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Pulitzer was announced, she was scouring the town dump for shingles to use on her house. A friend who had heard the news noticed her there and joked, ‘Looking for your old manuscripts?’” (Franklin). Octavo. Original green wrappers lettered in black. Spine lightly sunned, foot just bumped with short closed tear to front joint, head of spine slightly rubbed, faint marks to front wrapper. A near-fine copy. ¶ Ruth Franklin, “What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand”, New Yorker , 20 November 2017, available online. £2,750 [158824]

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124 NASH, John Forbes. “Equilibrium Points in N-Person Games” [ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , vol. 36, number 1, 1950, pp. 48–49]; — . “The Bargaining Problem” [ Econometrica , vol. 18, no. 2, 1950, pp. 155– 163]; — . “Non-Cooperative Games” [ Annals of Mathematics , second series, vol. 54, 1951, pp. 286–295]; — .“Two-Person Cooperative Games” [ Econometrica , vol. 21, no. 1, 1953, pp. 128–140], 1950–53 the four papers on game theory for which nash received the nobel prize First editions of the papers which, alongside the work of von Neumann and Morgenstern, constitute the foundation of modern game theory, and which together form the basis for Nash’s receipt, with Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi, of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics “for their pioneering analysis of

125 NEVINSON, C. R. W. Modern War Paintings. London: Grant Richards Limited, 1917 First edition, signed by Nevinson in pencil below the frontispiece; scarce in the jacket. “Having gone to France with the Red Cross and been invalided home soon afterwards, he announced that he would be using ‘Futurist technique’ to express the reality of war in his new work . . . Bleak, outspoken and often angry, his paintings of 1915–16 are among the masterpieces of his career, bravely opposing the prevailing jingoistic tendency” (Tate online). Quarto. Original green cloth-backed boards, titles printed in black to paper spine and front cover labels, top and bottom edges untrimmed. With dust jacket. Colour frontispiece with captioned tissue guard, 24 monochrome plates. Jacket spine toned, a few marks to front and back panels, small loss to head and foot of spine, corners lightly chipped, binding toned to edges of front cover otherwise sharp, square and bright. A very good copy. £2,750 [159649]

126 OLIVER, Mary. Dream Work. Boston & New

equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games”. John Nash was admitted to Princeton’s mathematics department in 1948. In search for a topic to write his thesis on, Nash turned to the new field of game theory, pioneered by John von Neumann in the 1920s and then established in his and Oskar Morgenstern’s classic 1944 work Theory of Games and Economic Behavior . Nash’s great contribution to game theory was the insight that one should distinguish between games where the players act in a cooperative manner and those where all players are entirely individualistic. The insight allowed Nash to propose strategic solutions both of a more useful character, and for a broader range of games, than von Neumann and Morgenstern had been able to. His first paper, “Equilibrium Points in N-Person Games”, introduced what is now known as the Nash Equilibrium, proving that there exists an equilibrium point for all finite non-cooperative games, a situation where no player can increase their own expected payoff by changing their strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged. This work on non-

cooperative games was elaborated and developed in the paper “Non-Cooperative Games”. The other two papers are on cooperative games. In “The Bargaining Problem” and “Two-Person Cooperative Games”, Nash outlines what is since known as the Nash Bargaining Solution, describing a two-player cooperative bargaining situation where the players are trying to maximize a joint surplus. The solution has been applied on numerous occasions to solve concrete economic problems, especially management-labour conflicts. 4 works, three articles in numbers in original wrappers (“Equilibrium Points” neatly rebacked), fourth in annual volume in contemporary library cloth. Housed in a custom brown and blue morocco-grain cloth box. Stamp of Johns Hopkins University to front wrapper of “Equilibrium Points”, very good. “The Bargaining Problem”: spine lightly sunned, light bumping at upper outer corner, very good, with Econometrica committee election ballot loosely inserted. “Non-Cooperative Games”: fine condition. “Two-Person Cooperative Games”: very lightly rubbed, else near-fine. £12,500 [155840]

York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986 rare proof copy, including the first appearance of “wild geese”

First edition, rare proof copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, “Provincetown, January 1991. Good wishes to Richard and Rebecca, Mary Oliver”. This, the Pulitzer-prize winning poet’s darkest and perhaps best collection. This title was inscribed in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where Oliver spent most of her writing career, and was “regarded as a cross between a celebrity recluse and a village oracle. ‘I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded’, she has said. She tells of being greeted regularly at the hardware store by the local plumber; he would ask how her work was going, and she his: ‘There was no sense of éliteness or difference’. On the morning the

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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk

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