The copper-engraved, oversized frontispiece map shows Baffin's Bay, Barrow's Straits, Prince Regent's Inlet, and the North Georgian Islands, as well as the bay named after Parry's two ships.

•  Arctic Bibliography 13145; Hill (2nd ed.) 1311; Sabin 58860. Recent quarter calf over marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels, and gilt-stamped anchor decorations in compartments. Title-page and a few others, plus reverse of 1 map, lightly stamped by a now-defunct institution. Pages gently age-toned, with occasional offsetting from engraving and the odd spot or smudge. One map with small portion of inner margin reinforced; final two leaves with inner margins reinforced; one plate with tears into image and mounted. Final advertisement leaf bound in before final text leaf. All edges marbled.

•  Shoemaker 25670; Sabin 58867. On Parry, see: The Dictionary of National Biography, XLIII, 392–93. Quarter cloth over paper with paper spine label, antique style. Map tattered on the edges, affecting ruled border, and with two closed tears. Lightly cockled with bumped corners; foxing and old damp-staining. A leaf of advertisements has been bound in at front—see our second illustration, here.  Ownership inscription on title-page.

This first American printing followed a London edition of the same year and was part of Putnam's "Library for the People."

•  Textured red cloth, covers stamped in blind with an attractive branch and leaf pattern, spine gilt-stamped; spine faded. Sewing starting to loosen. Lacking map. Front free endpaper with inscription “Rachel Wiston / 1887 / Aunt Sarah Hunt.” Scattered spots of foxing, mostly to first and last few pages.

This book bears an ornate, emblematic engraved title-page, with portraits of St. Brendan and Boyl and more, and no fewer than 18 leaf-filling plates by Wolfgang Kilian. These plates, which mixfancy and realism in entirely engaging ways, include a portrait of Columbus, a scene of St. Brendan celebrating mass on the back of a whale, botanical images of the marvelous Peruvian potato, and numerous views of the missionaries’interaction with the natives, some friendly, and some not—the unfriendliest being notably violent and gory. Also, on p. 35–36 is given an example of purportednative American music, with both words and notation. This copy is one (probably the first) of two states of this sole edition (with only three leaves in the preliminaries), without the additional foldout plate found in some copies.

•  Alden & Landis, European Americana, 621/100; Sabin 63367; Palau 224762. Binding as above and shown at left (distortion noted), chipped on corners and at head and foot of spine. Small wormholes visible on inside of covers, running into margins of pages and plates, and a few closed tears, neither affecting print or plates. Engraved title remounted. Small stains, light spots of waterstaining, and light soiling. A very covetable illustrated Americanum of the early 17th century, in an enjoyable copy.

François Raymond Joseph de Pons (1751–1812) was archivist for the French Navy. This work also appeared in English, German, and Spanish editions; this is its first edition, and the sole French edition.

Provenance: Engraved armorial bookplates of Thomas Munro on front pastedowns. Unattributed note in pencil in top margin of half-title of vol. I (repeated in substance in the other volumes): “This was Talleyrand’s copy.”

A very handsomely printed book in Arabic and Latin.

•  Lambrecht 1129. 19th-century German boards covered with black mottled paper, boards and spine abraded; paper spine-label with hand-lettering. Institutional bookplate on front pastedown. Four-digit number in ink at base of first p. V. Housed in a modern quarter brown morocco tray case with raised bands on spine, each accented above and below with gilt beading (our last image shows the volume lying in its box). One spine compartment with title, another with publication place and dates, all others with gilt center device. A very acceptable copy of a scarce and important work for Arabic studies.

The promotional map of Manhattan focuses on the Fair but also locates night and dinner clubs, theaters, movie houses, museums and other points of interest; a large map of automobile routes is given, as is a smaller map of the subway system. The map is contained in itoriginal color-printed protective folder stamped “With the compliments of Ralph C. Bulkley . . . The Seaboard Insurance Company of Maryland.”

•  Folder darkened and spotted; two exterior map panels slightly faded, map otherwise clean and bright.  (24644)

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

We find only two U.S. locations and a copy at the British Library.

