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E-List #2

Hello all,

We’re excited to share our second E-List. Giving a sprightly dodge to any sense of theme, below you will find pioneers in flight (both in air and in space), dispatches from the early Philadelphia Punk Scene, a D.C.-based communal lesbian separatist periodical, Art Nouveau Nietzsche, a classic of Persian Modernism gifted by Henry Miller to his fourth wife Eve McClure, a suffragist explorer calling the shots in Africa, the life story of the founder of Black Freemasonry, roguishness of the French variety, the Best Novel of the 21st Century (So Far), and more!

Click through to our website to order, and email us at info@capitolhillbooks-dc.com if you have any questions. 

Thanks for having a look,

Aaron Leis (your humble rare / online cataloger), and the rest of the CHB Team: Jim, Jenefer, Soumya, Caroline, Lori, Other Aaron, Kyle, Shantanu, and Kate. 

1. [ASSOCIATION OF SPACE EXPLORERS] Kevin W. Kelley [ed.]; Jacques-Yves Cousteau [fwd.] The Home Planet.

Redding: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1988. Signed by 31 astronauts and cosmonauts of the Association of Space Explorers on front endpapers with inscription to American ambassador to Bulgaria Sol Polanksy at the 4th Planetary Congress in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1988 (with Hank Harstfield signing the half title a few months later in January 1989).

Folio (14.25" x 10.25"); unpaginated. Full-page color photos throughout. Photographic dust jacket over black cloth-covered boards with stamped gray lettering. Jacket lightly shelfworn with a small, clean tear at top back corner and some associated creasing, along with some scuffing to back. Boards are clean and square. Binding is sound and pages unmarked. Business cards of Walter Cunningham and Alexander Alexandrov laid in at title page.

Signatures include: Vladimir Aksyonov, Alexander Alexandrov, John-David Bartoe, Scott Carpenter (second American to orbit the Earth, fourth American in space), Walter Cunningham, John Fabian, Mohammed Faris (first Syrian and second Arab in space), Bertlan Farkas (first Hungarian and first Esperantist in space), Yuri Glazkov, Georgi Grechko, Jugderdemidyn Gurragchaa (first Mongolian in space), Georgi Ivanov (first Bulgarian in space), Sigmund Jahn (first German in space), Vladimir Kovalyonok, Alexei Lenov (first human to spacewalk), Oleg Makarov, Yuri Malyshev, Wubbo Ockels (first Dutch citizen in space), Robert Overmyer, Yuri Romanenko, Stuart Roosa, Valeri Rozhdestvenskky, Nikolai Rukavishnikov, Svetlana Savitskaya (second woman in space, first woman to spacewalk), Rusty Schweickart (first to flight test lunar module, co-founder of Association of Space Explorers), Georgi Shonin, Gherman Titov (second human to orbit Earth, first to take manual photographs from orbit), Igor Volk, Taylor Wang (first Chinese person in space), Boris Yegorov (first physician to make a space flight).

$400

2. BILHUBER, Gertrude. The Effect of Functional Periodicity on the Motor Ability of Women in Sports.

Ann Arbor, MI: [University of Michigan], 1926. In original wrappers. Octavo; 84pp. Charts and tables throughout, including 9 fold-out graphs. Worn and slightly chipped at spine ends. One inch closed tear on bottom edge. Binding is sound and pages lightly toned.  

A study by Gertrude Bilhuber, a professor at Purdue University, analyzing the effects of the menstruation cycle on motor functions associated with various sport skills. Includes comparisons of soccer and basketball dribbling, volleyball serves, and accuracy in throwing a baseball. 

$65

3. BOOTHE [LUCE], Ann Clare; G. Alan Chidsey [designer].  Election Mood.

Great Neck, NY: G. Alan Chidsey, November 9, 1940. Octavo; [60pp]. Dark gray leather with stamped lettering. Covers a bit toned with any gilt or foil to lettering rubbed away. Spine a bit rolled. A handful of the pasted-in columns have let go from the pages, but are all present and laid in at their respective places, with no tears or folds. Binding is sound. Faint Library of Congress Surplus stamp on front free endpaper, but no other library markings.

