Provenance: Front free endpaper with inked inscription reading “Henry Pratt’s Book, Bought in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eleven, third month twelfth day”; front pastedown with inked inscription reading “Matilda Miller’s Book 1898.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 14380; Sabin 2180; Howes A352. Contemporary sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; leather much worn and abraded, spine with inked call number. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate (affixed above and not obscuring inscription), front free endpaper and fly-leaf with inscriptions as above, title-page unobtrusively pressure-stamped, first text page with inked annotation in inner margin and stamped numeral in lower margin. Pages age-toned and spotted. Upper outer corner of one leaf torn away, with loss of a few words; four leaves torn, touching a number of lines of text but not generally affecting sense. Occasional small pencilled check marks.

•  Not in Banks. Not in Evans. Stapled into original stiff printed wrappers, very good condition. Inner hinges of cloth tape.

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The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg travelled throughout Mexico and Central America as part of his ecclesiastical duties, and channeled his interest in archeology and antiquities into a number of publications on the original Mesoamerican sources he collected or copied. The present work includes commentary by him on the Chichicastenango manuscript, and much speculation regarding the prehistoric connections between the Old World and the New.

•  Leclerc, Bibliotheca Americana, 1082; Sabin 7437.   Contemporary half morocco and paper-covered sides, spine gilt extra; edges/corners rubbed, small repairs to spine and joints. Front free endpaper with institutional rubber-stamp; back pastedown with rubber-stamp partially touching the small affixed ticket of a New York bookseller. Outer margin of half-title and one other leaf chipped. A few leaves towards back of volume unopened. (20651)

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Brown was an author and publisher from upstate New York who volunteered in the War of 1812. Thurlow Weed, one of his employees, described Brown in his autobiography as “an eventempered, easy-going, good natured man, who took no thought of what he should eat or what he should drink or where wither he should be clothed. He wrote his editorials and his ‘History of the War’ upon his knee, with two or three children about him, playing or crying as the humor took them.”

•  Sabin 8557; Shaw & Shoemaker 31013; Howes, U.S.iana, B-866. Original quarter tan paper over light blue paper-covered sides, recently neatly rebacked with tan cloth, with a printed paper label on the spine. Original sewing going, with a number of leaves separated. Pages untrimmed, with some edges ragged, and with varying degrees of offsetting.