At once a great basic resource and a rewarding volume for browsing or bibliophilic pleasure-reading, this classic work by John Carter contains over 490 alphabetical entries offering definitions and analysis of technical terms as well as the jargon of book collecting and bibliography — with ample examples. A vice-president of the Bibliographical Society and Sandars Reader in Bibliography in the University of Cambridge, its author also worked for Scribner's and Sotheby's, and over the course of his active career he wrote or edited many well known and influential books about books. With Percy H. Muir, Carter was a prime mover of the legendary 1963 exhibition from which was derived that landmark text and guide among guides — Printing and the Mind of Man.

Carter's ABC (first printed in 1952) was revised and expanded by Nicolas Barker, his friend and the respected editor of The Book Collector, making good use of the author's own annotations and bringing to bear his own great knowledge and brisk style. A new introduction was also provided. This eighth edition incorporates the "lexicon of new bibliographical terms" brought into use by the Internet, in addition to other additions and amendments arising since the publication of the previous revised edition.

The result has been lauded as "the wittiest and most instructive alphabet for incipient bibliophiles ever compiled" (Books); it has been asserted that "No better guide to the whole subject has appeared in print" (Chicago Tribune). This is a book that no purchasing collector or cataloguer should think of as a frivolous expense, and a book that as a gift to a collector or cataloguer cannot fail to please.

•  New. Complete with printed dust jacket.

Binding: Publisher's red cloth imitating pebbled morocco, covers blind-stamped, spine gilt-stamped; all edges gilt.

•  Cloth rubbed over corners and spine extremities, with spine slightly darkened. Front pastedown with old (Catholic) institutional bookplate. Pages age-toned.  (14203)

Advertisements on the last page, notably forpatent medicines.

•  Drake 13678.   Uncut copy; later stitching; corners cut. Slight dog-earing, title-page a little tattered. Early inked ownership signature at top of title-page and some marginalia or interlineations.  (9959)

•  Original self wrappers [unbound; removed]. There is a small chip out of the inner edges of the leaves and the top corners of the first two leaves are lightly creased. Very good.  (17404)

Binding:  Publisher's tan cloth, front cover stamped in black and orange, with affixed chromolithographic illustration of the sorcerer opening the hidden door for Aladdin, spine with black-stamped title.

•  Binding as above, shaken, with light dust-soiling and light rubbing to extremities, edges, and cover chromolithograph; spine with small bits of cloth lost at had and foot. Front free endpaper lacking, frontispiece recto with (childish?) ownership inscriptions and geometric doodles, title-page with same name and pencilled inscription reading “The meaning of Aladdin is the Glory of Religion.” Sewing loosening, with frontispiece and first few leaves separating along inner margin from foot. Scattered light smudges and spots. Clearly a touch over-loved by at least one youthful reader, but still delightful.  (29134)

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 396.   Binding as above, in original glassine dust wrapper and publisher's slipcase; volume clean and fresh, wrapper with small chips to spine extremities, slipcase gently sunned and with a little soiling, one corner bumped.  (30120)

Signed binding: Publisher's mushroom-colored cloth, front cover with jungle vignette stamped in blue and title in green, spine with green-stamped title. Binding signed with “H”: Frank Hazenplug (1874–1931).

•  Binding as above, minor wear to edges and extremities. Front pastedown with inked gift inscription dated 1927. Pages age-toned with occasional smudges, endpapers spotted.  (28932)

Provenance:  Front free endpaper and fly-leaf with early inked ownership inscription of James [Brown?]; title-page with pencilled inscription of Mary M. Bancroft.

•  Shoemaker 23503; Pomeroy, Alexander Anderson, 777.   Contemporary treed sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; moderately rubbed overall, spine moreso, leather tender at front joint. Vol. I only (of 12), though, of course, complete as “what it is.” Ownership inscriptions as above. Light to moderate foxing and spotting/staining; one leaf with paper flaw resulting in ragged lower outer portion.  (29705)

•  Publisher's quarter cloth with paper-covered sides, corners the slightest bit rubbed; original slipcase, this sunned and abraded with “spine” broken. Danish copyright information lined through, volume otherwise clean and quite nice internally.  (24517)

•  Original printed wrapper mimicking needlework. A pleasantly clean copy.  (29889)

•  Publisher's light boards with printed dust wrapper, in Mylar protective jacket. Nearly new.  (23241)

Binding:  Publisher's blue cloth, front cover and spine elaborately stamped in black and gilt. All edges gilt.

•  Binding as above, minor rubbing to corners and spine extremities, otherwise clean and beautiful. Hinges (inside) slightly tender. Pages age-toned and edges embrittled throughout, as per nature of the paper; title-page with small edge nick, separating along inner margin where adhered to frontispiece — still, handling this with care, one need not be afraid of it.  (28416)

Binding:  Publisher's textured cream paper–covered boards in very good imitation of morocco, front cover framed in green-stamped fillet, gilt-stamped title surrounded by gilt- and green-stamped floral sprays.

•  Binding as above, paper chipping at corners and spine, spots of light discoloration around edges. Front free endpaper with nicely inked Christmas gift inscription dated 1900. Some pages with mild foxing along inner margins, otherwise clean. A light and sweet production.  (28455)

•  Ex-library with blind pressure- and rubber-stamps, properly deaccessioned.

•  Original green cloth stamped in gold, cloth slightly soiled and interior with a bit of cockling (not, really, staining) from moisture intrusion to lower margins. Though the price is much reduced here, recognizing faults, the book is actually less “reduced” than the price is!  (29037)

•  Wright, III, 168.   Publisher's cloth, spine gilt-stamped, front cover stamped in “silver” and gilt; cloth a touch rubbed over corners and spine extremities, otherwise clean and neat. Sewing breaking, not because this is a “bad” copy but because it's the nature of the thing.  (12987)

BAL notes that the book went through an unknown number of reprintings; the present example has the frontispiece in black and light brownish-grey, Craighead and Jenkins on the copyright page, “Dick and Fitzgerald's List of Publications” as the first ad with “Inquire Within for Anything you Want to Know” at the head, “Dick & Fitzgerald” as the spine imprint, the publisher's monogram blind-stamped on the back cover, and yellow endpapers.

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with pencilled ownership inscription of P.P. French, dated 1859 with note, “R.R. car” (back free endpaper with pencilled anecdote about this copy's purchase aboard a train); front pastedown with simple rubber-stamp of Amos T. French (a trustee of the Tuxedo Park Library and son of one of the main proponents of the fraudulent Wyoming Pacific Improvement Co.); bookplate of Francis Massey O'Brien (bibliophile and bookseller in Portland, Maine).

Evidence of Readership: In addition to the above, other pencillings to fly-leaves/endpapers and four illustrations with pencilled captions, Carroll's story with pencilled annotation at head.

•  BAL 7094; Wright, II, 163.   Publisher's olive green pebbled cloth, covers with decorative blind-stamped frames; front cover with gilt-stamped comic vignette of a bearded gentleman hauling a harp on his back while Lilliputian types swing from his beard and dance on his harp. Spine gilt with title, publisher, and a different harper-and-harp device, sunned; binding overall slightly shaken, minimal wear to extremities. One leaf with short tear from lower margin, not touching text. Some pages lightly age-toned, annotations as above, pages otherwise clean. A classic of 19th-century light-hearted literature and comic illustration.  (30074)

•  Very good; front cover bright and unmarked, spine notably faded, corners and spine extremities gently worn. All edges gilt. Pages very clean. (1908)

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