Search Results: Social Fiction from Lorne Bair Rare Books

New York: Dial Press, 1951. First Edition. Octavo. Cloth boards; dustjacket; 570pp. Trivial dusting to page edges, else Fine in the original pictorial dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $3.50 on front flap), slightly spine-sunned and rubbed at folds; Very Good. Sprawling novel of the rise of three young Jewish gangsters in the world of Las Vegas organized crime. Less a crime novel than an occupational novel of the Jewish-American underworld - a subtle distinction, perhaps, but as with all of Shulman's early novels (this was his third, following "The Amboy Dukes" and "Cry Tough"), big-city crime and corruption are offered up not so much for entertainment as for an examination of their social origins and implications.

New York: Crown Publishers, 1948. First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 561pp. Tight, straight and unmarked copy, Near Fine. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $3.50 on front flap), rubbed at margins and slightly sunned on spine; Very Good. Haydn's third novel, an epic set in the American South during the last spasms of the Twenties and the Crash of 1929. In a glitteringly dismissive review in Commentary, Elizabeth Hardwick wrote of The Time Is Noon: "...a weary novel whose earnest mediocrity makes one weak with melancholy....it wants, in its optimistic, endless fashion, to be good, honest, and profound, to say something honorable and significant. But it suffers from much love and little policy, for Haydn has very little to say and yet he has written a very long book" ("The Progressive Jew as Hero," in Commentary, May 1948). Other critics were more welcoming, or at least less savage, but it is probably no accident that Haydn didn't publish another novel for… Read More

London: Neville Spearman, 1954. First U.K. Edition. First Impression. Octavo (19cm); red paper-covered boards, with titles stamped in white on spine; dustjacket; [6],7-138,[2]pp. Near Fine copy, free of markings or notable wear. In the original dustwrapper, price-clipped, slightly toned on margins and spine panel; Very Good. West's third novel, originally published in 1934 (NY: Covici-Friede).

New York: Random House, 1955. First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Green cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 309pp. Slight reading crease to spine, else a tight, Very Good or better copy. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $3.75 on front flap), slightly edgeworn and rubbed at spine-folds; Very Good. Autobiographical novel based on the author's troubled childhood; his parents were Rebecca West and H.G. Wells. Mr. Wells comes out far better in this account than does Ms. West, for whom the author clearly held a deep and contemptful resentment. The first printing is surprisingly uncommon.

Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948. First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Red cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 275pp. Tight, unmarked, Near Fine copy. In original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $2.75 at base of front flap), lightly edgeworn with a short, closed tear at upper margin of front panel; Very Good. Atomic-age social fiction, concerning the career of an architect involved in the planning of an ideal post-War city but plagued with guilt over his dissolving marriage. Later mass-marketed as a Popular Library pulp paperback, but the first edition is far from common.

New York: Random House, 1958. First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Black cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 280pp. Tight, straight, Near Fine copy. In original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $3.95 on front flap); slightly rubbed and soiled on lighter portions with a brief closed tear at bottom margin of rear panel - Very Good. A novel of intrigue, fraud, and profiteering in the American pharmaceutical industry (imagine!), centering on a charismatic industry spokesman and a new over-the-counter tranquilizer with eerie foreshadowings of Prozac. According the the jacket's promotional copy, both authors had spent time as public relations executives for a major American drug manufacturer (unnamed); Kiefer would go on to write numerous screenplays and several more novels, including the Edgar Award-winning The Lingalla Code (1973). Middleton served as Lyndon Baines Johnson's head speechwriter from 1967-69.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (21cm); red cloth, titled in gilt and black on spine and front cover; yellow topstain; dustjacket; [x],241,[5]pp. Tight, Near Fine copy, with the pale yellow top-stain even and unfaded. In the notoriously fragile die-cut dustwrapper, price-clipped, lightly rubbed at spine ends, extremities, and with a trace of wear along interior of die-cut opening; Very Good or better. The author's fourth novel, providing "glimpses into the lives of a few village characters around the 1950's" (COAN, p.63). 62832.

