Best of 2020
In a chaotic year unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, books have remained a stabilizing force in my life: they can both calm and intrigue, bring challenge and joy. Here are 15 of my favorite rare books I sold at my company Type Punch Matrix amid the ups and downs of a difficult year.
1.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1817
This is the 1817 third edition of Austen’s best loved novel, the first edition printed in two volumes (as opposed to the three volumes of previous editions) and the final edition issued by the novel’s first publisher. What I love most about it is the moire silk boards: this was a material used in Regency women’s fashion, of the kind Austen’s heroines themselves would have worn.
2.
Z Mého Dětství, Helena Bochořáková-Dittrichová, 1929
A wordless graphic memoir of Bochořáková-Dittrichová’s provincial girlhood in the Moravian region of what is now the Czech Republic, Z MÉHO DĚTSTVÍ (“From My Childhood”) is widely recognized as the first wordless novel published by a woman. In it, a series of 95 woodcut vignettes (“a novel of impressions” according to David Beronä) carefully balance the quotidian realities of daily life with the wonder of childhood. A rare book at least in part due to its fragile production, this example is remarkably preserved — a beautiful example of this predecessor to Marjane Satrapi, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Alison Bechdel.
This book appeared in our print catalogue (PDF) from the spring.
3.
日本風俗 [Japanese Customs], Bolton,
illustrated by Kumataro Tsujiko, [1890]
This two-volume set of educational volumes was published in Meiji 23 [1890] for a Christian girls’ school in Osaka, with Japanese trades, professions, and major historical figures depicted with English and Japanese (katakana, kanji, and furigana) text, preserved in the original wrapper.
4.
HEXAPAWN: A Game You Play to Lose, 1969
An ingenious early IBM educational game simulating programing, training “how a machine can be instructed to ‘make decisions’ and avoid repeating past mistakes.”
This book appeared in our print catalogue (PDF) from the spring.
5.
Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, in Braille, 1934
First edition in Braille of the timeless classic about the bear of very little brain.
This book appeared in our print catalogue (PDF) on children’s books.
6.
Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, 1842
Previously unrecorded true first edition of the slave narrative of Moses Grandy, in an unusual sammelband bound with four other works aimed at children.
As an enslaved man Grandy was frequently hired out, which allowed him to keep a small portion of the funds earned by his labor. Using these funds, Grandy paid the asking price of $600 for his freedom. Rather than freeing Grandy, the slave owner then pocketed the money and sold him to someone else. Once again, Grandy set money aside and paid for his freedom. The second time, he again paid the funds only to learn he had been used as a loan for another man to whom he was subsequently sold. The third time, it was only through the interference of a few white men for whom he had done work that the slave owner capitulated and legally freed him. This book was put together with the help of the Anti-Slavery Society in England to raise funds for Grandy to purchase the freedom of family members remaining in slavery, but it also did much to advance the abolitionist cause in the United States, becoming one of the more famous narratives of the era. Before the discovery of this copy, the earliest recorded edition was from 1843.
This book appeared in our January catalogue (PDF).
7.
Siege de Paris, lithographed by Jeanne Petit-Jean, circa 1872
Rare set of plates by a French woman lithographer depicting major events of the 1870-1871 Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, including the use of innovative Air Mail balloons that carried citizens to safety and maintained communications in the city during the Prussian onslaught.
8.
Natural Magick, 1658, copy owned by Houdini
First edition in English of the book Houdini called “the first really important and exhaustive work” on the history of magic (in The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin), this copy signed by Houdini three times and with annotations in his hand.
This book appeared in our print catalogue (PDF) from the spring.
9.
Sassafrass, Ntozake Shange, 1976
Inscribed first edition Shange’s first major prose work (later expanded into the novel SASSAFRASS, CYPRESS & INDIGO), published by the same small feminist press that had first published FOR COLORED GIRLS… the year before.
10.
Bokura Norimono [Things We Ride],
from series editor Iwaya Sazanami, [1919]
Brilliant Taisho-era Japanese picture book on the theme of vehicles (cars, trains, planes, and even tanks) overseen by Iwaya, a pioneering figure in modern Japanese children’s literature.
11.
A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade,
William Wilberforce, 1807
First edition of one of the most important books in the history of British abolition, a rare presentation copy from the author of the work published successfully to influence the debates for passing the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
This book appeared in our January catalogue (PDF).
12.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
Terrific set of first impressions of the trilogy, included not only because they’re beautiful copies, but because I was pleased to send them to their new home in New Zealand.
13.
Our Nig, Harriet Wilson, 1859
Rare first edition of one of the most important literary discoveries of the twentieth century, the previously forgotten tale of a free Black woman living as an indentured servant in pre-Civil War Massachusetts — considered the first published novel by an African American woman.
14.
文明之花 [The Flower of Civilization]:
A Fine Story of Womans Right [sic], Sugiyama Toujirou, [1887]
First edition of this rare Meiji-era political novel, in which the author asserts the equality of the sexes and creates a woman-only branch of government.
This book appeared in our print catalogue (PDF) from the spring.
15.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, 1847
First edition of a key work in the development of the English novel, written by the previously unknown Charlotte Brontë under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
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First published 1 January 2021.
