•  ESTC T88657; Dibdin, I, 232; Schweiger, I, 2. Contemporary vellum-covered boards, covers framed and panelled in blind with central blind-stamped strapwork medallions, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels; front joints repaired and now strong, vellum soiled. Front free endpapers with early inked owner's name as above; shadow of shelf number once pencilled on title-page, erased. Spotting of various sorts and minor smudging in upper margins of some pages; leaves otherwise clean.

This sole edition is ornamented with a woodcut printer’s device and a woodcut headpiece and initial; the text is referenced with sidenotes.

Rare: Only two copies traced in the U.S. via OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956.

Provenance: Bookplate of Virtue & Cahill Library (the library of Portsmouth’s Catholic Cathedral) no. 8783, with a large overlaid rubber-stamp thereon starkly, blackly noting the dispersal and eventual sale of the library “following enemy action”—the cathedral having been bombed by the Germans in 1941.

•  On Allix, see: The Dictionary of National Biography, I, 334–35. 19th- or early 20th-century half calf over marbled paper, spine with gilt title; edges of leather with a dog’s tooth roll in blind. Leather rubbed, especially on joints and edges. Some soiling and waterstaining, mostly light and most notable on early leaves, with some small wormholes in the margins; a little fine chipping and some shallow dog-ears. Old inked ownership inscription on title-page, crossed out but still legible.

Provenance:  From the collection of 19th-century scholar Dr. Johann August Neander (1789–1850), a convert from Judaism who became a leading scholar of Christian church history.

•  Brunet 18324.   Contemporary calf, spine with raised bands, gilt-stamped compartment decorations at top/bottom, and later black leather gilt-stamped labels; covers blind-tooled in concentric compartments. Rubbed with bits of leather lost at extremities; offsetting from leather along margins of endpapers and title-pages. Marbled endpapers, free ones missing in both volumes; front pastedowns each with library bookplate and both title-page versos with call number in pencil. Initial pages of vol. II toned. A good solid set. (21186)

Provenance:  Front free endpaper and fly-leaf with early inked ownership inscription of James [Brown?]; title-page with pencilled inscription of Mary M. Bancroft.

•  Shoemaker 23503; Pomeroy, Alexander Anderson, 777.   Contemporary treed sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; moderately rubbed overall, spine moreso, leather tender at front joint. Vol. I only (of 12), though, of course, complete as “what it is.” Ownership inscriptions as above. Light to moderate foxing and spotting/staining; one leaf with paper flaw resulting in ragged lower outer portion.  (29705)

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked signature of Henry D. Gilpin, the U.S. Attorney General who argued the Amistad case; title-page with inscription of T.L. Gilpin.

•  American Imprints 12098; Westwood, Bibliotheca Piscatoria, 77.   Publisher's mushroom-colored cloth, lightly rubbed overall, spine sunned with original printed paper label now present only in remnants. Title-page with early inked ownership inscriptions of Henry D. Gilpin. Pages darkened and spotted. A solid, sturdy copy with nice provenance.  (27329)

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Alexander Oswald Brodie (not, please note, the American officer and governor of Arizona Territory); title-page with Brodie's inked inscription, dated 1839, Dresden.

•  Brunet, I, 604; Gibson, Bacon, 185b; Willems 1058. On Bacon, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   Contemporary vellum with yapp edges, spine with early inked title; spine lettering rubbed, back cover darkened. Both pastedowns lifted, front pastedown with bookplate beneath; free endpapers lacking. Title-page with inscription as above; pages with a very few small scattered spots, almost entirely clean. A handsome copy.  (30360)

The present edition forms volumes 8 and 9 of the series Historia de la conquista del Nuevo Mundo.

Provenance:  Bookplate of the great 19th-century Mexican collector J. M. Andrade on the front pastedown of each volume.

•  This edition not in Sabin.   19th-century quarter red morocco with red textured cloth sides. Spine with raised bands and very good gilt tooling including center devices in spine compartments. Interiors clean. A very good set.  (25271)

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)

Uncommon: OCLC and NUC Pre-1956 locate only five U.S. holdings.

Provenance:  Ownership “label” of George Williams (1814–78), who served as Vice-Provost of King's College (Cambridge) from 1854 to 1857.

•  Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped red leather title-label. Title-page with small affixed slip bearing ownership inscription as above. Occasional edge nicks and short tears, and a number of leaves with old creases or the odd smudge; last leaf with old, small repairs to margins, and one other leaf with very good repair from blank reverse to an interior tear (no text lost or even affected). (25368)

Sadleir's analysis suggested to him the following probable sequence: a) the private edition, b) copies of the public edition with p. 236 in the same form as it appears in the private edition, c) copies of the public edition with p. 236 blank; and d) copies of the public edition with the complete new version of the text on p. 236.

However, the remnants of the binding preserved at the back of the present first volume — see note below andtop-right image above — are red moiré silk (as opposed to the brown cloth of the public edition), with the side panels and spine ornately blocked with a gilt design and the title within the gilt frame (the spine is rather worn, but legible). This suggests that only some of the twelve private copies were bound in leather, and others, or at least one, were bound in this special silk cloth, gilt extra.

