AMERICANA TO 1820

Women's Rights — “Published by the Author”

•  First edition of this uncommon early American sermon on women’s rights. The Rev. Hanning argues in favor of the “respect due to the sex in general,” using Biblical and historical examples of worthy women to bolster his points.

Provenance: Title-page verso with early inked ownership inscriptions of James Bemiss and Nelson Bemiss.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 12709 (describing the second edition only). Uncut copy. Removed from a nonce volume and now in a Mylar folder. Pages lightly age-toned, with a few small spots of foxing. Some short edge tears and dog-eared corners. Inscriptions as described above.

“We Shall LoseOur Whole Income of Mony from Abroad”

[Hare, Francis].

•  Generally attributed to Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester, this anonymously published political analysis expresses concern not only that putting the Duke of Anjou on the Spanish throne would tilt the balance of power in Europe too far towards France, but also that such action would greatly damage the livelihoods of English textile workers, among others dependent on international commerce; also questioned areSwift’s views on the ramifications of trade with Portuguese America. This is the second, expanded edition.

•  ESTC T58140; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 711/126; Teerink-Scouten 1034. Blue-green paper wrappers, old style. Title-page with small numeric stamp, faint traces of other annotations. Small area of worming in inner margins, touching a very few letters. A few scattered spots, otherwise clean; edges untrimmed.

FranceSadly Disappointed Him . . .

Harper, Robert Goodloe.

•  Denunciation of France's aggressive stance, written by a politician who had been one of that country's most vocal American supporters during the Revolution. Harper, a prominent Federalist who served as a representative from South Carolina and later as a senator from Maryland, admits in this address his former pro-French sympathies before going on to critique the French assertions regarding various American actions and the U.S. treaty with Great Britain—in fact, he goes so far as to call for war. This much-discussed tract was reprinted numerous times throughout the United States and Great Britain, both in English and in French, immediately following its initial appearance in 1797.

•  ESTC T110138; Sabin 30433. On Harper, see: Dictionary of American Biography, VIII, 285–86. Recent quarter blue morocco with blue cloth sides, spine gilt-stamped with title within gilt-ruled raised bands and with trefoils at head and foot. Half-title lacking; one page (not the title) stamped by a now-defunct institution. Faint traces of waterstaining to lower outer margins of most leaves. A handsome copy of an important document.

Neatly Bound inQuarter Morocco

•  Still a standard bibliography for this aspect of Americana. This copy is no. 74 of 400 copies in royal octavo format. Harrisse provides considerably more information than latter bibliographies such as European Americana, including details of collation by signature.

•  Modern quarter brown morocco. Ex-library with red stamps. Top edge gilt. A few margins with chips or short tears. In all a rather nice copy, one now in a strong and appropriate binding.

Careful Scholarship — Handsome Limited Edition

•  A scholarly review of both “The letters of Amerigo Vespucci, and other documents illustrative of his career. Translated, with notes and an introduction, by Clements R. Markham . . . President of the Hakluyt Society” and “The voyage from Lisbon to India, 1505–6. Being an account and journal by Albericus Vespuccius. Translated from the contemporary Flemish, and edited with a prologue and notes by C.H. Coote, Department of Printed Books (Geographical Section), British Museum.” Click the image for an enlargement.

The present item includes a colored frontispiece of the coat of arms of Balthasar Sprenger, “the real author of the alleged Vespuccian voyage from Lisbon to India 1505–6,” with the accompanying tissue guard — the account long having been misattributed by historians to Vespucci himself.

Handsomely printed at the Chiswick Press. Limited to 250 numbered copies (this is copy no. 236).

•  Quarter white vellum, lettered in gilt on the spine, single-rule gilt frame on front and back covers. Covers bumped at lower corners and darkened along edges; head of spine with scrape and ink blot. Dark offsetting on endpapers; otherwise, pages clean. Top edge gilt, others uncut. (21272)

“My Pen Has Been Taken up in the Cause, & for the Benefit, of  My Own SEX”
A Biographical Dictionary of & for WOMEN

Click the interior images for enlargements.

•  First American edition, following the London first of 1803. This encyclopedic collection of lives of famous (and infamous) women was compiled by controversial novelist, editor, and feminist Mary Hays, friend of Mary Wollstonecraft — who is, curiously, not counted among the “illustrious and celebrated women” here. Among those who did make the cut are Sappho, Diane de Poitiers, Matoaks (a.k.a. Pocahontas), Susannah Centlivre, Charlotte Corday, Anne Boleyn, Mrs. Pilkington, and Anne Broadstreet (i.e., Bradstreet).

Hays notes in her preface that “Women, unsophisticated by the pedantry of the schools, read not for dry information, to load their memories with uninteresting facts, or to make a display of a vain erudition . . . they require pleasure to be mingled with instruction, lively images, the graces of sentiment, and the polish of language” (vol. I, p. iii).

