NEWEST ARRIVALS
NEWEST ENTRIES 10 MARCH 2014
As a CATALOGUE formed partly BY CHANCE,  this does not represent ALL our strengths!

[ PART I — PART II ]

The ART of Engraving & Printing inGUATEMALA, 1794 through 1823

Click the images for enlargements.

•  This is a great and eye-pleasing assemblage for the study of Guatemalan art, specifically that of engraving, etching, and typography. Announcements of university degree defenses are arare printing genre; for example, none of the 61 items in this collection are held in the John Carter Brown Library. Additionally, only 16 were discovered by Medina.

Of the 61 items, 37 are in the smaller folio format (appx. 29.5 x 20 cm; 11.75" x 8.875") and 24 in the larger folio format (42 x 30.5 cm; 16.5" x 12"). Each has an engraving or etching in the top area: The very attractive images include saints and Madonnas, including three instances of the Virgin of Guadalupe, but also coats of arms and, very interestingly, portraits of living individuals. The typography is always center-justified above a final paragraph or two that is right justified; and the printers have used a variety of ornaments to create interesting borders.

There is one case of an image being used twice: once on a small format broadside and also on a large one. The etched text has been eliminated on one of these; and when one looks carefully at the other images it is clear that engraved text has been masked or removed from some of them also — further evidence of recycling as having been a printshop practice.

Remarkably, one of the broadsides is bilingual (Latin & Spanish) and is a publicationnot of a university defense but a publication of that Enlightenment development, the social organization “La Sociedad Economica,” in this case La Sociedad Economica de Guatemala. It announces that it has been reborn, and will not let the authorities “suffocate” it. Another is aeulogy for a retired university professor.

Among the defense announcements, some give the actual questions/topics that will be asked/defended. The date range of the items is 1794 to 1823 and the engravers include Juan Jose Rosales de Santa Cruz, Narcisco Rosal, Juan Pedro Larrabe, Garci-Aguirre, Francisco Cabrera, Valladolid, and Jose Casildo Espana. Notably one is by the Mexican engraver Villavicencio. Finally, the printers are the usual admirable suspects: Bracamonte, Beteta, and Arevalo. It is interesting to see them represented by such UNusual ephemera!

•  Medina, Guatemala, 761; 814; 852; 1523; 1525; 1557; 1577; 1580; 1596; 1613, 1626; 1758 1898; 1806; 1918; 2138.   All items are in very good condition, in Mylar sleeves, the entire collection in a quarter morocco clamshell case.  (33845)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
MEXICO is one of our great specialties.
      For our MEXICANA,  click here.
For CENTRAL AMERICANA,  click here.
For more representing COLLEGES,  click here.
For BROADSIDES,  click here.
For a collection of COLLECTIONS,  click here.
This appears in the HISPANIC
                      MISCELLANY — click here.
*&* it appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

The FIRST Printed Armorial — Illustrated by Jost Amman

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The first work in this volume is a later printing of Reichenthal's 1483 chronicle of the Council of Constance, and it is considered the first printed armorial for includingover 1100 coats of arms of the attendees, all wood-engraved, uncolored, and sized to show six “shields” per page, with identifying captions and other matter. Other illustrations, which may be by Jost Amman — one clearly is, for it is signed “I A” — show scenes from the Council proceedings, including the settling upon a single pope to lead the Church of Rome.

The main purpose of the Concilium was to resolve the Three-Popes Controversy, which was accomplished by forcing or accepting the resignation of the papal claimants and electing Pope Martin V, so this volume remains textually interesting as recounting that, with other matters additionally addressed includingJan Hus (who was condemned and executed), issues of national sovereignty, the rights of pagans, and just war. This latter topic would be very important later in the conquest of the Indian nations of the New World and in considering the thorny issue of black slavery.

The second work is an epitome or treasury of the writings of Martin Luther condensed from the voluminous works of the great reformer; it was compiled and edited by Johann Pfeil.

Provenance:  Supra-libros, in black on front cover, of Ian Bode with date of 1576; 1824 ownership inscription on front pastedown of E.W. Ward of Oriel College; collation noted as complete by a Sotheran cataloguer below Ward's inscription; later in library of the Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

Binding:  Contemporary calf stained red, tooled in black on covers and spine. Spine simple with fillets above and below each raised band and a floral design in the center of each spine compartment. Outer edge of the boards tooled with a chain-design roll; inside that, tooling with a double fillet, then a handsome floral roll, then a double fillet again, resulting in a large center panel. Within the large panel is a concentric smaller one formed by a double fillet with floral corner devices. In the very center of each board is an elaborate lozenge with “Tudor rose”–like devices at its “corners.”

•  I: VD16 R2203. II: VD16 L3535.   Binding as above. Front cover expertly reattached using the long-fiber method; front free endpaper torn and expertly repaired. Paper with toning typical of its nature; marginal, generally very light waterstaining in latter portions of volume, primarily to text leaves. A very good copy.  (31285)

For 16TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For BOOKS IN GERMAN,  click here.
For CATHOLICA,  click here.
For RELIGION generally,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For BLACK LETTER,  click here.
For EUROPEAN LAW,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

LUTHER's Bible Illustrated byLucas Cranach

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The Bible in Low German, based on Lufft's 1544–45 edition of Luther's High German version, that is, thelast edition to bear Luther's corrections and revisions. The volume's numerous, often large, and decidedlygorgeous woodcut illustrations are by Lucas Cranach (the elder).

Appended to the text of the Bible are J. Bugenhagen's “Summaria” on various books of the Bible and “Summaria auer dat Olde Testament” by M. Vitus Theodorus. The text is printed in double-column format in fraktur type (i.e., black letter), with prologues, notes in text and margin, references, etc.

•  Darlow & Moule 4198 (in the long note).   Late 18th-century German binding of diced brown morocco with all edges paste-painted in blue. Title-page repaired on four sides on the verso and tipped in. Many margins in first portion of volume defective and repaired, with some loss of marginal notes and/or a word or part of a word of text; one repaired leaf with a good deal more taken towards bottom of outer column; instances intermittently throughout of close “shaving.” Old water- and other staining; lacks two leaves of the aftermatter (l1 and l4 of Theodorus' “Summaria”). Substantial inked “evidence of readership” of various sorts; Cranach's contributions happily unaffected by faults noted. A strong, in sum a rather nice copy of an uncommon and beautiful Bible.  (33851)

For 16TH-CENTURY BOOKS,
      & “REFORMATION,”  click here.
For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For BLACK LETTER,  click here.
For BOOKS IN GERMAN,  click here.
This book appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

On theNature of Things

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Uncommon pocket-sized rendition of this Epicurean-inspired poem. Lucretius's materialistic, anti-superstitious philosophy was much favored by the disciples of the Enlightenment.

The Plantin Press first published this work in 1566, and the title-page here bears Christopher Plantin's “Labore et constantia” compass device. The edition is rather rare, being reported in only three U.S. institutions.

Binding:  18th-century mottled calf, spine with gilt-stamped red leather spine label and gilt floral decorations in compartments. Marbled endpapers and all edges red.

•  Schweiger, II, 574. This edition not in Brunet or Graesse.   Bound as above, extremities rubbed; back free endpaper with old repair and front fly-leaf affixed to front free endpaper with early inked ownership inscription showing through on verso. Pages age-toned with mild staining; a few small, early inked marks of emphasis and one early inked marginal annotation. An elegant little production in a sound and pleasant copy.  (33944)

For 17TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For PHILOSOPHY,  click here.
For MINIATURE BOOKS,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,
                      click here.

Inscribed Copy fromTHE Robert of Robert's Rules

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this standard reference work from the military engineer responsible for Robert's Rules of Order.

Provenance:  Presentation copy, inscribed to Dr. M.N. Roe with the author's compliments.

•  Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover with embossed title, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine title dimmed, extremities slightly rubbed. Pages gently age-toned, otherwise clean. A pleasing copy; one eminently suitable for giving either informally OR ceremonially tosomeone appreciated  as “THE CHAIR”!  (33921)

For more CONDUCT Books,  click here.
For more “How-To,”  click here.
For more ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW,  click here.
For more Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For more “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

LEC: 50 Rilke Poems

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The Limited Editions Club takes on “Germany's greatest modern poet”: 50 poems from Rilke's early career, selected, translated, and annotated by Carlyle Ferren MacIntyre, with a preface by Harry T. Moore. The poems areprinted in English and German on facing pages, with mutedly melancholy, gray-toned, stippled full-page and in-text illustrations (four of the former, six of the latter) done by Robert Kipniss and lithographed by George C. Miller & Son. Katy Homans designed the volume; the text was printed in Dante type (both roman and italic) on Mohawk eggshell wove paper, and the binding was done by A. Horowitz & Son.

This is numbered copy 1496 of 2000 printed, signed at the colophon by the artist. Both the LEC newsletter and prospectus are laid in.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 518.   Publisher's quarter navy buckram and blue paper–covered boards, spine with author stamped in silver, in original matching slipcase; spine and slipcase sunned, otherwise clean and crisp.  (33728)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For LIMITED EDITIONS CLUB
      books,  click here

Wycliffe's New Testament — 150 Copies Printed?

Click the images for enlargements.

•  This is theearliest printed edition of Wycliffe's New Testament, that text itself occupying the 156 pages following an initial 108 pages devoted to a dedication to “the Right Honourable Thomas Lord Malton, “the editor [John Lewis]'s “History of the English Translations of the Bible,” “Corrigenda & Addenda,” an index, “A Particular Account of the . . . MSS of the Bible,” and “The Names of the Encouragers of this Work.”

The tall, upright folio volume bears two portraits, mezzotint engravings by George White of the editor and of Wycliffe, and offers a bright crisp engraving of the gorgeous and elaborate border of the “frontispiece [i.e., title-page] of Cranmer's Bible,” shown with the area for publishing data left blank.

The N.T. is neatly printed in double-column format, paragraph style with a single rule between the columns. In the top margin of the even-numbered pages is the name of the book of the Bible, while the upper margin of the odd-numbered pages contains the chapter number. The typeface is roman without any special characters (e.g., no “thorns'), but with nine-line woodcut initials at the beginning of each book and two-line bold-face initials at the beginning of chapters.

Different sources give the press run at either 150 or 160 copies.

Provenance:  18th-century note on front pastedown, “C. Willis, the gift of Mrs. Hewitt.” Later in the Howell Bible Collection, Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

•  ESTC T95000; Darlow & Moule 777; Herbert 1011; Graesse (1867 ed.), VI,2, 87.   Contemporary plain calf with modest gilt ruling on boards and spine, spine label partially missing; front joint (outside) open and board mostly detached. Title-page of N.T. browned from the engraving opposite; engraving of Cranmer Bible leaf extending beyond the text block. Despite the provenance, no library markings.  (33785)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here

Standard Bibliography — Nonesuch First Edition

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this authoritative reference work on the essayist and literary critic, written by the great British surgeon who pioneered blood transfusions and a rational approach to breast cancer. He was also a noted book collector, bibliographer of Blake, brother of the economist Maynard Keynes, and the man who saved Virginia Woolf's life following her first (i.e., 1913) suicide attempt. The volume is illustrated with reproductions of many of Hazlitt's first edition title-pages, as well as a portrait and a folding facsimile of one of Hazlitt's letters.

This isnumbered copy 298 of 750 printed by R. & R. Clark in Edinburgh for the Nonesuch Press, with the four collotype illustrations printed by the Chiswick Press.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with calligraphic bookplate of Norman J. Sondheim, American collector of fine press books.

