BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS

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100 Years of Book Collecting inPHILADELPHIA

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•  Philobiblon is one of the oldest clubs in America for book collectors. In 1993 it celebrated its centennial with a banquet, an exhibition, and this small volume bearing an introduction by the club's longtime president, George Allen.

The booklet includes on its final three pages “A short-title list of items exhibited in Some of Our Best Friends: Books Selected from Collections of Members of the Philobiblon Club, at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, 12 February – 9 May 1993,” and that is preceded on pp. 1–53 by a reprint of “A loan collection of decorative bindings, rare books, manuscripts, and other bibliographical specimens from the libraries of Philadelphia,” being the catalogue of an 1893 book exhibit at Philadelphia's Academy of the Fine Arts that partly led to the Club's formation. This is not a social history of the Club, but rather an excellent snapshot of its founding and centennial members' leading book interests.

•  New. Original tan wrappers. Saddle-stitched.  (35805)

For PHILOBIBLON PUBLICATIONS,  click here.
For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For more of PHILADELPHIA interest,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Limited Edition Facsimile

•  Number 86 of a limited edition of 300 copies of this facsimile of the Victoria and Albert Museum copy of this famous writing book.

•  Publisher's light boards with printed dust wrapper, in Mylar protective jacket. Nearly new.  (23241)

For CALLIGRAPHY / WRITING BOOKS,  click here.

“My Style of Drawing Birds”

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•  Consists of two essays: “My style of drawing birds,” published in M. Audubon's Audubon and his journals, 1897; and “Method of drawing birds,” published in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, v. 8, 1828. The original manuscript is presented in fine facsimile showing several authorial corrections and emendations of the first draft, and with a transcription and an introduction. Limited to 400 copies.

•  Publisher's green cloth stamped and lettered in gilt, spine lightly sunned with slim discolorations to cloth around board edges. Smallest touches of a dark discoloration to base of half-title and front blank. With the limitation card. (40830)

For NATURAL HISTORY,  click here.
For BIRDS,  click here.
For FACSIMILES,  click here.

The Deluge Delineated & a Library Located

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•  Edited by H.V. Hilprecht. Offered here is Volume V, fascicle I, printing “The earliest version of the Babylonian deluge story and the temple library of Nippur.” Illustrated with a frontispiece and two plates.

•  Uncut, unopened copy in original wrappers; wrappers discolored in certain areas, back one probably from a newspaper clipping, Interior clean, very good.  (34322)

For an ARCHAEOLOGY “Shelf,”  click here.

With an Early Engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe
*&* Commentary on It

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•  Medical doctor, professor of mathematics, author, and founder of the first medical journal published in the New World (Mercurio volante), Bartolache was one of New Spain's memorable and colorful “characters” during the Age of Enlightenment. He was an eccentric and volatile personality in the academic, medical, cultural, and social life of Mexico City during the last third of the 18th century.

In this treatise Bartolache (1739–90) presents quite possibly the first historiographical study of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the literature about her. In all, Bartolache details and discusses 19 books and pamphlets.  Additionally, this volume contains an excellent engraving of the Virgin, designed by Jose Guerrero and engraved by Tomas Suria. The last text pages discuss this image of the Virgin as a physical object, as a piece of art: the structure supporting her, the proportions of the face and body, the “paint,” and so on. The final six leaves contain a list of subscribers, which is rather unusual in Mexican books, and there are two other, unsigned, related engravings.

•  Medina, Mexico, 7957; Grajales & Burrus, Bibliografia guadalupana, 273; Palau 25095; Maggs, Bibl. Amer., I, 1141, and VI, 5899; Beristain, I, 141; Puttick & Simpson, Bibliotheca Mejicana, 167; Sutro, p. 33.   Contemporary acid-stained sheep (Valenciana style) with gilt spine, marbled endpapers and all edges red; fore-edge of rear cover gnawed upon by a rodent, but not too seriously. A clean, attractive copy of a book both widely and deeply interesting.  (36633)

MEXICO is one of our great specialties.
      For our MEXICANA,  click here.
For a whole short shelf devoted
      to “GUADELUPANA” — y
      otras Apariciones Marianas
      Mexicanas — click here.
For CATHOLICA,  click here.
For ART REFERENCE,  click here.

Bibliography Printed at a Fine Handpress

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•  A bibliography of the printing output of the little-known, mid-19th-century Oaxacan printer Ignacio Rincon y Muniz based on the holdings of the Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa in Oaxaca City. It is prefaced by a reprinting of Ignacio Cadiani's “Historia de la imprenta en Oaxaca” that appeared in 1894 in El Imperial newspaper (Oaxaca, 29 August – 2 September).

The edition is limited to 180 copies printed by Juan Pascoe and Martin Urbina on a 19th-century Ostrander Seymour iron press. The type is a mix of Blado and Poliphilus. Tomas Urbina Suarez bound the edition.

