Provenance:  Front free endpaper of vol. I with inked inscription: “Presented to the 'German Society Library of the State of Pennsylvania' by the Compiler,” signed “Wm. M'Carty.”; same to vol. III. Vol. II from a second 19th-century Philadelphia subscription library!

•  American Imprints 42-3093; Sabin 42997.   A married set. Vols. I & III: Publisher's brown cloth, covers framed in blind, spines with gilt-stamped title and two different vignettes; corners and spine extremities chipped (foot of vol. I revealing printed music beneath the cloth). Ex–social club library with remnants of shelving labels on spine heads, 19th-century bookplates and call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages. Vol. II (Naval) sometime rebound in navy leather over blue cloth, leather edges blind-tooled, spine with gilt-stamped leather title label; spine sunned, rubber-stamp of a different 19th-century library on title-page and a number of other pages, small repair to dedication leaf of vol. II. All volumes with occasional short marginal edge tears or corners chipped away; some pages lightly age-toned. All meaty, all sound for use, all evocative; despite “mixed” nature, a very pleasant set.  (3283)

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

Binding:  Publisher's tan cloth, front cover pictorially stamped in black and white; designed by Thomas Watson Ball and with his “B” cipher. The cover depicts a richly dressed man at a tickertape machine. Top edge gilt.

•  Bound as above; black stamping showing light wear: a solid, clean copy.  (22208)

•  Publisher's purple cloth, stamped in gilt on the spine; boards lightly soiled, corners bumped; spine sunned, pulled at head and foot, cloth of spine with a couple of very tiny tears and black spots. Front pastedown with bookplate. Small piece cut from bottom blank areas of four leaves of preliminaries, blank leaf at front torn out. Several pages with stains in margins. Very good. (14498)

Meade was, briefly, a member of the 3rd Philadelphia Battalion, but saw no military action himself; his grandson was Gen. George Gordon Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac.

•  On Meade, see: Dictionary of American Biography, XII, 473–74. Creased along folds, with a few ink blotches and very minor offsetting. Later pencilled note beneath signature.

•  Bound as above; moderate rubbing to corners and joints, front cover with small areas of faint staining, one small spot of insect damage to each cover. Pages age-toned with occasional faint spotting, otherwise clean. A lovely little book and an engaging example of its genre.  (27353)

Also included is a woodcut map showing Europe, the Atlantic, and the New World.

•  Palau 159680; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 609/77; Medina, BHA, 123. Old vellum; red leather, gilt-lettered spine label; some staining, and chipping to edges and label. Old, careful repairs to interior worming occasionally cost individual letters (but never sense) or a little loss to an illustration. Old rubber-stamps and red and black ownership label on title-page; inked notations on title-page and front pastedown. All edges speckled red.

This is numbered copy 932 of 1650 printed on grey Van Gelder paper at the Curwen Press.

Provenance: Front pastedown with bookplate of prominent New Yorker E. Coster Wilmerding.

•  BAL 13726; McKitterick/Rendall/Dreyfus 36.   Publisher's red cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title, in black-printed dust-wrapper; spine slightly sunned with extremities rubbed, dust-wrapper split and significantly chipped with most of spine paper lost. Provenance as above, and the volume clean.  (28230)

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  Contemporary mottled calf, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels, spine compartments with gilt-stamped floral decorations; covers mildly acid-pitted and considerably abraded, with leather lost at head of spine, corners, and joints. Spines with paper shelving labels or remnants thereof; front pastedowns each with bookplate. All edges marbled. Faint pencilled marginalia and bracketing; intermittent offsetting.  (22804)

•  Publisher’s cloth, spine with printed paper label; spine and back cover scuffed, spine label darkened and chipped. Front pastedown with institutional stamp. Many signatures unopened. Pages slightly age-toned, else clean; paper embrittled, with a few short edge tears.

•  Wing (rev. ed.) M1784; ESTC R23540. In later wrappers. A very nice copy. (21024)

Provenance:  Cortlandt F. Bishop, with his elegant red leather bookplate.

Binding:  Signed binding by M. Lortic: red morocco, gilt extra with accents of black; original wrappers bound in. Board edges with gilt double fillet; wide turn-ins with richly gilt; marbled endpapers. All edges gilt.

The prospectus is bound at the rear.

