Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Stein, Gertrude. Lucy Church Amiably. Imprimerie Union, Paris, 1930.
Price: US$50.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: Novel. First edition stated. Printed covers rubbed and soiled, spine deteriorated, moisture stains. Owner name and date on the first endpaper, scattered ink underlining throughout. Binding tight, slightly musty.
Seller: R Bryan Old Books, Sewell, NJ, U.S.A.
Stein, Gertrude. Lucy Church Amiably. Imprimerie Union, Paris, 1930.
Price: US$90.00 + shipping
Description: First edition. Square octavo in royal blue paper covered boards printed in black. A notoriously fragile book, this copy is tight within its binding; there is wear to the very edges of the boards as well as some scattered small nicks. The spine strip has shallow wear at the ends with the color well faded but the black lettering still bold.
Seller: Old Book Shop of Bordentown (ABAA, ILAB), Bordentown, NJ, U.S.A.
Stein, Gertrude. LUCY CHURCH AMIABLY. Imprimerie Union, Paris, 1930.
Price: US$120.00 + shipping
Description: 8vo., 240pp.; G+; spine blue with black lettering; moderate wear to boards, including cracking to psine, head and tail chipped, rubbing to edges, corners, water stain to fore-edge of front board; interior clean; First book issued by Stein and Toklas under their Plain Edition Press, limited to only 1,000 copies; shelved case 2. 1284284. Shelved Dupont Bookstore.
Seller: Second Story Books, ABAA, Rockville, MD, U.S.A.
Gertrude Stein. Lucy Church Amiably. Imprimerie Union, Paris, 1930.
Price: US$173.16 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: The first edition of important writer and art collector Gertrude Stein's lesser known work, a self-described novel of romantic beauty. This work is a poetic novel, depicting the romance of beauty in nature as experienced by Stein in Lucey, France.The first edition was printed in Paris in 1930; the first U.S. edition was not published for almost forty years in 1969, long after Stein's death.Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American novelist, writer and art collector. She moved to Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, and here she hosted a salon used as a meeting spot by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis and Henri Matisse. Her quasi-autobiography of these years, 'The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas', which was written from the perspective of her life partner, was a best-seller and brought her to mainstream attention.The release of this work was limited to one thousand copies. In paper covered boards. Externally a trifle rubbed, with chips to the head and tail of the spine, otherwise slight wear to the extremities. Ownership inscription to the front pastedown. Internally generally firmly bound, front hinge is starting after the title page. Pages are bright and clean. With a Shakespeare & Co. label to the rear pastedown. Very Good
Seller: Rooke Books PBFA, Bath, United Kingdom
Stein, Gertrude. LUCY CHURCH AMIABLY. Imprimerie Union, Paris, 1930.
Price: US$178.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Boards {HB} in very good condition with scratches, soiling and wear to covers. The inside is as near fine with just the slightest touch of browning around few outer edges, no names, bookplates or marks of any kind. The first book issued by Stein and Toklas's Plain Edition press. Limited edition of 1000. Bound in publisher's original blue paper boards. First edition, 240 pages. Size: 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall
Seller: David Gaines, Eureka, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$195.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: A very good copy of the first edition in a good example of the original and befittingly 'plain' jacket (heavy chipping to jacket spine, come chipping to edges; book has wear to spine tips and corners; rear inner hinge just a bit tender).
Seller: Arundel Books, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
STEIN, Gertrude. Lucy Church Amiably. Imprimerie Union, Paris, 1930.
Price: US$500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition. Printed blue papercovered boards. Rubbing and light wear, particularly at the crown, but a nice, very good or better copy, issued without dustwrapper. One of 1000 copies. A nice example.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
Price: US$833.74 + shipping
Description: First edition. Octavo. 240 pages. The first title in Stein's Plain Edition series. Recased in blue morocco with original, rather rubbed board panels laid onto front and rear covers; new endpapers. Original, much worn backstrip loosely inserted. ''REVIEW COPY'' written on title-page.Presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the half-title page: ''For R.K. Hart, in memory of the pleasure of meeting him and his many Lucy Church Amiables, Gertrude Stein''. Repair to first blank. Light stain to margin of page 86. Very good.
Seller: Peter Ellis, Bookseller, ABA, ILAB, London, United Kingdom
Price: US$1603.34 + shipping
Description: First edition. Octavo. 240 pages. Blue boards. The first title in Stein's Plain Edition series.Presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the half-title page: ''To Gerald who is giving us so much pleasure in liking our [?] may we have much more of the same - Gertrude.'' The recipient is Lord Berners (1883-1950) the British aesthete, composer, writer and wit, whose home Faringdon House was frequented by a wide range of artistic luminaries, including Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, Igor Stravinsky, Oliver Messel, Cecil Beaton, the Mitfords, H.G. Wells, Tom Driberg, the Sitwells, Constant Lambert, William Walton and many others. Stein and Berners collaborated on the 1937 ballet, A Wedding Bouquet, based on a text by the former and set to music by the latter; the choreography was by Frederick Ashton. A later collaboration, on an opera based on Stein's libretto Dr Faustus Lights the Lights, was abandoned as Berners sank into a period of depression. This has not prevented the libretto in recent years from being set to music and performed by various American experimental theatre groups.Rear inner hinge completely split. Covers generally rubbed. Head of spine defective. Internally very good. In less than impressive condition, but an important association copy.
