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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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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.
| [Modern Literature] Thomson, Sir Basil. Typed Letters Signed. Cotes du Nord, Sir Basil Thomson, 1933-1936, first edition. This is a small archive of letters between Malcolm Johnson, an editor and executive with Doubleday, Doran, and Thomson, British colonial administrator to Fiji and Tonga, an author who wrote about these places, and a prison governor who eventually became head of the Criminal Investigations Department at the New Scotland Yard, the first letter is dated September 4, 1934 from Thomson to Johnson, he thanks him for the second edition of "P. C. Richardson's First Case" and reports that he is one-third through with its sequel, he adds, "What you tell me about police projects in America interests/me keenly. I am all in favor with Mr. Mulrooney's proposal to/introduce flogging as a deterrent because I know how it has worked/as a deterrent to highway robbery over here, but I am not in favour/of recurrent floggings. I have had to witness floggings in/British Convict Prisons and I can assure you that they are not/a pretty sight," adding, "If a reporter for one of your sensational newspapers/contrived to be present and wrote it up, there would be a wave/of horror and pity among the ladies of the Country Clubs throughout/the country and public sympathy would be transferred to the wrong/party," he continues his response about other police matters being considered in the United States, the letter has a total of 50 lines, signed in full, together with a carbon of a typed letter from Johnson to Thomson dated September 29, 1933 reporting that the plan for a national police force has fallen away, but that a greatly strengthened finger printing bureau in Washington has remained, he also reports that Thomson's The Kidnapper wouldn't work for the American reading public "because we like our crime fairly unadulterated and bloody," Thomson writes to Johnson again in a typed letter signed, dated February 5, 1934, saying that he considered and then rejected the idea of writing a book about Scotland Yard, he does report that "I am not far from finishing a third Richardson (as an inspector)/with a better plot than the others, I think in which R works alone," the letter is comprised of 63 lines, he writes again about the difference between the American prison system and the British, to wit, "The real/defect in your system seems to be in the prisons - not the police./We had the same trouble in England until we nationalized the/prisons under a central Board in 1977 and had uniformed rules and/monthly inspection, a separate cell for each prisoner, and regular/searching of cells and the persons of prisoners, which is done in/the bath-house when they take their weekly bath," Thomson writes to Johnson again in a typed letter signed dated April 2, 1934, it appears that Johnson had offered an advance on a book about Scotland Yard, Thomson agrees to the project, but he declines the advance until he delivers the manuscript, he gives some information about how Scotland Yard is set up and responsibilities are divided, he also informs Johnson of the situation on crime in France, he reports that "democracy has sunk in France. Some sort of revolution is inev-/itable in the near future I feel sure. One can only pin one's hope/on the astonishing power of recuperation of the French," Johnson responds in his carbon of a letter dated April 14, 1934 that 'The History of Scotland Yard,' the project they had planned, would "be the definitive work on the subject," together with another letter to Johnson from Thomson, dated January 27, 1936, he writes in part, "There are one or two points which you may like to put/right if there is time. It was Old Scotland Yard that was/on the site of the palace of the kings of Scotland: New Scotland/Yard was built of granite quarried by the convicts at Dartmoor/on the site of what was intended to be the Victorian Opera/House to replace Covent Garden". Very good. JD 31418 |  $500.00 |
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