Provenance: A private American collection, acquired at the NJ Book Show January, 2000.

$1200.

9327. ANTIQUARIAN EPICTETUS. EPICTETI ENCHIRIDIUM CEBETIS THEBANI TABULA, 1723. 1.5 x 5 x 8 inches. 288 pages. Engraved frontispiece and folding plate, engraved chapter headers and initials. Title page printed in red and black. Gold stamped vellum armorial binding. Sound and tight in generally nice condition, damp stains in lower corner throughout. Works by the famous Stoic philosopher Epictetus printed in Greek and Latin side by side.

Provenance: A private American collection, acquired at the NJ Book Show November, 1999.

$400.

11684. LE FORUM ROMAIN, ET LES FORUMS DE JULES CESAR, D'AUGUSTE, DE VESPASIEN, DE NERVA ET DE TRAJAN, Par Ferdinand Dutert, 1876. Elephant folio 13 x 20 x 0.75 inches. Original leather binding and finely marbled end leaves. 45 pages of text with interspersed engravings including a number of architectural coin reverses. 9 full page engravings, about half double page, one plate missing. Sound and in generally excellent condition with minimal foxing and matching protective leather strips on top and bottom of spine. Cover. End plate marbling.

Provenance: A private American collection, acquired at the NJ Book Show c. 2005.

$1200.

Provenance: A private American collection, acquired at the NJ Book Show February, 1999.

$1000.

10048. TOBACCO ROAD, by ERSKINE CALDWELL, 1932 First Edition in very fine condition signed February 23, 1971 in a bold hand by Erskine Caldwell with additional notes by my father Dr. Lyle Owen. Certainly no doubt about the signature in this case as I can personally verify it was signed by Caldwell on one of his visits to my father's home outside Branson, Missouri. In excellent clean condition with tight binding.

Provenance: Gift in the 1980's from my father Dr. Lyle Owen, retired head of the Economics Department at the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

$4000.

Provenance: A private American collection, acquired at the NJ Book Show April, 1999.

$160.

I had an apartment in San Francisco just off the Haight Asbury in the early '60's and I and a couple of poet friends used to hang out with various beat luminaries such as Cassady and Ginsberg and a lot of lesser known poets and artists. Neal generally lived a very spartan life and was not much on possessions. He traveled light and generally gave away all non-essential stuff as soon as he got it. This photo was taken by a group of college kids who had made the pilgrimage into San Fran to meet him. They then gave him this one photo of them and him together leaning on the side of what was I think their car and as soon as they left he promptly gave the photo to me just to get rid of it. Things like that meant nothing to Neal. He always lived very much in the present and never kept anything he didn't need to. This happened on the street in front of the little corner gas station where Neal had a job pumping gas at the time.

We had some good and always very interesting times with Neal. There was our famous arm wrestling bout (Neal won of course), all the wild parties and the time I unwisely let him use the bed in my apartment. A cute college groupie had just tracked him down and was itching to jump into bed with him. He couldn't take her to his place because of his old lady he was living with at the time. (He said she had a terrible temper but we hardly ever saw her since she never went around with him and almost always just stayed in the small apartment they lived in.) Anyway I offered my place and he jumped at the offer. He and the girl were in there for around two hours while I kept trying to keep my buddies from spying on the action from the fire escape. After that the girl stumbled out with a sort of glazed look on her face like she'd just been really worked over and immediately left without a word while Neal just seemed nonchalant like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Problem is I went in a little later and found 5 big wet spots on the bed I had to clean up. Neal had obviously not wasted any time!

Neal was a fascinating character. Once I asked him how he managed to do everything so perfectly and precisely. He simply responded 'I never aim to miss.' But he could take reasonable precautions too when the situation warranted. On one of our trips to visit Ken Kesey down in Carmel he was driving down along the Coast Highway in his old rattletrap and we kept trying to get him to do some sideways drifts for us. He did just one little one just to show us he could and then told us it was too risky.

Provenance: Given to me by Neal Cassady around 1962-63 just off the Haight Asbury in San Francisco.

$2500.

Thomas Hart Benton visited my father Dr. Lyle Owen several times at our home near Branson, Mo. On this trip he was accompanied by photographer Frank Lauder of Kansas City who took this picture of Benton and my father smiling at each other seated on a typical old fashioned Ozark's porch. My father loved Benton's works and kept a framed copy of his painting Persephone over the fireplace mantle. Persephone depicts the goddess as a beautiful nude Ozark girl sleeping beside a river being spied on by the God Hades depicted as a middle-aged Ozark's hillbilly. Benton cultivated the image of an Ozark hillbilly, yet he was the first artist to have his self-portrait on the cover of Time magazine. He hated art museums, saying he'd rather have his work hanging in a brothel, but he became Missouri's most renowned 20th-century artist. The original Persephone hangs in a gallery at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Frank Lauder was a well known Missouri area photographer in the mid-20th century. A large collection of his autochromes is housed in the Kansas City Public Library.

Provenance: Given to my father by Frank Lauder or Benton. Given to me by my father c. 1970's.

$1500.

Gutta-Percha, a rare natural bioinert inelastic latex-like sap from SE Asia which became rigid upon drying and took very fine detail, was the chosen material for fine cases and plaques in the late 1800's prior to the development of plastics.

Provenance: A private American collection, acquired at Berman's Auction, NJ, December, 2000.

$650.

Gutta-Percha, a rare natural bioinert inelastic latex-like sap from SE Asia which became rigid upon drying and took very fine detail, was the chosen material for fine cases and plaques in the late 1800's prior to the development of plastics.

Provenance: A private American collection, acquired at Berman's Auction, NJ, May, 2001.

$1750.

Provenance: A private American collection. Acquired in the early 1960s from a San Francisco book dealer.

$200.

Provenance: A private American collection. Acquired in the early 1960s from a San Francisco book dealer.

$100.

Provenance: A private American collection. Acquired in the early 1960s from a San Francisco book dealer.

$100.