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Early Unpublished Short Stories, including "One for 'A'

Early Unpublished Short Stories, including "One for 'A' by VONNEGUT, KURT

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$24,000.00
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Seller: The Manhattan Rare Book Company
Title
Early Unpublished Short Stories, including "One for 'A'
Author
VONNEGUT, KURT
Seller
The Manhattan Rare Book Company (United States)
Condition
Very Good
Description
Indianapolis: n.p., 1945. First edition. Custom folder. Very Good. UNPUBLISHED SHORT STORY, TYPESCRIPT DRAFT; WITH FRAGMENT OF SECOND STORY. These two short stories survive from Kurt Vonnegut's early attempts to become an author, after the end of the Second World War in 1945 and years before the publication of his first piece of fiction, yet alone novel, in 1950. The period between Kurt Vonnegut's return from war-torn Europe and the publication of his first piece of fiction "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" in 1950 is replete with rejected short stories by the fledging fiction writer. And the two unpublished stories present here could easily sit themselves among the numerous works from this unhappy time in Vonnegut's early adulthood which have only posthumously received public attention. However, the Indianapolis address given at the bottom of "One for 'A'" helps to locate the story to a narrow timeframe after the war but before Kurt and his newly-wed wife Jane commenced their graduate studies at the University of Chicago. "In October [1945] Kurt reported to Fort Riley and was assigned to the secretarial pool," writes biographer Charles Shields (p. 84). "In his spare time, he continued to write stories and mail them to Jane, who was living with her parents in Indianapolis until Kurt's discharge" and by "December 1945, the Vonneguts were in a brick apartment building at 3972½ Ellis Avenue in Chicago." (Shields, pp. 84-85). Vonnegut would not return to Indianapolis for a long time, moving to from Chicago to Schenectady, NY for a job with General Electric, having had one MA thesis rejected and leaving a second incomplete-"another of my failures" that casts a shadow over this era for the incipient author (Vonnegut quoted in Shields, p. 92). Further evidence for the early dating of "One for 'A'" comes from the subject matter itself. The story depicts a despondent widower, reminiscing over his late wife, and his butler, who ensnares the mind of his employer with tell of mystic seers who can communicate to those beyond the grave. The methodology for this contact with the supernatural, per the butler's instructions, involves listening for raps on the table, with one rap indicating the letter A, two indicating B, and so on. This may sound familiar, as a similar incident occurs in Vonnegut's first novel Player Piano, published in 1952 (p. 306): Meanwhile, Paul and Harold passed the time of day. "Ain' a bit sorry," said Harold. "Wha's 'at tap-tap-tappin'?" The irregular tapping came from the other side of the sheet-metal wall that separated Paul's and Harold's barred cell from the totally enclosed tank for desperados next door. Experimentally, Paul tapped on his side. "Twenty-three-eight-fifteen," came the reply. Paul recognized the schoolboy's code: one for A, two for B... "Twenty-three-eight-fifteen" was "Who?" A butler's occultist hearsay is transformed into a "schoolboy's code", juxtaposing the grandeur of "One for 'A'"'s setting with the "sheet-metal wall" of Paul's industrialist backdrop. But the common thread is the un-sophisticated, working-man solution that the code represents in both contexts-easily understandable by all regardless of differences in social standing and effective in attaining their characters' goals. It seems unlikely that Vonnegut would repeat the 'one for A' motif after the publication of Player Piano in a short story, thus placing a cold terminus ad quo on "One for 'A'" of 1952. In addition to the Indianapolis address and its bearing on the time frame, these factors firmly demarcate the unpublished work by Vonnegut as one from his earliest years as a writer. The second story included remains untitled, on account of only the final five of what would have been eleven pages surviving. But, like "One for 'A'", it captures a distinct sense of Vonnegut's, even its fragmentary state. A boy in midwestern suburbiana yearns to flee to the east coast, to attend Harvard, and his dedicated girlfriend will help him in even the most ridiculous of circumstances-no stretch of the imagination is needed to see how the narrative could have grown from Vonnegut's mind, years before he himself would relocate to New York and then Massachusetts. At this historical moment, in world history and his own life, Vonnegut's success as one of the most read authors of the twentieth century was far from certain. These stories chart early attempts from the late 1940s at accomplishing his goals of being a writer, attempt which are in large part products of his wife Jane's dedication. Writing on their relationship at this time, Ginger Strands comments on how "Jane had just one idea, and she pressed it with patient determination. Kurt would be a writer-a great one. Her conviction terrified him. 'You scare me when you say that I am going to create the literature of 1945 onwards and upwards,' he wrote to her in August of that year. 'Angel, will you stick by me if it goes backwards and downwards?' [...] She urged him to use his free time at Fort Riley to pound out stories. He worked from five-thirty to seven-thirty each night and mailed his efforts back to Indianapolis for Jane to edit and re-type." (Strand). Edith Vonnegut, visual artist and daughter of Kurt and Jane's, has confirmed that her father did write in cursive early on, and-after comparing with handwriting samples from her mother and father-speculates that the present inscription of Kurt's name is by Jane pretending to be her father. Though speculative, this interpretation agrees with the known history of Vonnegut's first attempts to get published and would contribute unique material evidence to Vonnegut's particular early writing process. It is not often that one can read new Vonnegut material. The present copies of "One for 'A'" and the untitled fragment offer this unique opportunity, and to see further how he began to find his legs as a storyteller before dedicating his life to being an author as profession. As Vonnegut would write in Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." While Vonnegut was balancing many major life-decisions between 1945 and 1952 (where to study, who to work for, how much to work for) he never stopped writing-and the dreams of a writing career which may have once felt pretend became real. Provenance: Bernard Vonnegut; by descent to his heirs; purchased by private collector. VONNEGUT, KURT. Early Unpublished Short Story, "One for 'A'". Indianapolis: n.p., c. 1945. Octavo (275 x 215 mm), 5 typescript pages on 5 leaves. Signed and inscribed on the final leaf by either Kurt or Jane Vonnegut: "P[rivate] f[irst] c[lass] Kurt Vonnegut Jr. | R.R. 14-Box 223 | Indianapolis 44 | Indiana". Slight rusting and indentation from paperclip. with VONNEGUT, KURT. Early Unpublished Short Story, untitled. [?Indianapolis]: n.p., c. 1945. Octavo (275 x 210 mm), 5 typescript pages on 5 leaves. Pages numbered in ink in top right corner, with some corrections in ink. References: Shields, Charles J., And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2011) Strand, Ginger, "How Jane Vonnegut Made Kurt Vonnegut a Writer", The New Yorker, 3 December 2015 Vonnegut, Kurt, Player Piano (New York: Dial Press, 2006) -- Letters, ed. by Dan Wakefield (New York: Dial Press, 2014) -- Kurt Vonnegut: Complete Short Stories, ed. by Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2017).
WOMEN AND ECONOMICS

