Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives. Grafton Press, New York, 1909.
Price: US$750.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: 279pp. Blue cloth boards, gilt titles on spine and front board. Binding tight, slight spine lean, corner wear. Spine ends show wear, with missing cloth at head of spine and chipping at spine foot. Previous owner's name on FFEP in black ink. Pages otherwise clean and unmarked. From the initial edition of 500 copies printed at Stein's own expense with The Grafton Press, a vanity outfit. Contains three discrete fictional narratives, all set in Baltimore. Stein's first published book, despite previously completed work which wouldn't find its way into print until years later. From the library of the film critic Michael Feingold.
Seller: The Chatham Bookseller, Madison, NJ, U.S.A.
Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives. New York: The Grafton Press, 1909.
Price: US$800.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: Small octavo, vertically ribbed blue cloth lettered in gilt; issued without dust jacket; slightly soiled. First edition, one of 700 copies, with a further 300 copies used for the 1915 first English edition. Wilson A1. A gorgeous copy of Stein's first book.
Seller: North Star Rare Books & Manuscripts, Sheffield, MA, U.S.A.
STEIN, GERTRUDE. Three Lives. Grafton Press, New York, 1909.
Price: US$1030.61 + shipping
Description: Steins first book. 1,000 copies were made. With original dark blue vertical runkled leatherette, also called vertically ribbed cloth (but shiny cloth so one isnt sure). Very good to fine inside and out. And what writing. Richard Wright thought her Melanchtha section of "Black" language the closest to the real, with all its aesthetic artifice, predating the notion of distanciation by a decade, not to mention just being a great continuing monologue of a book, a monologue extirpated by the subject being simultaneous object for us. As usual without dustjacket.
Seller: Indexbooks/Peter Gidal, london, United Kingdom
Price: US$1127.23 + shipping
Description: First edition, first printing, of Stein's first published book. This is from the first issue of 700 copies, with a further 300 copies issued in Britain with a cancel title leaf and altered binding in 1915. Wilson A1a. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. With a later glassine jacket. Spine lightly sunned and nicked at ends, with slight lean.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
Price: US$1200.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: 8vo, 7 3/16 x 5 in. (185 x 125 mm); pp. 279 on cream stock, trimmed. Original dark blue vertically-ribbed cloth, gilt titling on front cover and spine, splitting to rear pastedown and hinge, not affecting rear joint which is fully intact. Neat ownership inscription from 1919 along top of front pastedown and ffep. One of 1000 copies. [Sawyer p.37; Firmage 1; Wilson A1]. This is the first edition, first printing of Gertrude Stein's (1874-1946) first published book and is from the first issue of 700 copies, with a further 300 copies exported to Britain and distributed with an altered tipped in title page in 1915. The three stories are independent of each other, but all are set in Bridgepoint (based on Baltimore) and each tells the story of a working-class woman. The themes range from female bonding, to race, to gender and sexuality. Its style is unconventional for its time and influenced by French literature, but it is considered Stein's formally most accessible work and it is the most widely taught of Stein's books. Stein attributed the inception of Three Lives to the inspiration she received from a portrait Cézanne had painted of his wife and which was in the Stein collection. She credited this as a revelatory moment in the evolution of her writing style. Stein described: «that the stylistic method of (Three Lives) had been influenced by the Cézanne portrait under which she sat writing. The portrait of Madame Cézanne is one of the monumental examples of the artist's method, each exacting, carefully negotiated plane-from the suave reds of the armchair and the gray blues of the sitter's jacket to the vaguely figured wallpaper of the background-having been structured into existence, seeming to fix the subject for all eternity. So it was with Gertrude's repetitive sentences, each one building up, phrase by phrase, the substance of her character.» (James R. Mellow, "The Stein Salon Was the First Museum of Modern Art," The New York Times, December 1, 1968).
Seller: Rob Zanger Rare Books LLC, Middletown, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Description: 279, [1] pp. Publisher's navy cloth, lettered in gilt on the front board and spine. No dust jacket, as issued, per Wilson. Mild rubbing to head and tail of spine and corners, a bright, square copy. One of 1000 copies, of which 300 were subsequently used for the 1915 first British edition. With a label to the front pastedown noting this copy is from the collection of Henry McBride. A superlative association copy of Stein's first book, published at her own expense. The book initially sold poorly (Grafton reported sales of seventy-three copies by February 1910, of which thirty-seven were to bookstores), but had what James Mellow described as "a surprisingly durable underground reputation for years." McBride had "read the book when it first appeared, admired it, and had become curious about its author." McBride was one of the prime art critics of his generation, and one of the first American supporters of the avant-garde in the early twentieth century, championing Matisse, Kandinsky, Duchamp, O'Keeffe, and many others, including Stein, with whom he became warm friends. "My only dear," she once addressed him, playfully, in later years. Wilson A1a.
Seller: Triolet Rare Books, ABAA, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.