AMERICANA AFTER 1820

Darwin's Correspondence

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•  First U.S. edition of the first published life of Darwin, with most of the work dedicated to the naturalist's letters. The two volumes are illustrated with five plates and one facsimile of a page from Darwin's notebook.

•  Publisher's terra cotta cloth, covers black-stamped, spines with gilt-stamped title; light shelf wear to bindings, spines each with horizontal area of discoloration. Ex–social club library: call number on endpapers, rubber-stamp on title-pages, no other markings. Pages clean.  (27117)

An 1892 YALE Dissertation Davidson, Charles. Studies in the English mystery plays. A thesis presented to the Philosophical Faculty of Yale University. New Haven: Yale University, 1892. 8vo. 174 pp.
$30.00

•  Doctoral thesis analyzing religious drama.

•  Fair in printed paper wrappers, front cover torn nearly in half.   (438)

Davis Himself on the Civil War — Many Plates & Maps

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•  First edition of Davis's arguments, constitutional and otherwise, in favor of secession, states' rights, and slavery; and his defense of his conduct and that of the Confederacy. The two volumes are illustrated with a total of 19 steel-engraved plates, including numerous portraits, and 14 maps, 13 of which are oversized and folding.

•  Howes D120.   Publisher's pebbled brown cloth, covers framed in blind with central gilt-stamped horse and rider medallion on front, spines with gilt-stamped title; edges/extremities lightly rubbed and spines each with a patch lightened (moreso to vol. I). Ex–social club library: call number on endpapers, title-pages rubber-stamped. Minor offsetting from some plates, pages otherwise clean.  (26900)

“I Saw Five Canoes of the Savages on Shore”

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•  An abridgment forAmerican children beginning with four leaves bearingeight captioned woodcuts, these appearing two on each leaf's recto page. The frontispiece — Crusoe with a dog on the island in an oval frame, labelled “Robinson Crusoe on a Desolate Island” — is glued to the inside of the front wrapper.

Page [48] bears an advertisement reading: “Book-store. Printing-office. Library. W. & J. Gilman, printers, booksellers, and librarians . . . publish and sell a variety of useful and entertaining books for children and youth.”

WorldCat and Shoemaker combine to locate eight copies.

•  Shoemaker 12353; Brigham, Robinson Crusoe, 103.   Publisher's wrappers; front one dust-soiled, with old writing, detached and reattached using cello-tape; rear wrapper lacking. Staining, generally light, and dog-earing; faded and watery old blue inkstain in upper margins of pp. 23 to end. A well-used but still interesting copy of a Crusoe for children!  (28123)

Crusoe, in Victorian Depiction

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•  Illustrated edition of the beloved classic, featuring eight wood-engraved plates.

•  Publisher's red cloth, covers blind-stamped, spine with gilt-stamped decorative title; cloth gently faded, extremities and spine gilt slightly rubbed. Eight plates lacking (of 16). Frontispiece recto with private collector's rubber-stamp, back free endpaper with same owner's small bookplate pasted in upside-down. Pages lightly age-toned with light offsetting opposite some plates, first few leaves with faint waterstaining in upper portions. A few corners dog-eared. Although not all called-for plates are present, there are no obvious excisions or absences.  (30003)

Brave Enough to Tell?

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•  First book-form edition: A budding romance is threatened by the young man's possibly tainted heredity, and whether or not the secret will be kept. A contemporary critic called this “a volume small in size but large in thought-provoking qualities” (Boston Transcript). Originally serialized in Woman's Home Companion, the work is here illustrated with two black-and-white plates featuring the very modish heroine, by an unknown hand.

Binding:  Publisher's green cloth, front cover pictorially stamped in white, red, and gilt; spine with gilt-stamped title.

•  Binding as above; dust jacket lacking, minor rubbing to extremities, back cover with crease in cloth (not board). Front pastedown with private collector's bookplate dated [19]15. A nice copy!  (28612)

“Apology”NOT Accepted!

•  Given the hotbed of abolitionism that Boston was, during the three decades leading up to the Civil War, one must wonder what Eliot was thinking when he voted in favor of the Fugitive Slave Act! Well, not wanting to leave his constituency in the dark, he wrote a defense of his action and published it in a letter to the Advertiser on 29 October 1850. His apology did not sit well with Dexter (here signing himself "Hancock"), who wrote this scathing rebuttal.

