Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. Lyrics of Lowly Life. Chapman and Hall, London, 1897.
Price: US$195.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 208 pages. First English edition, first printing. His 3rd book & 1st one published in England. With an Introduction by William Dean Howells. An uncredited, hand written poem on the two pages at the end of the book. Very good+ book with the the corners lightly rubbed and offsetting on the 1st & last sheets due to clippings laid in. A very nice copy of an important book.
Seller: Fireproof Books, MINNETONKA, MN, U.S.A.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. Lyrics of Lowly Life. Chapman and Hall, London, 1897.
Price: US$275.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: Slight soiling to endpapers. A bright crisp copy, near fine.
Seller: John R. Sanderson, Bookseller , Stockbridge, MA, U.S.A.
Price: US$375.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: - Quarto, 12-1/2 inches high by 8-7/8 inches wide. Two volumes uniformly bound in black cloth titled in gilt on the front covers and the spines with decorations in gilt on the front covers. The covers of both volumes are rubbed with wear to the edges and corners. The front cover of the second volume is detached and the spine of that volume is heavily chipped. The pagination of volume VI, consisting of 8 issues from January 15, 1987 through May 1, 1897, is as follows: Index to vol. vi pages [i-iv] followed by pages [193]-508. The pagination of volume VII, consisting of 12 issues from May 15, 1897 through November 1, 1897, is as follows: index to vol. vii pages [i-iv] , followed by pages [1]-480. The leaves are deckle-edged. The set is occasionally illustrated including 2 full-page illustrations by Frank Hazenplug decorating J.K. Turner's poem "The Lost Travelers", a color plate by Max Beerbohm depicting the Scottish writer John Davidson, and numerous pictorial ads. Included are several ads for the 1897 line of Bicycle saddles produced by Graford Mfg. Co. with beautiful Art Nouveau frames. There are also a couple of attractive illustrated ads for "Pabst" Milwaukee Beer, illustrated ads for "Pears' Soap" and ads for "Vigoral" depicting a strong man lifting weights, and a pictorial ad for H.J. Whigham's book "How to Play Golf". The first signatures (i.e. group of pages) in both volumes are detached but present. There are a very few short tears in the margins of the pages none of which touch the text. The edges of the pages are somewhat brittle but the set is in otherwise internally very good condition. The first published edition of Henry James' novel "What Masie Knew". The first three chapters appear on pages 214 through 219 of volume VI with subsequent chapters appearing throughout these 20 issues, concluding in the August 1, 1897 issue with chapters 29 & 30 of the novel. The novel, which follows the life of young Masie, the daughter of divorced narcissistic parents, was published in book form later that year, with the London edition appearing in September and the Chicago/New York edition following in October. An ad, appearing on October 15, 1897 on page 378 of volume VII, announces the publication of the book quoting a long glowing review from The London Chronicle. Other noteworthy contributions include the first appearance of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "Song", the first line of which reads "Over the Hills and Valleys of Dreaming". The poem was later published in Dunbar's book "Lyric's of the Hearthside" in 1899. Another of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poems "Mortality" is here first published in volume VII. The poem was also subsequently published in the 1899 book "Lyrics of the Hearthside". Kate Douglas Wiggin's "The Tale of a Self-Made Cat" appears on pages 318 through 321 of volume VI, and E.F. Benson's "The Taming of Dodo" is here printed on pages 11 through 16 of volume VII. John Burrough's "Veneering" appears in volume VII. Burroughs addresses "Literary Veneering", the shamming of emotions by poets. "Usually the only thing revealed is art, or artifice, craftsmanship, as in Swinburne." "Shelley, Swinburne, Rossetti, and all of that ilk, do not fail as artists, but as men. They are more like veneer than solid stuff." Robert W. Chambers' short story "The God of Battles" is here published for the first time in volume VII. This brief work is a Civil War story in which a young officer is billeted in the home of a lonely girl. The home is an isolated farmhouse near a Maryland battlefield. The soldier lacks the courage to tell the girl that her brother has been killed. Chambers' short story was later published in his 1898 collection "The Haunts of Men". John Jay Chapman's "Walt Whitman" appears on pages 156 through 159 of volume VII. This is followed several pages later by "Walt Whitman and the Critics", literary criticism of Whitman by Maurice Thompson, Oscar Lovell Triggs, and Edward Everett Hale, Jr. In his essay, Thompson presents a quite vicious attack on Whitman (and Kipling): "Whitman has what may be denominated the poetic sense, and his deep ignorance would not have hindered him as a free-and-easy lyrist; but he deliberately set out to be queer and loose, and to make poetry out of queerness and looseness. No other man ever had such a reservoir of unfiltered, unsterilized, and altogether egotism upon which to draw for floods of resonant and high-rolling absurdities. What if the magazines were to begin a ten-years' run of 'Leaves of Grass'? I can think of nothing more terrible, unless it might be twenty years of Mr. Rudyard Kipling." Maurice Thompson later addresses the subject of bicycle scorchers on pages 348 through 350 of volume VII. In his essay titled "Ram's Horns and Duffers", Thompson protests against "bicycle scorchers" , cyclists who were thought to be those who rode aggressively and at high speeds risking the safety of other riders and pedestrians. Ellen Glasgow's poem "A Vision" appears in volume VII. The poem was later published as "The Vision of Hell" in her 1902 collection "The Freeman and Other Poems". Evelyn Sharp's "Why the Wymps Cried" also appears in volume VII.
Seller: Blue Mountain Books & Manuscripts, Ltd., Cadyville, NY, U.S.A.
DUNBAR, Paul Laurence. Lyrics of Lowly Life. Chapman and Hall, London, 1897.
Price: US$3500.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: First English edition. Introduction by William Dean Howells. Green cloth gilt. A little offsetting on the front fly, corners a little bumped, near fine. Signed by Paul Laurence Dunbar, under which is written in another hand: "(The Author's Autograph) July 25, 1897. Oliver Morland with love from his old friends July N. & P. Impey. July 1897." Uncommon English edition of the author's first commercially published book, and his first book to be published in Great Britain. Oliver Morland was an author and the president of the London publisher Morland & Impey, Paul Impey was his Quaker business partner. This edition rarely found signed, this with an interesting association.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.