Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$395.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: SECOND EDITION. Untrimmed, in the original wrappers, although the book has been amateurishly bound (or pasted) into a plain faux-leather binding with a gilt-stamped title on the front cover. An engraved portrait of the author Thomas Hughes (1822-1896) has been inserted before the title-page, having been mistaken, apparently, for a portrait of Irving. Sporadic foxing. Some soiling, darkening and dampstaining, mostly confined to the wrappers and endpapers. A Good copy and a scarce survival. Numbers of The Sketch Book rarely survive in the original wrappers. BAL10106
Seller: Clarel Rare Books, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$500.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: SECOND EDITION. Untrimmed, in the original wrappers. White endpapers. [1]-108 pages. With an advertisement for the Knickerbocker Magazine on the outer rear wrapper (as called for by Langfeld). Spine mostly chipped away with the binding held by a thread or two, and with the wrappers likely reattached. Foxing to the front wrapper. Upper, outer corner of the free endpaper torn away. 1 x 4" rectangular excision to the blank margin at the head of the first text leaf, presumably to remove a signature. The culprit accidentally made the vertical cut to the following page as well. A Good copy, containing Irving's influential Christmas essays. Rare in the original wrappers. BAL10106.
Seller: Clarel Rare Books, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: Octavo. 7 parts in 2 volumes. Title-page to volume 1 repaired and mounted. Parts I, VI, and VII are first edition, second printing. Parts II, III, IV, and V were printed one year after the first edition. I (1819): 94 pages; II (1820): 96-169 pages; III (1820): 92 pages; IV (1820): 93 pages; V (1820): 108 pages.; VI (1820): 120 pages; VII (1819): 123 pages. Modern half calf over marbled boards. Volume II 5/16th of an inch taller than Volume I. Shaw & Shoemaker 48355; BAL 10106; Blanck, J. Peter Parley to Penrod, p. 143. Foredge of pp. 73-74 of Part I missing, affecting one letter on page 74. Pages 115-118 of Part VII with a running tear. Some other pages repaired not very well at an earlier date. Staining to some pages. Without the wrappers.
Seller: Sam Gatteno Books, Grosse Pointe, MI, U.S.A.
[IRVING, Washington]. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. C. S. Van Winkle, New-York, 1820.
Price: US$6000.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Thick 8vo. Pp. 94, [5], 102-119, [4], 124-137, [4], 142-152, [3], 156-169, [6], 176-192, [3], 196-206, [3], 210-215[4], 220-242, [5], 269, [4], 274-294, [3], 298-301, [4], 304-335, [5], 342-352, [3], 356-368, [3], 372-393, [4], 398-443, [6], 6-27, [4], 32-48, [3], 52-120, [5], 6-28, [3], 32-49, [4], 54-89, [4], 94-123, [5]. Includes all seven parts of the Sketch-Book published serially with the first five parts published 1819, the latter two in 1820. Contemporary table of contents in manuscript pencil on free endpapers. All edges gilt. Bound by French Binders, Garden City, in full straight-grained blue-green morocco, cover borders in gilt, inner doublures, board edges and turn-ins gilt, five raised bands on spine with gilt borders and lettering. Spine a touch faded. A sumptuous binding.Offsetting to margins of endpapers. soiling top corner of pp. 158-161, ring stain on the half-title to "The Inn Kitchen," foxing to preliminaries of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." In sum, interior generally quite fresh. First editions, first printings, of each part of Irving's second series of stories, including the first appearances of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," complete in seven parts. With state A of text on page 240 of part III in first volume, line 12: "on he" instead of the corrected "on the." Lacking the warning about piracy, as well as the blank at the end of Pt. I.The luxe binding is a fine example of "The French Binders," which had a short-lived and unhappy history: The principals were brought to New York by Grolier Club members Robert Hoe, Edwin Holden and Samuel Putnam Avery in an effort to save NYC bibliophiles the effort of shipping their books to Europe for fine binding. Frenchmen Henri Hardy (a forwarder) and Leon Maillard (a finisher), and Englishman John Holmes (who had trained with both Riviere and Zaehnsdorf) were imported to establish the New York Bindery. Business did not materialize as expected; during the firm's distress, Cleveland's Rowfant Club poached the binders, then suffered the same woes due to the Rowfant Bindery's anemic patronage. (One of the Frenchmen resorted to selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.) Upon learning the unpleasantries, Nelson Doubleday recruited the crew to Garden City, where he established the French Bindery. Alas, Maillard, beleaguered and suffering mental instability, committed suicide in 1917. (Please see Deborah Whiteman's review of Bound to Be the Best: The Club Bindery in the March 2006 issue of The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America).This series of tales brought Washington Irving immediate fame, creating America's first international literary light. An important milestone in American literature, presented here in the first appearance.
