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The novelist Ernest Hemingway once remarked that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” and other writers such as poet T. S. Eliot and African American novelist Ralph Ellison have added their acclaim. Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, worked for eight years on the story of an outcast white boy, Huck, and his adult friend Jim, a runaway slave, who together flee Missouri on a raft down the Mississippi River in the 1840s. The book has been controversial since the day it was published, opinions ranging from “the book is a masterpiece” to the book is “trash and suitable only for the slums.” The free-spirited and not always truthful Huck narrates the colorful stories in the book in his own coarse and ungrammatical voice. He shows a lack of respect for religion and adult authority and repeatedly uses the “n” word. Some readers view the book as satire and consider it a powerful attack on racism. Others believe it contributes to a “racially hostile environment” and are offended by the language and the portrayal of the slave Jim. In spite of it all, Huck Finn remains the Great American Novel to the many people who have read it and loved it.
Cover art by Maria L. Kirk.
Burnett’s story of a sickly and unloved 10-year-old orphan who finds joy and happiness in her secret garden is a classic of English children’s literature and one of Burnett’s best-known works.
"Navy Commander Alan Shepard, 37, father of two girls, 13-year-old Laura and 9-year-old Juliana, had no desire to be a hero.
"What drove him to volunteer for the potentially dangerous task of probing the void beyond our planet? Mostly, it was the chance to serve his country in a role for which he felt well qualified, but also because he saw it as a personal challenge.
"No daredevil, he has a great, restless desire to do everything well, and then to do it a little better than the other fellow. As an astronaut, he could pit his strength against man and Nature with the added incentive of a thrilling ride beyond the Earth's atmosphere in a space capsule.
"This unusual and timely book tells the whole story of Commander Shepard and his fantastic journey into outer space." [From the Introduction]
Interesting perspective of the space program from 1961. Chapter 11 presents some speculations of what NASA had on the drawing board at the time, including the "Apollo Orbiting Laboratory," which would be lifted up not by the Saturn V, but by the more powerful and as yet undeveloped Nova rocket.
From the book "Peter and Wendy" by J. M. Barrie. London: Hodder & Stoughton, (1911). First edition. This is the first book that tells the story of Peter Pan, Wendy and their exploits in Neverland along with the now familiar cast of characters that includes Captain Hook, Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys and Tiger Lily.
A page from Arnold Lobel's "Fables" book.
Fables.
Written and Illustrated by Arnold Lobel
Published by Scholastic Inc; First Edition (1980)
....Shows the Way.
Written by Donald Sobol
Illustrated by Leonard Shortall
Published by Weekly Reader Books (1972)
While attempting to escape a civil war, four people are kidnapped and transported to the Tibetan mountains. After their plane crashes, they are found by a mysterious Chinese man. He leads them to a monastery hidden in "the valley of the blue moon" -- a land of mystery and matchless beauty. The book was turned into a movie, also called Lost Horizon, by director Frank Capra in 1937. It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery high in the mountains of Tibet.
The first American edition of “The Phantom of the Opera” is illustrated with a color frontispiece and four double-page color illustrations by Andre Castaigne (1861-1929). The book’s author, Gaston Leroux (1868-1927), was a French journalist and writer of detective fiction. Though this is his most famous novel, he also authored a popular series of “locked room” mysteries including The Mystery of the Yellow Room and The Perfume of the Lady in Black. But The Phantom of the Opera is, by far, his most influential novel and the basis of many film adaptations, beginning with Lon Chaney Sr. in 1925, as well as the basis of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, one of the most successful of all time.
“The Apollo spacecraft will be manned by three astronauts. Two will land on the Moon in the Lunar Excursion Module (see preliminary model above). To return, they will blast off in the top part, leaving the lower section behind. They will then join the third man in the Command and Space Module for the trip back to Earth. The upper part of the LEM will remain in orbit around the Moon.” (The description accompanies the photo and is what actually happened three years later on Apollo 11.)
First of three Pop-Ups in the book.
Early pop-up book from the Disney studios featuring Mickey and the gang with the circus animals. The text Includes three color pop-ups and black & white illustrations throughout.