•  Dreyfus, History of the Nonesuch Press, 75.   Publisher's quarter blue-grey paper with taupe paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label, in original dust wrapper with black-stamped spine label; binding very slightly cocked with corners rubbed; wrapper sunned with edge chips and short tears, and interior tape reinforcements to two tears at spine and one at back fold. Offsetting from jacket flaps to endpapers; front pastedown with previous owner's pencilled annotations. A clean, solid, andquite pleasant copy.  (33868)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,
                      click here.

King Alfred & “Trial by Jury”Celebrated to Boot

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  “Engraved by T. Trotter, from an Original Picture painted by Cornelius Jansen, in the Hall of the Inner Temple.” Image measures 7.5" x 4.75" and is inlaid to a sheet measuring 11.25" x 8.5".

•  Very good image.  (33873)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

GORGEOUS!

Click the images for enlargements.

•  A fine, illuminated Ottoman Turkish Qur'an, dating from the first decades of the 19th century. It is written in black ink, 15 lines to the page, verses separated by gold roundels of varying designs (stars, flowers, geometrics) pointed in blue, green, and/or red, surah headings in white on a gold field; text is contained in a double border of gilt frames outlined in black. Bearing elaborate illuminated blue, red, green, and gold marginal devices on many pages, the volume has catchwords and some calligrapher's marginal additions.

Theilluminated double-page opening is composed of an interlace of monochrome and polychrome scrolling flowers within geometric borders, against a rich gold ground.

The calligraphy is very good but unsigned.

Binding:  Contemporary brown morocco, with concentric panels, one of which is colored red; the panels were created using various rolls and fillets to tool the boards in gilt Red pastedowns and doublures, elaborately tooled in blind. All edges gilt and decorated in gilt.

Provenance:  In the 19th century owned by George W. Scott; given ca. 1900 to the Pacific School of Religion; properly released.

•  Binding as above; rebacked and without the flap. Some smudging of the text at the time of inditement. Bookplate on front pastedown; rubber-stamp on preliminary blank leaf. Overall very good; indeed, quite beautiful.  (33828)

For RELIGION,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
For more Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

FIRST English Translation, NEW Etchings

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition thus: Excerpts from the first published English translation of any of the Idylls, originally printed in 1588, here featuringeight pastorally inspired etchings by Anthony Gross, consisting of seven full-sized plates and one in-text illustration (as well as a facsimile of the 1588 title-page), and an introduction by Douglas Cleverdon. This is the sixth of the Clover Hill editions under the Chilmark Press imprint.

The volume was designed and printed by Will and Sebastian Carter at the Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, in Palatino types on paper made by J. Barcham Green; it was bound by Wigmore Bindery. This iscopy 142 of 270 numbered copies, of a total edition of 417 (including 12 lettered copies and 135 copies numbered I through CXXXV).

•  Publisher's marbled paper–covered boards with brown buckram shelfback, spine with gilt-stamped title, in matching paper and cloth slipcase; cloth with crease at spine head, slipcase with small dent to one outer edge and light wear to extremities. A nice copy of an elegant edition.  (33781)

For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For more LITERATURE,  click here.
For more TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
This book also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Landmark Works in the STRUGGLE forReligious Tolerance

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Locke's letters on toleration were widely read and served as major philosophical support for freedom of worship by all, including Jews, Muslims, and pagans. His influence extended north across the Scottish border, east across the Channel influencing Scottish and Continental Enlightenment thinkers, and west across the Atlantic, having demonstrable influence on the likes of Jefferson and other American Founding Fathers and being a major part of the underpinning of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Present in this volume are copies of the first three of Locke's letters on toleration, the only ones published during his lifetime. The volume leads off with the second edition in English, corrected, of the first letter, this having first appeared in 1689 in Latin (Epistola de tolerantia) and in the same year in English in a quarto edition of 61 pages. Translated by William Popple, it is here in 12mo format. That is followed by Locke's Second Letter, in quarto, written in reply to Jonas Proast's The Argument of the Letter concerning Toleration considered and answered (Oxford, 1690), and then by his Third Letter, also quarto, which continued the debate with Proast by reply to the Oxfordian's own Third Letter.

A fourth letter was left in manuscript at Locke's death in 1702; it was first published in the Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke (1706) but seems never to have appeared in a free-standing edition of its own.

Provenance:  Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

•  I: Wing (rev. ed.); L2748; ESTC R21477. II: Wing (rev. ed.) L2755; ESTC R5484. III: Wing (rev. ed.) L2765; ESTC R5673.   Contemporary plain calf with modest blind-tooled floral corner devices on the boards; rebacked. Ex-library as above, with bookplate; stamp on front free endpaper and on title-page of The Second Letter only, otherwise unmarked. Without the half-title to The Second Letter. A very nice gathering. In a quarter brown morocco solander case with brown cloth sides; raised bands accented by gilt rules above and below each band; gilt center devices in spine compartments.  (33772)

For 17TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For PHILOSOPHY,  click here.
For HUMAN RIGHTS,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For WING BOOKS,  click here.
      Or for PRE-1820 AMERICANA,
  click here.

Perishable Press Poetry

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: “Adornment of Body,” “The Jane St. Poem,” and “Autumn,” preceded by a collage illustration that Hamady (who called this production a personal favorite) described as “a 'lady-out-of-the-map' rising die-cut from a grommetted card pocket with a red halo.”

This isone of 228 copies “manually printed in this farmhouse parlour on various shadwell papers hand-formed in the barn,” according to the colophon, which also mentions that “sultry august is when we finish” [sic].

•  Two Decades of Hamady and the Perishable Press Limited, 103.   Publisher's sparkly “flesh-glitter & sequin” paper wrappers, spine with “Joel” pressure-stamped in reverse. A beautiful copy.  (33821)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,
                      click here.

20th-Century Fine-Press Printing . . .
of a 16th-Century Edition . . .
    of an Ancient Greek Romance . . .

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First printing of this edition of what's sometimes spoken of as a sort of protonovel; based on Thomas Creede's 1597 printing of the first English translation, it is here edited by Stephen Gaselee and H.F.B. Brett-Smith. The volume was printed at Stratford-upon-Avon by the Shakespeare Head Press, on Batchelor's Kelmscott handmade paper with untrimmed edges; the title-page is printed in red and black.

This isnumbered copy 459 of a total of 503 printed (394 for sale in Great Britain, 104 for sale in America, and 5 special copies on vellum), signed B.G.G. on the limitation.

•  Publisher's quarter tan cloth and brown paper–covered sides, front cover and spine each with printed paper label; corners bumped, spine darkened, spine label chipped. Pages clean; edges deckle with a very few signatures uncut.  (33816)

For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
 For a bit more (mostly very mild!) EROTICA,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

ENGLISH EMBROIDERED BINDING

Click the images for enlargements.

•  A near-miniature printing of the Sternhold and Hopkins metrical version of Psalms, with the Geneva version in the margin, the whole in an embroidered binding. The text is printed in two small point sizes of roman, the smaller being used for the Geneva text in the margins. The music is present.

Binding:  Deep blue, rose, gold, and blue-green silk threads embroidered on cream silk, within an overall chain design in gold and silver wire thread incorporating some florets; mostly sunned to dull brown or dull green on covers butvibrantly viewable “as was” on rear turn-in. Evidence of silk ties now perished. All edges gilt.

Provenance:  Late 17th- or early 18th-century stencilled armorial device on the front pastedown of a griffin surmounting a cornet; bookseller's label (first half 20th century) of John Howell, San Francisco; afterwards The Howell Bible Collection, Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

Scarce edition: Searches of NUC, WorldCat, ESTC, and COPAC locate only three copies in U.S. libraries, this being one of the three (now deaccessioned), and five copies in the rest of the world (two in England, one each in Scotland, Australia, and Germany).

•  STC (rev. ed.) 2573.5; ESTC S116798; Wilson, Bibles, Testaments, Psalms ... in English, III, 71.   Binding as above; use of a magnifying glass is advised as exceptionally rewarding. Housed in a quarter red morocco open back case with a red cloth chemise. Lacking one leaf. Very good condition.  (33819)

For 17TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For SERVICE BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For MUSIC (& DANCE),  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.  

Signed bySinger & Soyer

Click the images for enlargements.

•  “The quintessence of Singer's genius”: two supernatural tales by the Nobel Prize winner, with an introduction by Harry T. Moore. The stories are illustrated with11 plates after watercolors by Raphael Soyer, and followed by a suite other plates after Soyer's pencil sketches.

The volume was designed by Bruce Campbell and set in Centaur and Arrighi types, with the text printed by Hampshire Typothetae (under Harold McGrath's supervision) and the watercolors by the Princeton Polychrome Press; the binding was done by the Tapley-Rutter Company. This is numbered copy 1496 of 2000 printed, and it issigned at the colophon by author and artist. The appropriate LEC newsletter is laid in.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 514.   Publisher's grey-green marbled paper–covered boards with grey natural-finish buckram shelfback, spine with title stamped in silver, in original plain paper-covered slipcase; slipcase extremities showing very minor shelfwear. A fresh and attractive copy.  (33824)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For JUDAICA / HEBRAICA,  click here.
For LIMITED EDITIONS CLUB
      books,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Mid-19th CenturyFemale Education

Hart Female Seminary (Plymouth, CT). 

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Testimonial presented to Miss Sarah H. Langdon of “approbation and esteem, for hercorrect deportment as a Pupil of said Institution,” this set forth in a variety of elegant letterings; signed by Helen S. Goodwin (principal) and I.P Warren (secretary).

The top portion of the leaf offers a large and lovely lithographed view of the seminary, the work of the Kellogg Lithographic Co. of Hartford, CT.

Provenance:  Ex–Allyn K. Ford Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, recently deaccessioned.

•  A bit dust-soiled but a very handsome, charming item.  (33761)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For a little more CONNECTICUT'iana,  click here.
For CHILDREN / EDUCATION,  click here.
For CONDUCT,  click here.
For BROADSIDES,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,
  click here.

Recipes from theReaders

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: Practical, everyday recipes and household suggestions collected and published by the “Home” department of the Chicago Daily Tribune. Although many of these entries were sent in by Chicago readers, others are marked as from Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Indiana, Ohio, and elsewhere.

Provenance & evidence of readership: Very large, in pencil, on rear endpaper: “Churchill Allen / Bainbridge / Indiana.” Endpapers and dedication page with all-over early inked and pencilled annotations: “Dear friend,” several times. Numerous numerals and calculations. “Miss Massie”(?).

•  Brown, Culinary Americana, 550.   Publisher's green cloth, front cover with black-stamped title, binding shaken and hinges (inside) cracked; corners and spine rubbed, spine with small tear in cloth, back cover with patch of discoloration. Annotations as noted above. Pages age-toned with occasional faint foxing — not kitchen-related staining.  (33825)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For COOKERY,  click here.
For General “How-To,”  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For “EVIDENCE of READERSHIP,”
  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Dante in aPoet's “Medieval” Binding

Click the images for enlargements.

•  “Edizione simplex” from the eminent Florentine publishing house, and an excellent example of a binding fashion created with an eye to the books' beingsnapped up as suitable souvenirs by visitors to Italy.

Binding:  Medieval-style contemporary vellum with yapp edges, done by Alfonso Dori & Figli of Florence, front cover with calligraphed title and illuminated manuscript–inspired foliate design painted in blue, green, rose, sepia, and gold. Front cover, in this case, additionally personalized with owner's name.

Provenance:  Front cover calligraphed with “M.H. Penick”; front fly-leaf with inked inscription, dated 1932, of Margaret H. Penick: very plausibly the poet Margaret Henry Dabney Penick (later M.H. Penick Nuttle; 1879–1962), author of Beauty's Snare and Coins of Memory.

