•  NSTC C26475; Shaw & Shoemaker 4218; Gaines, Cobbett, 62c. On Forsyth, see: Dictionary of National Biography, XX, 35. On Cobbett, see: Dictionary of National Biography, XI, 142–45; Appleton, I, 669. Recent quarter walnut brown calf over marbled paper; spine with two red leather labels, gilt-lettered with a single fillet above and below; remainder of spine divided into compartments by blind rules, with gilt-stamped date at base. Pages and plates lightly age-toned, a little cockled, and lightly soiled throughout with some shallow chipping, light foxing, and waterstaining. Rubber-stamps from a now-defunct library, including one on title-page. Pencilled ownership inscription on title-page. A nicer book than the faults-list makes it sound like, to read or work with.

Provenance: Riggs family: Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of philanthropist Elisha Francis Riggs, who funded the Riggs Library at Georgetown University; volume inherited by T. Lawrason Riggs, founding chaplain of St. Thomas More Chapel, Yale University; donated to St. Thomas More Chapel Library; deaccessioned 2008.

•  ESTC S106924; STC (2nd ed.), 1169; Gibson, Bacon, 171. On Bacon, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   18th-century calf framed in gilt single fillet, spine with recent gilt-stamped leather title and author labels, board edges with gilt roll; a little rubbed and covers with portions darkened. All edges stained yellow. Front pastedown with bookplate as above. Some pages gently age-toned, with occasional minor spotting. Small hole to added engraved title-page just beneath publication information, not affecting text. Final blank leaf (only) lacking.  (24666)

•  BAL 2485 (state 2, with contents page corrected). Publisher's brown cloth, front cover stamped in black and gilt with central gilt-stamped vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title; board edges and spine extremities showing minor rubbing, with spine gilt slightly dimmed. Front fly-leaf with inked gift inscription "to My Wife," dated 1890; newspaper clippings about Carleton and poems by him affixed to front pastedown, front and back fly-leaves, half-title, end of illustrations list ("The Old-Fashioned Christmas Dinner"), and reverse of one plate. Some instances of offsetting from clippings. A pleasing, interesting example. (14366)

•  BAL 2482 (second printing state, with plates included in pagination). Publisher's brown cloth, front cover stamped in gilt and green, spine with gilt-stamped title; front cover lightly scuffed, with corners rubbed. Front fly-leaf with inked gift inscription "to My Daughter," dated 1890; newspaper clipping about Carleton affixed to front fly-leaf, poem affixed to back fly-leaf as described above. Several insurance advertisements, religious leaflets, and other ephemera laid in. (14367)

Provenance: Armorial bookplate of the Sherwin family.

•  ESTC T50471; Bitting 94–95; Cagle 625.   Contemporary sheep, rebacked; spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels and gilt-ruled compartments, board edges with gilt roll; corners and edges rubbed. Front pastedown with bookplate. Frontispiece lightly foxed; light spotting scattered throughout. A sound, clean, pleasant copy.  (24532)

Rare. Searches via OCLC, RLIN, and NUC locate only five copies worldwide: Two in the U.S. (both at same university!) and three in France.

•  Duveen D494. Recent calf with covers framed in single gilt fillets, spine with gilt-stamped title label and gilt-ruled raised bands. Leaves with some dustsoiling and dampstaining; now heavily sized, many with margins repaired and a few with stray pencil marks. Lacks final blank leaf (only). In fact, a rather nice copy of a very uncommon item.

•  Publisher's embossed cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; corners and spine extremities showing minor wear, with gilt oxidized. Front free endpaper with pencilled inscription; some page edges with small blotches. Binding very handsome in its subtle way. Impossible! to get a good image of! (12986)

Gerard's observations cover botany, linguistics, culture, and commerce, as well as geography. The area of his travels is depicted by an oversized, folding map of his own design.

•  NSTC 2G5453; Howgego, II, G7.   Contemporary brown cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; rebacked and 95% of original spine reapplied, with the publisher's name at the foot of the spine chipped. Front pastedown and back of map each with institutional rubber-stamp (no other markings), front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription dated [18]49. Hinges (inside) reinforced. Last preface page with small inked annotation. Pages slightly age-toned; map with light offsetting and one short tear starting along fold, not touching image.  (24291)

•  Goldsmiths'-Kress 34583; NSTC 2H1685. Recent marbled paper wrappers. Title-page with small inked numeral in upper corner, small stain to inner margin of last page; pages otherwise clean.

