E-List: Women, 1808-2013

18 items in various fields, types and genres. All by women. For more photos, online purchasing and current availability, please follow the links for each of the items listed below, or click here.

To order something or make an inquiry, please email us, use the “Ask A Question” button at the bottom of the individual listings, or use the website contact form.

feminism’s perennial porcupine

Acker, Kathy

The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (San Francisco, 1975-1976)

$2500

6 vols. 1st edition. Self–wrappers, as issued. Some stains (one of them red, from Acker’s oft used, water–based, red ink) else very good with no chips or tears. Her 4th book and 3rd novel, hand–made and self–published in an edition of 100 or so copies, then mailed serially to subscribers only.

The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec is more political and less personal than her 2 earlier novels but Acker still does her usual rendition of a pissed–off grrrrl and punk–proud of it, with a stupefying tundra of wanton sex, smashed up rules of language, a constant foiling of time and place, and every word you would not use in front of children, all of it in her distinctive, bohemian–realist, post–nouveau roman, experimental, sometimes pastiche, copulation–positive, gangsta deadpan style of literary terrorism, popularly praised as willful, rebellious, deflating, and innovatively mutinous, or scorned as the longest suicide note in history. It’s all shaped by her life experiences of privileged academics, social exclusion, working the pole, and fucking guys for the free t–shirt, and though she is still unappreciated for the ground she broke (not that the world is ready for her anyway), 20 years from now Kathy Acker Day will be celebrated across America, as mothers on the ragged edge come together for lightning raids on gynecologists’ offices, to tear down pictures of cheery babies, and replace them with photographs of sullen teenagers moping at the family breakfast table.

Alexander, Irene

Ninth Week (Philadelphia [Penn], 1935)

$60 [for both books]

1st edition, showcasing an old mansion, Gothic in its history and sinister in its present. Tied to it are a criminal gang, a secret murder, and a generational family feud that conjoin and culminate during a marathon dance on a nearby beach. Original cloth and dustjacket, that would both be very good, except for a vertical crease the length of the book’s back cover, pastedown endpaper, and free endpaper. We do not buy or sell books as unimportant as this one when they are so badly scarred, and the zephyr of collector demand for Irene Alexander wouldn’t move windchimes, but we got it in an auction lot along with another book I thought we wanted. I was wrong about both books, but the older I get the less time I am forced to live with my mistakes and, anyway, this half of my error is easily erased. The next book is also by Irene Alexander. It’s priced $60, and whoever buys that book gets this copy of Ninth Week for free.

[and] Revenge Can Wait (NY [Putnam], 1941).

1st edition of a better than usual murder mystery. Owner’s name to the front endpaper, small bookshop sticker to the rear endpaper, one bumped corner, else near fine in a very good dustjacket.

Beauvoir, Simone de

Manuscript from L’Invitée (Paris [Gallimard], c1937-1941).

$1250

L’Invitée was an autobiographical novel, begun in the fall of 1937 (first called Légitime Défense), finished in the summer of 1941, and focused on Jean–Paul Sartre and Beauvoir’s lifelong taste for extended couples, the small, intimate groups they formed with their friends, leading to cross–sexual relationships that were often difficult for Beauvoir to bear. The book allowed Beauvoir to put herself on stage and transcribe in literary terms the feelings of jealousy that Sartre’s relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz inspired in her. It was Sartre who gave the L’Invitée typescript to Gallimard for publication, but on the advice of Brice Parrain and Sartre, our first 2 chapters were deleted, and the novel was published in August 1943, with great success, and the birth of Simone de Beauvoir as a writer and as a towering feminist. These 2 redacted chapters were found, then passed on, and finally published in 1979 in Les Écrits de Simone de Beauvoir by Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier, and our typescript was used as the setting copy to compose that edition.

[with] A letter (July 18, 1978) from Éditions Gallimard to Fernande Gontier, concerning publication of the 2 chapters. [and] A near fine, 1979 1st edition of the book that includes them.

Provenance: Fernande Gontier (Sotheby’s Paris, May 21, 2008).

Brontë, Emily

Wuthering Heights (New York [Harper and Brothers], 1848).

