NEWEST ARRIVALS
NEWEST ENTRIES 3 FEBRUARY 2012
As a CATALOGUE formed partly BY CHANCE,  this does not represent ALL our strengths!

[ PART I — PART II ]

Precious New Year's Gift in a FlatteringEMBROIDERED Binding

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•  Charming miniature almanac for a Belgian town, full of useful (now evocative) information as below and in a delightful binding worth its own leading paragraph . . .

Binding:  Splendid18th-century embroidered binding of gold wire and silver and colored threads over white silk, each cover featuring one pink flower with a long green stem and leaves at its center. Raised wide swirls of silver with touches of gold surround this in relief, the whole cartouche being set on a background of densely laid-on metallic (silver?) threads semé in gold; a thin gold border edges the covers, with spine sewn in a relatively simple pattern of leaves and crossbars. Boards cut flush with text block, text of calendar section interleaved with blanks for memoranda. All edges gilt.

Contained in this little book, surrounded on each page by a simple woodcut border, are the birthdays of European royals, including newborns; woodcut illustrations of moon cycles and numismata; tables of international currency values, tariffs, and taxes; names of government officials in Liege; a town calendar of events, meetings, and saints' days; and anadvertisement for the publisher, who sold the present almanac in various bindings and other such “cute New Year's Gifts,” including Paris almanacs, at his local shop.This was the fanciest binding style offered chez Dessain, according to his ad!

Provenance:  Ex musaeo Hans Furstenberg (gilt-stamped russet leather bookplate, front pastedown), the famous collector of 18th-century French books.

WorldCat finds similar little almanacs from the same period, butnot this.

•  Binding as above; worn at edges, longest stitches across spine loosening, silver thread tarnished as virtually always and colored threads fading. Minor offsetting from bookplate onto title-page, else in good condition.  Housed in a 19th-century marbled paper–covered slipcase.  (30397)

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All 6 Volumes: Everything theAMERICAN BUSINESSMAN
Might Possibly! Want to Read About

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•  First book-form edition: Full collected run of this weekly periodical, “embracing commerce — manufactures — agriculture — internal improvements — banks — currency — finances — education, &c. &c.” (according to the title-page). These issues originally appeared from July 1839 through July 1842; complete sets are now not often seen on the market.

Hazard (1784–1870) was a former curator of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and editor of a number of works designed to preserve records of the state. Here he gathers important information on any issue that might have an impact on business throughout the country: These volumes include articles on silk; the Amistad incident; steamboats and locomotives; tea; the “Generous Indian” (III, 13) along with notes on less friendly, more violent Native Americans; banking reports; the Mercantile Libraries (and public libraries) of Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, and Boston; coal mining; imports and exports from and to various nations; “the troubles in China” (I, 209); public school system reports; vegetable and mineral resources of various states; whaling; the founding of Girard College; “the integrity of the legal character” (II, 233); and many, many other topics — with brief news oddities such as the death of a healthy, active 103-year-old run over by a frightened horse, a town of 5575 people containing 300 widows, unexpected snow storms, a gift apple grown on the tree planted by “the first male white person born in New England” (III, 272), etc.

•  American Imprints 40-3037; Goldsmiths'-Kress 3730-3731; Sabin 31107.   19th-century half calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels; bindings moderately rubbed overall with some spots of discoloration, three volumes with front joints cracked, sewing holding. Ex–social club library: some spine heads reinforced with library cloth tape, 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages, no other markings. Variously, throughout, sections of waterstaining, browning, offsetting; the occasional leaf torn without loss, chipped, or with margin reinforced; varying degrees of age-toning, with the majority of pages clean. Massive quantities of data on early 19th-century commerce, ready to be made use of for scholarship or simply to serve a reader's pleasure.  (30395)

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Luther's Works — Contemporary Pigskin Binding

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•  The collected works of Martin Luther (1483–1546) in Latin printed simultaneously with the first edition of 1545–57. The imprint of our fourth volume is the same as the first edition (Wittenberg: Lufft, 1552); however vols. I–III have variant publishers and dates, indicating these wereprinted to meet demand. (Vol. V, lacking the title-page, bears a preface dated 1554, same as the first edition; the collation matches Adams.)

These volumes include not only works by Martin Luther, the leading figure of the Reformation, but also letters, papal briefs, and other documents written by his contemporaries — Philipp Melanchthon, Frederick III of Saxony, Leo X, Johann Tetzel, inter alios — concerning him and his controversial activities.

Thewoodcut border on the four present title-pages feature emblems of the four evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John floating amidst clouds and cherubs, with a vignette below of Luther and Frederick the Wise, his most important patron, in contemporary dress kneeling before the crucifix. Text is in Latin, printed in roman and occasionally gothic type with a few instances of Greek, decorated with fine woodcut initials of varying sizes, many historiated; the margins are filled with side- and shouldernotes (very densely on some leaves). In one margin of vol. I, there is a narrow woodcut with the abbreviation “Pet Ant Ber” for Petrus Antonius Berrus, named in the adjacent passage.

Vol. II offerstwo full-page woodcuts of the monsters “pope-ass” and “monk-calf” — the subjects of the anti-Catholic pamphlet by Luther and Melancthon first published in 1523 with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Bindings: All very handsome 16th-century alum-tawed pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, elaborately worked in blind with rules and concentric rectangular panels with a variety of stamps and rolls including acorns, flowers, leaves, and historiated compartments accompanied by captions in Latin: “Ecce ancilla domini fiat” (Luke 1:38); “Mors ero mors tua” (Hosea 13:14); and “Ecce agnus dei qui tol[lit peccata mundi]” (John 1:29). The binding appears to besigned NM in small round stamps surrounding the innermost panel. Spines have raised bands and a manuscript title in the upper compartment, blue edges, and title inked on the top edge. Embossed metal and leather clasps intact on all volumes.

Provenance:  Theophilus Natingus (contemporary owner's inscription in ink on each title-page.

•  Benzing 2 (vols. IV & V); Adams L-1741, L-1746, L-1749, L-1752 (vol. I not in Adams). These edd. not in VD16.   Bindings as above, first five vols. only of a seven-volume set; covers soiled and abraded to varying degrees, extremities rubbed with a few minor chips. Ex-library: attractive 19th-century bookplate on front pastedowns; old pencillings. Light marginal worming on the first and last few leaves of vols. II–IV and final six leaves of vol. V All volumes with some deckled leaves and natural paper flaws, resulting in a handful of small holes and occasionally minor marginal tears; with mild foxing and age-toning on a small portion of leaves; with a reader's distinctive pencil marks in some margins. A few other spots and smudges, but overall a monumental set in contemporary clothes and good condition.  (30356)

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English Tree-Tending: Formal, Mathematical Planting

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•  Acclaimed and influential treatise by Cook, head gardener to the Earl of Essex and a professional nurseryman. This is the stated third edition, corrected, following the first of 1676; it includes “Rules and Tables shewing how the Ingenious Planter may measure Superficial Figures, divide Woods or Land, and measure Timber and other solid Bodies, either by Arithmetick or Geometry: With the Uses of that excellent Line, the Line of Numbers, by several new Examples; and many other Rules, useful for most Men.”

The volume is illustrated with alovely copper-engraved frontispiece depicting tree-fellers at work and with four folding plans showing how to calculate the scale and design of landscape features. At the back of the work is a brief overview of the rules for making cider, and an additional recipe for birch beer (alcoholic) is given in the chapter on birches.

•  ESTC T131054; Goldsmiths’-Kress no. 6265.   18th-century calf, covers framed in double blind fillets with blind roll along joint, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and date labels and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; joints and portions of spine leather unobtrusively repaired, edges and extremities rubbed, sides with a bit of light scuffing, gilt mildly rubbed. Scattered faint foxing, most pages clean.  (30312)

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Truly a Toy Treasure — A Classic Mechanical Book

Sarg, Tony; Washington Irving; Lewis Caroll; & Robert Louis Stevenson. 

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•  First edition: Moving-parts boxed version of three beloved children's tales, retold and colorfully illustrated by the famed puppeteer and creator of the first Macy's parade balloons. Although the back cover claims this is the first in a series, in factonly one such “Treasure Book” was ever published — understandable, given the intricacies of this volume.

The front cover's multi-layer diorama features a sailing ship, a curious fish, and an unhappy sailor overboard, all behind a mesh overlay and moveable via a turning “wheel of rocks.” Inside, Alice's head bobs upwards on an extending neck, the fish footman bears a real folded paper invitation, and the Mad Hatter tips his hat; Jim's brightly colored treasure map can be unfolded and perused, the apples in his barrel can be slid aside to reveal his hiding place, and a sack of pirate booty lies in wait for the taking; Rip Van Winkle catches a fish with your aid in pulling the string, flies the American flag, and in the final cutaway diorama, drinks ale with a revolving cast of characters.

All “extras” are present (including the often-absent balloon face), and all moving parts work.

Provenance:  Front pastedown presentation page inscribed to Allen Pitts Wiegand with love from Mom.

•  Publisher's printed paper–covered box-style binding, spine with printed cloth overlay; mild shelfwear overall, edges rubbed with a few small edge chips, front cover with small tear to paper over mesh cutout and one at edge of wheel cutout, back cover with lower inside corner partially pushed in resulting in split along back joint. Pages clean; some of the removable items with light spots of foxing. Small bit of paper overlying wheel edge in final diorama partially detached (but still present). Presentation inscription as above. Despite minor issues listed above, no childish hands ever mauled or discolored this movable treasure, and overall it is in remarkable condition for a piece of this nature.A real box of wonders!  (30233)

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Venetian History — Unique Medieval Revival Binding

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•  First published in 1887, this evocative study of medieval and Renaissance Venetian history comes from a Scottish-born novelist and historical writer who also published similarly titled works on Florence, Rome, and Jerusalem. Here it appears in a remarkable hand-painted, medieval-inspired binding with raised and gilt details.

Binding:  Striking medieval-style vellum, front cover with inset chromolithographic illustration in jewel tones in raised, stamped and gilt frame; hand-painted foliate decorations in pink, green, blue, and yellow with stamped and gilt “studs” laid on, artfully scattered. Calligraphic title incorporating onlaid raised decorative capitals; spine with painted foliate decoration; back cover with fully-filling reverse-painted griffin in blue-green and gilt. Studs and other raised elements appear to be clay or ceramic; upper edges gilt and gauffered.

•  Binding as above, moderately dust-soiled and darkened, ties now lacking; gilt elements, front cover inset, and some paint a bit rubbed, with a few studs chipped and three absent — none of this much diminishing the effect. Frontispiece recto with early inked gift inscription. Pages age-toned with a very few light smudges; almost, entirely clean. A pretty and remarkable binding, very appropriate for this romantic history.  (30306)

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Milton's FavoriteLatin Translation of the Bible

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•  A later, folio format edition of the Tremellius–Junius translation of the Bible into Latin, being a reprint of the 1603 “fourth edition.” Despite its Latinity this is not a Vulgate, rather it is a Protestant Bible: Immanuel Tremellius (1510–80) converted to Catholicism from Judaism via Cardinal Pole but a year later left the Church of Rome for Protestantism. He served in various universities, including Cambridge, as a professor of Hebrew or of Old Testament, settling finally at Sedan. His collaborator in the translation of the O.T. was his son-in-law Francicus Junius (1545–1602) and the latter also supplied the translation of the Apocrypha, while Tremellius translated the N.T. from the Syriac, which is presented here in parallel with Beze's Latin translation from the Greek of the N.T.

The O.T. is in five parts here, the first and last having their own registers and pagination; each testament's title-page bears a large, nicely executed version of the printer's device (stolen from the Estienne family). The text is dotted with woodcut initials and accented with head- and tailpieces; the main body of the text is printed in double-column format surrounded by notes.