•  Binding as above, joints unobtrusively repaired, very faint traces of shelfwear to lower edges. Pages gently age-toned. A beautiful volume.  (3390)

•  Contemporary vellum, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels and gilt-stamped decorative bands; bindings lightly soiled, with spine labels chipped and rubbed, spines with shelving numbers in white. All page edges stained gold. Front pastedowns with institutional bookplates, title-pages with shadows of pencilled numerals. Vol. III lacking half-title. Intermittent light foxing, most pages clean. (14112)

Evidence of readership: In addition to the expected marking in margins indicating important statement in the text (which is extensive in this copy), folios 17r, 17v, and 18r of the second foliation have interesting marginalia .

Sabin calls this work a “rare and valuable compendium of the old mining laws and mineral customs.” Galvez was a special commissioner charged with making reforms in the governing of Mexico; his work greatly influenced the 1786 replacement of the Mexican provinces with 12 intendencias. The 18th century saw a rebirth of the Mexican and the Peruvian silver industry as new technologies and techniques were introduced. Concomitant with the increased production was increased wealth for the mine owners and the crown.

•  Palau 251938a; Medina, Lima, 1636; Sabin 56260.   Recent calf bordered in gilt tooling, spine with gilt bands and floral devices in compartments, gilt-stamped leather title label; a few very small scuffs to covers. All edges sprinkled blue and red. Title-page recto and verso with inked ownership inscriptions in an early hand. Final leaf with repairs to outer edge; penultimate two leaves with lower corners torn away, outer edge of one with small chewed portion. Occasional spots of foxing. Two worm pinholes to title-page; more extensive worming to inner margins of central 20 leaves, on some pages touching text without affecting comprehensibility. Handsome.  (3039)

This is a states' edition, promulgated by José Gómez de la Cortina, Governor of the Federal District.

•  Streeter, Texas, 880.   Very good condition. Lacking the integral blank leaf.  (24618)

•  Publisher's textured taupe silk binding, front cover with patterned coral silk insert; spine with gilt-stamped title. Dust wrapper and original slipcase present, lower back corner of jacket slightly crumpled; otherwise a gorgeous, clean copy in an undamaged slipcase.  (24683)

Blockley, in which the land in question was located, was a township located in West Philadelphia from about 1677 until its consolidation with the city in 1854. The name has lingered, although it has been superceded in general usage by the broader term “University City.”

•  Parchment crisp and untorn, with outermost folded portions lightly spotted; front with early inked title as given above, plus pencilled numerals. An evocative document connected to some very prominent names, in excellent condition, with its seal protected for its intended reuse by a diamond-shaped paper covering.

This is the third edition, following the first of 1817; the set is in the publisher's original bindings, and an uncut copy. Vol. I opens with an oversized, folding, hand-colored “Map of Hindoostan” done by Aaron Arrowsmith, while vol. II opens with an oversized, folding map of Persia, Afghanistan, etc.

•  NSTC 2M27509.   Publisher's dark red cloth, spines sunned to not-red with printed paper labels (chipped); cloth worn and wrinkling, some joints splitting, three spine heads reinforced. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages, no other markings. Vol. I map with short tear along one fold and with tear from inner margin, repaired some time ago; vol. II map waterstained, with tear from inner margin. Vols. I and II with light to moderate waterstaining to lower portions, most pronounced at endpapers; vol. II map stained; vols. III and IV with endpapers stained; vol. IV with upper and lower margins of one internal signature and last few leaves stained; vol. VI with upper edges of portion towards back stained. A few instances of scattered spotting; three leaves with short edge tears; first few leaves of vol. VI creased. Page edges untrimmed. Definitely a “used” set, but not one so “distressed” as recital of faults may imply; overall, internally mostly clean and certainly sound for use.  (28162)

The binding is full rusty-brown Nigerian goat, stamped in gold on the spine. The etchings are by Leonard Baskin, a series of five portraits tracing the downward spiral of Willy Loman — a powerful complement to Miller's portrait of a salesman at the end of his career and at the end of his rope! The plates, printed by Bruce Chandler, are each protected by a brown paper tissue guard. The book is designed by Benjamin Schiff, who chose a Bulmer font for the text.

This offering includes the monthly newsletter but not the mailing notice.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 540.   Binding as above. One of the tissue guards is loose but otherwise undamaged. Fine, in the original slipcase. A handsome production of one of the most performed plays in the world!  (21754)

Click the images for enlargements.

Provenance:  “John Wintling, his book, 1815" on front pastedown. In the State Library of Pennsylvania and given to the Crozer Theological Library; later in the library of the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School; deaccessioned.

