Jaws by Peter Benchley, First Edition with Dust Jacket, 1974

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929. First trade edition, first issue. In the original first-state dust jacket and publisher’s black cloth boards. Presented in a new archival ¼ leather and cloth clamshell case, with raised bands, gilt tooling, and titles to the spine. Presented is a first trade edition, first issue of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The book was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York, in September of 1929. This first printing is presented with its original first issue dust jacket. The dust jacket, as designed by Cleonike Damianakes Wilkins, is considered by many to be one of the greatest of the 20th century and rivals even The Great Gatsby in its collectibility. Set during World War I, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of a young American Lieutenant serving as an ambulance driver in Italy struggling through love and war. The story is told through first person narration detailing many aspects of war that would have been very familiar to readers at the time, as the book was published only 11 years after the 1918 armistice. The simple, direct tone his character uses when giving his unromanticized account of the war later defined Hemingway’s writing style. A Farewell to Arms is loosely based on Hemingway’s own experiences. The author briefly served overseas as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army, sustained injuries, and met a nurse who he eventually proposed marriage to but was declined. The novel’s post-war disillusionist subject assigned Hemingway to the “Lost Generation” of Modernist artists. A Farewell to Arms was Hemingway’s most successful publishing venture to date. Charles Scribner's Sons issued seven impressions of the novel in the short time between September and December of 1929, with over 100,000 volumes sold. The novel secured Hemingway’s place as a popular American author and became his first bestselling book. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was an American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style, characterized by economy of words and dry understatement, strongly influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and his public image. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Hemingway published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works during his lifetime; a further three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are now considered classics of American literature. The book’s striking dust jacket design was illustrated by the artist Cleonike Damianakes Wilkins, who worked under the pen name of Cleon. Wilkins was known for her distinctive fusion of Art Deco and Hellenistic styles. She designed the dust jackets for Hemingway’s earlier The Sun Also Rises in 1926 and his later publication In Our Time in 1930, as well as Conrad Aiken’s Great Circle, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men,and Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me the Waltz. Wilkins was chosen by Hemingway’s celebrated editor at Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins. In order to differentiate Hemingway’s tale from other, competing WWI novels on the bookshop shelves, Perkins sought to widen its appeal through the dust jacket. The resulting design was Wilkins’ interpretation of Sandro Botticelli’s epic oil painting “Venus...

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men: A Play in Three Acts. New York: Convici Friede, Publishers, 1937. First edition. Octavo. Original publisher’s beige cloth boards, with black and bro...

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961. First edition, first printing. Octavo. In original blue cloth boards, stamped in white. In the original unclipped dust jacket. Presented with a new archival ¼ leather and cloth clamshell. Presented is the first edition, first printing of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Catch-22 was published by Simon and Schuster, in October of 1961. This book is presented in the original publisher’s blue cloth boards, titled and embossed in white, and the original, unclipped dust-jacket. The Simon and Schuster “A Note to the Reader” postcard is laid in. The book comes with a new, archival ¼ leather and cloth clamshell. Catch-22 was Joseph Heller’s first novel and his most acclaimed work. Set during World War II, the novel uses a unique, non-chronological third-person narration, mainly focusing on the life of a B-25 bombardier in the U.S. Army, Captain John Yossarian, and his attempts to avoid bombing runs. Both the title and plot device, “Catch-22” refers to an Air Forces regulation which asserts that a man is considered insane if he willingly agrees to fly dangerous combat missions, but that if he makes the formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved." By the end of the novel, the phrase is invoked as the explanation for many unreasonable restrictions. “Catch-22” has since entered the English lexicon. Heller spent eight years writing "Catch-22," and used his own war experiences as inspiration for the novel. From 1942 to 1945, Heller served as a combat bombardier in the Twelfth Air Force and was stationed on the Island of Corsica. Upon publication, the book was not an immediate bestseller, but did elicit glowing reviews from some. “Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights. In any case, it is one of the most startling first novels of the year and it may make its author famous” (Orville Prescott, New York Times). It became a publishing sensation thanks to the 1962 paperback edition, which set record sales and benefitted from the national debate surrounding the Vietnam War. In the decades since, it has inspired a feature film, a miniseries, a 50-character stage play, and sold more than 10 million...

Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940. First edition, first printing. Octavo. Publisher’s beige cloth boards, first issue dust jacket. P...

Original Japanese press sheet poster for Jaws 1975. This film invented the summer blockbuster and was a massive hit that shattered box office records. It was the film that propelled...

A still life of the iconic Jaws paperback on a beach weathered wooden table just waiting to be read! The book and film are etched in 20th century pop culture and in 1975 when the fil...

The poster with plenty of bite. The original country-of-origin US 1 sheet film poster for Steven Spielberg’s seminal 70s Shark chiller Jaws, featuring the classic Roger Kastel artwo...

Superb first-year-of-release country-of-origin US Subway film poster for Steven Spielberg's seminal 70s Shark chiller Jaws. Roger Kastel's iconic artwork looks particularly impressiv...