•  A laced-through binding in light green heavy wrappers. As new.  (40732)

Everything You Need to“Negotiate” 1857

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•  This very pocket-sized almanac manages to stuff into its miniature pages a calendar, a list of the chief European sovereigns and their birthdays and accession days, a summary of postage and tax costs, a foreign currency exchange table, and railway statistics as the “commercial” aspect, before moving on to the “literary” with assorted amusing and enlightening sayings; the booklet closes with40 pages of advertising for other works from this eminent Scottish publishing firm.

•  Publisher's printed salmon-colored paper wrappers, front and back wrappers with engraved vignettes; spine and edges mildly rubbed, back wrapper with small scuffs. All edges gilt. First and last few leaves lightly foxed.  (29059)

For SCOTLAND & SCOTS,  click here.
Or for ALMANACS,  click here.

Reproducing the Process — One of Just 50 Copies

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•  A stunning Blake facsimile.  Printed on Arches pure rag paper “to match the paper used by Blake,” these two differently proportioned volumes showcase two sets of relief etchings first printed ca. 1794 — each set having the same title, and now known as Series a and Series b. While Blake experimented with these plates ca. 1788, no printed copies from that time are known to have survived. The etchings are here reproduced from plates in various collections, including six from the Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress and ten from the Pierpont Morgan Library. The quarto volume also supplies extensive bibliographical and literary notes by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, signed in type by him, and elegantly printed in green ink.

This offering comes from thelimited edition of 50 copies numbered in roman numerals, “each containing a set of plates shewing the progressive stages of the collotype and hand-stencil process and a guide-sheet and stencil,” of which this isnumber XIV, with this copy's guide-sheet and stencil coming from Plate I of Series a. The total edition consisted of 616 copies on Arches pure rag paper: 50 copies numbered I to L, each containing an additional set of plates, 540 copies numbered 1 to 540, and 26 copies numbered A to Z for the collaborators. Mr. Arnold Fawcus supervised the publication, and Bernard Quaritch Ltd. oversaw distribution.

Binding:  Both volumes neatly bound in full tobacco morocco with gilt lettering on spine, done by Duval of Paris, and housed in a Gloster marbled paper–covered slipcase done by Adine of Paris.

•  Bentley, Blake Books, 202; Keynes, Bibliography of William Blake, 218.   Bound and housed as above; binding with a few small spots or specks and very light pencilling on endpapers, housing rubbed along edges. A handful of very small marginal spots; expectable paint and rust on guide sheet and stencil from use. A beautiful and scholarly reference tool.  (38346)

For PHILOSOPHY,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.

THE Introduction to Bibliography

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•  Reprint of of the 1949 classic on bibliographical theory and application, here with an introduction by Thomas Tanselle.

•  Blue paperback; top edge soot-darkened with some top margins slightly affected, front bottom corner of cover creased across with some soiling there also. A good working copy at a much reduced price.  (36756)

Then an Unpopular Opinion — Now a FACT

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•  First edition of Bowyer's rewriting of Middleton's Dissertation on the Origin of Printing in England and Meerman's Origines typographicae: Bowyer was assisted by Dr. Owen and Mr. Missy.

In his dissertation on the history of printing in England (first edition 1734–35), Dr. Middleton argued the then unpopular opinion that William Caxton was the first to bring the printing press to England. That work is accompanied here by Gerard Meerman's essay on the appearance of printing in Harlem and Mentz, each with intelligent commentary by printers W. Bowyer and John Nichols. Also present are three short appendices on early Greek, Hebrew, and polyglot books.

An early user has added a note “By W. Bowyer” to the title-page; there is also evidence of a torn out leaf (M4), although pagination and content match catalogued and digitized copies.

Provenance:  From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  ESTC N10660; Bigmore & Wyman, Bibliography of Printing, p. 74.   19th-century half speckled calf and mottled paper, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, covers with gilt rolls along edges of calf; gently rubbed at corners and moderately along joints. Note and torn edge as above with three textual corrections in an earlier hand and one word in green ink, two very small marginal stains, light age-toning. Bookish content in a neat copy.  (37566)

Designed by P.J. Conkwright — A Signer's Sad, Sensational End

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•  Boyd, the great head of the Princeton University Library and later professor of history, kept the gentlemen of the Philobiblon Club awake with his after dinner account of themurder by poison of Whyte, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence and subsequently a judge in Virginia and opponent of slavery, at the hands of Wythe's sister's 17-year-old grandson. The death of a black teen-aged servant of Wythe's in the same atrocity is not glossed over, and one bit of the talk turns on Virginia's admission (or not) of the legal testimony of “Negroes” in a case such as Wythe's became. There is a “Bibliographical note” on p. [47].

