•  Lowndes 1869; NSTC L976; Schweiger, I, 238. Not in Dibdin.   Mid-20th-century half brown morocco and light green cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title, compartments with gilt-stamped floral and foliate decorations; spine gently sunned, extremities slightly rubbed. Top edge gilt. Front pastedown with bookplate as above, front free endpaper with inked inscription of Douglas F. Bauer, dated 1970. Front hinge (inside) unobtrusively reinforced with long-fiber tissue. Text with scattered light foxing, frontispiece and map affected more heavily; a few other spots only. Handsome and interesting.  (29763)

The volume is printed with the original language and spelling preserved, and is illustrated with a woodcut frontispiece of a fisherman taken from de Worde's 1518 edition that is cited as the earliest known depiction of an angler fishing with a rod, as well as with six woodcuts (provided at the back of the volume in the form of four plates) showing types of poles, hooks, etc. As the title-page proclaims, the work was printed with the types of John Baskerville, making it one of the last such printings done in England. A later hand has helpfully added pencilled marginalia clarifying archaic or obscure terms and suggesting subject headers.

•  NSTC 2B20037; Keynes, Pickering, 42.   Later half calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label, gilt-decorated raised bands, and gilt-stamped fishing creel devices in compartments; spine label with small edge chips and mild rubbing to paper. Pencilled annotations as above, pages and plates otherwise pleasingly clean.  (28566)

This is no “game” for the bull, of course.

Rare.  No copies traced via the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal’s online catalogue, nor via NUC Pre-1956, OCLC, and RLIN.

•  A little light spotting and soiling. Inked numeral on first page.

The plates are signed “F. Kearny,” an artist born in Perth Amboy, NJ, who studied drawing with Archibald and Alexander Robertson and engraving with Peter Maverick. From 1810 to his death in 1833 he practiced engraving in Philadelphia.

There are two states of gathering “U”: this copy has the typographical error “tibbon” with the stop-press correction to “ribbon” on p. 235.

The volume ends with advertisements for several sporting and fishing goods suppliers.

•  Shoemaker 27838; Howes K108; Henderson, American Sporting Books, 6; Phillips, Sporting Books, 21; Streeter Sale 4084; Bennett, Practical Guide, 60–61. On Stauffer, American Engravers, I, 148–49.   Publisher's sprinkled sheep with simple rope roll in blind on board edges, some abrasion to leather; round spine with gilt double rules forming “spine compartments,” black leather title label. The usual light and scattered foxing noted in all copies, nothing more. A very nice copy.  (28553)

true first edition of the unofficial second series

playing whist

The first series made its first appearance in book form in London, 1823. The authorized second series was not published until 1833, under the title The Last Essays of Elia; the pieces selected for the unauthorized American second series offered here are different from those contained in that volume, and mistakenly include three essays written by other hands.

•  Shoemaker 33813 & 33814; NCBEL, III, 1225; NSTC 2L2346.   Vol. I: Uncut copy. Publisher's quarter once-red cloth and paper sides, covers printed with “Elia” within a simple frame, spine with printed paper label; binding rubbed and lightly soiled, spine sunned to yellow. Repaired tear to one leaf, touching text without loss; remarkably clean and sound. Vol. II: Contemporary speckled sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; rubbed, and head of spine chipped with old refurbishing. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate and call number ticket on front pastedown, front free endpaper with inked numerals, title-page pressure-stamped. Author's name inked on title-page; front free endpaper and title-page reinforced at fore-edge (the latter from the back). Both volumes age-toned, with intermittent spots of staining; advertisements absent. The set now housed in a quarter blue morocco and blue cloth–covered clamshell case with marbled paper–covered sides and gilt-stamped spine.  (26434)

•  Cahoon, 42.   Quarter gilt cloth and boards, gilt label. Fine in tissue dust jacket.  (24865)

Provenance:  Ex-German Society of Pennsylvania Library, a German-American social organization.

•  Publisher's green cloth stamped in blind on covers and in gilt on spine (with a knight, bishop, and castle in addition to author and title); a little cocked and bottom edges worn. Front free endpaper separated and rear one chipped. Ex–social club library: call number on endpaper, rubber-stamp on title- and two other pages, no other markings. Clearly a book that was often read and consulted with some soiling and staining resultant; text not chipped though printed on inexpensive paper.  (26923)

•  Charming and charmingly illustrated Victorian tales, poems, and songs for children, many featuring animals — plus a series of lessons on astronomy. Almost every page incorporates a steel- or wood-engraved image; variously sized, many of these are full-page. (The final illustration, of a young miss playing piano with her little lapdog “singing” along, is especially appealing.) Music is included for “The Old Year and the New,” “Chipperee, Chip,” “Song of the Cat,” and many other tunes.

