The volume opens with an oversized, folding map of the city, with a note that the map is a specimen of a new type of plate printing. An advertisement on the back free endpaper mentions that Dickinson has “sold out his extensive Printing Office . . . [and] will now apply his whole attention to his favorite business, the manufacture of Printing Type,” providing stereotyping and music printing as well as “more than 120 different kinds of Job Type.”

Binding: Signed by Damrell & Moore of Boston, with their blind-stamp on the back cover: Brown cloth embossed with foliate designs, front cover with gilt-stamped decorative title.

•  Binding as above, covers with small, fairly unobtrusive spots of discoloration, cloth a bit rubbed over corners and edges and chipping over spine extremities. Map with small holes to two corners; pages clean, with memoranda leaves unused.

The last leaf, filled on both sides, lists a “Grand Assortment” of books available from “J O H N M E I N”;  these are of a variety of sorts, but the one that gets an all-caps headline is a new edition of Fordyce's Sermons for Young Women!

•  Evans 10687; Drake 3164; ESTC w22665.   Sewn in original marbled wrappers. Usual foxing and light age-toning of almanacs of this era and region. Some dog-earing and “thumbing”; small piece of wrapper missing from lower spine. Else very good.  (18214)

•  Original front wrapper present, but not rear one. Some chipping and definite wear, especially along spine. Old ink notations. A good copy. (9383)

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)

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

•  ESTC T105844. Period-style quarter calf with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled raised bands. Title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution. Some offsetting to margins of first and final leaves, pages otherwise clean. A nice little Anglo-Americanum, very evocative of its era.