Catalog 117: W-Z

362. WALKER, Alice. The Color Purple. NY: HBJ (1982). Her Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel, a surprise bestseller that was made into a film by Steven Spielberg. Signed by the author. Laid in is an autograph note signed saying that she and another had stopped by to say hello and will be back. The note is folded once; the book is near fine, with mild top edge foxing and slight corner bumps, in a near fine dust jacket with one tiny edge tear.

363. WALKER, Margaret. For My People. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1942. The African-American author's first book, a collection of poems in the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Series, with an introduction by Stephen Vincent Benet. Inscribed by the author. Fine in a very near fine dust jacket with tiny chips at the spine extremities. Walker won a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award for her novel Jubilee.

364. WALTERS, Minette. The Scold's Bridle. London: Macmillan (1994). Third book by the award-winning author of The Ice House, and others. Fine in a fine dust jacket.

365. WAUGH, Evelyn. Scott-King's Modern Europe. (n.p.): Chapman & Hall, 1947. Pages slightly browned with age, but still a near fine copy of this small book, in a near fine, spine-tanned dust jacket modestly foxed on the rear panel.

366. WAUGH, Evelyn. Wine in Peace and War. London: Saccone and Speed (n.d.). [1948]. The first trade edition of this volume by Waugh with illustrations by Rex Whistler, published by the British wine merchants, Saccone and Speed. With the ownership signature of Walter Armitage Halston and his notation "Given to me 1947 by Prince/ Vsevolde to whom it is dedicated." Pastedowns foxed; near fine in an edge-sunned tissue dustwrapper.

367. WAUGH, Evelyn. Helena. London: Chapman & Hall, 1950. Reportedly one of Waugh's favorite of his own novels, which followed up on the success of The Loved One, published two years earlier. Small owner name on flyleaf; near fine in a very good, surface soiled dust jacket with several creased edge tears.

368. WAUGH, Evelyn. Love Among the Ruins. London: Chapman & Hall, 1953. The limited edition. One of 350 numbered copies signed by the author. A fine copy, lacking the glassine dustwrapper.

369. -. Same title. London: Chapman and Hall, 1962. The second edition. Trace sunning at board edge; still a fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with a couple small edge chips.

370. WAUGH, Evelyn. Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, Unconditional Surrender. London: Chapman & Hall, 1952, 1955, 1961. First editions of the three books in Waugh's "Sword of Honour" trilogy, which novelist William Boyd called "without doubt the finest British novels to have come out of World War II." Boyd adapted the trilogy for a two-part British television miniseries. The second volume has a faint strip of offsetting to the flyleaf; otherwise they are fine copies in very near fine dust jackets. A nice set.

371. WAUGH, Evelyn. Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, The End of the Battle. Boston: Little, Brown, 1952, 1955, 1961. The first American editions of the three books in Waugh's "Sword of Honour" trilogy. The first volume is near fine in a very good, spine-faded and price-clipped dust jacket; the second volume is fine in a very good, spine-sunned jacket with a few spots to the rear panel; the third volume is fine in a near fine, price-clipped dust jacket.

372. WAUGH, Evelyn. Officers and Gentlemen. Boston: Little Brown, 1955. The first American edition of the second volume in his "Sword of Honour" trilogy. Near fine in a good dust jacket with an open creased edge tear at the upper front spine fold and several small ink swirls on the rear panel.

373. WAUGH, Evelyn. Basil Seal Rides Again. London: Chapman & Hall, 1963. Frontispiece illustration by Kathleen Hale. One of 750 numbered copies signed by the author. Faint handling to boards; very near fine without the glassine dustwrapper.

374. WAUGH, Evelyn. A Little Learning. (n.p.): Chapman & Hall, 1964. The first volume of Waugh's autobiography. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with a small chip at crown and one from the top edge of the rear panel.

375. WAUGH, Evelyn. A Little Order. Boston: Little, Brown (1977). The uncorrected proof copy of the first American edition of this selection from Waugh's journalism. Fine in wrappers.

376. (WAUGH, Evelyn). "The Balance" in Georgian Stories 1926. London: Chapman & Hall, 1926. Waugh's first book appearance. Other anthologized authors include Aldous Huxley, W. Somerset Maugham, Gertrude Stein and Liam O'Flaherty. Fading to spine cloth; modest overall handling; very good, lacking the dust jacket.

377. (WAUGH, Evelyn). ST. JOHN, John. To the War with Waugh. (London): Whittington Press (1973). A memoir published several years after Waugh died. One of 600 numbered copies signed by St. John. Very faint sunning at lower edge of cloth; still a fine copy in the original acetate dust jacket, with the publisher's prospectus separated from the front flap. The tipped-in frontispiece photo has come loose, as is typically the case with this book, but is present.

