This is the stated fifth edition, following the first of 1724; WorldCat suggests that it may be a reissue of the 1724 printing with the edition statement added. It is printed on one side of each leaf only.

Provenance:  Engraved title-page with early inked ownership inscription of A.W. Rappe in upper outer corner.

•  ESTC T78313.   Contemporary speckled sheep; abraded overall, spine label lost, covers all but detached. Engraved title-page with inscription as above. Minor to moderate offsetting throughout, pages otherwise clean. An interesting pattern-book from an author perhaps better known for such works than for his actual constructions.  (29679)

No. 64 of 100 copies.

Provenance:  Bookplate of Henry William Poor, the American banker and book collector (1844–1915) whose family business preceded Standard & Poor's.

•  Half maroon morocco over red cloth boards, gilt title to spine, top edge gilt; red and blue marbled endpapers in a French swirl pattern (joints rubbed and cloth darkened). Bound tight; bookplate as above to pastedown. Light thumb-soiling and one small stain in outer margin of last two leaves.  (30073)

Swift’s views on the ramifications of trade with Portuguese America

•  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.

•  American Imprints 40-3037; Goldsmiths'-Kress 3730-3731; Sabin 31107.   19th-century half calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels; bindings moderately rubbed overall with some spots of discoloration, three volumes with front joints cracked, sewing holding. Ex–social club library: some spine heads reinforced with library cloth tape, 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages, no other markings. Variously, throughout, sections of waterstaining, browning, offsetting; the occasional leaf torn without loss, chipped, or with margin reinforced; varying degrees of age-toning, with the majority of pages clean. Massive quantities of data on early 19th-century commerce, ready to be made use of for scholarship or simply to serve a reader's pleasure.  (30395)

The listings are augmented in the first three volumes by numerous in-text reproductions of illustrations and title-pages from the books. This copy includesauction prices neatly inked alongside every book.

•  Contemporary treed sheep, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels and gilt-ruled bands; sides showing minor rubbing, edges, joints, and extremities moreso. All hinges (inside) cracked or tender, some endpapers with pencilled notations. Vol. I: Two pages with light offsetting from now-absent item, one leaf with lower outer corner torn away. Vol. IV with bookplate of Alvaro de Fontagud y Aguilera. Pages gently age-toned, most noticeably in vol. IV, with occasional light smudges; each volume with last page browned.  (29161)

The 1820 date is indicated by the Huntington Library. The Airdrie printer/booksellers Neil remark that they sell “a variety of  song Toy and School Books. Cards &c.”

•  Weiss, Chapbooks, 277.   Original self wrappers; removed. Edges slightly darkened. Very good.  (17561)

•  ESTC T831; Kress 2665. Sewn, edges untrimmed, now in a Mylar folder. Title-page with numeral in lower margin inked in an early hand. Upper edges slightly darkened; a few small spots but mostly clean.

•  Original printed wrappers, starting to detach; creased and lightly darkened.  (29880)

slavery — which the author defends as a legal institution, but attacks as a detriment to the state's overall prosperity

•  Sabin 33370; Howes H739.   Publisher's cloth, vol. I (now) olive and vol. II brown, covers blind-stamped, spines with gilt-stamped title and gilt-stamped seal of Virginia (“Sic semper tyrannis”); corners and spine extremities rubbed, sides with areas of light discoloration, endpapers darkened. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate on front pastedowns, call number inked on front free endpaper of vol. I and front fly-leaf of vol. II, vol. II lacking front free endpaper. No other markings. Upper margins of vol. I with small areas of light waterstaining, extending to touch top lines of text at back of volume only; vol. II with similar light waterstaining never touching text. Vol. II with occasional lightly pencilled marginalia and marks of emphasis, many pertaining to the perceived value of the footnotes and references.  (26452)

•  NSTC H3370; Goldsmiths’-Kress 20080. On Huskisson, see the The Dictionary of National Biography. Recent paper wrappers. Title-page with small inked numeral in upper corner and a bit of staining; other pages clean.

Binding: The rear cover here shows what the spine of the “real thing” will look like in the “gold cloth” cloth version, with a sample backstrip from the half morocco style being affixed to the inside back cover); these variants were to be $1.50 and $200 respectively.