Barham began writing the short pieces making up this series as contributions to his friend and classmate's Bentley's Miscellany. The subject matter was “at first derived from the legendary lore of the author's ancestral locality in Kent, but soon [was] enriched by satires on the topics of the day and subjects of pure invention, or borrowed from history or the ‘Acta Sanctorum’. . . . The success of the ‘Legends’ was pronounced from the first, and when published collectively in 1840 they at once took the high place in humorous literature which they have ever since retained” (DNB).

Provenance: With R.H.D. Barham’s signature as noted above, and with the armorial bookplate of Sir David Lionel Salomons (1851–1925) in each volume.

•  NCBEL, III, 365; Sadleir 156a; Tinker 216 (public edition); Carter, Binding Variants, p.92. Bindings a bit darkened and slightly discolored at extremities, light rubbing to joints, some foxing to the prelims of the first volume, with an old tide-mark in the lower gutter areas of the plates; a tipped-in bookseller's description in the first volume. A very good, very interesting example of a very rare thing.

This is an original imprint, not a modern reprint.

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with pencilled ownership inscription of prominent 20th-century Philadelphia collector E.M. Boyle.

•  Not in O'Neill; not in Vancil.   Publisher's black straight-grained sheep in imitation of morocco, spine with gilt-stamped title and modest gilt ruling; spine showing thin cracks, sides lightly scuffed, leather loss at edges and spine repaired with long-fiber paper and wheat starch paste toned to resemble leather. Two sections with portions of lower margins chewed; first and last few leaves with outer margins repaired.  (30081)

A folded map of the top of the world as seen from the North Pole opens the volume; the title-page bears a wood-engraved vignette of armed explorers on an ice floe confronting a rather awkwardly depicted polar bear, signed byAlexander Anderson.

Provenance:  Front fly-leaf with inked ownership inscription of John M. Fenton, dated 1825.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 43240; Pomeroy, Alexander Anderson, 570.   Publisher's quarter tan paper and light blue paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label; binding mildly soiled, spine paper and label chipped, the whole nicely refurbished with losses to spine filled with appropriately toned paper, detached sewing support secured, joints reinforced, and worn extremities subtly repaired. Front fly-leaf with inscription as above. Map with some moderate foxing, and small chip out of upper margin (not touching image). Page edges untrimmed, a few signatures unopened; moderate to heavy foxing throughout but paper strong and good.  (29221)

Provenance:  Early 19th-century armorial bookplate of Robert Chambers; manuscript ownership “Ex libris G.R.W.”— William R. Wittingham, fourth Anglican bishop of Baltimore (a Latinophile who used “Guillelmus” for “William”), dated Sept. 22, 1856; later in the diocesan library of Maryland; deaccessioned 2006.

•  VD16 B 727.   Contemporary limp vellum with evidence of ties; slightly yapp edges. Occasional light foxing. 19th-century library stamps on the front free endpaper and title-page. A clean solid copy.  (24432)

Provenance: Covers gilt-stamped “Gymnasium Velavicum.”

•  Contemporary vellum-covered boards, covers framed in gilt rolls with gilt-stamped corner fleurons, spine with gilt-stamped bands and decorations within compartments; vellum chipped over spine extremities and showing moderate dust-soiling. Upper portion of front free endpaper excised; half-title crumpled, with inner and outer margins chipped. Pagination skips from 304 to 309, with signature complete and text apparently uninterrupted. Some edges and corners waterstained and a few lower margins inkstained, with occasional instances of edge chipping. Creasing to a handful of index leaves.

This is the first publicly circulated edition and anexpanded version of the original text, of which a now scarce, very limited edition was printed in 1813 for the benefit of the author's friends. (WorldCat fails to locate any holdings of the 1813 printing.)

Provenance:  Front pastedown with bookplate of the Rev. William Burrough Cosens, rector of Monkton Farleigh; title-page with inked ownership inscription of D.L. Browne, dated 1816.

•  NSTC 2B19927.   Contemporary half calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped red leather title-label, gilt-stamped raised bands, and blind-stamped compartment decorations; sides moderately rubbed, leather moreso. Half-title lacking. Occasional light pencilled bracketing; occasional foxing, most noticeable to first and last leaves. Much appreciated in its day as a comfort against the encroachments of age and infirmity.  (29558)

Click either image
for an enlargement.

Provenance: From the collection of 19th-century scholar Dr. Johann August Neander (1789–1850), a convert from Judaism who became a leading scholar of Christianity.

Uncommon: Of U.S. institutional copies we trace only a dozen.

•  19th-century German black mottled paper over boards. Binding shows wear. Ex-library with call number tag on spine; bookplate.

Provenance & Evidence of Readership: Front pastedown with bookplate of Sir John Dashwood-King. This copy was fairly extensively annotated in ink and pencil by an early hand, with both marginalia and marks of emphasis.

•  ESTC R206906; Wing (rev. ed.) B3195. On Blith, see: Dictionary of National Biography online; his designation as “a lover of Ingenuity,” in our caption, is from the engraved title-page.   Contemporary mottled calf, covers framed in blind double fillets, nicely rebacked with calf, spine with gilt-stamped title in exceptionally good period style; sides with minor abrasions, now toned. Pastedowns and free endpapers lacking. Engraved title-page with early inked annotations and pencilled doodle on recto, outer edge slightly ragged affecting image at upper corner; secondary title-page with early inked ownership inscription and a few tiny ink spatters. Pages age-toned and some browned, with early inked and pencilled annotations as above. A significant work, here intriguingly engaged with by a contemporary reader.  (30320)