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Welcome to Caliban Book Shop, Western Pennsylvania's premier source for quality used and rare books. We buy, sell, and appraise books, autographs, photographs, printed material, and original art. Caliban Book Shop is one of the last open bookstores in the city of Pittsburgh, so the shop is stocked with a great selection of paperback fiction, poetry, philosophy, etc., for general readers, students, and the intellectually curious. So, stomp on your K**dle and visit our shop to indulge in the tangible and tactile pleasures of real books.

Please note that books catalogued here on our website are kept in our warehouse, not in our Oakland storefront. If you are interested in one of our online listings, please call (412-242-9040) or e-mail (info@calibanbooks.com) , and if you are local, we can certainly bring items of interest to the shop in Oakland.

VISIT THE SHOP

410 S. Craig St., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 681-9111

HOURS (Caliban Book Shop and Desolation Row)

Monday-Saturday 11a-5:30p*
Sunday 1p-5:30p

*open most Thursdays until 8p

Featured Items

1880, First Edition. 109 pp. With 106 color plates and captions, printed on rectos only. Hardcover, mustard cloth, oblong 8vo. Gilt title and green, red and silver illustration on front board. Very Good copy: Moderate soil and edgewear to the covers. Endpapers lightly foxed. There is a tidemark from dampstaining visible on the bottom left corner of the contents, however, the plates and text are unaffected by the staining. Rear fly leaf creased, and its top corner is clipped. Very cool, clean illustrations showing pool shots. Rare. Book comes in a mylar sleeve.

Scientific Billiards: Garnier's Practice Shots, with Hints to Amateurs
Garnier, Albert
New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1880. 1880, First Edition. 109 pp. With 106 color plates and captions, printed on rectos only. Hardcover, mustard cloth, oblong 8vo... more
Price: $225.00

c. 1895. Complete set in 5 volumes. This set was limited to only 25 numbered and registered copies, this one being #5. Hardcover, small 8vos., uniformly bound in handsome green morocco with gilt title and floral inlays in red and pale yellow. Red silk endpapers, gilt dentelles, and leather doublures with gilt crown emblem. There is a small, neat bookplate of a former owner on the bottom margin of the limitation page of each volume. Otherwise, these are absolutely Fine copies, each housed in a green leather slipcase with velvet interior that shows minor scuffing. Illustrated throughout with hand-colored plates, and at least one watercolor illustration per book. Contents include: The Life of Spenser, The Shepheards Calender, The Faerie Queene, Complaints, and other miscellaneous works, poems, sonnets, hymns and a glossary. 5 volumes.

Edmund Spenser, The Crown Edition of the British Poets, complete in 5 volumes, one of only 25 sets
Spenser, Edmund
London: British Literary Society, c. 1895. c. 1895. Complete set in 5 volumes. This set was limited to only 25 numbered and registered copies, this one.. more
Price: $2,000.00

