Binding:  Prize binding from King Edward VI's School: Contemporary walnut-brown calf, framed and panelled in blind double fillets with blind-stamped corner crosses and gilt-stamped English Royal coat of arms (with the quarter of France and dragon supporter) as central medallions; spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels and blind-stamped crosses in compartments.

Provenance: Front fly-leaf of vol. I with inked inscription dated 1863, noting this set's presentation to R.K. Rodwell as an “Extra Prize for the best English Essay.”

•  NSTC 2T3717.   Bound as above, spines and extremities rubbed. Endpapers and frontispiece lightly spotted. All edges stained red.  (21923)

The six pages of advertisements offer multiplereviews of the Harper works listed, not just publication information!

Provenance: Front free endpaper with ex libris inscription initialed “GRW”: William [Guillelmus] R. Whittingham, Bishop of Baltimore.

•  Shoemaker 40623; NSTC 2E8969. Publisher’s quarter cloth and paper-covered sides, spine with printed paper label; binding faded and worn, spine label chipped and darkened. Front pastedown with institutional rubber-stamp, no other markings; pages untrimmed, and foxed throughout.

The volume was written on a single paper stock but by a (small) number of copyists. It bears an unidentified marca de fuego in the lower margins which usually indicates a religious library's ownership, increasing the possibility that the manuscript originated in the scriptorium of one of the orders. The purpose for compiling the documents is unclear, but since the various orders were in almost continuous litigation, and would often invoke the memory and spirit of a past monarch, a compendium such as this would have been extremely useful—especially when operating in opposition to the new, foreign monarchs, who, with their French ways of doing things, were to be challenged and "educated."

Provenance: Gavito collection; marca de fuego as above and below.

•  Contemporary limp vellum with yapp edges; recased and new endpapers applied. Clean, crisp, unwormed text. Marca de fuego reading "CDS" within a rectangular braided border.

Provenance: An interesting array of ownership inscriptions: “Abigail Davis Book Given her By her Friend [Master?] Vaughan” — “Abigail Davis Book”— “Abigail Davis” — “Abigail Vaughan, Her Book,” this last written largest of all.  (“Reader, I married him”?)

•  Evans 27179; ESTC W33646.   Contemporary sheep, binding overall showing scuffs and small cracks. Endpapers and fly-leaf with early inked ownership inscriptions; title-page verso institutionally rubber-stamped. Pages age-toned and spotted, with intermittent pencilled bracketing; a few leaves starting to separate. (20808)

Provenance: Presentation copy signed by the author: “To Mr. Breiser[?] with the regards of Maximilian Toch,” dated [19]17.

•  Publisher's olive cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title in decorative lettering embellished with an artist's palette, spine with decorative gilt-stamped title; cloth showing minor wrinkling and light discoloration over back cover and part of spine, corners and spine extremities slightly rubbed. Front free endpaper with inscription as above. Pages faintly age-toned, else clean.  (24491)

The Rev. John C. Lowrie, a prominent Presbyterian missionary and musicologist, provided an entry which includes a Hawaiian translation of the first stanza of “Tappan's beautiful hymn beginning 'Wake! Isles of the South, / Your redemption is near.” That entry is dated Sept. 14th, 1832, from Mount Pleasant, preceding Lowrie's voyage to India in 1833, as one of the earliest Presbyterian missionaries in that country.

In addition to some pressed leaves and ferns, there are a number of small print and manuscript items laid in — the beginning of a letter, a gift enclosure, an obituary of a writer of “Sunday school and church songs,” etc. A handful of pages have small woodcut or wood-engraved illustrations affixed.

Provenance: Front cover with label stamped “Mrs. Mary G. Torrence.”

•  Contemporary straight-grain morocco framed in gilt rolls, front cover with gilt-stamped leather label surrounded by gilt roll with gilt-stamped corner fleurons, spine with gilt-stamped title “Album” and decorative gilt bands; binding rubbed and scuffed overall, gilt rubbed, spine extremities chipped, joints starting from top. Dried plant matter laid in; scattered offsetting and spotting, with inkstaining to three pages and back free endpaper. A few pages excised; front endpaper and one signature separated.  (24628)

Provenance: This copy belonged to Hannah Diggins, whose name is inked on the front and back free endpapers.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 13308. Original “shingle” binding with quarter sheep and paper-covered sides; binding worn and darkened, sides stained, corners chipped, front joint starting from foot. Front free endpaper with inked inscription as above. Pages darkened and stained; one leaf with short tear from lower margin, with loss of a few letters.