An uncommon German-Americanum.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 32131; Arndt & Eckt 2062 (who give place of printing as Sunbury).  Publisher's sheep over paste boards, rebacked; single blind rule at edges of the boards. Library pressure-stamp on title-page; rubber-stamp on closed edges of text block. Waterstaining and age-toning without embrittlement of paper.  (27640)

“I start tomorrow on the Paris book: first person, uncensored, formless — fuck everything!” So wrote Miller to Emil Schnellock in 1931. Three years later, after some financial difficulty, Jack Kahane published Tropic of Cancer at Obelisk in Paris with money Anaïs Nin borrowed from a psychoanalyst. It is the story of Miller's first year in Paris, living hand-to-mouth as a struggling writer.

This edition is the same as the fourth edition in all but wrappers (and the same as the third in pagination, except for necessary variations on the copyright page: “Fifth printing” and “Reprinted January 1939"); our copy'sbinding is blue and white, lettered in black, not the light green wrappers lettered in darker green called for by Shifreen & Jackson.

Jack Kahane founded the Obelisk Press at Paris in 1929 to publish illicit English-language books like this free from legal censure.

•  Shifreen & Jackson A9h.   Binding as above; wrappers faded and creased along the spine, upper joints cracking. A copy that clearly was read more than a few times.  (30191)

Although whatever title-page may have been present is now lost and the first piece's beginning likewise, what is present here is a fascinating labor of love and lively-mindedness.

•  Hand-inked covers as above; edges darkened, one bright orange tie surviving and one lost. Leaves separating, first leaf lacking.  (30247)

Binding:  Contemporary crimson morocco, covers framed in wide stylized thistle and leaf gilt roll with gilt-tooled corner fleurons, spine compartments with similar gilt motifs, turn-ins with gilt roll. All edges gilt. Volume housed in recent red cloth-covered slipcase.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of collector John Train and with small ticket of Rastall & Son Booksellers, back pastedown with ticket of Leighton Son, & Hodge of London. Front free endpaper with inked inscription: “To Minnie on her marriage,” from A.B., dated Oct. 1858.

•  NSTC 2M29671.   Binding as above, minor rubbing to extremities, spine leather very slightly darkened and showing thin faint cracks. Front hinge (inside) cracked but holding. Small newspaper clipping regarding Milton and a slim silk ribbon marker (possibly once attached to binding) laid in. Plates with moderate spotting confined to upper margins only, not touching images; pages clean. An attractive and very Victorian rendition of Milton.  (30150)

The illustrations consist of six full-page watercolors by Edmund Dulac. The LEC bibliography says they were “printed in process offset,” but this is in error: The mailing notice (not present with this offering) asserts they were “reproduced in six printings by the Sun Engraving Company,” and a member of the family that owned that enterprise observes to us that it did not in fact have offset presses — while it was noted for its color letterpress productions, including the original (1940) Szyk Haggadah. The design is by John Dreyfus, who chose a monotype Bembo font printed by the University of Cambridge Press; the engraving of the music was done by G.T. Friend.

The binding is quarter gold-stamped vellum with marbled paper sides; top edges are gilt.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 250.   Binding with a light, small stain on back cover. Clean inside; bookseller's small label on rear pastedown. Original slipcase, with light scuff marks and minor paper loss at head and foot of mouth. A fine book, in a very good slipcase.  (23002)

Signed binding: Publisher's brick-colored cloth, front cover and spine with decorative gilt-stamped title and twining vine and flower motifs, front cover with “AR” monogram of designer Amy Richards (fl. 1896–1918).

•  Binding as above, slightly cocked and with corners a little bumped, spine very gently darkened and back cover with small spots, front cover with a few pinprick-type holes not detracting overly from overall appearance of design. Top edges gilt. A few page margins with faint smudges, otherwise clean.  (29769)

250 recipes making use of slow cooking

•  Bitting 326 (for 1909 & 1911 eds.); Brown, Culinary Americana, 2637 (first ed. only). Not in Cagle & Stafford.   Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black with title and images of fireless cookers; mild rubbing to extremities, very faint scratches to back cover. Front hinge (inside) with small area of insect damage near head. A clean, solid copy.  (30292)

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  Recent quarter calf, round spine; raised bands accented with gilt beading, gilt center devices in spine compartments, and two green spine labels. Combed-pattern marbled paper sides. Lacks the half-title, only; occasional light foxing. A very good copy of an interesting and now uncommon book.  (22228)