New York: Farrar and Rinehart, [1944]. First Edition. Octavo (22cm.); turquoise cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 302pp. Fine copy, with the printed bookplate of Elizabeth Prescott. In the original pictorial dustwrapper signed "Palacios" (Joaquin Vaquero Palacios, 1900-1998), unclipped (priced $2.75 on front flap); old sticker shadow over printed price, otherwise very fresh and clean, Near Fine and unusual thus. Rear jacket panel includes an advertisement for Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend, published the same year. The author's first book, a fictionalized account of a friend's descent into mental illness, described in the jacket copy as a blend of novel, case-history, and biography. Includes rather brutal, realistic descriptions of incarceration in a New York mental hospital, location unspecified but clearly modeled on Bellevue; and of the 1939 New York World's Fair, where the book's main character experiences his first psychotic episode. The book, heavily-hyped and widely-reviewed upon publication,… Read More

Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1952. First Edition. First printing. Limited issue; no.390 of an unspecified number of "Advance Presentation Copies" signed by the author. Octavo. Tan cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 220pp. Tight, clean, Near Fine copy. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $3.50 at base of front flap); lightly dusted with a few scuffs at joints and extremities; Very Good. Tales of the Brush Country of south Texas, "permeated with the acrid flavor of flowers, sweat, and frijoles" (POWELL Heart of the Southwest 2).

New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1927. First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Black cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 887pp. Tight and straight, with a small bruise to rear board at fore edge; Very Good. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $2.50 on front flap), slightly sunned on spine, else complete, clean, and but lightly worn; Very Good. An omnibus trilogy of sorts, incorporating the full text of Tarkington's earlier novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), The Turmoil (1915), and The Midlander (1922), each joined by somewhat awkward bridging passages so as to complete (or attempt) a new, massive work of fiction. This publisher's trick does not appear to have been well-received; the New York Times wrote: "If the publishing method of which "Growth" is an imposing example continues in practice it will soon be possible to say of good novels that they never die, they only consolidate" (NYT, Oct 23, 1927). A rather scarce book today, especially in dustwrapper.

New York: Vantage Press, 1975. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (20.5cm); maroon cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; dustjacket; [xii],64pp. Top textblock edge lightly foxed, else Fine in a very Near Fine dustjacket, unclipped (priced $4.50), with some trivial rubbing to extremities. Autobiographical novel of Margaret Foster, Ph.D., and her struggle to gain acceptance as a female African-American academic. "Rejecting the second-class citizenship she had been offered by the white university she had attended, Margaret finds work with a black college and there encounters a different and more subtle form of discrimination, far more painful, perhaps, because it is administered by "her own." She has innocently invaded territories claimed by a variety of "self-proclaimed gods" and therefore represents a threat to them" (from front flap).

Akron, OH: The Saalfield Publishing Company, 1904. First Edition. Octavo (19.75cm); red cloth, with titling and decorative elements stamped in white, green, and gilt on spine and front cover; dustjacket; [iv],[7],8-412,[4]pp, with frontispiece and three plates of illustrations by A.B. Shute. Spine ends nudged, light wear to extremities, with mild dust-soil to cloth, and a faint forward lean; some offsetting to endpapers, with a touch of dustiness to text edges; Very Good+. In the original pictorial dustjacket, printed in black on thick sage green paper; sunned at spine and extremities, with light wear and a few tiny tears; Very Good+. Labor novel set in the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania during the 1890's, depicting "the exact living status of the parties concerned, who the miner is and what his home life is like, the opinions and lives of honest officials, the ruling spirit of operators, the principles put in practice by unscrupulous hirelings, principles that are the generators of strikes which… Read More

London: Heinemann, 1930. First Edition. First impression. Signed by Tomlinson on the front endpaper. From the library of Hollywood filmmaker and noted bibliophile Frank Capra (1897-1991), with his pencil signature to front endpaper, with additional annotation, apparently in his hand, noting two errors in the text. Octavo. Black cloth hardcover; dustjacket,539pp. A few faint specks of foxing to upper edge of text block, else a pristine copy in the original, unclipped dustwrapper; very Near Fine, with deep, rich color on the spine panel. Retains the publisher's original wrap-around advertising band. Housed in Capra's standard folding chemise and slipcase of black cloth, lightly worn on exterior but still Very Good or better. Tomlinson's great but neglected novel of the First World War, derived loosely from his own experiences as a British Army correspondent in France in 1917. There was a signed, limited issue, but signed copies of the trade edition are infrequently seen, especially in such fine… Read More

