The Fortsas hoax is legendary for having fooled many renowned collectors and dealers near the mid-point of the 19th century (1840, to be precise) into travelling to the small town of Biche, Belgium for an auction of unique books that were bibliographically unknown!

•  Publisher's quarter cloth and decorated boards, front cover showing one faint crescent of soil; top edge gilt, a touch soiled near spine, fore-edges untrimmed. Map endpapers. A copy not quite perfectly fresh but very nice.  (28319)

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This was most likely a false imprint, probably printed in the Netherlands; no other works printed by “Jean Corneille” are recorded, and no other works by Benoist were printed in Germany during the time of his exile.

Uncommon: OCLC locates only six U.S. institutional holdings, one of which has since been deaccessioned.

•  VD17 12:116486H; Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes, 800.   Period-style speckled calf framed and panelled in gilt with gilt-stamped corner fleurons, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label, gilt-dotted raised bands, and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; binding signed in blind on lower rear turn-in by Grace Bindings. Title-page and last page institutionally pressure-stamped; title-page verso with rubber-stamp “Ex Biblioth. Regia Berolinensi,” with superimposed deaccession stamp; first page of preface with inked numeral in lower margin; lower (closed) edges rubber-stamped. Front fly-leaf with annotations on Benoist and first portion of volume with inked marginalia in an early hand. Pages age-toned with light spotting.  (25851)

Binding:  Publisher's mauve paper–covered boards, front cover with decorative rose-printed paper label, spine with printed paper label; edges uncut. Present are both the original dust wrapper, plain save for spine note of author, title, and date, and the publisher's box with the same information on its spine and the title repeated on its cover.

•  Box sunned with edges shelfworn, dust wrapper darkened with closed tear from lower front edge. Spine of volume gently sunned with head smudged; book otherwise clean and beautiful, fresh inside.  (29726)

Those copies with the Kilkenny impirnt (Killkenniae: ex typographi Jacobi Stokes) are far fewer than those with the Cologne imprint, but it is clear that all copies were printed at Kilkenny by Stokes.

Not a common work:  NUC Pre-1956 and OCLC combine to locate only eight copies in U.S. libraries.

Provenance:  On title-page, ownership inscriptions of the Revs. Thomas Qualy (1829) and Jacob Cleary. Additional Cleary ownership inscriptions on p. 1 (1873) and iii (1891), the latter a gift inscription on the occasion of that owner's giving the volume to a Rev. Thomas Kelly.

•  Bradshaw Irish Coll., nos. 5222-5223; ESTC t036179.   Recent full brown calf with covers panelled in the Cambridge style, author/title/etc. lettering in gilt directly to spine; spine with gilt rules above and below bands and gilt devices in the compartments. Title-page soiled and small portion of lower inside blank margin torn away and repaired; same page has old library call number in ink and the date of publication in ballpoint! Ownership notes as above. Very light waterstain in lower blank margins of preliminary leaves. Generally a very nice, clean copy.  (24805)

Single-click the image where the hand appears on
mouse-over, for an enlargement.

•  ESTC T138271; Lowndes, II, 404; Allibone, 2036. Recent quarter morocco over marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments. Title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution; pages slightly age-toned, one with pencilled underlining/emphasis.

Single-click the image where the hand appears on
mouse-over, for an enlargement.

•  ESTCT61515; Allibone, 2036; Lowndes, II, 404. Recent quarter morocco over marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments. Title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution; pages age-toned.

Provenance: Howard Osgood.

•  Brunet, IV, 683.   Contemporary calf, spine elegantly gilt extra, board edges with gilt rolls; leather acid-pitted, edges and extremities a bit rubbed. Title-page with small inked owner's name and institutional pressure-stamp. Damp-spotting to first and last few pages; some leaves starting to separate, many with lower outer corners crumpled. Intermittent underlining and marks of emphasis in red pencil throughout. (20861)

•  New, in dust jacket. (3248)

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)

A work of considerable significance for English canon law. There was another edition in 1641, without any place of printing specified, in 8vo format, and having 122 pages.

•  Removed from a nonce volume, semicircular area torn from lower portion of the title-page costing two letters of the imprint. Old ownership inscriptions on title-page. Library stamps in lower margin of last page.  (21014)

A preface to another volume in this series notes that “by means of some new literary connexions in america, we shall possess peculiar advantages in presenting to our Readers, accounts of the most interesting circumstances belonging to the United States”—and it was an American reader, in fact, who owned the present example.

Provenance: Front pastedown with inked ownership inscription of Joshua Gilpin, a Quaker from Philadelphia who established the first paper mill in Delaware, in 1787.

•  Disbound; marbled paper–covered boards much chipped and worn, with joints cracking and large portions of spine leather lost or worn down; sewing going, with some leaves separated. Some signatures uncut; page edges untrimmed and in some cases browned. Occasional edge chips. Volume now housed in a simple, acid-free phase box.

The Explicationes was a serious attack on the Trinity and all its editions, beginning with the first of 1598, were surreptitiously printed and circulated. It was on various lists of banned books.

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The imprint of this edition is from Johann Fabricius' Historia Bibliothecae Fabricianae, V, 51; the title-page device is particularly lovely.

Evidence of readership: A lengthy note in an 18th-century hand on the front fly-leaf, apparently citing Johann Vogt's 1738 Catalogus historico-criticus librorum rariorum, labels this work “Liber perniciosus” and has much to say about it and its early editions. An earlier hand has recorded a list of books/citations inside the front cover.

