•  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)

•  Shoemaker 24396. On Eaton, see: Dictionary of American Biography, V, 609–10. Removed from a nonce volume, now in a Mylar folder. Title-page with early inked inscription in upper margin, partially shaved—apparently, “W. Rawle” (the Philadelphia lawyer) from someone we can’t make out. Slight offsetting, cockling.

Provenance: Front free endpaper with ownership inscription by Henry Binkly, dated 1833; several laid-in slips of paper include a recipe for hair dye and a concoction involving sulphur, sugar of lead, and bay rum.

•  Shoemaker 8591; First Century of German Language Printing in the U.S., 2565. Contemporary sheep framed in blind, spine with blind-ruled raised bands, abraded but solid. One clasp lacking, one present and working. Moderate foxing; one sectional title with pencilled annotations. Clearly a volume that saw both use and reasonable care. Plain, and pleasing.

In either stereotyping or electrotyping, the "freezing" usefully eliminated the variations and errors characteristic within editions printed from a forme, as the type shifted minutely or substantially with use; but it also eliminated the traditional opportunities of correcting errata discovered during printing, and of easily creating wanted variants by changing just a word or a line of type to suit individual need, wish, or whim. Our commonest use today of the word "stereotype"--to mean "fixed, simplified, unvarying idea"--comes from this aspect of stereotyping's (and then electrotyping's) solidifying a complex and flexible original into an undifferentiated, all-or-nothing derivative.

Our electroplates, some of which were used and some not, are of individual, unillustrated pages from McGuffey's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Readers. They variously contain poetry and prose, and stories and history and general information; units of meaning may or may not be complete on the page. Buyers should be aware that the plates must be read with a mirror, but may be assured that with a mirror, reading is not very difficult.

•  Condition of these plates is good: They are not a kind of thing easily damaged!

The title-page wood engraving is signed “Whitney” — possibly Elias James Whitney.

•  Publisher's brown cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped pictorial vignette in blind-stamped frame; cloth with spots of discoloration, corners and spine extremities a little rubbed. Light to moderate foxing/spotting. Charming.  (23911)

•  Very Good. Sewn; in original printed wrappers. A little staining on the very top edge of the front wrapper and first two leaves. (788)

•  Sabin 23225; not in Shoemaker. Period-style quarter tan cloth with paper-covered sides, spine with printed paper label. Title-page and a few others rubber-stamped by a now-defunct institution; title-page with inner margin repaired. Mild to moderate foxing throughout.

Provenance:  Inscribed by the author: “To B.F. Pyle, Esq. [?] from his friend the author.”

•  Publisher's textured violet cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; faded, especially over spine, tear to cloth along front joint with corners and extremities a bit rubbed. Front fly-leaf with inked inscription as above. Endpapers, frontispiece (“The Rhine”), and title-page lightly foxed. In fact a clean, nice copy.  (23195)