[LONDON, Jack].. The Kempton-Wace Letters. INSCRIBED. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1903., 1903.

Price: US$8500.00 + shipping

Condition: Fine

Description: First edition, first issue, without the author's names on the title page. 8vo. Original gray/blue cloth, with front decoratively stamped in black in an all over floral design and lettered in gilt, t.e.g., others uncut (front hinge a little cracked), else a fine, bright copy. 256 pages. Enclosed in an old worn slipcase. Inscribed by Jack London with a quote from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam on the front free endpaper: "To dear Charles Warren Stoddard* - 'Indeed, indeed, Repentance /oft before / I swore - but was I / sober when I swore?' / Jack London / The Bungalow /June 6, 1903". Issued very early in his career - in fact, in the same year are his now classic "The Call of the Wild" - "The Kempton-Wace Letters" was a collaborative novel consisting of the epistolary discussion of the philosophy of love, written anonymously by Jack London and Anna Strunsky. *Charles Warren Stoddard (1843-1909), California poet and author of many travel narratives. After journeying to Hawaii and Tahiti, he wrote South-Sea Idylls (1873), Hawaiian Life (1894), and The Lepers of Molokai (1885); Jack London borrowed the last title for an article in Woman's Home Companion, January 1908. From 1889 to 1902 Stoddard was professor of English at the Catholic University of America. As evidenced by London's breezy letters to the older Stoddard, the two appear to have been on quite friendly terms. In one letter from 1900, London - referring to Stoddard's books on the South Seas - writes: "You are responsible. You have sown the seeds of unrest in me."

Seller: Houle Rare Books/Autographs/ABAA/PADA, Palm Springs, CA, U.S.A.

London, Jack. The Call of the Wild. The Macmillan Company, 1903.

Price: US$15000.00 + shipping

Condition: Fair

Description: a significant book in poor condition, hardcover in green boards with three panel illustration on front cover board and dog illustration on spine between titles, interesting inscription by Jack London dated 1903 on FEP to someone who had helped him with this classic work, bookplate of Brooklyn Friends School opposite inscription inside front cover board, book appears to have been personalized by Harry Preston whose period signature appears on front fly and whose initials are scratched into rear cover board (ouch!), frontispiece with tissue guard and remaining other 10 colored illustrations are present, front half title page has been cut out and laid in, page 97 is loose and laid in, under the title on the Hal color illustration the word Hell has been handwritten in the same size lettering, binding has a slight lean, see close-up photo of period signature where original signature has been partially erased, rear inner hinge starting

Seller: Philosopher's Stone Books, Kingston, NY, U.S.A.