$30,000

2 vols. 1st American edition, 1st state of the ads on the back cover of vol. II. Original tan wrappers (hyped falsely as “by the author of Jane Eyre”), both parts lean right, chips and tears at the spine tips, edges and corners, a stain to the lower corner of the vol. II front wrapper and first 24 leaves, else a good, sound set. Fine, double, half morocco, folding case. Harper’s single volume. issue in cloth is more common and less valuable, and rebound copies are even more common, should be cheap, and have done for Wuthering Heights’ reputation as a rarity what the Boston Strangler did for the reputation of door–to–door salesmen. You say you’d rather have the 1847 London edition in cloth? Me too, but it’s a $350,000 to $650,000 book, assuming it’s complete, and depending on the condition of the cloth, and you should buy that if you can afford it, and if you can find one, which you cannot. It looks like 3 complete copies of our book in wrappers, with all 4 covers, have sold at auction in the last 50 years (2 other copies were missing one or more of the covers), this compared to 2 copies of the 1847 London edition in original cloth, sold in the same 50 years (9 more rebound copies were sold in those 50 years). The record price at auction for our book in wrappers is only $11,250, (Christie’s Dec. 3, 2010), but that was at the bottom of the 2008 financial trauma. Here is what’s important: Harper’s vol. I in wrappers is scarce but often available. Vol. II in wrappers is 10 times rarer than vol. I because the 2 volumes were sold separately, and the novel was too enigmatic and complex for readers in 1848, who gave up on vol. I, tossed it aside, and did not buy vol. II, so Harper trashed unsold copies, and vol. II in wrappers is now almost never available.

“Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte. [...] She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the novel. [...] It is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human nature and lifting them up into the presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels.” –Virginia Woolf

Buck, Pearl S.

Autograph Manuscript of Mr. Binney’s Afternoon (c1940)

$1000

12 numbered pages, rectos only (8” X 10 1/4”), with the author’s ink corrections, additions, changes, and deletions throughout, all in black ink. Minor edgewear, scattered soiling and creases, and rust stains from a previous paperclip, two holes from a staple, still very good condition.

This story was published in the anthology, Today and Forever: Stories of China (NY, John Day, 1941). It’s a tale of westerner travels within China, and just what you’d want, because her 1938 Nobel Prize was “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China.”

Christie, Agatha

Peril at End House (New York [Dodd & Mead], 1932)

$6000

1st edition, published in February, preceding the London edition published in March. The 6th Poirot novel, a murder puzzle among Christie’s best and finest plotted. Former owner’s name else near fine in a dustjacket with some edge chips and short tears else very good and never repaired, superior quality for this jacket, printed in a smaller than usual edition at the nadir of the depression.

In our experience, the NY edition (besides preceding) is as scarce in jacket as the later London edition, and yet, in an unrestored jacket (as here) our NY edition is 1/5 the price of a comparable, unrepaired London edition. It’s an example of the vagaries in an inefficient, sometimes antiquated, and frequently maladjusted book market, providing collectors with an opportunistic advantage that doesn’t happen often and seldom lasts long.

ranked by Publisher’s Weekly as the 3rd best–selling children’s book of all time

Crampton, Gertrude​

Tootle (New York [Simon and Schuster], 1945).

$300

1st edition, 1st printing, June 1945 (Little Golden Book number 21). Illustrated by Tibor Gergely. Rubbing to extremities else near fine in scarce, very good dustjacket with some small chips, stains and rubbing.

Damianakes, Cleonike​

Etching of “Wind” (1934).

$750

1st printing. A fine etching, on wove paper, full margins (10 1/2” X 12 1/4”), titled “Wind” and signed in pencil “Cleon Damianakes” in the lower margin. 1/4” tear to a blank corner else near fine, framed, and scarce, with no other example that I could find in the auction records.

Painter, muralist, illustrator, and etcher, Cleo Damianakes (1895–1979) was born in Berkeley and studied there at the University of California. She became a member of both the California and Chicago Societies of Etchers, moved to New York, variously used Cleo, Cleon, and Cleonika as her first name, and in later years used Wilkins (her husband’s name), as well. She produced a striking and famous mural for the Berkeley High School Auditorium, her work is featured by the Art Institute of Chicago and Toronto Museum of Art, it’s held by many others, and she exhibited widely during her career, but is especially well known in literature for her notable dustjacket designs, that evoked a uniting of sex and Hellenistic Greece, for dozens of authors, but most famously for Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms, and for Fitzgerald’s All The Sad Young Men.

Fini, Leonore (and Juan Bautista Pineiro) 

Les Descriptions Marveilleuses (Paris [Editions d’Art Agori] 1973).

$850

1st edition, loose pages (10 5/16” X 13”), boxed, as published. From 220 numbered copies total, this is number 72 of 150 on vélin de rives. All 10 tissue guarded etchings (bistre) are signed by Fini. Fine condition in a good, original, marbled paper box.

