Honey & Wax Booksellers

Honey & Wax Booksellers Use books as bees use flowers. Rare books in Brooklyn. Here now. By appointment and online.

Hand-numbered broadside, one of 100 copies, reproducing the sign-up sheet for readers of Frank Stanford’s The Battlefiel...
08/20/2026

Hand-numbered broadside, one of 100 copies, reproducing the sign-up sheet for readers of Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, at Brown University on April 20, 1990. The all-night marathon reading began at 7:00 in the evening and concluded at 10:30 the following morning. Participants included Stanford’s partner in the last years of his life, poet C.D. Wright, and novelist Michael Ondaatje. Posthumously published in 1978, Stanford’s sprawling epic would become a touchstone for generations of American poets: “I can dream about a dead man’s letter and the five dollar bill in his shoe / I can dream about the ship of blind horsemen / that puts out in your sleep that is rigged by spiders / that has a plank everyone must walk.” This and more in our August poetry list (link in bio).

Extra Fishtown shoutout to the beautiful Harrietts Bookshop, where you can pick up a first edition of Dana A. Williams’s...
08/15/2026

Extra Fishtown shoutout to the beautiful Harrietts Bookshop, where you can pick up a first edition of Dana A. Williams’s history of Toni Morrison’s editorial career at Random House (Toni at Random) with a fancy stamp! Powerful reference library upgrade.

First edition of A Sussex Alphabet (1939), Eleanor Farjeon’s fine press ABC, illustrated with color linocuts by Sheila T...
08/15/2026

First edition of A Sussex Alphabet (1939), Eleanor Farjeon’s fine press ABC, illustrated with color linocuts by Sheila Thompson. Beginning with “Arundel” for the letter A, Farjeon contributes twenty-six short poems on the places, people, and features of her beloved English countryside: “Sussex Weald is flood and field, / Sussex Weald is wood and water, / I’ll hew and drain the Sussex Weald, / And till it for my son and daughter.” The printing reflects the artistic ideals of the Pear Tree Press and its founder James Guthrie, a printmaker inspired by William Blake and William Morris.

Dog days of summer greatly improved by a visit with Drew at Lot 49 Books — ideal mix of old & new books, vintage vinyl, ...
08/15/2026

Dog days of summer greatly improved by a visit with Drew at Lot 49 Books — ideal mix of old & new books, vintage vinyl, enviable houseplants! Go to Fishtown, treat yourself.

Signed first edition of Jack the Giant-Killer (1973), a near-miniature accordion-style booklet by Edward Gorey: “Is Jack...
08/14/2026

Signed first edition of Jack the Giant-Killer (1973), a near-miniature accordion-style booklet by Edward Gorey: “Is Jack afraid? / No. Not a bit. / He simply stands there, / Near the Pit. / The Giant will / Fall into it / if he takes one more step!” Published as Volume 4 of Scholastic Magazine’s collectible series of Lucky Mini-books, distributed through the Scholastic Book Club during the 1970s, this is a notably ephemeral Gorey title, uncommon signed.

Rampant Lions edition of John Milton’s Areopagitica, his 1644 essay on the freedom of the press, one of 500 copies. Subt...
08/10/2026

Rampant Lions edition of John Milton’s Areopagitica, his 1644 essay on the freedom of the press, one of 500 copies. Subtitled “A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England,” Areopagitica is Milton’s forceful protest against Parliament’s re-establishment of press censorship during the English Civil War: “Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

Picking up Moby-Dick, I find Melville describing the different species of whales in terms of bookbinder’s format: the S*...
08/07/2026

Picking up Moby-Dick, I find Melville describing the different species of whales in terms of bookbinder’s format: the S***m Whale is a Folio, the Narwhale an Octavo, the Porpoise a Duodecimo (12mo), etc. Explaining why the “whales of middling magnitude” are Octavos, not Quartos, Melville writes: “the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former [Folio] order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the bookbinder’s Quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.” Illustration by Howard Simon for the first American paperback edition of Moby-Dick (1931).

Original watercolors by George Zaffo for The Big Book of Real Trains (1949). Known for his attention to technical detail...
08/04/2026

Original watercolors by George Zaffo for The Big Book of Real Trains (1949). Known for his attention to technical detail, Zaffo’s picture books introduced generations of American children to the mechanics of transportation. By 1960, Zaffo could be found in nearly every school library across the country, spurred by Jackie Kennedy’s selection of his titles for the White House library. A decade later, the New York Times opined that The Giant Book of Things in Space “may well prove to be the nursery set’s ‘2001.’”

Two banker’s boxes of irregular handpress volumes (thanks, Brick Row) and a dream.
07/29/2026

Two banker’s boxes of irregular handpress volumes (thanks, Brick Row) and a dream.

Table 7 hitting the books! CABS-Minnesota 2026 well underway.
07/28/2026

Table 7 hitting the books! CABS-Minnesota 2026 well underway.

Address

3720 Spruce Street, Box 421
Philadelphia, PA
19104

Telephone

+19179742420

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