The first subscription leaf bears names from two different families.

•  Arbour, Canvassing Books, 772.   Publisher's tan cloth, covers stamped in brown and with traces of gold present; cloth showing water damage, spine darkened, spine and extremities rubbed. Text pages with a few small spots, only; but plates waterstained, with 11 damaged from having been adhered together at points — this misfortune absolutely not having destroyed their usefulness and interest for the perusing reader!  (27676)

Searches of OCLC, RLIN and NUC Pre-1956 locate only four copies in the U.S.

•  Medina, Mexico, 11808; Garritz, Impresos novohispanos, 3654; Steele 46; Sutro 134. Removed from a volume with ragged inner margin. Faint rubber-stamp in one margin.

On the bottom half is a signed receipt, in Spanish, dated Granada 8 May 1501, wherein Germán de Paris and Jacques acknowledge receiving the above mentioned payment.

•  The usual slash of cancellation (faintly visible above), indicating that this has been entered into the account books. Remnant of stiff paper at top of verso indicating it was once mounted in an album.

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This is the first printing of the first treaty of commerce and navigation between the United States and Russia; the only prior convention between the two nations was the convention of 1824 concerning the Pacific Northwest. This treaty establishes and confirms reciprocal trade, and commercial and navigation rights to vessels of both countries, and also applies the same rights to thekingdom of Poland.

Government document: 23d Congress, 1st Session. Doc. No. 415. Ho. of Reps. Executive.

•  Recent paper wrappers. Title-page with inked numeral in upper margin. Light spotting.

Jacob (1686–1744) was a legal writer known for his Every Man His Own Lawyer. He also dabbled in poetry, drama, and literary criticism; in the same year as the present work's appearance, he published a parody called The Rape of the Smock, and was subsequently immortalized by Pope's unkind remarks regarding both his grammar and his status as “the Blunderbuss of Law.”

•  ESTC T90927; Goldsmiths’ 5344. On Jacob, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Contemporary mottled sheep, framed and panelled in blind, rebacked with very complementary mottled sheep, spine with gilt-stamped title, author, and date; minor scuffing now nicely refurbished and front hinge (inside) unobtrusively reinforced. Pages mildly age-toned and cockled, with a few instances of light staining towards back of volume; one early pencilled correction. Last few leaves with upper outer corners torn away, touching a few page numbers and in one case one letter. Overall a solid and pleasing copy.  (30232)

Click the images for enlargements.

•  American Imprints 13113; Allibone 948; Goldsmiths'-Kress 27325.5; NSTC 2J1391; Sabin 35492.   Publisher's quarter brown cloth and plain tan paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label; edges and extremities rubbed, corners bumped, sides and spine with spots of discoloration, spine label darkened and chipped. Ex–social club library: paper shelving label on spine head, 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Scattered light spots, pages otherwise generally clean, with edges untrimmed.  (27685)

A successful novelist and journalist, Jones was wholeheartedly loyal to the Confederacy, and convinced right up until the end that the North would never conquer a united, determined South; he was also notably anti-Semitic, and there are a number of references here to the Jews being largely responsible for the country's economic woes.

•  Howes J220; Nevins I, 115 & II, 173.   Publisher's brown cloth, spines with gilt-stamped title; sunned and with some discolorations; corners rubbed and spine heads pulled/chipped. Ex–social club library: front pastedown with inked numerals in a 19th-century hand (partially obscured), title-page pressure- and rubber-stamped, a few other pages rubber-stamped. Front free endpaper of vol. I lacking. Pages with light waterstaining to upper inner portions in vol. I One leaf in vol. II with tear extending into text, without loss.  (26297)

Provenance: Front pastedown with bookplate “De la bibliotheque de F. Freudenreich.”

•  ESTC T48434; Alston, III, 308; Goldsmiths’-Kress 11089; Sabin 32702. Contemporary speckled calf, neatly rebacked preserving original gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels, spines with gilt-stamped thistle decorations; edges and corners rubbed, sides showing small scrapes and discolorations. Residue on pastedowns from sometime removal of bookplates. Pages age-toned, with occasional small spots, and offsetting from binding to in margins of first and last few leaves. All edges speckled.