Fini was an Argentinian born Italian surrealist painter, and among the most ferociously independent woman artists of the 20th century.

Fisher, Carrie

Photograph, Signed (Lucas Films, 1983).

$3000

Sensational, original, presentation, color photograph (20” X 16”) of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, in her gold bikini slave costume from Star Wars VI (Return of the Jedi). Boldly signed and inscribed, in black ink, to (the infamously nefarious) Dr. Arnold Klein, “For my own crazy. Who loves you darling [?] Guess again. PrincessLeia. Opiates for sure.” With the original hologram sticker (“Officially Licensed Star Wars Photograph”) in the lower left–hand corner. Several lines of emulsion flaking else very good in the original frame.

Carrie Fisher was a great lady from many points of view but anyone who knew her, or knows about her, understands the magnitude of this association, and the significance of the inscription’s reference to opiates. One might rank a different, imaginary association copy higher, but this one is as great as any, and it’s not imaginary, it’s for sale. Her Princess Leia is one of the worldwide, enduring, and magnetic babe fantasies. And speaking of babes, when we do employment interviews at Biblioctopus, we give the women a bite–sized Snickers. If they unwrap it and eat it, we hire them as catalogers. If they eat it with the wrapper still on it, we hire them for security.

More, Hannah ​​ ​

Coelebs In Search of a Wife (London [T. Cadell and W. Davies], 1808)

$800

2 vols. 1st edition. Her first (and only) novel, and a scarce one. Contemporary full calf, smoothly rebacked, sides rubbed, contemporary ownership signature on title page of volume 1, else very good, a complete set with errata in both volumes, that in vol. II (A1) often missing (not issued with half–titles). A suitable and sound binding, not a decaying one, or worse, a new one glowing with all the glossy dumbness of a dead fish. Collation: pp.[xii],+351+[i (blank)]. [iv]+ 469+[i (blank)]. Reference: Block, 166.

Hannah More was a literary giant, the most famous and successful woman author of her time, and the best–selling of the Bluestocking writers in the later period of that salon, comprised of both genders, and devoted to establishing the intellectual credentials of women. In 1786 she wrote their anthem (the poem Bas Bleu), and during her career as a literary figure, she transcended the others without ever becoming pedantic. She was a conservative feminist, joined a group opposing the slave trade, was a triumphant playwright and poet, and from 1795 through 1798 was the primary fount of cheap repository tracts, those little 8–page, or broadside, tales of whimsy published with the focused aim of encouraging the poor to read, and surprisingly, she pulled off the miracle, selling 2 million copies of them (led by The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain), an unprecedented feat in the 1790s. She spent her loot setting up Sunday schools to fight illiteracy, then turned to the novel in 1808. Expectedly, her publishers imagined Coelebs would be overlooked since Hannah More was not known as a “novelist.” But she had an eerie sense of the public pulse, and publishers notoriously surround themselves with smart people, the way a hole surrounds itself with a doughnut, then ignore those smart people. So, the book was issued in a small edition, that was quickly consumed, and read to rag, to be followed by a superfluity of reprints (beginning in 1809) and status as a huge bestseller. Those tears on her cheeks are from laughing.

Pick any criterion you like; this 1st edition is scarce by any of them. Today, reprints of it dominate both the library and collector landscape, so much so that, no less a mainstream source than The Oxford Companion to English Literature (6th edition, 2000), incorrectly lists this title, both under its own name and in the entry for More, as published in 1809 (Wikipedia makes the same error) and, indeed, there were a dozen or so reprintings in 1809, and several more by 1812, most of them common, but this 1st printing, the only one dated 1808, is scarce. Sadleir never got a copy and neither did Wolff. Only one set is recorded as having sold at auction in the last 40 years (£82.60) but if you take that price seriously, don’t buy this one.

Coelebs’ plotline is a timeless look at the transgressions of parents, a stun gun bolt to those who would impose (through their sons) their own shortcomings on single women. It shrewdly unwinds the tale of a young man badgered and burdened, by his father and mother, with a long list of virtues he must insist upon having in a wife, and the labors of this poor soul’s search for a woman (any woman) who could meet the standards set by his departed parents. It speaks to widespread, ineffectual parenting but, as we know, the full swath of ignorance had not been mapped in 1808, and in fact, we have at present, only explored its fringes.

