Rare books from Lightholder Books

The Journal of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen. 1941 self-published first edition, second issue, #118 of 295 copies made, 314 total pages. No DJ, boards in good condition, spine quite sunned but square, some shelf wear to board edges, bookplate on paste down end paper, erased pencil mark on back end paper, book in overall good+ condition. See photos! New Directions first rejected this novel (on account of its pacifism), which is why Patchen self-published it at first. Experimental in form and appearance.
"We never admire a man: we admire our admiration for him."

Blood on the Dining-Room Floor by Gertrude Stein. 1948 Banyan Press, 80 pages, #514 of 626 printed. This was Stein's attempt at the mystery detective genre.

Condition: VG. Gilt fading on the spine, some shelf wear to the boards, slipcase separating at the seams and worn.

"He cried when he was disappointed and fell down when he was angry."

How to Write by Gertrude Stein. 1931 Plain edition, first edition, 395 pages. Only a thousand printed of the first edition. This is a craft book like no other, experimental and lyrical and the third book published by her press.

Condition: VG. No dust jacket, as issued. Browning to boards, bookstore sticker on back paste down, some pages bent at the corner.

"I return to sentences as a refreshment."

Operas and Plays by Gertrude Stein. 1932 Plain Edition. First edition of 500 copies, 400 pages. Plain Edition is the press Stein and Toklas created since publishers wouldn't publish Stein's work. Includes two operas and eighteen plays by the trailblazing modernist.

Condition: Good. Missing original slipcase. Crease along spine, small white mark, corners slightly bent, darkening on back cover, According to Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography by Robert A. Wilson (Phoenix, 1974) there should be four leaves in the front, it looks like mine is missing two blank pages in front. The first leaf is separating a bit (see picture). Square, pages clean, presents great, small pen mark on the bottom of p11.

Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. 1909 Grafton Press, first edition, 279 pages. A thousand copies were printed of the first edition, 300 of which were used for the British edition. Stein's debut tells three unlinked stories of working class women in a fictional Baltimore. These stories are more accessible than Stein's later work, yet still new in style. No publisher would publish it so she funded her own publication with the vanity press Grafton Press. Later Stein would sell some Picassos to establish her own publisher to publisher her books.

Condition: Very good. Without dust jacket, as issued (Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography; Wilson, Phoenix Bookshop). Rubbing and shelf wear to boards, bumps to spine, the slightest of leans, small pencil markings on endpapers.

"The tradesmen of Bridgeport learned to dread the sound of "Miss Mathilda," for with that name the good Anna always conquered."

Things as They Are by Gertrude Stein. 1950 Banyan Press, first edition, #273 of 516, 88 pages. Stein wrote this novel in 1903 while she was at university but it was published posthumously by Alice Toklas.

Condition: Good. Bump and tearing to front board, see photo. Tanning to boards. some warping to page ends.

"The last month of Adele's life had been such a succession of wearing experiences that she rather regretted that she was not to have the steamer all to herself."

A New Song by Langston Hughes. 1938 International Workers Order, 31 pages. Among the many services provided by the IWO was publishing important civic literature cheaply and affordably. More than 15 poems, including "Let American Be America Again."

Condition: Good. Browning to cover and pages, quite worn and spine with a lot of rubbing away, top staple hole open. Intact and pages clean.

"That Justice is a blind goddess

Is a thing to which we poor are wise:

Her bandage hides two festering sores

That once perhaps were eyes."

How Does Your Garden Grow? by Beverley Nichols, Compton Mackenzie, Marion Cran, V. Sackville-West. Decorations by Nora S. Unwin. 1935 Doubleday, first U.S. edition. Includes essays on gardening by these four British writers. Beverly Nichols was an accomplished novelist and playright, Compton Mackenzie was a proud Scottish activist and writer, Marion Cran was the first woman gardening broadcaster, and Vita Sackville-West was an unconventional, accomplished novelist, essayist, gardener, and lover and companion to Virginia Woolf, Violet Trefiss, and others.
Condition: Jacket in good condition, tear on front cover on head and tail of spine, tear on back cover, book in good condition, wear and discoloring to boards, bookstore sticker on front pastedown, stamp on end paper, see photos.
"The true gardener is always wanting to rearrange and to improve his schemes."