•  First edition in the two states of this GILDED AGE novel of the evils of money-grubbing and corporate influence, featuring a young journalist of stalwart morals. Contemporary critics accused Keenan, who wrote the work in response to John Hay's anti-labor novel The Bread-Winners and published it anonymously, both of bad taste and of veiling real figures too thinly; “Aaron Grimstone” bears striking similarities to industrialist Amasa Stone (Hay's father-in-law who committed suicide by pistol) for instance, while “Horatio Blackdaw”is clearly based on New York Tribune editor Whitelaw Reid.

The two versions of the first edition here offered are one copy of the first edition, first state (in which the suicide scene, like Stone's, takes place in the bathroom with a pistol), and one copy of the first edition, later state (in which the suicide scene has been revised to the studio using gas).

Bindings:  These also are variant, though only in cloth color, the first being blue-gray and the second brown. Each front cover bears a vignette of money bags spilling forth coins stamped in maroon and gilt, with the legend "A Social Parable" below; spines offer title, coins, and legend.

•  Wright, III, 3060.   Bound as above. I (blue):  Spine darkened, joints and corners lightly rubbed. Front fly-leaf with pencilled annotations regarding the work and inked private ownership inscription dated 1885 (“Samuel A. Butz,” possibly the Allentown, PA, attorney). Pages clean. II (brown): Moderately rubbed overall, back hinge (inside) cracked, front fly-leaf with pencilled notes; ex–social club library with shelving label on spine, call number on endpaper, rubber-stamp on title-page, no other markings.An interesting opportunity for a scholar of 19th-century American literature, publishing, journalism, bindings, or any of a number of other topics.

successful merchant in Philadelphia

Rare: We fail to trace this via NUC Pre-1956, OCLC, RLIN, and the OPACS of the Library Company, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Library of Congress.

•  Shallow tears in margin, folded once. Light age-toning. Very good.

This is the first edition edited by W.F. Rocheleau and possibly the U.S. first (a Philadelphia printing appeared in the same year), as well as the earliest edition listed by Bitting; the work was originally printed in London in 1874. At the back of this edition is “A Sequel to Aunt Martha's Corner Cupboard,” which offers similar essays on sponge, cork, glass, chocolate, cloves, pepper, feathers, and flax — also an anecdote of a “noble girl” who swore never to wear ornamental feathers again, having come to understand the devastation the fashion wrought among bird populations.

Binding:  Publisher's blue cloth, front cover with black-stamped flowering plant design, spine with gilt-stamped title.

•  Bitting 260; Von Hünersdorff & Hasenkamp, Coffee, 798.   Binding as above, corners lightly rubbed and spine extremities somewhat moreso, front cover with small area of light discoloration near head of spine, spine slightly darkened. Front free endpaper with faint pencilled ownership inscription. Two pages with minor offsetting from now-absent laid-in item; a few small scattered smudges. Last leaf (advertising) torn partway along inner margin. A solid, clean, pleasant little volume.  (28538)

Knight, who was devoted to books and to literature from the time he was a small child, was a much-admired printer and publisher, as well as an author, reformer, and would-be educator: Many of his publishing endeavors were aimed at improving and enlightening the working class.

•  NSTC 2K7731. On Knight, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. On binding cloth, see: Krupp, Bookcloth, style Wav3.   Publisher's textured brown cloth, covers blind-stamped with muse motif and title, spines with gilt-stamped title and blind-stamped decorations; lightly worn overall with some fading, vol. II spine head with traces of a strip of cloth tape. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Paper slightly embrittled (more so in second volume), with a few short edge tears. Externally ordinary; internally worthwhile.  (26860)

•  Goldsmiths'-Kress 36939; NSTC 2K8200. Recent paper wrappers. Half-title faintly dust-soiled and with small inked numeral in upper corner; pages otherwise clean.

