GREAT GIFTS 100 “Generations Of Readers Have Marveled At The Modernity Of Her Work” 142AUSTEN, Jane. Works. Boston, 1892-98. Twelve volumes. 12mo, contemporary three-quarter brown morocco gilt. $8500 Lovely limited edition, one of 250 sets of Jane Austen’s beloved novels. Includes Austen’s novels (Emma, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice among them) and letters, as well as a memoir of the author by her nephew, J.E. Austen Leigh. Fine. Warmly Inscribed By Houdini 143HOUDINI, Harry. Miracle Mongers and Their Methods. New York, 1920. Octavo, original ochre cloth. $7800 First edition of Houdini’s “complete exposé” of side-show entertainers, inscribed to his friend, assistant and confidant: “To my good old friend Dr. J. E. Waitt, all good wishes from the author Houdini. May 14/21.” Following the death of his mother in 1913, Houdini began to investigate spiritualism and “soon became an all-out crusader against it. Early in 1924 he began lecturing throughout the United States on fraudulent mediums. In city after city he attended séances in disguise, exposing frauds on the spot” (ANB). Near-fine. “The Majestic Lord Who Broke The Bonds Of Rome” 144(HENRY VIII) POLLARD, Albert Frederick. Henry VIII. London, 1902. Folio, contemporary full crushed crimson morocco gilt. $3200 Limited first edition, one of only 250 copies printed on Japanese paper of this authoritative account of the “personal power” of the Throne, a splendid folio volume bound in contemporary full morocco by the renowned French bindery Chambolle-Duru. Illustrated with 32 rich full-page browntone photogravures in double-suite, many after portraits by Holbein (including the vividly handcolored frontispiece portrait of Henry). Oxford historian A.F. Pollard “was the leading authority on the Tudor period in his generation” (DNB). Fine. “This Was My First Intellectual Contact With The Theory Of Nonviolent Resistance” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) 145THOREAU, Henry David. A Yankee in Canada, With Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers. Boston, 1866. Octavo, original gilt-stamped brown cloth rebacked with original spine laid down. $3600 First edition, first printing, containing the first book appearance of “Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau’s idea of passive but firm resistance to government has had a profound influence on countless revolutionaries and reformers. Text with faint offsetting to pp. 266-67, else fine; front inner paper hinge just starting but solid; restored cloth with minor toning to spine. A very handsome copy.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDg3OTM=