Hand-made book comprised of artfully pasted-in clippings from Boothe’s magazine and news articles, with other design and format elements drawn in by the designer. Selections from eight articles Boothe published in 1940 leading up to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election to an unprecedented third term as president (the collection begins with Boothe’s 1940 Liberty Magazine article “A Third Term for Fear”). Boothe was an author, Ambassador to Italy and then to Brazil (the first woman appointed to a major ambassadorial role), member of the U.S. House of Representatives, conservative speaker, and the first female member of Congress to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Alan Chidsey was a New York bookseller, lawyer, and occasional book designer who served as a trustee to the Marsden Hartley estate. While we have seen a couple similar books designed by Chidsey described as mock-ups, none seem to have entered an actual print run, suggesting these were instead one-off or very small-run originals.

Articles included:

  • "A Third Term for Fear," Liberty Magazine, 1940
  • "There Are No Words," Allied Relief Fund (?)
  • "Letters of a Last-Nighter," Stage, Nov 1940
  • "Let’s Face the Facts #8," Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, November 1940
  • "Does This War Mean Beginning or End for World Democracy," [?]
  • "Half a Worm: A Confession of Weakness," Current History & Forum, 1940
  • "What National Unity Means," Address at Women’s Meeting to launch the National Unity Campaign at the Council Against Intolerance in America, October 1940
$400

4. CECIL-PORCH, Edith (Mrs. Fred Maturin)Adventures Beyond the Zambesi: Of the O'Flaherty, the Insular Miss, the Soldier Man, and the Rebel-Woman

New York: Brentano's, 1913. First Edition. Octavo; [viii], 391pp. 24 photo illustrations on 16 plates including portrait frontis, all present. Red cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering. Pages still uncut from Chapter IX onward. Covers bumped at corners and spine ends, with darkening and dulling to spine and some general smudging to cloth. Endpapers toned with previous owner's name in pencil on front free endpaper. Pages lightly to moderately foxed. One plate with a clean inch tear at fore-edge margin, not involving photo. Binding is sound and pages unmarked.

Adventurer, suffragist, and self-proclaimed progressive / "rebel of my sex," Edith Cecil-Porch begins her account with her childhood love of adventure books and disdain for the literature "written for little girls at that period" and the "goody-goody lives" of the heroines in them. With the intent to "enlarge the mind" she and the "Soldier Man" set off with "The Insular Miss" and "The O'Flaherty" to central and southern Africa.

$100


5. Washington City Canal Lottery Ticket.

[Washington, DC]: [no publisher listed], [ca. 1810]. A small lottery ticket mounted by tucked-in corners on paper backing with the description: "Lottery Ticket of the Colonial Period, authorized by Congress of the United States 1776, for work on Canal in 'Washington City.'" The canal was promoted by L'Enfant and Washington, and a lottery was held in 1796, though it was unsuccessful. Money was authorized by Congress in 1809, and we have been unable to discern if this is from the early lottery or a subsequent effort. The canal was in operation from 1815 until the mid 1850s when it began to fall into disrepair.

Full text of the ticket reads, "This ticket will entitle Possessor to such Prize as may be drawn to its Number in Lottery No. 1. for cutting the canal, through the City of Washington, to the Eastern-Branch Harbour."  It is listed as number "4349" and signed by a "Notley Young." Notley Young was an original proprietor of the City of Washington and died in 1802. This ticket may have belonged to him or his son, also named Notley.

