This isnumbered copy 459 of a total of 503 printed (394 for sale in Great Britain, 104 for sale in America, and 5 special copies on vellum), signed B.G.G. on the limitation.

•  Publisher's quarter tan cloth and brown paper–covered sides, front cover and spine each with printed paper label; corners bumped, spine darkened, spine label chipped. Pages clean; edges deckle with a very few signatures uncut.  (33816)

Printed at the Plantin Press entirely in Greek (except for the imprint information), using Greek type commissioned from Robert Granjon, this bears one of the variant Plantin printer's devices on the title-page. It was printed with guide letters, although none have been supplied in manuscript by a scribe.

Evidence of readership: Scattered marginalia in Greek and Latin, sometimes correcting a word in text or expanding on same; other times citing a page in a different book.

Provenance:  From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Voet 593; Graesse, Trésor de Livres Rares, I, 204; Brunet, I, 448; Schweiger, I, 44; Index Aurel. 107.600; Adams A1692. Surprisingly not in Legrand, Bibliographie Hellenique.   Disbound; now in modern wrappers. A very nice, clean copy with occasional light age-toning.  (37768)

•  Publisher's yellow bookcloth wrappers, front wrapper with affixed photographic label. Very clean and crisp.  (30630)

Although some sources claim Boileau translated his own text into French, the BNF considers that a false attribution and credits Abbé François Granet with both editing and translating the text. This version, by Dutch printer du Sauzet, features a title-page printed in red and black and simple but elegant typesetting.

Binding:  Contemporary calf, spine with gilt-stamped title and date, gilt-ruled raised bands, and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; covers framed in triple gilt fillets, turn-ins with a gilt roll. Handsome marbled endpapers and all edges gilt. Signed binding, with front free endpaper stamped “Koehler.”

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with garter-design ex-libris rubber-stamp of G. Manessier. Later in the residue of the stock of the F. Thomas Heller bookselling firm (est. ca. 1928).

•  Bound as above, leather scuffed and rubbed. Small area of worming to outer margins of some leaves, not touching text. Pages gently age-toned, otherwise clean. A pleasing, elegant little volume.  (40413)

•  Brunet, I, 1756; Palau 54187.   Contemporary treed sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled bands; binding lightly scuffed (most notably at spine), spine with tiny pinholes, front joint just starting from head. Front pastedown with attractive small ticket of a prominent Madrid bookseller. Pages generally lightly age-toned with scattered faint spotting; some leaves browned.  (29248)

Provenance:  Armorial bookplate of Ezra Otis Swift on the front pastedown; most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  NSTC 2B47098 & 2P5931.   Quarter black roan in imitation of morocco and dark pink paper–covered boards, gilt lettering on spine; rubbed with some loss of leather and paper. Edges uncut. Light age-toning with a handful of marginal stains. Bookplate and label as above; bookplate offsetting onto free endpaper. A scandalous historical poem from a respectable press.  (39422)

•  Publisher's quarter floral-patterned paper with woodgrain-patterned paper–covered sides, spine with black leather title-label stamped in silver, in original matching slipcase; one corner bumped and spine extremities with small chips, slipcase showing moderate shelfwear and with one upper edge split and repaired with archival tissue. Pages clean. Internally very appealing despite minor external wear.  (39805)

•  Very good, in publisher's cloth. Front free endpaper torn out. Preliminary pages with a few light creases in foremargins probably created from paper clips being fastened to them at one time.  (10711)

The present example isone of 2000 copies printed, with the type afterwards distributed.

•  Jackson, D.H. Lawrence Handbook, 24; Roberts A50c.   Publisher's olive green cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped phoenix vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title; dust wrapper lacking, spine slightly sunned, spine extremities and lower corners rubbed. Free endpapers with offsetting(?) and front one with upper outer corner torn away; text gently age-toned, with small areas of staining to two pages. Showing signs of wear, this is yet a solid, attractive, and pleasing copy.  (33546)

Uncommon: WorldCat locatesonly two U.S. institutional holdings.