•  Binding as above, tie now largely absent, vellum darkened (particularly the spine, all attractively). Front fly-leaf with inked ownership inscription as above and a small “device”; back free endpaper with Dori & Figli's attractive book-shaped ticket. Endpapers with small edge chips; pages age-toned, with edges darkened and slightly embrittled; one leaf with tear from lower margin, extending into text without loss. Half-title with small spots of staining. A suggestive and very giftable Divine Comedy.  (33676)

For BOOKS IN ITALIAN,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

“Our Trees Rise inCones, Globes & Pyramids”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: “An historical diversion” on the development of artistic treatment of vegetation from the time of the Garden of Eden up through Victorian curiosities (and a few modern surreal “survivals”), illustrated with colored engravings by Peter Barker-Mill. Produced and printed by Christopher Sandford atthe Golden Cockerel Press, this edition was limited to 500 copies, of which the present example is numbered copy 101.

Provenance:  This copy isinscribed by the artist “to Maude,” dated 1956.

•  Cock-a-hoop 198.   Publisher's half orange buckram with cream and green patterned handmade paper, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine slightly sunned, one corner a bit bumped, back cover with small indentation and bubble in cloth. A clean, handsome, inscribed copy of a charming look at the eternal question of art vs. nature in the botanical realm.  (33817)

For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For GARDENING books,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This book appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

He Sent Copies of Two Scores

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Hervé, a French conductor, composer, and librettist credited by some with inventing the genre of operetta, writes that he sends his latest score and also that of Le Petit Faust (neither present). He adds that he is having vision problems and asks the doctor to suggest something that could rid him of his bifocals.

Provenance:  Ex–Allyn K. Ford Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, recently deaccessioned.

•  Written in a clear hand. In very good condition.  (33763)

For BOOKS IN FRENCH,  click here.
For MUSIC (& DANCE),  click here.
For MEDICINE,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.

“Looking back on the whole ghastly affair . . .”

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  First edition.  Issued only in paperback. Hilarious, a la Wodehouse or Sturgis. “Meet Gilbert and Moira — the strangest couple ever to marry for other people's money.”

•  Paperback. Cover illustration by Daniel Torres. Fine.  (33906)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For our shelves of inexpensive GENERAL
              READING,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

A Booth-BarrettShakespeare Revival — In Dallas!

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  An unusual piece of theatrical ephemera, featuring two great American actors: a printed-silk playbill for a Dallas performance of the 1888 touring production of Julius Caesar, starring Edwin Booth (whose fame is regrettably now linked with that of his brother John Wilkes Booth) and Booth's longtime friend and business partner Lawrence Barrett. It was in the same year as this production that Booth founded the Players' Club in New York.

Other members of this cast include John A. Lane, Minna Gale (one of Barrett's favorite leading ladies), and Elizabeth Robins (later a prominent women's rights activist).

•  Printed silk, as issued; faint creasing, edges very slightly ragged, two small spots of light staining (one each to the outer margins). A marvelous souvenir of a high spot of American theatre.  (33692)

For THEATER/THEATRE,  click here.
For a bit more SHAKESPEARE,  click here.
For TEXANA,  click here.
This is in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.
*&* it's in “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

The First Production of This Press

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The first De La More publication. Limited to 250 copies; printed in red and black on handmade paper in black-letter types.

Binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe: Original vellum-backed boards, top edge gilt, others uncut.

•  Very good copy in original card slipcase. With the prospectus cum order form.  (33932)

For RELIGION,  click here.
For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here.
For BLACK LETTER,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Sustaining Our Vital Action in Full Force

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Making breakfast menus manageable: an entire cookbook dedicated to the first meal of the day, with interleaved lined pages for notes and additional recipes. The author reminds us that “a good breakfast is of vital importance to the temperance public” (p. 17) — but dispenses entirely with bacon and other pork, as being unwholesome and not in accordance with biblical principles, whereas venison and sheep “fulfil the required terms of the Bible's sanitary laws” (p. 113). The work was first published in 1882; without the title-page, as is the case here, it is difficult to determine the edition.

Binding:  Publisher's green cloth, front cover and spine decoratively stamped in black with title showing in green through a bright gilt-stamped “label.” The black-stamped author's name is given as “Miss Colbrath.”

•  Bitting 93. Not in Cagle & Stafford.   Binding slightly cocked, spine darkened, extremities rubbed; front hinge (inside) cracked. Front pastedown with early inked ownership inscription. First few leaves separated or loose with half-title present, title-page, pp. 79/80 (“Breakfast no. 9"), and 225–58 lacking; one leaf (pp. 113/14) with upper and outer margins cut down. Pages age-toned. Incomplete but still presenting an impressively large number of recipes, along with virtually all of the author'sorganizing principles.  (33708)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For COOKERY,  click here.
For TEMPERANCE,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
For Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

ITALY Learns about theAmerican Continental Congress & Revolutionary Politics

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (1713–96) wrote his seven-volume account of the European colonies in the East and West Indies with the help of the coteries of philosophes whose salons he frequented: Indeed Diderot is credited with the authorship of up to a third of it, and Holbach, Pechméja, and Paulze also contributed.

This Italian translation is of Books 17 and 18 of the original seven-volume work (first published Amsterdam, 1770, and an anonymous continuation); dealing strictly with North America, it has much to say about the political turmoil of the English colonies, the Continental Congress, etc., but also about Canada, native Americans, the border regions of Florida and Louisiana, and French interests.

A third volume that appeared in 1780, but is not present here, carried the story “fino alla primavera del 1779 nella quale, oltre alla guerra civile trà la Gran Bretagna, e le Colonie Unite, si descrive anche quella trà la prima, e la Francia.”

•  Echeverria & Wilkie, French Image, 778/67.   Contemporary vellum over paste boards, gilt caramel-colored spine label, all edges blue. Some gatherings of leaves browned from impurities in the water during the paper manufacture, and occasional foxing or other light staining. Without vol. 3, later published, and, that aside, arather nice copy.  (33614)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
      For PRE-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW,  click here.
For more of PHILADELPHIA
        interest,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY —
click here.

A Dear Baby Boy

Easy reading for the little ones.

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The story of a little boy with a German mother and an American father, starting his life in Germany before moving to New York. The text hyphenates multisyllabic words for the convenience of novice readers, and is illustrated with a total of40 pictures, including 9 plates. Written by the author of the “Rose Dale” books, this appears to be one of Mrs. Sanford's less common productions: WorldCat fails to locate any institutional holdings.

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked inscription reading “To Harry Lloyd Born from his Mama [/] 1882.”

•  Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped title and black-stamped decoration, front cover with affixed chromolithographic illustration; binding slightly cocked, extremities rubbed, front cover illustration with small scuffs. Pages age-toned with occasional faint spotting.In hand and under the eye, very appealing.  (33631)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For CHILDREN'S BOOKS, many
                    ILLUSTRATED,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS generally,  click here.
For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
“EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      UNDER,  click here.

An American Travels up the Nile: Victorian-Era Orientalism
inIts Most Golden, Glowing Fancifulness

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of the author's first book: a romantic, poetic travelogue by a popular writer and speaker who spent several years in Egypt and Syria. A contemporary reviewer described this as an account of “the thorough transformation of a bustling Yankee into the very embodyment [sic] of dreamy Orientalism,” and “one of the most amusing books of travel of the day” (Church Review, Vol. IV, pp. 300–01).

Binding:  Publisher's navy cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped Egyptian vignette; spine with decorative gilt-stamped title. The vignette is, with slight differences, reproduced from the engraved frontispiece by the Lossing-Barritt company.

•  BAL 4259; Smith, American Travellers Abroad, C144.   Binding slightly cocked, front cover gilt subtly oxidized in portions, extremities rubbed. Front free endpaper with early inked initials and with pencilled ownership inscription dated [18]59. Moderate foxing throughout; a few leaves with marginal chips, not touching text. A very enjoyable text, in a pleasingly appropriate contemporary binding.  (33630)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For books in handsome
PUBLISHER'S CLOTH, click here.
For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
“EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.
For AFRICANA,  click here.
For EGYPT,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

THE NATIVITY STORY

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  These two consecutive leaves contain the text of Matthew 2:1–11, the birth of Christ and the arrival of the Wise Men. The first page is elaborately decorated with alarge, four-line, painted and illuminated initial “C” and its text is surrounded by a four-part border of flowers, leaves, vines, and grotesques in shades of green red, yellow, brown, and orange. The text itself is accomplished chiefly in black with two lines in red, introduced by anilluminated initial “I,” all in a standard gothic hand.

According to provenance notes of the former owner, the manuscript from which these leaves originate was made for the use of the Chichester Cathedral. This may mean that the leaves were once part of the manuscript fitting this description sold at Sotheby's on 29 June 1938, as lot 528, the manuscript having 54 leaves. The Evangelia Festivalia were the Gospels for the Feast days of the year.

Provenance:  Chichester Cathedral (?); Vic-Wells Fund (?); lot 528 Sotheby's auction on 29 June 1938 (?); Ex–Allyn K. Ford Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, recently deaccessioned.

•  Very good condition, irregular along the left margin from removal from its binding.  (33752)

For CATHOLICA,  click here.
For SERVICE BOOKS,  click here.
For LEAVES,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.

“Books Are Communicative Instruments”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First collected edition: five essays by a man described by the publisher as “the embodiment of what it means to be a literate hand-printer in a world dominated by mindless commercialism.” The volume was designed by Carol J. Blinn at Warwick Press, and printed by Daniel Keleher in monotype Perpetua on Frankfurt Cream paper; it was bound by Sarah Creighton and Blinn using paste paper handmade by the latter.

325 copies were printed (of which 300 were for sale) andsigned by the author at the colophon. The prospectus is laid in.

•  Publisher's quarter Niger blue-grey goatskin with cream and blue paste paper–covered boards and leather-tipped corners, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine slightly sunned. Pages clean and crisp.  (33787)

For BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS,  click here.
For ART REFERENCE,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,
            click here.

RatherRadical Grammar

Cobbett, William. 

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this extraordinarily popular, oft-reprinted grammar, addressed to the author's 14-year-old son and written on Long Island by this political lightning rod and pundit. Cobbett, the author of Rural Rides and proprietor of the Political Register, wrote the work while temporarily in political exile in the United States; the ODNB notes its connection to his ongoing political interests, as, e.g., he “cheekily drew his examples of faulty grammar from the writings and speeches of such renowned political leaders as the duke of Wellington, Lord Castlereagh, and George III himself.”

Copies of this true first edition are now uncommon on the market in any condition.

•  Gaines, Cobbett, 78a; NSTC 2C27721; Vancil 53. On Cobbett, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Contemporary treed sheep, rubbed and spine label now absent; covers reattached using the long-fibre method and then toned with hinges (inside) stengthened. Title-page with inked ownership inscription dated [18]93; front pastedown with inked date (Nov. 1, 1888) and pencilled annotations. Pages age-toned and foxed, two signatures towards the back darkly browned; still, strong and untattered and interesting.  (33300)

      For PRE-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For DICTIONARIES/GRAMMARS, ETC.,  click here.
For ENGLISH POLITICS,  click here.
For Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

“Outward Beauty Stirs the Heart to Inward Loveliness”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: Poems inspired by Lyman's passion for gardening, interspersed with prose meditations on why to have a garden, visiting other people's gardens, and the irksome question of whether to cut flowers for importunate guests — plus acomplete list of all the plants that made up the Lyman gardens. The text is illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of the author's husband, Moses Lyman, and four other photographic plates.

Provenance:  Inscribed by the author “To my friend Maude Early Hogan with love Christmas 1924"; also with a laid-in manuscript letter on paper affectionately written by Mrs. Lyman, the letter bearing an affixed copy of Lyman's poem “Thankfulness,” from American Poetry magazine.