•  Darlow & Moule 6192 (note).   19th-century acid-stained calf, raised bands, each volume with one red and one dark blue spine label, Apocrypha bound in after N.T. at end of vol. II; some scuffing or light abrasions. Extensive 19th-century commentary in ink on pastedowns and some fly-leaves; one manuscript note (and a pasted-in old bookseller’s description) on cut down and mounted title-page of vol. I; a very few other notes (“not in Syriac”). Ex-library with bookplates but no stamps; first volume's first foliation with slender worming into text from lower margin on ff. 16–29; age-toning, foxing, and some medium-sized brown stainings generally. A solid and acceptable copy of a less than common edition of this important translation that was Milton's favorite Latin version of the Bible.  (30347)

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Renaissance HUMANIST Study ofChurch History

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•  First Panvinio edition of Platina's Lives of the Popes and six other works. Panvinio (1530–68), a great Augustinian scholar, annotated and updated the papal history to 1560. Bartolomeo Platina (born Sacchi, 1421–81) was a leading member of the humanist community at Rome and Vatican librarian, acclaimed as the author of the first printed cookbook, De honesta voluptate. His Lives of the Popes, which originally appeared in 1475 under the title Liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum, went through numerous editions and was for quite some time the standard papal history, despite its often critical assessment of the Roman Pontiffs.

The text is in Latin printed in roman and italic, divided into sections for each pope and the additional treatises: De falso & vero bono, dialogi; Contra amores; De vera nobilitate; De optimo cive; Panegyricus in bessarionem doctissimum patriarcham Constantinopolitanum; and Oratio ad Paulum II . . . de bello Turcis inferendo. Woodcut initials in criblé, historiated, and floriated styles decorate the text, which is enhanced by side- and shouldernotes. Two large sections list the popes in chronological order, charting relevant dates with notes. The printer's device, incorporating Psalm 64:12 (Vulgate numbering), adorns the title- and final page.

•  VD16 P 3263; Adams P-1420; Graesse, V, 313. On Platina, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, XI, 430.   20th-century glossy black paper over boards, gilt title to red leather spine label, all edges green. Ex-library: neat 19th-century bookplate and early ink marking, front pastedown, and label to lower spine but no stamps. Light waterstaining on first 20 or so leaves and in top margin of later ones, crossing text over corner in index; hole from re-sewing in lower gutter of about 11 leaves and final quire reinforced at gutter; pin-type wormholes in upper right corner of final two leaves; negligible tear in lower corner of one leaf. Foxing, generally light, and a few stains. Minute manuscript note in ink on title-page; three instances of marginalia (two a bit cropped) on three pages including the last (dated 1677).  (30348)

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A Fishing Classic, Important Lives, & Two Fore-Edge Paintings

Walton, Izaak. 

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•  First major appearance of Walton's beloved treatise in combination with his collected lives of authors, the set (here in its stated second edition) charmingly illustrated with copper-engraved plates and wood-engraved in-text illustrations. The Angler plates generally represent dashing young men — and a few young ladies — in the garb of Walton's day, while many of the in-text illustrations depict hooked fish; the Lives volume opens with a representation of the subjects' signatures within a decorative frame and includes, along with a portrait of each, ten renditions of important moments and locations in the subjects' careers as well as numerous smaller portraits, coats of arms, etc. Each volume is decorated with a vertical fore-edge painting.

Fore-edges: Angler with two jaunty 17th-century gentlemen and their rods and lines, Lives with a portrait of Walton, both paintings within arabesque frames.

Bindings: Straight-grained maroon morocco, covers framed in gilt triple fillets, spines with gilt-stamped author and title; board edges with gilt roll, turn-ins with gilt double fillets. All edges gilt.

Provenance:  Front pastedowns each with armorial bookplate of collector John Train; front fly-leaves with early inked ownership inscriptions of Lucy S. Sanford and T. (or J.?) Lister.

•  NSTC 2W4371. Bound as above, rubbed at joints/extremities, hinges (inside) tender; text block of vol. II starting to separate from spine and front free endpaper with outer edge chipped.  Pages generally clean; moderate foxing to some plates, with offsetting to surrounding pages. Unusual and very attractive.  (30156)

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BACON onNATURE

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•  Compendium of scientific (and also quaintly “traditional”) knowledge: This wide-ranging gathering of interesting observations in natural history was first published posthumously by the author's chaplain and secretary, Dr. Rawley, in 1626, and appears here translated into Latin by Jacob Gruterus. The present edition was, as Willems puts it, “exécutée” at Leyden by Hackius for Elzevier; some examples bear Elzevier's imprint and some Hackius's. The Novus Atlas accompanies the title work, with both having prefaces by Rawley.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Alexander Oswald Brodie (not, please note, the American officer and governor of Arizona Territory); title-page with Brodie's inked inscription, dated 1839, Dresden.

•  Brunet, I, 604; Gibson, Bacon, 185b; Willems 1058. On Bacon, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   Contemporary vellum with yapp edges, spine with early inked title; spine lettering rubbed, back cover darkened. Both pastedowns lifted, front pastedown with bookplate beneath; free endpapers lacking. Title-page with inscription as above; pages with a very few small scattered spots, almost entirely clean. A handsome copy.  (30360)

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The Latest Word on Science for the Layperson

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•  Science for the American masses, as delivered by the Rev. Dionysius Lardner (1793–1859), a prolific science writer and extremely popular lecturer on science and technology who toured the U.S. from 1840 through 1845. Included here are five essays on steam engines, among a wide-ranging array of topics including electricity, the atmosphere, the planets, gravity, optics, etc., with all lectures specifically designed “to instruct and inform, and at the same time rationally to amuse, those who have neither time, inclination, nor opportunity, to cultivate mathematics, by which alone a strict professional knowledge of astronomy, mechanics, and physics, can be acquired” (I, 18). Vol. I opens with a folding plate, “Mädler's Telescopic View of the Moon,” and includes two additional moonscape plates, while a number of articles in both volumes are illustrated with small in-text engravings. This is the second edition, following the first of the previous year.

•  American Imprints 46-3993; NSTC 2L4514. Recent black moiré silk, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels. Vol. II half-title and title-page with faint spots of waterstaining, pages otherwise clean. A very nice example of one of the best-selling scientific works of its time. (30342)

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A Prairie Robinsonade

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•  First edition of this western-themed entry in the “Crusoe Library” (which also included Arctic and Middle Eastern variants in the genre): An adventurous young man is stranded on the coast of Texas, takes up with a trapper, and winds up exploring the Missouri River and the prairies, encountering bears and buffalo as well as both hostile and friendly Native Americans, eventually becoming an honorary member of the Aricara tribe — and visiting St. Louis — before returning to his native Germany and living happily ever after. The tale is illustrated with six plates (including the added engraved title-page) and in-text wood engravings byJohn Andrew and others.

Although Sternick says the first edition appeared in 1864, this appears to be erroneous — the copyright page here gives 1866, and WorldCat fails to locate any copies anywhere printed prior to 1866.

•  Sabin 64917; cf. Sternick 589.   Publisher's textured oxblood cloth, covers framed in blind, spine with decorative gilt-stamped title; extremities a bit rubbed. A clean, attractive copy of this romanticized Western American story.  (30359)

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The State of19th-Century Metaphysics

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•  First U.S. edition: Discussion of the characteristics and essence of thought, and the relation of thought and philosophy to natural history, the sciences, and morality. Brown (1778–1820) was a Scottish philosopher, poet, and professor at the University of Edinburgh; this, his most significant work, went through 20 editions in the years following its initial Edinburgh publication in 1820.

•  Shoemaker 8196; NSTC 2B53063.   Period-style quarter light grey cloth and light blue paper–covered sides, spines with printed paper labels. One leaf with short tear from outer edge, not touching text. Pages age-toned with a scant handful of scattered small spots, otherwiseremarkably clean.  (30339)

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Irish Songs — American Striped Cloth Binding

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•  Later American edition of these celebrated Hibernian-themed lyrics from the author of “Lalla Rookh.” The front free endpaper bears a rather sweet early inked inscription: “For thee, A.E.” (with a small, difficult-to-decipher signature).

Signed binding: Publisher's striped cloth, predominantly seen in the 1840s and never common: Brown ripple-textured cloth thinly striped in light blue, covers each with blind-stamped frame and gilt-stamped harp and shamrock vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title and strapwork; front free endpaper with pressure-stamp of the Benjamin Bradley company. All edges gilt.

•  On binding cloth: Krupp, Bookcloth in England and America, 1823–50, Rip3.   Binding as above, cocked, corners rubbed, spine extremities chipped, tiny spot of insect damage in front joint; overall more attractive than this list might suggest. Front hinge (inside) tender. Pages gently age-toned; a few leaves of preface with light staining along inner margins. A very popular work, here in an unusual and distinctive binding.  (30344)

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Bertie's Own Bible — “A” Curious Imprint & aNorth Carolina Connection

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•  This “authorized” Bible (i.e., King James Version) was printed by Evan Tyler, the King's Printer for Scotland in 1641–52 and 1660–72, for “a” society of stationers; “not,” as NUC Pre-1956 notes, “'the' society, but a body who pretended that they possessed the ma[nuscript] of 1611, and claimed the copyright.” The text, which in this edition does not include the Apocrypha, is printed 66 lines to a full pageruled in bright red with the dedication's text additionally surrounded by an ornamental type border of small fleurs-de-lis. The title-page, engraved by W. Marshall, isbeautifully hand-colored in shades of red, green, yellow, brown, grey, and purple. A separate woodcut title-page, elaborately red-ruled but uncolored, introduces the New Testament.

Binding:  18th-century full mottled crimson morocco, covers tooled in gilt with a rope and coin roll border, framing a single stamp of a Saracen ducally crowned, thegilt supra-libros of Albemarle Bertie at the center of each board, gilt along the board edges and turn-ins in a floral roll pattern; spine gilt extra with a leafy flower tool in each of six compartments divided by gilt rolled raised bands; all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, and a green silk marker.

Provenance:  Ownership signature of Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey, the British general and member, briefly, of Parliament for Stamford, 1744–1818 (front fly-leaf verso); and his armorial bookplate (front pastedown). Another bookplate, small and circular (front pastedown, top), has the initials “M.A.H.” beneath a crown, likely for the M.A. Huntley who signed the front fly-leaf in ink. Presentation inscription signed Rev. [???] Edmunds “to his much valued & esteemed friend M.A. Pegus,” March 14, 1840.

The coat of arms forBertie County, North Carolina, incorporates the same shield, helm, and crest, as the arms of our Albemarle Bertie, whose relatives James and Henry Bertie acquired that land from the original Lord Proprietors before 1729.

This Bible isscarce: Just two copies were found in U.S. libraries via WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956.

•  Wing B2237; Herbert 631; ESTC R229989 (bound with Sternhold & Hopkins' Book of Psalms); L. Wilson, Bibles . . . in English, I, 183. Not in Darlow & Moule. On Bertie County, see: “James & Henry Bertie, Namesakes of the County,” in The Bertie Historical Association, vol. II, no. 2 (Oct. 1954).   Binding as above; leather darkened more or less evenly all over to a rich russet, lightly worn along the front joint with an old inch-long repair at the top, board corners lightly bumped, front supra-libros rubbed from use, at the spot, imaginably, where Bertie put his thumb. One small tear to a later leaf, the very lower outer corners of a few leaves torn away to no adverse effect, and a minute chip to the edge of the title-page; text remarkably clean with instances of off-setting from the hand-coloring the only “stains.”  (30139)

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Hide & Seek. Rolling a Hoop. Playing with Dolls.

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•  Uncommon sole edition of this well-thought-out collection of stories and poems for children, syllables separated for the young reader's convenience. The volume is profusely illustrated with full-page and in-text wood engravings, featuring an especially charming close-up of a sweet-faced St. Bernard. Three images have been partially hand-colored by a reasonably adept early reader, and three by a slightly more enthusiastic hand.

Binding:  Publisher's brick-colored cloth, front cover decoratively stamped in black and gilt withthree affixed CHROMOLITHOGRAPHIC illustrations of children at play.

•  Binding as above, spine and extremities moderately worn, small spots of light discoloration mostly confined to spine and edges. Pages faintly age-toned with intermittent light spotting; six images with early hand-coloring as above. Really, a very pleasing copy anda covetable gift for anyone who appreciates the joys of childhood.  (30281)

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THE Canon Law forMany Centuries

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•  Gratian's Decretum is the oldest and most substantial component of Catholic canon law. Written in the twelfth century and henceforth amended (most significantly in the sixteenth), Gratian's Decretum gives not only definitions of legal terminology, but also case examples (fictitious) and their solutions (universal). “The Harmony of Discordant Canons,” as the Decretum was originally called, is divided into three parts: first, 101 distinctiones concerning the origins of law, church heirarchy, and life of the clergy; second, 36 causae, or the fictitious cases, divided into quaestiones on heretics and marriage, among other subjects; and finally, five distinctiones concerning the sacraments. Although Gratian's work was never officially promulgated by the Church, it was a legal cornerstone at ecclesiastical courts until 1917, and a major influence on even the most recent laws of 1983.