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

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

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

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

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

Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

Provenance: First page with inked signature of Henry D. Gilpin (here "H.D. Gilpin"), the U.S. Attorney General who arguedthe Amistad case.  Front pastedown with Gilpin's bookplate and the Wisconsin Historical Society's rubber-stamp.

•  Half sheep over paper boards; covers off, leather rubbed and much abraded, spine leather chipped away; two holes in inner margin, never touching text. Remnants of paper label adhered to top margin of first page. Light spotting to several pages. A few small dog-ears. Now housed in a simple archival phase box. (13538)

Provenance: With the armorial bookplate of D. Feliciano Ramirez de Arellano, Marqués de la Fuensanta del Valle, and bookseller's ticket from a Lisboa dealer.

•  Palau 361040. Contemporary treed calf, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title label, covers showing only light wear; joints and board edges rubbed, leather lost over spine head and cracking over foot, spine also with small traces of paper label. Hinges slightly tender.

Like the first, this second edition of Vettori’s criticism of Cicero is in Latin with quotations and examples in Greek. It is self-described on the title-page as “quae corrupta, mutila, & praeposterè sita admiserat prima editio, haec 2. sedulò castigauit, suóque loco restituit.” The volume begins with the printer’s device on the title-page bearing the motto “Et fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus,” and prints the text in a clear roman type accented with historiated and portrait woodcut initials and woodcut head-pieces. A handsome production.

Provenance: 17th-century near-calligraphic ownership inscriptions on title-page of the Jesuit College at Tudela, Spain; and of G.M. Desmarsall.

•  Adams V687. Recent deep walnut full calf old style, by Grace Bindings (signed in blind at inner area of rear cover, lower turn-in): Round spine with raised bands accented in gilt and with blind-tooled devices in compartments; oxblood leather label, gilt-lettered; fillets extending onto covers from each band to terminate in trefoils and covers framed in blind double fillets. Lacks one internal blank leaf (only). All edges marbled. A very good copy.

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; Walsh, a leading literary critic and editor of the American Quarterly, was an early and distinguished Catholic-American literateur.

•  Parsons 631; Shaw & Shoemaker 50024; Sabin 101158; Howes W67. On Walsh, see: The Dictionary of American Biography, XIX, 391–92.   Recent quarter natural linen shelfback with blue-green paper sides in the style of the era. Library markings noted above. A very good copy.  (24005)

Provenance: First and last leaves stamped by the Lyceum Library of Hull (founded in 1807, and later dispersed in a famous sale).

•  NCBEL, II, 1591. On Walpole, see the Dictionary of National Biography. Contemporary half calf over marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped leather title labels and gilt-stamped floral decorations in compartments. Board edges rubbed, with the spine gilt somewhat dimmed. All page edges marbled to match the boards. Elegant.

Presentation copy: Inked presentation inscription of E.B. Washburne on p. 1.

•  Recent speckled brown wrappers. Some shallow chipping and tears. Neat, handsome old library rubber-stamps.

Valentina Wasson’s upbringing in mushroom-loving Russia inspired this work, although directly Russian-related material is scant compared to the masses of international lore compiled here. Befitting a labor of love, the volume was handsomely printed by the prestigious Stamperia Valdonega (following Hans Mardersteig’s design) on heavy paper with deckle edges. Its pochoir plates reproduce beautiful life-sized watercolor paintings of mushrooms done by naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, and other numerous plates depict other works of interest such as Gainsborough’s “Mushroom Girl.”

Provenance: From the library of chef and culinary collector Louis I. Szathmary, with the laid in, retained carbon of a letter from him to Ralph Geoffrey Newman (the late, noted, Chicago bookseller); this thanks Newman for “the interesting information on the Mushroom book.” A duplicate copy of Newman’s purchase invoice, with Szathmary’s cheque photocopied onto it, is also present.

This is copy number 412 of a limited edition of 512.

•  Green publisher’s cloth, spines with gilt-stamped labels, housed in the original neat buckram-covered slipcase. Corners and spine extremities show slight traces of wear with bindings otherwise crisp and clean; slipcase likewise shows only the faintest of wear. (In our rather bad photograph, the slipcase looks a tad bowed; in real life, it is NOT.) Glassine wrappers present (somewhat yellowed, a bit short as issued, and one with a bit missing at top of that spine). Top edges gilt. Pages and plates clean. A lovely association copy of this significant and uncommon mycological text.

This volume nicely shows both Welser's wealth (access to the Aldine press) and his antiquarian scholarship (on the history and Roman antiquities of Augsburg, Germany). A good example of the late Aldine press's contract work, it employs the usual mix of roman and italic type and on some leaves demonstrates the art of printing sideways; it does not bear the anchor and dolphin device, but is attributed to Aldus in Renouard, which makes a great deal of sense given the relationship between Welser and Manuzio. It is uncommon in today's market and is little held in U.S. libraries.

