Binding: Mid- to late-19th-century binding, with binder’s ticket of the True American Bindery of Trenton, NJ.

•  Half morocco with marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped titles and blind-stamped decorative devices; edges and sides moderately rubbed with a bit of paper skinned from cover of vol. II. Most pages with some degree of foxing.  Handsome on shelf, solid in hand.

In his sermon, Torres discusses the need for and goodness that comes from schools for girls. The text is printed in roman with side- and shouldernotes in italic, and contains two woodcut initials.

Rare: Medina knew of this only from the Andrade copy. WorldCat finds no copies, nor does COPAC; no copy was found via the OPACs of the Spanish National Library and the Mexican National Library. We must wonder if this IS the Andrade copy that was seen by Medina.

•  Medina, Mexico, 1260; Andrade 763.   Modern full red morocco, gilt extra on covers and spine; gilt roll of a chain design on the turn-ins. Partial, unidentified marca de fuego on top and bottom edges. A two-digit number in ink in margin of title-page; an old waterstain curving across the bottom outside page corners, light in front and heavier towards the back. In a neat cloth slipcase.  (25764)

Is it giving away too much if we reveal that “The Girl Sport” is also known as “The Bonanza Widow”???

•  Publisher's quarter red cloth and printed paper–covered sides; spine sunned, extremities rubbed. The printed spine label is laid in. Pages clean. Swell.  (28247)

Trost (1588–1636), a professor of theology at Wittenberg, compiled this dictionary and issued it two years after publishing his much-praised edition of the Syriac New Testament with an accompanying Latin translation; the Lexicon was likewise lauded, primarily for its completeness.

This and Trost's Syriac New Testament are among the earliest books printed in Cöthen, Upper Saxony. This is the sole edition of the dictionary and it is uncommon in commerce.

•  Graesse, VII, 103; VD17 12:128565E.   Period-style calf, framed in blind; spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label, blind-tooled decorations in compartments, blind- and gilt-ruled raised bands with blind-tooling continued onto boards, ending in trefoils; signed in blind on lower rear turn-in by Grace Bindings. Title-page institutionally pressure-stamped, dedication with numeral rubber-stamped in lower margin. Pages age-toned; title-page and last two index leaves with moderate staining and spotting (in part from old binding). A strong, handsome book.  (25212)

Includes 10 pages of publisher's advertisements.

•  Flake & Draper 9036.   Publisher's grey cloth, covers bumped at corners; spine split down middle and rebacked with black cloth tape, a small piece of which has been cut away to reveal the original gilt title. Hinge inside open in places, with pp. 3–22 and pp. 75–94 detached from binding; tiny edge nicks to fore-edge of pp. 9–16. Ex-library with bookplate on front pastedown, remnants of a paper label on rear free endpaper, and charge card and pocket on rear pastedown; pressure-stamps on title-page and other library notations on p. [3]. Text clean, with no marks or soiling; definitely “used” but a worthwhile keeper nonetheless.  (24427)

Published at the beginning of renewed interest in the U.S. and England in “scientific agriculture.”

•  Goldsmiths'-Kress 25812.   Publisher's blind-embossed green cloth, rebacked with much of old spine unobtrusively reapplied. Binding a little soiled and spine darkened with gilt of title dimmed; tips of corners chipped. Instances of dust-soiling at some top margins; one leaf with loss and soiling along outer edge without affecting text. Ex-library with old rubber-stamp on the title-page and several other pages.  (24439)

Binding:  Publisher's green calf, done by the Tapley-Rutter Company, with marbled paper–covered sides, spine gilt extra, in original slipcase.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 502.   Fine, in a near fine slipcase (paper cracked along a small portion of one edge, and carefully laid back down).   (21808)