WOMEN AND ECONOMICS by Stetson, Charlotte Perkins [Charlotte Perkins Gilman]

5 to 10 days for delivery
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$3,500.00
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Seller: Type Punch Matrix
Title
WOMEN AND ECONOMICS
Author
Stetson, Charlotte Perkins [Charlotte Perkins Gilman]
Seller
Type Punch Matrix (United States)
Condition
Very good.
Description
Boston: Small, Maynard & Co, 1898. Very good.. First edition of Gilman's most important nonfiction work, with still-relevant arguments about the economic value of female household labor. A major feminist treatise on women's enforced economic dependence, published two years after Gilman served as California's delegate to the International Socialist and Labor Congress in London, cementing her stature as an influential social thinker and public intellectual. The perennial popularity of Gilman's eerie THE YELLOW WALLPAPER (1892) and utopian HERLAND (1915) has often effaced the importance of her political and polemical feminist writings, not least because much of her revolutionary socialism has won the argument and ceased to shock as it once did. An exception is Gilman's eloquent argument for community kitchens and universally available early childcare, a demand backed by reasoning that has remained solid for the past twelve decades without ever becoming the law in the country of the author's birth. Her argument for models of living outside the heteronormative nuclear family structure remains current as well: "Married people will always prefer a home together, and can have it; but groups of women or groups of men can also have a home together if they like..." And more than half a century before THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, she identified the core of the housewife's alienation: "Men meet one another freely in their work, while women work alone." As for the subject of female household labor, so prized and promoted by traditionalists, Gilman asks the (now) classic question: if women's domestic work is really worth so much to families, what will you pay them for it? Gilman - who divorced her first husband, artist Charles Walter Stetson, in 1884, and would take the name Gilman upon her second marriage, in 1900 - became a renowned speaker on the lecture circuit in and after the 1890s. Her subjects touched not only on the "Woman Question" but also on a full range of economic, ethical, and educational topics, on which she continued to publish; the shortcomings of her ideology would be noted and critiqued by later feminists, though her importance remains. The deserved renown of THE YELLOW WALLPAPER has preserved Gilman's fame to the present day while obscuring both the significance and the sheer volume of her full published output, demonstrating the unfortunate effectiveness of Joanna Russ's famous dictum in HOW TO SUPPRESS WOMEN'S WRITING: "She wrote it, but she only wrote one of it." WOMEN AND ECONOMICS shows otherwise. 7.5'' x 4.75''. Original red publisher's cloth. Printed paper label mounted to spine. vii, [1], 340 pages. Spine sunned; dampstaining to lower corner of front board. Minor foxing to endpapers and scattered throughout.
A Winter in the West Indies and Florida containing General Observations upon Modes of Travelling, Manners and Customs, Climates and Productions, with a Particular Description of St. Croix, Trinidad de Cuba, Havana, Key West, and St. Augustine, as Places of Resort for Northern Invalids. By an Invalid