As the first and most significant volume of an original set of three offering also the works and commentaries of other popes (and one professor), this present volume offersGratian's Decretals in entirety.

Although no printer's name appears on the title, there is a large printer's device, of a ship at sea in an architectural frame. The text is in Latin with a few instances of Greek, decorated with elaborate head- and tailpieces, ornaments, and initials. Diagrams of family trees appear on pp. 1122 and 1127.

•  VD17 12:197825P. On the Decretum, see: A. Winroth, The Making of Gratian's Decretum (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).   Contemporary flexible vellum with yapp edges and early ink title to spine; vellum a little rubbed, one wormhole on the uppermost spine band. Pencillings and “M.A” in early ink on front fly-leaf, a few small ink spots to title-leaf and another. Portion of lower margin of one leaf torn away, natural flaws and minor worming to a few others. Browning, variously, due to iron in water used to make the paper, and some general foxing. Though one volume only of a set, complete in itself and a good book!  (30129)

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An Early Bilingual Edition of theSibylline Oracles with Their “Portraits”

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•  Fame?  Misfortune?  Wealth?  Life?  Death?  The Sibylline Oracles knew all, but understanding their pronouncements was not always easy. The efforts of scholar Onofrio Panvinio (1529–68), translator Sebastien Castellion (1515–63), and editor Johannes Opsopäus (1556–96) are brought together here and are supplemented bytwelve finely engraved portraits of “the oracles” by Karel van Mallery (1571–ca. 1635).

The pronouncements are here in the original Greek, with Latin translation (including sidenotes) on the facing page. These are enhanced by Panvinio's study of the Oracles, extensive elogia (testimonies by the ancient authors Plato, Ovid, Aristoteles . . . ), and Mallery's engravings of the sibyls, all preceding the actual printing of the prophecies with notes and supplemental material by Opsopäus.

The volume begins with a most handsome emblematic engraved title-page signed C. De Mallery involving a ship at sea against a sky labeled “Lutetia” (for Paris) surmounting an elaborate architectural frame containing the title and incorporating elegant symbolic ladies and more, followed on the next leaves by a dedication to the esteemed French collector Jacques-Auguste de Thou (Thuanus, 1553–1617). Beautiful floriated woodcut initials, factotum initials, head- and tailpieces decorate the text, which is anexquisite example of printing.

It seems that there were related texts printed at the same time that are sometimes found bound with this in a variety of combinations, but this not universally.

•  Adams S1061; Schweiger, I, 287.   Period-style full dark brown mottled calf tooled in blind, gilt title and tools to spine, red edges. Small hole from natural flaw in upper corner of title-page and one other leaf; oval-shaped spot in lower margin of title-page from an erasure (?), offset onto the front fly-leaf; light age-toning and occasional foxing in some margins, with a few stray ink marks from printing and maybe two or three dots from oxidization of the paper. Accounting for these minor expectable flaws, the present volume isreally very, very nice and the portraits areterrific.  (30177)

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Harvard-Approved

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•  First edition with Dr. John Ware's substantial additions and alterations, “intended to adapt [the work] to the present state of knowledge” (from the title-page). Smellie was the Scottish editor of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as a printer, antiquary, naturalist, and member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; his Philosophy, first published in 1790, became a standard text at Harvard University in the 19th century — particularly in this version, modified by a Harvard graduate.

•  Shoemaker 17997; NSTC 2S24902.   Period-style quarter light grey cloth and light blue paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label. Pages gently age-toned, a few faintly foxed. A nice copy of one of the most highly regarded natural histories of the time.  (30335)

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FIRST Grammar *&* Vocabulary of thisAfrican Language?

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•  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 this for publication.

The two folding tables are printed on very thin tissue or “tracing”-like paper.

•  Publisher's marbled paper boards, a little abraded and dust-soiled and with evidence of an old shelving label sometime removed from front cover; respined with black tape. Ex-library with stamps on new front endpaper, a front fly-leaf, and base of title-page; four-digit number stamped in lower margin of contents page. No other markings.  (30272)

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Portable Pindar from the Glasgow Editions of the Greek Classics

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•  One of Foulis's Editiones minimae, this being a dainty miniature printing of selected odes from Pindar's famous tributes to the classical Panhellenic festivals: Olympia, Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea.

Provenance:  Each front fly-leaf with early inked inscription of Henry Moore, Worcester College, Oxford; front pastedowns with bookplate of H.M., presumably also Moore.

Binding:  Publisher's mottled crimson calf, covers framed in gilt beaded roll, spines with gilt-stamped title and compartment decorations, board edges with gilt roll.

•  ESTC T134377; Brunet, IV, 660; Dibden, II, 290; Gaskell 274; Schweiger, I, 236.   Bindings as above, edges and extremities rubbed, spine leather darkened and showing small cracks. Vol. I with occasional instances of early inked marginalia in Greek. Vol. II with paper flaw to one leaf that has torn slightly, affecting about three letters. Pages gently age-toned with a very few scattered light spots, otherwise clean. A nicely printed text in a pleasing small format.  (30208)

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MOST HANDSOME

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•  Ruiz de Bustamante declares his degree defense in canon law at the Guatemalan university, his announcement being contained within a three-element typographic border of printer's ornaments. Above a Neo-Latin poem to Christ is an exquisite, unsigned, copper-engraved image of Christ crucified. The defense was set for 23 December, the verso containing a small printed announcement that the time for the defense was to be 9 AM.

Chain lines are horizontal!

We trace no copy via NUC, WorldCat, COPAC, Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico, Metabase, or the OPACs of the national libraries of Mexico or Spain. We have failed to find the URL for the OPAC of the Guatemalan National Library.

•  Medina, Guatemala, 1683.   Old folds, left margin irregular. A very clean, bright, crisp, impressive exemplar.  (30336)

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Mid-19th-Century Music forthe Young

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•  “Containing a choice collection of popular music, original and selected, arranged for one, two, three, and four voices, mostly with piano accompaniments,” according to the title-page. Following a brief introduction to musical theory, this children's songbook opens with “The Boy and the Robin”; the subsequent selections tend notably towards “what adults think children should sing” rather than “what children actually enjoy singing.”

This is the second edition, following the (scarce) first of 1852; the front cover differs from the title-page in giving the publication information as Chicago.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with several early pencilled inscriptions, including one reading “To Vestilla from W.B. Lear, July 13th 1857.” A folded section from a smaller hymnal is laid in.

•  Publisher's quarter sheep and printed paper–covered boards; binding darkened and rubbed, front joint starting from head, front cover creased. Front free endpaper partially excised and back free endpaper lacking; front pastedown with inscriptions as above, back pastedown with early inked annotations and numerals. First three leaves with central tear affecting several words. Laid-in hymnal pages with upper edges chewed. Moderate foxing and intermittent waterstaining; some corners dog-eared.Interesting for its graphically appealing cover and the array of its “juvenile” repertoire choices.  (30255)

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Biography of Savonarola byHis Friend

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•  Authoritative edition of Savonarola's biography first printed in the 1530's, the volume in hand containing both the entire “life” and the famous compendium of his revelations. Count Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533, not to be confused with his uncle Giovanni, the famous philosopher, 1463–94) knew Savonarola personally, and witnessed his martyrdom in 1498. After years of writing and revising, and reviews by friends who also knew Savonarola, his biography was finally finished in 1530 and later translated anonymously into Italian. The present edition is in Latin and was edited by Jacques Quétif (1618–98), a Dominican priest working chez Louis Billaine in Paris — France of the Ancien Régime regarding Savonarola as an authentic spiritual leader and not “just” the vexatious Dominican priest who antagonized Alexander VI, spoke out against humanism, and was excommunicated and executed for heresy.

The text is printed in roman and italic with side- and shouldernotes, and decorated with a few woodcut initials, headpieces and tail ornaments, with a separate section title for the Compendium revelationum, introduced with a preface by Florentine poet Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542). A colophon at the end of the Lamentatio sponsae Christi (final leaf) is dated 1537 for the Venetian edition by Tridino.

In addition to a finely engraved frontispiece portrait of Savonarola, there areeight plates, numbering four engraved coats of arms, for the Atestina, Medici, Borgia and Sforza families, and four large foldout letterpress family trees, for the author's family, the Atestina, Medici, and Borgia, who are all related in some way or another to Savonarola's story.

•  BM STC French, P1013. On Pico della Mirandola, see: NCE, XI, 347–48, and C.B. Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola ... and his Critique of Aristotle (1967). On Billaine, see: B. Montagnes OP, “Éditions et éditeurs de Savonarole dans la France d'Ancien Régime,” in Archivium fratrum praedicatorum, LXXV, pp. 159–78.   Vellum over boards with yapp edges, ink title to spine and blue speckled edges; vol. II, “Additiones,” not present. Unnoticeable pin-type wormhole to frontispiece, title-page rubbed with loss to part of two words and with small hole to its blank area; small spottings to Medici fold-out plate and a few other leaves; Borgia fold-out plate repaired and with a diamond-shaped waterstain; a few tears in lower margins, two resulting in a bit of loss and one of these given an old repair.  (30276)

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Price's History of Islam — Much Matter, a Handsome Map

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•  Major Price (1762–1835), an officer of the East India Company, was a notable orientalist and member of the Royal Asiatic Society. The Chronological Retrospect is his best-known and most referenced effort; the DNB says it is “the painstaking work of a genuine scholar anxious to do full justice to his authorities,” while Allibone calls it “the authority on the subjects discussed.”

The first edition (1811–21) was printed by several different hands, all in Wales, and one was a woman printer: Vol. I was done by George North of Brecknock, vol. II by Henry Hughes of Brecon, and vols. III and IV by Priscilla Hughes, also of Brecon and presumably heir to Henry. This appears to be a new issue, or, at least, the same issue with new title-pages; the preface to the first volume is dated 1811, and a note to the binder at the end of vol. III, part 2, reads, “The amended title pages to be substituted for those at present annexed to this volume” (p. 998). Vol. I has a hand-colored oversized, very large folding map..

•  For the first ed., see: Allibone 1677; Lowndes 1961. On Price, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Modern light tan cloth, caramel-colored gilt calf spine labels. Unopened and uncut except most preliminary leaves, deckle preserved on all; leaves naturally varying in size. Ex-library pressure-stamp to all four title-pages, and to dedication in the second volume; scattered stains from chemical reactions in the paper, mild foxing, printer's ink; dampstaining in the margins or at edges of some leaves, especially in first vol. and end of vol. III, part 2. Map in vol. I intact and nice, with just a negligible tear where attached at the upper hinge and one short one along a fold outside image; a few small marginal tears in vols. II and III (part 2), and a handful of naturally occurring holes not affecting text in all vols. Creasing as from some heavy object placed on top of leaves before binding (?) throughout, without tears or soil from this; clean, sound, attractive.  (30218)

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This Example Worthy of aMedieval Lady

Le roman de Tristan et Iseut.

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•  Gorgeously bound version of the beloved Celtic Arthurian legend, here in Bédier's French rendition — an attempt to reconstruct the ideal original version of this oft-retold romance. The text is attractively printed, each chapter opening with a large foliate capital.

Binding:  20th-century hand-painted vellum, front cover with sailing ship between decorative bands accomplished in a style reminiscent of the Bayeux Tapestry, spine with title and decorations, back cover with castle tower and distant ship motif. Publisher's original tan paper wrappers with Celtic motifs bound in.

•  Binding as above, vellum slightly darkened, clean and tight. Front pastedown with small rubber-stamped monogram “MG.” Pages gently age-toned, else clean. One of the great medieval romances, and a truly lovely object.  (30283)

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Before There Were Crock-Pots

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•  Written by a teacher of domestic science and former dietitian of Manhattan State Hospital (not the novelist of Gone with the Wind fame), this how-to book offers both “economy of fuel” and “a mind free from all care of the meal that is cooking” (p. 7). The work describes techniques for building and assembling portable insulating pails, refrigerating boxes, insulated ovens, and hay-boxes, followed by250 recipes making use of slow cooking. The instructions are illustrated with in-text engravings; at the back of the volume is a series of experiments designed to demonstrate the insulating powers of different materials, the effects of food density upon the temperature maintained, detection of poisonous metals that may be dissolved from the cooker utensils, etc. This is the third edition, following the first of 1909.