•  Publisher’s printed paper wrappers; edges nicked, paper split and chipping along spine, text block cracked. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate. Lower margins of title-page and preface waterstained, inner margin of frontispiece waterstained; upper margin of title-page with portion torn away. Some plates lightly foxed or browned, one with waterstaining in lower margin. Pages untrimmed. One’s sense is that this was USED as a guidebook!

This is an untrimmed copy in original boards, with 24 pages of advertising for Carey publications bound in at the front of the volume. The preliminary map, engraved by John Bower, has hand-colored border lines; this American edition does not call for the plates found in the English first, but does include in-text depictions of several “Ethiopic inscriptions.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 33864; NSTC 2S3118. Publisher’s quarter tan paper over light blue paper–covered sides; front cover detached and back joint cracked, binding spotted, paper cracked and split along spine, spine label now absent and replaced with hand-inked title, spine with later paper shelving label. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate, front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription dated 1829. Half-title with portion of outer margin torn away (not touching text) and laid in. Map lightly foxed, with two short tears along folds. Pages age-toned, with occasional spots of foxing.

•  Sabin 85145. Publisher's cloth, covers stamped in blind, spine with gilt-stamped title and ship vignette; spine sunned, with gilt dimmed, cloth showing a touch of rubbing at corners and spine extremities, and a small insect hole to the back joint. A few pages with mild foxing, generally a nice, clean copy. (18404)

Uncommon. OCLC and NUC Pre-1956 find no holdings of this Philadelphia imprint.

Provenance: Pencilled ownership note, “Miss Emily Larned.”

•  Rosenbach, Early American Children's Books, 680 (for first Baltimore ed. only); not in American Imprints.   Publisher's printed blue paper wrappers, showing minimal wear to corners and spine extremities, faint spotting to front wrapper, overall in excellent clean condition. Front inside wrapper with early pencilled ownership inscription. Pages clean save for light offsetting towards back of book.  (24580)

Binding:  Publisher's cream cloth, front covers and spines stamped in two shades of gilt.

•  Bindings pleasingly clean and showing virtually no wear or discoloration, lacking the rarely found cloth dust jackets. Front fly-leaf of vol. I with inked gift inscription dated 1898. Hinges (inside) of vol. II cracked. Pages and plates clean. (20484)

Of Philadelphia: “All night a sound as of a masque and procession of one hundred menageries let loose, filled one's ears. The deserts of Africa seemed to have disgorged half their denizens on the beautiful streets of fair Philadelphia; while bells, horns, gongs, and rattling fire-engines, helped to swell the hideous chorus . . . To any one not participating in these sentiments, Philadelphia can not be an eligible place of residence, I think: Sancho Panza certainly would shun it; for blessed, he declared, was the man who invented sleep.”

With 16 pages of publisher's advertisements at the end.

•  Sabin 93220; Howes W-687; Clark, Travels in the Old South, III, 419.   Publisher's brown cloth, stamped in gilt on the spine, in blind on covers. Cloth of spine frayed at head and foot; spot of black ink on spine, partially covering two gilt letters. Pages foxed throughout, intermittently water- or dampstained at lower edges, free of chips or tears. Faint early ink inscriptions on front free endpaper. Good+.  (24570)

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.

Click the image at left, for an enlargement.

This map depicts the parishes of San Francisco Tlapanzingo, Tlachichilco, and Ygualtepec in the Mixtec region of Puebla, Mexico, extending north into the current state of Mexico. The map also shows various still-extant towns (including Huehuetitlán), others then-extant and gone now, various ranchos or haciendas, a number of smaller villages, and the now extinct river Guacapa (a pestilential black water canal in modern times). The map is accomplished in red, green, yellow, brown, and grey. The lettering is precise and the whole very appealing.

•  Very good condition. Two small abrasions in map area with minuscule loss. Clearly once tipped into a volume of manuscripts or other documents.

Many sources, including OCLC, attribute this work to de Jouy himself, but the Monthly Review of May, 1825 admits that the “similarity of title, of decorum, of form, and of manner,” as well as the title-page’s claim that this is a continuation of de Jouy’s work, all misled their reviewer and a number of others into that incorrect and much-perpetuated citation. The travelogue has more recently been attributed to Louet de Chaumont, among others, while Barbier and Quérard suggest that it may have been compiled by de Villemarest from de Chaumont’s notes and manuscripts.