378. (WELSH, Irvine, et al.). Clocktower Press, 10 vols. (Orkney): Clocktower Press (1990-1996). Ten volumes, a complete run, from this important and influential Scottish small press. Includes Booklet number 5, Past Tense by Irvine Welsh, the first book by the author of Trainspotting, published in an edition of 300 copies. The stories in Past Tense were later incorporated into Trainspotting. Welsh also appears in Booklets 6 and 8, which had limitations of 500 and 300, respectively. Other authors featured in this series include Janice Galloway, Booker Prize winner James Kelman, Duncan McLean, John Aberdein, David Crystal, Brent Hodgson, Alison Kermack, James Meek, and others. Volumes 2, 4 and 10 are signed by McLean, Kermack and Aberdein, respectively. There was one Clocktower card, by Duncan McLean, issued in 1994 in an edition of 25 which is not included. An important collection, and one that would be difficult to assemble from scratch at this point. All volumes are fine in stapled wrappers.

379. WELTY, Eudora. John Rood. Exhibition of Recent Sculpture. NY: Contemporaries, 1958. An exhibition catalogue with text by Welty. A scarce "A" item, not listed in the bibliography, and consisting of text (two pages) entirely by Welty. Small corner crease to upper front cover; a near fine copy in stapled wrappers.

380. WELTY, Eudora. Fairy Tale of the Natchez Trace. Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1975. The text of a paper read at the Historical Society's Annual Dinner Meeting. One of 1000 copies. Fine, without dust jacket, as issued.

381. WELTY, Eudora. Women!! Make Turban in Own Home! (n.p.): Palaemon Press (1979). The galley proofs for this short piece issued as a limited edition, which describes Welty's foray into the creation of a tangible object and her deft retreat into creating words about the object instead. Printed on proofing paper, on rectos only. Fine. Scarce.

382. WELTY, Eudora. Bye-Bye Brevoort. Jackson: (Palaemon Press) (1980). The galley proofs of this skit, published for the New Stage Theatre in Jackson. Printed on proofing paper, on rectos only. Fine. Scarce.

383. WELTY, Eudora and MACDONALD, Ross. The Faulkner Investigation. Santa Barbara: Cordelia Editions, 1985. Prints in one volume Welty's review of Intruder in the Dust and Macdonald's foreword to Faulkner's story "The Hound." One of 500 copies. Fine in stapled wrappers.

384. -. Another copy. Near fine.

385. (WELTY, Eudora). TYLER, Anne. To Eudora Welty, For Showering Us With Gifts. (n.p.): Stuart Wright, 1984. An offprint from the limited edition Eudora Welty: A Tribute. One of five numbered copies signed by Tyler, this being copy number 4. A single poem, laid into printed cardstock covers bearing the above title. The poem inside bears the title "...For Showering Us With Gold." Staples missing; else fine. A scarce and moving tribute.

386. WHARTON, Edith. The Glimpses of the Moon. NY: Collier Books (1994). The uncorrected proof copy of the reissue of this novel that was originally published two years after Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence. Fine in wrappers.

387. WHITE, Edmund. The Flâneur. (London/NY): Bloomsbury (2001). The uncorrected proof copy of the first title in Bloomsbury's "Writer and the City" series, which matches writers with cities. In this volume, White delves into Paris. This is the British proof, made into an American proof by the addition of small labels applied to both the front and rear covers. Fine in wrappers. Together with an advance reading excerpt, printing chapter one. Fine in stapled wrappers.

388. WILDER, Thornton. The Alcestiad. (n.p.): (n.p.), 1962. Mimeographed copy of this opera in three acts. The play "The Alcestiad" was first performed in Edinburgh in 1955; this operatic version in Germany in 1962. Wilder allowed a German translation of the play to be published in his lifetime; an English version came out posthumously; this operatic version is unpublished. Pencilled copyright notice and pencilled corrections to two pages; sunning and erased number sequence to front page; stapled twice in left margin; near fine. A rare unpublished opera by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Our Town and other classics of the 20th century theater.

389. WILLIAMS, Jonathan. Portrait Photographs. Frankfort: Gnomon Press, 1979. Thirty photographs of "friends in the arts" by a "poet on the run." This is a copy reserved for presentation by the author and is inscribed by Williams. Subjects include David Hockney, Minor White, R.B. Kitaj, Allen Ginsberg, Guy Davenport, Charles Olson, Kenneth Rexroth, Edward Dahlberg, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton, Louis Zukofsky, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, among others. Fine in paper boards, dust jacket, glassine and cardstock sleeve.