•  Bitting 326 (for 1909 & 1911 eds.); Brown, Culinary Americana, 2637 (first ed. only). Not in Cagle & Stafford.   Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black with title and images of fireless cookers; mild rubbing to extremities, very faint scratches to back cover. Front hinge (inside) with small area of insect damage near head. A clean, solid copy.  (30292)

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OnWINGS of Verse

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•  Beautiful edition of gathered verses by Sir Walter Scott, containing “The Bridal of Triermain,” “Harold the Dauntless,” “William and Helen,” and what the advertisement calls “all the Smaller Pieces, collected for the first time in the recent edition of the Author's Poems” — decorated with a fore-edge painting.

The Fore-edge:  Simple but charming design of six bright butterflies in red, orange, yellow and blue.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of John Train.

Binding:  Contemporary maroon straight-grain morocco framed in wide gilt border and panelled in gilt single fillet, spine with gilt-stamped title and decorations, board edges (at corners) and turn-ins with gilt roll. All edges gilt.

•  NSTC 2S9246.   Binding as above, moderately rubbed; hinges (inside) slightly tender. Front free endpaper verso with inked ownership inscription.  Light to moderate foxing throughout, pages otherwise clean.  (30141)

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NOT Printed from Moveable Type — An Entirely Engraved Book
A Contemporary Sombre Binding

Church of England. 

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•  Sole edition. Silver plates, not copper, were used to print this beautiful and finely engraved Prayer Book. The engraver, John Sturt, was well known for producing a calligraphy manual, as well as for micro-engraving the Apostles' Creed on a silver penny and the Lord's Prayer on a silver halfpenny. Both his engraving and micro-engraving skills are employed in this famous and elegant volume. On 188 silver plates he calligraphically engraved the text and used a number of entrancing borders, and supplied a wealth of illustrations appropriate to the seasons of the Church's year or the feast being celebrated. He excelled himself in his portrait of George I, whose likeness he created via carefully and minutely inscribed texts of the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Prayer for the Royal Family, and the 21st Psalm!

The text, entirely ruled in red, is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is still the official Prayer Book of the Church of England, with the additions usual at the time: the thanksgiving for deliverance from the gunpowder treason, the prayers on the anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles, the prayers on the anniversary of the accession of the reigning monarch, etc.

Binding:  Contemporary sombre binding in black morocco, an English style used on devotional books ca. 1670–1720. Both covers intricately tooled in blind with a wide border of alternating circle stamps and delicate sprays framing a central lozenge made up of similar tools, arranged asymmetrically, surrounded by pendant floral ornaments; spine with raised bands and a single tool repeated in each of seven compartments. Unusually for a sombre binding, this has gilt board edges and all edges gilt. Marbled endpapers.

Provenance:  George Richard Mackarness M.A. (bookplate); Wallace Parham (bookplateand sticker).

•  Gewirtz, But One Use, 55; ESTC T141242; Griffiths, Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, 1717/2.   Binding as above; leather cracking slightly along joints and scuffed in a few places, chips at top of spine. Lacking volvelle, as is almost always the case; later manuscript note citing Walpole's “Anecdotes of Painting” laid in. Age-toning/soiling across page-bottoms and lower outer corners, with only a bit of soiling/spotting otherwise; reds remain very bright and impressions dark and crisp. Ink inscription “From my mother Jan. 1855" on front fly-leaf verso. A wondrously beautiful piece of devotional art in very nice condition.  (30126)

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DecorativePolish Catholic Miniature

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•  Miniature (or near-miniature) Polish Catholic devotional book. All text here is in Polish except for one line of the title-page: “Printed in Czechoslovakia.” Steinbrener was the proprietor of a prominent printing concern in Vimperk, which published prayer books in more than 20 languages; the present example was first printed in 1895. The work is illustrated with portraits of Jesus and Mary, six images of priests conducting Mass, and smaller vignettes of the stations of the Cross.

Uncommon: WorldCat locates only one U.S. institutional holding of this 1911 (as per the imprimatur) edition.

Binding:  Cream-colored plasticized boards (with cream cloth intentionally visible at joints), front cover with color-printed overlay of an angel delicately tinted in light blue and pink with gilt backdrop beneath a rose and grapevine motif, turn-ins with gilt roll, moiré silk endpapers. All edges gilt.

•  Binding as above, corners slightly rubbed, minor discoloration to sides and spine head. Lacking pp. 19–30 (with its not being entirely clear whether these were ever present). Pages age-toned; lower outer corners of first few leaves bumped. A beautiful little prayerbook.  (30391)

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Technically an Amateur Production, But
Nicely Executed

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•  Whoever Milliken and Cummings were, they wereserious about their efforts at a literary periodical. The present issue has an impressively ornate hand-inked front cover featuring a decorative title and stag vignette and a back cover with a likewise hand-drawn, unsuspecting gentleman about to have his derrière savaged by a charging hound (above the caption “Look out!!”), these enclosing otherwise unpublished short pieces (including “An Emotional Old Man,” attributed to Max Tuttle) and “splinters” of local interest items, all recorded in a casual but legible hand. Jennie Crowbie's class essay “Awkward Boys” is added at the back.

Although whatever title-page may have been present is now lost and the first piece's beginning likewise, what is present here is a fascinating labor of love and lively-mindedness.

•  Hand-inked covers as above; edges darkened, one bright orange tie surviving and one lost. Leaves separating, first leaf lacking.  (30247)

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Pedantic or Enlightening (or Both)? YOU Decide

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•  First edition: A British antiquary's commentary on some of the obscurer points of Shakespeare's plays, examining possible source materials and often focusing on the anachronisms present in the plots and settings. Present here are brief analyses of the legalities of different types of marriage contracts, the nature of period music (offering as examples tunes for the “Scotish brawl” and “Canary”), and the fine details of such activities as quail fighting, crow keeping, wassail drinking, wearing chopines, furnishing funeral tables, etc., as well as longer researches on the subjects described in the title.

This treatise was generally well-received at the time of its publication, and a later 19th-century critic praised Douce for his “delicate and sympathetic apprehension of the peculiar beauties of Shakespeare,” but Jeffrey rather famously severely critiqued the work in the Edinburgh Review), and Stapfer described it as “bristling with erudition but devoid of talent, and very foolish and irreverent towards Shakespeare.”

Evidence of Readership: An early owner of this copy who seems to have sided with Jeffrey has made occasional annotations in pencil, one of which decries “these commentators [who] will never allow poor Shakespeare any invention, always endeavoring to prove him pilfering . . . “

Both volumes are illustrated with wood engravings by J. Berryman, reproducing medieval and Renaissance images; vol. II also includes a total ofnine plates, one being an oversized, folding rendition of a fanciful 15th-century engraving of a Flemish morris dance. The title-pages are printed in red and black.

Provenance:  Front fly-leaf of vol. II with pencilled ownership inscription of prominent 20th-century Philadelphia collector E.M. Boyle.

•  NSTC D1619; NCBEL, III, 1644.   Period-style quarter calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped red morocco title-label, compartments with blind-tooled and gilt-stamped decorations, back pastedowns with binder's tickets. All edges marbled. Regular but not heavy early pencilled annotations, some offset onto opposing pages; a few scattered small smudges, pages otherwise clean. One leaf with small central hole affecting about four letters. A very attractive copy, with interesting and engaging signs of readership.  (30112)

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Gentle Prayers for the“Infant Pilgrim”

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•  Early printing of this collection of Christian-themed verses, taken (without attribution) from Ann and Jane Taylor's Hymns for Infant Minds. The Taylor sisters were, both together and separately, exceptionally popular children's authors; this example of their work featuresa preliminary alphabet and eight woodcut illustrations.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 44408.   Plain blue-green paper wrappers, much worn and creased, sewing loosening. Lower corners bumped; pages age-toned and lightly spotted. Much worn but not written or scribbled on; this copy easily imaginable as a critical element of some respectful child's nightly bedtime ritual.  (30253)

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Snakes Lost Civilizations & anAdventuresome Artist

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•  Before Indiana Jones stirred our imagination about lost civilizations and their treasures, there were Frederick Catherwood and John Lloyd Stephens, whose explorations of the Maya ruins of Central America, Chiapas, and the Yucatan excited the Anglo-American world in the middle of the 19th century and helped spur the rediscovery of the Maya among the non–romance language nations. And it was Catherwood's illustrations that fixed forever what the temples and other buildings looked like to the Victorian-era and later visitors to the area.

Following the great success of Catherwood & Stephens' s two accounts of their travels in Maya land, Catherwood decided to convert his drawings to large-scale luxury prints, the illustrations in the two travel accounts having been in octavo format. In England he enlisted a crew of the best lithographers to transform his camera lucida drawings to grand, eye-filling lithographs, with George B. Moore, William Parrott, Thomas Shotter Boys, and Henry Warren among those putting the images on stone; he had no one less than Owen Jones design and accomplish the title-page, chromolithographed in red, blue, and gold.

This set of images is of the very rare colored issue on card stock.

•  Hill, Pacific Voyages, rev. ed., 263; Palau 50290; Sabin 11520; Tooley, English Books with Coloured Plates, 133.   Plates were removed long ago from their binding (not present) and sold as a set of plates; all have been expertly conserved (conservator's report provided) and mounted on acid-free board, now housed in a custom clamshell case. The plates have been trimmed within the images by between one tenth and three tenths of an inch in each direction, letterpress descriptions and map lacking; the plates are handsome beyond easy imagining and fascinating in the detail and care of their coloring.  (29366)

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Everything You Need to Know about theHealthy Joys of Country Life
— from a Literary Lawyer's Perspective

Jacob, Giles. 

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•  Sole edition of this useful and eminently portable overview of practical topics such as animal husbandry, hunting, fishing, gardening (including care of fruit and other types of trees), and the cost of timber and stone as well as labor for carpenters, masons, or glaziers — along with rules for management of a large family, and a seasonal calendar which includes monthly good health practices. The volume opens with a copper-engraved frontispiece depicting a well-laid-out country estate with formal garden, frolicking deer in the woods, and laborers at work in the fields; towards the back of the volume are a compilation of thoughts on natural philosophy, “A General Description of England, and particularly of London; with an Account of the Taxes, Revenues, Government, Great Offices, and Courts of Judicature of England, &c.,” and a poem “In Praise of a Country Life.”

Jacob (1686–1744) was a legal writer known for his Every Man His Own Lawyer. He also dabbled in poetry, drama, and literary criticism; in the same year as the present work's appearance, he published a parody called The Rape of the Smock, and was subsequently immortalized by Pope's unkind remarks regarding both his grammar and his status as “the Blunderbuss of Law.”

•  ESTC T90927; Goldsmiths’ 5344. On Jacob, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Contemporary mottled sheep, framed and panelled in blind, rebacked with very complementary mottled sheep, spine with gilt-stamped title, author, and date; minor scuffing now nicely refurbished and front hinge (inside) unobtrusively reinforced. Pages mildly age-toned and cockled, with a few instances of light staining towards back of volume; one early pencilled correction. Last few leaves with upper outer corners torn away, touching a few page numbers and in one case one letter. Overall a solid and pleasing copy.  (30232)

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Presentation Copy of AMERICAN Catholic Poems
A Charming Cloth Binding

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•  Selection of Miss Conway's poetry from Catholic periodicals. A teacher and editor, she was born of Irish immigrants.

Binding:  Very handsome but unsigned publisher's green cloth stamped in gilt and black with attention to geometry, upper board graced with flowers, birds, and a gilt vignette in a circle of a girl reading and watching the sun rise over water from her perch beneath a tree on a hill. Spine with elegantly embellished title and author’s name also in gilt and black. Floral endpapers. All edges gilt.

Provenance:  Presentation from author to Capt. John M. Tobin (presentation on front fly-leaf).

Evidence of readership: (At least) one word added in early ink, p. 79.

