Specialist Selections Under $3,000

Theodor Seuss Geisel

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, first issue of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Dr.+Seuss&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dr. Seuss</a>'s <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=The+Cat+in+the+Hat&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Cat in the Hat</a>.<ul><li>Dr. Seuss (American).</li><li>New York: Random House, 1957.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>62 pages.</li><li>Illustrated throughout.</li><li>Bound in publisher’s pictorial blue boards, in illustrated unclipped dust-jacket repeating the cover design.</li></ul> Two siblings caught between the demands of a sensible goldfish, and an irresponsible giant cat.

The Cat in the Hat First Edition

Roald Dahl

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, first printing of Matilda by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Roald%20Dahl&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Roald Dahl</a>, accompanied by a jacketed uncorrected proof of the same.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 2 volumes.</li><li>Roald Dahl (English).</li><li>London: Jonathan Cape, 1988.</li></ul> The red card covers state that the provisional United Kingdom publish date is April 21st, 1988, and the provisional price will be £8.50. This price corresponds to the that of the over-sized dust wrapper in which the book is now housed.

Matilda First Edition with Uncorrected Proof

Hunter S. Thompson

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Screwjack by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Hunter%20S.%20Thompson&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hunter S. Thompson</a>.<ul><li>Hunter S. Thompson (American).</li><li>Printed by Patrick Reagh. </li><li>Santa Barbara, California:&nbsp;Neville,&nbsp;1991.</li><li>38, [2, blank], [1, colophon] pages.</li><li>Copy H of 26 copies, signed by Hunter S. Thompson.&nbsp;</li><li>Title page printed in red and grey and black.</li><li>Brown rexine titled in gilt upper cover stamped in gilt.</li></ul>

Screwjack Signed First Edition

Toni Morrison

An <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">inscribed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Toni%20Morrison&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Toni Morrison</a>'s Song of Solomon.<ul><li>Toni Morrison (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Alfred A. Knopf,&nbsp;1977.&nbsp;</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>337 pages.</li><li>Inscribed by Toni Morrison on front free endpaper reading, "A delight meeting you Angie. Warm best wishes from Toni / 12.55.1977"</li><li>Spine yellow with red and black lettering.</li></ul>

Song Of Solomon Inscribed First Edition

Ian Fleming

&nbsp;A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, first printing of Dr. No, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> by Eunice Gayson and Charles Edghill.<ul><li>Ian Fleming (English).</li><li>London: Jonathan Cape, 1958.</li><li>Signed on the title page by the actress Eunice Gayson, who played the character ‘Sylvia Trench’ in the 1962 motion picture of Dr No.&nbsp;</li><li>Additionally signed by Charles Edghill, who played one of the ‘Three Blind Mice,’ on the rear of the half-title page.</li><li>Presented in the dustwrapper.</li></ul> Dr. No is the sixth James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, published in 1958. It follows British spy James Bond as he investigates the disappearance of two agents in Jamaica, leading to the mysterious Dr. No, a reclusive villain with a deadly plan. The 1962 film adaptation, starring Sean Connery in his debut as Bond, launched the iconic movie franchise. Set in the Caribbean, the film features classic Bond elements: espionage, action, gadgets, and glamorous women. Dr. No’s lair, Ursula Andress’s beach entrance, and Connery’s suave performance made the film a pop culture milestone and a blueprint for future Bond films.

Dr. No

Jean-Théodore Descourtilz

A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Subject=Prints%2520and%2520colour%2520plate" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">colored plate</a>&nbsp;of birds by Jean-Théodore Descourtilz.<ul><li>Jean-Théodore Descourtilz (French).</li><li>From&nbsp;Ornithologie Bresilienne ou Histoire des Oiseaux du Brésil, remarquables par leur plumage, leur chant ou leurs habitudes.</li><li>Rio de Janeiro: Waterlow and Sons; London for Thomas Reeves, circa 1852-1856.</li><li>Birds depicted: Phibalura Flavirostris, Querula Rubricollis, Turdus Orpheus, Turdus Flavipes and Turdus Brasiliensis.</li><li>Chromolithgraph plate printed in color and finished by hand.&nbsp;</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul> Descourtilz worked for the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. He was the son of French adventurer, botanist and naturalist Michel Etienne Descourtilz. The only other work that Descourtilz was known to have illustrated was his father's work&nbsp;Flore Pittoresque et Médicale des Antilles.

