More from that large Robert E. Howard purchase, three from Donald M. Grant:
Posts Tagged ‘poetry’
Library Additions: Four Robert E. Howard Firsts
Thursday, March 6th, 2025Library Additions: Four Robert E. Howard Hardbacks
Monday, March 3rd, 2025More books from that large Robert E. Howard purchase.
Library Additions: Three Robert E. Howard Roy A. Squires Chapbooks
Monday, February 24th, 2025A private seller contacted me about selling me a number of the Robert E. Howard books I had on my want list, and we settled on a price of $725 plus shipping for some 40 titles. Some of those will go in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, but most are are going in my library and will take some time to list. I’ll start with the chapbooks, since they’re less challenging to shelve, and first among the chapbooks are these three, all published by Roy A. Squires. Many of those Robert E. Howard chapbooks were done in editions of a thousand or more, but these, in addition to being higher quality, were done in editions in the low hundreds.
I have quite a number of Squires chapbooks, I think just under half of the ones listed as actual publications in The Private Press of Roy A. Squires, so perhaps I should pick up the rest. I know I lack three more Howard chapbooks from Squires: Altars and Jesters, Black Dawn, and The Gold and the Grey. I’ve added those to the wanted list.
Library Addition: Signed First of Donald Wandrei’s Dark Odyssey
Monday, October 21st, 2024L. W. Currey had a sale, and this is the item that jumped out at me as worth picking up:
Wandrei, Donald. Dark Odyssey. Webb Publishing, 1931. First edition hardback, 118 of 400 signed, numbered copies, a Very Good copy with significant wear at head and heel and bumping at points, in a Good+ only dust jacket with 1 1/2″ spine loss at heel, 1″ spine loss at head, plus a few 1/4″ chips at dj top edge, wear at points, and a bit of rubbing; not great, but a mostly complete example of the notoriously fragile gold foil dust jacket. Poetry collection. At a 94 years old, it’s not the oldest dust jacket in my collection (I have an H.G. Wells first in dust jacket from 1922), but it is among the oldest. Bleiler Checklist (1978), page 202. Bought for $25, marked down from $50.
Library Addition: Signed First of Ray Bradbury’s That Son of Richard III
Monday, October 14th, 2024Another signed Bradbury first:
Bradbury, Ray. That Son of Richard III: A Birth Announcement. Roy A. Squires, 1974. First edition chapbook original, #LXIII of 85 the signed “Autograph Edition,” a Fine- copy with just a trace of wear at tips, in a Near Fine+ original Autograph Edition publisher’s envelope with slight age darkening at edges and slight bumping at tips. Chalker/Owings, page 589. Bought for $50 (marked down from $80) on eBay.
Unnoted in Chalker/Owings is the fact that two of my three copies have a “PZ” glyph inscribed on the lower right side of the introduction page, just barely visible in the scan.
This is my third copy of this Bradbury chapbook, following an association copy inscribed to Lord John press founder Herb Yellin and an unsigned copy of the “ordinary” edition. The ordinary copy has this, but the one inscribed to Yellin doesn’t. Bit of a mystery…
Edited to add: Mystery solved! I checked with fellow bookseller (and Old Earth Books publisher) Mike Walsh to see if he could solve the glyph mystery, and he directed me to bookseller Terrance McVicker of Bats Over Books, who had the answer:
The “PZ” you note in your query is actually “ZN,” printed on top of each other, if you turn it sideways. It stands for “Zerkall Nideggen.” Nideggen is a Japanese paper, but Zerkall was the German manufacturer. I think what Zerkall did was buy the pulp paper from Nideggen, then process it in their factory.
What your seeing is the Zerkall Nideggen watermark. The sheet before cutting, measured 24″ X 36″ and there was a watermark in the lower right-hand corner of the full sheet. Which meant that, when the sheet was cut to quarto size, only one out of eight pages would have the watermark. Printers usually try to get one watermarked page per book/booklet, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
Thanks for the info!