•  Bound as above. Extremities lightly rubbed and the lower board mildly scuffed; minor waterstaining in the upper and outer margins of some leaves, visible at the fore-edge. Lovely.  (29948)

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The Summa in Its First Edition — A 1474 Incunable
Manuscript Collation Indications Surviving — All Initials Accomplished
Early Provenance Explicit

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•  First edition of any part of Saint Antoninus' Summa theologica moralis, being also the first printing of the second volume — complete as published — and the only volume to be published by the press of Franciscus Renner and Nicolas de Frankfortia, whose partnership in Venice ran from 1473 to 1477.

Fame would descend on at least three of the would-be Dominicans who made their noviates in 1405 at Cortona under Br. Lawrence of Ripafratta. They were Fra Angelico — the painter; Fra Bartolommeo — the miniaturist; and St. Antoninus (1389–1459) — the reformer and theological writer. St. Antoninus, archbishop of Florence, essentially lived in the pre-printing era and so the Summa Theologica Moralis he wrote shortly before his death did not see its way into print until well after it. The work is composed of four parts and probably because of its size was only published piecemeal by various Italian and German printers; scholars say it marks a new and considerable development in moral theology, as well as containing a wealth of matter for the student of 15th century history.

A beautiful example of early Venetian printing in its original Southern German binding, this predates the universal use of printed collation marks. Visible however on many leaves of this very wide-margined copy arethe printer's original manuscript collation marks (as well as deckle), which would normally have been trimmed off by the binder. A large decorative initial in red, black, and bistre graces the beginning of the text, with other initials and running chapter headings accomplished or embellished in neatly applied bright red ink.

The textbock here preserves a series ofgraduated vellum tabs supplied for aid in navigating the text. Unrelated to the tabs, but also of interest to scholars of the book, are the strips of vellum manuscript visible at some inner margins, that have been used in the binding.

Binding:  Contemporary blind-tooled alum-tawed pigskin over beveled wooden boards. Top board tooled using a variety of embossing rolls and tools that include a roll of an eagle in a diamond centered in a large square with six “rectangle” compartments, four of which have an embossed stag at full gallop; a roll of a fleur-de-lis in a diamond; a stamp much resembling a Tudor rose in a circle; and a stamp of a thistle in a teardrop. The lower board is also tooled in blind, mostly with rules forming diagonal and rectangular patterns, but also showing embossing rolls of a vine and flower pattern, and a stamp of a Pascal lamb in a diamond.

Provenance:  Ownership inscription of “Conventus Gamundiani,” a Capuchin Order convent at Schwäbisch Gmünd near Wurttenburg, dated 1484 on front free endpaper and another date of “1479" on the first blank; ownership inscription of Johannes Meyer dated 1509; 19th-century library bookplate.

Evidence of readership: Five pages of contemporary manuscript notes and an index in red and brown ink, signed in two places “Johannes Meyer predicator (preacher)” and dated 1509; some 15th-century marginal notes in a very clear hand; early manicules; 19th-century notes pasted to front free endpaper.

ISTC and Goff combine to locate ten copies in U.S. institutions and two in private collections. One of the institutional copies has recently been deaccessioned and one of the private copies was sold long ago.

•  HCR1254; Proctor 4160; Goff A-867; GKW 2195; BMC, V, 192; ISTC ia00867000; Bibliotheca Apostolicae Vaticanae Incunabula A-363.   Binding as above; abraded, rubbed, and unevenly toned due to removal of clasps, bosses, and other “furniture”; numerous pinhole-type wormholes with board corners somewhat damaged. Some tiny worm holes in last few leaves and in the bottom blank margins of a few leaves; one natural paper flaw in one margin causing a hole, not near text; expectable, really minimal varieties of staining. A very stout if pillaged binding which has its charm and surroundsa fine very wide-margined copy of its landmark text.  (30138)

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The “Light of Catholic Truths” Comes to Spain — RARE

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•  In his Thursday sermons in the Jesuit Casa Professa of Mexico City, Martínez de la Parra during the 1690s painted for later generations a vivid and many believe realistic picture of sundry spiritual concerns of “the common man” in the capital at the end of the “Forgotten Century”: failure, death, redemption, living a Christian life, a child's education, and knowing what is right.

The sermons were originally published in Mexico City between 1691 and 1696 not as individual sermons but as three volumes gathered, andthis is the first Spanish printing of any volume of Luz de verdades. Vols. II and III were also published by Blas also in 1699 (unknown to Palau), but apparently as stand-alone volumes that are so catalogued by the only library reporting ownership of all three — the library of the Universidad de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife. Columbia University reports owning vol. I and the Lilly vol. III, with no other library reporting owning any volumes of this edition.

The plate is an etching of St. Francis Xavier.  The title-page is printed in black and red with a handsome border of printer's ornaments.

•  Palau 155512; Beristain, IV, 107; Alden & Landis 699/145; DeBacker-Sommerogel, V, 636.   Contemporary limp vellum with remnants of ties, light wear and typical stains to binding; rextblock separating slightly at the title-page. Light scattered dust-soiling, light age-toning; foxing in some margins and occasionally into text, with scattered round stains on several leaves as from a glass, cup, or other cylinder. Minor worming with tasteful early repairs. Really, a darned good copy of a rare book.  (29667)

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The Book That Defined Miller's Career

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•  Fifth Obelisk printing of the book that “afforded [Miller] his literary voice” (Shifreen & Jackson).

“I start tomorrow on the Paris book: first person, uncensored, formless — fuck everything!” So wrote Miller to Emil Schnellock in 1931. Three years later, after some financial difficulty, Jack Kahane published Tropic of Cancer at Obelisk in Paris with money Anaïs Nin borrowed from a psychoanalyst. It is the story of Miller's first year in Paris, living hand-to-mouth as a struggling writer.

This edition is the same as the fourth edition in all but wrappers (and the same as the third in pagination, except for necessary variations on the copyright page: “Fifth printing” and “Reprinted January 1939"); our copy'sbinding is blue and white, lettered in black, not the light green wrappers lettered in darker green called for by Shifreen & Jackson.

Jack Kahane founded the Obelisk Press at Paris in 1929 to publish illicit English-language books like this free from legal censure.

•  Shifreen & Jackson A9h.   Binding as above; wrappers faded and creased along the spine, upper joints cracking. A copy that clearly was read more than a few times.  (30191)

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A QUITELuxurious & Useful Production

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•  Canvassing ancient Egypt to the Italian Renaissance and modern times, this monograph on ceramic art distinguishes classes and styles of pottery, is illustrated with200 wood-engraved figures by Hercule Catenacci and Jules Jacquemart, bears12 full-page engraved plates by the latter, and tells how to identify many works' makers, cataloguing1,000 marks and monograms. Each full-page plate is protected by a guard sheet with a brief letterpress description.

Jules Jacquemart (1837–80) was but in his mid-twenties when he began drawing from the renowned art collection of his father, Albert, an art historian. The Jacquemarts' first book on the subject was the Histoire de la porcelaine, followed shortly by this, its companion, in 1873, when Jules was “at work again on his own best work of etching.” He also made the etchings for Techener's Histoire de la bibliophilie (1860–64) and, in 1864, received an important commission from the French crown for Gemmes et joyaux de la couronne (1865).

The monograph's originalcolor-painted beaux-arts wrappers are bound in at the front and back here, including the spine in front (rubbed and faded, hinting at original splendor). The title-page is printed in red and black. An extensive index appears at the end.

Binding: Three-quarter evergreen morocco bordered with gilt fillets over bubble gum and mint marbled paper boards; spine with raised bands, gilt-framed compartments containing author, title, date, and appropriate devices in gilt; endpapers matching marbled boards and top edge gilt.

•  For J. Jacquemart, see: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. IX, pp. 681–90.   Leather lightly scuffed at extremities and sunned to a woody green on spine and upper front cover; offsetting from turn-ins onto endpapers. Mild to (occasionally) moderate foxing throughout and old water damage on a few leaves only.  (30132)

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English Puritan vs. Italian Jesuit

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•  Collection of arguments against Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine (Bellarmino, 1542–1621) by the English theologian William Ames (Amesio, 1576–1633), by its title-page the second edition printed in England. However ESTC suggests this is a false imprint , printed in Amsterdam for the London firms.

A disciple of William Perkins (1558–1602), Ames ran into trouble preaching extreme Puritanism at Cambridge. When his nonconformity prevented his obtaining a preaching license in England, Ames moved to the Netherlands, where he was chaplain to the commander of English forces 1611–19 and wrote many treatises in support of strict Calvinism. Although he hoped to obtain a professorship at Leiden after the Synod of Dort, Ames was prevented by King James himself, who opposed the appointment to such a prestigious post. Ames moved again, to Franeker, where he had been invited by the curators to teach. It was there he composed the present text, a theological treatise against Bellarmine from the Calvinist point of view (first published at Amsterdam in 1625–26). Ames wasinvited to America by John Winthrop in 1628 but accepted a post at Rotterdam instead. His family traveled to New England in 1637, a few years after his death.

Four parts compose this single volume, which is paginated continuously in the third and fourth part; a separate title-page introduces each section, with the imprint date 1632 on parts II–IV. The text is printed in Latin — Bellarmine's points in italic and Ames's counter-points in roman, supported by citations in italic — with decorative ornaments on the section titles and at the end of the first part. ESTC notes the ornament on general title-page exists in two forms: a bunch of fruit, or the Jesuit mark of a burning heart with “IHS”; ours is the latter.

•  ESTC S116616; STC 551. On Ames, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Contemporary vellum with yapp edges, title and date inked early to spine; lightly soiled, ore to spine, dark top edge, . Library bookplate on front pastedown, pressure-stamp on title-page and last printed leaf, old inked control number. A few spots, a few small tears, one lower corner torn away without loss; the springy binding and good overall condition suggest this book was little-used, which is confirmed by a number of uncut pages.  (30206)

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An EarlyComplete Bible in GREEK — O.T. & N.T. / 1545

Bible.

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•  While Erasmus was creating quite a stir with the first, second, third, and fourth editions of his Greek New Testament, others were busy working at producing complete Bibles in Greek. The accepted sequence of complete Bibles in Greek is: First, the Aldine Bible of 1518, second, the Greek Bible contained in the Complutem polyglot — finished by 1517 but not published until 1520), and third, that printed in Strassburg in 1524–26. This, then, is but the fourth. As with all save the Strassburg Bible, it is folio in format.

Melanchthon (1497–1560), the great Humanist and Luther's friend and supporter, wrote the preface to this edition. The three leaves bearing that essay are missing from this copy and this may be due to a Catholic or Inquisitorial censor's removing them so that the text of the Bible proper could be used by Catholic readers. All of Melanchthon's writings, including introductions, were on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

The text of the Bible proper, here, is complete. The text of the O.T. “follows the Aldine Bible of 1518; with variant readings, and restoration of the usual order in Provers and Ecclesiasticus. The Apocrypha are grouped together as in No. 4602 [i.e., the Strassburg edition of 1524–26]. The N.T. text appears to agree with the quarto edition printed at Basel in 1545" (Darlow & Moule). The New Testament just referred to was the sole Greek-only Testament that Froben published and it follows the text of the fourth Greek N.T. of Erasmus, meaning that the N.T. here is also a close reprinting of the Erasmus fourth.

The typography is exquisite and Hervagius has enhanced the presentation on the page with attractive decorative headpieces, including one that spans the page and depicts a group of six peasants dancing to the tune of a man playing a flute or “pipe.”

Binding:  16th-century calf over wood boards, covers elaborately tooled to produce an interesting embossed binding of concentric panels: Used are a single fillet (repeatedly, usually in triplets) and a roll featuring urns, flowers, and putti.

Provenance:  Late-17th- / early-18th-century ownership signature of “Pet. Wedderburn; 18th-century bookplate of Lord Eliock; later pencilled signature of “[?].T. Coleridge” (not Samuel Taylor Coleridge; possibly, however, Justice John Coleridge). At back, “Ex dono D. Al: Brown, M.D.” and another ownership inscription entirely in Greek.

•  Darlow & Moule 4614; Dibdin (4th ed.), An Introduction to...Greek and Latin Classics, 86; Rumball-Petre, Rare Bibles, 224; VD16 B2576; Adams B978.   Bound as above; rebacked and edges and corners renewed, with remains of brass clasps. Endpaper reattached. Title-page cut down and mounted. There are a very few instances of old marginalia. A very clean, handsome copy.  (2416)

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The 1851 Streets of New York & Their Well-Regulated Cartmen

Taylor, Asher. 