Cleveland: World Publishing, (1951). First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 254pp. Inscribed on front endpaper: "For Bill Noble / with all the best," signed "John Voelker (Robert Traver)." Mild evidence of use, with some dusting to text block edges; Very Good or better. In the original dustwrapper, rubbed at extremities and lightly soiled, Very Good. A novel set in the backwoods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1946. Early Printing, without publication date on the title page. Octavo (21.25cm); grey cloth, with titling and pictorial elements stmaped in black on spine and covers; [viii],435,[1]pp. Forward lean, modest wear, pictorial bookplate to front endpaper, with two old tape stains to front pastedown, and a vintage decorative bookseller's ticket to upper rear pastedown; Very Good, lacking the dustjacket. Petry's first book, chronicling the life of a single mother raising her child in Harlem during the 1940's. A high-spot of postwar African-American women's fiction, not often found in attractive condition. HANNA 2854.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953. First American Edition. First Printing. Octavo (21.75cm); dark grey paper-covered boards and light grey cloth backstrip, with titling and author's facsimile signature stamped in gilt on spine and front cover; black topstain; dustjacket; [viii],340,[4]pp. A bookplate signed by the author is loosely laid in. Light wear to spine ends, tiny ink mark to lower edge of textblock, with a few faint surface scratches to rear cover; Near Fine. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $3.95), showing modest wear, a few tears and attendant creases, some corresponding surface scratches to rear panel, and faint dampstaining at base of spine (noticeable only on verso); Very Good. The South African Nobel laureate's first novel, preceded by a collection of short stories, The Soft Voice of the Serpent.

New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970. Reissue. Octavo (22.5cm); brown cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; x,294pp. Trivial external wear, lower corners gently tapped (though still sharp), with the usual mild discoloration to gutters from binder's glue; Near Fine, lacking dustjacket (if issued). Chesnutt's final novel, first published in 1905, which "tells the story of Colonel Henry French, a successful New York businessman who has returned to his southern birthplace of Clarendon with his young son, Phil. While intending only a three-month vacation (as ordered by his northern doctor), the nostalgic Colonel French, persuaded by his fond boyhood memories of southern life, decides to remain indefinitely in Clarendon. Yet he encounters a town beset by rigid social divisions, plagued by past prejudices, and hampered by corrupt practices, primarily at the hands of the wealthy convict labor contractor, William Fetters. Shocked by such wanton exploitation and prevailing injustices, Colonel French… Read More

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1884. First Edition. 12mo (17.5cm.); original green pictorial cloth embossed in dark green, brown glazed endpapers; 319pp. Minor external soil and rubbing; Very Good or better. Blanck notes two states of the text, one with the statement "The End" following text, the other without, but asserts no priority. Ours is the former. An early labor novel, a fictional account of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Hay, in addition to being a some-time novelist, was Abraham Lincoln's personal secretary and later U.S. Secretary of State under McKinley and Roosevelt. BAL 7762; BLAKE, p. 212-3; WRIGHT III 2608.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. First Edition. Inscribed on front endpaper: "Autographed for / D.W. Langer [sp?], 5 Bank Street / New York," signed by Cather, undated but on the premises of 5 Bank Street in New York City, where Cather and her companion Edith Lewis resided from 1912 to 1927. First printing. Second state of the text per Crane, with pages 164 and 173 (only) reset. Octavo. Publisher's pale green cloth, with facsimile of Cather's signature in gilt to front cover; 174pp. Spine sunned, with dulling to gilt; covers spotted, internally tight and unmarked; Good or better, lacking the dustwrapper. A presentable copy of Cather's historical novel of the American west, said to have been a strong influence on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. There was a signed, limited issue of 200 copies, generally easy to obtain, but inscribed copies of the trade edition are infrequent in commerce.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885. First Edition. Blanck's first printing, with A Marsh Island listed as "in press" in rear ads. 12mo (18.5cm). In original publisher's binding of dark green cloth backed with olive-green cloth, stamped in black on front and gilt on spine; plain endpapers; list of works by Jewett facing title page, and 12-page publisher's catalogue at rear; [ii], [1]-292, [ii], 12pp. Tight and sturdy with mild slant to text block; cloth a bit rubbed at head and tail, Very Good. Unsigned binding by Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842-1904), a close friend of Jewett's who designed many bindings for her novels (ANB). University of Tulsa literary scholar Don James Brown has made the case for "A Marsh Island" being the first American gay novel, citing Jewett's own sexuality and the effeminacy of the novel's protagonist. BAL 10885.