•  Sabin 1165. Original sheep, worn, dry, rubbed, joints partially open; loss of spine leather top and bottom. Expectable foxing. The illustrations still please, and the text informs.

•  Publisher's quarter cloth with paper-covered boards, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped title. Very fine. (20579)

Rare: We were able to trace only one U.S. copy of this work via NUC Pre-1956, OCLC, or RLIN.

•  NSTC 2ENG3884. Removed from a nonce volume. Light soiling and staining on title-page. Closely trimmed by binder, cutting off some sidenotes. Inked numeral in margin of title-page.

The text is printed in italic with guide letters. The printer's device appears on the title-page and on the verso of the last leaf (often lacking).

Provenance: Two old signatures on title-page, i.e., “Gilbert Boucher” and another.

•  Adams A1355; Index Aurel. 106.553; Renouard 115; Petras 223; Schweiger, I, 40.   Late 18th-century quarter sheep with plain sides. Spine tooled in gilt, rubbed, part of small label with date missing. Occasional light foxing. (20626)

•  Very good condition. Sewn.

•  Publisher's dark red cloth, stamped in gilt; front cover with a long oval illustration on-lay of a young woman. Covers soiled, front cover illustration lightly scratched. Christmas gift inscription (unsigned) on front free endpaper, dated Dec. 25, 1901. Endpapers soiled, final four pages chipped. Occasional spots of soil inside. Paper tops gilt, other edges deckle. Very good. (5851)

Binding:  Contemporary black morocco with bevelled edges, each cover deeply incised with a diamond center medallion, covers richly tooled in gilt; board edges with a gilt roll; turn-ins with wide gilt dentelles; yellow and gold endpapers. All edges gilt and gauffered in a pattern incorporating diamonds, to echo the cover pattern.

•  Not in Herbert.   Binding as above; slight wear to edges, extremities, and raised spine bands. Front pastedown with trace remains of adhered paper slip. Faint spotting to first and last few pages. Very nice. Indeed, luxurious.  (22048)

Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Bligh and one other plate showing sections of the bread fruit, this isscarce. Searches of OCLC and ESTC find only 10 copies of this edition.

•  ESTC T209375; Sabin 5910; Hill, Pacific Voyages, 135 (for London edition).   Good-quality 20th-century quarter calf and marbled paper-covered sides, spine with gilt lettering and neat blind-stamped devices between gilt-accented raised bands. Title-page with upper outer corner repaired with loss of “e” and partial loss of “g” from the word “voyage”; slight paper loss at bottom edge of one other leaf. Some foxing and browning on early and later leaves, including plates and title-page, and random spotting/staining found elsewhere; light offsetting to p. [1] from facing plate. A copy that clearly saw serious use, yet one complete with the frontispiece and plate — sound.  (23927)

The book includes eight folding maps, respectively, of the world, Africa, North America, South America, England and Wales, the Empire of Germany, and Europe.

•  ESTC N7888.   Contemporary calf, covers framed in double gilt fillets, rebacked in recent calf; raised bands defined by gilt rules above and below each band, and gilt-stamped title on a red leather label. Significant wear to corners and edges of front and rear covers; shallow chip at top edge of front cover. Title-page mounted, with upper, outer, and lower edges reinforced; early inked ownership notation (“His Book” but without a name attached!) on title-page. Some instances of mild foxing and the odd spot; light waterstaining to a number of early and later leaves, mostly in margins; offsetting from leather affecting only first three and final three leaves, at edges. First map with two repairs at top and bottom edge; closed tear at bottom and creases down center. A couple of maps with very shallow edge tears. All maps generally clean and overall in very good condition, excepting the map of Europe of which the right portion has been torn away along the fold and is now missing. Much interest and pleasure here.  (23789)

Single-click either image, for an enlargement.

Brown was an author and publisher from upstate New York who volunteered in the War of 1812. Thurlow Weed, one of his employees, described Brown in his autobiography as “an eventempered, easy-going, good natured man, who took no thought of what he should eat or what he should drink or where wither he should be clothed. He wrote his editorials and his ‘History of the War’ upon his knee, with two or three children about him, playing or crying as the humor took them.”

•  Sabin 8557; Shaw & Shoemaker 31013; Howes, U.S.iana, B-866. Original quarter tan paper over light blue paper-covered sides, recently neatly rebacked with tan cloth, with a printed paper label on the spine. Original sewing going, with a number of leaves separated. Pages untrimmed, with some edges ragged, and with varying degrees of offsetting.

In this edition Lic. Pablo de Mendibil has edited the letters into four large chapters and added lithographic portraits of Hidalgo, Morelos, Bravo, Guerrero, and Guadalupe Victoria. They are variously from originals by Gauci or unidentified artists, and are lithographed by either R.Cooper or Englemann & Co.

•  Sabin 47810; Palau 163362 (under Mendibil).   Mid–19th century half red leather, flat spine, machine-made marbled paper on covers and as endpapers, marbled edges. Leather abraded and refurbished; interior clean and nice.  (21727)

This handsome and SCARCE book is famous for its woodcut illustrations: It has one quarter-page, four half-page, one three-quarter page, and eleven full-page woodcuts. These include battle scenes, the assassination, camp life, etc., all of the figures being dressed anachronistically in Renaissance garb.

The text is printed in large gothic in double-column format.

•  Index Aurel. 128.654; Schmidt, Repertoire bibliographique Strasbourgeois, no. 91, p. 40–41; Schweiger, II, 51; not in Adams (who only lists much later editions in German). Recased in an 18th-century vellum-over-boards binding. Sophisticated copy in all likelihood, with several leaves apparently supplied from a different copy, those leaves being either slightly smaller than the others or more heavily sized. Occasional light waterstains in from a very few margins; two leaves with old scribbling in ink in margins; minor worming in lower margin of last six leaves. A very nice copy of a very scarce book that is clearly difficult to find complete, incomplete, or sophisticated.