•  Publisher's green cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title; extremities rubbed. One early leaf with tiny scratch and hole, not touching text. A nice copy of a charming little gardening book, with endearing provenance.  (33909)

For GARDENING books,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Le Carré: “An Eye Already Charged by Peril”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The G. Harry Pouder Memorial Lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins University on 20 May 1986: Le Carré talks about spy novels and George Smiley, and how they interacted with his own life.

One of 260 copies (including 10 hors commerce copies) printed by Claire Van Vliet at the Janus Press, this issigned at the colophon by Le Carré. The work was set in Times New Roman, printed on Arches Text paper, and bound by Linda Kohl in paper marbled by Pam Smith.

•  Fine, The Janus Press 1981–1990, 18.   Publisher's marbled paper wrappers. A clean, fresh copy of an uncommon item.  (33629)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For ENGLISH POLITICS,  click here.
For COLLEGES,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES 
  & TYPOGRAPHY,
 click here.

Love with the Complication ofT.B.

Click the image for enlargement.

•  First edition (correct code).  Frontispiece in color by Walter Biggs. The author was a native of Virginia and anardent suffragist.

Much of the action here takes place in atuberculosis sanitarium.

Binding:  Signed by Bertha Stuart with initials “B.S.” Olive cloth with image on front cover of a house and garden in pale yellow, dark green, and purple.

•  Rubbed at extremities, top of spine a little faded; text block a little skewed and front hinge (inside) cracked; yet a clean, attractive copy of a book in a nice signed binding.  (33907)

For AMERICAN PUBLISHER'S
CLOTH BINDINGS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For MEDICINE,  click here.
For inexpensive GENERAL
              READING,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

The Editio Regia — A Scholarly & TypographicMASTERPIECE of the Renaissance

Click the images for enlargements.

•  “Robert Estienne's 1550 edition, his third edition of the New Testament in Greek, established the textus receptus for subsequent editors. His documentation of collations of fifteen manuscripts (including the Codex Bezae) resulted in the first critical apparatus for an edition of the Bible” (Pelikan).

In addition to being a major scholarly achievement, Estienne's work is universally hailed for its typographic beauty: It is printed in the largest of the three fonts of Greek type that Claude Garamond designed, the famous Royal Greek type — the grecs du roi that Robert Estienne ordered on behalf of King Francis I of France. Their design was based on the handwriting of the Cretan copyist Angelo Vergecio. This is the very first use of this size of the Garamond Royal Greek type.

Adding to the visual beauty of the typography and aiding the reader in navigating the text is the printer's use of two sizes of foliated and grotesque Greek initials, headpieces of similar design, and a divisional title-page for the second section that begins with the Epistles of Paul.

As previously mentioned, the volume offers critical apparatus: This is printed in the inner margin of the text and gives variant readings and additions from manuscripts that Estienne had consulted for collating against the printed text; and the outer margin contains references and the ordinary chapter-numbers and division-letters, A, B, etc.

Two versions ofthe Estienne printer's device are used in the work: The coiling snake and vine (Schreiber B1) on the main and divisional title-pages and the man standing under an olive tree (Schreiber 10) on the verso of the colophon leaf.

Binding:  18th-century red crushed morocco, round spine, no raised bands, spine richly tooled with an overall, elaborate vine pattern “gilt-extra.” The covers have an outer border formed by a triple and single fillet, three of the four tooled in blind and one in gilt, and an inner frame also of a triple and single fillet, but with two in blind and two in gilt; the resulting panel is graced with gilt corner devices and a large gilt center device. All edges gilt and top edge with old ink lettering under the gilt (“Novum Testamentu[m]”).

Provenance:  The Howell Bible Collection, Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

•  Schreiber, Estiennes, 105; Adams B1661; Darlow & Moule 4622; Renouard, Estienne, 75, no. 1; Mortimer; French, 78; Rumball-Petre 228; Pelikan, Reformation of the Bible, I.18.   Binding as above, evidence of ties at top, bottom, and fore-edges of boards; a little rubbed. Text with red ruling through p. 43. Occasional light, small stain in upper margin and very occasionally some other spot; perhaps six leaves towards end with old light waterstain across lower outer corner. Very minor worming in some lower margins, not near text. Definitely a very good copy of a sumptuous book.  (33610)

For 16TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
For ESTIENNE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

First Edition of a DICKENS CLASSIC, with Phiz Engravings

Little Dorrit.

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: the original 19 monthly partsin wrappers, issued from December 1855 through 1857. Incorporating some of Dickens's own experiences as a child of an imprisoned debtor, this novel — his eleventh, and the best-selling of his works to that date — offers scathing mockery of bureaucracy's ill effects and of governmental incompetence, as well as introducing the epically self-sacrificing Little Dorrit herself.

Each installment features two illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne, a.k.a. “Phiz,” for a total of40 steel-engraved plates, including an illustrated title-page for the set. Vol. XVI includes the tipped-in errata slip regarding the confusion between Rigaud and Blandois, marking the first state. Extensive advertising material, including the “Little Dorrit Advertiser,” is present at the front and back of each part.

•  NCBEL, III, 803.   Publisher's printed blue paper wrappers, housed in green cloth-covered clamshell case; case with one corner discolored and cloth starting to split along spine extremities, still strong. Paper wrappers with expectable wear to edges and extremities, some minor spotting, generally clean and in good shape; front inside wrappers each with institutional sticker (three with sticker on first advertising page instead), these not unattractive and the only library indicia. Vol. IV with small 19th-century bookbinder's ticket on front wrapper; vols. XVII and XIX with early inked ownership inscription in upper outer portion. Occasional light foxing, including to some plates; two plates in vol. XIV/XX with small area of waterstaining to inner portions. Desirable Dickensiana.  (33605)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

The First Bible with aTitle-Page, a Famous INCUNABLE Bible

Bible.

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The first Bible with a “title-page,” leaf a1 having the words “Textus Biblie” in a large gothic font elegantly placed, highlighted with contemporary red inked tracery. The text is the standard Latin Vulgate, printed in double-column format in gothic type with guide letters, generally 48 lines per column, with a type area (with minor variations) of 21.7 x 13.8 cm. As is not usual, ALL of the volume's guide letters have been accomplished in red or blue or both, the neatly penned initials being all handsome and typically of 3 lines, sometimes rising to so many as 8 lines, in height. Some are embellished with tracery extending into margins, and ALL pages have their sentence-beginnings touched with red or, on a few occasions, blue. The thoroughness, the consistency of this adornment, is remarkable.

A much coveted incunable Bible, this is little held in U.S. libraries: Searches of NUC, WorldCat, Goff, and ISTC locate only 10 copies in the United States, no copies in Canada, one in Mexico. One of those 10 has been deaccessioned and is the present copy.

Provenance:  Bookseller's label of John Howell, Bookseller, San Francisco. Later in The Howell Bible Collection, Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

•  Goff B-583; Hain-Copinger 3093; BMC, I, pp. 119–20 (IB 1582); GKW 4260; ISTC ib00583000.   19th-century brown morocco over bevelled boards with raised bands; Victorian-style gothic gilt ruling in spine compartments and on boards, with gilt turn-ins; vellum pastedowns and free endpapers. Binding lightly rubbed in spots; old waterstaining from light to noticeable in margins throughout and sometimes into text, at times causing loss of some coloring of the initials. Very minor worming in a very few margins. NO library markings or bookplate, despite provenance; overall a good+, complete copy of a sought-after incunable.  (33652)

To view our INCUNABLES,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For CATHOLICA,  click here.
For BLACK LETTER,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

One Classic NonfictionBIBLIO-Who-Dunnit

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The first edition of the book that destroyed Thomas Wise, England's doyen of bibliographers and biblio-forgers. “This book is a fully documented exposure of a group of more than fifty 'first editions' of such eminent authors as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brownings, Swinburne, George Eliot, William Morris, R. L. Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling. . . . The exposure of the real character of these books introduces scientific methods which have never before been applied to bibliographical problems of this period.”

•  Fine copy in a very good dust jacket, jacket with minor chipping to lower area of spine, one long split at spine repaired on verso, and lower corner of ifront flap cut off; volume very clean and nice, top edge gilt. In a green cloth chemise with red leather author, title, and date labels on the spine, in an open-back slipcase.  (33426)

For BIBLIO-FRAUD &
          FALSE IMPRINTS,  click here.
For a little more SCIENCE,  click here.
For more BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

I Wish I Had More Time

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Senator Lodge thanks Joslyn, Associate Editor of the Buffalo News, for his kind letter about liking Lodge’s memoirs Early Memories (NY: Scribner’s, 1913). Lodge would like to continue them, he says, but doesn’t know when he will find time.

Written on Senate letterhead — “Committee on Private Land Claims, H. C. Lodge, Chairman” — with a nice, dark, bold signature.

Provenance:  Ex–Allyn K. Ford Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, recently deaccessioned.

•  Very good. Old folds; evidence on verso of having been mounted in an album.  (33775)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For WASHINGTON, D.C.,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Martha Graham's Teacher's Autobiography;  A Gift fromSt. Denis to Lisan Kay
(A Significant Exchange of Letters Laid In)

St. Denis, Ruth.

Click the images for enlargements.

•  A much personalized copy of this modern dance pioneer's autobiography that Ms. St. Denis (1880–1968) signed with her name in full in 1939 and that she later inscribed to ballerina Lisan Kay Nimura (1903–2006) in 1955.

This first edition (correct code on the copyright page) has the following aspects of personalization by “Miss Ruth” as St. Denis was known among dancers, in addition to the signature: a photograph of St. Denis and her husband and fellow dancer Ted Shawn (taken by Williamina Parrish) is tipped to the verso of the dedication page; three related publicity blurbs and a biographical blurb from the dust jacket are pasted to the blank areas of pp. x and xi (with the d/j having been discarded as was typical!); a dramatic half-tone image of St. Denis on a red background is pasted on the leaf preceding p. 1; two half-tone photographs of St. Denis in dance poses are pasted below the text on p. 113; a typeset explanation of Tillers of the Soil is pasted lengthwise in the foremargin of p. 211; a newspaper photograph with caption is pasted below the text on p. 225; and a half-tone photograph of St. Denis with Rabindranath Tagore is pasted below the text on p. 357.

Also present and laid in is a typed letter signed (“Lisan”) to St. Denis dated “Sunday April 23, '61" in which she says that Miss Ruth has hurt her in unspecified ways but “terribly” on the occasion of Lisan's having treated her to a performance of “Clytemnestra” that Lisan thought had “obvious Denishawn influences.” “I don't hold it against you --- but for the moment, it does hurt terribly.” St. Denis wrote back immediately and her autograph letter signed, written in blue pencil, is also present: “Lysan Dear! Try to forgive me!! I am in the middle of one of those crises that come to us all at times. I must appear — Rude & ungratefull {sic] — it was not meant in that spirit at all. I am truly grateful that you went to the trouble of getting the tickets & I am sorry beyond words for my bungling.”

Provenance:  St. Denis' gift inscription on the half-title in green ink: “To Lisan Kay — with all delightfull [sic] memories — past present [and?] sure to come!” Dated, '[19]55"; signed, as the letter is, with the writer's initials.

•  Publisher's cloth, without the d/j. Small chip out of fore-edge of front free endpaper. Text block slightly skewed. A truly special copy.  (33446)

For “EVIDENCE of READERSHIP,”
  click here!
For THEATER/THEATRE,  click here.
For MUSIC (& DANCE),  click here.
For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For more MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Exceptionally Nice Condition — A Good Exemplar

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Includes a list of clergy, and general and diocesan institutions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Also includes a list of bishops in the other reformed branches of the Church and the succession of bishops in the American Church.

•  Original printed wrappers, with a faint fold mark across width of wrappers. Three small punch holes penetrating inner margins, from front to back, without touching text. Mild foxing in margins. Overall, a very good copy.  (9984)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For ALMANACS,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Instructive *&* Beautiful

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  On the development of illuminated manuscript and early printed herbals, produced in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Illustrated in color throughout.