$150

6. DeWITT, Helen. The Last Samurai.

New York: Hyperion, 2000. Stated First Edition with full numberline. Signed by the author without inscription on full title. Octavo; viii, 530pp. Illustrated dust jacket with original $24.95 price; book in black paper- and cloth-covered boards with red lettering to spine. Jacket shows some light rubbing and bumping along edges, corners, and spine ends, but with no chips, tears, or marks. Boards lightly rubbed along bottom edge with some nudging to spine ends. A few pages near middle creased along bottom edge, not involving text. Binding is sound and pages unmarked.

Met with wide acclaim even before publication and shortlisted for several prizes, The Last Samurai sold 100,000 copies in English when first released but fell suddenly out of print and into a sort of cult obscurity—partially due to the difficulty of securing rights for the numerous other works quoted and the design / copyediting gymnastics involved in typesetting its many foreign language passages. Finally reissued by New Directions in 2016, the novel is beginning to find a second wind, with Vulture naming it “The Best Book of the 21st Century (for Now).” This copy is a First Edition, First Printing from the initial 2000 Hyperion hardcover print run. Uncommon signed.

$500

7. ELLISON, Ralph. Shadow and Act.

New York: Random House, 1964. Third Printing. Signed by the author without inscription on full title. Octavo; xxiii, 317p. Photographic dust jacket with original $8.95 price; book in green cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Yellow topstain to page block. Jacket shows a few .25" - 1" clean tears along edges, repaired on the inside with tape, along with a few smaller chips and rubbing along edges, but is clean and crisp overall. Boards are clean and square with light edgewear. Two small spots to top page edges, but interior clean and unmarked. Binding is sound.

$300

8. FIELD, Eugene. The Temptation of Friar Gonsol: A Story of the Devil, Two Saints And a Booke.

Washington, DC: Woodward & Lathrop, 1900. Limited Edition, numbered 15 of 50 copies printed for sale in England on tipped-in limitation notice at front (310 copies were printed otherwise as noted on bound-in limitation page at back). Octavo; unpaginated, with most pages still uncut. Illustrations and portraits throughout, with two fold-outs. Three quarter leather and marbled cloth with gilt to spine. Covers lightly bumped at corners with a few small scuffs to back. Large "exhibit" fold-out shows a clean tear at left margin where tipped in along gutter, not involving text. One tissue guard creased from hasty closure. Binding is sound and pages unmarked.

$75

9. [THE FURIES] Ginny Berson; Herlaine Harris; [et al.]. The Furies: Lesbian / Feminist Monthly. May 1972. Volume 1, Issue 4.

Washington, DC: Furies Collective, 1972. Quarto; 16pp. Newsprint printed in black with black and white illustrations and advertisements. Folded in quarters. The Furies were a short-lived but influential lesbian separatist group modeled after the Black Panthers and Weathermen. The group maintained that a global revolution could be started by small, local activist groups free from dependence on men. They taught auto repair classes to that end, for example.

The group operated out of 219 11th St SE, just a few blocks from our shop in Capitol Hill, and the house was the first lesbian-related historic landmark in DC.

$125

10. J.S.; [Richard Head]; [Francis Kirkman]; [Charles de Fieux]. The French Rogue: or, the Life of Monsieur Ragoue de Versailles. Containing His Parentage, Monstrous Birth, Early Rogueries...All Very Comical and Delightful.

London: N. Boddington, 1704. 24mo (5.75" x 3.5"); [vi], 194pp +2 ads.  Frontis engraving by Jan Drapentier. Rebacked with original leather boards and title card with gilt lettering. Boards rubbed at corners with light warping and some scuffs and smudges to leather. Previous owner's name (Frederic A. Jenks) on front pastedown and incorrect author attribution (Charles de Fieux) on front free endpaper in pencil. Pages toned and foxed but unmarked. Binding is sound.

Anonymously published satirical / picaresque novel, first published in 1672 in the wake of Richard Head's immensely popular The English Rogue, with more imitations (The Dutch Rogue, The Irish Rogue, The Scotch Rogue...) to follow. Signed only "J.S.," the novel has been mis-attributed to Charles de Fieux, with CBEL suggesting Richard Head or possibly Francis Kirkman as author.