From "Siegfried & The Twilight of the Gods" by Richard Wagner. New York: Doubleday Page & Co., 1911. First American Edition
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
In this, Asimov's second voyage into the human body, the destination is deep inside the human brain in a desperate search for the origins of thought itself. As in the first voyage, a team of scientists is miniaturized to molecular size and travel in a specially designed submarine. They embark on a dangerous journey to a dying brain in an attempt to tap the secrets held there.
“Pirates of Venus” is the first book in the Venus series and was first published in six installments in Argosy magazine in 1932 and in book form two years later. The novel contains elements of political satire aimed at communism and there are fantastic creatures, amazing landscapes, picturesque kingdoms with strange customs, a resourceful hero with telepathic abilities, and, of course, a beautiful and strong-willed princess. Carson Napier, the hero of the story, is on a journey to Mars, misses the red planet by a wide margin and crashes on Venus, a water world called Amtor by its humanlike inhabitants. And it’s there that many new adventures begin. “Pirates of Venus” is generally considered one of Edgar Rice Burroughs best books from the 1930s. [Source: Wikipedia]
This is a lovely version of Rudyard Kipling's tale accompanied with charming illustrations by Feodor Rojankovsky. --The little elephant gets by with his very short "nose", but you will be surprised how elephants got their longer trunk. : )
This is the first one-volume edition of two classic works, "Houdini's Escapes" (1930) and "Houdini's Magic" (1932). These books provided the most complete description available of Houdini's feats and how he performed them. Walter Gibson prepared them after Houdini's death in 1926, from the magician's private notebooks and with the assistance of his widow, Beatrice, and of Bernard Ernst, then president of the Society of American Magicians.
"It will soon become apparent to the reader that, although Houdini was daring, he never took an uncalculated risk. He would not accept a challenge unless he was sure he could meet it. He was physically fit, an athlete, and a strong swimmer. Yet his assistants were poised to rescue him if he didn't surface on schedule from an underwater box. A dozen less careful performers have been drowned, or seriously injured, because they attempted this feat without sufficient knowledge, or without taking the necessary precautions." -- Milbourne Christopher
Author Walter B. Gibson, after completing "Houdini's Escapes and Houdini's Magic" in the early 1930s, turned to fiction writing, creating the famed pulp hero of Lamont Cranston, also known as the Shadow. Under the pen name of Maxwell Grant, he wrote novel-length stories for "The Shadow Magazine" for more than fifteen years. These novels were adapted for the Shadow radio program and, today, they have been reprinted in paperback and hardcover editions. Under his own name, Walter Gibson has written many other books in the fields of magic, games and the occult.
From "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. London: William Heinemann, 1905. First Rackham Trade Edition.
Written by William Shakespeare, published in 1623. View all four folios at digital.lib.MiamiOH.edu/folios.
"Have Gun – Will Travel" was an American Western television series that aired on CBS from 1957 through 1963. It was one of the few television shows to spawn a successful radio version. The radio series debuted November 23, 1958. Of the 225 episodes of the television series, 24 were written by Gene Roddenberry, creator of "Star Trek," and 19 were directed by series star Richard Boone, who portrays Paladin, a gun for hire. His portrait is on the book cover.
The book features seven stories by the long-time editor of Astounding Science Fiction. They are all set in the far distant future amid technologies way more advanced than our own. The tales describe the perils we are inevitably exposed to in a universe indifferent to our lives, our progress, or our extinction. Campbell foresees humans bred for specific characteristics, watches their fight for freedom from interstellar invaders and bears witness to the rule of the Machine and to mankind’s sudden loss of memory.
In the Victorian age most book owners felt that any book worth keeping deserved to be rebound, usually in some form of leather to become part of a personal library. This copy of "Through the Looking Glass...," which was re-bound in leather, retains the original publisher's binding inside.
The sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865), “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There” (1872) was published seven years later and is set some six months later than the earlier book. This time Alice enters a fantastic world by stepping through a mirror. “Through the Looking Glass” is not quite as popular as “Wonderland” but it does include celebrated verses such as “Jabberwocky” and “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” and episodes involving “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” and “Humpty Dumpty.” The book features fifty in-text illustrations by John Tenniel.