Contents include: Antiqua quae Augustae Vindelicorum extant monumenta (pp. 199–244); Antiqua agri Augustani monumenta (pp. 245–258); Antiqua monumenta peregrina (pp. 259–74). Signature D is letterpress and an engraved double page map (upside down); signature Ii is letterpress and an engraved double page folding plate.

Provenance: Signature of Hermanus Conringius, dated 1662.

•  Renouard, Alde, 252. Vellum over paste boards, lacking ties; old inked title and paper shelving label on spine (minor wear, mild soiling and discolorations). Ex–theological seminary with bookplate on front pastedown and rubber-stamp on title-page engraving; title-page mounted. Early inked writing on front fly-leaf and rear free endpaper; a few instances of inked underlining and marginal notation. First few leaves with evidence of worming in bottom right corners and top right corners of first six repaired; light waterstains at top margins of some later leaves. Edges sprinkled red. Overall, a clean, crisp copy.

He was a staunch Lutheran. In this scarce tract, with a foreword signed by Joanes Wedman and Benedictus Morgenstern, he treats of Christ and his humanity and takes as his starting point Tilemann Heshusius's Das Jesu Christi warer Leib vnd Blut.

Provenance:  Signature of Howard Osgood on title-page; blind pressure-stamp of Rochester Theological Seminary.

Rare.  OCLC and NUC Pre-1956 combined locate only one copy in the U.S., this one, now deaccessioned. VD16 locates only three copies in Europe.

•  VD16 W-2911.   Removed from a nonce volume and laid into a cut-down portion of a 17th-century English map with hand coloring. Very good condition.  (24600)

This isthe first music book printed typographically in America: All previous music books had been engraved.

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription reading “Warren Burr's Booke 1786.”

Uncommon: Only seven U.S. institutions report holdings of this first edition.

At top of the title-page: “Laus Deo!”

•  Evans 19752; Amer. Sacred Music 533; Sabin 95414c (under “Also”); ESTC W15184.   Contemporary limp sheep, covers framed in blind double fillets; ownership stamps effaced on both covers, spine and edges rubbed, foot of spine with paper shelving label. Front pastedown partially removed, with bookplate remnants beneath; back free endpaper lacking and front one with inscription as above; title-page with institutional rubber-stamp in lower margin; back pastedown rubber-stamped. Pages age-toned and foxed. Sewing loosening, text block pulling away from spine, leaves starting to separate. Occasional tiny, unobtrusive early inked “rec'd.” marks, witha very few measures of music corrected or added to in an early hand.  (24016)

Provenance: Title-page upper margin with inked presentation inscription reading “Mrs. Miller with the Editor’s kind regards,” the editor being Thomas Worsley. Inked beneath the printer’s information are the words “not published,” also noted in another copy of this work. The front pastedown bears an inked inscription from Major and Mrs. F. Miller to Father Green, with a date in 1944 added in a different hand.

Binding: Signed contemporary binding: textured green cloth in imitation of morocco, front cover with decorative frame and title stamped in gilt; back pastedown with small binder’s ticket from Westleys & Co., London.

•  NSTC 2W32791. Binding as above, cloth a bit rubbed over corners and joints, with spine extremities pulled. All edges gilt. Front pastedown and title-page with inscriptions as above. Pages slightly age-toned, else clean, with errata slip present. Very nice.

All early editions are scarce, including this one: OCLC and ESTC report only three U.S. institutional holdings of this elaborated third edition, counting this (now-deaccessioned) copy.

Provenance:  This copy was apparently used by a clergyman; the back free endpaper has a list of hand-inked annotations beginning “March 12 1734 Baptiz'd Rich'd Son of John Bagsby of Broughton & Alice his wife” and ending with a private baptism in April of 1750. Six manuscript pages on “Churching of Women” and inditing a prayer to be used “when there appears but little hope of recovery” have been added at the back of the volume.

•  ESTC T84836.   Contemporary calf framed and panelled in blind with blind-tooled corner fleurons, rebacked with speckled calf, inner fleurons on front and back covers retooled, original leather rubbed. Front pastedown with private collector's bookplate, front free endpaper lacking, dedication page with early inked ownership inscription, back pastedown with inked annotations as above, back free endpaper with pencilled numerals. Pencilled bracketing; occasional inked corrections and additions in the same hand as the 18th-century inscriptions. Paper browned but strong.  (23706)