Provenance:  From the collection of 19th-century scholar Dr. Johann August Neander (1789–1850), a convert from Judaism who became a leading scholar of Christian church history.

•  Brunet 18324.   Contemporary calf, spine with raised bands, gilt-stamped compartment decorations at top/bottom, and later black leather gilt-stamped labels; covers blind-tooled in concentric compartments. Rubbed with bits of leather lost at extremities; offsetting from leather along margins of endpapers and title-pages. Marbled endpapers, free ones missing in both volumes; front pastedowns each with library bookplate and both title-page versos with call number in pencil. Initial pages of vol. II toned. A good solid set. (21186)

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)

A disciple of William Perkins (1558–1602), Ames ran into trouble preaching extreme Puritanism at Cambridge. When his nonconformity prevented his obtaining a preaching license in England, Ames moved to the Netherlands, where he was chaplain to the commander of English forces 1611–19 and wrote many treatises in support of strict Calvinism. Although he hoped to obtain a professorship at Leiden after the Synod of Dort, Ames was prevented by King James himself, who opposed the appointment to such a prestigious post. Ames moved again, to Franeker, where he had been invited by the curators to teach. It was there he composed the present text, a theological treatise against Bellarmine from the Calvinist point of view (first published at Amsterdam in 1625–26). Ames wasinvited to America by John Winthrop in 1628 but accepted a post at Rotterdam instead. His family traveled to New England in 1637, a few years after his death.

Four parts compose this single volume, which is paginated continuously in the third and fourth part; a separate title-page introduces each section, with the imprint date 1632 on parts II–IV. The text is printed in Latin — Bellarmine's points in italic and Ames's counter-points in roman, supported by citations in italic — with decorative ornaments on the section titles and at the end of the first part. ESTC notes the ornament on general title-page exists in two forms: a bunch of fruit, or the Jesuit mark of a burning heart with “IHS”; ours is the latter.

•  ESTC S116616; STC 551. On Ames, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Contemporary vellum with yapp edges, title and date inked early to spine; lightly soiled, ore to spine, dark top edge, . Library bookplate on front pastedown, pressure-stamp on title-page and last printed leaf, old inked control number. A few spots, a few small tears, one lower corner torn away without loss; the springy binding and good overall condition suggest this book was little-used, which is confirmed by a number of uncut pages.  (30206)

•  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)

•  ESTC R172299; Wing (rev.) A3084B. Small portion of upper inner margin torn away. Tipped onto a leaf of 19th-century paper; now in a Mylar folder.

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Histoire de l'oeil was translated from the French as A tale of satisfied desire by “Audiart,” a pseudonym for Austryn Wainhouse (a.k.a. Pieralessandro Casavini), an American Harvard graduate employed by the Olympia Press in Paris who received the National Book Award in 1972 for his translation of Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity. Adapted from Bataille's revised text, first printed in 1944 — the second version, and standard French edition — this translation appeared about the same time as the third French edition. Bataille worked on other projects with both Wainhouse and Maurice Girodias, founder of the Olympia Press, and probably knew of this translation.

The Olympia Press specialized in providing the types of books that would be automatically banned in Britain and the United States. The first to publish Nabokov's Lolita and Donleavy's Ginger Man, Olympia also printed numerous exuberantly pornographic works penned pseudonymously by members of the Paris expatriate community, as well as avant-garde and controversial works by prominent Beat writers including William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso.

Scarce: WorldCat locates just two copies in the U.S.

•  D. Cullen, ed., “Bataille's Eye & ICI Field Notes 4,” The Institute of Cultural Inquiry (1997), p. 25. On this work as censored, see: L. Sigel, International exposure: perspectives on modern European pornography, 1800–2000, pp. 129–30.   Publisher's mustard-colored wrappers printed in black, with white stars and bars; extremities rubbed, wrappers a little scuffed, inside like new.  (30200)

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked signature of Henry D. Gilpin, the U.S. Attorney General who argued the Amistad case; title-page with inscription of T.L. Gilpin.

•  American Imprints 12098; Westwood, Bibliotheca Piscatoria, 77.   Publisher's mushroom-colored cloth, lightly rubbed overall, spine sunned with original printed paper label now present only in remnants. Title-page with early inked ownership inscriptions of Henry D. Gilpin. Pages darkened and spotted. A solid, sturdy copy with nice provenance.  (27329)

No copy located via NUC Pre-1956 or WorldCat.  PROBASE locates only one copy in the more than 170 Portuguese libraries that participate; no copy found in the OPAC of the Portuguese National Library.

•  Removed from a nonce volume. Slim short wormtrack in lower margin of last leaves; light soiling to edges. A nice copy indeed of a rarity.  (28603)

WorldCat and Lindsay & Neu combine to locate eight copies in the U.S.

