Downes, Kerry
SIR JOHN VANBRUGH: A Biography
NY: St. Martin's Press, 1987

First American edition. Octavo. 560 pp; 40 b/w photographs, 22 elevations, floor plans & drawings; chronology; genealogical tables; bibliography & references; glossary; index. Cloth with dustjacket. Near Fine/VG+, unclipped jacket spine lightly sunned. The biography of a remarkably multitalented man whose life spanned the Restoration and the Early Georgian period. As an architect, he designed Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace; as a playwright, he wrote two of the Restoration's best comedies.
Inventory number #007958

Sarde, Michele
COLETTE
NY: William Morrow & Company, 1980

First edition. Octavo. 475 pp; numerous illustrations; bibliography; index. Cloth with dustjacket. VG in VG jacket.
Inventory number #007933

Francis, Claude
CREATING COLETTE: From Ingenue to Libertine 1873-1913
VT: Steerforth, 1998

First edition. Octavo. 367 pp; b/w illustrations. Cloth with dustjacket. Near Fine/Near Fine..
Inventory number #007932

Phelps, Robert
BELLES SAISONS: A Colette Scrapbook
NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978

First edition. Square octavo. 302 pp; illustrated chapter titles and b/w photographs throughout. Cloth with dustjacket. Near Fine/VG. Jacket has light soiling & a closed tear on back panel.
Inventory number #007931

Williams, Tennessee & Maria St. Just
FIVE O'CLOCK ANGEL: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948-1982
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990

First edition. Octavo. xix, 407 pp; b/w photographs; index. Cloth with dustjacket. Near Fine/Near Fine. Letters written over the course of three decades shed light on Williams' works, his friends and colleagues, and his dependency on alcohol and drugs.
Inventory number #007923

Nicolson, Nigel
VIRGINIA WOOLF
NY: Viking, 2000

First American edition. Small octavo. 195 pp; 10 b/w illustrations. Hardcover with dustjacket. Near Fine/Near Fine. The author, son of British writers Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, threads his personal reminiscences through the narrative of her life. His biography probes her stance on women's issues and the nature of war.
Inventory number #007905

Bell, Quentin
BLOOMSBURY RECALLED
NY: Columbia University Press, 1995

First American edition, first printing. Octavo. 234 pp; 18 b/w illustrations; index. Cloth-backed boards with dustjacket. Near Fine/Near Fine. A memoir of the circle of intellectuals in early 20th-century London known as the Bloomsbury group. The author writes candid portraits of his parents, Clive and Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister), Vanessa's lover Duncan Grant, and of Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell, and others who frequented Gordon Square in Bloomsbury and Charleston, the Bells' country place in Sussex.
Inventory number #007904

Jullian, Philippe
EDWARD AND THE EDWARDIANS
NY: Viking Press, 1967

First American edition. Octavo. 312 pp; illustrations by William Nicholson; bibliography; index. Burgundy cloth with dustjacket. VG/VG, old dampstain near top of fore edge, only visible on 3 pp, else a bright, clean copy; jacket lightly chipped at spine ends.
Inventory number #007406

Zamperini, Alessandra
ORNAMENT AND THE GROTESQUE: Fantastical Decoration from Antiquity to Art Nouveau
NY: Thames & Hudson, 2008

First English edition. Small folio. 308 pp; 242 color illustrations; glossary; bilbiography; indices. Cloth with dustjacket. Fine/Fine, a new, unused copy. A lavish survey of the grotesque style in European painting and decoration, from Roman times to the late 19th century. Grotesques consist of loosely connected motifs, often incorporating human figures, birds, animals, and monsters, and arranged around medallions filled with painted scenes. They were a fashionable form of ornamentation in ancient Rome; in the 17th and 18th centuries grotesque decoration was transformed into arabesque, chinoiserie, and singeries, and how it continued in the nineteenth century, leading eventually to Art Nouveau.
Inventory number #007078

Isaacs, Julius
OATH OF DEVOTION
NY: E.P. Dutton, 1949

First edition. Octavo. 337 pp; index. Blue cloth with dustjacket. VG/VG, light wear to corners, small chip at top of jacket spine & top rear corner.
Inventory number #005496