5 folio sheets (15.2 x 10.7 inches), all handwritten, with 3 TLS and a signed printed broadside, by Harry Hood Byrd, the folio sheets bearing signatures and sentiments to Edward Charity Martin (1879-1967), a politician from Waynesburg, PA, who was elected Governor of PA in 1943 and served until 1946 when he was elected to the Senate as a Republican and served there till 1958 when he retired; he wasa a seasoned collector of autographs and assembled a great collection which was auctioned off over a period of years in Western Pennsylvania small auction houses. Titled in his hand, The United States Senate, 82nd Congress, Second Session, June 1952" it features the signatures of JOHN F. KENNEDY (unfortunately the pen was running out of ink, so Kennedy's signature is not the boldest), LYNDON JOHNSON, RICHARD NIXON; the list begins: Alben W. Barkley, Kenneth McKellar, Ernest W. McFarland, Styles Bridges, [unreadable], Henry Dworshak, Francis Case, Everett Dirksen, John Marshall Butler, Wallace Bennett, Robert Taft, Arthur U. Watkins, Milton R.Young, Allen J. Ellender, James E. Murray, Herbert H. Lehman, William Benton, Spessard L. Holland, James O. Eastland, Lester C. Hunt, Clyde R. Hoey, Howard Alexander Smith (?), Walter F. George, John C. Stennis, Leverett Saltonstall, Owen Brewster, Alexander Wiley, Hebert R. O'Conor, Guy Cordon, Guy M. Gillette, Joseph C. O'Mahoney, Olin D. Johnston, Russell B. Long, Karl E. Mundt, Zales N. Ecton, A. Willis Robertson, [unreadable], Harry Hood Byrd, Carl Hayden, Tom Connally, Joe McCarthy, Warren Magnuson, Thomas C. Hennings Jr., Harley M. Kilgore, Margaret Chase Smith, Richard B. Russell, Estes Kefauver, William Langer, Dennis Chavez, Frank Carlson, Robert Kerr, Brien McMahon, Hugh Butler, Herman Welker, Bourke B. Hickenlooper, Edward John Thye, Harry P. Cain, Homer Ferguson, George Aiken, HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, J. W. Fulbright, Earle Clements, John O. Pastore, Thomas R. Underwood, J. Allen Frear Jr., Willis Smith, Pat McCarran, James P. Kem, H. Alexander Smith, John W. Bricker, Andrew F. Schoeppel, Irving Ives, Wayne Morse, George W. Malone, RICHARD NIXON ("Dick Nixon, U.S.S. California, June 26, 1952, to a fine friend and a great legislator"), John McClellan, Theodore F. Green, Almer Monroney, George Smathers, Paul Douglas, Burnet R. Maybank, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, William E. Jenner, Homer E. Capehart, John Sparkman, Blair Moody, Edwin Johnson, Ralph Flanders, John J. Williams, Fred A. Seaton, J. Lister Hill ..... Sheet titled U. S. SENATE 1953: Frderick G. Payne, Dwight Griswold, ALBERT GORE, Prescott bush, John Herman Cooper, William A. Purtell, Henry Jackman, Mike Mansfield, Stuart Symington, Frank Barrett, Thomas H. Kuchel, BARRY GOLDWATER, Charles E. Potter, JOHN F. KENNEDY (faded signature, with the following note by JFK: Massachusetts - with my highest regards to Senator Martin, March 1953), Alton A. Lennon, Robert W. Upton [Reverse side of this sheet has signatures from 1954-57]: Eva Bowring, Sam Ervin, Edward D. Crippa, Samuel W. Reynolds, Ernest Brown, Hazel H. Abel, Norris Cotton, Charles E. Daniel, Roman L. Hruska, Gordon Allott, Alan Bible, W. Kerr Scott, STROM THURMOND, Patrick V. McNamara, Richard L. Neuberger, Thomas E. Martin, George H. Bender, Carl T. Curtis, Clifford P. Case, William R. Laird IIII, Thomas A. Wofford, Robert Humphreys, Frank Lausche, Herman Talmadge, William A. Blakley, Frank Church. FINAL SHEET OF SIGNATURES FROM 1957-1958: Thruston B. Morton, [unreadable], Chapman Revercomb, Joseph S. Clark, John Sherman Cooper, John A. Carroll, Ralph Yarborough, William Proxmire, John D. Hoblitzell Jr., B. Everett Jordan, also 3 TLS (with some glue marks to left sides) by Clinton Anderson, Charles W. Tobey, and Henry Cabot Lodge; and a broadside signed by Harry Hood Byrd "The Test of My Vote in the Senate..." (1951) also with glue marks to left side.