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•  Two scarce official publications both in different ways relating to streets, common areas, and the use of them. The ordinance for cartmen and porters details registration requirements and fees, rules for operation, and approved prices for hauling all manner of goods from fish to rubbish to plaster, with the penalties for failure to comply. Taylor's 107-page “Hand Book,” following, locates streets (“Abingdon Place. From Hudson street, at 611, to Greenwich street”) and, where distances are necessary, gives them in hundredths of a mile; going northward, the city seems to end at about 24th Street, except for casual inclusion along Broadway of 33rd and 43rd [sic for 34th] Streets. (Taylor is described as “first marshal” and his book was “compiled for use in the mayor's office.”)

Searches of WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956 locateonly one copy of each item, those copies being at the New-York Historical Society; bound with the N-YHS's copy of Taylor is a separately paged, six-page publication with a caption title “Hackney coaches,” which gives rules and regulations concerning taxi fares. (The copy of Taylor reported at the New York Public Library is a photostat of the Society's copy.)

The survival of a bound-together duo particularly useful to cartmen and another to hacks, along with a separately bound copy of the text that would have been independently useful to both, raises tantalizing questions about how the pamphlets were sold and left Bowne's shop — i.e., as individual items, as mix-and-match two-fers, bound or only to-be-bound?? The questions may be unresolvable as the surviving exemplars constitute so small a sample!

•  Contemporary sheep with modest blind roll around the perimeter of the boards; plainly rebacked. Overall clean; stray staining in Ordinances, age-toning overall. Housed in a light brown cloth open-back case with dark brown leather spine label, and cloth chemise (by MacDonald of New York). An amazing survival of two interesting works relating to “New-York's” public spaces.  (29764)

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A Large-Format Almanac

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•  Title-page decorated with vignette consisting of an eagle clasping arrows and an olive branch in its talons and holding a banner with the national motto in its beak, while shooting stars form the background. Each month is accompanied by woodcuts showing scenes of farm life; an additional full-page woodcut shows a young boy feeding a dog. Last page includes the publisher’s advertisement.

This includes, among other interesting morsels historical, moral, and agricultural, a long essay onshooting stars.

•  Later sewing; spine reinforced with archival tissue. Title-page and last page with shallow tears in blank area of outer margin. Shallow dog-ears, occasional edge chips. Small hole on pp. 27/28, touching but not costing three letters. Light foxing.  (27818)

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Native Plant Lore — Indiana's First Medical Work

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•  First edition of the first medical work published in Indiana, a treatise on botanic medicine offering a vast array of natural remedies including such gems as “apply to the belly a poultice of wormwood and red roses, boiled in milk” (p. 20), as well as the more typical bloodletting and opium prescriptions. A number of children's and women's ailments are addressed, as well as a lengthy description of labor and what interventions should be avoided therein; also present among the diseases described here is “Negro Poison” (p. 45), a.k.a. tuberculosis.

The final portion of the volume is dedicated to American materia medica, an extensive listing of native plants and how to use them to cure various ailments that offers a good number of entries that may well have had legitimate medicinal value, e.g., bowman's root (“Indian physic”), plantain juice, mountain birch bark, Seneca snakeroot, etc.

Dr. Selman, who seems to have operated on the fringes of the Thomsonian movement, was the son-in-law of Kentucky physician Richard Carter (“commonly called the 'indian doctor,'” p. iv); his background and education are otherwise unclear. Here, he occasionally breaks into verse (!).

•  American Imprints 40126; Byrd & Peckham, Indiana Imprints, 658.   Contemporary treed sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; rebacked with compatible leather preserving original spine label, corners rubbed. Front pastedown and free endpaper with early pencilled inscriptions. Pages age-toned, with mild foxing and cockling. A nice copy of an uncommon item.  (30147)

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“Very Useful for Such as are Curious in Planting & Grafting”

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•  First edition of this first English translation of Robert Triquet's classic treatise on stone and pome fruits, including lists of varietals, their uses, and how best to grow them — including grafting and espaliering techniques. The author, a poet as well as an ardent outdoorsman and naturalist, may be best remembered for his friendship with Izaak Walton, to whose Compleat Angler he added a second part. Here, interestingly, he prefaces this translation from the French with a diatribe against the “effeminate manners, luxurious kickshaws, and fantastick fashions” (p. [5]) making their way into England from France.

The added engraved title-page is signed “F.H. Van Houe fecit,” marking this as the earlier state of the engraving.

•  ESTC R18563; Wing (rev. ed.) C6388.   Full period-style Cambridge mottled calf, covers framed and panelled in blind fillets and dotted rolls with blind-tooled corner fleurons, board edges with gilt roll, spine with gilt-stamped title, etc., and spine compartments gilt extra. All edges marbled. Pages mildly cockled and gently age-toned, otherwise clean. A very attractive copy, and a nice snapshot of period pomology.  (30099)

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America Reads aboutthe Irish Rebellion of 1798

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•  First U.S. edition of this collection of first-person accounts of the United Irishmen's 1798 uprising against British rule, originally published in Dublin in 1799.

The date of printing is based on the fact that the printing firm of Tennery & Stockwell was active at Cambridge, N.Y., in 1804 only.

Provenance:  Ownership signature dated 1806 of M.H. Smith and another undated (i.e., Manassah H. Smith, a lawyer in Warren and Portland, Maine); 20th-century bookplate of Francis Massey O'Brien (Portland, Maine), bibliophile and bookseller.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 6570.   Publisher's acid-stained sheep, abraded; black leather spine label; front joint (outside) starting. Early and late leaves with discoloration in outer margins from migration of leather oils, otherwise typical age-toning and the occasional stain or spot. Generally a very nice copy.  (29949)

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The First Book fromthe Strawberry Hill Press

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•  First edition and sole Strawberry Hill edition, with the points called for by Hazen; kirgate issued a close reprint of the work in the 1790s but corrected the points. As handsomely printed a work as one would expect of Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill press, this bears a title-page offering an engraved vignette of Strawberry Hill.

Gray (1716–71) and Walpole were best of friends at Eton (two of the “quadruple alliance” along with Thomas Ashton and Richard West), became estranged when they went off to university, and reconciled as adults with Walpole taking an active role in promoting Gray's career as a poet. The two “Pindaric” odes published here for the first time are “The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard.” “Progress” came from Gray's study of the history of poetry and was written over the span of 1751 to 1754: It “ traces the spirit of liberty and poetry from ancient Greece to medieval Italy to modern England” (DNB on-line). “The Bard” came from Gray's study of Welsh poetry and was written between 1755 and 1757: It concerns Edward's destruction of the Welsh bards and is appropriately Gothic to align nicely with Walpole's interests in that genre.

Horace Walpole (1717–97), the 4th earl of Orford, is best remembered as the author of the Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto. Among bibliophiles he is also remembered for his private press, variously known as the Officina Arbutana or the Strawberry Hill Press. Walpole's almost fantastic wealth allowed him the connoisseur's luxury of maintaining this noble enterprise, which he operated in the arena of the rebirth of fine printing in Great Britain that was being carried on by the Foulis brothers, Baskerville, and others.

•  Hazen (1973 ed.), Bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press, 1; ESTC T42023; Northrup 1; Hayward 174; Rothschild 1067.   Modern full speckled calf with modest blind tooling: binding unsigned but defintely by Bernard Middleton. All edges gilt. Without the half-title (as is often the case); title-page lightly dust-soiled and all leaves with indication of having once been folded vertically; held to the light, some leaves show old, excellent repairs along these folds and/or at edges. A lovely copy.  (29670)

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Albion Edition withFore-Edge City View

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•  Deluxe “Albion” edition of Longfellow, with notes, this copy graced with afore-edge painting. Rendered in muted colors, this is a universal (or at least, not specifically identifiable by us!) European cityscape, incorporating a hill, an obelisk, two cathedrals, and a number of other buildings; two spectators gaze at the view from a bridge to the far right. (One theory is that appropriately for this edition it's a view of London, the hill being Tower Hill and the obelisk being Cleopatra's needle, but, - ???)

Binding:  Carefully and beautifully treed calf, covers framed in gilt roll, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title-label, board edges with gilt roll, turn-ins with wide floral and narrow wave gilt rolls. All edges gilt; marbled paper endpapers.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of John Train; front fly-leaf with inked gift inscription to Dorothea Mary French from F.D., dated 1908.

•  Binding as above, lightly rubbed; joints tender with front one just starting at head. Occasional faint foxing; some lines of print offset. A lovely, quintessentially late-19th century production.  (30136)

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Lovely Production of a Timeless Story

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•  The beloved classic, here with an introduction by Edward Weeks and monochrome and wash drawings by Henry C. Pitz, hand-colored at Walter Fischer Studio. The volume was designed by Bert Clarke, set in monotype Walbaum, printed by Clarke and Way, and bound by Russell-Rutter in cream, gold, and green floral brocade with a gilt-stamped green leather title-label.

This is numbered copy 972 of 1500 printed, signed at the colophon by the illustrator; the appropriate LEC newsletter is laid in.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 396.   Binding as above, in original glassine dust wrapper and publisher's slipcase; volume clean and fresh, wrapper with small chips to spine extremities, slipcase gently sunned and with a little soiling, one corner bumped.  (30120)

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The City's Progress — With Fore-Edge Painting

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•  Deluxe production of one of Bunyan’s lesser-known but still much-acclaimed allegories, with the spelling modernized and very much a charmer having been given both a pretty binding and a fore-edge painting!

Fore-Edge: This displays a pretty rendition of what a hand on the fly-leaf has denominated “Bunyan's cottage, Elstow,” being of his birthplace, near Bedford; in its greens, red, blues, tans, and whites, it incorporates a couple seated on a bench in front and several other onlookers, including a mother holding a young child who points at the house.

Binding:  Contemporary black morocco, covers framed in gilt double fillets with gilt-tooled trefoil and fleuron corner decorations surrounding an elaborate arabesque medallion, spine compartments with gilt-stamped frames and decorations, board edges with gilt roll. All edges gilt.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of John Train.

•  Binding as above, minor wear to corners and extremities. Small spots of foxing to front free endpaper and fly-leaf, pages otherwise clean. A lovely volume.  (30140)

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“Thy Friendly Crook Shall Give Me Aid” — 15 Woodcut Vignettes

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•  Stereotyped by Lawrence Johnson, this miniature volume of Christian reading for children includes two poems and a short story, all three shepherd-related. Each page (except for the inside front wrapper) bears a small woodcut illustration, making a total of 15 vignettes — including, inexplicably, a menacing-lookingtiger on the back wrapper.

Provenance:  Inside front wrapper with inked inscription reading “Isaac Gara his Book Bought in Lancaster, August the 23rd, 1827 by his Mother” (the recipient likely being the Hon. Isaac B. Gara [1821–95], journalist, philanthropist, and postmaster of Erie, PA).

•  Shoemaker 30586.   Sewn in publisher's printed paper wrappers as issued; spine starting to split from head and foot, front wrapper with minor bleedthrough from inscription. Inscription as above. Foxed, one leaf with short edge tears from upper margin. In fact a pleasing example of such a thing as it is and with a charming inscription.  (30229)

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A Scandalous Life — An Elegant Book

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•  First edition of this biography constructed by Charles Langdale (1787–1868) from letters written by and concerning Maria Anne Fitzherbert, née Smythe (1756–1837), the morganatic wife of future King George IV, which Langdale received by confidential post after the death of his brother, one of her correspondents, Lord Stourton. Catholic, twice widowed, and a commoner to boot, Mrs. Fitzherbert was an easy target for scandalmongers; here, a contemporary endeavors to redeem her from the “reproach of a dishonest connection [with George IV] and abandoned principle” (p. 11), brought on by Lord Holland in his “Memoirs of the Whig Party” published the year prior in the Dublin Review.

The elegant frontispiece is a portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert by J. Broum after Richard Cosway, R.A. (1742–1821), the famous miniaturist who painted her on numerous occasions and whose portraits of her were so admired by her husband the King, that he took one to his grave.

Binding:  Full later brick red calf by Root & Son, double-ruled in gilt with leafy flowers in the board corners and in four of six spine compartments; gilt title, etc., on black morocco lettering pieces in the remaining spine compartments. Gilt-rolled board edges and turn-ins; mottled amethyst and emerald endpapers and a red silk marker.