Gallup, Donald, ed.
THE FLOWERS OF FRIENDSHIP: Letters written to Gertrude Stein
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953

First edition. Octavo. 403 pp; b/w illus. Blue cloth with gilt decoration on cover in dustjacket. VG/VG, bottom corner chipped, light edgewear.
Inventory number #004868

Bowen, Croswell
THE ELEGANT OAKEY
NY: Oxford University Press, 1956

First edition. Octavo. 292 pp, several b/w illustrations; bibliography; index. Black cloth with silver-stamped spine lettering with dustjacket. Near Fine/VG, a clean, unmarked copy; unclipped jacket has small loss at head of spine & slight wear to corners, inked price next to printed price on front jacket flap. The biography of A. Oakey Hall, who served as mayor of New York City from 1869 to 1872. A lawyer, he was the prosecutor in the notorious Burdell murder case, and a chief defender of August Belmont when Belmont sued the Evening Post for libel.
Inventory number #004754

Brown, Jane
BEATRIX: The Gardening Life of Beatrix Jones Farrand 1872-1959
NY: Viking Press, 1995

First edition. Quarto. 252 pp; numerous color & b/w illustrations; appendices; index. Cloth with dj. Near fine/VG. Garden historian Jane Brown's biography conveys both the privileged social world in which Farrand grew up and the genius of her work at such places as Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., and the Eyrie, the Rockefeller garden at Seal Harbor, Maine.
Inventory number #004282

Suleiman, Susan Rubin
BUDAPEST DIARY: In Search of the Motherbook
Lincoln, NE: Univ of Nebraska Press, 1996

First edition. Octavo. 232 pp. Hardcover with dustjacket. Fine/Near Fine. A clean, unmarked copy; jacket has light edgewear with minor wear to spine ends & bottom corner. The author left Budapest in 1949 as a young child with her parents, fleeing communism. This is the diary of her return 35 years later and her search for personal history.
Inventory number #004165

Miller, Nory
HELMUT JAHN
NY: Rizzoli, 1986

Quarto. 263 pp; numerous color and b&w photos and illustrations of projects; biography; completed buildings; projects; awards; collaborators; reviews. Paperback. Near Fine.
Inventory number #003916

St. John, Charles
A SCOTTISH NATURALIST The Sketches and Notes of Charles St. John 1809-1856
London: Andre Deutsch, 1982

First edition. Quarto, 191 pp; numerous color plates, many b/w sketches in the text. Cloth with dust jacket. VG+/VG+ to near fine, jacket price-clipped. A great copy.
Inventory number #003876

Whistler, Laurence
THE INITIALS IN THE HEART
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964

First U.S. edition. Octavo. 248 pp, illustrated with b/w photographs. Cloth with dj. VG/VG-, dj lightly rubbed, price-clipped. Laurence Whistler, British poet and glass engraver, and the younger brother of Rex Whistler, tells the story of his life with the actress Jill Furse.
Inventory number #003190

Douglas-Home, Jessica
VIOLET: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse
London: Harvill Press, 1996

Second printing. Octavo. 342 pp; 32 pages of b/w photographs; appendices; discography; bibliography; index. Black cloth with gilt spine lettering, in dustjacket. VG/VG-, light jacket wear & mild creasing at bottom edge on back cover. Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (1872 - 1948) was an acclaimed British harpsichordist and clavichordist, highly influential in bringing both instruments back into fashion. She was the first person to record the harpsichord, and the first to broadcast harpsichord music.
Inventory number #002888

Wetzsteon, Ross
REPUBLIC OF DREAMS : Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002

First edition. Octavo. xvii, 617 pp; 24 pages of b/w photographs; bibliography; index. Cloth-backed boards wirh dj. Near fine/Near fine.
Inventory number #002857

Strachey, Lytton
EMINENT VICTORIANS: The Illustrated Edition
NY: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989

First U.S. edition. Small quarto. 192 pp; numerous color & b/w illustrations. Cloth with dustjacket. Front free endpaper has vertical crease, top corner gently bumped, else VG/VG. Biographies of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon.
Inventory number #001923