vividly illustrated; English text.
Pictorial boards. Fine as issued without dustwrapper.
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London: Faber and Faber. First English edition, 2020.
From Tomas Straussler to Tom Stoppard; Zlin, Singapore, Mumbai, Bristol, London, back, spiritually, to the Czech Republic; and a reasonable shot at dominating the stage through the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first; author of Arcadia, where Septimus says to Thomasina, 'We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.' Illustrated; 950+pp.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Oxford: Oxford University Press. First edition thus, 1948.
Two volumes: Sixty-five letters from Jonathan Swift to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley, written between 1710 and 1713; edited by Harold Williams, seven appendixes setting the context (30pp.); first published in 1766.
Owner signature, else very good in dustwrappers. The two vols.
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Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. First Malaysian edition, 1997.
'This historiographic study of K'tut Tantri – alias Vannen Walker, the journalist from the Isle of Man; Muriel Pearson, the unhappy wife; Manx, the Balinese bohemian; and Surabaya Sue, the notorious revolutionary – compares her romantic and colourful autobiography, 'Revolt in Paradise', with other versions of her past ...'; or, 'when the legend becomes fact, print the legend'; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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Durham, NC: Duke University Press. First American paperback edition, 2022.
Worked on 1973-2003, a little more in 2013, then 2019 and, within the frame of 'I have never yet been able to experience the sensation of being only one person'; foreword by Joseph Donahue
Pictorial wrappers. Fine.
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Amsterdam: Gaberbocchus and De Harmonie. First Dutch edition, 2013.
'Correspondence, Diaries, Drawings, Documents, 1940-1942'; Stefan in Paris, Franciszka in London; 'one hundred and fifty of their letters survive, as do as many telegrams, Stefan's nine diaries, seventy official documents and Franciszka's many drawings'; 400pp; edited by Jasia Reichardt, coda by Nick Wadley; English text.
Printed wrappers. A little darkened around perimeter, else fine.
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Bristol: Sansom and Company. Second English edition reissue, 2000.
Alfred Wallis on the Celtic edge of England; illustrated, biographical monograph; first published in 1949, second edition in 1992.
Pictorial wrappers. Very good.
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First Light. Second English revised edition, 2006.
Biographical monograph of the Cornish naive artist (1855-1942) who began painting at seventy and produced what Ben Nicholson called 'something that has grown out of the Cornish seas and earth and which will endure'; illustrated throughout with the artist's work and, in great detail, the sources for that work; signed by the author.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. First American edition, 2000.
Two hundred plus letters, from an estimated ten thousand, written between 1907 and 1983, or most of the twentieth century, to, among many, H.G. Wells, Noel Coward, Emma Goldman, and Virginia Woolf; edited, annotated and introduced by Bonnie Kime Scott.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Frances Lincoln. First English edition, 2012.
Illustrated biography of the English artist, muralist, costume designer, illustrator, who was killed in 1944 during World War Two.
Fine in very good dustwrapper.
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London: Jonathan Cape. First English edition, 1998.
The most courageous of lives squaring off against all the institutions of her day; laid in is an autograph note, signed by Jane Dunn to Michael Holroyd, 'Well, you are responsible really for all this. Without you, Antonia would have remained a forgotten writer and this mad life & family fallout would have been just a private tragedy. However it makes a good if grim story. Many thanks for everything, Jane'.
Review copy with publisher's press release laid in. A couple of underlinings on the acknowledgments page, else fine in dustwrapper.
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London: MacGibbon and Kee. First English edition, 1968.
Beginning, 'I was an innocent child and have remained so to this day. Only yesterday, reading Chapman's 'The Iliad of Homer', did I realize for the first time that the derivation of the adjective venereal is from Venus! And I have been a physician practicing medicine for the past forty years. I was stunned!.'
The New Directions sheets with an English title page.
Review copy with publisher's slips tipped and laid in to prelims. Spots of foxing to top edge, very good in dustwrapper.
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New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. First American edition, 2011.
The life and work of William Carlos Williams, the 'America of Poets', according to Randall Jarrell', whose subject matter derived from the everyday lives of the citizens and poor immigrant communities of New Jersey, and more broadly, American society between two world wars, a 'flu pandemic, and the Great Depression.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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London: Impress. First English edition, 2018, 2023.
Two volumes: 'The Total Man' – graphic designer and typographer, Berthold Wolpe by Phil Cleaver and 'The Curious Maker' – sculptor, jewellery and costume designer and illustrator, Margaret Wolpe by Phil Cleaver and Jim McCue respectively.
Matching pictorial boards. Both fine as issued without dustwrappers. The two vols.
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[Berkeley, CA]: Shoemaker Hoard. First American edition, 2007.
The life and work of Louis Zukofsky, beginning on the Lower East Side of Manhattan reciting Longfellow in Yiddish ...; illustrated.
Fine in dustwrapper.
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