•  In dust jacket (with a small scrape); very good.  (24767)

For BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS,  click here.
For ART REFERENCE,  click here.
For NATURAL HISTORY,  click here.
For MEDICINE,  click here.
For our shelves of inexpensive GENERAL
              READING,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Defoe'sLondon, Illustrated

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Handsome rendition of Defoe's text from the original edition (1724–1726), here edited and annotated by Sir Mayson M. Beeton and E. Beresford Chancellor. The volume is illustrated with a frontispiece portrait done after the 1706 engraving by Van der Gucht, a variety of maps “specially drawn to delineate the London of Defoe's time and his circuit thereof,” and “reproductions of drawings, maps, and prints mostly contemporary with the period of [Defoe's] life.” The letterpress was composed and printed at the Westminster Press, the photogravure plates engraved and hand-printed by A. Alexander & Sons Ltd., and the collotype plates printed at the Chiswick Press, on Basingwerk parchment paper.

This isone of 350 copies printed, of which only 300 were for sale.

Binding: Publisher's brown cloth in remarkably convincing (and therefore rather interesting) imitation of a Cambridge calf binding, covers framed and panelled in gilt double fillets with scalloped gilt roll and gilt-stamped corner fleurons. Spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with skull and “What Do We Know” bookplate of Dr. Charles W. Burr, the first Chair of Mental Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania.

•  Bound as above, slipcase lacking; joints, extremities, and spine bands rubbed, spine slightly darkened. Pages and plates clean.  (33617)

For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
(often) “EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For FACSIMILES,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

In theDayak Language of Borneo — Revised with Native Assistance

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The second printing of the New Testament in Ngaju (a.k.a. Bideyu, and sometimes identified as Land Dayak). This printing is a revision of the first N.T. in this language: That edition (printed in 1846) was translated from the Greek by J.F. Becker and A. Hardeland of the Rhenish Missionary Society, with references to Luther's version and Richter's “Hausbibel.” Hardeland revised this second printing of the Dayak New Testament with the assistance of two natives of Borneo, Timothy Marat and Nicodemus Tomogong. It is printed in roman type in double-column format.

In the same year, 1858, Hardeland published the first complete Bible in Dayak, the Old and New Testaments being issued as separate volumes. Searches of NUC and WorldCat locateonly two copies in the U.S. of the N.T. alone.

Provenance:  The Howell Bible Collection, Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

•  Darlow & Moule 3460; North & Nida, Book of a Thousand Tongues (1972), 311.   Publisher's brown textured cloth, all edges speckled blue; library bookplate, old library rubber-stamp on title and in margin of table of contents, charge pocket and date slip at rear. Most attractively clean, even bright, with a very occasional spot or bit of foxing only; a very nice copy.  (33606)

For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For PACIFICA,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
        MISCELLANY — click here.

A Handsome Incunable Bible Leaf — KOBERGER

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  A leaf from Psalms, printed in gothic type, double-column format, the textcompletely surrounded by commentary. From the second edition of Koberger's four-volume Bible with Nicolas de Lyra's commentary.

Nicely accented with red in the text, and wittwo blue and two red initials completed by the rubricator.

•  Very good condition.  (33881)

To view our INCUNABLES,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For BIBLES & TESTAMENTS,
  click here.
For LEAVES,  click here.

Deluxe Signed Limited Edition PUBLISHER'S COPY:  Life of a Science Fiction Pioneer

BRADBURY: An illustrated life.

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First, limited edition thus of a visual record of the great Ray Bradbury's career in comics, movies, television, theatre, and literature. This profusely illustrated limited edition includes32 pages of material not present in the trade edition (incorporated here after the William Morrow title-page dated 2002, marked first edition): the volume opens with the previously unpublished “The Ghosts of Forever: A Film Fantasy,” illustrated by Joseph A. Mugnaini, and “Switch on the Night,” a reproduction of portions of Bradbury's original manuscript bearing his own illustrations. The foreword is by Donn Albright, and the introduction by Bradbury.

Binding:  Crimson “snakeskin” leatherette, front cover and spine with decorative gilt-stamped title and creature vignette, housed in matching clamshell case with front cover and spine similarly gilt-stamped.

A total of 26 lettered copies were issued in the binding described above. In addition to beingsigned by Bradbury and Weist on the title-page, the present example is anout-of-series copy marked (in red ink, on the title-page) as the publisher's copy.

•  Binding as above. A beautiful and unique copy of a striking tribute.  (33416)

For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For THEATER/THEATRE,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Middlebury College's Early Financial Problems

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Below a partially printed receipt form of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions — that Evarts has completed in manuscript acknowledging receipt of $53.12 “as donations from Sunday Societies,” said money forwarded by the Rev. Dr. Henry Davis, president of Middlebury College — is a serious letter to President Davis.

Evarts writes that he regrets “the unfortunate issue of your attempt to get a philosophical apparatus for your College” and the school's difficulty in raising money. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions holds a note for $1000 that the college owes and Evarts, the organization's treasurer, asks that if the college cannot pay at least some part of the principal, can it at least pay the interest promptly and send a paper guaranteeing payment?

Provenance:  Ex–Allyn K. Ford Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, recently deaccessioned.

•  Written in a clear hand.  (33764)

      For PRE-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For CHILDREN / EDUCATION,  click here.
For COLLEGES (just a small gathering!),  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For COMMERCE / TRADE /
        FINANCE / ECONOMICS,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,
  click here.

Tice IllustratesVoltaire

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Sole edition illustrated by Clara Tice, the illustrations numbering ten, printed in color, and definitely of an erotic nature. This copy (no. 130) is one of 250 copies “on special deckle-edge Pannekoek paper.” The title-page, printed in black and red, announces this is an “Exact reprint of the earliest English text” and tells us that it was “printed in Holland by Joh. Enschede en Zonen for the Bennett Libraries, Inc.”

In the early decades of the 20th century, Tice was a sensation because of her provocative art and as the embodiment of bohemian Greenwich Village — gaining, indeed, the sobriquet “The Queen of Greenwich Village.”

Binding:  Publisher's black goat, round spine with raised bands lettered in gilt and with a gilt-stamped female nude figure in center area of spine; front cover with two gilt-stamped reclining female nude figures reminiscent of those on big-rig mud guards! Elegant gilt turn-ins, top edge gilt and other edges deckle. Housed in a brown paper–covered open-back case.

•  Case rubbed but sound; binding as above with spine a little pulled, corners a little bumped, and front joint (outside) a little abraded. First leaves separated and tipped in; possibly, cancels? All illustrations eye-popping in several senses; all tissue guards present.  (33447)

For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
 For a bit more (mostly very mild!) EROTICA,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Garrick, Cromwell, Addison, Locke, Raleigh, et al.

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Third edition, “revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged, by the Addition of New Lives”: great figures of U.K. history, from a variety of fields. The first volume's frontispiece was engraved by James Caldwall after William Hamilton.

Binding:  Contemporary cream-colored sheep, covers framed in gilt floral roll, spines with gilt compartment decorations and gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels; turn-ins with gilt roll of a vine design, blue endpapers, all edges gilt.

Provenance:  Front pastedowns each with rather attractive 19th-century institutional bookplate, rubber-stamped “withdrawn”; title-page rectos each with rubber-stamped numeral. The set isfrom the collection of noted historian and military critic John Watts de Peyster: the title-page versos (or, in two cases, the contents pages) bear his affixed printed curriculum vitae.

Evidence of Readership:  In vol. I, two (helpful!) inked notes or reminders of where to look for pages bound in out of order; vol. II's front pastedown with inked inscription from Petrarch, “Solo e pensoso i piú deserti campi,” and its back free endpaper with first four lines of Gaetana Passerini's “Genova mia.”

•  ESTC T107371.   Bound as above, spines rubbed and darkened with labels variably chipped and one compartment variably lightened from now-absent shelving label; sides scuffed, edges and extremities rubbed. Pastedowns and title-pages as above; some endpapers showing light waterstaining; back endpapers with old paper adhesions; age-toning throughout. Vol. I: one leaf with lower margin repaired, not affecting text; a number of leaves from pp. 100–20 bound in out of order (see above); final text page with lower margin neatly excised. Vol. II: Inscriptions as above, back pastedown with a pencil sketch. Vol. III: small area of worming to final portion of volume, obscuring a few letters on some pages. Vol. IV: title-page with old staining; small areas of worming to front endpapers and to inner and outer portions of some pages with loss of a few letters. Vol. VI: title-page with small area of offsetting from affixed slip on reverse. A respectably (even endearingly) aged, complete set of interesting provenance.  (33397)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For more BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For SETS,  click here.
For BRITISH POLITICS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For more of MILITARY/NAVAL
      interest,  click here.
For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
“EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This set appears in the GENERAL
MISCELLANY —
click here.

An Insider's Guide toBATH

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Tunstall was aBath booster big-time. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, he was physician to the Eastern Dispensary of Bath and seven years resident medical officer of the Bath Hospital; his guide book to his city first appeared in 1847, with subsequent editions in 1848, 1851, 1856, 1876, 1888, 1889, and 1900. Besides the locale's follies, Roman ruins, chapels, farms, overlooks, etc., he offers considerable information on the hospitals, baths, and healing wells.

This would have beena definite must for hydrotherapy and other tourists. Nicely illustrated, it bears a great map.

Provenance:  Ownership signature of Mrs. Edward Brown, Belmont House, 1884. (This may well be the Mr. & Mrs. E. Brown whose “Belmont House” dates from ca. 1880 and is located in Browns Cove, Albemarle County, VA).

•  Publisher's green cloth, stamped in blind on covers and lettered in gilt on spine; text clean. A nice copy.  (33529)

For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
“EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.
For MEDICINE,  click here.
For ARCHITECTURE,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

“Of Cleaning TEETH” amongOther Things

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Food tips, anecdotes, and jokes (a lengthy one involves dog-stealing). “Feasts and Fasts of the Churches” and an anecdote of “Christian charity”; moon phases, planting times, and tides.

•  Drake 669; Shaw & Shoemaker 7854.   Uncut copy; stitching renewed; dog-earing. A not-quite-decipherable old signature at bottom (last name, Preston?).  (9444)

      For PRE-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For HUMOR,  click here.
For ALMANACS,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

The Young Adventurer as an“Old Buffer” — Signed by Waugh

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Limited edition of Waugh's final piece of fiction, originally published in Esquire in 1962: a short story featuring a protagonist of several earlier novels, once an enfant terrible and now a fat, wealthy, complacent reactionary. The work is nicely printed on very heavy paper, with a tipped-in, color-printed frontispiece by Kathleen Hale.

This is the first American edition, using the English sheets; the present example is numbered copy 561 of 1000 for sale in the United States, and issigned on the limitation leaf by the author.

•  Publisher's blue cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped Pegasus and rider vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine slightly sunned, acetate wrapper not present. Pages clean and crisp. All in allQUITE! JOLLY!?!   (33505)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

An Appreciation of GOUDY fromTypophilic WOMEN

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Sole edition: A tribute to the great type designer by way of a variety of short pieces, many highly decorative, from a group of women dedicated to fine printing. The volume opens with a fold-out “Happy birthday to our Valentine” plate printed in red, drawn by Susanne Suba; it also features a hand-colored floral bouquet plate designed and stenciled by Lucina Wakefield; a statement from the president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, printed by Helen Olson; a poem by Edna Beilenson; an entertainingly Twain-esque greeting written and printed by Madeline Forgue; a poem written by Edwina Peale, illustrated by Maude Langtree, and printed by Elizabeth Wood; a reprinting of D.B. Updike's “The Black Art,” printed by the Press of the Woolly Whale; and a wide variety of other typographic and literary accomplishments. Many of the leaves are French-folded, and an impressive range of types, paper colors, and illustration techniques are represented.

