Modern Firsts | Invisible Books

John Bratby | Breakdown | World | 1960 | First edition in unclipped jacket. Jacket still looks good at first glance, but is worn at edges, & reinforced with tape at extremities of spine & bottom of fold of front panel/front flap. The red top edge has been exposed to moisture at some time, & shows paler splash marks: the colour has extended onto the upper edge of the flaps & endpapers. The front cover is set somewhat forward. | £25

Alan Burns | Dreamerika! | Calder & Boyars | 1972 | 0714508039 First edition in price-clipped jacket. Publisher’s price label on front flap, ink price on ffep. 2cm closed tear with a very little loss at top of fold of back cover/spine. Corners of cover a little bumped. Top edge of page-block foxed. | £100

Driss ben Hamed Charhadi; Paul Bowles | A Life Full of Holes | Weidenfeld & Nicolson | 1964 | Oral narrative transcribed & translated by Bowles, who has inscribed the book to the Tangier-based writer Angus Stewart. First edition in unclipped jacket. Edge of page-block foxed. | £100

Hal Ellson | Reefer Boy | Neville Spearman | 1955 | 1st edition. Hardback in jacket. Front cover looks great, plain back cover has been exposed to damp at some time, & is noticeably crinkled, although there is no problem with the book’s cover beneath it. | £50

Stuart Evans | Centres of Ritual | Hutchinson | 1978 | 0091330505 First edition in unclipped jacket: spine very lightly sunned;a couple of small pressure marks to back cover. Edge of pageblock & edges of endpapers foxed. Previous owner’s personal blindstamp on half title page. | £30

William Gaddis | JR | Jonathan Cape | 1976 | 0224012533 UK first edition in unclipped jacket. Corners of jacket are worn, with a short split at the top of the fold of the back flap. The red upper edge of the book has become speckled, & there is a little bleed from either the upper edge or the red boards onto the very top of the ffep & front flap. | £200

Peter Handke | Across | Methuen | 1986 | 0413575705 Ex-college library copy, with expected markings but absolutely no indication of having ever been read. UK 1st edition in unclipped jacket. Jacket is in a protective sleeve, which has been taped into place. | £100

Peter Handke; Ralph Manheim (tr.) | The Left-Handed Woman | Eyre Methuen | 1980 | 413458903 First UK edition in unclipped jacket. A thin line of glue is exposed in the crease between the page listing other books by Handke & the title page, perhaps as a result of the book having been opened hard there, but the sewn binding remains solid. | £200

Aldous Huxley | Proper Studies | Chatto & Windus | 1927 | First edition in unclipped jacket. Diagonal closed tear at very top of front cover. Short tear backed with tape at bottom of fold of front cover/spine. Some loss to jacket at extremities of spine. | £50

Aldous Huxley | Those Barren Leaves | Chatto & Windus | 1925 | First edition in jacket, extra spine label at back of book. Edge of pageblock foxed. Pale jacket is worn & marked, with a crumpled tear at the bottom of the fold of back cover/back flap. | £50

Alfred Kazin | Starting out in the Thirties | Secker & Warburg | 1966 | Inscribed by author to Richard Hoggart B[irming]ham March 66 on ffep. There is also a WITHDRAWN stamp on the ffep. First British printing in a damaged jacket: the book itself is in very good condition. | £30

Jack Kerouac | On the Road | Viking | 1957 | First edition, with “Printed by the Colonial Press” on the publishing information page. A heavily used ex-library copy with no jacket, very worn original cloth cover, tape reinforcement to hinges, expected markings & label traces, & small ink marginal mark on one page. | £200

Paddy Kitchen | A Fleshly School | Gollancz | 1970 | First printing in jacket. Jacket is worn at edges, with a short closed tear at the top edge of the rear panel, & faded on the spine. The book is a little slant, with the front cover set forward. There are traces of a pair of staples having been removed from the ffep, with faint impressions left by the staples on the next couple of pages. There is a small cigarette scorch mark on p.9. | £25

Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautreamont; Alexis Lykiard [tr.] | Lautreamont’s Maldoror | Allison & Busby | 1970 | 0850310210 First edition of Lykiard’s translation. Dust jacket is price clipped, lightly sunned on spine & edge. There are a couple of closed tears to the upper edge of the back cover of the jacket, & the top edge of the jacket has been inconspicuously reinforced with clear tape on its reverse side. There is a faint trace of a small label on the front endpaper. The outer edge of the page block, & the pages at its extremities, are foxed. NB. The colours of the jacket are considerably paler than they appear in my photo. | £100