•  On Mrs. Fitzherbert, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Bound as above, spine a little scratched. Small tear repaired in margin of frontispiece and a bit of paper supplied to repair one lower inner margin; insignificant little nicks to a very few sheets, and a crease in one lower outer corner. Clean, LOVELY.  (30075)

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From theEarliest Days of U.S. Nahuatl Studies

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•  The second publication in the U.S. of any Nahuatl poetry. Original edition, not a cheap reprint. Volume VIII in “Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature.” “Edited, with a paraphrase, notes and vocabulary by Daniel G. Brinton” and yes, with the original Nahuatl.

•  Palau 35894; H. de León-Portilla, Tepuztlahcuilolli, 475; Newberry Library, Ayer Indians, Nahuatl-39.   Publisher's brown cloth with gilt spine title. Private collector's bookplate. Uncut, unopened copy. VERY GOOD.  (23607)

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OXONIAN Musings Illustrated

Montgomery, Robert. 

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•  Second edition of this poetic look at Oxford University, by the author of the highly successful “Omnipresence of the Deity.” The poem is here illustrated with12 copper-engraved views in and around Oxford, drawn by A.G. Vickers and engraved by various hands including J.H. Kernot, J. Skelton, W.R. Smith, and J.W. Cooke; the title-page vignette depicts the “New Clarendon Printing Office.”

•  NSTC 2M34090.   Contemporary calf framed in blind triple fillets with blind-tooled corner fleurons and panelled within with gilt double fillets with gilt-tooled corner fleurons; spine gilt-extra with gilt now attractively faded and recent period-style gilt-stamped morocco label, all edges gilt. Plates including engraved title lightly to moderately foxed with offsetting to surrounding pages. A good solid copy with substantial presence.  (30110)

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Cookery by a FamousEpicure & Cuisinier

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•  Home cookery, written by the famed “Terrapin Tom,” a caterer and one-time manager of the restaurant that served the House of Representatives. Murrey here provides a comprehensive survey of good but not excessively fussy, classic 19th-century cuisine, as well as a few more unusual items such as hop sprout salad, canned quinces, chili sauce (mild American-style), and Reed-Birds a la Lindenthorpe (cooked inside large potatoes). He mentions in several places the utility of various “weeds” as good salad greens, and offers brief remarks on etiquette and dinner menus (including the ideal bill of fare to be wholly supplied by the state of Maryland, and the author's version of a Dickensian “Christmas Carol” meal). This is an early edition, following the first of 1880.

Binding:  Publisher's brown cloth, front cover with black-stamped title and gilt-stamped vignette of an 18th-century mob-capped lady tasting from a steaming cauldron.

•  Bitting 337 (for first ed.); Brown, Culinary Americana, 2452 (likewise). Not in Cagle & Stafford.   Binding as above, minimal rubbing to extremities. Back pastedown with 19th-century Brentano ticket. Pages faintly age-toned, otherwise clean. A very nice copy.  (30093)

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The LEC Goes toCamelot among Other Places

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•  Selected and introduced by John D. Rosenberg for the British Poets series, here illustrated with25 in-text, wood-engraved vignettes by Reynolds Stone. The volume was designed by John Dreyfus and printed at the Cambridge University Press in monotype Perpetua on English wove paper, and bound by Tapley-Rutter in quarter maroon goatskin with terra-cotta linen sides, the front cover bearinga black leather oval medallion embossed with a portrait of the author and the spine a gilt-stamped leather title-label.

This is numbered copy 972 of 1500 printed, signed at the colophon by the illustrator; the appropriate LEC newsletter, in its (unstamped) envelope, is laid in.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 483.   Binding as above, in original glassine dust wrapper and publisher's slipcase; wrapper with spine darkened and torn with loss, front panel crumpled; book clean and fresh, one leaf not with damage but a natural paper flaw at edge; slipcase showing only minimal shelfwear. A very nice copy.  (30124)

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First Impeachment Trial of a U.S. President

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•  The Congressional Globe's reporting of the impeachment trial of President Johnson. Dense reading, printed in triple-column format. Yes, Johnson was acquitted.

Provenance:  Library of the House of Representatives with spine label to that effect and one rubber-stamp.

•  Sabin 36179.   Publisher's full sheep, lightly rubbed; front joint (outside) just starting. Some browning of the edges of the early and late leaves by chemical transfer from the binding turn-ins.  (30018)

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Riviere Binding — Fore-EdgeFisherman Painting

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•  “Golden Treasury” series edition of this collection of Herrick's verse, arranged with notes by Francis Turner Palgrave. The volume is decorated with adelicately tinted fore-edge painting on the gilt edges depicting a red-jacketed fisher, up to his calves in the water and casting his line, in an otherwise deserted bucolic setting. (That the edges are gilt, and so highly reflective, makes getting a good photo difficult! — though it only enhances the effect of the fore-edge as viewed in hand.)

Provenance: Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of John Train.

Binding:  Signed binding by Riviere & Son of full brown morocco, spine with raised bands and gilt-stamped title, board edges with gilt double fillets, turn-ins with one wide and one narrow gilt roll. All edges gilt.

•  NSTC 0337624 (for 1877 Golden Treasury ed.).   Binding as above, joints and lower corners carefully repaired with toned long-fiber tissue. Offsetting to endpapers from turn-ins; unobtrusive repair to upper inner portion of front free endpaper; back free endpaper starting to separate. Pages clean and gently age-toned. A lovely portable edition of Herrick's lyrics, in a simple but elegant Riviere binding with attractive fore-edge painting.  (30083)

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An Attractive American Set in Seven Volumes

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•  “Complete in seven volumes.” Each volume has an added engraved title-page, with vignette, and the first one offersa frontispiece portrait from the painting by Opie.

A newspaper clipping of a portrait of Hannah More taken from an engraving after the painting by H. W. Pickersgill, lies loose inside first volume.

•  Contemporary half red sheep in imitation of morocco over marbled cloth-covered boards, spines with gilt-accented raised bands, gilt lettering on spines. All edges marbled. Leather rubbed and scraped with some chips on spine, joints, and edges; pp. 421–34 of vol. VI have some shallow tears and chips from being bumped, fore-edge of one leaf folded back, without affecting text. Front joint of vol. VII starting from top edge. Some foxing throughout. Clean and complete.  (21439)

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Money & Passion

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•  Biographies of famous female collectors from Catherine the Great to Peggy Guggenheim, richly illustrated with images of the women and their outstanding stuff.

•  Photographic dust jacket protected by mylar, not price clipped, over bright red boards; bottom edge bumped but no damage to jacket. Neat black “remainder” mark near spine on bottom edge; practically new!  (30106)

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Foreigners Aren't Wanted & Drunks Are Better Dead than Alive

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•  First edition: A Scottish-born author attacks two bills, one for naturalizing foreigners and one for suppressing liquor abuse; the pamphlet concludes with “Some Observations upon the many miserable Objects that frequent our Streets, And the many Whores that infest the Town all Hours of the Night: And a Remedy advanced, whereby to render all of them serviceable to the Publick, &c.” (from the title-page). One of Campbell's suggestions here is that distillers should be at full liberty to sell as much liquor in their shops as they like, so that “human Brutes” could conveniently drink themselves to death onsite without being forced to take their criminal mischiefs and evils throughout the city (pp. 20–21). Prostitutes, particularly wronged women unable to find work due to lack of good references, are to be dealt with by establishing a “British Nunnery,” in which they should be industriously employed.

Scarce: A search of WorldCat and ESTC locates only two U.S. institutional holdings, and only one U.K.

•  ESTC T206417.   Removed from a nonce volume; upper outer corners creased, some leaves with small edge chips and/or dust-soiling, half-title with spots of staining. A very uncommon example of a particular, enduring mindset.  (29928)

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Folk-Style German Painted Binding

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•  Later printing of the popular Altenburg hymnal, this copy brightly bound in peasant style, inscribed, and clearly cherished; with two related texts. The Gesangbuch (words only) was edited by theologian Demme, and is printed in double columns of small but legible Fraktur; this 1825 edition is relatively uncommon. The publication information of the two additional works was suggested by WorldCat.

Provenance:  Front cover gilt-stamped M.K./S.W.M./1828. Front fly-leaf with attractively inked presentation inscription in German, signed Sophie Wiedemann in Lobitz and dated 1828, above additional inscriptions dated 1879, 1886, and 1938, the latter in English; back fly-leaf with inked prayer in Wiedemann's hand, above a later inked prayer in English, dated 1984.

Binding:  Contemporary varnished red paper, covers framed in gilt roll, covers and spine with floral designs painted in shades of pink, green, and yellow., front cover with gilt-stamping as above. All edges gilt, and gauffered at corners and at the spine. Pastedowns of light blue and red paste-paper.

The binding is highly reminiscent of a “peasant” binding, but clearly is not one as these are generally understood: It is not vellum, not embossed; but yes, it is definitely handpainted and folk-art inspired. A variant.

•  Binding as above, edges and extremities rubbed, spine faded with paper chipped at joints, head, and foot, partially exposing binding structure, front joint cracked. Free endpapers lacking; fly-leaves with inscriptions as above. Sewing loosening, with some signatures slightly proud and others just starting to separate. A few instances of dried plant matter laid in, including three four-leaf clovers. Occasional spots of minor foxing; one small ink stain affecting two leaves but not obscuring text. Some corners bumped. A multi-generational heirloom devotional, still lovely, and a very appealing example of such.  (29894)

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First AMERICAN Hudibras —Troy, 1806

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•  First American edition of Butler's “pungent observations and jingling satirical rhymes [strung] into a long heroi-comic poem” (Dictionary of National Biography, VIII, 74–76). A brief biography of the author precedes the poem.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 1178. Contemporary speckled sheep, worn and rubbed; joints cracked, spine with cracking gilt-stamped leather label and chipped paper shelving label. Front pastedown with small institutional bookplate. One “somewhat immodest” proverb carefully excised from footnotes, with no other loss of text. (8298)

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A Famous Irish Work on Irish Speechways — Two Charming Engravings

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•  First edition of this collaboration between the “Irish Jane Austen” and her father: a quirkily wide-ranging exploration of Irish wit and imagination, and a vigorous defense of Irish expressiveness in speech. Two engraved vignettes open and close the work; the first is of a bull solo, prancing, and the other is of a naked man grasping a bull by the horns, his club discarded on the ground beside him — can this be a Hibernian Hercules??

•  NSTC E263.   20th-century plain green cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine sunned, binding otherwise unworn. Title-page with early pencilled ownership inscription, one other page inscribed “John Robinson”; one page with pencilled calculation. Title-page dust-soiled with margins slightly ragged; first two leaves each with a repaired tear from inner margin. One leaf with lower outer corner torn away, not touching text. Scattered light spots of foxing.  (30021)

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On Greek (in Latin) — The Standard Grammar for Hundreds of Years

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•  Later edition of an immensely popular textbook on the Greek language — its declensions, conjugations, and irregular verbs, etc., systematically and clearly explained, followed by literary examples in the Praxis (pp. 358–416 ) — with contributions from Pierre Antesignan, Friedrich Sylburg, and Henri Estienne, who taught the author at Paris. Clénard (Nicolaes Cleynaerts, or Clenardus, 1493–1542) published the first edition of this Greek grammar there in 1530.

The Latin and Greek are printed in roman and italic, with side- and shouldernotes; the Wechel printer's device appears on the title-page and f. Oo8v (before the final quire).

There areno copies of this edition in the U.S., according to WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956.

Evidence of readership: Sparse annotations and marks in early ink.

•  Index Aurel. 141.560; this edition not in VD16 online, and not in Adams, but see nos. C-2140–2157 for others.   Modern half vellum over brown marbled paper-covered boards, with ink title to spine and faded blue edges nearly flush with boards. Faintly to moderately waterstained across most leaves, with occasional other spots; one lower corner torn away, the upper corner of another folded down with a number of others lightly creased, one leaf with a short marginal tear, and just one wormhole, at the outer margin of the final nine leaves (pp. 583 to end). Two stubs visible at the gutter of pp. 578–9 and 590–[91], but nothing lacking.  (29944)

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MEXICAN COOKERYdedicado á las Señoritas

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•  Uncommon edition of a classic Mexican cookbook: “Compuesto de recetas de exquisitas viandas, al estilo del país y extranjero, escogidas y arregladas por personas de buen gusto é inteligencia” (per the title-page). The recipes are notably reflective of popular Mexican cuisine, including olla podrida, chiles rellenos, and assorted tamales, empanadas, and asados. This is the third edition, following previous printings in 1856 and 1890; WorldCat locatesonly one U.S. institutional holding.