The author, Lewis Carroll, is a pseudonym for Reverend Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) who was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford. Dodgson was awkward and is said to have had a crippling stammer around other adults. But around children the stammer melted away as he told them his nonsensical stories. He was a brilliant and imaginative artist whose “extravagantly absurd” stories and witty wordplay appealed to young people.
The “Nuremberg Chronicle” is an illustrated world history that follows the story of humankind related in the Bible, from Creation to Last Judgment. It was written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel in the city of Nuremberg and is one of the best-documented early printed books – an incunabulum – and one of the first to successfully integrate illustrations and text. The publisher and printer was Anton Koberger, the godfather of Albrecht Durer. The large workshop of Michael Wolgemut, then Nuremberg’s leading artist, provided the unprecedented 1,809 woodcut illustrations. Albrecht Durer was an apprentice with Wolgemut from 1486 to 1489, so may well have participated in designing some of the illustrations for the specialist craftsmen who cut the blocks.
Approximately 400 Latin and 300 German copies of the Chronicle survived into the twenty-first century. Some copies were broken up for sale as decorative prints. The larger illustrations in the book were sold separately, often hand-colored in watercolor. Many copies of the book are also colored, with varying degrees of skill; there were specialist shops for this. The coloring on some examples has been added much later.
Six men and two women are trapped in a tropic clearing – and one of them is a murderer. Confronted with the intense heat and boredom of the tropics, having to wait for the arrival of the coasting launch which passes by once a month, this assorted group become irritable and overwrought. Jealousies and enmities become more and more marked until one night one of the members of the party is found strangely and horribly strangled by the head of an Indian doll which has been thrust far down his throat.
Albert Dekker stars as Alexander Thorkel, a mad scientist who pursues a fantastic experiment deep in the Peruvian jungle. He uses radioactivity to miniaturize living things, including humans, reasoning that if people were one-tenth their normal size, there would be ten times as much food to go around. When fellow scientists penetrate his jungle retreat, the paranoid Dr. Thorkel shrinks them down to size to protect his secret, even killing one of them to demonstrate his power. Here is a link to the movie trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlSqylxm3jo
Will Garth, the author of the novel based on the movie, is a house pseudonym. Authorship is often misattributed to Henry Kuttner because of his shorter magazine version from the film script published in “Thrilling Wonder Stories.” The actual author of the novel is likely Alexander Samalman.
This scarce twenty- page pamphlet tells the story of the Dakotas last winter buffalo hunt in 1880-1881. The hunting party consisted of 60 Sioux Indians and the story is told by Reverend Thomas Lawrence Riggs (1847-1940), the only white man in the group and an active participant in the hunt. Rev. Riggs, who was a missionary among the Indians, talked their language from childhood. He provides an inside view of the customs and laws that controlled the hunting of big game, sharing in the humor and hard work of the Sioux Indians during the hunt.
“The Blue Poetry Book” was Andrew Lang's first and only “colored” book of poetry. It collects nearly 150 poems by masters such as Blake, Wordsworth, Scott, Longfellow, Burns, Byron, Shakespeare, Poe, Marlowe, Coleridge, Milton, Macaulay, among others. The poems are accompanied by 100 black and white illustrations by Henry J. Ford and Lancelot Speed.
Andrew Lang (1844 -1912) was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales and for his twelve “colored” fairy books, published between 1889 and 1910. Each volume is distinguished by its own color, beginning with “The Blue Fairy Book” (1889) and ending with “The Lilac Fairy Book” (1910). In all, 437 tales from a broad range of cultures and countries are presented. The series was immensely popular, helped by Lang's reputation in folklore, and by the packaging device of the uniform books. The series proved of great influence in children's literature, increasing the popularity of fairy tales over tales of real life.
This book from Arkham House collects four bizarre novels by British author William Hope Hodgson, their first printing in the USA. They are “The Boats of the Glen Carrig” (1907), “The House on the Borderland” (1908), “The Ghost Pirates” (1909), and “The Night Land” (1912). Primarily the romanticist, Hodgson could not overcome a strong predilection for the weird. A thread of romance creeps into even “The House on the Borderland,” perhaps his best work and one of the most unforgettable weird-scientific novels ever written. “The Night Land” which was subtitled “a love tale” is a weird fantasy story of the world millions of years in the future.