Polite, Carlene

The Flagellants (New York [Ferrar, Straus, Giroux], 1967).

$150

1st edition in English of her first book (a 1966 French edition precedes but Carlene Polite was an American). Fine in a dustjacket with a 1/8“ tear to the bottom edge of the rear panel and some rubbing, else near fine. Signed and inscribed on the dedication page, “X–mas. 75. For Korby and Burt (In the name of some Dear Readers who heard tell of all this–Since Way Back When…) Carlene Polite” and since it’s headed “X–mas. 75” it was probably a gift. Not a scarce book but it is half–scarce as a presentation copy.

“The disintegration of a black couple’s relationship, […] among the first fictional works by a black woman to focus directly on the theme of the sometimes bitter antagonism between black men and women.” –Mel Watkins, The NY Times Book Review

Post, Emily

Etiquette In Society, In Business, and At Home (New York [Funk and Wagnalls], 1922).

$2750

1st edition of “the blue book of social usage” with an enormous, and largely positive, impact on modern life, suggesting throughout, that today’s pervasive love of lights, noise, and commotion are not social instincts. Near fine, in the scarce dustjacket, with tears and chips along the edges, strengthening in a few places along the folds, and the spine a darker shade of gray than the panels, but still good, and copies lacking the jacket are all 9–hour plane rides with a small child kicking the back of your seat. The text has been updated many times to reflect contemporary lifestyles, but this is the original, wide ranging enough to include the still useful (and practical) guidelines of how to write a thank you note, or make an introduction, or walk the streets, and the less practical responsibilities of a parlor maid, or how to use a finger bowl, or how to address a Duke. This is pure Americana, a significant book, and plenty scarce in jacket. If you are both naturally and perfectly civilized, there is nothing here to learn. If you are like the rest of us, just open it at random, to almost any page, and it will take you for a few minutes. Close it, do something else, come back, open it again, and be taken some other, but equally useful place, for another few minutes. The entertainment is endless and enduring. And here is some justification for buying it, beyond its influence, importance, and rarity in dustjacket. It is so iconic, that the inch and a half it will take on your shelves, will prove well worth the space, if for no other reason than as a vaccination against narrow focus acquiring the deadening effect of habit.

Baroqueback Mountain

Proulx, E. Annie

A Comprehensive Collection of 17 Volumes (1980-1999).

$850

17 vols. A comprehensive, high quality run of all Proulx’s work, showing her slow, 8–year crawl from her first nonfiction, how–to books, to her award–winning novels and stories. This little archive is limited to her 20th century books, but her 21st century titles are all easy to find and you can add them inexpensively if you like.

1) Great Grapes (1980).

2) Making the Best Apple Cider (1980).

3) Making the Best Apple Cider (after 1980).

4) Sweet and Hard Cider (1980).

5) What'll You Take For It (1981).

6) The Complete Dairy Foods Cookbook (1982).

7) Fences & Gates, Walkways, Walls & Drives (1983).

8) The Gardner’s Journal and Record Book (1983).

9) The Fine Art of Salad Gardening (1985).

10) The Gourmet Gardener (1987).

11) Heart Songs (NY, 1988).

12) Postcards (NY, 1992).

13) The Shipping News (NY, 1992).

14) The Shipping News (NY, 1993).

15) Accordion Crimes (NY, 1996).

16) Brokeback Mountain (London, 1998).

17) Close Range (NY, 1999). [read more]

[Pussy Riot]

Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer For Freedom (New York [The Feminist Press], 2013).

$250

1st edition of their first book in English, and the 1st edition of this compilation in any language, preceded only by an e–book a few weeks earlier. Signed by 2 of them. This book is the essential document containing essays, letters, poems, songs, tributes, and courtroom statements, arguments, tirades, and transcripts from the Moscow based, feminist, anti–Putin, punk rock, guerilla, protest group of 11 women, first formed in 2011. They perform masked but their identities are well known to the public and everything else about them is well known to the police. Wrappers, retail price tab else fine.

Simple liberty implies the independence to do what you want with the inseparable willingness to accept the consequences. 21st century liberty includes (or chases) free inquiry, the pursuit of ideas for their own sake, open mindedness, and respect for privacy, all without arbitrary restraints, but Pussy Riot isn’t there yet. They just want attention to sermonize against repression and for regime change. Figuring that if you set yourself on fire, people will come from miles around to watch you burn; these women are notorious for badgering and confronting a Russian government that is less diverse than a bag of marshmallows and treats opposition with frontier justice. So, Pussy Riot has the right enemies even if they haven’t done enough to earn them, but when dissent starts to look like a rocking horse, with lots of action and no progress, such notoriety passes quickly, and they will have to cut a Faust like deal with the Devil to stay relevant (and famous) or slip away, like Shelly Long and Paris Hilton.