Ornithologie Bresilienne Birds Plate

Patricia Highsmith

A first American edition of The Talented Mr. Ripley.<ul><li>Patricia Highsmith (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Coward-McCann, Inc.,&nbsp;1955.&nbsp;</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>252 pages.</li><li>Spine light green with yellow lettering, dust jacket protected in mylar covering, with price uncut.</li></ul>

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Stein, Gertrude

A first edition of this first book from Stein's Plain Edition, inscribed by Alice Toklas to author Elizabeth Sprigge, who would publish one of the earliest formal biographies of Stein.<ul><li>Gertrude Stein (American).</li><li>Lucy Church Amiably: A Novel of Romantic beauty and nature and which Looks Like an Engraving.</li><li>Paris: Imprimerie Union / (Plain Edition), 1930.&nbsp;</li><li>240 pages.</li><li>Part of an edition of 1,000 copies.&nbsp;</li><li>Inscribed by Alice B. Toklas on the front free endpaper: "Once again with love to Elizabeth [Sprigge] / Devotedly / Alice / Saint-Medard 54 – Paris."</li><li>Bound in the publisher's original blue printed boards.</li></ul> After Stein's death, Alice Toklas stewarded Stein's posthumous literary reputation, both assisting editors of new editions of Stein's texts and providing assistance (or obstacles, as the case may be) to biographers. At the time of this book's inscription, novelist Elizabeth Sprigge was working on her first biography, about the Modernist Swedish author August Strindberg, that would be favorably reviewed for its "remarkably accurate and clear treatment of a controversial figure" (Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 22 No. 1, 28). Toklas's 1954 inscription here — "with love [...] Devotedly" — indicates that Toklas and Sprigge began a friendship on warm terms. Indeed, Toklas was impressed by Sprigge's biography of Strindberg upon its release the next year, and she initially supported Sprigge's idea of writing a biography of Stein because of it. In 1953, Toklas wrote her own editor at Harper to provide a connection for Sprigge to publish her planned biography of Stein; it was, Toklas's biographer remarked, "a recommendation that Alice came to regret" (Simon, 283). As Sprigge continued gathering material for the biography, it became clear that she intended to "include personal details [...] a practice Alice would not allow" (Simon, 284). Toklas warned off friends whom Sprigge was contacting and, in 1956, argued at length with Sprigge regarding the content of the biography — especially her own role in it. Toklas argued she herself "had no place in the book except, perhaps, as the editor of the Plain Edition" (Simon, 284), Stein and Toklas's short-lived small press that published this book. Harper ultimately published Sprigge's Gertrude Stein: Her Life And Work in 1957, much to Toklas's dismay. One of Stein's most underappreciated books, Lucy Church Amiably was the first of the books Stein published herself, frustrated as she was by a lack of a regular outlet for her work. It was available only in this edition until 1969, when Something Else Press republished it.

Lucy Church Amiably, Inscribed by Alice Toklas

James Baldwin

The uncorrected galleys of the first edition of Baldwin's fourth novel about the life of a Black actor.<ul><li>James Baldwin (American).</li><li>New York: The Dial Press, 1968.</li><li>173 pages.</li><li>Bound in original plastic comb-bound paper wrappers.&nbsp;</li></ul> Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is the story of Black actor Leo Proudhammer, his brilliant career shadowed by the condescension, alienation and physical threats visited on him by a white America that will tolerate him only so far as he entertains, and which exacts heavy penalties for his efforts to live as a free man and artist.

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

Harry Callahan

A first edition, signed copy of Harry Callahan's Water's Edge.<ul><li>Harry Callahan (American).</li><li>With an introductory poem by A.R. Ammons.</li><li>Connecticut: Callaway Editions distributed by the Viking Press, 1980.</li><li>76 pages.</li><li>Folio.</li><li>With black-and-white photographs printed in duotone offset.</li><li>Includes original gelatin silver photograph (5 x 5 inches) mounted on rag paper, signed and numbered in pencil.</li><li>Number 30 of 50 signed copies in set II (of IV), each with a different gelatin silver photograph in an edition of 50 (200 copies in total with an additional 16 hors commerce).</li><li>With an afterword by Harry Callahan.</li><li>Bound in natural linen-covered boards, with cream endpapers, print laid in to the publisher's grey paper portfolio with title to front in blind, housed together in the publisher's quarter vellum over linen drop spine box with titles stamped in blind on spine.</li></ul> Callahan informally began his series of beach photographs in 1938 at Lake Hutton, where his wife's family had a cottage. But it wasn't until 1946, when he started teaching at the Chicago Institute of Design (The New Bauhaus), that he felt he had taken his first good pictures of the subject, taking photographs on the shore of Lake Michigan, just three blocks from his house. The series took shape when Callahan moved to New England to teach at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, in 1961. In his afterword, he writes: "I think that nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness—the point where you can't go any farther. I feel I have come close to that at various times with the Beach Series photographs. A determined single-mindedness and an insistent inner need has led me to that point. That is why I have always kept going back, and that is what still keeps me going today—keeps me alive?"

Water's Edge First Edition with Signed Photograph

Henri Abraham Chatelain

A colorful double-hemisphere world map surrounded by tables.<ul><li>Henri Abraham Chatelain (Dutch).</li><li>Nouveau Mappemonde ou Globe Terréstre.</li><li>Amsterdam: 1718.</li><li>Two sheets conjoined.</li><li>Unframed.</li></ul> Published over fifty years before Captain Cook's first circumnavigation, Australia and New Zealand only have partial outlines. To the north of Japan, the "island of Yedo" (here "Yeco") has hatched lines suggesting it might be part of mainland Asia.

