We are pleased to announce the acquisition of a world class Joyce collection, with material for sale individually and on view by appointment in our Manhattan offices and in our East Hampton gallery throughout the summer.

This collection, comprised of over 100 books, letters, photographs, and manuscripts by and about Joyce, was built over the course of thirty years by writer and editor Alexander Neubauer, who, drawn to Joyce’s prose, bought his first Joyce piece after high school, in the summer of 1977, on his first visit to Shakespeare & Company in Paris.

This important trove documents Joyce’s life and work. From a school photograph of him at the age of 7 with classmates who would become characters in A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man, and books he owned in school, to a portrait taken of him by Man Ray the year Ulysses was published; from letters to Nora Barnacle – who would become, soon after, Nora Joyce – scheduling dates, to correspondence with his publisher; from early works through Finnegans Wake, to books he inscribed to friends, to books from his library. “Taken together,” writes Neubauer in his preface to the catalogue illustrated with color photographs by David Levinthal, available in limited and deluxe issues, “they suggest evidence of an overarching theme: that despite all efforts to appear a man guarded by ‘silence, exile, and cunning,’ Joyce throughout his life chose to be dependent on a world of connections, a circle of confederates.”

Catalogues feature original color photographs by David Levinthal.

147 pp.; 7 x 10 inches. Cloth issue, $125. Deluxe limited edition, one of 25 copies, with a numbered, signed Levinthal print; in a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase. $2500.

A cycle of lyric poems evoking love and loss: set in Shimla, in the Himalayala mountains, and in the old Viceregal Lodge --  now called Rashtrapati Nivas.

15pp.; ca. 6.25 x 9.25 inches.
 

Limited to 150 copies, signed by Alexander: 

125 in red handmade wrappers, string-tied. $40

25 in patterned cloth. $125

On December 5, 2011, on the Paris Review Daily, we wrote about the survey on symbolism high school student and budding science fiction writer Bruce McAllister sent to 150 writers in 1963. PRD posted a number of replies from Kerouac, Mailer, Rand, Bellow, Updike, Ellison, and Bradbury.

The San Diego Union Tribune picked up the story a few days later and contacted not only McAllister himself, as had we, but also current teachers and students at his high school.

During the past week we have enjoyed following many of the discussions these surveys have engendered. Many readers have remarked on Ayn Rand’s less than generous response (the Atlantic Wire headlined, “Ayn Rand Was Meaner Than You Think").  As an antidote to that, we are happy to post today Joseph Heller’s thoughtful survey and cover letter.

Others have expressed an interest in the handwriting of individual authors, to which we respond with the survey of Richard Hughes. Hughes breaks each question down into its parts, signs and dates his survey, and offers a postscript turning the question of symbolism in literature, tidily, back onto McAllister: “Have you considered the extent to which subconscious symbol-making is part of the process of reading, quite distinct from its part in writing?”

Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, Inc. is pleased to announce the acquisition of a world class Virginia Woolf collection, for sale en bloc and on view in our East Hampton gallery throughout the summer.

This collection was built over the course of forty years by William B. Beekman, who, drawn to Woolf’s prose, bought his first Woolf piece as a Harvard undergraduate before her nephew’s 1972 biography brought her renewed consideration by the academy. This important collection documents Woolf’s life and work: From a childhood portrait taken just after her mother’s death, to letters from her husband and sister updating her dearest friend on the search for and ultimate discovery of Woolf’s body after her death, the collection spans Woolf’s entire life, shining a light into darker corners and brighter spaces of her youth and adolescence, her familial and romantic relationships over time, her printing and publishing work at The Hogarth Press and, of course, her own writing. 

