
NEWEST
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NEWEST ENTRIES 24 JANUARY 2021

As
a CATALOGUE formed partly
BY CHANCE, this does not represent ALL our strengths!
[ PART I
PART II ]
Isaac Watts' Copy — Excellent GREEK Printing & Red Ruling Throughout
Church of England. Book of Common Prayer. Greek. [title-page in Greek, romanized as] Biblos tes demosias euches kai teleseos mysterion kai ton allon thesmon kai teleton tes ekklesias. Kata to eth[os] tes Anglikanes Ekklesias. Pros [de] t[ou]tois typos k[ai] tropos tes katagaseos, cheirotonias, kai kathieroseos episkopon presbyteron k[ai] diakonon. [Cambridge: James Field, 1665]. 12mo (14.5 cm, 5.75"). [18] ff., 126 pp., [1 (blank)] f. [also bound in] Bible. Psalms. Greek. 1664. [title-page in Greek, romanized as]Psalterion tou David. Kata tous Hevdomekonta. [Cambridge: James Field, 1664]. 12mo. [1] f, 171, [1 (blank)] pp. (lacks blank leaf k6).
$2250.00
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The mid-17th century was a low point in the history of English typography but in this pair of Anglican religious texts James Field, printer to the University of Cambridge, produced
a very good example of the printer's art of Greek printing, especially in the use of a small point size. The guiding force behind their production was James Duport (1606–79), dean of Peterborough and master of Magdelene College, Cambridge, a noted scholar of Latin and Greek and supporter of the university press. The preface to the Book of Common Prayer is signed with his initials and it is established that he was the editor of the Psalms; the texts were almost certainly issued together but are also at times found individually in contemporary binding.
Field's minute typography here is dense and presented chiefly in double-column format, in both works; and, instead of woodcut head- or tailpieces and xylographic initials, he deploys printer's ornaments to enliven the text at the top of some sections and occasionally elsewhere.
The layout is overall lovely, and thoughtful, and the printing is extremely clear and precise.Binding: Contemporary morocco with covers framed in a single blind fillet; spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-stamped compartment decorations. Marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.
All pages ruled in red in the best style of the era.
Provenance: ISAAC WATTS (1674–1748), the godfather of English hymnody, is also fondly remembered for his Psalms of David: Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, a work that was reprinted over a thousand times. His ownership signature is on the blank leaf opposite the BCP title-page here. Later the volume was owned by Charles Mayo (1767–1858), a scholar of Old English, who dated his ownership as “St. John's College, Oxford, 1787.” Most recently in the library of American collector of Greek printing Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
BCP: Benton, Book of Common Prayer (2nd ed.), p. 25, no. 122; ESTC R24205; Wing (2nd ed.) B3632; Griffiths, Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, 45,3.
Psalms: STC R204252; Wing (2nd ed., 1994) B2720A. Bound as above, extremities a little rubbed, with small chip at head of spine and edges of label chipped; joints strengthened some time ago and volume varnished. Inscriptions and small booklabel as above; pages gently age-toned, otherwise clean.
A solid and attractive copy of an attractive production, with wonderful provenance. (40968)
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“Come, Read & Learn” — Fold-Over Flap PRESENT &
Cuts by Anderson
(Battledoor). The uncle's present, a new battledoor. Philadelphia: Jacob Johnson, n.d. [ca. 1810]. 12mo (16.3 cm, 6.4"). [4] ff. (see below).
$475.00
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Dr. R explains the unusual way in which the pages of this publication were put together: There are “[f]our leaves, the first and last pasted down to the covers, the 2 inner ones pasted together making 4 pages in all.” These four pages contain 24 letters of the alphabet, each with a “cry” illustrating it, 6 compartments to a page. Dr. R supposed the cries to be those of Newcastle or York, but Welch dissents and says they are London cries. In addition to the interior four pages, the covers are integral to the educational purpose of the publication: The front cover has a heading “Read, and be wise” and below is the alphabet in majuscules, then a center cut of sheep below a tree with children in the distance, with the numerals one to zero below the cut. Dr. R attributes this cut to A. Anderson. The rear cover has the same heading and below is the alphabet in minuscules, then a cut of horses and handlers and a building, with the alphabet in italic minuscules below, and then the numerals again.
The flap with “Come, read and learn” on the outside and the title and publication data on the inside is present and integral. It is not uncommon for this fragile flap to have been lost.
Rosenbach, Children, 428; Welch 1363; Shaw & Shoemaker 14251 and 21546; Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators, 248; Pomeroy, Alexander Anderson, 330. Publisher's heavy paper wrappers as above; covers darkened, front cover with pencilled annotation in upper portion, spine rubbed with short split starting from foot. Pages age-toned; upper edge and lower outer corner of central leaf slightly proud and thus showing some rubbing, last (T–Z) page with a wrinkle or two from gluing to back wrapper (not spoiling image or print).
Not pristine (and priced accordingly); a good, solid survivor. (41325)
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The Body & Soul A Poetic Vista
Fletcher, Phineas. The Purple Island, or the Isle of Man: Together with Piscatorie eclogs and other poeticall miscellanies. Cambridge: Pr. by the Printers to the Universitie of Cambridge, 1633. 4to (18.3 cm, 7.2"). [14], 181, [3], 130, [2] pp.
$1750.00
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First edition of this epic allegory of personhood, paired with a set of pastoral verses featuring fisher-boys. Fletcher (1582–1650) was a prolific author of both theological and secular works, with the two main pieces here being among his most distinctive and best-remembered. “The Purple Island” is an extended allegory in Spenserian style, comparing the human body and mind to a landscape, with anatomical notes; following that and the “Piscatory Eclogues” is “Elisa, or an Elegie upon the Unripe Decease of Sr. Antoie Irby,” with a separate title-page. A “Hinc lucem et pocula” printer's vignette appears at the end of most cantos of the first work, while the second work features decorative capitals and typographical head- and tailpieces, and the title-page of the final piece is ornamented with
an interesting coffin design created with typographical and woodcut elements.
Pforzheimer notes ruefully that this volume “though well-known by title [. . .] is little read despite the fact that though seriously intended it is
now frequently very amusing.”
Evidence of Readership: Occasional pencilled or inked underlining and marginal marks of emphasis; red bracketing (mostly faint); seven marginal annotations inked in an early hand (mostly translating the classically inspired names, as that Porneios is “Fornication” and Aselges “Lasciviousness”). The printer's vignette on the main title-page has been partially colored in, and the letters “B.D.” have been added following the author's initials on the second title-page.
Provenance: Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, Jr., and with small, attractive 19th-century institutional ticket.
Binding: 19th-century morocco, framed and panelled in blind, turn-ins with gilt rolls; top edges gilt, marbled paper endpapers. The extremely minute
binder's stamp of Alfred Matthews appears, in gilt, within the lower turn-in of the front cover.
ESTC S102332; NCBEL, I, 1188; STC (2nd ed.) 11082; Pforzheimer, I, 376. Binding as above, spine sunned, joints refurbished, light wear to sides and corners. Markings as above, main title-page also with small, faint pencilled inscription in upper portion; one leaf with lower outer corner torn away, not touching text. Pages gently age-toned, with annotations as above, otherwise clean.
A solid, very readable copy, with an interesting history evident. (41438)
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Illustrated Record of the
1931 International Exhibition
of Persian Art
Binyon, Laurence; J.V.S. Wilkinson; & Basil Gray. Persian miniature painting. London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Folio (39.37 cm, 15.5"). Col. frontis., xiv, 212, [2] pp.; 113 plts. (15 col.).
$750.00
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First edition. Including a “critical and descriptive catalogue of the miniatures exhibited at Burlington House January – March, 1931,” this hefty, very much “oversize” volume provides thorough documentation of the exhibition itself, along with extensive information on the history and aesthetics of Persian painting. The work, which one reviewer notes “immediately became the standard monographic introduction to the material” (Roxburgh, Art Bulletin, vol. XCV, no. 4), is printed on good paper and is illustrated with a
color-printed frontispiece and 113 plates, 15 of which are in color.
Publisher's ochre cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and medallion, in original tan dust jacket; jacket spine and edges chipped but by no means tattered, with volume corners bumped. Foxing to endpapers (only); pages and plates clean.
A significant work, here in the first edition in the uncommon dust jacket. (41400)
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Important Account of
The Augustinian Missionaries in Western Mexico
From the Press of Paula de Benavides
Basalenque, Diego. Historia de la provincia de San Nicolas de Tolentino de Michoacan. Mexico: por la viuda de Bernardo Calderon [i.e., Paula de Benavides], 1673. 4to (20.8 cm, 8.125" ). [12], 219 [i.e., 221], [3] ff.
$16,500.00
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Diego Basalenque emigrated to New Spain with his parents from Salamanca when he was nine, joined the Augustinian order at the age of fifteen, and professed his religion two years later in Mexico City on 4 February 1594. A man of many talents, he was a teacher, administrator, and historian especially remembered for his skill in languages: He was proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and
several Mexican tongues. There is evidence that he authored multiple works on a variety of topics, including mathematics and theology, but only three were published, all posthumously.
Basalenque wrote his Historia de la provincia de San Niçolas de Tolentino de Michoacan in 1644 but left it in manuscript at his death in 1651. Father Salguero, prior of the Augustinian province of MIchoacan in the 1660s and 70s and Basalenque's biographer (Mexico, 1664), saw the work published at the shop of
the very talented and well-connected widow-printer Paula de Benavides, widow of printer Bernardo Calderon. It is both a chronicle and a prosopographical account of the the Augustinians in Mexico from 1533 to 1643, and is divided into two main chapters: 1533 to 1602 when the province of the province of San Nicolas of Tolentino of Michoacan was created out of the province of The Most Holy Name of Jesus (“Santísimo Nombre de Jesús”), and 1602 to 1643. The facts and dates for events prior to ca. 1590 are mostly recounted from Juan de Grijalva's Crónica de la orden de N.P.S. Augustín en las provincias de la Nueva España, en quatro edades desde el año de 1533 hasta el de 1592 (Mexico, 1624) but those of the 17th-century are wholly Basalenque's.
His biographies of the 17th-century Augustinians are extremely valuable as they are based on his having known and lived with them; personality traits are discussed and family history and genealogy are detailed.
The history is printed mainly in roman but with some italic type, in double-column format, with woodcut head- and tailpieces and a type-ornament border on the title-page, which page further offers
a woodcut vignette portrait of St. Nicholas of Tolentino. There are errors in foliation: 47 and 48 are duplicated and 133 and 134 are incorrectly numbered 132 and 133.
In this copy opposite the title-page is an added facsimile map of the province taken from an edition of Augustin Lubin's Orbis Augustinianus, sive, Conventuum ordinis eremitarum Augustini chorographica et topographica descriptio; no map was issued with the book originally.
Medina, Mexico,1084; Pinelo-Barcia, Epitome, II, Col. 755; Beristain, I, p. 143; Ternaux 902; Andrade 632. Recased in contemporary limp vellum with slightly yapp edges showing evidence of now-lost ties; rear free endpaper lacking and all edges mottled. Case marks on front pastedown; last leaf torn cleanly and expertly repaired, one leaf with an old limited ink smear that does not impede reading.
A clean, very nice copy of a history offering much first-hand reporting, from a significant press and sometime enhanced, by a former owner, by addition of that helpful map! (41363)
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Arabic Bible Printed at Beirut
(Its Translator was a Rather Amazing Person)
Bible. Arabic. Van Dyck. 1913. [four lines in Arabic romanized as] al-Kitāb al-Muqaddas, ay Kutub al-ʻAhd al-Qadīm wa-al-Ahd al-Jadīd. Wa-qad turjima min al-lughāt al-aṣlīyah, wa-hiya al-lughah al-Ibrānīyah wa-al-lughah al-Kaldānīyah wa-al-lughah al-Yunānīyah. [in Arabic: Beirut : The American Printing Press, 1913]. 8vo (18.5 cm, 7.5"), 920, 295 pp.
$225.00
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The Van Dyck translation of the Bible into Arabic first appeared in 1865 and remained the standard version used by Arabs for a century. This edition from the American Printing Press is
an all-Arabic production, with the only English appearing in it being a small-print line, “Bible, Third Font, 282" on the title-page (at “rear”).
Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck (1818–95) was born at Kinderhook, NY, and educated at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, receiving his M.D. in 1839. The following year the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent him to Lebanon as a medical missionary for the Dutch Reformed Church, and he remained in the Middle East for the rest of his life with only an occasional trip to the U.S.
Van Dyck became fluent in Arabic, wrote extensively in that language, and taught medicine and other subjects: “[He was] professor of pathology and internal medicine in the medical school of the newly founded Syrian Protestant College, which later became the American University of Beirut. He also taught astronomy in its literary section, directed its observatory and meteorological station as well as the mission press, and edited its weekly journal al-Nashran. He wrote Arabic textbooks on chemistry, internal medicine, physical diagnosis, and astronomy, publishing some of them at his own expense” (Wikipedia).
WorldCat records at least three editions of the Arabic Bible from the American Printing Press in 1913, each with a different pagination.
Publisher's brown cloth, spine stamped in gilt with title in Arabic and with blind stamping to covers and spine; some chipping to cloth around spine and at edges. Printed on very thin paper, occasionally
showing a short tear or a crease but clean and untattered. A very good copy. (41439)
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The English Do Love Their Madeira . . .
So Why NOT Seize the Island?
(Napoleonic Wars). [drop-title] Noticias participadas del Janeyro, con fecha de 12 de marzo de 1808. [colophon:Buenos Ayres: Impenta [sic] de Niños Expósitos, 1808. 4to (19.5 cm, 7.75"). [4] pp.
$225.00
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Here we have essentially two related documents: On pp. [1–2] is the latest news of the war in Europe and then on pp. [3–4] is the “Capitulacion de la isla de la Madera” by the Portuguese to the English (dated at San Lorenzo Funcal 20 Dec. 1807).WorldCat locates only two libraries worldwide reporting ownership of this (JCB, Lilly), but given its presence in the bibliographies below it must be held in non-reporting libraries.
Scarce item from the famous press of “the orphan children” of Buenos Aires.
Medina, Río de la Plata, 563; Zinny, 1808, xxvi; Furlong, Rio-platenses, 1181 (describing only p. [1]–[2]). Without wrappers; leaves once separated from each other and now expertly rejoined at the inner margin.
Very clean, very good. (41417)
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German-American CATHOLIC Personal Devotions — An EXTENDED Manuscript
Fraktur Rubrics — “Pennsylvania Dutch” Embellishments
Kary, Simon. Manuscript on paper, in German, transcribed as: [one or two words blotted and unclear, then] sich befinden in Andachtübung Gott deß Morgens, und Abends, bey den Heiligen Meß, Beicht und Kommunion Gebettern zu sprechen. Wie auch unterschiedliche Getbetter zu Christo, und Maria, auf die fürnehmsten FestTage deß Jahrs. Und auch Gebetter zu dem Heiligen Gottes zu finden sein. Zu grössern Ehr und Seelen Trost. Geschrieben worden von dem Simon Kary im Jahr 1799. [i.e., Catholic prayer book]. No place [Pennsylvania]: 1799. 12mo (16.3 cm, 6.4"). [2], 136 pp.
$22,500.00
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In 1799 the German population in the U.S. is estimated to have been between 85,000 and 100,000 individuals, the vast majority being Protestants of one stripe or another. German Catholics were a very, very small minority, totalling perhaps 3,000 or so and concentrated in Pennsylvania, served in their faith by German Jesuit missionaries who established the mission of The Sacred Heart at Conewago and Father Schneider’s mission church in Goshenhoppen.
There were no German-language Catholic prayer books published in the U.S. until the 19th century, so those wishing to have one before then had to have a bookstore import it or engender one in manuscript — either by hiring a scribe or by inditing it personally.
Simon Kary chose the latter option and personally executed his personal prayer book in the style that was current in the “Pennsylvania Dutch” region.
His lovingly created, appealingly decorated late-18th-century manuscript book of German Catholic devotional prayers (i.e., Gebetsbüchlein) is in the typical German-American fraktur style in his codex, the title-page, sectional title-pages, and sub-section beginnings are written in fraktur lettering in red, green, black, and rose, with the initial line or lines of each prayer in red only, and the text is written throughout in sepia in cursive. All pages are given double-ruled borders; some of the fraktur capitals incorporate foliate and floral designs.
Kary’s personally selected, 136-page collection of devotions contains, as he described it, “appropriate prayers to God,. a intended for use in the morning and evening, for Holy Mass, for confession . . s well as various prayers to Christ, to Mary on the highest feast days of the year, and also prayers to the Saint [sic] of God. For the greater honor and comfort of the soul.”
The manuscript is written on laid paper, with vertical chain lines, gathered in eights, and its
original block-printed paper wrappers have survived with it.
German-American Catholic fraktur prayer books are rare but not unknown; for example, the renowned collection of fraktur at the Free Library of Philadelphia contains a “Himmlischer Palm Zweig Worinen die Auserlesene Morgen Abend Auch Beicht und Kommunion Wie auch zum H. Sakrament In Christo und seinen Leiden, wie auch zur der H. Mutter Gottes, 1787" (item no: frkm064000; https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/41639). Still, early German-American Catholic religious manuscripts are
objectively rare, especially on the market.
Manuscript additions to the manuscript: An early-19th-century owner of Kary's manuscript has added somberly appropriate matter opposite its title-page, i.e., on the inside of the front wrapper, that reads, in translation: “Forget not your father and your mother, for they have died. My most honored father died on 17th March in the year of the Lord [1]784. My beloved mother died on 6th December in the year of the Lord [1]801. The 14th November in the year of the Lord [1]803. M.S. in the sign of the fish.”
Provenance: Simon Kary in 1799; by 1803 owned by M.S. (as per inside front wrapper). Later early-19th-century ownership signature of Anna Holzinger on title-page; later 19th-century pencil signature of “Theresa” in lower margin of same with similar inscription on the outside of the front wrapper.
