The volume opens with awood-engraved illustration of the saloon, done by Philadelphia artist Charles H. Reed. Author James was a medical officer in the Union army and also published Two Years in the Service, or, the Personal Recollections of a Medical Officer and A Complete History of the Great Rebellion; or, the Civil War in the United States.

Binding:  Publisher's textured green cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped vignette of the shop and a very large American flag, taken from the frontispiece; back cover with same vignette in blind. Spine with a bit of gilt embellishment at top and bottom, gilt-stamped title.

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked inscription: “Compliments of Mrs. A. Horner Phila. July 4th 1876"; also with rubber-stamp of Samuel Hoffman, a Philadelphia collector and dealer of presidential and political material; and finally with inked inscription: “To the LIbrarian U. of Chattanooga Sept. 13, 1957 from John C. Daub,” a Pittsburgh rare book dealer.

•  Sabin 50402.   Bound as above, corners and spine extremities rubbed. Front free endpaper with inscriptions and stamp as above. A clean, solid copy.  (29560)

This is the genuine first edition, not a modern reprint.

•  Bitting 11; Brown, Culinary Americana, 4021. Not in Cagle & Stafford.   Publisher's aubergine cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title; spine and edges rubbed. Hinges (inside) tender; sewing just starting to loosen. Front free endpaper with inked numerals, a column of figures relating to eggs; otherwise unannotated. Pages with intermittent light spots of staining, largely but not entirely in outer portions; used but not abused.  (28523)

Click the images for enlargements.

The anonymously published work is signed “An Antiepiscopalian”; the title-page here bears a hand-inked attribution to Matthew Wilson.

An important entry in the literature of the “American Bishops” controversy in the lead-up to the American Revolution.

•  ESTC W13420; Evans 10947; Felcone 126; Hildeburn 2370; Sabin 11876.   Recent binding: boards appealingly covered in paper printed with 18th-century music, front cover with printed paper label. Two pages (not including title) institutionally rubber-stamped. Title-page with early inked ownership inscription and annotations, later lined through, with authorial attribution in the later hand. Lacking pp. 17/18, with final leaf tattered and text on p. 19 lined-through-by-show-through of X'es “deleting” manuscript notes on the verso (still, readable). Pages age-toned and lightly spotted, with edges untrimmed. One leaf with early inked annotation along outer margin.  (28100)

Click the images for enlargements.

As is the case with the 70 p. issue, the first 16 p. are the same sheets as appear in the original [Richmond, April 1792] edition (Evans 26580), and were probably printed in 1791. Evans, however, postulates that the first 16 p. were printed by Dobson in September 1792. He accounts for their presence in copies of the [Richmond] edition of 60 p. by suggesting that Asplund substituted the corrected Philadelphia sheets for the unsatisfactory sheets of the earlier edition. Cf. the prefaces to the 1794 and 1796 editions, with title: The universal register of the Baptist denomination.”

In addition to its exhaustive account of who's who and what's where, this lists both principles of belief and “Rules of Decorum”; the latter, e.g., forbid laughing and whispering when another member of the association is speaking in assembly. Between the “Rules of Decorum” and the Index, Asplund remarks on the un-Christian “inconsistency” of “Keeping our fellow-creatures in bondage, who have as good a right was we, both to civil and religions liberty — Not only so; but misusing them, concerning common blessings, which certainly is a violation of the rights of nature and inconsistent with a republican government.”

•  Evans 26582; ESTC W37302.   Uncut copy. In 20th-century black buckram binding. Ex-library with bookplate but no other markings.  (24467)

Provenance: Front fly-leaf inscribed “Thomas G. Arnolds Book Coventry,” inked in an early hand.

•  ESTC W37335; Evans 20950; Sabin 3366.   Contemporary speckled sheep, worn and very slightly sprung, spine scuffed with foot chipped. Pages age-toned and variably waterstained, with occasional edge nicks and crumpled corners; yet not brittle or nasty and the volume quite pleasant for reading.  (24391)

This edifying story isillustrated with a maritime vignette on the front cover, a frontispiece, and five rather large in-text engravings, one of which has some early hand coloring (the “nimble” colt pictured is now chestnut).

•  American Imprints 11639. Not in Rosenbach, Children's.   Publisher's printed paper–covered sides with sheep shelfback, spine with gilt-stamped title; binding darkened and rubbed overall, especially at extremities, spine with gilt mostly lost and head chipped. Front free endpaper with early pencilled ownership inscription. Scattered spots of minor foxing and staining. Clearly read and loved, but not abused.  (29987)

They address then-pressing topics: tariffs, protectionism, development of domestic industry, and European foreign policy ( NONE OF WHICH, of course, have ANY resonance today . . . ) .

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 49095; Clarkin, Mathew Carey Bibliography, 1133. Recent quarter tan cloth with paper sides in the style of the era; lightly soiled and the neat paper label with a small stain. Ex-library with stamp on title-page; paper brittle and age-toned, signatures wanting to separate (again) from spine (and some doing so). One page torn and repaired.

Provenance:  Flourishing old signatures of “J. Lowry” to pastedown and title-page.

Throughout his life Challoner “labored to save Catholicism in England from extinction; his writings and preachings served to strengthen the faith of the Catholic minority . . .” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 438). His readable, revised edition of the Douay–Rheims Bible (1749–52) served as the English Catholic standard until quite recently.

Provenance: Released as a duplicate from the greatest collection of American Catholica in the world, the Georgetown University Library, with a few of the requisite and expected stamps.

•  Parsons 461; Shaw & Shoemaker 31112. On Challoner, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, III, 437–438.   Contemporary treed sheep, spine with chipped, gilt-stamped red leather title-label; binding abraded, covers a bit sprung, spine with paper shelving label and some cracking of leather. Title-page and one other stamped as described above; pages age-toned. A “decent” copy.  (5306)

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Sabin 16279.   Publisher's textured teal cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; sides and edges clean and showing virtually no wear, spine with head pulled, title dimmed, and small rubbed spots. Ex–social club library: number on endpaper in a good 19th-century hand, rubber- and pressure-stamp on title-page, several other pages faintly stamped. Front free endpaper lacking. A nice, clean, sound copy with its paper holding up beautifully.  (26266)