Sanchez, Sonia

We a BaddDDD People (Detroit [Broadside Press], 1970).

$375

1st edition, 1st printing. Original wrappers, short diagonal crease to the upper corner of the front cover and some general light rubbing, else near fine. The 1st printing is seldom seen, even in significant collections of African American literature. A compilation of poetry broken into 3 parts; Survival Poems, Love/Songs/Chants, and TCB/EN Poems. Cover art by Ademola Olugebefola.

Ting Ling

The Sun Shines Over Sangkan River (Peking [Foreign Languages Press], 1954).

$50

1st edition in English. Original silk over boards, spine faded half a shade, else near fine, in a jacket with chips at the edges, and a short pen line to the front panel, else very good.

Undervalued because it is unknown and thus unappreciated outside of focused academia. I am no panegyrist of Ting Ling (1904?–1986), in fact I know nothing about her, beyond her oft–altered biography, but she was “the” Chinese feminist novelist, and the ultimate Asian uberfrau, bravery indeed in Communist China. She was a prodigy at Shanghai and Peking Universities and at 28 was appointed editor of the official left wing writer’s journal, but in 1933, her outspoken contempt for male chauvinism earned her 3 years in a Kuomintang prison. A book of stories (When I was in Sha Cuan, 1945) was greeted with the Chinese revolutionary equivalent of rock star popularity, followed by the expected Party discipline (status is measured by deference). Seeking a subject dear to the heart of the Party line, and harmonious with her own sense of integrity, she moved to the countryside, and found an intellectually defensible Communist success story. The result was this novel (1948), a virtuoso study of land reform, which won the Stalin Prize in 1951. Her return to favor included membership on the Cultural and Educational Council, command of the editing department at the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and Vice–Chairpersonship of the Union of Chinese Writers. Of course, she used her position to increase the pitch of her attacks on male hegemony in the family, and the government. Faster than you can say “Animal Farm” tolerance turned to exasperation, and in 1958 she was purged and sent to raise chickens in the Heilongjiang reclamation area. By 1970 she was in a Communist prison, then reluctantly released in 1975, and finally rehabilitated as “too old to cause trouble” in 1979.

Wilson, Margaret

The Able McLaughlins (New York [Harper], 1923).

$4250

1st edition (“H–X” on copyright). Her first novel. Near fine in a 1st state dustjacket with the correct text and the reorder coupon intact, small chips to spine tips and corners, and partial splits along the folds but still integral. A Pulitzer Prize winning novel, in a dustjacket that is riskier than it seems, because it is one of those brown paper jackets that wants to dry out and fragment along its folds. This one is as nice as, and priced less than, any of the overhyped others for sale in comparable condition, and the ones that are priced less than ours are not as nice, or in the wrong jacket. Or both.

105 years after Jane Austen’s last novel and Mary Shelley’s first novel demonstrated that women authors were every bit the equal of men, Margaret Wilson enjoyed the advantage of being their legatee. The Able McLaughlins is not historical romance, because it is only set 58 years in its past and it lacks historical luminaries, but it has some of the feeling. Its protagonist is Wully McLaughlin, but its essence is fixed on the trials of Christie McNair in a patriarchal Midwest, and her discovery that perseverance is not the long race, but many short races one after another, not so much the ability to persist, but the vitality to start over, an understanding of which bridges to cross, and which bridges to burn, a quiet voice that says, I will try again tomorrow. My discovery is that daily choices are easier, often, in fact, self–evident, once each of us decides whether we will devote our lives to conjugating the verb “to have” or devote our lives to conjugating the verb “to be.”

That last sentence, in the paragraph above, is a detour that is right from the tao of the octopus. But the question of a life focused on “to have” versus one focused on “to be” while pious enough, may, at some point, happily rise above choice, and evolve out of reciprocal exclusion into a less stressful and more harmonious welcoming, since the pursuit of an authentic life under the awakened scrutiny of honest self–observation, often reconciles matters that at first glance seem incompatible. Meaning, why accept “either/or” when “and/also” is frequently the byproduct of patient, unbiased, detached, and reflective contemplation? Better still, “to have” can serve “to be” and vice versa. And that, fellow seeker, is an echo from Eden.

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