We thank Prof. Edward Quinter for his help in ranscribing and translating this manuscript's title-page and translating the family notes opposite it. Recent light blue paper–covered boards with printed paper spine label, original block-printed wrappers preserved inside; early inked annotations in German on inside of original front wrapper and elsewhere, as detailed above. First two leaves and several others with areas of waterstaining, with tissue-paper repair to title-page partially obscuring several lines of text; last leaves with areas darkened as with some variety of oil. Pages age-toned, with scattered spots and occasional offsetting.
A manuscript attractive, engaging, and worthy of study; an enduring testimony to piety among an important, early American religious minority. (41242)
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Bodoni Tacitus — Three Volumes Nicely Bound
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. C. Cornelii Taciti opera. Parmae: In Aedibus Palatinus, Typis Bodonianis, 1795. Imp. 4to (32.38 cm, 12.75"). 3 vols. I: [2], xii, [6], 284 pp. II: [4], 297, [1] pp. III: [4], 281, [3] pp.
$1000.00
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Large quarto variant of the Bodoni edition of Tacitus's Annals (only, despite the title); the spine labels here give the more correct “Annales,” rather than Opera). Giani notes the scrupulous accuracy of this text, and the “grande perizia filologica” brought to the task by editor Vincenzo Jacobacci.
Binding: Contemporary quarter calf and marbled paper–covered boards, spines with gilt-stamped olive leather title and date labels; quatrefoil gilt roll on raised bands and blind-tooled, black-accented decorations in compartments. All page edges marbled to match endpapers.
Brooks 594; De Lama, II, 106; Giani 71 (p. 54); Schweiger, II, 1006. Bound as above, rebacked with the original spines laid down; sides and edges with moderate scuffing. Faint spotting, occasionally more pronounced, to many page edges; pages overall clean.
Bodoni's unadorned typesetting embodies classical elegance. (40168)
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Picaresque Aventuras — An ANIMATED Autobiography
Torres Villarroel, Diego de. Vida, ascendencia, nacimiento, crianza y aventuras del Doctor Don Diego de Torres Villarroel. Madrid: En la Oficina de Don Benito Cano, 1789. 4to (22.5 cm; 9"). [4] ff., 115, [1 (ad)] pp. [bound and apparently issued with his] El ermitaño y Torres: aventura curiosa, en que se trata de la piedra filosofal. Madrid: En la Oficina de Don Benito Cano, 1789. 4to (22.5 cm; 9"). 131, [1 (blank) pp.
$850.00
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Torres Villarroel's autobiography reads like a picaresque novel because he really did lead such a wild and adventurous life. Son of a bookseller, he left home (Salamanca) little educated (but an avid student) and “took to the road, becoming in turn apprentice hermit in Tras os Montes, dancer in Coimbra, bullfighter in Lisbon, musician, and failed smuggler” (Oxford Companion). He authored a successful series of almanacs (beginning in 1721), wrote on witchcraft, and in 1726 won the open competition for the chair of mathematics at the University of Salamanca.
His “Vida” is considered one of “the most important in the Spanish language” (Oxford Companion). The first edition of the autobiography appeared in 1743 and subsequent editions through that of 1758 added events and adventures of later decades of his life, the 1743 edition having covered only the first forty years. This edition, curiously, reprinted the text of the 1743 edition, thus leaving off his fifth and sixth decades; or
perhaps that is not “curious,” as the years covered here were more than arguably the most exciting!
Palau 337551 & 337410. Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature 575–76. Quarter mottled sheep, “Valenciana” style, round spine with raised bands accented in gilt above and below; boards covered in a handsome marbled paper and with a matching gilt rule along the leather's edges. Waterstaining almost throughout, often light, sometimes obtrusive, never ghastly; heavy paper strong and good.
Content, ENGAGING! (11657)
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Fiji Isles Paradise
Van Sandwyk, Charles. Sketches from a tropic isle. [North Vancouver?]: Published by the artist, 1997. 12mo (17.3 cm, 6.81"). 28 pp.; col. illus.
$150.00
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Drawn and annotated in the Fiji Islands: a stunning booklet of color-printed watercolor illustrations by Canadian-born artist Van Sandwyk, accompanied by his calligraphed meditations and signed by him on the dedication page.
This present example features the parrot-variant front cover illustration and, according to the artist's website, is one of 1500 copies.
The gilt-stamped matching bookmark and a card with information on purchasing prints are laid in.
Binding: Publisher's gilt-stamped olive green paper wrappers with color-printed parrot portrait onlay on front wrapper.
Searches of WorldCat locate
no copies in the U.S., with two found in Canada and one at the National Library in New Zealand, which last library supplies the “[North Vancouver?]“ attribution for this production without internal assertion of imprint place. Another online source gives “Tavewa Island,” with we know not what evidence.
Wrappers crisp and fresh, showing virtually no wear save for a small area of faint discoloration from now-absent label; booklet pristine and lay-ins present.
A lovely copy of a scarce and attractive item. (41361)
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First Person Experience Varying Expert Opinion
Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on
the Doctrine of Contagion in the Plague. Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Consider the Validity of the Doctrine of Contagion in the Plague. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 14 June 1819. [London]: No publisher/printer, 1819. Median folio (31.5 cm, 13.5"). 102 pp.
$65.00
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More than 90 witnesses gave testimony in this investigation into the nature of plague, how to distinguish it from other contagious diseases, and how it is transmitted.
Also addressed is the matter of quarantine.
Laid into later wrappers. Sewing mostly perished. Removed from a bound volume. Brittle paper, some chipping at the edges. (40957)
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Tideline Press: Deluxe Set, Signed & with Illumination
Wild, Peter; Elaine Scull, illus. The island hunter trilogy: Pioneers, The Cavalryman, and The Island Hunter. [NY]: Tideline Press, 1976. Oblong 8vo (16.5 cm, 6.5"). 3 vols. Each [24] pp.; illus.
$350.00
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Handsome fine press printing: a set of three volumes of Wild's poetry, illustrated by Elaine Scull, printed and bound by Leonard Seastone at Tideline Press, part of an edition of 150 “regular” copies and and present here as
lettered copy S of 26 deluxe gold-illuminated, casebound copies, signed at the colophon by the author, printer, and artist.
Bindings: Publisher's paper-covered boards in light blue, light green, and taupe; covers blind-stamped each with author, volume title, and
a landscape image drawn from the double-spread title-page.
Bound as above, spines slightly sunned and spotted; each volume with small faint trace of now-absent shelf label. Pages clean and fresh.
A very nice trio. (41344)
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On Spirits & the Supernatural
Burthogge, Richard. An essay upon reason, and the nature of spirits. London: Printed for J[ohn] Dunton, 1694. 8vo (17.3 cm,6.8"). [4] ff., 280 pp., in-text diagram (6 leaves [i.e., pp. 83–94] in expert facsimile).
$1500.00
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The first and only edition of this interesting work on philosophy and the supernatural. Richard Burthogge (1637/8–1705) was a physician and philosopher; after studying at Oxford and Leiden, he settled in his native Devon where he was a local magistrate and physician. His writings include theological and philosophical works.
Dedicated to John Locke, “one of the Greatest Masters of Reason,” this Essay sought “to reconcile the Experimental, or Mechanical, with the Scholastical Method.” It comprises discussion of the nature of Reason and its Acts (apprehension and the use and meaning of words), the nature of Falsity and Enthusiasm (with mentions of Fludd and the Rosicrucians), the nature of questions, human knowledge, and the mind and senses. The second half of the book focuses on the nature of animals and spirits and on the nature of spirits, specters, and apparitions in relation to the human mind and senses, with examples including the conversion of an Indian Raja and a strange omen narrated by Sir Walter Raleigh.
ESTC R1885; Wing B6150. Modern dark brown quarter calf over marbled boards, spine with raised bands gilt-ruled above and below, burgundy leather author and title labels, and gilt devices in compartments; leaves in facsimile as noted above and lower outer corner of B7 torn away taking a few words on each side. First and last leaves with offsetting to edges from previous binding, severest at rear; title and first two gatherings a bit soiled, with other instances of that variably elsewhere, and first few leaves with old marginal waterstaining; edges dusty and a bit darkened throughout, with general age-toning. A copy that clearly had been through a good deal and has been priced accordingly, now cased neatly and safely, ready for good use. (39427)
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The Beckford & Durdans/Rosebery Copy
[Head, Richard]. Nugae venales, sive, thesaurus ridendi & jocandi. [bound with another, see below] Disputatio perjucunda qua probare nititur mulieres homines non esse. [The Hague: I. Burchornius, 1642]. 12mo (12 cm, 4.7’’). [4], 336, 48, 44 pp. [also bound in] Acidalius, Valens. Disputatio perjucunda qua probare nititur mulieres homines non esse. Hagae-Comitatis: I. Burchornius, 1641. 12mo. 191, [1] pp.
$1250.00
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The elegantly bound copy of these works from the rich library of the novelist William Beckford (1760–1844). Interestingly, Beckford owned seven editions of the Nugae — this is his
first edition — printed between 1642 and 1720. In his sale catalogue, a note attributes it to the Irish novelist Richard Head (1637–ca. 86), author of the successful The Irish Rogue, although scattered sentences in Dutch or German cast doubts; the work also had an English edition, this perhaps translated by Head. The first part is a collection of ironic, witty questions and answers on satirical topics, often concerned with women — e.g., what is a liberal woman? — as well as with curiosities (e.g., why are Ethiopians black? is begging preferable to wealth? {‘it is’}). There follow essays on unrelated topics including pseudo-medicine, with the Nugae's second part — Crepundia poetica — then being a collection of short poems on sundry subjects from doctors to astrologers. The third part — Pugna porcorum — is
a satirical poem written solely and perhaps preposterously with words beginning with P.
The Disputatio, here in the second collected edition after a first of 1638, is “a jeu d’esprit against the opinions of the Socinians” (Brunet). Its two parts, propounding rhetorical paradoxes, first appeared separately in 1595, when a debate broke out following the Socinian affirmation that women were animals, not humans, as Eve was not created in the image of God. Attributed to Acidalius Valens, the work
seeks satirically to prove, through numerous mainly theological sources and following Socinian logic, that women are not men; the second essay defends women as a sex.
The title-pages offer three instances of the same handsome woodcut vignette.
Binding: 19th-century straight-grained citron morocco, raised bands, spine gilt-extra with flowers and flourishes; inner dentelles gilt, puce endpapers, all edges gilt over marbling. Red silk bookmark present and attached.
Provenance: William Beckford, with 19th-century note “Beckford sale 1883 lot 174" on front free endpaper verso and cutting from sale catalogue on front pastedown; red leather Durdans (Rosebery) booklabel to front pastedown and that library's small blind-stamp to first title-page and elsewhere. Later bookplate of Lawrence Strangman to front free endpaper; most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, with his small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
I: Wing (rev.ed.) N1462;ESTC R219402. II: Brunet II, 759 (1638 ed.). Bound as above, with significant rubbing to joints and spine especially and with discoloration especially affecting raised bands; gilt ornamentation still impressive. Short closed tear to B4 not quite reaching print, another with loss to margin just touching text on L4; age-toning, with a few leaves slightly browned.
Desirable texts in a desirable copy, with very desirable provenance. (41315)
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Betrayal/MURDER! in Oxford
Rosanna; the Oxford tragedy / In two parts. Part I.--How fair Rosanna, of the city of Oxford, was by a young gentleman betrayed of her virginity. Part II.--His cruelty in murdering her, and how a rose-bush sprung upon her grave, which blossoms all the year through; and how the murder came to be found out, by his cropping the rose, &c. Glasgow [Scotland]: Printed for the Booksellers, [18--]. 12mo (15 cm, 6"). 8 pp.
$95.00
Title woodcut vignette of a young woman in a bonnet, leaning against a gate. “[No.] 20” printed at the foot of the title.
Original self wrappers (unbound; removed). The bottom half inch of the leaves and the top inch of the rear leaf are separated; very good. (38504)
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Important Quaker Spiritual Autobiography
Crook, John. A short history of the life of John Crook, containing some of his spiritual travels and breathings after God, in his young and tender years. London: Printed & sold by T. Sowle, 1706. 8vo (19.1 cm, 7.51"). 53, [3 (pub. adv.)] pp.
$500.00
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First edition: an eminent Quaker leader's own account of his early life, spiritual awakening, and ministry, printed from a manuscript “written by his own hand” but not discovered until after his other works had been published. Crook (1617–1699) was a Justice of the Peace before joining the Society of Friends, after which he was imprisoned a number of times for his ministerial work.
Evidence of Readership: On the title-page, “Quaker” has been appended to Crook's name in pencil (done some time ago), with a bibliographic note in the same hand in the upper margin; two textual errors have been corrected, one in an early inked hand and one pencilled.
ESTC T73591; Smith I, 491. Modern green striped pastepaper–covered boards; spine gently sunned with paper spine label now blank, binding otherwise showing virtually no wear. Annotations as above. Pages browned (particularly first and last) and spotted with mild cockling and creasing. One leaf with tear from outer margin touching a few letters without loss.
A solid copy of the now-uncommon first edition. (41355)
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Cinematically Torn Between a Soldier & the Church
Crawford, F. Marion. The white sister. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1917. 8vo (19.1 cm, 7.51"). [6], 335, [11 (adv.)] pp.; 4 plts.
$75.00
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Photoplay edition of this popular novel — the basis for four different movie adaptations from 1915 to 1960 — about a young Italian noblewoman who, robbed of her inheritance and believing her soldier lover dead, takes vows as a nun before discovering the truth. The text is illustrated with black and white plates from the
Inspiration Pictures film directed by Henry King, and the dust jacket features a striking, sweet-faced depiction of
Lillian Gish in the title role.
Publisher's blue cloth, front cover and spine stamped in dark blue, in original color-printed dust jacket; volume extremities very slightly rubbed, back cover with small scuff, jacket gently sunned with a few short edge tears and inside spine foot reinforced some time ago. Front free endpaper with “Elizabeth” in pencil. Pages faintly age-toned, otherwise clean and fresh.
A nice copy. (37510)
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A Quick Introduction to Early Bookhands — The Enlarged Edition
Fairbank, Alfred. A book of scripts. [London]: Penguin Books, (1968). 12mo (19 cm, 8"). 48 pp., 80 pp. of illus.
$25.00
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A revised and enlarged edition of this classic first published in 1949, incorporating both fresh text and additional illustrations; the latter, which are labelled as “plates” and printed on both sides of a leaf, identify the illustrated manuscript examples as to place and date of inditement and give the current location of the manuscript.
A lovely, informative guide to a considerable variety of handwritings both useful and ornamental.
Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Original illustrated paper over boards, with the dust jacket (a little worn with interior repair at top of spine). Clean.
A very nice copy. (41368)
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Printed with Savile's
Greek “Silver Type”
Clement I, Pope. [three lines in Greek, transliterated as] Klēmentos pros Korinthious epistolē protē. [then in Latin] Clementis ad Corinthios epistola prior. Oxonii: Iohannes Lichfield, 1633. 4to (21.3 cm, 8.4’’). [24], 76, [48], [2] pp.
$950.00
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The handsome editio princeps of Pope Clement's Epistle to the Church at Corinth, here in a well-margined large paper copy. Pope Clement I (d. 99 A.D.) was consecrated by St. Peter as the second or third bishop of Rome, and this is his only extant work, edited, in this version, by Patricius Iunius [Patrick Young] from
an ancient manuscript in the Bibliotheca Regia of Charles I. Young (1584–1652), a Scottish scholar and exegete who served for years as librarian to Prince Henry, James I, and Charles I, was in charge of cataloguing manuscripts preserved at Salisbury Cathedral and other English churches, and he edited numerous Greek works and manuscripts.
The Epistle criticized the deposition of presbyters of the Corinthian church, advocating instead that the clergy’s authority as rulers of the church rested on their apostolic appointment. Its Greek text appears here with facing Latin translation, in double columns; preceded by the surviving Greek and Latin testimonies on Clement I, it is followed by Young’s annotations and a Greek fragment of Clement’s second epistle (now considered spurious).
This volume is printed in Sir Henry Savile’s superb Greek “silver types.” “The legend of the silver types has been a favourite one in the romance of typography. . . . with the notion that . . . [the] beautiful and luxurious typography [of the great printers] was the result of rare and costly material; and, ignoring the fact that silver type would not endure the press. . . . Sir Henry Savile’s Greek types, says Bagford, 'on account of their beauty [our emphasis] were called the Silver types'” (Reed, History, 474 n.181). The elegant Greek and Latin title-page is printed in red and back in various type sizes using roman and italic fonts. The Greek text is also printed in red and black, with several excellent woodcut initials and head- and tailpieces.
Provenance: Ca.1900 armorial bookplate of Harryson Caird, his autograph at foot of title-page. Most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
STC 5398; ESTC S108071 (with disjunct privilege leaf); Madan, I, p.166; Brunet, II, 94; T.B. Reed, A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, (1887). Contemporary English sheep, spine with raised bands and gilt-lettered morocco label; later paper on the boards, mottled and toned to mimic antique leather. Head of spine rubbed with loss, boards a little scuffed, and corners bumped, with first (blank) leaf detached; text variably age-toned, with some dust-soiling to margins and occasional slight spotting or foxing. (41312)
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A SENSATIONAL TALE by “The Ettrick Shepherd”
[Hogg, James]. The Long pack; or, the robbers discovered; a Scottish story, by the Ettrick Shepherd. Glasgow [Scotland]: Printed for the Booksellers, [18––]. 12mo (15 cm, 6"). 24 pp.
$150.00
A pedlar leaves a strange “long pack” at the house of a rich colonel on the banks of North Tyne in Northumberland; one of the servants, terrified to see the pack move, fires on it and finds he has killed a man armed with a cutlass and four pistols, who has been ingeniously folded up into the pack. Fearing a plan to rob the house, the servants summon reinforcements and a fierce gun battle ensues when the dead man's accomplices — a gang of robbers who apparently included some men of good family — attack the house, but are beaten off by the inhabitants.
