Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mosses from an Old Manse. Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$250.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: 19.5 x 13 cm. 12mo. 207pp, 211pp no advertisements. Two volumes bound as one with seperate pagination and title pages, as issued. First edition, later state of the cloth edition. 1846 on title pages and copyright page of volume 1, no date on copyright page of volume 2. T. B. Smith Stereotyper on both copyright pages, no mention of R. Craighead's Power Press but copyright page of volume 2 mentions William Osborn, Printer. Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books; New York. BAL 7598. Binding is worn and has binder's tape repairs around the edges. Interior is heavily foxed.
Seller: Midway Book Store (ABAA), St. Paul, MN, U.S.A.
Price: US$300.00 + shipping
Description: Octavo, [i-vi], [1]-207, [i-vi], [1]-211 pages. In Good condition. Rebound in half dark green leather with brown cloth boards and gilt lettering on paneled spine. Boards have rubbing to corners and edges, tearing to cloth along edges, and mild edge wear and shelf wear. Textblock has splitting to front interior hinge, previous owner's name in pen on front endpaper, light age toning, and mild to moderate foxing to pages. Shelved Room A. 1372673. Special Collections.
Seller: Second Story Books, ABAA, Rockville, MD, U.S.A.
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mosses from An Old Manse. Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$350.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition, Early State. Two Parts in One. 5 x 7.5in. [3] 207pp.; 211 [2]pp. Publisher's blind-stamped cloth boards with gilt titling. GOOD. Shows a chip of the cloth at the spine, several closed tears of the cloth at the spine, extremities somewhat shelf rubbed, former owner name of the period dated 1848 neatly at the front blank, the occasional thumbing of a margin, extremely sparse and occasional discoloration, otherwise the binding is strong, the text is clean and unmarked, and the boards remain relatively distinct. As pictured.
Seller: North Books: Used & Rare, St. Louis, MO, U.S.A.
HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$375.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First clothbound edition, third printing. Wiley & Putnam's Library of American Books. Two parts in one volume. Octavo. [6], 207 [1 (blank)]; [6], 211 [1 (blank)]pp. Publisher's decorative cloth stamped in blind, gilt spine, cream endpapers. Spine ends and corners worn and frayed, with few short tears and small chips on spine, moderate scattered foxing, a good or better copy. *BAL* 7598; *Clark* A15. 1.c.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$375.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition, First Issue. Two Part in One Volume, 207 and 211 pages, no advertisements. BAL 7598. Both R. Craighead's Power Press and T. B. Smith, Stereotyper, appear on the Copyright Page of each part, and the verso of page 211, part two, is blank. Originally printed in wrappers, this is hardcover volume, 3/4 black leather over marbled boards, gilt lettering at spine, brown spotted edges. Good, front cover detached, spine ends and corners bumped, light foxing and agetoned to pages.
Seller: Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA, East Woodstock, CT, U.S.A.
HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$425.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition, First Issue. Octavo, Contemporary 3/4 brown leather, marbled boards. Two volumes bound as one. Fabulous collection of the author's best known short stories. An attractive and tightly bound volume with wear along spine edges, scuffing to leather, pages clean but for some light foxing.
Seller: Babylon Revisited Rare Books, Northampton, MA, U.S.A.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Mosses From An Old Manse. Wiley and Putnam, NY, 1846.
Price: US$1000.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: 12mo., 2 parts in 1; 207 and 211 pgs., plus adverts, bound in as end matter: "New and Valuable Books published by Wiley and Putnam, 1846" (4 pgs.) This book is rare in any condition, and this specimen has its publisher's usual interior foxing, spotty and occasional on the page surfaces, more frequent deep in the binding gutters. Sewing is intact, but front cover is splitting at hinge for 2". Head and tail are worn thru. The gilt title remains legible on the spine. Blind-stamped original cloth front and rear panels show modest wear, the front having a light stain along part of its outer perimeter. First edition, 2nd state, with both Smith Stereotype and Craighead's Power Press trade emblems. Book 2 title page verso is blank, a bibliographical point of issue in Fraser Clark's "Descriptive Bibliography" on Hawthorne. The book has one 19th century owner name inked with a fine script hand. A rare volume from the first era of America's literary flowering. Very good antiquarian condition, in the original binding.