Ursula le Guin | City of Illusions | Victor Gollancz | 1971 | UK 1st edition in unclipped jacket. Ex-library copy with expected marks & signs of use, front cover set forward. Dust jacket is in lovely condition except for offset marks from the tape used to secure its protective cover. | £50

Maurice Moiseiwitsch | The Sleeping Tiger | Heinemann | 1955 | First edition in unclipped jacket. Minor wear to edge of jacket, most evident at extremities of spine, spine very slightly faded, tiny nick to edge of spine. Front cover set slightly forward, outer edge of page-block foxed. | £100

J. F. Powers | Morte d’Urban | Gollancz | 1962 | UK first edition in unclipped jacket. Jacket is worn, with some loss at the corners, the extremities of the spine, and the crease of the spine. Clear tape has been applied as reinforcement in a three places on the reverse of the jacket. The exposed edge of the tape is visible at the top and base of the spine. There is minor wear to the edges of the hardcover beneath, and the edge of the page-block is foxed, as are the opening pages of the book. The front cover is set a little forward, and there is a previous owner’s signature on the ffep. Despite these faults, this remains a handsome, sturdy copy. | £20

Thomas Pynchon | Gravity’s Rainbow | Jonathan Cape | 1973 | 224009621 Paperback first edition. A handsome copy, with a light crease to front cover, a couple of light creases to spine. The background of the spine has faded to a pale orange. A little wear & a few small marks to the outer edge of the page-block. Internally in very good condition indeed. | £175

Paul Ritchie | Confessions of a People Lover | Calder & Boyars | 1967 | First edition in unclipped jacket. Price has been crossed through in pencil on front flap. Jacket is worn at the edge, with a little loss. White background of jacket is foxed, as is outer edge of page-block. | £30

Alain Robbe-Grillet | Snapshots and Towards a New Novel | John Calder | 1965 | First British edition. Very good hardback, a little faded at extremities of spine & with an ownership signature on ffep, in good jacket. Jacket is unclipped, but has suffered some loss at the edges & is worn, with a little loss, along the creases of the spine: its predominantly white background areas are rather rubbed & marked. | £100

Vernon Scannell | The Fight | Peter Nevill | 1953 | First edition in unclipped jacket. A few light marks at edge of front cover & spine, blank back cover is dampmarked along edge, with spotty foxing elsewhere. Red cloth cover is lightly dampmarked on spine & adjoining edge of back cover. Still a handsome copy. | £25

Iain Sinclair | The Kodak Mantra Diaries | Albion Village Press | 1971 | There is a distinct wobble to the profile of this tall thin ringbound publication. The outer edge of the front cover is marked, & there is some wear to the edge, most evidently at the corners. Still an impressive artefact. No problem with text pages. | £60

Randolph Stow | The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea | Macdonald | 1965 | First edition in unclipped jacket. Outer edge of page-block foxed, the top edge heavily so. A pencilled note on the rear pastedown recalls meeting the author who “wore a bootlace tie”. | £90

Ruthven Todd | The Lost Traveller | Grey Walls Press | 1943 | First printing in a price-clipped jacket. The pale jacket is heavily foxed, & marked with cup-rings. The boards are worn & threadbare at the edges. There is a little damage to the top of the ffep, apparently due to the page becoming stuck to the front pastedown in the production process: the small missing patch of paper is still glued to the front pastedown. The book is slant, with the front cover set forward. There is some foxing to the outer edge of the page-block. The frontispiece & text pages are in very good condition, with some foxing to the final page. | £100

Robert Tressell (given as Robert Tressall on spine & title page) | The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists | Grant Richards | 1914 | First edition in what we assume to be library binding. The cover is very worn, & has been exposed to damp, with some offset on the lower corner of the last page, & the very tip of the lower corner of the penultimate page of the book. The outer edge of the page-block is worn & marked, & the binding is very fragile at the first & last pages of the book, although the main body of the book still feels solidly bound. The word ‘adult’ & a number have been written on the reverse of the front cover, & there is an ownership signature in the upper corner of the rear endpaper. The paper is foxed & marked, & the book has evidently been heavily read, with little tears in the outer margins of a few pages. | £400

Boris Vian | Froth on the Daydream | Rapp & Carroll | 1967 | First British edition of this translation in unclipped jacket. Jacket is worn at edges, most heavily at top of spine. Spine of jacket is creased & very lightly faded. The outer edge of page-block is foxed. A contemporary Sunday Telegraph review, incorporating a Nicolas Bentley drawing of ‘Boris Vian: trumpeter of zany notes’ has been loosely inserted into the book. | £150