Now one of the scarcest and most desirable books in modern children’s literature, Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are faced many opponents and was banned in several libraries upon publication in 1963. Their author-illustrator collaboration, facilitated by Harper & Row publisher and editor-in-chief of juvenile books Ursula Nordstrom, became something of a cultural phenomenon, spawning a host of imitators of their “unruly” and “rebellious” child protagonists. Just a little glow to begin with, then by infinite gradations a consuming fire.” Best known for his immensely popular illustrated children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak’s career was launched in 1952 with the publication of Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is to Dig. Then occurs the first little burning exaltation. But you have it and when you arrive home with it you creep off to some secluded room and examine it. You cannot explain how or why you got it, or what you paid for it. You come out of a bookshop carrying a first edition of something or other. Currie wrote from personal experience of the effect of bibliomania on the collector in his memoir Fishers of Books (1931), “The first symptom of bibliomania manifests itself by producing a form of somnambulism. American journalist, author, and book collector Barton Currie contributed hundreds of articles and stories for publications such as New York Evening World, New York Evening Sun, Harper’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping in the early part of the 20th century. From the library of Barton Currie with his bookplate to the pastedown and later Maurice Sendak, although not marked. Octavo, three volumes, original publisher’s cloth with gilt titles to the spine, half-titles, 2 pages of advertisements at rear of vols. $12,500.00 Item Number: 135364įirst edition in book form of one of James’s “three formidable novels” published in the 1880s along with The Bostonians and The Tragic Muse.

The Princess Casamassima by Henry James