Attributed to James Hogg [1770 –1835] by the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, this tale was first published in 1817; known as the “Ettrick Shepherd”, Hogg was born in Ettrick Forest and indeed began his life as a shepherd. His literary talents were discovered by Scott, and he was a friend of Byron, Wordsworth and Southey.
A woodcut border frames the title page, which features a woodcut vignette of a seated man in kilt, plaid and bonnet, playing the bagpipes; there is also a woodcut tail-piece “[No.] 24” is printed at the foot of the title.
Very good. Original self wrappers (unbound; removed). (38499)
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American Women's Missions
Woman's Home Missionary Society. Woman's home missions [of the Methodist Episcopal Church]. Delaware, OH: Woman's Home Missionary Society, 1884–85. Folio (27.1 cm, 10.67"). 104, 144, 192 pp.
$200.00
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Collected here are the first three volumes of a monthly periodical dedicated to Methodist women's domestic missions — and their accompanying fundraising efforts — in the south and west of the U.S., running from Jan. 1884 through Dec. 1886. The Woman's Home Missionary Society was organized in 1880, and sent missionary teachers to
Mormon, Chinese, African-American, and Native American communities as well as assisting impoverished women and children. The present accounts of their labors include news of members' activities, uplifting readings, illustrated advertisements, and extensive writings on
the state of affairs in Utah and in Indian Territory.
Contemporary half oxblood morocco and pebbled cloth–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; minor shelfwear overall, spine and extremities unobtrusively refurbished. All page edges speckled red. Front pastedown with book manufacturer's ticket. Pages very slightly age-toned, otherwise clean and fresh.
Uncommon. (41345)
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Hygienic Ice Cream Manufacturing
Warner-Jenkinson Mfg. Co. Ice cream, carbonated beverages [/] with a short introduction to the study of chemistry and physics. St. Louis : Warner-Jenkinson Mfg. Co., 1924. 8vo (20 cm, 7.87"). [2], 134 pp.; 8 plts.
$120.00
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New and improved version, updated (and retitled) from a sold-out 1921 booklet: “A handbook for ice-cream makers, sodawater bottlers, and students taking short courses in Dairying, etc.” This combination of culinary and scientific information focuses on the technical aspects of manufacture — and promotes Red Seal products including flavors, colors, stabilizing powders, and others. The text is
illustrated with eight photographic plates depicting various facilities, as well as several in-text depictions of yeasts, bacteria, etc.
Not in Bitting; not in Brown, Culinary Americana. Publisher's very dark brown textured cloth, cover and spine stamped in red; edges and extremities a little rubbed, spine sunned. Endpapers lightly foxed; front pastedown with inked ownership inscription from Pullman, WA; pages clean.
A solid and nice copy of this expanded edition, the first under this title. (41348)
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17th-Century Martial — Classic Engraved Title-Page
Martialis, Marcus Valerius. Epigrammata. Amstelodami: Apud Ioannem Ianssonium, 1654. 12mo (13.9 cm, 5.5"). [12], 456 pp.
$225.00
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Attractive Janssonius edition of Martial's Epigrams, with commentary by Thomas Farnaby. The pithy satires appear here with an engraved title-page and the main text elegantly laid out in italics surrounded by minute but legible notes in roman.
Provenance: Front fly-leaf with early inked inscription “Sum ex libris Jos. Crowther” and in a different early hand, “E libris G. Craulein.”
Schweiger, II, 598 (for 1645 ed.). This ed. not in Brunet. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped black leather label. Inscriptions as above, title-page with small initials inked next to publication information. Fly-leaves browned, with edges chipped; pages age-toned with occasionally a pinhole piercing and in one leaf a tiny burn-hole, with neither obscuring sense.
A solid, clean, very usable copy. (41359)
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Hypatia, in Disguise?
Kingsley, Charles. Hypatia or new foes with an old face. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1897. 8vo (18.7 cm, 7.36"). Frontis., [2], xvi, 477, [1] pp.; 4 plts.
$50.00
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Kingsley's best-selling tale of fifth-century religious and philosophical conflict canvassed via
the extraordinary career and sensational murder of Hypatia, a renowned and revered female philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician in ancient Hellene Alexandria.
It is illustrated with a frontispiece and four plates done by Edmund H. Garrett.
Binding: This is an intriguing example of this novel of ideas, in that the usual thematically appropriate binding has been replaced by an unrelated, innocuous color-printed scene of a cottage by a lake on a background with a repeating design of daisies, embellished with raised cornflowers (unsigned) — perhaps intended for ladies of delicate sensibilities who didn't want to be seen in public reading this controversial novel!
Provenance: On front free endpaper, two ownership stamps of Sarah E. Lembeck.
Publisher's printed paper–covered boards with pattern of daisies in white and gilt, front cover with illustration as above, robin's egg blue cloth shelfback gilt extra; very minor dust-soiling to light portion of cover illustration, traces of wear to corners and lower edges. Title-page with one tiny edge tear; pages clean. (37535)
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With One Large “JOLLY” Cut
Roy's wife of Aldivalloch. To which is added, the Highland plaid, Neil Gow's fareweel, John Anderson, my Jo, Maria. Glasgow: R. Hutchison, 1823. 12mo (15.4 cm, 6"). 8 pp.
$95.00
The woodcut title-page vignette shows three men sitting around a table, smoking pipes and partaking of a punchbowl.
This ed. not in NSTC. Removed from a nonce volume. Pages age-toned, else clean. (38501)
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English Catholic Provenance — Counter-Reformation Content
Duranti, Jean-Esienne. ... De ritibus ecclesiae catholicae libri tres. Romae: Ex Typographia Vaticana, 1591. 8vo (17.8 cm, 7’’). [16], 724, [76 pp].
$900.00
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The first edition of this monumental survey, in full Counter-Reformation spirit, of the rites of the Catholic Church — a copy with 18th-century English ownership, most likely circulating in Catholic circles. In that era, it was probably in the library of the Rev. John Cotes (1700–94) of Alnwick, Northumbria, a onetime student at the Jesuit College in Douai who then taught philosophy there for two years (Hodgson, 8); he was in Sunderland from 1730 to 1737 (Northern Catholic History, 1981, 16), and was listed among the signatories of the Declaration and protestation of the Roman Catholics of England (1789).
Author Jean-Étienne Duranti (1534–89) was the first President of the Parliament in Toulouse; the author of juridical works, he was also a co-founder of the Compagnie royale des Pénitents bleus de Toulouse, inspired by Franciscan ideals. His De ritibus is an encyclopaedic reference work discussing
all ritual aspects of Catholicism, from the meaning of sacred objects (e.g., chalices, candle holders, holy water containers) to the function of church architecture (e.g., choir, baptistry, cemeteries), the history and parts of the mass, the meaning of types of readings or songs, and the significance of the canonical hours. Each section comprises detailed theoretical or practical points — listed in the lengthy index — including the discussion of topics such as
the vestments of corpses.
From the Vatican press, this bears the woodcut arms of Pope Gregory XIV on its title-page and an array of interesting woodcut initials and ornaments in the main text, which is printed in a small roman font with some use of italic type. This is one of few books published by this press at the beginning of the time when
Aldo Manuzio the Younger was appointed director. There was also a folio edition in the same year.
Provenance: As above, with 18th-century autograph “J. Cotes” and small manuscript price (?) on title-page; later manuscript casemark “Case B 1 14" on front pastedown. Most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Adam D1192; EDIT16 CNCE17949. Hodgson, Northumbrian Documents. Contemporary English calf, spine plain-style with raised bands and without labels; scratches and rubbing to modestly blind-ruled boards, upper corners bumped; front pastedown lifting but fully present, and upper outer corners (only) of one portion very shallowly rodent-nibbled. Dust-soiling notable to endpapers, title-page, and a few other leaves; otherwise text clean with minimal age-toning, occasional passages of light waterstaining, and the odd corner-crease or dog-ear.
A handsome and interesting book with enhancing provenance. (41340)
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The “Philosophy of America” — First Edition, in a Signed Binding
Mason, Walt. Uncle Walt [Walt Mason]: The poet philosopher. Chicago: George Matthew Adams, 1910. 8vo (20.1 cm, 7.9"). Frontis., 189, [3] pp.; illus.
$85.00
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“Walt Mason's Prose Rhymes are read daily by approximately ten million [newspaper] readers,” according to the preface, making Mason “the Poet Laureate of the American Democracy.” This collection of his popular, often humorous short pieces comes “from the presses of the Caslon Press . . . Arranged and decorated by Will Bradley. Frontispiece by John T. McCutcheon. Illustrations by William Stevens” (per the colophon); this first edition is in a
publisher's binding signed “B” (for Bradley).
The type here is set within ruled borders, and the verbal vignettes' titles are set as shouldernotes; the “poetry,” set as prose, is
frank period doggerel and often the more fun for that, although many sentiments are also “period.”
Binding: Publisher's brown cloth, front cover and spine pictorially stamped in orange, black, and tan with an image of Uncle Walt holding forth; the orange title lettering is LARGE and the image fills the entire cover.
Bound as above; minor wear to black portions of front cover, extremities slightly rubbed. Dust jacket lacking, as is typical; page edges untrimmed. Text age-toned, otherwise clean and crisp. (41338)
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Illustrated Italian Gospels
Fiorentino [Nannini], Remigio, transl. Epistole et evangelii, che si leggono tutto l'anno alla Messa, secondo l'uso della Santa Romana Chiesa. Vinegia: Gabriel Giolito, 1569. 4to (24.7 cm, 9.72"). [32], 527, [1] pp.; illus.
$2000.00
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This devotional work “nuovamente tradotti in lingua toscana” was by a Dominican friar, is here in its second edition (following a first of 1567), and is one of the few vernacular biblical texts at the time approved by the Catholic Church, being
the only accepted Italian translation. Nannini's text is embellished with
numerous large, often striking woodcut illustrations and with many and various initials of various sizes, and it includes two calendrical tables as well as an index.
Provenance: Front pastedown with “E Bib. Si. Fi. Xii” bookplate, overlying a lengthy inked annotation in Italian, dated 1682. Most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
EDIT16 CNCE 11371. Not in Adams, not in Brunet. Contemporary mottled calf, rebacked in complementary very plain style without labels; sides with moderate scuffing. Pagination occasionally erratic, especially towards back of volume, with no apparent break in text; all edges speckled red. Bookplate and annotations as above, with occasional early inked doodles and annotations, including to title-page and final page (with printer's vignette). Text age-toned with intermittent light to moderate waterstaining and spotting, first and final leaves more noticeably soiled; a few corners bumped or torn away.
Very solid, and with all its obvious use and wear quite attractive. (41333)
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The FIRST Occurence of the
Term “Rump Parliament”
Walker, Clement. Relations and observations, historicall and politick, upon the Parliament begun anno Dom. 1640. [London?:: No publisher/printer], 1650. 4to (20 cm, 7.8’’). [6], 161, [1] pp.
$750.00
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This intriguing pamphlet in its fourth edition, after three of 1648, with the first occurrence of the phrase “Rump Parliament” used to refer to the members of the sitting Long Parliament. “Wing states that [its] place of publication [was] London, but the typesetting and ornaments appear to be continental” (ESTC); as, unlike the three editions of 1848, this was printed after the beheading of Charles I, it is unsurprising it should have been produced abroad. The title-page layout appears to follow that of the second edition, a copy of which probably provided the source for the present one.
Writing under the pseudonym Theodorus Verax, Clement Walker (d. 1651) was a controversialist and M.P. for Wells. His Relations is devoted to the Long Parliament; appointed in 1640, in 1648 it was hit by Pride’s Purge, which expelled the Presbyterian, moderate faction, favoring instead the Independents and supporters of Cromwell’s New Model Army under the direction of Sir Thomas Fairfax, to whom the Relations is dedicated. It argues, however, that if Presbyterians were in the wrong, the Independents were not right either, as, like the former, they eventually behaved in ways that wronged the English people.
The work is made of up three parts in one, with separate title-pages. The first, “The Mystery of the two Iunto’s,” discusses the tensions between the Presbyterian and Independent factions; the second, “The History of Independency,” begins with a discussion of Cromwell’s Army, its fights against the City, and all the phases of the strengthening of the Cromwell faction. The third part is concerned with the controversial Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, eventually executed as a Cromwell collaborator, under Charles II, for high treason.
ESTC R186161; Wing (rev. ed.) W334C. Modern marbled paper–covered boards, gilt-lettered leather label to spine. Text with age-toning sometimes unto browning, with variable dust- and finger-soiling especially to page edges; short slender (even “minute”) worm tracks to outer margin of final gatherings.
A sound and serviceable copy of this work by “Verax.” (41342)
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Bewick: Befores & Afters from a
MODERN Fine Press
Bewick, Thomas, illus. Thomas Bewick: Ten working drawing reproductions shown with impressions of the corresponding engravings. Chicago: Cherryburn Press, 1972. Oblong 8vo (19.8 cm, 7.79"). Frontis, [14] pp.; 10 double-spread matted plates.
$125.00
Click the images for enlargements.
One of only 160 copies printed: an elegantly designed portfolio presentation of ten of Bewick's preliminary drawings (reproduced from the originals by the Meriden Gravure Company) alongside reprintings
from the original blocks of their final engraved forms. (One engraving only is done from a later plate, which provides instructive contrast of effect.)
The introduction was signed by the printer, Robert Hunter Middleton, a Bewick aficionado who expertly reproduced his work.
Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, sans indicia.
Publisher's case of tan buckram and textured grey paper–covered sides, front cover and spine with red paper labels, in matching slipcase; slipcase rubbed but solid with spine cloth slightly foxed, case otherwise showing virtually no wear.
The enclosed portolio, pristine. (41304)
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The Scottish . . . Machiavelli?
Skelton, John. Maitland of Lethington and the Scotland of Mary Stuart: A history. Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1887. 8vo (22.3 cm, 8.77"). 2 vols. I: xl, [2], 336, [4 (adv.)] pp. II: x, 436, [2 (adv.)] pp.
$100.00
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First edition, attractively bound; and one of the first scholarly efforts to advocate for a more positive depiction of the character and accomplishments of Secretary Lethington, set in the context of his tumultuous era.Binding: Contemporary half green morocco and gold-veined marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels; gilt-ruled raised bands, and compartments gilt extra.
Provenance: From the library of Robert L. Sadoff, M.D., sans indicia.
Bound as above, withspines evenly sunned to olive, joints and edges rubbed, some corners bumped, spine extremities chipped; front joint of vol. I cracked and partially separated. Pages lightly age-toned; stain to fore-edge of vol. I, extending slimly into a few margins, and two pages in vol. II with small area of spotting.
A dignified set, priced to allow for repair! (41200)
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Three 1586 Greek Works from Fédéric Morel's Press
Synesius, of Cyrene, Bishop of Ptolemais. [title in Greek, romanized as] Synesiou Kyrênês Episcopou Ymnoi deka. Grêgoriou tou Nazianzêiou ôdai teatares. [bound with two others, see below]. Lutetiae [Paris]: Apud Federicum Morellum, 1586. 8vo (18 cm; 7"). 88 pp. [with the same author's] [title in Greek romanized as] ... Peri enypnion ... Liber de insomniis ... Lutetiae [Paris]: Apud Federicum Morellum, 1586. 8vo. 56 pp. (lacking parts 2 and 3; [10], 31, [5], 55, [1] ff.). [with] John Chrysostom, Saint. [title in Greek romanized as] Ioannou tou Chrysostomou Peri Heimarmenes te kai pronoias. [then in Latin:] Divi Ioannis Chrysostomi Conciucnculae perquam elegantes sex de fato & prouidentia Dei. Lutetiae [Paris]: Apud Federicum Morellum, 1586. 8vo. 82. (i.e., 79), [1] pp.
$2875.00
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An attractive Greek sammelband of scarce theological works in a trio produced by Frédéric Morel (1552–1630) — heir of a great line of Paris printers after his father’s death in 1583 and, from 1581, the French Royal Printer for the Greek, as blazoned by the dedicated printer’s device with pike, snake, and olive branch on each title-page here. Based on editions previously produced by other Parisian printers (and sometimes also bound together), this sammelband boasts the famous Grec du Roi typeface — in particular, the Royal Pica Greek — that Morel had inherited, ultimately, from Robert Estienne, and which was originally produced by Garamond.
Synesius (373–414), Bishop of Ptolemais, was known in the Renaissance for his intriguing works, spanning subjects as varied as the praise of hair and the making of astrolabes. First here, entirely in Greek, are his ten famous hymns of Neoplatonic feeling, followed by four odes by the Church Father Gregory of Nazianzus (329–90), Archbishop of Constantinople. Next comes part I (only) of Synesius’s second work – Peri enypniōn — “one of the most fervent writings in the area of religiously founded speculation about divination through dreams,” and “an important representative of Greek oneirological thinking” (Bittrich, 71); this concludes with a short Orphic hymn. The last work presents the influential Conciunculae by John Chrysostom (347–407), a treatise on fate and divine providence, followed by short excerpts from St. Isidore’s epistles.
In addition to the royal printer’s woodcut device on titles, the works all also have interesting decorated initials and ornaments.
Binding: Late 18th-century green sheep, board edges gilt with a decorated fillet with stars in a chaine; spine gilt with Greek fillet and urns. Gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.
Provenance: From the library of the Hardens of Crea, King’s Co., in Ireland, and probably bound in Dublin in the second half of the 18th century. Armorial bookplate printed in red of Henry Hurden, L.L.B.; most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
I: Not in Brunet or USTC. II: USTC 171954; Pettegree & Walsby 87229; Renouard 1584 06:14:1; Brunet, V, 614. III: Adams, C1546. Bittrich, “Outline of a General History of Speculation about Dreams,” in On Prophecy, Dreams and Human Imagination (2014), 71–96. Bound as above, second work lacking parts II and III, rubbed and with spine a little sunned; text remarkably clean, with
generous lower margins. Light age-toning small light water stain at foot of a few leaves; two pages in last section with old pencilled underlining.