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•  Lindsay & Neu 3238 (note collation variation).   Recent paper–covered boards, front cover with printed paper label. A few pages institutionally pressure-stamped; inked numeral in upper outer corner of p. 2. Light foxing; pinhole worming in lower margins, not touching text. Two leaves with inner margins reinforced. A nice copy of an uncommon item.  (27773)

WorldCat locates only two institutional holdings.

Provenance:  Prize copy, front free endpaper with inked inscription: “Awarded to Miss Annah E. Ruggles for Spelling, Penmanship & good Conduct. May 22 1834 1st District [O. Anyall?].”

•  Not in American Imprints.   Publisher's quarter sheep and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; rubbed and worn overall, sides scuffed, area of insect damage at head of spine. Pages foxed; three leaves and one plate with short tears from margins, not touching text or image. One plate with a not very well-focused patch of early coloring — this elephant's flank is green!?  (28426)

WorldCat and Lindsay & Neu combine to locate only three copies in the U.S.

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•  Lindsay & Neu 3437.   Recent paper–covered boards, front cover with printed paper label. All four leaves pressure-stamped. Clean.  (27779)

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•  ESTC R30642; Wing (rev. ed.) S3598.   Later plain paper wrappers with edge wear and chipping at spine. Title-page with very old institutional pressure-stamp and early inked numeral in upper margin. Outer corners stained, edges ragged; one leaf with upper outer corner torn away, with loss of a few words; title-page darkened and last page stained; still a good, usable copy.  (25531)

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There exist at least four different editions of this work. In this edition, line 9 of the title begins “VVhere” and line 19 has “Parliament, Council of State, and Army.”

•  Wing (rev. ed.) I289aA; ESTC R234704.   Removed from a nonce volume and now in later wrappers. (21001)

The set is illustrated with a total oftwelve steel-engraved portraits and three oversized, folding facsimiles of prominent physicians' letters and signatures. The binder has disregarded the printer's directions for the arrangement of the plates, and grouped them all at the fronts of the volumes.

•  NSTC 2A12623.   Contemporary speckled calf, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels; bindings mildly rubbed overall and moreso in spines' top compartments where old labels were removed(?), spines darkened and showing small cracks in leather with some joints just starting, small square of old tape at corner of back cover on vol. I. Ex–social club library: each volume with 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Vol. I with hinges (inside) starting. Occasional mild spotting or smudging, short edge tears (not extending into text) and occasional corners or lower margins partially torn away throughout. Vol. III: lower inner margins of frontispiece and engraved title-page reinforced with strip of cloth tape. An uncommon and fascinating set.  (29411)

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The anonymously published work is signed “An Antiepiscopalian”; the title-page here bears a hand-inked attribution to Matthew Wilson.

An important entry in the literature of the “American Bishops” controversy in the lead-up to the American Revolution.

•  ESTC W13420; Evans 10947; Felcone 126; Hildeburn 2370; Sabin 11876.   Recent binding: boards appealingly covered in paper printed with 18th-century music, front cover with printed paper label. Two pages (not including title) institutionally rubber-stamped. Title-page with early inked ownership inscription and annotations, later lined through, with authorial attribution in the later hand. Lacking pp. 17/18, with final leaf tattered and text on p. 19 lined-through-by-show-through of X'es “deleting” manuscript notes on the verso (still, readable). Pages age-toned and lightly spotted, with edges untrimmed. One leaf with early inked annotation along outer margin.  (28100)

Provenance:  Ownership inscription of “Conventus Gamundiani,” a Capuchin Order convent at Schwäbisch Gmünd near Wurttenburg, dated 1484 on front free endpaper and another date of “1479" on the first blank; ownership inscription of Johannes Meyer dated 1509; 19th-century library bookplate.

Evidence of readership: Five pages of contemporary manuscript notes and an index in red and brown ink, signed in two places “Johannes Meyer predicator (preacher)” and dated 1509; some 15th-century marginal notes in a very clear hand; early manicules; 19th-century notes pasted to front free endpaper.

ISTC and Goff combine to locate ten copies in U.S. institutions and two in private collections. One of the institutional copies has recently been deaccessioned and one of the private copies was sold long ago.

•  HCR1254; Proctor 4160; Goff A-867; GKW 2195; BMC, V, 192; ISTC ia00867000; Bibliotheca Apostolicae Vaticanae Incunabula A-363.   Binding as above; abraded, rubbed, and unevenly toned due to removal of clasps, bosses, and other “furniture”; numerous pinhole-type wormholes with board corners somewhat damaged. Some tiny worm holes in last few leaves and in the bottom blank margins of a few leaves; one natural paper flaw in one margin causing a hole, not near text; expectable, really minimal varieties of staining. A very stout if pillaged binding which has its charm and surroundsa fine very wide-margined copy of its landmark text.  (30138)

Provenance:  A signature “Fr. Antonio Lobato de Sto. Thomas” appears at the bottom of the last page and is almost certainly that of the the friar himself, which would mean that this is his autograph manuscript of the sermons.

