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Autograph Letter Signed

Autograph Letter Signed by DUNCAN, ISADORA

5 to 10 days for delivery
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Details
$9,500.00
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Seller: The Manhattan Rare Book Company
Title
Autograph Letter Signed
Author
DUNCAN, ISADORA
Seller
The Manhattan Rare Book Company (United States)
Condition
Fine
Description
Berlin: np, 1905. first edition. custom folder. Fine. A PRIMARY DOCUMENT ON THE FOUNDING OF THE GRUNEWALD SCHOOL, THE INSTITUTION THAT PRODUCED THE ISADORABLES AND ESTABLISHED THE PEDAGOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN DANCE. Writing from Berlin, Duncan describes the founding and early success of her "free school for the dance in Grunewald," opened on December 7, 1904, in a wooded district outside the city that she deliberately chose for its distance from academic conservatories and theatrical convention. The Grunewald school represented Duncan's first sustained effort to translate her revolutionary ideas about natural movement, rhythm, and expressive freedom into a residential pedagogical environment-and it was here that Anna, Erika, Irma, Lisa, Margot, and Maria-Theresa, the six pupils later celebrated as the Isadorables, first studied under her guidance. She explains that "these little girls living together and studying the Art of the Dance under my guidance have made such wonderful progress" that sculptors and artists visiting the school expressed "their enthusiastic belief in the benefit of this school for the artists of the future & for the state." That final phrase-written to a potential German patron-was not rhetorical flourish but a calculated civic argument: Duncan was positioning her radical pedagogy as a public good, a claim she understood would resonate with the cultural and institutional priorities of her Berlin audience. The emphasis on communal living, bodily freedom, and immersion in nature simultaneously marked a sharp departure from classical ballet training and aligned her project with broader early-20th-century reform movements in education, art, and physical culture. The school Duncan describes in this letter was not only a pedagogical experiment but a political one, and its politics were inseparable from the female body. Duncan's insistence on bare feet, loose tunics, and unencumbered natural movement was a direct challenge to the corseted, constrained body that Victorian and Wilhelmine culture demanded of women-a challenge she was now institutionalizing in a residential community of girls living and moving together outside the structures of conventional female education. Scholars have since read the Grunewald school, and Duncan's broader project, within the history of female separatist spaces and the emergence of a distinctly modern female subjectivity: a body that moved for its own expressive purposes rather than for the pleasure or approval of a male audience. Duncan's own life enacted these ideas beyond the studio-her refusal of marriage as an institution, her open relationships with both men and women, and her insistence on erotic and creative autonomy as inseparable from artistic freedom were understood by her contemporaries as continuous with her dance philosophy, not incidental to it. This letter, in which she solicits patronage for an all-female residential school from a male Berlin patron by arguing its value to "the state," captures with particular sharpness the negotiation at the center of her project: radical female autonomy framed in the civic language her audience required. In her letter, Duncan outlines her plan to expand the school, proposing a subscription benefit performance at the Kroll Opera House on July 20-one of Berlin's premier cultural venues-with lots available from 100 to 1,000 marks, proceeds directed to young art students in Berlin. That concert, now documented in dance history, marked the first public appearance of the Grunewald students: the girls who would go on to perform more than seventy times across Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Russia, England, and France before their celebrated American debut at Carnegie Hall in December 1914. This letter, dated just seventeen days before that performance, captures the school at the precise moment of its emergence into public life. Duncan invites Russo's support directly: "If this idea meets with your approval will you subscribe-the corner stone of the new building with list of subscribers enclosed will be laid in October 1905," adding plans to take "twenty five more little girls next year." The choice of the Kroll Opera House as the vehicle for her fundraising is telling: Duncan was simultaneously operating at the center of Berlin's cultural establishment and presenting herself as its reforming conscience. The identity of the recipient merits attention. The recipient's precise role in Berlin's cultural networks has not been fully established, but the nature of Duncan's appeal-combining artistic vision, civic argument, and a concrete financial proposition-suggests she regarded him as a patron of standing, someone whose name on a subscriber list would carry weight with others. Historically, the Grunewald school occupies a critical place in dance history. It was Duncan's first attempt to create a permanent educational structure for modern dance-preceding her later schools in Paris and Moscow-and it was the nursery of the Isadorables, whose subsequent careers as performers and teachers became the primary vehicle through which Duncan's principles were transmitted to the next generation. The pedagogical ideas articulated in this letter-movement derived from nature, the unity of art and life, dance as a formative social and cultural force-became foundational not only to modern dance but to performance theory more broadly. Duncan's influence has proved anything but historical. In dance, her principles-movement originating from the solar plexus, the body as the direct expression of inner life, choreography as an act of personal and political freedom-remain active presences in contemporary practice, traceable through Doris Humphrey, José Limón, and Mark Morris, and kept in living transmission by the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation and the Isadora Duncan International Institute, both of which continue to teach and perform her original repertory. In gender and sexuality studies, the scholarly recovery of Duncan has accelerated markedly since the 1990s: her work now figures centrally in debates about the female body as a site of resistance, the politics of visibility and exposure, the history of queer female community and erotic autonomy, and the relationship between modernist aesthetics and feminist practice. The Grunewald school in particular-the all-female residential community whose founding this letter documents-has attracted renewed attention as an early instance of the kind of separatist female space that second- and third-wave feminist theory would later theorize explicitly. This letter captures Duncan not as a touring icon but as a cultural architect at a pivotal moment: seventeen days before the school's first public performance, soliciting the patronage that would allow her to build the institution whose students would carry her legacy into the twentieth century. The letter in full: Dear Herr Russo - 
On Dec 7. 1904 I opened my free school for the Dance in Grunewald with twenty pupils. These little girls living together and studying the Art of the Dance under my guidance have made such wonderful progress that all sculptors & artists visiting the school express their enthusiastic belief in the benefit of this school for the artists of the future & for the State. This idea encourages me to the adding to the school by a second building with larger dancing room that I may take thirty five more little girls next year. For this purpose I am giving a subscription Benefit at Knes Knigl Opera House on July 20. The subscriptions are sold in separate lots of one hundred to one thousand marks - the seats of those not able to be present are given to young Art Students in Berlin. If this idea meets with your approval will you subscribe - the Corner Stone of the new building with list of subscribers enclosed will be laid in October 1905. With kindest regards to Frau Russo - and to yourself. I remain Most Sincerely / Isadora Duncan / July 5, 1905 - 11 Hardenbergstrasse Berlin. Two pages on two adjoining sheets, 7 × 9 in. Written to "Herr Russo" (unidentified). Berlin (Grunewald): July 5, 1905. Fine condition. ISADORA DUNCAN LETTERS OF ANY IMPORTANCE ARE VERY RARE.
Woodward's Catalogue of Architectural Books [cover title]; Published and for sale by Geo. E. Woodward, Architect, No. 191 Broadway, New York