Handsome Greek printing with pleasing provenance. (37798)
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Rime Pietose — De Luca Copy
Interestingly VARIOUS Management of the Woodcuts
Bramicelli, Guglielmo, transl. Inni che si cantano tutto l'anno alle hore canoniche, nella Chiesa romana. Venetia: Giorgio Angelieri, 1597. 8vo (13.3 cm, 5.25"). [40] pp., 93 (i.e., 100) ff. (pagination erratic); illus.
$1975.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition: Catholic hymns, translated from Latin into Italian verse by a member of the Clerics Regular of Somasca (variously identified as either Bramiceli or Bramicelli). Many of the hymns open with small illustrations — totaling
42 in-text woodcuts— and the title-page features Angelieri's printer's device of an amphora watering a seedling, bearing the motto “A poco a poco.”
The woodcuts are notable not only for the variety of scenes they present but for a certain variety in presentation: Many of the images are presented with their edges visually defined in the normal way, essentially “ruled”; but some are presented as if paintings, within full Renaissance “picture frames” --- with the images themselves, inside, sometimes having their edges normally defined and sometimes floating entirely free. Yet other cuts are given framing at their sides or top and bottom, but not both!
Bramicelli's vernacular renditions were apparently unauthorized; one source claims that the Church ordered the book burned (Tentorio, Saggio storico sullo sviluppo dell'ordine somasco dal 1569 al 1650, p. 178). This may explain why the work is now
scarce, with WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956 locating only one U.S. institutional holding (Newberry), and only one additional one internationally. EDIT16 gives only ten Italian libraries as holding copies.
Provenance: From the collection of Don Tommaso De Luca (1752–1829), described by Alexander Roberson as “a priest of the old school . . . possessed of one of the finest libraries in all Northern Italy”; front free endpaper inked with “Exemplare proveniente dalla celebre Collezione de Luca. Veggasi suo Catalogo stampato, alla pag. 101, lin. 29.30" (referring to De Luca's 1816 Catalogo di una pregevole collezione di manoscritti e di libri a stampa delle più ricercate edizioni). Most recently in the library of of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
EDIT16 CNCE 7425. Not in Adams; not in Mortimer; not in Index Aurel. Contemporary marbled paper–covered limp wrappers, faded and rubbed overall; spine darkened and chipped, front cover with early inked numeral at upper center. Front hinge (inside) cracked, with uppermost of two sewing bands separated from vellum; front free endpaper with early bibliographic note in neatly inked Italian. Light waterstaining to lower outer corners of about 12 ff., scattered minor foxing.
A fascinating production. (38978)
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Burial Fees Attacked
Spelman, Henry. De sepultura. London: Printed by Robert Young, 1641. 4to (19 cm, 7.5’’). [2], 38 pp., lacking first and last blank as usual.
$400.00
Click the images for enlargements.
The first edition of Sir Henry Spelman’s famous condemnation of the financial contributions demanded of mourners by their churches for burials — an influence on several pamphlets by John Milton. Spelman (1562–1641), one of the most important English antiquaries of the early modern period, was acquainted with Robert Cotton and a great collector of medieval documents and records; published in the year of his death, his De sepultura deprecates the act of requesting money for burial rites because, as the pamphlet's first sentence says, “It is a worke of the Law of Nature and of Nations, of humane and divine Law, to bury the Dead” (p.1). The “selling of graves and the duty [tax] of buriall” he sees as Christian customs, “not heard of [. . .] among the Barbarians” (p. 2); he cites numerous medieval ecclesiastical and state sources from England and sometimes France that forbid the exaction of money for burial and blessings to the dead, as well as the opinions of major English canonists. He also quotes from church constitutions of his time, with citation of prices (separate for children under 7) requested by parsons and church-wardens for interment. Very interesting is a paragraph printed in Anglo-Saxon type, Spelman being knowledgeable in that language, which reproduces
a law from the reign of Cnut.
Provenance: 17th-century autograph of “William (?)ram (?)” and three early pen trials on title-page; large 20th-century armorial bookplate of Edward Jackson Barron, member of the Society of Antiquaries to front pastedown; even larger 20th-century engraved bookplate of Moses H. Grossman, designed by Henri Bérengier (1881–1943), laid in; modern manuscript date to lower blank margin of last verso.
ESTC R19887; Kress 606; Goldsmiths’-Kress 766.1; Wing (rev. ed.) S4924. Early 20th-century half calf over marbled paper boards with author/title/date blind-stamped to spine; rubbed. Title-page and last verso dust-soiled and text generally with significant age-toning but paper yet good; one small pinehole-type wormhole through lower margins.
A sound, readable copy of an important text on a once vexed subject. (41335)
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Stowe's Second Anti-Slavery Novel — First U.S. Edition
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Dred; a tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1856. 12mo (20 cm, 7.87"). 2 vols. I: 329, [7 (6 adv.)] pp. II; v, [1], [5]–370 pp.
$475.00
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The follow-up to Uncle Tom's Cabin: first American edition, first state as described by BAL (matching on all points, including state “A” bindings), with publisher's advertisements at the back of vol. I.
In some ways even more militantly abolitionist than Uncle Tom, this novel's complicated plot
drew liberally on real-life figures and events that Stowe cited in a long and detailed Appendix, to create and assert a realism as to slavery and its effects that readers would find undismissable..
Provenance: Front free endpaper of vol. I with inked inscription: “To Miss Matthews As a Phillipoena Pay[men]t From G.S.R. October 7 1856.” (“Phillipoena” was a German-derived game involving love and friendship penalties or “forfeits” between couples; make of that what you will!) Most recently in the library of Robert L. Sadoff, M.D., sans indicia.
Binding: Publisher's straight-grained very dark brown cloth, covers framed in blind-stamped leaf and vine decorations, spines with gilt-stamped title and “Boston” at feet; plain yellow endpapers.
BAL 19389; Wright, II, 2391. Bound as above, slightly cocked, lightly rubbed overall and moreso at corners; spine extremities chipped. Varying degrees of foxing; some signatures starting to loosen.
Inscription as above! (41279)
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A Bowery
“B'Hoy” Makes Good
Southworth, Mrs. E.D.E.N. Capitola's peril. New York: A.L. Burt & Co., [ca. 1890]. 12mo (19.2 cm, 7.55"). [2], 246, [6 (adv.)] pp.
$125.00
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The exciting conclusion of The Hidden Hand, Southworth's most popular novel. “Madcap” scrappy Irish-American tomboy Capitola, rescued from street life in New York City and removed to a Virginia plantation, embarks on further adventures before settling down to her happy ending. The entire work was originally serialized and then printed in book form under the Hidden Hand title, and subsequently often published in two volumes as The Hidden Hand and Capitola's Perils. This is an early if not the first printing of the latter as a separate item, now uncommon as such, with the present copy being
in the publisher's original dust jacket.
Binding: Publisher's light yellow cloth decoratively stamped in maroon and dark green, front cover with color-printed pictorial paper onlay, in color-printed dust jacket as above.
Cover and jacket sport three-quarter portraits of a charming, intelligent-looking young woman of the period; not the SAME girl, however!
This ed. not in Wright; see Wright, III, 5090 for single-volume first ed. Bound as above, volume slightly shaken, edges and spine extremities rubbed, tiny spots of insect damage to front joint; jacket
darkened with spine head chipped and lower portion of spine torn away. Pages evenly age-toned, otherwise clean. (41299)
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Lions, & Tigers, & Bears — Engraved!
Bennett, Edward Turner; William Harvey, illus. The Tower menagerie: Comprising the natural history of the animals contained in that establishment; with anecdotes of their characters and history. London: Robert Jennings (pr. by Charles Whittingham, College House), 1829. 8vo (22.8 cm, 8.97"). xviii, 241, [1] pp.; illus.
$250.00
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First edition: Detailed accounts of the animals and birds of the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London — not just the natural history of their species, but the specific temperaments and characteristics of
the individual creatures then living in the collection. The great cats, hyenas, wolves, bears, monkeys, elephants, eagles, vultures, owls, macaws, alligators, anacondas, etc. are
illustrated with “portraits of each, taken from life, by William Harvey; and engraved on wood by Branston and Wright.” This work marks the closing days of the 600-year history of the menagerie, as by 1832 all of the animals had been transferred into the care of the Zoological Society of London.
Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Contemporary quarter sheep and cream paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and date; binding rubbed overall with sides darkened and leather scuffed (particularly at joints). Hinges (inside) starting from top; still holding. Back pastedown with small ticket of F. Westley, binder. Pages faintly age-toned with a few scattered small smudges, otherwise clean; one leaf with short tear from lower margin, just touching last line of text without loss.
An enjoyable copy of this attractive Whittingham production, and from a good collection. (41296)
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Cicero on Divination — Isocrates on Virtue
Cicero; Abbé de Regnier Desmarais, trans. Traité de la divination. Traduit du Latin de Ciceron. Amsterdam: Chez Isaac Trojel, 1711. 8vo (15 cm, 6’’). [24], 283, [5 pp.
$450.00
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The first French translation of Cicero’s famous work on divination, here in its scarce second edition and appearing with Isocrates’ Discourse translated from the Greek. F.-S. Régnier-Desmarais (1632–1713) was a French religious, poet, and translator of several classical works; in the preface here, he explains his choice of Ciceronian effort by noting that this was, of Cicero’s works, “the least known to the wider public.”
The Traité is a history of divination (i.e., the prediction of the future) in ancient Western and Middle Eastern cultures. Discussing its origins and its main kinds (artificial and natural), it considers divination through dreams, prodigies and presages, and the function of the Aruspices.
Isocrates’s Discourse addresses “the behavior of honest men in the course of life,” with didactic advice.
Trojet's title-page is in red and black with an emblematic engraved vignette; his last four pages give a “Catalogue des livres francois qui se trouve à Amsterdam, chez Isaac Trojel,”
with an interesting selection promised.
Binding: Contemporary calf, covers gilt ruled and spine gilt extra with gilt-lettered morocco label. Gilt inner denteles, blue endpapers, edges speckled red. Red silk ribbon book mark present.
Provenance: 18th-century French inscription on the fly-leaf.
WorldCat locates no copies in the U.S.
Dorbon, Bibliotheca Esoterica, 746; Quérard, II, 203. Not in Caillet; not in Coumont.. Bound as above, a little scuffed; evidence of mismanaged binding acid, especially at one corner, and front endpapers abraded. A handful of leaves slightly browned (poorly dried) or with the odd, small, light dampstain; text generally clean, with a couple of blank margins unobtrusively strengthened. (41303)
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“Jim Crow's trip to Greenwich . . .”
(With a Side Order of Man'splaining)
Five popular songs. The Exile of Erin. Jim Crow's trip to Greenwich. Braes o' Birniebouzle. My Mither men't my auld breeks. Lash to the helm. Glasgow [Scotland]: Printed for the Booksellers, [1840s]. 12mo. 8 pp.
$85.00
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In the second song here, Jim Crow takes a trip to Greenwich on a steamboat with “folks of e'bery nation,” some of whom are nervous about the safety of the boat, and overhears
a foolish fellow explaining the mechanical workings of the craft to a lady passenger. “The Exile of Erin” is Thomas Campbell's.
Title woodcut vignette is of a young man in a straw hat, sharpening a scythe which is balanced on his shoulder; “[No.] 53” is printed at the foot of the chapbook's title-page.
Unbound; removed. In the song “My Mither”, an owner has crossed out two words & one phrase in pencil and written pencil amendments in the margin. Very good. (37145)
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Stamped in the Titular Metals
Ellwanger, George H. In gold and silver. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1892. 12mo (17.1 cm, 6.73"). Frontis., illum. t.-p., viii, 156, [2 (adv.)] pp.; 8 plts., illus.
$55.00
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First edition of these four stories: one example of prime 19th-century Orientalist exoticism in which a traveler tries to track down a famously beautiful rug, two fishing tales, and an account of a fox's triumph over his would-be hunters. The stories are
illustrated with a frontispiece, eight additional plates, and a number of in-text vignettes by A.B. Wenzell, W.C. Greenough, and W. Hamilton Gibson, as well as a title-page printed in accordance with the title.
Binding: Publisher's brick-colored cloth, front cover with cream medallion stamped in gilt and silver, in silver- and gold-stamped frame with corner fleurons, spine and back cover repeating the corner fleuron motifs. Top edges gilt. Silk bookmark detached but laid in.
Binding as above; spine foot chipped, corners rubbed, otherwise fresh and bright inside and out.
In fact a lovely little volume, with both the gold and the silver, i.e., aluminum, shine extraordinarily bright and clear. (41288)
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UNCUT BIFOLIUM . . .
Catholic Church. Liturgy & ritual. [drop-title] Die XXVII. augusti. In festo Sancti Josephi Calasanctii a Matre Dei. Scolarum piarum fundatoris, duplex. [Mexico City: 1790–1800]. Folio. [1] f.
$185.00
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Printed here is the text of the changes to be introduced into the mass specified in the title. Offered here is a bifolium containing two copies of the decree, meant to be separated but never cut. Uncut bifolia are extremely rare.
This is handsomely printed!
Not in Medina, Mexico; not in González de Cossío, Cien or 510. Folded once and never bound. Lightly soiled at edges, with just a small spot or two of foxing; crisp. (41271)
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Improvements in TWO KINDS of Pumps — Patented!
A Very LARGE & Attractive Document
Henderson, William M. Patent No. 38308: Improvement in pumps. [Washington, D.C.: United States Patent Office, 1863] . Folio (appr. 50 × 27 cm, 20" × 14.5"). [3] ff.
$750.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Patent granted to William M. Henderson of Baltimore for improvements in “double action suction and force pumps.” F. [1] is the patent itself on an engraved form, with the hand signature of Secretary of the Interior I.P. Usher; f. [2] is
a drawing of the device as improved upon, and [3] is Henderson's official description of it.
This is a very large and beautiful version of the U.S. “letters patent” document, with an elegant engraved eagle, the calligraphic blazon “The United States of America,” and a handsome engraving of the Patent Office building in Washington (drawn by A.A. von Schmidt and engraved by W.H. Dougal) occupying almost the entire top half of the first page.
Henderson's story as an inventor, involving emigration from England, “field work” building railway bridges in Chile, and residence in the late-19th-century U.S. industrial centers of Baltimore and Philadelphia, is interesting both as individual and as
representative of American inventors' careers in a very inventive era.
Henderson's papers are held at the Hagley Museum, & Library, Wilmington, DE: see, https://invention.si.edu/william-m-henderson-papers-1847-1893. Laced together with a light blue silk ribbon; folded. Some foxing, especially on drawing; soiling on exterior fold with traces elsewhere; and spotting to ribbon and blue-green wafer. (8638)
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Ellis on “the Whole Law of Woman's Life” — Complete Set
in the
SCARCE PRESENTATION CASE
Ellis, Sarah Stickney. (The Englishwoman's Family Library). The daughters of England, their position in society, character & responsibilities. The mothers of England[,] their influence & responsibility. The wives of England, their relative duties, domestic influence, & social obligations. The women of England, their social duties, and domestic habits. London: Peter Jackson & Fisher, Son, and Co., [ca. 1845]. 8vo (17.7 cm, 6.96"). 4 vols. Daughters: Frontis., 400 pp. Mothers: Frontis., [8], 390 pp. Wives: Frontis., 371, [1] pp. Women: Frontis., 343, [1] pp.
$5500.00
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Ellis's popular “Women of England” series: Moral education aimed not at fine ladies, but rather at middle-class women, of “that estimable class of females who . . . enjoy the privilege of liberal education, with exemption from the pecuniary necessities of labor” (Women, p. iv). These volumes seek to teach Englishwomen to be observant, kind, and humble as girls; thrifty, domestic, and comforting as wives; dedicated instructors and guides as mothers; good, soothing Christian influences on those around them throughout their lives; and above all, patient and submissive — in short
the embodiment of the Angel in the House, though these books preceded the publication of that poem. Ellis grants the necessity of some degree of education for women primarily in order to make them better housekeepers and more interesting companions to men, noting that “so far as cleverness, learning, and knowledge are conducive to woman's moral excellence, they are therefore desirable, and no further” (Daughters, p. 105) — but still she reinforces women's agency, responsibility, and need for self-awareness and self-management, particularly in the daunting task of choosing husbands who will respect them and treat them well.
The four volumes, each with its own engraved frontispiece, appear here
in the publisher's leather-covered wooden display casewith shaped roof-like pediment, gilt decorations, gilt-stamped “Library” title, glass-fronted door, and push-button metal catch. The works were first published separately in 1839 (Women), 1842 (Daughters), early 1843 (Wives), and late 1843 (Mothers); the case, apparently first advertised in 1843, could be “had separately” and assembled sets then ensconced in it, or one could buy handsome, variously bound complete sets already encased when new.
Uniform sets are uncommon, and contained in cases like this one are even more so.
Provenance: Daughters with inked ownership inscription of Josephine Sparre, dated 1856; Women with early inked inscription of A.M. Kirwan of Well Park, Drumcondra (Ireland).
Publisher's red pebbled cloth, covers elaborately stamped in blind, spines with gilt-stamped titles and embossed decorations; volumes with edges and extremities rubbed, small scuffs and spots of discoloration to sides, spines gently sunned, Daughters cloth somewhat lighter overall. Daughters: Offsetting from frontispiece to title-page. Mothers: Frontispiece lightly foxed; light pencilled marks of emphasis. Wives: Front free endpaper lacking; frontispiece foxed. Inscriptions as above; occasional small spots of foxing, smudges, and edge chips scattered throughout; box with scuffs and wear, cracks to leather at top refurbished. A removable dais has been added to the foot of the box in order to fit the presently contained volumes more snugly; markings to the cloth lining of the box suggest that, at one time, taller volumes resided there.