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 12742; Sabin 31061.   Period-style quarter tan cloth over blue-grey paper–covered sides, spines with printed paper labels. Title-page of each vol. with ownership inscription in upper portion excised; title-page of vol. II with small portion of outer margin reinforced. Pages age-toned, with a few foxed or spotted; occasional short edge tears, not extending into text.  (24204)

Blair Blazoned

•  First U.S. edition, following the Edinburgh first of 1807, of this laudatory biography written by a professor at the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Blair, a Scottish preacher, critic, and rhetorician, is best remembered for his sermons (which were praised by Dr. Johnson) and his involvement in the Ossian debate, in which he defended the poems’ authenticity.

Provenance: The Rev. Edwin A. Dalrymple; the Maryland Diocesan Library.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 15224. Contemporary quarter cloth over marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; binding moderately darkened and worn, cloth chipped over head of spine, spine showing shadow of a now-absent shelving label. Front pastedown with private collector’s bookplate and with institutional rubber-stamp (as above); title-page additionally with early inked gift inscription in upper margin (this cut into by binder). Some light spotting and age-toning.

Impeachinga Signer & Another

Click the interior images for enlargements.

•  First edition; although the title-page says “Vol. I,” no more were published.

Signer of the Declaration Francis Hopkinson was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of accepting payments from litigants, accepting bribes for appointments, and dealing in false certificates, all as an admiralty judge, in 1780, but acquitted by the Senate; Comptroller General John Nicholson was charged in 1792 with trafficking in illegal stock certificates and tampering with state finances, and also acquitted by the Senate. With a list of subscribers, many prominent.

Hogan, the editor/compiler here, makes the point that the account of the Nicholson trial is much more complete than that of Hopkinson's because he was personally present throughout to take it down in shorthand.

•  Evans 27132; Sabin 32418.   Period-style quarter calf with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled raised bands; binding by Starr Bookworks, with its small label. Title-page with institutional rubber-stamp dated 1879. Pages age-toned, with spots of light waterstaining to some upper margins and occasional offsetting.  (24324)

"Great Names" (Pseudonymous Division)

Hold-Fast, Simon, [pseud.].

•  Pro-Federalist, anti-Republican tract that is well written and shows reasoning of the non-strident school. Very good political content.

Provenance: Ownership signature of Ezra S. Ely, D.D.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 4393. Removed from a nonce volume. Respined with archival tissue. Six-digit number stamped on title-page. Some age-toning and occasional light foxing.

A Lancaster Imprint — Not a Stone upon Stone

•  Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70 by the Romans, ending a four-year revolt by the Jewish zealots. Many Christians, even at the time, saw this as a judgment on the Jewish nation for rejecting Jesus, something apparently supported by Jesus' words as recorded in the Gospels (cf. Luke 19:42–44). George Peter Holford (1768–1839) first published this popular work in 1805, entitled in its original English The Destruction of Jerusalem, taking the prophecy of Jesus and its subsequent fulfillment as one of the proofs of Christianity.

Translated from English into German by W. Reichenbach, no doubt for the German Evangelicals in central Pennsylvania, this is the work's first German-language edition.  Another came out in Philadelphia in 1831, and more appeared in the 20th century.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 20358; Arndt, The First Century of German Language Printing in the United States of America, 1740. Sheep with remnants of gilt on spine. Abraded and stained with two wormholes. Pages with some waterstaining and scattered age spots, not obscuring text; also some chipping in the margins, not affecting text.

For more GERMAN AMERICANA,  click here.

THREE SPEECHES

•  War of 1812 speeches — the third one being an important one concerning admission of new states to the union and the resulting change in the balance of regional power.

The half-title proclaims, "Republican Eloquence. Speeches of Messrs. Holmes, of Massachusetts, Findley, of Pennsylvania, and Young, of New-York. To which is added, Steven's sermon on the war." Shaw and Shoemaker list each as a separate work and so do RLIN, OCLC, and NUC Pre-1956.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 31747. Printed on cheap, brownish paper. Removed from a nonce volume. Respined long ago with brown paper (non-archival). Library stamps.

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AMERICAN POEMS

•  Toward the end of this volume of early U.S. poetry is a prose chapter entitled “The Shaking Quakers” — a well-observed account of two visits that the author made to the Niskayuna Shakers. The visits in all likelihood occurred in 1784–86, while Honeywood was studying law in Albany.

•  Wegelin 996; Shaw & Shoemaker 669; Sabin 32786; Richmond 2274. Period-style quarter tan cloth with light blue paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label. Title-page and several others rubber-stamped by a now-defunct institution. An uncommon book, with many interesting points, including some charming little head- and tailpieces.

Philadelphia “Prep”

Click the title-page image for an enlargement.

•  Important, early, American college-preparatory/college-level edition. The preface, explanatory matter, and notes are in English. The editor, Dugdale, taught in Philadelphia, and several teachers at the University of Pennsylvania whom he asked to review the volume recommend it to schools and colleges in the preface.

This is the rarer of two Philadelphia editions of 1815: It is not listed in NUC Pre-1956 and Shaw and Shoemaker located only one copy (at The American Antiquarian Society); we do know of some other copies. The other edition has the imprint reading “Impensis E. Kimber.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 34951.   Original treed sheep, leather label; spine, with gilt-stamped red leather label, a little pulled at bottom. Significant degrees of browning and foxing, as expectable of the paper used. An interesting volume in nice condition. (7008)

TO Part XI . . .

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