This isnumbered copy 36 of 195 printed.

•  Original quarter tan buckram with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with title stamped in blue; edges and extremities rubbed, spine slightly darkened. Frontispiece with small tear at central folding point. Some pages slightly age-toned, otherwise clean. Simply, a JOY.  (33512)

For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
This book appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.
Or for “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

He Saw Considerable Action for the King
in theAMERICAN REVOLUTION

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Rawdon, the Marquis of Hastings, writes his correspondent: “I think you have taken every step that prudence could suggest and proper regard to your own dignity permit. Do not . . . censure yourself as romantic.” He then considers “romance” for two pages. Toward the end of the missive he writes, “I will talk to the Venetian minister regarding your present purpose. Bronapace[?] is still in Ireland, recovering slowly. Politics go on in a very pettifogging style. Give my respects to Mrs. Stuart.”

Rawdon served his King in the American Revolution, seeing action at the Battles of Bunker Hill, Long Island, and Harlem Heights, participated in the Landing at Kip’s Bay, and so on. He retired from active service in 1781 after his participation in the Southern Campaign.

Provenance:  Ex–Allyn K. Ford Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, recently deaccessioned.

•  Written in a slightly difficult hand; evidence of having been mounted in an album.  (33776)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
      For PRE-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For ENGLISH POLITICS,  click here.
For more of MILITARY/NAVAL
      interest,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

Chinese Ideograms & Poetry

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition in English of Michaux's Idéogrammes en Chine, translated by American poet Gustaf Sobin. This long, illustrated and annotated prose poem was originally written as an introduction to Leon Chang's La calligraphie chinoise (1971), a work that is an important complement to Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's classic study, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.

Limited edition of 150 copies, signed by author and translator. This is copy 40.

•  Publisher's off-white linen binding with turquoise spine and cover labels printed in white, in a matching open-back slipcase. Fine copy.  (33520)

For CHINA,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For CALLIGRAPHY / WRITING,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
      & TYPOGRAPHY,
       click here.

One of Blockson's101 Influential Books

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The first book that Miguel Covarrubias illustrated for the Limited Editions Club, this is one of an edition limited to 1500 copies and issigned in full by Covarrubias in sepia ink. Its illustrations are both in color and line.

Alvah Bessie translated the novel from the original French and its publication precedes his first original book. Set in “Ubangi-Shari,” a former colony of French Equatorial Africa, Batouala was so realistic in its portrayal of colonial life as experienced by blacks that it was banned in all of France's colonial holdings. Charles Blockson ranks it among his 101 most influential books.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 35; Blockson, A Commented Bibliography of One Hundred and One Books by and About People of African Descent, 6.   Full natural leather, blind-stamped; spine darkened and slightly damaged at extremities. A good-only copy, without the slipcase and with a little light thumb-smudging to interior; yet in conception and artwork as fresh as ever.  (33382)

For ABOLITION / BLACK
         HISTORY,  click here.
For HUMAN RIGHTS,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For LIMITED EDITIONS CLUB
      books,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
          & TYPOGRAPHY,
 click here.

A Noble Book for Your House in Tuscany?
      (Smith's Patron Was the Second Earl of Warwick)

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Smith is remembered in art circles as a very accomplished water color artist and it was that work that attracted the attention of George Greville, second earl of Warwick. The earl became Smith's patron and sent him Italy where he produced such works as “Outside Porta Pia, Rome” (now in the Tate collection) and “Interior of the Coliseum” (now in the British Museum); “his Italian pictures . . . are considered Smith's best” (ODNB).

Toward the end of the 18th century (1792–1799), Smith produced the first edition of this work, laden with72 engravings (by various artisans) after his original watercolors. This second edition of his Select Views in Italy was not issued with a title-page, although some copies have a copy (reprinting?, remainder sheet?) of the first edition's; it begins instead with a splendidly calligraphicengraved dedication leaf reading, “Italian scenery. To the Queen's most Excellent Majesty this Collection of Select Views in italy is with Her Majesty's gracious permission Humbly dedicated by Her most obedient and devoted Servant, John Smith.” Dated in text 18 January 1817, the leaf was designed by Tomkins and engraved by Ashby; at its bottom, as on a title-page, is “London[,] J. Smith, W. Byrne, & J. Edwards.”

The text in this edition, bilingual inEnglish and French, is the same as that of the first edition; but it was entirely reset and the plates are restrikes of those of the first edition, with the original imprints removed and the numeration moved to the top of the plates. This is, therefore, a particularly interesting object toset beside an example of its first edition!

Provenance:  No bookplates or inscriptions, but spine with initials “G.O.B.” tooled at base.

•  20th-century cordovan-color calf, modestly tooled in blind, spine sunned and lightened with darker streaks and patches evident; joints (outside) with excellent repairs. Text with only an occasional age-stain or instance of foxing; plates remarkably unblemished. Blue silk placemarker. OVERALL A VERY NICE COPY.   (33233)

For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
“EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS
            & the ANCIENT WORLD,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For BOOKS (usually entirely) IN FRENCH,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Abbott'sIllustrated Biographies

Abbott, Jacob, & John S.C. Abbott. 

Click the images for enlargements.

•  20-volume set: Accounts of some of the greatest names of history, written primarily by Jacob Abbott, a clergyman and educator as well as a prolific children's author, with Abbott's brother John Stevens Cabot Abbott contributing four of the 20 lives. The series was aimed primarily at readers aged 15 to 25 and originally published in 1848 under the title Illustrated History, becoming a great and oft-reprinted hit in its day. This is the first Superior Printing Company edition; represented here are Romulus, Alfred the Great, Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Xerxes, Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus, Cleopatra, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Nero, William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Henry IV, Hernando Cortez, Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, Peter the Great, Marie Antoinette, and Josephine.

Each volume opens with a frontispiece portrait, most volumes having three additional plates with a few offering two or four instead.

•  Publisher's cream paper–covered boards, spines with stamped titles and heraldic rampant lion decorations; spines darkened (uniformly so), some spines chipped or scuffed. Preface and last text page of each volume with pencilled ownership inscription of J.C.B., dated 1923, except vol XV, marked as read in 1959 by J.D. Bowman. Vol. VI with newspaper clippings affixed to free endpapers, offset onto pastedowns. Vol. VIII with frontispiece separated and laid in, first few lower outer corners bumped, small pencilled marks of emphasis. Vol. IX with small scuff to front cover, small pencilled marks of emphasis, newspaper clipping affixed to back pastedown. Vol. XI with lower portion of one leaf torn away, with loss of portions of eight lines. Vol. XIII with front joint cracked and spine paper partially detached, reinforced some time ago with cellophane tape. Vols. XIV and XIX with back endpapers bearing inked and pencilled annotations. An enjoyably readable tour of famous lives in a “period” edition.  (33428)

For CHILDREN / EDUCATION,  click here.
For more ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS,  click here.
For more of MILITARY/NAVAL
      interest,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
For more SETS,  click here.
This book also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Lowell's Letters, Edited by a Friend

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First U.S. edition (per the Bibliography of American Literature) of this extensive collection of the poet's correspondence.

•  BAL 13228.   Contemporary half calf with marbled paper–covered sides, leather edges with single gilt fillet, spines gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels; spines and extremities rubbed, spine labels chipped, leather with minor discoloration, joints starting from heads. A few signatures opened roughly, some unopened (most in vol. II). A worn but still distinctive set.  (33162)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For SETS,  click here.

Lily's First Appearance

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of Wharton's first significant novel, illustrated with eight plates done by A.B. Wenzell. This is the third state of the first edition, on wove paper with advertisements at the back.

•  Garrison A12.1.c.   Publisher's red cloth, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped title and author; without the dust jacket. Top edge gilt. One leaf with short tear from lower margin, extending into text without loss; one page with a streak of discoloration along gutter (associated with bindery glue?). A very nice, clean, crisp copy.  (33105)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL     
            MISCELLANY — click here.

“The Sitting Bull Legends . . . Have No Relation to the Facts at ALL”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this classic, sympathetic biography: “a fresh attempt at a portrait of Sitting Bull” (p. viii).

•  Luther 92; Howes V82; Rader 3534; Smith 10543.   Publisher's maroon cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped bull vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title, dust jacket lacking; spine with gilt dimmed and extremities a bit rubbed. Fore-edges of closed book with staining that occasionally encroaches on the outer edge of a margin and on a few leaves appears at “light to moderate” level farther inward; otherwise, expectable age-toning only with the occasional spot. A solid, good copy.  (33168)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For more of NATIVE AMERICAN interest,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For more “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Starting with, “How First Love May Interrupt Breakfast”

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  First number of the first U.S. edition of this charming, humorous Bildungsroman, here in the publisher's original wrappers. 16 in-text wood engravings adorn the text; like the illustration on the front wrapper here, they are based on theoriginals done by Thackeray himself. The front wrapper states “To be completed in seven numbers,” although in actuality it took eight. A nice example of a “part” of a book issued in parts.

•  Publisher's printed paper wrappers; wrappers darkened with corners bumped, front wrapper with small ink spots, short edge tears, and faint rings of discoloration. Faint intermittent foxing with one signature (only) more notably age-toned.; final leaf with portion torn out of outer margin, not touching text. A pleasing touchstone for Victorian literature and its “production.”  (33259)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For HUMOR,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

An Imposing Fellow — An Imposing Portrait

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Engraved by John Hall after Gainsborough's 1774 painting. Image measures 7.5" x 4.75" and is inlaid to a sheet measuring 11.25" x 8.5".

•  Very good image.  (33880)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

“Just 25 Yards of Sail toCarry TWO People Across the ATLANTIC OCEAN!”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Awhaler's account of his life and times, culminating with the voyage he and his wife made from New Bedford, MA, to Penzance, England. Joanna Crapo was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a dory boat, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. This is a reissue of the first edition, with a postscript written by Mrs. Crapo sometime after the captain's death in 1899.

•  Forster 32; Toy 156.   Publisher's brown cloth, covers stamped in blind, spine with gilt-stamped title; edges and extremities slightly rubbed, spine with small spots of discoloration. Pages faintly age-toned, otherwise clean; a nice copy.  (33301)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
“EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For MARITIME matters,  click here.
For a bit more FISHIN' &
    HUNTIN' (here, WHALIN'),  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
For more “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
          MISCELLANY — click here.

Slavery of Indians as Well as of Blacks — Facts Often Now Forgotten

Click the images for enlargement.

•  Moore apprenticed as a librarian under his father, Jacob Bailey Moore, the librarian of the New-York Historical Society, and succeeded him in that position in 1849. His tenure as such ended in 1872 when he became the Society's first superintendent of the Lenox Library (now part of the New York Public Library).

His Notes covers slavery of both Indians and blacks, the laws allowing and regulating it, the practices, movements against it, and other institutional and social aspects. It is most occupied with the colonial period to 1775.

•  Sabin 50381; Library Company, Afro-Americana (rev. ed.), 6776.   Uncut copy and mostly unopened. Publisher's dark red cloth, covers embossed in blind and spine lettered in gilt; joints (outside) slightly rubbed. Slim crescent of light amber–colored stain to outer margin of first few leaves only. An excellent copy.  (33285)

      For PRE-1820 AMERICANA — click here
  and/or
      POST-1820 AMERICANA — click here.
For ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW,  click here.
For HUMAN RIGHTS,  click here.
For ABOLITION / BLACK HISTORY,  click here.
For more of NATIVE AMERICAN interest,  click here.
This book appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Procedure & Parties

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Olea saw the first edition of his work on European legal procedure, parties, substitution of parties, and assignment under Roman law published for the first time in 1601; subsequent editions, like this one still of the 17th century, followed. A final section with its pagination is the decisions of the Roman Rota (“Decisiones Sacrae rotae romanae, recentissimè recollectae per ... Io. Dominicvm Fantini”).