$425

11. LOWINSKY, Ruth. Thomas Lowinksy [illus.]. Lovely Food: A Cookery Notebook.

London: The Nonesuch Press, 1931. First Edition. Octavo; 12pp. Lacks dust jacket. Limited Edition, numbered 228 of 500 copies printed on Batchelor's Hammer & Anvil handmade paper by the Fanfare Press. Includes eleven illustrations from artist Thomas Lowinsky. Brown and dark red cloth with spine in gilt and gold roundels tracing edges along front and rear covers.

Some spotting to covers and light edgewear. Binding is sound. Pages unmarked. [Biting p. 294, Dreyfus 79]

$250

12. MARMER H[enry] A[aron]. The Sea.

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1930. First Edition with (1) on last page of text. Signed by the author to Captain R.S. Patton. Octavo; x, 312pp. Charts and illustrations throughout. Blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Spine a bit cocked, with boards showing light edgewear and some nudging to spine ends. Opens easily to between a few gatherings, but binding is sound. Pages lightly toned but unmarked. Not ex-library.

A nontechnical and readable history and examination of oceanography by Henry Aaron Marmer of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey team. Signee Captain Raymond Stanton Patton served with the Navy's Bureau of Navigation at the Naval Observatory during World War I, and was later promoted to Director of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. The survey vessel USC&GS Patton was named in his honor.

$125

13. HEDAYAT, Sadegh; Nancy Esdaile [illus.] D.P. Costello [trans.] Henry Miller [inscribed]. The Blind Owl [Buf-i Kur].

London: John Calder, 1957. First English Language Translation. Inscribed by Henry Miller to Eve McClure, his fourth wife, on front free endpaper. Octavo; 134pp. Illustrations by Nancy Esdaile. Illustrated dust jacket with original 15s. net price; book in red cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Jacket rubbed with a number of small tears along edges, chipping at spine ends, and some smudging to back. Spine a bit rolled with bumping at head and tail. Unrelated notes in pencil on half title and opposite, else pages unmarked. Binding is sound. Scarce in jacket.

Fevered and obsessive masterwork by the father of Persian modernist fiction. Published in Bombay in 1937 with "Not for Sale or publication in Iran" stamped on the cover, the novel finally appeared in Hedayat's home country in 1941 after the abdication of Reza Shah, and became an immediate bestseller. The book has since been widely translated and variously banned, as well as blamed for an uptick in suicides among its readers. It appeared in French in 1953 and in English with this edition in 1957, and was praised by the likes of Andre Breton and Henry Miller, who at one point described it as the best book he had ever read and was keen to see it adapted to film (in a 1964 letter to Hedayat's French publisher Jose Corti, Miller writes "I never stop talking about Hedayat's book, and certainly not with cinema people..."). Miller gave this copy to his fourth (ex-) wife Eve McClure, who appears to have in turn jotted plans for the weeks on either side of Christmas on the book's initial blanks ("prepare stuffing," "finish moving out old studio," etc.). Miller's inscription is dated 10/24/62, four months after their divorce was finalized.

$850



14. NIETZSCHE, Frederich. Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für alle und keinen.

Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1908. Limited Edition of 530 copies (100 in leather and 430 in parchment); this copy unnumbered / out of series. Folio (15.25” x 10”); 160pp +2pp Contents. Black and gray marbled paper-covered boards with brown leather title card on black leather spine, with gilt lettering and rules. Designed by Henry van de Velde, with his ornate double-title page, full title, and ornaments throughout in red and gold. Type by Georges Lemmen and Harry Graf Kessler, printed on Van Gelder-Bütten paper with van de Velde-designed Weimar Nietzsche Archive signet watermark. Binder’s stamp of the Großherzoglich-Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule Weimar (“Weimar KGS”) on back pastedown.