Dutch Double-Hemisphere World Map

Virginia Woolf

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First edition</a>, first printing of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?creators=Virginia%2520Woolf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Virginia Woolf's</a>&nbsp;The Voyage Out.<ul><li>Virginia Woolf (English).</li><li>London: Duckworth &amp; Co., 1915.</li><li>318 pages.</li><li>16 pages of publisher’s advertisements.</li><li>Bound by The Chelsea Bindery in full morocco with gilt title, marbled endpapers, handsewn headbands and all edges gilt.</li></ul>

The Voyage Out (First Edition, First Printing)

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First edition</a>, first impression, Binding A, of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;creators=Ian%2520Fleming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ian Fleming's</a> first selection of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/james-bond" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">James Bond</a> short stories, which was followed by Octopussy and The Living Daylights; this collection includes For Your Eyes Only, A View to a Kill andQuantum of Solace, all of which were adapted as part of the 007 movie series.<ul><li>Ian Fleming (English).</li><li>Dust jacket illustrated by Richard Chopping (English).</li><li>London: Jonathan Cape, 1960.</li><li>pp.252.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>Bound in publisher’s black cloth-effect paper over boards, lettered in gilt, in original pictorial dust jacket.</li><li>Housed in a custom black cloth-covered clamshell box, with gilt titles and decoration to the spine.</li></ul>

For Your Eyes Only (first edition, first impression)

W. B. Yeats

First edition, first impression copy of Yeats' The Winding Stair.<ul><li>W.B. Yeats (Irish).</li><li>The Winding Stair and Other Poems.</li><li>London: Macmillan, 1933.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>Bound in publisher's green cloth, Sturge Moore design to upper board in blind, design and titles to spine gilt, with the Sturge Moore dust jacket.</li></ul>

The Winding Stair (first edition, first impression)

William Burroughs

Signed first edition, tenth printing of Burroughs' Naked Lunch.<ul><li>William Burroughs (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Grove Press, Inc.,&nbsp;1959.</li><li>255 pages.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>Signed flat by Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg on title page, dated "July 16, 1980."</li><li>Bound with black and yellow spine with red lettering in illustrated dust jacket protected in mylar covering.</li></ul>

Naked Lunch (signed)

Mark Twain

First American edition of Twain's The Prince and the Pauper: A Tale for Young People of All Ages.<ul><li>Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens]&nbsp;(American).</li><li>Boston:&nbsp;James R. Osgood &amp; Co,&nbsp;1882.</li><li>411 pages.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>Includes 192 illustrations.</li><li>Bound in original green cloth gilt.</li><li>Housed in gilt-stamped slipcase.</li></ul>

The Prince and the Pauper

Jean de Brunhoff

An attractive first edition copy of the scarce first Babar title, in which Babar is introduced to the world.<ul><li>Jean de Brunhoff (French).</li><li>Paris:&nbsp;Editions du Jardin des Modes,&nbsp;1931.</li><li>47, [1] pages.</li><li>Folio.</li><li>Bound in original illustrated boards, blue cloth spine.</li></ul>

Histoire de Babar

Maurice Sendak

A nice first edition of this classic and controversial picture book, the recipient of a Caldecott Honor in 1971.<ul><li>Maurice Sendak (American).</li><li>[New York]:&nbsp;Harper &amp; Row,&nbsp;[1970].</li><li>40 pages.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>Original tan boards with illustrated paper label affixed to the front board and illustrated dust jacket, with a contemporary gift inscription, and with dust jacket priced $4.95 and 10/70 on front flap and 7 titles on the back flap.&nbsp;</li></ul> Both an entertaining tale of nighttime cooking and a subtle commentary on childhood psychology, this book has stirred controversy since its publication, and has frequently appeared on banned books lists. A provocative, historically important book that will transfix both children and adults.

In the Night Kitchen

Helen Frankenthaler

Signed and inscribed copy of Frankenthaler from the painter to the noted art historian Charles Moffett.<ul><li>Helen Frankenthaler (American).</li><li>Text by Barbara Rose (American).</li><li>Designed by Robert Motherwell (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Abrams,&nbsp;[1970].</li><li>Square quarto.</li><li>272 pp. with 205 illustrations, including 54 full-color plates.</li><li>Bound in cloth printed with a Frankenthaler work made just for this publication, in clear mylar dust jacket.</li></ul> Designed by Frankenthaler's husband, the great abstract expressionist, Robert Motherwell. This copy inscribed to the art historian and curator Charles Moffett: "For Charles and Jane, Congratulations! Happy days, Fond thoughts, Sincerely, Helen Frankenthaler, Sept '79" with a scrap of kraft paper with Frankenthaler's return address tipped in to the front free endpaper in her hand.

Specialist Selections Under $3,000

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Theodor Seuss Geisel

Roald Dahl

Hunter S. Thompson

Toni Morrison

Ian Fleming

Jean-Théodore Descourtilz

Patricia Highsmith

Stein, Gertrude

James Baldwin

Harry Callahan

Henri Abraham Chatelain

Virginia Woolf

Ian Fleming

W. B. Yeats

William Burroughs

Mark Twain

Jean de Brunhoff

Maurice Sendak

Helen Frankenthaler