•  Contemporary quarter pebbled oxblood cloth and marbled paper-covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; edges and sides scuffed. Front pastedown with pencilled gift inscription, dated 1914 in Mexico and name not quite legible; pages gently age-toned, otherwise clean.  (29930)

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Odes by a German Jesuit

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•  First edition of three books of odes and one book of epodes by a German Jesuit lauding a milieu of Jesuits, politicians, popes, biblical figures and religious icons, including the Virgin Mary, Thomas à Kempis, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, among others. Like fellow Neo-Latin lyricists, Adam Widl (1639–1710) was much influenced by the style of the classical lyric poets, and very much by Jesuit contemporaries who followed them, namely “the Polish Horace” Mathias Casimir Sarbiewski (1595–1640), and “the German Horace” Jacob Balde (1604–68), who published his own Lyricorum libri IV, epodon liber unus in 1643 and to whom our author acknowledges his indebtedness by way of odes in his praise.

The text is in Latin printed in roman and italic, decorated with a few woodcut ornaments and one initial at the beginning of the dedication. The engraved title shows Widl holding a lamp and an open a book with the words “Poesis sacra et profana” written across the opening, as he floats above our book's title which appears in an abstract cartouche flanked by four figures standing in an architectural frame supported by portraits of Pindar, Horace Flaccus, Sarbiewski, and Balde.

WorldCat locates only two copies in the U.S.

Provenance:  Albertus Henricus Krussi(?) (his ownership signature in ink, front flyleaf and engraved title).

Evidence of readership: Heavy underlining, occasional annotations, and scribbles on the rear flyleaf verso in early ink.

•  DeBacker-Sommervogel, VIII, 1107; W. Kühlmann, “Neo-Latin Literature in Early Modern Germany,” in Camden House History of German Literature, p. 297.   Period-style calf, boards with single-ruled border; round spine with gilt-stamped red morocco label and blind-stamped devices in “compartments” defined by a gilt roll of a chain pattern; red speckled edges. Trimmed close and bound tightly, often affecting but not taking a few letters at the gutter, with light water- or dampstaining in upper outer corner extending into the middle of many pages; intermittent inkstains from the annotator's pen; one corner tip torn away and other corners creased, visible from the edges. Miniscule wormholes barely visible in upper and outer margins extending from preliminaries to mid-text. A substantial little book in several senses.  (29853)

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LEC Edition: Rilke's Semi-Autobiographical Novel

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•  Rilke's only novel, translated by Stephen Mitchell. This edition was designed by Benjamin Shiff, printed on Cartiere Enrico Magnani paper, and bound by Recalcati in Milan; the present example is numbered copy 602 of 800 printed.

•  Publisher's white vellum, front cover with gilt-stamped title and spine with gilt-stamped author's name; white vellum only a touch short of pristine with interior perfectly fresh. In publisher's black cloth slipcase with lower edge very slightly rubbed, otherwise unworn. An attractive, in fact lovely copy.  (29939)

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Harper’sILLUMINATED

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•  When the Harper firm published The Illuminated Bible near the midpoint of the 19th century, the company produced one of the most elaborate and costly American Bibles to that time. O'Callaghan says, “This work was originally announced in 1843, and was issued in 54 numbers at 25 each. J.A. Adams, the engraver, is credited with having taken the first electrotype in America from a woodcut. Many in this Bible are so done. Artists were engaged for more than six years in the preparation of the designs and engravings . . . at a cost of over $20,000.”

The title's use of the word “illuminated” refers not (as usual) to decoration in gold, but both to the huge number of illustrations and to the fact that the half-titles, the title-leaves, and the presentation and birth, death, and marriage leaves are printed using colored inks. Concerning the illustrations, Frank Weitenkampf wrote in The Boston Public Library Quarterly (July, 1958, pp. 154–57): “The engravings after Chapman carefully reproduced the prim line-work method of the Englishman Bewick, introduced here by Alexander Anderson. . . . [T]his Harper publication was a remarkable production for its time and place, and retains its importance in the annals of American book-making. W.J. Linton, noted wood-engraver and author, knew ‘no other book like this, so good, so perfect in all it undertakes.'”

Binding, signed: Contemporary red morocco, cover panels deeply beveled, inside bevel framed in wide gilt roll with gilt-stamped corner decorations, spine gilt extra, turn-ins w ith beautiful, bright gilt rolls. Signed by Cook & Somerville of New York.

Provenance: Front cover gilt-stamped “Mary Van Horne Clarkson”; inscriptions of several members of the Van Horne Clarkson family, mostly in New York.

•  O'Callaghan 288–89; Hills 1161.   Binding as above, joints and extremities rubbed, covers with scrapes and discolorations but gilt still bright; repair to foot of front cover joint (hinged in place with appropriate papers; exterior secured with toned tissue), abraded leather consolidated. As might well be expected of such a massive volume, hinges and joints are tender. Occasional very faint spotting, pages generally clean, with family register leaves unused. Last (index) leaf with tear from inner margin extending into text, repaired with long-fiber tissue and wheat starch paste. In its signed binding, this is an interesting example of a very impressive production.  (28808)

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“Food Facts, Instead of Food Fads”

•  “A simple statement of the fundamental principles of diet for the mutual use of physicians and patients,” here in its second, revised edition. Dr. Sansum's principles might well meet with general approval today, as he argues that most modern people do not consume enough vegetables and fruit to keep their systems in a healthy state; he offers chemical analysis, dietary guidelines, and a series of menus, designed to balance the body's acidity level or to promote weight loss. Each chapter closes with a brief list of scientific references; one chapter is illustrated with a diagram of the alimentary tract. Sansum was the director of the Potter Metabolic Clinic in Santa Barbara, CA, and a leadingdiabetes specialist.

•  Brown, Culinary Americana, 1955 (for 1927 ed.).   Publisher's orange buckram-covered boards inoriginal pictorial dust jacket showing a clearly very fortunate family at table; spine very slightly sunned, front upper edge faintly dust-soiled, jacket with spine sunned and back panel moderately soiled, tear (with some resulting creasing) to upper portion of front panel and small nicks to spine extremities. Pages gently age-toned, otherwise clean.  (30179)

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Slightly Random Reading . . . A Striking, Unusual Cover Treatment

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•  Two volumes from a popular and oft-reprinted survey of history originally published in 1883. The present books cover "The Old Pagan Civilizations," "Jewish Heroes and Prophets," "Great Women," and "Great Rulers."

Bindings: Publisher's textured dark brown cloth, covers with globe and torch design stamped in rich shades yellow, red, green, and black; spines embossed with modest "ruling" and author, title, publisher, volume numbers.

•  Vols. I and IV only. Bindings as above, slightly shaken, extremities rubbed. Pages clean.  (29812)

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Not Just YourBasic Cold-Water Cure

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Kellogg's hefty treatise on the curative properties of hot, cold, and neutral baths and other hydrotherapeutic applications, extensively illustrated. Famed for co-creating corn flakes breakfast cereal and for promoting vegetarianism, sexual abstinence, and the liberal use of enemas, the chief medical officer of the Battle Creek Sanitarium here provides a massive amount of detail on assorted uses of water as the cure for “almost every imaginable pathological condition” (p. 21) — althoughelectric-light baths are also described and recommended.

This is an early issue of the second edition, following the original publication in 1900. The106 plates (many featuring double images, and 18 being color-printed) depict a jaw-dropping variety of different types of bath, shower, plunge, wet sheet pack, affusion, lavage, irrigation, and massage - including the "percussion douche," demonstrated here bya striped-bathing-suit-clad attendant applying a hose to a young man wearing a towel.

Contemporary half roan over beautifully rich marbled paper, this also used for endpapers; spine with gilt-stamped author and title and top edge gilt; corners and joints rubbed, spine head with small paper shelving label. Front pastedown with extremely attractive old institutional bookplate, dedication page with inked numeral in lower margin, back free endpaper with pocket and slip, no other markings. Pages and plates clean and crisp. (29651)

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ODE for the End of aTwelve-Day Celebration

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•  A poem entitled “Odita” and beginning “Salve cándido Lirio, Purisima Azucena, Fragrantisima Rosa, Cipres y Palma bella.” The poem is in twelve 4-line stanzas, printed within a double frame of printer's ornaments in double columns separated by a column composed of a third ornament. Signed at the end “L.A.”

We locate only the copy at Brown University.

•  As issued. Two circular wormholes, one at the left edge of the sheet and one just touching print within the outer border; pleasantly if not quite perfectly clean, and very handsome.  (30389)

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Japanese-AMERICAN! Cook Book

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•  First edition: Bilingual instructions on how to cook wholly American meals in the traditional Japanese charcoal stoves known as hibachis or more properly shichirin — although non-hibachi items such as salads and canapés are also covered. Note that although there are three “Chinese-style” recipes included, there are absolutely no Japanese dishes present here; however, in case you ever need Japanese-language recipes for cream of tomato soup, cheese omelets, Yankee pot roast, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, etc., this is the perfect cookbook for you.

The title-page verso has an affixed paper label reading “Manufactured in Japan by the Dai Nippon Printing Co.”

•  Publisher's color-printed paper wrappers, joints and extremities lightly rubbed. Pages clean. A very nice copy.  (30351)

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Establishing a Mining Company

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•  Acontemporary manuscript copy of the rare published work of the same title (Mexico: en la Imprenta del Nuevo Rezado, de Doña Maria de Ribera, 1749), being a plan and prospectus for a new silver mining company to be established during the 18th-century rebirth of the industry that had been brought about by new technologies.

The original publication was so rare that Medina never knew of it.

•  Sewn in contemporary plain wrappers; one marginal pin-type wormhole touching (but not compromising) three notes only. Written in a very clear hand.  (30378)

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The American Revolutionary War — Firsthand Account of an Elite Fighting Force

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•  First U.S. edition, following the English first of 1787: The exploits of one of the most famous Loyalist regiments, led by Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe, the man who later became the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. The volume featuresten oversized, folding maps lithographed by Endicott (several after Simcoe's own drawings, others from Lt. Spencer and other officers of the troop), depicting the topography and troop deployments at various battle sites in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, and Virginia.

•  Sabin 81135; Howes S461; American Imprints 44-5635.   Publisher's plain paper–covered boards, recently rebacked with olive green cloth, spine with new antiqued printed paper label; paper rubbed and stained. Hinges (inside) reinforced. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page and sectional title, no other markings. All leaves affected by an unusual sort of very light and remarkably even waterstaining that left the upper outer corners (only) untouched and even bright, with a variously wavy line of light to moderate brown marking the “border”; otherwise a few other pages with other soiling or staining; one page with smudge of green ink, touching but not obscuring text; one leaf with short tear from upper margin, not extending into text; and a bit of cockling. An excellent example of a good book that has suffered accidents but also is “better than it sounds.”  (29420)

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ToAmputate or Not?

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•  First American edition of a work not to be confused with the same author's Physician’s Vade-Mecum of which the first American edition also appeared in Albany (1809). From amputation to syphilis, to piles, exostosis, abscesses, tumors, deafness, gunshot wounds, burns, and so many other topics, Hooper (1773–1835) crammed a great deal into his handy go-with pocket volume. He was successful both as a physician and as a medical writer, and although the Royal College of Physicians prevented his obtaining a D.M. at Oxford, he was successful in obtaining an M.D. from St. Andrews. The DNB says of him that as a writer he was “most industrious,” noting that “his books had a large sale.”

At rear are “Select Formulae of Prescriptions, Latin & English, and a Glossary of Terms.”

Provenance:  Early 19th-century signature on title-page of “John Stevens, No. 6" at top of title-page.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 28770. On Hooper, see the DNB, XXVII, 306–307.   Publisher's acid-stained sheep with red leather spine label, modest gilt ruling on spine; leather joints and worn corners repaired with toned tissue. Occasional foxing only. In all, a nice copy of a volume that was a must for American doctors at the beginning of the 19th century.  (29572)

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“Nothing ButINDEPENDENCE . . . Can Keep the Peace of the Continent”