Boards lightly bumped at corners with some scuffing to leather along joints near head and tail. Faint dampstaining at bottom edge of first few blank pages and to recto of first double-title page, just visible in bottom margin of verso but not involving illustration. Rippling/waving along edges of flyleaves. Expected offsetting opposite the larger ornamental designs. A few sparse instances of foxing internally and a few pencil notes on front and back pastedowns, else pages unmarked. Binding is sound.

Henry van de Velde, one of the founders of Art Nouveau in Belgium, was commissioned by Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth to redesign and refurbish the Nietzsche Archive at the Villa Silberblick, where the philosopher spent his final years. With Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst van de Velde established and ran the Großherzoglich-Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule Weimar (Grand-Ducal School of Arts and Crafts), which operated from 1908 - 1915. The school closed during most of the First World War and reopened in 1919 as the Bauhaus under the direction of Walter Gropius, whom van de Velde recommended for the job.

As this copy is unnumbered and out of series but bears the binder’s stamp of van de Velde’s school, our assumption is that this copy was bound contemporaneously for private use or perhaps for the school itself. Van de Velde and Insel-Verlag also collaborated that year on a limited First Edition of Nietzche’s Ecce Homo.

$2750

15. [PHILADELPHIA PUNK SCENE]. Steve Fritz [ed.] Terminal! Nos. 3-6.

Philadelphia: Terminal!, 1981. (February - July). Side-stapled ‘zines (11” x 8.5”); 22pp each. Printed white paper covers. Lightly toned along edges with rubbing to fore-edge of No. 6, else all clean and crisp with no tears or marks.

Philadelphia-based music fanzine covering the local scene as well as touring acts, with attention to the emerging punk, new wave, and hardcore artists. Close enough to D.C. and New York to be an easy stop for touring musicians, Philadelphia was also enough overshadowed by those larger communities to have freedom to carve out its own thriving local scene, supported by college radio stations WKDU and WXPN, an ever-evolving network of clubs, basements, hoagie shops, DIY / house venues, and a divided and charged political environment. Content is the usual mix of letters, album and show reviews, cartoons, and interviews with everyone from Sting and Bono to local fashion designer Animal X and Crash Course in Science. An Issue 5 article “Dead Kennedys and the Nazi Terror” paints the eclectic scene at a recent DK show at Omni’s: "take a bunch of Nazi’s [sic] in their 'let’s dress up, mommy' uniforms, the Revolutionary Youth Brigade, the Progressive Labor Party, none-too-a-mused Jewish (and other) types and add the regular sort of indescribable people like you and me who show up at Omni’s. All right, now mix them all together. Stand back.”

$150

16. ROOSEVELT, Theodore. Realizable Ideals.

San Francisco: Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co., 1912. First Edition. Signed by the author “With the best wishes of Theodore Roosevelt | May 7th, 1912” on front free endpaper. Octavo; 154pp. Tipped-in portrait frontis with facsimile signature printed beneath. Green cloth-covered boards with gilt stamped lettering. No dust jacket, as issued. Boards bumped at corners and spine ends, with another small bump to top front edge and some toning and foxing down spine and on back. Color faded, but gilding is still bright. Front board opens a bit shakily, but binding is holding soundly. Free endpapers toned and some offsetting opposite frontis with pages bumped at top corner throughout, else clean and unmarked.

Collection of lectures given as part of the Earl Lecture Series at the Pacific Theological Seminary in Berkeley in 1911. The lectures include "Realizable Ideals," "The Home and the Child," "The Bible and the Life of the People," "The Public Servant and the Eighth Commandment," and "The Shaping of Public Opinion and the Ninth Commandment." In the year of this book’s signing, Roosevelt founded the Progressive “Bull-Moose” Party after failing to secure the Republican nomination for president, with Woodrow Wilson winning the election as the opposition votes split between Roosevelt and Taft.

