Poe, Edgar Allan, the Murders in the Rue Morgue, First Photoplay Edition, 1932

AUTHOR: POE, Edgar Allan. TITLE: The Bells And Other Poems. PUBLISHER: London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d., (1912). DESCRIPTION: LIMITED SIGNED EDITION. 1 vol., 12-5/16" x 10-1/2", limited to 750 numbered and signed copies by the illustrator Edmund Dulac...

Author: POE, Edgar Allan ( Edmund Dulac ). Title: The Bells and Other Poems. Publisher: London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d., (1912). FIRST TRADE ...

AUTHOR: GOSSE, Phillip. TITLE: The History Of Piracy. PUBLISHER: London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1932. DESCRIPTION: FIRST EDITION. 1 vol., 8-5/8" x 5-7/8", illustrated, bound in ...

AUTHOR: TOLKIEN, J. R. R. TITLE: The Hobbit or There and Back Again. PUBLISHER: London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1937. DESCRIPTION: FIRST EDITION FIRST PRINTING. 1 vol., 7-11/16...

AUTHOR: LUNARDI, Vincent. TITLE: An Account Of The First Aerial Voyage In England, In A Series Of Letters To His Guardian, Chevalier Gherardo Compagni, Written under the impressi...

Author: WELLS, H. G.. Title: The Time Machine An Invention. Publisher: NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1895. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION FIRST ISSUE...

A beautiful limited edition set of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated with ten plates to each volume, and signed by the publisher. The Arnheim Edition of Poe's works...

Lovelace, Delos W. King Kong. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1932. 8vo. Rebound in 1/4 green leather and cloth boards, with raised bands, gilt stamps, and gilt titles to spine. New matching archival slipcase. Presented is a first edition of Delos W. Lovelace’s adaptation of King Kong. This printing was published by Grosset & Dunlap, in New York, in December of 1932, just months before the March 1933 film premiere of King Kong. The book has been beautifully rebound in handsome ¼ green leather and cloth boards, with raised bands and gilt stamps and tiles to the spine, and a matching green archival slipcase. RKO producer Merian Cooper and writer Edgar Wallace originally conceived of the story about a remote island inhabited by a huge silverback gorilla, among other creatures. After Wallace’s untimely death, the thrilling screenplay was finished by James A. Creelman and Ruth Rose. Just as the RKO film of King Kong was finishing production, Cooper asked his friend Delos Lovelace to adapt the film's screenplay into a novelization. On the novel’s cover, Lovelace’s name was overshadowed by the phrase, “conceived by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper.” The Grosset & Dunlap book was published later that month, on December 27, and served as part of the film’s advance marketing campaign. The book would go on to see numerous reprints, furthering King Kong's status as a cultural phenomenon. Alexander Grosset and George T...

A beautifully illustrated and very smartly bound, limited edition of Edgar Allan Poe's works. In a lovely Bickers binding. Limited edition, numbered 14 of 150 copies printed with pr...

Stevenson, Robert Louis. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [1932]. First Grosset & Dunlap Edition. 8ov. Presented rebound in ¼ navy leather and red cloth boards, with raised bands, gilt tooling, and gilt titles to the spine and a matching archival red slipcase. Presented is the first Grosset & Dunlap edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, published in 1932. The book is presented rebound in ¼ navy leather and red cloth boards, with raised bands, gilt tooling, and gilt titles to the spine and a matching archival red slipcase. First published in 1886, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. Inspired by both a murder trial and a subsequent nightmare, Stevenson wrote this novel as an examination of the duality of human nature and the inner struggle between good and evil. The tale is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the murderous criminal Edward Hyde. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is considered to be a defining book of the gothic horror genre. The book was initially sold as a paperback for one shilling in the U.K. These books were called "shilling shockers" or “penny dreadfuls.” The first American edition was published on January 5, 1886, four days before the U.K. edition published by Longmans. Scribner's published 3,000 copies, only 1,250 of them bound in cloth. Initially, stores did not stock it until a favorable review appeared in The Times in January of 1886. Within the next six months, close to 40 thousand copies were sold. A wildly captivating story, there have been numerous adaptations of the novella, including over 120 stage and film versions alone. In 1931, Paramount Pictures produced an adaptation directed by Rouben Mamoulian, starring Fredric March...

In The Houses of Ireland by Walter Pfeiffer and Marianne Heron. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, Inc., 1988. First edition hardcover with dust jacket. 254 pp. A beautiful chronic...

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [1931]. 8vo. Rebound in red 1/.4 leather and black cloth boards, with raised bands, gilt stamps, and gilt titles to spine. New matching archival slipcase. Presented is a photoplay edition of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of horror, Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. This printing was published by Grosset & Dunlap, in New York, in 1931. One of the most collectible Grosset & Dunlap photoplay editions, this book was published to accompany the 1931 Universal Pictures James Whale horror film starring Boris Karlof, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boless, and Dwight Frye. It is illustrated throughout with scenes from that production. The book has been beautifully rebound in striking ¼ red leather and black cloth boards, with raised bands and gilt stamps and tiles to the spine, and a matching black archival slipcase. Mary Shelley was just nineteen when she wrote her classic novel. The circumstances of its composition are by now well known. In 1816, Mary was in Switzerland with Percy Shelley, Byron, and Byron’s physician John Polidori when the evening’s discussion turned to one of Shelley’s favorite topics, the supernatural. Byron proposed that all members of the party write a romance or tale on the subject. The resulting efforts were Polidori’s The Vampyre, Byron’s unfinished narrative about a vampire, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The first edition of Frankenstein was published anonymously in London, 1818, and is exceedingly rare. An 1831 edition was published in London, for which Shelley wrote an introduction describing the circumstances surrounding the creation of the work. The first American edition was published in 1833. Frankenstein has been named “the most famous English horror novel… a defining model of the Gothic mode of fiction, and… the first genuine science fiction novel, the first significant rendering of the relations between mankind and science through an image of mankind’s dual nature appropriate to an age of science” (Clute and Nicholls, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 1099). Alexander Grosset and George T...