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Not in American Imprints. Binding: Krupp, Bookcloth in England and America, 1823--50, p. 40.   Publisher's brown fine-ribbed cloth of Krupp's style Rib2, covers blind-stamped with foliate and arabesque designs, front cover with gilt-stamped title; spine sunned, edges and extremities worn, sides with spots of light discoloration. Foxed moderately (not worse) throughout; front fly-leaf with pencilled gift inscription dated 1845.  (26633)

Rare: We fail to trace any copies via OCLC; only one holding listed in Shaw & Shoemaker.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 11490.   As issued, with old folds, edges slightly irregular. Two tiny holes within text, at the point where two folds intersect, and costing only a portion of two letters. Fingernail-sized stain. Four words have been redacted by the previous owner in ink, but can still be easily read.  (24636)

Fore-edge: This beautiful example bears a subtly shaded (and therefore hard to photograph)fore-edge painting showing Westminster Abbey in the background behind a waterfront view with sailboats.

Binding:  Full straight-grain dark olive green morocco, covers framed in elegant feather and pearl twist gilt roll, turn-ins with floral gilt roll. Stone-pattern marbled endpapers. All edges gilt.

•  Griffiths, Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, 1802/1.   Binding as above, mild rubbing overall with some abraded areas consolidated, joints and extremities subtly repaired, aesthetically appropriate endbands supplied. Title-page with inked ownership inscription dated 1803, “The gift of my beloved husband.” Intermittent faint spots of foxing, mostly confined to early leaves. One inked marginal annotation in an early hand, three psalms (145–47) with small inked emphasis marks, pages otherwise clean.  (28715)

Also attracting renewed interest was The Declaration of Independence: Americans and especially several entrepreneurs rediscovered the majesty of it and its wording. But it was not the Declaration as it came from a printing press that was of interest, rather it was the version indited by Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress. Coincidentally, this interest in the manuscript coincided with an upswing in the general upspringing writing masters and the publication of writing books that taught clerks, storekeepers, secretaries, and the interested populace how to write clearly and elegantly.

One of those entrepreneurial writing masters was Benjamin Owen Tyler and in 1818 he publishedthe first facsimile of the Declaration in its manuscript form. In 1817 he travelled to Washington and obtained the permission of Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush (son of Signer Benjamin Rush) to have access to the original manuscript so that he could engross his facsimile. As the facsimile proclaims: “The publisher designed and executed the ornamental writing, and has been particular to copy the facsimilies exact, and has also observed the same punctuation, and copied every capital as in the original.” The engraving also contains in attestation a facsimile signed statement of Richard Rush dated 10 September 10 and the seal of the Secretary of State's Office authenticating the copy.

The Tyler Declaration is not a one-to-one reproduction of the 1776 manuscript, for it incorporates decorative lettering not found in Thomson's original. But it certainly gives a feel for the original and it was a great advertising vehicle for Tyler as a writing master.

The whole LARGE production wasengraved by Peter Maverick, one of America's master engravers, and printed on paper with a few copies on parchment and at least one on silk. Many other facsimiles would follow. . .

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 46130.; Nash 87; John Bidwell, “American History in Image and Text” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1988, Vol. 98, pp. 247–302.   Document backed onto linen, edged with red linen tape, well-attached to an ebonized wood molding at head and roller at foot; age-toned or possibly showing discoloration from the mounting adhesive. One small piece of blank margin expertly readhered; some creasing. Overall very good. An impressive American document evoking not one but two significant patriotic periods, and one in safe and attractive condition for display.   (In its picture, it's hanging for the time being on one of our shop walls — comfortably!)   (29408)

The signers' facsimile signatures appear below the main italic text and within the decorative border.

Bidwell and WorldCat locateonly five institutional copies, none west of Charlottesville, VA.