Seller: Old Book Surfer, Cambridge, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$1210.34 + shipping
Description: First British edition, published in the same year as the first American edition, and most likely produced from the same sheets with fresh titles, two volumes, 8vo., pp.(iii),207;(iii),211, uncut, publisher?s decoratively blindstamped green cloth, gilt; ex Armitt Library, Ambleside, with two small plates to front paste-down endpaper of each volume, Volume I has further small pictorial ownership bookplate to front paste-down endpaper, both volumes with light creasing to front free endpaper, foxing to edges (and, therefore, to margins), foxing to prelims and closing leaves, with occasional spots to text, toning to titles, slight uniform fading to spines (gilt bright), with just a little bruising to edges of Volume II, a very good set.
Seller: Minster Gate Bookshop (est. 1970), YORK, United Kingdom
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Mosses from and Old Manse - two volume set. Wiley & Putnam, London, 1846.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Two volume set. One of only a few hundred sets of the first British Edition, which used the American sheets with inserted English title, perhaps the scarcest form of this title, the first in hardcover form, preceded only by the American edition in wraps. Usual foxing to the pages, sometimes heavy. Original publisher's green cloth. This is a well-matched, married set, with subtle expert restoration, which made use of an extra volume II to supply a needed front endpaper in volume I, and a better-matching cover for volume two.
Seller: Graver & Pen Rare Books, Midland, MI, U.S.A.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE .. Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Description: 12mo, two volumes in one: pp. [1-6] [1] 2-207 [208: blank]; [1-6] [1] 2-211 [212: blank], half title leaves present, publisher's original decorated gray-green cloth, front and rear panels stamped in blind, spine panel stamped in gold and blind, pale yellow endpapers, top edge untrimmed. First edition. An early printing (a mixture of second and third printing sheets) with Smith and Craighead imprints present on both copyright pages and page [212] of volume two blank (in subsequent printings page [212] is used as the title page for a publisher's catalogue). According to BAL "when issuing the book in cloth (as a single volume) the publishers used whatever sheets they had in stock, and copies in cloth, therefore, frequently are of intermediate status." The second of Hawthorne's three major collections of short fiction published in his lifetime, and the best and most important of the three. Includes a number of classics, "The Birth-Mark," "Young Goodman Brown," "Rappaccini's Daughter" and "The Artist of the Beautiful." The other fantasy stories are "A Select Party," "Mrs. Bullfrog," "The Hall of Fantasy," "The Celestial Railroad," "The New Adam and Eve," "Egotism; or the Bosom Friend," "The Christmas Banquet," "Roger Malvin's Burial," "P.'s Correspondence," "Earth's Holocaust," and "A Virtuoso's Collection." "P.'s Correspondence," appears to be the first American alternate history story. "The darkness of his vision of the human psyche gives to almost everything he wrote, even works which were not supernatural fiction or fantasy, a sense that its protagonists are acting in obedience to the Gothic manipulations of the dead but shaping past, that they can never simply flourish in the here and now. It is in something like this sense that so much of his work seems to have been treated as allegory: his characters are so in bondage to the stories they have been appointed to undergo that they seem to 'stand' in an allegorical relationship to symbolic events, rather than to live them . In the end, the Hawthorne romance of predetermination casts a long shadow over the American Dream, telling us that we must both dream very hard and surrender absolutely." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 457. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 1-16; 1-17; 1-18; and 1-19; (1981) 1-96; and (2004) II-505. Barron (ed), Fantasy Literature 2-79. Barron (ed), Horror Literature 2-39. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 777. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 1070. Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), p. 551. Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, pp. 196-99. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature III, pp. 1536-43. Survey of Science Fiction Literature IV, pp. 2035-40. Bleiler (1978), p. 96. Reginald 06958. Wright (I) 1143. BAL 7598. Clark A15.1.a. Lower corner tips worn, lower spine end worn and repaired, mild foxing to preliminaries, but overall, a very nice copy, quite superior to most extant copies. A seminal work of early American fantastic literature by one of the two (the other was Poe) founding fathers of modern American imaginative fiction. (#155571)
Seller: Currey, L.W. Inc. ABAA/ILAB, Elizabethtown, NY, U.S.A.
Hawthorne Nathaniel. MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. New York Wiley and Putnam 1846, 1846.
