London, England: Paladin Grafton Books, 1986. First UK Edition. Softcover. The first British edition of the hallucinatory novel by Kathy Acker, the late William S. Burroughs-influenced experimental writer. A softcover original issued the same year (1986) & in similar trade format as the first Grove Press/Evergreen US edition. Both editions also have the same bold front cover illustration by Catherine Denvir. "If Miller and Burroughs didn't curl your hair, Acker's..... More

Elmwood Park, IL: The Dalkey Archive Press, 1989. First Printing. Softcover. This fall 1989 number of the venerable literary journal is partly dedicated to articles by & about Kathy Acker, the late experimental writer often cited as a literary post-punk progeny of William S. Burroughs among other influences. Includes the transcript of a conversation between Acker & Ellen G. Friedman, as well as articles by Acker herself, Naomi Jacobs, Robert..... More

New York, NY: E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1976. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." (Chapter 1, first sentence, pg. 3) Thus famously begins the novel about the manners & foibles of England's landed gentry during the late 18th-early 19th century by Jane Austen (1775-1817), first published in 1813..... More

Paris, France: L'Herne, 1973. First Printing. Softcover. An early French-language study of the life & work of Jack Kerouac by Victor-Levy Beaulieu, the Quebecois novelist, playwright & biographer. A first printing (dated October 26, 1973 on colophon page) of a softcover original in sewn binding, part of the publisher's Les Livres Noirs series. Text in French. A collectible Kerouac rarity with the perspective of an author who shared his subject's..... More

New York, NY: Situations, 1998. First Separate Edition. Stapled Wrappers. The title work along with eleven other short prose-poem stories by Ted Berrigan (1934-1983), the great New York School poet's-poet & a canonical category onto himself. A note preceding this collection states that it first "...appeared in Angel Hair #4, Winter 1967/68, thanks to editors Lewis Warsh and Anne Waldman, and has not been published since..." This first separate publication..... More

Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1981. Limited First Edition. Hardcover. Signed by Paul Bowles. "He arrived in Tangier at noon and went straight to the house. In the rain the outer courtyard was uninviting. Several dead banana plants had fallen over and been left to rot on the tile floor. Even as old Amina, seeing him from the kitchen doorway, waddled out into the rain to greet him, he..... More

New York, NY: Targ Editions, 1979. Limited First Edition. Hardcover. One of 350 copies signed by Richard Brautigan. A late work by counterculture-cult author Richard Brautigan (1935-1984), direct successor/progeny of the Beat Generation & subject of an extensive recent biography by William Hjortsberg. As stated by the author, "this small collection of short stories was written in Tokyo and Montana between 1977 and 1978. The stories are positioned so as..... More

New York, NY: Herodias, Inc., 2000. First edition thus. Softcover. First published in 1952 in an expurgated edition, this is the first Herodias Classics Edition, with the "unrepentant, unexpurgated" text of later printings of this underground novel, which "brought a French existentialist sensibility to (the) American malaise" as described by Steven Moore in his forward to this edition. Roughly concurrent with the Beat & other writings that took the lid..... More

New York, NY: Viking Press; Grove Press, 1973; 2009. First Edition(s). (1) (Maynard & Miles, A23, pp. 83-84). In one of the earliest book-length critical studies of WSB’s work, the lauded “William Burroughs: the Algebra of Need,” Eric Mottram writes: “‘Exterminator!’ is a call for help, a cry of surprise, a shout of recognition, and a demand for the agent and his god to be exposed. Its formal virtuosity is..... More

New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981. First Edition. Hardcover. (Shoaf 53a., pg. 49). In his article Burroughs' Theatre of Illusion: Cities of the Red Night, in the Spring 1984 issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Steven Shapiro describes this work as WSB's "....most densely overdetermined work of fiction." With great insight, and fitting density, he writes that "Burroughs' discourse encompasses contradictory exigencies of obsession and freedom, replication..... More

New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1979 (1973). First Softcover Edition Thus. Softcover. "A distant cry echoes down cobblestone streets through all the grey basements up the outside stairs to a windy blue sky. "Exterminator!" "(pg. 8) In the pioneering study of WSB's work, "William Burroughs: The Algebra of need (expanded edition, 1977)," Eric Mottram writes: "Exterminator! is a call for help, a cry of surprise, a shout of recognition, and..... More

New York, NY: Viking Penguin Inc., 1989. First Edition. Hardcover. Beginning this essential compendium of fragmentary treasures subsequently assembled is an illuminating, informative essay by James Grauerholz, paramount authority on the life & work of William S. Burroughs. Grauerholz relates the events & circumstances surrounding the creation of the work; delineating with unrivaled accuracy the origin of the source material that became "Interzone" & its rescue from the Tangier "word..... More

William S. Burroughs, 2003. Milan, Italy: Adelphi Edizione, 2003. First Italian Edition Thus. Softcover. This Italian translation of The Soft Machine is the first edition issued by this publisher, & is therefore a first edition thus. First published by Olympia Press in Paris in 1961, TSM is another high cut-up production in the wake of Naked Lunch, influenced by Brion Gysin's observation that "writing is fifty years behind painting" in..... More