•  NSTC 2H18614. Publisher’s plain paper-covered boards, sometime rebacked with speckled paper and old printed paper labels laid on, the set now in a recent case with sides covered in blue cloth and speckled paper; extremities rubbed, covers with spots of discoloration, retained spine labels chipped and darkened. Front pastedowns each with institutional bookplate (no other markings). Hinges (inside) reinforced some time ago. Vol. II with one signature separated. Pages untrimmed and clean save for scattered small spots of foxing. A strong, agreeable set.

Click the image for an enlargement.

After a brief respite back in the U.S., where he was welcomed as a hero, Walker, the quintessential filibusterer, returned to Central America wanting to capture Honduras. He died there trying.

The map (14" x 16") is in four colors and is titled “Colton's Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador & Costa Rica.

•  Publisher's brick colored textured cloth stamped in blind. Top and bottom of spine pulled and frayed. Some foxing at front and rear. Newspaper articles at front and rear of volume. Some added owner's notes about Walker on blanks. Clean.  (21372)

•  Garrison A28.I.a. Publisher’s green cloth, front cover stamped with a French country in white, red, and gold, spine with gilt-stamped title; original box lacking, cloth a bit rubbed over corners and spine extremities, with spine title dimmed. Front free endpaper with inked owner’s inscription dated 1919. Faint waterstaining to outer margins of pp. 21–35.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 39807; Smith, Americans Abroad, W66. Contemporary paper-covered boards, spines with printed paper labels; darkened and worn, vol. I with covers detached and paper cracked over spine, vol. II with front joint open though presently holding Front pastedowns with bookplates of the Salem Library Company; vol. I with early inked inscriptions to endpapers and half-title. Light to moderate foxing, no other stains.

Fifth edition of the Voyage from London and second edition of the Continuation.

•  Voyage from London: Sabin 103534; Alden & Landis 739/343; ESTC T29204. Continuation: Sabin 103535 & 103538; Alden & Landis 739/340; ESTC T34033 & T34025.   Recent full calf antique-style with gilt concentric panels on covers and gilt corner-devices on same; round spine with raised bands, each accented by gilt rules. 19th-century wood-engraved portrait of Whitefield added as a frontispiece. A very pleasing volume.  (21775)

Other birds mentioned as seen here include ducks (including canvasback), ospreys (“listening, pensive, to the distant roar / Of yon white falls that down the mountain pour” (p. 50)), geese, partridges, robins, woodcocks, owls, pheasants, blackbirds, and jays — with many of the aforementioned species falling victim to the party's guns at least once.

The poem originally appeared in 1809–10 in serial form in The Port Folio magazine and made its first appearance in book form after Wilson's death, printed at the Bucks County press of Simeon Siegfried at behest of the author's nephew. Its index provides, in addition to clarifications regarding bird species, notes on the local flora, fauna, geography, and idiomatic expressions. By general consensus, the work is much longer than it needs to be as poetry; but it is wonderful to read Wilson's descriptions of (and reactions to) what are now lost landscapes or unbelievably changed places — and it is wonderful to see the ornithologist's vision presented here in words, knowing what birds would emerge from his burin. One realizes that this was, whether consciously or no, a scientific expedition!

Provenance:  William B. Keyser's inscription, dated 1819; Keyser was a teacher at the Newtown Academy.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 46824; Sabin 104599; Wegelin, American Poetry, 1209.   Period-style quarter calf and marbled paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled raised bands, binding signed by Starr Bookworks. Half-title with large inked ownership inscription of Keyser, as above, dated 1819. Title-page verso with affixed printed publication statement, as described in Sabin, with offsetting to recto. Pages age-toned and lightly spotted.  (24792)

•  NSTC 2W33589. Recent plain paper-covered boards, front cover with printed paper label. Frontispiece, title-page, and several other pages stamped by a now-defunct institution. Lacking all but one plate (the frontispiece). Page edges untrimmed.

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