The Princeton Library catalogue record for this work states that P.J. Conkwright, the legendary designer and typographer at the Princeton University Press, designed the book. One would suspect that it was printed at the Press as well.

•  New. Bound as issued; marbled paper boards, black cloth spine with title stamped in gold. Glassine dust wrapper, chipped and torn over spine but present.  (35761)

    For PRE-1820 AMERICANA,
  click here.
For ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW,  click here.
For ABOLITION / BLACK HISTORY,  click here.
For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For PHILOBIBLON PUBLICATIONS,  click here.
*Or* for “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

A Fine, Substantial,BOTANICAL Bibliography

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•  Second edition of “Botanico-Periodicum-Huntianum.” A bibliography that seeks to be “a fairly, but not wholly, comprehensive listing by title of periodicals from 1665 to 2000 that regularly contain . . . articles dealing with the plant sciences, their history and bibliography.” Lists abbreviated titles, number of volumes, life span, etc. Entries are cross-referenced.

•  Publisher's green cloth. As new.  (29580)

For HERBALS,  click here.
For SETS,  click here.

19th-CenturyChildren at WORK & at Play

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•  Chapbook containing four short stories for children, emphasizing the virtues of kindness, patience, hard work, and caution. The tales areembellished with seven hand-colored wood engravings, done by Whatman after T.H. Jones and featuring what the publisher advertised as “fanciful borders.” The first story offers an interesting insight into 19th-century book production, with the “lame boy” of the title taking up paid work as subcontractor to another child, a little girl, in cutting small prints from a large sheet to be bound into books.

This is the stated sixth edition, with the publication date suggested by the Bodleian; it is notably uncommon, with WorldCat findingonly one U.S. institution (Wayne State) reporting an actual hard copy rather than microform.

Provenance:  From the children's book collection of Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Opie A 188; Osborne Collection, p. 973.   Publisher's brown cloth, ribbon-embossed in a staggered ripple pattern, front cover with gilt-stamped title framed in blind-stamped arabesques; neatly rebacked with buckram, edges faded, corners rubbed. Two leaves of text lacking from final story; one plate bound in the wrong story but all plates present. Pages gently age-toned, otherwise clean.  (40708)

AnotherTasty Cagle Bibliography

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•  Expanded and revised second edition of Cagle's important 1990 bibliography of the Lilly's collection of European and British gastronomic literature, featuring books printed from 1475 through 1962. Included are a number of facsimiles of title-pages and illustrations.

•  New, in dust jacket.  (29380)

For COOKERY,  click here.

Enjoyable, Essential, & UPDATED!

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•  Are you a novice reader of rare book cataloguing who is just beginning to realize that there might be a difference between a “joint” and a “hinge”? Would you rather be asked for the proof of “E=MC²” than for the meaning of “ *⁶a-z⁶A-R⁶S²**⁶)(⁶)()(4T⁶V-X⁴ ”?  Or are you on the other hand a connoisseur of the bibliographer's terms of art who savors the very sound and cadence — as well as the exact and enticing images that the words and sentences raise — in a description like the following: “18th-century olive morocco; round gilt spines extra without bands; gilt triple-line fillet frames on covers with gilt corner devices; single gilt rule on board edges; gilt inner dentelles. Dutch-style printed endpapers with gilt and green stars and dots on a white field. All edges gilt; all pages ruled in red in the 17th-century style”?

AT ONCE a great basic resource and a rewarding volume for browsing or bibliophilic pleasure-reading, this classic work by John Carter contains over 490 alphabetical entries offering definitions and analysis of technical terms as well as the jargon of book collecting and bibliography — with ampleexamples now including illustrations and much enhanced coverage of the implications of the internet.  Carter's ABC, first printed in 1952, was last revised, expanded, and given a new introduction by Nicolas Barker, his friend and the respected editor of The Book Collector, in 2004.  This new, 9th edition co-revised by Barker and Simran Thadani is a book that no purchasing collector or cataloguer should think of as a frivolous expense, and a book that as a gift to a collector or cataloguer cannot fail to please.

• Complete with printed dust-jacket; new. (39930)

For the EIGHTH EDITION, at a lower price, 
click here.

One Classic NonfictionBIBLIO-Who-Dunnit

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•  The first edition of the book that destroyed Thomas Wise, England's doyen of bibliographers and biblio-forgers. “This book is a fully documented exposure of a group of more than fifty 'first editions' of such eminent authors as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brownings, Swinburne, George Eliot, William Morris, R. L. Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling. . . . The exposure of the real character of these books introduces scientific methods which have never before been applied to bibliographical problems of this period.”

•  Fine copy in a very good dust jacket, jacket with minor chipping to lower area of spine, one long split at spine repaired on verso, and lower corner of ifront flap cut off; volume very clean and nice, top edge gilt. In a green cloth chemise with red leather author, title, and date labels on the spine, in an open-back slipcase.  (33426)

For BIBLIO-FRAUD & FALSE IMPRINTS,  click here.
For a little more SCIENCE,  click here.