First edition.

•  Sabin 19890; Dumond 63. Sewn, in original printed wrappers, slightly chipped. Five-digit number stamped on front wrapper, and a neat paper label at upper left corner. A very nice copy.

So, Will You Hear “Polly's Lecture to Dolly” or
“Dot Lambs Wot Mary Haf Got”?

•  Insufferably cute children surely learned whole portions of this volume by heart, and entertained adults with their skill upon parental demand.

•  Plain robin's-egg blue wrappers printed in black, a little darkened. Excellent condition. (28507)

Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?

•  First edition. An exposé related to the Rev. Solomon Spaulding, whose “The Manuscript Found” is claimed by some to be the source of the Book of Mormon. With an introduction by Thurlow Reed. Publisher's catalogue in the back.

Beyond matters of authorship, there is quite a lot of general Mormon history here, including a good deal on polygamy; the perspective is not friendly.

Provenance:  From the libraries of the Rev. C. C. Bitting and Crozer Theological Seminary.

•  Flake & Draper 2832.   Publisher's green cloth, spine chipped at head and foot. Title-page separated from binding, but present; shallow chipping along edges. Short closed tears to top edge of pp. 29–32 and 103–106 and outer edge of one page chipped; several page corners chipped/creased. Ex-library with bookplate, card and pocket, pressure-stamp on title-page, inked numeral, penciled notation, two rubber-stamps. A few penciled check-marks.  (24434)

Pleasingly Bound & Illustrated

•  Second edition, third printing: edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, this is illustrated with photographs of persons mentioned and specimens of Emily Dickinson’s autograph.

•  BAL 4685. Handsome green publisher’s cloth; front cover gilt-stamped with title at top and Indian Pipes in lower right corner: corners rubbed with a little loss of cloth. Some very shallow chipping on corners, and traces of soiling on edges and endpapers. An attractive book.

If It Bleeds, It Leads!

•  1848 edition of Dickinson’s almanac series. Although a few public occasions of genuine merit are noted in the calendar of “general events in 1847,” most of the listings run towards the shocking and scandalous, especially involving death by shooting or other catastrophe (“A little girl in Philadelphia died in consequence of over-exertion, by jumping a rope” for May 24); also listed for the reader’s edification are all the fires that took place in Boston in 1847.

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.

Recipes of Old Russia forAMERICAN KITCHENS

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•  First edition thus: “Popular and famous Russian dishes” as prepared by a native Moscovite (known as Betty F. Grant after her escape to China and subsequent marriage to Percy Grant) armed with her mother's and grandmother's recipes. A similar work was previously issued in 1941 as Betty Grant's Russian Cook Book, but this version adds a number of recipes and is “substantially anew book” according to Publishers Weekly. The volume is illustrated with comic vignettes by Sapajou (the well-known cartoonist and refugee né Georgii Avksentievich Sapojnikoff) and Avis Walker Grant.

Binding:  Publisher's red cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and samovar vignette, drawn from a real samovar in the author's possession.

•  Not in Brown, Culinary Americana or in Cagle & Stafford (in either form).   Binding as above; minimal shelfwear, dust jacket lacking. Front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription. Pages very clean. A fresh, solid copy.  (30357)

“Only Such Hymns as Will Be Approved by  
the Entire Body of the Protestant Church”

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•  Very early YMCA hymnal.

Binding:  Dark green publisher's cloth, cover edges bevelled and title gilt-stamped in a cartouche on front one, this within a blind-stamped vaguely “gothic” frame. Glossy brown endpapers and all edges red.

•  Bound as above, somewhat scuffed and with loss of cloth at head and foot of spine; hinges (inside) open. Ticket of a music publishing concern and “musical merchandise” establishment in Worcester, MA, inside front cover; endpapers chipped. Text age-toned, generally clean; a few pencillings.  (3192)

GORGEOUSBRIGHT RED COVERS
  Proverbs, Parables, & Dreams with a “Period” Flavor

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•  New York “tenth edition” of this popular collection of proverbs by a Boston preacher highly thought of in his day; its original publication was in 1850, perhaps rather oddly in St. Louis, and it appeared thereafter in a variety of markets. Here, it is in a perfectly stunning American publisher's binding of gilt red morocco. Along with the “proverbs,” pithy preachings of the author, this offers parables and apocalyptic dreams.

