BIBLIO-GIFTABLES

With Commentary on . . .
the Unsettled State of Strawberry Cultivation

•  Third revised edition, originally published in 1836; many new varieties of fruit are discussed and a number of articles have been added or rewritten. The volume is illustrated with in-text wood engravings of berry varietals. The author was a prominent laborer on behalf of the Sunday School movement. Click the images for enlargements.

Signed binding: Publisher's dark violet cloth, covers with blind-stamped strapwork and floral decorations, spine with gilt-stamped title. Front panel stamped “Davies & Hands” around each corner.

•  Binding as above with minor rubbing, spine and portion of front cover faded to olive. Scattered foxing; one corner torn away (not touching text).  (29034)

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Third Lessons in ReadingALOUD, Illustrated

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•  Revised edition of this reader: Short pieces to be read aloud, with notes regarding proper pronunciation, accents, and expression — the whole providing a nice overview of contemporary literature considered appropriate for juveniles, emphasizing PERFORMANCE.

The poems, stories, and Christian meditations are illustrated with a number of in-text wood engravings, including an image of Marion's Men and one of the two Native American “Children in Exile” of J.T. Fields's poem; the front cover scene of a young boy declaiming to his mother and sister was engraved by John Karst after George White.

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with ownership inscription of a Miss Brewer inked twice, once faintly as Harriet and once a little more darkly as Hattie (dated 1870); title-page same name in upper margin (very faint) and front cover with very very faint fourth signature.

•  Publisher's quarter sheep and printed paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and embossed stars within circles, all edges marbled (now faded); spine head chipped, corners bumped, general rubbing and paper darkened. Ownership indicia as above; early hand-coloring to title, probably Hattie's. Intermittent mild to moderate foxing.  (28421)

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Spenser Susan Hawk Trouble

•  First trade edition, first printing.

•  Fine copy in fine dust jacket, the flaps unclipped and retaining original price and month/year printing code.

“Clear, Complete & Concise”;  Elegant Yet Economical Cookery

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•  Illustrated, opinionated, forward-looking cookbook. This is cookery of a distinctly modern flavor, considering the careful directions, the canned vegetables utilized in a number of recipes, the notes on when frozen birds are or are not acceptable, and the occasional sharp editorial comment (after remarking that some people boil geese before roasting in order to remove the strong flavor, she says, “Why not have something else if you do not like the real flavor of the goose?”).

According to Cagle & Stafford: “First edition, late printing, Boston, no date, but after 1887 when Miss Parloa's Kitchen Companion, mentioned on the title-page, first was published.” The famed head of the School of Cooking in Boston, editor for several years of the venerable magazine Good Housekeeping, and pioneer in “domestic economy,” Parloa here offers extensive information on seasonal shopping, kitchen furnishings, and cuts of meat (the latter two topics illustrated with a number of in-text wood engravings) in addition to the recipes and how-tos; a section of blank leaves for note-taking is provided at the back.

Binding: Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover pictorially stamped with rules, flower and foliate designs, and a platter-bearing female cook in black and maroon; spine with gilt-stamped title and black-stamped decorations.

•  Bitting 356; Brown, Culinary Americana, 1519; Cagle & Stafford 595.   Binding lightly worn overall, edges and extremities rubbed; no frontispiece present and apparently none is called for here as (unlike in other printings) the list of illustrations does not mention it. Intermittent mild to moderate spotting, some page edges slightly ragged. A few recipes with early pencilled annotations and a solid copy — an excellent example of a used but not battered cookbook.  (28483)

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Dulac Illustrations

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•  Pater's retelling of the tale from Apuleius's Golden Ass, printed in the Trajanus type designed by Warren Chappell and here set by hand, illustrated with Edmund Dulac's watercolors, in a binding done by Frank Fortney. The appropriate “Sandglass” Heritage Club newsletter is laid in.

•  Publisher's red buckram, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped title, in publisher's metallic paper–covered slipcase; volume clean and fresh, slipcase showing shelfwear. An attractive copy.  (29938)

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Mystic or Pragmatic Wife?

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•  First edition: Acclaimed play from a prominent Spanish realist author, addressing issues of class, materialism, and feminism.

•  Palau 220783.   Contemporary quarter maroon sheep and red pebbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and compartment decorations; spine attractively darkened, edges and extremities rubbed, sides with spots of discoloration. Front free endpaper with private shelf-code sticker; title-page with private collector's rubber-stamp. Pages age-toned, with some scattered small smudges or spots of light staining.  (29936)

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“To Lay the Foundation of aPublic Free school or academy”:
This is ANDOVER

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•  First print appearance of the first constitution of the first great American preparatory school, written in 1778 at the time of the Academy's founding. Most especially, students were to learn “the GREAT END AND REAL BUSINESS OF LIVING.”

This is the genuine 1817 edition, not a modern reprint.

•  Sabin 1438; Shaw & Shoemaker 41808.   Recent light blue paper–covered boards, front cover with printed paper label. One leaf with short tear from outer margin, not touching text. Pages lightly age-toned, otherwise clean.  (28150)

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ManufacturingVery Various Articles for Market

Trade “secrets” and private recipes.

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•  Sole edition: Practical guide to producing various commercial, cosmetic, and quasi-medical goods, intended for those inclined to set up shop for themselves; the “recipes” for amandine, blacking, face powder, corn salve, fly paper, egg preservatives, an ink eraser, and a simple microscope are exact and interesting.