The Later Years of theGolden Cockerel

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•  Unlimited edition of the fourth volume ofthe bibliography of the Golden Cockerel Press, with a list of prospectuses from 1920 through 1962 and illustrations taken from the books.

•  Publisher's blue cloth–covered boards in original printed paper dust jacket; jacket with edges and spine lightly sunned, upper edge showing minor wear, lower corner of front inside flap clipped. Volume clean and fresh.  (36848)

For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.

On Forman & Wise

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•  Well-written and well-documented account of Wise & Buxton Forman and their now notorious forgeries of books by 19th-century writers like the Brownings, Tennyson, Swinburn, Ruskin, and Stevenson.

•  New, in dust jacket.  (24560)

Satire of Pennsylvania Politics at theStart of the French & Indian War

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•  A facsimile of this Colonial American “fragment” is printed here with a good introductory essay by Samuel W. Pennypacker (a governor of Pennsylvania and a major bookcollector), with the title-page of the 1758 original reading: A fragment of the chronicles of Nathan ben Saddi; a rabbi of the Jews. Lately discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum: and translated from the original, into the Italian language. By the command of the king of the Two-Sicilies. And now first publish'd in English. Constantinople, Printed, in the year of the vulgar aera, 5707. The work is, in fact, a satire by a member of the Proprietary party in Pennsylvania, dealing with the political controversies of the province during the early years of the French and Indian war and the personalities involved. It takes the form of a mock-Biblical account of the arrest of William Smith for allowing a translation of an article from Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette to be published in the German newspaper under his control. A key to the pseudonyms is provided by the great Pennsylvania bibliographer Charles Hildeburn, in his hand on two blank pages of the original 1758 printed book.

“Of this book one hundred and fifty copies are printed on hand-made paper.” The title-page is printed in red and black.The 15 plates offer a fine facsimile of the 1758 rarity, presented with good margins on that good paper.

•  Nearly New. Bound in brown paper boards, printed in black. In a protective box that is lightly chipped and with a spot or two of fading/discoloration; book in fine condition.  (35756)

    For PRE-1820 AMERICANA,
  click here.
For more of PHILADELPHIA interest,  click here.
For PHILOBIBLON PUBLICATIONS,  click here.
For FALSE IMPRINTS &
         BIBLIO-FRAUD,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For FACSIMILES,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Fine Press Edition withImportant Scholars' Essays

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•  Las Vigilias de Tasso was the first book printed in the state of Michoacan (1827) and is a very rare book: Searches of the appropriate databases locate only the British Library copy and three copies in U.S. libraries. Compagnoni presented the work as a hitherto unknown work of Tasso, butit was his own creation.

The translator, “Lelardo,” was in fact Manuel de la Torre Lloreda. In this fine press edition of Las vigilias, Juan Pascoe's press (Taller Martin Pescador) has invited scholars Catarina Camastra and Moises Guzman Perez to contribute what are significant essays on Las Vigilias, its true author, its Mexican translator, and the work's printer. The essays on the translator and printer are important additionally for the history ofthe portable press of the Independence era, the Imprenta del Ejercito Imperial de las Tres Garantias.

The colophon explains, “Florencio Ramirez compuso las letras Blado, Castellar y Polifilo para este libro, y Juan Pascoe y Martin Urbina imprimieron 150 ejemplates sobre paper Strozzi de Ponte entre noviembre de 2014 y agosto de 2016.” The copies are unnumbered. This is one of the few hardbound copies.

•  Uncut and partially unopened. Quarter café au lait crushed morocco with oatmeal-colored linen sides; dark red leather spine label and dark reddish brown endpapers (bound by Lucía Farías Villarreal of Monterrey, Mexico: http://www.ovejaverde.com.mx/). New.  (37102)

Bancroft Library's Cookery

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•  This bibliography of culinary rarities was issued as the guide to a marvelous exhibition of a portion of the Craigs' extensive collection. Useful for collectors of cookery, and interesting reading as well, it isillustrated with a number of frontispieces, title-pages, and graphics from various works covered in the text.

•  Publisher's textured cream paper wrappers, top edge soot-darkened with this intruding intermittently into top or foremargins. Generally a clean, good copy.  (36760)

For COOKERY,  click here.

(Crane, Hart).   Schwartz, Joseph.  Hart Crane: An annotated critical bibliography. New York: David Lewis, 1970. 8vo. xi, 276 pp.
$27.50

•  A detailed and valuative bibliography of writings about Crane. Intended for the extreme Crane enthusiast and Crane scholars.

•  Very good copy in dust jacket; dust jacket lightly foxing.  (1730)

TO Part II

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