Binding: Publisher’s red morocco, covers framed in gilt rolls, front cover with gilt-stamped angel vignette and title, back cover with gilt-stamped urn, spine gilt extra. All edges gilt.

•  Binding as above, edges and extremities rubbed with leather chipped at spine head, spine somewhat darkened and with gilt dimmed (not lost); appearance of three small pin-type wormholes through leather at front joint, but this is associated with the sewing stations. Pages gently age-toned, with a few lightly foxed or stained; first few leaves loosening.Delightful lying on a table in 1856, delightful doing the same thing now. (15208)

“WOMEN'S THEATER” — San Francisco 1923

•  Program and cast of characters for “The Knave of Hearts” by Louise Saunders and “The Unseen” by Alice Gerstenberg, two plays by women dramatists with all-female casts.

•  Fine.  (19234)

“The Great Discovery” — GOLD

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•  First edition: History of California immediately prior to and during the gold rush, based on the author's firsthand observations and on facts “gathered from living witnesses” (p. 9). The volume is illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of John Augustus Sutter and with two steel-engraved plates.

•  Sabin 21232; Gaer, California Literature of the Gold-Rush, 25; Cowan & Cowan, Bibliography of the History of California, 187.   Publisher's textured maroon cloth, front cover with very decorative gilt-stamped title presentation; lightly rubbed, spine sunned and with some other sort of discoloration at top. Ex–social club library: front free endpaper and fly-leaf with inked numerals in a 19th-century hand; title-page, one plate, and one other page rubber-stamped. Pages faintly age-toned, otherwise clean. A nice little book.  (26296)

New Homes, New Hearts

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•  First edition: Two intertwined stories of learning to love again after loss, set at Christmas-time aboard the westbound express train from Winnipeg. Written by a Canadian-born journalist, this sentimental tale (meant for grownups who love children rather than the children themselves) is here illustrated with a frontispiece and four plates by Elizabeth Shippen Green, mounted on green paper, with additional in-text decorations done by Harold J. Turner and printed in green.

Binding:  Publisher's sage green paper–covered sides with dark green cloth shelfback, front cover with decorative title and train vignette both stamped in gilt and dark green, spine with gilt-stamped title. Top edge gilt, outer edge deckle.

•  Binding as above; edges, joints, and extremities rubbed, front cover mottled. Front pastedown with inked ownership inscription. Pages and plates clean.  (29126)

An Artist's View of theEarly Development of American Art

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•  First edition. Dunlap (1766–1839) was “one of the first outstanding figures of the American stage” according to the Oxford Companion to the Theatre; sent to London to study painting with Benjamin West, he found the lure of the theatre more compelling and eventually became a playwright, manager of New York’s Park Theatre, and vice president of the National Academy of Design. Here reverting to his first “life,” he provides interesting biographical accounts, full of anecdotes and personal observations, of numerous prominent American artists and their works. Vol. I features a facsimile of an autograph bill of sale, for portraits, by John Singleton Copley.

•  On Dunlap, see: Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 211. American Imprints 24237; BAL 5026; Howes D571; Sabin 21303.   Publisher's quarter green diced cloth and tan paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped title; edges and extremities rubbed, corners bumped, spines sunned, sides with spots of staining and discoloration. Front hinges (inside) tender. Ex–social club library: spines with paper shelving labels, front pastedowns with 19th-century bookplates and inked shelving numbers, title-pages and one other in each volume rubber-stamped, no other markings. Some outer corners of vol. II lightly waterstained; a very few instances of small spots of staining.  (27558)

“Curves Do All Kinds of Queer Things”

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•  “A slightly expanded version of a letter written on July 21 1937 to a friend who wanted to know how one went about designing a typeface” (p. [3]): from the typographer, calligrapher, and illustrator W.A. Dwiggin to fellow typographer, engraver, and book designer Rudoph Ruzicka. In addition to several diagrams of letter construction, the letter is illustrated with a facsimile of a pencilled working drawing on thin paper. produced under the supervision of Boston master printer Gehman Taylorthis is the third publication from the Harvard College Library's Department of Printing and Graphic Arts.

•  Publisher's dusty rose (loosely) paper–covered limp wrappers, front cover with printed paper label; volume very clean, original slipcase discolored with joints split and much of spine detached but present. A nice exemplar.  (28334)

TO Part VIII . . .

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