Today "Bronte" is perhaps one of the most famous names in literary history. And yet Charlotte Bronte and her sisters Emily and Anne published their poetry and novels under pseudonyms in the early part of their careers. Following the great success of Charlotte's novel, "Jane Eyre," she revealed her true identity and soon joined an elite circle of writers that included William Makepeace Thackeray. Though none of the Brontes reached 40, collectively and individually they managed to make a lasting mark on the landscape of English literature. This nineteenth-century edition is an attractive seven-volume set bound in quarter-leather. more info...

One of the most beloved story-tellers of all time, Charles Dickens truly captured the essence of humanity in his writing, challenging the status quo and humanizing the lower classes. In fact, his criticism of the inequity in nineteenth-century English society managed to bring about real social change. From "Oliver Twist" to "A Christmas Carol," his timeless tales of hardship and redemption continue to resonate with today's readers. This edition, known as the "Gadshill edition," comprises 34 volumes containing his complete works, bound in 3/4 leather with top edge gilt. more info...

The quintessential American poet and the "father of free verse," Walt Whitman has inspired many for generations. This limited edition collection of his complete works, including three volumes devoted to "Leaves of Grass," will surely delight and entertain. Ten volumes in quarter vellum, with top edge gilt. more info...

We take many things for granted, including atmospheric pressure and the theory of probability. And yet neither of these would be "common knowledge" without Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher whose experiments have changed the way we look at the world. In the posthumously published "Traitez de l'Equilibre des Liqueurs, et de la Pesanteur de la Masse de l'Air," Pascal describes his experiments with liquids, which proved, among other things, that air has weight. These experiments also led to the formulation of Pascal's Law, which states that "in a fluid at rest, the pressure is transmitted equally in all directions." This is the first edition of this work bound in full early calf, and includes two fold-out illustrations of Pascal's experiments. more info...

This classic set of Shakespeare's works begins with a brief biography of the playwright by editor Charles Knight. The six volumes contain all the best-loved Shakespearean plays, with charming illustrations at the opening of each. Bound in quarter-leather and stamped in gilt with marbled endpapers. more info...

Described by Heinrich Haeser as "the founder of scientific epidemiology," the Venetian physician Girolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553) wrote De Sympathia et antipathia rerum liber unus; de Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis et Curatione in 1546, a monumental study of infectious disease and germ theory. Fracastoro might actually be better known, however, for coining the word syphilis - it is derived from the poem Syphilidis, sive Morbi Gallici (Syphilis, or the French Disease, translated into English by Nahum Tate in 1686), about a shepherd named Syphilis suffering from the malady. Nonetheless, it is this book that Morton's Medical Bibliography calls a "landmark in the development of our knowledge of infectious disease." more info...

Once upon a July 4th in 1862, Reverend Charles Dodgson began an extemporaneous yarn intended merely to liven up a five mile boat trip for three little girls named Lorina, Edith, and Alice. Though Reverend Dodgson had often told tales to pass the time away, according to his diary, young Alice insisted that this one in particular "might be written out for her". In 1865, Alice's wish was ready to be presented to the world in printed form as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, complete with 42 of John Tenniel's illustrations. However, upon viewing the finished work, Tenniel flatly rejected the printing. Although Tenniel ostensibly took issue with its quality, many historians now suspect that this rather expensive objection might be attributed to his tumultuous working relationship with Carroll. Carroll ultimately acquiesced to Tenniel's objection and pulled the original printings from circulation, but was fortunately able to later sell the 1,952 sets to D. Appleton & Company, who published those sheets in this red cloth-bound first edition of the classic children's tale. Tenniel's illustrations display a simple yet wonderfully fantastic vision of Alice that has become embedded in our collective imagination. What began as Dodgson's small yarn has been spun into the golden, fanciful tale that established Carroll's place in the literary world and still enchants readers of all ages today. more info...

Friedrich Schiller's 1801 work Maria Stuart, set in 17th-century Britain, dramatizes the mounting tension between Mary, Queen of Scots, and her cousin, the Queen of England, Elizabeth I. As Mary persists as a threat to the Queen's throne, the pressure mounts for Elizabeth to sentence her to death and in a stroke of theatrical genius, Schiller gives us the impossible and fictionalizes a fiery meeting between the two women. Schiller's play is currently on Broadway as Mary Stuart in a Tony-nominated adaptation written by Peter Oswald and directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter star in the acclaimed production and, in the words of NYTimes theater critic Ben Brantley, "embody what may be the most storied rivalry in English history." Brantley further describes the play as having a "fierce timelessness in its depiction of political power games and the roles played - then as now - by charisma, duplicity, self-editing and what has come to be known as spin." more info...

Albrecht Durer (1471 - 1528) was not only a master Renaissance artist, but also a master theoretician. Toward the end of his life he produced three works on perspective, beginning with Unterweysung der Messung (1525), which would forever alter the landscape of human thought. For the first time in history, Durer explicated the marriage of science and art that was to become the foundation of Renaissance thought, consequently forming the basis of "accepted aesthetic dogma until the 19th century" (Carter, PMM, 54). The second of these works, originally published in German in 1528 as Vier Bucher von menschlicher Proportion, is presented here in its first translation into Latin, as De Symmetria Partium [1532] and De Varietate Figurarum [1534]. It was these Latin translations by Joachim Camerarius that allowed the filtration of Durer's influential ideas throughout the rest of the continent of Europe, to be discovered by Michelangelo and a host of other Renaissance thinkers and artists. These two volumes bound as one are complete except for the final blank in each volume. The plates for this edition were printed using the woodblocks from the original edition of 1528. The full early calf binding is stamped in blind with an armorial device featuring a pelican in her piety and a series of blocked decorative floral borders. A beautiful copy of one of the most influential works on Renaissance art and thought. more info...

Lauded by most as a witty and incisive account of Hollywood's narcissism, Lulu in Hollywood, a collection of essays by quintessential flapper and silent film star, Louise Brooks, casts often unflattering light on show business personalities such as Marion Davies, Humphrey Bogart, W.C. Fields, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, and Charlie Chaplin. Brooks astounded critics not only with her abilities as a writer, but also her keen insights into the movie industry. A trained dancer turned Ziegfeld show girl turned actress, she is perhaps most remembered for her unrelenting contempt for celebrity. In Lulu in Hollywood, Brooks justifies her attitude when she calls herself "an inhumane executioner of the bogus," in "cruel pursuit" of truth, while William Shawn describes her as "a brilliant observer of others." Published in 1982, years after Brooks had made her last film, the book garnered much attention, proof that her indelible persona continued to fascinate her many fans. more info...

Jacques Androuet du Cerceau was the most famous of an important family of French architects, engravers, and designers working throughout the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. This volume is the first he produced in conjunction with the royal family. In it he provides models and instructions for the designs of fifty town houses on estates of various sizes, depending on economic and social scale, while still attempting to preserve ties to the classical tradition. According to Millard, this must be seen as the first wholly French publication of French architecture in the new classical style, and the first attempt to systematize French building practice. The book was designed as both a pattern book for the use of masons and carpenters, as well as a illustrative look at design. An important early work from the founder of one of the most important families of French design. Printed in the same year by the same printer as the Latin edition. (Millard 6, p.11). more info...