Books

New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1911. First American Edition. Near Fine/Near Fine. First American edition in one of only a handful of known surviving dust jackets for this edition. Bound in publisher's brick red cloth decorated in blind and stamped in white. Near Fine with light bruising to spine ends and former owner name and date written to the front free endpaper. In a Near Fine dust jacket with several edge-tears, light wear and light soiling. A fantastic example of this illusive jacket. French artist Andre Castaigne painted five watercolors for this work, utilized as color plates in this edition. As jacketed copies have only been recently been discovered— the first at auction in 2015— it is becoming clear that Bobbs-Merrill used each illustration for a color dust jacket design. This was an unusual display of largesse and graphic design savviness at a time when jackets were generally drab reproductions of the book’s boards and considered disposable. A remarkable…

The Phantom of the Opera, published serially in Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910, and in volume form in late March 1910, is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It tells the story of a mysterious masked man living in the catacombs of the Paris Opera House and his obsessive love for the beautiful Christine Daaé.