A Winter in the West Indies and Florida containing General Observations upon Modes of Travelling, Manners and Customs, Climates and Productions, with a Particular Description of St. Croix, Trinidad de Cuba, Havana, Key West, and St. Augustine, as Places of Resort for Northern Invalids. By an Invalid

3 to 6 days for delivery
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$400.00
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Seller: James Cummins Bookseller
Title
A Winter in the West Indies and Florida containing General Observations upon Modes of Travelling, Manners and Customs, Climates and Productions, with a Particular Description of St. Croix, Trinidad de Cuba, Havana, Key West, and St. Augustine, as Places of Resort for Northern Invalids. By an Invalid
Seller
James Cummins Bookseller (United States)
Condition
Original green cloth heavily toned
Description
New York, 1839. 12mo. Original green cloth heavily toned. 12mo. FIRST BOOK ON FLORIDA AS A RESORT. Sabin 104829; ; Clark 3, 257
No image available

BEETHOVEN by Wagner, Richard

7 to 14 days for delivery
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$350.00
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Seller: J.B. Muns, Fine Arts Books
Title
BEETHOVEN
Author
Wagner, Richard
Seller
J.B. Muns, Fine Arts Books (United States)
Condition
Very Good
Description
Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1870. Paperback. Very Good. Wraps sl. worn/stained on rear. A very nice copy. 73pp. of text in German. Centenary essay. Wagner uses Beethoven's music to justify Schopenhauer's claim that music, by contrast to the other arts, expresses the world's inner being.
No image available

LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, INCLOSING HIS REPORT ON THE PETITION OF JONATHAN JACKSON, AND THE MEMORIAL OF ABEL WHITNEY, PRESENTED THE 28TH OF NOVEMBER, AND 11TH OF DECEMBER LAST.18TH APRIL, 1798 by [Wolcott, Oliver]

7 to 14 days for delivery
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$175.00
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Seller: David M. Lesser, Fine Antiquarian Books LLC
Title
LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, INCLOSING HIS REPORT ON THE PETITION OF JONATHAN JACKSON, AND THE MEMORIAL OF ABEL WHITNEY, PRESENTED THE 28TH OF NOVEMBER, AND 11TH OF DECEMBER LAST.18TH APRIL, 1798
Author
[Wolcott, Oliver]
Seller
David M. Lesser, Fine Antiquarian Books LLC (United States)
Description
Philadelphia: Joseph Gales, 1798. 16pp, disbound, scattered light foxing. Very Good. Wolcott says this is a "succinct view of existing arrangements respecting the Internal Revenue, the funds allowed by law for defraying the expences of collection, and the principles by which compensations have been regulated in the acts of the President." Evans 34867.
No image available

Misterioso. Portrait des Thelonius Monk mit 10 Original Holzschnittidolen von Peter Richter und Zen Texten by Richter, Peter

3 to 14 days for delivery
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$125.00
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Seller: Thomas A Goldwasser Rare Books
Title
Misterioso. Portrait des Thelonius Monk mit 10 Original Holzschnittidolen von Peter Richter und Zen Texten
Author
Richter, Peter
Seller
Thomas A Goldwasser Rare Books (United States)
Description
Freiburg: Syrinx Presse, 1967. First edition. Richter, Peter. Original wrappers, 23 x 22 cm., cover and other woodcuts printed on red paper, text (Zen stories) printed on white, paper folded Japanese style, small split at the base of the spine. One of 350 numbered and signed copies.
THE PRISON SHIPS AND OTHER POEMS

THE PRISON SHIPS AND OTHER POEMS by WALSH, Thomas

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$85.00
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Seller: Antic Hay Books
Title
THE PRISON SHIPS AND OTHER POEMS
Author
WALSH, Thomas
Seller
Antic Hay Books (United States)
Description
Sherman, 1909. WALSH, Thomas. THE PRISON SHIPS AND OTHER POEMS. Boston: Sherman, French & Co., 1909. Small 8vo., cloth and boards stamped in gilt. First Edition. Signed presentation from Walsh on the front endpaper: "To Mr. Robert Bridges, with the best regards of The Author. 1910." The presentation is either to English poet Robert Bridges or to Scribner's editor Robert Bridges. Very Good (some darkening edges). $85.00.
The Loaf and the Lilies