Publishers' advertisements at back offer other useful volumes, and tout this one as, “not by any means a clap-trap book, though it exposes many clap-traps.”

•  Publisher's black pebbled cloth, covers blind-stamped, spine with blind-stamped title; limited fading and rubbing, sewing starting to loosen. Front pastedown with inked inscription, front free endpaper with intriguing “Fraters Florere” rubber-stamp. Pages faintly age-toned, otherwise clean.  (26631)

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PhiladelphiaPoets, Playwrights, & Publishers BEWARE

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•  A well-done poetic skewering of prominent literary Philadelphians (poets, playwrights, journalists, periodical editors and publishers) of the mid–19th century as well as fulmination on some practices and events. Uncommon, as one would expect, asprivately printed.

•  Sabin 62915.   Publisher's plain dark gray boards, front cover with “Parnass” etched in an early hand; rubbed overall with front joint carefully repaired, spine and edges subtly restored with toned repair tissue. Ex-library, spine with remnants of paper shelving label, front pastedown with faint traces of now-absent bookplate, pencilled annotation along inner margin of first text page. Front pastedown with early pencilled note regarding contents. Light foxing, a bit of soiling.  (24837)

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Printed in Black & Red — Woodcut Initials — PLANTIN LEAVES

•  Each leaf now available has a single woodcut historiated initial measuring about 30 x 30 mm or 1 1/4" by 1 1/4", not colored or illuminated but bordered and highlighted in red.
Each: $30.00

Available AT THIS WRITING, subject to prior sale: D (man kneeling in prayer, before a radiance), I (Sts. Peter and Paul), M (woman giving alms), and S (the Savior[?] with an orb).

•  Each leaf is offered unmatted, in a museum-recommended and -approved clear Mylar sleeve that will allow it to be enjoyed without worry of soiling it with hand oils or dust.

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Philadelphia's “Mad Men”— 1956!

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• “The Poor Richard Club is one of America's oldest and largest advertising organizations,” as stated by this membership publication on p. 8. Illustrated with a photograph of the Club's handsome building, then located at 1319 Locust Street, Philadelphia, this offering includes a typewritten letter on Club stationery, laid in.

The sections offering the house rules, by-laws, committee-lists, and so forth are expectably full of period flavor (the card room closes at midnight, no ifs, ands, or buts); but the simple listing of members and their business affiliations is suggestive as well.

The Club's published history seems to be readily available online; evocative ephemera like this, Not.

•  Original embossed ecru wrappers, light age-toning; edges lightly discolored. One member's name is checked in the roster, in ink; otherwise clean and very good.  (10346)

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Westward!

Post, Charles Cyrel.

•  Novel about the 1880 gunfight at Mussel Slough, in California, between settlers and the agents of the Southern Pacific Railroad. With engraved plates. Testimonials (in the back) compare it to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

•  Publisher's brown cloth, stamped in black and “silver”; front and spine with decorated with a frontier scene showing Conestoga wagons in a wilderness landscape with rising sun in the background. (We can't seem to get a photograph of this that doesn't "glare out.")  Bright with a few flecks of white (paint?). Spine slightly rubbed on joints and at head and base. Pages toned. Good+. (20739)

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The Opposite of a Good Sport is aGAMESMAN

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•  “Being some account of the activities and teaching of the Lifemanship Correspondence College of One-upness and Gameslifemastery,” illustrated by Lt.-Col. Frank Wilson. This is the third book in Potter's popular “Gameslife” series, in which frolicsome pupils are taught how to b.s. their way through life, literature, driving, hunting, wine selection, etc., generally via dubiously ethical techniques of causing other people to question their own judgment.

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)

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“In Vienna Everyone Worships the Opera”

•  First U.S. edition: Extensive andextensively illustrated  history of “the very center of Viennese culture.” Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Publisher's cloth, virtually pristine, in excellent dust wrapper with minimal rubbing to spine extremities.  (26317)

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Illustrations byDULAC

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•  This eccentric Russian fairy-tale is retold here in prose by Edmund Dulac, the noted children's book illustrator, from the poem by Alexander Pushkin. Dulac, in the foreword, asserts that the meaning of the tale is not easily understood, seeing it as belonging to a “class of folk tales that start as clear and simple myths and . . . have other myths or incidents, often irrelevant, added to them from generation to generation in order to make them more entertaining.” However, it has usually been interpreted as a kind of political satire.

Edmund Dulac created the book's enchanting illustrations, consisting of 10 full-page and six in-text watercolors, a two-color decorative title-page, and decorative head- and tailpieces, and initials, also in two colors. Ernest Ingham designed the book using a monotype Poliphilus font.

The binding is full Russian-red cloth with apolished brass design of a cockerel set in the front cover and a gilt-lettered title on the spine. This edition is limited to 1500 copies and this offering includes the monthly mailing notice.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 205.   Binding as above. In a glassine wrapper with shallow edge tears and chips, contained within a chemise covered with Russian-red paper with gilt cockerel design with gilt-lettered spine; spine sunned and paper chipped. The whole in an unevenly sunned slipcase, with slight loss of paper to top edge at mouth and spine. A fine book, in a good+ slipcase.  (22314)

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TO Part XXI . . .

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