•  Szabó, Régi magyar könyvtár, III, 4237.   18th-century English calf in the Cambridge style, leather at joints (but not sewing) starting; call number neatly in white in one lower spine panel. Private library bookplate; 18th-century ownership inscription partially erased from verso of title; handwritten notes as above. Title-page with a bit of dust-soiling and off-setting from binding at edges; otherwise, spotting never dark and mostly marginal.  (27172)

In this edition, the title-page is in the state with the diagonal (not vertical) shading of the pedestal; and quires and D are without catchwords on the rectos (i.e., they were printed at Hanau), while all other quires have catchwords (i.e., they were printed in London). The title-page's claim to Frankfurt printing is simply specious.

•  STC (rev.) 12685.3; Shaaber, British Authors Printed Abroad, H49; Sabin 29819; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 606/61. For a detailed bibliographical study of the editions of this and their points, see: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 74 (1980), pp. 1-12. On Hall, see: The Dictionary of National Biography, XXIV, 75-80. Old vellum, neatly recased and hinges strengthened. Lacks the maps, but the engraved title-page and engraved plate of "writing" are present. These have light, thumbnail-sized waterstains at their foremargins, being the only leaves so marked, all others being quite clean. Priced approximately $2300 less than the last complete copy to sell at auction.

The woodcut “printer's device” on the title-page is telling: “Ex trunco veteri novus ramus,” which pretty much epitomizes Leclerc's writings.

Uncommon.  We locate fewer than 10 copies in the U.S.

•  Weller, I, p.278.   Recent quarter leather with gilt spine; sides with German-style brown paper speckled with black. Shadow of old pencilled shelf number and another four-digit number on verso of title-page. A very good copy.  (24769)

Binding:  An example of a painted and tooled vellum binding known in Germany as a “Bauern Einbände,” or “Peasant Binding” — but, though betraying a strong influence of folk art, such bindings were certainly not for peasants! The style almost certainly began in Hungary with early examples first appearing in southern Germany, and it was to gain greatest favor in northern Germany and Holland during the 18th century.

This vellum binding is elaborately tooled, embossed, and painted. There is an outer border on each cover; the center area is occupied by an embossed and painted bouquet arising from a heart-shaped jar inscribed with “Singet und spielet dem Hernn in eurem Hertzen,” this within columns and an arch surmounted by a fountain flanked with flowers. The cover is identical to that shown as Fig. 2 in Goff's article. Our spine treatment is different.

The bouquet is painted in red, green, and yellow, and below the quoted matter is a stylized device of a “4" above the letters “C G R” (or “C R G”).

All edges gilt and gauffered; neat clasps are present.

NAIP locates only five copies, we locate another four. Whether all nine have “peasant” bindings we have not been able to determine, but at least five do.

•  Not in Evans; not in Bristol; not in Hildebrand. ESTC W34038. On the binding and the history of Baisch, see: Goff, “German folk bindings on 'Philadelphia' books of 1774,” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1968, pp. 324–30.   Binding as above, colors on the rear cover much faded and the embossing less pronounced; spine damaged and repaired, with loss of some of the original vellum but with enough remaining to see the style. Front fly-leaf filled on both sides with old writing in German; some leaves neatly turned-in (dog-eared), in fact a neat and clean copy. Housed in a brown cloth clamshell case with leather label.  (29150)

Palau states that this piece was actually printed in the U.S., and the paper on which it is printed would certainly substantiate that claim, as does the fact that it is held by the Library Company of Philadelphia, famous for its collection of Spanish-language books printed in Philadelphia with false imprint information.

An extremely rare piece of Bolívariana. This copy belonged to one of Mérida's family.

•  Palau 165374; not in Shaw & Shoemaker; not in Shoemaker. Original wrappers, one chip; stains on rear wrapper and soil to front one. Once upon a time, folded as to fit in a pocket. Very Good condition.

Uncommon. A search of ESTC, OCLC, and NUC Pre-1956 finds only four U.S. holdings of this title. ESTC notes that this is a false imprint and that the work was likely printed in the Netherlands; one source suggests Lausanne.

•  ESTC T112988; Caillet, Manuel bibliographique des sciences psychiques ou occultes..., 7879.   Recent quarter calf with marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped titles. Title-pages each with inked ownership inscription dated 1804 in lower margin, name lined through; first page of preface with inked numeral in lower margin. Upper outer corners rounded, with most of these (and some margins) browned in vol. I. All edges speckled blue and brown.  (23261)

•  Dust jacket and binding as new. (5948)

Rare: COPAC locates only the copy at the University of Manchester library, but we trace other U.K. copies in the British Library and Cambridge University library. In the U.S. and Canada the only copies we find are at the UCLA and the Pierpont Morgan libraries.

Provenance:  Ownership signatures on the front free endpaper: “J. Turner, 1790" and “John S. Conner / North Bend Ohio / Oct. 18th 1877.”

•  Renouard 48:10 and 308:22; Baudrier, VII, 20; Adams S137; Shaw 44; Aldine Press. Catalogue of the Aldine Collection, UCLA, 1115.   Full dark walnut modern calf old style: Spine with raised bands accented with gilt and blind rules, the blind ones extending onto covers to terminate in trefoils; burgundy leather author label and gilt date; gilt tools to spine compartments. Blind double fillets framing covers. Heavy browning to the first two and a half signatures and again in the last gathering; minor worm damage to blank area of title-leaf; additional dampstaining, mainly though not exclusively to margins, more often than “occasionally” and yet not quite “throughout.” Withal, a reputable copy of a notable forgery.  (25748)

•  New; publisher's quarter cloth with paper sides with a reproduction of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

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