Some of Ellis's most successful and influential writing in a desirable uniformly bound set, within the rarely surviving and quite charming display case. (41250)
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M.A. BINDING — “The Music-Lover,” “The Unruly Sprite,”
“The King's Jewel,” *&* OTHERS
(ILLUSTRATED)
Van Dyke, Henry. The unknown quantity: A book of romance and some half-told tales. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912. 12mo (19.5 cm, 7.67"). [2], xiv, [2], 370 pp.; 4 col. plts, 3 plts.
$30.00
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First edition. The first few stories are set among the French Canadians of Quebec; others are inspired by fairy tales from various lands, Christian epiphanies, musical experiences, etc. The volume is illustrated with a total of seven plates: a color-printed frontispiece, three more color-printed plates, three black and white plates, and additional head- and tailpiece vignettes by Garth Jones.
Binding: Publisher's blue cloth, decorated on the front cover with an elaborate fruit and flower pattern in gold, light green, and orange, spine with gilt-stamped decorative title. Top edges gilt.
Signed by Margaret Armstrong.
Gullans & Espey, Checklist of Trade Bindings Designed by Margaret Armstrong, 250; Smith, American Fiction, 1901–1925, V-87. Bound as above; corners and spine extremities lightly rubbed, orange stamping showing minor scuffing. Pages gently age-toned, with some foxing to endpapers and in proximity to plates.
A nice copy of a nice book. (41282)
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One for
FRANCISCAN Novices
Franciscans. Cartilla, y doctrina espiritual, para la crianza, y educacion de los novicios, que tomaren el habito de la orden de n.p. S. Francisco. Mexico: Imp. de D. Felipe de Zuñiga y Ontiveros, 1775. 12mo (14.7 cm; 5.75"). [3] ff., 118 pp.
$950.00
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A primer based on the doctrines of St. Bonaventure, but adapted to the practices of the Franciscan Order — here specifically set forth for novices and in its second edition. The first edition appeared in Mexico in 1721.
A scarce work, having been printed in a limited number of copies for the very limited-sized audience of Franciscan novices.
Provenance: Henry Ward Poole's copy with his initials and “Mexico, 1876" on the front pastedown.
Medina, Mexico, 5761. Contemporary limp vellum. Fore-edges of binding and pages smoke-darkened, with old waterstaining at rear; else a nice copy with a good provenance. (35154)
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An Old Story — A German Tale for a Scots Audience
Burger, Gottfried August. The lass of Fair Wone, Or, the parson's daughter betrayed. Glasgow: Pr. for the booksellers, [ca. 1840?]. 12mo. 8 pp.
$35.00
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Uncommon chapbook: “A celebrated ballad, translated from the German,” being an English rendition of “Der Pfarrers Tochter von Taubenhain.”
A nobleman pursues a virginal country maid, and the liaison ends very, very badly for the latter. The title-page bears a woodcut vignette of a woman picking mushrooms, with [no.] “70" at the foot of the title.
Not in NSTC. Removed from a nonce volume. Pages faintly age-toned, with small edge nicks. (37155)
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The Cambridge Union [DEBATING] Society
University of Cambridge. Cambridge Union Society. Laws and transactions of the Union Society, revised and corrected to March, M.DCCC.XXXII. To which is annexed a list of the members and officers, from its formation in M.DCCC.XV. and a list of the periodical and other works taken in by the Society. Cambridge: Pr. by J. Hall, 1832. 8vo. [2 (1 blank)], 112, [5 (blank)] pp.
$80.00
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The laws of this Cambridge students' debating society are printed on pp. 111. On pp. 1376 is a long list of all the questions debated, from its founding in 1815 to the time of printing. Included are the dates, the topic of debate, the names of the speakers (with college noted), and the final score. Also includes lists of honorary members, contributing members, officers, newspapers and periodicals taken in by the Society, books in the library, books presented to the Society, and a list of members indebted who owe them money. This edition not in OCLC.
NSTC 2C3298. Removed from a nonce volume, with stitching holes, now in a Mylar folder. Very good. Series of numbers inked in top left corner of title-page. Title-page separating a bit.
Very good. (9129)
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Chromolithographed/ILLUMINATED Symbols
& Stories
A Victorian “Medievalesque” Binding
Humphreys, Henry Noel. The miracles of our Lord. London: Longman & Co., 1848. 8vo (17.1 cm, 6.75"). iv pp; 16 double-sided col. plts.
$700.00
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First edition of this Victorian interpretation of a medieval book of meditations: Biblical miracles, delicately calligraphed and
framed in 32 vividly illustrated, chromolithographed, illuminated borders. The main figures were adapted from the Old Masters and the decorative details “all strictly original, and not borrowed,” according to the artist (p. ii), a successful illustrator with particular interests in natural history, numismatics, and classical and medieval studies.
Binding: Publisher's boards of papier-mâché and black plaster, molded to resemble a medieval carved binding, each cover with six figural medallions surrounded by a border of interlaced vines and strapwork incorporating small creatures; spine with embossed title, edges and turn-ins with gilt roll. All edges gilt; marbled endpapers.
Ray, Illustrator and the Book in England, 232. Binding as above, small red shelfmark at foot of spine; corners and spine extremities chipped, one small chip to outer edge of back panel design, one very unobtrusive break in inner frame of front panel design, nicely refurbished. Sewing loosening as is common, with last leaf separated and previous one threatening; pages gently age-toned with occasional minor smudging in margins; text pages (not plate pages) foxed.
A striking binding and equally striking color-printing. (41192)
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Bodoni: Poems of “Armonide Elido”
Mazza, Angelo. Opere. Parma: Per Giuseppe Paganino, 1816–19. 8vo (21.4 cm, 8.42"). 5 vols. I: Frontis., xx, 182 pp. II: 192 pp. III: 206 pp. IV: 180, [2] pp. V: 198 pp.
$350.00
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Collected verse from a Parma-born scholar and poet. Mazza (1741–1817), who as a member of
the Academy of Arcadia used the name Armonide Elideo, was known for translating Dryden, Gray, and Thompson into Italian as well as for his own poems. This
Bodoni-printed five-volume set comprises two volumes of sonnets, two of “sciolti,” and one of stanzas and odes; it does not include the dedication found in the quarto edition printed at roughly the same time, but does feature the frontispiece portrait of the author engraved by Giovanni Rocca.
Bindings: Contemporary half calf and and marbled paper–covered sides, leather edges ruled in gilt, spines with gilt-stamped title and volume numbers, and with gilt-tooled raised bands and blind-tooled compartments, making a striking effect. All edges marbled; original silk bookmarks present and attached.
Provenance: From the collection of Brian Douglas Stilwell, sans indicia.
Brooks 1183; Brunet 16403. Bindings as above; minimal shelfwear overall, one spine head chipped. Vol. I: first few leaves with very light waterstaining across lower corners, not approaching frontispiece image or type; last few leaves with lightest imaginable waterstaining to lower halves . Vol. III: short tear in oute margin of one leaf. Vol. V: title-page with sprinkling of tiny spots; one page with small ink smear.
A clean and handsome set. (40203)
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Signed Binding — Decorative Designers
Merriman, Henry Seton. The vultures: A novel. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1902. 8vo (19.2 cm, 7.55"). vi, [2], 340, [3 (2 adv.)] pp.; 8 plts.
$30.00
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First American edition of this thriller-romance featuring international espionage, set largely in Poland and leading up to the events of 1881. The
binding is signed “DD” for Decorative Designers; the eight plates are unsigned.Provenance: Front free endpaper with ownership inscription of Theodore H. Swan.
Publisher's green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in dark brown and gilt; very slight rubbing to extremities, otherwise clean and fresh. Pages faintly age-toned. One leaf with chip in upper margin; one leaf with tear from upper margin, extending into a few lines of text without loss. A solid, pleasing copy. (41297)
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Vices & Virtues for Children — A Woodcut BESTIARY
[“Frate Tommaso”]. Fior di virtu historiato utilissimo a' fanciulli, & ad ogni stato di persone. Verona: Angelo Tamo, 1610. 16mo (14.9 cm, 5.86"). 92, [4] pp.
$1500.00
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Uncommon children's chapbook edition of the “Flower of Virtue,” an illustrated conduct book pairing good and bad qualities, with stories about animals and imaginary beasts providing analogies. First printed in Italian in the 15th century, the work was supposedly written in the 14th and sometimes attributed to Tommaso Leoni or Tommaso Gozzadini; it was a popular didactic text, translated into several different languages (including Hebrew, in 1600). This printing claims to have been newly revised by the Inquisition, and “da molti errori espurgato,” according to the title-page.
The small but vigorous woodcuts include a unicorn, basilisk, and phoenix as well as a camel, lion, falcon, etc.
WorldCat finds
no reported holdings of this printing, and only a handful of other early 17th–century examples.
Evidence of use: Covers with numerous early inked doodles in addition to inscription described below; early inked marginal doodles and marks of emphasis throughout (including the inked outlining of the title-page griffin.
Provenance: Front cover with inked inscription “Tobia 1614"; most recently in the children's book collection of Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Contemporary cartonné binding, darkened, spine and extremities rubbed, front cover with 19th-century small paper shelving label, and spine with two earlier paper labels now chipped and largely lost; corners bumped, with one lower outer corner and one upper outer apparently cut away. Pages age-toned and stained, with a good deal of deep dog-earing and lower outer corner of final leaf torn away not touching text.
A good solid copy, obviously well used and in some ways the more appealing for that. (41237)
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A Semi-Monthly for
Inquiring Minds of the 1840s
The Daguerreotype: A magazine of foreign literature and science; compiled chiefly from the periodical publications of England, France, and Germany. Boston: J. M. Whittemore, 1847–49. 8vo. 3 vols. Vol. 1, no. 1 (Aug. 7, 1847)–v. 3, no. 12 (Apr. 14, 1849).
$775.00
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An uncommon, short-lived, and fascinating compendium of reviews of “the latest and most interesting” books, of news of scientific advancements, and of this and that for the inquiring mind of the late 1840s.
Despite the title of the magazine, these three thick, strong volumes are unillustrated; this is a wealth of
word pictures, for WORD PEOPLE! Recent, handsome black moiré cloth with caramel color spine labels; text blocks excellent with only the very occasional instance of a generally light spot/stain, short closed tear, or dog-ear.
Handsome on shelf, comfortable in lap. (27436)
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Still SQUABBLING after All These Years! — The Archbishopric vs. the Jesuits
Suárez de Zayas, Juan. Discurso, y alegacion juridica por el venerable dean, y cabildo de la santa iglesia cathedral metropolitana de la ciudad de Mexico, en la Nueva-España. En el pleyto con la sagrada religion de la Compañia de Jesus. Sobre la liquidacion, y justificacion de los diezmos de frutos, ganados, heredades, y predios, propios de las casas, y colegios de dicha religion, sitos dentro de los limites, y terminos de aquel arzobispado; y sobre las diligencias, que à este fin practicaron los jueces hacedores de diezmos, y sus colectores, y ministros. [in text at end: Madrid, 1735]..
$400.00
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Lic. Suárez submits this pleading to the Consejo de Indias which is considering the case of the Archbishopric of Mexico vs. the Society of Jesus: The case has deep roots, extending back more than a century and centering on the Society's claim of exemption from tithing to the archdioceses on certain, specified monies. A side issue is the manner in which the archdiocesan authorities have attempted to secure the disputed money.
Alden & Landis, European Americana, 735/226; Sabin 93331; Palau 324189; Medina, Biblioteca hispoano-americana, 3009. 20th-century full treed sheep, marbled endpapers; title-page and last leaf soiled and mounted, otherwise very nice. (41274)
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“There are Few Difficulties That Cannot be Surmounted by
Patience, Resolution, & Pluck”
Henty, G.A. Condemned as a Nihilist: A story of escape from Siberia. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892. 8vo (19 cm, 7.45"). 332, 16 (adv.) pp.; 8 plts., 1 map.
$65.00
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First U.S. edition: Written by George Alfred Henty, a prolific and popular novelist who specialized in historical juvenile adventures, this jaunty tale features a Russian-born but English-raised teenager exiled to Siberia after obliviously mingling with the wrong crowd. Much of the plot involves hearty outdoor adventures — including camping, boating, hunting, and fishing — during the course of our hero's travels from the east of Siberia to Norway and thence back home.
Reproduced in black and white,
Walter Paget's eight illustrations depict dramatic scenes of survival including a boxing match with a prisoner, a bear attack, and a fight with hostile Samoyeds; they are accompanied by one double-page map of the Russian empire.
Binding: Publisher's teal cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and scene of a bearded man either tying or untying the hero stamped in black, brown, and gilt, spine similarly stamped; midnight blue endpapers and all page edges stained to match boards.
Dartt, pp. 40-41; Newbolt 58. Bound as above, binding very slightly cocked with edges and extremities lightly rubbed. Text clean.
A nice copy of one of Henty's less common titles. (38686)
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Prudentius, Bodoni, & TWO Oxford Friends — A Handsome Set
(Extra-Beloved Here for Its Surviving Bookseller's Label)
Prudentius Clemens, Aurelius. Aurelii Prudentii Clementis V.C. Opera omnia nunc primum cum codd. vaticanis collata praefatione, variantibus lectionibus, notis, ac rerum verborumque indice locupletissimo aucta et illustrata. Parmae: Ex Regio Typographeo, 1788. Large 4to (30.2 cm, 11.89"). 2 vols. I: [10], 71, [3], 361, [3] pp. II: [4], 284, [2] pp.
$800.00
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First edition of Prudentius from the Bodoni press. Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348 – ca. 410) was a Roman Christian poet born in Northern Spain, known for the asceticism he adopted late in life as well as for his lyric (Cathemerinon, Peristephanon), didactic (Apotheosis, Hamartigenia, Psychomachia), and polemical works (Contra Symmachum). The Psychomachia is particularly notable as one of the earliest Western examples of allegorical verse, exerting much influence on the subsequent medieval development of that genre. Here, the texts were edited by Giuseppe Teoli, who signed the dedication as well as supplying the preface, footnotes, and indexes.
This is a typically handsome Bodoni production with wide margins, an elegant type, and a different engraved vignette on each title-page; Dibdin calls it “one of the most beautiful editions of a classical author I ever beheld.” 18th- and 19th-century critics tended to agree with him and with Eschenburg, who deemed this edition “splendid and valuable.”
Binding: Contemporary light brown morocco, covers with wide frames composed of multiple gilt rolls, spines of darker brown morocco with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels; main label reading “Aurelii Opera.”
Board edges and turn-ins with gilt rolls and, in an unusual treatment, with the darker brown of the spine echoed in these areas as an accent. Endpapers of light blue moiré silk, all edges gilt.
Provenance: Front fly-leaf of vol. I with affectionate inked gift inscription from David Williams to John Griffiths (both academics of the University of Oxford, as referenced in the inscription), dated 1854. Front pastedowns each with 19th-century bookseller's small leather label (“the most Expert Bookfinder Extant”).
Brooks 361; Brunet, V, 916; De Lama, II, 52–53; Dibdin, II, 360–61; Graesse 467. Bindings as above, edges and extremities rubbed, spine labels with small repairs.
One of the most desirable editions of this important poet, here in an attractive copy with delightful provenance. (40137)
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Lovers in Disguise, Lost Children, Ghosts, Shrews, & MORE
Illustrated in COLOR
Crawhall, Joseph. Crawhall's chap-book chaplets. London: The Scolar Press, 1976. Large 4to (29 cm, 11.4"). [8], 27, [5], 21, [3], 25, [3], 30, [6], 27, [5], 20, [8], 15, [5], 48, [4] pp.; col. illus.
$75.00
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First facsimile edition of this gathering of folksongs and ballads, redone in quirkily illustrated versions by Joseph Crawhall II (1821–96), an antiquarian, writer, and artist — who has supplied his own woodcuts. According to the preliminary note, “Crawhall's Chap Book Chaplets were originally issued uncoloured as eight separate chap-books and as a bound volume containing the eight parts. A small number of volumes were made up with the illustrations hand-coloured: there is considerable variation between copies. The present edition, printed by lithography follows a hand-coloured original.” That original was published in 1883 by Field & Tuer et al.
This bright and cheerful facsimile reproduces “The Barkeshire Lady's Garland,” “The Babes in the Wood,” “I Know What I Know,” “Jemmy & Nancy of Yarmouth,” “The Taming of a Shrew,” “Blew-Cap for Me,” “John & Joan,” and “George Barnewel,”
all with their remarkable, rambunctious, good-humored illustrations.
Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Publisher's quarter very light grey linen and printed paper–covered sides; small faint spot of staining at lower edge of front cover, otherwise clean and unworn. Pages age-toned (not unattractively or indeed inappropriately!).
A thoroughly delightful production in a very nice copy. (41201)
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Daughter Jean is the
Interesting One
Duke of Gordon's three daughters; To which are added, The Brewer laddie; and The Hero may perish. Glasgow [Scotland]: Printed for the Booksellers, [1840s]. 12mo. 8 pp.
$45.00
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The Duke of Gordon's three daughters leave Castle Gordon for Aberdeen. Lady Jean runs off with Captain Ogilvie, who is stripped of his rank as a punishment. After bearing him three children, Lady Jean grows weary of living in poverty and returns to her father's castle; however, all ends well: Ogilvie discovers that all his brother's children have died; he is now “heir of Northumberland”; and Lady Jean becomes Countess of Northumberland.
Title woodcut vignette of a man in doublet and hose with a plumed helmet and a sword; “[No.] 18” printed at foot of title. Very scarce chapbook edition.