Woodward's Catalogue of Architectural Books [cover title]; Published and for sale by Geo. E. Woodward, Architect, No. 191 Broadway, New York

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $8.00
Details
$450.00
( US$)
Seller: Bartlebys Books
Title
Woodward's Catalogue of Architectural Books [cover title]; Published and for sale by Geo. E. Woodward, Architect, No. 191 Broadway, New York
Seller
Bartlebys Books (United States)
Description
New York: Geo. E. Woodward, 1869. First edition. 8vo. (24) pp. Illustrated from wood engravings. Detailed descriptions of newly published books, with illustrations, and a well-annotated list of other books in stock; three pages, including a complete plate list, are devoted to Woodward's National Architect. Not in Hitchcock. OCLC locates one copy (American Antiquarian Society). Owner's name at head of front wrapper, a little soiling, but very good. Original illustrated cream wrappers. (#7726).
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE COMMERCIAL POLICY OF SPAIN IN THE FLORIDAS, WITH INCIDENTAL REFERENCE TO LOUISIANA

DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE COMMERCIAL POLICY OF SPAIN IN THE FLORIDAS, WITH INCIDENTAL REFERENCE TO LOUISIANA by Whitaker, Arthur Preston (translator & editor)

7 to 14 days for delivery
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Details
$150.00
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Seller: Bartlebys Books
Title
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE COMMERCIAL POLICY OF SPAIN IN THE FLORIDAS, WITH INCIDENTAL REFERENCE TO LOUISIANA
Author
Whitaker, Arthur Preston (translator & editor)
Seller
Bartlebys Books (United States)
Description
Deland: Florida State Historical Society, 1931. 1st ed. 1 of 360 copies. Tall 8vo.; lxii, (1), 277pp. Frontis. portrait, maps & plans. Unopened pages. Cloth-backed paper boards. Text in Spanish, with English translations facing. A very good copy.
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The Tendency of History. by Adams, Henry.