Highlights include much material previously unknown to scholars prior to Beekman’s purchase:   an early photograph of thirteen-year-old Virginia Stephen – years away from marriage to Leonard Woolf – in mourning for her mother; a letter from Woolf refusing a marriage proposal – by a married man; a leaf excised from Woolf’s March 22, 1923 passport, signed and filled-in as “Mrs. A.V. Woolf” – “A” for “Adeline,” her seldom-used Christian name; Gisèle Freund’s 1939 portrait of Woolf, which Freund shared publicly without Woolf’s permission, leading her to call Freund, in a letter to Vita Sackville-West, “[t]hat devil woman”; two love poems by Sackville-West for Woolf; letters documenting Woolf’s professional career and personal relationships, as well as many inscribed copies of the books she wrote and published; books from her library, spanning decades; dozens of letters and books Woolf sent to her cherished nephew, Julian Bell, who sought to follow in his aunt’s footsteps into the writer’s life, but was killed in the Spanish Revolution; and a series of letters from Leonard and Virginia’s sister Vanessa to Sackville-West on Woolf’s disappearance and death.

This collection also includes stunningly fresh copies of Woolf’s major works, difficult to locate in beautiful examples of the fragile dust-jackets as are here found. 

Woolf material of this quality appears with increasing rarity in the market today, as more and more archival items migrate to institutions, and are thus rendered permanently unavailable to private collectors.

The Beekman Collection of Virginia Woolf, priced at $4.5MM, presents a unique opportunity for scholars and collectors alike: to acquire, in one fell swoop, items that would otherwise, over time, become unavailable.

*

A catalogue documenting the Beekman collection is available for purchase, in trade and limited issues, both illustrated with photographs by David Levinthal incorporating elements from the trove. The limited issue is slip-cased in quarter-morocco with a numbered print signed by Levinthal.

Writing in the New York Times, Charles Hagen said that, “what distinguishes Mr. Levinthal’s work is his interest in emotionally charged historical material. But the real force of his images comes not from his choice of subjects but from the way he tells their stories.” In Virginia Woolf: The Flight of Time, Levinthal alludes to the darker and lighter episodes and themes of Woolf’s life, to her well-known sadness and to her infectious vitality.

A presentation copy of the 1946 Modern Library edition of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, inscribed to Phil Stone, Faulkner’s early literary mentor, later friend, and dedicatee of all three volumes of the Snopes trilogy.

Faulkner’s relationship with Phil Stone, an Oxford native and Yale graduate four years his senior, was  seminal. When in 1915, at the age of 18, Faulkner determined not to return to high school for his junior year, Phil Stone took on the role of tutor. Faulkner’s brother John later recalled,

The Stones had a big old Studebaker touring car, a sever-passenger affair. Phil loaded it with books for Bill to read and turned the car over to him. Bill would go out on some country road, a side road where it was quiet, and park the car and spend the day reading. He taught himself French out there and later he actually taught French at the University. Phil’s guidance was good, for it put the finishing touches on the reading program that Mother had established in all of us…. What Phil picked for Bill to read was pretty much what she would have chosen. Bill read Plato, Socrates, the Greek poets, all the good Romans and Shakespeare. He also read the other good English writers and the French and German classics. (My Brother Bill, 130)

Two years later, when Faulkner’s beloved Estelle announced her engagement to another man, Stone got Faulkner a job in bookstore in New Haven. In 1924 he underwrote – and contributed a preface to – The Marble Faun, Faulkner’s first commercially published book and only commercially published volume of poetry. Throughout the earliest years in Faulkner’s career Stone remained his champion, steadfast in his belief in his young friend’s brilliance. Many of Faulkner’s literary submissions, in fact, were typed in Stone’s local law office. In later years, though Stone served as the local expert on Faulkner, their closeness suffered intermittent periods of turmoil, such as is seen between the closest of friends. This did not prevent Faulkner from dedicating all three volumes of the Snopes trilogy to Stone (The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion, 1940-1959); nor inscribing this Modern Library edition of two of his best-known works, three years prior to his receipt of the Nobel Prize; nor did it mitigate Stone’s profound sense of loss at Faulkner’s passing in 1962. Fittingly, this man who carried Faulkner financially and emotionally into his career, was a pall bearer at his funeral.