Featured Items
- Elk River Books, ABAA/ILAB - Featured Items
- Featured items that Elk River Books plans to bring to RMBPF 2019.
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Featured Items
Description:
Presentation copy. Signed and inscribed by author on copyright page to actress Margot Kidder: "Margo- / Here's what they (the world) / had me doing in '66 - / Ed." Second
printing: does NOT include extra flap at the end. 12mo (18 cm). 25-foot-long, 51 accordion-folded panels in leporello binding, with original silver FasCal-covered cardboard
slipcase (now in pieces). White paper wrappers with black lettering. From an edition of 1,000 copies (The Works of Edward Ruscha, p. 169). Continuous stream of photos
along top and bottom edge of panels, representing both sides of the street (ironically rendering the Strip in strip form, points out David Bourdon in "A Heap of Words About
Ed Ruscha," in Art International, 11/20/71). Wrappers have light edge wear, smudging and creasing. From Kidder's estate.
Price: $3,000.00
Description:
Wide quarto (23 x 30 cm), pp. [34]. Spiralbound sketchbook, brown covers with paste-down collage of color and black and white images on front. Cover is signed and
dated "2/20/82." Seventeen original drawings, paintings and collage (pen and ink, watercolors, markers, colored paper, etc.) dated from February 13 to 20,1982, depicting
the artist's response to a production of Shakespeare's great tragedy. Each piece depicts a specific scene, often with lines from the play included. Poem titled "Macbeth
(After seeing Nicol Williamson's production at the Circle in the Square, matinee, February 13, 1982)" pasted onto inside front cover. Several pages wavy from watercolor
application. Light bumping and wear to extremities.
Hoffman (1921-2013) was a painter, illustrator, poet, teacher and veteran of WWII and the Korean War. In addition to painting murals for U.S. Army installations and the
New Castle PA Public Library, he has had one-man shows at the Crespi Gallery (NYC), the Phoenix Gallery (NYC), the American Embassy Gallery (Oslo, Norway), the
Cleveland Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Arts and Crafts Center (Pittsburgh), as well as numerous groups shows across the country. He also had a
career in public relations at McGraw Hill.
The production inspiring this book was directed by Scottish theatre artist Nicol Williamson, who also played the title character. Though the production received mixed
reviews, Williamson has been described as "the greatest actor since Marlon Brando" by John Osborne (author of Look Back in Anger) and as "touched by genius" by
Samuel Beckett. Film buffs perhaps best know him from his roles in Excaliber and The Exorcist III.
Condition: Very Good.
Price: $1,000.00
Description:
Limited edition of 1,500 to 5,000 copies. 16 x 18 cm cardstock folder containing eight differently-colored seed packets--four flowers, four vegetables--each with a Brautigan
poem and planting instructions (packed for the 1968-1969 season). Folder is illustrated with three photos of a young girl, Caledonia Jahrmarkt, taken by Haight-Ashbury
photographer Bill Brach.
Six packets are unopened and still contain their seeds: parsley, lettuce, sweet alyssum royal carpet (x 2 -- one pink and one blue), carrots and squash. No seeds remain in
the California native flowers and Shasta daisy packets. Originally contained only one sweet alyssum packet, and this copy is missing the calendula seed packet (Barber,
23).
Laid-in is a folded, letter-size mimeographed broadside of the 1967 poem, "The Beautiful Poem," with "Drawing by Seurat" of a woman with a scarf. On the back is a
handwritten notation of the address of Brautigan's early 1970s San Francisco apartment, 2546 Geary St. The poem was published in All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace and reprinted in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster. (Source: Brautigan.net).
The glue has failed on folder sleeves, leaving brown discolored splots. Light toning and spotting to folder, and moderate soiling of some seed packets.
According to biographer William Hjortsberg, the inspiration for the poetry seed packets was a discussion with friends about creating edible books to give away at a summer
arts festival in Santa Barbara. The books did not happen, but Brautigan took the idea and ran with it. (Jubilee Hitchhiker, 316).
Condition: Very Good.
Price: $1,250.00
Description:
Quarto (25.5 cm), pp. [12]. Hand-tied pamphlet with blue paper wrappers, paper label. Signed with lengthy inscription (on verso of first leaf) by Frost to Robert S. Newdick,
an Ohio State University professor of English literature (who was to have been Frost's biographer, but died before he could complete the work). No. 31 of 125, limited
printing by the Daniel Oliver Associates of Dartmouth College. Includes three poems from Frost's early writing that had not previously been published in book form: "The
Quest of the Orchis," "Warning," and "Caesar's Lost Transport Ships" (though all three had appeared in print previously in The Independent). Crane, A18.
Front cover and back covers are detached from the rest of the pamphlet, and have dampstaining that does not affect the interior pages. Binding is intact but frail. Includes
envelope addressed from Frost to Newdick in Frost's handwriting with cancelled three-cent stamps and the admonition to postal carriers: "Please do not fold." Envelope is
in two pieces, has dampstaining and many chips and tears.
Inscription reads: "Dear Mr. Newdick, This may interest you as an 'item' and a piece of writing if nothing else. The only poem in it I care for is The Quest of the Orchis,
which might well have gone into A Boy's Will. Caesar's Lost Transport Ships was a high school piece. All three poems were published in the old Independent.
[indecipherable] yours, Robert Frost April 16, 1935 Amherst Mass."
Condition: Good
Price: $2,500.00
Description:
Atlas, Elephant folio (50 cm), other volumes, folio (32 cm). Complete set of Moulton's definitive edition of the journals produced by the Corps of Discovery, including Atlas,
Herbarium and Comprehensive Index. All volumes first edition, Atlas signed by Moulton on title page. Blue cloth with gilt spine titling, all jackets present (except for Atlas,
which was issued without one). All volumes fine or near fine with the following defects: Atlas (spine cocked, light rubbing, small paint (?) smudge on upper corner); Volume
2 (jacket has very slight edge wear); Volume 4 (corner is bumped, jacket with several small closed tears); Volume 10 (top edge bumped); Volume 11 (crease at spine).
A beautiful set of the collection, which was 20 years in the making. Moulton, who calls himself a "documentary historian," poured over the original handwritten journals for
this project, adding footnotes with updates on tribes, maps, and plants. (Beckham 5h1).
Condition: Near Fine
Price: $3,000.00