Unbound; removed. Very good. (37146)
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Sammelband — Four Tracts Printed on Native Paper — One about Censorship
Sancho de Santa Justa y Rufina, Basilio. Exemplares de carta qve el Illo. y Rmo. Señor D. Basilio Sancho de Santa Justa y Rufina, Arzobispo de Manila ... escrivio al Muy Ilustre Señor Governador ... D. Ioseph Raon: con el motivo de haverse efectuado por un Señor Ministro de la Real Audiencia la supression de unos Impressos, instructivos de la conducta y doctrinas de los Regulares de la Compañia, dados al publico en Madrid con Superior permisso, y que conduxo a Philipinas la Fragata de su Magestad nombrada La Venus, el año pasado de 1769. de edicto qve sv Señoria ... mando pvblicar, verificada la dicha supression, para aquietar las conciencias de los Fieles de su Diocesi, y de respvesta en qve sv Señoria ... satisface a los escrúpulos de cierto theologo ... Manila: en la imprenta del Rey, [1771]. Folio (30 cm, 11.75"). [2] ff., 16, 6 pp., [1] f., 100 pp., lacks the engraved frontis. (only). [bound with the same author's] Representacion al rey nuestro señor Don Carlos III.... en la cual, trayéndose á exámen los principales fundamentos, en que se apoyan los regulares párrocos de Philipinas, para eximirse de la jurisdiccion de los ordinarios de ellas, y de su visita, en cuanto á lo que es meramente la cura de almas, se demuestra claramente, ser nulos, y falsos; evidenciándose con la misma solidex la injusta contradiccion, é injuria, que por los referidos regulares ha padecido en este punto el Santo concilio de Trento, y las bulas pontificias, las leyes de Indias, con repetidas, y las mas terminantes reales cédulas de S.M. preceptivas de la visita, que aqui se expresan. Manila: En la imprenta de la Universidad de Santo Tomas, 1768. [1], 39 ff. [bound with the same author's] Memorial al rey nvestro señor D. Carlos III ... Hecho con el motivo de los distvrbios, qve hán intentado mover algunos regulares de Philipinas, mal afectos á la jurisdiccion episcopal ... Manila: En la Imprenta de la universidad de Santo Thomas, 1768. [1], 12 ff. [bound with the same author's] [drop-title] Señor. El año pasa de sesenta y ocho remiti a las reales manos de V.M. testimonio de las deposciones, que de mi orden se recivieron sobre las discordias, que algunos regulares pretendieron suscitar entre este prelado y su verable cabildo ... [Manila: no printer/publisher, 1769]. [8] ff.
$8750.00
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Sancho de Santa Justa arrived in Manila in 1767 to take up his duties as archbishop, which included overseeing
the expulsion of the Jesuits. He was a native of Aragon and a member of the Society of Scholarum Piarum.
Bound in this sammelband are four reports or letters addressed to the crown concerning various matters relating to the Jesuits and to other regular clergy, all printed on native paper (a.k.a., “rice paper”). The Exemplares concerns the confiscation of books produced by Jesuits and the edict to suppress them. They had arrived on the frigate La Venus in 1769; but after reading them, the archbishop allows them to circulate freely. The Representacion addresses the authority that regular clergy want to exert in parishes in contravention of canon and civil law, including disallowing the archbishop to visit their parishes, while the Memorial deals with the attempts by regular clergy to disrupt the relationship of the archbishop with his cabildo. The fourth and last item gives further information on the same matter as the third publication.
All four items are most uncommon. Exemplares is held by no U.S. library, Memorial and Señor are held by the Lilly only, Representacion by only Duke and University of Virginia.
Exemplares: Medina, Manila, 286; Palau 296834; Pardo de Tavera, Biblioteca filipina, 2516; Retana, Aparato bibliográfico, 342. Representacion: Medina, Manila, 278; Palau 296831; Retana, Aparato bibliográfico, 331; Pardo de Tavera, Biblioteca filipina, 2513. Memorial: Retana, Aparato bibliográfico, 332; Pardo de Tavera, Biblioteca filipina, 2514; Medina, Manila, 279; Palau 296832. Señor: Palau 296833; not in Medina, Manila; not in Retana, Aparato bibliográfico; not in Pardo de Tavera, Biblioteca filipina, 2514. Contemporary limp vellum with spine title in ink and thong ties, book block loose in binding; first item lacking the engraving. Contents relatively clean, with two small wormholes throughout causing generally minor text loss (a letter or two, not whole words).
A fascinating compilation of scarce Philippine imprints. (40763)
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An American Boy Makes Good, Sees Changes — His Life Through His Diaries
Sampson, George G. Manuscript on paper, in English: Collection of 26 diaries. Maine, Worcester, New York City: 1886–1912. 32mo to 16mo (4" x 2.5" to 6" x 2.75"). 26 vols.
$1700.00
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George Sampson was an ordinary New England farm boy by birth, whose diaries here reflect his personal experience of two decades-plus of sometimes sweeping change in ordinary American life as well as his own transformation from a rural schoolboy into a professional man whose life is urban. As his 26 years of record-keeping begin in 1886, George is in Franklin County, ME, with extended family all around and many named neighbors; the diaries for many years show us a large, hardworking household whose members, all of them, commit themselves day after day (and year after year) to the unending, relentless, and remarkably various array of chores required by the propagation, planting, cultivation, reaping, and sale of market crops along with what seems to be extensive mixed animal husbandry — not to mention what was required simply to maintain and improve an array of farm properties including home gardens, orchards, woodlots, hayfields, and an additional acreage nearby used primarily for large-animal care.
The meticulously recorded, sometimes “how-to” detail on these activities can be surprisingly exhausting even to read, even as it is fascinating, informative, and impressive.
Yet when George is young he also records
plentiful times of fun and play; and as he gets older he records enjoyment of a full array of social, community, and church occasions — including, once, a circus, and eventually incorporating concerts, picnics, “sociables,” an occasional lecture, and attendance at a great many “lodge meetings.”
By 1893, our diarist has become serious about his studies, leaving home for the first time to attend school; by 1898, he is also teaching; and 1901 finds him at Bates College, where he works as hard intellectually as at home he had done bodily, and where he works in the dining hall to pay for his board. But, again, he records a full, fully enjoyed, and
fully detailed palette of recreations — e.g., glee club activities and attendance at football games; lectures and concerts; suppers and card parties with friends; lawn parties, dances, and candy pulls; and theater and concert trips. (
Oh, and dating.
)
George graduates from Bates in 1905 and, by the final diary in 1912, he is an accomplished secondary-school physics teacher in Worcester, MA, with a master’s degree from Clark University, and he is taking additional (presumably doctoral) courses at Columbia University during a teaching sabbatical.
Each volume here opens with a printed section offering calendars, postal rates, almanac facts, etc.; usually, George has used the back pages for personal accounting, addresses of friends, and other memoranda. For space reasons, his entries must be laconic, but he has filled most space there is. Only the final few diaries have significant unused sections.
A long descriptive analysis is available on request.
Virtually all diaries are bound in leather or leatherette, a few with the lower third of the rear covers removed neatly, and the “set” lacking only the volume for 1906. Some volumes are written in pencil, later ones mostly in ink, in a legible hand.
Very good. (39290)
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An English Incunable Leaf — Wynkyn de Worde, 1498
Jacobus de Voragine. Golden legend [single leaf]. [Westmynster: Wynkyn de Worde, 1498]. Chancery folio (27.3 x 19.5 cm; 10.75" x 7.675"). [1] f.
$1650.00
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The collection of saints' lives called the Legenda sanctorum, or Golden Legend (Legenda aurea) — “worth its weight in gold”! — was composed in the 13th century by the Dominican hagiologist Jacobus de Voragine (ca. 1230–98, elected Archbishop of Genoa in 1292), and first printed in Latin at Basle in 1470 with William Caxton printing the first English version in 1483. This is folio ccxlviii of the 1498 London (Westminster) edition
printed by Wynkyn de Worde (a.k.a., Jan van Wynkyn), England's first typographer and successor to Caxton, whose press he formally took over in 1495 after a difficult three years of litigation following Caxton's death.
This leaf of The Golden Legend has on its recto, and continuing on the verso, the final portion of account of the nativity of the Virgin, which recounts episodes from her mature adulthood and
shows the Mother of God as a powerful figure with a powerful sense of what is due her. She promises death within 30 days to a bishop who has removed from office an unsatisfactory priest that she appreciates as specially devoted to her (he is reinstated and the bishop lives); she intercedes in another vision with her “debonayre sone” to reverse the damnation of a “vayne and ryotous” cleric who, on the other hand, has been specially devoted to her and her Hours (he reforms). In a third case, she redeems from the grasp of hell a bishop's vicar who, disappointed of promotion in office, had engaged “a Jewe [who was] a magycyan” to facilitate his signing in his own blood a soul-sacrificing deal with “the devyll” (the vicar repented). The Marian section closes with an account of “Saynt Jherom's” devotion to her. All this is followed on the verso by the beginning of the life of St. Adrian of Nicomedia, who before his conversion to Christianity and subsequent martyrdom was a Herculian Guard of the Roman Emperor Galerius Maximian. He is the patron saint of soldiers, arms dealers, guards, butchers, victims of the plague, and epileptics. The text is printed in double-column format in
English gothic type.
Provenance: From an offering of leaves from this edition of The Golden Legend by the Dauber & Pine Bookshops, New York City, in ca. 1928 .
English incunable leaves are increasingly difficult to obtain.
STC (rev. ed.) 24876; ESTC S103597; Duff 411; Copinger 6475; Goff J-151; ISTC ij00151000. Removed neatly from a bound volume. With a “cover leaf” in approximation
of a title-page, reading “The Golden Legende. J. de Voragine. Printed by Wynkyn de Worde 1498. Dauber & Pine Bookshops, Inc. New York.”
A striking relic recounting multiple miracles and presenting Mary as a most interesting personality. (40744)
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A Proto-Unitarian Reaction to the
“AWAKENING”
Eells, Nathanael. Religion is the life of God's people: a sermon preached at Boston, in the presence of His Excellency William Shirley, Esq; Governour and Commander in chief in and over His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England; and the Honourable His Majesty's Council, and the Honourable House of Representatives, of the Province aforesaid, May 25th. 1743. Being the day for the election of His Majesty's Council. Boston: Pr. by S. Kneeland & T. Green, Printers to the Honourable House of Representatives, 1743. 8vo (19.5 cm, 7.625"). [1] f., 43, [1 (blank)] pp.
$850.00
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In May of 1743 the Convention of Ministers, consisting of the “Pastors of the Churches of Christ in the provinces of Massachusetts-Bay,” met to reaffirm the establishment Protestant religion and denounce the Great Awakening. On the occasion of this meeting their moderator, the Rev. Nathanael Eells, Congregationalist minister and pastor of the Second Church in Scituate, preached this sermon — which includes the significant phrase, “the one only living and true God; who is one in Essence, and three in Relations” (p. 8).
This formulation in reaction to the Great Awakening characterizes the beginning of the Unitarian movement in the U.S., a movement which now seems very far indeed from anything this preacher would have foreseen.
A fascinating item in the history of religious thought.
Evans 5173; Sabin 22006. Recent cloth-covered boards; a red leather spine label, gilt double ruled above and below with gilt lettering. 19th-century library rubber-stamps on verso of title leaf and bottom of p. 43. Light waterstain on title-page, occasional other light stains, overall remarkably clean. A nice, neat book. (3203)
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19th-Century Cookery “On the Fire” in the Household of a
Widely Active Lancashire Executive
(Mrs. Rawlinson's Manuscript Compilations)
Rawlinson, Mary Ann. Manuscript on paper, in English. [Cookery]. Burnley, Lancashire: [ca. 1884]. 2 vols (16.1 cm, 6.34"; 15.7 cm, 6.18"). I: [32] ff. II: [24] ff.
$1250.00
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Two notebooks of recipes compiled by Mary Ann Rawlinson of Burnley, Lancashire. Rawlinson (1841–1912) was the wife of Joshua Rawlinson (1841–1896), a prominent figure in the Burnley community — having trained at his father's cotton mill, he went on to become an accountant and successfully directed or managed a jaw-dropping number of businesses and business concerns in the area, including the Burnley Paper Works, the Burnley Carriage Company, the Burnley Ironworks, the Nelson Room and Power Company, etc. He also became a well-known authority on the cotton trade, founding or serving in various positions in the Burnley Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association, the Todmorden Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association, the Padiham Masters' Association, the Colne and District Coloured Goods Manufacturers' Association, and many other organizations; his obituary in The Accountant periodical noted his widespread influence in trade matters, and his position as “one of the best-known men on the Manchester Exchange . . . well known and respected throughout commercial circles in Lancashire.” In addition, he was one of the founding members of the Victoria Hospital, assisted in that capacity by Mary Ann.
Mrs. Rawlinson recorded these recipes in standard format with ingredients listed first, and although her page-filling, uninterrupted, and only lightly punctuated paragraphs sometimes obscure that convention, her strong, slanting handwriting is very decipherable. The dishes she chose to preserve here (unseparated by any categorization) include British classics as well as dishes showing overseas influences; among them are Genoise pudding, maccaroni cheese [sic], curry, baked haddock, marmalade pudding, ragout of rabbit, milk rolls, lobster cutlets, beef olives, amber pudding (using apples, dried cherries, and lemon rind), Charlotte Russe, stewed steak, potato croquettes, Mulligatawny soup, lentil purée, beef hash pie, orange fritters, stewed kidney, kedgeree, German pudding, oyster patties, and many others. In the middle of one volume are a few pages bearing dessert recipes given in several different hands, one recipe being attributed to Mrs. Carr and one dated 1884.
This gathering of recipes provides
a great deal of information regarding the dietary habits and preferences of the prosperous couple, as well as the culinary techniques available to Mrs. Rawlinson — everything here was prepared “on the fire,” as Burnley did not have electricity until 1893.
Contemporary oilcloth limp wrappers, now housed in a plain box with printed paper label on lid; box extremities lightly rubbed, wrappers rubbed and worn, text block all but detached from spine in smaller volume; Mrs. Rawlinson's name inscribed in each volume. Larger volume with offsetting to first and last pages; a very few instances of spotting, pages overall very clean.
Interesting provenance/context, and interesting content. (41147)
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Bodoni's Quarto
Hero & Leander
Viviani, Niccolò. Ero, e Leandro poema. Parma: Nel Regal Palazzo Co' Tipi Bodoniani, 1794. 4to (28.4 cm, 11.18"). [8], 40, [2 (blank)] pp.
$700.00
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Typically elegant Bodoni printing of this ottava rima treatment of the subject, written by the Marchese Niccolò Viviani, governor of Pisa, and dedicated to Maria Luisa of Parma. In 1794, Bodoni published the first edition of Ero, e Leandro in folio, following up in the same year with quarto and octavo versions; the paper of this
large quarto is watermarked “FP.” Thomas Hartwell Horne claimed “of each edition, not more than
40 or 50 copies were struck off.”
Provenance: Front pastedown with bookplate of Robert Wayne Stilwell and with 19th-century Florence bookseller's ticket.
Brooks 548; De Lama, II, 96–97; Giani 59 (p. 51). Contemporary half brown calf and marbled paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label, marbled endpapers and all edges marbled; rubbed overall with fore-edge and spine label chipped, pin-hole worm action to spine/joints without this reaching interior. Free endpapers, front fly-leaf, and final blank each with one horizontal crease
in lower portion; front endpapers with pencilled annotations. Occasional light to moderate foxing. (40167)
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First Series: An American Botanical Celebration with
96 Color Plates
Meehan, Thomas. The native flowers and ferns of the United States in their botanical, horticultural, and popular aspects. Boston: L. Prang & Co., 1878–79. Large 4to (26.5 cm, 10.43"). 2 vols. I: ix, [1], 192 pp.; 48 col. plts. II: v, [1], 200 pp.; 48 col. plts.
$800.00
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First edition: “The most beautiful, interesting, and important from among the vast number of plants which grow in the different parts of our country” (vol. I, p. iv). Meehan (1826–1901) was an eminent British-born botanist, gardener, and nurseryman who settled in Germantown, PA, and helped preserve Bartram's Garden — and who assessed many of the plants in these volumes from a Pennsylvania/New Jersey point of view, as well as in terms highly accessible to laypeople. All 96 plants here are
illustrated with chromolithographed plates done from the work of Alois Lunzer, “who painted from life all the plants treated” (ibid.). A second series, not present here, followed later.
Binding: Publisher's half roan with pebbled cloth–covered sides, leather edges with gilt flilet, front covers with decorative gilt-stamped title and floral vignette; spines with gilt-stamped title and author and blind-stamped fleurs de lis decorations in compartments. Moiré silk endpapers; all edges gilt.
Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabels (“AHA”) at rear.
Bennett, American Nineteenth Century Color Plate Books, p. 75; Nissen, Botanische Buchillustration, 1331. Bound as above, moderate rubbing overall with small scuffs, sunning to cloth at edges, front joint of vol. I partially refurbished some time ago. Pages and plates age-toned with offsetting from plates and intermittent foxing; one leaf with short tear into lower inner margin, not touching text.
Laid in is a small scrap of paper bearing an appealingly homemade rendition of a pink flower, in what looks like watercolor.
A strong, clean, and attractive set of a significant American and Philadelphia-associated botanical work, beautifully illustrated. (41168)
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“The Blackest of All Nursery Tales,
the Most Terrifying of All Ghost Stories,
the Most Pathetic of All the Chronicles of Damnation”
James, Henry; Mariette Lydis, illus. The turn of the screw. Los Angeles: Printed for the members of the Limited Editions Club at the Plantin Press, 1949. 8vo (29.4 cm, 11.57"). xii, [4], 145, [3] pp.; 12 plts.
$75.00
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First edition of the Limited Editions Club production of James's “sinister romance,” a psychologically tense ghost story that has served as source material for numerous adaptations in formats including radio, film, opera, ballet, and television. The novella appears here in a volume designed by Saul Marks, typeset in Bembo by Lillian Marks, and printed by the two at the Plantin Press, with an introduction by Carl Van Doren and
twelve suitably spooky “gravure-brown” illustrations by Mariette Lydis.