Signatures of all the United States Senators, 1952 - 1953, plus additional senatorial signatures to 1958; 82nd-85th congress
Kennedy, John F., Lyndon Baines Johnson, Joseph McCarthy, Hubert H. Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Strom Thurmond, et al. (Edward Martin estate)
5 folio sheets (15.2 x 10.7 inches), all handwritten, with 3 TLS and a signed printed broadside, by Harry Hood.. more
Price: $3,500.00

1945, First Edition in book form, First Printing. 124 pp. Hardcover, brick cloth. Illustrated with b&w photos from the production. Fine copy. NO dust jacket. Clean and unmarked contents. Bookplate of the former owner, actor Hume Cronyn, on the fly leaf. Cronyn's wife, Jessica Tandy, starred as the heroine in the original Broadway production of Williams' other masterpiece, "A Streetcar Named Desire." A scarce book, with a wonderful association.

The Glass Menagerie
Williams, Tennessee (Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy)
New York: Random House, 1945. 1945, First Edition in book form, First Printing. 124 pp. Hardcover, brick cloth. Illustrated with b&w photos from the production... more
Price: $250.00

First edition, 1890. Large thick quarto, gray cloth hardcover with gilt designs and pictorial front cover, gilt title at spine, 472 pp., heavily illustrated, clean unmarked text, about a Very Good copy, general soiling or discoloration to some pages of the text, some pages of the text with light creasing or wear to the page-edges, light soiling to the covers, some rubbing and wear to the covers including some scuffing to the front cover and minor loss to the cloth at the spine-ends. Text in German. A rare book. Digital images available upon request.

Im Wandel der Jahrtausende; Eine Weltgeschichte in Wort und Bild; Herausgegben von Albrecht Wirth; Mit 461 Abbildungen im Text und 49 Kunstbeilagen
Wirth, Albrecht
Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1890. First edition, 1890. Large thick quarto, gray cloth hardcover with gilt designs and pictorial front cover, gilt title at spine,.. more
Price: $300.00

No date, ca. 1895-1900. Number 2 of 5 copies. 20 volumes plus two bound folio volumes of the plates printed on Whatman paper and finished off in watercolor. Each of the volumes is in full morocco gilt extra in various colors, some with inlays to bindings and some with elaborate inner doublures that include pictorial and decorative inlays, and each has an original fore-edge painting, contents printed on velin with plates in 4 states: bistre, colored, b/w, Chine. Each is housed in a full morocco slipcase. A magnificent set that is as sumptuous a production as can be imagined, all in great condition. The two large folios of color plates include impressions of the plates in watercolors and with a number of original watercolors as well, totalling 201 plates. The Realist titles are: Flaubert's Madame Bovary (2 volumes), Daudet's Sapho, Alexandre Dumas Fils' The Lady of the Camellias, Goncourt's Germinie Lacerteux, Halevy's The Cardinal Family, Zola's Page of Love (2 volumes), George Sand's The Devil's Pool, Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin (2 volumes). The Romantics titles are: De Musset's The Confessions of a Child of the Century, Claretie's His Excellency the Minister, De Lamartine's Raphael, de Bernard's Gerfaut (2 volumes, bound with Gautier's Militona), Musset's Nouvelles, Murger's Bohemian Life, Feuillet's Monsieur de Camors, and Jean Aicard's King of Camargue. A brilliant set not likely to come up on the market in the forseeable future.

Chefs-d'oeuvres du roman contemporain, 20 volumes plus 2 suites of plates, Edition Magnifique: Realists and Romantics: Madame Bovary, Bohemian Life, Sappho, Lady of the Camellias, Devil's Pool, Mme de Maupin, Gerfaut, etc.
Flaubert, Gustave; Alphonse Daudet, Alexandre Dumas Fils, Edmond and Jules Goncourt, Ludovic Halevy, Emile Zola, George Sand, Theophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Alphonse de Lamartine, Charles de Bernard, Octave Feuillet, Jean Aicard
Philadelphia: George Barrie, 1900. No date, ca. 1895-1900. Number 2 of 5 copies. 20 volumes plus two bound folio volumes of the plates printed.. more
Price: $22,500.00

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