Devil at Westease by V. Sackville-West. 1947 Doubleday, first edition, 219 pages. Rebecca Dinerstein Knight in The Paris Review starts a wonderful biographical essay on Sackville-West thusly: "How preposterous is it that Vita Sackville-West, the best-selling bisexual baroness who wrote over thirty-five books that made an ingenious mockery of twenties societal norms, should be remembered today merely as a smoocher of Virginia Woolf? The reductive canonization of her affair with Woolf has elbowed out a more luxurious, strange story: Vita loved several women with exceptional ardor; simultaneously adored her also-bisexual husband, Harold; ultimately came to prefer the company of flora over fauna of any gender; and committed herself to a life of prolific creation (written and planted) that redefined passion itself." Devil at Westease is perhaps Sackville-West's rarest novel and wasn't published in Britain at the time. According to a New York Times review "This new book by V. Sackville-West, poet, novelist,… Read More

Lustra by Ezra Pound. 1916 Elkin Matthews, first thus, one of about 800 copies printed (previously privately printed edition was 200 copies with nine additional poems) 116 pages. This is a collection of early poems, some of which previously appeared in Poetry and Smart Set. Pound was one of the major figures in the early modernist movement and his influence on poetry reverberates today. According to Donald Hall: "Ezra Pound is the poet who, a thousand times more than any other man, has made modern poetry possible in English."
Condition: Good+, no DJ (not sure if one was issued) bumps to board, owner name on front paste down, tanned end papers.
"Come let us pity those who are better off than
we are."

Nocturnes by Thomas Mann. With Lithographs by Lynd Ward. 1934 Equinox Cooperative Press, #298 of 1000 copies, signed by Mann, 61 pages. Mann was a German Nobel-winning author well known for Death in Venice and Magic Mountain. He was an exiled writer for his opposition to Hitler. Nocturnes consists of three short stories A Gleam, Railway Accident, and A Weary Hour.
Condition: Book in VG condition, some fading to boards, slipcase in fair condition and has split apart.
"Waltz time, tinkling glasses; smoke, steam, hubbub, voices, dance steps. We all know these little weaknesses of ours."

New Directions in Prose & Poetry. Edited by James Laughlin IV, 1966 New Directions. This was the first publication by the legendary publisher, and includes work by Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, Kay Boyle, Elizabeth Bishop, and more. According to Triolet Rare Books: "Gallup states that 513 copies total were printed, of which 204 were in boards."
Condition: Book in good+ condition, boards are bumped, tanning to edges, browning to end papers, spine square and pages clean.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Unstated late-forties printing, inscription dated 1953, Grosset & Dunlap reprint, 218 pages. Fitzgerald's masterpiece and perennial student assignment was not always recognized as such. HL Menken wrote at the time: ""Scott Fitzgerald's new novel, The Great Gatsby is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that." This Grosset reprint is rare with jacket.
Condition: Jacket in acceptable condition, many creases and tears, see photos, book in good condition, wear to boards, inscription on first page and owner name on end paper.
"No---Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. 1864 Tauchnitz (this edition printed after 1877 as Emma is on ad card), 340 pages. Marbled boards and endpapers, gilt pages, leather bound. A classic in beautiful presentation.
Condition: Good+, pages have warping and browning
"He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing."

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. 1952 Scribners, first edition, 140 pages. According to a review in the New York Times: "'The Old Man and the Sea' is a short novel, only 27,000 words. It is much simpler and enormously better than Mr. Hemingway's last book, 'Across the River and Into the Trees.' No phony glamour girls and no bullying braggarts sentimentalized almost to parody distort its honest and elemental theme. No outbursts of spite or false theatricalism impede the smooth rush of its narrative. Within the sharp restrictions imposed by the very nature of his story Mr. Hemingway has written with sure skill. Here is the master technician once more at the top of his form, doing superbly what he can do better than anyone else."
Points: Blue-tinted author photo on back jacket, no mention of prizes on the back flap, "A" and Scribners colophon on copyright page
Condition: Jacket in good-condition, chips at the corners, open tears on head and tail of spine, price clipped, book in good… Read More