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James M. Dourgarian, Bookman
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2341 Hickory Drive
Concord, CA 94520
925-349-4400
Established1980 - Member ABAA
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Click on the shopping basket by a item to create an email for us to contact you about ordering that item. You may also call 1 (925) 349-4400 to talk to Jim and place a phone order with Visa, Mastercard, or Discover. You may also arrange to pay by check. Click on the link below to email a general inquiry.
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James M.Dourgarian, Bookman, was established in 1980. We are members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA). Like all ABAA members, we answer to a higher authority and follow a higher standard of ethics that guarantees a successful transaction for all our customers.
We buy and sell old books, vintage books, collectible books, rare books, first edition books, and related ephemera. We maintain several specialties. Among them are American fiction first editions from c.1900 to the present. Within that general field, we have heavy emphasis in John Steinbeck and Steinbeckiana. Thus, we buy and sell Steinbeck primary first editions in dust jackets, signed/limited editions, his appearances in anthologies, his periodical appearances, books and periodicals about Steinbeck, film and theatre memorabilia, bibliographies, and miscellaneous items.
We also specialize in these same categories for these authors -- Jack London, Wallace Stegner, and Stephen King. Other specialties include Western Americana, books on California and the West, Photography books, books on Japan, China, and the Orient, and Armed Services Editions. The latter are vintage paperbacks issued to American GIs from 1943 to 1947. They are comprised of mysteries, Westerns, science fiction and fantasy, mainstream fiction, historical novels, science, poetry, adventure stories, and more.
Within our field of modern first editions, we also sell related film memorabilia Thus, we sell film posters, lobby card sets, pressbooks, stills, scripts, etc. for films made from the works of authors we carry such as John Steinbeck, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen King, Edward Abbey, Anne Rice, and many others.
| [John Steinbeck] Steinbeck, John. Cannery Row. n.p. (NY), n.p. (The Viking Press), n.d. (1944), first edition, wrappers. Softcover. Advance copy, an uncorrected galley proof, bound in plain, unprinted tannish wrappers, printed on rectos only, a very scarce advanced state of this minor, or not so minor, Steinbeck masterpiece whose themes of death and loneliness are masked by its surface layer of humor, all the more rare in that this is an Author Presentation Copy, Inscribed by Steinbeck to the best man at his second marriage, Howard O. Hunter, who was the Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissioner in the early 1940s under the FDR administration, Steinbeck and his second wife, Gwen Conger, were married March 29, 1943, just 11 days after receiving his final divorce decree from his first wife, Carol, Steinbeck has Inscribed the first preliminary as follows, "For Howard/who really/belongs in/Cannery Row/John Steinbeck/last night in New York 1944," this galley lacks all the preliminaries found in the 1945 published version such as half titles, title page, copyright page, dedication page, etc., although not specifically cited in Goldstone & Payne, there is a notation under G&P A22a that "a copy of the unrevised galley proofs is in the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas," see Morrow 172 (that copy with a yellow label on front giving publication date and price that is not on this copy--the Morrow copy was not signed or inscribed), now housed in a beautiful custom clamshell case with leather spine, laid in loosely is a letter of provenance from Ellen Leonard who was given this proof by Hunter's wife, Edna. This was bound for in-house use by Viking and not for sale, thus it was never meant to be in great condition even when new, spine ends are chipped, there is offsetting from printed pages onto the previous verso, some pages are becoming dis-bound. JD 29396 |  $35,000.00 |
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