Seller: Peter Ellis, Bookseller, ABA, ILAB, London, United Kingdom
Stein, Gertrude. Lucy Church Amiably. Imprimerie "Union", Paris, 1930.
Price: US$1750.00 + shipping
Description: First edition ("The plain edition an edition of first editions of all the work not yet Printed of Gertrude Stein."). 240pp. 1 vols. Small 8vo. Presentation Copy, Inscribed to Henry McBride. A fine association copy of this book (published by Stein and Toklas under their "Plain edition" imprint), inscribed by Stein on the flyleaf to her friend and champion, the American art critic Henry McBride: "To Henry dear / from Gertrude," With McBride's book ticket on the front pastedown HENRY McBRIDE was an important art critic between 1915 and the early 1950s, a champion of twentieth century modernism, and a close friend of Gertrude Stein's. According to biographer James Mellow, Henry McBride, along with Carl van Vechten, was one of Stein's most important friends in the building of her American reputation. McBride was an art critic for the New York Sun whom Mellow calls "the most astute and entertaining art critic of his generation." From the time that they met in 1913, McBride became a powerful promoter of Stein's work in the States, "he mentioned her frequently and favorably in his columns for the Sun, often quoting her at length. His promotion of her work and her reputation during the years of World War I kept her name before the public . " Wilson A14 Original blue paper boards, printed in black. Worn copy, spine defective (faded, detached with half-inch loss from head), lower board detached, internally very good. In custom morocco backed slipcase and chemise First edition ("The plain edition an edition of first editions of all the work not yet Printed of Gertrude Stein.").
Seller: James Cummins Bookseller, ABAA, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$2244.68 + shipping
Description: First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author upside down on the rear free endpaper, "To Charlotte Becker, whom I very well remember and who was so pleasant and amused in those early days, Gertrude Stein". Becker was a prolific poet, playwright, and illustrator, who later became a book reviewer for the Buffalo Evening News. Becker and Stein were introduced by their mutual friend Mabel Dodge Luhan in Paris in spring 1911. Luhan was a wealthy and influential advocate for Stein in the USA, and Becker's sometime lover. Lucy Church Amiably was the first title in Stein's Plain Editions series, published by her and her partner Alice B. Toklas after Stein had grown frustrated with finding a publisher for the title. Stein wanted the book "to look like a school book and to be bound in blue" (Stein, p. 298), and records the "childish delight amounting to ecstasy" seeing it in the windows of bookstores gave her in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: "She had never seen a book of hers in a bookstore window before. and she spent all her time in wanderings about Paris looking at the copies of Lucy Church Amiably in the windows" (ibid., p. 229). Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933. Octavo. Original blue boards, spine and front cover lettered in black. Housed in a custom blue cloth chemise and slipcase. Spine sunned with small loss to ends, rear joint cracked but firm, front joint starting at head, rubbed with a little wear to edges, a very good copy, contents fresh, boards notably bright.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
Stein, Gertrude. LUCY CHURCH AMIABLY. Imprimerie Union / (Plain Edition), Paris, 1930.
Price: US$2500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition of this first book from Stein's Plain Edition, inscribed by Alice Toklas to author Elizabeth Sprigge, who would publish one of the earliest formal biographies of Stein - and which Toklas repudiated. After Stein's death, Alice Toklas stewarded Stein's posthumous literary reputation, both assisting editors of new editions of Stein's texts and providing assistance (or obstacles, as the case may be) to biographers. At the time of this book's inscription, novelist Elizabeth Sprigge was working on her first biography, about the Modernist Swedish author August Strindberg, that would be favorably reviewed for its "remarkably accurate and clear treatment of a controversial figure" (Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 22 No. 1, 28). Toklas's 1954 inscription here - "with love [.] Devotedly" - indicates that Toklas and Sprigge began a friendship on warm terms. Indeed, Toklas was impressed by Sprigge's biography of Strindberg upon its release the next year, and she initially supported Sprigge's idea of writing a biography of Stein because of it. In 1953, Toklas wrote her own editor at Harper to provide a connection for Sprigge to publish her planned biography of Stein; it was, Toklas's biographer remarked, "a recommendation that Alice came to regret" (Simon, 283). As Sprigge continued gathering material for the biography, it became clear that she intended to "include personal details [.] a practice Alice would not allow" (Simon, 284). Toklas warned off friends whom Sprigge was contacting and, in 1956, argued at length with Sprigge regarding the content of the biography - especially her own role in it. Toklas argued she herself "had no place in the book except, perhaps, as the editor of the Plain Edition" (Simon, 284), Stein and Toklas's short-lived small press that published this book. Harper ultimately published Sprigge's GERTRUDE STEIN: HER LIFE AND WORK in 1957, much to Toklas's dismay. One of Stein's most under-appreciated books, LUCY CHURCH AMIABLY was the first of the books Stein published herself, frustrated as she was by a lack of a regular outlet for her work. It was available only in this edition until 1969, when Something Else Press republished it. A fragile book often found in shabbier condition, an important copy. 7'' x 5''. Publisher's original blue printed boards. No jacket, as issued. One of 1000 copies. 240 pages. Inscribed by Alice Toklas on the front free endpaper: "Once again with love to Elizabeth [Sprigge] / Devotedly / Alice / Saint-Medard 54 - Paris." Spine faded, but titles legible. Extremities worn, rubbing overall. Else sound.
Seller: Type Punch Matrix, Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A.