Biblioctopus

Biblioctopus We specialize in the classics of fiction and other rare books.

Our latest E-List features manuscript material and first editions spanning four centuries. Highlights include a collecti...
02/10/2026

Our latest E-List features manuscript material and first editions spanning four centuries. Highlights include a collection of nineteen Charles Olson works with inscribed copies and “Projective Verse”; Edna St. Vincent Millay’s signed holograph “Prayer to Persephone”; nine Sonia Sanchez works comprising her first three poetry collections and major Black Arts Movement anthologies; Chapman’s 1616 complete Homer translation; T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land first edition in original flexible binding; an inscribed copy of Hart Crane’s White Buildings. Also included: working lyrics manuscripts by Joey Ramone and Dave Guard, Beat poetry collections and proofs, and William Blake’s illustrations for Robert Blair’s The Grave.

Follow the link in our bio to view!

Slide 1: Sonia Sanchez collection Slide 2: The first complete Homer in English Slide 3: Charles Olson collection Slide 4: Edna St. Vincent Millay manuscript poem Slide 5: First edition of The Waste Land

From our e-list, knowledge and discovery, part 1:Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War CeremonialAn extraordi...
09/05/2025

From our e-list, knowledge and discovery, part 1:

Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial

An extraordinary 1943 collaboration between anthropologist Maud Oakes and revered Navajo medicine man Jeff King, preserving sacred sand paintings and ceremonial knowledge through 18 silkscreen prints documenting the Warrior Twins mythology - created to protect Navajo soldiers heading to WWII.

**100% of profits from this book’s sale go to the Navajo Health Foundation at Sage Memorial Hospital, supporting life-saving healthcare for thousands of Navajo people who must travel over 50 miles for basic medical care.**

This sacred work emerges from ongoing colonial violence demanding urgent acknowledgment. Spanish slave raids from 1540 captured thousands of Navajo women and children. The 1864 Long Walk forced 10,000 Navajo at gunpoint to march 250-450 miles to Bosque Redondo concentration camp, where 3,500 died from starvation and disease.
WWII Navajo Code Talkers were forced to weaponize the very language boarding schools tried to erase. Today: 38% live in poverty, 30-40% lack running water, 76.7% face food insecurity - America’s highest rate. 500+ abandoned uranium mines contaminate water, causing elevated cancer rates. Median income: $28,917 vs national $80,610. Unemployment approaches 70%.

Federal treaty obligations have been systematically violated for 150+ years. Massive investment in infrastructure, healthcare, and economic development isn’t just warranted - it’s morally imperative to address this national disgrace.

📚 E-LIST: SUMMER 2025, CONDITION 📚Available to view now by following the link in our profile. A list of mainstream title...
07/10/2025

📚 E-LIST: SUMMER 2025, CONDITION 📚

Available to view now by following the link in our profile.

A list of mainstream titles in exceptional condition.

From James Baldwin’s watershed “Go Tell It on the Mountain” (fine in fine dustjacket, as sharp as the shards of Narsil) to William S. Burroughs’ complete Paris Trilogy in original wrappers fresher than your first taste of ice-cream. Each book represents the kind of condition that makes collectors stop in their tracks.

Highlights include: Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” first English edition (the book everybody seeks but gives up on in the fatigue of failed pursuit), Charlotte’s Web first printing (inside every ruined dust jacket is a fine book wondering, what the hell happened? This one never had to wonder), and Tennessee Williams’ “Streetcar Named Desire” in publisher’s pink boards with matching dustjacket.

Whether it’s Hawthorne’s “Wonder Book” in the rare publisher’s deluxe gift binding, Huxley’s signed “Brave New World,” or Thomas Pynchon’s complete collection spanning 68 volumes, these are the copies that define what “fine” really means in the rare book world.

The kind of condition that guarantees legs - and few books do.

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A list of 16 new arrivals is available to view now by following the link in our bio. These items capture the essence of ...
04/28/2025

A list of 16 new arrivals is available to view now by following the link in our bio. These items capture the essence of our upcoming printed catalog, but they will not be included in it.

This will be our first printed catalog in over a year, so if you’re not sure about your status on our mailing list, please subscribe using the link in our bio or send us an email.

SALE: Our final list of 2024 contains 35 previously cataloged items that have been discounted 20-75%. Check out the link...
12/14/2024

SALE: Our final list of 2024 contains 35 previously cataloged items that have been discounted 20-75%. Check out the link in our bio. Some great stuff at unmatched prices.

Check the link in our bio for our Holiday E-List.Some of the gift worthy items are:A signed Keith Haring calendar First ...
12/03/2024

Check the link in our bio for our Holiday E-List.