•  Not in Brown, Culinary Americana.   Publisher's printed paper wrappers, slightly age-toned, back upper outer corner minutely chipped. A clean, fresh copy — a fine one.  (26065)

•  Not in Brown, Culinary Americana.   Publisher's printed paper wrappers with hanging loop. Soiling/staining/spotting, and original staples mostly deteriorated with spine darkened around staple sites. Poor condition, but a charming “period” production.  (26087)

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•  Good; spine gently faded with gilt dulled, corners and extremities lightly worn. Front free endpaper with pencilled gift inscription dated 1868. Plates somewhat darkened.  (1916)

•  Paperback. Fine.  (5324)

The front page bears two vignettes of brunette beauties, one in the process of applying tonic and one with an impeccably arranged hairstyle.

•  Folded as issued, back page with upper outer corner bent and small nick to upper edge. Gently age-toned.  (29194)

Binding:  Publisher's blue cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and train vignette stamped in black and gilt, vignette extending onto spine.

•  Binding as above, extremities very slightly rubbed, spine dimmed. Light waterstaining to inner margins of front fly-leaf and half-title, otherwise clean. A volume “got up,” given its content, with remarkable style and charm!  (29124)

Provenance: Title-page stamped by a private collector: “Thomas Witherell Palmer, Log Cabin Park” (Detroit).

•  Contemporary half calf with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and ornate gilt-stamped decorations within compartments; binding with light to moderate rubbing overall, with spine leather starting to show some cracking. All edges stained red. Delightful reading and looking, and a delightful copy.

•  Folded as issued. Very good condition.  (26013)

•  Publisher's cream-colored boards in original dust wrapper, cream-colored portions of jacket slightly darkened, otherwise showing only minimal shelfwear. A clean, solid copy.  (30365)

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Llamosas and Tovar Ponte were among the leading figures of the early Independence movement in Venezuela. Both served as president of Junta of Defense of the Rule of Fernando VII (later, The Revolutionary Junta), Llamosas 19 April – Aug 1810, and Tovar Aug 1810 – 2 March 1811. Additionally Tovar Ponte, the favorite son of an elite family, was a member of the 1811 Congress and a signer of the Venezuelan Act of Independence on 5 July of that year.

This historic document was printed by Venezuela's first press, that of Gallagher and Lamb, which only arrived in Caracas in October of 1808, and it is universally dated as having come off the press on 20 April!

Very Rare.  This broadside was unknown to Medina and is only the 14th item in Pedro Grases chronological list of things printed in Venezuela. Grases located only the copies in the Public Record Office (London) and the Archivo de Indias (Seville). Searches of NUC and WorldCat fail to find any copy at all. Further, no copies were found when searching the OPACs of the national libraries of Venezuela, Colombia, Spain, France, and England: Evidently, this is only the third known copy.

•  Not in Medina, Caracas; not in Villasana. Grases, Historia de la imprenta en Venezuela, Repertorio #14. As issued. Worming in fore-margin, touching but not costing three letters; repaired. A very good copy.

Binding:  Splendid18th-century embroidered binding of gold wire and silver and colored threads over white silk, each cover featuring one pink flower with a long green stem and leaves at its center. Raised wide swirls of silver with touches of gold surround this in relief, the whole cartouche being set on a background of densely laid-on metallic (silver?) threads semé in gold; a thin gold border edges the covers, with spine sewn in a relatively simple pattern of leaves and crossbars. Boards cut flush with text block, text of calendar section interleaved with blanks for memoranda. All edges gilt.

Contained in this little book, surrounded on each page by a simple woodcut border, are the birthdays of European royals, including newborns; woodcut illustrations of moon cycles and numismata; tables of international currency values, tariffs, and taxes; names of government officials in Liege; a town calendar of events, meetings, and saints' days; and anadvertisement for the publisher, who sold the present almanac in various bindings and other such “cute New Year's Gifts,” including Paris almanacs, at his local shop.This was the fanciest binding style offered chez Dessain, according to his ad!

Provenance:  Ex musaeo Hans Furstenberg (gilt-stamped russet leather bookplate, front pastedown), the famous collector of 18th-century French books.

WorldCat finds similar little almanacs from the same period, butnot this.

•  Binding as above; worn at edges, longest stitches across spine loosening, silver thread tarnished as virtually always and colored threads fading. Minor offsetting from bookplate onto title-page, else in good condition.  Housed in a 19th-century marbled paper–covered slipcase.  (30397)