This is numbered copy 1157 of 1500 printed, with the appropriate LEC newsletter laid in; unlike many LEC editions, this one was issued unsigned, as
the mysterious artist had vanished into parts unknown by the time of publication!
Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 199. Publisher's tan buckram, front cover and spine stamped in brown and gilt; spine showing a little rubbing and darkening. Slipcase lacking. A solid, pleasing copy. (41183)
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Editio Princeps Estienne Printing
Justin, Martyr, Saint. [in Greek, romanized as] Tou hagiou Ioustinou philosophou kai martyros, Zēna kai Serēnō, Logos parainetikos pros HellēEx Officina Roberti Stephani nas. Pros Tryphōna Ioudaion dialogos. Apologia hyper Christianōn pros tēn Rhōmaiōn sygklēton [etc., i.e., Opera omnia] ... ex Bibliotheca Regia. Lutetiae: ex officina Roberti Stephani typographi Regii, Regiis typis, 1551. Median folio (34.5 cm, 13.5"). [4] ff., 311, [1] pp., [2] ff.
$2000.00
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The editio princeps, printed using the first font of the “grecs du roi” (i.e., Claude Garamond's “gros-romain” font of the “grecs du roi,” as per Mortimer), and based on the manuscripts in the French Royal Library. Schreiber notes that its publication resulted in a “sensation . . . among the learned [that was] still remembered . . . over 40 years later” by Henri Estienne and noted in the preface to his edition in 1592 of Pseudo-Justinus.
Adding to the wonderful Greek typography, Robert Estienne has enhanced his text with gorgeous woodcut foliated and grotesque Greek initials and harmonious headpieces. “The edition was complete and published by Charles Esteinne after Robert's final departure for Geneva” (Schreiber).
Provenance: 18th-century bookplate of Beilby Thompson of Eserick (1742–99 ), who may famously be remembered for having gradually bought up and relocated the village of Eserick to move it away from his house. Later in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Binding: 18th-century calf in a modified Cambridge-style binding. The covers' central panels, stained black and outlined in a filigree roll, are surrounded by a wide frame of tan calf; beyond that, at the boards' edges, is a 1.5" outer border of sprinkled calf. Blind-tooled rules and beading articulate the intersections, with black(?)-stamped devices accenting the tan compartments' corners, in the speckled section, and with the chains connecting those devices to the innermost panel being also (sometimes?) blackened. The round spine has raised bands accented by gilt rules above and below each band, and a gilt-stamped label with the author's name abbreviated.
Renouard, Estienne, 79/2; Adams J494; Hoffmann, Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesamten Literatur der Griechen, II, 502–503, & 648; Shaaber, Sixteenth-century Imprints, J111; Armstrong 138, 222; Mortimer, French, II, 335; Schreiber, Estienne, 107. Bound as above, front board recently expertly reattached; endpapers chipped and front one with upper outer corner torn away.
A very nice, very wide-margined copy. (40074)
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The Oneida Community's Official Newspaper
Noyes, John Humphrey, ed. The circular. Brooklyn, NY: No publisher/printer, 1851–52. Folio (46 cm, 18.5"). 207, [1] pp.
$2875.00
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John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida Community in 1848 and The Circular came into being only three years later as the reinvented version of The Free Church Circular, which had been Oneida's periodical until a fire destroyed the printing area in July, 1851. It was not only the Oneida community’s own newspaper, it was
its chief propaganda organ and that is apparent in these pages; for who “outside” could resist curiosity such as that raised by the headline of the very first issue's first article here — “Financial View of the Second Coming. [Adapted to Wall Street]”? Over the years The Circular was to change its name several more times; in 1871 it became The Oneida Circular and in 1877 it changed again to The American Socialist. Similarly, and even more frequently, its place of publication changed: Brooklyn (1851–54), Oneida, NY (1855–Feb. 1864), Mount Tom (i.e., Wallingford, CT, Mar. 1864–Mar. 9, 1868), and finally Oneida Community (Mar. 23, 1868–Dec. 26, 1870).
The Oneida Community has often been called the most successful American 19th-century Utopian community: A Perfectionist communal society dedicated to living as one family and to sharing all property, work, and love. The website of the Swarthmore College’s Peace Collection has this to say about the it, and about The Circular in particular: “The Oneida Community was an experiment in Christian perfectionism, the doctrine that by union with God, humans could live lives entirely free from sin. Founded by John Humphrey Noyes (1811–1886), it was radical in the thoroughness with which this challenging ideal was pursued. The community's religious leanings are readily apparent in the discussion provided by The Circular, in which many [secular] topics are covered; yet most of the conclusions call on religious ideals.”The Oneida newspaper meant so much to Noyes that even after he gave up control of the Oneida Community, he was to retain control of the newspaper and continue its
its advocacy for social change along with argument for communitarian economic aims, and these embraced a wide range: women’s rights, abolition, “complex marriage” (a form of polyamory), birth control via male continence, and (eventually) proto-eugenics, to name but five. As a University of Syracuse digital guide to the Oneida Community Collection notes, “The papers contained a very frank record of the daily life at Oneida as well as religious tracts, discourses on current subjects of social, political, and economic interest, letters to the editors, and advertisements for the Community's varied manufactured goods. They made no secret of their manner of life. . . . “
Present here is The Circular's volume I (numbers 1–52, November 1851 through October 1852), all issues printed in four-column format and very legible type. Following the attention-grabbing article already cited, the gathering's first issue presents a neat statement of “The Basis and Prospects of the Circular” before moving directly on to recount at length the foundering on a Hudson River excursion of a Community-owned sloop, with the loss of two woman members' lives.
This is an engaging, very readable social history compendium apart from its usefulness for the study of a particular, mid–19th century American, radical social and religious movement.
Mott, History of American Magazines, II, p. 207; Lomazow, American Periodicals, 568; Oneida Community collection in the Syracuse University Library, pp. 24–25; https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/o/OneidaCommunityCollection/hsr1.htm; and Sabin, 89516. Stitched, in plain wrappers. Front wrapper with a patch of waterstaining along upper spine area, carrying through variously but usually faintly through March issue; some later issues on paper inclined to browning. Untrimmed, and with very little staining or tattering.
A physically stable collection, safely and immediately usable. (41155)
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Conspiracy! Murder! Kissing Fair Maidens on the Cheek!
(A Gothic Novelist Turns His Eyes to Venice)
Lewis, Matthew Gregory. Rugantino, the bravo of Venice. Durham: George Walker, Jr., 1838. 12mo (16.8 cm, 6.61"). 24 pp.
$150.00
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Scarlet Pimpernel–style derring-do from the author of the classic gothic novel The Monk. Lewis first published this story — inspired by Abällino der grosse Bandit by Zschokke — in 1804, before reworking it into a play which premiered in 1805. The present Durham printing offers an abridged rendition with
a dramatic wood-engraved title-page vignette of a mustachioed swordsman, and it is uncommon. Searches of WorldCat find only two U.S. institutions (Harvard, Haverford) reporting ownership.
Provenance: From the chapbook collection of Albert A. Howard, sans indicia.
NCBEL, III, 743 (for earlier eds.); NSTC 2L14132. Removed from a nonce volume in printed self-wrappers, sewing loosened. Front wrapper/title-page with short tear from upper margin not reaching print. Pages age-toned, with some edges slightly ragged. (41173)
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Judith & Holofernes — A “Last-Era” Bodoni
Di Calboli Paulucci, Francesco. La Giuditta: Canti del marchese Francesco di Calboli Paulucci fra gli Arcadi Euricrate Acrisioneo; membro ordinario Dell'Accademia Italiana, ecc. Parma: Co' Tipi Bodoniani, 1813. Large 4to (31.9 cm, 12.56"). [8], xiii, [3], 207, [1] pp.
$425.00
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First edition: A lengthy verse retelling of Judith's triumph in a large handsome font, two verses to a broad page, dedicated to Maria Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Massa. Bodoni began the preparation of this edition, and Luigi Orsi finished it after his death; one of his final works, this impressive large quarto embodies
the later, absolutely unadorned Bodoni aesthetic.
A search of WorldCat finds only seven U.S. institutions reporting ownership.
Brooks 1146; De Lama, II, 218–19. Contemporary speckled paper–covered boards, framed in single blind roll, spine with later gilt-stamped red leather title and publisher labels; spine darkened, edges and extremities chewed, back joint starting from head and foot. Front pastedown showing small line of adhesion from now-absent affixed label. A very few faint spots of foxing only, indeed happily few as Bodoni productions can go; internally, an attractive, wide-margined example, with its page edges untrimmed. (40201)
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Cheap Repository — Quirky Copy
[More, Hannah]. The pilgrims: An allegory. [London]: J. Evans & Son, [ca. 1820]. 8vo (17.2 cm, 6.75"). 16, 16 pp.
$200.00
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A parable of travellers, some of whom focus on “the things above” and others on “the things below.” Following the first piece are four additional brief “Cheap Repository” items, with a shared title-page — “Dan and Jane; or, Faith and Works,” “The Execution of Wild Robert; Being a Warning to All Parents,” and “The Gin-Shop; or, a Peep into a Prison.”
These are all complete, but jumbled together with pages curiously intermingled.Each title-page features a wood-engraved vignette. All six pieces are signed “Z,” for Hannah More, the creator of and primary contributor to the “Cheap Repository.”
Provenance: From the chapbook collection of American collector Albert A. Howard, sans indicia.
Removed from a nonce volume. Latter portion misbound as above. Slightly age-toned, with scattered mild foxing. Each title-page vignette with a few dark spots apparently resulting from printer's over-inking; an interesting copy. (41161)
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Progress — Easy, Clean, & Safe!
Rome Gas, Electric Light & Power Company. The dirt-less workman. Rome, NY: Rome Gas, Electric Light & Power Company, [ca. 1925]. 16mo (15.1 cm, 6"). [16] pp.; illus.
$75.00
Click the image for enlargement.
Uncommon electric promotional booklet: “Electric service in the home has become an essential comfort of our modern life” (p. 14), and this pamphlet encourages homeowners to get their houses wired for it, arguing that installations are clean and quick, and subsequent electric bills cheap. The text is illustrated with a cutaway diagram showing the process of wiring a three-story house with attic, photographs of electricians on the job inside various homes, exterior shots of older and newer buildings, and an interior image of an “American workingman's home, where . . . every possible economy is practiced.” The colophon labels this “Electrical Progress Booklet No. 1,” part of an advertising campaign noted at the time for its success.
Publisher's printed paper wrappers, stapled; small scuffs, back wrapper with streak of staining, pressure point from a front-wrapper scuff or prick unobtrusively carried throughout.
This ephemeral, eye-opening item is now scarce. (41057)
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Live Every Day as if the World Were Ending — SCARCE ISSUE
[Campbell, John]. The last week of the world. A vision. London: John Evans, [ca. 1810?]. 8vo (16.7 cm, 6.57"). 8 pp.
$275.00
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Apocalyptic warning, written by a Scottish missionary (1766–1840) known for his Travels in South Africa. This printing, apparently the first, is scarce; WorldCat locates three U.S. institutional holdings of a later “Evans and Son” imprint, but none of this “John Evans, No. 42" printing.
The large title-page wood-engraving illustrates the dividing of the wicked from the righteous..
Provenance: From the chapbook collection of American collector Albert A. Howard, sans indicia.
Removed from a nonce volume; page edges gently browned. The workmanlike printing is somewhat uneven, and the title-page vignette shows a few small ink spots from the press.
Uncommon and interesting. (41160)
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FIRST Grammar & Vocabulary of
This AFRICAN Language?
Wilson, John Leighton. A grammar of the Mpongwe language, with vocabularies. New York: Snowden & Prall, printers, 1847. 8vo (22.5 cm, 9"). 94 pp., 2 fold. tables.
$500.00
Click the images for enlargements.
One of the first books printed in the Mpongwe dialect of the Myene language spoken by a small group of Bantus living in Gabon. It is also almost certainly the
first published grammar of any dialect of this African language. According to the 1848 report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, John Leighton Wilson was chiefly responsible for preparing it for publication.
Wilson, a South Carolinian, was educated in New York City, and he and his wife, Jane Bayard Wilson, were the first missionaries sent to West Africa by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. They were first settled at Cape Palmas, Liberia, working among the Grebo, but in 1842 moved to Gabon and worked among the Mpongwe. Ill health forced their return to the us in 1850, never to return to Africa.
The two folding tables are printed on very thin tissue or “tracing”-like paper. In addition to the grammar and the vocabularies there is also
a printing of the parable of the prodigal son in Mpongwe with a literal translation into English done interlinearly.
Provenance: Deaccessioned from the Bowdoin College library.
Publisher's marbled paper covered boards, brown leather shelfback, original title label on front board; light abrasions only, and some soiling to label. Browning to endpapers, some chipping and crinkling to edges and corners, intermittent spotting and soiling; ex-library with partially removed bookplate on front pastedown, embossed stamps on title-leaf and two others, no other markings. (41081)
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Building a Railroad in
CUBA in the 1830s
(Early Cuban Railroads). A collection of two letters and four printed forms relating to the Compañia de Caminos de Hierro de la Habana and the Compañía del Camino de Hierro entre las Ciudades de Puerto Principe y Nuevitas. Havana & Puerto Principe: 1834–40. Letters: 4to (25 x 20 cm, 9.875" x 8"). 16 pp., 7 pp. (last blank). Printed documents: Folio (30.5 x 21 cm, 12" x 8.25"). 4 leaves.
$2500.00
Click the images for enlargements.
In the earliest period of railroad technology, Cuban leaders became interested in
a rail line to carry sugar and coffee from inland to the port in Havana. In 1837 the railroad was launched, one of the first in the world and beating Spain by more than a decade. Civil engineer Benjamin Hall Wright (1801–81), son of Benjamin Wright, chief engineer for much of the Erie Canal project, was hired to consult on the Cuban rail project. These two letters (dated 8 January and 17 May 1834), written in fluent Spanish and addressed to Wenceslao de Villa Urrutia, discuss the supplies and funds needed for the road from Havana to Güines in the interior, as well as for an additional proposed road to Rincon, also describing the necessary grading work.
The four printed documents are stock certificates issued by the “Compañia del Camino de Hierro entre las Ciudades de Puerto Príncipe y Nuevitas.” They are partially printed and completed in manuscript, issued with the appropriate (and interesting) stamps to members of the Betancourt family, and signed with flourishes by multiple officers. The Betancourts were deeply involved in the development of early railroads in Cuba.
The letters have all the characteristics to be expected of copies retained in a bound volume maintained by Benjamin Hall Wright.
Zanetti & Garcia, Sugar & Railroads: A Cuban History, pp. 18–33. All documents overall in excellent condition with only some age-toning; all leaves loose. Letters with evidence, as above, of having been in a sewn volume. (40980)
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The First English THUMB BIBLE in Prose
Beautifully Bound & with Sharp Lovely Plates
Bible. English. Selections. Biblia. Or a practical summary of ye Old and New Testaments. London: R. Wilkin, 1728 (i.e., 1727). 64mo (4 cm, 1.57"). [6], 154, [2], 155–278, [6] pp.; 16 plts.
$6500.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Delightful example of an illustrated thumb Bible, this being
the earliest known prose appearance of such according to Adomeit. Wilkin printed this tiny volume in 1727, and Adomeit notes that “copies are most commonly found with date altered in ink to 1728" — as is indeed the case here — “but there seems to be no difference between the copies outside of this change.” In addition to the two engraved title-pages, the text is illustrated with
16 minscule engraved plates.
Binding: Full black calf, gilt extra, board edges and turn-ins with gilt roll. All edges gilt; marbled endpapers.
Adomeit, Thumb Bibles, B16 (see also p. xvi); ESTC N64949; Opie L 25. Binding as above, slightly (expectably) sprung, spine gilt showing one crack. Dates inked in an early hand as above; frontispiece for New Testament affixed to final page of Old Testament. Pages and plates very clean.
A remarkable copy of a desirable item. (41004)
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Deluxe Angler — In a Zaehnsdorf Binding, with Proof Plates
Walton, Izaak & Charles Cotton; Harris Nicolas, ed. The complete angler or the contemplative man's recreation being a discourse of rivers fish-ponds fish and fishing ... and instructions on how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream ... with original memoirs and notes. London: William Pickering (pr. by C. Whittingham), 1836. Large 8vo (27.3 cm, 10.75"). 2 vols. I: [16], clxiv, [4], [clxv]-ccxii, [2], 129, [1] pp.; 29 plts., illus. II: [4], [131]–436, [32 (index)] pp.; 38 plts., illus.
$4000.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition edited by Sir Harris Nicolas, and
the most lavish of all of Pickering's editions of this beloved treatise on fishing. In addition to the expected steel-engraved plates and in-text illustrations, this copy features
an extra set of proof plates printed on India paper, mounted on heavy paper, and bound in for all illustrations including the headpiece decorations, for
a total of 67 plates. Horne summed the work up as having been “illustrated by the foremost contemporary artists, produced by an excellent printer and issued by an outstanding publisher” — and it appears here in a binding that does justice to those qualities.
Binding: Signed 20th-century dark green straight-grain morocco, covers framed in quadruple gilt fillets with gilt fish motifs in corners, spines similarly decorated, board edges with gilt fillets, turn-ins with gilt fillets and roll. All edges gilt; green marbled endpapers. Bindings done by Joseph William Zaehnsdorf, with his stamp (dated 1914) on lower front turn-ins.
Provenance: Front pastedowns each with small silver “TJS” monogram label (unidentified); most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Keynes, William Pickering (rev. ed.), p. 94; Kelly, Checklist of Books Published by William Pickering, 1836.17; Ing, Charles Whittingham, 13; Horne, The Compleat Angler 1653–1967, 43. Bindings as above, spines gently sunned; front free endpapers stamped “Bartlett & Co, Boston” in upper outer corners. Occasional minor foxing/spotting; vol. II with mild waterstaining to lower outer portions, more pronounced to first few leaves and later ones.