Hatfield had published the Commentarii twice before, in 1585 and 1590, with the present printing being the most uncommon of the three; together these publications mark the first, second, and third Latin printings of the works in England. This copy lacks the two folding maps — but any example of this printing is difficult to find, with OCLC and ESTC reporting only two U.S. institutional holdings.

Binding:  Contemporary mottled calf; spine divided by triple blind-rules into four compartments, plain with no labels. Each cover bordered with a blind double rule, then within that divided (not into concentric panels but) vertically into two unequal tall compartments. Each compartment's every corner is further modestly decorated with a blind-tooled ornament resembling a very pointy strawberry. Now in a box as described and pictured below.

•  STC (rev.) 4334; ESTC S115140. This ed. not in Schweiger or Dibden.   Contemporary binding as above, worn and rubbed with front joint repaired, back joint starting just starting with volume quite firm; closely trimmed with some captions and sidenotes touched/shaved. Lacking the two maps and six leaves from the preliminaries; commentaries and final indices, etc., complete. Pastedowns and endpapers with early inked and pencilled annotations and sketches (including two ownership inscriptions dated 1708 and one sketch labelled, “a fine windy day”); front free endpaper and fly-leaf partially cut away; title-page verso with early inked annotation in Latin. A very few early inked corrections, a few instances of inked numerals in margins. Pages age-toned, with occasional light spotting; second half of volume with light waterstaining to outer margins. Now housed in an attractive clamshell case of quarter black calf over aubergine moiré silk with gilt-stamped spine, as shown, designed to resemble a bound volume.  (23931)

•  Publisher’s red cloth, without the original glassine dustwrapper and so with (at some angles) the thumb-oil prints of a reader visible; therefore not absolutely pristine but quite nice.

Scarce: OCLC and NUC Pre-1956 find only one holding, in the U.S. (i.e., Louisville, KY).

•  Removed from a nonce volume, now in a Mylar folder. Title-page with small inked numerals; last leaf with upper outer corner torn away and reattached some time ago. Lacking pp. 27–36. Complete up to (but only partly including) the Extrait of the Contrat de Mariage between Louis XIV and “Marie Therese” of Spain.  (23745)

The complete Oxford editions are generally seen bound as seven volumes, but the work appears here as one very large volume, in an attractive contemporary binding.

•  NSTC 2H39552. Contemporary diced dark blue/black calf, covers framed in blind rolls and single gilt fillet, gilt spine extra; slight wear to corners and extremities, joints just starting at top and bottom. Front pastedown with private collector’s bookplate and with institutional bookplate. Pages clean. All edges marbled. Handsome!

•  One leaf, printed on one side and creased from folding into six parts. Top left and bottom right corners torn. Tear to lower margin resulting in the loss of one or two words of text. (6336)

Present at the back of the volume isa list of “disabled men in Burillville [Rhode Island] July 1863”; a later, handwritten card with some information on Benjamin Cook and some of the pieces in this volume is laid in.

•  Contemporary half sheep and marbled paper–covered sides; binding rubbed and worn, spine head pulled. Back (inside) hinge cracked. Leaves excised at both front and back of volume. Some light spotting and staining. (20849)

This document details the first and second expeditions to the Middle East for the purchase camels (1855, 1856); it includes a report on the Zemboureks, the Dromedary field artillery of the Persian Army, and letters dated San Antonio, Indianola, and Powder Horn, Texas. It bears 22 full-page illustrations and one folding plate.

The camels were used experimentally in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, but their use was never adopted. Some escaped and for a while were feral; the vast number, however, were sold to civilians. (Government Document: Senate Ex. Doc. No. 62, 34th Congress, 3d. Session).

•  Publisher's brown cloth, stamped in blind. Spine lettered in gilt, mostly perished. Diocesan library stamp on front pastedown, no other library markings. Very good internally.

•  Brunet, II, 856; Graesse 440. Period-style calf framed in blind, spine with raised bands and otherwise very plain– no label. Title-page with faint early inked inscriptions. Colophon with margins repaired, one repair at inner margin just touching a letter of text. Waterstaining to inner portions and lower outer corners of much of volume (not affecting title-page or preface, and generally faint); some pages browned. Numerous instances of early inked marginalia and underlining. (20816)

•  Shoemaker 24396. On Eaton, see: Dictionary of American Biography, V, 609–10. Removed from a nonce volume, now in a Mylar folder. Title-page with early inked inscription in upper margin, partially shaved—apparently, “W. Rawle” (the Philadelphia lawyer) from someone we can’t make out. Slight offsetting, cockling.

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Palau 78542. Removed from a nonce volume; creased. Title-page with inner margin reinforced. Pages somewhat unevenly age-toned; trimmed closely, in some cases just touching outermost letters. Last leaf with tear from lower margin extending into text, and with small holes along creases.

•  Palau 81595. Removed from a nonce volume. Small inked numeral in upper margin. Some light waterstaining; two leaves with outer edges untrimmed and ragged.

For a quasi-official publication, this is surprising attractively printed by the premier printer of early republican Venezuela, Espinal—the man described as "el espíritu progresista" (Origenes de la imprenta en Venezuela, p. 90) in the printing industry. His wood-engraved wrapper illustrations clearly demonstrate the close relationship between printers in Venezuela and their suppliers in the U.S. In both the front cover's cut of a ship under full sail and the rear cover's cut of a ship at a pier (with China goods in the fore-ground), the Stars and Stripes fly aft.

•  Sewn, in original printed wrappers. Faint waterstains in lower margins of the first 17 pages and to outside cover.