•  Bidwell, “American history in image and text” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, v. 98, pt. 2, 1988), 15; Printing the Mind of Man 220 (for first edition).   Printed on white-coated card stock. Very Good condition.  (28506)

The prosecution of the War of 1812 had left the U.S. in debt and, invited by committee chairman John W. Eppes to opine, the Secretary of the Treasury A.J. Dallas here offers an extended analysis of how the national debt was incurred, notes that “it becomes the object first and last in every practical scheme of finance, to re-animate the confidence of the citizens,” and observes it as a state of things that must not continue that specie is being hoarded, banks are not lending, and a regularized national currency is lacking, so that “the monied transactions of private life are at a stand; and the fiscal operations of the government labour with extreme inconvenience.” Fortunately, he says, there are solutions, and he outlines these in a series of proposals including “taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,” reaching even unto “addition[s] of 100 per cent. on the present auction duties . . . [and] on the existing duties upon carriages.”

Occupying pp. 21–22 is record of the “schedule of new taxes referred to in the letter of the secretary of the Treasury . . . in which the taxes proposed . . . are principally adopted.”

But Secretary Dallas realized that the solution was not as simple as raising taxes or even doing that and instituting new ones. It would be necessary to issue bonds, and to do that the U.S. needed to establish a national bank: These propositions are canvassed here.

The act incorporating a national bank passed Congress in 1816.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 33249.   Disbound and now laid into marbled paper wrappers, pamphlet age-toned and foremargins with noticeable foxing and staining; paper good and the whole readable in several senses.  (29861)

Click the image for an enlargement.

This is the true 1802 printing: In 1804 it was reprinted in 8 pages as a preface to other related documents (Report of the Commissioners appointed in pursuance of An Act for the Amicable Settlement of Limits with the States of Georgia ... : 29th November, 1804 (p. [9]-28); and Documents accompanying the Report of the Commissioners on the Georgia Mississippi Territory, Ceded to the United States: Feb. 10, 1803 (p. [29]-140)). That 8-page reprint is sometimes found by itself without its required accompaniments and in fact is miscatalogued in Shaw & Shoemaker (3343).

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 3344. Recent paper wrappers. Slightly age-toned, otherwise clean.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 39609.   Removed from a nonce volume; inner edge a little irregular; remnants of paper adhered in inner margin. First page rubber-stamped by the War Department Library. (13169)

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 27339. In modern wrappers, old sewing holes; age-toned.

      For more PRE-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 14058. Removed from a nonce volume. Librarian's lightly pencilled notation on title-page. Stray brown spots. Very good. (18017)

Provenance: A Treasury Department Library copy, with bookplate of that institution on the front pastedown. Gilt-stamped leather labels on spine state “1798” and “First Comp’t Office”; gilt-stamped leather labels on front cover state “Register’s Office” and “Treasurer's Accounts.”

•  Evans 34885, 36541, & 36595. Contemporary or very early19th-century library sheep, spine and front gilt-stamped on green and red leather labels (as described above); binding much rubbed and abraded, with some peeling of leather and loss at head and foot of spine; front cover detached. Remnants of old paper label adhered near inner edge of front cover. Pages clean save for some offsetting.

At the heart of the controversy was Duane’s support of Jefferson for president and his exposure of the notorious Ross election bill by which the Federalists sought to thwart Jefferson’s bid for that office.

• Evans 38856; ESTC W021879. Removed from a nonce volume. Clean and in nice condition.

      For more PRE-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For a short “shelf” devoted to
                    FREE PRESS/SPEECH —
            click here.
For more of PHILADELPHIA
      interest,  click here.

In addition to the five plates (three lithographed by A. Hoen & Co. after drawings by J.H. Emerton, one by A. Gast & Co. after a drawing by Riley, and one by Sinclair & Son after a drawing by C.S. Minot), the report is illustrated with a number of in-text woodcuts of locusts and other insects, their anatomy, and their eggs and egg-masses, as well as machines and devices designed to eradicate them. Appendices include a detailed comparison of insectivorous birds and their potential benefits.

Provenance: With affixed note on Entomological Commission letterhead, addressed to the Rev. E.H. Dalrymple of Baltimore, MD, and signed by C.V. Riley; front free endpaper bearing the mailing label to Dalrymple.