Library Addition: Thomas Ligotti’s Pictures of Apocalypse
Wednesday, July 5th, 2023Another small press book:
Ligotti, Thomas. Pictures of Apocalypse. Chiroptera Press, 2023. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, still in shrinkwrap. Also includes a special 24 page Pictures of Apocalypse: Interviews and Sketches chapbook, including new interviews with the author and artist, “Concept to finish” art documentation, outtakes, a thank you card, and a bookmark.” A verse cycle. A fairly elaborate small press production for this stylish horror writer. The book is no longer on the publisher’s website, so I assume it is now out of print. But I still have copies through Lame Excuse Books (including the extras bag).
Here’s a scan of some of the items in the extras bag:
Library Addition: Neil Gaiman’s Words of Fire
Tuesday, July 4th, 2023Arte Editions are the people that did Gaiman’s The Case of Death and Honey. This actually had a smaller run.
Gaiman, Neil. Words of Fire. Arte Editions, 2022 (actually 2023). First edition trade paperback original (with self-flaps), #276 of 300 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy. Poetry collection. There were two different hardback editions (the Portfolio Edition and the Roman edition), both of which were sold out by the time I heard about it. Now out of print from the publisher. I still have one copy left available through Lame Excuse Books.
Note: The streaks in the image are actually marbling in the cover-stock.
Library Addition: Leah Bodine Drake’s A Hornbook for Witches
Monday, October 17th, 2022I’ve been winning a fair number of Arkham House auctions recently, though this is one I bought off a fellow Biblio dealer. The last time I looked, nice copies of this were going for well over a grand and out of my price range, but prices seem to have drifted down a bit.
Drake, Leah Bodine. A Hornbook for Witches. Arkham House, 1950. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with foxing to gutters and under flaps, slight bumping at heel (and unlike most Arkham (and U.S.) books, the printing on the book is 180° off what you would expect, running up the spine rather than down, so from bottom to top it reads “Drake • A HORNBOOK FOR WITCHES • Arkham House”), and a very slight bit of wear to Arkham’s usual Black Novelex boards, in a Near Fine- dust jacket with shallow 1/16″ chipping at head, heel and points, and age darkening to spine; a fairly nice copy. One of the rarest Arkham House books, with only 553 copies printed, and Jaffrey states that Drake took “about 300 copies” for her own distribution. Derleth, Thirty Years of Arkham House, 43. Joshi, Sixty Years of Arkham House, 43. Jaffery, Horrors and Unpleasantries, 40 (“There are few copies around, and copies are really hard to come by”). Nielsen, Arkham House Books, 44 (and #5 on his list of “The Thirty-Five Most Valuable Arkham House Books”). Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy Three, page 29. Kemp, The Anthem Series, pages 334 (“Scarcest Arkham House title of all.”), which also notes an audiobook edition of the title narrated by Vincent Price (though evidently only including four of the poems here). Bought from a fellow Biblio dealer for $832.
Library Additions: Six Signed Ray Bradbury Firsts
Monday, October 10th, 2022Someone had a lot of eleven Ray Bradbury firsts listed on eBay for $420, and accepted a $300 offer. These are the ones going into my library (two replacing unsigned copies), the rest will be offered for sale in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog.
Library Addition: Robert E. Howard’s Always Comes Evening
Tuesday, July 12th, 2022This isn’t the most expensive book I’ve bought, but it’s up in the top 10.
Howard, Robert E. Always Comes Evening. Arkham House, 1957. First edition hardback, a Fine- copy with an old bookstore sticker inside the front cover and just a trace of foxing to gutters, in a Near Fine, price-clipped dust jacket with slight dust soiling to rear cover and slight age-darkening to letters, and a few other touches of wear. “Another volume that must be called a landmark.” – S. T. Joshi, Sixty Years of Arkham House. Howard’s first poetry collection, the second of three Howard books published by Arkham House, compiled by Howard estate executor Glenn Lord. Derleth, Thirty Years of Arkham House, 50. Joshi, Sixty Years of Arkham House 50. Jaffrey, Horrors and Unpleasantries, 49. Nielsen, Arkham House Books 53. Nielsen also ranks it 9th for scarcity and 13th most valuable, though the latter is out of date, since it’s much pricier and harder to find that Skull-Face and Others these days. Bought off eBay for $650.
