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First edition of Morrison’s highly influential debut novel, in notably attractive condition. The novel “cut a new path through the American literary landscape by placing black girls at the center of the story” ( New Yorker ). On publication the book received little critical attention. However, the distinguished New York Times critic John Leonard was unstinting in his praise, describing Morrison’s prose as “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry”, and closing by saying that “Miss Morrison’s angry sadness overwhelms”. Octavo. Original blue cloth-backed grey boards, titles to spine in silver. With dust jacket. Insignificant peripheral toning to jacket, a couple of nicks at folds, light crease to front flap, small mark at head of front panel, neat ballpoint ownership inscription to front pastedown. An excellent copy, bright and square, in a particularly sharp jacket. £3,500 [152150]
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136 MORRIS, William (trans.); HOMER. The Odyssey. Done into English Verse. London: Reeves & Turner, 1887 INSCRIBED TO HIS MOTHER First edition, fine paper issue, presentation copy, both volumes inscribed from the translator to his mother in the month of publication, “to Emma Morris from her loving son William Morris April 22nd. 1887” and “to Emma Morris from her loving son Nov: 12th 1887”. Fiona MacCarthy notes that “Emma Morris was good natured, but she did not like disturbances. She was one of nature’s compulsive glossers over; and the sense of loss so deep and sharp in Morris’s writing is not just a matter of his marital despairs but also derives from a complex knowledge of the hazards of real communication between sons and their mothers”. The volumes are additionally inscribed by Morris’s sister, Henrietta Morris, who helped disperse her mother’s library after her death. She presented this to the English theologian and Orientalist Stanley
Leathes (1830–1900), rector of Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, where Henrietta lived. 2 volumes, octavo (224 × 170mm). Cloth-backed light-blue boards, printed paper spine label, top edges trimmed, others untrimmed. Publisher’s advertisement leaf at rear of volume 1. Housed in later chemises and morocco-backed slipcase. Inscriptions from William Morris to his mother and later inscriptions from Morris’s sister on half-titles. Extremities worn. New cloth spines retaining original boards and printed paper labels, minor loss and abrasions to labels, some light foxing and browning, new endpapers (free endpapers retained), tear to original rear free endpaper of volume 2; very good copies, remarkably clean. Slipcase worn. ¶ Buxton Forman p. 127; LeMire A–40.01. Fiona MacCarthy, William Morris: A Life For Our Time, 1994. £5,000 [151224] 137 MORRISON, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970 DEBUT NOVEL BY THE “TOWERING NOVELIST OF THE BLACK EXPERIENCE”
138 MOZART,
Wolfgang Don Giovanni. London: printed by W. Winchester and Son, in the Strand; and sold at the opera-house, 1817 Amadeus.
The belated London stage debut of Mozart’s most celebrated opera
Rare libretto of Mozart’s Don Giovanni , printed with parallel text in Italian and English, published on the occasion of its premiere in London.
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SPRING 2022
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