William Hope Hodgson (1875-1918) was the son of an Essex clergyman who left home early in life to spend eight years at sea, a circumstance that profoundly influenced his writing career, for his best weird tales were written about the sea. When World War I broke out, Hodgson was granted a commission in the 171st Brigade at Royal Field Artillery. He fought at Ypres and, in the following year, he distinguished himself for bravery by the part he played to help stem the onslaught of a superior German force. Not long after, while on duty in the dangerous post of observation officer of his Brigade, he was killed by a shell.
Hannes Bok (1914-1964) is one of a handful of fantasy illustrators from the pulp magazine era, along with Virgil Finlay and Edd Cartier, whose work is just as popular today as it was in the 1940s. He made his professional debut in the pages of Weird Tales in late 1939, but he began dabbling in fantasy and science fiction art as early as 1930. He did considerable pulp magazine work throughout the 1940s, and was active as a book illustrator and painter in the late 1940s and early 1950s, contributing to such publishers as Arkham House, Shasta, Fantasy Press, and Gnome Press.
Car: Lotus Emira V6 First Edition.
Engine: 3456cc V6.
Year of manufacture: 2022.
Date of first registration in the UK: 7th December 2022.
Place of registration: Not known.
Date of last MOT: Not applicable.
Mileage at last MOT: Not applicable.
Date of last change of keeper: No previous recorded keepers.
Number of previous keepers: 0.
Date taken: 17th September 2023.
Second of three Pop-Ups in the book.
Early pop-up book from the Disney studios featuring Mickey and the gang with the circus animals. The text Includes three color pop-ups and black & white illustrations throughout.
The somewhat faded gilt-embossed image on the front cover is the American Crystal Palace built in Bryant Park, New York for the 1853 World’s Fair.
The “Book of the World: A Family Miscellany for Instruction and Amusement” was edited by Dr. [Thomas] Gaspey [1788-1871]. John Weik and Charles Wieck published the first volume in 1852 and John Weik alone published the second volume in 1853 (not shown here). The first volume contains 48 full-page engravings, 35 of which are colored. Colored engravings of that period were virtually always colored by hand with water colors. This took time and great skill as the color was applied to the plate itself.
With sales of about 200 million copies, “A Tale of Two Cities” is the biggest selling novel in history. It began as weekly installments from April 30, 1859 to November 26, 1859 in Dickens’ literary periodical titled “All the Year Round.” It depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the French revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period.
Chapman & Hall published the novel in 8 monthly parts (July – December 1859) and in book form that same year and commissioned Hablot K. Browne [Phiz] to create full page illustrations for the story. It was the last of Dickens’ books to be illustrated by Hablot K. Browne.
The Illustrated News of the World – First Edition 1858.
‘The Illustrated News of the World and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages’ was a new publication with the strong visual emphasis of numerous large woodcuts to illustrate local and world events, and also featuring a number of fine steel engravings of eminent persons. The publishers stated their hopes that the publication would match or supplement the existing illustrated magazines:- The Illustrated London News and Punch Magazine .
Published by Illustrated News of the World, The Strand, London. Annual bound collection, red cloth boards 338 pages 42cm x 29cm.
A wonderful 1950s children's book about a little Inuit girl who helps build an igloo.
The Little Igloo.
Written by Lorraine Beim, Jerrold; Beim
Illustrated by Harold Simon
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons; First edition (1941)
"Das arme Jesulein. Gemalt und geschrieben von Ida Bohatta-Morpurgo
Verlag - Josef Müller, München"
Mother's childhood Christmas storybook.
Written and illustrated by Ida Bohatta-Morpurgo de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Bohatta
First edition, 1931
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1931. A szegény Kisjézus.
Írta és illusztrálta: Ida Bohatta Morpurgo de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Bohatta
Mamám gyerekkori karácsonyi mesekönyve
Kiadó: Josef Müllerr Verlag, München. Első kiadás
This is Verne’s most popular novel and it was first translated from French to English for the American and British markets. This American edition from James R. Osgood has 54 inserted plates with illustrations by A. de Neuville and L. Benett. It was printed in London from the plates of Sampson Low’s British edition which came out a few weeks earlier, in November 1873. James R. Osgood is also credited with the first English-language edition of the novel. Osgood published it in the summer of 1873 in a small pocket-sized format with just one illustration, called “The Tour of the World in 80 Days.”