•  Publisher’s quarter cloth and printed paper wrappers; wrappers darkened, with small edge nicks, cloth starting to split from top of front joint. Front wrapper and front inside cover institutionally rubber-stamped, front free endpaper with label as above. First map and title-page partially torn along inner margin; plates 2 through 5 with small nick in upper edge, not approaching image. Pages clean.

•  Original printed wrappers, chipped at spine and edges and corners without loss of printing; darkened. A shallow chip or two to title and following page, shallow dog-earing and faint waterstaining to initial leaves including title-page; otherwise, clean and free of chips or tears. (21257)

•  Sabin 51791; NSTC 2USA3337.   Removed from a nonce volume. Original printed wrappers, chipped. Two instances of blue crayon marking, in top right corners of front wrapper and top right corner of title-page. Now in a mylar folder. (8963)

•  ESTC T105844. Period-style quarter calf with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled raised bands. Title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution. Some offsetting to margins of first and final leaves, pages otherwise clean. A nice little Anglo-Americanum, very evocative of its era.

The title-page offers a handsome vignette of the Theatre, not one of the commonest ones.

•  ESTC T118673; Madan, Oxford Books, 17.   Period-style calf, framed and panelled in blind with blind-tooled corner fleurons and rather elaborate additional decorations in blind; spine with gilt-stamped title and publication information and different blind-tooled decorations. Endpapers a little smudged and title-page mounted, with edges darkened. Early inked ownership inscription in upper margin of first text page mostly torn away, with loss of a few words. Pp. 227–30 lacking, being the last bit of the printing of the Church of England's 39 Articles and the first part of the section, “De Eligendis Publicis Lectoribus.” Pages faintly age-toned, with occasional light spotting; mostly clean.  (25553)

Upchurch's account of his life and accomplishments includes descriptions of the founding of various lodges and the establishment of their rules, his observations on visiting chapters in California and a number of other states, and (in passing) the poor living conditions in San Francisco's Chinatown; it is illustrated with portraits of the author, depictions of lodge charters and regalia, and other memorabilia. Poems and eulogies were added by Samuel Booth, the editor, who also did his best to shape the plain-spoken Upchurch's thoughts into publishable form while not making any attempt at literary polish.

Binding:  Publisher's roan, front cover with decorative gilt-stamped frame and gilt-stamped facsimile of Upchurch's signature ("Fraternally yours"), back cover stamped in blind. All edges gilt.

This is the original first edition, not a modern reprint. Actual holdings (as opposed to microform or online files) are uncommon in U.S. institutions.

•  Bound as above; rubbed overall most notably at edges and joints, front joint cracked but holding, spine with paper shelving label. Front pastedown with institutional presentation bookplate, lines unused. Pages faintly age-toned, otherwise clean; one leaf with small edge chip.  (29694)

The work was limited to 100 copies, all printed on Japan vellum. It has an engraved vignette on the black and red printed title, small illustrations or vignettes on 50 text pages, 11 vignette borders or headpieces (three of them in color, 10 of them in anextra state), and 10 tipped-in color plates. The illustrations are by Henri Gervex, J.A. Gonzalès, L. Kratké, Albert Lynch, Adrien Moreau, and Félicien Rops.

Binding:  Full red crushed morocco with five raised bands. Covers with a triple-rule gilt border; spine gilt extra with gilt beading on bands. Triple gilt fillet on board edges. Wide turn-ins richly tooled in gilt and with cream and blue leather inlays that are also gilt-tooled. Blue silk pastedowns and free endpapers. Marbled paper fly-leaves. All edges gilt. Binding signed “David.”

Provenance:  Red leather bookplate of Cortlandt Field Bishop, the famed collector of the early 20th century and, at one time, owner of the TWO most important auction galleries in NY/USA.

Original full-color wrappers bound in.

•  Vicaire, VII, 924.   Uncut copy. Bound as above with original wrappers bound in. Light refurbishment of front joint (outside). A fabulous copy.   (26675)