The Loaf and the Lilies by Bowers, Penelope

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$75.00
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Seller: ReadInk
Title
The Loaf and the Lilies
Author
Bowers, Penelope
Seller
ReadInk (United States)
Condition
Good in Fair dj
Description
London: William Heinemann Ltd.. Good in Fair dj. 1948. First Edition. Hardcover. [moderate shelfwear, soiling to top edge of text block, gift inscription (non-authorial) on ffep, small vintage bookseller's rubber stamp (Bertrand Smith "Acres of Books," Long Beach, California) on front pastedown; jacket heavily worn with various chips, tears, creasing, etc.] Described as "an English story written in India" in the jacket blurb, its theme deals with "reincarnation and fate." The first of just two novels by this British author, who trained as an actress and apparently had a brief stage career in the 1930s prior to going to the Sudan (during the first year of the war) and subsequently to India, where she remained until 1947. .
Folies-Bergere

Folies-Bergere by Derval, Paul

4 to 7 days for delivery
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Details
$55.00
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Seller: Brenner's Collectable Books
Title
Folies-Bergere
Author
Derval, Paul
Seller
Brenner's Collectable Books (United States)
Condition
Near Fine
Description
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1955. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good Plus. 8vo., 219pp. Sharp Stated First Edition bound in quarter pink cloth over paper-covered boards. Photographs throughout. Square, tight and clean throughout with a touch of wear and soiling to spine ends but quite minor. Very attractive but clipped photographic dust-jacket has some rubbing to folds and hinges. Light wear to edges, spine ends and tips. Spotting on reverse but invisible from the front. Still fresh and bright. A very pretty collectable copy of this showcase of the famous Paris caberet.
LA METHODE

LA METHODE by Pépin, Jacques

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$50.00
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Seller: lizzyoung bookseller
Title
LA METHODE
Author
Pépin, Jacques
Seller
lizzyoung bookseller (United States)
Condition
Color illustrated wraps. Very good
Description
New York: A WALLABY BOOK, 1984. Large format paperback. Color illustrated wraps. Very good. 390 pages. 29 x 22 cm. Presentation copy, signed on half title page: "To John, Glad you came, Jaques". A fully illustrated guide to essential cooking methods. Includes 141 original step-by-step techniques, clearly illustrated with over 1,000 detailed photographs. Photographs by Léon Perer. Cover and pages lightly toned.
No image available

L'AVANGUARDIA POLACCA, 1910-1978 by WITKIEWICZ, S.I.

7 to 14 days for delivery
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$45.00
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Seller: The Bookpress, Ltd.
Title
L'AVANGUARDIA POLACCA, 1910-1978
Author
WITKIEWICZ, S.I.
Seller
The Bookpress, Ltd. (United States)
Description
WITKIEWICZ, S.I. L'AVANGUARDIA POLACCA, 1910-1978. Milano: Electa Editrice, (1979). Small, square, 4to. Cloth, dust jacket. 173 (3) pages. First edition. An exhibition catalogue on the Polish avant-guard. Fine.
No image available

Tales the Moon Can Tell by ANDERSEN, Hans Christian

6 to 14 days for delivery
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$30.00
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Seller: Argosy Book Store
Title
Tales the Moon Can Tell
Author
ANDERSEN, Hans Christian
Seller
Argosy Book Store (United States)
Condition
very good
Description
Copenhagen, 1955. paperback. very good. Brande. Translated from the Danish by R. P. Keigwin. 33 black & white illustrations by Marlie Brande. 81pp., unopened. Thin folio, printed stiff wrappers, chipped. Copenhagen, 1955. A very good copy, internally clean and un-read. One of 1000 English language copies published on the 150th anniversary of Andersen's birth.
No image available

Apology for a Hero by Barker, A. L.

7 to 14 days for delivery
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$30.00
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Seller: Sanctuary Books
Title
Apology for a Hero
Author
Barker, A. L.
Seller
Sanctuary Books (United States)
Condition
Near Fine
Description
London: Hogarth Press, 1950. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good+. Blue cloth; full-color illustrated dust jacket; 8vo; pp. 263. Spine tips and corners just a little rubbed; small bump at top edge of front board; otherwise book is fine. Dust jacket very lightly chipped at spine tips and corners; a little faint wrinkling along the edges; VG+ in mylar, not price-clipped. The author's first novel.
Engraved Portrait

Engraved Portrait by Cavalcanti, Guido

7 to 14 days for delivery
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$20.00
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Seller: Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc.
Title
Engraved Portrait
Author
Cavalcanti, Guido
Seller
Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc. (United States)
Description
Margin: 242x167 mm. Remnants of former mounting on reverse of print, small tear in right margin that does not impact the image.
No image available

THE ROCKEFELLER MILLIONS by Abels, Jules

7 to 10 days for delivery
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$17.50
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Seller: Hoffman Books
Title
THE ROCKEFELLER MILLIONS
Author
Abels, Jules
Seller
Hoffman Books (United States)
Condition
Very Good
Description
Other: Other. Very Good. Hardcover. The Story of the World's Most Stupendous Fortune. NY (1965) . .399 pages, clothbound, no jacket, very good condition. .

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