259
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SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
Frankenstein or, the Modern
Prometheus.
Engraved frontispiece and title-page vignette. 8vo, original brown cloth
rebacked retaining backstrip, faded, overall light spotting, corners bumped, some color
restoration; hinges and endpapers reinforced from rebacking, contemporary owner’s inked
signature from 1846 on front pastedown, frontispiece and vignette with some period hand-
coloring (more so to vignette), scattered light foxing.
London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831
[3,000/4,000]
FIRST ONE
-
VOLUME EDITION
,
FIRST ILLUSTRATED
,
AND FIRST EDITION TO CREDIT
MARY SHELLEY AS AUTHOR
.
Part of Bentley’s Standard Novels Series, other issues from the
same year were bound with one or more stories by the authors. Shelley “revised [and] cor-
rected” the text for publication by Bentley and, at the request of the publishers, she wrote an
Introduction, dated October 15th, 1831. In it, she states that she made a few simple style
alterations, but nothing affecting the tale, rather “mere adjuncts to the story, leaving the core and
substance of it untouched” (Introduction, p xii). Lyles B4a; Sadleir 3734a; Wolff 6280a.
258
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SHAPIRO, JULIAN [SANFORD, JOHN.]
The Water Wheel.
8vo, publisher’s
green cloth, spine gilt-lettered, slight lean, spine with uniform light fading, but overall a
very nice copy.
[Ithaca]: Dragon Press, Duffield and Green, (1933)
[600/900]
FIRST EDITION
,
PRESENTATION COPY
.
The inscription on the front free endpaper reads: “For
Connie & Tom / Sincerely / Julian L. Shapiro / ‘Johnny’ / 2.13.38.” Shapiro’s first novel
and the only one to bear his real name. Henceforth all his books would be published under the
name John Sanford. In the 1950s his career as a Hollywood screenwriter was thwarted when
he was among those blacklisted after he refused to testify in the McCarthy-led HUAC hear-
ings. A friend of Nathanael West, Shapiro/Sanford went on to write more than 20 novels, and
is now considered to be one of the most unjustly neglected figures of post-war American letters.
259
