Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  ESTC R24103; Lowndes 888; Wing (rev. ed.) S6383 (noting the true publication date). On Gibson, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Recent quarter calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and publication labels and gilt-stamped compartment decorations, leather edges tooled in blind. Lower (closed) edges and title-page recto and verso institutionally rubber-stamped; last page with affixed printed errata slip. Back fly-leaf with early inked annotation; text with a very few instances of inked bracketing in an early hand, pages otherwise clean. All edges speckled in red and brown.  (25422)

Scarce

•  Creased with slight soiling along crease, edges slightly ragged, otherwise in good condition; now in a Mylar folder. Tipped onto a blank leaf bearing a watermark of 1826.

•  ESTC T8304. Contemporary full calf, covers framed in blind using double fillets on three sides and a floral roll on the fourth; rebacked and corners redone at some point using lighter calf, gilt-stamped leather title label. Abraded and worn, with front hinge(inside) tender. Pages age-toned, some more so than others; yet the volume almost entirely free of spotting. (Our image is a bit distorted, above right — Nutt & Gosling could print in straight lines, and did!)

ESTC describes only Scottish holdings of this item

•  ESTC T200651. Tipped onto a leaf of 19th-century paper; in a Mylar folder. Darkened, last page with a short closed tear and with light-colored staining partially obscuring a few letters.

Respectably produced in the contemporary style of English law-printing, set almost entirely in gothic with a large initial containing trumpet-blowing cherubim.

•  ESTC N51532. Disbound from a nonce volume, now in a Mylar folder. Title-page with small tear to outer margin, lower outer corner lost. Pages clean and crisp.

•  Removed from a volume and old sewing holes visible in inner margins. Last leaf detached and reattached with archival-quality tissue tape. A clean copy.

•  Removed from a volume and resewn. A clean copy.

A good example of the solid, workaday English law-printing of its period, opening with an attractive foliate initial crowned with a seated griffin.

•  ESTC N57352. Removed from a nonce volume. Pages clean save for some very minor browning in outer margins.

“the integrity of the legal character

•  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)

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

Following Hillhouse's discussion of his purpose and reasoning, the actual amendments have a separate title-page.

First edition.  Second and third editions were printed at New Haven by Oliver Steele & Co. in the same year as this first.

•  Sabin 31883; Shaw & Shoemaker 15230.   Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with printed paper label. Pages with a few scattered spots of light staining and occasional early inked corrections; old stitching holes in inner margins. Page edges untrimmed. In fact, quite a nice copy.  (25210)

Despite Hope's having been English and even knighted, this work was apparently never printed in England.

Binding:  Publisher's red cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and blind-stamped garden design, spine with gilt-stamped title. Signed binding: Front cover with monogram of a J crowned with E (unidentified designer).

•  Binding as above, cocked, with minimal rubbing to extremities. Front free endpaper with inked gift inscription dated Christmas 1904. A few corners bumped, one torn away. Pages very clean. A bright, pretty copy.  (29132)

A New York printing was issued simultaneously.

•  Howes S218; Library Company, Afro-Americana, 4994; Sabin 33240.   Recent very handsome black moiré cloth, spine with printed paper label. Original printed paper front wrapper bound in. Wrapper, title-page, and last text page tattered (wrapper significantly, pages less so) and now mounted; wrapper with inked ownership inscription dated 1896. Pages age-toned, with intermittent foxing.  (25316)

He was shot to death in his study on 14 September by a still unknown gunman using a shotgun!

Craig Walley's relatively recent Murder at Mount Hermon: The Unsolved Killing of Headmaster Elliott Speer has resurrected interest in the mystery.

•  Original wrappers. Fine. (17126)

This was long most commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but recently, on the basis of new scholarship, authorship has been ascribed to Richard Jackson, a London barrister and colonial agent with whom Franklin collaborated in other publications. Franklin and his son, William, certainly supplied many of the materials that formed the basis of the book, which was published during Franklin's first mission to England.

Provenance:  Large signature of “Jo. Kirkbride” dated “Septr 30th 1759" on front free endpaper.

Manuscript additions: Under this ownership signature, in a later, much smaller hand, are five lines of speculation as to the work's authorship; a date is corrected on p. 263. Between leaves B3 and B4, a leaf is bound in containing, on its two sides, a handwritten “List of Governors of Pennsylvania — continued”; this, with one addition to the printed list on p. 262, takes the chronology through John W. Geary, inaugurated in 1867.

•  Sabin 25512 (noting that the editor of the second edition (Philadelphia, 1812) “had no doubt as to [Franklin's] authorship” and supplied his name); Sparks, Franklin, III, 109 (affirming that the volume “was prepared under [Franklin's] direction, and doubtless from copious materials furnished by him”); ESTC T117618.   Recent quarter calf, old style, with raised bands accented with gilt beading on each band, a gilt center device in each spine compartment, and a green leather title label. Boards covered with a stone pattern marbled paper. Title-page with two old ink blots; text lightly and uniformly age-toned. Inscriptions/additions as noted.  (25085)

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)

Provenance:  Library of the House of Representatives with spine label to that effect and one rubber-stamp.

•  Sabin 36179.   Publisher's full sheep, lightly rubbed; front joint (outside) just starting. Some browning of the edges of the early and late leaves by chemical transfer from the binding turn-ins.  (30018)

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.

Vol. I opens with a rather nice mezzotint portrait of Wirt, engraved by A.B. Walter after Charles B. King; vol. II with an oversized, folding facsimile of a letter from John Adams.

•  BAL 11056; Cohen 2161; Howes K87; Sabin 37415.   Publisher's brown cloth, covers framed in blind-stamped strapwork, spines with gilt-stamped title and blind-stamped decorations; cloth lightly dust-soiled, chipped at corners and spine extremities. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, rubber-stamp on title-pages. Vol. II: one leaf of contents with two short tears. Pages clean.  (29413)

•  Stiff printed wrappers, center bit of top edge a trifle bumped. Near fine. (23499)

•  NSTC 2K6435, Imprint 1. Removed from a nonce volume. A few light brown spots.

•  Sabin 38070; Shoemaker 5776.   Period-style quarter tan cloth and light blue paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Pages lightly cockled, with minor offsetting, first and last few leaves darkened. Outer edges waterstained, extending into outer margins in latter portion of volume and across text for the last few chapters — never distressing or impeding reading, but reducing the price of the volume.  (28741)