An enduring classic, in a beautiful set. (40961)
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Bodoni Press: Genesis in Italian Verse
Cerati, Gregorio [Gaetano Gerardo]. La genesi: Versione di Monsignor D. Gregorio Cerati, già vescovo di Piacenza. Parma: Co' Tipi Bodoniani, 1807. 8vo (15.5 cm, 6.1"). [2], lix, [3], 260, [4] pp.
$275.00
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First edition: Poetic retelling of key Old Testament events from the creation of the world through the deaths of Jacob and Joseph, by an author (1730–1807) who served as bishop of Piacenza from 1783 until his death. This Bodoni printing sets Cerati's terza rima in the press's typically restrained, minimalist style; the preface is dedicated “al chiarissimo Giambatista Bodoni” by Antonio Cerati.
Binding: Contemporary green morocco, spine with gilt-stamped floral motifs, covers bordered with gilt roll. Attractive marbled endpapers; original silk bookmarker present and attached.
Provenance: Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Benedetto Grandi, a collector of books and antiquities, and with small early label marked “Attilio”; front free endpaper with bookplate of Dom Henri Quentin (1872–1935), philologist and editor of the Vulgate Old Testament.
Brooks 1018; Giani 180 (p. 72; apparent error in collation). Bound as above, lightly rubbed overall and spine sunned to olive. Scattered minor foxing; small signs of worming buried in gutters and other spots in inner margins with repairs done some time ago, with occasional minor adhering between pages at repair locations.
Solid and very readable; a pleasing copy. (40193)
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SONGS in Prose & Verse
Davidson, Gustav. Songs of adoration. New York: The Madrigal, 1919. 12mo (18 cm, 7"). [4] ff., 13-37 pp, [1] f.
$38.75
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition. One of 333 numbered copies for sale on untrimmed “San Marco hand wove deckle edge paper” (colophon); this is number 323 of 500 total.“Title page and decorations by I. Sanders, sculptor. Lettering by Theodore Mehrer. Composition by I. Marlin. Cover and interior stock supplied by The Japan Paper Company” (verso of title-page).
Davidson (1895–1971) was an American poet, writer, publisher and longtime secretary of the Poetry Society of America.
Original green stiff wrappers with lettering and design in gold on front cover. Fine copy.
A very elegant little production. (39837)
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One of the Few
BROADSIDES Printed in NAHUATL
during the Colonial
Era
Venegas, Francisco Javier. Broadside, begins: Don
Francisco Xavier Venegas ... Teniente General de los Reales Exercitos, Virey, Gobernador ... de
esta N. E. ... Ayamo moyolpachihuitia in Totlatocatzin Rey D. Fernando VII. [Mexico: No
publisher/printer, 1810]. Folio (42.3 cm, 16.25"). [1] p.
$15,000.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
Publications in Nahuatl, the indigenous imperial language of Mexico, were not
uncommon in the colonial era. The first came off the press of Juan Pablos, the earliest known
printer in the New World, in 1543, but virtually all were meant to be used by Spaniards either
wishing to learn the language or interacting with the indigenous population either as catechizers,
confessors, or bosses.
The notable exception to the rule were the broadside decrees that
were published for promulgation to the Indians during the war of independence. Two were
issued by Viceroy Venegas in 1810 shortly after he arrived in New Spain: They were an effort to
quell the recently declared Hidalgo revolt. The present one, which alludes to the revolt,
announces an end to the required payment of tribute by Mexico's Indians and is a printing in
Mexico of a decree that the Regency had issued in Spanish on 26 May. At the same time it is a
plea for donations from the Indians to fight the French!This broadside also importantly marks the end of the 40-year ban on the use of Nahuatl in
official publications. Venegas adds (in translation): “And so every one may know the king's
desires, and so they may be realized, we order this decree be promulgated everywhere in the
Mexican language, the Otomí language, and every other Indian language.” No examples of its
publication in those other indigenous languages have been found.
The broadside was not intended to be read by the natives, most of whom were
illiterate, but rather was to be read by Nahuatl-speaking town criers.
Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only four U.S. libraries (UC-San Diego, Lilly,
John Carter Brown, and Cushing at Texas A&M) reporting ownership.
Garritz,
Impresos novohispanos, 914; Medina, Mexico, 10533; Torres Lanzas 2609; Ugarte, Obras
escritas en lenguas indigenas de Mexico, 421; H. de León-Portilla, Tepuztlahcuilolll, 2812. See
also: Mark Morris, “Language in Service of the State: The Nahuatl Counterinsurgency
Broadsides of 1810,” in Hispanic American Historical Review 87:3 (2007), pp. 433–70.
Removed from a bound volume, printed on pale blue paper. Two tears in text
area with old repair.
The bottom margin shows the faintly visible transfer from another
copy of the broadside while wet and stacked in the print shop!
(41014)
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Early Editions of Two Titans, in Greek
Herodotus. [two lines in Greek, romanized as ] Erodotou logoi ennea, oiper epikalountai mousai [then in Latin] Herodoti libri novem, qvibvs mvsarvm indita svnt nomina ... Basiliae: In officina Heruagiana, 1541 [colophon date]. Median folio (32.5 cm, 12.75"). [10] ff., 310 pp., [1] f. [bound with] Thucydides. [three lines in Greek, romanized as ] Thoukydides meta scholion palaion kai pany ophelimon choris hon ho syngrapheus poly aneucheres esti [then in Latin] Thucydides cum scholiis et antiquis et utilibus sine quibus autor intellectu multum est difficilis. Accessit praeterea diligentia Ioachimi Camerarij, in castigando tum textu, tum commentarijs un[am] cum annotationibus eius. Stephanus Schirotius Pannonius lectori. Basileae: Ex officina Hervagiana, 1540. Median folio [12] ff., 225, [3], 177 [i.e., 178] pp., [2] ff.
$5750.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Only the second edition of Herodotus in the original Greek, the editio princeps having appeared in 1502 from the Aldine press. This is the first edition edited by Joachim Camerarius (1500–74), containing his Latin-language preface and notes before the main text and ending with the historical narration, from the battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.) onwards, of Gemistus Plethon (ca. 1355–1452). Herwagen's Greek type is handsome and, unlike his 1540 printing of Thucydides with which it is bound here, it has no woodcut initials, the printer having opted for guide letters in the initial spaces only.
This Camerarius edition of Thucydides is only the third printing of the text in the original Greek, following the Aldine printing in 1502 and the Giunta in 1526. It is also the first printing of the Greek text outside of Italy. As with his Herodotus, Camerarius' preface here is in Latin while the rest of the text is in Greek only. There are two states of the title-page, this copy with “PANNO/nius” on its title-page; another is noted as having “PAN/nonius.” And in contrast to the Herodotus, this Thucydides has very interesting woodcut initials.
The pairing of these two texts is not uncommon but they are also found separately in contemporary bindings, indicating that in the 1540s they were sold both individually and as a pair.
Provenance: Pasted in the top margin of Herodotus is a slip reading “Ex libris Joannis Adami Messerschmid 1770.” Later in the library of the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (properly deaccessioned).
Binding: Recent full calf by Starr bindery, raised bands to spine accented with gilt rules, and a gilt green spine label; interesting but modest blind tooling on the covers in a 16th-century style.
Previous Binding: Deteriorated but preserved in a separate blue cloth clamshell case: Boards covered in calf with a center gilt device accomplished with a single stamp used dos á dos Visible under the pastedowns and on the back of the preserved but incomplete spine covering are scraps of a medieval manuscript. Also visible on the front pastedown is a curious embossing, possibly intentional and possibly the impression of something once pressed long and hard between cover and text block.
Herodotus: Adams H395; VD16 H2507& G1079; Dibdin, Greek and Latin Classics, II, 19–20; Schweiger, I, 138; Graesse, III, 254. Thucydides: VD16 T1114; Adams T664; Graesse, VII, 148; Schoell, II, 166; Adams T664; Schweiger, I, 325; Dibdin, Greek and Latin Classics, II, 506. Bound as above; text with occasional, generally light instances of soiling, staining, or spotting, this most notable at beginning (including Herodotus title-page) and at end of volume. Minor pinhole type worming in lower margin of both works (three or four very determined pests, who thankfully did not
meander).
A handsome and wide-margined copy. (40952)
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Surveying the Literature of
Street Vendors
Nisard, [Marie-Léonard] Charles. Histoire des livres populaires ou de la littérature du colportage depuis le XVe siècle jusqu'à l'établissement de la Commission d'examen des livres du colportage (30 novembre 1852). Paris: Librairie d'Amyot (Imprimerie D. Jouaust & Ch. Lahure), 1854. 8vo (24.5 cm, 9.64"). 2 vols. I: [4], xvi, 580, [4] pp.; illus. II: [4], 599, [1] pp.; 1 fold. plt., illus.
$500.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition of this important study of the chapbooks and tracts (both secular and religious) peddled by itinerant sellers in France: the first comprehensive, systematic work published on the subject. Nisard was a member of the titular government committee charged with licensing (and censoring) the literature sold by colporteurs, putting him in an excellent position to collect and document a great deal of otherwise ephemeral printed material — much of which he considered pernicious in influence. Covered in these two substantial volumes are almanacs, occult pamphlets, catechisms, biographies, sermons, letters, primers, religious polemics, romances, etc.
The text is
decorated with over 100 illustrations reproducing woodcuts from tracts
described, many mounted and some full-page, including a number of danses macabres.
Brunet, VI, 1720 (no. 30066); Graesse, IV, 679. Later plain cream linen, spines with titles stamped in brown; minor sunning to spines and to top front edge of vol. II. Edges untrimmed, most signatures unopened; dust-soiling to edges and into many margins; foxing, creasing and cockling variously; some leaves in vol. I with short tears from outer margins (often where an illustration needed to be placed inside an unopened signature).
Of interest for scholars of public morals and popular culture, the book trade, and illustration in France from the 15th century through the middle of the 19th, among other topics. (40866)
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The Editio Princeps
Aeschylus. [7 lines in Greek romanized as] Aischylou tragodiai hex. Prometheus desmotes. Hepta epi Thebais. Persai. Agamemnon. Eumenides. Hiketides. [then in Latin] Aeschyli tragoediae sex. [colophon: Venetiis: In aedibvs Aldi et Andreae soceri, 1518]. 8vo (15.8 cm, 6.25"). 113, [1] ff.
$9750.00
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Editio princeps of Aeschylus, edited by Franciscus Asulanus and printed at the Aldine press. As the cataloguer at the Brigham Young University Library notes, “The manuscript that Asulanus used was defective, lacking the end of Agamemnon and the beginning of the Choephori, so that in this edition they are treated as one play under the title Agamemnon.”
The Aldine printer's device (version A2) is on title-page and verso of last leaf. The text of the plays is printed in the Aldine Greek face Gk4 (first used in the 1502 Sophocles) and Torresani's “to the reader” in Aldine italic face I1:79. There are spaces with guide letters for capitals but these were not accomplished by an illuminator.
Binding: Recent full red morocco, round spine with raised bands accented by gilt rules above and below each band, “Aldus, 1518" in gilt at base of spine. Aldine device in gilt on both covers. Marbled endpapers. Top edge gilt, other edges red.Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Renouard, Alde, p. 85, no. 9; UCLA, Aldine Press: Catalogue of the Ahmanson-Murphy Collection (2001), 164; Kallendorf & Wells, Aldine Press Books, 157; EDIT16 CNCE 328; Index Aurel. 100.913; Adams A262. Binding as above. Light waterstaining to foremargins, perhaps more than occasional but not throughout; in fact, a clean and handsome copy. (40776)
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An Unlikely Love Story in a Decorated Cloth Binding
McCutcheon, George Barr; Harrison Fisher, illus., & Charles Buckles Falls, illus. The purple parasol. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1905. 8vo (19.7 cm, 7.75"). Frontis., 108 pp.; 4 col. plts.
$25.00
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A whimsically romantic tale of a man who falls for the woman whose infidelity he's hired to prove, presented with handsome illustrations and in a floral, decorated cloth binding. Four stylish color-printed plates and a color frontispiece depict a woman and her purple parasol, done by
American illustrator Harrison Fisher. Each page is adorned with black and white decorations by Charles Buckles Falls.George Barr McCutcheon (1866–1928) was an American novelist and playwright known for being a part of the Golden Age of Indiana Literature.
Binding: Publisher's green cloth, gilt lettering and lavender-stamped flower stalk to spine; on front cover, similar lavender and light green–stamped flower stalks form columns on either side of a center panel with gilt-lettered author and title. Fore- and bottom edges untrimmed.
American Fiction, 1901-1925, M-134. Bound as above; not a pristine copy but a nice one, a bit shaken and with a little soiling READ! (37546)
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Greek Text after ERASMUS & Ceporinus
Illustrations after Graf & HOLBEIN
Bible. N.T. Greek. 1535. [one line in Greek, romanized as] Tes Kaines Diathekes Hapanta [then in Latin] Noui Testamenti omnia. [colophon: Basileae: apvd Io, Bebelium {for Johann Schabler, called Wattenschnee}, 1535. 8vo (16 cm, 6.25"). [8], 367, [1] ff.
$2500.00
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Jakob Ceporinus (1499–1525, born Jakob Wiesendanger), the editor of this Greek Testament, was
a Swiss humanist who attended the universities of Cologne and Vienna and acquired knowledge of Hebrew by studying with the German humanist Johannes Reuchlin in Ingolstadt. He worked in Basel as a proofreader for a printing house, settled in Zurich, and in April of 1525 was appointed as
the first Reader of Greek and Hebrew at Zwingli's school of theology in Zurich. He died unexpectedly in December 1525.
The first edition of his Greek New Testament appeared in 1524 from the same printer as this third edition of 1535 and like that first closely follows the Erasmus third edition, with a few variants and independent readings. Also as with the 1524 edition, the title-page has
four woodcuts after Urs Graf representing the evangelists, and that leaf is followed by Oecolampadius' “In sacrarum literarum lectionem . . . exhortatio” (pi 2–7).
The work was published at the expense of Johann Schabler, called Wattenschnee, whose device with motto “Durum pacientia frango” is on the verso of last leaf. The Testament text is in Greek only and each book begins with a woodcut headpiece and a historiated initial, with some initials after Dance of Death designs by
Hans Holbein.
Reuss lists this among “Editiones Erasmicae.”
Provenance: 19th-century signature on front fly-leaf of W.C.S. Tole (?); most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
VD16 B4180; Adams B1653; Reuss, Bibliotheca Novi Testamenti Graeci, p. 33. Not in Darlow & Moule, but see 4601 for the first editon. 18th-century full calf, no raised bands, round spine gilt extra; spine pulled at head, front joint sometime repaired taking part of the label and some gilt on that side with volume now strong, corners rubbed and some old abrasions.
Interior with a very few instances of old marginalia; type splendidly sharp on very clean pages. (40636)
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Celebrating the Sun King, in Thread — & in Stunning Engravings
by Johanna Sibylla Küsel
[Félibien, André]; Johanna Sibylla Küsel Krauss & Johann Ulrich Krauss, engr. Tapisseries du roy, ou sont representez les quatre elemens et les quatre saisons. Avec les devises qui les accompagnent et leur explication. Königliche französische Tapezereyen. Augsburg: Johann Ulrich Krauss (pr. by Jacob Koppmayer), 1687. Folio (31.8 cm, 12.52"). [8], 129, [13] pp.; 8 double plts., illus. (2 illus. ff. lacking).
$2750.00
Click the images for enlargements.
German and French Baroque: This sumptuous illustrated presentation of Charles Le Brun's tapestry designs for Louis XIV, accompanied by explanations in prose and poetry, marks the work's first bilingual appearance — following its initial French publication of 1668 — as well as the first publication under the imprint of Johann Ulrich Krauss, who had taken over his father-in-law's printmaking and publishing business not long before.
Working on royal commission, Le Brun created eight elaborate renderings for two sets of allegorical tapestries comprising the four elements and the four seasons, which were then woven at
the Gobelins Manufactory. In addition to the added copper-engraved main title-page here, there is a special engraved sectional title for each main set. Each design (Fire, Air, Water, Earth; Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) has its own section featuring a double-page spread with accompanying letterpress description in both French and German, followed by individual close-ups of the emblems from the borders (done from miniature paintings by Jacques Bailly), each with a brief prose explanation followed by verse in both languages. The prose was written by Félibien, secretary to the French Royal Academy, while many of the poems were written by
Charles Perrault with others by François Charpentier, Jean Chapelin, and Jacques Cassagnes; the German throughout is printed in blackletter, the French prose in roman, and the French verse in italic.
The text is not only illustrated as above but decorated with a number of engraved initials and headpieces, as well as woodcut tailpieces.
Sébastien Le Clerc did the original 1668 engravings after Le Brun's designs; for the present edition, although a number of sources cite Krauss as the engraver throughout, Krauss's wife
Johanna Sibylla Küsel supplied and signed four of the eight dramatic double-page copperplates depicting the tapestries in their entirety and she was almost certainly chiefly responsible for many additional pieces. Frau Krauss (1650–1717), daughter of engraver Melchior Küsel, was an accomplished artist, engraver, and printmaker in her own right.
VD17 23:288787R; Landwehr, French, Italian, Spanish, & Portuguese Books of Devices & Emblems, 287; Henkel & Schöne, Emblemata: Handbuch Zur Sinnbildkunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, 300; Adams, Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the 16th & 17th Centuries, F.247; Faber du Faur 1846. Contemporary vellum with later silk ties; vellum lightly worn and spotted, spine head with traces of early, hand-inked shelfmark. Light waterstaining to upper outer portions of roughly the first third of the volume; minor spots of staining scattered throughout. Some inner margins unobtrusively repaired or reinforced; two small spots of pinhole worming running through most of volume with six instances (touching some images) repaired; engraved “Devises” title-page with short closed tear. Lacking two plates from the Autumn section (XXVI & XXVII): Despite this, and the minor faults described, a copy
deserving of admiration. (40766)
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