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•  Recent wrappers. Pages clean; two leaves shaved at bottom with very minor loss.

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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)

A leaflet accompanying the set tells us: “These volumes are an official publication of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York. We would like to extend our appreciation to David D. Ryus, Alan Ternes, and Louis Bilka for their contributions to this work. Editor: Barry L. Kessel and project editor: Philip R. St.Clair.”

•  Publisher's full tan calf, round spines, raised bands, gilt tooling in replication of an 1830s binding. Silk place marker in each volume. All edges gilt. With original prospectus and some advertising matter laid in, and in a brown cloth open-back slipcase. Both books and slipcase in excellent condition.  (22188)

•  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.

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According to the colophon: “Finit explicatio formalis totius primae partis Summae theologiae Sancti Thomae Aquinatis . . . Die 21. Decembris anni 1611 . . . Mantuae in aedibus Sanctissimae Inquisitionis.” The earliest edition in any U.S. library is the Venice, 1614 edition. This 1622 printing is reported as owned by only one U.S. institution, this copy having been deaccessioned by the other library of record.

•  VD17 12:643261D.   Contemporary vellum over light boards, small area of discoloration on spine; lacks the silk ties, bookplate removed, old library pressure-stamp on title (properly deaccessioned), NO rubber stamps. All edges stained blue. A very nice copy. (20728)

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.

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•  VD17 14:019976Q; Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes, 1343. Period-style morocco signed G[race] B[indings] on back turn-in, framed and panelled in gilt rolls with gilt-stamped corner fleurons, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt decorations. Lacking two final blank leaves. Title-page with inner margin repaired and with early inked ownership inscription and annotations (partially shaved); some early underlining in red and scattered instances of early inked marginalia. A few signatures browned; first and last few leaves with waterstaining to inner margins. One leaf with short tear from outer margin, not touching text; last two text leaves with upper outer corners torn away and repaired, with loss of several words. (19319)

The last leaf, filled on both sides, lists a “Grand Assortment” of books available from “J O H N M E I N”;  these are of a variety of sorts, but the one that gets an all-caps headline is a new edition of Fordyce's Sermons for Young Women!

•  Evans 10687; Drake 3164; ESTC w22665.   Sewn in original marbled wrappers. Usual foxing and light age-toning of almanacs of this era and region. Some dog-earing and “thumbing”; small piece of wrapper missing from lower spine. Else very good.  (18214)

Elegant, lithographed vignettes and devices serve as head- and tailpieces.

This work is rare: No copies were found via RLIN, OCLC, or NUC Pre-1956.

•  NSTC 2M23757; Yale University Library, Speck Collectioin of Goethe's Works, 240. Recent quarter nut-brown calf over marbled paper; spine with beaded raised bands, compartment devices, and a red leather gilt title-label. Shallow chipping to some leaves’ edges, traces of soiling and age-toning around same, and a few places with small brown spots. Rubber-stamps from a now defunct library, including on title-page. All edges gilt. Overall quite handsome.

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•  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.

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Scarce: Only two U.S. copies traced via NUC Pre-1956, OCLC, and RLIN (Harvard, LC).

•  Goldsmiths'-Kress 13422.18. Contemporary mottled green paper over cartonneé covers: paper browned, torn, and chipped, especially along spine and edges. Uncut copy. Light soiling on deckle edges, endpapers, and title-page. Some light waterstaining in parts. Pencilled notes on front free endpaper.

Scarce. Searches of OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956 find only one reported U.S. holding, and that copy has since been deaccessioned.

•  VD17 12:103685V. Contemporary speckled sheep, front cover with gilt-stamped ecclesiastical coat of arms, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title-label; gilt rubbed and dimmed (spine gilt almost entirely so), leather moderately rubbed. Front free endpaper excised; front pastedown and first three leaves with worming along inner margins, touching a few letters. Title-page with old institutional pressure-stamp and with early inked ownership inscription; title-page reverse with armorial bookplate; back pastedown with sequence of early inked names dated from 1627 through 1704, the first four all inscribed in the same hand. Pages age-toned, with scattered instances of early underlining; a nice little book.

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

Written on the rear two fly-leaves is a manuscript poem in Della Crusca's honor, “Composed by Mrs. A. M. Vining” and dated July 17th 1800.

•  ESTC W30060; Evans 25807.   Contemporary mottled sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; leather rubbed overall, binding sturdy. Front free endpaper with inked gift inscription (of Mary Goldsborough) dated 1812; front fly-leaf and title-page with early inked ownership inscriptions (Miller; one, Eliza Miller). Moderate foxing. One leaf with tear from outer margin extending into text.  (22557)

•  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)

•  Abbey, Life in England, 427; NSTC M2209; Graesse, IV, 513; Brunet, III, 1692.   Binding as above, edges rubbed. Pages and plates clean. A beautiful copy.  (22473)

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.

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)

TWO nicely accomplished pen-and-ink drawings of ships

One leaf bears a number of small photographs of young men, labelled “1915” — possibly classmates from St. Paul’s?

•  Publisher’s cloth wrappers, front cover gilt-stamped “Autographs”; edges and extremities chipped. Text block partially separated from spine. Some fading to colored pages, with occasional very slight offsetting or ink smearing.

Binding: Contemporary olive morocco, covers framed in gilt single fillet, spines with gilt-stamped title. All edges gilt.

•  NSTC T1207 (for 1801 and 1809 eds., not citing this ed.). Bound as above; spines darkened (not unattractively), some corners bumped. Front pastedowns each with armorial bookplate, one volume with additional private collector’s bookplate affixed and others with that bookplate laid in. Occasional small spots of faint foxing; one page with two drops of spilled wax.

The illustrations are full-page watercolors, six in all, by Edmund Dulac. The LEC Bibliography says they were "printed in process offset," but this is in error: The mailing notice 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. Since Hubert Foss and Edmund Dulac both died during the production of this book, a one-page photo-print from The Times of London's obituary section summarizing the achievements of these two men has been included with this offering. The monthly letter and mailing notice are also present.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 250. Two tiny stains on the fore-edge, a penstroke marking p. 54, and two other pen-point spots. With the original slipcase.

•  STC (rev.) 17947; ESTC S121879; Allibone 1325; Vancil 165. On Minsheu, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   Period-style morocco framed and panelled in gilt rolls with gilt-stamped corner fleurons, spine with original gilt-stamped leather title-label, gilt-ruled raised bands, and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments (signed by Grace Bindings in blind at inner area of rear cover, lower turn-in). Title-page institutionally rubber-stamped. Some age-toning and light to moderate spotting; one leaf with tear from outer margin into several lines of text, without loss; last leaf with small hole affecting a few words. (21047)

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•  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)