The Caravaggio Shawl
Boston: Alyson Publications, 1989.
First edition, first printing. Signed by Samuel Steward on the front free endpaper and inscribed: "For Donald -- will this outpouring never stop?" with date 1989. 209, [5] pp. with five advertising pages at rear. Bound in publisher's printed wraps. Very Good with light wear and soiling and scattered foxing to covers and textblock edges, several superficial scratches to rear cover, and bumping to lower right corner. Publisher's slip apologizing for misplaced punctuation laid in, together with second slip providing amusing explanations for the mistake. Samuel Steward's remarkable life encompassed a career change from university English professor to leading tattoo artist during the 1950s, several years as an unofficial sex researcher for Alfred Kinsey, and a third career as a writer of erotica for gay men under the pseudonym Phil Andros. This is the second of two murder mysteries in which Steward turned his old friends Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas into detectives.
Price: $650