390. WILSON, Edmund. Correspondence Archive. 1943. Seven autograph letters signed (totaling 9 pages, on 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" stationery) and two autograph postcards signed, spanning the dates May 13 to November 19. The correspondence concerns the arrangement for the recipient to come to Wellfleet, Massachusetts -- where Wilson was living at the time with his then-wife, Mary McCarthy -- and to work, at least part of the time, typing the manuscript of Wilson's latest book. Apparently, the recipient had worked in a similar capacity for Wilson, and for Max Eastman, the previous summer. The correspondence both predates her coming and postdates her leaving. Among the topics mentioned is the arrival of the galleys of "the F. Scott Fitzgerald" book -- Wilson edited The Crack-Up by Fitzgerald, a posthumously published collection of fiction, uncollected pieces, notebooks and letters. The book of his own that he was working on at that time would have been Memoirs of Hecate County, the only book of fiction for which he received substantial critical acclaim; mostly, Wilson's reputation rested on his nonfiction -- his great erudition, perceptive analysis, and articulate expression led him to be considered the dean of American letters at the time. A nice archive of slight but interesting correspondence by one of the leading American literary figures of the twentieth century. The letters are, in general, creased from folding, but still near fine.

391. WODEHOUSE, P.G. French Leave. London: Herbert Jenkins (1955). Small sticker removal abrasion front flyleaf; near fine in a very good, price-clipped dust jacket with several closed tears, most internally tape-repaired.

392. WOLFE, Tom. Manuscript of "Good Buildings." [ca. 1984]. Two drafts, 9 pages and 25 pages. This piece first appeared in Esquire in June, 1985, as "Proper Places" and later much of the text was incorporated into Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. The first draft is a ribbon-copy typescript with extensive holograph revisions by the author in pencil and ink. Much of this material was edited out of the later draft. The second draft is also ribbon-copy typescript, again with many holograph changes by the author. "Good Buildings" is a critique of New York in the mid-1980s, part of Wolfe's satirical savaging of the upper crusts of New York's elite society and its peculiar, passionate concerns. As a writer who has skewered the modern art world and the wealthy "radicals" of the late 1960's, Wolfe wields a much-feared pen, and The Bonfire of the Vanities was both eagerly and fearfully awaited as the publishing event of the year. Wolfe writes with scathing insight and fearsome accuracy, and this manuscript is an excellent example of the writer sharpening his pen as he works. The sheets are fine.

393. WOLFE, Tom. The Bonfire of the Vanities. Franklin Center: Franklin Library, 1987. The limited edition of his huge bestselling novel of New York, in which Wolfe tried to prove wrong his own dictum that fiction is dead because it can't live up to the weirdness of everyday life. Leatherbound, all edges gilt, with a ribbon marker bound in. Signed by the author and with a special introduction by him for this edition. Fine.

394. WOLFF, Tobias. In the Garden of North American Martyrs. NY: Ecco (1981). The uncorrected proof copy of the book that immediately established Wolff as a master of the short story form. Fine in wrappers and exhibiting, on the summary page, the $14.95 price that was printed on the earliest dust jackets, although the book was never sold at that price. Scarce: we have not seen another copy offered since the book was first published.

395. WOLFF, Tobias. This Boy's Life. NY: Atlantic Monthly (1989). The first book of memoirs by the author of In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and The Barrack's Thief. Fine in a fine dust jacket.

396. WOOLF, Virginia. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown. London: Hogarth Press, 1924. An essay on the importance of character in the novel. Edge-sunned and lightly splayed; about near fine in wrappers.

397. WOOLF, Virginia. A Letter to a Young Poet. London: Hogarth, 1932. No. 8 in the Hogarth Letters series, and the first in this series by Woolf. Near fine in saddle-stitched wrappers.

398. WOOLF, Virginia. Walter Sickert: A Conversation. London: Hogarth, 1934. Spine- and edge-sunned; near fine in saddle-stitched wrappers with Vanessa Bell cover art.

399. WOOLF, Virginia. The Virginia Woolf Reader. San Diego: Harvest/HBJ (1985). The uncorrected proof copy of the first American edition. Fine in wrappers.

400. (WOOLF, Virginia). BENNETT, Joan. Virginia Woolf. Her Art as a Novelist. Cambridge: University Press, 1945. A short critical introduction to Woolf's life and novels. Fine in a mildly spine-tanned, else fine dust jacket.