Title-page printed in black and red, text in double-column format.

•  Palau 200148.   Contemporary limp vellum with ties; a browned copy. Half-title cut down and mounted; title-leaf remargined. Worming in margins and in text, with loss of words and letters; occasionally a tear, occasionally an old marginal note.  (31655)

For 17TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS
            & the ANCIENT WORLD,  click here.
For EUROPEAN LAW,  click here.
For Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.
This appears in the HISPANIC
      MISCELLANY — click here.

The New French Classicism — Le nouveau classicisme français

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this influential treatise on the five orders of classical architecture, written by the physician and scientist generally credited with the design of the eastern façade of the Louvre. Perrault's theory of proportion introduced a lasting debate over ideas of positive and arbitrary beauty.

In addition to thesix leaves of plates done by Pierre Le Pautre, Louis de Chastillon, and Sebastien Le Clerc, the work is illustrated with several in-text uses of a woodcut diagram comparing the five types, as well as a title-page vignette of the arms of Louis XIV and a distinctively rendered headpiece (signed by Chastillon) of the Colbert serpent coat of arms supported by a dog and a unicorn.

And yes, Claude was related to (brother, in fact, of) Charles Perrault, the fabulist and reteller of the Cinderella story and other tales.

•  Brunet, IV, 507; Graesse, V, 207; Cicognara, I, 607.   Contemporary speckled calf, spine with gilt-stamped title and compartment decorations, board edges with gilt roll; joints and extremities carefully and unobtrusively repaired and refurbished, edge gilt rubbed. Pages slightly age-toned, with scattered spots; last few leaves with margins a bit darkened. Small area of pinhole worming to outer margins, not touching text (three plates each with tiny portion of one line touched); some instances nicely refurbished with long-fiber tissue. A clean, wide-margined, attractive copy of an attractive book.  (33221)

For 17TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For BOOKS IN FRENCH,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS
            & the ANCIENT WORLD,  click here.
For ARCHITECTURE,  click here.
This is in the GENERAL
             MISCELLANY — click here.

For “Workmen & Laborers” & Including Ruskin'sAttack on Whistler

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Facsimile printing of the 1886 Frank F. Lovell & Co. edition: pamphlets presenting Ruskin's perspective on contemporary moral and social issues.

•  Publisher's teal cloth, spines with gilt-stamped title; spines with gilt slightly dimmed and minor extremity wear, front cover of vol. II with a small light smudge. A solid and pleasant set, with its pages very crisp and clean.  (33164)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For COMMERCE / TRADE /
        FINANCE / ECONOMICS,  click here.
For ART REFERENCE,  click here.
For ENGLISH POLITICS,  click here.
For SETS,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

The Feast of a MARTYREDSoldier & Patron of Hunters

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Handsome manuscript rendition of the Proper for the festival of St. Eustachius or Eustace — who converted after seeing a vision of the crucifix between a stag's antlers, and was eventually roasted alive along with his family — and his companion martyrs. Possibly commissioned for the Church of St. Eustache in Paris, this manuscript offersFrench and Latin parallel texts nicely accomplished in double columns of neat text in brown withred and blue accents, ruled in blue and red with some inked flourishes; one column (along with a scattered handful of words elsewhere) is done in oblique script, while all others are upright roman.

•  Contemporary mottled sheep, spine compartments with gilt-stamped floral decorations; binding scuffed with small areas of insect damage, spine with label now absent and leather lost at foot. Preliminary leaves with pinhole worming; pages slightly age-toned, with scattered mild spotting and some small smudges to letters and lines. All edges red. AN ENGAGING THING.  (32913)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For BOOKS IN FRENCH,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For CATHOLICA,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For a bit more FISHIN' &
HUNTIN',  click here.
For more of MILITARY/NAVAL
      interest,  click here.
For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.

One of theGreat EARLY Chaucerian Collections

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Early edition of the first comprehensive collection of Chaucer's works — along with several spurious pieces. This is the fourth edition of the Workes, following the first of 1532, which included the first printed appearances of a number of Chaucer's verse and prose pieces, among them the Book of the Duchess and the Legend of Good Women. Editor William Thynne examined a number of manuscripts and printed versions in order to provide what he considered the most accurate renditions possible of the texts; his work helped to shape and direct the Renaissance perspective on Chaucer and his canon.

That the text is printed in double columns ofblack-letter — this being late for that, except in realms of serious law or theology — will have lent it an air of “auctorite” and, perhaps, of pleasantly suitable archaism for its original readers; the printer has also supplieddecorative woodcut initials in a variety of sizes, some historiated, some signed “I.R.,” and one with a backwards “N,” while the “Knight's Tale” opens witha large woodcut of the armored knight, mounted and with jousting lance in hand. The Romaunt of the Rose is marked by a separate title-page with an elaborate border depicting the genealogy of Henry VIII using the tree motif. As the title-page and prologue are not present in this copy, it is difficult to ascertain which of the two variant states of this edition is represented here.

•  ESTC S107207; STC (2nd ed.) 5076.   Period-style mottled calf framed in double blind fillets, spine with raised bands and gilt-stamped author and date; front free endpaper with recent pencilled annotations. 6 preliminary leaves (including title-page), first part of text through “General Prologue,” and final leaf (CCCLXXVIII) lacking, the latter supplied both in facsimile of original printing and in 18th-century inked manuscript! First four leaves with upper portions repaired, with loss of two paragraphs of “Eight Goodly Questions” (which is bound in between two leaves of the preface), two and a half paragraphs of Hoccleve's “To the Kings Most Noble Grace,” about 14 lines of Thynne's dedication to Henry VIII, and upper portions of the table of contents; tear to first page of the “Knight's Tale” neatly repaired from rear. Pages age-toned, some from the midpoint onwards with waterstaining across text, noticeable but never dark nor obscuring; otherwise the mostly marginal inksmear, chip/tear at an edge, or expectable soiling only. Several paper flaws, one significant and with the printing accomplished over it in instructive fashion; in some sections, apparent bad inking for the press with light spots and dark ones scattered; pagination notably erratic, with some numerals skipped and some repeated. Occasional instances of early inked annotations and marks of emphasis, particularly in the Romaunt, including long lines drawn marginally and across text. Imperfect (“read hard,” when young?) and priced to reflect that; but still a Chaucerian high spot featuring all the tales of the Canterbury Tales and many other important pieces, withthe array set forth in the 16th century's “antique” style.  (32721)

For 16TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

A Healthy Climate for aHealthy Recovery

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Sole edition. Tunstall is credited with an “M.D.” on the title-page and his credentials there are “Senior Physical to the Eastern Dispensary; Physician to the Institution for Diseases of the Chest; and formerly Resident Medical Officer of the Bath General Hospital.”

The frontispiece is adetailed wood engraving of Bath from Beechen Cliff as drawn by J. Syer.

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only the copy at Duke University as far as U.S. library holdings.

•  Publisher's dark brown textured cloth, stamped in blind and lettered in gilt, top edges bumped; a narrow scalloped border of quite-light waterstaining to top and fore-edges of frontispiece. Very good copy.  (33468)

For NATURAL HISTORY,  click here.
For MEDICINE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Illustrated & with Music — NONESUCH

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Milton's masque in honor of chastity, here accompanied by facsimile versions of the original five songs by Henry Lawes (edited by Hubert J. Foss) and six color-printed illustrations by Mildred R.H. Farrar: a frontispiece, a title-page vignette, and four plates. The Earl of Ellesmere supplied the foreword.

The text was printed in Fell types, with the music in Walpergen type, by John Johnson at the University Press of Oxford; the illustrations were printed from the artist's linoleum cuts by the Curwen Press; and the binding was done by the Leighton-Straker Company. This isnumbered copy 505 of 950 printed.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with calligraphic bookplate of Norman J. Sondheim, American collector of fine press books.

•  Dreyfus, History of the Nonesuch Press, 109.   Publisher's faux vellum with yapp edges, blind-tooled with rules and arabesque decorations, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine darkened, extremities rubbed, minor dust-soiling more pronounced to back cover, small area of light staining to lower front joint and adjacent cover. Slipcase lacking. Pages very slightly age-toned, all edges deckle. A good solid copy of a beautifully produced work.  (33370)

For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For THEATER/THEATRE,  click here.
For MUSIC (& DANCE),  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY, click here.
For Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

The Last of the 17th-Century Editions ofSIDNEY

•  Handsome folio printing of the Arcadia, opening with a strongly impressed copper-engraved portrait of Sidney done after Elstrack, and accompanied by a “Life and Death; a brief Table of the principal Heads, and some other new Additions.” Along with the title work, this stated 13th edition contains Sidney's sonnets, “The defence of poesie,” “Astrophel and Stella,” “Her Most Excellent Majestie walking in Wanstead Garden,” “A supplement [not by Sidney] to the third book of Arcadia,” and “A remedie for love.” Richard Bellings's sixth book of the Arcadia, originally published separately in 1624, here appears with a separate title-page, also dated 1674; the pagination and register are continuous.

Provenance:  “Judith Tichborn her book given me by my most renowned and beloved knight Stephen de la Stanly 1713.”

•  ESTC R21446; Wing (rev. ed.) S3770.   Period-style mottled calf, covers framed and panelled in blind fillets with blind-tooled corner fleurons, spine with raised bands and gilt-stamped title. Pages age-toned and foxed with occasional small inkspots; some paginations trimmed and frontispiece edges slightly ragged. One early leaf with tear in lower margin, extending into text, repaired with two words from opposing page partially lifted by adhesion; one leaf with small hole affecting about eight words; one leaf with tear in outer margin touching final letters of seven lines; occasional edge chips, one upper outer corner torn away. A very readable copy in a dignified binding; a romantic tale with a romantic inscription.  (33123)

For 17TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

“Eustacia Vye Was the Raw Material of a Divinity”

Click the images for enlargement.

•  First edition illustrated by Leighton of Hardy's Wessex tale of mothers and sons, adultery, and ruined lives. Leighton's woodcuts aretwelve tipped-in cuts and numerous in-text head- and tail-pieces.

The edition was limited to 1500 copies, of which 500 were for sale in England and 1000 in the U.S. This is one of the 500 copies for England.  Autographed by Leighton on the limitation page.

•  Publisher's quarter vellum with brown patterned paper sides. Top edge gilt; deckled edges. Without the d/j. Vellum lightly discolored. Very good.  (33480)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

CRIMINAL LAW — An Italian “Take”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Caballo (d. 1616) was a Florentine judge and legal writer who saw his “Resolutionum criminalium” achieve great acceptance upon publication in 1606 and as attested to by the several later editions in the 17th century. This dense work on criminal law begins with a title-page in red and black with type in a great variety of point sizes of roman and italic. The text is printed in double-column format and each “century” begins with a large woodcut headpiece and ends with a small woodcut tailpiece.

This edition, “Hac quarta editione pluribus mendis expurgatae,” has several very good indices of “arguments,” words, and “things.”

•  Later limp, but rather stiff, vellum. Inkstains on bottom edge of closed volume; some captions a little shaved, half-title a little tattered. Remarkably solid andclean.  (31616)

For 17TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For EUROPEAN LAW,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

All the News THAT FITSWe Print

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Messrelationen were published beginning in the 16th century in conjunction with the Leipzig and Frankfurt bookfairs: They recount the political and military events since the last fair. Present here is the issue for “Herbstmesse” (i.e., Autumn) 1790. The frontispiece is an engraving of Gustavus III of Sweden. The title-page is in black and red.

WorldCat reportsprecious few holdings of any issues of the Frankfurter Mess-Relationen for the 1790s.