Seller: Long Brothers Fine & Rare Books, ABAA, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Price: US$8500.00 + shipping
Description: Seven parts bound in two volumes. Large octavo. 19th century calf, spines gilt extra. Bound without wrappers and adverts. Early manuscript index on front binder's blank in both volumes. Spines darkened and slightly crazed, joints a bit worn and slightly cracked in places (but sound), occasional spotting and foxing to Part I, brown spot in fore-edge of Part VII, clean 5 cm tear in top edge of leaf 63/4 of Part VII, with no loss, still a good set in contemporary dress. Old morocco faced slipcase. First editions, first printings, of each part of Irving's second major sequence publication, with BAL's state 'A' of the text on page 240. Neither the terminal blank for Part I, nor the slip against piracy that was inserted in some copies of Part II are present. THE SKETCH BOOK is among Irving's masterworks, printing for the first time in complete book form "Rip Van Winkle" (Pt. I), "Old Christmas" (Pt. V), and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (Pt. VI). "That Americans here first read of Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane is not so important in influencing the culture of the country, as that they learned of these and other gentlemen, and of the Indians, and of old England, through the medium of a musical, rhythmical style, quiet humor and dreamy charm, which instinctively taught taste and sweetness, 'taking pleasure and giving pleasure and always playing the companion rather than the teacher'" - GROLIER AMERICAN HUNDRED. Proper sets in original wrappers are rare and beyond the means of most collectors, and today sound sets, with each part in the first printing, in contemporary bindings, are increasingly less common. BAL 10106. LANGFELD & BLACKBURN, pp. 15-22. JOHNSON HIGH SPOT. GROLIER AMERICAN 100, 31. PETER PARLEY TO PENROD, p.143. WRIGHT I:1430. BLEILER, p.107.
Seller: William Reese Company - Literature, ABAA, New Haven, CT, U.S.A.
Price: US$12500.00 + shipping
Description: Small quarto, seven parts: pp. [i-iii] iv [5] 6-94; [97-101] 102-169 [170: blank]; [171-175] 176-242; [243-247] 248-301 [302: blank] [i-ii] [303] 304-335 [336: blank]; [337-341] 342-443 [444: blank]; [1-5] 6-120; [1-5] 6-123 [124: blank], each part uniformly bound in late nineteenth century three-quarter green crushed levant and marbled boards, spine panels lettered and tooled in gold, front and rear panels ruled in gold, a.e.g., marbled endpapers. First edition. A complete set of the seven parts, all first printings, bound without the original wrappers. The final blanks of parts 1 and 2 were not retained, but otherwise all the parts are complete as issued, and part 2 has the notice of regarding unauthorized reprinting inserted in some copies. Part 3 has "ont" on page 240, line 12 (Blanck's state A, no priority, if any, established). This set has been enhanced by the addition of seven nineteenth-century engraved portraits of Irving used as a frontispiece (with tissue guard) for each volume. Irving's first major work of fiction, including "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," his two most famous stories, as well as "The Spectre Bridegroom," a fine mock Gothic terror tale. "The father of the American short story and one of the first American professional writers, Irving is an important link in the transfer of the stories of German Romanticism to American soil . Irving's work laid the foundation for the writings of William Austin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and others." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 505. "Not only in the creation of the short story was Irving a pioneer. His work marks a progress in the American romance, so great as to be not merely a development, but a new species. The inconsistencies, the incongruities of which even [Charles Brockden] Brown was guilty, give place to a completeness of structure and a professional surety of touch. Irving's romances, even when we know, though constant rereading, just what is to happen, charm us by the grace of their form and the solvent of a humor which is his alone." - Quinn, American Fiction, p. 43. Barron (ed), Horror Literature 1-46. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 884. Bleiler (ed), Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror, pp. 686-88. Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, pp. 224-25. Tymn (ed), Horror Literature 1-181 and 2-51. Bleiler (1978), p. 107. Not in Reginald (1979; 1992). BAL 10106. Wright (I) 1430. Grolier 100: 31. Langfeld and Blackburn, pp. 15-22. Petter, The Early American Novel, pp. 122-26, especially p. 126. Some uniform tanning to the leather, but a lovely copy overall. First printing parts are uncommon (the first part in first printing is rare), mixed printings and editions are the norm, and copies in original wrappers in the trade nowadays are virtually nonexistent. A very desirable copy of a seminal American short story collection. Enclosed in a lovely custom quarter leather clamshell box with each volume protected in a cloth folder.(#156925)
Seller: Currey, L.W. Inc. ABAA/ILAB, Elizabethtown, NY, U.S.A.