Often, the PRB&M catalogue "ENGLISH POLITICS" offers pamphlets or other works relating to LAND INTERESTS — If this is part of your collecting vision, please  click here.

Provenance: Ownership stamp of “C. Witter . . . St. Louis, Mo.”

•  Amerine & Borg, Bibliography on Grapes, Wines, Other Alcoholic Beverages, & Temperance, 1851.   Publisher's dark green cloth, covers with blind-stamped grapevine borders, spine with gilt-stamped decorative title; spine extremities slightly rubbed, front cover with a few tiny spots of faint discoloration, otherwise a clean, fresh copy. Title-page with private owner's rubber-stamp in lower margin. Pages clean. A nice book. (20691)

Binding:  Publisher's black-stamped tan cloth, front cover with a full-color half-tone picture on-lay of two Chinese men painting vases in a porcelain workshop.

Provenance:  Gift inscription from Betty Rudolf to Betty Westcott, dated 1924, on the front free endpaper.

•  Binding with light scratches on front cover picture, traces of old pencil marks on front, and spots of soiling on back. Light soiling on endpapers; else, clean. Very good.  (22194)

Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

Such statistical publications as this were essential for the government of the newly independent nation, especially for planning purposes and for use when negotiating with bankers for the loans so essential to the nascent nation.

Interestingly, the population statistics ignore distinctions such as “indio,” “mestizo,” etc. The brief paragraphs about the towns and hamlets are filled with facts such as that the nuns of one particular town still wear hats of the Quiroga style.

An observation having nothing to do with the text: The paper on which this work is printed is very thin laid paper with no apparent watermark. The quality is not “European” and this cataloguer (DMS), with nearly 40 years experience with Mexican books, wonders if the paper is from one of Mexico's first paper mills?

•  Palau 155712; not in Sutro. Later 19th-century quarter sheep with stone pattern marbled paper sides. Binding worn, text skewed in binding. Private ownership pressure stamp on title-page.

The present copy lacks, at the end, five leaves: Aldus Manutius's "farmer's calendar," which was intended as a commentary on Palladius, and a blank; other commentaries quite complete.

•  Renouard (2nd ed.), Annales de l'imprimerie des Estienne, 55.2; Adams M1358; Schreiber 70e. 18th-century mottled calf with round gilt spine, raised bands, plain covers, gilt ruling on board-edges, French swirl endpapers, nicely mottled edges. Clean and crisp. Lacks the final five leaves: a blank and the separate calendar.

For more Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.

•  Goldsmith’s Kress 8390. On Muratori, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, X, 81. Contemporary vellum over paste boards with remnants of gilt label on spine; soiled, stained, and chipped with loss of top layer of vellum on rear cover and part of spine. Interior with light foxing, water- and other staining. Far from splendid, far from dead.

Virtually every display and every event associated with the Exposition is described here, and most are captured in truly extraordinary steel-engraved illustrations — page after page of scenes, portraits, diagrams, reproductions of works of art, and architectural views, all vividly rendered with much attention to the human element; a nearly full-page depiction of “The statue of 'The Freed Slave' in Memorial Hall” focuses on the solemn reactions of the surrounding crowd of well-dressed African-Americans. Scullers on the Schuylkill, wine tasters, Chinese merchants, the Emperor and Empress of Brazil, viewers amazed by the cataract in Machinery Hall, assorted advertisers and their wares (birdcages, corsets, firearms, “Centennial Pop-corn”), arrivals at the Pennsylvania Railroad Centennial Depot, the “Grand Commandery of the United States Knights Templars . . . passing the Masonic Temple in Broad Street, Philadelphia,” and a remarkable range of livestock are all present. A meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati took place during the Centennial, prompting a brief history of that organization here, alongside articles on the early manufacture of earthenware, customs regulations, the Liberty Bell, the operations of the United States Life-saving Service, etc.

A double-page facsimile of the Declaration of Independence is included; the color-printed frontispiece and one other color plate show “Flags of All Nations.”

•  Publisher's pebbled brown cloth, front cover and spine decoratively gilt-stamped, back cover blind-stamped; spine gilt faded, corners and spine extremities slightly rubbed. Pages clean and fresh. A gorgeous volume!  (24674)

•  Shoemaker 30185; on Powel, see: Dictionary of American Biography, XV, 143–44. Contemporary paper wrappers, front with printed paper label and separated from spine but present; chipping, soiling, and pencilling, with staining especially to lower edge of front wrapper. Pages untrimmed; varying degrees of foxing and staining; lacking frontispiece and one plate — a still-interesting volume priced according to its faults.

