•  Shoemaker 33941; Rosenbach, Early American Children's Books, 714.   Publisher's printed light blue paper wrappers, split and chipped along spine, otherwise crisp and clean. Pages with light age-toning and offsetting.  (24569)

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

Quite scarce. We find only one copy reported as owned by any U.S. library.

•  Publisher's red cloth, all edges gilt. Very good condition.  (14554)

•  Stationer's blank book: quarter sheep with marbled paper sides. Binding scuffed and rubbed. Joints open but covers firmly attached. Internally very good.

•  Contemporary gilt-stamped green cloth with a bit of light wear to the head and foot of the spine, otherwise bright and lovely. Some page edges uncut. (10569)

An additional folding leaf bears a wood engraving (signed “JMH, del.”) of a train in the English countryside, a sternwheeler, and an English eating hall!

The author (1827–1916) was a native of Indiana, a graduate of Indiana State University, and a Presbyterian missionary in China beginning in 1850 and later in Japan. He acted as interpreter for William B. Reed, the United States minister, in negotiating the treaty of 1858 with China.

RARE. No library reports to OCLC or RLIN owning a complete set of all four parts. In fact, only Harvard and the library that deaccessioned this copy report owning any parts; Harvard owns parts two and three.

Provenance: Author’s presentation copy, with the front wrapper inscribed “Rev. E. W. Syle / fraternal regards of / Wm. P. Martin.” The Rev. Syle was a pioneer in the education of the blind in China and Japan.

•  Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese, 204. Stitched in plain wrappers, as issued; now laid into a protective library binder. Front wrapper with inscription as described above. Pages very faintly age-toned, some creased; one map with split starting along fold. A rare production in a great association copy.

•  Faxon 108. Binding as above, paper scuffed and joints a touch rubbed. Front free endpaper with owner’s name; front pastedown and fly-leaf with pencilled notations. Frontispiece with small chip to outer margin, repaired. Some instances of offsetting surrounding plates and illustrations, pages otherwise clean. An attractive, engaging little book.

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

Preliminary pages include the testimonials or “Recommendations” (pp. iii–iv) and a “Preface” (pp. [xiii]–xxv). At the end are “On fulfilling engagements and paying debts. From a sermon by the late President Edwards,” “On the religious education of children. (From the Christian observer),” “On sanctifying the Sabbath-Day. By Sir Matthew Hale. (From the same),” and the table of contents.

•  Sabin 46307; Shaw & Shoemaker 35227; Holmes, Cotton Mather, 112-E.   Contemporary sheep, rubbed and abraded. Rebacked, with gilt title on red leather spine label. Offsetting from leather on endpapers, fly-leaves, and title-page, at edges. Variable foxing. Ex-library: Front pastedown with library bookplates, not uninteresting, and front free endpaper with early inked signature; title-page additionally with pressure-stamp and penciling on verso; institutional rubber-stamp on front free endpaper and at base of p. [iii]. Small paper loss at outer margin of pp. 151/152 and pp. 155/156 without any loss of text. Lacks “Editor’s preface, with a sketch of the author’s life” (pp. v–xii).  (24571)

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 compl 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!

•  Original front wrapper present, but not rear one. Some chipping and definite wear, especially along spine. Old ink notations. A good copy. (9383)

Although the university was founded in 1551 and began offering classes in 1553, its rules and practices were not published until 1668: Various manuscript compilations of the rules had been gathered during the first hundred years of the institution, but it fell to Bishop Palafox to undertake the definitive compilation and to initiate the publication of the results, which did not see light of day until after his death. It is his omnium gatherum that the body of this volume offers.

•  Medina, Mexico, 5836; Palau 6067; not in Harper, Americana Iberica; not in Maggs, Bibl. Amer. 20th-century quarter calf with marbled paper sides and endpapers. All edges carmine. Paper clean and crisp. A lovely copy.

a photograph of “St. Paul’s School” (not the American one)

TWO nicely accomplished pen-and-ink drawings of ships

One leaf bears a number of small photographs of young men, labelled “1915” — possibly classmates from St. Paul’s?

•  Publisher’s cloth wrappers, front cover gilt-stamped “Autographs”; edges and extremities chipped. Text block partially separated from spine. Some fading to colored pages, with occasional very slight offsetting or ink smearing.

•  Original quarter cloth with decoratively printed paper sides, paper chipped over edges. One instance of pencil marking; otherwise clean and unused. (4954)

The Search is in verse and Joseph in prose. The frontispiece is an engraving by B. Tanner after Stothard's original. Tanner was one of America's premier early engravers upon steel and copper. A student of Peter Maverick's, he settled in Philadelphia in 1805 and continued in the Quaker City until 1845. In addition to engravings for book illustration, he produced line and stipple portraits, scenes, and views. Here his offering is printed on a lighter weight stock than the rest of the volume and, as in all copies we have seen, is browned.

•  Rosenbach, Early American Children's Books, 442; Shaw & Shoemaker 23434. On Tanner, see: Stauffer, American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, I: 243–45. Beyond the scope of Welch. Publisher's salmon paper over paste boards. Clean with no tears. Frontispiece browned as noted, with two lighter spots. A very good copy.

Rare.  No copies traced via NUC Pre-1956, OCLC or RLIN.

•  On Muretus, see: Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, II, 148–52. Contemporary half vellum over stencilled paper, spine with inked title; stained and paper torn with much chipping, especially on edges of covers. Ex-library with white-lettered call number on spines and, on title-pages, two different Catholic institutions’ rubber-stamps, plus the old inked ownership inscription of a Jesuit novitiate (Maryland). Ink scratches to frontispiece portrait (intentional?), and some inkstains in margins elsewhere. Lightly foxed. All edges speckled red.