6 Rare Books for the Perfect Holiday Gift

6 Rare Books for the Perfect Holiday Gift

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  Virginia Woolf

  This lot is a lovely pair of first editions with their original Vanessa Bell jackets. Having been denied the Oxford education her male relatives were afforded, Virginia Woolf considered herself a self-taught reader. It is arguably her unaffected approach to literature – her insistence on the pleasure that ought to be drawn from reading – that renders her literary essays so sharp and enthralling. The common reader, Woolf observes in the present pages, “reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others.” May we all aspire to be such readers! —Kalika Sands, Associate Specialist

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  Susan B. Anthony

  Selling at auction is Susan B. Anthony’s The History of Woman Suffrage, inscribed 23 June 1902 – the same year it was published. Anthony is one of the most renowned suffragettes. In her inscription, she honors the work women have done in the past to obtain equal rights and acknowledges a hopeful future. —Bella McKelvey, Pre-Sale Experience Coordinator

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  Joseph Conrad

  The heavily revised autograph manuscript of the last two chapters of Joseph Conrad’s “The Planter of Malata” from 1913. A beautifully legible 12-page manuscript (including two pages of revised typescript) from one of Joseph Conrad’s impressionistic tales, the lead story in Within the Tides. The carefully emended manuscript demonstrates the author’s mastery of his third language in a complex story he considered “mainly aesthetic; an essay in description and narrative around a given psychological situation.” —Selby Kiffer, International Senior Specialist

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  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  This auction includes a fine selection of F. Scott Fitzgerald material – including a number of inscribed first editions, and even Truman Capote’s rejected screenplay adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Lot 134 is a nice example of Fitzgerald’s great American novel in the first-issue dust jacket, one of the most famous in American literature, featuring Francis Cugat’s iconic celestial eyes. —Ella Hall, Specialist

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  James Joyce

  Offered on the centenary of the publication of Ulysses, this is a fantastic association copy of the most important and influential novel of the 20th century. It’s also 41 of only 100 numbered copies signed by Joyce and printed on Dutch handmade paper. This copy belonged to Annie Winifred Ellerman, known as Bryher, who was a novelist, poet, editor, and companion to Hilda Doolittle (H.D.). She and Robert McAlmon, her husband at the time, befriended James Joyce in Paris in 1921, and helped to finance the publication of Ulysses. McAlmon served as Joyce’s typist for sections of the manuscript, no less. —Richard Austin, Global Head of Books & Manuscripts

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  Martin Wong

  For collectors of contemporary art, this singular drawing by Martin Wong is a uniquely intimate portrait of his lover, Miguel Piñero. Accomplished in April 1982 – not long after the painter and the poet had moved in together, and at the height of their collaboration – this drawing was composed not for public view, but hidden away in a book that Piñero presented to a friend. Though the poet appears regularly in Wong’s paintings, this work is a private and personal gesture, likely dashed off while hanging out with friends. The book itself is an inscribed copy of Piñero’s Tony-nominated play Short Eyes – the first Broadway production by a Puerto Rican playwright and the recipient of an Obie Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. On the whole, this volume is a relic of a now-bygone era of downtown New York’s artistic and literary worlds. —Daniel Baker, Associate Cataloguer

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