In the period 1750 through 1820 there was considerable interest in the development of this potentially lucrative enterprise. The work in hand is divided into four parts: "I. On the raising and planting of mulberry trees. II. On hatching and rearing the silkworms. III. On obtaining their silk, and breed. IV. On reeling their silk-pods."

The two plates (one being the frontispiece) show various machinery and tools for, and stages of, the production of silk. The author, a "reverend," flourished 1734–60.

•  Sabin 66625. Recent quarter calf, antique style. Round spine with raised bands accented with gilt ruling. Gilt center devices in spine compartments. Green morocco title-label. Marbled paper sides. Light foxing. A very good copy.

Click the images for enlargements.

The series started in 1656, “compiled for his country's benefit” by Cardanus Rider, pseudonym of doctor and astrologer Richard Saunders; an issue of the British Merlin was found in Isaac Newton's library at the time of his death. In addition to calendrical information, each month gives gardening advice and preventative measures for good health — in March one should “Purge and let Blood: Eat no gross Meats” (p. 7), after finishing pruning fruit trees and sowing peas, oats, and barley.

Binding:  The present copy is notable for having been inserted in an older “cottage roof”-style black morocco binding, covers and spine gilt extra with foliate and arabesque designs. This binding originated in the 17th or early 18th century, most likely the former; with the old text block gone, the almanac (interleaved with blank pages as issued, with additional blank leaves supplied at the back) was added in its place in the 19th century — so too the silver furniture now here: silver button-style bosses etched with a floral design, concealing clasps which hold the volume closed with a silver stylus clasp-pin.

•  NSTC EPH132.   17th-/early-18th-century morocco as above; edges and extremities rubbed, spine leather with minor cracks, clasps and pin slightly tarnished. Front fly-leaf with early inked annotation (“For to keep steel from ruse,” use “Tripoli” and sulphur), back fly-leaf with offsetting from a now-absent leaf also with inked annotation. Pages clean.  (23933)

•  Pebbled cloth, lightly worn. Leaves with minor cockling, some staining and offsetting. Some pages with portions excised; one leaf excised entirely.

•  Drake 3819; Shaw & Shoemaker 43108.   Uncut copy; old stitching. A very good copy.  (9622)

•  Goldsmiths’-Kress 7065; ESTC T81915 and N24607. Contemporary calf with remnants of gilt; dry, flaking, and partially gone to red, with some chips to edges, corners, and spine tips; old repairs to joints. Remnants of bookplate on front pastedown. Old water/mildew damage to lower margins, occasionally making its way a bit into text; several leaves repaired, long since. Plates generally quite clean and always pleasing, with faintest waterstaining to lower portion of plate 6 (only). All edges speckled red.

Published at the beginning of renewed interest in the U.S. and England in “scientific agriculture.”

•  Goldsmiths'-Kress 25812.   Publisher's blind-embossed green cloth, rebacked with much of old spine unobtrusively reapplied. Binding a little soiled and spine darkened with gilt of title dimmed; tips of corners chipped. Instances of dust-soiling at some top margins; one leaf with loss and soiling along outer edge without affecting text. Ex-library with old rubber-stamp on the title-page and several other pages.  (24439)

•  Goldsmiths’-Kress 7892.2; DeBacker-Sommervogel, VIII, 444. Contemporary speckled calf, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title-label; binding scuffed and rubbed, with leather cracking over joints and spine extremities chipped. All edges speckled red. Front free endpaper and fly-leaf partially affixed to front pastedown; front pastedown with inked initials. Pages beautifully clean.

Though an "odd vol," this is a pleasing book, done up in a typical German style of the era. Paper marbled in browns, black, and greens is used over boards, with slivers of leather at corners; a round spine bears gilt ruling and a cream-colored label with author, title, translator, and volume number. All edges are green and the whole is exceptionally well preserved.

•  Schweiger, Handbuch der classischen Bibliographie, II: 1206. Bound as above. Vol. 3 of 4. Some little foxing but almost no scuffing.

The Castildelgado document is the settling of a dispute with the town of Ybrillos over pasturing rights.

•  Bound in limp vellum with remnants of ties. Written in clear notarial hands. A very little tattering; in very good condition.