In 1954, Ellison decided to write about youth gangs. To research the issue, he joined a street gang in the Red Hook, Brooklyn, area, under the alias "Phil 'Cheech' Beldone". His subsequent writings on the subject include the novel Web of the City/Rumble, the collection The Deadly Streets, and part of his memoir Memos from Purgatory. [Source: Wikipedia]
Robert Dietrich - Be My Victim
Dell Books First Edition 106, 1956
Cover Artist: Arthur Sussman
Robert Dietrich is a pseudonym of E. Howard Hunt
Written by William Shakespeare, published in 1623. View all four folios at digital.lib.MiamiOH.edu/folios.
The A. C. Gilbert Company was once one of the largest toy companies in the world. Alfred Carlton Gilbert (1884-1961) founded the company in 1909 as a company that provided supplies to magic shows. Then, in 1911, Gilbert invented the Erector Set and introduced it two years later. Beginning in 1922, A. C. Gilbert made chemistry sets and other sets for budding scientists. Microscope kits came in 1934, then a line of inexpensive reflector telescopes. In 1938, Gilbert purchased the American Flyer, a struggling manufacturer of toy trains. Gilbert re-designed the entire product line, producing 1:64 scale trains running on O gauge track. After WWII, Gilbert introduced S gauge model railroad kits. Although these new trains were popular, Lionel outsold American Flyer nearly 2 to 1. Once the largest employer in New Haven, Connecticut, the Gilbert Company struggled after the death of its founder in 1961 and went out of business in 1967. American Flyer was sold to Lionel. The brand name on its Erector Set and microscope products was retained by subsequent manufacturers. [Source: Wikipedia]
Release a Jinn from a bottle – according to legend – and he becomes your slave. But Zongri was an unusual Jinn – evil, malicious, and thoroughly angry at having been kept imprisoned for thousands of years. Instead of thanking young Jan Palmer for freeing him, he cursed Jan – with the curse of “eternal wakefulness.”
Jan had enough trouble in his own world. Meek and bookish, he stood accused of murder, and no one would believe him innocent. But his trouble more than doubled as the curse sent him into another world every time he fell asleep. In this other existence, he had a separate identity – that of Tiger, swashbuckling adventurer and warrior against the ruling demons. The odds were against him everywhere – and he could die in either world at any moment!
After establishing a career as a writer, becoming best known for his science fiction and fantasy stories, L. Ron Hubbard developed a self-help system called Dianetics which was first expounded in book form in May 1950. He subsequently developed his ideas into a wide-ranging set of doctrines and rituals as part of a new religious movement that he called Scientology.
Hannes Bok (1914-1964) is one of a handful of fantasy illustrators from the pulp magazine era, along with Virgil Finlay and Edd Cartier, whose work is just as popular today as it was in the 1940s. He made his professional debut in the pages of Weird Tales in late 1939, but he began dabbling in fantasy and science fiction art as early as 1930. He did considerable pulp magazine work throughout the 1940s, and was active as a book illustrator and painter in the late 1940s and early 1950s, contributing to such publishers as Arkham House, Shasta, Fantasy Press, and Gnome Press.
This is Arthur C. Clarke’s first science fiction novel and the jacket art is by Chesley Bonestell. The premise is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored and that Martin Gibson, a famous science fiction writer, is traveling there as a guest of the crew of spaceship Ares. Gibson arrives and given a tour of the place. He learns of secret plans to make Mars self-sufficient and the atmosphere breathable for humans. The most ambitious project involves the ignition of the moon Phobos and its use as a second sun. Gibson also encounters never-before-seen Martian creatures when he is forced down in a dust storm on a trip to a remote research station. Hard to believe this story was written before humans had achieved spaceflight.
This first-edition VHS release of Ferdinando Baldi's "Gold Snake" (1966) sports a simpler cut-n-paste back cover and came packaged in the small box format. The film, dealing with underhanded doings related to atomic secrets, clearly attempted to cash in on the James Bond craze. The same director gained more "regional" fame for his "Ten Zan: The Ultimate Mission" (1988), which used P'yongyang to stand in for Hong Kong (?). Extremely rare tape nowadays.