•  Contemporary half roan and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and date; binding scuffed. Two leaves with chips in lower margins, with loss of about four letters; two pages with spots of staining, pages otherwise clean. This copy evidently was never abused by childish hands, although the magazine certainly deserved to be pored over — really, this is a wonderful little book.  (29570)

Save just one instance of Latin, the “Impressi” printed in roman on the title-page, the entire volume is in Greek elegantly printed in black with some red, including on one leaf several capitals floating in the margin just outside the justified text. A few large floriated initials — two red, introducing the Olympia and the Pythia — and a handful of interesting small ornaments decorate the headings of major sections. The copious scholia, also printed in Greek, engulf the text, typically filling at least seventy-five percent of each page with notes on the subject, syntax, and even scansion of Pindar's poetry.

Chigi's good friend the Pope granted the right to print this work exclusively to Kallierges for five years.

Provenance:  Willm. Markham (his bookplate, front pastedown, covering another); Ed. Jameson (inscription above title).

Marks of readership: A partially legible early ink scrawl in Italian below the title and a one-line note faded to illegibility on another leaf; one missigned leaf corrected in manuscript; sparse underlining and annotations in brown and red ink; and, on eight leaves ruled for notes bound in at end, entries (one or several) in an early hand to most columns.

•  Adams P1221; Brunet, IV, 658; Dibdin, II, 286 (“scarcer and dearer than the preceding [edition]”); Graesse, V, 293–94; Sandys, II, 80 & [107]; Schweiger, I, 234; S. Fogelmark, “The 1515 Kallierges Pindar: A First Report” in [Greek title]. Studies in Honour of Jan Fredrik Kindstrand. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Graeca Upsaliensia 21, VIII, pp. 37–48, and his forthcoming monograph.   18th-century brown calf, covers bordered with gilt triple fillets and an interior roll alternating a flower and a dotted arch; marbled endpapers and all edges red. Board extremities bumped/scuffed and volume rebacked with gilt morocco spine labels (original leather discolored where laid over the new material); hinges (inside) subtly repaired with similar marbled paper. Intermittent foxing and generally light old waterstaining, the latter chiefly to lower margins or across corners but occasionally ranging upwards or across text; fore-edges of ff. 231 affected, with final leaf significantly stained and extensively repaired/reinforced without loss to text or to printer's device on the verso. A masterpiece of Renaissance printing, on thick paper.  (29671)

The quoted matter in our caption is from Dibdin, who further says, “The editors of this magnificent work have taken infinite pains to bring together every thing which could illustrate and improve the reading of the poet; and . . . their edition will long remain a splendid monument of classical research and typographical beauty.”

The frontispiece and title-page here producea “spread” of Oxford’s most pompously engaging sort, the former bearing an engraved portrait of Pindar flanked by Mercury and Apollo with a winged herald bouncing by on a cloud overhead, signed M. Burghers, and the title-page featuring one of the largest and most elaborate of the press’s self-referring allegorical vignettes, a helmed Minerva surrounded by her insignia with an extensive architectural panorama of the city behind her, signed MB

Provenance:  Douglas F. Bauer (his signature, Easter 1968, on the front flyleaf, and gilt initials on the lower spine); early ink owner's mark above the imprimatur on f. [a]2v.

•  Brunet, IV, 659; Dibdin, II, 289; ESTC R20960; Graesse, V, 295; Schweiger, I, 236; Wing (rev. ed.) P2245; Brüggemann, A View of the English Editions, I, 78–79.   Modern brown cloth over boards with a gilt leather title piece and gilt lower spine (as above). Moderate foxing, age-toning, and/or soiling, variously; later quires and indices notably browned, a couple of corners torn away and one tiny interlinear hole, a very short and slim track of minor wormwork in one section, and a few natural paper flaws. A substantial, satisfying volume.  (29710)

The detail here is now interestingly “period,” and the “type” is eternal.

•  Publisher's light blue paper–covered boards, spine with silver-stamped title, in original dust jacket; volume with spine gently faded, jacket with a few tiny scuffs and spine and inner panels slightly darkened. Internally very crisp and clean.  (30125)

•  Publisher's printed paper wrappers, edges chipped and corners lost. Being a "pulp" novel, this is on pulp paper — pages therefore age-toned, brittle, and breaking off where the corners are sharply dog-eared. (12422)

gambling

Is it giving away too much if we reveal that “The Girl Sport” is also known as “The Bonanza Widow”???

•  Publisher's quarter red cloth and printed paper–covered sides; spine sunned, extremities rubbed. The printed spine label is laid in. Pages clean. Swell.  (28247)

Click the images for enlargements.

This copy with an authorial inscription to a recipient whose name has been gently, but entirely, obliterated!

•  Good quality red cloth, original wrappers bound in; grey spine label. Very good copy.  (21546)

Binding:  Publisher's brick-colored cloth, front cover decoratively stamped in black and gilt withthree affixed CHROMOLITHOGRAPHIC illustrations of children at play.

•  Binding as above, spine and extremities moderately worn, small spots of light discoloration mostly confined to spine and edges. Pages faintly age-toned with intermittent light spotting; six images with early hand-coloring as above. Really, a very pleasing copy anda covetable gift for anyone who appreciates the joys of childhood.  (30281)