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $15.50
Details
$225.00
( US$)
Seller: Savoy Books
Title
The Tendency of History.
Author
Adams, Henry.
Seller
Savoy Books (United States)
Description
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896. Book. 8vo, original printed wrappers. Pp. 17-23, unopened. Slightly dusty; a fine copy. First separate edition, an off-print from the annual report of the Ameircan Historical Association for 1895. Very scarce. BAL 27..
About Alphabets, Some Marginal Notes on Type Design (Typophiles Chap Books XXXVII)

About Alphabets, Some Marginal Notes on Type Design (Typophiles Chap Books XXXVII) by Zapf, Hermann; Standard, Paul (Translator, Preface)

5 to 14 days for delivery
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Details
$110.00
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Seller: Swan's Fine Books
Title
About Alphabets, Some Marginal Notes on Type Design (Typophiles Chap Books XXXVII)
Author
Zapf, Hermann; Standard, Paul (Translator, Preface)
Seller
Swan's Fine Books (United States)
Condition
Very good +
Description
New York: The Typophiles, 1960. Hardcover. Very good +. One of 300 signed and numbered copies, duodecimo size, 118 pp. total, this volume signed by Hermann Zapf. Hermann Zapf (1918-2015) was one of the most influential typographers of the early digital age, having a career that "spanned the glory days of hot metal composition right through to the rise of the Apple Mac"; his creations continue to inspire today. Interestingly, it is Zapf's "dingbats" that may have had the biggest impact on modern communication: these formed the basis for Unicode's symbols, which in turn paved the way for the now-ubiquitous emoji. This volume signed by Zapf at the colophon, being no. 102 of the edition (both the signature and number in blue ink). ___DESCRIPTION: Bound in full blue cloth over stiff cardboard, brown leather spine label with gilt lettering, the frontispiece a reproduction of a photograph of Zapf, replete with typographic designs, several being double-page; duodecimo size (7" by 4 1/2"), pagination: [1-6] 7-117, [1, colophon], this one of 300 signed/numbered copies (total English edition 700 copies; there were also 1300 copies printed in German). ___CONDITION: Better than very good: the cloth binding clean overall and without wear, all corners perfectly straight and unrubbed, a strong text block with solid hinges, the interior clean and bright, and the sole prior owner marking we see a gift inscription on the flyleaf dated "vii.62"; we would have graded this book fine except for (i) an old damp-stain at the head of the spine which has darkened the leather spine label and the cloth at the very top, and (ii) foxing to the edges of the text block. Even with its few faults, still special with Hermann Zapf's signature. ___POSTAGE: International customers, please note that additional postage may apply as the standard does not always cover costs; please inquire for details. ___Swan's Fine Books is pleased to be a member of the ABAA, ILAB, and IOBA and we stand behind every book we sell. Please contact us with any questions you may have, we are here to help.
The Central Australian Expedition: The Journals of Charles Stuart
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

The Central Australian Expedition: The Journals of Charles Stuart by Davis, Richard

7 to 14 days for delivery
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$30.00
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Seller: Mullen Books, Inc. ABAA / ILAB
Title
The Central Australian Expedition: The Journals of Charles Stuart
Author
Davis, Richard
Seller
Mullen Books, Inc. ABAA / ILAB (United States)
ISBN
9780904180800
Condition
VG+/VG+
Description
London: The Hakluyt Society, 2002. Hardcover. VG+/VG+. Black cloth, sky blue DJ. lxxi, 366 pp. No ills. Account of Stuart's unsuccesful but historical 19th century trek to seek the center of the Australian continent.
Heroes of Hope: A ranking of 52 people who changed the world by daring to hope

Heroes of Hope: A ranking of 52 people who changed the world by daring to hope by Butler, Primus S.

2 to 8 days for delivery
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Details
$25.00
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Seller: Tschanz Rare Books
Title
Heroes of Hope: A ranking of 52 people who changed the world by daring to hope
Author
Butler, Primus S.
Seller
Tschanz Rare Books (United States)
Description
Tooele, UT, 2008. First Edition. [133pp]. Quarto [28 cm] White wrappers with the title printed in black on the front panel and backstrip. Near fine. A self-published homage to the 'Most Wanted Iraqi' playing cards, with the theme being decidedly conservative and religious: Norman Vincent Peale, Dan Quayle, Pat Boone, Billy Graham, Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Orrin Hatch, Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, Richard Simmons(!) and others (you get the idea). An earnest tribute.
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Guinness le Livre des Records

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $5.50
Details
$19.50
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Seller: Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABAA
Title
Guinness le Livre des Records
Seller
Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABAA (United States)
Condition
Very Good
Description
France: Denoel, 1977. Very Good. First thus. Very good plus. In French. Illustrated.

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