•  Contemporary very stiff vellum. Binding gnawed by a rodent with loss. Written on a good quality European paper, with some soiling and an occasional stain. No faults are serious and overall this is a remarkably good survival for an 18th-century Philippines manuscript. Now housed in a blue cloth clamshell box.  (23668)

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

Present here is vol. I containing the original Greek text, the Latin translation having been printed in a separate volume.  Incomplete at the end, it lacks the final eight leaves or the last part of the Indica (37.3–43.14), only, with Arrian's Anabasis Alexandrou (Campaigns of Alexander) appearingcomplete as Books 1–7.

Binding: Contemporary alum-tawed pigskin over bevelled boards, remnants of the metal closures. Covers elaborately blind-embossed with several rolls and devices. Front cover has in its center panel the initials “A. W.,” the date 1539, and medallions of Manfred of Saxony and Luther, while the rear cover's center panel has medallions of Melanchthon and Erasmus.

•  Graesse, I, 227; Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, III, 388; Adams A2009.   Binding toned to a pleasing dark tan. Old bookplate on front pastedown. Front free endpaper torn with loss. Vol. I only, and lacking those final eight leaves; the Anabasis complete. (20418)

This example is apparently a variant state of the first edition of 1712 (ESTC does not distinguish between variants, grouping all entries under one listing), with p. 61, line 8 ending “of the Romish Persuasion.’

•  ESTC T41498. On Asgill, see: The Dictionary of National Biography, II, 159–61. Removed from a nonce volume, now in a Mylar folder. Title-page with small numeric stamp, spots of discoloration. A few pages more notably browned than their neighbors; otherwise generally clean.

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As is the case with the 70 p. issue, the first 16 p. are the same sheets as appear in the original [Richmond, April 1792] edition (Evans 26580), and were probably printed in 1791. Evans, however, postulates that the first 16 p. were printed by Dobson in September 1792. He accounts for their presence in copies of the [Richmond] edition of 60 p. by suggesting that Asplund substituted the corrected Philadelphia sheets for the unsatisfactory sheets of the earlier edition. Cf. the prefaces to the 1794 and 1796 editions, with title: The universal register of the Baptist denomination.”

In addition to its exhaustive account of who's who and what's where, this lists both principles of belief and “Rules of Decorum”; the latter, e.g., forbid laughing and whispering when another member of the association is speaking in assembly. Between the “Rules of Decorum” and the Index, Asplund remarks on the un-Christian “inconsistency” of “Keeping our fellow-creatures in bondage, who have as good a right was we, both to civil and religions liberty — Not only so; but misusing them, concerning common blessings, which certainly is a violation of the rights of nature and inconsistent with a republican government.”

•  Evans 26582; ESTC W37302.   Uncut copy. In 20th-century black buckram binding. Ex-library with bookplate but no other markings.  (24467)

•  ESTC W35823; Evans 35119. Contemporary sheep, spine with red leather title label; abraded with a few wormholes (including one track across spine) and front joint opening. Some pages quite stained, not impairing reading; a couple instances of chipping in margins with loss of letters. Front free endpaper excised. Pp. 433–44 pinned together in the inside margin. Pencil doodlings on half-title and p. [5].

The volume was published at the request of Cardinal Ascanius Columnas in an edition ofonly 750 copies, and was printed at Antwerp at the press of Moretus’ widow and sons with the famous Plantin device appearing in two versions (engraved, to the title, and woodcut, to the final recto).

A full-page engraved funeral portrait of Rubens engraved by Cornelius Galleafter Peter Paul Rubens signals the beginning of the third section, in which Jan Brant records the life of his son-in-law’s brother and transcribes his epitaph. Even Balthasar Moretus contributes an epigram in honor of the deceased.

In the fourth section, Rubens’ own orations and selected letters appear, i.a. his funeral oration to Philip II of Spain. Josse DeRycke contributed the final funerary tribute.

Done up in fully elegant Plantin–Moretus style, the volume has in addition to its careful typography and full-page plate and devices been lavished throughout with two-line block initials and four-line historiated woodcut initials; also, it offers several intricate woodcut tailpieces.

Searches of NUC Pre-1956 and WorldCat locate only eight copies in U.S. institutions, one of which has been deaccessioned; most arenot in obvious places.

•  Graesse, I, 241; Corpus Rubenianum, XXI (1977), 152.   Period-style full brown calf, covers framed in blind double fillets, spine with gilt-stamped red leather title-label, raised bands with blind tooling extending onto covers. With a few odd spots to the text only, this is aremarkably fine, crisp copy. All edges green.  (28878)

•  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)

•  Publisher's brown cloth, spines with brown paper label; several labels with ssmall brown spots, cracks, and edge chips, not too conspicuous and not affecting printing. Two leaves (pp. 343–346 of vol. X) detached from binding; long tear down center of pp. 283/284 (vol. IV), without loss of text; except for two leaves with some offsetting from laid-in scrap of paper, interiors clean. Outer and lower edges deckle, with a few signatures opened unevenly and some unopened. A very good set.  (24537)

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)