Price: US$2475.00 + shipping
Description: 2 volumes bound into one. First Edition of each book, First Printing with "R. Craigheads Power Press" and "T. B. Smith imprints on the verso of both title-pages, and all first issue points as called for by Clark. 8vo, very handsomely bound in three-quarter scarlet morocco over red cloth-covered boards, gilt trimmed on the cornerpieces and backstrip, the spine with handsome ornately gilt decorated compartments between gilt stippled raised bands, gilt lettering in two gilt framed compartments and additional lettering at the tail, t.e.g., PUBLISHER'S RARE ORIGINAL DARK GREEN CLOTH preserved and bound in the rear rear of the volume. [i-vi], [1]-207; [i-vi], [1]-211 pp. A very clean and handsome copy, beautifully preserved, the text-block unusually clean and the binding bright, tight and strong. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING OF THIS EARLY AND QUITE SCARCE HAWTHORNE TITLE RARELY ENCOUNTERED IN FULL FIRST STATE FORMAT. Hawthorne spent three years in the Old Manse in Concord. The Old Manse is a historic manse famous for its American literary associations. It is now owned and operated as a nonprofit museum by the Trustees of Reservations. In 1842, the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne rented the Old Manse for $100 a year. He moved in with his wife, transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. Prior to their arrival at the Manse, Henry David Thoreau created a vegetable garden for the couple. The Hawthornes lived in the house for three years. Previously the manse had been home to Ralph Waldo Emerson. MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE is the best and most important of the three literary collections Hawthorne published during his lifetime. Many of the tales are allegories and, as in much of Hawthorne's best works, focus on the negative side of human nature. Herman Melville, a close friend of Hawthorne, noted this aspect in his review of it-- "This black conceit pervades him through and through. You may be witched by his sunlight,transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds."
Seller: Buddenbrooks, Inc., Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.
Price: US$2500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 8vo (5 1/8 x 7 3/16 inches).Pp. vi, 207, [blank], Bound in publisher's original blind-stamped cloth, gilt lettering on spine. Original pink patterned endpapers. A few leaves roughly opened along top edge (approximately 1/8 inch only); scattered light foxing, spine and edges mildly sunned. A superb copy. First edition, first issue, with Craighead and Smith imprint on both title versos and blank p. 212 in vol. two. Of copies in cloth, BAL reveals that page (212) "in the earliest printings is wholly blank; in known reprints this page is used as the title page, dated 1846, for a publisher's catalog.The Old Manse refers to the Concord house occupied Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and is the title of his essay introducing the subsequent 25 short stories.Upon publication, Hawthorne sent copies to several critic-acquaintances, including Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe was favorable, he took issue with Hawthorne's association with the Transcendentalists; Melville, by contrast, was unconditional in praise, noting that the stories will beguile with sparkle, but that underneath "his black conceit pervades him through and through."A desirable copy, now housed in a clear, archival sleeve. BAL 7898; CLARK A15.1.a.
Seller: Long Brothers Fine & Rare Books, ABAA, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$2750.00 + shipping
Description: First printing, American issue, with the Craighead and Smith imprints to the copyright page of both volumes. 12mo (19.5cm). Two volumes bound as one in brown cloth, blindstamped, titled in gilt on spine; cream endpapers printed in red-orange; [vi],207,[1],[vi],211,[1]pp. In custom tan calf and cloth slipcase. Bookplates of Florence and Edward Kaye, and of the Laugher Bache Library, with Laugher Bache's signature at head of title page. Straight and sound; cloth faded at spine, lightly rubbed with a few small stains, internally foxed: just Very Good. A collection of short stories, from the collection of noted book collectors. The two-in-one format of the first edition, which was also issued in paper wrappers and as two volumes in cloth. CLARK A15.1.a1. BAL 7598.
Seller: Lorne Bair Rare Books, ABAA, Winchester, VA, U.S.A.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Wiley & Putnam, New York, 1846.