$3250

17. WESLEY, Charles H[arris]. Prince Hall: Life and Legacy.

Washington, D.C. / Philadelphia: The United States Supreme Council Southern Jurisdiction / The Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, 1977. Stated First Edition. Signed by the author without inscription on front pastedown. Octavo; xvii, 237p. Black cloth with gold lettering and design. Covers slightly leaning, with nudging to spine ends, some dulling to gold title band, and some faint smudging to back. Front endpapers toned from a previously laid-in clipping, else pages clean and unmarked. Binding is sound.

Hall (1730s?-1807) was an abolitionist and leader among Boston's free black community, known as the "father of Black Freemasonry" after establishing what would become the first African Masonic Lodge in the United States. He encouraged and helped enable blacks to fight for the colonial military during the Revolution in the hope that they would achieve equality and freedom in the country to come, and when they did not, turned to advocacy for education equality and the abolition movement.

$400



18. WODEHOUSE, P[elham] G[renville]. Seven Letters to Charles A. Goodrum.

Seven items dated 1958-1971. Six letters and one postcard with envelope (one hand-written and all signed), addressed to Charles A. Goodrum, who served as the Director of Research for the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress and author of the Edgar Award nominated bibliomystery Dewey Decimated, Treasure of the Library of Congress, and I’ll Trade You an Elk, the story of his father’s efforts to develop a city zoo in Wichita, Kansas in the wake of the Great Depression.

Wodehouse’s letters discuss writer’s block “I feel...as if somebody had removed my brain and substituted an order of cauliflower,” adaptations of Jeeves “I am rather dubious about those TV Jeeves things the BBC are doing,” candid progress reports on his current projects, and notes of advice and congratulations regarding Goodrum’s own work.

$1750

19. [WRIGHT BROTHERS] Kelly, Fred C[harters]. The Wright Brothers: A Biography Authorised by Orville Wright.

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1943. First Edition, Second Printing with code [b - 6 - 43] on copyright. Signed by Orville Wright to Watson Davis on full title. Octavo; [xiii], 340pp. Printed blue dust jacket over blue cloth-covered boards with white lettering to spine. Jacket shows a few small tears and chips along edges with some adjacent creasing and smudging to back. Boards are sturdy and square with nudging to spine ends. Binding is sound and pages unmarked.

Watson Davis was editor of Science News Letter, a Library Science Pioneer, and science advocate who served with Wright, Charles F. Kettering, and others as an original member of the National Inventors Council. Orville Wright, after his brother Wilbur, flew the second successful manned heavier-than-air machine flight in history on December 17, 1903 just south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

$2500

20. WRIGHT, Charles. The Messenger.

New York: Farrar, Straus & Company, 1963. Stated Second Printing. Signed by the author on front free endpaper with inscription: "Harold — Baby — I never intended Write This Book off The Top of my Head. Just for the option money. Bitter. Charles W," then again by author on title page to Harold Mays, Jr and dated 4/7/1993. Octavo; [vi], 217p. Photographic dust jacket with original $3.95 price. Book in black boards in white cloth with spine stamped in black and gray, with red topstain. Corners and edges of jacket are rubbed and worn, with a few tiny, clean tears and some creasing along edges. Staining to spine and along edges of rear cover. Book has a moderate roll to the spine, with some staining to spine ends and fading along top edge. Light spotting to topstain and some toning to endpapers. Some brown staining to last 15 pages, but text is unaffected. Binding is sound.

Overall a very good, sound copy of Wright's debut novel, of which James Baldwin wrote (from rear cover), "He's caught the New York laconocism behind which so much anguish growls, and almost the exact shade of that awful half-light in which so many people are struggling to live."

$200

TERMS: We accept all major credit cards, paypal, and checks.  Reply to "info@capitolhillbooks-dc.com" for further questions or inquiries, or call Aaron at 202-834-4725.  All items offered are subject to prior sale. Returns will be accepted for any reason within 10 days of receipt. 

Reciprocal courtesies to the trade.

Institutions may be billed according to their needs. 

 
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