Rare Book Monthly

Book Catalogue Reviews - April - 2009 Issue

Fine Books and Presses from McLean Arts and Books

McLean Arts and Books.

McLean Arts and Books.


By Michael Stillman

This month we have received our first catalogue from McLean Arts and Books of McLean, Virginia. It comes with the descriptive title, Artists' Books, Illustrated Books, Private Press, First Editions, Fine Literature. It is difficult to expand a description when the title succinctly says it all. So, we will just open the pages of this fine catalogue and give you a glimpse at the material inside.

We start with a book with an interesting connection to its subject matter. The book is Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail, but this edition was published in 1945, almost a century after the first. It is a copy containing the illustrations of famed American artist Thomas Hart Benton. Benton's illustrated editions were the most popular of this classic, but this is one of a limited edition of 1,000 copies signed by Benton. That Benton would illustrate this book is appropriate, for it was Benton's namesake great uncle, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who was more instrumental than anyone in pushing for America's westward expansion, the subject of Parkman's book. Priced at $200.

An American Tragedy was the breakthrough novel for Theodore Dreiser. He had written several books and had a substantial career as a newspaper writer, but he was well into his 40s when major success came. This book revolves around themes regularly visited by Dreiser - conflicts between love and money, pregnancy, and the case of the ambitious social climbing young man weighted down by an unwanted pregnancy with the wrong woman. Offered is a copy of the first edition from 1925, signed by Dreiser. $250.

In 1937, the nations of the world gathered for a world's fair in Paris. It was intended to celebrate modern technology, art, and the end of the Great Depression. In reality, the world was on the edge of its greatest calamity, with nothing but dark days ahead for Paris and most of the world. Two large pavilions, those of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, faced each other, a propaganda battle that in a few short years would become a brutal hot war. Offered is a copy of Paris 1937, by Jean Gabriel Dagagnes, published by the Municipalite Parisienne. It is a celebration of the fair, containing prose and poetry from French writers such as Paul Valery, and original etchings of Paris by Henri Matisse and others. This is copy #158 of a limited edition of 500. $5,000.

The Limited Editions Club undertook a major printing in 1939. Designed by the noted typographer Bruce Rogers, this is a 37-volume set of The Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies of William Shakespeare, plus two volumes of The Poems of William Shakespeare, and a one-volume Shakespeare Commentary. The artwork was contributed by many notable artists, including Arthur Rackham and Eric Gill. The plays were printed in a limited edition of 1,950 numbered copies, the poems in an edition of 1,500. The sets are signed by Rogers. $1,500.

Rockwell Kent was an American artist, writer and illustrator. While Kent was highly sought for his art, his politics rubbed some people the wrong way. Already a social activist, his politics veered sharply left from the 1930s until the end of his life in 1971 (he received the Lenin Peace Prize, a notable award in the old Soviet Union, in 1967). In the 1930s, he was placed on a list of "un-Americans" by the conservative-minded Daughters of the American Revolution. Kent responded with this question/statement: What is American? Offered is a 1936 reprint of this article that first appeared in New Masses, a place which McLean notes, the ladies of the DAR were unlikely to see it. $225.

McLean Arts and Books may be contacted at 703-848-0243 or mcleanab@msn.com. Their website is found at www.mcleanbooks.com.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Geek Week
    2-17 July | New York
    Sotheby’s, July 15: Buzz Aldrin's FLOWN Apollo 11 Crew-Signed NASA Manned Spacecraft Center Cover. $15,000 to $20,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 15: Lunar Surface Flown Mission Emblem Presented to Tom Stafford by John Young. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Albert Einstein. Typed Letter Signed ("A. Einstein."), to Ann Morrisett, Affirming a Pacifist's Right to Self-Defense, March 21, 1952. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Geek Week
    2-17 July | New York
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Operating and Maintenance Manual for the BINAC Binary Automatic Computer Built for Northrop Aircraft Corporation. Philadelphia, 1949. $30,000 to $50,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Steve Jobs Apple Computer Business Card, c. 1977. $5,000 to $8,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 15: Extensive Chronology of Spacecraft From Apollo to Skylab, Signed by a Member of Every Crewed Apollo Flight and the Commanders of Each Skylab Mission. $5,000 to $8,000.
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  • DOYLE
    Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
    July 23, 2025
    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
    DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
    DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
    DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800

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