STORY

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[Lauren R. Stevens.] Autograph Letter Signed and Typed Letter Signed (both 'Lauren') to English literary critic A. Alvarez ('Al'), discussing his decision to leave Harvard and his first novel, 'The Double Axe', an inscribed copy of which is included.

Author: 
Lauren R. Stevens (b.1938) [A. Alvarez [Al Alvarez] (b.1929), English literary critic; H. C. Baker [Herschel Clay Baker] (1914-1990), Professor of English Literature at Harvard University]
Publication details: 
TLS: 430 W. Allen's Lane, Philadelphia 19, Pennsylvania. 5 October 1960. ALS: on his (cancelled) letterhead 1717 Cambridge Street, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts. 31 January 1961. Book: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961.
£250.00

TLS: 2pp., 12mo. In good condition. The letter begins: 'Dear Al: | Last Thursday morning, while sitting in a barbar chair, I asked myself a question which a number of people have been asking me recently, namely, What are you doing at Harvard? I couldn't come up with a very satisfactory answer, so I went to a friend's house on Cape Cod for the weekend. Monday I saw the head of the English Department at Harvard, H. C. Baker. He said, "Follow your star," which seemed to me a little romantic, but all the same good advice.

['H. E. H.'] A melodramatic murder story, written for Blackwood's Magazine but unpublished, entitled 'Recollections of a Governess | My first Friend', and purporting to be the work of 'Emma', daughter of 'Henry Darrel [...] an Officer in Dragoons'.

Author: 
'H. E. H.', soi-disant daughter of 'Henry Darrel [...] Officer in Dragoons' [Blackwood's Magazine, Edinburgh]
Publication details: 
Place and date not stated. [England; 1840s.]
£450.00

56pp., 4to. On wove paper watermarked 'E & S | 1840'. In ruled notebook, in contemporary brown calf half-binding, with marbled boards. In very good condition, lightly-aged and worn. Neatly written out, with a few emendations in pencil. Signed at the end 'H. E. H.' (either the initials of the author or of the narrator 'Emma').

Eight Typed Letters Signed from Axel Munthe, author of 'The Story of San Michele', written in a charming and entertaining style to his young friend 'Miss Judith' - Judith Masefield, daughter of the English poet laureate John Masefield.

Author: 
Axel Munthe [Axel Martin Fredrik Munthe] (1857-1949), Swedish physician and author of 'The Story of San Michele' [Judith Masefield (1904-1988), daughter of the Poet Laureate John Masefield]
Publication details: 
Written from Italy and London in 1930 and (perhaps) 1931.
£1,600.00

'The Story of San Michele' is one of the most popular works of the twentieth century, and this delightful correspondence bears ample testimony to the extraordinary allure of its author. The eight letters are entirely legible, in fair condition on aged paper. They total 3 pp in folio, and 8 pp in 4to. The sequence is tentative, none of the letters giving the year. The numerous errors, in large part due to Munthe's growing blindness, are largely unnoticed in the following transcripts. Letter One (2 pp, 4to). 'Rome Villa Svezia Via Aldrovandi 27 Feb 8 [1930]'.

The Haunted House translated from Plautus

Author: 
H.A. Strong
Publication details: 
London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1872.
£125.00
The Haunted House translated from Plautus

xxxviii.80pp., 8vo, printed red cloth, slight hinge strain, endpapers discoloured, cover has minor defects, but is attractive. A drama. Scarce: COPAC lists only the BL copy but WorldCat lists five other British repositories.

[Autograph Manuscript] A Little Romance of 'P.W.' ['P.W.' = Pearson's Weekly]

Author: 
William Le Queux, novelist
Publication details: 
No date.
£750.00
William Le Queux, novelist

ARCTIC LAPLAND LAPPLAND LITERATURE SHORT STORY PERIODICAL

Redfield; or, A Visit to the Country. A Story for Children. With Four Illustrations by John Absolon. With letter from publisher with good content.

Author: 
Anon. [Mrs Parker Smith?]
Publication details: 
London: Bell & Daldy, 186, Fleet Street, 1858.
£480.00

90[6]pp., 8vo (six-page catalogue of Bell & Daldy's "New and Standard Publications" at end), in slipcase, green cloth in good condition, pattern in relief, gold motif of laurels surrounding the title, hinge strain at title/frontispiece, some speckling throughout, some pencilled underlining, and childish daubing of colour onto three of the illustrations. INSCRIBED as follows: "This book was written by my mother [letters crossd out] the stories read to me & Walter for our amusement in 1857-8 | J Parker Smith".

Manuscript notebook, titled 'Anecdotes &c.', containing several hundred humorous stories (transcribed and 'Related'), with a few newspaper and magazine cuttings.

Author: 
Victorian notebook filled with humorous anecdotes [A. S. S. Sidney, Wobaston House, Wolverhampton; nineteenth-century English social history; jokes; humour]
Publication details: 
English. Dated between 1866 and 1911.
£150.00

Quarto (leaf dimensions roughly 19.5 x 15.5 cm). Ruled with twenty-eight lines to the page. Written in a close, neat hand, covering the first ninety-one pages of the notebook. Loosely inserted are twelve pages containing a further thirty stories, on three bifoliums each headed 'Anecdotes &c'. In black-leather half-binding, marbled boards. Good and tight, with text clear and complete on lightly aged paper. Calligraphic design printed on front free endpaper. A charming collection, casting amusing and entertaining light on nineteenth-century English social history.

Autograph Signature and two black and white Photographs.

Author: 
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), American composer, pianist and conductor
Publication details: 
Edinburgh, 1973.
£120.00

All three items in very good condition. Clear, bold signature, on a cropped piece of paper three inches by five wide, reading 'Leonard Bernstein | Edinburgh | <'73>'. The first photograph (six and a half inches by eight wide, and with the stamp of the Scottish Tourist Board on the reverse), shows a smiling Bernstein in a Prince of Wales check double-breasted jacket with a bespectacled old gentleman in a single-breasted pinstripe jacket, admiring a bagpiper in full regalia at a British railway station (Edinburgh Waverley?).

Fear. Reprinted from the "Manchester Quarterly," April 1914.

Author: 
L. Conrad Hartley
Publication details: 
London: Sherratt and Hughes. Manchester: 34 Cross Street.
£28.00

8vo: 8 pp. Stapled and unbound. In original grey printed wraps with rusted staples. Grubby and dogeared. Signed ('L. Conrad Hartley') presentation inscription dated 31 May 1915. No copy of the offprint of this short story on COPAC.

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