Price: US$9000.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 2 vols. 1st edition of an American bequest to world literature. Original wrappers (copies in cloth are later issues and any contention that they are concurrent is wrong). 1st printing (Clark A15.1.a) with every point, 1st binding, state A of the front covers and spines, and matched backs of Wiley & Putnam ads with 18 titles listed ending with Mosses. Clark lists 5 back covers with no priority, and publishers typically first used the ads most recent to the book, and ours are therefore the tidiest, but in this case the back covers were probably issued randomly and ordering them past question is like 5 people try to divide a Kit-Kat. Small spine chips (the tips are intact), splits to 3 of the 4 joints invisibly closed (tacked back down), vol. I half-title and title short at the blank bottom (as issued), first 2 and last 2 leaves foxed (the rest clean), still, very good. A wonderful set, the nicest one known to us, of the few sets known to us (see our last paragraph below). Ex-Natalie Blair, the first great woman collector of Americana. These 25 stories launched a new, wickeder, deeper and more literate, approach to fiction with disturbing moral and psychological implications. Here's a taste from 5 of them. 1. Young Goodman Brown presents the reader with an allegory on the depravity of public morality and the recognition of evil, hinting at The Scarlet Letter 4 years later. The title's namesake, a Hawthorne paradox, has an encounter in a dark forest with 17th century Salem witchcraft leaving him cynical, wary, disillusioned, and embittered of everyone around him. 2. The Birthmark is a critique on the search for perfection in which Georgiana, an idyllic beauty (and a stand-in for the reader), marries Aylmer, a brilliant scientist. She has what she believes is a good luck charm, a small red birthmark on her left cheek in the shape of a tiny hand that disappears when she blushes. But Aylmer is obsessed by it, believing it ruins her beauty. Foreshadowing infiltrates the tale, creating the horror (we know where this is going) as the deranged Aylmer's work is consistently beset with unintended consequences, and Georgiana is wired to submit. Resolved to remove the birthmark himself, Aylmer plans the procedure, and gives her a potion he has invented to remove it while she sleeps. As she sleeps the birthmark fades away, but she awakens and dies. 3. The Celestial Railroad is another allegory, a parody of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, with his Evangelist replaced by Hawthorne's Mr. Smooth-it-away, and Bunyan's journey on foot replaced by an iron locomotive. 4. Rappaccini's Daughter has Giovanni falling in love with Beatrice, a beautiful young woman whose father experiments with a garden of poisonous plants. Beatrice has tended the plants from childhood and become immune to their toxins, but they have contaminated her and rendered her venomous to anybody who touches her, beyond redemption by love or science. 5. A Virtuoso's Collection, the last story, is a tour guided by The Wandering Jew through a fanciful museum housing impossible historical and mythical items, figures, books and especially beasts (the wolf that suckled Remus and Romulus, and the one that ate Little Red Riding Hood, Robinson Crusoe's parrot, Minerva's owl, Ulysses' dog Argus, Eve's serpent, and dozens more. And there are another 20 tales of equally unanticipatable imagination (especially 175 years ago!), and there is an opening sketch describing the Concord parsonage in which Hawthorne wrote them. Mosses was rightly praised in contemporary reviews by a magic circle of Hawthorne's peers: "Extraordinary genius, having no rival either in America or elsewhere." -Edgar Allan Poe "A wondrous symbolizing of the secret workings in men's souls.You may be witched by his sunlight - transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds." -Herman Melville "It is unfair that his book competes with imported European books. Shall real American genius shiver with neglect while the public runs after this foreign trash?" -Walt Whitman But few 1846 readers were up for these kinds of stories and Mosses found few buyers, and a new edition was not called for until 1854, after Hawthorne had been validated for The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of Seven Gables (1851), A Wonder Book (1851), and Tanglewood Tales (1853), but that is hardly shocking. In 1846, indifference was the public's routine response to any new wave of real art, presaging America today, where not reading their own great literature is the national pastime. What is rare? The old-time definition of a rare book was one that a specialist in that book saw once every 10 years (scarce meant once a year) and we still use that gauge here. These days too many sellers lie foolishly about rarity (and anything else they think they can get away with) but the marriage between an unreliable bookseller and an intelligent collector is always going to end in adultery. RBH shows 5 other auction sales of Mosses' 1st printing in wrappers since 1940, and, unlike ours, not all were the 1st state throughout. McMichael's set (Sotheby's 1992) was defective and repaired. Bradley Martin's (Sotheby's 1990) was chipped and repaired. Another (at Christie's, 1988) was crudely repaired. Gerald Slater's (Christie's, 1982) was fouled by black spots all over vol. II's wrappers. And I didn't see Paul Lemperly's set (sold in 1940). One more set (Sotheby's 2011), had a 2nd printing of vol. II. Our pair seems finest of all, and they are correct bibliographically, so if you fancy American literature, and want the best, for priority, condition, content, and effect, here it is, a tangible case in point that the pursuit of quality means trying to buy books that are a little better than necessary. Of course, when you don't like the price, you can flee quality from time to time, but if you want to
Seller: Biblioctopus, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.