•  Publisher's printed green paper wrappers; spine and edges lightly worn, back wrapper with affixed Olympia Press paper price label, partially torn away. Two leaves with lower outer corners proud and now ragged; five leaves with small holes near center, touching letters without loss of sense. Overall a very reasonably fresh copy.  (35684)

•  Publisher's tan linen shelf-back with rust-colored boards. Boards lightly chipped. A very good copy.  (36591)

According to Miller's bibliographers, the 1945 printing uses the same plates as the 1938 edition, explaining why the copyright reads “Reprinted October 1938,” confusing this with the second Obelisk printing. “The actual date of publication is 1945 and is documented in a letter Miller wrote to Ben Abramson in August of that year” (Shifreen & Jackson). Like the copy seen by Shifreen and Jackson, the present copy's leaves vary in size, so that many are shorter than others.

Jack Kahane founded the Obelisk Press at Paris in 1929 to publish illicit English-language books like this free from legal censure.

•  Shifreen & Jackson A12e.   Publisher's steel gray wrappers with white boxes lettered in black; faded and shelf-worn, paper on the lower spine cracked to reveal quires beneath. Age-toning resulting from poor paper quality, as usual for this edition; sewing brittle. Far from pristine; definitely showing evidence of its readership.  (30196)

“I start tomorrow on the Paris book: first person, uncensored, formless — fuck everything!” So wrote Miller to Emil Schnellock in 1931. Three years later, after some financial difficulty, Jack Kahane published Tropic of Cancer at Obelisk in Paris with money Anaïs Nin borrowed from a psychoanalyst. It is the story of Miller's first year in Paris, living hand-to-mouth as a struggling writer.

This edition is the same as the fourth edition in all but wrappers (and the same as the third in pagination, except for necessary variations on the copyright page: “Fifth printing” and “Reprinted January 1939"); our copy'sbinding is blue and white, lettered in black, not the light green wrappers lettered in darker green called for by Shifreen & Jackson.

Jack Kahane founded the Obelisk Press at Paris in 1929 to publish illicit English-language books like this free from legal censure.

•  Shifreen & Jackson A9h.   Binding as above; wrappers faded and creased along the spine, upper joints cracking. A copy that clearly was read more than a few times.  (30191)

•  Publisher's half cream pigskin and light grey/tan cloth, rich eggplant endpapers, front cover with gilt-stamped vignette and spine with gilt-stamped title; bottom edge and corners rubbed or frayed with attendant soiling, front cover with area of faint staining. Interior clean and bright. (28154)

Eugene Karlin (who signed the colophon) created thedelicate fine-pen illustrations; of these, 20 are full-page and 9 are in-text. The drawings of lovers engaged in the act of lovemaking are both tasteful and erotic; they are mostly heterosexual, with one — non-explicit — depicting two men). Robert L. Dothard designed the edition, which is limited to 1500 copies (of which this is numbered copy 1002), using a monotype Emerson font; the binding is quarter goatskin vellum with the title stamped in gold on a brown skiver label, and the sides are Swedish tan paper with a gold-stamped design on the front. The appropriate LEC newsletter is laid in.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 409.   Binding as above, in original glassine dust wrapper and slipcase; wrapper with lower corners chipped, slipcase with minor rubbing to gilt spine label, vellum spine with a few tiny brown spots (possibly as issued — the club newsletter for this volume says “Goats are real individuals, and that goes for their skins too; connoisseurs in such matters prize the mottled and stained appearance, which the skins come by quite naturally”). The whole generally clean and unworn; pages fresh and crisp. A beautiful copy.  (30460)

COSTUME!

•  Publisher's quarter vellum and light blue buckram sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; vellum darkened and spotted, sides with mild wear and discolorations; front hinge (inside) slightly tender. Front free endpaper with a very faded (all but illegible) early inked inscription; margins with scattered light smudges, pages and plates otherwise clean. A volume clearly pored over . . .  (35542)

•  New. Publisher's blue cloth shelfback and French swirl marbled paper over boards; white paper label on front cover.  (35760)

•  Publisher's blue cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and fish vignette with blind-stamped decorative borders; spine slightly darkened, small spots of light discoloration, extremities rubbed. Sewing just barely starting to loosen but holding; pages clean. A more than decent copy of this interesting and, shall we say, “highly personal” work.  (35139)