401. (Writers on Writing). Archive. (n.p.: n.p.) (1964). Nearly seventy authors' holograph and typewritten responses to a mimeographed questionnaire on the uses of literary symbolism in their writing and in writing in general, sent out by a high school student in 1964, who later became an award-winning science fiction writer.
      In 1964, Bruce McAllister was a high school student who had just become one of the youngest writers ever to publish in the science fiction and fantasy field, having written a story -- "The Faces Outside" -- that was published in a national magazine and then included in the annual anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction. Having been exposed to the issue of the presence of symbolism in literature, and having seen the kind of "symbolism hunting" that took place in high school English classes, he determined to try to find out how writers, rather than teachers and literary critics, saw symbolism. He composed a questionnaire asking writers if they consciously used symbolism? if they felt they subconsciously used it? how they responded to readers who found symbolism in their writing, where it wasn't intended? whether they thought "the great writers of classics consciously, intentionally planned and placed symbolism in their writing?" or if they did so subconsciously? and finally soliciting any additional comments the writers might want to make.
      McAllister sent the questionnaire to a long list of nationally and internationally recognized writers he found in such reference works as Twentieth Century Authors, about one-third of them being science fiction and fantasy writers (including Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury) and two-thirds of them being "mainstream" writers, including Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, and many others. About half the mainstream writers responded and some ninety percent of the science fiction authors did. And while the questionnaire reflected the youth of its author, many writers showed great interest in the subject and great generosity of spirit in responding thoughtfully and at some length to the questions.
      McAllister had clearly expected (actually wanted) most authors to respond that "symbol hunting is for literary scholars, not for real writers," but instead received an astonishingly wide array of answers, which ranged from a belief in the Freudian and Jungian ideas of the subconscious and the archetypal unconscious, to the conviction that there is no such thing as the subconscious. Some popular authors took the position of "I write about people; it's that simple" while other, more literary authors took the opportunity to criticize scholars for not finding symbols they had, in fact, consciously placed in their work (John Updike, William Golding). In all, the diversity of the voices that comprise the literary community is readily apparent, and taken together the questionnaires offer insight and irony that no single set of answers could: one writer remarks, for example, "For a conscious symbol user, simply look at Ray Bradbury," while Bradbury himself, in his response, explains how unconscious he is as a writer, and how strange he feels when critics charge him with writing symbolic fables.
      Among the writers whose autograph or typed questionnaires, most of them signed, are included are: Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, William Golding, Joseph Heller, Jack Kerouac, Mary McCarthy, Wright Morris, Iris Murdoch, Ayn Rand, Henry Roth, John Updike, Eudora Welty, Herman Wouk, Brian Aldiss, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, James Gould Cozzens, L. Sprague de Camp, Walter Edmonds, Sumner Locke Elliot, Harlan Ellison, Howard Fast, Gerald Green, Richard Hughes, William Melvin Kelley, Fritz Leiber, John D. MacDonald, John Masters, Judith Merrill, Theodore Morrison, Frederick Pohl, J.F. Powers, Conrad Richter, William Shirer, Clifford Simak, Mary Stewart, Niccolo Tucci, Joan Williams, and others. The file is carefully preserved in a loose-leaf binder, with each response separately protected, together with any accompanying envelope and a typed transcript of the response. The whole is housed in an attractive custom cloth slipcase.
      Since 1964, Bruce McAllister has become an important writer in the science fiction and fantasy field, with his 1989 novel, Dream Baby, having garnered substantial critical acclaim, and his stories being regularly nominated for awards and appearing in the annual "year's best" anthologies. This archive represents a unique collection of writers' thoughts and impressions, all of them otherwise unpublished, on a subject of substantial literary significance. Many of the writers have gone on to even more critical acclaim than they enjoyed at the time McAllister wrote to them, with at least two of them -- Golding and Bellow -- having won the Nobel Prize, and many others having garnered Pulitzers, National Book Awards, Hugos, various Lifetime Achievement Awards, and so forth. Needless to say, it would be impossible to create this collection from scratch today.

402. YATES, Richard and STYRON, William. Lie Down in Darkness. Watertown: Ploughshares Books, 1985. Yates's screenplay of Styron's novel. One of reportedly 50 copies signed by both authors. Fine in a fine dust jacket. An uncommon collaboration between two of the most highly respected writers of their generation. Books signed by Yates are uncommon.

403. YEVTUSHENKO, Yevgeny. Selected Poems. Baltimore: Penguin Books (1962). A selection of poems by the preeminent Russian poet of the post-Stalin era. Signed by the author. Paperback. Small nick at mid spine; else fine.

404. YEVTUSHENKO, Yevgeny. Selections from the Bratsk Hydroelectric Station and Other Poems. NY: New World Review, 1965. Inscribed by the author. Near fine.

405. YEVTUSHENKO, Yevgeny. Bratsk Station and Other New Poems. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1967. The first American edition; a paperback original. Signed by the author. Fine.

406. YOUNG, Marguerite. Harp Song for a Radical. NY: Knopf, 1999. The uncorrected proof copy of Young's posthumously published biography of Eugene Victor Debs. Fine in wrappers.