Some of the gift worthy items are:

A signed Keith Haring calendar

First edition in English of Pinocchio

A complete set of the 66 handbills by David Singer for the Filmore West concerts

A pre-Colombian Chancay painted textile

An small archive of marketing related ephemera

Our most recent e list: the hero is a woman, with 21 items in which a woman is crucially important as the hero of the st...
08/22/2024

Our most recent e list: the hero is a woman, with 21 items in which a woman is crucially important as the hero of the story, the central subject, the creator, or some combination thereof.

The slides above are:
1 and 2) A Photographic Archive of Women with Musical Instruments containing over 300 photos from c1850-1930 with women hold or playing musical instruments.
3) a near fine and unrestored copy or CS Lewis’s “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”
4) an early, unpublished handwritten manuscript of a short story by Simone de Beauvoir

Link here or in our bio:
http://eepurl.com/iULF0I

To sign up to receive notifications of future e lists and Carolyn’s please girlie this link or the one in our bio:
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The scholarly 1876 William Morris translation of, The Aeneids of Virgil. Full navy blue morocco, inlaid and encrusted wi...
08/15/2024

The scholarly 1876 William Morris translation of, The Aeneids of Virgil.

Full navy blue morocco, inlaid and encrusted with gilt by Sangorski & Sutcliffe (signed on rear doublure), front cover with wide frame featuring very many inlaid green and brown morocco acorns, the frame enclosing a recessed central panel with densely scrolling gilt stems and leaves as well as blooms of violet and orange morocco and, at center, a monogram “WM” within a brown morocco collar, the four corners of the cover with square inlays of beige morocco decorated in gilt and bearing the letters “Æ, T, L, and D” (the first initials of 4 key characters). The back cover with a similar broad frame (but featuring a gilt-decorated column of blue foliage), a similar recessed panel (but with different flowers and with the letter “V” at the center inside a powder blue morocco collar), and corner squares of inlaid brown morocco decorated with classical motifs (helmet, shield, etc.), raised bands, spine in compartments decorated like the recessed panels (but with rust colored flowers); doubloures of russet morocco enclosed by dark blue turn–ins, the latter with gilt quotations, the former with 11 rows of inlaid blue flowers and gilt leaves, a set of batiked leather flyleaves followed by anpther set in silk, gilt and intricately gauffered edges featuring many small flowers as well as painted leaves.

“the Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900). 1st edition, 1st printing, and of course it’s the fabled 1st binding (thus the 1st ...
07/24/2024

“the Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900). 1st edition, 1st printing, and of course it’s the fabled 1st binding (thus the 1st issue), a phenomenal, unsung rarity in this state.

The bibliography is complicated and convoluted. The text, plates, title page and binding were all manufactured separately (and not in equal numbers), and then assembled as needed. The earliest text has plentiful printing points that also appear in many reprinted copies, some of them comparatively late. The1st state plates sometimes seen in copies with other elements reprinted. The back of the title page is blank in the 1st edition, but even this state (lacking a copyright) was probably sold into 1901. The key point, and the only one that’s definitive (and rare), is the color of the publisher’s imprint at the base of the spine, it should be green, as it is here (not red).

Patience is key in collecting modern firsts. But sometimes when it rains it pours. Our fine signed advanced copy of “Go ...
07/16/2024

Patience is key in collecting modern firsts. But sometimes when it rains it pours. Our fine signed advanced copy of “Go Tell it on the Mountain” (from last week) is off with a new owner, but this one arrives to take its place. While not signed, it is a fine copy of the first trade edition. And fine copies of this book in 2024 are 50x rarer than very good copies at about 3 times the price. The inefficiencies of collecting modern first editions are advantageous to those who are patient enough to only buy that finest copies possible.

Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man (1952). Not quite dead fine but as close as we’ve seen in a decade. Midcentury black and ot...
07/11/2024

Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man (1952). Not quite dead fine but as close as we’ve seen in a decade. Midcentury black and other dark colored dust jackets are so, so difficult. A masterpiece of modern American literature.

The subject is “seeing” and “not seeing” centered on a man whose trials with racial prejudice lead him to believe he is invisible. He lives in a dark, New York basement (forced there during a race–riot) which he has wired with 1,369 stolen light bulbs. Always alone, he comes to see and understand himself in the symbolic light of his precious bulbs. A dense book reading bitter lessons from the past, but not quite prematurely disappointed in the future.

When you’re intending to buy a book in a black jacket, take it off the book and hold it up to the light to look for Sharpie bleed-through on the back, also look at the extremities of the jacket in different lights at different angles for black ink or pencil that doesn’t bleed through.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that 99 out of 100 midcentury black jackets that look too good to be true, are too good to be true.

Einstein’s “Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie” (1916) or his theory of relativity in its original form. ...
07/11/2024

Einstein’s “Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie” (1916) or his theory of relativity in its original form. Rare. PMM 408. The true first of one of the most important and culturally significant papers in the history of Physics. E=mc2

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