•  Never bound; spine with faded marbled paper as shelfback. Dust-soiling, dog-earing, light spotting to last leaves; last leaf with a short tear (repaired) in foremargin.  (33124)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For BOOKS IN GERMAN,  click here.
For more of MILITARY/NAVAL
      interest,  click here.
This is also in the GENERAL
          MISCELLANY — click here.

“The Modern Reader's Chaucer”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this beautiful production, illustrated with32 color-printed plates by Warwick Goble. The texts (slightly expurgated) were put into modern English prose, with occasional verse interludes, by medievalist John S.P. Tatlock and poet-playwright Percy MacKaye.

Binding:  Publisher's navy cloth, front cover ornately gilt-stamped with wide vinous floral border and ship-at-sea vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title and coordinated vine-and-flower motifs; top edge gilt.

•  Bound as above, spine slightly dimmed and rubbed, back cover with one wrinkle in cloth in upper outer corner, one corner bumped. One page with small scuff where top of page was adhered to previous plate; a few signatures not entirely cut. Lovely front cover bright and beautiful, pages clean: a very nice copy.  (33110)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For books in handsome
                          PUBLISHER'S CLOTH,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
This book is in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.
For more “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

EntirelyENGRAVED 18th-Century LYRICAL DIALOGUE

Click the images for enlargements.

•  The first edition of thefirst work published by M. Arnaud Berquin (1747–91), thisentirely engraved dialogue between Lamon, Lysis, and “La femme” was issued together with the Pygmalion, scène lyrique, which Berquin translated into verse from the original by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As in the instance of a copy at Texas A&M University, the Idylle in hand has been separately bound — in our copy's case finely bound, well highlighting the vignette and tailpiece engraved by Charles-Étienne Gaucher (1740–1804) after Clément Pierre Marillier (1740–1808), and the text engraved in an attractive italic “hand” by Droüet.

The two-part text was not reprinted until 1883, by J. Lemonnyer in an edition of 525 copies.

Binding:  Fine olive brown morocco gilt, ca. 1910 and very much expressing that era's style. Each board double-ruled in gilt and finely framed with a canopy of elegant gilt garlands, title gilt at center of front cover. Spine gilt extra from top to bottom in a leafy vine pattern. Board edges single-ruled in gilt, turn-ins double-ruled in gilt with a rule of delicate gilt beads between, french combed marbled endpapers in an exceptionally pretty and precise pattern.

•  Cioranescu 11517.   Bound as above, second part only of two; binding a little rubbed (only) at joints, edges, and one corner of front cover. Paper chosen for blank endpapers unevenly bleached, in production, to now-spotty but not unpleasant effect; text with a little age-toning at upper edges and some light dust-soiling at deckle edges.  (32768)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For BOOKS IN FRENCH,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
 For ENGRAVED BOOKS,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

“A Fair General View of theMost Important Characters”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First U.S. edition of detailed biographies of the most notable 17th- and 18th-century actors to grace the English stage — Charles Hart, Edward Kynaston, Mrs. Elizabeth Barry, Susanna Centlivre, Lacy Ryan, Charles Macklin, Mrs. George Ann Bellamy, and John Philip Kemble, among many others — with many and often pungent details of their personal and stage lives, and including significant roles played.

Scottish author John Galt (1779–1839) pursued legal studies, business, travel, politics, and prolific writing in London and Glasgow before joining the Canada Company. Traveling back and forth to North America in the late 1820's, he was appointed superintendent of the Company and founded the city of Guelph, Ontario, in 1827. Galt continued writing to support his family throughout his life and published many books, including an autobiography documenting his experiences abroad and a biography of Lord Byron, whom he knew personally. His Lives of the Players was first published in London, also in 1831.

•  American Imprints 7212.   Publisher's brown cloth over boards, printed paper label on spines, cloth stained and worn; hinges repaired with brown tape. Ex–social club library: bookplate and call number in ink on front pastedowns, pressure-stamp on title-pages and sticker on upper spines. Corners creased and one tip lost in vol. I; and one leaf in vol. II creased across middle horizontally in the press. Foxing and staining of expectable sorts. A good set.  (30842)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.
For THEATER/THEATRE,  click here.
For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

“Reasonable Rates, to Encourage Future Dealing”

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  A small advertisement or bookseller's “label” for John Gover, “bookseller at Gosport, near Porstmouth.” He “sells and furnisheth any Gentleman or others, with all sorts of choice Bibles, Testaments, Common-Prayer-Books, and all other sorts of Books of Divinity, History, Law, Physick, Chyrurgery, Navigation, Horsemanship, Husbandry, Cookery, and Plays of all sorts, and Paper, Paper-Books, for Shops, Pocket, or other Uses; Pens, Wax, Wafers, London-Ink-Powder, and all other Stationary Wares: Also Mony [sic] for Old Books, and Old Book [sic] New Bound, Books lent to Read, all at Reasonable Rates, to Encourage Future Dealing.”

•  Good condition.  (33882)

For 18TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For COMMERCE / TRADE /
        FINANCE / ECONOMICS,  click here.
For BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.
For BROADSIDES,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

A Sorrowful Reader?

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First and only U.S. edition of this English translation: Romantic fiction about Joachim Murat, King of Naples; a noble Arab character features prominently.

Evidence of Readership: Title-page with early, rather elegantly inked comment, “with a Sorrowful ending.”

•  Contemporary quarter morocco and marbled paper sides, worn and abraded; front and back covers pressure-stamped by a now-defunct library, spine rubbed and with paper shelving label. Title-page and several others stamped; title-page with comment as above; stray pencil marks to a handful of pages.  (4364)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For more of PHILADELPHIA
        interest,  click here.
For “EVIDENCE of READERSHIP,”
  click here.
For our shelves of inexpensive GENERAL
              READING,  click here.

Roman Poets, Orators, Rhetoricians, &c. (but No Nudity, Please)
for 16th-Century Students

Click the images for enlargements.

•  As Hadrian's private secretary, Suetonius was intimately familiar with then-current events and with the historical record; he made use of the imperial archives as well as contemporary gossip to write his biographies and histories, particularly his best known work, the De Vita Caesarum (known in English as the Twelve Caesars). The Illustrium Virorum (a.k.a. On Famous Men), accounts of prominent men of letters, provide much of what is known about Roman authors of the period and were consulted by many subsequent biographers — despite having survived in only partial form. Also known as De viris illustribus urbis Romae, the work has in the past been attributed to Aurelius Victor, Cornelius Nepos, and Pliny the Younger as well as Suetonius.

The present copy is a very uncommonschoolbook edition. The main text is printed in roman and surrounding additions in gothic type; the title-page is printed in red and black within a woodcut framework of allegorical figures.

Evidence of readership: In the present copy, the first five lives were extensively annotated in Latin by an early hand, with both interlinear and shouldernotes. Evidence of something else: In the present copy, inkblots cover significant portions of three nude figures in the title-page frame!

Provenance:  19th-century ownership stamp of the Redemptorist house in Ilchester, Maryland; later 19th-century stamp and label of the Redemptorists' provincial library of Baltimore; 20th-century stamps of the Redemptorists' library at Mount St. Alphonsus.

WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956 do not locateany U.S. institutional holdings of this edition.

•  VD16 P3514; Schweiger, II, 1140 (under Victor); Index Aurel. 110.780. Not in Adams.   Early 19th-century half roan and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title-label; three corners lacking leather, binding scuffed overall, spine leather rubbed, hinges (inside) tender. Title-page darkened with edges somewhat tattered, early inked ownership inscription (faint), two closed tears, two institutional rubber-stamps, and paper shelving label affixed in lower portion of woodcut title-page border; “censoring” inkblots as above with some bleeding to subsequent two leaves. Back pastedown with pocket and slip, one endpaper rubber-stamped. Pages age-toned; some shouldernotes, running headers, and pagination shaved. A nice example of a surviving, utilized, classroom copy of a classic Classical work.  (32635)

For 16TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For CHILDREN / EDUCATION,  click here.
For GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS,  click here.
For “EVIDENCE of READERSHIP,”
  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

Five Icelandic Stories — A Handsome & Thoughtful Production from thePENMAEN PRESS

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition, and the first appearance in English of two of these tales: Five stories translated from the Icelandic by Pardee Lowe, Jr., and illustrated with wood engravings by Michael McCurdy, who was also responsible for the typography. The text was set in Palatino and printed on Mohawk Superfine paper by McCurdy and Penelope Reid; the binding was designed by Robert Hauser.

The tales are: “The story of Brand the Generous,” “Authuns's story,” “Stump's story,” “The story of Thorsteinn Sagawise,” and “The story of Odd Ofeigsson.”

This is numbered copy 28 out of the 100-copydeluxe edition, signed at the colophon by the translator and artist.

•  Publisher's half cream paper with red and cream printed paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title. A crisp, clean copy.  (33349)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For COLLECTED PRESSES
              & TYPOGRAPHY,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150
      & UNDER,  click here.

The Inquisition's Top Guidebook — Big & Thorough & Handsome for Use

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Compiled as early as 1376 and first printed at Barcelona in 1503, this is the influentialguide for inquisitors composed by Spanish Dominican theologian Nicolas Eymeric (Aymerich, ca. 1320–99), elected thegrand inquisitor of Aragon in 1357. The second Italian printing and third edition overall, it includesextensive commentary by Francesco Pegna (Peña, ca. 1540–1612), an Aragonese canonist with strong ties to the Roman Curia.

Enumerating hundreds of heresies and prosecution procedures, Eymeric outlines the belief system of the Inquisition and defines categories of offenses includingsorcery and witchcraft, paving the way for later texts like the famous Malleus maleficarum (Hammer of Witches, 1486).

The Latin text is printed in roman and italic, mainly double-column with sidenotes and with various, numerous, at timesvery large and always interesting woodcut initials throughout; some sections are framed by a single-rule border. Copious indices accompany each of the three parts; and both the title-page and the final verso feature the printer's large device employing elements of Roman iconography. There is a separate title-page to the third part, Pegna's Literae apostolicae diversorum romanorum pontificum (Rome, 1579), which was also issued independently of Eymeric's text.

As ahandbook of the Inquisition, this remained influential well into the 17th century.

•  Palau 20871 (Aymerich); Vekene, Bib. bibliographica ... inquisitionis, I, no. 109; id., Bib. der Inquisition, 79; id., “Die gedruckten Ausgaben ... des Nicolaus Eymerich,” in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1973, 3; Index Aurel. *167.023; Brunet, II, 1142n; Edit16 CNCE 18448. This ed. not in Adams. On Eymeric, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia online.   Recent full dark brown morocco blind-ruled, old style; spine with raised bands, author/title gilt on a red leather compartment label, and date gilt collector-style at base; bottom edge with title elegantly inked on, early. Ex-library: stamps on bottom edge, old pressure-stamp on first, last, and one other leaf, and acquisition number in ink on second leaf. Title-page repaired at inner margin, with short closed internal tear near device and canceled ink inscription at bottom; first and last leaves (only) dust-soiled and waterstaining in some lower margins (only); an early ink marking or two (only); a handful of quires very foxed, others unevenly browned. Occasional instances of very minor wormwork, typically almost unnoticeable and in gutters, with more noticeable but still minor tracks in lower margins of some quires. A volume satisfying and impressive physically, and textually important.  (31327)

For 16TH-CENTURY BOOKS,  click here.
For RELIGION,  click here.
For CATHOLICA,  click here.
For INQUISITION material,  click here.
For EUROPEAN LAW,  click here.
For OCCULT matters,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
This also appears in the GENERAL
            MISCELLANY — click here.

PLEASE GO ON, TO Part II . . .

PLACE AN ORDER   |   E-MAIL US   |   PRB&M HOME